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

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What is the first thing I should be eating in the morning to set me up for success that day for my mental health, my hunger cravings, everything?

My hormones.

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

We talked about juice, but what about smoothie? You just mentioned smoothie. So smoothies would be a better solution with protein.

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

Protein in there? Yeah. If you have peanut butter in there, Is that a good thing because it's protein?

It's going to be better for your glucose spike, yeah.

It's a better thing. Okay.

You're trying to make me say things. I'm just trying to understand better. But the solution to this crazy food landscape that we live in, food environment, is not to cut out stuff. I don't believe in that. I think you try that for a week or you're like, This year, I'm never going to eat sugar at all. That doesn't work. It never does. So what I recommend people try is try some of these techniques. For example, if you really want to eat some sugar sugar, let's say a cookie, a donut, whatever, the best time to eat that sugar so that you have maximum dopamine from it, maximum pleasure and less impact on your body, is going to be after a meal as dessert. You want to always avoid eating sugar on an empty stomach. And always avoid eating sugar in the morning. Really? Yes. So breakfast should be savory. In the morning, nothing sweet. Really? Yeah.

Man, those pastry stuff with the chocolate inside and just, oh, man, the donut in the morning.

Keep them for dessert after lunch. Because if you have them in the morning, then what's happening in your body? As you digest that sugar and those carbs, they turn into glucose molecules. And these arrive into your bloodstream really quickly and cause what's called a glucose spike, so blood sugar spike. Then about 90 minutes later, Louis, your glucose levels are going to drop. You're going to feel a crash. Now it's 10 AM, 11 AM, and all of a sudden, you feel more cravings for sweetfood. You're like, I need a cookie, I need some chocolate. I need a snack.

I need that spike Then you spike again.

Then all day, you're on a roller coaster where you feel addicted to sugar. Because your brain, when you're experiencing a glucose crash after a spike, the cravings center in your brain actually activates and says, Louis, find a cookie, find a cookie. You want to avoid that because then you cannot fight against the craving center in your brain.It's so hard.Yeah, that center is very powerful. It's linked to evolutionary responses that we have to low blood sugar. You want to avoid that from happening? The way you do it is have sugar after a meal as dessert, never on an empty stomach, never as a snack, never for breakfast.

Oh, my gosh. Never as a snack. If you can.So you eat something first before you have the sugar.

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

Before?

Or with them. You could have them before or with them. So for example-So you have a bite of cake, but then have something else, a fat within that. Yeah, you could have some Greek yogurt with the chocolate cake, or with the bowl of pasta, add some chicken or some cheese or some spinach, right? Put clothing on your carbs.

Don't eat it naked.

Exactly. Never eat your carbs naked so that they don't cause as big of a glucose spike. Because when you put clothing on those carbs, digestion happens more slowly. You're still eating the carb that you love with less impact on your glucose levels. This is just one of many different hacks that I have that help us eat the stuff we love with fewer consequences on our physical and mental health.

That's powerful. The more glucose spice we have on a daily basis, and the more we have over time, it causes us to live less. It won't allow us to live longer. That's what I'm hearing you say.

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

What does glycaation mean?

Glycation and glucose sound like the same word. They're similar. Glucose glycation. This is why. First of all, before we talk about glycation, I have to explain something to you. You know when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to cooked to brown? What actually happened is that in the oven, it glycated. Glycation is the cooking process of the chicken. Now, did you know that as a human being, from the moment you're born, you slowly glycate You slowly cook. You start to cook. Yes, like a chicken in the oven. Then when you're fully cooked, you die. I know it sounds crazy, but it is true. On the inside, you're actually browning. If you look at the cartilage of a baby, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of somebody who's 100 years old, it's brown. It's been glycated. Glycaation is cooking and it's aging. Now, why am I telling you this? Because every time you have a glucose spike, it accelerates glycaation. Glucose causes this cooking, causes this glycaation, causes this aging. So the more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age. And this shows on your skin as wrinkles.

I'm actually 85 years old, but you can't tell because I don't have glucose spikes. And it also ages your organs within. And that's just one of the few things that happen when you have too many glucose spikes over time.

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

As little as possible, I would say.

Besides not eating, I guess, how do you not have a glucose spike when you're eating foods?

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

So I recommend people learn to check in with themselves and see how they feel.

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

Are you into intermittent fasting?

Yeah.

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

You don't need to skip breakfast, you don't need to skip dinner. No, you don't. You don't need to have 500 calories a day and restrict calories. No. Now, are you still going to look healthy and lose weight in this process, or you're going to gain weight if you're just eating whatever in the right order?

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

Your hormones are healthier.

Exactly. Your hunger hormones are more balanced instead of you feeling famished every 2 hours. So naturally, when you focus on the hacks, a lot of things fall into place into your body. And then on the fasting topic, I I just want to remind people that intermittent fasting is not necessary to have a healthy body. You don't need to fast in order to be healthy. It's much more important to eat well in a way that keeps your glucose level steady than to restrict your eating window, for example. Especially for females, we have to remember that fasting is actually a stressor on the body. If you already have a life where, stressful job, kids to take care of, you don't sleep a lot, you drink coffee, you do intense cardio exercise, maybe you do cold showers, you add fasting on top of that, that is a lot of stress for your body to handle. That's why you see some women who are piling on all these things, their hormones are breaking down, they feel exhausted all the time. Their body is just being like, No, that's too much stress. I love fasting when I'm on vacation, for example, and it feels like an easy stress to add on.

But when I'm working and I'm doing lots of stuff, I prefer to have breakfast, to have a savory breakfast, as I explained, to keep my glucose level steady, and to just eat three times a day. Really? Yeah.

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

It's so tough.

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

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

It's so hard to have willpower.

So hard. Forever. So hard. And a lot of these fads, unfortunately, they're just not based on science. They are marketing machines. And that's also being used by the food industry to sell you more processed food, etc. So I think what people will find in my work is I'm a biochemist, and so I'm coming back to the principles of physiology. How does your body actually work? And how does food impact your hormones, your cells, your energy levels, your mitochondria? I'm not trying to push some crazy new extreme diet. I'm just showing you some simple stuff that actually has been used for centuries. It's not very ground-breaking when you think about it. Let me give you an example. The four hacks in my second book are: Savory breakfast instead of a sweet one, vinegar before you eat carbs, a vegetable starter, so starting meals with veggies and moving after eating.

What's the science behind all those hacks?

Okay, so savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. First of all, that's been done since forever. Sweet breakfasts, that's an invention of the food industry. We didn't used to have dessert for breakfast. It doesn't make any sense. We used to have meat and potatoes. So savory breakfast instead of a sweet one. Because if you have a savory breakfast that's built around protein and not, let's say, orange juice and granola, which is pure glucose, then your glucose levels are going to stay nice and steady with the savor breakfast instead of having a big spike. And then that addiction roller coaster we talked about. So the spike and the cravings, and the spike and the cravings, and the spike and the cravings. You don't want to be on that roller coaster because then that prevents you from living the day you want to live. It prevents you from being able to use your energy and your passion and your talents to express in the world. You are being controlled by that cravings roller coaster if you start the day with a sweet breakfast. That's the first one, Savory breakfast, built around protein, nothing sweet except whole fruit.

If you want something that tastes a little bit sweet.A.

Little extra, yeah. But after you eat the protein.

Exactly. For example, this morning, I had some leftover salmon cakes. I had some green beans. Sounds good. Yeah, green beans and some rice and some Parmesan cheese. To me, treating my breakfast like I would any other meal has completely changed my life. It almost feels like I often get people who tell me, I was having a sweet breakfast my whole life, and now I'm having a savor breakfast, and it feels like I walked through a mirror. You know in the movies, like the Alice in Wonderland, walking through to this alternate universe, parallel universe? That's how it feels because all of a sudden, you're in control, you're energized, you feel good. Anyway. Interesting. That's breakfast. Second hack that I love talking about is vinegar. Now, everybody has vinegar in their kitchen.

But no one uses it. True. No one likes the taste of it.

But it's an ingredient that's been around for centuries in our culture. Actually, in some countries, it's very well known that it's something that is good for you. It's healthy. In Iran, for example, they have apple cider vinegar every day. It's a health drink. But only recently have we understood why it's good for us. The reason vinegar is so cool-What's the science behind it? Vinegar contains a molecule called acetic acid. Acetic acid, what it does when you have it before a meal, is that it slows down the breakdown of carbs into glucose molecules. It acts on enzymes in your stomach, and it slows down how quickly the food you just ate is going to be turned into individual glucose molecules and then into your bloodstream. The second hack is one teaspoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before a meal that contains carbs.

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

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

But do you shoot it before every meal?

No, I would say once a day before a meal that's high in carbs. That's it? Yeah.

When you track this with a glucose monitor or how you're tracking it, what do you see the spike doing instead?

You see 30% reduction in the glucose spike.

If you just have a teaspoon.

Table spoon and a big glass of water diluted before eating carbs.

Like 10 minutes before, it doesn't matter.

5 to 10 minutes.

Wow. 30% less of a spike.

You still eat the carbs you love with less impact on your glucose levels. Interesting. But if you hate this hack, it's fine. The other hacks are just as powerful. The savory breakfast one will transform your entire day, the experience of your whole life, essentially. Then the third hack is called the veggies starter hack. That hack means having a plate of vegetables at the beginning of a meal. You might think, Okay, actually, this has been done for a long time. In France, we have this concept called crudité, which is raw veggies at the beginning of a meal. In Italy, antipasti, all the roasted nice vegetables. In the Middle East, they eat herbs by the bunch at the beginning of a You know that salad with vinaigrette? It's quite a common way to start a meal. Now we understand why. It's because veggies contain an amazing substance called fiber. Fiber, she's amazing. I love her. She's on fire. She's amazing. Fiber, when you have fiber in vegetables at the beginning of a meal, the fiber has time to go and coat your upper intestine and to create a protective shield, like a superhero deploying herself on the walls of your upper intestine.

Really? Yeah. It's this goo viscus mesh that is improving your gut lining. Then any glucose coming down afterwards will not be able to get through to your bloodstream as quickly. The veggies starter is an incredibly powerful hack. You can even combine it to the vinegar hack by making a little vinegar dressing and putting it on your veggies.

What does that do? Does it decrease even more?

It decreases even more the glucose spike of the meal. You still have the pasta and whatever you like, but if you add this hack... The cake and the sugar. Yeah. You see, what happens when you do these hacks is that you can still eat the carbs you love, but then you're creating less of a spike. Therefore, the carbs are, first of all, not having as big of a negative impact on your health. Less inflammation, less glycation, less insulin reduce, and you're avoiding the creation of that cravings roller coaster, which is the main issue because most of us, when we have something sweet, then 2 hours later, we want more sweets. Then it's 11 PM and you've eaten 56 cookies, right? Yes. That's what we want to avoid. We want to have the stuff we love without creating this cycle of becoming a victim to more sugar cravings. The last hack I'll mention, and you'll love this one, it has to do with muscles. You got some good muscles, no? Yeah. You know how to use these.

I want them bigger, though. You want bigger muscles? Stronger? Really? Let's go.

Nice.

Not too big, but just...

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

It is. It helps you process sugar better when you You have more muscle.

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

Move, walk, stretch, jump.

Exactly. You can even... 10 minutes. Clean your apartment, do the dishes, fold your laundry, go grocery shopping. If you're at work and you can't do any movement, you can do some calf raises underneath your desk for 10 minutes. Lots of easy little ways to get movement in so that your muscles will absorb some of the glucose from the... Welcome to a new Members Club with easy access to locations all over the country. All of our members are extremely entitled to free hot drinks and VIP discounts.

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We can do more for you. What happens if it's 10:00 at night, Ben and Jerry's is calling my name in the freezer. Yeah, baby. Or whatever ice cream you like is calling my name. I'm just sitting there watching a movie, eating a whole thing of ice cream, and then I sit there, and then I go to bed a couple of hours later. What happens to the brain, body, gut if you do that by itself without applying these hacks?

Well, you're going to experience a very big glucose spike as you're watching the movie and eating the Ben and Jerry's. That's going to have impact on your brain. It's going to increase inflammation. It's going to mess up your sleep hormones. You're not going to sleep as well. Your sleep is not going to be as deep or as restful. You might even wake up the next day feeling hungover. You never get hungover because you don't drink, but sometimes you can feel hungover from sugar. If you've had it late at night, you're going to feel a bit groggy. You might feel like your hands have swollen a little bit during the night.Your.

Face is swollen.Yeah, exactly.

Interesting. Then with that glucose spike, you're also increasing glycaation, aging. You're also increasing insulin release, which over time builds up to a diagnosis of prediabetes, for example. Whatever health background your body has, if you've ever experienced symptoms from brain fog to psoriasis to fertility problems, that spike is going to make those worse. Let's say you're watching that movie, you're eating the Ben and Jerry's. You have a few options. You can have a handful of apples as you're having the ice cream to put some clothing on the ice cream. Interesting. Yeah. You could do a vinegar drink. You could also grab a book or a bottle of water, and after you eat the ice cream, maybe do some bicep curves as you're watching the movie to help your muscles soak up some of that glucose. There's always solutions.

If I've eaten the cake, the ice cream, the cookies, and I've forgotten to do all these things beforehand, but I can still do it afterwards a little bit, even if the sugar is just in my gut already and just soaking down there, I can still have a couple of almons or have vinegar and it'll still help?

The best thing to do afterwards is movement. Move. Yeah. Do them calf raises. You're sitting on the couch, calf raises for 10 minutes during the movie. That's going to help, actually. You can do that up to 90 minutes after eating the muscles. Okay, cool.

Do some pushups, whatever it might be.

Totally.

The number one cause of death in these United States is the American diet. Really? Bumping tobacco, smoking to number two. Cigarettes not only kill about a half million Americans, every year worse. Our diet kills many more.

Come on.

But that's good news because it means We have the power. It's never too late to start eating healthier, to stop smoking, to start moving. It's really a positive message that I was excited to learn when I finished the book.

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

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

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

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

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

Now, there are certain pockets that are blue zone pockets.

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

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

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

For 12 things that we should be doing every day.

Twelve things. So 90 minutes of modern intensity exercise or 45 minutes of vigorous exercise every single day. How much How much to drink? I want people to eat dark green leafy vegetables every day, the healthiest vegetables. I want people to eat berries every day, the healthiest kinds of fruits, a teaspoon of grown flax seeds, a quarter teaspoon of termic, on down the list. Again, just to inspire people to think, and they can track their progress, make a game out of it. Look, on the road, I'm not even hitting it. I'm lucky if I hit half. But it's, again, an aspirational. If you really did have control over your environment, this is really the things we want to include in one's daily routine.

What are the top five foods that you eat every day to age longer?

Yeah. In terms of anti-aging foods, this Global Burden of Disease Study, which I mentioned before, again, the largest systemic analysis funded by the Bill Mundegate Foundation, found that the food associated with the largest expected life expectancy gains are legumes. These beans, split beans, chickpeas, lentils. In fact, one thing we can do is booster intake of beans or lentil soup or hummus. And we think it's because they're the most concentrated sources of prebiotics, the resistant starch and dietary fiber that feeds the good bacteria in our gut. That has implications in terms of decreasing inflammation, improving our immunity, improving muscle strength, muscle quality, muscle mass, and frail individuals, all by just by changing a microbiome. In fact, you can do these so-called fecal transplant studies where you can- You take a healthy poop and put it in a sick person. It's crazy, right? You can actually change their biology to make it- That's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But that's how we can prove cause and effect because, well, yeah, you feed someone a healthy diet. How do we know their gut bugs have anything to do with it? Well, we can control for that, and you can do it.

So you can make mice more fit, less fit by giving them- Healthy poop. Healthy poop from an exercising mouse from marathon mouse or a mighty mouse versus the frail mouse. So you can actually change. They're eating the same, they're doing the same, but they just have a different stool composition. And how do you get those good gut bugs? You feed them the right food. And that's the prebiotics. What are good gut bacteria eat. A lot of people are thinking probiotx. They're thinking the actual bacteria themselves, the acidophilus, the Bifidobacterium. Those are the good gut bugs. But if you just take those pills, the reason you don't have those good gut bugs in the in the first place is because you're not feeding them very well. So you can say you can try to populate your gut with as many good bugs as you want. They're going to die off if you continue to starve them, continue to starve your microbial self. Whereas if you just ate the right foods. These are the good gut bugs or fiber feeders, if you eat the right foods, then your good bugs will be fruitful and multiply all on their own and do all the work for you.

And that work is creating these so-called post biotics, which are their byproducts of microbial metabolism of these good foods, like butyrate and assay. They can absorb through the colon wall into our bloodstream, circulate throughout our body, even cross the blood-brain barrier, have effects on our mental health, on our immunity. So dramatically decrease inflammation. You can prevent asthma attacks just by feeding people some beans. I mean, it's absolutely remarkable.

So legumes have prebiotics.

They have the prebiotics. So that's why we think the food, in fact, legumes are the primary protein source of every single blue zone ever documented. That's where they get most of their protein from some legum, whether it's brown pees or something or black beans in Costa Rica or with soy foods in Okinawa. But it was always centered around not just plant-based in general, but a plant-based source of protein, the legumes. Beans. So beans. And so we should be thinking like, bean, chili, how can I fit beans in my daily diet? And that's part of the daily diet is like, Can I have any beans today? Can Can I put beans on my salad or throw some beans on this pasta dish? It's like, simply get a can of unsaltet, no salt added beans, open in 2 seconds. You always keep a can of beans in the fridge. You can just throw a spoonful on to anything, basically. In fact, someone had a talk who was like, I just take white beans mashed into my oatmeal. I'm like, Never heard of that. But he's like, Can't even taste it. I'm like, Okay, yeah, great. I mean, look.

What's nice about a healthy breakfast is that regardless of what you do the rest of the day, God knows what bowl of candy is on your co-worker's desk or what donut shop you're walking by or God knows what stress is going to take you down the wrong path. At least you have a good foundation, you have a food in you, you're feeding your good money. Anyway, so that's number one on the list.

Okay, number one, legumes.

Okay, now, so they identified the top five foods that associate with the longest lifespan. Now, legumes rule the roost on a per serving basis, but actually on an An ounce per ounce basis, nuts are associated with the longest lifespan compared to any other type of food out there.

What are the three best nuts?

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

Why unsaltet?

In terms of dietary risk factor for death, excess sodium intake is the way. I've been talking about the all this.

Oh, man, the salt is so good. It tastes so good on something.

I know. Look, in terms of things we're missing out on, right? It's the legums, but in terms of stuff we're getting too much of. Salt. There's lots of horrible things in our diet. There's sugar, there's trans fat, there's... Okay. But sodium, salt intake is the number one dietary risk factor for death on planet Earth is the single worst thing about humanity's diet. But there's good news.What.

About like-There's good news. What about Himalayan salt or something like that? They're all the salts are the same.

I know. But this is pink. This is from the Himalayan. This is rainbow-colored. This has got a few minerals in it or something. No, it's all bad. But a little bit? Can you have a little bit? Well, so we want to stick under 1,500 milligrams a day. That's the American Heart Association recommendation. To do that, and people are like, I don't add a lot of salt. Most of our sodium intake comes from processed foods. 70% of sodium intake is not the salt we add in the kitchen or the dining room. It's in these processed foods. Anything in a box, in a package, in anything, they add salt because it's a flavor-enhanced. In fact, that's why they add it to a lot of beans. It's not a preservative. It's in a can. It's sterile. It's because they want to make things taste good. It's the cheap way to make things so you can't just eat one. But the problem is that sodium increases risk, not just of high blood pressure, but so many different leading killers like kidney disease and ice disease, on down the list. Okay, but so there's two ways we can go. So there's lots of salt-free seasonings out there, and encourage me to explore all sorts of new...

People often... There's all sorts of spices that I've never heard of, like saffron. I mean, there's also... So I explore the whole world out there and find some delicious taste. And then the easy fix is switching to the salt, substitute potassium salt. Instead of sodium salt, sodium chloride, switched to potassium salt. It was potassium chloride. It's just a natural mineral mined out of the ground just like the sodium chloride is. And there are interventional studies. I talked about one in the book where they took these five kitchens at a veteran retirement home and randomized their kitchens into either continuing to salt with regular salt in the kitchen or switching to a 50/50 blend of regular salt, regular sodium chloride and potassium chloride. And there was a 40% drop in cardiovascular disease death rates within a matter of years in the reduced sodium group. In fact, their life expectancy at age 70 in between the two groups was 14 years. Come on. Meaning that just by switching to half potassium salt for which you wouldn't even be able to taste the difference, they effectively made themselves 10 years younger when it came to the risk of premature death.

So there's no downside. There's no... Okay. Now, if you go with it, I'm encouraging people to actually try to switch to full potassium salt rather than the one in the 50-50 blend, but then you do actually taste the difference. There's this bitterness to potassium salt that you don't get otherwise. It's more apparent in some foods than others. Some foods, you really can't taste the difference, but any amount that we can cut down. The only other caveat is you need to have kidneys is good enough to get rid of the excess potassium. If you have kidney disease or if you have diabetes, just because diabetes is such an increased risk of kidney disease, it's so damaging to the kidneys. Even if you don't know you have kidney disease, if you have diabetes, you should first get your kidneys tested before switching to potassium. If you're over 70, our kidney function does tend to decline over time. So even if, as far as you know, your kidney is fine, if you're over 70, I would It's super simple test. You can just get your kidney function tested and just make sure your kidneys can handle the extra potassium.

But then if you give them the all clear, your kidneys are good, then you can get all the saltiness you want. You could add extra, right? You can make your pop guard as crazy stuff, right? Cheers to your eyes, salty and with no harm. No harm. That's one of the really one of the simplest tweaks in the book. It's like the leading cause of dietary risk factor for Death. The worst thing we can possibly eat. There's a simple fix to it. I'm too bad there wasn't a potassium donut or something. We just switched over and totally fine. But that was one of the rare things that was super easy to do.

Explain that one more time. If we have more potassium salt first, then we can have salt?

No, we're swapping out. Instead of shaking on sodium chloride, we're shaking on potassium chloride. There's a bunch of different brands.

You can have as much as you want.

You can have as much as long as your kidney's okay. Okay, got you. You have as much as you want. You can go any grocery store in the salt aisle. There's all these salt substances, and it says potassium chloride. There's some 50-50 blends. If you want to start there and move, it's certainly better than adding pure sodium salt.

I'm going to try that. Yeah, I'm going to try that. And the studies show.

Oh, right. And not just it's associated with, but these interventional trials, these randomized control trials, blinded, they don't know who's in which group until they break the code at the end. They say, Oh, my God, significantly less death and disability in the group, just cutting down on the sodium.Eating.

The same things.Eating the same.Eating.

The exact same things with one single tweak, just switching over what salt they're using. Amazing. That's incredible. Now, why haven't we heard about this? Why isn't this on Blari? Because no one makes any money on it. It's like dirt cheap. I think it's more expensive than regular salt. It's like five boxes. But no one's making money. There's just not a lot of money made because it's just a simple… You'd probably dig it up your own somehow. There's just not a lot of profit to be made. Unfortunately, we don't hear a lot about it.

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

Palmful a day is my recommendation. Palmful. It's a one ounce.

What if you want to have more?

Oh, look, you can have more. They're calorie-dense, too. The longevity benefits plateau out at one. You don't get more additional benefit. They're pricey and they're pricey, and they're calorie-dense. Calories. Right. They're calorie dense. If you're really active, it's not going to matter.

So 10 to 15 a day, maybe somebody.

It's ten-halves. Ten-halves. Ten-halves comes out to be 30 grams or one ounce. Okay, got you. But look, you're not counting. It's just we have a handful. We have a handful. Every day or at least three times a week.

The benefits are that great.

Are that great. In the adventice cohort, the Lomelen adventice cohort, they think it accounts for two years of extra life. Come on. It is one of the only foods. There's only two foods that have ever been associated with increase in literally years, plural, a single food, and nuts is one of them.

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

Okay, so what you do is you take hundreds of thousands of people. You follow them, their diseases, and their diets over time. So you keep doing these dietary services. Exactly what are you eating? You can do these random call you up. Okay, what do you eat in the last 24 hours? Go through. Sometimes you make them take pictures. Sure. You follow them, and then you know their doctors. You know what have they been diagnosed as, what are they dying of, what did their autopsy show. You can follow them over time. That's what's called observational research or epidemiological research. Now, you cannot prove cause and effect with that research because there's confounding factors. Maybe the people who are eating nuts are health nuts.

They're working out all day.

Nut eaters are working out Maybe they have eating other healthy stuff. Maybe instead of... What's the other thing you're eating instead of nuts? Maybe you're snacking on some potato chips, right? And so maybe it's the benefit. It's not so much the nuts, but you're not eating potato chips, right? So there's all these confounding factors. Now, there are statistical methods that you can use to try to control for that. So you're basically comparing nut eaters who aren't smoking and it's an exercise, blah, blah, blah, to the non-nut eaters that also don't smoke, don't it? That's why you need this big number.Right. And so like the NIHA, our peace study, the largest study in history, we're talking over a half million people. And so with that much data, you can crunch the numbers and really tease out, wait a second, with all these other factors controlled for, the people are eating this many nuts or living this much longer. That's pretty crazy. And then you can turn to the most powerful evidence we have, which are interventional trials, where you randomize people to two groups, and you give them a smoothie, one one with nuts and one flavored with nuts, but no actual nuts in it.

So you make people a donut-flaved smoothie versus an actual donut smoothie, and neither the researcher nor the experimental subjects actually knows which is which. And you test it before and so you really can't tell. And then you can measure acute reactions. You can measure their artery function literally within hours of consumption, and you can see what's happening in their cholesterol. So these are called surrogate endpoints. So what we'd like to is let's randomize people to these smoothies for 10 years and see who actually dies and who doesn't. You can see how logistically that's difficult to do. But what we can do is we know that the amount of cholesterol in our blood is a really good indicator of risk factor for heart disease. Anything that lowers cholesterol, we have the observational evidence showing decreased risk of heart disease among non-eaters. Then we have this short-term data showing, look, it improves the artery function, decreases the cholesterol. No wonder we're seeing these endpoints points in the opposite. You put all the evidence together, you're like, wow, nuts really appear to be healthy foods, right? That's how you do this research. So fascinating.

This is fascinating.

Oh, yeah, good stuff.

Okay, we're still on the five things to eat every day. Lagooms, nuts, no salt.

No salt. No salt? Unsalted. We're keeping our salt intake as low as possible, under 1,500 milligrams. That's not no salt, but it's really… Mostly, it's about if you just avoid processed foods, you're going to go a lot away. Way less salt.

Even fresh Number 4 and 5, what would those be?

Then it's eating more whole grains. So you're having an oatmeal for breakfast, right? Instead of bacon and eggs.

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

Yeah, the kernel of truth, was a little of a pun for all grains, is refined grains. Refined grains are terrible for us. When you take something like whole wheat and you strip away all the fiber and you're left with white flour, or you do the same with brown rice to white rice, or you strip out the nutrition, and you're left with basically sheer carbohydrates. Or you take something like a sugar bee, where most sugar comes from these days, actually not from cane. You basically take all the nutrition where you're left with table sugar. I'm assuming it's pure calories. Look, you only have value.No value. 2000 calories in the calorie bank every day. You cannot be wasting your calories on these empty calorie foods. Most grain consumption in the country is, sadly, these refined grains. So going after grains, it makes total sense because that's what people are reading. But of course, a whole grain got caught in the friendly fire.

So what are the grains we should be eating?

So yeah, whole grains, ideally, whole intact grains. So like oak growths or steel cutouts. The more closely to how they grew out of the ground, the better. Or whole grain rye. We want whole as the first word in any grain.

Steel-cut oats or whole-oats.

Steel-cut oats, fantastic. Or even oak brews, which are what steel-cut oats are before they... Oak brews? Yeah, oakroats is before you cut it. An oakroat cut two or three times turns into steel cutouts. But that's the original in that. If you haven't tried it, they are delicious. Oat groats? Oat groats. You buy it. Oh, my God. Someone turned me on to oakroats, and I was like, I'm never going Really? They're so good. They're so much more healthy. I can't get back to mushy oats. I'm sorry. Do you cook them? Do you- So you cook them now. They take a long time to cook unless you have a pressure cooker. If you have one of these electric pressure cookers out of the market now. Then it's super quick. 20 minutes, you press a button, they're done, and you can make a whole- But it's like an Oatmeal. It's like... But it's chewier, harder, more delicious. No matter how well you chew, the reason it's so much better for you is because These bits of... Don't get absorbed in our small intestine, end up in our large intestine and act as this prebiotic bounty for our good gut bugs.

But the more you refine it, the more you process it, the more that gets absorbed high up in the small intestine, you're basically leaving your colon bugs to starve down there. And that's why the more hole, the better. That's where the dietary fiber is. That's where the resistant starch is. That's where we can feed our good gut and they feed us right back. Wow.

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

Okay, the fifth thing are foods that want people to reduce. They want people to reduce meat and soda as the two most important things to cut down in one's diet. But interesting Personally, the top four were actually things people aren't getting enough of. If you add those things. Right. It's possible that really the benefits of a plant-based diet is less about what you're cutting out and more about just including the healthiest of healthy foods out there, right?

Yeah, I like that philosophy for people, because if you can include these things in your system and in your daily routine, you're going to be less hungry for the other sugary, processed things. There you go. Maybe you have a little bit of it every now and then, but it's not 80, 90% of your diet.

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

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

But everyone talks about serotonin in the brain.

Yeah.

But it's produced in the gut.

95% of it is produced in the gut. 5% of it is produced in the brain. Now, in the brain, it is very relevant and important for how we feel our mood, our energy levels, our focus. But in the gut, the microbes have the ability to actually shape the production of serotonin and serotonin precursors. These serotonin precursors affect bowel motility and affect mood. It can cross the blood-brain barrier. If you think about this, people that have, for example, irritable bowel syndrome. All right, so what is irritable bowel syndrome? Here we are, it's 2024. We don't have a blood test. We don't have a CAT scan or anything we can do to diagnose this condition. We've known about for 50 years. Okay, what is going on here? Well, they have a change in bowel motility. They all have either diarrhea or constipation. They all have abdominal pain. In an overwhelming fashion, They suffer from mood disorders. There is a massive disproportionate prevalence of depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders in people that have IBS. It's quite fascinating because when you think about it, it connects back to the gut and the brain, and the new way of thinking about this condition, which has changed many times during my career.

Really? Yeah.

About thinking about it and treating IBS.

Treating about IBS, right? Now, there's a more holistic view, which is a good thing.

Not just, here's a drug or here's this thing. Yes.

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

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

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

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

Well, they existed. They existed, but they didn't exist to the level of intensity or the number of people that are being affected by these things as what we see today. And these are complex issues. So to sit here and pretend that this is just this one thing. Hey, it's the gut microbes. That's all that matters. That would be oversimplifying it. But I think that the important point, though, that the listeners need to hear is that they These gut microbes do play a role. In order to introduce this conversation, I feel like, let's take a quick moment, take a zoom out, and let's talk about the microbiome, which is the living microorganisms that are a part of our body. There are 38 trillion microorganisms that exist, covering all external surfaces of our body. So they're on our skin, on the top of our head, our scalp. Literally, they're crossing my eyeball as I sit here and look at you and talk to you. But they're so small, I can't see them. So thankfully, they're not affecting my vision in any way. So these are like little bugs. Little bugs. How many? 30 trillion? 38 trillion. Bugs.

38 trillion. We call them gut bugs. But really, we're talking about bacteria.

Bacteria that is around. And fungai. That is around. That's on the outside of our body and our inside of our body.

Well, so here's an interesting thing about that. It turns out that what's inside of our body, we're talking about our intestine, is actually outside of our body. Yeah, bizarre. I know. Our intestines are on the outside of our body. Okay, so here's the thing. Your tube is a... Your intestines are a continuous tube. It starts at your mouth. Now, you're a tall guy, much like me, okay? But the average person in the United States, somewhere between 20 and 28 feet, okay, is this continuous tube of intestines.28 feet?Yeah. The tube is never broken. There is no point where things that enter into the tube leave the tube and go into the body unless they're absorbed by the body. Interesting. Basically, What that means is because it's a continuous tube, it starts at your mouth, which is outside of your body. Things are outside of your body. You swallow them down. You may think of them as being inside your body, but actually, they're within this tube, and they never actually enter into your body. All the way through, this is actually an external facing surface. Interesting. You're interacting with the outside world, which is one of the key points to understand.

Wow, that's fascinating. You're interacting with the outside world within your intestines. This is the reason why, by the way, Lewis, that 60 to 70% of our immune system lives in the wall of your intestine. This is the home of your intestines. People may think of the bone marrow as being, Hey, that's where immune cells live. No, no. They're born there. They may be born in the bone marrow, but then they move to places, much like you were born in Ohio and I was born in New York, and now you're here, and I'm in Charleston. The immune cells move, and most of them take up residence within the mining of the intestines. The reason why they're there is because this is actually where we're interacting with the outside world. And so we need our defense systems in place in that location. All right. Anyway, so here we are. We got 38 trillion microbes. Now, this is, by the way, more than we have human cells. So we are less than 50% human.

Wait a minute. How many human cells do we have?

About 30 trillion.

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

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

And so a microbe is not a human element.

No, it's not. It's also not a part of our body. They take up residence after birth. That's crazy. Yeah. So the water breaks, the water breaks, mom goes into labor, and for the first time, the baby is exposed to the outside world. And with that, come a flush of these microbes. And actually passing through the birth canal is a gift from nature, because as a child passes through the birth canal for the first time, it's being exposed to this world, this microbial world that dominates. And they've been around, Lewis. So like humans, we've been around for about three, three and a half million years. Archeia, which live inside of our microbiome, they're not bacteria, they're not fungis. They're these weird things, but they produce gas. So when you pass gas, think of Archeia. There's an archeologic site in Greenland where they found four billion-year-old Archeia, 4 billion years. And we think that that's the oldest life on this planet. Wow. So these microbes, they have been around forever. They've survived everything that exists. No matter what happens in this world, no matter what happens, there will be microbes. It will continue to exist. And they're an important part of us as humans, which is really the key point.

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

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

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

Well, I'll give you three things, and they all connect back to the microbiome. I would start with food. The food is our most powerful lever that we can pull in terms of shaping and changing the microbiome. And there are simple choices that anyone can make. And this doesn't have to fall under a dietary pattern or a label. It's just changing the way you What would be, for that first one, what would be the top five foods that everyone should eat daily to optimize their gut microbiome? Okay, I can give you a top five, but can I start with this essential rule? Yes. Which is diversity of plants. All right. So eating as much variety of different plants in our diet. We have to be intentional about this if this is what we want. Because the problem is the food system is not going to do that for us. You go into the supermarket, they've distilled it down to 75% of the calories in our supermarket is three foods.

What are those three fruits?

Wheat, corn, and soy.

Wow.

Yes. That is 75% of the calories in the supermarket. Now, granted, most of those are ultra-processed. So I'm here to advocate for real food. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. That's at least five. We could add mushrooms. Those are broad categories, and we can get more specific if we want to. But to me, it's about getting that variety. And this is not just an idea or a concept. This is actually scientifically proven. In a study called the American Gut Project, which, by the way, was international, but it was run out of UC, San Diego. What they found is that at the end of the day, when they did their analysis, above everything else, there was this one rule. The diversity of plants in your diet was the number one factor in predicting who had the healthiest gut. And the number is 30. 30 per week.30.30 different plants.Wow. Per week. Now, all fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumesInclude those 30?They count.Okay. All of them. Right?

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

At least.Wow. At least. But you know what?

I'll even call if I've tried 30 different plants in my life.Lewis.It's like...

You and I need to spend more time together. Exactly, right?

It's like 30. Wow, that's incredible.

You start to take a smoothie. It could be Monday morning. Okay. Take a smoothie. Bananas, strawberries, greens of your choice, whatever ones you like. Chia seeds, hemp seeds. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds.We're already up to six.Okay. You want to add in some raspberries or some other kinds of berries.We can easily get this up to 10. Got you. You're making pasta sauce. Why would you just do pasta sauce? Why not throw some plants in there? There you go. Right? Onions, garlic, basil, oregano. Those count, too. Spices count.

Why is the... If someone's like, Listen, I just like my 5-10 plants a week. I eat healthy plants. I eat mostly plants. I eat non-processed foods. Is that good enough, or is it really more about adding more and more of the diversity as possible, as opposed to just broccoli and spinach by itself?

The average person in the United States, 10% of their calories comes from actual plants. The number one plant is the potato. We're not talking about optimal nutrition here. There's a reason why people in the United States are suffering through the health-related issues that they currently have. We need to make changes. If we simply added more fiber to our diet, we would radically transform the health of this country. Really? Yes. That person who's not necessarily eating a lot of variety, but is eating a lot of plants, number one, I give them a standing ovation. Their diet's great starting point. They're way better off than the average American is right now. We all, though, should be looking to optimize. We all have opportunities to do better. So if you take that diet and you add more variety to it, they will reap the rewards of that. And the reason why is because every single one of these plants has unique properties that are, number one, going to affect our microbiome. So these microbes, they're like us in many ways, Lewis. They have personalities. Some of them are not nice. They have cliques. They have certain ones that they tend to hang with, and they work together.

They also have taste buds. They have different food preferences. Not every microbe, believe it or not, likes kale.

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

You can trade it to like kale, but there's going to be a lot of microbes that are going to be hungry if the only thing that you eat was kale. Interesting. Every single plant is feeding certain families of microbes.

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

Oh, 100%.

If I just eat broccoli and spinach and kale a few times a week, versus I might never feel like I'm full. It's like I still want more. I need some different carbs or some snacks or things to feel more full. But if I'm hearing you say, right, if you have more diversity of plants more frequently, you're going to feel more satiated. You're going to get the fiber that your body needs to It's going to be less hungry as well.

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

Glp-1 is what exactly?

Glp-1 is glucagon-like peptide 1, which is a gut hormone, which is what Ozempic is. Ozempic is GLP-1. It has these different effects on our body, including helping us to control our blood sugar and making us feel full. Interesting. Which is the reason why Ozempic is used for diabetes and for weight loss.

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

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

Getting results.They're.

Getting results.

But what are the long term effects of these?

We have no clue. Right. We have no clue. We don't have the data yet to say what the long term results of these are. What We do know with complete clarity is that if you stop using the drug, by the way, they're very expensive. They're very expensive. Thousands of dollars per month. Wow. Right? And are we ready to commit to doing this for the rest of our lives? Because when you come off of the drug, you go right back to where you were before. Really? Yes, you rebound immediately. So flip side, though, I think it's important at the same time as we're having this conversation about Ozempic and these types of weight loss drugs. Again, I'm not here to vilify them. Okay? But when we're doing that, instead of changing the way that we eat.

The behaviors.

Right. The problem that exists with this is, yes, we can measure weight loss. When people lose weight, there are different things that can certainly improve, and they become more healthy. But is the only thing that matters for human health, our weight? That is not the case. There is so much more to us as humans and our determinants of our health beyond just whether or not we're obese, skinny, or what our body habitus is. We need to look at that bigger picture. The bigger picture is that when we optimize our diet, we have opportunities to improve ourselves metabolically, which includes improving our weight, which includes improving our blood sugar control. But we also have opportunities to prevent other diseases far beyond what Ozempic is capable of preventing.

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

So the data are clear that when we consume an ultra-processed diet, which in the United States today, 60% of calories are ultra-processed foods, so more than half. These are foods, by the way, that did not exist 100 years ago. Crazy. So what we're describing was not possible for our great grandparents. There's no way they could evade the diet that we currently eat because these foods did not exist. Our kids, 70% of calories in our kids come from ultra-processed foods. And there's no doubt that they cause a shift in the microbiome. It's a shift towards what we call dysbiosis. So it's the opposite of what we see when we eat a diverse diet. Diverse diet leads to a diverse microbiome, and that is a healthy microbiome. When we shift towards ultra-processed foods, we're actually contracting the microbiome. We're empowering the ones that love sugar. We're empowering the ones that create inflammation.

And they're signaling the direction they want to go in. They want you to go in. Hey, you want more of this sugary drink. You want more candy, you want more chips. They're telling your brain, you need this.

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

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

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

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