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Hi everyone. Kaya Here, director of Dr. Mark Hyman's brand new Longevity Roadmap Docuseries. I'm so excited to announce that this docuseries is now live. And today we wanted to give you a sneak peek of episode six. In today's episode, Dr. Hyman and his team at the Ultra Wellness center discussed the food as medicine approach to longevity. You can eat to beat disease. You can eat to prevent disease. You can eat to enhance your health span and your lifespan. Let food be thy medicine. Here's a sneak peek of episode six of the Longevity Roadmap Docu series.
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The most powerful tool you have to change your health is your fork. Food is not just calories or energy. Food contains information that literally talks to your genes and it turns them on or off and affects their function moment to moment. Food controls your hormones, your immune system, your brain chemistry. It even controls your gut microbiome and your detoxification system. And of course it controls your structural system because it's what you're made of. You are literally what you eat. So ask yourself, do you want to become a Twinkie or a raspberry? The most exciting thing I've heard in a long time is that the Rockefeller foundation is supporting a research effort to map out the tens of thousands of molecules in food. Things we've never discovered before. And what they actually do using the most advanced technology in artificial intelligence, creating a literal periodic table of medicinal molecules in food. I get excited about that. I don't know about you, but it makes me really happy. It goes way beyond what we think of as food, of course. Protein, fat, carbs, fiber, vitamins, minerals. Yeah, that's food. And they dig deep into the realm of food as medicine. Exploring the realm of what we call phytonutrients. These are plant based chemicals that have medicinal properties when you eat. If you eat a whole foods, plant rich, nutrient dense diet, you are literally eating your medicine every single day. Food is the fastest acting and most powerful medicine you can take to change your life. And it works fast, literally in minutes to regulate almost every single function of your body. For better or worse, depending on what you eat. Yes, we are stuck with the genes we got from mom and dad. But here's the headline news. You have amazing control over how those genes are expressed. And the biggest factor controlling your genes is what you eat or sometimes what you need that you don't eat. Think of your genes as the software that runs everything in your body. Just like your computer software, your genes only do what you instruct them to do like with the stroke of your keyboard. The foods you eat are like the keystrokes. They send messages to your genes telling them what to do. They create health or they create disease. We know that poor diet is linked to many preventable lifestyle diseases like type 2 diabetes, many cancers, heart disease, dementia, and lots more. We also know that a real whole foods diet that's rich in these phytochemical dense plants, that has clean protein, plenty of fiber, and healthy fats, can prevent, treat, and even reverse most chronic diseases. You see, food impacts each node of the functional medicine matrix that we discussed in episode one. It can boost your vascular system, your immune system, your hormones, your detox system, your energy system, your microbiome, and everything in between. And there are specific functional foods and superfoods that assist with things like DNA repair, stem cell activity, and that feed the healthy bugs in your gut. This means that there are foods that can actually fight disease. More importantly, there are foods that literally create health. Let's just take COVID 19, for example. Just one study found that if you have good levels of selenium in your blood, you are three times more likely to be cured of COVID and recover. But if you have low levels, you are five times more likely to die. That's a 500% increased risk of dying. That is massive. And that's just one nutrient. And it's easy to get from a few Brazil nuts, but of course, don't have more than two to four a day because you can od. Now, I don't know about you, but I want to incorporate as many of these disease fighting foods as possible. In this episode of the Longevity Roadmap, my team will walk you through our favorite functional and superfoods that can help you make your healthspan equal your lifespan. Now, I don't want you to think that you can eat a diet of junk food and just incorporate a few of these superfoods to live longer and healthier. Extending your health span and making your health span equal your lifespan requires a complete lifestyle overhaul. So we're also going to discuss how to personalize your diet, how to test your nutritional status, how to balance your blood sugar, and lots more. So let's dive in. So a pegan diet essentially was a goofball joke I made once on a stage with some friends who were fighting or were a paleo doc and a vegan doc. And I just said, well, if you guys are paleo and you're vegan, I must be pig. And then I thought about it and what are the common principles that most diets, even in the diet wars, have in common. And what I realized was there was far more in common with being paleo or vegan, which are the extremes, than with the traditional American processed SAD or standard American diet. What are those principles? Well, both agree that we should be eating a plant rich diet that's full of colorful fruits and vegetables that are incredibly nutrient dense and full of phytochemicals. We should be eating good quality fats like olive oil, avocados, that we should be eating omega 3 fats which are so essential from us. So we should be eating a diet rich in high quality seafood that doesn't have heavy metals and mercury, things like sardines and mackerel and herring and anchovies and things that I love and my wife doesn't love. That. We should be eating a diet that's got whole grains and beans, but not whole grain flour. So not whole wheat flour, not even brown rice flour. Those are dangerous. But literally whole grains and the more weird the grains, the better. Things like black rice or quinoa or red rice or buckwheat. I mean, buckwheat is an interesting one. There's a form of buckwheat from the Himalayas that is the most powerful superfood on the planet that's anti inflammatory and regulates all these pathways. And the good quality beans aren't too starchy. So these are the basic principles. And if you're eating animal products, you want to make sure they're regeneratively raised. There's an incredible body of research now showing that grass fed, regeneratively raised animals actually contain phytonutrients, which are plant based compounds that you wouldn't expect to see in animal food, but that are there because of what the animals are eating. So you're not only what you eat, you're whatever you are eating already ate. So we have an incredible strategy for eating a diet that is rich in all these things and is incredibly including all these protective foods and removing all the harmful foods. So getting rid of the starch and sugar a little bit, it's fine. But we shouldn't be eating flour on a regular basis. Whatever it is, we shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar or any form of sugar or artificial sweeteners. Occasionally it's fine, but it's not a staple, it's a treat. And we definitely shouldn't be eating things that aren't food, that are in our food, like pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, additives, preservatives, artificial sweeteners. Chemicals like those just snappy in our food. And another principle is if we're eating dairy, we should be very smart about what we're eating. Most modern dairy is conventionally grown, is got a lot of hormones and a lot of inflammatory proteins that are because of how we raise the animals and bred them to produce a certain type of casein that causes all these consequences of inflammation and gut issues. But if you have for example heirloom cows or sheep and goat, you don't get the same level of casein. And if you can tolerate it, those are fine to include in your diet. But for most people they don't tolerate it so much. And most people are lactose intolerant. So those are the principles of a pegan diet that we can include and designing our daily meals. So for example, yesterday I had shishuka, which is I cheated. But it's a Moroccan dish with red peppers, tomatoes, spices. It's made from whole ingredients and I put it in a little cast iron pan. I broke some pasture raised eggs in there and I baked it. So it's like baked eggs. And it was a delicious breakfast. Actually made something the other day. It was kind of fun. I made cashew waffles. Cause don't really eat waffles very often. But I had a friend over, a little kid and I made cashew waffles, which is cashews and eggs and almond milk. Pretty simple. And it turns into waffles, believe it or not. For lunch I would often have a salad. So I'll make a nice big salad with tomatoes and olives and avocados and pumpkin seeds. I'll open a can of mackerel or sardines are herring often on the side and eat that with it. That's lunch. I use olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Really simple dinner is usually some form of high quality protein. Sometimes use tempeh or tofu. I'll have grass fed beef. Occasionally pasture raised chicken. I've had fish for example. I like black cod and salmon and some of these other fish that are low in toxins. I'll make lots of veggies. So I'll literally have the protein as a side dish and. And I'll have a mountain of. Whether it's stir fried bok choy or broccolini artichokes. So I'll make two or three side dishes of vegetables and might have a piece of dark chocolate after dinner. So that's essentially what I eat and it's essentially what is going to help promote longevity. I use a lot of spices. I use a lot of good quality fats. I use a lot of veggies and colorful veggies. And I really try to focus on not the five to nine servings, which is the minimum, right? That's the minimum. And a serving is half a cup. So that would be like 2 cups of vegetables. I think we should be having 8 to 10 cups of vegetables a day. And it's not easy to do, but I like to do it. Sometimes we make a, what we call an Alka Gezer shake in this morning, in the morning, which is lots of veggies, cucumber, celery, greens, avocados, blend it all up. And my wife likes to take all the vegetables and freeze them. So we have them in packets, then we just throw it in the blender and then we have this nice cold green smoothie. In the morning, there's probably like five cups of vegetables. So there's a lot of ways to sort of hack the process. But getting your veggies and your phytochemicals is so important because so many of the pathways related to aging have to do with including these phytochemical rich compounds, whether it's green tea or quercetin, which is found in onions or, or resveratrols and graves or turmeric, which is curcumin, which is in curry. Including all these as a regular staple in your diet. And if you do that day after day, day after day, and are consistent, you will see the benefits over the long term in terms of your metabolism. You'll increase your organ reserve, you'll decrease body fat, you'll increase muscle mass, you'll reduce inflammation, you'll increase your antioxidant enzymes, you'll boost your mitochondria, you'll improve your brain chemistry. All the things that we want as we age. So food is the most powerful drug on the planet. It is the place to start, and it works anytime at any age for anybody.
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So carbohydrates are a necessary macronutrient for our health and well being. But as most of you know, there's a wide range of carbohydrates. So on one end may be something like simple sugar or soda, that's a carbohydrate that's really broken down and absorbed really quickly into the body, causing insulin spikes, which causes inflammation. And we all know that's not good for us. And then on the other end, that may be something like broccoli, right? It's also a carbohydrate, but it's slow to get digested and absorbed into the body. And it influences our body in a much different way. So all carbohydrates are not equal as we know. And carbohydrates are a really important, necessary food for our health and well being. While we just want to make sure we're making the right choices of carbohydrates, we want to be choosing those healthful carbohydrates. And of course, most of us all know, okay, we want to avoid the simple sugars and we want to eat more of the vegetables. But so what about the in between part? The in between part is where people have a lot of confusion many times and they're like, well, what about bread and what if it's gluten free and what if it's whole grain and what if it's, what about potatoes and what about, you know, and what about beans and legumes? Even so there's a continuum of carbohydrates. We've got our vegetables and then we've got our beans and legumes. For most people, beans and legumes are a wonderful food that's rich in fiber and is good for us. For some people, they could be too high in carbohydrate. And so we have to think about that. And then we've got the refined and processed carbohydrates, right? We know we want to eliminate those. We want to avoid things like cookies and crust crackers and baked goods most of the time. And even things like breads and pastas, they're not usually very nutrient dense, which means per calorie, they're not giving you all the nutrients your body needs as much as, let's say, a sweet potato. So you always want to think about, I want a better carbohydrate option. So my root vegetables are going to give me more vitamins and minerals per calorie than something like pasta or bread would. It doesn't mean for most people they can never eat pasta or bread, but those are better choices, right? So where does somebody fall in terms of how many carbohydrates they can tolerate? You want to just listen to your body to figure out what's the right amount of carbohydrates for you. First of all, you don't want to just have your meal be all carbohydrate because most, I mean, I don't think I've had any patient who feels good with that.
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Right?
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Pancakes with syrup and orange juice, all carbohydrates. And most of the time people don't feel very good after they eat a meal like that. What is the amount of carbohydrates that your body can tolerate? Monitor how you feel after your meal? What's your energy level like? How is your weight? Are you still gaining weight when you don't want to? If you're still gaining weight when you don't want to, maybe you need to cut further back on carbohydrates. If your digestion doesn't feel good after eating some higher carbohydrate meals, maybe some, even the root vegetables or for some people, the beans and legumes, they may need to cut back there. So it's very personalized. When we determine how many carbohydrates somebody can tolerate for all of us, we want to eliminate the simple sugars and the refined carbohydrates. And then the amount of whole grains, root vegetables, and beans and legumes somebody can tolerate really does depend on their individual health. So, for example, if you've got somebody with a lot of insulin resistance, they've got a high fasting insulin, they've gained a lot of weight around their belly, you're seeing skin tags that may indicate insulin resistance. Their hormones are out of balance, their periods are irregular if they're a woman. If they're a man, their testosterone is low. Right. If we're seeing signs of metabolic syndrome, we typically cut back further on carbohydrates. That helps people feel more satiated. And when we increase fat a little bit in their meal, make sure they're getting enough protein and cut back more on the grains. Even if they are whole grains, sometimes people just feel better and they'll get to their goal faster. If your metabolism is really good and if you don't have any signs of metabolic syndrome, you may not have to worry about whole grains. And you can enjoy some of those whole grains that are rich in fiber, like quinoa and brown rice and even some whole grain breads within your meals and feel really good and satisfied with that. So it really depends on the individual.
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Person you just heard a little bit of. Episode 6 of the Longevity Roadmap Docu series, which is now live. To watch this full episode, visit longevityfilm.com and sign up for this free event. We'll be airing the entire docu series the weekend of January 22nd, so head over to longevityfilm.com to sign up for this free event today. Thanks for tuning in.
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Sam.