The Nutrition Doctor: “THESE Foods Can HEAL - REVERSE DISEASE & AGING!” (It’s SO SIMPLE!) Dr. Michael Greger

26:11Most of our sodium intake comes from processed foods. 70 % of sodium intake is not the salt we add in the kitchen or the dining room. It's in these processed foods. These, you know, anything in a box, in a package, in anything, they add salt because it's a flavor enhancer. Right? In fact, that's why they add it to a lot of beans. It's not a preservative. It's in a can. It's sterile. it's because they want to make things taste good. It's the cheap way to make things, you know, so you can't just eat one. But the problem is, is that sodium increases the risk, not just of high blood pressure, but so many different lead-in killers like kidney disease and ice.

26:46Kind of on down the list. Okay. But so there's two ways we can go. So there's lots of salt-free seasonings out there. And, you know, and encourage people to explore all sorts of new, you know, and, you know, people often, you know, there's all sorts of spices that anyone would have heard of, like saffron. I mean, there's also, so explore the whole world out there and find some delicious taste. And then the easy fix is switching to the salt substitute potassium salt. Instead of sodium salt, sodium chloride, switch to potassium salt. It's potassium chloride. It's just a natural mineral mined out of the ground, just like the sodium chloride is.

27:22And there are interventional studies. I talk about one in the book where they took these five kitchens at a veteran's retirement home and randomized their kitchens into either continuing to salt with regular salt in the kitchen or switching to a 50-50 blend of regular sodium chloride and potassium chloride. And there was a 40 % drop in cardiovascular disease death rates within a matter of years in the reduced sodium group. In fact, their life expectancy at age 70 in between the two groups was 14 years. Come on. Meaning that just by switching to half potassium salt, for which you wouldn't even be able to taste the difference, they effectively made themselves 10 years younger when it came to the risk of premature death.

28:13So there's no downside. Wow. So, okay. So now if you go with, I'm encouraging people to actually try to switch to full potassium salt rather than the one in the 50-50 blend, but then you do actually taste the difference. There's this bitterness to potassium salt that you don't get otherwise. It's more apparent in some foods than others. Some foods you really can taste the difference, but any amount that we can cut down. And the only other caveat is you need to have kidneys good enough to get rid of the excess potassium. And so if you have kidney disease or if you have diabetes, just because diabetes is such an increased risk of kidney disease, it's so damaging to the kidneys.

28:53Even if you don't know you have kidney disease, if you have diabetes, you should first get your kidneys tested before switching to potassium. And if you're over 70, our kidney function does tend to decline over time. So even if, as far as you know, your kidneys are fine, if you're over 70, I would go super simple test. You can just simple blood test. Get your kidney function tested and just make sure your kidneys can handle the extra potassium. But then if you give me all clear, your kidneys are good. Then you can get all the saltiness you want. You can add extra, right? You can make your popcorn as crazy, right?

29:30Tears to your eyes salty and with no harm. Wow. No harm. So that's one of the really one of the simplest tweaks in the book. And it's like the leading cause of dietary risk factor for death. Like the worst thing we could possibly eat. And there's a simple fix to it. Like I'm too bad there wasn't like a potassium donut or something. We just switch over and totally fine. But that was one of the rare things that is like super easy to do. So explain that one more time. So if we have more potassium salt first, then we can have salt? No, we're going. So we're swapping out. So instead of shaking on sodium, sodium chloride, we're shaking on potassium chloride.

30:07There's a bunch of different brands. And you can have as much as you want. And you can have as much as long as your kidneys are okay. Okay, gotcha. Right, you can have as much as you want. And so you can go any grocery store. Wow. In the salt aisle, there's all these salt substitutes. I'm going to look for this. And it says potassium chloride. And there's some 50-50 blends. If you want to start there and move, it's certainly better than adding pure sodium salt. I'm going to try that. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to try that. And the studies show. Oh, right. And not just it's associated with, but these interventional trials, these randomized control trials, blinded, they don't know who's in which group until they break the code at the end.

30:38And they say, oh, my God, significantly less death and disability in the group. Just cutting down on the sodium. Eating the same things. Eating the exact same things with one single tweak. Just switching over what kind of salt they're using. Amazing. That's incredible. Now, why haven't we heard about this? Like, why isn't this on, like, Blary? Because no one makes any money on it. It's, like, dirt cheap, right? I mean, I think it's cheap. I think it's more expensive than regular salt. Right, right. It's like five bucks or something. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, there's just no one's making money. I mean, there's just not a lot of money to make because it's just like a simple, like, you know, you'd probably dig it up your own somehow.

31:14And so there's just no, yeah, there's just not a lot of profit to be made. And so, unfortunately, we don't hear a lot about it. That is fascinating. Okay, so we've heard about legumes, number one. Yeah. Nuts, specifically walnuts, being number two. Palmful a day is my recommendation. Palmful. So one ounce. What if you want to have more? Oh, look, you can have more. They're calorie dense, too. But the longevity benefits plateau out at one. So you don't get more additional benefit. And they're kind of pricey. And they're calorie dense. Right, they're calorie dense. So if you're really active, it's not going to matter.

31:46So 10 to 15 a day. So it's 10 halves. 10 halves. 10 halves comes out to be 30 grams or one half. Okay, gotcha. So that's, I mean, look, you're not counting. Just grab a handful. Grab a handful. Grab a handful. And every day. Or at least three times a week. I mean, the benefits are that great. Are that great. And that's, in the Adventist cohort, the Lomelan Adventist cohort, they think it accounts for two years of extra life. Come on. It is one of the only foods, there's only two foods that have ever been associated with increasing literally years, plural, a single food. And nuts is one of them.

32:24How do they measure this that know that like nuts and beans are going to make you live longer? Okay, so what you do is you take hundreds of thousands of people, you follow them, their diseases, and their diets over time. So you keep doing these dietary services, exactly what are you eating? You can do these random call you up, okay, what do you eat in the last 24 hours? Go through. Sometimes you make them take pictures. Sure, sure. And so you follow that. And then you know their doctors. So you know what have they been diagnosed? What are they dying of? What do their autopsies show? And so you can follow them over time.

32:56And that's what's called observational research or epidemiological research. Now, you cannot prove cause and effect with that kind of research because there's confounding factors. Maybe the people who are eating nuts are health nuts. And maybe, you know, nut eaters are working out more. Maybe they have other eating other healthy stuff. Maybe instead of instead, what's the other thing you're eating instead of nuts? Maybe you're snacking on some really potato chips. Right. Right. And so maybe it's the benefit. It's not so much the nuts, but you're not eating potato chips. Right. So there's all these confounding facts.

33:27Now, there are statistical methods that you can use to try to control for that. So you're basically comparing nut eaters who aren't smoking and exercise, blah, blah, blah, to nut eaters, the non-nut eaters that also don't smoke, don't it? And that's why you need this big number. Right, right. And so like the NIHARP study, the largest study in history, we're talking over a half million people. And so with that much data, you can crunch the numbers and really kind of tease out, wait a second. With all these other factors controlled for, the people who are eating this many nuts are living this much longer.

34:01That's pretty crazy. And then you can turn to the most powerful evidence we have, which are interventional trials where you randomize people to two groups, and you give them a smoothie, one with nuts and one flavored with nuts, but no actual nuts in it. So you make people a walnut flavored smoothie versus an actual walnut smoothie, and neither the researcher nor the experimental subjects actually knows which is which. and you test it beforehand. So you really can't tell, right? And then you can measure acute reactions. You can measure their artery function literally within hours of consumption.

34:33And you can see what's happening in their cholesterol. And so then you can, so these are called surrogate endpoints. So what we'd like to know is let's randomize people to these smoothies for 10 years and see who actually dies and who doesn't. Okay. You can see how logistically that's difficult to do. But what we can do is we know that the amount of cholesterol in our blood is a really good indicator of risk factor for heart disease. And so anything that lowers cholesterol, ah, okay. So we have the observational evidence showing decreased risk of heart disease among non-eaters. And then we have this short-term data showing, look, it improves artery function, decreases cholesterol.

35:08No wonder we're seeing these endpoints in the absence. So you put all the evidence together and you're like, wow, nuts really appear to be healthy foods, right? That's how you do this kind of research. So fascinating. This is fascinating. Oh, yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Okay. We're still on the five things to eat every day. Legumes, nuts, no salt. No salt. No salt. Unsalted, right. Unsalted. Oh, yeah. We're keeping our salt intake as low as possible, under 1 ,500 milligrams. That's not no salt, but - Right, right. Very minimal. It's really, and mostly it's about, if you just avoid processed foods, you're going to go a lot of way there.

35:39Way less salt, yeah. So even fresh foods, yeah. Okay. Number four and five, what would those be? And so then it's eating more whole grains. So you were having an oatmeal for breakfast, right, instead of bacon and eggs. What about the whole, you know, grain-brain theory and then, like, how grains are bad for the brain? You know, what type of grains affect the brain in a healthy way versus a bad way? Yeah, the kernel of truth, who's kind of a little of a pun for all grains, is refined grains. Refined grains are terrible for us. So when you take something like whole wheat and you strip away all the fiber and you're left with, you know, with white flour, you do the same with brown rice to white rice or you kind of strip out the nutrition.

36:22I mean, you're left with basically kind of sheer carbohydrates. So you can take something like a sugar beet where most sugar comes from these days, actually not from cane. And you basically take all the nutrition away. You're left with table sugar, right? I'm assuming it's like pure calories. And look, you only have no value. 2 ,000 calories in the calorie bank every day. you cannot be wasting your calories on these empty calorie foods. And most grain consumption in the country is sadly these refined grains. So going after grains makes total sense because that's what people are eating. But of course, whole grains got caught in a friendly fire.

36:57Right, right. Right? So what are the grains we should be eating? So yeah, whole grains, ideally whole intact grains. So like oat groats or steel cut oats, The more closely to how they kind of grew out of the ground, the better. Or, you know, whole grain rye, you know, so we want whole as the first word in any kind of grain product. Steel cut oats or whole oats. Steel cut oats, fantastic. Or even oak groats, which are what steel cut oats are. Oak groats? Yeah, oak groats is, before you cut it, an oak groat cut two or three times turns into steel cut oats. But that's the original. And that, and if you haven't tried it, they are delicious.

37:34super chewy. Oak groats? You buy, that's what, oh my God. Someone turned me on to oak groats and I was like, I'm never going back. Really? They're so good. They're so much more healthy and I can't come back to mushy oats. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you cook them? So you cook them. Now, they take a long time to cook unless you have a pressure cooker. So if you have one of these electric pressure cookers out of the market now, then it's super quick. 20 minutes, you press a button, they're done. And you can make a whole meal. But it's like oatmeal? So it's like, but it's It's chewery or harder, more delicious.

38:06And no matter how well you chew, the reason that's so much better for you is because these bits of go off. You know, don't get absorbed in our small intestine. End up in our large intestine and act as this prebiotic bounty for our good gut bugs. But the more you refine it, the more you process it, the more that gets absorbed high up in the small intestine. You're basically leaving your colon bugs to starve down there. And that's why the more whole, the better. That's where the dietary fiber is. That's where the resistant starch is. That's where we can feed our good gut bugs. And they feed us right back.

38:43Wow. Okay. So that's number four. What would be the fifth thing? Okay. The fifth thing are foods they want people to reduce. They want people to reduce meat and soda as the two most important things to cut down in one's diet. But interestingly, the top four were actually things people aren't getting enough of. Uh-huh. If you add those things. Right. And so it's possible that really the benefits of a plant-based diet is less about what you're cutting out and more about just including the healthiest of healthy foods out there. Right? Yeah. I like that philosophy for people because if you can include these things in your system and in your daily routine, you're going to be less hungry for the other sugary processed things.

39:24There you go. And so maybe you have a little bit of it every now and then, but it's not 80, 90 % of your diet. Exactly. It's about, it's, that's the kind of behind the daily dozen thing. It's like, by the end of the day, if you actually check off all those boxes, you are kind of naturally crowding out these less healthy options. And it turns out over 50 % of calories in the United States come from ultra processed junk. Most of the food we eat is just junk. And so, right, we're just kind of crowding out, saving for the special occasion, right? It doesn't matter what we eat on our holidays, birthdays, special occasions, but on a day-to-day basis.

40:00We really should try to eat healthy. And that is centering our diets around these natural foods from fields, not factories, these kind of unprocessed foods. Now, I'm curious because we have about 50, 50 men and women that watch and listen, right? Amazing. But I'm curious about what, if you could specifically create a super supplement or a stack of supplements every single day for men that they took first thing in the morning, maybe three to five key ingredients, whether it was in a powder or liquid form, what would be those things to have men be optimized, healthier, stronger, more vibrant men?

40:42What would those ingredients be? They'd be foods. They wouldn't be supplements. They wouldn't put it in a pill. Now, look, you want to take some berries, free-dry them, and make them into a powder? Fine. Sure, sure, sure. If you want to call that a supplement by just eating a spoonful of freeze-dried strawberry powder, fine. Sure. Do whatever you want. It really comes down to the food. We just don't know enough about biology and the human organism to be able to tease out what it is about these thousands of different food components. Then we can extract it out and make money in a pill. If people don't, that doesn't keep people from trying.

41:15Sure, sure. I can tell you, right? That's how you make money. Yeah, of course. Unfortunately, the system is set up with these kind of wrong incentives, right? The worst thing to sell is produce, right? It goes bad. So the most profitable foods are, unfortunately, the least healthy foods, right? I mean, what you want is a snack cake that sits on the shelf for a few weeks. That's how you make money. Right, right, right. I mean, the produce rots on the shelf. It's like the worst thing. It's good for a week, yeah. It's a loss leader for these. It gets people into the store, so they'll buy the stuff that actually makes profit.

41:44If you want to make money, you sell brown sugar water in a bottle. It's like pure profit. It's all money. So it's not like the head of these soda companies is sitting around thinking, how can I contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic? Right. They're just like, how do I maximize profit for my shareholders in the next quarter? Sure. And anyone who doesn't think that way gets a conscience. They'll be booted out the next day and replaced by somebody who will. Right. Right. And it's not some diabolical thing. It's literally just that's how the system works. Sure, sure. And so, like, even a sweet potato grower is not going to put an ad on TV for sweet potatoes because they're not branded.

42:24Like, you'll just buy their competitors sweet potatoes. Like, the system is not set up. You're never going to see an ad for sweet potatoes in the Super Bowl because there's just not enough money to be made. Well, pistachios have done a good job. And avocado. Wasn't there an avocado one, too? I think there was. Yeah, but pistachio nuts have, like, blown up. They branded pistachio nuts somehow, right? They're everywhere. Look, look, I'm all in favor. I want big broccoli to swoop in and start putting up billboards everywhere. Exactly, right? Right. If only they had the money, right. But you mentioned prebiotics being like a key thing for everyone, I guess.

42:59So what would be, you know, if you were to create, like if someone was going to get three to five supplements, let's say, or the nutrients that they want to have, whether it's through foods or maybe they didn't have access to those foods, but they can get these prebiotics. What would these ingredients be for men to optimize their hormones, their muscle growth, their stamina, all these different things? Yeah, so why not? Look, if it's the prebiotics that are good for you, why not take prebiotic pills? Why not just take a prebiotic powder, right? The problem is that, you know, we talk about dietary fiber.

43:29But actually, that term dietary fiber literally covers thousands of different compounds, right? And so there's actually thousands of different dietary fibers, and they each feed the growth of different probiotic good bugs in our gut. And so it's actually this diversity of all these indigestible plant carbohydrates. That's what dietary fiber is. Right. Indigestible by our small intestine, makes it down to our large intestine, so we cannot be replicated. And so things... So there's been experiments using something like psyllium, which is a very common fiber supplement. It can help with... Kelp with like...

44:03Uh-huh. Releasing the stool. ...regularity, right? But does not have all these side benefits because it's not actually digestible, fermentable by a good gut bugs. It just kind of goes through us. And so we have yet to capture the complexity of the natural food matrix in actual kind of pill form... Wow. Interesting. ...as much as people have tried. And so, yeah, any time some, you know, new study comes out saying berries are great for you, and it's probably these anthocyanin pigments, the bright, colorful pigments in berries, then instantly supplement manufacturers are like, boom, there's anthocyanin supplements at every dose possible.

44:44Sure. Of course. But the food form of these nutrients is the best form to get them. And there have actually been studies that have actually put things head to head. So it's like, oh, I bet tomatoes are good because lycopene, that reg pigment, that's why people, men who eat more tomato products have lower rates of prostate cancer. There's probably the lycopene. But when you actually give people lycopene supplements, it doesn't work. And so it's like, okay, well, there's thousands of other things in tomatoes. Let's try something else, right? But it doesn't stop people from making lycopene supplements.

45:14It's kind of all the ingredients combined in the tomato or the apple or whatever that gives you the full compounds that helps your body digest. It's a symphony. And in fact, there's actually synergy. So when you take, there's a famous study that was done on pomegranate, and you can fractionate out the pomegranate into, you know, different, based on kind of different compound weights. And so when you give, you kind of drip one component pomegranates on cancer cells growing, human cancer cells growing in a petri dish, you know, it drops your growth like 20%, and you do another component. But then you add together, and you have, and one plus one is greater than two, in that they somehow work together and actually have greater drop than all the individual components.

45:56So really, the whole, I mean, I would love, if there was a supplement, if there was a pill, and there certainly are supplements out there that help people get a unit out of good sunshine, need to take vitamin D, and alcoholics have it, and pregnant women have certain, I mean, there's absolutely needs for supplements, right? but there's in terms of longevity in terms of like i went through and i went into this book thinking i would be recommending some of these supplements that have made a lot of news um just because you know i'd heard such positive things about them but when you look in the literature and i would love to because it's like that's such a great hook like take this one supplement and it's got to do x i would love to be able to say that um but they fell one by one boom boom boom but But what I did find is that these just random foods I had never heard about, like cardamom or, you know, strawberries, one example, or mushrooms have these things.

46:47And it's just like normal natural foods have these extraordinary effects. It's kind of not as sexy. You can't just like take it a little pill. But on one hand, look, it's delicious. Like, I mean, it's not as convenient, right? Right. But, again, it really comes down to the food. And it's just not a lot of money to be made. And so we just don't hear about these studies because there's just no corporate budget driving this promotion. Yeah. This is fascinating, man. This is powerful stuff. I've recently heard more about glucose. This is becoming more popularized online or at least talked about in the media more.

47:22It's kind of like the more your glucose spikes throughout the day, the faster you age as well. I don't know if you've seen anything in the studies around that. Oh, yeah, sure. No, no. And I've also heard from some experts that either having a little bit of vinegar in the morning or before a meal helps decrease the spike in glucose. Is that an accurate finding that you've seen too? I've got a whole chapter on glycation, one of the aging pathways, and recommend two teaspoons of vinegar with every meal. That's one of the, absolutely. And one of the reasons is because it, what does this, am something called AMPK, because the vinegar is acetic acid in water by definition.

47:58and by metabolizing the acetic acid requires energy and that energy drain actually bumps up AMPK, which is boosted by exercise, boosted by calorie restriction. It's one of the kind of anti-aging pathways. And we can get that boost by just simple vinegar and it decreases our blood sugars, decreases body fat. You can randomize people to get vinegar to get to the vinegar drinks. That kind of grows. But they used acetic acid versus another kind of acid, It tasted exactly the same, but it wasn't acetic acid, and saw significant difference in visceral body fat, which is the most dangerous body fat coiled around our internal organs, infiltrating our organs.

48:41They did CT scans. I mean, they're just randomized to different kinds of... Wow. Well, one vinegar or placebo vinegar, and they did this and saw significant loss. Pounds of body fat, different... Same amount of calories. Same amount of calories. Just by having vinegar? Vinegar. Vinegar. Now, the problem with the vinegar strategy is that it gets cleared from our system within four to six hours. That's why you really got to do it at every meal if you want to get that constant boost. Every meal? I know. Okay. So how do you do it? How do you do it? Tell me. So you can like - You put it in a tall glass of water.

49:12You put a little bit, yeah. So put in some tea. Diluted. Put in some water. You got to - In fact, it can be dangerous taking it straight. You can burn your esophagus. So very important. Do not drink vinegar straight. Wow. Sprinkle it on a salad. Sprinkle it on - And there's all these flavored balsamics out there. So with savory, sweet, there's like dark chocolate balsamic. There's Italian seasoning balsamic. So you can get it. There's curry. There's ginger. Or you can just do apple cider vinegar. Totally apple cider. Put it in water and drink it. In fact, you can get the benefits from white distilled vinegar that they use for cleaning the bathroom floor.

49:44I mean, so because it's the acetic acid. But just in terms of making things flavorful, making things fun, there's ways to add it to your meals. I mean, it sounds kind of gross to begin with, but you just kind of get, you just find creative ways to include vinegar and it has significant effects on long-term blood sugar control. And on fat loss too. And on fat loss. And not just any kind of fat loss. Visceral fat loss. I mean, people hate that jiggly superficial fat, but that actually has very little metabolic implications. You can do massive liposuctions on people, get rid of that, get literally over a dozen pounds of that superficial fat, no effect on metabolism, no effect on insulin resistance, no effect on triglycerides, no effect.

50:23If you lost that many pounds of fat, period, like if you were doing exercise, you're doing a better diet, you would get tons of benefits. But that superficial fact that we hate seeing in the mirror, that's not what we should worry about. It's the internal fat. Right. Look, if you want it for cosmetic purposes, whatever. But it's that internal visceral fat called around our organs under the abdominal musculature that's kind of bulging out the belly. That's the serious stuff. The good news is your body's smart enough to know that's the most dangerous fat. And when you lose weight, that's the first fat to go.

50:54So the preference, that's why people lose fat. They're like, why is my arm still jiggly? I've been losing all this weight. It's because your body's smart enough to know, look, we'll get there. Let's do the important stuff first. Wow. So what would you say are the main keys of losing fat, visceral fat and kind of the external fat? Well, the single intervention that created the greatest loss of body fat that didn't restrict calories. Obviously, you can lock someone in a closet. You can starve someone. Right. Or you can change someone to a treadmill. Right. Okay. But no exercise component and no calorie restriction, no portion restriction.

51:36Eat as much as you want. The most effective body fat at 6 months and 12 months was this whole food plant-based diet. It was centering your diets around, and it's really kind of a calorie density factor. So it's not a restriction. It's not a restriction. Eat as much as you want. Right, but there's so few calories per pound, per mouthful, per plate in these foods, because it's like you can eat a wheelbarrow of leafy greens. You couldn't even maintain your weight. I mean, you literally could not fit enough in your stomach. You can only fit about a quart of food in your stomach at a time. And so, like, you know, you can get 2 ,000 calories.

52:13You ate two pints of strawberry ice cream. That would fill up your stomach. You'd be full, and you'd get over 2 ,000 calories, all the calories you need for the day. To do that same thing with strawberries, 44 cups. 44 cups of strawberries to get 2 ,000 calories. Like, you couldn't even fit. That's like filling your stomach to bursting 11 times a day. You couldn't even do it physically, right? And that's this concept of calorie density. And so that's why, you know, something like oil, you know, people drizzle oil on something. A lot of calories. That is the single most calorie dense food on the plate.

52:38Even butter has a little water in it, so it doesn't have that much calories. One tablespoon, 120 calories. So you drizzle it on, you wouldn't even taste it. I mean, you'd see it'll be a little glisteny or something. You just add 120 calories. What, are you crazy? For that same 100 calories, you could add like, you know, two cups of blackberries or something. That would actually fill you up a little bit, right? And think all the nutrition you'd get with that, right? Instead, I mean, oil may have some fat-solid vitamins, a little vitamin E or something, but, I mean, the nutrition has really been stripped away, right?

53:08Oh, wow. And so the caloric density. So by staying away from junk food, which is designed to have maximum calories per bite, you know, to confine the fat and the sugar to just absolutely, like, you have teeny little, you know, you get 100 calories in just a teeny little bit, you have these massive platefuls of food, eat all you want and not have to worry about it. And that's really, and then you're just getting mountains of nutrition for actually very few calories. And so you can facilitate weight loss in a healthy way. I mean, you know, the goal of weight loss is not to fit into a skinnier casket.

53:40Right? Not to make it lighter for your pallbearers. Like we want healthy, how about we lose weight in a way that doesn't work with your health, you know? Wow. Yeah, and when you get these calorie-dense foods with all the nutritional value, it sounds like there's so much healing properties within these foods that allow your system to self-regulate, your skin to recover, your gut to recover, your brain to start functioning better. Isn't that right? And calorie dilute foods, not calorie-dense foods. The calorie-dense foods are the junk food, right? So not calorie-dense, but calorie... We want nutrient-dense.

54:18Nutrient-dense. Nutrient-dense. Lots of nutrition per calorie. And so what has more nutrition per calorie than anything on planet Earth? These dark green leafy vegetables, right? massive amounts of nutrition actually for very little has those nitrates those athletic performance enhancing ergogenic nitrates actually helps slow our metabolic rate and the candle that burns half as bright burns twice as long that's the other food associated with literally living years longer dark green leafy vegetables nuts dark green leafy vegetables and we think it's because the nitrate normally you only get that kind of metabolic slowing with our resting metabolic rate with severe caloric restriction, but instead of walking around starving all the time, you can just eat a big salad.

54:59This is exciting. This is exciting. So we mentioned intermittent fasting, you know, eat in the morning, don't skip breakfast, most important meal of the day. Really? Most important meal of the day. Here's the thing. This is what doctors were saying for many years. Yes. Don't skip breakfast. Yes. But then in the last seven years, everyone's saying doctors were wrong. Yeah, yeah. Skip breakfast. Allow the body to have autophagy. Allow the cells to - I know, I know. You know, extend the window where you're not eating as long as you can. Right. And that's been the new science. So the new studies that have been out where, you know, skipping breakfast is actually better for you because it's boosting testosterone.

55:41It's doing all these other things. So what - I talk about that backlash, that back and forth. I actually have videos about it. It's so funny because you start out the video and be like, yeah, breakfast. And they're like, oh, okay, breakfast. Oh, and then we're back to the beginning. It's so funny. And so many things in the book like that, like wheat germ or something. That's like, didn't that go away in like the seventies, right? Like the health issue. And then it's like, oh, then we, then there's this thing called spermidine. And it's most country and then wheat germ out of all these, all of a sudden, wheat germ is like back on the menu.

56:09But it's just so funny. there's like this, we had some kind of ancient wisdom even before we knew why that did actually support these foods. So yeah, no, it turns out. Now it's true about that feeding window. We do want to try to squeeze it, but critically important is when we're putting that window. In the morning and at lunch. We early time restricted feeding. Because of the circadian rhythm. That's it. You got it. So 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 that cover 11 aging pathways, kind of our 11 best opportunities for slowing the sands of time, ending each with kind of practical takeaways.

56:48This is the part one of the book. It is kind of the nerdy section. It goes really deep into kind of the interesting biology mechanisms, but really do kind of like, okay, but here's the bottom line. You can skip all this. Sure, sure. This is the foods to eat. This is the activity to do, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, and the cellulose senescence chapter, very fascinating. So, our cells in our body only divide about 100 times before they stall out. So, 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.

57:21We want cells to naturally kind of put themselves out to pasture, being replaced by new cells from the stem cells. Right. And, you know, cells can become damaged along the way. Okay, 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, basically come and wipe them out. This is basically their kind of little suicide way. Sure, sure, sure. They're like, okay, so they release these inflammatory compounds, signal the immune system, and then it 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.

58:02But 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. and 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. So, there's a term inflammation. And a big part of this is these cells, which our body shouldn't get rid of, but unfortunately our ability to do that declines with age.

58:49And 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. They kind of go out to pasture early. And so we can decrease oxidative stress 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.

59:27There'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 medical conditions in which senethin cells play a key role, in which case the benefit-risk analysis might actually support use of some of these toxic drugs. But 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. 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.

1:00:07Now, 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. So 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. Okay, the second, something called quercetin. Quercetin is found in onions, kale, tea, and capers. It actually plays a role in Mediterranean diet help.

1:00:42And that helps explain, there's these remarkable studies where they give people onions onions and see remarkable benefits literally within an hour. You know, you randomize people eating onions. In fact, you 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. And 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 in the sweet onions. So like that, of course, like the tastiest onions is low amount. Yeah, yeah.

1:01:14So like the, 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. Go 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, right? Super cheap, and you get those benefits for brain function, eyesight, artery function, inflammation, blood sugar, cholesterol.

1:01:48You get those very benefits in this kind of savory form. Is raw or cooked red onions better? Either way. Either way. Can you eat too much? Your breath. Your partner may. In fact, you need to have any. I mean, your entire sweat can start. I mean, you can really start as well. But has there become like too much? Like, you know, if you have a half an onion, you put it in some... There'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, some of these remarkable clinical benefits, we're seeing after eating like one or two onions a day.

1:02:26I don't know how one does that without... Wow. 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. Right. And this is all the allium family vegetables. So it could 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 pepilongumine. Only found really in one place, which is something called papali or long pepper.

1:02:57It's in the black pepper family. You can get it in Middle Eastern spice stores. And it basically kind of tastes like black pepper with a little kind of sejuan heat to it. but it's a senolentic 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 that's amazing now you went to medical school right? in medical school they don't teach you this stuff they don't even teach you the basics they don't teach you about nutrition they don't teach you about foods none of that right? maybe there's like one hour class on this stuff I hear from other doctors so how did you get into this world of nutritional science as well, when most people today look at doctors skeptically when they're speaking about this because they think, oh, they're not a nutritionist.

1:03:47They're not a scientist around foods. So how did you get into this world? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. In fact, having an MD after your name is basically advertising the world that you know nothing about nutrition, that you are completely ignorant about the entire field of nutrition. So the average doctor these days gets four hours of nutrition training out of thousands of hours of preclinant instruction. I actually chose the medical school with the largest nutrition training in the country. They actually have a nutrition school at Tufts, 19 hours. But that's the most out of thousands of hours. Right.

1:04:17And most of it is basic biochemistry of vitamins and like scurvy, pellagra, stuff we don't even see anymore. And it's like Krebs cycle. So it's not actually clinical nutrition. Using nutrition diet to actually prevent arrest or reverse disease. That's missing in even those few hours that people get. Okay. And so then doctors graduate without this powerful tool in their medical toolbox. To actually heal. To actually help people. Instead, for about 80 % that walks into the primary care doctor's office are these chronic diseases, lifestyle diseases, like the high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and the obesity and the heart disease.

1:04:53And yes, we have drugs that can slow down the rate at which our diabetics go blind and lose their kidney function and lose their lower limbs. But not reversing it. But not actually make our patients better. That's why we went to medical school, right? We want to actually heal people. But instead, I mean, it's just so frustrating because unless you treat the cause, the underlying cause, you're not actually going to reverse the disease. The root. Right, the root cause. But that's the exciting thing about lifestyle medicine. Okay, so how did I get into this old lifestyle medicine thing? Proud to be a co-founder of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, now the fastest growing medical specialty in the country.

1:05:31Very exciting. Okay, it all started with my grandmother. I was just a kid. When my grandma was sent home in a wheelchair basically to die with end-stage heart disease, she already had so many bypass surgeries, she basically kind of run out of plumbing at some point. So confined to a wheelchair. crushing chest pain. Her life was over at age 60. Oh, man. And then she heard about this guy Nathan Pritikin, one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers. And what happened next is actually detailed in Pritikin's biography. It talks about Francis Greger, my grandmother. They wheeled her in and she walked out.

1:06:13Though she was given her medical death sentence at age 65, thanks to a healthy diet, she was able to enjoy another 31 years on this planet until age 96 to continue to enjoy her six grandkids, including me. That's why I went into medicine. That's why I practiced lifestyle medicine, why I started the website nutritionfacts.org, why I wrote the book, How Not to Die, why all the proceeds from all my books are donated directly to charity. I just want to do for everyone's family what Pritikin did for my family. Wow. Now, did you think about that and going into medical school? Absolutely. So you knew going into medical school, they're not teaching me the things I still need to know.

1:06:50Yeah. So when did you learn all the stuff about lifestyle, nutrition, diet, foods? Was it all after medical school? No, the big pivot was in 1990, before medical school even started. And that was the publication of the Lifestyle Heart Trial from Dean Ornish and colleagues. So what Pritkin was doing, he was reversing heart disease by the thousands. But back then, we did not have the technology to actually look inside people's arteries. So it was a clinical diagnosis. You have chest pain. When you walk upstairs, you got heart disease. Okay. And so we put you on drugs and we cut your chest open. We do bypass, we stents, whatever.

1:07:27Okay. Then Pritikin would take these people and then put them on his diet and lifestyle program. And all of a sudden, chest pain goes away. And so he reversed heart disease. Now, the medical profession was like, no, no, no. Heart disease gets worse, worse, worse till you die. That's what the thinking at the time. And so if your patient is fine, he never had heart disease in the first place. Right? Something else. Right. It must have been something else. And so he kind of remained on the fringe until Dr. Dean Ornish came along. He used something called quantitative angiography, where you inject a radiopic dye into the arteries.

1:07:58You can see, yeah, yeah. You do these x-rays. You can actually see the inside of the arteries. And so for the first time, he was able to prove the reversal of heart disease, opening up arteries without drugs without surgery just a healthy plant-based diet and exercise um and so that was really and it was published in the most prestigious medical journal in the world so it was like unassailable science randomized controlled trial of course the people in the control group who were told to continue to eat whatever their doctors told me continue to get worse that's what happens normally whereas you've got this reversal on average in those and so it's the only diet ever been proven to reverse the progression of heart disease in the majority of patients.

1:08:42So it's like, look, if that's all a plant-based diet could do, reverse the number one killer of men and women, like, shouldn't that be kind of the default diet until proven otherwise? And the fact that can also be so effective in preventing and resting and reversing other leading killers like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, which surely make the case for, you know, plant-based eating really kind of unassailable at this point. And so, but then here I am. So now I had already knew about this from my grandma, right? But here it was in black and white publishing, you know, the most prestigious medical journal.

1:09:12And so, you know, you just imagine all of medicine changing. Here we are decades later. That was 1990s. Over three decades later, hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to die from heart disease. A preventable, arrestable, sometimes even reversible condition, which we've known about for decades, just because this has yet to really penetrate into the medical field. And that's because the incentives are wrong. Actually, you know, hospitals make money cutting people open. And these are the golden goof for big pharma, lifestyle drugs, where instead of 10 days on an antibiotic to save your life, it's take a drug every single day for the rest of your life.

1:09:55that's how you make money, right? But the only drug you need that for is these lifestyle diseases where if you continue to treat yourself like this, well, of course you need something. And look, if you refuse to improve your life, then these drugs can be life-saving. I mean, so, but even better, why not try to reverse the disease by treating the underlying cause in the first place? So when you finished medical school, did you start going right into this nutritional side of learning as well? Well, so, yeah, so I started out in clinical practice. But then I realized, like, even though, you know, I don't know how many people you could pack into a day, you know, how many people am I reaching, right?

1:10:33So people were dying everywhere. And so then I started, you know, giving lectures and going around to medical schools and trying to train the kind of next generation of doctors. But even then, like, how many people can you reach? You know, you can reach hundreds, right? So then I started, it was actually so long ago, it was like a VHS series. I started thinking, well, why not tape these lectures, right, and then send out these VHS tapes. We started into DVDs until finally I was able to put it online. Yeah, yeah, of course. And then can reach millions with that same kind of message. So now I'm so, I had to give up the clinical practice.

1:11:06So I feel like I'm still practicing medicine, but just on a kind of broader scale, writing, research, speaking, all that, just getting this information out there. It's like, in a certain sense, we really don't need any more research. Like, we have enough to, like, save so many lives, and there's always unanswered questions. I love the research, but we have enough now to really reverse the course of the way our country's headed. So it was a lot of your learning then based on just studying research papers and clinical trials and then kind of assimilating the research and saying, hey, this is the findings.

1:11:38Why don't we start trying these things with patients and see the results? Yeah. So it's all really the gold standard of what we know in medicine comes from the so-called pure-reviewed medical literature, right? So these are the studies in these peer-reviewed medical journals where at least this is kind of barred to entry. Like on the internet, you can say anything, right? Earth is flat, whatever, right? And look, you can say there's crazy things published in the peer-reviewed literature as well, but at least there's kind of a barred entry where fellow scientists actually look at your work with kind of a skeptical eye and make sure you're just like not totally making stuff out of whole cloth, right?

1:12:10And so that's where we look to. And so there's been decades, decades of this mountain of research building up, but it just hasn't kind of gotten over to the general public, again, just because there's not money to be made. So new blockbuster drug, oh, my God, there is a press release. There is ads on TV. Commercials, marketing, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody knows about the new drug, which could have even a fraction of the benefit. And so I feel like we're in a very similar situation to kind of smoking in the 50s. In the 50s, we had already literally - Recommended cigarettes. Decades of research, starting in the 30s, linking lung cancer and smoking.

1:12:48And so yet the average per capita cigarette consumption in the 1950s, 4 ,000 cigarettes a year, meaning the average person walking around smoked half a pack a day. That's crazy. Most doctors smoked. The media was telling people to smoke. The American Medical Association said smoking in moderation. That was fine. Right? Right? And so by the time 1964, when the first Surgeon General's report came out, and smoking rates went up, up, up until 1964, then in one of the most remarkable public health victories of all time, basically smoking rates have come down every year since and down this tumbling lung cancer rate.

1:13:25It's just one of the most beautiful graphs in all public health. And what happened in 1964, the first Surgeon General's report, just this acknowledgement by the powers that be that, okay, yeah, smoking isn't good for you. and they cited 7 ,000 studies, right? So you'd think maybe after the first 6 ,000 studies could give people a little heads up or something, right? So I feel like we're in the same situation today where there's this absolute mountain of evidence. It just has yet to kind of make it into the public consciousness, make it kind of bypass these barriers. And so that was really like, that's my role, is I'm going to take, right?

1:14:03It's not me saying this, right? It's just like this is what the established science is already there, but there's just kind of no sexy money to be made. Right. And it doesn't make those headlines. No one wants to see broccoli on the cover of a book. Sure, sure. Right. It's just like it's like it has everything working against it, except who profits. I mean, the people profit. Yeah. Your family profits. Longevity profits. So that and so and so that it's just crossing that gap, getting that information out to the public. I mean, you mentioned that in 1964 was when they came out and said smoke is essentially bad for you.

1:14:37Right. 60 years ago, is that right? 60 years ago? It seems to me like 80 % of Americans know that sugar and processed foods are not healthy for you. It seems to me by now there's enough information out there that people at least have that awareness. but they haven't stopped the consumption or the behavior. What do you think it's going to take for people to change the behavior and the habits to consume healthier foods so they can actually live longer, as opposed to suck to the addiction of feeling and tasting good? Right, right. Well, you know, towards the end there with the smoking crisis, most smokers had an inkling that smoking was not good for you.

1:15:26But what the industry's tact was, was just to muddy the waters. They knew they were going to lose in the end. They're going to confuse you, right? And so, in fact, there's this famous memo, which was uncovered in the tobacco trials, this internal memo called Doubt is Our Product. So this is a PR company that worked with Phil Morris to, we don't have to convince people smoking is good for you. We lost it. Okay. All we have to do is introduce doubt. Yeah, maybe it causes lung cancer. Maybe it doesn't, right? And that's all you need for someone who's addicted to smoking. To be like, well, look, they say it's okay, right?

1:16:00And so now, the same thing, right? It's like we are bombarded by ads for fast food, for junk food, for candy, for soda, right? At the same time, the science is so clear, but we're getting these mixed messages. And you know when you're, everybody wants to hear good news about their bad habits, right? And so when there's like, well, this person says alcohol's good for you. I mean, right. And so even if all these people are. And so that's all you need is that. And then you just kind of continue down your path. Right. And so that's what the 1964 did was just like, OK, there's scientific consensus now.

1:16:37Anyone who's telling you that smoking is not bad for you is a paid shill of the industry. And it's like this is like this is the established science. Although, you know, it's hard to imagine that even happening these days. What if the CDC, the government came out and said, you know, yeah, it turns out that processed meat, bacon and hot dogs, lunch meat, we determined that they increase the risk of colorectal cancer. In fact, it's a known human carcinogen. It's true. Group one carcinogen, meaning we're as sure that processed meat causes colorectal cancer as we are that plutonium causes cancer and tobacco causes cancer and asbestos causes cancer.

1:17:11We are sure it causes cancer. And yet, you know, we're sending kids to school with a bologna sandwich or something, right? We wouldn't maybe smoke around our kids now, but we're sending them. And colorectal cancer is the single deadliest cancer among nonsmokers. That's our number one cancer. If you don't smoke, you're number one cancer nemesis in terms of dying colorectal cancer. And, right, and we, okay, so, so this, this science has been established, has not yet, but what if the CDC, the government finally came out, put it on their website, okay, yeah, process me, we probably shouldn't be feeding this to people.

1:17:43in today's media world, you know, back then, like we like to, I mean, certainly me, I like to think of the internet as this like democratizing force. Like, you know, we all this idealistic view of like, now like the truth is going to float to the surface, right? If everybody in free marketplace of ideas, right? And so, you know, back in the 1950s, tobacco could absolutely control the message. They can pay off the doctors. In fact, the American Medical Association, even after 1964. Did they endorse tobacco? Even after the Surgeon General Report came out, they refused to endorse it. And it turns out later, they got a$10 million check for the tobacco industry.

1:18:21Wow. Which they didn't disclose. Anyway, okay. So look, you could pay off the documents. You could control the message. You control the media, right? Now, which is in part good, there's no longer that kind of monopolistic control of the message, right? But there's confusion. But it's replaced with confusion. And so even if these days we had the quote-unquote authorities, the experts that came out and said X, Y, Z, a lot of people wouldn't believe them. Now, for good reason in many cases because there's been so many terrible crises with drugs that were promoted and then turned out to be terrible and pulled from the market.

1:18:58And look, all the authorities were telling people to use these drugs. Anyway, so it's hard to imagine a similar kind of aha moment with diet that we saw with this kind of clear surge in general thing. And so there's always going to be the sugar pushers and there's always going to be these people that are muddying the waters just enough to introduce enough doubt that people will kind of throw up their hands and eat whatever crap's put in front of them, which is how the industry makes money. I've got a few questions for you left, but I'm excited for people to check out your book, How Not to Age, the scientific approach to getting healthier as you get older.

1:19:38And I think a lot of people think about, you know, how do we, how do I make my biological age, right? Yeah. Reverse, essentially. You can't reverse chronological age. Right, right. But how do we make our cells younger, right? How do we make our body, our cells younger? Is that the difference between chronological and biological age? Exactly, right. There's the calendar age that just keeps going forward until we get a DeLorean or something. But then there's the, right, but just because we happen to have this many birthdays doesn't necessarily mean our body is functioning as if it could be worse.

1:20:12We could have accelerated aging. And then we really should have the heart and the kidneys and the liver of a 50-year-old, but they're actually functioning like a 60-year-old. Wow. Right? We actually have the muscle mass of a 60-year-old. We actually have that. Or alternately, we take care of ourselves and we have tremendous power of this leeway. Or, yeah, I've had 50 birthdays, but, you know, I have the aerobic capacity of a 40 year old. Or are they I mean, all these benefits. And so that's this difference. And so there's lots of different ways to measure biological aging. And it's just a fascinating field of science.

1:20:45But but but the bottom line is that we really have tremendous control over that leeway. That's cool. And literally just, and it's never too late. I mean, so there's, the first studies that came out, it's like, okay, well, if you start at age 20 and you do the X, Y, and Z, by age 50, you'll have all these benefits. And it's like, yeah, that's great, but you should have told me that 30 years ago, right? Sure, sure, sure. But then they thought, wait a second, even in the 80s, this is the latest that's been done, but even in people's 80s, there's still literally years left on the table, healthy years left on the table, just by simple, basic lifestyle changes.

1:21:19And so those few things I mentioned before, not being obese, not smoking, regular aerobic exercise, and more fruits and vegetables can, over the subsequent four years, if you're between the ages of 45 and 64, decrease your risk of all-cause mortality by 40%. Wow. Meaning your risk of dying by anything over the next four years. By 2028, you want to reduce your risk by 40%, just do those four things. I mean, that's like we have tremendous power over, you know, look, you still get hit by a bus. I mean, there's lots of things. You still got to wear a seatbelt, smoke alarms, all that, right? But in terms of what's the most common cause of death, actually we have so much control.

1:22:00And unfortunately, we just don't hear that message. What are the four main things? Okay. So not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, which really comes out to like 22 minutes a day, which is what the cutoff point was. and five daily servings of fruits and vegetables minimum, right? And that's not a lot. And we're not talking about cutting out meat. We're not talking about, like, any of these, like, dramatic changes, not all or nothing, like, just like these really core kind of, yeah, we heard about five fruits and vegetables, right? But it's like, wow. I mean, that makes this massive amount of difference.

1:22:32Now, you want to go beyond that and, like, you know, tweak even further? Yeah, we got also there's certain fruits and vegetables that are even better than other fruits and vegetables. But let's not get lost in the weeds here. Just do these simple things. Let's do the simple things. That'll get us most of the way there. Wow. This is fascinating, Michael. I'm so grateful for your excitement and passion around this and your wisdom and knowledge. A couple of final questions. This one is something I ask everyone towards the end of our conversations. It's called the three truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario.

1:23:04You get to live as long as you want to live. You get to continue to write all the books and speak, you know, 200 times a year like you do a lot of times to spread this message and you experience life the way you want to all your dreams come true but it's the last day for you mmm far in the distance yeah and in this hypothetical scenario on your last day you have to take all of your work with you no one has access to this book this conversation or anything you've ever written or said ever are you killing me it's gone to another place okay but before you die you get to leave three things behind, three lessons, three truths.

1:23:43It could be about your work. It could be about personal life. It could be about whatever you believe that you would want to leave behind, these three lessons to the world. What would be those three truths for you?

1:23:56Well, I mean, certainly a truth for me, you know, it's always hard to give advice to other people, right obviously but what's certainly been true for me is my what i've dedicated my life to well this kind of reducing unnecessary suffering in the world that has given me having that having that that that motivation having that vision having that base truth in my life has like so even if all my good works were to nothing it would have benefited me to have woke up every day and been able to look myself in the mirror and be like you know there's just so many horrible things happening in the world but like i did my part like and so that would be the message it's like if you can configure your life to not just do what you're good at and not just to you You know, but to do something meaningful for others and to kind of look outside yourself, if you can.

1:24:58Look, there's so many people struggling with basic. You know, I had this privileged ability to be able to look outside because I had my basic needs met. So that would definitely be one of the truths is to, you know, incorporate some kind of selfless acts. Look, and that could be philanthropy, right? I mean, you could be, you know, it doesn't have to mean devoting your career to that. Sure, sure. Sure. But, you know, like tithing, you know, even 10 percent to. Yes. You know, there's so much we could do with, you know, like bed nets for malaria and stuff. You can say literally save people's lives for, you know, small amounts of money.

1:25:31Right. If you actually save someone's life, you went into a burning building and you pulled out some kid. That would be the biggest day of your life like that. You would remember that. That would be like your crowning achievement. You would never forget that. Your life would have been worth it. Right. You can do that with a check these days because now we have a system where we can get money anywhere in the world to places that really need it. We have preventable diseases and we have tremendous poverty that can be alleviated. And it's like, that's this amazing, we have this amazing power that we never really had in our species before to help.

1:26:01You know, we have this tendency, obviously, to help people around us, people who are close to us. We see something and we want to reach out to something local. I totally understand that. But, I mean, you know, poverty here is nothing like poverty. some places in the world, and you win the dollar can go so much farther. So far, yeah. And so that's, you know, that's another thing that I've really learned is that you can help, I mean, you can be that, like, crazy hero that actually saves somebody's life. Amazing. Regardless of what you do in your life by, you know, giving just a little bit. Like, we really have tremendous control.

1:26:33I know we don't like to think about these horrible things, but you know how you don't think about these little horrible things is you actually do something about it. Right. We don't want to think about it because we have this guilt. you know and so you don't have the guilt when you feel like i am part of the solution taking action yeah i am taking action and i'm actually in fact i'm helping and even if i could help more and i'm not helping as much as i possibly could look i'm helping more than like 90 percent of the people like even given 10 how many people actually give 10 of their income right particularly people who make enough that they wouldn't really even notice the 10 in the end of the day um yeah and so the fact that you know there's this really this beautiful culture of giving in this culture um in this society when it just came back from europe and there just really isn't this like thing of like donating to like non-profits and there's just not that kind of like you know the billionaires there are just like keeping all the money themselves whereas you know billionaires here are doing these massive projects and i know we love to hate on the billionaires i know we hate on them, but they actually do some good things they can do, and we should be applauding them when they do it, and not just like, God damn it.

1:27:42You should give more. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. And they should. But still. Yeah, yeah. Still. Of course. Okay. So that's your first one. Okay. So first, live to your values. And the second one, we want to separate that out to actually act on those values. Even if it's not in a career, you can do it with money, with resources. is um another core um core truth third truth could give me a a truth that um i is is is you know all that otherworldly thinking you you need to hold a place for love self-love and not only self-love but you know surrounding your people and having surrounding yourself and we We're just kind of, we're these social beings.

1:28:33We just evolved to be, you know, to be able to have to have the, and as much as like, you know, I'm just like workaholic for the whatever, I've really learned too late in life, I'm afraid. Really? And that, you know, I really have to, you know, you put on your own mask before you help others. And it's not because you're selfish, it's because you can't help others if you're not taking care of yourself. And so, yeah. And so really cultivating love in your life is something that I wish I would have emphasized earlier. And it almost seemed selfish to me, right? It's like, what do you mean? I mean, but there's so many people out there that I could be helping, right, to put all my energies into one person.

1:29:21It seems almost like, well, of course, I want to help because I'm close to them. But it's like that almost seems unfair. But the wisdom I've learned later, the truth that I would pass on to my earlier self would be to really, that has to be a priority. Wow. Because that's so much of. That is life. From kind of a lifelong perspective, it's the feeling of the work I've done. But kind of on a day-to-day happiness, like how are you feeling right now on a day-to-day? It's the loving relationships in your life. Those are great truths. Those are beautiful. Do you have love in your life right now? I don't have enough love in my life, unfortunately.

1:30:04So what action are you going to take this year to cultivate more love? That has been, yeah. Well, I mean, I'm a tough person. I'm a tough person to love just because, you know, I'm so kind of. Your time commitments to your work. I'm so neglectful of my relationships with friends and family as much as I love them because there's just like the world's on fire that I can do something about it. And like, I feel myself and the more uniquely positioned I am to help. Like before, when I was a kid, it's like I'm I'm like bulk mailing envelopes for the local like homeless, whatever. Right. It's like but like if I wasn't doing it, somebody else could do it.

1:30:43But the more I get like, well, if I'm not specialized, right. It's like, well, if I'm that if this if I don't get this done, it's not like somebody else is just going to scoop. She would have been to do it. And so I feel this like additional burden to do it. but so speaking tour this is your third truth if you go out there's three things to do in the world so that's I'm going to meet a lot of people on this speaking tour and hopefully I will find the love of my life on the road so you're sending that intention I'm sending that intention out into the world there you go but you can also do that with friends and family and be a little more intentional It's true.

1:31:23It's hard. When we get so obsessed into our mission, it's hard to remember to text or call. I understand that feeling. I love you, Mom. That's good. Give her a call today. That's right. That's right. I want to acknowledge you, Michael, for your commitment to your mission, your commitment to wanting to put together great work where you're finding all the best research you can find and packaging it so we can understand it. and sharing your findings so that we can hopefully live healthier, longer, better lives so that we can enjoy the fruits of connection and love with people around us. And I want to acknowledge you for acknowledging that as well, that it's something you get to work on in your own life.

1:32:06That's right. I think saying that truth and owning it is a great thing to say. And so having that intention this year, I think I'm excited. Hopefully by the end of this year, you send me a photo. I'm reporting back. Absolutely. The love in your life, whether it's one person or friends or family, just more love in general. You get invited to the wedding. Let's go. Let's go. People can get the book, How Not to Age, The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older. Make sure you guys grab a copy. You've got a few other great books as well. Where can we follow you, support you, and learn more about your work as well?

1:32:42So all my work is available free at nutritionfacts.org. No ads, no corporate sponsorship, strictly not commercial, not selling anything. Just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother. That's beautiful. That's so nice, man. I love it. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

1:33:04Is living true to your values. Living true to your values. Whatever those values are, you know you should do the right thing. But are you actually doing what you know? you're not like being convinced otherwise no no you know what's right and are you actually doing in the back of your mind right you you know you could be a little bit a little more true to your inner self but are you actually doing it are you going all in on it right ah ah that's that's greatness it's like being your own superhero basically it's like and no one knows what you're capable of but you yeah then and you know and people could be like patting you on the back oh my god you did awesome but you know you could have studied a little more you could have done this a little more you okay now it's that feeling that like no no i i put in the work and i and i did absolute look i could have done better but i just i don't have the capacity to do better but i did the absolute best i could that and look who it doesn't matter what the outcome is did you really do what you know it was possible.

1:34:08That's greatness. Michael, thanks so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

1:34:42I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.