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0:00
Coming up on this episode of the
0:02
Doctors Pharmacy. When you understand what's in
0:04
food, the most important thing to understand
0:06
is that quality matters. The source matters.
0:08
Where it was grown matters. The quality
0:10
of the seed matters. The quality of
0:12
the soil matters. The way
0:14
it was grown and transported and
0:17
processed and where you could buy it.
0:19
All those things influence the quality of
0:21
the nutrition in the plant or
0:23
in the animal. Hey
0:26
everyone, it's Dr. Mark. As functional medicine practitioners,
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thoroughly tested products. Welcome
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to the doctor's pharmacy. Every week I bring
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on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics
3:59
in the field of... One
8:00
of them in particular has a particular power
8:02
to rejuvenate your immune system. And as we
8:04
age, there's something called immunosynescence, which is the
8:06
aging of our immune system. And that's why
8:08
we see with COVID, for example, so many
8:10
people who are older or chronically are getting
8:12
sicker and dying because their immune systems can't
8:14
handle it. So what the
8:17
Himalayan Tardic Baccuit has is phytochemicals
8:19
that actually kill the zombie cells
8:22
that are the immune-synescence cells and
8:24
really help your immune system rejuvenate.
8:26
They also contain over
8:28
130 more phytochemicals that are polyphenols
8:31
or spared and rutin. Christen, for example,
8:33
is very abundant in Himalayan Tardic Baccuit.
8:36
It's been found to regulate allergy, immunity,
8:38
gut health, as well as be beneficial
8:40
in prevention of COVID. So there's really
8:42
some interesting compounds in there. Plus it's
8:44
got more protein, less starch and
8:46
sugar, more minerals like magnesium and zinc than
8:48
almost any other what we call grain. And
8:50
the thing about it, it's not a grain.
8:52
So if you're grain-free, you get to have
8:54
bacuite because it's actually a flower and I
8:56
guess you can eat flour. So the next
8:59
category of foods, which is really a staple
9:01
in my diet, I eat this every single
9:03
day because one,
9:05
I have a genetic problem that makes it
9:07
hard for me to make a molecule called
9:09
glutathione. And two, it's just such a delicious
9:11
food. And three, it has all these other
9:13
benefits. So these are the cruciferous vegetables or
9:15
brassicas and they include things like broccoli, cabbage,
9:18
collards, kohlrabi, kale, I think
9:21
a rheolus part of it and
9:23
Brussels sprouts. So all those
9:25
kinds of family of vegetables
9:27
contain compounds called glucosinolates and
9:30
sulflurofanes and many other
9:32
compounds as well. But these have turned
9:34
out to be incredibly powerful to upregulate
9:36
a molecule in your body called glutathione.
9:38
And this molecule has so many
9:41
functions in the body but particularly it's powerful
9:44
in regulating immune system
9:47
and improving your antioxidant system and
9:49
detoxifying. In fact, it's the master
9:51
antioxidant, master detoxifier and master regulator
9:53
of your immune system. And
9:56
it's made by the body but it often is
9:58
sluggish and making it when we're exposed. to so
10:00
many toxins and some of us like
10:02
me have a gene doesn't make that much of
10:04
it. So I mean historically we weren't exposed to
10:07
80,000 different toxic chemicals and
10:09
all this pollution and crap and so
10:11
we really need to have a robust
10:13
detox system. And
10:15
so for me it's really important to have at least
10:17
two cups a day of these cruciferous vegetables. I
10:20
like broccolini, I love that one. And you can
10:22
mix and match and have all kinds of different
10:24
ones but these are really critical. Plus not only
10:26
do they contain these compounds that are detoxifying but
10:28
they're also anti-cancer. And in China they did an
10:30
incredible study where they looked at the urine samples
10:32
among Chinese and they did food questionnaires and they
10:34
found that those who had the most in
10:38
their, these compounds in their urine, namely
10:40
you know most of the sort of broccoli
10:43
kind of extracts, which they are broccoli metabolites
10:45
in the urine, they had
10:47
the lowest rates of cancer. So
10:49
there's a direct correlation between high intakes of
10:51
these foods and low rates of cancer. Broccoli
10:54
sprouts are like broccoli on steroids
10:56
basically. And you can
10:58
put them on salads, they're really delicious, they're a little spicy,
11:00
yummy. And they're really
11:03
high levels of these phytochemicals like
11:05
sulforaphane, leucosinolates. And then all
11:07
these other compounds are also in these vegetables
11:10
like magnesium, folate as
11:12
well as vitamin K and iron and many, many
11:15
other really beneficial nutrients that we need. So
11:17
it's a real staple. The next major category
11:19
of food is mushrooms. And I'm not talking about
11:21
the white button mushrooms which actually are not that
11:23
nutritious and particularly you should not eat them raw
11:25
because they have a natural carcinogen in them. But
11:28
I'm talking about mushrooms that have been used for thousands of
11:30
years in China and
11:33
Japan and other countries and that actually
11:35
have powerful medicinal properties. And
11:37
they contain a class of carbohydrates called
11:39
polysaccharides. And these polysaccharides have
11:42
dramatic potential to boost
11:44
immune function, to help cancer
11:47
and many, many other things. So
11:49
for example, my favorites are shiitake,
11:51
maitake and lion's mane. So
11:53
shiitake is wonderful for immune function. Maitake
11:55
is also wonderful for immune function but
11:57
also cancer prevention. And there's
11:59
many, many studies. is on my talking cancer.
12:02
And then the last is lion's mane, which
12:04
looks like a brain and actually is great
12:06
for neuroplasticity. So you only can take them
12:08
as supplements, but you can cook them, I
12:10
roast them in the oven, I saute them,
12:13
they're delicious little garlic and they're really yummy
12:15
and they're great for you. And there's a
12:17
whole new mushroom explosion literally happening in our
12:19
country with exploration of different kinds of edible
12:21
mushrooms, therapeutic mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms. So we're really
12:24
entering a mushroom revolution and stay tuned because
12:26
there's billions of dollars flowing into this marketplace.
12:29
And the last, and again, there's 25,000 different
12:31
molecules and I could have picked 10 other
12:34
foods, right? But these are the ones that I kind
12:36
of really like to talk about today. And the other
12:38
is green tea. Now green tea
12:40
has a class of compounds called epiglactocatylic
12:42
and gallates, which are powerful antioxidants, but
12:45
they also upregulate glutathione, they're powerful in
12:47
detoxification, they're anti-cancer, they've been shown to
12:49
improve immune function, for example, around COVID.
12:51
So they're really powerful and you can
12:54
just drink green tea and there's matcha,
12:56
there's sencha, there's, you know, I like
12:58
the brown rice, one green tea with
13:01
brown rice, I think it's called jamacha
13:03
or something, I probably screwed that up, it's
13:06
great. And those are
13:08
something you can incorporate in your day just as a
13:10
cup of green tea or iced tea.
13:12
I put matcha powder in my smoothie, for
13:14
example. So there's a lot of ways to
13:16
get it. I think these are really important
13:18
super foods that we should be incorporating in
13:20
our diet on a regular basis. When you
13:23
understand what's in food, and I
13:25
think it would be worth breaking it down a little bit. The
13:28
most important thing to understand is that
13:30
the quality matters, the source matters, where
13:32
it was grown matters, the quality of
13:34
the seed matters, the quality of the
13:37
soil matters, the way
13:39
it was grown and transported
13:41
and processed and
13:43
where you could buy it, all those things influenced
13:45
the quality of the nutrition in the
13:48
plant or in the animal. And
13:50
so we've developed a food system which is
13:52
really great creating a lot of starchy, well-preserved
13:56
carbohydrate calories that can sit on the
13:59
shelf for years. and not go
14:01
bad. But that is not what
14:03
we want to be eating because within food,
14:05
when you look at the quality aspect, it
14:08
says everything about how food can regulate
14:10
your biology. So for example, protein,
14:13
fat, carbs, I
14:15
just go through a couple of examples. So protein,
14:18
you think protein is protein, protein. Is it all
14:20
the same? Well, no, it's not. If you're eating
14:22
a feedlot cow versus let's say
14:24
a regenerably raised grass fed cow, the
14:26
effects on your biology are erratically different, even
14:28
if it's the same grams of protein. So
14:31
for example, the feedlot cow will be full
14:33
of antibiotics, will be fed a lot of
14:36
grain, will have a lot of omega-6 fats,
14:39
may have all kinds of
14:41
other inflammatory molecules in them because of the
14:43
diet they're eating and the
14:45
way they're raised, plus all the antibiotics and so
14:47
forth. The regenerably raised
14:49
grass fed cow is eating maybe a wide
14:51
variety of plants, 50 to 100 different plants,
14:54
many medicinal plants with all kinds of phytochemicals.
14:56
They have higher levels of omega-3, higher levels
14:58
of vitamins, higher levels of antioxidants, higher levels
15:00
of what we call phytochemicals. And you go,
15:02
wait a minute, Dr. Hyman, how are there
15:04
phytochemicals in animals? That doesn't
15:06
even make sense. They're called phyta, which means
15:08
plants. How can we plant chemicals in meat?
15:11
So the animals eat the plants and we
15:13
eat the animals. And basically
15:15
we are whatever we're eating ate.
15:18
So we're seeing, for example, as high levels
15:20
of some of these beneficial phytochemicals like the
15:22
catechins in, for example, goat
15:24
milk has been eating certain shrubs and plants as we
15:26
do in green tea. So that's
15:28
profound to discover that. And the quality changes
15:30
the effects on your biology. And there's been
15:33
some studies looking at, if you eat, for
15:35
example, wild meat versus feedlot meat, eat feedlot
15:37
meat, same grams of protein, your
15:39
inflammation goes up, eat wild meat goes down,
15:42
right? So the quality matters. Fat's another
15:44
example. You could eat the same
15:46
grams of trans fat, like basically
15:48
shortening, as you do of omega-3 fats, which
15:51
comes from fish. And it binds
15:53
to a part of your cell called PPAR, which
15:55
is basically a receptor
15:57
on the nucleus of your cells. And
15:59
when... When the trans fat binds to that
16:02
receptor, gram for gram, it turns on
16:04
inflammation. It slows down your metabolism. It
16:06
makes you prediabetic. When you
16:08
have the same amount of fat from fish oil,
16:10
it will actually reduce inflammation. It will speed up
16:12
your metabolism and reverse diabetes. So
16:14
same fat in terms of the
16:16
amount, but the quality matters. Same
16:18
thing with carbohydrates. If you
16:21
have Himalayan tardary buckwheat flour and
16:23
you make pancakes from that versus
16:25
modern dwarf wheat, which
16:27
is super starchy, has
16:29
way more glide in proteins than
16:31
traditional wheat and is sprayed with
16:33
glyphosate and harvest, which is a
16:36
terrible destroy of your microbiome and
16:38
the soil microbiome and also affects
16:40
the risk for cancer. It's
16:42
then preserved with something called calcium propionate,
16:44
which is a preservative that causes autism
16:46
in animal studies and hyperactivity behavior issues
16:48
in kids. I mean, that's a very
16:50
different kind of pancake, even though it's
16:52
you're eating the same amount of carbohydrate.
16:55
So that's just on the macronutrient level. But
16:58
on the micronutrient level, there's also
17:00
big differences in vitamin and mineral content, but
17:03
the bigger differences are in the phytochemical content.
17:05
There's a wonderful book called Eat Wild, which
17:08
talks about, for example, they don't treat a
17:10
wild blueberry and a conventional
17:12
blueberry or a small
17:15
purple Peruvian potato versus a
17:17
giant Idaho starchy potato
17:19
or a different between
17:21
traditional Native American corn
17:24
versus the modern corn. Even
17:26
though they're all corn or other whatever,
17:28
the phytochemicals are profoundly different and have
17:30
tremendous differences in their biological effects. So
17:32
when we're eating food, we're not just
17:34
eating for energy. We're not just eating
17:36
for protein, fat or carbohydrate or fiber.
17:38
We're not just eating for vitamin minerals.
17:40
We're eating for this class of compounds,
17:42
which turns out to be probably
17:45
the most single, most important regulator of
17:47
all your biological functions and is the
17:49
major determinant of the quality of your
17:51
health and aging. So
17:53
if you want to create health, these
17:56
are not optional. So
18:00
we talk about essential nutrients and
18:02
vitamins and minerals as being essential to life. And if you
18:04
don't have them, you die. Well, you're
18:06
not gonna get a deficiency disease if
18:09
you don't have these phytochemicals like scurvy
18:11
or rickets, but you
18:14
will develop product disease and you will age
18:16
faster if you don't have these protective compounds
18:18
in your body on a daily basis. So
18:20
it's so important to understand that the quality
18:22
of your diet matters at every single level
18:24
and the source matters and all those things
18:27
along the entire supply chain matter. If you're gonna actually
18:29
think about what you're eating. So
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what are the basic needs of your diet?
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my favorite water filter. Let's follow a
21:22
piece of food that we're going to
21:24
put in our mouth, right? So we're
21:26
chewing it up. Guess
21:28
what? Our food actually interacts with
21:30
the healthy gut bacteria that lives
21:32
in part on our tongue. So
21:35
our tongue has healthy gut bacteria as well. The
21:37
gut starts in the mouth and it goes all
21:40
the way to the anus. And so when we
21:42
eat foods like a beet, for example, or
21:44
a piece of spinach, and we're chewing
21:46
and enjoying the beet, it
21:49
turns out that the nitrogen that
21:51
the plant naturally absorbed in the
21:53
soil gets converted by our gut
21:55
microbiome that live in the little
21:57
recesses of our tongue. So think about it. You get up on the
21:59
site. in the morning and you're brushing your tongue, okay,
22:01
now it'll grow back, okay? I don't do that,
22:04
I think it's supposed to, who brushes their tongue,
22:06
I don't know, it's a thing. But
22:08
people actually use this like, dentists
22:11
give mouthwash. And
22:13
they actually kill all the bacteria in your mouth
22:16
with the intent of actually preventing
22:19
cavities. Well look, if you have good, healthy
22:21
gut bacteria in your mouth, which is one
22:23
of the body's health defense systems, it
22:25
actually works for you and it doesn't work against
22:28
you. And it actually suppresses cavities by itself. So
22:31
eat a piece of spinach or chew it up, the
22:34
bacteria actually change the nitrogen into a form
22:36
that when you swallow it, gets absorbed in
22:38
your stomach, we're still following the food along,
22:41
as a chemical form that is
22:43
nitric oxide. Now nitric oxide
22:45
suddenly is absorbed in the stomach
22:48
in your blood vessels carried by
22:50
the circulation, which causes vasodilation, now
22:52
your blood pressure falls. And why
22:55
is that important? I
22:57
mean, hypertension, one of the big causes
22:59
of stroke, for example, and
23:02
for every single point, we can lower that
23:04
top number in the blood pressure, 140
23:07
over 90, we decrease our risk of stroke by
23:09
5%. So it's
23:12
meaningful. So, you know,
23:14
nitric oxide also has
23:16
other benefits for our
23:18
body as well. It actually calls another defense
23:20
system, stem cells to help us heal. So
23:23
the stem cells live in a bone marrow, have
23:25
nitric oxide, now they fly into the
23:28
bloodstream like bees in a hive, looking
23:30
for organs to actually repair. So just
23:32
eating a spinach or beet, for example,
23:34
will immediately help our cardiovascular system, help
23:36
us our regeneration system, and also can
23:39
help grow blood vessels that we need
23:41
to heal. That's just one example of
23:43
how we can track kind
23:45
of like, you know, it's like being like
23:47
a going on safari in Africa. You know,
23:49
you're in a Jeep with a camera and
23:52
trying to follow on what's going
23:54
on. And we're beginning to understand there's
23:56
this, you know, incredible journey
23:58
that had happened. in our body
24:02
with foods that we eat and they activate our
24:04
health defenses. Yeah, one of the favorite
24:06
things I love to talk about is how we've
24:09
sort of lost our nutritional wisdom and
24:11
historically we were attracted to the right
24:14
foods. Now we're not because our brain
24:16
chemistry hormones and our microbiome all been
24:18
hijacked and are sending chaotic signals to
24:20
our brain about what to eat, but
24:22
historically, we crave the right
24:24
things. And when you eat in a certain way,
24:26
you don't actually look at food the same way.
24:28
I mean, when you see, when I
24:31
see processed food or I go buy a Starbucks
24:34
and I see all the muffins, it
24:36
doesn't look like food to me. I'm like, well,
24:38
why would I eat that? It's like eating a
24:40
rock. Like, it just like doesn't even interest me.
24:42
And it's not because I'm depriving myself, it's because
24:45
I've changed my nutritional wisdom in
24:47
my innate biology to crave the
24:49
right things. And
24:51
what happens is when you look
24:54
at this phytochemical story, the
24:57
flavors in our food come from
24:59
these molecules. So actually
25:01
the more flavorful thing is naturally, not when
25:04
you put all kinds of stuff on it,
25:06
but naturally, actually the better it is for
25:08
you, the more medicine is in the food.
25:11
Well, and you know, when you treat the
25:13
food with medicines like putting pesticides on foods,
25:15
for example, you might make it look a
25:18
little bit nicer. But in fact, I always
25:20
like to talk about this example. I
25:23
used to be a skeptic
25:26
about organic foods. And
25:28
the reason is because there was so much
25:30
marketing on there and telling me
25:32
to have less something bad doesn't
25:34
attract me. I wanna know, like I
25:36
want a different reason. And so
25:38
I started talking to horticulturalists and
25:42
they told me something really important. They said, you know that
25:44
a plant like a strawberry or
25:47
a coffee bean, when
25:49
they're existing in the wild and
25:52
the pests, the little bugs, insect, nibble
25:54
at their leaves and stems. Yeah, they
25:56
produce more chemicals. They produce more chemicals
25:58
because they view the- little nibbles as
26:01
an injury. So in response as a
26:03
wound healing response, they create more elastic
26:05
acid in a strawberry or more chlorogenic
26:07
acid in the coffee bean. And
26:10
sure enough, when you actually put pesticides
26:12
on a strawberry or a coffee, which
26:14
is conventionally grown, you wind up they
26:16
don't need to make more of those
26:18
chemicals. And so what you wind up
26:20
having is something that looks like a
26:22
coffee bean is something that looks like
26:24
a strawberry, but it's actually relatively deficient
26:26
in what Mother Nature would have otherwise
26:28
served up that's actually good for our
26:31
body. And so, you know, I started to
26:33
change my mind more good, as
26:35
opposed to less bad. Yeah, that's true. Now that
26:37
actually tracks me. It's true. I think I
26:39
think the other point that to make on the back of that is
26:41
that when we put these chemicals on the
26:43
soil, it kills all the life in
26:45
the soil. So when you till the soil, when
26:47
you put fertilizer on it, when you pesticides,
26:50
herbicides, it literally kills the microbiome of
26:53
the soil. And the plants
26:55
are in an intimate relationship with the microbiome
26:57
of the soil, they're feeding the microbiome, I
27:00
bring in carbon dioxide, turning in that into
27:02
metabolizable starch. And then in
27:04
turn, those bacteria are helping the plant
27:06
extract nutrients from the soil, minerals,
27:09
vitamins, all kinds of stuff that the
27:11
soil has that benefits the plants with
27:13
this mutualism that occurs, that
27:16
if when we break that cycle, we end
27:18
up, as we see now with many of
27:20
our fruits and vegetables having dramatically lower levels
27:22
of nutrients than they did even 50 years
27:24
ago. And that terrifies me
27:26
because we're these nutrients are not just
27:29
kind of window dressing on our food, they're critical
27:32
molecules that are they call them vitamins, bite it
27:34
vital for life. That's what that by means that
27:36
they call and that was the whole point of
27:38
these things that you get sick and die if
27:40
you didn't need them. So we're kind of a
27:42
pandemic of that. Well, and I totally
27:44
agree because I think you and I were at
27:47
a meeting once where we both heard there was like only 60
27:50
harvests left. Yeah, right. In topsoil in America,
27:52
like, just think about that, like you could
27:54
you can count that off, you know, with
27:56
a with a family member on hands and
27:59
fingers and toes. that is truly
28:01
scary. And so I think that, you know,
28:03
the greater, the
28:06
more we're alert to the fact that
28:09
if we wanna take good care of ourselves, we don't
28:11
wanna get more complicated, we wanna get more simple. We
28:13
wanna actually follow our body's instincts to eat those
28:16
things that are more natural, that
28:18
are less processed, that are plant-based.
28:20
And, you know, ultimately, you know, you were
28:22
talking earlier about, you know, animals eating plants,
28:24
you know, even these delicious
28:27
seafoods, oily fish that people actually eat.
28:29
At the end of the day, it's
28:31
big fish eating smaller fish, eating smaller
28:33
fish, eating plants. And that's where the
28:35
omega-3s come from. Exactly, algae,
28:37
right. Exactly. Exactly.
28:39
Yeah, it's so true. I think,
28:42
you know, the interesting thing that I've been learning
28:44
about is that the animals
28:47
left to their own devices, they'll eat three
28:49
or four main crops or foods. But
28:52
if they're free to eat and
28:55
forage for a wide variety of plants, they might
28:57
eat up to 50 or 100 different plants. And
28:59
they'll sample little bits of each one, kind
29:02
of like taking their vitamins or
29:04
their daily pharmaceutical drugs. And those
29:06
animals, and if you take a
29:08
feedlot cow, it takes an enormous amount of investment
29:10
to keep it healthy. Antibiotics, hormones,
29:12
you know, all kinds of, you
29:14
know, very aggressive measures because they're
29:16
not eating their natural diet. And
29:19
the molecules in there that we want aren't
29:21
there. And there may be inflammatory molecules. When
29:24
you take a grass-fed cow, better.
29:26
But if it's only eating one or two kinds
29:29
of grasses, that's not great. And
29:31
they need extra support. Whereas regenerated
29:33
raised cows foraging on maybe 100
29:35
different plants, actually don't need medicines,
29:38
don't need antibiotics, don't get sick.
29:40
If the plants are the right plants to actually
29:42
grow to their ideal
29:45
weight as fast as feedlot cows, and
29:48
don't release as much methane. I mean, it's really
29:50
fascinating when you get into the science of the
29:52
biology of how much the
29:55
interrelation between soil, plants, animals
29:57
and humans exists, you know. And
30:00
the concept of diversity, which you're talking about
30:02
is so important, right? Because we do want
30:05
to protect the species and the diversity of
30:07
species in our planet. But actually, this is
30:09
how we're hardwired as well. We,
30:12
our human body, loves diversity. Our gut
30:14
microbiome, lots of different things, our health
30:16
defense systems, our five health defense systems,
30:18
all crave different types of stimuli to
30:21
activate them, to keep them kind of
30:23
agile and active and in shape and
30:25
working on our behalf. And
30:28
here's, I think, the really good news for
30:30
people that are watching this is that ancient
30:33
cultures, ancient food cultures that
30:35
revere, treasured, tasty foods,
30:37
mostly plant-based foods, actually understood this. And
30:39
that's why so many of the foods
30:41
from the Mediterranean or from Asia, if
30:43
you go back and look at traditional
30:45
foods, like, I mean, you and I
30:47
talked about this before, this idea of
30:49
Mediterranean cuisine, like there's a lot of
30:51
unhealthy eating that goes on in modern
30:53
Mediterranean countries today. We're talking about traditional
30:55
eating patterns. Same thing in Asia. We're
30:58
talking about going back to basics. And
31:00
so, we're entering this
31:02
era where we're, in a
31:04
way, I think that we're all kind of shedding the
31:07
artificial skin that
31:09
we've grown over the last five
31:12
decades, that what we are
31:14
sold in media or in
31:17
the supermarket is actually better for us.
31:19
And when you shed your skin, you
31:22
kind of get back to basics. The more authentic
31:25
instincts that we have about what we should eat
31:27
happen to also taste better as well. It's so
31:29
true. You know, I went to a Chinese
31:32
doctor the other day and I had just to
31:34
check up. I just wanted to get my pulse
31:36
checked and get it tuned up. And
31:39
afterwards, she sent me a prescription, which
31:42
was, after feeling my pulse and seeing where
31:44
I was out of balance, she says, oh, you need to build
31:46
up your blood for this or that, other things. So she said
31:48
I should eat bison and beets and duck and
31:50
liver and cuttlefish avocados and black sesame seeds.
31:52
And then she said I should eat walnuts
31:55
and almonds and woodier mushrooms and
31:57
all mushrooms, olives, natto and seaweed.
40:00
or hotter cold therapy will
40:02
actually trigger a response to
40:04
create a benefit. So when
40:06
I heard you talk about
40:08
the broccoli compounds, the glucosinolates,
40:10
they basically are a signal
40:12
to upregulate your body's
40:14
own enzymes for detoxification.
40:18
Is that right? I think
40:20
you hit something, Mark, that's extraordinarily important.
40:24
This concept of hormesis, we
40:26
have to differentiate, I think, the mechanism of
40:29
treating a disease with a bioactive new to
40:31
nature molecule called a drug from
40:34
eating foods that have bioactivity ingredients
40:36
in them. Foods
40:39
have undergone the largest scientific study
40:41
in the history of any living
40:44
species called natural
40:46
selection. Think about it,
40:48
if you want to talk about a study that
40:50
has a long history, plants
40:52
have smoothed their composition over
40:54
millions of years. That's
40:57
the clinical trial. They
40:59
have survived in their environments as a
41:02
consequence of that process of natural selection
41:04
to form medically contain
41:07
substances that allow them to have an immune
41:09
system to defend against some of the most
41:11
hostile environments. How do you like to be
41:13
a corn plant sitting out in Iowa and
41:16
have to be out there every day with your arms
41:18
stretched to the sky with
41:20
no umbrellas? I
41:22
mean, that's like instant sunburn, right? Just to think
41:25
about that. So how do plants protect
41:27
themselves? They develop these xanthophils
41:29
and carotenoids that are sun SPF
41:33
compounds, right? It prevents
41:35
them from oxidative injury from the
41:37
ultraviolet light. And so
41:39
they have these substances that are the
41:41
right level in those plants to provide
41:44
the optimal protection against the environment which
41:46
they have been living in the
41:48
case of wild plants for hundreds
41:50
of thousands or millions of years. That's
41:53
why when I talked to Mary Ann Lila, who
41:57
was originally at the University of Illinois,
41:59
she's now...
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