Transcript of Episode #153 Featuring Dr. Joel Fuhrman! The creator of the NUTRITARIAN DIET! Over 30 years of experience and well known for his 7 New York Times Best Selling books!!

Your biology may not be the same in your 40s as it was in your 20s, but your standards and goals can be even bigger. We're at a time where we have more tools and methods to not just live longer but also healthier with better results as we age. Aging is no longer viewed as a decline. It's about optimization and time efficiency. Training smarter and more efficient is a new standard, and we now know how to get more from the workouts we are already doing. Now, chances are your supplement stack is missing a much healthier foundation, so enhance it with Mitopure, a targeted supplement that revitalizes your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells. Mitochondria are crucial to overall health, not just energy production. Protein builds muscle, creatine supports power. Mitopure helps support the cellular engines that power both. When your cells thrive, everything follows. So claim your free Aging Muscle Protocol guide and free sample of Mitopure gummies from Timeline at timeline.com/dylan. It's the science-backed breakdown of exactly what's happening to your muscles as you age and how to fight back. All right everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. So today is a big one for me.

My guest is on another level of brilliant, and many of you are gonna know exactly who it is. After you either see this or hear the introduction, but we are going to utilize the time today to cover as much as I can possibly take from him. It's, it's gonna take probably multiple episodes. We've had some discussions prior and I've already learned quite a bit and I'm excited to learn more today and present him to you. So he's a board-certified family physician and nutritional researcher, and he specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. Now he is the father of a special diet, and I learned about this and I am super intrigued. We're going to talk about— it's called the Nutritarian Diet, and it's a nutrient-dense, plant-rich eating plan. And this is designed to slow aging. And he's done so much. He has 12— and that is correct when I say that— 12 books. We're going to get into some of— and he is a specialist in multiple areas. So, my friends, welcome Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

Great to be here.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and see me. When I got introduced to you, I was reading about you and completely fascinated, but then after talking to you, seeing the things that you've worked on, it's definitely life's work to say the least. I mean, 12 books and such substantial information. What got you into nutrition?

Well, I was on the world figure skating team in the 1970s. I was second in the United States in pairs figure skating with my sister. Later. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So we were competing and we always wanted to have better stamina, not get sick for training purposes. And my father was overweight and kind of sickly. He'd be going to doctors with back pain. So he started, he started reading books from Herbert Shelton that were written in the 1940s, 1950s. And the first book he read, I think, was You Don't Have to Be Sick by Jack Duntrop. He was a producer of Hapalong Cassidy or the Howdy Doody Show or something like that back in the days. Right. So I was a teenager around 1960, you know, 1965, reading these books and thinking my father's nuts. You know, how could he like think everybody's wrong and that what you eat, you know, what you eat is what gives you asthma. What you eat is what creates rheumatoid arthritis and makes your joints degenerate. This is crazy. You know, how could everybody, you know, so I, so I did read a lot and start to change. We, our whole family changed our diet when we were young.

We saw my father get better. He got healthier and we saw it improved our, our stamina for training purposes. And then I just kept reading and going to conferences and learning more and seeing people. And this is when I was a teenager, I'm like 18 or 19. I'm 72 now. So this is when I'm like, this is more than 50 years ago, right? And I'm seeing these people who recovered from ulcerative colitis or recovered from asthma, recovered from diabetes, didn't just get better, they got rid of their problems, you know, through excellent nutrition. So I was, I was really, you know, perked up into wanting to learn more about it. So then when I finished my skating career, I went to my father, I was still performing, teaching skating, and working in my father's shoe business. He had 12 shoe stores in the metropolitan area. But I knew in the back of my mind that my real passion was nutrition at this point. And so I started to meet my, meet, meet it to date and to meet a woman who turned out to be my wife eventually. And she was going to medical school.

So I started talking to her and say, well, what are you going to medical school for? Don't just give people drugs that are toxic when it's what their, their lifestyle and their diet that's causing all the problems.

Mm-hmm.

So she said, if you're so passionate about that, Why don't you go back to medical school and change everything and make it and do things a different way? Be a different type of doctor. Go to an Ivy League medical school and make things different. So I said, I thought about that, but I thought I'm too old, you know, I'm in my late 20s. I didn't have the prerequisites. And then so this woman who I wasn't, I was just starting to date, started telling me about the postgraduate pre-med program at Columbia saying, why don't you just drop your father's business? Just sell the business, let him retire. And if this is really what you're passionate about, go back to medical school full-time, go back to the pre-med program. At Columbia. So I sold my father's business. I eventually married this person and she, you know, but anyway, so I sold my father's business and didn't know I was gonna get into medical school, but I, you know, took the, took all the pre-med courses in one year at Columbia and then applied to med and took the, and took the MCAT and applied and got into the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Wow.

Yeah. So I, and with a specific intent to be a doctor specializing in nutritional medicine. And I became board certified in family practice so I can treat all ages and all types of conditions. And it's really, so I've had, you know, this last, you could say, you know, 35 years of this career that's been so personally rewarding because I've attracted people who were willing to make that commitment, who wanted to get well. I've had patients say to me, you know, I'll eat sawdust if you want me to, if you can get rid of my rheumatoid arthritis.

Yeah.

You know, stuff like that. And then, so I attracted people who knew my specialty, were willing to do what I told them to do. And I watched, you know, thousands of people reverse serious diseases. And so that really, so my early years in medical practice sparked my interest even more.

How many years did it take you to get through that medical school program?

Well, it was like a 2-year process to get into medical school, take the courses, take the MCAT, and then wait to be accepted. Then 4 years of medical school and then 3 years of residency.

Wow.

So that's about, you know, 10 years just to, you know, yeah, that was a big thing to go back into. Decision when I was already being, I was already successful economically in my family's business. I had to drop all that, become poor again, take out loan and invest back and become, to go to school again. But it really, you know, I'm really so blessed to have had such a rewarding career. By the way, when I was ranked number 2 in the United States in 1973 in pair skating as an athlete, I got injured and I couldn't walk for almost a year. So because of that, I didn't get, I couldn't get back into shape in time for the '76 Olympics. I came in and subsequent, I came in 4th in that national championship. And so I was the alternate. And then I, then I eventually after that became, was 3rd in the World Professional Championships, came back into better shape again. But the point I'm making right now is that maybe if it wasn't for my injury, I would've never pursued a career in medicine. So I think my injury may have had me cut my skating career short.

Always. Yeah, yeah, it's time. There's only different little things that come into your life that change the trajectory of your life in some way, right?

I know all too well, my friend. All too well. Okay, so this is something I'm curious about. Now, I've studied nutrition in school, but not to nowhere near the extent that you have. How, how does it differ from like your real-world work in terms of what you've done now over the years to what you learn in school? Is there a lot of differentiation there in terms of the way that they teach about nutrition itself? And, and look, I understand things have evolved over the years, like low fat and low carb and everything that comes along. But what's it like in school?

No, they don't teach anything in school. Nothing. Nothing. It's, it's almost like a couple of classes that are meaningless.

Mm-hmm.

Deficiency of scurvy from vitamin C or the B vitamins and how they can court, you know, it's, it's worthless. It's, it's no substantial learning. You have to really learn it on your own. Yeah. So I've spent countless hours reviewing more than 40,000 scientific studies, publishing my own studies, but reviewing the world's literature and and I even have a full-time PhD who works for me, who does nothing all day long but cull articles and read science and pull out the best articles. So it's just a full-time job scouring the world's literature and become an expert in the whole, and where the science dictates and directs us to, you know, to know where the money is. Where is it really? And when you, but you know what? Over the last 40 years, the scientific evidence has cumulatively added on to what we knew 30, 40 years ago, but it hasn't changed it that much substantially.

You know, so the, the reason that I ask that is not to throw stones at going to school or, you know, draw conclusions, but it is to make a point is that while it's respectable and it's, it shows a lot of, you know, discipline to go to school and do all of that, the real learning and education comes from being in the trenches, from doing the real test, seeing the real world work like you've done. As opposed to, oh, I learned this at school.

You, you learn how to read research and how to interpret and be a critique of research.

Okay.

So if you're looking at 100 articles on one subject, you can know how to throw out the ones that may have some maybe C or D value, not A or B. And you, so it helps you to be able to interpret scientific studies. Okay. But like you said, you don't get any training in school of how to deprescribe medication. My expertise, and I've imparted this to other physicians and, and trainings we've people. I'm one of the original founders of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, which is now a board certification. And we've taught doctors over the last 30 years is how to get a— when a person is eating healthily, losing weight, and doesn't need the diabetic medications or the high blood pressure medications or the autoimmune medications or the asthma inhalers, how do you slowly reduce the medication safely so the person doesn't get into trouble? So it's a whole different skill set to deprescribe. Yeah. And that's where you need a medical degree. 'Cause I'm writing prescriptions to lower the dosages and to do it slowly. I know when to switch and when to stop a medication. Yeah. You know, so it's, it's a whole new specialty.

I love it. Okay. So I want to get in then to some of the things that you do and some of the things that I've learned from you and that you, you're teaching. So you have developed your own diet, so to speak, or let's just call it the way, way to eat. I, I don't like the term diet.

Yeah. It's a dietary portfolio.

Yeah.

You know, I didn't invent eating natural foods. No. Eating fruits and vegetables, whatever.

Over, you know, but you kind of gave the structure and the right kinds of foods. Now I want to ask you this first. I say this, and I, I want to know your thought because you would know better than anybody. I argue that food is medicine, and that's the actual medicine first and foremost, that you can heal yourself through that. You set up your lifestyle, you set up— the way that I like interpret blood panels, because I do that, is one of the things I do, and I can normally look at a blood panel and go, okay, you're not eating so great in this area, you're lacking this nutrient, and it's coming from your diet more than likely. Do you agree or disagree agree with that?

I more than agree.

Okay.

I, I take it a step further because not only do I agree, but I'm saying most of what doctors do is hurtful and damages people's health. Mm-hmm. Not only is food better medicine, conventional medicine is harmful. Take any, let's take, take osteoarthritis. Okay. You come to me with a pain in your knee. I put you on a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Yeah. That stops the production of chondrocytes producing the proteoglycans and the glucosaminoglycans that make the cartilage soft and cushiony. So now the med— the pain medications from the doctors accelerate the degeneration of your knee, and then you go back to them 6 months later, it's still outta pain, the drugs aren't working, and they give you a steroid shot. Yep. Now the steroid shot now completely poison the chondrocytes and melts your cartilage away. So that's just one example. Yeah. You know, so what doctors do is the body is, you could say, is controlled by a lot of different factors. The nutrient density in the cells, the toxicity in the cells, the circulation to the cells, the body fat, and all types of biochemical events. And when we— the signals of pain and the symptoms of disease is, is generally the body expressing something that's wrong.

The medical profession, instead of trying to uncover what's wrong, gives you a drug which further contributes to the toxic load the body is trying to deal with. Very often the asthma attack, The psoriasis, those are extraordinary efforts of the body to try to remove waste products and get it out of the body. So your mucus membranes become very hyperstimulated. You're producing excess mucus and extra, it gets all inflamed and easily irritated. So instead of removing the, getting rid of the buildup of metabolic waste products, use a steroid inhaler now to stop, to calm down the inflammation, which just pushes the toxins, the poisons back inside the body, which now makes you, or use a beta agonist like a rescue inhaler, which then irritates the lung further, which makes you more dependent on medication in the future and makes your asthma go to a deeper level of seriousness. So now you don't just get it once in a while, now you get the asthma every day and you have to wake up in the middle of the night to take inhalers. The point I'm making is that whether it's diabetic medications or insulin, which makes you gain weight, makes you more diabetic, or whether it's medications for pain that ruin your cartilage, or whether it's anti-inflammatory drugs that make your inflammation toxic.

Of course, I'm saying, I'm taking it a little step further than you were saying. I'm saying medical care is one of the 5 factors that decrease your life, that decreases your lifespan. Exposure to medical care is a risk factor shorter lifespan. So if you're taking, if you're a kid in a pediatrician's office and you're visiting, your parent is bringing you to the doctor more to get more shots, more drugs, more, you know, more ear infections, more treatments. The, you know, the, what I'm saying right now is the goal is to live healthfully as much to as much as possible, avoid the need for medical care. Even the re— how many antibiotics you've been given in your life, there's a risk factor for cancer down the road now. And 94% of antibiotic prescriptions are given for indications that they didn't— weren't needed for. So we're talking about the vast majority of what doctors do is overall net harm.

Mm-hmm.

Now we're not talking about medical emergencies or people who are in acute need of some kind of help, but we're talking about treating chronic diseases with drugs when, when their lifestyle was the cause of the condition.

Yeah. I can't tell you how many people I've had to, to work on their guts, for example, that have been overprescribed antibiotics that don't do anything. That were for viruses.

They, they destroy the gut bacteria and it takes a year to recover.

Yeah.

They do something. Yeah. They're destructive and it's, you can't recover quickly from those that destructive effects.

Well, you're oftentimes, cuz another thing that I do is a lot of stuff with cardiology patients and the heart patients and you just rob Peter to pay Paul. Here, take this and it causes a side effect. We're gonna take this to stop that side effect and then this to stop that. And before you know it, you're on 9 or 10 medications. And your whole day is planned out around taking this and then avoiding this side effect to stop this one. And it's just like this trickle-down effect. And so one of my main premises for even being here with people like you is to try to spotlight what is actually happening so people will stop listening to, well, they're crazy, they're, they're non-conventional. No, we're conventional. That shit is non-conventional.

That, that's right. That's, I'm I'm agreeing with you. And I'm saying that what we do in the field of lifestyle medicine, getting people to live healthier, that's where the evidence supports. We're doing evidence-based medicine. Conventional medicine is really not evidence-based because they look at short-term, immediate, acute parameters, which can be, can save a person's life in a crisis. Yeah. But they don't follow the effects of their treatments over the years and follow 10, 20, 30 years to see if that treatment compared to a group, let's say, who was treated, was not treated in that same medical way, followed them for 10 years and see what the overall lifespan is. Yeah. What the cardiovascular death rate is, what the cancer, what the cancer incidence and cancer deaths, and what deaths were. What I'm saying is that medicine doesn't generally track long-term chronic, chronic effects of their treatments. Yeah. They only track the short-term effects. So largely, not everything, but largely what they do is not evidence-based. It's hypothesis-based. And they're giving a hypothesis because it worked in the short run. You're feeling better, you're breathing better, your pain is down and nothing bad is happening to you right now.

It must be good for you.

Yeah.

Like proton pump inhibitors for reflux, right? Which now we know have a black box warning because they increase risk of heart disease. Like osteoporosis drugs. I can go on from one med problem, like bisphosphonates for osteoporosis, which increase risk of atrial fibrillation. And most of the newer osteoporosis drugs that are stronger than bisphosphonates increase your risk of having a heart attack. And then they can cause necrosis of the jaw or mid-femur fracture. But what we have now, new therapies and regenerative therapies that can improve bone density without these dangers. But the point I'm making right now is that they're doing, they're not doing a great job at studying the long-term damage and seeing what other options would give better long-term, you know, would create less damage. And that's where I come in with nutritional excellence.

Yeah.

And I coined that term a nutritarian diet just to describe A diet via which science has indicated would slow aging, prolong human lifespan, and when used therapeutically for a person in trouble, it can enable the body's own self-healing mechanisms to reverse disease and have the person make a complete recovery and they can stop taking their chronic medications, you know?

Yeah.

Get rid of their diabetes. I was part of, I think, 5 other doctors or 8 other doctors who published a study on the deprescribing of diabetic medications. Once people adopted, you know, a high, a low glycemic, high plant-based diet, the diabetes melt away. So, but I've, I've published numerous studies on various topics demonstrating that people, that blood pressure reverses itself in a short period of time. The majority of people are off the blood pressure medications, blood pressure medications in 6 weeks. Yeah. They don't have high blood pressure anymore.

I can't tell you how many people I've had come in with all kinds of different instances where I say, all we have to do is change a couple things here. You don't need, for me, a lot of it's, it's, it's hormone related cuz I do a lot of that. So it's, I need testosterone. I'm looking at their blood panels, I'm like, no, you don't. Let me fix this area and this, and your testosterone's gonna go right back up. And it's just the same with food. It's, oh, I'm taking this medication. Well, you don't need it. You don't need it. If we just make some tweaks in your diet and your sleep patterns and habits, it's gone. Right. And, and I just hate that reliance on things that don't need to be relied upon.

Well, everybody is unhealthy.

Mm-hmm.

And the American diet is dangerous. It causes an epidemic of heart attacks and strokes and dementias and other diseases. And people are so addicted to it. Addicted and habituated to this diet, and they're all overweight and they all have high body fat percents. And it's almost like doctors feel it's hopeless. They can't get people to change. It's too hard to change, to radically change the way a person eats once they're addicted to the American style of living and eating. And of course, as you know, I've spent my career showing that people will change if they're educated sufficiently. And if they know that they're going to temporarily feel worse, and if they know that eventually their taste buds will change and get stronger and they learn the right recipes, they can make the change and they can stick with it and they can drop £100 and keep it off and they can drop it. You know, they can get the inflammation down and they can stop the stickiness of their platelets and lower the risk of having a cardiovascular death within a couple of weeks. Could reduce the risk of having a death just from getting off the American diet.

But people think, and doctors think, 'cause this is a response I've gotten through the last, you know, even through my whole medical career. We know you are right, but the but is we could never get our patients to do that. People aren't gonna listen to you. You're not gonna make money that way. And people just want a pill. So you're just, you're just swimming against the stream. People don't want to change, make radical change in their lifestyle. They just want a medication and you're just making it difficult for, you're just gonna, you know, have a, you're not gonna get people to listen to you anyway. So, you know, this is from a doc. These are from doctors who are not trained in motivational techniques and nutrition. They don't, they don't have the experience in dealing with food addiction. And they don't really have the science behind the food addiction or motivational change, nor do they treat people in groups and give people enough time to learn and to make the educated decision for themselves. You know, my response to all these doctors all the years who always responded to me, like even in medical school, you know, we know you're right, but you're never going to get people to make the change.

You know, that was always the response. And my response back to them was, that's not our paternalistic position that just because we think a person's not going to change that we lie to them. And we don't give them informed consent and we don't tell them the damaging effects of taking these drugs and we don't tell them there's an alternative that could give them better outcomes, we sucked away their chance to make the right decision. You didn't give them the option to make a right decision. Whether 1 in 10 peeps will do it, make the change, or 3 out of 10, that's not even the relevant point. The relevant point, we have an obligation to give people proper informed consent and let them make that choice. So I'll sit down with patients and I'll say, okay, you're here with me right now, you know, do you want to just make an improvement? Do you want to really do whatever it takes to totally get well, to drop all your excess weight and to get rid of your diabetes and reduce and get rid of your cardiovascular problems and get rid of your, you know, psoriasis or whatever it is?

You're willing to make all the changes necessary? And they'll very often say, yeah, just tell me what to do and I'll do it.

Yes, that's the, well, I'm going to do it anyway, so you might as well tell me. No, I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And most people, not all, but most are very receptive to that when you just say, look, this is, this is it, this is what it really is. Most people actually do want to hear that. You just have to be willing to say it, not be a people pleaser, but be somebody that actually cares, right? And I think that that's one of the things that I'm, I've run into the more that I've gotten into working with doctors and practitioners over the years. And it's like, man, I say this as precise as I can, get some balls, man, because like people are depending on you. They really are. And the doctors hold a lot of power in what they say. And I don't think sometimes they actually realize it. Some do, but some don't, that your words are gold to people. Like they're gospel to some people. And I think that if that resonated with more, and I, I think it does with functional medicine doctors a lot, cuz they go the extra mile and they really try harder to, to, to give that.

I just can't antiquate how careless that some of them are with the way that they're just just take this and go, take this and go without asking questions. You go to the doctor, how many doctors ask you, what's your diet like? How's your sleep? How much stress are you under? They don't ask you anything. It's just like, oh, you have that problem? Then it's probably this here, or we can go give you a blood test here. And that's it.

And I just can't stand it.

Well, it's, it's, it's, it's why I'm thankful people like you exist because you actually dig in and show people different ways and methods. And that's kind of why I want to transition then to your diet that you've coined and that you've come up with. How, how many years did it take you to figure this out testing-wise and how did you develop it?

Well, don't forget, I've just, I've just researched and I let evidence, evidence speaks. And the world's body of nutritional literature says and shows us how cancer cells replicate and what food and food elements stop cancer cell replication. How do you shut off the kynurenine pathway that allow cancer cells to metastasize and how, and how Inflammation is the foundation of disease and how, how inflammation builds up through free radicals. So really, you know, I didn't invent that vegetables make people live longer and that raw vegetables have the most consistent, powerful association with reduction of cancers of all type. There's more than 200 studies. So I had the background in reading from these early pioneers like, you know, Trail and Shelton and how they advocated people eat a huge variety of colorful plants in their diet. And a lot of times, sometimes they have the science wrong. But in reviewing all the science that's subsequently come out over the last 30 years, we know that, for example, there are more than— I used to say 200, but now there are more than 300 studies that show that the consumption of raw vegetables, like eating salad, particularly when you mix lettuce, which is the richest source of sulfoquinovose, which fuels the good bacteria in the gut, the mixing lettuce with the cruciferous green, like arugula or sprouts or bok choy or kale, how that supports the growth of the intraepithelial lymphocytes behind the villi in the small intestines, how the green vegetables are necessary for normalization of the body's defenders at the gates of the castle, the lymphocytes that surrounded the digestive tract.

So in other words, you're asking me, how did I develop this? It's eating this way, using it with patients, but also seeing the cumulative effect of evidence and the explanations and the studies that test it, you know, and see. So what I'm, what I've said right now is that this showed that the more vegetables, especially raw vegetables and green vegetables you eat, and there were studies following hundreds of thousands of people showing that that the green vegetable consumption predicts lifespan achievement, how, how long a person lives. Really? More percentage of green vegetables, longer lifespan. It was one Asian study on more than 100,000 people showing that in the, in the highest quintile of cruciferous vegetable consumption is where all the super elderly lived. You know, if you wanted to achieve that, it had to be through high green vegetable consumption. But, but I've come to that acronym G-BOMBS, right? G-B-O-M-B-S, because there's more than 100 studies on each particular G-BOMB. Showing the dramatic, you could say, corroborative evidence that leads to their anti-cancer benefits. And when you mix a dietary portfolio that includes all the various G-bombs together, then you support the immune function with a lot of different mechanisms that overlap and add a lot of power to the body's resistance to fight off any type of cancer, especially the most dietary-sensitive cancers that are hormonally sensitive, which are the most 3 common cancers in America.

Which are breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer, almost totally dietary-induced cancers that don't have to happen with excellent nutrition. So the G-BOMBS stands for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. So it's, we want to have a high phytochemical concentration in each cell and a lot of phytochemical and fiber diversity to fuel the right bacteria in the gut. So all these things work hand in hand. So the mushrooms, for example, have anti-angiogenic effects and anti-aromatase inhibition, which prevents estrogen from— keeps estrogen control from stimulating breast and prostate tissue. But the anti-angiogenic effects means they prevent like an abnormal cell from cleaning a blood supply to allow it to grow fast.

Okay.

So they have anti-cancer effects. Likewise, green cruciferous vegetables also have anti-angiogenic and anti-replicative effects on abnormal tissue, but they also have different effects on modulating, enabling the body to remove toxins and fix, repair broken DNA cross-links and repair the mitochondria. In other words, they're the green vegetable, and particularly the isothiocyanates, the ITCs in green vegetables, have an incredible, um, a whole series of different mechanisms which they help normalize an abnormal cell. They remove toxins, they fix broken DNA cross-links, they suppress genetic alterations that can lead to cancer. They improve immune surveillance and they also have anti-angiogenic, anti-angiogenic effects as well. So we're talking about all these different foods that overlap and, and enables the body immune system to, to enable us to be normally protective against these prime, the, the inflammation diseases that afflict other Americans.

So when we're looking at this diet breakdown, are we looking like macronutrient-wise? So are we doing a certain amount of fats, proteins, and carbs when we're looking at this? Or is it more like serving sizes of each? you know, area of, of food, right?

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that the, the amount of fat, carbohydrate, and protein that you eat, the balancing those macronutrients is insignificant and almost irrelevant.

Really?

Yes. Because when you, you know, high glycemic carbs are dangerous. Mm-hmm. When you switch high glycemic carbs to beans and squash and to low glycemic carbs, it adds for longer lifespan. It's not the carb content, it's the, it's whether the carb is high glycemic. Right? The same. So in, in other words, what I'm saying right now is that whether your diet is a little higher in carb or a little lower in carb, but here's what we do know. We know that when people switch the type of carb and the type of protein and the type of fat, that's what leads to the longest lifespan, not the amount of fat and the amount. There's some type of fat that is very detrimental and there's some type of carbs that are very detrimental and some carb, right? There's some protein that's very detrimental.

Of course.

But here, but But for example, on a nutritarian diet, we get our fat from nuts and seeds and avocados. The Americans get their fat from animal fats, saturated fat, and oils. And when you get— it's a completely, you could say, opposite effect now because number one, oils supply no protein.

Yeah.

Nuts and seeds give us a protein and fat mix. Right. But the fat is encased in a mechanical fiber bundle. So the fat is absorbed very slowly over 3 or 4 hours, bathing— so bathing the whole length of the small intestines in fats that fuel the growth of beneficial bacteria. And because the fat is eased out of the digestive tract so slowly, a good percent, like 20% of those fats are lost into the toilet bowl. So you're satiated by a certain amount of fat you're eating, but doesn't even make it all absorbed into the bloodstream.

I see.

So now, but in any case, you need a certain amount of fat for absorption of fat-soluble nutrients to get the maximum phytochemical absorption of the vegetables you're eating. Now you have your fat from oil in place of the nut or seed like an American does, right? Well, those fats are absorbed within 3 to 5 minutes, not 3, not 2 to 3 hours. And they're absorbed in the proximal or short part of this first initial part of that small intestines. You have a rush of fat into the initial part of the small intestines, which creates a spike. We call it the lipemic load of that meal, which is very high. The lipemic load of that meal comes in and inflames and damages the junctions between the cells, leading for a leaky tight junction. And now we have the lipopolysaccharides, the particles of bacteria and pathogens, and food antigens can come in and excite an immune response. So the oil, and it's particularly fried foods, fried foods and a lot of oil, it primes the body to be sensitized by, by antigens and also by bacterial toxins into the blood, causing inflammation. But now that spike of the blood, that high caloric rush into the blood stimulates the dopamine centers in the brain and makes you a food addict because now you're not satisfied unless you have the high caloric rush.

So there's two parts of the caloric rush. There's the lipemic load, which is the fat, high fat entry to the bloodstream. And then there's the glycemic load, which is the high sugar entry to the bloodstream. So Americans getting their carbohydrates from, they're eating sugar, they're eating white flour, white rice, white potato, particularly white flour products like pizza and hamburger rolls and croissants and bagels and cookies. Mm-hmm. White flour is a sugar equivalent. And it enters the bloodstream at the same rate of glucose shooting up in the bloodstream as if you just took straight sugar into your bloodstream, into your, you know, or whatever, sugar cube or a candy bar. So white flour products are candy. And what I'm saying right now, when we add up the lipemic load from the oil and the fried foods and the glycemic load from the refined and high glycemic carbohydrates, that totals into a caloric rush that is brain stimulating and addicting. And it makes your body being dopamine tolerant, overly dopamine tolerant. Now you're, now you're not satisfied with a normal caloric load. You gotta overeat and you have to look for a caloric load. So if the person had, who's eating an American diet of fast foods and greasy food and oils and sweets, you give them a salad, a bowl of vegetable bean soup and a, you know, and an orange for dessert or something, they're gonna feel not satisfied.

That's like, I pull, I gotta have something to give, make my satisfy, make me satisfied. I'm like totally hungry. You know, gimme a candy bar, an ice cream cone, a pizza, something. That wasn't food, that was just an, an appetizer. So they, so their, their brain has habituated to this intense caloric load.

Yeah.

So we're talking about this balance of fat, carbohydrate, and protein. I'm saying you have to rehabituate the brain. So there's a period of time where you're not satisfied with the food, but when you start switching your carbohydrates to low glycemic carbohydrates like beans and your fats to slow entry fats like nuts and seeds, then you're able to feel instinctually connected with your proper caloric load and you don't really want more food than you need to maintain your most, your leanest ideal weight. Yeah. You exercise more, you weightlift and you get hungrier with the calories you burned, but you're not eating to create fat on the body. You don't eat outside of your musculoskeletal demands.

You know, avocado's to me, one of the most like fulfilling things that I eat every day. And I, I find myself not hungry for hours. I mean, I eat a good amount of it, but It's one of those foods that I didn't eat until like 2 years ago and I can't go a day without it. It's just the best. So I, I, I understand some of the foods you're saying. I got 2 questions for you. One is on the oils. Now are we talking seed oils? Are we talking olive oils? We're talking every oil, every oil, every oil.

Okay. I know like conventionally people think, oh, the Mediterranean diet is such a good diet compared to the American diet. They eat olive oil like crazy. Olive oil. Why you talking about olive oil is good, right? Well, that's not what, that's not true. It's, yes, olive oil's better than other oils. Yeah. It's better when you compare it to other sources of fat, like animal fats that may be worse. But when you do the study, studies like the PrevMed study, which compared the longest— the people, of course, were the people who ate nuts and seeds at baseline and were randomized to the group and told eat nuts and seeds. The point I'm making here is that it's what are you comparing it to? Comparing olive oil to butter, you know, or you're comparing olive oil to walnut and almonds. When you do the comparison, we know that oil is fattening and the consumption of oil and this false story that oil is so good for us, Is one of the reasons why people can't lose weight. It sabotages their weight loss because they're, it, you know, just took 250, it's 120 calories a tablespoon.

Yeah.

You just put 360 calories of oil on your salad. How do you take the, with no protein in it?

Yeah.

You, you would've been more satisfied with this weight while you're flooding the bloodstream with fat. The body's not gonna suck fat out of your cells when your body is as a caloric rush. And plus it makes people desirous of more calories. Yeah. You, if you put, it's an appetite stimulant.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so yeah, a little bit of olive oil on a person who's slim and exercising a lot and who has the extra load, like a person like who's a professional athlete who can handle a little bit of olive oil cuz they had enough caloric space to eat all the other healthy foods too.

Yeah.

But now take a person who's relatively inactive and their caloric needs are only 1,300, 1,400 calories a day. How are they gonna put 400 calories of oil in there and still get all the healthy foods they're supposed to eat into their diet? It and you just sabotaged, you just added an extra 300 calories of their oil. Yeah. Of oil to their— so it really is a saboteur and it's not the healthiest way to get our fats.

Yeah. I went through a phase one time and I, geez, it's been like, I don't know, almost 9 or 10 years and I've always been able to lose weight like this if I want to. I mean, I'm been a trainer and nutritionist and I went through this like year and a half phase where I was slamming the olive oil and I could not lose any weight. And never in my life until that moment was that the time. And I was just, I like to test things.

Yeah.

And that showed me, and I was having a lot of it, don't get me wrong, but I just, I incorporate it very little now into my diet because I found exactly what you're saying to be true. And that's why the people that walk around saying, I drink a liter of olive oil a day or whatever, and I'm just like, come on, man. Like that, that, that's just not, don't tell people to do that.

Right. Let me give you a simple equation.

Yeah.

H equals N divided by C. Okay. That means your healthy life expectancy is proportional to micronutrient content of your diet over calories.

I see.

The more micronutrient bang you get per caloric buck, the longer you live. The goal of optimal nutrition is to get as much diversity and concentration of nutrients per caloric buck.

I like it.

Right? So the more you eat empty calorie foods and eat foods without a significant— the more you put in white bread and oil And even animal products don't have a phytochemical load. In other words, there are 3 classifications of foods. There's produce, there's animal products, and there's processed foods, basically. And oil's a processed food. And I'm saying here that only the produce contains phytochemicals and antioxidants and has enough diversity of fibers to support a healthy gut microbiome. And Americans eat, they say, about 10% produce, but they really, if you take out white potato and ketchup, it's less than 5%. The produce consumed by Americans, they're consuming about about 35% of calories from animal products and about 65% of calories from processed foods if you include oil in that combination.

And then, all right, I want to do something with you that I just thought of. A little bit of a rapid fire, but not, not too rapid because I want you to, you know, get into things a little bit. But I'm going to just start throwing some things at you and you tell me yay, nay, and why, you know, like just random foods. Okay. This, because I think this will be good. It'll, it'll maybe open up some eyes here. Ground beef, grass-fed ground beef.

Yes. I'm saying that there's a, you could say a dose-dependent relationship between the consumption of red meat and animal products in general with shortened lifespan, particularly when people switch from an animal food protein to a plant-based protein. Okay. So when you, there's, so the whole glycemic thing and well, you have more meat and you have less sugar and less carbohydrate is all based on studies looking at processed carbohydrates. When you, and we're talking here about the highest protein plant foods are green vegetables, beans, and nuts and seeds.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So when you're taking any study that compares a person lowering their meat consumption by 5% or 10% and instead increasing their consumption of high protein plants like greens, nuts, or seeds, you get a tremendous synergistic effect on enhancing lifespan. So I'm saying I can open a book right now and list off 10 or 12 different studies, all done with hundreds of thousands of people followed more than 20 years, showing that the more plant protein they consume, the longer they lived, and the more animal protein they consumed, the shorter their lifespan.

Really?

Right.

Okay.

The one of the home, one of the most important, you could say tidbits to get outta this presentation is that we're not eating enough of these protein-rich plant foods like greens, beans, and nuts and seeds. Right.

What about seafood specifically, like salmon, something like that?

Another nay, because we can't get, there's not enough wild salmon around. And the farm-raised salmon is one of the richest sources of the persistent organic chemicals that are, that are making people sick.

Yeah.

So you have, we have, we dump like thousands of tons of garbage in the ocean. Yeah. And they give these, and these people who are these, the fish that are farmed in farms on the continental shelf are given antibiotics and other chemicals to support the growth. They're not eating, they're eating, not eating a healthy diet. And we have, and our, and our environment's very polluted. So it's not the same as a natural wild salmon that you would eat 100 years ago.

Right.

Now we've also contaminated our bivalves, which are scallops, mussels, oysters, and clams. And the filtering of the overgrowth of the algae from the overgrowth of farm runoff from farms, the extra nitrogen in the water in inland lakes and in coastal waterways have caused a toxin that filters down in the water called BMAA, which is concentrated in bivalves and shellfish. If you said to me, you know, as a treat, what would be the thing you'd, an animal product you'd enjoy the most? I'd probably say like, you know, lobster probably.

Yeah.

Something like that. But I stopped doing it now because it's so tight. It's, it's, it's, it's collect, it's associated with increased risk of ALS and Parkinson's disease from people who eat more, who live near the Chesapeake Bay, who eat fish off inland lakes because of the pollution in the water now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about pasture-raised eggs?

Well, the re— if you compare here, don't forget where it's all about what you're comparing it to. Right. Eggs might be better than something else you could be eating. But when you look at the studies and you compare people that reduced their egg consumption or eliminated their egg consumption and instead got those same calories from beans or nuts, it reduced risk of cardiovascular mortality by 15%. Switching of eggs from beans and nuts. That's just the switch for the eggs. Yeah. Right. It was even more from the switching of eggs. That was a whole egg with the cholesterol than it was from switch from removing, removing red meat, which is about 8% reduction when they— So, but it adds up 15% here, 10% there, 8% there. We're getting, you know, so we're— I'm making this radical claim. I'm saying nobody has to have a heart attack. Now people said, what? What kind of bull is that? You know, it's the heart attack is that heart disease is the number one cause of death for adults in America, right? And I'm saying that the number one cause of death in adults in America can be almost totally prevented.

I'm saying almost because it could be genetic valve defects. People could have gotten, you know, some rheumatoid, there could be some very unusual causes of it. Of abnormal structures in the heart, but we're saying probably 98% or 99% of cardiovascular deaths can be wiped out. We could extend human lifespan dramatically with these advances in nutritional science. Okay.

What about like fruits, especially like berries and things like that?

Dramatically protective.

Okay.

The Women's Healthy Eating and Living Study, the WHEALS study, showed that breast cancer was dramatically protected and most protected by the increased consumption of vegetables and green vegetables in particular, and cruciferous vegetables the strongest. But the combination of cruciferous vegetables and beans gave the strongest protection. But it also showed that people who added fruit to their diet had more protection against cancer than people who just had the vegetables and the beans without the fruit. Mm-hmm. So yes, we're talking about nutritional variety and diversity and berries because of their high intake of flavonoids, bioflavonoids and anthocyanins are incredibly protective against cancer. They even, they even study, they give people powders made from berries, like berry supplements.

Yeah.

And show that early cancers like can be reversed from the berry powders. Wow. We're talking about, yeah, they do esophageal cancers 'cause they can look it into the throat and see early stage, and even without cutting people open, they can easily study the reversal of esophageal cancers being reversed from just giving them berry powders. Wow. So yes, there's a tremendous benefit. That's why, I, I go out of my way to get organic wild, to get wild blueberries. Yeah. And blackberries. And I buy them frozen.

Frozen.

Yeah. Yeah.

Excellent. So when you've, you've said beans now multiple times, what kind of beans are you referencing then for people to eat so they have an idea? 'Cause obviously there's different choices.

All types. Types. Yeah. Lentils and black beans and red beans and adzuki beans and kidney beans and soybeans. All types of beans.

Green ones too.

Well, green like string beans.

Yeah.

They're like a green vegetable.

Yeah.

They're, they're, yes, there's a green vegetable, but they don't fall into the category of beans.

Okay.

So beans, when you are mostly use Soak them, you cook them in a, in an Instant Pot or whatever, or a Crock-Pot. You cook 'em for a long time. They're in a soup or a stew. They get soft. They're high in protein, they're carbohydrates. They have the beans, have the most resistant starch.

Yeah.

Everyone.

Yeah.

And they have the most slowly digestible carbohydrates, so they don't create this glycemic spike in the blood. And all because they're so high in resistant starch, the 90% of the resistant starch doesn't get absorbed into the bloodstream. The word resistant means it's resistant to enzymatic degradation. So the enzymes, the digestive enzymes can't break it down. Yeah. So it gets fermented by bacteria in the gut into short-chain fatty acids. Now that the, the, one of the major short-chain fatty acids, butyrate, is a signaler of the hype of the appestat in the hypothalamus to reduce our appetite.

Mm-hmm.

So our appetite and our appestat in the, in the brain. So it makes us feel satisfied with fewer calories. So because the calories, the, the carbohydrate calories are not all absorbed, the, at a percent of total absorbed calories, the protein content is beans is even higher than you would think. It may say 35% calories in a bean is from protein, but yeah, but when you consider you're losing 15% of that, you're using 15 or 20% of the resistant starch that's passing through you or not being digested out of the percent of calories that were absorbed is closer to 45% is more closer to 45% protein in the bean.

Right.

So it's really a high protein food. In many cases you're getting more protein than you would from the same amount of calories from animal products.

Got it. Okay. What about for people that are, and I don't wanna say bodybuilders per se, but people that wanna follow this that are training to gain more muscle, gain more size, they're obviously gonna have a higher need for protein intake and probably a higher carbohydrate need depending on the type of training they're doing. Would you, a couple things then, are there different foods you'd recommend? And then if we're looking at protein powders, are you looking at plant protein powders as opposed to whey or what's your, what's your recommendation there?

Well, start with high protein plant foods like hemp seeds and sunflower seeds and, you know, pumpkin seeds and almonds and beans. And, you know, I'd start with the real food and people don't realize how high these foods are in protein.

Oh yeah.

You know, so, but number one, so like a conventional typical veg, high carbohydrate vegetarian diet, which is linked to osteoporosis. Yeah. And weakened muscles, you know, gets about 15 grams of protein per 500 calories. But a nutritarian diet gets about 25 to 30 grams of protein per 500 calories. So now we're in the 100 gram of protein a day for a 2,000 calorie diet. We're in that range just from plants. So it's rare that a person would, you know, and as you get bigger and you're exercising more, maybe you need 3,000 calories a day. Maybe you're LeBron James or you have, you know, you're, maybe you're a bigger guy and you need more food. You're getting more calories. You're getting 30 grams of protein per 100, per 500 calories. Yeah. You're pumping in your protein. So, but yeah, I mean, if I was recommending a protein powder, it would be hemp and pea and pumpkin seed-based proteins because the whey proteins and the, and even the soy protein, it raises IGF-1 too high. We want IGF-1 to be moderate, not to be pushed up into the cancer, the pro-cancerous range. But the, but keep in mind, here's what I'm saying.

I'm saying that I'm an athlete and I ski, I do downhill skiing in my 70s and I do mogul, not downhill skiing, mogul skiing with, you know, and I do mogul, you know, hard mo— and I play singles tennis very aggressively and I do, and I go to the gym and I, I've been in, I've been working out my whole life, right? And my body fat Fat is around 11.5%. That's excellent. Yeah. And I have a six-pack. Love it. Okay. So now the question is, I only weigh £150. When I was competing as a professional athlete, I only weighed £155. I'm only £5 lighter than I used to be when I was younger and had more, more muscle. But what if I wanted to be £165 or £170 of muscle? I'd have trouble getting up there on my present diet. I'd probably need to eat more animal protein to get my, to gain an extra £10. 'Cause I'm, I'm exercise, I'm lifting weights, I'm benching, I'm squatting, I'm lifting as much weight as I could possibly handle. Handle. And I'm pretty strong and I could lift, you know, I could still bench press even now, probably more than my body weight.

But nevertheless, I'm not going to get to £165 unless I eat more, a higher protein diet. Yeah, for sure. But that's probably going to shorten my lifespan. So probably we saw that in the NASH study. The NASH study was on professional football players that the linemen who were bigger in the 250 to 300-pound range had the shortest lifespan of any population in North America compared to the quarterback and the tight ends and the receivers who were running up, who were thinner and leaner, you know, and didn't have the extra bulk on their body.

Yeah.

The extra diet and the extra calories they needed to get to that level of bulk. And you're probably not gonna get to that level of bulk unless you are eating animal products. So there is some trade-off here because the leanest athletes, like the, like the tennis players and the skiers and the boxers and the basketball players are gonna live the longest. The powerlifters and the guys who want to get as big as possible are probably not going to live as long, live as longest. And I advise a lot of professional athletes, including some professional football players. And some of them say to me, I have 3 more years in professional football to get all my money. And then I'm going to work with me and I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to drop £50. I'm going to eat super healthy. I'm going to undo. But now I have to carry the extra weight. So I can't eat that way now. You know, I mean, it's their career. They make a lot of money. But in any case, there's some trade-off here.

Yeah.

Because we're probably not going to maximize size if you're restricting animal products to the degree that I want you to restrict it. If you restrict to not more than 10% of calories, restrict to that level, you probably are going to maximize your opportunity to maximally bulk up.

Yeah.

But that, but the maximally bulking up is not, is not the same thing as maximally extending lifespan.

I was going to say the same thing. I've spent a lot of time in studies and understanding through experiences too, training people for so long. The more body weight you carry around for the longer periods of time, the shorter you're going to live. They stay in that mTOR state way too long and it, it kills them. It, it does. And they don't like to hear that, and they get mad at me when I say it, but it's a fact. And I try to teach people how to live longer, not shorter, just to be big, right? It just doesn't make sense to me. So, I mean, basically what you're saying then is we stick to this type of diet, we have a lower probability of getting cancer and a higher probability of living longer by sticking to this diet.

And I'm saying the probabilities are astronomically beneficial that people I'm claiming radical claims that they're not going to believe. I'm saying wiping out more than 95% of heart attacks. I'm not saying some rare cancer, not lung cancer from smoking and lung cancer become by radon and pollution. But I'm saying when you're talking about dietary-related cancers like breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer, the death rate from those cancers could be diminished more than 90%. More than 90% reduction. We're talking about you take that and the 95% reduction in cardiovascular death or Whether it's or more, we're talking about saving the, allowing humans to live to their normal lifespan without, which is between conservatively between 95 and 105 years old.

Mm-hmm.

We all should be living around 100 years old. Yeah. And the average American lives around 70, around 78, 80 years old.

What are some of the, 'cause we said now green vegetables a ton of times, what are some of your go-tos for people that you would recommend? Like optimal?

I want to, if people said, well, what's the change I could start right now? What did this one thing you want me to do? And that's change your lunch. For lunch, I want you to have a big salad with a whole head of lettuce in there.

Okay.

And then I want you to also eat sprouts or bok choy or arugula or some other cruciferous green raw with it, with shredded onion and tomato and whatever you want in the salad. And then the dressing should be made from nuts and seeds, not oil. So we're mixing an orange with sesame seeds and cashews and blood orange vinegar and lemon, or mixing hemp seeds and walnuts with tomato paste and tomato sauce and and black fig vinegar or balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic or taking a, or putting, in other words, making a Caesar dressing, a Russian dressing or a fruity dressing. We're making it from the nuts and seeds, not from oil. So the dressing itself adds to the protein, adds to the fiber, adds to the, you know, you get lignans. My diet has anti-cancer lignans. My diet has 300 times the lignans of, you know, lignans of these enterolignans that have anti-estrogenic effects.

Yeah.

Protecting against prostate and breast cancer. And they're in flax seeds and chia seeds and hemp and sesame seeds. But we're talking about that the Americans consume like less than a half of a milligram of lignin. We're eating like, we're eating 50 milligrams of lignin, you know what I mean? But in any case, the point is that, so we had this big salad with a nut and seed-based dressing and eating raw cruciferous vegetables. Yeah. And that's, you know, so I wanted them to do that. And then they had a vegetable bean soup maybe with some beans that were cooked cooked with onions and mushrooms in there. So they had cooked beans and cooked onions with some vegetable juices and with lentils. And so then they could have the— so that is low glycemic, high protein carbohydrates with the green vegetables. And you need this combination of raw and cooked. And lunch is the meal when people are out of the house more oftenly tempted to eat fast food or junk food. So filling up with and chewing and filling up on soup with mushrooms and beans and greens and a salad with a nut-based Is so important.

So you're not gonna, and then, you know, so then you could have more cooked vegetables and wok for dinner. But what I'm saying right now is that the cooked vegetables could be that you, that you had the raw vegetables for lunch and now you're having cooked broccoli, artichokes, asparagus, string beans, zucchini with, you know, you're having different types of other green vegetables at dinner cooked. And my favorite are artichokes. I love artichokes, man. I take the artichoke and I cut it through the stem, right through the center of the artichoke, open up into two halves. Use a small knife to cut at the demarcation line between the choke and the heart, and I remove the choke. Yeah. And the fuzz, take it out of there. And now you steam it for 18 minutes once the water's boiling, 18 to 20 minutes. And then you eat the leaves and the lower leaves and the choke and the heart. The heart's the best part. But yeah, the artichokes have one of the most highest ORAC scores, the store of antioxidants, but they're also the highest protein per calorie of any vegetable. Vegetable.

Really?

Yeah, they're mostly— it's amazing. They're, they're so low in calories and it's almost all protein.

Yeah, if you saw the amount of vegetables I'd eat, you'd love me, man, because I eat so many daily. Yeah. Oh yeah, no, I, I have for many, many years, and I snack on them throughout the day.

They're free. I mean, yeah, they— nobody's gonna put on fat in their body eating more green vegetables. No.

So yeah, no, I have a long-standing thing my wife does every day. It's mushrooms, onions, zucchini, and I'm Italian, I love peppers, you know what I mean? So red, yellow, I mix all the colors up, and spinach. And that's made every single day for me to just kind of snack on throughout the day. But I just started eating arugula 'cause I hadn't been doing that. And I've kind of been mixing that in too and trying to get all that in there. So I like to try to keep variety as much as I can.

So going over these parameters of longevity, the nutrient density in the cell, the toxicity in the cell, and which are related to the nutrient density, the more nutrient density and diversity. So I'm saying nutrient density and diversity, 'cause you're saying you eat a lot of different types of food and that's the diversity of different types of nutrients. That enables the cell's machinery to keep itself clean. It's not just eating kale all day long. You gotta eat a wide variety.

Yeah.

So it's nutrient density and, and diversity. It's body fat percent is number 3.

Yeah.

'Cause body fat is pro-inflammatory tissue.

Absolutely.

So there's no such thing as a healthy overweight person. Now you have a high body fat, you're in trouble.

100%. And you get higher estrogen, like, you, you know, all these things that you're—

Estrogen, testosterone ratio, it's off. Everything's off.

Yeah.

And then you You have your omega-3 index, critically important, because your body can't detoxify from brain toxins when your omega-3 index is too low. So that sometimes has to be— can be supplemented to get it in the right range. And the last one is, believe it or not, is exposure to medical care, whether it's drugs, radiation. It's avoiding doctors. So you don't put medicinal substances in your body is a major factor, especially antibiotics. Yeah.

You know, well, you know, this is why I love doing what I do, because I, I have, you know, so many different types of people that talk nutrition, because I'm— I've been a nutritionist, gosh damn, like 20 years now, and I love to get different aspects and different ideas. And this is the first type of diet like this that I've ever heard, and it's fascinating. And I've actually, after I talked to you, when we talked, I started to do— I remember that picture I sent you that my wife had been eating those. I've been eating that every single day, incorporate that, eat it in yogurt, put it in one of my, my drinks, and I, I feel pretty damn good. And I, I love to take and extrapolate this information and learn like real base science about it.

So, so what was in that? Because you didn't say what was in that thing you were putting.

Oh, it's, it's hemp. It's, it's flax and chia and hemp all in one.

Flax, chia, and hemp. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, you know, you gotta eat a lot of it to get the full, I mean, it's like 3 big spoons of it, of, of teaspoons of it I think is what it is. But man, I've been putting it in my, I eat it straight in my yogurt and it tastes damn good. Yeah.

You know, there was a study that had— they followed women for 10 years who had a diagnosis of breast cancer. And those who had almost no lignans compared to those who had less than 1 milligram of lignan had a 71% decreased risk of death from breast cancer over that 10-year period. From 1 milligram, from less than 1 milligram, like half a milligram of lignans. If we eat 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed has 21 milligrams of lignan in it.

Wow.

So even a teaspoon of ground flax is 7 milligrams. So I'm saying even a small amount is So, so the chia and the flax, and then you put some sesame seeds in your lunch salad. I just, you know, I, you know, that's more lignans. Yeah. So yes, it's incredibly protective against cancer. It tastes good too. Yeah. It doesn't look like it will, but it does.

I mean, I think so. I love it. I put, I eat it in my yogurt with some blueberries and, and it's, I, I put the wild blueberries in.

I know I also bought, I bought this, you could, it's called tart cherry juice concentrate.

Okay.

And I poured a little tart cherry juice concentrate on the wild blueberries and the flaxseeds to give it more flavor.

Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna try. I drink pomegranate juice for, for my heart, so I might try that.

Yeah, that's good.

That sounds good. Yeah, man, this has been fun. I appreciate all the insight. It, like I said, it's, it's different, but it's, it makes sense. It makes a ton of sense. And I trust you. I mean, you've been doing it for so long and you've clearly proven. So I really appreciate you sharing all of this and being bold, like, you know, talking about things that are non-conventional, but to me it's conventional, but I, I love the insight and, and the way you back it up with such confidence and precision. And people like you are gems, man. So I, I really appreciate the info. It's been fun.

Excellent.

Where can people follow you, get some of your books? What are the best places to catch you online?

drferman.com.

drferman.com.

And I do have my Eat to Live podcast. Okay. Yeah. Which I do with my daughters.

Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we gotta make sure we link that. I'll, I'll put that in the description cuz I want people to listen to that. I bet it's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Great. Well, I'm sure I'll have you back again for another one. We got a lot of other stuff to get to. So much to talk about. Yeah.

Yes.

The time flew, but that's kind of how it goes when we're having fun with good information. So once again, thank you not just for coming, but for everything you do. It's greatly appreciated, man. You're a real asset to everybody. So thank you.

My pleasure. Thank you too.

Awesome. All right everybody, that wraps up another one. Enjoy this. Learn some things about your nutrition. Take this to heart. Give it a shot. Got— stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.