The School of Greatness - 4 Ways To Live A Healthier & Longer Life EP 1134

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

The most important thing you can do for your future self is to take control of your health.In this episode, Lewis and the guests discuss what you need to do to live longer, how we can prevent and treat chronic diseases by changing our diets, how food affects our brain, the main causes of cancer and what we do about it and so much more!For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1134Previous episodes of each guest:Dr. Steven Gundry: www.lewishowes.com/521Dr. Mark Hyman: www.lewishowes.com/916Dr. Lisa Mosconi: www.lewishowes.com/1091Dr. Jason Fung: www.lewishowes.com/1030 & www.lewishowes.com/1031 

This is episode number 1134, On the Ways to Live a Happier, Healthier, Longer Life. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now let the class begin. I've got a big announcement. The School of Greatness is available on American public television. That's right. When I started my podcast, I had zero listeners. And I kept going because I wanted to help people get the information that I didn't have access to growing up.

Now, not only have we become one of the top podcasts in the world, but I'm excited to tell you that the School of Greatness show is on TV and you can go to lewishouse.com slash watch to see when it's available on your TV. Every person tuning in really helps us right now. So if you're able to also share this with anyone you think would find it valuable that doesn't consume podcasts regularly, that would be greatly appreciated. Again, that's lewishouse.com slash watch. Check it out now. I'm excited about today's podcast because it's all about optimizing your health to live longer, better, and happier. Because on the School of Greatness, we've had so many great health experts talk about the different ways you can take control of your health and I wanted to bring together some of the best moments from these episodes that really helped

shape my knowledge and give me a deeper understanding of what to do and what not to do most importantly. So in this episode, we discuss what you need to do to live longer with Dr. Stephen Gundry, how we can prevent and treat chronic disease by changing our diets with Dr. Mark Hyman. How food affects our brain and the link to Alzheimer's with Dr. Lisa Moscone. And the main causes of cancer and what we can do about it with Dr. Jason Fung. This will be powerful, so make sure to share this with a few friends you think would be inspired by this as well. You can copy and paste this link, lewishouse.com slash 1134. Or just take the link wherever you're listening to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, in just a moment, it's time to take back control of your health.

In this first section, Dr. Stephen Gundry shares the top ways to live a healthier and longer life. I want all of us to stick around as long as possible here on this earth. For people that want to live longer and be healthy while they live longer, not having to get surgeries all the time. Right. If you had three to five minutes max to talk to someone who said, I just want to live longer. I want to know the secrets to living longer. I got to figure out the keys and you've got three minutes with them. What would you say

in three minutes are the things they must do every day or as often as they can for the rest of their life to extend their life? The first thing they must do is realize that the only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth the only purpose of food and preferably it'll be mushrooms that you pour the olive oil on that's number one the evidence that the polyphenols in olive oil if you really you know wanted to live well for a very long time really you know wanted to live well for a very long time olive oil is the key two of the blue zones actually three if you count the at your olies use a liter of olive oil per week now that's a lot of olive oil it's like 10 to 12 tablespoons a day so there's a beautiful study out of spain that i talk about where you took 65 year old, and we'll dumb it down real quick.

Two groups. One group had to use a liter of olive oil per week for five years, and they changed their olive oil once a week at the clinic. The other group had to eat a low-fat Mediterranean diet, both Mediterranean diets of Spain. At the end of five years, the olive oil group had better memory, had improved memory than when they started. The low-fat group lost memory. The women in the olive oil group had a 67% less incidence of breast cancer than the low-fat group. People in both groups who had coronary artery disease the group that got the olive oil had a 30 less incidence of new events versus the group that had the low-fat diet and so if you know three blue zones and this study doesn't convince you that you better get olive

oil into you olive oil grows brain cells and it's not the oil per se it's actually the polyphenols in olive oil olive oil the polyphenols literally make your blood vessels slippery and i've actually published data on this that your blood vessels you cannot stick cholesterol to blood vessels if you have olive oil in your system. So, you know, drink the dumb stuff. Do you drink it? Yeah, I do. Wow. I take a shot of it.

Craig's always talking about how he can drink as much as possible. But what I would urge people to do is, you can cook in olive oil. This myth that olive oil oxidizes when you cook it is one of the worst internet myths there is. Really? It turns out that olive oil is the least oxidizable oil it's even better than avocado oil or coconut oil it does not oxidize oxidize meaning like evaporate no i mean gets damaged damaged got it okay it turns out everybody sees olive oil smoking and they figure that's damaged it's not so you can burn it as much as you want you know cultures have been

using olive oil to cook with for 5 000 years and you know there's not a lot of dead italians from cooking an olive oil okay so you gotta get that's number one number one number two you got to take vitamin d3 you got to vitamin d3 not d yeah well there's there's d there's D1. What's vitamin D3 and why is it important? So D3 is the active form of vitamin D that we use. You will be shocked that people who have the highest levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream live the longest and live well compared to people with the lowest levels of vitamin d3 it turns out that you have to have vitamin d3 to activate stem cells activation and we can vitamin d is also through the sun is that correct but it's nearly impossible to get enough vitamin d through the sun really nearly impossible. 80% of Southern Californians are vitamin D deficient

because we're slathering sunscreen on us and we're wearing long sleeve shirts. We're inside a lot still. We're inside a lot. I live in Palm Springs. It's pretty hot in the summer. Really hot there. Tend not to go out a lot in the summer.

So we don't have enough vitamin D. And so you have to swallow vitamin D. The University of California, San Diego published a study that the average human being to have an adequate level of vitamin D3 should be taking 9,600 international units a day. So basically 10,000 international units. Wow. They found no one who had vitamin D toxicity at 40 000 international units a day you can't overdose on vitamin i have yet to see vitamin d toxicity and i've been measuring vitamin d levels for 20 years every three months i personally run my vitamin d level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter for the last 12 years to prove i'm not dead and so far so good right

and here's you know just wow tell you how crazy this is if i feel i'm getting something if i'm coming down with a scratchy throat or something i'll take 150 000 international units of vitamin d3 how many capsules three days well so you can get five thousands D3. How many capsules is that? Three days. Well, so you can get 5,000, right? So that's 10 capsules three times a day for three days. So I'm basically taking half a million international units of vitamin D to ward off a virus. Everyone always says you should take vitamin C when you start to feel like a scratch. Yeah, it really doesn't work. Vitamin D is probably one of the best antivirals that's ever been discovered.

So vitamin C really doesn't help that much? Really doesn't help that much. We can get into vitamin C, and I think everybody should take a time-release vitamin C twice a day, and it's actually for a different purpose. What's the purpose? All right. The quick version. All right, quick version.

So you and I are one of the few animals that don't manufacture our own vitamin C. Us, monkeys, and guinea pigs. And we have actually all the genes to manufacture vitamin C. There's actually five of them. The last gene is turned off. It's called a ghost gene. Why do we do that? Well, we manufacture vitamin C from

sugar, from glucose, and it's actually very expensive to manufacture vitamin C. So the theory is, and I like the theory, is we grew up in Africa with lots of vitamin C containing plants in our diet. And so it was unnecessary for us to manufacture vitamin c and the theory goes we'd have some extra glucose left over that we could store as fat to make it through the winter when times are rough and we're the only fat storing ape so the problem is vitamin C is essential to repair collagen in everybody. Collagen. Okay. The reason smokers get wrinkles is collagen is broken because you actually repair cracks in collagen with vitamin C.

And smokers use up all their vitamin C with what's called oxidative stress. So they don't have any vitamin C. In fact, here's another controversial statement. If I've got a smoker with heart disease, I'm willing to trade him his smoking with him taking large amounts of vitamin C while I get the rest of his diet squared away rather than tell him to stop smoking. Now, the reason I say that is, and I talk about this in the book, there's this fascinating island people called the Katavans in New Guinea who smoke like fiends.

They eat 60% of their diet is taro root. The other part of their diet is coconut oil. And they live into their mid-90s with no medical care, but they've been studied extensively. There has never been a case of a heart attack, heart disease, or a stroke in these smokers. What they do do is they eat a lot of vitamin C-containing fruits and vegetables as part of their diet. Olive oil as well? They don't have any olive oil. They have coconut oil. That's their coconut? They don't have any olive oil. They have coconut oil.

That's their coconut. They don't have any olives down there. So you can do without olive oil and still live a long life. Yeah. But you think olive oil will... Yeah. Since olive oil is so readily available... Might as well.

Might as well. Might as well. Okay. So anyhow, back to vitamin C. Yeah. You have to have vitamin C to repair the cracks in blood vessels. People remember scurvy, where people would die, they bleed to death on long ocean voyages. Actually, 50% mortality on those old ocean voyages, just dying from scurvy.

And the British Navy, the reason they're called limeys is because the surgeon in the British Navy realized that if he gave them limes to take on the voyage, that they wouldn't die of scurvy. That's why the British Navy is still called limeys. So vitamin C repairs the cracks in collagen. And our blood vessels are flexing all the time. And so these cracks have to be repaired. And if they're not repaired, you basically bleed to death. We have a system of repairing those cracks and it's called cholesterol and cholesterol will patch those cracks so if you have plenty of vitamin c throughout the day you won't you'll

be able to repair those cracks and there's a wild study i, head down a rabbit hole, you can genetically engineer rats to lack that final gene to make vitamin C. And they will live half as long as a normal rat. If you then put vitamin C in their water, they will live as long as a normal rat who can manufacture their vitamin C. But they're drinking the water throughout the day. Yeah. So, vitamin C, c unfortunately we have to manufacture we have to manufacture it and we've got some interesting tricks to do that uh coming up okay but in the meantime the average person should take like a thousand milligrams of timed release vitamin c twice a day okay to cover their ass wow okay so the first thing i heard you say this three minutes is turning into 20 it's okay of timed release vitamin C twice a day. Okay. To cover their ass. Wow. Okay. So the first thing I heard you say,

this three minutes is turning into 20. I'm sorry. No worries. The first thing I heard is olive oil. Oh, and olive oil is actually one of the tricks to activate the ghost gene. A polyphenol and olive oil. Okay.

You will actually make vitamin C. Okay. There you go. So there you go. Another good reason. So have olive oil. Vitamin D, have lots of vitamin D. Three.

D3. D3. And then what's next to live a long life? go another good reason so have olive oil and vitamin d have lots of vitamin d3 d3 and then what's next to live a long life next is you got to get some form of long chain omega-3 fat better known as fish oil and vegans have no excuse anymore there is algae based dha and epa but here's the deal your brain uh is about 70 fat so if you want to call me a fat head you know i will take it yeah and i can just see how the internet lighting up me is a fat head so half of the fat in your brain is actually an omega-3 fat called DHA. So basically half of your brain is fish oil. Wow. And as I talk about in the longevity paradox, you look at people, what are called the omega-3 index,

which basically looks at how much DHA you have in you over the past two months. how much DHA you have in you over the past two months. People with the highest omega-3 index have the largest brains and the largest areas of memory, the hippocampus. People with the lowest levels of DHA have the most shrunken brains and the smallest memory areas, hippocampus. So mom was right. When she said fish is brain food you know she was absolutely she didn't know why it was but we now know it's dha is really what makes your brain so sushi is good sushi is actually not a good idea oh wow most of the people i see with high mercury levels are sushi eaters or dentists uh so and particularly

sashimi grade tuna you just want to just kind of want to stay away from it oh sugar fish is amazing though yeah and it's got the grains too yeah it's got the grains you know so so no sushi yeah so once in a while yeah once in a while okay absolutely yeah yeah but you know. So no sushi. Yeah. So once in a while. Yeah. Once in a while. Absolutely. But, you know, so fish oil is incredibly important. Yeah. And what I try to get people to do. And again, I measure this every three months and all my patients.

And when we're talking, you know, thousands and thousands of patients over the last 20 years, you want to get about a thousand milligrams of dha per day now how do you do that well you get fish oil i mean you can go to costco i don't know right and you look on the back and you find serving size and make sure it says one serving size they love to fool you uh they may say two or three and then you look down below and you see dha and you look to see how much dha is in a capsule and you add it up and say oh okay there's 250 milligrams of dha in this capsule so i need to take four wow four a day yeah well i mean a day yeah thousand a day okay we got olive oil we've got uh vitamin d. We have fish oils. What else do we need to live longer?

So you've got to have polyphenols in your diet. What the heck is a polyphenol? How do you remember polyphenol? Think about polywannaphenol. Phenols are plant compounds. Polyphenols are plant compounds that plants use primarily to protect themselves against stress and sunlight. Just interesting fact. We know that red wine is beneficial for you because of actually two polyphenols.

The most famous is resveratrol. The other one is quercetin or quercetin. The higher the grapes are grown, the higher in altitude the grapes are grown the more polyphenols they make because they need more to protect themselves yeah exactly it's basically uh suntan you know they they've actually protected themselves against sunburn interesting also the more the plant is stressed the more polyphenols it makes to protect itself right okay so polyphenols are traditionally in dark colored berries so for instance blueberries blackberries raspberries interesting fun fact the leaves of these trees or vines have more polyphenols than the actual fruit does so for instance black raspberry leaves have far more polyphenols than black raspberries

and i take black raspberry capsules oh by the way and it's in the book. There you go. So, olives, for instance, are loaded with polyphenols. And olives that are stressed are even better. Olive leaves have more polyphenols than olives. So, olive leaf extract is an easy way of getting the huge amount of benefits without drinking a liter of olive oil. So, what about, like, you know, leafyy greens do you want stressed out looking leafy greens or do you want healthy thriving looking excellent question it turns out that the reason organic vegetables in general are better for you besides the fact that they haven't been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and probably roundup and we can get into that, is the fact that these creatures, these plants,

actually have to work harder, and they have to produce more polyphenols to protect themselves against insect predation. And so that's actually the reason you want to eat organic. So when you're going to the farmer's market and the poor little organic vegetables have got pock holes of insects, they're dying and they don't look very good you go i want that guy that guy is struggling he is going to just be so loaded with polyphenol

and correlation with that is the more bitter the better because polyphenols in general are very bitter uh for instance when uh we were developing you know my signature product vital reds it's pure polyphenols primarily and they're bitter so we did lots of taste testing to figure out how the heck we're going to mask these really bitter compounds so more bitter more better in fact as i talk about in the book i had the pleasure of knowing jack lillane who you would know is really the godfather of fitness and nutrition in the united states and i knew him in his later years and jack used to have a saying is that if it tastes good spit it out interesting now what he really meant by that is bitter things nasty tasting things is actually what is going to give the

bugs that are actually going to keep you alive what they want to eat and don't you know more bitter more better so you know the more polyphen, the more bitter greens I can get into you, the better. But you can get that through capsules and other things too. Yeah, you can. And in fact, that's one of the reasons I'm a nut about taking a bunch of supplements. Because we, if you look at even, you know, really good organic eaters, If you look at even really good organic eaters, most human beings only eat maybe 20 different plant species. I probably eat like three.

Yeah, most people do. Like five maybe. And ketchup is not a vegetable. It's a tomato and we can't do that. and we can't do that. So our ancestors, and even looking at modern hunter-gatherers like the Hunza tribe, they go through, they eat 250 different plant species

on a rotating basis. And you think about it, all those plants are grown organically. They're in six feet of loam soil. They got their cool microbiome. So they're just replete with all these nutrients and polyphenols. And so, you you know if people

think that they can actually do a great job eating healthy uh without supplementation and i got oceanfront property in palm springs i'm happy to sell them right right exactly okay so i want to get one more thing i've heard that in order to extend your life you need to i can't remember the name extend something at the end of your telomeres telomeres what is that telomeres so how do we is that true you have to extend this so that is one theory of longevity and it is a it's a good theory i like like the theory. It's controversial. Vitamin D. Turns out that people with the highest levels of vitamin D have the longest telomeres.

There you go. So why wouldn't you do that if you like that theory? There you go. So that's vitamin D. Vitamin D. If anybody takes away, it's vitamin vitamin d so you've given four things so far let's give me one final thing that can extend our life and the quality of our life as well great so the last thing we want to do is we want to turn off as much as we can the sensor called m tor originally called the mammalian target of rapamycin.

It's subsequently been discovered in all organisms besides mammals. And so now it's called the mechanistic target of rapamycin. And so mTOR is an energy sensor and it's in all of our cells. And it's in all of our cells. And basically, we come from a circadian rhythm system of plentiful food at one time of the year and very little food at another time of year. Right. Fruit sometimes, none of those. Exactly. And we use fruit to gain weight for the winter. And that's a whole other subject.

So mTOR senses energy availability. And it senses sugar molecules. And it also senses amino acids, protein. Now, it turns out that it's very sensitive to particular amino acids rather than all amino acids. The ones it's most sensitive to are amino acids contained in animal protein and animals include fish animal protein includes eggs it includes cheeses and besides you know meat so beautiful work that's been done a lot of it done by now my friend Walter Longo from USC

from the longevity Center is that the mimicking fasting diet yeah the fasting mimicking diet I've taken that a couple times he got a patent

for Prolong yeah Prolong yeah got a patent for it so Prolong yeah so Prolong is

a vegan low amino acid diet that you do for five days. Yeah, it's tough the first time. It is.

For me, it was. Now, in the book, I wrote about it in The Plant Paradox, actually, before he made promo. But I write about it again. And he's even given me a nice shout-out on the back. The idea is you want to reduce mTOR as much as you can. And the more you suppress it as much as you can. And the more you suppress it, the longer you live.

And here's the reason. If times are rough and you sense that times are rough, your body, your immune system actually goes around and looks at all the cells in your body and says, who's pulling their weight? Who is really contributing to this effort and who's a slacker who looks a little weird who's not you know not doing and it actually instructs cells to commit suicide and it's called autophagy and it tells cells sorry you know you're not you're out you're out of here you die um and so it gets the fittest of the fittest to survive.

It makes you stronger. And you have to have these periods of time. You have to call the herd, as we say. So unless you do that, you have all of these cells that just kind of build up the debris. They're called senescent cells. Some people call them zombie cells. called senescent cells. Some people call them zombie cells.

And it's the amount of these zombie cells that is actually going to make you deteriorate long before you should. And get sick. Exactly. So you got to call the hurt. So how you do that? Five days in a row, once a month. Once a month you do this? Once a month.

Five days in a row. Five days in a row. Once a month you do this? Once a month. Five days in a row. Five days in a row. You follow a vegan diet of about 900 calories. And I got some great recipes.

It's easy to do. And you do it five days in a row. It's as if you did calorie restriction every day. And what this does is not only call the herd, but it activates stem cells. In this section, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about how we can prevent and treat chronic diseases by changing our diets. One of the lessons I'm learning over and over is how important our diet is to success in every area of our lives. What do we categorize as sick? That's a great question.

So what's obese? What's sick? What's... So at the top level, we have to understand that over the last 40 years, a tsunami has come that we weren't aware was coming, that we weren't prepared for and still haven't grappled with. And that tsunami is chronic disease and food-related in 40 years in 40 years did we have chronic disease prior to this we did of course we did but not the magnitude we used to have like five percent obesity rates in this country in the early 60s it's 40 percent now in most states i thought it was like

30 like a few years ago nobody nope it's. It's like 40%. Many states are 40% and many are just pushing 40. So it's 35 to 40 depending on where you look at it. Like California is probably less. Colorado is less. But Mississippi and Alabama are you know 40 plus. So we have 6 out of every 10 Americans who's got a chronic

illness. 4 out of 10 who have more than one. By 10 years from now we're going to have 83 million with three or more chronic diseases, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, dementia, you name it. We are having 11 million people, and this is, I think, a conservative estimate, 11 million people around the world die every year from bad food, from ultra processed food and not enough good food. Now I think it's more like 50 million when you

look at all the related conditions and so forth it's a staggering number that beats out smoking war violence accidents you name it nothing else comes close not malaria tb aids all that is a fraction a third of the deaths that are caused by chronic illness and they're mostly preventable and they're mostly caused by food and they're mostly caused by food, and they're mostly caused by the ultra-processed food that our food system produces en masse. It's the biggest industry on the planet. It's $15 trillion, about 17% of the world's global product, and it is controlled by a few dozen CEOs that are in monopolies around seed production, agrochemicals,

fertilizer, processed food companies. It's staggering how the system has sort of just over the last 40 years completely transformed. And I remember I was in some store or cafe and I saw this picture of Woodstock. i'm looking at the all the sea of people and the 60s right 69 there was a one overweight person i watched this movie i think it was called amazing grace about eretha franklin african-american church now african-americans 80 of african-american women are overweight uh it is you know 80 today 80 why why that? Well, because they're targeted by the food industry, because they're in a vicious cycle of economic stress, of social stress, of unfair targeting and manipulation by the food industry. This is well documented by, for example, studies from Yale where they look at the amount of advertising and targeting to poor and African American, Hispanic communities. It's staggering. And there was not one overweight person in this sea of African Americans in 1970. And so it's literally just happened. And I was 11 years old

in 1970. And in my lifetime, you see this change. So we have this staggering problem of chronic illness, which people suffer from. It's bankrupting people. It's bankrupting our country. I mean, think about the amount of economic stress. We talked about… Well, insurance, too. I mean, so much insurance money that's involved in this, too. People are having to go to the doctor so much more probably now because of these issues, right?

Absolutely. People… And then many people are not adequately covered. So, there's a lot of co-pays. I mean, people can have $10,000, $20,000 in co-pays. I had a patient the other day who, you know, had diabetes. And I fixed his diabetes through food. And he says, I saved $10,000 a year on co-pays for my insulin.

Just the drugs. Yeah. And when you look at the amount on diabetes spent in this country, which is basically one out of every two Americans has prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, one-third of Medicare spending is on diabetes. One third of Medicare is on diabetes. Yeah. Medicare, if it was a company, would be the biggest company in the world, a trillion dollar

budget a year. Shut up. Yes. One third of our total federal tax revenue expected to grow to 100% of our mandatory spending by 2048. And in six years, Lewis, six Louis six years the Medicare trust fund which is sort of the bank account that we used to make sure we cover Medicare it's a little complicated how it works, but the Medicare trust funds gonna be out of money So that means that we're gonna have to get a trillion dollars a year out of Our tax revenue. We're not covering. So this is a threat to our economy.

It's a threat to our political stability. It's a threat even to national security. It's because seven out of 10 kids who apply for the military get rejected. Can't get in? Because they're too fat or unfit to fight. No way. Yes, there's 700 admirals and generals that published a report called

Unhealthy and Unprepared about the threat in our military and national security and not only that soldiers are overweight so we're feeding them crap they go in iraq and afghanistan the number one reason for for uh medical evacuations was not war injury was obesity related problems come on yes 100 obesity related problems what does that mean like they're injuries like a heart injury injuries from being overweight wow and and you can read about this i didn't make Yes, 100%. Obesity related problems? What does that mean? Like they're- Injury- Like a heart problem?

Injuries from being overweight. Wow. And you can read about this. I didn't make this shit up. Right. In that report, Unhealthy and Unprepared. Just Google it. You can read it yourself.

Wow. It's staggering. So we have a $22 trillion debt. We have this threat of chronic disease exploding. It's getting worse and worse. Medicare for all is kind of a silly idea and so is repealing obamacare now they're going to help the problem unless we figure out how to stop people from going into the system in the first place into the system meaning getting unhealthy yeah if they don't need medical care it's cheap

you know so let's go back to diabetes for a second. Tell me again the stat on diabetes, how many people have it or are pre-diabetic. I'm uneducated on this. How many different types of diabetes are there and how is it caused? Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Pancreas fails. It's what used to be called juvenile diabetes. You need insulin. You need it.

You need insulin. If you have type 1 diabetes, you need insulin to do what? You need insulin, yes, because your pancreas dies. Your pancreas makes insulin and helps your blood sugar get balanced. That's the blood. It's the gatekeeper that lets the glucose into your cells. It's really important. How does that die?

How do people die from that? How does the pancreas die? How does it get to that point? It's an autoimmune disease. It's not like you get multiple sclerosis or arthritis. It's basically your body attacks your pancreas die? Oh, well, it's an autoimmune disease. How does it get to that point? It's an autoimmune, like you get multiple sclerosis or arthritis. It's basically your body attacks your pancreas. Is that from eating a lot of bad foods? Well, there's been links to dairy and actually as a driver of type 1 diabetes.

Gluten, 29% of people who have type 1 diabetes have celiac that are undiagnosed. Wow. And celiac is a big cause of autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes. So that's a very small number of people. Very few. One out of two Americans have what we call type 2 diabetes. We used to call it adult onset, except now kids as young as three are getting type 2 diabetes from drinking soda from the crib. Oh, my gosh.

I was working when I was a resident in an urgent care center, and this woman comes in for back pain. She's got her baby in a carriage and i see her feeding this baby this brown liquid in a bottle who's seven months old and i'm like what is soda i'm like what is that so that's coca-cola no i said why are you feeding your baby coke she's small uh he likes it oh my gosh oh my god listen my wife showed me this this uh video on on uh on the social media the other day it was of a baby it looked like it was maybe eight or nine months old baby having ice cream for the first time oh having sugar for the first time and you watch the baby eat the ice cream i'll light out the eyes and then the baby like i want the

thing like stuffs in his face i was like oh my god it was just just so crazy. And it's highly addictive. So yeah. So now we're seeing one in two Americans suffer from either pre-diabetes or type two diabetes. And that is when you eat too much sugar and starch. And every time you do that, it raises your insulin. Your body becomes resistant to the insulin. So it doesn't work as well. So you need more insulin. And insulin does what? Insulin makes you hungry. it makes you store belly fat it locks the fat in the fat cells and it slows your metabolism it's like a quadruple bad threat for your body to gain weight so it's why we're seeing you know and that's goes back to what we're growing right so why are we eating all this food that it's because that's the food we produce right and so that's the food we produce.

And so that's the other part of the problem. So we have the chronic disease, we have the economic impact, and then we're like, well, why do we have this food? So as a functional medicine doctor, I'm always asking why. Well, why are my patients sick? Because it makes money, right? Well, no, yeah, but I'm going even further. Why I got interested in this, because as a, why would a doctor care about agriculture

and soil and all this crap? Because as I was thinking about my patients' diseases, most of them were caused by food and can be cured by food. Mm. Something, well, if it's caused by food. How many are most of them? Is this like 50%, 70%? 80%. 80% of anyone that comes in to the hospital, or your patients, that's some type of disease or some type of sick I mean unless it's like an environmental thing

like mercury or lime or mold you know most of the cancer cancer cancer is caused by food really 70% so you've said a cancer is caused by food and sugar is the number one culprit heart disease diabetes Alzheimer's heart disease the big killers are by sugar and food. Yes. Yes. So if you change your diet, you should be able to cure, prevent.

Or cure sometimes. Sometimes cure, depends how far along things are, I guess. Yeah. You can prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's. Yes, 100%. I mean, the studies are there. It's crazy. Even people who already have Alzheimer's,

when they improve their diet, they can wake up. They get more functionality back. So you've got me thinking, okay, well if the patient's diseases are caused by food, what's causing the food? It's the food system. And I'm like, well what's causing the food system? It's our food policies. Like what's causing our food policies?

It's the food industry that's lobbying Congress. It's got money. It's the biggest lobby group in Congress is agriculture and food by far, like by twice as much as the next lobby group. By like gas and oil or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Right. And it's like, what?

So then I began thinking, well, if I'm going to help my patients, I can't do it in my office. Like I can, it's like, it's like I'm like in the boat, bailing the boat with a hole instead of plugging the hole. Right. You're not going to the source. Right. So then I'm thinking, okay, well, what do I need to do as a functional medicine doctor? I need to go to the root cause, right?

The root cause and why. And then it became clear to me that it's, it's our, our agricultural system that's driving so much of the problem. It's like, I'm the first one to raise my hand when I say like, I love sugar and it's my biggest vice, right? Like I love cookies and candies and cakes and brownies and anything you can think of I love it right you know we programmed I don't know why I don't diabetes so much sugar I've had my whole life but I can't be having that much because you look pretty good well I train hard too right I go

through waves and but as a kid I would drink like nine ten dr peppers a day I remember what like some days in the summer you just sit around. You could have been president if that would have been. Exactly. I would just, I mean I would run around and work out and play sports but then I would just drink because I thought that's what was on TV. You were 16, 18. No, I was like 9, 10, right? So I was like

but it was, you'd see it on commercials like your NBA superstar drinking Dr. Pepper or Sprite or whatever whatever on the basketball court. And I don't know if it was just like subconscious or just it tasted good and you didn't think about it. I mean, this is where the food industry is so, I mean, I talk about it in my book, Food Facts, but the food industry is so strategic about how it advances its mission and goals. And it does it through multiple channels.

And I'm just going to go through's just people just don't know the celebrity endorsements right yeah first you know obviously you know celebrity endorsements which is the obvious one they co-op social groups so they fund groups like the NAACP and Hispanic Federation the you know African American and Latino communities are the most affected by diabetes and obesity and they co-op them by funding them I want to show the movie fed up at yeah the The African-American and Latino communities are the most affected by diabetes and obesity. And they co-opt them by funding them. I want to show the movie Fed Up at the King Center in Atlanta.

And Bernie's King, Martin Luther King's daughter, was all about it. And she was excited. But once we got it scheduled, a few days later, I got a call that we couldn't show it. I'm like, why? She's like, because Coca-Cola funds the King Center. No. Yeah. I went to Spelman College, you know, which is African American Women's College in Atlanta.

And the dean said to me, half of the 18-year-olds coming into college have a chronic illness. Obesity, hypertension, diabetes. 18-year-old women. And I'm like, why is there soda machines all over the campus? Why?

She goes, because Coke funds. No. And one of the people on the board of trustees is one of the highest executives at Coca-Cola. Oh man. An African American woman. So they co-op social groups. And that's why they, for example, oppose soda taxes.

Because they're in the funding of these big soda companies. And then of course they fund research. So they fund 12 times as much research, $12 billion worth of research a year to study nutrition. What would be the first steps that someone could take to help? Well, I think, you know, it seems like such a big, it is. So let's talk about some of the solutions. So we know, you know, food is causing chronic disease. It's destroying our economy. It's crippling our climate. It's destroying our environment and killing all the pollinators and all biodiversity.

And it's causing social injustice because it targets poor minorities who suffer from problems. It prevents kids from learning in school because they're eating all this crap. It threatens our national security. It creates political instability. So we know all these things. But the good news is that by fixing the food system, we can solve these. And how do we do it? Well, it's going to need citizen action.

It's going to need business innovation. well it's going to need citizen action it's going to need business innovation and it's going to need policy change and of course other philanthropists and governments to help get on board and i think that's what's really exciting to me because there's so much hope so for example on a personal level you can shift what you eat and what you do to drive change in the marketplace why are companies like Nestle and Unilever and Danone creating regenerative ag programs within their supply chain? Why are they trying to up the quality of their food and take out chemicals?

Because consumers are demanding it. Well, they're buying companies like Primal Kitchen that have like- Like Kraft, right, bought Primal Kitchen, which is basically a Whole Foods, really high quality, nutritious product with no junk in it. I'm curious, you said something about nut milk and about dairy. Has dairy been declining in the last five years?

Yes, dairy consumption has been declining dramatically. Do you know the percentages? Yeah, I think over the last few years it's gone down about 25%. Borden, which is a big milk producer, has been around since 1887, has gone bankrupt. What? Yeah. A lot of these milk producers, now people are still eating cheese, they're eating yogurt, but actual milk consumption has gone down and the nut milks have gone up. Why is that?

Is that because of education? Is that because of disease? that because I think you know I think probably a lot of you 75% of the population is lactose intolerant. Yeah, so I don't feel good I used to drink so much milk every day. And how did you feel fine? I always had like his stuffy nose right right. I was always tired and workouts and practices like I was always blowing my nose Actually milk is nature's perfect food but only if you're a cat right i mean we're the only species that consumes milk after weaning there are very few populations that seem to thrive on milk the messiah and some of the northern

europeans the other problem the dairy we're eating today is not the dairy we ate right so there are heirloom cows i mean you travel around the world you travel I travel and you go see these really weird-looking cows in other countries like what is that and it's a cow but these are you know complex breeds that have different types of protein in the milk different types of casein and the Holstein they sort of the homogenized cow I don't mean homogenized milk but everything they're all the same. Not the steroid.

And they're fertilized by like three bulls, I think. They get the sperm from the bull. And it's like they're all the same. And they have bred out the beneficial or the safe casein, which is A2 casein, and then A1 casein, which causes more inflammation, more congestion, more irritable bowel, more autoimmunity, more skin issues. So people are getting that milk isn't always the best. And I think then, you know, people are eating nut notes.

Now, they're not completely... Are those good for you, though? Because a lot of people have still, like, skin problems. Yeah. Well, nut milks are problematic. So, one, almond milk is great. But, you know, almonds are... But you can't have too much of it.

Yeah. I started to get, like, a rash after... Yeah. Like, I switched almond milk is great, but almonds are- But you can't have too much of it. Yeah. I started to get a rash after I switched from milk years ago, and I started to get eczema, like a little eczema here and there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when I stopped drinking it, it would go away, and I was like, huh, maybe I'm drinking so much almond butter, almond milk, everything. Well, a lot of them had carrageenan in it, which causes leaky gut. You get leaky gut, you get eczema.

So it's a thickener they put into these milks. They put a lot of sugar in these milks. They put a lot of gums in these milks. So you have to be very careful about which one you're having. Just because it's healthier doesn't mean it's healthier. Yeah, and I don't want to, like, again, drinking tons of soy milk. It could be GMO soy. It could be folic glyphosate.

If not, it could be, you know, getting huge amounts of these phytoestrogens, which our bodies aren't really meant to get. Eating traditional foods and traditional amounts are fine. Tofu, miso, tempeh, those are fine. Really? Those are how people have consumed soy over millennia, but not 10 pounds a day and not three glasses. Not gallons of it.

No. I had a stepdaughter once. She loved soy milk, just drinking it all day. And she started at nine years old getting little breasts. And I'm like, well, that's not good. Oh, you know Yeah, and so yeah, we have to be smart about it I think you know if you're using a little here and there but I don't recommend people to drink it as a drink really You know if you want to put along coffee milk or soy milk

There's a lot of milk coconut milk don't drink. No. No, I mean I think have have it sometimes You have a glass once a week. Maybe it's okay, but not like drinking glasses every day. Yeah, probably not. But you can add it to things. Sure, put it in a smoothie. You can mix them up. Macadamia milk, cashew milk, hazelnut milk. There's all kinds of milks now.

I like macadamia milk. Macadamia milk is so good. It's like sweet tasting. Yeah, you can make your own nut milks. I have cookbooks. My food, what should I cook and tasting. Yeah, you can make your own nut milks. I have cookbooks. My food, what should I cook, and others. Teach you how to make your own nut milks at home. You soak the nuts.

You put them in a blender with some water. There's no additives, ingredients, sugar. It's great. But not too much of it, is what you're saying. Yeah, no, no, yeah. That's the challenge. It's like anything. Like anything.

Except for water. Drink a lot of water. That's better. Yeah, I mean, listen. Anything can kill you, right? Water can kill you. Yeah, I mean, listen, anything can kill you, right? Water can kill you.

You know, marathon runners who overhydrate, their body is diluted, their blood is diluted with too much water, and they get what we call low sodium or hyponatremia, and that causes seizures and death. So yeah, you can die from drinking too much water. So it's all about eating stuff in complex amounts and in a complex variety of foods. So a variety of food is good.

Huge. We've seen 800 species of plants. That's good. Not having the same, like three things every day. Listen, most of our diet is, is corn, soy and corn, soy and wheat. Most of our diet, you know, and, and in other countries, rice in there. And those are, you know, all mostly turned into processed food. I think we used to have, like I said, 800 species of plants we ate.

Now there's 12. We've lost 90% of all our edible plant species, half of all our livestock species. We've lost them. Gone. Stink. What do you mean? Those plants are gone? Gone.

We can't make, we can't create, there's no seeds anymore? There are seed banks that are there. Those plants are gone? Gone. I mean, there are... We can't make... We can't create... There's no seeds anymore? There are seed banks that are there. There's seed vaults in Alaska. Oh, those are probably valuable. Yeah, the USDA has a lot of seeds. Actually, a friend of mine was trying to develop different varieties of plants. He was trying to get some old seeds and got to the USDA.

And by accident, he got a a packet which was numbered like four three two one six whatever and he was like call them some what is this like because he was working with an agricultural guy to grow you know healthy food and well these are these himalayan buckwheat himalayan buckwheat which is kind of a rare buckwheat from the himalayas it grows in really rough conditions and it's one of the most nutrient, phytochemically rich, dense foods, high protein, low starch, full of phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals on the planet. And it's almost extinct. Pretty much. Maybe there's a few villages in the Himalayas that grow it. So how do we bring that back? And how do we start to create different sort of more you know beneficial grains there's there's

um uh kernza wheat which has been developed by uh russ jackson out in uh west jackson out in the midwest which is a perennial wheat that grows roots that go you know you know tens of feet into the ground breaks up the soil creates organic matter and creates incredibly delicious wheat that's heirloom wheat. It's actually a new form, but it doesn't have all the gluten in it, it's less inflammatory, less sugar. Oh, man. So we need to kind of bring back some of these different kinds of foods in these complex

farms that actually restore soil, restore human health. Oh, man. So I spent 30 years doing functional medicine and just seeing the power of food to actually heal people. And you know, people often don't understand how close they are to feeling good or how bad they feel. It can be like one or two days switch. Yeah.

I mean, Dr. Hyman, I didn't know how bad I was feeling until I started feeling good. And I was joking. I had FLC syndrome, which is when you feel like crap. Right. Well, it's just like the inflammation, the pain, the achiness, the tiredness. Like you said, you have congestion in your nose. Your digestion is not right. You have a little headache.

You're sluggish. You have brain fog. You're tired. You're achy. You don't sleep well. You have skin problems. Blurry eyes. Yeah, all that stuff.

And people are like, oh, this is normal. This is just normal. I have an irritable bowel. I have sinus issues. My joints are a little sore. No, it's your food. It's what you're eating. And so for 10 days, you do a 10-day reset.

And literally, it's like when your computer's not working, you hit the reset and it reboots everything. It's like a reboot. And then you get to see within 10 days how powerfully food and... Impacts you. Yes. And then you go, well, now I can choose. Now I can feel like crap or I can feel great. But now I know.

Yeah. And there's a more serious form of what we call feel like crap which is FLC syndrome called FLS. Right. Exactly. That's when you go to the doctor.

And the first time I've ever created anything because I really want people to have the experience is called, it's a company called Pharmacy and you go to getpharmacy.com

with an F. F-A-R-M-A-C-Y and you get the 10 day reset. It's a whole program it's really integrated and it's powerful and it involves

lifestyle change and diet change and the right nutrients and supplements and shakes and it's just awesome wow 10 days

10 days reset it I mean I even do it you know like I you know I came back

from the holidays you know and I try to do well I cook Christmas dinner I'm Jewish my wife's family and I made it all healthy but you know when there was our mom's house we're here it's like a little ice cream or this right and go too far buddy and I didn't feel great and I came back I just did

the whole 10 day reset it's like I feel amazing you don't crave bad stuff your energies up your sleep's better your joints don't hurt your digestion is good I gotta get it yeah I gotta get it from me and the team. Make sure we reset it. Amazing. So, um, get pharmacy.com. Yes. Uh, food fix book, food, fix book.com and your podcast doctors, pharmacy, doctors, pharmacy. Yeah. We need everybody on the team here to fix this food system. Cause it's an existential threat and we don't do it. We're screwed. I mean, we're just, you know, we know the decline of the Roman Empire was because of some bad stuff that was going on there. Well, our food is the decline of our empire. Really?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, if we're all sick and dead, we can't do anything. I mean, yeah. I mean, the amount of disability and suffering. A lot of pain. Mental illness. Mental illness connected to food. Depression.

Depression. Obesity. Chronic disease. It limits our productivity productivity our ability to engage in life like we all want to feel good we want to have energy we want to be able to love the people we love in our life to do the work we want to have the mission we want to to be energetic and engaged and i just want to sit around all day and binge on netflix right yeah i mean watching netflix is fine but like not in a way that avoids life because you feel so bad. And I think what's frustrating for me is, Lewis, is that I see so much needless suffering.

You know, some things we can't change. In this section, Dr. Lisa Moscone shares the effects of food on the brain and the link between the rise in Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's. When you've learned, you know, the more you've studied brain foods and the functionality of optimizing your brain and, you know, living longer and having the function of your brain use, what have you, what would you shy away from? What would you say? You know what, that's probably the worst thing for your brain to have functionality and to to to function longer and live longer with your brain health what are the the main foods you would absolutely never touch you never give your family or your kids because you just feel like it's very harmful processed foods and any processed foods and no we we don't eat i don't eat processed foods i i really try to stick to

whole foods so does that include like that's a cooking pastries i was just thinking oh my goodness this is maybe not true i i do eat crackers occasionally but um we really i really don't eat a lot of processed foods and they're mostly minimally processed and my daughter really loves this peanut butter covered banana bites so i buy those but i wouldn't call it a processed food i mean it's not fresh from the plant but um it's certainly not burgers or hot dogs or popcorn and then it's just frozen pizza i don't don't eat that i just so what is the what is processed foods due to brain health there is a lot of research showing that the standard american diet or the sad diet is really really yeah it's really really bad bad news for your brain. And we have seen this many times using brain scans.

We've published this time and time again. Then this may sound biased, but we were using a Mediterranean style pattern as an example of a healthy diet, which is what scientists would tell you. Most scientists really endorse aranean style diet as a healthy it's a brain healthy diet and we we were comparing the brain scans of people and the mediterranean diet to those of people of the same exact age educational level on a western diet or in a standard american diet you could see the difference just by looking at the brains. So if you are... What do the brains look like on the Mediterranean diet versus the sad American processed diet?

Is it just like it light up? It's lit up more. It's more rich looking. It's just fuller. What is the difference? The difference is that the brains of people on the Western diet look older. Just picture that in your mind, if you can, and the brain of a 50 year old person on a Mediterranean style diet looks very

full. There's very, the brain is, is, is composed of three different parts, but mostly just two parts. There's brain and then there's fluid inside your hand and you want to have as much brain as you can and as little fluid as you can i mean you want to have some fluid because it's protective but not too much you have more fluid and less brain it means your brain is shrinking like you're losing neuron and fluid is taking over the space oh my gosh if you compare the brain scans you can tell that people on western diets show brain shrinkage already in midlife and that continues over time and worse than that and we have published this the western diet is associated with the emergence of al's plaques already in midlife.

So people on Mediterranean diets are basically zero plaques, at least in our, in our hands. What do you mean by plaques? What does that mean? Alzheimer's plaques. So Alzheimer's disease, which is the most common form of dementia in the population is characterized by presence of these plaques. So it's a plaque on your teeth, there plaques inside of the brain. So there's a plaque on your teeth, there'd be plaque in your brain.

There are lesions. Yeah, there are lesions inside the brain that are considered the hallmark or the signature of Alzheimer's disease. For a really, really long time, scientists, everybody thought that Alzheimer's was a disease of old age. And that's because the symptoms become evident when people are in their 70s. But now people are getting them in their 50s, the plaque buildup. That's right.

So Alzheimer's disease starts with negative changes in the brain decades prior to anyone forgetting keys or forgetting names. That happens in midlife. And the very first signs that we can detect using brain scans are these plaques, these lesions that you can see building up inside your brain. And there's a very clear difference in the timeline for people on Western diet who developed the plaques earlier than people who follow healthier diets. Wow. So that's a really, that's a big flag.

Is there a way when, if you notice someone's brain scan is shrinking their brain, they're building some of these early stage plaques around their brain. They've got more fluid, less brain matter. Is there a way to reverse that so your brain can actually grow and expand and become healthier and reverse Alzheimer's plaque? Is that possible? So, well, that's the hope with the vaccinations that we're working on. So, scientists have been working on developing vaccines for Alzheimer's disease for a really, really long time. The idea is that if you remove the plaques, your brain will stop deteriorating. But so far, all the clinical trials failed, which is...

And removing the plaques. No, they've removed the plaques, but they do not reverse dementia or cognitive impairment or the atrophy. So that's disappointing in so many ways. I can't even begin to tell you, but that's another reason why the entire scientific community is now moving towards prevention. People say we're starting too late. We should start treating this when people are younger right not when they need it it's like when you're it's preventative you know we want to we want people not to get those plaques

i think that would be ideal so when you get when you start to build up these plaques what i'm hearing you say is you can remove the plaque potentially, but you still cannot reverse dementia or Alzheimer's? Are you able to reverse Alzheimer's in some way? Is that possible? Depends on what you mean by reversing Alzheimer's. So there's Alzheimer's disease, which is the actual pathology, the lesions and plaques and tangles and a bunch of other things. And then there's dementia, which is the clinical syndrome with the symptoms. We can reverse Alzheimer's by removing the plaques.

But the problem is that the symptoms don't go away. Really? So we were unable to reverse the symptoms of dementia currently. Is that right? No one's had dementia and then reversed it. Not in clinical trials. In real life. Has someone done this that you're aware of? I don't think so. I.

So is there a way to slow it down? I think I would know about it. Is there a way to slow this process down so it doesn't get worse? And it's kind of like a manageable. Symptoms where it's like, i'm you know i'm forgetting or i'm losing memory but it's not worse and worse and worse every day have we seen that uh yeah so there are some medicines that we have uh there are alzheimer's uh drugs that slow down progression, like Donepizil or Aricept, like the most common. Well, we only have four medications approved for Alzheimer's disease.

We have acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which are the most common. We have memantine for some cases. They do slow down progression, but they do not fix the problem. but they do not fix the problem. Where is Alzheimer's the most prevalent in the world? Is it in the USA? Is it in Europe? Is it in what countries or regions of the world? The United States are quite on top.

And then there are other countries as well in Europe some places in asia i think industrialized countries in general experience very experience higher rates of dementia and one thing that i would like to point out that is against my work so the alzheimer's disease affects women more than men or affects more women than men to say more correctly. Why is that? One thing that people don't realize is that almost two-thirds of all Alzheimer's patients are women. Really? So for every man suffering from Alzheimer's, there are two women. And that's one of the reasons that I started looking into Alzheimer's disease, is that I have a family history of Alzheimer's disease that really affects the women in my family. So if you can't believe it, my grandmother was one of four siblings, three sisters and one brother.

All three sisters developed Alzheimer's disease and died of it. But as the brother was spared. So for me, that was terrifying for my mom as well and i started asking questions i was like why does it matter is it just my family number one am i screwed is it a gene that your parents have that then you're gonna have one of what because i think that's a fear for a lot of people like my grandfather had and my dad's gonna you know yes for a really long time most people understood alzheimer's disease as some kind of inevitable consequence of aging or bad genes in your dna but we now understand that no more than two percent of all alzheimer's cases are genetically inherited two percent and most

have so you could have five people in your family have it, and you still have a 2% chance of getting it from them, the gene. Is that right? Well, this is in the whole population. I think if five people in your family have Alzheimer's disease, you want to get tested for genetic disease. Now, is it because of the diets they've been eating? Is the reason why they're getting it?

Or is it because they're going to get it no matter what? Well, so for 2% of the population is genetic, is genetically determined. For 98% of the population is multifactorial. So there are a number of factors that really matter, including your genetic background, not in a causative way, but more, there are genes that give you blue eyes and genes that give you brown eyes. And there are some genes that negatively impact brain health and genes that are protective. So it's a combination of things.

But then medical history is supremely important. Lifestyle is huge. And the environment, they really all matter. is huge and the environment. They really all matter. And what we have found is that hormonal aging, your hormones are also incredibly important, especially for women.

So it's what I was telling you. So for a really long time, people would say to me, women live longer than men and Alzheimer's disease is a disease of old age. So obviously more women than men have Alzheimer's disease is a disease of old age. Obviously, more women than men have Alzheimer's disease. But what we have shown is that, yes, women live a little bit longer than men, four and a half years on average. Four and a half years. But we tend to develop Alzheimer's disease at a younger age than men. Why is that?

Because you think that's... It's menopause. Well, one of the reasons, at least the reasons that we are looking into much of the time at this point is menopause. And it's literally that during menopause

we lose the superpowers of estrogen and the brain goes through quite a transition. You can see how brain energy levels literally change in women's brains connectivity changes the white matter volume changes blood flow changes everything kind of changes and for some women it's just it's just a phase it's just a transition the brain adjusts there. There's a new baseline. There's a new normal. We move on. It's a, what a, how long does that transition take?

Is it months? Is it years? I don't know. It's years. It's years. So you might feel this brain fogginess for a couple of years and then it should balance out. Yes. For some, for some women, however, the symptoms of menopause don't go away.

It may turn into something more serious, including a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. So basically, we start developing these Alzheimer's plaques. Not all women. This is not universal. But some women, with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease, start developing these red flags for Alzheimer's disease in their 40s and 50s. So much earlier than we have thought before. And then, of course, think about it. So you're going through menopause and your brain is changing

and it really needs support. And you're eating poorly. You're not exercising. You're not sleeping. You have a ton of stress. Those factors all really work together against you in a way. So I think it's really important for men and for women, I would say women really need to start thinking about that in midlife, that our brain is like a muscle. There are things that

we can do to make it stronger and more resilient. We can exercise it properly. We can feed it properly. We can take care of it properly. And your brain will perform so much better for you at any age. And men and women need to do slightly different things. What are the different things? Not so slightly. So for example, for some women, we have a lot of patients who come to us, they learn so much more about their brains and their risk factors. And then some women will start taking hormones, hormonal replacement therapy. Is that good or bad? It's really case by case.

Some women swear by it. Some women swear at it. They really hate it. It does not work. It doesn't help at all for some women is a godsend and i think it's really important to have a conversation with a doctor not just your menopause specialist but i think also brain doctor and we're not there yet we're not there yet i i now work at the intersection between neurology, neuroscience, and women's health, which is a very unusual space, a very interesting space, but it's also a very challenging space.

And I think my hope for the future is that we'll start looking at women as organisms, as a person, right? Not like you go to the endocrinologist to look at your thyroid, you know, you go to the OBGYN to look at your ovaries, then you have to go toocrinologist to look at your thyroid you know you go to the obgyn to look at your ovaries you then you have to go to a brain person to look at your brain i believe in integrative medicine i think that we're moving in that direction it's all connected it's yeah yeah might be a problem here but it's affecting something else you know it's all it's all connected yeah yes so i think that is really really important but however hormonal replacement therapy really doesn't work for all women and there is no recommendation to use it for alzheimer's prevention yet we're working on it we're hoping that we'll find a good way to help integrate these therapies into in a safe way but yeah sorry i just made this point i would say that you know

the point of hormonal replacement therapy is that you want to give women the estrogens that the body is no longer making but where are these estrogens coming from because plants make estrogens. So estrogen is the most ancient of hormones. And that means that it can go across species. So plants make estrogens, animals make estrogens, women make estrogens. And estrogens from a plant, phytoestrogens, enter a woman's body. And if you consume these plant-based foods often enough that's effectively a very gentle hormonal replacement therapy over time which is one of the reasons that people think that a mediterranean style diet that is more plant-centered is beneficial for women's health

because women on this kind of diet have a much lower risk of a number of things, from cardiovascular disease and stroke to depression to Alzheimer's disease, dementia. And also they have fewer hot flashes and they don't suffer from menopause the way that so many American women do. Now, I've heard from different scientists and nutritionists about meat being a complete protein and having like these nutrients, nutrient dense within the meat. Yeah. How, but I'm hearing you say that plant-based is, has just as many nutrients and proteins and antioxidants and all these other things.

proteins and antioxidants and all these other things. What are the, what are the benefits or the, or the, the, the cons against eating quality meat, let's say for brain function and brain health? Is there other things we should look out for if we do have a lot of meat or some meat in our diet? It's a, it's a really interesting point. I think so many people right now are eating a lot of meat. There are a lot of diets out there that really support and encourage eating good quality meat, but quite a lot of meat. I would say the research points to plant-based diets as being healthier overall and more protective. For the brain? Yes, for the brain. But I think also in general, there aren't that many dietary recommendations that include a lot of meat. I think every person is different. I think every person is different, but to your point, there's no need to eat meat to obtain complete protein.

It's an easy way. It's definitely convenient for you if you're not an animal. It's a good way to obtain complete protein just in one small amount, in a small portion of food. To obtain the same amount of protein from plant-based foods, you need to eat more of those. But there are some plant-based foods that are actually quite rich in protein, which are inches like hemp seeds, complete protein. Tempeh, complete protein. Nutritional yeast, complete protein. And also a good source of vitamin b12 so i think it's a fish is a good source of complete protein that's actually that's actually

being linked time and time again with a lower risk of dementia by almost 70 percent if you could only eat five foods every single day for the rest of your life oh my gosh to optimize brain health brain functionality longevity support memory all those things yes what would those five foods be on a daily basis i would say well you don't like berries but i would definitely go for berries because um're rich in fiber, they're low in sugars, and they provide really an enormous amount of antioxidants for the small serving size. And just evidence that consuming two to three servings of berries per week really slows down cognitive decline in both men and women, and especially in women. So you might want to try something. Man, I got to start.

Which berries, which two or three are the best? Black berries actually have more antioxidants than even blueberries. That's an interesting type of berry. They're not as easy to find as blueberries, but you can get them frozen and they're still quite intense. Now, if it's a modified blackberry where it's frozen, it's put in a smoothie and blended, it's in liquid form, does that all still matter or do you need it in raw form or it doesn't matter? No, cooking. So cooking destroys vitamin C.

Vitamin C, all the antioxidants are really easily damaged by heat. So freezing shouldn't reduce the antioxidant capacity by too much. Obviously, you don't want them to be frozen for 10 years. I mean, you know. Sure. So we got blackberries, blueberries. Blackberries are great. Goji berries.

Goji berries. They're one of the most concentrated sources of vitamin C. There's a kind of plum that I haven't been able to find. It's called Kakadu plum, which seems to be the most powerful concentrated source of vitamin C on the planet. I know they have been in Australia and Pacific Islands. I've never seen it here, but I would like to try it. Okay, so we got berries, number one. What would be the second?

Mulberries are really good. Mulberries. Anyway, berries. Sorry, I'm stupid. I actually had mulberry tree in my backyard in Ohio growing up, and I would eat some mulberries every now and then. So maybe I'll get back into mulberries. That could be nice.

You can also find them dry. Okay. Dried mulberries work too. Yeah, they're very good. They're very tasty. You still have the nutrients when they're dried. Yes. Yes.

A little bit less than the fresh ones, but they're sweeter when they're dry. Okay. I grow them in the garden. Do you? Yeah. And those are high in antioxidants those are high in antioxidants yeah they're high in antioxidants okay great awesome okay so we got berries is what you get the berries and i would go for dark leafy greens okay is it really important they contain a ton of phytonutrients, which are really good. You know, they have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties, and a lot of fiber. And fiber is really important for a number of reasons. The most obvious being that it supports gut health,

obviously, and 70% of the immune system is in the gut. So eating fiber also supports immunity, which especially now is a huge concern for everyone. But also fiber has a really important modulatory function on sex hormone binding globulin, which is what regulates flow of hormones inside the body. And so it really helps support hormonal health as well so i would say two reasons to eat fiber and go for your leafy greens and there's a ton of greens and we don't have to eat kale all the time there are so many other varieties that are just spinach and arugula

all those all the lettuces all the different micro microgreens, the collard greens, if you like them, but also cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower. Now is the season, so cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Romanesco. They're yummy. I'm sure you eat veggies. I eat those. I eat a lot of veggies, yeah.

There you go. Okay, so we got them. Those are the first two. Well, I would throw some polyunsaturated fatty acids there that the omega-3 is whether from fish do you fish yeah right so in that case for those who do eat fish then the smashed fish so salmon uh mackerel anchovies sardines herring smash smash fish all right so there's a really good source, very concentrated sources of DHA. And if you didn't get that from fish, what would be the substitute you would do plant-based?

Well, for me, plant-based. So omega-3 is from hemp seeds, for sure. Flax seeds and flax oil, walnuts, almonds, chia seeds, and also um seaweed i don't know if you like seaweed i actually love seaweed i eat those little the nori sheets yeah the little sheets i can eat those for days i know so good yeah that's good for you then huh yes in this section dr jason feng shares the main causes of cancer in today's world and what we can do about it. What are the main causes of cancer? As it seems like you hear about it more and more recently that so many people are getting cancer or the early stages of cancer.

What are the main causes of cancer? Yeah, that's a great question. And that's something that we've always been trying to deal with. And sometimes some people say, well, we don't know what causes cancer. That's sort of a cop out because we actually do know a lot about what causes cancer. And these are things that cause cancer are called carcinogens. And the World Health Organization maintains a huge list of these carcinogens. But if you want to break it down into what causes cancer in most people, you can look at the sort of a couple of studies have looked at the sort of percentage contribution of these

carcinogens to cancer. And the biggest one, of course, is tobacco smoke. So that's sort of by far and away, the biggest contributor to cancer at around 35%. And these estimates were from 2015. So it was higher before when more people are smoking. But as a contributor to cancer, it's the biggest. Interestingly, the second biggest and almost as big is actually our diet. So it's a huge, huge part of what contributes to cancer in general, and far outstrips of those two are way above any other causes of cancer. So when you worry about things such as radiation or, you know, chemicals, sunscreens and pesticides and stuff like that, they do cause cancer, but the contribution in a whole population is very small. So what's interesting about diet is that we know this

from our studies, but what part of the diet actually contributes to cancer? And that's where things sort of bogged down a lot. So initially in the 70s, people talked about fiber. So people thought about, oh, hey, well, you know, maybe if you eat a lot of fiber, what you're going to do is have a lot of big bowel movements and that's going to clean out your bowel and you're not going to get cancer. Turns out that wasn't true. Then the next thought was, hey, maybe it's dietary fat. So if you remember the 80s and 90s, there's this huge movement against fat that, you know, all fat is bad for you. It caused the heart disease and all this sort of stuff, much of which has sort of been, you know, overturned at this point.

But there's this thought, maybe it causes cancer too. Turns out that wasn't true either. Then people talked about vitamins. So maybe cancer is like a vitamin deficiency. So we did many, many studies, millions of dollars, decades of research where we would randomize people to say one group that took a certain vitamin and one group that didn't and see if there's any difference in cancer. So we tested vitamin A, didn't work.

Vitamin D, B didn't work. Folic acid, didn't work. Vitamin C, didn't work. Vitamin D, didn't work. Vitamin E, didn't work. Selenium, didn't work. Omega-3 fatty acids, didn't work. So all of those supplements didn't actually make any difference to the incidence of cancer. And so we're sort of stuck at that point in the mid 2000s saying, oh, no, it's the diet, but what part of the diet? And that's when it became sort of more and more clear that this cancer is actually an obesity-related disease. So what happened, of course, is that in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, people didn't really think about it.

But then we had this obesity epidemic, so it became a bigger and bigger problem. So obesity in 2003, when they started to look at the studies, that was the first really definitive studies that said, hey, obesity is actually a huge risk factor, as well as type two diabetes. And both of those conditions will actually increase your risk of certain types of cancer law. So it really depends on what type of cancer you're talking. Like if you're talking lung cancer, obesity plays almost no role in it, right? That's smoking. Or if you have asbestos, which causes mesothelioma, which is a cancer of the lining of the lung, again, obesity plays no role. But things like breast cancer and colorectal cancer, which are sort of really important cancers, they actually are obesity related cancers. So

that was the sort of big link. And to this, you know, at this point, the World Health Organization considers 13 different types of cancer as obesity related cancers, which is huge, because from 2003, we didn't even know like when I went to medical school, nobody thought obesity caused cancer, really, it's as almost as big as smoking is a huge, huge thing. So therefore, if you know that, that's super powerful because if you can maintain a normal weight, you're going to reduce, just like stopping smoking, right? You're going to reduce your risk of these types of cancer. But aren't there a lot of healthy people out there or non-obese people that also get cancer? Absolutely, because there's a lot of different things that go on. And that's what I spend the first half of the book talking about is how the sort of cancers develop. So it's not just

about obesity, just like you can smoke forever and not get lung cancer, but it raises your risk. So what are the other factors? If you're, say you're, there's people out there that are super healthy, they're working out, they're eating well, but then they get cancer they're yeah under 15 body fat 12 body fat what are those other factors of people getting cancer main actually yeah the rest of it we actually know very little about so we need to know more about those because uh certain things so smoking and diets are probably your biggest factors. And then there's a whole, there's like a hundred different other risk factors for cancer. These are the other carcinogens that we talk about, but also things such as, you know, background radiation

and sun exposure, you know, like if you get too much sun, for example. So there's all sorts of other things and genetics plays a role. But one of the big mistakes I think we made is that we focus so much on the genetics part of it, thinking that, well, this is sort of a random mutation that causes cancer. Not sort of which puts the puts the onus on sort of this random luck sort of idea that it's just bad luck. My parents had this. My grandparents had this gene. So I have this, I'm going to get cancer. Yeah, exactly. And some people think that that's sort of a death sentence. Like if you take BRCA, which is a certain type of gene, for example. So this is the gene that Angelina Jolie, for example, got diagnosed with her, her mom had cancer, I think, or, you know, an aunt had cancer. So so she got tested and she had

the gene and people think well for sure you're going to get uh you know cancer but it turns out that if you look at the incidence of cancer if you have brca if you have that gene in like you know in the 30s and 40s and 50s that risk of breast cancer was like 30 compared to sort of like 80 in modern day America. So what's the difference? Even though you have the same genes, what's the difference between those two situations? And it comes down to the lifestyle. So the point about cancer is that cancer is like a seed. So if you have other genetics, you have the propensity to develop cancer. And this seed of cancer actually exists in all of our

cells, and actually not just all our cells, but in all multicellular animals have that sort of seed of cancer. So what's important then is you can't do anything about the seed. But what you can do something about is the soil, which is that if you provide a fertile sort of soil for that seed to germinate, then you are going to increase your risk of developing this cancer. And cancer is not a rare disease. I mean, it affects like one in 10 of us, one in eight of us, something like that. So it's something that we really have to think about as we live longer, because it is one of these really important things. And it sounds like, you know, in the next 30 to 60 years, if we don't figure out how to reverse this or solve this or, I guess, create bad soil for the seed of cancer by creating healthy habits in other ways, it seems like this is going to accelerate.

Where it was 30%, I guess, 20, 30 years ago or 50 years ago, and now it's 80%, I guess, it's going to be even more in 20 to 30 years, right? Oh, absolutely. and now it's 80%, I guess, it's going to be even more in 20 to 30 years, right? Oh, absolutely. And the trend is very clear because if you look at the biggest killers of Americans, it's always been heart disease and cancer. So if you go back sort of to the 70s, so 50 years ago, you look at heart disease, number one killer of Americans, that's heart attacks, strokes, that kind of thing. Cancer was a fairly distant second. But the rate of death from heart disease has been improving very, very quickly. And the rate of improvement for cancer has been improving very, very, very slowly. Why is that? It's because cancer is a very complex disease. And the way we think about cancer, we just don't know what it is.

So for such a common disease, it's a total mystery why we get this cancer. Because if you think about it, it doesn't make any sense for cancer to develop because it's actually part of us. That is, if you develop breast cancer or colon cancer, for example, that cancer cell was initially derived from our own natural cells. So why would it want to do this? That is, if you get cancer, then the cancer grows, and then it kills you, and it kills itself. So why would this sort of thing ever develop? It doesn't make any sense from a sort of that looking at it that way. But most diseases want to spread, but they want to stay alive. Exactly.

Exactly. Like the coronavirus doesn't want to kill you necessarily. It wants to be able to spread to affect infect other people. Exactly. And, you know, if you sort of bystander, it just kills you, you know, along the way. But that's not its primary purpose. So the point about cancer is that we have never sort of understood what this is as a disease. That is, if you look at heart disease, heart disease is caused by blockages in arteries. So we develop all kinds of things. So we develop drugs. We develop blood thinners. We develop, you know, you go in and you use a balloon to open up the artery.

You develop new technologies such as imaging technologies. You develop ways to monitor patients. So because you know what causes it. Because if you don't know what causes something, it's really hard to fix. Like if you have a car and all you hear is a random clank and you don't know what the clanking is from, it's really hard to fix it. Same thing with diseases. If you have a disease like COVID, for example, and you know it's a virus, well, now at least you have somewhere that you can start. That is, okay, it's a virus, let's develop

a vaccine or let's develop some antiviral drugs. But if you have no idea what this disease actually is, then you have nowhere to go. So that's what I talk about is how we think about cancer, the paradigm of cancer as a disease, what causes it, you have to first understand what it is. And that's been the real mystery. The medical mystery is what is cancer? And the way we look at cancer has changed significantly over the last 10 years. And most people don't even understand that. So it's a very interesting story from that standpoint. Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned, you know, the, the, the heart disease. Uh, I saw Dr. Stephen Gundry endorsed the back of your cancer code book, and he's been on my show a few times and he's a guy who did 10,000 heart surgeries and realized that like

the things that he was doing on the surface level to create temporary relief, people were coming back in because they weren't solving the root problem, which was a lot of it around diet and lifestyle. And that's what I'm hearing you say is that diet is a massive contributor to cultivating the seed of cancer to grow and flourish with the wrong type of diet. Is it possible in your mind to reverse cancer by the right diet and by fasting, which is something you talk about a lot? Oh yeah. Because the thing is that if you, like once you have the cancer, it's really hard because that's sort of like, you know, if you don't change the oil in your car, then your car breaks down,

then you say, oh, I'm going to start changing the oil in my car. Well, yeah, that's good. But you need a lot more than that. It's the same thing. Once you actually develop the cancer, then it's really hard to fix from a diet standpoint. You really need the drugs that we've spent millions and billions of dollars developing over these last 30 years. But in terms of preventing cancer, there's actually no reason why you couldn't because you can look at sort of people who live in a traditional society, for example. So you can take a look at, say, the Inuit or the American Indians sort of before sort of they became westernized. Or you can look at the African people before they're sort of

assimilated into a western culture. And interestingly, those peoples were actually considered, some of them were considered immune to cancer. There was so little cancer that they thought that the Inuit, for example, or what used to be called the Eskimos, actually could not get cancer. So the university, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, they used to send an expedition up to the Arctic Circle every year to study why these Inuit couldn't get cancer. Of course, as they became westernized and started eating, you know, sugar and white flour, then they started getting all the same cancers that we did. In Africa, for example, this fellow by the name of Denis Burkett, who is a sort of a missionary and doctor, when he got down there, he's like, wow.

In my, he was like, look at these, the difference, the people who live traditionally in Africa get no cancer, no colon cancer. But the minute they transition to a Western style civilization with their foods, with their, you know, the whole thing, they actually start to get cancer. You don't find cancer when that so it was called actually a disease of civilization. So all of these diseases, obesity, diabetes, and cancer, were not found in people living traditionally. So the point is, not that, you know, one is that they didn't live as long, but the point is that if you can find and understand what makes it protective from them, why this sort of soil, like we all have the seed, but the soil was different. What it is about that, if we can understand that, then you can reduce your risk substantially to the point where your risk is very low. Again, as an example, if you take a Japanese or Chinese woman from Japan or from Shanghai and you move them to San Francisco,

within a couple of generations, their risk of breast cancer approximately tripled. It's crazy. So it's crazy, exactly. But that's great hope because... Because if you know the root of it, then you can go back to a different way's crazy. Exactly. But that's great hope because. Because you know the root of it, that you can go back to a different way of living. Exactly.

Because if you can, and remember Shanghai and Japan and so on, they're, they're, you know, modern societies. So if you can understand what it is about the diet, about the lifestyle, that's so important. You could actually take that woman in San Francisco and reduce her risk of breast cancer by a third. So that's very, very powerful knowledge. So what would you say are the five foods we must eliminate to support us in preventing

cancer? What are those five key things that you're like, oh man, if we can get rid of as much of this as possible, it's going to really support your chances yeah i think that's a good question and it's um sort of sugar is probably one of the very very important things that we really need to lower because that really supports it and it gets to how cancer develops a lot of the refined foods and people talk and the most that we eat like the one thing we eat more than anything else tends to be refined carbohydrates um so you know white bread and that kind of thing that's probably the most important thing uh is the sugar and refined

uh grains refined anything is probably bad for you you know, even if you're not talking about carbohydrates, but refined, say, oils, you should eat natural oils. Like eat foods that are sort of in the natural state and refined meats. Like, you know, eating bologna, for example. People talk about meat all the time. But it's like there's a big difference between bologna and, you know, grass-finished beef sort of thing. There's a huge difference because one is jam-packed full of chemicals and other crap, and one is just beef, right? And people have been eating beef for thousands of years. So those refined foods, so refined carb, but also refined fats and refined proteins, probably those play a decent role, although

the evidence is lower. And then the other thing that is really important, the fifth thing that's probably very important is likely the frequency that we eat. That is, eating all the time provides that sort of fertile soil. So to understand why this is, you have to get back to sort of how cancer develops. So you have to understand that cancer almost develops, evolves, almost as a separate species from us. So when you have a breast cancer cell, for example, it originated from a normal breast cell. But after it evolves, it grows or it doesn't grow depending on growth factors. And it's almost a separate species from us. That is, it will grow and it won't,

the normal breast cell or a normal lung cell, they will do everything to play on the team, right? So they're always supporting the body. You're a team player. Those cancer cells are not team players. Basically, they're out for themselves. It's the enemy. It's the enemy coming to attack you

that's right it's it's it's like the guy who's just trying to pad his stats you know right it's like you should have passed it's like yeah but but that's the point that this cancer cell now is only interested in its own survival that is is, it will grow, and it will grow at the expense of its neighbors. So it will keep growing, and it will destroy everything around it. So it will move around, for example. So a breast cancer cell will move around the body. And that's not for the good of the whole body, right? It's for the good of itself.

It's trying to spread itself around. So you've got to realize that the cancer cell responds as a foreign organism and it sounds very strange to say okay we have this foreign organism almost like an infection in us but that's actually how our body sees that cancer that is our our immune system actually detects is a very powerful um you know it kills stuff but it's very powerful so it has to be reined in because you don't want it destroying, you know, normal parts of the body. So it recognizes certain cells as foreign and certain cells of self and

cancers are actually innately seen as foreign cells. So it is a foreign invader almost that has evolved from us. But during the development of this cancer, it will grow or not grow depending on growth signals. So our body has certain nutrient sensors. So nutrient sensors tells our body when food is available. So when you eat, certain hormones like insulin and mTOR will go up.

And that tells our body that food is available. We should grow, right? Because you don't want your cells to grow when there's no food, right? It's just natural. If there's no food, you got to get rid of some of those extraneous cells. So if you have, if you're eating all the time, and you're always, you're always activating these nutrient sensors, you're actually telling your body, grow, grow, grow, grow. So if you eat six, eight times a day, you're telling your body, your cells in your body grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

If you eat fewer times, like three times a day, or you do intermittent fasting, if you don't eat at all, what you're going to do is shut down those growth signals and the cancer will have a more difficult time to grow. So if you grow breast cancer cells in the lab, for example, you can't do it without insulin. It will actually wither up and die. So therefore, if you know that, then you can say, well, if I, and that's one of the secrets. Insulin comes from eating any food or is this only sugar? It's carbohydrates and protein. So, you know, but the nutrient sensors come from different foods so different foods will activate different nutrient sensors but the point is that

if you don't eat like fasting for example one is you're going to lower your insulin levels which will you know lower the growth overall growth signaling in our body, which is a good thing for adults. And adults' growth is not good. Generally, you stay the same size. You don't want to be growing too much because the high growth environment, of course, lets the cancer sort of grow out of control. And that was the secret to why vitamins, for example, was not a good thing, because it's basically growth. It supports growth of cells. And what they found in a lot of studies was when they gave people these vitamin supplements, they actually got more cancer. They didn't get less cancer, they got more cancer. So in fact, it's just like if you spray spread fertilizer on an empty field, you want the grass to grow. But what grows are a bunch of weeds because you've put down all this growth signaling stuff.

So therefore, all you get is the weeds. Same with the body. So are supplements and vitamins bad for us then? There's no evidence that it's really bad for you. When you give high doses in these studies, you do get certain ones. So folic acid, for example, and beta carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. And those two studies, there is actually a suggestion that you actually get more cancer from them

because in our current situation in North America, most of us are not vitamin deficient. Most of us actually have too much. You actually want to slow down the growth. And this is why obesity and type 2 diabetes are so intimately linked with cancer is because both conditions are conditions where we have too much insulin in our body. So we want to lower insulin overall because insulin is one of the main causes of the fertilizer for cancer to potentially grow. Exactly. And there's several ways to do that.

One is to change either the foods that you eat, and that is the sugar, for example, the refined carbohydrates that make up the bulk of our diet. And the other thing is to change the frequency with which you eat, because you can affect both things. So just like if you're, for example, to pay, you know, $10, and you pay it every day, adds up quickly, right? If you have a coffee every day, and it's like, you know, five or seven bucks at Starbucks, every day, every day, every day, it adds up. So just like that, it's not just the amount that you're paying, which is not much, but it's the frequency, right? Same thing with the foods. It's not just the amount that you eat or what it is that you eat. It's how often you

eat it. So if you're eating now six, eight times a day, well, that's a lot worse if you ate once a day, right? That's just basic math. Like you can't get around that. And the problem is of course, that if you look at how people eat today compared to sort of 1970, it's very different. So in 1970, people ate three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, no snacks. Nobody ate snacks back then. That culture, like snacking all day. Exactly. And people say it's good for you. People say, oh, you should eat multiple times in the day, six times a day. It's good for you. But nobody in the history of humanity has done that before, because we had work to do, right? It's not like your great grandparents, you know, working in the factory, they're taking off every two hours to make themselves a little,

you know, ham sandwich or something, right? It was like, there's work to do, you eat when you have time. So, you know, in the 70s, it's funny, because I always say you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that was it. If you wanted it's funny because I always say you have breakfast, lunch and dinner. And that was it. If you wanted to after school snack, your mom said, no, you're going to ruin your dinner. And if you wanted a bedtime snack, she would have said, no, you should eat more at dinner. Right. You should have finished your meal. Exactly. And that was the point. And nobody ate not a lot of desserts and all that. Nowadays, of course, when you look at the studies, people are eating five, six times a day.

You even look at schools. It's like, you know, oh, you know, they're going to have breakfast. Then they're going to have a mid-morning snack. Then they're going to have lunch. Then they're going to have an after-school snack. Then they're going to eat dinner. And then if they play soccer, in between the halves of soccer, parents think that you need to feed them like cookies.

It's like, hey, well, you know, I played soccer growing up and nobody chased me around with a bunch of cookies. We had a great time. We didn't need it. Right. And, but, but that's six times a day, every single day. And it's ingrained into us. You know, a few years ago when my son was, you know, going on a trip or something, the school said, well, you should pack them two snacks. I'm like, why? Why would you want to give him a bunch of snacks? Like, they're not good for you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Make sure to share this with a few friends if it inspired you. Just copy and paste this link wherever you're listening to this podcast. Or you can go to the full show notes to learn more about all the different experts

in this episode at lewishouse.com slash 1134. And if this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button right now over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to stay notified every week on the latest and greatest on how to improve the overall quality of your life here on The School of Greatness. So click that subscribe button right now. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts. Let me know what you enjoyed most from this episode. And again, make sure to share this

with a few friends or tag me on Instagram, at Lewis Howes, if you post about it over there. And I want to leave you with this quote from the Buddha who said, To keep the body in good health is a duty. Otherwise, we shall not be able

to keep the mind strong and clear. That's right. It's our duty to take care of our vessel. This is your body. You've got one body. Make the most of it and make sure every day you're doing. This is your body. You've got one body. Make the most of it and make sure every day you're doing things

that help your body improve. I'm so grateful for you and I want to remind you if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And you know what time it is.

It's time to go out there and do something great.