Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
“Your Life Style Is Your Medicine” is a podcast that focuses on how a person's lifestyle can be the key to health and happiness. Routed in the principles of lifestyle medicine, Ed Paget, osteopath, and exercise scientist, interviews area-specific experts on how lifestyle impacts well-being, focusing on purpose, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and stress, which could lead to a longer, happier life. Edward now runs immersive lifestyle medicine retreats, with the purpose of helping others take back control of their lives to live longer and healthier.
Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
Episode 43: Dr Joel Fuhrman - Reversing Chronic Diseases & Extending Lifespan with Nutrition
Can the right diet really reverse chronic diseases and extend your lifespan? On today's episode, we sit down with Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a pioneer in nutritional medicine and the visionary behind the Nutritarian Diet. From his days as an elite figure skater to his transformative journey into medicine, Dr. Fuhrman unpacks how early natural hygiene movements and personal family health transformations shaped his groundbreaking philosophy. With compelling evidence, he argues that his diet plan can not only reverse type 2 diabetes and cancer but also significantly extend your healthspan and lifespan.
Changing people's lifestyles is no small feat, especially when it comes to nutrition and exercise. Dr. Fuhrman candidly addresses the challenges of motivating individuals to adopt healthier habits, explaining why traditional medical appointments often fall short. He talks about the addictive nature of modern processed foods and the nutritional deficiencies that plague us, offering more intensive solutions like educational sessions, support groups, and retreats. Learn why recalibrating taste preferences and addressing underlying nutritional deficiencies are crucial for sustainable health improvements.
The conversation gets even deeper as we discuss the profound impact of body fat and insulin resistance on overall health. Dr. Fuhrman dispels the myth that being overweight is primarily genetic, spotlighting the historical and environmental factors at play. We explore the Nutritarian Diet's potential to mitigate these risks and promote a healthier, longer life. Plus, we delve into the importance of maintaining musculoskeletal mass as we age and the delicate balance between raw and cooked foods. From mindful chewing to overcoming food intolerances, this episode is packed with practical tips and strategies to optimize your health through better nutrition and lifestyle choices.
Welcome to the your Lifestyle is your Medicine podcast, where we do deep dives into topics of mind, body and spirit. Through these conversations you'll hear practical advice and effective strategies to improve your health and ultimately add healthspan to your lifespan. I'm Ed Padgett. I'm an osteopath and exercise physiologist with a special interest in longevity. Now I've got a really exciting episode for you today. You see, today's guest says it's possible to reverse type 2 diabetes, beat autoimmune disease, stop cancer and add a decade of healthy living to the average American's lifespan.
Speaker 1:But these claims aren't just hyperbole. The man behind the claims is Dr Joel Fuhrman, a seven-time New York Times bestseller and founder of the Nutritarian Diet. He backs up his claims with hard science and has been working with patients for 30 plus years to prove it. Today we're going to talk about the foods that you need to cut back on, why being overweight is a problem and what foods you should eat more of to add health spam to your lifespan. So, dr Joel, welcome to the show. Thank you Great to be here. So, dr Joel, welcome to the show. Thank you Great to be here. Look, you have a really interesting philosophy on food and I bet that didn't just happen overnight, so can you give us just a little overview of how you developed your philosophy and your journey to get to where you are today.
Speaker 2:Wow, I could spend hours on that. But yeah, you know, I was on the United States World Figure Skating Team. I actually was third in the world in pair skating with my younger sister, gail, and so through my teenage years, in childhood, we were always training, skating, competing, traveling, and we ate really healthfully, wanting to have better stamina and not get sick, to continue our passion. You know this passion. And my father was overweight and sickly when I was younger and he read a lot of books from Dr Herbert Shelton. I think the first book he read was called was by Jack Duntrop, called you Don't have to Be Sick, written in 1950. Wow, the first book I think my father read.
Speaker 2:And when I first started reading these books when I was like 12 years old, that my father was reading, I thought it was like crazy. I said how could this be right and everybody else in the world be wrong? How could you know everything doctors do be not the right, not, you know, it's really. It's all about what you eat and not about all this stuff taking drug, you know, so you know. But after. So I was exposed to this movement through the American Natural Hygiene Society back in the 60s and 70s. I guess by the time I was the early 70s, I was already 18 years old. You know I was born in 53. So the so by the time I was immersed in this movement of healthy eating for my own personal benefit, seeing my father got got well, being exposed to other people who changed their diet and made recoveries from serious illnesses. I had already experienced all that before. I was 17 or 18 years old.
Speaker 2:And then, when I then by the time was 23 or 24, and my ice skating career was winding down and coming to an end, I decided to go into my father's chain of shoe stores and to try to maybe pursue that, as while I was still skating and I realized my passion was really nutrition and health and it wasn't really selling shoes and I would really felt that I was thinking about going back to school to get the pre-med courses, to go back to medical school, to be a doctor specializing in nutrition. And I eventually did that. I met my wife and we started dating and she was going to medical school and I thought I was too old already to go back to medical school. By then I already hadn't had the pre-medical retirements. But I saw through her that I learned about these programs and I went back to the postgraduate pre-med program at Columbia where you could take the pre-med requirements that you hadn't had when you graduated college. And I applied to medical school in my later 20s, specifically with the intent of being a doctor specializing in nutritional medicine. I wasn't like a regular doctor, then decided to come over this way. I went to medical school because I wanted to be a doctor that did this type of practice and I was always passionate and excited about this nutritional bent and giving people the power and the tools to not just change their eat differently but actually to get rid of their psoriasis and get rid of their asthma.
Speaker 2:And can we get people to recover from diabetes and high blood pressure and heart disease and can we reverse these diseases?
Speaker 2:And is nutritional excellence more powerful than medical care and drugs and surgery? Does nutrition have the real answer to afford people this opportunity to make a complete recovery and not be on dangerous drugs the rest of their life? And I was excited about that potential and my career over the last 35, 40 years as a result of this passion has been very exciting and very rewarding when you work with people and seeing them make complete recoveries. Asthmas asthmatics who no longer have to use inhalers and wake up in the middle of the night, people who have their psoriasis and psoriatic are gone. The multiple sclerosis is completely recovered from it. They don't have heart disease, they don't have diabetes, they don't have high blood pressure. They don't need drugs anymore.
Speaker 2:So, in other words, I'm saying that this nutritarian diet that I developed and refined and made even more superior had its foundation in the natural hygiene viewpoints of the 1940s and 1950s, but obviously what I do today isn't what they did back then, but it was still based on that foundation. And then what we do today is probably even more effective. And I say that with these advancements in nutritional science and our years of clinical research and clinical experience, we have this unprecedented opportunity to live longer, to age slower, to be healthier than anybody than we could have in human history. So the average, so I'm saying that the lifespan of humans should be around 100 years old you know, 95 to 105 average and that the same dietary portfolio that slows aging and maximizes lifespan prevents cancer, prevents heart attacks and strokes and dementia, but also is therapeutically effective as an intervention to help people recover from serious illnesses.
Speaker 1:So back when you were in medical school, medicine didn't really focus on nutrition. So how did you cope with your colleagues who wanted to get into surgery or do all the sort of the things in medicine that people think is very heroic?
Speaker 2:Was there a sort of a pushback against you getting into nutrition? Not really. Even I went to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and I was very open about my interests and they respected that. They even made a committee at the medical school. We even had meetings and they even set me up with a mentor at the medical school who had similar interests. So they felt that rather than dissuade somebody from their passionate interests, they want to encourage that and make you be the best representative of that specialty, representing this fine medical school. So they try to have you more develop your assets to be the best at what you do, no matter what road you took.
Speaker 2:So I was very respectful of that and many of my fellow medical students were very respectful of my interests and learned a lot from me. I've got tremendous you could say tremendously tremendous, you could say reassurance from my fellow medical students who said, joel, I learned as much from you and that what I've learned from you being in medical school with you, I learned as much from you as I did from any from the from other. Anything else I learned in medical school I learned from you, I think is the most important, and a lot of doctors who were out of my graduating class have said to me as an adult that I've helped their own health, their own careers, and they've benefited greatly from our relationship and I've had many really deep friendships with other doctors I met in medical school that still communicate with me and many of them still watch their health and their family's health as a result of my influence.
Speaker 1:I think that's brilliant. It seems to me your medical school was quite forward thinking, and I'm comparing it perhaps to the schools in the UK where I've actually spoken to doctors who said during medical school they looked down on nutrition. They thought it was beneath them, that was a dietitian's role, not a doctor's role. And so you had that experience which has set you up brilliantly for your career and so you had that experience which has set you up brilliantly for your career.
Speaker 2:Right, and and I'm, you know, I've had, you know, many doctors who like, let's say, specialists in endocrinology and diabetology at penn, and when I've approached them about doing research with them and showing them my work as a doctor, their response was was oh, we know that works, but we can't get our patients to do that and it's kind of a waste of time because people just want to drug and they don't want to listen to us if we tell them that stuff. And so my response to them was like you don't have the skills, the training, the motivation to know how to encourage, to know how to teach and encourage and motivate people. You can't just assume they don't want it. It's a whole different specialty to be able to motivate people to make these changes. You know. So it's so. In other words, I, they have an excuse. They don't disallow or disavow the success of what you can do. They just think it's not for them, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. I think it's the same with exercise and other disciplines, where the doctor knows that these things are well-researched and they know roughly what to prescribe, if you like, but people don't follow it because they don't do it in a way that encourages change and it doesn't work with the person. It's too prescriptive.
Speaker 2:And, of course, doctors don't want to spend time with people, and they're right to a degree. You can't spend a 15-minute visit with a person and expect to change their life. It just doesn't work. So they're right, they can't motivate people to change, but they don't know how to do it. You got to set up like lectures in the office, where people comes for an hour and a half and there's 10 people in the room.
Speaker 2:If they're diabetic, you can't just go one-on-one for 15 minutes and, as you know, many people even that doesn't work for have to come back and follow up with making sure they learned it and they're applying it and what. And you can work with them and there's a lot of connection here. You have to be a lifestyle medicine specialist and even now I have a retreat in San Diego, as you know, where people come and stay with me for a few months who can't do, who don't seem to be able to get it done, to learn it and to get rid of their addictive drive to overeat or eat the wrong foods. They need to be somewhere to get away from that, to be able to make this transition and make it stick, and we even have that services available for them through the website, through the extra connective services and the emotional wisdom and the social connection and all the other things you need to put into place to make this more acceptable and doable for people to make these changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll talk more about your retreat later on, but I want to get back more into what it is that you do with your nutritional protocols, and maybe even before we get to that, why do you think America has such a problem with being overweight?
Speaker 2:Well, because the foods that Americans eat are highly addicting and they drive certain behavior in the primitive brain that are hard for people to resist. Because when you try to resist them you get too much, too uncomfortable. It's like any other addictive substance when you try to stop smoking cigarettes you feel very uncomfortable. It's painful to stop smoking, it's painful to stop. You know, taking cocaine, it's painful to stop it. But they get the instantaneous thrill of doing the substance. But they also feel pain when they try to stop it and the primary pain input is fatigue. They feel so weak and fatigued and even agitated and fatigued and it could have cramping in the stomach or headaches, but it's mostly fatigue and agitation. Where they don't constantly put unhealthy food in their mouth, they try to stop doing that, they feel worse. So it drives them to eat, to feel good, and they equate the fatigue and the agitation with hunger and they think they're eating to respond to hunger. But the body's demanding more calories than it requires. And it's demanding more calories than it requires because of nutritional insufficiency, because the diet doesn't contain what the human needs, doesn't meet human needs, and also because of this concept that these processed foods and animal fats and oils and high glycemic carbohydrates all have a high caloric rush, and the word caloric rush means the amount of calories you can get into the bloodstream at one time. If you're out there in the woods or the jungles, you know eating, you know wild artichokes and pine nuts, you're not going to be able to get 800 calories into your body in 10 minutes. There's no way you could get that many calories in. So we need modern food technology to be able to concentrate the oils so they absorb very rapidly. So it's not just eating an apple, we're actually eating sugar or honey or maple syrup or we're eating things that are fried and cooked in oil or eating animal fats that are commercial animals that are high in fat. So we're getting a lot of flood of nutrient, flood of calories in the blood. And that high spike of calories in the blood has an effect on the same opiate centers in the brain that are overly stimulated from taking opiates and narcotics. So our brain is stimulated from these unnatural caloric load and then people get habituated and addicted to overeating and when they follow my program or come to my retreat I say this doesn't guarantee you're going to eat healthy and eat the right amount and keep your weight down for the rest of your life. But it gives you the possibility to achieve that with a high degree of probability.
Speaker 2:Because when you're eating American food it's impossible to change your diet. It's almost impossible to control your caloric drive. When you're desirous of so many calories, when you've been overly stimulating the brain for so many years, it's just too hard to control what you eat. And also the taste buds have to change, the taste, muscle has to improve. It's just like going to the gym and exercising with weights At the beginning you get all sore and your muscles hurt, but after a while you feel good doing it and you feel you can do more, you know.
Speaker 2:So this is the same thing, people. You know, exercising with food we feel worse at the beginning, but soon they're going to like it better, they're going to digest it better, they're going to not feel, they're going to feel more comfortable and eventually they're going to feel desirous of the right amount of calories. And if they eat too much they're not going to feel well, they're not going to feel like the extra caloric intake is no longer in their own best interest and they don't feel well physically when they eat too much. It changes. It goes the opposite. You start out feeling lousy if you try to eat healthy because you're withdrawing from your toxic lifestyle and eventually, when you do this long enough, you start to feel so good that you instinctually desire the right amount of calories and the right foods, and then you feel really lousy if you don't eat that way and eat something unhealthy. You feel so lousy.
Speaker 1:Do you think there's some nefarious sort of hand at work, feeding people high levels of sugar and fat and oil? Or do you feel like it's just something that evolutionary we have a drive for and therefore the food companies are satisfying a need? Well?
Speaker 2:both those things are true. I mean, in other words, the economic incentive that food manufacturers are there to make money. They want you to buy their Frito-Lay's potato chips and you want more pizza and more hamburgers. And they're going to put sugar in the hamburger meat and sugar in the potato batter that they make the french fries out of. They're going to put salt and sugar in the soda. They're going to put salt in the soda and sugar in the meat and salt. They're going to actually add oil to the inside of the potato batter. So they're going to do all the things that food scientists have determined increases people's appetite and desire to overeat food. And they want you to be attracted to their company's food and not the other company's food. They want you to be their customers.
Speaker 2:So, yes, it's all geared towards the food industry's desire to sell their product and to sell things that people are going to eat and become addicted to and also, like you said, married into these natural drives of humans to get pleasure from eating highly concentrated calories, especially sweetened, and substances sweetened and fatty substances. We say you know, sweet, fat and salt. Of course it's the SOS sugar, oil and salt. And don't forget, you know we're saying eating SOS-free, sugar, salt and oil-free. But white flour is a sugar equivalent, because white flour just turns into sugar almost directly, as if you same amount of glucose enters the bloodstream. Had you have eaten just a sugar cube compared to a you know, the same calories of bread you've talked about.
Speaker 1:There's no such thing as a healthy overweight person. Now, why is that? Because this could be a controversial topic being bearing in mind that something like 80 of americans and that's spreading into Europe as well are overweight, and it seems to me that we're being told by media to accept being overweight as normal.
Speaker 2:Now, yeah, I don't really think it's controversial among you. Know scientists and doctors who study this. I don't think there's much controversy here. I mean we know that fat on the body causes insulin resistance. Controversy here I mean we know that fat on the body causes insulin resistance, which means it interferes with the function of the insulin receptor. We know all long-lived individuals, all people who live past 95 years old, are all insulin sensitive, not insulin resistance. The hallmark that marks longer lifespan is being insulin sensitive and being a lower.
Speaker 2:We know that when you're in proportion to your body, weight goes up, your lifespan goes down through higher rates of cancer and heart disease. These are well accepted and well accepted facts. We know that the fat on your body is pro-inflammatory, excitatory on producing more estrogen production from the aromatase system. So the aromatase enzyme is activated by the inflammation coming off the fat supply, because the fat cells don't get a great blood supply, they're not well-perfused with blood vessels, so they create more inflammation. We know that fat on the body in proportion in a dose-dependent relationship increases risk of serious infections, complications from infections and death from infections. And we know that fat on the body also promotes angiogenesis. Let me say this again that when we eat excess calories and when we eat higher glycemic carbohydrates and we eat also excess protein, we promote these two hormones, insulin and IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor one and those hormones in higher levels are powerfully promote angiogenesis. They're fat storage growth hormones and promoting angiogenesis means we're promoting the growth of blood vessels to fuel the growth of fat and in doing so you're also allowing tumors and cells otherwise to replicate and glean a fat supply from the angiogenesis promotion. So growing fat on the body permissively allows other cells that shouldn't be growing to grow simultaneously, like tumors and cancers. So these are not controversial issues. These are well-established scientific facts.
Speaker 2:The twisting of reality that you can be healthy and overweight because all overweight people are pre-diabetic, not just the ones whose sugars start to rise, because my definition of pre-diabetes includes the damage from being insulin resistant, with a high circulating insulin driving excessive angiogenesis. It's just a precursor to prediabetes and diabetes, just like the people who have normal blood pressure eating the unhealthy diet, being overweight especially when eating extra salt too, they always eventually develop high blood pressure, even though it's not high now. They're just a precursor to high blood pressure. Oh, I can eat all the salt and junk I want because my blood pressure is normal. Well, it's not going to stay normal. 90% of Americans over the age of 70 are on medication for their blood pressure, so this is crazy. So it's just a matter of time until the overweight person suffers from and experiences these diseases that occur from the foods they're eating, that allow them to become overweight.
Speaker 1:Reminds me of the analogy of the person who's fallen out of a window and they're falling to their death, but they're like, oh so good. So so far, so good. You know, halfway down they're good. So why? Why do you think people are beginning to say that being overweight is a genetic condition?
Speaker 2:Well, everything's genetic to a degree, to a small degree. But obviously there were no overweight gazelles and antelopes, zebras, chipmunks, deer. There's no overweight early humans even. And, by the way, if we look at the incidence of breast cancer and prostate cancer in human history, it never, hardly occurred. Even the first cancers that occurred in any significant number were testicular and scrotal cancer in the 14th century in men who worked as chimney sweeps and inhaling smoke. We never even saw breast cancer and prostate cancer because people couldn't get enough, you know, fatty, oily, greasy, sugary food.
Speaker 2:Back then Food, this unhealthy food wasn't so available. So you know, it's not predominantly genetic if it's something new, completely unique in human history. But like everything else, we inherit certain tendencies and habits from our parents and we inherit a tendency towards certain diseases like obesity when you do the wrong thing. Even breast cancer, you could say, has a genetic component. Some people are more prone to breast cancer with the gstp1 gene or the broccogene and but even those cancers are suppressed when you eat healthfully. Scientists call that gene silencing. I mean you diet rich in green vegetables, especially green cruciferous vegetables. Those cancers do not increase risk of breast or prostate cancer under those conditions.
Speaker 2:But yes, there's, let's say, a group of Indians that lived in the Angonquin tribes in the southern United States, northern Mexico area, that their ancestors were all slim and long-lived and they started, you know, became wealthy under discovery of oil and they started eating American food and they all became overweight and almost all became diabetic.
Speaker 2:They had this genetic predisposition to become overweight and diabetic on American food, on oils and you know, but not on their native foods that they ate when they were for the first, many, many thousands of years that they were eating the, you know, the berries, the cactus roots and all the things they ate. Their body was designed to eating natural foods with a lower caloric density, with a higher nutrient density. When they go back to eating foods that have a low caloric, high nutrient density, they can be satisfied, lose weight and their diabetes would go away or never come back. So there are some people with more genetic susceptibility to becoming diabetic or overweight. But this because you're somewhat more genetically susceptible than another person doesn't mean you have to have those things happen to you. That's inevitable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an important point that's missed in the newspaper headlines about obesity being genetic is that it's genetic, but only in a certain environment, and you've said that brilliantly. Can you describe to us, then, what the nutritarian diet involves and what it doesn't?
Speaker 2:involve. You know, it's definitely a plant-based diet. So it couldn't be done with a vegan diet where you're having no animal products and then you have to supplement intelligently to have B12, zinc and DHA, you know. Or it could be done with a small amount of animal product, like a few servings a week or a few limited ounces, but we're still eating a high, large quantity of high nutrient plants, particularly a salad, every day, you know, and with both, and also cooked vegetables and cooked beans and cooked mushrooms. So we're having a mixture of cooked vegetables and raw vegetables. We say that there are like five categories of foods, you know vegetables, fresh fruit, intact whole grains, beans, legumes and nuts and seeds. Those five categories of foods, of unrefined foods, and there's a whole bunch of incredible recipes we can make, like salad dressings and sauces for the vegetable-based dishes and desserts made with an icing or a cream sauce or an ice cream made it of whipped bananas with macadamia nuts and real vanilla bean powder. There's all types of delicious foods that we can make out of natural foods that we're not feeding the body with oil and animal fats, because most Americans and most people, as you know, in the modern world, get almost all their fat from oil or from animal fats like butter, or eating a piece of steak or bacon or something, whereas a nutritarian diet gets almost exclusively its fats from eating nuts and seeds and avocados not from eating oils from the nut or seed, but eating the whole nut or seed as your source of fat. And you have a complete biological opposite effect when you do that. One causes a rush of calories in the bloodstream, leading to fat storage, and the other causes us to slowly absorb the fat so it's preferentially burned for energy and not absorb all the fat that was in the food, so you'd not even be able to. You feel like you're satiated with so many with all these calories you ate, but the calories never fully get absorbed into the bloodstream, so it naturally calorically restricts us when our fats come from these whole food sources.
Speaker 2:So we're eating this diet that's based on nutrient comprehensiveness, comprehensive micronutrient adequacy, which means getting all the micronutrients we need in high levels, trying to achieve a high cellular density of micronutrients. So we want to have antioxidants and micronutrients in our cells that are dense, and when you gain weight you dilute the micronutrient density of your cells, dispersing your nutrients through a bigger mass. You're halving the nutrient concentration in your cells. So we're looking to eat a diet that's rich in nutrients and we're looking to keep the body fat low at the same time. So I'm saying that a body fat for a male greater than 15% will shorten lifespan and promote disease, and a body fat for a female greater than 25% will lead to more significant risk as you go up from there. My body fat, for example, at the age of 70 is probably around 11%. I think right now you know 11% body fat, so I mean most you know, um, and so even though 25 body fat for a female it may be not ideal, at least that's acceptable.
Speaker 1:And then you can be healthy with a body fat 25% or below for a female and 15% and below you could be healthy for a male, even though it may not be ideal that body fat and what do you say to people who think that you should have a little bit of extra fat on your body in case you get sick, something like a store to use while your appetite is down because you're ill or bedridden?
Speaker 2:Well, if you have more body fat to protect you from getting sick, it's going to make you get sick. I mean, even 10 pounds of extra body fat almost doubles the risk of dying from pneumonia. Even just 10 pounds of body fat doubles the risk of dying from pneumonia. Even just 10 pounds of body fat doubles the risk of dying from pneumonia. So we're talking about you playing with fire, you know, and we work as we age to maintain our musculoskeletal mass and strength and the same body composition we had when we were younger.
Speaker 2:If you want to live to be 100 years old, what are we doing? We're trying to exercise and eat right, so we keep our same musculoskeletal mass and strength and low body fat percent. That's the goal is to try to keep. And how do you keep your blood pressure low as you age? Either? I mean, if you're going to salt your foods and overeat, it's going to eventually climb up as you get older. It's going to eventually climb up as you get older.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of work and effort to maintain your youthful numbers, youthful blood pressure, youthful body fat percents. We're naturally going to lose some muscle mass and bone mass and brain size and immune function as we age and eventually, with the immunosenescence, you're going to eventually die of something. We can't live forever. But the whole key here is how do we resist, slow down, retard, that natural weakening of the body and aging of the brain and aging of the immune system? And nutritional excellence is very powerful at being able to stop that rapid decline we see for most Americans. They're 65, 65, they already are like a couch potato. They can't do sports and they can't sprint and they can't play singles tennis or ski down a mogul field or surf or they can't do anything. They can't play pickleball even half the time. I mean, well, you know they're. They're just so in such bad shape by the time they're even 65 years old that they have to have a sedentary life practically, not to mention the amount of prescription drugs they'll be on as well.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I like that you mentioned pickleball there. I see you have pickleball in your retreat center as well. Is that something you've got into recently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I play pickleball a little bit. I enjoy tennis more because, frankly, I don't feel I can get enough of a sweat and run enough and pant playing pickleball. Frankly, I don't feel I can get enough of a sweat and run enough and pant playing pickleball. I don't get tired playing pickleball. It's not exerting enough for me. I'd rather play singles tennis so I can run to side to side in a good match and feel like I'm getting a workout or something. You know, pickleball is great, but let's go do some exercise now that we're done.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean yeah, I do know what you're pickleball doubles. You can see why it's the fastest growing sport in over 60s or something. Uh, pickable singles the way we play down here. I find that's a good workout, but uh yeah I'll give you a game. One day, we'll see okay I want to talk about protein, because when people mention plant-based or vegan, the, the meaty just get very excited about protein, especially the, the levels of protein we need as we age. Is this something you address with your nutritional advice?
Speaker 2:Yes, I absolutely think that's very important, which I address because there are certain forms of a plant-based diet, like some people will eat almost all fruit, like a fruitarian diet or a raw food diet. And I noticed those people do have some more immunosenescence as they age from lack of protein because their diet is and people are putting too much oil on their food. You know you're taking instead of nuts and seeds. When you take your fat with nuts and seeds you're getting 10 grams of protein came along with the fat. When you put oil in your food, you just remove 10 grams of protein out of your diet. So I see the design of some plant-based diets can be low in protein. Keeping in mind these five categories of foods, the only one low in protein is fruit. The rest, the intact grain, the vegetables, the beans and the nuts all have adequate protein. So in your diet, especially when you're eating some of the higher protein which are the higher protein foods like greens, beans right, greens beans and nuts and seeds, because the nutritarian diet utilizes so much greens, beans and nuts and seeds. Because the nutritarian diet utilizes so much greens, beans and nuts and seeds, it's relatively high in protein compared to other plant-based diets. You know what I mean. And it's high in calcium too, for that matter, and it's not low in fat and it has adequate protein. So when we measure the protein content of the diet, we're easily getting a gram per kilogram of body mass and we're not on a very low protein or a very low fat diet. It's just a very natural protein and natural type of fat that humans can get without being toxic Like.
Speaker 2:The big concern today that most people don't even know about is the agricultural runoff causing algae overgrowth in the estuaries and lakes and coastal waterways that have now contaminated the bivalves.
Speaker 2:First of all, the sardines and the small fish are contaminated with microplastics in their digestive tract and the bottom feeders, like shellfish, and bivalves, like clams, oysters, mussels and scallops, have a high level of BMAA, which is now linked to ALS and Parkinson's dementia syndrome, from eating seafood that's, fish and bivalves, like clams, oysters, mussels and scallops, have a high level of BMAA, which is now linked to ALS and Parkinson's dementia syndrome, from eating seafood that's contaminated. And it's contaminated with the BMAA from cyanobacteria which grow on algae from agricultural runoff and on the plastic dumping off the coastal waterways. So, whereas some seafood in the diet could have been a good source of zinc and DHA and B12, now it becomes a highly polluted source of those nutrients. So it makes more sense in the modern world to move your diet more plant-based, as we've contaminated and polluted some of these animal foods that we could have had in smaller quantities. That could have been healthy.
Speaker 1:And do you find you need to change those levels of protein for younger people or for older people, or is it the same, like one gram per kilo throughout?
Speaker 2:What you're saying is correct, that people in middle age like 30s, 40s and 50s they don't. They can eat a diet mostly of fruit with a little bit of vegetables and beans. They can feel good enough protein in a diet that's relatively low in protein because their protein bioavailability is so high. They digest the protein so effectively. But as we age the quality of our digestion goes down and we aren't able to assimilate protein as well, and so a nutritarian diet is particularly well-designed for a toddler, a growing toddler who needs more protein, or a person over the age of 80 who needs some extra protein as well.
Speaker 2:Most Americans don't have to worry about this, because they're dead by then anyway. They die young and they don't have to really get to the point. But us nutritarians, we can use hemp seeds and edamame and soybeans and black beans and lentils and navy beans and artichokes. Artichokes and broccoli, as you know, are super high in protein. People don't realize these solid green vegetables that have substance, like when you steam an artichoke and eat the heart or you eat broccoli florets. That's really high in protein, especially when you mix it in the meal with like nuts and seeds and you have some beans with it. Then you've got a really high protein meal and you don't have to get animal products to get that level of high protein quality.
Speaker 1:What about omega oils? Is that something that you would supplement with, or would you get that through the diet as well?
Speaker 2:Well, we're talking about. There's a lot of different omega-3 oils, but the three basic ones are ALA, alpha-linolenic acid that comes from walnuts and flax seeds, and it's important to get a source of ALA in your diet because ALA itself, before it changes by the body, can convert it into EPA and the longer chain, omega-3, epa and then eventually DHA, which is really important for the brain. But ALA by itself is still an important nutrient, irrespective of its being converted into EPA and DHA. And we get a lot of that in the nutritarian diet, because half of our nut and seed intake comes from walnuts, flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds that are all very high in omega-3. And then we also additionally supplement with plant-based DHA and EPA to keep the omega-3 index above 5.5.
Speaker 2:Because on this plant-based diet we know that we get shrinkage of the brain with aging, with low levels of omega-3 index, which can be protected against by eating seafood or fish oils.
Speaker 2:But we can use these algae oils, which I actually sell a refrigerated algae-based oil on my website, because all my patients and people who follow my approach we get a refrigerated product that gives them some extra EPA and DHA to prevent the natural tendency towards brain shrinkage with aging what I'm saying right now is everybody's brain shrinks with aging. It's part of aging, just like your bones, but we want to resist that from shrinking to maintain our full memory and intellectual abilities in our later years. So we resist that by taking the omega-3 supplements. However, not every single person in the world needs to take the supplement. Some people, genetically, can convert the ALA into EPA and DHA effectively enough to have a level above 5.5 without supplements. And some people need higher doses of supplements because even with a normal dose they don't convert enough. So how much you need to take is variable from person to person and should be directed by the blood test, the omega-3 index.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be a bell curve, isn't it? It's like most things Some people are going to be on the spectrum, others, and those are the ones that everyone likes to highlight as the case studies, but really the general population is going to be pretty fine somewhere in the middle. That's correct, exactly correct. Another concern I've heard people talk about is phytates and oxalates being quite high in raw foods. Is that something that? How do you address that? The?
Speaker 2:nutritarian diet. I do give people advice about how to eat and how to make the diet ideal for them and we do not advise people have salads of spinach and Swiss chard, you know, and push your highest in oxalates, and even parsley. Well, I don't eat a lot of parsley, the food you know. So, in other words, um, that's why we're using using foods like bok choy and kale and you know arugula as a source of omega-3. And bok choy is the biggest calcium-oxalate, a favorable calcium-oxalate ratio. In other words, low oxalates, high calcium. Oxalates bind calcium. Spinach has a lot of calcium but also high in oxalates. The oxalates bind the calcium, making it not bioavailable, and so oxalates also produce more calcium in the urine as well. As you excrete the oxalates, you take more calcium in the urine. That could pool and cause stones in some susceptible people.
Speaker 2:So we're recommending people not eat more than 25% of their raw vegetable intake from spinach. We limit that to 25% and also we utilize and we want the salad to contain a lot of lettuce. Lettuce almost has zero oxalates in it. It's really low oxalate food and it's a rich source of calcium. And lettuce is a superfood, by the way, because lettuce itself is nature's richest source of sulpoquinibose, which is the favored fuel for the healthy bacteria to grow in your gut and to create that healthy biofilm on the villi. You know, healthy bacteria coating. So we're talking here about mixing the right foods together and even though some oxalates are completely normal and actually healthy for us, we don't want to have an excessive amount. So we do watch spinach, parsley, rhubarb, swiss chard or we don't want to overdo those high oxalate foods. But we don't have to be concerned about the whole vegetable and plant kingdom because it has oxalates in it. We just don't want to go overboard on those. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:The same with phytates yeah, the phytates themselves have bone strengthening and other anti-cancer benefits, though they bind zinc and zinc is a critical nutrient. So, even though to protect immunosenescence and brain and also for the brain as we age and we're saying here that if a risk of death as we age, if it's not going to be from cancer or heart disease, then what's we're going to die of? And another cause of death could be infection like pneumonia, right Sepsis and zinc. So zinc supplementation to account for the lower absorption of zinc from a plant-based diet because of the presence of phytates, compared to the more readily and easily absorption of zinc from animal products. We don't just supplement with B12 as a nutrient that's not in an ideal level on a plant-based diet. It's also probably not optimal level of zinc as well. So zinc, B12, and DHA, EPA are probably the three most critical nutrients to supplement with, even though we're still checking a few other things, but those are the main three that you're not going to have idealized levels on a plant-based diet May probably not.
Speaker 1:And what do you think about cooking food versus the raw food? So some people advocate a raw food, vegan or vegetarian diet, and I've heard you talk about how cooking changes things Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean cooking, and, as you know, I recommend a diet that includes a lot of raw food and also some cooked food as well, because most people are aware that it's unhealthy to eat beans not well-cooked. Beans need to be well-cooked, and even certain mushrooms have a mild, like the agaris family of mushrooms, which is the white button and the portobello and the cremini and the regular basic mushroom. The agaritin is high until you cook it, and so the agaritin is somewhat of a mild carcinogen. It's better to have a lower level of those. So some of these things are better off cooked than raw, particularly beans and mushrooms.
Speaker 2:And also when we're cooking some green vegetables like broccoli, it increases usually the volume of greens people can eat and lowers the glycemic load of their diet, meaning that most people on raw food diets to get enough calories are eating excessive amounts of fruit, and the excessive amount of fruit makes their diet not as protein rich as they age.
Speaker 2:So how do you get calories in raw food? You'll eat some great raw green vegetables, but your stomach maxes out because it takes up so much room and then you don't you feel somewhat needed for calories, so you got to eat some. You got to get some fruit in there or avocado or nuts to get enough calories, because you're not eating the beans and the squash and the. So the diet becomes a little bit more imbalanced. You get more nutritional variety, more green vegetable and bean consumption and higher levels of protein per kilogram body mass when you include some cooked vegetables in your diet, and we know there's a dose-dependent relationship between green vegetable consumption and longevity. So we actually are able to eat comfortably, enjoy eating more green vegetables. We cook some asparagus, cook some artichokes, cook some broccoli, and even edamame is cooked and soybeans are cooked, which add good quality protein to the diet as well.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts on people who might be intolerant to some foods? There's a FODMAPs way of eating where certain cruciferous vegetables create digestional distress.
Speaker 2:You know, it's rare that a person has to eliminate all the FODMAPs anyway and that, when it's, usually reflects some degree of other issues that are affecting their digestive negatively, like poor nutrition, overeating, not chewing well enough. Now, the first thing we address when people have digestive impairment is eat less food and chew it much better, making sure you are so mindful that every mouthful is completely liquefied and thoroughly mixed with saliva so you feel like no particles are passing down your throat, it's only liquid passing down your throat, and you wouldn't believe how that takes care of like 90% of the problems right off the bat. They stop overeating, they start chewing better and half the problems are gone. And then you know. So you know, people have allergies and food sensitivities, of course, but as they develop better and better health those things usually improve and we can do oral tolerance therapy. Over time I usually wait a year, or at least a year of getting them in better health first and then, once they're in better health and a better immune function, better nutrient density, then you can do oral tolerance therapy where you give them like a very teeny amount of their offending substance, you know, every day, or three times a day.
Speaker 2:Might be like if they're allergic to sunflower seeds. It could be. You know a half of one sunflower seed in a quart of water and you're just taking a couple of drops of water from that quart. You're taking a homeopathic dose of that sunflower seed material but you're gradually increasing it every day you know what I mean and we get them to.
Speaker 2:It's just like when people say they can't digest beans. Well, I tell them why don't you have a teaspoon of beans at every meal, every single meal, not once a day, three times a day? A little bit of bean. And let's build you up to the level you can tolerate at each meal, like two teaspoons of beans, or even eventually in a month, a tablespoon of beans with each meal, and you'd be surprised. And in six months they would be able to eat a half a cup of beans at one time with no problems, because they learned how to handle, digest and build up the bacteria to digest beans better and build up a better functioning body for better functioning digestion. So in most cases we can fix the digestive impairments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I once had it described to me as if you imagine someone's taking down a building. They start with a wrecking ball and then they go pneumatic drills and then finally they might come in with a chisel and hammers. And that's like our digestive system, that the teeth are like the wrecking ball, but if you turn, you get the construction crew to turn up to take down a skyscraper with chisels and hammers. They're not going to be able to do it and that's like when you don't chew your food it goes straight into your digestive system and it's overwhelming for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and nobody chews enough. Nobody chews really well Because especially they're used to eating foods that don't require being chewed. They're eating like cottage cheese and eggs and things like that, where you can just sour cream and yogurts with sweeteners. It's food that you can just suck down your throat without chewing, practically. So they're not used to highly chewing things and really keeping in the mouth for a long time as it liquefies. So that retraining takes away half the digestive problems right off the bat.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So what sort of clients do you see the best changes with when they come to stay with you in San Diego? And what I'm thinking is if someone has been eating the standard American diet for 60 years, is that too late for them to see changes, or can you still reverse their health at the age of 60 and onwards?
Speaker 2:Well, I always say, if you're not yet in the coffin, you know you could be in better health, you could live longer, you could do better, you know. But yeah, we routinely see people coming in 65, 70, 75 that get off their blood pressure medications, they get off their diabetic medications, that drop 50 pounds and I fix their joints as well. They have bad knees and bad backs and bad shoulders. Because we do nutrition, we're doing the wisdom training as well, the emotional relationship, the building self-esteem from compassion and kindness and appreciating the world around you through gratitude. They're feeling like they don not, as they don't need other people's approval. They're more confident in their ability to be a role model when they leave.
Speaker 2:And we use this thing called. We have a soft wave machine, it's called soft wave TRT. It's like the lithotripsy that breaks up kidney stones, those shock waves. Well, it's those shock wave machines, this new soft wave, high evolution. New soft wave, high evolution, new shock wave machines to break up calcifications in the joints and scar tissue for like frozen shoulder or arthritic knees or bad backs or hips.
Speaker 2:And we have a lot of people who could hardly walk and we put the we, we adjust their gait and their orthotics in their shoes and we get them. So they're balancing their stride and we're using balance board treatments to get their brain neurology for the brain to have better balance and better gait. So we're doing certain rehab physical rehab and building back better joint function. And so people coming in here they leave and they really feel a lot better. They can walk better, they can move better, they're 50 pounds lighter, their knees and ankles don't hurt anymore and they're on their plan to control. The whole goal is to give them the tools they need to continue to live this way at home and keep getting better and better.
Speaker 2:So there's no age at which they're which I don't think a person should be have a chance to improve. However, which you know, there's reality. You know we're not denying the fact that diseases can get it to an irreversible point and the older you are, the more you let the disease gets worse, the more, like when your joint is bone against bone and there's no cartilage left and it's, you know, and it's scraping every. You know. Obviously, the more advanced it is, the less chance we have to restore something. The more the cancer is advanced and the more it's that started to metastasis, you know, the less chance of having a recovery. The more early, of course. The earlier in the disease process and the younger in life you begin, the more potential there is to have a complete recovery.
Speaker 1:And that's brilliantly put. There's something I find in the physical medicine world that's the world I'm in, osteopathy specifically is that someone comes in with back problems and knee problems and the osteopaths don't address other lifestyle factors like nutrition and sleep. And I'm like you know you're working with one hand tied behind your back. It's this whole person approach and it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing.
Speaker 2:And they got to take a hundred. Sometimes these people have to take a hundred pounds off too. Yeah, treating the joints, treating the circulation, treating the structure and the balance, giving them balance exercises and taking a hundred pounds off the body and getting putting a lot of nutrients in and reducing the anti-inflammatory effects of the, the pro-inflammatory effects of their unhealthy diet and the anti-inflammatory effects of eating so healthy, and it all comes together and works together right. So it's really. It gives us tools to really impact people.
Speaker 1:I've heard you talk about the blue zones and say they could do it better, that they're not doing it as well as they could do. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, most people in the blue zones aren't living to be in their hundreds. I mean, it's a lot. So much myths there. You know they live on the average, maybe five to 10 years at the most, longer than the average American. We don't buy a car by comparing it to a junkyard wreck because the average American is so unhealthy. So what, they live longer than the average American. What does that say, I mean? But they're not doing things perfectly over there.
Speaker 2:But we're still learning from the blue zones. What are the things they are doing right, better than Americans? What accounts for the extra five or eight years of lifespan? But we have so much scientific evidence and, as you know, I've reviewed probably 40,000 studies on the elements that reduce cancer risk that we can actually change our lifespan and can slowly aging process, and I'm saying Blue Jones are just a baby step in the right direction. But there's so much more we can do to add 20 years of lifespan, not eight years of lifespan. We can get so much more protection and there's still a lot of heart disease and strokes and even though maybe I'm saying I don't know if I have these statistics right, but it's maybe one in 10,000 people that live to be 100 years old. In the United States and maybe in the blue zone, maybe it's five in 10,000. You know what I mean. It's still not. A lot of people live to be 100 years old. I'm saying let's have 50 of the people live to be 100 years old, not five, not one percent. You know what I mean? Um, yeah, so, but in any case, um, we have, we have so much, um, scientifically, scientifically researched evidence that's corroborated by many studies showing the same thing, such as eating nuts and seeds with your vegetable-based meals helps facilitate the absorption of the anti-cancer phytochemicals in the body 20 to 50 times as much absorption of nutrients. Making a nut-based dressing or something with the meals. And that eating nuts and seeds as your source of fat have a 40% reduction across the board in risk of cardiovascular death.
Speaker 2:Just from that one change alone, forget the other G-bombs. G-bombs stands for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds, and I'm saying that all these categories of foods, each one individually, has lifespan promoting effects. If you just make one of those, just eat more greens or just eat more beans. Eat more flax seeds and chia seeds. That makes you live longer. Eat more berries. It makes you live longer. Protects against danger. Eat more mushrooms. It makes you live longer and has higher, so any one of these things has a dramatic effect on extending human lifespan. But you do all six of them together, then you have really conquered the code here.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and throw into that good sleep, good community stress management and you're on a winning ticket.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So if my listeners have listened to this and they're saying, well, I want to know more about this, where can they go to find out more about you and your work?
Speaker 2:Well, my website's drfermancom, which is D-R-F-U-H-R-M-A-Ncom, and I've written, as you know, many books. I've probably written 12 books and six booklets, but I have seven New York Times bestselling books. But my most recent book is probably the place to start it has the most updated references and that's Eat for Life is my most recent book and probably a good starting book, basic book for people to start with.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and I'll link that in the show notes below. Dr Joel, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to us.
Speaker 2:My pleasure Great talking to you and your audience Terrific.
Speaker 1:That's the end of this episode of the your Lifestyle is your Medicine podcast. Thank you for joining me with my conversation with Dr Joel. Now, if you'd like to support the show, the best thing you can do is subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts so you can be notified when the latest episode comes out. And also, I'll be very grateful if you'll be able to go onto your podcast app and consider giving us a five-star review so I can get this information out to more people. Additionally, if you're watching this on YouTube, please leave a review or comment below. Remember, if you want my direct help, you can go to my website, edpadgettcom, subscribe to my newsletter and drop me a message via the contact us link so I can help you make your lifestyle your medicine.