Kind: captions
Language: en
recently there was an interesting study
that showed if you actually increase
your
level of omega-3s by an extra serving a
week or two from wherever you are with
your starting point you can increase
your longevity your survival by 4.7
years
[Music]
dr william lee welcome to the show
thanks very much it's a pleasure to be
here man i'm excited to have you as i
was saying before we started rolling you
have such a an interesting perspective
on health and the thing that was a real
hook for me and where i think is the
right place to start is a quote that you
said which is that health
is not
the absence of disease now i found that
very surprising then i heard your answer
and i was like okay i'm with him so why
isn't health the absence of disease
well so
as a medical doctor i train in internal
medicine uh which means that i take care
of young and old men and women healthy
and sick
you know i
um have spent most of my career not only
in
sort of the
the
the center the thick of the current of
modern medicine which is largely about
prescriptions and knowledge largely
about
diagnosing and treating disease the
thing that's different about me though
is i started realizing with all the
successes we've had you know treat new
treatments for 12 different types of
cancers that didn't exist before you
know
that
we were really only tackling
part of the equation because wouldn't it
be much better if we could actually
prevent the disease in the first place
and what's interesting
is the same science that teaches us how
to intercept and tackle a disease using
drugs
actually teaches us
in some ways a hell of a lot more about
how to prevent the disease in the first
place how do we actually you know um not
just pick up the pieces after the time
bomb explodes or the stick of dynamite
but how do we actually pull the fuse out
or disarm the time bomb right so that's
what got me really interested in
diverting my scientific
focus
from treatments to taking a look at
prevention now if you're talking about
disease it's pretty straightforward
diagnose it find a treatment write a
prescription refer to a specialist if
you're talking about prevention you're
really talking about health and this
brings me full circle to where you where
you started what we're starting
so what is health right i mean i'm just
like everyone else well if i'm not
are you healthy well if i'm not sick i'm
actually healthy right so in most
people's minds including mine
not being sick is kind of the default
definition of being healthy
but that is very
problematic because the absence of
something the absence of disease
is very is impossible to operationalize
you can't do something about the absence
of something else
so that's what i started to ask well
what is health if it's not just the lack
of disease
well it turns out
that and this has been my research it
turns out that health is not just the
absence of disease it is the result
of our body's own hard-wired defense
systems health defense systems that
we're born with these are defense
systems are formed in a womb before
we're born and the moment we appear on
planet earth our health defenses are
firing in all cylinders from day one
all the way to our very last breath
and all of a sudden that gives us a
whole new canvas to understand what can
we do to support health what can we do
to boost our body's health defenses
yeah i love this idea one when you think
about disease it's
happening within us all the time
and right now i've heard you say this in
interviews right now literally this
minute you and i are both forming
cancers but they are very small and the
body has defense mechanisms against that
and it goes and attacks it and you talk
about the five defenses that the body
has and when those five defenses are
working well then even though you're
being assaulted from the outside you've
got things going wrong on the inside
you're able to
hit this i'll call homeostasis that we
think of as health and
really
taking your approach of saying okay
there are these five defenses which
would be great for you to walk us
through what those five are but that
there are things you can do on a daily
basis that support those
and that's what i really want people to
take away from your message so what are
those five defenses and how do we keep
them optimized
yeah so our body has five very simple
health defense systems that are um
that have now been discovered they are
number one something called angiogenesis
that's blood vessels that's how our
blood body grows blood vessels angio
means blood blood vessels genesis is how
the body grows blood vessels we've got
60 000 miles worth of blood vessels
packed in our body and these are the
highways and byways of our oxygen our
nutrients whatever we breathe whatever
we eat in order for ourselves to get the
benefits of the critical elements of
life they have to be carried by the
blood vessels so that's so critical for
our defenses that's healthy number two
our stem cells you know when we were
kids we were told that starfish and
salamanders can regenerate but humans
can't guess what that textbook's been
thrown right out the window because
humans do regenerate
just slowly and we know that we
generally regenerate because our hair
grows back um
you know our skin
can actually heal and and grow itself
back but some of the crazy things that
we're beginning to actually discover
is that uh if you snip a piece of your
lung off and it'll grow right back at
the very tip if you cut up take away two
thirds of your liver okay let's say that
you have a tumor in your liver you can
remove two thirds of it and that one
third will grow the rest of the liver
back kind of like a salamander's leg
it's crazy and of course our nerves will
regenerate and so biotech companies have
been trying for decades now to figure
out how to inject stem cells well mother
nature's already beat them to it because
stem cells are present in our body as a
defense and we're continuously
regenerating ourselves from the inside
out repairing problems you know there's
a road crew inside our body
yours and mine right here right now that
are fixing things that are invisible to
us
third microbiome we can talk more about
this you know it's the tip of the spear
of a whole new frontier
about the human body that we're just
beginning to understand but the
important part of it is that we know
that when we've got good healthy gut
bacteria and this microbiome is the
ecosystem of our gut bacteria i call it
the great barrier reef in our body
you know 39 trillion bacteria all living
inside there and what we know the
important part for your your viewers and
listeners is that they help when they're
healthy they help to lower inflammation
in our body which then lowers all kinds
of disease they help optimize their
metabolism
everybody's always worried about their
metabolism good gut bacteria helps that
right along
fight fat um helps to avoid um
insulin sensitivity over uh
and avoid glucose surges all very
important controls our hormones
you know so that our mood and our brain
so our mood is actually uh healthy as
well and can fight cancer and uh
regulate obesity all kinds of things if
our gut and by the way it's so easy to
disrupt the gut i mean think about a
tanker spill uh that destroys you know a
coral reef that's what we can
accidentally do to ourselves by eating
the wrong things you know if you were
taking a boat by the great barrier reef
and you were to take a a bottle of toxic
material and pour it right down on top
of the coral reef guarantee you that the
fish and the anemones are all going to
be dead okay that's what we do to
ourselves so this higher level of
awareness that we have we have to take
care of our gut microbiome so important
for for defending our health our gut
defends our health fourth our dna
defends us against the environment so
most people think about our dna as our
genetic code yes it is it is the
blueprint for our proteins in our body
that we inherited half from our mom half
from our dad etc etc however
the the really cool um unsung part of
our dna is that it's one of our bodies
five health defense systems what does it
do it fixes itself what do i mean by
facing itself well if we go out you know
during the summer and you go to the
beach and you are enjoying laying out
you know enjoying the weather beach
weather the ultraviolet radiation is
coming in and mutating your dna
now how come we don't develop cancer all
the time after going out to the beach
because our dna is hardwired to fix
itself when it's damaged by the
environment and the beach is one thing
and i'm not even talking about the
tanning slot but i always ask people
when you're actually filling up your car
with gas
like you're you know you're at the gas
tank do you stand upwind or downwind of
the of the of the pump and people go huh
what are you talking about i'm like well
if you smell the fumes the solvents then
you're standing downwind and if you
smell them you're breathing in solvents
that can mutate the dna in your lung so
how come we don't get lung cancer
because our dna fixes itself an amazing
defense system um uh that our dna plays
and then finally is our immune system
which of course you know after the past
year and a half everybody knows just how
important good strong immunity
actually is but most people don't know
that even as we get older
our immune system still has the capacity
of fighting invaders not just outside
invaders like viruses and bacteria but
inside invaders like cancer so we are
able to now
and this is one of the most remarkable
things i've seen in my medical career
give people who have cancer even
metastatic cancer that spread
immune treatments that by themselves
don't kill the cancer but uncloak the
cancer so that your immune system can go
after the cancer and even if you've got
metastatic disease even brain metastasis
it's possible in some cases now for your
own immune system to wipe out all traces
of cancer and put you
not just in remission okay that's what
chemo does can put you in remission but
immunotherapy can actually turn the
clock back and reset yourself so you
don't have cancer anymore
hope you enjoy the episode brought to
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theory enjoy the episode
so five health defense system what's the
mechanism
when you talk about the uncloaking
what's actually going on our
my understanding is that you're
basically getting a sample from the
tumor cell
you're sequencing the tumor itself
and you're somehow programming the
immune system to go seek that out is
that accurate well there are different
types of immunotherapy broadly speaking
immunotherapy is harnessing your body's
own immune system to fight the cancer
which is different than inventing a
toxic drug
or even or even a smart bomb you know a
targeted drug to actually go after the
cancer
so immunotherapy relies on your immune
system it is true what you just said
there are some very specific kinds of
immune systems where you can remove your
immune system reprogram it you know kind
of turn it from
uh you know
turn it from uh
an ordinary immune cell uh into a super
soldier okay and then inject it back in
the body and it will go and go after the
cancer but there are other forms of
immune
therapy where what you're what you're
doing and this is what i was talking
about
cancers like to develop these sneaky
ways of hiding from your immune system
they cloak themselves you know like the
old star trek the klingons would turn on
cloaking device and now you can't the
enterprise can't find the enemy ship
okay well that's what cancers actually
do some immunotherapies all they do is
they rip the cloak off the cancer and
the immune system goes regular immune
system goes aha i see you i'm going to
come after you and i'm going to get you
because what keeps you and i
from actually developing lethal cancers
right here right now tom is that our
immune system is spotting little tiny
harmless microscopic cancers and saying
i see you you're gone okay you're dead
meat and they just clear off it's like
taking an eraser just erasing the cancer
right off the chalkboard all right so
when you uncloak the cancer it allows
your immune system to do this the best
example of this is former president u.s
president jimmy carter
when he was in his 90s he developed a
melanoma that had spread to his liver
and his brain
and you know it was at that point this
is about 10 years ago now almost 10
years ago
a brain metastasis from a skin cancer
melanoma is pretty much a death sentence
and so he was happy he happened to be
one of the first people to actually get
a treatment that ripped the cloak off of
the melanoma cells in his brain and
elsewhere
and it allowed his 90 year old immune
system to see that cancer and even at
that age even with that spread
he had all this cancer cleared out of
his system and i use that knowledge to
help treat my own mother
who actually had metastatic endometrial
cancer so this is this came
home to roost really on a personal level
and you know we were able to
replicate that kind of finding not from
a skin cancer but from an endometrial
uterus cancer so
um you know we haven't beaten cancer uh
completely yet but i'll tell you i did
not expect in my career in my lifetime
to be able to see it's possible to take
somebody with advanced cancer and turn
the clock back and literally erase it
off the chalkboard using immunotherapies
and so i'm talking about drugs i mean i
talked a lot about drugs and stem cells
and you know all that kind of stuff but
the amazing thing is that with this
hardcore knowledge now i've worked in
biotechnology so i know
what it takes to develop technologies to
go after these um help enhance these uh
health defenses
but what's amazing is that
it's very hard to beat mother nature and
you can talk about drugs when you're
talking about treating disease but when
you're talking about prevention and
raising your shields amping up your
health defenses you can't talk about
drugs you got to talk about something
like food
and food is a medicine we take three
times a day and that's what i wrote
about my book ecobee disease
all right before we get on to food
because we're going to spend a fair
amount of time on that i want to
understand this uncloaking mechanism
what's going on at a cellular level
that one to what is the cloak itself is
it like a biofilm like what happens with
bacteria that uh that seems odd but
maybe that is what happens and then what
is the removal
mechanism yeah okay so
um
there are many different ways to cloak
uh we're discovering new ways and there
are in cancers many ways the one that
actually has
been amenable to immunotherapies
uh has been a
protein called pdl1
uh it's called program death ligand one
so this um pdl1 protein is made by lots
of different cells to help our healthy
cells
protect to protect ourselves against our
immune system so why doesn't why don't
most of us have autoimmune diseases
because our immune system is jacked up
and ready to kind of attack anything
that it doesn't want well it can
recognize self or healthy self
from disease
because our healthy cells have created
this protein called pdl one and it
basically raises the flag okay like on
the lawn that says hey you know what
we're normal please don't attack us so
cancers have hijacked pdl1
and they make lots of pdl one all over
themselves and so basically your immune
system kind of wings right by so these
these super soldiers their regular
immune system is with all these soldiers
that are patrolling your body our body
all the time they can't see the cancer
because they're completely cloaked it's
just wearing another kind of assassin in
the crowd waving a flag and so it
ignores it and yet there it is it's
right there so when you actually take
that flag away and you let the body
secret service spot that thing okay then
your immune system will find the cells
that are not make waving the flag that
protein pdl1 say uh
i'm coming after you
all right this is utterly fascinating so
let me say this in my sort of layman's
terms and see how close i'm getting
so we've got autophagy your body's going
through and it's saying oh here's a
damaged cell i'm gonna strip it down for
parts essentially and so that you know
whether it's a senescent cell that's
just sort of
um misfiring or whether it's a cell
that's literally broken we're cleaning
all that up now i never stopped to ask
myself how the body knows that that cell
is damaged
it knows it if i'm understanding you
correctly because it stops producing
this protein that you're talking about
so in the absence of the sign that says
i'm healthy the body then goes okay
you're damaged and i need to strip you
apart
so
that is part of autophagy so autophagy
is basically like recycling you know um
you take the plastic parts and the bits
and stuff after you've gotten your take
out or you carry out you want to put it
back so it can get reused in some useful
way or the other stuff thrown out
so that's autophagy and yes these types
of signals are used to help distinguish
between what you're going to keep and
what you're not going to keep and and
and what you should attack what you
should not is that what we're triggering
here is it normal autophagy or is there
another layer where it's a totally
different response yeah this is a this
is another layer um the autophagy will
occur after the immune system actually
finds it but before that it's really
spotting the enemy uh it is
cellular profiling okay
so if you think about like the security
force you know you got a vip in town you
got a big crowd that's going to come out
to hear the vip and you want to make
sure that there are no assassins or
trouble causers in the crowd
you actually have your security go out
there and review who's coming to the
party and when they when they get to the
party they're scanning the crowd looking
for um they're profiling the people does
that
that individual that cell look like it's
carrying a problem okay um and and most
people are looking like innocents and so
they they've got you know um they've got
the pdl the proteins that basically say
hey no no i'm you i'm i'm fine don't
attack me
but that um cancer
is hiding itself cloaking itself
masquerading uh
uh uh like a good guy okay um so what
immunotherapies can do is peel off the
mission impossible mask how does it
reveal
how does it know to selectively peel off
the pdl how do you keep it from just
peeling pdl off everything
yeah it's because tumors make a lot of
it they make tons of extra pdl and in
fact this is how we're able to
find out if you're a good candidate for
this kind of immunotherapy it's called a
checkpoint inhibitor checkpoint just
like checkpoint charlie just like the
checkpoint for a security team profiling
to make sure there's no bad guys in the
crowd and um uh and and tumors cancers
that are going to respond to this make a
ton
at this checkpoint and what what the um
what happens is that the treatments
have been designed so they're able to
peel back
the pdl one it's called a pdl1 inhibitor
a checkpoint inhibitor and literally it
kind of rips the mask off of of cancer
it doesn't rip it off everything
otherwise your whole immune system would
go after you with autoimmune disease do
you have to inject it at the site or
something no it goes right into your
bloodstream and uh
you want to you want this thing to go
everywhere into your brain into your
toes into your kidney into your liver
everywhere okay and that's the amazing
part like we are moving away from you
gotta cut the patient open and look for
the thing or you gotta scan you can
the this is these biological therapies
um leverage the power of our health
defenses
yeah this is so interesting and forgive
me i'm i piece by piece i'm beginning to
understand it better
okay so i want to keep pushing on this
so i really get it so
what am i injecting exactly
right
well first of all
not every tumor is going to be making
tons of it so some tumors are
not going to respond to immunotherapy as
easily you got to find a different way
to attack them but the ones that do
here's what we do we actually there's a
bag of liquid that contains a
immunotherapy drug they're called
checkpoint inhibitors
and most of them are
what we call monoclonal antibodies so
we're hearing a lot about antibodies in
the news we get a vaccine your body
makes antibodies
antibodies are really kind of the
ammunition
that your immune system uses they're the
bullets that the immune system uses to
attack things like viruses or cancers
and so what um uh but you but then ant
body can be designed okay so you can
actually create a designer and a body to
tackle and strip away the pdl uh the the
cloaking mechanism so literally what
what's in a bag that you would actually
drip in as an infusion
uh is a bag full of antibodies it goes
straight into your body okay it's like
getting an antibody if you infusion
that's exactly what it is and these
antibodies have been designed and dosed
and primed so all they do is they get
all over your body they're patrolling
everywhere and and they don't last
forever so just a single injection and
they're ripped in there anywhere there's
extra pdl and extra cloaking
peel it right off okay how did we get to
the point where we could design
something that would only strip it away
if it's extra
ah well that's the that's the heavy
lifting of biotechnology you got to look
at normal you got to look at abnormal
then you gotta titrate it you gotta
figure out that recipe you know
how does grandma how does nona make that
red sauce so delicious she just seems to
know exactly you know
they've tried this over and over again
different doses different levels
different formulations until they found
just the right one
dude that is so brilliant
that's really really incredible okay so
about 20 of people if i remember
correctly are like sort of hyper
responders to that um
you've got an interesting hypothesis
that'll lead us into another one of our
defense mechanisms which maybe is the
place to go next before we get to food
which is and i don't know if it plays
into the antibody role but certainly
just in in treatments in general
that there are certain things that may
be going on in your microbiome that
metabolize
the medication in a way that that either
works for or against you
um
can you give us some color on that yeah
absolutely
i i i you know you're you're setting
this up perfectly
for me to tell
you how our health defense systems don't
work in their own silos they actually
work together our health defenses
collaborate and through these
connections they can really help us
resist diseases like cancer
so you know the microbiome is something
that i can tell you when i went to
medical school was never taught med
school we were taught bacteria is bad
you want to actually scrub it out clean
it out treat it out with an antibiotic
well now we know that actually most of
the bacteria in our body is good
there's a few bad actors but most of
them are good and a lot of the good ones
live in our gut okay and the gut
bacteria
as i mentioned a little bit earlier do
all kinds of
amazing and crazy kind of things one of
the things they do is the gut bacteria
talks to our immune system which
connects back to the immunotherapy so
you need to have a good immune system
that's ready to rock okay ready to
respond to the immunotherapy that you
may be treated with that's what's
hanging in the bag
so if you hang something in the bag the
antibodies that go into your bloodstream
that rip off the cloaking device you
still need the other half of your immune
system the other half is the immune
system has got to be good enough to go
after it
now
it turns out the microbiome
pretty much is the trainer for the
immune system one of the trainers one of
the caretakers one of the
housekeepers of the immune system and so
if your microbiome isn't in good shape
your immune system is not going to be in
good shape as well
now
here's what's kind of crazy um
most doctors that are out there in
practice now when we were in school we
were told that um our immune system
like where's your immune system it's in
our lymph nodes it's in our spleen it's
in our thymus you know people kind of
like had we we had a checkbox of places
that the immune system is located
right you get a lymph node after you've
got like a sore throat or a flu or
something like that broadcast
that's not where the immune system is
now we know that there's some there but
actually
70 of our immune system
lives inside our gut so think about your
intestines right it's a big long tube
like a sasha's casing
a garden hose cut a garden hose in half
it's got a layer inside that layer think
about the jelly rolls think about it
like a jelly roll now inside the middle
of that layer is 70 percent of our
immune system inside our gut wrapped
like a like the jelly in a jelly roll
now where is the bacteria the bacteria
is inside our gut
that ecosystem is inside our gut like
inside the tube
and then the jelly rolls where the
immune system is 70 of our immune system
so what happens what's the connection
what's the collaboration
our gut talks to our immune system like
college roommates living in a dorm right
so you go to college
paper thin walls right some guy wants
pizza what are we gonna have tonight you
know you just pound through the wall and
shout through the wall and the guy knows
what you want to order right that's the
same thing your gut bacteria can talk to
the immune system through the walls of
the bacteria
and help to prompt them and give them
commands and how to actually get in good
shape
drop down and give me 50. you know like
that's actually what our gut bacteria is
able to do for our immune system now
there's one bacteria that's actually
they're different bacteria that are
important for different things we're
just beginning to discover this there's
one bacteria that seems to be
particularly important
it's called acromancia
mucinophila acromancia mucinophila i'm
going to come back to the name in a
second so this
immunotherapy cancer therapy i mean it's
truly remarkable what it can actually
achieve
in its best form okay but yeah only
about 20 of people are the kind of
responders that we wish we all would be
right the jimmy carter's or my mother's
for example and so um one of my
colleagues in paris um dr laurent
sitbogel is an immuno-oncologist okay
and she took 200 people
that had different types of cancers
breast colon pancreas
and she
and they were all treated with
immunotherapy and of course only 20
percent had the good response the
beneficial response the other one were
so-so that's a catsy response okay and
and she looked at everything that made
the difference between responders and
non-responders right that's a typical
thing that an analyst would do what
makes the good one what makes a bad one
what are the differences she could not
find any difference between the
responders and the non-responders
except for one bacteria that one
bacteria was acromancium
mucinophila the people who responded it
had it in their gut one bacteria and the
people who didn't respond to
immunotherapy had a bad outcome were
missing it
that's so interesting you're so crazy
okay so she took the
so she
she replicated that in the lab and found
that if she had mice growing cancers and
she gave immunotherapy if she gave them
an antibiotic to wipe out necromancer
man the cancer just grew grew grew grew
they didn't respond to the treatment if
she put acromancy back in their gut the
tumors responded they shrank frank
trying to disappear amazing right um uh
and by the way she got the acromancia
from human patients she put it back into
the mouse so
all right so what does it have to do
with um how to boost akkermansia right
because it's very sensitive you have
if i were to give you a zpac
okay to treat a bronchitis
that would wipe out acromancy your body
will eventually grow back slowly but
surely but if you had cancer and you're
getting this treatment you cannot afford
you don't have time time's not in your
side right so
we cannot eat acromancy right now as a
as a supplement there doesn't exist it's
not a probiotic okay
not yet
the only thing that we can do
is actually grow acromancia so we have
to be our own gardeners of our
microbiome to grow the acromancia so our
immune system is in good shape so that
acromancy can talk to the immune system
so that that part of is in good shape to
respond to immunotherapy how do you do
that
well
it's all in the name okay achromacia
mucinophila mucin
this bacteria loves to grow in mucus
loves to grow in the mucus of the gut
our gut normally secretes mucus
so the more mucus we have it's like
fertilizer the more the more acromancia
will grow
so how do we grow the mucus well you can
eat foods pomegranate pomegranate juice
the elacha tannins natural chemicals and
pomegranate actually one of the few
things that can stimulate our gut
natural gut
natural substance and art to our gut
naturally to secrete more mucus so you
can grow back your acromancy
so that's basically what
we're doing now with some of these
cancer patients is making sure before
they get immunotherapy that they're
actually growing back to acromancia this
is crazy and this brings us right to
food one of the things that's so
profound about your approach is you've
compared the response to all kinds of
diseases to a drug and then the response
to food as if it were a drug and it
really i literally have the chills right
now just saying that it is astonishing
how you can get a response from eating
food whether it's pomegranates
increasing the mucosal layer in your
intestines or
many many other things which i'm sure
you will rattle through some of here
shortly
that if you saw a drug that gave that
kind of response it would be a
multi-billion dollar drug and people be
losing their minds but the fact that
it's food becomes even hard to test for
walk us through some of the early
realizations that you had around that
and i've heard you talk about how as an
oncologist it's easy to get you know um
oh god what are the the chemotherapy
drugs and test it out in your lab but if
you ask the same thing about what the
response would be for broccoli or
something it's like nobody they look at
you sort of sideways um
talk to me about food as a drug
yeah so
first of all food is medicine is a an
ancient concept and if you go back to
the ancient societies and ancient
cultures like greek culture or asian
culture
food isn't just food it's not sustenance
you know it's actually part of our lives
and part of our lives is actually what
we eat
influences our bodies
here's how i came into this you know
very honestly
i'm not one of these doctors that
basically you know quit modern medicine
and then
pooh-poohed and eschewed prescription
drugs like i just told you i i've
actually been involved with developing
biotech drugs so i i believe
that new medications can be really
really important for the right person at
the right time in the right situation
however
i started to realize that because i
helped to develop many of the systems to
develop drugs
that we were
not taking full advantage of all these
testing systems
right um and and to just to flesh out um
how i explained it
i i'm a cancer researcher so i've done a
lot of research with in cancer labs and
i can tell you you can
go onto the internet click on some chemo
drug or whatever have it fedex to you by
by a mail order have it arrived the next
day put a a little um
a spoonful of the chemo drug into a into
an experiment and within a few days or
maybe even a few hours you would know
using this test system whether or not
the drug is effective against cancer
where there's activity okay
now you can pick up the phone and you
can call on a pizza or a salad and have
it delivered in 15 minutes and you ask
the same cancer researcher how do i
study what the
onions do what do what does the
anchovies do what do the you know what
does the lettuce do and they would
scratch their heads and say i have no
idea so that's what i did
10 years ago is to tackle that challenge
of of of
bringing two world cup making two worlds
collide the world of biotechnology where
we have like you can't believe how
sophisticated some of these testing
systems are
and that's what's amazing because you
can throw in the drugs too and you can
throw in the foods and then you can
compare them side by side so
um uh my area is in the field of
angiogenesis how the body grows blood
vessels for years cancer researchers are
finding trying to find ways
to cut off the blood supply that feed
cancers so the cancer doesn't get a
blood supply it's just this microscopic
thing and it can't grow in fact tumors
cannot grow larger than the head of a
ballpoint pen the tip of a ballpoint pen
until it gets a blood supply no oxygen
no nutrients no growth
all right but when cancer is actually
able to get this blood supply they start
taking off they can grow sixteen
thousand dimes in two weeks so it's an
angiogenesis is a trigger
to propel cancer growth so finding drugs
that can inhibit angiogenesis or stop
blood vessels from going to tumors
was at one point kind of a holy grail it
was you know like how do we get that
lots of drugs i've been involved with
the whole thing
and now there are actually lots of real
fda approved drugs but we were able to
study foods in that same system
foods
some of the foods soybeans grapes
strawberries
lemons and it was crazy to actually see
because i had the street cred of being
able to study
against the biotech drugs that pound for
pound ounce for ounce molecule for
molecule um
in in many cases the food held their own
against the drug
some cases more powerfully obviously
some foods are not as powerful
but that actually opens the gateway for
a whole new future and i think that's
something that's really exciting to
watch
no joke do we know what's going on at
the molecular level is it a metabolite
that our microbiome produces when
um breaking down grapes that's stopping
the angiogenesis or is it something else
yeah so um so
mother nature
in creating foods um have laced these
foods with natural chemicals right um
these are called bioactives and they're
called bioactives because they're
biologically active and in a plant let's
look at a strawberry for example okay
the tartness of strawberries you know
their strawberries are sweet and tart
the tartness comes from an acid
unsurprisingly called elagic acid
okay and so you know when a strawberry
is a little tarter because it's got more
elagic acid so um electric acid is a
powerful starver
of cancer so cuts off does that actually
end up in our bloodstream like can could
i eat strawberries and then you could
draw my blood and be like you had seven
strawberries absolutely that is insane
okay now but here's here's the even more
insane part
what are these
what are these bio actors doing in the
plant
they are part of the plants health
defense system
so these natural chemicals help the
plant defend themselves
when we eat them they have another job
description they do double duty and they
actually help to activate our own body
self defenses now here's one thing that
i think is a practical um value
you know for a long time people are sort
of talking about like well you know like
you should eat more organic and don't
need pesticides and stuff like that
here's a whole new take on this okay and
this is kind of smoking hot information
um
pesticides actually kill insects so that
the plants
look better
the leaves aren't as chewed up and
usually the fruits or vegetables look a
little bit better too right that's just
agriculture makes it look better and the
product look better on the shelf
organic doesn't use that and so a lot of
times you get you have that more natural
you know the bugs are nipping at the
leaves and chewing up the stems guess
what
mother nature created things like a
lactic acid as natural insecticides and
so basically when the um the plant the
strawberry plants being chewed on it
makes more logic acid to repel the bugs
it's a wound healing response and a
defensive response so organic foods have
more bioactives as a reaction i just was
uh involved with a study uh i was
meeting about yesterday talking about
coffee
organic versus conventionally grown
coffee conventional grown coffee with
pesticides organic coffee
hands down
um this is a study at the university of
warsaw university
hands down
a pound for pound of coffee bean organic
coffee has more bioactives than the
pesticide treated coffee because the
insects the natural things of the
environment cause it to create more
natural health defenses
dude this yeah this gets incredible i
can't believe i'm this deep in my
journey of health and all that and i
never realized that the actual chemical
compounds from food i always thought it
was the metabolites from the
digestive process that was making its
way into the bloodstream which i know
also happens also happens
yeah that's uh that's really intriguing
so one thing we actually haven't talked
a lot about which is your specialty is
angiogenesis so
when we eat something that has an
anti-angiogenesis benefit is it
like ubiquitous across every blood
vessel in the body or
is it doing something
creating some sort of knock-on effect
like the antibody drip that we're
getting where it's somehow selectively
targeting things that are over producing
something
great question let me kind of um frame
it in
uh uh first framing about androgenesis
in general so when we were in our mom's
wombs
okay and sperm met egg and started to
form a little ball of cells that didn't
look anything like a person yet but
started to create little organs and
start to create shape the first organs
that get created are blood vessels our
circulation is the first thing that gets
created so
our blood supply our circulation is very
much a part of who we are and i
mentioned that we have 60 000 miles
worth of blood vessels just to give you
a sense of how extraordinarily big that
is if you were to pull out all the blood
vessels
from from you or me and line them up end
to end that would form a thread
that would go around the earth twice
huge okay it is insane now
our
every single cell in our body every
organ require
relies on just the right amount of blood
flow so they're getting fed with oxygen
and nutrients um uh they don't need more
than just the right amount and but if
they don't have enough
our body has to be able to grow more
okay
this having just the right amount i call
it the goldilocks zone
so goldilocks remember the the the story
um you know the bears went in there and
it's not too hot not too cold not too
hard not too soft or our health defenses
including angiogenesis
is exactly the same way
not too much and not too little but just
the right amount
so this just right zone exists for our
blood vessels our stem cells our
microbiome our dna kind of balance as
well as our immune system it's all about
homeostasis the term you used earlier
just the right amount now that means our
body knows how to grow more when it's
necessary
and then when there's enough it stops
and there's too much
it's kind of like a gardener you know
that sees your lawn overgrowing it mows
the lungs mows it right back down until
it gets to the right height okay our
body's health defenses when they're
working at their best there's like a
perfectly manicured lawn
not too much not too little just the
right amount to be able to uh to to go
around like playing like rounds of golf
on a perfect course now
what tumors do
is they hijack this process and so they
like a tumor is sitting on a golf course
it just grows extra weeds and grass
righteous for itself
so that's what gets targeted your body
tries to fight that off but sometimes we
need some extra help for that extra help
can be a smart bomb drug that we
designed to target those extra blood
vessels or we can help our body
mow the lawn by eating foods that have
anti-angiogenic or blood vessel mowing
capacity you'll never go to get rid of
them all it's just back down to the
body's set point so what's an example of
um a drug that can actually do this
there's monoclonal antibodies that are
designed like smart bombs to take out
tumor blood vessels but foods can
actually do it too now why can drugs and
foods target a tumor blood vessel and
not take down your aorta or the blood
vessels feeding your brain like your
carotid artery it's because
when we build the healthy blood vessels
we take our body takes great care to
construct them
to be very very strong it's like
building a skyscraper okay the
architects and the contractors and their
craftsmen they make everything perfect
as perfect as they can
when a tumor does it you know it doesn't
it's not careful contractor that's like
a lousy contractor just throws the the
thing up and so the blood vessels that
are grown are flimsy they're fragile
they're unstable
and so think about you know a hurricane
like eric and ida sweep through the area
and the strong sturdy structures are
healthy blood vessels are going to stay
up even when the wind is there all the
ones that are not well constructed the
wind blows them right down and that's
why a tumor blood vessel is much more
vulnerable to either food or drug
wow that that's really incredible
okay so you wrote the book eat to beat
disease we've touched on a little bit
but now i think it's worth what what is
your sort of general i know that there's
never going to be a one-size-fits-all
it's very important for people to
understand
but in terms of general uh patterns of
eating to be disease what are those
general patterns
yeah well first of all um when i wrote
youtube disease which became a new york
times bestseller
uh the whole point was not about writing
about a diet it's not keto it's not
south beach it's not about weight loss
even it's really about health
and because when i was
doing my research to look at different
foods that would activate our health
defenses
here's the first thing i was surprised
by it's not like one food or two foods
or five foods or yeah it was more than
200 different kinds of foods and they
were fruits and they were vegetables
they were spices and they were legumes
and they were different kinds of seafood
including shellfish and they were
different kinds of fish beyond salmon
okay um and and there's even some dairy
products that can actually have some
benefits as well including fermented
foods like yogurt and sauerkraut and
kimchi and these foods are so ubiquitous
that they are found in the traditional
cultures of every single society but
especially
mediterranean diet which we know is
healthier for us as a pattern an asian
food which we also know is healthier and
so what i started to realize is that
eating to beat disease
is not just picking a particular disease
and trying to figure out what the recipe
is that the one size fits all but it's
really um a journey that we have our
whole lives from the time we're small
until we get old we get older
parents have the opportunity to actually
start feeding their children when as
soon as they're taking solid food foods
that can actually help them beat
diseases in fact in fact breastfeeding
is actually helping your child
beat disease by
shaping and sculpting their microbiome
right one of the health defense systems
so i came up with 200 different foods i
laid them all out according to which
health defense systems they activate
some cases they activate all of the
health defense systems i call those
grand slammers because man a single food
well knock out you know knock the five
health defenses out of the park it's a
home run not to eat those things
and i explain all the research has been
done by myself and other people to show
how they actually work so what's the
principle to eat to beat disease you can
love your food to love your health
love your food to love your health that
seems so contradictory to what we used
to think about healthy food right
because the old thinking is that well
you got to eat healthy you got to cut
out everything you love you know and and
and i'm i'm turning that upside down
inside out i'm inverting the whole
equation i'm saying if you look at those
200 foods that i put down in my book you
could be diseased
take a sharpie out and circle the ones
that you love already i like this i like
that one tomatoes i like oh man i like
this one okay
that's a great starting point because if
you start eating those foods you're
already head of the game because you
already love foods that can actually eat
that can activate your health defenses
now you can explore expand your horizons
by
choosing these other foods that are out
there as well if you sat on tv and
watched a food the food network
you can find all these people
experimenting with different ingredients
if you go onto youtube you can look for
an ingredient you don't recognize
or melon the heck is a bitter melon well
it's an asian gourd is it bitter
absolutely but there are ways of
actually cooking it so it's not so
bitter and it has medicinal value well
how would i do it click on youtube and
search on recipe cooking bitter melon
and you'll watch somebody teach it to
you so
love your food to love your health
explore with your life and just know the
foods i put in the book
activate your body's health defenses
right and some of the things i know
you've recommended historically
mostly plant-based
you talk about getting some omega-3 from
marine sources uh whether it's from fish
or whether it's from uh
i i think you talk about seaweed you'd
have to refresh my memory um
you do personally eat some meat though i
don't know if you eat any red meat or
not i know you recommend that people cut
that down
extra virgin olive oil
things like that am i missing any of the
the heavy hitting advice
well i mean so here's here's the basic
thing
all the research scientific research has
been done and the epidemiological the
public health research shows that eating
a plant-based mostly plant-based diet
that that's pretty broad you know um
fruits vegetables legumes nuts uh
healthy oils good for you you should eat
most of mostly that
doesn't mean
and by the way
plant-based could be tricky because
a lot of ultra processed foods also have
plant materials in it
processed soy all kinds of other things
all kinds of unhealthy oils made from
plants however it's whole plant-based
foods
it's kind of stuff you'd find a grocery
store or a farmer's market okay like i
would say mostly go for those mostly go
for those okay um
seafood has been shown to improve
survival and decrease the risk of death
if you eat two or three servings of of
seafood shelf it could be fish or
shellfish you get a healthy omega-3
fatty acids
per day
per week two to three servings per week
and the amount you would eat uh which i
write a whole chapter about food doses
amount you would eat is about three
ounces so people like well i'm not a
human scale i have no idea what three
ounces is what i would say it's a lot
less than you think it is a piece of
fish about the size of a deck of playing
cards you can put it in your palm it's
about the eighth it's about as thick as
a deck of playing cards not that big a
deal and you know um and and people who
love seafood can can get a lot of it
that way recently there was an
interesting study that showed if you
actually increase your
level of omega-3s by an extra serving a
week or two from wherever you are with
your starting point you can increase
your longevity your survival by 4.7
years
so an extra serving of of omega-3 rich
seafood you increase your survival by
lifetime survival by 4.7 years now you
can get if you're a vegan or a
vegetarian you can get omega-3s from
plant-based foods so chia seeds flax
seeds some of the nuts you can get those
as well but what in plant-based foods
you get a different kind of substrate to
make your omega-3s so you gotta eat a
lot more of it so you know um i i
i like diversity so um plant whole
plant-based foods seafoods if you
actually eat fish
if you don't explore it if it's not for
some ethical reason um and then you know
look uh in dairy by the way you know
when it comes to food and health there's
no universals okay some dairy products
you know like honestly cheeses are good
for the microbiome because many
traditionally made cheeses not in large
quantities they've got saturated fats
and a lot of salt but some cheese
actually have lactobacillus and other
healthy gut bacteria that we can use as
a probiotic food yogurt a dairy product
probiotic food
and so i'm all about the science
wherever the science takes me is where
the evidence takes me there's a great
american novelist named el doctoro and
he had this great uh quote he once said
writing he's a novelist writing is like
driving at night
you can't see beyond your headlights but
you can make the whole trip that way and
that's what science is like you just can
only see where your headlights are going
and you're focusing on the evidencing
ignoring all the darkness that's out
actually out there so what about meat
okay um i can tell you that
most of the research has been pretty
convincing that if you eat a lot of red
meat okay which was really only done for
the last
70 years or so like you know since the
1950s um before that most societies
didn't have we're not prosperous enough
to have a ton of meat around okay and
and now we have this abundance of meat
that we've industrialized meat and all
the things that are not so good for us
but um
all the studies show that eating a lot
of red meat
and all the studies have shown that
eating processed meats we're talking
about our sausages and the pepperonis
and all kinds of other hot dogs all that
kind of stuff
that's been classified by the world
health organization as a carcinogen by
the way processed meats you know once in
a while
especially if that's something you
really enjoy don't worry about it knock
yourself out enjoy it but do not do it
all the time and if you can cut it down
or cut it o