Untitled episode

the outcome of this uncontrolled study called Aging isn't that glamorous we know this with the psychological problems the metabolic problems behavioral problems the dementia that we're seeing in an aging population when you think about a longevity diet you know what are the foods that you wanna make a top priority if we're going to focus on rejuvenating our immune system and reversing the Hallmarks of aging and

reversing our biological age through food so what are the top Foods we should be thinking about okay well I'm going to now spout my requirement because you've taught me how to say this simply and number one I'm going to choose low glycemic minimally processed foods that grew on the earth and it looked like they once were alive that's good that's that's going to be number one

am I doing so far you're doing good you're doing good what I want you to do is dive into the rainbow a little bit because you know we've been focusing on one particular plan in my entire Buckley but there's a lot of others that hold a lot of promise and work in the same ways as as phytohome hermetic agents to activate our longevity Pathways yes so

can you speak to some of those okay so this is an interesting question I I haven't heard a lot of people talk about this because a lot of superfoods that are really rich in these harmonic compounds you can't eat those alone and survive right you can't live on berries by itself so there are different kinds of foods there are those kinds of foods that provide maximum

benefit because they provide protein carbohydrate fat and all the vitamins and minerals that you could live off if you were on a survival diet somewhere by the way Himalayan turtle buckwheel is one of those very high in protein very balancing amino acids but then there are others that you would like to include in your diet that you wouldn't consume as your major food stuff they would

be like you wouldn't live on cruciferous vegetables probably probably not but I I would consider cruciferous vegetables would be a very important part of the cabbage broccoli cauliflower and Brussels sprout family a very important part of of a complete diet I would say that nuts and seeds because they carry the germ seed of the germinating plant right that's like an egg so they've got a lot

of good stuff in them so they're like the plants eggs precisely so you've got all the neat stuff that's needed to make life when I think of seeds when I'm really become an appreciator of these seeds because when I look at our buckwheat seeds they look like little uh armadillos you like you could run a Sherman tanko room and it wouldn't crush them but somehow you

give them moisture and life generates out of them and they form this beautiful crop that in the spring is gorgeous to look at and there's life in those seeds so seeds contain all the stuff necessary to make life nuts similarly as well now you could say well it's peanut and nut no peanut is a legume so that would not be in that family then you would

say well but then there's some controversial foods that might be included like soy and I'm not talking about GMO soy I'm talking about non-GMO soy soy has a whole remarkable portfolio of interesting phytochemicals and so he's got a pretty bad reputation I think because of the whole nature of genetic hybridization and and all that kind of stuff but Soy in its natural state and particularly cultured

soy tempting and you know the kind of cultured soy products are still really so yeah yeah excellent Foods so I think when I look at the Foods on the list it would be some foods that are Central that I could live on that produce good calories with high vitamin and mineral density and then other foods that provide High harmonic phytochemicals and it's the balance of those

that's why basically think eating by the rainbow because you're going to get a whole different array of carotenoids and flavonoids and polyphenols so you don't buy the whole argument that these things in plants are anti-nutrients and harmful compounds and we should be avoiding them and eating only meat I think that's gibberish I think that's an absolute gibberish argument there there are I mean there's a number

of really interesting uh you know positions out there that are promoting this and showing all sorts of health benefits and okay there are plants certainly plants with solonation alkaloids like potatoes with green ears you don't want to eat them right they're they're toxic but it's knowing what plant to eat at what time in its ripening cycle at what level that's the knowledge of human species going

back thousands of years that's been studied and this concept where we're eating you know toxicological substances yes if you're eating both loads of something you can be killed on water if you over ingest it when it comes to extending our health span the number of Health years were on this planet it's critical to pay attention to what we consume and that means also paying attention to

what our food consumes what we're eating eats essentially what the plants eat in the soil and what our animals eat and our diets have dramatically changed over the last hundred years in America our agricultural system has moved from heirloom High nutrient dense plants to a subsidized production of Highly commodified crops modified corn wheat rice and soy that are now the Staples of our diet that account

for probably 40 to 60 percent of our calories in the form of ultra processed food and that the calories are not really the issue as much as the quality of the food we're eating and the information in food as Jeff has taught us it's a direct reflection of the health and the quality of the conditions under which the food was grown and if we don't have

food grown in the right way the nutrients don't end up in the food and then they don't end up in us so I'm really excited to be here with you Jeff to discuss some of your really exciting new research on clinical trials that you've done on the impact of phytochemicals in the immune system how that affects the immune system's aging and how to use the Nature's

power of phytochemicals to enhance our Health and Longevity through what we eat we're also going to assess my new book Young Forever which I have uh documented many of the things that you're talking about and I've learned from you and the practices and principles I've used up as a doctor and have experienced as a patient over the last 30 years I'm going to keep wanting to

do what I'm doing for a long time uh and what brings me joy and basically now at 63 years old I feel like I'm in better shape than I've ever been I feel healthier than it was and it was 40. I'm chronologically 63 but biologically 43 and and what I've learned over the last few decades is pretty revolutionary helping me get biologically younger while I grow

chronologically older and I really want all of you to learn how to do that too so Jeff let's start by talking about how we're really for the first time pulling the veil back on what it means to Age and what the mechanisms of aging are and how we need to kind of reframe what we thought about aging as we see it which is pretty much a

phenomena of disease and Frailty and decline and and now we kind of have learned from nature that there are remarkable molecules that help us to address some of the phenomena that occur as we get older and that you know we've learned a lot but the question I post you now is what what really have we learned about human longevity from plant genetics well thank you let

me if I can do first a male culpa and I don't think I've ever told you this story mark this is an honest step so you've got to keep this secret Among Us that in 1976 I was involved with the start of Omega Institute with uh Stefan Rickshaw in Rhinebeck New York and in my first course there was a week-long course on nutrition there are a

lot of very enthusiastic students in this course starting in the on the Saturday morning and I was very I spoke really quickly back in those days as contrasted to today where I speak much more slowly but I was just rattling off stuff so fast nervous anxiety came to the first break and this uh attending in the course came up to me and he said so um

you know I signed up this course to hear about nutrition and I I said well that's what I've been talking about this morning he goes no you haven't been talking about nutrition you you've been talking about dead Foods I came here to learn about life Foods well in my pedagogical naivete I had the audacity to say well I'm not sure there is any difference between life

and dead Foods and therefore I guess if that is how you're kind of interpreting what I'm saying that probably this is not the course for you well it turns out he was right and I was wrong at 77 years of age I've come to learn since 1976 that there is such a thing as live Foods the live Foods carry extraordinary energy in them that you don't

get from Ultra processed foods that go Way Beyond calories it's both the enzymatic activity of the plant itself and its non-denatured form but it's also the psychological energy that comes along with that plant that's been grown by stewardship of a survivable planet that we carry a legacy up as a record of the intention that went into the production of that food it took me a lot

of years to kind of finally grok that and understand it because I came from a very materialistic kind of scientific background that molecules or molecules and action is action and mechanisms or mechanisms but I've come to recognize now in this latter portion of my career working with organic farmers in Upstate New York that are part of our Cooperative that there's a stewardship that occurs that is

transmitted into the food product for which people who consume it then benefit because they are part of more than just the molecules of which the food is made up of and it's been part of my path of learning I have to say and I've I've had individual we're here in this audience today I would I would give him a big apology for my um demeaning what

was the principle that he was trying to get across now that doesn't mean that there aren't molecular processes going on within food that influence our bodies certainly that's become kind of my resident expertise but we're in a constant learning mode all of us and so what I've learned is I've um now celebrating coming up next month my 77th birthday and I hope double sevens is a

good number um is that there is a always new things to learn but B we're part of the process we each have our own zone of of influence some people are have larger zones of influence than others but every person has its own influence and we all speak to the World on our Behavior what Our intention is and how we want to present ourselves and our

beliefs to the world and in a time where we are watching demographic transitions in the development countries of the world people are getting older and people are then getting the legacy of whatever they were thinking and acting over the course of their younger years the outcome of this uncontrolled study called Aging isn't that glamorous we know this with the psychological problems the metabolic problems uh the

behavioral problems uh the issue issues of dementia that we're seeing in an aging population not that we could completely eradicate those because age does happen the clock does turn it is irreversible call time but the way that time plays out chronologically on our body is highly variable and that concept of healthy aging which starts probably preconceptionally now it's what we're learning that the preparation for this

room meaning the biological magic event that creates the plural potentiality of life that gives rise to all outcome that we would never anticipated the magic of a human being that aging process is already set in motion partially in the preparation of that sperm to meet that egg and it then follows all the way through at field development into infancy and throughout the remainder of our life

and that's that epigenetic process that we're now learning much about that in school I was told that epigenetics stops the moment that fetal development stops and then we're kind of fixed in Stone from then on whatever the genes are that's what you're going to get if you got the bad luck of the draw what was you if you happen to get a good hand dealt to

you good good luck but now we're recognizing actually this epigenetic remodeling occurs throughout all of our life on what we bathe over our genes in terms of experience our thoughts our attitudes our beliefs how we eat how we act who we interact with and that directly relates to our biological agent your years and birthdays stay the same but the way your body performs at those age

is variable so that's my learning of 77 years that's pretty good Jeff I want to come back to the the Insight which is that you know the the food that we eat is information and and uh and particularly the phytochemicals in food are massive bioregulators uh the question is you know you know are these phytochemicals more than just antioxidants or anti-inflammatories and what role does their

genetics have a in our health and what's going on with this sort of world of phytochemistry that that we didn't really understand before that we're now beginning to understand and how it regulates our biological health and our biological age and I and I I think I'm just going to sort of uh highlight what you said to me earlier before we started when we're chitchatting that in

in clinical trials that you've just completed you saw a five to seven year reversal of biological age in three months of using a phytochemical cocktail that we're going to talk about soon from an ancient plant so that just seems really remarkable to me when everything else is the same you can have that much of an impact yes so let's talk just a second about this phytochemicals

you know that's um chemicals why should we care so I think back and I've got enough years of experience now where there are many moments where I was in debates or discussion at different meetings often with people that were not of the same mindset as I they would always put me on the program as the alien fugitive just to get a different opinion so I was

here you know social determinant for alternative opinions often in these meetings and um the construct was that nutrition was calories and within calories you have the three principal calorie con contributors protein carbohydrate and fat and then you had some excessive accessory factors that were helpful to support metabolism to use those calories that we call vitamins and minerals and these were the kind of fabulous 35 essential

nutrients that was nutrition but then when you start asking questions if you analyze the chemical composition of food is that all that you'll find in food then people would say well no that other stuff is kind of Flotsam and Jetsam we can take it out of there and we can throw it away and maybe put in pet food to make spry pets but you know it's

not important for humans and of those other things that we take out particularly in the processing of plants they fall in this family called phytochemicals or phytonutrients and if you went to a traditional nutrition textbook that generations of nutrition experts were trained in and asked how many pages in their textbooks that they studied from that they had to take tests from to get certified we're discussing

phytochemicals it would be like a few pages because they were considered non-essential because you didn't have compounds yeah you they were just kind of there right now the most exciting singular geek geekism that I have learned over the last 10 years is that these compounds this literally thousands and thousands of different plant-derived secondary metabolites that the genes of plants make for us or for them actually

and then we eat them um are purposeful they weren't just because the plant didn't have anything better to do with its time they had decided I'm going to make glucosinolates today sounds like a glucosinolate day then tomorrow I'm going to make epic catechin gallate because I like green tea no the plant does those because it gave a selective advantage to the plant based upon their immune

systems and these compounds that are found in plants these secondary metabolites are signal transductions agents that regulate the expression of genes at the Executive Center of function and you might ask the question what's most important the genes you have or the way they're expressed well that's a difficult question to answer because they're both pretty important but if you don't express your genes in the right way

you're a mess remember did every cell in your body contains your Same Book of Life of 23 pairs of chromosomes that has a message for every other cell type of which there are hundreds of different cell types in the body so how does that happen how does the liver cell stay a liver cell when it has a message for the brain cell on the skin cell

and vice versa it does so by regulatory elements transcription factors and Regulatory elements the epigenetically mark that are directly tied to your phytochemicals in your diet as to how they actually function their signal transduction agents they're Regulators they're not just antioxidants or anti-inflammatories that's a simple-minded thought that goes away 10 years ago now we recognize that they actually have purposeful action at specific cell types in

specific cell activities to regulate their functions so that that cell will do something in response to a signal and that signal could be a stress it could be exposure to his antibiotic chemical a foreign chemical so if you have a a diet that's rich in glucosinolates like endo3 carbonyl and sulfurophane and so forth then your liver cells pick up the message and what does it do

it activates and upregulates the gene expression of various cytochromes in various secondary enzymes involved with phase two conjugation so your liver is more capable of getting readily those foreign chemicals it plays an intimate role in protecting the body against agents that might create dysfunction so the construct that we all learned in school about phytochemicals if you ever studied it at all is a relic it's wrong

now that's the beauty of science right we like to think that the human body of knowledge is advancing to answer questions that previously we just glossed over and say well that wasn't important we'll just take them out of food and make white white is close to Godliness so we'll make all white foods that have no flavor and no color so we can put sugar and salt

and fat in them and make them palatable and high profit for the processed food industry because we don't need all those other things no one's ever proven they're useful now we say no that is where the business is for anti-aging is in those products well I mean the thing that we really know is that these molecules interact with our receptors our cells our hormones our brain

chemistry our microbiome our immune system in so many different ways but there's a conversation going on that these compounds are the plants defense mechanisms they're the plant's deterrence to pests that the plant's immune system to fight off bad things that if we consume them they're they're little poisons that we're putting in our body that could potentially harm us and and I think it's an interesting conversation

particularly in the carnivore field where there's a lot of anti-nutrients in plants and plants are bad for us there's phytates and there's oxalates and there's um you know all sorts of things that we may not want to be consuming and in a way I I think it misses the fundamental point of what's going on that these plants are hormetic agents right or mesis is essentially the

idea of something that doesn't kill you but makes you stronger like exercise or fasting and that yes these are compounds that are a little bit irritating to the body but that irritation just like exercise or fasting or hot or cold therapy will actually trigger a response to create a benefit so when I heard you talk about the broccoli compounds the glucosinolates they basically are a signal

to up regulate your body's own enzymes for detoxification is that right I think you hit something marked that's extraordinarily important this concept of hormesis we have to differentiate I think the mechanism of treating a disease with a bioactive new to Nature molecule called a drug from eating foods that have bioactivity ingredients in them foods have undergone the largest scientific study in the history of any living

species called natural selection think about it if you want to talk about a study that has a long history plants have smoothed their composition over millions of years that's the clinical trial they have survived in their environments as a consequence of that process of natural selection to hormonically contain substances that allow them to have an immune system to defend against some of the most hostile environments

how do you like to be a corn plant sitting out in Iowa and have to be out there every day with your arms stretched to the sky with no umbrellas I mean that's like instant sunburn right just to think about that so how do plants protect themselves they develop these xanthophylls and carotenoids that are sun SPF compounds right that prevent them from oxidative injury from the

ultraviolet light and so they have these substances that are the right level in those plants to provide the optimal protection against the environment which they have been living in the case of wild plants for hundreds of thousands or millions of years that's why when I talked to Marianne Laila uh who was originally the University of Illinois but she's now at the Kanopolis uh Center University of

Carolina South Carolina she's been studying indigenous plants in hostile environments for 30 years that's been her research she's published hundreds of papers we had a her as a presenter at our meeting last fall at our pl-mi meeting and she was talking about the fact that when you get stressed plants that have had to survive in these hostile environments bad soil bad weather bad Sun Frost heat

all these things bugs um that they have had to develop by a Natural Evolution for many compounds that are their immune system to help defend us and it turns out it turns out that when we eat those plants that contain those harmonic substances that are defensive immune active substances in those plants that it transfers that immune principles to humans this is now an extraordinary chapter in

our web of life you know wait wait did you just say that if we eat plants that have had to build their immune system up because of tough conditions that those compounds in those plants strengthen our immune system a hundred percent correct a hundred percent correct and in fact this is what got me into Himalayan tartare buckwheat I it was just like the weirdest thing if

someone would say Jeff you're going to be the advocate of bringing Himalayan tartery buckwheat this 4 000 year old ancient fluid back to the United States I would say you got to be kidding me you know this is the Twilight years of my career I'm not going to be in organic farming but I couldn't resist once I learned about this crop this 4 000 year old

domesticated crop as it relates to its immune potentiating activity that is some 50 times 50 times not percent higher in immune potentiating nutrients in common buckwheat 50 times higher than common buckwheat it's infinitely larger than wheat or other grasses and other grains it's infinitely larger and why does it have that extraordinary power because it grew on the slopes of the Himalayas in extraordinarily bad soils high

in aluminum it has an aluminum detoxifying Gene it's Frost resistant it's drought resistant it's bug resistant bugs don't even like it because it's got so many phytochemicals and it doesn't require irrigation you just throw it on the ground put it there with good stewardship of organic soil and boom up you get a crop of Himalayan tartery buckwheat and it's been lost in America for 200 years

because it has a taste right because when you put secondary phytochemicals in Plants they're not like white flour and sugar they have a taste so now we have a food lab to make recipes and make it more palatable and to reintroducing it tastes good so there we go and this is my expert this is the Dr Mark Hyman Himalayan tournament pancake expert yes I do have

a pancake pancake recipe it is very good in the vegan diet chai pancakes that I made for Jeff if any time so let's stick it a little more the the phenomena of Aging and as we've learned from you over the years is really an inflammatory process yeah so let's kind of start with what causes the immune system to become dysfunctional as we age what causes the

acceleration of inflammation as we age and and how does that connect to the Aging of our whole body and then we'll kind of loop back to how to use plants to affect that and what you've found in your research yeah so you said this beautifully in your book you know Mark as you know if you read his books and I'm sure everybody here has read one

or more of his books is a brilliant narrator he tells a story better than anyone I've the first time I I read anything he wrote I said this man's on the path because he can make very complicated topics very engaging and understanding because I have lageria which is no Diary of words you do you do not need to diminish your Genius you're very very good at

this um so one of the things that I've learned that Mark picked up beautifully and he's done elegantly in in young forever is a discussion about how our body responds to the experience of life and how that's associated with biological aging so you know my my father used to say to me you know Jeff life is what happens in between your plans so we got this

whole thing about a planned life I remember my daughter-in-law when she had her pregnancy plan with her first child and I said no woman can live by this plant oh yes Jeff I am very disciplined I'm living by this plan then of course stuff happened during her pregnancy she said oh my plan went on went to hell I'm not able to do my plan well that's

life right stuff comes up it happens and we have to be resilient so what is resilience resilience in our body is Manifest through principally three different cell types three different tissues that are constantly sampling the outside world 24 7 365. they're the only parts of our body that are constantly sampling the outside world and what are they they are our nervous system there are mucosal tissues

in our respiratory tract in our gastrointestinal tract and they're our immune system and they're all cross talking all the time one to the other and so when we start talking then about what happens with the experience of Life what up to as it relates to aging is it this system this information system picks up bad news because everybody's life has trauma along the road right now

the question is how do you deal with the trauma does it stick and stay there irreversibly and if it does you just accumulate Road tar over life which then depreciates the function of those cells that are taking the message from this reporter system this communication system some people call this immune scars we've just had a big episode of immune scars called SARS kobit 2 haven't we

and there are now people well not some people probably the majority of people are carrying some Legacy of what that virus left on their immune system these are epigenetic marks of an immune system that's altered from that experience now is that a one-way Street and that's where Mark's book I think is so beautiful because it describes no nothing in life is a one-way Street even loss

of neuronal Reserve we're now finding there is neuronal plasticity and neurons can be regenerated maybe not as quickly as skin cells but but they can be regenerated so there's this other street that goes back the other direction if there is damage there is repair so that's what I call Rejuvenation and our body is capable of rejuvenating and fortunately what we're starting to learn is that these

marks that we carry that are associated then with the principles of Aging or the Hallmarks of Aging that Mark is summarized so beautifully these are kind of scientific geekisms these Hallmarks of Aging but you've made them accessible in your book they can be modulated by a reversible set of principles that are is in our physiology if we give it the right thing to work from if

we don't give it the right thing to work from it doesn't have the ability to power up that Rejuvenation system and we just take the luck of the draw and we get worse as we grow older by the way when I say worse it's not just physiologically or metabolically worse it can be behaviorally alert worse you can be feeling like we're not loved we're not appreciated

we have no attribution it's socially deprived it's a form of of um deficiency it's not a vitamin deficiency it's a social support deficiency those leave marks vitamin L deficiency yes vitamin L deficiency exactly right so all of these things work together to create who we are and how we've how we see our aging process manifest in our body so Jeff what what's you know take us

down into the rabbit Hall a little bit of the science of what's happening to our immune system as we get older that causes it to generate more of this chronic sterile inflammation that is at the root of what we call inflammaging and then and then I want to kind of dive deep into how do we combat that and how do we change that reverse that process

yeah so I'm just reviewing now what Marcus already said in his book so I'm kind of the uh just speaking book for his book but in his book he talks about these these cell types that are that are associated with biological aging that are called essay SP cells that stands for senescent Associated secretary phenotypes I belong when what does that mean in English what it means

is that there's a zombie they're called Zombie cells in English yeah they they don't die and they run around spewing out inflammation right yep exactly so the genes of these cells are the same but they're communicating a different message because they've been modulated by epigenetic experiences to be shifted into an alarm state and that alarm State the body's inflammatory Pathways coming from a damaged immune system

are there for a purpose right to recycle dead tissue to help defend us against foreign Invaders inflammation is not like a bad thing it's a good process it's what it's uncontrolled simmering like a burning like a Boiling Pot on the stove all the time that's associated with the development of these senescent Associated secretary phenotype type cells zombies so a zombie cell does it a zombie you're

just gonna live in your body forever and the answer is no we now know that there are processes in the body for which Nobel prizes have been won for the discovery only recently like the process you talk about autophagy or mitophagy that are processes that activate the the Rejuvenation of cells to give room for new naive cells to come in and replace them remember that in

our body our bone marrow is producing on the order of several million new white blood cells every few minutes so we're constantly remodeling ourselves so the question is those white blood cells that are coming out into our body are they as good as the ones that were there before are they worse are they better and Rejuvenation is making them better not making them worse that's the

process that we're really uh speaking to when we talk about young forever it doesn't mean that you've completely eradicated aging because the clock still ticks but it it's removing these accelerants of the process of chronic inflammation that's associated with fibrosis insulin resistance cellular proliferation all the things that we associate with the physiology of aging and by the way it's very interesting when the the investigators um

uh and again Mark talks about this in the book investigators that are measuring these age clocks um like Stephen Horvath who is UCLA is one of the world's experts in this area they're able to actually take photographs of people and they're able to match the photographs based upon the physiognomy of whether they look old for their age with their biological age clock of their immune system

ah right they're able to show that yes there's that and so you say hold up does that mean the inside of my body if I could take a picture of the inside organs they'd look not so good too yeah that's that's what it's saying that you're altering the physiognomy the architecture of your body and its function as a consequence of these processes so Jeff we we

know that these cells accumulate as we get older these zombie cells and other things that happen to our immune system which is a decrease in our ability to fight infection and our ability to fight cancer and so we have sort of at the same time we have this sort of increasing inflammation on the one end we have a decreased ability to respond to threats on the

other hand and you have this concept that you coined called the amino Rejuvenation which I find fascinating and and the mechanisms by which it occurs are still a little opaque to me um and in the work you've been doing lately around studying the particular unique phytochemicals in Himalayan tartery buckwheat things that are found nowhere else do we know of yet in any other plant have this

ability to rejuvenate our immune system and you you really have just completed a very important study which I find shocking which is that using the compounds from this ancient plant that somehow rejuvenate our immune systems we can turn back the biological age clock by five to seven years so take us through exactly what is happening at a cellular level from these compounds what are the compounds

what do they do how do they actually change your biological immune clock and make us younger yeah so thank you so I want to give attribution to my colleague who's sitting right here in the front row Dr Austin Perlmutter he is a person that's overseeing this clinical study that we're very excited about in our little company um we thought it was a pretty ambitious trial for

a small group but thanks to his Acumen and the associate health committee had with some very diligent co-investigators we're able to take 50 individuals apparently healthy take their blood initially um and to evaluate using a gene chip produced by alumina that has a little over 900 thousands what are called cpg sites that are epigenetic marker sites on the genome but so this chip is able to

measure 900 plus thousand of these sites and they look for the methylation patterns of the genes right that's one of the principal process of epigenomics is methylation of the genome so we're able to look at the methylation patterns of individuals at Baseline then we were able to put them on the Himalayan Turtle buckwheat phytochemicals over the course of 90 days at a level that would be

considered equivalent to eating something like 100 grams of Himalayan tartery buckwheat flour equivalent today so in that range how many pancakes is that yeah that's a whole other story I can tell you about I just got through eating a little over 400 pancakes yeah we're going to get to that sorry I like that story but uh but anyway going back to the clinical trial um the

outcome then was to then take the blood of the individuals after the four months and it was ad-lib so they were on the same diet this was an end of one study control you know against themselves their change over the course of three months and then re-analyzing their methylation patterns or their epigenome of their white blood cells um over the course of the three months and

in using H clock algorithms from these accepted methods were able to deconvolute that data this is a huge amount of data it's well over a terabyte of data so there's a lot of machine learning that has to go on and how to analyze the data but we were able to ultimately demonstrate that there is a functional change in the pattern of white blood cells in the

body normalizing function and those individuals who started off with a an immune age that was higher than their chronological age after three months there was a trend a significant Trend actually to bring it back into a lower immune age over the course of three months so we feel this is the first study ever under this control I I want to emphasize to the pilot study so

only 50 people it was only three months it was not Placebo control but I think it's the start of a whole new generation of how we interrogate this from a scientific perspective to demonstrate that we have the tools to actually show how you can reverse aging in the immune system with nutritional intervention and that these compounds that we're using the course of dental ludiolin Rootin uh

is I mean there's over 50 different phytochemicals in tardy buckwheat the plant didn't make them just because it had nothing better to do it made this specific composition for the immune defense of the plant well it's important you just said that because you know a lot of uh aging research and research in general is a reductionist and in aging circles and Longevity research they're looking at

quercetin as a bioactive molecule that can help regulate immunity and reverse biological age and they did a study using that plus a chemo agent Destiny and they found a reversal about a year biological age but what you're talking about is a five to seven year reversal we're using a complex set of compounds that are in a whole food so when you try to sort of extract

a ingredient you might not know what you're leaving behind and it turns out what you're leaving behind some of it we know right some of the compounds in Himalayan Target we know something we might not know yet right and absolutely and so that is really fascinating to me that there's all these uh flavonoids and other compounds called to jojoba which are acting in a way to

regular epigenome independent of our lifestyle which is kind of fascinating to me and when you compound that with lifestyle changes and other strategies and a more sort of 360 view of how do we approach healthy aging it becomes a really powerful intervention well thank you Mark I think that's the real Secret Sauce you just said I would not say that any one thing is the way

we reverse aging I think it's a compilation of different things better sleep hygiene regular activity uh good thoughts and attitudes being loved being respected um you know the the concept of a good diet and we say some kind of a like modified Mediterranean low glycemic load gluten-free low allergy load type of dietary approach all these things work together but I think that the construct that there

are plants that have had to grow up over Millennia of their history to form genes that are really capable of being resilient against hostile conditions that is an interesting construct it raised my question such that I had a conversation you know how life is very uh fortuitous at times in serendipitous as I get older I think that there's no such thing as Serendipity I think we

work ourselves into situations where these coincidence happens where you run into somebody and say oh that was such a coincidence no it probably you were traveling in a certain circle of things that were likely to meet that person again so that happened to me with regard to this tardury buckwheat story so I'm go to China I Have This Magnificent visit I'm up in Harbin China the

northernmost City up by North Korea and Russia and I my host there is very kind he says Jeff do you want to go back to Shanghai on the bullet train that switches 2200 miles across all of China down the middle of China in the bullet train going at 250 miles an hour silently and vibration free on this electric train it's fantastic and China's just going by

me like a diorama so I I turn to another I said about halfway across I I said to him so have you ever heard of Himalayan tartare buckwheat and it was like the train stopped and we were frozen in motion he looked at me going oh my word you got to be kidding me I said no why why do you say that he said because we

have been studying tertiary Buckley we've been very angry we can't find anybody in America that's interested are you interested in working with us so then I get back to the United States and I asked my colleague Trish Yuri uh who is working with me for over 25 years I said Trish when I left to go on this trip you were going to look in to see

if anyone was growing tardury buckwheat in the United States and she said I can only find one person he's a former Cornell University AG researcher um that has retired and his wife who was a nurse a hobby Farm in uh in Upstate New York yeah and he got these seats from the USDA that he didn't know what they were they just had a number on him

and he grew him he loved them and now he is he's found out that their tartare buckwheat seeds and he has 10 acres and he's the only person I can find in the country that's Brian so then I called Mr Beer up and I said are you can we come out and visit you on your farm in Angelica New York and so we come out there

and we spend a couple days hanging out in the farm and getting our hands in the soil then I come home and I get a call from a good colleague friend of mine uh Naji amirad um at Vanderbilt University and he says Jeff you've been asking about this study that just appeared in the journal of clinical investigation from Vanderbilt my colleagues who are studying this very

unique new substance called two hydroxyl benzylamine to hoba and this study that you were very interested in was lowering blood pressure with two hoba based on its immune effects and the relationship of immune cells to the vascular endothelium relaxing the endothelium and lowering blood pressure and I said yeah I'm really interested in that because when I read the paper in the fine print it said that

there's only one source in nature of that which is Himalayan tartery buckwheat and he said that's right so now we have a Vanderbilt group we have a China group we've got a farmer in Upstate New York and now I'm in organic farming so this whole makes sense yes it makes total sense so the construct I wondered how all that dirt got into your fingernails precise like

so then we get a soil scientist Emily Reese who is the soil Steward who did her PhD at Cornell and she's the person who's stewarding the soil of a 500 acre organic farm and so we we asked her if she would take on the responsibility of being our soil scientist so that we could see if renourishing the soil with mycorrhizae if we inoculated the soil to

bring back even better health of the soil if if it would send a signal from the mycorrhizae through what they had exude which are things like salicylate and other gibberellins other compounds that influence the root well actually the germination of the seeds that become the plant that then affects the seed of the plant and its phytochemicals for those non-soils scientists out there listening what Jeff just

is explaining is how the soil is full of mycorrhizal fungi which is this huge network of fungi underneath the soil that is connecting all the plants to one another it's helping the plants extract the nutrients from the soil that are living in a symbiotic relationship with with the plants and the soil and in order for the plants to get the nutrients they need they require these

fungi to be there and in depleted soils which is most of the soils we have because of pesticides fertilizers herbicides like to say that destroys the microbiome of the soil we've destroyed these mycorrhizal networks so this is a really key part of Virginia agriculture but just describing and and what he did was take uh basically the buckwheat seed and kind of Jack it up with some

extra maseratal fungi and some other bacterial compounds that are in in the soil that help the plant get more phytochemicals exact exactly right so this is beautiful beautiful and you said it beautifully in your book too so these sometimes I have to I'm you know like Obama had his anger translator I'm I'm jet plans like you know geek translator and thank you for that years of

help I I've needed it um so what happened we had this field trial we had strips on the on the field that were inoculated with different microrizole inoculants and then we at the end of the growing season obviously we harvested we took the seeds we did a phytochemical analysis and we were very excited uh to see that one of the plots that we use a certain

mycorrhizal inoculant had a what appeared to be a strong Trend towards increasing the phytochemicals of these compounds in the plants so here is kind of closing the circle for me because now we talk about planetary health planetary immune system soil health root of seed health plant health and then food product health and then human immune health it actually closes for me I started as a professor

in chemistry and environmental science in Earth year 1970. I was hired because they wanted an Earth year chemist in 1970. this has closed that inside an afro back then for those did I ever yeah yeah that's an amazing story that connects the Dos between how we grow our food the medicine in the food and how it impacts us and so you know really you're talking about

the microbiome of the soil and the fungi in the soil that determine the quality of the food we're eating and we really stripped that out of most of our agriculture and what you're saying is that we can actually even help plants a little bit more by some of these new technologies that are allowing us to inoculate the seeds and the plants with these extra kind of

probiotics and fungi which essentially the microbiome of the soil and these mycorrhizal fungi networks so it's really kind of mind-blowing and how that determines so much about our health and that sort of the subtext of that is what about all the rest of the food we're eating that doesn't grow in that kind of soil and what is it lacking and why are we all so sick

and is it connected to the incredible growth of chronic disease and obesity in this country you know it it's really interesting if if any of you have ever gone to the Sacramento Valley or Coachella or some of the big produce producing Salinas found in California where they produce a lot of our produce for the whole country particularly during the winter months and you you watch the

stewardship of the land it's all production based isn't it it's all yield based and that's not to say that these farmers are irresponsible they're responsible for making a living and to produce a product that can be sold that looks good to the consumer and so if you then were to take that and compare it to the group of these tartery buckwheat Cooperative Farmers that we've enlisted

to work with us they have the same goals they have to make a living they have to pay for their farms and so forth but there their commitment to the stewardship of their soil is extraordinarily motivating and and symbolizing of what we need in general about regeneration of Our Lives of our health of our sense of Vitality of our resilience I mean it's not just growing

stuff in the soil there's a whole metaphor to living about and I I recall actually asking I've never talked to you about this Mark but back in in when I was a young guy in teaching uh environmental science was one of the courses I taught at the University was it actually turned out to be a very popular course in the in the 1970s and um I

would ask a question the first day of this class this was you know non-scientists would have to would take an elective to get their science credit so there's a lot of people that were just in there to fill a seat but I try to make it attractive enough they'd want to come to class so I the first day of class I'd ask how many of you

are considered are interested in posterity now remember these are undergraduate students 18 to 22 years of age probably and you know they would look at me like really strange no no Professor ever asked us about posterity and I would say no I want to know how many of you are interested in posterity and there would be some people that would raise their hands yes and then

I would say okay why are you interested in posterity you're not going to be around why are you interested now a lot of those students in that in those classes because they were taking science credit with me for the business school right so my concept was what is sustainable business what is sustainable work uh what is a sustainable culture and how do you embody that if

you can't keep the principles that keep Life Alive the carbon hydrogen sulfur oxygen and nitrogen Cycles healthy how can you have sustainable anything and so this this metaphor that we're dealing with is a powerful way of thinking about biological aging because when we are preventing our own biological aging by implementing what Mark is talking about his book we're making a contribution to survival of the planet

that's the only way you get there you have to swim you have to swim upstream to be there because if you're swimming Downstream with what's common in fashionable you're not you're in any evolutionist that's what's going on you're an anti-evolutionist if you're following the stream yeah you've got to swim upstream and that's what your book really says so beautiful well I think you know the the

company that you started big gold Health which I'm helping with an advisor for an investor and is is unique because it's it's taking these ancient food products and turning them into medicines that actually work better than most drugs I mean quercetin for example is Works uh as a scenolytic killing zombie cells it also works to activate ampk which you know is one of the longevity switches

in part of the Hallmarks of Aging that are in the nutrient sensing pathways uh and yet you know the effect of just that one molecule may not speak to the power of a more complex diet so I think the key is the phytohermesis concept because I think it really speaks to the way in which phytochemicals work by triggering our bodies to respond to them with a

healing response that's right and that that's something that I only completely understand and I think that that is a very important concept that helps sort of Define why we need to be consuming these compounds and why they're so important and how we need also to be careful because what happens if you take a super high dose it might not be good right it's a little stress

in the right dose to activate your healing response but not too much you know I think I've been around in this field long enough maybe I'm cynical maybe I'm you know um jaded but I've seen umpteen multiple moments where we had the answers about nutrition and it was the topic du jour and everybody was on that program if they wanted to be in their peer group

keeping up and I could start naming things but I won't I won't point fingers all I can say is now having been in this field 50 years most of those things came and went the only things that have stayed are the things that are real and that's eating a complex diet that's un adulterated that is rich in plants that has animal products that are also unadulterated

you know at one time I was the scientific head of Coleman Natural meats the only company at the time that raised animals naturally that we fought with the USDA to get a natural beef designation that was 10 years of tireless work to finally get the Cattlemen's Association to kind of allow that designation because they pretty much owned the USDA as it relates to what was going

on but the beef that was produced by the Coleman Ranch was a free-range form of animal that didn't go into feedlots didn't eat uh if it ever had to be medicated it was cold out of the herd it was a Veterinary treated animal that didn't get into the production and that's that's those are the kind of things that we know are sensible right they're they are

my my father would call it rule rules of reasonableness the way that we've been eating reasonable recently is is really following rules of unreasonableness that's right yeah so Jeff um in in the work you're doing now in the in big bold Health which everybody should check out bigboldhealth.com to learn more about the science and the work you're doing what are you most excited about that's coming

down the pike what are the things that you're you're seeing that are going to be the most impactful and helping us to kind of reimagine our approach to helping agent I think there are three things happening right now Mark and you and I have talked about this that are notes of optimism for me um these are this is a no necessary order priority just uh what

I've been seeing first of all is the rising advocacy of the the body politic of our country to be disgusted with the way that their health has been treated and we're starting to see consumer advocacy groups raise up rise up particularly now with postcode with long haul where you're starting to see people grouped together and saying this is unacceptable the way that we're being treated and

we want to find Solutions and these advocacy groups are composed of very intelligent people that are just disabled because of infection and they are putting their energies into creating a new way of thinking about health a new way of approaching it uh secondly is the meeting that you've participated in the White House conference on hunger food and health which I think uh was an extraordinary moment

I was at the McGovern committee hearings back in the 60s it took 40 years to get the government to have a national conference and what happened with the McGovern committee how did you get that how did that get translated into into consumer outcome it got translated into high sugar foods dietary guidelines yes the dietary guidelines cut out fat and added sugar and then we never saw

metabolic syndrome until the guidelines were commercial socialized by the food processing industry and now we have epidemic proportions of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance so this particular round now what we see is and I couldn't believe it when it came out as a mandate for future exploration food is medicine now those of us in this field Jim Gordon and this group have been talking about this

for long periods of time food is medicine when it's appropriately applied and this construct that the government will be even thinking about reimbursing people for prescriptions for produce I mean if that's not a revolutionary concept so that's number two and number three then is you know here I am I'm I know I'm a techno Greek but I've I've got at least two or three wearables that

I'm wearing and these wearables are becoming more and more sophisticated so we're getting 24 7 information about the intimacy of our body that we never had access before we don't need a physician it goes to the cloud it gets now processed by ai ai algorithms that are much more sophisticated than the single mind can ever come up with and it's feeding back to us real-time information

about how to live the life that is going to be consistent with our biological opportunity those things when we put them together are frame shifting they are culturally seismic they change the whole way that we think about health and disease and I'm really optimistic because this organization has been advocating this for the 40 years that I've been involved it's very exciting that's exciting Jeff that's really

I agree with all those I think a little update I I think the the current um Congress has the potential to pass a medically tailored meals Bill uh to study the effective food as a treatment for chronic disease and it's a 500 million dollar bill uh I'm working with the chairman of the health subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee to help move this forward he's

in charge of the trillion dollar budget of Medicare so we're we're seeing movement the Rockefeller Foundation is also independently funding a 250 million dollar study on food is medicine so this is really starting to happen in a place where I remember when you even suggested food is medicine you'd be ridiculed and laughed out of any medical conversation but now it's really Central to understanding what we're

doing so let me give you one other note to what you just said and by the way thank you for your extraordinary advocacy in this area so we are a little company um yeah if that deserves some Applause absolutely um so our little company big bull health went out and wanted to get some Venture money to to guide us but I was very concerned about because

money comes you know what is money money is potential energy and potential energy can do good or it can do bad so you can go either way so I was looking for strategic investors that really saw the mission that we're trying to develop and I was very fortunate or we were very fortunate we found such an organization they have over 60 companies they've invested in all

in sustainable and and uh I I guess if we would call it new age food Tech and AG Tech related to sustainability across oceans and land and uh so this company came in and joined us as a partner at the White House conference they were instrumental in working together with several other Venture Capital organizations that are now raising a fund of two billion dollars to fund

technology and AG development and and development of technologies that will in fact produce sustainable Food Supplies that are meeting the food as medicine mandate so this is coming from the private sector and where where there is money there will be business where there is business there will be jobs where there are jobs will be smart young women and men coming into the field and we will

transform this from a pathology Focus to a health focused culture through this kind of advocacy definitely it's definitely happening thank you Jefferson and I and I'm sure maybe you're aware but uh the IRA Bill the inflation reduction act uh had 20 billion dollars in it for performing Agriculture and moving in more photo regenerative agriculture that we were involved in advocating for as part of our food

fix campaign so it's really it's really exciting to see these things starting to move forward if you loved that last video you're going to love the next one check it out here if you really want to fight body fat and raise your metabolism you don't want to fear your food you want to actually lean into it to look for delicious healthy foods eat en at a

modest volume and also either eaten at the right time