Dr. Neal Barnard - The Power Foods Diet: The Breakthrough Plan That Traps, Tames, and Burns Calories for Easy and Permanent Weight Loss - ENCORE

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. 

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https://www.carbonworksmusic.com/

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

Transcript

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Hi, friends. Lauren here. Well, I want to tell you that this week we are running an encore presentation of Doctor Neil Barnard. And he will be talking about his latest book, The Power Foods Diet The Breakthrough Plan that traps, tames, and burns calories for easy and permanent weight loss. So he's really talking about a whole food plant based diet and the role of how it provides a lot of antioxidants. And it helps you avoid Alzheimer's disease and heart disease and all the things that we dread. He's also going to share his three pronged approach to diminishing menopause symptoms. And, stay tuned till the end. We talk about his musical career. I don't know if you know that he is a musician. Quite a good one. And one of his psychiatric patients ended up at his concert and thought she was hallucinating, so that's pretty funny. Anyway, we will be back in February with new episodes, so until then, I wish you well. I'm Lauren and I'm Lisa, and we're flipping the script about growing older. Our guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing. Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast. Welcome to age like a badass mother. Doctor Neil Barnard is an adjunct professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He has authored 20 books, including his latest, The Power Foods Diet, and has led numerous studies on investigate the effects of diet on diabetes, body weight, hormonal symptoms, and chronic pain, including a study that paved the way for viewing type two diabetes as a potentially reversible condition. However, the thing that I admire most about Doctor Barnard is his unwavering commitment to end horrific animal testing and experiments. When Doctor 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. Doctor Barnard refused to participate. In 1985, he founded the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Back then, most medical schools use live animals. Today, zero medical schools in North America use live animals. That's due to Doctor 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 doctor, Neil Barnard. So welcome. Well. Thank you. Terrific to be with you today. One of the things that I just really admire is the work that you've done regarding animals and animal testing. So can 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 in medical school? What happened? Yeah. Animals are used in a great many ways, but for some people, their first introduction to it, at least in 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 4 or 5, six students, and they give them a dog. And the dog is nervous. You know, 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 of the lecturer and they take 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 Nora Ephron. And it speeds the heart up. And the students write that down, but they knew it anyway, because they know they know what these drugs do from lecture, and then they will slow the heart down with another drug called for Fran alone. But they knew that anyway, because it was in the book. It was in the lecture. And in some different labs are different, but they sometimes grenade 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, you. She she's dead, right? And then their instructions guy goes, she's dead. Beggar up. And they're kind of stunned by the callousness of it. But but they go on and they bag up the dog and and then about an hour later, the students are all gone. They're at home and the 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 they're there. Teach. This is a teaching exercise. Anyway, it's it's obviously terrible for the dogs they killed. It's terrible for the students as well because that part of the student's brain that is learning to be compassionate and learning how to be a professional is threatened because they aren't. They're 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, of course, a 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, huge victory. But 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 and at higher levels of training, surgical training, for example. But 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. Can you talk a little bit about the power Foods diet and what do you consider power foods? Yeah, you know, there's been a real shift over time. First of all, as 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 were told by the 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 there is to it. There's been a shift toward dietary patterns and more plants, less animals, that kind of stuff. But within that, there has been 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 is inbounds again. 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 digestive tract without you being able to absorb them at all, which is 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 Justin's job with me was to take these powerful if there are dozens and dozens of them and turn them into appetizers and soups and desserts and things that kids will love and 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. Yeah, they really made it nice. And and we've been getting a lot of good comments from people who've been using it. That's good. So I mean, I'm some of some of the power foods are like big things. That whole food plant based people are probably already eating. Right. Like in my bones. Yeah. Lisa's holding up her salad that she's eating or was eating right before you got on. Beans? Yes. Whole grains and dark leafy greens. Yeah. Those are. 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'll 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, 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 your intake, people would lose weight. And let me just give you the list that, that they came up with. Because then the next step is you test them. But number one was berries like blueberries especially. But others in the number two group was cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts. Third group was green vegetables spinach, asparagus. Group number four was melon. So cantaloupe and watermelon is especially group number five. Citrus fruit oranges, grapefruit even juices counted. Yes they did. And the sixth group was of legumes. So beans, lentils, peas, soybeans soybean products they all got it. So there are some others too. So anyhow then these then these fruits have to get tested. So one of the coolest things I saw, 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 2734 identical twins. Yes. How do 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 do you have in your abdomen? How much visceral fat versus subcutaneous fat that is. And what they found is that within each pair, the one who had the most. And so in and 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. It'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 pairs. Genetically identical. One has more of this, one has less, and the weight goes, goes away, so to speak, to the extent that you eat food. And then we now know that these are metabolism boosters. Not, not they're not you know, they don't 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. There's just a gentle but that's interesting. So because there 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. They're it's not. So they're eating these foods and also calorie dense foods. So so what they on is boosting the metabolism. So even just adding your foods without cutting everything out it could help you lose weight. 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 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 going to eat something with a lot of grease in it. Chicken fat, beef fat cheese that 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 it's not so healthy. Let me have olive oil or extra virgin olive oil. I'm 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. And so that's an important one. But to answer your question, yes, above and beyond that, there are all kinds of properties of food I mentioned blueberries. They have anthocyanins, cinnamon, ginger, jalapenos. These and other spicy foods have certain natural compounds in them that influence metabolism. Who knew? Were the twins eating exactly the same thing? Aside from the berries and so forth, they were eating whatever they wanted to. It was an associational study. So they just they just said, okay, you all come in, get your Dexa scans. And they did, you know, practically 3000 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 anthem sign and eating people have not just less body fat, but specifically less abdominal fat, body fat, less visceral fat, which is good and is and this is, is that the signing also an antioxidant that's is at the accident property. Yeah. Absolutely. Very powerful. And 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. Those are don't eat them. But those are antioxidants as well. Those are anthocyanins as well since we're talking about the antioxidants and the and so science, can you dive in a little bit more because in that you talked about also like a small amount of nuts and seeds for vitamin E and the free radicals, you know, sort of fighting the free radicals by eating the antioxidants to help with, brain health. Yeah. 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. The biggest threat that. That many of us or maybe the top of the list, I should say, is the things that we never want to have is Alzheimer's, because you lose everything and you lose everybody. And it's a horrible thing. There are certain things that you want to avoid, and there's certain things you want to add and things to avoid, so, etc. it says the top of the list and that's that's the solid SAT. When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, my mom had five kids, and we'd run downstairs at 7:00 in the morning, and my mother would be taking a fork and pulling bacon strips out of the frying pan, and she 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 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. But like coconut oil. Like coconut oil. Exactly. But you don't need it. You don't need to send it to a lab. You could just see it and then it saturates out. And dairy is the number one source. Dairy fat like butter, cheese, cheese is 70% fat. And Americans eat tons of it. 72,000 calories worth of cheese every year. So the average consumption. So that's number one avoiding in the Chicago Health an aging project back in 2003. This is 21 years ago. Researchers discovered that if you avoid saturated fat to a substantial degree to to if you're in the low end of saturated 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, but maybe one ounce. You get more vitamin E. Vitamin E is just as you said, it's an antioxidant. And so science vitamin C, beta carotene, lycopene that makes it tomato red, beta carotene that makes a carrot orange. These are all in 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. So but you don't want to overdo it with nuts and seeds because they are so fatty, you're going to get you're going to overdo it quite easily. But about an ounce per day will help, and possibly 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 in food. In your food. Not a supplement. 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. I don't get any of them because there are eight forms of vitamin E, 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 words. 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? You know, your memory is starting to sputter a little bit, you know, okay. Having trouble remembering the name of the movie that these people didn't have had Alzheimer's, but they were 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 a three month period, the two groups just diverged with their ability to acquire and retain new information. So, you know, 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 or a 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, no negative effects. Having fruits like berries, having a little bit of nuts and seeds, avoiding the the cheese and the these are all benign things. And let's add to it. Lacing up your sneakers. Because University of Illinois research has showed that exercise is protective too. What's an ounce of nuts look like? 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 starting from the bottom of your hand. Yeah, you just make it or the middle of your cup with your hand or them in there, but once it hits your fingers, that's more than enough. So everybody has a different sized brush. But but go go to the 7-Eleven, buy nuts and see what an ounce is, and just pour them in your hand and then you'll see, okay, that's I wore them really well. I have two other cautions. So the first caution is don't eat them because if you do, you'll feel your hand again. 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. The second. So so so what do 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 own. Yeah. You know, put them on your oatmeal, put them on a pancake or whatever. Use it as an ingredient, not as a snack. 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. So 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 the 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, you know, severe menopause symptoms. But if we're eating differently than 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. Thank you. 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 bad. There was no, you know, seven, 11, 20 years ago and nuts were in trees and they were seasonal and they were encased in a shell. 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 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 it's not something it's it's not like are your diet and and if only we had squirrels pause to get them. Well, if only we had the good sense that squirrels model every day. Really. I mean, they do so much better. I mean, you know, 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 have come in. I say it maybe don't go there too far. I mean, there are there are other foods that have a lot of vitamin E without too much fat, mangoes and such as? Well, well, you know, well even well, 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 most people, 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 three 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 improved dramatically. As long as we're doing other things that relate to menopause, to which we can talk about. And it's really part of the solution, you know, in your in your book, your your body in balance, which is all about hormones. I read that, you know, menopause, obviously it's a natural part of life or we wouldn't be doing it. And that it was really the drug companies premier and, and Prime Pro that 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? You know, let me put it this way. Mother nature is pretty smart in certain ways. And Mother Nature is recognized that estrogen is like dynamite. You know, dynamite is a great thing. You know, if you want to build a tunnel or something, your your mining cells or 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. You growth hormone can hurt you if you have too much thyroid hormone. All hormones are big double edged sword 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 2 or 3 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 as if you're past your sell by date nonsense. Complete nonsense. Women have always lived or 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 100 and some years ago might have been 40 or 50 on average, because there was so much childhood, childhood mortality. Once you take that out, you have people living more lives. So 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 is done. You got a lot of stuff to do. And babies is not the thing. So menopause is a completely normal phase of life, just like menarche. And what about you know, I think everybody's kind of familiar with the Japanese women who eat soy and 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? Yeah, soybeans. Well, first of all, the soybean is an amazing thing. I mean, it's it's particularly part of the Asian traditions, but it's so versatile. I mean, you can turn it into soy milk, turned into tempeh and miso soup. You can turn it into tofu, and they make sausage out of soy. They make it make soy bacon. One day they make soy snow tires. I don't think you can make everything soy. It's astounding thing I won't buy those. But back in the 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 westernized, 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 media diet. And instead of 15% of women having hot flashes in the early 2000s, it was up to about 47% between 40 and 45. So you could see that change. And so the speculation was, could it be the soybeans? The answer is probably yes. That was protective for them. Could it be the fact it was just a plant based diet? The answer 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 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 to 30%. In other words, soy has an anti-cancer affect that's really quite substantial. So anyway, cut to the chase. It turns out there are two completely different estrogen receptors estrogen receptor alpha and estrogen receptor beta. And the soybeans. The soy isoflavones attach preferentially to beta. So the alpha is the gas pedal on cancer. That's where estradiol attaches. The beta is the brake 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. If 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, they should bring it back. It's a great thing. I mean, any you take anything that cuts a woman's risk of breast cancer by 30%, sign me up. I mean, that is that is a great thing. 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. Yeah, yeah. And you can buy them if you buy them organic. They're the organic ones are everywhere. You can get organic. So I know if it's labeled organic by law, it cannot be GMO. So right. You know, it's GMO soy. There's a lot of GMO soy that's cattle feed. If you eat chicken, you're eating an animal raised GMO products in a great many cases. Same with same with cows. And you know, but if you want to have estradiol, that will increase cancer risk. 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 tell you. What they should be nervous about is dairy. It's dairy. 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? Right. Yeah, 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, the industry could say, well, we didn't inject any hormones in the cow. That's true. Most dairies don't inject hormones, but 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 in the milk and in every dairy, they do a very creepy thing, which is they take these cows, chain them up, artificially inseminated 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. There is not labels on that. On the dairy America. American people have no idea of these. And then we wonder, well, gee, why are we seeing problems with our kids health or or with our health? That's where we reach adulthood. 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? Everybody's different. And what can I do? Are my hormones going to kill me? Menopause will come. Every woman is on her own time frame. It. Okay. And you mentioned in your book some over-the-counter things for 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? Well, first of all, if some over-the-counter 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. And with this, I mean, to knock out moderates her hot slices by 80% is really huge. So what seemed the reason I put it that way is that we're I think we 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 if they are still having some animal products, I would omit them. The second thing is, and a 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 and especially if you're buying even a sort of a healthy 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 is in one serving. There is more than three grams of fat. Set it aside. Now, you don't have to worry if for fruits 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 mature soybeans. This is not tofu. This is not soy milk. This is not edamame. Those are all sign. Those are all saying that they do not have the isoflavones that mature soybeans do. When when you a edamame is a baby soybean, if you just leave it on the vine until it becomes the mature soybean. 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 in 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 and I don't think anybody knows why. But at Tufts University, back in the 90s, 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, where they would cut down in oils, their estrogen subtractions go down it. And we we haven't sorted it all out. You might think, well, that would make hot flushes worse. We're trying to take the diet out of it. So we keep oils out. We keep the animal products out. We bring the soybeans in and just try the sailing that I mean, there are all kinds of other treatments that people that 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. Okay. So you don't want to recommend any over-the-counter products like Black Cohosh or any. No, I don't have anything that just no pressure. You don't want to have anything bad to say about them. I just don't think black cohosh we're not super impressed with the soy isoflavones use in isolation. There are a lot of people who will take Justine, which is a soy isolation, a soy isoflavones, and they will isolated from the soy. They'll throw away the soy bottle. They'll market Eugene Esteem. I'm not blown away by the data on them. 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, you know, I didn't know that about the soybeans. I thought it like tempeh or, you know, Lisa, you probably thought that too. You know, they are fine. That. Yeah, the less processed soy is what you're trying to pull out for, to actually see the soybeans in there. So have those things if you want to 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 that 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 could 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 or what you've cooked them in the in your your to come out, spread them out kind of thin on the parchment paper. Put them in the oven. Put them at a 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 can put in you. Yeah. And you can, you can. That's what I was going to do with my soybean salt. And you could put garlic on them. You can 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, toasted, toasted. They'll just sell sell you the ones that they make. So have fun with it. That's really that's that's that sounds good on the other side. Do this in addition to that while you're sorting out because I want my goal is to cure you and give yourself some time. We saw a lot of people are fine within a week. Most people are. Most people need more time from our, our study was 12 weeks for most people. By about week five, six, seven, they've got the effect they're going to get. Okay. Thanks, Betty. They tell. Yeah. Betty. Betty's regimen. Okay. The Betty study. Betty study. Okay. Well, I know Lisa is itching to ask you about music, but just let me ask you a couple. Dude, what? What's your beauty routine? Because look at you. You look phenomenal. Do you have, like, do you do you, like, have a favorite moisturizer? What do you do? Are you why you look so good? Well, it's aside for me. That's very sweet of you to ask. No, I'm a typical guy. I mean, I neglect everything. I, you know, I got a virus. Open a towel. Yeah. I mean, you know, guys are. So. Anyway, thank you for saying so. Okay, so you really don't you don't moisturize or do anything. You know, I think I think it must be a frustrating thing to have guys like me who just really just don't do anything at all. I mean, I my gosh, I eat pretty clean diet. I haven't had animal products in 40 years, and I exercise and try to have fun in life. And that's kind of my whole routine. So, okay, so I think it's the rock music maybe. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. I just have two questions back on what about 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 if you're trying to manage your hormones with diet, it's not the the consumption of those fats is your advising to keep them at a minimum or omit them even is correct. Weight isn't an issue. That's 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. They interfere with attempts to improve insulin resistance. We did at prior trials in menstrual cramps. We're doing a endometriosis trial now, and the fatty foods seem to folic it all up. So but the other thing I 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 an effect, but we're kind of under the hood trying to understand what is going on in the biology of it and with with fiber. We figured it out a long time ago. 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 makes estrogens, but well we'll see. Well, and then I 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 because 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? Most of them look at total fat. Yeah, I know it's a great question. And you know, we don't 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 they haven't really teased these issues out. Yeah. Got it. So to to be to be continued. Well let's talk about the fun stuff. Yes. Definitely. To be continued. So yeah. So are you still playing hard. But these are wonderful people. I have to say they're just the best musicians in the world. And they're people I've I've gotten to know. Yeah, incredible. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. 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 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. So is that something that, like you do you tour or because I also listen or read? Maybe I listen 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? No, they don't say mixing together at all. It's a terrible thing. And and for a couple reasons, a couple of reasons. One is if you're a musician, people think you couldn't possibly be a competent doctor, you know, because, I mean, if you take time and you know, I it and I write a lot of music and and it's like, why are 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 of scientists who have been musicians, you know, Einstein and many others are kind of known for that. But but I got to say, the other direction is even worse. If you're a doctor, nobody can take you seriously as a musician. There was here in DC, there was a guy who was the jazz playing dentist and everybody's like, I'm gonna get out of here, you know? So, so, so when I, when I'm working with musicians and they find out about you, they, they like, I don't know, you know, get away from me, okay? I mean, you can't have soul. You know, if you're an orthopedic surgeon, like, get away. But my only defense is that I've been playing music since much way before I was ever a doctor. I mean, when I was a kid, it was a thing, and it was a thing that it was important to my parents. And I was classically trained. But then I just 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 I just it's it's a fun thing to do. But I also for me, it's also a way to sometimes say a thing that I think needs to be said, like, say, in the pandemic. I wrote this song that I had this memory when I was when I was a kid, my, my little, my, my mom had five kids and my little brother David was going to sleep when my mother took to me and she said, David, nighty night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Goodnight, David. He couldn't sleep at all. He was looking for bedbugs. What are bedbugs is like, where are the bed bugs? And I thought, don't look at the terrible things we do to kids. You know, we see, like, three blind mice, you know, cut off their tails with a carving knife. We 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, he would say to six. So I saw it. This was the pandemic was starting. And now what we tell kids mattered because a million people died, that in fairly short order of 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 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 I'm going to come out of this, okay, but I do know this. If I'm tucking you into bed, my little beloved daughter, sun. Whatever for now, we're okay. And just that little bit of reassurance I thought was important. So I wrote a 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 going to have that those stars are twinkling and I don't I don't believe in boys and kids with a lot of foolish stuff. And life is not going to be all right. I mean, there are a lot of tough things that kids and adults go through, but you can't say to someone you love, for now, I'm here, it's gone. 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 said, this song needs to be in French, and I translated into French. And my friend Christine, who is beautiful singer, she's, she's Italian, but she grew up right near the French border and she's a great, great, great French singer. So I said, Christine, come to New York, let's, let's do this damn thing. And she came over and she just sang that song beautifully. Just killer. I don't know if you've heard the French. Yeah. She's just she's got an incredible. So we recorded it. Anyhow, the what gave my life meaning actually was I, 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 like, going to suicide. But I was just really, just really killing this. And one of the comments was a woman who said to my four year old son, goes to bed at night. He first watches it in English, and then he watches it in French, and it turns out to like and he goes to sleep. And I thought, okay, my life now has meaning. That was so sweet. That's beautiful. So thank you. Thank you for all of your contributions to our world. You're you're it's something we really appreciate you. Well thank you. Okay. Thanks for listening, friend. From my heart to yours. Be well until we meet again.