Michael Klaper, MD Is Educating The Next Generation of Doctors | Rich Roll Podcast

[Music] it's uh it's great to see you my friend I don't see you often enough and it's its gift and an honor to be able to reprise a conversation that we started I think it was six years ago yes sitting in the cabin of a cruise ship in the Bermuda Triangle in the early days of the show hmm we've come a long way since then but your message has remained consistent you've done so many amazing things over the course of your career you really are a gift to to health and humanity so first of all I just want to say that publicly thank you thank you and I'm really interested in in hearing more about this next chapter that you've been on going around in medical schools and and and lecturing to medical students about nutrition which seems to be you know a much-needed thing and and quite overdue so how did this whole thing come about and which thank you so much for the invitation it's great to see your smiling face and cross the table here and commend you for all your wonderful work and you've been an inspiration steadily for be it every time I get whether you're good at reuse I think I'm gonna get back on that show again yo here we are we are great so such an important question that you asked modern medicine and I've been a physician now for teach seven years and I entered medicine in late 60s early 70s and seen lots of wonderful changes and it's become powerful on a level that none of us have been able to conceive of but there's been there's glaring grotesque absence this black hole when it comes to true causes of disease the true powerful healing techniques and of course we're talking about what our patients are reading and Western medicine has evolved or devolve to the point where we practice medicine we take histories we order all these tests to physical exams and never once asked the what do you read me through yesterday's eating day and and if such a huge oversight because that's by and large the reason why the patient is sitting in front of us overweight and hypertensive and diabetic and clogged up and inflamed because of what they're running through their bloodstream every few hours and yeah we just blow right past as far from the medical point of view it doesn't even enter the equation of what's happening and that leads to such not only inefficiency but everything from wrong diagnosis to wrong treatment to real patients dying on real operating tables from operations they don't need so at this point my medical career I've had to say seeing another elderly person with constipation is not the best use of my energy you should do something about that so I so the campaign be are moving medicine forward initiative this it came from there and you you're doing this with plant pure or like foundation right it's like a 501 C 3 yes I'm very appreciative to the folks at planter communities they we entered into an agreement where if people want to support our work getting me in front of medical school audiences if they give a donation to planetary communities they it finds its way to our own nonprofit account here so they've kind of extended their umbrella over us a bit and it certainly has made a big difference as far as that you some getting some support so how many medical schools have you lectured so far we've been to just about twenty and we've got another for a lined up here I'm going to be going to University of Texas in Houston Dallas San Antonio then the University of Arkansas then we got a swing for the Northeast going to be going to Rutgers University of Massachusetts we were just up at University of Washington Seattle University of Florida in Gainesville now all medical audiences are the folks are my friend and say at this point I want to reach as many first-year students as I can before pharmaco sclerosis sets into their I like that I'd never heard that before like that and even the only treatments drugs yeah no doctors there's a there's a better more elegant way to approach the condition here so so give me a synopsis or like a truncated version of what it is that you speak about when you get in front of these students well as I step up to the microphone I tell them listen I'm gonna give you them the lecture I wish somebody had given me 50 years ago 50 freakin years has been since I was a first year medical student 1968 but if somebody had told me now what I tell us to listen you're gonna be learning from men--they about these weird and wonderful diseases from smallpox to leprosy but the reality is when you open the door of your waiting room of your clinic or the emergency department or surgical outpatient you're not going to be seeing patients we're not gonna sleep I thank God it's gonna be obesity and diabetes and clogged arteries and inflammatory diseases from what your patients are eating and unless you get real with that then you're gonna miss the diagnosis about what's really staring you in the face and your treatments can be inappropriate it's gonna be band-aid medicine if the patient's making themselves sick with or what they're reading every few hours and you're they're just there to raise their statin dosage or raise their metformin dosage or its bankrupt medicine you're not helping that patient you're perpetuating their problems right so in terms of unpacking the nutrition side of this I mean you're coming from a whole food plant-based perspective I'm interested in how that's received from the medical school community I mean obviously you know even in the period since we first did this podcast the movement has grown tremendously it's incredible what's happening now even versus then but as somebody who's been in this I mean you graduate med school in like 72 right and then went vegan I think about 10 years later so you've been doing this for a long time you've been treating patients forever I'm sure there were there were decades in there where you were this crazy maverick and you know fighting the system and you know perhaps on some level you're still doing that although I would imagine the reception is a little bit more welcoming correct I'm very perceptive and you're the first part of my lecture and I want to talk science these young students and so I've got it's it's a two-pronged attack your one is to convince them that food has anything to do with these diseases again geez the etiology unknown yeah a autoimmunity we don't know why the body attacks itself but the smart guys at NIH are working 24/7 and when they come up with the answer they'll design a maze Ocilla and give it to us to restore our patients or perfect health well it's not going to happen and so I showed them slide two what happens to their blood after they eat rice and beans and greens and what happens to their blood after they eat a cheeseburger and a milkshake yeah and I show them all the fat in the blood and all the inflammatory proteins all the things that that percolate through the system hour after hour not only that but month after month year after year they tell them were shocked when when the inflammation appears in the body we were puzzled when the arteries start platting up with evel's chlorosis we can't figure out why the guy's joints erupted it with autoimmune arthritis and certainly that colon cancer that that popped out of the colon GI was just bad luck bad genes well nonsense it's tough for houd it's the food it's what they're eating these diseases are not suppose to happen now spontaneously it's it's the fuel we're putting through through the system it's we've been putting diesel fuel through a gasoline burning engine and we get all these all this dysfunction so my first task is just to make the connection between food and and disease and health if you do it right and then we move delicately into the issue of animal-based foods versus plant-based foods and how fundamentally the diet changes we you people put a piece of animal flesh into the intestinal tract two or three times a day you're gonna change everything from the flora from the battery that live in the gut now to the chemistry of the blood to these what you're smearing on the colon wall to the the leakiness that you of the intestinal wall as you create that lease autoimmune disease changes everything and and it's you know politically dicey a lot of folks are and the students and their professors are into paleo diets etc but I said listen we're basically plant eating creatures we our simian ancestors have been on this planet for 20 million years eating leaves and fruits our bonobo and gorilla cousins are up in the trees today eating leaves and for plant eating creatures and as long as we eat a plant predominant diet you don't have to be a hundred percent vegan but if the majority of what goes down your gullet is whole plant foods leaves and greens and fruits and vegetables your body turn a thrive on that and we talk about disease reversal in fact I put that concept up on those on the slide disease reversal I was a physician 45 years before anybody even put those two words in the same sentence for me that these are reversible diseases these Sderot the diabetes and high blood pressure and the the inflammatory arthritis these diseases go away with a healthy diet and so towards the end I put up a fairly controversial set of slides where I show them the list of the classic diseases diabetes hypertension etc and I with another click of the slide the words reversible comes ago these are all reversible diseases and then the most controversial slide I put up by clickin as a want to heal these patients or don't you I mean really why'd you go into medicine want to heal these people then get real about what they're eating because that's why they're sitting in front of you we've been we've been treating the patient's diet like in the Harry Potter movies of all the bark you know the name they must not be spoken don't ask what the patient's eating we're Americans we can eat whatever we want yeah but your arteries got something to say about them and prostate glands yes I'm say but your your intestinal tract of something say buddy your diverged got something to say about it because he's gonna or she's gonna be dealing with the consequences of that and so let's get real about what the patient's eating because it's got such a powerful factor so so I've got these powerful concepts to wheel in during the course my slide presentation but it's a bit easier as you implied because in our 2020 and in every first second third year medical school class now there's twenty or thirty students they've seen movies like forks over knives they've seen what the hell they've seen Cal spirit the lights on they they get that there's something to this nutrition thing they caught you and probably the most Mima Bowl quotable in all of us it was at what the health or cowspiracy what it what dairy is house no is baby calf growth flu that is traveled far and wide across and so in that way it's a little easier either there was often allies in the audience among the students but there's always a bunch of professors in the back of the room with their arms folded and or tongues going cluck-cluck but they're alive they'll either get on board or they'll be pushed aside that this wave is breaking and there's no stopping it food is is really where it's at as far as healing goes in modern medicine yes right so for that essentially the the student body these younger people are much more receptive to it than the institution absolutely the institution you know is the one that green lights you to come and speak in the first place so there has to be some Amin ability to what you have to share yes point that the administration of these medicals they don't want to hear from dr. Klapper they the message is disruptive their rates their models and so we go right to the students we hear they're the ones they're the ones they invite me and they arrange they reserve the lecture hall they arrange for the Indian restaurant to bring over the samosas and for a lunchtime rounds and so we dealing right with the students and and we ask them to form a nutrition interest group so after I leaves with it's not a one time drive-by lecture they a nutrition interest group and once a month I'll Skype in we'll talk about nutrition based cases what will keep the light on as far as their awareness how important nutrition is in their patients yeah that's crucial I mean that was my next question it's great for you to pop in for a couple hours but what is the legacy of that let you know and unless they create a curriculum around it or there's some kind of follow-up to you know create some momentum around this then you know how impactful can it possibly be I mean how far away are we from from really kind of canonizing nutrition studies in medical schools so that we can create a new generation of people who are well versed and what is so important in terms of treating patients all right you you put your finger right on it of course and I gave a lecture up and down in Seattle and professor surgery and I came down afterwards and said nice lecture doc very import good stuff but I'll tell you until the national board of medical examiners that starts asking questions on the national board about nutrition we're not going to be teaching this stuff it's enough for us to get in surgery and biochemistry and physiology we're and the nutrition is just not on the radar screen and when he said that I think you know he's right and so from that has come a real initiative largely spearheaded by the American College of lifestyle medicine to get questions about nutrition on the national board exams and so we went to the national board of medical examiners and they we told them that and they say okay very grudgingly but we don't know anything about it about nutrition and lifestyle medicine you guys make up the questions and and we'll we'll put a few of them on the exam so they put the ball back in the court of Mara College of lifestyle medicine where I am a member and so we are now engaged in a process of creating a pool of a thousand questions to give to the national board of medical examiners and to have them take a sample of them to put on the exam so then we can start going to the medical schools and say this is going to be honored now oh it's real now you have to retouch it oh yeah sad because they don't realize the jewel listen from this is the key to the healing yeah again and they're gonna be grudgingly give it a little bit of energy on the test and I'm afraid knowing the reality of it there's gonna be a question about olive oil and another one about getting enough sleep and you know they'll give a token recognition but as far as really getting into plant-based nutrition I'm gonna have to keep working at the coalface for a while to get that real right over the course of your many decade career I'm sure you've seen diet trends and fads come and go and you know it's interesting to see what sticks and what doesn't and what passes I'm sure you've seen it all and right now we're in a moment where we are seeing you know the explosion of interest in plant-based diets and the science that backs it up in lockstep with that though there's also a very you know strident growing movement around low-carb eating and keto diet and so I'm sure these questions come up all the time especially with these students and just in general so how do you kind of think about that and how do you communicate around those other protocols and what is your perspective on them oh my daugther showed it so you got time time okay well this is like you know listen there's a lot of plant-based people that listen to the show but there's people that are on different kinds of diets absolutely and I think the reason I'm asking you this question is you know for even a very well-educated motivated listener or just consumer in general they go online or they you know read whatever's happening and they see the stuff about plant-based but they also see the stuff about keto and low-carb and it's confusing even if you're you know going to PubMed and and reading abstracts which almost no one does it's still confusing right there's science to support different perspectives and it's all very disorienting and so I'm always trying to drive people towards you know what is common-sense here you know what are the facts really said what does the science really say and what are some principles that we can hang our hat on that can guide us in a trajectory that's doable in the context of our busy lives very important of course so put on our miner's cap here and drill down there enough and it starts with a recognition on everyone's part how toxic the standard Western diet has become and if you're especially a even dabbling in fast foods at all every piece of meat you eat is going to be come with with white bread and sugary ketchup and hydrogenated oils and and the toxic load that comes with whether it's the peaches or the burgers or the buffalo wings etc and all the diets who are serious about getting people healthier whether it's paleo or keto or plant-based whatever now all of us we all we strip away that that outer whole of toxic you know we can all agree that we all agree the standard American diet the fast-food diet is bad in dude and once you do that that that step alone is a quantum leap is a huge improvement and you reduce a huge load of refined sugars and and fats and foods that are grossly obese oh genic and as a result people as panel especially the the paleo folks strip out the dairy products as well and as well as the oils and will you take out the dairy the oils and and junk flour products people are going to lose weight and the very act of losing weight does good things in most people's bodies and their lipid profiles get better their diabetes gets better they feel better their energy level goes up and so you see this improve this initial improvement in health in most all of these dietary styles and it's enough to provide very powerful reinforcement yeah I went paleo boy I lost weight felt good man it's the diet for me and I hear that word with the Quito folks as well but as a physician and as a person who respects the biology of this body that we have I mean no gorilla packs its intestines full of meat through three times a day like we do and having been in the medical game for so long I have to say wait a minute grant did you see this initial improvement but I urged well do not be seduced by this improvement that you're seeing now what the reality is you packed that colon full of meat to three times a day a day now and you send the surge of cholesterol and saturated fat and oxidized meat proteins through those tissues day after day after day as the months go by as the years go by this is a recipe for colon cancer this is a recipe for artery disease as a recipe for strokes recipe for dementia recipe for autoimmune disease from leaky gut and the problem and and I put this my slideshow so medicines become very segmented medical cures become very fractionated very segmented and the odds of you seeing the same doctor when you go back to the clinic or small doctors move away patients move away and the point is people know the specially these young Doc's make these recommend all you ought to eat paleo you're already keto and then you never see them again and I asked those young dot you make these recommendations you got to be around in ten years when this guy passes his first bloody stools and that colon cancer that your diet spawned you read me around to see it you'll be around 12 years this lady's joints light up from the autoimmune arthritis that your diet is leaky gut gave her you won't be around to see it you think you've done something good for her but you're gonna be around in 15 years when when this guy has a stroke from that carotid plaque that your diet stirred up in his arteries or you won't be around to see that and that's my concern as a seasoned physicians have been in this game a while now what are you really brewing up in these patients colons what are you really brewing up in their arteries what are you really brewing up in their joints what are you brewing up in their immune systems and their prostate glands and their colon and their breast tissue yeah and and the folks were making these initial recommendations don't I say do you really know what you're doing doctor you know the Fred do no harm' applies to dietary advice as well and you can really hurt somebody with the wrong diet and I think a lot of wrong advice is being given yeah we're plant eating creatures we need to be true to that can you have a little piece of flesh once or twice a week yeah probably get away with it but but we're not Homo carnivorous we're not flesh-eating Apes and we're meant to run on whole plant foods and when we do that the body gets lean and healthy and the arteries open up inflammation subsides and right the body has to find a word on that so you are 71 right now what only 272 I can only aspire to be as vibrant and as healthy and as handsome as you 72 so for me it's like the proof is in the pudding I mean you obviously you know I've been living this lifestyle for a very long time and you're an incredible living example of the benefits of it I mean you're not you know medications right I mean you know it's to me it's like there you go right so I look at you I hear what you're saying and then I log on to Twitter and I see the debates and the kind of tribalism and the silos and you know unhealth talk about disease you know there's a disease of communication happening right now and it's become really kind of I mean acrimonious is real gentle a word of people infighting and you see this even within the vegan community there was a flare-up you know this week that we don't need to get into but but you know I I think often and I don't really participate in that but I observe it you know sort of take a forensic you know look at what's happening and it's deeply concerning to me because the people that are consuming that are just like I said earlier the average consumer and I think if foments more confusion than clarity and I'm interested in your thoughts on how we can you know create a healthier dialogue and flow of information about these important ideas because truly as you mentioned earlier people's lives really are hanging in the balance here absolutely and you you touched on the major points that they often get lost here the especially the folks in the plant-based community we're a small community yeah we've got a big idea that we're trying to to widely promulgate and we and all this petty infighting certainly doesn't help the public looks deaf these guys don't have their act together it certainly doesn't help the larger mission so one thing to do is for everybody take a step back and say what are we trying to accomplish here we're trying to get them plant-based eating widely-accepted and the least we can do now is talk civilly to each other and realize that we all are in the same boat rowing in the same direction here and in we're all learning we're all on the same journey together here and to have respect for each other's journeys and if something goes by that you have scientific disagreement with it then express it as civilly professionally and and back up your reasoning why and and doesn't have to be done in public you can write someone a private emails that you know I saw something you published and you might want to consider point a B and C about that and you want to talk about this there's a way to communicate civilly and professionally and and that's there's been one of the casualties here and we need you everybody take a step back and and and because we're all friends we all like each other it's time to treat each other as such yeah as well as professionals yeah and get our communications on a level that then are not too injurious it's super important what's your take on this sort of explosion of the carnivore diet that suddenly came out of nowhere and is capturing people's fascination yeah like my friend John McDougall says people loved if you're good news about bad habits you know they like that taste of steak in their mouth so if a little is good let's do more is better but it got even just more like a hundred percent yeah you know we're not carnivorous Apes and this is a recipe for colon cancer and and strokes and autoimmune disease and they're going to learn the hard way I've already seen this the studies showing up in the journals that the folks who eat all the meat would have lots of this TMAO molecule in their bloodstream from the from the carnitine metabolism that the that these microbes want this is not a karma free diet to say the least and that pendulum is going to swing back hard and then you're going to see the the studies start showing out carnivore diet associated with colon cancer carnivore dad is associated with Alzheimer's carnivore died associated with yeah and my left eyebrow won't go up this much when I read them yeah I know yeah that's kind of expected those headlines and that's what they're gonna see in the pantheon of harm how do you you know differentiate or distinguish between meat or chicken and beef and pork versus oils versus dairy like how do you come home ah hey there's there's a choice and again less of toxicologists say the dose makes the poison and a little a teaspoon of oil is probably not gonna hurt anybody and a and the small little bite of cheese probably not don't anybody hello piece of meat anyone it's the its building your diet around these are staples is where the problem comes in and they each have their adverse effects unique to them and the now the very act of cooking meat oxidizes cholesterol which is atherogenic it creates carcinogens it does all these things that the oils don't and the and the dairy doesn't but the oils injure the artery walls and they Lin they now increase the risk of atherosclerosis formation the dairy products are loaded with everything from from estrogens to leukemia viruses you know and you want to remember to rather be shot or hung yeah so they're all pretty evil if in a survival situation you know and probably the the meat would you know small amounts would be less dangerous but again we're talking about some tiny bit just amounts not being a mission your diet around it right so you you grew up on a dairy farm I did there is I think maybe we talked about this last time but there seems to be a high percentage of plant-based doctors that grew up on dairy farms in general I don't know what that's about but maybe it's just seeing up I mean I'm sure that you know the dairy farm you grew up bears no resemblance to the dairy farms of today but nonetheless mm-hmm how did that kind of did you know how do you how did that impact like how you think about dairy products oh my oh right it's very profound and so much of what we're learning about dairy now I brings pay echoes of the things that I saw again and this my uncle's dairy farm in the 50s and and I was a little kid but a couple of things that still are burned into my memory I remember the air of sadness in the dairy barn there are there cows that they were unhappy standing there and they often had tears these female cows had tears go from their own beautiful eyes and I realized now today these are all mothers who've had their babies taken away from them every one of them that no wonder they're sad and they and they're just standing there getting the the babies milk stripped from them absurd if it's been taken away yeah well I'm anthropomorphizing well the other remember another memory that I have is the sound of a mother cow locked up in the stanchion in the barn with her calf that my uncle just took away in the veal pen ten yards away and this mother cow is bellowing hour after hour day after day the most heart-rending soul tearing bellows in cries you can imagine because there because their infants been taking away and this goes on for days three four five days and nights you these haunting cries are coming and that's the truth of dairy and you cannot get that milk flowing without taking that calf away from the mother it's a cruel cruel industry from the from forcibly impregnating the the female cows to taking their babies away to to killing the male cows reveal to killing the mothers after a few years they all wind up as Hammond read that the dairy barn is a slaughter industry so the dairy barns are short stopping off place on the way to the slaughterhouse for a few years of calves and and milk now and I didn't understand that when I was eight but I sure understand it now and the memories of those the tears running down the moms G and the and their cries out against against their babies taking away still haunt me to this day it's a cruel cruel industry so you go vegan in like 1981 cry and and from what I understand I mean that was it seems like that was motivated mostly from kind of an ethical moral compunction initially actually there it was the conjunction of two very powerful forces in 1981 I was a resident in anesthesiology in Vancouver and and I'm on the cardiovascular service and day after day I'm putting people to sleep and I'm watching surgeons open up their chests and open up the arteries in their heart and from their coronary arteries they're pulling this yellow greasy gut called atherosclerosis out of their arteries and and I knew what that stuff was there was already studies and in journals and talking about what this stuff is and I realized that I should pay attention my dad is already showing signs of clogged arteries to do it would eventually kill him and and I'm as I'm watching the the surgeon one day pull a particularly rubbery slippery piece of material out of an artery I thought to myself man that stuff looks like chicken fat him little voice up my shoulders said it's a good reason why it looks like to advance after it is chicken fat and kalfa and Pig Fed and the Fed of the animals this man was eating so from the operating room I'm getting this message cook that if I don't change my diet now that's gonna be me on that table with that striker saw going up my sternum and I really don't want they have to happen I saw those folks and they wake up they're very uncomfortable so I from the medical side I was getting the very strong message but then as you mentioned you know when I would say fourth-year med student at University of Illinois in Chicago I'd spend my Saturday nights in the trauma unit a big battle Cook County Hospital and and all night I would see the worst that humans inflicted on each other the physical violence of sexual as you know psychological violence I would be shaking by Sunday morning when I walked out of there and I vowed if I couldn't rid the world of violence to at least get out of my own life to become a man of non-violence and I made a serious study of it and and I got the books on from the Indian Saints and maganda about leading a life of I himself non-violence and so I really started trying to institute these my life and so I'm up in Vancouver and on the cardiovascular service and one night I'm out for dinner with a friend of mine and I'm pontificating about living a life of non-violence well I'm polishing off a porterhouse steak at the local Cajun cleaver yeah yeah job it was great compassion so that's all very nice Michael but if you want to get the fireman side of your life you might want to start with that piece of meat on your plate because in satisfying your desire for the taste of flesh in your mouth you are paying for the death of the animal and for the next one in line that's a slaughterhouse well Susie said that I might had all the rationales you'll bill well that's what they raised them for and the animals dead already you know but before the words could come out of my lips the that little voice said you know he's right yeah he's right yeah when I went out to pay for the meal I felt complicit in a crime that remembered the cows on the farm and had been no wonder she was crying you know because they're all gonna wind up I remember vividly the Bulls being shot in the head and when a dairy cow stopped giving milk eat my uncle would call the far the the slaughterhouse guy and he would come with his truck and load her up I knew the reality of it in a year I was paying for that system to work and so between what I was seeing in the operating room and what I knew in my heart from that night and the steak houses that was the end that was it the line in the sand and so I adopted a plant-based diet lots of lentil stews and being chilies and my body loved it boy within 12 weeks the 20 pound spare tire a fat melted off my waist my blood pressure went to normal my cholesterol went to normal I felt great waking up in a nice lean body every day and I said something do this and at that point I realized I didn't want to be an anesthesiologist and spend my time putting people to sleep I'd rather go back to general practice and help him wake wake up so I did when that happened and you had that kind of you know epiphany with respect to you know how it impacted your health positively positively did you then turn to the medical literature to find support for the I mean what what was the kind of state of the Canon of literature at that time there was not much of it to say the least dr. Frey Ellis a physician in England had published studies of a fellow with bad angina that was destined for the operating table went on a vegan diet and within six months he's hiking up the mountains in the Lake District in England and and Frank Sachs knows had published studies showing the vegetarians of lower blood pressure they had lower cholesterol there were already little flickers and within a year or two dr. Dean Ornish was published his for his initial studies and as soon as I saw his studies I said yep that's right that's exactly what should happen and so I was getting in just on the early bread crumb a stage of have read the and what did your fellow general practitioner you know practitioners in your community think of all this oh my didn't have a lot of support lost the thread in indeed yeah yes but my patients were getting healthy their support someone in the area to give plant-based cooking lessons I would send them to my friends they would give them the cooking lessons and the same thing started happening with them and and and it really pushed my medical management to a plantain to the wall in that I had a patient with high blood pressure and I had among two medications and I get a call from them so died every time I stand on I'm getting so lightheaded I was gonna pass out am i actually thumping away there and then he says well my wife took my blood pressure and it was 70 over 40 and so I urged as though that I said those those fateful words that I was urged never to say stop your blood pressure medication man you got that's low blood pressure you guessed out their freakin pills well soon as I said those words I thought there'd be a puff of smoke and the ghosts of my internal medicine professor would lifetime medication nobody gets all these man not only can you get him off her medication you've got to get them off they'll stand up and pass out on you and so and so Wow high blood pressure is reversible and you can this is not lifetime medication you can get may get these patients off the off their medications well once that happened that broke the old model and now the door was open and well it wasn't long before one of my diabetic patients call me and there was on 20 units of insulin and on metformin type 2 and type 2 and the blood pressure with a blood sugar of 30 today I have a pounding headache the eyes will cut your insulin in half he calls me two mornings later it's still running low blood sugar so I said those faithful words stop your insolent and you don't need insulin anymore so you're expected the right practice exactly but got him off his medication he's these now lean healthy guy doesn't have diabetes and so these two patients once I have this experience there's no turning back there's no there's no denying what I just saw these these people are getting healthier right in front of my eyes and they're so grateful they're so happy to be off their pills that people don't want to be sick people yeah my other dog friends will say paper people won't change their diet they will change they're tired of being fat and sick yeah that was the thing I was gonna ask I think we're you know on this subject of patient care there is this sense a that you know people are not going to change their lifestyle habits so just give them the pill that's kind of the conventional approach here and second to that we're now kind of in an interesting you know different type of culture and social climate where it's not exactly encouraged to confront people with the fact that they're overweight or obese or you know it's like fat shaming or what out like you know don't stay you can't tell them the truth about that or like you know you're beautiful and perfect exactly the way that you are and the the combination of those two things I think you know makes it more difficult to do exactly what you just explained yes and I run into that but I don't let it stop me and in fact in my slide presentation I've got a picture a plastic model of an OB see abdomen and and I've been along with some obese people saying last way I am and accept me how I am and fair enough and psychotic but compassion for these people and there's all sorts of reasons why they're carrying this extra weight for the way they were raised and abuse and their view of food etc there's no aspersions on the person but from us but I say from a completely physical point of view we're talking physiology here here's what's going on inside that anthem and I got a bear we slice the in bento BC Everman in half and there are two kinds of fattening up one is right under the skin the subcutaneous fat is metabolically active it produces estrogen it's the largest in secretion tissue in the body and if and you do not want it to be obese with 30 pounds of estrogen secreting tissue pumping out these powerful hormones plastered on your abdomen if you're a woman that's a great way to get breast lumps and and fibroids and bleeding and and possibly increased risk of breast cancer estrogens make the prostate gland unstable it's a greater guy is a great way to wind up with man boobs and prostate cancer you don't want the subcutaneous of fat pumping out all these estrogens and inside the abdomen the intra-abdominal fat that wraps around the intestines that's a different metabolic cat and that puts out these molecules called inflammatory cytokines there that fan inflammatory reactions throughout the body and they not only make inflammation worse and joints and arteries but they also interfere with the action of insulin and then they make type 2 diabetes worse and now people can get all defense if they want but again your body doesn't care the obesity is not a state of health it's a state of inflammation and estrogen access and this lead this leads to shorten lives so I'm delicately trying to put that across but to the doc city you guys got to know this this is really the reality of this so the subcutaneous fat is producing all of this estrogen but but people are afraid to eat soy it's so sad and it's a real casualty of this modern internet Asia news so I got phytoestrogens gonna give you man boobs and turn your Sun gate only tofu uh-oh I've heard all that stuff and it's sad not only because it's not true but it as you probably aware the phytoestrogens in soy are actually protective they actually block the receptor sites that the cancer-causing estrogens we are trying to occupy in the countries where they the most soy they have the lowest rate of breast cancer and the women who with breast cancer who eat soy do better their cancers grow more slowly so it's it's one of these unfortunate media inversions of the truth well it's so strange how certain foods get conflated with gender identity and perhaps diet protocols as well like oh if you're vegan you're a soy boy you know you're gonna do whatever you know whatever gets associated with that culturally and it's it's so strange oh it is you're eating meat and you're barbecuing even if you're just buying it in cellophane wrappers and at the supermarket that's um somehow makes you more of a man germinal sense and that's why I was so glad to see the film the game changers come out so that hopefully will blow that stereotype out of the water that certainly made an impact oh it certainly has curious to see what you would cut a few big you've got I was just I was with Louisa Hoya the other day the director of the film working on some PSAs but you know dot C bow she yeah I know that some commercials great cyclist and I'm I'm not part of the game changers and I've never met Louie before but it was a pleasure to meet him and him and and just to you know congratulate him on the impact of that movie I mean it's really you know it's made it's made a gigantic impacts undeniable absolutely and hopefully it'll start dismantling that stereotype that vegetarians are but it goes back to the siloing and the confirmation bias and all that kind of stuff if it was amazing to kind of watch you know again from a forensic point of view all the all the rebuttals and the deconstruction pieces and that came out in the wake of that you know trying to hold their ground and you know combat the the the science and the perspective of that movie you know because people want to believe what they want to believe and and we are in a very strange time in which it doesn't matter how much science in fact you put in front of somebody they're gonna dig in whatever their their perspective is and and listen you know the vegan plant-based community isn't immune from that as well I see it going on on both sides sure and you know it's concerning about the health of our culture in general whether it's happening in the health conversation or in the conversation and all the social problems that were you know facing right now I think it's a real it's a real problem and I'm not sure how we're gonna solve that when the way that technology is headed really I agree you know you have to have faith in the truth and then you know they say you can't keep a hatpin in a cloth bag for very long now the point comes out and the truth is were plant-eating creatures and when you look at the environmental cost of creating a flesh based diet it's destroying this planet yeah I mean that's the other big thing that's kind of occurred in the in the decades since you began this now there's a whole environmental conversation around the impact of diet on the health of our planet that didn't exist when you began this and I think it just is another you know everybody you know has different things that motivate them or they concern them and now it's just another on-ramp into why this is a good idea oh absolutely and to the folks who are advocating you know Paleo diet or acute diets you know that you know if they're I said wait a minute if you everybody already beaten paleo really are you truly advocating a flesh based meal three times a day for eight billion people talking about we just don't have the land or the resources to do it like I'm I'm in support of you know regenerating our soil and the impact that regenerative methods of Agriculture can have and you know I had you see that movie the biggest little farm elementary is know you know some some some local farmers here a husband-and-wife couple who took a barren plot of land and turned it into a thriving ecosystem through these kind of principles of regeneration and I think that's great there's something kind of you know beautiful but also bucolic about that mmm and and I think that that is you know that's a that's a move in the right direction certainly away from you know industrial animal agriculture which is you know basically the the motivating force behind our Western diet but I don't think that that model can scale to feed eight billion people that's the problem and most people they look at a regenerative farm and say well I mean this way but most you know it's like that's producing very little of the food that people are eating it's it's really a pipe dream to think that that's going to be the solution here that's the point and with 350 million Americans clamoring for meat the steak or the burger there would come off that farm people would be paying one hundred and twenty dollars Frank first day and that's just what it really should cost if we got rid of all these industrial farms and we just had these regenerative farms meat would be incredibly expensive absolutely dispense with the subsidies and the like exactly would create greater balance and I think it would it would make people you know more mindful but also you know the economic incentives are out of whack right no they would be in line with what it actually is and the impact that these industries are creating I think we could write this show oh absolutely people could only afford to eat this stuff once a month and that'd be fine people got through meeting you down to one at what burger once a month I'd be a happy doc yeah that would that would change about the way that it traditionally always was there's a delicacy these things were you know these things were hard to come by exist it was a garnish or something special it didn't you know predominate our plate three times a day exactly two dollar burgers are you know an obscenity and every level economically as well as ecologically and you know sort of likewise I celebrate the the innovation that we're seeing with the plant-based meats with even possible burgers and the beyond burgers but I think you know it's becoming more incumbent upon the consumer to be more educated about these foods yes they're vegan but you know they're still coming with the bun and the ketchup and all the other I mean you know there's it's like this is not whole food plant-based this is a move away from industrialized animal agriculture and that's great and I think there are arguments to be made about the positive health impacts of these products versus their animal you know counterparts but let's not be confused here you're here so you know how do you think about that because listen in in 1981 you go to the health food market slim pickins right about how turd you can get you know vegan alternative to every delicacy that you can imagine and they all they figured out how to make these things taste good to sate you in a certain way and it's very easy and I found myself doing this I will plead guilty to this like deluding myself into thinking like this is an okay choice maybe it is once in a while I can't make this you know front and center exactly I'm a hundred percent in agreement yeah I'm so grateful to see these meat like burgers are wonderful and if it gets Joe Sixpack meat potato guy off his beef burger on to that I'm all for it but yeah but again these are novelty foods you eat them once a month for twice for their treat and their transition food for these folks who need to tiptoe into the plant-based world and I'm very grateful for them but where no one's advocating them as a staple of the diet but by a longshot we agree one of the things that's amazing about you know the work that you've done it's it's one thing to talk about prevention like let's prevent people from getting heart disease or diabetes or high blood pressure and the like it's another thing to talk about reversal that's where people start to get real prickly here yeah but you've seen you know amazing results and you know I had we were talking earlier I had Robby borrow and Cyrus kobata in here talking about all these case studies of people that they work with where they have reversed their type 2 diabetes and type 1 maybe they've been able to ameliorate you know the symptom ology of that and it's really you know really quite something but this is this is nothing new for you you've been doing this for a long time indeed I was on the medical staff at True North health center in Santa Rosa California for eight years and we saw plant-based nutrition done right and it's most effective pure from the setting and and what I saw there just it was stunning every every medical student every physician should see these diseases go away to see lupus go away rheumatoid arthritis go into remission and high blood pressure disappear in type 2 diabetes these are reversible diseases there was somebody had told me that when I was a medical student and as part of the lecture that I'm giving to the students that these are eminently reversible diseases yeah well you know if you if you have a gasoline burning engine you've been putting diesel fuel in and it is running rough and black smoke is coming out of it and then you switch to high Tech's gasoline mmm my car runs great with our food so many of these conditions are just a result of what we're eating well one of the big interesting protocols at at true north is the fasting then that you know that that kind of protocol that you a nation's under and this is another area that I think for a long time was considered you know very fringe absolutely I know that you know the staff yourself included I've taken hits for you know kind of putting people under this this you know regimen but you know interestingly now suddenly fasting is all the vogue right really it's it's weird how these trends happen like nobody said any said boo about the microbiome and then suddenly it's all about the micro you know like I don't know how these things percolate up but right now we're we're in a moment where people are not only paying attention to the benefits of fasting and intermittent fasting you know there's science that's starting to show up to back it up and and you know the average person now is I you know I fast 18 hours a day three times a month or whatever it is like this is something that nobody was talking about even five years ago whatever's new as old as do we get out right there the wheel keeps going around and round but I'm in amazement as you are to see these things that now becoming far more widely accepted the human body and fasting is we had spent a whole program on that the and let me take a step back we realize that you know a million years ago on the African savannah it was probably pretty common that four or five days would go by before you found the next berry bush of fruit on under the knife Kirkus rotted in the Sun and these these enforced four or five day fast were probably the rule and our body learned how to deal with that and in fact after 48 hours without carbohydrates coming in which is our preferred fuel now the body switches into burning stored body fat and goes into this state of ketosis and wonderful things happen in the early stages ketosis and the body starts cleaning itself out it suppresses inflammation it protects the stem cells so when they revive after the fast it's a healthier immune system these wonderful things happen and we would use the idea TrueNorth we would put people on water fast but again this would be so this is medically supervised and as medical fasting these are people with runaway high blood pressure runaway rheumatoid arthritis lupus these are our official medical problems in these people and a fast isn't a wonderful initial step to to suppress the symptoms and and start the person on the road to recovery but as I tell the patients and the med students who would rotate through to north you know the fasting is wonderful it's powerful it's great but on the screen of their life is little blip on the screen what matters is what you read after the fast it's the food stream day after day month after month that makes for a healthy body because if they go on a water fast for three weeks and they get those a great improvement but if they go back to cheeseburger and Pizza land the Cinderella turns back into a pumpkin within days of the joints are sore the blood pressures back the the water fasting is a step to a whole food plant-based diet at changi and while they're water fasting we would give them cooking lessons and show them videos and food demonstrations so when they left they would know what to eat so the symptoms don't come back so the fasting is a powerful tool but it's just a tool in the chest the issue is the food so patient comes to true north means with you how do you decide whether or not to put them on a fast and if so how long to do it and what is it that you're kind of monitoring while they're doing it because at three weeks three week water fast that's this is not intermittent fasting this is this is a whole different thing like how did this begin as a procedure or a protocol and you know what is actually happening with this person while they're undergoing that I mean three weeks yes right such an important question it sounds crazy it does but first of all it's easier than you think by day three hungers gone about one of the blessings of ketosis it pretty much turns off hunger and by day three for though you're not thinking about food as God's gift of faster so you don't spend three weeks hungry and in fact all the energy that would usually be devoted to digesting your food on a water fast is freed up and no food to digest and people feel that energy and they stopped me in the courtyard archive and felt this good and here's our gee I haven't eaten in three weeks but I feel wonderful it's counterintuitive you think you're going like you guys need my alcoholic mind no more food forever my right and there's a good reason for this and and the body's using this energy to heal and to readjust itself it's it's oh it's a it's a blessed state but you but you don't do a lot of physical activity here you don't to drop your blood sugar it's a special state it's a good time to get some meditation done and some contemplation work on your novel it's a time to be physically quiet during that time but but as far it's not three weeks of longer people aren't even hungry after after a few days the vast majority of them every once in a while I'll get some it's my way all the way through but it is rare most people they're not hungry and during this time wonderful things are happening as far as their the the underlying disease process that brought them there in the first place their diabetes usually getting better they're blood pressures coming down their arteries roping up the angina is going away but there are absolute contraindications you don't fast type one diabetes people who are way underweight that they are not good candidates for water fasting for whatever reason people with a lot of emotional problems probably not a good idea children you don't fast there are there are some contraindications as far as determining who does the fast and then as far as monitoring the fast that's a good word we wash these people like a hawk the intern knocks on the door twice a day how you doing jester vital signs are true blood pressure pulse and in nausea and headache getting lightheaded when you stand up and if we get positive answers to any of those questions then we're going to throw up I'm getting lightheaded that's the end of the fast it's time for some juice and they get them on to some some light foods so we're so if most every healthy person can you can do a three-day fast at home five at the most after that you better be in a place where people know what they're looking at if you get lightheaded or nauseated or whatever so I'm sort of monitoring by an experienced person is is a really key to doing these long fasts safely but at home I have people just on a weekend I've got patients who just water do water from Friday to Monday absolutely reasonable thing to do I think I think good things happen their body I've got people who don't eat till noon I think that that extra six hours in the morning of no food does good things for them that's intermittent fasting so there people can put their toe in the water and get the benefits without doing these long medically supervised fast yeah it seems like science is still very much emerging in this area I mean you have Valter Longo who's kind of you know at the forefront of this you're studying this and he's come up with his fasting mimicking diet which allows you to eat but still produces that same physiological effect you have such and Panda they all have to give a little bit of different opinions on this I had David Sinclair in here the other day really was talking at length about you know what's happening and it went when you fast how that's impacting longevity and anti-aging like I think it's a very cool interesting field mm-hm and perhaps much more you know needs to be studied here and I'm wondering whether there's any wisdom and like why do the three-week fast when you could do perhaps the fasting mimicking diet and you know is there a reason why you you've you know this Institute where you used to work kind of settled on this as being in that way of dealing with us and I and you know as an important caveat you're dealing with people are very ill they're coming to you right exactly and as you already mentioned the these the folks are the kind of self selective they have they've come there that are willing they're willing yeah they're ready they're ready to go it is and it's also you know the the big league heavy artillery of of nutritional therapy a full on water fast is very effective and if I've got a guy we've had a fellow a blood pressure of 220 over 130 and he goes on four medications and just nothing was bring him down and took about twenty seven days on water fast but fine that that pressure came down and so those are the kind of folks that that kind of fasting works the best for I would imagine also psychologically it's got to be incredibly empowering or bringing somebody in who's you know kind of feeble bodied at the moment and you're putting in front of them something that is seemingly impossible to do and then they do it it's got to make them you know in addition to whatever you know spikes and vitality and you know reduction in their you know disease markers are just knowing like how did something incredibly hard I would imagine makes them more motivated and excited about making the changes that follow and and kind of taking an insurance policy on and making sure that they stick oh is huge that's so perceptive of you rich yeah I tell them it's like you know the outward-bound courses where they did yes you can and they strap you up and they you're on the rope there and you're going across and you look down and you see your own deaths out there you keep on going and they make it across you're now someone who did their you can't say I can't do that you just saw yourself do that and push yourself past your limits well a blue on Waterfest doesn't say I can't do that you just did it and you'll never be upset about missing lunch again you know just went three weeks without food now and you're right it's tremendously empowering and it's a real investment that people want to stick with what are some of the craziest turnarounds that you've seen oh oh my we have two patients with lymphomas come in Rebecca as an older woman had a had a mass the size of a grapefruit in her abdomen she did a prolonged water and juice cleanse and that just melted right away lymphoma disappeared this was validated at University California San Francisco they biopsied it completely disappeared completely disappeared Wow without traditional chemo and absolutely and and then Yvonne was another one she came in she also had lymphoma she had lymph nodes the size of hens eggs and her groin and her armpit then she did a 26 day fast tumor just melted right away and she's been cancer free now lymphomas are special kind of cancers they're watery and they respond well to - fasting - the biochemical changes so not all cancers are created equal I can't say it's the definitive cure for cancers but to see that happen and it was just stunning to me another one of these things that were told now that never happens well I just saw it happened twice so those are two of the most dramatic and and you know dr. McDougall has got a big waste basket of pills that people you know that's right throw in there and and that's so gratifying people come in with these bags full of pills and they leave normal healthy people and as to walk out the door you go yes that's what medicine should be we've seen the growth of lifestyle medicine practitioners this is another you know trend in the right direction it would be great if there were more people doing this we're in a healthcare system that makes it I think kind of too difficult for a lot of practitioners physicians to make that choice and back to that issue of of you know empowering people to make these lifestyle changes so much of it it's the follow-up like how connected are these people to the practitioners you were talking about the doctors you know that doctors not going to be around to see that person when this happens but to create that relationship where there's accountability and there's check-ins and their supports and all of that I think it's critical in terms of you know making sure that these things stick long-term and you know if you're you know had some of these doctors uh Robert Oz felt or Michelle McMann and like there are Michelle Micmac any other doctors that are doing this very effectively so I'm interested in your and obviously true north being an incredible example of this but you know how can we you know create better incentives for physicians to craft practices like this and create those those you know communities to promote this in light of a system that is giving these doctors 15 minutes prescribed get them out the door or turn and burn you know it's the way that it's all set up right now it just seems wrong headed oh it's absolutely wrong headed and it's and it's days are numbered I think that we're it's inevitable that the current edifice is just paying doctors to do things to patient to do bypass grafts to do colonoscopies etc after the disease is already started to do these band-aid procedures very expensive band-aid procedures and you do to a quarter million dollar operation and the patient limps out of the hospital to go eat more cheeseburgers and beaches and clog up their graphs so they can come back in and have another one that's bankrupt medicine and and it's totally not sustainable I ran into a and Merrick a lifestyle medicine meeting nice looking lean fellow - Kim Beckman thought he was a doctor he said note I'm not a physician I'm a plant based insurance actuary well I said oh oh yeah I said a bunch of us realize that the vegans require a lot less medical care and he said the and the insurance companies need to take advantage of this the entire suit model has to have to collapse down in this way mm-hmm he says there is value for every CEO that doesn't go down with a heart attack there's value to the community for every young breadwinner who doesn't develop a colon cancer there's value to the community and we can quantitate that we know that someone a diabetic person with a hemoglobin a1c of 9 which is out of controlled IV we are going to pay $15,000 a year for for his medical care if you can get his his hemoglobin a1c down to 8 that lowers our cost down to 12,500 we can quantitate every one point improvement we can tell you how much money we're going to save off that you can quantitate a lot of these diseases says man that gives us a way to do value assessment for the patient he says the numbers go like this every time we pay for a coronary bypass by the time we pay the surgeon anesthesia recovery room the rehab etcetera clusters quarter million dollars than ten fifty thousand for every and if in a ten-year period we expect to Korea to pay for ten of those with a hundred executives here and none of them have their MI and none of them and why I'm needing the procedure we're sitting on that money we'll be happy to pay the doctor 20,000 will pay the patient 20,000 will pay the clinic 20,000 we're still sitting on almost $200,000 profit here there's money in the system we've just got a rejigger the way the beams are flowing the bean counters have to start paying the doctors for keeping people healthy and and the patients as well it can be done and there would free up so much money all these scans not done procedures not done we could send kids to college or you put internet in everybody's houses we could fix the roads there's such wealth there we just need to restructure now we're seeing the way medicines practice I think that has to go hand-in-hand education as well and perhaps and over all of our litigious society I mean so many of these tests and scans are driven by a fear of getting sued well I got these and they could have given me this and they didn't yeah yes but I predict we're gonna see a 180 on that I think just a matter of time before an angry Widow walks into the office of a cardiologist or a cardiothoracic surgeon says my husband died on that operating table last month during a four vessel coronary artery bypass and nobody told us he could have melted those plaques away from the inside with a plant-based diet why didn't somebody tell us this why was this information withheld from us when did you people know this how long has this been in the medical literature 25 years and she will lodge a wrongful death suit and I think she should win that suit because this was a wrongful death that someone when she sign you in the when the patient signed the insert informed consent form it should say and I've been instructed that this this these plaques could be melted away with a with a whole food plant-based diet someone should have told him that and and there's gonna be a couple of lawsuits and that hopefully will move us in direction we need you that would be a very interesting test case oh it sure would it sure would they'll say well it's not standard of care well darn well it should be and we've got to get that dietary counseling as part of standard of care if you could craft the perfect health care system what would that look like compared to what we have right now well I think the ancient Chinese had added five hundred years ago you pay the doctor as long as you're healthy or keep me healthy as soon as you get sick the doctor starts getting better and motivates the doctor to keep you healthy what are you reading you know and he's very interested in how you living your life because his income stops if you get sick yeah and some variation on that right the there's so many ways we could do this the federal government could help when it comes tax time and before you fill out your taxes you go down to the local pharmacy where the nurse and the urgent care booth is there and she takes your blood pressure put you on the scale and and Jen takes a urine specimen and six your finger for cholesterol and if you're no more than five pounds over your ideal body weight take five percent off your taxes if your blood pressure's one 130 over 80 or below take another five percent off your taxes if there's no cotinine in your urine from cigarette smoking take another five percent off your taxes if your cholesterol is below one 150 take another five percent off and and she'll write it up and give you a little ticket that you submit with your tax return whoa government's paying me for staying healthy yeah there's so many ways we could do this and we would all be better off for it yeah where was it I saw I might have this wrong but I saw a little video I think it was in might have been in Russia or China where you could get a free like subway token if you're you run on a treadmill or the idea of like setting up a gym like reversing the gym membership thing like the gyms free as long as you're going the minute you stop going are you signed for a year if you don't you pay when you don't go no the tools are all around us we just click are thinking a little bit get creative yeah sure I mean we certainly need to make changes we sure do I'm not working so well is now it's a disease care system and the disease is winning at this point so somebody if somebody's listening to this and they're like I'm on board conceptually I understand this but what is this I you know I don't really what does this mean like I've wake up in the morning okay so what do I eat and how does this work like walk me through an ideal you know day in the life of food and activity and lifestyle in the world of Michael clock yeah absolutely okay well as long as you're eating food that grew out of the ground and has been minimally processed you're going to be okay basically though that they're gonna have another t-shirt made up eat plants and get on with it yeah you know at this point cuz that's what it comes your brain loves to over complicate this oh we do we some velvet rope and I need this secret VIP thing really if but again this body's been around for thirty million years and we are plant eating creatures so in the morning if you're if you're not hungry don't eat just drink water till you get hungry that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do when there's reasons why that makes sense is you've been fasting all night it's okay to extend that into the morning hours so if you're not hungry don't eat just drink water if you are hungry bio may either have some fruit have a cantaloupe have a grapefruit etc or something more substantial some oatmeal and some fruit with it will have milk or rice milk on top of that so there's breakfast lunches and dinners I say put them on the 4s clothes line here salads soups steamed veggies and starches and so have a big sale at least once a day you gotta have that fresh life fresh green stuff for now so I have a big salad once a day twice a day is even better I'm a big fan of these hearty vegetable soups you can make up a big pot of soup and a crock pot or a slow cooker and eat off of it for three days pour a bunch into Tupperware freezer containers let them cool put lids on put in the freezer so you got a bunch of frozen soup portions bring them out heat them eat them make life simple for yourself so I'm a big fan of these hearty vegetable soups I could live on soup and salad and steamed greens with that that's largely but what we eat you need two favorite colors should be green yellow green and yellow I have something dark and green every day whether it's kale chard broccoli brussel sprouts etc there's something yellow carrots squash sweet potatoes yams you need something for the carotenes so so salad soup steamed veggies and you need some calories in the form of healthy starches so I'm a big fan of sweet potatoes and potatoes of all sorts but quinoa millet and all these lovely whole grains and we make a bow to the sort of legumes as far as proteins go yeah I have something leguminous at least every other day I'll call scoop a lentil stew of bean burrito being chili hummus and with something they have some legumes in it if you do that I'd have some fruit for dessert man you're gonna body will know what to do with that you're gonna have a fine food stream there but dr. K yes what about protein all right and there's protein in everything if you are eating 2,000 calories enough to keep your weight up of whole plant foods that grew out of the garden out of the ground you're going to be getting 50 60 70 grams of high grade protein it sits in the rice and the beans and the greens and fruits and everything's got protein I've in 45 years of Medicine I've never written the diagnosis protein deficiency on the chart it just just does not happen so but again the whole foods are really important you got to be able to identify though that's a cucumber that's accurate that's that's a green pepper over there yeah it's when the hand of man to process it into all sorts of flakes and process through that's where you get in trouble whole grains are very much a part of this as well what have you learned or what's your perspective on gluten and gluten sensitivity right it's an issue but it's it's this much of an issue it's not that much of an issue there's probably more of it than we think it's a fairly rare phenomenon from a strictly medical point of view and the classic sense where we Doc's learned that someone who's gluten sensitive they eat some bread and they spend the next 6 hours on the toilet bloody diarrhea that's fairly rare but there's probably a little local it's a continuum there's probably a lot of folks with a low-grade gluten sensitivity they may not even be aware of it and they get this bloating and the gas and the loose stools if there's any question just stop all gluten for a month and if your symptoms clear up then have three slices of whole wheat bread one day and see how you feel the next day do you know it's the cheapest best lab test going and see if they see if you're gluten sensitive or not you can test yourself I wouldn't rely on the blood test at this point I know that when I eat like if I eat a you know we're fine bread or pita crust or things like that if I overdo it with that like the next day my eyes are all puffy you know so it's like well clearly there's some inflammation happening here I don't know what's happening in my joints or the rest of my body but there's this can't be a good thing something is happening that's my body so I wish I could tell you I was perfect about that I'm definitely not but but I sure do there must be something to that oh there is absolutely and you did the right thing and you're tuned in enough to know that when I eat this next morning my body's not here but so all you need to know you're probably someone who should eat gluten very sparingly and you've already gotten that message and so the lightening doesn't come out of this guy and strike you're dead but your body lets you know one way or the other what about organic versus non-organic in this day and age it's becoming more and more significant whether the for a number of reasons the you have the less pesticides and herbicides to eat the better I feel much better about paying those organic farmers to take care of the soils and to take care of the earth so I've got nothing better to do with my penny stand then buy organic produce and and then as we've heard from our friend dr. Jeff Bush know hopefully the organic produce will have much less in the way of glyphosate and roundup etc and blessed by definition of the genetically modified organisms so all the way around I'm a big fan of organic produce and I don't mind paying the extra nickel for the broccoli what about that person who's listening in this who's thinking this all sounds great but like I got I work two jobs and I'm you know I'm barely making ends meet you're talking about you know making all these food it just sounds like a lot of work and the learning curve is really high time consuming perhaps expensive like how do you work with somebody who is sort of cost and time restrictive so important great please I would urge them go to websites like Forks Over knives and click on their transition program click on their recipes they will walk you through how to make this happen in your life there's books virgin vegan and there there's lots of books to help you get started the engine to website has some excellent now programs to transition when the so go to the websites and take advantage of their transition programs and also this idea well that's all it's an expensive way to eat and takes a lot of time to work actually not rice and beans are cheap you can buy a 20 pound bag of rice for 6 bucks you can buy 15 pounds of lentils for $8 the staples are cheap and if you're not spending your money on meat and ice cream and cheeses you got pennies to spend on the organic the organic produce and you can certainly save yourself a lot of time as I mentioned by using your freezer make up these big bad soups make up on a Saturday morning make up 30 veggie burgers and put them in your freezer now you got a freezer full of burgers bring mouth heat them and eat them so these batch cooking helps and if there's a store you can buy bags of frozen organic vegetables already cut up so in your soup pot just open a bag of frozen a throw in the bot and and done you don't have to spend any time cooking chopping so there's ways around it these days people die of their excuses they die of their excuses and you know I don't want to see that happen any longer so at this point choose to being chilly over the beef chili and well the money's going one of two places either going towards the food that's gonna make you healthy or it's going to the healthcare corner the grocer the doctor later I know unfortunately that's it's not great at motivating people you know we're not we're not so good at you know forecasting into the future and making better decisions now for some reason but that is the truth and there is something interesting about like like it's counterintuitive to me to buy frozen fruits and vegetables like I want to go to the farmers market it I want it really fresh but there is something to be said for those products that are frozen immediately after picking their you know so they're basically they're locking in those nutrients there's no you know sort of degrading process that happens in the you know however many days it takes between picking and ending up in your grocery store yeah absolutely flash frozen vegetables are the busy person's friend absolutely you're absolutely right and in the mornings that will thaw out the night before we go to bed if we're having oatmeal next morning we take out the frozen mangoes and cherries from the freezer let them thaw overnight and we put them in the cereal the next morning yeah what is your what's your exercise routine look like these days you're you you're runner yes I used to be a runner yeah I have back surgery too many hours of the operating table and so now I'm a cyclist and so either do I love going on for these 15 mile bike rides but I've got a an exercise bike a recumbent bike in my out on our patio where I can watch I've got a couple of bird feeders so I'm a bit of a burger that's no bird as I'm pedaling I could see that but got the big lens and very importantly I'll get on the bike crank up the resistance and start pedaling but then I grab to twelve pound hand weights and as I'm pedaling I'm doing an upper body workout and so I do 40 minutes of upper body while I'm pedaling you work up a sweat doing that and I do that every other morning and and so that's my cardio strength program and my wife's a yoga teacher so the mornings I'm not sweating she's got me on the map and doing salutations to the Sun my my grandparents retired to west palm beach they've since passed away but you know my youth was marked by going to west palm beach you know once a year to visit them in the wintertime I mean that is a community it's it's much more cosmopolitan now than it was then but it's certainly you know a very large retirement community so we must be interesting for you to be so vital at your age and to be surrounded by a lot of elderly people who are much less so to put it bluntly it is something you ought to run out good shake that's so that equation yeah you don't you can't but yeah it's it's sad it but it motivates me to to help people not wind up in that position you're seeing more and more plant-based restaurants in the Miami area as well really remarkable I've got a I've got a folder on my my computer things I never thought I would see and and every week I'm the two or three goes in there McDonald's serving plant-based burgers and this and the California schools and the hospitals now certainly plant-based meals and all these amazing restaurants that are showing up that's really exciting there's a really hopeful signs have you been to love Life Cafe and my only no really yeah our good friends Diego and Veronica run this amazing plant-based restaurant it's in it's in the Wynwood district and Miami just too far from where you know and they serve amazing food they're just they're beautiful people too and cyclists Oh avid cyclists so I'm gonna connect you okay please do one of the questions that I always ask the doctors that I have on the show is what would be like your number one agenda like imagine a parallel universe where suddenly you found yourself as Surgeon General what are the changes if you had that kind of power that with broad strokes you could really you know change policy move them on a grand level like what you know how would you get to work if you roll up your sleeves like what's what's priority number one well I would end our cultural subsidies to the meat and dairy industry and let the market really dictate what these things sold for what they cost to produce and if any subsidies are done I would give it to the broccoli farmers but I would make healthy produce really cheap where that just you couldn't pass it up and then I would Institute a number of incentives that I mentioned now as far as giving people tax breaks for being healthy helping with their you know their daily health practices to reward them in various ways so it becomes fun I would start in the schools I would get physical education back into the schools I would make exercise and healthy eating healthy for kids and then bring the kids out to the gardens and the farms and show how their food is grown and reconnect them they're suffering from nature deficit disorder and but I would connect especially the young people with the reality of food production so it's a basically an educational process as well as financial rejiggering of the system so rewards people for staying healthy and eating healthy yeah it seems elementary to me that we should build into elementary education the principles of nutrition so that young people at a very early age you know can crock these principles that's just fundamental so slimming decisions about how to live am say where does food come to it comes into supermarket goes out trees you need to know that instead we get we get these subsidy subsidized you know milk advertisements in high school gymnasiums oh my really and we've got to stop lying to our students to each other yeah mm-hmm final thing if if somebody's listening to this and you know perhaps their health has gone somewhat awry but they go to their doctor and their doctor is basically telling them you know what you already were counted like the typical like you got to be on these drugs and anybody who tells you otherwise it's insane and there isn't they don't feel like they you know have a community of like-minded people who are saying things some what are what you're saying and they don't know where to turn is there you know short of going to true north we what are some resources you know is there a directory of plant-based doctors where people could find somebody who's kind of speaking your language in their area like where did you point absolutely the websites peoples know about it are two of them one is called plant-based dr. zorg plant-based dr. zorg and plant-based Doc's calm between those two of the odds are you'll find somebody near you yeah educate yourself get books by dr. mcdougal dr. Fuhrman dr. Esselstyn and and all of them are laying out the basic truths here but basically in plans and so if you do those who think as you keep yourself and find a nearby plant-based physician you'll get all the all the good advice you need and I would urge people go to my our website I've got a YouTube channel dr. Klapper yeah all spelled out do ctor que la pers 9dr and I've got all sorts of instructional videos there we're adding more and more to that so check out my youtube channel dr. Klapper and I love that you're on YouTube that's great and and if people want to help our efforts to get me in front of medical school audiences I've got a changed man Western medicine go to my website dr. Klapper comm all spelled out yo ctrl a PE are calm and click on moving medicine forward and you'll see what we're doing not only how you can help us we could sure use the support plane tickets are expensive but also there's a little box to check if you know a medical student at a medical school or someone on the faculty you'd like us to connect with them please give us their name and now and we will follow up and connect with that so that's on my website collab calm people go to moving medicine forward they'll see they'll see the work we're doing yeah and they can follow you on Instagram you can follow me on Instagram to do it that's fantastic I mean I think there there is no worthy more worthy cause than trying to you know take all of this experience that you have to try to create you know the next generation of doctors because this is where the rubber meets the road right if we can if we can create a situation in which this next crop of medical practitioners has the tools you know that are required to treat these things and nip them in the bud we don't even need to get into reversing because we're all about prevention at that point absolutely were in a much better place absolutely I tell these Susan before you order another thousand dollar scan another 500 dollar set of blood tests ask your patients what they ate yesterday and if it's full of burgers and buffalo wings they ask why they're sitting in front of you send them to the plant-based diet ition let her do the counseling let her show on the movies let her take of shopping you see him back in a month and see if they're healthier and they will be so it's time for the era of nutritional medicine to dawn boom all right I love it you are a gift to humanity my friend you're a beautiful guy your message is super powerful so it's an honor to help amplify your wisdoms well you do that beautifully thank you so much for helping keep alright job well come back and talk to me again so I hope you I don't you hopefully we'll meet on the trail out there absolutely and just to echo what you said previously if you are in medical school or you know medical school faculty like please reach out okay good my website let's try to let's try to get him full-time on the road to do alright absolutely thanks thank you peace peace [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 91,336

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, vegan podcasts, plant based nutrition podcast, heart disease podcast, medical school nutrition, chronic lifestyle illness, rich roll michael klaper, vegan nutrition podcast, how to reverse heart disease, plant based diet podcasts, how to reverse chronic disease

Id: Rhs1BB7MbHo

Length: 92min 36sec (5556 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 23 2020