Something You Should Know - How to Stop Postponing the Important Things in Your Life & How Food Fights Disease

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

The scent of lavender is supposed to be calming. It may also be the scent of trust. I begin this episode by explaining how lavender can make you appear to be more trustworthy – and why. http://rd.com/advice/relationships/habits-make-people-trust/ I bet you have things you really want to do but somehow never get to doing them - right? There are trips you probably want to take or goals you want to accomplish but you don't. So what’s stop you? Sam Horn author of the book Someday is Not a Day in the Week (https://amzn.to/2X94qqn) joins me to explain why people keep procrastinating on those important goals and she offers a simple and effective way to stop putting them off and start doing them.  What is it about some people who just walk into a room and take control? How do they send off those signals of, “I’m in charge here”? A lot of it turns out to be body language and I’ll explain how you can do it too. http://www.businessinsider.com/tricks-for-reading-peoples-body-language-2016-3 What if the foods you eat can actually target certain diseases? There is some fascinating new evidence that 200 specific foods can actually do just that according to renowned physician Dr. William Li. Dr. Li has served has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, Tufts University, and Dartmouth Medical School and he is author of the book Eat to Beat Disease (https://amzn.to/2IjehXk). Listen as he explains the fascinating research that shows exactly which foods fight which diseases.  This Week's Sponsors -Ancestry. To get 20% off your Ancestry DNA test go to www.Ancestry.com/something -BetterHelp. Get help with a counselor you will love at www.BetterHelp.com/SYSK -Quip. Get your first refill pack free. Go to www.GetQuip.com/something -Skillshare. For 2 months free access to over 25,000 classes go to www.Skillshare.com/something -ADT. To get a secure smart home designed just for you go to www.ADT.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, if you want people to trust you, smell like lavender. It'll make sense when I explain it. Then it's finally time to stop postponing those important things you really want to do. We can prevent regrets if we replace the I can do it later with how can I do it this week or this month or this year. And we will never regret doing all those things. Calling us will only regret not doing them sooner. Also, how to project power and confidence just by the way you hold yourself. And food as medicine.

There's fascinating new evidence on how food fights disease. Right now, doctors are not giving prescriptions for food, but in the future, they may be. In the meantime, when you're at home, the health care you can do for yourself is the food that you choose to eat three times a day. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily.

Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit,

the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hey, welcome. One of the things that interests me about podcasting is how people listen and when people listen. And we know from analytics, we know that most people listen on mobile devices, either on their phone or their tablet. But more and more, we're seeing an increase in listening to this podcast anyway on smart speakers. And I think one of the reasons that happens is it's so easy to listen on a smart speaker. You just say, Alexa, play something you should know. And here's something you should know from TuneIn. Today on something you should know. And smart speakers are becoming so popular. I mean, I remember, I don't know, a year or so ago, I wasn't even that sure what a smart speaker was. We now have four smart speakers in the house and we use them all because they are so easy to listen to. And they're so easy to get information from, from the time, the weather, the sports scores you're looking for. So it's one of those things where once you have a smart speaker, it's like you wonder

how you ever lived without it. First up today, if you want to appear more trustworthy to other people, it might be a good idea to surround yourself with the scent of lavender. Because when other people smell it, they're more willing to trust the person they're dealing with. In an experiment, 90 young adults were separated into three groups to play a game that tested interpersonal trust. During the game, one group was exposed to no scent at all,

the second group to the scent of peppermint, and the third to lavender. The ones who smelled lavender were significantly more willing to entrust money with someone else than people in the other groups. Researchers say the olfactory nerve, which affects smell, is connected to that part of the brain that controls how we trust others and that lavender has a calming effect, whereas peppermint is more stimulating. And that is something you should know. We all have things in life that we say we want to do. Trips we want to take, things we want to accomplish, people we want to spend time with.

And somehow those things never get done. Why? If they're so important, why are we not doing them? And then there are a lot of things taking up time in our life that we'd really rather not do. So why are we doing them? How do we fix this? That's the question I'm about to put to Sam Horn. Sam is a speaker and writer of several books, and her latest is called Someday Is Not a Day in the Week. Hey Sam, so this idea of doing what you want to do, doing the important things in life and eliminating the things you don't want to do, doing that when you say it out loud,

it just makes all the sense in the world. So why don't we do it? Why don't people just naturally stop doing what they don't like and do what they think is important? Yeah, oh boy. See, you know, this is about procrastination. And the Buddha said, the thing is, we think we have time. See, that's the allure and the temptation of someday, is that because we're busy, we think we'll do it later, as if we're going to have more time later. Do you know anyone who has more time than they used to? So once you realize that now is the new later, then you stop putting things off automatically.

In fact, there's a little test that we can use to stop procrastinating on even little things like chores and so forth. Want to hear it? Next time you're about to put something off, ask yourself these four questions. Number one, do I have to do this? Number two, do I want it over so I'm not feeling guilty about it or worrying about it? Number three, how much time does it take actually? And number four, the big one, will it be any easier later? Okay, so with these four questions, here's a wonderful success story of someone who put them into practice on the way home from the workshop. She said, Sam, I'm driving along. I see a gas station.

I glance at my tank. It's almost empty. I think I should get some gas. She said, guess what? I said, I glance at my tank. It's almost empty. I think I should get some gas. She said, well, guess what? I said, I'll get it tomorrow. And then I asked myself, wait a minute. Do I have to get gas? Yeah, I'm the only one that drives this car. Do I want it over so I don't have to worry about running out on the freeway tomorrow morning? Yeah. How much time does it take to get gas? Five minutes. Will it be any easier tomorrow? No. She said, I pulled in. I got the gas.

She said, I got home. I'm fixing dinner. I opened the refrigerator. There's an out-of-date yogurt on the shelf. What do I think? I think, I'll throw it away later. I closed the door, start walking away. Those little four questions popped up in my mind. Do I want to throw away that yogurt so it doesn't start smelling up the refrigerator? Will it be any easier later? It takes five seconds to throw away the yogurt. It really can help us overcome the automatic postponement of things for no good reason. Yeah. Well, who hasn't done that? And I've heard that advice too, that, you know, if something's only going to take two minutes,

why put it on a list of things to do later? Just do it. Just get it over with. See, you know, Mike, what you're just bringing up is the burden of the hassle of the accumulated postponed task. Henry Miller said, life for most of us is one long postponement. And you know what? It feels bad. We're carrying away this burden, and it is a path to regret. In fact, I'll always remember I was speaking at a convention, and the gentleman who introduced me had had a heart attack the year before. Well, he had survived it, but he said that what he couldn't stop thinking about on the way to the hospital,

having the procedure and so forth, is all those things he had promised himself. You know, he and his wife had been talking about going to Hawaii for years and had always put it off because they were so busy. He said, you know, he had promised a family reunion, But there was always reasons, you know, oh, this kid has a graduation, oh, this kid is in grad school. And then he realized that we can prevent regrets if we replace the I can do it later with how can I do it this week or this month or this year. And we will never regret doing all those things. Calling us will only regret not doing them sooner. There does seem to be, when I think about this, some element of, yeah, I want to do these things, but maybe I don't really deserve it. Maybe I'm

being too good to myself and at the expense of others. And that's why I'll put it off till later when I figure I do deserve it. Mike, you've just pinpointed is that many people feel it's selfish to do something that puts the light on in their eyes. And a very interesting cause of this is coming out. Do you know that young people in their 30s and 20s are actually putting off marriage? And the reason is, is because many of them saw their parents sacrifice themselves for their kids. You know, the parents didn't have any interest. They were at every softball and soccer game, every dance recital, every piano recital. And they think, well, I'm not ready to sacrifice myself for my kids, so I'm not going to have them right now. So I'm asking everyone out there is that do you believe that putting other people first is the right thing, the noble thing to do?

Are you leaving yourself out of your own story? And where did you get that message? And is it a healthy message? Do we really want to model for other people that we never do what we want, that we always do what other people want? It is not selfish to do one thing a week that puts the light on in your eyes. It's smart. I'm not talking about doing it all the time.

It's just that so many of the people I've met interviewing people around the country is that they are self-sacrificing themselves for others because they think it's the responsible, right thing to do, and what they're modeling is self-sacrifice, which comes with too big of a price. Well, that's an interesting take on, people are putting off marriage, as if it's either or, that if you get married and you have kids, now you have to go to every softball game and you can't do anything for yourself. And there are plenty of people who manage to juggle both of those things and are quite happy. See, I'm so glad you're bringing that up because I hope people imprint these five words. What we accept, we teach.

So see, and what we model, we teach. So as you said, there are people who have determined that as an adult, it is my responsibility to model for my kids that you can raise children and you can have your own interest and hobbies, and that it is not an either or, it's both. And that by making sure that, yes, I come to some of your games and your sports and your school activities, and I also have my own interest, that is what we're teaching our children, that everyone counts, and that you don't give up everything you want to do and only do what the people around you want to do. So it does make you wonder why this is so hard. I mean, lots of people will hear you say this, most of them will do nothing, because it's too hard to change the routine, or it's,

they don't think this applies. I don't know what it is, but most people don't change. You know, Mike, once again, you keep pinpointing, you're taking us deeper into the cause of this, because only when we get crystal clear about these habits, these habitual ways of living, do we look at them and change them? In fact, John Cotter out of Harvard says, do you know what the number one prerequisite is for change?

A sense of urgency. And see, if we don't have a sense of urgency, then once again we're assuming we can do it later. Now here is a way to give yourself a sense of urgency. It's called an S-E-E. That's a significant emotional event. And most S-E-E's are dramatic or traumatic. You know, we have a health challenge. We lose a loved one. We get divorced. We get fired. And see, we come face to face with our mortality. And we realize that the clock is ticking and that we need to do things differently now.

Well, I think why wait to have an actual S-E-E? Why not have an imaginary S-E-E so we can get the epiphany without the pain, so we can get the urgency, so we're motivated to do things differently now instead of later. Now, I've got a favorite success story of that. Do we have time to share it? Sure. So let me remind people, though, that I'm speaking with Sam Horn, and she is author of the book, Someday Is Not a Day in the Week. You know, one of the reasons you listen to this podcast, I suspect,

is because, you know, you're the curious type. So you are the perfect person to discover Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with more than 25,000 classes in just about everything. Today we're discussing procrastination, and later on in the podcast we're going to be talking about food and nutrition, and Skillshare has a lot of great courses on both of these things, as well as classes in social media marketing, mobile photography, creative writing, even illustration. In fact, it was the mobile photography course that interested me, so I'm taking it, and already the pictures I take with my phone are so much better. If you're a Something You Should Know listener, you must like learning.

So I have a great offer for you. Two months of Skillshare for free. That's right. Skillshare is offering Something You Should Know listeners two months of unlimited access to 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com. Again, go to skillshare.com to start your two months now. Join me and millions of other students already learning on Skillshare and get two months for free. That's skillshare.com.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. So Sam, you wanted to share a success story you like, so go ahead and do that.

Great. Well, I was doing a workshop in Waikiki, and one woman, what she wasn't doing that she wanted to was being adventurous. And I said, well, like, what's an example? She said, well, here I am in Hawaii, and she said, I haven't stepped foot in the water because I saw Jaws when I am in Hawaii. And she said, I haven't stepped foot in the water because I saw jaws when I was a kid. Big mistake. I said, okay, the way to hack a fear is to make the daunting doable. She said, what do you mean by that? I said, you don't have to go in the ocean, the deep ocean where you have to worry about sharks. I said, do you know about the natatorium?

It's only three feet deep. It's where Duke Kahanamoku used to train for the Olympics. And it only has one small break in the seawall, so the surf can't get in and neither can the sharks. She said, okay. I said, now, another way to hack a fear and to give yourself urgency is to put a date on the calendar. Because one of these days is none of these days.

I said, when are you leaving? She said, two days from now. I said, tomorrow is the day. I said, now set your clock for 6 a.m. She said, why 6 a.m.? I said, because the sun is going to come up over Diamond Head at 6.30. And you want to be at water's edge, about to step into that natatorium water, when the sun peaks up over Diamond Head at 630, and you want to be at water's edge, about to step into that natatorium water when the sun peaks up over Diamond Head. She said, why is that so important?

I said, because experiences are more meaningful when they're metaphorical. I said, now there's one more way to hack a fear. I said, here's my card and my number. I said, promise me you will send me a picture of you doing this so we can celebrate it together. Guess what, Mike? Two days later, I get this smiling picture, Beverly at Water's Edge. And so it goes to everything you're saying.

If you want to hack a fear or this sense of complacency and give yourself a sense of urgency is make the daunting doable. So you don't have to go back to college and get your degree. Just make a phone call and sign up for one class. Make it meaningful and metaphorical. Maybe you can picture all of your family there when you finish that first class as proof

that you can make your life more of what you want it to be now and not someday. You know, put a date on the calendar. You're going to call today before the, you know, the end of business day. You're going to call that local community college and find out a class. And if you do those things, you get yourself out of inertia. And see, when we're in inertia, nothing happens, right? Just set something in motion and you will have momentum. And now you're on a roll. And it does take that change in thinking. You have to stop doing the someday I'll do this and instead do it. Aviation pioneer Chuck Yeager, who actually was the one who broke the first sound barrier, he said, at the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results.

And I'm asking every single person listening to this, someday at the end of your life, you're going to look back and you're either going to have reasons, reasons why you didn't do things, reasons why you put things off, or you're going to have results, and you're going to have either regrets or results. And here's a quick example. Yesterday I have this Someday Journal, and the day's quote was from Stephen Covey, and he said, we are not a product of our circumstances. We are a product of our decisions.

And I looked outside, and it was a beautiful day outside, and I asked myself, what am I doing inside? So I put on my shoes, and two minutes later, I was out the door. And I'm walking along. I'm moving and I'm grooving. I'm infused with energy. I'm feeling so lucky to be alive. And one of the things you're talking about, Mike, is that if we stay with our habits, we're often staying sedentary. We're often staying inside.

And inside is where the reasons reside. Get outside, because when we decide to get outside, now we're feeling energized. Now we're seeing other people doing things. We are motivated by what they're modeling, is that life starts outside. And you're thinking, Sam, it's still winter. There's still snow for some people.

Even that is going to motivate us more than staying inside where the reasons reside. That is another way for us to get the energy and the motivation to do something different instead of just staying stuck, sedentary, sitting in our head, living with regrets. I wonder though, and I've had this conversation with other people about the idea of people who say they want to do things, but maybe they don't really want to do things. Maybe they say they want to write the great American novel, but they never get to it. Maybe they say they want to take a trip around the world, but maybe they don't really. Maybe they just like saying it and believing it.

We talk about dreams, and I really believe that we're never too old to have new dreams, and that the key, instead of just talking about it, is to just take one step to try it. Martin Luther King said, you don't have to see the whole staircase to take the first step. So see, instead of thinking I'm going to write the great American novel, that's so daunting. You know, what if it's not any good? What if we're not a very good writer? Oh my gosh, it's going to take so long. So see, we talk ourselves out of even trying. Do what James Rollins did. You know, I had the privilege of helping to start and run the Maui Writers Conference for 17 years. And you may know James Rollins. He's a New York Times bestseller. He has more than 18 New York Times bestsellers. But that's not how he started.

He was a veterinarian in Davis, California. And he came home on his 40th birthday and he was exhausted and he fixed himself a TV dinner. He sat down in front of the TV and he's flipping through channels. There's Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins says, what's your dream? He said, if you don't get up off the couch right now and do something to move it forward, it's never going to happen. So instead of just saying, but I'm busy, but I have my own, you know, he got up, he went over, he called his local Barnes and Noble. He asked if they had a reader support group. Every Tuesday night they did. So he put it on the calendar and instead of trying to go it alone, he went it together. Because in a group with other people, sometimes we don't have much energy.

We get to jump on the bandwagon of their energy. And I will always remember that he was standing at our opening reception. We had something called the Manuscript Marketplace, where you had a guaranteed look by a top agent and editor. And he hears someone talking about who is going to win the manuscript marketplace, and that not only is this person going to win, but that he's going to introduce him to his agent and to his editor, both at the conference. Well, he turns around.

It's Terry Brooks, sort of Shannara, great sci-fi fantasy writer, and he's talking about his manuscript. And James says it never would have happened if he didn't get up off the couch in that moment of inspiration and call and get support and put himself in a community instead of trying to go it alone, where he probably would have run out of discipline, run out of perseverance, and run out of his own conviction out of perseverance, and run out of his own conviction that this is something he wanted to do. So for the person who has just listened to you and been motivated by what you're saying, that yes, you should do the things that

you want to do, but where do you start? If you've been living your whole life postponing everything, how do you begin this so that you actually start moving towards doing the things you want to do? I'm going to recommend you GTS that stuff, Google that stuff. And here's a quick example of what I mean is that if you just get an inkling, you don't have to commit to it right now. Just what is something that calls you or that you think might be fun or that you haven't tried before that you'd like to try. There was a woman who moved to New York, and she had been an actress in her high school plays, in her community theater, and so she moved to New York with dreams of being on

Broadway, and she said a year later, she is still sleeping on a friend's couch. She's still working as a waitress. She's still going to audition after audition and being rejected, and she felt so lonely, and she heard about something called Daybreaker, and she decided to go. Now, Daybreaker is in almost every major city around the United States, and it was started by Radha Agrawal. She and her twin sister, Mickey Agrawal, were out dancing one night. And there was a bouncer at the door, and a lot of people were on substances, and it felt dangerous.

Well, they were entrepreneurs, and they said, okay, we're going to do the opposite of this. What if we had a dance party in the morning instead of at night? What if instead of substances we had a dance party in the morning instead of at night? What if instead of substances, we had green juice? What if instead of a bouncer, we had a welcome party? Well, this young woman went to a daybreaker, and she said she made more friends in two hours than she had in almost two years in New York City. And she said she found her new home, and she never would have made that switch. She probably would have gone back to her hometown with her tail between her legs if she hadn't just reached out one time, if she hadn't GTSed, you know, community

and found this dance party, and it only cost $25, and it changed her life. So what I'm reaching out to people, Google that stuff. If you like dogs, just put in, you know, where's a local dog park, where you can walk your dog at the local dog park instead of just walking around the block. If you like horses, maybe you can volunteer. Maybe you don't have to own a horse. You can't afford that, but maybe you could volunteer at the local therapeutic horse center. I guarantee you if you Google and put into search something that you're thinking about trying,

whether it's music or whether it's art or whether it is gardening, you're going to find something in your community. Just go once. You don't have to commit to going for the next year or signing up for six months. Just go once. Get your bandwagon out of your bedroom, and I bet people will jump on it, and you can get that momentum that carries you forward into a life you like instead of one you regret.

And who doesn't want that? Sam Horn has been my guest. She is a speaker and writer. Her latest book is called Someday is Not a Day in the Week. There's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Sam. You're welcome, Mike, and thanks so much. I appreciate having the chance to do the show with you.

People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed,

but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. I think we all have a general sense of what it means to eat healthy, and that there are nutrients and things in food that keep us functioning, and they keep our organs and cells working, and we're not really sure exactly how it works. It's all a little bit vague, but it all works.

And now it seems that some of the foods we eat can do much more than that. They can actually help to prevent and even fight disease, some serious disease. And this is relatively new information. Dr. William Lee is at the forefront of all this. Dr. Lee is a pioneering scientist and physician who has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, Tufts University, and Dartmouth Medical School. He's author of the book, Eat to Beat Disease. Hi, doctor. So talk about your work in all of this, how this is all coming together. For the past 30 years, I've been working, looking at common denominators of health and disease. And the one thing we've discovered is that health is not simply the absence of disease, but rather it's the result of hardwired natural defenses that are inside our bodies that are firing on all cylinders hard at work

from the time we're born till we take our very last breath. Some of those defense systems, and there's five of them that I think are particularly important because foods can activate each of these defenses. All right, so let's start with that. Let's tackle those five things. The first one is angiogenesis. That's how the body grows blood vessels. Our circulation blood vessels bring oxygen and nutrients to every cell of the body, protects us against sickness. The second one is our regenerative system, our stem cells. We were taught when we were kids that salamanders and starfish regenerate. People don't, but that is

now turned on its head because scientists have now discovered that we do regenerate from the inside out using our stem cells and foods can activate that too. The next defense is our microbiome, our healthy gut bacteria, which is really filling our bodies. We've got 39 trillion bacteria within our bodies. So you could consider that we're infected but not sick. In fact, quite the opposite. These bacteria communicate with our organs and even our brains to help keep us healthy. Our DNA, which is much more than our genetic code, actually protects us against harms from the environment, whether it's ultraviolet radiation at the beach or fumes we might actually inhale at a filling station or putting gas in our car.

And then our immune system is our final health defense system. And we've always recognized that as protecting our health, but we now know that our immune system is more powerful than we ever imagined because there are breakthroughs in cancer research that show if you give a cancer patient an immune therapy that doesn't kill the cancer by itself, but just lets the body do what it wants to do, you can wipe out cancer completely. And what's really remarkable is that there is real science that shows how more than 200 foods can activate one or more of these systems to boost our health. So how so? Give me an example. For example, soybeans, right? So soy foods have gotten a scary reputation in recent years because many people believe that a plant estrogen that's

found in soy might cause breast cancer. Well, we know that human estrogen can actually fuel breast cancers, some breast cancers, but it turns out that plant estrogens are nothing like human estrogens and in fact can counter them. So soy can actually be used to fight cancer, including breast cancer. What I read about in my book is a study of 5,000 women who already have breast cancer and it was found that those women who ate more soy actually had better survival and less chance of having the cancer come back. And so, how does the soy work? It actually cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. So, one example of how foods can help us right-size our defenses to protect us is soybeans that actually cut off

blood supply. So, it removes too many blood vessels that are feeding cancer. Another sort of example of that is, in fact, tomatoes. And people have now begun to question whether tomatoes are a good food or a bad food because they might or might not be related to the nightshade family. Well, look, tomatoes are an amazing source of vitamins and a naturally occurring chemical called lycopene. Lycopene is anti-angiogenic, meaning that it cuts off the blood supply to feeding cancers. And a study of almost 47,000 men showed that those who ate two to three servings of cooked tomatoes, that's tomato

sauce per week, had a 30% reduction in their risk of developing prostate cancer. So here you have two of the biggest fears of men and women, where diet actually activates our health defenses. Okay, so here's the thing that always concerns me and I think confuses people into inaction, because they don't know what to do with this information. So does that mean that I can eat a bowl of spaghetti sauce once a month and I'm fine? Do I need to eat 16 bowls of it every day for the rest of my life?

And is a little soy sauce okay? Or do I need to eat a plate of soybeans every day? So how does it, what's the prescription? Well, what you're talking about is exactly the confusion that exists out there in the public right now, which is that we've been so trained over the last decades on the latest superfood or the super diet and looking for that magic pill or magic bullet. And there are people writing diet books all the time that claim to cure disease. And so precisely as you brought up, there is no magic food that you should be eating all the time. If you take a look at the 200 foods I put in my book and no magic food that you should be eating all the time. If you take

a look at the 200 foods I put in my book and pick the ones that you love and figure out how to incorporate those into your diet over the course of a week or even the course of a month, you're adding good things to your diet that actually support and activate your health defense systems. That's the new direction of where food as medicine is going. We're not talking about deprivation. We're not talking about subtraction or limitation. We're talking about adding foods to our diet, starting with the foods that we already like. And so then what about the people who eat horribly and live to 150 years old and they've been, you know, smoke a pack of cigarettes and have a fifth of gin every day? I mean, there's always those outliers that seem to defy everything you're

saying. That is a great question. And in fact, it fits what I'm saying about the health defenses precisely. What I will tell you is that modern research is discovering that some people seem to have extraordinary health defenses, that regardless of what you throw at them, their hardwired defenses seem to be able to fight off all those harmful effects better than other people. Because, of course, we also know the people, there are some people who are jogging and running and juicing every day

who wind up developing horrible diseases. And so the question is, well, why did they not actually, why did they succumb and why didn't they actually survive despite the fact they were, you know, doing Pilates? And the answer really is it's not about the food. It's about how our body responds to it. It's about our body's defenses. So some people have stronger defenses than others.

And the goal is really to try to boost our defenses based on our knowledge. And so if your immune system is down, we should try to boost it. If your circulation can be improved, now there are ways to actually improve our circulation. If you're at risk of cancer, for cancer, the science says that we can actually knowledgeably choose foods among many that we can add into our system that can actually tip the scales a bit more in our favor than against the favor of the disease. So again, no single prescription, no magic bullet, but really it's a lifestyle of choosing wisely. If you are the theoretical person who's eating a, quote, healthy diet, lots of fruits and vegetables and

nuts and lean meats and that, is that okay? Or do we need to drill down and get more granular than that? Broadly speaking, you know, I think the general wisdom is whole plant-based foods are good for us, and that's true. But we're actually now beginning to understand what's in individual foods. What's in a strawberry? It's an acid called a lactic acid. What's in a coffee? It's called chlorogenic acid. That's actually good for us. What's in, you know, leafy, dark green leafy vegetables?

We know what that is as well. And we begin asking deeper questions. So for tomato, the lycopene that I was mentioning to you, is there some varietal tomato that's got more potent lycopene than others? And the answer is yes. For example, researchers have been looking at which tomato varietals have the greatest amount of lycopene. You go to a farmer's market and you're offered, this summer, we're offered such a huge variety. Which one do you choose? It turns out the San Marzano tomato from Italy, even the ones in the can, are packed with lycopene. It turns out the cherry tomatoes

actually have the lycopene of a big tomato just packed in a more concentrated, smaller package. Those are excellent. And there's an orange-colored tomato called the tangerine tomato that's also very rich in its lycopene as well. So we can drill deeper. And we also know that if we're leaning forward into choosing our foods, some foods mix well together. So for example, the lycopene in tomato, the good stuff is actually dissolved in fat. It's a fat, we call a fat soluble bioactive. And so when you actually cook a tomato with olive oil, then you eat that together, you wind up absorbing more of the lycopene into your bloodstream. So, yes, we can drill deeper.

We're beginning to do that science now. But at the end of the day, most people aren't interested in the science. They're interested in something that tastes good, that they can afford, that they can find. And that's what eating the beet disease means, is that regardless of your socioeconomic status or where you live or what you do for a living or what your culture is, you can find food that science is telling us can help activate our circulation, our stem cells, feed our healthy bacteria, protect our DNA, and activate our immunity. And does food fight disease once you get it, or are we just talking about preventing disease so you don't get it? Right. So the schism between is it medicine or is it food, I would tell you that it's both. Now, I'm a medical doctor that's actually spent most of my career helping to develop cutting-edge biotech treatments for unbeatable diseases.

And so I know firsthand just how powerful medicines can be. And yes, foods can be even more powerful because we can prevent disease itself. And that's, you know, one of the promises of having a healthier diet started earlier in life. But even if you're sick, think about it. Your doctor will give you a prescription or the hospital will do something for you. But when you're at home, the health care you can do for yourself is the food that you choose to eat three times a day. Right now, doctors are not giving prescriptions for food, but in the future, they may be. In the meantime, health care is actually what happens between visits to the doctor's office. That's what I

could tell people, is that that's the decision you can make yourself. And so if you're sick, besides the medicines you're getting, you can actually choose foods that activate those defenses. And nowhere is this more pressing, for example, that, I mean, every patient that I've ever seen who has cancer is always interested in what foods they should actually eat. Science is starting to provide some of those answers, and it's not definitive. There's a lot more work to be done. But I think that, you know, we're beginning to enter this era where food becomes a tool in the toolbox. And if you do this, how potent is the food in the sense that if I identify that I need to eat soy more often, how much more often? And if I stop, do I lose all the benefits or does it linger or is it changed from food to food or what? All important questions, some of which are remaining ahead for researchers to answer.

But the idea is to eat diversely among those foods that activate your health defenses. So it's, again, trying to get away from this idea that, like, pick one food and eat it all the time, but rather, what are those foods activating? And if they're activating your immune system, can I choose among different foods that I like that will all activate my immune system? In terms of how long these effects last, here's something amazing. In young Young people drinking some fresh orange juice actually can start to protect your DNA against damage within 20 minutes after you start drinking it. It's pretty amazing. You start seeing these changes so quickly. Another study that I cite

talked about eating kiwis, whether you eat one kiwi or three kiwi a day, that also help to protect your DNA but also boost your immune system. I'm not saying food is a magic answer. I'm saying it's an important tool in our toolbox. What you just said, though, brings up a really important issue and a frustration for a lot of people. There are so many people who are concerned about nutrition and obesity who are pounding the drum against fruit juice. And you just said orange juice will help protect your DNA. So do we not drink it because of all the sugar or do we drink it because it protects our DNA or do

we throw all this out and go have a Coke because nobody can really decide? You know, when you talk about individual foods, we tend to actually have a reductionist view. So you think about fruit juice, you think about the sugar, and that's got to be bad because sugar is bad for you. But really, if you think about a whole plant-based food, they may have sugar in it. They have a lot of sugar in it. A great example I give is not just only orange juice. It's like a mango. It's not even a juice. It's a fruit. A lot of people are afraid of the sugar in a mango. But in fact, what they don't realize is that along with that sugar in that mango, when you eat it, you actually have fiber, you have vitamins, you have bioactives. There's at least two bioactives that boost your immune system, can even target cancer stem cells,

help feed your gut microbiome. And so by taking a larger picture view, I think we start to see that although there may be some things that we want to have a little bit less of, on balance, there may be more components of the whole foods that we eat that can actually help support our defenses. I think people are so used to the advice of cutting out foods, that getting rid of unhealthy foods is what's so important, and you're not talking about that at all. You're talking about adding foods to your diet. And so which is more important? I mean, obviously, you think adding foods is more important, but what about the concern of reducing or getting rid of unhealthy foods as a way to be healthy and live a longer life?

The idea that I try, I found most successful for people is that, is not to tell them to cut things out, but to say, hey, you should add this. And if you make more good decisions over time than bad decisions, then there's less room for the bad foods that you're eating and more effects of the good foods that you're eating. And so it is a balance for sure. It's a net balance. When you look at all this food, is there anything, because it's never jelly donuts and french fries, it's always asparagus and broccoli. Is there any food that like falls into the category of pleasurable that actually is good for you? So you might be surprised, for example, that hard cheeses actually have been shown to reduce cancer risk. Why? Because some of the hard cheeses like Gouda, Emet-Aller, Jarlsborg cheese, they're actually made with a bacteria starter that has a side effect of the bacteria kick out a special kind of vitamin called vitamin K2. This vitamin K2 actually cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers.

It's anti-angiogenic. And so surprise, when you go to the EPIC study, looking at thousands of patients, you see that people who eat the equivalent of about two slices of hard cheeses, like you see in hotels in Europe, small amount of cheese, actually they have a lower risk of lung cancer. Some other surprises, for example, dark chocolate. As if anybody needs another reason to love chocolate, there's been a research study done at UCSF that actually studied in people with coronary disease. So they've got blockages in their

heart blood vessels that if you actually give them dark chocolate that are packed with these flavonoids, these are the healthy bioactives, those bioactives that eating that chocolate can coax out their stem cells that help them to repair and regenerate their blood vessels and improve their blood flow. How much do you need to have? Well, in that study, it was having two cups of hot cocoa made with dark chocolate twice a day for 30 days.

And so, again, these are not sort of generalizable. This is the data. Take a look at it and sort of make your own conclusions. But pretty convincing to me as a research scientist, as a doctor, that food does have an effect on our body. Well, this idea of food is medicine, I think, really appeals to people. It would appeal more to people if jelly donuts really were a medicine. But nevertheless, I think it's very exciting.

Dr. William Lee has been my guest. He is a scientist and physician who has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, Dartmouth Medical School, and Tufts University. And his book is called Eat to Beat Disease. You will find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Dr. Lee, thank you. My pleasure, Mike. Thank you for having me on. Have you ever seen someone walk into a room and immediately know that they're the one in charge? Well, there's a couple of reasons for that that are largely about body language, erect posture, gestures made with palms facing down, and just generally open and expansive gestures.

The brain is hardwired to equate power with the amount of space that people take up. Standing up straight with your shoulders back is a power position. It appears to maximize the amount of space you fill. Slouching, on the other hand, is the result of collapsing your form. It appears to take up less space and projects less power. Maintaining good posture commands respect and promotes engagement, whether you're a leader or not. And that is something you should know. If you subscribe to this podcast, it's just one less thing you have to remember to do

because the episodes will be delivered right to your device, and you can subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribing is always free. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers.

It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.