The SIMPLE Way To Make Your Body CLEAN Itself

0:00 Is there a particular type of fasting method that you would recommend for someone who's trying to, you know, improve their longevity? Cuz there's so many that I hear. 16 hours, 5 days. >> I'm a scientist, so I go with what's proven. I'm not selling anything. So, what the science says, first of all, is that there isn't one size fits all for everybody. Um it it often depends on what you can do personally. It's challenging to do this, right? You'll feel hungry for the first 2 weeks you try it. So, I I would suggest the way I do it is I start by skipping one and then maybe one and a half meals. Uh like what you do, try to go without a meal until 3:00 or 4:00 if you can. Maybe not the first day, right? If you

0:46 do that the first day, you'll say, "This is crazy. I'm I'm going to grab a snack." And you won't do it. So, go slowly, build up to it. So, the first day, I would say, "Just don't eat breakfast and maybe have a snack mid-morning." A week later, try to go without breakfast completely until lunch. And eventually work up to what you do and I do, which is eat a very late lunch if not go to dinner. What you get with that is obviously not eating in bed, hopefully. So, you've got that the night fast starting What would it be? 7:00 p.m. roughly? When do you finish dinner? God, no comment. Okay. It's usually pretty late. Last night it was, you know, it was This is probably why I don't eat very early the next day. Last night would have been about, I'm going to say, 10:00 p.m. Okay. >> It was super [clears throat] late. It was That's an extraordinary example.

1:31 Usually it would be 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. Okay, but but you've got at least 13, 14 hours, which is good. You want to aim for 14 hours. Some people go 16 hours, but that's a good start for fasting. And hopefully you can do that most days, 5 days a week. That's great, cuz that means that you're turning on your sirtuins, raising your NAD. You're exercise You exercise as well, so that's also adding to it. One thing that I've started doing is fasting for longer than just 14-16 hours. I try maybe once a month to go for 3 days without eating. Why? Because there's a type of cellular recycling that doesn't happen within the first 16 hours. Um you will enter ketosis, so you'll see your body will start to change its

2:17 metabolism to produce what's called ketone bodies, but the true real deep clean cleansing of old proteins and damage damage proteins happens after 2 and 1/2 to 3 days. And it's called chaperone-mediated autophagy. Autophagy? Autophagy is the word for auto self-eating, and it really kicks in for with an extended fast. What's the evolutionary reason for that? What's going on there? Why does it take me 2 and 1/2 days for this deep clean to happen? Uh cuz your body doesn't want to uh do it. It costs a lot of energy, and having to remake body parts is energy expensive, and our body tries to conserve energy as much as possible. Uh when you're fasting, what it'll it needs to do is to use your body as fuel.

3:04 So it'll start breaking down proteins for fuel that you need. So first of all, what will happen is in the first few hours, you use glycogen from your your liver. Your liver makes glucose. You'll feel a little bit hungry, but you'll eventually be fine. Then once you run run out of glycogen, then you're going to start breaking down fat and making ketones. Uh that's when you start to get a bit of bad breath from from that, and you but you feel great. When you're in a between about 15 hours and 24 hours, that's when you get a lot of ketones, and your brain uses those for fuel. So you'll have sharp mind, can remember things, you can focus on work, if you ever get there. Beyond that, you need to break down fat, and uh that is uh when your body is starting to do that. But ultimately, what what what

3:50 happens after 3 days is your body says "Hey, I'm going to start breaking down protein as well." And uh I wouldn't do that often because I don't want to break down a lot of protein, but your body will start to turn over old proteins preferentially. And a little bit of that, that's why I do it maybe once a month, has been shown, at least in animals, to be not just healthy, but life extending. On that point of ketosis, um I like being in a state of ketosis. I kind of cycle in and out of it during the year because I get so many of the like cognitive benefits. I'm more articulate on the podcast. I can think better. I feel better. I feel more focused and more attentive. Is ketosis is the ketone diet

4:36 the keto diet a healthy diet in your view? Is it What are the benefits of it? Is it something that you think is natural to be recommended? >> Well, I don't mind being controversial, but I do speak the truth. Um there's not a lot of evidence that long-term the key ketogenic diet is healthy. Mhm. It certainly doesn't correlate or associate with uh longevity. Short-term, okay. It does help people lose weight, no question. Uh but I am rather concerned for people that don't have a balanced diet with an input of plant material, which has molecules that are unique to plants and you won't find in high-processed foods uh or meat. The evidence, speaking as a scientist, is that the long-term ketogenic diets are not going to be longevity inducing.

5:23 The evidence is more having a lean diet with a focus on plants that are not overcooked and not all ultra-processed. That one is undoubtedly the healthiest if you can do it. Do you eat meat? I do eat meat, but not like I used to. I used to think that a meal was not a meal unless I had a piece of meat there, and then the vegetables were the decoration. And I'd begrudgingly eat the green stuff. I've been flipped totally. Um Serena, my partner, Serena Poon, is not just a nutritionist, but a longevity expert for the last 26 years. And so, she came to my apartment, uh which is now our apartment, and she just cleared out all the food that I had. Pretty much everything was either toxic or uh or just not healthy.

6:08 It was ultra-processed. She said, "What are you eating that kind of peanut butter? You're full of sugar." So, she she's taught me how to live healthy. And so, now I rarely eat meat. I rarely drink alcohol. I focus on really fresh, high-quality uh preferably organic foods, cuz I don't want pesticides and I I don't want other contaminants. But, I do know organic can be more more expensive. Why not meat? So, animals, unfortunately, don't make what are called polyphenols, which are a type of molecule that uh I believe uh and have evidence turns on the sirtuins and other pathways, biochemical reactions that delay aging. So, sirtuins are just one

6:55 of a few enzymes that control aging. We know this. There are sirtuins, there's mTOR, which responds to aminos, and another one called AMPK. So, those three pathways are altered in just the right way by molecules found only in plants. Well, and a small extent in fun- fungi, but not in meat. So, if you're not eating a lot of vegetables or fruits, you're not getting these molecules. They're like medicine as food. So right here, I hope you don't mind me mentioning that there are some some food in front of us. And I'm looking at blueberries here. Blueberries are packed with polyphenols. It's one of the reason they have purple color is that polyphenols have the color. And as Serena would tell you, eat the rainbow.

7:41 I call it xenohormesis, which is not as attractive. But xenohormesis is the same idea as eat the rainbow, that by eating plants that have a lot of these molecules that are often produced by stressed plants. What do you mean stressed? Stressed plants. So, plants will be stressed just like we are. If you don't give them enough water, food, too much sunlight, not enough not enough sunlight. They in their defense, they make polyphenols. There's a whole bunch of them. Resveratrol, fisetin, quercetin. There's There's hundreds. Uh this one has um anthocyanidins. That's the color. These activate these adversity responses in our cells. The sirtuins will get activated by molecules in this blueberry. So, if I

8:26 eat this blueberry, those conductors that conduct some of the aging process you talked about, making sure my cells don't have an identity crisis, fixing the the the negative stress that's going on in my um in my cells, they will be benefited by me eating this blueberry? Yeah. It's It's like a a free hack, right? You can eat something that's yummy, but you're also getting the benefits by mimicking fasting and exercise in your food as well. The sirtuins don't just need NAD. That's the gas pedal. That's the petrol for those of you in the British world and Commonwealth. The fuel for sirtuins is NAD. The accelerator pedal

9:12 are the polyphenols in fruits and vegetables like resveratrol, quercetin, which we know when you give them to sirtuins, they get hyperactivated. And when you say eat the rainbow, you mean eat colorful-looking food. Because that's an an easy way to remember how to eat foods that have the most polyphenols. I'll give you a really good example, Steven. Serena put me onto green tea matcha. Right, so matcha tea, if you haven't tried it, I'm sure you've tried it, but those of you who haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. It It tastes great. The reason for it switching from coffee mainly to matcha in the morning for me is that it's full of polyphenols. Why is it full of polyphenols? It's not just because it's green tea,

9:57 which is not naturally healthy, but the growers of those plants in Japan typically, they shade the plants before they harvest. Shading the plants stresses them out. Plants need light, so they don't just make more chlorophyll, which produces the deep green color in the tea, but the polyphenols are super high. And through trial and error over thousands of years, the Japanese figured out that by shading the plants, giving them this mild hormetic stress, it makes them not just extra tasty, but extra healthy. Same with red wine, by the way, but the alcohol can be an issue. But absent alcohol, red wine is very good for you. Okay. Without the alcohol. It's unfortunate. You know, I I

10:43 One of my papers in 1996 caused red wine sales to go up 30% and stayed up. I apologize for saying that red wine every day was healthy. Doctors were recommending it, remember? Yeah. But I now changed my mind. I have to say that I no longer believe having one glass of red wine every day is healthy. In my opinion, and I've stopped drinking red wine every day. Instead, I take polyphenols from red wine and from vegetables, either in a pill or in my food as a substitute because the evidence for alcohol is rather damning. There's a UK Biobank study, and the UK looked at thousands of people's MRI scan of their brain who were drinking one glass of alcohol a day, and there was a statistical difference between people that were drinking one

11:28 glass a day and were not in in of brain size and gray matter. Of course, the gray matter was tended to be smaller in those that drank even slightly. Yeah, I do um I actually I have a magic company. It's It was this year voted the fastest growing company in the UK. Um it's by some founders that I invested in um Levi, Teddy, and Marissa from Dragon's Den and it's been an absolute unbelievable in business, unbelievable. So, tell us where do where do I get it? Japan. You get the magic from Japan, but the company is called Perfect Keto. People know about it cuz I've talked about it before, but I didn't realize when I made the investment that magic was considered by many to also be very healthy, especially a health alternative to certain energy products in the market that you get in cans that give you

12:15 um >> [clears throat] >> I shan't get sued. >> [laughter] >> But the other thing that the company I invested in is this one here called KetoIQ. I'm a co-owner of this company as well and >> Yeah. Yeah, I love that love that company and the CEO Michael, good guy. What's your thoughts on exogenous ketones? Like drinking ketones? I do it. In fact, that I drink KetoIQ before I do a podcast. Why? It improves my clarity, I find. I also believe the science and there have been multiple studies now in people. In some of the the science comes out of KetoIQ, but also independent studies have shown that it's extremely healthy for the heart. And there's new studies that show for the brain as well it can be healthy. The

13:02 brain uses ketones like beta-hydroxybutyrate or in that one it's 1,3-butanediol. Um just a shot of that will give the brain food that it needs rather than the body having to make it. Um and you get, I believe and I feel it, I get the clarity of fasting without being in a fasted state. But I also drink it when I'm fasting to give it the body the extra boost that it needs. And on this point of diet, one One things that I was told by my doctor when I did a like one of those blood tests was he cautioned me about bad cholesterol. He said to me something along the lines that I need to be careful about the bad cholesterol. And there's been lots of conversation about cholesterol, good, bad. What's your perspective on this conversation on bad cholesterol which has been thought to increase um

13:47 certain foods have been thought to increase bad cholesterol um which is very very detrimental to our health. I didn't realize there was a debate. At least in my world there is no debate. Um if you're referring to do you want to get your LDL cholesterol as low as possible? Yeah. Definitely. Oh really? Okay, so it's Yeah, I mean the science is irrefutable. There's thousands of people in studies. Now, I think I know what you were you're talking about. There are there are some stories that you need cholesterol in your brain and if you inhibit it you might affect your brain function. Um you also need it for repair of arteries. But there's no evidence that that's a problem. In fact, it's it's a little known fact that the brain doesn't use the cholesterol from the bloodstream. It

14:33 makes its own. So I've actually been on a statin to lower my LDL since I was 30. Really? Well, I had high cholesterol. It's in my family. But I went to my doctor and I said, I want to go on these new drugs at the time, statins. And he said, why? You don't have heart disease yet. And I said, why would I wait? Get me on it. I want to be on it. And in those days it was very weird to give someone a statin at age 30 with no evidence of heart disease. But as you know, I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't wait till we get diseases to treat them. We should preempt that and start early in life. And so yeah, I insisted with my doctor. Initially with statins, but on all of these things I go in and I say

15:18 I need you to prescribe me this test. I I this medicine. And eventually after talking it over with him, he typically prescribes me something or gets me a test. But I've been fighting the system and my doctor's at Harvard, so he's a good doctor but conservative. The old way of doing medicine is if you're not sick, we're not going to give you a medicine, certainly not if you're young and healthy. Uh but that has to change. >> So you're saying that I should be on statins potentially? >> Well, what's your LDL level? No, I don't think it's great. I think I eat too much bacon or something. Well, we can talk about food and cholesterol cuz it depends whether you absorb cholesterol or not. We can test for that, but if you do absorb cholesterol more than most, I would say that you may want to change your diet at a minimum. On this plate here in front of us,

16:04 I have the top five foods that I believe you think are great for reversing aging. Am I correct in that? Does that These are great choices, yeah. So what are these and why? So we've already done the blueberries and we've you've explained to me about polyphenols and they're rich in them, which I understand. And they're low in sugar, right? Well, they're not low in sugar, so don't eat a ton of them. A handful is fine um as a snack. It's also known that having too much sugar is bad for longevity. So keep your blood sugar level steady and low as much as you can. So don't eat too many of those. A better choice than blueberries would be something like matcha, which is not full of sugar. In fact, if you go to some of these chains that sell matcha and it tastes really sweet, you're going to reverse the effect of

16:50 any polyphenols by drinking that much sugar. So I always have unsweetened matcha. Okay. So now we've got avocados here. Yeah. Yeah. Avocados uh they're not so much known for their polyphenols, though they do have them. It's the type of fats, the polyunsaturated fats. They help with satiety, so you're not going to be as hungry. Uh so if you put that on your sandwich at lunch, you're not going to feel peckish. And they're highly anti-inflammatory as well. The molecules are in there in the fats are very good for you. Extra virgin olive oil? Oh, yeah. Excellent. So, the type of uh oils that are in there are very healthy. There's omega-9, which is also known to activate sirtuins. And again, if you have the right uh grower, and this has been

17:35 cold-pressed, not too processed, and stressed before harvesting, you'll have huge amounts of polyphenols as well. I really hope that this is what the team said it was. >> [laughter] >> This has happened before where I tried something, and I thought it was something else, but it it was some Basically, it was a white powder, and it was labeled with something >> could it be? A yellow yellow liquid. >> [laughter] >> Uh urine urine. No, I'm joking. It's not. I can I don't think drinking urine uh is is longevity. But yeah, on and off, I I do take a teaspoon of olive oil in the morning, and mix it with uh resveratrol and uh polyphenol. Oh interesting. Okay, so extra virgin olive oil good. Good. And there's a lot of evidence, not just molecular like me, but

18:22 epidemiologically, people that that have a lot of olive oil in their diet tend to have low inflammation and less disease. And then we've got some nuts. Yep, nuts are good for many reasons. They're full of vitamins and minerals. Uh if there's a Brazil nut, you want to have one of those every day for the selenium, which is a very rare element in our food supply. And there's a recent study just last month showing that a lack of selenium uh can be very del- deleterious. So, nuts are great as a snack. Be careful, they're full of calories, though. So, if you're trying to lose weight, and you're not exercising a lot, don't overeat on the nuts. And what Oh, my least favorite food, but nevertheless, I will eat them. This is a Brussels sprout.

19:09 Um when I was a kid, Brussels sprouts tasted a lot more a lot worse, A lot bitter. >> True. Those are good um because they have polyphenols, but there's also another molecule in them called sulforaphane. It's actually the reason they taste terrible and smell terrible. Sulforaphane is what it sounds. It has a sulfur atom in it. And that gives it that rotten egg smell. But sulforaphane activates these hormesis pathways. There's one called NRF. And that is a stress response protein that sulforaphane activates. So you actually by eating preferably relatively steamed, not fried to death, Brussels sprouts, you'll get sulforaphane. You can also take sulforaphane as a supplement if you don't like Brussels sprouts. If you love

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