 These little seeds have nearly two times the fiber, calcium, potassium, and iron over Chia. The magical part is 10 times more prebiotic over Chia. Can you share with the audience a little bit of your background, where you originated from and how you ended up in the United States? Of course. So I'm originally a refugee from Afghanistan escaping that war-torn country when I was a child, about 10. Faith would have it that we survived and I ended up immigrating not only to U.S., but I grew up here in California and went on to get myself educated. I obtained a bachelor's in finance after business school. I got into banking and real estate, zero intention of getting into health or wellness or food and beverage industry. But Faith would have it and a couple of awakening moments in my life basically forced me or encouraged me to reevaluate the purpose of my life. I went on to start a socially responsible brand of water initially making a difference around the world, building water wells with its mission, which was great, but then it wasn't so great on the planet so I had to revisit my mission and that led me to the healing powers of what now you know as Zen Basil and for anyone who might not be familiar with Zen Basil basically they look like chia on a ground to ground comparison these little seeds have nearly two times the fiber, calcium, potassium and iron over chia. So it's of course the magical part is 10 times more prebiotic over chia and if a superfood is going to be a superfood it has to be anti-inflammatory which means it has to be lectin-free, right Dr. G? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well okay so wait a minute so now you're a refugee you probably got exposed to the standard American diet and you probably incorporated the standard American diet into your lifestyle and then what happened? Well like you said as all immigrants when we get here we think everything we're just so happy to be alive, to survive and of course everything in America the richest country in the world is a privilege and honor and must be way better. So I had no idea that there was any issues with our food system McDonald's and Burger King these were our favorite you know fast food which we called it a meal you know dinner my entire family loved it we enjoyed it it's delicious so we lived off of your typical Western diet and when I experienced you know weight issues in my teens you know there was the cleansing method you juice for a couple of weeks drop 10 pounds no problem you get back to it and that yo yo cycle continued in my 20s then I found that over the counter appetite suppressant and just when the weight would creep up you would get on a couple of pills and then you were fine and in my 30s my own health advocate would actually my doctors would prescribe weight management prescription appetite control pills which must be safe because my doctors are giving it to me so basically I had no idea I had an eating disorder this yo yo of like I was up 20 pounds up and down up and down all the way down to my 40s and in my 40s everything kind of broke and it wasn't working anymore I realized that you know I'm like 35 pounds overweight which literally put me in an obese category and I had no idea that I'm obese I mean I wasn't a denial and it just the the the health factor of what I was experiencing which I thought it was normal because you know everyone puts on weight when you're in your late 40s and okay find that these appetite control pills are not working and I actually was like messing up my mind and then my son's health my mother's health all of this was happening essentially you know it took like three decades to get there but it was a lot of awakening to say the least and that's when I start digging a little further into what is really wrong and of course the conclusion is our food we're not broken you shouldn't fall apart at 50 you shouldn't like accept what I was except expect accepting at 50 you should you should focus on healing and that healing comes from food not prescription and whether it's over the counter or wherever it's coming from that is not healing that's band-aiding and giving you a long side effect so there's a lot of awakening that I experienced in my late 40s essentially that it's obvious I mean the fact okay so let's talk about the fact that our food system is broken when I start digging a little further in 90 okay so here's the statistics that like shocks me 40% I wasn't my family was not alone my my weight is not isolated case 40% of Americans today are in the obese category we know what obesity crisis is doing to our health and and how it contributes to just about every single disease under the sun and we can't accept that so then you look into even further especially when you know we went through the epidemic 50% of us are pre-diabetic and according to CDC 80% of us are not even aware of it so I'm thinking okay 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy that is a scary statistics especially because we live in the most you know abundant richest country in the world we should not be okay with this so yeah I strongly think that we have a food system that is basically empty calories missing nutrients so okay so you're like almost everybody else in America what what did you do what happened to you to say okay this is not working I'm gonna do something else well as I was learning from you know amazing educators like yourself I ran into you know plant paradox early on and thought okay my gut feeling yeah our food system is really broken but that wasn't like really moving me until there's last procedure that my son had to go through so let me backtrack a little bit as like I said immigrants we accept everything is shiny and perfect here so when my son was born and of course you know as mother we don't think so much of like taking care of ourselves but our children now that's where things move I mean I I I always explain how motherhood explained or defined the true meaning of love for me the unconditional the definition of what true love really means is when I became a mom and my son he had common allergy that went on to become labeled asthma then he was put on antibiotics and this is to when he's just to he's put on antibiotics he's getting steroids he's getting this version of antibiotics and that and he's constantly running flaring up into some kind of a you know infection and then he needs antibiotics and of course pediatrics are prescribing it I'm accepting it this is normal his little body went through so much procedure so many health issues that the finale was this one particular operation that he was going through and things that didn't work out things went wrong and that's when life kind of like that was a moment that I knew things are not shouldn't be accepted this this is not at that point this was you know I would I had educated myself what I didn't learn in school but you know just basically searching for better way I knew that there are things that are broken way further in and we need to focus on healing we need to focus on getting to the root cause of what is it that this child of mine needs to be on our antibiotics for two we did the math there was not a month every other month he was prescribed some form of antibiotics for 20 years of his life wow I don't have to tell you now Dr. G and your audience are familiar on what that level of antibiotics that's to a young man's body and microbiome and health so I'm learning all this and then if that wasn't enough and you know like I said a couple of moments of life just really woke me up my mom health started to deteriorate so dramatically that currently she's basically trapped in a 90 year old body when she's only in her 70s it started off with a little gut you know pain and the next thing we know it's one pill to 15 pills and 15 pills twice a day and every single organ in her body has failed and it's it's heartbreaking to watch that yeah okay so you know the whole family is a mess and so again where where did you start obviously now you know this is a crisis this can't go on you know you're watching a parent go downhill you're watching your child go downhill you're you're watching yourself addicted to you know diet pills etc etc and you're you're a big financial wizard but you can't even manage your own body right or my well like I said I was chasing the American dream little that I put any kind of a concentration on the importance of health because in my opinion back then that's taken care of we have one of the finest health system in the world so you know you have a pain you go to doctor and you get a pill and you're good so it was my ignorance really for this space that no your health is you not in the hands of others so once I started to really kind of educate myself around how broken and how much my family is not isolated so I'm understanding the importance of value of food and healing that's how we get to the root cause of issues and I'm running into statistics like you know 95% of us are missing the most important nutrient fiber 95% of Americans or malnutrition on fiber that's like you know and then it goes on 50% of us are missing key nutrient magnesium 40% need supplement and calcium so that should be from our food not from supplements the latest study I just run into now is Columbia says no 30% of us are iron deficient so these are like basic nutrient that we must run on and yet the entire population is is affected so I'm searching for healing concepts and I had no idea and they're like no you know expectation that I was gonna run into this treasured seed but in the early days I had heard a lot from my late father in regards to a gentleman who had lived and in our region actually he was he was born like a thousand years ago you might know his his name is abyss it needs to know in our culture in my language I don't know if you've heard of his book the canon of medicine oh yeah oh okay so his name was translated and later on and I think it's like in the 13th century his work he's still regarded as the father of modern-day medicine because it was canon of medicine that that created or established early days of medical school so he left many books and my father would always talk about if you see no this and if you see no that I run in and I'm searching for healing ingredients I read into one of his books literally called the book of healing so it's kind of like it was sent to me so I'm going through this material and he's talking about what we call basal basal in our language rayon so there's a whole section of basal just the plant and how it's healing how it's good for your gut your mind your heart it gets rid of parasites and he goes on and on and on how the concentrated nutrient are in the seeds now early on when I had seen chia I was sure it's basal seed or talk me right on because we didn't call it basal seed we call the talk me right on so she was a foreign name to when I first saw it in the market I thought for sure that's talk me right on which in my language basal seeds so long story short it was the the work of it me see no that actually clarified no no no no chia has nothing to do with basal seeds and even when I was going through his work I kept thinking I probably will find chia there was no mention of chia in fact she is not native to our culture or environment but basal is and so that's how this whole idea let me dig a little further in what is he talking about in terms of basal seed healing powers and and and how could this one thing be good for your gut and you mine and your heart and then the people in my culture would always talk about how these seeds once I established no no these are two different seeds how is these seeds good for your hair nails and skin that part was like puzzling like I it was too good to be true kind of like I couldn't I didn't believe it like yeah that's like old wife tail I mean how could this one little seed be good for your hair nail and skin and then I run into your work and of course I understand it's all about gut health and so the motivation kept digging in gearing me basically guiding me that no no you need to look further into this area yeah so this act so this was really I mean this was your culture teaching you that you know one of the answers you're looking for has been known about for thousands of years basically and you know why the why the heck aren't you looking into this yeah you know it's an interesting story I years ago I I had a patient who son had a chia seed company and I actually had a big bag of chia seeds in my office that I would show patients and I was on the phone to a colleague Lauren Cordain the father of the paleo diet and we were talking about things we were thinking about writing a book together and I said you know we got to talk about chia seeds because they're so important and they're so good for you he said don't you read the literature and I said what are you talking about of course I read the literature and he said well I'm going to send you two papers and it's the last time chia seeds are ever going to go in your mouth and I said so he sent me a couple of papers a human studies where humans we wanted to find out chia seeds have a short chain omega-3 fat which is true and that's why they're so healthy and so they gave these to people and they looked at their omega-3 fat levels their alpha-linolake acid levels and in fact they went up and supposedly that's very anti-inflammatory but lo and behold the groups that got the chia seeds even though these anti inflammatory compounds went up they their inflammation markers as measured by C-reactive protein actually went up rather than down and so you know he was lecturing me over the phone saying you see it's not what people think he says so get that bag out of your office and I've never let anybody have them again and when I started researching chia seeds lo and behold they contain electin and I said duh well of course and you know the mommy plant wants to protect her babies and that's one of the ways of doing it so and you're right basil seeds are totally different than chia seeds but your brilliance is that basil seeds act like chia seeds in the way they behave in water and in puddings and yeah there you go they get this wonderful gelatinous fiber that anybody can see but as opposed to chia seeds yeah look at that these things are actually a phenomenal source of a prebiotic fiber that feeds your gut so you've done some nutritional analysis of basil seeds right yeah I have actually I need to thank you again for highlighting that human study on chia because had it not been for your highlighting I wouldn't have even discovered that like I said in the early days about 20 years ago when I saw chia I personally thought that that was our version of tochmerion basil seeds in fact just yesterday one of my friends also from Afghanistan popular on social media she's like he's like yeah I thought chia was basil seed too so my family and friends still call my brand chia oh you're doing the chia thing they say that until today you're doing the chia thing you're talking about chia no it's not chia so and and this is a common theme like I still go through and find YouTube videos of individuals talking about basil seed and their language because in India it's called something else and Pakistan is called something else in Afghanistan etc in Egypt is called something else so areas that are historically familiar with the values of basil and basil seeds they are translating it to chia so the actual I mean I literally run into a YouTube video with over 2 million views and the healer was talking about basil seed in his language and the translation of the YouTube video was chia chia chia so you know what when things become popular in the US it we lead the way it becomes popular across the world so right now if you go into other parts of the world they're still going to say chia is more healthier better for you even though historically there's no track record of this ingredient existence in our and in history I mean it's been popular for the past two three decade primarily in America and Europe but go back you know 100 200 years and it didn't exist so and then to backtrack when I was reading the book of healing basil by itself as you highlight so well in regards to the leaf has been well you know studied and and there's no doubt in regards to its nutrient and values and healing and polyphenols but the chia seeds leaves were only known as pet chia so there's really no concentration here's you know when people say oh how's this of superfood I say well and your paper actually helps me validate that point if a food is considered superfood it should be rich in nutrient and it should be healing it's both if it's rich in nutrient but inflammatory it's literally counterproductive right so that's that's basically how I would identify if the natural healers said it's healing if the or beta medicine and Chinese medicine all validated which was all in regards to basil seed clearly this is where the magic is so yeah it all of that education for me was kind of you know peeling off this onion that whoa there's something bigger than me and my family here we've gotten this wrong so so then I went back in the early days this is like over five years ago I literally started testing what was only available was in these little Asian stores that no one knew and it was named something else like subject seeds so I started testing some doing some basic lab work not a whole lot of you know nutritional value coming out so I'm still like confused okay so a lot of data says chia is better for you a lot of health advocates are promoting chia so chia is good for you but then the natural healers if nesina said no it was basil basil seeds so you know all of so I had to continue to research and then I found out no there's over 150 different basil plants to source from the seeds and the regions and the farming practices all make a unique different attributes of its healing and and it's a nutrient count so that's when I knew that this had to be explored and I kept investing my time my life my career to make sure that this is captured and that's when I discovered the seeds that now you see as in basil power when the lab results came from this strength and we're looking at over 50% fiber I knew that this is going to be a magical thing because I knew fibers the most important nutrient for metabolic health according to you and Dr. Lustig's metabolic health and so many other health advocates that have educated us about fiber so that's where until today I still have so much miscommunication around this subject but I kept digging into various different strings so I can basically find a baseline where is it and I have to establish that that's another talk about nutritional panels so when I first started in basil this was my package and I said zen basil basil seeds 100% organic basil seeds I didn't do any chia comparison people still ask me questions like are those for planting are those for eating and I'm like no no no no here look at my nutritional panel on the back it's it's got way more fiber in fact nearly two times and it's got way more calcium way more iron and and potassium and and and and hydrates faster etc it was a deep slow long conversation to go from basil plant does it smell like basil no it doesn't smell like basil it's not like the leaf it's more the concentration of the nutrient so it's a deeper conversation and then from there I went on to put it right in the front loud zen basil looks like chia but it's not it's got nearly two times the fiber and in one serving you get 15 grams of fiber and that's when the conversation got a little bit more exciting because people recognize that oh so it's got more fiber I want fiber because somebody said I need fiber and then and it got a little easier but the nutrient count this is like literally my third baseline that I've created in terms of nutritional fact sheets so I'm constantly testing establishing that baseline because to give you an idea of how these panels are created traditionally in the US if we go to if I wanted to build a brand I go to the US database and all of the popular ingredients including chia is in the US nutritional fact sheet database you extract what you need slap it on your label and off you go in my case I had to establish this category I had to test and retest and then send my food science lab results to my FDA labeled agency authority to confirm and then validate and verify so it's been a journey to come up to this point all right so I noticed you know you've you've mixed it in water and clearly it makes a wonderful you know gel so what do you do with that am I just going to throw a bunch in my mouth and crunch it or and the reason I'm doing that because as you know in my most recent book unlocking the keto code I've got a tropical basil seed pudding in there but tell me how you started incorporating this into into your diet and how do you teach others to do it well I have like a host of recipes that's online for free and I constantly coming up with new recipes and I share that on instagram so I encourage anyone who's interested in other ways to to follow along on instagram with me but basically the nutrient is in the lot then to the seeds so the simplest way that you would want to incorporate it is simply hydrated and water as I just did pour in your favorite you know I like it with coconut milk bam that's it it's a pudding whatever all addition you want to add the pistachios or all the other healing mulberries these are by the way superfoods in my culture that you're constantly sharing so by the way the book of healing speaks about so much of what you've been promoting from pistachios to walnuts to mulberries yeah but basically water yogurt of your choice milk of your choice and you got yourself a nutrient rich that is not just fiber rich we're talking about calcium potassium iron magnesium so many incredible healthy enzymes the prebiotic aspect of it in fact one published paper was validating exactly that 10 times the prebiotic fiber over chia now that we understand microbiome I know how did the natural healers in my culture said this is good for your gut and mine because the whole concept of microbiome understanding of this philosophy is rather new but somehow those guys a thousand years ago knew that if you take care of your gut chances are the rest of it will be doing really well too no it's absolutely true you know apocrates the western father of medicine 2500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut and I've actually got a buddha scholar who's recently become one of my patients man he's actually gone back and look at the ancient sanskrit translations of the buddha and one of the things he shared with me that the buddha said that enlightenment begins in the intestines and yeah and you go wow so you know one of the great thinkers of of eastern thought was saying the same thing as the you know the father of western medicine and they were actually contemporaries and so all these guys and like in the african culture all these guys knew this how they knew it is amazing because they didn't have the sophisticated you know lab tests that we have now but they were right and one of the things that's important that I've emphasized is that the reason these prebiotic fibers are important is that this is what our bacteria are probiotics eat and they in turn make these compounds that are now called postbiotics that actually are a huge part of the the gut brain connection and so so much of our not only you know gut health is really correlating now to our brain health and our mental health and our levels of depression and anxiety which are you know through the roof it's because you know our gut health is so poor so you know anything we can do and you got twice the fiber of chia seeds and again we've known you're right the healing powers of basil have been known you know by almost all cultures and and to think they can be concentrated in these little bit of seeds that you're right do not taste like basil everybody goes ah I'm not really wild about the taste of basil they don't taste like basil no yeah exactly no it doesn't not only that I think that's probably one of our biggest problems we have been marketed and convinced that you lead with taste and the the problem with taste is the fact that we've re-engineered our taste buds so excessively that the true nature of what basil you know forget that these are wholesome so it's not going to have any flavor by the way if you haven't tried some basil seeds yet but if you taste a perfect example what you talk about in blueberries blueberries in season versus blueberries you know with the rays under certain lights but then we've taken it to another level we have these things called natural flavor that's really one ingredient that comes from like a hundred different enhanced re-manufactured uh re you know created to make you get hooked on some illusion of a flavor that doesn't even exist in the nature so now we're convinced that's what strawberry supposed to taste like when in fact it's a whole other story so but yes we have really done a number in terms of you know concentrating on on taste and and then the manufactured version of a taste is we've forgotten that food is supposed to nourish us the purpose of food is not to always taste amazing but to be a source of energy to feed your mitochondrias to to to feed your microbiome to make you healthy to make you energize energy's not sugar yeah i'll tell you an interesting story i had dinner a couple of weeks ago with a very famous plastic surgeon in in Beverly Hills who is a big fan of mine and he actually hands my book to all of his patients and so he wanted to have dinner with me and so we were we were talking and he said you know let me tell you a story he says i'm from Canada i'm from montreal and i hope that doesn't give who this person is away but he said we would go out blueberry picking in in the fall with my mother and we'd go out you know to the blueberry patches and my mother we'd come to the first blueberries and you know and my mother said no we're not going to pick here we're going to climb up the mountain and we're going to go to the top of the mountain and he's going mom they're right here she said no no no they struggle up there and they're smaller and they're concentrated and that's what we need to eat and he says you know and i'm complaining and she's you know i'm complaining mom you know they're right here let's not come on and she she dragged me up the mountain he says you know now you know reading your stuff and other stuff i know why mom drugged me up the mountain because all the grace all the polyphenols were up there and so this ancient wisdom it was just his mother's ancient wisdom um but this has been passed down from you know mothers to mothers to mothers and we we stopped listening to all this because now everything is marketed for taste rather than health benefit so so good for you you you reminded me of really important um kind of awakening yes mothers who gives the first dose of our mighty contrius that's right and i think that and when i discovered that and and and learned from you and dr sinclair talking about the importance of having fruit and and seeds and and food that has um weather the storm basically in a capable of raising in in a stress climate well that's exactly what zen bait basil seeds um you know the fact that they have these enzymes locked in them they have a protected coat that protects them from the harsh climate of the cold weather the um excess heat in fact they they have to have that extra strength that you know we're talking about uh metabolic flexibility these days a lot that comes from having those type of foods that have the capability of being raised in a stressed environment now we're nourishing at a deeper level so of course i was doing the basic uh comparison of chia seeds versus these seeds and basil seeds i call them zen basil because not all basil seeds are the same i did the testing and i did a lot of validation that's that's a whole another conversation to get into but the importance of having stressed seeds or food that is capable of of exactly what you just described top of the mountain and your your basil seeds are obviously organic and where the heck do you grow basil seeds well basil seed the magic thing is that it is such a universal ingredient it's grown everywhere from california to afghanistan so pick a region there's not a region as long as it's a it's a warm climate it does require a certain type of a soil it does require a good amount of sun because again it's that stressed environment so wherever you can find your sweet basil plant you're going to be able to find the seeds the problem is just like the like i said we lead in in the in the world the hardest part for me was tracking down and finding organic and not only finding organic but also getting the the the organic to be established in the us market i mean that that was a whole another literally took me three years to accomplish that project alone to find the right the pacific strength that these seeds are and then to have it be officially certified in the us in the us da organic database so i'm so proud and and thrilled that not only i launched the whole idea that basil seeds are for eating but then basil is the only us da organic certified and verifiable in the us da organic integrity database so that's the part that i get extra excited because i've learned so much from you doctor dr g uh what's the value of having something that is supposed to be healing if it's sprayed with roundup if it's treated with chemicals we're you know so yeah now we share one other very common interest and you mentioned it when we first started you have a non-profit that provides drills wells for people who have no water access and as you know i and gundry md our favorite charity is charity water which does the exact same thing in you know the world is suffering from a lack of not only available water but clean water and yeah it's so good for you so uh how did you get interested in that well that was my initial awakening i as being a survivor from a war torn country i felt like with this privilege of being raised and you know one of the richest parts of the world comes responsibility this was not in vain and i need to give back so i started my charitable contribution through my previous brand which carried on to zen basil and like i say generally as long as i'm alive i'm going to be committed to this cause and the reason why for me at this point it goes back to what my late grandmother would say she would always use this one statement saying throw it in the river and in our language it doesn't translate really well but in my later years i realized the value of that statement when you do good we understand karma but what she was saying was even deeper than karma it's kind of like if you do good to someone that is you know completely forgotten and and do it out of the you know without a condition not a p or not none of that but from you know like from the heart to someone that you'll never meet um it will come back to you in tenfold and i honestly when i get testimonials from my customers i believe the fact that we give back to these forgotten women and children especially in afghanistan and and my projects by the way are primarily in afghanistan because obviously everybody knows how devastating that part of the region of the world is and um you know it's the least week i can do and my small capacity we completed about five clean water projects um two years ago and right now i'm doing six clean water projects despite the harsh condition and challenges and difficulties that they're going through so i'm committed to being some form of an assistant and i believe that comes back and enhancing the nutrient count of my product and so when i get the testimonials i know it wasn't just that just the surface level there's a you know throw it in the river comes back to you in tenfolds you know that's a good point what what kind of testimonials are you getting? absolutely i would love to actually read to you one that um i recently got uh on amazon and uh it just made me so emotional when i get some you know especially i'm not in the health i was not a doctor so you probably get this all the time but when i get a um this one particular the testimonial made me all emotional so i have to read it for you right i'm a 34 year old woman who struggled with extreme fatigue brain fog and constant sickness for the past two years needless to say this has all left me pretty terrible mood every day leaving i felt like um i was just dragging through life i started in basil seed one month ago and in the last three weeks i suddenly noticed drastic reduction in my fatigue increased energy i mean this is not sugar so increased energy and major boost in my mood i like it was validating everything what i knew the the seed is is is talking about i honestly can't believe it i can't believe the difference when um when you actually have energy and you feel happy like a normal person it's insane and i i i didn't realize i was going through life in such funk such a for so long wow just wow totally life changing i highly recommend zen basil seed i got so emotional reading i i actually shared that on instagram and and she reached out and she said you were reading my my um review so i know exactly who she is now because her initials were just nz but i was so moved with her um testimonial and there's so many of this caliber um my favorite is hunger killer yeah because you know i started this journey because i know we were eating way too much right and we're eating um you know empty calories we're not getting nutrient clearly because 95 percent of us are not even getting the basic fiber but we're eating constantly so that all of this is kind of putting it together for me and it's coming in full circle which is um my new product line that i hope you tried it dr oh yeah thanks for sending that i appreciate it i um well actually your your research is always helping me i've learned so much about the value of our cellular health the understanding of mitochondrias um and then i run into the research of um from harvard how they were you know basically injecting nad's into mice and then the reverse of the age by like 20 years can you imagine what that would mean to my mom's health so now my new question is how well this is what that this formula is all about how can we make nad organically wouldn't that be an amazing through food you know uh which the researchers are validating that's exactly what happens when you reduce recycle reuse that's by the way by new mantra for zen basil cellular hydration we feed to reduce our eating consumption and of course the the uh window restrictions that you talk about in terms of eating is is is absolutely to the not only to the point but it's been you know a huge support for my own health um and then allowing ourselves to break down that old stored stubborn what we call stubborn fat but it's really stored obesogens but the good news is that we can reverse this the good news is that we could actually have a better you know hopeful tomorrow by just doing small little tweaks i think you're gonna love this one you are what you eat but you are what the thing you're eating ate