 Hello, this is Dr. Michael Greger coming to you live from my treadmill as I do every month. To answer any questions you may have, particularly important for years like this, every three years writing a book and on my book writing years, I am not on the road as much as I was, but in 2020 I will be back. And my next book comes out December of 2019. And maybe I'll do 200 cities or so, like I did last time and hopefully come to us in near you. But until then, every month, at least we can do Q and A's, I just did a live Facebook and now here on YouTube, which I actually like better because I don't miss any questions because the questions just get kind of lined up and don't scroll past me. So let me get to the top and see what you have to ask. All right. And Anarag Nailuri asks, why isn't DHA in the Daily Dozen? So actually, the Daily Dozen doesn't include any supplements at all. These are because either the kind of, things that encourage people to fit into the daily routine. B12, for example, can be taken once a week. So there's nothing you need to check off every day. I try to find what your mic grabs or say on the bottom, it would be my recommendation. And vitamin D, you can get it from adequate sunshine, only for those getting inadequate sunlight, need to worry about supplementing their diet with vitamin D and DHA is, so DHA is long chain and makes three fatty acids. So I encourage people to consider a pollutant-free source of DHA, 250 milligrams of DHA and or EPA every day. And sorry, I just got done eating lunch. If you don't have greens in your teeth, you're not doing it right. So why isn't it in the Daily Dozen? Some of the encourage people to take every day. And that's because, so that's the World Health Organization is that we should get these preformed DHA. You can get it from toxin-free sources through the algae or yeast-based sources. But whether or not we should take DHA every day as a controversial subject in the field of nutrition, probably one of the most controversial in the field of plant-based nutrition. And so basically I laid out all the science. So I have a series of videos that you should be taking or not. Well, it's up to you. And so here's the data that convinced me. If it convinces you, do it. If it doesn't convince you, then don't do it. And I'll update you as new studies come out. And so kind of make up your mind as opposed to something like vitamin B12, critically important to have a regular reliable source of vitamin B12, no controversy whatsoever. So you have to actually do it. But it's still actually not technically part of the Daily Doesn't, but it was included on the Daily Doesn't app. Again, don't need to take it every day, but just kind of as a reminder. But I just saw the other day has vitamin D in there. Really shouldn't be in there. We're gonna take that out of the app and make it a little clearer what I mean by vitamin D12. I mean cyanone, not methyl. And I mean either 250 micrograms a day or 2,500 once a week. Joe Rab asked, what kind of cookware do I use? And of course the real question is what's the best cookware to use? Not what I particularly do. People just assume that I follow all my recommendations which I try to do, but anyway. It's hard to get 90 minutes of exercise every day when I'm sitting on my butt in an airplane all day or whatever, or eating in an airport food court. I do my best. That's all we can all ever do. I think I get the question. So what we wanna stay away from is stay away from nonstick pans for the fluorocarbons. And if I don't have a video already, the hydrofluorocarbons, I have videos in the works talking about some of these, like these Teflon compounds, not a good idea. You can use cast iron pans, you can use stainless steel. And yeah, that would be. And maybe you can look at my videos on aluminum and if that convinces you that you don't wanna add extra aluminum in your life, then that's maybe something you wanna stay away from as well. Okay, Jay Tampa asks, how do I deal with diverticulitis since going plant mace? So to prevent diverticula, which can get inflamed called diverticulitis, so diverticulosis turns into diverticulitis when it gets inflamed. The diverticulosis, these diverticula, are these little outpouchings from your colon caused by pressure when you bear down on a stool. You shouldn't have to bear down on a stool, like having a baby. It should be, stool should be soft and large and should just come out naturally without you having to push it all because you're eating lots of fiber. Where's fiber found? Concentrated in beans, whole grains, but all whole plant foods have fiber. Missing from aluminum foods altogether and missing in large part from processed plant foods. That's one of the reasons we should all try to center our diets around whole plant foods. So the best way to prevent diverticulitis is to not have diverticulosis by eating a high fiber diet. And so populations that have high fiber diets don't get diverticulosis. And in terms of keeping it from getting inflamed, it's actually a very similar advice. I continue to eat lots of whole healthy plant foods. There used to be the thought that people with diverticulosis should not eat like popcorn and seeds because it gets stuck in one of those little outpouchings and they become inflamed because often on surgery took out a piece of bowel and they found a little seed or something in there, but it was a reverse carization. It was the fact that it was inflamed and seed got stuck in there and out the other way around. And indeed, when it was actually put to the test, those who eat foods like popcorns and nuts and seeds actually have lower rates of diverticulitis. And so that was common medical misconceptions. So much in medicine is not based on evidence. That's why there's actually a field. There's a movement called evidence-based medicine. Can you believe that? Like what other science isn't that just presumed? Like evidence-based engineering, evidence-based chemistry, you just kind of assume, right? But not in medicine. That's how far things have gone off the rails. And don't get me started on nutrition. All right. Bill Reeve asked, how do I help bloating on a whole food plant-based diet? And so one way to do that, I don't know if this is the case for you, is to start going slow. So if you've been eating, you know, cheeseburgs and milkshakes your whole life without any fiber, so your microbiome is not ready to all of a sudden jump to count quinoa to large amounts of prebiotics and you can get gas and bloating. And so increase people to go slow. And so there's studies showing, so I have videos on this where you give people like canned chickpeas, randomized people to chickpeas or control, which was cooked carrots, and found that for most people, actually they didn't get any gas and didn't get any bloating. And even those that did, the minority that did went away in two weeks. So they just bought it there, their microbiome got used to all this, the wonderful goodies coming down and had a healthier microbiome and symptoms went away. So, but some people are really sensitive and they wanna start even like small, like a tablespoon of beans a day, right? Start there or move on up if you start experiencing gas and bloating. But eventually you should get to my recommendation, three servings a day of legumes and have a healthy microbiome to support it. And I have a blog called, I just type in gas and beans it'll pop right up, has lots of practical suggestions. There's also those little indigestible sugar, the enzyme drops, worst comes to worst. Important thing is eat yo beans. Patricia, Devani, S, R, greens and fruit smoothies, good for children. I can't get my kids eating up fresh greens. Well, a lot of adults aren't eating greens either, but smoothies is a fantastic way to get greens into children. You can also mix it into sauces and all sorts of things. I got videos on blending vegetables into various dishes. Oh, I guess you do have a green smoothie video. It's not really green. It's more of kind of a red smoothie based on tomato. But certainly I have green smoothie recipes and I'm not sure that cookbook. So in terms of our green smoothies is good for you, I've got a whole series. In fact, I think one of the videos our green smoothies is good for you. And so check out the series. So there's some caveats like dental erosion, like they can be sour. And so you want to like rinse your mouth out with water after you drink it. So you don't rotate your navel, little things like that. But otherwise fantastic way to get lots of greens in you and them. All right, Derek Reeves. Hi. Are there any studies into whether cooked, then cooled oats, have an increase in resistant starch? Oh, just like potatoes. That's interesting. So, Sarge in, for example, pasta white potatoes can become crystallized when you cook then cool it. So potato salad, cold pasta salad and she has more resistant starch, more pre-biotics for good gut bacteria than hot potatoes, hot pasta. And the question is, well, what if you cook and then cool oats, you have the same effect? Oh, it also works with corn porridge. Cold corn, I don't know who's eating cold corn porridge, but it works for that too. Of course, heated back up, it's still crystallized. Does it happen in oats? I do not know, that's a good question. But resistant starch is a good thing. One of the two things that are good gut bacteria eat the other being fiber. What I would recommend is to eat oats anyway, we'll get you to eat the most of them. Of course, there are healthier forms of oats than others. Even in fact, I have a chapter in my upcoming book, not chapter section on what we call food form and where I compare and contrast the health benefits of whole oats, which are actually the whole oat groat compared to steel cut oats, which is an oat cut in like two, three pieces compared to rolled oats, where they basically roll the groat based on really thin slices of oats for like instant oatmeal versus like oat flour, all of which have the exact same ingredients. Oats, one ingredient, oh, whole plant food, oats, right? But they actually have different effects on your body. And so even that process, so by my definition of processing, which is nothing bad added, nothing good taken away, that's unprocessed. 100% green light food, even oat powder, oat flour, right? 100% green light, all whole plant food. It's still better to eat your nutrition intracellularly surrounded by these indigestible cell walls and that's what happens before you powder your carbohydrate. So even whole wheat flour, for example, is, even though it's a whole plant food, has negative physiological effects compared to, for example, wheat berries because you've broken open the cell walls, which is something that does not happen in nature, but happens in a mill. So anyway, so basically powdered carbs, not great, even if they're whole foods, with the exception, interestingly, of pasta, which actually is a digestive closer to intact grains than flour products. Boy, I could go on and on about that. But okay, there's so many more questions. Scorpon asks, I'm not gonna try that last name. What can I do against eczema on your hands? Ah, I've got videos, in fact, they're recent. Like just in the last year and I felt bad. I've gone years and years, there's 1500 videos on the site and hadn't done eczema yet. A type of dermatitis, very common. Ah, so frustrating. So, but finally I did it. And so there's things you can do on the inside, on your outside, things you can put on your hands and put internal aid to get out into your hands. That will help with eczema. Check out the videos on NutritionFacts.org. Lawrence Kersh asks, what's the best way to reduce inflammation, diet or otherwise? Thanks. How about an anti-inflammatory diet? And so if you type in inflammation, in fact, I think it's one of the popular topics. I've got all the videos, in fact, I hand-picked about a dozen of the best videos to watch. And so, you know, ginger, turmeric, some spices, powerful anti-inflammatory. In fact, I've been put head-to-head against corticosteroids and anti-inflammatory drugs, these NSAID drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin in terms of for arthritis and other things. So, yes, powerful anti-inflammatory effects without the downside of something like aspirin ibuprofen, which can have negative gastrointestinal side effects and cause damage to your intestinal tract. All right, but anyway, fiber-rich foods or anti-inflammatory, because of the things that your microbiome makes with the fiber and then your absorb back in your system circulate throughout your body, the antioxidant-rich foods or anti-inflammatory because some of the information is caused by proteins and other molecules in our body. They're attacked by oxidant stress and they actually change their shape and are attacked as foreign by the body and you get this kind of autoimmune friendly fire response. I mean, you can prevent that reaction happening by eating anti-oxidant-rich foods on and on. Lots of videos about inflammation. But great question because chronic low-grade inflammation may play a role in a variety of different chronic conditions. Many of our leading killers, like diabetes and heart disease, et cetera. All right, any reason to take an alpha-lipoca as the supplement? Not that I know of. Cammie black, high-folate and low-vitamin D. All other blood work is perfect. Type of a band take a vegan vitamin D. I'm in the sun daily, eat all sorts of vitamin D-rich foods. Okay, well, if you're in the sun daily, you lost vitamin D-rich foods and your vitamin D is low, then, uh-oh. Looks like we are, the video is halted there. I don't know if it'll catch up or I should just pause. Here, let me see. Maybe I'm the only one that's, it's a, no, it looks like I'm doing fine. I'm sorry, it just must be my browser. So, where were we? Oh, okay. So, the problem is with vitamin D tests is that they're not great tests, such that you send the same blood sample to 100 different laboratories and you get wildly different results such that low vitamin D maximum might not be low vitamin D. You can get tested or you can take vitamin D supplement, 2,000 international units, vitamin D three a day should be all the vitamin D most people need. Um, and I wouldn't worry about, so I wonder if a high, I've never, I don't know why they would test for a folate level. I wonder if that test would pick up folic acid and if it did, if you're taking folic acid supplement, excess folic acid, that might not be a good thing as I talked about in my Facebook live. Mary Kessler isn't calling necessary nutrient absolutely. Then how can it be harmful to one's health is the question. So, there's a lot, so water is a necessary nutrient, drink too much water and you die. You literally die. You wash out the electrolytes from your brain and drop dead. Okay, so that's how something will be necessary nutrient, but it can be harmful. You know, iron, that's another good example. You can be low in iron, that's not good. You can be anemic, but if you have high in iron, you can get all sorts of horrible diseases of your liver and these iron overload, toxicity diseases. And so, but so absolutely. So it's all about not getting excess colon. I talked about that in all my TM AO videos on why we should minimize our intake of eggs, poultry and seafood. And for the same reason, red meat for the carnitine, which turns in the same end product, which is trimethamine oxide in the body. Zach Plunkett asks, if I was personally diagnosed with cancer, would I consider chemo and radiation or would I try combating it with diet? Or would you do both? Ah, I like that there's another option there. So it would depend on the cancer. So for some cancers, such as testicular cancer and childhood leukemia, chemotherapy has remarkable, wonderful success rates. Truly these are triumphs. Unfortunately, for most cancers, most common cancers, breast, lung, colon, et cetera, very disappointing in fact to have a video. Recently came out with a video talking about the improvement in five-year survival rights, dismal. And so I'd have to make a decision always as with anything, particularly in medicine when it has to do with something, life and death important to the health of your family, risk versus benefits, and so I'd see. I mean, is this really gonna help me? Is it just gonna shrink the tumor? Who cares if my tumor shrinks, if I don't get to live longer or feel better? Or maybe even if it doesn't make me live longer by shrinking the tumor, it'll take pressure off some nerve and have less pain. That's the legitimate reason. But regardless of what I'm doing, all of the above you could still eat healthy. And so absolutely I would eat a super healthy diet. And again, that particular diet would depend on what kind of cancers. And so I have data on, for example, breast cancer survival with flax seeds and soy foods improving breast cancer survival, decreasing recurrence rates. There's a lung cancer study on survival and broccoli consumption. And so in the whole that esophageal cancer study with strawberries, so there may be some foods that may be better than others for particular cancers. Okay, oh, and there was that great case report out of True North with that lymphoma case treated with water only fasting followed by a plant-based diet. That was really impressive. Anyway, okay, moving right along. David Woods, if you can't just eat flax seeds every day, oh, if you can't eat flax seeds every day, or chia seeds, we've got an alternative for megathreophilia acid, if so, how many chia seeds, oh, interesting. Okay, so, absolute chia seeds have omega-3s and they have lots of soluble fiber and so are super healthy and have a wonderful texture and ideally you should grind them up though, actually. So powdered flax seeds, ground, excuse me, powdered chia seeds, ground chia seeds would be preferable in terms of maximizing absorption of the omega-3s found within, but in terms of how much? That's a good question. I think flax seeds has 22 grams of ALPalanic acid, the short chain omega-3s per tablespoon. I know about chia seeds, but it's pretty close. They're both pretty high in omega-3s. A walnuts, another choice, hemp seeds, another choice as well, but the problem, the reason I really would strongly encourage you to go the flax seed route instead is because the lignans, these anti-cancer fighting compounds found really constantly only one place in the last flax seeds. There's a hundred times more in flax seeds than almost everything else. There's an exception of sesame seeds, but even then they are a distant second. All right, Chaz Lawn asks, how do you calculate the number of calories to eat based on my weight? Oh, to lose weight, fantastic. There are two, there's two color calculators, one out of school in Pennsylvania was the University of Pittsburgh, I forget, but that anyway, I like the NIH one better. You put in, ooh, NIH body weight planner or something. Let's see if we can find that, body, NIH body weight planner. I know that's not what it's called, but okay, it's called the body weight planner. Oh, I nailed it. All right, so www.niddk.nih.gov.bwb, body weight planner, or just Google, NIH body weight planner, and all will be revealed, and that is thanks to Kevin Hall, one of my, one of, a favorite researcher of mine who came up with these really ingenious equations for helping to calculate calorie changes in dietary calorie intake based on weight loss. And so you can see how people are reporting. So then you don't have to rely so happily on dietary surveys, which people under report on, particularly people who are overweight. Okay, Marie Kessler asked, please discuss the, oh, Warburg effect, influence of carbohydrate sugar to prevent cancer. Oh, that is so cool, I'm gonna have a whole, I'm probably gonna have that in my July webinar along with my fasting videos. So basically, there's a sense that sugar feeds cancer. And so if you have cancer, you shouldn't have any sugar. But see, so yes, cancer cells can thrive off of sugar, but all cells thrive off of sugar. That's what cells eat. So that's like saying Hitler breathes air, so therefore oxygen isn't good for you or something. I mean, it doesn't make any sense just because, anyway. So I mean, what would be interesting is if cancer somehow preferentially likes sugar, otherwise it doesn't make any difference. There are other cancers that actually preferentially eat ketones, actually eat ketones that don't eat sugar. And anyway, the bottom line is that what happens if you eat sugar and you have cancer? I do people like diabetics who have high sugar levels. Does that works in terms of prognosis? I go through all that. And basically sugar isn't good for anybody, but you have these cancer patients avoiding fruit, which is like the worst possible thing you can do because it's one of the healthiest foods on the planet. Kendra Garcia has best and worst foods for eczema. And that's as I just mentioned, there was an idea video on that very topic. So please check it out. And also I did a video on stuff you can apply to your hands for eczema. Carl Kramer asks, since I advised everyone to submit vitamin D and B12, a little iodine. What's wrong with taking a daily multivitamin? Okay. I didn't recommend submitting with iodine unless you're pregnant, but I do encourage people to eat iodine rich foods such as snacking on Nori sheets. So two sheets of Nori seaweed a day to get all the iodine need. There's only about 150 micrograms a day. There's lots of other ways you can get iodine and sprinkle doles on things. So sea vegetables though, that's really where iodine is concentrated, although it's found throughout the kind of plant kingdom, depending on what kind of soil that were grown in. Vitamin D, again, don't need to take vitamin D if you're getting adequate sunlight. And I have videos and all that on exactly what latitude you have to be and how light your skin has to be, et cetera, et cetera. And what latitude, I think I already said that. Okay, vitamin B12, oh yes, of course vitamin B12, non-negotiable, regular reliable source, 2,500 micrograms, cyanocomalamin once a week, probably the cheapest way to do that, that's what I do. Okay, but what's wrong with taking daily multivitamin? Well, okay, so daily multivitamin. Well, first of all, the B12 and the multivitamin is maybe attacked by some of the metals like copper because usually they add minerals, so it's a multivitamin mineral supplement, and can turn the B12 into an analog form, so actually destroy the B12, which ruins the most important reason why you'd be taking a supplement in the first place. And look, you don't need particularly men, or for women who are not of a child-bearing age, I don't need to take excess iron, in fact, that can be dangerous, folic acid may not be a good idea, we should get our folate from beans and greens, and so that's why you just take what you need, you don't wanna, I mean, there's a sense that multivitamins are totally, it's just like, well, it's like insurance policy, as if there are no potential downsides, but that is not the case. Yo bro beans, yo bro beans asks how dangerous are lectins? Yeah, I've got three videos, a video series on lectins. One talks about the Plain Paradox, Dr. Gundry's book, and then I talk about, I talk about all the, everything you ever wanted to know about lectins, exactly how much you have to cook foods to destroy the lectins. Basically, you cook beans until they're edible, you've destroyed the lectins, so it's not something you have to worry about, unless you're trying to sprout kidney beans or something crazy like that, and nobody does that, and no one certainly shouldn't do that, otherwise you would get very sick, violently sick, don't try it at home. Leanne A asks, what was my lunch today? Oh, great question, well, so I actually had lunch ready for my Facebook Live, and then I had dessert between Facebook Live and YouTube. Dessert was, of course, barry dates, it is officially barry date season people, and so the date people, here's my favorite dates, they don't pay me to say that, although they do give me dates, so I will disclaim that, but only because I have never found dates that taste better, not saying there aren't better tasting dates, oh, actually domestically, in Saudi Arabia, I was given the best dates in my life, but I haven't been able to find a way to import those, so, but here, the only date, the best dates, I'm able to get my hands on these barry dates, and they just came out, it's always right for my birthday, so they send me dates, and they are the most delicious thing, it should put them in the freezer, they're like caramel candy, oh, so I had that in my favorite kind of apple, honey, crisp apples, again, this is the season, I wait all year, and of course, last week, papas season, in fact, someone, I was speaking in Ohio the other week, actually gave me papas in line, my absolute favorite fruit, the largest, Native American, North American fruit, it's like a banana mango custard, delicious tropical amazingness, I actually have some papas growing in the backyard, hopefully they're both male and female, otherwise I will never have any papas, it's a really interesting way to garden, but anyway, I'm off on a tangent, that was my dessert, what was lunch, ah, I'm out of time, but my lunch was a, was tomato sauce, I was spaghetti tomato sauce, so whole wheat pasta obviously, and then spaghetti sauce made with canned, whole tomatoes, in a not, in BPA free can, 200 blender, blend them up, can make my own little tomato sauce, and then I just sauteed in wine, the onions and garlic, and added some capers, and a few calamans, olives, not too many to ruin my sodium intake for the day, and then lots of fresh herbs from the garden, in the back we have sage and rosemary and oregano, not traditional Italian seasoning herbs, at least the rosemary, but delicious, and what else did I put in there? Oh, we had bell peppers, and we had some hot peppers from the CSA community, Spur Dad Culture thing we belong to, so lots of peppers, and then of course, grains, kale, three bags of this little baby kale that we got so good, mostly I should just put in the pasta water, so it cooked along with the pasta, but of course I kept some to keep that mursonace, enzyme intact, to attack all the other glucose inlays to make that wonderful surfur fame, you can read all about that or watch in my video, the second strategy to something about broccoli, anyway, I could have sprinkled some mustard powder, but anyway, and then put that all together, add some little hot sauce, oh, no I didn't do it, I didn't have beans, I just been traveling, normally I always have beans, open can of beans, I didn't have any beans, I should just make some beans, so I should have added some beans, I'm not gonna get that check, I mean I make the Daily Dozen today, quick! All right, for a late afternoon snack, I will eat some hummus, thank you so much for your reminder, I should have had my Daily Dozen app open, free on my phone and Android, thanks everybody, see you later, see you next month.