Dr. Michael Greger: "How Not To Diet" | Evidence Based Weight Loss

they gave me 15 minutes introduce dr. Greger which is not enough but actually I only need a minute I just want to say a couple of moments how many people have been coming to PB NSG for a year or less or maybe even this is your first meeting just raise your hand okay so I do want to point out it was I feel nostalgic because Paul chatlin is not here he's in Florida he's watching happy birthday Paul wherever the camera is I think we should all shout happy birthday Paul Shalit yay Paul hopefully you heard

that you'll probably text me in a minute but I do want to say for those who have been coming here relatively recently I'm nostalgic because it was exactly I think to the day that I got a text from Paul chatlin a man I did not know who reached out to me to say I understand you're a cardiologist it supports plant-based eating I am a miracle basically this is what he said I was supposed to have bypass surgery six months or so before the summer of 2013 he was calling me January 2014 the thing is it

worked and I'm great and I feel wonderful I just am lonely because I don't know people doing this I understand you might have some patients you've been educating and the truth is I've been doing that for decades and we got together had a cup of tea in my kitchen table and we said let's get a room let's be crazy let's get a little room at Beaumont Hospital put out one little ad in a local newspaper and see if we can get 15 or 20 people interested in a support group kind of a Weight Watchers a

a kind of church base whatever you want to call it support group and for those of you that weren't there and I was the room that hold a tea at Beaumont we had 136 people and maybe I'm off by a couple show up it actually violated the fire code it was insanely interesting on a snowy very very treacherous February night the hospital administration was a little concerned because they hadn't really approved the agenda and they're way too many people they let us do it one more time the next month and the next month about 150

people showed up and they ended our relationship with that hospital because we violated the fire code and we were talking about healing disease with nutrition and that's not even now in 2020 always well accepted in a hospital and graciously this high school another high school accepted us but if you would have asked us then with grow to 7,000 members and cookbooks and cooking classes and prominent speakers and internationally known speakers I mean it's phenomenal and there's no doubt about it I I kicked a little in the beginning get it going Paul chatlin the volunteers now

Lisa Smith the board now dr. breaky and such carolyn trap has been here from day one it there is no city in the United States that has what we have we're hoping they all get it and Paul chatlin is working on that and you know Chicago has a start up in Philadelphia and others but you know we have such a amazing ability you know and I'm gonna do one more thing before I introduce them because I do have a minute according to the clock if you're in the room and you've used plant-based nutrition to help

you move towards reversing a disease maybe losing a medicine blood pressure diabetes heart disease if you're comfortable stand on up for those that don't know so I mean once you look around this this is not what you're going to see at a medical conference for the American Heart Association American Diabetes Association it's hard work and it takes change and it takes support in community but it happens I'll just ask one more thing if you're in the room and your main goal was weight loss and you've used plant-based nutrition I'll say conservative lose 30 or more

pounds there's nothing special about that number I'm just picking stand-up if that's been a result you've been able to achieve using plant-based nutrition yeah you know and that's not we're not shaming we're just recognizing in the medical world carrying excess weight can be related to certain medical conditions and medical costs and for some people losing weight is the pathway towards their health and we're gonna hear all about it I have read dr. Gregers book the new one he was very kind and send me a preprint I literally and I'm not joking couldn't put it down

I took notes all through it I just haven't got to the 4400 medical references yet and all but all right well thank you for sharing that we do have some you know world record setters in the room who have completely reversed chronic conditions have completely reversed obesity I won't point them out particularly but you know that's the real deal here if you wonder if it works you know there are some doctors are some dietitians there are some other just regular people that actually watch forks over knives read some books took a cooking class and you

know just applied it whatever their own medical team said or not although you always want to work with them if you can dr. Michael Greger MD fellow of the American College of lifestyle medicine is a physician New York Times bestselling author and if not already soon-to-be I'm sure a repeat New York Times bestselling author are you yet already alright and an internationally recognized speaker on nutrition food safety and public health issues a family member and fellow the American College of lifestyle medicine he's a licensed general practitioner specializing in nutrition graduating from the Cornell University School

a Greek ultra and Tufts University School Medicine he was honored with the lifestyle medicine Trailblazer award in 2017 and the co-founder of course if you don't know of nutritionfacts.org the best thing you can do when you drive when you on vacation just listen to him don't watch him while you drive but just use your time wisely before the current book in the topic is mega best-selling how not to die book reached unbelievable records followed by the cookbook and I say this this is I think the most amazing comment of this introduction out introduction a hundred

percent of all proceeds he's ever received from books DVDs speaking engagements have and always will be donated to charity and I heard on an interview I heard on an interview that this book that he has tonight had a advance of 1.5 million dollars I mean very few authors anywhere of any kind of book get that kind of money and that I went to research this evening dr. ergo will share his research and experience and the question how can we best use science to manage our weight most optimally dr. Michael Greger come on up stand up

[Applause] [Applause] now the pressures on 4,400 about 4990 references Regis exactly a rages surely if there was some safe simple side effect free solution to the obesity epidemic we know about it by now right well I'm not so sure may take an average of 17 years before research evidence makes it into day-to-day clinical practice to take one example that was particularly poignant for my family heart disease decades ago dr. Dean Ornish and colleagues published evidence one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world that our leading cause of death could be reversed with diet

and lifestyle changes alone yet hardly anything changed even now hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to die from what we learned decades ago was a reversible condition I had seen it with my own eyes my grandmother was cured of her end-stage heart disease by one of Dean's contemporaries Nathan Pritikin using similar methods she was given a medical death sentence at age 65 after one too many open-heart surgeries but thanks to a healthy diet she was able to enjoy another 31 years on this planet until age 96 to continue to enjoy your six grandkids including me

so the fact that was the cure to our number one killer could get lost down some rabbit hole and ignored what else might there be in the medical literature that could help my patients but just didn't having a corporate budget driving his promotion well I made it my life's mission to find out for that's why I became a doctor in the first place and why I started my non-profit site nutritionfacts.org everything on the website it's free no ads no corporate sponsorships strictly non-commercial not selling anything just put up as a public service as a labor

of love as a tribute to my grandmother nobody is anarchists almost every day on the latest in evidence-based nutrition what a concept all right so what does this science show is the best way to lose weight well if you want testimonials and before-and-after pictures you have come to the wrong place I'm not interested in anecdotes I'm interested in evidence when it comes to making decisions is life and death important as what to feed yourself and your family well then there's really only one question what does the best available balance of evidence say right now the

problem is that even just sticking to the peer-reviewed medical literature is not enough as folson unscientifically unsupported beliefs about obesity are pervasive even in scientific journals right the only way to get the truth then is to dive deep into the primary letter to read all the original studies themselves but who's got time for that there are more than 1/2 million scientific papers on obesity with a hundred new ones published every day but that's what we do it nutritionfacts.org we comb through tens of thousands of studies in year so you don't have to very nice and

indeed we uncovered a treasure trove of buried data like for example today I'll cover simple spices proven and randomized controlled trials to accelerate weight loss for pennies today but with so little profit potential it's no wonder that those studies never saw the light of day of course the only profiting I care about though is your health that's why 100% of the proceeds I received from all my books are all done to charity I just want to do for your family what Pritikin did for my family but wait isn't weight lost just about eating less and

moving more I mean isn't a calorie a calorie that's what the food industry wants you to think the notion that a cow from one source is just as fattening as the county from any other source is a trope broadcast by the food industry as a way to absolve itself of culpability coca-cola even put out an ad emphasizing this one simple common sense of fact as the current and past chairs of Harvard's nutrition department put it this central argument from industry is that the overconsumption of calories from carrots would be no different than the overconsumption of

calories from soda I mean if calories just a calorie why does it matter what kind of food we put in our mouths well let's explore that example of carrots versus coca-cola now it's true that in a tightly controlled laboratory setting the 240 calories of carrots 10 carrots would have the same effect on calorie balances the 240 calories in a bottle of coke but those comparisons fall flat on their face out in the real world I mean you can chug those liquid candy calories down in less than a minute but eating 240 calories of carrots might

take you more than two and a half hours of constant chewing it's been tested not only would your jaw get sore but 240 calories of carrots that's 5 cups karates I mean you might not even be able to fit all those in I mean our stomach is only so big I mean once we fill it up stretch receptors in our stomach tell us that when we've had enough but different foods have different amounts of calories per stomachful some foods have more calories per cup per per mouthful per pound than others this is the concept of

calorie density the number of calories in a given amount of food as you can see oil for example has a high calorie density meaning it has a high calorie concentration lots of calories in just a small space so drizzling just a tablespoon of oil onto a dish adds over 100 calories and for those same calories you could have instead eaten about 2 cups of blackberries for example a food with low calorie density so these two meals have the same number of calories I mean you could swing down that spoonful of oil not even feel a

difference in your stomach right we need a couple cups of berries I mean that could start to fill you up so that's why yes biochemically a calorie is a calorie but eating the same amount of cowers in different forms can have different effects I mean the average human stomach can expand to fit about 4 cups of food so you know a single stomach full of strawberry ice cream for example could max out your calorie intake for the entire day to get those same 2,000 calories from strawberries themselves you'd have to eat 44 cups of berries

now I mean that's that's 11 stomach full right I mean as delicious as berries are I don't think I could fill my stomach to bursting 11 times a day I mean some foods are just impossible to overeat you physically just could not fit them into your stomach because they're so low in calories today I mean you couldn't even maintain your weight in a lab a calorie is a calorie but in life far from it traditional weight loss diets focus on decreasing portion size but these kind of eat less approaches can leave people feeling hungry or

unsatisfied a more effective approach then is to shift the emphasis from restriction to positive eaten more messaging of increasing the intake of healthy low calorie density foods but you don't know until you put it to the test indeed researchers in Hawaii try to put in people on a more traditional Hawaiian died with all the plant foods they could eat unlimited quantities of fruits vegetables whole grains and beans and the study subjects lost an average of 17 pounds within 21 days calorie intake dropped 40% but not because they were eating less food they lost 17 pounds

in three weeks eating more food in excess of four pounds of food today how could this be because whole plant foods tend to be so calorically dilute you could stuff yourself without getting the same kind of weight gain they lost 17 pounds in three weeks eating more food that's why in my new book how not to diet which I'm very excited about that's why low in calorie density is on my list of the 17 ingredients for an ideal weight loss diet since Americans average about 3 pounds of food a day if you stuck with mostly

the these foods you could see how you can eat more food and still lose weight [Music] vegetables have the lowest calorie density so researchers at Penn State decided to put them to the test study subjects we're served pasta told to eat as much sure as little pasta as they wanted on average they consumed about 900 calories of pasta now what do you think would happen if as a first course you gave them about a hundred calories of salad composed of largely lettuce carrots cucumbers celery and cherry tomatoes ok would they go on to eat the

same amount of pasta and end up with a thousand calorie lunch 900 plus 100 or would they eat a hundred fewer calories of pasta effectively cancelling out the added salad calories it was even better than that they ate more than 200 fewer calories right thanks to the salad one hundred calories in 200 calories out so in essence the salad had negative 100 calories pre-loading with vegetables can effectively subtract 100 calories out of a meal that's how you can lose weight by eating more food of course the type of salad matters the research has repeated the

experiment adding a fatty dressing and shredded cheese which quadrupled the salads calorie density now eating that salad as a first course didn't turn a 900 calorie meal into one with less than 800 calories instead it turned it into a meal with you know calories and the quadruple digits I mean it's like a pre-loading pizza with garlic bread or something right I mean just you end up eating more food more calories overall so what's the cutoff studies I'm pre-loading show they eating about a cup of food before a meal decreases subsequent intake by about a hundred

calories so to get a negative calorie of facts the first course would have to contain less than 100 calories per cup right so as you can see in the chart that includes most fresh fruits and vegetables but having something like a dinner roll or something would just simply not work but hey give people a large apple to eat before that same pasta meal and rather than consuming about 200 calories less it was more like 300 calories less so how many calories does an apple have it pens on when you eat it eaten before meal it

could effectively have negative 200 calories you see the same thing giving people a vegetable soup as a first course hundreds of calories disappear one study that tracked people didn't take throughout the entire day even found that overweight subjects randomized a pre lunch vegetable soup not only ate less lunch but deducted an extra bonus hundred calories from dinner to a whole seven hours later so the next time you sit down to some healthy soup you can imagine calories being veritably sucked out of your system with every spoonful even just drinking two cups of water immediately before

meal cause people need about 200 calories actually 20% less taking in about a hundred fewer calories so no wonder why overweight men and women randomized to two cups of water before each meal lost weight 44% faster two cups of water before each meal 44 percent faster weight loss but who's gonna profit from telling you that that's why so called a negative calorie pre-loading is on my list of weight loss boosters they serve all the things I could find that can accelerate weight loss regardless what you eat the rest of the time anything we can put

on that first course salad to boost weight loss even further well in my amping ampk section I'll talk about ways to activate an enzyme known as The Fat Controller its discovery is considered one of the most important medical breakthroughs in the last few decades you can activate it this enzyme through exercise fasting or nicotine but is there any way to boost it for weight loss without the sweat hunger or whole daemul horrific death from lung cancer thing well Big Pharma is all over it I mean after all obese individuals may be unwilling to perform even

a minimum of physical activity wrote a group of pharmacologists thus indicating that drugs mimicking endurance exercise may be highly desirable so it's crucial that oral compounds with high bioavailability are developed to safely induce chronic Am peak activation for long-term weight loss and maintenance but there's no need to develop such a compound because you can already buy it at any grocery store it's called vinegar when vinegar acetic acid is metabolized by our body we get a natural ampk boost I mean enough of a boost though to to lose weight at a typical dose you might get

dressing us out well let's look I mean look vinegar has been evidently used for centuries for weight loss but only recently has it been put to the test a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial on the effects of a vinegar intake on the reduction of body fat in overweight men and women the subjects were randomized to drink a beverage can anyone do two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or a placebo control group drinking a beverage developed a taste like the vinegar drink but prepare with a different kind of acid so it didn't actually have any vinegar in

it three months in the fake vinegar placebo group actually gained body fat is overweight people tend to do over time whereas the genuine vinegar group significantly lost body fat is determined by CT scan a little vinegar a day led to pounds of weight loss a chief for just pennies a day without removing anything from their diets that's my why one of my 21 tweaks to accelerate weight loss is two teaspoons of vinegar with each meal either sprinkled on your salad or even just you know added to some tea with some lemon juice or something now

the vinegar studies were nicest because they were placebo controlled I mean that's hard to do with food right people tend to know what they're eating I mean you can't stuff a cabbage into a capsule but there are some foods so potent then you can actually fit them into a pill to pit them against placebos and that's spices one no garlic can cause weight loss well simple give people some garlic powder pills right versus placebo pills and garlic worked resulting both a drop of weight and waste lines within six weeks now here they use half a

teaspoon of garlic powder a day that would cost less than four cents for cents to steep well how about two cents 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder day but a hundred men and women were randomized to a quarter teaspoon worth of garlic powder a day and those unknowingly taking the two cents worth of garlic powder lost about six pounds of straight body fat over the next fifteen weeks now if you can splurge up to three cents a day for all the big spenders there's black cumin meta-analysis of randomized control trials show weight loss of efficacy with

again just a quarter a spoon and a said wait a sec what is black cumin you obviously have not been reading your Bible described as a miracle herb besides the weight loss their randomized control trial showing daily black human consumption significantly improving cholesterol and triglycerides significantly improves blood pressure and blood sugar control but I use it just because it tastes good right it's just a spice I just put black cumin seeds and a pepper grinder just use it like black pepper with more than that thousand papers published in the medical literature in black humans some

reporting extraordinary results like dropping cholesterol levels as much as a statin drug why don't we hear more about it I mean why weren't we taught about it in medical school presumably because there's no profit motive right black human is just a common natural spice I mean you're not gonna thrill your stockholders selling something you can't patent that costs only three cents a day or you can use regular cumin acts as an appetite suppressant those randomized to a half teaspoon for lunch and dinner over three months lasts four more pounds in an extra inch off their

waist found comparable to an obesity drug known as orlistat that may sound familiar that's the anal leakage drug you may have heard about though the drug company evidently prefers the term fecal spotting to describe the rectal discharge that their drug causes the drug company's website offers some helpful tips though it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants and bring a change of clothes with you to work I mean you know just in case their drug causes you to crap your pants at work I think I'll stick with the cumin thank you very much cayenne

pepper can counteract the metabolic slowing that accompanies weight loss and accelerated fat burning as a bonus ginger powder over a dozen randomized controlled trials starting just a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger a day showing significant decrease body weight again for just pennies a day prove it in placebo controlled trials to work we probably never heard about any of this because it just can't make enough profit my section on fat burning foods excuse me fat blocking food starts out with a command to eat your thylakoids doctor's orders what on earth is a thylakoid oh just the

source of all known life and the oxygen we breathe no biggie talak odds are where photosynthesis takes place the process by which plants turn light into food solenoids are these the great green engine of life these microscopic little sac-like structures composed of chlorophyll rich membranes concentrated in the leaves of plants when we eat thylakoids in other words when you bite into a leaf of spinach those green leaf membranes don't get immediately digested they can last for hours and our intestines and that's where they work their magic I look away membranes bind to lipase lipase is

the enzyme our body uses to digest fat so if you bind the enzyme then you can slow fat absorption say wait a sec I mean if all fat is eventually absorbed though no what's the benefit location location location there's a phenomenon known is the ileal break the the ileum is the last part of the small intestine for dumps into the large intestine when undigested calories are discovered detected that far down in your intestine your body thinks oh I must be full from stem to stern and puts the brakes on eating more by dialing down your

appetite this can be shown experimental if you insert a nine-foot tube down people's throats and drip in any kind of calories fat protein sugar you can activate the illegal brake then sit them down to an all-you-can-eat meal and compared to the placebo group that just got a little squirt of water through the tube they eat over 100 calories less they just don't feel as hungry right they feel just this full eating significantly less that's the ileal break in action this can then translate into weight loss randomized overweight women to a diet of green plant membranes

in other words just covertly slip them a little powdered spinach and they get a boost in appetite suppressing hormones a decreased urge for sweets and a decrease for chocolate this is amazing so these are women who've been who been slipped some spinach versus something that just looked like green powder but it wasn't actually spinach so they didn't know who was who but look at this craving for sweets this is hours later four hours later those that got the spinach they're like sweets sweets chocolate who wants chocolate I don't even like oh right first I mean

it's just amazing different in all just because they got slipped a little of these thylakoids it just changed their whole brain chemistry over it so now the and oh and of course the most important part is the accelerated weight loss boom right all thanks to eating green the actual green itself the chlorophyll packed membranes in the leaves now the researchers use spinach powder only because then they could disguise it so they couldn't tell who is actually eating spinach or not but you can get just as many thylakoids eating a half cup of cooked spinach a

day right totally doable which is look that's what I recommend people eat two times a day in my daily doesn't check list of all the healthiest of healthy foods I encourage people to fit into their daily routine in the Journal of the Society of chemical industry a group of Food Technologists argued that given their fat blocking benefits thylakoid membranes could be incorporated into functional foods is a promising new appetite reducing ingredient or you could just get them the way mother nature intended and now though thyroids eventually get broken down fibre makes it all the way

down to our colon and while it's technically true that we can't digest fiber it's only applicable to the part of us that's actually human most of the cells in our body are actually bacteria our gut flora which way is much of one of our kidneys metabolically active as our liver has been a call to our forgotten organ and it's an organ that runs on Mac microbiota accessible carbohydrates so when you see me you know right things like you know eat lots of Big Macs I don't want anyone to get any wrong impression here Mac is

just another name for prebiotics but our good flora eat in other words fiber what you are good bugs do with fiber while we feed them and they feed us right back they make short chain fatty-acids with fiber then they can absorb from our colon into our bloodstream circulate throughout our bodies and even end up in or in our brain it's like the way our gut flora communicate with us by sending out these little chemical signals dialing down our appetite all the while increasing the rate at which we burn fat and boosting our metabolism at the

same time all thanks to fiber check this out put people in a brain scanner and show them a high calorie food like a doughnut and the reward centers and the brains instantly light up but if you repeat the experiment but this time secretly deliver fiber derived short chain fatty-acids directly into their rectum you get a blunted reward center response and subjects report the high calorie foods just seemed less appealing and subsequently they ate less of an all-you-can-eat meal but fiber supplements like Metamucil don't work which makes sense because they're non fermentable meaning your good gut

bugs can't eat it so yeah it improves bowel regularity but can't be used by a good gut bacteria to make those compounds that block your cravings for that you actually have to eat real food our good gut bugs are trying to help us right but when we eat a diet and deficient in fiber we are in effect starving our microbial cells less than 5% of Americans even reach to recommend a minimum adequate intake of fiber no surprises the number-one source of fiber are beans and whole grains and 96% of Americans don't even reach the recommended

minimum intake of legumes which are being split peas chickpeas and lentils and 99 percent free to recommend a minimum for whole grains most people don't even know what fiber is more than half of Americans surveyed think that steak is a significant source of fiber however by definition fibers only found in one place and that's plants right zero fiber meat dairy or eggs and little to no fiber and processed junk and therein lies our problem okay cap but wouldn't at least the protein and that stink fill you up well surprisingly even a review supported by the

meat dairy and egg industries acknowledged that protein intake does not actually translate into eating less later on whereas you eat a fiber rich whole grain for supper and it can cut your calorie intake more than twelve hours later at lunch the next day you feel full about a hundred calories quicker the following day because by then your good gut bugs are chewing down on the same food and dialing down your appetite today even meat could be considered junk food more than a century well the major goals of animal agriculture was the increased in carcass fat

quantity and we take chicken for example you know a hundred years ago the USDA determined chicken it was about 23 percent protein by weight and less than two percent fat today chickens have been genetically manipulated through selective breeding to have 10 times more fat chicken little has become chicken big and maybe making us bigger chew now meat consumption in general is associated with weight gain but poultry appears to be the worst even just a an ounce a day I mean that's like a single chicken nugget or one chicken breast every 10 days was associated with

weight gain compared to eating no chicken all yeah you know it's funny when the when the meat industry funds obesity stays on chicken they choose for their head-to-head comparison foods like cookies and sugar-coated chocolates now this is a classic drug industry trick where you make your product look better by comparing it to something substandard right well apparently just regular chocolate wasn't enough to make chicken look better okay but what happens when chicken is pitted against a real control like chicken without the actual chicken chicken chickens out both soy based proteins and corn which is a

plant-based meat made from the mushroom kingdom we found out stronger satiating qualities than chicken feet people love chicken and rice lunch and four and a half hours later they eat 18 percent more calories of a dinner buffet than those who had instead be given a lunch of chicken free chicken and rice these findings are consistent with childhood obesity research they found that meat consumption seemed to double the odds of school children becoming overweight compared to the consumption of plant-based meat products now of course whole food sources of plant protein like beans did even better though

associated with cutting in half the odds of kids becoming overweight so that's why I consider these kinds of you know plant-based meats as a more of a useful stepping stone towards a healthier diet rather than the end game ideal and part of the reason that plant-based meats may be less fattening is if they caused the loss of an insulin spike meat free chicken like corn costs up to 41 percent less of an immediate insulin reaction it turns out animal protein causes almost exactly as much insulin release as pure sugar just adding some egg whites to

your diet can increase insulin up by as much as 60% within four days and fish maybe even worse wait second why would adding tuna to mashed potatoes spike up insulin levels but adding broccoli instead cut the insulin response by about 40 percent I mean it's not the fibre because given the exact same amount of broccoli fiber alone provided no significant benefits so why does the animal protein make things worse but the plant protein make things better well plant proteins tend to be lower in the branched chain amino acids which are associated with the insulin resistance

the cause of type 2 diabetes you can show this experimentally you give some vegans branched chain amino acids and you can making them as insulin resistant as omnivores or you take some omnivores and you put them even through a 48-hour vegan diet challenge and within two days you can see the opposite significant improvements in metabolic health why because decreased consumption a branched chain amino acids improves metabolic health check this out those randomized to restrict their protein intake we're averaging literally hundreds more calories per day so they should have become fatter right but no they actually

lost more body fat restricting their protein enables them to eat more calories while at the same time they lost more weight more calories but a loss of body fat and this magic protein restriction they were just having people eat the recommended amount of protein right so maybe they should have called this the you know normal protein group or the recommended protein group and the group that is eating more typical American protein levels and suffering because of it the excess protein group given the metabolic harms of excess branched chain amino acid exposure leaders in the field

has suggested the invention of drugs to block their absorption to promote metabolic health and treat diabetes and obesity without restrict caloric intake or we can just try to not eat so many branch chain amino acids in the first place where they found mostly in meat clean chicken and fish dairy products and eggs perhaps explain why animal protein has been associated with higher risk of diabetes whereas plant protein appears protective so defining the appropriate upper limits of animal protein intake may offer a great chance for the prevention of type 2 diabetes and obesity but it need

not be all or nothing even an intermittent vegan diet may be beneficial if there's one piece of advice that best sums up the recommendations in my new book it would be to wall off your calories let me tell you what them what I mean by that animal cells are encased only in easily digestible membranes which are allows the enzymes and our gut to to effortlessly liberate the calories within them you know steak for example but plant cells on the other hand have cell walls that are made out of fiber which acts as an indigestible physical

barrier so many of the calories remain trapped now process plant foods like fruit juice right sugar refined grains even whole grains if they've been powdered into flour have had their cellular structure destroyed their cell walls cracked open and their calories are free for the taking right but when we eat structurally intact plant foods chew all your one you're still going to end up with calories completely encapsulated with by fiber which then blunts the glycemic index activates the ileal brake and provides sustenance to our friendly flora so bottom line trying to make sure as many of

your calories as possible your protein your carbs your fat are encased in cell walls in other words from whole intact plant foods that's what nature intended to happen a millions of years before we learned how to sharpen Spears and and mill grains and boil sugar cane our entire physiology is presumed to evolved in the context of eating with the rest of our great ape cousins eat plants the Paleolithic period when we started using tools all that goes back about two million years we and other great apes have been evolving since back in the Miocene yura

more like 20 million years ago right so for the first 90 percent of our hominoid existence our bodies evolved on mostly plants so it's no wonder our bodies may thrive best on the diets we were designed to eat so maybe we should go back to our roots with enough portion control anyone can lose weight you know lock someone in a closet Forsman lose as much body fat as you want yep chaining someone to a treadmill could have a similar effect right okay but what is the most effective weight loss regimen that doesn't involve calorie restriction

or exercise or a felony well I have scoured the medical literature at all and looked at all the randomized control trials and the single most successful strategy to date is a diet of whole plant foods the single most effective weight loss intervention like that ever published in peer-reviewed scientific literature a whole food plant-based diet and that works better than anything else studied to date and no wonder right give them what we just learned about fiber branch amino acids and all that stuff okay I mean look we've known for more than 40 years there are those

eating predominantly plant-based way on average about 30 pounds less than the general population but you don't know if it's the diet itself until you put it to the test in 2017 a group of New Zealand researchers published the Broadstone a 12-week randomized control trial done in the poorest region of the country with the highest obesity rates avoiding individuals were randomized to receive either standard medical care or semi-weekly classes offering advice and encouragement to the low-fat diets ended around fruits vegetables whole grains and legumes and that's all it was just empowerment with knowledge no meals were

provided or the intervention groups were just merely informed about the benefits of plant-based eating and encouraged to you know try to fit it into their own lives well no significant change in the control group as expected but the plant-based group even without any restrictions on portions and able to you know freely eat all the healthy plant foods they wanted lost an average of 19 pounds or by the end of the three-month study okay I mean 19 pounds that's a respectable weight loss right okay yeah but what happened next right at the end of those 12

weeks class was dismissed and no more instruction was given right the researchers were curious though as to you know how much weight that subjects had gained back after being released from the study so everyone was invited back at the six-month mark to get reweighed I mean yeah the plant-based group had left the three-month study 19 pounds lighter but you know after six months there were only down 27 pounds they got even better right see the plant-based group had been feeling so good both physically and mentally had been able to come off so many their medications

they were sticking with the diet on their own and the weight had continued to come off what about a year later you know even the studies that last a whole year right where people are coach this down a particular diet the entire time by the end of the year any initial weight lost at the beginning first few months you know tends to creep on back right the broad study only lasted three months get after it was all over those who've been randomized to the plant-based group now I lost the pounds they kept it off not

only did they achieve greater weight loss the six and 12 months in any other comparable trial that was months after the study had already ended a whole food plant-based diet achieved the greatest weight loss ever recorded compared to any other such intervention published in the medical literature you can read the record-breaking study in full for free at nature.com slash article slash n UT d20 173 or you just point your phone camera at the screen and pick off the QR code you know any diet that results in reduced calorie intake can result in weight loss I

mean shedding pounds isn't so much the issue the problem is keeping them off and a key difference between plant-based nutrition and more traditional approaches to weight loss is that people are encouraged to eat ad libitum meaning eat as much as you want right no calorie counting no portion control just eating right the strategy is to improve the quality of food rather than restricting the quantity of food if you put people on a diet packed the fruits vegetables whole grains and beans and allowed me to as much as they want they end up eating about 50

percent fewer calories than they would have otherwise I mean just as full on half the calories how can you keep people satisfied cutting more than a thousand calories out of their daily diets you do that by feeding them high bulk low calorie density foods vegetables fruits whole grains and beans and fewer calorie dense foods like the meats cheeses sugars and fats now but it may not all just be on the calories in side of the equation those even more plant-based appear to be effectively burning more calories in their sleep the resting metabolic rate of those

eating more plant-based may be 10% higher or more a boost of metabolism that can translate into burning off hundreds of extra calories a day more without doing a thing eating more plant-based you bore more calories just being alive just just existing so no wonder why are those eating more plant-based tend to be slimmer start packing your diet with real food that grows out of the ground and the pounds should come off naturally taking you down towards your ideal weight but what about ketogenic diets body fat actually slows bad up body fat loss actually slows down

after you switch to a ketogenic diet because your body starts cannibalizing its own protein just looking at the bathroom scale though the keto diet seems like a smashing success losing less than a pound a week on the regular diet and then BOOM three and a half pounds within seven days after swishing taquito but what was happening inside their bodies told a totally different story and the ketogenic diet their rate of body fat loss was slowed by more than half so what they were losing was water but they were also losing protein also losing lean mass

this may help explain why CrossFit trainees placed on ketogenic diets though their leg muscles can shrink as much as eight percent within two months of course even if keto diet works I mean the goal of weight loss is not to fit into a skinnier casket people whose diets even tend to trend that way appear to live significantly shorter lives another and even just drifting in the direction of eating more healthy plant foods is associated with living longer now those going the other way though those who start out more plant-based but then add meat back into

their diets at least once a week not only appear to double or triple their odds of diabetes stroke heart attack and weight gain but may also suffer an Associated 3.6 year drop and life expectancy that's going from no meat to just once a week meat or more low carb diets have been shown to impair artery function and worsen heart disease whereas whole food plant-based diets have been shown to actually look verse heart disease right that's what Ornish used so it appears to be the most effective diet for weight loss just so happens to be the

only diet ever proven to reverse heart disease in the jority patients right if my grandma didn't have to die like that maybe no one's grandma has to die like that if that's all the plant-based diet could do reverse the number one killer of men and women it's just gotta be the default diet until proven otherwise and the fact that can also be so effective in preventing arresting reversing other leading killers like type-2 diabetes and high blood pressure would seem to make the case for plant-based eating simply overwhelming only one diet has been shown to do

all that a diet centered around whole plant foods right so we don't have to mortgage our health to lose weight the single healthiest diet also appears to be the most effective diet for weight loss after all permanent weight loss requires permanent dietary change or healthier habits just have to become a way of life and if they're going to be a lifelong you want to lead to a long life thankfully the single best diet proven for weight loss just so happens to be the safest cheapest way to eat for the longest healthiest life thank you [Applause]

thank you so much so Gregor are we gonna take some questions let's do it all right so we'll have a mic on both sides do it does balsamic vinegar work as well as apple cider that it absolutely does because it's just the acetic acid in fact even that nasty white distilled vinegar works although I would prefer were people to use something like apple cider or balsamic cuz then you actually have a few grape phytonutrients a few apple five dimensions in there but it's that but the active ingredient is actually the tea I guess it would

make vinegar vinegar so by definition vinegar works two teaspoons of every meal but never you can't just take it straight you'll burn your esophagus so I mean ever you got to put in something yeah I'm a nutritionist and I am anti Kido but how do you explain people that are having results where the blood sugars are going down and cholesterol numbers are going down yeah yeah so because so the number one source of calories in the American diet is refined carbs in fact in terms of food wise it's green based desserts Oh pastries cake cookies

that's the number one source of calories in the American diet so you cut off the number one source of calories then through korrok restriction people can lose weight and the the ketosis being in ketosis I got videos about this I'm also blunts your appetite so people are able to maintain that caloric restriction long term they lose weight and you lose weight by any means and your cholesterol goes down you lose weight by you know getting aids and tuberculosis or a good meth habit or you know chemotherapy anything your cholesterol will plummet and of course in

terms of blood Sugar's not eating any carbohydrates and now of course they're becoming more insulin resistant every day because you're packing their muscles with all these with all this fat that's causing insulin resistance but who can own it Costin I didn't name carbohydrates so their blood Sugar's are really low but of course their diabetes isn't any better in fact it's actually worse or their pre-diabetes are some resistance because as soon as they start eating any kind you know they eat a banana or some house and their blood sugar sky rocks higher than it would have

otherwise and so and thank God it's unsustainable because if it isn't then they're gonna run into these horrible long-term health problems like acceleration of heart disease do you recommend a probiotic or should the foods would be eating contribute to the gut flora so your gut flora or in there when you're born thanks to your mom's birth canal and will stay with you your whole life unless you take some oral antibiotics certain broad-spectrum oral antibiotics like amoxicillin can wipe out your gut flora said it takes two months for it to get back and so if you

suffer from antibiotic associated diarrhea so you take antibiotics and they'll soon you get diarrhea chronic diarrhea lasts more than two weeks then taking a probiotic supplement like a mixed after the s Adolphus products is a good idea it's a treatment of course you want to make sure it's alive and so you know just because it's a refrigerated section the natural food store doesn't mean it wasn't sitting on a hot truck for two weeks or whatever so what you do is you take it home you open up two capsules and you dip and you you know

you you you dump it into like a two bowl at one of two bowls of milk soy milk any kind of milk and then you come back in the morning and they should look totally there for one should be filming gross and foamy and yogurty the other one should be fine but if you pour them both down the sink they both look the same well you have a dead product it's not gonna help you at all you take it back everybody bad but in terms of day to day if you're not not as as a

treatment of antibiotic associated diarrhea but of all I just want to have good good gut bugs in my stomach well you do that by you feeding the goo cup bucks you already have right but there's a have a video where I do an analogy or it's like let's say you have a shed full of bunny rabbits and you want to make more bunny rabbits and and you're feeding your bunny rabbits pork rinds okay your feed but and then they're all dying off and you're like no big deal I'll go to the store I'll get new

bunnies and use repopulate that's taking probiotics you're starving your gut bugs right they're dying because you're not feeding what their cement to eat but fine so you're taking more right or there's another way you can make more bunnies you feed them carrots even with their mint eat and they are fruitful and multiply all by themselves right and so that's and so you've got a few good ones in there but they're you know but the but you know if you're just an American diet all the cheeseburger a milkshake eating bugs or there's a billion you know

are shouldering out you're crowding out your poor little fiber eaters they're like please eat some garnish something please but then all of a sudden you start editing beans you die starting a hologram Oh son the good cut box oh yeah bring it you know and then they yeah and then the fiber feeders start taking over and the bad bugs start dying off and slowly but surely you will populate your gut and keep it going so that's and there's actually prebiotic there's actually probiotics these good gut bugs actually on raw fruits and vegetables I know anybody

knows how to make sauerkraut I mean when I when I was thinking oh you must make sauerkraut kind of like you make yogurt right you take you know lettuce and you add some kind of starter fermentation bugs or something no you take cabbage and you put it into salt water so other bad bugs don't grow and all of a sudden it turns into it ferments into and fermented sauerkraut how did that happen where do these lactic acid producing bugs he's lactobacillus come from they were on the spinach leaves as soon as they the cabbage leaves

out in the field naturally growing so we can get the best of both worlds probiotics and prebiotics by eating whole healthy plant foods and sauerkraut isn't good for you guys it's got too much salt but it just that was just a little Auggie yeah I just got a quick question about like in terms of nutrition would you say smoothies will be better or like a whole food like I know in your videos you mentioned you know we can really we can't really chop the food that wall as like it would get in a blender and

we will be readily more absorbed nutrition and a smoothie but I know more researchers coming out on Tyler quoits could you just explain the differences between like a smoothie and heating like like a whole whole food yeah so I so I mean so these are whole foods right they're just hopefully stood in a bend blender so what would not be a whole food is juice fruit and vegetable juicing right well because then you throw away the fiber but you retain the fiber and all the thylakoids and everything when you blend it and smoothie the problem

with smoothies from weight loss standpoint is rate of consumption we can you can drink smoothie so quickly so let me down so quickly that we get such a rush of of these easily digestible carbohydrates a we actually get Excel the exaggerated blood sugar spike so but all you have to do is drink too smoothly at the rate it would take you to eat that many fruits and vegetables right you make a big green smoothie like you pack a blender full of fruits and vegetables right think how long it would take you to eat like oh

my god I'd be sitting there even for okay well that's how long that's if your smoothie for make them thick use a thin straw and you know sip at a time and then you know and looking work you know or whatever yeah and so you can sip it throughout the day then you get the benefits of both words but yeah smooth but the the the negative metabolic effects the smoothies it's all because the the rate at which you're eating in terms of calorie kind of calories per minute but if you take that same smoothie and

you just drip it out over the time you'd naturally eat those fruits and vegetables so your body can handle it then there's no negative metabolic effects oh here what do you recommend for someone who has lupus and is going whole food plant-based who has one who has lupus Oh lupus right and then what are your thoughts on sorry I've got some lupus videos coming up so the only lupus video so anyone from a lupus is a nasty autoimmune inflammatory disease so you know you've heard of you know like autoimmune disease we body attacks your own

thyroid you get hypothyroidism how she moves on thyroid itís like oh that's terrible your body's attack or type 1 diabetes your body attacks your own pancreas well in lupus your body attacks your own DNA right so it attacks your whole body your whole body attacks your whole body and so it can cause all sorts of horrible things eventually one of the first things your kidneys shut down I mean so it's just the terrible diseases okay but it's an inflammatory disease so maybe an anti-inflammatory diet could do it and so there was a some single most

anti-inflammatory food in the dietary inflammatory index anti-inflammatory index is is turmeric so there's actually study showing that you could decrease that you can improve kidney function in lupus victims with just that one spice turmeric but this doctor by the name of golden brook Goldner said why use one anti-inflammatory food let's make a whole diet of the most anti-inflammatory foods and she produced this like made up this like practically like a green smoothie diet was just like packed with greens packed with berries packed with every anti-inflammatory thing gave it to lupus patients and I've got a

video coming up shortly so make sure to subscribe and talking about her initial results she's had results for years and I'm I see her I'm like you got to publish it it does not exist in science unless you publish it and she finally published it yeah and so I made a bit I was so excited to make about it and you will see her extraordinary results like these women who enforce Li mostly women for some reason get the disease who were on the kidney transplant list and then all of a sudden were not because they

didn't need kidneys anymore amazing because their own kidney started working all thanks to her diet and then she adds on it's not like green smoothies forever but just in the first few weeks to get people into remission and to reduce flares really amazing stuff and so keep an eye out for those videos would you address the problems associated with licked Indonesian bowls yes the plant paradox so I have I started getting emails about this book called the plant paradox written by this guy Guthrie no Guthrie right yeah and but once you get enough emails about

something that's why so it's good to email me you see something and if you're the only person ever even mails me about something I'm like yeah whatever okay but if you're like the 10th first an email have like I better look into this alright guys you know and so people can't even know I'm a book and so the whole theme of this book the plant paradox is that there are these lectins in food like so called healthy foods like beans and tomatoes and you know and and they're really bad for you and so it's a

paradox because plants are supposed to be good for you but oh they're actually evil for you okay so I did a series of videos the first of which I mean I didn't really mince words dr. Gunn Drees plant paradox is wrong that's the title of the video and then I talked about lectins I go through the whole thing I'm some of you interesting you can you can watch the videos but basically it turns out that if anything lectins are probably good for you they're not harmful unless you I mean you can't eat raw kidney beans

but how can you rock means anyway because the little rocks you gotta cook them and once there once you can mash them with a fork once they're edible then they're perfectly safe because you wipe off on elect ends but there have been rare case reports of people not knowing how to make beans then so they put red kidney beans in water soak them overnight so they're like hard firm and rubbery and then didn't cook them at all and just like made like a bean salad out of them or something I don't know how you could

even eat that but people got really sick really so if you want to like play really bad practical joke on someone give them some rubbery kidney beans uncooked kitty means they yeah they will do bunnelby havoc Amber's violent violent vomiting anyway but but no but as soon as they're edible then they're then all the lip tints are gone and the lectins in foods II don't cook like tomatoes are perfectly harmless blah blah blah and in fact them have anti-cancer properties blah blah blah it's all the videos check it out yeah alright oh or wherever hi

dr. Greger welcome to Michigan oh thank you alright my question is grains and seeds and spices y'all rains greens you want to keep whole and not break I get that but you had said the black cumin you put it in a pepper grinder - alright yup you break it why is that very good because the studies were done when with powdered black cumin so and just similarly with like garlic powder he said white garlic powder why by God part i buy garlic right the brother the studies were not done with garlic the studies were why

were they done with garlic powder cuz then you can disguise it into a pill because they want to do a placebo sugar pill versus the garlic pill and no one knew the difference in fact they even took some garlic powder and sprinkle it on the outside of the circle pill to make him smell garbage just so when you really would to know which one you were getting but you couldn't do that with real garlic like how do you give people glow of garlic on that so they don't know so this stays well done with dried

garlic and so I said well look this is where the science now look maybe raw garlic works better maybe cooked garlic works even better we don't know but look this is what the signs show so we stick with the signs and the reason it's like well isn't it obvious then that like fresh garlic will work better not so with the ginger that's really interesting the ginger powder fresh ginger doesn't work that's actually been put to the test so wait a second how can fish internet work because the active ingredient is with the coz these compounds

called show gels which are dehydration products of ginger when ginger dries new compounds are created and it's the new compounds that actually work so dried ginger works fresh ginger doesn't work so that was mind-blowing to me as I was right so I was like oh well I better tell people dry ginger not that I'm a dried garlic excuse me because maybe dried garlic is actually different than regular garlic so I'm gonna stick to what the signs with the way the experiments show hi I'm a nurse case manager and I have a unique role in that

I present this to people who didn't come to me looking for hmm I'm presenting it to them what I've found is and I don't even know if you can address this but what I found this year was the American College of intricate knowledge II came out with the recommendations to primary care doctors and the only diet I just about fell off that they recommend as a plant-based diet problem is none of my doctors even knew what a plant-based diet was and then I began to wonder how many of these endocrinologists if you asked him knew

what a plant-based diet was because my parents my patients who go back to thereunder colleges come back like they're doing headlights so if you even know and you can and I don't know that you do but where's the American Heart Association on this and the American Dietetic Society is still I don't even send my patient patients to diabetic education because they're still not teaching plant-based yeah my kidney doctors don't get it like people are getting better and the patients buy it because they understand it but they're doctors because I always say go back and tell

your doctor what we're doing yes all I hear is keep doing what she's telling you to do keep doing what she's telling you nobody will acknowledge that's unfortunate yeah you know that you know there's actually this new people always ask me all the time where they can find a plant-based physician and so I'm I said this is a new resource my monthly email my subscriber email that comes out I don't know they either just came out or it's coming out this week talks about there's this new organization oh we actually have a board member here

a fellow board member I'm for physicians Association for nutrition this new international group and they're putting together a free directory of all plant-based practitioners in the world that's cool but and it's great that it exists but if we all just go to the plant-based people we're never gonna show the other thing we're not going to show the power that nutrition can have to the docs that really need to be educated in fact when I go to these big American College of lifestyle medicine conferences where there's a plant-based nutrition health care conference now there's thousands of

plant-based Doc's and I sit them down and we all said it you need together because what else do you do at a plant-based conference in eat right and I said well how did you learn about that because none of us got in medical school obviously so where did you find about this you know what they say patient patient taught them some pay one of their patients with they known for years goes soft forks over knives or what the health or read a book and trying to study whatever and then they change the diet on their

own they come back to the doctor all sudden they lose off this weighed their diabetes is better there because they don't need blood pressure medications anymore whatever and which is this astounding recovery in a patient that was just had just been getting worse worse worse and that's what you do you just manage their their diabetes they work for us and then they die and you just try to slow down the rate at which they lose their vision and they lose their kidney function and they lose their lower limbs I mean that's well that's all we

can do as doctors or we thought then all of a sudden there's this miraculous reversal of disease and the doctors thing in the back of mine we said I got a thousand patients just like you what did you do and they said oh there's this great documentary I saw you gotta check it out then they see it and all of a sudden they change their all practice and they'll sudden have a lifestyle medicine practice because this is why they went into medicine because you know if you want to just make money you go to the

stock market right people go into medicine at first at least as young idealistic people that want to help people I want to take care of sick people and all of a sudden you can reignite that spark that led them in the medicine the first place people actually getting better like laying hands jumping out of wheelchairs it's a beautiful day and so so so that so it's so whenever they're like so whenever people say I really you know I want my I wish I had the doctor there was plant-based I'm like oh yeah I know but

come on go back to your other doctor and just show them what they can do because all the science in the world just for some reason some quirk of human psychology all the science in the world you know may not stack up against a single anecdote a single story single person that they knew they know the family and all of a sudden they see before their own eyes even though I can show the data but I seen before the knives and that really can it can affect them so anyway so we should educate our doctors

and in terms of some of these organizations I think the documentary I mentioned what the hell is a good job explained why the Mait why the American Diabetes Association American Heart Association are not more are not the ones leading the fight in this area and all you have to do is you look at the funding page right and you know who funds the American Heart Association in fact one of their I've given they could their gold funders or the top tier if I forget the names of them coca-cola like that was like that was that's

who funded and so they had coca-cola on the website and they're all like you know and so it's like is American Heart Association gonna tell but not drink Coke of course they're not kind of dry I mean they've got hundreds of thousands of dollars and of course why is coke giving to them that's exactly why you know I mean so and it's just that's really disappointing and look the American Heart Association does really good stuff they tell people cut down and so you know okay great until of course the salt industry gives them a little

but but you know so far so good so so what that means if you you know leaves us thought you know you know within our own practices to stick with the signs and educate ourselves and it's sad because literally lives are in the balance and it's not having fast enough hello first I want to say look forward every month to your q and A's on your treadmill oh thank you for that and today's my 2 year plant-based anniversary and I thought what better way than to see you well my question is the one thing I

worry about getting is iodine and I know you've said to eat me sheets I can't do it so just supplements work for that or no okay so um great question in fact I have all series of videos coming out of an iodine and so iodine is an essential mineral that we all need and it's found and it's found in the soil so some crops so if it's fun soil cops pick it up but the problem is it's found irregularly in soil so for example in Northern Europe the soil just doesn't have a lot of iodine

and so if you just say locally in Northern Europe you wouldn't have enough you know one thing or another thing so now we I mean we typically you go to the grocery store and stuff is coming from all over the world so the hope is you're getting enough iodine but particularly for pregnant women cuz then it's really serious you don't need just need iodine for one you need iodine for two there can be really serious consequences of not having enough of iodine for an infant and so particularly for pregnant women and breastfeeding women you really

need to make sure you're getting enough iodine not just well I'm eating plants from around the world and probably one of them's being grown in good soil oh no it's right which most people get away with I mean most people don't think about iodine but pregnant women should think about iodine and so you then you just need a source that you know is a good source and the most concentrated source on the planet is sea vegetables suck it out of the sea water and so I so I suggest as like a like a snack you

can eat these nori sheets you know that they make sushi out of but you can get a 50 pack and you chew on them and it's just like a snack and you're like snacking on dirt vegetables like what I'm eating greens as a snack okay can't like kids love them okay some people don't love them okay fine look no no no you know I mean look you know you know you can white-knuckle anything for a little while but if it's gonna be sustainable you have to enjoy it has to be convenient etc fit into your

lifestyle so if you just don't like Nora she's there's other um I encourage people uh before completely giving up on seaweed you experiment around so dulse flakes it says purple sea when it comes to the little flakes you sprinkle it on stuff it's a very unsee weedy sea weed very very mild probably won't even taste it and I forget I did a video you'll see in the video it's it really it's like quarter teaspoon a day or something really not a lot so a little shake you have at the table just randomly shake you get

all the I don't need RMA is this nice like noodle like sea vegetable that's good for soups what's the other one I row oh okay and then all right well I'm getting down I always start with the whole foods alright okay now if you're but if you just for whatever reason right then yes you can take 150 micrograms it's like three times a week get all that in you need you can get it until getting a multivitamin just I would not recommend getting in a kelp tablet many natural iodine supplements are just a little compressed

pieces of kelp powdered kelp compressed into a pill and kelp is a sea vegetable but the problem is depending on what the kelp was doing that day could have a lot of iodine could have less iodine it's not standardized and so and you can actually get too much iodine so you know if you just if they just you know the company just adds iodine to it then you know it's presumably any and if you've gotta buy any supplements ideally get what's called USP certified which doesn't mean that it's good for you all it means is

that what's inside the bottle is actually what's on the label of course it can be like arsenic on the label arsenic and the thing that you guys to be certified they don't care all right and Danes certify all sorts of crazy stuff but they're just like yeah but the crazy stuff on the labels the crazy stuff in the bill right which unfortunately given the poor poor regulation of sometimes disease is not a guarantee at all that what's actually in the thing is actually on the thing so oh yeah so you can do that worse comes

to worse and particularly important for pregnant women yes oh okay I've seen a lot of research and plant-based nutrition and rheumatoid arthritis but I was wondering if there is much for osteoarthritis there is so I actually have a little section on austere artists in the new book and so we used to think osteo arthritis was kind of a wear and tear disease where so basically osteoarthritis is that the cartilage cushion between your bones in your joints particularly the knees gets worn away and then it gets it worn away at a faster rate than your body

can build it back up so normally gets worn away all the time but we just make more so but if it weren't away faster then it gets too thin and they can cause pain okay and it's what we used to think was just wear and tear particularly because obesity is the number one risk factor is the heavier you are the more likely to get us or for a very common and in fact as I talked about in the book so what happens worst kind of worsening knee replacement surgery very serious surgery and forget the mortality

rate after knee replacement surgery but something ridiculous like 1 in 500 people don't wake up like that's bad alright and it's done hundreds of thousands so like thousands of people are dying from new places anyway but but but um but I forget how many pounds you lose its equivalent of knee replacement surgery like lose 15 pounds and it's as if you just got a knee replacement surgery I'm in terms of the disability in terms of pain everything works just as good and so obviously it just has good side effects that Center Center okay but that

that was kind of the old way of thinking the reason is because you cannot get osteitis arthritis in non weap joints like your fingers and your wrists so wait a second doesn't matter how how fat can your finger possibly be right and so wait so maybe it's not just mechanical wear and tear and in fact you're sticking needle in you pull out all these inflammatory mediators so it actually is an inflammatory arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis and so wait a second if it's an inflammatory disease we have an inflammatory diet diet an anti-inflammatory diet is synonymous

with a plant-based diet and indeed when you put people randomized them to plumpest at night you get significant improvements in osteophytes even without weight loss and so yeah it's the same diet it's the same thing and it works for osteoarthritis too I have an uncle who just he was just treated for leukemia and he survived great the survivor it's wonderful well how effective is a plant-based diet for somebody in that situation like a cancer survivor or leukemia survivors some some type of terrible disease like that it would it prevent any kind of relapse or would

it help them immensely so for most types of cancer the answer is we don't know it's never been put to the test so the only two cancers we have reversal data on or prostate cancer and breast cancer there are dietary interventions that can prolong survival and breast cancer and actually reverse cancer growth in in prostate cancer but that's extent now all beyond that we have epidemiological studies population studies that show that for example people with lung cancer we more broccoli tend to live longer than the people that same kind of lung cancer don't eat broccoli

that doesn't prove broccoli made them live longer people eat broccoli have also said their healthy behaviors and so maybe because they were also exercising something to try to control for that but we don't have interventional trials you randomized people you eat this diet you eat this diet lets you drops dead first that's the kind of that then we can actually prove cause and effect and that it has not been done for the vast majority of cancers and so all we can say is hurt it'll support your body too sir to put up with the the

conventional you know chemo radiation surgery and it'll prevent all the other things so for example and this was actually shocking to me and it's hard to shock me I've become quite cynical over the years but postmenopausal breast cancer patients diagnosed postmenopausal breast cancer was the most breast cancer number one cause of death isn't that breast cancer number one cause of death of women with breast cancer still heart disease still heart disease you're more likely to die from your heart from heart disease you don't even know you have then the active cancer you have in your

body and so whether or not a plant-based diet helps with that particular type of breast cancer you have doesn't matter because it reverses the the cause of death you're more likely to die from our disease and so that's why it's always good to be a healthy diet to put your help your body best support itself through whatever crises come through you know it's like it's like asking you know it's getting enough sleep good for this particular disease we don't know no one's actually tried it but like probably a good idea right to just support your

body to do healthy things for your body what are you smoking bad for this disease maybe it's never been tested but it's probably not a great idea whether or not it hurts that particular disease or not right we're just talking about a healthy diet but I totally hear you you'd like to be able to go to your uncle and be like here's the study that shows you're gonna live four point five years longer study hasn't been done right but instead you can give them this overwhelming body of evidence saying this is to help these diet

sets or support you blah blah blah and so all these other cancers you might work well against but yeah I'm fortunately does not exist yet dr. Greger about breaky and before I asked the last question I want to thank you very much for coming to Michigan on behalf of all of us in Michigan well one more after me sorry okay becoming a Michigan and your excellent presentation now as a family doc of course I deal with this very commonly and I start with they want assistance I start into calorie density microbiome and they cut me

off they say no no doc I already ate healthy I just need to exercise more and can you help me with that kind of 2-minute evidence-based approach to helping them understand yeah no no that's fantastic in fact that's exactly what the food industry wants them to think in fact the CEO of Pepsi Cola said we would have no obesity if everybody just exercise and coca-cola went one step worse and created the global ballot energy balance network which is this pseudo scientific body I mean they're they hid their money and it was later exposed but it

was this group of scientists that said it's all about inactivity it's all about the it's all about the energy out not what you eat oh and by the way see we were secretly funded by coca-cola all along okay with that and it's worked that amazing propaganda machine you ask people what do you think most people say it's balanced energy and is just as important to diet and then the second most popular answer is exercise more important than diet right and so the vast majority of people are simply dead wrong and one easy way you can

explain it to them that explain why you cannot outrun a bad diet is just simple math an average do B person moderately vigorously exercising like biking really hard for an hour kind of you can go through about 350 calories right the average calorie intake per minute for typical snacks processed food seventy calories a minute in five minutes you've just wiped out an entire hour of exercise it just shows how how completely one-sided it is and then if there's a really science minded person you talk about how we have total control over calories in I mean

you could eat no calories - where's the calories out the the you know kind of the elective energy exercise it's just a teeny little slice most the calories you burn throughout the day we have no power over its resting metabolic rate if we light in bed all day completely still we'd still burn most of the calories that we burn more than 50% just keeping our brain going or heart pumping that's it so most recovers completely out of our hands in terms of unless you're like you know there's some you know some articles on mountain climbers

and Army Rangers and people that do extreme and exertion they can actually lose weight pretty effectively but for most people exercising you know that it's just no no comparison now exercise super important for also star the reasons even if it's not really gonna help your weight as much super health is super healthy important for all sorts of other things so absolutely need to exercise but we just cannot count on it to effectively and and they really it's that because people expect it to work and then they're like I'm a failure my body is biochemically there's

something wrong with me I've exercised started exercising I'm still not losing weight I'm on the flip side people that for some reason they get an injury and they stop exercising they think oh my god I'm gonna gain all this weight and then they don't really gain much weight even though they're like wait a second I'm not exercise I'm not gaining weight and it's the same kind of thing it just really it's more kind of what's going in your mouth I'm for the last question well that's one this question over here and before the last question

I just want to say if you like this presentation I will be back here in Michigan in May for the veg fest giving this exact same talk and so if you're sitting here thinking oh I wish my friend family member would ever conceived the stock bring them in May alright last question hi dr. Greger I'm Kirsten's Allison and I'm internal medicine whew I'm really happy to see you I listened to your podcasts and your presentations on nutritionfacts.org all the time I agree with what you said I feel like often I'm on a desert island when

I talk to my patients about plant-based nutrition because their own physician or other physicians tell you there's no no evidence or there's no reason for that or they recommend keto diets or something called clean meat which I've never really understand what that is that's not even my question I just wanted to echo my frustration with my day-to-day living on a desert island sometimes and thank God that your you have some lucky patients I tell you Oh our what if my question is about intermittent fasting there was a recent review article a New England Journal of

Medicine about intermittent fasting can you comment on that for weight loss yeah no so actually the biggest chapter of my book so I named in fasting just because there's so many different types I wanted to go through every single one of them so there's all today fastings time restrict your feeding there's five to fasting twenty-five five go through all them and kind of the takeaways are well so water only fasting it's so complete what are the fasting first of all it's not safe to do for more than 24 48 hours without physician supervised supervision and

even under supervision it's a terrible way to lose weight you actually lose less weight completely what are only fasting than you do eating 500 calories a day which doesn't make a lot of sense until you watch the video and understand oh I understand why now but I starting to have videos on that on the site alternate day fasting the longest largest study ever done Alton day fasting found significant increase in cholesterol compared to the continuous caloric restriction group so if you are going to do alternate day fasting first of all they found no benefits in

terms of lean body mass preservation or bone preservation or compliance or nothing but if you like it for whatever reason make sure you get your cholesterol test and make sure that it doesn't go up like most patients did in this study the one type that I would consider safe and effective would be early time restricted feeding so there's this body of evidence on restricting your eating window to under 12 hours a day so most of us eat like 15 hours of the day but so so just cutting it down so that we're fasting 12 hours

a day most of the most of which while were sleeping and it was really interesting when I looked at that literature it's all over the place some half the studies show it's terrible for you have to say show it's amazing for you and I was just like what am I gonna you know so only when you dig deep do you realize ah that's what's going on late time restricted feeding me you skip breakfast and you have a late evening window is bad for you metabolically bad thanks to chronobiology our circadian rhythms food even that night

is more fattening than the exact same food eaten earlier in the day the fewer calories after sundown the better so you time restricted feeding late used to you know only start eating at noon or something that's bad and has negative metabolic consequences even with the time restriction however early time restrict is feeding meaning you have a bit you you front load your calories towards the day big breakfast as possible I make supper the smallest meal or no meal at all if you're gonna skip any breakfast any meal will be skipping supper non breakfast the more

calories we can front-load the better and then you get twin benefits of not only time restriction feeding but the carnal biological benefits of eating calories earlier in the day which are better for our blood Sugar's better for a cholesterol better for weight loss and so yeah early time restrictive eating that's one of the things in the book that actually changed my I'm not that I'm which turn about weight but in terms of the metabolic impacts so now I try to eat more calories earlier in the day unless I get out of a really long book

signing so thank you so much for the last question [Applause]