Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. William Li on How to Beat Disease With Food

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

In this podcast, I interview Dr. William Li all about food. Specifically, we’re talking about the science of how your body defends itself and heals, and the role that food plays in that process. I��ve talked before about “superfoods” in my book Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger and here on the podcast, but in this episode, Dr. Li dives deeper into how certain foods can affect our body’s ability to heal and prevent disease through their effects on angiogenesis (the process the body uses to grow new blood vessels), the immune system, and the microbiome. We also talk about the specific chemicals in those foods that exert the benefits, how fiber works and affects the gut, foods that can hurt your microbiome, and more. You’ll also learn some of Dr. Li’s favorite foods to incorporate so that you can fit all of this scientific knowledge into your daily life. In case you’re not familiar with Dr. Li, he’s an internationally renowned physician, scientist, and author of the New York Times bestseller Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself. He’s also the president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that works to promote medical innovation and breakthrough technology to disrupt disease and improve world health. So, if you want to learn all about how food affects the body’s ability to thrive and beat disease, and what foods you should be eating on a regular basis to boost your health, listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 7:07 - How does the body heal itself? 11:50 - What are your favorite “super” foods? 14:01 - The key to remaining fit for as long as possible 16:06 - Foods that can prune away unneeded blood vessels 19:13 - What is the chemical in cruciferous vegetables that's so beneficial? 20:23 - How do you increase absorption of isothiocyanates? 22:50 - What is the microbiome, what effects does it have on your body, and what foods can improve your gut? 26:29 - How does fiber work? 30:20 - How can we support the immune system with food? 36:47 - What foods are harmful to the microbiome? 43:03 - What does the research say about artificial sweeteners and the microbiome? 44:09 - What causes controversy in food research? Mentioned on the Show: Dr. Li’s Book: Eat to Beat Disease - https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Beat-Disease-Science-Itself/dp/1538714620/?tag=mflweb-20 Dr. Li’s website: https://drwilliamli.com/ Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://buylegion.com/vip Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/beyond-bigger-leaner-stronger/

Hello friend and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I'm your host Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. And if this is not your first time here, if you like my podcast, take a moment and please subscribe to it in whatever app you are listening in because then you will not miss any future episodes. They will be queued up for you. And you'll help me because it will boost the rankings of the podcast on the various charts. And that will help other people find me in my work. Alrighty. So in this episode, I interview Dr. William Lee, and we talk about food. And specifically, we talk about the science of how your body defends itself against disease and dysfunction and heals itself from disease and dysfunction and maintains good health and good working order about the importance of eating a lot of nutritious foods. I've even talked and written about the quote-unquote superfood phenomenon and why I think it is mostly marketing puffery, although some foods are more super than others, maybe more

nutritious than others or special than others. If you have read my book, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, for example, you know what I'm talking about. But in this episode, Dr. Lee is going to dive into that topic a bit deeper than I have. He's going to talk about how food can help our body heal, how it affects the immune system, how it affects the microbiome and other vital physiological processes. We also talk about very specific molecules, specific chemicals in foods that exert those effects, that produce those benefits. We talk about fiber, how that works, how it affects the gut. We talk about foods that can hurt your microbiome, can hurt your gut health, and more. And in case you are not familiar with Dr. Lee, he is an

internationally renowned physician, scientist, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Eat to Beat Disease. And he is also the president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation. And we talk a little bit about what that word means, angiogenesis. And that organization, though, is a nonprofit that works to promote medical innovation and breakthrough technology to disrupt disease and improve world health. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you. We make getting fitter, leaner, and stronger paint by numbers simple by carefully managing every aspect of your training and your diet for you. Basically, we take out all of the guesswork. So all you have to do is follow the plan and watch

your body change day after day, week after week and month after month. What's more, we've found that people are often missing just one or two crucial pieces of the puzzle. And I'd bet a shiny shekel it's the same with you. You're probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there's something you're not doing correctly or at all that's giving you the most grief. Maybe it's your calories or your macros. Maybe it's your exercise selection. Maybe it's your food choices. Maybe you're not progressively overloading your muscles, or maybe it's something else. And whatever it is, here's what's important. Once you identify those one or two things you're missing, once you figure it out, that's when everything finally

clicks. That's when you start making serious progress. And that's exactly what we do for our clients. To learn more, head over to www.buylegion.com. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way, is not a high pressure sales call. It's really just a discovery call where we get to know you better and see if you're a good fit for the service. And if you're not, for any reason, we will be able to share resources that'll point you in the right direction. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want

to see more of it, and if you also want to finally stop spinning your wheels and make more progress in the next few months than you did in the last few years, check out my VIP coaching service at www.buylegion.com slash VIP. Hey, Dr. Lee, thanks for taking the time to do this, to come talk to me about using food to get healthier. Well, thanks, Mike. I think food is just another dimension to fitness. I totally agree. And it's something, you know, I talk about this in, I have a book for intermediate and advanced weightlifters. It's called Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And I didn't put this information in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, because there's already so much information in it. I think I do my best to make it all digestible and practical, but there's so much in there.

I was like, all right, I'm going to save the food optimization for the next book because a lot of the people coming into Bigger Leaner Stronger, this is the first time they have really thought about consistently even eating, let's say, fruits and vegetables and whole grains, right? So I just was like, let's say fruits and vegetables and whole grains, right? So I just was like, let's just let them get into the routine. And then let's talk about some more specific foods that they may want to consider incorporating into their diet now that they're used to eating well, so to speak. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I love the idea of sort of including and adding things. So much of the emphasis of healthy eating has been on elimination. I mean, and this has been going back 10, 20 years. And I think that's trained people to actually

react to this idea of healthy eating as thinking about deprivation, but it's quite the opposite. I think there's, I mean, as you and I have spoken about before, plenty of opportunity to select from things that everyone enjoys individually to be able to make healthy choices. This is in the scientific literature, but in the fitness space, people know this as flexible dieting. And some people have taken that to an extreme and their version of that is only caring about calories and macronutrients and not caring about nutrition. But if that's really not, if you look to the scientific literature, that's not what flexible dieting is. It's very much what you're saying. you're saying. And before we get to foods in particular, I wanted to hear from you. And I think people listening would be interested to hear a bit of the science of how the body heals itself. When I was on your Instagram page, you had commented that super foods, there's no individual food that is the heal all, there are no magic bullet foods, but the body is super in many different ways.

And especially in its ability to heal itself and to stay strong and resilient. What are some of the physiological systems that allow for that to happen or that make those things happen? Yeah, well, this all comes from my own background. I'm a physician, I'm a medical doctor, I study internal medicine. I'm also a research scientist, I'm a vascular biologist, which means I study blood vessels, which form our circulation, which feeds all of our cells and tissues. And of course, I wrote a book, I'm an author, I wrote Eat to Beat Disease, which really talks about the science of food as medicine. And my worlds all converge because I spent the first part of my career actually helping to foster the development of new biotechnologies using medicines and using new cutting-edge science to be able to bring breakthrough treatments for diseases like cancer or diabetes or even vision loss. If you can imagine, there are treatments now for

blindness that weren't available before, untreatable causes of vision loss. And now, not only can you halt vision loss in its tracks, about 10 to 20% of people, you can actually even reverse vision loss. So we can do things with medicines that we could never dream of before. And that includes, you know, treating cancer and healing wounds with diabetes. And that was really the first part of my career. And something I noticed as a medical doctor is that my patients would always ask me at the end of a visit, hey, doc, what could I be doing for myself? I mean, of course, I've given them diagnoses and written them prescriptions. And I realized that I was never taught what to eat, what people should eat in medical school. And I thought that was just wrong.

In fact, I was stunned to realize that I had so many other answers to people's questions, but not that one. And so I went back and it took me about 10 years to do this. And I went back and said, what can I do as a scientist to study what foods can actually do to help the body? An interesting kind of dimension on my story is that for a while, I actually was treating patients at the Veterans Administration. So this is the nation's veterans all being taken care of. Most of them were former active duty people. And the people that I were seeing in their 50s and 60s and older were terribly out of shape. They had obesity and lots of chronic diseases. And the thing that struck me when they asked me these questions about what they should eat was I realized that

all the veterans, when they were in their 20s, were cut, fit, buff specimens. They couldn't even serve unless they were in perfect fitness, right? And so it made me ask the question, whatever happened to them? Why didn't their bodies help them maintain fitness throughout their life? And that's what also made me realize that there was an opportunity to study what food does in the body, but to use my background with drug development. So when I study food as medicine, I mean, I literally use the same kind of thinking that have been used to develop cancer drugs to say, how do we activate the body's own physiological systems? What foods, you know, like when you hear about, you know, the so-called superfoods, you know, there's only one food and you just eat it

and close your eyes and it's going to create miracles for you. That's not so. You could never do that with medicines. In fact, the serious nature of drug development is that, you know, you need to understand how the body works. You need to kind of do science to figure out what you could do to trigger something beneficial in the body. And then it takes a decade to come up with it if you're lucky in biotechnology. But what was so amazing when I studied food in the same systems that we use to do drug development is that we found foods that had the same or even better activity than a lot of drugs and food doesn't need to wait. I always say that food has immediacy, something that, you know, we talk about now that your listeners actually hear about,

they can put to work right away. They don't need to wait. Yeah, that's exactly, again, what I talk about in this Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger book is, hey, if you're already used to now eating nutritious foods, here are some specific ones you should consider including. And so what are some of your favorites that you think that people listening should consider eating? And I'm assuming this would be a daily thing or just on a regular basis. Yeah. a daily thing or just on a regular basis. Yeah. So I get asked this question all the time, what five foods should I eat? Or what's the one single food I should eat? And I think that that has to do with the human nature of wanting to be reductionist, right? Just give me the magic bullet,

give me the silver bullet. Tell me the one thing I need to do. Yeah, the Pareto principle, right? Just what's the 20% that's going to give me 80%? I'll just ignore the rest. Exactly. And listen, I think, first of all, let me just tell you, I think when it comes to food, and I'm somebody who really enjoys food, I wouldn't say I enjoy eating, but I do enjoy food because I think food is one of these really intimate parts of our lives that tells us something about our background, our families. I mean, everybody can remember that smell in their mom's cooking from the kitchen when they're growing up that really shaped who they are. And so our food and our food choices tell us something about where we came from, where we grew up, our communities,

and of course, our culture. Because in America, anyway, everybody came from somewhere and they were probably influenced in some background way for that. And of course, as we go through life, we're traveling, we're visiting, we're learning, we're exploring, we encounter new things that shape our preferences as well. So when I get asked the question, you know, like, what are some of the things that I think everybody should know about? I sort of first say, first, understand how your body works and what health and fitness means. Our body is hardwired to keep us fit and our body is hardwired to keep us healthy. In other words, when we're born, there's machinery inside us that repels disease and helps us stay in fitness.

us stay in fitness. And what happens is that as we go through life, there's many forces in the environment, things that we do to ourselves, things that we don't even know are happening to us that kind of erode, they kind of pick at and can deteriorate our health defenses. And that's actually why we get sick. And so that the key to actually remaining fit for as long as we possibly can throughout our lives is to keep supporting and even boosting, activating our body's health defense systems. There's five of them. And this comes out of my research because we have been involved with drug development. I've been involved with drug development to find biotech things that can actually overcome diseases in five health defense systems. One is angiogenesis. That's how our body grows is circulation. We've got 60,000 miles worth of

blood vessels in our body. And these blood vessels bring oxygen and nutrients, whatever we're eating, it's our highways and byways of our body that actually bring it right to ourselves and our tissues and our tissues and our brains and our hearts. So we really need good circulation. What are some foods that actually can help our circulation? It turns out that healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids actually help keep the blood, the highways and byways flowing really smoothly. It turns out that there are natural chemicals in fruits. I know that you're somebody who believes in eating regular portions of fruits on a daily basis. The peel of fruits contains a natural chemical called ursolic acid. And I don't think your listeners

need to memorize what the particular chemicals are, but I can tell you, leave it to the researchers like me. We've looked at our salic acid and it helps our body develop more blood vessels to keep feeding our healthy organs. Now, the other part of our circulation as just one example is actually our body knows how to prevent too many blood vessels from growing because just like your lawn, if you have too much grass growing, you can can't play um a game on it right so you want to bring the gardeners into our lawnmower and you want to mow that lawn down and so our body knows how to mow down our circulation so it's got just the right amount not too many not too few i call it the goldilocks zone

and some of the you know like the not too hot not too coldilocks zone and some of the, you know, like the not too hot, not too cold for the bears and some of the foods that can actually help our body prune away extra blood vessels, the unneeded extra blood vessels, green tea can do it. Pomegranates can actually do it. There's a natural chemical in peaches. It's the summertime. I love peaches. Chlorogenic acid that's found in the meat of the fruit of a ripe peach. That's delicious. Olive oil has some of it. Allium like garlic and red onions have a lot of it as well. But even carrots, most people eat the orange part, the taproot that's under the ground. When you go to a farmer's market and you buy a whole food, whole carrot, you usually buy it with this big bushy green top on it. It looks like the tail of

a Maine coon cat. And it turns out that when we compared the carrot bottom with the carrot top, the carrot bottom actually has blood vessel pruning properties, which by the way, are good for starving cancers. Cancers can't grow without a blood supply. So carrots can actually help cut off the blood supply to little microscopic cancers that might be trying to grow. And then the top part, which most people don't eat, but I've learned to eat because you can make pesto out of it. You can actually juice it and you can put it into a smoothie. There's all kinds of things you can put it into a salad. Carrot tops actually have twice the amount of blood vessel, cancer-starving, extra pruning power. And so, this is just one of the five health defense systems. And some of the foods that can actually

help us achieve balance, that's really an important property. Yeah, that's fantastic. I didn't know about the carrot top. I'm going to stop throwing them away. Oh, yeah. No, no. I mean, besides the carrot tops, we've also done really interesting research looking at broccoli, broccoli, you know, broccoli in a farmer's market. And this is where I've gone, you know, when Indiana Jones goes to these wild lands to go look for, you know, holy grails and stuff like that. I go to the farmer's market to do my research and I pick up foods, whole foods, the way they come out of the ground. And when you buy broccoli, it's one giant long stem with a little bit of treetop, the florets. And so we studied the florets, which are

also have cancer starving, blood vessel pruning, right sizing the bloods of your circulation properties, but the broccoli stem has twice the potency as well. So again, food waste is something that I really emphasize people should try not to waste their food. And now we know that like different food parts, the anatomy of the food can be helpful too. Yeah. That's also good to know because I generally throw the stems away and I'm just eating the florets. And I regularly eat, I always include some sort of cruciferous vegetable. And that's something I talk about in this book I've been mentioning as one of the quote unquote superfoods.

I think everybody should try to eat regularly. And I'll usually rotate between broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. I'll just eat one regularly in different ways until I feel like switching to the next. Uh, but I'm going to make a little mental note to do something and cut up the stem and eat that too. Why not? Yeah. And you wanted a little, little kind of, um, performance tip with those, um, cruciferous vegetables that you just mentioned. So the, so, you know, I'm a scientist, so I think about the details and the details are the chemicals that mother nature, you know, mother nature has created her own pharmacy, not with a pH, but with an M. So, you know, all these natural chemicals that are found in our plants, which by the

way, most of those natural chemicals, which are healthy for our body, were also helpful for the plant when they're growing. Mostly, many times, it's actually as a natural insecticide to prevent bugs from eating the plant and chewing it. So it's got a defense role to begin with. When humans started to eat plant-based foods, those natural mother nature's pharmacy had another job description, which is to interact with our human cells. mother nature's pharmacy had another job description, which is to interact with our human cells. So those cruciferous vegetables that you're talking about, they belong to a class of

natural chemicals called ITCs, like India, Thomas, Charlie, and ITCs are isothiocyanates. Again, your listeners don't need to remember all the details on this, but here's the key thing. don't need to remember all the details on this, but here's the key thing. Isothiocyanates are found inside plant cells. So humans have cells, but plants have cells as well. When we eat the plant, we chew them and it's chewing that releases those natural chemicals, isothiocyanates. So the more you chew your broccoli, Brussels sprouts, the more you chew that, looks like what our mom said, like, don't just wolf your food, don't chew it. And you'll chew it if you actually prepare it in ways that are really tasty. So food should be tasty. Then you're chewing it, you're actually breaking down those cell walls and releasing the natural

chemicals. So you're not just flushing it through your system, you're absorbing it in your gut. a natural chemical. So you're not just flushing it through your system, you're absorbing it in your gut. That's a great tip. I even go as far as chopping up my garlic and then leaving it sit for 10 to 15 minutes or so before cooking it just to preserve some of the allicin. I'm sure you're all familiar with that. It's interesting that there's actually research on that point in particular, that if you eat your garlic raw or if you are going to cook it, let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes before and it's even more nutritious, so to speak. actually are pretty smart in many ways. And so when we begin, quote, preparing our food, whether it's instinctively or we learned over trial and error, cutting, chopping, mixing, allowing food to rest, all those kinds of techniques that you just described, like cutting the garlic and letting it rest for a little bit, it actually helps the food prepare itself a little bit better. So I think that we have this instinctive way.

Everybody talks about inventing new foods, right? And there's all these kinds of new, I don't know, engineered foods that are out there like the plant-based meats, et cetera. I actually think that it's really worthwhile going back and looking at some of those old ways of doing things. Now, obviously, not with a lot of butter and a lot of unhealthy things. I think we can put today's filter and remove a lot of this, but a lot of old techniques like chopping and sitting, marinating, fermenting, those all turn out to actually be activating our health defense systems. Interesting.

Yeah, that's something I have not looked very much into. Interesting. Yeah, that's something I have not looked very much into. I've heard these things, but I wouldn't be able to describe it nearly as expertly as you would. Can you talk to us about the microbiome? You mentioned this in the IG Live, and it's something that I've written and spoken a bit about, and it's something that is getting a lot more attention these days. And I would be curious as to your take on maybe if you want to quickly explain what it is and some of the ramifications of a healthy and unhealthy microbiome. And it's not just, oh, you're going to have stomach aches. And then maybe some of your kind of go-to foods or the foods that you like to promote for improving the health and function of the microbiome. Yeah, you know, this is the microbiome is one of these, again, it's become a very trendy term that people are talking about all the time.

So I'm actually going to, you know, share with you and your listeners what I know as a scientist. And so the first thing about when you, when you know, you're talking to a scientist is, is a scientist will, an honest scientist will always tell you that, you know, there's a lot we don't know yet. Okay. And so what I, what I'm going to tell you about the microbiome, I will tell you, this is a brand new field. It's very exciting, very important, much more important than we ever thought. But we're just at the tip of the iceberg. And so when you hear people talking about the definitive microbiome diet or whatever,

we hardly understand what it is. But let me just tell you what we do know. We know that our body is made of about 30, 40 trillion human cells. And what's remarkable is that while we've always known that we've got bacteria in our skin and our scalp and everything else, and in our gut, because feces is actually filled with bacteria, what we didn't realize is the stuff that gets flushed, actually, some of those are the remnants of really healthy bacteria. And so when you count those bacteria in our body, because it starts with just saying what it is, the microbiome, turns out in the gut,

we've got 39, about 39 trillion bacteria that live inside our gut. So I told you, we've got about 40 trillion human cells. We've got 39 trillion bacterial cells. So we're not even fully human. If you think about it, we're an ecosystem that's part human and part bacteria. And there's even a term that describes an organism like us humans that is not made of only one living cell, but made of different types of organisms. And that term is called a holobiont, a holobiont. So it's not like a cyborg. It's not like a Terminator, but a holobion basically refers to an organism like a human that's part human cells and part bacterial cells. So here's what we do. Cyborg would be a little cooler, but. It is true. That's coming, right? So that'll be kind of like the next level of things.

But with our gut microbiome, our gut bacteria is all throughout from our mouth and our tongue all the way down to, you know, the tail end of us. And most of it's in our colon, which is on the back end. This healthy gut bacteria, when we eat food, our body absorbs most of it. So think about it. You eat a broccoli, a piece of broccoli or a spoonful of broccoli, forkful. You're going to absorb the nutrients. You're going to absorb some of the plant proteins.

You're going to absorb a lot of the good stuff, the vitamins. And then the fiber that's in that broccoli, some of it will get absorbed, but there's a lot of fiber in plants that don't get absorbed. And that fiber just kind of goes down into your lower gut, into your colon. Now, when I went to medical school, what I was taught, what we were all taught, is that the fiber just stimulates your bowel so that you go regularly, so to speak. But now we know that that's not quite true. That fiber that our human cells don't absorb goes to feed our bacterial selves. So that

fiber that we don't absorb feeds the bacteria. The bacteria kind of descend on it and chew it up. So every time we eat, we're like feeding our pet bacteria inside our body. And that bacteria eats the stuff that our bodies don't absorb. And I'll come back to this in a second in terms of harmful foods. And then when they eat the fiber, for example, they chew it up. As part of the metabolism of the bacteria, they kick out these metabolites. So they're the things that when you feed them, they produce these metabolites. These metabolites are called short chain fatty acids, and the bacteria release them into our bloodstream, our healthy gut bacteria. And what do they do? These metabolites lower inflammation. They speed up healing. They boost and improve our immune system, which can actually help us fight cancer. And then most remarkably, and again, I talked about the tip of the iceberg, but most remarkably,

we're beginning to realize these gut bacteria and the metabolites that they create activate our brains. There's a gigantic nerve in our body called the vagus nerve. It's just one of many nerves that connects our brain, our guts to our brain, but they signal our brain. Our gut bacteria is connected to our brain and they kind of ring the bell and they prompt our brain to release neurotransmitters like dopamine, like serotonin, like oxytocin. And that actually controls our mood. So our gut actually is connected to our brain, which is connected to our mood, which is connected to our behavior.

So some of the foods that I think that people need to know about are the same foods that we want to take good care of our gut bacteria. Foods with fiber, plant-based foods. Cruciferous vegetables are a great example, but fruits as well. I love fruits. Kiwi is a great source of fiber that feeds our gut bacteria. It's packed with fiber. Mushrooms also are a great source of fiber to feed our gut bacteria. The fiber in the

mushrooms called beta D glucan really is a strong immune booster. And of course we've all learned, all learned last year, how important a good immune, healthy immune system. Yeah. That's going to be my next question for you. Yeah. So, so our microbiome does a lot of stuff. Um, and then fermented foods are, are actually deliver the bacteria right to our gut. So when you actually have foods like yogurt or kimchi or sauerkraut, you are taking, again, old school preparation of foods, fermentation, and the healthy bacteria that winds up in the edible bacteria in these foods that we actually swallow, populate our gut and help to build up that 39 trillion population in the ecosystem. That's fantastic. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you.

You already were segueing into the next question, which was going to be about the immune system. Because, of course, I mean mean really the first point of of just helping your your vascular system work better that's also relevant to covet right because correct me if i'm wrong but my understanding is it's it's really a vascular disease more than a respiratory one and if you want to quickly comment on that and then and then i i would love to hear your thoughts on the immune system maybe some of basic function, and then how we can support it with the right foods. Yeah, we'll talk about I'll come but I'll come to COVID in one second. But you know, the whole thing about our immune system is actually formed, our immune system is formed while we are in the womb. So when we're inside our moms,

that's when our immune system actually forms. And our immune systems form from stem cells, which means that our immune system continues to renew itself. So it's kind of like the gift that keeps on giving if we take care of it properly, which is why it's so important to take good care of our immune system. Things that actually, before talking about what boosts our immune system, let's talk about things that take down our immune system. If you eat foods that are way too salty, over time, that extra salt actually takes down the immune system. If you eat foods that have too much sugar, that hyperglycemia, like you wear out not only your pancreas, but you also wear down your immune system.

And so too, if you eat foods that are, have too much saturated fat, you know, people who are in that so-called, you know, excess Western diet where you're eating, you know, the gigantic two inch or three inch T-bone steaks all the time, those things take down your immune system. That's still a thing among paleo and, you know, paleo has now kind of branched off into different subsets, but many forms of, I don't even like to call it the paleo diet because that's how people know it. But as you probably know, it's based on pseudo history and a lot of pseudoscience. It's an okay, some of the variations are an okay way to eat because they would basically come down eating a lot of the stuff you're talking about. There would be some strange restrictions like, oh, but no potatoes or no sweet potatoes, no oatmeal, stuff like that, which is unnecessary. But you have these days also a lot of people following the carnivore diet, which I'm sure you're familiar with, where you just eat a bunch of meat.

And it's usually a lot of fatty, tasty meat. And that's also a diet that I do not recommend. And, uh, but a lot of people are doing it right now. Yeah. Well, you know, listen, there's a lot of these fads and trends that are all, um, based on what I call kind of good intentions, right. Um, people that really want to find better ways. And so I never sort of, um, criticize the intent. But what winds up happening is, you know, there are scientific principles that either hold up or don't hold up. And our body is still a mystery that we're kind of peeling the layers of the onion back and to figure out.

So what we do know is that lots of red meat, saturated fats, high salt diets, high, um, uh, hyperglycemic diets. It doesn't mean sugar or salt's bad for you. It just means that too much of anything knocks you out of balance and actually can take down your immune system. But other things that we do also take down our immunity, like sedentary lifestyle. If you're not active, you're, if you're not physically active, you're not exercising in some way, shape, or form regularly, your immune system is down. And so I think that the idea of immunity is something we're born with. We carry it with us. It's up to us to take good care of it and keep it in good shape, just like our muscles. And the foods that actually can boost your immune system that I really enjoy, blueberries contain anthocyanins.

Anthocyanins are a natural dye that makes that nice, dark, purplish, bluish color. Blackberries have them. Anthocyanins, pomegranate has a lot of anthocyanins. Even dark chocolate has anthocyanins as well. Cranberries have them as well. So the fact of the matter is that cherries do. Those anthocyanins can actually increase certain functions of our immune system called T cells. Most people don't have any appreciation of how complicated the immune system is. When I was in medical school, it was one of those things when I was starting to learn it.

Um, there's like a textbook on immune immunity. We have to read like in two weeks and to have a test on, I mean, it made my, it made me glaze over it because it was so complicated. So I try to explain to people today that your immune system, it defends you. And like an army, uh, it's like, it's like an army, but it's an army of super soldiers and every type of cell in the immune system, every component is like its own type of super soldier that has its own weapon. It's trained to have its own, um, uh, skills and they all work together as an army to kind of defend you. Um, so blueberries, oh, you know,

something that you might like to know is, um, broccoli, which you like to eat, also upregulates or stimulates or boosts your immune system. An amazing study that was done by researchers in the Southeast of the United States and in young, healthy people, they wanted to study the flu vaccine. This is old school, you know, get your flu shot kind of thing. But for people who don't like jabs, you can actually get a flu vaccine by a nose spray. And so they took some young kids in their 20s, you know, kind of out of college, and they gave them a flu spray, the equivalent of a flu shot. And then they gave half the people only the nose spray with the vaccine. Then they gave the other and a placebo drink.

And the other half, they actually gave the no spray with the flu vaccine, but they gave them two cups every single day of a shake made with broccoli sprouts. So I'm not talking about raw food. I'm just talking about broccoli sprouts that you can find in a grocery store because you don't have to do anything special with them, they just put them into a, and made them into a smoothie. And it turns out that these isothiocyanates that we talked about that boost your immune system, what they found in these young people just getting a flu vaccine and compared to

the placebos that those who had the vaccine plus broccoli sprout shake had an amplification of their immune response against the flu by 22 times it's really amazing so this is a human study uh super practical food and a great way to actually boost your immune system yeah that's awesome and you know mentioning a couple of the foods that brings the immune system down made me think, are there foods that you would say, yep, these are not good for the microbiome? Things that, again, the point, of course, like you said, is to not completely avoid them. You don't have to completely avoid the fatty steak. You just probably don't want to eat like, you know, 16 ounces of it every day. Are there any foods though, that if eaten consistently make the microbiome, make it, make it harder for it to do its job? Yeah. Well, so first of all, you know,

I think you'd agree with me on this. If we all spend most of our time, let's just call it 80% of our time taking good care of our health defenses. We can afford, you know, our shields are up. We can afford to take a few hits and we'll bounce right back. And so really the whole idea is to practice good, healthy lifestyle habits, including a good, healthy diet most of the time. And, you know, and it's not that hard. It's really, really practical, but there are some things that I would say the research has shown time and time and again,

that they're not good for your microbiome. And if they hurt your microbiome, your good, healthy gut bacteria, they hurt your immunity and actually make your body more inflammatory, which doesn't set you up for all kinds of diseases, which could include helping cancers, microscopic cancers to take off. So nobody wants that. So what are some of these foods that research science has shown is not good for you, not good for your microbiome and therefore not good for your immune system? Well, first of all, heavy duty alcohol, like if you are heavy drinking is good, bad for almost every aspect of your body, including your microbiome and including your immune system.

I, you know, I don't think that needs to be said, but, but other things that people tend to kind of not appreciate as much as that processed meats. Okay. These are the, you know, the, the packed with preservatives are packed with all kinds of chemical preservatives. And I'm not talking about the kind that they, you know, hang up to dry in Italy, you know, which people don't eat that often, even in Italy. But the stuff that, you know, like the lunch meat stuff that's going on that, you know, that you see in every deli counter that gets sliced up and put

into a sandwich every single day from the time you're a kid, those preserved meats and those chemicals actually really injure your microbiome. Your gut bacteria, they like to eat the fiber and they like to eat other things. They're pretty adaptable, but preserved meats, they don't like. It really changes the ecosystem from good towards bad. The other thing that actually is harmful to the microbiome that's been shown now by research is, is artificial sweeteners. So I don't drink soda, sort of as a general rule. And, and, and I've never drank diet soda, but I know they're really popular.

So I try to tell, you know, friends and family members who, you know, I'm watching them pick up a can of diet soda and swigging it down on a hot day. I'm just saying, listen, it's important to get hydrated, but you know that the artificial sweeteners in a lot of these diet sodas actually harm your microbiome. And because your microbiome actually helps you regulate your insulin and your glucose sensitivity, actually helps you regulate your insulin and your glucose sensitivity. Even though you're having a diet soda to avoid that extra, quote, calories that could make you fat, so to speak, the reality is you're harming your microbiome. People who drink a lot of diet soda actually gain weight because you're messing up your microbiome. And it also influences your immune system.

And then the final thing is really that's been now studied that harms your microbiome and hence your immune system is if you are on a staple diet of ultra processed foods. So, you know, people talk about ultra processed foods all the time. It's really hard to define it. I would say ultra processed foods tend to come in a box. They come to be made from big companies. They tend to have ingredient lists that, you know, take up half the size of the box and starts with things that you can't pronounce. And so I sort of say for anything that you buy in a grocery store, pick it up, look at the ingredients, see if you feel comfortable with those ingredients. And if you can't even pronounce stuff that's on there, then that's probably, that should send a red flag to you that there might, that might be an ultra processed food.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's, um, you know, I, I have said for a long time, if you just stick to most of your calories coming from foods that you cut and prepare and cook yourself. And then if you want to a lot, a minority of those calories to, even if it is an ultra process, let's say you really like Oreos and you're like, you know, I'd love to have like a couple of Oreos every day. I don't see anything wrong with that. So long as you are getting most of your calories from all of these nutritious foods that you're talking about. And certainly in addition to that, if you're also exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy body composition, you don't have to be ripped or jacked of course, but just healthy. And, and then with that comes the flexibility that we've talked

about and the sustainability where then people, they, they go, yeah, I could do that. I can, you know, I have all these tasty foods to choose from that are nutritious and I can have my, my Oreos, maybe not even every day. Maybe I just want to have it every from that are nutritious and I can have my Oreos, maybe not even every day. Maybe I just want to have it every other day. Okay, I can do that. Right. And that's the whole idea of being prepared to go out into the world to go live your life. And like I said, life is full of trials and tribulations and just there's a tax on our

body just for being on planet earth. Um, we're exposed to radon, we're exposed to ultraviolet radiation, not to mention all the stuff that's in the environment that, you know, we put on there with manufacturing, but listen, you know, we, we have to sort of live to enjoy our life. I used to always tell my patients, life is for the living. And so you really need to kind of prioritize the things that, that you value that are also healthy for you. And if you can align those things, and especially comes to food, like my mantra, my motto is love your food to love your health. If you can align the things that you love with the things that are good for you, that's perfect. Completely agree.

And before we wrap up, I wanted to follow up on this point of artificial sweeteners in the microbiome, because I know that's controversial. I know some people would push back and they would say, no, research has been overblown. And yeah, you know, in rats, maybe that's the case. But even though we share 99% of DNA, we're not just big rats. And if you look at these other studies over here, human studies, it indicates that that's probably not true. What are I understand this would this could turn into a long this could be a podcast episode unto itself. But I thought it would be because I know some of the people listening have heard some of those things. So I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to to share some of your thoughts about some of these counterpoints that I'm sure you've heard. Yeah. Well, first of all, as they say, whether something is a cure or a poison isn't a dose, right? So it has to do with how much exposure you actually have. And it is clearly true in a laboratory that artificial sweeteners actually damage, are actually quite damaging for the gut microbiome. But you know, listen, as somebody who's done cancer research, we've cured

cancer in mice over and over again, but we still have a great deal of difficulty getting those types of results in humans. And so I'm the first to tell you that you have to sort of respect what the science says in a lab, and you have to take a look at what actually happens in the clinic. Well, it turns out that when it comes to food, part of the controversy that occurs is at the moment that something comes out that's bad about a certain food that is easily available. What happens is that the companies that make those foods fund research that's biased that actually comes to the opposite conclusion and then and there starts the controversy and so i think that

you know the thing the first thing to realize is that um you know the poisons in a dose so if you have a little bit it's probably okay if you have a lot probably not okay for these artificial sweeteners number one number two Number two is that we have found repeatedly in the lab that actually that artificial sweeteners do damage the microbiome. And if that's a risk that you're willing to take, whether it holds out in humans, then it's up to you. We're free to make our own choices. But it turns out also that there are human studies that are randomized, double-blind, crossover clinical trials that have been done, published not so long ago, looking at non-nutritive artificial sweeteners to take a look at their effects on the gut microbiome in

humans. And they looked at the feces, they looked at the stool, and they found that there were changes that were not favorable in people that were actually having these non-nutritive sweeteners as well. So again, I mentioned to you about the microbiome, we're just at the tip of the iceberg, and there's nothing really definitive about anything about the microbiome. We just need more research on it. But hey, listen, I'm somebody that would rather take the risk towards something healthy and good for me because I'm focused on being as fit as I can and doing everything possible. And if I've got choices to make, I would like to be mindful enough to make a good choice rather than a bad choice. And so it's one of those things that once you know the information, you can't unlearn it. You just have to act on it.

Yep. And what is a little versus a lot? I know some people are going to be wondering, because certainly people who are having maybe some of these chemicals regularly are now wondering, am I having too much? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is what's not really known. I mean, Well, I mean, I think this is what's not really known. I mean, what is the optimal dose of, I mean, frankly, not only an unhealthy food, but even a healthy food, right? So like, again, the cure is in the dose as well as the poison. So, you know, can you overdose on garlic? Absolutely.

In fact, I had a classmate of mine in college who, uh, was a garlic fiend. I remember this, this guy used to walk around and you can fetish to have, it is a crazy fetish. His room smelled like garlic. And when he came into the dining hall, you could smell them like from the other end of the dining hall. Right. And, um, uh, and I remember he used to just go on and on about garlic and, and he would

eat like six cloves at once, you know, like it was like they were Tic Tacs. And, and I heard some years later that he died of kidney failure because of all the garlic he actually ate. So we know garlic's good for you. But an overdose of anything isn't so good for you. And I think that this comes back to something that we started this conversation about, Mike, which is it's up to all of us to really take reasonable approaches to be as fit as we can. We put as much focus and attention as we can to the things we prioritize. At the end of the day, it's all about living our life with reasonable balance.

I think that's true for good things as it's true for bad things. Moderation is what's key, I think, to having a long, healthy, fit life. Fantastic. Well put. I completely agree. And just to echo your take on artificial sweeteners, that's one of the reasons, that's really the primary reason why my sports nutrition company has not used, we've used natural sweeteners and natural flavoring and natural coloring as well. No, no artificial sweeteners, particularly I wanted to stay away from sweeteners and food dyes. I don't know of any research to indicate that artificial flavoring is an issue, but I figured, Hey, if we're going natural, we'll just use natural everything.

And I started Legion, I believe this is year seven now. So back then, I was pointing to research that was coming out and there was rodent research and it was speculative. And I acknowledged that. I said, hey, look, I don't know if this is going to be a problem. I don't know how this is going to pan out, but I'm betting and real money because in some cases it costs me three, four, maybe upward of $5, certainly three, $4 per bottle to use natural substances where if I were to switch to sucralose and artificial flavoring, I mean, it would go down to probably 50 cents or less per bottle. That's how much of a premium I'm paying to stick to the natural ingredients. And I was saying back then, look, think of your average person who's like

into fitness, who takes supplements. They're having probably two to four scoops of protein powder per day. They're probably having something pre-workout. A lot of them like to have something in the middle of their workout. They are probably going to have something after their workout. You have all these different products that they take. Then you throw in a greens supplement, or you throw in a couple of others that people like to take. So now on average, I mean, you might be getting six, eight, 10 plus servings of ACE-K or sucralose or aspartame per day. And back then I was saying, I'll bet you when the research, uh, if we fast forward, I was saying five, 10, 15 years from now, there's going to be more and more evidence

that that's probably not a good idea for your, for your gut health. And, uh, and then that of course has other ramifications. And so I was saying then, and I have the same type of philosophy as you do. I don't want to, I don't see the need to take that risk with my body. And I, and I, uh, with supplements, I was not taking supplements that were maybe I would have, I think they're a little pre-workout I was taking, which I would take like half of a serving. Um, one, not even every day was artificially, uh, sweetened. And I wasn't concerned about that, but I would not want to have that much artificial sweetener and certainly not food dyes on a regular basis for myself. So why would I put it in

products and sell it to others? That would be completely unethical. Yeah, no. And I love sort of, I mean, you obviously have really good intuition. And we do have to think about the nature of research, which builds our knowledge going forward. And that's one of the things that made me want to do things like create a masterclass and create an online course and offer it to people periodically. Because, I mean, as a researcher on food, on diet, these things have such immediacy. I feel like there's an opportunity as we learn new things to be able to get it out. And it's an opportunity to deliver information. It's kind of like science news that people can use.

And that's really why I kind of created my masterclass. And people who want to find out about my free masterclass, they can sign up or sign up for an online course I teach about. You can go to drwilliamlee.com, D-R-William-Lee-L-I.com to find out more. But I appreciate really being able to share and kind of mind meld with you on these. It sounds like a lot of our philosophies are very, very congruent and convergent, and would love to be able to share and kind of mind meld with you on these. It sounds like a lot of our philosophies are very, very congruent and convergent, and we'd love to be able to keep having this conversation. Yeah, yeah. This was great. I really appreciate you taking the time. And why don't we also wrap up with, again, you mentioned your book earlier, but for people who have forgotten, if you want to share that with them, and then if

there's anything else you want them to know about, let's definitely let them know. And then if there's anything else you want them to know about, let's definitely let them know. Sure. Well, listen, my book is called Eat to Beat Disease, The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself. It's a New York Times bestseller. You can find it online on Amazon and anywhere that books are sold. I actually did a update on it during the pandemic to include immune boosting recipes. So even if you have the book, there's

actually a new edition that's got more information in it. I put 25 new recipes in it. And the best would actually keep up with what I'm doing, which is really science-based and new research-based on food as medicine. Just come to my website, drwilliamlee.com, drwilliamlee.com.R. William Lee, L.I. dot com, Dr. William Lee dot com. And, you know, I really love to invite people to come up to sign up for my free masterclass. You can find out about it on my website. And if you want to take an online course, you can learn more about that there, too, as well. Love it. Love it. Thanks again for taking the time, Dr. Lee.

Thank you, Mike. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. Thank you, Mike. people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.