 So this is Dr. Michael Greger coming to you live from my treadmill to give you live Q&As every month and this month it is right now. I just finished a Facebook live at noon and now I'm here to finish up any other questions you may have. And so every month I do this and so we'll be answering questions the next half an hour. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my work, every year I read through every issue of every English and English nutrition journal in the world so busy folks like you don't have to. Then I compile the most interesting, most groundbreaking, most practical, finest new videos and articles I upload every day to my non-profit site nutritionfacts.org, everything on the website is free. There are no ads, no commercial sponsorships strictly, no corporate sponsorships strictly non-commercial, not selling anything just putting it up as a public service as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother which is the reason I do all the work that I do as a reason I became a doctor in the first place. All right let's get to your questions here I see they are pouring in, should I start why don't I start at the top because then that's only fair to the people who came here first and posted right oh do they go up or down okay hold on it doesn't look like I can go all the way to the top that's crazy okay as far as I can go is how man they're moving quick okay Richard asks is there any research damn okay I must Joey asks what are your thoughts on a potato only diet I think a potato only diet could lead to vitamin A deficiency in your eyes could melt out of your eye sockets don't do it now of course if you eat sweet potatoes then that wouldn't be a problem but I wouldn't recommend eating only one food of any kind we should eat a diversity of food and so sweet potatoes are fantastic I would just eat other wonderful foods too all right Eliza asks is there any evidence backing of the health claims around pink Himalayan sea salt over sea salt pink Himalayan salt is a marketing ploy to rip off gullible folks Himalayan sea salt is as bad or worse if there's any toxic metals then regular salt and regular salt is bad the number one risk factor for death in the world is high blood pressure so if you want to cut down a certain intake I recommend getting down to the American Heart Association recommendation of 1500 milligrams a day and to do that you have to pretty much eliminate processed foods and added salt and it doesn't matter if it's Himalayan or not if it's pink or not Sydney asks is coffee a few times a week okay I talk about coffee in my chapters and how not to die on my liver chapter Alzheimer's chapter Parkinson's chapter and so coffee may actually be beneficial for the mind lung excuse me mind brain and liver decreasing risk of liver disease coffee drinkers do tend to live a little longer than non- coffee drinkers but the coffee can also is not for everybody coffee can increase GERD gastroesophageal reflux disease so if you have absolute reflux it can lead it can contribute to bone loss because it can worsen glaucoma what else urinary incontinence so I mean there are some conditions for which you shouldn't be drinking coffee but bottom line is I don't recommend coffee why because every cup of coffee is a lost opportunity to drink something even healthier who's a cup of green tea so I recommend the healthiest three healthiest beverages are number one water number two green tea or white tea better and then hibiscus tea was an herbal tea which can actually decrease we're just talking about high blood pressure actually decrease blood pressure on the border of what many kind of first-line diuretic drugs can do but without the side effects in fact only good side effects if it seems like I'm skipping around with the questions it's not because I'm picking them out I start reading them before I even see what the question is it's just that the question scrolls moves so quick I just have to jump right in because otherwise I lose the question and I can't finish it okay so Houston Marsh asked do the probiotics and pickles outweigh the problems called caused by salt that there shouldn't well I mean commercial pickles don't have probiotics because they're anything in a jar is pasteurized is I mean they have to expose it to boiling temperatures to kind of seal it off you know that pop when you get from the jar that's because they you know anyway but if you can actually get in like a refrigerated section of a health food store you can actually get real fermented foods that's they have to be refrigerated because otherwise it'll go bad unlike pickles in the jar and they do have probiotics unfortunately they also have lots of salt which we just talked about why because salt actually keeps the bad bugs from growing and facilities to growth of the good bacteria that can survive the high salt environment like lactobacillus but where did that lactobacillus come from the first place where did you know you know when people think you make sauerkraut you like okay take some cabbage and then you add some kind of starter or something no the lactobacillus bacteria are present on the cabbage leaves in the field when you pick it and all you do when you dunk it in salt water is that you prevent the growth of some of the rotting bacteria and the lactobacillus grow but it's right there so by eating raw fruits and vegetables we can get the best of both worlds probiotics the good bacteria they're sitting on the veggies and the pre-biotics the fiber resistance starts that are good bacteria eat otherwise we are starving our microbial self which is not a good thing and so but I would stay away from these kind of fermented foods because the salt intake this reason that Korea has the highest stomach cancer rates in the world it's because kimchi is kind of a national food and the second highest stomach cancer rates in the world is Japan they also eat a lot of dried salted fish and preserved vegetables and in fact Japan refused to publish how not to die unless I added an extra chapter you know in the most versions I have the top 15 killers chapters I used to the top 15 killers well one of the top killers in Japan is stomach cancer and so they won the chapter on stomach cancer so I had to do a special chapter just for the Japanese version and basically told everyone to cut down on salt so it's not just high blood pressure but also the gastric irritation the stomach lining irritation can increase one's risk of stomach cancer and you can do interventional studies where you show someone eats something like a fermented vegetable you can see you can do stomach biopsies serial stomach biopsies day after day as you see the damage that's being done the inflammation that could eventually lead to cancer all right Olaf asks as electric pressure cookers recently became popular I was wondering if I consider pressure cooking is a good cooking method I have one of those electric pressure cookers is because I stayed at the house of somebody who had one and was so impressed that I got one what do I do with it I cook beans so I think in the book I talk about how I eat canned beans because they're so convenient that's awesome and so you stay away from BPA lined canned beans you stay away from salt added canned beans but and saying you know yeah cooking beans from scratch is cheaper a few cents as opposed to a few dozens of cents per serving but it turns out that it's super easy with a electron electric pressure cooker put beans in and you press a button and you walk away and the house doesn't burn down and you can get videos done and everything cooks and how cool is that um so I mean you can make like you know still cut oatmeal in just a few minutes in fact even better than still cut oatmeal actually whole oats themselves which are what is you know either sliced in half to make still cut or rolled to make rolled oats you actually get the growths themselves super easy to cook and electric pressure cooker I have become a big fan in fact the only thing I am sad about is that I bought like the smaller one and thinking back I said oh I should have got the big one because I like making big batches of food all right Daniel asks can a change in diet reverse atrial fibrillation and do people who and do I know people who successfully did it um so there are dietary approaches to preventing atrial fibrillation so for example things you can do after oh you know bypass surgery to decrease your risk of atrial fibrillation including dietary purchase but there's a once you already have it getting rid of it I don't think there's any interventional trials that I know about um but I will look into it if I find anything I will do a video about it thank you for that question all right um Samuel asks what is the best supplement for Hashimoto's thyroiditis um and uh I don't know of a particular supplement that would help um with any autoimmune disease um well turmeric I guess for some but hasn't been tested for Hashimoto's so I don't think there is a a magic bullet supplement for Hashimoto's in fact there's few magic bullet supplements for anything though vitamin D can certainly have some effects um have we seen in randomized double blind placebo controlled trials and I have a bunch of videos on what vitamin D can do one of the few supplements actually shown to extend lifespan not just associated with greater lifespan but you actually randomized people vitamin D and placebo those take vitamin D pills live longer and have lower uh of a variety of check out the videos but that's very rare it's very unusual that a pill can actually have those kind of effects in uh in terms of a supplement all right is there any specific diet as Jennifer Stone um to prevent treat or heal ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease absolutely obviously haven't typed in ulcerative colitis or Crohn's into nutrition facts.org and I've got a bunch of videos on both prevention and treatment in fact it's not just uh plant-based ice can be used to use as a treatment but actually the most effective treatment um so I believe there's 90 percent remission rates two years out that's really extraordinary by a team of Japanese researchers uh check it out just type in Crohn's into nutrition facts.org all right vegan renegade asks probiotics with antibiotics actually wasn't a question just those three words um uh presuming the question is should one take probiotics with antibiotics ideally not take antibiotics in the first place unless you really need it but you want to make sure that's the case for many common uses of antibiotics as childhood most childhood ear infections and bronchitis and stuff actually don't need antibiotics actually do more harm than good but if you do have to take antibiotics there are certain circumstances where probiotics would help um but um so for example antibiotic induced um diarrhea probiotics can indeed be effective in treating Travis asks says that his bowel movements are so big not to brag but Trevor Travis you see Travis bowel movements so big from all the fiber it's stretching and cracking bleeding okay um okay um the size of the bowel movements is is I mean we're looking for its consistency I mean eating lots of fiber rich foods and enough water you should have large bowel movements but they shouldn't be large in diameter they should be large in volume they should be soft and squishy they should not be hard enough to stretch and crack and bleed if you are um then it does not sound like you're eating enough um uh the you know fiber rich foods and particularly fiber found the inside of the fiber found whole grains for example so if you're eating those wheat growths for example not wheat growth oatmeal oat growths well I guess wheat berries too um then that would be a good source um you know people have this sense oh I eat a lot I eat tons of fiber eat lots of fruits and vegetables but actually you know fruits and vegetables are water but 90% water um and so yes there's fiber but and you know but there's just a you know a few grams here or there if you want fiber fiber then it's legumes and whole grains um bean split peas chickpeas lentils whole grains that's where you get lots of fiber um and that should soften large soft bowel movements that's that's what we're looking for actually um asks arsonic and rice question mark question mark question mark um indeed so just recently on social media I made this recommendation for people to cut down the right rice consumption and if you go back um I've got really ancient videos like a decade ago 2008 I think it's the last videos I did in arsonic and rice men this um but there's just been a tremendous amount of research done since then um about 200 papers published um and so it was definitely time to go back and so I just scripted 13 new videos on arsonic and rice and there you're gonna it's gonna be so much arsonic and rice videos you're gonna get sick of it but there's just that much really good information in terms of which rice is the lowest arsonic is it short grain medium grain whole grain brown versus white conventional organic you uh you know south central us rice arkansas texas rice versus california rice versus india pakistan chinese rice red rice black rice um you know infant rice cereal rice pasta there's all sorts of um really um uh good data out there and so but basically I didn't want to wait until the videos came out because I thought it was a kind of a it was critical information so that's what I use um social media for so I encourage people to you know follow me on facebook or twitter etc and then something comes out like oh wow people with Crohn's disease shouldn't be in nutritional yeast wow okay here's the video but the video still has to be you know recorded and and it won't be on the on the website for weeks but people should know right now um and so anything like that where something changes um that could change your dating habits I make sure to get it out of social media and then of course don't believe me just because I say it um I'm just saying look the video's coming well I'll actually show you the science you can make up your own mind so the same thing happened with arsenic and rice um see traditionally uh the uh the the recommendations as to how much rice is too much given the arsenic content particularly of south central rice arkansas texas rice why because of decades of arsenic contained pesticides using the cotton fields to kill off the bull weevil and so we soaked arkansas with these arsenic containing pesticides and then king cotton is no more so what do we do we grow rice patties in that same area and sucks up the arsenic and so that's why it has about twice as much arsenic as california rice um and not to mention the arsenic containing drugs given to chickens by literally the hundreds of thousands of pounds um and then the arsenic um and then the chicken manure is used in the in the rice patty and then the there's all sorts of reasons okay but the bottom line is given the amount of arsenic rice what can we do to decrease our risk there's a number of things we can do um well so um so for example consumer reports uh came out with a number of exposes and said you shouldn't eat more than two servings of rice a week um and you know kids shouldn't be drinking rice milk adults half a cup of rice milk um uh day at most day at most maybe a week at most i have to look at it again but i remember the rice two servings of rice max now and so it's like okay but then but that was based on the water standards um so the epa said uh standard is for 10 parts per billion of arsenic and assuming that you drink like a liter a day like four cups of water a day and so 10 is kind of the the max and so then you can find out how much arsenic is rice and then you can say oh okay two servings and then you're like well hey if you boil rice like pasta and then drain off the excess water i'm instead of cutting you know cooking it until dry and rice cook or something you actually can get rid of up to 60 percent you can get rid of 40 cooking in a 6 to 1 water to rice ratio you can get rid of 60 cooking in a 10 to 1 water ratio um so that cuts it down so wait a second if you just cut it in half then instead of consumer reports two can't we get four and then if we get like you know California rice um can we that has half the arsenic can we get it even lower so can you have like eight servings a week um and so look then that's a serving a day what's the big deal the problem is the water standards the water standards are not based on uh it's basically on economics and technical uh technological feasibility not based on safety so carcinogens typically the way the acceptable cancer risk is one in a million one in a million excess uh cancer cases in terms of uh lifetime cancer risk so some company wants to put out a new chemical basically the regulatory agency says okay well you show me that it doesn't cause more than one in a million extra cancer cases now you say wait a second there's 300 million people in this country you know what about that 300 what about the hundreds of people that are going to get cancer because of your new chemical you say well look you got to make a cut off somewhere and uh they kind of commonly accepted acceptable tolerable uh level of cancer risk is one in a million okay excess cases all right um and so I just assume well that's what the water standard was for arsenic but no that's because it's actually impossible to get um arsenic and water that low you can really only get it down to like um uh three parts of billion is kind of technological feasibility so wasting why is it up at ten actually if you wanted to get it down to one in a million you'd have to be at 0.02 parts per billion so basically um the the standard for arsenic and water is hundreds of times greater than we'd accept cancer risk anything else so it's like one in 10,000 risks is hundred times more even 300 times more risk than we've except from any other carcinogen and the reason is is because it's just really hard to get arsenic out of water and the reason it's not down at least to five which is the New Jersey Standard the most strictest standard in the world I'm excited to say go New Jersey um but it's just it costs money um and uh so there's kind of that kind of burn so it's cost benefit now so of course they don't tell anybody this um but so but sticking so but that that white water aside the rice you don't use the water stand because the water stand is 300 times two lacks um and so you so wait a second um then uh then um basically the bottom line is I think all processed rice products like rice milk white rice um rice uh uh you know uh these junk food like that has organic brown rice syrup like granola bars and stuff and these like energy blocks that athletes eat um instead of being yellow light foods because their processed plant food should be red light foods so instead of telling people to moderate their to minimize their consumption encourage people to avoid those foods and there's rooms of brown rice um which would normally be a green light food because it's whole plant food meaning maximize consumption the question is does one move it to yellow light minimize or to red light avoid and that um as far as I'm concerned is based on how much you like rice if you really like rice um then there's things you can do to decrease your consumption choose the low rice arsenic you can cook it in a certain way you can minimize your intake um to serving to a week like the like the like the consumer report says but um that would still expose you to 100 times uh you know more arsenic than you may want to be putting your diet based on typical acceptable uh cancer risk standards and there's all sorts of non-cancer risks associated with arsenic which I get into I mean there's actually people like with celiac disease with lots of rice because I cut out wheat barley right they actually get arsenic poisoning they actually not just like theoretical long-term cancer risk but I should get sick right now because you're getting too much arsenic because you're eating too much rice so particularly for people who eat macrobiotic diets or eat a lot a lot of rice is really important cut down your consumption for people that don't care either way what kind of whole intact grain they're getting they don't care if they're eating quinoa or rice it doesn't matter to them then eat the quinoa because other grains have 10 times less arsenic um and so encourage people to switch if it doesn't make much difference so that would effectively moving it into the red light region boy that was a lot sorry about taking all that time but it's important and there will be 13 videos oh and it's so hilarious with the rice industry responses you won't believe it or actually you will believe it if you've followed any corporate hijinks on nutrition facts dot org whoo okay alex asks does living on plant-based diet decrease risk of dvt oh um deep vein thrombosis um uh uh that's a good question um i do have a bunch of videos topic talking about uh um uh talking about um homo hemo rheology basically that's the study of the flowability of blood and the fact that um eating different foods can have on it um which can increase risk for a bunch of kind of rhombotic events whether it's a heart attack most types of stroke or something like dvt um so i'm gonna have a bunch of videos about that i'm trying to remember bottom line it's been tested an interventional study i'm not sure um but uh let me look but but um definitely uh know that i've got a bunch of videos coming up on dvt but it's gonna be a while because that's a huge folder my heart disease folder just keeps getting bigger and bigger Sergio asks us do you change your mind about eggs being advertised as health and nutritious or safe and why and no so um i have this hilarious video one of my favorite videos i did this free information act um uh request um about uh the hijinks from the egg industry um and uh and got all this internal communications uh from the you know the the poultry people at the usda telling the egg industry no you can't say eggs are healthy can't say they're nutritious oh my god can't even say they're safe because of seminal poisoning because the amount of cholesterol they have not to mention saturated fat you can't get me you can't call it you can't legally call it using american eggboard money why because that's um that's uh overseen by the federal government so if you're doing something with the tens of millions of dollars at the time to promote eggs in this country then under the auspices of federal government you cannot do things illegally i mean you can't say things aren't true now if you want to run an ad with your own money not american eggboard money but just some company then you can say anything you want you can say whatever you want cigarettes are good for you eggs are good for you um but if you actually want to use american eggboard money you still cannot say they are healthy nutritious nor safe um because there's uh you know the ftc there's there's you know otherwise false misleading okay jordan asks will juicing our greens help us to meet the minimum servings of vegetables a day um or will the reduction in fiber lower the serving count so yeah i probably wouldn't consume um yeah so when i recommend that you should eat i think my uh recommendation is free servings a day of darkening the few vegetables one of which should be cruciferous if i remember my own daily dozen recommendations um i'm assuming you're eating the whole vegetables not throwing away the fiber and so um so what i'd recommend blending your vegetables just wait a second how do you do that so um oh i wish i i think i have the jar back over there can you see it um anyway i shouldn't share my dirty dishes but um is uh what i uh my latest favorite drink is this v12 smoothie which is um basically it's like v8 juice but instead of like carrot juice and parsley juice i just put in a whole carrot whole thing of parsley you know whole celery uh turmeric root um bell pepper you know all this stuff um and you put it in with mice and you blend it up and it's bright green of course but then you get all these amazing vegetables and you didn't lose anything so that's it so it's better to blend than juice um same thing with fruit but uh i didn't think you could do with vegetable stew but you did it all again um and it's delicious so it's kind of a savory green smoothie i supposed to a sweet green smoothie all right libertarian liz asks i just got some spinach and broccoli how long should they sit before you put them to cook 45 minutes um or um cook them right now and then add to the cooked spinach broccoli um some raw cruciferous so add some uh raw add a little rugal or some raw broccoli or something or add mustard powder which is a raw cruciferous vegetable and doesn't matter about the spinach spinach is not a cruciferous vegetable so you can it doesn't matter how you cook it chop it um you're not going to get any sulforaphane either way but for the broccoli you should use the uh the the weight technique or the second strategy for maximizing proper broccoli um sulforaphane production and you say what am i talking about um just type in second strategy and some nutrition facts that are in my videos will pop up and give me more details all right balanas is lean chicken breast really that bad um uh well foods are not bad or good they are better or worse and so it depends what you'd be eating the chicken breast instead of and so if you ate the chicken breast instead of eating a hot dog then that would actually be helpful a helpful choice but if you're eating chicken breast compared to you know uh the you know uh i don't know uh there's some bean burrito or something then no absolutely not it would have more uh saturated fat less fiber and have all the problems associated with consumption animal protein and everything um that i talk about so um uh i would uh so uh is it really that bad compared to what compared to most compared to most whole plant foods it really is that bad compared to processed meat no not bad at all those are better choices um all right bernard the disappointed owl asks how long does sulfur fane last in the fridge um i i i'm sure the sulfur fane will last as long as that vegetable does i think the vegetable will go down before sulfur fane so i wouldn't worry about it the dark emperor of memes asks what are the best ways oh i'm out of time but okay what are the best ways to prevent infections with diet the best way to prevent not get infected in the first place so uh you wash your fruits and vegetables under running water um and you stay away from uh you know foods that um are associated with the most increased risk of the worst uh foodborne diseases like salmonella which hospitalizes and kills more than any other of foodborne bacteria and so that's um so we're talking about you know bugs like campylobacter salmonella found predominantly in poultry and you say who eats undercooked poultry is notice the cross-contamination it's the fact that um before that uh you know fresh or frozen chicken makes it into the pod um you're exposing comic kitchen surfaces to these bugs which can then transfer to other foods or your hands or utensils or something or dishcloth and then infect other foods and that's why um there's just millions of of uh foodborne infections every year caused by bugs that are totally destroyed by cooking that's because of cross-contamination issues and so i would uh i would be very careful about you know having someone's raw chicken dripping onto your broccoli one shelf down if your roommate is making less than helpful choices thank you so much everybody see you next month at my next live q&a's subscribe to find out when the times are have a wonderful day