Dhru Purohit Show - The Top Foods To Tackle Fat Loss, Fight Chronic Diseases, and Slow Rapid Aging with Dr. William Li (Rebroadcast)

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, Bon Charge, Pique Life, and BUBS Naturals. Longevity doesn’t require high-tech solutions. It thrives on fundamentals: whole foods, quality sleep, movement, and connection. Today’s guest draws from a world of experience and science to show how these ageless habits can become part of your everyday rhythm. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re bringing back one of our most powerful conversations with Dr. William Li to explore the top health-promoting foods he’s discovered during his travels. Dr. Li breaks down the latest research on the best breakfast choices to nourish, fuel, and heal your body, his approach to longevity, and the four key gut bacteria linked to long, healthy lives. He also highlights the foods that support these beneficial bacteria, boost collagen production, and help reduce toxin exposure. If you’re looking for foods and habits that truly promote longevity, this episode is for you. Dr. William W. Li, MD, is an internationally renowned physician, scientist, and author of the New York Times bestsellers “Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself” and “Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer.”  His groundbreaking research has led to the development of more than 40 new medical treatments that impact care for more than 70 diseases, including diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. He is President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, and he is leading global initiatives on food as medicine.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Li dive into: Classic American breakfast versus breakfast in the Blue Zones (00:00) Coffee: one of the holy trinity beverages (2:53)  The benefits of oats and bioactives (6:00)  Processed versus ultra-processed foods (15:55)  Never too late to change your operating system (25:17) Dr. Li’s approach to longevity (32:30) Gut microbiome in those who live long lives (51:08)  Top foods that feed the four key bacteria associated with longevity (59:50) Releasing the hope molecule during exercise (1:10:31) The importance of self-reliance in judging what is right for you (1:16:24) Doubling down on the basics and key habits (1:19:22) Dr. Li’s thoughts on reducing toxins and microplastic exposure (1:22:19) Naturally boosting collagen in our diet (1:40:19) Exosomes and fatty acid profile (1:53:27) Final thoughts and key takeaways (2:05:23) For more on Dr. Li, follow him on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, YouTube, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, Bon Charge, Pique Life, and BUBS Naturals. Black Friday has come early! You can stack my code DHRU on top of Cozy Earth’s sitewide sale for up to 40% off. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru today.  Right now, Bon Charge is having their holiday sale and offering my community 25% off. Just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use code DHRU to save 25% today.  Ready for your healthiest glow this Holiday season? Get 20% off for life, a complimentary gift, and explore the clean, plant-powered essentials behind your favorite new routine at piquelife.com/DHRU. Support your skin and your health with BUBS Naturals Collagen Peptides. Head to BUBSNaturals.com and use code DHRU for 20% off your order. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. William Lee, welcome back to the podcast. Always a pleasure to talk with you. And I feel like today's episode is going to be a special one because I tend to get you right before your next big book comes out. So I get a little bit of a tease, a sneak peek for me and my audience about what you're writing about next. And I can't wait to hear all about it. So thank you for being here.

Well, thanks for having me on. And it is true. I love to actually just talk to you about what I'm working on because what I write about is really actually what my research is about. I write very authentically about whatever is I'm doing, what I'm actually interested in. And we're going to get into that in today's conversation. Great.

Okay, I want to start off with something. You know, in America, we're very used to starting our morning off, let's say breakfast, where a classic American breakfast, you have oatmeal, maybe a huge Starbucks latte with like 30, 50 grams of sugar inside of there. You have people eating some eggs generally seems to be healthy. Depends on who you pay attention to. Some people say it's the devil.

Some people say it's healthy. And a glass of orange juice. I'm actually curious from your point of view, is that actually a healthy way to start the day? And contrasts that with you were recently in Greece working on your next book. How do some of the world's longest living people start their morning off? So first of all, let me take you back to my original exposure to the Mediterranean. This was long before people were talking about the Mediterranean diet. Okay, I had finished college before going to medical school.

I was very interested in understanding food, culture, and health. And so I did the gap year. I went over to Italy to learn about food. It was my first exposure, really, to Europe way of life, you know, in a place where it eats Mediterranean cuisine, right? And culture. And then I went to Greece, which is a place I've come back to again and again. I'm fascinated by the elemental nature of the life in Greece. It's not fancy, for the most part.

It's very simple. And this has actually given me an insight into healthy approaches to food because simplicity is actually something that seems to be a recurrent theme in people who live long and live well. And so, you know, I love the fact that you brought up this idea of like the typical breakfast where, you know, you're stacking the drive-through. And, you know, we didn't even talk about, like, how you get your coffee, you know, with the pumpkin flavor and all the whipped cream and, you know, your convection oven, you know, ultra-process breakfast sandwich and all that other kind of stuff that, you know,

we see this all the time. I'll tell you what I've seen. I've seen in some of the healthiest people that come from the healthy cultures. They live pretty simple lives. A great example is the people I've known from Greece, for example, they start their breakfast with basically a simple cup of coffee and maybe a piece of fruit. And that's it. It's really, really simple.

All right. And maybe some Greek yogurt. All right. And not a lot of it, like a little tiny cup of it with some crushed pistachios, maybe a little bit of cut fruit into it. And that's it. And I actually embarked upon that myself and found myself feeling so much better by and not loading in calories and loading in additives and loading in all that other stuff.

Listen, I grew up like most people who are probably watching or listen to this. You know, hey, it's really great to have a big thing of a big topping of whipped cream with all these fancy things on it. Like it feels like holidays, you know. But to be honest with you, simple has always made me feel better. I start the day with a cup of coffee. And by the way, coffee, as I have continued to conclude, it's one of the holy, Trinity beverages, water tea and coffee, no matter what field you're looking at, whether you're

looking at cancer, whether you're looking at diabetes, whether you're looking at longevity, whether you're looking at overall fitness, coffee seems to be good for you, okay? I was told in medical school, you know, coffee's not that great for the heart, you know, it could actually give you arrhythmias and there's too much caffeine in it. The bioactives in coffee, which you would find as a common denominator from Ethiopia, which is where we think coffee originally came from to Greek coffee, which is actually Turkish coffee, is pretty loaded with caffeine. So you've got to be careful about that. But it's also loaded with these polyphenols like chlorogenic acid.

And chlorogenic acid does amazing things to your metabolism, to your blood vessels, to the lower inflammation, and just tip the odds in your favor towards longevity with a simple cup of coffee in the morning. Is that usually what you have to start off the day? day. A cup of coffee. A cup of coffee, the stronger the better. Now, listen, this is me. And personalized nutrition. I always say when I'm on a podcast, the most useful thing I can do is to tell you the facts, you know, like science, or I can just tell you what I do. And for me, a really nice cup of coffee straight up. I don't put cream. I don't put dairy. And I also don't even put nut milk or, you know, any of those or milk or anything else. And I, I,

like my coffee is straight. Part of that came from the fact that when I spent time in Italy in Greece, I would just have like an espresso in the morning or a very strong coffee in the morning. And it's a pick-me-up. It does not break my intermittent fasting from the night before. Because as long as you don't put any sugar or anything else in it, you're just soaring through your body, your metabolism is still powering through burning harmful extra body fat overnight and continuing into the day. and it's not until you actually eat something with real calories in it, which could be other, you know, could be a piece of fruit or yogurt, any of these other things we talked about.

But, you know, so I, and I do skip breakfast every now, but I like a simple cup of coffee as the anchor to how I start my day. What about some of these other foods that you often see people eating here in the United States and contrasting those? Things like oatmeal, things like eggs, things like orange juice. What's your feeling on those? You're asking the right question, but I really want to frame it. I'm not going to actually tell you, you know, like oats are universally good or bad.

Like that's the religion of food. For example, oatmeal, which is, you know, basically cooked or steamed or boiled oats, actually contains a lot of bioactives from oats. And this is recent research I've done. We presented at a medical conferences where we took whole oats, the kind you have in amino skin cream and the kind you would have an oatmeal. We've extracted out the concentration of the, bioactives. So what are the bioactives and oats? Well, one of them's called avananthropide.

Okay. The other one is beta glucan, which is the same thing you'd find in mushrooms and barley. Two really potent substances. And we decided to do some medical research by testing what can these oats bioactives do. So people talk about inflammation and all that stuff. I'm a scientist, so I wanted to see it for myself. So we collaborated with a group out of the University of Arizona and a standard model to look at wound healing. Now, I have a background in biotech, and wound healing is a big problem in people with diabetes, in nursing homes, in the intensive care units.

You've got skin breakdown, bed sores. People with diabetes wind up having wounds in their feet that lead to, they get gangrenous, and they have to get amputated. So one of my passions, but also areas of expertise, is how can we support healing, wound healing, faster, right? So we talk about healing, right? So, okay, oat biowactivs, if you inject them into the wound, in the border of a wound, and this is a lab experiment, we were so surprised.

It doubled the rate of healing. It zipped the wound shut. And then when we did the medical research to food as medicine research, we did a deep dive into the tissue that healed. And we found oat biolactives completely suppressed inflammation. Bingo, box checked, proven. it. Okay? I saw it myself. Number one. Number two, it generated more healing blood vessels. That's my wheelhouse. Angiogenesis, how the body grows blood vessels. Oates can actually stimulate healing by nurturing those blood vessels that we need for healing and lowering inflammation.

And then something that was surprising to us is that in the lab, when we did this, used extractive remotes, injected into a wound, doubled the healing. We also discovered that the wound that healed was scarless. And scarless healing is a holy grail for anybody, any surgeon, any medical device company, any pharmaceutical company. We'd never seen this before. And we wouldn't have discovered it if we didn't actually take what Mother Nature had, pull it out, and put it into a standard medical test system. This is what I, you know, like people always, you know, talk about. food is medicine. I'm one of the dudes that actually does it. And so when we looked at it, how could you get scarless healing? I mean, like, we looked under the microscope and this baby had,

this healed wound had no scar, no inflammation, plenty of nourishing blood vessels, but it had no scar. When you actually looked at the collagen, and I know, this is the topic that, you know, you've also talked about, and we can talk about us more about collagen. Collagen is normally in tissue. It's a beautiful woven pattern. You know, if you've ever had a beautiful, or rental rug or tapestry on your wall or your window, like that is, that's weaving. And when collagen is woven perfectly, there's no scar. So we looked at this. There was no scar.

The collagen was woven perfectly in the healed wound with more blood vessels and no inflammation. Okay. And then we took it one step further. We found that the oats bioactives recruited stem cells for healing. Okay. So I just took you through, you know, like over a year. of worth of research, but I gave you the kind of the top line on this. So that changed my view towards oatmeal. Okay. Did you have a negative view on it before? I had a more neutral. I had a neutral

view. Okay. Listen, I grew up, I remember my parents used to buy those pre-packaged oatmeal envelopes. Quaker oats packets or whatever the brand was. I can't remember, but you know, they had little dried fruit chips in it and they had flavoring and sugar, all sorts of stuff. God knows what else was in there. Okay, because I wasn't paying attention when I was a kid. Right. Now I do. So I, you know, like with my situationally aware approach to food where I always tell everybody, please, if you're going to buy something in a box or in a package or a sealed envelope, look at the ingredient label. Like I do that now, but I look back and I'm like, you know what, I don't know how good that pre-packaged stuff was for me because it was an ultra-processed food.

I didn't think about it that way. But so I, maybe I had a little bit neutral to questioning, a little suspicious about this. But, you know, now I know, oats by itself has some really, powerful things that could be unlocked, which we've done. But back to the oatmeal. How do you, you know, like oatmeal is an oatmeal. You could buy rolled oats, you know, in a canister. And that's all there is to it. Please look at the ingredient label, which is what I do now. Now that I've made these research discoveries, I'm eating oatmeal every now and though. Not every single day, but sure, like if I had a choice, I'm going to make my own with just water. I still don't put dairy in it. And then, you know, I'll take some dried fruits because I know there's other bioactives, dried cranberries to, you know,

to get the Alagitanin and anthocyanis and I'll get all that stuff or crushed nuts. Right. You get some dietary fiber, get some healthy monounsaturated fatty acids, good for my cholesterol. You know, I'm trying to think about, you know, this whole idea of how do you start your day? Back to the question you asked, how can one start one's day in the healthiest way possible? For me, a cup of coffee, I don't adulterate it. I know what's in it. It's got chlorogenic acid.

It's good for so many aspects of health and longevity. It adds to my quality of life. So that's part of my health span and lifespan. Coffee, by the way, slows down the rate of cellular aging as well. So that's been studied in people. Phenomenal. I don't think too much about it. I just get my cup of Joe.

Yeah, you have it. You enjoy it. But I enjoy it. Okay. And that's at the end of the day, the most important thing. I know that oatmeal with this research could be beneficial, but it depends on how you get it and what you put in it. And so, you know, it's all in the details, right?

So like the quality of the product that you're having you. But enough for me, if I can get Greek yogurt, I might have it every now and then. I don't have every day. Other than the coffee, there's probably no single thing that I do every single day because I love diversity. And, you know, like in my books, I've written about two or three hundred foods. I love to choose from them. You know, it's kind of like I feel like I'm the kid in the candy shop of health every single day. from the time I wake up and the choices I make, I just have a lot of fun picking things that I love that are good for me.

You know, I think that really the message of what you're sharing here is that it's not good and bad foods. Generally, when you're talking about whole foods, minimally processed, and actually it goes back to how processed is it? If it's super adulterated, you can take anything that actually could be a great food for you or a part of a healthy diet. If somebody is largely eating whole foods, getting their steps in, doing some resistance training, and they want some oatmeal, and that's their preferred way to get carbohydrates, and it's not filled with a ton of sugar. But even if they want to put a little bit of honey or maple syrup and they're putting nuts in and other stuff, they're going to be a healthy person. Yeah.

Right? It's only when we rely heavily on these ultra-process forms in all areas of our life. You mentioned how coffee can be great for us. And there's some people out there that are drinking coffee. and it's truly maybe 30 grams, 20 grams of sugar every single morning day in and day out. And that's not the only thing that they're doing. There's food dyes in there. There's syrups.

There's other stuff. And then that leads to the next thing. They might have two lattes in a day. Then there might be a lot of processed foods in the diet. So it's really about how we approach these things. That's what I'm hearing from. Well, you're right. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head.

But one thing I want to do for anybody listening to this is to try to bring a little bit of discipline and clarity to this idea of the use of the word processed and ultra-processed. Sure. I think it, I think we, you know, those of us who talk about it all the time, we understand what we're trying to say, but I think for people are listening, sometimes there's some confusion. What's, you know, if, what's process versus ultra-process? And what I tell people is that we very rarely eat raw ingredients one at a time.

Maybe an exception is a salad bar, you know, or a fruit plate, you know, you're eating one, Every forkful is like one thing. A little thing of lettuce, a little tomato, a little watermelon or a pineapple. Most of the time, the foods that we eat, the food I enjoy is cooked, prepared. You know, whether it's Chinese food, Indian food, Mexican food, Spanish food, Italian food, is prepared. And that means that you're taking raw ingredients and doing something with it, which is processing it. So you ever see how they make homemade pasta? Get a big amount of flour, make a little hole in there like a volcano crater, crack a couple of eggs,

and just use your fingertips to start working it until it actually firms up and then you roll it out. Okay, so that's like grandma in Italy making pasta the way it's been done for thousands of years. Right. That's processed. You're processing the food.

Minimally processed a lot of people. Minimally processed. But the point is that like homemade, like that with fresh ingredients, could be technically considered processed. But that's not what we're talking about when we talk about the foods that we should be more careful about.

Now, you know, there's so much discussion about the food industry. And I want to maybe touch on that just a little bit, but ultra-processed foods are not the foods you make at home, you know, like manipulate at home to cook and to turn into a meal. Those are the ones are made in a big factory and where machines are extruding ingredients and converting ingredients into forms and shapes like animal crackers, for example,

that wouldn't naturally occur in nature and then add lots of chemicals to them. emulsifiers, preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring, added sugar. That's another one. Okay. And this is all transparently on the ingredient label, but hidden in plain sight to the consumer. And so ultra-processed foods are a choice that many of us have been, I would say, conditioned to make, to reach for because of how we grew up in our society, something out of a box that tastes

really great and it's sweet and it's not very expensive. So maybe your mom bought a lot of it and it's in your pantry, maybe for months and months and months, like food doesn't, it's not supposed to last that long. Okay. And it's all engineered for convenience shelf life, longer at last, better is for consumers, so to speak. That's what, that's what they make us believe, or certainly for the grocery store. And it's cheap and it's available, right? And then it's engineered to really be, make you crave it, right? So I don't call it a conspiracy. Companies do what companies do.

That's what they're trying to do. Their job is to create stuff, you know, for their shareholders who are actually counting on them to create stuff. The responsibility comes to us as consumers to make those healthy choices, right? I mean, look, you get in a car every day and you drive to your work or whatever. up to you if you're going to actually speed and endanger yourself and other people, or are you going to drive on the speed limit? And so these are choices we make.

We make good choices and we can make bad choices. But if every day you choose to make a choice that puts you in danger, okay? And I think that's really where this modern sensibility is. It's like all this stuff that we just thought was our lives, ultra-processed foods. You know, there's a danger element to them. I think we're beginning to wake up as a society to ask questions about that. And at the end of the day, it's up to us to make those good choices. All right.

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science, just 10 to 20 minutes while you're winding down at night. And right now, it's the best time to shop. It's the Bond Charge holiday sale. You can save a massive 25% off sitewide on all their products. To get this deal, just head over to bondcharge.com and your 25% discount will automatically be added at checkout. The sale will end on the 31st of December 2025, so hurry and don't miss this massive chance to save big on your favorite bond charge products. Again, that's bondcharge.com, B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E dot com to get 25% off site-wide. I'd love to get your perspective on this. I was recently in Japan for the first time visiting.

My wife had been there a couple of times. And in reading a little bit about it, one of the things that you see in contrast is that Japan is a society, which also plays into this idea of your Mediterranean diet, right, that you talked about last time you were on the podcast. their population has, I think, like a 3% obesity rate compared to in America, we're like just right around or a little bit above the 50% like obesity, right? And then if you talk about overweight, we're dealing with a population that's in the 75 plus category, maybe even 80%, I'll have to pull those statistics.

And one of the things that they do in their country, when you look at the country of Japan, is on a national level. They really talk about healthy eating habits. from a young age. And in fact, many of the schools are mandated to have a nutritionist at the school and that meals have to be. They're mandated to be made from scratch each day for the kids in that school. And at the youngest of ages, it depends on the school district and where it is and what part of the country and what resources. But kids are often involved in the making of the process, washing foods, other things. So I think sometimes when people feel that there's

something going on in America, they hear from organizations like the Eat Real nonprofit and that's in the Bay Area where they see that one of the trickery that sometimes happens is that you have an aggressive sort of food industrial complex that will lobby that they will come in with the cheapest prices into schools and they end up getting the kitchens sort of shut down, I'm not by direct pressure, but because the schools don't need a kitchen. And now the schools that actually have interest in making healthy food, they don't even have a kitchen in the first place, and they can't even compete. So it's not that it's one person's fault, but it's almost like a de facto plan of like,

how do we have it so backwards over here when it comes to teaching our young kids? And then there's things like, oh, you know, what if it was the farm bill or something where pizza is considered a vegetable, right? And so that meets the requirements for a lot of schools. So that's where I think that some people feel like, is corporate pressure from just the idea of maximizing profit from every different direction, is that sort of unintentionally, intentionally squeezing us so that from a young age, we have kids that develop these just incredibly unhealthy habits?

Yeah. I mean, look, health starts when you're young, right? So the moment you're born, you're becoming exposed to the environment. your epigenetics are starting to change. Your genetics are firing up, your health defenses that you're born with that formed in your mom's womb when you take your first breath, you know, take your first suckle of hopefully breast milk and not formula. You know, you're being exposed to the environment. Ali, it's like we're out, I've been using an analogy.

When we are born, we are all like laptops, new, brand new laptops you take out of the box. It's perfectly designed. They all look the same. you plug it into the wall. When you started up, the operating system is supposed to work exactly the same way. Okay. And yes, there are some genetic differences, of course. But lifestyle winds up being, you know, 80% or more dictating our fate.

And our fate starts when we were young. So a lot of these early exposures that we actually have wind up not only developing habits, but also developing cellular fingerprints that we carry with us to the decades that we wind up living. Now, the good news, it's never too late to actually revert back to your own operating system, which is the, this is why I tell people, you know, if you're somebody who hasn't really paid attention to your health for most of your life and you feel kind of crummy and you're like, you know what, it's time to own up to this and I want to actually change myself. I want to do something.

How do I do it? Which diet do I take? You know, what supplement should I take? What should I cut out of my life? I mean, that's a typical thing that I often hear from somebody who's desperate to, you know, improve their situation and they're overwhelmed especially in today's world and then they and then of course then they invoke like oh is there a big conspiracy around me and i'm trapped in a you know i'm trapped in somebody else's nightmare you know what what i say is that it's a very complex situation health and

food all right and and you know you addressed uh you started to address um you started to address some of the nuances and complexities what i say is it what you got to realize is that we all have it hardwired in in ourselves to be able to have that operating system to get back to health. Our metabolism knows how to actually be healthy. We know how to lose body fat. We know how to actually regulate blood sugar for the most part. We know how to actually keep our joints healthy. We know how to keep our brains healthy.

That's actually what comes out of the box. That's our operating system. Now, over the course of many years, we derail our operating system. You know, it's like your laptop, you keep it too hot, you drop it, you download crazy things on it. It's got some viruses on it. listen, you might keep your computer, your laptop in perfect shape. If I'm careless and I drop it and I do all those crazy things to it, I don't have any kind of hygiene on it.

At some point, I'm going to regret it. I'm going to say, you know what? My laptop's running really slowly. I got all these viruses. My screen doesn't work so well. What can I do? I feel overwhelmed. And what I always tell people, like in your body, go back to basics, clean it up, go back to

the operating system, all right, and start from there. And so simple things can actually get us back. And yes, there are lots of overwhelming considerations. You know, I mean, if you are overwhelmed by messaging, that's not corporations, or maybe it's a media corporation, but listen, it's up to you, what you're listening to and what you're scrolling through if you're overwhelmed by advertising on television or a billboard sign as, you know, they used to be, hey, listen, we're supposed to, you know, we're supposed to be smart enough, especially as we get older to make our own.

choices on these things. You can't tell people not to advertise, you know. I mean, you can try to. But at the end of the day, I always feel take responsibility, go back to your own operating system, do some simple things that can make a big difference. So you can't fight the machine. Okay. Machine can be taken down by another machine to take it apart, try to put it back together. I think, you know, in our society and not just the United States, but I think around the world, we're seeing this in action. The old machine is being challenged by the people. who are saying, should we take it apart and put it back together again? Sometimes you got to do that.

You know, if you're somebody who is really good with your hands and tools, sometimes you just got to take that lawnmower apart. Yeah. Okay? And put it back together and clean all the pieces. I think that's kind of what we're going through with the society. And food is no different. I think that some of those questions that are being asked,

should we be having these additives? Should we be having these dyes? Should we be having these preservatives? I think they're really valid questions. We don't know the answers to some of the suspicions in full detail. But listen, I'm a medical doctor. And when I took my oath at the end of medical school to become a doctor, you know, you get all these young guns, you know, with their assesses go through, we have to take

the Hippocratic oath. And along the way, we really are pledged to the concept of first do no harm. And I think when you go to Japan, when you go to Europe, when you go to many other countries, that's their first principle as well. We don't know what the harm is. Let's not subject our people to it. And so there's a little bit more of a let's protect our people first as opposed to let's make money first. Sure.

Totally. Important message. We have to have personal responsibility because at the end of the day, for our own situation, it has to be us realizing we have agency and start to make decisions in the right direction. you know, it's the law of responsibility. If it's somebody else's fault completely, not that they didn't play a role in it, then you are a victim.

You can't change anything about it. But if it was a little bit our fault too, then we can do something about it. And that's an important reminder for all of us. And along with it, as people get healthy, as a lot of people are listening today, they do care about like, what can I do to make the world a better place?

First always is be an example. Share education. If you like this podcast, your books, other things that people come across, share it with people, donate that book to a local library, you know, start a book club, maybe start a garden, whatever it might be, be involved in some advocacy, you know. Those things also can play a role in it too. But I love the message of personal responsibility and it's one that I live by in my own life as well.

I want to come back to this idea that you're thinking a lot about right now, which is your approach to this world of longevity. And I think that a great way to set up this conversation is when you're spending time in Greece and Europe and some of these other places in Asia where you have these pockets of individuals who not only live along life, lifespan-wise, as is related to what's possible for human beings. That could be a high concentration of centenarians or whatever. But even for the individuals that get, let's say, quote unquote, only to like 80 or 85 or 90, they're generally a lot healthier than people that we see as the average population here

in the United States, for example. What are some of the things that they are or aren't doing that sometimes people are confused about? Maybe we call this myths around longevity. So what can you share with our audience when it comes to this topic? Things move fast during the holidays. Everyone's rushing around, shopping, planning, and doing. But what if the season your luxury was slowing down?

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That's Bubbs, B-U-B-S-N-A-T-U-R-A-L-S dot com, and use the code Drew, D-H-R-U, that's me, for 20% off. And if they ask you how you heard about them, please support the show and tell them we sent you. That's a big one to unpack. and I'm in the middle of doing the research on it is sort of to say, what are we learning new about longevity that hasn't already been covered or isn't really well worked out? And what are some of the things that people believe about longevity that may not be entirely the way it actually is? So a couple things.

And I think that, you know, I'm a real practical guy. I'm a pragmatist. So I like to explain things in ways that are easy to understand. So first of all, we all want to live as long as we possibly can. And to me, longevity is living as long as you're possibly able to, but as well and having a good quality of life along the way. Right. So everybody wants to live as long as they can.

But you don't want to be living to whatever crazy numbers that people are spouting, 150, 200, 300 years old. You know, like you see, you hear these numbers from the sort of the people who are ultra-bio-hackers who are, you know, really dreaming of super longevity, right? Like, I've even heard the term, I think Peter Diamandas said this, escape velocity of aging. How do you escape? So you're just going to live forever.

And I think it's an intriguing idea, but I think it misses the point of our humanity, you know? I mean, we all just want to, you know, like, if all you do is focus on a horizon, that distant point, and you don't focus on what is in front of your headlights, you're really going to be missing a lot of your life, especially, and maybe giving yourself a false promise, if you just actually give a part of them. So some of the myths are like, for example, that your genetics determine everything about whether you're going to live long or not.

It is true if your grandfather, a great-grandfather, your family members lived a long time, you're probably going to have a better chance, hopefully with better genetics to, you know, drive your vehicle for a longer period of time, the vehicle being your body. my great uncle, for example, lived to 104 years old, completely intact and cognitively clear. I don't know. I hope I got something from him. Was he here in the States? He lived in China.

Okay. D drank green tea, probably six to ten cups of green tea every single day of his life. And he was very physically active. And he was really plugged into his community, had a big support. You know, he kept his mind really active. And so, you know, these are, again, recurrent themes of people who live a really long time. Could I interrupt you for one second? You're such on a role, but I'm so fascinated about your uncle.

Obviously, everybody's individual situation is different, but from your research end, from your food end, and obviously he was a family member, if you had to rank, obviously genetics play a little bit, as you mentioned, they're not everything. If you had to rank the things that he was doing that probably played the biggest role in his long, but more importantly, healthy lifespan, even for somebody to live to 80 in America, but not be on prescription drugs and be. healthy and their brain is sharp. That's even super rare. And meanwhile, your uncle, great-great-uncle's living to 104. What do you think were the biggest things that played a role? You know what? I actually asked him this. Yeah. I asked him this because I went to his 100th birthday, which he planned. He made the guest list. He selected the food. All right. And he hosted, like as the talkative host. It was an amazing event for me. The first time I had ever personally known somebody, in this case, family member who turned 100 and I could see what it could be like. And so before we actually got to

the actual birthday party, I arrived a little bit early and this was in China. And I talked to him. And I'm like, okay, you got to tell me right here right now. Like what is your secret? Like when you look back, what insights could you share? And I think the answer is pretty typical. He basically said, you know, I don't know there's a stock answer I can give you that's going to work for everyone. but he told me, here's what was important for me if I had to look back at it. He said, number one, I let things roll off my shoulder. I don't carry my anger. I don't carry resentment.

Things are just not that important for me to actually kind of get too wrapped up in it, no matter what it is. And he's like, he's always been that way. So the mindset for mindset, psychology. Lower stress, you know. And I think there's a little bit of self-care in there. Like, you know, he would rather pay attention to things that he cares about rather than what other people care about, you know?

And he let a lot of a lot of things. And he specifically could talk about anger. He's like, let the anger roll off. It's not a big deal. It's not worth it. Okay. And I still to this day remember that whenever I get into a situation where I get riled up. I'm like, you know, maybe it's not that important.

Okay. And actually it's been helpful to me. So mindset, absolutely. The second thing he said is he's like, you know, he lived at the base of this mountain that grew tea. And he said, I drink tea my whole life. He's like, I grew up in this house. My whole life, I've been drinking green tea that is fresh from the mountain, freshly picked, seasonally picked. You know, he's like, I know the people who, in all the places that were picking the tea.

And he's like, and I just drink and sip it all day long. And he was a big believer in drinking green tea. And of course, the scientific evidence has shown the catechins, the polyphenols in green tea. Actually, you know, you get dietary fiber. If you have the powdered tea, like the macha, if you actually have catechins from regular tea. earlier in the season, you don't have as much caffeine because caffeine is developed by the tea plant as its own insecticide, natural pesticide, early in the season. They're not too many bugs around, so the caffeine is very low.

But he would just sip tea all day long. And the third, so the third thing he told me, okay, was that he had to walk to the tea, like a temple kind of place where he would sit with his friends every day. he had to walk and exercise to get to his tea. And those three things. Mindset, you know, trying to be a little chill, a lot of green tea over many decades, many decades. And then exercising.

And then he's hanging out with buddies. You know, like, you know, that classic idea, you see like these old guys hanging around playing chess or whatever it is they were doing or just having conversation or just sitting around and looking. I remember there was, because I went up with him one moment. morning. I got up at 4 in a morning and I walked with him because I wanted to see what it was like. You know, like, okay, I want to walk in the shoes of this guy who's about to turn 100 and see what he

does to see if I could imagine myself doing that. So we walked up these stone steps. I mean, listen, the dude was like 99 plus, right? This was just a few days short of 100. And he was walking up uneven stone stairs. Okay. And probably the same way that people in Sardinia, in Ikaria, Greece, maybe in Okinawa, you know, in these old cultures where people are living really well. And I was having a chat with him the whole time, you know, and it was social exercise, diet with green tea in his case, and mindfulness. Actually, if you really bring it back down to the things that you hear everybody's saying, what's the common denominator?

Take care of your mind. Don't get hung up on things. You know, take care of yourself. Eat in healthy ways. choose your weapon of health, not weapon of destruction, weapon of health, you know, it's going to be your health defense that you're activating your body. Be social. Exercise. Yeah. And there's probably a lot of things within that that he also wasn't doing. For example, like my guess is not knowing your, you know, your great uncle, but he probably maintained a healthy body weight throughout his life,

which is a part of it. And obviously these habits and things like cream tea and other things like contribute to that and help support the natural metabolism that we all have. He's not having, you know, ultra-processed foods on a regular basis. You know, by the way, I do remember another thing he told me on a previous visit that I had with him before his 100th birthday. And I can't remember how old he was at the time, but I was so curious to, and I think we should all do this more if we're fortunate to be able to have elders in our family or our community that we can actually speak to just to get the wisdom of experience and age.

You know, like I think that we're so focused on ourselves and here now. Like I think there's a lot to be gained from talking to other people just as examples, you know, good and bad, right? One of my favorite things to do. But when I do remember another sort of deep piece of advice he gave me, he always said, live a life of moderation, be moderate, even with moderation. And what he did is he say, don't be excessive all the time. But every now and then give yourself a chance to blow it out and do the things that you want to do, not moderately.

And so, you know, like I always thought, wow, that's a pretty deep thing. Like be reasonable most of the time. But every now and then give yourself the freedom to go do something that's a little extreme. And so anytime I want to do something extreme, I remember what my family member advised me. what's the sidebar before we get back to longevity in that, you know, great role that you were on. What's something extreme in Dr. Lee's world? Oh, you know what? I love to explore new foods.

Yeah. So sometimes I will just go, you know, so most of these, the travel you're talking about to Italy or Greece or Japan or whatever, I'm researching. I'm actively researching and I'm going to markets, I'm going to restaurants, I'm talking to people. I'm trying to find out something new. And I listen to people. So if somebody I meet in the Mediterranean encourages me to try a food and it might have some animal fat in it, it might not look so healthy. But they really want me to try it because they're really proud of it.

And they think that this is something that's important for me to know about as I research it. I'll sit down and try it. You know, like I'll feel like I'm walking on the ledge a little bit, you know, like because it doesn't look that healthy. And you know what? It's part of my experience. I'll get to sample it. I might not eat it again. but then I've actually tried something new.

So I'm never afraid to try a new experience that can give me a better insight into the world, but also into myself and how I react to it. Yeah, that's an important philosophy. So it may be hard to get back on track because I threw you off by asking about your uncle, but I had to because that just sounded so fascinating. But you were talking about some of the myths that people think. And some people think it's genetics. Some people think that, you know, it's really that one day we're going to find a magic pill that everybody could take,

which I want to say that I do appreciate some of these what I call a longevity explorers. I don't think it's how we all need to necessarily live our life. But I appreciate anybody in any category that's like looking for the extreme of something because who knows what benefit might come to society? Yeah. For that, do you agree with that? Yeah, no, totally. I mean, listen, I think that these explorers that are biohacket and, and trying supplements, inventing their own formulation,

or doing like real bench research to figure these things out and then trying it for themselves. They are the modern-day kind of pioneers. Like, not everyone's going to be right. Not everyone's going to, and some people are going to meet a untimely fate that they didn't expect. That's all part of exploration. I think that's the great, you know, one of the themes that I keep coming back to you,

particularly, you know, I'm writing my next book. I'm writing about a theme that will be very much involved with longevity. One thing that keeps on coming up is humanity. You know, like we want, we don't want to be inhuman. We want to live forever. We want to be more human. We want to actually be in touch with who we are as humans. As flawed as humans actually are, you know, there's a lot of shortcomings that I think we have as human beings.

but, you know, the courage to explore is one of those wonderful things. So let's talk a little about myths, you know, so, you know, genetics being a myth. You know, I do think that the search for a magic supplement, I gave a talk recently, a keynote recently at a big conference of futurists and with a theme of longevity. And I started out by saying that, you know, it's pretty cool that we have actually arrived at a time where we could even consider a legitimate quest to find ways to live longer. I think that's the science is there. I'm a scientist.

I get excited by where science is pile driving progress forward. All right. But it's not a new quest. In fact, the quest for longevity, immortality is what it used to be called, is one of the oldest quests of humans, okay, starting way back. And so I think about, and I gave this example of the first emperor of China, okay, who sent his people ambassadors on this expedition to find the magic ampule with that liquid powder. Like he sent them to all these different islands to look for something that he could have that would make him immortal.

Right. And this has been the theme of many myths and movies and books. And, you know, it's mythological, you know. Never found it, obviously. And the guy died. But as he, you know, as he knew, recognized his mortality. his failed effort. You know what he did?

He built the 10,000 terracotta warriors to look over his tomb. That was his solution at the time to immortality. All right? Now, fast forward.

And if you look at Renaissance paintings, you see the fountain of youth and you find all these other stories about what we as humans have been trying to do to look for that magic potion, magic pill, magic fountain to really help us live long

and maybe forever. I think things changed in the modern day when Google formed Calico, the company Calico, whose mission was to conquer death. All of a sudden, you know, you have capitalism, you've got investors, you've got people who are seriously going to try to tackle this impossible topic, seemingly impossible topic. And yeah, you know, I think that brought us in a way into the modern age to say, you know what, maybe we can actually try to take a crack at this, right? So fast forward even more. and you've got the hallmarks of aging that, you know, I know you've had other people on the show talking about, you know, the mitochondria, the atophagy, the inflam, inflammation aging, you know, the gut, all these NAD, you know, rapamycin, all these really important bricks that are being built up to help us better understand what's going on with aging, what's not going well with aging, and how do we, how might we build it back up?

It's like cancer research back in the 1930s. we're just starting to see the path of man it took a long time for us to be able to get to immunotherapy today and we're still not where we want to be so this is a long journey that we're actually on but the myth is that we can still find and it's so tempting to go back to that ancient quest we still want to find that magic supplement all right and that's one of the things I would caution anybody is that there is no magic supplement I don't care who it is that's going to solve that problem and if you just think buying a supplement subscribing to a refill of your supplement. And that's going to do it?

Not going to do it. All right. It might be part of the solution. I'd be supportive, but it's not the only thing. And along the same lines, I would say another myth is that, you know, if you just follow longevity hacks, it's going to solve your problems. All right. And those longevity hacks are, you know, in a kind or gentler way.

Like if you don't want to use the word hack, you know, a lot of it is actually about being mindful, thinking about what you're doing. purposeful of what you're doing. What's an example of some of those just so that you don't get enough sleep. Sleeping at the right temperature. You know, you don't want to be sleeping in a super warm temperature and you want to try to get, you know, seven to nine hours of sleep, eight hours being a magic window. This idea of a caloric restriction, hey, don't be a glutton. All right, don't overload your body with calories and choose wisely. Whatever is you're loading in, that's fuel. Fasting or intermittent fasting. One of the most natural things that we do. When you're sleeping,

you're not eating. When you're not eating, you're fasting and you're not sleeping all the time. You're going to sleep and waking up. So you're intermittently fasting all night. So a lot of these sort of like trendy topics that wind up being hacks for longevity actually are things that are pretty reasonable to do, fairly straightforward. And I encourage people, you know, like, again, I welcome and I respect. In some cases, I admire people who are these pioneers of longevity and anti-aging. I think it's really cool that there are people that are doing that kind of thing. Me, I'm a researcher. I know what I'm working on. But I also, you know, in trying to help educate people, right? Like if you know something, tell somebody else something that can be helpful.

I try to get people who don't have the capacity or the money to go buy all these things for themselves and who gets stressed out hearing about how you got to monitor your glucose every single hour, you know, it stresses them out. And I basically say, listen, you know what, those things matter, but they don't matter enough for you to get, like, wound up about it. And they're pretty common sense. And so many of the hallmarks of aging fit with some basic mindfulness principles that anybody can actually manage. And so I sort of take down that, that I think you can be ambitious if you want to actually aim towards living a long and good life and healthy life without actually having to jack yourself up in terms of like, oh man, do I have enough money to afford this?

Do I have enough time to deal with this? Listen, if you're super stressed out all the time because you can't fit another 10 biohacks into your day when you've got your job, your family, you know, your mortgage and everything else to deal with, that's not going to take away as opposed to add. Sure. it kind of goes back to your great uncle's message of like simplicity and how you started off this podcast. So on that theme, because you are in that, you know, there are people that live longer and healthier

than the average population here in North America. So what are some of those things that you found that make the biggest difference with that? So what's really interesting for me is as somebody who's a scientist and can tinker in the lab, as I have, but also as, as, a food is medicine research where I believe the other end of the equation as a doctor and as an observer is equally important is to study what's happening in people who actually have lived a long time. All right.

What can we learn from them? Is there some clue? We talked a little about the advice my uncle gave when I probed him for it. But objectively, as a researcher, as a scientist, what can we find that is a standout in people who live a long time? Not subjective, but objective. All right. And this is an area of interest that I think is so fascinating. 15 years ago, if you were to talk about gut health, so a few people might have recognized it, but we didn't

really have even the tools that were affordable to be able to study gut microbiome or gut health at scale, healthy gut bacteria. The 39 trillion bacteria that we know live inside our gut that actually help control inflammation, help control our metabolism, help signal into our brain, the whole gut brain axis that I know you've talked about on the show, but now we have it. And Because we have it, we're able to apply the measurement of the gut microbiome, not just to people in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, but we can apply the same research tool, diagnostic tool, exploration tool to people who live a long time to ask the very simple question. And this is just an example of the research that I've been fascinated by.

People who live a long time, what's different about their gut microbiome? We know it's so important. It's a tip of the iceberg. but is there something we can just jump ahead and look at people who are 100 or even older to find out what's different about their gut? All right? It says looking for hypothesis,

looking for observations, and we've discovered something. And this is amazing. All right. So there's a group in Italy in Bologna who gathered people into a study that ranged across adult life from 20s to 40s to 60s to 70s to 90s

to 100s to 114. Super 18. All right? Super centenarians as I call it. Okay, so we all think about somebody who's lived to 100. Like I brought my uncle up like, oh man, that's really cool. You know, probably pretty rare to get there. I don't know too many people who are who live to 100. But do you know how many centenarians there are on the planet today? Take a guess. I don't know. If I had a guess, okay, so the population globally is eight point something billion, right, around there. My guess is that there's probably, I would say that there's probably 0.5% of the population, 0.3%, maybe 0.2%.

So I'm not going to do public math here, but let me just estimate from a gut feeling. I don't know. Are there like 200,000? There are, as of now this year, an estimated 720, 22,000 centenarians on earth. almost three quarters of a million people are 100 years or older. So this is not a long shot. This is something that is happening on a planetary level more commonly than we thought. And the reason that I bring that up is because a lot of people will be surprised to hear how many people actually live to 100 every single year, all right? Which is good news, right?

I mean, it says something that, you know, with all the crap that we're afraid of, the climate, the pollution, the toxins, all these things that, you know, are. very appropriately, you know, should be front and center for what we're thinking about when it comes to policy and elections and, you know, the decisions that we make for our families and ourselves totally appropriate. But it just goes to show you in spite of that, humans are actually starting to live longer. And there's a lot of us, a lot of people who are doing that. Okay. So let me type with this research study because they gathered a bunch of people who are actually 100 and older as part of this big cohort. And they studied their gut microbiome. using standard tools that we have available today that are affordable.

So again, 15 years ago, maybe a few people could know it, but super expensive and we didn't have that knowledge base. Now they've applied it. And the question that this study asked was, what are the standout bacteria across people who are living at different age groups? And then when you go to the centenarians and older, are there any bacteria that pop out that go, oh my gosh, these bacteria are so high in these.

people, there must be something going on with these bacteria. And the answer is there's four bacteria in the superagers. Wow. Hundred and above. All right. So I consider this kind of like breakthrough discovery. Like my whole career as a research researcher has not been to follow other people, but to really look on the horizon for, you know, like if you're in the old days, you think about those big sailing ships. Yeah. Right. So if you're, if you're in the crow's nest with the periscope and the parrot on your shoulder. All right. What do you do?

You go like Land Ho, right? Like that's the discovery. I think I see something. So this research, I think, has seen Lan Ho and the gut microbiome of superagers. And there's four bacteria that's happened. You want to know what they are?

Yeah. All right. I know you'll have heard of one of them, but three of them, I bet you haven't heard of. All right. One of them is called odoribacter. Okay. O-D-O-D-O-O-D-O-O-O.

O-R-I-Bacter, odoribacter, all right. A second one is called oscillobacter, like oscillation. Third one is called chrystenela, Kristencella, okay? Another bacteria. Now, have you haven't heard about this? And I know you're, you know, you actually pretty, you're pretty seasoned when it's talking to microbiome, right? Now, even for me, I hadn't really heard about these.

and I spent some time like a decade looking at microbiome. I didn't even heard these. Okay. Fourth one, Acrimancia. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Four bacteria, including one like our old friend Akramacia

that I know I've talked to you on the show before. Yeah. They are the standout bacteria in people who get to be 100 and much older. The super ages. Okay. So what do they do? All right. Let's pounce on those for bacteria.

What did they do? Well, we don't know everything they do, but we do know that some of them, like the odorobacter, improves your immune system against e coli, against other bacteria that might take you out as you get older. Okay. It boosts your immune system. It defends you against bacteria and viruses and probably cancer as well. But we don't know that. Like again, this is all discovery. We're putting together a picture. Cool. We got a bacteria that boost your immune system. Another one, the osceolobacter helps improve your lipid, your blood lipid profile. It's like mother nature's

statin actually lowers your LDL, your bad cholesterol, helps improve your HDL cholesterol, lowers overall cholesterol. Pretty cool. All right. That starts to make sense. Also helps your metabolism, your blood sugars become more even out. How insulin sensitivity makes your body more insulin sensitive, all right? Doesn't mean that, you know, it's going to help you of your pounding sugar and sodas into

your body all the time. But let's talk about people that are making it and living, you know, a reasonable, only healthy life, that bacteria could make a big difference, right? Other bacteria, improve cardiovascular health. Of course, acrimancy, we know it is a whole host of things for lowering inflammation, improving metabolic health, helping you to fight off cancer, even showing like it actually plays a role, probably in brain health and cognition, protecting cognition as well as some of the latest research on it.

Okay, so that's pretty cool. You got four players that have been newly discovered that all do things to your bodies, systems that help us live healthy. Live long, live healthy, live long and prosper, right? That old spot thing. Hey, if our gut microbiome is important for our health from where adults, what about when we're elderly? We're beginning to ask that question. This is the new conversation that's actually happening in longevity research. Okay. And then with the coolest part, and this is what I'm working on, what are the foods you can eat that can actually support that? I'm not going to go like bacteria by bacteria, but I'll just tell you collectively.

Sure. So give you an idea. If you're interested in these, in grooming, cultivating, raising these bacteria in your body, this is what I'm finding out so far. So remember, odorobacter, acylabacter, chrystina, and acrimancia. All right. Acrimandacy, we know, right? We've talked about this before.

Pomeranets, dried cranberries, conquered grape, the juice or the whole thing. There's some more players. Chili peppers can actually do it. as well, black raspberries can do it. If you've ever been to dim sum, you know, where they steam their soup dumplings, you know, it's like a treat. It's like these steam wrappers and a little bit of filling and like a big bite of soup that comes out. Absolutely delicious.

Guess what? The vinegar that they serve in those restaurants, along with those soup dumplings, is Chinese black vinegar. Suchang vinegar. That vinegar grows acrimandia in the body. Pretty cool, right? Wow. So I've talked about salsa, spicy dim sum, all right, pomegranate, you know, like, I mean, think about all the Middle Eastern cultures that actually have used pomegranate and they're cooking,

cranberries, you know, turkey day cranberry, all right? There's healthy ways of actually doing that too. So again, you know, like these are achievable ways to actually cultivate this one bacteria, which, by the way, if you have it and you have cancer and you're getting immunization, therapy, this one bacteria acrimancy of synephilis has been shown in human studies to be critical for helping you respond to the cancer treatment. So this is not like a maybe I wonder if I should. This could wind up becoming a life and death decision. And this is like the kind of research I do as a medical doctor. You know, I'm not just sort of like a kale wheat leaf waiver saying, oh, like on a good

day, eat some more veggies. Like this is the stuff that I do as a cancer researcher as well. Like what could we advise patients to do when they are asking their oncologist or oncology nurse, what should I eat? And the answer that's always given, often given is like, I don't know, or it doesn't really matter what you eat. It does matter what you eat. By the way, when it comes to cancer, if you want to live long, I mean, there's all kinds of things that you can actually do, but one of the things I think that we should be focusing on that is going to be very, very effective as the science for extending life is going to be, is work being worked out, is to curtail or avoid the things that will take you out early.

Cancer being one of them. Diabetes, one of them. Obescena being another one. Ackermansia. Other foods, by the way, that actually answer, resistant starches. For acrimancia or all these bacteria. For these other bacterias.

Yeah. Okay. Resistant starches. Day old rice. Cook rice, steam rice. Put it in the fridge. Have it the next day. You've turned, you've turned steam rice.

fresh rice, which is a starch, into a resistant starch. All right. Potato. Got to roast a potato. All right. If you're roasted healthfully, don't eat it all, stick your leftovers in the fridge. Guess what? That temperature change changes the chemistry of the starch.

The next day when you have it, even if you heat it up again, resistance to starch, that grows some of these healthy, these four players. You know, these are like the four horsemen of longevity that we think we may be on to. Again, this is not a conclusion. This is an observation. Sure. But an exciting one. Very exciting.

Resistance. Resistance starches. All right. Oatmeal also, you know, has some ability to grow some of these bacteria as well. So again, you know, you sort of, we're starting to reverse engineer. What can we learn from people who are super old that are in good health? What's in their body that's a standout? Got microbiome?

It's the undiscovered country. Now we're beginning to just like just to carve into it a little bit to figure out what's there. Now let's back it up. If those are important, are there foods that we can actually eat? Because as you pointed out, these are the early patterns. Like you can't be, you know, sick when you're 70 and say, oh, man, now I'm going to go back and start to grow these things all of a sudden. You should start living a healthier life. But these are patterns that actually probably support your overall health from the time when you're not thinking.

about your health. You know, follow-up question on this, which is obviously super fascinating. One of the things that we learned from you is Acrimancia, which you've talked about before on the podcast numerous of times, is not just a small strain, but it's a pillar strain. In a healthy gut, it should make up, I think you said last time, about 5% of the total sort of bacteria. A little bit less. Okay, so around there. So 3, 4%, some around there. But anyways, it's more than like a percentage point. And there's probably not that many bacteria. bacteria that make up that volume, right? Because if you have 100% and acrimancia is somewhere between 2 and 5%, there's only so many bacteria that are like that. Do you know for these other bacteria

that you mentioned, were they able to find how plentiful they were? Were they also a large percentage in the gut? Don't know that. Don't know that. And that's, you know, like you're, you're asking the questions that the researchers are asking as well, including myself. All right, let's let's dig a little bit further what is their prevalence how common are they um what else do they do make where do they grow you know like maybe they're not all in the usual place that got microbiome we need to figure out other places they grow um are they environmentally uh influenced you know uh maybe smoking actually affects it if you don't smoke uh you know maybe food certain foods fermented foods might affect it so there's so many questions that get asked this is this is the bread and butter of

scientists, you know, and I, I'm an honest scientist. And you can tell when you talk to a real scientist, when the scientist says, I don't know. I don't know the answer to your question, but they're really, really good questions. And are they affected by stress management? Are they affected by sleep? Are they affected by exercise? Right? These are all things. The other thing that I think I'm really excited by is new discoveries that I think can lend to this. idea that we can live well as we live long. So we know that exercise is pretty central, pretty fundamental to being able to extend your life as long as you possibly go with unhealthy.

Extend your health span, you want to exercise on a regular basis, right? But have you heard of the hope molecule? No, I haven't. All right. So the hope molecule is a relatively new discovery that when you exercise, it comes from the muscle, when your muscle is contract. it releases hope molecules, H-O-P-E, hope. What are the hope molecules?

Well, there are things that when you exercise, your muscle contracts, it goes in your bloodstream, goes to your brain, and it makes you feel hopeful and optimistic. You ever feel like after you exercise, you work out? Just feel pretty good. All the time, right? All the time. Hope molecules contribute to that.

Not the only thing, but contribute to that. All right. What is a hope molecule? All right. It's called a myokine. Mayo as a muscle, kind like cytokine. It's a natural chemical that's released by muscle during exercise, kind of like the cytokine of the muscle, but it has a brain signaling property that we didn't realize.

And you see, the reason that is that's so important is not only does it actually connect the gut brain, muscle brain, all right? And that's actually really important because we tell people to exercise. Some people go, ah, you know, I never exercise. I can't do that. hey, you know what? We're making these discoveries that show that you can actually be influence your mindset by exercise.

Did you know that like, again, you're hardwired. Your body's hardwired to create these hope molecules. Who wouldn't want that? Right. So again, these are new discoveries that I think add layers of richness to what's already been discovered and will continue to be discovered in a lab on the building blocks of aging and how to actually counter aging. Let's also add to that.

what can do for a lifestyle that can affect our gut, that can affect our mind, that can affect our muscle, let's make some sense out of some of these recommendations that are there, you know, so that when my great uncle told me like he walks up, hugs up to the tea temple to be with his buddy to drink tea, now I'm thinking, all right, he's getting his muscles working and they're releasing hope molecules that actually influence his brain. And now he's socializing in a more positive way with his friends. And we know social interaction. is something that Dan Butner from the Blue Zones has talked about so important for these countries where people live long.

They're with other people, you know? And by the way, I think that is something that we need to really contend with as a society. And I don't know if it's a policy issue, but it's certainly a public health issue is loneliness. No good if you're living to whatever age you want to live to, but you're doing it alone, isolated. And so how do we address that? How do we, what can we do with that? I don't have the answer to that, by the way.

I'm just bringing it up as something that in this wide-ranging conversation we're having about longevity and like, you know, we're sort of covering this gray space that a lot of the pioneers haven't yet covered. But this is the area that I'm working in. I think it's really an amazing area to be able to flesh out for people, the things that anchor them to their humanity as they get more years. So when you look at movement and. and the brain muscle connection that you just talked about, the hope molecules.

What's your thoughts on some of the longest living groups that are out there? You know, these 700,000 centenarians worldwide that are there and maybe discounted by a couple of percentage points because some of them were probably going to be genetic outliers in America who are living long, but they're not very healthy or they've lost their sort of ability because of dementia, their cognitive ability. But for those people that are aging healthy and are living a long life, do you generally see that those individuals are having, compare their

activity levels to the activity of, you know, Americans, like modern day sort of average person, which we know that just going by one measure, step count, a lot of people are getting 4,000 or 5,000 steps or less in a day, which actually I was surprised to find or not surprised to that I think even the CDC says that is the definition of being sedentary as one measure of things. So how would you look at how are these people? How are your uncle? How are they getting that regular boost to that hope molecule? What's their activity level?

It's really hard to do comparisons because, you know, we are kind of looking in the rear view mirror to, you know, when we are thinking about where we've come from as a society in terms of how inactive we are and how poorly we ate and all that kind of stuff. I think, you know, today people are actually, you know, their, their attention, their, their radars on. Like, we should be moving more. So people are actually moving more. So I think it's a little, I'm very cautious not to say Americans are like this and the grass

is greener in another part. I mean, look, if you go to the Mediterranean countries, there's plenty of unhealthy people there. Sure. And that's the first thing that, you know, when I went to, when I first went to Italy and Greece, and I was saying, oh man, you guys are so healthy. They would say, you should see the people who have cancer. You should see the people who are smoking.

You should see the people who are dying of heart disease. And so, you know, I think that it's, I want to make sure that we don't over simplify. But there are clues, important clues, to actually think about it. Now, I don't know the answer of how people become more active. They may or may not be more active. And it's probably not one thing. It's a constellation of things that gives you that magic unlock to be able to be to live longer. The stress, the exercise, the healthy diet, the genetics, you know, all of those

things. But but I think, you know, from anybody watching and listening to this, you know, at the end of the day, this is not, you know, we're not teaching a course. We're not teaching a class. We're trying to hopefully, in a conversation, leave people with some, tickle their brain to say, you know what, I could do that. And I think that if you can actually get yourself to walk, if you're not doing, if you're not doing more already, just from not exercising to go for a 30-minute walk as briskly as you can after dinner every single day. And if you can't go outside because it's too cold or raining, do it inside the house. Just stay in motion. And if you're like, oh, I'm going to be bored and I don't have a friend to do it with, put some earbuds in and

listen to the Drew Proet podcast. Let's see this episode. All right. And you'll actually get it in And just know that what you're doing is by working those muscles, you are actually releasing substances that were recently discovered that actually affect your brain and makes you more hopeful. And I think that those are the concrete types of messages that are more helpful. And I don't know how we could make Americans more active. I think actually there's a subset of Americans who are very active, you know. And by the way, you know, this whole 10,000 steps thing, right? Like that was sort of like the mantra. You got to work at least 10,000 steps a day if you want to be healthy.

Do you know that's an urban legend? It's an urban legend and definitely like researchers just kind of made it up is what I heard. No, actually it's a marketing company that made it up. A step counter, right? In the 1960s, a Japanese step counter, basically a pedometer company developed, hired a ad agency and they created a campaign calling it 10,000 steps. It was something that, you know, it was a jingle that worked for them. And somehow that wound up becoming embedded in the public consciousness and passed around like the old game of telephone until we started to in the medical community quoting it. And, you know, in health and wellness and fitness community, quoting in 10,000 steps.

Actually, it's not as it doesn't have to be as high as 10,000. It's going to be very individualized. It's probably closer to between 5,000 and 7,000 steps to be able to be just generally healthy. But it depends on your age. Depends on what else is going on in your body. Right. And so this is, again, where I think the God is in the details, what we hear about and talk about. I mean, if I could make an editorial comment here, because I am affected by the same thing.

We live in this incredible age where we can listen to podcasts like this one and many others. We can flip on a television and scroll through a million different options. We are able to use social media and get a lot of information all the time. How do you sort through all that information and how do you know what's misinformation? How do you know what's urban legend? I mean, I just told you that 10,000 steps is an ad jingle from the 1960s that is still being bandied around. All right.

And a lot of people believe those. All right. I think the key thing is try not to, you know, I think, again, this is a little bit of that self-reliance. Whatever you hear, if it's interesting, to have a, have a, have a. healthy amount of skepticism. Check it out yourself. You know, talk to other people and a lot of things, especially in a health and wellness community that get talked about, might not be ready for prime time, might be a great idea, but not for you. It might be an urban legend. You know, oh, don't eat

soy because it's going to cause breast cancer. Tomatoes have lectins. You know, you and I've talked about this before on your show. There's so many of these things out there. I kind of feel like my responsibility. And I know you've done an amazing job about this is to have really level set conversations about what we know and what we don't know and wherever possible, bash a myth whenever you can. I think that's what people, that's what's helpful for people, especially when you talk about these aspirational areas

like longevity. Yeah, totally. And even then still, there might be things that we get wrong, especially me. I'm not a researcher. I'm not a subject matter of expertise. There might be things that we over-prioritize. it might be things that we under-prioritized,

but that's also part of the human experience of learning along the way. And I think that a lot of the people that I talk to that I look up to yourself included in that list, it's always whatever you decide to do because there's people that are different in so many different ways. For example, you were talking about how they start off

their morning in Greece and how you feel better, eating lighter. I've personally found that for me, also to hit some of my protein goals of being under-muscled growing up, under eating protein as a skinny Indian vegetarian kid who didn't really know about getting all the vegetable sources of protein that were out there. I'm making up for lost time for the goals that I have. So I have a particular type of amount of protein that I'm trying to hit in the day along with,

you know, working out and doing resistance training. And I also enjoy it. It turns my brain on. I feel good. Your hope molecules in there. Get my hope molecules in there. I actually like eating and I do well with the big breakfast. And I recognize that doesn't work for a lot of people that are out there. So there's going to be that personal experimentation. Personalized nutrition is the best way to go. And regardless of what you do, whatever you do, anything new you try. And we all like trying new things, especially if our hobby, you know, for me, sometimes the world of health can be a little bit like a sport.

I don't really watch sports. But I'm always curious about what's next. And I like to see what people are up to. And I might try something new because every so often you come across something that makes a huge impact. But, and this is the big but, what I've learned from you and other people that I look up to is never forget about the basics. If you just nail the basics, that's going to be more than good enough for the people that are listening out there. And even if you want to try something new or take something on, don't forget about those basics. And the basics are not difficult to do.

Yeah. Because they bring you back to simplicity. And but what it does take is being aware and being a little mindful and being very deliberate about how you live your life. I mean, I think that, you know, you happen to life, if you believe that you can actually affect your own life as opposed to being helpless and life happens to you, that's, that overcoming that barrier is one of the first steps to getting healthy. You know, you are happening to yourself. Life isn't happening to you. You're not a victim. You know, you are in the driver's seat. And I think That is a simple thing that I think everyone can benefit from, especially, you know, if you think about where we are in society today, we went through some huge historical

events like the pandemic. We, you know, are in the midst of social transformation that's happening that are not comfortable for many people, myself included. We're also in a middle of a technology and a scientific revolution where we're beginning to see, you know, new possibilities on a real. revealed, whether it's AI, whether it's gene therapy, whether it's longevity, you know, things that are really, really exciting versus things that are very scary, got climate change. I mean, look, all these things are happening around us, all right?

But at the end of the day, no matter how overwhelmed you might be or excited or depressed, you might be on these things, you still happen to yourself. And that's, I think something that's super important for everyone to actually take comfort in. One of the topics that I wanted to chat with you about, because I know you have to some thoughts on this is that it seems to be living a long healthy life is about the habits that you do, but also as we touched on some of the habits that you avoid. Like, again, not being overweight, not relying on ultra-processed foods as the foundation of your diet. But increasingly, there's a lot of awareness that part of what you don't do is you don't overexpose yourself to

toxins in the environment. There's a certain amount of toxins that we're all. all going to be exposed to. Right now we're recording in California in Los Angeles. There's a fire burning just, you know, maybe 50 miles north of here. It's going to take down the air quality today. The score for the air quality is going to go down. We're going to spend some time outside. At home, I have air filters, but, you know, we're in a studio. There's no air filters. We're going to be exposed to some toxins that are there. What is your point of view on toxins and the low-stress way to avoid the biggest ones that you might have concern about. And do you have any perspectives that you've been sharing

with your patients or your community on this topic? Part of the privilege of being born is to be able to live on this planet, but the tax that we have to pay for being on this planet in modern society as we're exposed to toxins, all the time, hard to avoid them. You know, and the toxins aren't just in the fumes from the paint that.

that, you know, I was on a wall that really stink or from bus fumes. I remember when I was a kid, I became really acutely aware of toxins because, you know, like I was growing up in Pittsburgh and we'd be waiting for a bus or something like that and like this bus would belch these fumes right into our faces and oh my God, this smells so bad. And I knew it was going to be bad for me, you know, and like, and so we'd learn to stand someplace else. But frankly, it's actually very difficult to avoid environmental toxins and harms obviously if you smell something you know like you want to kind of avoid it i always tell people

if you're filling up your car with gas if you still drive a gasoline car i say do you stand upstream or downstream from the pump and most people look at me like i don't know what you're talking about why would you even ask that question and i said well if you are if you can smell the gasoline when you're pumping your gas you're standing downstream okay and that means that you're breathing in the fumes you know the solvents fumes from the gasoline into your lungs which is going to mutate your DNA, which is something you could avoid by simply moving to the other side of the pump, all right, or the nozzle. And that way you'll be upstream and you won't be smelling it the same way.

Right. So those are some simple moves you can make. But the one that actually really grabs me, my attention now, that I'm telling my community, I am trying to raise the alarm wherever I can. And I am making as many, taking as many actions I can at my own house is microplastics. Microplastics really are like the new smoking. Okay. We know smoking is bad for you.

People denied it for a long time. We have also known that microplastics are everywhere. And I was, honestly, I was kind of blowing it off myself for a number of years. People would just say, well, what do you think about this plastic cup you're drinking from or the water bottle? I mean, look, it wasn't so long ago where if you went on vacation to a sunny environment, You know, somebody would get hand you a water bottled water out of a plastic bottle. And you'd probably drink it on a really hot day. And you want to stay hydrated, right?

Now we know those plastic water bottles are shedding microplastics. There's a definition. It's less than five millimeters of size of plastic. You might even be able to see them. They're like the tiny little plastic particles that get shed into anything that's plastic that just breaks down. All right. And then there's nanoplastics, which are less than one micrometer.

That's like a 10,000 times smaller. You can't see that at all. And they're coating everything. Pante hose, you put on panty hose, not you, but if somebody puts on panty hose, you're going to be spraying some of that stuff just by snapping the fiber into the air, it goes right into your lungs. It's so small, gets absorbed into your bloodstream. And we now know that you can actually find microplastics in your blood,

We know that microplastics are in our food. They're in our beverages, anything plastic bottle. They're in anything that you turn into a beverage or food. That starts with plastic. Something I was stunned by is that a tea bag, a typical tea bag, and this was done by a research study made out of paper, I thought, actually was sprayed with a little bit of plastic on the outside by the manufacturer so that the paper doesn't rip and all the tea leaves come out.

all right I guess it makes sense from a manufacturer's perspective but you dunk that tea to steep the tea it sheds a billion plastic particles into a mug of tea

one billion from one tea bag and you're drinking it so how do we how does this like add up well the most recent estimates is that many of us in America are eating the equivalent of one credit cards worth of plastic

in our body every week okay So until recently, when somebody said to Dr. Lee, you know, like, is that bad? I said, you know, you don't have any evidence of what, if it's bad or not, it's something I'd like to avoid. Now we have the evidence. A study that was done out of Italy about a year and a half ago found in people who had cardiovascular disease. So they had damaged blood vessels. They had plaques, narrowing of their blood vessels, specifically in the blood.

blood vessels feeding their brain, all right? And they found when they were doing the procedure, the standard medical procedure to take out the blockage so you can go in there and fish out the plaque and open up the blood vessel. They found microplastics in the blood vessels in the clots. Wow. Whoa. They're studying embedded in the clots. And then when they actually did the outcome studies, they found those people who had, not everybody had plastics, but A lot of people did. Those people who had plastic, microplastics embedded in their clot at a fourfold increase in the risk of having a fatal heart attack or stroke. Crazy.

I think they were even some of the things that came out of there. We talked about the study with my cardiologist, the people that had the highest exposure of plaque, there was some higher amounts of microplastics that were there along with it. Right. And think about the things that caused plaque, right? ultra-processed foods with unhealthy fats, packaged in plastic that you might microwave, you know, and having all that stuff out there. So, I mean, look, I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that this is a new concern. A few other maybe data points that might be helpful for your listeners to say before.

I always try to take people's anxiety down. We talk about stuff like this. But I think there's a few more points that are worth floating out there because this is all relatively new discoveries and research about us. Like earlier we were talking about the discoveries that are positive, like, okay, let's be fair. There are some things that we should be alert about. And microplastics is one of them. We're now able to measure microplastics in your bloodstream.

We don't do it routinely, but you can measure it in the blood. You can measure it in the plaques, the narrowing of your arteries. And they've also found microplastics in human brain. So much microplastics, by the way, that if you could take a kitchen scale, you know, the kind you'd measure out for a weighing dough for a cake, all right, and you can measure the weight of the plastic in the brain on a kitchen scale. All right. It's not the old type of scale with a chain, but a very sensitive scale.

That's how much plastic can accumulate your brain. And that plastic has been shown to stimulate inflammation, not surprisingly. Brain inflammation, clearly associated with cognitive effects, brain fog, all these other things you don't want to have and we're wondering or scratching their head saying, hey, you know, why are we a society dealing with so much dementia? I don't know. Maybe the microplastics are playing a role. It's not the, it's not the magic bullet answer, but wow, this is another thing that we

need to be aware of. Founded in testicles. All right. So if you're a guy and you're like, I'm like, I don't, I ain't scared to know microplastic. If I told you it's in your balls. All right. You might think twice. They find it in a urologists who are doing surgery on the human penis have found

microplastics studded in the tissue, in the muscle of the penis. How did it get there? I don't know. But obviously, I somehow got there from the bloodstream or some other way. You can guess on that. But the prevent of the matter, they find it in a penis. They found it in human semen. Well, I mean, one of the theories is, is that all this polyester,

clothing that we're wearing has microplastics inside of it. Oh yeah. So when you're wearing polyester underwear, men or women, and all this athleisure that is so common, it's not like we're wearing organic cotton all the time or wool or cashmere or whatever. We're using all these synthetic fibers. These synthetic fibers, they shed microplastics. And then we are also drinking tap water, a lot of us. Running through plastic pipes. It's running through plastic pipes, but also all this in America especially, all these clothes that we wash, it's in the wash cycle, you take the microplastics go through the water system. And from my understanding from EWG, we don't have the advanced filtration abilities, even in America here, to get rid of things like microplastics.

This is why I'm a huge fan of just having a high quality filter at home. Yeah. Because, you know, thank goodness that we have access to clean water in the United States, which means it doesn't have bacteria, we're not going to get typhoid, or other things like that, which is how a lot of people were dying from poor sanitation previously in the world. But now we have this new problem. Like you said, it's the modern day smoking that we're dealing with. And it's plastics. And so I had heard somebody, it's actually a great quote. I've shared it before. I had heard a speaker a long, long time ago in the whole raw food movement that I was once part of. They used to say that either you get a filter or your body becomes the filter.

That's a good way. And there's a lot of good options that are out there. Don't get a Britta because that's mostly focused on just removing chlorine for taste, but get a good quality reverse osmosis. What kind of filter do you have? I have reverse osmosis. Okay. Now the criticism that people have is that, oh, well, reverse osmosis takes out all the good

minerals that are inside. I don't know about you, but I'm not drinking tap water to get minerals, right? You can add some trace minerals back in a few times a week. You can add some electrolytes. And so you can get most of the minerals from the food that you eat. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not worried about that aspect.

And occasionally I'll add in with my big, you know, 32 ounces of water that I'll take to the gym in the morning. I'll just put in a few trace minerals as a brand. I have no affiliations called trace minerals. Great. That's out there. There's plenty of other brands that are there. So I use reverse osmosis. I don't want that exposure that's there.

And I think that's one of the easiest things that people can do. Well, look, I mean, this is a great conversation. It's really practical. Right. So we all drink water. We all have water running in our houses. I mean, hopefully you do. And here's a simple way to address a concern, but it's still surrounds down with plastic, right? So what are the things that I tell people are really common sense? First of all, don't eat off of plastic plates or use plastic silverware or drink from a plastic cup. Think about the summer picnic, you know, or the big house. party that you actually have and, you know, like, what do you go? You go up and buy it to go to the store and you buy the party plates and the party silverware. It's all plastic, right? Not only do you throw it away like that evening or that later the next day, but for the environment, but people are eating off of those and no, there's no doubt that they're shedding microplastics as

way. So avoid plastic plates and silverware and cups. From what I've also understood, I don't if you've connected with her, but she's an incredible researcher in this space and now advocate. Her name is Dr. Yvonne Burkart. She is a toxicologist by training who got super sick by working in the food and the fragrance industry with all these different additives and flavors, and she developed a bunch of different illnesses, removed herself from that exposure and started to clean up her life and became now an advocate for what she calls a low tox lifestyle, all very basic things. of how we can protect ourselves.

She said, one thing that I want people to be aware of now that they're talking about plastics is that we have to also just be aware that even a lot of paper cups, for example, if we had this piece of paper right here where I have my show notes that I did for preparation in this podcast, if we turned it into like a little cup and we poured water, it would basically disintegrate,

especially hot water, it would melt or it would at least start to break down. It wouldn't stay firm. Now, when we go to a coffee shop, and again, this is about doing our best, best, right? It's not about getting overly anxious or worrying. When we get a paper cup, we have to understand that these paper cups, the reason that they don't disintegrate is because they're coated. And often that coating is plastic. Exactly. So just very simply, you can get a mug.

Many coffee shops, even here in L.A. We'll give you a discount. Metal, glass. Those are the ways to actually go. Have you started doing that even in your own life? Is that something that you try to do? 100%. Listen, I'm not always perfect. There's sometimes you're there in an airport and you're traveling and you want a cup of coffee and you don't have access and they don't have takeaway cup they don't have a you know here cups but i would say 99% of time i'm going to be having a cup with me are going to ask for a cup it's an easy thing to do listen if you are athletic and you go to work out and you bring your water bottle swap it out from the plastic one to one was made made out of metal or glass yeah okay and that's a that's a really easy fix i also think that

not buying food that's been packaged in plastic is really important all right i mean and by the way You can go to the produce section and buy lovely cherry tomatoes that are found in a plastic box with a plastic top. All right. And then you're going to wash it with unfiltered water in your house. And you're pretty much marinating this thing. It's been marinated and you're going to wash it more with plastic water-containing plastic. Right. So again, I sort of try to be more selective of buying foods that are not pre-packaged in plastic.

It's tough. It is very tough. Because even like my wild caught salmon or my grass-fed beef, even if you get it at Whole Foods in like, you know, or like an A-R-Wan or whatever, in the sort of deli section where it doesn't look like it's touching plastic, if you go behind and you see when they're getting it initially, it's wrapped in plastic. This is actually a modern conversation, Drew, that I think needs to be had.

And hopefully there will be people in government and people in the private sector and companies. They're going to want to come together and have this intelligent conversation to say, listen, this is a new discovery. We didn't realize this was happening. What do we do collectively to make better decisions so that the public is actually going to be less exposed to these toxins? Even if it's impossible, like, you know, whenever I, if I ever have hesitation about the plastic thing, I just, in my mind, I'm picturing a credit card. Do I want to be eating that this week? No.

So I'm just, you know, I'm going to try to make another decision. But, you know, plastic food containers, you know, you've got leftovers. What do we used to do? You go to the, you know, Tupperware. I don't think that company's around anymore, but not good. Don't put your food in a plastic container, all right, and then you put it in the fridge where you may have had foods that you cooked in glass or metal or, you know, cast iron or or whatever.

And now you have just put it into a plastic container overnight to marinate with a plastic. And then you're going to heat it up the next day in the microwave. And now you're going to actually put more or cook it or heat it up, you know, in the plastic. No, don't do it. So I always say toss out your plastic storage containers. I know they're cheap. I know they're convenient. I know they're light.

I know there are things that you can easily take to work for the next day if you're trying to heat up some lunch. But please just get glass containers. It's okay of the topest plastic, honestly. It's not going to touch the food for the most part. Because it's really hard to find a glass top. You're not. Nobody's going to be carrying around a glass box everywhere they're going.

All right. But minimized amount of plastic, those are avoidable things. And the other thing that I heard Sanjay Gupta from CNN, who I know say about microplastics, he said, change out your toothbrush. I didn't think about this, but yeah, if you keep using the same toothbrush the whole time, brace down. And now you are deliberately putting microplastics that are going to break down into your mouth and rinsing them around and you're going to be swallowing some.

And so just make sure you change out your toothbrush, you know, and change them out before they wear down. That's great. I'm another low-hanging fruit. Yeah. That's based on some research that we wrote about in my newsletter, which is that if you have Teflon pans

that have scratches on them, inside of those Teflon pans is basically a coating of plastic in the layers that are there. That's part of it. These PFAs, these microplastics that are there. And they found that just a single scratch on an average size skillet for a Teflon pan,

because these pans develop scratches over a period of time, can leach up to 1,000 to 10,000 microplastics and nanoplastics every time you cook. So an easy solution. That's also actually a cheap solution is that all the researchers that I've talked to say stainless steel. It's great. It's cheap. Now, there can be fancier solutions that are out there that are companies that sell ceramic

and that sell this and that. But just stainless steel and it's going to last forever. And you're not going to have that same exposure. So take a look at your pans, especially the ones that are Teflon, or even if they're the ceramic coating that has scratches on it, that can be detrimental to your long-term health. So just go for a cheap solution. Stainless steel is the cheapest and easiest. And I will tell you, again, back to simplicity.

If you want a pan that's going to last a long time, that it's kind of a workhorse in the kitchen, just look at what chefs use. All right. I mean, I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends who actually are either cooks or chefs. They all use stainless steel pans. That's the workhorse in a restaurant. And at home, like I have stainless steel pans or cast iron, which is heavier. And you get a little bit of iron actually from cast iron.

If you're iron deficient, you know, like when you're a cast iron pan, you get a little with the iron. And you can season and condition them. If you have a stainless steel walk, okay, if you condition it the right way and take care of your pots and pans and walks the right way, they actually make a non-stick surface. All right. So you don't need to have that NASA developed, space age, you know, 1960s innovation in order to be able to have a real workhorse. And I think that's what people need to have, you know, I teach an online course called

Eat to Be Disease course. And one of my favorite modules in my course is about rethinking your kitchen. And I tell people like, what are the things you should toss out that are not because for your griff's house and swap in and keeping simple cookware, stainless steel pan, cast iron, skillet, and a wok. That can, you know, and pots made those semi-animit material. That's how you, that gets you the whole way in terms of like almost every situation for cooking. I want to pivot here again and come back to the concept of food because, you know, that's really your bread and brother of what you're amazing about educating people about. And I always find that

anytime people hear you talk about food and the power of ingredients, they get so excited to double down on going back to a whole food's diet, eat a little bit healthier that day, which makes a huge difference over a period of time. So on the topic of longevity, it's not just about living to a long age and being healthy. People also want to look good. And one of the things that I've loved is that I see that one of the top videos that my audience has watched that you've made is on the topic of collagen and how collagen is an important part. of keeping us looking young for a long time. So I want to ask you, what are the top ways that we can naturally boost collagen in our diet?

And then are there other foods that you have found that also can help us not only live a healthy life, but stay looking young? I have no problem with wanting to look as good as you can, right? And we all, I mean, you know, vanity and our self-image is super important. So there's no judgment there in talking about sort of figuring out how to keep yourself looking as youthful as possible. You want to look good. More power to you. I'm all for it. So number one, I want to kind of put that out there.

So collagen is actually an important way to do because that's how your body does it. All right. By having this biomaterial that exists under your skin that provides structure so that you look the way that you want to look. wrinkles, uh, different types of tissue that look, uh, sagging.

Like, it's usually due to some stretch or, um, uh, disruption of collagen or weakening of collagen. And our body continuously produces collagen. It's a protein. Okay.

And collagen, by the way, is amazing. It's a, it's a triple helix. It's kind of like taking three threads of protein. And, and you,

you know, the old macramee thing, you might have learned when you were a kid, you know, you weave them together. That's what your body does to make collagen that actually sits in lockstep with each other in a line woven like an oriental rug into patterns that actually give us structure to our skin. Tensile strength, shape, structure, form. And then you've got blood vessels have to go through there.

So you get nice coloring. All right. And so all these things are really, really important. Okay. And by the way, there's one, to give an example that a lot of people don't know. know about. Your cornea is the front of the eyes, which you put your contact lens on, if you are contacts. It's the crystal clear fun, just like the watch face on front of your eye, and it's completely clear, and that's made out of collagen too. And the reason that light can pass

right through it, so you can see, we can see each other, is because the collagen fibers are oriented exactly in lockstep. And if you mess up the collagen in the front of your eye, it clouds up and now you can't see. That's how important collagen is. So how do you actually keep your collagen healthy? How does your body rebuild? How can you support that using food? Well, it turns out collagen is made with amino acids because it's a protein.

So you want to keep up your protein. So something very simple. Like I try to keep things as simple and doable as possible. Okay. Make sure that you have adequate protein because the protein you eat puts amino acids to your body. And your body is going to harvest some of those amino acids. acids to build in part collagen. So you want to keep on growing collagen. You're going to need to eat an adequate amount of protein to be able to just keep up that structure under your skin.

Number one. Number two, an interesting co-factor is what we call it in science that your body needs to build healthy collagen in that lock, step, woven way for good shape and form. And structure is vitamin C. So if you don't have vitamin C, your collagen will fall apart. And a great example of that is you probably, you know, your listeners probably heard about this, this disease called scurvy,

you know, which people, you know, on pirate ships and long journeys on the ocean used to have. There was no citrus, no vitamin C. You know what? The collard,

their teeth used to fall out. All right. And the reason is because the collagen in their gums couldn't be adequately remade because they didn't have vitamin C. And so the gums got weak, their collagen got weak,

and their teeth came out. All right? And their joints got weird. So this is really what you want to have is good vitamin C. How do you support vitamin C? Well, you could take a supplement easily, but actually there's so many other whole foods that have so many other supportive elements for overall health.

You might as well have them. Obviously citrus, oranges, you know, in the wintertime, tangerines, tangeloes, you know, a lot of mandarin, there's a lot of different kinds of oranges and citrus you can actually have. But other less obvious sources of vitamin C or kiwi, red bell peppers, tomatoes, guava, all great sources of vitamin C and broccoli, a great source of vitamin C. So you can get vitamin C from your diet, and I encourage people to eat diversely to get that vitamin C from whole foods because you get all the bioactives and polyphenols and a dietary fiber

as well as extra credit for your effort. Whereas a simple tablet of vitamin C, all right, no help the vitamin C, but you're missing out, man. And so I always think that get it from the whole food is a vitamin C, getting breast protein for amino acids, getting your vitamin C. And then, by the way, and this is something that I used to think was bunk, but then I realized there's real research to it and real science. And I participated in some of it. So I know it's real. An example of where I change my own mind with evidence and science is actually having collagen products. Okay.

eating collagen will actually build collagen. And so let me tell you why I was skeptical. Years ago, someone said, I'm going to have some bone broth and I'm going to have some collagen and it's going to make my joints better. And my first response back then is, it's like 10 years ago. I'd say, that's bunk. No way it's true. What are you going to say?

You're going to eat some collagen, little collagen worms, little eels are going to swim out of your stomach and swim their way to your joint and stick in your joint. It's not going to happen. all right and maybe that's how it was marketed but actually that's what here's what actually happens when you have a dietary source of collagen so what are some dietary sources of collagen bone broth you boil up enough bones from things it's filled with collagen from the animal from the bones distalves the bones it always dissolves the joints it is rich i mean if you've had really good quality bone broth it is delicious and it is dense it's got stuff in it and and you know like

Something a human being has been having for a long time. Low, thousands of years. This is like your great, great, great grandmother's solution to health. And now we're rediscovering it with science. It's got collagen in it. All right. What's another source of collagen? Jello.

I'm not talking about like the atomic colored jellos that we had when we were kids, you know, like bright green and bright orange, like colored stuff that you don't want to have. Like, I'm not talking about those jellos. Those jellos have all those additives that we talked about at the very beginning. We don't want to avoid it added sugar, right? But I'm talking about you can get plain gelatin. Okay. If you look in the middle aisle of the grocery store, go look for Knox gelatin or whatever.

It's just a plain box of just powder gelatin. And you can make your own gelatin out of it. And you can flavor it though you want. You'll make it sweet. You can make it savory. You can make it neutral. That's a way of actually doing it, okay, of having collagen as well. But let me tell you,

biologically what happens that actually it helps your body build collagen. Collagen is a pretty big molecule when you eat it, whether bone broth or jello or whatever, gna on a chicken wing, okay, you're going to get some collagen in your system. Gets your stomach acid. That collagen is busted up. That stomach acid is a cauldron that digests any food that you have, including collagen, which breaks it up into a million pieces. and this is where I went wrong with my assumption

is that you break it up to a million pieces, that little snake of collagen can't swim anywhere. You know, like, okay, so we've shattered that idea a long time ago. Actually, the biology is now teaching us something different. When you digest collagen into fragments, those fragments get absorbed into your bloodstream. And collagen fragments are actually biologically active. Those collagen fragments will circulate in your bloodstream.

bloodstream, affect your joints, and they, collagen fragments, will activate the cells that make collagen, like fibroblasts, okay, special cells that can actually make collagen, and they will stimulate the collagen making cells to make more collagen. That's why bone broth and jello actually works for your joints, for your joint health, and for skin health as well. It actually is true. So, again, if you're going to actually buy product that is packaged, whether it's plain gelatin or bone broth, please look at the ingredient label because that's actually how you get the transparency to know whether or not there's anything added to it by the factory, the manufacturer that you might not be comfortable with. Get the pure stuff, get the elemental stuff. That to me is

what you really, really want when it comes to bone broth, don't have crazy chemical additives. If you can't pronounce it, you don't know what they were for in there. Okay, you wouldn't put it in your, you wouldn't add that in your house, probably. That's something you want to avoid. And that's a good choice. Choose the one that's actually simpler, that actually doesn't have those additives or toxins that we're trying to avoid, right? This is where we're headed, I think, as a society. We're trying to raise our awareness of these things. We're trying to take action. Hopefully, companies and governments and educators will all, and a medical community all get together to say, you know what? It's like smoking. Not a good thing to do. Let's all work together in alignment to make sure we're not doing

these kinds of things and we're not exposing to people. But at the end of day, it's a choice that we're actually making. You can still get a cigarette. Okay, you can still choose to smoke it. Most people who care about health don't. And so, but this is, again, amazing ways to actually take care of that collagen that's going to make your skin looks good. Structure, function, tensile strength, shapes your body in any way, shape, or form that you want it to be. All right, you need to have good collagen, amino acids, protein, vitamin C, and collagen containing products like bone broth or jello are simple ways that you can go to the store today to help your body's collagen.

Incredible. Just what are your thoughts on whether it's a supplemental form, high quality, or whether it's something like a bone broth? Should somebody be thinking about having that a few times a week? It's a great part of having a diverse diet. And, you know, supplements, I call supplements for what they mean, topping off. You know, like if you can't get it in any other way, yeah, choose a supplement. why not, you know, or you can't eat enough, try some supplements.

So I don't have a problem with collagen supplements. They actually work, you know, I mean, they work for veterinarians. We tell they work for dogs with arthritis. And actually human studies actually are showing that as well for the reasons I actually told you that I had been skeptical about before, but in fact, the human evidence actually shows us now that the biology of collagen fragments activating the cells to make more collagen actually works in your body. So I'm all for it, you know.

I have to tell you know, like, I was a little under the weather, like, um, uh, last week. And you know what I did? I made some soup, but I made it with bone broth. Wow. Pomey, homemade, did you make it at home or did you pick some? I went out to the store to buy it because I wasn't, making bone broth is a little tough and it stinks at the whole house. You know what? I, I do it after like a Thanksgiving meal, or whenever there's poultry or bones being available, like a carcass. I'll actually make it myself. Delicious. But yeah, it's work. you know, and, and, but I bought, I bought the bone broth and, you know, I'll just tell you, just end of one, myself, taking self-care, I felt so much better after sipping the, the bone broth

soup. And it wasn't a placebo effect, like my sinuses cleared. I felt more relaxed, you know, like my, my headache kind of went down. I'm sure some of that is, um, uh, these peptides and fragments and things like that that are in the bone broth. And so, listen, I mean, grandma was right. Have some chicken soup. That's awesome. You know, on this theme of longevity is not just about how we, you know, how long we live and making sure we're free of chronic disease and that our brain is sharp. But also part of that is looking good too.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting to look good. In fact, I think there's some data that's out there that I came across that actually like how you perceive yourself to look. If you perceive yourself to look young, you actually feel young, right? I'm sure there's something in that dimension versus if you, feel like you look old in your perception, like your look accelerated in your aging, that can have some mindset, you know, impact on you as well. I don't know if that's true or not. I'll share with you what I came across and you can tell me and we'll add it to the show notes afterwards. But on the topic

of not only feeling young, but looking young, is there anything out there like collagen that you've seen that makes a difference in how we look? All right. So I'm going to give you some like cutting edge research that I'm impressed by, that I have become a believer in the science of, and it's leading to products that you can actually find on the market. Oh, wow. And have you heard of exosomes? Yeah, for sure. So exosomes are these tiny little packages that are found in normal healthy cells, and these little packages are more like, when I say package, I mean like a box. Okay, they're a little box and it contained cargo. And the cargo is something, it's genetic material, special kind of genetic material called micro RNA. Okay. And microRNA isn't like this BS topic that's just influencers are

talking about. But in fact, it won the Nobel Prize in 2024. So it's real science that's been recognized as profoundly important to our understanding of the human body. Okay. And our human biology. And that's what's inside an exosome. And so what do these little, cargo of micro DNA, microRNA, what do they do? Well, it's a way of one cell communicating to another because they release these exosomes. So exo means going out. And so these little particles that are inside the cell, they get spewed out. Okay. And they hit the nearby cells. And those nearby cells, the microRNA in the exosome gives the signal to tell the cell next door to reboot itself, to regenerate itself, to restore itself, to go reprogram itself.

This is pretty amazing, which is basically one cell telling the next cell to keep yourself a little bit younger. All right. Now, I could take that further and turn into a marketing statement, which I won't because I'm a scientist, but you can tell where this will go. Because if you then take exosomes, which you can find from human tissue, where do you find them? You find them from body fat, fat that is sucked out by liposuction.

usually thrown away, okay? You can harvest exosome from there. So companies are actually now harvesting human exosomes with these youth commanding packages that tell cells to become, to reset themselves and putting them into skin creams. Wow. So.

And there's actually evidence that it's making a difference? Okay, so I was at a private conference where I invited a researcher to come in to present some data and a product and clinical studies. on exosomes, and she busted out a skin cream and showed patient after patient after case studies before and after, before and after. Okay. And I got to tell you, the skin looked a lot better.

And for skin that was aging or not doing well or had a disease, the reset, reset it, clearly reset the skin. Wow. And this is a trusted colleague of mine. So I know that, like, I wouldn't, it would not be like, it would not be like, Like, there's no hanky-panky in the clinical data. All right. I mean, there was like real cases.

So what's really exciting is that is the sustainable potential for exosomes because it turns out, and I'm super excited about this because of my work in food is medicine, you can also get exosomes from foods. Plants have exosomes. Wow. You can find it in aloe vera, which is a food source in Latin America. You can find it in ginger. You can find it in coffee grounds and coffee beans.

Is that amazing? And there's a huge overlap in the Venn diagram between the microRNA in the exosome of a plant compared to human fat. Isn't that amazing? Totally. Think about how far apart we were evolutionarily way back when like we look nothing like a coffee beam or a piece of ginger. And yet our micro RNA in our exosomes shares an overlap. That's incredible. That is incredible.

You know, just because I know people are going to hit us up afterwards, right? Is your friend's product that he presented on? Is that commercially available? You know, and you don't have to mention it. The person who I invited to speak, which who you might want to have on this podcast at some point, is Dr. Robin Smith. Okay. She's a physician entrepreneur. She's been involved with stem cells and all kinds of other things.

I'm happy to make the introduction to you. and she started a company called exocyticals, which obviously have to do focusing on exosomes. And as far as I understand, there is a product that's out there that's a skin cream that's actually for healing and for resetting the skin. Okay. Interesting. We'll check it out afterwards. Definitely check it out.

I mean, look, I think in the same spirit we're talking about the pioneers for longevity and anti-aging and, you know, know, or healthy aging, like, look, this is what's cool. In today's world, what we didn't have back in the time of the emperor of China, you know, creating those, you know, cataricata warriors, we have real science, we've got real technology, we live in a modern world where lots of smart people are coming at this topic in lots of different ways. How do we have longer? How do we live better? How do we look better? How do we actually stay healthier? What are the foods we should eat? And of course, you know, what are the things we should avoid, including the environmental

toxin and microplastics and things that we've actually covered as well. Yeah. No, it's super important. And like you said previously, is that these things are fine to explore, but don't forget about the basics. You know, on this topic of looking young and feeling young as well, too, and having a healthy body, one thing anecdotally that I've generally seen is that I'm a fan. I have no affiliation with this test called a mega-quant.

It's a fatty acid profile. It breaks down your 369 and it also tells you how much exposure to trans fats do you have inside of the body. Because even though trans fats have been quote unquote banned, they're actually still in the food system and you don't have to declare them if they're under, I think, like 0.5% or something like that. And then there are some controversial thoughts that people have that some highly adulterated oils, especially seed oils, could become. trans fats, especially if you're talking about like deep frying foods and a restaurant, not changing the foods. I don't know the research on that, but that seems to be a debate that's out there. So anecdotally, I've seen from having recommended this test because it gets people, again, there's this correlation observational data, but people who typically have the highest omega

index, which means that they have a good fatty acid profile, low to no trans, trans, fats inside of their body and they're getting plenty of omega-3s from the Mediterranean diet, you know, healthy fish in there, sometimes supplementally taking fish oil, high-quality fish oil. There's so much research that those individuals have incredible cardiovascular health. But anecdotally, I've also seen that people who consistently score high on the fatty acid profile, I generally see that their skin looks a lot better than people who score lower. That's an anecdotal thing.

I only have maybe 14, 15 friends that have done it. But you've got to figure that also how you eat plays a huge role. And if you're eating a lot of fish and you're regularly having things like bone broth, you're probably having more collagen in your diet as well. Well, yeah. And omega-3s also help support vascular health, blood vessels under the skin, bring circulation, which then make your skin cells healthier, give you better coloration.

So, yeah, I would believe that. know. I mean, I think that it's sort of like the, the, it makes sense that we, everything that you just said makes a lot of sense, whether or not the test is the best test or the only test or the valid test. I mean, I think those are things, those are the deep dive details that will be worth checking out. But sure. I totally agree that, you know, like the, the idea of like, looking at trans fat is something you want to avoid, looking at healthy omega-3s is something that you want to add that, you know, these are these are uncontested. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, anytime you work on a new book, even with your vast level of knowledge, you always come back and you are highlighting something new that you knew about before, but you're sort of doubling down on the principles of this particular food. So in preparation, literally, you're in the thick of it. You're in Los Angeles. You're writing. You know, you just came back from Greece. You were writing over there.

Is there anything that you started to pay attention to a little bit more than before that has now become one of the foods that you're writing about, it's unique and beneficial properties? You know, I go back to the things that I encounter. I make for myself every single day, or I make sure that I'm putting it into my diet every single day, which is the benefits of coffee, benefits of tea, and keeping it elemental, meaning simple, unadulterated, like none of the crazy drive-through stuff with flavorings. But yeah, I mean, the more data I look at coffee or tea, I'm saying, oh, you know, this actually makes sense. And it's quite impressive that it also improves the cognitive function in people who are older.

It improves muscle strength and performance in people as I get older as well. Like, you know, I haven't really been able to poke any holes or, you know, even as you're kicking the tires about coffee and tea. So it makes me double down on, you know, the pleasure I already get out of drinking coffee. I usually drink coffee in the morning and I'll drink tea in the evening. How many cups of tea would you have in a day? And what's your favorite kinds? I like green tea. But I also like uloong tea. I like jasmine tea. Jasmine tea is just green tea with jasmine flowers in it. And in my last book, one of the things I wrote about is that it's a myth that you only have, the only green tea is actually healthy. It turns out that black teas are also healthy.

and they also have theoflavins and other bioactives that are also beneficial that can help your metabolism. All right. And then the fermented teas, which is taking tea to an ultra extreme where it's black and it's fermented, it becomes a probiotic tea. Wow, cool. I can actually drink tea that's also probiotic. So I think I've expanded, as I'm going through my research now, I'm deepening my appreciation of the benefits of both tea and coffee. I'm also thinking about drinking matcha more. I enjoy much anyway. It's a little bit more work to actually, you know, because it's powder. You got to dissolve it and, you know, they got to store it in a certain way.

But honestly, matcha contains the fiber, 100% of the fiber of the tea leaf. Good for the gut microbiome, gut brain. You know, I'm thinking about longevity and aging and cognitive health. Like, okay, maybe I should do some matcha now as well. So, yeah, these are the, I mean, it's a good question. Like, honestly, these are the day-to-day things as I'm researching and learning and thinking about and writing. I'm also encountering. You know, I mean, like, I'm not writing science fiction.

I'm writing about science fact. That's amazing about tea. I definitely have increased. I was always a green tea fan. I never actually used to drink any coffee at all. I never really needed the coffee to have energy in the morning. But now I do one cup of coffee, which is an espresso, just one shot of espresso, because I'm actually pretty caffeine sensitive. I don't like too much caffeine at once.

and I'll have like one to two cups of green tea later in the day, and that's directly because I feel like I've gotten excited about the benefits of green tea from listening to all your content over the years. William, as always, I have such a blast chatting with you. I'm more excited than ever to focus on the simple stuff, the basic stuff, living a life based on whole foods, unadulterated foods, a little bit of, you know, excursions every so often, but largely focusing on the basics. and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our entire audience for coming on and sharing your latest information. I can't wait until your book is out on longevity and we'll invite you back

on the podcast to chat more about it. Well, thanks very much. And for people that actually are interested in following kind of like my research, I'm doing something new now that I didn't do before as I'm writing my book. I'm actually putting out content on my YouTube channel, which I encourage people to subscribe to and hit like. And it's going to happen to start to start to happen pretty soon, where I'm actually going to be talking about the subjects that I'm writing about in real time. So you want to check out what I'm actually doing and what I'm learning and what I'm discovering. So if it's something I'm excited about, I'm going to share it. You encourage people to actually come up and check me out on YouTube at Dr. William Lee. Amazing. We'll link to it in the show

notes. William, thank you so much again for being on the podcast. Thanks very much. Hi, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter.

And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an evening. easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called

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