Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - How to Eat to Live Longer in 2024 w/ Dr. Helen Messier | EP #76

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Aging is one of the greatest challenges to human health That’s why XPRIZE is launching XPRIZE Healthspan, a global competition that will award  $101 million to revolutionize the way we approach aging XPRIZE Healthspan will create a  paradigm shift where we e can improve human health before biological aging triggers the onset of chronic diseases and disabilities. . According to XPRIZE, this is the Healthspan Revolution. Learn more about the prize https://www.xprize.org/prizes/healthspan  ____________ In this episode, Peter and Helen discuss the importance of the food you eat and the role of diet in extending your healthy lifespan, allowing you to live longer. 12:19 | Reversing the Signs of Aging 27:56 | The Health Span Revolution Dr. Helen Messier is the Chief Medical and Science Officer of Fountain Life. She received her BS in genetics and her PhD in molecular immunology from the University of Alberta. Learn more about Fountain Life here: https://fountainlife.com/  Learn more about my executive summit, Abundance360 ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are,  please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:  ProLon is the first Nutri-technology company to apply breakthrough science to optimize human longevity and optimize longevity and support a healthy life. Get started today with 15% off here: https://prolonlife.com/MOONSHOT  Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ Use my code PETER25 for 25% off your first month's supply of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic: seed.com/moonshots  _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now:  Tech Blog Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity My new book with Salim Ismail, Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact, is now available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3P3j54J _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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One of the keys of diet is variety. What are your thoughts on sodas? I would say don't. Fruit juices? The same thing. Alcohol? There's really no benefit from alcohol. Okay, what should I eat? Is there one diet for everybody?

There is no one right diet for everybody. And there's no one right diet for everybody at all stages of their life. One of the things that plants have, and the only place we can get it, is fiber. Typically, the USDA recommends 35 grams a day for people. Most of us get around five or 10. Wow.

We don't get nearly enough. I can't think of anything more valuable than your health. And it's no longer something that's just for the wealthy, just for the elite. It's something that all of us can be thinking about. I think it's one of the single most important things that you can do. Everybody, Peter here. This episode is sponsored by XPRIZE. Imagine a future where aging brings more time with your

family and friends, opportunities for continued learning, second or third careers, and actually allows you to fulfill your entire bucket list and go for a second one. A future where healthy aging is not a luxury, but a necessity. We designed XPRIZE HealthSpan to make that future a reality. XPRIZE HealthSpan is the world's largest health prize. In fact, it's the largest prize on the planet. It's a seven-year, $101 million global competition that incentivizes teams to develop and test therapeutics that target the biology of aging to improve function

and extend your healthy lifespan. Now, here's the details on the prize. This radical collaborative effort is going to bring together top scientists, clinicians, policy makers, industry experts, non-profits to create a future where aging is something that we're not scared about because we're making 100 years years old in u60 we're adding decades onto our health span so if you'd like to be involved please join the conversation by following x-prize on youtube instagram linkedin facebook on x and discord or go to xprize.org and learn more about x-prize healthspan i cannot tell you how pumped i am about this competition. You know, going to space has been something I wanted to do since a kid. XPRIZE has really opened up the doors and living to 120

in a healthful fashion. That's what this XPRIZE is going to do. Now back to the episode. Everybody, Peter Diamandis here. Welcome to Moonshots. The Moonshot conversation we're having today is how do you add 20 healthy years onto your life? I'm joined by an extraordinary, brilliant physician and friend, Dr. Helen Messier. Helen, good to see you. Great to see you, Peter. So excited to be here with you. I just love this stuff and I can't wait for our conversation. Yeah, no, it's amazing. And for those who don't know Helen, Helen is the chief medical officer and the chief scientific officer of Fountain Life. She is very much a renowned functional medicine thought leader and physician. She's founded the national chain of

concierge practices in Canada. She has a PhD in molecular immunology. And most importantly, everybody I speak to about her says, oh my God, she's amazing. She has a PhD in molecular immunology. And most importantly, everybody I speak to about her says, oh my God, she's amazing. She's had previous leadership positions at Human Longevity and Viome and so thrilled to have you as part of Fountain. So everybody, let me just start by a disclaimer. This is not medical advice. This is advice that you should think about, take to your physician if you want to dive deeper. And we're going to be talking about the things you can do today to extend your health span, not just your lifespan, but your health span. And it's no longer something that's just for the wealthy, just for the elite. It's something that all of

us can be thinking about. And in a post-COVID world and in a world where you can do almost anything, I can't think of anything more valuable than your health. I like the saying, your health is your new wealth. So Helen, where are you today? I am talking to you out of our headquarters in Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida. Yeah. It's super proud. Fountain has four centers today.

We're going to be growing towards 30 or 40 centers around the world. But Helen and I just had a chance to publish a book. It's called Longevity Practical Playbook. And we're going to talk about the things that you can do. And I want to go system by system, area by area. This is the stuff that over the last decade, I've started to completely shift my life. And one of the things I love about you, Helen, is you not only understand the general elements, but at a molecular level, what's going on.

So let's begin with a topic that is one of the easiest, I think, and lowest cost things people can do to extend their life, which is their diet. And we are what we eat. Why don't you kick us off there? When people say, okay, what should I eat? Is there one diet for everybody? Yeah, that is a loaded question, because people get very, you know, diet becomes a religion for many people, and it becomes very challenging. And I think the first thing to understand is there is no one right diet for everybody. And there's no one right diet for everybody at all stages of their life. You know, depending on what they're trying to achieve, depending on your genetic background, I think

your dietary needs are going to change over your lifetime, and they're going to be different from your neighbor. Now, having said that, there are some certain principles that are, I think, the same across most people, you know, getting your phytonutrients from plants, making sure you get enough of your basic nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and so on is critical. Making sure you get enough protein for muscle mass and muscle synthesis is critical. Making sure you get enough of the healthy fats, because our cell membranes, our brain are made up of fat. So everything you're going to hear me say probably many times through our conversation, Peter, that it's all about balance, right? There's nothing all good or all bad about most things. It's really getting them in the proper

proportions and balance. And I think that applies really mostly to food and fatty acids and even the different components of food. Omega-3s, omega-6s, saturated fats, nothing's bad if you take it in the right combination in the right amounts. You said something a minute ago about your genetic background, and it's very true, right? If you're in Alaskan Eskimo, the diet your body wants and needs is very different than if you're, you know, of European descent or Asian descent. And there's an interesting fact that was studied and I think is well documented that your longevity outcome, and let me take a second just to define health span versus lifespan for folks. We're going to talk about that, right? A lifespan is how long your heart is and your brain waves are going. It's like, are you alive or dead? Yeah, it's a zero or

one. And your health span is how long you feel healthy, how long you're able to play with your grandkids, go up the stairs, walk around, feel cognitively alert. And I think it's health spend we're after first and foremost. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and typically, if we think of our, you know, if you think of your grandparents and think of aging in our society as it is now, there tends to be this very long, slow decline in terms of our health, right? We hit a certain age and we tend to get, you can't do quite as much anymore. And over time, we start to accumulate these chronic diseases, we get some diabetes, we get heart disease. And it happens

over time and it happens for a long time and we get less and less able to do what the things that make life worth living. And if we look at even healthcare costs, the majority of healthcare is spent in those last years of a person's life when they're really sick. I mean, you can spend a ton of money at the last few years of your life. And I just want to point out, if you spend it earlier and spend your time differently earlier, it makes, you know, you want to make that correction as early in your life as you can. You do. You absolutely do. And the idea is to square off that mortality curve, you know, instead of having this long, slow decline over the end of your life,

you want to live fully and healthily right to the end and then kind of drop off, you know, square off. I want to extend that end. And then make it out a little further. As I like to say, life is short until you extend it. You know, one interesting stat that, you know, I think most people, and we'll talk about this when we get to mindset, most people have an age in their minds by which they expect to die. And you've gotten it from their mom or their dads, their grandparents or society as a whole. And we have to remember that, you know, if you had had that image in your mind a hundred years ago, it might've been, you'd expect to get to 50

versus 80. That line keeps on moving and your mindset has a lot to do, but your genetics have some to do, but not as much as people would think, right? So how much of your lifespan, your health span is a function of lifestyle versus genetics? Yeah. The vast majority is a function of our environment and our lifestyle. Under 10%, probably some estimates around 7% of our actual longevity is due to genetics. The rest is really due to what we do. And this really brings in the whole concept of epigenetics, right?

Epi just meaning on top of genetics. So we're all familiar with our genetic sequence, you know, the color of our eyes that we inherit from our parents, the predisposition, even certain diseases we understand are genetic, like cystic fibrosis. But the vast majority of chronic diseases that we're really familiar with that really lead to that long decline as we get older. Remember, aging is the biggest risk factor for all chronic disease. So cardiovascular disease, risk factor for all chronic disease. So cardiovascular disease, cognitive disease, diabetes, metabolic disease, those, yes, there are certain genetic predispositions, but you do not by any means have to get it. So your genetics, your DNA is not your destiny. It's what you do

with that genetics and what environment you put it in. So the food you eat, the thoughts you think, how you move, actually affects how that DNA is expressed. And that's the epigenetics. And we can dive into that a lot more if you like. But understand that really the key is your health and who you are is really a function of your environment and your genetics interacting. For sure. And I think that's a lot of hope for people because they say, oh my God, my grandparents,

my parents died at this age. And am I, you know, yes, they did. It doesn't mean you have to. You can catch and change a disease early. And I think you have to come to it with that mindset, a belief that I'm not going to succumb. I'm going to overcome that situation. And going back to our subject at hand, which is diet, I think diet is one of the places you can make one of the biggest, easiest changes.

I don't want to say it's easy. Changing one's diet is not easy, but it's not expensive. And it is doable. And like you said, there's no absolutes. There are a couple of absolutes as far as I'm concerned. Let's dive into those. I would say the first absolute, and I've been on TikTok and Twitter and getting more of a reputation as a no sugar guy than I want because I don't want to be the guy who's just, that's the only thing I'm speaking about.

But sugar is a poison. Let's talk about sugar one second, Helen. Yeah. So sugar is a poison. Now we need sugar. Let's put that first and foremost. If we don't have sugar, we can't stay alive. If our sugar drops to zero in our bloodstream, we will die.

So we need sugar. And this is, again, it's about balance, but too much sugar becomes very problematic. And when we have sugar floating around in our bloodstream, so that happens when we eat things that get absorbed very quickly. So simple carbohydrates. What's that mean? Rice, bread? Yeah. So anything like basic sugar, and then things like rice and white bread, things that don't have fiber in them, when we eat those, those get absorbed very quickly by our body, and it goes directly into sugar in our bloodstream. Now, when that happens, that's really dangerous, because when we have sugar, it starts to bind to all the different proteins. Now, some of you may understand one of the proteins it binds to is hemoglobin. That's why we can kind of get a measurement of how much sugar, the average sugar in your

bloodstream by measuring your hemoglobin A1c. That's just a measurement of how much sugar has attached to your hemoglobin molecules or your red blood cells. But sugar also attaches to a lot of other proteins. Now, when that happens, and that's what we call a glycation reaction. So when sugar binds to proteins, it's a glycation. It happens without enzymes. It's just, it's called again, an amadori reaction. And it will happen on its own when sugar is in contact with the proteins. And then what happens is our immune system goes, oh, that looks

foreign, right? Our immune system's, oh, that looks foreign, right? Our immune system's used to seeing our own proteins, but it's not used to seeing the proteins with sugar molecules attached to it. And so it will actually mount an immune response to it. So we call these, you know, proteins that have all the sugars attached to them, we call those ages. And I think that's a really appropriate name, advanced glycation end products, right? And it does, it ages us. And that those ages attach, we actually have receptors for them specifically to get rid of them in our body because they're

so dangerous. And those are called receptors of advanced glycation end products or RAGES. glycation end products are RAGES. I think they're really well named. And it does, it causes a full body wide inflammatory reaction. And we can get into what inflammation is as well. But inflammation, that's the pain in your joints, the redness in your skin. And we do know that inflammation that doesn't shut off can cause a lot of damage. It's one of the underlying factors of a lot of chronic diseases. Let's take this a step further because, again, you need glucose in your bloodstream. Your brain works on glucose and ketones. But it's when the levels get too high and you can wear a simple glucose monitor, which I do, a CGM, a continuous glucose

monitor to look at the glucose levels in your bloodstream. And if you have pure sugar or white bread, you'll see this spike and then insulin gets pumped into your body and it drops down. We'll talk about that in a minute. But what's interesting is that the impact of this glycosylation, this attachment of the glucose, when I think about this, and if you can expand on this, is it's a cardiovascular inflammatory, a neuroinflammatory. It feeds cancers. I mean, there's like nothing good about it yeah the rages was just one thing it causes inflammation in your blood vessels absolutely in your brain uh you know there is nothing good about it and uh one of the hallmarks of cancer to your point peter is the fact that the cells the cancer cells now, all the cells in our body,

other than our brain cells, typically they burn fat. So at rest and when our mitochondria, the little power plants of our cell that take the food that we eat and turn it into energy to fuel our muscles, to fuel our brain, everything that we need to do, all the reactions in our body, you know, our brain, everything that we need to do, all the reactions in our body, they love to take fat and make energy from it. Now, cancer cells can only, one of the hallmarks of cancer is that they burn sugar, they can't burn fat. So the mitochondria are so damaged in cancer cells that they cannot burn fat, and they only burn sugar. So the whole idea that sugar feeds cancer is absolutely true. And you know, anyone dealing with cancer, the first thing you do is want to limit the sugar. I mean, we know this because PET scans are basically labeled sugar, right?

And that's how we search for- So a PET scan is a positron emission tomography. Tomography. It's a way of, yeah, it's a way of it's a kind of scan yeah yeah to look for cancer in the body and and it's radio labeled sugar molecules because that sugar will go directly to where the cancer is so you know i i just want to make our first point here which is uh the body was never designed to to consume this much right? This use of sugar cane and sugar in our diet is something recent over the last few hundred years. It didn't evolve with us over hundreds of thousands of years. And it's not easy. In fact, sugar is addicting. You know, I have two 12-year-olds and I look at the cereals they're eating and it's like all sugar. I mean, I taste it and I go, like, this

is disgusting. It's so sweet. It brings back memories. But, you know, it's not easy to break a sugar addiction. Yeah, it's difficult. I think, Peter, to your point with evolution, we've actually evolved to have a sweet tooth. So if we think of human evolution, you know, we would have periods of feast kind of in the fall during harvest when we had an abundance of food. And then we would have kind of periods of famine, especially over the winter. Now during that fall is when things, sweet things were available, you know, ripened fruit is sweet, right? Honey that's available from that we would go and get. So we have this innate need and I'd say, we search out sweet things and sugar. I think that's in all humans. And at the time, it was very beneficial. So what would happen when we ate that sugar, it would induce some insulin

resistance. Okay, so remember, when we eat sugar, it comes into our bloodstream. And we then our body senses it, it says sugar is too high, and it will produce insulin, our pancreas, the beta cells in our pancreas make the insulin. And the insulin is like the little door knocker on the cell. And it says, binds to this, the receptor on the cell basically knocks on the door and it says, open up, let the sugar inside. And so the sugar can now go from the bloodstream inside the cell where it's safe. Okay, so that's a good thing. Now, over time, when we have a lot of sugar around, and also, you know, fat in there as well, but think of a lot of sugar, what happens is the cell kind of

gets tired of opening up that door. And the the little door knocker, our body has to actually produce more and more insulin for the sugar to get inside for the cell to open up the door, almost like the little boy who cried wolf too many times. And so and so that's what we call insulin resistance, where our cells become start becoming resistant to the action of insulin. And therefore, the sugar ends up staying around in our bloodstream much longer. And that's the first sign of, of course, we would induce by eating a lot of sweets, this this sort of state of insulin resistance, which what did that do that allowed us to store fat, right? When we're insulin resistant, we store a lot of fat, that sugar gets converted very quickly to fat.

And those fat stores would then allow us to survive through the winter when there wasn't a lot of food there. So you know, the people genetically that can do this, the people that are much more prone to insulin resistance, those are the people that survived, right? And we're all usually descendants of that. So they're really if you think about the fit genes, certain certain traits, depending on your environment are very beneficial. You take those and you put those in a different environment and they become very detrimental. So humans were never meant to be exposed to vast amounts of calories and food and sugar at all times. We're meant to go through those periods of feasting and famine. Yeah. So again, bottom line is high glycemic index foods, sugar, candy, all of these things not healthy for you. You know, my dad used to say in ancient Greek, panmetron iristan, which means everything in moderation.

And that's fine, but we are addicted to it. One thing that I do every year with a dear friend, Guillermo Navarrete, is part of abundance 360 and abundance platinum, we do a 22 day, no sugar fast and everybody together in a WhatsApp group. So it's much easier to do this as a group than on your own is you give up sugar. Um, and we go to really a ketogenic diet, uh, for 22 days. And at the end of that, you feel like you have control back, right? You have control back over that sweet tooth and you can say no a lot easier. And so I did that, you know, two and a half years ago and I've had really, I'm very, very careful about when I eat any sugar.

If I'm going to eat something, it's going to be very mindful and it's going to be a very limited amount. thing, it's going to be very mindful and it's going to be a very limited amount. And you'll notice when you actually get rid of that sweet tooth, Peter, that things just taste ultra sweet. When I first cut out sugar in my diet, it takes about three months to completely overcome that craving and that addiction to sugar. And just so you know, sugar is as addictive as cocaine. Yeah. Well, I haven't tried cocaine, so I wouldn't actually know, but I have tried sugar. So it takes about three months. And then things like the cornflakes that, you know,

I used to sprinkle sugar on top of cornflakes. Yeah, it's all sweet already. Exactly. All right. Let's move beyond sugar. So please consider trying a continuous glucose monitor so you can see which foods actually spike your glucose. There's a Free Libre 3 now. There's a Levels. Yeah, the Dexcom, Freestyle Libre. They're really very easy. You just stick them on the back of your arm. You monitor the readout with your iPhone.

You know, you just download the app. Very easy and very, very informative. And I think when you start using a continuous glucose monitor, I can't recommend it enough because not only are you going to find which foods actually spike your blood sugar, I think that's important. And you will notice that that's not the same food for everybody. Some foods, it might not spike one person's blood sugar and another food will spike a different person's blood sugar very high. And so that's number one. And then the other thing you're going

to get insights in is all the other things that you do. And we're going to jump into this more, I know later, but how sleep and how stress and how all of those other things have an effect on your blood sugar. So if you don't sleep very well the night before, the same food can spike your blood sugar more. You'll also notice how at different times of day, you're going to be more and less insulin sensitive. So in the morning, typically, we have these basically the circadian rhythms, typically, we have these, basically the circadian rhythms, and we have clock genes that control those circadian rhythms. In the morning, you're much more insulin sensitive, meaning the same food will not spike your blood sugar as much as

eating that same food in the evening when we're much more insulin resistant. So from a diet perspective, you know, what you eat is critical when you eat is also critical. So the whole, you know, the old adage of breakfast like a king and lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper is actually very true when you take your circadian rhythm into account. And then, you know, how you eat, which we're going to get into in a bit, I'm sure. In the next three, four years, we're going to all have an AI system that is advising you all the time, 24 seven. But until then I've got Helen. Okay. So everybody wants to take a short break from our episode to talk about a

company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Company is called fountain life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built

at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the U.S. today and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full-body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI-enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, a DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're going to find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Found Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life. And we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter.

When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller, Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. Let's jump in beyond it. So I was saying, what are the absolutes? The absolutes are, listen, sugars are poison. Minimize your sugar. Measure what's going on. Try yourself going through a 22-day sugar fast, do it with

a group of people. That's one piece of advice. The other sort of, I think, absolute piece of advice is the idea of a whole plant diet, that I think everybody can benefit from a whole plant diet. So what is a whole plant diet? Yeah, I mean, a whole plant diet is really just what it says is eat plants. You know, they eat everything in as close to its natural state as possible, right? For the you want to not too much. And again, mostly plants is really the how you want to think about diet, but whole plant food diet is plant forward. Doesn't mean that you have to be vegan. Doesn't mean you have to be vegetarian. It just means that you should eat, really focus on getting plants first and making sure that you get all of the phytonutrients,

all of the... So why plants, Helen? I've been i've been a vegan i've i've gone a whole keto diet i've done everything i'm back to sort of mediterranean diet but when i see literally when i see plants on my plate i attack them um i i'm like okay the brussels sprouts the asparagus the spinach it's like you know i like, I've learned to love my plants. But why is that important? Why is that important? So plants have so many important things. So one of the things that plants have, and the only place we can get it is fiber. Now fiber is not only does it fill you up, not only does it control how fast sugar is absorbed into your bloodstream, so it

controls your blood sugar, but fiber feeds our microbiome. And our microbiome, as you know, there's all of the trillions of microorganisms that live, it lives everywhere in our body, in our skin, and everywhere. But the vast majority of them live in our GI tract or in our gut. majority of them live in our GI tract or in our gut. And those microbes, it turns out, do so many important things for us. You know, the list could go on, I think every day there's hundreds of papers published on how important the microbiome is for our overall health. And what plants do is that fiber feeds the beneficial microbes. That's absolutely critical. We do not get nearly enough fiber in our diet. You know, if we look at a lot of times, this is only my own kind of hypothesis, but I think, you know, we talk a lot about the paleo diet being, you know, all meat and the animal that

our caveman ancestors would kill. But if you think, if you look at what our ancestors ate in terms of fiber, it would be in the 100 gram per day range. You know, even if you look at what our ancestors ate in terms of fiber, it would be in the 100 gram per day range. Even if you look at traditional populations now, it's around that. Typically, the USDA recommends 35 grams a day for people. Most of us get around 5 or 10. Wow. We don't get nearly enough. Wow.

By the way, one thing that we said about the microbiome, we'll talk about that more. I mean, every day the research is showing how it's connected to every aspect of your health, your Alzheimer's, brain clarity, cancers, and so forth. And then one of the things I just, you know, you and I talked about this for me a little, forth. And then one of the things I just, you know, you and I talked about this for me a little, a little bit ago, a few months ago, which was I had to take some antibiotics for some, after my, some dental work. And I tried to avoid it, but I took it in the final result because of a sinus infection. But, oh my God, I hate antibiotics. it's like they've saved our lives they've added decades onto your year but keeping your microbiome in good state of health is so important we'll get

to that but i just want to put that note in for folks to think about do not take antibiotics if you have a viral infection um there's so many reasons not to do it uh so please please please think about antibiotics not only do the antibiotics So please, please, please think about antibiotics. Not only do the antibiotics. And yeah, with the caveat, if you need them, definitely take them. But if there's any doubt, like you said, a viral infection, antibiotics don't kill viruses. They kill bacteria. And not only do they kill the bad bacteria, they also kill all of the good bacteria in your gut, those beneficial microbes we talked about.

kill all of the good bacteria in your gut that we those beneficial microbes we talked about and i will talk later about your mitochondria are in fact bacteria that were incorporated into cells and antibiotics can actually damage your mitochondria i don't want to dive in the rabbit hole right now i want to get back to food so whole plant diets so one of the things that i recently learned and i found it really an important tidbit, which is the order in which you eat your food can have a massive benefit. So let me lay it out. When you're looking at your plate, eat your veggies first, eat that fiber first, then eat your protein.

And then if you still have a hunger, you can eat your rice or your bread or your, your carbs. So why is that? Yeah, absolutely. So the order that you eat, it will fill your stomach up and it will slow the absorption of the sugar from those rice and carbs. If you have the fiber and the protein in your digestive system first, you have much lower glycemic response to those foods. So that's, that's a big reason. Another reason is you get filled up with the good stuff, and then less room for you to eat the stuff that's not so good, sort of that calorie, you know, the nutrient poor food, you want to eat the nutrient dense food first. And you know, the other thing that's in the plants,

we talked about fiber, but all of the phytonutrients. So phyto just means from plants, and nutrients being all of the such important components. Why do we eat? We eat to get building blocks for our body, the protein, and to get energy, and also to give cofactors for all of the biochemical reactions that we need to

stay alive. All of those enzymes that carry out those biochemical reactions, those are required cofactors. And that's what vitamins and minerals are. They're cofactors for these enzymes. We can't carry out any of these reactions without those. So that's really important as well. And that comes from the plants. I think that's really critical. And the other thing plants give us is antioxidants. You know, we will get into the whole oxidative stress and free radicals. We can go down that rabbit hole if you like, but free radicals damage in the process of making energy, you know, taking in oxygen and the food we eat, those mitochondria, which you're going to hear over and over again, because we're talking about longevity. So they're so important.

They have, they have smoke essentially. Think of them as a power plant that produces a byproduct. They're burning something. They're burning something. And that smoke is reactive oxygen species or what we call free radicals. And those free radicals cause oxidative damage. So, you know, think of when a metal piece of metal rusts, that's free radical damage or oxidative damage of the metal rusting. So think of that rusting inside our body. It will damage a lot of our proteins and cell or cell membranes get damaged quite significantly with those free radicals. So in order to deal with that, if we didn't have antioxidants, again, we would all die.

We make antioxidants, but we also need to get them from our diet. A couple of key points here as takeaways. Again, please think about this tonight when you're eating dinner or lunch. Attack your veggies first. Get that fiber in. I like to pour extra virgin olive oil on all my veggies and really consume olive oil in that capacity. So that's the first thing. And then your protein. We can talk about protein from legumes, protein from beans, protein from fish, chicken. I don't take in red meat. And then the final thing, and I typically skip They feed you a giant bowl of bread and a glass of wine. And it's like, so, uh, you know, pro tip here when they bring it to the table, say, can you please bring this back with the main course? Because if it's sitting in front of you, um, you're going to eat it. Or if you need to make sure that you soak your bread in the extra virgin olive oil to blunt

the glycemic response of the bread. But better yet, to eat it on the back end of your meal. Exactly. There's another thing you taught me, which is eat the rainbow. And that doesn't mean Froot Loops or Skittles. So what does eat the rainbow mean? People try to make it be Froot Loops and Skittles. But yeah, eating the rainbow just means eating all of the colors of the rainbow.

Because the phytonutrients, the densest nutrition in these plants come from the colors. So think of the green and kale and beans and peas. Think of the red and tomatoes and strawberries. Think of the oranges and carrots and the blue and blueberries and blackberries. That's like, so you want to get, what I tell people is try to get one, at least one food of every color every day. That's going to give you, because the key, one of the keys of diet is variety. You know, it's great to, and you know how much I love broccoli, is variety. It's great to, and you know how much I love broccoli, Peter.

I love broccoli too. But the key is you can eat a big plate of broccoli, which is great, but you want to get variety. You want to get lots of different types. So really go for those colors. And when my kids were little, I used to have them check off the colors of the rainbow, make sure they got one of each. So that's another thing that I attack ferociously. It's like, you know, we were at our longevity platinum dinner and my team's amazing. They feed us great longevity diets. And I remember in front of the group was these plates of like, you know, every color out there.

And I was like, I was just grabbing, grabbing at them. And so, you know, the order in which you eat your food, the color of the food, putting off the high glycemic index. Let's talk about one second, nuts, beans, legumes, and then how many calories to consume per day, because that is all over the place. So how much protein do you consume? Where do you get your protein from? And how many calories? That's an important part of our diet conversation. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, honestly, calories, I think it is important.

You don't want to overconsume calories. But to your point, if you eat the right foods first, I think it's really hard to get too many calories when you eat plants. That becomes very difficult. You'll be full before you can have too many calories when you eat plants. And that becomes very difficult, you'll be you'll be full before you can have too many calories. Right. And so so really go with that first. And then the calories tend to really take care of themselves. If you do that, you know, I used to calorie count, I used to, you know, I don't think I think from kind of an ease perspective, just focus on the good foods. And then, you know, don't stuff yourself stop think from a kind of an ease perspective, just focus on the good foods

and then, you know, don't stuff yourself. Stop when you're about 80% full. Before you go for those seconds, you want to wait about 15 minutes. It takes about 15 minutes for the food to register from your stomach to your brain that you've had something to eat. That's so important, right? You ever have that feeling like, oh my God, I ate too much. Like it sneaks up on you because there is that delay and chewing your food and waiting and having a conversation. And then there's vitamin O. Talk about vitamin O here. People are going, what's a vitamin O? I don't remember that from medical school. Yeah, I love it. The vitamin O, and that came from Mark David, who's just a fantastic, I wrote the slow down diet. It's oxygen. Make sure you breathe. And we talked about- I'm taking a deep breath right now.

When you eat, but how you eat, right? So everyone, let's do this together. Take a deep breath. how you eat, right? So everyone, let's do this together. Take a deep breath. And then let it out. Out breath longer than your in breath. And suddenly, I think you can feel how your nervous system switches, right? It switches from that sympathetic nervous system or the fight or flight nervous system. And it switches to your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest nervous system. So all of our bodily functions, whether it's, you know, urinating or salivating, you know how you're stressed, your mouth dries up, right? You're clenching, yeah. we're in a parasympathetic state. And the key is that they can one or the other can be active at one time, they both cannot be active at the same time. So you're either sympathetic, or you're parasympathetic. And so when you eat in that parasympathetic state, you actually make the best use of your food, you're going to digest your food, you're going to absorb the nutrients,

you're going to utilize them properly. If you eat in a stressed state, you tend to just take it all and store it away as fat for a later date. You don't, you don't, I remember just like shoveling the food in my mouth just to have to get it done and then get back to my work. And the worst thing, and you said this the other day, and I agree with you is sitting there watching crisis news network, watching CNN and having dinner as bombs are flying and people are, it's like, that's the worst state to have had, you know, to eat. Yeah. Over the years, I've experimented with many intermittent fasting programs.

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backslash moonshot. Get started on your longevity journey with Prolon today. Now back to the episode. It is. If you think about how we tend to eat in our society, right, in our culture, we eat when we're driving, right? We'll go through the drive-thru and eat when we go through, and that's, you know, obviously stressful. We eat at our desk when we're trying to do work. We eat, we read, we can never think of how many times you actually sit and pay attention to your food and don't do anything else other than maybe good conversation with a friend. How many times in our week, think about that, that we actually pay attention, taste our food, chew our food, pay attention to it versus just kind of shoveling

it in because you have to get some calories in. You know, my sister made a good point is this is part of from cultures around the world. This is why they say a prayer in the beginning or gratitude, grace, it's slowing you down and it's getting you into a conversation. It's preparing your body to absorb the food. So yeah, really, really important stuff. Protein. So, and, and intermittent fasting, a lot of conversations here, a lot of depth on, on diet. So I'm focused this year on building muscle mass, which comes from, you know, lifting weights and, and creatine and other supplements. We'll talk about that later. But it's also getting enough protein in my diet. But then you hear conversations around,

well, too much protein is not good for longevity. So help me dissect the situation around protein. How much should we get? Yeah. And I think a you know, a lot of it does. We do need protein, number one. We do. Protein makes up the building blocks. Our muscles are in our body is really made up of protein, collagen in our skin, our bones. So protein is essential. And we also know that our muscle mass is a key determiner of our longevity, right? So if we get weaker, one of the best predictors of mortality and longevity is just grip strength, right? So

overall strength and muscle mass is very important for longevity. So that's really critical. If you think of the elderly, frail people that not only do risk falling and all of those things, but- And we'll get to this conversation in depth when we talk about exercise. Yeah. So how much protein should a person get? Yeah. So you need protein in order to build muscle mass. And I think part of it depends on how active you are. You want to, like with exercise, you definitely want to be able to lift weight, you know, weight or some kind of resistance training is really important to build and make use of that protein. You want to make sure you digest your protein appropriately, because undigested

protein can get down into the lower reaches of your colon, and then your bacteria will start to ferment that that becomes a problem because they produce a lot of harmful substances from that protein fermentation. So you definitely want the protein that you eat, you want to be able to digest it and absorb it appropriately, and you want to make use of it by exercising. Having said that, you know, the estimates are somewhere around 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight every sort of daily. And so that kind of gives you a rough estimate. You know, people, obviously, with kidney disease and other things, they have to be a little bit more careful with

the protein, but that's a general kind of... So I weigh roughly 150 pounds and i take in 150 grams a day and one of the things that's interesting is you can't just take in 150 grams at a sitting no it's uh no it's spacing it out through the day um that's exactly right yeah and that stimulates muscle building is when you actually space it out during the day. So that's really important. You don't want to just fast all day and then eat a 20-pound steak. You know, the idea is to definitely space it out to the day. And so you stimulate that muscle kind of building throughout the day.

I think that's really important. And, you know, we can get into the whole mTOR, AMPK and fasting if we want to. Well, let's touch base on it a little bit, because I used to focus on intermittent fasting, and I would typically eat dinner at six or six, done by seven. And then I would fast until the next day at about noon, one o'clock, have a lunch and dinner, skip breakfast. And I've changed that. And one of the reasons, it looks like the data of intermittent fasting in terms of during the day doesn't impact all-cause mortality, but it does impact my ability to take in enough protein. So I said, I'm going to actually take in a protein shake. I use a, uh, uh, Kachava,

uh, which I enjoy, um, as a plant-based protein shake I do every morning. Um, so what do you, what are your thoughts on intermittent fasting? Yeah. So, you know, there are some, there is some evidence out there for intermittent fasting being good for people with metabolic syndrome, you know, sort of that whole insulin resistance and that abdominal weight. So, if you're, you know, really overweight or obese and you need to lose that weight, intermittent fasting can be helpful. But if we pull back and we look at kind of what our, you know, what we did in terms of evolution, what our humans kind of did. Remember, we talked about the feast and the famine, you know, how you feast in the fall

and famine through the winter. I think that there is a role for going for periods without eating. One of the challenges if you go for longer periods without eating is you do lose muscle mass. So when people lose weight, there is a portion of that weight that you definitely lose body fat, but you also lose muscle mass. So that's something you really have to be careful of. I was going to say one of the strategies for fasting, because some people do a four or five day water fast where it's like just water and electrolytes and that's it. And that's really hard. Um, uh, there is a product that I love that I write about in longevity, which is, uh, the, the prolon fasting mimicking diet, um, which is a little bit different, right? It's a five day diet, but like day one is like 1200

calories and day two through five is like 800 calories and it's nutritional. And the studies that they've done, if I understand correctly and you can amplify is it's actually more beneficial for you than just a water diet. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So the fasting mimicking diet, um, there you get a little bit of food, so it's easier to do because you're not completely not eating. So you get some olives and other food, so it's easier to do because you're not completely not eating. So you get some olives and other things. They also give you something to kind of feed your mitochondria energy without the sugar. And that can be helpful. And they've done some really good studies on it. You know that people lost body weight, right? They lost that kind of fat mass,

their waist circumference, their blood pressure went down, their cholesterol markers improved. So there are, you know, there's been some good studies around the fasting mimicking diet that have been very beneficial. You know, sometimes I use it, you know, in patients as well, just to kind of kickstart them. Often, people with autoimmune diseases and that kind of thing, the kickstart using the fasting mimicking diet is a really great way to kind of really get them

started, especially around elimination diets. We can get into that later. But so there is benefit. I think that, you know, some people, there's still some, you know, not sort of misunderstanding maybe around fasting and women versus men. Who does it work better for? I think all of that is we're still trying to tease it out. But there's a role for going for periods without eating and a role for eating. And so doing that once in a while can make sense. And so doing that once in a while can make sense. microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health. You know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health, your cardiac health, your metabolic health. So the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut? Let me take a moment to tell you about

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the first month of Seeds Daily Symbiotic. Trust me, your gut will thank you. All right, let's go back to the episode. Let me hit a few other key points on diet, what I eat, don't eat, what I drink, don't drink. So I've, I've eliminated all sodas, uh, with, with full disclosure, when I go see an Epic movie, I may have a Coke zero, you know, once or twice a year, but that's it. I've gotten rid of, of sodas. Uh, I don't want, first of all, sugary sodas. And then I don't want the phosphoric acid, uh, that, that comes from that. What are your thoughts on sodas? I would say don't. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, I can't really think of anything good that comes from drinking a soda,

whether it's a artificial sweet. Coca-Cola is definitely not going to sponsor this podcast. Okay. So sodas don't. Fruit juices? The same thing. Fruit juices are really all sugar. Fruit is different because fruit comes with the fiber, the other things that slow down the absorption of the sugar, but the fruit juices are pretty much all sugar. And if you wear that CGM and you monitor your blood sugar when you drink, say, orange juice, you'll probably notice it go really high. Yeah, spikes. All right, here's a controversial one. Yes. And too much fructose isn't too good either. All right. Alcohol, vitamin E-T-O-H. So, I mean, let's talk about alcohol. Is it eliminate? Is it partial? You know, there's a lot of people who swear by it. I have personally basically gotten rid of alcohol 99%. I will have a half a glass of red wine once every two or three weeks i'll have a shot of

tequila on a you know a special occasion um but otherwise uh i minimize my alcohol intake how do you think about alcohol any any benefits for you yeah you know there is a lot of people will say yeah their studies show that there's a protection of cardiovascular disease if you have a glass of red wine a day and it's the resveratrol. But if you really look at the evidence and the scientific literature, there's really no benefit from alcohol. You know, as sad as that makes me to say, there's nothing really good that comes from alcohol. It doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it once in a while, to your point, Peter, but be aware that alcohol is a poison. You know, it has a lot of damage.

It kills our brain cells. It kills our gut cells and causes, you know, this increased leaky gut, so to speak. It, you know, it takes a big tax on our liver to actually detoxify it. Even though it can make you sleepy, it doesn't actually improve your sleep. It actually disrupts your deep sleep and your different phases of sleep. There's really nothing good that comes from alcohol other than, you know, maybe in a social situation where you can. A social lubricant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Unfortunately, I mean, what I have noted is if you're, if you're trying to keep your,

your glycemic index down, tequila is probably the thing that spikes your blood glucose the least. Yeah. Sometimes you'll see that alcohol will, if you're wearing a CGM, alcohol can drop your blood sugar. That's very common, but that doesn't mean that, you know, it's lowering, it's not a good way to drop it. All right. One last topic here is water, water intake, which most people I think don't sufficiently do. That's correct. We have to get water. You know, our body is made up of mostly water and we need to drink that and replenish it. We lose water all the time just in evaporation and urination. It's really critical. I would say a vast majority of us are walking around dehydrated.

You know, so many times that we also confuse thirst with hunger. And a lot of times when we're thirsty, we're going to interpret that as hunger, and we'll eat instead of drinking. And so one of the things you should do is really anytime you feel hungry, number one, drink a glass of water. Do that first. If you're still hungry, then okay, go ahead and have something to eat. But absolutely drink the water first because a lot of times it's because you feel it because you're thirsty. Is there any downside to sparkling water, to carbonated water? Yeah. So, you know, I like it. You know, I've got my Pellegrino here. Um, I, you know, there, there's certain, um, soda water, for example, is quite salty. It will make

you feel thirstier. Um, but if, if you like the bubbles, you know, there's not really a huge downside of, and, and, uh, and, and, uh, alkaline water? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of conversation around that. A lot of controversy around that. I've yet to see some really good data around the alkaline water. You know, body alkalinity, fruits and vegetables are going to really help with that more than the water. If we think of our stomach, our stomach is very acidic. And so you want that hydrochloric acid, you want that acid in your stomach. And so I think the alkaline water is, you know, fine. I don't think there's harm.

But I think it's more important just to drink water, good clean water, you know, water is filled with toxins. So make sure it's clean. A lot of the water bottles, even, you know, getting the plastics is, is a challenge. It's a challenge getting good, clean water. So I'll wrap up on a few of the products I use here. I use Athletic Greens as a, you know, if I'm drinking water out of a, you know, a couple liter liter bottle just to flavor it and to get a little bit of additional nutrients, I'll use Athletic Greens. One of my favorite products that I introduced this year is Nutra 11, which is a hot protein drink in the morning. I'm addicted to it, bluntly. I replaced coffee with it.

We should talk about coffee. I get 20, I replaced coffee with it. We should talk about coffee. You know, I get, you know, some 20 grams of protein and it's very, it's flavor with monk fruit has zero sugar, zero carbs. And again, I'm addicted to it. Caffeine. I used to, you know, when I was in medical school, you know, I would five, six, seven, eight cups, you know cups keep me going. It was like I prided

myself on being able to down a few cups and go straight to sleep. But now I'm like, holy cow, I can't do that to myself. How do you think about coffee? Yeah. Now, coffee in and of itself is filled with antioxidants and a lot of really beneficial nutrients in coffee. So coffee is a good thing. Now, some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others, right? Caffeine can increase your heart rate, it can cause adrenaline, cortisol to be released. And some people can handle a lot more than others. Now, genetically, we can metabolize, we all have sort of different ability to metabolize coffee. It's the CYP1A2 gene, if you guys are interested. If you're the C in that CYP1A2, you will be a slow metabolizer. I'm a slow metabolizer. I love my caffeine, my coffee.

I used to think I was a fast metabolizer, but my genetics came back that I'm a slow metabolizer. And you and George were like, you know, one cup a day, Peter, that's it. And I tried to go to like one or zero a day. Yeah. So the idea is to, you know, limit it. If you're a slow metabolizer, just limit, kind of maybe stop drinking it by noon so that if you do, otherwise you'll have a lot of difficulty falling asleep. All right. So listen, I think we gave diet a pretty good run for its money and hopefully

people have taken away some, uh, some concrete, uh, things that you can do immediately. Uh, and it's not expensive to be clear. Uh, these are things that you can do immediately that are, um, that are available to everybody. And a lot of it is the way you change what you eat, when you eat, the order you eat it in. And I think it's one of the single most important things that you can do. I want to take a moment to tell you about Abundance360, my year-round leadership mastermind

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