Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | 5 Food Tips to Heal Your Body, Boost Your Brain Health & Live Longer | Dr William Li #562

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

You probably already know that your diet can hugely influence how well you feel, but did you know that the food you choose to eat can change the make-up of your entire body, all the way down to the health of your cells? Feel Better, Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today’s clip is from episode 485 of the podcast with internationally renowned physician, food scientist and bestselling author, Dr William Li. In this clip, we explore the intricate relationship between what we eat and how our bodies function and Dr Li shares how certain foods can stimulate and protect our vital stem cells, which enhances our body’s natural ability to regenerate and heal. Thanks to our sponsor ⁠⁠⁠https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore⁠⁠ Show notes and the full podcast are available at https://drchatterjee.com/485 Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts ⁠⁠https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore⁠⁠ For other podcast platforms go to ⁠⁠https://fblm.supercast.com. DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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Welcome to feel better, live more bite size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 485 of the podcast with internationally renowned physician, food scientist and bestselling author Dr. William Lee. Now you probably already know that your diet can hugely influence how well you feel. But did you know that the food you choose to eat can change the makeup of your entire body all the way down to the health of your cells. In this clip, we explore the intricate relationship between what we eat and how our bodies function. And Dr. Lee shares how certain foods can stimulate and protect our vital stem cells, which in

turn enhances our body's natural ability to regenerate and heal. Over the past few years, there's definitely been more and more conversations about the relationship between food and health. But I think you, Dr. Lee, are talking about a couple of things that I don't see many other people talking about. For example, stem cells. So number one, what are stem cells? And number two, what is the relationship between them and the food that we consume? It's a great question and it's a really interesting topic. A stem cell is basically a early primitive cell that has formed us.

So when your dad's sperm met your mom's egg and we were just this ball of cells, those cells all started as stem cells, which means that they could become anything. Some of them became blood vessels. Some of them became heart tissue. Some of them became a brain. Some of them became nerves and bone. And those primitive cells, by primitive, what it means is that they can become anything. Their destiny has not yet been decided.

And over time, they can be coaxed to become something that we need. When we're born and the umbilical cord is cut, we have extra stem cells left over. These extra stem cells, about 70 million of them, are still floating around in our blood and there are instructions at the time of birth to tell these extra floating stem cells, hey, it's time to park your car, hide out in the places that you're going be for the rest of your life and you'll come out when you're needed. So we've got extra stem cells so that we never run out. So these 70 million extra cells stem cells they are in our bone marrow and that's mostly stem cells and and the stem cells in your bone marrow they help us

create more blood cells that we actually will require over our lives. But they also contain these stem cells that are sticking around. And these stem cells can regenerate us from the inside out. They heal us from the inside out. Meaning, if we actually have an injury, and this is relatively new research in medicine, if we cut ourselves, let's say you're riding a bike and you fall off, all right,

and you scrape your knee on the path, that injury on your knee will send an alert signal like 911. And basically in response to that distress call, the stem cells come flying out of our bone marrow, like bees coming out of a hive, looking for the area that's injured that they need to repair help to repair from the inside out and it's not just a scrap it and it could be your heart your brain your nerves could be any organ at all that our stem cells repair and the remarkable thing is that they can become anything if you need a liver repair they can become liver cells if you

need a nerve repair they can become nerve cells blood vessels they can become liver cells. If you need a nerve repair, they can become nerve cells, blood vessels, they can become vascular cells or blood vessel cells, even brain. We believe that brain tissue can regenerate in part with these stem cells. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible just to hear that we have this reserve capacity within the body. So stem cells are clearly very important. But I think when we talk about foods, I think people these days are thinking about the relationship between food and obesity, food and type 2 diabetes, food and longevity and all these kinds of things. I don't think many people, at least not to my knowledge, are thinking about the relationship between foods and stem

cells. So you mentioned what they are. Talk to us about how we can use food or choose certain foods that help us harness this potential that we have inside of us. Yeah, well, so I'm a scientist. I study blood vessels. That's where my route as a scientist is by circulation. And in fact, our blood vessels are remarkable. 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels are packed into our adult bodies. That is so extensive that if we were to pull out all the blood vessels and line them up end to end in your body, you'd actually form a line, a thread that would wrap around the earth twice. Four hundred of those miles are actually in our brain. And these literally are the highways and byways of everything, oxygen we breathe, the nutrients

that we eat, they deliver to every single organ in your body. Really, really critical. And in fact, no matter what else you think about in terms of your health, if your blood vessels are healthy, you are at a really great starting point to optimize the rest of your health. But if your blood vessels are unhealthy,

you're gonna be far behind. In fact, it'll be impossible to optimize your health in any other part of your body. This is especially true as we get older, like 40 and above, we need to start paying super attention to how well our blood vessels are functioning. Now these roads, these blood vessels need to be maintained, just like a road in the countryside.

If you don't maintain the road, it's gonna break down over a period of time. And one of the things as a vascular blood vessel researcher and your genesis researcher, we discovered early on is that stem cells in our body contribute to building and repairing blood vessels. So that was sort of how I became interested in and quite familiar and actually worked on stem cell research in the lab. We actually discovered many chemical substances that can stimulate stem cells to help do their repair. Some of the synthetic chemicals that you could order from a research shop could actually stimulate stem cells, but then it was really jaw-dropping to me.

In fact, one of the most light bulb going off moments that I had as a food as medicine researcher to discover that natural substances in our food can similarly activate our stem cells and call them into action. And without necessarily putting out a distress call, we can just gently coax our body's own reserve into action to help repair ourselves in a more robust way. So which are some of the top foods that we can choose to put inside our mouths that are going to do this? Yeah, okay. So first of all, this is where at the beginning of a new era looking at regenerative foods, foods that can stimulate regeneration. So I don't have like the wrapped gift box to give you of a laundry list of all the foods known to man. We're still doing research on

this, but I'll tell you, I'll give you some examples because, and when I talk by the way, Rangan, I really refer to both laboratory but also to human evidence, which I think is really important. You know, something we see in the lab is interesting and they can let you raise an idea, but at the end of the day, it's whether or not it works in people that makes all the difference in the world. So I'm going to kind of flip back and forth a little bit, but always emphasize what we know in people.

So first of all, you might not be surprised that the source of stem cell activating substances are plant-based foods. Mother Nature's sort of medicine cabinet are fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes, and healthy oils and seeds, you know, omega sources of omega-3s. Researchers have been actually mining the same pharmacopoeia, farm with an F, not a pH, looking at what substances are in nature

that can stimulate stem cells. So I'll give you an example. We know that there's a natural bioactive, a natural chemical found in plants called ursolic acid. Okay, that's U-R-S-O-L-I-C, ursolic acid. It's found in fruit peel, right? The peel of an apple, the peel of a pear, the peel of cranberries, the peel of cranberries,

a peel of blueberries. I mean, unless you were a kid and your grandmother peeled an apple for you, you just take an apple and clean it and then just eat the whole thing, right? The peel's got good source of dietary fiber and Ursulic acid. Ursulic acid has been shown to stimulate stem cells

to come out of the bone marrow and help to stimulate regeneration and to repair out of the bone marrow and help to stimulate regeneration and to repair blood vessels, for example. Quite amazing, all right? That's an example. There's another substance that has been discovered called beta-d-glucan. Now this is a soluble fiber,

which we know is good for gut health, and it does a lot of other interesting things too that are beneficial for the body. But beta-glucan has been discovered to stimulate stem cells. Now, where do you get beta-glucan? You can find them in mushrooms, both the cap and the stipe, the stem of the mushroom has beta-glucan. In fact, the stem of the mushroom has twice as much

beta-glucan as the cap of the mushroom. Oats also has beta-glucan. You know, if you're actually having steel cut oats for breakfast, for example, is another source of beta-glucan. And barley, now barley has actually been studied with beta-glucan to look at stimulating the stem cells that can regenerate your circulation,

that can help to repair and grow new blood vessels where they're needed. And this is exactly in my wheelhouse to study circulation. So we took this even further to look at the role of other foods that can stimulate stem cells and one of them is dark chocolate. Dark chocolate has a very particular benefit because first of all, chocolate is a confection. It's a candy, it's made, you know, it's crafted to be sweet and delicious.

And most people like dark chocolate, but it contains a plant-based food ingredient, and that's cacao. Cacao comes from a tropical tree where the seed pod of the cacao is shaped like an American football and that those seeds are the ones that are dried, fermented, ground into a powder and used by percent to actually make chocolate. So if you have a 50 percent cacao chocolate it's got half of the cacao. If you've got 80%, it's got a lot more, 90%, et cetera.

Well, what research has been done, shown that 80% or higher cacao puts enough of a natural plant-based bioactive called proanthocyanidin into your bloodstream. So this has been measured. And in the clinic, if you actually give people who have, let's say, coronary artery disease, so they've got narrowing of their blood vessels and stiff, hard blood vessels, these are not people at their optimal state of health. If

you measure their stem cells and then see how many stem cells are floating around their blood, which is not many, and then you were to actually do a simple test called flow mediated dilation, FMD, to check how resilient their blood vessels are. If you do that at baseline to see how well the blood vessels in these people are doing not that well. Then researchers have given them two cups of dark chocolate in the form of hot chocolate. That's it. Two cups. To have a day for 30 days and at the end of 30 days you measure, take out your blood and measure the stem cells again and then do that flow media dilation resiliency test again of the blood vessels to see

have they changed? This is what's amazing has been found that dark chocolate the proanthocyanidins not only got into the bloodstream but they doubled the number of stem cells circulating in your blood vessels and improved the by twofold the resiliency of your blood vessels just over the course of a month with as little as two cups of hot chocolate that's dark. Wow. That's a really interesting point what you said there at the end there. The quality matters, doesn't it? Because you could get, I guess, a hot chocolate powder from the supermarket,

which was full of additives and full of sugar and has a very low concentration of cacao. Or you could get a completely different one, which is minimal ingredients, high levels of cacao, as you say, 80% plus. That's the nuance I think sometimes that we're missing aren't we when we talk about food. Hot chocolate is not just hot chocolate. It depends on the quality, right? Matt Lauer That's right. And the stuff that you get in a packet at the grocery store and it might taste really great. It might be the stuff that we had when we were kids. I know I did. If you now take a look at the ingredient label, I tell people anytime you're buying anything that's pre-packaged, please take a look at the ingredient label, I tell people anytime you're buying anything that's prepackaged, please take a look at the ingredient label before you put it in your grocery cart.

Because if you start seeing the added sugar and then the emulsifiers and all the artificial chemicals and preservatives and the stabilizers, that's probably not something that you want to actually put in your body. And if the ingredient label creeps you out, put it back and just look for another choice that as you say has minimal numbers of ingredients or even better yet, I mean, and I say this to people who are really committed to using a natural way to improve their health. Put it together yourself. I mean, you can even make it without dairy,

which is really interesting. You can make yourself a really tasty, super dark chocolate. And in fact, a lot of people don't know this, but the history of cacao and chocolate goes all the way back to the Aztecs civilization, where at some point they actually considered chocolate was used as currency, was so valuable. And at a certain point of time,

it was used for its medicinal and ceremonial value. The healthful chocolate we're talking about is really paying attention to the details of the quality of what you're actually going to put into your body, because that's going to influence how your body responds to it. It's really fascinating. We mentioned a few foods already that can help our stem cells. What about olive oil? Does that already that can help our stem cells. What about olive oil? Does that have any relationship with our stem cells?

Absolutely. Olive oil is a healthy fat, as they say. It's a plant-based food. It comes from plants, the olives. It contains bioactors, many bioactors. Some of them have been identified. The ones that actually have been best studied, one of them is called hydroxytyrosol, the other one is called oleocanthal, and you know for people who are listening, you know if you're a science geek you can write all this stuff down, but just know that there are these natural substances that have powerful effects on our body. And for example, hydroxytyrosal as a molecule, but olive oil as a food substance, all right, has been shown to be protective of our stem cells,

meaning when you consume olive oil and you get these polyphenols, hydroxytyrosal, oleocanthal, in our bloodstream circulating around. Look, there's a lot of stuff in our bloodstream that's going on, a lot of exposures that we have. And when you've got hydroxytyrosol from olive oil in the bloodstream along with your stem cells,

they sort of act as police escorts to help your stem cells get to where they go in a safer way. They're escorted to where they're needed, they're protected. And so why do they need to be protected? Well, if you think about it, there's a lot of oxidative stress that can be in our bodies. Oxidative stress can come from fumes that you breathe,

from vaping, from off gassing, from carpets, from artificial flavorings and preservatives that you have in your food, from cleaning materials that you have in your food, from cleaning materials that you're actually having. All these chemical exposures cause oxidative stress in our blood, which can damage your stem cells. Hydroxytyrosal, again, is one of those natural molecules that have been shown to protect your stem cells against oxidative stress. I think the quality of the olive oil is really, really important. So extra virgin first press olive oils always going to be tastier. You're going to get that

peppery, you know, sometimes peppery taste to it. By the way, those that's what the polyphenols are there to give you that taste sensation, a great taste sensation of olive oil. All right, I always want to get the highest quality olive oil. So what I look for are olive oils that are made with, pressed with only one kind of olive. It's called mono-varietal olive oil. But I look for a mono-varietal olive oil is coming from one of three different kinds of olives that you can actually find very easily in the store.

And the reason I look for them is because they have the highest levels of polyphenols of all the olives. All right. So if you like Spanish olive oil, all right, I look for mono-varietal Spanish olives made with the variety of olive called PQL, P-I-C-U-A-L. Fortunately it's a very common olive in Spain. You can easily find Piquel, modern variety olive oil, and it's not that expensive, all right?

If you like Greek olive oil, I love Greek olive oil. The olives that have highest polyphenols among Greek olives are called Koroneki, K-O-R-O-N-E-I-K-I, Koroneki olives. Fortunately, a very common olive in Greece, monovarietal, highest polyphenols, taste amazing. If you like Italian olive oils, in Umbria, the highest polyphenols have been found in Moriolo olives,

M-O-R-O-A-I-L-O, Moraiolo olives, which is found in Umbria. It's a less common olive. It's gonna be more expensive, but again, tastes great, highest polyphenols. And so I kind of tell people, look, if you're gonna go buy olive oils, why not get the highest quality?

It's fuel. You wanna be able to have it taste great if you're gonna use it and dip some bread or whatever it is, sourdough bread or whatever something healthy in it, why not get the best? And why not get the best with not only the best taste, but also pure and also with the highest polyphenols. And that's how I actually choose. Sanyam Bhutani Super interesting.

Any other foods that we forget about when thinking about our blood vessels that you would like to highlight and encourage us to bring into our diets? Yeah, well, you know, it turns out that two beverages, tea and coffee, have polyphenols that are heart healthy and beneficial. All right. Tea has catechins and the specific catechin that has been best studied is called EGCG, that has been best studied is called EGCG, epigallocatechin 3-gallate. And again, I encourage people not to get hung up on the technical stuff unless you're a science geek, but just know that we know these things.

In coffee, there's many different polyphenols. One of the best studies called chlorogenic acid. And both of these are heart healthy and vascular healthy, blood vessel healthy for similar reasons. They protect your blood vessels against oxidative stress. They lower inflammation. They're good for gut health. So they're powerful levers that can actually help us.

And by the way, if you combine this over the course of the day with eating some leafy greens, and then you have some of these blood vessel regenerative foods like the barley with a beta-glucan or the mushrooms that we talked about earlier, or a little bit of dark chocolate, high quality dark chocolate. You see, it's the net consumption of the things

that we're eating all day long that expose our blood vessel that extraordinary network to help us maintain the roads in our body and that's our circulation yeah and I think that all this discussion about longevity accompanying this quest to live long we want to live well and the choices that you're making now, the research is finding remarkably that we can actually improve our future us as well in ways that are profoundly important, our vision, our brain, our muscle strength,

our ability to enjoy life. We want to actually really enjoy every year that we get. And I think that the good choices, those tiny little tweaks we make, they can make a big difference. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. If you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short

doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash friday five. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Byte Science next Friday.