WHOOP Podcast - The Surprising Link Between Diet and Lifespan | Dr. Michael Greger

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

How can a plant-based diet help you unlock your health goals? This week, on the first episode of our Longevity Series, WHOOP SVP, Research Algorithms and Data, Emily Capodilupo, sits down with Dr. Michael Greger, Physician, Author, and Speaker on Public Health, to discuss the important health information related to a plant-based diet. Dr. Michael Greger runs the science-backed, non-profit NutritionFacts.org, which aims to bring free, online information on a variety of health topics to public view. He is well known for his stance on utilizing a plant-based diet to aid and reverse symptoms of chronic disease. Emily and Michael discuss the science behind the benefits of a plant-based diet (02:09), what a "plant-based" actually means (5:21), defining the benefits of plant-based diets (06:08), which foods to include in your diet first (09:59), the psychology of adopting new habits (11:40), why you can’t “run off a bad diet” (17:43), what role can supplements play (27:43), and the importance of committing to small changes in behavior to aid longevity (36:36).Resources:Dr. Michael Greger on InstagramNutritionfacts.orgFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramTikTokXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

I'm all for giving people the truth. They're afraid people are going to throw up their hands and not do anything. There's this critical research done by this famous Harvard nutrition professor that showed that, okay, well, really, the ideal diet would be one exclusively centered around plans. That research is the one who came up with the dash diet, but explicitly said in their design documents that we are going to save more lives if we kind of soft-pedal the diet. Tell that to the 1,000 American families that lose a loved one every day to have blood pressure.

And it's like maybe it's time to start telling Americans. the truth. Minimizing the intake of meat, dairy, egg, salt, sugar, maximizes the intake of fruits, vegetables, legumes, your beans, splippies, chickpeas, nut those whole grains, nuts, and seas, mushrooms, herbs, and spices, basically real food that grows out of the ground from fields, not factories. These are our healthiest choices. The more we can center our diets around these healthiest of healthy foods, the healthier we're going to be. What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder, of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. If you think about joining

whoop, you can visit Whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial and get the full whoop experience. This week's episode, Woop SPP of Research, Algorithms, and Data. Emily Capilupo is joined by Dr. Michael Greger for the first edition of our longevity series. This series will feature conversations focused on providing you with insight on how to live healthier and longer. Michael is a best-selling author, a physician, and founding member, and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He's an advocate for whole food and plant-based diets in an effort to reverse chronic diseases. Emily and Michael discuss the benefits of a plant-based diet, exercising for longevity, the best ways to develop new habits with diet

and exercise, the impact of our society becoming too sedentary, and debunking some dietary myths. Reminded if you have a question was the answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here are Emily Capitalupo and Dr. Michael Greger. Hi, everybody. I'm Emily Capitalupo. I'm the Woop Senior Vice President of Research Algorithms and Data. And today, I am joined by Dr. Michael Greger. Michael, I am so grateful that you traveled here to be with us. I'm so excited for our listeners to get to learn from you over the next 30 to 40 minutes. So without further ado, welcome to the Woot Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. There are so, so many reasons why I'm excited

to be doing this with you today. Chief among them is that you're one of the most renowned nutritionists and plant-based dietary experts in the medical world. I think there's a great place to start. Would be breaking down the science behind the benefits of plant-based diets. It is not hard to be an expert on any kind of nutrition in the medical world since they're so little nutrition training the average medical student gets about four hours of nutrition training less a quarter of medical schools have a single dedication course in nutrition so having an md after your name is basically advertising the world that you know nothing about nutrition you should never listen to anything any MD says about unless of course they've actually done studies but otherwise

doctors are learning about nutrition like everybody learns about nutrition and then check out aisle magazines or what some bro next to what the gym ties you about. So unfortunately, it's not hard to be an expert in nutrition, but things are changing. We do have a new field of lifestyle medicine using diet and lifestyle interventions, not just prevent disease, but to arrest and treat disease. And so things are on the end. But yeah, unfortunately, it doesn't take much to kind of rise above the fray. But in terms of what a healthy diet can do for you, I like to think of myself as an advocate of evidence-based nutrition, and the evidence just happens to point to eating a diet centered around the healthiest foods, which tend to be whole plant foods. And the benefits

are, we can look to a golden burden of disease study, for example, the largest study and risk factors for death and disease in human history, funded by the Bill and the Gates Foundation, But the number one risk factor for death in the world is our diet. Number one killer in the United States is the American diet. Bumping tobacco smoking to number two, cigarettes only kill about a half million Americans every year. Our diet kills men more the single most important thing we can do. The most important decision we make every day is, number one, what to put at the end of our four? And that's because a number one killer for both men and women is heart disease.

and most of our leading killers have to do with a diet and lifestyle, which is good news because it means we have tremendous power over our health destiny and longevity, the vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a healthy enough diet and lifestyle. I love that you went there because I think the first part of the message can come off a little intimidating, right, that like our diet is killing us. But I think it's really important that what people hear from that is your diet is one of the most in-control things that there is. right? If you told me that the biggest determinant of health was my genetics, it's like, well, you know, I either did a great job or messed up picking my parents, and that's the end of that.

A couple questions before we keep going. You say plant-based diet, and I hear that language a lot. Is that vegetarianism or is that different? No, no. So that is a diet that it prioritizes plants, not necessarily exclusively of plants. It is centering one's diets. A plant-based diet is an aspirational goal to include many of the healthiest of healthy foods in one's diet. And so that is, you know, minimizing the intake of meat, dairy, egg, salt, sugar, maximizing the intake of fruits, vegetables, legumes, your beans, split, peas, chickpeas, not those whole grains, nuts, and seeds, mushrooms, herbs and spices, basically real food that grows out of the ground from fields, not factories. These are our healthiest choices. The more we can center our diets

around these healthiest of healthy foods, the healthier we're going to be. And you keep saying healthiest of healthy food. So within plant-based, you know, what should our listeners be thinking about? Like, is it just enough to cut out meat or what are the other things that are my God? Well, look, some of the worst possible foods in our food supply are technically plant-based Coca-Cola is plant-based, potato soups, plant-based, right? Just some of the worst possible foods we can put in our mouths. And so that's why the proviso, unprocessed plant foods, a whole, W-H-O-L-E, whole foods is critically important because you can eat an absolutely lousy junk food diet. I think Oreos are vegan. They're vegan. You know these labels like vegetarian and vegan as a physician.

I mean, that just tells me what you don't eat. I mean, do you actually eat vegetables? And so that's really the critical component. It's what percentage of your diet is composed of whole plant foods versus every day else, which is the processed foods. We should now make up about 60% of the American diet in terms of calories, as well as these animal foods. So that's really helpful. And I love the framing around it being leaning towards, you know, less consumption of animal products and not necessarily a rigid hard line. I think that's going to make it a lot more accessible. And critically, what you're replacing them with, right? That is the fundamental question in the field of nutrition is compared to what? Or instead of what? Anytime someone asks you is X health, is our eggs healthy. You always have to fall up compared to what. What else would you be eating instead of those eggs? If the answer is a breakfast-linked sausage, then absolutely eggs are healthy. If the alternative is oatmeal, then not even close are they healthy, right?

You know, what about fish? What about anything? So what would you be eating instead of that food? And so it's not eat more of this, eat less of this. Public health messaging really has to be this instead of that, not cut down on soda, but drink water instead of soda. That's a better kind of public health communication to make people make these actionable changes in their diet. So, you know, we start an app, Dr. Gregor's daily dozen, which is kind of

the dozen healthiest of healthy kind of foods and behaviors. I encourage people to fit into their daily routine. So, yes, iceberg is a plant, eggberg and lettuce is a plant, but kale's even healthier. And so I want people to eat not just fruit every day, but berries every day, the healthiest fruits, not just vegetables, but dark green leafy vegetables, crucivorous vegetables, with cabbage family vegetables every day, you know, legumes every day, Tim's been of ground flaxi, quartet, cornucin, turquite, the best beverages, best sweeteners, how much exercise to get every day again, just to inspire people to kind of follow along and have that accountability to keep them on the right path. I love that framing. And I think so often there's such a desire

to say like, this is the healthy pile and this is the unhealthy pile, that that oversimplifies things in a way that's just confusing and not helpful for people. And it's all a spectrum. Of course. I mean, logically, that's obvious. Food is a zero-sum game. Every time we put something in our mouth, there's an opportunity cost. And that is failing to put something healthier in her mouth. So are bananas unhealthy? Well, I mean, do you live on a planet without blueberries? Okay.

I mean, you know, it's like, you know, we can always kind of ratchet, you know, our health up by, you know, choosing the healthier choices whenever we have a chance. And so if you are privileged enough to have that kind of choice in your life, well, then, oh, wow, well, you can get the no-salt-added beans rather than, you know, the right. salty beans. Now, beans are healthy, salted or not, but so much healthier, particularly since sodium intake is the number one dietary risk factor for death on planet Earth, we really do want to cut down on sodium, but it's all about just rationing up. We can all just choose to, you know, try to think of how can I make this meal even healthier than it already is. You've talked a little bit

about, you know, blueberries better than bananas, et cetera. If you were going to give people five foods that are like, you know, these are, I don't have a swap for them just great. I'm curious what your top five would be. Sounds like berries, dark leafy greens. You're making me hungry. All right, what are the next three? So if there were three foods to add someone's diet, regardless of what you have to do with your diet, it would be berries, greens, particularly dark green cruciferous veggies like kale

collag greens, and number three would be legums. Beings, coffee, tip, tip, lentils, that is the primary protein source with all the blue zones, center their diets around and talk about beans forever. And if there were just three foods to work, first would remove for one's diet, number one, it would be anything with hydrogen and oils, these added trans fats. Number two would be processed meat, bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch, meat, which is according to the IARC, the official World Health Organization by that determines what is and is not cancer causing is determined.

They're class one carcinogens being we know they cause cancer in human beings, yet we send our kids to the school with bologna sandwiches. wouldn't smoke around our kids, but what are we doing? And number three would be liquid candy, soda, sugar-sweetened beverages. Those would be the three things I would remove. Those would be three things that. And just doing that, you would be so far down along the path. And yes, if you want to keep tweaking the edges, there's all sorts of things. You know, I mean, God, my latest book at 13,000 say, you can go as deep as you want to get into the weeds, right? But it's important to take a step back and just someone's a really basic. So, you know,

five surgeons free semester's day, maintaining healthy weight, not smoking, walking 20 minutes a day. I mean, that's like 80% of the way there. Sure. There's this tendency within the public health community to not tell people the truth because the thing is overwhelming. So that's why, for example, the physical activity guidelines come out to be about 22 minutes a day of modern intensity activity. Now, does the science show that the optimal amount of exercise is 22 minutes a day? No, not even close. Yeah, we've done this research.

It's way higher than that. but they thought that if you said an hour, people would do nothing. Exactly. And if you say 22 minutes, they're like, okay, you can do that. Right. And so actually the evidence peaks out at 90 minutes a day. And the only reason, perhaps, that it's because they couldn't find enough people to actually exercise more than 90 minutes a day.

So it's possible it drops off or it keeps going up, right? But we have evidence at least, you know, walking on it as business day. You associate with longer life compared to 60 minutes, compared to 45, compared to 30. Okay. Now, the important message, any exercise is better than none. Right. And so as long as people, we tell people that, then I'm all forgiving people the truth, right? People, they're afraid people are going to throw up their hands and not do anything. Just hammer that message. Any exercise better than none. And then, yes, if you're interested,

here's the data showing, yeah, more is better. And, you know, there's easy ways to do it and fun ways and blah, blah, blah. And so the same thing with diet. In fact, the dash diet is a perfect example. Dash diet is probably one of the best studied diets in human history. This is dietary approaches to stop hypertension. This is like the official, you know, American Heart Association recommends it. The federal government recommends it. This is that which is designed to lower blood pressure, which is a leading killer because it contributes to strokes and heart disease and kidney failure and all sorts of other things. We really want to keep a blood pressure now.

Okay. And so they designed this diet. There's this critical research done by this famous Harvard nutrition professor that showed that, okay, well, really, the ideal diet would be one exclusively centered. ground plans. And so why didn't the dash diet? Were they just not aware of this, this very important research? No, it was designed by that guy. That research is the one who came up with the dash diet, but explicitly said in their design documents that we are going to save more lives if we kind of soft peddle the diet. I understand that kind of logic, but, you know, tell that to the 1,000 American families that lose a loved one every day to have blood pressure. And it's like maybe

it's time to start telling Americans the truth, which is that, you know, leaving causes. Yeah, I feel like we could have an entire podcast dedicated to the, like, psychology of how you take something that is challenging, but of course, correct. Like, you know, you do need to be this extreme and make that palatable to people, because that is a challenge totally separate from what is the optimal diet of, you know, how do you get people to adopt that behavior change, which is not trivial. So if you look at like the USPSTA, the guidelines, just like the official, like, body that makes the prevention medicine guidelines, they will say that dietary counseling for obesity is ineffective. And you say, wait a second, diet has nothing to do with obesity?

I mean, that's like, that's all that, right? Yeah. No, they're saying, telling people to eat healthier doesn't work. And it's true. The research is very, you know, you tell people, you randomize people to advise to eat healthier versus not. And guess what? Nothing happens. Why? Because they don't comply, right? So without that compliance base. And so two things can be completely true at the same time, which is, okay, here's the healthiest diet, but maybe we don't tell people about it, right? Here's how much to exercise, but maybe we don't tell people about it. I am of the, let's give everybody the truth and tell people that look, any movement we can make, certainly it's not black or white. It's not what the evidence shows at all. It shows that even these small

incremental steps towards a healthier diet, towards healthier eating, toward cutting down on smoking. Right? These are beneficial. Little steps can go a long way, particularly when you know, you catch people earlier in life and they can turn these into lifelong behaviors. That doesn't surprise me what you were saying. When I was an undergrad, I worked for a summer at a healthcare consulting firm in Chicago. And my project was trying to understand why people no-showed follow-up appointments after ER visits. So they'd leave the ER with a follow-up appointment with a specialist and then not show up. And in the top three reasons why people don't show up is because they didn't want to get weighed.

And it was like people are in such deep denial about like their weight and like what that has to do with why they're not feeling well and like what landed them in the ERs. These are literally people who are, you know, acutely unwell and they're just like, well, never mind because like I don't want to face this. And so it is such a deep issue, and like there are so many layers to solving this. And obviously your work trying to understand what healthy looks like and how to solve the problem is so important. But there's so many layers we need to understand too and help people across those barriers. And so I think it is so interesting to think about how do we make you hear the truth and not sugarcoat things? Because that doesn't really help people. But also how do we not scare you away?

because if you tell somebody, you know, who loves their meat and potatoes, like, that that's killing them, I think there's a lot of like, and, you know, you and I have heard some of these talks around things like, you know, I thought I could just outrun my bad diet or I thought I could, you know, do all these different things. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out Woop at Woop.com.

It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at Woop.com. Back to the guests. Why isn't that true? Why can't I outrun a crappy diet and make up for my crappy diet with a other good behaviors. Oh, because sedentary activity, I think to my talk, I think it's killer number six

falls, or killer number eight, so falls down. So number one is diet, number two is smoking. The number of risk effects is way more important. Now, I mean, there's overwhelming evidence for the benefits of exercise on down the list, not just on, you know, balance and strength training, all the typical things, but with sleep and depression and, you know, on down the list. I mean, you know, most of our cells in our body are replaced practically every year. And it's like, okay, what are we building our body with over the next year? And our body's big. You know, we are.

We eat. It's really food, water, light, air. Like, there's not many ingredients that go into our body. And so it's like, well, no wonder if we're choosing, like, shoddy building materials at the drive-thru that we're going to end up with not the optimal working system. people spend more money taking care of their car or taking care of right you know they take more care to put in like the high grade gasoline you know and it's like you know you could get another car if it breaks down you can just like scrap it get a whole brand but you know but yet they treat

their bodies in a way now maybe they're going to think there's there's some biotech revolution around the corner we're going to be able to just swap them in and out but right now as seeing stand we really have to take care of ourselves because there's really no good replacement and you know earlier the better i talk about how you know our leading killers like heart disease for example by age 10 nearly all kids um in the standard american diet already have we're called fatty streaks building them inside there are always the first stage of atherous to heart disease just going to kill people. You know, you do autopsy studies of young men, women, you know, accident victims, and you see, you know, breast tumors or prostate tumors. And it's like this thought of like

using diet and exercise to prevent disease, well, wait a second, if the average, you know, breast cancer takes 30 years to manifest from the first mutated cell to somebody you actually pick up in mammography, and then all of a sudden you picked up a mammography and like, okay, now I'm using diet to, yesterday I was using it to prevent disease. Now I'm using it to treat disease. No, for the last 30 years, you thought you were eating healthier to prevent your breast cancer. No, you were treating it by slowing down its growth rate. Whether you know it or not, almost every American raised in a state of America has heart disease, has azoresquotic pack in their arteries right now. And so, you know, people look at like the great, you know,

Dean Ornish lifestyle heart trial, 1990, proving we can actually reverse the progression of heart disease with healthy enough diet. Yes, that's if we catch it in time. The number one way people die with heart disease in this country is what's called sudden cardiac death, meaning these are people with undiagnosed heart disease. They have no idea they have heart disease and it's death within a certain number of minutes after their first symptom. A little over 50%, particularly for women actually. So you don't even know you have heart disease. So, you know, so an ounce of prevention is worth way more than a pound of cure because there is no cure for dead. Your first symptom may be your last. So we have to start now. The problem with prevention is when it works,

nothing happens. Like it's just such an unsexy, hard to fund anything, kind of motivate people around it. But, you know, they'll have one life to live. So I love this. It's such a beautiful metaphor that like eating a crappy diet is like trying to build your house with rusty nails and then like wondering why it doesn't, you know, last as long as one that's built with higher quality nails. And so it's important to build our bodies, which we are constantly doing, even if we're quote unquote, fully grown. And so we need to put in the good stuff. I think this is probably a softball, but I'm curious how you're going to answer it. If I'm eating crappy food or if I'm eating good food, it all kind of breaks down into the same stuff. You're saying, no, I see you

shaking your head. What's actually happening, like on a cellular level when good stuff versus bad stuff comes in? Like, I understand the metaphor at a high level, but, you know, if I'm getting my vitamins, I'm getting my protein, I'm getting my carbs, you look like I'm saying, total nonsense. So let's correct this message. Because I think this is how a lot of people think about it, right? They think in terms of macros. They think in terms of calories. They took their multivitamin this morning. So, you know, buzz off with your superfoods. You just described the entire field. of nutrition dietetics, which was built a century ago based on nutrient deficiency diseases. And indeed, people used to die by the hundreds of thousands of berry berry because we refined

brown rice to white rice and oops, we didn't know there was such a thing as this particular vitamin. And literally more people were dying of berry berry in Japan than smallpox. It was the leading killer. Hundreds of thousand people dropped it. Scurvy, Pallegra. Quasciorca, these are classic nutrition deficiency diseases. How many people do you know are dying from Pallegra these days? I mean, how many of your close friends? Okay, let's ask that same question. How many people do you know, have you ever heard of this really esoteric disease called heart disease or high blood pressure or diabetes or obesity or we are dying of diseases of excess, nutrient excess? I didn't call the nutrients technically.

are, right? Sodium is a nutrient, et cetera. If it's a nutrient. Okay, so the field nutrition was built very powerfully on diseases of deprivation. And in fact, you have the USDA talking about how sugar is the cheapest source of calories. Like they were touting sugar because for three cents, you could get, you know, 2,000 calories because we evolved in a context of caloric scarcity, of sodium scarcity of so we grew these tastes for calorically dense foods fatty sugary foods a taste for salt a taste for right and then the food industry took those taste and used our natural biologic scler just to hook them into eating not just one of their crazy ultra-processed junk food which is now killing people with excess nutrients excess sodium excess setry fat excess sugar that's what's killing

people now. And so the question we should all be asking from a nutritional standpoint these days is not, oh, where am I going to get my ribble flavor? The question is like, okay, where am I going to get my potassium? 98% of Americans, epitasm deficient dines, don't even reach to recommend a minimum daily intake, 4,700 milligrams, right? And we evolved getting probably over 10,000, right? Okay, 90. So, okay, now that's a nutrient. We need to figure out where we're going to get. How, on the flip side, 97% of Americans eat enough protein. That's just advertised and everything. But wait a second.

And the 3% who aren't getting enough of protein probably on starvation dies, not eating enough of anything, right? I mean, it's hard. Okay, 97% of Americans eat fiber deficient diets. Don't even reach them measly recommended daily intake. It's like, okay, it's like, wow, where are you going to get your potassium from? Where did you get your fiber from these days? Oh, wow, I got to eat more whole grains.

I got any more. And so that's really what we have to worry about not getting enough. Almost everyone gets too much sodium. right, the American Heart Association, 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day maximum. You throw that all into your favorite little nutrient profile website. You put your daily diet and you try to hit 1,500. That's basically eliminating everything in a box or a bag, all processed foods, right? Not adding salt.

So it's how am I going to avoid these nutrients of excess since that were dying of diseases of excess? That's really where I have to turn to. And so it's like, wow, how much added sugar does this have? whoa, how much sodium does this have, right? And since approximately the number of calories we get every day, approximates the number of sodium, we're not supposed to exceed. So the dietary guidelines said, don't go about 2,300 milligrams of sodium. It's about what people eat every day. So you want to make sure every single food has more calories than has sodium. Because if everything you eat has more calories and sodium, then you're not going to see your sodium recommendations.

So those are the kind of things we have to worry about. There's a licensing effect, a multivitam. So you give someone a multivitamin, and then you give them a buffet, and they choose less healthy choices. Now, a lot of that research, there's kind of a replication crisis, and we're not sure how much of that is actually going to replicate. But there are certainly, but there are studies published in the period of medical literature. You give someone a multibitamin, and it's actually not even, it's a placebo, but it's labeled a multivitamin. And they go on with hidden cameras to eat more chocolate pudding at that buffet. It's because, oh, I did something good, so I can kind of let myself go a little bit. And so that's why sometimes, multiple times, worse than useless, right?

If it gives you, and you say the thing about statin drugs, these cholesterol lowering drugs, which are amazingly effective, save hundreds of thousands of lives. But on an individual basis, the absolute risk reduction is minuscule. You actually ask people what kind of level of protection that we needed to take a drug every day for the rest of the life, even the side effects are minimal, and it's, you know, orders of magnitude higher than actual benefit of these. kind of lifestyle drugs. And so if people actually knew we overestimate the power of pills and procedures to actually keep us healthy when it's really all about these diet and lifestyle, if people really knew how powerful a tool they had at their disposal, then maybe they'd do

better and live longer. So to sum up a little bit of that, what role, if any, do you recommend supplements play? Do you think that they can be helpful for people not in any kind of specific situation like they're known to be vitamin D deficient or something. Oh, yeah. No, so certainly there are entire classes. So pregnant women, alcoholics. I mean, there's a lot of people where we just know that they're going to run to baseline sufficiency. Certain types of bariatric surgery can lead to very predictable nutrient deficiencies over time. And so there's certain classes of people that need to get specific supplements. You don't get adequate sun exposure. If you live at a certain latitude, et cetera, et cetera. You may need vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin. And if you're eating an exceptionally

healthy diet, one almost exclusively on plants, you need a source of vitamin B12, critically important. I mean, so there's, you know, kind of for different reasons. I encourage people to consider a 250 milligrams of DHA, a pollutant-free source of DHA, like an algae-based, which is a long-chain to make through fat acid, associated with improved cognitive function later in life. You can actually do, They randomized double-in placebo control trials and actually improve cognition, reduce brain shrinkage by randomizing people with average kind of long-chain omega-3 levels to 250 milligrams of algebra-based DHA. You actually get improvements in cognition.

Whether you could argue those aren't really noticeable, and, you know, it's more kind of doing tests on a computer, but these are relatively short-term. So if you can show actually significant improvements brain function from six months or a year, well, maybe over time. And so I'm convinced by that body of research, but I have a bunch of videos, and people may look at the same data and think otherwise. But that's another nutrient system that are kind of on a general basis. Now, you talk on your podcast a lot about different kinds of supplements that are common. And a common conclusion is this is actually junk.

And so I'm curious, there's probably a lot of people listening who are taking a lot of different things. especially maybe some of the trendy things. What advice would you give to somebody who, you know, hasn't been specifically diagnosed or told by a physician, you know, you're at risk, therefore, or you're pregnant, therefore, you know, take your folic acid, but it's just sort of trying to biohack and, you know, is taking 50 things. I mean, kind of famously, you have people like Brian Johnson, who takes like 100 pills a day. Like, is there wisdom there? How do you think about that stuff? Well, so first of all is the supplement industry. so poorly regulated on purpose by the industry. I mean, they'd be a very powerful lobbyists

to make sure that their industry is the wild wild west that you can't even be certain that what's in the pills, actually what's on the label. And so you can do this, you can pick your favorite supplement and type that in the PubMed, which is the National Library of Medicine, largest medical database in the world. And they'll likely be a study where they just took, they either top 15 sellers on Amazon or they just went to their kind of local health food store or whatever and bought the whatever brands they could find some convenience sample and they just tested it not only is there nothing in it but it's like made of like house plants or like or even worse it's actually contaminated with uh actual pharmaceuticals pharmaceuticals or even

banned pharmaceuticals particularly a lot of these kind of like performance enhancing or sexual enhancing these banned drugs these horse tranquilizers these like so you can't even be certain, even if, for example, taking this much of magnesium had this specific effect and we actually were confident that you have no idea if your magnesium pill is even, you know, one recommendation is that you can buy brands that have been UPC certified, which is a third-party independent certifier where, you know, brands will pay extra money to have that, and then they get a stamp proof. Now, this doesn't mean that the supplement's good for you, right? It just means that what's on the label is within a 10% margin or something of what's actually in the pill. So then at least

you know what you're taking. That's one way to kind of, you know, quality control. Now, so you are relying on that manufacturer that they actually did it right and that they say and that they're not just putting lead chromate to make it nice and bright yellow and, right? Instead, you can just get turmeric. One ingredient, turmeric, not an extract, right? And you can get, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the, actually, many of these studies are based on. And so, if you're green powder, literally, it's, like, dehydrated spinach, like, free, dried spinach powder. Okay. Great. I love it, right? But if it's, like, but you can't make a lot of money selling people, whole, like, whole food, like, why am I paying so much money for, you know, whatever, for tumor can caps. But if it's, like, fancy, extra

extract turmeric with all sorts of fancy things added, right? Then I'll pay 20 bucks a bottle. It's like calcium, right? Calcium carbonate, that's chalk. So the cheapest substance ever. So you can't sell people, calcium would make any money, but you can sell people coral calcium or fancy Himalayan calcium or whatever, you know, so that you make up some crazy stuff, right?

And so there's a for-profit entity called Consumers Lab that does a lot of testing of supplements. And what they'll often find is that some of the cheapest supplements are actually the ones that are, you know, that actually contain what they say they contain, typically because they're part of some brand like Kirkland or something, which has like a brand reputation to uphold. So they can just put crazy crap in it and hope to get away with it. Now, that's not always the case. But, you know, otherwise you may just get some fly-by-night internet company

that's stuff in God knows what in those capsules and they'll never be caught. In fact, when even the FDA has these like takedown orders because they found some illegal drug in it, then when they go back six months later to look at the same brand, it's bad. Like, it's like so crazy. It's so frustrating. And so, and there really are kind of pharmacological effect with some of these spices like turmeric and black human and papali and hibiscus tea. And like, you know, like culinary doses of regular spices like cumin can actually have beneficial effects.

So years ago, I did all my thesis work on the effect of. melatonin on like circadian phase shifting and created one of the first mathematical models for that system and um doing that learned that melatonin supplements um like all supplements are regarded by the FDA as food and not as medication which is what you're talking about this idea that um the FDA is not in certifying something saying that this is efficacious at all the way they would if it was you know, Tylenol or something, all they're saying is that it's safe to eat. And so safe to eat does not mean has the ingredients you expect it to have or that it's in any kind of bioavailable form. And so what we see with like on the shelf melatonin products is that one,

they vary tremendously, like you said, from what they claim to. And many of them like don't necessarily actually turn into like bioavailable melatonin that affects how you sleep. And so I think there's a really concrete, useful nugget for our listeners to take. take away from what you're saying, which is you kind of be careful and look for reputable brands not to get the cheap stuff and say, well, you know, all these bottles say that they have, you know, X milligrams of whatever substance. So I might as well get the, you know, the cheapest one. And specifically to look for that UPC seal. So I think that's a really great nugget for people to take away. So thank you for that. And just wrapping up the supplement conversation,

I think, you know, the pushback you get from industry is like, they're trying to take your vitamin C away. No, we're just wanted, as you said, like Tylenol, over-the-counter medication has to actually, by law, contain what it says it does. What a concept, mind-blowing. That's all we're asking is for supplements be treated like over-cant-any. Anyone can buy me. You don't need a doctor's prescription or anything. If you want to buy it, you can buy it. But it's just, it's like a truth in advertising. It actually has to say what it has. That shouldn't be too much. But that is a hot potato in the beltway because there's just such a powerful industry that wants to make sure that they can make money off a sucker.

As we wrap up, I'm curious if there were two or three things that you, either summarizing what you've said or something you haven't had a chance to say yet on this podcast, but that you really wish people understood and that they could relatively easily incorporate into their lives, what would those two, three takeaways be? What we put in our mouth is most important. Number one, diet, number two, cigarettes. Basic, simple, lifestyle behaviors are really what will get people most of the way there. It's never too late to stop smoking.

They were too late to start moving. Never too late to start eating healthier. Small changes can make a big effect in the long run. In fact, one of the speakers today was talking about Columbus-Batis talking about kind of compound interest. But it's so true, making those early changes, right? really compounds over time. It's never too late, right? But, you know, you change the, he was talking about the one in health modeling study of the show, so if you change your diet, and it's really not much. From a typical diet to a healthier diet, not even a great diet,

but a healthier diet, starting at age 20, increased lifespan of women by about 11 years, by 13 years. Starting at age 60, though, then you only add 8 or 9 years, but even age 80, you can add 3 years. So it's never too late. But, oh, the early. earlier, you get on board, the greater chance you have the benefit. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's not just about longevity, it's quality of life. I think one of the things that's so beautiful about adopting a plant-based diet is within a few days, you should feel better. And so, you know, there's the long-term play, but you do get the benefits in the moment. It's not just the compound interest of saving up for retirement.

So that's what I've used in my clinical practice. practice a lot, is this kind of like, try it like a free sample. Like, let's just like, you look, you can eat anything for it. The problem, people can't wrap their heads around. Wait a second. I'm not going to eat pepperoni pizza for the rest of my life. They don't even want to. They shut it now. Okay, no, no, no, two weeks. You could eat anything for two weeks. You could eat nothing for two weeks. Like, oh, right, let's just give it. Let's do an experiment. Let's just give it a try. Right. And the reason that this is the sneaky approach. And look, we're going to give it a try. I might as well jump all in, right? Go all in. And you know, do all these things, you know, and then the hope is that within two weeks. They're feeling so much better, better energy, better digestion, less painful periods, whatever it is, then it's like their own body is telling them how much better this diet is. Now, they could still choose to, you know, go back to whatever, you know, but then they have that, at least they have that in their mind, that it's not just, you know, their own body is telling them. And it's, it's, you know, it's that early feedback that's hopefully going to keep people on the path. Not that they're actually

going to get benefits in two weeks, but the long-term benefits we really care about, but they'll get enough just to keep them on the path. And then, you know, it doesn't matter what you eat today, tomorrow next week. But for the next couple decades, and so the hope is to, you know, tweak your diet. So you get those long-term benefits in terms of decreasing disability and mortality risk and all that vitality and mental health and, you know, that we're hoping to. to get along with it. I love that. So I wonder if you would agree with this,

if we want to leave our listeners with the challenge to give plant base a try for two weeks. And if they do that, what can they expect to experience at the end of two weeks? One thing they'll experience is actually a change in their palate. And so taste puts only last about three weeks before they were replaced. And the original studies were done on low sodium dice steak people

and remove soft from their diets. And first you have people salt soup to taste. Then you put them a low salt diet. And at first everything tastes like cardboard. And they're like, oh, my God, I'm never going to live my life like this. I don't care if I die tomorrow. There's no way I'm going to live like this. But then something magical happens.

And then a few weeks, all of a sudden, their palate changes such that the original soup they salted the taste is actually way too salty. They actually prefer less salted soup, right? And so then you get the best of both worlds. Wait a second. Healthier and taste better. right, as soon as we stop numbing our palates with hyper-sulty, hyper-sweet, hyper-fatty foods that the processed food industry has been, you know, gearing up. And the animal ag has been, you know, increasing, you know, a hundred years ago. A chicken was 2% calories. Now it's over 20% calories. I mean,

it's all about getting that nice caloric density and such that, you know, the ripest peach in the world is going to taste sour after a bowl of fruit loops, right? I mean, it's just like our palate's completely off, right? But then all of a sudden, some magical things, within a few weeks, all of a sudden, you're sitting there eating corn on the cob, no butter, no salt, and it's delicious. Now, you tell people that now, and they're like, what? Like, it's just, that's just like. I don't like corn. You know, or some will see me, someone will come by my cubicle and, you know, I'm like, you know, microwave sweet potato, a little cinnamon or something.

And they look at me, I'm like, like I'm some aesthetic monk. Like, oh, it's great that you can do that, but I could never eat. But if you eat healthy, natural, normal foods for long enough, all of a sudden your palate adjust. And normal food actually tastes delicious, as delicious as that suit as the fruit loop, right? I mean, it's as sweet, as delicious as it was before. But once you, you know, once you kind of recalibrate your palate. And so then all of a sudden, you get the best both worlds, taste great and you get to live longer too. I love, and I imagine that's new news, it's certainly something I just learned that our taste buds turn over every three weeks.

And I think that there's something kind of exciting about that, that if you ride out, you know, maybe it tastes a little more bland or a little bit less exciting, that you will actually get brand new taste buds and you get to train them on what food is all fresh. And so it's not so much that like, hey, if you wait long enough, you'll forget how delicious fruit lips are or whatever. But literally you can build these brand new taste buds in such a way that they're in tune with what's actually good for you. And so I think maybe that's where we should end on this beautiful message. Give it the three week. You'll get brand new taste buds and then teach those new babies to love the stuff that's actually good for you. And so then it's not anymore an exercise about self-denial in service of longevity. It's actually about enjoying the things that are great for you.

and longevity is just this delightful side effect. Love the food that loves you back. I love that. Thank you so, so much for being here with me today. I had so much fun and I learned a lot talking to you. And I hope you had a great time too. Absolutely. Can't wait to come back.

Big thank you to Dr. Michael Greger for his insights on health, longevity, and nutrition. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question to us, he answered on the podcast, email us, guest to whoop.com, call us 508, 443, 4952. If you think about joining whoop, you can visit whoop.com, sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members can use the code will, WI-L, to get a $60 credit on Woop Accessories when

you enter the code at checkout. That's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.