 Changes in your diet not only affect you physically, physiologically inside, but also mentally, how well you think, psychologically, how well you feel. But you'll never know just how good you can feel until you put it to the test and try eating healthier. Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast, I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Today I'm on my treadmill answering a wide variety of your questions, from everything from the versatility of purple sweet potato powder to the benefits of a fermented soy food called natto, and the best way to manage menopause symptoms. First off, Himmi asks, would you recommend using purple, oh, 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, 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 that 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 that caused me to gain weight. Oh my God, not just gain weight, almost double your weight. Managed to lose weight by changing medications. 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 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 effects. We want to get you back down to where you were before. So, so glad to be able to help. Next up. 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? 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, well you've eliminated dietary cholesterol by eating vegan, but there are still plant sources of 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 there's still had 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 to your diet 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 to increase your cholesterol. Added foods actually draw down your cholesterol. And the portfolio diet should be working well as these first-generation statins. And if it's not, then you really should start looking for secondary causes of hyper-cholesterolemia. So for example, undirected thyroid gland can jack your cholesterol up, even if you're eating really healthy. Excess abdominal adiposity. There's a whole bunch of things you can deduct and look at before going to pharmacological options. OK, Yogi says, does long pepper increase absorption of turmeric like black pepper? Oh, such a cool question. OK, 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. OK, well, does it have peppering? That's a good question. So I believe 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 suppress your liver's ability to remove it, you get higher levels in your bloodstream by like 2,000%. And so I think it's the peppering, which is kind of 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. OK, 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. Ooh, that's not 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 analogies. Face blew up into a giant cold sore. So if you're eating that many mixed nuts, obviously your diet is not that low in fat unless you were low in fat and they also made nuts. And then you had a cold sore. So cold sores, I mean, presumably is around the lips. You think of cold sores as opposed to your face. 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. Herb is virus one. So yeah, 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 is perfectly fine. Sorry about your cold sore. There are some things you can do about your cold sore. There's not great data about lysine. 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, can work as well as longer courses. And earlier the better. So 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 it 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. It's often used for like herpes II infection, like trying to suppress general herpes outbreaks, but can also suppress some 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. Fuchsia asks a menopause and high LDL 90 days ago, that's 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. I guess it 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 in their cholesterol. It doesn't go up as much as other people. And they're just kind of lucky that way. And 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, they have 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, 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. And 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 that I talked about with portfolio diet. It's all sorts of other things that lower cholesterol too, like black human. And I, if you just type in cholesterol into the nutrition facts or all sorts of stuff, come up amlas, also lowers cholesterol, we've 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. Yeah. I mean, if you're doing in men fasting to lose weight, to maintain muscle mass on any kind of caloric restriction, 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 the age side of all caloric restriction chapter in the, how not to age. Every time I see that study, I'm just like baffled by how, how powerful that is. So early time restricted feeding, you know, skipping supper, turning 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, as 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, 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 is, that you can get away with. And this is not just me, this next national toxicology program has come out with numerous draft 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 in the early 80s with lead where we see a 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 benefits might it be? So not so is a slimy fermented soy food. Well, it's not so good for you. Well, I mean, yeah, in that it's a, it's a slimy fermented soy food. I think people think of Nato, they think of a particular form of vitamin K. It's not necessary to get a Nato 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 Nato if you like eating Nato, 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, nutritional use safe to consume have heard of some type of issue with formation of harms the body should not be consumed. Nutritional use of safe to consume, except if you have hidradonitis 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. Okay, Gabriella. What is my, what is my advice about managing menopause symptoms? Oh, boy. Well, that is a huge part of my book, how much 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, Wild Blueberry, what a name. There we go. Wild Blueberry asked if I had my blood, I had my blueberries today. If I had my blood checked, what values? Should I pay particular attention in order to find where the meaning balance died? Should I test for certain? The USPSDF, the kind of preventive services guidelines committee really suggests just getting a cholesterol check. There's no reason to check for vitamins and minerals in particular unless you have particularly symptomatic 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. Unfortunately, I'm out of time, but thank you so much and I'll talk to you again soon. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials which may be able to share it on social media to help inspire others. If you'd like to see any of the graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing base there you'll find all the detailed information need plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. My last two books were How to Survive a Pandemic and My How Not to Diet Cookbook. Get ready this year for the launch of How Not to Age and of course all the proceeds for the sales of all my books goes directly to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a non-profit science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates on the latest new nutrition research with bite-sized videos and articles uploaded nearly every day. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorships, no kickbacks, it's strictly non-commercial, not selling anything. I 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.