 Hello everyone. Happy Memorial Day weekend. This is Dr. Michael Gregor coming to you live from my treadmill. Every month I'm doing live Q&As on Facebook and YouTube. Just did Facebook a little bit a time ago. Now here on YouTube, for those of you who are familiar with my work every year, every issue of slain nutrition journal on the planet, so busy folks like you don't have to. I think the most interesting, most groundbreaking, most practical, finding some new videos and articles I upload every day to my non-profit site, nutritionfacts.org. Everything on the website is free, no ads, no commercial sponsorships strictly, and no corporate sponsorships strictly on our commercial, not selling anything, just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother actually who's recently why I became a doctor in the first place and the reason I practice the type of medicine I practice today which is lifestyle, medicine. Happy to answer your questions. I'm going to go and just start at the top of the list and go down. There were some smart folks here already piling on the questions before it even started. That's a good way to get your question answered. Start at the top with no exit love now says so many health foods contain manganese and it all adds up. Do we have to worry about getting too much manganese? I think the only source that I've seen that would be a problem is that is a hibiscus tea is such an extraordinarily high manganese content that I'd encourage people not to drink more than a quart a day. There's about a liter, four cups a day, but hibiscus tea one of the healthiest, one of the three healthiest beverages that's water, hibiscus tea, this herbal tea which can bring down blood pressure, have also show the wonderful benefits and then green or white tea. But there are certain green tea limits based on fluoride content and based on lead content if it's imported from China and depending on whether you eat it or not depending on whether you're kid depending on whether you're pregnant I've got videos and all that just type in the lead and tea pop right up to see how much is too much and for a hibiscus tea just a little heavy on the manganese so you want to moderate your intake but still drink it. It's fantastic. I have a picture brewing as we speak what a fantastic refreshing summer drink for those of us in the northern hemisphere but for all our southern hemispherians happy winter which is starting in four days for you. What brand of B12 do I take vitamin B12 it's critical to get a regular rival source and encourage people to get the cheapest source and so whatever is cheapest that's what I take. The astronomy freak 95 asks despite food is being healthier what I consider white potato is a health food part of a healthy diet as I mentioned on Facebook foods aren't healthy or unhealthy per se they're healthier or less healthy and so our white potato is healthy compared to sweet potatoes no compared to you know ho ho's yes and so if you so if you have access to either you're at the grocery store so white potatoes there sweet sweet potato and then if you have orange sweet potatoes or purple sweet potatoes choose the purple sweet potatoes right minus well you know just like is green cabbage not good for you well purple cabbage is better not saying green cabbage is bad for you but compared to purple not as good so you might as well go for it God Vlad asks Vlad from Romania asks doesn't ask anything just says they sent me an email okay Cynthia says cyanicobalmint or methicobalmint for vitamin B12 and the answer is cyanicobalmint unless you are a heavy smoker or are in kidney failure or sent to your diets around cassava in which case you should stop all three of those if possible and stick with cyanicobalmint okay BJ K says that his mom been following healthy my daily dozen recommendations and even the same foods but she is experiencing bloating so what should we do well you know some people are in tall into certain foods and depending you so we say in the same foods how could it cause different effects well we each have different gut microbiomes we each have different good bacteria in our gut and so presumably if you eat the same foods you'll foster pretty much the similar types of bacteria the growth of similar types of bacteria and so if after eating a year like this you should have lots of fiber-eating bacteria versus starch-eating bacteria and they should take care of all this stuff and you should be wonderfully healthy but if you're bloated then obviously your one possibility is that your microbiome is just not happy with something and other things a food intolerance kind of thing if it's so I you know I would one thing she could do is she could experiment so she could do what's called elimination diet where you basically stop eating everything except the tapioca sweet potatoes and water which is essentially no one's intolerant to and then start adding food slowly back in your diet and see if it causes problems so for example you'd be gluten intolerant so if you start eating bread and all of a sudden you feel bad then that may be a sign although of course you'd want to make sure you don't have something called celiac disease which is serious disease and you'd want to get tested for before just going on a gluten-free diet John has a daughter with heavy periods and the thing she may need to eat meat well what should John tell her well as with anything you have to treat the cause why so presumably this is a question about iron if you're losing so much iron might want to eat meat kind of which has very very readily absorbable iron in it well what you do is you treat the cause well I mean why is she having such heavy periods does she have fibroid tumors so something even something like ginger we found not only to to fight painful menstruation but actually decrease flow significantly you know maybe that would take care of itself and then you wouldn't be losing on the iron and have to worry about iron if however she really does have iron deficiency anemia the answer is not to eat meat the answer is to eat iron rich plant foods like beans and greens and eat vitamin C rich foods plant foods along with those iron rich plant foods to maximize absorption so we're talking about tropical fruits and citrus fruits and broccoli bell peppers along with iron rich foods maximize the absorption of plant-based iron should get the best of both worlds all the iron you need for blood formation but without the negative aspects associated with excess meat consumption oh and by the way people that don't eat meat have no higher rates of iron deficiency than people that do eat meat but that's not saying much because the rates are pretty bad I think about spainable population about one in seven reproductive age women menstruating women have iron deficiency and so may need to go out of the way to eat iron rich foods healthy iron rich foods BJK is back drinking water or herbal fruit teas best before during or after a meal doesn't matter it doesn't matter unless you're talking about non herbal tea talking about black tea green tea or white tea which can actually interfere with iron absorption so you don't want to drink it with a meal but these other like fruit trees some like obesity you can drink with your meal no problem smart dogs smart dogs asks could I see the reasons for why smoking weed is bad for your health versus vaporizing oh so any kind of smoke in your lungs is bad forest fire smoke house fire smoke incense cigarette smoke marijuana smoke there are things there are like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons basically products of incomplete combustion which are toxic and so for people that want the effects of marijuana but don't want to suffer the concept the adverse health consequences on one's respiratory tract then vaporizing cannabis on where they where it's heated up to a point that doesn't actually combust doesn't actually go into flames but the THC the kind of psychoactive component is released at the same level as if you actually burned it and then it kind of comes up into a little balloon and then you then you sniff up the kind of steam of the vapor and you get the effects without these these toxic components and so what is that what talks most what's the really thing to worry about chronic bronchitis so a significant number of people who who smoke weed oh marijuana kind of on a regular basis suffer from chronic bronchitis symptoms such as excess flame production chronic cough shortness of breath and but the good news is is that they they go away those symptoms go away so you stop and they get better as opposed to smoking a long-term smoking tobacco we actually get something called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease emphysema leading killer though chronic marijuana consumption does not seem to lead to obstructive lung disease and so has reversible as opposed to irreversible scarring they get with tobacco smoke but but you can still get these chronic bronchitis symptoms if introducing any kind of smoke into your lungs bjk is back any concerns with homemade almond milk which is basically crushed almonds and water or even easier you can take a you know spoonful of almond butter and just blend it with some water and poof instant almond milk of course there's no fortification most almond milks in the market have added you know fortified with calcium and vitamin d and b12 other things um but anyway does almond milk inhibit the cocoa flavonoids like dairy milk or store milk might the interest we don't know so this is experiments showing that one of the reasons you don't get the benefits of these cocoa flavonoids of don't get benefits of dark chocolate when you're eating milk chocolate in terms of improving artery function is that these phytonutrients found in the cocoa mass itself the cocoa are bound up by the by the milk same thing with tea when you add milk to tea you bind up all those wonderful phytonutrients in tea um and but it turns out the same thing appears to happen with smoke so maybe it's something to do with just approaching reaction we're not sure and so does have a lot of milk we simply don't know um so uh good question um if i find anything about it i'll do a video about it on johnny says yeah white potatoes are healthy they have lots of vitamin c okay um lots of things have vitamin c um i don't think anyone got scurvy because they didn't eat white potatoes and uh sweet potatoes have vitamin c too smart dogs is back asking calcium supplements for osteopenia plants enough oh so i actually have videos on whether or not the calcium supplementation um uh may prevent bone um fractures um and so uh the video one is our calcium supplements effective and another one our calcium supplement safe i believe so check out those two videos and um and uh i if you're like me you'll be surprised at the uh findings brussel the raw man asks what do i think about honey uh it's interesting i just did a video i just scripted a video so when i say i just scripted a video it may not appear on the website for weeks um so you're like wait a second you said you just scripted i didn't see it on monday or whatever um but that's just because there's a buffer you know it's a whole process here um but um just did a video about honey as a treatment for canker sores what's called aftis ulcers these some people i mean most people get you know canker sores once in a while you know these little shallow ulcerations unlike your inner lip but some people get chronic recurrent canker sores seem to be very painful even for their quality of life and so there's been kind of a desperate search for things you can do about it there's all sorts of drugs and things laser treatments and all sorts of crazy things but um but one of the most effective treatments i've ever been able to find was this amazing study using honey basically a q-tip dipped in honey they just rubbed the honey on the canker sore uh three times a day something like that and absolutely shocking results um wait till you see the video you will be impressed um but in terms of eating honey it's sugar it's like uh you know eating you know agave syrup or brown rice syrup or half fructose corn syrup or table sugar uh lots of empty calories which we don't need we should have nutrition with our calories um and so i do not recommend eating honey if however the only way you're going to drink that green tea is with some honey in it um it would probably the benefits um would i mean i'd want you to drink the um i'd want the that the teaspoon of sugar to make the medicine go down in other words um but if you can drink green tea straight even better or white tea even better than that ace life asks can a vegan health coach help better patients better than a traditional doctor okay um uh so if we're talking about i mean there's some things that doctors do awesome not uh i mean no and so look acute conditions you break your leg you want a doctor you don't want a vegan health coach you have an infection for which you need antibiotics you want a doctor not a vegan health coach um however so for acute conditions phenomena um again a car accident you know you want a trauma surgeon uh but but actually about 80 percent of the things people see doctors for are chronic lifestyle diseases and so if we want to treat the cause if the cause is lifestyle then the cause isn't a drug deficiency isn't a surgery deficiency well then traditional doctors may not be able to help as much as someone even if they have no medical credentials or health credentials whatsoever who will take you to the grocery store and say this is the healthiest food right here let's let's let me show you the wonders of the produce aisle um may actually be better in terms of reducing one's chronic disease risk and those are the leading killers leading causes of death and disability so for example global burden of disease study the largest study of disease risk factors in human history funded by the bill melinda gates foundation number one cause of death in the united states is what we no more cause of disability in the united states what we uh bumping tobacco smoking now to number two cigarettes only killed about a half million americans every year whereas our diet kills hundreds of thousands more so obviously diet is the number one thing taught in medical school right the number one thing your doctor talks about it every thing they'll visit right way to say i mean so i mean unfortunately um the amount of nutrition education gotten in medical school i mean continued medical education is insufficient to deal with the ravages of chronic lifestyle diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity and hypertension and high blood pressure um the heart disease um and so what we need is advice on healthy eating and for that a health coach may be better informed vegan or not than a doctor um and so you use what's good at right i mean you you know you don't take your um your dog to the auto mechanic you take your dog to the vet right i mean so if you have a problem you take it to the right person so if you have a problem with a lifestyle disease um then uh you need someone that can help you with your lifestyle ideally you'd have a lifestyle medicine doctor um who uh get offered the best of both worlds all right chukapakabra i'm sorry if i mispronounce that um uh says ask eating healthy um exercising a lot but still high blood pressure 125 or 85 um what uh how can i get down to 110 over 70 and for those of you thinking wait a second 125 or right about that sounds pretty good to me i mean isn't the definition of high blood pressure like 140 over 90 so it sounds like they have normal blood pressure yeah but having a normal blood pressure and it's decided where it's normal to drop dead from diseases like heart disease and stroke and kidney failure um is not necessarily a good thing in fact showing that even people so called normal blood pressure like 120 already benefit from blood pressure reductions to the ideal blood pressure the no benefit from reducing it further blood pressure 110 over 70 wow it's even possible to get down that low absolutely if you um eat and live right now it sounds like this person is um uh eating very well um so basically if you're eating a plant-based diet i would cut out processed foods um um not add um salt to one's diet um and if you still don't get down to an ideal then i would uh move to add foods to your diet that specifically lower your blood pressure even further for example ground flaxseeds and hibiscus tea will um should bring your pressures even lower though you may be doing better than many americans in fact most people over the age 60 are actually hypertensive actually over 140 over 90 nicole the name of my favorite cousin uh thanks me for everything i do thank you you're absolutely welcome uh nicole um bjk is back asks possible to include too little sodium um um and uh uh you don't have to worry about eating too little sodium it's a little bit of sodium in everything um and so just whole healthy natural plant foods um should supply all the sodium one needs um and as fed asks um been on a plant-based diet for years how do i treat menopausal hot flashes without medications do i recommend hormone therapy i do not recommend hormone therapy um and uh oh for us here process um do i recommend some of these injectable drugs so uh for menopausal hot flash symptoms i'd recommend soy food consumption um if you just type in menopause in nutrition facts.org a couple videos will come up and talk about the efficacy of soy foods for helping with that um so the reason i don't recommend hormone therapies because um whether it's those uh so-called plant-based hormones or not um they uh they they um you know these like uh these uh you know horse estrogen um uh hrt um uh therapies have been associated with increased risk of blood clots and and breast cancer and heart attacks and so i would not do that um for osteoporosis oh um a good question i have so i have some videos on preventing osteoporosis but um i don't have any videos on treating it that is uh an area that i am going to do more videos on and when i do i will compare my natural therapies to the current leading um of pharmacological approaches and so stay tuned bjk asks uh following the daily dosing recommendations um one might get an excess of protein um is that a concern um excess of protein um so i think you're eating um plant protein right i mean so you get a lot of protein because you're eating legumes being still these ticklies and lentils i would not worry about eating too many legumes steve asks there are a little bit on the amount of dates one should eat on a whole food plant based diet um i mean the only kind of theoretical limit is that you need so many dates because it's so uh calorically dense that you just kind of um you'd uh i mean you only have about you know two thousand calories in the calorie bank every day um is that you would kind of push out other healthy foods from your diet um so i mean if you ate it you know a thousand calories of dates um then you know you just maybe so that um you're not going you just uh you don't you're satiated and you don't feel like eating that big salad um and so that's the only i'm really concerned dates are really healthy for you but we should um have dietary diversity to add all sorts of really healthy foods into our diet um ace life asks what medical school program is good for poor kids you mean like getting in like a medical school that poor kids can attend a cheaper medical school um usually um state school so if you're in california the state school system i think they're all expensive um but uh it should be easy to get a loan i mean get student loans i mean they just know that doctors make such obscene salaries that you'll be able to pay back whatever loans you get um and so everybody should be able to go to medical school it's just a matter of how long it'll take you to then pay back your loans bjk asks nitrate plus vitamin c equals good what about nitrate plus vitamin c plus fat from nuts and or seeds um from pub med fat transforms ascorbic acid from inhibiting to promoting acid catalyzed and nitrosation nitrosation um i will check out that uh article and get back to you um uh vlad asks uh oh just says i want you on my podcast nas ask do you recommend drinking hard water or a uh recommend water softeners or bottle water i recommend drinking tap water straight from the faucet although um you know some plain carbon you know activated carbon filter like a brittle or pure um to make your water taste better which will make you drink more of it which is a good thing um though have a whole series actually have a series of uh uh videos coming about out about arsenic and rice and i talked a little bit about arsenic and water in terms of if you live in an area which has high arsenic water then you might um um then you might think twice but uh other than that um i think uh just straight tap water should be fine um bjk is a face safe to buy toothpaste compared to calcium carbonate um uh yeah well no that's just chalk um so the reason i add calcium carbonate is just as a as a mild abrasive it's just powdered chalk and so that you know so um is it safe yeah i don't think there's anything um there's any downside to calcium carbonate um there is however i have uh some videos coming out about sls sodium laurel sulfate as an irritant i'm increasing risk of i forget what it was maybe that was part of the apthas ulcer video series um anyway that uh so uh that that's a concerning agreement agreement not for cancer which was some email fraud thing from the 90s um but uh as an irritant um uh yeah um i forget indications for one uh make sure you're subscribed to my emails and of course subscriptions are free everything is free um so you won't miss those videos coming up um ace life is anything medical schools should lower the tuition fees tuition fees are pretty outrageous um i think i forget i i forget how much uh my uh uh the tuition it toughs was i actually got a free ride through the medical science training program um was offered a free ride actually ended up not taking it but that's a whole another story um but uh do i think they need to lower tuition fees i'd like to see them lower their tuition fees most countries medical school like all uh uh graduate training all college is free um uh but um but again it shouldn't be a barrier since you can get any student loans you need and pay them off uh right harry asks what is my take on intermittent fasting like 16 hours fasting eight hours feed window um for diabetes that's a fantastic question and i'm gonna do a whole series of videos about it um and uh because there's now a whole body of evidence and there wasn't before last time i checked but now there is and the uh and it's not like i'm trying to hide anything from you i just haven't read it i have it all sitting in the folder looking forward to doing series of videos i know that's a topic of interest folks and so it's high on my list of priorities um smart dogs as one's the next q and a the next q and a is i believe let me look june 29th thursday june 29th um 12 30 and 130 12 30 facebook 130 youtube folk folk b asks with people taking talking although talking a lot about soylent and lab grown meat so i think we'll ever be able to synthesize the complexity of plant foods well on nature does it right takes the little seed explodes into an oak tree right everything just comes out so there's no reason we won't be able to kind of figure it out one day but um you know they uh plants do all the work for us and so no need to uh to uh to try to synthesize in the lab unless you're trying to patent something because obviously you can't um well until recently you hear they can't patent much of life i think one santo patented some broccoli stream or something but most broccoli uh unpatentable which is good because then it's cheap but it's bad because no one's going to research in broccoli they can't make a lot of money out of um so we should support public funding of medical research through for example the national institutes of health bjks following the daily dozen guidelines oh we already talked about that got it harry sends me an image of watermelon that looks delicious you're making me hungry and it is 3 30 that brings us to a close sorry i didn't get to move your comments um or get those questions in early i'm in fact the next youtube event page is already up you could put your questions in right now virgin 29 and be sure you get the answer um uh thanks everyone for joining me on this wonderful holiday weekend and have a fantastic uh month and i will hope to see you soon