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calories a calorie. Just count your
calories and exercise and you're going
to be all set. That's not true. What you
eat and how you live can actually help
to restore your own healthy metabolism.
They all have these sulorophanes. Then
sulforophanes activate your fat fat and
actually starts to slow them down,
shrink them down and direct them into a
different direction to become more
healthy fat. Certain can intercept stem
cells. So body has these fat stem cells
to make more fat. Take these baby pre
fat cells and make them stay there. You
can actually not just claw your way back
to where you started, but you can
actually even get better. To me, how do
you do that? You do that by
there. great wooden engravings going
back to medieval times with this like
calories in and excrement out. And it's
not false. It's a good basic principle.
But you know where we are now is we are
light years ahead in our refined
understanding of not just calories but
how the body processes what you put into
it. It's kind of like fuel. You got a
nice car if you're actually putting good
quality engine oil in it. good quality
calories in the case of your body, your
car is going to drive a little bit
longer. It's going to perform better,
okay? It's going to be happier and
you're going to be happier with it for a
longer period of time. And you you have
to be informed of what you're putting
inside your chassis, your fuel tank. And
I think that's really the the biggest um
misconception that it's simply a number,
like a calculator. Yeah. Calories in,
calories out. If you exercise, if you
eat less, you're going to be all set. As
a as a matter of fact, the quality of
the calories makes a huge amount of
difference. You could have the same
number of calories in a can of soda,
okay, as you could actually have in a in
a plate of fruit and they would
obviously be radically different because
of the effect of the micronutrients
>> on those aspects of your body.
Metabolism is really the process that
our cells use to extract energy um uh
from food if we can if we're feeding
ourselves and from our within our body
to be able to power up and fuel all of
the functions um from the molecular to
the cellular to the organ to the
organismic level. That's basically what
metabolism actually is. And we don't
think about it that way, but I think
science is telling us that there's all
these layers to peel back to understand
how the actually engine runs. So, you
know, anybody who's actually sat in a
plane, right, you you get your boarding
pass, you get onto the plane, you buckle
your seat belt, you settle back for the
flight, you know, it's kind of like
getting into a plane is kind of like
trying to understand metabolism. It
seems kind of easy. you can settle down
into the seat, you know, uh, and just
enjoy the ride. But in fact, there's a
lot going on from the cockpit to the
engines to the fuel tanks, um, to the
weight of the passengers and the weight
of the luggage to the delays, the air
traffic control. And so that analogy
really tells us that we, you know,
somebody needs to be in charge of
understanding this.
And and I think that's that's where uh
folks like you and I, Mark, are really
trying to play our role in in digging
into what this what the science is that
you're showing and connecting the dots
with what everybody already understands.
And whenever there's a misconception, we
try to clear that up just to bring it
home to people uh who are listening
that, you know, are not really into this
the learning all about all the different
aspects of the science. Here's what what
it boils down to. Most people realize
that their body's metabolism is
connected to their weight, right? That's
one of the I mean, even even a kid in
grade school learns that pretty early
on. And here's one of the things that I
think, you know, for metabolism, it's so
complicated what we're learning. Maybe
it's simpler to help people understand
what we're learning is not correct. Like
what are the myths of metabolism? One of
them is we just talked about is the fact
that you know calories is a calorie.
Just count your calories and exercise
and you're going to be all set. That's
not true obviously. The second thing and
equality obviously matters. The second
thing that's really interesting is that
you know how many people have have have
you heard say my sister or my sibling
was really lucky because he or she was
born with a fast metabolism and look how
skinny uh he or she is. Right? And then
and then of course then the other line
is that well look I wasn't so lucky. I
was born with a bad metabolism and
that's why I have so much struggle with
my weight. I I can't tell you the number
of patients I've actually heard from
that. And actually honestly when I was
in medical school I I kind of I drank
that Kool-Aid too, you know, because
right that's the stuff that we learned.
It's it's almost and yet you don't
really find that in a textbook. That's
just a populist belief. Here's what the
science is actually showing.
>> Yeah. In fact, our fat, our body fat is
our most important gland, endocrine
organ in our body.
>> Yeah.
>> And most people don't realize this, but
before you could stuff your face to get
fat,
>> your fat formed before you even had a
face. So, here's a sperm and egg meat.
>> Your ball of cells. Some of the first
organs that form are your circulation
and your nerves. They form this kind of
like these lakes and these little
tributaries. The third cell after blood
vessel nerve that forms in your body is
atapost cell. Your fat forms before any
other organ. So you got to ask your qu
yourself a question which is what I what
I'm doing now like I'm diving deep into
this stuff really like a scientist
trying to understand what's going on.
This atapost tissue communicates with
your circulation communicates with your
nerves and is actually an endocrine
hormonal organ. It produces at least 15
>> uh hormones that connect to your brain,
to your stomach, to your immune system,
all these other things. A dipenectin is
one of them that certain foods can make
um you have make more your fat. You want
to feed your fat good stuff so it makes
better hormones for you. Yeah.
>> But fat like any other tissue has to be
tamed. And so I think that's another
kind of um
>> myth to to be busted is that fat
>> it must die. Wrong. Yeah, fat keeps you
keeps us alive. It's when it gets
>> un you want you want smart fat, not
angry fat.
>> That's right. It it even gets deeper
than that when you look at those
micronutrients, those bioactives that
are present mostly in the foods that we
already know are healthy, right? Whole
plant-based foods, nuts and legumes,
healthy oils. So the things that you
know like you and I have written and
spoken about frequently they those those
natural chemicals the lycopine the
corsetin the hydroxyols
they are now surfacing as players. These
same natural chemicals that are found in
healthy plant-based foods whole foods
>> actually are players because they act
they they can help sensitize our cells
to absorb uh energy. So they improve
insulin sensitivity.
Um, they can also help us switch that
um, bad fat, undesirable fat, hungry fat
into good fat, the brown fat that
actually can crank up your energy burn,
which is really cool.
>> And and and also, by the way, certain
bioactives can intercept stem cells. So
our body has these fat stem cells to
make more fat. We can certain foods can
intercept them and take these baby
prefat cells called padypipes and make
them stay there. It's like a it's like a
like a traffic cop, you know, telling
somebody to stay right tell that car to
stay right there.
>> We can eat foods that can actually
direct the traffic of fat, which I think
is really remarkable. Mother nature is
really clever. Very rarely does she have
one system do only one thing. Usually if
you do what systems will do multiple
things. So, um, in my book, Eat Disease,
I talked about the microbiome actually
helps you speed healing, communicates to
your brain, your social hormones, um,
helps influence your immune system.
Well, the microbiome actually is a
critical regulator of metabolism, helps
metabolize lipids, blood flowing around
your bloodstream, and how your body uses
glucose as well. Now, not surprisingly,
um, and some people may have heard me
talk about this, in fact, on your
podcast, um, there we're now
discovering, cancer researchers are
discovering that there are certain
>> bacteria that when present allow your
body to respond to cancer treatments, so
you have a better outcome. And one of
them is acromancia. You and I have
talked about this before. Pomegranate
juice, conquered grape juice, cranberry
juice actually helps to grow more
acromancia. It has to do with the
elagotanins, these natural chemicals
that cause your gut to secrete more
healthy mucus that these bacteria, this
bacteria acromancia loves to grow in.
Now, what's interesting is that when
this is a big study done like 10,000
people in China, people who actually are
heavier going into overweight to obese
actually have less to no acromancy in
their gut.
>> Wow. People who are thinner, leaner,
lean body mass, just because you're
skinny doesn't mean that you don't have
body fat. But people who have low body
fat,
>> yeah,
>> actually have more acromancia. So
acromancia seems to be sort of this
conductor of metabolism, body fat
regulation, um glucose homeostasis as
well, immune function, inflammation,
cancer development. I mean, you know,
just so profound. And so this is just
one example of a single bacteria and
there you know we got 39 trillion
bacteria. So we gota we're just at the
tip of the iceberg but but this is but
this is actionable. So you know certain
foods um that contain alagotanins like
pomegranate, pomegranate juice,
conquered grape, cranberry, those
polyphenols that are found those natural
chemicals found polyphenols found in
those fruits actually stimulate the
growth of more acromancia. So if you can
actually have uh orange uh an orange,
should you have a lot of orange juice?
Well, you know there's fiber in oranges,
there's vitamin C, there's a lot of
hesperid narogen, a lot of good
bioactives, but there's also a lot of
fructose in orange juice. In fact, to
make you need two large, juicy, ripe
oranges to make sorry, you need eight of
them to make two cups of two two glasses
of orange juice. A tall glass right
>> now. When would you sit down to eat
eight oranges? you wouldn't you would
eat one orange and get all that other
the healthy stuff along with the orange.
And so this is why you know fruit juices
as a general rule are are not a good not
as good a choice for your metabolism
than going for the whole food. And this
goes back to the whole food because
juicing itself it's a kind of
processing. Right? When you filter it
you're filtering out all the good stuff
too. in many ways that we think about
ourselves as a species living on a
planet and that we're constantly
communicating with uh things around us
and and plants and animals are also
communicating back to us. It's this
continuous feedback loop that's actually
going on. So, you know, this is this is
you think about these bioactives in in
um in in whole foods.
>> They are mother nature's way a plant's
way of communicating to our bodies,
right? And so that's really quite
profound. Um, and what's interesting is
that many of those healthy plants that
we already know about, tomatoes,
broccoli, bok choy, kale, they all have
these sulforophanes. Then sulforophanes
activate your white atapost tissue, the
bad fat that you know that hungry fat,
and actually starts to slow them down,
shrink them down, and direct them,
traffic direct them into a different
direction to become more brown. Brown
fat. Actually, by the way, you know, so
big bulging fat, right? This is the life
preserver you throw off the boat to
rescue somebody. That's the stuff you
don't want around your your waistline.
Well, it turns out that that that the
healthy fat, the brown fat, the burnable
fat that burns out energy, is not a
lump.
>> It's very thin and it's woven like a
seamstress between your muscles.
>> Amazing. Right. So um way back in the I
think the 1800s 18th century a biologist
a naturalist in Switzerland Conrad
Guestner was um finding these um these
rodents uh in the mountains of
Switzerland and dissecting them and they
were hibernating animals and he found
this thing between their shoulder blade
and he called it um a uh a he said is
neither fat nor flesh but it was it got
bigger in the winter because he was
>> catching these guys when during you know
while they're hibernating.
>> Oh wow.
>> And what he what later on was discovered
in the early 1900s is that you know
actually it's a kind of fat. It
resembled a sort of a fat and then when
they jumped forward and found it in
babies they actually found that so in
these rodents it was right between the
shoulder blades. It get bigger during
the winter and it would actually shrink
during the summer. And people are saying
well how come these animals don't starve
when they're hibernating? It's because
that they're building up these things
that this is an a heat generator. This
is their space heater and it was it was
actually fueling up their metabolism.
Babies have it too right between the
shoulder blades. And for a long time,
>> the medical community thought, you know,
this brown fat's like an artifact from
evolution. It's like the appendix. It
doesn't have any real use. Hey, look, we
we have sweaters. We've got indoor
heating. You know, we we don't need we
don't need that brown fat to heat us up
anymore. Mhm.
>> Turns out, this is a super fascinating
story. Um there was a 67year-old
um patient that came to a Boston
hospital, Mass General Hospital, and had
a tumor in her chest. And so they were
doing a PET scan
>> to look at it. So a PET scan, for those
of you who don't know, it actually
measures the metabolism
>> of a tumor. It's and so cancers will
light up because they're really active,
fast dividing cells. When they scanned
this this patient's chest, the um tumor
lit up like a uh like fireworks. So when
they biopsied, guess what they found?
They didn't find cancer cells. They
found fat cells. And when they looked at
the fat, it was brown fat.
>> Okay? And they were like, "Whoa, this is
crazy." So they actually called it an
hibernoma. All right? There's a whole
tumor category that's based on Conrad
Guestner's little rodent discovery of
hibernating animals. So pathologists
used to call this hybras. Okay? when
they used to find them.
>> Wow.
>> So, this radiologist went back, okay,
and looked at a thousand PET scans taken
from adults in Boston for different
reasons, all kinds of different scans.
And he found that that people were
lighting up, that these this brown fat
was lighting up in different places than
different times. It goes one step
further. Remember I told you these
rodents are hibernating in the cold,
right, in in you know, central Europe
like around Switzerland? It's pretty
damn cold in the in the winter time.
>> Yeah.
>> What he found when he looked at the date
of the uh when he looked at the date of
the um of the scan when did the scan the
scans that lit up with brown fat were
all done during the winter months in
>> cold temperatures light up
>> your brown fat.
>> Yeah, I know that. Yeah.
>> So, so this is so then fast forward. So,
we now know that we've got a pretty
substantial amount of brown fat. And
when they look at where it is, it's not
just behind our shoulder blades. It's
around our neck. It's around our girdle.
It's up behind our chest. There's some
in our belly. And cold temperatures and
certain foods will light it up. And
that's kind of like the cool part. The
bioactives in foods
>> will mimic these temperature and other
factors to really help us burn fat. You
know, anybody in the medical community
will know that the teaching of the drug
companies is that a little bit's not
enough and then you want to you want to
increase the dose until you get the
maximal tolerated dose. That's how drugs
are developed. That's how chemo
therapies develop. How much can you elev
how could how how high can you make the
dose until you basically make the person
croak? That's really how drugs are
developed. And yet that's not how
biology is when when we eat those um
when we have that symbiotic relationship
with plants, which I totally agree with.
And by the way, humans aren't the only
ones that do this. Bears go out and
forge for berries for specific kinds of
things. Insects go out and look for
specific types of plants and pollen to
be able to service their own systems as
well. So, you know, we we've been we
we're f you know, we're
>> we're all taking the p carrying a page
of the playbook of every other living
species on the planet. And at the end of
the day, it all goes back to the to the
plant-based foods. But here's I think
what's really um cool. We can actually
um uh think about this hormmesis concept
is so important. A little might not be
enough. A little bit more might be
better. Even more might actually get you
want to be. And then when you go way
overboard, you actually get less of an
effect. And by the way, this is a lesson
I think that people need to hear about
dietary supplements, right? because you
get your corsetin, you get chlorogenic
acid, you get your lycopine, you get
your whatever it is. And you know the
the the thinking is for a lot of people
who are not savvy to the idea of
hormesis is that more isn't always more.
>> Yeah.
>> At some point more is less. May not be
toxic, but it you might actually move
away from the benefit that you would get
from this is my new deep area of
research. I'm not going to go into the
complex. I'm going to go through the
simple things. Turns out for your
metabolism that what you eat and how you
live uh can actually help to restore the
metabolism that you were destined to
have born with which is the same as
everyone else. All right? So you're
you're you're not doomed by your
genetics. Um you're you're capable of
actually restoring your own healthy
metabolism. And if you listen to the Dr.
Mark Heymans of the world, you can
actually elevate them as well, which to
me is a is an is an inspirational
message that you can actually not just
claw your way back to where you started,
but you can actually even get better. To
me, how do you do that? You do that by
actually a lot of the common sense
things that we over and over we've been
saying, eat mostly plant-based foods,
whole foods, you know, um fruits and
vegetables, nuts, legumes, healthy oils,
avoid unhealth excessive unhealthy fats.
All right. Yeah. Um, omega-3s, which
come from seafood and seaweed, are are
also great compliments. And look, um,
I'm somebody who really enjoys food. I
don't love to eat, but I I enjoy food,
and I love the traditions of food.
>> It's okay to, you know, you don't have
to be a ve vegan to enjoy your life, and
you and you should live your life, but
what you need to do is that you're
tending your own body's garden.
>> So, you need to make sure you're taking
care of it most of the time. taking care
of it of not only eating well, cooking
it the right way. So, you know, omega-3
healthy a piece of salmon, okay? Uh if
you deep fry it and turn into fish and
chips, it's it's, you know, like what we
do to our food even at home
>> actually can make the difference between
turning something that's good and making
it better versus taking something as
good and taking it less good for you.
So, that's something it's it's in your
hands. And then of course the simple
things like staying physically active,
um getting good quality sleep, managing
stress, you know, um those are all the
composite things that those systems we
started at the very beginning of this
podcast talking about all those
molecular systems and the microbiome.
Look,
>> you don't need to me memorize all the
things that that you know that that
folks like you and I are are uncovering,
but what you do need to understand is
that how you schedule your life, how you
run your life has a profound effect,
this domino effect on all the things
inside. So do good things for yourself,
do a good deed for yourself every single
day, three times a day and while you're
sleeping at night. That's the secret to
actually helping your metabolism. it
actually our body is is shifting over
time as we age and there all these
little gears and parts are all moving
and responding to that information. So
here's the thing that you know like I
you know listen I'm a I'm an internal
medicine doc like you uh I'm a vascular
biologist and I've been involved with
biotech development. So for me I've
always been curious on the mechanisms.
What do we understand about a molecular
or cellular process that drives a
disease and if we understand that could
we apply the science to come up with a
solution and that's really how
>> imunotherapy and anti-androgenic therapy
and all these growth factor therapies
this is modern medicine at its best from
a technology perspective
>> however what really drew me into the
nutrition world was
>> I realized that you know when we're when
we're diving after disease including
obesity by the
We're we're already kind of looking at
what c, you know, we're trying to figure
out what causes the hurricane while
we're in the eye of the storm.
Everything is blowing around us. The
roofs are coming off, you know, ducking
for cover. And so, one of the things
that I think is so um uh fascinating to
me as a scientist, as a doctor, is
really going back to take a look at,
well, what happens before you're sick?
like what's the basic function of the
body like before we're trashed, you
know, at any age. And so this is where
uh a profound study was published in 20
uh 21 uh uh in the journal Science, one
of the most credible scientific journals
by a guy named Herman Panzer, who's a
professor at Duke University. He worked
with uh colleagues from 19 other uh uh
countries to look at 6,000 people and
ask what was their metabolism like? And
so, you know, the onesies and twzies and
the threzies studies that have been done
on metabolism or people that doing
sports drinks or athletes doing research
studies, that's one thing. But what they
did is they took a look at, it's
amazing, they took a look at people that
were just a few days old to 95 years
old. They
>> applied the exact same measurement
system which uses a form of water that
has an atom that you can actually
measure in a room.
>> So talk about a closed system. So you
put these people into closed system and
you give them this this uh this cocktail
to drink. wound up happening is that
they could actually measure from their
breath and their urine how their body
was using metabolism. And what they
found it was, of course, everybody's
metabolism was all all over the place.
So information, right? So put
information in, they're eating and
drinking information out, they're
measuring it looks like a mess. Except
one of the things that they did is they
corrected they developed um back to the
physicists they used mathematics to kind
of correct for age, size, sex um and and
this is really kind of the mic drop
here. They corrected for body fat.
>> So what they realized is that everyone's
going to have a different level of body
fat from the time they're a baby to
their time they're in their 90s across
the age span. When they did that, this
this um chaotic data set suddenly
clarified itself into four phases of
human metabolism as we age from a few
days old until we're in our 90s. And
yeah,
>> that really changed my mind when I saw
that data to go this is like a Eureka
moment that humans all are hardwired and
it makes total sense to go through the
same stages of cellular metabolism as we
age. And so there's four phases. Zero to
one is one phase. So when you're born,
we're we're corrected for body size. We
have the same pace of metabolism as our
moms did. That makes sense. we were
synced with our mom's metabolism
corrected for size but from zero to one
our metabolism soarses uh to about 50%
of higher than what we're going to have
we're an adult that's why um neonatal
nutrition what we feed our babies in the
first year of life is so profound all
those cells are taking in those calories
the nutrients breastfeeding everything
counts in the first year of life so from
the get-go what were the fuel that we're
giving our bodies actually can make a
huge difference going downstream
from from one years old down to uh uh uh
20,
>> our metabolism actually starts to go
down to adult levels. And so when you're
a teenager and you're seeing teens eat
two or three dinners and their group up
a tree, right? What do we always say?
Like, you know, like, oh man, our kids
are like sprouting like trees. Their
metabolism is going crazy. actually
their metabolism is going down heading
down towards adult levels.
>> Surprise, right? And then from 20 to 60,
>> that's during college age, your first
job, you know, your mar your your your
marriage, if you get divorced, your
menopause, all those kinds of things.
Actually, it's a straight line of how
our bodies program. And only at 60,
>> at 60 years old, in our sixth decade,
does our metabolism start to decline
very, very slowly. So that by the time
we're 90,
>> our metabolism at 90 years old is 75%
what it was when we were 60.
>> Hey, if you like that video, then you're
going to love this one. Check it out.