Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #382: The Prescription for Longevity: Diet, Exercise, & Lifestyle We All NEED To Try with Dr. Michael Greger Physician, Bestselling Author, & Nutrition Expert

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

To check out OneSkin click here!  https://shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=1054216&m=102446&u=3821794&afftrack= To get your 15% one time use discount use code: Confidence Remember if you opt in for the subscription you can cancel any time but you can only use the discount code once. In This Episode You Will Learn About:  The easiest way to live happier, healthier & longer Why you won’t be told about these simple anti-aging tips How these little changes to your life will make the BIGGEST difference Totally demystifying healthy diet, exercise, & lifestyle Resources: Website: https://nutritionfacts.org/  Read How Not To Age Visit 21daykickstart.org  Listen to Nutrition Facts with Dr. Greger Download Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen Instagram: @nutrition_facts_org YouTube: @NutritionFactsOrg Twitter: @nutrition_facts Visit heathermonahan.com Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan Right now you can get Two Memberships for the Price of One at masterclass.com/monahan Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code CONFIDENCE and depending on the model, you’ll receive UP TO 39% off or UP TO $300 off! Show Notes:  Don’t you want to stop aging in its tracks? I sure do! Thankfully it is no mystery how to live longer and be healthier. Dr. Michael Greger, expert in nutrition and bestselling author of How Not To Die, is here to share his simple tips on achieving longevity. With his scientifically backed methods, we will break down what actually MATTERS for our health and what is just marketing. Don’t be fooled by the flashy products and overload of misinformation! Together, let's demystify the secrets to a longer, more vibrant life and discover how choosing to make simple yet profound changes in our lives can lead to monumental results! About The Guest: Dr. Greger is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety, and public health issues. A founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. Greger is licensed as a general practitioner specializing in clinical nutrition. He is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University School of Medicine. In 2017, Dr. Greger was honored with the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award and became a diplomat of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. His books How Not to Die, The How Not to Die Cookbook, and How Not to Diet became instant New York Times bestsellers, and his two latest books, How to Survive a Pandemic and The How Not to Diet Cookbook, were published in 2020 with much acclaim. One hundred percent of all proceeds Dr. Greger has received from his books, DVDs, and speaking engagements have always and will always be donated to charity. If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: #346: You Have No Idea What Lies Ahead For YOU With Heather! #340: The BEST Sales Tips From My Exclusive Masterclass With Heather! #343: How To Fail Your Way To Success With Leila Hormozi CEO of Aquisition.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One need not make drastic changes. It really isn't all or nothing. Even basic commonsense lifestyle factors can mean literally living the difference a decade of healthy life expectancy. And that's not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, eating more fruits and vegetables. So it's really the basics.

That's really the core regimen. And it's never too late. Never too late to start eating healthy or never too late to start moving, never too late. Never too late to start eating healthier. Never too late to start moving. Never too late to stop smoking. We really do have the power. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me,

we are going to chase down our goals. We've come at first aid and set you up for a better tomorrow. After you've stayed here, I'm ready for my close time. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to be back here with us this week. Okay, today we've got an incredible guest.

He's a founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Dr. Greger is a physician, New York Times bestselling author and is internationally recognized speaker on nutrition, food safety and public health issues. He is lectured at the conference on World Affairs, testified before Congress, and was invited as an expert witness

in the defense of Oprah Winfrey in the infamous Mead Defamation trial. I'm getting into that. In 2017, Dr. Greger was honored with the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award. He's a graduate of Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University School of Medicine. His first book, How Not to Die,

became an instant New York Times bestseller. He has videos on more than 2,000 health topics. The amount of work that you've done is nothing short of shocking. And his new book, which we're gonna get into today, is out December 5th. Dr. Greckert, so nice to meet you. And thank you so much for being here today.

I'm so honored. Hopefully I can help inspire some of your viewers to live longer, better lives. Yeah. Well, you're inspiring this one right here. Okay. So first of all, what is this Oprah case? I don't even remember that happening.

We break it down. Don't remember the famous. She had to move to Texas, battle off the rancher. So 21 states had what called food disparagement laws, where it's illegal to make so-called unfounded comments against perishable food items. So she had on this rancher by the name of Howard Lyman, who just talked about some of the kind of realities of modern agribusiness on how they feed the remains of cows from the slaughterhouse back to cows

is way of kind of like recycling essentially. And that would lead to the bovine spongy form and stuff a lot of the mad cow epidemic. And but like Oprah was just like, just so shocked to hear about. She's like, that's it, never eating another burger again. And so this cattle futures tumbled on the Chicago mercantile exchange that next week

because Oprah's not eating meat. Oh my God. And so then some cattle rancher sued her in Texas under one of these so-called food disparagement laws saying, wait a second, you can't make unbounded comments against personal food items. And so they brought on me as an expert witness to basically argue that, no, these were indeed founded comments. Nothing was said, it wasn't true, right?

You can say true things about food. But thankfully, she did not need my help. She actually won on first amendment grounds that, look, you should be able to say whatever you want about anything, right? That's kind of our system. But in a strict legal sense, you can argue that she won the case. On the other hand, they dragged her through eight years of appeals. So it took her eight years to get her out of this legal mess. And so if you can drag one of the richest and most powerful people on the planet through the courts, run their lives, you know, it's like a message to anyone else, right? That look, if we can do that dope, or we can do that with anyone.

And so it had kind of this kind of gagging effect on free speech, even though technically you could say stuff, it had a way of kind of cooling speech in this area. And so that's one of the reasons why you don't see more of those kind of exposés about food safety issues because they're afraid of those kind of losses. Wow, oh my gosh. Well, thank you for breaking that down for us because somehow, I'm sure I knew I got at the time, but I've forgotten about it a little bit of media overload,

I think, these days. Okay. So now you did not get into this business to specifically help Oprah Winfrey. In fact, I think you are working on making the world just a healthier place. Can you give us a little background into how you got into this work? It was really all thanks to my grandmother. I was just a kid when my grandma was sent home in a wheelchair to die. Essentially, she was diagnosed with end-stage heart disease. Charity and so many bypass surgeries are basically run out of plumbing at some point. Confined in wheelchair, crushing chest pain, her life was over at age 65.

But then you heard about this guy, Nathan Prittikin, one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers, and what happened next? It's actually detailed in Prittikin's biography. It talks about Francis Greger, my grandmother. They wield her in and she walked out. Though she was given her medical death sense at age 65, thanks to a healthy diet, was able to enjoy another 31 years on this planet until age 96 to continue to enjoy her six grand

kids, including me. So that's why I went to medicine, why I practiced lifestyle medicine, why I started the website nutritionfacts.org, why I wrote the book, How Not To Die, why all of the proceeds I received from all my books are all donated directly to charity. I just want to do for everyone's family what Pritikin did for my family. So give us a little bit of insight into that because that sounds rather drastic that she was basically they were thinking she was going to die and then she lived another 30 years by diet alone. We didn't used to know that heart disease was reversible. We thought they just got worse, worse, worse than you died.

And predicate was reversing heart disease by the thousands, but unfortunately back then we didn't have what's called angiography. We didn't have this way of kind of x-raying the arteries to see if anything was changing. So these were clinical diagnoses, meaning their symptoms got better. And since we didn't think heart disease was reversible, the medical community just said, well, if you

got better, then you never really had heart disease in the first place. It wasn't until then dean Ornish stepped up, and in 1990 published the lifestyle heart trial, the most prestigious medical journal on the planet proving for the first time in a randomized controlled trial using some co- something called quantitative angiography, you could actually prove that you can actually reverse heart disease, open up arteries without drugs, without surgery, this healthy plant-based diet lifestyle program. And so really, that was the big shift. Now, my family knew about that forever. I mean, you know, but here was in black and white, published in the best medical journals on the planet yet, basically crickets. So here we have the cure to our number one

killer of both men and women. And yet, you know, the system wasn't changing. And to this day, hundreds of thousands of men and women continue to die from this preventable, arrestable, reversible condition. I said, wait a second, if the cure to a number one killer could get lost down some rabbit hole and ignored, what else might there be in the medical literature that could help my patients, but just didn't have like a corporate budget driving its promotion? Well, I made in my life's mission to find out. So that's how nutritionfacts.org came about. This is the resource I wish I had in medical training to be able to kind of sift through the misinformation mess that we have over the kind of corrupting commercial influence in the field of nutrition. So what does that mean? It just means that is it

pharmaceutical companies? Who is it that's holding this information back or why are people still not understanding that there are solutions readily available to them? In terms of medical training, most doctors just never taught about the power the health nutrition can have in the course of illness. And so they graduate without this powerful tool in their medical toolbox. Now there's also institutional barriers, time constraints, lack of reimbursement in general. Doctors simply aren't paid for counseling people on how to take better care of themselves.

But drug companies do play a role in medical education and practice. You can ask your doctor when the last time they were taken out to dinner by big broccoli, it's probably been a while. It's so true. But that's so horrifying that people who literally have the potential to die because they're not

making different decisions that are readily available to them, the information's there. verifying that people who literally have the potential to die because they're not making different decisions that are readily available to them, the information's there. Not only are they not aware of it, but they don't even know how to access it, is that correct? It's increasingly easier. And that was the dream of the internet, right? Is that we would democratize information no longer could there be these gatekeepers. So you know, back in the 1950s, the tobacco industry had a stranglehold on the medical associations on the media.

And so the American Medical Association was coming out saying that smoking on average is good for you, actually beneficial in moderation, of course. But the media was telling people to smoke famous athletes agreed, but that was at a time where you really couldn't get even though there were decades of science, linking smoking with lung cancer, they were published in medical journals, never really saw the light of day. But the hope with the internet was all this information out there that's been lying these dusty stacks could now get out because you didn't need a corporate

budget for promotion. You didn't have ads on TV. If something's actually going to be saving lives, that alone could get it out there. And there's certainly some of that Wikipedia is a great example of this expansion of knowledge, this democratization of knowledge. At the same time, with much of the kind of web 2.0 with this move of social media There's been this medical misinformation There's just been all these crazy conspiracy theories and so much mudding on the waters to the absolute delight of

These food corporations who want nothing more than you to just get self-restraint You'd throw up your hands and put it eat any kind of crap that's put in front of you, even though there's clear consensus and the nutrition literature going back decades around the really the core tenants of healthy eating like eat more fruits and vegetables. Masterclass makes a meaningful gift this season for you and anyone on your list because both of you can learn from the best to become your best, from leadership to effective communication to cooking, whether you're watching Masterclass on TV, listening in audio mode, in the app or on the site, the quality speaks for itself.

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Go to shopify.com slash monahaneim now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash monaheim. If it was just that simple, so how much of it is that people don't have the information or how much is it that they don't actually want to adhere to the direction that is available to them? No, that's a fantastic question. In fact, so the controversy really isn't in the medical field, is not so much about the science, but it is about compliance.

So, you know, when I talk to my fellow colleagues, no one doubts the science, but they're like, I can't even get my patients to stop smoking. There's no way they're gonna eat like this. And so they don't even bring it up. And I think that's a really dangerous patronizing attitude. They're like, they make up their own mind, whether or not to even bring this information to patients. And it's true. Many patients are not going to do anything with

it. They just want to pill or they're not going to do anything. And look, that's totally up to them. But at least they should have the choice, right? It's your body, your choice. You want to smoke cigarettes, you want to go bungee jumping, you want to, you know, not wear your seatbelt, right? I mean, see, it's up to each of us to make our own decisions as to how to eat, how to live, but we should make these choices consciously, right? Educating ourselves about the predictable consequences of our actions. And so that's where I feel my work comes in. It's like, okay, here's the pros and cons. And then it's up to you, do what you want.

I just don't want you to make decisions based on some propaganda from Coca-Cola rather than the actual science. Well, that's one of the reasons why I like your new book, How Not to Age so much is if you're not preaching at people at any point in both, you must do this, you must do this, but you give different viewpoints,

you back everything up with the science that you've done. And clearly, you put a tremendous amount of work into this book. I mean, I wrote two books and nothing like this. I can't even, first of all, writing a book in itself, it's hard, but to do it, allowing for all these different perspectives, even to the point you just made.

Not only do you share, yes, here are some of the food tips and tricks that will help you with this situation. You give a lot of different perspectives and options that it isn't just one way. What made you write this book and put so much work into it? Look, some people are gonna take this information and they'll make one decision.

And other people learn this information, the exact same information and be like, you just have different values and decide to do something else. That's why I didn't want to prescribe anything because how do I know? Just because I feel this way, just because they could be worth it for me to do X, Y and Z every day, it may not be worth you and everybody has the right to make that decision up on their own. My aim with this book was really to create the most comprehensive anti-aging book ever written to really cover every possible strategy

for slowing the aging process for the longest healthiest life based on the best available bounce of evidence. And really the good news is that we have tremendous power over our health destiny and longevity. The vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with healthy enough dying lifestyle. And so what do you say to the people that say, no, it's genetics.

And I know what you say because I've already seen it in the book, but and there are so many people that say that I have people say to me all the time, oh, you're blessed with great genetics. And I think, sure, are you at the gym with me every morning at 6 a.m.? And are you the one that decides to go to bed at 10 o'clock

at night when there's plenty of other things I could do? I know firsthand that isn't always the case, but what do you say to people when they should be everything to genetics? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, just have to look at the science. So based on studies of identical twins who have identical genetics, the same DNA,

only about 25% of the variation in lifespan between people is determined by genes. The question is, okay, well then, what can we do to exercise control over the vast majority of which we have control? And that's really what I delve into in the book. And it's true, some people are blessed. They don't have to eat as healthy or work out as much as other people, but the people who do have bad genes, where these diseases run their families?

Well, that's no excuse. They just have to actually work harder than everyone else. They have to eat even cleaner diets. So it's not an occasion to throw up your hands. It's an occasion to really double down on healthy lifestyle choices. And you've seen people with poor genetics be able to be very disciplined and have a powerful impact? Oh, absolutely. In fact, something like Alzheimer's, this Alzheimer's gene, I put before, which can as much as quadruple ones risk of getting Alzheimer's disease, but lifestyle changes can actually Trump that,

so for example, there's something called the Nigerian paradox, where in Nigeria, they have among the highest rates of this Alzheimer's gene anywhere in the world, just genetically, but actually have some of the lowest rates of Alzheimer's disease. How is that possible? It's because they eat these plant-based diets at lower their cholesterol. That's what APAWEE does. It's the primary cholesterol carrier in the brain.

Basically, what's good for our hearts is good for our heads. By lowering cholesterol low enough, we can actually undermine the ability of this gene to actually increase our Alzheimer's disease risk. Okay, so for anyone, and that's super interesting because Alzheimer's is so widespread, especially here in our country, you hear so much about it, so many people have affected with it, and so great to hear that there's healthy ways that people can address this. For people who are thinking, okay, how not to age, because this is what I thought, when

I first heard about your book, I thought, oh, my face, how to get my skin to look better. What overview can you share with people right now that this book, while it does affect how you look, it isn't just about your skin? I really had to add that stuff. I knew people would be interested in the cosmetics of it, and really wanted to have such a comprehensive book. And so do have a whole chapter in preserving skin. So that's kind of one, there's kind of four sections of the book. And sections three is preserving function, so preserving your bones and your vision and your hearing and your circulation, et cetera. And I do talk about skin, do talk about nails, talk about hair, things that people care

about. But also wanted to talk about slowing the aging process itself for these age-related diseases like dementia and cancer and heart disease. And thankfully, it's really the same kind of thing. It's not like, oh, you have to choose between looking better or being better inside the same things that are good for you on the inside or good for you on the outside. So it was really kind of a naturally came together and they really kind of complimented each other. Well, that section of the book intrigued me because recently I've been noticing that more hair has been falling out of my head. So I went

right to that part of your book. And you actually said, I believe it was wheat germ is something that people could take. Wheat germ. Absolutely. Yeah, because of the sperming day and yeah, exactly. But so random. I've never heard anyone talk about that. Oh, I know. I know it's all about boosting autophagy, which is this kind of internal house cleaning system, which helps our cells rejuvenate by getting rid of, build the cellular debris that contributes to the aging process. And actually, hair follicles are one of the most active growing tissues in the entire body. And so we need a lot of this autophagy. And so that's why that's how this sperming thing comes in. So the most concentrated source is wheat germ.

You can also get some eating plain white button mushrooms, green peas, there's a number of sources if you've found whatever reason don't like wheat germ. Okay, so on that, we've just brought something else of about all of these cells that are since selenic cells or I don't know. Oh, senescent cells. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about that.

Oh, yeah. Senescence is one of the 11 pathways of aging that I talk about in the book. It's basically the accumulation of what are called zombie cells, basically, considered one of the foundational hallmarks of aging. Most of our cells are only able to divide about 50 times before kind of stalling out. At which point they secrete these inflammatory compounds to signal to the immune system to basically clear them out.

Unfortunately, our body to remove these cells declines with age so our tissues end up littered with them. So they keep spewing this inflammatory mediators and that actually contributes to the aging process. Thankfully, we can prevent premature senescence by averting oxidative or free radical DNA damage, and potentially help clear them out once they've already formed using these so-called senolytic compounds. There are natural scented compounds, quercetin, ficedin, piper longhumane, quercetin is found in onions, apples, kale, tea, and capers,

the kind of the Mediterranean spice. And then ficedin really only found one food strawberry. So I encourage people to eat fresh frozen or freeze-dried strawberries. And then this piper longhumane is found in a food in the black pepper family called Long Pepper or Peppale? That's how you'd buy it like in an Indian spice store

and you can try seasoning your meals with that as one of the ways to block that particular aging pathway. Another buzz word or something that I have been hearing a lot about that I didn't understand that you get into the book is the NADs? Can you talk us a little bit about that? Yeah, I know that's interesting. Yeah, so NAD, which is an essential co-factor, basically,

for hundreds of different enzymes in the body, including a number of entire aging enzymes like search ones. So boosting NAD levels has been shown to improve the health span and lifespan of a variety of kind of laboratory animal models. It's not clear if those benefits are actually ever going to translate into humans so far, they've been difficulty doing so. There's a number of NAD boosting supplements on the market with a whole alphabet soup of names is N-A-N-A-M-N-R-N-M-N on down the list, it really turns out that none of them have been demonstrated

to be both safe and effective and perhaps better than kind of blindly overloading the system with these NAD precursors. The body seems kind of too smart to allow the levels in our tissues to actually change when we take these by pill. So really, I encourage people to go for the natural approaches for boosting NAD, which is amping up this enzyme that makes NAD in the body called NAMPT. How do we do that? We can do that to exercise the only known thing that can actually boost NAD levels in our muscles. And then the other half of it is trying to prevent excess NAD degradation by suppressing the over activation

of two NAD consuming enzymes, one called PARP1, one called CD38, basically involved in oxidation and inflammation, and so by decreasing that, by eating more antioxidant rich foods, by eating anti-inflammatory foods, you can naturally boost levels of NAD in our tissues and hopefully getting some of those benefits that we're seeing in the lab. So you bring up the importance there of working out? Well, do you mean exercise in doing cardiovascular exercise?

Or does that mean weight lifting and how does that affect the body differently? So both. So both can increase NAD levels in the muscles. And so for healthy aging, we not only want aerobic exercise, get our heart rate up, but we also want resistance exercise like strength training, using bands. And finally, something critically important, particularly in older ages, balance training. For fall prevention, so about 85% of age-related fracture risk, actually, it's nothing to do with our bone mineral density, really has to do with falls, preventing falls. And so we do that by strengthening our lower limbs through strength training, as well as these balanced training exercises, can decrease the risk of osteoporotic fracture, 74%, something that none of the so-called,

you know, anti-astero-process drugs have been able to show to do. And that's just one of the benefits of exercise. We tend to think of exercise as just improving muscle mass and strength and preventing falls, but people don't realize that exercise does so many other things in their body, enhances cognition, improves mood, treats depression, improves immunity, artery function, erectile dysfunction, trees depression, improves immunity, artery function, erectile dysfunction, insulin

sensitivity, overall quality of life. And so, yeah, it's a critical component to any kind of optimal anti-aging regimen. American spend an average of 90% of their time indoors and take about 20,000 breaths a day. According to the EPA, indoor air is 2 to five times more polluted than outdoor air, and in some cases up to 100 times more polluted. Data shows that air pollution is responsible for nearly 7 million premature deaths globally. Wow, I mean, the air quality struggle is alive and it is real. Let me tell you, I live right near a freeway.

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So it's so interesting to hear. It's so funny, it was like anyone listening, there's certain things, like some people just eat really healthy or know to always eat their vegetables and you know, have a great mix of fruits in their life. Some people know to get eight plus hours of sleep and I and I are disciplined about. Some people love to work out.

Well, whatever the piece is in for me, I love working out. So of course, I worked out my whole, you know, any and every day I can my whole life. So that no brainer, but to think about after, especially after digesting the information in your book, I know I'm not getting anywhere near the amount of nutrients and the right foods and, you know, that can seem overwhelming. How do advised people when they feel overwhelmed by one of these elements and how they can incorporate into their lives? Yeah, well, I think the most important thing to recognize is that when need not make drastic changes, it really isn't all or nothing. Even basic commonsense lifestyle factors can mean literally living the difference a decade of healthy life expectancy

and that's not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, eating more fruits and vegetables. So it's really the basics. That's really the core regimen and it's never too late. Never too late to start eating healthy or never too late to start moving, never too late to stop smoking. We really do have the power. Now, that'll get you 80% there. Now if you're interested in that last 20% working at the margins, all the little tweaks

you can do, it looks like mine, you get just a wealth of all sorts of things, but let's not lose side of really the core basics. I don't want people to get intimidated and be like, well, I can just not do anything. Even 15 minutes of walking a day is associated with significant and lower risk of premature death, right? So any exercise is better than non. So yes, ideally, I mean, we have science suggesting that up to 90 minutes of daily exercise, modern intensity exercise, you get a cruel more and more benefits all the way at least up to 90.

And we only know 90 because there's not enough people to study that get more than 90 minutes of exercise every day But I think the authorities the reason I recommend only about 20 minutes a day is because they want to make it seem approachable, doable, non-intimidating and so look just help people the truth any exercise is better than none Absolutely, but look there's benefits all the way up So the more the better at these kind of modern intensity levels, I'm a big proponent of just kind of laying it out there. And then letting people pick and choose what works for them. And knowing that again, not black or white,

anything we can do on a daily basis, doesn't matter what we eat on our holidays or birthday, special occasions, the day-to-day stuff that really adds up, I dated a basis really should try to eat healthy. That's trying to center our diets more around the healthiest of healthy foods out there, kind of unprocessed plant foods. So one of the other things that you brought up in the book that I thought was interesting and important to include is stress and relationships and how that impacts the body. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so those are two factors of the so-called blue zones. These areas of exceptional longevity around the world. They have more of these centenarians, people live over a hundred. So there's these hot spots of longevity around the world. And so the whole point is, well, let's look at the Venn diagram. Of like, what do they all seem to do together? And so in terms of their diet, they all center

as a primary source of protein, some kind of legume, beans, puppies, chickpeas, lentils, that's a cornerstone of all blue zone diets. You know, don't eat a lot of processed food, sugary foods, all the foods, all these things. And so we can get a sense of what a long-jeivity diet might look like. But they also have other healthy lifestyle factors, like regular movement, even though they don't necessarily go to the gym, they're, you know, out in the garden, they're active throughout the day. They're not sitting here. They're not sitting for six more hours a day, like so much in the Western world does.

And they also wait control. They also tend to be kind of ideal, EMI, and stress reduction and social connectivity. Now for those of you who start to stress about their stress, it's important to recognize that stress does not appear to be an independent risk factor for premature death, but it's mediated through changes in lifestyle. So people who are stressed tend to eat more and tend to eat worse, as well as smoke more, drink more, more likely to do illicit substances. And so it's that. So if you actually adjust for those factors,

you actually don't see people who are stressed living significantly shorter lives. It's only through the changes in lifestyle. So if you can maintain your lifestyle, despite the stress, you will not suffer the ravages of that stress in terms of any decrease in longevity. And the same thing with connectivity, social connection, loneliness, bereavement, stress, all associated,

we sit in a short or live, but mediated to the lifestyle changes. So the reason why people die soon after their spouses is all of a sudden they turn to the drink, they don't need a cell, so that they used to be, and if you control for those factors, then it all kind of washes out. And so those are two very important factors, but they're those factors, then it all kind of washes out. And so those are two very important factors,

but they're dependent factors. And they're not independent factors. Media through those lifestyle changes, so maintaining a healthy lifestyle can get you kind of through all the rocky phases of life. Wow, so I mean, it must have been some regards. Interesting to use a doctor to see COVID happen in real time and be able to process the changes people

went through. What are some of the things that you saw there? What we saw, predominantly, was how critically important these so-called comorbidities are, these preexisting medical conditions. And so what determined most whether someone would suffer severe course or even die from COVID was whether or not they're obese, whether or not they had heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes. And so that's how good news because we can have control over those lifestyle diseases. And so my hope was that, okay, all of a sudden people are sheltering in place, staying at home. Now they have control over their environment.

They're no longer walking past the donut shop. There's no longer a bowl of candy on your coworker's desk, and you're at home, you may have more control over your schedule. So what a perfect time to get an exercise regimen and what a perfect time to clean out the pantry and just surround yourself by good food. That was my little idealistic, you know, it's like, now you can do it, right? And really reduce your risk of having serious consequences. Unfortunately,

that's not what people did. And they just started, you know, Instacard and Cookies or whatever. And unfortunately, we lost about two years of life expectancy. Well, life expectancy peak to actually 2014 started to decline even before COVID. Thanks to the obesity epidemic, we're raising now the first generation of Americans that are going to live shorter lives on average than their parents. And then COVID comes along, really knocks our knee caps out. And so it's a lot of work to do. But we really do have the power, much controlled over our life expectancy and disability.

Why would it be that if our children now are going to lead shorter lives or have potentially shorter lives when they have more information that doesn't make any sense? Wouldn't you think it, right? Well, because all the information in the world has not stopped the obesity epidemic. From continuing to increase, we now 70% of Americans are overweight obese. We have a childhood obesity epidemic, which is going to manifest this increase rates of type two diabetes, right?

These are even young children. We used to call it adult onset diabetes. Now we call it type two diabetes because it's no longer just starting an adulthood is starting younger because there's so much excess body fat on so many of our youth. And so that's why if the trends continue as they are, we're going to see these, really kind of a public health catastrophe.

But it's important to recognize that obesity is not some moral failing. Right? The Battle of the Bulge is a battle against biology. Right? Being overweight is a normal natural reaction to an abnormal unnatural ubiquity of the sugary fatty foods we are just drowning in a sea of excess calories being pummeled all day long by advertisements for fast food and junk food and candy. No wonder. Right? We're in this situation we are. Unfortunately, the most profitable foods like brown sugar water and a bottle, pure profit, are the least healthy foods and the healthiest foods like fruits and vegetables are the worst investment,

right? The food actually goes bad. You want a snack cake that lives on the shelf, right? That's why you never going to see an ad on TV for sweet potatoes or something. It's just the system is set up to incentivize all the wrong things. I mean, the head of Coca-Cola doesn't want to see a child's little BC epidemic. They just want to satisfy their shareholders for the next quarter. How do you do that? You don't do that through healthy food. Any CEO that did would get instantly booted out and replaced by someone who could make shareholders money. How do you do that? You don't do that through healthy food. And any CEO that did would get instantly booted out and replaced by someone who can make

shareholders money. How do you do it? You do it selling, you know, carbonated brown sugar water with taxpayer subsidized sugar industry. I mean, it's just pure profit. Unfortunately, these companies do not have the health of our families forefront in mind. Clearly not. But when you just

brought up 70% of population being obese, that shockings me. Number one, I live in Miami, which might be a little different because it's very much an outside lifestyle. However, and I'm interested to hear your perspective on this,

so many of my friends are on ozempic or diabetes, I believe, and I've lost so much weight in our thinner than ever. What are your thoughts on these one pill, one shot wonders? These weekly injectable drugs, like Ozan, Epic, now there's a whole bevy of them that just got approved by the FDA. I mean, I think good options of last resort,

like bariatric surgery. I see them very similar to bariatric surgery, where if you are unable or unwilling to treat the cause of your obesity and lose weight, then the benefits outweigh the risk because obesity is such a dramatic poll on our life expectancy and increases morbidity like osteoarthritis and diabetes on down the wrist. So for example, bariatric surgery, you can randomize people obese individuals to get bariatric surgery.

It's actually a risky surgery. It's difficult to do those kind of surgeries. And still, they actually live longer than those in the control group that didn't get the surgery, despite the risk of the surgery, because obesity is so devastating. And in fact, even in the bariatric surgery group, they ended up obese. So they went from really obese to just a little obese, still live significantly longer than the control group that stayed really obese. And we would expect, although we don't know the long-term consequences of these new drugs, even if they have some pretty significant side effects, it may very

well end up in the wash that you would live longer on these drugs. Of course, you don't have to take them every week for the rest of your life, but of course, that's exactly what big pharma wants. I mean, that's the cash cows of big pharma. It's not the life-saving 10-day antibiotic course. That doesn't make money. It's these lifestyle drugs where you give someone, you know, blood pressure lowering drug or cholesterol lowering drug every single day

for the rest of their life or an anti-osterbreast drug every day for the, that's how you make money, but we can treat the cause that led to these diseases in the first place with diet and lifestyle changes that may be actually more effective than these drugs and just really have positive side effects. It's just incredible when you hear rationalized you so directly that we still as a population continue to make wrong choices when the information is so right there. What I love about your book, how not to age is you can literally find specific topics and go right to it. It's almost like a dictionary for your health. I've been struggling personally with some inflammation of my Achilles, which happens to any runner, you know, whatever, but I'm thinking there's got to be more here than maybe the right stretching because some people you'll just hear like you're out of alignment or you're not stretching and you need more ice.

And so then I began thinking, oh, that's the only issue that it could be until I was looking at your book and I started diving into inflammation and some of the impulse solutions like tea. That was such a surprising hack to me that I'd lean from the book that's at so helpful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we have tremendous influence. The book is kind of intimidating, size-wise, but you don't have to read it kind of start to finish, right? You just like, oh, all I really care about is I'm losing my hearing. Okay, well, you turn to that chapter or whatever. So it's gonna exist as a reference book to kind of always go back to.

That was really my kind of goal in doing it, but the downside of that is it looks kind of like, you know, oh my God, that's just too complicated kind of thing, but it's just little chunks on all the various different conditions. You think about all the conditions, age-related conditions. Well, of course, it's gonna be a big book, even if I spend, you know, just half a page on every one of them. When things go sideways, will you be prepared? Some people are concerned they might have to go

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Save more and get peace of mind now by going to for the number four for patriots.com slash confidence. The way that it's laid out, it's very simple for anyone. I used it myself to be able to go in and search. This is the topic I'm curious about. And you can find the information very, very simply. It's laid out incredibly easily. Well, which to me, that's what so useful for it, because when I first got the book, I was thinking, okay, how do I approach it? And then just out of curiosity, I thought, well, let's go look at my issues that I personally have first to see.

And then recently I haven't been sleeping enough. And so I went, I should probably read more about the sleep chapter right now because I haven't been doing a good job on that. And I wonder what impact it's having on me. And then you start educating yourself and you start saying, oh, wait a minute, this isn't worth it to continue short-change my sleep. Isn't it interesting? And so like simple things like wearing socks, they have randomized controls for hours and

putting on warm socks, improves your sleep. And I talk about it exactly the mechanism by which that happens, but it's like, how cool that there's these simple things. And it's not like there's some big sock out there that can, you know, send out press releases about this kind of study. This kind of great science just gets kind of buried.

It's just not a lot of kind of profit to be made because people just buy your competitors' warm sock. The system isn't set up. Unless you have a branded patented product like a drug, there just isn't this financial incentive to really educate people about it unless you have some gimmicky product. All this amazing science just gets completely lost. That's really my job to dig through all that and bring out those things where yeah, no, the only people are going to profit off of it are you and me and our families. We're going to profit through our health.

Give us an idea a day and in your life of what your food choices exercise choices and sleep choices are like? In terms of diet, which is probably the most important factor over which we have control, I encapsulated my eating recommendations in the daily dozen checklist of all the healthy foods I encourage people to fit into the daily routine. And so there's a free app called Dr. Greggers' Daily Doesn't on iPhone Android. I'm going to talk about it in my book How Not To Die. So basically, it's like I encourage people to eat dark green leafy vegetables every day, the healthiest vegetables, berries, the healthiest fruits, table spoon of ground flaxsees, corn teaspoon of turmeric, on down the list how much exercise. You know, again, just trying to inspire people to include some of the healthiest of healthy foods into the daily routine. And so then,

those are the specific foods. And then in terms of how do I actually make those into meals, I have a series of cookbooks, there's the how not to die cookbook, how not to die cookbook, the how not to age cookbook will be out December 2024. So it's think I'll be around for another year. But I do have a few recipes in the book, in terms of exercise. It's really more about just not being center. So I'm actually on a walking treadmill now, normally I'm kind of walking during interviews, but I've got complaints that I make people seasick. So I turned off the treadmill, but just during the day while I'm working,

I'm able to clock about 14 miles a day, just going through my daily business. Yeah, sleep is critically important. The best way is to go to bed early. And then basically whenever I wake up, it's like even for whatever reason, I get woken up early, you know, at least I've, you know, kind of nailed it.

It's like eating a really healthy breakfast is like whatever happens during the day, you know, at least I got a foundation. So going to bed really early and thankfully, I'm able to do that. And less so on the road, it's a little more difficult. I use it kind of speaking late, kind of long book signing lines,

but when I'm at home, I have control of my diet. You know, there's just not bad food in the house because I know myself and I know I could white knuckle it for a while and just eat healthy food, but you know, I'm gonna have a bad day and I'm gonna go for the things that I shouldn't be eating. So I just don't have that temptation. There's just no bad food in the house.

And so look, I get hungry enough, I'm gonna eat that apple because it's like the best thing I got, you know? I don't have to choose between eating cookies, you know? So that's basically kind of my schedule went home, but then on the road, you know, I do my best to try to eat healthy. It's tough.

I love that you share that with such honesty, though, because, you know, it's funny the other night there was a really bad storm in Miami and the noise is all that I couldn't sleep. And it was one of the first times I have very, very little sleep. I felt terrible, unproductive. I had the worst day

the next day, I mean, I'm having a baby, literally that fact that you forget what it's like to have run on no sleep. And then I started thinking about, if this is what it's like in a big fashion, a match over time, if you're always short-changing your sleep two, four hours, whatever, you might not get hit with it that way, but over time, it's got to impact you in such a big way. It's got to be terrible. And many people live their lives like it. They don't know any different, right?

And so that's why it's amazing when you just change people's diets and you get these, like, you know, they have this chronic dyspepsia or like, you know, upset stomach. And they were like, I just thought it was normal to feel really crappy after a meal or whatever. you know, upset stomach, they were like, I just thought it was normal to feel really crappy after a meal or whatever, or you know, it's normal to just drag your feet and be really tired and not, you know, difficult to get out of bed and stuff. No, no, no, normal, you know, healthy is normal. But your body wants to come back to health

and we're not stabbing with the fork three times a day or you know, not giving it a sufficient sleep. You know, there's these amazing things where you can randomize people, sleep deprived under five hours or at least seven hours of sleep and then drip rhinovirus, drip the cold virus and everybody's nose. And you're five times more likely to actually come down with the cold in the sleep deprived group.

And now there's a hundred percent infection rate across the board. They literally had virus dripped inside their nose, but there were five times more likely to actually show symptoms. And the people that got enough sleep, their bodies were able to rid the virus before they even knew about. Never even got a sniffle out of it. And so that just gives you a sense.

Now, it's unethical to do that kind of experiment with more serious viruses like influenza or something, but gives a sense of how much power we have. And this was just literally a week, a week of five hours of sleep was enough to so suppress the immune function. And we see similar effects with proper sleep and vaccine effectiveness. Yeah, we really underestimate the power we have over our health. You don't know how good you're going to feel until you give it a try. So I encourage people, let's do it for a few weeks. Get enough sleep, eat healthy, exercise, and then at the end of those three weeks.

And of course, I have the luxury of being able to do labs before and after, and can show them kind of the objective benefits, but their own bodies are telling them. They're feeling better. They have more energy, better sleep, better digestion, less painful periods, whatever it is, such that instead of it's just a doctor wagon, their finger, better digestion, less painful periods, whatever it is, such that instead of it's just a doctor wagon, their finger in their face, their own bodies are telling them how good they're feeling. And even if they don't necessarily continue it, at least in the back of their mind, they'll know they have that power.

It probably wasn't as hard as they thought it was. And so there's something they could always go back to. And so, but you know, unless you do that experiment, you don't know how good you can feel. And the numbers that you see when you're doing this in a lab support, you can see in real time. Oh, oh my God, right. And so, you know, it's like when I give someone

a prediabetes diagnosis, you know, you will now qualify for cholesterol-loan statin drug or your blood pressure is going too high. And it's like, okay, we can do two things. We can give you a drug and here's the pros and cons. Or let's try three weeks. There's a great organization called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. They have a 21-day Kickstart program, which is completely free. At 21dayKickstart.org, it starts in the first of every month. Hundreds of thousands of people have done it. It's a bunch of different languages. You kind of start

as like a little social media group and you get daily recipes and advice and you kind of support each other. And the hope is you just dive in completely for three weeks. You know, you can eat anything for three weeks. You can eat nothing for three weeks. You know, you really like just let's try it like a free sample because it's hard for people to imagine lifelong changes. Right? It's like, what? I'm not going to eat another pepperoni. No, no, no, just give me three weeks. Let's just try it. And so I encourage people to do that. I doesn't take much time. You can be an emergency room physician and still be able to just give people your else a sign up beginning the next month. And just let's just try it and see how you do. And you often find that even within those few weeks, you

can so dramatically drop their cholesterol. They no longer qualify for drugs. Their blood pressure, you know, normalizes. The only caveat is that if you are already on blood pressure lowering or blood sugar lowering drugs, you have to do this in conjunction with your medical professional because your doctor has to wean you off these drugs. As your body gets better, once you start treating the cause, your blood sugars and blood pressures can so rapidly normalize that you can find yourself over-medicated, which can be dangerous.

You can drop your pressures too low, drop your sugars too low. And so your doctor has to wean you off these drugs as your body gets better literally starting within just a few days. Wow, that is incredible. You mentioned something that just triggered something for me. You said, or eat nothing. Talked us a little bit about fasting and intermittent fasting and the impact that has in the body. That's actually the biggest chapter of my book, Countdown to Diet, which talked about weight control because there's so many different

types of intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting, five two fasting, 25 five fasting, mimicking diets, et cetera, et cetera. Really, the bottom line, and there's kind of pros and cons across the board, but the bottom line is that early time restricted feeding is beneficial. So that means restricting your daily feeding window to 12 hours or less, but critically, it's pushed towards the morning, rather than night.

So if you're going to skip any meal, you skip supper, not breakfast, we should try to shove as many calories earlier in the day as possible because of our circadian rhythms, our bodies are better able to deal with junky foods. If you're going to eat junk, you do it for breakfast because the exact same food in the morning is less fattening than the exact same food, exact same number of calories 12 hours later in the evening and has less of a triglyceride bump and less of a blood sugar load. And so big breakfast, so making breakfast or

lunch is the biggest meal of the day. Actually, maybe one of the reasons why the Adventists in Lomolinda, California, the last remaining blue zone, actually have the longest formerly studied lifespan in history is because they have this religious teaching to do that early time restrictive feeding. I mean, that may be one of the reasons they live so long. Wow. I mean, these are incredible hacks that anyone can implement right now to have profound difference in your health immediately within just the first couple of weeks as Dr. Feier took us through. How can everyone find the book, how not to age and how can they find you?

So they can find me in nutritionfacts.org where all my information is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship, not selling anything, just put it up as a public service. As it tribute to my grandma, you can get the new book at your local public library. I mean, I don't get a penny for many of my books, all proceeds donated directly to charity. I just want everyone to enjoy the longest, healthiest life.

Dr. Greer, thank you so much for the work you're doing. And thank you so much for this book. It's an incredible resource and I'm super greatly creative for us. Oh, I'm so happy. Keep up the great work yourself. All right, guys, get the book, how not to age Dr. Greer and start changing your life today. See you next week. I decided to change that diamond and the red velvet. I couldn't be more excited for what you're getting here. Start learning and growing. You can inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You can miss it. I'm on this journey with me. Hi friends. I am here to tell you all about a new podcast that I am loving. Creating confidence hosted by my friend Heather Monahan, who is part of the YAP media network. Heather sits down with experts like Gary Vee, Sarah Blakely, and Les Brown to share with you the techniques and strategies to create your confidence, pursue your dreams, and leapfrog

the villain you'll meet along the way. Creating confidence is all about elevating your confidence to its highest level ever and taking your business right there with you. I love Heather and I love her approach to really supporting women in this online space, and I want to share with you some reviews so you can hear what it's all about. I love that this person says that Heather is so inspiring and each episode is filled with tips and tricks on how to become more confident and live the life of your dreams. I especially love this one. I love how open and vulnerable Heather is and

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I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire YAP Media, and host of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. Each week we dive into a new topic like the art of side hustles, how to level up your influence and persuasion and goal setting. I interview A-List guests on Young & Profiting. I've got the best guests.

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