 Okay, real briefly, what is a vegan diet? I can't tell you the number of people who meet me and describe themselves as, well, let's just use an example. I'm a vegetarian. I only eat chicken and fish. Seriously, I hear this all the time. That's not a vegetarian. I'm a vegan. I only eat eggs and milk. No, that's not a vegan. That's a vegetarian who's a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. A pescatarian is someone who just eats fish as their source of animal protein. So a vegan forgoes all forms of animal protein, whether it's eggs, whether it's milk products, dairy, whether it's chicken and fish, meat in terms of beef. So that is a vegan. Okay. So why does cutting down on animal protein seem to have such big longevity benefits? Well, most of the research centers around something that I talk a lot about, but we're gonna talk about it again. There is an energy-sensing molecule called mTOR, little m capital T, capital O, capital R, that's present as a sensor of how much energy is available for that organism. And originally, we thought that mTOR was only in mammals. It turns out that mTOR is in all living things as far as we can tell, even little worms. And it senses not only the sugar available, but also protein available. And it's so sensitive that it's far more sensitive to certain amino acids. And most of those are the branch chain amino acids. Some people know them as BCAAs. And this is leucine, isoleucine. It's also sensitive to methionine, another amino acid that's very present in animal protein. And when it senses the building blocks of making cells, it tells the cell, hey, we got plenty of energy, let's make some more cells. If it doesn't sense the present of these proteins and sugars, it says, uh-oh, times are rough, and we should hunker down. We should try to protect all of our essential workers and let everything else go by the wayside to try and stay alive until the next time food arrives. And quite frankly, your cells don't know from day to day when food's going to arrive normally. And just as a plug for the energy paradox, believe it or not, one of our problems in our society is that we are overfed and undernourished at the cellular level, so stay tuned for that. Okay, so back to MTOR. So we know that people who have MTOR that's highly stimulated will make a hormone called insulin-like growth factor. There's a very important word there, growth factor. And the other important word is insulin-like. It behaves like insulin. And insulin is also a growth hormone. So as I tell my patients, as we get older, I can assure you that there is nothing in us that we want to grow. And most cancers are incredibly stimulated by insulin-like growth factor, as well as insulin. In fact, we measure IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor in all of our patients every three to six months. And a high IGF-1 correlates, sadly, with the development of cancer. And a low IGF-1 correlates very well with longevity. In fact, if you look at my patients and other people's patients in their late 90s, early 100s, who are thriving, they run very low insulin-like growth factors around 70 to 80. So you can have this test done. It can be measured. There's a little bit of lab variation I've noticed as we change labs in this day and age. But in general, a low IGF-1 is a good thing. So getting back to Amtor, in general, plant proteins are fairly limited in terms of branched chain amino acids in methionine compared to animal proteins. So one of the theories of how plant-based diets improve longevity is that you're not stimulating Amtor, and you will have a low IGF-1. And in fact, I see this all the time with my patients. They'll do an experiment for me, and they will really cut back on animal proteins, and that includes cheeses, that includes eggs, that includes fish, that includes chicken, and their IGF-1s plummet. They'll drop 50 points depending on the time period compared to their last one. In fact, we just had one this week who had been running IGF-1s of 200, 170, had a scare because of a cancer, changed over to a vegetarian diet keto, my keto version. And the next time we measured their IGF-1, it was 70. Went from 200, 170 to 70. And that's how powerful the stimulating effect of animal protein is. Now, they also got rid of fruit in their diet. So two things stimulate Amtor. Certain amino acids, more prevalent in animals, and sugars, and fruit sugar is one of the things that will stimulate Amtor. Okay, the other evidence comes from the blue zones. And I've written about this extensively in the longevity paradox. And the blue zones have wildly different diets. And just to recap, blue zones were defined by the journalist, Dan Buckner, as places with considerable longevity compared to other places in the world. And I happen to have lived in the blue zone, Loma Linda, California for much of my career. And I'm actually the only nutritionist who has ever lived and worked in a blue zone. And one of the unique factors of blue zones is not the commonality of their diets. They're wildly different. The Okinawans eat an 85% carbohydrate diet of sweet potatoes. The Sardinians use a liter of olive oil per week. So wildly different from high fat to low fat. But what all of these programs have is they have very limited animal protein in their diet. Do some of them have animal protein? Absolutely. But if you look at the Loma Linda data, and the Adventists of Loma Linda now have been studied for pretty much a 50 years studying now. And one of my colleagues, Gary Frazier, has been studying these folks for as long as I've known him. And the vegans of the very long lived Adventists are the longest living of the Adventists. Now they're followed by the vegetarians who are the lacto-ovo vegetarians. They're followed by the cheaters, as they call them in the Adventist society, who eat fish or chicken. And so they've shown and published very good results that for every small uptick of animal protein, of any source in the Adventist diet, you see an increase in heart disease, you see an increase in cancer, and you see a decrease in longevity. Now that's, you know, dogged on it. That's really too bad. There's another factor that I think bears mentioning. It's controversial. We could have an hour-long debate with one of the Carnivore MDs about this, but it was a chemical called TMAO that was discovered by the Cleveland Clinic a few years ago. And this chemical is made by gut bacteria, metabolizing animal protein, primarily choline and carnitine, into what a chemical called TMA, which is then transported to the liver and it's then changed to TMAO. There's a great deal of literature primarily from the Cleveland Clinic that elevated TMAO levels correlate with severity of coronary artery disease, with severity of hypertension, with damage to blood vessels. And there's some pretty good papers showing a pretty strong correlation. Now, the Cleveland Clinic found that vegans do not in general have elevated levels of TMAO for two reasons. Number one, they lack a bacterial population that manufactures TMAO. And they even proved this by getting some vegans to actually eat animal protein. And they, in fact, did not generate TMAO. So there is a bacterial community if you eat a vegan diet that is protective from making TMAO. Now, to the Cleveland Clinic's credit, some of the researchers said, well, now, wait a minute. The Mediterranean diet has a remarkably low coronary artery disease rate. And yet the Mediterranean diet has fish, it has eggs, it has cheeses, it has salamis. There's meat eating, what gives? So they found that there is a compound in some olive oils, balsamic vinegar, and in red wine that is called 331 dimethylbutanol that paralyzes the bacteria that make TMAO from animal protein. Doesn't kill them, but it paralyzes the enzyme systems. And so they believe, and I think they're correct, that the reason the Mediterranean diet can have these animal products is that the olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, and the red wine in that diet have changed the bacterial ability to make TMAO. And so if you wonder why I have a lot of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and red wine, I'm paralyzing my bacteria so that I don't make TMAO. Okay, so far so good. Now, unfortunately, recently it was discovered that some deep water fish have TMAO already in their flesh. Now this threw a real monkey wrench into the Cleveland Clinic's claim that TMAO is bad for you because fish eaters in general have better health than red meat eaters. And if fish eating raises your TMAO, that would seem to be a very bad thing. So interestingly, to save face, the Cleveland Clinic, when they measure TMAO, ask you to abstain from fish eating for four to eight hours before the test so you don't screw up the reading. And as I tell my patients, well, if TMAO is bad for you and you're eating fish, wouldn't you wanna know what your TMAO level is? So long story short is the jury is still out. There's a recent paper that suggests that TMAO may actually dilate blood vessels. So stay tuned. And by the way, I have two lifelong vegan patients in their 70s who have ungodly high TMAOs and the Cleveland Clinic can't figure it out. We've tested them multiple times and they are vegans with high TMAOs. So stay tuned. Are there other benefits to a plant-based diet? When we get, when you see the energy paradox, you're going to find out that we have a class of bugs that are really good bugs. I call them gut buddies who absolutely positively love soluble fiber and fiber in most vegetables and in some fruits, that they convert into a host of incredibly important what are called short chain fatty acids. The most famous one is butyrate. And as you're going to learn in the energy paradox, butyrate may be one of the most important compounds that you can possibly have and generate. And it's good for your brain. It's great for your mitochondria. It's incredibly protective to your cells and it's what's called a signaling molecule. It actually tells all of your cells, all of your mitochondria that things are going great down in the engine room, down in your gut and that carry on and do great things. It's also a great energy producing substrate that your mitochondria can use and your brain can use. So long story short, the more butyrate generating bacteria that you have and the more you give those bacteria fiber in plants, the better off you are. Also, there are some incredibly important compounds in the cruciferous vegetables and the allium family like garlic and onions and leeks that make hydrogen sulfide. Now everybody goes, wait a minute, hydrogen sulfide, that's a poisonous gas. Well, and by the way, all hydrogen sulfide is the rotten egg smell. It turns out that hydrogen sulfide follows a hormetic curve. And if you've read any of my books, Hormesis is best defined by Nietzsche's famous expression, that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger. So exposure to small amounts of what might otherwise be poisonous or toxic is actually beneficial to an organism. And we found that in these hormetic compounds, none is not good. Some is great and a lot is really bad. And it's finding this sweet spot, what I call the Goldilocks effect in the energy paradox of these compounds that really make the difference. And it turns out that hydrogen sulfide is an incredibly important gaso messenger. And boy, are you gonna learn about gaso messengers in the energy paradox. So lots of really, really good reasons to eat plants and plants that have soluble fiber. As many of you have heard, the chicory family is one of the best sources of soluble fiber you can get. I happen to have my artichoke socks on today. If you're watching on video, artichokes are a phenomenal source of soluble fiber. I've got my carrot tie on today and raw carrots are actually another great source of fiber. Please don't cook them cause the sugar comes out. More amazing episodes just like this one, watch now. Cause mushrooms have incredible properties that you should know about to improve your health, your brain health and your longevity. First of all, mushrooms contain many polysaccharides.