Maximizing Nutrients: Next-Level Health with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz | Exam Room LIVE

foreign [Music] out of your meals or maybe then again maybe not let's dig in welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the Physicians committee hi I am the weight loss Champion shot Carol We Appreciate You racing your health IQ with us in more than 150 countries around the world and making the damn room one of the most consumed nutrition podcasts anywhere on the planet today and indeed we do have a double header of Health on tap first up maximizing nutrients how to get the most out of what it is that you're eating from gleaming all of that lycopene out of tomatoes to carotenoids from carrots we're gonna tell you how to get the most bang for your nutrition buck and there can be a huge difference by the way based on how you're cooking so who's gonna weigh in on that well it's our good friend a two-time New York Times best-selling author he is the Pharaoh of fiber a friend of the show the gut health MD doctor will bolsawitz is here but because this is a double header we're not stopping there also today a former NFL player get this lost 100 pounds in just 40 days and he did it on a mega water fast this has been making headlines around the world but the question is was it really healthy the doc's gonna weigh in on that as well so if there's something that is on your mind about maximizing nutrients or water fasts or whatever you want to talk about when it comes to your gut health post it in the comments or in the chat and we'll get to as many as we can when we open up the doctor's mailbag in just a little bit and with that we welcome the quarterback of Health the vegan goat and a Sure Fire first ballot fiber Hall of Famer Dr will balsowitz what's up man what's up man great to see you Chuck thank you for having me on the show hello everyone great to see you man I can't wait to dive into the Russell Kung that's the NFL player and the mega water fast and 40 days and 100 pounds but we got to start with maximizing nutrients I was flipping through your Instagram the other day and I come across you walking through the grocery store and you're talking about this and I was like man you really did a great job of talking about that in 60 seconds but we got more time than that here on the show so let's unpack this um how does somebody go about getting the most bang for the nutrition Buck every single time they sit down to eat well I think the number the number one strategy if you want to maximize the nutritional quality of your diet is to eat more plants um that to me is the like rather queer starting point and you know we have measures of nutritional density it's important to understand that when people talk about nutritional density there actually are formulas that can be used to measure this you don't get to just make up you know hey that's nutritionally dense um you don't get to just say things like that there actually are measures of this and the way that we measure it chalk is by looking at how much uh nutrition or how many nutrients you would receive in proportion to the number of calories that you're consuming and when we do an exercise like that what you find is that by far the most nutritionally dense foods are plant-based foods and among them the ones that really stand out are the greens and the reason why Chuck is because greens have very very few calories I'll just give you a quick example if you consume a tablespoon of oil it can it contains about 100 calories oil is the most uh calorically dense food that exists and in order to match what you find in one tablespoon of oil you would have to eat an entire pound of um of kale and uh I don't think many of us are capable of eating an entire pound of kale that would be rather difficult so these greens are so incredibly nutritionally dense so that's you know that's really the starting point for this conversation I think eat more plants I like that but let's do Next Level Health there's a reason why I put Next Level Health in the title of this particular episode because not only can we gravitate toward those more nutritionally dense foods that you were talking about but you can take those and you can even by the way that you're cooking the way that you're chopping take them up still another notch in your Instagram post you were talking about really making sure that we knew about how to get the most lycopene out of a tomato so if we're talking about maximizing nutrients maximizing lycopene from a tomato what are we talking about here man yeah so uh if you if you take a tomato and you cook it specifically stew it or boil it or something along those lines you actually transform the food and you enhance the availability of something called lycopene which is a carotenoid carotenoids are responsible for many of the orange red and yellow colors that we see in plant-based foods and um so now it's interesting because take a step back for a moment I'm I'm offering this question up to the people who are here live with us please jump into the chat box and answer for me but like have you ever noticed that when you cons when you cook a tomato it tastes different right if it's very different than than it does when you just eat it raw and I propose that one of the things that has happened with the food is that you have made this nutrient lycopene more bioavailable now Chuck let me uh unpack this uh for a quick moment unpacked baby come back I'll come back to it in a moment but I think I think the takeaway Point here is that raw food isn't always the healthiest form of food this is why I think having a combination of both cooked and uncooked food is really uh a great way to go it's really interesting to me that you say that and I I must agree with you a thousand percent about the tomatoes there is a huge difference between slicing a tomato and putting it on a sandwich or on a salad versus what you would get in the stew example that you were just using I find that a cooked tomato is actually a little bit sweeter maybe it draws out the natural sweetness the sugars in it a little bit more as well um and the other examples that you cited on your Instagram post uh were carrots and broccoli you were speaking specifically to carotenoids in those two instances so what do we know about how to prepare those things to maximize those carotenoids yeah so uh let's think broccoli as a quick example here so broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable cruciferous are the or this family of cancer-fighting vegetables that includes broccoli and kale and Brussels sprouts just you know as an exam as a few examples cabbage and um and I'm a big fan actually of consuming these Foods Raw and the reason why is because the cancer-fighting phytochemicals which uh we call isotiocyanates are more readily available in uncooked food so again when it comes to broccoli like I think it's great to consume at least some of your broccoli raw to get some of these cancer fighting phytochemicals but that being said uh broccoli also contains carotenoids and carotenoids as I mentioned a moment ago are things like lycopene or in the case of carrots beta-carotene often making up the colors that are red or yellow or orange but can be existing in a green vegetable just like broccoli because broccoli is green because the chlorophyll content um but corphone isn't the only thing in there there's a lot there's a lot of good stuff in there so anyway if you if you steam these Foods or boil these Foods then much like tomatoes you can unlock uh the availability of these carotenoids so you know with tomatoes it's lycopene and with carrots it's beta-carotene but they come from the same family these carotenoids that have antioxidant Health promoting properties and by boiling or steaming them you are basically getting more access to them now I want to comment on this real quick Chuck because there's there's a theme here that I think is kind of interesting to help people understand why this specific cooking technique works and the reason why is because um these cooking techniques uh you are using water so steaming or boiling you were using water and these carotenoids are what we call fat soluble so fat soluble includes beta-carotene lycopene and the carotenoids it also includes things like vitamins D k e and the fat soluble vitamins or carotenoids are not going to be lost as much when you cook them with water on the flip side Chuck I mentioned in the video If you fry carrots and the same would be true by the way for broccoli or tomatoes if you fry them and you are going to substantially reduce the availability of carotenoids and the reason why is the oil that you are using to fry those Foods is actually going to draw out those phytochemicals and therefore you don't get access to them so flip side there are certain vitamins that are water soluble these include vitamin C and the B vitamins and the B vitamins and vitamin C you may get lower levels so there's a trade-off you may get lower levels when you cook with water steaming or boiling so you may get less vitamin C from your carrots when you steam them or boil them but again like you're enhancing the beta-carotene so uh so the bottom line here is that depending on whether you cook with oil or depending whether you cook with with water it will affect the nutritional value of specific nutrients within the food all right let's see if we can paint an ultra clear picture here um I want to go back to what it was you were talking about when you're frying food you you were using carrots there frying carrots specifically so this is interesting to me because when you're talking what I'm kind of picturing in my mind is not only are you frying out the healthy nutrients but you're frying in all of the saturated fat all of the unhealthy stuff that you really don't want so you're kind of inverting the nutritional value of a particular food every time you dunk it in the fryer yeah there is something you know when we fry we're achieving temperatures that we're not able to achieve with water right because the issue with water is that it gets to the boiling point and then it stops it doesn't go above that temperature whereas when you cook with um uh frying or for example cooking on the grill you're achieving much much higher temperatures than you could ever achieve with the with steaming or boiling and there are consequences that come from this and it can deconstruct the nutritional value or you can lose certain nutrients as a consequence of this and is is there like one particular cooking method that is a Surefire for every food across the board to maximize whether it be steaming or boiling or roasting or even microwaving or is it really dependent upon What that particular food is you know it really depends on the individual food and also the individual nutrients so every single time we cook a food we are anyway processing it the word process when it comes to food is not something you should be scared of um processing is a normal part of consuming our food I mean literally if you chop your food you're processing it if you chew your food you are processing it these are all things that are completely natural and normal the part that we need to be sort of scared of and cringing is ultra processed Ultra processed foods and that's not what's happening when you take vegetables into your kitchen and do things with those vegetables so uh when you when you process your food truck there always will be some level of change that takes place and it's kind of interesting because there was a microbiome study done at the University of California San Francisco uh the scientist his name is Peter turnbike Peter turnbaugh is a person that I've cited heavily his work uh in my books and so I admire his work and um basically what he showed is that if you take the exact same food and you serve it different ways it will have different effects on the microbiome so you know I always talk about diversity of plants but I would actually Advocate not just for diversity of plants but I would advocate for diversity of cooking techniques and um you know the other the other thing that I should say about this is that um there's no there's no one preferable cooking technique but uh if I were to if I were forced to select just one it would probably be steaming there are a certain specific scenarios where it seems that steaming really is enhancing the nutritional value you know for example if you steam Your Greens there are certain benefits that it has in terms of the ability of those greens to bind up bile acids and when we bind up bile acids we actually are improving our digestive health we're also improving our metabolic health and that's one of the ways in which greens actually lower our cholesterol so um so I do think that steaming is great it's just that I would advocate for multiple approaches and Chuck there's something I didn't mention in the in the 60-second uh Instagram reel yeah what you got what you got what you got do tail do tell well I think there's also next level processing uh it goes beyond like a traditional kitchen techniques okay and is what I would describe as allowing nature to do the work for us um so we're cooking at room temperature so yeah yeah I'm not talking about some sort of brisket thing or something um I'm talking about room temperature and basically there's two things that I'm referring to here that I I believe supercharge our food and really enhance nutritional value and that is fermentation in sprouting and the evidence is actually quite clear that in in both of these cases the food is transformed as a result of us going through this process we'll start with fermentation uh first so when we ferment our food it is transforms it is it is categorically different and the benefits that we receive from this are that there are new vitamins so I was mentioning B vitamins a moment ago B vitamins are actually created by the microbes in the process of fermenting the food um there are probiotics so that's not something that we routinely get access to there may be some probiotics on a very minor level when you consume raw uncooked foods but when you ferment those Foods you are actually amplifying that at least 10 if not more than a than tenfold like potentially a hundred or a thousand fold you are amplifying that in terms of access to to living microbes probiotic microbes but you're also changing the uh the nutrients so you are changing the fiber changing the amino acids changing the polyphenols all of which we now get better access to the fiber the protein and the amino acids as a result I'm sorry and the polyphenols as a result of fermentation so there is a transformation that takes place where the end product is clearly distinctly different and in in the cases that I've reviewed I mean it's just like impossible for me to you know um deny this that that it's very clear that the nutritional value is enhanced as a result of fermentation there's other things that take place too I mean we reduce our anti-nutrient contents through fermentation as well so like gluten content drops down substantially so um that's fermentation when we talk about sprouting it's amazing you take you give me a half of a cup of lentils uncooked and give me three days and about 15 minutes total and I'm not exaggerating when I say that and in those three days I can make that go from a half of a cup of lentils up to four cups of lentils and it can be completely organic and inexpensive and it does not require soil and it does not require a tremendous amount of space we're talking about literally one square foot on your counter that's a and you can do this and you are increasing the fiber content you are increasing the protein content you are increasing the presence of vitamins believe it or not there's increased minerals which I don't completely understand but it must be that we get more access to them we are reducing anti-nutrient content by sprouting our food um and in many cases you are enhancing specific phytochemicals as a result of sprouting so an example of this uh would be with broccoli so we were talking about broccoli I was talking about the cancer fighting benefits of broccoli from isothiocyanites and specifically uh when you sprout broccoli seeds you increase the availability of a phytochemical called sulforaphane that is like an incredible cancer-fighting phytochemical and you get 50 to 100 times more sulforaphane in sprouted broccoli seeds then you would have an adult mature broccoli and this is the point is that fermentation and sprouting are like an incredible way to enhance the nutritional value of our food it just takes time see you know what you just did there I mean like you basically morphed into Harry Potter because that is some nutrition Wizardry that you just dropped on us that's awesome man that's what I love about you that is you bring the knowledge you bring to science it is great uh if you have a question and top-notch I mean 11 out of 10. 11 out of 10 my friend if you have a question for The Wizard of Pfeiffer go ahead and drop it in the comments or in the chat we're gonna open up the doctor's mail bag in just a little bit first a quick little roll call Carlene says that this is her first time watching live Carrie is tuning in from British Columbia hello Pat first time live checking us out in Las Vegas today Beth is in Tulsa Seth get this all the way over in Uganda watching live Mary is in San Jose and Michelle says Buckle in your seats for for Chuck and Dr B hey roomies yes man that's a that's a lot of fun man she's fired up to be here um I'm digging that one little bow I want to put on the maximized nutrient conversation here is also we've talked about in the past like adding black pepper with turmeric to really extrapolate all of the potential health benefits that come with the turmeric are there other kinds of foods that we should be pairing together to really make sure that we're able to draw everything out of them that we possibly can uh yeah so I I mentioned a moment ago that if you that lycopene and the other carotenoids are fat soluble and so what that means is that salsa where we take tomatoes and combine it with or like guacamole where we combine tomatoes with avocados the fat content of the avocado is going to help to give us increased access you're chopping up the Tomato into small little pieces and that's coming into contact with the avocado which has been mashed and when you're bringing this together that fat content actually helps us to get better access to um to the lycopene because it is fat soluble so that's another hack yeah nice Harry Potter of nutrition bro I'm telling you straight Wizardry I'm gonna send you a wizard hat like it just needs to happen and we'll just call it like the Hogwarts Studio powered by fiber field and Chuck Carroll or something like that I don't know we'll figure it out we'll figure it out that's awesome though um Let's uh let's go ahead and switch gears too um I want to talk to you we said that this was a double header and we won't be opening up the doctor's mail package just a little bit but man I'm sitting here the other day and I get a text from my wife she's like OMG check this out didn't you cover this guy when you were still covering the NFL and sure enough I did NFL player loses 100 pounds I'm gonna add this to the screen right now uh NFL player loses 100 pounds in just 40 Days by going on a water fast this is a guy by the name of Russell okung Dr bullswits I know you're you're a sports guy so maybe you've heard of him as well oh definitely great player fantastic offensive lineman major major major um uh pro bowler I mean just huge star for Seattle for so many years so he I mean just and the linemen are just enormous but after they retire they do I mean a lot of these guys continue to put on weight and face a lot of health challenges Russell decided he didn't want to go down that route but he goes to the extreme and he sheds 100 pounds in just 40 days without eating a single thing and only drinking water it essentially was a mega water fast and of course everybody's like holy cow is that even safe I don't know I was like well I'm not the doctor here but I know somebody who is so I wanted to get your feedback here I mean what a transformation we just saw it up on the screen a second ago but that's a pretty prolonged water fast is that risky in your opinion well I think there's a number of things that we have to discuss with this truck so you know first of all this is coming from a People magazine article so it is indeed it is indeed this is this is not this is not peer-reviewed MediCal uh Journal we don't we don't have the details right like I don't know what sort of um attention he received from his medical doctor he may have had a tremendous amount of attention to make sure that everything was done in a very safe way blood uh lab values may have been drawn you know weekly during the process of him doing this um so I I think that there are some unresolved questions that we just don't have uh answers to the fact that he did this and he did well with it is not evidence that the rest of us should be doing this is is something that I think needs to be made perfectly clear like if you're going to consider doing a prolonged anything we should have studies that demonstrate the risks and the benefits and anytime we make decisions in healthcare whether it's my role as a physician or a person's role as the patient ultimately choices are made because the benefit outweighs the risk and if you don't truly know what the risk is then it's really hard to make that assessment and you're taking a you're taking a huge risk if you don't know what those risks are because you can get yourself into trouble and you know I do worry I do worry about the average person going and doing something like this because they read that this guy had the success I you know before we talk about what are the risks associated with this I think that there are some extraordinary circumstances that exist here that need to be mentioned which is the first of all the gentleman is a massive NFL player he also like literally used his body physically um uh to make a living and so highly Physically Active clearly to lose 100 pounds in 40 days the Bible of physical activity that is required for that is actually substantial because to um to even if you have zero caloric intake chalk to lose about a pound we typically have to burn through uh about 3 500 calories so and 3 500 calories like to do that and lose a hundred pounds that is a lot of calories that you are burning through um even on a daily basis right so two and a half pounds per day in order to lose 100 pounds in 40 days that suggests to me that like we're looking at roughly a little under maybe 9250 or something of that variety in terms of the number of calories that you're burning per day to lose this amount of weight even with zero calories coming in none of us are burning 9250 calories on a daily basis unless you're an extremely Active Athlete um so I think that needs to be mentioned now um what happens when we uh water fast well there's a couple of things first of all um there is the risk that it can affect your electrolyte uh balance within your body and this could manifest in a number of different ways low sodium we call that hyponatremia low potassium we call that hypokalemia mode magnesium hypomagnesemia if you're not taking electrolytes in you're going to continue to urinate because you're drinking water and this is going to deplete your bodily reserves and this could potentially put you very rapidly In Harm's Way so you have to be extremely careful about your electrolytes again this is one of the reasons why I'm wondering how often were they checking his blood work it could negatively affect your kidneys you could end up being actually dehydrated as a result even though you're drinking water because again these electrolytes are thrown out of whack and then you may not adequately be perfusing your kidneys this could affect your blood pressure in a number of different ways it could affect your blood pressure where your blood pressure drops too low but it could also affect your blood pressure where your body is out of balance and it's actually clamping down and it's clamping down and as a result of this your heart is actually working harder and your blood pressure believe it or not actually goes up um so there are a number of things that can potentially go wrong and when we talk about gut the gut so I worry I worry about what's happening with the gut we do have evidence Chuck that when people fast for more than 24 hours there are certain microbes in the gut that start to take over and they will actually consume the lining of the gut there's a mucous layer that lines our gut they will start to consume this mucous layer and thin it out and as they thin it out the risk of disease actually starts to go up so I do worry about what happens when a person hasn't consumed any fiber for 40 days um so again like I personally don't think that putting out a message that encourages people to like just kind of say Well it worked for him so it'll work for me and therefore I'm going to just go do this that's a very dangerous proposition from my perspective yeah you know I mean here's so many questions just one is a guy who's lost a lot of weight himself uh two is a former sports reporter uh but three it's like even though this guy started well over 300 pounds 330 plus does the body have how long can the body sustain um its energy based solely off of what you have stored that excess fat that you've got built up in the body that you then convert like how long can you go I mean 40 days just seems like an inordinate amount of time well I mean I think like a person who's got a lower body fat you know to bulk yourself up to be an offensive lineman which they clearly do you know these guys you watch them transform when they start as 18 year old kids they go to college and like they they emerge as a different person it's not just muscle mass that they add it's definitely there's definitely added fat Mass um that's a completely different circumstance than like the average person who's out there um you know in terms of uh their body's ability to do something like this so I do think that there's substantial risk associated with that truck like I I don't think that I could come anywhere close to doing 40 days of fasting and and be safe nor would nor would I want to even test those Waters because I don't really see what the payoff is and you know I should mention Chuck that you know one of the things too is like so you lose 100 pounds okay but what happens now and if you don't transform your diet into something that allows you to um eat you know in abundance without restriction and yet simultaneously maintain a healthy metabolism and not over consume if you don't do that you're just gonna rebalance you're going to rebound and you're going to go back up when you lose 100 pounds you don't just lose fat Mass I think this is an important point uh you lose muscle mass as well so in this person like he has lost muscle yes he's less fat he's also lost muscle and if he gains the weight back what he's gaining back is not the muscle he's gaining the fat you can end up less healthy than when you started so um crewy to me like these the answer here is not a uh binge like uh or like some sort of like wild restriction uh like binge of water or like a wild restriction on food but like instead the the solution here is sustainability what is the sustainable diet that you can actually maintain and that will help you to achieve your health related goals including your body weight and Metabolism yeah that's a interesting thing I was going to ask you about the muscle wasting that would occur with something like this obviously I mean I experienced that to a certain degree as well you know going from 420 down to where I am at at 140. I mean it's just impossible I feel for me to have that same amount of muscle that I had naturally just to carry around that mass of body weight with every single step that you take I mean I used to be able to leg press like 12 13 1400 pounds no problem not sure I could get anywhere close to that uh today and I do Wonder like what his true energy level was like what his muscle mass was like at the end of these 40 days um and there's all also a lot of roomies right now in the chat doctor be there like yeah but is this going to be another situation like we saw with so many uh contestants on The Biggest Loser who lost initially an extraordinary amount of weight only to regain it very rapidly after the fact when they reintroduced food back into their diet so I would think that with a shock to the system like this the risk of having a significant rebound or regain would probably be pretty high here oh exactly and that's my point is like if he doesn't change his diet then he's just going to rebound back to what he was before so uh there needs to be a change in dietary strategy that is required in order to maintain any level of the weight loss but ultimately like if there if this if weight loss ultimately requires a change in dietary strategy this is ultimately what's required then what is the value what is the benefit of doing the 100 day or I'm sorry the 40-day water fast that to me has substantial risk why why would you do that when you could just simply make the dietary change now I I will acknowledge that like dietary's change obviously is not easy I don't mean to make it sound like it's easy if it was so easy everyone would just do it so there are Channel there are challenges that exist there um and maybe there is a role for fasting prior to dietary change that's something that's more controlled perhaps shorter duration I'm not I'm not saying that there's no role for fasting it's it's just that ultimately he does need to change his diet so I saw someone who said if he does a an appropriate uh refeeding that he will gain muscle not fat well that's a dietary change that's my point right uh you know but here's the thing I mean you're talking about breaking some old habits back when I was covering the Washington football team I would get the opportunity from time to time to go out to eat with a lot of these guys and let me tell you they can put it away I mean there's a reason why these guys are well over 300 pounds I mean we would go to Buffalo Wild Wings which was very close to the training facility out in Ashburn Virginia and we would sit down there and I wasn't even vegan at this point but um I mean I would order a salad and I'd be pretty content with that maybe a potato on the side still trying to keep it healthy didn't know much about a plant-based diet but I would get ribbed to death by these guys because they would be ordering like two and three orders of wings with a hamburger to go with that and some fries and these guys would eat every last morsel that was on their plates and even the old 420 pound chuck would have been like these boys got some skill at the table let me tell you what I mean but but you're right I mean you mentioned I mean it really was bad it was mind-blowing but you you mentioned like you're these athletes are taught when they reach that certain level to eat and eat and eat and eat and even though we have taken strides and nutrition for athletes there is still so much to learn that you know a lot of these guys really aren't doing much more than saying I got to make sure that I get enough calories here to maintain this body mass and even put some more on and they're not gravitating toward those healthy foods it's hard to hit the reset button I think perhaps the hardest thing is to reset how you eat how you train yourself to eat because it does it takes a whole overhaul to do this and even if you shock the system for 40 days I think it would be really easy to go right on back to B-Dubs and sit down with two or three plates of wings Dr B well that's true and what you're describing I mean think of it about the amount of food that those those guys are consuming and that's wholly unnatural I think you're telling me completely unnatural to be to be um consuming food like in that amount um uh without any uh sort of check on it and if you were consuming any level of fiber you would feel full and there's no way you would be able to eat that mountain and the reason that they're like doing this is because they actually want the larger size as NFL players which I get but they make a health compromise in the process of doing this the rest of us are not trying to make money by being bigger human beings the rest of us actually are trying to generally speaking maintain like an ideal body weight if we can so that we derive the health benefits that come from that and um and so with that when you're doing something that's completely unnatural like that Chuck if you could just make a transition towards something that's a little bit closer to normal like maybe including a salad when there right as a starting point that like it would actually though Russell Kung as an example he would he would lose a substantial amount of weight I don't know about 100 pounds in 40 days but he would lose a substantial amount of weight by making small tweaks to his diet to not be so sort of over the top and ridiculous with what he's eating well I want to put this argument to bed as well because there's also another reason Beyond just calories why they were gravitating toward the fried wings and hamburgers and things like that goes back to the protein I mean as you might imagine as we've seen in Game Changers like protein protein protein with these pro athletes If instead these guys would have sat down with a plate of barbecued tofu say which is not the most manly thing and you're probably not going to see many NFL players do that so just indulge me strictly hypothetically if they were to sit down with that plate of barbecued tofu would they still get the same protein benefits from that that they would have those massive orders of chicken wings well you know the issue is that the the reason that they're able to get as much protein from those massive orders of chicken wings is that they they never really achieve satiety because they're just consuming empty calories and so they're able to eat in a completely unnatural way and the difference is that gram for gram ounce for ounce the tofu holds up to the chicken the protein contents gram for gram ounce per ounce holds up but the problem is for them is that if they're trying to consume a ridiculous amount of protein you know um uh like 300 grams of protein a day or more then in order to do that it becomes a little bit more difficult with tofu because you get full tofu has fiber and it's going to make you feel full that's the issue and let me ask you this the gut health MD what happened to the dude's microbiome do you think when he goes through such a drastic change I mean 40 days of straight water after years of indulging and very likely an unhealthy diet how drastic of a change are we talking about in the span of 40 days here you know it's really hard I'd be very curious Chuck I sincerely would to to see microbiome specimens um and it's hard to speculate on this because the the thing is that Chuck we do have studies of many different varieties where people when they lose weight there are changes in the microbiome that simultaneously take place that people would say are beneficial so there is in a way some expectation that the microbiome does make some beneficial changes in the process just as a result of weight loss quite simply um that being said like the way in which he's going about this where there's the like a zero consumption of fiber I'd be very curious to see where that leaves his microbiome after 40 days because we know that many of those same microbes that people like basically get more of when they lose weight well they're they're losing weight and they're still consuming some Fiber in this case he's not consuming any so I'd be very curious to see where that lands you know what I'm curious about and this is just a strictly juvenile question um but is it even possible for him to have been constipated during this 40-day water fast if nothing is going in like how would you even know go you know what I mean nothing in nothing so yeah break this one down elaborate help me understand here sir okay okay so we have to consider that the the majority of the mass of our um poop is actually microbes so 60 or 70 percent of the weight of our poop is actually microbial therefore most of our poop is not the undigested excrement from our food that the undigested X come in from our food is actually a minority of the weight of our poop now when you consume a fiber high fiber diet I'll give you a quick example Chuck um I imagine anyone can relate to this if you put a soluble fiber supplement into your coffee and you Stir It Up it will dissolve it will disappear and you will have a big bowel movement like not immediately but you will notice that if you do this consistently add soluble fiber to your coffee you will have bigger bowel movements the reason why is because that soluble fiber is actually food for your microbes it's Prebiotic and when the microbes eat they multiply and you get more of them when you get more of them there's more of a mass of microbes and because they make up 60 to 70 percent of the weight of your stool when you increase the mass of the microbes you will increase the mass of the of the poop so like high fiber like big fiber consumers big bowel movements this is the way it works small fiber consumers small bowel movements I like being a big bowel movement kind of a guy well this is actually a saying um it takes a man to admit that her rough big big bowel movements small hospitals small Bob movements you need big hospitals right because there's a there's a correlation there so but anyway um the the point though is that you still have a microbiome you still have a microbiotech I'll continue to carry the show please do I'm done uh you still have a microbiome and although you're not necessarily helping the microbes to like multiply and grow in a powerful way because you're depriving them of their most essential nutrient which is fiber they're still there you still have microbes they're still turning over um and as a result of this they ultimately do need to be flushed out and that's what our bowel movements are it's the flushing out of our microbes that is routinely taking place so so because he still has a microbiome I still expect him to poop it's just not gonna poop very much oh my God how badly kind of guy I'm a big bowel movement guy he says baseball movement kind of guy big bowel movement kind of guy there are two kinds of people in this world big bowel movement people and little bowel movement people you sir are a big bowel movement person outstanding work so proud of you man I love this show I love it when you're on the show about that I mean my god do I love it when you're on this show you just make me so daggone happy man oh man uh let's like wrap a couple of quick questions from the roomies I mean they've been flooding the mailbag I don't want to feel like everybody's being um ignored here um number one let's go grab a question from Teresa this is actually at the top of the starred stack Ollie number one Teresa from Waikiki says Aloha but they don't want to lose any more weight I don't think they've been on a 40-day water fast but they've hit their bottom and they don't want to go any lower so how can the person maintain their weight healthfully here and not continue to lose like we saw Russell do a hundred pounds in 40 days yeah uh the most important thing is so one of the issues that takes place when people transition to a plant-based diet is they don't realize that they're not actually consuming enough calories and in the beginning for that for many of them because they've gone plant-based feel fatigue or get headaches things like this um so the key here is consuming an adequate amount of calories and there are a number of different strategies that you can use but consuming more calorically dense foods that are still healthy is probably the way that I would go about this you know as opposed to focusing on salads and things like this it still eat salads don't get me wrong but you want to make sure that you get in your avocados your nuts your seeds and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and I I you know I had a post about extra virgin olive oil the other day I know it's a very divisive uh topic I don't think it needs to be a very divisive topic I think we can agree that you can definitely be healthy and completely plant-based with or without oil there may be some circumstances where I don't think oil is appropriate but there's also some certain circumstances like what we're talking about right here where oil is appropriate extra virgin olive oil do you think we get hung up in the oil conversation in terms of just like sheerly looking at the fat and calories there and not the totality of the nutrition of it because there is a big difference between the olive oil you're talking about and say Palm Cur uh or coconut oil I mean huge differences nutritionally yeah there is and uh and I actually Advocate against I've been very clear about this I advocate against palm and coconut oil not to say that I never consumed these things but it's the over consumption the over consumption of saturated fats and um so you know I think that there's a big difference there and saturated fat is the number one driver of LDL cholesterol which is associated with our risk of ultimately having heart disease which is the number one killer in the United States and it doesn't matter whether it comes from a plant Source or a meat Source when you crank up your saturated fat intake you are going to drive your LDL cholesterol up and increase your risk of having heart disease so um from my perspective I don't see really much value to those particular types of foods but on the flip side like the I as I mentioned in this post that I did recently there's a study called predymed where they looked at people who were at high risk of having a heart attack and they actually gave them and like what I would describe as an absurd amount of extra virgin olive oil four tablespoons per day and yet the people who were consuming more four tablespoons per day of extra virgin olive oil we're less likely to have a heart attack than the people who were on the lower fat diet by the way just to be clear it was not a low-fat diet it was not it was a lower fat diet but still I think you know we vilify our fats and we make it sound like these are wildly unhealthy Foods Chuck nutrition is all about substitutions if we make it sound like extra virgin olive oil is the least healthy thing on the planet then we're missing out on the opportunity to get people who are consuming a lot of butter to replace that butter with extra virgin olive oil you know what would happen if they did that they would be so much more healthy we need to understand this is not just about a whole food plant-based diet this is also about taking the average American the average American United States is 10 plant-based let's try to get them moving in the right direction it goes back to the better than what topic better than what you know it amuses me when sometimes I'll post something about or mention on the show what I've been eating and and all I always go back to the one time I was writing about kimchi and somebody wrote in just with this scathing direct message about like just basically how I was a nutrition frog because I was eating kimchi and it was so bad for me and this and that but you have to keep in mind that you're sending this to somebody that used to eat literally 10 000 calories of junk every single day is there any Universe in the world where you could tell me that kimchi is worse for you than a beef grilled stuffed burrito the world that I'm living in no chance that's ever happening Chuck a couple quick points that I want to uh pull from the comments section thank you for the everyone who's active in the comment section I am reading what you're saying Steven says arguing over a tiny amount of olive oil has grown tiresome and I agree and the same is true for fermented foods for people who are on a low salt diet consuming some salt and fermented foods is not problematic and we are being ridiculous when you are still well below the excessive intake of salt because you're consuming a very small amount of fermented food let's not like let these Concepts drive us towards poor choices who are the healthiest people in the world in terms of being an industrial society right now Chuck do you know which country has the longest life expectancy I mean I would say Japan has to be up there um it used to be it used to be they were replaced in South Korea is number one okay North Korea has the longest life expectancy in the world this is a population that consumes kimchi on a level that no American unless you are literally from South Korea no American is approximating this because they're consuming it at every single meal giddy up so um and I think you know looking at the comments too like I want to uh give a quick shout out to Peter 5.0 who's made a lot of really nice comments during our conversation today and one of the ones that he just made is that context matters yes context matters this is important so like we freak out about some of this stuff but like at the end of the day if you replace uh extra virgin olive oil with legumes with more beans I'm gonna take more beans give me more beans instead of extra virgin olive oil but you know what extra virgin olive oil compared to all the junk fats that Americans are consuming right now huge upgrade in terms of what they're eating and in terms of gut health Chuck when it comes to fermented foods which includes kimchi and other fermented plants you know we're we're getting so focused on this one nutrient the salt and we're not seeing the big picture which is that we now have randomized controlled data randomized controlled data where people have a fermented food intervention and by the end of 10 weeks they have increased the diversity within their micro microbiome show me something else that you can do that with and during those 10 weeks by the way they reduced measures of inflammation show me something else that you can do that with let's stop bashing these Foods based upon uh some you know myopic vision of just this one little nutrient that's that's nutritional reductionism and when we do that you know in the plant-based Community we always say let's not be reductionist let's not be reductionist so let's not let's agree that in the plant-based Community let's not be reductionist ourselves there you go I love it I absolutely love it and uh let's wrap up today I want to give a shout out to Rich s who says Dr B has helped me in my bodybuilding by the way rich I owe you an email we're gonna get you on the show because I love your story brother Dr B has helped me and my bodybuilding improve my gut microbiome a lot help me with the nutrients he is 72 man 72 and a bodybuilder this guy hashtag goals I love everything that riches bring into the table man I saw that picture he's seven I can't believe he's 72. the picture was super small but the guns were blazing dude the guns were blazing so then that's like okay cool we're going to get rich on the show we're going to get the full size high resolution photos up here and it's gonna blow your mind yeah yeah man I feel like we had ourselves a master class here on the show today but no no in your world my friend there's plenty more of that still to come what do you have cooking up uh cool so those of you who uh know me and are familiar with my work you may know that I have been running a Master Class which has now settled into being a once a year thing and this is like effectively Chuck I I view this as like you're going to microbiome School microbiome school is going to be a seven week you know program uh effectively like taking a college level course and I'm the professor and I'm going to be there with you and so I'm going to be in there in the like in the community we have a community we have conversations that exist um in this community on a daily basis I'm also there live doing Q and A's for the dedicated group that's going through my master class um but then also you're gonna be learning from videos and audio lessons and case studies and breakdowns of specific topics and of course the Q and A's and then there's the library the library basically means that I have like literally dozens of hours of content from prior master classes that you get access to you can you can consume as much as you want to um The Master Class truck this is my top course my best course um is my course that was looking at the big picture and it also is something I'm very proud of to say that people who have taken this course with me 95 to 98 have finished the course depending on which you know version of it because it has evolved as it's gone but 95 to 98 percent have finished this and said they would recommend this course to their friends and that to me is really meaningful that means they got something out of it that's huge that is a huge positive rating that just does not happen in a lot of things in life man that is awesome which means people are digging what you're putting down man so um registration opens I believe on June 26th so here's what I want you to do there's a link to that website Dr B's website is in the show description bookmark that and then set a reminder tell Siri to do that for you right now set a reminder for June 26th get in register today for the master class unbelievable results unbelievable knowledge man that's just fantastic stuff I'm really really happy that you're bringing that back again this year you know and I just want to comment real quick Joseph just said in the chat box Dr B's second book was better than the first and I really appreciate you saying that Joseph it's really nice to to hear that because I I worked so hard on both of those books I'm proud of them uh so but it is is Meaningful to get messages like that I really appreciate that there it is right there and there's also a link to uh pick up your copy of the fiber field cookbook in the show description and in the episode notes right now as well this really is man this is a gem of a gem uh we were talking a little bit about broccoli earlier you've got a cheesy broccoli and potato soup in here that is just mind-blowingly good that's on page 91. you're welcome so uh man Dr B the time has just flown by my friend uh can't wait for next month it's always so much more fun when you are here and we can just play in this healthy sandbox together man this is just awesome on so many levels thank you thank you everyone and uh in closing I just want to say I am proud to be a big bow movement kind of guy that's my dude that is my dude we're gonna put that on the t-shirt for you no doubt uh Dr will bolsowitz he is one in a million my friend and I also want to say thank you to the crew behind the scenes for making the magic happen appreciate you guys and to you exam roomies thank you so very much for all of your questions and interactions in the chat room today you guys make the show the extraordinarily fun nutrition resource that it is and for everybody here at the Physicians committee I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll we will talk to you again very soon but until then have a big bowel movement and keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 41,870

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Id: mE9WbYU5tmI

Length: 55min 19sec (3319 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023