In today’s video, we sit down with Dr. Joel Furhman. Dr. Furhman is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times best-selling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing. He specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods. Dr. Fuhrman is the President of the Nutritional Research Foundation and on the faculty of Northern Arizona University, Health Sciences division. He coined the term “Nutritarian” to describe a nutrient-dense eating style, designed to prevent cancer, slow aging, and extend lifespan. For over 30 years, Dr. Fuhrman has shown that it is possible to achieve sustainable weight loss and reverse heart disease, diabetes and many other illnesses using smart nutrition. In his medical practice, and through his books and television specials, he continues to bring this life-saving message to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Your host, Nathan Crane, is a Certified Holistic Cancer Coach, Best-Selling Author, Inspirational Speaker, Cancer-Health Researcher and Educator, and 20X Award Winning Documentary Filmmaker with Over 15 Years in the Health Field.
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Audio Transcript
(Note that this transcription was auto-generated so there may be some errors)
00:00:38:04 – 00:01:07:07
Nathan Crane
Hello and welcome, everybody. I am super excited about this podcast today with Dr. Joel Furman, a good friend and colleague, a seven time New York Times bestselling author and one of the rare medical doctors who actually helps people not only prevent chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes and cancer, but actually helps them transform their lifestyle to help their bodies heal themselves from these chronic diseases.
00:01:07:16 – 00:01:17:22
Nathan Crane
And he has significant results. And he’s been helping many people all over the world for decades. So, Dr. Joel Furman, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:18:23 – 00:01:22:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
Thanks, Nathan. Great to be here.
00:01:22:11 – 00:01:39:24
Nathan Crane
So you primarily focus on, well, you’ve really created something called the nutrition diet, and it is primarily focused on a whole food plant based diet, right? Some would call it a vegan diet, but you wouldn’t necessarily call it a vegan diet. Can you talk about that?
00:01:41:12 – 00:02:06:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
Right. I mean, particularly my interest is in reversing disease and making the I’m putting forth the science and the clinical evidence that nobody has to have a heart attack or a stroke. We can reverse those illnesses, reverse diabetes, get the most people off of medications, and even reverse autoimmune diseases like psoriasis and and rheumatoid arthritis and show green syndromes and lupus as reversible.
00:02:06:21 – 00:02:48:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I’ve spent my life aiding people in reversing those conditions. So we’re talking about the diet style that’s most favorably designed to slow the aging process, prevent disease, prevent cancer and dementia, and also reverse disease. So what I’m saying is the new territory in diet is designed as where is the scientific evidence point that what portfolio of foods will allow people to age slowly, slowest as possible, live the longest, and then can utilize that longevity promoting diet style as a therapeutic tool to reverse disease in people who may be sick and be suffering with various chronic conditions.
00:02:49:03 – 00:03:31:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
And so that’s predominantly what the nutrition diet is about, and it’s based on various principles. And one of the main principles is gives the most nutritional bang for caloric buck and have both a high level of nutrient exposure while at the same time having a broad diversity of exposure to a wide variety of nutrients that humans need, not leaving any particular hole open, making sure you have every nutrients humans need in the right amount and with the with the knowledge and the science to know that most Americans and most people in the modern world are ubiquitously and severely deficient in phytochemicals.
00:03:31:01 – 00:03:45:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
And we’re an animal with a high phytochemical requirement. An exposure to the the density and variety of phytochemicals is the secret to slowing aging and preventing cancer.
00:03:45:22 – 00:04:24:22
Nathan Crane
So there are a lot of health experts out there who would agree with you and a lot of others who don’t agree with you. And I think this is the confusing part of the Internet today is there is science that supports absolutely everything you say. And then there’s science that people reference that they say claims the opposite. So what what I’m interested in, especially with this podcast and all the work that I do and the work I’ve done for almost two decades now is really researching and understanding what is the truth, what is the diet, the lifestyle, the the most effective things we can do in ways we can live and eat that promote health
00:04:24:22 – 00:04:47:06
Nathan Crane
and vitality and longevity with the least amount of disease and the least amount of health problems possible. Right. And I know that’s been your focus for a very long time. So how do you how do you look at science of nutrition and why is what you’re teaching controversial and compared to what maybe others are saying out there?
00:04:47:24 – 00:05:12:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
Right. I mean, you have a lot of people that put forth their opinions, but I don’t think that this scientific information is controversial among nutritional scientists and scholars in this field. In other words, people who spend their life studying the the the world’s nutritional science literature and its complete availability and knowledge. We’ve collected over the last 20 years.
00:05:14:01 – 00:05:39:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
We don’t have much controversy among nutritional scientists, nutritional science meetings, you know, lifestyle medicine conferences, the World Health Organization meetings on nutrition. In other words, in the field of nutritional science, there’s been less and less controversy and more coming together of knowledge with so much corroborating evidence so that we can create evidence based on a grant on a system of grading.
00:05:39:13 – 00:06:06:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
And we know that, for example, that the most proven methodology to slow aging and extend human lifespan. And I want people to write down these five words because all the evidence points to this, and that is moderate caloric restriction, because we know that being overweight shortens life span, even being £30 overweight, shortens lifespan. So moderate caloric restriction to maintain a low body mass and a low body fat mass.
00:06:06:09 – 00:06:34:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
And we’re talking here about maintaining your body fat below 25% if you’re a female and below 15% if you’re a male. So we’re very clear and precise about that in the context of nutritional excellence. So we’re talking about achieving nutritional excellence without consuming excess calories, moderate caloric restriction, not severe caloric restriction, because severity of caloric restriction leading to anorexia could lead to nutritional deficiencies and low muscle and low body mass.
00:06:34:24 – 00:07:01:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
And, you know, taking things your immune system too far. So that’s the foundational principle there. And then we’re talking about we’ll talk about other factors that are just life span. But essentially we’re looking at three categories of food here. One category is processed foods, and those are things like pasta, bread, salad, oil, mayonnaise, donuts, cookies, crackers, radix cakes, breakfast bars, give us sources of calories without a significant micronutrient load.
00:07:02:09 – 00:07:36:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
And the micronutrients do not contain calories like phytochemicals and antioxidants and vitamins and minerals are not calories. They’re just nutrients. The calories are the three calorie containing nutrients are fat, carbohydrate and protein. And we know that most people shorten their life span because they’re eating too many calories, too much fat, too much carbohydrate and too much protein. So we’re trying to people eat less fat, less carbohydrate, less protein, lower their macaroni trans and increase their micronutrients by eating foods that have a higher micronutrient density, particularly to fight over phytochemicals.
00:07:36:18 – 00:08:05:15
Dr. Joel Furhman
So one thing we have here to start out with is that almost all the nutritional scientists in the world, and I’ll say more than 95% of nutritional scientists in the world agree that processed foods taking an empty calories shortens human lifespan. And then we have one third of the American diet is animal products. And animal products are rich in protein and fat, but they don’t really contain much carbohydrate, but they’re also do not contain phytochemicals and antioxidants.
00:08:05:23 – 00:08:25:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And if we use the 36 various parameters set by the government on the R.D. I’s for nutrients, we find that animal products are relatively low in vitamins and minerals and particularly low in phytochemicals compared to plants. Plants chlorophyl plants are phytochemical rich and also numerous in other vitamins and minerals, more concentrated.
00:08:25:11 – 00:08:45:07
Nathan Crane
Now where the animal based kind of doctors and people out there would disagree with that is in the diets they promote, they promote in their animal products is the the things like delivers in the heart in the brains and those kinds of things of the animal, which are actually very high in a lot of those nutrients. So what what are your thoughts on that?
00:08:46:01 – 00:09:08:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
No, they’re not. They’re high in specific individual nutrients like niacin and FTS. They have In other words, they have a very select amount of nutrients They’re high in, they’re select, they’re high in six particular nutrients, but low in diversity of nutrients. And no antioxidants, no phytochemicals. And none of those anti-cancer factors we get from plants. What I’m saying right now, looking at that animal product, those are theories.
00:09:08:22 – 00:09:29:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
People start with a theory and they can have a theory that they were a hypothesis. And then we can look at short term studies to see whether utilizing, let’s say, more animal products in the diet or less leads to more further short term benefits. And then we can look at long term studies over the years to see if it has long term benefits for lifespan.
00:09:30:08 – 00:09:57:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And we give more credence to studies that look at hard endpoints. So since you’re bringing that up, I would say that the corroborating evidence is overwhelming today that and this is from more than a thousand different studies today, that as diets go higher in animal products, we see more early life deaths of all cause mortality, meaning more heart attack deaths and more cancer deaths and more stroke deaths, except for hemorrhagic strokes.
00:09:57:03 – 00:10:25:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we have to exclude Asian countries that have a lot of salt where they’re leading strokes for hemorrhagic strokes. And look at Western countries. The United States were leading cause of strokes, were skim extracts from way clots. So we can talk about hemorrhagic strokes later. But right now what I’m saying right now is that we give more credence to studies that have large numbers of people, hundreds of thousands of people enrolled, and one for decades, because you have to follow people for decades to see the outcome.
00:10:25:11 – 00:10:42:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
If I give you a vitamin or give you a smoked Cigarets and Strachey for a couple of years, we’re not going to see the overall effect. You may even lose weight from smoking cigarets and it may even make your triglycerides look down and may help you with weight. It may have some beneficial effects. We know over the years if you smoke for 30 years, you’d be at high risk of a lot of different diseases.
00:10:42:15 – 00:11:09:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
The point I’m making is, is that there’s a difference in a soft end point. Like you lost some weight or your glucose went down or a hard end point, which is you died your early life death, you got cancer, you had a heart attack. And I’m using the terms very carefully here to say all the long term studies, looking at heart endpoints, following large numbers of people to the end of their life to see how long they live.
00:11:10:04 – 00:11:31:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
All those studies corroborate each other. And these two are high credence, long term studies of large numbers of people, and they all corroborate each other, showing that more animal protein and more animal products makes for more premature deaths. And premature deaths is a sign that before the age of 70 and more heart attacks, strokes and cancers and dementias.
00:11:31:17 – 00:11:47:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we’re saying that there’s no controversy among nutritional scientists today, that diets higher in animal products are unfavorable for longevity and are actually dangerous. Now, the question is, what about diets with a moderate amount of animal products or less?
00:11:48:10 – 00:12:10:18
Nathan Crane
Let’s say that because I want to get into that. But before we do so, here’s where the controversy is that I’ve seen and where I’d like you to to touch deeper on. And actually something I’m actually curious about myself, because isn’t it isn’t it true that most, if not all of those studies, all that grouped together animal products and corroborate each other?
00:12:10:18 – 00:12:46:02
Nathan Crane
Right. Which is a lot of the research I’ve seen and actually read and looked at for the past, you know, 15 plus years, which has led me into the path of, you know, a whole food plant based diet. But now, as I look deeper into it, aren’t those aren’t majority, if not all of those studies actually, they include all kinds of animal products, including, you know, milk, homogenized processed milk, things like fried bacon, things like processed meats, which we know are carcinogenic, lunch meats, these kinds of things.
00:12:46:02 – 00:13:07:04
Nathan Crane
Right. Versus don’t they include all the all kinds of those kinds of, you know, you know, processed hamburgers from McDonald’s, things that we know are toxic and combine a lot of other toxic things together versus looking at what a lot, you know, the kind of animal based movement that’s happening right now where they’re saying, look, we don’t recommend eating any of those things.
00:13:07:04 – 00:13:27:09
Nathan Crane
We recommend eating, you know, just even raw liver and straight from the animal and this sort of thing. Right. Where they’re they’re promoting a totally different thing and saying, hey, those studies don’t apply to this because none of those studies actually include this healthier animal diet that we promote. So I’m curious about that and what you think about that.
00:13:28:07 – 00:13:51:07
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, it’s a scary assortment. In other words, it’s not it’s totally not true. Is that the science here today are highly technical, very advanced in their ability to ferret, to ferret out different influences and controls, and that most of these studies are not done in the United States on the type of processed meats and commercial meats. No similar in other countries where the meats are grass fed, raised naturally.
00:13:51:07 – 00:14:33:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
In other words, when you have a thousand studies that corroborate each other and the majority of which are done in countries where they’re using natural raised animal products, it excludes that argument. Not only those exclude that argument, it shows that that the animal product consumption in America with commercially raised animal products is not anything is not any worse than the animal products that they’re eating in New Zealand, which were all wild based, noncommercial animal products, you get the same negative effects from animal protein going up in the diet in New Zealand, studies and Australian studies with using grass fed and passageways, animals, wild animals, as you do in America using commercial animal products.
00:14:33:15 – 00:14:35:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
In other words, it’s just a theoretical argument.
00:14:36:00 – 00:14:38:02
Nathan Crane
You know, or someone can look at those studies and.
00:14:38:02 – 00:15:05:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
That and also that they are isolating. They’re not studying processed meats. And the World Health Organization review 2000 studies that are not studying diets high in processed meats. And look at also the yes, the Seventh Day Adventist study, Seventh Day Adventist Health Study two, for example, is a religious group in the United States where they advocate exercise, not smoking, not drinking alcohol and eating relatively small amounts of clean animal products.
00:15:05:24 – 00:15:27:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And they’re that study has gone on for more than 30 years now. And the reason why it has so much respect in the nutrition world is because we can compare people on diets that are largely health healthy and are not eating a lot of junk food and are not eating bacon and hot dogs, but are eating animal products in small quantities.
00:15:27:18 – 00:15:57:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
And what those studies have shown, which has been corroborate by other studies around the world, too, is that even moderate amounts of animal products produces significant increased risk not only to diets rich in animal products. And I’m saying that we see this a dose dependent relationship between as you go above 10% of animal products, you start to see the risk climb significantly so that even 15 or 20% places people have significant risk and where genetics play more of a role.
00:15:57:21 – 00:16:27:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
But once you go over 30 to 40% of calories, man with products, genetics have relatively little risk and the whole population develops. Usually heart disease and cancers develop, so high rates of diseases. So we have significant studies from various isolated populations around the world that corroborates studies in major western United States. And most of these studies are done, are not done in commercial raised animal products in America, but they are done in countries where they have more natural animal products.
00:16:27:17 – 00:16:53:07
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I’m saying that argument is, you know, you could say, well, we people are eating other junk food, you know, But so the studies are highly technical today, especially when you have, you know, some of these studies have 20, 30 scientists working on them, and they’re working on these studies for decades, trying to look at those issues and ferret out exactly what the people are eating and actually determine the risks of various parts of the study.
00:16:53:13 – 00:17:29:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
For example, what about the fish component? What about the dairy component? What about what about the processed meats? And what they found in those studies When they evaluated the various types of animal products, they found that processed meats had the most definitive have the most dangerous 4.4 cancer. But red meats were also a class one, a carcinogen. In other words, red meats also were severely were strongly carcinogenic or cancer causing compared to, let’s say, fish And but animal protein did play a role, especially in special up to the age of 70.
00:17:29:24 – 00:18:16:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
In other words, in midlife, you could say from the age, you know, until the age of, let’s say, 70 years old, reductions of animal protein seems to be a major factor in keeping IGF one in a hormonally favorable range that allows for slower aging. What I’m saying right now, one of the most controlling factors in reducing risk of cancer and slowing aging that’s recognized by the world’s nutritional science community is regulating IGF one to keep IGF one into a moderately safe range and not let it go too high and more and diets higher and animal products unquestionably matter where you get the animal product from even fish and even fish that expose us to microplastics
00:18:16:24 – 00:18:35:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
today and other toxic chemicals must dumping garbage in the water. But even fish and egg whites, which are somewhat safer forms of animal products as you go in higher amounts to get the animal protein to high, you can push the IGF one over 200 and even over 250, which is a source with high rates of cancer and shortens lifespan.
00:18:36:06 – 00:19:09:07
Dr. Joel Furhman
The fact that animal protein to a degree regulates our rate, which we age and too much animal protein. As it goes up, it pushes IGF one, which is a hormone associated cellular replication that ages us and increases risk of cancer. And we want our IGF one in that sweet spot of not being too low or too high. And that later on in life for people over the age of 75 or 80, we want to make sure we’re getting adequate protein in the high protein plant foods such as hemp seeds and green vegetables and beans and soybeans that are associated with a longer lifespan.
00:19:09:17 – 00:19:34:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
And that but we but in any case, what we’re saying here, protein does matter. But most of these studies show that more plant protein in the diet leads to adequate but not excessive IGF one and more animal protein. The diet, as you go to a certain level of animal protein, it pushes IGF one into an unfavorable range, even if it’s clean animal protein, such as egg whites or wild fishes.
00:19:35:01 – 00:20:03:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I’m saying that animal protein itself, even using something like isolated soy protein or whey or egg protein or even, you know, we’re talking about protein powders and drinks could also that could maximize growth and maximize muscle mass would not be most favorable for longevity. And we know the profession that has the shortest lifespan in North America are linebackers on football teams who are extra large and eat a diet to get that big.
00:20:03:09 – 00:20:25:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
And so when you’re eating a diet to get excessively large as a powerlifter, as a linebacker on a football team, it would be good to to keep your body fat low, not to go for such high degree of muscle mass and to try to relatively control calories so you don’t get quite that large that you would need, that you would need to be a professional football player or a linebacker and football team or a powerlifter.
00:20:25:20 – 00:20:29:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we’re saying here that size is not a determinant of good health either.
00:20:30:17 – 00:21:00:12
Nathan Crane
Hey, I just want to take a quick second and thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you’re enjoying it so far as a special thank you for tuning into this episode. I want to give you my number one Amazon bestselling book, Absolutely Free. You can go download it right now at becoming cancer free dotcom. If you want to learn evidence based strategies for helping your body become a cancer fighting machine for not only cancer reversal but cancer prevention, go grab a copy of the book again.
00:21:00:12 – 00:21:17:21
Nathan Crane
I’m just giving to you for free. You can go download it at becoming cancer free dot com. All right, let’s get back to the show. Yeah, it goes back to what you’re talking about, about moderate caloric restriction. And you know, the body fat 15 less than 15% for men, less than 25%.
00:21:17:22 – 00:21:40:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
Also excess of muscle mass, which as the size of our body gets bigger, it’s would exceed the capacity of our organs to clean and to the heart to oxygenate. In other words, being too large and too much muscle mass could also age us faster. And that’s also mean you have to eat extra calories to get that big. And the extra calories run our furnaces at a higher degree of utilizing more.
00:21:40:17 – 00:21:58:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
You could say energy. And so we also control the metabolic rate. So when we eat excess calories, we speed up our metabolic rate and we undershoot our calories, eat, don’t eat excess calories, it slows down our metabolic rate. And a bit about rate corresponds to the rate at which we’re aging well.
00:21:58:11 – 00:22:31:05
Nathan Crane
And that’s that’s a trade off for some people tuning in who are athletes or professional athletes or who are striving to be a professional athlete. And they love what they do. They love their sport, gives them, you know, purpose and meaning and drive and joy in their life. Right. And on one one hand, on one degree, it’s very you know, many of them today are living a very healthy lifestyle in the fact that they really focus on, you know, adequate sleep every night in recovery and sauna and ice bath and massage and relaxation and eating a clean diet in a lot of ways cleaner than most people.
00:22:31:18 – 00:23:08:01
Nathan Crane
I’m not talking about all athletes out there, But, you know, a lot of the ones that I know, including myself and I go above and beyond. I think a lot of the people that I know because I really care about not only my performance, but also longevity. And so I know there is a trade off there because of the, you know, the amount of food that you have to eat and the amount of digesting that you have to do right, isn’t a big part of allowing the body to heal itself, to repair itself, to go into autophagy and help eliminate, you know, the basically recycle and replenish the cellular waste of the cells to eliminate
00:23:08:01 – 00:23:43:14
Nathan Crane
cancer cells. A big part of that is not allowing the body to consistently put all of its energy and time on digestion so it can go into healing, which is why, you know, we can talk about fasting also the importance of, you know, having whether it’s time restricted eating or intermittent fasting or having some breaks between meals is where this old paradigm of, hey, eat five, six, seven times a day, which means you actually are never taking a break away from digestion, except maybe when you sleep is actually not the best thing to do for most people.
00:23:43:21 – 00:23:59:14
Nathan Crane
Right. So I want to go down both of those rabbit holes in a second before I do all these studies that you’ve been referencing. I know you’ve looked at these and collected these, and where do you have them all listed there in one of your books or in all of your books? Right.
00:24:00:03 – 00:24:08:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
Right. I do have more than 30,000 scientific studies that I’ve collected over the years that I you know, I’ve spent my life reading these studies. And have you.
00:24:08:03 – 00:24:09:20
Nathan Crane
Read all 30,000 of them?
00:24:10:06 – 00:24:38:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes. Wow. 30,000. And I’m saying that difference from from people saying that studies all contradict each other. They also different things. It’s not true. The overwhelming amount of evidence points to the same direction and all the studies on nutritional science and longevity. And I have to say that in my most recent book, which is called Eat for Life, and I mentioned in the most recent book, because it has the most updated references and also the most references in it.
00:24:39:02 – 00:25:07:15
Dr. Joel Furhman
And so there’s over 2000 references in the book going into all these factors in detail. And when people look at the reference is they can see that the references support what I’m saying in the paragraph with multiple studies supporting each statement. I read nutritional and health books that give a reference and I’m not going to mention names of people who wrote them, but you pull the reference that’s referenced to support the statement and the reference didn’t even have data to support the statement that was claimed.
00:25:07:15 – 00:25:25:23
Nathan Crane
I’ve actually seen that exact same thing on blog posts or different things that I’ve read, and I go in and look at the citations and I read it and I’m and I’m and I’ve seen that some times where it literally either doesn’t support what they’re saying at all, or even in some cases it’s like the opposite. Or I’m like, what is this?
00:25:25:23 – 00:25:28:23
Nathan Crane
How is this a citation for what you’re claiming?
00:25:29:10 – 00:25:48:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, exactly. And then let me clarify what you said about athletes, because I think that look at like, you know, Novak Djokovic, the tennis player, the top tennis players in the world, Federer, Djokovic and Murray, look at these guys. They all need super healthy. They all need neutral talent. What’s almost essentially a neutral champion diet to take care of, to prolong the lifespan.
00:25:48:18 – 00:26:12:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
Tom Brady, Venus Williams, try to leave the tennis tour due to show runner syndrome or in connective tissue disease due to an autoimmune He’s got well through it following a diet almost exactly like I’m recommending a neutral, you know, a nutrient diet. We’re talking about the ability to reverse disease and prolong their careers and age slower, to improve their athletic performance, improve their stamina, keep them aging slower so they can compete.
00:26:12:04 – 00:26:35:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
But there’s a difference between a basketball player, a tennis player, a skier and a cross and a and a triathlete with a linebacker on a football team and a powerlifter trying to achieve size or a sumo wrestler trying to get artificially large. And I’m saying that you can’t get artificially large and still have a long life. So you’re playing.
00:26:35:03 – 00:26:54:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
It’s dangerous to get that. So it’s but you can be a great tennis player, a great skier, a great basketball player, and still compete at a high level through, you know, in watching your diet and your sleep and all those things. And look at Eric Sloppy. He was one of the he was in the he was in four Olympic Games in in the top of his field in downhill skiing.
00:26:54:01 – 00:27:19:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
He lived in Park City. He’s an American skier who’s now retired and has kids. And he traveled with his Vitamix and made green smoothies. And he did so because it would prevent him from being sick and missing an event or or not being able to train because these athletes of today, like Djokovic and Erik, you know, the people who follow nutrition and type diets, they they don’t get sick so they can keep moving.
00:27:19:24 – 00:27:37:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
It’s training on because if you get sick right in the winter, when you’re out on your back for a week, your whole career, your whole years, work could be shot. There’s only a 10th of a second difference between you and the guy in 50th place. But so the point is, is that they they want to keep well, they want to keep their youthful vigor and vitality and not age rapidly.
00:27:37:24 – 00:28:02:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
So they have to leave their sports. So it may it slows the aging process. It keeps them at their levels of high degree of fitness for many, many more years. Look at Tom Brady. Today is a perfect example. And look at look at, you know, well, you know, a lot of basketball players we’re talking here about like even LeBron James has made a radical change in his diet and he’s doing really well.
00:28:02:04 – 00:28:23:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
You know, But in any case, what I’m saying here, just to clarify, yes, if you’re trying to go for excessive size or artificially size large, you have to eat more animal products and more calories than what’s good for your ideally. And people used to take steroids and take things to make themselves artificially get big. You know, I was in on the 1972 Olympic team, the East German Olympic team.
00:28:23:21 – 00:28:45:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
They’re almost all dead. There’s very few of them alive today. And it is with athletes. And they’re all dead because they probably took performance and fans dancing drugs when, you know, when they were in those years and in the communist countries and which is so so we’re not just so we have to you know what’s the what’s the term you know you know way the performance aspects against what’s good health for all in jeopardy.
00:28:45:21 – 00:28:56:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
Just because the drug makes you have better performance it may not good for you longevity. And just because animal protein in high amounts may build a little more muscle tissue doesn’t mean it’s good for your longevity or your or the rate at which you’re aging.
00:28:56:12 – 00:29:29:10
Nathan Crane
Well, Most most people aren’t thinking about longevity until they’re older, right. Or dealing with a chronic health condition. Certainly younger people in my generation, I, I talked to people about longevity, cancer prevention, you know, anti-aging, these kinds of things. And most of us could care less, unfortunately, until they get sick, until they get really sick. And then or they have someone really close to them who’s been really sick that they had to take care of and they might be more concerned about it, or they went through their own health challenges like I did, or they got very passionate about health like I did and got really serious about it.
00:29:29:10 – 00:29:51:09
Nathan Crane
But I’d say majority of younger people, unfortunately, are very short sighted when it comes to their health and are thinking about today, you know, not tomorrow, not ten years from now, not 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, I’ll never get cancer and then I’ll worry about it when I get there. And then those are the people that that I see through my companies that we coach and work with.
00:29:51:09 – 00:30:11:10
Nathan Crane
And you know, unfortunately, these are the people who are 50, 55, 60, 65, 70 with a stage three or four cancer diagnosis. And all they want is their health back. Right. And for some of them, it’s possible. And for others it’s not possible. It just I mean, I think it’s possible for every person. But there’s no guarantee is what I should say.
00:30:11:10 – 00:30:36:03
Nathan Crane
I think the possibility of healing or at least improving quality of life and potentially extending lifespan when you’re dealing with a serious chronic disease at a later stage in life, I think there’s tons of possibility there. There’s just there’s never a guarantee. Right. And that’s the challenge it’s in. So thinking about. So for younger people thing about longevity, anti-aging prevention of disease earlier in life would be a smart thing.
00:30:36:12 – 00:30:54:18
Nathan Crane
But I think some people like that linebacker you’re talking about, you know, the 29 year old £350 linebacker who’s, you know, maybe they are a professional athlete and that’s that’s what they love and that’s all they care about. You know, if it reduces 15 years from their life, do they really care? I don’t know. I probably at that age, they don’t care.
00:30:54:18 – 00:31:19:03
Nathan Crane
But when they’re 55, dealing with tremendous pain from the disease and all kinds of issues, you know, that’s that’s the part that sucks when you watch your own family or somebody who is on their deathbed. And for like my grandfathers, both of them actually, you know, watch them suffer the last years of their life, It’s like there’s there’s no amount of joy in life.
00:31:19:03 – 00:31:27:22
Nathan Crane
I think that is worth the amount of suffering that you can experience in the last few years of your life when we don’t take care of ourselves. And so.
00:31:28:17 – 00:31:50:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
You know, and that’s why this subject you’re bringing up today is so critically important, because my message here is that people need to have informed consent. They need to have the right information. It’s okay to tell them that for them to smoke cigarets for 30 years and then get told by their doctor they should quit smoking after they get lung cancer.
00:31:51:05 – 00:32:19:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
But even better, if they were told that the smoking was probably going to cause some harmful effects. If they do that for the next few decades and that’s the problem with these these people on the Internet giving improper, incorrect and dangerous nutritional information because they’re not giving people the ability to make the right choices for themselves. And people have a tendency to want to believe anything that supports their the things they want to eat or they put their initial, their up, their habits.
00:32:19:06 – 00:32:57:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
They’re already addicted. Foods are already addicted, too. So because we have such a large amount of people promoting high animal protein diets or promoting other dangerous health messages, people are they’re essentially tricking people, maybe not intentionally, maybe from their own ignorance, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re hurting people with bad information. People are accepting what they’re saying, and then when they get something bad happening to them, like colon cancer or a heart attack, then that person was damaged and that person never had the ability to make the choice because they were given wrong information.
00:32:57:03 – 00:33:20:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
So why take that wrong information seriously? Because I think that we that and I don’t and I think it should be like you’re saying, reading, writing, arithmetic and nutritional science taught in grade school because we teach smoking cessation and No. Two and say no to drugs in grade school. And that’s been very effective at reducing smoking and smoking addiction moving forward because we’re taught when we’re young how bad smoking is.
00:33:21:12 – 00:33:47:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And the same thing is true with, you know, promoting the consumption of candy and sugar and processed grains and commercial baked goods, which are linked to not only link to disease but a link to depression and link to drug abuse. Let me say that one more time to be clear on that. I’m saying that the consumption of commercial baked goods and fast foods are linked to depression and a dose dependent manner.
00:33:47:22 – 00:34:20:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I’m and mental illness. And I’m also saying that in the highest quintile of candy, fast food and commercial break, good consumption as a child, you have a higher risk of having being arrested for a criminal offense or a drug related offense by the time you’re 35 years old. There’s a real at these foods are addicting and they and their disease causing and it’s very important that we give people informed consent and we instruct them properly and not try to trick them into believing that what they’re doing is healthy.
00:34:21:05 – 00:34:50:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
And that’s really important and that’s really important. And I think an important message I’m staying about the Keto Paleo or carnivore movement where people aren’t just advising animal products in small amounts as a condiment to add extra nutrition. They’re advocating diets that are largely or you could say based on animal products, which we know at this point in human history that those diets will result in harm to these individuals later on in life.
00:34:50:19 – 00:35:07:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
So you’re giving people wrong information that’s going to lead to some problem in their future. Unfortunately for those individuals and the science supports the viewpoint, I’m stating right now that we have to give people enough information that they can make a good decision for their own life.
00:35:07:20 – 00:35:21:15
Nathan Crane
So to be clear, you’re not 100% against animal products. You’re saying, look, if you have if you’re going to have animal products in your diet, they should be 10% or less. Is that accurate?
00:35:23:07 – 00:35:51:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes, that’s pretty accurate. But I’d have to say that that for some people, even 10% can be too much, that we generally see, quote, reversal occurring in diets that are below 5%. And we see no heart attacks occurring in the 10% range. We still see some low flickering of heart attacks. For example, in the Seventh Day Adventist study, having one serving of meat a week, one serving of meat a week still significantly increased heart attack risks, even in one serving a week.
00:35:51:08 – 00:36:14:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
So a person who has that genetic risk should probably have no no meat and maybe one serving of fish a week or none. So yes, but so in most population studies, 10% or less, we generally see very, very good outcomes with very little heart attacks and cancers. So, yes, generally speaking, a healthy individual may do okay with 10%, but ideally 5% becomes more assurance.
00:36:14:22 – 00:36:39:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
But above 10% is when we see the epidemiologic studies start to see populations showing a higher degree of heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths in a dose dependent manner from 10% to 15% to 20% to 25%. Keeping in mind the Americans eat about 30, 30 or 35% of calories. Mammal products. We’re eating already a high amount of animal products by worldwide standards.
00:36:40:05 – 00:37:04:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
By worldwide standards, we see that in the lowest turkey of animal product consumption, which is below 7% because the middle range is 15, the higher range was 30 world wide and in the lower range below 7%. We saw, you could say, you know, 70 to 70% less cancers than we did in the high range, above 30%. You know.
00:37:04:20 – 00:37:31:01
Nathan Crane
So let’s talk about keto because there is a ton of controversy around the ketogenic diet and there are doctors that I know and published scientists who use ketogenic diet and see incredible results with cancer. And so and then there are a lot of people who claim they get on the ketogenic diet and their autoimmune disease goes away and this goes away and that goes away that heal their chronic health conditions.
00:37:31:08 – 00:37:56:12
Nathan Crane
So you see these, you know, people’s stories all over the Internet and doctors promoting it and guiding their patients down keto and saying they are seeing tremendous results and not only short term but long term as well in these cases. So why is it that some people are saying ketogenic diet is healthy, it’s good, we’re seeing great results and then you know, you’re saying and the science is saying, no, it’s actually not very healthy for you.
00:37:57:01 – 00:38:15:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
That’s right. I’m saying it’s clear that we do have long term studies today on long term use of diets and out of the long term studies on long term use of keto diets were showing poor long term outcomes. So you can’t say that they’re showing good long term results because we do have this because that’s a claim based on an individual’s opinion.
00:38:15:22 – 00:38:39:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
But we’re looking at the data. Let’s look at what the data shows and the data shows that long term keto diet have life lifespans shortening effects. That’s quite alarming. So we have alarming information on that and all the studies done on that so far with long term data shows high rates of premature mortality due to numerous reasons. But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get short term results from a lot of different ways of dieting.
00:38:39:11 – 00:39:11:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
You just have to understand And with regard to there’s all the only cancers where there’s some evidence that ketones seems to benefit our brain tumors and energy, glial gliomas and stuff like that. There is no evidence that keto diets benefit common cancers like prostate cancer, colon cancer and breast cancer. Those are the three more common cancers. There are some unusual cancers that it may be more glucose sensitive, that severe sugar deprivation may benefit.
00:39:11:11 – 00:39:41:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
I’ve had people with brain tumors follow keto diets that were more plant based too, for that reason to keep glycemic load very, very low and glycemic effects to star brain cancers as to try to shrink, to try to slow the progression of brain cancers as well. But there’s very little evidence on there’s some studies being done, but other than claims being made, when these claims to look are investigated with more detail and more data, the claims are very spur, you know, very poor information.
00:39:41:12 – 00:40:06:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
And it’s very early in the in the science. I’m open to the suggestion that there may be more cancers that show that keto diets may help some other cancers. But right now I haven’t seen any favorable data on that except for with regard to brain tumors. So that and then people do lose weight and do can control their high blood pressure, their diabetes, you know, and with keto diet support from carbohydrate restricting.
00:40:07:07 – 00:40:35:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
But we can get even better results when we use a natural food plant based diets with more green vegetables because we can also keep in mass and greens. We could also keep the glycemic load favorable and get better results without increasing the risk of the animal protein. So I think they’re safer. I also think that you can get just as good results or better results, which I’ve documented that and produced many studies on the effects of a neutral tearing in diet, reversing diabetes, reversing heart disease, lowering blood pressure.
00:40:35:01 – 00:40:53:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
A matter of fact, one study at 450 people that dropped their systolic blood pressure, 26 points, you know, and within six months on a neutral tearing diet that beats out any diet, even the the the you know, the conventional authorities say the low sodium dash diet had the best effect of lowering blood pressure, lowered systolic blood pressure, 11 points.
00:40:54:00 – 00:41:16:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
But a new criterion diet hasn’t been beat for lowering cholesterol and lowering blood pressure or lower and diabetes for that matter, at this point. So even though ketones work just like smoking cigarets work, they’re not a good long term plan for that. So I’d have to say that we don’t have evidence with regard to the long term safety and we have significant evidence as to their long term harms.
00:41:16:11 – 00:41:38:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
So there are better ways to skin the cat than, you know, certainly with some people with autoimmune conditions, just cutting out processed carbohydrates and fried foods can make their autoimmune disease getting well. So going on to vegetables and meats could improve their autoimmune condition. But still, we don’t want to we still have to question, does this person have to eat so much meat to do this because that may hurt them in some way.
00:41:39:09 – 00:41:42:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
So, yeah, we have to question all this and look at the best data we have available.
00:41:43:09 – 00:42:09:01
Nathan Crane
So all of the studies that I’ve looked at personally on the ketogenic diet, on the benefits of it, all kinds of benefits. You can find every one of those studies that I’ve seen so far. Have the participants lost weight on the ketogenic diet during the study? And so the question then becomes and this question that I ask is, is it the weight loss on that short term study that created all the blood marker benefits?
00:42:09:01 – 00:42:37:05
Nathan Crane
Because, you know, if you lose weight, right, if you’re overweight and you lose weight, even if it’s a pretty unhealthy diet, but you’re losing weight, you can see a tremendous improvement in a lot of blood markers. Right on a lot of I mean, you might see triglycerides improve, you might see cholesterol improve, you might see blood pressure improve, you’re losing weight and you’re not overweight or you’re losing ten, 15, £20 in a six week study or a three month study.
00:42:37:05 – 00:42:47:22
Nathan Crane
Some of these are that I’ve looked at. Then the question becomes, is it the weight loss that caused all the improvements or was it the ketogenic diet itself?
00:42:47:22 – 00:43:11:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
Well, don’t forget, there’s some big advantages to a keto diet that’s legitimate is cutting a processed carbohydrates, which are bad for people and of course bad blood parameters. So it’s like there’s not everything about the keto diet is bad. Being in chronic ketosis may be bad and having some animal protein raising IGF one may be bad, but keeping your glycemic load of diet low and cutting out the processed carbohydrates which work on the body, is a drug which accelerate aging is good.
00:43:12:00 – 00:43:32:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
So you to not only the weight loss, there are some benefits to keto diets by removing processed foods and high glycemia carbohydrates. So that’s a big benefit. But we want but but I’m saying that all nutritional researchers recommend that that’s that you should remove that we just don’t do the other part with excess amounts of animal protein product loaded on to that good good part.
00:43:32:09 – 00:44:01:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
So it’s but yes and the main factor here that people are confused about is they think you can be overweight and healthy. And I’m saying there’s no such thing as a healthy, overweight person because as body fat climbs on the body, your immune system function falls and your pro-inflammatory inflammatory markers go up, produce more free radicals, more cytokines and more little kinds, more insulin resistance, more estrogen production.
00:44:02:00 – 00:44:22:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
In other words, body fat is a serious issue and people because they become addicted to the American diet, are in denial. And just about the argument that rejecting the fact that eating too much meat is bad for them, they’re also rejecting the fact that being overweight is bad for them, too. They want to deny that as well and think that you can be a healthy, overweight person.
00:44:22:14 – 00:44:43:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
And it’s it’s more socially acceptable to just accept you’re fat for being overweight because it’s impossible to lose weight. And they might as well just be a healthy, overweight person. And I’m also speaking speaking against that as well, because even being £30 overweight increases risk of later of later life infectious related death and of course, increases risk of cancer death as well.
00:44:44:05 – 00:45:13:18
Nathan Crane
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00:45:13:18 – 00:45:34:02
Nathan Crane
They’re only available at healing life dot net. So not only do you get access to all of those, but you actually get to speak with these doctors and experts and ask them any question want about health and healing. And this is available exclusively to healing life members. You can try it out for free. Go to healing life dot net and.
00:45:34:02 – 00:46:03:20
Nathan Crane
You can start your free trial there. And whether you’re interested in learning more about detox or cancer, diet and nutrition and nutritional science, about diabetes, about disease, autoimmune disease, anti-aging, longevity, all of these topics are covered in depth, and more are continuing to be added at healing life. And again, you get to talk to these doctors yourself. So I invite you to set up a free trial at Healing Life dot net, and I hope to see you over.
00:46:03:20 – 00:46:35:11
Nathan Crane
Now let’s get back to the show. But if you look at Cosmopolitan and what the mainstream media is telling people, they’re saying literally, here’s a cover of Cosmopolitan with an obese woman saying this is healthy. So here’s what we’re being told as society, that being significantly overweight is actually healthy. How how are they how are they even able to claim this is the question?
00:46:36:03 – 00:46:56:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, you know, it has to do with a social norm today because I think it stems from the fact that people having trouble losing weight, they can’t lose weight no matter what they do. And don’t forget, it’s kind of interesting because a woman of 50 years ago eating the same amount of calories with the same amount of exercise compared to a woman today.
00:46:56:21 – 00:47:13:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
The one today is going to be £30 heavier on the same amount of calories. Figure that one out right. And we know why. It’s because of endocrine disruptors and exposure toxins in the environment, the kind of the plastics in the in the ocean and the food and the, you know, the endocrine disruptors, exposure to chemicals of people in in fast food.
00:47:14:07 – 00:47:47:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
But what I’m saying as an advocate of a neutral tearing diet, that the current the conventional diet is so addicting that people can’t comfortably cut back on calories to control their rate, their weight, it becomes impossible to do so because their body is so deficient in nutrients and crave calories. So because it becomes impossible to lose weight and so stressful to do so and takes so much and they just gain the weight back anyway, that then people have said, well, I can’t lose weight, so I might as well accept it because why should I be in constant stress about something I can’t change?
00:47:48:06 – 00:48:09:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
So then I think that’s where it stems from. This idea of, you know, healthy at any weight. But I’m saying a different message because my findings over the last four decades have been that when we eat a diet with such a high degree of nutritional quality and we give the body sufficient nutrients, the body becomes comfortable with less calories, no longer is driven to overeat.
00:48:09:03 – 00:48:22:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
Calories, feel satisfied with the right amount of calories and loses weight without having to feel they’re on a diet with with extreme deprivation because they’re naturally comfortable with the right amount of calories when they eat a diet so rich in nutrients and so rich in natural foods.
00:48:23:07 – 00:48:26:21
Nathan Crane
So my life, my life even. Go ahead.
00:48:28:05 – 00:48:50:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
Now, I was going to say that’s why the nutrition and diet and even the keto diet has some advocates because when you’re are because they take away hunger and take away both diets can make people satisfied with less calories. Whereas on an American diet you just cut back on calories. It doesn’t work. So that giving people lap bands, they give them medications and even the medications don’t even result in much weight loss.
00:48:50:18 – 00:49:04:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
It’s still don’t they don’t work that well. And then we have this movement that think that you can be healthy at any age, which is totally against science. The science shows that being overweight increases your risk of depression, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and cancers, and dementia unquestionably.
00:49:05:20 – 00:49:24:09
Nathan Crane
So. My own life is a testament to what you just said a second ago, which is I used to crave, you know, potato chips, fried foods, ice cream, lots of sugar, things like that. I used to just crave it and I eat a whole bag of potato chips. Right. I need a whole thing of ice cream. Just it’s like I couldn’t get enough of it.
00:49:24:09 – 00:49:45:21
Nathan Crane
And then the more that I cleansed, literally cleansed and fasted and changed my diet over the years, cleaned out my body slowly over time, I stopped craving those things less and less. And once in a while I might crave a potato chip here and there or whatever, and sometimes I might have some, but it’s so rare compared to what it used to be, and I just don’t get the same craving.
00:49:45:21 – 00:50:03:18
Nathan Crane
I don’t get the same satisfaction and I know what it’s doing to my body, and I know that it’s not giving me any real nutrition. It’s just a it’s just a party in my mouth kind of experience. Right? And I know what it’s doing to my brain. I know it’s basically tricking my body to think that I want more and more and more of this.
00:50:03:18 – 00:50:23:18
Nathan Crane
And this is how you get fat, right? You grab a bag of potato chips and you eat the bag of potato chips and all you’re getting is processed starch, like, you know, usually some sugar. You’re getting, you know, lots of oil in there that’s been cooked in and tons and tons of calories that do not provide any nutrition to your body whatsoever.
00:50:23:24 – 00:50:46:15
Nathan Crane
And so you’re hungry, right? You’re still hungry. And then you go and grab the Pop-Tarts or the the other thing that doesn’t have any nutrition at all, and you just keep eating, eating, eating, trying to satisfy this urge, because the deeper urge is really your body is saying, look, I need nutrients. That’s why I love your term nutrient nutrient excellence or nutritional excellence.
00:50:46:15 – 00:51:03:12
Nathan Crane
Right. Which is because the body’s saying in the brain saying, I need nutrients, any vitamins, minerals, any phytonutrients, I need amino acids, I need these things. And that’s that’s how you feel satiated. You get it from the fiber and from from the nutrients. And so your body goes, hey, you know, I have these. I don’t really need to eat more.
00:51:03:23 – 00:51:23:10
Nathan Crane
I’m as an athlete, I’m trying to gain weight. And it’s been very hard to pass the year. I have to I to gain weight. For me as an athlete, I have to eat more than I want to because the way I eat, I get so much fiber and I get so, so many nutrients that it’s like I’m not hungry.
00:51:23:10 – 00:51:48:14
Nathan Crane
And so I have to force myself to eat if I want to gain weight as an athlete. And so I know that’s you know, that’s not the ideal way for, you know, the blueprint. But the foods I’m eating are, you know, organic, whole food plant based, nutrient dense foods, very little processed foods. Right. So the testament is that on that kind of diet, it’s like you it’s very hard to gain weight even if you’re trying.
00:51:48:14 – 00:52:00:24
Nathan Crane
And that’s been you know, which is like if your thing is I need to lose weight, I want to lose weight, I want to be healthy. I live a long time. I want to prevent disease. You know, I know for sure in my own life this diet works.
00:52:01:11 – 00:52:05:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah. We’re trying to get extra large. Probably is not the greatest idea, but.
00:52:05:16 – 00:52:12:00
Nathan Crane
Yeah, and I’m not to get extra large either. I’m trying to add £10, right? And I’m not. I’m already lean. I’m already in. I don’t know, maybe.
00:52:12:00 – 00:52:15:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
Those £10 is isn’t ideal for your longevity.
00:52:15:17 – 00:52:41:16
Nathan Crane
Yeah, for longevity, probably not. I mean, longevity in my frame, you know, to live a hundred, you know, long and healthy is probably probably under £200 because I’m 62. So probably 185 is is probably pretty good. I could be lean muscle at 185, but you know, for the sport I’m in which I love and it gives me so much passion and joy and I love doing it every single day.
00:52:41:16 – 00:53:02:07
Nathan Crane
I look forward to it. You know, I need a little bit more muscle mass. Not a huge powerlifter, not a huge, you know, bodybuilder or whatever, but a little more muscle mass to move some more weight, which for me is probably around £215. So yeah, it’s just it’s eating healthy. If I was required to get fat, it just doesn’t work.
00:53:03:20 – 00:53:30:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, it reminds me of a it reminds me of a famous basketball player on the Miami Heat. His name was. Anyway, he’s retired now. He left basketball at a weight of like £240 with kidney disease. And I his diet doctor in Miami contacted me. We worked together to get him on a neutral tearing diet and he got rid of his kidney disease.
00:53:30:12 – 00:53:45:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
And he’s been running his body at about, you know, about £20 less now than he was. It a lean, lean, thin athlete, a to 40. He now runs his body at about 220 is even smaller and leaner to keep his end with no more kidney disease. You know what I mean?
00:53:45:23 – 00:53:49:22
Nathan Crane
That’s a great way to help. Yeah, that’s awesome. You know.
00:53:50:13 – 00:53:53:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
Every famous basketball player, I can’t think of his name better, but anyway.
00:53:54:24 – 00:53:58:20
Nathan Crane
Yeah, we won’t. We won’t do any name dropping on this podcast right now, so no worries.
00:53:59:22 – 00:54:30:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
I wanted to say was, you know, something unique I want you to consider, I want people to consider here is that white flour and oil flood the body with a high concentration of calories that you couldn’t get, eating natural foods, too much calories into the bloodstream at one time. And that caloric caloric load overly stimulates caloric measuring the dopamine centers in the brain that get stimulated by excess calorie consumption and people get acclimated to higher calories.
00:54:30:22 – 00:54:51:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
And the deadening of the dopamine, the dopamine sensors in the brain, which become dopey, insensitive. Now then you start striving and driving for more calories and, you know, you feel empty when you don’t eat more food. And these foods like like white flour and oil, your body can’t convert white flour into energy directly because you need it. You need cofactors, vitamins and minerals to do so.
00:54:51:24 – 00:55:14:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
So it more easily since it’s a fat production. And then when the counter when you do produce flour into energy, then you utilizing up reactive oxygen species and vitamins minerals causing more nutritional deficits from the utilization of white flour for energy. I’m saying that white flour products like pizza and burgers and bread are acting more in the body like a drug, and it’s addicting, addictive drug leading to overeating behavior.
00:55:14:16 – 00:55:46:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I’m also suggesting that oil works similarly. Similarly, because Americans get their fat intake, they all do, from animal fats and oils and US nutrients get our fat intake from nuts and seeds, walnuts, sesame seeds, pistachio avocado, flaxseed chia seeds. Right. So when you’re getting your fat from nuts and seeds, the calories are absorbed very slowly, a certain amount per minute and when the calories are coming in, just like getting your carbohydrate from a bean from you, calories are coming in slowly.
00:55:46:03 – 00:56:18:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
Your body can preferentially burn those calories for energy as opposed to storing them as fat. And they’re not because they’re not spiking the blood with a lot of calories. You’re not estimating the brain consumption to make you addicted to the overconsumption of calories. Americans, they feel empty and wasted when they eat, let’s say, 1600 calories a day. The average person, the average American consumes about 3400 calories a day, and the average rural Chinese person consumes about 1600 a day, almost half the amount of calories Americans consume.
00:56:19:05 – 00:56:42:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I’m saying most Americans, you know, aren’t doing enough physical activity to warrant consuming such high amounts of calories. They work sitting on their back, the buttocks the whole day. But I’m saying that generally speaking, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Americans are eating almost double the calories they need to consume and their diet being so poor nutrients and so much content and so much hypoglycemic and so much oils, which oil?
00:56:42:19 – 00:57:02:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
All kinds of oil is 120 calories a tablespoon, and it goes in the lips to the hips in 5 minutes flat. I’m saying I make this joke and I say half of what we eat meets our needs and the other half meets the needs of our doctors. So when people say, you know, we can’t be in double, I’m saying, Yeah, people need those double the calories they need.
00:57:03:00 – 00:57:24:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
And the trick is to be able to be able to eat less food without getting too thin because we want to maintain good strong muscle mass and good bone structure and that we’re able to eat till satisfaction, like you’re saying, to eat to a satisfy. And we’re not going to feel hungry or deprived and still be satisfied, much less calories.
00:57:24:22 – 00:57:42:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
That’s why when people come to my retreat here in San Diego to learn how to eat this way and stay with us for a few months, they’ll lose £25 the first month, you know, £15 the second month, and they’ll go home and continue to drop about 10 to £12 a month because they learned and they’re not feel like they’re on a diet.
00:57:42:12 – 00:58:01:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
They’re reading at a buffet. They’re taking as much food as they want, pretty much. And they go, you know, they’ve learning to eat the right foods, but they get to be connected instinctually with the right amount, with starting to feel that this is the amount they feel comfortable with, which takes time for people. That’s why they come and stay here a while to get rid of their addictive drive to overeat calories.
00:58:02:12 – 00:58:26:19
Nathan Crane
So do you have any any structure or framework for a percentage of macronutrients that you have found is kind of the ideal percentage breakdown of macronutrients? Now, we’ve been talking about micronutrients and the importance of nutritional excellence and getting a good diversity of these nutrients from, you know, a diverse plethora of foods. And we talk about what kinds of foods those are.
00:58:27:04 – 00:58:49:14
Nathan Crane
But looking at macros because the ketogenic diet, if you look at macros, it’s very high fat and protein and very low carbohydrates. And so people say that’s the healthiest. And other people say high carbohydrate is very bad for you. And some people claim a little bit higher fat, a little bit lower carbohydrates. Where is the nutrition diet on on that graph, if you will?
00:58:51:00 – 00:59:12:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
First of all, the main message here, my main message is to tell people to stop thinking about worrying about macronutrient ratios, because that’s going to get you into problems, into trouble because we have to eat less fat, less carbohydrate, less protein. We want to eat less food in general and stop thinking you’ve been trained to think you have to get this much fat.
00:59:12:03 – 00:59:30:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
This much protein is more carbohydrate. Now I’m saying if you eat healthy enough, you’ll be satisfied with less and you’re getting about 40 grams of protein per 1000 calories. So let’s say you’re getting about 30, 40 grams protein per thousand calories. We need 2000 calories If your activity level warrants that and you’re getting about 80 grams of protein.
00:59:31:08 – 00:59:47:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
If you’re an athlete in your world and you want 3000 milligrams when you’re warranting 3000 calories a day, then you’re getting of 120 grams of protein. But I’m saying right now that a diet can be healthy with anywhere from 15% of calories and fat up to 40% of calories and fat, as long as the fat comes from nuts and seeds.
00:59:47:18 – 01:00:02:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
If I’m a fly, I’m a professional basketball player. I got to eat more fat to get because I need more calories. I want to have more nuts and seeds in my day. And I was a professional athlete and I did it all nuts and seeds. You’d have to eat at least 6 to 8 ounces of nuts and seeds a day, which is What’s that?
01:00:02:19 – 01:00:25:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
That’s 175 an ounce. That’s almost 1500 calories just from nuts and seeds a day. I had to get the fat content of my diet higher because otherwise my stomach would be too far with the foods I had. I needed more concentrated calories, otherwise I stretched out my stomach. So I was in class in college, you know, snacking on sunflower seeds while much warmer working in the my while I’m working in class all day, how to keep my calories up and how to a concentrated sauce.
01:00:25:23 – 01:00:50:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
But a good source like sunflower seeds not not olive oil. I’m eating a whole seed with a lot of nutrients and proteins and fibers, but we know from those studies on ketogenic diet that carbohydrate, when carbohydrate intake drops below 30%, then we see significant increase in early life mortality drop in carbohydrate intake below 30%. Now, I’m also advocating for a low glycemic diet.
01:00:50:20 – 01:01:15:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
I don’t want people to eat a lot of dried fruit and a lot of processed grains. But the fact that they’re eating beans, which are low glycemic and nuts and green vegetables, means they’re getting a lot of high protein plant foods that are naturally low glycemic is not eating. We’re not eating a fruit based diet, even though we’re eating six pieces of fruit a day or for 3 to 6 pieces of fruit a day for most of us is okay because our diet, we’re not eating a fruit based meal, reading a vegetable based meal.
01:01:16:02 – 01:01:16:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
But in any.
01:01:16:13 – 01:01:18:01
Nathan Crane
Case, so hang on to say.
01:01:18:15 – 01:01:20:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
The range of acceptable numbers here.
01:01:20:19 – 01:01:32:09
Nathan Crane
Hang on one second. One say you just said studies have shown carbohydrates below 30% in the diet equals what.
01:01:33:01 – 01:01:35:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
Increases risk of early life death.
01:01:35:11 – 01:01:42:17
Nathan Crane
Now, is this multiple studies? Is this a studies on ketogenic diet? Is this what what studies are these that show this?
01:01:44:04 – 01:02:09:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
There’s multiple studies now. And I did give a press I did give you a list of three of three such studies that were done independently by different researchers showing that they looked at people on lower carbohydrate diet diets in general, some of which was keto diet, who are you know, other people are just on high animal protein diets like Atkins type diets in the past that want to keep there, that do advocate ketosis to keep their levels of carbohydrates low.
01:02:09:14 – 01:02:24:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
And what they found particularly was the carbohydrate restriction and a degree of carbohydrate restriction was linked to early life deaths. And we think that’s maintaining ketosis for many years, for long periods of time. It’s harmful to the body’s longevity.
01:02:24:19 – 01:02:37:23
Nathan Crane
Gotcha. So you’re saying carbohydrates now on a Nigerian diet, carbohydrates are automatically going to be above 30% anyway because you’re eating beans and vegetables and fruits, which are high in carbohydrates already.
01:02:38:07 – 01:02:38:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
That’s correct.
01:02:39:23 – 01:02:51:21
Nathan Crane
So you’re not concerned about any real percentage of fat versus carbohydrate versus protein. I know you focus a little bit more on protein, specifically because of the studies on plant protein in certain percentages.
01:02:51:21 – 01:03:08:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
Right. We want to have more plant protein and less and less animal protein. That’s the key factor, not worry about the amounts. But once you on it’s completely vegan diet, then we want to pay attention to plant protein to make sure a person is eating greens, nuts and beans because those foods give you more adequate protein completeness by having them in your diet.
01:03:08:24 – 01:03:29:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
Even a small amount of beans, even a small amount of nuts and seeds. But we want to what the other issue here is that green vegetables were such a green vegetable dependent animal that our immune system ability to fight cancer and ability to slow aging is so related to green vegetable consumption that green vegetable consumption linked to energy with no threshold effect more you eat the longer you live.
01:03:29:18 – 01:03:33:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we’re trying to advocate people eat a lot of vegetables, particularly a lot of green vegetables.
01:03:34:05 – 01:03:51:16
Nathan Crane
So what about the people out there saying the doctors out there specifically saying that things like, you know, cruciferous vegetables, kale, a lot of green vegetables, broccoli, have anti nutrients and that you should actually avoid those kinds of vegetables.
01:03:51:16 – 01:04:19:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
That it’s so ridiculous to be not even worth addressing because like I said, we have a thousand different studies show that the consumption of cruciferous vegetables lead to longer lifespan. And they can produce one study that shows that consumption of fruits, vegetables have any adverse effects on any factor longevity, heart attack, cancer, dementia with not one study to suggest that’s true and thousands showing the opposite to come up with ridiculous opinions like that by these gurus.
01:04:19:05 – 01:04:40:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
It’s just it’s just it’s not it’s it’s really sad and people will believe whatever they want to believe, you know, But there’s no data to suggest that’s true. The only thing that we see in animals is that if you go to a very high consumption of preserve as vegetables, it could suppress the thyroid, but it’s almost impossible to consume that amount of cruciferous vegetables if you’re eating a varied diet of the foods in it, unless you’re juicing huge amounts of it each day.
01:04:40:23 – 01:05:03:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And so the effect so even the thyroid suppression from the goiter changing, so called cruciferous vegetables is still not even a valid argument, number one. And number two, cruciferous vegetables are the richest source of isocell for ISO Siannise Itzy’s, which are probably the most powerful anti-cancer substance which arms the cells, machinery the the or the antibodies, the response element, the cell.
01:05:03:03 – 01:05:26:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
It removes toxins, repairs, broken DNA, cross links and and suppresses genetic alterations that could lead to cancer. So we’re talking about foods that lead to gene silencing clean the body, slow aging. So these are these claims about them having anti nutrients or negative factors in them. Okay. You can make any kind of claim. But today in today’s world, we have good data.
01:05:26:13 – 01:05:54:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
We have a lot of science that looks at consumption of these things over time in people. And we show dramatic benefits. The same thing. Some people are saying beans, well, beans have too much lectins in. Well, then why are beans linked to longevity in every study ever looked at? And the Hispanic effect shows that people, even the relatively economically deprived people living in food deserts or Hispanics do better than black Americans as far as longevity because they eat some beans in their diet.
01:05:55:04 – 01:06:17:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
And whether people are a little beans or whether we’re looking at the blue zones so people live the longest eating more beans, we show that beans are linked to longevity and have anti-cancer effects. And the Nurses health study also showed that even eating two servings of beans a week lowered breast cancer rate by 23%, just two servings of just women who ate two servings of beans a week had a 23% lower risk of developing breast cancer.
01:06:17:19 – 01:06:25:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
That’s just an example. And so making a claim that beans are bad when every studies show they promote longevity is just ridiculous.
01:06:25:23 – 01:06:43:08
Nathan Crane
Well, the lectins and beans specifically, we know that Lectins from legumes, for example, are primarily mostly eliminated. Right? There’s a little bit left over, but mostly eliminated when you cook them fully. And I don’t know anybody who eats Robyn’s, I don’t think they’d have very many teeth left if they did know.
01:06:43:10 – 01:06:44:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
What it means. Too dangerous.
01:06:44:21 – 01:07:09:06
Nathan Crane
Yeah. And I don’t think you would ever try and I don’t know who would ever want to eat Robyn’s, but cooking them basically removes majority of the lectins anyway. So lectins when when people claim that lectins are bad for you, I’m not sure where they’re saying it’s bad for you in in real life. Maybe the lectin itself if you’re consuming massive amounts of lectins, you know, we do know that there can be some issues with that.
01:07:09:06 – 01:07:13:24
Nathan Crane
But when you’re eating, you know, wholly cooked beans, those lectins are primarily removed.
01:07:15:09 – 01:07:37:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
Of the the thing is, is that there is a risk of eating undercooked beans. So this whole thing about lectins is good because then people know not to eat hard beans that are undercooked and unintentionally eating robins, but they may have certain beans that were not cooked sufficiently and not cooking them sufficiently does place people at risk because undercooked beans would be those type of lectins can cause agglutination of the blue and red blood cells.
01:07:38:06 – 01:07:44:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we want people to eat beans that are thoroughly cooked. That’s a good thing to know that we should eat beans that early cooked.
01:07:45:06 – 01:07:49:19
Nathan Crane
Know how does someone know if they’re thoroughly cooked? They’re beans or thoroughly cooked versus a little undercooked?
01:07:50:13 – 01:07:54:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
Because they’re not they’re they’re not they’re hard enough. They’re not hard. They’re not chewy. They’re soft.
01:07:54:13 – 01:08:12:05
Nathan Crane
Enough. Like there’s a little like I’ve had beans before where it’s like a little like they’re soft, but it’s there’s a little bit of, um, I won’t say crunchiness, but almost like a little bit of a hard, moderately hard shell, right where it’s like it doesn’t just melt when you chew it. It kind of.
01:08:12:13 – 01:08:14:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
If it’s crunchy, it’s probably been undercooked.
01:08:14:16 – 01:08:21:24
Nathan Crane
Yeah. And then it’s not quite crunchy, but basically you want the beans to like when you chew and they just immediately kind of, like, melt right into the beetroot.
01:08:21:24 – 01:08:39:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes, you do want to cook, but the lectins that remain in cooked beans have beneficial effect against cancer and beneficial effect on bone mass and are actually good for you have anti-cancer effects. So the small degree of lessons that remain after cooking are actually healthy for you. So there’s a people are very confused about this issue.
01:08:39:17 – 01:08:51:22
Nathan Crane
What about oxalate? That’s another big issue. They say oxalate. It’s from the vegetables and so for and beans and all that that’s really bad for you you got to avoid oxalate so avoid all of the vegetables and all the beans and all the good stuff for you.
01:08:52:22 – 01:09:15:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
Oxalate crystal cause calcium oxalate crystallization in the urine can cause kidney stones when your diet is high in animal protein. That is correct that when you’re eating a lot of animal protein, it makes more likelihood that the oxalate in certain vegetables like spinach, Swiss chard, beet tops and parsley can be more of a contributory factor to kidney stone formation.
01:09:16:02 – 01:09:46:02
Dr. Joel Furhman
But when the diet is not excessively high in animal protein, when your diet is what we’re saying, under 10% of calories matter of a protein, then they actually do not precipitate out. That doesn’t mean I’m still not recommending people eat more than 25% of their diet from the high oxalate raw vegetables. Because because I’m not because raw spinach, raw Swiss chard, raw parsley and rice beet tops the oxalate buying calcium and you don’t get as much calcium absorption is due from lettuce and kale and college and other arugula and other green vegetables.
01:09:46:10 – 01:09:59:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I still don’t want people to predominantly spinach salads raw because I want to eat other types of green vegetables, too. So we do have some awareness of oxalate, especially in kidney stone formers, but it’s more of an issue with people eating a lot of animal protein.
01:09:59:13 – 01:10:04:21
Nathan Crane
Why? Why is that? Why is it only matter if you’re eating animal protein, eating like a plant based diet?
01:10:05:08 – 01:10:22:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
It’s because of the acidity of the urine makes the oxalate crystallize. When you acidify the urine from so much as an acid forming diet, you know, more acid Forming urine is one of the some other reasons, too, that, you know, as far as pressure in the kidney and increased pressure on the parts of the kidney.
01:10:22:11 – 01:10:46:10
Nathan Crane
But okay, so going back to what you were saying on kind of the macronutrients, one, if you’re eating a more neutral turn style diet, you’re you’re getting a lot of diverse food. The fat versus carbohydrate versus protein is not that big of a concern. You said 15 to 40% of fat if it’s coming from, you know, whole food, fat, sources, nuts and seeds and things like that.
01:10:46:10 – 01:10:52:20
Nathan Crane
Plus, you know, a lot of, you know, beans and a lot of foods already have some fat in it as well. A lot of plant foods, carbohydrates.
01:10:53:19 – 01:11:11:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
By the way, I have some overweight women who I’m not. They’re fat. They’re having not more than an ounce and a half of nuts a day, between an ounce and a half to 2 hours in a day. So Their fat may be closer to 15 or 20%. I’m just because they need to restrict calories because they have slow metabolic rates, but it’s not doing it because of the fat issue of an athlete.
01:11:11:13 – 01:11:34:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
Of course, eating more nuts could push their their calories up to 40% calories and fat because they’re burning those fat calories off. My diet can be higher in fat because my body fat low. I’m very physically active and I’m burning off those fat calories and not storing them on my body. And so those extra omega six fats are burned off for energy if I was overweight, then it would be not favorable to have a diet of that much fat.
01:11:35:05 – 01:11:35:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
If only.
01:11:36:04 – 01:11:49:12
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I have to eat over 4500 calories a day just to maintain my weight at 205. If I want to gain weight, I have to eat more than 4500 calories a day.
01:11:49:12 – 01:11:52:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
Well, how much? How many ounces of nuts and seeds a day do you are you eating?
01:11:52:17 – 01:12:13:20
Nathan Crane
So I don’t measure, but I you know, I’ll use chia seeds. I use flax seeds. I’ll use hemp seeds. I put a big hand, not a big handful, but a good handful of pecans in my oats in the morning, or walnuts, pecans or walnuts. And that’s I don’t eat a ton of nuts and seeds, actually. So the big handful.
01:12:14:02 – 01:12:22:02
Nathan Crane
And then and then the Chia flax or hemp seeds that I put like in my smoothies or in meals. And that’s usually about what I used.
01:12:22:05 – 01:12:34:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
When I used to advise, like world class Olympic athletes. I used to like I even sent them bottles of Mediterranean pine nuts because 40% protein. Those are so good. Yeah, they’re expensive, though.
01:12:34:16 – 01:12:35:14
Nathan Crane
Can you send me some?
01:12:37:04 – 01:12:40:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
I would send it to them because they were like Olympic and world class. They would pop out.
01:12:40:14 – 01:12:43:11
Nathan Crane
Hey, I’m working on it. Okay? I’m working on it. It’s okay.
01:12:43:22 – 01:13:08:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I’ve given them for free, you know, I’ve sent them to keep me on their you know, they’re on a team in the Mediterranean. And it’s also we’d have them eat a lot of them, you know, dried soybean dishes and tempeh, you know, Tomomi and things. But but particularly hemp seeds. We’d also put the hemp seeds in because keep in mind that hemp seeds are a high omega three high protein, not a seed with one as walnuts, but the ones are high in omega three, but a little protein low in protein, but hemp seeds.
01:13:08:19 – 01:13:26:02
Dr. Joel Furhman
So whenever the recipe calls for cashews, we take out half the cashews and put in a half hemp seeds, whatever the cash. Of course, with pistachios, not so pecans or or any kind, not that’s not. We take out half the nut because hemp seeds taste so flat, they don’t change the flavor much. You can just take it half the subsidy, the other half of hemp seeds.
01:13:26:05 – 01:13:32:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
And in that case we increase the omega three, omega six balance and we increase the protein content just by using more hemp seeds.
01:13:32:08 – 01:13:45:08
Nathan Crane
So so someone like me, an athlete on a whole food plant based diet, I’m not 100%, Terry, because we do use a little olive oil to cook with. Sometimes it is a little bit of salt. And I know nutrition. You you don’t use any oil or any salt, right?
01:13:46:10 – 01:14:08:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
I don’t use any oil. However, I don’t think a little bit of oil is a is a bad thing for a person who is has a low body fat and is highly physical, active, like a professional athlete. I think oil is particularly bad when people are not heavily physically active and don’t have optimal body fats because then it leads to excessive body fat like like extra virgin olive oil.
01:14:08:22 – 01:14:33:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
Now I’m saying extra virgin olive oil increases the risk of breast cancer and an overweight woman because it makes her become more overweight, which increases the risk of breast cancer. But if you are working behind a plow 8 hours a day, burning 4000 calories a day, whether you had a little bit of oil in your diet because you’re burning off those calories in your body effects under 15% for a male, then you’re it’s not an issue like I can you know, I don’t but I could eat a little bit of oil.
01:14:33:01 – 01:14:41:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
But I but instead I prefer to eat nuts and seeds because they’re richer sources of nutrients. Like I could stand up and show you my my six pack because.
01:14:42:15 – 01:14:50:14
Nathan Crane
I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. By the way, when I was out at your house and seen you, you know, working out and stuff like that. So it’s in your, what, 68, 69.
01:14:50:14 – 01:14:51:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
79 and.
01:14:51:18 – 01:14:55:15
Nathan Crane
See almost 76 pack that’s Pretty amazing.
01:14:56:07 – 01:15:18:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
And my body fat is pretty low, my body fat is pretty low. So around 11%, you know, ten or 11% body fat. So what saying is, I’m not saying olive oil is poisonous. Of course, when you cook an oil and you heat it up, the heat causes rancid. It says we want people to mostly uncooked. But if you’re overweight, it’s just too fattening.
01:15:18:14 – 01:15:38:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
And if buy and you’ve got to take calories out of the diet and by putting those calories that are absorbed so rapidly and stimulant or appetite stimulant, they might be good for an anorexic person or a thin person in nursing home eating to gain weight or a person who’s too thin. But so it’s a question of adjusting it to their individual needs, though I’m not saying it’s so dangerous for a person who needs the extra calories.
01:15:39:00 – 01:15:46:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
I’m saying it’s dangerous a person taking in excess calories. You’re going to cause them to not to stimulate their appetite and interfere with their ability to lose weight.
01:15:47:01 – 01:16:09:06
Nathan Crane
So someone who is like have more athletic goals. Right. And they’re on this kind of diet and they want to increase muscle mass but keep, you know, fat mass, low, do you recommend that they do higher fat then a higher amount of fat in the diet versus increasing cart? Like if you were to increase protein, fat, carbohydrates, you have to increase all of it to increase weight.
01:16:09:06 – 01:16:18:15
Nathan Crane
Obviously, like say you want to add five or £10 of body weight, but is it better to increase a little bit more fat than than carbohydrate. So in that regard.
01:16:19:12 – 01:16:37:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes, because the higher fat nuts and seeds are also high in protein. That’s why oil wouldn’t be good to you know, when we’re talking about putting more olive oil in, it’s not going to build muscle you better off eating sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds and then pine nuts because then because you’re going to get more protein with the fat.
01:16:37:17 – 01:16:53:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we increase the fat, which makes you reach your caloric needs. But because these things have the protein content of meat or that they are high in protein, it gives you more protein for muscle building at the same time. That’s why it’s better for you to have more calories, nuts and seeds and not the oil, even though you’re not going to be.
01:16:53:06 – 01:17:04:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
You can still burn off the oil, but you going to be really lowering your protein content if you’re plant based II and by putting oil in. Because when you’re having the whole nuts and seeds, it would have been the fat content would have been associated with the protein, higher protein substances.
01:17:05:19 – 01:17:21:18
Nathan Crane
Now, is there a point at which it gets too out of balance where you have too much fat percentage out of your calories, where we’re entering into that? Okay, Now we’re heading more towards ketogenic and away from what you’re suggesting. Is there like what’s that threshold that people need to be concerned about?
01:17:23:13 – 01:17:48:02
Dr. Joel Furhman
Well, here’s the thing. I mean we see in modern nutritional science, we’re showing that adding a variety of different foods in the diet leads from a longer lifespan. So excluding of carbohydrate vegetables, shortening lifespan, even studies on showing that green vegetables, vegetable consumption and protects against cancer show that people who eat vegetables and fruits live longer than people who eat vegetables and don’t eat fruit.
01:17:48:12 – 01:18:20:20
Dr. Joel Furhman
So even the exclusion of fruit is a negative factor because it increases the exposure to different bio flavonoids. So particularly that’s where my G bomb acronym has the the berries at the end green talking about these anti-cancer food G bombs, greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds. So because each one of these foods and even other foods that aren’t on the list that we to go after nutritional variety a diet that’s vegan and excludes nuts doesn’t people don’t live as long.
01:18:21:02 – 01:18:39:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
If you’re excluding fruit you don’t have as long if you too much fruit and exclude all carbohydrate vegetables beans, you don’t live as long. The minute you take a certain factor of food and take it out of the diet, you’re lowering the nutritional diversity of your diet. And increasing nutritional diversity is one aspect that increases longevity, increasing nutritional diversity without an increase in calories.
01:18:40:16 – 01:18:58:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
So therefore, we want to have some beans in the diet. We want to have some root vegetables in the diet. We want to have some whole grains in the diet. We want to have some nuts and seeds in the diet so that on end you want it so you can have a wide range of acceptable dietary styles. I’m saying 15 to 40% of calories of fat is an acceptable range.
01:18:59:05 – 01:19:14:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
Probably if you’re going to 50 or 60% of calories from fat, then you’re probably not getting enough. The other foods that are that you probably the beans and the grains and the vegetables and the fruit, you’re probably not getting enough. The other things you should be eating, it’s die is probably too imbalanced. You know?
01:19:14:04 – 01:19:45:19
Nathan Crane
Yeah, that makes so that makes perfect sense. So the G bombs is is easy to remember. Green beans, onions, mushroom seeds and berries that covers a wide variety and diversity of all kinds of different kinds. Food. Right. That’s kind of easy takeaway for people to think about. But the big issue for people when it comes to weight loss or change in their diet to heal cancer or diabetes or heart disease is not so much understanding this stuff.
01:19:46:05 – 01:20:02:06
Nathan Crane
People can listen to this and understand and go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And you stop eating potato chips and ice cream and processed foods and, you know, high animal products or whatever. It’s how do they actually do it? How do they make it stick? How do they make the changes when these foods are as addictive as as cocaine?
01:20:02:07 – 01:20:28:14
Nathan Crane
Right. We know sugar literally is processed. Sugar on the brain does the same thing as cocaine does. It’s incredibly addictive. And so how do you get people to actually make these changes in their life so they can lose the weight, keep it off, feel good, transform their health and not, you know, get stuck in that that rapid continuous death spiral of, you know, potato chips and donuts.
01:20:28:14 – 01:20:30:15
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, we can do that. Another two hour conversation.
01:20:30:15 – 01:20:36:00
Nathan Crane
And that’s well, I know it’s emotional. I mean, there’s a big emotional component to this, right? Well.
01:20:36:10 – 01:20:50:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
First step, yes. They have to understand the biological effects of food addiction. They have to be they have to know what food addiction is, what the symptoms of it, or how to get rid of it. And then they have to know about emotional overeating and they have to also learn about the fact that they have to change the way they think.
01:20:50:10 – 01:21:05:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
They think to a degree to not to to not to try to please the other people or try to behave in a manner to need the approval of other. Because you’re going to be different if you’re eating healthy. But one thing I wanted to say, that in the way you brought up, the people have you know, they know they eat healthily, but they can’t do it.
01:21:06:23 – 01:21:25:15
Dr. Joel Furhman
I’m proud of the fact that I developed all these incredible recipes and diet programs that people can do that they find delicious and satisfying. It’s funny, I was giving a kind of a presentation at a nutritional research conference where other nutrition researchers from Harvard and around the world were presenting. Right. And one of the head nutrition researchers from Harvard, I think his name was Frank.
01:21:25:15 – 01:21:47:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
You were at the Harvard medical school. He came up to me and said, you’ve put together the most, how should he say, the most practical application of nutritional science? People could follow it and make it taste good because all of us were talking about numbers and nutrients and foods. But you’ve really put it together in a way to make it a plot applicable to people so they can put it into actions, own kitchens.
01:21:48:00 – 01:22:00:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I said, Well, thanks very much. I really appreciate you saying that, because that’s what I’ve been trying to do for most of my life is make people feel able to do this and make it taste good. Because talking about the research is one thing we’re saying about eating raw broccoli is good for you, but who wants to sit there and wait?
01:22:00:00 – 01:22:29:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
Played a role. Broccoli. You know, broccoli, somebody’s got to make it so people have a taste, you know, taste good. But anyway, so what I’m saying right now is that there are two things that happens. This one is that when you eat unhealthily and then you move to a healthy diet and you start restricting those foods that you thought you live without, you feel physically worse and you feel weak and shaky and fatigued and you go through emotional withdrawal and you can feel degree of emotional pain or agitation at the same time.
01:22:29:07 – 01:22:43:14
Nathan Crane
It’s like exactly how I felt when I quit smoking. You know, it’s it’s when you have an addiction is something that is bull, that is emotional as well as physiological. It sucks at first, you know. Yeah. Just lose for a short while. It really sucks.
01:22:43:23 – 01:23:04:07
Dr. Joel Furhman
And the physical pain goes away in the first week. But the emotional longing for those things you’re missing continues on for months. The same thing when you stop cigarets you might after six of being off nicotine, you’re not suffering anymore, but you still are, you know, emotionally addicted to smoking. And that takes longer to leave you.
01:23:04:11 – 01:23:20:10
Nathan Crane
I got to tell you, for me, it was it was three days and here’s why. And I know for some people it’s not that fast. But I was so you know, I was smoked a very young age. I was smoking two packs a I mean, I started smoking when I was a very young teenager and got to the point where I was smoking two packs a day.
01:23:20:18 – 01:23:46:14
Nathan Crane
And I got to the point in my life where I made such a strong decision that I was going to quit cigarets like I had tried so many times before that for years, tried to quit, never successfully, tried all the things a lemon drops in the toothpicks and, you know, all kinds of things. Nothing seemed to work. What worked for me with that was I got very serious about getting healthy and I said, know, I was 18 years old, 18, 19 years old.
01:23:46:14 – 01:24:17:01
Nathan Crane
And I said, I I’ve been very unhealthy for my whole life, basically up to that point, sick all kinds of health issues, all primarily, you know, self doing it to myself. And I made the decision to get healthy, to stop all pharmaceuticals, stop all drugs cigarets everything. And I was going to the gym one day and I, I finished working out and I walked outside and lit up a cigaret and and I stood out there and I just thought, What the hell are you doing?
01:24:17:01 – 01:24:49:13
Nathan Crane
You’re trying to get healthy, You’re smoking a cigaret after you work out. Like, are you just so stupid or what? Like, I had this real with myself. Like, how stupid can you be? How is how are you going to get healthy and then smoke cigarets and cause cancer at the same time like it was such a dichotomy in my brain and it was like, if you’re serious about this thing, you have to quit Cigarets And I literally I when I made that decision so strong in that moment I went home and told my roommates, I said, Guys, the next few days I’m going to be a dick.
01:24:49:13 – 01:25:10:09
Nathan Crane
I’m going to just be an asshole, deal with it. I’m quitting smoking, period. That’s all I said. And then the next day I. I quit. But what was crazy was that that afternoon, because you have the the physiological response was the emotional. Well, you know, some I mean, I had cigarets with coffee in the morning, I had cigarets with beer.
01:25:10:09 – 01:25:43:07
Nathan Crane
I had cigarets with this cigarets after every meal. Right. All of these stimulus, all of these triggers that make you want to have that thing. And it’s true with food as well. But I was sitting outside where I normally would sit down and smoke and there was an ashtray there with like a little half of a cigaret and my body without my consciousness or my subconscious addictive part, if you will, picked up a half cigaret and started lighting it before I even realized what I was doing.
01:25:43:07 – 01:26:01:00
Nathan Crane
And in that moment I go, What are you doing? And I threw it down and I took the whole thing, threw it in the garbage, and it was like that was it? The next few days sucked. I was I had a job interview to get into real estate and I was sweating and I, like, felt terrible. And I was, you know, I just I felt terrible.
01:26:01:00 – 01:26:33:24
Nathan Crane
But it it took in less than a week, I was done. I was over it and I never wanted or ever desired a cigaret again. And so I’m not saying that’s for for everybody and probably not true for most people, but I think why that was the case for me, why that time that I was able to actually quit and never even think about it ever again was my decision was so was so strong and I had such a deep reason to do it that there was no going back and there was nothing that could stop me.
01:26:33:24 – 01:26:42:03
Nathan Crane
I didn’t count my days. I was like, got 30 days cigaret free. It was just, I’m done and that’s it. And I mean, that’s my theory anyway. Don’t know.
01:26:43:06 – 01:27:09:07
Dr. Joel Furhman
Well, you know, obviously, you know, I’m working with people who have food addiction all the time and the primitive brain is missing the high and the stimulation and the body couldn’t think illogically. Now, you know, your brain is not your best friend, the primitive brain like your body in an airport with no food with you, and you’ll be smelling this this dubious, certainly aroma, the chocolate chip cookies in the bagels and saying to yourself, well, look, I’ve got no food, I’m not going to starve.
01:27:09:08 – 01:27:32:02
Dr. Joel Furhman
I’ve got to eat something. So I’ve got to have a bagel, you know, but I have a piece or something. There’s nothing else to eat. See the dig? The brain put themselves in that situation with no food in their backpack and put themselves in the primitive brain where, you know, is like working as your enemy. So. So I and that goes away with time, But it takes months for the person to lose that for you.
01:27:32:02 – 01:28:12:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
Get back. I’m going to stick on this program. But for a lot of people, when their commitment is not that powerful, is lost the keys to the bank. In other words, they’re not in control of their own behavior anymore. Their brain is on their friend. That’s where they’re off the cigarets, where they’re off the alcohol, where they’re off the sugar, they’re off the white flour, off the oil, flour off the oil.
01:28:12:21 – 01:28:39:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
They got to get. And they’re sabotage, especially when they’re sabotaged by not just their environment, but but their friends and family are trying to sabotage them, too, because they’re surrounded by food addicts. What you’re going to leave the club of food addicts? You know, So in any case, this can be tough. But we’ve developed the processes over the years so that people can read the books, watch the videos, join one of my programs or my online programs.
01:28:39:22 – 01:28:58:14
Dr. Joel Furhman
And they really feel that the information sets them free. They get enough information, they’re able to make the right choices and know what to expect. How to break free from their cravings and desires is to eat foods that are not in their own best interest. The question is why would a person do something and they’re not in their own best interest?
01:28:58:19 – 01:29:13:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
Why would you eat candy? Why would you eat hot dogs? Why would you eat potato chips? Why would you do that? It’s not in your best interest. And the reason is because they’re addictive and they’re designed to be addicting. They’re made by scientists designed to help people. It’s just like, what if there was everybody trying to give you a kid cocaine?
01:29:13:14 – 01:29:31:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
You know, they’re just these things are addictive substances, these highly flavored, highly caloric, highly rushing into vast calories that absorb very rapidly are designed by food scientists to hook people and they get people hooked. And you’ve got to get and you’ve got to get off them to get unhooked.
01:29:31:19 – 01:29:49:00
Nathan Crane
So one of the things I’ve heard from people often when they, you know, they see how I live and how I how I eat and they learn a lot, especially other athletes who see how I am in the gym and they go and they know I’m, you know, plant based and have been for a long time, over a decade in there.
01:29:49:05 – 01:30:10:21
Nathan Crane
And at some point, conversation always comes up and it’s so common. I hear it again. Again, I tried going vegan, I tried going plant based, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t I couldn’t stick to it. And I said, well, why was that? And I start digging in and very often it’s just people don’t know how to cook healthy food and make it taste delicious.
01:30:10:21 – 01:30:34:16
Nathan Crane
And that’s what you were just talking about a minute ago, which is one you got to have the knowledge of what these processed foods and, you know, highly palatable foods and high sugar foods and high animal products are doing to the body. You got to know what it’s doing. You got to continuously educate yourself. That’s one thing I’ve done for the past 17 years, is continue to educate on this exact thing as why I read the research papers.
01:30:34:16 – 01:31:00:14
Nathan Crane
That’s why I do these interviews. It’s why I continue to learn because as much as I learn, I’m still always questioning and trying to learn more. And so you have to continuously educate yourself. But then you also have to learn how to make it taste good and learn how to do it easy, right? Make it easy. Because if it’s difficult, if it takes some an hour and a half to make a simple meal that tastes terrible, they won’t they won’t stick with it.
01:31:00:14 – 01:31:10:14
Nathan Crane
They should learn. So one of the things so So you were talking about your cookbook. I love your cookbook, the Eat to Eat to Live Cookbook. And so is that’s one. I have had a few.
01:31:10:22 – 01:31:13:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
I have a few cookbooks, but I like the intuitive cookbook the best, too.
01:31:13:20 – 01:31:30:01
Nathan Crane
I don’t have the other ones. That’s the only one I have. I’ll have to get some of the other ones. But you know, one of my favorite recipes in there is the the tofu scramble. So the tofu scramble, like I love that is so good that, you know, there’s some simple fast recipes in there. There’s some good soups.
01:31:30:01 – 01:31:54:15
Nathan Crane
There’s the key is is getting a good cookbook, a good recipe book that follows true healthy principles. And then learning some of these recipes, experimenting with them, figuring out the ones you like, and then you’ve got three or four or five recipes that you can cycle from from time to time, right? Maybe you have ten over the course of a year or two of doing this where it’s like you can cycle through them and and you can change things pretty easily.
01:31:54:15 – 01:32:12:15
Nathan Crane
My breakfast is pretty simple, but I can change it up depending on which or berries I put in there, which nuts or seeds I put in there and all those little things, you know, give the diversity in might change things like my oats in the morning, steel cut oats. I cook it with some high protein almond milk. It’s actually what I cook it in.
01:32:12:15 – 01:32:21:12
Nathan Crane
And then I’ll add in different kinds of nuts. I’ll add in some you know, one of my favorite dried berries is the golden berry. The gooseberry.
01:32:21:13 – 01:32:22:21
Dr. Joel Furhman
I love those two of those.
01:32:22:22 – 01:32:23:12
Nathan Crane
Yeah, Yeah.
01:32:23:12 – 01:32:25:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
The sour. But they’re good.
01:32:25:05 – 01:32:28:03
Nathan Crane
They’re sour. And I love the sour, actually. Sour.
01:32:28:12 – 01:32:44:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
This morning I had a cybereason with oatmeal and berries. But you know what I’m thinking? I just want to put a plug in for my some of my food products. But because a lot of times you make you throw some vegetables in a walker, you’re putting frozen vegetables. And one of my favorite things, do I have this Thai curry sauce?
01:32:45:01 – 01:33:06:24
Dr. Joel Furhman
And it’s I can make it from scratch in the Vitamix, but if I’m in a hurry, I can just open a jar of the Thai curry sauce that we made with no oil and no sugar. It’s flavored with a date sweet melody, and you just take a couple of tablespoons of the Thai curry sauce on top of the vegetables you have an incredible delicious vegetable dish or, you know, you just so the sauce is in the salad dressings, make the vegetables jump out at you, you know, and so easy to cook.
01:33:06:24 – 01:33:33:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I design a line of products to make people who can do this, who don’t have any time, they can just open some vegetables and throw some sauces on top of it, open a salad and put some dressing on top or open the thing and open a box of healthy soup and put it on, eat it up. So, you know, so I’ve developed, you know, how should I say, the product line to support the recommended portions of people that I’m giving people because I know that they have trouble with the time element and learning how to make it taste good.
01:33:33:12 – 01:33:42:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I that’s what my profession in my career has been to make. I can how I can supply people and make this easier for them so they have no trouble do it and make it taste delicious.
01:33:42:21 – 01:33:47:06
Nathan Crane
Are these things on like Amazon and places like that? Are they only on your website?
01:33:47:22 – 01:34:00:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
I think there might be on Amazon too, but they’re mostly I think they might. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s mostly on the website, but we have a whole selection of food sources and salad dressings and soups that make and flavorings that make this easy for people to do.
01:34:00:06 – 01:34:19:23
Nathan Crane
Yeah, doctor, firm, incom and click on shop and then click on food. And I’m looking at all the sauces right on my computer because they’re the thing that makes the menu, that makes the food is the sauce. Like, like you can you can cook the same kind of simple things every day and switch up which vegetables switch up which greens switch up.
01:34:20:06 – 01:34:30:05
Nathan Crane
Maybe got tofu this day and next day you’re doing beans, right? Like you can switch those things. Super simple, but what. Yeah. What makes the food is, is at least.
01:34:30:08 – 01:34:32:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
Have you tasted my Thai curry sauce yet.
01:34:32:11 – 01:34:39:20
Nathan Crane
No, I’m looking at it right now. Let me see what’s in it. I love her. I love curry. Curry is like one of my favorite Thai flavoring.
01:34:39:20 – 01:34:41:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
Has lemongrass in it.
01:34:41:07 – 01:35:07:20
Nathan Crane
So you’ve got dates. Peanuts is all organic, by the way, which is awesome. Lime juice, coconut. Charlotte’s ginger, red curry powder, paprika, garlic, lime peel, lemongrass, shallots, chili powder, turmeric, cayenne pepper. Oh, my God, that sounds amazing. Yeah And then you can just like what I do with this is, like, I’ll cook up. I’ll cook up a batch of tofu, some mixed vegetables, and some some brown rice or some quinoa.
01:35:07:21 – 01:35:27:02
Nathan Crane
Right. Like, that’s kind of one of my staples. And then just change the sauces on it and change that up. And then we’ll do like some curry dishes as well. And do you might be peas, might throw some peas in there or some I like to do for my kind of grain, which is not really great to see, you know, quinoa.
01:35:27:02 – 01:35:36:14
Nathan Crane
I like to keep that my my core base. Sometimes I’ll do brown rice and sometimes I do white rice just to switch it up. But I know rice is kind of an issue because of the arsenic, right?
01:35:36:21 – 01:35:49:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
Arsenic and brown rice and the glycemic affect the white rice but I one Qin was my favorite grain as well because it’s actually richer in protein and lower glycemic and cleaner too. It’s a clean it doesn’t have much chemicals in it.
01:35:49:11 – 01:36:04:02
Nathan Crane
Exactly. And so that’s that’s an easy and it’s easy to cook and it’s nice and fluffy and it’s really tasty. He’s got like a nutty, natural, nutty kind of flavor. I love quinoa, so I’m going to I’m actually going to order some of these sauces, by the way they look.
01:36:04:02 – 01:36:26:12
Dr. Joel Furhman
Well, can I make a recommendation for you? Yeah. Get my of wild forest mushrooms. They’re incredible. They’re. They’re not commercially grown either. They come dried and you can plop them in a soup and they’re so and that they have such powerful anti-cancer and really powerful effects. But as you know I have the mushroom powders and mushroom supplements. But this is just the real dried mushrooms that people got wild in.
01:36:26:12 – 01:36:33:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
The woods like Black Forest and black trumpets and all these things, they’re just like, chop them up and drop them into a soup. They’re fantastic. Got to try that, too.
01:36:33:22 – 01:36:35:04
Nathan Crane
Do you go pick them yourself?
01:36:35:22 – 01:36:43:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
No. This tea, this company in Oregon that I found does it. They go and they they have a whole company that just gets wild mushrooms and dehydrates them. It’s phenomenal.
01:36:43:08 – 01:37:06:23
Nathan Crane
You know, I like it. I like your dressing salad variety pack, because one of the things, too, is like making salads tastes good to me. Salads are boring to eat. Like I prefer to take all my greens and veggies and stuff and put them in a blender and just drink it because like, I think for me it’s the time part, you know, I’m so busy with training in the morning and then working all day training in the evenings, buying time with the family.
01:37:06:23 – 01:37:23:09
Nathan Crane
If we’re not doing that, we’re traveling like I’m so busy, like to sit down and spend, you know, 15 minutes eating a salad. I just prefer even though it’s fantastic, you and, you know, to get the sauces right, too, is sometimes a challenge if I’m going quick. So like, I’ll just put it in a blender and drink it.
01:37:23:09 – 01:37:35:10
Nathan Crane
But if I’ve got a good sauce on hand that I can just pour on it like that tastes good, that’s healthy, then I’m way more likely to actually sit down and eat a salad and enjoy it.
01:37:35:10 – 01:37:55:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
You’re going to do it. This good salad dressing is the key. It’s the most important recipe to learn is some great tastes like salad dressings and tomatoes, sauces and things. But of course I’m saying that chewing the and mixing it with the bacteria in your saliva increases nitric oxide production, which increases immune function, relaxation of blood vessels and physical and athletic.
01:37:55:09 – 01:38:04:08
Dr. Joel Furhman
You get more athletic performance when you actually shoot the salad. So even though it’s good to do it blended, it’s also better to do it. So you also add it should one to at least a few times a week in there.
01:38:04:12 – 01:38:29:20
Nathan Crane
That’s why we have these nice flat teeth specifically for chewing, chewing plants, chewing, breaking down roots, breaking down. You know? Yeah. And when when we know that when these plants, the enzymes interact with with our body. Right. Our body actually starts a entire chemical cascade process of. All right, here’s the food, here’s what we need to do, here’s what’s coming in.
01:38:29:20 – 01:38:49:22
Nathan Crane
Right. It starts to actually activate and and certain enzymes mixing together creates certain, you know, effects on the body. It’s actually really fascinating that chewing into these plants, we start to activate a incredible response in the body that is designed to heal and repair and rejuvenate.
01:38:50:17 – 01:39:14:11
Dr. Joel Furhman
Right. There are two enzymes I want people to know with that are most important here. And the one enzyme is called My Rossini’s My Way, my ro oro S.A.C., my Rossini’s, which is found in green vegetables, green cruciferous vegetables that is in the cell wall. And the better you chew in your mouth, the more my grossness gets broken open from the packets they’re in and you form more the anti-cancer compounds in your mouth.
01:39:14:11 – 01:39:37:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
You want them in the mouth to the proportion how well you chew. And that’s the my. It is heat sensitive to the cook, the vegetable first. You’re not going to get the anti-cancer effects. The other enzyme is called Ali and ac l l I and AC 2002 eyes. You get triple points in Scrabble, Ali and Ace, and that’s in leeks and onions and scallions and shallots in the onion family.
01:39:37:21 – 01:39:54:10
Dr. Joel Furhman
And that’s why people cut an onion there. I’m still forming sulfuric acid because when the sulfuric acid is formed, you’re going to form a lot of other anti-cancer compounds. So again, I’ll sulfide compounds. So the trickier than what you have to remember, remember two things is one is you’re putting raw scallion, raw onions, salad and showing them real well.
01:39:55:00 – 01:40:12:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
And number two, you’re putting raw greens like a workhorse of is greens and showing that number two, when you’re making your soups, you cold blend these substances. You don’t you don’t put the whole onion, the soup, you don’t put the whole greens in the soup. You blend them in the blender so you don’t let the heat deactivate the enzyme.
01:40:12:03 – 01:40:32:13
Dr. Joel Furhman
Then once you form the compound, the enzyme forms, then you can put the onion, the soup, then you put the green vegetables in the soup to cook because you would have formed the seeds and the organic compounds before you deactivate the enzymes. So it’s important to people know those two enzymes and how to cook to maintain the benefits of that for their powerful anti-cancer effects.
01:40:32:13 – 01:40:44:10
Nathan Crane
So I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you about gene editing. There’s a whole new thing, I don’t know. Have you looked into gene editing? All of you heard the science on that and what people are doing with it.
01:40:45:16 – 01:41:02:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
Maybe not so much, but I know a lot about Gene silencing and the effects of these foods enables a silence, a defective DNA, DNA that could lead to disease. The body has the ability through through a healthy diet to consumption of green vegetables and the other and the onions and mushrooms to silence genes that would normally cause a problem.
01:41:02:12 – 01:41:26:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
And I know that we’re able to affect the way that we are. Our genes are the product of what we eat, what we eat forms our genes rather than people think our genes form us is actually our diets create how our genes work and through epigenetic defects and through epigenetic changes in methylation methylation of genes, we can cause methylation defects, a mess of methylation repair.
01:41:27:02 – 01:41:34:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
So the genes are active, they’re not fixed, and we could modify them favorably by the favorable changes to our diet.
01:41:35:08 – 01:41:57:03
Nathan Crane
So we’re talking about gene expression right there, which is, you know, foods that can literally impact gene expression in a positive or negative way. Right. Which is to say, let’s say, for example, you have the best example I can give is a BRCA1 gene, the BRCA one gene, the breast cancer gene. Right. Which is people say, oh, I have this breast cancer gene.
01:41:57:06 – 01:42:19:05
Nathan Crane
I’m I’m going to get cancer. And the reality is over. At least half of the women who have the gene never get cancer. So it’s not the gene, Right? It’s the environment in which the gene lives and words and diet and lifestyle and all these things can actually affect the expression of that gene where that gene actually activates and turns in, you know, it creates the cancer process in the body or not.
01:42:19:11 – 01:42:30:02
Nathan Crane
And foods can suppress that. So can lifestyle, so can stress, so can many other things. But certain foods can also instigate that, right? Can activate it.
01:42:30:11 – 01:42:31:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes, for sure.
01:42:31:09 – 01:43:02:16
Nathan Crane
But the gene editing thing, so one that’s fascinating, that’s worth a whole other to our conversation, But the gene editing thing is I don’t know enough about it yet, but I’m I’m concerned about it where they’re literally talking about going into there. They’re talking about scientific actually manipulating and editing your genes, using a scientific process to turn these genes on or off.
01:43:02:16 – 01:43:10:04
Nathan Crane
Basically, it’s how I understand it. Genome editing is basically genetic engineering of the human and.
01:43:10:14 – 01:43:12:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
It sounds like science fiction.
01:43:12:12 – 01:43:16:05
Nathan Crane
Sounds like science fiction. And they’re doing it. They’re doing it. Do you know much about it or.
01:43:16:05 – 01:43:43:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
No, I don’t. You know, I know that there are a few aspects I’m doing for longevity one is like to take and add precursors and 80 plus even I get like an Ivy now because there’s anti affects and stabilizing brain memory. And the other thing is I pay attention to the omega three index that as we’re on plant based diets or any kind of diet that having an unfavorable omega three index has negative effects on brain chemistry and resistance to toxins in the brain increasing risk of dementia, Parkinson’s later on in life.
01:43:44:07 – 01:44:01:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
So we want the omega three index to be favorable. So I measure that in the blood. I measure the omega three index, making sure it’s above five at a minimum, at least above five. And a lot of people in plant based diets with vegan diets because they’re not eating fish and things have low omega three index that could be negative for their brain, brain health and future life.
01:44:01:05 – 01:44:34:09
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I’m very cognizant of possible you could say I’m at the Achilles heel of a plant based diet is people not having an adequate omega three index. So we use for vegans, we have a vegan supplement and I have and I actually produce in glass bottles, a vegan DHEA, an EPA that’s kept under refrigeration. So people have fresh, fresh supplement with no rancid fatty caused by sitting at room temperature so people can make sure they take the amount that brings their omega three index into a favorable range.
01:44:34:23 – 01:44:56:19
Dr. Joel Furhman
That said, too much fish oil can push it the other way. So we’re saying that too much fish oil can be a pro-inflammatory substance, but too little can also be pro-inflammatory. It’s is a sweet spot for many nutrients to make sure it’s not too low or not little. And I’m advocating between six and eight. I’m going to make it three index tested between five and a half, an eight as being the optimal range on that test.
01:44:57:07 – 01:44:59:16
Nathan Crane
And that’s that’s from an algae source, right?
01:45:00:02 – 01:45:20:03
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yes, it’s an algae source. That’s correct. Because my cap I’ve been in practice taking care of a vegan community of elderly people for so many decades, seeing that the problems they can develop if their omega three index is too low, they can develop neurologic problems. And as they get older, when they’re not going to have a heart attack and, not going to get cancer, they’re going to live to be 85 to 100 years old.
01:45:20:03 – 01:45:25:22
Dr. Joel Furhman
And they don’t want we want them to have full mental faculties in place and not get demented and certainly not get Parkinson’s disease.
01:45:26:11 – 01:45:29:15
Nathan Crane
Now, now, kelp are a type of algae, right?
01:45:30:15 – 01:45:31:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
Kelp is a seaweed.
01:45:32:01 – 01:45:33:02
Nathan Crane
Yeah. Which I think is a.
01:45:33:02 – 01:45:34:17
Dr. Joel Furhman
Type of iodine.
01:45:35:04 – 01:45:57:20
Nathan Crane
Right. And so what’s funny about this too, is so with people take fish oil to increase omega threes, but what are the fish eat to increase their own omega threes? They eat algae, right? They eat the seaweeds, eat the kelp, they eat the plants that make their own omega three. So it’s like, why don’t we just go to the source, which is why a lot of.
01:45:57:20 – 01:46:15:06
Dr. Joel Furhman
People think that we could just eat flaxseeds and walnuts and green vegetables and we could make sufficient EPA and ourselves like the animals can make it. We don’t have to supplement. We just eat the right precursors to it, get enough flax seeds will make enough EPA and DHA. J But the facts are it doesn’t work for most people.
01:46:15:11 – 01:46:34:23
Dr. Joel Furhman
They don’t have enough conversion enzyme activity to make enough, even if they increase the levels of omega short chain omega three so that so some animals may be able to convert and some people may be able to convert it more readily produce higher levels. I know a guy who’s eating who takes no supplements and his omega three index is eight and he takes no or seven or eight and he takes no omega three supplements.
01:46:35:03 – 01:46:53:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
He just converts it naturally, you know what I mean? But there are other people that have a would have a level of two because they don’t convert at all. So we can’t assume what’s good for one person is not all of a sudden we have to measure that to make sure that you’re converting. And even so, even with dietary gymnastics, some people don’t improve their levels and other people can.
01:46:53:11 – 01:46:54:18
Dr. Joel Furhman
So I just want to make that clear.
01:46:54:22 – 01:47:01:08
Nathan Crane
But algae is is is the one source that you don’t need to convert because it already has the. Yes.
01:47:01:13 – 01:47:10:00
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah. Well, this is especially it’s a special type of algae that reduces EPA and not all seawater algae would have that. But yes, I mean.
01:47:10:11 – 01:47:51:16
Nathan Crane
Well I’m asking because I was watching a documentary the other day on theorized of the indigenous tribes that traveled around up where Alaska is now and then down through into the United States, around the ocean, into like Mexico area. There was a whole documentary done on it on where they thought where it used to be frozen there. I mean, there’s like 20 something thousand plus years ago where it was actually they believe it was melted enough through the streams where they could travel along the ocean coast and along certain rivers and things like that.
01:47:52:02 – 01:48:22:11
Nathan Crane
And the things that they theorized that they would have actually been eating, most of the thing that would have been most abundant and inaccessible would be things like seaweed and kelp and algae and these kinds of things. Right. Obviously, fish also, they could have been fishing, but that’s a common thing for certain tribes even today, from what I understand, is they do harvest and eat seaweeds in camps and in algae as part of their normal diet, which is not normal for us here in the West anyway.
01:48:22:11 – 01:48:32:22
Nathan Crane
It’s never been normal in my life. I mean, other than seaweed in Japan, seaweed is very common right now. If you eat sushi, you’re eating seaweed. But here in the west, it’s just not a common part of most people’s diets.
01:48:33:15 – 01:48:58:05
Dr. Joel Furhman
Yeah, you know, humans can survive on almost anything and and still have a, you know, a relatively you know, 40, 50 years of life. But if we’re trying to push the envelope of human gravity and I’m saying we can get to be 97, 270 years old, then we have to use science to try to get there. So, yes, we can have past humans have survived on any combination of food.
01:48:58:05 – 01:49:17:04
Dr. Joel Furhman
But that doesn’t mean because people have survived on it and civilizations have lived on those things doesn’t mean that’s the ideal diet in today’s world. To live a long life, we’ve got to be careful with extrapolating that. I’m just saying that, yes, are different. Like, you know, so lots of different ways people can survive in lots of different diet styles.
01:49:17:04 – 01:49:37:16
Dr. Joel Furhman
Humans can survive. But the question is, in today’s polluted world, with the science we have available today, how can we maximize our chances to have healthy life and to live a long time and not get sick? So we have a lot of that to answer today and people don’t have. We really have to be confused. We’ve got a lot of the data is really solid.
01:49:37:16 – 01:49:59:22
Nathan Crane
Well, thank you so much, Joel, for taking the time to be here. Eat for Life is the book. I think anyone tuning in who wants to dive deeper into this world of nutritional excellence, eat for life, go grab that book and. The cookbook that I use that I recommend is the Eat to Live cookbook, one of my favorites.
01:50:00:11 – 01:50:16:15
Nathan Crane
I’ll have to get some of your other cookbooks and try those out as well. So I can’t speak to the other ones, but I’m sure they’re great as. Well, and Dr. from Incom, all of his resources are there. Joel, thanks so much. It was a man. I could talk to you for hours. We got. We got to do this again in the future where we get to go deep like this.
01:50:16:15 – 01:50:18:11
Nathan Crane
This was awesome. So thank you so much.
01:50:19:06 – 01:50:23:01
Dr. Joel Furhman
Terrific. Great. Good talking to you. Good luck to everybody. So your best of help.
01:50:23:21 – 01:50:31:17
Nathan Crane
Take care. See it. All right.