Why People Are Overweight & Struggle With Food Cravings with 99 Year-Old Dr.John Scharffenberg, M.D.

that's okay as long as you can see your screen we're good you can see your screen so hey everyone 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 well my guest today back by popular demand is Dr John scharfenberg he has been a professor of nutrition at Loma Linda University for over 63 years and he is almost 100 years old in fact he's been on the show twice and he has more views than anyone else on the show probably combined over a half a million if you missed those episodes I'll link to them below today he's going to be doing a talk on Diet alcohol and Hardline drugs please welcome him to the show it's very nice to see you again you actually dressed up for me well I have a tie on you me most people don't wear a tie on the show so that's you wear a tie every day though even even when you're not working right yeah wow that's something so well welcome back you've become quite an internet celebrity other channels have heard about you maybe through my channel and on dog bachelor's channel from uh amazing facts you've got close to a million views and yeah you're just taking off you're taking the Internet by storm Dr sharpenberg do you ever think you'd be such a sensational YouTuber in your late 90s I think I'm getting better each time well you definitely deserve it I think if you have the time you should maybe start your own channel you have so much wisdom to say so today's topic why are you interested in this topic well because it has so much to do with something that happened way back which predicted what's going to happen now which is the doctor register UD register was a biochemist he came to Loma Linda University about a year before I came there and when he was this in Wisconsin and he was working in the laboratory on the Army rations K rations and he found there was something deficient in it it happened to be vitamin B12 above a man of the same year found it too and he got the credit for it but registers had a very interesting thing about this B12 business uh he really discovered in 1948 that's the last vitamin we've discovered but now he did some studies which I want to tell you about what he did at Loma Linda we have some slides here on it I gotta see show you why animals sometimes become alcoholics and why they sometimes produce morphine in their body so let's have that first light absolutely let me just bring up the PowerPoint and you see just while I'm pulling it up you have seen obesity increase in the last 100 years haven't you yeah right now particularly it's going up with the children yeah so let's get this there we go there he is that alcohol and Hardline drugs now he was reading a book by a well-known lady author who wrote more than anybody else in the United States Ellen White and here's what she said in that book it's a Ministry of healing reference next slide many who would not be guilty of placing on their table wine or liquor of any kind well let's load their table with food which creates such a thirst for strong drink that to resist the temptation is almost impossible wrong habits of eating and drinking destroy the health and prepare the way for drunkenness now that was kind of interesting to me Dr Register scientifically he said is there any evidence for that so he said let's do an experiment and see let's try this out with the rats let's take some rats and give them a good diet and then a junk food diet and see if it makes any difference regarding the running alcohol or that sort of thing so the next slide now shows you the junk diet that he called the poor teenager's diet uh he said let's put some donuts and coffee for breakfast at 10 o'clock some sweet rolls and coffee and lunch hot dogs with the mustard and pickle relies soft drink apple pie and coffee then at 3 P.M snacks sweet rolls and coffee and then for dinner in the evening spaghetti and meatballs French bread green beans tossed salad chocolate cake and more coffee then the evening snack three filled cookies the candy bar and coffee so he took these Foods Blended them up in liquid then dried it out that's the junk food diet he was going to feed these rats all right now the next slide will show you the height of the line represents how much alcohol breath strength now rats don't usually drink alcohol they know not to drink alcohol humans haven't learned that yet but rats know not to drink alcohol but when they put them on a good diet it was a milk and vegetable diet considered good by the scientists uh they didn't drink any alcohol now the next slide shows you what happened when they were fed this junk food diet they started right off drinking a little alcohol and it was a 12-week study ever but at the seventh week they took off and became real alcoholic rats okay now the next slide they then they what they did was take these alcoholic rats and gave them more coffee and more irritating spices like pepper and stuff like that and they became alcoholics quick right off the bat and then they put them back on a good diet again and they stopped drinking out alcohol just drank water so that was very interesting okay the next slide now to make sure that we knew what was happening here we we pair these rats off and and check the progeny the progeny of the formerly alcoholic rats tend to like alcohol so there's something affecting them which is exciting next life now we figured out what's happening biochemically there's eight or nine essential amino acids phenylalanine is one of those we have about six percent of that in in the amino acids in our diet phenylalanine now that's converted to tyrosy another amino acid and that goes to make dopamine dopamine is something produced in the brain okay and then that goes to make that's your hydroperoline which is something we find in the poppy plant that's an intermediate in the synthesis of opium and Dr Register tagged this with carbon 14. fifty percent of the carbon 14 was found in the urine as morphine codeine or its precursors non-morphine and nor codeine so it was producing morphine now the next slide so here it says phenology makes a five percent I said it was six I know it's five or six percent of the proteins the foods we consume okay now the next slide so I'll need it gets converted to Cyrus and tyrosine and that goes to make dopamine okay the next one now the dopamine doesn't have to go down to make morphine it can bake uh three four dioxide hydroxyphenyl acetaldehyde but that's toxic so the body quickly converts it to the acid form which is enough toxic okay but if you drink alcohol it blocks that from happening and then it goes down towards the morphine making the morphine all right now another slide to show you this what's happening dopamine can help to produce three or four dihydroxyphenyl acetyl aldehyde this is a toxic substance and the body quickly converts it to the acid form all right next slide see what else could happen but animals that drink alcohol block this reaction from happening okay the next one now it doesn't have to go to make that acid it can make the basic building block of the body biochemically which is this acetyl coenzyme a but it takes a lot of nutrients to do it and on the junk food diet that just wasn't good enough nutrition to do it and so it goes down to make more morphine all right next slide hmm and so they tag that carbon 14 tetrahydroporphyroline to see what would happen next slide and acetylcholenzyme is okay but it takes a lot of nutrition to go and make that that's a basic building block of the body biochemically all right next let's go on to the next one and the next one so when the diet was of junk food diet was given those rats they formed this uh morphine codeine normal morphine and nor codeine so a junk food died if they didn't have a junk food diet they could have gone to make acetyl coenzyme a rather than the morphine all right next now Wendy's alcoholic rats are injected with morphine they no longer drink alcohol they want just plain water but the reason they were drinking the alcohol was when they made morphine in their body they became dope addicts and if they drank more alcohol they would produce more opium so we found out our line of reasoning was correct they became dope addicts and that's why they drank more alcohol so we think this is probably applying to human beings too but this was just on animals next slide so for the first time scientists have found a relationship between a poor diet alcohol and Hardline drugs like morphine in animal studies this has been demonstrated we haven't done it yet with humans but appears likely that this is also happening in a similar manner with humans okay now that was years ago one was late 60s 1968 69 it wasn't published until about 1917 1972. okay next slide now that was what happened years ago what's happened now it has been shown after reviewing a hundred articles that humans produce opiates as a derivative of the digestion of excess sugars and fats we need to figure out exactly what's happening there is good evidence that some obese binge eaters experience physical craving due to their bodies producing this opium and so that's a physiological reason that the body craze uh the sweet things that they're eating and is a problem they're getting fat so that's one reason for obesity is the body is producing opium in the Bible okay the next slide now there are antagonists to the opium there are medicines on the market now and I giving you the names of three of them here these medicines will keep you from making of the opium they're antagonistic to the opium and if you get these medicines if all these people get these medicines some of them it will knock all their desire to eat all those sweet things they've been eating it's kind of exciting so there's a group of people that are addicted to Morphine that's making them get fat because it makes them addicted to certain foods next slide um so here's what Dr reddish's animal study showed it showed a junk food diet increased the consumption of alcohol and opiate production he showed coffee increase the production of opiates in the body toffee increased the rat's alcohol consumption spicy foods increase alcohol consumption and opiate production production sweets increased most of the substances also so that's what we found out from the animal study in the late 1960s now more recently what's happening next slide coffee increases dopamine production we found out increases at 250 percent the dopamine is produced in the brain rats in acute opiate withdrawal have increased craving for sweets and that's what's happening with obese people oftentimes sweets have analgesic effect because of the increased production of opiates now with this opiate antagonist weight gain decreases as the desire of the sweet food is decreased so that's kind of exciting we found out how from the animal studies how a human being if he eats this junk food diet he will produce opium makes him want to drink alcohol so more opium can be produced is an opiate addict if you give them an opiate blocker they no longer eat those bags all those bad things so we need now to find out how to control weight in these kind of people there are some obese people who are obese because they're physiologically addicted is there any more slides or is this it that is it that's it okay now let me tell you uh currently about some of this there are different new drugs now to help these people uh we know there's several organs involved one is the hypothalamus and we know that the uh pancreas is important and we know that the production of opium is important so there's different reasons for people to be for people to be obese and we need to find out with different kinds of people what is the reason uh now these new drugs are expensive they figure it'll cost fifteen hundred dollars a year to use these new drugs uh but there are drugs that are really working on the pancreas to make the pancreas produce more uh insulin to control the blood sugar properly okay so they it's feeding the the cost of it is expensive and the insurance company doesn't pay for it so these are some of our problems with the new drugs that they're experimenting with now a little bit more on on some of these drugs we know that many people are controlled more by the clock externals than by internals uh obese people are controlled more by the clock so if you put people who are obese and normal weight people in a room where the clocks are going one hour too fast or one hour too slow the obese people when it says it's 12 o'clock and they're used to eating lunch at 12. they're hungry they say they gotta eat a normal weight person doesn't do that he's controlled by what his stomach feels like so the overweight person though is controlled by external so we have to use behavioral change techniques to help these people to control their appetite for example if a man walks to work that's the donut shop the donut calls out at him says hey you always come here and get your coroner it's ready come on in and get it and you go in and get the donut so you have to plan a different way of walking to work so you don't go by the donut shop or don't have any change in your pocket to put put in the slot machine to get anything uh those are behavioral change techniques we make about 400 decisions on what we eat every day and we know it without even thinking and so overweight people get caught up in this a man goes to work he comes home he sits in a nice soft sofa in front of the TV right next to the kitchen by the way and he used to be eating peanuts there and so what does he do the peanuts in the kitchen and call out hey your peanuts are ready so he gets up from this so so far goes into the kitchen gets his penis and starts munching in the peanuts now that kind of a person he has to change words sitting at the table change the room around so he knows things are different it's going to be different now and he doesn't let those things affect him uh but there are a lot of those things that are that he has to do differently to to change his habits but there's this group that's making opium we need to find out how they're making it why they're making it and how to change that so they don't get overweight you can use these uh opium antagonists to start with but all these kinds of things are expensive and the insurance company doesn't pay for it so we need more research right now on how these things affecting the body but it looks like junk food diet is bad it's bad bad for the rats it's red we're human it looks like coffee is not good it looks like other caffeinated products are not good helps to produce this kind of thing so we have different kinds of obesity we're beginning to divide them up for example if something is affecting the hypothalamus that's where the dopamine is made coffee increases the dopamine production makes you want to make or more of that opium so we have to know if that is their cause of obesity notice the Cushing's disease that means the hypothyroidism that is affecting obesity also and we need to uh did those people the right thyroid so the thyroid is working properly and then there's this these medicines now used to produce insulin at the right time works on the pancreat now I hate to use those kind of medicine I can see to make dietary changes would be good if that will work but to take all these pills or they're so expensive and there should always really side effects and you can't get insurance paperwork and usually the malpractice insurance is higher for the doctors who are giving you medicines treating you for obesity now are there any questions anyway has about this well I actually I'm going to look in the chat in a minute to sharpenberg but I and I actually have a few questions based on some of the things you said if I understand you correctly at least with the rats they didn't struggle until it was the ones they were on they were addicted to these substances on purpose they weren't like seeking them out in nature there there is no alcohol or drugs for rats in nature or chocolate that's right and so they didn't have this predilection in to begin with it was given to them and then there then it was their offspring who suffered that's correct so could we maybe make a case that that could be what's going on with people that people that are addicted to junk food and processed food and eat that primarily as their sole source of calories then produce offstream Offspring with the same predilections I I think that's right I think that's right yeah because because remember this these these Foods didn't always exist throughout human history no no that's right uh but there is a lot of junk food around now a lot a lot of junk food well when you gave that list of what they gave the rats looks like what people I know eat that's right A lot of people were eating too much junk see and and what they're saying is excess sugar sweets and it's excess uh irritating spices pepper uh that is causing this problem uh coffee did it and so on so I think if we work on this a little more we'll find out more foods that are causing the problem and then maybe we can figure out how the right kind of a program would be good for a certain group of obese people they're not obese for the same reason but if they weren't eating these Foods I mean people are going to vary genetically in in their weight there's there's going to be Slimmer people there's going to be heavier people I understand that but if people weren't eating these Foods would anyone really just become obese eating the kind of diet that the Adventist recommender at True North a diet that is Whole Food plant exclusive without you know sugars and oils and salt and things like that and without alcohol I mean could someone become obese if they were eating the diet that Dr goldhammer served them at True North yeah well you know I was down in Miami Miami is the opium capital of the United States they are selling the drugs right out on the street so there's a lot of rehabilitation centers for those kind of people I went into the rehabilitation of centers to see what they're feeding them they were giving them lots of coffee well according to the right studies and even human studies now we know that increases the production of the dopamine which is on the pathway to developing the opiates so I said this shouldn't be done you should change in your rehabilitation program you should get rid of the coffee I think the coffee and the sweets we know for sure irritating spices we know cause the problem pepper uh there are spices that are helpful and we need to find out which ones are good and which ones are bad and I think we can do that uh you know um I for the past five years I've hosted an annual Summit called the truth about weight loss and a wonderful plant-based physician named Dr Linda Carney actually gave a talk about 17 reasons caffeine makes you gain weight and I appreciate you saying that because so many doctors including plant-based doctors think of coffee as benign many of them don't don't like it like Dr goldhammer but the people I know that drink coffee they always seem to be craving sweets later in the day even if they have a donut with their coffee in the morning they're always looking later in the day and it's such an addictive substance it's very hard for people to quit once they start and the sweets by the way seem to be algesic sees the help to pain control you know analgesic and so we need to do a lot of research right now because we have all these different causes of the Obesity different kinds of reasons why people will be some just overeating some uh need the behavioral change technique some it's they're producing opium because they're too much sugar too much coffee too many things like that in their body so there's different reasons Cushing disease lack of uh thyroid hypothyroid problem uh and these medicines now that that are working on the pancreas I'm a little scared of those because most all these medicines have side effects and if you artificially try to get that pancreas to squirt out more insulin to help all these problems I think you're going to get into problems how have you seen the food changed since let's see if you're you're going to be 100 this year which means you were born in 1923. yeah I should be able to do easy math like that but how have you seen the food system change in the food supply change like what kind of things did you eat growing up for example well you know I grew up in the mission field out in China and you didn't have a drugstore on every corner or a little grocery store or a place to get a bottle of alcohol on every corner now now people have access to alcohol everywhere people have access to all these sweets candy bars everywhere so I think that's one of our problems access people have access to this so much easier than when I was growing up you didn't have access to those things did they even exist as you were growing up though well you had candy bars for example but we were brought up taught not to eat all those candy bars so so we didn't have them uh but we didn't have access to it like people do today yeah do you think the processed food industry knew they were creating a an addictive product on purpose no I don't think they were doing it on purpose I think they were doing it because of salt they got money it was sweet people liked it and they got money from it so they pushed it so they just they just got lucky that these Foods happen to be addictive for a a large segment of the population yes so they're they're really getting to be dope addicts a bunch of them that nobody thought this would happen I don't know if you're familiar with Dr Kathleen De Maison she wrote a book called potatoes and not Prozac which she used to work with groups with alcoholics and she noticed it when they were coming off alcohol all they did was eat sugar yes yes so so there's a problem here with all the sugar stuff now uh I I've been pushing this idea the right kind of diet and avoiding seven risk factors to decrease your heart attack and stroke with 80 your diabetes risk 88 now we've done very well in this country in dropping our uh incidents of heart disease and strokes primarily because of stopping smoking we've knocked our smoking down great only 11 percent of the adults adults are still smoking and in California we're a few more smart people live that's only nine percent so that's pretty good uh but there are some things that are continuing that so the rate is not dropping in heart diseases stroke as well as it should for example just in the last couple years the diabetes risk has increased about 75 percent we're getting more diabetics and I don't know if you realize it but women that are put on these statin drugs to lower their blood cholesterol have 71 percent increase in their chance of getting diabetes so that's not good oh and I don't think all these women should be on these drugs we've done studies just on women two out of three studies showed the people who took those drugs to lower the blood cholesterol died sooner than the people who didn't take them so there's some problems with those drugs I don't think women should be on those statin drugs okay and of the other people that found that actually for 93 percent of the people on those drugs to lower their cholesterol it didn't do any good whatsoever in longevity seven percent it did but for 93 it didn't we don't know who has atherosclerosis who doesn't we've been going by cholesterol level but now we've found out that we're just avoiding seven lifestyle factors we can knock our cardiovascular disease heart attack and stroke 80 diabetes 88 percent so we should treat people that way prevent the disease that way rather than giving in them pills which doesn't help a lot of people uh now the three things that have not gone down that are keeping the cardiovascular disease rate still up is diabetes hypertension and overweight okay now the diabetes we know what to do to knock that if a person is vegetarian why do I say vegetarian because the people who are not vegetarians have 3.6 times greater risk of diabetes being on their death certificate okay so non-vegetarians are much more apps to get diabetes uh overweight hypertension all these are interrelated uh usually the diabetic is diagnosed with hypertension about seven years before he's diagnosed with having diabetes and most of them are overweight so these are the kind of problems we have with diabetes so we know if the diabetic exercise every day keeps his weight down as a vegetarian he's has very little chance of getting diabetes the first place now hypertension hypertension is a problem overweight increases that diabetes increases the risk so all these are interrelated exercise is the best prevented for hypertension so what are we going to do about it we got to get people exercising but our problem is when a doctor tells somebody to exercise how many of them will do it hardly anyway not very many it seems like that's even harder sometimes than they get to people to eat healthfully that's right that's right it's very difficult get people to exercise or even the health only it's hard to get people to do what we know they should do there are many people know what they should do and they don't do it so our next breakthrough in healthcare is going to be and getting people to do what we know they should do and they know they should do it so now the weight thing is another big thing it particularly in children that the weight increase has been going up with children we were the fattest country in the world until just recently Mexico beat us they're a little bit helpless but about 40 percent of our people are overweight if you are overweight you have eight times greater risk of getting diabetes if you are obese you have 20 times greater risk of getting diabetes so these are things we got to do something about now for blood pressure they all have revolve around vegetarian diet too all real revolve around that vegetarian let's like be to have diabetes on their death certificate hypertension is best prevented by exercise overweight exercises important in keeping their weight down so all these things are interrelated and vegetarians related to all three but my main goal is to try to get more people to be vegetarians uh only about six to fifteen percent of Americans are on the vegetarian diet how do we persuade them to do more in that regard I think we've got to give them the reasons why now in 19 in 2015 there was a group of doctors that examine the American diet and made recommendations to the Department of Health and Department of Agriculture they said the vegetarian diet is an Optimum diet but when it got to the top of each department top man they eliminate all meat from their recommendation even lean me but running after the top people in the department they included lean meat in the in the idea of diet which the doctors didn't recommend at all so doctors know the top doctors know the vegetarian diet is a good diet and I think we should get kids to present this you know if an adult says something you tend to argue with him but kids say it you won't want to help the kids you don't argue with them very much but a lot of kids I I think we can make them good health Educators we can make them the ones to go out and tell people just five reasons why you shouldn't smoke you don't have to have an MD or PhD to do it just go out there and tell people these are the five reasons why you shouldn't smoke we can take nutrition and divide it up in different ways like this too now this idea of eating but two meals a day skipping the evening meal it helps sleep apnea it helps weight control it helps the metabolic cycle so that blood sugar doesn't jump up and down so much it's very useful it's begin to be taught in the United States there was some dietitian down in Alabama who suggested this and uh Evans have taught that for years and years too that it's a good idea to be on two meals today and for one time one a period of time almost all advents were on two meals a day but now most of them have slipped back on it a few now are coming back to the idea of two meals a day the New Start program at Weimar for example they are now putting that into their program put people on two meals a day uh help them in having a best possible diet but not many places are they doing that does it have to be breakfast and lunch or can it still be effective if it's lunch and a light early dinner because it's very different for people with families and work to to you know to to share meals the last meal is in the afternoon well they haven't done enough studies on this to really know that but we we think it's earlier or better and this lady says you shouldn't eat anything after 2 p.m That's The dietitian foreign you know you mentioned a vegetarian diet but a vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean a healthy diet because you can still have all kinds of vegetarian or vegan junk food that's right and I I well it's likely that many of these people when they become vegetarian they go to sweets and that's wrong yeah you know you mentioned two drugs naloxone and Naltrexone and I remember hearing about a study and I believe it was with naloxone those are drugs that are often administered in the emergency room right if somebody were to have like say what could be a fatal heroin overdose is that correct that's right that's exactly right because I think it blocks the blood-brain barrier it makes the drugs ineffective so I remember and I wish I could find the study and if anybody knows where I can in the medical literature please let me know help at Chef aj.com because I'd love to read it but the way I remember hearing about it is they gave a group of self-professed chocoholics naloxone and then they unleash them on a buffet of chocolate and they went up to whatever their favorite thing was and took a bite and they no longer had any interest in it that's right they've done studies like that yes I I have the name of one of those studies let's see I would love to read it because I mean because then but that's not the answer right we can't all just take naloxone or Naltrexone just so that we can avoid these hyper palatable Foods or can we yes I mean are drugs the answer I guess what I'm saying here here's the study uh fell off by the name of junoski d-r-e-w-n-o-s-k-i he does a lavatory experiment in which two groups of students were invited to an event which Andy cookies and other sweets whose high sugar and fat were readily available after determining the average eating patterns and quantities for a group of students the same food was placed out again but this time the one group was given this naloxone the opium antagonists this group almost completely lost interest in the food the control group not given the opiate blocker continued to eat sugar flour and fat foods just as before so we have a whole system explaining food addiction or alterations in the biochemistry of the brain's pleasure Center most specifically in the dopamine receptor areas of the brain so they've done studies like that right but but but are what I'm saying are doctors putting patients that maybe struggle with weight or food addiction on these drugs long term I mean what are the long-term consequences of naloxone and Naltrexone yeah see that's what we don't know and that's dangerous so so uh but anyway it shows there is a group that's making opium in their body and we need to find out how to decrease that production of opium how do we determine who this population is is it everyone that struggles with excess weight are there people maybe that no I don't need only some of them see and and I think to do this now Optimum tests you could determine who is having that problem who isn't well it sounds like quite quite an ordeal in that there's lots of research ahead of us yes there is what do you think of that new weight loss drugozymec that so many people are rushing to take it's I'm told it's very very expensive yeah those kind of things are the ones that are they work on some on the hypothalamus they make you lose your or have satiety because they delay the emptying of the stomach but they work on the pancreas also producing more uh insulin you see overweight people are like diabetics in many respect that that's drug you mentioned is used for diabetes but it's used for overweight because there are insulin resistant and so if you can get more insulin produced that could be utilizable then that would be helpful and that's what that does but the insurance company doesn't pay for it because cost you maybe fifteen hundred dollars a year to get those medications so it's a problem it helps to determine I think it's good for a test to try to figure out who is what kind of a obese problem what their problem is to use some of these things but not to use it regular well here's an interesting question from a live viewer named Ronnie saying well could we just ask our regular doctor for these drugs even in the short term to just get off dopamine I don't think he or she means getting off dopamine but just maybe to decrease the cravings for the foods the food the the food the price of these drugs is so expensive that now it's only the wealthy people that are on it it's only the wealthy who can afford fifteen hundred dollars a year for this kind of stuff so it's only the wealthy right now that are doing it yeah how do you feel about gastric bypass surgery as a as a cure well you know even after the bypass surgery eventually you have to learn how to eat eventually so it's just it doesn't really take care of the problem because you have to learn how to eat later on just temporarily this has helped you to lose weight right now did you ever struggle with weight or has anyone in your family ever struggled with it and my mother was a little overweight sometimes not much uh but we didn't have it in our family right now my wife's Brothers all were overweight and they all had diabetes except the one boy that was not overweight and my wife when she was young she was a little pumpful one time in grade school she heard her teacher remark that she's going to end up and so she made up her mind she would never get to that situation and she kept herself thin from that on uh so she never got that way but her brothers all of them had prostate cancer except the one that kept his weight down uh they're all overweight they all had diabetes I diagnosed one as diabetes that he didn't know he was uh so they were all diabetics all had prices cancer uh because of weight but my wife determined not to get her weight so she didn't have the wrong nice speaking of eating one of the live viewers is asking what do you yourself eat and is there are certain foods that you've eaten a lot of over the last 99 and a half years well let me tell you what really has helped me a lot I've been on the two meal a day plan I only twice a day I early in the morning then at noon or one o'clock uh so that's helped me keep my weight down and I believe that in my weight control programs that I did I did three other principles first I'd say first don't eat between meals two-thirds of women who are overweight if they stopped eating between meals they wouldn't be overweight so a lot of them just have to do that one thing uh but if they have a hard time with their weight getting it down doing going on two meals a day program usually works all the people have a hard time usually that works so I had only four principles when I started out number one is don't eat between those no snacks number two cut down on foods that empty calories no vitamins or minerals hardly added sugar and that kind of stuff and number three principle was cut down on saturated fat and the fourth principle was none of those were fourth principle was going two meals a day that was the program I I usually put people on and if they were having trouble getting their weight down the two meal a day program seemed to work yeah many of us here watching like myself my friend Karen we do two meals a day but we do lunch at noon and dinner and dinner at five yeah we do know that people who work at night die sooner you know so they'll show something that's not good about that uh so we haven't had enough studies of that type to show if there's a difference or when the two meals are but I would imagine if what you say is true about what we call intermittent fasting limiting the feeding window you that you could maybe argue that eating two meals at lunch and dinner is still better than eating free yeah yeah you could but I'd like to see studies done on it yeah I just feel like it's going to be unrealistic for most people whereas it's pretty easy to skip breakfast you go exercise you take a walk and noon is there before you know it but yeah and I don't know how you get through those it's not that I'm even hungry at night it's just that you know I want to be with my family and they're all there's no way to do that except it I I know a lot of it's a matter of habit whichever way it goes it's a matter of fabric yeah well you know my my personal physician who's also an Adventist you know her I mean she's just a big fan of no dinner you know I just always saying you gotta try it and I'm like well it's not that great to me so are there certain foods that have been a Hallmark of your existence that you've always included like greens or beans or rice or potatoes or sweet potatoes fruit well I'll tell you we never ate fresh Greens in China because they use human manure to put on their greens to grow their greens and you got amoeba that way and you die from the amoeba so we never did that if we ate any ingredient it had to be cooked in China and but I came to the United States and I saw all these people eating salads and I discovered that those who did eat the salads had a lot lower death rate than those who didn't so daily salads are good so I started eating more salads more greens it's it's good uh but the things that I ate a lot in the in China growing up is rice I was great I rice eater and I argue with myself do I like potatoes better or rice better for a long time you said it's rice but I'm back to potatoes thingy as potatoes but potato has a problem has a high glycemic index right but you're not generally eating a potato by itself you're eating it as part of a meal so wouldn't it the glycemic load change because I don't just eat a potato I eat it with many other things like you know vegetables or beans or something like that potato has a glycemic index by itself white potato of about like ice cream um and and but it changes numbers by what else is in the meal it changes numbers by how the potato is prepared all that makes a difference now for example we should have uh twice as much potassium in our diet as sodium and we got to turn it around we got twice as much sodium potassium what most people eat potatoes that are peeled and you're knocking off all the potassium which is what we really need there are some restaurants where you can go go and get a whole dish of potato peelings I don't know if you've seen that they just give you potato feelings have you seen that investors no no but there are places that do that wow eat a plateful potato peelings oh just the peel with that and they probably deep fry them with oil and use a lot of salt I know I know but anyway if you're peel the potatoes you're losing a lot of the potassium so we change our whole sodium potassium ratio when we do that uh so and if you get fiber if you get fiber you don't get hypertension for example if you eat 12 grams of fiber a day compared to somebody who's eating uh 24 grams a day you have a 57 percent higher risk of uh getting hypertension uh so fiber is important linoleic acid is important eating the foods that have linoleic acid most plant foods have it that have fat in it it's limitic acid that house to keep rats from Ever Getting hypertension uh potassium helps you you can feed rats so much potassium that no amount of salt will do them any harm but uh they got to have lots of potassium now it's crazy on the rat studies rat normally doesn't eat what the experimental person doing rat studies uses for rats they're giving them seven to ten times more salt in their diet that they would eat normally if they had to pick their own diet so what do their results mean I don't think they mean anything yeah well just to just to preface this that I'm an ethical vegan first and foremost I've been vegan for 46 years so I'm really against animal studies across the board however when it's already been done I am willing to let people discuss the results because I feel they're helpful to people but I'm curious when they try to addict the rats to drugs or alcohol is that all that's being offered or is there natural healthy food that's consistent with their species Natural History being offered do you know what I'm saying because if if we were dropped on a desert island and all they gave us was chicken nuggets we would eat it to survive but with the rats are they also offering healthy food and they're choosing the unhealthy food over the healthy food do you see do you understand the difference in what I'm saying well see they have a standard high salt diet for all rat Studios which is not right because they're giving them seven times more salt than they ordinarily would pick if they were choosing their own diet so now you should know that the Cancer Society doesn't use any Rat study or any of their decisions has to be human studies so they don't go by rat studies no animal study yeah I have to do more there's too many steps between animal and human so they use only human studies to decide what they'd recommend to us well I have seen people just when they cut out all salt and donate processed food even if they're not vegan lose tremendous amounts of weight because I have found that for most people salt is a very powerful appetite stimulant and causes them to just eat more of whatever yes and of course with high blood pressure I think you know calcium in in our diet for example if you uh cut your salt in half you excrete less calcium you reabsorb more calcium it's by taking a 900 milligram tablet of calcium every day if you cut your salt and take a nap so we need to cut our salt down absolutely absolutely and to have it in so many foods it's in every processed food every processed food they had so yeah they do for example I was on my breakfast cereal dry breakfast cereal I wouldn't take it if it had more than five grams of sugar in it every serving see and but I found out I I like something called Cherry oats and it was low on sugar but they add the salt the salt was high wow that's something so when you grew up in China was the rice you ate for all those years white rice which gets vilified today uh we we ate rice white rice yeah now when I got married my wife knew better and so she had to switch meat around now how'd she do it well she put in 10 Brown and ninety percent White when I got used to that she put in 20 Brown and 80 percent White until she got me on brown rice by itself so I can say today I can't say hey I don't like white rice I just still like it but I I'm used to brown rice now too that's fantastic so if it is the problem in the coffee and tea the caffeine because somebody's asking well what about matcha green tea but my understanding is that has just as much can have just as much caffeine yeah I think it's more than caffeine that's a problem we have we have theobromine for example we have other things so the cancer researchers that we're looking to see if coffee was causing cancer they started doing the studies with decaffeinated coffee to see if it was only the caffeine and they seem to be other things that were problems not just the caffeine that makes sense and as an Adventist those are things that in general don't most Adventist just avoid caffeine Alcohol Tobacco and hard-line drugs well they avoid tobacco we do the best on that and alcohol next best on that coffee I asked Gary Fraser who does all the Adventist Health studies from Loma Linda he's now retired back in Australia but Gary Fraser I said why don't you do more studies on Adventists and coffee he says we don't have enough drinking coffee to do good studies really I almost I thought almost everybody drinks drink coffee I I mean he's talking about Adventist group see and he said we only had about eight percent of the Adventists that were drinking coffee I said Gary oh in the Adventist Community but in the general world population right from coffee yeah got it so I said I was at to a very conservative Adventist Church in Phoenix Arizona and I did a study 40 percent of the Adventists were using coffee wow and I said the difference Gary is I don't make them put their name on the paper like you do [Laughter] so so there are quite a few evidence still using coffee in this in this country they might not use it very often you know they might use it just occasionally or something but but there quite a few still use it were you part of the original Adventist Health study yes yes I was I mean the Gary Frazier did some very good things now he went over to England studied Oxford of how to present things in a in a way that's be more interesting for example the percent of people who do live to be 85 or older he got that idea from his study at Oxford he went there to learn good statistical methods to present it to people in a way that they would understand it easy and this is interesting that that the Adventist vegetarians the men 48.6 percent of them who are vegetarian live to be 85 or older and general population is only 19 and a half percent big difference but that's a nice way to present it you know you talked about these drugs like naloxone and Naltrexone that block they when people take them they're not interested in eating the junk food but are there drugs that could increase dopamine in a person's brain so they don't seek the food in the first place because isn't that why they're using the drugs and the alcohol yes and I like to see well they're making opium they became out of this so that's why they're using it but I'd like to see it we know that the coffee increases the dopamine production 250 percent you see so that's your coffee doesn't do it do any good on that regard coffee increases dopamine production 250 percent you have a study on that yeah yeah I I just picked it up in the literature I don't remember where I was but uh they're beginning to study that more and more because of this uh opiate antagonists being so good to identify a certain group of people that are overweight and so they're beginning to study it now more and more and we need it even more studies we need to find out more about it what it is that makes the dopamine increase wow is there anything people can do naturally like exercise or have sex or other other things they can do besides drugs and food well that's what we got to figure out that they're just entered the studies now they're just getting onto studying a lot of this stuff it's but we don't have the answers yet don't you think it's kind of late maybe they should have started a little sooner um so what have you got planned for you I hope you'll come back on December 15th on your 100th birthday you can talk about anything you like and what have you got planned for the rest of the year are you I know you're giving presentations and are is there a way people can find out where well I gave one at Weimar last weekend and I went for about two hours that was a long time but the interest was very great interest was good that's great well I think you should have your own YouTube channel yeah well I'm getting too old to to worry about doing now if I was younger I'd do that yeah so so somebody's arguing that moderate alcohol consumption can reduce your risk of developing and dying of heart disease and stroke and possibly your risk of diabetes what do you say about that that's not true it's just scientifically it's not true and we we know how there's no group medically that recommends alcohol for any reason whatsoever amen doctor yeah people want good news about their bad habits well this is let's see here's a here's a comment from a live viewer named Calista I'm 56 years old and I want to start Whole Food plant-based no oil what do you suggest for someone starting out well I think you should make changes gradually number one in other words I wouldn't go all hog just on that point I would do it one day a week and after three months or so two days a week and do it that way because your body is uh gets a while to get adjusted to a new program so I would I would make my changes gradually great well it's never too late because I've had people in my programs that were 90 years old that were able to still make changes the quality of their life yeah yeah well you have a wonderful quality of life I'm very impressed with uh you and I really appreciate you coming on the show it's been a pleasure knowing you it is a pleasure to know you not been and uh I and please feel free to come on anytime yes I'm excited really about this method of getting across to people I know isn't it great Whoever thought in 1923 that you'd be a celebrity on a on a internet you know who there wasn't even internet back then these big these three studies I've had on zoom and this kind of thing YouTube I've had over 2 million hits that's why I say start your own channel doc why not call it scharfenberg speaks a hundred years of wisdom but I think I think it's important for me to get the most important things together in a concise way that people can get the message yeah well maybe it's time to write a book hmm well thank you but I I'm excited about you know only 60 15 of Americans are vegetarians not very many are and the evidence is so strong in favor of it we've got to show people how reasonable it is show them how easy it is to do and the advantages of it uh but I'm surprised that more people haven't done this well I think that part of it it has to do with the social norms but also that I find that many people do suffer from food addiction and that they if that doesn't include it in the diet then they're not that interested you know no I mean people that drink alcohol coffee eat junk food they don't want to be told not to do that people are not looking for bad news about their bad habits as Dr McDougall says they're looking for good news about their bad habits and you know a lot of doctors don't even believe it I I don't know if food addiction is the best term call it whatever you want but a lot of doctors and I've had them on the show and I don't ever want to argue with them but they don't even believe in it yes they say it's not the same because there's no detox there's no people don't die from it maybe they don't die quickly like they would from a heroin overdose they don't from a Twinkie overdose but I think they die slowly and insidiously developing these lifestyle diseases and they certainly don't feel good mentally and emotionally when they are always having cravings for these foods and they can't stop the compulsive eating I think we should be able to live to be maybe 120 three different methods I checked out and I thought it would be possible each one came out to about the same number 120 years I think we should be able to live a lot longer than we do right or maybe you'll come on every year until you're 120. if I should live as long as you all right what have you got planned for the weekend anything special uh well I'm not sure of anything real special you know I've been trying to find out where I could get something good to eat vegetarian wise yeah it's hard it's hard without doing it in your own kitchen it's hard well do you know there's a bunch of restaurants here in in the area we live not too far from each other uh there's uh these Chinese restaurants or yeah vegans but no faux vegan I think you'll like it actually we're having our dinner there tonight and it's they they have a regular vegan menu and they have an oil-free salt-free vegan menu I get something called the Tammy special it's it's absolutely delicious so I'm gonna try I'd be happy to take you there one day and we can go for lunch since I know you don't uh choose to eat dinner but I find it's it's fantastic and it's over brown rice and it's got all kinds of fresh vegetables and it's got a garlic sauce but they don't use you know oil in it and it's quite delicious love to take you there good free advertising for you Julie from for Pho Vega she hasn't been on the show yet it's it's in Rocklin so when I get back I'm going to Mexico tomorrow to teach cooking for eight days when I get back I'd love to take you to lunch all right well thank you Dr scharfenberg it's always great catching up with you okay and thanks all of you for watching another episode of Chef AJ live please come back tomorrow when my guest is Ava loves raw how she healed herself and avoided a hysterectomy simply by eating a whole food

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 31,197

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Id: fuXDCGoeuLI

Length: 68min 21sec (4101 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023