What is Metabolism? | Interview with Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

hey everybody and welcome to chef aj live i'm your host chef aj and this is where i introduce you to amazing people like you who are doing great things in the world that i think you should know about one year ago today march 20th 2020 i did my first episode of chef aj live at the time i didn't really know it was going to be a show it was just an effort to connect with people during the beginning of the pandemic i had no idea that people would come on and so many people would watch on a daily basis and i'm just so honored that now we are in season two with our first episode it's actually episode 445 i've interviewed over 500 guests for the show and i decided to start the new season with the guests that had the most views of all the guests and it is none other than multiple new york times best-selling author nutritional guru everyone's favorite doctor on the subject dr joel fuhrman thank you so much for taking this spot my pleasure looking forward to it as usual yeah dr firmer before we begin i just want to tell you how much i really truly appreciate what you do because somebody of your stature often wouldn't give somebody like me the time of day you've been on the show three times and with the summits i've done three truth about weight loss summits in the gi health summit and you are one of only two we we've interviewed over 150 doctors now you're only one of two that has actually been on every single summit you're always one of the most popular guests and your information is amazing and i what i really appreciate about you is that you're not afraid to tell the truth there's so many people that are doctors are in the nutritional space even in the plant-based world that are like oh you know oil's okay you know little vegan junk food's okay a cheat day's okay and you really tell the truth you're not afraid to speak up for for the health of people you're really one of the only ones in the plant-based world that gets food addiction so so thank you for that my pleasure and i think that you know that um i am some people may consider my viewpoints radical but i want to give people the best information so they could choose to do um what part of it or all of it i always felt like that if you'll sell a person out if you water down the information to try to expand your reach to make it more palatable to more people then you sell out those people who want the best information so they could have gotten well of the best results so by trying to make it more politically more applicable more that people want to hear you just weaken the message and don't and you have to um you know deviate from optimal you're deviating from the truth of what's best for people to do you know and you're not afraid to tell parents that they're not doing right by their children when they feed them this junk food that it's really not okay right and i'm not afraid to tell people that if they're a little bit overweight they're still putting themselves at health risk that there's no such thing as a healthy overweight person and we have all these healthy eating plant-based eaters of vegans they're healthy they think they're healthy but their body fats are 30 they weigh 140 150 pounds and they think they're healthy and they're and they're not because fat cells spew out reactive oxygen species cytokine lipo kinds increase insulin resistance increase estrogen production increase angiogenesis in other words what i'm saying right now is that the foundational principle behind my nutritarian approach is that is this idea of moderate caloric restriction in the context of micronutrient excellence and that we have to modulate the quality of what we eat and the quantity of what we eat to make sure that we achieve an optimal body weight and that means that that a woman's be a woman's body fat percent to be healthy has to be below 25 percent and a male's has to be below 15 percent and it's you're just you're trick um you're not being honest with yourself and people don't have the perception because they think as they're eating healthy it's okay that they still remain overweight because everybody in america is overweight and they just look like everybody else but it's still not ideal yeah well your height weight chart is that the gold standard because i'm i'm even overweight according to yours by about five pounds i don't have one specific weight chart or one specific amount of what i tell people to weigh i i do um you know i do tell people for most for males ideally that bmi should be about 22 when females are below 21 a bmi but there are some individuals that could have you know bigger bone structures that could always there's always the exception but regardless of your bmi whether it's above 22 for a male and above 21 for a female by a touch you still body fat still should be below 25 for a female and below 15 for a male i'm 67 my body fat's about 10 10 there's no reason why a male's body fat should be above above 15 ideally for a woman it might even below 23 but but certainly 25 is reasonable to expect people to have their body fat below that so i think that that's the it's it's a high expectation for some but it's something we should be achieving towards and if you have to do exercise to achieve that in addition to eating right then that's great wow well thank you i just want to show you something my birthday is in two days and look what somebody gave me oh wow that stuff is super expensive i know that is a good friend somebody that buys you dr fuhrman's vanilla powder thank you so much laura oh my goodness you know how expensive that is it's almost like a hundred dollars it's almost like two hundred dollars a pound yeah so it's like tremendously expensive stuff it's so good though it's the greatest stuff because it's it's good for you it makes things taste great you don't use that much so it's really worth it you know i agree we had to buy it because it was more expensive everywhere else so we had to get it and put it up there because people were pack couldn't find it for less than like 300 a pound so we had to get some and get them to even though it's super expensive it's still the best price you can get it at you know what i mean no and i agree with you as a chef it's unparalleled i won't even use extract anymore it's just yeah i mean either the extract the fake vanilla stuff it's in the liquids this is really real ground vanilla bean you know exactly because the alcohol free has glycerin which is sugar and the one that's not alcohol-free or sugar it just doesn't taste good i'd rather omit the vanilla than not use vanilla powder yeah that's great yeah so so we call today's uh getting together metabolism body fat oils aging and weight loss which one of those would you like to talk about first i wouldn't mind if you talk about oils because there is now a slew of younger vegan doctors that are basically saying it's not only okay but that it doesn't impact somebody's heart disease and with the um percentage of people overweight and obese i just don't understand how anybody is recommending oil as as a food well you know i'm i'm saying something a little even more radical in the other direction i'm saying as as crazy as this sounds i'm actually saying olive oil in these oils actually increase the risk of cancer like breast cancer so i'm saying completely opposite what these people are saying the reason i'm saying that and i think i can justify that with science is because oil is so effective at preventing weight loss and maintaining people in the overweight condition and it's being chronically overweight that set that raises aromatase activity and raises your estrogen levels that increase risk of breast and prostate cancer and it's being chronically overweight that keeps you chronically insulin resistance insulin resistant and then you have a higher glucose response with more advanced glycation end products circulating which age you faster so i'm making the connection between oil and body fat because we know when people either remove lessen the oil or switch oil the same amount of calories of oil into nuts and seeds they lose weight and that's well established in the scientific literature so there's no science so i'm saying something even further here that if you were going to a buffet and i gave you a tablespoon of olive oil 120 calories of oil to eat on the way to the buffet because there's no fiber and no volume and no significant nutrient load and it's absorbed so rapidly into the bloodstream when you got to the buffet you wouldn't eat 120 calories less eat the same amount of calories it has no effect to ratchet down the apostate so the additional oil you eat is just additional calories you could have consumed that you're consuming that you wouldn't have consumed if you didn't put the oil on it has no effect to reduce your appetite if i mix the oil and the food on the buffet then the scientists measuring how much people ate would find out they ate more than 120 calories extra from the oil 200 calories extra because oil is an appetite stimulant makes you want to eat more food or whatever it is you're eating furthermore because the oil it goes and the calories from the oil go into the bloodstream so rapidly it stimulates dopamine receptors in the brain the same way as other addictive substances like sugar does it's the speed at which calories into the bloodstream medical the medical term for that is called the bolus the word bolus means it all enters at once it doesn't come in slowly when you eat calories from a walnut or pistachio nut you get one or two calories a minute coming in here you get 30 to 40 calories a minute coming in and you know when your body takes in fat calories slowly your body preferentially burns those fat calories for energy it burns it off and it'll burn off the omega-6 calories as they're coming in to keep your omega-3 omega-6 ratio favorable when you're taking oil calories there's no burning off it has to go to storage when it goes to storage it turns on fat storage hormones which stay elevated for days and and you continually eat oil every few days and you have your fat storage hormones activated and people wondering why they're not weigh 145 pounds and they're not losing weight for a five foot four woman or something why she's not losing weight and she's cutting back on their food but she's still putting oil in the food and what i'm saying right now is oil has not only makes for excess calories but it has biological effects to your body's efforts to get rid of excess fat on the body and i'm making this clear in this conversation how dangerous i think excess fat on the body is i've already gave you three or four examples and that the hormones that lead to fat storage and like insulin also activate angiogenesis promoters because fat cells in general are are blood vessel and hypoxic tissue they don't have a great blood supply because they don't create a great blood supply in order to grow they have to release certain mediators and hormones that tells new blood vessels to grow into them the word angiogenesis means the promotion of the growth of new blood vessels so fat cells can grow more right so you now cancer cells need angiogenesis promotion so they can replicate grow and metastasize without angiogenesis promotion you can't get cancers to spread fat cells on the body are almost necessary to allow cancers to replicate and so i'm saying it's irrelevant whether a little bit of oil raises your cholesterol or is cardiovascularly negative or positive compared to a person eating butter meat pasta or a white potato it's irrelevant what's relevant is the oil is the most body fat promoting it prevents and most people are as you just said earlier most people in america are overweight if you were working eight hours a day behind a plow you know in an ox you know where you're a professional athlete and you could handle a little oil in your diet and still keep your body fat low and be really slim probably be great for you but most people don't aren't professional athletes who are working physical jobs and most people unfortunately are significantly overweight and that little bit of oil sabotages their ability to get healthy you know i couldn't agree more and it's generally the doctors that are telling people it's okay are ones that have never been overweight you know right they've never been overweight yeah and they don't know how some people have very slow metabolic rates and a little bit of deviation from what would be what we're considering ideal could could sabotage their results i take care of as you know i have people here who are diabetic with high blood pressure who are overweight and it's not that easy to get them well if they don't keep dropping weight every single week while we're monitoring them so they know exactly how to eat so when they go home they can replicate exactly what we taught them to do because they know they're losing two to three pounds a week and they can keep it going at home they know exactly what to eat exactly how much to eat they put dust adjusted it so they get results so they can replicate it the ultimate um decisions here if you're not getting results you're doing something wrong you have to get results if you're overweight so you achieve an ideal weight right i say a nutritarian is somebody at their ideal weight or if they're overweight they're moving towards that ideal weight at least two pounds a week if they're not dropping two pounds a week in the direction of their ideal weight and they're not following you know my recommendations because you have because that's because moderate caloric restriction is part of it needing less food slows the aging process and even has the ability as we see it measure it to reverse aging i know that sounds crazy and radical but we measure these aging parameters and we're seeing people age backwards and i'm not saying you're gonna um i'm saying what they've accelerated their aging and they've gotten to themselves in bad health and their aging parameters are abnormal like they're telomeres and their stem cell measurements and their inflammatory markers show they're at a higher chronological age biological age in their chronological age but then we get them doing the right thing and actually we see the biological layers measured by telomeres improving so it's we're seeing people actually get healthy reverse disease and age backwards well i we know this works but people still say that the diet that you and i eat and recommend without sugar oil and salt it's extreme i mean how do you eat at restaurants how do you eat at other people's houses you know and and this idea you know of these cheat days the people that you and i know and work with they can't afford a cheat day right you know i always give the story of like yeah one i won't give the whole story now but one sheet meal sets a person back for three days now that one cheat meal because when you are losing weight you're not just burning calories your body is also removing toxins and acidity and your body holds on to fluid and swells itself so when you getting healthy you're spewing out toxins and you're spewing out extra fluid that the toxins needed to dilute them so they wouldn't irritate tissue as much so when you go off your diet your body stops removing toxins it stops removing fat and it stops again and you hold on to fluid too which is also reflective of of um improper health to have excess fluid being held by the body yeah absolutely so if you don't mind i there are some questions that have been sent in because you're very popular and i'll start with a few of them we have one from deborah i recently started eating a whole food plant-based diet june 2020 due to having crohn's disease i just had a colonoscopy and they found deep ulcers in my intestine which can turn into fistulas is there any possibility of healing naturally from this my doctor wants me to take medication for the rest of my life which i don't want to do and i don't want another surgery yeah over the you can imagine over the last 30 years my a lot of my work has been involved with taking care of people with autoimmune conditions especially colitis and crohn's disease so it's very um you know so it's just um very very very critical this person knows they can get well and that we have certain protocols they have to follow but if they're having inflammation there then they have to be on a diet of pretty much mostly cooked foods and they have to have and we usually give them um some extra elements like high dose probiotics and high omega epa fish oils you know high we give them um a lot of inflammatory anti-inflammatory type materials and we usually heat give them juices that have been mildly heated as well so we have a protocol to get the inflammation down and then we as they're doing better we can wean them off the primarily cooked food and heated diet we can go towards a more um you know more raw foods that are blended so it has to be done in stages and it's really just hard in this type of a conference to tell a person what to do they need particular guidance based on their individual um disease process which even involves blood tests to make sure we're doing we're you know adjusting the the um the food and the supplements accordingly to help them heal so that's something i do do and i um actually have i've had people come to the retreat here to get well from that one example is a um a 19 year old boy i think he was like 16 when he came here but at 16 when he came here he had active crohn's disease on remicade and he stayed here for a couple of months and i've been in contact with him over the last year since he's been gone and he pretty much has made a complete recovery from his crohn's disease so we have a lot of that's just one example but over my career i've had to treat a lot of people with colitis and crohn's i remember years ago i had one person who likes who lived in my house for like two months who came out of the hospital they wanted to remove his colon wanted to surgically remove his colon and he was on steroids and he wasn't on eating anything so i told him well get you know we'll come into co right from the hospital and come in and live with me for a while i lived in my house for a while in the bedroom before my before carol was born he was up in that bedroom but anyway he stayed in that room we we um i kept i fasted him for a period of time i think i fasted him for about 10 days once he wasn't eating in the hospital but it was off the steroids now fasting in my house and then i put him on just steamed zucchini and cooked vegetable juices for about two to three weeks after that he was only on pureed steam zucchinis that we steamed with the full skin on and vegeta and cooked them and then so that and then we gradually fed them on to some like red new skin potatoes new skin players without the skins on them with the zucchini we gradually advanced his diet and he fought and he of course made a recovery too but it was a very um harrowing and you know he was very very dangerous position with having like 18 bloody bowel movements a day and they wanted to take his colon out so i have some taking care of some very very severe cases and achieved results in those cases and so now it's almost like people can live with you again if they eat to live retreat you know i always love that that people you know my wife and i first of all enjoy getting to know people and having you know it's because i always we always talk about people years ago um when we first got married and i was first a doctor i have to have people living in my basement you know on beds in my basement i did but but now we have a beautiful place where people come on but it's nice to know people and get to know them and that and it helps the healing when as you know you can't just come in for a doctor visit sometimes and and get a person to really understand everything they have to do and they need help to do it and of course we're dealing with a lot of people who still have addictive relationships dip this addictive love affair with food and that that period of abstinence where they learn to make healthy food taste great is the it you know turns it around for them too thank you sherry wants to know if we can freeze the dr furman vanilla powder it's available on your website drfurman.com in the store i think it's probably a good idea it might keep for a year out of the refrigerator but if you know because it's expensive you need to lose it you don't know how long you're going to use it for might be a good take some out into a smaller bag or a glass and then keep that in your refrigerator and the other part you could freeze it's a good idea yeah that's what i've always done i just want to let you know thank you randy dole and you got us a super chat donation so thanks dr fuhrman and here's a question from nataria regarding white blood cell count i recently saw a youtube video of dr fuhrman saying that people who follow a nutritarian diet have a lower white blood cell count i did some blood tests recently and my white cells were lower should i be worried you should be proud of yourself for for a health accomplishment because we know in the scientific literature that lower white blood cell counts are lead are linked to reduced inflammation longer lifespan and lower risk of cancer so this is a very good question because people should be aware that the normal range of white blood cell counts is abnormally high because it's measured because they set the normal based on where most americans run and you go to your doctor and he sees your white blood cell count as 3.2 or 2.8 or 3.8 and in the normal range is 5 to 10 and the doctor says oh my goodness there's something wrong with your white blood cells are too low you need to get a bone marrow biopsy you could have cancer and i'm saying to people no it's the doctor that needs the bone marrow biopsy for his high white blood cell count you have the normal white blood cell count because you're eating right and we know that these cells like the battery in the flashlight maintains its charge when the battery is turned off our white blood cell counts are lower because our white blood cells are safely tucked away you could say they're um they're they're safely in their in the bone marrow not being utilized not much inflammations then should we get an ammonia or should some some infection or some serious issue now we have white blood cells that can function more effectively we need them to function because people are constantly inflamed keeping the white blood cells activated all the time they're not going to respond well when they get sick whether you're exposed to a virus or an oral or a bacterial illness so we have better white blood selectivity and this woman should be proud of herself and be able to stand strong against her physician and saying no my white blood cell counts are good it's the other peoples that are higher that are bad yeah it's so hard when you don't have a doctor like yourself or a lifestyle medicine or plant-based doctor because they they interpret the blood tests completely differently yes and i think certainly i you know i've been i've been sharing this with all the physicians i've mentored in the lifestyle medicine community to let them know about these abnormalities observed over the last 30 40 years and people who eat so healthfully to let them know that they're not abnormal you know great thank you kathleen says for the g bombs do you have to have everything together at once or can some things be eaten with other things within the day for instance i have berries and flax and chia in my oatmeal cooked mushrooms with my morning steamed greens raw onions in my evening salad beans and soups a friend has everything all at once in a salad and do the greens have to be raw or is steamed okay of course they don't have to be all at once i'm saying g-bombs are foods that we should be eating regularly probably daily but not all the cells have to be able the same meal of course but um and yes we want people to eat the the onion family and the crus and the green cruciferous family some raw each day what i'm saying right now is that there are two raw foods and two cooked foods that maximally build the microbiome with that favorable biofilm covering the villi in the small intestines that makes for food which makes for toxins blocking the intake of toxins antigens proteins but also keeping the glycemic effect of fruits and other foods you eat lower because you have this favorable biofilm made up of a thickened variety of bacteria it's the huge different variety of 500 different species of bacteria that give us the healthy microbiome and we want variety in what we eat too the broader variety in your diet the broader variety of bacteria healthy bacteria you develop so the two raw foods are to help you build this microbiome are raw leafy green vegetables particularly raw cruciferous greens that you chew exceptionally well and the raw of the allium family mean meaning onion and scallions and the two cooked foods of course are mushrooms and you should be having more than one variety of mushrooms a day when you do have mushrooms shiitake and one other type of mushroom usually and of course cooked beans well-cooked beans especially azuki beans black beans and red beans in combination with the you know not that you can't have cooked greens and cooked onion but i want some of your onion and cruciferous green consumption to be consumed raw now i call it that anti-cancer salad because it includes obviously these on the scallion and the onion and the raw greens and we're chewing it exceptionally well with a dressing made with some nuts and seeds instead of oil because you absorb 20 to 50 times as much of the fat soluble phytochemicals and carotenoids because you did have some fat from nuts and seeds with that meal in the drink and it could be you could shoot a few walnuts with the meal but um and then the anti-cancer soup the reason i call it an anti-cancer soup is because when we put the onion and the green vegetables in the soup we don't we puree it while it's raw we puree first the greens in the blender then dump that into the soup to cook and then we puree the leeks and the scallion the onion and in the blender in its own blender and pour that into the soup to cook it's because the enzymes the myrosinase enzyme in green the cruciferous vegetables and the alienase enzyme in the onion family still stay activated when it's broken down while it's still raw to form the beneficial organosulfite and isothiocyanates all these beneficial anti-cancer compounds are now formed in the blender as you're breaking down the cells where they would normally be formed in the mouth as you chew very well but now we can pour them in the soup and the heating of the soup will not destroy them it's their formation that it would have impaired if we had heated them first before they were chewed or crushed so yes the reason why we're developing this this anti-cancer dietary portfolio with the way to cook and prepare the foods to maximize the anti-cancer potential and it includes a mixture of both raw food and cooked food sounds good yeah we have a lot of questions about beans and nuts actually but i wanted to ask you because i recently had doug evans on the show and i know you wrote the forward to his book can you eat the sprouted legumes and sprouted nuts instead of eating the nuts and the beans is that acceptable um it could be it could work for some people but when you sprout something you reduce this caloric density turn it into a vegetable from a bean or a nut so it's so it's good way to lose weight um but some people who are athletes and bigger people need the extra calories and obviously it's pot you know so um so it may reduce the calories to turn your um it may reduce the caloric density and and um and some people just need more calories you know what i mean but but it but it would be acceptable in your opinion for some people that have trouble with those foods to eat them that way they'd still nutritionally be okay yes except you know we it's we'd have to see yes i think yeah if you're eating everything sprouted what i'm saying right now is it's like eating a salad you know so um as long as they're not they're getting enough calories and getting enough you know they're everything looks good sure some people need more protein and more fat as they age and their ability to biologically assimilate these nutrients go down so if a person's getting frail not getting good athletic response getting muscle wasting then yeah you know so probably you better eat the sprouts and those sprouted substances need a small amount of the nuts and seeds of beans would be give you more biological diversity and nutritional diversity whenever you narrow the diet and remove a certain amount a certain type of food you usually have a higher probability of impairing a person's health so we really want to have the full biologic effect of all these foods present so in most cases i would say it's probably better to have some and it depends on how much they're sprouted too you know what i mean which nut you're talking about usually a nut that's partially sprouted is still a nut it's not much different from a nut whereas a bean that's sprouted like a mung bean it's still it's now it's a b now it's a vegetable more like a vegetable than a bean but most of those beans that are bigger beans have to be cooked even if they're slightly sprouted because they still have those agglutinins in them and they still have would have to be cooked to deactivate the gluten so so it's very very but we have to be more specific here you know so what kind of bean we're sprouting you know what i mean great thanks so much okay looking at bean though as you know increases its absorb by increases its ability to digest digestibility and deactivates the let the harmful lectins there's beneficial effects to cooking for certain foods like beans you know right uh richard hubbard is watching live he said to my friend dr fuhrman tell him i said hello well who was that richard hubbard oh yeah yeah he's a nice guy he lost tremendous amount of weight he's doing great yep i had him on the show he's wonderful so jana writes i'd like to know if you have a suggestion for raising blood pressure without the use of sodium i often end up in the er or icu with bradycardia dangerously low blood pressure and syncope the cardiologists all recommend liberal use of salt which has worked to keep me stable anytime i've actively worked to decrease my sodium intake i end up back in the er i do exercise every day and i've been completely whole food plant-based and so free for at least four years and other people watching live saying they have hyponitry natremia so is this no salt for everyone no there's some people who require some more sodium in their diet because they have a certain biological genetic or acquired inability of the kidney to hold on to sodium there's definitely some adjustments but they shouldn't follow the doctor and just put a lot of salt in their diet they have to treat this very scientifically like a scientist and actually measure the amount of sodium they require so they get the perfect level it's it's also what's letting your sodium deviate your high to low and medium to moderate to that gets that's not good for their health in other words most of us the lower the sodium the better the natural diet gives about 500 milligrams to 700 milligrams a day of sodium which is perfect because our sweat stops throwing out sodium and our urine stops putting out a lot of sodium so we hold on to sodium well that way we're in an athletic event going for a run or a tennis match or something very aggressively sweating we're not going to lose sodium and we're not going to be playing basketball and getting cramps in our legs because we're losing electrolytes because when you push out and urinate out and sweat out extra sodium you pull out potassium magnesium and other electrolytes and other minerals with the excess sodium excreting so it's better for you to be in a low sodium diet everybody holding on to all those minerals and you don't need and you don't need water not gatorade or something you don't you know you don't need to take salt because you exercise but there are some individuals who do not have their kidneys is a impaired ability to reclaim and hold on to sodium so they require a little more on their diet and for those unusual people maybe one in a hundred people then they should experiment when it's usually reasonable to give them 250 milligrams of sodium with the extra with each meal so that means in addition to the 750 they're getting with their diet from natural foods they're getting an additional 250 with each meal they're doubling the sodium moving from about 750 milligrams to 1500 milligrams of sodium it's very rare a person would require not good for them to move up to 2000 or 3000 so the doctors so if the person did require using a lot of sodium because the average american might be consuming 3000 milligrams of sodium it's still considered a low sodium diet on 1500 you follow me by some people's criteria but that 1500 of a low sodium diet still has 250 milligrams of extra added sodium per meal which is more than the average american is consuming but this person required that now if they so that number should be titrated so these people are using the least amount possible to maintain normalcy of their blood pressure and of their sodium levels in their blood so they're non-symptomatic because excess sodium causes microvascular hemorrhaging hemorrhages it's a pro-inflammatory substance for the endothelial lining of blood vessels and over years and years it weakens the lining of the blood vessels making them more prone to rupture increasing a person's risk of hemorrhagic stroke so we don't want people to consume more sodium than they require because it has its deleterious effects over time great thank you uh bronwyn says i'm wondering what your take is on collagen i'm in the midwest and it's extremely popular right now for healthy skin hair nails and weight loss our plant-based dermatologist said absolutely not what do you think about college and dr furman i think most of the studies on it haven't shown any significant effects so we have to look at whatever data we have available in the scientific studies and i think most of the collagen that you consume orally as a supplement gets broken down into its basic amino acids and a little bit that's absorbed as collagen doesn't have the ability to go into your skin into your joints and have um and have those kind of positive claims if it did we need some the more radical or how she'd say the more unbelievable the claim the more you require more substantive research and data to be able to hold that claim with some degree of authority you know so we need a lot of data to make that statement to make that statement as being strong so i i don't think that data is there um so it's not something i generally recommend well i've never taken i've got healthy nail skin and was able to have weight loss so i don't know why don't they just do your diet instead well every person is different you know you know person could be a mediator and say look at me i've got healthy nails my weight's down and they're one person in their in their certain age you know but obviously the ultimate um what you could say determinant of whether what's right is following groups of people for decades until their death and seeing how long they live and what they die of and then we can give them better advice you know what i mean yep let's see uh trish says could you please ask dr furman to discuss the vibrational piece of exercise equipment the power plate he uses in his practice i'd like to know how he uses it himself where he gets his routine and if he can share where one could watch and follow a class that's a great idea because i i was just thinking i should make a power play class because it's a vibrational platform the power plate is a little better than other vibrational technology because it moves in three dimensions forward back left and right up and down it's a little more expensive you know usually and it helps you when you exercise on it it helps you get faster results from the exercise and it makes you more tired and burns a little more calories and a lot of the profession almost all the professional sports teams football players basketball players use this kind of technology i use it because it helps me with skiing and it helps with injury prevention too so i might be doing a vibrational um i crossed my arms and it's a vibrational pulley which i'm pulling up and exercising while it's vibrating makes it harder to exercise while the pulls vibe and the platform is vibrating so when i'm up there doing what i'm doing on one leg i'm going down and up on one leg from side to side and then with the other leg i'm standing on the leg from side to side i'm putting my feet together and i'm pulling against the straps i'm lifting against a stationary motion or i'm doing touching one toe and coming up and touching the other toe and coming up on the power plate while it's vibrating and i'm doing these exercises it gets you more response in regard to building bone mass and the reason i've done it used in my office and i use this equipment in my offices because i treat people without medications who have severe osteoporosis so i'm my style of my practice is getting people well without having to use drugs right so a person comes in they're told by their doctor they need to take bisphosphonates or you know some toxic drug and i say no we can get you well we're going to give you a customized exercise program that's not going to compress your bones and your spine we're going to be gentle but over time we'll put more force on it and we'll use vibrational technology we'll measure the amount of strength you have and we'll see you improve your strength and your bone mass and i've got some great results well for example you know have people making radical improvement in their bone mass on their dexa scans using both about you know using these type of technology so i have it at the retreat and by having it for my patients i've been using it for myself and seeing that it gets my legs in better shape for sports you know it's just i know the professional athletes are using it so yeah the power play on we have some um i've put some up of the different types of power plates on drfurman.com with an explanation of different types because they're because some are more expensive than others some are more affordable and so like i use the professional one because it's here at the retreat but people can buy a home version that's much less expensive in other words yeah that'd be fun to see you do uh videos with it i should probably do you know do like the top 10 exercises that i do on the power play so people could watch them they come with a whole slew of exercises but i have my own that i think are better that i use for really i'm building on them and also we do like i just did yesterday i did push-ups on the power plate i did i did my leg raises for my stomach on the power plate so my body was vibrating it made it a lot harder it makes the exercise more difficult you know to doing on a vibrational platform and you just get better at better um you know get tired out faster and get better outcomes and they say you don't do more than twice a week have enough time to recover in between these strong efforts it's a lot of effort to work out on the power plate yeah that sounds like a lot of fun people are asking where your retreat is it's in san diego right yeah it's in northern san diego northern san diego county near the la luceri creek nakes of nature preserve we have a thousand acres of um of nature water and 100 miles of hiking trails with streams and lakes and little waterfalls it's just such a beautiful area part of san diego we can drive anywhere to the beach within 20 minutes but we're um but we're out in the middle of the country and almost like you're looking around and you hardly see any living creatures around you it's almost it's really in a beautiful um open area with great views dina wants to know if you miss new jersey uh not at all i'm like i'm living the i'm so happy to be living to here in san diego because it's just so beautiful here and the the um recreational opportunities i can go to the dog beach i could run on the beach and the sand dunes i can go climb in the mountains i could go surfing i could play tennis i could drive and go skiing i could go you can go to go to a river or go to a lake and go you know in other words there's so much opportunity to have to do things that are fun and always have nice weather you know and always have this temperate climate where it's always beautiful and sunny and to do things outdoors and swimming of course you know and so it's um anyway we have a big saltwater pool and we also have a sand volleyball court now we don't just play sand volleyball we use the sand to exercise on the sand to like move side to side motions and to have the have the bare feet in contact with the earth doing certain exorcisms in the sand so yeah i know what so it's a new um a new part of my life you know where i'm not writing books anymore and i'm you know caring for the people that are here and i have a little more free time because i'm not busy being an author in writing all the time so i can slow down my workload and have more time for recreational and fitness too what took you so long to get to california faith wants to know how you feel about green tea decaffeinated green tea and alcohol yes yes and no okay so the tea whether it's a green tea is good whether it's decaffeinated or not but alcohols no okay good alcohol is carcinogenic and a little bit of carcinogenic isn't so bad but it's still carcinogenic you know and it's it's still a dangerous substance the only thing that we have to talk about tea for a minute the green tea is good for you the green tea extracts are in the green tea or have anti-cancer effects but if you drink things that are so hot it has cancer promotion effects what i'm saying is let the tea cool down so it's warm if you're chronically burning your mouth with soups that are too hot or teas that are too hot which people do you're increasing your risk of tongue cancer and throat cancer from the chronic exposure to steaming hot substances so the tea is good for you but don't make the tea that hot let it cool off or put an ice cube in it so you're not burning yourself when you drink little tiny burns when you're drinking it right but are there some people that just for the caffeine it's it's really a no something with how they metabolize them there's some people that just really shouldn't have caffeine in any form yeah i'm sure that's true but you know but you but obviously green tea even the ones that have caffeinated have less much less caffeine than coffee and their one green tea a day is not is going to be as addictive and and the reason why i'm an anti-caffeine person don't allow people or don't want people drinking coffee and too much caffeine is because they feel withdrawal from their caffeine they don't sleep as deeply it enables them not to be in touch with the amount of sleep they need it acts as a stimulant but also they start to feel a little buzz when they're withdrawing from the caffeine which is relieved by eating food so they've lost their connectivity to feeling hunger and feeling so they think that the caffeine withdrawal because it's taken away by eating it makes them want to eat more and more frequently so i i'm really not a person a person that discourages the caffeine consumption but of course with green tea one green tea with some caffeine in a small amount a day usually is not harmful and of course we want their um we want to encourage people to continue their green tea why are you so adamant about people overeating even if it's healthy food of a low caloric density like like vegetables or salads you just why do you think it's just never good to overeat i mean if you're in a normal body weight right because people are chronically um how you could say they're they're not just addicted they've been chronically patterned to eat so many calories they don't need so the average person because of their upbringing because the way other americans eat are eating almost double the amount of calories they require through life i always say we live on half of what we eat and on the other half lives our physicians did you get that i get it okay so what i'm saying right now is most people are so used to eating so many needless calories they didn't need to have that when they go to a healthy diet they still try to connect and get it to their stuffed and and they eat too much food trying to duplicate the amount of calories they were eating on their unhealthy diet and they don't realize when you're eating this healthily need less calories you don't need that many calories unless you're getting too thin of course and to explain and also we know that when we sleep on an empty stomach and we're healing and detoxifying and repairing more in the non-digestive state and we eat it to dinner to our full once we eat too much food it takes longer to digest it and then you're digesting food half the night while you're sleeping in bed at night i don't mind if they overeat at lunch a little bit but i want them not to eat so they feel stuff because you're decreasing your digestive capacity and your digestive efficiency when you put so much food in your stomach at one time um so yeah i've seen people overeat on healthy food and it's not great for their health which which let's springs into this thing about metabolism let's because it talks about how much you eat about metabolism let's say for argument's sake for simplicity that my caloric needs for the day to maintain my lean body mass a good amount of calories for me is about 1500 calories a day just because it's a nice round number i don't know if it's 1400 or 600 let's just say 1500. if i consumed an extra piece of ezekiel bagel or something an extra 200 calories a day let's say over that 1500 now what would happen to those 200 calories every single day would i gain 20 pounds after a year because it is 3500 calories excess per pound so with 350 days in a year each hundred calories over basal metabolic rate would put on 10 pounds per year so i ate 200 calories extra a day after a year i'd be 10 pounds heavy if they're here to be 20 pounds heavier right no wrong you wouldn't be 20 pounds heavier because as you overshoot your basal metabolic needs your body compensates to try to utilize the extra calories and what it does to you without putting weight on you so it's your body speeds up its metabolic metabolism it raises its metabolic rate to burn the extra calories so after 200 calories extra for a year i'll only have gained 10 pounds not 20 pounds because my body will speed up its respiratory quotient the amount of calories burned through breathing it'll increase its thyroid function it'll raise its body temperature it'll set into motion of a series of biological events to try to get rid of some of those calories and in doing so the increased metabolism as a result of the extra calories is burning your stem cells and you shorten your telomeres and increasing the biological parameters of aging you're aging faster so you made a deal with the devil here i'm not going to gain as much weight from the excess calories i'm consuming but i'll take away some years of life at the end by you by aging myself faster to increase my metabolic burn and run my body temperature higher okay so now here i am at 1500 calories a day and instead i undershoot my calories by 100 calories or so each day and i go to bed if some nights i even feel as i'm going to bed as i finish dinner at five or six o'clock some nights at 10 o'clock as i turn the light off i feel oh i'm a little hungry right now but i don't go to i don't go up and eat i just go to bed i just take a little sip of water and go to bed the hunger is my when your hunger is mild it's not strong so i'm trying to err on the side of slightly under eating not slightly overeating i'm trying to win as a question of not having enough at dinner well stop eating that if you think you're not hungry anymore you know you can always eat breakfast the next day you're not going to starve the food's right there you'll eat an earlier breakfast then if you need to i think people are just sorry to be hungry they're afraid to be hungry they're afraid to now i undershot my calories and let's say under shot by 100 calories a day so that means after a year instead of 150 pounds i'm 140 pounds right the answer is no not right i'm not going to lose the 10 pounds because i'm already exercising a lot so my body gets the signal from exercise that it has that it desires to retain this muscle mass and this amount of strength so my body wants to have as much as getting signals from my use of my body that tells it to maintain this guy's degree of strength and muscle mass and resist losing weight because it utilizes those muscles regularly and my body then will slow down the metabolic rate in the attempt not to lose weight with fewer calories i always say moderate caloric restriction not excessive caloric restriction people can moderate can caloric restrict and become too thin and that's not healthy for you either you want to maintain good muscle mass and strength and size but i can moderately caloric restrict and still maintain that muscle weight in size the the less you eat the longer you're going to live assuming you're not too thin so what i'm saying right now is how much should you eat you should as little as you possibly can as long as you're not becoming too thin now getting back to me again who now i understand my calories by about 100 calories a day i'm still keeping my weight at 150 pounds though or 146 between 146 and 150 not dropping below 146 for the year but my body will get colder it'll slow down the metabolism it'll lower my thyroid function a touch it'll reduce my body temperature it'll slow my respiratory quotient my body will conserve those forces of life it'll keep that battery not being used my the battery in the flashlight is the flashlight's turned off my body's running cooler making the age slower so we have the we have the control of our metabolic rate you can't increase your metabolism and burn hotter without gaining weight you're burning gaining weight slower but you it's impossible to raise your metabolism to induce weight loss the metabolism is raised because of excess calories and you're still going to be gaining weight from the excess calories just not as fast as if your metabolism wasn't raised so eating excess food raises your burn your calorie burn and makes you gain weight slower but you're not going to lose weight the the most proven methodology to slow aging is to have adequate and micronutrient exposure with a full variety of nutrients humans need while at the same time making sure your body fat is low and you're not excessively consuming calories that's the whole picture there people are just doing part of the picture they don't like this part of the picture that means they shouldn't overeat and chronically use recreating food between meals and constantly eating all day long even if they're not overweight there are people that are not overweight that are still chronically overeating and they still could be at almost the same weight and still cut back their calories and run at that same weight and be a lot healthier if they eat less calories wow thank you dr fuhrman there's a question from nicole who's a health coach it's kind of long so i'm going to summarize it but what a lot of things we talk about is is how environment predicts your success that i always say if it's in your house it's in your mouth and her question is basically why do you think that so many people put up with unsupportive spouses and children because what i hear a lot is well i i want to eat this way but i can't because you know i have to cook you know this kind of food my husband and children won't eat this way so what i guess the question is is why doesn't the family support them but then even the bigger question is why does the wife put up with it um well i think that here's the thing if i was a person in a household where i was eating healthfully and learning all this information i'm excited about what i'm learning and i think that the food i'm eating is beautiful aesthetically beautiful it tastes good but i'm understanding the magical the magic of natural foods the magical substances it contains to do such good to the body now i'm not necessarily going to control another person but if we have a relationship of love and respect then those other individuals can respect me and share in my enthusiasm and even learn what i'm learning so they can support me in my endeavor that's the starting point of is getting so when you go from a house where one person learns about this information and gets excited about it the only opportunity this person has to do to change the people around them is not to go home and say you know eat this way i'm gonna divorce you or you know or start fights about this and try to push it on people the place to start is two is three two or three things number one is i'd really love you to understand me and care for me and support me in what i decide is best for me if i if i wanted to go to medical school this person to become a lawyer or be whatever they pursue some some career or hobby they get support from their family or be an artist they'd get support from their family encouragement because they want that person to be happy and feel fulfilled in life and this is something where we need the support of the people that live with us to make us feel respected known and and considered and to share in what we're learning and be feel and we want our people that love us to feel proud of us for what we're doing whether they can do it or not that's the first step then the next step is people recognizing that this is not may not be an all or nothing thing but the person in the family but we're this person preparing healthy food for themselves a lot of them taste good we're certainly going to these people going to improve what they're eating it may take them some time to achieve that but then there's the feeling of love from this person who's who's who wants to change and that feeling of love is that to the person who's not changing was well how would you feel if you loved a person you loved a person as much as i love you i love you so much and what i've learned is so beneficial to people that i want you to learn this and try to at least move towards it because it would be so much better for your life your happiness your brain function your health we can live in the future and have a happier life together be more physically active so you know i've dealt with this for the last 20 years when people have come to our getaways and when and one of the spouses is into it and the other spouse is not at the end of the week when they've heard all the lectures and tasted all the food and the majority of those people changed over and really are doing it with their other spouse so a lot of it just has to do with with the relationship has to be built with a lot of care on both sides and strengthened use this to strengthen your relationship to strengthen your love and care for each other and making healthy foods in the family we want our children to eat healthy because we want them to be healthy adults right this shouldn't be a source of contention because there's too much knowledge science experience and even knowledge and experience in making food healthy food tastes great most people just eat the simplest diet that has no flavor and no you know i'm teaching people obviously to feel that's not what they're giving up it's what they're gaining and what they're gaining is more enjoyment of what they're eating a complete you know more pleasure both with taste pleasure but also the intellectual and emotional pleasure of feeling you're doing the right thing for yourself and that has tremendous ability to make you enjoy eating more so i think with the right ability to teach and share with your family you should be able to slowly get the support more and more of the people around you if it's done with kindness and love and with your how should i say walking the walk not just talking the talk if you are just talking and you're not doing it yourself and you can't expect the other person to change you've got to be a perfect role model and achieve and feel better and be better and look better and be healthier for it then other people are going to you kind of emulate you and learn and want to learn from you so i think i'm i'm not just blaming the person who isn't changing i'm doing some blame here on perhaps the person that is doing the changing maybe they're not doing this properly in the way they're sharing demonstrating and loving the people they're living with but sometimes it's still really hard for them especially if they're food addicts to be living their in the house with everybody else eating crap when they're trying to eat healthy they they have to do they have to go one and one thing at a time and do all these things we talked about as well as in the process having their own refrigerator their own storage unit maybe their refrigerator is the garage refrigerator the one in the kitchen is not the one they touch there's all that we've got to um structure it and we want the ability the support of their people their loved ones to help them stay on track even if they're not doing it their loved ones when i you know where for example we want a person not to smoke cigarettes we don't want them to go home and have people smoking cigarettes around them but if they have a smoker in the house that smoker can't smoke in the house he has to smoke out of the house if this person wants to eat bacon cheeseburgers that has to be out of the house and not in the front of the face of the person who has that you know bad fat you know bad relationship with food but yes all these things can be cultivated and proved and moved in the right direction it's never the case almost never the case that it's hopeless it's just they need the right coaching and right advice yeah i agree thank you so much well i saved this for the end because it's controversial but as you know just like with all of our guests especially when they're doctors people want to know how you feel about the covet vaccine and if you personally are going to take it well keep in mind that i just want to say that i'm a i spend untold amount of hours researching the scientific literature on nutrition and health and longevity and i even have scientists that work for me dr ferrari phd as you know on my staff who who um who's always researching and reviewing articles so so we are stay up to date on nutritional research i'm not an immunologist i don't stay i'm saying that because i don't stay up to date and knowledgeable about all things regard to vaccines it's not my field of specialty and and the toxicity of vaccines and the possible side effects of vaccines and whether they work or not and whether this vaccine is going to do some more variants and make it worse for people in the future it's going to so these are unknown um i should say unknown guesses people have some people saying well these vaccines are going to in the throes of the pandemic are going to make for more variant changes in the virus and make more people die and have third and fourth and fifth waves that are even worse and some people are saying well the the rna vaccines are going to be bad for people's health long term so the answer the question is i don't know i really can't answer that question um my gut feeling not based on science just based on feeling is that i that they made most likely the case that the variance is going to continue in a year or two from now people are going to need more vaccines and so i'd rather take less vaccines right now and maybe if i was going to take a vaccine take the j and j vaccine it's just one vaccine rather than take two rna which is a newer technology vaccine because it may be the case that you know a year from now or two years from now you need an extra vaccine if there's new if a new variant of kovid starts to kill so many people again so the answer to the question is that i'm not professing to be an expert in this field um and i have and i probably when the when the vaccines become available for healthy people um right now i think it's 65 and older um i am 67 of course um i probably could get the vaccine shortly it's just been made available in california for people 65 and older and i probably will get the j j vaccine just because i want to just because i'm thinking that i'm not worried about cohen myself i've never been even missed a day at work in 50 years you know i mean i don't i don't even get sick from anything but um but not to put uh i just want to have give people more confidence around me and people that i care for that i'm not going to be putting them at risk so i think i probably will get um i haven't got get the i'm thinking the j and j vaccine it's more standard technology it's one shot you know and also it doesn't require so much care in in freezing it or um so if something does something wrong in the preparation or storage of it it's not like it to go bad or something they're probably going to get probably would get that shot but but certainly i'm respecting people with different opinions and different because nobody knows and it's a lot of there's a lot of unknown here sorry about the people working in there that's okay well i'm going to let you go because i know you have to be somewhere but just one last question you i know you're going to live a long time with your healthy lifestyle but what do you most want to be remembered for well you know it's it's what i enjoy doing the most and that is um i've impacted so many individuals and given them a better life and they know i've cared for them with a lot of kindness and love and knowledge and i've gotten a lot of people to transform their health and i have so i have so many thousands of people that appreciate my work and what i've done for them over the years and i mean if i um and i don't need to accomplish anything more in my life you know i still want to i still get pleasure from doing what i do um but i'm not um under some pressure to um do anything i feel satisfied with the amount of people i've touched and what i've accomplished in life and i think that i'm proud i'm proud of that and i think that people who have changed their diet and gotten and learned about health and nutrition they've also gotten themselves in better health like you who then reach out and help other people they get that same feeling of superpowers of doing good for humanity and being kind to people so i think it's the it's the people i've touched and known that they know i care about them and do everything in my power to help them get better thank you because it's incredible how many people even yesterday on the show that i interviewed that their point of entry was either one of your pbs specials or your bookie to live well thank you and my and to put a plug for my latest book i'm obviously eat for life because i want people to have the more modern updated research and because they still think of me as meeting each to live which is great which is they should read it but of course it's better when people read more things that are updated more updated research and more scientific support as the research has accumulated over the last decade making this way of eating overwhelmingly supported by the scientific literature well thank you so much for the work you do and we'll see if we can keep you in the number one spot and you can come back anytime sounds great thanks everybody nice to meet you take care and thanks all of you for watching another episode of chef aj live please come back tomorrow and my guests are dr doug lyle and dr alan goldhamer bye

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 55,393

Keywords: chef aj, chef aj live, chef aj recipe, weight loss, author, podcast, nutrition, recipe, weight loss recipe, plant based, plant based diet, cooking, 2021, metabolism, body fat, aging, oils, vegan, vegan lifestyle, diet, healthy, health, food addiction

Id: psbPaVLHvDY

Length: 60min 2sec (3602 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021