Kind: captions
Language: en
You assume that when you're eating food,
you're going to grow fat eventually,
right? There's actually substances in
food that can help you tame and even
lose fat. The hydroxyarol, you know,
like a peanut, the elactric acid. I
started to discover that in fact all of
these bioactives, they were fighting
body fat. They were taming the stem
cells. They were actually igniting the
brown fat to burn down energy and
increasing metabolism. There's a tea
that I write about called tea. And it
turns out research have been done to
show that tea lights up your brown fat,
triggers your excess fat burning,
decreases your stem cells making more
fat and f visceral fat as well. Quite
remarkable. Unexpectedly, I started to
lose weight in ways that I could never
lose before. Wait a minute. That's a
little bit weird. How could you be
eating more food and losing weight?
People
[music]
know stem cells by mostly associating
with driving to the driving to the
corner strip mall and getting their
knees injected or their elbow injected.
Right? To me, as a researcher, that kind
of stuff is not ready for prime time.
But our body is ready for prime time. We
are primed with stem cells from the time
we're born. We got about 75 million stem
cells that are just left over from
developing in a womb and they get stored
in our bone marrow and in our other
organs and our skin and even inside our
body fat. These stem cells are called
out to help repair us from the inside
out throughout our lives. So we are
actually continuously renewed where we
regenerate. And this whole idea that um
humans don't regenerate but salamanders
and starfish can is wrong. Another myth
that's being overturned is that humans
do regenerate. We just regenerate
slowly. We can't grow back an arm or a
leg or a tail, but we can actually grow
back our liver. We can grow back our
lungs. We can even grow back parts of
our brain, which is really, really
amazing. And definitely we regrow back
our our nerves. The thing about our stem
cells in our body fat that can affect
our metabolism is that the our body fat
does contain stem cells. And remember I
told you if you have too much energy,
too much fuel, too much food, uh too
many calories, but your body is going to
have to stuff the the fuel into the into
the fuel tank. So the fat you don't if
that's completely loaded up now, you got
to create more fat. You know what? It
creates it from stem cells.
>> All right? So So our stem cells and our
fat are there as reserves if we need to
actually create more fuel tank. But it
turns out that you can do some good
things with those um fat atapose cells
as well. I read about um some research
that is being done. I took part in some
of this as well.
Uh cardiologists are working with
plastic surgeons in liposuction to
remove fat and to identify and isolate
out the stem cells from body fat. So
here's how it works. do lipos suction.
You get this jar of yellow stuff which
is fat and you put that put that into a
a tube and you spin it in a centrifuge.
Makes it go round and around and around
and with and what happens when you spin
it like that is that the cells the stem
cells will clump to the bottom. The fat
will float to the top. You stop the
machine. It's not spinning anymore. You
pour off the fat and the stem cells are
what you have left. Cardiologists are
taking those stem cells and they're
putting it with a little saline, a
little salt water, and they're injecting
it into the heart.
>> Okay? And because it's not in the fat,
it's now in the heart. It will create
new heart tissue. All right? And one of
the remarkable things in my book I talk
about is that they're doing the same
thing with spinal cord injury. Now, it's
research only, but it actually is in
humans. Um there was a really famous
case of a somebody who a young person
who injured his uh spinal cord at the
neck level became quadripollegic and um
what they did is they actually took his
body fat spun it down exactly the same
way got the stem cells and then took his
stem cells and injected it into the
spinal cord and he was able to regain
movement which is really really amazing.
I'm telling you this to show you how
powerful stem cells are. And if you
imagine them in the heart or in the
spinal cord, that might be something
that the medical community is going to
be able to use in the future. That's
very promising. But that just shows you
how powerful the stem cells can be
inside the fat itself. You don't want to
be triggering those stem cells to grow
new fat by eating more food and
overloading your system. Those guys can
really fuel up your fat really fast.
Which is why sometimes when we see
massive weight gain, you know, like it
and quickly weight gain, it's partly due
to these stem cells. So, what's really
important is that you can tame these
stem cells. There are foods that can
actually you can eat that will actually
start to divert the stem cells by
telling the stem cells, hey buddy, don't
be making more fat. Let's let's stay
let's stay calm. All right? Let's just
stay quiet. Don't act out. Don't make
more fat. And that's really another
example of a health defense system that
on one hand could be really powerful to
help recharge, renew certain body parts
that we might want to have, but we have
to tame it. Body fat is not bad. It's
good you but what we want to do is we
want to respect it, but we do need it to
be tamed. We cannot allow it to actually
go uh haywire. Um the lycopine in
tomatoes, so there's a bioactive called
lycopine. It's a carotenoid. Um turns
out that uh found in tomatoes actually
uh you know kind of uh do a lot of
things to harmful body fat to fight body
fat but one of the things it does it
actually uh tames the stem cells. So it
basically tamps down the ability of fat
stem cells from going haywire. That's
important. That's like sending that that
that uh crazy kid in the classroom who
can't stop making noise and being
disruptive. That's like sending him over
to the principal's office. Getting him
out of the space. making sure it's not
causing trouble. That's what tomato is
one of them. Olive oil actually turns
out um which contain lots of bioactives
and I think that's what I'm so excited
about as a research scientist. Not only
is it the food but we're beginning to
identify the specific substance in the
food that can be beneficial. So um
hydroxyol aloanthin all these types of
bioactives uh in in olive oil for which
is also present in whole olives by the
way and and it's present in olive oil
but it's also present in olive water.
Olives are mostly water not oil. So when
you press olive oil it turns out that
the the they they throw away the water
right now and they they collect the oil
but the water's got a lot of these
polyphenols. One of them hydroxyarol
which also makes it into the oil a
little bit actually will tame your uh
stem cells in body fat. So again this is
an example where uh the foods that we
eat actually uh not only surprisingly
actually can help us fight body fat. I
that's one of the things that I was so
surprised at when I started to set out
to do this research. You assume that
when you're eating food you're going to
grow fat eventually. right here.
Actually, there's actually substances in
food that can actually help you tame and
even lose fat. And in fact, I I'll
confess something uh that uh most people
don't know is that when I uh wrote my
first book and I turned it in and it
became very successful, New York Times
bestseller, I had in the back of my mind
a little concern that people would
become so uh enamored with eating all
the foods that I talked about that they
might gain weight. And you know, I'm a
I'm a medical doctor, so I get concerned
about this obesity epidemic. And I would
be receiving these emails, you know, um
thousands of emails, tens of thousands
of emails, people thanking me for
writing the book and then talking to me
about how more empowered they feel and
and how much healthier they felt. Uh
some people said, "Oh, you know, I was
able to get off of my medications, you
know, like I got lots of really good
feedback."
>> [snorts]
>> Uh, and I was I was but I was my radar
was on for people that might say but I
was waiting for the butt but I'm gaining
weight, you know, because I'm eating so
much of the good food that you guys are
talking about. I never got that. What I
got instead was I distinctly remember
somebody wrote in and said and you know
what the the other the other benefit I
got from eating uh to beat disease is
that unexpectedly I started to lose
weight in ways that I could never lose
before. And I got that one letter and I
thought, well, thank God he didn't gain
weight. And then I thought, wait a
minute, that's a little bit weird. How
could you be eating more food and losing
weight? So, I kind of brushed it off and
then I got more maybe another dozen
letters like that, uh, or notes, emails
like that, people reporting that they
were actually losing weight. And by the
time I got to like 20 or 30 of these,
uh, I thought, wait a minute, there is
actually something going on. I'm a
researcher, right? So, we pick up clues
by observing. And I thought what the
most unusual thing is that by eating
food and these people are telling me
like now they're like really eating uh
you know foods if I five health defense
systems. How is it that they could be
eating food and losing weight? Um so
that's what literally triggered me to
begin looking more deeply into this. It
was really just the next part of my
research. Um actually I was doing
research on metabolism but I now I
wanted to dive in to see what the heck
was going on. And so when we started to
take a look at the bioactives in these
foods, because as a researcher, a
scientist, that's what I'm wondering. Is
there a mechanism like what could
possibly be in these foods? The
lycopine, the hydroxyarol in olive oil,
lycopine in tomatoes, uh the elactic
acid in chestnuts, you know. Um, I
started to discover that in fact all of
these bioactives
started to also make sense to me because
they were fighting body fat. They were
taming the stem cells. They were
preventing fat cells from loading up
with extra fuel. They were actually um
uh igniting the brown fat uh turning on
that space heater to burn down energy
and increasing metabolism. And then when
you actually really took a look at the
uh studies that were uh looking at
specific foods studied in clinical
trial, clinical studies, isolating the
food, all right, and just giving the
food to people, you started seeing that
they it was shrinking waist size, circum
waist circumference, and they were
losing body weight as well. And so all
of a sudden it became clear to me that
there was this whole other field of
foods that actually can activate your
metabolism, burn down harmful body fat.
And against what we I talked about at
the very beginning of this, which is
this new science of the metabolism,
these four phases and the harms of extra
body fat, I realized that there was
something that people had to read about,
which is what are those foods that you
eat that we know what's inside them can
burn harmful body fat and unleash your
inner metabolism. Who hasn't heard of
the benefits of green tea, right? It's
been sensationalized. I think that uh in
the modern world uh because of all this
complexity, human nature tends to either
create a hero or a demon. Uh that's
demonization or heroization, right?
Green tea tends to be in the hero side.
But for me, what I really try to bring
to the forefront and into focus is that
the science is actually trying to teach
us exactly what it is that's in the tea.
So, we know tea has polyphenols. are
called kakans. We know one of the kakans
is called EGCG. It's epigalo katakin 3
galate. But don't worry about the fancy
Latin scientific ner names. Let the
scientists kind of deal with it. But
there's a polyphenol and tea katakin
that's actually really really good for
you. Not only does it cut off the blood
supplies to help starve cancers, not
only is it anti-inflammatory,
uh not only does it help protect your
stem cells so you can regenerate from
the inside out, the the the fiber in
green tea and some of the kakans kakin
itself is actually a prebiotic. Helps to
nourish your nourish your gut
microbiome, take your gut bacteria, make
it happy. It's antioxidant, good for
your DNA, stimulate your immune system.
So again, you know, these are the
attributes of one of the only one of the
substances that we know about in green
tea that actually helps our body stay
healthier. It turns out when it comes to
your body fat, the katakin, the same
substance, actually fights white fat.
So, it actually helps you um actually
lose some of the subcutaneous jiggly
stuff, but more importantly, it actually
helps you lose visceral fat, the harmful
baseball glove fat that can be trapped
even inside a skinny body. That's the
stuff that chokes your organs, that
grows fast, that's the fat in the back
of your tongue that we talked about
earlier. Uh so, the bottom line is that
>> [snorts]
>> um green tea drinkers just metabolically
are healthier. And here's the other
thing about green tea. Not only has a
kakin, but it's actually just brewed in
water. Whether it's hot water or iced
tea, iced green tea, you wind up
hydrating yourself as well. And so
again, you get multiple benefits. And
hydration also, by the way, a lot of
people don't know this, but um a cup of
iced tea, a glass of iced tea has got
water. Not only got the katakans, but
it's got water in it. Turns out water
itself turns on your metabolism, turns
on your brown fat. And it's and
basically when you drink iced tea, cold
or or a glass of cup of cold water, it
actually it gets into your stomach and
there's a temperature gauge in your
stomach that senses that's cold. And
because it's your core body temperature,
what we think happens is it triggers
this this gauge to turn on your
metabolism to trying to warm up the
water. It's kind of like a like a like a
hot water thermos. It wants to warm it
up and it turns up your metabolism to
turn up your metabolism and act as your
brown fat. Your brown fat needs that
fuel to create to be the space heater.
It draws down energy from your harmful
fat, burns away some of your harmful
fat. So again, you know, like th this is
this is how this is a new way of
thinking about our food. It's actually
working our inner the food is working
our inner workings on our behalf of our
metabolism. And by making really really
smart choices, we can actually allow
ourselves to unleash our inner
metabolism. A lot of people don't
realize this, but matcha is super packed
with polyphenols. You know why? Matcha
is grown in a very particular way. 28
days before they pick the the the tea
leaf from to make matcha, they put it
under shade. They put they they
basically cover it with a canopy and and
the shade is there. So the tea in
response to the tea leaf tea plant in
response to shade actually wants to make
more polyphenols. So they make anywhere
from 30 to 300 times more polyphenols
under the shade. All right? And then
what happens when you pick the leaf, you
cut off the stem and then they powder
they dry and powder the entire leaf. And
so that's why you have so much more
polyphenol, but then you get more rather
than having in a tea bag or loose tea
leaves, you actually powder the entire
leaf. So you're getting the entire leaf
including all the polyphenols. So you
drink all the polyphenols, which is why
you get 30 to 300 times more than just
dunking a tea bag. You also get the
dietary fiber. Good for your gut
microbiome. So matcha tea actually is
quite amazing. actually done a study to
show that that that matcha tea extracts
can kill breast cancer stem cells. Wow.
>> I'm I'm always amazed by that because
look, as somebody who's been involved
with biotech development um and cancer
treatment development, finding something
that could kill stem cells, cancer stem
cells like breast cancer stem cells,
which is what makes cancers come back,
is a holy grail. we don't have a drug
for it, but here matcha tea actually
been shown in the lab to actually be
able to do that to me is actually really
jaw-dropping. [snorts] Then going down
into even more fermented tea because
traditionally again, you know, this idea
that in our wellness community we wind
up having all these mantras um must
drink green tea and oxidized fermented
tea is no good. Turns out that's not
true. The science is showing that ulong
tea which is slightly fermented also
good for your metabolism. You can lose
your waist, you can shrink your waist
size, your waist circumference, lose
body fat. And then even perhaps more
surprising if you take the extreme of
fermented smoky dark teas. There's a tea
that I write about called puer tea. This
is comes from a village of Puer that um
back thousands of years actually traded
tea on the silk road. So they smoked the
tea, they fermented it so it actually
survived the tea journey. And it turns
out research have been done to show that
pure tea lights up your brown fat, burns
up, you know, triggers your fat, excess
fat burning by burning the cells,
decreases your stem cells from making
more fat and whites uh fats, visceral
fat as well. Quite remarkable that this
fermented tea that's supposedly, you
know, fermented, it's not can't be good,
doesn't have any of the polyphenols
left. Wrong. And on top of that, they've
actually discovered just a few years ago
that there is this this tradition
thousand-y old tradition of making puart
tea. There's even a bacteria, a
probiotic that actually is that the
bacteria is grown in the way that's
fermented. In fact, they call it
purillus
uh like a basillus that actually grows
in puer tea. So, this is actually a a
probiotic tea, which to me is
remarkable. And not only does it improve
gut health, it's good for your
metabolism as well. So it fires up your
brown fat. So again, you know, tea is
the second part of the holy trinity. The
third um which I always drink and you
asked me what did I want if I, you know,
I was coming in to do this podcast with
you and I requested a cup of coffee.
Coffee has chlorogenic acid and many
other polyphenols, but the chlorogenic
acid not only boosts your health
defenses um but it also triggers your
metabolism uh and it stimulates your
metabolism from going as well. A little
bit of the caffeine which I'm able to
tolerate. Not everybody can tolerate
caffeine um but I'm able to tolerate the
caffeine. Caffeine also uh stimulates
not only your kind of like your brain
but also stimulates your metabolism as
well. And I'm not encouraging people to
go after caffeine. I'm just saying that
coffee is one of the the the third of
the holy trinity. Coffee, tea, uh, and
water that actually is really really
healthy. The study that was done was
taking pieces of fat from people getting
beriatric surgery. So these are people
that are morbidly obese and removing
their fat. And the researchers um
actually took a chunk of the fat and
grew them out in a in a plastic dish,
petri dish. Um [snorts] and uh they uh
were able to observe that fat wants to
grow. Once it's out of control, it you
know it it sort of wants to keep on
going out of control. And the way it
does it is kind of like scary on
autopilot. Fat is a highly vascular
tissue, meaning that it actually
requires a lot of blood vessels, just
like a tumor, by the way. Um, so when
fat wants to go way beyond where it
should be growing excess body fat, the
way that it supports itself is by
hijacking and recruiting and growing out
extending extra blood vessels
desperately trying to find a source of
blood of of nutrients and oxygen. And so
what they found when they removed the
fat from obese people and they put it
right into a petri dish and to grow grow
in tissue culture, the fat within days
started extending its tentacles of blood
vessels searching for new nutrition in
order to be able to make it grow bigger
and bigger and bigger and to explode in
its growth. And so this is what's really
interesting is that there's an analogy
between excess body fat and cancer
that's growing. Early in the womb when
we were our bodies were still forming,
blood vessels grew and fat formed little
uh little uh bubble wrap uh packing
around the fat, little formations of fat
in order to be able to store fuel.
That's basically how we actually form.
So our blood vessels naturally have a
little rim of fat around it. It's
they're the fuel tanks for our body. All
right. Um and uh what happens is that as
fat mass grows, it continues to need
blood supply. It needs oxygen. And when
you have too much fat growing, it just
needs more blood. It needs more blood
supply. It actually reaches out and it
grabs more uh blood vessels to selfishly
grow blood vessels towards itself. Now
if the fat grows too fast faster it can
grow than it can grow the blood vessels
actually the center of the piece of the
expanding mass will start to die because
it can't get it can't grow blood vessels
fast enough. That's called hypoxia.
And when you when the center of the fat
that's growing it happens in tumors as
well doesn't get enough oxygen. And that
hypoxic area in the center of a fat mass
is really dangerous because hypoxia
causes inflammation. Basically it's a
tissue that's starting to die. It's not
dead yet. And inflammatory cells just
race in there. And that's why excess
obesity actually is associated with
inflammatory diseases. Highly
inflammatory diseases like cancer, like
diabetes, like Alzheimer's disease.
Partly because it it's a setup. Too much
body fat sets you up to basically be a
walking vessel of inflammation. I titled
my book Eat to Beat Your Diet. It's a
trick title because it's not a diet
book. It's kind of an anti-diet book
saying that, you know, you can improve
your health without ever having to go on
a diet. And it has to do with your
metabolism. And your metabolism actually
is very sensitive to the relationship
with body fat, your fuel tanks, which is
then sensitive to the to the food that
you actually eat. And skinny people,
people who have a lean body, right? You
think you're okay um because you're
lean. Uh, but that's not necessarily so
because the visceral fat the which is
the fat you can't see. Not the muffin,
not the thigh, not the butt, not the not
the jiggly part under your arm. It's
packed inside your body can happen in a
thin in a thin person. Let me tell you
what visceral fat's like. The analogy I
give is that if you went to a FedEx uh
uh shipping place and you wanted to send
some fluorescent light bulbs, all right,
long thin light bulbs are delicate.
You're going to get a thin box and
you're going to actually ask for some
peanuts and you're going to pack the
peanuts in there. Right now, you can
pour put the peanuts in there gently and
have just enough or you can really begin
stuffing extra peanuts in so that in
fact the the peanuts are actually
pushing on the light bulb like almost
breaking the light bulb. Now, you force
the box the thin box close and you tape
it shut. At arms length, you got a
skinny box, but inside there, the
pressure from that those peanuts are
crushing the light bulb. And that's what
can actually happen in skinny people.
The peanuts are the visceral fat, the
dangerous fat. Fat you can't see. It's
stuck inside you. You could be skinny or
big body size will also have it.
Everybody needs to watch out about
visceral fat. And the thing about
visceral fat, I I think of it's like a
baseball glove wrapped around your organ
that can choke your organs. It's easy to
grow, highly inflammatory. It's one of
the first places that actually stores up
extra fuel. you eat too much, that extra
energy, your body's going to stuff it
into those fat cells, that storage tank,
your visceral fat. That's actually a
place that you really want to be able to
fight it first. Now, a really
interesting fact that people don't know,
um, I I do this with my master classes
that I've been on metabolism, I've been
doing, and I do make it really
interactive. So, I basically said, uh,
true or false, first place when you gain
extra body fat is, uh, around your
waist. And most people say true because
it's their own experience. They see it
in the mirror when they gain extra
weight. And actually, it's false. One of
the first places that you gain extra
body fat is in an area of visceral fat.
It's inside. But surprisingly, it's not
your belly. It's your
tongue. Your tongue can get fat, even a
skinny person. So, let me explain this
to you. So, studies have been done
looking at um the anatomy of the tongue.
Turns out the tongue is made of three
different parts. The you've got the
acrobatic tip. That's a surf dislay of
the tongue. You got the middle that's
mostly muscle, right? So when you're
moving food around in your mouth, you're
actually [snorts] um it's not muscular
uh moving the food around. The rear, the
last third of your tongue is uh is big
and thick and it's actually marbled like
a t-bone steak. Okay? Um and it's ribbed
with visceral fat. And so as you start
to gain weight, one of the first places
to gain that extra fat is in the
marbling of the last third of your
tongue. One of the first places. So even
a skinny person have this. How do we
know this happens in a skinny person?
Well, usually it's a it's their bed
partner that tells them, um, hey, you
know what? I don't know what's going on,
but you're starting to snore,
>> right? And what's happening is that when
you're you know, they're gaining weight.
Their the last part of their tongue,
last third of their tongue is gaining
weight. It's getting fat, fat tongue.
And when they're sleeping, their whole
body's relaxed and their fat tongue is
also relaxed and it obstructs their
airway. All right, we call that sleep
apnnea. Now, you snort awake and you're
starting to snore on and off. And so,
that's one of the early clues that
you're actually gaining extra body fat,
visceral fat, is when your tongue gets
fat. Hey, if you like that video, then
you're going to love this one. Check it
out.