 If you're looking for a new snack to indulge in, look no further than walnuts. They're versatile, delicious, and incredibly nutritious. First of all, walnuts have the highest plant protein content of all the nut choices. And if you're looking to get plant protein in your diet, look no further than walnuts. Walnuts contain phenomenal substances that I write about in my books called polyamines. What in the world are polyamines? Well, polyamines have been shown to actually improve your overall health, your overall health span, and your overall longevity in multiple studies. Polyamines, if you've read my most recent two books, The Energy Paradox and Unlocking the Keto Code, are some of those substances that are critical for uncoupling your mitochondria. And if you've been paying attention, uncoupling your mitochondria results in your mitochondria, those little workhorses of energy production, working better and not damaging themselves. So, polyamines are the way to go. Let me give you an example. One study showed that eating pistachios, walnuts, and almonds, please skin them please, increases your level of butyrate producing bacteria, with walnuts and pistachios beating almonds in a landslide. Now, why in the world would you want to produce butyrate producing bacteria? Well, again, if you've read my books, you know that butyrate is a short chain fatty acid. And butyrate in particular does two remarkable things. The cells that line our colon, our large intestine, actually get about 90% of their entire energy supply food from butyrate. They are dependent on butyrate for their livelihood. Secondly, we now know that butyrate is absorbed through our gut and acts very much as a substrate for producing ketones, but butyrate also has phenomenal anti-cancer properties. And butyrate is one of the preferred substances for your brain to use. All of this sounds like a really good thing. The problem is most of us don't eat the foods that feed the butyrate producing bacteria what they need to produce butyrate. And it just so happens that walnuts and pistachios are two of the best ways to give your gut buddies the things they need to produce butyrate. So let me give you another example. Mice that were fed walnuts had less than half as many tumors in their colons than mice that were not fed nuts. Again, since the wall of your gut requires butyrate to be healthy it stands to reason that the more butyrate those cells get, the more normal they are and the less butyrate they get, the more likely they are to turn into mischievous cells. Secondly, remember that butyrate in itself has tremendous anti-cancer properties. And so it's a win-win. You help the healthy cells be healthy and you suppress any cancer cells and that's exactly what they found out. To find out exactly why that work the researchers looked at the mice fecal samples and examined the bacteria living in their intestinal tract. They found that the gut microbiome of the mice that had eaten walnuts were similar to one another and actually favored bacterial communities that supported colon health. In other words, the walnuts gave the right bacteria the things they needed to keep the colon healthy. Want one more proof of how great walnuts are? Many of you have heard me talk about the Predometh study from Spain. The Predometh study was a four-year study designed to look at adults with known coronary artery disease. And they took 447 adults and they were assigned to one of three diet groups. One you've heard me talk about they were given a liter of olive oil per week. They had to bring their olive oil container back to the clinic once a week and refill it. Another group ate 30 grams of walnuts per day equivalent to the amount of calories they would have gotten in olive oil. Well the third group was put on the exact same number of calories but they followed a low fat diet. So they did brain function tests at the start of this study and then they did brain function tests at the end of this study. What was shocking was the low fat group experienced a significant reduction in memory and cognition. Now in a way that's not surprising because these people started the study at age 65 and they're now 69. So they got older and yeah okay their memory and cognition got worse. But the walnut eating group showed significant improvements in memory while the olive oil group experienced significantly improved overall cognitive function. So the point of all this is that good things happen when you give the bacteria the foods they want to eat. When you give bacteria the ability to make butyrate when you consume polyamine containing foods like walnuts all of these things go kind of direct to the source of your long-term health span and your long-term brain function and why wouldn't you want to do that? It's a prescription that quite frankly no doctor would think about giving you for brain health but that prescription is going to go much farther than anything any prescription medication that your doctor would prescribe for you to improve your brain health. The more we begin to realize the importance of these compounds in everyday foods like walnuts that not only may benefit us directly because of their polyphenol content because of their polyamine content but now more than ever with each passing day we're beginning to realize that it's the compounds and fats in things like walnuts or pistachios that our gut bacteria, the good gut buddies, actually need to thrive number one and to produce these beneficial compounds that in turn we need for our colon health, for our brain health and so we are, I'll tell you this over and over and over again, we are a symbiotic organism where we have a huge massive tropical rainforest living inside of us that should have at least 10,000 different species of bacteria, fungi, of parasites, of worms, all this teeming tropical rainforest and we're beginning to now, because of the Human Microbiome Project, pick apart why this tropical rainforest is so important to our overall health and the new book that I'm writing right now dives really even deeper into this what is called the trans-kingdom communication between these species and us and believe me, we need them and we need to feed them what they want to eat and walnuts are one of the best things that you can do so grab yourself a handful of walnuts every day, I recommend you have about a half a cup and that's going to be the thing to do, why not have more? Well, quite frankly, if you want to eat more, the odds are you may put on some weight I have a number of patients who lose too much weight on my program and I found that one of the ways to stop that weight loss is to just increase the nut consumption so if you want to gain weight, you have trouble gaining weight, look to nuts as a way to do that Should you use walnut oil? Well, quite frankly, walnut oil is good stuff and it's great for flavoring but what you're really looking for is the whole package in the walnuts that has the fiber and the polyamines that feed your gut buddies Now one word to the wise, I have a few female patients who because of the tannins in walnuts feel like they get burns on the inside of their mouth and tongue and if that's the case, one of the things you can do is soak your walnuts which will remove the tannins, soaked walnuts are available You can find them in Whole Foods and other health food stores You can buy them on the internet so if you've got a problem with that funny feeling in your mouth after eating walnuts, buy soaked walnuts and you'll be fine Now some people say, eh, walnuts just don't do it for me I'd rather have something else that's boring There are so many walnut recipes that I've got in my books such as the walnut bread in the plant paradox the walnut blue cheese dressing in the longevity paradox the walnut lentil veggie burgers or meatballs in the longevity paradox and the walnut nutmeg horchata in the longevity paradox All of these are great ways to get more walnuts into you and to keep your gut buddies happy The shocking benefits of spices Take one teaspoon of this a day If you're looking for great ways to get more polyphenols in your diet and you should be, then listen up It's as simple as making your meals more flavorful by adding some extra seasoning and spices That's right, just adding a teaspoon of the right spice you can do a whole lot for your health Let's take turmeric, for example Turmeric is big right now Everybody wants turmeric lattes, turmeric smoothies, turmeric everything Why? Well, the active ingredient in turmeric, that root that looks a lot like ginger except it's orange colored or cumin, can actually help in the management of oxidative and inflammatory conditions In fact, strangely enough, these compounds that we eat and we think about them as anti-inflammatory compounds unfortunately most of these don't cross the blood-brain barrier Turmeric is actually one of the few exceptions We know that turmeric does cross the blood-brain barrier Why is that important? Well, if you like the concept that brain health, dementia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's is directly related to neuro-inflammation inflammation of our neurons then turmeric, with its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier may be a winner and a winning spice Now, turmeric has also been shown to boost energy levels It does that by actually boosting mitochondrial function and in fact can repair mitochondria by uncoupling mitochondria Joint support has been shown to be useful by taking turmeric and several studies have shown that turmeric boosts mobility and flexibility But here's the problem with turmeric I've seen patients throw big pieces of turmeric in their smoothies cook with turmeric, but turmeric is incredibly poorly absorbed Curcumin almost doesn't get absorbed from your intestine But there's a trick If you add black pepper to turmeric there's a component in black pepper called bioparen and bioparen escorts curcumin across the intestinal wall So interestingly enough, there are some studies that I've reported in the longevity paradox of curry eaters, people who eat curry at least once a week have a 90% reduction in Alzheimer's compared to people who don't eat curry Well, what's with that? Interestingly enough, curry powder contains both turmeric and black pepper So the turmeric is absorbed with the help of the black pepper The curcumin gets into your brain and reduces neuro-inflammation And in humans who eat curry once a week, much, much, much lower dementia than people who don't eat curry Why? Because these spices are really the spice of life And if nothing else, they're the spice of your brain's life And I kind of like my brain How about another one that most people really only think of about once a year and that's at Easter And that happens to be cloves Clothes, interestingly enough, have the highest polyphenol content of any spice Now, I've written and spoken about polyphenols throughout my career Real briefly, polyphenols are produced by plants in both their leaves and their fruit and their seeds to protect the leaves, fruit and seeds from hostile environments, from sunlight, from predation And these polyphenols, we now know, protect the plant by uncoupling their mitochondria Simplistically saying, tell the mitochondria, don't work so hard Don't damage your cells Don't get affected by oxidative stress And it's called mitochondrial uncoupling When we eat the polyphenols that are very, very high in spices Two things happen Number one, recent research shows that polyphenols are one of the preferred prebiotic fibers of our gut microbiome, our gut bacteria That means the more polyphenols we eat, in this case, in spices the more our gut buddies, the good guys, improve their diversity improve their lives The second thing we now know is that polyphenols, like I mentioned, curcumin are very poorly absorbed But our gut microbiome can actually eat them and then turn those polyphenols into absorbable compounds And when those polyphenols reach our mitochondria they have the same effect on our mitochondria that they were used for by the plant to protect its mitochondria and that is they uncouple our mitochondria Now uncoupling mitochondria, if nothing else, actually helps you lose weight And it's no surprise that people with diets high in polyphenols are actually in general much thinner than people who have diets that are very low in polyphenols And we'll talk about that a little bit further Now in terms of spices, cloves are the highest It turns out that in the Middle Ages, during spice trade, cloves were the second most popular spice And the highest price spice behind saffron The number one spice was black pepper And among other reasons, black pepper contains that compound, bioparent that actually helps you absorb the polyphenols in spices So it was a win-win proposition Now there's a lot of other interesting sources of polyphenols in your spice counter Dried peppermint, peppermint is part of the basil family And the more peppermint containing basil containing spices you eat every day, the better One surprising one, which is very high in polyphenols, is star anise And star anise is a great flavoring for just about anything you want to eat Finally, cocoa powder, non-dutched process, non-alcoholic cocoa powder is loaded with polyphenols And I bet you've got some cocoa powder in the pantry right now All of these polyphenols, the more we can get them into you the more you'll protect your mitochondria, the more you'll uncouple your mitochondria and the longer your health span Another interesting spice that also has benefits is ginger Now ginger is renowned for helping with nausea Now although ginger is a bit lower in polyphenols it's actually a very potent mitochondrial uncoupler and a mitogenesis promoter But does it really help with nausea? Well, as many of you know, I look at food sensitivities for a great number of my patients with leaky gut and autoimmune disease And surprisingly, ginger, even though it's known for helping with nausea frequently shows up as a troublemaker for people having antibodies, IgG antibodies to ginger So don't necessarily be afraid of ginger But if you're doing a lot of ginger tea, if you're adding a lot of ginger to your smoothies or to your cooking, and you still have issues with bloating, with gas, with irritable bowel try taking ginger out of your diet for a while and let's see what happens Okay, one of my favorite spices, again a huge spice in the middle age spice trade was cinnamon Numerous human studies have confirmed that cinnamon can lower fasting blood sugar levels by anywhere from 10 to 30% Why, well, cinnamon again is loaded with polyphenols In studies with people with type 2 diabetes, one gram of cinnamon or about a half a teaspoon of cinnamon per day has been shown to support healthy blood sugar levels In fact, numerous studies show that adding cinnamon to your coffee in the morning will block the invariable rise of blood sugar following consuming a cup of coffee Maybe that's why the Viennese are famous for putting cinnamon in your coffee And maybe that's why at almost every coffee shop you go into there is a cinnamon shaker And don't be afraid of adding cinnamon to your coffee Why not add a teaspoon of it to your coconut milk latte Or if you're going to eat starches or carbohydrates, why not sprinkle them with cinnamon So for instance, if you're going to have a sweet potato, sprinkle it with cinnamon If you're going to have an in season crispy pear like a dandju pear, put cinnamon on it One of the interesting things about cinnamon is that cinnamon tricks your brain into thinking your food is sweeter than it is So you'll actually enjoy a lot of your less sweet foods And maybe not eat as much of them by putting cinnamon on your food So next time you're going to have a sweet potato, do this trick Sprinkle it with cinnamon Better yet, get out clove, grind your clothes Sprinkle it with cloves and cinnamon and see if you don't enjoy it more And see if you're not satisfied earlier with less food I think it goes a long way Just remember, the spice trade of the Middle Ages was a drug trade People paid exorbitant amount of money for spices And people risked their lives to get these spices Because they were such potent health promoting drugs And believe me, what we need right now is not more pharmaceutical drugs We need health promoting spices Last but not least, chili And no, I'm not talking about red pepper flakes Remember, red pepper flakes came about Because the seeds and the peels were thrown away by traditional cultures Before they ate the flesh of a chili Or before they ground the flesh of the chili up into chili powder It was the discharge from traditional cultures that led to chili flakes on your pizza Just remember, the peel and seeds have the lectins So, a lot of traditional cultures use chili in the cooking process They take the whole chilies, cook with it, then throw the chili away They get the benefit, the polyphenols, the capsicum from the chili But not the discharge The third way that people do, besides peeling and de-seeding their chilies And then drying them into chili powder, is they ferment their chilies And traditionally, most chili flavorings, most chili sauces were prepared by fermentation So for instance, Tabasco sauce is fermented chilies Fermentation breaks down the lectins So, have your chilies, but eat them the right way Either use them whole to flavor your food, but don't eat them Either peel and de-seed them, then grind them up, or buy ground up chili powder I buy my chili powder, has chili from New Mexico Multiple sources, and use it that way For the third way, use a hot sauce that has been traditionally fermented And you'll be very safe Now, chili has great benefits Studies show that the capsicum in chili is a tremendous curb of appetite And people in general who eat chilies and capsicum, or use chili powder Way less than people who don't eat chilies Plus, chili actually has beneficial effects on joint health And, believe it or not, cardiovascular health And I take a supplement every day with chili powder to help my vascular system So, however you want to get chilies in, just get them in the right way And you'll see the benefits Finally, ever notice that when you eat something spicy, like has chili in it That you begin to sweat That's because the chilies are uncoupling your mitochondria And you produce heat from that uncoupling And that, as you know, if you read the last book, Unlocking the Keto Code Is one of the huge benefits of eating polyphenols And you're seeing it in dramatic fashion whenever you're having spicy food Ever since I told my readers to give fruit the boot in my first book many years ago People have labeled me as some kind of fruit hater Well, my wife Penny can tell you I am anything but a fruit hater I have a yard full of fruit trees and vines In fact, there are lots of fruits I absolutely love and recommend But I'm going to share a few of my favorite fruits and why I love them so much Easy tips for eating fruit in moderation and what it really means to eat your fruit in season It's a little more complicated than you might think Okay, let's start with a question I get all the time Is fruit really bad for me? Well, that depends First of all, our desire for fruit is deep seeded All great apes, as I pointed out in my first book years ago Only gain weight during fruit season And fruit season only occurs once a year in the jungle It doesn't occur all year round Apes didn't know that you could genetically or hybridize fruit to bear fruit year round So great apes only gain weight during fruit season That's because as you'll learn in the Energy Paradox That we use fructose, the sugar in fruit, mainly to add fat to us Why? Because the rest of the year there wasn't much food to eat And those of us who could store fat, we are the fat storing ape after all We're much better off So we have a distinct desire to get fruit in us and as much as we can find So that's why fructose is so desirable And number two, fructose unfortunately builds fat, builds triglycerides And as a heart surgeon and cardiologist I can tell you that the more fructose you eat The higher your triglycerides will go, the higher your cholesterol will go And you're going to get fatty liver disease and run low on energy That's why it's not such a great idea But you have heard me say in all my books to eat fruit in moderation Now people always want me to say, well what do you mean by moderation? So here's the deal, how many servings a day? You may have seen recently that new evidence came out that the idea of eating five fruits and vegetables a day Is now being modified, so that in the good old days People interpreted five servings of fruits and vegetables as basically Well I can eat five servings of fruit and that qualifies as eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day But in fact the evidence is completely different In fact if you put rats on the five servings of fruits and vegetables a day And give them mostly fruit and some vegetables they'll all get fat and diabetic If you give them mostly vegetables and some fruits they won't do that So recently the guidelines have been revised that the eat five a day should only be two fruits and three vegetables Now there's a proviso to that because the vast majority of vegetables in people's diets are actually fruits Tomatoes is a fruit, eggplant is a fruit, squash is a fruit Any of these vegetables with seeds are actually fruits So you gotta be very careful, you want to eat vegetables that don't have seeds So we're beginning to realize how mischievous a lot of fruit can be in our diet So what do you do? In moderation means probably one serving at the most per day If you want to do two servings please use low fructose fruits And we're going to get into that in the next segment One of the biggest recommendations in my best selling book the longevity paradox was to eat in line with the seasons Now unless you only shop at your local farmers market chances are you don't know what's in season and what's not So here's a few tips Look at the origin of the fruits that you're buying If it's not grown in the United States it's probably not in season anywhere near you It doesn't matter that I live in California if I see grown in Mexico or grown in Honduras that's not local to me Particularly in the winter we all see all these beautiful fruits coming from Chile and Argentina And they look fresh but they're not number one and they're certainly not in season Bananas are not grown in the United States so a banana is not an in season fruit no matter when you pick it up So get a produce calendar There's actually a great website called Farm Flavor where you can find a produce calendar for every state in the union So it'll tell you what fruits are growing in your state or other nearby states for every month of the year That way when you go to the grocery store you know exactly what's in season and what isn't Now of course if you live in California like I do or Florida or Arizona You know that most vegetables and even some fruits are actually available all year round Strawberries have been hybridized to produce strawberries throughout the year here in California That doesn't mean that they're technically in season Strawberries normally would only grow in the summer in most areas before they were hybridized So buy or beware Alright now it's time to talk about what you've been looking for My favorite fruits Believe it or not there are a number of fruits that are quite low in fructose And you really want to avoid the high fructose fruits So my favorite ones are berries particularly raspberries and blackberries Surprisingly blueberries have now been hybridized so much that they have much higher fructose than ever before So blueberries of the berry family fall way down the list Boys and berries, maulberries if you can find them are also low fructose fruits Now here's one that probably surprises you kiwi fruit Kiwi fruit particularly if you eat the peel, the furry hairy part Has huge amounts of fiber and quite low fructose Making it actually one of the best bang for your bucks in eating fruit Not much fructose lots of fiber Another one is a crispy pear Now this is totally different than a ripe like a Bartlett pear A crispy pear is designed to stay crispy and not ripen And it also has low fructose But remember once you allow anything even a crispy pear to ripen fully It becomes a fructose bomb There are persimmons in the fall that are relatively low in fructose but be warned I actually have two different patients who saw that persimmons are allowed on our list Because they have a lot of fiber quite honestly And they went on a persimmon kick And you wouldn't believe what happened to them Their insulin levels went up, their triglycerides went through the roof And they each actually gained about 10 pounds Just going on a healthy persimmon kick And believe it or not that's what fruit was designed to do It was designed to have us gain weight Passion fruit is fantastic High fiber low fructose Another one of my favorites is pomegranate seeds Do not drink pomegranate juice You are concentrating the fructose whenever you're having any juice And that goes along with pomegranate juice But the pomegranate seeds are actually mostly fiber And some really cool omega fats that you really can't get anywhere else But in the pomegranate seed So those are my favorite in season fruits Question I get all the time Well what happens if you take an in season fruit like berries And freeze them and then use them in the winter Wouldn't that be okay? All I can tell you is that none of us evolved Even recently to have year round fruit Even if it was picked in season So it's really one of the reasons I invented Some of my best selling products Was to give you the benefits of the polyphenols And the fibers in fruits Removing the fructose which is the mischief maker So please don't fall for that trap Make sure to check out the next one here Tupperware parties Little did we know that these plastic containers Leech endocrine disruptors into our food