Top Food Hacks To Regenerate Stem Cells, Boost Brain Health & Improve Circulation | Dr. William Li

I'm a scientist I study blood vessels that's where my my root as a scientist is by circulation uh and in fact our blood vessels are remarkable we've got 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels packed inside our body 400 of those miles are actually in our brain so uh the our circulation is really super important and as a researcher I began appreciating that our uh this incredible maintenance of the blood of our circulation which are after all the highways and byways that deliver the oxygen we breathe and the nutrients that we eat that these roads these

blood vessels need to be maintained just like uh a road you know in the countryside if you don't maintain the road it's going to break down over a period of time and one of the things as a as a vascular blood vessel researcher androgenesis researcher um we discovered early on is that stem cells in our body contribute to building and repairing blood vessels so that was sort of how I became interested in and and quite familiar and and actually worked on stem cell research in the lab um we we actually discovered many chemical substances that

can stimulate stem cells to help do their repair and so when I began studying food as medicine one of the things that it was remarkable to discover is that some of the synthetic chemicals that you could order from a a research shop could actually stimulate stem cells but then then it was really jaw-dropping to me in fact one of the most um light bulb going off moments that I had as a food as medicine researcher to discover that natural substances in our food can similarly activate our stem cells and call them into action and without

necessarily putting out a distress call we can just gently coax our body's own Reserve into action to help repair ourselves in a more robust way so which are some of the top foods that we can choose to put inside our mouths that are going to do this yeah okay so first of all this is we're at the beginning of you know a new era looking at regenerative Foods foods that can stimulate regeneration so I don't have like the uh wrapped gift box to give you of a laundry list of all the foods known to man

we're still doing research on this but I'll tell you I'll give you some examples because um and when I talk by the way uh rangan I I really refer uh to both laboratory but also to human evidence which I think is really important you know something we see in the lab is interesting and they can actually raise an idea but at the end of the at the end of the day it's whether or not it works in people that makes all the difference in the world so I'm going to kind of um flip back and

forth a little bit but always emphasize what we know in people so first of all um you might uh not be surprised that the source of stem cell activating uh substances are plant-based Foods Mother Nature sort of uh uh uh uh medicine cabinet are fruits and vegetables nuts and legumes and healthy oils and seeds you know Omega sources of Omega-3s and so uh researchers have been actually mining the same uh pharmacopia uh Farm with an F not a pH um looking at what substances are in nature that can stimulate stem cells so I'll give you

an example we know that there's a a natural bioactive a natural chemical found in plants called ursolic acid okay that's URS I or solic acid it's found in fruit peel right the peel of an apple the peel of a pear uh the peel of uh cranberries a PE of a peel of blueberries right these are fruit Peels and most likely if you have eaten an apple you're not I mean unless you were a kid and and your grandmother peeled the Apple for you you just take an apple and clean it and then just eat the

whole thing right the Peel's got good source of dietary fiber and orsolic acid orsolic acid has been shown to stimulate stem cells to come out of the bone marrow and help to stimulate regeneration and to repair blood vessels for example quite amazing all right that's an example um there's another substance that have been discovered called beta D glucan now this is a soluble fiber which we know is good for gut health um and it does a lot of other interesting things too that are beneficial for the body but beta glucan has been discovered to stimulate

stem cells now where do you get beta glucan you can find them in uh mushrooms both the cap and the stype the stem of the mushroom has beta glucan in fact the the the stem of the mushroom has twice as much beta glucan as the cap of the mushroom so I always tell people actually preparing food um and you know you're you're preparing you're cooking mushrooms please don't throw the stems away because they have a lot of goodness to them um you can utilize them it's sustainable cooking keep all the food parts and use them

and they're good for you um oats also has beta do glue can you know if you're actually having um steel cut oats for breakfast for example uh is another source of beta glucan and barley now barley has actually been studied uh with beta glue can to look at stimulating the stem cells that can regenerate your circulation that can help to repair and grow new blood vessels where they're needed and this is exactly in my wheelhouse to study circulation so we took this even further to look at the role of other foods that can stimulate stem

cells and one of them is dark chocolate dark chocolate has a very particular benefit because first of all chocolate is a confection it's a candy it's made you know uh it's crafted to be sweet and delicious and most people like dark chocolate but it is contains a plant-based uh food ingredient and that's cacao cacao comes from a tropical tree where the seed pod of the cacao is is shaped like an American football it can be bright yellow it could be brown if you pick one up it's kind of heavy you shake it and you can

feel the heavy Chestnut like seeds shaking around and that that those seeds are the ones that are um dried fermented ground into a powder and used uh by percent to actually make chocolate so if you have a 50% uh cacao chocolate it's got half of the cacao if you've got 80% it's got a lot more 90% Etc well what researchers has been done shown that 80% or higher cacao puts enough of a natural plant-based bioactive called proanthocyanidin into your bloodstream so this has been measured and in in the clinic if you actually give people who

have let's say coronary artery disease so they've got narrowing of their blood vessels and stiff hard blood vessels all right so these are these are not these are not people at their optimal state of health if you um measure their stem cells and then then see how many stem cells are floating around their blood which is not many and then you were to actually um do a simple test called flow mediated dilation fmd um to check how resilient their blood vessels are basically it's a blood pressure cuff you blow it up and you put an

ultrasound uh in your uh uh in the crook of your arm and then you let the blood pressure uh cuff deflate quickly you see what happens to your how well your uh circulation your blood vessels recover from compression from the C that's a reflection of vascular blood vessel circulatory Health if you do that at Baseline to see um how well uh the blood vessels in these people are doing not that well then researchers have given them two cups of dark chocolate in the form of hot hot chocolate that's it two cups to have a day

for 30 days and at the end of 30 days you measure take out your blood and measure the stem cells again and then do that flow media dilation resiliency test again of the blood vessels to see have they changed this is what's amazing that's been found that dark chocolate the an proanthocyanidins not only got into the bloodstream but they doubled the number of stem cells circulating in your blood vessels and they doubled the resiliency improved the by by twofold the resiliency of your blood vessels just over the course of a month with as little as

two cups of hot chocolate that's dark wow that that's a really interesting point what you said there at the end there the quality matters doesn't it because you could get I guess a hot chocolate powder from the supermarket which was full of additives and full of sugar and has a very low concentration of cacao or you could get a completely different one which is you know a lot of you know minimal ingredients uh high levels of cacao as you say 80% plus that's the Nuance I think sometimes that we're missing aren't we when we talk

about food hot chocolate is not just hot chocolate it depends on the quality right that's right and the stuff that you get in a packet at the grocery store that's inexpensive and and it might taste really great it might be the stuff that we had when we were kids I I know I did um if you now take a look at the ingredient label I tell people anytime you're buying anything that's prepackaged please take a look at the ingredient level before you put it in your grocery cart because if you start seeing the added sugar

and then the emulsifiers and all the artificial chemicals and preservatives and the stabilizers that's probably not something that you want to actually put in your body and if it if the ingredient label creeps you out put it back and just look for another choice that as you say has minimal numbers of ingredients or even better yet I mean and I I say this to people who are really committed to using a natural way to improve their health put it together yourself I mean you can even make it without dairy which is really interesting without any

type of of um milk product at all uh you can make yourself a really tasty um uh uh super dark chocolate and in fact a lot of people don't know this but the history of cacao and chocolate goes all the way back to the Aztec C civilization where at some point they actually considered um chocolate was used as currency was so valuable and at a certain point of time it was used for its medicinal and ceremonial value and so this is why you know like we go you know you're taking a trip at an airport

and you're passing by the uh uh the the news stand and you know it's so tempting to buy a bottle of water and get a chocolate the you know the the the healthful chocolate we're talking about is really paying attention to the details of the quality of what you're actually going to put into your body because that's going to influence your body responds to it yeah it's really fascinating I was reflecting with a friend over the summer on how certain things let's say cacao let's even say alcohol as well were often used in traditional cultures

in very different ways to the way we consume them today or they're often consumed today you know it was ritualistic ceremonial cacal probably from what I understand wasn't used daily it was now and again for C celebration for ritual and I think the same thing also from what I understand with alcohol yet we love to take those things and then shove them in every day now and it I I I feel that we do that with lots of things we change the way we consume them compared to how we have done so traditionally absolutely because

if you think about uh uh the way that we approach uh the the the foods around us uh today uh so often it's really food is treated as a commodity you know we we have this consumer mentality where we just go out to look for the cheapest most convenient most tasty thing so influenced by advertising and we've gotten further and further away from what I think is absolutely Central to our Humanity when it comes to food which is to have some appreciation uh of our food to to Really Savor our food respect our food and

frankly you know if you take look at some of the broader planetary concerns in terms of how we grow our food how we treat the land that our foods grow on how we you know how we Farm our food all of those implications uh uh of the degradation uh of the food system comes from the fact that you know we we don't respect it so much anymore and so we're just stripping away the land we're getting the cheapest food possible the fastest possible we're packag into things that are not very costly put colors on them

you know cheap things to attract you know sort of like the clickbait uh idea of uh of of our of nutrition and and our food I think it takes us further away from our humanity and I'm I'm bringing that up because you know as you're talking about tradition and ritual uh and ceremonial I think one of the things that we're beginning to perhaps appreciate as things are becoming so distressed around the world is that you know there's a there is really great value and calming value to be able to be more appreciative to the things

that we do have and to respect when it comes to food to really start thinking about our food in a different way including where it comes from and how it's handled and then ultimately how we're preparing it and putting it into our body it's a it is a Continuum that pays off when it comes to our health yeah for sure thank you for sharing that now Dr Lee so far the foods we mentioned in relation to stem cells I think are oelc acid which you can get in Fruit peels you mentioned beta de glucan which

you can get in mushrooms and oats and barley you you've also mentioned about cacao and dark chocolate and how beneficial that can be one thing I've always noticed with your approach you make food something that I think excites people you talk about all these different foods and all these different Pathways and and how we can you know be active participants in our health by choosing foods that are going to activate all these incredible Pathways how do you square that alongside the fact that many people these days eat an excess of calories if someone hears what

you're saying and they're already eating an excess of calories and they start adding in uh dark chocolates um hot chocolates um oats barley right H how do you help people tease through that because obviously an a calorie excess is problematic for health even if you are adding in some of these powerful Foods yeah no I mean this is a great topic of discussion I'm very passionate about this idea of not overeating not over consuming okay because we you know we're here we're talking about uh how we have gotten further and further away from traditions and

rituals and and mindfulness uh look uh overc consumption is a relatively recent phenomenon I say within the last 70 80 years within our last 100 years for sure um uh of modern society you know because if you go further back than that most people were most people were still scrabbling around to actually get enough food they were hungry most of the time all right it's only really in our mind modern day and age and you know sort of post World War II where uh relative Prosperity especially in modern countries developed countries actually allowed us to

essentially um overc consume uh food on a regular basis and so I want to talk about metabolism for a moment because this is actually where this squares away with healthy eating and and overeating okay so uh I I want people to think about uh uh metabolism which has to do with weight gain which has to do with obesity which has to do with uh diabetes and metabolic diseases and and other chronic diseases ranging from cardiovascular disease to cancer to dementia so it's all connected together um uh uh our metabolic health is maintained by our body

like a machine and in fact it's like the operating our our metabolism is like the operating system on your computer like on your laptop and you know there's all these myths about metabolism and one of the myths is that our metabolism is just the role of the dice we get it from our parents we we're we're born with whatever metabolism we're we're we're brought born with and that's actually not correct um you know people how many people have heard oh my sister was so lucky she was born with a fast metabolism she's skinny as a

stick and she can eat anything um me I've actually was born with a slow metabolism I've had to fight with food my whole life and I've had trouble with my weight that's not me but I'm I'm saying what what people have what I hear people saying and it's just the luck of the draw so therefore they give up and they say you know this is my fate wasn't my fault I was born I I I drew the short end of the stick no it's not true what you know if if we are born and our

kidneys work the same and our eyesight works the same and our nerves work the same what makes you think that metabolism in the human body is a crapshoot and just a and it's it's it's it's ramshackle and just a game of chance um who gets a fast or slow metabolism no our metabolism is an operating system the same as in your laptop and uh ran if you went to buy the same model of laptop I have we bought them from the same store at the same time you and where you live and me where I

live and we plug it in charge it up and then hit the button at the same time boot it up the operating system of your laptop where you live and where I live it's going to be exactly the same out of the box so the human metabolism is hardwired in our body to operate exactly the same way I and I'm telling you this because it's very important to think about the consequences of abusing our metabolism over a period of time all right and when you abuse your metabolism uh you can actually slow it down you

can actually cause problems with your metabolism you can derail your metabolism and over consumption of calories is one of the things that you can do to to abuse your metabolism so think about it you rangan are are um uh uh take exceptional care of your laptop you know you uh have it in a case you clean it afterward you shut it off at night um you use an antivirus program to make sure you know you make sure you don't have malware on it viruses on it okay me I'm I'm not so careful I I travel

with it sometime it gets dropped I just I shove it I just throw the laptop the back of my car um oops I spill coffee on it every now and then water I mop it up and I and I never turn it off and and I'm downloading stuff all the time off the internet okay now what do you think is going to happen to that same operating system in your laptop versus my laptop yours is going to be functioning a lot better than mine and if you think about taking in calories when you over consume

calories among other things that you can do uh uh what that does is that puts a stress on your metabolism uh and if you overload your metabolism by eating more calories now calories are basically look food is food is our fuel we call and our fuel just like in your car uh uh is something that we absolutely need so you need calories food is our fuel and in our body we we call it calories all right so this is the similar way and we and just like you're filling up your car with fuel uh we

fill up our bodies with fuel uh by the with the food food that we eat if you overload the fuel in your car what's going to happen I mean usually the gas station the patrol station has a clicker to prevent you from overloading your gas tank in the body we don't have we we do not have that clicker so we can easily overload overflow our gas our own body's Cote fuel tanks fuel tanks are fat when you overload your fat okay you're going to keep on filling up fat and filling up more fat you need

more fat our stem cells will create more fat more fuel tanks and you keep on eating you keep on overloading that caloric load overload puts a stress on our metabolism all right and that then starts to derail our health and so I don't care if you eat an uh eating healthy food or junk food now obviously just like petrol fuel that you put in your car if you care about your carve you're very conscientious about the uh about the the longevity your car the the health of your car your automobile all right uh uh you

are going to actually try to choose higher quality fuel to put in it put some crummy fuel in it once in a while once once or twice no problem your car is not it'll survive it you put crummy fuel in your car lowquality fuel the cheapest fuel in your car every single day I guarantee you your car is not going to last to somebody who's as as long as somebody who's who takes really good care of a car and put good quality fuel so the quality of the fuel the quality of the Food Matters for

the engine of our body okay um and if you overload fuel in our body you overload our metabolism and it doesn't matter whether you actually have good quality fuel or bad quality fuel overloading is not good but whatever fuel you have you would prefer to have good quality fuel so this is back go back to your point of overc consumption I always tell people you know who are struggling with okay there's so much information out there uh Dr Lee how do I get started and the first thing I say is that you know take stock

with the quality of the food that you eat what quality fuel are you loading into your the the the vehicle of your body and you know if they take a food diary record you know for a few days or a week everything they eat then they can read it and say oh man you know this isn't so good I shouldn't be eating this or and sometimes people surprise them you know actually I I eat pretty well on average um but they can identify some of the lowquality fuel items that they actually are putting in then

I ask them to say how much do you actually eat now this is a trickier question because most people overeat you know and we're trained to or almost trained to overeat and so if you are uh loading your own plate uh uh I always tell people take only 2third of what you would normally take so if you're if you're if you're serving yourself at dinner uh from the the the platter whatever you would normally take as a just have an instinct to say no I'm just going to take I'm going to leave a third of

it back in the platter I'm going to take only two thirds and put on my plate all right I always say load the vegetables on first yeah uh then take then take only then remove a third of it as a start all right then I always say uh uh if you are if you and eat slowly and if you're feeling full stop eating you don't have to clean your plate it's okay if you don't clear clear everything on your plate that's a good health habit and then I always tell people uh try not to snack

after dinner because snacking after dinner is another opportunity to actually overload your uh your body and so these are all little tips that I think people always try to get into like so how do I do this like I want to choose good healthy food but it's more than that I I can't I don't want to overeat the food how do I start so I I give people these sort of like uh little easy tips of how to how to take those first steps in their health Journey yeah I really appreciate that it's really really

useful because you mentioned quite a few things there that are are worthy of conversation I think one was about the wealth of information that now exists for people the overload of information even good quality information it's a bit like the overload of good quality healthy food if you are you know Ting lots of healthy food and you know that analogy with the car is is a really nice one because as you say you can't really overload your car fuel tank cuz there is a a stopper it just won't allow you to do it but just

imagine that wasn't there if you start spraying petrol all over the internal workings of your car even if it was premium fuel well it's a little bit like when we have visceral fat accumulating in our body isn't it you know this harmful fat certainly Beyond a certain point where it's starting to send out inflammation and damage those organs and increase our risk of early death and disease so I think it's a really it's a great analogy I want to talk about this era of information overload because I think people can consume all kinds of information

now they can read books they can watch your YouTube channel or my YouTube channel and they can get all this information yeah I still think with all this information so many people are confused and they go well yeah Dr Le you're saying this someone else is saying this someone else I I followed online is saying this and my feeling and I'd love to know your perspective on this is that yes we want to listen to experts we want to get their advice and hear about the science and the research but then we also have to

then go inwards and go okay which bit of this advice works for us I heard Dr Lee say this I heard Dr chasi say this I heard Dr whoever else say this but actually you know what when I eat like that that's when I feel good and I feel we're missing that these days we we've outsourced our inner expertise about our own bodies far too much to external experts and I think that is a massive problem these days that we're not talking about enough yeah no uh our own health is incredibly personal what makes me

feel good when I make a food decision where I sit down to make a meal or or even how I prepare a meal for example or if I sit at a restaurant uh where I naturally kind of gravitate in terms of ordering food that's very personal to me and how I feel about uh uh how I eat and how much I eat and when I eat these are all very important factors for health but but how it works for me is going to different than how it works for you for example or or anybody who's

listening so knowing thyself like self- knowledge is true knowledge every individual needs to reckon and recognize their own self- knowledge as all of of self- knowledge self-limitation uh in order to be able to you advance and and you're right we spend so much time externally consuming information and not enough time uh contemp lating how we what makes us tick how are we actually doing it you know there are uh taking a walk is a solo act can be a solo activity that allows you to exercise and be in motion but if you do it by

yourself I mean some people like to walk with others but if you do it by yourself it's an opportunity to actually calm your mind from other people and think about yourself if you meditate it's another way to actually um and and practice breathing exercise it's another way to actually Center yourself and I think that you know one of the things even though we talk about healthy foods and we talk about exercise all these we give a lot of recommendations right and I want to talk about the information overload sources in in just one second but

you know we give a lot of advice recommendations because part of our mission your mission and mine is to get useful information out to people but you know that's still an external thing to somebody listening to us what's really important equally important is that uh anybody who wants to pursue Better Health take the time to really get to know uh uh how they feel uh when they're healthy and how they feel when they're not feeling so healthy and how individual moves make them feel to to find out what their own path is everyone's got their

own path and and by the way I I say this again I mentioned it briefly personalized medicine is where all medicine is going yeah so I don't care if you're in oncology and canc treating cancer Cardiology treating you know blockages of your blood vessels and your heart the bottom line is that we're all realizing one size doesn't fit all yeah all right and every individual is going to be different and respond differently to the same treatment that we might listen medicine when when you were training and I was training I'm I'm sure we had some

very very common patterns and themes one of the themes is that you take an antibiotic you say get write the same dose and you treat for the same number of days and you're done it's like a cookbook that's supposed to work the same way for everyone and it's just not so it's not true in medicine it's not true in nutrition and it's not true in exercise either yeah and so I think that this whole idea of personalization uh having individuals know themselves is absolutely vital yeah vital as as a as a start hey guys as

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thing about this whole information overload you know this is true for children uh who are consuming uh uh information uh in a very particular way right so typical kid in high school is or Junior High School maybe even younger is on their phone scrolling all day long they're watching Tik Tok they're watching looking at various things they're communicating and with Snapchat and quick you know communication it's it's very externally focused and it's consumptive there's an algorithm that that feeds you more of what you seem to be enjoying seeing or looking at longer but that doesn't

actually help you get to know yourself yeah and uh and it also uh doesn't force you to consider the source of your information I think another really uh important thing for anybody who is interested in health information from experts is first try not to listen to everybody and everything you know try to pick a few people who um are trusted voices it's up to you to decide how you connect to them one of the big challenges I think of the online community whether it's YouTube or uh Instagram or these other media platforms is that anybody

can actually deliver information and any and and and I think that one of the things that I believe is that people who are trained in health and who do research and who are very careful in their communication and how what they're actually projecting um uh because words matter yeah I think that that's really important uh from a from a source perspective so you can actually narrow yourself down um you know pick two or three people that you feel you resonate with you like their voice but but do check into their backgrounds to see if you

think that that person should be a trusted resource um so you're not getting uh wild ideas that may not actually be correct yeah thank you William for sharing that really some great life advice there you know Beyond food in terms of how to navigate the modern world and I think it's I really I feel very passionately about that idea that we've got to start tuning into ourselves more you know yes there are some some core dietary principles that we can share and you know you've written two fantastic books on a lot of these things that

that you know a lot of the foods that people can choose to help improve their health for whatever reason they want but ultimately you've got to try this stuff out for yourself and and and really pay attention to when do I feel good what pattern of eating suits me when do I not feel bloated when do I feel that I sleep well what is going on in my life when those things happen that's the ultimate knowledge that self- knowledge that self-awareness that Insight that's wisdom and honestly if I reflect over my career about the patients

who truly transformed their lives for good it was those patients who at some point converted the advice being from the outside to figuring it out for themselves go no I know what's best for me I know which way of eating works best for me having heard from the experts but then becoming their own experts so that's something I I really want to help people do more and more um going back of foods then uh Dr Lee we mentioned a few Foods already that can help our stem cells what about olive oil does that have any

relationship with our stem cells absolutely so olive oil uh is a healthy fat as they say it's a plant-based food comes from Plants they olives uh and it uh contains bioactives many bio activ some of them have been identified the ones that actually uh have been best studied one of them is called hydroxy tyrosol the other one's called oool and you know for people who are listening you know if you're a science geeek you can write all this stuff down but just know that there are these natural substances that have powerful effects on our body

and for example hydroxy tyrol and as a molecule uh but olive oil as a food substance all right um has been shown to be protective of our stem cells meaning when you consume olive oil and you get these polyphenols the hydroxy ooc canol in our bloodstream circulating around look there's a lot of stuff in our bloodstream uh uh that's going on a lot of exposures that we have and when you've got hydroxy tyrosol from olive oil in the bloodstream along with your stem cells they sort of act as police escorts to help your stem cells

get to where they go in a safer way uh they they're they're escorted to where they're needed they're protected and so why do they need to be protected well you think about it there's a lot of oxidative stress that can be in our bodies you know um oxidative stress can come from fumes that you breathe from vaping from off gasing from carpets from AR artificial uh flavorings and preservatives that you have in your food from cleaning materials that you're actually having all these chemical exposures cause oxidative stress in our blood which can damage your stem

cells hydroxy tyrol again is one of those natural molecules that have been shown to protect your stem cells against oxidative stress so literally it's like a police escort that helps your stem cells um get to where it needs to go uh in sort of a safe and efficient manner so when you think about olive oil there are multiple reasons to consume olive oil you just mentioned the research around stem cells I'm sure if I asked you about longevity or inflammation or blood vessels you could also talk to me about the benefits of olive oil but

how do you recommend people consume it are you a fan of it being cold on salads and vegetables or are you someone who says yeah it's okay to actually cook with olive oil as well because this is an area of a little bit of confusion and controversy online so I'd love to get your take on this I want to be very clear about this olive oil is of all the cooking oils uh a healthier choice to be able to have with the meal you can you don't have to cook with it but you can cook

with it um there's a myth that olive oil has a low smoke point so you shouldn't do high heat cooking as it turns out olive oil's uh smoke point is almost the same as canola oil uh which is uh used for frying it's pretty close you shouldn't reuse olive oil at a hot heat but but cooking with it in a in a walk if you're using doing Asian cooking is perfectly fine actually you just have to like the taste of the olive oil in cooking it so again that's a little bit of a myth you

can actually cook with olive oil at pretty high heat and you're fine certainly sautéing is no problem frying is Stir frying is no problem and by the way in the Mediterranean I don't encourage people to eat a lot of fried foods because the frying creates these little side products called acrylamides which you know are potentially carcinogenic but Everyone likes occasionally people like crispy food um you know in the mediteran how they fry Foods they fry them in olive oil all right and in fact the polyphenols get into the food that you fry so it actually

make something that's not that healthy a little bit healthier with the polyphenols in it um I would say so you can actually cook with it I'm not saying you should eat you should fry with it or eat fried foods but cooking with it is fine e using olive oil uh um cold plain is is is also fine if you want to dip it in some bread or put it in a salad dressing um I think the quality of the olive oil is really really important okay and a lot of people don't appreciate this but when

you go out to buy olive oil what do most people do well you know if if you if you are for the first time buying olive oil it's overwhelming how many different choices you have so you might go for the less expensive one or you might go for the one that's got a more attractive label on it um I'll tell you the way that uh I recommend doing it and what I do myself I always want to um get the highest quality olive oil uh so um what what I look for are olive oils that

are made with pressed with only one kind of olive it's called monovarietal olive oil and there's two reasons for that when you're when olive oil makers make olive oil they're picking olives when they're ripe off the tree and literally just crushing it and then spinning it in a basket and so it whips out all the fluid and the oil floats to the top uh and then the the watery stuff goes to the bottom and the chunks go to the bottom and they just scoop the olive oil off they don't filter it and so that's why

you wind up getting the little bits that are green so extra virgin first press olive oils always going to be tastier you're going to get that peppery you know sometimes pepper taste to it by the way those that's what the polyphenols are they're actually giving you that taste sensation a great taste sensation of olive oil all right um many olive oil ERS and you can look this up on Google there's a whole scam in the olive oil industry where people who are labeling olive oil are in fact adding other oils to it it has some

olive oil and they cut it um and so um that's not good you're you're getting who knows what other kind of olive oils it's it's a whole scam the other other times people are mixing different types of olive oils together sometimes the cheapest ones they can find together to serve it up to you and so the way to get around that is to look for mono variet olive olive oils pressed with only one variety of Olives these are going to usually be coming from a single Farm all right it could be a large farm but

a single farm and this also not only guarantees the quality of the olive oil because it's not going to be cut with other things mono varietal it's a label um mono one varietal type of olive um but I look for monovarietal olive oils coming from one of three different kinds of Olives that you can that you find very easily in the store and the reason I look for them is because they have the highest levels of polyphenols of all the olives all right so if you like Spanish olive oil all right I look for monovarietal

Spanish olives made with the type of olive the variety of olive called piku p i c a l p olives fortunately it's a very common Olive in Spain and fortunately that Olive you can easily find pyal monoidal olive oil and it's not that expensive all right if you like Greek olive oil I love Greek olive oil um the uh uh the olives that have highest polyphenols among Greek olives are called coroni k o r o NE I Ki coroni olives it's from the pelonis fortunately a very common uh Olive in Greece monovarietal highest polyphenols taste

amazing great for whatever you're cooking or grilling or salad dressing and then Italian if you like Italian olive oils in Umbria the highest polyphenols have been found in moraiolo olives m o r o a i l o morolo olives which is found in umbrea it's a less common Olive it's going to be more expensive but again tastes great highest polyphenols and so I kind of tell people look if you're going to go buy olive oils why not get the highest quality it's Fuel and if you're GNA and and it's going to you want to be

able to have it taste great if you're going to use it and dip some bread or whatever it is sourdough bread or whatever something healthy in it or you're going to dribble it on some uh some pasta or whatever you're cooking with it why not get the best and why not get the best with the high not only best taste but also pure and also with the highest polyphenols and that's how I actually choose with olive oil by the way some people have reported I heard this before that olive oils are not good for your

blood vessels they actually damage the line of your blood vessels that's all bunk a blood vessel expert and I'm also an expert on food is medicine we've studied this it's a theoretical thing that got put together that winds up actually not being true well-intentioned people try to put science together and I'm not real scientists and they don't know the data it's understandable how they may come up with it but olive oil is perfectly fine in fact it's very healthy for your blood vessels quite the opposite now how much to eat you know there's a lot

of studies out there of olive oil on average if you take a look at all all the studies the average amount of healthy oil to consume per day is about 3 to four tablespoons worth of olive oil okay that's a fair amount of olive oil if you're not an olive oil consumer but if you think about the Mediterranean three to four tablespoon go ahead and take a measuring uh spoon out in your in your kitchen and to take out three to four tablespoons and put it into on a dish it's not that much and if

you are um scrambling your eggs with it all right if you like eggs um instead of butter and in lunch if you're making a salad dressing with it and you're going to put some salad dressing on it and then at at dinner if you're going to roast some vegetables uh or or grill some vegetables and you're going to put some olive oil on it you will easily get three to four uh tablespoons of olive oil into your system okay brilliant that's super practical so essentially a lot of advice there and olive oil if people are

struggling with the cost of things as many people are these days is your advice to get the best quality olive oil that you can afford yeah absolutely and and by the way you know I would say it's it's a buyer world out there particularly because you could buy things on the internet as well if you search for um monovarietal piku or Cori or marol olive oil and you just let the internet show you what's the cheapest one you know and do a little review to make sure that they're you know a good quality manufacturer or

supplier order it buy it you know um that that's the fastest way to actually get high quality listen people people spend a lot of money on a lot of different things right but then you actually again take a look at your own lifestyle I can tell you the best investment you can make is getting high quality food for yourself and you're in Europe it's a lot better than the United States I mean people buy junk stuff for food and they spend their money on things that are unhealthy um uh as well they get they buy

cheap unhealthy things and they spend money on healthy unhealthy things I think food is what getting healthy food high quality food is one of the best investments you can actually make yeah yeah yeah completely agree and I think you know everyone does have different Financial situations and different means no question but I think something quite profound happens when you internally going back to what we were talking about before about you know tuning into yourself listening to your body's own signal like when you consciously make that decision not like an opinion a decision that you know

what the food I put in my mouth now is of top importance you know I made that decision a few years ago like I internalized that you know if I'm going to be the best human being that I can be the best father the best husband the best capable human being as I age well the quality of the food I put into my mouth day in day out is important it doesn't mean you're never going to go off track but there's something really I think powerful about when you make that decision and once you make

that decision and you live with that decision for a while you know other things start to change so you know I love eating out as much as the next person Dr Lee but I will say that I've become a lot fussier these days and I actually prefer eating in I much prefer eating in because when you really tune into what good quality food tastes like often when you're out not always there are some great restaurants out there and great cafes for sure I just don't feel that good afterwards a lot of the time when I

go out it could be the oils they're using to fry or whatever it might be so again I'm not saying that applies to anyone else but for me I much prefer to eat in these days when I can I I totally agree and and by the way I think the the companion piece that I add because I'm like you I you know I sort of I I I try to find what makes me feel good uh and stick to that but I also think that you know having some self-compassion is an important component of that

as well so if you've decided that you're going to just try to be as healthy as you can um don't feel like it's a strict religion or a you're not in a military camp where you can only do one thing we're all human we have to enjoy ourselves we have to have enough compassion to realize that it's okay every every now and then to you know kind of wander off the path as long as you get back on the path you're going to be just fine and I try to kind of lower people's stress level

in trying to live a healthy life by also saying you know look these are guidelines you know that they're good for you you you should feel you should feel better when you're doing them um it's up to you to actually take that path and and rather than make people feel fear guilt shame when it comes to food I try to give people permission to live a little you know every now and then you're going to do something you're going to really enjoy listen if you spend more time doing things that are good for you your

body's going to be strong enough to be able to rebound from something occasionally you do that's not so good for you it's like driving on a road right I mean look you know the rules following the rules of the road are actually going to help keep you a safe driver so that you're going to be accident free but look who doesn't speed every now and then and you know speeding can kill you right so but every now and then you need to get some place quickly you're G to go a little bit faster than the

speed limit it's okay it's okay and so I I kind of try to give people permission to um and I encourage them to be self-compassionate and give them permission to feel the Liberty to choose yeah with the with the encouragement that make more good choices more often yeah I completely agree it's a great point and just to be super clear I've really got to that point about eating in compared to eating out I would say in the last couple of years you know I've been on this journey to improve my health with my lifestyle for

you know 10 plus years now so you start off where you can and bit by bit that bills and you go off track and you go ah you know what I actually feel better when I'm like this and you know last week I was away for work between Monday uh afternoon and Friday evening so all my meals were out and I was was completely fine and I was able to function and and do what I had to do but since I got back at the weekends I'm like no no no I just want to eat

in I cook my own food now so I think that's a really really important point you mentioned uh blood vessels before in relationship to olive oil now we've spoken a lot about stem cells if we could just shift the focus to blood vessels olive oil as a food that could help us with our stem cells and help us with our blood vessels let's just set the scene again like we did with stem cells why is the health of our blood vessels so important what do we get wrong when we think about blood vessels and then

how can we choose specific foods that that are going to enhance the health of those blood vessels okay so I mentioned earlier 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels are packed into our adult bodies that is so extensive that if we were to pull out all the blood vessels and line them up end to end in your body you'd actually form a line a thread that would wrapped around the earth twice all right and these literally are the highways and byways of everything O oxygen we breathe the nutrients that we eat they deliver to every single

organ in your body really really critical and in fact no matter what you else you think about uh in terms of your health if your blood vessels are healthy you are at a really great starting point to optimize the rest of your health information is not enough to make change in your life you have to take action so to help you take action after watching this video I've created a free nutrition guide for you this contains the five most important practices I've seen in over two decades of seeing patients they work for you no matter

what your dietry preference there's a step-by-step action plan to help you implement those changes in your life if you want to receive that free guide right now just just click on the link in the description box below but if your blood vessels are unhealthy you're going to be far behind in fact it'll be impossible to optimize your health in any other part of your body and this is true when you're a child this is true when you're a young adult this is especially true as we get older like 40 and above we need to start

paying super attention to how well our blood vessels are functioning now the good news and what people don't get right sometimes is that we think about out our blood vessels as passive and like plumbing and then they get clogged they get narrowed with lipids or plaque or atherosclerosis you know and this is what ultimately leads to a heart attack or a stroke or for you know leg dysfunctions when you've got clogged arteries in your legs my arteries are hard you hear this all the time well our blood vessels are anything but static it's not just

piping under your sink that if you keep pouring grease down the sink it's going to clog up uh your your your sink and then you're got to call the plumber in to to open it up with a wire nope it's not like that at our our blood vels are incredibly Dynamic and that what that means is our body manages to maintain our blood vessels to try to keep them optimize all the time now something that keeps our blood vessels healthy and dynamic is the inner lining of the blood vessels our blood vessels have a sleeve

in it it's like a layer of um plastic wrap that is extraordinarily slippery we call it the endothelial layer um if you think about like a garden hose and you to cut the garden hose in half and look down the middle of the hose you're looking down into the hole and and if you were to actually take a plastic wrap the count you would have in your kitchen and coat the inside of the garden hose with a with a plastic wrap so that when water is running through that the water is slip slipping through sliding

through the plastic wrap now imagine in your blood vessels that same kind of wrap made out of living tissue called called vascular cells blood vessel cells it's extraordinarily slippery so so slippery that I give the analogy of like an ice skating rink if you've ever been a kid gone ice skating I don't know most many adults don't ice skate anymore but if you're a kid you might have had that experience you know that when you get out in that ice on the ice and I on the skating rake it's really really slippery it's hard to

actually keep your balance all right um and that's what the blood vessels need to be so that all the blood cells that are winging through our body they don't stick to the walls at all they just keep on going keep on going you know like it's there's like traffic direction um this is this way to your liver this way to your eyes this way to your brain okay now you also know that um uh if you're and and by the way if you've ever been ice skating you know that after the ice is cleaned there's

a machine that will polish the ice between sessions and the ice skating right it's called a Zamboni uh machine they drive over it it heats the ice there's a little uh brush underneath it that kind of polishes the ice when the ice is new and newly polished you could take a sweater because it's a little cold in the ice getting rink and you can throw it on the ice and the thing will Glide your sweater will Glide it's so slippery all the way across the rink to the other end now after you have a hundred

people skating on the ice for a session or after a hockey game you know where where people the players are really scuffing up the ice big time all right when you come off the ice if you were to throw that sweat sweater on it again it won't slide it'll just stick right to the ice it'll just stay right there so the so we we just like the ice skating rink you want your blood vessels to be really really polished and smooth flowing and if you don't treat your blood vessels properly and there's lots of things

that can damage our blood vessels high amounts of salt high amounts of sugar high amounts of of unhealthy saturated fats scrape up the lining of our blood vessels that's like uh you know that's the difference between being able to have the sweater Glide all the way to the end of the rink versus having the sweater stick to the ice now when you have blood cells sticking to the ice that's not good when when when that ice is your inside your circulation because that stickiness can actually start to build up layers and layers and layers and

that's really how blood vessels get narrowed so one of the things your body tries to do is to use those stem cells we talked about earlier and to try to repair those areas of the ice where like a piece might have come off and smooth it out again so we can actually restore that healthy layer it's very quite it's very amazingly Dynamic and when we need more blood vessels our body can naturally grow them uh where they need to be grown and then stop it when there's adequate blood vessels and if there's too many blood

vessels growing our our our body can also trim the extra blood vessels so we don't have too many it's like a landscaper that's looking at a gulf course course and and keeping maintaining a perfect golf course hey there's a couple of patches that need some more uh uh grass they'll actually put the seed in there and grow it right up so it looks perfect and if there's and if the Grass Grows too high it'll just mow the lawn so you wind up having just the right amount at all times not too few not too many

just the perfect amount that's how um our blood vessels are maintained that process is called angiogenesis that's how blood vessels grow and stay healthy yeah it's such a beautiful image to think about the inside of these miles and miles of blood vessels inside our body as either being you know smooth and the blood can travel with no friction and no problem at all or there could be bumps and lumps there and it can be more difficult and you know we don't naturally I think many of us think about food and blood vessels but we do

think about our brain health our cognition our mood our skin Health our immune system without realizing that wait a minute what underpins all of them well if you don't have healthy blood vessels you're not going to be delivering oxygen to all of those critical things so healthy blood vessels mean a healthy heart a healthy brain I think it's um it's such a core tenant of Optimal Health to have healthy blood vessels of course many people talk about exercise and actually moving your body is going to help um maintain those blood vessels or or certainly it's

one factor but I've heard you say in one interview that one of your pet hates is when you hear about exercise being the only thing that's good for your heart's health because of course the food you consume is also very important with these blood vessels as well so perhaps you can give some examples of what kinds of foods directly impact the health of our blood vessels well one thing we talked about already is olive oils uh uh olive oil but I also want to actually back that up and just say look and what about olives

you can just eat the whole Olive and now you get the fiber from The Olive and you'll actually get the other poly more polyphenols from the Flesh of the olive other things that other foods that are um clearly very heart healthy are the leafy green foods that have dietary fiber and all these other polyphenols so the Brasa family now I like to cook so you know when you get me talking about Foods I I'll usually start talking about the foods and most people think about broccoli okay um I will tell you broccoli like other brass

a ve family of vegetables have isothiocyanates these are the class of molecules that create suanes and suanes um are great for our metabolism they help to lower um uh burn down our harmful body fat they lower inflammation which is really really critical and many of the Brasa family of vegetables you're talking about broccoli you're talking about kale you're talking about brussels sprouts you're talking about Bak Choy you're talking about Swiss chard you know I mean these are vegetables that are growing in the summer Gardens and you know take a little extra olive oil sauté some

garlic on it and just just throw the vegetables in there um hit them with a little bit of uh spice and you've got very quickly a delicious uh warm cooked vegetable dish that that's tastey squeeze a little lemon you want to little red pepper flakes what is that doing for our blood vessels if we I mean it sounds delicious my stomach's watering already the thoughts of that but what what does that actually do to the to our blood vessels what's happening is that they're when you're eating it when you're eating that delicious food the the

polyphenols and the suor aphanes get absorbed into our bloodstream all right from your stomach uh and those uh those they they serve a number of functions that help protect your heart number one they lower oxidative stress uh while there while these molecules are coursing through your blood vessels because they've been absorbed after you've eaten them from your stomach they're protecting the walls of your blood vessels from damage so there's oxidative stress they actually protect your cells the lining the the the smooth lining of your blood vessels number two they actually lower inflammation as well so

uh the the the the sorines and leafy greens lowers inflammation inflammation itself can damage the ice they can scrape up the lining of the blood vessels lowers inflammation the other thing about these leafy greens is they have dietary fiber which don't get absorbed into your bloodstream but that tumbles all the way down through your gut down to your gut microbiome we haven't had a chance to talk about that yet but gut health turns out feeding dietary fiber from our food to our healthy gut bacteria leads our own bacteria healthy gut bacteria to produce um substances

short chain fatty acids that then lower inflammation further inflammation is super damaging to our blood vessel Health right so if you have if you're inflamed and you've got inflammatory markers I mean we can measure uh in the lab if you take a vile blood you measure your C reactive protein as a marker for inflammation listen that's that inflammation if your CRP if your levels inflammatory markers are high you got inflammation everywhere in your body including in the line of your blood vessels that's 60,000 miles worth of inflammation that's actually a really bad thing to be

carrying around so this is how leafy greens with their polyphenols and their dietary fiber can all conspire in a beneficial way or collaborate in a Ben icial way to be heart healthy starting with improving the health of your blood vessels yeah super interesting any any other foods that we forget about when thinking about our blood vessels that you would like to highlight and encourage us to bring into our diets yeah well you know it turns out that two beverages tea and coffee have polyphenols that are heart healthy and beneficial all right uh tea has kakin

and the specific kakin that has been best studied is called egcg epig Gallo cakin 3 gallate and again I encourage people not to get hung up on the technical stuff unless you're a science geek but um just know that we we know these things uh in coffee there's many different polyphenols one of the best studies called chlorogenic acid um and both of these are heart healthy and blood vascular healthy blood vessel healthy uh for similar reasons they protect your blood vessels against ative stress they um lower inflammation they're good for gut health they improve your

metabolism by helping your body burn down harmful excess body fat which then contributes to inflammation so um so it they're they're powerful levers that can actually help us uh and and if you by the way if you combine this over the course of the day with eating some leafy greens and uh and and then you have some of these blood vessel regenerative foods like The Barley with a beta glucan or the mushrooms um that we talked about earlier or a little bit of dark chocolate high quality dark chocolate you see it's the net consumption of

the things that we're eating all day long that expose our blood vessel that extraordinary Network to help us maintain the roads in our body and that's our circulation you mentioned some of the benefits of green tea there I know you often speak about these drinks that you know all the longevity populations consume tea coffee and water water you've also made a video recently on your YouTube channel about drinks that we can consume that help us with our metabolism and help us perhaps remove visceral fats from you know organs like the liver it's quite an interesting

concept that for people because I think if most people think about their weight and excess fats that may have built up on their body I think there's a widespread View out there that the main thing that matters is being in some form of calorie deficit so essentially you are consuming less than you're burning off so over time you start to lose some of that excess fat and I know your your last book covered this in a lot of detail but just help us understand how important what I just said is versus particular drinks like green

tea or coffee that can really help boost St metabolism can you help us sort of find a way through that in case anyone's getting confused there yeah there's a lot of ways to help our body optimize its metabolism we we talked about one earlier which is don't over consume calories and whatever you do consume make it high quality so that kind of that snapshot can captures a lot of what we talked about earlier but you know there is a hidden mechanism a hidden trigger in our body that can help burn down extra harmful body fat

that um allows us to eat Foods in order to burn fat now that sounds like a contradiction terms right if you want to lose fat you want to not eat right nope actually there are some foods and this is a big surprise and I wrote about this in my book Eat to beat your diet there are some foods that actually trigger fat burning now now to to before I tell you the foods I got to tell you how this works you know um uh the popular uh fad that people have been doing these days like

cold plunges right and cold plunges being a healthy for your metabolism and other things well actually it does work and I'll tell you why it works when you expose your body to cold it the temperature drop actually triggers a special kind of body fat that's not harmful but really beneficial and it's called Brown fat and brown fat is not a fat that most people are familiar with most people are familiar with um white fat we call it white fat they're two different color this is what these this is what this tissue looks like under the

microscope okay white fat looks white Under the microscope if you're in a lab and brown fat looks Brown under the microscope white fat is the uh is sort of the fat that we normally think about it's lumpy bumpy wiggly jiggly it can be under the skin subcutaneous white fat it's under our arms under our chin it's the muffin top that people don't like or the thigh fat or butt fat okay okay but white fat is also uh not only Under the Skin but it's packed inside the tube of our body our body is a tube

so if you look inside the tube of our body um where our organs are our gut our viscera if fat growing there called visceral fat can be extraordinarily dangerous because as it expands it sort of expands like a glove wrapping around your organs and it can be highly inflammatory and that when and so our body has kind of evolved a natural way to tame that kind of extrav visceral fat and it's through Brown fat there other kind of fat now brown fat is not lumpy bumpy wiggly jiggly Brown fat is thin as a sheet and

it's not it's not close to the skin in fact it's close to the Bone it's like it's like attached to the muscle deep underneath your skin and we got a little bit on the side of our neck we have a little bit under our breast bone we got a little bit between our shoulder blades and it's scattered in our belly a little bit all right and what brown fat does does it just kind of hangs out quietly in the background but if there's really cold temperatures okay cold temperatures will trigger to fire up and generate

heat right um uh and and uh when it generates Heat this this evolved in animals uh who are that are hibernating right you get that wood chuck gets nice and fat in the fall into the winter and then it Waddles into the cave and then it's not coming out it's got to stay warm in the winter why doesn't it freeze to death well because the brown fat of those hibernating animals when the weather gets really cold triggers thermogenesis thermal heat Genesis generating heat and that brown fat actually fires up and keeps animal warm all winter

long provides it energy where does it get the energy from the brown fat in hibernating animals has to uh sustain the heat making fuel okay the fuel we talk about fuel again it draws it down from the fat so that's why animals start the winter hibernating as big round you know fat balls and by the time spring comes around they consume most of the energy they've lost most of that fat by generating heat well guess what humans also have that same mechanism in fact it wasn't until 1930s and before until we realized that humans also

a brown fat and it's in the locations I mentioned around your neck behind the breast bone and so on and so forth cold weather will actually fire it up and we disc discovered this by the way it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine um and an analysis of pet scans now pet scans pick up metabolism when you're generating heat when Brown fast generating heat it'll actually light up because of higher metabolism it was picked up in pet scans um uh in New England which is an area in the United States that gets

cold Winters um and uh people were just were looking for um uh uh uh tumors and they found in instead of a tumor they found um something lighting up in the body that turned out to be brown fat uh it wasn't a tumor it was brown fat people had noticed it before no one had noticed it before but then when they actually looked at when pet scans showed the brown fat firing up it was only during scans taken in people who were getting the scans in the winter not in the summer and so seasonally our

Brown Fett lights up which makes sense just like those hibernating animals so cold plung actually are beneficial for your metabolism by firing up your brown fat to burn down your harmful white fat so Brown fat is good fat burns down extra white fat which is bad fat visceral fat and lowers inflammation now temperature does it that's pretty cool there are some drugs that will do it I don't recommend it because they they all have side effects but guess what it turns out that there are certain foods that you can eat that turn on Brown fat

and uh and Beverages and two of them we talked about green tea and uh uh and coffee both contain the polyphenol that light up your brown fat to burn down harmful excess white fat so two Beverages and there's a whole other bunch of foods as well can actually help to stimulate your metabolism by lighting up your brown fat to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make shortterm change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often

they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take they're really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below one last thing I tell you that that that people will like I can't remember which is the brown fat which is the white fat I'll tell you what how you can remember Brown fat you know people are talking about mitochondria now these days in in the health

and wellness world well mitochondria are the little tiny batteries batteries in our cells that give us energy um I remember when I was in medical school I'm sure you had a similar experience memorizing all the different parts of the cell man there are so many different parts of the cell how how on Earth you going to memorize them so I always remember mitochondria as mighty chria these little tiny little things that are small But Mighty and they generate energy and so Brown fat has a lot of mitochondria okay the cell fat cells and that's why

they are able to generate the heat they're like loaded with batteries okay and they the batteries generate heat they draw down the fuel from the white fat well mitochondria have a lot of iron in them iron the same kind of iron that you'd have in nails like you know like for construction now what happens when you take a bunch of silver nails and you stick them outside in your front deck for uh a few days or a week they're going to turn brown cu they oxidize right Rusty Nails and that's what actually happens in our

Brown fat is that the iron attached to other mitochondria and there's a lot of mitochondria which means there's a lot of iron all right gets oxidized and it gets Rusty and that's why Brown fed is brown and white fat doesn't have that so that's the reason that there's white fat and brown fat yeah I love it so if someone is trying to lose excess fat on their body yes they need to think about how many calories overall they're consuming we've covered a little bit on the show already but I guess people really do struggle to

you know lose weight and keep that weight off in the modern food environment so you're saying yes pay attention to how much you're consuming but also if you are consuming the right kinds of foods and drinks like green tea and coffee and I know tomato juice we haven't mentioned today but those things can also help activate Brown fat which is it's all going to help basically you know instead of just taking one approach you're saying why why just stick to one why not do everything that you possibly can to increase the chances of success that's

right and and you know and do it in ways that are kind of natural uh and don't don't force you to take it go to extremes so one thing is just putting Less on your plate it's e that's a that's low hanging fruit that's easy to do um whatever you put put on your plate make it plant-based and as healthy as possible don't eat too much saturated fat don't eat too much salt don't don't and don't have added sugars yeah listen that's a that's also pretty easy you just got to remember the details on that

so again less fuel but high quality fuel that makes a lot of sense um now if you want to actually add to this uh you know this idea of like a uh burning down fat now you can actually think about swapping out the food foods that grow fat in fact um that build fat and swapping them out for foods that burn down fat so swap your soda for tea or coffee all right and now rather than building up your uh fat with empty calories you know extra calories from the soda or destroying your gut microbiome

with the diet soda now you're actually drinking a beverage that traditional and you know tastes great to to most people people uh that actually will light up your brown fat at the same time and to burn down harmful visceral fat so simple swaps can you know swap out something that's not good for you that builds your fat with something that actually can burn down your fat that's a simple uh thing as well but you know and then but if you think about like what about planning a meal right like oh my gosh you know I

gotta if you have to do your meal plan for the week and you think about what you're going to shop on shop for that can and then you want to choose healthy oh man that's another layer I got to actually deal with to figure out like what should I buy that's healthy well look let me kind of run down some interesting foods that can have been shown in human studies to burn down harmful body fat all right and and let me challenge you if you're going to listen to this to write it down on your

grocery list and see if this is something you might consider buying all right as long as you don't eat too much of it all right onions onions have coratin mostly packed on the outer layer of the onion so once you peel the onion um don't throw away don't peel off too much of the outer layer because most of that fat burning cortin Brown fat lighting up cortin is on the outer layer red onions got more the good stuff than uh yellow onions but yellow onions are also good uh what about um Tomatoes turns out lopine

in tomatoes which helps to make the tomato red uh actually uh can burn down extra body fat it can actually even burn down visceral fat by through thermogenesis that can you shrink your waistline your you know you're not stretching out the tube of your body as much it'll shrink it down this has been studied in humans um what about uh strawberries strawberries ripe strawberries been shown to actually um burn down harmful visceral fat a can of inexpensive white beans has been studied just eating you know a can of beans uh uh for five days out

of seven days been shown to shrink your waistline by one inch by burning down harmful body fat uh what's in a bean well a lot of dietary fiber some healthy uh fight fats from the legumes obviously how you cook the beans going to make a difference you know if you want to Stew them add a little extra virgin olive oil and now you've ganged up because olive oil can also burn down harmful body fat as well carrots can burn down harmful visceral fat all you need to eat and this has been studied is the equivalent

of three medium-sized carrots a day can actually turn on your thermogenesis going to make a salad going to roast some carrots hey you know what um I'm just giving you a partial grocery list but if you if you think you can take that and run with it oh what about Seafood let's say that you do eat seafood all right um listen I'm an omnivore I I pretty much eat anything I try to eat healthy things I I try to mostly e plantbased foods I eat actually only a very tiny amount of meat um and I

try to choose high quality whatever it is I I'm eating but Seafood actually contains omega-3 fatty acids guess what that's another healthy fat actually omega-3 is a lot of people don't realize are originally coming from Plants they come from algae all right uh so the plants of the sea is where they're originally coming from uh and they wind up in Seafood most people think oh I got to eat salmon I'm sick of salmon or I got to eat tuna it's expensive you know what actually turns out that lesser fish more inexpensive fish uh and shellfish

uh also have omega-3s um and so sure salmon has a lot um but you can can actually look at COD or flounder or other types of or Mediterranean Sea basss they all have omega-3s uh that are healthy for you and so do muscles and clams if you eat shellfish and squid and octopus and shrimp okay they all have omega-3s and that's another way if you live near the coast or you're somebody who enjoys cooking and you want to kind of live it up with uh uh you know some seafood you know that's also a way

of turning on your good beneficial Brown fat to burn down your harmful excess white fat the underscore here though I want to say even though I mentioned a lot of ingredients you got to remember how you prepare the food is important if you don't want to be putting a lot of butter into it you don't want to putting a lot of salt into it that can damage your blood vessels you don't you know cook in a healthy way you don't need to steam everything but you want to actually be mindful you're not going to fry

everything either yeah Dr Le you have such a wonderful way of talking about food you clearly explain the science but your passion infuses through everything and it it kind of leaves us all with this idea that the foods we choose can be a creative Pursuit for us yes it's for our health but there's a it's like an autistic Endeavor that we can play with to actually find the things that we can utilize to improve our health so I really really appreciate that I also appreciate that list at the end there many of those foods that

you recommended were very very affordable which I think is a you know something to be very aware of these days to finish off Dr Lee if someone has heard our conversation and they're like okay Dr Lee I hear what you're saying I understand the science there but I don't really need to change much my life is going pretty well I think I'm of a decent way I can function at work why should I start changing the food that I put on my plates What would you say to them well listen I you know my current

research the area that I am working on you know my books are all about the work the research I'm doing I'm I'm not like I'm not reaching for topics to cover I'm I'm writing about what I'm researching and right now I'm researching about aging healthy aging including longevity and I'm I'm researching brain health and all the things connected to brain health and one of the reasons that I you know to answer to somebody who's asking the questions that you just stated I would say listen if you are doing pretty well now keep it up all

right but what the exciting research is showing is that if you push a little bit harder and try to buff up some of those areas even by a little bit you could actually be doing yourself a service to improve your brain health as you get older in remarkable ways like for example here's one um H you know I'm eating plenty of fruits and vegetables I'm fine well you know what uh you might be amazed to know that um strawberries even a cup one cup of ripe strawberries a day all right has been shown to actually

reduce uh cognitive decline uh in in human clinical studies and also reduce the uh depression that comes with cognitive decline what's in a strawberry you got elic acid and anthocyanins these are natural molecules that we're discovering and so we're discovering the benefits to brain health of r strawberries so you know maybe you're eating healthy but maybe the next time you go by a market and you just are walking by those strawberries you might want to do a double take and go back and say you know I'm GNA try some of those now and so these

little tiny extra tweaks if you're somebody who's already healthy think about what you're doing if if you feel it pretty good now great now it's time to actually level up to actually see if you can do something to make yourself even better in the future and so I think thinking about our uh what we do now having an impact in the future it's kind of like saying rather than uh put all my money under my mattress which is sort of a Depression era thing why don't we invest our money in some good things I you're

going to have the money anyway but where are you going to put it under your mattress or you going to invest it in something that's going to grow and I think that making healthy food choices are a way of growing our health and this is where my research Is Now by growing your Health you know you're you're you're really investing and you're becoming wealthier uh inside out um uh in terms of brain health which is a huge dividend for you uh I mean think about it the thing that all this discussion about longevity and mitochondria

and glucose spiking and you know and and and trying to get your ceru and you know like all the millions of things that people are talking about now I have one thing to say to that who wants to live longer if you're not able to have good brain health you could live to 1502 200 go for it but if your brain isn't working it's not worth living for and so that's why I think that in this accompanying this quest to live long we want to live well and the choices that you're making now the research

is finding remarkably that we can actually improve our future us as well in ways that are profoundly important our vision our brain you know our muscle strength uh our ability to enjoy life um you know you talk you mentioned the word passion we want to actually really enjoy every year that we get yeah and I think that the good choices those little tiny little tweaks we make they can have a big they can make a big difference yeah with I love that thank you so much for that impassioned plea at the end of our conversation

where would you direct people who want to learn more obviously you have two wonderful books but you also have an online course that people can do I believe yeah so you know first of all I have a YouTube channel uh anybody who's interested in YouTube check out check out the the content because I'm putting out stuff that people are asking me all the time uh I can't always you know get in front of an audience a live audience that you do it so I'm like okay I'm just gonna I'm just going to put it up

on YouTube so my YouTube channel Dr Dr William Lee lii um uh my website is also the same it's www.dd William le.com and I'm on social media however if you want to uh really do a deep dive with me I'm happy to accompany you and be sort of your um uh your your guide on a health journey and I I do an online course which is a really really deep dive for a month at a time uh with a lot of interaction and I teach you about your body's Health defense systems it's called the E

to be disease online course I've been doing it for um uh more than four years now and I'll tell you what's remarkable is there are more than 4,000 people from 80 countries that have taken it so one of the um sources of Pride I have of the impact that's actually having is really being able to have this broad reach from all around the world and what I try to encourage my students to do is not only to learn these practical tips and how they can help make daily moves to actually help them their own health

but I encourage them to share their insights with their family and friends as well and then they become the expert they become the person who is actually able to communicate something important that's based in science and evidence that they've learned in order to help other people become healthier as well so this is a something you know living life with purpose is actually something that's very very satisfying I think to most of us certainly to me and so I try to share that with people by saying listen if you know how to live a little bit

healthier and you can share it with your kids or you could share it with your neighbor or your friends and then they become a little bit healthier you've actually made an impact on the world yeah I love it dosy you're doing fantastic work thank you for coming on the show Once Again always a pleasure thanks for inviting me if you enjoyed that conversation then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I've picked out especially the food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest

form of poison that's a phrase from Anne Wigmore I think it absolutely stands true