The Liz Moody Podcast - Is Inflammation Pseudoscience? Top Stanford Doc Shares The REAL Research + What You Should Do Today

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

I received a podcast review that basically said because a guest talked about chronic inflammation it was a "MAHA podcast." So I decided to go straight to one of the top inflammation researchers in the world and ask him directly: is chronic inflammation actually real, or is it pseudoscience?  My guest is Dr. David Furman, the Director of Stanford Medicine's 1000 Immunomes Project (the largest longitudinal study on aging and the immune system in the world) and an Associate Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and his answer might surprise you. We play a game of Myth or Fact and bust some of the biggest inflammation claims all over the internet, from gluten and dairy to seed oils, and microplastics. We also get into how to actually test whether you're inflamed, the surprising link between chronic stress, depression, and your immune system, why your coffee habit might be doing you a favor, and exactly what to do about all of it if you have no money to spend. 🎧 What you’ll learn: • What the best anti-inflammatory tools and habits are • Why 80% of people over 40 are inflamed • The surprising foods that drive inflammation • The inflammation-stress and inflammation-depression connection • One free thing you can do tonight to start lowering inflammation immediately Studies mentioned in this episode: • iAge / Thousand Immunomes Project (inflammatory aging clock, CXCL9 biomarker): Nature Aging paper via PMC / PubMed • Chronic inflammation in the etiology of disease across the life span (Nature Medicine, 2019 — the paper linking inflammaging to major diseases) • NLRC4 inflammasome / caffeine study (why coffee drinkers had less inflammation): Nature Medicine, 2017 • Chronic stress / caregiver glucocorticoid resistance (the cancer-caregiver study): Miller, Chen & Cole, PNAS 2012 • 2014 depression inflammation study: Mostafavi et al., Molecular Psychiatry 2014 • Kitavans tribe free from stroke and heart disease study: PubMed / PubMed For more from Dr. David Furman: • https://davidfurman.com/  • https://www.buckinstitute.org/  • https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/david-furman  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • AG1: visit DrinkAG1.com/LizMoody and get an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 for FREE in your AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order. • Evlo: go to EvloFitness.com and use code LIZ to get 6 weeks free today. • IQ Bar: text LIZ to 64000 for 20% off.  • OneSkin: go to OneSkin.co/Liz and use code LIZ to get 15% OFF for a limited time. • Pique: head to PiqueLife.com/LizMoody for 20% off + a FREE Starter Kit on $100+ of subscriptions.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 446. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted to do this podcast because inflammation is something that has been taken over a little bit by the pseudoscience part of the internet. You are one of the top researchers who studies inflammation in the world. So I wanted to ask you directly, chronic inflammation. Is that real or is it pseudoscience? Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. and we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. All right, Dr. David Furman, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Liz, for having me.

I had a podcast review that said that because I talked about inflammation on the podcast, it was like a maha podcast. You are one of the top researchers who studies inflammation in the world. You are a Stanford professor and director. So I wanted to ask you directly. We're talking about chronic inflammation here, not acute inflammation. So not the type of inflammation when you get a cut, you get inflammation. It makes the cut go away.

But chronic inflammation. Is that real or is it pseudoscience? No, it's absolutely real. There's been hundreds, if no, thousands of papers demonstrating that chronic inflammation exists. It does accumulate with age and it causes damage to tissues and organs. So in one sentence, why should I be worried about inflammation? On the one hand, we have a lot of epidemiological data showing that inflammation is associated with shorter lives and more incidence of chronic diseases.

On the other hand, we know when you have high inflammatory burden in your body is damaging your organs and it's accelerating aging processes. So we should care because we want to prevent disease from happening or at least try to push it as far as possible in your life. course. What percentage of people are inflamed? Do we know that? Yeah. So over 40 years old, right, in that population, around 80% are inflamed more than what you want it to be, more than the optimal state. I wonder if that's why so many people think it's pseudoscience is because if everybody has something, you're like, is this a real thing? Or is this just something that, since everybody has it, people can use it to sell me things and get my attention and sell me remedies, et cetera, Right. We have a natural aging process, but it can be accelerated. And that's where it becomes problematic. And there's around 20% of a population by looking at the 1000 Immunums Project, which is a longitudinal study of aging, that really are more protected from inflammation. That doesn't mean they're not suffering from the same inflammatory insults that we have during our daily lives. But there are other things that prevent them from having

those consequences in their health outcomes. Like what? Anti-inflammatory processes. So there's the other side of the coin, right? You can be inflamed, but if you have high anti-inflammatory molecules in your body, that counteracts the effect of inflammation. And why would some people have high anti-inflammatory molecules in their body? Because of the way they decided to, say, treat their bodies.

There are a lot of different mechanisms that trigger anti-inflammatory processes and that can prevent inflammation from going awry. Why do you think inflammation has become such a buzzword for the pseudoscience community? Well, I think you are right in that because it's so common, right? And it's really not super well defined. And that's where the Thousand Immunums Project comes very important as a. hub for can we define new biomarkers of inflammation, right? Because of this kind of ill-defined term, there's a lot of companies and a lot of supplement out there that are claiming our anti-inflammatory

and immune modulators while there's very little data to support that. I was looking at posts where people were talking about lowering inflammation. A lot of people are using it synonymously with weight loss and bloat and they'll be like, I drop 10 pounds of inflammation. And we're going to talk about the relationship with weight and inflammation a lot later, including GLP1s. But I think that the way people are using it is like, oh, I didn't need to lose weight, or I'm not talking about weight loss. Like, I'm just dropping inflammation over here. So it's okay that, for instance, I'm in a really small body.

And then I took GLP ones and now I'm in a much smaller body. I'm just dropping inflammation over here. I'm not dropping weight. I think it's more complicated than that. Right. If you're not measuring inflammation, you cannot claim you're lowering it. So let's talk about that. Like, how do we know?

if we are inflamed and how do we know if anything that we're doing is actually decreasing that inflammation? Historically, we've seen inflammation as just one thing, right? The benefit of inflammation. And I'm going to talk about that in a moment, which is you cut your finger, you know, it gets red, swollen, warm, and there's repair mechanisms that happen. There's also with that inflammation, immune cells are recruited to the side of infection and that gets better over time, right? And they should resolve in about, say, seven to eight days. So that's when, like, you have a cut, it gets red and swollen around the cut. That's your cut getting inflamed. Exactly. And you can measure that inflammation. There are canonical markers. And if you go to

your doctor, they'll probably say, you know, see reactive protein or interleukin six, which is another protein that is classical marker of inflammation. When we study aging and the effect of this environmental triggers of inflammation, which is very different, the markers are not the same. It's not the interleukin 6. It's not the CRP. These are other markers. And that's how we really set up to study inflammation in this longitudinal study of aging, which is the Thousandemianum Project at Stanford School of Medicine. So in that study, we recruited a thousand people. We fought over the years. Now it's year 17. So it's been a while since we started. And then we used to... a very unbiased approach to study hundreds of thousands of things from blood.

And then we use AI and machine learning to try to identify which are the biomarkers of this systemic, silent inflammation associated with aging. And we found some. These are not the IL-6 or CRP that I was just alluding to. There are other molecules. One of them is called CXL9, that when you have it in elevated, concentrations, it affects your circulatory system. Another one is very well known. It's eotaxin one that accelerates aging in the brain, right? These are different molecules, different from the

ones that we've been measuring for decades. But there is a test. It's called the inflammatory age test. And that's what we developed at Stanford. Can I go get that? Yes, yes. There's a company, one of my companies that commercializes this. And it's a blood test? It's a blood test. And so it would be like called into a lab and I would go get it at the lab. Exactly. Is it really expensive? No, it's $300. Okay.

Yeah. You receive a kit and then you put the device in your arm and then that gets a blood draw of a half a mill of a milliliter and that gets sent to the lab and the analysis is done. I'm loving this. It's like a revolution and we have a sponsor for this podcast, Rhythm Health. You put it in your arm and they take a bunch of blood. You did it home. I love it. It feels fake, like it feels like Theranos. Because it doesn't hurt and you're getting all this

information. You don't have to go to the icky lab and have the person like stab you with a needle. So I just want to be really clear because I've got a bunch of blood tests and I thought because my C-reactive protein was low, I wasn't inflamed. Should I be counting that for anything? We run a secondary study and the past part of the A Thousand Immunums Project where we recruited individuals that were very healthy. And they had the C-reactive protein all below one. and no risk factors for cardiovascular disease. And inflammatory age, which is the metric I was just alluding to, increases with age. It increases in people with heart problems.

In these healthy population that you wouldn't have picked up because they don't come to the clinic, they're healthy, supposedly. But if you look at the test, it's actually telling you something more, that they are at risk, that they have left ventricular heart per trophy, which is something you don't want to have, that they have vascular aging, which is something you also don't want to have because it's a risk factor for heart attack. There's a lot of stuff going on words that I haven't heard before. Tie that into the C-reactive protein for me.

C-reactive protein is a marker for acute inflammation. It's an acute reactant that goes up when you are reacting to an infection, for example. Now it's used more and more in cases of suspected infection. Cardiovascular research has shown that it has very poor predictive power. So even in a group with completely low levels of CRP, inflammatory age could be higher and it will define your future health. So should I be looking at that for anything? I think so. Absolutely. CRP? Yeah. Oh yeah. Like am I just discounting that now on blood tests? If there is a suspected infection, you should look at, you know, cereal active protein, your levels of different, lymphocytes in blood, but not for general health and wellness, no. Okay, good to know.

Online, a lot of people talk about the signs of inflammation, like you're bloated or your gums bleed. Are there any signs that we can look for outside of blood tests that were inflamed? Not for age-related inflammation, no. If you are suffering from poor sleep and you know you have poor sleep, right? If you are treating your body in a very non-very conscientious way, right, if you're smoking and if you're overweight, you know you're going to be inflamed. That's pretty obvious. Those are physical external markers of inflammation. But other than that, you wouldn't tell. It's silent. It's inside the body. It's not that you get red or anything like that. You wouldn't view bleeding gums as a sign of inflammation? Not for chronic inflammation.

now. Bleeding gums is acute inflammation, response to an infection. Okay. So that's the C-reactive protein, acute inflammation. I think the thing that people are trying to figure out is like, I don't feel good. I don't know why I don't feel good. How do I know if the reason that I don't feel good is because of inflammation? There is a direct connection between feeling well and having inflammation or not having inflammation. When you're stressed, for example, you know, the chronic stress that you know is causing harm, it is associated with inflammation. Social stress, I'm referring to. So there's been this very large studies showing that, for example, in caregivers of cancer patients,

they don't have cancer. They're just normal people that are under a lot of stress. There are anti-inflammatory processes that their function is to suppress inflammation that I mentioned before. In these individuals, when you take the cells out of their bodies, this anti-inflammatory system, that's called glucocorticoid system, is shut down. So the receptors of the glucocortico's in the cell are internalized. So that means that social stress is causing elevated glucocorticoid system that is activated

in a chronic fashion. And then you are inflamed because you don't have... the elements to combat that inflammation. Your anti-inflammatory system is no longer working. Okay, so your glucocortozoid system is an anti-inflammatory system. Yes. And that gets shut down during times of chronic stress. Interesting.

So then any other inflammation that your body is exposed to, it just can't fight it off. Exactly. Essentially. That's exactly right. And you're not feeling well. You feel that stress. You probably are inflamed, right? That's with social stress.

And then depression. We published a paper in 2014, where we found in major depression disorder that in 500 people with major depression disorder and controls, that inflammation was up the roof. Is it a cause or a consequence, right? We don't know yet. But definitely in people that are feeling depressed are going to have high levels of inflammation. That's for sure. Would you say that if you don't feel good in any capacity, whether it's your mental health or your physical health, you should be thinking about your inflammation. Yes. Okay.

Or doing some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in this podcast if you don't get the test. Mm-hmm. Okay. Absolutely. Cool. I'm going to play a little game with you. This is called myth or fact. So we're going to bust some internet myths about inflammation.

And I would just love to know I'm going to share something. You can say myth or fact and then maybe share a little bit about what the research actually says. Eating gluten causes inflammation. Fact. Fact. Mm-hmm. Oh, man.

I thought you were going to say myth for that one. for sure. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, tell me. I just, I'm under the impression that, like, way too many of us are not eating gluten, like way more of us than need to. Right. No, you should not eat gluten. When you eat gluten, there are proteins that are part of gluten. I'm going to name one, gliding. And gliding binds to a receptor in the epithelial in the, in your gut. What happens is that that receptor is called CXR3. But what happens is you have this tight junction in the gut lumine that prevents stuff that it's in the lumen to go into your peripheral blood. Okay, so it's acting as a barrier.

When gluten or gladiin binds to CXR3, this loses enough. And so you have the concept of leaky gut. Which is another thing a lot of people think is pseudoscience. Oh, absolutely, and it's not, right? You have permeability of the gut. And that increased permeability allows antigens, are part of what you eat, that is in the lumen of your gut, to go into your peripheral blood, and that causes inflammation. So there is a direct link between gluten consumption and

inflammation in circulation. Even if we don't have celiac? Exactly. Okay, so how does that square with all of the research around whole grains helping your heart health? So that's a very different aspect of grains. And I think there's a lot of push from big companies that want to sell a whole grains and staple foods and the USDA are pushing for a lot of staple foods that I think we should not touch. Because those are inflammatory in nature. So not just gluten, but many other grains. I'm shook. I definitely thought you were going to say that like unless you're celiac, you can eat gluten, like maybe don't eat super processed carbs or grains, but like go ahead and eat, you know, sourdough or wheat berries or things like that. And you're like, no, you don't

do sourdough at all? Every once in a while. There are compromises to this thing. I would like to also comment that my thesis, and you're going to see this in my book when it comes out, is that if we didn't evolve with a certain compound, better not touch it. And do we, we, know all the compounds we evolved with? Certainly we didn't evolve with gluten at the levels of consumption that we do today. Right. That's interesting. I think the levels of consumption that we do today is a really interesting part of it. I also think we're going to come back to later like we want to live a fun life too. So I think that that is like a part of the equation and we're going to talk about that later. Myth or fact, eating dairy causes inflammation. That's a hard one.

There hasn't been extensive studies showing that compounds in dairy products cause direct inflammation. Even a study that we did that was published in Nature Medicine shows that cheese, for example, doesn't cause age acceleration or inflammation. It's actually protective, which was surprising to me. I think there's no clear evidence. Do you eat cheese? Every once in a while and only very hard cheese. Would you drink whole milk? No, not at all.

Okay. Would you drink kaffir or fermented milk? Yes, kaffir very seldom the case that I do it. I just want to talk about this before we go through the rest of the list because I don't want people to be like, oh my God, I can't do anything. But when we're talking about inflammation, we're really talking about the whole picture, right? Like, it's like you don't want to do this inflammatory thing and this inflammatory thing and this inflammatory thing. But it's not that you have to abstain from every single thing that could possibly raise inflammation. You just don't want to like overflow your inflammation cup.

Well, we talked about stress, right? And you're stressed because you can't eat anything. Right. You're going to be inflamed. If you're stressed because someone is inviting you to a party and you're the weirdo that cannot eat anything or cannot share, you're going to be inflamed. There is a compromise. I think the idea is to try to master inflammation, to try to see what are my limits,

what can I do to improve my anti-inflammatory processes? we're going to talk about that in a moment to challenge my body with things like the hormetic response. If you want and have certain compromises, that's totally fine as well. I have my own compromises, right? But I try to keep a very strict lifestyle to keep inflammation at bay. Yeah. And I also just like to remind myself and people listening that like the whole point of all of this is to live as good of a life as possible. If this is enhancing our life, then that's great.

If it's making us have the energy that we need to take on each day, if it's helping with our mental health, amazing. But if it's detracting from your life, then that's not actually serving the base purpose. 100%. I'm going to play a video for this next one. Number one, most anti-inflammatory food in the world is not turmeric. It's not ginger. And it's definitely not blueberries.

Just one little teaspoon of this food can reduce joint inflammation better than ibuprofen. It has been used for thousands of years. And it has outperformed turmeric and ginger. in reducing inflammation by 60%. The number one most anti-inflammatory food in the world is called black cumin seed oil. Some people call it black seed oil. The unique compound in black seed oil is called thymocinone, which has a direct anti-inflammatory effect comparable to over-the-counter pain medications.

That is from Dr. Eric Berg on Instagram. Is black cumin seed oil the most anti-inflammatory food in the world? There's no evidence to demonstrate that. I wouldn't say that that's a fact. I would say that's false. Is there any evidence to say that it is anti-inflammatory? I haven't seen any evidence. We need more studies. All of the research I do and our claims are based on longitudinal studies of aging, looking at hundreds and thousands of parameters from blonde and analyzing how people live and they're not just the lifestyle, but also nutrition

and their daily choices, and how that is mapped to all this inflammation, but also age acceleration of different organs. And I never have seen the presence of this compound in any of my papers, really, in the literature. Myth or fact, having more muscle mass fights inflammation. Fact. And how does that work? The organs are secretory tissues, and you have more than 300 anti-inflammatory peptides that come from muscle.

Generally speaking, the older audience, when your doctor says, hey, come down, you know, this idea of wear and tear and you have to slow down, I actually think it's quite the opposite. As you're growing older, you should have more muscle mass to support your bone and to also produce anti-inflammatory molecules. Do men have more anti-inflammatory molecules than women because men tend to have more muscle mass than women? I don't think so because the bodies are smaller. in women, so I don't think that's the case now. Is there any difference between how men should approach inflammation and women should approach inflammation? Maybe after menopause, because we don't have menopause, right?

We have andropause, and we, as men, don't have the hormone replacement therapies that we see in women. Hormone replacement therapy is largely anti-inflammatory, not the conjugated, synthetic one. That's inflammatory. But in the case of women, after the age of menopause, I'd say HRT is very beneficial. In case of male, we don't have that. It's a different way to manage inflammation. And we're going to talk about some inflammation-related things that women suffer from later like PMOS and endometriosis and things like that because those are very grounded inflammation, I believe. Okay, myth or fact grounding or earthing helps with inflammation.

There's no clear evidence to show that, not that I know of. So it's myth. It feels so nice to have your toes in the grass. It's like one of those ones where you're like, I want to feel like this is true, you know? It does. It does feel good. But in the absence of data, I cannot say it's a fact. Myth or fact, night shades like tomatoes and eggplants cause inflammation.

It's similar to dairy by principle. These are too new to our genetic. inheritance. So they came from the Americas, right? And we didn't involve in the America. For any metabolic pathway to be able to cope with a compound, you need evolution. How do we know that? When you look at the genetic studies, the idea of species and the genetic composition of different species, and then you recreate those dendograms, you know that metabolic pathways take a long time to develop. That's so interesting.

Tomatoes and stuff like that are really, really, really new to us, right? We shouldn't be exposed to tomatoes. But there's no good evidence today that compounds in tomatoes are inflammatory. In absence of good evidence, I'm going to keep eating tomatoes because they're delicious. Yeah, I like them too. Myth or fact, turmeric lowers inflammation. Fact. Does it do it to the extent that, like, you would say take a turmeric supplement or you should be adding

this to things or is it like a little bit? It helps a little bit. We demonstrated in one of the studies that curcumin, for example, which is the active compound in turmeric. Of turmeric, yeah. lowers inflammation in isolated cells at least. And there's been some studies in human cohorts that show that it lowers inflammation, the way they measure inflammation, which is still kind of debatable.

I would say there is some data. And I'm going to get into later, like, what supplements you think are actually worth the money. Myth or fact, seed oils increase inflammation? Fact. Okay, the internet's going to go crazy. This is so controversial. Yeah, no, the industrial seed oils are packed with omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and they turn your acosanoid system, which is a system that really,

it's a gatekeeper of inflammation towards inflammatory state. You want more of the omega-3 polyunsaturated falliasis that come from fish. When you do the balance and you look at the actual numbers, these industrial seed oils are just almost zero or three. And so they're a larger inflammatory, and they get into your cells and that triggers inflammation. Let's say your ratio is great. in absence of the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s being the problem, are seed oils bad for you?

No, exactly. So it really changes your ratios more than being inflammatory in enough itself. So like theoretically, if we took a shot of salmon oil, every time we had some French fries that were cooked in industrial seed, like it's about the ratio. Because I think, yeah. In that case, it's a little different. could fry. When you fry, you're causing a lot of other byproducts. Yeah. But if you toss a little bit of seed oil into your salad and you have a lot of herring or, you know, fatty fish next to it, you may compensate. Yeah. So I agree with you. Yeah. I think that's an important distinction because I think when we talk about seed oils, it's so important to say, well, are you frying foods over and over

in a vat that's like the oils being reused. Are you eating foods that you would never normally eat because they're fried in these oils? And what are your omega-3 to omega-6 ratios? Because I think there's this like general demonization that's happening that's not that helpful. I agree. Myth or fact? Microplastics increase inflammation. It's a fact because we've seen that when we put microplastics in tissues, you have an increasing reactive oxygen species, which are these largely inflammatory molecules that you have that are produced by your cells in response to those plastics. Now, when we measure in humans, plastics and the presence of micro-nanoplastics, there's still

a little bit of a controversy because they can be confounded with lipid droplets. So the technologies to measure micronanoplastics in humans are still evolving. Wasn't there something recently where they use plastic gloves to do the tests and then those actually got into the plastics and people didn't actually have as much plastic as we thought. There is some of that as well. So there's the idea of contamination of the tissues. Everything we're using in the lab is plastic. Right. Right. All the consumables are made out of plastic. Right. So that's that issue as well. But the technology to measure micro nanoplastics is still evolving. Again, it's not super clear. It's like if you have the spoon of micro nanoplastics in your brain,

quote from the media, is that really true? We don't know. How anal are you when it comes to avoiding microplastics in your life? Very hard, very, very, very, very strict. Very anal. Super, yeah, super crazy. Super strict. And why is that? Like, if you're, if you feel like the evidence is still a little bit confusing, it's not like pointing to anything specifically right now, why are you so strict about it? Because the principles of, you know, we haven't been exposed to plastics throughout evolution. Again, it comes down to if there's something foreign to your body that your body cannot process. And certainly we cannot process plastics. It may be damaging. It may very well be inflammatory. I also personally like the microplastics thing because it feels

like one of the easier health challenges. Like you can swap out your storage containers in your home. You can get a water bottle. And then you're mostly avoiding it. I feel like, oh, no, you don't think so. Not so much. What are the sources? Yeah. Yeah. So the sources are multiple. When you're washing your laundry and you're drying your laundry, a lot of fibers of plastics

are being released. They're in the air, right? In the highway, the tires. Yeah, tires, the wheels and they're producing plastics as they are being used, right? And then the list is very, very long. When you put plastic containers, not ideal. deal. We want to get rid of those and move to glass containers or use, I use a lot of spoon. One example is you're putting, you know, your toothbrush is made out of plastic and you're putting

in a very warm environment in your saliva. It's the perfect, and you're crunching them. Basically, you know, as you're brushing your teeth, you are being exposed to micro nanoplastics. So I'm trying to avoid those instances. So do you not brush your teeth? I do, I do, but I use a wooden-based toothbrush that is made out of bore bristles. They're available on Amazon. What do you think are the three lowest hanging fruits for avoiding microplastics in our lives? Changing toothbrush, I think it's important.

And then containers that you put your food and you freeze it down, there's leaching of not just their plastics, but the malleable form of the plastic is given by plasticizers, right? So the plastic is really a resin and a plasticizer. And the plasticizer leaches, and then you have all these hormone disruptors, which is also causing inflammation. And so that's another one. And the third one is really processed foods. The more process your food, the more microplastics will have.

And so if you go grocery shopping to your farm, farmers market, very likely those are going to have tiny little levels of plastics. But if you go and eat processed foods, the more processed foods, the more process it is, the more microplastics will have. And that's from like the machinery and stuff like that? Yeah, we don't really know where in the process you're getting these plastics, but work from Matt Kempen, the University of New Mexico has demonstrated that the more processed the food, the higher the level of microplastics in there. Did you know that the average half-life of caffeine is five hours? Meaning if you drink a coffee or match it at 3 p.m.

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eat. Tiny amounts and hopefully not the sugar you get from the supermarket. I like to eat honey, right, and low amounts. If you have not just sugar, but high caloric intake in general is inflammatory. Myth or fact. Inflammation is the root cause of nearly every disease. Fact. Really? Yes. That's not overstated. I like to believe it's not. It's obviously I'm biased. But we published a paper in nature medicine in 2019, putting examples, clear examples that all of these diseases that are supposedly associated with aging are really associated with inflammation. So I mentioned depression. Who would have thought that a major depression disorder, you have inflammation, right? Cardiac disease, heart disease, autoimmune diseases. You have this genetic susceptibility. But if you don't have

inflammation on top, you never develop your autoimmune disease, brain disease, inflammation of the brain. I like to think it's a fact. Myth or fact, celery juice fights inflammation. Myth. I haven't seen any evidence. Myth or fact, sauna lowers inflammation. Those are tricky questions. I would like to separate the evidence from the principles. The principles are telling you, yes, it should lower inflammation. You have the heat short proteins that are helping the HSP that are helping lower inflammation. These are longevity proteins. But have we demonstrated this in longitudinal studies and looking at chronic inflammation

and not those biomarkers that I mentioned before? We haven't. So myth or fact? Well, I tend to think it's a fact. And do you have a protocol for San Francisco? that you like to follow? No, I don't do sauna. I do cold shock proteins instead.

Okay, well, so tell me that, myth or fact, cold plunges, lower inflammation. Same as heat shock proteins. And do you think that's different for women or for men? Because a lot of the chatter online about cold plunging is like maybe for men, maybe not for women, or for women, maybe not quite as cold. Yeah, I don't know. I myself go to Ocean Beach. I live at the beach and I go cold lunch for three, four or five minutes in the ocean.

typically between, say, 10 and 15 degrees Celsius. Which is not as cold as people think. I included cold plunging in my last book. And when I looked into all of the research that I could find on it, I do think it was not as long and not as cold as people think. And you see these like men mostly. We're just in these like, it's 30 degrees and I was in there for 15 minutes. And I'm like, I'm not sure that's better for you.

Correct. No, no. Exactly. It's not like a totally doable. Dick competition. These both are examples of hormesis. You mentioned hormetic stress earlier. Can you explain as simply as possible what that is and how that would impact inflammation?

The hormetic response is a evolutionary concern mechanisms that most species or all species have, which is if you give a lower levels of stress to a system, you develop resistance or resilience mechanisms. And that's what it is. What doesn't kill you, right, makes you stronger. The idea of low levels of toxic stress to the cell makes the mitochondria, in particular, mitochondria is the most common one, develop and be activated. And so the hormetic response is a conservative response that allows you to develop a buffer, what I like to call with these challenges that you give to your body, when you have inflammation, you can cope with it. My question is always, like, when does something tip?

You're like, being stressed for prolonged periods of time is bad for you, but then I'm like, well, how do we know that's not hormetic? And that stress isn't inoculating me in some way from greater inflammatory challenges. Like, when is the stress good and how do we know when it tips to bad? Well, anything that is, in my opinion, right, evolutionarily conserved that you've seen as a hunter and gather is something that your body craves. Obviously, a croissant is not. Obviously, gluten is not. Obviously, long periods of chronic stress is not something that we've evolved with. We've evolved with acute stress, hunting, right? But then you go back to, you go back to, a baseline level of stress.

And so I think... But we didn't evolve with like saunas. No, but we were definitely exposed to very low temperatures. And we didn't have the means to have, you know, a protected environment in that sense. But like we were never in a temperature of 180 degrees in the world. Correct. Yeah.

Things have changed. I always struggle with the evolutionary stuff because I'm like a lot of ways that we live now are huge improvement on evolution. And we're living much longer than we ever have historically. And a lot of the problems that are come up, even like you're like, let's fight inflammation so we can live as long as possible. That's not a problem that would have even mattered 200 years ago because we're not trying to live to 80, 90, 100. You know what I mean? So in many ways, you could argue that we're improving things over what was available to us historically. We are, but there's a misconception of evolution. So if you look at hunters and gatherers,

Most people die at the very early years of life between zero and five. So if you cross that barrier, you could perfectly live to 90 or 100. There's been a lot of studies, especially Lindbergh, Stefan Lindbergbergh, who wrote a lot about the Kittavans, which is these tribes that are still existing. And they don't have cardiovascular disease. They are 85, 90. there's no cancer, there's no brain disease. And when you look at inflammation,

there is high levels of inflammation of the acute phase sometimes. And then, you know, you don't see that increasingly with aging. So I think there's a misconception around how long you live, you know, we used to live in prehistoric times. When we do analysis in epidemiology, you tend to have averages. But if you have a lot of people that die in the early years of life, that's a by-model.

You have two curves. And if you average them, you say, okay, people die at the age of 35. That's not true. A lot of infant death. And if you get to be an older person, which is very difficult, right? You don't have those chronic diseases that we associate with inflammation. I have another video for the next one. Hi friends.

Do you ever notice joint pain or brain fog? Well, what's the fastest way to lower inflammation in your body? The answer is by not eating. In other words, by fasting. Because when you're fasting, you're allowing your body to clean up all the garbage inside yourselves. This process is called autophagy, which means self-eating. And I have a whole video dedicated to autophagy on my YouTube channel.

where you can learn more tips on how to incorporate fasting into your lifestyle. Myth or fact? Fact. Yeah, fast aid is one of the best ways to lower inflammation. It's a very strong demonstrated mechanism that in animals and humans, that if you do intermittent fasting, you're activating autophagy, the cells will clear up the debris from metabolism that will naturally decrease inflammation. Is there a type of fasting or a length of fast that needs to occur for that to have?

Yeah, we believe the 168 is kind of the sweet spot, eight hours and fast for 16. Okay. You're activating your autophagy, but you're not overdoing it because there's always the risk. That's what I was going to ask is like there's the stress too of your body being like, I'm not being fed. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think that's different for women? Because I've heard that men can perhaps deal with longer fast and women's bodies experience more stress from them.

Make some sense. I don't know. I know. Well, we don't have enough research about women for almost anything. thing. Correct. Myth or fact, exercise actually causes inflammation. Fact. It causes acute inflammation. Aside from the many anti-inflammatory peptides that you find in muscle are being produced, there's also inflammatory molecules that are produced after training. They should go back down very rapidly, right? But these are the response, this is the acute response. The one that we

discussed is typically activated in response to an infection. And we see high levels of interleukin six after exercise. That's true. It's a fact. But you also have a lot of anti-inflammatory molecules that are being produced. So net, is it anti-inflammatory? Net is anti-inflammatory. Yes. Is something like a marathon inflammation causing? We believe it is, but I don't think we have the evidence to demonstrate that, not that I know of. How do we know if we're over-exercising to the point where we might be increasing our systemic inflammation? When you're causing damage to your tissues, you're definitely going to increase inflammation

more than anti-inflammatory. But isn't the point of exercise? Is it wrong to say you're microtering your muscles and then they grow bigger? It depends, right? If it's, say, zone two cardio, you probably are causing the most best. benefit from exercise. If you're doing a marathon, you're causing the largest harm, right, due to exercise. But I think the net is always positive. I wouldn't not recommend people from doing exercise. It's a really strong way to combat inflammation overall. Is there a best

workout for reducing inflammation in your mind? So there's some work showing that high-intensity training can clear up senescent cells. There's some work showing that Zone 2 cardio, for example, I alluded before, is kind of ideal. But that depends on the individual. Your profile may be very different than my profile and your interests, right, and your preferences may be different than mine. So I think combining your profiles identified by looking at, you know, blood and your preferences, we can get the best out of this exercise.

the recommendations. What's your workout routine? I do very short high-intensity training. I like to do surf. That's more kind of zone 2-ish. That's something that's very fun to do as well. Having fun is important. And that's it. You don't do any strength training? The high-intensity training, I think... Is strength training? It is. Okay. So you're doing like high intensity with weights, not like sprinting or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. We're going to get to GLP ones, but outside of GLP1s, what are your thoughts on all of the peptides that people are buying at compounding pharmacies and other sources on the internet and they're taking them for an array of issues including but not limited to fighting inflammation?

I think we still need to collect evidence. There's very few long-term studies that demonstrate benefit. Aside from the classical peptides, I even know insulin and stuff like that are safe and they've been great for a variety of different conditions. For health and wellness, I would be cautious, especially when we talk about immune modulators and anti-inflammatory peptides that we don't know if they really are anti-inflammatory because we don't have the evidence.

In the absence of evidence, I would say be really, really cautious, right? How big of a part of the future conversation around inflammation do you think peptides are going to play? Huge. Huge. Huge. Because of GLP-1s or because of these other types of peptides we're seen online? Both.

Because GLP-1s are coming and many researchers are trying to show, it has anti-inflammatory effects to repurpose them for inflammation. But there's a lot of huge industry around other types of peptides that certain companies want to purpose for inflammation, but we don't have the data yet. Again, I would be very, very cautious and I would look for specific double-blinded control studies to really show evidence that these things are being anti-inflammatory and have really strong health benefits. Well, let's just get into the GLP ones right now.

One of the big conversations around GLP ones is that they help with inflammation. And I personally can't tell if that's because of the weight loss effect or if, you know, there was just new research that came out about it lowering. risk of breast cancer, there's stuff coming out about GLP-1s and dementia. Is that through some sort of inflammatory pathway, or is it all through an inflammation-based pathway via the mechanism of losing weight? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I don't think we have the answer. We have now a few studies looking at Glyp 1 and aging biology in general. We believe this targeting aging biology. if it's inflammation or control of protein folding or if it's mitochondria function, we don't know.

I tend to think it is affecting inflammation. Directly. Directly, yeah. But we don't know the mechanism. If somebody is carrying excess weight, do you think there's evidence there that a GLP1 would be helpful in lowering their inflammation and that's something they might want to look into? I think in that case it really is important to consider Glib 1 as a treatment for inflammation because we do know, and as I mentioned before, a large fraction of your circulatory inflammatory

biomarkers come from fat cells. You're substantially reducing your nutritionally intake. You're going to prevent inflammation from arising. So I think it's a good solution in that case. Should we play two truths in a lie? Sure, let's do it. Okay. You have two truths and a lie for me, and I'm going to guess which one is the lie. Okay. Inflammation is bad for you.

Okay, that feels true to me. Okay. Although it's tricky because the acute inflammation is good for you. Okay. Next one. Inflammation can be controlled. That also feels true, although I'm curious because we're exposed to environments that are so highly anti-inflammatory. Centenarians, people that live.

a hundred years and older, are less inflamed than older people that are in the 80s and 90s. That also feels true. They all feel true to me. I'm going to go with the lie is that inflammation can be controlled because I do think we all live in an environment that's increasingly causing inflammation. All right. Wrong. Okay, wait, which one was the lie? Inflammation is bad for you. Inflammation is good for you, right? We know that inflammation can cause tissue repair. It can fight viruses.

It can fight infectious diseases. If it goes awry, you develop autoimmune diseases and you have chronic inflammation, which is very different from. The other two are true, right? So centrenarians have lower levels of inflammation? Only because they have anti-inflammatory molecules, circulating that are able to counteract the inflammation they have. Wait.

So, right. So if you do the net effect, they have lower levels, but not because inflammation is lower in them, they do react to inflammatory triggers, just like we do, but they have more anti-inflammatory molecules that counteract the effect. And is that genetic, typically? We don't know. We tend to think it's genetic, and these are kind of outliers, right, obviously. but they also have a different immune system overall.

There are these so-called CD4 T cells that are very different centenarians than the rest of population. So they're very peculiar. I want to dive into some of the stuff around diet and inflammation because I do think that's very confusing for a lot of people, myself included. I'm so confused about protein and inflammation. Some people are like protein is really good for lowering systemic inflammation because of its impacts on your metabolic health.

being your blood sugar, super stable, and then other people are like protein directly, the molecules in protein are causing inflammation. What is the truth? Well, there's been some studies in the past showing that some degree of consumption of processed meats will cause inflammation. Like hot dogs and deli meats. Yeah, exactly. But I don't think it's actually the protein in enough itself, but it's the processed protein, right? What about like grass-fed beef? And there's this like protein maxing thing happening societally right now, I think because a lot of people are trying to lose weight and also people want to feel satiated and all

these reasons. And so people are like 30 grams protein for breakfast and then like 50 grams for lunch. Is that reducing our inflammation because of the metabolic benefits or is it increasing our inflammation? We don't have an answer for that. I, again, like to think principles, right? What you should be eating is not a huge amount of protein. we have not evolved with massive amounts of proteins that are available to us, right? We were grubbing stuff, so a lot of fruits and vegetables,

and hopefully don't wash them too much, because you want the microbiome to go there and have as much diverse microbiome as possible. Like dirty spinach. Eating high levels of protein, I think on the one hand could, impair protein homeostasis, right? But we also have involved with huge levels of protein. I remember when I saw this documentary on the Hatsah people living in Africa, right? And they kill an antelope and they eat the whole antelope in three days. But then they don't get protein for months. So I think we should balance the amount of proteins we eat and favor those that are coming from fish.

I hate fish. I really do. I like throw up when I eat fish and it comes up on this podcast over and over. Like let's eat fish. And I like cannot eat it. Well, yeah. We have so much data. You're just going to die young, Liz.

We have a lot of data and demonstrate this associated with lower inflammation, lower organ aging. Is that because it's a better protein source or because of the omega-3 content or what's going on there? I think it's both. Okay. Yeah. Great protein quality and also is packed with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. In your mind, as somebody who researches this stuff and also you can speculate on mechanism, what is the ideal anti-inflammatory diet? Is it Mediterranean? Is it keto, is it vegan? Is it something that I haven't said? I think when you have fish in a table and veggies and fruits of diverse quality, that gives you the fiber you need, the soluble fiber to feed your microbiome. It gives you the nutrients that you need. It even gives you the calcium

that you should get. They should not get from milk, for example. You should get from greens. And then the protein content, the omega-3s. I think, you know, very simple stuff, not super complicated. Whole foods, fruits and vegetables, a lot of berries. Beries are packed with nutrients and fiber. The one that I like the most is raspberry. I love raspberries. I put little chocolate chips in their butts. I eat it almost every night. Yeah, it's good. So, yes, dark chocolate, though. 70%? Yeah, fair enough. Okay. Compromise. Are there any foods that you think of as extraordinarily anti-inflammatory? I think raspberry and sardines. If you do a lot of as raspberries. Not together. No.

Why are those two so extraordinary? Because one small sardine has one or two grams of omega-3s. And the raspberries are going to give you a ton of fiber to feed your microbiome. and you need a lot of diversity in your microbiome to have this thick layer of the musing wall that prevents leaky gut and inflammation. How big of a part of the anti-inflammatory diet conversation is our microbiome and feeding our gut health and things like that? It's a big component.

I couldn't give you exact numbers because it depends on the study. But we're now looking at 10 different cohorts that are the largest, cohorts studies of longitudinal studies of aging that have ever been, and that we're bringing all of these data together, harmonizing all of it. We'll know more. Yeah, soon. Yeah. How old are you? 50. Do you feel pressure to be like young appearing because of the work you do? Like you look younger, you look significantly younger than 50? Are you like, I got to look immortal over here?

No, not at all. Okay. Because I think what we're trying to push here for, is maintaining health and functional ability, right? Your vision, your hearing capacity, your cognitive function, your strength. And that is not so much related to appearance. Yeah. We're going to talk about that for a moment maybe. So the skin, right? The skin is important.

And how you look has a direct connection with your overall health. As a consequence, you can look good. But my goal is to maintain my inflammation as low as possible. Okay. As a consequence, yes, you may look younger and great. But that's not what drives my research now. But what do you mean by looking good? Are we talking like less wrinkles?

Are we talking less acne? Right. Yes. What are we? Definitely less acne. We've seen that tribal societies there's no acne. Acne may very well come from dairy products. I don't want to state that strongly, but there is some evidence. Definitely wrinkles. When you have hallmarks of aging in the skin, inflammation, cellulases, in essence,

they go with loss of elasticity and saggy skin and so on. When you have low levels of inflammation circulating, you ought to be in a better shape when it comes to appearance. And if you have skin conditions, is that a sign that you are experiencing some level of systemic inflammation or no? Not necessarily. Not necessarily, no. Some skin conditions depend on other things that you're putting into your body and also like auto-inflammatory reactions that it really depends on the skin condition we're talking about here, right? They don't necessarily reflect overall inflammation.

I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I'm so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it. so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells.

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targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do, do I? Do I? And this, I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer, it looks glowier, the texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on.

This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.co slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.com with code Liz. If you are worried about microplastics, this is the one change you need to make that not nearly enough people are talking about.

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They come in little packets of powder. And then you mix that powder into hot or cold water with no, tea bag necessary. You like stir the entire packet of the powder into the water. You also get more health benefits because you're not steeping the tea. You are drinking the entire tea leaf. So all of their teas, you drink them sort of in the way that you drink matre. You drink the entire tea leaf. They have a ton of delicious green teas. They have black teas. They have white teas. They have herbal teas. So no matter what your preference is, peak can give you a healthier option. I have turned so many people onto their teas and now they're all obsessed. It's all that they drink too.

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heard about rhythm. This is a home blood work test with zero pain. It feels genuinely too good to be true, but it is real. So I am going to walk you through how this works because I was so nervous about it. They send you like a little envelope and in it, there's something that looks kind of like a continuous glucose monitor if you've seen that. And you put that on your arm and you press a button and it takes the tiniest vial of blood. And I was like, there's this guy in the video and he's like, this doesn't hurt at all. And I was like, there is no way that this does not hurt, sir. But then I did it.

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month and free shipping at Rhythm.com.com slash Liz Moody. And that is Rhythm with 1H. So it's RYTH Moodie for 15% off your first month and free shipping. Stop guessing, start testing, rhythm.com.com slash Liz Moody. Is there anything else that you want people to know about eating an anti-inflammatory diet. There's one piece that we didn't discuss, and it comes from my own research, that it's published in 2017 in Nature Medicine. It's a seminal paper that we did where we look at different genes that are expressed in the cells from older adults that are doing great versus those that are not doing great. And we found a molecule that is called NLC4, NLRC4, it's called inflammatoryome, that triggers inflammation. What happens is in people

with high inflammation, they typically tend not to take caffeine as much as those with low level of inflammation. What I'm trying to say is caffeine and its metabolites can prevent from inflammation. That's great news for everybody listening. It is. Anything that has caffeine and metabolites can reduce the levels of inflammation by inactivating a signal of this NLRC4 inflammatory. That's interesting because I've heard about the antioxidants that are in coffee and tea, like chlorogenic acid and things like that, which are quite anti-inflammatory from my understanding.

Those are the ones. But you're saying in absence of all of that, just the caffeine on a zone? No, those are the ones. Those are the ones. Okay. So we tested those in cells from these individuals. And it turns out that when you put... these chlorogenic acid and other metabolites from caffeine, antioxidants, they reduce the levels

of NLRC4 expression. Do you have a dose for that? How much matcha can I have? It's actually linear. Oh, so 20 cups of matcha. We looked at seven or eight. I literally looked this out very recently. I am in the position in my life where I'm having to ask the internet how much macha is too

much matcha. Yeah. And it said that like six or seven grams, you start to tip over to potentially stressing your liver out. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to, I mean, it like, you know, I googled it. And this is what I didn't dive deep into it. But up until then, I'm supposedly safe. Right. Yeah, I think so. What we found in the study is that the more caffeine in circulation and other metabolites from caffeine, the less inflammation there was in these people. So have like 20 cups of coffee a day. It's hard, though, because sleep also is probably a very powerful answer.

inflammatory vacancies, so we have to balance those two things. Yeah. So maybe not too much caffeine, not until like after lunch. I do noon is my cutoff. Right, exactly. What do you do? I'm a fast metabolizer. So if I drink coffee at 3, 4 p.m., I don't have any sleep issues.

Yeah. And I can, you know, track my sleep pretty consciously. But you use this as permission, like, if I want a coffee, I'm going to have a coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We love. Do you do matcha?

No, no, not really. Oh, it's so good. Okay. We have a little segment we like to do where we have questions that are too embarrassing to talk about because we love to demystify and bring taboo topics out into the open here. So we have some questions from listeners that are things they're uncomfy with that we're going to give answers to. This is embarrassing, but I'm super confused what it actually means to be inflamed. Everything online makes it look like it's about losing weight.

So is being fat being inflamed? But then I asked my doctor and he said it's a shorthand for arthritis and joint. pain and everyone else is wrong. Can you simplify how I, as a woman in my 30s, should be thinking about inflammation, please? So I think in the simplest terms, somebody's listening and there's like a normal person, how should they be thinking about inflammation? You should measure. You should always have a baseline. If you cannot have, you know, glucose levels and your favorite comprehensive lab panel should at least have inflammation measured, right? That's your baseline. but also if you're exposed to UVB, UVA constantly and you're not protecting your skin,

you're going to have inflammation circulating. There's a really nice study that was done showing that healthy doses of UVA and UVB that are used for psoriasis, for example, increase CXL 9 levels in circulation. So we're talking about the sun exposure will increase inflammation. So if you have, you know, UV exposure, if you're smoking, if you're overweight, chances are you will be inflamed. Bottom line, that's kind of the things that you know are causing inflammation because we talked about them. If you're protecting yourself, you still measure it, right? Because as I mentioned before, this is...

80% of people. Yes, are in flame over 40, right? Over 40 years old. What are the top environmental sources of inflammation? Air pollution is important, in a particular matter, 2.5 and 10, goes into your airways and increases inflammation in the airways and that propagates. Of course, plasticizers and plastics that you're exposed to. Water quality.

And then we discussed all the nutritional elements to it. And do you think of it like an equation? Like we're in the summer right now, it's fire season in a lot of the country. If you're someplace where you're going to be breathing and smoke for months, should you be amping up the other anti-inflammatory things that you're doing? Absolutely. I think that's a fair way to put it. Okay.

Next one. It feels like everything fun causes inflammation. If I don't want to be inflamed, I can't drink, I can't eat fun food, I can't go out with my friends. Do you have any advice for doing the math between enjoying my life and trying to live as long as possible. That's a tricky one. And I'm going to tell you why it's tricky because we don't have evidence, right? Again, goes back to how much of this is bad, how much of this is pushing the equation to an anti-inflammatory versus an inflammatory. I don't have a clear answer. If you're

building buffer and your life is mostly, you know, during the week, you're protecting yourself, you're challenging yourself, you have this healthy living in general. I think you can have some compromises over the weekend, I like to say. But if you're constantly bombarding your body with inflammatory insults, you're not going to do well. Can I ask you a weird question? Is it better to split the difference day to day, like do a few less inflammatory things day to day? Or is it better to be like quite conscientious for like a certain amount of time, really give your body a rest and a break?

And then you can kind of go harder. Does that make sense? Yeah, right. I think it's the latter. Okay. Yeah. So if you... Like that break matters. Yes. Because you don't know what's when the equation is going to the wrong direction, right? And when that tipping point changes during the day, if you're doing constantly.

So I think the chronic exposure to inflammatory triggers is very detrimental. And we should avoid all of that, right? and we should challenge our body and create buffer for those events when you go out and, you know, you go with friends and maybe have a beer. Yeah. Right. And maybe, I don't know, have a bite that is not super good for you, right? But the social exposure is.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You're laughing. You're sharing stuff. And that's my take at least. For me and my life, I like to think about which are the things that give a lot of bang for their buck, but also are relatively easy.

for me to do or I even enjoy them. Like, I love sauna. It is my break. I do it at the gym after my workout. It makes me feel relaxed. It makes me feel happy. So I'm going to include that. That's anti-inflammatory and I'm going to include that.

I also love sourdough bread. I'm not going to have it every day, but that's not something that I'm going to give up. But I'm not going to sit around and eat bread that's not particularly satisfying for me. So I think thinking about in terms of your life, what are the things that move the needle that you like and what are the things that aren't that hard for you to give up and give those up? That's a great advice. I'm with you, Liz, because that's the way I do it as well. Things that I love to do is going out there and surfing, right? Or the cold plunge every morning. I love doing that. Yeah. It's something that it doesn't really cause any traction for me. It's not difficult to do.

Yeah. I agree with you. Preferences and what feels easier to do, start implementing today. Yeah, but don't sit around. If you don't have access to Asana, don't sit around and being like, I'm not going to be inflating forever. You know what I mean? Like, I think we're all real people. in the real world. Okay, let's do this as the last one for embarrassing questions. I feel like I don't have the time, energy, or money to actually fight inflammation. Can you rank where this should sit on my list of priorities for my actual real working person life? You should always find the way, right? No matter how much your budget is, no matter how difficult you think it is, right? Nutrition is the important. It's a really important one. Sleep is huge and is free. Tonight, you go and after sunset,

you dim your light and you turn off that bright screen before going to sleep, maybe an hour before going to sleep. You will activate your melatonin. Melatonin is anti-inflammatory. During the week, you want that night to have the highest level of anti-inflammatory as possible. And it's free, right? You could do it today. So you don't need a huge budget to start treating yourself better.

Okay. I want to put some numbers to this. other than the sleep hack, if you had $0, what are three things that you would be doing to fight inflammation? I would move around. You park your car further away from your grocery shopping and do that walk and carry those bags, not roll them. So those are things that you could do today for free.

And then again, sleep. And as far as food go, I would start with the very basic stuff. If you don't have access to organic foods, right, at least start changing your ultra-processed foods to whole foods and fruits, vegetables, fish that is conventional, may not be organic, but it's a big shift from the ultra-processed foods that is hyperglysmic. And then if I increase your budget to $100 every month to fight inflammation, what would you add in?

There's been a couple of studies that show that increasing the budget by 11% should be sufficient to have complete coverage of a very healthy diet. 11% for whom, though. You know what I mean? Like if it's 11% for somebody on welfare, it's going to be really different than 11% for... Right. It's the minimum wage.

Oh, okay, the minimum wage. Okay. Interesting. That's really interesting. That's a piece of data. Yeah, let's increase the minimum wage like that. Exactly. Come on.

What about if you had unlimited dollars to fight inflammation? Is there fancy stuff you would add in? like hyperbaric oxygen therapy or stuff like that. Unlimited money, unlimited time. Yeah, no, in that case, I would help others. Oh. I don't think there's a higher level of complexity that will give you more benefit to yourself. I think in that case, I would try and spread the word.

I want to get into a few inflammation-related conditions and then we'll do a little speed round. PCOS is now called PMOS, which is polyendocrine metabolic ovarian. syndrome. I've heard a lot about how that's really rooted in chronic inflammation. Can you explain that connection? Well, we knew that for decades, that there's an inflammatory component to PCOS, and only recently we start to adopt this new nomenclature. We know from our studies and others that there is an underlying inflammation to PCOS. Endometriosis, the same thing. Is there anything that you would recommend people who are suffering from, these conditions should be doing differently?

I think the anti-inflammatory protocol that we discussed throughout this interview on protection against all these inflammatory triggers from the environment and then challenging yourself to combat inflammation is a one-size-fits-all. So it's good for PCOS individuals. It's good for the healthy individuals that they don't know are suffering from inflammation. It's also good for autoimmune diseases. I don't have a specific protocol for PCOS, if that's a question. But if you have PCOS or PMOS or endometriosis and you're wondering, am I inflamed?

The answer is yes. Like, inflammation is part of those conditions. Correct. And that's 100% without a doubt proven at this point. Very clear. I wouldn't say 100% of the cases. It's very clear that there is an inflammatory component. What about subclinical stuff, like really bad period cramps?

Would that be a sign of high inflammation? I don't know. Do you know if periods are inflammatory events? They are. There's a huge amount of inflammation when you have changes in your hormone levels. So think about the immune cells, right? They have receptors for hormones. They have receptors for estrogen and progesterone.

When you have changes in your levels of progesterone and estrogen, your immune cells will react. Is that why I get, like, I always feel like a little sick right before my period? Very likely. that's why you may feel a little sick. There's another thing which is interesting. After the flu comes the blues, right? This idea that medical doctors have known for a long periods of time that when you get an infection, after the infection,

you clear the inflection, but you don't feel well. You feel depressed. And that relationship between infectious disease, immune system, inflammation, and depression is being shown. by our study where we demonstrated that in major depression disorder, inflammation may be the root cause. That's so interesting. What about postpartum depression?

The really good point, it may very well be the case that you have increased inflammation to try to resolve all of the changes that have happened after partum. Yeah, that's really interesting. Okay, so then again, the way we should be thinking about that and applying it is like, if I am dealing with depression, if I'm dealing with. anxiety in addition to PMOS and demetriosis, these are all signs that my body is one of those bodies that is dealing with inflammation. Very likely.

Okay. So then the good news is everything we talked about in this episode should help. Correct. Yeah. Okay. We love. Do you know about hormonal birth controls impact on inflammation? No.

We have data in hormone replacement therapy. And that's positive. That's very positive. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is really good for inflammation. To the point where do you think women should be getting on it? sooner rather than later? Yes. Okay. After seeing the data, I would go on HRT. Like even before they experienced symptoms, perhaps? Like, how do we know when to go on it? We have data from women over 40 and you start seeing huge benefits in mortality and age acceleration.

When you look at organ aging, it protects not just your musculoskeletal system, your heart, your brain, your immune system. it's really incredible. I was very skeptical. I don't, generally speaking, I don't like pharmaceutical interventions, period. And I thought, you know, yeah, hormone replacement, you might as well just let the natural process of, right? Now we see the data is incredibly strong. So you think the evidence is there to support that if you are over 40, it might be worth talking to your doctor about HRT? Correct. Even in absence of symptoms. A hundred percent. That's crazy. Okay. Is there any Any research on whether meditating helps inflammation?

Yes. There's some research showing that long-term people who practice meditation have lower levels of inflammation. There's also studies that have been done in interventional trials. So you do meditation and you do some form of exercise that resembles meditation, but it's not meditation as a control. Oh, interesting. And it turns out that in meditation, you lower a lot of genes.

that are associated with inflammation. Like, has an epigenetic effect? As a direct effect on your gene expression. Yeah, it would be an epigenetic change. Interesting. That's cool. Do you meditate? I used to.

Okay. It's hard to stick with it. Just, yes. Okay, I have a speed round for you. What's a piece of common anti-inflammatory advice that you think is wrong? Taking a million supplements for inflammation. I think it's wrong. Okay, that's a perfect segue to my next.

one, which is what is the top supplement you recommend to fight inflammation and the top one that you think is a waste of money? Yeah, I don't like to give advice about supplements because what we do is you take your profile that's unique to you and you can build compound gene interactions and be able to have a recommendation for your own profile. So if I tell you your lithium A is great, Yes, it may be great. Ketone bodies are great. Corcumin is great, right? But it may not work for you as well. So I like to do more of a personalized approach. I myself do mostly foods. I don't take any supplements today. What about stuff like if you're low in D, that's definitely going to make you inflamed? If your omega-3s are low, that's definitely going to make you inflamed. Are there things that you would look out for on a blood panel?

A hundred percent. That is yes. The answer is yes. So not only your gene profile and your inflammatory proteins, but your vitamins that are circulating in the body, your lipids that are circulating in your body, your lack of, for sure, you want to compensate. If you lack vitamin D and most of us are deficient in vitamin D or omega-3, you want to supplement. I agree with you. Those two came up for me as things that I was quite low in. I mean, which makes sense because I don't eat fish, which is annoying.

What's the hottest take you have about inflammation? The fact that it determines rates of aging in most organs, it's a huge, huge take. You need to tackle inflammation and keep it at bay and optimize it and master it, right? That way you can delay onset of disease. You can maintain a healthy organ in your body. So I think that's kind of a big take. And you can look really hot. There you go.

Yeah. What's one piece of research that you've read that changed your mind about inflammation in some way? I would like to come back to this idea that when you look at evidence epidemiological end, so correlative studies, you know that inflammation is important for cancer and cardiovascular disease and so on and so forth. But we look at the mechanisms. One of the things that we developed recently is a test for, it's a blood test for, for intrinsic. capacity, which is essentially a declining function. The single strongest predictor of declining capacity was inflammatory age. So if you have high inflammation circulating in the body, you have low

capacity. And this means you're at risk of developing diseases in those organs. You're at the risk of death. That's cool. I love that the research, the change your mind was research that you did. What's the most underrated, boring way to fight inflammation that actually works? Great one. I love this one. The principle of maximum effort. Because it's really not super fancy, right? It's really boring. But the accumulative effect, we believe, is huge. Is it cognitive effort too? Is it just physical effort? Yes. It's both physical and cognitive. You want to challenge yourself. Okay. So it's challenging your brain as much as possible, reading hard books. Correct. But also challenging your body, lifting heavy weights. parking far away. Like in all moments you're thinking, how can I make this almost a little harder for myself? Exactly. Yeah. Feel uncomfortable. Okay. Yeah. This comes up so much on the podcast. I do think our

discomfort with discomfort is one of the roots of all modern problems. Yeah. Like mentally, physically, all of that. I agree. I agree. If you had to pick just three things that we should all be doing daily to combat the inflammatory effects of modern life, what would those three things be? Sleep better, at least seven to eight hours a day, consistently, move more, and eliminate plastics and microplastics and non-plastics. As much as possible. Yeah. Because it's like freaking hard to.

I agree. Yeah. Yeah. My thing is like I'll do like my sheets, but I'm not going to do my normal clothes. You know what I mean? Like you have to make so many compromises around it. Exactly. So I try to look for the heavy hitters and do that.

those. What's one prediction you have about how we'll think about or treat inflammation in the future? Well, that requires a change of a different scale, right? Because we are in a very toxic environment. We live in a difficult world, right? We are, you know, not only household, household is relatively easy, but then you go workplace. And then you go to the city and then you're walking, you know, you're bombarded by inflammatory insults. So I think the long-term vision here would be, hey, let's create a city that is anti-inflammatory in nature, or, you know, that is longevity promoting.

And there's some efforts in the UK and elsewhere, where these cities are being almost engineered to have more of a gain in your longevity, and your health than what it is today. That feels like such a pipe dream, but that's actually happening? Yeah, it is happening. I want to move there. Longevity cities.

Do you think that most of us are over-concerned, under-concerned, or the right amount of concern about inflammation? Under-concerned. Okay. You don't think this is like too hyped up and it's all over the internet. Not at all. Not at all. I think we should even communicate more and try to educate people as much as possible.

Finish this sentence. We would all be so much less. inflamed if we just stopped. Eating processed foods. Even healthy unprocessed foods, quote unquote. Yeah, no. Yeah, exactly. What's one habit that changed your life?

It's a collection of habits. I'm sorry to tell you, but I moved to this valley close to the beach many, many years ago, and I changed all of these things that we've been discussing, and my inflammatory age went down by 10 years. I don't know which of, you know, these. different aspects was the most significant one. But I think it's, again, going back to what you said before, whatever feels that you can do with the minimum and the largest gain sounds about right. I also think that what you did exemplifies a really underlooked element of inflammation,

which is joy. You were like, I'm going to move somewhere that I love, that I can surf, that I can include this thing that I really enjoy in my life. And that's where I do think the community stuff comes in, the hobbies, like, is joy anti-inflammatory? Yes, 100%. So there's a few studies showing that loneliness in young and older people will increase inflammation and in older people, it increases the risk of heart attack. In younger people, risk of suicide. Try to nurture your relationships and your community and engage in, you know, one-on-one

and also in-person, going out and talking. And yeah, I think it's super important. We like to leave people with one action step, something they can do the second they turn off this podcast to begin to feel and experience a difference. So for somebody looking to tackle their inflammation, what's one action step they could take today? Tonight, right, after the sunset, turn off your bright screen. Turn it off. One hour before you go to bed. And that will shoot your melatonin.

It will cause anti-inflammatory processes. system from happening. Not only that gives you better sleep, right, quality, but it does increase your anti-inflammatory molecules to take place. Amazing. David, where can people find you if they want more information from you or more info on your amazing study you're conducting? Yeah, so the Buck Institute, where I lead the AI platform there, and I have a lab, and David Furman.com, my website. Amazing. And you have a book coming out in the distant future. So I have to have you back on to talk about that. Yes, the good fire and the slow burn.

Ooh, that's a great title. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate this. Thank you so much, Liz. That is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening on Apple or watching on Spotify or YouTube.

You can subscribe or follow so our next episodes get sent directly to your feed. If you like this episode, leave a comment or better yet, send it to a friend, a coworker, a parent, or somebody else that you think might love it. All right, I love you. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have lead levels above California's Prop 65 safety limits? And in some cases, they have

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