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Reverse Heart Disease through Diet with Dr. Michael Greger - E27
42 Plays5 months ago
In a world where chronic diseases are increasingly prevalent, our dietary choices can serve as powerful preventative medicine – capable of reversing heart disease, reducing the risk of cancer, managing diabetes, and fundamentally reshaping our health trajectory. In this episode, we explore how the foods we choose to put on our plate are not just a matter of momentary satisfaction, but critical decisions that impact our length-term health and longevity.
Dr. Michael Greger is a renowned physician, author and the founder of NutritionFacts.org, a non-profit, science-based public health resource on nutrition and wellness. Dr. Greger is best known for his books, including the bestseller, “How Not to Die,” which explores how dietary choices can prevent and reverse many chronic diseases. His advocacy for a plant-centered diet, outlined in works like "How Not to Diet," continues to guide individuals and communities toward optimal health and longevity in an evidence-backed, accessible manner.
“You actually didn't sleep well, but you forgot how bad you sleep, and you wake up, you’ll be like, ‘Wow, I slept great’. And all it is is the drug faking it.” - Dr. Michael Greger
In this episode you will learn:
- The crucial role of nutrition in medical training and why it's often overlooked in traditional medical education.
- Insights into research on reversing heart disease with lifestyle changes, and the challenges of widespread implementation.
- The impact of stress and social isolation on mortality, emphasizing the importance of lifestyle choices over stress alone.
- The benefits and challenges of intermittent fasting, and alternative ways to boost autophagy.
- Dr. Greger's recommendations for practical dietary changes and the significance of fact-checking nutrition studies.
Resources
- Connect with Dr. Greger on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelgregermd
- Find out how you can make healthier dietary decisions through Dr. Greger’s online community: https://nutritionfacts.org/
- Shop all the products Dr. Greger mentions in the episode: https://alively.com/products/michael-greger
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
https://www.zapods.com
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
https://alively.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Personal Story of Transformation
00:00:00
Speaker
I was just a kid and my grandma was sent home in a wheelchair essentially to die. She had instaged heart disease. I already had so many bypass surgeries, basically ran out of plumbing at some point to combine the wheelchair-crushing chest pain her life was over at age 65. But then she heard about this guy, Nathan Pritikin, one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers.
Introduction to Health and Wellness Podcast
00:00:19
Speaker
They wheeled her in and she walked out. Though she was given a medical death sentence at age 65 thanks to a healthy diet, I was able to enjoy another 31 years
00:00:31
Speaker
This is the Home of Health spam podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Impact of Dr. Greger's Work
00:00:45
Speaker
All right, Dr. Greger, so good to see you. Normally, I would have prepped you for a couple of minutes before, but we're tight on time and want to jump straight in. So, I mean, the first thing I would love to start with is we were recently in Boston together at the WOOP event or TEDx Boston all on longevity. And, you know, I was a little fanboying, very excited to meet you. As soon as I see you, I say, oh, my God, Dr. Greger.
00:01:10
Speaker
you changed my life. and And I think this is so special. And then 10, 15 minutes later, I'm in the hallway and I see another lady run stuff like, Dr. Greiger, you changed my life. And so my first question is, how often do you get that?
00:01:23
Speaker
Ah, well, it's a self-selected audience, right? if It's a longevity audience. What do you expect? um But no, no, it's very nice. Even on the sidewalk now, on the you know going through customs, going through you know security lines at the airport, i people ah People recognize me more and more which is very nice very nice and then i get these wonderful stories of you know affecting people's lives in a positive way hopefully and that keeps me motivated
Inspiration Behind Dr. Greger's Career
00:01:54
Speaker
to keep doing what i'm doing because most of the time i'm just sitting in front of a screen type in a way and don't have enough you know really i really don't have a
00:02:03
Speaker
good can i got feeling you know what can you thank them having, when is all theoretical until someone comes up to me and starts crying and talking about how you know their uncle doesn't have to have their legs amputated and you know um as all it's good stuff and it truly is cascading because after reading how not to die initially.
00:02:22
Speaker
And I was posting my results on social and then I had tons of people coming to me cry and say, oh my God, you changed my life. Since I saw that I did this. And so you don't even hear the cascading viral side because they might not associate it with you because they didn't necessarily read it. So it's absolutely amazing. So for those listening who might not know how and why did this guy change so many lives?
00:02:45
Speaker
you know Can you talk about how not to die? how not to diet How not to age? What is it that you say you do that all these people are saying, wow, you've really changed my life? um Well, you know for me, it all started with my grandmother. um I was just a kid, and my grandma was sent home in a wheelchair, essentially, to die. She had end-stage heart disease. I already had so many bypass surgeries, basically ran out of plumbing at some point, combined the wheelchair, crushing chest pain. Her life was over at age 65.
00:03:15
Speaker
but then shared about this guy, Nathan Pritikin, one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers. And what happened next is actually detailed in Pritikin's biography. It talks about Francis Greger, my grandmother. They wheeled her in, and she walked out. Though she was given a medical death sentence at age 65 thanks to a healthy diet, I was able to enjoy another 31 years on this planet until age 96 to continue to enjoy our six grandkids, including me.
Dr. Greger's Journey in Health and Nutrition
00:03:39
Speaker
So that's why I went into medicine, why I practice lifestyle medicine, why I started at NutritionFacts dot.org, why I wrote the book How Not to Die, why all the proceeds from all my books are all donated directly to charity. I just want to do for everyone's family what Pritigant did for my family.
00:03:55
Speaker
And on that, I would really appreciate to hear from you kind of the direction of before you went into medicine and started learning enough to say, hey, I need to put this up on nutritionfacts.org and share this with people.
00:04:12
Speaker
Did you have a sense for what the answers would be? Because one of the things I've noticed reading how not to age versus how i'm not to die, there are a lot of commonalities, but you're learning new things. Like you talk about, Hey, I didn't know about Spermidine, but in researching this, I now learned it and now I am adding wheat germ and all this. And so what was your life before you started going down that path and researching? Cause I think about my father, for example, as a cardiologist,
00:04:39
Speaker
and was overweight and started going on a diet and lost sixty five pounds in a year so running half marathons and he said i just had to unlearn everything they taught me in med school about nutrition which by the way is like a two-hour session. of your favorites as which is often biarre yeah Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. You know, I learn as much as much writing these books as people get reading these books. Why? Because there's very little ah nutrition training in the entire medical training process. And so it's funny when people you see an MD after people's name, that is basically an advertisement to the world that they know nothing about. That they have
00:05:21
Speaker
basically receive no formal training um in nutrition. And yet people, you know when you're asking surveys, people really ah seek nutrition advice from their physicians over, for example, dieticians and people who've actually studied.
00:05:37
Speaker
um And so, you know, I had to basically, you know, I mean, I had that family experience. So I already seen in my own eyes, but it wasn't really until 1990 with the publication of Dr. Dean Ornish's lifestyle heart trial, where it was finally put to the test and randomized control trial um showing that the progression of heart disease could be reversed, arteries opened up without drugs, without surgery.
00:06:02
Speaker
um just this plant-based diet and lifestyle program you know proven with quantitative angiography and geography then subsequent you know data showing this dramatic improvement in blood flow to the heart muscle itself using neon nuclear imaging.
00:06:14
Speaker
But here it was in black and white, publishing some of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, yet basically nothing happened. It was just like cricket. And even today, hundreds, now decades later, hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to die from this preventable, arrestable, preventable, potentially reversible condition. And it's like, well, wait a second. If The cure or number one killer could get lost on some rabbit hole and ignored. What else might there be in the medical literature that could help my patients, but just didn't have a corporate budget driving
Online Resources and Evolving Nutrition
00:06:47
Speaker
its promotion. So that's really what started me down this path to start learning. And it's all there in the literature.
00:06:53
Speaker
I mean, you know it was all about you know going to the dusty basement stacks originally at Countway, you know which is the Harvard's Medical Library in Boston. But now, of course, everything's online, which is so now I can i can i can read it all my jammies, which is much better. Probably better for your lungs and not breathing in all the dust. Oh my god, it's nasty. yeah God knows. I do love that smell, though. It's like about old library smell that gets me going. Great.
00:07:22
Speaker
and so You know, as you're learning and you're researching and you're writing new books, you're changing what you're doing. And so I think back to the the daily dozen, right? That you put on nutritionfacts.org and from How Not to Die and and all that. how What does your nutrition day-to-day or week-to-week look like now?
00:07:44
Speaker
especially any changes based on what you've since learned. Oh, yeah. oh Well, I mean, you know, every time I, you know, write a new book and get more information, you know, I'm tweaking things as they go along. So like, you know, this book, for example, you know, I found out days I added papali, which is this long pepper, you know, spice. I started eating more strawberries, which I just never really did before because the facet and this kind of potential senolytic compound, wheat germ for the spermidine, the cardamom. Amyloid comes up a a few times. I think was the original. from Not to die. I've been doing that for a long time. okay I'm eating more tempeh now. I started growing my own mushrooms for the ergothionine and the spermidine. The basics, not much is really
00:08:37
Speaker
I'm affected the basics but i'm always you know tweaking and adding new things and just as i learned more i'm trying to think of the some things that certainly been removed oh my god with rital for example. You know appear to be this kind of harmless i'm low calorie sweetener and it turns out it's only harmless because i'm testing it sufficiently and once we did we found out um it may be causing cardiovascular disease so that's something i.
00:09:04
Speaker
obviously stopped and and tried to shout from the rooftops to get people to stop doing it and felt this tremendous burden that I had led people astray. um but yeah so i mean It goes in both directions. and you know and That's why it's just critically important that you know I make sure that everything I put out there is you know fact-checked. you know We have our own fact-checker on on board.
Fasting and Early-Time Restrictive Feeding
00:09:30
Speaker
Now I have 20 staff, so we have this whole kind of research army that makes sure that you know anytime some new study comes out, we can really put it in context of yeah everything else that's been published on the subject in the past so we don't you know get led astray by some kind of tangential new data point.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense on the the book as well, especially How Not to Age. yeah It's not just what you're consuming and putting in your body or what you're not consuming. Actually, before I move on, I do have a very selfish question.
00:10:04
Speaker
so I, since reading How Not to Die, you know, it's whole food plant, not plant-based, right? Because to your point, Oreos. or fun like was That's not helping you. But like, eating whole foods is really where it's at and getting the right whole foods to get that balance. But I have this guilty pleasure that I love Celsius. Like, especially when I see the ocean, Celsius, it's it's these drinks.
00:10:31
Speaker
ah They have taurine, they have all this stuff, but they use artificial sweeteners. ah go And what what I can tell, they're ones who can get with stevia, but they're harder. I use the packets. I have to see which sweetener they use on those. But how harmful, even if it was just on the gut microbiome, because that's that's, I'll do fasting. And then as soon as I come back and I put that in, my body's like, oh my God, this is Awful. What do you mean? You don't need me to tell you. Your own body's telling you. I guess that's true. Come on. Yeah, I guess that's true. No, no. I mean, yeah. More and more, we're learning. I mean, they get narrower now in terms of some of these low calorie and artificial sweeteners.
00:11:13
Speaker
um in terms of negative effects, metabolic effects, microbiome effects. you know i mean the you know These companies used to you know brag that, you know for example, sucralose, Splenda, does not get absorbed into the system. Therefore, it's safe. right They're arguing it's safe. Well, yeah, you know what that means? That means that it goes down to your colon, convect your microbiome, and that's where we think some of these negative metabolic effects are coming from.
00:11:37
Speaker
And it's like, well, I mean, I don't know what you like about the Celsius, but you can get touring. You can get, you know, maybe you get taste. It's all for the taste. It's delicious. They don't sell like the just the yeah. I mean, yeah. So it's it's a matter of seeing if you can find yeah replicate that taste in some other way that just didn't have the, you know, because they also have caffeine. I don't even want the caffeine. I do decaf coffee. So I'm getting a bunch of things. The artificial sweetener, the caffeine. to get this taste. Oh, wow. Okay, now I want to try it. They are delicious. Oh, Jesus, really? Okay. so good i um but Also, now that I just said that, because I would love to ask you on fasting. So fasting was another thing that came up, right? We see it in rodent studies and all of this and calorie restriction. But as Peter Attia had said, you know, it's one of these things we know is good for you, but we don't know the dosing or the frequency to take of it. And so I was doing
00:12:35
Speaker
five day fast. And like, how much better is that than a three day fast? Like what I see is after one or two days, my sleep is phenomenal. My a is phenomenal. My recovery is great. By day four or five. i I can't sleep. I'm so excited. Energy levels are no, the trade offs there. do Have you looked much at the fasting side?
00:12:58
Speaker
of nutritional health. Yeah. Well, so that's the largest chapter of my book, How Not to Diet, was on fasting, was on intermittent fasting. Talking about, all through I mean, I go through, you know, water-only fasting and alternative day fasting and 5.2 and 25.5 and fasting mimicking diets and all through the list. um And I think, I mean, the bottom line is really,
00:13:18
Speaker
I think early-time restrictive feeding. I might talk about the pros and cons of each, but that's, I think, really where where most of the money is. and so That's basically restricting one's a daily feeding window to 12 hours or less. and Most importantly, it should be earlier rather than later. If anything, we skip supper, not breakfast. We should try to stuff as many calories earlier into the day as possible. The exact same food eaten in the morning ah you know it causes more cause less accumulation of body fat, the exact same food, exact same calories eaten in the evening.
00:13:47
Speaker
Less of a blood sugar spike, less triglycerides. If you're going to eat junk, eat it in the morning, have that Celsius in the morning. um But yeah. um So yeah, early time restrictive heating is basically the the take home from the fasting chamber.
Boosting Autophagy and Staying Active
00:14:02
Speaker
Well, but the autophagy side as well. So I get that that's enough time. Well, I mean, no, no. In fact, only in rodents is enough time, right? No, but it really takes two to three days for autophagy to start ramping up in human beings. Thankfully, there's lots of other ways we can boost autophagy without going that long. Um, and you know, so that's where the spermening comes in, the chlorogenic acid from your decaf coffee and, you know,
00:14:28
Speaker
the mission curlimide and aerobic exercise. And you know there's lots of ways we can ah you know boost autophagy without you know you know dealing with the downsides of fasting.
00:14:39
Speaker
And so on the exercise front, I mean, based on what you've learned in the research you do, what is your own exercise and fitness routine on a kind of week to week basis? Well, I mean, I have the one that I recommend. But yeah, um unfortunately, I just um I find it difficult to to to to find ways to be active and productive at the same time. So right now I'm standing on the treadmill. I have it off just because I don't want to make people nauseous. But so, i you know, I work on ah on a walking treadmill. So I end up, you know, walking about 14 miles a day. But i unfortunately I don't get my heart rate up. I'm working on flexibility, not doing resistance ah training. um And so there's lots of things that I mean, you know, I go through and how not to age, you know, all the recommendations and really what we should target for.
00:15:27
Speaker
but unfortunately I've found myself too busy to take my own advice. Okay. Yeah. So I mean what you're doing tons of zone two with the 14 mile walking. And I guess what you were saying you would I mean, it's so low, hurry. So maybe not even all the way elevated. No, no, no. Yeah. I'm not getting my heart rate up. I mean, it really, it's not really, exercise, it's just not being sedentary. It's just movement. Right. and so so yeah yeah um And so it's really just like, so i'm it's I don't have that prolonged sitting, yeah um which is which is so detrimental. So I'm getting blood flow, ah you know, my lower extremity is going, but really, you know, not doing, you know,
00:16:05
Speaker
really you know Really not the you know stressing my body like I should.
Sleep Hygiene and Natural Aids
00:16:09
Speaker
You're stressing whether it's the the strength training or kind of the more hit oriented. Oh yeah, yeah. i agree Yeah, yeah, yeah. and And then back to, there are a lot of things you're trying to do and and you're very productive and put out on the sleep side. So in the book you talk about the U-shaped curve. You're talking about my two worst.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I guess let's let's talk about those two, what you recommend and then what you actually do. yeah Right. right um Yeah. The sleep is really interesting. That's one of the most kind of surprising things I found in how not to age. But yeah, we should I think we should the target should be seven or eight hours a night, you know and there's all sorts of you know healthy ways to do that, and unhealthy ways to do that, and you know happy to talk about anything. Knowing there's so much you want to get done, and I'm not sure if you hit that 78 window, but if you're trying to maximize, hey, I understand,
00:17:03
Speaker
It's my brain's cleansing time and I need it to flush the toxic, et cetera. Are there things that you either take or routines that you follow or temperature of the room or bed that you do to try to make the most of whatever time you get? Oh yeah, sure. Right. No, no, optimal sleep hygiene and conditioning, you know, cool and quiet and dark and go on through the list. And, um, yeah, yeah. And so I have the four rules of each, you know, I talk about it and you know, then there's all sorts of other things you can do, you know, warm showers,
00:17:35
Speaker
foot and body um ah baths before bedtime, warm socks at night, have been shown to help with sleep. um you know We want to stay away from you know these hypnotics, sleeping pills like Ambien, surprisingly ineffective and associated with significant high risk of premature death. Melatonin supplements not recommended due to contamination concerns, but there are melatonin rich foods.
00:17:58
Speaker
So it's Cuba fruit, tart cherries that have been shown to help, at least compared to control. Yeah, I started tart cherry because of a podcast guest. She was like, oh, I used to do tart ah dark chocolate, but but the caffeine and everything before that. But now it's my treat. I switched to this tart cherry juice. I'm like, oh, fantastic. So that's what I do now with my magnesium at night. it's great Oh, perfect. OK, there you go. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker
And so, one thing you brought up in How Not To Age, the Ambien, right? People were like, oh, I'm sleeping great, until we could start tracking it. Oh, isn't that amazing? Yeah, no, no, no. So, right, you ask people, you say, you know, so Ambien not been found effective for sleep, and people are like, there's bullshit. or maybe it doesn't work for the average person, but it certainly works for me. I sleep so much better. But it turns out is actually it's an amnesiac. So you actually didn't sleep well, but you forgot how bad you sleep and you wake up and be like, wow, I slept great. And all it is is the drug faking it. But you actually put people on a sleep study where you hook people up and you actually don't get better sleep. You just forgot how bad and increase your risk of all cause mortality. I would stay away from these drugs. And do you use anything to track your own sleep?
00:19:08
Speaker
I don't, okay other than just kind of total sleep time. But yeah, no, I don't.
Diet's Role in Stressful Times
00:19:14
Speaker
I know there's all sorts of cool gizmos now that you can, you know, you strapped to yourself. No, on like stress management mindset. I think there was an interesting one you talked about in Nazi occupation, those on a plant-based diet were less impacted. It's like stress impacted you differently.
00:19:34
Speaker
If you were on a plant based diet than if you were consuming animal. blood yeah noah Everybody was on a plant based diet. So what happened during so both in World War One and World War Two? um ah you What happened during rationing? What happened when?
00:19:50
Speaker
I'm supplies are cut off so for example and not occupied europe you know they talk about livestock people are living off a feed crop so they're living off of the bar that you normally feed to the food feed of the animals people living off a kind of you know backyard garden vegetables for years and you think well what happened what an interesting natural experiment what would happen to what happens to the disease race now you would show if stress. Play a critical role in heart disease for example.
00:20:18
Speaker
then what possible situation would be more stressful than you know being under Nazi occupation. And so you would assume, oh my God, heart disease rates must have skyrocketed. What happened? Absolutely opposite, plummeted. Heart disease rates absolutely plummeted. Why? Because diet trumps stress. Because all of a sudden they weren't eating these rich diets. you know They didn't have the butter, they didn't have all the you know saturated fat intake.
00:20:46
Speaker
They also didn't have a sugar. they they yeah ah Sometimes there was tobacco rationing. All sorts of things went into, but it's just kind of an interesting experiment that really gives you a sense of, even under stressful conditions, the reason why stress As well as social isolation, loneliness, bereavement. Why that's tied to negative health outcomes, which absolutely is, is because when people are stressed, they not only tend to eat more, but they tend to eat worse foods, high in sugar, fat, calories. ah People who are stressed often tend to use more substances such as alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs.
00:21:23
Speaker
So increased stress is associated with lifestyle behaviors that increase mortality, but stress itself or socialization itself um does not appear to independently shorten lifespan. So that's good news. So you can be stressed and lonely as long as that doesn't lead you to eating really crap, but you're not exercising, you're not taking good care of yourself, you should be able to kind of maintain um your health during those circumstances.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it was similar with meditation. I think you cited that meditation wasn't associated more meditation or more frequent wasn't associated with lower cardiovascular issues. Well, it's really tough. it's these These are impossible studies to do, right? So, of course, you can't blind people. Now, people, long term meditators do have really good public health statistics compared to non to do to a kind of a regular control group. But, the of course, the question is, you know what is the confounding? There's the self selection, there's people, long-term med days tend to eat healthier, tend not to smoke, you know all these other things. And so all we really have are these kind of short-term experiments where if you randomize people,
00:22:32
Speaker
to meditation or not, you don't see benefits. But that's just a few weeks, right? ah You know, ah meditators will be like, well, yeah, I mean, the reason why people with thousands of hours of meditation training have better public health statistics is because they've been meditating for thousands of hours, and you're not going to replicate that with a few weeks of
Challenges in Health Research
00:22:52
Speaker
meditation. So what we can say is that short term,
00:22:56
Speaker
You know a few weeks doesn't seem to move the needle um and we do have that long term kind of observational data we don't know if it's cause and effect. You know, it's very similar to, you know, what we, you know, with diet. um You know, it'd be nice to randomize people to different diets for decades, but unfortunately we don't have that. So what we have, the short term studies where we can measure intermediate outcomes, like what does it do to your cholesterol and blood sugar and blood pressure? Using those intermediate risk factors, we can kind of get a sense of, oh, okay, that explains why, you know, this, you put a people on this diet, their cholesterol goes down.
00:23:31
Speaker
And people who happen to be on this diet for many decades have lower rates of heart disease, which is associated. And so you'd be like, okay, all the evidence kind of matches. And so it'd be like, okay, this is this makes sense to follow this kind of diet. Same thing with with smoking cessation. There's not a single study on the planet showing that smoking cessation causes people to live longer. Why? Because smoking cessation does where you tell people to stop smoking and they just don't do it.
00:23:57
Speaker
So you can randomize people to stop smoking or not, but guess what? It doesn't work because they don't stop smoking. um So you don't get enough of a differential and they actually live the same. yeah So we're not actually comparing non-smokers. Smokers, we're comparing people. So it's like with diet, you tell people, eat this way, we're randomize you to eat this way, this way, but you can't do that for five years because people don't do it.
00:24:19
Speaker
And so there's these famous, huge, massive trials where they randomized people to, for example, a low-fat diet, almonds saw no benefits. But you always have to ask, if you don't see the effects that you would expect, you have to be, well, did they actually do it? Did they actually comply? And in which case, if they didn't, well, then it doesn't tell you anything. Other than, it's very hard to get people to change their lifestyle. On changing their lifestyle, this is one I go back and forth on. I'd love your thoughts.
00:24:49
Speaker
There's a whole camp on more and more protein. You need protein. What you're a lot of research you've pointed to is, no. like It's actually way lower than we think. And so I was topping up my diet with egg whites. right I'd make my salads, I'd do my vegetables, and I'd put egg whites in. And then at that same TED Talk, much less in your books, you showed data that like eggs were associated with worse outcomes than even meat.
00:25:15
Speaker
And my question was hey is it the whole lag if you just did the weights. It's probably the yoke it's probably i so that's for most of the cholesterol is the calling for the tmma production. So yeah we would not expect those outcomes social that consumption to be associated with just the.
00:25:33
Speaker
the the egg white. So when we say that egg protein consumption is associated, we're just measuring how much protein they're getting from eggs, but guess what comes with egg protein? they the the you know The cholesterol in the yolk, most people aren't eating you know they they you know why you know egg white omelets. They're eating the whole egg, and so that's why. and so i mean That's what we would presume to be the case. For example, you can feed people egg whites. You don't see it affecting their cholesterol. Of course, you feed people with egg yolks and the and you do see problems.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah.
Controversies in Dietary Guidelines
00:26:04
Speaker
may May I ask, this is whether it's the, you, you talked about going back to the dusty library and we have these studies, we have this research going way back on these are things we know. And I think it was a how not to die where you said they came up with the recommendation on how much meat to eat. And like, but there's no data saying that that's what we should do. And like, yeah, but if we told them the real number, which is zero, no one would follow it. So we had to kind of come up with this random number out of nowhere.
00:26:34
Speaker
and And you have this other camp, whether it's a carnivore or the armnivore or the paleo pushing the other side and saying, well, here's the problem with the methodology, right? It's observational. And it says, here's all the problem. My question back to you is, has there ever been a study in the history showing the opposite? They're like, okay, great. youre You're calling all the problems for the studies that show whole food plant-based is better than the alternative. Has there ever been a study, methodology or not, that shows eating meat is better than the alternative? Oh, a methodology? Well, methodology independent, absolutely. So you can show, so for example, the PURE study, this large multi-country epidemiological study found that those people you know eating more you know protein more carbs and less protein did did better.
00:27:27
Speaker
More carbs, less protein did worse than those. the other And you think, well, that that seems counterintuitive. Of course, why? Because they're looking at Bangladesh. you And Bangladesh, the only people that, they you know, they viewer there was extreme poverty, and they literally couldn't afford and any protein, and they were living eating white rice. And they had no access to health care. Of course, they had these horrible public health statistics. They're absolute, some of the poorest people on planet Earth.
00:27:51
Speaker
So they're not even getting a variety of plants, right? They're not even getting the nutrients from the plants. So it's really just a prize. So their high carb intake and low meat intake is really just a proxy for extreme poverty. And of course in those conditions, you know, yeah yeah know yeah you deal with confounders.
00:28:07
Speaker
But in terms of a randomized controlled trial that actually showed that you know more meat was better, i mean i show i do and so there are studies funded by you know the beef council and the egg industry and that show benefits. and and And so I talk about those studies is exactly how they do that. So for example, um you know these beef studies showing that you can um ah you know add beef to people's diet and their cholesterol goes down.
00:28:34
Speaker
Amazing. How do you do that? What you do is you add beef to the diet, but so decrease the amount of other meat, eggs, and dairy such that their saturated fat intake actually goes down. Their cholesterol intake actually goes down. and What happens? It goes down. It's like you could add Twinkies to someone's diet and just cut and cut more than a Twinkie's worth of sugar out of the diet. So, okay, now they can't drink Coke and they can't. And so they're actually getting less sugar overall and say, look, we just added Twinkies to people's diet we now and their triglycerides are better, their liver fat. Oh my God, it's amazing. And so, I mean, you can, there's all sorts of studies, ah um but, you know, but you know you you look at the conflicts of interest statement, mean you realize, oh, well, obviously now,
00:29:20
Speaker
Just because something's funded by the agency doesn't mean necessarily it's a bad study, but you just have to use the extra grain of salt and look at the materials and methods and be like, has this study been intentionally designed to bring about a predetermined outcome? And with the decades of good studies showing the alternative, there are still physicians, there are still people in the space that care about their health, investing in their health.
00:29:45
Speaker
that really come out with, no, no, no. There's nothing on this plant base. You need plants, you need animals, all this. I don't know if the story just, I want to eat animals so badly that like, I want this to be true, so I'm going to create a story.
Whole Plant Foods as the Optimal Diet
00:30:01
Speaker
What is the motivating factor? So, you know, you send them to the Two Health Initiative. Two Health Initiative.org is started by Dr. David Katz, the head of the Yale Prevention Research Center, saw all this crazy nuttiness online. It was like, oh my God, people think it's so controversial, but there's actually a consensus. in the nutrition world as the core tenants of healthy eating and living. It basically formed the IPCC of nutrition. You want to know about climate? You asked the climate scientists. You want to know about nutrition? You asked the nutrition scientists, bought together hundreds of top nutrition scientists in the world to agree to a consensus statement as to what is the healthiest human diet. Spoiler alert, it's a diet centered around whole plant foods.
00:30:41
Speaker
um But it's just like, look, there is a consensus, and if you disagree with the consensus, you have to have this extraordinary evidence to be like, you're right, and all of science is wrong. Okay, look, that's how science changes, whip it out, let me see it. And they just don't have the science. Now they can be they can bring out theory, they can, that's great. But when put to the test, and we're talking about life and death decisions, what we eat, number one killer, number one cause of death and disability in the United States um is our diet, bumping tobacco smoking to, you know tobacco's number two, kills about half a million Americans every year, our diet kills
Using Humor to Communicate Science
00:31:16
Speaker
many more. So when it comes to something as life and death, as way to what to feed ourselves and our families,
00:31:21
Speaker
then we should base those decisions on the best available balance of evidence until proven otherwise. I know we're bumping on time. If I could ask one last question, reading your books, talking to you, the puns, everything, humor seems to play a big role in your life. like what Where does that come from and and what do you think that gives you? Well, it's just you've got to get people.
00:31:41
Speaker
you just can't look The book had like 13,000 citations. You've got to make it entertaining. People are going to look at it anymore. It doesn't matter what the science anymore. It's like, can you get some eyeballs? and so you know Adding some humor, some entertainment value gets people to kind of take the medicine. Unfortunately, otherwise, it'd be nice if just the data. Everyone was data-driven. Just show me the science and then boom.
00:32:05
Speaker
You know, but it's like, unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. And if you can be entertaining enough, you can get people to believe the earth is flat.
Encouragement and Closing Remarks
00:32:12
Speaker
Dr. Gregor, thank you so much for anyone listening to this. It is entertaining. The book initially came to my life because someone said, you need to read this. It will change your life. It did. And I've since given it and told many others the same. ah Please check them out. He has many amazing books that will indeed change your life for the better. Thank you so much for the time today, Dr. Gregor.
00:32:35
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Health Span podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other healthspan role models on the lively.com. Enjoy a lively day.