Fight Aging With 3 Foods That Eliminate Inflammation | Dr. Michael Greger

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12So what is the difference between, I guess, bad cells and zombie cells? Oh, this is cellular senescence. So this is one of the aging pathways. I cover 11 aging pathways, kind of our 11 best opportunities for slowing the sands of time, ending each with kind of impractical takeaways. This is the part one of the book. It is kind of the nerdy section. It goes really deep into kind of interesting biology mechanisms, but, you know, really do kind of like, okay, but here's the bottom line. You can skip all this. Sure, sure. You know, this is the foods to eat. This is the activity to do, blah, blah, blah.

0:45So, yeah, and the cellulose senescence chapter, very fascinating. So our cells in our body only divide about 100 times before they stall out. The so-called Hayflick limit. We used to think cells just kind of, you know, divided forever, but they only divide 50 times. And this is good because that's a protection against cancer. We want cells to naturally kind of put themselves out the pasture, being replaced by new cells from the stem cells. Right. And, you know, cells can become damaged along the way. Okay. So the only, and so at the end of those about 50 doublings, what the cells do is they release these inflammatory mediators, which signals the immune system to come and kill them.

1:24Basically come and wipe them out. This is basically their kind of little suicide way. Sure, sure, sure. Be like, okay, so they release these inflammatory compounds, signal the immune system, and then comes and clears out these so-called zombie cells that are no longer participating in the body, actively spewing this what's called senescence-associated SASP. But, okay, the problem is this works great when we're young. Unfortunately, our immune system starts to decline with age. And so what happens is our immune system's ability to clear out these cells declines such that our body's tissues get littered with these senescent cells spewing out inflammation.

2:06And one of the reasons why levels of inflammation climb with age, so you can do these kind of blood tests of systemic inflammation like C-reactive protein and tumor necrosis factor, IL-6, etc. And they all go up. And so there's a term inflammation. Beijing. And a big part of this is these cells, which our body should get rid of, but unfortunately, our ability to do that declines with age. And so, two-pronged approach. First, we prevent cells from going prematurely senescent. So they should make it to 50, but they suffer damage to their DNA from free radicals, from oxidative damage to their DNA as a protective mechanism because it could cause mutations or something.

2:50They kind of go out to pasture early. and so we can decrease oxygen just by flooding our body with antioxidant rich foods like the berries and greens and really healthy foods okay so one so we prevent the premature senescence that's the first thing and the second is we look for senolytic compounds ways to clear these zombie cells from our bodies there's been a number of drugs that have been put to the test unfortunately these drugs have kind of some severe side effects and so there are certain certain medical conditions in which senescent cells play a key role, in which case the benefit-risk analysis might actually support use of some of these toxic drugs.

3:27But for kind of the general public, we're really left with senolytic compounds in natural foods. There are three of them that have been shown to clear senescent cells in the body. One is facetin, which is really only found one place in concentrated form, and that's the strawberries. So that's why I end up in the book, in that chapter, recommending fresh, frozen, or freeze-dried strawberries into your daily diet. Now, normally, I would have put, like if you're putting some on your oatmeal or something, I would have put like blackberries. Blackberries have five times the antioxidants to strawberries.

3:58So look, if you like them both, you know, why not? But I didn't know about facetin, which is really only found in strawberries. So if you're not eating strawberries, you're really not getting into your daily diet. So I've been eating a lot more strawberries. Wow. Okay, the second, something called quercetin. And quercetin is found in onions, kale, tea, and capers. And actually play a role in Mediterranean diet help. And that helps explain these remarkable studies where they give people onions and see remarkable benefits. Literally within an hour, you can randomize people eating onions. In fact, you can randomize people to eat high quercetin onions versus bread to be low quercetin onions and show that it does appear to be this one compound.

4:42And so, of course, there's quercetin supplements everywhere. It's not clear. We don't know. What's the best onion? Well, it's the, so it's actually lowest in the sweet onions. So, like, of course, like the tastiest onions is low amount. Yeah, yeah. So, like, okay. But so yellow onions have more. Red onions have the most. So red onions are better than white. So red onions really are the best. Really? And look, you can basically, anything you can do with a red onion, a white onion, you can do with red onion. So it's like, there's just no excuse. Same thing with cabbage. If you're making something with cabbage, don't go for green cabbage.

5:15Go for red or purple cabbage. It has these anthocyanin and berry pigments. One of the cheapest sources of these berry pigments is in red, purple cabbage. Super cheap. And you get those benefits for brain function, eyesight, artery function, inflammation, blood sugar, cholesterol. You get those berry benefits in this kind of savory form. Is raw or cooked red onions better? Either way. It's a heat stable. I'm able. Your breath, your partner may. In fact, you need to have any, I mean, your entire, your sweat can start. I mean, you can really, you can really start as well. But has there become like too much, like, you know, if you have a half an onion.

5:54There's only a concern in supplement form. So the supplement manufacturers come out where it's like you could not eat this many onions. And then we're playing with fire. But yeah, there's never been any. In fact, some of these benefits, I'm seeing these remarkable clinical benefits. We're seeing after eating like one or two onions a day. I don't know how one does that without. I mean, that's a lot. But you can get benefit even from literally a teaspoon of chopped onion. You can get. Put it on your food and just eat it. You can just sprinkle it on you. Right, right. And this is all the allium family of vegetables.

6:23So it can be like green onions or, you know, so like scallions or onions, garlic. It's all in this kind of same family and they have this beneficial compound. The third compound, it's a tough one to get. It's called piperlongumene. only found really in one place, which is something called papali or long pepper. It's in the black pepper family. You can get it at Middle Eastern spice stores. And it basically kind of tastes like black pepper with a little kind of Szechuan heat to it. But it's a single-edged compound you really can't find anywhere else. So I encourage people to put some of that in their pepper grinder to add that to their daily diet.

6:58That's amazing. That's amazing.

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