The EASY NUTRITION HACKS To Boost Immunity & Prevent CHRONIC DISEASE | Dr. Jeffrey Bland

I'm curious about immune system and Immunity this has obviously been something that people have been thinking about a lot more in the last few years with everything that's happening globally um but I think immunity and the immune system is actually something I've been fascinated by because I don't think actually people understand what it is I don't think I understand fully what the immune system is so if we can start with that first what is the immune system what is it intended to do for us how can we own it and also is it possible to have full immunity over viruses and diseases oh boy there's a lot of stuff wrapped up in that so let's let's unpack that let me start with just a simple concept that I think describes why I'm so interested in the immune system and why I think everyone else should be as well so it turns out that every minute that we're alive and not sick that we're producing about a million new immune cells which means if you do the math of the total number of immune cells that are in our body it means that about every three months we've completely reformed our immune system with new cells now the question is those cells that we're reforming every three months are they as good better or worse than the ones from which they were derived and um what has turned out as people have studied this and I'm now speaking about immunologists who are investigating this is over the course of living for the average person the cells have replaced these old cells are worse off than the ones that they are replacing they're worse off meaning they have undergone aging this is called immunosenescence and it turns out that that process of immune aging is why we see for instance SARS cover 2 covid-19 appearing more seriously in older age people because their immune system is kind of starting to be worn out they've undergone what's called immunosenescence now it turns out that that is a biological property that is related a lot to how your immune system is being treated over the course of your living it's not a locked in you will have this bad immune system when you're 65 or you'll have this great immune system when you're 25. so you can control the outcome of your immune system that is the lesson of this discussion wow okay and we call that we call that kind of the biological age of your immune system as differentiated from your number of birthdays which is you're not the chronological right exactly okay so so you can track the biological age of your immune system yes and we've been doing that there is there are ways now scientifically to do that fairly conveniently by the way if you are in the laboratory which we are and um you do that by actually looking at how the genes in your immune cells are undergoing injury or change and the way we do it is the rather than looking at injury through the DNA we look at the change on What's called the EPA genome Epi meaning above the the genome and the actual measurement we use is the number of methyl groups that are stuck onto the genes of the immune system now some of those that's part of the epigenetic process some of those processes are related to the adaptation of the immune system to be better off than it was before but others of those can lead to the immune system agent and we can measure where those methyl groups are put and how they track with performance of the immune system so is it possible then to take a person say 30 take their blood and spin their blood down take the The Buffy coat of the of the blood which is spun down which is where the immune cells reside is that the white part there that's the white part not the red precisely yep you know the red cells are in the red that's erythrocytes but the white part is The Buffy immune cells and you can then subject those to this kind of study I'm talking about this epigenetic sequencing using gene chip technology when you do that you can find out that people that are 30 may have immune system function at the epigenetic level of a 60 year old or you may find a 60 year old that has the immune system of a 30 year old interesting what what are the main factors that determine a weaker immune system in a 30 year old versus a strong one and a 60 year old what are they doing differently that causes them to be weak or tall okay so that is really where the Rosetta Stone lies this is the answer to that question so let me give a best approximation because I don't believe anyone fully has answered that question but we have some pretty good uh at least first level understanding so if a person is exposed to a lot of stress if they don't sleep if they're a smoker if they consume excess alcohol if they don't exercise the uh extremely Ultra processed foods if they're exposed to xenobotic toxic chemicals every one of those things that is mentioned is an agent that modifies how the immune system is marked epigenetically and can contribute to immunosines immune aging so if you wrap those things together and then lay them on top of a person's jeans because you you might say but but Jeff I know a person that has all those things and they're perfectly healthy in their 90 years of age and they've never been sick well yes there are those exceptions certainly related to their genetic luck of the draw I call it their Book of Life 26 chapters 23 chapters that's encoded in their in their chromosomes those things might have been the luck of the draw that helped them to resist but for most individuals what we will find is those characteristics as you load them up on the immune cells you will see more and more of the injuries that pertain to aging of the immune system wow yeah there's a lot of damage when you start to stack those challenges exactly on the immune system over time maybe in your early 20s you can handle it but then as you age Each decade it's probably harder and harder to recover faster from sickness or illness or injury right I think Lewis you said it this is what I call resilience and you know resilience is a characteristic that I think we haven't given enough uh Credence for we did a survey of 15 000 individuals on our website asking what's your definition of health and out of those fifteen thousand individuals only a few of them said absence of some disease I don't want to get cancer I don't want to get Alzheimer's I want to get heart disease what do most people say they said I want to be able to run a marathon I want to learn new tasks I want to be successful at work I want to have the energy to play with my kids I want to be able to climb mountains I want to I mean all these variety of human functions that relate to the expression of Joy diversity performance it wasn't about the absence of disease it was the presence of function the presence of performance so the immune system gives us that flexibility it gives us the resilience to be able to jump on a plane and go to Kathmandu or to go to Kilimanjaro and Hike the mountain and if you have an immune system that's not properly configured you end up with a more probable acute Mountain sickness and other things that happen right now you're known as the father of functional medicine why is the immune system and Immunity something that you've dedicated most of your work to understanding yeah thank you so that is a part of my four-year learning so right now if I was to list the major concerns health concerns that people have throughout the course of living would be things like dementia maybe Alzheimer's it would be cardiovascular disorders which still constitute the number one cause of premature death it would be um autoimmune disorders there were 88 different diagnoses of different types of autoimmune disease it would be diabetes particularly type 2 diabetes it would be obesity I could go down the list but that's a pretty good start every one of those conditions that I just mentioned is an immune related dysfunction they're connected to the immune system everyone is an imbalanced immune interesting really so when you look at these diseases you'll see that there was a break or a weakening in the immune system that's exactly right and that's part of the reason why these diseases were formed or caused because the immune system wasn't able to fight against whatever forces were coming at them yeah so let's use an example but probably most people would not be aware of let's let's think of the brain so people would say well these had uh cognitive dysfunctions early stage dementia memory loss foggy brain that can be an immune problem Jeff the brain is up there all by itself it's got the rubbling barrier it's separated from the rest of the body but it turns out the brain has its own immune system this is called the microglia these are cells that are actually in the brain oh they were called microglia glius from the Greek meaning glue like because they were just thought to be glue-like cells that glued the neurons of the brain together but over the last particularly 30 years it's been found no these are actually the brain's immune system and they cross talk with the immune cells that are floating in our blood which crosstalk with immune cells in our liver which crosstalk to the immune system that's in our gut you realize that 60 of our immune system is clustered around our intestinal tract wow so all of those are cross-talking this explains why people with gluten enteropathy that can't stand gluten because of their immune problems in their gut it speaks to their brain and they have higher levels of dementia interesting so how many immune systems does the body have that up there this is another probably aha for some people the immune system resides in every organ of the body okay we have the myokines in the in the muscles that's why you get uh sore chronic muscles with either over training or under training you're actually altering the immune system that's producing these inflammatory meat eaters that are in your muscles uh the same thing holds true for the liver uh the this this Rising tide of non-alcoholic fatty liver disorder that we're now Stephen demon in kids that's a consequence of immune system in your liver gone awry so why is there why is the liver being affected if someone's not doing alcohol is that from processed foods sugar gluten or other things or how is the liver being affected to someone in their youth okay so you you know you're asking superb questions it is really well fantastic so um here is the operative model of how that occurs so we would all agree that we've changed our diets considerably over the last hundred years yeah we even want to say over the last 15 years the sad diet the standard American diet exactly right so we have a lot of these Ultra processed foods that are very high in blood sugar stimulating effects and and they also bring a lot of other agents into the diet that's activate the immune system to say I don't really think these are friendly to us they're unfriendly and when the immune system recognizes a foreigner or a non-friend it is got the principal responsibility of Defending us from that not just viruses or bacteria so where does this start well most people eat their food orally and that means it starts in the mouth you consume digest into the gut and now you feed the remnants of that food to your gut microbiota the so-called microbiome the microbiome is composed of literally thousands of different Critters each with a different personality that picks up the information from your food that you've eaten and parsley digested and it then sends signals from its metabolism that are picked up by the intestinal wall where the immune system resides is called the gut Associated lymphoid tissue the gulp Galt so that immune system is sitting there in in the intestinal tracts picking up the information from your microbiome that picks up the information from your diet which is an alarm message because you're reading things that the body doesn't think it should be consuming and now what does it do it takes that message into your blood and where is the first place that that blood goes when it comes out of your intestinal tract that's the portal blood system that goes right to your liver so your liver is the drainage organ that takes that information and says whoa we're getting a lot of bad pushback here from this diet we're going to tell our immune cells in our liver that are called the cup for cells that they should be aggravated they then send out a message in the blood that travels to the rest of the body including to your fat mass and so now you go from friendly fat to angry fat and angry fat is where you have a concern about obesity and associated with Disease by by the way there is no data that says it being fat will cause a disease there is a data strong data saying that those people that have angry fat have fat that's been activated through their immune system imbalance into a state of alarm they're the one and of course that is because of the dice reading that's the majority of people with increased body mats right right you know fat in itself is not a bad thing but an overwhelmingly unhealthy amount of fat is of the wrong archetype of the wrong archetype that's right will potentially be a cause of you know type 2 diabetes and other things so let me say something that so for decades I've run clinical centers thousands of patients had many many research projects we've published over the years one of my learnings because when a person comes in and they're very worried about their weight and they have elevated blood pressure and they have elevated cholesterol and they have elevated blood sugar and so they're worried about all sorts of diseases and um they they say well doc you know I'm I'm grossly overweight and I know that from the tables and you know I'd say that I've tried to lose weight then but I've been unsuccessful and you know if I have to lose 50 pounds it I just am not going to be successful well the data says that you don't need to lose 50 pounds what you need to do is to calm down the immune system that's sitting in that fat that's making it Angry that may be as little as five pounds of weight loss if it's the right type interesting so getting rid of that bad fat the angry fat the unhealthy that's right exactly not trying to lose 50 pounds which is this daunting task um interesting okay so when did the immune system become something that you wanted to really obsess over with your practice and study and research and just diving into is it early in your practice or was it well you know when we started the institute for functional medicine which I'm even saying is I find hard to believe was 1991 so we're in our 32nd year of that now being codified um we've had several thousand several hundred thousand people go through its programs over those years Health practitioners uh I was focusing on how these different organs communicate with one another I was interested in how do we get a disorder not how we treat it once we have it I was worried about root cause I was rude about what's called upstream and um just then if you recall that's before the turn of the century um just then were the new genomic techniques and tools becoming available before we started to decipher the human genome as we got into then the 21st century and those tools became available it started to make a lot of what we had been speculating on in the early days of functional medicine look much more well proven because now we can actually mechanistically look at how the liver talks to the immune system how the immune system talks to the brain and and we had tools to actually start examining this from a mechanistic level now let me just finish the story by saying once we have those tools and we were able to start putting the puzzle together into a logical framework then it allowed us to really go back and say what are the systems in the body that are the most affected Upstream that give rise to this bound stream fifteen thousand diagnoses and I was very very fortunate because I tried I've traveled over six million miles believe it or not I know it's crazy who would do that in their life so that's a whole nother story but but um because of that travel the benefit they gave me is meeting all sorts of extraordinary Innovative uh individuals across different disciplines all over the world and so I started to assemble my list of the people that were really creating this new model and my wife um Susan was very uh a very insightful one one night when I was waxing on and she said Jeff you know you've met all these people all over the world you always speak so highly about them why don't we host a meeting you bring these thought leaders in it's just a white board to talk about what would the Health Care System look like if it was to be idealized take away licensure take away reimbursement just talk about the structure of what it would be based on all these people you're talking about so she hosted or I guess we hosted a meeting in Vancouver Island British Columbia in Victoria uh we brought in about 60 of these five leaders from different places around the world different disciplines and it was really really extraordinarily vital three-day discussion everyone say this was so much fun let's let's do it again we did it the next year the second year was when I I came up with this concept of calling it functional medicine and um when I went back to talk to the group on that the last Sunday of the of the three days they said well uh we're not sure that that's a good word because in medicine today and back then uh function really referred to two things well either geriatric medicine dysfunction physical disability or psychosomatic medicine it's all in your mind it's a functional disorder and and that might be really kind of a marginalizing what you're saying but I said no you know I'm reading the literature all the time and when I'm starting to see articles on functional neurology functional Endocrinology functional Cardiology they're reframing this as an upstream way of looking using that these new tools it will later be Downstream pathology disease so let's capture that let's let's get to where the puck is going let's um let's capture that as a term but with some pushback reticency the group said okay let's let's give it a whirl so that then led us into recognizing that there were in group discussions a variety of central processes in the body that were the Upstream processes that are they were in balance that gave rise to these Downstream collection of diagnoses and those included such things have um the immune system was obviously one of them another was digestive physiology another was cell communication another was detoxification another was um intracellular cellular replication and the Integrity of how cells replicate themselves in the daughter cells without losing their function so we had these uh these six basic functional uh characteristics that we could measure each one of those physiologically and so then we started to say okay can we prioritize those in terms of how they would go into a clinical Management program because ultimately we're kind of in this blue sky ethereal area we need to translate this for clinicians how they could deliver this in practice so we developed a program that was our first kind of clinical tool that I'm very proud of if someone was to say Jeff what is the most um the thing is you're most proud of I think it would be the development of that first program which we call the 4r program those R stood for remove replace re-inoculate and repair we've taught hundreds of thousands of practitioners that program by the way now what does that mean it was our gastrointestinal restoration program we started talking actually about prebiotics probiotics endotoxemia in 1985 that was my first seminar for doctors on that topic and traditional medicine at that point was really calling us way out there um when we finally then codified this program in the early 1990s the for our program it was a way of doctors actually delivering a program to their patients that was easily applied that people could understand that would restore proper gastrointestinal immune and digestive function so the first star was removed that was take away bad stuff that could be exposure to toxins that could be exposure to bacteria tainted food that could be food allergens things that you know were alarming your body that was the first R to remove the next was replace and what we found and is actually very well known in medicine is that a great percentage of individuals suffer from digestive insufficience so in fact the cells of our stomach that secrete hydrochloric acid to start a digestive process called the parietal cells something like 50 percent of people over the age of 50 have defective or dysfunctional parietal cells which means that they're not able to digest a steak dinner as well and when you talk to people about oh gee I used to be able to eat this heavy meal and it was still fire now I get digestional problems after just a few bites well that's part of the digestive physiology so we can replace those digestive enzymes as support that's the the second R is how do you replace them well pancreatic enzymes like pancreatin or hydrochloric acid like betaine Hydrochloric so taking different enzymes that's right exactly so that's the second arm the third R then is the reinoculate r now what does that refer to that is going back and repairing the what what is now called the microbiome we didn't know that term when we first started but now that is what we're talking about and so that has to do with pre and probiotics reassembling the proper gastrointestinal physiology with pre and probiotics that's the third r think of all the amazing things in life that are expressions of just you for instance the song You Stream over and over again while you're in your 13th Hour of gaming at 4am in the morning with all the lights off trying not to wake up your roommates or the recommendations that you share with your friends on the top six comedy podcasts that are the best to listen to on your way to the gym and back or even your new haircuts which may or may not be an epic bowl cut from the 90s and hopefully is everything that makes you you makes all the difference State Farm believes Insurance should work the same way your plan your coverage they need to be personalized to you and the ability to choose the plan you want by picking the options that fit you like building your home and auto policies is exactly what the State Farm personal price plan is all about getting the coverage you want at an affordable price just for you so are you ready to make things personal call or go to statefarm.com today to create your steep Farm personal price plan M prices vary by state options selected by customer availability and eligibility may vary what should we be doing with pre and probiotics should we be taking them daily what types should we be taking you know how does that work because you hear about this a lot now this yogurt's got good for you know bacteria or prebiotics or probiotics so take this kombucha or whatever these different things are should we be doing these things daily what does that exactly actually mean so as you have advocated with many of your guests that I've heard on your podcast a diet that takes us back to Dan buettner and blue zones it's a diet that people have historically eaten that has the capability of nourishing a healthy microbiome right like a Mediterranean salad that's exactly right so you have a high amount of soluble and insoluble fibers because they're not over processed so these are minimally processed as like a Michael Poland another person you've interviewed and those are diets that will deliver the raw materials that are necessary for the body to have a proper microbiome now individuals who are in a treatment regime because I've been speaking here about doctors applying this to their patients they need a boost they may need a therapeutic booster so then we get into administering a Prebiotic and augmentation that's that's going to give a fire is starting to get them going basically got a booster rocket got it okay so that's re-inoculating right right that's what we call it reinoculate and then and then the um the last arm is the repair arm and the repair arm is is are there nutrients that will then restore the damage of the very sensitive one cell thick liner of the gastrointestinal mucosa that separates us from all that toxic junk in our intestinal tract because often that becomes damaged and that's called dysbiosis is the name that we applied when we started using the term dysbiosis by the way this was the late 80s again gastroenterology of the days criticized I said no that does not exist and then we talked about endotoxemia that what happens if you have dysbiosis then leaky stuff goes across because you have a leaky gut that goes into your blood and now you have endotoxinine and traditional medicine said no you can't have endotoxin you have all these people in shock and they'd be in the hospital with with toxic conditions but we said no we think that there is chronic sub-acute endotoxemia that's been proven unequivocally over the last 30 years now is leaking gut becoming a bigger problem in the world today and if so what is the root cause of a leaky gut endotoxemia which occurs from a dysbiosis which occurs from a faulty diet in the lifestyle some Bag diet lifestyle causes most and drugs and alcohol I mean people don't recognize that many of the Pharmaceuticals both OTC and prescription the people are consuming as an adverse effects on their gastrointestinal microbiota which then complicates a small bowel overgrowth and all sorts of problems that are associated within the toxemia it seems like you're speaking about drugs a little bit there it seems like the world is over medicated here over drugged here here and I just don't know if the body again this is my uh just the view of human nature I don't think the body is meant to have chemicals outside constantly to to change the chemistry with inside that much now if there's some extreme pain that's going to give some relief or help some some some numbing of a pain that until the immune system can heal itself cool but what is the difference I guess between modern medicine and natural medicine and why are we over medicated and how can we start pulling back on that medicine you are asking such great questions I mean these are really the fundamental questions of our age um so I want to roll back a little bit to try to get an answer to your question um years ago I had the privilege of being invited to trying to do a series of lectures ending up at the Beijing University Medical School and Medical Center the largest Medical Center and Hospital in China and it was where you have a president of the United States was over there he would be treated and I was hosted by the chief of staff of the hospital is very prestigious opportunity for me he then invited his whole senior staff to a seminar I gave on functional medicine which was kind of Staggering actually it was obviously translated by Imagine isn't that good and at the end of that presentation which was a couple of hours uh we were giving one another gifts in this ceremony and I gave him a gift and I knew my translator translated my English then he gave me a gift and he started speaking the translator was going to translate back to English but he went on and on and on and on and I was standing there going Mandarin yes in Mandarin I'm wondering I wonder what he's saying because it was really lengthy and finally I I said to my translator said so exactly what is he saying he said well I can summarize it by saying you're the first person he's ever met from the United States who seems to understand traditional Chinese medicine now the reason for that is that if you think about modern pharmacology how does it work it works in a specific way a scientist or some investigator discovers a Target in the body we call it a receptor that is related to some specific disease so they have made this fundamental scientific discovery that that receptor could be the testosterone receptor or the estrogen receptor we have thousands of different receptors in the body that some alteration in that receptor either too active or not active enough causes this disease or that condition so then science jumps in and says oh then let's go out and Screen new to Nature molecules the whole library of molecules millions of molecules that have been generated in the laboratory from chemist Thai Memorial or new ones that we're going to generate and let's then test them against that receptor and let's find which of those molecules will most do what we want at that receptor to treat that condition that is the pharmacological model of our age and by the way that's modern medicine right it's been very very successful for many things but you'll notice that it is an acute disease-focused model because what you're really trying to do is take all the ambiguity out of a receptor you're saying we own you we're going to put a molecule in your body that is so at such an affinity for you that you can't escape from us now that's why we have so many adverse drug side effects because there's not a lot of wobble once you've got that control now you take the luck of the draw and you may be one of those outliers that doesn't respond as other people respond so that's that is a model that's really good if you're in the emergency room because you don't want a lot of ambiguity if that person is near death you want that molecule to go in and do it stop it in that moment that's right but now if you take those drugs that we're designed really for acute disease management and to extend them into chronic management so now we'll take a drug that really was designed after two years of study to go into a person that's going to take it for 20 years for a chronic condition not an acutenant condition is that the same thing no and that's where it's not it's not and so now what we start getting is what's called iatrogenic disorders right what's that mean physician induced Earth treatment induced disorder that are actually caused by the effects of that molecule wow causing another de factor of disease it requires another molecule to treat it oh my gosh so now let's go back to my traditional Chinese medicine how did traditional Chinese medicine develop they didn't have big chemistry and and screening of thousands of new to Nature molecules um what they had was nature and they had empiricism they had observation energy balance that's right and what are plants whole system not just one little part and plants have hundreds of bioactive compounds now why do plants have hundreds of bioactive compounds because they don't have any anything better to do no they make those hundreds of bile active compounds because the plant has evolved to know that that's the symphonic orchestration that's necessary to manage their function they're not treating the disease they're managing their function now when we take those molecules out of that plant by extraction we put them into a tea or whatever the tincture or whatever now we have an orchestra we don't have just the first violinist we have an orchestra that speaks to our body and it speaks to our body in what's called an adaptogen now what is an adaptogen an adaptogen is something that goes through those receptor sites the same ones I was talking about the drugs are designed but it speaks to the receptor site in a different way if the receptor site is overactive because it's a mellow acting Symphony like a Jackowski waltz or something it turns on if it's over if it's under active but it turns off if it's under active it's an adaptogen it's an Agonist antagonist dual personality so how does food work think of our diets in a natural state weed thousands of these nature molecules we call them plant nutrients or whatever and they come into our body they're distributed out to our cells and how do they work do they work like drugs well they work on the same body systems that drugs work on but they have a different personality they are adapt engines if we were to eat drugs in our food think what would happen every time that we ate we'd be whip spot around and so if evolution is the biggest scientific study ever done and how to safely manage human health based upon natural intakes of foods and natural products so I learned a tremendous amount from my visit I've now taken several visits to China about how the different philosophies translate into a whole different treatment regime both of which have benefit depending on when they're used in the right way in the emergency room and in crisis medicine we probably want these single molecules in the in the control of health and function and and healthy longevity we probably want a different set of molecules that are producing in symphonic activity now let me let me give you one last point and I'll get off my soapbox you're good well the soapbox is this so because um I've thrown this net out in the world of these conversations with the people I've had the fortunate meeting um I had a coincidence I'm sure you've had this in your life reading your biography probably more than once so within a couple of months period I had three different encounters that you might consider serendipitous or disconnected but I recognize if we're very connected and probably not serendipitous I first had a conversation with a co-investigator at Vanderbilt University Medical School about a new molecule he was studying that was very useful for improving the immune system and lowering blood pressure I never thought that blood pressure was associated with the immune system but he was showing me the mechanism by which that relates and I could go through it but I won't bore you so this molecule had a name to hydroxybenzylamine abbreviated two over two hoba so then I said well that's interesting how did you come on this molecule he said well we didn't do screening we actually looked at historical consumption of foods and we found that there is only one food that seemed to have this in high level because it's a food called tartari buckwheat I had never heard of tartare buckwheat before in my life I said oh that's very interesting so then I go home and I'm invited then by another colleague to go to Harbin China northernmost big city 28 million people northern China and between North Korea and Russia um for the annual health check Center I was going to speak to 8 000 Chinese doctors around about functional medicine and my host and guide was a shanghai's medical doctor but PhD in the United States so he's dual Citizen and um so he and I spent this week together and on the way back from Harbin because there was a typhoon in Shanghai said so Jeff what about we don't take a plane because the airport's shut how about if we took the bullet train now it's 2200 miles bullet train the bullet train from Harbin to Shanghai miles 2200 across the middle of China yeah and I said wow what an experience that would be it goes 300 miles an hour that's crazy and it's totally vibration free so it's like chin is going by as a diorama you're sitting in the car right you can't see anything it's just like it's just and so these you go through acres and miles and miles of fields and then suddenly a 10 000 or 10 million people City props up and then boom you're back in the field so halfway across China I said to him I said um I'm going to throw a wild card out here because I know this is a little bit strange question but are you not become interested recently just before I came on this trip was something called Himalayan tartare buckwheat and do you know anything about it it was so amazing it was like we did a freeze frame it's like the train stopped and we'd have freeze frame in time his eyes got big he looked at me goes you got to be kidding me I said noon why is that he said we have been looking for someone in the United States that we could collaborate with we're in the world's expert in the bioactive compounds and Himalayan Turtle wow my research group is the group in China doing the most work on this amazing and so we developed a partnership I then came home and this is the third part of the coincidence and my dear colleague Trish Erie who has worked with me for 26 years but before I left I told her the tartare buckwheat story so she while I was gone was looking to see where it was growing in the United States she could find only one person who was a former Cornell University AG Professor retired and his nurse wife that lived in Angelica New York and had a small hobby Farm in which they were growing tartari buckwheat only people in the United States wow so when I got back my interest was really peaked and so I we made contact we went out to Angelica New York we now own Angelica farms and it turns out that he for a whole series of coincidences was able to get these artisanal scenes from the USDA that were the original ancient Himalayan tertery buckets so we now have a Himalayan tartery buckwheat organic agriculture with a Cooperative farmers and the reason I'm saying this is it turns out that that Pro and the reason I'm so interested in that uh that food by the way it was an American food brought up by our Colonial ancestors because it's so hearty it doesn't need fertilizer doesn't need any subsidy doesn't need to be watered it's tough and and Hearty because it's grown on the foothills of the Himalayan mountains but it was lost about 200 years ago in America I think I know why but it it's it was no longer in agriculture in the United States and so I got very interested because the immune activity of the nutrients in Himalayan tertiary buckwheat the at the level of them are 50 to 100 times that percent times higher than any other plant food wow this is like this super food of immune strengthening capability wow so we now have been doing clinical research looking at its effect on immune cells we've doing field trials looking at what happens if we renourish the soil to enhance the phytochemicals in the plant um we're full in we're the first people in the world I think to produce organic Himalayan tartery Buckley so it's all part of this immune story that I've been pulled into just a few years that's a fascinating story I'm gonna have to ask you how I can get some of that later well we're sending you something I'm coming to you and I'm also curious what are the top five foods or superfoods like that to support boosting immune system naturally and really the main things that we should avoid eating that hurt herb in the system okay so can I have a little discussion with you about the word boosting sure I am not a believer in any way shape or forms strengthening well let me tell you why I'm not it for boosting so during the SARS cov2 pandemic what did we see in a lot of people we saw that their immune systems were racing out of control they were in a hyperinflammatory state so if we were to boost their immune system does that sound like a good idea no it's not in fact we were trying to attenuate their immune system interesting and so so strengthen or well I call it balancing harmonize yes because the immune system is intelligent if you give it the right things the immune system Finds Its proper resting Point yes and so allergies are one we we have now what we call immuno identities five different Amino identities that are different archetypes of immunological imbalance each one of those represents a different personality as to how people experience the symptoms and so if you can understand those immunotypes then you can balance their immune system in ways that that's our whole personalizing of immunity what are those identities so we have a state that's uh hyper immune function that would be a person who is hypersensitive inflammation joint pain those kind of things we've got a person that is a variant of that which is pre-autoimmune types and disorders thyroid disorders or joint space disorder is um we've got a an immune suppressed type so where they're susceptible to every cold and flu that comes along they always get it and there's a group of individuals that have what we call dormant immune systems they're not really suppressed they're just kind of in quiescence they they're missing a link to really put them into full activity and full balance and then the the fifth one is a balanced immune immune system which is what we all want which we all we want So based on these five immune identities when we understand what ours is then we can start to adjust to get more Harmony that's what we're doing in mid bull Health a little company I decided to focus my energy on because I felt this was a a field that hadn't gotten the attention it really deserved so how do we know which identity we have we've got a questionnaire that's the first start you know we've got all sorts of tests that we could do that are expensive and sophisticated but to get it started down the road we have an immune identity questionnaire that's very simple to fill out where do we go to get that where's our legalhealth.com big boldhealth.com yeah and there'll be a questionnaire I mean it's a 30 question here it should give you at least where you think you're at right it's a broad brush right right and I want to emphasize that this immunotype can change right like it's not just fixed in stone seasonally yearly that's right decade decades all these different precisely as we age as we uh you know this whole thing we learned with covid-19 was pretty powerful wasn't it that the United States that we thought was the healthiest nation in the world had some of the worst outcomes from SARS kovi 2 in terms of um of serious illness and hospitalization and even death from around the world right yeah we were the worst country in all the developed countries of the world really yes why is that well a lot of people thought it was well it must be because we have more older people but that's that wasn't the case it wasn't solely a consequence of our demographics it was a consequence of the fact that our immune systems are really compromised in this country wow and that's what really emboldened me to to get on involved with this we don't understand that we are all working on this margin without a lot of head space we don't have a lot of Reserve our resilience is compromised and we're we're living with it because we say well I can always go to a drug I can always go to an antibiotic or I always go to anti-inflammatory you can always take an immunosuppressive anti-rheumatic drug but all of those have adverse long-term Health implications so wouldn't we want to balance our immune system for resiliency rather than try to treat the outcome that's the whole functional medicine model that is um Amen to that yeah and it's more about performance yes and balance rather than let's live on Marge origin and then take drugs when we need to to I guess mask the symptoms or feel a little bit better in the meantime but it's going to create more long-term effects is what I'm hearing you say negative effects long term to the immune system in the overall system of our bodies very well said so let's look at um endurance athletes endurance athletes have a lot of susceptibility to infection and this is well known because they're pushing their immune system that's so hard because they're compromising the resilience of their immune system because it's not getting all that it needs because remember when you're turning over the immune system more rapidly it needs more stuff to replenish itself so if you're on if you're um and Appling you say well as long as you get enough calories but I'm not concerned about what those calories are then you end up with potential marginal insufficiencies of various things that are necessary for proper immune function and one of those families by the way of nutrients which most people don't put on their list I think vitamin C or they think zinc or they might think folic acid or vitamin B12 but they probably wouldn't think of flavonoids flavonoids what are those those are the plant chemicals that I've been speaking about that are part of the Himalayan tartory buckwheat orchestration we have rediscovered in the field of nutritional biochemistry what we used to consider throwaways in our food we thought well you know they're not essential nutrients you can you won't get a disease like scurvy very very or pellagra if you don't have flavonoids but what you do get is a reduction in your cellular resilience because they are the agents in our diet that tell cells how to communicate with one another through this of this whole process and just describing of intracellular communication wow so they have this extraordinarily you've probably heard about certain one and about amp K and all the kind of things that are going on now in longevity nutrition and Medicine those then tie back to the mechanisms by which these flavonoids actually operate at the cellular level whereas veritrol is a flavonoid yeah it is a flavonoid yes I'm taking rosveritrol supplement yeah so that's one of and what we believe is giving the whole orchestration of the symphony because it's the way that our body has learned to operate is by having strings percussion brass everything okay so back to the back to the foods then let me re-ask the question about what the right wording what would you say are the top five foods to harmonize and balance our immune system well you know I would start the reason I'm hedging a little bit is your supplements too well the reason I'm hedging is that when I say Foods I I couldn't use foods like uh berries but people can live on berries right so berries can be an adjunctive it's a good immune because it's all of the flavonoids and polyphenols and berries but if you ask me would that food sustain life no you would have to eat something else but I would put berries I would put citrus on that list but can you live in oranges and and tangerines and lemons solely no but I would put things like true tumeric we know that that has a very powerful effect I would use a user Resveratrol as an example with peanuts and peanut skins and grape skins and there's another thing that that has a benefit I would use garlic and allium family onions these are very high in immune active nutrients let me give you an illustration though when I say hi I think this is important to put things in perspective so if I was to ask myself how many onions would I need to eat to provide the same amount of immune active nutrients found in one serving of tartery Buckwheat even though onions are called a high flavonoid high quercetin containing fluid quercetin is one of the members of that of the family you would have to eat over 10 pounds of onions holy cow so most people are not going to eat 10 pounds of onions right so when I say it's a high flavonoid food it's high relative to other things like lettuce or like meat because meat is hardly any flavonoids but relative to The Supercharged Foods it's still relatively low what are the other supercharged Foods then besides the is the buckwheat well a common buckwheat is is also that would be but not as much as the one that you just common buckwheat is 50 times lower and tartar Republic but it's still higher than you know the thing most most all of your whole grains by the way are are high in immune active vitamins minerals and and polyphenols um now people would say but what about gluten Jeff you know because there's this picture or well that's buckwheat has no gluten no gluten I don't know why in the world when it was chosen as a name that they put wheat in the name because it's not related genealologically at all to the grass family to wheat okay so it is a gluten-free product but if you were to ask me can you name gluten-free uh products that are high immune strengthening products there are some of the the ancient non-green non-grain related I mean oats is a good example it's a gluten-free organic oats are high in these phytochemicals that are immune strengthening they have what's called beta-glucan beta glucan stimulates your their two major parts of your immune system you probably know there's the innate immune system which is your first line of defense and there's the Adaptive immune system that's the intelligence that remembers what you've been exposed to that's where immunization and and being immunized and again something comes out of your adaptive and it's well beta glucan and Oates activate your first line of defense which is your um in your innate immune system so these would be some examples of things that that one could include that would be providing these nutrients what would be the top five I like lists what would be the top five foods to support you in overcoming illness or chronic disease and helping you live longer well I'll talk about these as kind of Side Foods to that will support you with your immune system what do you think of the foods that will support with this overcoming chronic illness or maybe a longer in general okay so let me start by saying what those foods should not do and then I'm going to say what foods will do the right thing perfect you don't want foods that activate your blood sugar that is a tenet that connects to virtually every chronic disease when your blood sugar is out of control not just diabetes high blood sugar high blood sugar so that's called the glycemic effect of the food glycemic refers to the how much it raises their blood sugar glucose and what we now know is that any food that has the capability of modifying by not elevating your blood sugar after you eat it is going to have a valuable impact on your overall health and your immune system positive impact yeah that's right what are those foods that keep your blood sugar lower than so these are foods as Michael Poland has said beautifully that are minimally processed because once you start processing a food to simplify it and break it down into its component parts it then increases its glucose raising effects so the um the physical nature of a whole food even if it has the same nutrients on the label as a processed food has a very much more beneficial effect upon your health so in apples might have a lot of sugar in it but versus apple juice yes right so which is processed precisely or even applesauce the more processed you get the more effects adversely your blood sugar interesting wow Simple Thing juice is healthy it's good it's juice right well that's one of the problems we're having right now is that my parents I think are are really trying to do a good job with their kids and they're taking away soft drinks but then they're adding back juices which so they're very high in sugar it's natural sugar but it's still sugar and it has a high glycemic or a high glucose influence so I think we're learning a lot of lessons and you know unfortunately the food processing industry sometimes can manipulate consumers into kind of false assumptions or false conclusions so so we have people like you that are true Seekers that are out there giving the real story so that people can make more informed decisions and as a nutritional biochemist you have a you have a lot of farms right around the country is that what I read or you work with a lot of different local farmers are our Farms that we're producing the tertiary buckwheat are all Upstate New York all in New York and they're all the best foundations over there for it we like the kind of coal winners and we like the buckwheat the turkey Buck we'd like to be challenged because it's this hearty plant so it likes Northern climates and likes the kind of uh soil um that kind of duplicates some of its original soil sure sure do you have Partnerships with Farms or are you yeah all the Farms or whatever well we are we're actively involved in um and have been I I think in my case going back many decades in stewardship of the soil organic farming now we get into sustainable agriculture how do we get into a um and by the way this also pertains to the Sea um I had a opportunity now it's seven years ago to do something I never thought in my life I would do and that's to start with a partner who owns a major Fishing Company in Alaska to build the first pharmaceutical grade plant in Dutch Harbor Alaska in the aleutians some 500 miles out on the tail of Alaska into the Bering Sea our pharmaceutical grade plant pharmacistical grade manufacturing plant all manufacturing plant in which we're able to take the fish from his ships and his ships are uniquely different because nobody in the crew is on the deck they are all below deck the fish are brought in fish one fish at a time on a hook and line they come in and they're processed on board they are then Frozen to minus 20 within 20 minutes of a live fish which captures all of their nutritional value wow and that is then brought back to our um manufacturing plant in Dutch Harbor on the sea in Alaska as you said exactly Bering Sea in Gulf of Alaska so you built a manufacturing plant first first ever is it in the sea or is there land that's on top of all I don't know if you know the Aleutian archipelago it's a really interesting chain of islands uh in Alaska right they go all it's the tale of Alaska if you look at the map that goes all the way down almost to siberium wow and their their islands that are these are volcanic islands each island is like a volcano unto itself it it's like the Hawaii of the north yeah right some people consider Hawaii to be the extension of the Aleutian Islands wow so that um that Island uh processes a billion dollars with a fish pro products a year one of the major fishing ports in the world wow okay so your your plan what is it designed to do that it's designed to be able to take the Frozen things that come off the boats come in and keep them cold process the oil so that we end up with the fish oil no one else in the world can produce it retains all the natural come on really yeah yeah we have the highest levels of pro-resolving mediators in that oil that are about 100 times more anti-inflammatory than normal fish oils so it's all part of this meeting this again my hobby which is boating and meeting this fisherman some five years ago and and then we've developed this relationship goodness that's amazing it really has been amazing actually and we got a grant from the state of Alaska to train uh young a lot Native Alaskan young women and men to become Kim techs we built a whole facility and we now have members of the Native Alaskan Development Group on our board because you can't own shoreside land in Alaska unless you have Alaskan Partners native Partners so we've learned a tremendous amount about Native culture wow it's it's really been quite a education for me wow um so is this where you eat all your fish then it sounds they can ship it anywhere or where's the how's the shipping work well we again we we have partnership with a variety of suppliers that we're not into the commercial fish sure business but it allows us now to actually build a a sustainable in fact I'm very proud we're not only MSC certified which is Marine Stewardship Council sustainable fishery but we're now a higher standard which is only available in the state of Alaska which not only certifies that the fishery is sustainable but the sure Side Community is sustainable huh they audit the communities the workers Fair wages Health uh plans on the shore side so that your culture has to be stable as well as your fishery it's like the Michelin star of you know manuf fish manufacturing that's what we think and we're the first and only um oil manufacturers supplemented has that dual certification so it's it's this for me you can see it's just been I got to get access I gotta figure out how I can buy some of this fish in the world we're sending you this stuff so you'll be having a chance to check it out and so if so when they so they can pack it within 20 minutes keep it cold and then process it and ship it and still keeps its nutritional value yeah it's even if it's a week later it's like arrives at someone's door in fact it's better than fresh now why is it better than pressure this is something I've learned actually so when we buy fresh fish in the storm and I learned this by going up to Norway and being in Iceland and being in Alaska on the fishing boats is that that fresh means you've caught it by whatever mechanism generally it's net but it it could be other mechanisms uh sainting that fish is brought in on the boat and it is put in the hold with ice so it's iced down now it may be still alive or is it is it you know it's dead okay and so now it's on ice for some number of days until that ship gets back to a offloading at the processing that and fillets it and then that's right yeah and so even at ice temperature the body of a fish is degrading right interesting so you end up with a different texture a different flavor a different nutrient composition slightly and you can measure this there are things that we measure called initidine and lipid peroxides in the fish that tell us how much aging it's undergone this is amazing so so they fillet it within like 20 minutes or an hour or whatever it is when they catch it right 20 20 minutes what do they catch it fillet it pack it it goes It goes oh I'm I'm sorry I'm you're speaking about the normal process your process our process it goes into deep freezers at minus 20 degrees wow so it's frozen to capture on the boat on the boat these are all specially designed filleted skins deboned yeah and then it's yeah they're put in separate trays I it's actually beautiful the way he designed he's a Marine architect my partner and he designed these ships so that um there are racks that go into these deep freeze and that then the the fish product doesn't sit on top of it it's all um cosmetically laid out so that it's all individual that's amazing okay is that where you get your fish yeah absolutely it shifts to you and it tastes better than like fresh Cod organic fruit whatever it is wild Alaskan that they're selling at the store yeah so let me give you an example how this works and market dynamics you'd be interested in so normal fish and either salmon or con that's Cod you know on traditional methods may have a varying price but let's take cod as an example of probably something like on the wholesale Market a dollar fifteen a pound say the fish that are then sold out of this process to high tier restaurants because of its quality sell for three dollars a pound because the difference is so perceptible to the consistent it's so much WoW fascinating well most of the fears that people eat is from uh fish farms correct it's like mostly you know in a contained water aquarium essentially that may be out in the ocean and but in like its own container where it's not like a wild fish correct yeah that's a whole nother process yeah that's uh I don't know if you've seen the book salmon Wars it was just uh published that really talks about this whole fish farming controversy yeah let's put it that way obviously we in in Seattle and up in Alaska are very much against fish farming be and Alaska does not allow fish farming they made a decision as a state that the preservation of their wild fishery is their unique point of of entry and so we don't have any wild like we don't have Atlantic salmon in Alaska Atlantic salmon are the ones that are fish farmed and when they get loose then they populate with a wild um replicate with the wild salmon and change the whole genes really wow this is fascinating there's so much something to learn about this stuff what about the meats um non-fish Meats what do you are there certain meats that you will only eat because there are some that are better than others in terms of immune support and health for the body yes you know this is another um I I probably should give a caveat um I'm pretty much a non-red meat eater myself but with that said for 10 years I was on the board of the first organic meat company certified in the United States Coleman Natural meats in sawatch Colorado it was really a fascinating experience for me I was the head of their scientific group that was really measuring the level of pesticides herbicides or chemicals that were in the meat because their animals were raised in the absence of any Veterinary medicines no antibiotics in the feed they were not said to feed lots and so their positioning was we have certified tested residue-free products and the reason that that company was found and this I think you find interesting was the um the founders were a fifth generation cattle ranchers the Coleman family uh when I when I met Mel and Paulie Coleman um and they had been raising their beef traditionally on their Ranch which was I think it was the highest elevation cattle ranch in America at the time something like that 11 000 feet or something oh when they're on their upper past here and uh versus Colorado or is this in Colorado uh and so the wife Polly who was the quintessential Western woman uh Rancher horse rider uh Roper uh Chef I mean everything she became allergic to their own beef and so they go in these do these store demos um because they felt their meat tested so good and put them on a toothpick and do store demos and she got so every time she would eat some of their meat she would end up an allergic reaction so she told her husband no that something was going on even though they were trying to be very careful uh when the animals went to the feedlot they must be getting something that's making this meat so that I can't eat it anymore so they made a decision was quite a risky decision at the time okay we're giving up all that kind of commercial beef production that we are in the Cattlemen's Association and our history and our families you know well in Wisconsin this technology we're giving it up and we're going to a total natural um beef production system which was kind of uh made them expatriates from the cattle ranching Community interesting and so they then fortunately early on uh met John Mackey at Whole Foods and was able to be picked up at Whole Foods as an alternative natural meat but they were trying to get a designation with the U.S department of Agriculture to be a naturally labeled beef okay but the Cattlemen's Association as you can imagine pushed back extraordinarily hard on that because they didn't want to distinguishing different kind of meat that were made appear less whatever less desirable and so um that wasn't when they put a scientific Advisory Group together and they hired me to run that as a consultant to run that group so we worked with the USDA and all this testing process and and for five years fought many battles in court basically and eventually they were successful in winning the designation of of natural me through the USDA that opened the gateway then for many other companies to start doing that and we actually certified other Ranchers with our process and I did our group did all the testing so so what I I guess that the input of the story is that then Paulie Coleman was once again able to eat her own product her allergies went away wow now why did they go away what was the process that switched because no longer were they going into feedlots and getting exposed to chemical uh processing and antibiotics and dead medicines gotcha they were that's what it was causing it gotcha and people used to say early on to me I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in this early on and I I got heavily criticized saying no hold it there is none of these things that appear in the meat I mean that it's all excreted out it's processed and and that's a bunch of your sensationalizing and you're making people paranoid but it's turned out that no we were right wow based on what they're eating it's causing you to have reactions that's right I mean what they're eating that's right the immune system says that's a foreigner even though it's at levels that are parts per billion levels our immune system is that sensitive to some of these chemicals so really matters what we eat oh boy does it ever in the immune system is our Telltale it'll tell us should we I mean listen this is like uh I guess a privileged conversation for a lot of people to talk about show but should we be really thinking about eating from local farms the the most we can um you know if we can afford those things or what should we be thinking about if we're shopping at the grocery store or ordering out you know we're getting Foods out at different places we're not cooking ourselves versus going to the local farmers market what should we be thinking about when we're choosing food I think you really hit it right there you know um the Journey of Life Starts us with single steps and we're not going to transition this food supply system overnight into something that's regenerative or all organic or take these chemicals out of there a lot of people are saying well hold on if you did Jeff what you're advocating in on Moss that we'd reduce our food production we'd produce starvation um and you know that's not a good idea it turns out however that's a more complicated story than it might appear at the first level because we have so much food waste in this country if we just if we just cut food waste down we could easily change our agricultural system and still meet the demands of of individuals so that's a whole other sidebar question as to why we waste so much food but let's just stay on point here as it relates to changing our agricultural system when we first started advocating organic standards and certification as an industry this became the birthing of the Natural Foods industry which is now I think it's a 65 billion dollar industry no one believed that that was ever going to happen it was the farmers are not going to go for this it will reduce their profitability they can't make a living people don't care um but we were on post Adele Davis and we were post um uh the the whole nature of pesticide residues producing difficulties in in health and particularly children so we had a lot of uh mothers that started to get very active and be proactive in this movement it's starting to pick up steam this would have been in the in the 80s for me and we started to take groups to DC and and really start talking to people put position papers together wow so over time organic agriculture through the organic farming Act was certified by law uh and you might say today of the um 870 870 million Acres of Farmland in the United States what percentage are organically farmed and it's it's a very small percentage it's less than three percent less than three percent of the total era of Farmland in the United States 800 how much million 870 million Acres 870 million Acres of Farmland where we're growing food yes three percent is well this minute I need to be cautious yes because we're growing crops but only 50 percent of that is up at food because the two major crops uh let's see 100 million acres is corn and 80 million acres is soy and then and 50 percent of that doesn't go to Food it goes to forming ethanol and forming really other okay substances that are not eaten directly by humans so we've used our land in different ways as a economic driver but the organic movement still is an agent of positive change that is growing so when someone says could we transition agriculture over to sustainability uh using limited chemical intervention the answer is yes we can do that that technology does exist and we talk about uh you know Carbon capture and climate change uh you know an acre of organic land will capture about a ton of carbon per acre per season a non-organic Farm captures about a half a ton of carbon very interesting so there's all sorts of things as part of the story that we could go on and on and on but I believe given all the imperatives that we have for survival maybe things that we think we thought were not so possible now become more possible what has been in the 40 Years of your you know research and dedication to the immune system but also Understanding Nutrition and food and farming and all these different areas of the body and also just human nature and nature in general what has been the biggest transformation in the last four decades and you've seen in the I guess the medical system and the health and wellness space so that's number one yeah and what do you see is going to happen over the next couple of decades that is possible for the medical system and health and wellness that it that hasn't happened yet so let's both take a deep breath oxygenate our neurons because this is the this is the dream state that I'd like to capture this moment okay so I'm going to use a symbol to answer your question because your question is so Omnibus and and so important that I want to use something that people might be able to identify so what is something that we sitting at this table can show as a symbol of a change that no human species in the experience of this planet has ever had that relates directly to their potential Health outcome and I'm going to show you it this is an aura ring this is an Apple Watch yeah Biometrics uh-huh no human culture or human being prior to the last 10 years has been able to measure their biology 24 7 365. right now what happens is when you can do that you start owning your body at a different level it's like continuous glucose monitoring that people are putting on their bodies now let me give you an example of this early on with SARS cov2 I've been wearing my aura ring and my Apple watch time since beginning I noticed that my aura ring was telling me that my Readiness score in the morning which was constant in the 80s or maybe in the low 90s my Readiness score for two days went down and I thought well why was that why am I ready to score I'm doing all the same things Readiness Quarry is a calculated algorithm on this that measures your heart rate while you're sleeping your body temperature and sleeping your heart rate variability your um I said pulse rate and your your oxygen and he was in your sleep and for this by steps and it was going down now my life had not changed so why would I go down in fact it changed so much that it went one day down to 60 where it was normally in the high 80s you still had the same routine went to bed at the same time that's right the right Foods all that stuff okay three days later I got sick oh so it prompted you my immune system is what I was measuring wow I wrote an article on this I did a series of Vlogs they went viral um and the aura ring company now has all sorts of studies going on to use this biometric as a way of starting to assess your immune system if it's if it's weakening if that's right early warning so these tools that we have now the of course the Apple watch you can measure your cardiac Rhythm you can measure your oxygen sat soon you'll be able to measure your glucose and blood pressure once you are able to do that 24 7 you have a laboratory of your body that no one's ever had access to wow now you can start to tune you can be your personal coach now the reason that I think that's so powerful is that in the medical world of today we don't have all the resources that are available to treat each person individually we can the best we can do is for people to go to the emergency room when they got a problem and hopefully get the best of care but the daily tuning up of your body based on your aspirations for good health uh we just don't have all the resources capable of doing that these tools provide us that opportunity and so now what I'm witnessing is a transformation in which the disease care system is starting to ddock and separate from the Health Care system and I've been saying for 40 years that Health can't be owned by the disease care system there are just two different languages too there's nothing wrong in fact there is a lot of good things about the disease care system but you can't have health owned by disease Care Health has to be over here personalized and accessible with a whole different set of tools and also disease care system I guess really has no incentive of you being healthy well there is financial there is that as well so there's a conflict of interest yeah because they want you buying something that you need to taste so that you're like preventing these disease just enough but not fully curing it so you can keep buying it right well let me give an example that's very to me um optimistic and um is a feel-good experience so when we started the institute for functional medicine in 1991. uh there was a lot of pushback in from my colleagues saying Jeff your advocacy is Noble but you're never going to get dogs who are already licensed to go back and pick up these textbooks and to study biology and sell thumb function and nutrition and so forth pathology uh Immunology blah blah blah I mean they've already been through enough school they're sick and tired of it they're licensed they're not going to do that well I'm here to say 32 years later that these individuals these several hundred thousand people that we've had the Provost you're working with demonstrate that's not right there are impassioned dedicated people that take time out of their practices at their own Financial loss they go home at night and they study these textbooks so they have a need to know they come back and they take heart exams to be certified that are as hard as their board certified exams they are totally dedicated to Patient Care and to what I call re-enchanting themselves to why they went into medicine right the problem that doctors have today often is Ahad advocacy and I can say this having been a medical school professor and and seen the light of excitement in these young people's eyes that they were going to go out and help the world then I see them 30 years later when they're worn out and tired and they've just had that spark just drained out of them because they don't feel like they're really getting people well and they feel like they're a surrogate to the drug company prescribing medicines so when we can give these people the opportunity to really work him with patient-centered health care and see the results of these things produce in terms of Upstream root cause outcomes they are exalted to go to their books and to dedicate themselves so I'm very optimistic that we're watching a transformation occur right before our eyes really so that's the biggest thing do you feel like everyone should be tracking in some way whether it's a ring or a watch or something do you feel like that's well I think there there are different glucose monitor you know all these things I'm sure you found this in your people you speak to and your friends and colleagues for different levels of geekism yes I mean some people I'm probably way on the edge of the biohacker and times I was wearing you know multiple different kinds of devices I'm way out the edge but I think that there will become more and more acceptance of these tools as they become cosmetically attractive they don't look clunky and I'm bulky and and the information this is the key doesn't require them to be expert it goes through the cloud automatically it gets Aid with generative AI it comes back to them in a usable way that's personalized to their language their culture their ethnicity their desires and now we truly get a personalized Healthcare System that's interesting if you could only use one device consistently would you use the ring or the The Watch if you had to pick one I've had such an intimate relationship with my rings because I got this for the first generation and this this is a new Apple watch for me but I probably just for the convenience stay with the ring there with the ring but the Apple watch gives you a lot of data too well well now now the Apple watch has your cardiac rhythms on it which you don't have on your interest in the rain yeah so the different tools for different things you're interested wow okay this is fascinating um what else do we need to know about balancing and harmonizing our immune system uh or anything else you feel like we should be aware of to prepare and optimize performance over these next few years well you know you asked me the question and I thought it was a really good leader question and why did I land on immunity and we've gone around this topic you know from different angles um immunity is is a Way Station a point of entry there are many doors in the health it just happened that given all the concerns that people had relative to infectious disease that immunity was the topic to cure but it it's it's not the only way to get into Health you could get into Health Fitness and cardiovascular fitness and musculoskeletal Fitness you could get into it through gastrointestinal Fitness you could get in through a neurological Fitness it's my belief that there are four quadrants of function that people aspire to perform at high levels and those quadrants I discussed this in my book disease delusion because I thought it was a concept that most people probably not familiar with so what are the four quadrants there's physical function which is your body motion mechanics biomechanics muscles bones ligaments tendons all that mechanical nature there is metabolic function which is the mechanism of physiology that goes on within inside our body there is cognitive function which is your you do quite a bit on your podcast on that and do a beautiful job and then there is behavioral function which has to do with the nature of how we relate and act in the world around us from the information that we're processing our cultural backgrounds our belief systems our attitudes when all four of those are tuned up we're a complete human being and we have the best day in our whole healthy happy that's right yeah most of us probably don't experience all those tuned up in the same day or all the time right so we're constantly in aspiration but some people of those fours have more common problems in one of them than the others and that that is maybe where they want to start and so that's what we've tried to do in this um this big world health model was we've tried to say we want to give you a point of entry into owning your health and the immune system is a place because immune system so rapidly responds to what you're doing that you'll get quick feedback yes and we all like to get quick feedback we like to know what we did really made a difference we don't want to just move a number right we want to move our performance sure so that's kind of how we landed on the immune system but it's not the only Gateway into taking charge of our health what's your biggest fear and concern at this season of your life with all the information you have with where you're at personally and professionally and where you see things happening in the future well at 77 you know as I was saying to you um I hope that that's a double sevens that means the lucky double sevens yes um but clearly the number of years ahead are less than years behind that that's a fact so what's my singular most important um commitment to whatever those days ahead might bring is to do a pay forward I've had a privileged life I've traveled six million miles I've met extraordinary people like you people that are advocating for others to be better for our society to improve for culture to be more understanding and tolerant and and benevolent and for people to have joy and that experience that I've shared with so many people just got passed Through My Lens because of my background in in biosciences in the way that I communicated but it is really an advocacy that I have the responsibility because of this Fortune to pay for it and I pay for it through watching how my grandchildren are responding to their grandfather as kind of a litmus test and how people that are now becoming the leaders um how they're picking up and modifying what I've been trying to advocate for a number of years and and is some of this stuff sticky that I've been doing and if it's not why and can I modify the way I'm languaging in a way that makes it more sticky so my thing is all about pay forward and you know I'm in a very privileged place I don't have to make a living the college education for my grandchildren are all put away in trust funds amazing um my wife and I are very fortunate we have no debts um so if we have bad days as our own fault and so you know what do we want to do with those days and how do we want to leverage the fortune that we've had and that's why to me Big Bowl health is is it more than just a name because being bold about your health means you're not apologetic you state who you are you're transparent and you try to advocate for other people to both Aspire and Achieve that which is given to them to have great lives right wow it's beautiful so what is big bold health and how can we get involved well we we um everybody can go to our website we've got all sorts of podcasts and information there about all sorts of things I'm I was mentioning to you early on that I I was told by one of my colleagues that I was maybe one of the earliest podcasters because in 1979 I started a series of educations called functional medicine update on audio cassette tape that then transferred over to CD later and later transferred to a sticks later went live cast I did it for 31 years never missing a month that's amazing and I had subscribers to that all 31 years so long that their kids had become doctors amazing it started to subscribe so um I think there are so many ways that we can give and be purposeful and have a life of meaning and uh and still be who we need to be yeah in the world right that's beautiful and and there's a program at big bold Health as well that we can go through yeah we we have What's called the immunity plus um program which is a 90-day program we have an app that guides people that has daily lessons um introducing a person to ownership of their immune system and we just finished a very interesting clinical trial that was glintrails.gov registered you can look it up on the clintrails.gov website in which we looked at the effect of these Himalayan tertiary buckwheat nutrients on the immune age of 50 human beings and we found people that had aged immune systems we could reduce their immune age by Within 90 days by six to seven years come on yeah so their biological age you could yes put back in time precisely so from this one ingredient well it's a combination of all the ingredients within Himalayan turn every buckwheat really but by taking yeah this Himalayan tartery buckwheat now white for 90 days yes you could reverse the biological age of people that had ex had had immune Asia was greater than their chronological age we could reduce it oh wow so it was greater than the chronological actuation you could reduce it back to their kind of chronology in some cases below their chronology oh my gosh 90 days a day this I gotta take this okay this is amazing well so this is when this has been documented this is everything yeah yeah we are we're um we're just uh writing up the paper for our publication and we wow and the other thing we did which you might find interesting is because we started now to understand the interrelationship between the immune system of the soil to the immune system of plants to the immune system of animals to the immune system of people who eat those animals um we started to ask the question what would happen if we re-nourish the soil of our Farms now our Farms recall our all organically certified they've been at least 20 years organic these are good farmers and in fact we have a little video on our website of at Harvest and when you hear the stories from our farmers and our Millers and you can't help but be impressed the house wow how passionate they are what they're doing and so we started we have a soil scientist Dr Emily Reese at work Cornell PhD that works for us on this project and so we started inoculating the soil with different friendly bugs like its own microbiome and then we ask the question at the Harvest did we change the level of these phytochemicals so that we can enhance the level of these nutrients and lo and behold we can't by improving the immune system of the soil we improve the immune system of the plants which then improve animals right wow so this is this is a web that we're living in a web of interaction we tend to segment things out we have kind of an after-procentric view of humans and then everything else but we're all part of this web of interaction and the more we study it the more we understand how we interconnected this is amazing um I want people to go to your website bigbold Health they can go there and learn more about this do you have also a list of farms around the country that is using these processes to enhance the soil and the the farming system or no that's a really good question we haven't actually we've got that in the list but we've never actually published and I would be able maybe a little bit where is how we would do that because we probably offend so many that we missed ah gotcha you know how it is if you say well what about me and we well we didn't know about you so look at that every year you can update it yeah you can updated every recording you say hey the K Edition Beyond this okay interesting um I would acknowledge you uh Dr Jeff for for your 40 plus years of dedication to this cause this mission of helping people have better performance with their overall health with their immune system with looking at their health as this web and not just as a you know a parts that could have a disease or something but looking at how everything plays into that and for your joy for life you enjoy for people you enjoy for adventure and continual service I'm really grateful for you on how you show up in the world and I'm so glad we had this conversation I have a couple final questions for you this is called the three truths question so imagine it's your last day many years away you get to live many more decades and accomplish what you want to accomplish live the way you want to live and for whatever reason all the things that you've ever published and the conversations and the books has to go away to the next place but you could leave behind three lessons with the world and this is all we would have to remember your content from these three truths what would be those three truths for you well you know this is interesting I did an exercise when I was in my 40s I went to a personal development seminar and one of the questions was what would you like written on your tombstone and um it that has not changed actually at all for me over the 37 years since that 40-year birthday um I said I'd like on my Tombstone to say he was a teacher because I think to be a good teacher you have to be a good learner you have to be a good listener you have to be a person who uh understands difference of opinions and accepts and and uh incorporates those that really work for you so that that would be one but the others would be uh I think that that I would like people to recognize that Health resides within all of our genes and what happens is we get this derailed because we get subliminally seduced we get marketed time becomes compressed we don't always make the most intelligent choices and we become casualties of our own lifestyle and environment and where none of us are going to live perfect lives that's not realistic but I always believe in the 90 percenter rules you know people say well where would you start to say give up shivered soft drinks you know that's that is the first step no one should be drinking them and then you can go down the list right of a hierarchy so to me is just people recognizing they're in charge of how their genes are going to express themselves into their function and that we're getting information all the time from how we live in our environment that is translated up by our genes into how we look at and feel you know obesity just doesn't happen magically um it happens because information that our genes are processing have given rise to the collection of calories and for a Rainy Day That Never Comes you know our fat mouths right so all these things tend to to weave together about the importance for us being in charge of the most important precious gift that we have ever been given that makes us the Jewel on the past 10 and the diamond of life which is our genome it's ours ours alone it'll never be duplicated unless for cloned which that's all another thing a half course okay that's number two what's number three well number three I think it is to recognize that um that health is really determined by our function not by the absence of disease and you know in 19 I think it was 47 when the health the World Health Organization was first being formed uh it set a mandate as to what health would be World Health and it was the full expression of physical physiological and mental and emotional health it wasn't just they didn't mention absence of disease once in that definition I think that's what I would Aspire for people to understand that absence of disease is not the presence of Health health is a determinant based on our function that's beautiful um before I asked the final question I'm curious side question what uh was the biggest lesson coach wouldn't tell you while while playing at UCLA and winning a championship under him uh I think it was two lessons it was discipline he was a master of discipline and it was respect respect for who you are I'll never forget an occasion at a practice where one of the five star high school athletes that was recruited on the team was not behaving within the context of the structure that wouldn't was advocating the ground rules that's right and and he was a master of giving warnings but you could tell they were well stated clear and on the second or third time I can't remember that this incident happened um he called out the player in the middle of practice as missed her with his last name showing respect asked him to leave the court and dismissed him from the team after practice it was a big media thing because this person was going to be a star he ended up going to the NBA later for a different school and I thought I learned a lesson from that example of what respect is all about respect for yourself because it was that player that was disrespecting himself it wasn't disrespecting the team or the coach he was disrespecting himself and he actually got himself into trouble when he was in the NBA later in the NBA yeah he never learned the lesson or anything that's right interesting wow so he dismissed him from after a couple warnings he dismissed him for practice then decided this guy's not good for our culture and our team that's correct he's not living up to the code that we have the code of conduct or whatever was and so he removed him from the team and then he transferred schools yes and it went on to be a star player at another school went to the NBA and it was a big media thing in the LA Times you know a lot of people thought this was um obsessive yeah bad move but it was it was smart because that year uh um wouldn't want a national championship so he won that year yeah that was your sophomore year yeah and so he won was that his first national championship or no before I think that was the second actually I think with freshman year is who was his first so he made a tough call to let go of a top arguably one of the top athletes on the team the best players from his pedigree yes right and said hey you're not right you know you might have a lot of talent but that Talent isn't welcome here if you're gonna have this Behavior so I'm going to respectfully ask you to leave yeah that's a bold move variable and but that was he was a man of great integrity that's why he still cherished by so many things wow they knew him wow I had two um other than my own father I had two other male important figures wouldn't be one and and the second or the third was I had the privilege of of uh taking too sabbatical year leave with the Linus Pauling two-time Nobel prize winning Laureate at his Institute at Stanford and and those those three men really were very instrumental in forming my view as to what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it as a as a man that's beautiful this is inspiring I'm so glad that you're here and sharing everything I've got uh the final question is what's your definition of greatness to be right be respected by those people that you respect you know I I've been criticized many many times by many people because I've not always taken a politically um kind of middle of the road opinion on certain things uh but that's actually only sharpened my focus and allowed because criticism can be a very powerful way of uh evaluating your own thoughts and principles but it's how my the people I greatly respect how they respond that is really to me the the truth teller it's the the way that I evaluate how I'm proceeding you know so asking yourself a set of questions you know am I still hungry or am I just enjoying eating that's a big one you know Americans are socialized I mean think about what your mom said to you she said Are You full when she fed you right she didn't say are you satisfied that's the right question or are

Channel: Lewis Howes

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Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: CmeFdeMqTxo

Length: 96min 55sec (5815 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2023