How to Get Younger While Getting “Older" | Suzanne Somers

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1:24I've done over 1 ,500 podcasts over, it's been, I guess, gosh, 10 years now. And what's great about podcasting is you get to just call up all these people you're either amazed by, or maybe they did something currently that you really want to ask more questions about, or they're your heroes from childhood or some icon of your personal history. And you just get this chance to call them and say, hey, can I talk to you and ask you any question I want? Like, for instance, a few weeks ago, David Rubenstein, the head of the Carlisle Group, came on, and I was able to just ask every question I had about the economy, and he was able to answer.

2:13As you know, I've been so fascinated by chess, and even back in the 80s, Gary Kasparov was my hero, and he's been on my podcast four or five times. What a gift it is to me, and I hope it is a gift to the listeners to listen in while I ask these questions to my heroes. So a few years ago, I had on right before COVID, actually, it was in my apartment, we did this podcast, and there was a kind of a big crowd and we set up chairs and people were really listening. Suzanne Somers, first off, she was really famous as being an actress from a famous actress from my childhood on a show called Three's Company.

2:57Since then, she's been so involved in the health industry and the exercise industry. Tragically, you know, she passed away. As I'm recording this, she passed away yesterday. And she had a long battle, 23 years with breast cancer. She was 76 years old. And I remember thinking during the podcast, boy, this is a woman who lives life to the fullest. She's had her ups. She's had her downs. but she every day it felt like she squeezed the most out of life like you know she's in her 70s her husband's in the 80s she pointed him out and she was talking about how like they have sex twice a day or whatever like i hope i am so fortunate at the age of 76 to be doing that and with all the again all the ups and downs particularly as you age and anyway it was a meaningful podcast to me, meaningful in the sense that I still four years later or three years later, remember it and apply the things I learned from that podcast in my life.

4:03I don't always do that, but in this case with Suzanne Somers, I did. And again, she was such an icon from my childhood. It was such a pleasure to talk to her. She and my wife got along. She stuck around afterwards and we were all just joking around. And it was a funny podcast as well. A lot of reaction from the audience, but it's evergreen, meaning it's just as good now as the day we recorded it. And if you didn't listen to it before, or even if you listened to it before, it's worth listening to again. Here it is. And again, rest in peace, Suzanne Summers.

4:39This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

4:56Maybe they influence each other. I really like your hair. Thank you. I really like yours. Thank you. I've liked yours since Three's Company. That's funny. So I've got Suzanne Somers here from, I knew you originally, of course, from Three's Company. And then since then, you've done many more, much more important things, including 20, I didn't know you were the author of 27 books. Yeah. So you've written more books than me. So you're the first person I met who's done that. I'm older than you are. All right, I'm going to catch up. But maybe I'll catch up or maybe not because your latest book, which we're going to talk about now, is called A New Way to Age, The Most Cutting Edge Advances in Anti-Aging.

5:39And people will probably say, well, why did Suzanne Somers wrote that? And I'll answer and then you can answer, which is you've written a ton of books on health and medicine and holistic medicine and so on. Uh, and in this book you interview, I don't know how many doctors, but like, was it 20 doctors, a dozen doctors? You've interviewed a whole bunch of doctors. Actually didn't count, but a lot. I didn't count either. I should have counted. Yeah. And, but they were all fascinating and you're really, you know, uh, and by the way, also I have, uh, Dr. Dean Mitchell here. Listeners might remember him from the Dr.

6:11Gundry Plant Paradox podcast, but Dean, welcome back. Thanks. I want to be your wingman today because, uh, you know, it's a lot of fun being here with you and of course, Suzanne Somers, who I have a lot of admiration for. Well, yeah, he was telling me, Suzanne, how much he liked your book, Toxic and Knockout. And so many of your books have been so interesting and your interview style with the doctors you interview, you're really getting the maximum amount of knowledge from them. And it was so fascinating. You talk about everything from, I don't know, oxytocin to telomeres to CBD to the vitamin B.

6:47And, you know, and then I just want to quote one thing. Look at you, your dog-eared and everything. Yeah, no, I learned a lot and I had a lot of questions. But the main thing is, I think the subtitle of your book should have been, and it's from page, I believe it was 192. I don't have it written down. But this quote, I think your subtitle should have been, infrared sauna makes for better erections. I think that should have been the subtitle of the book. And we'll maybe get to that. Maybe not, we'll see. That's another book. Right, that's the next book. But there's a lot of stuff. You're all over here from stem cell therapy to testosterone to supplements.

7:23So I almost don't know where to begin because there's so much knowledge. What do you do? What do you think is, out of all the people you spoke to, what do you think is the most important ingredients for anti-aging? And by the way, Dr. Mitchell's here to help me just in case I'm an idiot, which I am. I don't know anything. So I'll ask the questions I'm curious about and then he'll fill in some facts for me and for you and for the listeners. I'll try. So roll back. What was the question? What do you do for anti-aging? You're obsessed with it. You do it. You ask these doctors because you're interested and aging, it seems like you think and I would agree that aging almost should be thought of as a disease rather than a natural thing that happens in our lives.

8:08And it's a disease that should be studied or a condition that should be studied and potentially cured. And so that's the focus of your interviews, it seems. In a way, it is curable. When you look at the present paradigm of aging, it's something none of us want. It's decrepit, it's frail, it's one of the big three, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, and then the eventual endpoint at the nursing home. And nobody ever thinks that will happen to them. Nobody in a nursing home ever thought they'd end up in a nursing home. What are any of us doing differently than those people. So you have to start thinking about it now and the earlier the better to make better choices because the people in nursing homes today just thought they were doing everything right.

8:53They believed that processed food was okay. They believed the allopathic approach to health was okay. And I know that most people are most comfortable with allopathic medicine. What do you mean by allopathic? Allopathic is doctor, here's my problem. And the doctor says, here's the drug for the problem. And that's what feels safe. and that's what we all grew up on. And then we went to the doctor and they wrote a prescription and you almost didn't feel like you got your money's worth if you didn't walk out with a prescription. And so that I get, and I'm not trying to tell people not to go that way, but if you're like me and you'd rather go natural first and then only resort to Western medicine if absolutely necessary, then this is the book for you.

9:36So the way I approach my health and the greatest thing that ever happened to me was getting cancer 20 years ago. It's an unusual thing to say that that's the greatest thing. It is an unusual thing, and it wasn't at the moment when you hear those three words, but I remember being presented with standard of care. And I remember saying, I can't. The idea of filling my body with chemical poisoning to cure me, I don't get it. And I said, will it cure me? well, it won't cure you, but it might give you a better chance. Is that, I'd hate to sell that product. You know, here's 18 weeks of chemo, you'll lose your hair and you have a better chance of living, but it's not a cure.

10:23Yeah, like, well, I'm always curious. And I actually asked this question of my friends. If you have cancer, would you do the chemo? Because it's not so clear what the chances of success are. In many cases, I've seen people die from the chemo. And - A lot of cases. Yeah, and it doesn't look very pleasant way to die either. It's very - It's torturous, yeah. Yeah, and so I don't know. I mean, well, I know what you did. So tell me your story. I've turned it down several times. I've had a lot of cancer and I've eaten every time doing it my way through diet, through detoxification, through pancreatic enzymes.

11:02I had cancer three times in my 20s. People don't know this, actually. Yeah, I don't know that, actually. What did you, what kind of cancer did you? I had severe hyperplasia in my uterus three times in my 20s. In my 30s, I had malignant melanoma on my back. In my 40s, I had cancer in my uterus and had it removed. In my 50s, I had breast cancer, a tumor. In my 60s, I had ductal carcinoma in situ. So cancer just likes you. Yeah. Like it's all over. But I'm not afraid of it. I meant to interrupt one thing. She's a warrior. I mean, when you battle all these things, that's what I tell my patients. It's like sometimes when they're like, oh, my God, this happened to me.

11:41I had this cancer. This is too. And they battled through it and they've actually overcome it. I said, you're a warrior. You deserve that medal. So don't feel like you're, you know, defective in some ways. Well, I actually am, this is selfish to say, but I'm nervous that I haven't had anything because I think the one time I get something, I'm just going to completely collapse and that's it. That's going to be my final. Yeah, but you have great hair. Yeah, well, at least I have that. So in the grave, I'll have an open casket. God's very sneaky. He never gets you what you think's going to get you.

12:10It's always something else. I think in the - Good hair cancer. I mean, this book, To Limit It to Cancer, would be doing it a disservice, but we're in that arena. But I think the oncologists are doing their best. They're giving us their best, but that's what they're taught. And I am in a place in my life of, can we be more creative? Maybe it's not that complex. Maybe cancer wants to be fed right and detoxed. A guy that I interviewed for three of my books, you may know him, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, who I believe was murdered four years ago. He was just about to publish 126 case studies of stage four cancer, including pancreatic, of his patients who had been alive on his protocol 10 years or longer.

13:02I used his protocol for ductal carcinoma in situ. What is it? It's coffee enemas and pancreatic enzymes. Oh, we were just talking about it. It was from Nick Gonzalez. I knew his work. And I had patients that we shared that swore by what he did. It was difficult, but people who had... I think chemotherapy is harder. Yes. What's a coffee enema? Okay, so let's start with why pancreatic enzymes. The pancreatic enzymes that he gives you are porcine. Pigs enzymes are closest to human. So when you take enzymes with meals, it just digests your food, but you take it away from meals an hour before and after.

13:44Like in a supplement form? Yeah, in supplements and a good deal. If you have cancer, probably 14 to 16 every five hours. And so it's a commitment. You gotta believe it. Can you buy those in the store or what's? Yeah, you buy them from his pharmacy where he never took a piece. I said, he said, I don't want to make money off my patients. I said, it's okay. Anyway, enzymes eat debris. Cancer is debris. Chemicals are debris. Toxins are debris. So the enzymes go in there and eat up the debris. Hopefully it's eating your cancer. And then for lack of a more delicate way to describe it, those little, they're little animals, the enzymes.

14:33They poop out the debris, okay, into your bloodstream. And then the coffee enema detoxes the liver and flushes it out. So you're eating it up and flushing it out and eating it up and flushing it out. How does it know, how does it recognize that the cancer cells are debris? Because this isn't part of the idea is that cancer cells fool a lot of other medicines, you know, so that the medicines can't recognize the bad from the good? Perhaps they're smarter, but if there's no food that they're digesting, they just take what's available. You know, they just want whatever is available. And so when I went to Dr.

15:10Gonzalez's funeral and I talked to him three hours before he died and he was fine. He's a God-loving man, country-loving man, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, eats organic food. He had recently had a checkup. He's perfect healthy. You know, he took perfect health. How did he die? His heart exploded. Yeah, they said he had a heart attack. So when I was at the funeral, the wife said to me, the widow, that he had gotten a phone call two months earlier from an anonymous caller saying, you're going to be murdered. You won't know where it's coming from. And it's going to look like a heart attack. And then she also said to me that Nick should talk to Mike Baker.

15:47So the widow said to me, do you know Mike Baker? and I said, I don't know him, but I know who he is. He used to be with the CIA and now he runs a security system called Diligence Inc. So I called Mike Baker and I said, do you know Dr. Nick Gonzalez? No. Do you know you're mentioned in this anonymous call? No. I said, so you're with the CIA. Does the CIA have a way to induce a heart attack in somebody? And he paused, he goes, yeah, we have a heart attack gun. If I walk down the street and I just bang into you, he said, you won't see it, you won't feel it, but five hours later, your heart will explode.

16:22So obviously I want to get to the material in the book, but I also want to hear why would the CIA be interested in this guy? Not the CIA, someone who got a hold of the technology that the CIA uses, because what would the CIA care for? You can't have a little guy in New York coming up with a cure to cancer, which is a$200 billion a year business. Connect the dots. So when I went to his funeral, and it was upstate New York, one of those little churches that looked like George Washington went to church there. You know what they look like. It was packed with his patients. There wasn't one person there who looked ill, not one gaunt face, not one, you know, the eyes sunk, not one gray complexion, not one cane, not one wheelchair.

17:07Everybody had vitality and juice. I always talk about energy and vitality as juice. And then the reception after were all the stories of 26 years ago. I was told to get my things in order and I've been doing Gonzalez all these years. He never said I have a cure, but all his patients that I interviewed from my book said, you know, they were cured. So can I ask, like, let's say it was a different kind of cancer, like lung cancer. Doesn't matter. So the same enzymes? The pancreatic enzymes? Doesn't matter if it's a whole body, one organ, breast, prostate, doesn't matter.

17:55How come like someone like Steve Jobs, and I'm not being skeptical, I'm just curious because obviously now this is going to be the thing I do. It's the last person I speak to about it and that's the thing I do. So how come Steve Jobs or somebody like that who did try holistic approaches, he ended up going back to, you know, the whole whipper snapper thing? believe, maybe it wasn't the right approach. Belief is a huge thing. Belief is powerful. And all these people at Nick Gonzalez's funeral had a total belief in him. I have a total belief in him. So I'm more apt to be able to tackle cancer in me than someone who doesn't believe.

18:32I think belief is that powerful. So the book is not about cancer, but it's about other ways. because I know most people are most comfortable going allopathic. Like I said, here's the problem, doctor, here's the drug for the problem. I prefer first to try natural any way I can. And then if absolutely necessary, I go allopathic or Western. And I've been using... So when I had cancer, that's... I just didn't want it... when I was presented with it, I have to say that took some courage because I had to watch Dan Rather on CBS say, is she risking her life? I was on the cover of People Magazine. Is she risking her life?

19:21Larry King with Andrew Weil. Is she risking her life? And I'm hearing from everybody. Everybody's looking at me with that. What are you crazy? What are you doing? Is it any crazier to change the way you eat and take food seriously? food is fuel. Imagine this is a Maserati putting the most powerful food in this great machine that we have. So I ate only, and I do eat only organic food. If you can pick it, pluck it, milk it, or shoot it, you can eat it. And if it's organic, food, thoughts, sleep. I know it sounds too simple, but maybe that's what I said a little while ago. Maybe they're making it more complicated than than it is.

20:06I mean, and we were just talking about this too, that we were talking about, I've had over 500 episodes of this podcast. Many of them have been with health practitioners and the one, everybody could argue about every single diet, but the one or two things they agree on is low sugar, low processed food, good sleep, and some exercise. But James, you know what I really, Suzanne's been a little bit too humble in this situation because I've been in practice 30 years. And I remember even as a young doctor, 25 years ago too when she was coming out with her books and doing her things. And today a lot of these things are commonplace now.

20:41And people, I mean, so many of my patients are so interested in eating healthy. You know, the things that she brought out 25, 30 years ago were bold. And especially to come out from a non-medical professional, even more bold. And I think what she was sort of even tying in too, and you're up against the pharmaceutical industry. They would much more prefer to have a drug where you have to pay$1 ,000 a month to get injected than to eat more natural foods or do certain things. So, you know, I think what she did, and she's being a little bit humble about it, it was tremendous, and especially in the time when she did it.

21:14And now I think she deserves the credit of being, you know, like a senior, as we would call it, a senior holistic professional. I don't think she wants to be called senior. I'm not senior, but we know we're senior in authority. It didn't help that I was playing the dumbest woman in America. That was the hard part, right? That's right. I was such a transition to make. I mean, if you were a medical reporter, that's right. But you are a sex symbol, you are a TV star. But at the same time also, you use it appropriately because, you know, again, you got that attention. And I think you did it all these years.

21:47And I've read your work with a certain kind of reverence to realizing, you know, you have a big responsibility. You can't give people false hope and you can't do things that would undermine their relationship with their doctor, which is sometimes all these people have. Or the doctors that I interview. Yes. I take them very seriously. I think that's key is that you sort of balance, you know, your background with the fact that you're bringing in the authority of all these doctors you've worked with. And you're interviewing them, asking them great questions. So they're kind of downloading this information to you.

22:19Then you're writing about it in this book. And you talk to so many amazing people. It's clear they're knowledgeable in every aspect. so now what do you do for aging like now you're keeping your health you're keeping your juice you're very energetic and you know you talk about everything from you know dhea supplements to telomere lengthening and all these things what what do you do well you know this year i turned 73 and i thought what's interesting about 73 is i always thought when i was 73 i'd be old and And chronologically, I'm old, but I'm not old. You're sitting here with me. I'm not old. I'm not an old lady.

22:57And so what's the difference? I have embraced my age. I'm not all pilled up so that I have my acquired wisdom. So I can perform my, I'm a matriarch, and that sounds like some old-fashioned thing, but wisdom is the one thing that no young person can buy or have. and I just was interviewed by two young women. They're in their 30s. And I said, you're the hope because you're not stuck in a thought process because they were both going, I'd rather go natural. I go, so take that and don't go to the doctor like a child. Go to the doctor informed. You're the contractor. And doctors are professionals that we hire to take care of different parts of our body.

23:47But you can't hire the right subcontractors. If you don't know your job and your job is the contract, you have to listen to the language of the body. Like when you are in hormonal decline, it's such a language. It took me three years to hear it because nobody ever mentioned menopause to me. And it was a secret. And when I was a kid, you used to say in whispered voices, my mother's going through the change I hear. Remember the change? It was so shameful that this natural thing that happened. It's very clear to me that we're here for one reason only, and that's perpetuation of the species. And so everything's working great.

24:26Everything's great while we're completely reproductive. So around 40, 45, earlier now because of stress and toxicity, which blunts hormone production, the brain goes, whoa, this person's got lousy eggs. This person's got imbalanced hormones. This person can't make another baby. I got to get rid of this person. I'm giving my brain a personality. We got to get rid of - That was a good impersonation of the brain. I got to get rid of this person. Well, if you notice, we get our cancers at the end of our reproductive years. That's when I got mine because the brain wants me out of here. Make room for the new young reproductive ones because it's a perpetuation of the species.

25:07So now we got this dilemma because we figured out how to extend life. We're living longer. We're gonna live to 80, 90 and 100 now. I fully plan to live into my hundreds, but with no quality of life. And so what I started writing about, and I appreciate your compliments, I started writing about quality of life. If I'm gonna be alive, I wanna be alive while I'm alive. What's alive? I wanna have a sex drive. I wanna have nice shiny hair. I don't wanna have unexplained weight gain. I don't want to have insomnia. I don't want to have night sweats. I don't want to have hot flashes. I don't want to be forgetful.

25:46And so how do I rectify all of that? Lab work, urine testing is the best, much better than saliva or blood testing to be accurate with determining your hormone levels. And to be clear, you list exactly what blood work, what urine testing and so on, what to check for and everything in the back of your book. Yeah, yeah. So you're not going to read this book and go, well, I'd like it, but I don't know where to get it. The book will tell you everything. The back of the book is as important as any other part of the book in this. And so you are able to test to determine your deficiencies. And then when that number comes back, you have qualified doctor like Dr.

26:24Mitchell and other doctors that are in this book who understand you need some of this and you need some of that. We women drain out of progesterone as a general rule first. Who cares? Well, estrogen is carcinogenic. Progesterone is anti-carcinogenic. So nature devised us so that we make estrogen every day of the month. And then 15 days of the month, we make progesterone. So just when our estrogen reaches a peak, which happens to coincide with the full moon, by the way, on the 12th day of every month, we women make the most estrogen we're going to make all month. What's interesting about that in paleo times, when there was no light, we could make love by the light of the moon.