 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. This is going to be an exciting podcast. Now you know aging is thought to be a losing battle but it doesn't have to be. In just a minute I'm going to speak with actress author and health spokesperson Suzanne Summers. Yes she's here on the podcast after a long wait. She's 73 years young. Suzanne who you probably remember from threes company step-by-step and other television series she defies virtually every stereotype about getting older and in her latest book a new way to age she shares her insights about how to live a healthy happy life no matter how old you are. So today we'll discuss how to stop aging like your parents and start aging with energy, vibrancy, confidence and even get this a strong libido. So Suzanne welcome to the program. So so pleased to be speaking with you. It's great to have you here you are you know really one of the the true forces and pioneers in the wellness movement and and throughout your career and even in your writing you've attacked getting old or aging head-on and I you know I applaud you for that and I also applaud you before we go any farther about being open and frank with your listeners your readers your followers about health struggles that you've had and about finding alternatives to traditional medicine to help you in your health issues. So that congratulations again. Thank you you know sometimes in the darkness is the light and I think that this journey that I'm on that I never planned to be on began with a cancer diagnosis over 20 years ago and at that time when I was presented with standard of care which would be chemotherapy etc. I said I can't do that and my doctor said you'll die. I said honestly with the way I think I believe that I personally would die if I do what you want me to do now that does not make for a good relationship between patient and doctor and what I do what I do know and what I explain in in my new book is most people are more comfortable choosing allopathic medicine meaning here's the problem here's the drug for that problem and that's the way most people are going to go. What I decided to do for myself and then present it to my constituency is if you're interested in another way this is what I do I never give advice I'm not a doctor but I know I always thought Stephen that when I was 73 I would be old and chronologically I am but I'm not old and I believe it's because of the choices I've been making over the last two decades for myself and when I lectured of women I always say every night before you go to bed make an imaginary list and in that list put an imaginary line down the middle and then think of every choice you made food choices thought choices chemical choices throughout the day and ask yourself does that choice lead me towards great health or away from it and what I would say to my audience is you'll be surprised how many choices you make away from good health all day long so do I do it perfect no but I think about I think about every chemical I'm exposed to I have an organic skincare line because I wanted it for myself with absolutely no chemicals we even got that coveted toxic free insignia on ours which means as we grown organically extracted organically and nothing upwind or downwind of the product can be toxic to contaminate it I want it for myself but there's a whole constituency out there and you're running into it to people it's like an ocean liner it takes a long time to take the ocean liner and move it around but it's starting to move there are a lot of us who don't issue allopathic medicine when you need it you need it and it's a godsend and surgery nobody does it better than in this country etc but if you can first take from my perspective the non-drug alternative choice I feel I'm better off having done that so some people would you know look at you and your career and say wow she's always been a health fanatic she probably was you know eating perfectly at age 15 was that the case or was the cancer diagnosis the real switch that changed things the veiled gift I call it that was the switch I you know I did TV series for what 16 or 18 years and on every TV series they've got what they call the craft table it should be called the craft table because it's filled with things that nature never designed everything seems to have orange powder on it the only orange powder I know of it's healthy for you is turmeric and there's no turmeric on a craft table no so never never seen one that's what I mean out of the out of the darkness there's light if you look for it I believe because of my being diagnosed with cancer that I'm healthier today because it was like a proverbial shaking of the shoulders and I had to say to myself at that time what have I done in my diet and lifestyle that I played host to this disease and I started looking at the realities of my life it wasn't that I ain't bad I just didn't eat well I didn't think about the food that I was eating I didn't think about sleep you know I just had started writing books at that time I always felt if I could stay up all night and write and then the phone doesn't ring and nobody bothers me I was missing you know sleep is a game-changer I'm sure you agree yeah so I just took charge of I decided to eat as though my life depends upon it and I eat great I ate a high fat high vegetable high protein diet I I mean if you can eat good quality fats you can have chicken piccata with lemon butter capersauce and there's a lot of great food that you can eat so it's not like I eat boring food I eat amazing food and I grow my own food and that's nurturing and thrilling and a cauliflower tastes so different when you cut it from the garden and you bring it right to the kitchen you eat it raw on the way up and then you get up there and lightly steam it and I like to put garlic and olive oil and parsley and and a little butter over it and just sort of scoop up the art of the cauliflower so I I really look at cancer as a veiled gift and it woke me up and I love I love the following that I have these are all people men and women who want quality of life we want to live this long extended life that we're all afforded now like it or not we're all going to live longer but who wants to live this long life without quality and my quality comes from bioidentical hormones I've been on replacement for 20 years and good food choices I have love in my life which I think is a big factor I love my family I I do a little exercise every morning which I so I've been doing it for about 15 years knowing that we are approximately 40 trillion cells you and I some very anal retentive person counted I guess and I know that that's our communication system right but all all the cells talk to one another so every morning without the first thing I do when I wake up is I isolate one cell and I say to that one cell I love my life I love my husband I love my family I love the food I get to eat I love that I live in America I love my work and then I add any more gratitudes that I have for that day and then I release that cell and in my mind's eye I know that little guy's got to go tell 40 trillion other cells okay guess what we love our life we love the food we get to eat we love living in America we love our husband and there's it takes a nanosecond and I feel this happiness and conversely if I woke every morning say I don't like my marriage and my work sucks and I hate living in this country and all the negatives guess what the little guys got to go tell everybody so that taught me that we are actually in control of our happiness or unhappiness we choose it and I think it's the same way with health we are in control of our health by the choices we make knowing none of us is perfect especially me but that we do the best we can to make the best choices relative to health every day so that's a great point so what do you think is the biggest misconception about aging you know now that now that you're 73 is it exactly what you're talking about or it's getting old inevitable chronological aging is inevitable I mean and you can't lie about your age anymore there's Google women used to lie about their age all the time but I actually celebrate my age every year when my birthday comes I think it's actually better for my brand what I'm loving is trying to be aspirational for women that it's not about facelifts I mean if you see me in person I don't have a lot of wrinkles but I'm certainly you know my neck and things like that I leave it because I feel that it would be dishonest in the message that I'm putting out that if I started lifting everything up but what I find through hormones and then I can this book I interviewed Dr. Terry Hirtog of Belgium he's quite renowned in Europe he's who he's a third-generation endocrinologist he is the one who made thyroid legal in Europe and he's very forward-thinking so I have been injecting human growth hormone for probably 15 years which is an anti-aging hormone everybody's so afraid of human growth hormone but when you and I were both young and making a full complement of hormones guess what we're also making human growth hormone and so that keeps my muscles from deteriorating and he then said to me in that same shot put IGF-1 for elasticity which is what you get from a compound in pharmacy and also put alpha thymosin-1 which builds up your immune system in the same shot so a lot of people are afraid of shots I'm not I don't even feel it it's a little teeny needle but I've noticed since I was doing that less wrinkling and in the in a natural way that it's not that kind of super smooth skin that that that looks false it's it's it's it's a reverse aging they're just so many new things happening so it sounds like I'm afraid of getting old I'm not I want because I I really am just I have I'm in love with my husband I I met him when I was 20 and I feel if there's anything to new one another in other lives I just knew the day I met him I was in therapy at the time I said to my therapist I met who I'm gonna marry today he doesn't know it but this I want to live a long time with him so he he does everything I tell it like if I hand him a handful of supplements I go take these he just takes them because I think for 83 he looks amazing and he's got energy and juice and when we're around his contemporaries they're all starting to be hunched over and bad hips and bad knees and and they don't have the zest and the life and the sharpness his brain is is like that well it has to be the fish oil and the testosterone which I give him his shot every Tuesday and by the way in this book Dr. Abraham Morgantala I'm sure you know who he is he's on the faculty at Harvard and he conducted a study and he called me for another book of several years ago he said I've got something interesting he said I just at that time it was a two-year study now it's like a seven-year study that men would come to me with elevated PSAs or prostate cancer and and he backed up all the science in this book so it's not me saying this this is Dr. Morgantala he said I found with each man that when I gave them testosterone their PSA levels went down their prostates would shrink I said how does that work he said well I love this analogy said the prostate is like a woman's breasts and in a woman's breasts we have ducks where we make milk he said but in a man's prostate in the ducks is where testosterone makes food for the sperm so when a man is making a full complement of testosterone the prostates nice and tight and small but as he declines in testosterone the prostate starts to enlarge looking for its major building block according to Dr. Morgantala and as a layperson I got that that visual I went well doesn't that make sense and because young men don't get prostate cancer elevated PSAs unless there's some aberration some exposure to chemicals or things like that so that's that's life extending too that's giving men a long life of quality and in the end isn't that what we all want I want to live to the very end whatever that is and just die the way people used to die just good night Gracie that's right that's right most of my listeners won't won't get that joke but that's okay so you know you became very controversial in as a woman with breast cancer who says no no no bioidentical hormones are very important and and I know you say look I'm not a doctor and I'm not giving you know medical advice but you were kind of a lightning rod and I guess still are yeah for so how is our listener or viewer gonna take what you're saying and deal with that when they have breast cancer and their doctor says you got to go on hormone suppressant so you got to have you know radiation therapy chemotherapy what say you well I often question I was of the first generation who took birth control pills now those of us well gosh that was great you can manipulate your your cycle by a hot date with Alan I could move my cycle to Monday and take a few more pills through the was a terrible thing to do because you're going against the nature in your body anytime you try to out think nature you're going to get in trouble so the brain according to what I understand with having written 27 books is it recognizes a reproductive person as valuable I'm speaking biologically molecular biology biology we are here for one reason and one reason only according to biology and that is to perpetuate these species now isn't it interesting that we start getting our cancers at the end of our reproductive years that that says to me the brains going ah this person isn't valuable anymore let's get rid of them let's give them a breast cancer let's give them ovarian cancer let's give them prostate cancer so when I when I discovered bioidentical hormones I had three terrible years prior to that I couldn't sleep I was gaining weight my mood changed I'm an upbeat happy person but when you don't sleep night after night after night and you're sweating all night you're not in a very good mood I remember one day I sort of lashed out at Alan which is very unusual for me and he said you know marriage can only take so much of this I went oh my gosh no I'm not the last thing I want to do is send you away I went from doctor to doctor to doctor I finally found an endocrinologist in Santa Barbara who's doing something about bioidentical hormones for those who don't understand bio bioidentical is biologically identical to the human hormone an exact replica of what your body once made or still make some of the the compounding pharmacies make bioidentical hormones out of soy and yams things like that so I took my blood test before I went to the endocrinologist I drove up there like a maniac the day of my appointment and she looked at my blood work she said oh you poor thing I said what you must feel awful I said I do I said I'm I'm a upbeat happy person I have days when I think the world would be better off without me that's how real hormonal imbalance becomes that's how real it is she said well we're gonna start you on bioidentical hormones she said you're making very little estrogen and almost no progesterone I now realize that's the combo for breast cancer later on I'll get to that the minute so she said I can't give you everything you need right away I said why she said because you could literally go crazy took you a long time to lose them you've got to build them back up slowly she said but you're gonna start feeling a little better right away and she said it will probably take the better part of this year to find your sweet spot so in the first two weeks I honestly did start feeling better and I would call her with my symptoms I call the symptoms of seven dwarves of menopause itchy bitchy sleepy sweaty bloated forgetful and all dried up and I would call her saying I itch today and I I'm in a bad mood today she'd say what are your stressors been and if it was there was no obvious stressor in my life then she'd be as okay let's raise this a little bit and raise that a little bit she understood the ratio is perfect and it did take me the better part of the year to get me back and when I got me back it was just the most incredible thing I was sleeping through the night I didn't need to take any over-the-counter drugs I was in a good mood all the time my weight went away my hair became break an indicator of poor hormonal balance is hair and you can see it on women because we have longer hair but I know this sounds shallow but at 73 I love that I have healthy hair I love it because it says to me if my hair is healthy then inside I'm healthy and what this is all about Steven for me is keeping your insides young keeping your organs and glands in tip-top shape keeping your gut in tip-top shape which you know much more about than I do I don't want to pick your brain one day and and it all manifests on the outside if your gut is healthy you know your skin will glow if your organs and glands are operating at max your your body won't wrinkle so much you'll just have more enthusiasm and zest and it's such an incredible way to live and you have to give up so little you have to give up chemicals as best you can control by what you put on your skin you know with skin care when when you look at your arm under a microscope what our pores look like big holes and so then the visual is put a chemical cream I don't care how expensive it is a chemical cream on your skin and then imagine where's that gonna go it's gonna drop into your bloodstream then where's it gonna go well chemicals love fatty organs and glands so they go on a rampage in your bloodstream their favorite is the brain which is the fattiest of all and one of the things when I wrote my book toxic that I found so interesting is that as as we build up in chemicals the brain the pituitary and hypothalamus shrinks to make room for more chemicals more chemicals you take in the more the poor little brain and hypothalamus and to a tear you got to hide in the corner I sometimes wonder is this where dementia comes from is this where all the brain issues of today ADD ADHD OCD all-timers you know I'm not a doctor but I'm just as a critical thinker going can't be good to have chemicals up there so I recommend that I do myself that other people do it because this isn't medical HEPA filters in your house to just suck the chemicals out clean with non-toxic cleaners I happen to make one it's my chemical cleaner is made from colloidal silver which as you know is is safe enough to drink I don't recommend it but it really does the job and just start putting yourself in control rather than waiting for the big fist of life to come at you you know most people wait till they are in the catastrophic state and then they start climbing uphill what I'm trying to do for myself and to my readers is start now in fact one quick story I was in at the vanity fair Oscar party a few years ago and I was standing there I was kind of I like to watch and this beautiful girl was standing in the corner beautiful she looked like Scarlett Johansson beautiful and I could tell she wanted to come over and talk to me but I could tell she was nervous and finally she worked up the nerve to talk to me I was think that's so funny because I'm so normal and she said I just hope when I'm your age that I look like you and I said thank you very much I said start now start now it's never too soon yeah I think it's a that's a great point you know and that's actually why I wrote my book the plant paradox family cookbook because one of the things that I'm I now have two young grandchildren and I realized that the you know the sooner my daughter and her husband started feeding those kids right the better chance they have of getting you know exactly where you and I want to be and with good lifelong health right and in that book and I want to echo what you just said there's a very famous study that anybody can look up it's called the Appleton Wisconsin school study where in Appleton Wisconsin a lovely old town I visited it they had a lot of issues with behavioral issues in their junior high truancy a lot of trip to the junior principals office and so what they did is they contracted with a local cafe to provide breakfast organic breakfast and lunches for all the kids and then they taught all the parents you know okay let's replicate this at night at dinner the best you can and they actually followed truancy behavior and academic performance and low and behold truancy drop behavior issues went away and academic performance got better and better and they were so excited and here's the punch line they said well we need to kind of institutionalize this so we're going to contract with a food service provider because we're overwhelming this poor little cafe and you know we're going to keep doing this well and I won't mention the food service provider a very large corporation low and behold the minute the food service provider came in everything went right back to normal because they weren't actually using organic ingredients and touchy-feely California speak they weren't putting in any love into the food that they were making and it's just it's a great study and I so agree with you because I believe it's about the food and I know you do too it's about the food I think organic is it's non-negotiable in today's world I mean I don't know when we ever thought it was a good idea to spray poison on our food but it's not a good idea I a story for you I was watching when Anthony Bourdain was alive I really enjoyed his show and I love the way he loved food and he went to there's a very famous chef in France and I can't remember if it was Michel Girard or was one of those famous chef names and so they went from Paris to the little village where the chef was from and when they got to the village they went to the school that the chef went to and in the school cafeteria were the women making lunch and and the kids ate off of dishes that were made of real you know glass you know not real stuff real stuff and they made a great vegetable soup and all the kids finished all their soup and then they made this great chicken with sauce that you and I would love with all the pan juices and everything and and the potatoes and the vegetables and the kids every plate was empty because they were feeding those kids good quality homegrown a real food I always say if you can pick it pluck it milk it or shoot it you can eat it as long as it's been grass-fed and and not sprayed with poison so I think you and I are on a very similar path in that food is all important today and that's one of the big choices we make every day I I would have a very hard time eating process food today knowing all that I know about what it does so what do you what do you say to your listeners and my listeners that well you I don't live in Palm Springs or Malibu or Montecito and I don't have an organic garden and it snow is half of the year uh yeah that sounds great Suzanne but that's not my life how do people do this in the Midwest for instance where I'm from yeah I usually get the it's it's so expensive it's really not so much more expensive now than it was at one time because more and more grocery stores there are I don't know how pervasive Whole Foods is but I know that there are other chains around the country that for the people like us who just demand organic food so let's say it's a little more expensive what's what's the most important thing in your life is health so sometimes you you don't get the new pair of shoes you instead buy high quality you know if you're going to eat beef you know New Zealand or Australian grass-fed organic beef organic chicken I love fish but man they're sure messing up the the oceans you know for our fish oil we gotta get little Alaskan Pollock way up it's it's hard to find clean fish anymore which is really a shame but that bite we you know what can we do there's nothing you can do about it yeah you know I give a shout out to Walmart there's a lot to not like about them but they've really insisted that their organic food is basically the same price as conventional all of their produce and you know and I congratulate them and you know and they have the power to do that they can tell their suppliers hey you know we're not going to pay you unless this is organic same thing with same thing with Costco yeah with Costco great quality organic at a great price you can buy in bulk so I don't know what other chains are doing that but the fact that there are two major American chains doing that it's available it's about how much do you want it how healthy do you want to be yeah maybe you might have to drive a little further maybe it's a bit inconvenient but to feel the way I feel at this age I when I'm in New York I'm around a lot of people who are a lot younger than me in their 40s and a lot of them are a lot older than me in their 40s why if you are if you're in New York City and you look up anywhere on any one of those high-ride buildings you'll see multiple EMF towers electromagnetic fields that is like brain you know pulsating through your brain they have them in the elevators the lifestyle there the lack of sunshine the lack of of calm it ages people so much earlier and so if that's where you live that's where you live but that's where your choices are more important than ever of your food and how you keep your apartment and in terms of of HEPA filters and non-toxic cleaning agents it makes a big difference my husband is is like the canary in the coal mine he carries the HLA gene those people who carry that gene are more susceptible to chemicals than other people if he walks into somebody's house who's just sprayed air freshener he starts getting facial tics and facial spasms that's how sensitive he is and when this happens to him I think he he's going to go down first from the chemicals but we're all getting hit we're all getting it and so I had a beautiful perfume made for me by Tom Ford can you imagine this beautiful perfume I can't wear it because Alan is just too allergic to anything I can wear natural vanilla oils I put I think the the oils are very interesting and every night before he goes to bed I put frankincense here I go just like baby Jesus put a little frankincense here don't have any myrrh but he was good enough for him I also have to tell you this I really enjoy taking care of him he takes care of me and so many other ways and I take care of him and health and that's that's great in a relationship when you take care of each other it's very comforting loving gives you a lot of peace a lot of calm I think that's a good point that I want to come back to and I want to talk about relationships because you and your husband have now been together for 50 years and as a Hollywood couple how the heck does a Hollywood couple stay together for 50 years that is certainly not the norm yet come on give us some secrets here oh it's true love you know it's I feel like we have what everybody looks for and we just are lucky enough to find it this time around and it's so meaningful to me it it means everything to me so I cherish it and cherish him and take care of him and vice versa and and I think one of them there are two reasons that we're so happy he makes me great coffee in the morning I don't mean mediocre I mean great it's organic he walks it around the bed so he just hands it to me and he waits for me to take the first sip and I give him a thumbs up sometimes I go not as great as yesterday because we're on a one to ten scale and the second cup he walks around the bed also because I don't like it passed across because it's hot and it might spill okay that's how I'm spoiled three times a week sometimes four this is my bad habit uh we meet right here I'd love you to come over sometime a big Al's bar here at our house and it started a few years ago I never had a hard liquor drink in my life because I come I've written several books about being a child of an alcoholic and my alcoholic father and my husband I was writing all day and he buzzes my office and he says you want a date and I said yeah he said meet me at the bar big Al's bar so I go down there and we shared a tequila and uh listened to music and pretty soon we were dancing and it was so lovely that we couldn't wait to do it again and so three four times a week would do that now I had a residency in Las Vegas two years ago and I didn't hire a writer instead Alan and I at big Al's bar drinking tequila wrote the act and in all my years of performing in Vegas they were the greatest reviews I've ever gotten and I thought because it was absolutely true no BS we cleaned out all the BS sitting at the bar and so anyway coffee in the morning tequila at night take care of each other so is is there such a thing as a soul mate he's my soul mate I never knew if I believed in or not but but he is he is um I once I once read one of Shirley McClain's books didn't everybody at that time and she talked about the light institute in gallus day on New Mexico and how you could go there and they could regress you into past lives and I said to Alan I don't know if I believe it or not wouldn't be interesting I said I know you're not into this I said but that's what I'd like for my birthday presents $1,500 for four days so we went and he said it's all right I'm gonna buy tamales there's homemade tamales at this little grocery store on the corner I'll sit on the on the bluff and look at the beautiful scenery so I go into this little hut and she has me lie on a massage table she had me undressed which I thought okay I don't know I have to get undressed but she covered me with a sheet and then she stood over me with her hands and then all of a sudden tears came out of my eyes and landed in my ears and all of a sudden I was in a different place and time and there was Alan and this was like I don't know why I know it was Mesopotamia I don't know why but he was there and then there is another life in Ireland he's never Alan he's my son he's my brother he's something so maybe there is something maybe it's all BS and I grant that but maybe there is something to we've been here before we'll be here again and we hook up with the same people but the day I met him I walked in and it was you know like a light bulb went off no I I met my wife Penny at 20 years old singing in a singing group in Montego Bay Jamaica and she was in the audience with her parents and we I walked over and introduced myself and we we spent the the evening talking and that morning we both decided we were going to marry each other she bet she went back to her parents room so I met the man I'm going to marry and fortunately we were both geographically undesirable because I was at Yale as an graduate she was at the University of California Santa Barbara and my parents lived in Atlanta her parents lived in Greenwich Connecticut but we had a hiatus for a while but long long story short we actually reconnected by her seeing me on the Today Show when I was a famous baby heart transplant surgeon and we've been together for over 25 years now and the interesting thing is we even though we diverged our lives for a reason she never stopped looking for me and I never stopped looking for her because yeah you you know a soulmate and I I counsel I really do counsel my younger friends you shouldn't have to make your spouse or your significant other into something you want to make them into it is not going to work I've never actually seen it work successfully you'll know and just kind of keep working at it until you know so you found your soulmate oh yeah absolutely absolutely and I dedicated one of my first book to her that she's my soulmate and you know your audience doesn't know but pretty soon you and I are going to be neighbors that's right and I have a feeling I will meet your wife and I have a feeling the four of us will get along really well yeah I think so and as long as you have us over to the bar but we'll have we'll have the tequila see margarita no because there's too much sugar in margaritas why don't drink margaritas just just tequila with ice ah okay all right and I hope it's dark tequila and I'll go into that later okay all right so now a hot button topic to use an interesting word so people assume that having a low libido as you get older is normal and it's unavoidable uh you beg to differ uh why is that and what what can everybody do about this well for a woman when she loses her sex hormones estrogen progesterone testosterone dha for mental and a few others she cannot feel sex she's capable of having sex but she cannot feel and that's what I was going through in those three years here I desired my husband I couldn't feel anything um so when I restored in in and got it in perfect balance my sex hormones whoa my sex drive came back and now I was at an age where my children are grown and out of the house and um I we were free to be now there's a lot of talk right now because I was on Megan Kelly show on the today show um I guess last year with my last book and she said I hear you and your husband have sex twice a day and I said yeah but I sleep through one of them I said what is it about men at four in the morning well I'm my god then the social media I got this thing Suzanne Summers condones marital rape and I thought marital rape are you kidding what I was really trying to do and talk about my sex life is not too much information what I was trying to do is to say it ain't over it ain't over and if you accept that it's over you've kind of thrown in one towel and I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet I I love to get dressed up we go out for dinner you know I have a tequila and I love those evenings I love to date I love the whole keeping the romance alive and here in the desert you can do that so well because it's conducive to that so I'm just trying to let women know not you know look at me look what we're doing pretty much every day and I know that sounds like a lot but it's just it's there and he's juiced up on testosterone and you know with testosterone also what he loves is he works out with free weights he's on testosterone and HGH and DHEA but he's very developed like really big biceps which you cannot do without testosterone and HGH helps um building a bone and muscle so estrogen and testosterone and anabolic the the they build it's what is it osteoblasts and osteoclasts build and burrow bone and build bone that's hormonally driven so old ladies who are constantly breaking hips and and fracturing things just because of hormonal loss I can look at a woman I just know the state of her health by her hair by her posture you know the ladies who are old but skinny but they've got a big belly that's hairline fractures in their spine that eventually that spine collapses they get shorter pushes the spine pushes out the abdomen right pretty soon she's got this big belly that has nothing to do with what she's eaten so I I pay a lot of attention to my bone structure to keeping my bones I take calcium but always with vitamin k and I love the the um the description for vitamin k it's good for your heart it's good for your heart because calcium as you know wants to go into the soft tissues the arteries this is your you should be saying this and the k is like a little traffic pop this is not in at all let's go back into the bones and that's why k is good for the heart because it keeps them away from the soft tissues I just find um health so fascinating understanding how the body works so fascinating and what I say to my readers is you are the contractor this is your body your life no one's going to care as much as you I don't care how great your doctor is it's your life so you be the contractor you read you find out you learn as much as you can and then when you go to doctors you can go in knowledgeable and be able to have a conversation that starts here rather than the doctor having to start a kindergarten and you'll be so far ahead of the game and I hear from women all over the world I feel so privileged I have 25 million books in print around the world and I hear from all over the place of how this has been life-changing for women and now the men are coming because the men saw that the wives were doing really good and they want some of that too and uh this is just as much for men as for women uh it's equal you have hormones we have hormones you have more testosterone than estrogen and we have more estrogen than testosterone but it's interesting you know when you see old people who have weak voices and um man boobs on men that's because as we decline in in hormones a man's testosterone as it keeps dropping your shoulders drop your stomach gets bigger you get kind of grumpy you get kind of growl jolly and look what happened your estrogen is now higher than your testosterone and that's why you speak with the high voice and you get the man boobs same thing for the women as she starts to decline the um all the itchy bitchy sleepy sweaty bloater forgetful and all dried up that that drops down and pretty soon she's she's got more testosterone than estrogen and I don't know if lauren bakal was just a real estrogen kind of but she had that deep voice you know if you remember so um we want to stay a woman and we want to stay a man in the right balance in the right ratios and um have quality of quality of life long life is great the quality to me is the key yeah and I think that's the point that I try to make in all my books that this is this is the only house I'm ever going to live in yeah and if we put as much effort into taking care of this house as we do to the home we occupy or our car right or our outfits imagine what could happen and you know and I thank you again for writing a new book so how do people find you as if nobody knew uh where we're going to find this book oh go to amazon go to my website it'll be all over the place there are two other things in there that I just want to bring up that every book startles me I never know what I'm going to really I don't have a preconceived notion other than with each one the title a new way to age I'm I'm doing it and then I bring in all these incredible doctors and scientists what came up as the most cutting edge is cellular health which I thought about in terms of communication like I said before yeah but now there's something so fantastic we all know when the pipes in our house get clogged and corroded that the the water doesn't flow and the house the pipes don't work as well well the same thing happens with the cells with aging the cells get filled with debris is called autography there's a new supplement called senolytic activator correct that cleans out cellular debris it's like cleaning the the rotor-rooter and the pipes of your house well how about that and then there's the other one NAD um like not oh do you know it's it's niticamide adnein dinucleotide I could be wrong on the first word I think it's inamide yep yes thank you thank you um that repairs DNA breaks before other things that's cellular health again that's reverse aging so there's that there's there's so many new wonderful things coming down the pipe and those two things I just mentioned um very inexpensive like for the senolytic activator you only take it once a week eight bucks a month the NAD is a little more expensive than not terrible so if these this is a good time to be aging really a good time by the way I just want to say one thing to you of what a what a impact you've made that people are talking about your approach to health and food and and gut health and I think that's one of the most important areas right now everybody's got something wrong with your gut so you've done an amazing job and your career I follow your career from all the facets of your career it's really incredible so congratulations well thanks I'm just echoing Hippocrates who said 2,500 years ago all disease begins in the gut and he was right all right so hopefully we'll see uh walking the dogs in the neighborhood on the mountain yeah on the mountain what a pleasure thank you so much thank you all right take care okay it's time for the audience question and Laura M on YouTube asks is it possible to address varicose veins with the plant paradox program well it's interesting most varicose veins actually come from losing the valves that are basically locks in a canal that allow blood to get pumped back to our heart from our legs if you think about it we don't have a heart down in our feet which would be a useful thing because blood has to be pumped uphill about four or five feet instead we actually have muscles in our calves and our thighs that when they contract they actually squeeze on our veins in our legs and those veins all have little one-way valves that allow blood just like in a canal in a river allow blood to go forward and then close so it doesn't fall backwards and most people who stand for a living for instance surgeons get varicose veins bank tellers get varicose veins grocery checkout get varicose veins because number one you're standing but you're not exercising your muscles and so slowly over the passage of time those valves lose their ability to match one of the good news is part of the plant paradox program is to make you more active to make you conscious of moving to make you do some simple exercises and so the answer is you can improve varicose veins at any point in your life but eating is not going to be the big component to that it's movement that makes a difference you have to have rather than wearing your heart on your sleeve you have to wear your heart in your legs so great question and that's all we have for today and thank you for listening and watching the Dr. Gundry podcast we'll see you next week before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you