Dr. Neal Barnard - The Power Foods Diet

Neal Barnard, MD, FACC is here to chat with us about his latest book, The Power Foods Diet – The Breakthrough Plan That Traps, Tames, and Burns Calories for Easy and Permanent Weight Loss. We talk about the power of plant-based diets, and the role of specific foods in weight loss and brain health. He emphasizes the importance of avoiding saturated fats and incorporating antioxidants like anthocyanins and vitamin E into the diet, which is especially important for avoiding Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Barnard shares his natural, three-pronged approach to diminishing menopause symptoms. We discuss the benefits of soy in reducing breast cancer, and touch on bioidentical hormones. Lastly, we have a fun discussion about Dr. Barnard’s musical career and how a psychiatric patient of his once ended up at his concert and thought she was hallucinating! This man is fascinating and knows so much about so many things. 

https://www.pcrm.org/power-foods-diet

https://www.pcrm.org/

https://wellelephant.com/ ACE40 discount code for ACE Plant-based Eating Class

ACE Plant-based Eating Course - Wellelephant.com use discount code ACE40 

Transcript

Lauren Bernick (05:26.514)
including his latest, The Power Foods Diet, and has led numerous studies on investigating the effects of diet on diabetes, body weight, hormonal symptoms, and chronic pain, including a study that paved the way for viewing type 2 diabetes as a potentially reversible condition. However, the thing that I admire most about Dr. Barnard is his unwavering commitment to end horrific animal testing and experiments. When Dr. Barnard attended medical school,

It was common to administer drugs to healthy dogs, record their effects, and kill the dogs at the end of the experiment. Dr. Barnard refused to participate. In 1985, he founded the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Back then, most medical schools used live animals. Today, zero medical schools in North America use live animals. That's due to Dr. Barnard and his team.

Did I mention that he's 70, looks 45, and is an actual rock star to boot? Please welcome a badass mother effer, Dr. Neal Barnard. So welcome.

Lisa (06:29.711)
Hehehehehehehe

Neal Barnard (06:36.505)
Well, thank you. Terrific to be with you today.

Lauren Bernick (06:39.25)
Nice to see you.
one of the things that I just really admire is the work that you've done regarding animals and animal testing. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because when I saw your talk the other night, you really called it a hazing ritual and not really a class, you know, what you should be doing. So can you talk about that in medical school? What happened in that experience?

Neal Barnard (08:28.265)
Yeah, I mean animals are used in a great many ways, but for some people, their first introduction to it, at least among medical professionals, is just what you said, that in a physiology class or in a pharmacology class, the students are brought into a laboratory, and they're broken down into groups of four or five, six students, and they give them a dog. And the dog is nervous. They're petrified.

And each group of students takes their dog and puts the dog on the table, and they follow the instructions of the lecturer. And they tape the dog down, they anesthetize the dog, and they start an IV, they put an EKG on, and then they start administering drugs. And the first drug is norepinephrine, and it speeds the heart up, and the students write that down. But they knew it anyway, because they know what these drugs do from lecture.

and then they will slow the heart down with another drug called propranolol. But they knew that anyway because it was in the book, it was in the lecture. Different labs are different but they sometimes exsanguinate the dogs, which is where you drain blood out. And you drain the blood and drain the blood and eventually it stops coming out because it's all gone. And at that point the dog's heart stops beating.

And the students look nervously at each other, and one says to the other, she's dead, right? And then their instructor comes to go high and goes, she's dead. Bag her up. And they're kind of stunned by the callousness of it, but they go on, and they bag up the dog. And then about an hour later, the students are all gone. They're at home. And all the way down the aisle are all these trash bags with dead animals in them.

And the students are describing to their girlfriends or their boyfriends or their parents what they did that day. And their family members say, why? What's the point of killing all these animals one afternoon? And they try to describe how this is a teaching exercise. Anyway, it's obviously...

Neal Barnard (10:41.005)
terrible for the dogs, they're all killed. It's terrible for the students as well because that part of the students' brain that is learning to be compassionate and learning how to be a professional is threatened because they are given this choice of either you participate and you become a doctor or you defy them and maybe you're never going to be a doctor.

And anyway, for me, it wasn't a question. I mean, they said this is what we're going to do. And it was a course requirement. I just said, I don't care if it's a requirement. I mean, I'm not doing it. And so I didn't do it. And

passed the course anyway and I'm on the faculty there still today. And we just, I just made a vow that we were going to get rid of those damn things and we did. But that's, that's one, I mean that was huge, a huge victory, but there's a lot more to be done on how animals are used in toxicology, how animals are used in basic research, how animals are used at higher levels of training. Surgical training for example. We have one already in most of those too. I mean we have, there is not a lot of animal use left in medical education.

But anyway, that's our job here.

Lisa (11:50.111)
Yeah, I mean, they, yeah, and they, I mean, I know they've, we're using animals as trash, crash test dummies and all kinds of things. And, you know, it's really sad because, you know, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about how desensitized their training, their training desensitization, just like someone walking, working in a slaughterhouse or kids in 4-H, right? Like to disconnect from that, it's very sad.

Lauren Bernick (11:50.142)
And that's thanks to you and your team.

Neal Barnard (11:58.882)
Yeah.

Neal Barnard (12:15.377)
And there's nothing more valuable in this world where there's a lot of confusion, territoriality, and conflict. There's nothing more valuable than the ability to reach out, to be compassionate toward other people, toward other animals, to the environment that we live in, to practice a little bit of selflessness in a way, and to nourish that. And when it's threatened in this way, it's not a good thing.

Lauren Bernick (12:41.195)
Yeah.

Lisa (12:41.527)
Well, to your point too, you know, I work with Dr. Matthew Letterman and Dr. Alana Polde, who are really, have been really talking about connection. And so when I hear you talk about this and they're learning to become doctors, talk about disconnection. That's complete disconnection from empathy and compassion. It's really, all I can say is that we're grateful to you and physicians committee for really stepping in there and helping change that.

Neal Barnard (12:46.159)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (13:10.479)
Because future doctors, to have that ability to really connect with their compassion and empathy is huge for the future of medicine in my opinion. So, thank you.

Neal Barnard (13:11.517)
Thank you.

Lauren Bernick (13:22.422)
Thank you. Well, I know you wanna talk about your new book, The Power Foods Diet. It was, it's great and I love it. It has such good recipes in it from Lindsay Nixon and Dustin Harder. Like I definitely, I can't wait to make, I was looking through it. Okay, this sounds so good. Creamy spinach and artichoke wraps. That's speaking my language. And chickpea pot pie stew with.

Neal Barnard (13:23.065)
painting.

Lauren Bernick (13:50.186)
Herbs polenta dumplings. Oh my god. Like I you also said that these recipes have to be quick and easy. So that's what you know, I know I know that that's important because a lot of people feel like they can't they can't cook, they don't have time. So thank you for doing that as well. But can you talk a little bit about the power foods diet and what do you consider power foods?

Neal Barnard (14:14.989)
Yeah, you know, there's been a real shift over time. First of all, more and more people, really more people than ever want to lose some weight.

because we're seeing increases in overweight and obesity. And many are told by their doctor, well, if we can help you to eliminate some unwanted weight, your risk of diabetes or cardiovascular disease or even things like Alzheimer's can reduce. But there's been a shift and it's not so much calorie counting anymore or the old idea of, well, just avoid carbs and that's all it is to it. There's been a shift toward dietary patterns and more plants, less animals, that kind of stuff. But within that,

something quite new, and that is there are specific foods.

If you bring those foods in and you emphasize them and put them right up front, and I call them power foods, they'll do one of three things. They'll either tame your appetite. So you get to the end of a meal and you're satisfied, but you didn't overdo it and your appetite somehow is in bounds. Again, it's not, you don't feel like eating as much as before. And the second thing is there are some foods that trap calories and they go out of your

Neal Barnard (15:28.155)
cool. And then the third thing is there are some foods that increase your metabolism. So you're just burning calories faster. So they are power foods. And so Lindsay's job and Dustin's job with me was to take these power foods. There are dozens and dozens of

and turn them into appetizers and soups and desserts and things that kids will love and things that are really familiar, like pasta dishes and soups and everything. So that's what we did. And I have to say, I think they just did such a great job. When you look at the food photos, I mean, it's about that far away from food porn, I have to say, they really made it nice. And we've been getting a lot of great comments from people who've been using it.

Lauren Bernick (16:02.698)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (16:03.499)
Hahaha

Lauren Bernick (16:10.41)
That's good. So I mean, some of some of the power foods are like, things that whole food plant based people are probably already eating, right? Like, beans, yeah, Lisa's holding up her salad that she's eating or was eating right before you got on beans and whole grains and

Lisa (16:10.955)
Fantastic. Cool.

Lisa (16:18.535)
in my bowl.

Neal Barnard (16:25.153)
Yes. Yeah, those are among them. I want to credit our friends at Harvard, because they did a study that really, I think, well, prior to this, you would hear all kinds of goofy things. Like, if you just eat celery, you lose weight. And yeah, fair enough. But the science was kind of fluky. 2015, though, things started to get serious, because at Harvard, they did a study. More than 100,000 people in their cohort studies.

Lisa (16:26.703)
dark leafy greens.

Neal Barnard (16:54.321)
And they just tracked these people over years and they found there were certain specific foods. If you ate more of them, if you increased your intake, people would lose weight. And in fact, let me just give you the list that they came up with, because then the next step is you test them. But number one was berries, blueberries especially, but others. The number two group was cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, basil sprouts. The third group was green vegetables, spinach.

Asparagus. Group number four was melon. So, cantaloupe and watermelon especially. Group number five, citrus fruits, oranges, grapefruit, even juices counted. Yes, they did. And the sixth group was legumes. So, beans, lentils, peas, soybeans, soybean products. They all counted. So, there are some others too. So, anyhow, then these foods have to get tested. So, one of the...

Coolest things I thought, I have to say, two years later, after the Harvard results came out, researchers in the UK started zeroing in on what the heck is it in that blueberry that would cause weight loss. And they brought in 2,734 identical twins.

Yes, how you find that many, I have no idea, but that's what they did. And everybody got a DEXA scan. So you lie on a table, you scan your body, and you know how much body fat you have on your thighs, how much fat you have in your abdomen, how much visceral fat versus subcutaneous fat, da-da-da-da. And what they found is that within each pair, the one who had the most anthocyanin intake, that is the blue in a blueberry, had less total body fat and less abdominal fat specifically.

But then they said, well, anthocyanins are the blue in a blueberry. It's a natural antioxidant that's colored blue. It's also in strawberries. It's also in a pear. A pear has kind of a little red blush on the skin. That's anthocyanin. It's also in grapes. And so you take twin pears, genetically identical. One has more of this, one has less. And the weight goes.

Neal Barnard (19:06.445)
goes away, so to speak, to the extent that you eat these foods. And then we now know that these are metabolism boosters. They're not, you know, you don't have to get peeled off the ceiling. It's not like you're going to be on, you know. Anyway, you get the idea. It's just a gentle metabolism booster.

Lisa (19:20.299)
Well, so it's that's interesting. So because they're also because when we think about weight loss and a whole food plant based diet, it's calorie density. We think we're thinking of calorie density, but this is even beyond that. There it's not. So they're eating these foods and also calorie dense foods. So so what the anthocyanin is boosting the metabolism. So even just adding your foods without cutting everything out, it could help you lose weight.

Neal Barnard (19:49.749)
Okay, you're touching on what's really so important is that there are multiple mechanisms happening at the same time and the one that you mentioned is really so fundamental and so important but has been lost on a lot of people. Let's say you're eating a lot of fiber. Fiber has almost no calories. So if you're eating high fiber foods, you just fill up with fewer calories. Great. Let's say you do the opposite. Let's say you're gonna eat something with a lot of grease in it. Chicken fat, beef fat, cheese fat.

Every fat gram has nine calories in it. That's the densest calorie source you can get. And some people on a plant-based diet will think, well, yeah, but let me have coconut oil. Or if that's not so healthy, let me have olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. Still very calorie dense.

I'm not saying that extra virgin olive oil doesn't have some health benefits. It does, but it also packs in as many calories as Vaseline. So that's an important one. But to answer your question, yes, above and beyond that, there are all kinds of properties of foods. I mentioned blueberries. They have anthocyanins, cinnamon, and cinnamon, ginger, jalapenos.

Lisa (20:50.083)
Hehehe

Neal Barnard (21:11.313)
natural compounds in them that influence metabolism. Who knew? You know, I'm making a bean burrito with jalapenos. But yeah, they do. They work.

Lisa (21:18.096)
That's great news. And so... Oh, go ahead, you go.

Lauren Bernick (21:22.418)
Would the twins what oh sorry were the twins eating exactly the same thing aside from the berries and so forth.

Neal Barnard (21:30.893)
They were eating whatever they wanted to. It was an associational study. So they just said, OK, you all come in, get your DEXA scans. And they did practically 3,000 scans. And they just crunched the numbers. And they found the same thing that the Harvard people found, which was that for whatever reason, the anthocyanin-eating people have not just less body fat, but specifically less abdominal body fat, less visceral fat.

Which is good.

Lisa (22:00.235)
And is anthocyanin also an antioxidant? Is that the antioxidant property? Okay.

Neal Barnard (22:05.229)
Bingo. Yeah, absolutely. Very powerful. And they come in a variety of colors. There are many of them. Strawberries have a red antioxidant. Grapes have one that's not exactly the same as in blueberries. And in the autumn leaves, when the leaves turn orange, don't eat them. But those are antioxidants as well. Those are anthocyanins as well. There's a whole range of them.

Lauren Bernick (22:32.546)
Wow.

Lisa (22:34.835)
I think it was your... Oh good. Oh no, I was...

Lauren Bernick (22:35.066)
And no, you go ahead.

Lisa (22:40.675)
I think it was maybe one of your TED Talks, or it might have been in one of your books, when you were talking about anthocyanin and antioxidants versus free radicals. I think it was maybe when you were talking about Alzheimer's, which is definitely something Lauren and I wanted to dive into with you a little bit. I have so many questions about prevention of dementia and Alzheimer's. I know you lost your father, I'm sorry to that, and that's how you began the TED Talk.

But for our demographic, I'm going to be 61, Lauren's in her mid-50s, and a lot of our listeners, that's a big concern. We know from you and many of the lifestyle doctors how important diet plays in that and the role of saturated fats and all. But since we're talking about the antioxidants and the anthocyanins, can you dive in a little bit more because in that you talked about also a small amount of nuts and seeds for vitamin E and the free radicals.

fighting the free radicals by eating the antioxidants to help with brain health. And also your background in psychiatry, I kind of feel plays maybe a role in that as well, just understanding the mind and neurology a little bit better.

Neal Barnard (23:46.658)
Yeah.

Neal Barnard (23:56.181)
The biggest threat that many of us, or maybe the top of the list, I should say, of the things that we never want to have is Alzheimer's, because you lose everything. You lose everybody. And it's a horrible thing. There are certain things that you want to avoid and there are certain things you want to add. And the things to avoid, saturated fat is the top of the list. And that's the solid fat. When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota,

My mom had five kids and we'd run downstairs at seven o'clock in the morning and my mother would be taking a fork and pulling bacon strips out of the frying pan. And she'd put the bacon on a paper towel to drain and then this hot bacon grease in the pan she would pour it into a jar to save it because she was going to cook with it the next day. But the reason I'm mentioning this is that you see the bacon grease, it goes in as a hot liquid.

And then as it cools down, it solidifies into what looks like wax. You don't need to send it to a lab. The fact that it is solid at room temperature means it's very high in saturated fat, like coconut oil, exactly. But you don't need to send it to a lab. You can just see it, that it's saturated fat. And dairy is the number one source. Dairy fat, like butter, cheese. Cheese is 70% fat. And Americans eat.

Lauren Bernick (25:04.255)
like coconut oil.

Lisa (25:15.927)
Yep, butter.

Neal Barnard (25:22.945)
tons of it, 70,000 calories worth of cheese every year. It's the average consumption. So that's number one. Avoiding in the Chicago Health and Aging Project. Back in 2003, this is.

21 years ago, researchers discovered that if you avoid saturated fat to a substantial degree, if you're in the low end of saturated fat intake, your risk of developing Alzheimer's is cut by half to two thirds. Just from that step alone, great. They also found that if you have more vitamin E, so now we're talking about avoiding the saturated fat, what if we bring in a little bit of nuts and seeds, not a lot, maybe one ounce.

you get more vitamin E. Vitamin E is just as you said, it's an antioxidant. Anthocyanins, vitamin C, beta-carotene, lycopene that makes a tomato red, beta-carotene that makes a carrot orange. These are all antioxidants. And vitamin E is a little bit special because it's a lipid soluble one. It protects the cell membrane.

and it just parks there waiting for a free radical to come by and try to destroy it. It just neutralizes it. But you don't want to overdo it with nuts and seeds because they are so fatty. You're going to overdo it quite easily. But about an ounce per day will help. And a fairly generous vitamin E intake will cut Alzheimer's by about 50%. So we're just, I mean, these are big. These are big effects. So we want to combine them. Let's say I avoid saturated fat and add vitamin E. Great.

Lisa (26:34.339)
Hehehehehe

Lisa (26:57.939)
In food in your food, not a supplement. Yeah.

Neal Barnard (26:59.833)
Oh, so important, so important, do not go to the health food store and say, give me a bottle of vitamin E. I want your cheapest one or your most expensive one. Don't get any of them because there are eight forms of vitamin E.

Lauren Bernick (27:01.45)
Yes.

Neal Barnard (27:13.661)
eight natural different related compounds that all together are vitamin E. That bottle may have one form or two and that's going to suppress your absorption of others. Get them in the way nature packed them, which is in seeds, nuts, and even traces in other foods. But back to the blueberry. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati did a cool thing. They brought in people up in years, average age 78, and they said, what would happen?

Neal Barnard (27:43.309)
you know, okay, having trouble remembering the name of the movie, da da. These people didn't have fluoride Alzheimer's, but they had kind of old age memory loss. They tested anthocyanins and the way they did it is random assignment to a purple liquid that could be grape juice, could be a placebo that tasted like it, but it didn't have anthocyanins in it.

And they saw within three month period, the two groups just diverged with their ability to acquire and retain new information. So that was too simple. Well it was sort of a lot. It was two cups a day they drank, but you know you could do that. A pint of blueberry, grape juice was the first one. They went back, they said well let's confirm it, and they decided to try blueberry juice. Same story. So I personally think that we need to continue to test these things.

But we are talking about changes that are totally safe. Zero negative effects. Having fruits like berries, having a little bit of nuts and seeds, avoiding the cheese and meat, these are all benign things. And let's add to it lacing up your sneakers. Because University of Illinois researchers showed that exercise is protective too.

Lisa (28:55.107)
Yes. Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (28:59.454)
And you know, that makes me think about like all the people I know who are doing like these crazy paleo and whatever kind of diets and what's the other one, the keto diet. What? And they're eating exactly the opposite of what you just said, because they're eating like the butter in their coffee and the, you know, all these crazy oils and meat and dairy and it's so

Lisa (29:09.932)
A keto. Yeah.

Neal Barnard (29:11.141)
The carnivore diet, yeah.

Lauren Bernick (29:27.234)
dangerous. It just it makes me bananas that these people are doing this. You know, even I had a cardi. Right. Exactly. Right. But they'd be so much better off doing the power foods diet where they're eating a whole food plant based diet. That's you know, low in saturated fat, low in fat, and probably has no saturated fat. Right? Yeah.

Lisa (29:32.931)
They're going for the short-term gain and not the long-term effect because you can lose weight that way, right? But not a smart way.

Lisa (29:50.31)
boosting your metabolism, boosting your brain.

Lauren Bernick (29:54.654)
So what like how many what kind of when you say an ounce of nuts, what does that look like? Is it like, you know, a quarter of your palm or what's an ounce of nuts look like?

Neal Barnard (30:07.021)
If you take your palm and pour nuts into it, when it just is about to hit your fingers, but hasn't hit them yet, that's an ounce.

Lauren Bernick (30:17.546)
starting from the bottom of your hand or the middle of your, okay, make a cup with your hand.

Neal Barnard (30:20.149)
Yeah, you just make a cup. Just make a cup and pour them in there. But once it hits your fingers, that's more than enough. So everybody has a different size palm. But go to the 7-Eleven, buy nuts and see what an ounce is and just pour them in your hand and you'll see. Now, I have two other cautions. The first caution is don't eat them. Because if you do, you'll fill your hand again.

Lauren Bernick (30:27.694)
What's... I...

Lauren Bernick (30:35.602)
Okay, that's more than I thought, really.

Neal Barnard (30:45.561)
and if they are salted or smokehouse flavor, you're going to eat the entire container. The human psyche just can't deal with these things. So what would you do instead of eating them? Is they're now in your hand, you got an ounce, crumble them up, put them on your salad, put them on your oatmeal, put them on a pancake or whatever, use it as an ingredient, not as a snack.

Lisa (30:46.475)
Hehehehe. Hehe

Lisa (31:06.952)
I'm sorry.

Lisa (31:13.98)
Hmm.

Neal Barnard (31:14.045)
And the second thing I have to say is if you are trying to lose weight, if you're trying to reverse diabetes, or if you have any kind of hormonal issue for a young woman, menstrual cramps, for a woman at menopause, if you've got hot flashes, these hormonal issues don't do well in the context of a high-fat diet. So this may be a time to not have nuts and guacamole and things in your routine.

Lisa (31:40.255)
Okay, that's a great segue, because Lauren and I do want to talk to you about hormonal changes as we age. And we do understand that the extra weight, how that impacts how your hormones, you're either turning them on, I think you talk about, you know, we might be genetically predisposed to certain things and we can either turn them on or turn them off, right? And I think hormones kind of fall into that category, like we could be, have, you know, our mother may have had bad

Lauren Bernick (31:42.178)
Yeah.

Lisa (32:08.387)
severe menopause symptoms, but if we're eating differently, then we could maybe avoid that. But at the same time, those healthy fats are good for the things that we're trying to avoid as we're aging, like dementia and Alzheimer's, and keep our brains boosted. So a small amount, I would think, would be okay through those hormonal changes.

Neal Barnard (32:32.025)
I think everyone has to sort of do their own calculation. If a person is really trying to lose weight, I would suggest not having nuts be part of your routine. Keep in mind, in nature, nuts aren't at... There was no 7-11 2,000 years ago. And nuts were in trees. And they were seasonal. And they were encased in a shell.

Lisa (32:34.572)
Mm-hmm.

Neal Barnard (32:56.133)
So nuts was not, they weren't something that you could have in a big way on a daily basis, 365 days a year. Nowadays we have factories that shell them for us and put them in packs and salt them up and flavor them up and make them accessible. And we imagine, well, that's a food group. Every squirrel will tell you that they're seasonal. So it's not something, it's not a regular part of your diet. And the re-

Lisa (33:02.011)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (33:17.749)
And if only we had squirrels paws to get them.

Neal Barnard (33:20.981)
Well, if only we had the good sense that squirrels model every day, really. I mean, they do so much better. I mean, anyway, don't get me started. But we do a lot of work with weight loss, with diabetes and things. And I have to say that when people really bring any fatty food into their diet in a big way, it makes weight loss difficult. And so that's where the nuts and seeds and stuff come in. I say, maybe don't go there too far. I mean, there are.

Lisa (33:29.88)
Yeah

Neal Barnard (33:48.665)
There are other foods that have a lot of vitamin E without so much fat. Mangos and other. Well, even foods like mangoes, yes, but also even green leafy vegetables. They don't have much fat. But the fat that they do have does come along with some vitamin E. And the reason it's not a significant source for most people is they just don't eat those foods. If green vegetables are a big part of your diet, as people are increasingly saying, it becomes a significant source of omega-3.

Lauren Bernick (33:52.958)
such as, you know.

Neal Barnard (34:18.981)
and vitamin E. So that's really, I think, my best source because when you rely on those, as opposed to nuts, which are just really concentrated in these things, the weight loss is easier, the menopausal symptoms for many people improve dramatically, as long as we're doing other things that relate to menopause too, which we can talk about. And it's really part of the solution.

Lisa (34:39.083)
Oh yes, please.

Lauren Bernick (34:39.778)
Yeah. You know, in your book, Your Body and Balance, which is all about hormones, I read that menopause, obviously it's a natural part of life or we wouldn't be doing it. And that it was really the drug companies, Premarin and Prempro, that made it a condition that we had to cure. But before that, it really wasn't. It was just thought of as a natural...

rite of passage. And so what aside from not getting pregnant your whole life, what why does Mother Nature want us to go through menopause?

Neal Barnard (35:17.889)
You know, let me put it this way. Mother nature is pretty smart in certain ways. And mother nature has recognized that estrogen is like dynamite. You know, dynamite is a great thing. You know, if you want to build a tunnel or something, or you're mining, a little dynamite is handy. But dynamite can be really, really dangerous. Estrogen is the same way. Estrogen allows reproduction to occur.

Men have a little bit of it, women have a lot more of it. But nature says, look, estrogen will give you cancer if you have too much of it. And by the way, that's not unusual. All hormones are really dangerous. Insulin, you need insulin to get sugar into your cells, but you could kill yourself if you have too much insulin. Growth hormone, you need a little bit of growth hormone. Growth hormone can hurt you.

If you have too much thyroid hormone, all hormones are big double-edged swords and estrogen is one of them. So you need a little bit, but if you have too much, it increases the risk of all kinds of problems. So, puberty, menarche, is when nature says, okay, we're going to ramp it up and for the next two or three decades, we're going to let you have a little bit of extra estrogen. But as soon as your kids are...

adolescents, I'm taking it away. Factories closed at 50. And so some people mistakenly say, well, a century ago women didn't live past 50. It's as if you're past your sell-by date. Nonsense.

Complete nonsense. Women have always lived long lives if their lives weren't cut short by infections and things like that in infancy. I mean that's the reason the life expectancy a hundred and some years ago might have been forty or fifty on average because there was so much childhood mortality. Once you take that out you have people living long lives.

Neal Barnard (37:12.941)
The age of 50 or thereabouts is when it's no longer a great thing for you to have a toddler on your kitchen floor. So reproduction is done. You've got a lot of stuff to do and popping out babies is not the thing. So menopause is a completely normal phase of life just like menarche.

Lauren Bernick (37:32.21)
And what about, you know, I think everybody's kind of familiar with the Japanese women who eat soy and suffer or really don't get hot flashes. Is that can you talk a little bit about soy? Because I know people are so nervous about it or some people still get nervous about it. Can you talk about the benefits of soy?

Neal Barnard (37:52.017)
Yeah, soybeans, well first of all, the soybean is an amazing thing. I mean, it's particularly part of Asian traditions, but it's so versatile. I mean, you can turn it into soy milk, you can turn it into tempeh and miso soup, you can turn it into tofu. They make sausage out of soy. They make soy bacon. One day they'll make soy snow tires. I don't know, they can make everything out of soy. It's an astounding thing, but...

Lisa (38:14.531)
Hahaha!

Lauren Bernick (38:16.912)
I would buy those.

Neal Barnard (38:19.153)
But back in the 1950s and 1960s, women in Japan really did not have serious hot flashes the way we're seeing it in North America. Maybe 15% of women had them in surveys that were done, and when they had them they were typically mild. However, lest anyone think this is genetic, it is not. When the diet started westernizing, what we saw is there was first of all more fish.

Dairy came in, which was not a Japanese thing at all. Meat increased. Fatty foods came in. Rice started to fall away. Prior to that, it had been a lot of rice, white rice, but rice, some fish, a lot of vegetables really predominating in the diet. And that gave way to a meatier diet. And instead of 15% of women having hot flashes, in the early 2000s, it was up to about 40-some percent, between 40 and 45. So you could see that change. And so the speculation was, could it be the soybean?

The answer is probably yes, that was protective for them. Could it be the fact it was just a plant-based diet? The answer is probably yes as well. But soy has compounds called isoflavones that do attach to estrogen receptors. And when that was discovered, researchers got nervous and they thought, well, maybe this will cause cancer because estradiol, the main estrogen in a woman's body during her reproductive years, attaches to estrogen receptors and it causes cancer.

or it can cause cancer. So researchers started studying this and they noticed something amazing, despite the fact that indeed the soy isoflavones do attach to estrogen receptors, they do not cause cancer. In fact, women consuming the most soy have about 30% less breast cancer risk compared to other women. And if you had a breast cancer diagnosis in the past, you were diagnosed with cancer.

If you're eating a lot of soy, your risk of dying of that disease is again cut by about maybe 25-30%. In other words, soy has an anti-cancer effect that's really quite substantial. So anyway, cut to the chase.

Neal Barnard (40:33.269)
It turns out there are two completely different estrogen receptors, estrogen receptor alpha and estrogen receptor beta, and the soybeans, the soy isoflavolates attach preferentially to beta. So the alpha is the gas pedal on cancer, that's where estradiol attaches, the beta is the break on cancer, that's where the soy preferentially attaches to. So I'm being simplistic, but soy, for some reason, it can't shake this mistaken reputation that it's going to cause problems. You go to the store and it's hard to find soy milk anymore because there's every other brand. But people got nervous about soy.

bring it back. It's a great thing. I mean, you take anything that cuts a woman's risk of breast cancer by 30 percent, sign me up. I mean, that is a great thing.

Lisa (41:09.956)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, and you know, and if it had the effects that, you know, people in this country think it has, there'd be higher rates of all those things in the Asian countries. And, you know, men would have hormonal issues as well. And you don't see any of that. So I just want to reiterate, tofu, tempeh, edamame, miso, soy milk, are all things that we should be eating for our listeners.

Neal Barnard (41:37.749)
Yeah. And you can buy them organic. The organic ones are everywhere. You can get organic soy milk. If it's labeled organic by law, it cannot be GMO. It's not GMO. GMO soy. There's a lot of GMO soy. That's cattle feed. If you eat chicken, you're eating an animal raised on GMO products in a great many cases. Same with cows. And if you want to have estradiol, that will increase cancer risk.

Lauren Bernick (41:48.097)
Right?

Lisa (41:48.865)
Mmm.

Lauren Bernick (41:58.155)
Mm-hmm.

Neal Barnard (42:07.181)
Have an ice cream cone. Have some cheese. It's got, it has estrogen in it from the cow. So why anyone would be nervous about soy? I can't figure what they should be nervous about is dairy. It's dairy is an issue.

Lisa (42:09.015)
Hmm, yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa (42:16.415)
Well, yeah, and our listeners, for those who don't know and haven't heard you talk about this, that's a really important point because, you know, the greenwashing of hormone-free, antibiotic-free, like that's impossible for dairy to be hormone-free because the only reason they're producing the dairy is because of the hormones, right?

Neal Barnard (42:35.073)
Right. Yeah, and the FDA will not allow a carton of milk or a box of cheese. They will not allow them to label it hormone-free. The industry could say, well, we didn't inject any hormones in the cow. That's true. Most dairies don't inject hormones. Some do, but most don't. The cow makes hormones. So the cow is making estrogen. She's a living, breathing animal. She's making estrogen. It gets into milk. And...

Lisa (42:35.887)
Hehehehe

Lisa (42:49.228)
Right.

Neal Barnard (43:04.381)
In every dairy they do a very creepy thing, which is they take these cows, chain them up.

artificially inseminate them in a creepy way. And so they're impregnated every year and they are milked way into their pregnancy. So they are creating more estrogen every day the pregnancy goes on. They're milking them, milking them, milking them. That estradiol is getting into the ice cream you give to your eight year old son or your seven year old daughter. These are not things that should be in their diet. It is not labeled on the dairy. American people have no idea of these. And then we wonder, well, gee, why are we seeing problems with our kids?

health or with our health as we reach adulthood.

Lisa (43:43.871)
Yeah, dairy lobbyists.

Lauren Bernick (43:44.338)
Yeah, and then, you know, yeah, and it makes me think of, you're talking about the cows, but then I'm thinking about the pregnant mare urine from Premarin. So, you know, I know a lot of our listeners and actually we had a guest the other day and she told us she took PremPro and Lisa said, doesn't that make you nervous about breast cancer? But we didn't really press it and I kind of wish we had a little because I don't want anybody to think that Lisa and I endorse.

you know, taking Primarin or PrimPro. And can you talk about that a little bit versus like bioidentical hormones and how you feel about that? Or what were you gonna say, Lisa?

Lisa (44:22.223)
Well, let me jump in there for a second because I did want to seg into this with Dr. Barnard because I am postmenopause. And I've been on a plant-based diet for a very long time. And it wasn't the hot flashes and the night sweats. I didn't have those symptoms. For me, it was more like low libido and a little bit of brain fog and some dryness.

those kinds of things. And I actually did start, and I know I've read in your book about this a little bit, but I did start taking bioidentical hormones because I was afraid of the Premrin and the Prempro. And I don't know, you know, the jury's out for me. I'm starting to stop taking them because I don't want to be. And I know there's not enough research yet to see how they impact breast cancer and those things. But for me, it was more about boosting mood.

boosting libido, boosting energy. Are there ways we can do that without reaching for these options?

Neal Barnard (45:24.214)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (45:24.562)
And she's whole food plant-based. She didn't say, I mean, just so you know that.

Lisa (45:27.031)
For a long time, yeah.

Neal Barnard (45:30.313)
Uh...

Lauren Bernick (45:31.31)
Okay, we just asked you 12 questions, sorry. Sorry about that.

Lisa (45:32.311)
You're on the spot. Ha ha

Neal Barnard (45:34.61)
Okay, when I was very taken, no it's fine, I was very taken with the science of this and the findings and by the way not just from Japan but you could look at another country, look at Yucatan Peninsula.



I'm probably sure people are sick of me saying this, but I haven't gone through menopause yet. I haven't even had symptom one yet. So one, I want to go back to, again, I have two questions. One, so I'm 55 and I'm still not through, haven't even gone through symptom one of menopause. And you're saying that hormones are dangerous. Is my body doing something dangerous to me?

And what can I do?

Neal Barnard (01:01:45.059)
Everybody's different.

Lisa (01:01:47.449)
Ha ha ha!

Lauren Bernick (01:01:48.12)
Are my hormones gonna kill me?

Neal Barnard (01:01:51.531)
menopause will come. Every woman is on her own time.

Lauren Bernick (01:01:56.492)
Okay. And you mentioned in your book some over the counter things for symptom relief for those people who are having them. Can you just like go through a few of those in case some people really do need some relief and diet is just not cutting it? Some over the counters?

Neal Barnard (01:02:11.087)
Well, first of all, if diet isn't cutting it, let's try to make sure we're doing the diet right. Now, we are the only group, I think, to have had the amount of success that we've had with this. I mean, to knock out moderate spherulone flashes by 88% is really huge. So, what seemed, the reason I put it that way is that we're, I think we need more research to really confirm what I'm about to say.

I believe that the greatest success comes from doing each of those three pieces. And piece one is avoiding animal products completely. So if a woman says, well, it's not working for me, if they are still having some animal products, I would omit them. The second thing is, and the much more difficult thing, is avoiding excess oils.

Keep in mind in Japan, back before they westernized, they were not frying a lot of stuff. They weren't using a lot of oily things. Their oil content was really low, like 10% calories or even less in some populations. So in America, if we avoid animal products, we're avoiding a lot of fat, but there is oil used in a lot of things. It's not in fruits, it's not in vegetables, it's not in beans, it's not in grains, in their natural state. But it's amazing how much nut butters, and especially if you're buying

seeming packaged food, those factories just jam oil in everything. So to decide if that's the issue, take a month or two months.

and just read the labels really carefully and really exclude the added oils. And one trick that I sometimes suggest is on any packaged food, if in one serving there is more than three grams of fat, set it aside. Now you don't have to worry if for foods that don't have labels, like fruits, apart from avocados which are fatty, vegetables they're all fine, grains are all fine, beans are all fine, but you know any packaged food be careful. And then the soybeans. One half cup.

Neal Barnard (01:04:12.321)
This is not tofu, this is not soy milk, this is not edamame, those are all fine. Those are all fine, but they do not have the isoflavones that mature soybeans do. Edamame is a baby soybean. If you just leave it on the vine until it becomes the mature soybean...

Lisa (01:04:25.84)
Mm.

Neal Barnard (01:04:28.159)
It's had time to really make isoflavones. So go online and you'll see Laura Brand is the one we use, but there are other brands, Mature Soybeans, and you'll see Organic and Non-GMO, get those. Put them in your Instant Pot or pressure cooker. Cook them about 40 minutes, so you don't want them to be al dente, you want them to be soft. And there are a lot of different ways you can do it, I could describe.

the culinary part if you want. But have a half a cup of them every day. So you do all those three things. And the one that people tend to not do very carefully is the oil part. I don't know why. But I don't think anybody knows why. But at Tufts University back in the 90s,

Lauren Bernick (01:04:55.387)
Sure.

Neal Barnard (01:05:11.503)
They found that oil was really critical with regard to estrogen function. And what they were focusing on is breast cancer, that when women would avoid oils, when they would cut down in oils, their estrogen sub-fractions would go down. And we haven't sorted it all out. You might think, well, that would make hot flashes worse. We're trying to take the diet out of it. So we keep oils out. We keep animal products out. We bring the soybeans in. And just try that. Failing that, I mean, there are all kinds of other treatments that people.

that people will use. I mean, doctors use a number of other medications, non-hormonal medications. But I'm going to leave that between women and their doctors to discuss.

Lauren Bernick (01:05:50.624)
Okay, so you don't want to recommend any over-the-counter products like black cohorses or any? No?

Lisa (01:05:51.229)
Um.

Neal Barnard (01:06:00.055)
I don't have anything bad to say about them. I just don't think black cohosh works very well. And I'm not super impressed with the soy isoflavones used in isolation. There are a lot of people who will take genistein, which is a soy isoflavone, and they will isolate it from the soy. They'll throw away the soy, but they'll market you genistein. I'm not blown away by the data on them.

Lauren Bernick (01:06:00.288)
No pressure if you don't want to.

Lisa (01:06:02.506)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (01:06:06.285)
Okay.

Neal Barnard (01:06:27.539)
So nature made these little pills that are round and they contain all the isoflavones in a soybean. They call it a soybean. So have that. And if you had...

Lauren Bernick (01:06:40.196)
You know, I didn't know that about the soybeans. I thought like tempeh or, you know, Lisa, you probably thought that too, didn't you?

Lisa (01:06:47.902)
Yeah, the less processed soy is what I was trying to call out in that list.

Neal Barnard (01:06:48.68)
They are fine.

Lauren Bernick (01:06:51.427)
Right.

Neal Barnard (01:06:52.491)
Right. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, tempeh, you can actually see the soybeans in there. So have those things if you want, have them as part of your routine. But if you have symptoms and you're trying to get a handle on it, whatever else you may eat, if you have soy, fine, but have my half a cup also. And then once you've knocked out your hot flashes, if you want to back off on it and see how you do, do that. And by the way, how to make this doable. You could take the soybeans that you've cooked in your Instant Pot.

I mean, they're wet cooked beans. You can put them in soups. You can add them to a salad like pine nuts. That's fine. Or you can get fancy with it and get a cooking sheet or a casserole dish, cover it with parchment paper, and spread out the cooked soybeans. You've cooked them in your Instant Pot. You took them out. Spread them out kind of thin on the parchment paper. Put them in the oven. Put them at 350 for an hour. You're toasting them.

And if you take them out and they're still a little moist put them back in I want them to come out dry And when they come out dry You put them in a glass bowl and you've just now got This snack that you could put in you

Lisa (01:08:04.601)
crunchy soybeans. That's what I do with my chickpeas. I'm gonna do it with my soybeans.

Neal Barnard (01:08:06.079)
Yeah, and you could, if you're traveling, you put them in your luggage. And you could salt them, you could put garlic on them, you could put anything you want, and it's a very nice snack. Now, if you say, well, I want those, but I don't want to do the work, you can go online. There's a company called Toasted, T-O-S-T-E-D, Toasted. They'll just sell you the ones that they make. So it's, you know, have fun with it.

Lisa (01:08:28.065)
Mmm.

Lauren Bernick (01:08:28.165)
Wow.

Lisa (01:08:31.705)
That sounds great. I'm gonna do that.

Lauren Bernick (01:08:32.862)
That's really good advice. I think a lot of people are going to be happy to hear that.

Neal Barnard (01:08:35.171)
But do that in addition. If you're having other soy, do this in addition to that while you're sorting it out. Because my goal is to cure you. And give yourself some time. We saw a lot of people are fine within a week. Most people need more time. Our study was 12 weeks for most people by about week 5, 6, 7. They've got the effect they're going to get.

Lauren Bernick (01:08:40.412)
Okay.

Lauren Bernick (01:08:55.772)
Okay, thanks, Betty. Great job. Betty's, Regimen. Okay. The Betty study. So, okay, well, I know Lisa's itching to ask you about music, but just let me ask you a couple, what's your beauty routine? Because look at you, you look phenomenal. Do you have like, do you like have a favorite moisturizer? What do you do? Why do you look so good? Aside from your diet.

Neal Barnard (01:08:58.535)
Yeah.

Lisa (01:09:01.499)
The Betty Study.

Lisa (01:09:12.63)
Hahaha

Neal Barnard (01:09:13.175)
Hmm

Neal Barnard (01:09:19.895)
Well, that's very sweet of you to ask. No, I'm a typical guy. I mean, I neglect everything. I, you know, I got to buy her soap and a towel, you know? You know how guys are. So anyway, thank you for saying that.

Lauren Bernick (01:09:33.104)
So, okay, so you really don't, you don't moisturize or do anything?

Lauren Bernick (01:09:39.43)
Wow.

Neal Barnard (01:09:39.943)
I think it must be a frustrating thing to have guys like me who really just don't do anything at all. I mean, I eat pretty clean diet. I haven't eaten animal products in 40 years. And I exercise and try to have fun in life. That's kind of my whole routine.

Lauren Bernick (01:09:46.404)
Oh my gosh, it kind of is.

Lauren Bernick (01:09:51.328)
obvious. Yeah.

Lisa (01:10:01.929)
I think it's the rock music that keeps you young. I just have two questions back on what you were talking about. So just back, you know, rewinding a little bit, Lauren is very low fat, strict, oil free. I'm low oil and, you know, don't do saturated fats, but I do eat nuts and seeds. But I also don't have a weight issue. So

Lauren Bernick (01:10:02.068)
Okay, so yes, okay.

Neal Barnard (01:10:05.799)
Yeah, maybe that's it. I don't know.

Lisa (01:10:30.649)
If you're trying to manage your hormones with diet, it's not the consumption of those fats, you're advising to keep them at a minimum or omit them even if weight isn't an issue.

Neal Barnard (01:10:51.799)
Yeah, that's correct. That's right. But let me be clear about what we know versus what we believe. We know that fatty foods are going to interfere with weight loss. We know that they interfere with controlling diabetes.

Lisa (01:10:53.687)
Okay.

Neal Barnard (01:11:09.423)
They interfere with attempts to improve insulin resistance. We did prior trials in menstrual cramps. And we're doing an endometriosis trial now. And the fatty foods seem to bollocks it all up. But the thing, we see this, but I can't really explain exactly why.

These are just so, there are a lot of things like that where we prove and effect, but we're kind of under the hood trying to understand what is going on in the biology of it. And with fiber, we figured it out a long time ago. How fiber, a high fiber diet escorts estrogens right out of the body. That's great. But with why oil tends to increase estrogen levels, I honestly don't really know. We know that body fat makes estrogens, but we'll see.

Lisa (01:11:35.904)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (01:11:52.565)
And those.

Well, and then also I was curious if any of the studies, like I haven't heard about from any of, from the doctors or I don't really know how to research it specifically, but have the studies about extracted oils been isolated just with oils or, cause I know that in some of the studies, the subjects have removed animal products and oil or trans fats and oil. Are there any studies that

specifically target just oil.

Neal Barnard (01:12:30.487)
Most of them look at total fat. Yeah, it's a great question. And we're not funded by a drug company, and we're not funded by the food industry. So unfortunately, those people who are funded by those things tend to go off in kind of their own direction. And they haven't really teased these issues out.

Lisa (01:12:32.269)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Lisa (01:12:45.418)
Yeah, got it.

Okay. Well, let's talk about the fun stuff. Yes, definitely to be continued. So yeah, so are you still playing in Carbon Works?

Neal Barnard (01:12:50.871)
So to be continued.

Neal Barnard (01:12:58.639)
Sure, you bet. These are wonderful people. I have to say, they're just the best musicians in the world. And they're people I've gotten to know. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

Lisa (01:13:05.151)
Incredible.

Lisa (01:13:09.033)
And you play guitar and keyboards, you write all the music. One of the things I love about the music is the, one of my favorite things when I hear music is the integration of like violin and cello with the electric guitar and the keyboards. I love that sound. And everybody in the band is so good, but what really, what I love about your music is it's very eclectic in terms of like the types of music that you play.

like you have like the punk song, samurai that's a little more punky. And then the song you wrote during the, the really poignant song you wrote during the pandemic, everything's all right. So I don't know, I just, I guess I'm just being a little bit of a fan right now to tell you that, how much I appreciate your music. But so is that something that like, are you, do you tour or, cause I also listened or read, maybe I listened to that story that you told about,

a psychiatric patient who came to a show and they thought she was hallucinating because they saw you playing in a band and it turned out. Are you stuck like the medicine and the music mixing together?

Neal Barnard (01:14:15.907)
Yeah!

Neal Barnard (01:14:21.335)
You know, they don't go together well at all. It's a terrible thing. And for a couple reasons. One is if you're a musician, people think you couldn't possibly be a competent doctor. Because if you take time, and I've released four records, and I write a lot of music, why aren't you paying more attention to p-values and t-tests and things like that? But I think we do. I mean, we work really hard. And frankly, there have been a lot of scientists who have been.

Lisa (01:14:23.992)
Ha!

Lisa (01:14:31.865)
That's so crazy.

Lisa (01:14:36.457)
Uh huh. Yeah.

Neal Barnard (01:14:50.775)
musicians, you know, Einstein and many others are kind of known for that. But I gotta say the other direction is even worse. If you're a doctor...

Lisa (01:14:52.249)
Hmm.

Neal Barnard (01:14:58.839)
Nobody could take you seriously as a musician. Here in DC, there was a guy who was the jazz playing dentist. And everybody thought, like, get out of here. So when I'm working with musicians and they find out I'm a doctor, they're like, I don't know. Get away from me. I mean, you can't have soul if you're an orthopedic surgeon. Like, get away. But my only defense is that I've been playing music since much

Lauren Bernick (01:15:04.504)
Oh gosh.

Lisa (01:15:07.481)
Ha ha

Lauren Bernick (01:15:14.437)
But.

Neal Barnard (01:15:25.823)
way before I was ever a doctor. I mean, when I was a kid, it was a thing. And it was a thing that was important to my parents. And I was classically trained. But then I was kind of rebelled by getting a guitar, which is what they didn't want me to do. And I've had bands all along. And it's a fun thing to do. But for me, it's also a way to sometimes say a thing that I think needs to be said. Like in the pandemic, I wrote this song that...

I have this memory, but when I was a kid, my mom had five kids, and my littlest brother David was going to sleep one night. My mother tucked him in. And she said, David, nighty night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Good night, David. He couldn't sleep at all. He was looking like, oh.

Lauren Bernick (01:16:13.052)
I'm sorry.

Neal Barnard (01:16:15.183)
bed bugs, what are bed bugs? You know, the poor kid is like three years old. And I thought, you know, look at the terrible things we do to kids. You know, we say like three blind mice, you know, cut off their tails with a carving knife. We'd make kids memorize that. Or Jack and Jill went up the hill and then Jack fell down and he had like a neurological injury. And you know, we'd say terrible things. So I thought, this was, the pandemic was starting. And now what we tell kids mattered.

Lisa (01:16:15.623)
Where are the bed bugs?

Lauren Bernick (01:16:16.293)
Bed bugs.

Neal Barnard (01:16:42.787)
because I mean, a million people died in fairly short order of COVID. And kids overnight, we've forgotten this now. This was not that long ago. Kids were pulled out of school overnight and they heard that somebody's got this disease and people couldn't go near each other. They couldn't be near their friends and everyone was scared. So I started to think about, wait a minute, I don't know where things are going. I don't know if things are going to be fine. I don't know if we're going to come out of this. Okay. But I do know this. If I'm tucking you into bed.

my little beloved daughter, son, whatever. For now, we're okay. And just that little bit of assurance, I thought was important. So I wrote this song, and that was the message. And it just had the idea of, we're going to sleep now, it's okay. There's little dreams you're gonna have, little stars are twinkling, and I don't believe in...

BSing kids with a lot of foolish stuff and life is not going to be alright. I mean there are a lot of tough things that kids and adults go through. But you can say to someone you love, for now, I'm here and things are going to be okay.

And that's what that song was. And I wrote it in English. And then I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight. And I thought, this song needs to be in French. And I translated it into French. And my friend Christine, who is a beautiful singer, she's Italian, but she grew up right near the French border. And she's a great, great French singer. So I said, Christine, come to New York. Let's do this damn thing. And she came over, and she just sang that song so beautifully. Just killer. I don't know if you've heard the French.

Lisa (01:18:22.297)
She's got an incredible voice. Yes, that's incredible.

Neal Barnard (01:18:24.243)
Yeah, she's just, anyway, so we recorded it. And anyhow, what gave my life meaning actually was, we put that song on YouTube, and there's a little video of all these animals who are yawning. And I don't know if you've seen it. They're all going to sleep, and it's just really cute, just really killer. And one of the comments was a woman who said, my four-year-old son.

Lauren Bernick (01:18:24.705)
Mm-hmm. Yes, we heard it.

Lisa (01:18:37.173)
I love it. I love it. Yes.

Lauren Bernick (01:18:38.432)
Yes, so we saw it. Oh, I love it.

Neal Barnard (01:18:48.911)
goes to bed at night. He first watches it in English and then he watches it in French and he turns on the light and he goes to sleep. And I thought, okay, my life now has meaning. That was so sweet. So anyway, that's that song. I call it a lullaby in English, I guess, or in French it's called Tout ira bien, which means all will be well.

Lauren Bernick (01:19:02.384)
Gosh.

Lisa (01:19:13.549)
Well, I mean, there's a perfect example of your music being good medicine, where the two come together. That's such a great story.

Neal Barnard (01:19:18.863)
Yeah.

Lauren Bernick (01:19:19.26)
Hmm, that's true. It's beautiful. It's what, well, can you explain, it seems like you also have a lot of Asian influence in your music. Where does that come from? Is that correct?

Neal Barnard (01:19:24.367)
Yeah.

Neal Barnard (01:19:33.847)
Particularly Vietnam. When I was in medical school, I lived in Arlington, Virginia, and there was a lot of Vietnamese stores and clubs and things and I got hooked on the Vietnamese music and the thing about it is with the traditional instruments they use a what we call a pentatonic scale, which is five-tone scale as opposed to eight in European music which anyway the five-tone scale is exactly the same as blues and so I thought wow

I can play Vietnamese music with a rock and roll band. And so I started, I bought some traditional Vietnamese folk song records and our band started playing them. And at first I was kind of nervous because I mean, it's kind of like cultural appropriation, like stealing your stuff. But I had Vietnamese friends, I said, well, what do you think of this? And there's a club in LA, a Vietnamese club.

And I was talking to the owner who's a Vietnamese singer. I said, what do you think? And she said, let's do this. Let's record this. And we recorded a bunch of stuff. And it just really worked. And where I finally felt it was OK, because I knew I was taking liberties with some age old traditional songs and playing them on the electric guitar, where I knew I was OK was the Library of Congress back in 2009 held a memorial.

at the end of the Vietnam War, it was horrible. Just overnight, people had to flee Saigon, and the boat people had to just get out any way they could, and many, many of them died, and it was just horrible. They did a commemoration of that, and they wanted music to end the observance, and it was...

this song that I had written that they asked for and it was taken from a traditional Vietnamese song but and sung with Vietnamese and English lyrics and

Neal Barnard (01:21:37.135)
That's what they wanted. And so they had some Vietnamese people dancing to this. And I thought, OK, here they are. They've come to America. And you've got, it's not competition. It's not a question of you stealing from me. It's we're together. What have you got that I would like? What have I got that you'd like? And one of the musicians who plays the traditional Vietnamese instruments, he was talking with my singer. And she said, you know, this is stuff that we don't do. And he said,

Lisa (01:21:51.181)
Hmm.

Neal Barnard (01:22:04.791)
man, maybe we should do this a lot more. And isn't that what art is all about? It's finding things that we can trade and try and grow with. And if it doesn't work, don't do it. But if you like it, let's do it and let's share it. And anyway, so that's that story. So you'll hear these. Carbon Works has two records out. But before that, we had a record called Verdun, V-E-R-D-U-N, like the French city.

Lisa (01:22:09.809)
Absolutely.

Lisa (01:22:20.48)
What an honor.

Neal Barnard (01:22:29.003)
And there's another Verdun band that's heavy metal that is not us, but that song was on that record.

Lauren Bernick (01:22:33.816)
Yes, I came across them. I was like, wow. When I was researching, I was like, dang Dr. Barnard. Yeah, that was nice.

Lisa (01:22:35.95)
Ha ha!

Neal Barnard (01:22:38.904)
That's a different one.

Lisa (01:22:41.197)
Who were your musical heroes when you were learning to play the guitar and the keyboard?

Neal Barnard (01:22:41.829)
That's it.

Neal Barnard (01:22:46.831)
I mean, they're just people like everybody else. I mean, for me, I loved the Beatles when I was a little kid. To me, they made music make sense. And then after that, it was Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. And there's a jazz musician named John McLaughlin, who's English, who's a brilliant, brilliant guitarist. And you know, everybody's Stevie Roulan and others. But mostly, I don't try to imitate any of them. What I do is I want to make music that I want. I close my eyes.

Lisa (01:22:54.264)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (01:22:59.201)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa (01:23:13.556)
Hmm.

Neal Barnard (01:23:14.883)
I imagine an auditorium, the curtains open, and musicians come out and start playing the greatest music ever. And I just let it come to me and then I write it down. And that's what I, that's the song. So that's what I try to do.

Lauren Bernick (01:23:29.104)
That's beautiful. Well, thank you. Thank you for all of your contributions to our world. You're something. We really appreciate you. You are a badass.

Lisa (01:23:29.177)
incredible.

Lisa (01:23:39.365)
Yeah, I really, we have so much respect for you. And I, you know, having worked in this field for, you know, over 10 years now, I have to thank you for all the wonderful information you provide, because it's really helped me to help my health coaching patients to have, you know, your videos and some of your talks and things as resources. And yeah.

Neal Barnard (01:23:39.519)
Well, thank you. Thank you.

Neal Barnard (01:24:03.095)
Thank you for saying that, but let me return the compliment, because it's one thing for us to do randomized clinical trials and to come up with information and to try to write it down and make it meaningful. But what you do is so important, because you have the ability to take this information and to put it in the hands of people who can use it, including people that you've never met personally. You're making this available to people, and you'll never know how many lives you save.

But it can be really, really huge, because they in turn share it with other people. So thank you so much for doing that. That's so important.

Lisa (01:24:34.073)
Oh, thank you. We're on a mission.

Yeah, thank you, doctor, so much. Thank you for your time. We really appreciate you. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.