EPI 248: Dr. William Li - Author of "Eat To Beat Disease - The New Science Of How Your Body Can Heal Itself". How Specific Foods May Help Maintain Good Health & Support The Body's Ability To Protect Itself

Welcome back to another episode of the Peak Performance Life podcast. Today, I am very excited to have a bestselling author on the line with us. His name is Dr. William Lee, and he's an internationally renowned physician, scientist, and author of The New York Times bestsellers. First one is called Eat to Beat Disease, the new science of how your body can heal itself. And his other book is called Eat to Beat Your Diet, Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer. His groundbreaking research has led to the development of more than 40 new medical treatments that impact care for more than 70 diseases, including diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. And his TED talk called Can We Eat to Starve Cancer has garnered more than 11 million views. Dr. Lee has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, CNBC, Rachel Ray, and Live with Kellyanne Mark, and he has been featured in USA Today Time Magazine, The Atlantic O Magazine, and much more. Dr. Lee, thank you so much for joining us here today. Thank you, Tilar. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I was so excited to have you on and talk about this such an important topic here. Before we jump into it and start talking about your books and a lot of the great things that you've contributed here, why don't we start with a little bit of background of how you got interested in the work that you're doing today? Right. Well, my background is as a physician. I was trained in internal medicine, which means that I take care of men and women, young and old, healthy and sick. And my interest, even though doctors are educated primarily in diagnosing and treating illness, my own personal interest has always been on health. And how can we defend and keep and maintain and preserve what we started out life with, which is being healthy for as long as possible. I'm also a scientist. I'm what's known as a vascular biologist. Vascular is just a complicated word, complicated word that means blood vessels. So I study your circulation. And most people don't know this, but we have as adults 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels that are packed in our bodies. These are the highways and byways of everything that we breathe, we eat, our nutrition, our oxygen and very importantly, any medications we take are also all delivered by our blood vessels to every single organ and every single cell in our body. And as you had mentioned in the introduction, I've been involved with developing real disease treatments quite successfully over the past decades. And I started to realize at a certain point that as important as it is to have better treatments for diseases like cancer, vision loss, diabetes, the reality is, if we're treating the disease, we're already kind of late to the game. What's a lot better would be if we could actually prevent disease in the first place. In other words, wind the clock back and try to get to the person before they become a patient. And you talk about prevention. You really can't talk about drugs. Drug addicts are expensive. They're not equally available to everyone. They all have good effects, but also side effects. So I was starting to take a look at what is universally available to everyone and that's food. We all got to eat usually three times a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner. And what's amazing is that as I was pursuing my research, I began to actually throw food into the same test systems that we were using to develop drugs. And when we did that, I literally, my jaw dropped and we saw about 50% of the foods that I threw in there, whether it was tea or tomatoes or berries or broccoli, that about 50% of these foods were as or more potent than the drugs that we were actually testing. And so that opened my eyes to this possibility. Actually, let me correct myself. I built myself to the reality that what we eat powerfully influences our cells and in a way that traverses our blood vessels, our circulation, but also protects us against disease. And so it kind of fast forward takes me to present day where I've become one of the leaders, I would say maybe pioneers in a food as medicine world. And partly it's because I'm one of the people doing the actual research. Amazing. What an amazing story of being a researcher and kind of a traditional medical doctor, seeing how foods affect your body similar in the way to drugs do, but catching it ahead of time. So this is just, this is amazing. I'm so excited to have this conversation. And your TED Talk, can we eat to starve cancer? I'm sure many people kind of listening, if they haven't seen the TED Talk, what's kind of the summary there? Yeah, the summary there is that there are foods that we can easily eat every day that have been shown in the research lab and also through clinical research to reduce your risk of developing that one disease that everyone fears, which is cancer. And the reason that this actually works, and we know it works, is because what Mother Nature put into our food is really a pharmacy, not pharmacy with a pH, but pharmacy that's spelled with an F. Mother Nature's pharmacy is that our foods are packed with natural bioactives, natural chemicals, that when we eat them, actually activate our body's health defenses against cancer, including the ability to cut off the blood supply feeding cancer. So we can eat to starve cancer. And by starving a cancer, we're actually able to prevent it from growing. If you already got the cancer, you can eat it, and it can actually enhance your regular treatment. And now we also know that if you have cancer and you're being treated with the state-of-the-art cancer treatment, which is called immunotherapy, not chemo. This is actually medicines that help your body's own immune system jack itself up to go after the cancer, that if you eat the right foods, you can actually help to tilt the odds in your favor because you're amplifying your own immune defenses. And so that's what I really talk about is the fact that cancer is a disease that isn't just something that we wait to be diagnosed, that we could actually then leave it for the oncologist to infuse something in us when we go there, but really something we can be more proactive on and that the biology of cancer teaches us that we can actually use food to fight it as well. Amazing. And I definitely want to jump into some of those foods, which I'm sure our listeners are dying to hear about. But you also are an expert in heart disease as well, as you mentioned vascular and things like that. And heart disease is actually the number one killer from what I understand in this country as well. So then you have cancer and heart disease. And so do you find that heart disease is something similar as well with food having a huge impact on that? Yeah, it's amazing. For a heart disease, and as a vascular biologist, I study everything that involves blood vessels, including the heart. And what's amazing is that we have spent decades appropriately thinking about the things that can clog up the vessels in the heart and cause problems that we have to put a stent in or have to do bypass for or give medications to lower the lipids so that your cholesterol doesn't become such a problem. These are the fundamentals of what a cardiologist or a family practice primary care doctor actually deals with. But we haven't been spending enough time about thinking, what can we eat to improve the outcome of the heart? And this is really where food as medicine comes in. For example, many people are surprised to learn that if you eat foods that contain dietary fiber, whether it's a leafy green or something that might be soft that you don't realize has got fiber like avocado, for example, or a mushroom, that the dietary fiber actually feeds your gut bacteria, healthy gut bacteria, your microbiome. And one of the things that the healthy gut bacteria does is it automatically lowers blood cholesterol, blood lipids by itself. It kind of like your body has its own statin like mechanism to lower cholesterol. Now, having said that, I have to emphasize that there are many cases where that's not going to be enough and you want to actually work with your doctor to take the medications you're recommended. But amazing that your food can actually help to activate your own body's ability to lower cholesterol and lower blood lipids. Number two, your healthy gut bacteria fed by prebiotics like polyphenols from colorful foods and also dietary fiber. Guess what they do? They lower inflammation. And when your gut bacteria lowers inflammation, guess what? That unloads the burden of your heart that really doesn't want to have to deal with inflammation. So if you think about inflammation like fire, you have a small localized controlled fire like a campfire. That's great to warm yourself up it by when you're camping at night. But if you actually have a raging forest fire, house fire, all right, that's out of control. You're going to get burned. And large scale inflammation is very dangerous for cardio people with heart disease because it makes cardiovascular disease worse. You kind of singe your blood vessels, so to speak, damage your blood vessels. Now it's easier to stick those lipids. It's easier to actually create clots. It becomes an overall more dangerous situation. So something as simple as eating foods that can improve your gut's protective function can lower those factors that are bad and harmful for heart disease. So that's another example. Now the other interesting thing that a lot of people don't realize and what I love to work in is like, what can we include to our diet? Not just exclusion, but what can we add to our lives that also taste great? That can be really helpful. For example, a lot of people don't realize that black tea, English breakfast tea, Earl Gray, has been shown in human research to actually mobilize stem cells. So you could actually get your own stem cells. You don't have to go to the corner strip mall to get them injected in your knee. To me, as a researcher, not yet ready for prime time, coming down the pike, but not yet ready. I would never have that done to me personally. However, black tea, for example, has been studied and it can actually mobilize your own body stem cells that are hiding in your bone marrow. When you have black tea, they come flying out like bees coming out of a hive to look for areas that need to be repaired, including your heart. Besides black tea, the other one that I love to give that everyone usually stands up and cheers for is chocolate. Turns out that dark chocolate is made with primarily a plant-based food, cacao, a cacao pod, which is filled with polyphenols, the polyphenols that matter the most have been studied the most are called proanthocyanidins. Guess what happens when you eat a high percentage, high concentration cacao, dark chocolate, 70 to 80% or more? The bioactive, the proanthocyanin, recruits stem cells, your own stem cells out of your bone marrow into your bloodstream and they can actually repair your cardiovascular system. Again, this is really where entering into an era where when it comes to nutrition, where people have been taught to fear food for decades or even have a judgment, don't do this or you're a bad person. I like to say that we're flipping the script to be able to tell people what they can celebrate. Foods that you like to eat that research is showing can actually help make your body stronger and healthier. Those are great tips. Those are great tips. I personally take this super overpriced, expensive supplement that's supposed to release my stem cells naturally, but this is the first time hearing of black tea. That's a really good piece of advice there. And then chocolate, of course, we want kind of the, like you said, the 70, 80%. If you do 100% dark chocolate, it's not going to taste very good, but you don't want to be too low either. You don't want to have too much sugar in there. Yeah, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give everyone watching or listening this little tip that darker the chocolate, the more the bioactive, the more proanthocyanin, which is really great for your vascular blood vessel, healthy, good for your circulation. And by the way, what's good for your circulation is good for brain health, heart health, good for muscle health. It doesn't matter what age you are. Okay. Now, what, so 70 or 80%. Yeah, that's kind of bitter. A lot of people are very sensitive to bitter flavors. And so what I tell people is that what you want to do in the case that you're very sensitive to the bitterness of dark chocolate is to have a couple of squares of chocolate with your coffee. And the reason is coffee plus chocolates, a nice blend is called mocha. You can drop it in the coffee or you can just nibble it along with sipping the coffee. It actually has this wonderful flavor. And the taste of the coffee actually combined with the chocolate makes it more of a rich, silky flavor, taste, I mean sensation rather than actually bitter. So that's a great kind of work around for people who want to have dark chocolate, but have a little difficulty with the bitterness. Love that. Love that. Yeah, one of the things I've always said, I've said multiple times on this podcast is that in my opinion, when someone says sum up health, what are the most important aspects of health? And I say very simply, in my opinion, health is about lowering inflammation in the body, right? We know that almost every major disease stems from inflammation. It's a great example you gave of like, you know, if you have a little, little fire pit with a little fire going, that's fine. But if it's a whole forest fire, you know, then everything hurts, right? And I actually think that so many people walking around here with back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, things like that. If they actually lowered inflammation in their body, they might actually not have that pain anymore. They might not have to go get that surgery that they're going to get while they're still drinking alcohol and eating inflammatory foods every day, and then wondering why their body's inflamed, right? So I think there's, there's certainly, would love to get your opinion on what are some of the best ways for people to lower inflammation in their body? Yeah. So let me give the big picture about inflammation. Number one, you're absolutely right. Inflammation is one of the cornerstones to chronic diseases. So if you want to look for a common denominator that we're finding in almost every major disease that we struggle with in modern countries, inflammation is one of those repetitive, it keeps on rearing its head. It's present everywhere. Okay. And, and it's very, very challenging. But I will also tell you that inflammation itself is not bad by definition. I think that, you know, in a health and wellness space, it's way too common for people to want to just quickly assign good guy, bad guy, black versus white, on versus off. That's not how the body works. The body is actually quite sophisticated. So inflammation exists because it's a good thing. We need to have a little bit of inflammation whenever we need to. So for example, you cut yourself, whether you're in a kitchen and you slice your finger, or do you fall off a bike or a skateboard and you scrape your knee? Okay. Or you, you know, slip down some stairs and you scrape your knee. Listen, whenever you have an injury, inflammation is the body's natural, healthy response to protect you because the moment there's an injury, your skin breaks, inflammatory cells get there. Okay. And they set up shop and they are there to get rid of bacteria. They are there to clean up any wounded tissue. They're there to remove damaged dead cells. So a little bit of inflammation is good. Now, and how, by the way, how do you know that? Well, you know, if you ever cut yourself or scrape yourself, you know what happens, right? Like you get the ouch and then maybe a minute or two later, you look at it and you've got this pink swelling around it. All right. And that pink swelling is inflammation. And guess what? It goes away. It goes away maybe after a few hours or definitely after a couple of days when everything is healed up. So inflammation is there to clean things up when you got a problem. And then it goes away all by itself. Like a volume switch, your body will turn it up. Okay. And then it'll turn it back down when it's all done. Everything is all done. Everything's safe. Chronic inflammation is a different situation. Chronic inflammation, which can lead to back pain and joint pain and all kinds of other, you know, can lead to brain fog. It can lead to heart disease, a lot of things. Again, this common denominator of disease as inflammation, it's chronic inflammation. It's inflammation that doesn't go away. So that little pink swelling around that cut that normally goes away, that's a way, it causes way more trouble than fixing a boo boo when it's actually rip roaring through your body. Everything from your brain to your heart, to your blood vessels, your liver, your kidneys, your muscles, that kind of inflammation that doesn't go away after a few days, that is setting up shop to cause you trouble. All right. And so what we want to do is to be able to help calm inflammation, help our body get back to its normal balanced state where we're not actually having inflammation all the time. So remember I told you about the volume switch. Okay. Volume switch is good. You want to hear a little bit of the radio or the music. You want to hear a little bit more, turn a little bit louder. But then, you know, if you remember like what it's like driving kids in a back seat of a car on the way to school, it's so loud you got to turn, you got to turn the volume down. And that's what we want to do is to turn the volume down so that our body isn't actually suffering from that inflammation. All right. So how do we do that? There's a lot of good news is that there's a lot of ways to do that. I already talked about one of them. You can get your gut to do it. Like do make your gut bacteria do all the heavy lifting for you by feeding it prebiotics and probiotics. That's a simple way. But there's a number of foods that also can be helpful. Yeah. What are some of the, when you mentioned prebiotics or when people talk about fiber, what are some of your, you mentioned avocado, what are some of your other, do you recommend people, I personally do supplement with some prebiotic fiber just because I want to make sure that I'm getting enough fiber and sometimes I'm maybe not. Are you okay with supplementing with fiber? And if so, do you have a favorite type of fiber that you like there? Or do you know, what foods do you like that are, that are, have some good prebiotics and probiotics? Yeah. I get asked this all the time. And first of all, I'll just put it right out there. I believe in supplements. I take some myself. And I believe that the best role for getting stuff, useful things in our body is to get it through our food. Sure. And what I believe is that supplements literally mean topping off. So there's something that you're not able to get enough of because, well, that's just not that easy for you for one reason or another. Sure. Supplement to top it off. And there's some things that you just don't get enough of, no matter what, that we know that are important for our health. So having put that out there, I will tell you that when it comes to foods, most of the foods that actually you would find in the produce section of a grocery store and many foods that you found in the middle isles that you're supposed to stay at, could have to be good for us. Now let's talk about produce for a second. That when they say eat the rainbow, what I want to tell you is that the colorful nature of fruits and vegetables that you see at any time of the year, you go into the grocery store, push your cart, doors flip open by themselves, you're in there. What's the first section you go to? It's a produce section. That's how it's laid out. And if you really take the time to look around, you'll see there's all these colors, oranges and reds and yellows. And when they talk about leafy greens, actually there's a huge variety of green that's out there as well. All of those colors are given to the plant by polyphenols. It's what makes strawberries red. Strawberry is blue. It's what makes different avocados or eggplants purple. And so when you eat those polyphenols, they do a lot of things. Most of those polyphenols are all by themselves anti-inflammatory. Take them to the lab, dump them in with some inflammatory cells that are swimming around in a lab dish. Man, you're going to put them to sleep. They go bye-bye. They go bye-bye. All right? Now, when you eat them in the body, we see this as well. Inflammation levels go down when you're eating these anti-inflammatory foods. Now, people like to just throw the label like a T-shirt on these foods called the Manta inflammatory, but really they just have their very nutrient dense. And polyphenols are part of that. Many of the plant-based foods also are packed with dietary fiber. And some of the fiber is obvious. You eat celery. It's a very fiber-seed. Broccoli has got a lot of fiber to it. All good for you. You eat a nut, a soybean or any other kind of fresh nut chestnut. You're going to taste a lot of fiber to it as well. All great for your gut bacteria. But I would tell you that soluble fiber, which is beneficial for your gut bacteria, you're feeding your healthy gut bacteria, sometimes they don't get stuck in your teeth. It's not stringy. So that's why avocado, surprisingly, is a good source of dietary fiber. And that's why mushrooms are also very soft. You cook a mushroom. I like to cook. So I like to talk about this. Have a little extra virgin olive oil, cut some shallots or a little bit of minced garlic, some herbs, get it heated up in a pan and saute some mushrooms that you slice up. Guess what? It turns soft, packed with dietary fiber as well. Dietary fiber is one of the key things that we should have, but it's very difficult to get enough of for most people. And that's why supplementing with dietary fiber is actually a really smart thing to do. But before you jump to the supplements and bridging between, let's say, the produce section, the veggie section or fruit section, and dietary supplements, by the way, is a grain, like a whole grain, like for example oats. If you have oatmeal, you soak up the oats or have rolled oats and you make yourself some oatmeal in the morning, that is a great source of dietary fiber. And oatmeal, oats actually have a natural bioactive called avananthromide. It's a tongue twisting polyphenol name. But you know what avananthromide does? It shuts down inflammation like nobody's business. And so having some oatmeal for breakfast actually gives you some extra dietary fiber that you might not have otherwise had. And it also gives you an anti-inflammatory, so two for one. Yeah. You know, oatmeal is quite a controversial one, I will say these days especially. I'm curious to get your opinion on even some fruits like a banana that might spike your blood sugar, for example, or I think one of these continuous glucose monitor companies, Levels Health, they put out an article saying that 70% plus of the people who have oatmeal for breakfast did see a little spike in their blood sugar after eating it. So I'm curious, first of all, do you think that that's kind of not that important or how would you balance that or are there certain types? Other people might say, oh, certain oats have gluten. Could be bad for your gut. Is there certain type of oats that you would look for? And how would you balance like people saying that things might spike your blood sugar, but also they may be a colorful rainbow or be oats or something like that? Yeah, listen, I'm glad you asked that question, Talor. Because and I know this is going to sound controversial, but it's not really controversial. There's way too much hype and attention and fear factoring given to the term glucose quote spike unquote. For most people, glucose doesn't spike. It goes up when you eat something goes back down when your body, your metabolism naturally takes it down. It doesn't spike. It doesn't crash. Those are the kinds of terms that have become very popular used by influencers and, you know, frankly, even some really credible people who are speaking publicly about spikes and crashes. And it fits very nicely with this idea that you can actually have a glucose monitor to look at it. Now, I don't have a problem with glucose monitors. I think they're really an amazing way of biohacking and monitoring your own self like quantified self. It's a good thing to know where you're at. But in reality, if your glucose spiked or really crashed, you'd probably be in a hospital or an emergency room because that's not actually what really happens. Really think about it like sort of waves on an ocean. You go, the boat goes up and the boat comes back down. It goes up and it comes down. You're somewhere in the middle of that up and down is kind of where your body wants to be. And so back to the oatmeal. I don't see that controversy at all. All the clinical data shows us not controversial. Now, if you want to actually make it controversial, you can actually, you know, get pre-pregnancy cooked oatmeal that's dehydrated, loaded with added sugars and loaded with artificial flavorings and all that kind of stuff. That's not so good for you. I prefer, you know, steel cut oats, rolled oats. You can soak it the night before if you want or just cook it with some hot water to it. And then add some fresh cut fruits, ripe fruits or berries. You know, again, you get a glucose spike or a crash with adding berries and fruits. No, you don't. If you're most normal people, if you don't have brittle diabetes, you're going to be just fine. By the way, your body needs glucose. You know, by the way, I also think about this when people say, oh, don't eat sugar because sugar feeds cancer. I'm sorry, sugar feeds every cell in your body. Okay. And so it's, you know, there's all these urban legends that are out there. I really try to get people to lower their anxiety and make them feel it's okay to do the things that humans have been doing for thousands of years across multiple cultures. And it doesn't cause a dramatic, you know, anxiety-provoking situation. If you have orthorexia, which is a term that's used for this like insane focus on healthy eating, you know what? It stresses you out. And now you've got a cortisol spike, all right? And then your sympathetic nervous system is off. And where's your monitor for that? Oh, I know you can measure near your end or you can measure it where you're awareable. And I don't think that for me, when it comes to nutrition, while I totally respect all the technology and I think it's really great and there's a good role for it, I think that we all need to kind of come down from the ledge a little bit on this stuff and feel a bigger sense of ease when it comes to eating whole foods, especially plant-based foods, and really be able to make better decisions. And some of those better decisions are choosing what to add to our diet and also what not to add to our diet, cut down or cut out some things, all right? And I think that that's a more healthier, more chill way to navigate the grocery, the restaurant, your own meal planning. And when you're tapping into our humanity, and I think that's a lot easier to do, that's something that we can stick to for the rest of our lives. We're actually being a little bit more true to who we actually are biologically and also how we are psychologically and also who we are from a social perspective as well. Yeah, it's a really good point. It's a really good point. Is it orthorexia was the word? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, to not be overly stressing yourself out over not eating perfectly and things like that. I do want to ask you real quick, because I did hear this, maybe it is an urban legend or whatever, but this thing about, oh, if you feed cancer cells, sugar in a petri dish, they grow and expand or whatever, sugar feeds the cancer, and that's why you should stop sugar. And in general, if it's processed artificial sugar or processed foods and things like that, I would imagine you would agree, I don't know, that those maybe are not always the best to be consuming in high amounts at least. But I'm just curious a little bit, talk a little bit more about that then. So some amount of sugar is okay. Do you prefer that it's as long as it's not added sugar, it's okay? Where do you stand on the sugar situation? Okay, great question. I love to know you're giving me the opportunity to take out Thor's hammer to smash some myths that are out there. I love those. Okay. And so, okay, first of all, you need to understand that our bodies require sugar, glucose, in order to operate. Our brain is actually the most, has the biggest appetite for sugar. And if you didn't have sugar in our body through diet, our body will make more sugar, in order to, it's called, it's a process that every doctor learns in medical school, it's called glucose, gluconeogenesis. If you don't eat enough sugar, our body will make more sugar. All right? And the reason is that every cell needs sugar, especially our brain. So number one, we need sugar. Our body regulates that sugar through its metabolism, which involves insulin and many other factors that actually help to draw the sugar into our cells. Sugar actually is like the fuel. You need to put fuel into our cells. Right? So think about it. If you don't have an electric vehicle, your car runs on gasoline or petrol, depending on what language you use. All right? If you don't have gasoline, your car is not going to run. And gasoline fuel is basically like sugar is fuel in our bodies. So you need to have it. All right? So eating glucose on a regular basis is not a problem because your body needs it. And if you don't have enough of it through your diet, your body is going to make it so that you actually have enough to power up your cells. All right? This leads to where the source of the sugar is. All right? Now, many healthy foods, fruits and vegetables, I mean, think about it. There's nothing I love more than a juicy peach in the summer or a amazing juicy pear in the winter. And if you've ever had like a tall glass of orange juice, you know, freshly squeezed orange juice, oh man, it tastes really good. Okay? And those are actually sources of natural sugars that are perfectly fine for you. So long as you don't do it, overdo it. You know? And I'm bringing this up because we talked about a tall glass of orange juice. You know, you're traveling, you go to the hotel, and you go to get breakfast, and somebody comes by to pour you some orange juice, and they ask you for a second one. And it's so easy. I could guzzle a tall glass of orange, freshly squeezed orange juice, like in 60 seconds, it'd be gone, maybe 30 seconds. But you know what? That's got a lot of sugar in it, natural sugar in it as well. And I'm bringing that up because I would prefer and recommend eating a whole orange, okay, which has some good sugar and dietary fiber and vitamin C and other polyphenols like narrow gin and hasperidin that are anti-inflammatory. But if you want to actually have a cup of juice, just recognize that you got a lot of those good things as well, but also a lot of sugar. Do you know, Talora, how many oranges it takes to make, you have to squeeze to make one tall glass of orange juice on average? Like five maybe? Eight. Wow. So you got whole oranges, 16 halves, squeeze them in order to get a big tall glass of orange juice. So if you had two of those, you're having 16 oranges, 32 halves. And that's how you kind of like think about them. But eating a whole orange that's very sweet or a bowl of strawberries or blueberries or blackberries, absolutely fine. So the source makes a difference. And then there's some foods that you don't think have sugar, but actually have a lot of sugar. I mean, besides an apple, which is sweet, did you know that, for example, red bell pepper, quite sweet? Okay. And so it's a vegetable. Eggplants have sugar, even though they don't taste very sweet. There's sugar in them as well. So again, people who are walking around saying, oh, I can't be having anything that's got natural sugar in it. I would say, listen, the sugar is only one component. The natural source is totally fine if you don't overdo it. All right. So the orange is the one orange. The orange is always going to be fine. All right. And by the way, it's the matrix of the whole food. Sure, it's got sugar. It's got polyphenols. It's got dietary fiber. It's got vitamins and minerals as well. You want to look at the whole foods. This is the other thing that I'll tell you happens so often in the modern conversation about nutrition. People want to boil it down to one thing and that one element is either the good guy or the bad guy. All right. And then if it's a good guy, you want to turn him into the superhero. And if it's a bad guy, you want to turn into the supervillain. And that's really not how adults can verse about something complicated like the body. All right. So I'm a doctor. I've got to actually talk this way, which is reasonably about the complexity of the body. So I would tell you that most natural sugars are totally fine to eat. All right. And frankly, if you want to eat some Halloween candy every now and then, have a piece of birthday cake, celebrate at a wedding, have a piece of wedding cake or some bonbon, totally fine. Our body, when it's happening infrequently, can easily take that extra added sugar, take it right down to the normal level. All right. And basically, you'll be fine the next day. All right. Or you'll be fine really, really in the next hour. You'll be actually fine. So on the other hand, what we're talking about when we're thinking about the dangers of sugar, if you want me to go there, it's really looking at the habit of people that routinely, daily, at eat and consume lots of added sugar all the time. I remember when I was in medical school, I had a classmate who proudly bragged that he had two six packs of soda every single day. Okay. Even back then, I was like, it made me cringe. Do you know how many teaspoons of sugar are in a typical 12 ounce can of soda? I think it was, isn't it like 40 or 50 grams or something like that? It's about nine teaspoons of sugar in a single can. Multiply that by 12. Okay. If you came to my house and I gave you that many cups of sugar to drink, you would say, no, thank you. That's disgusting. And yet some people swig it down every single day. Now, I would just tell you that the thing that's really important is to be, to practice moderation. If you go through your life eating balanced food, balanced meal, okay, add plenty of plant-based foods, eat healthy oil, use healthy oils to cook. Listen, every now and then, you're going to be able to actually bounce back from a candy bar or a piece of cake or a soda. It's really the habit of actually pounding yourself with added sugar all the time. That's not so good. Now, the other thing that I think is unhealthy that a lot of people don't think too much about, why do we tell people to cut down or cut out ultra-processed foods? There's almost like a mantra about that now. It's a slogan. I got to cut down on ultra-processed foods. There's a reason. Not only do those ultra-processed foods often contain a lot, and I mean a lot of added sugar, or if it's a savory one, a lot of added salt. Too much sodium is not good for your circulation or your kidneys. Too much sugar is not good for your metabolism. All those things, too much. Some of those ultra-processed foods that come out of a factory also have a lot of additives, artificial preservatives, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring. That's not good for us because those substances are chemicals that we're beginning to discover through research now damage our body's health defenses. You lower your shields when you eat a lot of ultra-processed foods, and then if you don't eat enough of the whole plant-based foods, guess what? You're not getting the things that put raised the shields back up. Remember, life is about balance. What you don't want to do is to veer too far on either end because then your mind goes crazy trying to do it, but especially taking down your health defenses, you're making yourself vulnerable for a lot of those chronic diseases. Yeah. Yeah. Very well put. I mean, look, I love hearing different viewpoints. We've had people on this podcast who have like, yeah, ketogenic diet is amazing because it's ... You don't need the sugar, the keto diet, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into that. I don't know. I mean, let's go there. By the way, I'm a scientist, and one thing that you'll know about real scientists is that when we don't know something, we'll tell you we don't know. Scientists actually spend ... We spend our time talking to other scientists most of the time about things we don't know, and not bragging about what we do know. But I will tell you that the whole idea of the ketogenic diet had very, very honest origins where it did work, and we don't know everything there is to know about the ketogenic diet. So it's an actual active area of research, and I think it's really interesting. Now, first of all, ketones are ... Your body is swapping out when you're actually not getting enough carbs to really generate the energy that you actually need. It's kind of a replacement. It's kind of like an emergency ... When your phone's out of batteries almost, and you whip out the extra charger to give you a few more minutes of power, that's basically what ketones actually are. They kind of get you through a tough space when you don't have enough, a normal, healthy diet. The ketogenic diet, or sorry, and ketosis actually happens when you're in a diabetic crisis. All right? So ketones are something that medical doctors learn to smell on the breath of somebody. It smells sweet. Somebody is in a diabetic crisis, so their insulin levels are low, their glucose levels are really high, but their cells aren't getting enough of the glucose. It's like a diabetic crisis, like I'm telling you. Your body absolutely responds in a life-saving effort to be able to generate enough energy for your brain primarily, so it starts generating ketones. When I first heard about a ketogenic diet, I was thinking, it must be something medical because we don't really want a lot of ketones floating around. Of course, now people want ketones floating around, but in general, ketones are a rescue by the body, produced by the body, in a metabolic crisis. All right? Now, when we purposefully manage to create a ketotic state by managing how much we're eating, or not eating in the case of carbs, it turns out those ketones do some really interesting things. And where they do some medically relevant things that have been shown to be super beneficial, where medicines don't work, or sometimes are not enough, is in seizure disorders. Ketogenic diet, amazingly, can actually help to solve as part of the medical treatment, people who have seizures that are really difficult to manage. Amazing. So what are the ketones doing for the brain? We don't fully understand. We think it does some kind of reset to the way that the neurotransmitter is working the brain. But for seizures, for seizure disorders, that could actually be really a godsend. But speaking of the brain, this observation is what led other people to think about the ketogenic diet for cancer. Even though it's very popular for many people with all cancers, I'll tell you where the evidence, the clinical evidence, shows the most promise is actually in brain tumors. It turns out that brain tumors, which are often very deadly tumors, cancers, that the ketogenic diet seems to change the biology of the cancer, or maybe change the biology to the brain. Again, we don't know everything there is to know about it, but that's actually where it actually shows to be somewhat helpful. Now, what about going on a ketogenic diet on a more extreme level for biohacking your body or to really for training, extreme training? I think this is where the practice, which is pretty common, actually, is a little bit ahead of the ski tips of the science. So we don't know everything there is to know about it. Most people actually are able to tolerate it. It might actually even show some benefits, but I don't think it's the cure-all. I know it's not the cure-all that people think it is. And I also think that eating the ketogenic diet or following a ketogenic protocol, you got to think about, well, you're still eating food. What are you substituting it with? If you're eating a lot of unhealthy foods by swapping out your carbs or something unhealthy, guarantee you, even though you might get some of the benefits that ketones might offer, now you're getting all the other stuff that you're swapping them out, the carbs out for, for something that's harmful for you as well. So again, I think it's so important not to oversimplify that foods are about individual elements that are either the hero or the devil. Like we can't be doing that. We have to look at the balance. So that's my take on the ketogenic diet. I think there's a lot for us still to learn about it. And I think there's definitely some medical benefits to it. This is why I love this podcast. I love hearing different viewpoints. And I think it's important for the audience to hear different viewpoints and to decide for themselves which one they feel right. I do have a little bit of a concern that we're saying, Hey, just go eat whatever you want, kind of a thing. So maybe we can kind of circle back to, obviously, yes, you want people to not have the orthorexia, you know, not be stressing out about what they eat. But like you said, you know, and we're saying, yeah, it's okay to eat some sugar. But if obviously if you eat too much sugar, you're going to get diabetes, which, you know, you're going to have all these other problems, right? So there's, there's some point where, and I guess maybe we could take this back to like, what do you, what do you eat in a day? What is like a day of eating look like for you? I wonder, let me frame it out for you. I did not say that you should eat anything, including sugar. What I said is that you should actually eat mostly plant based foods. Yeah. Okay. The things that you could primarily find in the produce section or the farmers market, yeah, ideally seasonal. Okay. And you should not ignore eating some of the things that come out of the middle aisle, because things like extra virgin olive oil and dried beans and dark chocolate. And, and tinned fish, you know, those are things that are healthy things you can easily find in the middle aisle. And, and I think that if you build your dietary plan, you know, kind of like how you eat around those concepts, it resembles an awful lot like the, wait for it, Mediterranean diet or the Asian diet, which are widely recognized as healthy traditional diets. And so I think that if you, you know, for most people to think about, if you eat mostly plant based foods, okay, and find other, and by the way, you can have protein, you can get your protein from plant based foods as well. But if you're not a vegan or a vegetarian, it's okay to get a balance of protein from other sources as well. I am an omnivore, so I eat pretty much everything. But I like to make sure I'm, I'm using mostly plant based foods with my diet. That's the healthiest way to eat. Nuts and seeds, legumes are always really, really great. And by the way, when you eat something like beans, which Dan Butner, my friend from the Blue Zones will tell you every single Blue Zone where people live long and healthy, they've got great health spans, they have a common denominator ingredient, which is beans in their diet. So when you eat a bean, it actually makes you feel satiated. So for your next meal, you're likely not to overeat. You're less likely to overeat as well. So it's not just what you eat. It's also how you eat. And even when you eat, like the timing of your, of your diet can also make a difference. So what do I eat? Again, I try to think about plant based foods whenever I'm shopping or planning. I'll supplement with what any other types of proteins, you know, seafood is a really good one. Very healthy. You got to pick, you know, pick your seafood to make sure that it is something that is lower on the food chain. They've got healthy omega threes, but not everybody eats seafood and you might not get enough omega threes, which are good for you. That's an example of where having a dietary supplement for omega threes would actually be really, really sensible. All right. I like yogurt. I try to have whole yogurt. Whole yogurt, not low fat yogurt. Okay. And I like it plain because I will actually decorate it with fruits and things myself. Thank you very much. I don't want a factory to layer it in with artificially colored or flavored or sweetened layers on the bottom of it. I'm happy to add it myself. So again, you know, there's a, there is an art to actually making the food as healthy as possible, but you know, these are all things that most people can actually get a hold of very conveniently. And that, that's what I mean by not going orthorexic, which is focusing only on a few trends or protocols and going way over the edge to doing something extreme. Human body doesn't like extremes. We like to kind of live the way we were designed. And so that's kind of how I think about it. And when people ask me, how do I eat, I actually tell them, or like, what time of diet are you on, Dr. Lee? I always tell people, you know what, I don't believe in diets because I think diets are impossible to stick to for a whole life. I have a way, a method that I eat that I would call it, I call it. Mediterranean, because it's kind of like half Mediterranean, half Asian. I like to cook in both genres. Sometimes I mix them together. And if you look at the way that the traditional Mediterranean and traditional Asian diets are, and all those recipes that are out there, okay, it's so delicious to be able to go out and find foods almost anywhere you can find a way to go to the market, grocery store, pick up a fruit or vegetable. You're not really sure what to do with. If you type that name of that food, type Mediterranean recipe, hit search and then tap video. Someone will show you something absolutely delicious that you can actually make with it. That's how I kind of take down the anxiety it is that people sometimes have when they're looking at healthy eating. This has been amazing, Dr. Lee. I'm sure we, I know we only scratch the surface. I know your books go into way more detail. People should watch your TED Talk. Where else can people find you, follow you and learn more from you? Yeah, well, listen, you can follow me on social. I'm, my handle is at Dr. D. R. William Lee, L.I. is my last name, at Dr. William Lee. I'm an Instagram, because I subscribe to my YouTube channel. I put up every single week healthy tips that I go great into depth with. Usually have to do with food, because that's actually what I study. And come to my website. It's Dr. D. R. William Lee dot com. And, you know, I've got, I do a program called Grand Rounds, where I invite people to come in. And we kind of have a program just like doctors have to learn about complicated medical things and try to problem solve to come up with simple solutions. Amazing, amazing, Dr. Lee. This has been great. I love hearing your viewpoint. It makes a lot of sense. And I highly encourage people to check out your books, follow you, subscribe on your YouTube channel and stay up to date. This has been very informative. And I hope we can do it again sometime. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would really mean a lot to me. If you would forward this episode along to any friends, family members, anyone that you think that would get value out of it and learn something important. The mission at peak performance is to help people prioritize and transform their health. And so if you think someone will get value, please, please, please do forward this episode along to them. 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