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let's dive in to today's episode. I'd like to welcome
to the show doctor Joe Furman. Hey do, Doctor Furman,
doing great. Thanks, Thank you so much for coming on
the show. You were an inspiration to me when I
first started going down my plant based, nutrient dense diet
change of over a decade ago now, and you've been
tiresly working at trying to get the word out, so
hopefully we could get the word out even a little
bit more in today's episode. So I do truly appreciate
you coming on my pleasure. So, first questions, how did
you start this journey into the understandings that you came
to with nutrient dense foods and plant based foods and
all that kind of stuff from I mean, I'm assuming
you didn't start off this way, that you kind of
discovered this along the way.
Speaker 2: No, I started this in my childhood. Actually, Okay, you know,
my father was overweight and sickly, and I remember most
of them spending when I was younger, as a young
teenager driving around with he couldn't even sit up. He
had to lie in the back of a wagon on
a mattress. We drove him from doctor to doctor, you know,
to doctors, doctor visits and things. So he started picking
up books and as I did, to try to improve
his health. I think it was twelve or thirteen years
old at the time. I think the first book we
read was You Don't Have to Be Sick by Jack Duntrupp.
He was a producer of Apolon Cassidy in the nineteen
fifties or something, or The Lone Ranger or something, you
know what I mean. Died at the age of ninety six.
He had two heart attacks before the age of fifty.
He was almost but he lived to be ninety six.
I played him singles tennis when he was in his nineties.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he would have lived longer if he wasn't
so sick when he was younger. But I'm saying the
average lifespan of humans should be between at least ninety
six and one hundred and seven, you know, for taking
good care of our health. But then we started reading
a lot of doctor Shelton's works from Herbert Shelton, who
wrote most of his works between nineteen thirty and nineteen
sixty and so before I was born in fifty three,
Shelton wrote a bunch of books and wrote a newsletter
for the American Natural Hygiene Society wrote he wrote a
monthly like magazine too. So my fought so we started.
So my father changed his diet and lost weight and
got healthier, and then we started eating differently as a kid.
And then I was on the United States. I was
a competitive figure skater. I was actually third in the
world in pairs figure skating in the nineteen seventies. I
was second in the United States in the nineteen seventy
three national Championships. So I was always in training, you know,
trying not to get sick, trying to get better stamina
and strength. So we started cleaning. We're eating very healthy,
very clean. You know, we'd bring the Vita mix and
make smoothies and sad blended salads and so and have you.
When I was in training, we'd have like a whole
bathtub full of food in the back of the car.
You know, we eating huge amounts of food because we
were training all day long. You know, running and lifting
weights and going to classes and skating hours each day.
But so I so, you know, subsequently in my career
now I've advised a lot of world class Olympic athletes
and how to never get six. They don't have to
miss their training and miss their events, and you know,
how to maintain performance. But it started out that way,
a combination of my father's illnesses and myself and my
sister trying to maintain and achieve greater stamina and performance.
You know, you know how like Tom Brady, Venus Williams
and all these top tennis players in the world, they
pay very close attention to their diet to maintain Venus
Williams was off the tennis tour for a few years
for with her Chouldgren syndromes and with her autoimmune condition,
and she changed her diet to what is like, which
is essentially the neutritarian diet, and got well and got
back playing tennis again. And a lot of these athletes
are prolonging their careers and maintaining their youthfulness by aging
slower by following either what I'm doing and utilizing my
program or something similative to it. Even Alonzo, do you
know who Alonzo Mourning is, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a Miami Heat guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had when he was ending his career on
the Miami Heat, he developed kidney disease and his doctor
contacted me and Alonzo and his doctor. I gave him
a diety so he would get rid of his kidney,
so he would approve his kidney function and get rid
of his autoimmune condition. And he made a complete recovery.
He went from a really bad shape, really unhealthy guy.
He'd got in great health again and now he's even
thinner now and in better shape health, and he was
towards the end of his playing career, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1: So, so someone like Tom Brady, because I'm fascinated by
Tom Brady because he's he seems like unnatural though he
should be the actual natural, the most natural, if you will,
but he seems almost mythical on how he's been able
to maintain his body. And still he's still arguably the
best quarterback playing the game. And he just what is
he forty four? I think it's forty three. How's he
doing it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And you know that when if you notice it,
he wasn't the greatest when he was nineteen and when
he was real young.
Speaker 1: He was he was he wasn't even he wasn't even drafted.
Speaker 2: I don't think he took time to develop his skills
and his intelligence, and over time he developed his skills
better and better as he got older, because you have
That's what we're finding that if you keep these athletes
staying healthy and staying youthful, over time, they get better
and better as opposed to petering out and burning out
their career because they're aging slow and they can maintain there,
you know. So, yes, I think Tom Brady has his
diet compared to most other football players, has maintained his
youthful youth. Youthfulness enabled him to keep training and using
his brain and is growing knowledge about the game and
to improve his skills. Yeah, as he got older because
he maintained his youthfulness an age like other people did.
And look at me. I'm I'm sixty eight right, oh wow,
And I can literally I can ski moguls and do
helicopters and like when I you know, I was a
good skier when I first started when I was twenty
years old because I was an United States skating team.
I could do that stuff. But when I got out
of medical school in my thirties, and I was not
in such great shape as I am now. What I'm
saying right now is my skiing is better than it
ever was. My tennis is better than it ever was.
I'm faster on the court. I can ski down moguls
the whole run from the top of the mountain down
to the bottom at high altitude without getting tired. I
can bounce around on mobiles and take jumps and fly
in the air. You know, I'm as fit as I
am now at sixty eight as it wasn't my thirties.
A more fit, you know. And my body fat slow, my,
you know what it was. So yeah, I feel like
I'm not that my physical ability hasn't really aged much
even at sixty eight.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just remarkable. Now, I wanted to ask
you a question that a lot of people really hear
the here these kind of words, but don't understand what
they are. What is micronutrients versus macronutrients?
Speaker 2: Right, Well, the macronutrients really means calories because there are
three mac primary macronutrients fat, carbohydrate, and protein, and those
are the only way we get calories. Fat carbohydrate in protein,
And I'm saying that the excess fat, the excess carbohydrate,
and the excess protein, when we take in extra calories
we didn't need, then it ages us, gets us overweight,
and destroys our future health. I always say half of
what people eat feed their needs and the other half
feeds the needs of their doctors, which means that they're
eating themselves into diseases. You know. But in any case,
the American diet is ubiquitously and severely micronutrient deficient. And
the micronutrients refer the food factors for survival, longevity, and
health that do not contain calories like vitamins and minerals
and phytochemicals and antioxidants. So I'm saying that the standard
American diet, because it's so high in processed foods and
oils and animal products, it doesn't contain a significant load
of micronutrients, especially antioxidants, spitochemicals, and on certain vitamins. It's
so low that the body builds up more toxins and
ages very very rapidly. But I'm also saying that as
you achieve micronutrient excellence, it gives you an instinctual desire
for the right amount of calories, and you no longer
become a calorie consuming monster having to overreach to keep
your energy up.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: And so what I'm saying right now is that when
your diet isn't nutritionally adequate, it makes people want to
eat more calories and they can't control that and they
have to become overweight because their diet is too micronutrient
deficient or micronutrient you know, unsatisfactory. The body can't produce
the type of cell repair, the machinery can't be turned on,
you can't reduce reactive oxygen species. You can produce enough
energy from the right amount of calories. Because like when
you're taking in white flour, that's a drug, it's not
it's not even a food. You try to process it
for energy and there's no cofactors and phytochemicals. The body
has to convert into fat, leaving you if it's converted
into fat instead of producing any out of it, so
you're left fatigued and you got to eat more food
to keep your energy up. So what I'm saying is
here is that there are a lot of different mechanisms
that drive overeating behavior that leads people who become overweight.
And one of these major mechanisms is micronutrient insufficiencies.
Speaker 1: So if you're able to increase your micronutrient or nutrient
density in your foods, you will technically eat less because
your body won't be asking for more and more food
because it's getting what it needs to function properly and
to repair things and to grow and to do all
the things that it needs to do to run a
healthy machine.
Speaker 2: That's right, and I'm most I'm making this radical statement.
I'm saying that heart attacks and strokes and high blood
pressure and diabetes and high cholesterol and dementia, that and
cancer and cancer are unnatural to the human species, not
the inenvial consequence of aging, not the result of genetics,
the result of poor lifestyle, poor habits, and poor eating
habits that break down the body. And that we can
make our body cancer proof, COVID proof, high blood heart
attack proof, we don't have to worry about these diseases
and living life into our later years without fear, with enthusiasm, passion, creativity,
and excitement and enjoying our years in Later in life,
most Americans get over the age of sixty and their
body is they're a couch potato and they're living and
they're going. They're mostly their involvements in life goes to
going to doctors, taking drugs and getting medical procedures and
living in fear of something bad happening to them. They
have no quality of life when you're constantly worry about
something bad happening to you, and constantly being checked for
cancer and watching for heart attacks and monitoring blood tests
and soul This craziness based on what people put in
their mouth.
Speaker 1: It is interesting too because if you start looking at
other mammals on the planet, they don't have these issues.
I mean, gorillas don't die of heart attacks, don't.
Speaker 2: They activity because when they feed them kibble. It's exactly right.
Gorillas in the wild have no heart attacks. Only in captivity,
and they feed them like kibble, like dog food kind
of stuff. You know that we feed them junk food. Well,
that's the craziest thing in the world. Why have a
gorilla in captivity. It's not feeding their natural diet that
they would be eating in the wild.
Speaker 1: It's not giving a koala steak. This just doesn't really make.
Speaker 2: Sense in the world what we do to these gorillas
in captivity, but they're looking. I read an article on
this recently that a lot of gorillas in captivity, some
of the being zoos and people that house them are
trying to clean up their diet and replicate their natural
diet have better health than those gorillas.
Speaker 1: So that's such an interesting thing because we've been told
so often throughout at least the last hundred years or more,
that as you get older, you get dementia, you get
heart attacks, you get high blood pressure, you get high cholesterol.
These are things that just happen because you're getting older.
And now the science is coming out and the information's
coming out, they're like, no, it's it's really not a thing.
It's like, you know, the the in the eighteen hundreds, Yeah,
the lifestyle, theF the lifespan wasn't as long, but they
didn't have nearly as much. I don't even know if
there was a lot of cancer or if there was
a lot of heart I don't know.
Speaker 2: And if we have records back, you know, for the
medical profession, seeing that there was hardly anything ever cancer
reported until the seventeenth century when the first cancers they
recorded in any significant amount were scrotal and testicular cancers
found in men who worked as chimney sweeps from inhaling
all the smoke. But most of the people who lived
in you know, a more poor lifestyle were eating more
plant foods and that they grew on their own farms,
and they really couldn't afford to have all the rich
foods that maybe the kings and queens the higher class
was eating. So there, you know, So it was very
little common diseases. But of course there were high infant mortality,
high infection mortality. There's a lot of one in nine
women died during childbirth. But if you look at the
Renaissance artists who lived in the fourteenth century, their average
age of death was greater than the average age of
men today because they lived longer than than men lived today,
because they were people that survived their childhood in order
to produce works of art, and they were males who
didn't die giving birth to children, you know, so they
lived so that the males. So in any case, we're
not living longer today than ever before, we're just having
less infant childhood mortality. But with the adults aren't living
longer unless you're you know, well you can, especially people
in your Ukraine now being killed with war. A lot
of people in prior generations got killed during wartime and
fighting and all kinds of you know, things that cut
short their violence, that cut short their life. We have
an opportunity. The human life span should live between easily
between ninety five to one hundred and five without these
serious illnesses, with full mental faculty and full be able
to be active and enjoying your life. I remember what's
his name who wrote The Good Life? I forgot his name, anyway,
if it comes to me, I'll mentioned he was a
mit scholar who lived in Maine and built his own
greenhouse and made his own food. And they died at
one hundred and one because he felt kind of fatigued
he couldn't work full time anymore, and he had a
big party to celebrate his life, and then he fasted
himself to death at one hundred and one years old.
But I'm just showing it a lot of these healthy
people I knew and that I have known in my
medical career, who changed, who ate healthily when through most
through a lot of their lives, had very very long
lives and almost all past ninety five years old.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned that the word nutrient.
Speaker 2: Scott Nearing, if you heard him Scott Nearing, he was
heard of that he was an mit scholar. He was
he used to be an economics professor, and he wanted
to show people how he can live off the land
and not have to spend a lot of money and
still have a good life. And he built and shade
died it in Maine where it wasn't a warm climate,
and he grew all his own food. But anyway, he
lived to be one hundred and one years old in
great health.
Speaker 1: You know, now you've used the term nutritarian. What is
the nutritarian diet consist of?
Speaker 2: Right? The word nutratarian obviously refers to a diet that
people are eating to maximize their health and longevity. Right,
That means we're eating a diet rich in nutrients, particularly
rich in vegetables, because we're vegetable dependent animals and we're
eating a lot of nutritional variety. We have a wide
variety of foods that were eating, especially g bombs, greens
and beans and onions and mushrooms and berries and seeds,
and different types of foods, because we know that the
blue zones around the world, where people living five to
ten years longer than average, are not eating great diets.
They're just better than the average American diet or standard
Western diets or European diets, but they're not eating they're
not eating a diet that's scientifically designed to have the
nutrient density and variety of foodstuffs, variety of plant material
that we can design from scratch, a diet that blows
the blue zones out of the water. And that's what
the nutritarian diet does. It's using the epidemiologic studies, the
historical studies, the blue zone studies, and the randomized control
trials to pick the foods with the most powerful anti
cancer effects, immune system strengthening effects, and longevity building effects
and put that together in a dietary portfolio to maximize
the health of humans. And then we see that wellward
mushrooms have ergothieni in and other longevity factors in them,
and their anti angiogenic and green Cruciferus vegetables are the
richest source of isothiocyanides, which the most powerfully activate the
cellular repair machinery that silences genetical alterations that could lead
to disease. So I'm saying right now that when you
think genetics don't play a major role in disease outcomes,
because when you eat healthily, genetic defects gets silenced and
also repaired. And the braccal one gene VSTP one gene
that increases risk of breast cancer for women do not
increase risk of breast cancer in women eating a nutritarian diet,
let's say, because we gene silence those abnormal gene defects.
I am saying that we're that our genes are reflective
of what we're eating. Our genes are modifiable and change
their expression based on what we eat. So we're not
looking at our genes to tell us what we should eat.
We're eating to shape the development and function of our genes.
And they work together, obviously, And the body has the
ability to repair methylation defects, broken DNA cross links, and
other so our body really has incredible, miraculous cell healing
properties when we put all these right foods in, including
greens and mushrooms and onions and barry least and seeds
particularly like things like flax seeds and gus seeds and
sesame seeds and hemp seeds and all these walnuts things
like that, and fascinating research that shows us when we
have the ability tea to diet with this wide amount
of plant material, then the body becomes really disease proof.
Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. Now, what is the
difference between fast and slow food?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, the you know, people consider fast food what
you purchase in a fast food restaurant, right, correct, But
we know that anything that you buy in a package
or a or a bag that's a fa you know what,
a twinkie or a doughnut or a you know, some
kind of candy. We're saying that fast food are things
that you could just open up and just eat potato chips. Right,
it's all fast food. But I'm also considering fast food
anything made with white flour, because white flour is not
a food, it's a drug. It's to say you like
you're eating a cocaine equivalent. And I'm saying that because sugar, honey,
maple syrup, white flour, the body doesn't differentiate. It sees
it all coming in as glucose. It's a glucose load
entering the body. And this major load of glucose because
white flour products like bread and bagels and pizza and
pamburger buns and all these things, the muffins, they enter
the bloodstream very rapidly. It's called a high glycemic load.
Means a lot of glucose went into the budstream really quickly.
So all this glucose into the budsroom quickly without a
significant amount of nutrients. It does no nutrients, it's just
a glucose. When the body has that huge load coming
in fast, then the concentration of calories coming in fast
all at once in the bloodstream signals dopamine receptors in
the brain, and the same brain centers for stimulation that
opiates stimulate a narcotics. So the extra rush of calories
in the blood drive addiction to those substances and give
you cravings. Because over time you become more dopamine and
sensitive body starts to require more dopamine stimulation, and then
you need concentrated calories to repeat that dopamine stimulation to
keep yourself feeling even normal. So you're overly dependent on
dopamine stimulation from the excess dopamine stimulating effects of the
rush of calories into the bloodstream. And the other source
of fast food of fast calories are oil. Because people
are eating a lot of their fats from oil, which
puts so much calories so rapidly in the bloodstream, that
makes them a huge appetite, stimulant and very fattening. You know,
most Americans get most of their fat from either oil
or animal fats. They're not getting their fat from food
like nuts and seeds. So I'm saying it's walnuts, not
the walnut oil. Sesame seeds not the sesame oil. It's
pistachio nuts not the pistachiavel. When you get your fats
from these whole nuts and seeds, the fat calories come
into the bloodstream slowly, not fast. And when the calories
the fat calories into the bloodstream slowly one or two
calories a minute, the body preferentially burns it for energy,
doesn't even store it as fat. But when fat calories
rush in at fifty calories a minute from the oil,
then the body has no choice but to put it
in and put store it as fat right away and
turn on fat storage hormones and fat storage mechanisms and
inhibit fat loss and then increase the appetite. They get
more energy for the because you know, no longer have
the calories in the blood, you know. So it's all
it's all very what's the word abnormal for humans to
be getting fat from oils. Oils and not a natural
food for any animal species on the earth and any
primate or any human. It's a processed, you know, food
that's been designed and you know, I see it as
the like the biggest scam perpetrated on the world's population
is convincing them that oil is a health food, you know.
And it's when while everybody is overweight and fat, they're
consuming five hundred calories of oil a day and thinking
they can lose weight, and they think they can't. It's
almost impossible. But so that's right. It's a fast food.
And the slow food carbohydrate is like beans, peas, you know,
so you know, chickpeas, lentils. Then the carbohydrates come in
real slowly into the bloodstream. The beans in these other
types of carbohydrates have very high and slowly digestible carbohydrates
and very high in resistant starch, so you get the
calories come into the bloodstream slowly, so the body doesn't
have to produce much insulin to keep the glucose curved
level because the calories come in very gradually. And of
course insulin is another growth hormone that most fat storage
and sets the stage for later life diseases. The hallmark
of all long lived people or healthy centenarians is their
insulin sensitive and the body doesn't have to make much insulin.
They're not stressing out the insulin production by taxing it
with high glycemic carbohydrates like white bread and white rice
and sugar and honey and sweeteners. So we're talking here
about getting your carbohydrate from fruits and vegetables and beans,
and getting more protein from greens and beans and nuts
and seeds, and obviously your body functions completely differently.
Speaker 1: Now, what are some of the most nutrient dense foods
that you can recommend.
Speaker 2: Well, green vegetables are the most nutrient dense foods. And
one of my mantras is to tell people to have
a salad, a big salad, at least once a day.
This here's the mantra. The salad is the main dish,
that is it, and at least once today they should
be eating a big salad and a nine inch salad bowl,
chopping up a mixture of lettuce, dark green lettuce with
half of some cruciferous green like bopjoy cabbage, arugula, baby kale.
You know, we have this unprecedented opportunity in human history
to slow aging and live longer because we have access
to all these incredible foods today almost all over the
all over the United States. We can get it, and
we can get sprouts and microgreens and baby lettuces and
things like that that our ancestor is get. I couldn't
even see those foods in the marketplace when I was
a child. You didn't have so much access to healthy food.
And somebody's buying them. They're making them, they don't be
producing them. But if some people are aware of the
incredible health benefits of these type of microgreens and baby
lettuces and cruciferous greens, because they're selling it in bags
and boxes of these green productions or green vegetable productions production.
So eating a salad every day is critically important to humans.
We are green vegetable dependent animal, like the primate, like
all the other primates are. I always tell people if
you don't want to eat green vegetables, you better live
close to a hospital, because you can't have good health
if you don't. We're green vegetable dependent animal, and I
say that the consumption of raw vegetables has the most
consistent and powerful association with the reduction of cancers or
all type. But in addition to the greens, we're talking
about both green raw vegetables and green cook vegetables and
green cruciferous vegetable family like broccoli and cabbage and box
showy that family too. And then we have the other
g bombs, the other bombs. The G stands for greens,
and the bombs stands for beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds.
So we're talking about getting a lot of our carbohydrate
needs met from beans when you know as possible, like
a cup of beans every day, of different types, chickpeas, lentils, peas,
you know, things like that. And then onions and scallion
and green onion is very very powerful anti cancer longevity
promoting effects, also anti diabetic and blood pressure lowering effects.
And then you have mushrooms, which are the most powerful
anti angiogenic food. The word angiogenesis means the production of
new blood vessels to fuel the growth of fat, which
simultaneously fuels the growth of cancer cells. And mushrooms doesn't.
Don't let you fuel the growth of fat or fuel
the growth of cancer cells. They prevent new blood vessels
bringing new blood and oxygen and nourishments to grow to
feed out normal growth of tissue. So eating foods that
feed abnormal growth and mushrooms say no way, Jose, I'm
not letting you feel abnormal growth.
Speaker 1: And Well, if you're gonna be asking what are some
of the mushroom species that are really good to eat?
I mean obviously there's the crimson, the crimson mushrooms about
what there's some more exotic ones that I've seen a
lot of supplements about, like for the brain, brain function
and things like that. What do you recommend as far
as the kind of the kind of mushrooms.
Speaker 2: To eat, well, I do recommend people eat the simple
basic mushrooms that are least expensive too. Those are those
types of white button mushrooms, kremeni, most cremini brown mushrooms,
and portobello mushrooms are the same type of mushroom. And
then you have then we also recommend people buy a
lot of shataki mushrooms. Those are the ones that have
the umbrella cap with a little dirt nib on the bottom.
You cut off a little dirt nib, but you eat
the whole stem and the whole umbrella cap, the shataki.
But then buying you know, oyster and trumpet and lions
made in chantarell and all these different other mushrooms, what'sever
available in your marketplace, And some of them are quite expensive,
some of them they could be you know, ten dollars
a pound or more. But it's okay because I'm saying
it's okay to spend your money because you don't need
that much of that stuff. Right, even a half a pound,
even six dollars worth of those mushrooms are going to
be good for three nights to sprinkle in your dishes,
because even a little bit of mushrooms added to your
diet have tremendous powerful effects on longevity. It was a
study on a huge cohort of Asian women that showed
that people away ten grams of mushrooms a day had
a sixty four percent lower risk of developing breast cancer
compared to women who eat no mushrooms and the ten
grams are the size of your thumb. That's just a
little bit of mushrooms. So it showed the So these
studies that have shown the effects of even a small
amount of mushrooms have incredibly powerful effects that improving bodies
immune function in lifespan. And we're not recommending ten grams
a day, of course, we're recommending people that have thirty
to fifty grams a day have much more mushrooms in
a quarter a cup of mushrooms or a third of
a cup. But even at ten today, even one, even
just a spoonful of day, a mushroom has a beneficial
effect in your health.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: But so even if you can't afford it at a
huge amount, still buy some mushrooms and try to grow
some mushroom variety. I usually get shataki mushrooms as a
base and a super a dish, and I always ate
like one other mushroom to it, like white button or
a little Chanta rail or little trumpet or a little
white little something mixed in with the shataki, because I
love the shataki they're so chewy and like the mouth feels,
you know, add some substance in chewiness to the food
and they're really great.
Speaker 1: Now I've heard you discuss the beans and the second
meal effect. What is that?
Speaker 2: It means that beans have so much resistance starch that
they fuel the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut
more than other foods do. The other foods fuel the
growth of the most beneficial bacteria flora in the gut.
Are the green vegetables raw and the onions raw, But
the mushrooms are mostly cooked and the beans are mostly cooked.
Beans are well cooked. Beans have a lot of resistance storach.
But the combination of those four foods thicken the microbiome
that covers the villi and the small intestines. And scientists
call the covering the thicken coating on the villi. They
call it the biofilm. This biofilm of active living cells
that aren't part human, but their bacteria produce nutrients, help
us complete the protein that we eat from vegetables and
also slowly absorption of glucose into the bloodstream. So when
we eat a mango for breakfast, or some oatmeal and
a banana, the glycemic load of that breakfast is lowered
because we ate the beans and the greens, and we
have a thickened biofilm which then slows the glue eases
of the glucose in the bloodstream, reducing the amount of
insulin needs to be produced. So scientists call that the
second meal effect, which means that the glycemic effect of
that meal has been blunted by the fact that you're
regularly eating greens and beans and mushrooms, particularly beans.
Speaker 1: Interesting and and beans and lagomes as well.
Speaker 2: Beans in lagooms. I use that was interchangeably beings out
saying lagumes and then and the combination of the greens
and the onions and the mushrooms and beans. Also scientists
call it gene silencing. That I mentioned that these foods
not only folk develop a favored microbiome, but they also
penetrate into every cell in our body and activate the
antioxygen response element and the cell that repairs the cell damage.
And here's the thing. It gene silences any defa in
the cell. So if you've inherited something bad that can
increase risk of disease, that's recognized and silenced and not
allowed to cause a problem. So when you're eating right,
your genes, negative genes don't have a chance to cause
any negative effects, and scientists call that gene silencing.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the importance of
the microbiome and what it does to our health and
it's something that is really starting to come into into
the zeitgeist a little bit more in recent years, But
a lot of people didn't even think about the gut
or the gut flora or anything like that. So can
you talk a bit that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people are thinking they're taking these probiotic pills
with acidophos and bibotus and thinking the yogurt's good. But
we're finding out with more research that the most longevity
promoting microbiome that slows aging and communicates with our immune
system are gram positives that have the most micro biologicalsity.
So it's having the most wide diversity of different types
of grand positive organisms that slow aging and support the
growth of the healthiest immune function. Because your immune system
is you could say, concentrated around the digestive tract. They
call it the interstitial lymphocytes that surround the digesta tracts
that are fueled by the eryl hydrocarbon receptors, which are
then fueled by green vegetables. So what I'm saying right
now is that our immune system is concentrated around the
digesta tract and it's fueled by the microbiome there and
the interaction between the cells that are living the bacteria
that living there, which then don't let yeast forms and
viruses and bacteria penetrate through, and it allows to penetrate
through so slowly or with such small concentrations that the
immune system can recognize and engulph those and deactivate them quickly.
It's when you have and of course when you're eating
like meats and sweets, let's say you have more gram
negative organisms, more yeast for forms, and more. And when
you have this these negative gram negatives bacteria, you produce
more and more animal protein choline, You produce more TMAO
trimethylamine oxide, which then is a pro inflammatory substance that
increases risk of cancer, dementia, and of course atherosclerosis increases
risk of heart disease tremendously. From the type of bacteria
you just grow that failure, you're giving a favorable expression
to have those growing those unhealthy bacteria in a digest
atract versus crowding them out and fueling and having all
the good bacteria. So we're saying that the lagoons, then chickpeas,
and the lentils and the greens, these foods, and even
the mushrooms and the onions are the best prill probiotic
or prebiotic to grow the health of these good bacteria.
And then you have post biotic products, which means the
bacteria themselves produce nutrients and support immune function and communicate
with the rest of the body and the brain to
improve our health and to prove our immune recognition of
abnormal cells and invade in microbes that can invade us.
Speaker 1: Fascinating, fascinating. I've heard you say before that nuts and
seeds can really truly help heart disease. Can you discuss
a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's really fascinating that it's wild that people are
consuming nuts and seeds have such lower rates of cardiovascular death.
We're saying that most studies show about a forty percent
reduction in cardiovascular death from the regular consumption, the daily
consumption of nuts and seeds and the diet. And you
could say, well, that's because people are eating nuts and
seeds instead of oil. Whether eating nuts and seeds instead
of meat, maybe they cut the meat down and eate
more nuts and seeds, but that's not what the study shows.
It shows with every cohort we're looking at, whether it's
person eating a fish based diet or a meat based diet,
or a vegan diet or a near vegan or a
flexitarian diet, or a unhealthy diet or healthy vegan or
health that when we look at every cohort, it held
up still beneficial effects on longevity. And we're talking about
reducing all cause mortality meaning cancer as well as heart
attacks and strokes and seizures and irregular heartbeats and infection.
That nuts and seeds have beneficial effects on human longevity.
That what I'm saying right now and what you ask me,
is to make the strong point that nuts and seeds
should be the fat source, the fatty food that humans
eat to get their fats should come from nuts and
seeds and avocado, not from animal products and oils, because
when we do that, we magnificently improve human health and longevity.
Speaker 1: Now with nuts, though, the thing I've heard and I'd
love to hear your thoughts about it is that with
something like almonds or pistachios in nature, you need to
work to get to that nut. So for you to
actually get an almond is going to take a tremendous
amount of effort to break through the husk and all
that stuff to get the one almond.
Speaker 2: But now we have that's true.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's say with pistachios, it's.
Speaker 2: A thing you can take. A human can take a
rock and smash open and almonds in two seconds.
Speaker 1: Okay, So but that two seconds is a lot more
seconds than buying a hand You could buy literally get
a bag of almonds and eat, you know, one hundred
almonds without thinking about it. Is that too many calories?
Or do we need to worry about that? We chould
watch how many nuts we eat?
Speaker 2: No, we should watch everything we eat, not eat, not
over eat of any food because our total calories for
the day matter. But when what I'm saying right now
is when your nutrient levels are low, you can become
a calorie consuming machine. You can sit there and need
a whole bag of almonds, got it. But when you're
when you're getting enough greens and beans and mushrooms and
onions and berries, and you're eat enough vegetable enough nutrients,
you're not going to become one over eat You're gonna
feel instinctual cutoff point. You're not going to really being
an overeating machine. So we're not saying that people can't
emotionally overeat or haven't been trained to overeat since they
were young and still have perverted styles of eating that
have to be retrained. That's for true. And people could
use nuts to overeat on. We're not justifying it. Could
overeat on fruit and vegetables too, but nuts are calorically concentrated,
so is avocado, and so is things like you can
overeat on even rice. But the point is is the
course that you can easier overreat on nuts because it's
one hundred and seventy five calories per ounce. So let's
say if you have two ounces of nuts, that would
be let's say three hundred and fifty calories a day,
which would be reasonable. But if you ate a thousand
calories from nuts a day on top of your other food,
it would be you know, obviously, what I'm saying is
using nuts as your fat source to use it judiciously.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show, like a.
Speaker 2: Half an ounce to an ounce with each meal. I
could eat announce with each meal because I'm doing a
lot of athletics. But of course you're looking to lose weight,
can still have a half announced with each meal and
still have an ounce and a half of nuts a day,
And that's not going to be that And when we're
in the scientific studies show with it, when you change
let's say you had two hundred to three hundred calories
of nuts, and you reduced your calories from carbohydrate accordingly
by three two hundred, three hundred calories, you have more
weight loss and more satiation of hunger by including the
two hundred. By reducing the carbohydrates down, so when you
move things isocalorically the same amount of calories. Let's say
your calories is sixteen hundred for the day, you keep
at sixteen hundred for the day, but you take in
more nuts and less potato or rice, then you've got
better health, no longevity. But obviously if you can, oh
you snack on food, is going to emotionally eat and
use nuts to gain weight, then you're gonna not be
great in great health because any time you have fat
on the body, you're not going to have good health.
And there's no such thing as an overweight healthy person.
All overweight people have are shortened their life spans. And
if you're going to eat to keep yourself overweight, because
we want to modulate our food intake to get our
perfect body weight, and modulate our protein intake and modulate
our fat intake. So part of being a neutratarian isn't
just eating one kind of food and overeating on it.
It's knowing when to eat and how much to eat too, right,
because we want to be at our perfect weight. So
my perfect weight, for example, at the age of sixty eight,
my body fat is about ten percent. And I say,
for a male to be in good healthy ask does
this body fat below fifteen percent, but preferably lower than that,
but probably below twelve. But for a woman to be
in good health, you haves to every body fat below
twenty five percent, maybe even ideally below twenty three percent.
But at least we have to. We can't just to
eat anything as much of these things as we want.
Speaker 1: We have to.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying is you're not going to want to
overeat those things when you really learn how to eat healthy,
learn the recipes and you know you and of course
we have the ability to control our health destiny. We
can't just eat, and we have to and that entails
moderate caloric restriction to slow the aging process. Atle bit
restriction is made possible because you're comfortable eating less calories
when eating the right food, and it becomes impossible to
do because you're uncomfortable eating less calories when you eat
the wrong food.
Speaker 1: So which brings me to another question, what do you
think about intermitted fasting? Is that something that is beneficial
long term?
Speaker 2: It can't be answered simply okay, because we have so
much of our population is overweight, right, and these overweight
people when they start to intimate and fast to lose weight,
they're so emotionally attached to food and addicted to food
that it sometimes triggers binge eating, binge eating or yo
yoing their weight and they go on these diets that
are too strict, utilizing intimatetent fasting or fasting as it
means to get their weight down. Then they bounce back,
can overeat and it triggers them emotionally. Now you to
and their col and their metabolic rates are slowed down
by fasting, and now with a slow excessively slow down,
I should say, and then when they're eating more calories
they gain weight even back again. And if you're using
any so there's too much of a high probability for
people with an addictive relationship with food or emotional overreaders
to utilize fasting and then binging and fasting and binging
to yo yo their caloric intakes too much. That's not
going to be in their best interest. For most overweight people,
we see better long term results that achieving and maintaining
a normal weight if they develop a feeling for repetition
and doing the same thing every day, week in and
week out, losing weight gradually and slowly till they get
to their perfect weight because they know how to live. Now,
So I can intermit in fast because I'm not overweight
and it's not going to lead me into a binge.
But if you haven't mastered your diet and your weight,
then you don't want to go to these extreme coloric
restrictions until you can get your regular pattern of eating
every day to get you to achieve an ideal weight.
You following me too much chances of blowing this up
and the oyoling, which is so bad for your health.
And then the major factor via which intimate and fasting
slows aging and extends human lifespan is not having food
in your stomach when you're sleeping at night. And so
we're talking about eating a lighter and earlier dinner and
finish eating dinner at least four hours before bedtime, so
the meal has a chance to totally digest, so when
you go to bed at night, you're not digesting food.
So yes, if that's called time restricted eating or intimate
and fasting, then I'm green with it. But I'm for
going on these diets of five hundred calories a day
for four days in a row and then going back
to your normal way of eating again to keep your
weight under control. It has a history a very poor
success rate and a history of long term failure. Even
the people have gone water fasts for two or three
weeks and they lose a lot of weight. If you
follow them a year or two later, that are a
heavier weight two years later, a year later than they
wore when they before they started that fast. It did
not result in permanent weight loss because it slowed the
metaboli rate down slow much and they went back to
eating again, which they have the tendency that they're like
now they're thinking about food in such an emotional way
that they're triggering their desire to overeat, and then they
put back weight on again. So I'm really into these
days of people taking the initiative and teaching them they
have to persevere over time with the repetition of the
right way of eating, day in and day out, and
to lose weight at two or three pounds a week
until they get to their ideal weight and keep it
going in that direction and then live that way for
the rest of their life. And if they want to
put some fasting on top of that, they could, but
it's not the means to lose weight. It's not going
to be a major portion of their therapy until they
learn how to eat.
Speaker 1: Right now, what are some fat loss promoting foods?
Speaker 2: Fat loss promoting foods, Well, the same foods we were
talking about that prevent cancer have effects to reduce fat
storage in the body, you know, the G bombs. So
I be saying the same four foods, the beans, the
cooked foods are the beans and the mushrooms cooked and
the raw foods are the greens and the onion scallion
raw with that same combination of food, having the big
salad every day for lunch, having the bowl of vegetable
and bean soup with the onions and mushrooms in it,
and a little fruit for dessert. It's the style of
the diet that makes you lose weight effortlessly because we
have it both major meals. We have some cooked food
and raw food. So at lunch we have a salad
with some cooked super chili or something with some soup,
and then for dinner we have some raw vegetables with
a dipper of sauce, maybe different raw vegetables, and you
had at lunch, maybe peppers and box choy and snow
peapods and carrots and hickem, you know. And then we
have a cooked vegetable walk with cabbage and mushrooms and
onions and snow peapods and water chestnuts, and maybe a
curry sauce on that, and maybe some frozen fruit whipped
up to a nice dessert. But every meal has those
features of raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, beans and nuts and
a little fresh fruit, except for breakfast, which was mostly
probably just a little grain with some fruit and plant milk,
you know, so it's some seeds on top, like flax
seeds or geese seeds or something. So we keep it
not too complicated so people can reproduce this, and we
make it with great tasting recipes, including great tasting desserts
that are made predominantly from fruit with no sweetener agents
that taste really great by like whipping up frozen fruits
into like ice creams and things. But so we make
a really great tasting plan that people can feel satisfied with.
They're not having to eat thimble sized portions of food.
They can enough volume of food to feel satiated and
still watch their weight come down. We had a person
here at the retreat this first month who lost fifty
pounds in the first month, and I said to him,
he asked me, how much is What's the most weight
a person ever lost in the first month? And I said,
it's not a race, and it doesn't matter how much
fast you lose it. But I don't think any but
he's lost more than like forty pounds. So he said,
I'm beating it. I'm going to fifty pounds this month.
So we so like walked in the pool and then
I saw what a pool like half the day trying
to I said, you know, so he's not losing that
much weight this month. He's only losing about thirty pounds
the second month. But most people eventually go wind down
to losing about you know ten. Most lose people lose
twenty pounds the first month, fifteen pounds the second month.
Then they kind of like stay at hover at ten
pounds a month usually until it gets close to their
ideal weight. So they're losing usually about two pounds a week,
and then they might go within a ten pounds to
the right the weight down to a pound a week.
But the bottom line is there's a new tratarian as
a person at their perfect weight or moving there in
that direction. Because if you're overweight and you're not moving
in the right direction, then you're not following the program right.
Then you're doing something wrong, could be overeating or nuts,
or you're being dried fruit. But if you want to
do this right and you're overweight, you have to be
losing steadily on the way to your ideal weight out.
Speaker 1: What is the most important meal of the day.
Speaker 2: Lunch? Unquestionably, lunch is when people should be eating that
big salad and the bowl of vegetable being super you know, yes,
I want like, like, if I'm out busy something, I
may be out with my family or doing something, I
may skip dinner or just have some fruit for dinner
or something, or a handful of nuts for dinner. But
I'm not gonna skip that big salad you know, of
raw vegetables and take the time to chew it and
really break down all those nutrients in your mouth and
get that really healthy meal in for lunch every day.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to ask you a change.
Speaker 2: Most days of breakfast, I have little grain and a
little bit of seeds and berries and fruit. And today
I had I had a u some apricots and some
figs and you know whatever. But but if I'm busy
on a you know, work, I could maybe just have
a piece of fruit. I'm not going to have the
seeds of the cereals they have. I could like skip
it or change it around, but I'm not going to
change my habit of having that big salad to lunch
every day.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: I could change the breakfast a little bit sometime I
could skip it, I could change it up, but just
someone in a rush having a pain Ezekiel English muffin
or something in the car. But I'm not going to
change my big salad for lunch.
Speaker 1: Do you recommend breads or should we watch the bread
and take that we have.
Speaker 2: I recommend not having flour breads made from flour, but
like I buy the Ezekiel Food for Life brand, which
are made from sprouted grains.
Speaker 1: What's the difference.
Speaker 2: It's the glycemic load that's different because when you grind
some of these, when you know, we're already talking about
white flour as being a drug and not even a food,
it's like that's no brainer, you know. But now what
about these whole grain breads that are made with the
whole wheat flour?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And that's the question, And there are intermediate food because
even the because they grind the whole wheat flour and
make it so finely ground that it's still probably unfavorably glycemic.
If you had one slice of bread, you know, with
a healthy meal, it's not a big deal. But the better,
the best breads if you're going to use bread, and
they taste good too, but the food for Life is
Ezekiel brand, which are made from sprouted grains which have
lower and sodium, higher in protein and lower glacimic. Then
the whole wheat flower made bread, you know what I mean,
because they made from the whole. They take the grain
and they sprout it and then they grind it up
a little bit and make it into a loaf, you know,
bake it into a loaf, so it's naturally lower glace
simic and more nutrient rich. So it's just a better
quality bread. Got it?
Speaker 1: And then how about like all these new flowers like
cassava flour or chickpea flour, almond flour, these kind of
products that are like like I have a tortilla made
of cassava flour, you know, to get away from the
gluten and things like that. Is that that kind of
good food to eat?
Speaker 2: It's okay. I think people could eat those in moderation.
I have seen like tortillas and wraps made it of
cauliflour too.
Speaker 1: You ever see those those.
Speaker 2: Are cauliflower wrapp You know, they're not eating that much
of the rap anyway. You stuffling it with mushrooms and
ab aca and sprouts and tomatoes and onions. Since you
can make a nice healthy wrap. I put some of
the like a basil. I take like roasted garlic and
hemp seeds with a little bit of basil, and and
what am I putting a little nutritional yeast in there
and a little bit of you know, making these delicious
dressings or a dip made for the for the wrap,
and then putting a wrap around and carrying on the
plane with it when I'm traveling or something, you know
what I mean. So, yeah, it's you can use some
of those wraps. You're not eating that much wrap anyway,
So yeah, those sound all reasonable, but we're not eating
a It's not a major portion of our diet anyway, right,
That's just it's a rapping, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a rapping. Now everything we've talked about we're talking
about obviously longevity, but I've heard you talk about actually
reversing aging or aging back where it's it's everything that
we're talking about in that in that world of trying
to turn the clock back, if you will, instead of
extending it.
Speaker 2: I know there are some scientists and people and physicians
and people saying you can't age backwards. That's ridiculous. But
I'm saying no, you ate can age backwards. We've proven
that and we see it all the time, every day.
Speaker 1: I see it.
Speaker 2: It's the only to bend. But I'm not aging backwards
because I've been doing I've been eating right a long time.
I'm just aging slower. But when these people come into
our retreat, let's say, or they come in they come
from an unhealthy diet, there's measurable biological aging determinants like
their telomere length, their epigenetic changes, and we can measure
the inflammation their bloodstream, and then we can measure them again.
The telomeres represent your biological age and your epigenetic changes.
We can see how fast you're aging and how fast
you have aged. So maybe you're sixty years old, but
you have the body of an eighty year old based
on your blood tests or your swabs of you, you know.
And then after you fight healthily for six months, we
see the telomeres went back to normal. Now you're a
sixty year old with sixty year old telomeres, not a
sixty year old the seventy year old tar old telomeres.
You follow me, right, So you see unhealthy people age
backwards as they get really healthy, you want to stay
on that, so you can't. So people are aging backwards,
but we're not really aging backwards. We're just bringing them
to it. We're just bringing them back to where they
should have been if they were eating healthfully, and they've
just accelerated the aging process, so they have abnormal, accelerated
aging that we're just repairing back again. So it's like
aging backwards. I'm not aging backwards. I'm still aging, but
I've were not because I didn't get myself in a
bad shape to begin with, so I have to age backwards.
You follow me.
Speaker 1: I know, I understand what you're saying, but also there
are times where, like you, you could be a fifty
year old but have a thirty year old's internal scenarios
based on the blood type of blood work, if you're.
Speaker 2: Eating compared to the average fifty year old.
Speaker 1: Correct, exactly, exactly, And I'm making this.
Speaker 2: I'm also making the radical statement that people should be
that the average lifespan should be between ninety five and
one hundred and five, not between seventy and ninety where
most Americans die around age seventy seven seventy eight. So
we're talking here about living to be around one hundred
years old, having good health, and your full mental faculty.
These intact.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to ask you two questions to ask
all my guests, what is your mission in this life?
Speaker 2: Well, I have my own personal missions and business missions,
but my mission in life is too is to be happy,
enjoy the world around me, and have a positive effect
on as many people as I can to improve their
health and happiness. You know, so, and you can only
do that if you're in good health yourself. If you're
not taking care of your own health and your own
happiness and well being, then you can't have a good
positive effect on other people. You know. I'd love to
have an effect on the planet as well, but you know,
we're seeing the planet being destroyed. But there's so much
negativity and short sighted thinking. And I'm saying here that
I think the instantaneous gratification and the food addiction mentality
has led people to think and behave for instant gratification
and not think of the effects that we're having on
the world collectively and enables us to destroy the environment
for our children and grandchildren, destroy the planet, which includes
climate change and also the promotion of aggression, aggression, contempt
for other humans, the one country trying to beat out
another country, and the increased competition between humans and wars
and killing each other, which we're seeing today, you know,
in today's climate, we're seeing you know, climate change, wars,
and also an acceleration of hate among Americans against immigrants
and people from other countries and people with different have
different backgrounds and different educations and different you know, but
we're not We're not cultivating, you know, a concern for
people all over the world, a collective well being for
the earth, compassion for all humans, matter what they like
us or not, you know, stopping wars and working together
as a as a as a unified planet. At Roam's
sharing this one spaceship to protect the planet for our
children and grandchildren future generations. We're not having that happen,
and so I'm you know, in some ways, I'm disappointed.
I can't do more, but we all do the best
we can and do as much as we can. And
I think the nutrition has a huge part to do
with all this, and it fuels people's aggression and there
and mental illness and their ability to be be more
narcissistic is fueled by their poor diets. And so that's
my niche is I can't do everything. I'm just doing
what I can do, and the niche that I've chosen
to live in. And I really, as you know, of
very passionate about motivating people to take better care of
their health.
Speaker 1: Now, where can people pick up your book Eat for
Life and all your other amazing products and courses and
services and so on. Thank you?
Speaker 2: Well, my website's doctor firm in dot com d r
f U h R m an dot com. But you
can buy those books anywhere bookstores, Amazon, you know. So,
And I have a lot of my work has actually
been shown a lot on public television on PBS the
United States, a lot of they have run a lot
of my shows over the last ten years. So I've
very been blessed to have gone into the you know,
gone into the living rooms and bedrooms with people across
America speaking about motivating them to take better care of
their health, because they don't get that from anybody. They
don't get it anywhere practically, right, they go through grade school.
Only the most important thing is they should have learned
to protect their life. They learn nothing about it.
Speaker 1: All right, you know.
Speaker 2: But anyway, So yeah, I've had some. I'm very grateful
for the opportunities I've had to be able to have
an effect on hundreds of thousands of people. That's given
me tremendous amount of pleasure. But I get so much
pleasure just from helping one person, just from seeing one
person transform their life for the better, and working with
that gives me a lot of satisfaction, pleasure as well
as a farm.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for not only coming on
the show, but for all the amazing work you've been
doing over over the years. And I truly truly appreciate you,
my friend. Thank you again.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Else, thank you for spending this sacred time with us today.
If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll
find the show notes for this episode at Next levelsoul
dot com forward slash zero nine to nine, and if
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