100 Year-Old Nutrition Professor: 7 Keys to A Long Life | Dr. John Scharffenberg

have you ever met anybody 99 years old before first time first time hi Dr sharpenberg there he is aishan hi Sandy dog you still speak Chinese yeah a little bit he speaks Hindu or jongwind lots of Chinese oh really yeah yeah she speaks Mandarin but come back out here but it's kind of pretty out here oh it's pretty in here too it's gorgeous oh my gosh this is Chinese is amazing yeah so that's awesome that's Dr John scharfenberg who turns a hundred in a few months my friend Michelle sen Charmed him into letting us visit him in his home and I thought how wonderful she can interview him in his beautiful backyard and I can run the cameras and enjoy the show but Michelle being Michelle she dragged me into the interview and persuaded him to let us inspect his kitchen and home office John received his MD from Loma Linda University in 1948 and a masters in public health from Harvard in 1956. he is an Adventist and a vegetarian from birth not uncommon among Adventists here he is a half century you go let's take another cancer lymph gland cancer Dr Alan Cunningham went around the world check 16 countries and he noticed that as the meat intake went up particularly with beef the risk of lymph gland cancer increased so from the anatomy standpoint alone it looks like our creator made us to be a kind of an animal that does not eat other animals I read two of his books while editing this episode six extra years and problems with meat Michelle sen is a recent Stanford grad in science technology and society and she knows things about nutrition because she works at True North Health Center whose founder has gone viral on YouTube for its impressive results from medically supervised water fasting part one of this episode is on the simple Lifestyle Changes almost all of us can make and understand that have a profound impact on our health part two is me grilling John about the amazing breakthroughs in our understanding of nutrition over the last 70 years and part three is discovering John's extraordinary life in Public Health by rummaging through his office to get started I'm just going to ask you some yes or no questions just to introduce yourself so do you smoke I don't smoke Never Smoke do you drink any alcohol no never have do you need any assistance to walk yes so now sometimes not to walk but to go up steps or down steps I sometimes need a little bit okay this is a railing guys don't have any problems okay do you wear glasses no and that's because I had cataracts and had cataracts removed and they put in 2020 lenses so I have 20 20 Vision through my glasses away and can you drive yes I drive do you drive at night yes and how old are you Dr John scharfenberg I am 99 but of course in China I'm in my hundredth year so they call that a hundred right because you're born in Shanghai I was born Shanghai but you they list the year you in as hundreds but the US people say you have to finish the hundred year before they call you hundred so you're already in there yeah wow in one sentence what should people eat a university of course in one cent eat that's the proper time that means no snacking eat at the proper time a variety not all of one meal you get too fat that way but over 10 day period so make sure you get all the nutrients you should have eat a variety of different foods so eat at the prophesy a variety of natural non-processed Foods in quantities for ideal weight that's all you need to know everything else explains why the sentence is true and do you yourself eat any animal products like dairy or I do I'm a lacto oh vegetarian I'm not a vegan and I don't like the term vegan in Great Britain when they use that term there was no religious connotation but when the man came here to the U.S who started in 1960 he had religious connotation he had a monthly magazine on health for the vegans he called it ahimsa that means you don't use animals for any business to make money on you don't wear silk shirts because you're using this silkworm to make to get a business from them and you don't kill any insects and one of their religions ideas was eat supper before dark because after dark you're more likely to kill insects [Music] so I I don't say I'm a a vegan I don't like the term I say I'm a I I'd rather have the term total visitor total vegetarian I like that and some people now adays say that plants are trying to kill us what do you think about that but who's trying to kill plants some people say plants are trying to kill I've never heard that before okay no no no I haven't heard that some people are also saying that high LDL cholesterol is also fine for us it might even be good what do you think about that well you have to know about this whole story of of cholesterol cholesterol Wars cholesterol Wars yeah it's a big big story but here's something we've just learned since about 2010. a big advance in health you remember when the Robert Koch discovered the bacteria and pasture showed how it could make germs and you could get sick from it with his flash studies that was a real breakthrough in health and then penicillin about 1927-28 penicillin was another real breakthrough now in 2010 we've had another great breakthrough that nobody's heard about but it's exciting here's what it is the World Health Organization agrees to it American Heart Association uh the European Cardiology Society they all agree to this that if you avoid seven risk factors lifestyle factors you can reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke cardiovascular disease 80 percent you can reduce the risk of getting diabetes 88 percent now what are these seven risk factors tobacco alcohol inactivity no exercise overweight and then they said too much meat and sugar they added two others they were high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol okay if you just do the first five you don't have to worry about the other two because those first five help to keep your blood pressure down and your cholesterol down okay so this is kind of exciting without any medicine we can lower the risk of heart attack and stroke 80 percent now that to me is really exciting you don't have to have all these pills now cardiovascular disease is killing more people than the next five leading causes of death combined and here we don't need any medicine for it just lifestyle exercise no tobacco alcohol this kind of thing keep your weight down it so it's kind of exciting but doctors haven't really accepted this yet the authorities have leaders have scientific people have but the doctors have been for years giving satin pills to lower their cholesterol they had the idea that if we would lure everybody's cholesterol we'd have no more heart attacks it's not right it was an error yeah they've been giving people statins if their cholesterol level went up okay now here's the exciting thing most of the studies were done on men well they say women are just like men now I'm a doctor I know there's a difference they're treating the women the same way when they did three studies just on women alone they found out two of the three studies showed those that took the pills died sooner then another problem what about men the older men do better with higher blood cholesterol levels higher than what we think are good okay so the people authorities in this field said that if you get to be 75 years of age you should no longer be put on statins okay because they do better with higher levels they live longer okay so that doesn't fit our our idea that LDL was all that bad there's something wrong with our Theory yeah so we were told in 2015 and the world Cardiology Journal we were told here's what we should tell our patients today tell your patients that we thought if we lowered everybody's cholesterol we'd no longer have any heart disease that was an error but tell them what will really benefit them is lifestyle lifestyle no tobacco no alcohol keeping your weight down exercise you know all that kind of thing uh but even now the authorities who say you should be on statins say you should try lifestyle before you put the patient on Statin and most people aren't doing that they just start off with the pills right so I'm not for the pill business I don't believe women should be put on statins number one and I'm sure that the men over 75 shouldn't be put on statins no matter what their cholesterol level is and I'm sure everybody will be should be started on a lifestyle program before they even try the medicines and why do you think there is so much controversy around nutrition and has it always been this way well here's the problem the doctors in their training have never had a good course in nutrition that's the problem right you go in to see a doctor you say what should I eat for breakfast tomorrow now he doesn't want to act stupid so he has to give you an answer and he doesn't really know so he thinks to himself what did my wife give me for breakfast this morning he doesn't know what to say scientifically which is too bad they need a good course and then another problem that we have medically we've been using cholesterol as an indicator who needs statins as if that would tell us you know and it doesn't it's a very poor representative of your heart status or your atherosclerosis status very poor another problem we're having lots of groups of doctors working together and the leader of the group gets the group together and says now look you have to see a new patient every 10 minutes otherwise we aren't going to make any money on this 10 minutes isn't long enough to teach anybody anything so so these are kind of problems we have medically see and then we had some scandals bad scandals I don't know if you've heard of the Cochrane database can you explain more about it is the name of a group of top specialists in different subjects all around the world and they're the gold standard when that group says this is what all these studies mean that's what we should listen to but recently they voted the man who was most against the pharmaceutical companies having any influence with this group they voted him off their group that's the Scandal when did that happen it just happened a few years ago no not very logo wow and so that's a scandal are they going to allow the pharmaceutical company have influence then here's another thing they did they said how low should your LDL cholesterol be now I was one of the first ones that said it should be 120. I had done thousands of them so I knew what it should be before they had any standards then when the standards came out the British Heart Association said it should be 115 LDL cholesterol the U.S said 130. mine was 120. so I hit it pretty close yeah and and and that was kind of exciting where it should be but a committee got together about 15 people to decide how lower LDL cholesterol should really be eight of the 15 people got some financial payment from the company that makes the pill to lower the cholesterol so they voted it should be down to 100 LDL I see it's crazy it doesn't have to be down that low at all but they did it because they were friendly with the pharmaceutical companies and here they have so on the top guy out who was opposed to that and now all these people were going to be the immunization from the company by lecturing for them and stuff so it's not right money follow the money you were professor of nutrition for over 62 years at Loma Linda University so throughout that time has it always been this way that people keep disagreeing about nutrition yes they have a bunch of doctors you see don't have the training in it the average doctor so they don't know about it it's just a few people on the top know what it should be like the Heart Association was pretty good do you think the problem is getting worse today do you think that people are disagreeing more than ever about what is healthy to eat no but they've changed their views on something they've changed their views and that made quite a difference in knowledge what they knew worked and didn't work but I don't think we have to worry about everybody's cholesterol level I see have you heard of people talking about the carnivore diet sure me dying meat diet all meat and I I don't think that's right either for example the fat and the blood of the animal even the Bible says you shouldn't eat it the Jews were told not to eat it fat in the bud now we've found out that the fat in the blood has a heave iron in it and that increases the risk of colon cancer type 2 diabetes and increases the risk of heart attack so for example in the big nurses study they did they checked a certain number of them to see how much iron they're restoring in their sternum they took the needle sucking the sternum and checked to see those that had the most heme iron which was the meat eaters they had more iron there than the people who didn't eat the meat had more diabetes so there are doctors who prescribe meat if you're anemic they shouldn't it's the iron in the meat is more quickly observed absorbed so it's good from that standpoint but it's increasing colon cancer heart attack and diabetes type two wow yeah so what do you think is the best way to change people's minds about nutrition I think we need to get doctors educated nutrition we need a good of course in nutrition in medical school they don't have it and that's one of the greatest things for prevention you know we just don't have that in the medical school they should have a good course they don't how often do you yourself eat I eat twice a day only and that's different than most people now there's something new about that there's a dietitian down in Alabama do you remember her name you know I don't remember I could probably look it up and find out but anyway she started in this country the idea now we as Seventh-Day Adventists used to teach that that was a good thing to do because Ellen White told us who we believed was a prophet told us that years ago so I brought up my children on two meals a day and uh when did I started When the Children got old enough to see if I was eating supper or not when they knew that I was on two meals a day too so I've been on that for years yeah and what time do you eat your two meals well I eat breakfast about 6 30 in the morning I wake up about four I eat breakfast about 6 30 and then lunch come 12 31 mm-hmm so I can eat with other people yeah yeah at that time and then I don't eat anymore and when you get water when do you go to bed early like eight to nine eight to nine so so between your your lunch and you go to bed that's quite a few hours do you get hungry no no you do when you change over to start with for two or three weeks but we say when you get hungry drink a glass of water hi okay so you don't no snacks no snacks so I can't wait for wait to go check out your refrigerator so you can see more see movie yeah you said you like to eat a lot of fruit more than vegetables right you oh okay I like range not rice and you said that before you were going out to the black bear bite the Black Bear Diner and buying food but now you get help making your meals yes this lady's sister she didn't like to see me going out eating all the time so she brings a lunch every day what are your favorite foods mangoes oh yummy yeah Manila mango two months of the year in Manila you couldn't get mangoes the temperature it wasn't right but down in Cebu the timber is just right they have mangoes every month of the year wow down in where again Cebu what is that island of Cebu okay do you have any favorite vegetables trying to think what I like most I kind of like snow peas um but more fruits Tomatoes Tomatoes yeah I like tomatoes I would argue with myself whether I liked rice better or potatoes it's a contest a long time I thought it was rice but then I changed I think it's potatoes really okay but there's some problems with potatoes what's the problem they have a high glycemic index even compare so white rice people say it has pretty high glycemic index potato is even higher potatoes like ice cream they like ice cream oh wow and so there I have a friend who's a dietitian already and she no longer eats potatoes at all because of that all right guys but it depends on what else you eat with a meal right see and how you prepare it so every time they do a study on it it comes out a different number so I I had don't go for that idea scientifically yet I see so when you're putting together your plate to eat are you are you thinking in terms of the kind of nutrients you're adding or are you just eating Foods you're familiar with you know when I was bringing up my children I one week out of the year every year practically would write down everything we ate how much and then we take out this agriculture handbook for the nutrient content and calculate what we we're eating and so my kids learn nutrition this way the thing I was usually lowest in was vitamin A that means the greens ah see I never ate Greens in the orient fresh greens right because the Chinese always use human manure and that's the way you got amoeba you could die from that so I didn't eat that and I came to this country and I found out that people who ate a salad every day has a great drop in there the chance of dying um if they have a a food that had vitamin A and vitamin C in it both they could reduce their death rate about three quarters wow and so I began to eat more salads greens but the foods I like the best I I was supposed I like lentils pretty well you know I like Chinese cooking while cooking I can eat vegetables that way very nicely I I like it and now when you get your blood work done are there any deficiencies abnormalities no except for my age B12 and vitamin D vitamin D to be useful is in young people because it has to hit the cholesterol in the skin and change the changes it it has to go to the liver change it again goes to the kidneys changes it again and it makes a hormone which we call Vitamin D okay and all these things and old people are working to have three so old people aren't getting it they have to take a supplement I see so you supplement vitamin d and vitamin B12 yes every day that's yeah that's all gotcha why do you think that the Chinese and seven the Adventists live so long in America I think it's a matter primarily a vegetarianism we checked in California the vegetarian Adventist group with the general population how long they live for example for the men in the general population 19 and a half percent of them live to be 85 or older but for Seventh-day Adventist men 40 vegetarian men 48.6 that's a big difference now the women live longer than the men so in the general population uh 39.3 percent of the women live to be 85 or older but for the Adventist women 60.1 percent um quite a difference it is yeah quite a difference yeah and I it's vegetarian what makes the difference of course Adventists are an unusual group to study because they don't smoke or drink alcohol whereas all other studies they have to compare this group to that group with the same number of smokers same amount of smoking same amount of alcohol confounding factors yeah messes up their study administs don't have those compound effective so that's pretty good now in the Adventist Health study for the men they had only 56 of the death rate of the people of the general population 44 lower vegetarian no that's for the ones who are not vegetarians everybody all Advent but if you take just the vegetarian ones they have only 39 of the expected death rate of the general population if you take the total vegetarians who don't use milk or eggs they had only 16 of the death rate of the general population so smoking and tobacco knocks it down 44 percent if you don't eat meat knocks it down further if you don't use milk eggs knocks it down first wow what are the major advances in health that you've seen the last hundred years you know the biggest thing that's happened in this country is that we have purified our water so you turn on any faucet you could probably drink it I remember I went with some friends to Mexico City for a meeting on nutrition Big World meeting on nutrition two out of three of the speakers could not give their lecture because they had diarrhea because because of the food they were eating yikes and when we came home the Food and Drug Administration sent us letters where did we eat what did we eat well what did I eat there mangoes things like a peel yeah but then there's plantains you know and rice and things like that they're cooked so we never had any problem but I was surprised so many people got sick wow so it sounds like you carbs like a lot of mangoes lots of red so I think water Improvement was the biggest thing we did compared to any other country and then another thing I think next is immunizations so we got rid of yellow fever polio smallpox and even the measles and the German Measles and all these things the number of cases diphtheria will be gone number of cases went way down I wish people stop dying I've got all kinds of data on that so I think that was a big deal what about in your area of nutrition what have been the changes or major advancements the past hundred years well I used to say before 1950 was the Dark Ages but we did have some things that we did well Paul Agra have you heard of pellagra yep the 3DS diarrhea dementia dermatitis death during the 1940s early 40s during World War II time we had as many as 100 to 300 000 people sick at one time and since dementia is one of the problems a lot of them were in jail because they did crazy things so they got put in jail and what made it bad was the Chicago Board of Health said it's an infectious disease it wasn't nutrition disease they proved it was not infectious and so we got rid of pellagra in the 40s we had degerminated the corn you know we did things like this so they began to add niacin to the food and then there was no problem so that's one big thing we did before in 1950. but before 1950 everybody thought you're crazy if you're a vegetarian you couldn't bring up a child on a vegetarian diet right see but from 1950 on it was really excellent things that happened there was Frank budreau he was a public health man and he said if we you use the information we had on nutrition it would be as big a advance as we pasture finding the germ Theory wow and I think that's right the U.S government had advisors of Physicians specialists who've told them that the best that people could have is a vegetarian diet it's the optimum diet so I think we should get more people on that as far as we know only six to fifteen percent of Americans are vegetarian but now that we know with the proper lifestyle you can decrease heart attacks and strokes 80 percent and that's one of the main things be a vegetarian the problem was people like me right they rebelled against this so they changed it and said eat more fruits and vegetables but they really meant Less meat so they added another recommendation eat no more than five to six percent of the calories as saturated fat that means animal fat dairy fat no fat butter fat cheese that meant it off lard bacon beef that's what we had to get rid of so we don't use the bad terms vegetarian or the bad term meat we just say no more than five to six percent of the calories saturated fat calculated that means vegetarian time advancements you think yes I think there are some that we should do the next Advance has to be in getting people to do what even they know they should do we don't know how to do that you know and seeing a patient's new one every 10 minutes is not long enough to even try but here uh lady is overweight comes in to see the doctor he writes out a prescription you will now exercise one hour every day she comes back one month later a little bit heavier did you follow the prescription did you exercise no and that he has 100 patients go through his office like that he stops even trying to educate them yeah that's our problem yeah but the immunization has done good job you know even without immunization I was in charge of tuberculosis control I did so well in California that they made me a consultant to CDC and it was kind of kind of exciting uh because we just about have it eliminated we still have it another 10 years we'll probably have TB eliminated that's phenomenal it is wow and I have a hand in that myself amazing thank you and thank you for your service too because you serve for two years in the Army right four years four years two years as a medical student oh okay they put me through medicine yeah wow thank you for all you've done what do you think has gotten worse in the field of nutrition the past hundred years you see the cardiac rate has gone down because of smoking going down now only 11 percent of Americans adults they're smoking in California where they're a little more smart people it's only nine percent so we've done well here in this country uh and the state we've done well but there are things that are keeping the figures up one is diabetes two is hypertension three is overweight particularly in children now diabetes it is jumped a lot in just a couple years about 75 percent the rate jumped High well why it jumped by 75 yeah in what time frame just a few years it just suddenly went up and so why why did that happen the people who who are put on statins medicines to lower their cholesterol uh women particularly have 71 percent higher chance of getting diabetes if they're on statins so that's one problem we've been getting too fat particularly children that's another cause of diabetes and our blood pressure we have people with hypertension and you usually have hypertension maybe seven years before you're diagnosed with diabetes so all these things work together and all of them have to do with a vegetarian diet and what about exercise how important is that to longevity exercise is extremely important exercise helps to keep your weight down exercise helps you or hypertension it's the best preventive for hypertension there is exercise helps to keep you from diabetes in other words if you exercise and you keep your weight down and you're on a vegetarian diet you won't get diabetes so this is one of our problems it's the lifestyle and see the doctors have been telling people safely satin pills they're going by the cholesterol level with the idea that if you lower your cholesterol will not have heart attacks anymore it's not true it's not true and we made a mistake we should tell them that lifestyle is important but the problem is we haven't persuaded people to live like they even though they should live yes that's why I'm starting to become a therapist I want to figure out how do we people know what to do but a lot of them know what to do but they don't do it it's hard yeah it's hard for exercise how much do you think it can compensate for being overweight a woman who's fat I had a lady helping me with my PowerPoint lectures was she was did it for a living for advertising for purposes and she was really big and I said to her I said you know I've got to talk to you about your weight she said I said you want's a good news first or the bad news she said give me the bad news first I say you should know for every disease we know overweight is going to increase your risk of dying but the good news if you are obese and she was real big if you are obese but you exercise every day you will live longer than the person whose normal weight who doesn't exercise oh she's good good because I exercise well what exercise do you do I go horseback riding oh so you're just like sitting on it I know the horse exercises but I'm not so sure how much the person is yeah anyway a man who smokes has hypertension has high blood cholesterol but he exercised every day will live longer than the man who doesn't have any of those wings who doesn't exercise and what counts as enough exercise yeah I hate to tell you this but too much exercise increases your death rate too because hardly anybody does that but they have these people running marathons to think that's not right it's too much so they're trying to find out how much is okay we're beginning to get an idea of how much it's not very far between a good amount and bad amount but I hate to help you with this because most people aren't doing anything a way of exercise what are you doing now for exercise you know I should add one more thing to the exercise bed they've done studies with Alzheimer's patients and and probably exercise in mid-ease is the most important time not kids not old people like me but exercise middays 40 to 70 years of age you exercise in that age group might reduce your risk of of Alzheimer's so I think that's the important time when I was 55 51 I moved out for my job at Loma Linda started exercising by living out in the country growing food cutting down the trees and so on and I outlived my brothers now 14 and 17 years now and right now what do you do for exercise walking is about the only thing walking and sometimes do you work in the garden I haven't been doing much here see most of the garden was all in place this was all in place oh it's gorgeous mostly Farm flowers is not so yeah does the Walking how much do you walk every day I have been walking enough but you should walk I think at least two miles a day and why they did studies those who walk two or more miles a day compared to the walk those who walk one or less and those who walk two miles or more a day compared to the other had only 50 percent of the death rate because their chances are dying in half yes I think maybe you and the sisters could do a walk-in a little more yeah I need to do some more walking yeah is it just hard to find the energy to or the time well he knew there's a problem with me I think it's the association I need to be walking with somebody doing something with somebody else oh talking or something maybe you should get you a dog or something yeah well I want to know what do you think looking back on your life was the hardest time in your life I don't know that I had any hard time yeah so I didn't no I live kind of a protective life now one thing that we should be working on is the aces the adverse children's experiences if a husband is beating up his wife and the kids see that that's an ace if the kid is not getting enough to eat as an ace if the most important thing is the mothers aren't spending enough time to help the kids emotionally paying attention to them they're just ignoring that's an ace if the if somebody is mentally off in the house that says if somebody's going to jail in the family that's nice there's about 10 of those and if you have about six of those you may cut your life short by 20 years so I I think we need to do something to try to help our kids have the right mentors to help them religiously or take them out in the country for exercise things like that so you said that there have been no very difficult times in your life and I think um you know a lot of people they find it hard to look back at life and think that it was also positive so how do you how do you keep on that characteristic smile and positivity well let me tell you one thing that happened to me me and my wife uh we had moved from Longwood up in the country and I was waiting for my tax returns people to get it finished and I had to wait an hour or so so I went to see a person in the house they weren't there so I drove in the backyard and I saw a big tall man walk by inside the house so I knocked on the door he came to the door and the family was taking little windows take them out make big windows and the man said you know there was a burglar in here and broke the window back bedroom oh I said I'd like to see it because I was knew the people I said we're the people oh they're at work so I went back to look at that broken window in the bedroom then my wife dropped to the floor I what happened I was sipping over to see what happened then I felt the hammer he had on my head he hit her with a hammer Hammer he was wanting to kill us to take our Cadillac we just bought a secondhand Cadillac kind of like my wife before and since I was wooing it was a glancing blow he demanded my keys I saw him at him hoping he'd have to turn around to get them but he caught him I was going to tackle him if he turned around but he ran out and got our car and drove off now that new car had a number on it so you could tell where it was and I ran out on the street and I didn't realize how I looked my face was all bloody but I didn't know it my hands were all bloody from this cut on the head and I finally a car stopped I said can you get the fleece that man just stole my car going around the corner now and he may have killed my wife in the house and so he called the police with a five minutes of us right close so we went in the house and picked my wife up from the floor put on a chair she said what happens if we have an earthquake oh that's California person yeah California she didn't know what had happened see anyway they had about 20 cars lined up that they were going up the hill of the mountains and he wouldn't stop he wasn't going fast but he wouldn't stop and they had to Ram him that's the front ruined my car it was loaded with everything our own Factory and we got the car back and I got all my stuff back but having to give up the car because it was total to it so how do you stay so optimistic just by all these things that's you asked what happened bad in my life I would say that was the worst thing right yeah but I was in Wars too I was over in Korea when the Creole War started you were in Korea yeah when it wow I I had my house burned two times I all your belongings burned to the ground not quite but I was had a home right in front of sigmundry's house the Korean president I I was out of the house at the time evening and somebody got the kids ran out with one of our helpers so that was a problem I went to the other house and I said to my wife this is the first time I felt warm in Korea I went into the bathroom I saw flames in the wall through an electric socket I called the Marine who was in the duplex he came with a big accident he had it down before the fur the apartment came out so I've had some bad experiences but I wouldn't say I've had any long experiences that were bad for me right so I mean even now you smile and you laugh all the time what what is it what keeps you so positive you know I think what's positive is is a I wake up every morning and I say you know what's going to happen today I know the Lord is going to bring somebody to me that I can help I have a friend of mine his grandson was alcoholic he was despondent all the time I didn't speak against it I just told him look when I get up in the morning I'm so excited I want to see who the Lord is going to bring to be that I can help if I could get his mind off himself helping others so that's what I was trying to do to help other people but it's interesting how many things have happened where somebody's brought to my attention that I can do something for well that's a beautiful perspective thank you for sharing that when do you have any current goals you have like long-term projects you're working toward well I'm trying to get my message out about the lifestyle which really basically is vegetarian diet see uh that's what I'm trying to get out because it's so reasonable it's sensible it's not hard to do in this country you know but to get people that want to do it I'm trying to show them the reasons why it should be done I got six good reasons I give them why it should be done and you know we oftentimes think you have to be a doctor or a PhD or something to be able to tell people this stuff you don't I've taken kids and trained them in five weeks how to do health education and it worked it worked for example given five reasons why you shouldn't smoke get them go out and tell everybody you don't have to have an MD to do that and you could take nutrition and break it down into little bits and tell them here's the five things you need to know about it um and it works so I've tried that and I'm really excited about getting organized a program to work with young people and get young people to do the education like in your local area yeah I I have all outlined how to do it but I don't have the energy now at this age to do it I need to get somebody who'll grab my idea and activate it I want to I want to get kids doing it oh you should share with us your your plans so that maybe somebody who has the energy and time to do it will do it yeah I'm excited because I have all kinds of subjects that they could lecture on was there anything we didn't cover that you want to make sure you shared my dad was heavily what temperature we call it tobacco and alcohol of our Adventist Church in Washington Sierra Tacoma Parks Silver Spring area he made the film with a Dr oxner chest surgeon taking out the man's lungs because he's smoking he had cancers alone and it was called one in twenty thousand at that time we had about twenty thousand dying every year from smoking a lot more since that time and this one was the one that was going to be saved because it had his lung removed he took that film he showed it to a British Parliament a Great Britain London it had a big effect on them over there yeah it was and he did that in New York City in a big hotel 800 people there some people would think those are the days TVs didn't have much blood yeah and this was what the people were fainting oh my gosh oh my gosh but uh my dad was a really helped remove the stop smoking program yeah I think technology has been improving a lot for example when my dad had cataract surgery he had to stay flat in bed for three days there was pain doing it I had mine out in 15 minutes you know I had it out I could get up and exercise and do everything right away tremendous change uh for example Dennis we are always used to be scared to go over the dentist because it was painful yeah I have a dentist here now putting in implants no pain good no pain at all tremendous Advance good yeah I think of surgery for example we may have more breast cancer than we used to have but our surgery is better at we are saving patients from dying yeah because of surgery so there's a lot of things that technology has been improving tremendous in the medical field but as far as what we should be doing now I think is important yeah the aces I mentioned or the children's programs obesity we got to do something about obesity exercise we got to get people exercising and you have to eat less calories yeah how do we do that there's two meals they think it really works where he's having more alcohol problems much more alcohol problem and that increases the women's breast cancer midlife drinking is a bad thing we need to do something about that we should do it like we did with the smoking tax it access to that that's alcohol waves attacks are very high like they did with cigarettes besides the taxes make laws you can only drink here there you know that's what they did with the smoking uh we've got to get people moving towards a vegetarian diet a lot of people are doing that that means we got to educate other why they should be vegetarian in 2015 the US government said it's an Optimum diet but not many people moved because they made that statement we got to do something yeah with that now it's interesting about blood pressure what are we going to do about hypertension I began to get high blood pressure but not till I was in my 80s and it's very low do you take medication for it I do the Lost pill I am but it's kind of interesting if I'd had it when I was 50 have time to cause a lot of trouble but I didn't get until I was 80. so it made it quite a difference but hypertension if you get enough liminalic acid in your diet polyunsaturated fatty acids but most plant oils you won't get hypertension if you get enough fiber in your diet you won't get hypertension if you get only 12 grams a day of fiber compared to uh 24 grams you have about 57 percent higher risk of hypertension if you get enough potassium you with our rats they won't get high blood pressure they won't have any problems and with humans there's no studies that they don't get hypertension if they get enough potassium we're supposed to have twice as much potassium as we have sodium we have it just turned around we're getting twice as much sodium as we are potassium and potassium is from the fruits of vegetables yeah meat gives us 25 of our salt our sodium is in meat and a lot of our breakfast cereals they had so I used some breakfast cereals and first thing I do I try to make sure there's not more than five grams of uh sugar per serving yeah it's me I got to be under that for me to use it our fancy cameraman Chris do you have any questions I think you've done a really good job of asking the questions how can I get in to see Gary Fraser and interview him he's a good friend of mine he wrote a book you know in 2003. I read it put out by the Oxford press in fact I've ordered two of yearbooks how many books have you written I have written many I I'll tell you well I've ordered two of your books I thought I heard you say on Chef AJ live that you wrote a book all about fat yeah I can't find it I can give you one oh I want one I want it autographed see it's just a little pamphlets oh yeah it's my lectures that I had with slides I made each page of the book one of those and I have lots of things like that now something I'd like you to see I'm trying to make it attractive oh that's pretty how do you like that yeah that's a very prettier pretty graphic you can't really copy that very well oh one other thing I want to show you you've got to see this then you hold it up so the camera can see yeah it looks like we got some slides and I have this all on the computer how's diet related to you're being alcoholic or to open them at this point Michelle and I got treated to a fascinating talk linking junk food to acquiring a propensity towards alcohol and drug abuse the initial research was done at Loma Linda in the 60s when Dr Register was head of the school of nutrition where Dr scharfenberg worked Dr Register was a giant in the field and one of the discoverers of B12 in the late 40s the initial studies were on rats whose diet was changed to the standard American diet of donuts hot dogs and all the rest poor rats if he gave them a good diet here the height of the line represents the amount of alcohol they drink every rat knows not to drink alcohol yeah they drink only water when they put them on the junk food diet they start a write-off drinking some alcohol and seventh week they took off and became real alcoholic raps we've found out biochemically how that works the talk got pretty technical but the bottom line is when rats ate junk food their bodies produced opium to be sure that we're right in our Theory we injected these alcoholic rats who were making morphine we inject them with morphine they drink water really wow that's amazing see they're getting already what their body craze if you give a human being who's obese you go give him an opiate blocker I have one here that they tried it affects the dopamine Center in the brain they stop eating the foods that they craves so we can now divide up obese people who have a physical logical craving because of the Opium oh wow from those who who have another kind of obesity so are you very familiar with the new obesity drugs that are coming out they're having they're having one of them is a Sophia oh it is Locker costs a thousand dollars it's expensive I've heard it's very successful yes but people who take it say Wow now I know what a normal person feels like because right now I'm not hungry all day long but there's another group who are obese but not from that reason see so we can separate the kind of obesity now I see because of this oh that's exciting and do they know what percent of people are obese because of no we don't know they're just now getting into the research on this thing but you see Dr Register found out with animals that's true yeah wow way back wow 1960s yeah amazing but now we're finding out it's true and they're doing it with overweight people so something about their diet that's making them produce opium we got to find out what that is yes so Dr scharfenberg sometimes I think most of what we know about nutrition we knew in the 70s we knew a long time ago here a long time ago and now fad diets keep coming and the food companies are marketing and they're messing with our brains did you ever meet Ansel Keys what did you think of answer keys I had to invited them out to my facility you did yeah how was he what was he like he's a doctor in physiology yeah University of Minnesota yes yeah and he did the seventh country study you know quite respected right yes there were problems with it but but he was a well-respected scientist yeah yeah and that that was a nice study they did those seven countries study yeah I knew him well the head of the Framingham study was a friend of mine too so yeah that was that was an epic study I heard you say once that he used to think HDL was significant in heart disease yeah Dr castelli yeah and then he said you know what we found out in the modern day that HDL doesn't matter that's right they did a study of 600 000 people or some people but wow Canada the Chinese comedians did the study and it didn't seem like HDL has anything to do with heart disease yeah now all the talk is non-hdl cholesterol that's right so and do you ever talk about APO b or is it too complicated for consumers the latest thing is that we can reduce heart disease 80 percent Strokes 80 percent diabetes 88 with avoiding these seven risk factors yeah lifestyle rather than medicine yeah that is brand new of concept yeah that's a that's a Brand New Concept I've heard you say that on other interviews you see Ellen White was telling us this and I was a medical student that bothered me yeah you know how could that be yeah and here we now know it scientifically isn't it amazing it is amazing so I've heard these Adventist professors say we used to be thought of as crackpots yeah that's right in fact I heard you say tell Michelle you couldn't raise a child on that's right now it's it's respected and it's respected yeah very respected yeah am I right in thinking that the Adventists In America which is not the longest lived population in the world are the longest lived people in the world now they're the longest lived Blue Zone they're the only ones that have been scientifically studied yeah these others the National Geographic man I know him yeah he he didn't study it Dan buettner yeah yeah he just wants to know how do you feel about this diet yeah it's psychologically he's not thinking about the science of it I gave my whole list of scientific things for longevity yeah he wasn't interested in that yeah oh that's funny but so but the Adventists have had hundreds of studies yeah awesome see this is why I want to interview Dr Fraser because the Adventist 2 study is amazing it is it's one of the most amazing studies I've ever seen he doesn't like the way I say it oh really well how do you say it he wants to look at it this way he's not trying to brag about Adventists he's trying to downplay that yeah he's trying to say what an Adventist lifestyle is the thing that we can get everybody to accept yeah fair enough and see that's what he wants to do yeah and I've met him on the steps I said look Adventures are doing so much about he didn't like that he he doesn't want us brag about that he just wants to see hey these are things we learned from this study that should help everybody in the world oh wow yeah that's what he's trying to do yeah I see he's a good guy he's a good guy he eats some fish right you know that book that he put out yeah he needed to get time off to do that I arranged for him to get oh financed oh so we have you to think that's awesome it was awesome 2003 he went to Oxford yeah to get ideas on new ways to calculate things statistically yeah that's where he got the idea what percent of the population lives to be 85 or longer that's another way of looking at it see he worked he was unsabbatical at Oxford right yeah and he worked with the Epic Oxford team the other vegetarian study I I don't know he must have known all that he knew all their decisions yeah but he went there to learn that yeah how can you look at things sensitively in a different way to make it interesting to people well he has said that their outcomes were very different than Adventist outcomes and he said when we looked at the data it's because of what they were eating in the UK they were eating a lot of processed food the Epic Oxford study with no good study oh really some people commented to me on that yeah and I know what they're talking about yeah because the study group did have the near the death rate that the whole population had oh that's where it was off it wasn't adequate control group I see interesting see that's fascinating so they still it's still going on so this is fascinating have we worn you out are you done no I want you to see the food yeah no we want to see the food too absolutely it's not my refrigerator I've got a little section oh we'll see your section I only want to talk to you for three more hours Chef AJ's gonna throw you a 100 Year birthday party don't I think she is I don't know I have a very exciting guest today his name is Dr John scharfenberg I was surprised I got so many hits oh yeah you're a celebrity you're a YouTube Star 470 yeah eight or something like that yeah a thousand biggest episodes she ever did yeah it is yeah yeah and that's not the only one where you were with Doug Batchelor yeah pastor of the yeah and I'm delighted today to have here in The Amazing fact Studios Dr John scharfenberg I had 500 000 in the first two weeks Amazing did you ever think you would touch this many people no I didn't I didn't Steve Jobs you know him yeah yeah he was my old boss is that right yeah we'd go out to lunch well actually I would go to lunch because everybody else was eating ham and cheese sandwiches on White Bread and I would go to this little burrito place and they had brown rice and beans and guacamole and all that kind of stuff and you just got your whole wheat tortilla and then they would put in whatever filling you wanted and Steve started looking at that he was vegetarian he started looking at that saying that looks pretty good are you Advantage Adventist and I said no I didn't even know what an Adventist was at the time and he said well can you buy me some of those burritos so when I would go out to lunch I'd get one for Steve and one for me three two one Memorial Day happy Memorial Day all righty let's see what the doctor eats okay there's bananas okay I have raisins raisins and prunes I haven't had raccoons for a year I gotta get some foods I love food we used to think that's just what old people ate yeah I know but I guess you qualify now Brazil nuts you know these have selenium yeah can't you eat too many of them and get too much selenium no oh really no but they come from Brazil there's places where they have sodium in the soil where they don't yeah it usually comes from those places where they have selenium yeah it's supposed to decrease prostate cancer oh I see and pecans how's your prostate cancer doing I don't have any problem that's wonderful and almonds yeah and cashews cashews so I have so much I have trouble with cashews can you explain why I don't know I can't stop eating them uh Wallace is the best Handful in lowering blood cluster yeah yeah because of the Omega-3s uh yeah well yeah that's right and how often do you eat nuts I hate and that's almost every meal this is one of my favorites tofu and which part of this fridge is your stuff just a little this little drop that's sat next to it cook cereal I think cook cereal let's she always has it cooked here and applesauce and then down in here I want to show you something where's the mangoes [Music] raspberries is mice cherries you saw them here and the strawberries those are my three bags and you eat a lot of bananas I like bananas don't they have high glycemic index you don't worry about that potatoes you know yeah hi guys but I don't really believe in that yet in Canada the British people did study that but every time they do it they get a different number yeah it depends on what else is in the meal and how it's prepared um so we aren't really sure where we are on that but I have a dietary friend she doesn't eat potatoes anymore because yeah but and but you eat a couple of cups of oats in the morning sometimes when you're not having waffles I like the waffles the best they're the best my wife developed a waffle recipe it's gone all around the world I know because we use it you use it yeah with bananas and applesauce that's right yes and oats it's a good food it's not just good for breakfast but it's good for a snack later on our grandkids are eating like bread yeah yeah yeah our grandkids love them yeah can we see your books for books come in here it's not books it's a little little things you study a room let me give you the kinds of things I'm doing is nutrition related to hypertension pamphlet let's see what else do it I want you to get this one yeah I didn't give references for it but I miss you yeah on exercise there we go and let's see what's in there's some good stuff there yeah it talks of the benefits of exercise it says sitting time increases death rate and the speed of walking is also important you can have that one if you want we want it why I am a vegetarian well this is a thick pamphlet wow you know I love how you you made it so easy for people to have these printouts and they can read this now one of the best things I've done did a School of Public Health I discussed milk milk can you show us that all the arguments against it all I recommend is for it and then I divided them two ways good arguments a bad arguments oh yeah yeah Gary Fraser says people who drink milk have lower colorectal cancer than vegans do is he right that's right because of the calcium but all of you female organs are less lower oh if they are vegans yeah wow and we don't really have enough numbers what do you mean by females organs are lower uh breast cancer oh uterine cancer ovary cancer if they drink milk if they don't drink if they don't drink if they don't drink less yeah see it's only the colorectal that's how I see I see uh but we don't have large enough numbers to be sure to be sure yeah now he I said why why do I study coffee more yeah he says we don't have enough Adventure drinking coffee only eight percent oh really I said Gary I was too one of the strictest Arizona Adventist churches and I checked them out and they said 40 percent were drinking coffee oh interesting I think the difference is I don't have them put their name on the paper that's funny so you got to have an anonymous survey you make it put some names on the paper I said that's the difference that's so great so great well this is quite a library you've got here well it's so much not much but but I Got the Whole Foods Foods in their natural state that sounds like Ellen White take yeah take one of those I'll take it give you the one with that okay it's in here I think these are this is your wife here no that's my mother oh your mother she was a very nice person we just found that picture a while back well and she raised you vegetarians my son oh and the first time I realized that I look at quite a bit of lighting yes you do I was surprised I was about to tell you that but I thought you would know are these some kind of old letters over here uh like this all right that's the letter I wrote years ago 1991. I'll tell you why I raise money for a group in Romania they do it have a Lifestyle Center they have programs three weeks or something like that see it's 91 yeah but I raise the money for them to start that thing I've helped many groups like that get started that's wonderful period of great scientific advancement on diet and preventive Cardiology 1948 and Beyond oh that's awesome and you said right now your current project is working on the plan for for the young people to take up I don't know who I can get to do that kind of thing see I think you don't have to have a PhD MD to educate people I had a five-week course in School of Public Health I was afraid they might object to it but they let me not a year and and uh they went out from there 16 banded together it went out and started doing programs very successful a wealthy man in Philadelphia saw what they were doing he said I'll pay all the expenses you come up here and they did it's very exciting what they did these are the weed control programs I show them how to draw blood in this first girl usually we have a sticker needle and an orange you know but I look at practice of me and she got into the first shot she was so excited she jumped up in that wheel and here's the thing was popping up and down my arm you're a brave man I wouldn't have done it I was the first one to take students overseas we went to little islands and they were 8 is 12 is 10 inches too short compared to the world Irish kids in in the wealthy District in Manila see they weren't getting enough to eat so I I had evening programs for them there's no electricity at Village I had a glass launcher they had worms we did worm studies oh wow and the stools the specials coconut shell yeah one boy didn't have one so his friends in this classmate gave him part of his survey both had his Festival anyway they have three different kinds of worms wow and they had hookworm that meant I had to do something about shoes yeah I had to do something about gardening we taught them gardening as a rule the governor of the province told every school they had disease gardening now that was worthwhile that was worthwhile you know I have to tell you I got pinworms at one time and they they crawl out of your butt at night yeah and they make you really itchy yeah right I know it's gross poor Michelle over there is about to vomit but I had a toilet building contest wow and uh we wanted to present immunization wasn't part of us wow because that's their problem they always think they have to have a doctor and I was trying to show them they didn't need a doctor see they could get well without a doctor but just living right it was exciting wow it was really good public health so is your son a doctor yes I heard that he married a nurse tonight daughter is a nurse married to the doctor wow that's great but I heard he said you're only going to live to 110 and he said I was 110 yeah what do you think about that I know I think it's pretty good

Channel: Plant Chompers

Views: 1,295,491

Keywords: vegetarian, longevity

Id: iddFlIcxQi4

Length: 77min 15sec (4635 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023