 From my treadmill questions you may have, for those of you unfamiliar with my work, every year I read through every issue of every English language nutrition journal in the world. So busy folks like you don't have to. Then I compile the most interesting, most groundbreaking, most practical topics. There's new videos and articles that I upload every day to my non-profit site, nutritionfacts.org. Everything on the website is free. There are no ads, no corporate sponsorships, strictly non-commercial, not selling anything. Just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition. All right, let's see. Oh, we already have tons of questions. Let's see what we got. First off, Hemi asks, would you recommend using purple sweet potato powder to mix with the orange or the white ones when you can't find purple sweet potato powder? Oh, that's a good one. What a cool idea. Yeah, if your purple sweet potato powder is just as one ingredient, purple sweet potato, fantastic. I mean, you don't have to mix it with orange or white. You can mix it in a smoothie. You can, in fact, in my upcoming book, How Not to Age Out in December 2023, I have a recipe for Okinawan Smoothie, which is based on purple sweet potatoes. But yeah, if you didn't have purple sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, you can add purple sweet potato powder. You can add it to oatmeal or add it to anything. So yeah, fantastic. Super. So it has all the wonderful stuff the sweet potatoes have, plus those berry anthocyanins, which are so important for brain health and all sorts of other things. And so yeah, that's great. I didn't even know such a thing existed, but I'm totally going to look into it. Cool. All right, next up, Ammo asks, I was put on medication and it caused me to gain weight. Oh my God, not just gain weight, almost double your weight. Managed to lose weight by changing medications, taking plant-based diet. But okay, any advice? I'm so sorry to hear that and I'm glad that you've changed course. So I wrote an entire book just for you, How Not to Diet. All the proceeds from all my books are all done in the charity. So go to your local public library and get How Not to Diet in hardcover or audiobook or ebook. And it talks about, it says it looks like you're already eating healthy, but then there's all sorts of things you can add on to a healthy diet to accelerate the loss of body fat because we want to get you back down to where you were before. So, so glad to be able to help. Next up, Teresa says, does sugar take increased risk of Hashimoto's? Hashimoto's thyroiditis, leading cause of underactive thyroid gland. Not that I'm aware of. We could do a really quick search on PubMed, but it's not something I ran across. Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease. I don't see how sugar could affect that, but we shouldn't be eating added sugar for all sorts of reasons from cavities on down. Next up, The Nick asks, I like to use malted grains in desserts. They have the same benefits as whole grains. So malted grains, you're basically breaking down some of the starch into sugar. But I didn't know, can you just buy? I think you can get like barley malt, or I've certainly seen the ingredients. I didn't know you could actually just like buy malted grains. So I'm not exactly sure what the nutrient composition would be. Certainly wouldn't be presumably as good as intact grains. Part of the benefit of the starch that you would malt out of malted grains is that by eating intact grains, no matter how well you chew, there's going to be pieces that travel all the way down and provide this bounty of starch to your good gut bacteria. But when we break all those cell walls open by grinding them finely into flour, unfortunately all that starch gets absorbed, much to why up in the small intestine never makes it down to your good gut bugs. Unfortunately, I don't know if the same thing would happen with malted grains, but yeah, presumably it's, I don't know how it comes. But if it's powdered, we'd lose that prebiotic goodness. Okay, Llewellyn says cholesterol is high. Even though they've cut out meat, eggs, and dairy, and trying to watch what they eat needs to be on a stand. What else is out there that is better than drugs? Okay, so there's all sorts of things. So the first step is to get rid of foods that increase your cholesterol. And so there's three food components that increase cholesterol, and that's saturated fat, trans fats, and dietary cholesterol. So you've already eliminated dietary cholesterol by eating vegan, but there are still plant sources saturated fat like coconut oil, palm corn oil, palm oil, found a lot of vegan junk food. So you'd want to stay away from that. And then trans fats have been largely removed from the U.S. food supply, but if you're in a, you know, this question is coming from another country where they still have this partially hydrogenated oils, that would be something to stay away from as well. And usually just by doing that will bring your cholesterol down. So average cholesterol of people eating vegan, about average total cholesterol is about 140. We want to get it below kind of 150. If your doctor is talking about statins, your cholesterol is probably way above that. So unless you're just doing a lot of coconut oil or something, then the next step would be to add foods you died that actively pull cholesterol from your body. And so that was the thinking behind Dr. David Jenkins portfolio diet out of the University of Toronto, where he came up with a portfolio of different foods that pull cholesterol from your body using different mechanisms and so have kind of this additive effect. And so, you know, once, you know, part of the portfolio of eating a lot of soluble fiber rich foods, slimy foods like oatmeal, okra, eggplant, et cetera, nuts and seeds, all sorts of things to pull your cholesterol down. And so then you've eliminated foods, increase your cholesterol, added foods actually draw down your cholesterol. And the portfolio that should be working well as these first generation statins. And if it's not, then you really should start looking for secondary causes of hypercholesterolemia. So for example, undirected thyroid gland can jack your cholesterol up even if you're eating really healthy. Excess abdominal adiposity is a whole bunch of things you can deduct and look at before going to pharmacological options. Okay, Larry says, do I agree with Dr. Cobble, Austin, that complete avoidance to oil in the diet is necessary to first plaque buildup in the artery. So it's not necessary since there are certainly cases of reversal without avoidance of oils. But so the question is really, is that the best way to do it? Certainly, I mean, we don't have good data kind of either way, but certainly would recommend minimizing intake of any kind of processed food. Oil is highly processed. It's basically empty calories. It's basically the table sugar of the fat kingdom where you take something really healthy like a sugar beet where most sugar comes from these days. Remove all the nutrition left with just sugar. Why would you throw away all that nutrition? Same thing with oil, right? Start something like a walnut. Remove all the nutrition except a few fat soluble nutrients like vitamin E and you left basically a stripped down of almost pure calories. Why would you do that? Take too much oil. You actually impair your endothelial function, the function of your arteries. All sorts of reasons why oil is not good for you. And look, if you're trying to reverse the number one killer of men and women in this country, in fact, most countries, I would really go out of your way to eat as healthy as possible. Eating as healthy as possible means centering your diet as much as possible around whole healthy foods that has grown. Next up, am I familiar with Mark II? Should I give up my Tabada workouts? I'm not familiar with either Mark II or with Tabada or with Mark I. So sorry about that. But if, but maybe I should look into it. Yeah, so sorry I can't help you. It's not something I've run across. Okay, Yogi says, does long pepper increase absorption of turmeric like black pepper? Oh, such a cool question. Okay, so long pepper, what's long pepper? Papali. So it's in the same black pepper family, but it may have scenolytic properties, which is one of the aging pathways. So I talk about adding long pepper to one's diet. And that's one of the recommendations in my upcoming book, How Not to Age, something I've done in my own diet. And the question is, does it increase absorption of turmeric? I don't think so. Well, does it have peppering? That's a good question. So I believe what's, what's increasing absorption of, it's not so much the absorption of turmeric, it's the suppression of the detoxification of curcumin. So basically there's something in black pepper that suppresses your liver's detox enzymes, which normally would detoxify this curcumin, which is like, what is this in the body? Which is the bright yellow pigment in turmeric. And so when you press your liver's ability to remove it, you get higher levels in your bloodstream by like, you know, 2,000%. And so, so I think it's the peppering, which is kind of the, the, the, the spicy compound in black pepper. Long pepper has a different flavor. It has a more kind of a numbing, white sejuan pepper kind of flavor. So it may not have peppering. And if it doesn't, I would not expect it to have the same impact on your liver that would increase the bioavailability of the compound in turmeric. Okay. Next question. Bitfines says, Whoa, on a diet, three pounds of greens. That's a lot of greens. Greens are really light. So three pounds of greens, a massive amount of greens, two pounds of sweet potatoes. That's not, you're making me hungry. Some berries during the evening, one to 4% fat. Whoa. That's extraordinarily low fat diet. I mean, Okinawa is only like 9% fat. And although, yeah, so about 10% is probably 10 to 15% is probably normal for the human species. But that's extraordinarily low. But I ate one third of a pound of mixed nuts. Analges face blew up into a giant, giant cold sore. Okay. So if you're eating that may mix nuts, obviously your diet's not that low and fat unless you were low and fat and also made nuts. And then you had a cold sore. So cold sores. I mean, presumably is, is, is around the lips. You think of cold sore as opposed to your face on cold sores can be triggered by sun by a bunch of different things. But not by nuts. As far as I'm concerned, it's caused by virus, herpes virus one. So yeah, I, I would diversify your diet. You're hitting a few on a daily dozen, but there's a lot of others you should hit including nuts, but no reason to eat a third of a pound an ounce or a little less than an ounce a day. It's perfectly fine. Sorry about your cold sore. There are some things you can do about your cold sore. There's not great. Here, I'll take that question for a second. There's not great data about lysine. That's, it's a supplement that's touted as being anti cold sores. But what does work is antiviral drugs. So valocyclovir and acyclovir even just a day, like two doses. It can work as well as longer courses and the earlier the better. So you could, if you get cold sores, you can have it on your person. So you can get a prescription for it and have it. And then as soon as you feel the tingle or whatever, you know, you're going to get one, you can take it and reduces reduces the duration by about a day. And then if you keep getting recurrent cold sores, then you can be on kind of a prophylactic dose of something like valocyclovir, like 500 milligrams a day. That's often used for like herpes to infection, like trying to suppress general herpes outbreaks, but can also suppress cold sores as well. But hopefully you can find ways like, you know, some block or something. If the sun is one of the triggers that means you don't have to be on drugs your whole life. All right. Next up, Lowry says, I've heard prostate cancer associated with fat standardized and plant based fats. So it's not seasoned avocados. I don't think so. Should we look it up really quick? I haven't. I would be surprised. I don't know if there was an association between nuts. I presume they're just talking about saturated fats. Prostate. Let's see what we have out there. Is there anything? Nope. I'm not seeing anything. Nuts. We look at dietary fat intake. I So trans fat seems to be associated with increased prostate cancer risk. So that's, you know, meat dairy and partially adrogenated oils. Of course, milk fats associated with prostate cancer, but maybe other compounds in milk and maybe the fats just going along with it. Yep. Not seeing anything on. Oh, here we go. Here's a meta analysis 2015 and PLOS one fat intake is not linked to prostate cancer systematic review and dose response meta analysis. I actually didn't find any risk with total fat intake or even saturated fat intake. So it may not be a fat effect of so the reason why, for example, people who eat more dairy have more prostate cancer, particularly more lethal prostate cancer may have nothing to do with the fat content. But, for example, be working through protein activating into or or all the other, you know, possibilities, the galactose, etc. All right, next up. James Taylor says bed source Jeff Nelson shows a newer spinal tap study that proves that the large amount DHA supplements don't reach brain. Am I aware of that? I'm not sure what study is being is being referred to. I would be surprised. I mean, there's data that you can increase your brain content of DHA that and actually the blood level and brain levels actually very correlated to do autopsy studies and find that if you have higher blood levels, you have our brain levels, etc. And so that's why blood levels can be a good proxy, but I'd be interested in reading that study and would wonder what kind of time course it was over. Next up. Heroes lost 24 fans says hello. I am Casey and our animal and dairy products and eugens. Do they can do gametic cell and you put in pre pregnancy prenatal pre gestational women. I am not sure what you can do. I'm thinking about chromosomal abnormalities in like, you know, sperm and eggs or I guess here just eggs. I've never heard of the, the, the word in Eugene. Is that something is that just something I'm familiar with or someone. No, there it is. It is a substance that causes aneuploidy or this chromosomal abnormality of having a different amount of chromosomes. I am not familiar of any dietary connection with the chromosome number or abnormal number of chromosomes, but that very well may be just for me not it's not something that's ever come on my radar. So sorry, I do not know if that is the case. Fuchsia asks a menopause and high LDL 90 days ago. Oh, wonderful husband and I started a hopeful plan based journey his numbers. Oh my God, wonderful, gorgeous 238 to 102. But my LDL only works 20 points. Well, hey, 20 points. That's amazing. Well, I guess depends on how high your LDL was, but that's pretty good. Just stick with it and it should continue to come down. And so that's fantastic. I mean, just like, look, some people can eat crappy foods and their cholesterol doesn't go up as much as other people. And they're just kind of lucky that way. So difference in genetics can offer a difference in impact of diet and lifestyle choices. And so it's not that, you know, there's different diets for different people with different genetics, but it's the, you know, some people exercises healthier than other people. Some people smoking is worse than for other people. You know, this predisposition for lung cancer and that, you know, the tobacco they're just waiting for those first few mutations from, from the cigarette smoke. And so, so it's if you're eating the same kind of food, then it may be just be genetic differences, but you're moving in the right direction. That's the important thing. Stick with it. And, and if you don't come down to target, then, you know, start thinking about some of these other things I talked about with portfolio diet. It's all sorts of other things that lower cholesterol to like black human. And if you just type in cholesterol into nutrition facts that are all sorts of stuff come up, amla is also lowers cholesterol with dried Indian gooseberry powder. So sorts of supplements that can do it as well. Okay, Scott says, can I exercise while doing 18, 600 men fasting? Absolutely. You can exercise. In fact, if, if you're doing in men fasting to lose weight to maintain muscle mass on any kind of chloroconstriction exercise is critically important. Obviously, if you're dizzy or lightheaded, you want to be careful. But yeah, that's, I mean, that kind of intermittent fasting, if you do it, if you do it right, meaning that it's early, meaning that you eat earlier in the day and you know, stop eating like, in that case, you know, before three o'clock, you can get tremendous metabolic benefits. I profile the study in my time restricted feeding video, and I keep looking at it and every time I read about it because I talked about it in my how not to age. So I have a whole quark restriction chapter in the how not to age. Every time I see this study, I'm just like baffled by how powerful that is so early time restricted feeding, you know, skipping supper or trying to shove as many calories in the morning as possible and stopping eating early. Even if you're eating the same foods can have remarkably different effects thanks to our circadian rhythms and exercise would be a great benefit to that. If you can do it, that's great. Okay, Nels Nels Nels says I changed my mind on fluoride. What are my recommendations? So I gave a webinar recently talking about community fluoridation and new data out of Canada, which has got a lot of people concerned about fluoride in the water as a neuro developmental neurotoxicant. And so pregnant women may want to try to avoid excess fluoride intake. But that's separate from topical fluoride, which can give you the benefits of drinking fluoride without the risks and so I encourage people to stick with fluoride containing toothpaste. But for pregnant women to not be ingesting more fluoride than you can get away with. And this is not just me, this national toxicology program has come out with numerous stress statements reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really kind of going the way of kind of similar to what we were kind of the early 80s with lead where we see significant detriment in IQ in child mom child pairs with greater exposure to community fluoridation. Okay. Remco says is not so good for your health. And if so what my benefits might it be. So not how is a slimy fermented soy food. Well, it's not so good for you. Well, I mean, yeah, and that it's a, it's a slimy fermented soy food. I think people think of not other than a particular form of vitamin K. It's not necessary to get a not a vitamin K, your body can make that kind of vitamin K from the greens that we eat. So we dark green leafy vegetables and get all the vitamin K, I would eat not oh if you like eating not oh otherwise. Probably the healthiest soy food is probably tempeh, which has lots of ergothinine and spermedine and all sorts of beneficial things or edamame, another whole soy food. Yeah, those are probably the healthiest sources of soy is Stephanie says nutritionally you safe to consume have heard of some type of issue with formation the harms the body should not be consumed. Nutritional yeast is safe to consume, except if you have hidradenitis separativa, which is this nasty autoimmune disease or another autoimmune disease called Crohn's disease, which is an inflammatory type of inflammatory bowel and videos on both of those and why nutrition is not good for them, but good for everybody else. As far as we know. Okay, just browsing says oh, that's a great question I added I recently added sumac to my list of things to research because I don't recommend your name is who bought up last time but someone said about sumac I was like, is there any research I looked up there's lots of research and sumac I know I missed it. So I always want to prioritize things that have any videos about a nutrition facts or gets getting rare. It's videos and over 2000 topics now button. So max one of them, I don't think I bet you could type sumac in nutrition facts and not a single thing would pop up and that just that hurts my soul. So we're going to change that it's on my list. Okay, Gabriella. Oh, oh, that was nice. This may be from one of the other things I did today. What is my what is my advice about managing menopause symptoms. Oh, boy. Well, that is a huge part of my book comment age and my preserving your hormones chapter. And so it depends on which menopausal symptoms you're talking about. In terms of weight gain, I would probably go to my how not to diet book. But in terms of kind of these vasoactive symptoms like hot flashes and flushes and a night sweats that kind of thing. There are a bunch of options and soy foods are one of the ways that you can. It's probably the first line treatment for treating symptoms and there are kind of gender urinary symptoms of menopause, which used to be kind of have different names, but that can be treated with non pharmacologically with vaginal lubricants and moisturizers and I talk about the best brands. And then there are hormonal, both prescription and non prescription local hormonal applications and different things you can eat and so on down the list. But there's lots of things you can do. Check out the new book at your local public library when it hits it out this December. Okay, Richard says, oh, I want my dad to try plant based. You must love your dad and want him around for a while. Does this help? Oh, Janicelle Arderitis. I don't not that I know of. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know of any dietary influence. But again, not something I've looked into, but look, the number one reason your dad and everyone's dad is going to die on average is heart disease. And we know plant based diets and help with that. So for nothing else, we do that and everything else could just be a side benefit. Okay, wild blueberry. What a name. There we go. Wild Blueberry asked if I had my blood. I had my blueberries today. If I have my blood checked, what values? Should I pay particular attention to find out whether meaning balance diet? Should I test for certain? Oh my God, we're running out of time. But the USPSCF, the kind of preventive services guidelines committee, really suggests just getting a cholesterol check. It's no reason to check for vitamins and minerals in particular, unless you have particularly symptomatic or eat, kind of, or have kind of a strange diet where we would assume that you'd be off kilter in some way. So it's better just eating a healthy diet and remaining healthy. And then obviously, if you run into a problem, you can check for specific things. But there's no reason to sing after a lavage if you're feeling particularly fine. With the exception of cholesterol, because we want to make sure that your cholesterol is not at a whack, because that's something that you wouldn't necessarily feel. I did want to tell people that I have a new webinar coming out on May 12th. You can go to nutritionfacts.org slash webinars. I think today is the first day you can register. It's two hours. And so we're offering CME for the first time, continuing medical education. So up to two AMA, one credits for physicians. We're super excited about that. And I'm going to go through all the meds and the best exercises and the best foods, et cetera. So go to nutritionfacts.org slash webinars to check that out. Ah, unfortunately, I'm out of time. But thank you so much. And I'll talk to you again soon.