Transcript

Most Replayed Moment: Is Milk Healthy? The Truth About Dairy, Sugar, Fruit And Fasting

0:00 Uh I got told the other day w which helped me s understand myself, I got told that When we're hungry, especially when it's sort of like late at night. The Logical center of our brain, like the prefrontal cortex.

0:15 is less active and the amygdala, the sort of emotional part of our brain that once the dopamine is much more active. And it helped me to understand why maybe late at night if I haven't planned my food. Um I'm much more susceptible to make a bad food choice that I then regret. I'm much more s acceptable to lean in for sugar or something that's like super high in carbs or whatever. Yeah. That really helped me. And this is the why the planning thing makes a lot of sense.'Cause I can use my prefrontal cortex, my logic center of my brain, to make the food choice

0:43 In the morning. Yeah. So that I don't find myself making a mistake. It's so important, Steven, because i people have to understand that willpower Is not the answer. You cannot use willpower to control your food behavior. It's part of your ancestral

0:59 evolutionary limbic reptile dinosaur brain. And so when your blood sugar drops You're gonna eat whatever in front of you, whether there's a vending machine, if there's a donut, if it's cookies, it doesn't matter. Even if you know better. And I I've experienced this. You're just gonna eat whatever because it's a life threatening emergency. Your body doesn't know that there's grocery stores and restaurants. It means you're gonna go out and try to hunt and gather and do something that's like an emergency. So when you have that food emergency Yeah and you don't have the right food on you?

1:29 You're in trouble. I I have that all the time. I have this like constant fight fight with myself where m this one voice is like, Do the fucking right thing and then m this other part of my brain is like just today, break the rule. And yeah. And but obviously that voice is louder sometimes than others, and typically late at night it's louder. Stress. Stress. Sleep deprivation. All that increases your appetite increases Cortisol, it increases. Uh Ghrelin, which is a grain, which is a hunger hormone.

1:56 I mean you can take uh you know young healthy K college kids and Sleep deprive them and they're gonna crave carbs, they're gonna crave sugar, and they're gonna Gain weight. It's not rocket science. What about for someone that

2:09 Doesn't have any money at all. It's so they can't, you know, they don't have the ability to A lot of the privileges that me and you have. What are some of the very basics that they should be thinking about in order to remain healthy in a world where every convenience store is trying to sell you something cheap and sugary. Yeah, it's a really good good question. You know, I think I think the economics of being healthy is a problem. And and and we know that there's a huge disparity in health.

2:35 Um But it's not only economics, it's education. Uh you know, I I met with uh woman who was the Doctorate. Uh a clinic in Ped Stivison, which is in Brooklyn. It's a very underserved area.

2:47 And uh in a very um low socioeconomic status group. Very unhealthy. And she said, You know, Mark, did you know the the number one predictor Of health? Is it money? No.

2:59 Education. So even people who are Yeah. wealthy but haven't been educated still have issues. So for me it was really about education. And so people can be educated to do the right thing and it doesn't have to be expensive.

3:13 And I was part of this film ten years ago called Fed Up. That looked at childhood obesity in our food system and the advent of sugar and marketing and processed foods and we we visit a lot of families and I work with a family in North Carol uh South Carolina and Easley. It's one of the poorest areas in America. It has the worst uh Called the uh

3:32 Uh food deserts. One of the worst food deserts. In America, basically where there's not a lot of healthy options to choose from. Oh yeah. And there's something called the retail food environment index. How many healthy grocery stores are there to fast food and convenience stores? And there was well like ten to one was was terrible. And his family you know was Lived on a thousand dollars a month for food for a family of five. They lived in a trailer. They

3:56 Uh, we're in disability and food stamps. the mother was a hundred plus pounds overweight, the father was very overweight, had type two diabetes and was on already at forty two year olds. Old was on dialysis for kidney failure. Which is amazing'cause you sh usually don't see that'til later. That the son was sixteen years old and fifty percent body fat. Guys should be ten to twenty and was about die to be diabetic, was pre diabetic.

4:20 And Rather than kinda they were part of the movie. I said, Why do you want to do this? And they were like, Well in order for my dad to get kidney transplant, he has to wait. We're trying, we don't know what to do. We're doing all this low fat stuff and we're doing all this diet stuff we have in the house not working. I went to their house. And I rather than giving a lecture

4:36 About what to do. I said, Let's cook a meal together, but let' first let's do an inspection of your kitchen and let's see what's in here. And so we pulled out everything from the freezer and the fridge and the cupboards and everything was packaged, boxed, processed. Everything was very high in high fructose corn syrup from the peanut butter to the salad dressing. Everything had trans fat in it, which is deadly. And a lot of it said diet there. So my basic rule is if it has a health claim on the label, don't eat it. You know, it's gluten free potato chips.

5:04 Doesn't make it healthy, right? Coca Cola is gluten free. Doesn't make it healthy. So um I showed them what they were doing and they said, Let's just make a simple meal. Here's a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget. Haddy, well for you For the planet and your wallet. It's made by the environmental working group. You can get up on EWG.org. It's free.

5:24 And It and and it was like how do you choose the cheaper cuts of meat or the the beans or the grains or the veggies. You know, like onions and carrots and celery are not expensive, you know, like a lot of veggies are not expensive. So we made turkey chili. We made a salad from fresh ingredients. Olive oil and vinegar dressing, not a dressing that was full of Chemicals and high fructose corn syrup and refined oils. We I show'how to roast his sweet potatoes. I show'em how to stir fry vegetables. We had some asparagus.

5:50 They never eaten anything fresh. They never cooked in the kitchen. The kids came out who were playing video games. They came running in the kitchen like what's that smell? And there was like the roasting of the sweet potatoes. We had this beautiful dinner together. They love the food. And I was like, You know what? I don't know if it's gonna work, but you don't they didn't even have cutting boards, they didn't have knives. Like they literally hadn't like we tried to cut Uh the you know, the um the onions and the sweet potatoes with a butter knife, because that's all they had was like a butter knife. It was really hard. Uh so I bought them on the way home, I bought them cutting boards on Amazon and on Ives and I sent it to their house.

6:24 Next week the mom text me, she says, Mark We lost eighteen pounds just because of family. A year later the father lost forty five, got a new kidney, the mother lost a hundred pounds, the son lost one hundred and thirty two pounds. And and went to medical school. guy and his family go to college and he asked me for a letter recommendation.

6:41 For medical school. And they lived in one of the worst food deserts. They didn't have Much No, economically, and they were able to figure it out. Because eating real food doesn't have to be expensive. You don't have to have a seventy dollar wagu ribeye steak, right? You can you can eat real food. And it's just as simple as not eating The ultra processed food. It's so bad for us.

7:01 And it kills eleven million people a year. We know the state is so strong it causes mental health issues, aggression. Violence. depression, anxiety, uh gun violence. I mean the the studies are there. I just I did a podcast on the Doctor's Pharmacy in my podcast about this talking about how our food is affecting our mental health, not just obesity and diabetes. But our cognitive function.

7:22 uh at A D D and memory issues. I mean it's all linked to what we're eating. So We we have a uh you know, uh like I said, the best of times, the worst of times. We know What to do, but we have the ability to do it. It it it's just it's a problem of education, a problem of

7:38 a political will to change the policies that are driving us to do the wrong thing. And right now there's a bill being proposed in Congress that would limit As a pilot. Ultra processed food for kids. With food stamps, which I think would be amazing.

7:52 Mm. Bighting back tooth and nail. Right. So so we're fighting big forces. Uh the food industry is the biggest industry on the planet. When I was growing up. Um and I was trying to be healthy.

8:05 One of the things I used to do. Was chug milk. Yeah. I got told that it would make me tall like my brothers. So I used to drink out like crazy. Yeah. Straight from the carton. Just as many gulps as I could take from the fridge. Did it work? Did you did you grow? I have no idea. I'm still shorter than they are, so I guess not. Um but that's one of the big myths that I think a lot of family still believe that

8:27 Milk is Great for our bones and to help us grow. What's your thoughts on milk? It's a controversial topic as well, subject to milk. Yes. I mean the dairy industry is big. Um Our current uh secretary of agriculture worked for the dairy industry. It's problematic'cause'cause the science isn't there. There's a there was a the paper called Milk and Health that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

8:49 Top medical journal in the world, arguably, maybe the Lancet, if you're from the UK. But it it basically was written by two Harvard scientists that dissected all the scientific evidence around milk and whether the claims were right or not. Maybe for the audience in Europe you might not know this, but in the States you'll remember this, there were all these got milk ads. So there were Famous people, celebrities, uh you know, sports athletes, politicians all wearing a white milk mustache. And they're like got milk as a promotion and in in in those ads it would say it's gonna build better bones, it's gonna do this, it's gonna do that.

9:25 And the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. Uh. Actually Or w I think it was federal you can't Do that.

9:34 Because It's It's not true. Like you have to take those ads out. So those ads went away. And it was in government.

9:42 Promoting those ads. with the dairy council. So there's something called check out programs that the government has where it's supposed to support agriculture. Well the government was paying In part for these ads with taxpayer dollars. And the science wasn't there. And the the dietary guidelines for Americans

9:58 says that the average American should have three glasses of milk a day and kids should have two glasses of milk a day to be healthy. You cannot get money and funding for school lunches in America without having milk on the menu. No, there is no evidence to support this. In fact, there's opposite evidence that skim milk causes weight gain because it doesn't satisfy your appetite. That milk can cause cancer. Prostate cancer.

10:23 that um it doesn't create strong bones in fact Just higher risk of fracture with high milk drinkers. That it creates a lot of digestive issues for people It can create autoimmune diseases like type one diabetes. It has a uh common allergies to or food sensitivities that people get. And I remember I was I was in the um

10:41 emergency once and when I was working in the ER and this mother comes in with this kid with like This ten thing. ear infection. I'm like, what happened? Like when did this start? Oh it started when he was like twelve months old. I said, what changed? Well I stopped breastfeeding and I started giving him milk and all of a sudden he started getting his ear infections. I'm like, oh this is before I even knew about all this. It was just kind of an interesting footnote. But w we really have have to look at the data and be science driven and

11:05 The problem is we're we're we have corporate capture in America. We're we're the food industry has captured our food agencies, our political um system from the FTA to The U S DA We they spend, for example, half a billion dollars just on the farm bill. Uh which has you know, for example, food stamps and other food programs, child infant nutrition.

11:26 So it's it's really. Unfortunate, but milk is not nature's perfect food. It's only nature's perfect food if you're a calf. I is there health benefits to milk? Yes. So so that's the other side of it. Now what milk should we be drinking? Right. If we're drinking modern milk, modern milk is from hosting cows that are Almost homogenous in the same not homogenized milk, but homogenous breed.

11:50 They they have very few bulls inseminating and they have like you know massive insemination program from very few uh uh bulls that have a limited genetic stock. And uh they're what we call A one cows. So most heirloom cows, most sort of historical dairy had something call A two casein, which is less inflammatory, less likely to cause gut issues, less problematic for the body. So sheep and goat milk have eight too. Certain cows like Jersey or Guernsey cows have A two.

12:19 In them. And you can get A2 milk, you can get A two ice cream now. Um And so this A one case. Potentially very problematic. So

12:29 I think the current dairy is not great. And then we pasturize it and homogenise it and then we You know And we add growth hormone. We have estrogen that we add into the cows that's in the milk. We have sixty different hormones in the milk, some of them naturally occurring, but We milk uh pregnant cows uh and that

12:47 milk has a lot more hormonal effects. So I think current uh current dairy is not something we should consume. Now if you have a chance to get sheep milk or goat milk or A2 milk from a cow That may be okay. Yogurt's may be okay. And depends on your genetics too. Seventy five percent of the world's lactose intolerant. Many people have dairy sensitivities. But uh I I think you know, if it's if it's from the right source, it's okay. For example, I use goat way. As my morning protein shake. So go way is from goats, obviously. Uh there's very little casein in it.

13:17 but it's A two K C if there's any. And I don't react to it. But if I have regular way I do have a reaction, I get congested, I'll get pimples or I get regular stuff. So I don't think dairy is n something we should be consuming in large amounts unless it's certain kinds of dairy. Position on fruit. A lot of fruit. How much fruit? I think it depends, right? So if you're a diabetic uh and you're metabolically completely out of whack. Um and you don't have any metabolic resilience.

13:45 Yeah you know, eating a plum might be a problem for you. And now we have continuous glucose monitors, you can track your blood sugar and see. And I've I've had patients like this, gee, I I I eat a plum and my sugar goes to the roof. So or but if I ate an apple, it doesn't. So I think different fruits had different effects on you. Uh but for the most part food is full of phytochemicals, fiber. Phyternutrients, it does have a little bit of sugar in it.

14:07 Uh, I would say no fruit juice. I think fruit juice is definitely to obesity in kids and other things. But if you want to have an apple or a peach or a plum I think it's a very important thing. You shouldn't have it first thing in the morning. I think

14:19 protein and fat in the morning is important because it it activates your metabolism and your protein synthesis. If you eat sugar in the morning, which is essentially what we eat in the world today, cereal, pancakes, waffles, muffins, bagels. You know, sweetened yogurt, sweetened coffees. I mean, It's the worst possible thing we can do for our biology. It it it jacks up our blood sugar and insulin and ends up causing us to gain weight and be hungry and Yeah, be Craving more stuff. So

14:44 Having having um food, for example, you have frozen berries in your I had frozen cherries, for example, in my whey protein. That's okay. There's protein in there and it it mitigates the effect. So What about eating times? When to eat? Yeah. Have you got any thoughts around when we should and shouldn't be eating. Yeah, for sure. I think you know, you you know, we had something called breakfast before, which was breaking the fast. And now people eat all night. They eat until they go to bed and they as soon as they wake up they eat or have something uh sugary stuff in the morning they get sugary coffee.

15:14 And they don't give themselves a window. Um Fantastic. Which is critical for our biology. And I wrote about this in my book Young Forever. Where we talked about how do we

15:23 Cover our own repair re renewal system kick in.'Cause the body think about it, uh, Steven, you your body when you cut yourself Heels. The skin closes it. He's How does it know how to do that? I it's it's so smart. It's got a your bones break. It heals. I broke my arm a few years ago. It healed, right? What's going on? I'm not going, would you please heal in there? It's it knows what to do. It recruits stem cells, it recruits repair factors and growth factors, and it it knows what to do. So the body has this innate healing, repair, renewal, and regeneration system. And we need to learn how to activate it.

15:56 And most of us do the opposite. We do everything in our power to deactivate it and that causes disease. So food is the most important thing we do to interact with these regenerative renewal repair systems. It's one one of the things we call the hallmarks of aging. And there's one called deregulated nutrient sensing and it really relates to how our bodies relate to food, how our s nutrient sensing systems are disregulated by our highly processed diet, by high sugar and starch, and not enough of the right foods. So

16:25 In the in the long answer to your question, you know, it's important to give yourself a break of twelve Hours. So If you eat at six at night, you can eat six in the morning minimum. But Best probably fourteen. So if you eat dinner at six, you eat breakfast at eight.

16:40 That's okay. That's a fourteen hour fast. And in that time your body is doing its cleanup, recycling, repair. Is there an evolutionary story here? For sure, absolutely. You know, when when uh you know we didn't have grocery stores, we didn't have you know Whole Foods, we didn't have restaurants, we didn't have takeout, we didn't have convenience stores. So we had to go out and find food. Now I just came back from Tanzania and visited the hunter gatherers there, the Kadza, which is one of the last few tribes that hunt and gather and we went hunting and gathering. It's like Man, it's a lot of work to go you know, dig up some roots and kill a bird in the tree and like it was a it was a project. We ran around for hours. Uh

17:17 And so we don't know where we're getting our next meal. And so the body has had to deal with periods of feast and famine before. So what it's got built into it is a system of conservation. And and repair. When we don't eat. And so the system has activated that

17:34 improves our our blood sugar control. that recruits pneumochondria and builds pneumochondria, that reduces inflammation. Yeah. activates um c cellular cleanup and repair processes. So you have all these old cells and damaged proteins. Your body has a little

17:49 Like Digester, almost like a little vacuum cleaner that goes and sucks this all up and then di digest it and then uses the parts. It's almost like an a a a recycling system in the body. We need to activate that. And so that fasting period Is it time to do that?

18:04 And we've seen even for example, we know for example concentration camp survivors. Hmm. Live really long. Like They live ninety, hundred plus years old. Many of them and it's because they had this period of deep starvation.

18:16 Yeah. had an effect on their biology. And we know this We know this from many animal studies that starvation and fasting Well extend your life by a third. If you eat a third less calories, you'll live a third longer. Now, it's not fun, right? But you don't have to do that. So timing of eating is important. So give yourself three hours before bed for no food and give yourself at least twelve to fourteen hours between dinner and breakfast. How do we know in the animal studies it wasn't just the calorie restriction that caused the

18:43 Um sort of longevity effect. Oh, it was the kind It was so what if I just restrict my calories instead of fasting? Well you can do that. Uh I met a guy who was from the Calorie Restriction Society. Calorie Restriction Society. Yeah, which is based on this these research in animals where think about it, if you eat a third less, you live a third longer. So for a human that would be a hundred and twenty years old. And I said, What do you have for breakfast? He said, Well, I had five pounds of celery.

19:11 And I'm like Okay. You go do that. I'm gonna figure out another way. So you have to eat enormous amounts of Like low calorie food just to feel full, right? That's why he had all that food. So he he he was starving. And And there are a lot of downsides to starving. You lose muscle, which is necessary. There's certain things that go wrong. And so it's not really the optimal strategy. You want to do things that mimic starvation. So how do you mimic

19:38 This period of starvation. But The causes something called autophagy. Which basically means to eat yourself. to basically clean up yourselves. It's like self cleaning or self repair, right?

19:49 And and and so there's a lot of ways to hack that. You can do it by This longer term overnight fast. You can do it by certain supplements and and certain medications like rapamycin's being studied for longevity. Which is a My drug that's used for for cancer and for other immune suppressing treatments, but it works on this pathway called MTOR.

20:10 Which essentially. Is the Activation. of cellular build up, right? It causes muscle synthesis. So if you want to build muscle, you want to activate mTOR with protein, which is good, but you don't want to activate it all the time. So this drug inhibits mTOR. Which is what happens when you starve yourself. So it mimics starvation.

20:29 And then you get this Ca. Or drugs like metformin are being studied, which is another drug that's looking at How do we activate this longevity switch?

20:39 Called AMP K another pathway. That's uh re regulating your nutrient sensing. So when you have enough You know what I mean? If nutrients this activates. But if we're running around eating, well, you can actually take this drug and it may have an effect. There's a large trial going on now. I'm still agnostic. about it. I I'm I'm neither pro or against it. I think the data's not in it for me to start taking it or for my patients to start taking it.

21:00 But it works on some of the these sort of Uh starvation mimicking. Hacks, let's call them. So starvation is good for us. Yeah. I mean yes, yes, I would say you have to be careful because You know, people go really to the extreme, they're going like

21:15 I'm gonna not activate mTOR because activating mTOR caused me to Age faster and it prevents autophagy and it builds cancer and It's bad. So I'm gonna become a vegan.

21:27 And I'm gonna eat less calories. And eventually what happens is you lose muscle. So it's it's like Goldilocks, you know, you need Both MTOR activation and mTOR ambition. You need to take a breath in. You need to take a breath out. You need to be awake. You need to go to sleep. Yeah. Your heart needs to beat. It needs to relax. It's just how the body works. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.

21:59 Oh my god