The most important decision we make is what we put in our mouths. And so if there's any decision that should be built based on evidence and we should demand evidence. It's only one died ever proven to reverse heart disease the majority of patients plant-based diet. If that's one thing you need to know number one killer of men and women only died ever proven a verse in the majority of patients plant-based diet. So the only way that wouldn't argue for it being the diva.
All died for everyone is if it so dramatically increase your risk of, you know Killers to through 15 or something such that it would overwhelm the heart disease benefit and instead you tend to see a benefit neutral flexpro support. It's just the whole system is rigged kind of against us, you know, they're the CEOs of junk food companies are in sitting around trying to think of creative ways to contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic. They just need to make money for their shareholders. How do you do that? You don't do that selling something that goes bad like produce that you can't brand you want a snack.
It sits on the shelf right mean the system is just set up to reward these behaviors that make people sick.
That's dr. Michael Greger. And this is the ritual podcast
the Rich Roll podcast
everybody. What's good? I'm rich roll. This is my podcast. Welcome to it.
It I can almost promise that today's episode is going to leave you ready to ramp up your plant-based intake. So to help you form a new routine. We created an online platform that makes going and most importantly staying plant forward easy and delicious. It's called the plant power meal planner and for just a dollar fifty a week. It provides you with access to thousands literally thousands of delicious nutritious easy to prepare plant based recipes.
Thoroughly customized to your specific preferences with access to a team of experienced nutrition coaches seven days a week. It also automatically creates simple grocery list based on selected recipes and even integrates with grocery delivery in most urban areas. So everything you need to eat the way that you deserve magically arrives at your doorstep to learn more and sign up visit meals dot ritual.com or click meal planner on the top of any page on my website Rich Roll.com.
Because one of the most important decisions we make every day multiple times a day is what we put in our mouths but here's the unfortunate thing the discussion the information that's swirling around the internet about nutrition tends to be a toxic stew a hotly debated metastasizing mushroom cloud of half-truths and misinformation. So, how do we sort through the Tribal wars? How do we separate?
Fact from fiction. Well, we can start with seeking out the experts and how about we default to the best most objective science available to arrive at the facts that live beyond dispute. Well, this is the life's work of today's guest my friend. Dr. Michael Greger longtime listeners are well acquainted with this beautiful man. One of the OG guests on the show all the way back to episode 7, and he also graced us again.
On RRP $1.99, but I can't believe it's been five years since I've talked to this Treasure of a man. That's just not right. So today we're going to put Matters To Rights a graduate of Cornell and Tufts University School of Medicine as well as a founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle medicine. Dr. Greger is a globally lauded nutrition science wizard. He's the guy behind nutritionfacts.org the world's most authoritative.
For science based Public Service destination for all things nutrition health and disease prevention. He's appeared everywhere from the dr. Oz Show to The Colbert Report and his books how not to Die the how not to die cookbook and how not to diet which is the focus of today's conversation all became instant New York Times Best Sellers, and I think it's worth noting that in an effort for him to remain completely free of conflicts of interest.
100% of all fees and proceeds that he receives from his many speaking engagements and all of his book sales are completely donated to charity. There's a bunch more. I want to say about the good doctor G and the conversation to come but first on the subject of making healthy eating delicious and convenient or brought to you today by Daily Harvest. Do you ever have those days where you just grab a handful of whatever snack you can find in the pantry and just call?
Launch that is called satiation not nourishment and don't get me wrong. I do it too in between workouts or recording sessions. Sometimes I just throw down a bag of cashews and call it a meal. This is why I'm all about Daily Harvest. Here's the lowdown. Basically Daily Harvest is organic farm Frozen pre-prepared thoughtfully sourced fruit and vegetable meals like sweet potato and wild rice hash which I'd like to talk.
Top off with an avocado or lentil tomato molinez. This is stuff. You don't have time to make but it's delivered right to your door everything at Daily Harvest is built on fruits and vegetables. No preservatives. No added sugar. No artificial ingredients. Everything stays Super Fresh in your freezer until you're ready to enjoy it and the variety is huge. You can choose from more than 65 different options. I've got tons of Incredible Smoothies hearty soups Harvest bowls and flatbreads.
Each recipe takes just one step to prepare and it's ready in five minutes or less. I love them. I kids love them. Especially my 12 year old daughter and she my friends is not an easy sell plus everything is crazy fresh Daily Harvest Works directly with farms and they freeze organic fruits and vegetables at Peak ripeness to lock in nutrients and taste. So stop overthinking your meals for the week. Go to Daily Harvest.com and enter my promo code Rich Roll to get $25 off your first box.
That's promo code Rich role for $25 off your first box at Daily Harvest.com. That's Daily Harvest.com promo code Rich Roll. We're also brought to you today by ship. Oh, I can tell you firsthand from watching my wife Julie birth or plant-based Cheese Company SRI mu that the number one challenge for e-commerce businesses is shipping customers expect it to be Flawless. So if you can't get that dialed in and affordable,
You're screwed. Well ship I was founded to solve this problem for businesses both large and small not only can their volume discounts save you up to 90% off Carrier rates 90 percent. That's insane. It's the only shipping software for growing businesses that you can start right now set up in minutes and then ship your goods today, but perhaps even more valuable is the time and he's they can save you. All you got to do is connect your online store to shippo and they will instantly identify the lowest shipping rates from 55 plus.
Stop Global carriers. Your orders are automatically pulled in and ready to go just click print and ship plus automated return labels are free. You only pay if your customers use them. So stop being held hostage by your carrier get shippo today. And right now shippo has an incredible offer get a shipping consultation and shippo Pro Plan six-month trial for free at go shippo.com Rich Roll. That's up to a seven hundred dollar value for free.
Echo ship out.com Rich Roll go right now and get your shipping consultation and shippo Pro Plan six-month trial for free at go shippo.com / Rich Roll. So you've perfected that sour dough recipe you've been working on for years. You've got your small business license and the orders are starting to pour in customers are spreading the word. So what is stopping you from making your side gig a dream job a website?
Right. It's about damn time. You made a website. That's just as awesome as the bread you've been baking whether that bread is real or metaphorical. And if you can bake a loaf of bread I can assure you that you can build a beautiful site with Squarespace to me. The coolest thing about Squarespace. Is there all-in-one platform which hosts a variety of templates you can choose from and play around with and try out for different looks on your website and don't worry Squarespace has intuitive and easy-to-use tools and customizable.
Gives you the freedom to craft a site that is authentic to you. You don't need to know how to code. You don't have to be some kind of graphic wizard. All you got to do is be you. So stop putting your business goals on hold make your next move with a stunning website from Squarespace. Just go to squarespace.com forward slash Rich Roll and make sure to use the offer code Rich role at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase at squarespace.com Rich Roll.
Offer code Rich Roll to get 10% off your first page. Okay. Dr. Michael Greger. So today's conversation is about first and foremost how not to diet the optimal criteria to enable weight loss and the actionable steps required to replace constant weight loss struggles with simple and sustainable lifestyle practices, but it's also about the corrosive.
Option of commercial influences within the nutrition space it's about how to digest the incredibly conflicting information where spoon fed every day by the media and celebrities alike and it's about separating evidence-based science from confirmation bias. I should note that this was recorded preak Ovid back in February. So this is a coronavirus free conversation.
However, if you would like, dr. G's Take on our current situation you are in luck as this week just a couple days ago. He released a new audio book entitled how to survive a pandemic which is all about the origins of these types of diseases how to protect ourselves and what we must Rectify to reduce the likelihood of future catastrophes. So check that out. Dr. G is truly one of the most delightful relentless.
Passionate and service-minded humans I've ever met and you guys are going to really dig this one. So without further Ado, please meet the inimitable and amazing Michael Greger MD. So good to see you. It's been a couple of years, but I think about you all the time and you're just you're out there. You have more energy. You are more Relentless than almost anybody I've ever met. It's crazy.
You were just saying that you're
doing how many lectures I got 200 cities and sometimes more than one lecture person is City sometimes to a you know, different cities in the same day, you know over ten months. Yeah,
so when people say, you know, yeah, I'd really like to eat better but I travel too much nobody travels as much as you do. I don't think I've ever met anybody who travels much.
Well, I but it's just I'm on like a three-year book cycle. So it's only one out of three years. So I write a book a year then I'm on the road for a year, but then I got you know, and then I got a right.
Three years worth of videos for nutrition facts not write the
next book. So do you whiteboard that all out advance so, you know when your books are down the line and all of
that to like 2042 or some
right? And when do you how do you apportion that so you have all the videos coming out on nutrition facts, right? You got the books. You got the lectures. You're never home and when you are home, you're on a walking
desk. Like how does this work? Yeah. No. No, so people like well, I love the video you like. How do you do the video today? You remember plain as if you know, I'm
Thinking right. It's like real
time to that video a year
ago literally, right? So I do I script three years worth of videos every three years. And so you just hope and pray that broccoli still good for you next year because you know, it's set in stone
has that ever happened where the science has changed and you had to pull a vehicle that yeah. Yeah.
I mean usually in there's even stronger evidence or you know the same kind of Direction, but now there's you we finally have something that really clinches it. Yeah more than
That rice, but yeah,
well, you are one of my very first guests on this show episode 7 going all the way down there and then we did a second one where there was a technical snafu. We are at some conference and we did it and it didn't record that's only happened like three or four times and seven years, but you were you fell victim to that the trendsetter. I know I did and then the last time that we did this I think was four years ago. So it seems like yesterday as you're in my heart all
What is the the current lecture all about because I know you you're constantly of D change it for every audience or you have kind of a lockdown thing that you do every year.
Yeah, so so now so I used to a new talk every year because I was always traveling every year but now I'm only traveling, you know after the new book, so I just have the new book talk and so for new audiences they get the last book talk, um, but for audiences of already seen it the how not to die talk. I give the how not to die at the weight lost.
I'm doing now. So this is the
new book. I actually like the old one. I mean so my the last talk how not to die talks my favorite talk. I mean she says more humor than any others. I mean so my preference and it's like perfectly memorized like I can like, you know, think about my grocery list while I'm giving it like, I mean, it's just like definitely right and put its so but and and the new, you know, I'm reading off at notes on a Podium I missed, you know, it's going to be awhile before and just want to get really good at it.
I never get it's like a stand-up comedian. You
got a date you tape your special. You gotta retire the material. It's all over but in your case this material it has a longer shelf life though. This stuff doesn't doesn't necessarily
age. You know, what's crazy. So how not to die is selling better now than it did the month after release backlog 2016 - old
seen over 3/4 of a million copies right about about that now and hundred percent of all proceeds go to charity.
A charity for all my books. Yeah, we're talking a lot of
money. Yeah. Yeah this last one. I donate more than a million dollars this year. Wow, very very
cool. And I would suspect that that a big part of that other than just being you know compassionate in your heart is to basically rebut the argument that you're conflicted you have you're selling a book. So you're anchored in this position and no matter what the evidence says, you've got to tow this line because you're financially incentivize.
Used
right. Although there's still the ideological kind of conflicts of interest. So even even people that aren't necessarily profiting off of their work. I mean, they still may be wedded to some idea. I'm so it doesn't completely divorce me from the rhyme, you know, you know concern over bias, but but yeah, I mean with so much the corrosive Corruption of commercial
influences. Well, let me talk about that
within I mean medicine in general
Nutrition in particular where you know this I mean the, you know, the confirmation bias is just so extreme in no other field I've ever seen such a thing.
It's pretty bananas right now. I feel like there's a mushroom cloud of information. Like if you're in the twittersphere, it's just it's insane the siloed, you know, kind of Tribal wars that are going on right now are so emotional and acerbic it's quite toxic. So, how do you I mean you post your stuff?
I've noticed like you don't engage in any of that. You kind of just stay above The
Fray. Yeah know that yeah, and that was a conscious decision to be like, whoa. This is all the science that I could find on this and so there's unless and so the only you'll notice on nutrition fact, the only comments I respond to is what about this study or you know, what about this study, you know, and because it's very possible. I may be I miss that stuff. I mean, you know, I mean, we got a huge research staff now, but you know, I want to make sure that that I put that into the
Into the calculus when I came out with what I consider the best available balance of evidence. And so it's like this is the sign so there's really nothing anyone can say, you know, I mean and so and it's really not like, you know, most of my videos. I turned really hard to be like this not I have no opinion on this. Here's the science make up your own mind. I mean it convinced me to do XY and Z, but if you're not convinced by the evidence, you know, wait till you know, right then I was
drops, but you must you must
Must get the criticism that you're cherry-picking studies. Like you have to make a decision about what studies you're going to highlight in these videos, right? So
that's why that's why it takes me forever to write the videos because I have to make sure so not just some new study. But where that new study exists in the context of every other study that's ever been published ever. Right? I mean so many studies get published a year. Well, I mean, so just like legitimate so well, so in the in obesity just just in the
Of obesity. There's over a hundred thousand studies every so that's like, you know, I mean so it's like, you know, I go to sleep and I'm already like, you know, I'm way behind you do sleep. Well, I'm working on it,
but talk about that in the new book. I know you practice it is
so depressing to look at the sleep medicine literature because I just realized all oh that's I'm going to that horrible things gonna happen to me. Oh that this
is the one blind spot. If you're running your
regimen, that's yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, but I mean I just I find myself I'm so much less productive when I'm unconscious. Yeah that you know,
so thousand studies a year on Obesity alone hundred thousand a hundred thousand. Oh my God, how do you even wait through this and figure out so, you know what's worth looking at and you know, what's really worth exploring and digging into and and and ultimately I would imagine deconstructing at times to figure out what's you know, what what holds up your standards and what doesn't.
Yeah, so there was over
So we have over a hundred research volunteers that churn through that's how we can get through tens of thousands of studies every year just because we have you know, all these like retired docks that are just sitting around and just enjoy have a hobby of help me out basically and so any one time we have nearly 200 active volunteers and so I mean we can just we can just churn through so much and you know have access have people in libraries every major Library anywhere who will pull any study from Anna.
You know, so I have someone that will just go to the NIH, you know large Medical Library in the world and pull any gold say there's not even online. So I have access to everything and just in this incredibly politically privileged position to be able to you know, but that's assuming the literature also has one thing right the reason why this new obesity book The the weight loss book was such a bear the hardest thing I've ever taken on in my life was because it's incredibly
Inflicting. Hmm. And so if you know hundreds they say one things and others hundred say say another thing if say well we saying what is it about the way they did the studies the the populations the exclusion criteria, like what was it that you could arrive at such despair conclusions using very similar kind of methods and that for for so simple questions like skip breakfast or not. Skip breakfast exercise before or after a meal or I mean these like really like these are
An article research questions, there's a thousand articles on and you're just like wait a second. This is two pages of the book maybe want maybe it's a little sidebar
and it's all of us want to know should I practice
my and you know, I get a lot of fast I get a lot of that to do that. That's that's what everyone's like. Okay. I don't care like that just temporary thing. I know right be my Guru right and that but that but they you know, anyone thought I mean that's that's the antithesis. I was what I wanted to you know,
That's the problem is people just you know, just follow what someone says and as if we were born with this knowledge. I mean we I mean when it comes to something as life and death important as the what feed yourself and your family then if there's anything we should any decision we should make best based on evidence. It should be something like that. If you're online buying a toaster then the random opinions of strangers may actually be really useful like, oh I like this.
One, okay, but when it but you know when I was when I was in practice and so we came to me I said, well, you know, why are you eating this particular a someone at the gym told me to you know eat this with right? I'm like really, I mean, you're the checkout aisle magazine is the reason that you're feeding your kids that I mean you realize that what we is the number one cause of death and disability in the united mean the most important decision we make is what we put in our mouths and so if there's any
Fiction that should be built based on evidence and we should demand evidence and not just a citation but show me the evidence. I want to see it for myself to make sure you didn't take it out of context. I mean that this is this is what and so that's that but
you and I both know well that even the most well-intentioned consumer who begins to explore this whether online or whatever they're going to find conflicting information out there and it appears to have equal Merit. It's like it's like when you
Turn on the news and there's 10 people yelling at each other at the same time. Even if one of them is completely Loony Toons. It appears that they're standing on equal footing right. So, you know, you can find studies that will support whatever perspective or confirmation bias that you have and it becomes very difficult for that well-meaning, you know intelligent person to separate, you know the chaff from you know, the cream when it comes to this this is where you come in but even then
It's like all right. Well, you're sifting through thousands and thousands of these studies and realizing. Well, this is complicated and even even good science seems to conflict. You know, how do you make heads or tails of that? I can't judge somebody who's like, you know, dr. Greger just like what is it? Tell me give me the thing
and now you want to check, you know, it's like that and there's lots of problems with the, you know, peer reviewed medical literature. You know, it's like that. I don't know if Winston Churchill left actually said it but attributed to Winston Churchill, you know democracy.
See worst form of government except for all the others right? And it's the same thing. I miss like the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It's the best we have. I mean, it's the worst we have except for all the others. I mean, that's what else can we do but abide by you know, what's been, you know published in the medical literature, but there's lots of problems with industry bias and you know funding effects and I'm so that's why you really need. I'm first thing I do when I look at this study who paid for the study, where is it coming from just so you can read
With that lens doesn't mean it's necessarily bad study
topics. So be a good study
till be a good study. But you want to read it with that, you know to you want to you know, take it with extra-special grain of salt and look the materials and methods really make sure they didn't create this. They didn't produce the stay in a way to get some desired result. They were actually coming into it really, you know, look I to learn
something and despite the fact that you've read countless thousands of these studies, you know, you've been on board with the whole food plant-based.
Diet for decades at this point. Do you ever come across a study that contravenes some long-held truth that you've held like if you ever had to mature update your thoughts on things. Like how is that
Evolution ban? Yeah. No, look. I mean anyone who's saying the same thing about nutrition that they're saying few years ago obviously hasn't been keeping track the literature. I mean, the reason I can do knew I could do new videos everyday forever is just because there's this tremendous wealth of information out there now usually,
Kind of nibbling at the edges like after how not to Die game out. I realized that oh and I was telling people. Oh, you got a toast your walnuts and sesame seeds and makes your kitchen smell so wonderful. That's great and they tasted wonderful. Then this paper came out talked about these a GES these Advanced glycation end products is glycotoxins found in high fat high protein foods exposed to high heat dry heat temperatures traditionally. It's like frankfurters and stuff and chicken McNuggets, but not you put them at those temperatures and I create these nasty. I don't so I
I know I tell people to eat the raw nuts, but that's the nice thing about a video where it's like it update. I suppose the book which is already out but you know reprints we can get it but I mean it's a little things like these are like teach him good but but I mean there you can find studies all the time saying, you know, you know bacon butter is good for you just like the tobacco Lobby would come literally with piles of studies to these Congressional hearings say this is not this is not the research that says smoking is neutral. This is
The literature saying Smokies good for you. It helps with Parkinson's disease and ulcerative colitis. And a lot of this is true because it's immunosuppressive and serve an autoimmune disease. You smoke you kill your immune system your you're not immune disease gets better inflammatory bowel disease gets better, but maybe these are legit studies showing smoking beneficial now, of course, that's not the best available balance of evidence because you're going to die rific death lung cancer, but you can but those studies exist and you can cherry pick them out and that's
That's why that's why, you know every single every every day a video comes out. I send the video to every single principal investigator of every article eyesight and be like excited. Here's your research, you know in hopes, that one will be like you you misinterpreted or whatever and I can immediately, you know, kind of
right so when you when you get like what is your response when somebody criticizes you and says, he's just you know, he's a plant
Guys always going to be a plant-based guy. He's got his own confirmation bias. This is a guy who's really just an animal rights activist whose shrouded himself in a medical
frog I mean, it's like it's like, you know some some, you know, pulmonologist saying, oh, you're just an anti cigarette guy mean you're only reason you're telling people not to smoke it is because you know, you have a well known record of you were against cigarettes 10 years ago before the study.
He comes out o a new study comes out and saying smoking is bad for you. Mr. Anti cigarettes. Is that it again? I mean the science is the science and you know, the charges of cherry-picking so there for example is only one died ever proven to reverse heart disease the majority of patients plant-based diet number one killer of men and women like and that'd be the default die until proven. Otherwise only one. So it's hard to cherry-pick when there's only one Cherry like there's no other now in the future, maybe some new.
It will be shown to but I mean until that happens and this happens over and over again with multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease and on down the list nothing's been shown to work better and there's just I mean, you know, so right
right. I mean listen you said it but the fact that heart disease, you know, basically kills more people than anything else and this is the one protocol that actually will not only prevent it but reverse it if you have it like why
are we even exploring anything further and the fact that it's amazing? I think it's so
controversial and the fact that can also help prevent arrest reverse other leading Killers type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. We seem to make the case for plant-based eating just like simply overwhelming at this point. I mean if that's alright if there's one thing you need to know number one killer of men and women only died ever proven a verse in the majority of patients plant-based diet. So the only way that wouldn't argue for it being the default died for everyone is if it
So dramatically increase your risk of you know Killers to through 15 or something. So I said would overwhelm the heart disease benefit and instead you just see you tend to see a benefit neutral effects across the board.
Right? Well, you've got to be thrilled to see this movement this way of eating and living, you know, kind of explode over recent years. I mean never before in your career, you know, have we seen such a crazy adoption rate which is super exciting, but there's also a
Lot of pushback now and we have these sort of other diets that are Rena rising to the surface and and you know challenging for their moment in the Sun and and it makes me realize or I guess appreciate just how emotional all of this is. It's not it's really not an information War as much as it is a psychological War, you know what I mean? Like because you've spent decades putting information out. I mean nobody puts out more information about this than you do.
And if somebody's resistant to that that's their choice, but I feel like the battle really needs to be waged on how to win hearts and minds and not just the minds but the hearts, you know what I mean like hot. What is what and I'm interested in, you know, whether you have thought about this, you know with respect to the newest book. It's like weight loss like everybody wants to lose weight, right, but often it's not it's not the information. It's the implementation of the information and and what gets in the
The way of people taking that information and putting it into action has to do with their own psychological makeup and you know, the emotional landscape and you know, the the social construct in which they live their lives,
you know, when I you know that some of these, you know, amazing plant-based nutrition Health Care conferences now with we now attract thousands of right mean it's just amazing. You know, the number one question I have for ever when it's like how did you come across the obviously then learn about it and in medical school, none of us did like
how did you and most frequently the answer I get is because a patient taught them like so they've had these patients forever and they know their whole families and they've had diabetes and you know, they're just trying to slow the rate at which they go blind and their kidney function and lower Limbs and then all the sudden they come in there 20 pounds lighter there there they need to dramatically over medicated all the sudden they have to pull back all the drugs and the doctors like what happened and the patient says, oh I saw four
silver knives or you know game changers something and then all the sudden and I'm and the docking the back the Mind doctor saying I got like 2,000 patients just like you what is going on and that's so and so it's great that it's upside down. Oh my God, and so have you drives me crazy? And so I'm like, wait a second. I've got a stack this big of peer-reviewed scientific literature randomized control trials proving reversal of these diseases yet. It was one little anecdote one.
And comes to you and then all of a sudden but it's but it's but it's that human connection. We're like storied creatures like all the data in the world, you know, all you know, it'll you know, I some people are open to that but other people they just need to see in front of their face or I and so I know so that's that's why I think the more popular it gets the easier will be when they see their friends and family the Transformations then it'll click that and of course, I'll be in the background banging my head against the wall saying, how long is this is the 70s, right?
The Pinnacle was it reversing heart disease in the 70s how many people have died since then needlessly over a hundred thousand people every year heart disease in the United States alone that much suffering it should anger people right? I mean the the the the reaction to someone who just doesn't have to go through, you know, open heart surgery anymore isn't shouldn't be relief. Oh my God. I have to get my chest cracked open and now I get to live long happy life and see my grandkids grow up. She'd be like how why didn't anyone.
Don't miss Prime outraged outraged. It's
yeah, yeah of these 200 cities that you visit all the speeches that you give how many of them are at medical schools or hospitals? Because I obviously like the way to get to the root of this is to is to educate medical students and create a better ecosystem around
care training the trainer's that's really what I'm doing now is mostly talking to professional audiences. I'm talking tonight at a medical center the
and lots of medical schools now, but and that's how I actually started out. My kind of speaking career is going in fact, that was my goal is to beat every single medical school every two years to hit every single new grad coming out. I have a whole new generation of Doc's learning this but I realized like that's too slow like they're not they're still going to be in training for another five years and they got to get out and then they mean so like people are dying now when it comes to Safe simple side effect free Solutions, like stop smoking eat healthier. You don't need your doctor to tell you to do that.
We can take this directly to the people with this kind of democratization of information now available. And so I you know, so then that's how nutritionfacts.org got born instead of for forget the doctors, you know, let them come around eventually we got a right people are dying right now people need to know and then of course, it's up to you. It's your body your choice want to go smoke cigarettes, but go bungee jump and do whatever you want. But you know, they're at least you should be, you know educated about the predictable consequence
of your actions.
Actions other than your unbridled enthusiasm for this one of the things that's that that I like about you and that's interesting about you is that you really strive to stand outside of dogma and you're not telling people what to do you're just you're basically in a very objective way presenting the information and allowing people to do with it as they will.
Yeah. I mean that's always been really important to me is and lookin for whatever reason and there's no judgment. But I mean I happen to have the background that enabled
You to do this work and to be who I am. I mean, there are people struggling with all sorts of things that you don't know about and the fact that they're still eating, you know, crap on their whole, you know way home from work. I mean, you have no idea what's going on in their lives. They LED them to whatever but should they have the opportunity to really, you know, whether it's a health scare, whatever to be like, I really need to clean up my act. At least there should be a place they can go where here's the information. This is what I wish I learned in medical school.
And you know do with it.
He got on nutrition fact. I mean how many hours of videos do you have on there? Now? We have
thousands thousands for oh, so we over 2,000 videos now.
Basically you go to the side and you could just search whatever food or whatever ailments and you've got it
covered. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah over Brawn out of whack. Nobody's
gonna
be there's always stuff. I'm constantly. I mean, there's just always knew. Yeah, you know, and you know, so I
A two ways one through I run through all the topics actually alphabetically anyone's keeping a real close attention will be like, oh so the olive oil came after the nuts which came after the you know, yeah, but and then I just go through and read all the every issue every single Inglis Anderson nutrition journal the world see because there may be topics. I don't even know to look up there's this. Yeah, I mean all sorts of new hormones and real receptors and new just working on the plane on this CD 36 receptor.
Whoa blew my mind videotape is like because to come right
get sidetracked on that. It sounds like an air. It sounds like a airplane to me like a C-130 already know what the hell? Oh my God amazing in terms of taking it to the people which you've been doing the real needle mover I think has been this slew of documentaries artists that have come out over the last amazing the most recent of which is of course game changers and you were the scientific technical advisor.
That movie right? So what did that look like? What was your
involvement? Well, I mean just I mean certainly to take that first point when I go around speaking ask people in these, you know for our book signing lines. How did its what the hell that's Forks Over Knives is these these documentaries are now just really yeah tremendous oversized effects. And so if people have their funders interested in getting this, you know movement off the off the ground, I think that's a decent way to
go. Yeah. Well, they're probably good.
It's these movies
do very well and they have so ya know so so yeah, so I was approached by James of Wilkes God like seven years ago, you know when they was just you know an idea and and you know interview me for the for the film and some like, you know on some Highway and Santa Rosa or something in this noise. He's like a little whatever, you know, like little camcorder he kind of thing and hotel and it was just an idea but you can't say no to any opportunity, right? So like poor Dean ornish still kicking himself for not being
Silver knives because he's taking some time off or whatever. You just got to be in everything and hope something else. And and so so then he actually it's starting to get some momentum for the film and invited me back said sorry we got through all that footage way. It was crappy foolish, but now we actually have real cameras and you know, all right, so then we you know do another thing and actually happened once or twice more than two like okay now we really have money now, we have liked a fancy so I went through like and then of course I get cut out completely from the film which is fine.
And I wouldn't replace a second of it. Well, I think so perfect. But hopefully I'll be in some DVD extra or something down the road. But so but the role I could play instead was to fact-check the film uh-huh because I was like, I have an army. I mean that that's what we do. You're the perfect person for that. Yeah, and and and we actually behind the scene and and open invitation to anyone writing a book producing a film TV show anything come to me. I'll do it for free or Holt.
I mean, it's so important to me that we don't say ridiculous stuff and people throw the baby out with the bathwater mean the movement has said just ridiculous crazy stuff exaggerated stuff. I mean while I mean if yeah, it doesn't help the movement to do that it right and because
it imperils The
credibility if you have an as if we have to exaggerate anything we should use the industry estimates for everything the most lowball, you know. Oh, yeah, it's only
1,500 gallons per pound of beef whatever water, you know, according to the National Cattlemen's beef Association or whatever. I mean, that's what I mean. Yeah, it boggles the mind. So yeah, that's so critical that so a lot of the books that that you know, I are written up and as long as long as we will do it as long as they're willing to
actually write so your job was really vetting all the science so that there was no exaggerations and that everything that was said and every scene kind of, you know met the method
Scientifically in
fact was conservative. So not just sticking to the consensus but like on the conservative side of anything, let's not see anything. The science is so strong. We don't need to exaggerate we don't need to go anywhere but beyond the Solid Ground, we're
right and the the whole erectile dysfunction sequence was your
brainchild. I was walk us through that. Well, so we need so I had the data I had the science but again, you need to make this.
Uh science relatable, you know I can show you know graph a table an amazing table with a statistical significance that alone would give you an erection, but that's that's not going to move
visual Sunny cinematic.
It's not cinematic and so they kept asking how do we make it? How do we make it visual? How do we make it alive? And so so I said, well, let's do the lacked Essence the you know, the the the cloudiness of fat after eating a meal in the serum and
I knew just from reading the literature on on blood flow on endothelial function that they had these ridges scan machines with a name like ridges scan. It's got to be good. And and so and so and now it's actually being done legit why I mean in a real study, in fact, I think bios felt. Dr. Oz felt is now as the funding is actually going to put it to the desk and really, you know, tightly controlled randomized fashion with
With a you know a Cadre of folks, but again you was just they wanted to show the example to you know, anyway, right? Yeah, but
so latest book how not to die at how dare you write a book about weight loss can't believe this right. So how not to die is really about sort of tackling preventing reversing the you know, the sort of top ailments chronic ailments that people suffer from but of course obesity is an ailment in and of itself.
For a contributor to a variety of ailments, right? So without sort of confronting obesity head-on, you're not really getting you know, you're not going to move the needle for people right? So you got to you got to get them to lose weight.
So I did yeah. Yeah, so how not to die 15 leading causes of death just went through one through 15 chapter on each talking world. I may play in preventing resting reversing. So there's a type 2 diabetes chapter, obviously the oh but never took obesity on directly and and it really required its own time. So that means
yeah,
so you have to then turn your focus into how to help people lose weight. Right? Like what is the science of weight loss and I would imagine, you know, you had to confront like a lot of things that we sort of assumed or take for granted that perhaps maybe didn't turn out to be true like like oh calories in calories out or you know, three meals a day or what. Do you know? What if there's so much conventional wisdom around like here's how you lose weight ABC so
By immersing yourself in all of this research. Like what surprised you the most or what did you discover that perhaps, you know, you didn't expect.
Yeah. So in both ways some of the conventional wisdom actually has real scientific basis and only recently does it have real scientific basis. So for years, we've just been saying stop talking out of our butt but now oh, that's actually true. We should you know, breakfast like a king, you know lunch like a prince dinner like a pauper kind of thing some of this or you know, drink water before meal very,
Kind of thing. Oh now we actually have signs. It really does Michelle beneficial effects, but I think the biggest the biggest challenge for me just because this is not my field. I mean, I you know, I just know from what I learned in med school and this concept that a calorie is a calorie right account from one source is just as frightening as a colleague from any other source. I mean, this is kind of a Trope broadcast by the food industry which comes all the self of culpability but it's just not true like, you know, a hundred calories of chickpeas has a different effect on body weight than a hundred calories.
Have chicken or Chiclets based on absorption based on fiber content based on also and even if you absorb the same amount even Kelly may still not be a Kelly depends when you eat it in what context do you eat at how fast you eat it all so I mean so I mean that just kind of exploded like my concepts of kind of what we had learned in med school. So like this chronobiology have a whole chapter on
rye hold the circle logarithm this because this is I'd never heard anything about
this so
What I had known what we learned about met in medical training is it's called karma Therapeutics where if you give chemotherapy at the right time of day you actually have fewer side effects and it's more effective than given at a different time of day same dough same drug, which which is fascinating but I hadn't taken it the to The Logical conclusion. What about Chrono prevention might exercise and and and and and you know, sleep patterns and meal patterns also play a role if it
has such a dramatic effect and indeed calories eaten in the morning are less fattening the exact same food. You denied fewer calories after Sundown the better so they do these studies how it acts is that well, it's because so for example in the morning your body has to make glycogen stores for the for the rest of the day and in make instead of just using the energy if you if you take the little
Chains of sugars and starches and and make them to glycogen in your muscles and liver. That's an energy intensive process. And then you break it back down to be used later on and so the fact that you're using energy to basically get the energy right back is kind of energy intensive buzzing this one of the small reasons. Why eating in the morning when your when your body's, you know knows it's got a whole day ahead of it. Where are you? You have that glycogen building signal earlier in the day, but, you know a lot of the car.
No biology stuff. We just don't know in terms of what exactly is going on, but everything from body temperature to you know, testosterone to cortisol levels everything, you know goes on this this wild they'll attack and then there's seasonal Cycles weight loss, you know, it's in the the way you put on the kind of winter months for for the for the holidays may have improved
upon how far the Earth is
from the Sun crazy right there with the rotation. I'm so
Was damning that that that yeah that just blew me away. So you can put people on 2,000 calories exact same through the on calories as one meal is breakfast or one meal at supper the Army did this and one and the evening group same calories gains weight and the breakfast group loses weight such a chore as crazy. And so then that really opened my eyes a okay. Well now anything's possible and so then really kind of dug deep and you know came up just you know, what are the criteria for for Optimum weight loss like what would a
Would the optimum weight loss diet look like from kind of from the ground up just because originally how not to die. It was going to be a chapter on each of the latest diet Trends and just you know going through what's the science behind each by realize the books can be out of date before it even comes out. You know, I'm part of the US News and World Report, you know diet panel, you know Andrew we get dozens of new diet. I've never heard about every year that we have to go through and I just realized well, wait a second this that's not the right. It's like whack-a-mole. So instead let's just here's the criteria.
Switch you can look at any future diet and see what kind of where would fall among this range. And then and then the second half of the book is regardless of what you eat. There are, you know kind of tips and tricks that can and tweaks that can get
you to accept like the water thing and focusing on nutritional density and caloric dilution things.
So very good nutrition and see that's the really the first farm and that's part of a good healthy weight loss diets a weight loss techniques but like the water like water,
Reloading. So if you drink two cups of water before eating a Whopper, you'll gain less weight than I mean so I mean, so it's regardless of what you eat. That's the whole second have and the hope is people don't just kind of jump to the second half in locksley do a safe sustainable nutritious healthy diet, but
in terms of the foods to eat though, I've been at Harkens back to the previous book and it kind of Orient surround the daily
dozen ended up. I mean an end up that way based on those criteria like want to be fiber rich.
You know low and added sugars on add fat and you know, you know water rich and all they say and if the same, you know, vegetables and the kind of on down the list and that was the that was the the either the criticism we got from the daily diet the daily dozen app that we released its, you know at a million downloads and there's two camps of criticism one is on my guys too much food. I can't eat at all. And which gets much food to my oh my God, I can't because there's two all this
stuff make sure you get all of that. Well,
the I mean that
But I think it's aspirational like, you know, it's just and you can you know, make it a game and see how many you can get if you don't do good one day and try better the next day and that was actually this. I mean, I'm hoping to you know, after you checked out those boxes only so much room for pepperoni pizza at the end of the day. I mean, it's this kind of it's this kind of eat more approach, but it's really hoping to kind of actually push out some of the less healthy options, but the other group of criticisms came in says not enough calories. It's like look I'm training. There's no way I'm getting a got to get enough calories eating this kind.
I was like well, look this is the minimum you can eat more food. I'm not say this is all you can eat. This is I just want people to hit this but then I realized wait a second. Oh too much food too few calories. That sounds like a good weight loss diet and the fact that these are some of the healthiest foods on the planet is a good bonus as
well. Right? Did you come across some interesting research on intermittent fasting because that seems to be the thing that you know, a lot of people are talking about and thinking about and practicing right now, and I've had a couple people on the podcast speak to
it.
That's the biggest chapter is the vast each other so much information on I remember looking to faster because it's been a you know common interest for four years people ask me about it. And any time I only want to say I don't know once ever even if the most esoteric question in the world. I wanted the next time someone asks me that I'm going to know an answer to it and some people cast me about fasting and there just was no data. And so that's why if there's if there's if there's a condition or food that you can't find a nutrition facts that
Didn't one reason is probably because there's just no good data out there. I mean, it's not like, you know, I'm trying to annoy. It's just like we don't know and so but just in the last few years have been an explosion of research into intermittent fasting water-only fast thing, you know, 5 to 25 5 time restrictive eating all these and so tremendous literature and what's interesting about the intermittent fasting literature. Well, so in terms of investing no benefit in terms of compliance.
Ants or lean mass conservation or weight loss compared to continuous caloric restriction and the longest largest studies today shows increase in cholesterol for people that have the same caloric restriction doing alternative day modified fasting and so I would encourage people not to do it or at least get their cholesterol checked but the time restricted feeding where you try to narrow your eating window to 12 hours or less and so you fasting least half the day.
What was that's this is one of the research areas where there was diametrically opposed some studies show. It's great for you other studies show. It's terrible for you has all these negative metabolic consequences. And so it was my job to like what is going on here and turns out it's timing early versus late. So
when do you break the fast
so your window, right? So if your window is late you get the negative biological consequences.
Of eating at night and and and shifting your calories towards later in the day. And so people that skip breakfast. I had these negative metabolic effects of timer start feeding, whereas people that did early time restrictive feeding. Not only got the been the Chrono biological benefits of shifting their calories towards the beginning of the day. They also got the timer started feeding benefits. And so that was really the that that that's that's one of the things in the book that actually changed the way my family
needs. Yeah. You just rocked me with that because I do it where I eat.
Night, if you're going to own ether and the day miss any meal it should be it should be supper not breakfast,
right breakfast is called Break fast for a
reason. Yeah, I mean that hand and wow. Yeah, I mean and and that actually may be one of the reason that the Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians live longest living population in the world, right Okinawa Japanese with the number two and they're done. They now they're eating KFC. There's really only one Blue Zone that continues to this day. It's in Loma Linda, California The Seventh-Day Adventists visitors log.
- living formally stop study population in the world, but me but one of the reasons maybe because they practice this early time restrictive eating often skipping supper of their the teachings of the church are you know, like two meals a day and you know, make lunch the biggest meals a day hasn't been put to the test but given all this short term data. That's super interesting. Maybe I know that'll be the next book how not to a gel look deep into that.
Is it is that the net is
starting?
January 25 one it'll be out December
22. Oh my God. What's the book after that?
I think it's going to be a hot to die from cancer for cancer survivors. Unfortunately, you know the advice people with cancer diagnosis get is he whatever you want or just keep weight on or whatever terrible advice. I'm and now we actually have some decent data on cancer survival. Not just prevent. I mean sort of how not to die how to prevent Canada. What if you already have cancer? What can we do to slow down stop reverse? So,
That'll that'll brighten X and then we're I'm going to do one of mental health after that how
not to age. Oh, that's a that's a good one. I just had David Sinclair and here the other day great fast. I got Dan buettner coming back here tomorrow. So I'm
all about the I'm Jeff hug for me
aging stuff. That's super interesting. I mean, I think the work that David is doing obviously that's in the genetic field. It's not nutrition per se but I think there's so much emerging science that's happening right there. It's pretty fast,
you know, in fact there was this
one seminal paper that really inspired me to write the whole book and that was basically the big Pharma got together the top researchers in the world flew them to the some luxury resort somewhere and so Sinclair was there and long ago and everybody who's anyone in the field got paid enough money to all come together to list the most potentially the the the most druggable longevity Pathways in the body like we wanted to make a lot you know a longevity drug
how would we do it right so they all sat down they came up with these five biochemical Pathways for longevity and look at these I said wait a second every single one of these we can modify with diet you know sort of talk about like mtor and igf-1 and all the wait a second think we could all do the you know so as I call this like part that's the whole book one chapter at each week and yeah I'm so I'm really excited about thankful yeah very cool
so I imagine you probably get this from time to time dr. Gregor
The new book but I got to tell you I've been on the keto diet. I've lost all this weight. I feel good or I'm on the carnivore diet. I'm on this side. I'm on that diet. So, you know, like you can't tell me that your way is better than my way.
Right and I mean I can say let's see your lab work or let me see your arteries. Let me see your calcium score. Let me see. I mean, you know, I
work doesn't mean anything that's that's a sort of common retort from the low.
Our carnivore camp that these the blood work is misleading because it doesn't necessarily mean what it says.
Well, I mean if you have science to support that but that's not what I mean. The science shows. I mean so, you know, there's you know, the presidential advisory from the American Heart Association came out, you know for it to be cost of these crazy myths out there that they have to write these papers saying yes, that's right. That's bad for you. Yes. Coconut oil is bad for you and I mean and and yes l
all this is leading predictor of heart disease I mean you know I mean things that have been settled science for decades but in the internet age of flat earthers we have to come out and explicitly explicitly say right and so I mean yeah so and and we don't just have certain biomarkers we have you know large populations people who fall diets even even trending in that direction living significantly shorter lives
it is interesting that the carnivore diet has
he has caught the attention of so many people and seems to be like a like a trending thing right now
it's just it's like a yeah it's like a it's like if an Internet troll were a diet it would be the right way it's just like the right but I mean look you can imagine some with food intolerance whether it's celiac disease or anything else
the ultimate destination
Nation - right and some people go on elimination diets I mean typically put someone on like you know water sweet potatoes and tapioca like
things no one's allergic to and then all of a sudden their joints feel better they more energy all of a sudden their chronic indigestion goes away okay and then you add back what was it what was it about your diet that you know was causing a problem and so it's the same thing me you're just basically you know excluding and so if you did have some kind of intolerance well then you know but obviously then you'd want to add healthy foods back into your diet to find out what it is and so you can actually have a long healthy life
one of the things that I've been contending with
with in the last couple years I mean I've been plant-based for 13 years now is the fact that now there is this proliferation of amazing tasting tasting plant-based analogues to every food imaginable right and it all tastes great and I'll find myself indulging in that a little bit more than I should and kind of you know selling the lot of myself like oh it's plant-based it's cool you know and knowing of course like this isn't the healthiest this is not a doctor
Gregor's daily dozen, you know and then I follow that up with with another kind of layer of denial, which is that because I'm an athlete that I can kind of outrun it burn, you know, I can burn it off and as long as I'm trim and I feel good that I'm not I'm not necessarily paying the same told and somebody knows is and I know that's not true. And so there's always like yeah, I'm plant-based, but I can I can certainly
Only iterate and evolve, you know to do better than undoing
ya know and then bright it's a process and it's harder. I mean, but what I see, you know, when I see an ad from Burger King bragging that it's understand Whopper 0% beef. They're bragging that there's no beef in their new burger. I mean that just speaks to me to the tremendous surge in interest in playing basic course, it makes and I'm not I don't magic be right now. So that means something when I say it right but nutritionally right if you look at these things often more sodium
The coconut oil base or may have as much or more saturated fat even sometimes so these are right now healthy food step in the right direction stepping stone Foods. I like them home, you know, you know not everyone could go, you know kill quinoa overnight but transition foods to get people in direction of eating healthier. I see a tremendously kind of optimistic social phenomenon, but my concern is that people stop their people will just kind of switch over.
Their milk shakes their cheese burgers and milkshakes and then stole their and not capture the full benefits of
plant-based. Yeah. It's never been easier to to EV you can go you can get your you can go to Burger King and get you get fries and a burger and you can then go get coconut ice cream and knock yourself out and then wonder how come I'm not losing weight. All right getting
fatter. Yeah. I just yeah, I moved to Philly recently. There are multiple all vegan donut shops like oh
it's all vegan donut shop do you want to go you know I mean I mean that's right and so right I mean you can be you can have a terrible terrible vegan
diet I know that if I'm eating Whole Food plant-based and I'm adhering to that pretty strictly that I don't really have to like the idea of needing to diet it just doesn't it just I don't have to worry about it right so
how not you to
die how not I know that's tricky right how to diet not as a Yoda would say would have retitled it so knowing that then it is not it is how not to die it and yet it is a program that extends Beyond just eat these foods like you have these strategies and things to kind of accelerate that aspect of
it right and because I wanted to I mean with so much kind of nutritional noise and nonsense out there I just wanted her to finally
Be not only in evidence based diet book but you know sighting of thousands of studies digging up every possible, you know tip trick tweet technique proven to accelerate loss of body fat to give people every possible advantage and kind of you know, building the optimal weight loss solution from the ground up. Basically my criteria is if I mean if it's been proven to cause weight loss and it's not I mean I had a low bar but like I have a chapter on which cigarettes are best to smoke and we and we know nicked.
Gene is is I mean proven, you know, but so I say look we can eat nicotine containing foods and maybe get a similar benefits but and there was some some things I should cut out. Like there was a licorice root chapter. I took out because the therapeutic index of you could get too much licorice really easily and hurt yourself, but there are some things there was some base level of safety but beyond that if it cause weight loss in a randomized control trial it's in the book and I want to give people every possible kind of advantage and so that's where I came this kind of
You want weeks thing to add on to their daily dozen now, they've got like 40 check marks every day, you know, if you really wanted to go all
out. So if somebody comes to you and says listen, I'm 50 60 pounds overweight. I gotta I gotta drop this weight my life hangs in the balance. Like, how do you kick start that person like walk me through like if you had, you know, five or 10 minutes to speak to this person. How do you kind of get them sorted and on their
way? Yeah, so get them the right information, right? I mean, so yeah, so, you know, I could share them.
The app, dr. Gregers daily Dozen free app obviously everything I do everything is I produce available free and then, you know, tell him about something like 21-day Kickstart program from pcrm or Physicians committee for responsible medicine. First of every month totally free bunch of different languages hundreds of thousands people have done it you do is kind of social media group together and you know, you get daily advice and tips and things like that again just to stick with it long enough so you can see the benefits yourself. I'm then it's no longer some doctor wagging their finger at you, but you have the internal
you to stick with it because you feel so much better digestion is better he sleeps better your energies better oh and you're losing weight and you know without writing about
it what are some of the crazier turnaround stories that you've heard or experienced
oh well I mean well I mean the the most exciting things is diseases for which there's nothing in the literature that suggests it's possible so people come to me say I've Hashimoto's thyroiditis hypothyroidism and I tell them you're going to be on thyroid hormone replacement brush your life your thyroids all scarred up it's over
over and we can help prevent it but you know and they said no no I had it I diagnosed I was on this for years and then I went plant-based and all the sudden I'm off my thyroid medication here's my TSH here's my lab values and I tell them your doctor has to write you up as a case study I want to see this published I'll do a video about it I mean so they'll you know someone comes to me with Ankylosing Spondylitis or some one of these you know horrible inflammatory autoimmune diseases I'm like look we have great data on Crohn's and multiple sclerosis and
um yeah and and ulcerative colitis and other similar rheumatoid arthritis similar flipped her I'm not surprised that helps with your disease but it hasn't been anything published yet and so quick we gotta get you we got we have to you know it doesn't exist in the scientific World less is published in peer-reviewed scientific literature and so I encourage them to get it out there and actually there was just a case here as an enclosing Spondylitis I'm excited to so but I mean those that I mean you expect that you you I'd no longer have diabetes I know
I'm heart disease I mean all these things and you know teary-eyed and you know I mean it's you know they're out of their wheelchair the walking again it's a they have their lives back and have a future again that you know old hat that's why I've been seeing for years but what some of these new you know where someone says you know I have some you know some disease I had to look up and help with that too he said wait a second it's a little snake oily Panacea right I mean that's just that's a red flag when someone says my thing can help with x y and z
But you realize look we're talking about a diet that improves arterial Health every single one of our organs needs blood flow to get rid of waste products get oxygen nutrients. And so the no wonder that a heart healthy diet is a brain healthy diet is a liver healthy diet is a kidney healthy diet, right and a plant-based diet is a whole food plant-based diet is basically synonymous with an anti-inflammatory diet and since inflammation plays rolled so many chronic diseases. No wonder an anti-inflammatory diet is going to help kind of across the board with all these things.
There's these kind of underlying, you know mechanisms by which you can imagine and look even if someone will ask me. What does it work for disease, you know Z that you know, and I say well, I don't know bud healthy diet can only help right mean look probably people with disease d z probably still die of heart disease. Number one, right? So for me, for example breast cancer postmenopausal breast cancer number one killer of women.
With older women with breast cancers heart disease still kills them more than breast cancer. And so whether or not a whole album is that reverses breast cancer your state you're still more likely to die of heart disease and we know we can reverse heart disease. So of course everyone with breast cancer, of course, everyone should be on this healthy diet and then if their side benefits, well, then great. I mean, you know as we sing with prostate cancer and some other conditions
well when you look at ya like what you like what you said, I mean what's killing people heart disease?
Oak obesity, you know in terms of brain health Alzheimer's is exploding right now and to the extent that you're eating in a way that's improving arterial function and reducing inflammation, right the downstream Domino impact of that, you know has all kinds of positive consequences,
even if it doesn't help it helps right even doesn't help that particular thing. And I mean, I like
that Meme of what if it turned out that global warming is a hoax. We just improve the planet for no reason, you know.
There we go. Right right mean like well to stopping smoking help this disease. I don't know but it's probably a good idea to stop smoking. Right? I mean, it's just I mean just kind of
yeah, what is a day in your personal life with food? Like how do you make it work?
Well on the right? Well again, no Travelers the attorney is real time. How do you deal with the airports and all of ya airport food courts. Yeah. Well, look, it's getting easier. Now you can get like brown rice and then airport. I mean, that's great like these like, you know fast casual places like, you know things ye never
To see before and look there's you know, I've grown bet, you know, if I can, you know land someplace and find a Whole Foods and have hot bar and grab some food and you know first few days, I have snacks and then slowly it's all gone. You know, what I've been doing recently is I we tell the organizers you got to bring me food. Mmm, you know, I mean, there's only so many microphones in the rider. There's only so many sweet potatoes like he's grabbing my plane guy with the crazy Rider right? Right. Who does he think that Stan Halen? Oh, I know green M&Ms no M&M's period it's all right.
Um and so right and so look I you know, I need to I yeah, and typically I don't even have time even if I could I mean it right even if it's healthy food around here. I am Southern California, I could get healthy food, but I don't have time and
it's just and on the rare days a year
at home. Oh now then once I have control over my love how excited you and know that's a beautiful thing. Well, I mean, I just yeah, this is my first day of this this few weeks tint and so I'm feeling the the leaving home thing. It was it was hard.
to get up this morning but yeah then I can eat this beautiful diet oh my and it's like it's like a it's like a it's like a game like how healthy can I get I mean it's really and and you know what help so I do love food delivery like Whole Foods delivery and then then you're not even tempted to buy junk guess it's not in front of you grab me and so it's like everything I eat so
my house just as healthy
food and so if you get hungry enough you're going to eat an apple right mean there's nothing
you will eventually eat that apple right and so with only healthy stuff you know I can I can build up my healthy immune system
always making a healthy choice the the most convenient
right oh yeah I could go out and you know in a Philadelphia winter and bike someplace to get something to bike to the donut shop but so much easier when I have a fridge full of yummy
food and do you prepare stuff ahead of
time I do a lot of batch cooking yeah yeah yeah particularly now I'm doing a lot of this
Prebiotic mix I talk about my went in studying the improving your microbiome for the new Big microbiome chapter in the diet book and just learning how again how important microbiome is and where are the most concentrated source of prebiotics. And so I divide I discovered sorghum for the first time discovering all these weird millets that I had no idea that have poorly digested starch and so they are fed the animals but poorly digested starch is exactly what we want because it's poorly digested in our small intestine.
Makes it down to our lower intestine, where are good gut bugs can have a bounty of prebiotics and then has all those knock on benefits. And so that's the kind of thing where I just instant pot a huge amount and just you know Tupperware in the fridge and you know take out one every day since it's over and you know, so I always have always have my intact grains and whole bunch of wonderful black lentils and then it's a matter of just getting Greens in the
house. What else did you learn about the gut the gut biome and
in prepping for this company is now we have this Interventional trial so we've always known you you can sew flash back a few years ago it was a black hole almost no pun intended we're because most gut bugs are actually on culturable in laboratory conditions like we can't grow them outside of the human colon we don't know what their gas or you don't know and so it we like but we had no idea was going on there until we had genetic fingerprinting techniques and also in for the first time we'd be like oh
oh okay we can actually track people's microbiome over time compared people's different microbiome and we can correlate diseases with with different bugs in our gut and change people's diets change the microbiome see the beneficial or adverse effects but that's the problem if you improve someone's diet all of a sudden you give people lots of whole grains and legumes beans split peas chickpeas and lentils lots of prebiotics they get these beneficial changes in their microbiome and also and they have amazing health benefits
yeah but you just fed them all want to healthy food how do we know microbiome has anything to do with it that's where fecal transplants come along right then we can prove it's the microbiome because we can take those gut bugs and put it into somebody who's continuously the crappy diet and see if we can get those same metabolic benefits and that's what we're saying so we're seeing so you know someone gets a fecal transplant for someone who's overweight all the sudden they start packing on pounds eating the same food or there's that's crazy
mental health changes all sorts of crazy things and and now we can prove it's the gut but now what happens is of course it's temporary because right you you introduced it got bugs but then you keep starving them by not eating any fiber and then they died away but you see initially those same benefits of course you got to feed those Goga bugs or they're going to die off but but so so what went from a from a correlation science now we have a causation signs
and it's just fascinating that we can transfer the benefits of healthy diet so so I mean so the black market Rich Roll stool you could I mean you know the the the the I mean yeah start
selling that shit I
it's exactly I mean who wouldn't
pay it is it is fascinating I mean the links to Cravings as well like nature of the gut Flora impacts the foods that you
crave the yeah yeah yeah
and it also
so I think is is because it's so complex that it's Rife for confusion and people kind of making claims about what you should and you shouldn't do that we don't necessarily have the ability to really back up at this
point it particularly this kind of personalized nutrition like people all the time are sending me things my I sent my stool sample into this company and gave me back a thing and said I should be eating this and I shouldn't be eating this we don't have that kind particularity does not same thing with DNA testing right
they get back their their genome and say oh well I you know I'm whatever I shouldn't be eating the X y&z we don't have that kind of
but is it true that we should be eating fermented foods and we should be eating you know nutritionally a variety of nutritionally dense foods to be kind of seeding that that gut Flora with a diversity of
bacteria so it's the three rights the prebiotics probiotics and polyphenols which of these kind of tend to be brightly colored pigments in fruits and vegetables these are kind of the three
three the three things that benefit a good microbiome and you can use all three of them or just two of them I mean the problem with probiotics is you take them and then they just die off you don't continue to eat healthy and so if you just have like antibiotic Associated diarrhea or something you wipe out your gut bugs then I see a therapeutic role of something like probiotics but otherwise taking probiotics is useless because they'll just die off if you put them in the same environment that didn't grow good gut bugs in the first place putting in some good acidophilus they're just going to die off because you're not feeding the rest of us because
Good gut bugs are by definition fiber feeders resistant starch eaters. These are I mean, that's that that's what makes good gut bugs grow. And so what we really need is we just need to feed our good gut bugs pretty box and people are like, oh I eat so many fruits and vegetables but that's realize fruits and vegetables are almost all water like, you know fruits or like 80% water or some water specials 90 95 percent water their water and vegetable form not actually a lot of fiber you can actually have a pretty deficient fiber deficient diet if you're
Including whole grains and legumes some of these dryer Foods into your daily diet.
Wow, that's good to know because I just thought well as long as I'm eating a lot of high fiber foods, like I'm basically taking care of my Prebiotic needs.
All right, but there is actually not so the fruits and vegetables are not Hive their high fiber foods compared to what 99% of the population needs, but if you're really trying to build 70 grams a day, you know 80 grams.
they are like a hundred and twenty grams, which is how we probably evolved, you know, based on human coprolites, you know, fossilized feces then main if un you do the math, you people don't even close so, you know ornish, you know, really healthy, you know, hopefully plant-based diet, you know kind of like 60 which is, you know, average about 15 recommended minimums about 30 and so getting 60 but I mean that's and that's a remarkably healthy diet to shoot up there and then these population studies where they have
No, essentially no heart disease. No diabetes, no breast cancer know, you know like sub-Saharan Africa half century ago. They were getting you know, the the triple digit fiber construction every day and per so part of that benefit may actually have been the microbiome and that was the benefit of the fiber as opposed to, you know, drop a ones cholesterol or something
right more will be revealed though. I think there's there's there's got to be like lots of crazy studies being performed right now.
no and so there are vegan fecal transplant studies what can we do you give someone a you know you know you know they do it through tubes they do it two capsules I you know you just don't want to burp after that you know that kind of thing
do you know Robin shut can dr. Robbins who can she dc-dc physician who specializes in the microbiome and she was that she was on the show a long time ago but she was predicting not only fecal transplants becoming like a booming business
this but actual Spas like high-end Spas where you could go and have your you know your artisanal
you want them to eat for the week before
you show up exactly how about
their right that's ready oh that's
great well let's let's shift gears I want to talk about sitting for a minute and she did some interesting stuff here on the book around that I know you're we're sitting down but sitting is unless you're on an airplane or in a
car yeah yeah I'm stuck
I stuck my butt all day in a plane typically, but yeah, so I mean there's this myth that sitting is the new smoking not by any stretch of the imagination at least 10 times more deadly to smoke than to Sid but prolonged sitting to find typically over six hours a day is associated with increased mortality. Even if you then go out to the gym and work out hard for an hour a day after work and so it does I mean that helps but doesn't completely counter balance the fact that you're sitting all day and we think a lot of that has to do with the
The Venous stasis, they the quagga Bill coagula ability of your blood the fact that you're not actually having movement of blood through your veins in your lower legs affection to feel of function and effects kind of your kind of systemic arterial tree, but even something like, you know, bobbing your knee up and down has been shown to completely eliminate those effects that's wild and so and they have someone just Bob one knee up and down.
Versus the other and you can measure the differences and what's going on their legs and that is what's correlated with this increased, you know, cardiovascular disease morbidity mortality. So there's a way so even if your truck driver even if you're stuck inside all day sitting down there things you can do and so yeah and there's all sorts of I go through all the various different like little bars and things they can put on your desk stand which one's work, which ones are just fad. And so there are ways you can counterbalance effect but or you
Can you know do a standing desk walking desk? I love getting back to my walking desk. I dicted to the thing
wasn't there a study that you looked at where they put people on basically, you know, a standardized amount of calories every day and said you can exercise this much and there was a difference in between. Some of them lost weight. Some of them didn't and it came down to how much they were sitting and then there was this realization that there are certain people that are walking around all the time. He's kind of casually throughout the day and they were having amazing.
benefits that the people who were just eating the same and working out the same who were sitting more weren't able to
realize these neat benefits right these non-exercise through my journey so so what what they yeah so what they realized is that we typically you know this whole calories in calories out and you ask people what matters and people actually either say they're the same or calories out matters more and that's completely not true we have almost total control over calories in fact we could eat nothing although can
our he's out typical exercise like casual exerciser it's only like 5% of calories out most of our calories out our our Imaging tests of brains most wild animals movement is their number one calories out for us it's our brains we could lie down in bed chained to a bed all day still burn over a thousand calories the most of the and so that's why it's so hard to outrun a bad diet because you know even a moderately exercise moderately obese person moderately intensely exercise to burn our Burns
D calories mean most snacks drinks processed foods have like 70 Cal are consumed at 70 calories a minute so five minutes eating just wiped out a whole hour of exercise that's why it's so difficult but what they learned is because and so there's a there's a you know like a 60% slices just like you know basal metabolic you know activity keeping your breathing your heart pumping your brain going and then there's a small sliver unless you're a mountain climber in our
me Ranger something really doing intense exercise you just have a small fraction of voluntary says but then there's this non-exercise thermogenesis which is fidgeting which is just moving around walking around you know standing rather than sitting I didn't so they now we have these accelerometers we can put on people and so really revolutionized our understanding of where these calories are going and why you put people in the same kind of same calorie diet the
enforced exercise schedule and some people lose vastly more amounts of weight than others and most of that had to do it's not like some people just you know had metabolic slowing or there's some biochemical thing going on no it was the amount of the the of this this this can on you know you know typical kind of exercise you know where you setting out a half an hour to do any kind of exercise it was just that they're just moving around more during the day and so how can we
enforce that well-being at a standing desk you have postural muscles otherwise you claps to your floor you know anything you can do to get you to just move yourself more and you know bouncing your knees that kind of
stuff I mean that dovetails pretty perfectly with the blue zones findings right that these people that live so long and live so healthy are people that are just kind of in constant low-grade motion throughout the day that
they're not going to the gym right because their whole life it's just my we were built to move and so
and so I mean that's what some of that sitting data suggests that
what about the person who has struggled to lose weight their whole life and no matter what they do they just continue to gain or they can't you know they stay at a certain point is there is there validity to this being hormonal or an endocrine problem you know hear people say like oh it's my genetic makeup or you know I just have a slow metabolism
rhyme so there are some conditions so for example hypothyroidism
in the where the does slow down your metabolism by about 15% and indeed it's just it's harder for them to lose weight but there's no such thing as someone who's basically obesity resistant there used to be there people claim no matter what I say even if I don't need anything I gain weight or don't lose weight and so scientists lock them in a lab and when you do that everybody everybody everybody with is never been a single publish case they lose weight in fact exactly as they should
Sherwood in terms of body fat some of them and this is where this comes from start retaining water such that they lose no weight after not eating for four days so the bathroom scale says having lost a pound but if you actually do CT scans dexa scans actually see what's going on so their body they're losing body fat exactly as predicted but they're retaining all this water and then finally when the diaeresis happens all the sudden they plunge down and match exactly onto the curve but it can take
days for you to reach that and she can imagine people who are like I'm starving myself for literally days not losing a pound there's something wrong with me no you are actually losing body fat every single day is just your scale doesn't tell you the you know the the what compartments you're losing that weight from wow
that's interesting because I feel like that that does come up quite a bit people you know will say just you know there's something different about my genetic makeup that makes me immune from these positive experiences that other people
have
have to get enough time
yeah one of the things that I hear quite frequently is Rich you know I've been listening to you I read your book blah blah blah whatever I saw the movies I went plant-based for a while and now I'm you know I'm pretty much there but I went back to some fish and a little bit of you know a little bit of meat here and there so I'm kind of 90% in your direction like is that good like it how do you how does this how does the evidence in the science breakdown in terms of somebody who is
Atlee plant-based I guess the word plant-based mean how do you define that if your plant-based it doesn't mean your plant perfect for your plant a hundred percent what is the difference between somebody who is you know adhering to you know your optimal protocol versus the person who is indulging in a little bit of meat and dairy products on the side
I think the body has a remarkable ability to bounce back from insults in fact that's what this kind of this heart disease reversal data shows is that you
have you can eat a lifetime of this horrible food and then even when the average age is like in the 60s some of these reversal studies and even after a lifetime of that you can clean out there as the body was just waiting for you to stop you know attacking your arteries with these suits and you could rapidly I'm reversal and you get more reversal the more compliance you get but but these the compliance wasn't perfect and most of these studies and so people were eating those kind of 90% type diets and seeing the remarkable benefits
it's like there's no study in the world that suggests someone with a who's like a social smoker who picks up a few cigarettes at a party once a year is going to have any greater you know lung cancer risk than someone who doesn't smoke at all of course we tell people don't smoke at all because we're afraid this kind of kind of you know lead down that path and some people are easier or ironically more compliant with strict rules Black & White rules so if you're like there's no cheese in the house versus a little cheese in there I'm just going to have a little bit the concern I think with a lot of these
Plant-based Physicians who were like absolutely be strict zero, you know, we don't want you to eat any of this. It's not that they think it's not that the science supports. We need that level of compliance to get the benefits but the concern is you won't is that you'll slip back down to your old? Yeah. It's right. So it's a psychological, you know, you know, it's easier for for for an alcoholic to completely be
teetotaler. Yeah. It is to yeah, trust me. I mean a couple observations on that. I mean I certainly fall into that camp like I
I have to have Ardent strict rules around this stuff because if I you know partake a little bit that just opens the door for more like I just know myself well enough to know like if if I could have a little bit of cheese here and here and there that I could maintain that for a little while but six months later, they're probably be a lot more cheese happening
like this would be like that would be the harm. It wouldn't be that cheese once right while that wouldn't even that it's that it
triggers it it it basically keeps that craving alive.
right rather than allowing me to transcend and it
doesn't allow your taste buds to adapt right I mean so we are taste buds been so dead by this deadened by the hyper salty hybrid sweet hyper fatty foods such that Natural Foods don't taste any good and so then you feel like some kind of aesthetic monk or are you just eating but give it a few weeks and all of a sudden you know the soup salted to taste weeks ago we have these great studies so it's actually to Salt you prefer lower salt so and the same thing happens with you know but look the ripest speech in the world tastes sour after bowl of Froot Loops like you naturally
Ava but all the sudden you get to a point where if you start if you get rid of all that crap then all the sudden you know corn on the cob no butter no salt taste delicious like Natural Healthy hopefully then you get the best of both worlds wait a second tastes delicious and you get to live longer that's what plant-based eating is all about but you may never get there if you you know we'll have a little cheese here a little cheese there you maintain that as you power like that yeah except then and then then okay I'm going to be good eat that salad and the sound doesn't it tell taste like cardboard because you know it doesn't have the same kind of yeah
right I know that to be true because I've experienced that in my life but I think people hearing that think it's bullshit like they're like they can't believe they can't believe that that's true they're like that sounds great but there's no way
yeah no yeah yeah it's got of the
face and the other observation I have about this is that I don't think people are very good objective they're not objective about about what they're truly doing like when they say I having a little bit of this or I have a moderate amount of this I think they're there
perception of that moderation is generally in my experience completely
out of whack No in fact there's a great study that I talked about in the new book where and this is the reason why moderation why food industry loves moderation they asked people what they thought a moderate amount of chocolate would be moderate amount of you know process meet modern amount of they go through all these Foods red and what was the definition moderate exactly how much they themselves were eating no matter how much they
eating that was defined as moderate based on their own and take their eating a chocolate bar every day that's moderate intake and so so when the food industry says everything in moderation that's the part that I think that's basically giving people license to do exactly what they were doing before because they all everyone thinks that they're eating moderate amounts of bad food
righties and it goes back to the psychology I love all of this it really isn't about the information it's about it's about people's emotional you know baggage around all of this stuff that and I really think that that is the
the biggest barrier like when somebody says I can't lose weight or what there's there's a whole you know package there that needs to be you know really deconstructed in order to get that person you know acclimated towards a new way of living and
eating and and I have a chapter in the book talking about those psychological we have these glitches right so I talked about in Psychology liver so they called the what the hell effect that's the ue1 cooking eat the whole bag because why are they screwed up by which makes absolutely no sense just takes it back wait a second so I made
one step away from what my plan so I'm just going to go out that makes absolutely no sense in fact you meet that one then you definitely shouldn't eat the whole but our psychology goes in the absolute wrong direction and the same thing then there's a the the flip side is making progress towards a goal actually gives people license the you know so losing weight one week is correlated with gaining weight the next way right your but just the understanding of that knowing that that's a glitch that the hope is that you can
catch yourself right and so you know I find myself you know after some for our book signing you know the you know jet lag to heck you know staring at whatever goodies are in my hotel minibar right and have this my first reaction is like I deserve this like oh my God Ben where what I went through today but then I realized just what the hell but you're all right I just the self licensing and I say know what I deserve course mmm is too
healthy and so yeah
I think I think momentum is underrated to Once people get a little practice with this and they're starting to see even the smallest amount of result positive result then it really like enforces you know that drive to keep going and it's almost like an insurance policy or a barrier against those kind of slips and I something mystical about that and in that
does argue towards the more if you're going to try it go all in as opposed to the eight
90% right well if you're going to try like a free sample right that's what I used to tell my patients right I like if you look you can eat anything for a few weeks you need nothing reviewing so maybe let's just let's try it let's go all-in just very you know and because people can't stomach the thought of I'm never going to another pepperoni pizza the rest of my life like this is Unthinkable but like no no just a couple weeks and we can go right back to eating whatever you want it you know just give it a try I'm in the but if when the hope is that they go well and they start to feel the benefits right so they're less painful periods or their their chronic migraines went away
ever it is such that then have the internal motivation even if they don't take advantage and they do slip back to their old ways they know at least in the back of their mind they know how good they could feel it anytime if they just moved in that direction but you don't know how good you're going to feel till you give it a try
what changes would you make to our system of health care if you were in charge I mean you know listen nobody goes into medicine to you know just be a vehicle for for diagnosis and prescription you know but
but the system is set up to create a dynamic that forces medical practitioners into this kind of practice that you know isn't really necessarily I would imagine what they thought they were signing
up for yeah I mean it's really the I mean in fact if you look at mental health statistics of practitioners these days particularly the United States this is not what we kind of signed up for because most of what comes in our door by the 80% and Primary Care are these chronic diseases for which we have very little to offer patients and kind of traditional
The model, right? We can slow down the rate at which you go blind in which you lose your kidney function. We can slow down the rate at which you know, your arteries clogged off by, you know, prescribing these drugs and I only have a little time so we give these prescriptions but instead of giving fully informed consent that well, here's your other options that I don't have time to tell you about and our may work better and less side effects. But I mean the system is set up to kind of reward bad behavior. The most profitable doctor visit in North America is a blood pressure check.
Doctors love it. Everybody loves it being bill for it. They come in. They're on blood pressure medication. They come in every and then you tweak the drug a little bit and then come back its the easiest, you know, if you fit in a few minutes you get to build for it and it's the most common Primary Care visit and for a condition that need not happen at all. This is the lifestyle disease high blood pressure lifestyle disease, but that entire sector of the field would be gone both big Pharma and
and Big Medicine mean no one benefits from people eating healthy I mean if you go down the list like junk food industry the matter name one industry that would that would benefit from people eating healthier and you say well what about the health insurance industry don't they benefit from people here because they have to pay for it all no they get a slice of the pie and the bigger the pie the bigger the sli's I mean that you know when I when I get to talk to these you know Healthcare Executives at these conferences first of all they'll say well you know they're only
I'm going to be on my insurance for a few years and I switch and people switch insurance so frequently why am I going to prevent their diabetes and have some other company benefit from my preventing their diabetes and it's the pie I mean it's just so expensive and then they get their cut and the more expensive it is the bigger the cut and it's just the whole system is rigged kind of against us you know the CEOs of junk food companies are in sitting around trying to think of ways to creative ways to contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic they just need to make
for the shareholders how do you do that you don't do that selling something that goes bad like produce that you can't brand you can't make it you want a snack cake that sits on the shelf right mean maybe the system is just set up to to you know reward these behaviors that make people
sick yeah so how do we change the incentivization so that we get more Robert ass fields and Michelle McCann Atkins who are who you know have created practices where they have follow-up and accountability and there you know providing that kind of extra
Ville of care to help people make these lifestyle shifts like there has to be an economic structure that that that you know makes it attractive for young doctors to enter
into this so I mean it's a reimbursement that's a Dean ornish had this famous quote saying that you know he thought it was the research but knows all about reimbursement you know so he proved back in 1990 right decades ago you could reverse heart disease the number one killer and you know as you know hundred thousand people continue to die every year needlessly it because it's that the
the lifestyle purchase isn't reimbursed and so yes some people can fight against the the buck the trend and find creative ways to like these shared medical visits where are you can Bill Insurance you there's actually no technical maximum for the number of people you can get you can get 30 people in a room and you can Bill insurance for each of those 30 people and give the same little speech that you give for group diabetics or group of people with obesity and
and so that's one of the kind of ways that within the system I'm doctor and be able to get reimbursed but yeah I mean we just need to change the incentives like why do U s-- taxpayer subsidized by the billions the the sugar industry the corn syrup industry the the LOL make cheap livestock feed for dollar menu Burgers why why are we paying a quarter billion dollars to the Sorghum Ministry I'm buying some sorghum now because I love it but I didn't even know about it a few months ago right no it's all fed to livestock and so
I mean now you can argue we should be subset of the government should be subsidizing who's out but if you're going to subsidize those how about subsidizing fruits and vegetables making them cheaper even free to end because then we'll have all sorts of knock on benefits in terms of lower costs across the
board yeah we're taking those subsidies and channeling them into improving Healthcare or creating those in the Senate but
the the controversy is our who's going to pay for health care not what the fundamental Health Care is going to
be right I think ornish did create a
a reimbursable
program though absolutely paid right pay for reimbursed by Medicare there's two programs now him and pritikin and and and I speak at hospital I speak at ornish programs across the country that's often my in into a medical system to kind of promote the program saying that this option exists yeah
speaking of pritikin pritikin you know your your entry point to this whole thing begins with pritikin
yeah yeah amazing right not a doctor I people always ended up breaking out
an engineer came from the outside diagnosed with with a serious heart disease in his early 40s and was and was basically told to go home and die there's nothing we can do about it back then we didn't have drugs from and couldn't even put anybody on anything and people just get worse or first and you die heart disease reversible know but then he looked around the world found these popular you used to date a guy who just went and said there's population of the world that don't suffer from epidemic heart disease like it's unknown people just don't have heart attacks in rural China sub-Saharan Africa wait a sec what was it about
these populations he figured oh maybe it's cholesterol and started experimenting around how we can lower people cholesterol came plant-based diet and reversed you know heart disease by the thousands but back then we didn't have angiography we didn't have this ability to visualize inside what the artist we're looking like so it's a clinical diagnosis that Angela they could have had such bad heart disease it couldn't walk up the steps but you just had to trust that the patient had engine and all of a sudden they go on a plant-based diet and all the sudden they're running marathons and the response the messages
communities well you never had heart disease first place if you had a heart disease you wouldn't be running marathons well it should because it was simple but all the sudden what horn has brought to the table is to be proved with some called quantitative angiography oh we can actually see the arteries open up get bigger improved blood flow reversal proof in black and white pumps and some of the most prestigious medical journals in the world and but one of those people that pritikin reverse their heart disease was Francis Gregor my grandmother who you know the in a wheelchair after so many
bypass surgeries basically run on the plumbing and there she was and saw about pritikin 60 Minutes pretty good was featured on 60 Minutes of somehow made the cross country track one of his earliest patients she's featured and predictions biography and she you know they wheeled her in and she walked out with a few weeks she was walking ten miles a day went on to live another 31 years age 96 after her medical death sentence at age 65 and that's what that's what changed our whole family I mean now as a kid this is all happened when I was on I mean I just well yeah duh
you go to the doctor get better that's what doctors do right little did I know what Revolution back then the thought that heart disease was reversible completely revolutionary only later in life that I realized what had happened what my grandma was part of I was pretty content kind of perceived as a quack and his
time well he
was he was putting doctors and shame because he knew the science I'm because he had he'd read read all their the primary literature and so would just demolished there's actually some old YouTube of his debates he would just
polish opponents because they thought they knew what they were talking about of course they I mean they were just there doctors we weren't taught anything about nutrition and so I told me he was just kind of untouchable when when who's actually presenting the science but they didn't believe his results whose results were two miraculous and he couldn't prove it Beyond these amazing patient testimonials but you know how far it is that really go it doesn't until you know we have good data to back it
up and he inspired everything that you've done
that's how that's why I was like man is trigger that's why I started nutrition facts that's why I wrote how not to die that's why all the proceeds I received from all my books it donated to charity I just want to do what everyone for everyone's family will predict and did for my family
right well let's round this down maybe provide a few starting points for somebody that's listening to this this all this information is totally new to that person they're overweight the ready for a change what's the first thing they do
go to your local public library grab how not to die it check it out and nutritionfacts.org all my work is free there are no ads no corporate sponsorship strictly non-commercial not selling anything just put it up as a public service as a labor of love as a tribute to my
grandma I like how you mentioned the library and not the bookstore
free books are free literally in your neighborhood they're just sitting
there but if you had to tell them like look I'm ready I'm staring at
next meal like what should I focus on what am I what what are what are a couple foods are some like thumbnail you know rules that I can wrap my head around
yeah so there's a 17 criteria which make for the first part of the book like being rich in fiber water Rich vegetables things like that that that through calorie density mechanisms and improving microbiome health is and Etc can you know can achieve that satiety without calorie
friction or portion control I mean that's that's the magic of plant-based eating as opposed to traditional weight loss approaches is that people are told to eat ad libitum meaning eat as much as you want and and that's because you know you take people put people in Whole Food plant-based diet and you / a thousand calories out of the daily die cut their caloric intake in half they don't notice because I mean I mean they have these crazy people healthy enough that you just could some foods impossible to overeat 2000 calories of strawberries forty four cups of strawberries you couldn't fit them all
your stomach like you know I mean that you know that's just you know there's yeah you know me I go on and
on listen man I I love you I assume you know I can go out and run really far distances but I aspire to your level of energy you know what I mean whatever you got I want it and you've been so inspiring to me and my journey and I just I love the impact that you're having on the world and its its massive it's no small thing
thing you've devoted your life to this cause and you've changed so many other people's lives and it's to be commended it's an honor to talk to you today my
well you know what I hear Beyond just documentaries I heard you on the Rich Roll podcast and that's why I changed my life and that's why I'm
here good man come back again sometime anytime and you're going to speak at a hospital tonight that's right where am I going to the pitch you don't even know do you know what state you're
in I just looked at my phone
your boy went
away yeah what's the pitch at the hospital
tonight we're going to do weight loss we're going to do weight loss
good all right on friend let's get you out of here piece mind-blowing stuff am I right hope you guys enjoyed that if you have any questions or feedback for dr. G you can shoot him his way on Instagram at Michael Greger MD and at nutrition underscore facts on Twitter pick up how not to diet
and his newest audiobook how to survive a pandemic which are of course all linked up in the show notes on the episode page at Rich world.com if you'd like to support our work here on the show subscribe rate and comment on it on Apple podcast on Spotify and on YouTube Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media and you can support us on patreon at Rich world.com forward slash donate thank you to everybody who helped put on this show today Jason camiolo for audio engineering production show notes and interstitial
music Blake Curtis embargo Lubin for videoing Today's Show and creating all those social media clips that I share Jessica Miranda for graphic Sally Rogers for portraits Georgia Whaley for copywriting and DK for Advertiser relationships theme music as always by Tyler Pia Trapper pie at Meharry Mathis thanks for the love you guys see you back here in a couple days with another cool episode to be determined until then peace plans
