Diet, Immunity, & Fasting | Interview with Dr. Alan Goldhamer

buddy and welcome to today's lie I'm chef AJ and as you know I've been going live at least once a day since the sheltering in place started to create a sense of community and connection and introduce you to some really interesting dynamic people and today is no exception he's one of my favorite people in the world one of my very favorite speakers he is the co-author of an amazing book called the pleasure trap he's also the co-founder of The True North health center located in Santa Rosa California and so many people are very fearful of what's happening in the world today with the köppen 19 and of course we're not taking that lightly but one of the things we want to articulate is that we believe that what you eat matters not just for this pandemic but in general so dr. Goldhamer is going to talk a little bit about diet and how it affects our health whether or not we get a disease whether or not we can recover and if it affects immunity all at all so welcome dr. Goldhamer thank you so much for taking the time to talk to people today my pleasure glad to be here hey so what do you think does what we eat matter yeah diet does matter in fact it may be one of the larger affect that we can have in determining our health and it makes sense that it would matter you know so much of our relationship with the outside environment comes in response to us consuming food yeah you breathe air you drink water and you eat food but but the diet that we you know has a major influence not just on your current symptoms today but also your the effect of your immune system and its ability to deal with problems that are going to come along tomorrow as well and what diet do you think is best for that well you know the diet that we appear to function the best on in my opinion is a whole plant food diet so a diet that's derived from the foods were designed to actually eat so that would be things like fruits and vegetables minimally processed beans grains nuts seeds these types of food factors what it doesn't include are the highly processed fractionated foods the and the animal food so the meat fish fowl eggs dairy products all salt sugar basically the stuff that makes up around 90 percent or more of the food that most people eat should probably be excluded and what's left are the whole natural foods which make up a relatively small percentage of the foods that people actually eat do you think the diet should be plant-based or plant exclusive many people use words like plan to be do we need to be a hundred percent or was it okay to have some animal products depends on what your goal is you know if your goal is maximizing health I think a whole plant food diet exclusively whole plant food diet is probably the best diet and a diet that it completely eliminates the chemicals added to food that tend to make people fat sick and miserable would be ideal so we would recommend a whole plant food diet that's SOS free SOS is the international symbol of danger it also stands for the chemicals that are added to food that fool the satiety mechanisms in the brain and lead to overeating and the epidemic of disease and ability that we see around us so that includes salt oil and sugar so why do you believe that these chemicals that you say fool the brain satiety Magnusson salt oil and sugar why do they make people fasting maybe taking one at a time sure well these are all natural substances that are a critical part of Whole Foods and so our brains are designed to be able to detect those necessary and essential components the problem is in the modern world we've learnt to fractionate foods and process these components out of food so you know for example sugar is not a food it is a natural part of virtually all food so you have you know glucose and and other sugars in a whole food but when we concentrate it out and turn it into a chemical substance like table sugar we get some significant into where it affects as a consequence of it for example you can eat sugar cane you can chomp on sugar cane pretty much all you want but when you take you know 30 pounds of it to make a small amount of sugar now you get a very very different effect so the way sugar works is the our brains are designed to detection and enjoy sugar and that's how we know Whole Foods are good but when we get into a refining process turn it into a highly concentrated chemical byproduct and then add that to food we end up with a problem and one of those problems is obesity same things true with oil you know we need essential fats in our diet especially omega-3 fatty acids to form the other components that are necessary but when we terrorists foods apart remove one component in this case the oil feed it back to people it tends to not work as well in terms of our ability to regulate our intake and as a consequence we end up with problems of obesity and salt interestingly enough doesn't contain any calories per se but in my opinion is still responsible significantly contributing to obesity and the way salt may contribute to obesity is because of its effect on satiety it can actually stimulate what's called passive overeating if you eat your fill of something say like potatoes or rice or whatever you would eat a certain amount but if you salt those potatoes or rice up what you'll find is on average you'll eat more now some people say well yeah because it makes it taste better so of course you'll eat more but what tasting better is in part is more stimulation of dopamine in the brain and so yes it makes it taste better but it's a drug like effect in my opinion and as a consequence when we minimize or eliminate adding salt of food we tend to minimize or eliminate the tendency to over eat whole foods and as a consequence we reduce obesity and the consequences that go along with it so it's not intuitively obvious to think that putting a little bit of salt in your food salt not containing any calories directly would have any effect on your weight but in my experience it does so even even that little bit of brown sugar on the oatmeal even that little bit of salt on our vegetables for some people that might be a deal well it's a very similar to alcohol you know if you're an alcoholic that little extra drink or two may stimulate the Kowski of addiction that leads into you know finding yourself you know unable to talk or move line under some bread bridge somewhere so you know for them a little bit is a big deal now for other people they might be able to have a drink and not become a drunk but if you're already a drunk it's not you that's that's not something you should be doing and the same thing may be true you know if you're one of those people that has very sensitive satiety mechanisms and you can have a little bit of this or a little bit of that and not become overweight you may be able to quote get away with it at least as far as your weight is concerned but if you're struggling with obesity you may not be the person that should be eating a little bit of this or a little bit of that first of all a little bit often very quickly becomes a lot but even if you did just make it a little bit you're still offsetting whole natural foods with their normal satiety feedback mechanisms for highly processed foods that don't have the same feedback and systematically it's going to ultimately over time result in obesity so the question you after your ask yourself is how fat do you want to be if you just want to be a little bit fat then a little bit of that stuff you may be able to get away with it if you don't want to be overweight if you don't want to have the consequences of immunosuppression of health compromising that comes from that then stop it and you know adopt a whole plant food diet what you'll find eventually is after you're used to eating a whole point food diet it's not that much difficult it's from a discipline standpoint to avoid the other food factors it's just like a person that's been a recovered alcoholic for a long time doesn't have to put all of their energy every day into choosing not to drink they may still have to put extra energy into it but it doesn't take all of their waking moments when you first are trying to lose weight it can be all-encompassing the amount of energy it takes but eventually you adapt adopt better habits you Nura adapt to a healthier diet and now it doesn't take quite as much effort particularly if you put yourself in an environment that self-promoting well you know I agree with you I've followed an SOS free diet since about 2008 and you know I finally got my weight my cravings and food addictions under control I've never felt better have you found that it takes less energy per day on average now than it did eight years ago when you first were tightening up in your diet it's very easy now it's automatic yeah yeah that's but that's what my experience has been as well the longer you do it overall the easier it gets that doesn't mean though that if you're put in an environment of temptation it doesn't require you to put some extra energy in and the problem is most of the people we know are living in an environment of temptation they're living in a world designed to make them fat sick and miserable in a world where everybody wants to give them what they want not what they need so they go to work and there's temptation all around them and there's social conséquences there at home and they've got temptation all around them there are everywhere they go everything they do tends to try to reinforce poor behavior choices so it seems like it takes an inordinate of effort because it does but one of the things that happens is you can try to continue to improve your environment so there's less of that overwhelming temptation particularly when you're exhausted fatigued irritable or more vulnerable well you mentioned temptation and it's interesting because Robin is asking life you ever do you dr. Goldhamer ever creative cravings yeah cravings aren't really much of a problem in my experience and they haven't been for many years but now keep in mind I have a few advantages over the average person number one I started this diligently when I was 16 years old so I'm 61 years old now so what is that 4045 years that's that's a lot of years of doing it number two I work at The True North health center where we have fabulous chefs and staff and there's no temptations so it's whole plant food SOS free every day and since I'm at the center and eat you know up to 20 meals a week at the center there's obviously a lot less temptation because you know I work here and at home you know I live with dr. Jennifer Morano so there's not going to be any temptation at the house and so the only problem I might have is when I'm traveling and they're you know as you said AJ you know once you get used to this we have our little adaptive strategies and so honestly at my point it really doesn't take any energy or discipline or anything else it's just kind of what we do the only potential challenge is securing you know access to some calories you know sometimes you go to these health conferences and there's really there's really nothing healthy to eat you know because everything is highly processed fractionated food it might be vegan but it's certainly not healthy in and it's even worse when I speak at medical conferences which more recently I've been given the opportunity to do there are there serve and I know recently I was in Texas for diabetes conference physician specializing in treating diabetes and they had pulled pork sandwiches and chocolate cake and so I mean literally the only food or something that closely resembled food were really the table decorations I was really a remarkable and of course most of these physicians are overweight or obese and was interesting after my presentation I talked about some of the results that we've published in the scientific literature and the success and many of the doctors came over and were pointing out that you know one guy said you know I I've been in practice 25 years treating diabetics and I've never seen one get well they know that if a person is overweight and comes in and loses weight they don't think oh this patient must have adopted a whole plant food diet and begun an exercise and adequate sleep program they assume that this person may have colon cancer has developed an eating disorder or is it drug addict because sometimes their only experience that people losing weight and keeping it off is when they develop cancer develop an eating disorder or become a drug addict so they're initially going to be worried in ordering tasks consistent with what their experiences because the fact is under conventional medical care many of these conditions never get well it's not part of the paradigm they don't even think about people losing weight and keeping it off or normalizing their blood pressure blood sugar levels because given the advice that they're giving people following conventional medical advice they're promising you that will never happen you will never get well you will be overweight and sick for the rest of your life because what they're doing has nothing to do with getting rid of the causes of the reason why you've developed the over obesity and develop these disease of dietary excess and that's where the doctors at the true I'll Center try to approach it from a different paradigm our model is can you eliminate the cause of the problem so you can get well maintain normal weight blood pressure blood sugar levels and eliminate the need for medication and that's a very radical concept you actually see that happening we not only see it happening now we've done an increasingly effective job of publishing the results in Kirov uted scientific journals showing that it does happen it can happen safely and effectively but you have to be prepared to do you know radical things like eat well and exercise and sustain those behavior patterns long enough to be able to get the results and of course at True North health we also use medically supervised water only fasting where people are going on water fasts for as long as 40 days which you know definitely is considered radical but often an effective stepping stone to get people back to the basics of diet sleep and exercise and you know whether you fast you don't fast the key is getting on a health promoting diet lifestyle and you have to sustain it and it's difficult and that's just how it is there's nothing we can say to make it easy we can and tell you that it will get easier as you get well and you establish your favourite behavior parents but it's difficult that's why most people aren't going to do it because they'd rather you know die as a consequence if their behavior patterns rather than have to you know escape the pleasure trap of doing something because you know many of our colleagues accuse you and then me because I really do everything you say that we're making it too hard for people to be vegan that they're going to go back to animal products because it's ridiculous to tell people they shouldn't have sugar and salt yeah well I think they're right I think that in many respects what what our colleagues are saying is true it is much more difficult to not only have to give up your meat fish fowl eggs and your clerks but then also have to give up oil salt and sugar because at least now you know at least vegan isn't considered you know a bad thing as many people they wouldn't necessarily want to do it but they wouldn't mind terribly that you did it and they could see you know the arguments the support of the environment or the health potential health benefits you know that's become a little bit more acceptable now you see you know vegan options out there but SOS is a whole nother issue getting rid of salt oil and sugar in some ways is even more difficult because then you would have to actually shop and chop and make your own food because all the heated beated treat the chopped their vegan they have salt and chicken factors they they have more salt oil and sugar to try to quote um make up for the deficit and so the argument that's made by many people in the health arena is that our goal should be to help as many people as possible to convert as many people over to healthful living in terms of its because of its impact on the environment and all the tremendous benefits animal rights issues moral ethical spiritual and so their main concern is how can we help the most people possible and that's because many of these people are really good people and they you want to help a lot of people and they're very nice and kind and caring and all that yeah that's not me so my interest is not saving the world not that I wouldn't mind people do that I'm grateful that people are out there doing that work my only interest is really the patient in front of me what is that one individuals pattern that's gonna most likely get them and keep them well and so my focus is really on that and that's a much more you know narrow focus self-centered kind of if you will selfish motivation and I have believe that in that particular limited application the best advice is to give people to die if it's going to maximize their health and longevity and I believe that's a whole plant food SOS free diet but I think the diet that eliminates the addition of salt oil and sugar that's completely free of animal products and highly processed foods is the one that's most likely to result in health recovery maintenance and stabilization now the argument is well how much does a little bit make like couldn't they have just a little bit of this and a little bit of that and that would make it easier to get people to do it we can have a broader audience and the answer is yes that might be true at Health Center though we tend to see the people that you know if they really got thriving health doing that little bit of this a little bit that they wouldn't necessarily be coming to the Trinity Health Center they're coming to us because they've tried everything and they still aren't quite where they want to be or they're healthy but they really want to stay that way they're particularly interested in maximizing long-term outcome and so they're willing to give up a little bit of this a little bit that in exchange for the long term potential benefit now if we're doing actually some research coming up next year that I'm really excited about because it's looking at biomarkers that predict health in healthy people other words we already know and we've published a bunch of data showing if you have high blood pressure diabetes if you've got lymphoma cancer whatever you can do fasting and a whole plant food SOS free diet and recover your health we've shown that we demonstrated that but what about in healthy people do they have to still eat this really strict diet and exercise and sleep patterns or is it really that beneficial to a do preventative fasting etc so the way we're going to try to answer that question is looking at biomarkers that predict health and immunity so in healthy people there's differences too for example not everybody responds the same to exposure to various organisms for example the the influenza viruses or The Cove advises or these other things that we get exposed to although it's one may affect how vulnerable you are to getting infected more importantly it may affect on how well you recover you notice not everybody gets these infections died some people died some people recover some people have serious consequences so what is it that makes the difference in the person that recovers well or maybe doesn't even isn't even aware they've been exposed versus somebody that has devastating consequences well you know that's being studied right now quite actively as far as the current epidemic that's or pandemic that we're dealing with but you know these issues have been ongoing you know basically forever in fact if you think about it even this year I think influenza is still killed I think more people than cold it may have or it's close so the point is all of these different organisms infection including bacterial infections when people become exposed to them their immune system is going to determine largely how they respond in fact in code I understand that one of the reasons some people get very serious consequences isn't actually an overreaction of the immune system or inappropriate reaction very very much like you see in autoimmune disease and so you know we know that in autoimmune diseases things like rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis and related conditions things like asthma eczema psoriasis that the immune system is responsible for the symptoms that you're experiencing it's actually your immune system attacking your own tissues and there's different theories about why some people manifest those diseases and others don't they include explanations like genetic predisposition things like got leakage where people may absorb proteins into the body and systematically vulnerable people may get at this overreaction well what do you do about it conventional medicine says well let's shut down the immune system let's take steroids or medications that suppress the immune response and sometimes those can be very clinically effective short term it's almost like a dream because the symptoms go down but then it can become a nightmare because it turns out you need your immune system and when you suppress it with powerful drugs long term there can be consequences our approach in autoimmune disease is very different we're trying to eliminate the contributing factors that might contribute to the gut leakage the free radicals the reactive molecules with dietary change and with fasting and then get people on diets that don't tend to promote that type of response so it's not been studied yet in terms of kovat 19-under that's what effect diet has on prevention getting affected or what effect it has on recovery but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the people that are going to do the best overall are going to be the people that are the healthiest and so what our research is going to be looking at is identifying those biomarkers that predict resistance and health and seeing whether or not diet and lifestyle and fasting actually augment that and help help that we know it does in sick people and what we'd like to do is find out if it works as well as we think it should work in healthy people so that's kind of next area focuses wonderful there's so many comments and if I don't read them they disappear so if you wouldn't mind I'd like to read a few of them heidi says you are a brilliant doctor you have helped me so much over the years thank you thanks for all you do and have done for us and then Robin says I've read the pleasure trap and visited true north after great experience best doctors in the world and there's more nice comments so I'll read them as they come along yeah so let's hear some of the critical comments though the people's it's a girl that's where the interesting stuff gets in with us I feel like I'm full of hot air there is one I was I wanted to I was actually typing back to the person who made it say make sure she was talking about you I don't talk about me or both of us she goes you are encouraging disordered eating okay I'd like to hear more about that if the definition of disordered eating is eating a whole plant food SOS free diet and I completely agree because we're definitely encouraging eating something that's very different than the norm it's a radical diet radical I believe comes from the word Radhika's which means root or cause we're trying to get rid of the reasons why people get into these issues to begin with and that is you know fooling the mechanisms that normally regulate proper feeding behavior you know it's interesting with animals if you give animals ad libitum exposure to food and it's whole natural foods they get to a certain weight and stabilize but if you put these same chemicals in the animal child the salt will and sugar they will systematically overrate and develop obesity and so you can turn that on and off not that you'd want to do that but you know using rodents and you know other animals they've done these studies where they give the animal free choice you know can eat what at once and it will just like we do choose to eat the more highly concentrated foods is that's how we're set up we're not set up for an environment where these types of temptations would normally be present and by the way the animals will also become alcoholics and they'll also become drug addicts so it's not like we're exempt from you know the laws of physics or thermodynamics or of nature thank you so I just one more time talk about whether or not were like this person believes we're creating eating disorders because our suggestions are so restrictive I recently appeared in on the local news I did a cooking demo and they had told me that it was to promote you know the vegan diet and you know I cook your way SOS free and they told me the host was just diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and not to use any sugar and I said well that's not going to be a problem because I don't use sugar I only use for it so the host was very excited because then he could taste what I was making and so there were a lot of people on Facebook ethnical beacons that were just bashing me because by saying and I wasn't telling everybody else to eat not each other I was just saying in this recipe and it's great it doesn't have sugar like how how what a terrible vegan I am because I stopped by not eating sugar I'm making it hard for people to eat and wait can I just say one more thing the reason I'm asking this is because I think it's important then I'm not really telling other people what to do I'm just saying what I did and what works for me but do you really believe that by recommending no boy no sugar and no salt it's making it harder because the people that I know that have left veganism they haven't left it because they couldn't put brown sugar on their oatmeal or salt on their broccoli they left it to go back to eating animal products so an answer your question I do think it's more difficult for people initially to get in their head the idea that now they're not only giving up animal foods but they're giving up all their processed addictive foods as well let's go back to using alcohol as an example if you tell alcoholics look you cannot drink at all no alcohol nothing you get nothing do you think most alcoholics are like all excited about that what if you told alcohol it's okay just drink beer and wine okay and you'll be fine wouldn't that be an easier message to tell people the problem is we know it doesn't work because when people keep drinking it still ends up cascading into a problem so yes if we could tell people well let's just have a little of this a little of that don't be too hard on yourself except yourself the way you are and everything will be fine that would be great and if it worked I'd be all for it honestly it would be so much easier not to have to be you giving people this rigid advice the problem my experience now doing this 36 years with people is it doesn't work for many people or at least the people that I see and so what does work when I look back like who was successful who lost weight kept it off who you know 10 years 20 years in fact I just got a guy AJ who's coming in 36 year follow-up so I saw him 36 years ago and he was 34 years old and he just turned 70 and he told me the same story I keep hearing over and over again from these patients is yeah all my buddies are falling apart and they're all you know having trouble and Here I am 36 years later coming in for health promoting you know short preventive fast and doing great and so now I'm seeing you know decades of this I don't see people coming back in saying oh you know I got to that SOS free diet and then I developed an eating disorder and disordered behavior and I'm having trouble that's not what the experience has been in fact quite the opposite but we do see a lot of people that struggle you know with making these transitions but once people make those transitions I think most of them would say things similar to what you said it's actually easier now than it was then um and as far as we don't know because the data is you know we haven't really done good data looking at adherence and and what translates to the best results effect is if you look at most adherence data none of the stuff works very well a significant percentage of backsliding occurs including by the way in vegan diet compliance so what's interesting is that and as you said it's not because they aren't eating sugar all and thought goodness knows most vegans are on diets that are higher in sugar and salt even in some of their meeting counterparts but there you still have about the same percentage of the population that are actually doing a vegan diet now that as far as I've been able to tell as you have in past years or decades and so a lot of people will you know start doing a vegan diet that oftentimes will backslide into their animal-based foods and the same things true course with salt and sugar though maybe they all start trying to make changes but they have difficulty with compliance and so as I mentioned you know next year's focus study is is on this issue of adherence and biomarker changes that occur in healthy people so we do want to answer this question is what is the best strategy and we're likely to find it'll depend on the person some people are betting with a more strict approach other people may be more successful with a more flexible approach and dr. Lisle talks about this a lot about emphasizing the importance of the ego trap and versus the pleasure trap so you have two factors that can be in competition with each other you know the pleasure trap is pretty simple if you have a little you're gonna want a lot you know we argue stop it and you know certainly with alcoholism it's been shown that the most effective strategy for managing alcoholism is to just not drink and I argue that that may be true for people with weight loss issues too it may be easier to just stop it than it is to tease yourself and constantly have to deal with these issues but there the other side is the ego trap the idea that you know if you try to deny people everything they may have a rebounding effect and go for everything and this argue that argument is that even if it's not the ideal diet it's better it's an improvement and it'll result in better adherence but I don't know that that's been proven yet that allowing people a little of this and a little of that in the long run results in better compliance and that's that's we do have to do a study to look at that and we and we're in the process of doing that to our true north health foundation I always tell people do the least restrictive program you can do that gives you the results you want but based on the even numbers it doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people being more flexible like you're saying so we did a we just recently did a query that to our patient population 1,100 people complete completed a detailed personality profile and what we're looking at there we have the data on those patients to tell who was successful for example at long-term weight maintenance so people that have lost weight and kept it off and what we're in the process right now we have a statistician analysis is looking is there a different than personality amongst the people that lost weight and caped it off versus those that lost weight but regained it because what we're trying because they're all been given the same recommendations education and support we're trying to determine what are the variables that determine success here are things we think we might find we might find that people that have supportive environments where they go home to supportive mates and and family may help we believe that people that engage in ongoing education and inspiration you know when they do things like your weight loss management programs these types of things that continue educate inspire themselves we believe that that may help we believe that people that adopt district health promoting diet lifestyle may do better than people that don't but we don't know that for sure that's why we've got to do some research thank you you had mentioned alcohol Lisa asks what effect does alcohol have if any on the immune system and I would also ask you if coffee has an effect yeah you know those are really good questions there's a bit of literature out on alcohol and immunosuppressive effects I don't know the literature immunologically on coffee this is stuff that actually our team is researching right now looking at you know what are the specific effects what are the markers that we can measure with so I really can't answer that question definitively but what I'll tell you what I suspect I suspect that coffee has a profound effect on the immune system but it may be indirect it has a it's a powerful nervous system stimulant it can disrupt sleep quality so the coffee you drink even in the morning can have an effect on the evening and disruption of sleep quality has been shown to have a profound effect on amia logical function so anything that gets you from getting into non REM deep sleep and getting recuperative sleep is probably going to turn out to be detrimental you say you've been following the SOS free diet for 46 years so you were 16 you're older than me I didn't hear about this until 2008 it was actually before I even met you I heard about it in lecture the dr. Esselstyn gate and when I Jeff Nelson's healthy lifestyle expose so how does this how does this would have been 1975 how how did you even hear about this and why is a 16 year old would you think to do such a what many people are calling an extreme diet yeah well for me I was healthy but wanted to be healthier because I wanted to be dr. Lyle and playing basketball and he used to beat me terribly so I adopted I read Herbert Shelton and other books that said oh if you adopt a health promoting diet without these refined carbohydrates it would make you healthier and I thought well if I get healthier that might give me an edge and I did but unfortunately it failed it was a complete failure because dr. Lyle adopted the same kind of dye and he still beats me badly every time we play so for me it was a failure but it was a motivating factor and I got interested in this I met my uncle he inspired me he was a physician when I was 16 I had decided that I was going to go into this area as a profession and I told my family dad at my 16th birthday party actually and he said that I shouldn't do that that it was the worst thing that he's ever heard of that nobody in this family should go to a doctor like that and that certainly not become a doctor like that in fact he said better I should be a communist spy and so when my father took me inside he said son I don't know anything about this alternative medicine business but he said anything that makes your uncle that angry and mad it can't be bad so good luck to you son you stick to your to your guns and so I did I got involved with it and you know it didn't it didn't necessarily help my basketball very much but it did allow me I think in part to keep playing basketball so now here I am at 61 and I can still go out there and compete and certainly I noticed as the years go by the players I'm playing against get younger and younger and so I got the ultimate compliment just before the pandemic shut down the gyms I was playing in there was a new guy that showed up and they said pointing at me they said just don't let that old man shoot so what's good that's people are saying nice things about how good you look and how good your skin is I'm guessing you probably don't have skincare routine it's just your diet I do I wash my face with soap and water every night so I wash I do shower and bathe and so I think that is a health care routine you know I don't use any product but you know whatever right do you have any advice for somebody living without a Coleman without a colon yeah when you have a have to bypass your coin you have to adopt a very healthy diet in order to minimize the negative consequences so we recommend a whole plant food diet that's free of salt oil and sugar in that case and sometimes you have to modify the food factors even further to adapt to the anatomical limitations but the the basic dietary pattern doesn't doesn't change in general what about for somebody there's half gastric bypass Debbie saying because they have often have absorption issues yeah that's a bigger even bigger problem because when you've had these bypass surgeries sometimes you can't eat the volume of low density foods comfortably and so you have to use a little bit more concentrated foods which can make it more difficult to regulate caloric intake however fortunately even the cooked and more concentrated versions of whole plant food diets work remarkably well and so people are still able to sustain optimal weight in health but it may be a little bit more difficult because they don't have the luxury of eating larger volumes sometimes of the solid material and the other material they have to modify the diet or maybe process those suits into blended salads or make another other adaptations because of the anatomical compromises that have been instituted in their systems Thank You Suzanne ordered pure encapsulation b12 which is what you sell it true north and wanted to know is it okay to take breast feeding yes b12 we recommend a thousand micrograms of methyl cobalamin a day it could be any reliable brand it doesn't have to be there's nothing you know it has to be one brand or another the one thing I like about pure encapsulations is they have a they're very vegan supportive and that they use like they don't use gelatin capsules they'll use vegan capsules further encapsulated products they also have liquids which I like because when you figure out that cost per dose it's cheaper and so they have a liquid b12 they have the encapsulated the vegan encapsulated twelve so there's a lot of options same thing with D they have the regular d3 from lanolin which is basically wool which is you know an animal probably don't have to kill the animal but it is you know derived from wool but they also have a lichen derived vitamin D liquid which is comes from lichen so it's more expensive I think because of the you know whoever owns the patent on it but nonetheless it's a hundred percent vegan version of vitamin D so there's a number of reasons why we've chosen to you it recommend that particular company but I don't know that there's any problem with the reliability of major brands for methylcobalamin or b12 you can get the you know lots of different options there thank you so what do you think of some of these newer vegan doctors saying in promoting vegan keto they're saying that oil really doesn't make heart disease worse or even caused it and I know what I feel what do you think about you know diet well I think a vegan keto diet would probably be less damaging than a conventional keto diet we wouldn't recommend the Dead dr. Atkins diet or something like that to anybody so if you are trying to do a keto diet let's say for example you wanted to keep the person in ketosis for whatever reason whether you thought that was going to be helpful in cancer management or they had seizure disorders or some reason why you wanted to alter the physiology the person to burn fat rather than sugar you'd certainly want to try to do it in a vegan format but you know that's a rare exception most people are not going to thrive as well on a ketogenic diet long term as they would on a whole plant food diet now you want to remember that sometimes what's good for short-term isn't necessarily sustainable long term so you might be able to argue well if I do this vegan keto diet it helps me lose weight temporarily or it helps me deal with these symptoms temporarily and that may be true but it may not necessarily be true that it's a long term health promoting sustainable diet I'm also the things you do sometimes to maximize athletic performance aren't necessarily the same things you do to maximize health so that what might make you a bigger stronger lineman isn't necessarily going to be the thing that protects your heart or protects you from cancer in the long run so again if we're talking about long term health promotion then I would not recommend a ketogenic diet even a vegan ketogenic diet unless there were some extraordinary circumstance where you know that individual it was determined that that was in their best at least short-term health interest thank you Janna says yes you can and the faster you do it the sooner you get to where you want to go and it's just like a band-aid you know some people it's better to just take it off and other people want to peel it off slowly and so I think there's a certain personal preference but as long as you do the transition say in a week or two I don't really mind if you take that extra few days great so do you believe that there is any particular food or category of food that human beings absolutely must eat 100 percent for health longevity there are there are many people that feel that if we do not eat nuts we'll get heart disease or stroke and if we don't eat beans we won't live long like the Blue Zones but there are people even cluding people there's almost 500 people watching live right now that have certain digestive issues like SIBO and IBS and they try they can't eat legumes other people can't eat nuts either from allergies or because they're a food trigger for their food addictions and yet they are they feel like they're being and nut shamed or failed vegans because they can't eat certain foods do we have to eat particular foods or can we just eat food well I think that there is no one particular class of foods that has to be included to ensure optimum health if there was a class I would say it was most critical it would be our our vegetable foods so you know the whether it's raw solid materials cooked vegetable materials greens whether it's the starchy vegetables the Hubbard squash the butternut squash the sweet because you know somewhere in there there's going to be a selection of foods that hopefully will make up the bulk of both the quantity and quality of your diet but nuts if you if you don't do well and that's say for example you have allergies to nuts it's because you nuts you're not going to prevent you from being able to achieve and maintain long-term optimum health for example some people that can't eat nuts made you okay with seeds they might be able to do some flaxseed or something other people don't do well with seeds they might be able to deal with nuts and people don't do with nuts or seeds they can get the raw materials they need from other sources so as far as fruit I have patients that don't use fruit at all on their diets I think it limits the diet in the sense that fruits are kind of cool it's nice to have the variety of textures taste colors flavors but if you don't do well with that because you have particular problems with blood sugar level and you haven't had the ability to fast or overcome that yet you may have to exclude from your diet not the end of the world in terms of beans if people don't do well with beans they can get rid of beans and still be healthy it's unfortunate because beans add a lot of affordable high quality and nutrition but if you're not able to digest them then it doesn't mean you're not gonna be able to achieve optimum health so the biggest problem I would have would be a patient that wasn't able to eat vegetable material that would mean you'd have to put them on a diet that was you know using these others foods exclusively I think that in the long run they probably wouldn't do as well as they would if we can incorporate vegetables as the bulk of the diet so I guess my answer your question would be yeah I guess vegetable material would be the most critical component thank you bruce says what do you think about him an all potato diet there's a guy that did it for a year and lost a lot of weight but he I think he was also drinking alcohol well I don't know who who they were specifically referring to but I have effect I had a patient that did diet only for extended periods of time did very well on it I wouldn't recommend a mono diet on any substance even something as nutritious as potatoes indefinitely because you will get a variety of nutrient base by incorporating vegetable materials in with whatever your primary source of starch is it could be potatoes it could be sweet potatoes but I would still include a couple pounds a day of Veronica vegetable materials in order to optimize maximum quantity and quality of nutrients and diversity so could you do it absolutely you know people people have done it and and basically anything you do other than get 2,000 cars a day from greasy slimming fatty dead decaying flesh is likely to insult in some kind of systemic improvement but I get a little frustrated people think well it's a lot better than X Y or Z and that may be true but something being less bad doesn't actually rise at the level of being good if you want to talk about what's good whole plant food diet fruits vegetables grains legumes nuts and seeds in some kind of combination enough to meet your needs what's not good animal food meat fish fowl eggs dairy products also and sugar Hollywood fractionated processed foods so we have kind of quote good and we have bad and the less bad and the more good healthier you're going to be thank you Liz says she recently tried an expensive fasting mimicking diet she said she felt very unwell that the food was disgusting and she was constipated and nauseous do you think these are good no I do advocate intermittent fasting for people I think everybody should fast every day for between 12 and 16 hours so what that means is I suggest people not eat three hours before they go to bed at least that they don't have to eat too early in the morning so that there's a period of 12 to 16 hours of fasting each and every day we believe that the cumulative effect of these brief periods of fasting adds up to biological changes consistent with health promotion the other possibility is that by limiting our feeding when do we mean there we may reduce some of the excess over eating that occurs even on healthy diets just narrowing the feeding window seems to be a helpful tool for some maintaining optimum health and weight regardless of which diet they choose to be eating so that is something I advocate then there's in there there are also periods where people will limit caloric intake for 5 or 7 days maybe by taking the substance that's produced for them and it's a product that's sold or maybe eliminates a raw fruit and vegetables only and and these programs I think for some people can be helpful it make helping them make transitions away from their the conventional eating program facilitate short term weight loss but these are not designed a sustainable diets you're not going to go on these products indefinitely and I think we still need to do a whole lot more research to determine how helpful are these product at helping long-term success you know weight change and they may be and that's fine I don't have a fundamental in principle argument against them although I would say that from my viewpoint it's all interesting that if you just adopt the whole plan for the SOS free diet and you're a male you're going to lose about 3 pounds a week on average and if you're a female about 2 pounds a week on average whether you buy substances or not so I don't know that it has to be complicated it can actually be done pretty simply if you want to facilitate additional weight loss or just adopt a healthful diet and show some discipline over time and you're going to ultimately achieve your weight goals as well Thank You sunny wants to know if you can ever reverse all stones without surgery well gallstones are frequently passing in people so I mean when you say reverse it you want to reverse the formation of new stones stones that have already been formed may or may not break down or may or may not pass and when they do pass they can be rather uncomfortable we see that in fasting a lot of times stones that have already been formed may get purged during the fasting process that could be one of the many what I call entertaining symptoms that can sometimes come up during fasting but we know that dietary change can result in physiological changes that alter this formation of new stones so people that are frequent stone formers oftentimes stop forming new stones once they make adequate diet lifestyle changes sweet hygiene yeah you know getting enough sleep is an important issue and to get enough quantity and quality of sleep you need to sleep in a cool dark and quiet place and you need to make sure that you're not being disrupted by your mates or your paths or anything else you're ringing phones or your other factors so you try to create a cool dark and quiet place that allows you to sleep so long that you can wake spontaneously feeling refreshed and that's usually a good sign if you can wake feeling refreshed that's probably a good indication that you got the quantity and quality of sleep you need it's going to range from anywhere from six to eight hours or more in some cases depending on how you live you want to sleep less then eat well people that eat well don't need quite as much sleep as people that don't um don't have stress you know or you know don't watch so much news every day or whatever it is you have to do reduce your stress input engaging enough but not too much physical activity develop effective interpersonal relationships if you do all these things the need for sleep may be somewhat reduced compared to those people that don't have the benefit of those healthful habits but you still need to get enough sleep that you can wake and feel refreshed if you're not that means the quality of corner of your sleep is inadequate you're not going to be as healthy as you would if you if you fix that problem thank you Jim Monte says I know SOS free is low-fat but is it you haven't mentioned that and asks can you still be not the skinniest version of yourself but still be healthy well I don't think it is actually technically a low-fat diet that we're advocating because if you we're limiting for example in people that are able to eat nuts and seeds we limit them on average to about an ounce a day so it's the 1:1 food we do portion control because it is a food that is highly concentrated and sometimes we'll people overeat on and so in even some of the higher fat vegetable foods avocado and things again we recommend portion control but even with portion control if you eat up to an ounce of nuts or seeds a day or half an avocado you're going to find that the percentage of calories from fat in the diet is around 15 to 18 percent of calories from fat whereas people advocating low fat diets dr. McDougall dr. Esselstyn and others for management of cardiovascular disease are advocating ten or twelve percent of calories from fat so this because they'll exclude nuts avocado other higher fat animal foods entirely from the diet so although I believe that we're going to find that these lower fat whole plant food SOS free diets will result in equal efficacy in reversal cardiovascular disease as an even stricter version we can't prove that yet nobody's done that research the research says are people like Pritikin and Esselstyn that are using no concentrated vegetable fats and obviously no oils and other things in the diet as well so I would absolutely agree that the research supporting my contention has not yet been completed however my clinical observations have been that people adopting this diet that is lower in fat that is 15 to 80 percent of calories do seem to reverse the chronic artery disease and do seem to do well in terms of my unproven clinical observations and I believe that I'll end up being proven correct on that but you know that data is not available yet Thank You Steven asks is there iodine adults because according to pranaam etre he says it's she's not showing any iodine I don't know if there's iodine in dulse because I don't know that the the chronometer I don't think it's things zero I don't know that it's measured there but there is an other sea vegetables particularly kelp is exceptionally high in iodine and even your other you know sea vegetables are thought to contain significant amounts of iodine so small amounts of these materials if they're incorporated in the diet would almost certainly include increased iodine intake the other thing is sea vegetable I mean plant vegetables that are grown on the coast tend to have iodine concentrations well it's only foods grown in the middle of the country where the oceans never covered it that are iodine deficient so I think that most very diets are going to have enough iodine intake although you could certainly consider supplementation of that if you were concerned about that thank you Monica says what happened to your uncle like how does he feel about you now well my uncle was very stubborn man he taught at the VA he knew everything about anything as far as he was concerned he wouldn't review for example our high blood pressure data when we did our first study said he wouldn't look at it until it was published in a peer-reviewed journal couldn't bother wasting his time and then finally we got our first paper accepted for publication in purview Journal two months before it came out he died of a massive heart attack and my mother insisted that he died just so he wouldn't have to admit that he was wrong that's hilarious so what I can't we did the question go I'm sorry I lost the person's name but she wanted to know what do you do about children vegan children but they don't like a wife her Lola what do you do for your vegan kids who don't love a variety of veggies yeah we just have meat more of the veggies that they will eat and continue to ask them to experiment every once in a while with just a little taste and after over time often times they find that their tastes will change and they'll develop a broader appreciation for it most importantly if you want kids to enjoy vegetable stop feeding them all the sugar oil and salt because once they're off all the SOS free highly processed foods particularly once they actually get some appetite though and all the choices available our whole natural foods they tend to start gravitating more towards whole natural food so the problem is we've turned our children into little addicts and so they don't like the less stimulating effects because they're addicted to the artificial stimulation that comes from the highly processed foods and so you know you have to help your kids break those addictions and that's very difficult you know especially if you're not setting a good example you can bet your kids will be falling you're modeling well you know you had mentioned earlier that it's so hard for not for you and me you know I don't think anything bothers you you have a very unique personality you're very stable and calm but sometimes fathers need the way other people talk about us like that I'm this like Goldhammer light that you literally you and I are the only people that can do this diet I here at Doug Doug and Jen saying on their podcast all the time and I love them just like I love you and they're my friends like you are but I have worked with thousands of people now you've probably work with exponentially thousands more and yes it is difficult but I have success in at least hundreds of people that I could tell you about now yeah so there's no question that this is a very difficult approach and it's awesome in my mind no effective it's also a very effective approach but not everybody is willing to pay the price for maximum effectiveness and so you know each individual has to decide what is their goal what's their motivation I have to say I found there are some people that are much easier to work with than others I find one of the best patients are people that are properly motivated and the best motivation is pain the ability and fear of death so people that come in that are in a lot of pain that are you know really miserable they want to blow their brains out because their life isn't worth living that sometimes makes a better patient than a person that has a relatively minor issue the problem with those people is once they get well their motivation pain debilitating fear of death begins to reduce and so sometimes we do have recidivism issues until they get back into paint ability and depth other people that are good are people that are doing it intellectually they're doing it because just they've done the math and they figured out what they want and they're willing to do whatever it's going to take to get there but for a lot of people they're living their lives really more emotionally not so much analytically or intellectually or so they want what you know the quickest fastest easiest not what necessarily what has the best long-term game and so I think that for those individuals this seems overwhelming and honestly it may be I don't know I don't work with those individuals I mean honestly most of those kind of people would never come to the True North health center because they look at our material and you know run away screaming so we have a opportunity to work with the highly motivated people that are willing to basically do anything in order to recover their health because they're they want to be around and they want to get out of pain and they want to live their life and so it makes it a real joy because those people even though sometimes they have to struggle with you know recovery they're willing to put in the hard work that it takes to get and stay well and for the other people that you know not getting a chance to work with those people I don't know how they have the patience honestly because it's pretty frustrating to know what to do to get somebody well but they don't want to do it you know or they do it and they get well but then they won't keep doing it that's really frustrating and so I found a way to deal with the frustration is just work with the people that want to actually get well and pay the price and so we've set our stitched our clinic up in such a way that we tend to filter out and collect those people that are willing to do that by one they have to consider the possibility for example a fast I mean most people they would never consider fasting I think that what just sounds insane and then they also have to realize that they come to true north health it's a whole plant food SOS free diet there is no meat fish fowl eggs dairy products coffee alcohol they'd have to be in a place where for days or weeks they wouldn't be have access to any of that that's enough to get rid of a lot of other people now the people that are left are usually you know our patients the thousand people you're we admit it true north health I think is one of our strongest attributes the doctors that work there because it's the first time they've ever had people that can actually get well and are willing to do this kind of approach but even with those people they still it's still a challenge because they have to sometimes go home and then the temptations of the home environment obviously we have significant recidivism and what we're trying to do right now is figure out what can we do to support people better so that when they go home they're able to sustain these roles and I'm really happy to say we've made huge progress there for example you yourself know that your program has been effective in many of our patients at helping them sustain long-term weight loss because they've been able to get the that not just the education but the psychological support that comes along in engaging in group activities where they're not the only one in the world trying to do this um we also have companies like momma says and leave side that have been willing to offer SOS free options a food to their clients and they're finding increasing numbers of people that are interested in taking advantage of that and that reduces the channel factors because they can get whether it's freeze-dried the problem with it or its mama says fresh ready to eat me that they don't have to put all the energy in every single day of making every single meal that's been very helpful and I think it's going to show we'll be able to demonstrate improve compliance and then also all this web-based education and support I think is going to turn out to be helpful too and we're going to be launching next week it's through the Children's Health Foundation a phone coaching service where people are able to get affordable access to attending doctors that aren't idiots they can you know get support ongoing encouragement and information through web-based systems you know and so we've got we've missed the bullet purchased the hardware and software and we're about to launch a program that's going to give people access at home - for example our ongoing lecture programs at the center video library that we're putting together as well as direct access to our coaches and our doctors on a on an affordable basis so I'm optimistic that we'll be able to improve adherence and compliance in a broader range of people but it'll still probably be a relatively small part of the population that's willing to do what it takes to actually get and stay well thank you there was a really funny question or comment I this goes very fast so I apologize do you feel like you inherited some of your uncle starkness for better or worse I think I may very well have gotten a little bit of that stubbornness although yeah I don't I I think I got more from him was was inspiration not so much genetics I think I was just so inspired by his vehement and Hagin ISM to this entire approach that that really piqued my interest and I think that my father his support in recognizing that same observation was actually really encouraging so I think Betty says what's wrong with meat and fish maybe we can just suggest you well you know meat fish Valley's terrific to all share one common thing these animal products all had suffered from a concentration biological concentration issue animals get exposed to the same kind of nonsense that we do in the environment even more so because we put stuff in their feed antibiotics and pesticides and chemicals and residues and that material builds up day after day after week after month inside the animal when you kill and eat the animal or drink its products you get its entire lifetime accumulation of toxicity so at a calorie of plant food compared to a calorie of animal food you could hide between two and a thousand times the concentration of various substances in animal food compared to plant food because of this biological concentration issue animals it's also really high in protein and fat Nexis fat and protein are responsible for our difficulties we believe with cardiovascular disease increased risk of cancer and other problems some people make arguments that the animal products are an important threat to the environment because their impact on global warming et cetera and some people make arguments about moral ethical and spiritual consequences they're taking sense your creatures torchic them all their life and then killing them and eating them when it's not necessary so you can make a lot of different kinds of arguments about animal products but my basic argument is the more animal food you eat the more compromise your health tends to be and so you know I just think that in this environment the best strategy is to avoid meat fish fowl eggs and dairy products whether it's moral ethical spiritual environmental or health all of those arguments I think are pretty compelling when it comes to avoiding animal foods terrific Linda wants to know is a type 1 diabetic could she do a juice passage for North because they tend to a water fast right many of our there are many patients that water fasting may not be appropriate and so we would do either a modified feeding regime or juice fasting you know we put a program together for each person about 15 percent of the people that come to us are not coming have nothing to do with fasting it may be modified fasting or juice fasting or other other programs and so I'm not I don't think we have a preconceived idea for any given individual with the best approaches sometimes it's not fasting at all and one of the things I'd mentioned is we do offer a free service which is pretty cool I think is that if a person goes to our website at health-promoting comm and completes the registration forms I offer a free phone conversation with me to discuss whether what kind of candidate they might be whether it be fasting or dietary changes or things they can do that they're not doing and I'll also refer you if it's if you aren't able to access the center we may be able to refer you to somebody closer to you or we also have this phone coaching business now where our attendings are available or over the phone to provide meaning support and get into the details in the weeds of the specific diet lifestyle changes you make but as far as the general screening call you can do that without any cost and I'll be happy to speak with you just complete the registration give me a call that's great I think this person turned in a little bit late because she asks is it better to have sea salt or iodized salt yeah it would be better to avoid adding salt to the diet whether it's iodized or not we want to avoid salt because of its effect on passive overeating because of its effect on blood pressure and fluid retention and generally all the salt you're going to need is going to be contained in the high volume of vegetable based materials that we're going to be recommending that you eat so you shouldn't have to add refined salt any more than you'd have to add refined sugar or refined oil into your diet great and here's the question on flour isn't it just as bad in terms of caloric density and people with food addictions it's not quite as bad as pure sugar you know flours about 15 in our cars that pound sugars 1800 carbs a pound but clearly flour price if your goal is weight loss you're going to need to minimize the use of flour products if you want to maximize the weight loss of weight so if you wanted to eat rice you might be able to do that but if you turn that rice into flour and then bake products up with it you're going to significantly increase its chloric density and so it may not be a health compromising factor in and of itself but the effect of the refine processing may influence your ability to maintain weight loss so for people trying to lose weight we would try to minimize flour products on the other hand let's say you had people you're trying to gain weight or maybe you're feeding kids you're trying to get more calories into them then we might go the other way we might use some of these like rice pasta or other more processed food products to increase Clarks density so they're so full that when they go to school there's not much room left for those federally subsidized lunch programs they're trying to shove into the kids thank you dr. Volterra we've gone an hour I want to respect your time but there's still a few questions would you like to go a few minutes longer or would you like to really back another time thank you so there's a question and you don't have to answer this in its entirety only because I know you're going to be a guest on the GI health summit but is we would fasting help Zeebo well you know it's interesting with this is it kind of a not a new condition but a new frequent diagnosis the idea of intestinal overgrowth and I'm going to go into the in the GI Semin I'll talk a lot about this in detail but there is no question that one of the benefits of fasting may be actually giving the body a chance to reboot that whole gut microbiome you know you have this five pounds of bacteria living in your gut maybe a thousand different strains and it it I we believe that we're going to find that fasting is one of the most effective ways of giving the body a chance to recalibrate that microbiome we've done a study it's actually completed but the data is not available yet including to me as far as the results are concerned so we're maybe by the time of the summit we'll have the results of that study where we took 21 subjects and we did fecal analysis before and after long-term fasting we did it on 21 subjects and I believe it'll be the first data ever to look at this in long-term fasting bit so we're I'm just anxious hoping that we'll have the data available soon this is an interesting question that I've heard before from Rachelle because actually there was actually an article in I don't know how I got subscribed to the New York Times because I don't even read the paper or watch the news but for some reason I'm getting it and there was an article that the younger people that were dying from Kovac 19 tended to be overweight or obese whether they had pre-existing health conditions and Rochelle writes I'm terrified that if you get infected with the virus that if you are obese the outcome would most likely not be good I cannot change this overnight and the stress of this makes me want to overeat more and and so what I'm hearing dr. Goldhamer and that's why I'm doing this show I've been going live one to three times a day just to kind of help people you know with just feel better and give them something to think about other than the virus but I'm seeing there's a group of people that are using this time really to clean up their act to to clean their environment to learn some batch of cooking and then there's another group of people that are like I'm so anxious and depressed I'm just going to eat all the crap okay so let's be clear that yes risk factors include age obesity diabetes high blood pressure in fact if you think of metabolic syndrome all the things that contribute to metabolic syndrome are the things that all not surprisingly increase your risk of having a bad outcome with any infection including apparently kovat however I want you to think about this let's use diabetes as a model because we have data on that if you are a diabetic and you go on a whole plant food SOS tree diet you start losing weight and your blood sugar starts coming down what's interesting is your blood sugar will I often normalize long before all that weight is off I don't believe it's just the weight that's the problem it's the diet that makes you fat that's the problem not just the fact that you're storing some extra reserves in the term in form of fat and the day you change the diet that makes you fat you start losing your fat and it turns out you mobilize your fat in inverse proportion to its importance of the body so visceral fat itself we've done a study recently with fasting we found that this real fat was selectively and preferentially mobilized during fasting compared to even aggressive weight-loss dietary changes so we know that the body has the ability to address these most health compromising fat components and so don't assume you have to lose all your fat to reduce your risk factor it's likely that your risk factors are going to be reduced dramatically literally within days or weeks of making these dietary changes and so yes it's true that getting close to optimum weight is probably going to be correlate with optimum health but the elevated risk factors associated with obesity are almost certainly going to be turn out to be tied to the elevated risk factor associated with the diet that keeps you fat so if you want to stress about something stress about the diet you're eating not about how much fat reserves you may still have residual in your body and if you use the stress to motivate yourself to make improve dietary change likely you're going to get a significant reduced risk factor should you become infected hopefully you'll be one of the 85% that don't even have any untoward effects and even if you have untoward effects you'll be the ninety three percent of all people and you know even higher percentage of people that don't have pre-existing conditions that survive and thrive post infection so remember the vast majority of people are able to go through this process of infection with the more current viruses that were exposed to without having terrible consequences the problem is if you even even even think about this let's say you're over 80 and you're a smoker and you have risk factors even though is the majority of those people survive and recover so it's you know an unfortunate minority of patients particularly people that are vulnerable that have these pre-existing conditions are the ones that seem to suffer the most so that doesn't mean it's not serious and it doesn't mean that it may not be younger people that have serious consequences and that's true by the way with influenza and even other bacterial infections you know occasionally you have people for whatever reason genetic predisposition who knows that have bad reactions so certainly it makes sense to try to minimize exposure that's why you know we use hand-washing and social distancing and whatever else it is that they're recommending you try to minimize your chance for exposure my bigger concern is what can you do to maximize your chance of healthy recovery and that's going to be where diet sleep and exercise become paramount you know sleep is important their first immunological function don't be depriving yourself of sleep right now because sleep deprivation may result in reduced immunological vitality and don't be putting yourself on a antigenic rich diet the same kind of diets that promote autoimmune disease because we know that an autoimmune response seems to be associated with a poor response to a health recovery infection so do everything you can to promote health and hopefully you'll be one of those people that either avoid exposure or gets exposure but recovers with without secondary effects what's wrong with well you know again arguing that wild salmon may have somewhat less health compromising components than other salmon doesn't make eating salmon advantageous and I would argue that today even wild salmon still has vulnerabilities of biological concentration and mercury concentrations and other things and so yeah if you were going to eat salmon there might be advantages to eating one kind of salmon over another but I think the best strategy for us and my opinion is to just let the animal products go right now let's hold off on meat fish valley exterior parts let's not eat products with added oil salt and sugar and instead let's fill ourselves up with fruits vegetables grains legumes nuts and seeds and I think you'll find that you'd be so healthy you won't have much time to worry about the details thank you mark says he's been on a whole food plant-based diet since February but he has cow what is he doing wrong he has what doubt oh well you know one of the things that happens when people go through rapid weight loss no matter how you do it even on a healthful morning diet is you can put a lot of load on the bodies from breaking down excess fat they can overload genetically vulnerable people's kidneys and you can develop elevated uric acid and have clearance problems that's that's definitely a possibility it's less common when people do it healthfully but it definitely can happen can definitely happen after fasting if you fast and go through any time you do rapid weight loss and so if you're having gaudiya problems there are strategies you can use to minimize that but that gets into a very specific medical management scenario and what I would recommend you consider doing is calling and scheduling a phone consult with one of the doctors at the True North health center it could be dr. Boris dr. struck or others and let them review your medical history take a look at the lab values and get really specific about what additional actions you can take to minimize the secondary effects of gout and give your body and your kidneys in particular a chance to recover so that you don't have those symptoms and I don't I you know it's going to be a small percentage but that small percentage does need a little extra help in order to mitigate it Renee you know I I was curious if SOS free diet was taking off and you know I googled it and it's actually like a lot of hits came up there's people other than you and me that actually recommend it and embrace it like what came up was dr. Ross Anna Vieira and the UC Davis School of Integrative Medicine and many different chefs and bloggers and youtubers that maybe not be as well known but they're doing it so well now we're also getting a lot of criticism because now we're seeing people criticizing our version of the vegan diet that is a vegan SOS free diet as saying it's too strict it's too rigid the same criticisms by the way people used to make about the vegan diet as a whole they said let people have chicken and fish in a little bit of cheese because you know if you just tell them to eat no animal foods that's way too radical and you know and then we learned that well gee that cheese and stuff maybe actually moral health compromising in some ways even than the meat and so then you know now there's become more of a consensus that okay maybe it's okay to recommend vegan but to also recommend maybe we can get rid of the oil but not the salt or we can get rid of the oil in the salt but not the sugar we can get rid of the sugar in the oil but not nobody wants to get rid of everything so you know that's why I get into the theme where I tell people if you go inside themselves and look at any food and just ask yourself do you really want that substance do you really really want it if the answer is truly yes then you know you can't have it because you get nothing that is great I was gonna say that would be a terrific note to end on but I do want to ask this question from Carol she asks if you've successfully worked to help reverse heart disease in persons who have high lipoprotein a yes many of our patients with coronary disease have elevated levels of various biomarkers including lipoprotein a and with dietary change we often do see correction sometimes it's a little bit more rapid when we introduce fasting into the mix but even these people that are told they have congenital hypertrichosis rimi oh they have congenital hypercholesterolemia and they have six hundred milligram percent cholesterol and even some of these patients when they're willing to do really radical things like adopt a health promoting diet engage in exercise undergo fasting these patients oftentimes get really remarkable results and if you'd like you can go to our new website at fasting org where all of our research and other people's research about the effect of fasting and these kind of interventions is being posted it's all freely available in fact we have I think over 500 articles on fasting that are in the process of being watched right now so I'd suggest you consider looking at that and see for yourself what the research has said about the effectiveness of you know conservative intervention and recovering from some of these serious problems Erin mentioned here I've heard that sometimes with people and especially if they're losing weight anytime there's rapid weight loss whether it's fasting or aggressive dietary change or pregnancy your period can go through a bit of adaptation where the hair follicles mature you'll get extra spinning for a while so you don't lose the hair follicles it's not like the hair doesn't come back it's just that it all matures together and so you'll see usually it's about 30 days post rapid weight loss that the following cycle there are some changes that occur so there's some hair thing people freak out and then the hair comes back and they're fine I haven't seen patients where they're sustained effect from it now there are other things that can cause that - infections in the scalp thyroid problems there's all kinds of neuro endocrine issues that can that can be manifest in hair loss as well as chemotherapy and other changes but the important thing to know is that the rapid weight loss that results in hormone changes that can be associated with hair loss is a transient temporary situation and generally it corrects you had mentioned earlier this is easy for you because of your job I'll make this the last question because I see looking over your shoulder and I really appreciate you going over Jan just wanted to know if you have any strategies that you use when you're traveling and or have you ever been in a situation where you just couldn't buy healthy food oh yeah it happens all the time and I just don't eat but you know it's like people think if you get on a plane in New York and travel to New York or to California you would die over Colorado if you don't eat it turns out it's not true the peanuts aren't saving your life you'll survive just fine when I travel I will oftentimes take some calories with me just so you know if I do get hungry I've got whether it's some nuts or seeds or or a leaf side product or you know some other materials but generally there are these places when you travel now they're called grocery stores and you can go in and get things like you know banana and you peel and eat it and and it works out fine you can take some oats and put some hot water in them and make oatmeal out of it you can get a potato put it in a microwave and and eat the potato it may not be quite as good as it was steamed or maybe you can get one of the what are the devices you carry AJ the instant it's the pot or something like that will you travel with it and you know so there's different strategy I honestly don't find very much problems traveling I'm not afraid to ask a restaurant to give me what I want I never had a restaurant say what do you you want steamed vegetables oh we don't want your kind here take your money and go away you know usually they're more than happy to accommodate you if you're crystal clear about what you want so you know you just have to and I feel like it's almost a service because every time you go into restaurants it well this is what I want and the more they hear that soon they start offering those options and so you know you're actually influencing and helping other people by being insistent and persistent and you know at the conference service out where there really wasn't anything to equals it was a medical conference I I did eat the table decorations and actually they were they were quite good thank you so much dr. Goldhamer guys come back in 90 minutes where I'll be interviewing dr. cyrus Khambatta I can talk to you forever but I know you have to go so please consider doing this again because you're such a wealth of information thank you guys for watching and thank you so much dr. Goldhamer very good

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 90,017

Keywords: chef aj, chef aj recipe, plant based, plant based diet, diet, vegan, healthy, weight loss, food addiction, podcast, author

Id: tSbe-rqH-Qw

Length: 81min 12sec (4872 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020