Superfoods for Brain and Immune Health

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor Hyman Show. Food is medicine, but then that begets the question of, well, what foods contain the most medicine and how do you grow foods that contain the most medicine? And it turns out that regenerative agriculture is that method. That we've seen a 50% drop in lots of minerals and other nutrients in vegetable crops over the last fifty years. So even if you're eating your broccoli, it's not as good it used to be.

Now before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale, and that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well, check out my membership community, Doctor Hyman Plus. And if you're looking for curated, trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, doctorhyman.com, for my website store and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Today, I wanna zero in on the research behind five specific foods that you can add to your diet for tremendous capacity to support your brain and health and make us feel, think, and perform better.

Now some of you may be familiar with a few of these foods, but others may surprise you. So let's jump right in with the first food that can literally change the way your brain works for the better. The first is dark green leafy vegetables and specifically a category called cruciferous vegetables, also known as brassicas, based in the broccoli family. Kale, collards, spinach, arugula, Swiss chard, collard greens, mustard greens, bok choy, romaine lettuce, turnip greens, beet greens, watercress, endive escarole, broccoli rabe, dandelion greens, radicchio, watercress, lettuce, chicory, pretty much anything green. What is the mechanism of green leafy veggies and the positive effect on their brain?

Well, there's a lot of reasons. Antioxidants and protective phytochemicals. Now we don't think of phytochemicals as essential nutrients, but they kinda are. They're they're protective foods. Right?

We know harmful foods like sugar and processed food and so forth, but they're also protective foods, and we wanna eat more of those and less of the harmful foods. Now green leafy vegetables contain anti inflammatory molecules and antioxidants, things like vitamin c and e, carotenoids, which are the green my orange things, actually, also, but they're in the green vegetables, lutein, which is great for eyes, alpha linolenic acid, which is plant based omega threes. They contain polyphenols, which are these plant based anti inflammatory chemicals, flavonoids, things like camphorol. All these things reduce oxidative stress, which causes inflammation, and they reduce, more importantly, neuroinflammation, which is inflammation of your brain. Now oxidative stress damages your cells, and it can contribute to the formation and accumulation of something called beta amyloid plaques.

So you might have heard of amyloid theory of Alzheimer's. And amyloid, just to be clear, is not the cause of Alzheimer's, although many for many years thought it was, and we spent billions of dollars studying research to prove that it was, but we never could be successful. It's sort of a side effect of inflammation, and it's the body's attempt to deal with a bad set of circumstances. So it's sort of a bystander in the process of dementia, and it does gum up your brain. But it's it's really not the issue.

It's the inflammation that's driving the amyloid development. And some of these foods can be protected. Right? So some studies suggest that polyphenols can inhibit the formation of beta amyloid fibrils, which are these plaques that are common in response to inflammation in the brain, then they gum up the brain that ends up causing dementia. Now they also promote clearance of these plaques from the brain.

So these polyphenols actually help the brain clear amyloid, which is great. This explains probably, maybe some other effects on the cognitive function that we're seeing. There's also other nutrients like vitamin k, filoquinone that plays a crucial role in regulating calcium and activates proteins that help keep calcium out of areas where it shouldn't be, such as the brain's blood vessels. Vitamin k also has anti inflammatory effects, and that can reduce neuroinflammation. It's also involved in the synthesis of important fats called sphingolipids.

It doesn't matter what they call them, but, basically, it's a class of lipids that are crucial components of your brain cell membrane. So your brain cells have membranes, and they have to be made up of the right fats. And if they don't have the right fats, you end up with more inflammation. Now these lipids play a role in cell signaling, and they maintain the integrity and the function of your brain cells. Really important.

So what else besides green leafy vegetables is protective for your brain? What's the second big group of of food or foods that can do this? Well, small cold water fish. Let me explain why. Now I call these the smash fish.

Salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring. Now you might not like them, but they are the most nutritionally dense, the lowest in toxins, and the highest in omega three fats. Plus, trout and oysters are also great. Now why is fish good for our brains? What does the research actually say?

Well, a new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition looked at the diet of seven ninety eight adults, age 65 to 97, and they looked at a hundred and two item questionnaire using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Now, participants were categorized based on adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Now, we can argue what is the Mediterranean diet? Is there a better diet out there? But it's basically a Whole Foods healthy diet.

Right. And it's not. And I mean, what is Mediterranean diet? It could be pizza and pasta. That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about whole foods. Right? Lots of veggies, fruit, olive oil, nuts, seeds, fish, whole grains, beans. That's a Mediterranean diet. Now the higher adherence to the diet was correlated with a fifty five percent lower risk of depression symptoms.

Increased fish intake was linked to a forty four percent reduced risk of depression overall and a fifty six percent reduction in women. Now each additional gram of fish per day decreased a woman's depression risk by two percent. And three or more servings of fresh fish a week reduced depression by sixty two percent. Now think of that in the context of our mental health crisis. I mean, we're all taking Prozac and being in therapy and doing all these things, but what if we just ate a can of sardines three times a week?

Right? You might have no friends because they might like how you smell, but maybe you won't be depressed. Now I'm just kidding. I love sardines and they're great and they're delicious. And I just came from Europe where they have fresh sardines.

They're so good. Now, what they found was interesting. There was no effect with canned tuna. Now, tuna is also high in omega threes, but it's also high in mercury, which can actually cause depression. And it can be a concern.

So I would stay away from those big fish like tuna, swordfish, halibut and so forth. Now you can use the guide from the environmental working group, EWG dot org, and you can see their guide on choosing fish with the lowest amount of mercury. So just go to EOPG.org and you'll learn about it. So why why is this so good for our brain? Well, the the brain diseases that we see, right, whether it's depression, Alzheimer's, even autism and ADD, are inflammation of the brain, brain on fire.

And omega threes are powerful anti inflammatories. You see, up to 60% of our brain is made up of fat. So you literally are a fathead. Right? Half of that fat, by the way, is omega three fats.

So they're essential. These are called essential fatty acids. They're not optional in your diet, and yet most of our diets are deficient in these essential fatty acids. So they're like a vitamin or mineral. If you don't get them, you're gonna get deficiency, and it shows up as depression, dementia, and a whole host of other things.

Now as we expanded our brain, our cerebral cortex, and our executive function and memory and intellect, it seemed to coincide with the introduction of fish and CFIT into our diet about thirty five thousand years ago. Even hunted land animals had higher levels of omega threes than industrial raised animals. So, like, for example, wild bison have higher levels of omega threes than a feedlot cow. Now it makes sense that we need these omega threes to keep our brains functioning properly and that a lack of fish or omega threes can lead to omega three deficiency, and that leads to mood and memory issues. Now the two most important forms of fish oil are EPA or eicosapentaenoic acid.

You don't have to remember that. And DHA or docosahexaenoic acid. It just comes from the chemical structure. These come from fish. You can't get them really from plants.

Alpha linolenic acid or ALA is also an omega three. It's a plant based form of omega three, and it comes from things like walnuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds, hemp, and some leafy greens. The problem is that only about 10% of the plant based omega threes, the ALA, is converted to the ones we actually need, the EPA and DHA. So you if you're a vegan, you're not necessarily gonna be getting this, and it's a big risk for deficiency. So you have to figure out how to get your levels up by taking fish oil.

And there are concentrates of plant based fish oils where they kind of jack up the amounts and convert it. And it's it's kind of a bit of a project, but there are some around. EPA and DHA, these essential omega three fats, play crucial roles in the body's inflammatory system. We learned this in medical school. This is not a new science.

We know how they regulate eicosinoids, prostaglandins, all these inflammatory systems in our body, and they produce a whole class of anti inflammatory molecules, also called resolvins and protectants. Right? They resolve and protect you from inflammation. They resolve inflammation and they protect you. Now these are great names.

I love these names. But, basically, a lot of fish oil, has this in it, but sometimes at low levels. I'm gonna tell you a minute about when you can get. There's high levels of these protective things. Now when we're deficient in omega threes, it increases our risk of inflammation in the body and the brain.

And it can show up like depression, mood disorders, memory disorders. EPA specifically has been shown to reduce neuroinflammation. Right? Remember, the neuroinflammation is linked to memory issues, dementia, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, ADD, autism, bipolar disease, schizophrenia. All of these problems of the brain have been linked to neuroinflammation and EPA actually is inversely correlated with all these problems.

So there are actually studies from Harvard that show you can treat bipolar disease by giving fish oil. Surprise. Or ADD by giving fish oil or depression by giving fish oil or improve dementia by giving fish oil. That's how powerful these are. And they regulate all sorts of compounds in the body, regulate neuroinflammation.

Now when you have low levels of EPA, it increases your risk of heart disease, not just brain diseases, but also heart disease, skin disorders, diabetes, and lots more. In fact, these fats are absolutely essential for life. We gotta get them from our diet, but ninety percent of Americans are deficient in these critical fats. And I'm gonna explain to you more where to get them and how to take them. But I think at this point in history, unless you wanna poison yourself with mercury from eating a lot of fish, you are gonna need to take omega threes from supplements.

I mean, unless you wanna eat sardines every day, which most people don't. Himalayan tarry buckwheat is full of over a 30 of these phytochemicals, some which are found nowhere else in nature that have powerful properties, regulate our biology, and rejuvenate our immune system. So talk about how and and again, there are many other compounds that that can be be beneficial for health. There's 25,000 as I mentioned. And in my whole my book, The Pecan dot, I talked about the role of these compounds and how powerful they are.

But the Himalayan tarot buckwheat, how does it work on these chip cells? How does it work to rejuvenate your immune system?

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
So that has been a really interesting story that's emerging. Because generally, what scientists will do, and you know this very well, is they'll they'll look at those hundred different phytochemicals and they'll say, which ones are doing the heavy lifting?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
So they'll go and they'll find

Dr. Mark Hyman
The reductionism.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Exactly. They'll find a molecule. And then they'll study the heck out of that molecule. Well, that's been done with Himalayan terrier buckwheat. We could go on the list, Rutin, quercetin, diazepine, luteolin, fisetin, hesperidin.

These are some of the major of the hundred or so phytochemicals in Himalayan terrier buckwheat, along with two jojoba. And each one of those has been individually studied, and has been found individually to have effects on, immuno rejuvenation, by activating this process of autophagy selective to the immune system. And in fact, now we have to see all sorts of papers being published on quercetin. It's it's the darling right now. And quercetin is an important member of this family, so I don't want to undersell it.

But quercetin doesn't work the same when it's working by itself as when it works with 99 other fighters.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's a team. It's a team effort.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
That's right. And so here as we get into fractionalized foods, saying, oh, let's just pull one one nutrient out, and then we'll make that the nutrient of the month. Versus saying, no. It's the combination that makes the orchestration of effects that's causing immuno rejuvenation.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So Michael Pong called nutritionism. It's the reductionist approach to studying nutrients. That's why we have saturated fat and salt and this and that instead of looking at the whole composition of the diet. So important.

So so basically what you're saying is these compounds in the Himalayan tarotid buckwheat help to get rid of all these old cells and rejuvenate our immune system to this process

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
of the population. Let me say one thing to loop back to a point you made earlier and you and you did so eloquently, by the way. When you were talking about the fundamental processes that people start having problems with as they get older and get more ill. One of those you mentioned was mitochondrial function, which is the energy powerhouse of the cell, where our energy is produced. Well it turns out that our mitochondria can, within immune cells, can undergo injury, and when they do so, that produces a senescent immune cell.

So the mitochondria itself can be the seat of the initial injury that then creates the damage to the immune cell to make it senescent. Now what do you do to get rid of bad mitochondria? Because the mitochondria can rejuvenate themselves in the absence of the cell rejuvenating. The mitochondria has a life of its own within the cell. Yep.

And that process is called mitophagy. It's a subset of the big process called autophagy.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
And it turns out that these chemicals that are these phytochemicals that are entirely buckled specifically have been found to have mitophagy influences on immune cells. Wow. So it re energizes the cell.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. You're you're kinda cleaning up your energy system.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like cleaning your carburetor.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Exactly. Yeah. And the spark plugs or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. This is an incredible story. So you've written a lot about immuno rejuvenation and you you talk about a stepwise process to help rejuvenate immune systems. Can you can you break down a little bit these four steps of immuno rejuvenation program that you've developed? Yeah.

And by the way, all this is on bigboldhealth.com. You can read about it. You can listen to podcasts, read the articles, read the science. It's just fascinating.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Yeah. I I think what's happened, you can hear it probably from my tone of voice, is this has just sucked me in full on. It's like it's like I opened the door and it was a vacuum and it just sucked me right in. It's gonna warm my whole. There is so much here that I think will help people once we learn how to really apply this in a personalized way.

This is really personalized immunity, and we now recognize that people have different immune identities. Just like they have different fingerprints, they have different immune identities. That requires different approaches towards their immune identities to maximize their immuno rejuvenation. So it starts with some fairly simple things. The simple things are the things we've been going through, maybe they're simple to say but not so easy to do, that's changing some lifestyle principles.

So you start looking at things like your sleep, you start looking at your activity level, you start looking at how much are you eating out of rushed habit patterns of things you know better than eat, but it's just convenient to eat them. And one of the things that has been very useful for me, and I I found when I did a, a series of little Instagram posts on this, are these biometric devices that we wear, these wearable devices that give us information. And I and I I happen to be wearing an Oura ring because after being a bio hacker and wearing all sorts of different equipped pieces of equipment, this one I found gives me the most interesting information. And what I found is from a personal experience, now I've done really kind of a pilot study and I think it's more general, is that our aura ring is actually a surrogate marker to measure aspects of our immune system. Yeah.

Because what happens is, when you're under immune stress, it's eating do you realize over 50% of your metabolic energy can be eaten up by your immune system when you're under immune stress? So So what happens is your body temperature goes up, your, heart rate variability goes down, your respiration goes up, your heart rate goes up, your, sleep patterns go down. So, you know, when you see these very low scores in the morning from an Oura ring that says, oh, geez, what's going on? It's probably something that happened to you last night that affected your immune system. Could be alcohol.

It could be it stayed up too late. It could be stress. But your immune system is finding is telling you that it's under it's under demand. So these tools to me are useful for supporting your coaching system. Right?

Because you need to coach yourself through these behavior changes of improving your sleep, your activity, your diet, you know, things that you need to rhythmically figure out about your life that are directly being manifest through your immune system into your function. Your immune system is directly connected twenty four seven to everything you're doing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So what are these four steps that you talk about?

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Well, I just told you the first step is assessment. Right? It's understanding where you are. What's the base? Then from the first

Dr. Mark Hyman
Your immunotype in

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
a way. That's right. It's your immunotype. And we have a a questionnaire on the Bitworld Health website that gives a kind of a first, kind of look see. So we start off with the first thing, which really you you very well stated, and that is finding those patterns of behavior that tie to your immuno immunotype.

Are you an allergic type? Are you an inflammatory type? Are you a a type with that tends to get everything that comes along, so you have an immunosuppressed thing. Mhmm. So you understand a little bit about what your own immuno personality is.

And we have a questionnaire on our website, this called the immuno, identity questionnaire. It gives a little bit of a a help for a person identifying their own specific immunotype. Then we go from there, saying, well, now you have your immunotype. What are you going to do to move you from an imbalanced immune state to a balanced immune state? That's what we're all hoping for.

Because what we wanna do is we wanna shut off our immune system, where we don't wanna hyper function it. I mean people always say boost your immune system. But hold just a minute. If you're already in an inflammatory state, you really wanna boost your rebalance your inflammation. And so if people say, I'm just gonna take a bunch of immune system boosting nutrients.

Well, no, no, no. That may actually only exacerbate the problem, make it worse. So the second step then is you modulate your immune system based upon what you've learned about your first date. Are you immuno underactive, immuno overactive? Do you need to bring your immune system down?

Do you need to bring your immune system up? And we have a series of ways that that can be employed with diet and lifestyle. I would, again, go back to where you, took us earlier, and that is make sure when you introduce the program that you're using food as a friend, and you're using rhythmic eating so that time becomes your friend. Your circadian rhythms doesn't become your enemy. Don't overindulge.

Don't too frequently snack. I mean, it used to be, oh, we wanna take seven to eight meals a day. Those are the days of hypoglycemia. That was probably not a good idea with regard to what we've learned about circadian rhythms. Then the next level, the third step, is how can I optimize my immune system by utilizing some of these specific nutrients that we've been describing, the the Himalayan tartarid buckwheat phytochemicals?

I would also put into this family, there are three families of nutrients that are very important. The phytochemicals we've been discussing a lot. Second are pre and probiotics, because the gut plays such an important role in modulating our immune system. 70% of our immune system is clustered around our gut, the so called gut associated lymphoid tissue. So we want the friendly microbiome, so pre and probiotics would be step two.

And then the third are omega three fatty acids. There are more and more papers coming out to show the important role that omega three fatty acids have in balancing the immune system, and I might add, it's not just omega threes in and of themselves, it's also in concert with vitamin a, vitamin d, zinc, and what are called pro resolving mediators. Pro resolving mediators are part of the omega three family that activate the immune, regulation process and the inflammation regulation process. And we find that some fish oils, and and and marine oils have much higher levels of these pro resolving mediators, these PRMs, than others. So we want a high PRM, omega three rich oil, we want pre and probiotics, and we want the proper phytochemicals.

And I think the point you made And,

Dr. Mark Hyman
yeah, you you now have created these this fish oil, this Dutch Harbor fish oil, which comes from Alaska. Right?

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Yeah. Dutch Harbor Omega, DHL, and it has the highest level we know of PRMs of any natural oil.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So this is some of the beneficial stuff that's in fish oil that reduce inflammation, but it it it's it's a separate class of compounds that are just the omega threes. They're called proresolving meat eaters. Basically, your your immune system has a way, a break, a way of resolving the inflammation. These are called proresolvents, and they they come from these certain sources of omega threes. And you you've got those, access from Alaska, and now you have a product that's called Dutch Harbor Omega 3 Oil, which you can get on bigboldhealth.com.

Right?

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Exactly. And I might say that the reason that we haven't heard more about these proresolary mediators in in these commercial oil sub omega three supplements is that when most omega three oils are manufactured, they're cleaned up through a very complex process that strips out the PRMs. It removes them. So people don't talk about them because they're not in

Dr. Mark Hyman
the barracks. Yeah.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
And so you have to have a very mild process to retain these, ingredients within fish oils, which we've been able to develop.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So aside from all the lifestyle factors, let's just sort of summarize. Okay. That help us to remove the things that are causing damage to our immune system and immunosenescence in age. In addition to sort of enhancing our immune system with, you know, right, sleep and exercise and timing of eating and whole foods diets, there's some super hacks. Right?

Things like phytochemicals from Himalayan tarotid buckwheat, pre and probiotics to help our microbiome regulate itself, and these pro resolving mediators that come from special kinds of fish oil.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Yes. That's powerful. Well, thank you. Now let me just say one thing about, what we've learned. Because a lot of these people would say, it sounds interesting, but where's the proof?

And fortunately now, the phytochemical portfolio in hemolytic terrier buckwheat has been studied clinically now in in studies with humans for a number of years. So we have an idea how much you need to get in order to produce this. And it's equivalent to something like a hundred grams a day, that would be something like three and a half ounces of Himalayan ternary buckwheat flour, delivers the level of these phytochemicals that have been found to be associated with improved immune function. So people would say, well, I really don't eat Himalayan terrier buckwheat flour every day. Well, we try to produce other ways of getting it, like through a shake mix or through a capsule that's concentrated in these phytochemicals, knowing that not everybody's gonna

Dr. Mark Hyman
So you're gonna have, like, four capsules eating it. It's like a quarter of a pound of

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Of the flour, which is pretty amazing. And by the way, I've used this flour, made best pancakes, chai, Himalayan buckwheat pancakes from my buckwheat and diet. We made soba noodles. We made dumpling skins, like for, you know, dumplings, which are amazing. And it tastes so good.

It's so good. And what's fascinating about it is that not only are you developing a product or series of products that that take advantage of these phytochemicals, phytonutrients to rejuvenate our immune system, But it's tied into the bigger ecosystem in which we live. That it it's not only important of what you grow, it's how you grow it. Yeah. So you could grow this in a way using chemicals and poor soils like that are eroded, that don't have organic matter, and you wouldn't necessarily get the same product.

What you're finding is that using practices that we call regenerative agriculture, which we've talked a lot on this podcast, which we're regenerating ecosystems, regenerating the soil, and building the organic matter of the soil that that you can not only help rejuvenate human health but planetary health. Yes. That we can address the ravages of using all the industrial agrochemicals, the fertilizers, the pesticides, the herbicides, the high amounts of irrigation that deplete our water resources and the depletion of the soil microbiome through these chemicals and tillage and all these practices that have been so destructive and may account, for a significant part of climate change. And that the soil itself is a sink for carbon and can draw down carbon through the power of these plants that suck carbon into the atmosphere because they breathe carbon dioxide. But you can't do it if you don't use regenerative agriculture.

And the beautiful thing about the Himalayan hardwood buckwheat is that not only are you growing it to produce these phytochemicals for human health, but the very way you're growing it is also helping planetary health using regenerative agriculture. And there's very few regenerative products out there on the market now, and and this is one of them. It's it's amazing. And it's gluten free, It's organic. It's non GMO.

And what's really fascinating about this packaging, Jeff, is and you can buy this now on bigboldhealth.com, right? Is not only you you talk about the nutrient contents way higher in protein than most other grains. Way lower in its impact on blood sugar. So, very low glycemic index. Much higher levels of magnesium and zinc and iron and all kinds of nutrients.

But what's amazing is that on the And I've never seen this. Is it says total polyphenols which are the antioxidant levels. These are the phytonutrients which is amazing that we now, you know, have it's almost like a, like a medicine. It's almost like a you're seeing, like, a a a flower package that has a drug on it, which is, like, so cool, except these drugs are phytochemicals.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Well, we're we're the I think the first group, in the flower area to actually be certifying on each batch our phytochemical levels, that are these immune active, phytonutrients.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's so important, and I think, you know, as you've taught us all, Jeff, food is medicine, but then that begets the question of, well, what foods contain the most medicine and how do you grow foods that contain the most medicine? And it turns out that regenerative agriculture is that method. That we've seen a 50% drop in lots of minerals and other nutrients in vegetable crops over the last fifty years. So even if you're eating your broccoli, it's not as good as it used to be.

Dr. William Li
Let's start with basic hydration. That's a great idea. So this is a this is a twofer. Yeah. Really three if you actually talk about coffee and tea with water.

You've actually taken the number one, number two, number three beverages in the world, water, coffee, and tea. Yeah. Combine them into one, put it in your gunnysack, and take it with you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's great. Actually, no. Yeah. I was in Ikaria, like, researching the blue zones, and I went to this guy who was sort of making goat cheese, and I was milking goats and, like, making cheese with him.

It was kind of fun. And then after he's like, let's have some tea. And he serves me this tea. And I'm like, what is that? And he's like, because it's had a different taste I never had before.

Oh, this is the wild sage bush that's growing everywhere here. I'm like, oh, that's kinda cool. So I I saw this plant. I looked at and I looked it up, and it actually has higher levels of catechins than green tea. And and this this is one of the longevity molecules.

Yeah. Right? So it's quite interesting.

Dr. William Li
Well, I mean, I think that that's the other thing is that really mother nature has created a pharmacy with an f kind of in your in the spirit of what how you do things. You know, the pharmacy with an f actually is way more diverse than anything you'd find in a drugstore, in a hospital, farm far, you know, pharmacy, stock house. And we're just beginning to discover Yeah. What some of these things are. That's the power of science.

Yeah. We can go in there. We can do mass spec. We can identify the different peaks.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And we

Dr. William Li
can put a label onto them.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's pretty I mean, it's also got tea, water, coffee.

Dr. William Li
So here's something, I else I would bring. I'd bring tree nuts with me.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Tree nuts? Okay. Walnuts, almonds,

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
and cashes.

Dr. William Li
Almonds, pistachios, macadamias, cashews. You know, so they're number one, I love the diversity of the different types of tree nuts.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. William Li
Okay? But they're a great source of protein. We need protein to be, healthy. Right? Especially as we get older, people are always asking, like, what's a good source of protein?

Well, you know, tree nuts gives you some nice protein, but it also gives you dietary fiber, which is important for our gut health. And if there's one thing that I I carry around with me now knowledge wise that I know everyone needs to do better on, Everyone can up their own game is to get better gut health. I don't care if you're a super athlete, triathlon. You know? Every single person can do better the next day, tomorrow to get to improve their gut.

That is so powerful. I have colleagues, who are, I mean, I do cancer research, but I also have colleagues who are doing gut microbiome research, in cancer patients. So talk about life and death. Right? I mean, you know, gut health, you have, you know, more regular stool or whatever, anti inflammatory.

It all comes into sharp focus if you're talking about cancer patients.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And it

Dr. William Li
turns out that the quality, and nature of your gut microbiome can make the the distinction between life or death if you have cancer. And I've been talking to oncologists about this, cancer docs, and they're just starting to wake up to this idea of and, you know, cancer patients are going to flooding into the clinics every single day

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. William Li
Getting chemo, worse, getting antibiotics for various things. Yeah. Okay. I mean, look, you might need antibiotics for

Dr. Mark Hyman
steroids, which are messed up.

Dr. William Li
But you're not resurrecting. You're not protecting the gut microbiome. Yeah. And if that makes a difference between life or death, that is something that everyone needs to focus on. So a study out of the MD Anderson Cancer Center looking at people with one type of cancer, melanoma, that spread.

So we're talking about metastatic melanoma, bad disease, that responds well to immune therapies. Not chemo. It's a

Dr. Mark Hyman
it's a Checkpoint inhibitors.

Dr. William Li
Checkpoint inhibitors that actually oh, explain to people listener listening, a checkpoint inhibitor is, not chemo. It's giving you an infusion of a medicine that wakes up your own immune system to spot where cancer is. It actually helps your immune system do what it's supposed to do. Yeah. Find cancer and scrub it out.

Think about the dry erase board. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You know,

Dr. William Li
if you got some notes on there, just scrub it all out to zero or a clean slate. Yep. I I did for my mom. I've I've I've seen many other patients who have actually had a complete response. It turns out not everybody responds.

Only about twenty percent of people have a good response. Eighty percent of people don't, and we're beginning to realize that eighty percent don't have the right gut microbiome makeup. Now a few years ago, we talked I I remember we had this conversation at Milken about Akkermansia, which, you know, is is everyone's talking about now. And good thing too because it's important. Yeah.

But now we're beginning to realize, other, bacteria are also important. There's about eight bacteria been discovered, and dietary fiber matters. So

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Nuts.

Dr. William Li
The study that my colleague at MD Anderson, led on showed that for melanoma given immunotherapy, for every five to six grams of dietary fiber, it decreases mortality from that cancer by thirty

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, wow.

Dr. William Li
Percent. Wow. Like, you basically I mean, think about if you wanna check By

Dr. Mark Hyman
the way, people eat eating every about eight grams of fiber a day. I was at the Hazza tribe in Tanzania. They eat a 50 grams a day. And so, you know, we need to boost it up to about 50. But you think five, just five grams reduces by 30%, you and you're gonna eat 25, 30, 50 grams.

That's a lot of that's a lot of percent reduction.

Dr. William Li
And and, you know, you don't want you don't wanna just order in a in a bottle. Right? I mean, or in a jar. I mean, like, I know we tend to be reduction. You want it in food.

You want it in food because the foods, fruits and vegetables, especially the whole foods, contain the polyphenols that are the prebiotics that work along with the fiber to feed the actual healthy gut bacteria, and you want diversity. Yeah. So you want you wanna eat you know, that whole idea of eating the rainbow is you know, I always think about the rainbow being a nice, visual allegory. But, really, this is a life and death thing. Like, the more diversity you can put in your plate, the more diversity you're gonna have in your gut.

When your gut diversity is really rich, meaning you have a lot of different types of gut bacteria, it pays you back. Your health gets paid back by improving your immune system.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That is so important what you said. I wasn't gonna highlight that because the the the polyphenols, you sort of whiz by that. But, you know, we think about prebiotics and probiotics for our gut. But there's another incredibly important category of compounds that are called polyphenols, which are all the colorful plant compounds you see and that make your vegetables and fruit the colors they are.

And those are medicines, and those seem to be fertilizers for the good bugs. Now we were talking about the reduction in cancer from having more fiber. How does that work when you eat nuts? Well, basically, you can probably explain it better than I can, but there's an important compound that healthy bacteria make in your gut called butyrate. And butyrate has many effects on the body.

It's anti inflammatory. It keeps your gut lining healthy. It's the fuel for the gut colonicized. But it also suppresses p 53 oncogene, which is essentially a cancer promoting gene, which is why dietary fiber reduces colon cancer and many other cancers. So we actually now know the mechanisms by this word.

So it's it's kinda amazing if you're geeky like us. It's like, holy cow. We understand how to get from a to z and why it's happening. Not just eat fiber, you're not gonna get cancer, but we understand the linkages all the way along.

Dr. William Li
I wanna I wanna unpack something you just said is because it's so interesting and important, but also to bring a little bit of clarity to the audience. So you you heard the term oncogene. Right? Like, Mark, you just talked about oncogene. An oncogene is a gene which is made of our DNA that's associated with causing cancer.

And a lot of people, including myself, for many years thought that and, you know, you've heard of BRCA and, and there's a lot of other oncogenes. It turns out that p 53 is one of those oncogenes. Yeah. But it turns out that p fifty three, the way that it was we're born to have p fifty three, normal p fifty three is protective against cancer. It's only when p fifty three is mutated, when there's a problem with p fifty three that it actually sets up for cancer.

So p fifty three normally actually protects us against cancer. It's it's basically it's the bullets in our gun against cancer fight cancer normally. Yeah. And it's only when it's actually mutated. Now how now let me tell you how powerful this is.

There are animals like elephants that rarely get cancer that have more than one copy of p fifty three That's

Dr. Mark Hyman
interesting.

Dr. William Li
In their genome. And so p fifty three is protective. What we wanna do is prevent prevent those mutations that can occur. And this is the real purpose of this antioxidant story that's been floating around for decades. Yeah.

Right? So antioxidants are neutralized these harmful activated atoms that that, you know, are in our environment that we eat sometimes with, ultra processed foods. And those can actually come in there and basically, like a samurai warrior, like, slice and dice, like a ninja, slice and dice our our DNA. Yeah. And when your p 53 gets sliced and diced Yeah.

That's when you run into trouble. So you need to protect it. Polyphenols, kind of antioxidant properties, they also activate all of these other protective aspects of our body so that we are more resistant against diseases, including cancer.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's it's quite amazing. Okay. So we got we got, tea, coffee, water, nuts of all kinds. What else are you bringing with you?

Dr. William Li
You know,

Dr. Mark Hyman
I so To Mars, let's say. To Mars. What are you bringing me to Mars? You know, I mean, look.

Dr. William Li
Perishable goods, the things we talked about, you can actually carry with you because they're they're you can put them in a tin Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
A tin.

Dr. William Li
Yeah. Exactly. But, actually, you know, fresh, foods, produce is really, really important. And, you know, I and I know that everybody kind of rolls their eyes when they hear about another story about broccoli or kale. I like to present it as brassica, which is, like, a gigantic class of green vegetables.

Yeah. You can choose a cauliflower, bok choy, you know, broccolini. It's a lot of different types of vegetables you can actually get. Mother nature's really smart. She actually created the same types of polyphenols and bioactives and put them in all this entire class of vegetables.

And and if you have any of those things, you know, what are some of my favorite ones? I mean, I I like bok choy. Yeah. Go to an Asian market.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Broccoli is my favorite. Broccoli is and, you

Dr. William Li
know, like, broccoli a a Chinese broccoli is a great one. If you were God, like, anybody that wants to, change their mind about the, you know, same old same old with broccoli just needs to step into an Asian grocery store.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh my god. Yeah. Right? I mean, the thing about Chinese broccoli, I don't know. It's sweet.

It's got this, like, sweet flavor.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's like almost like eating candy, but it's broccoli. It's, like, so good.

Dr. William Li
Well and by the way, you know, because I like to cook. So for me, talking about food as in as ingredients is important because people like to nail it down in their heads. But, really, Chinese broccoli, what what do you do with it? First, you gotta wash it. You trim it.

You heat up some oil, puts a little bit of garlic slices or chopped garlic in there. And then literally, you, stir fry it quickly. Okay? Not with a lot of oil. Mhmm.

And then you can add oyster sauce, soy sauce. Yeah. Little chili pepper. Whatever you wanna do to really light up your taste buds. Food has to taste good.

Yeah. Healthy food has to taste good.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Nobody wants to eat sawdust and cardboard.

Dr. William Li
Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So we got the whole Brassica family, collards, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, broccolini, broccoli rabe. I mean, the list goes on. You can look it up. They're called cruciferous vegetables, brassicas.

You can find them. We'll link to them in the show notes. But this is something I eat every day, and I try to eat a cup or two every day of these foods at least. Yeah. So, okay.

So you got water, tea, coffee, nuts, brassicas. What's next?

Dr. William Li
Well, I I yeah. I didn't include water because I'm just saying that you're gonna have to drink water anyway to survive. So I put coffee and tea as

Dr. Mark Hyman
a Coffee and tea. Okay. Coffee and tea, nuts. Brassicas.

Dr. William Li
Brassicas. Okay. Alright.

Dr. Mark Hyman
What else?

Dr. William Li
How many do I have left?

Dr. Mark Hyman
You can do as many as you want.

Dr. William Li
There's no there's no I think you can do a You know what? So is this so another thing that that I personally love and, again, you know, this is my informed opinion. I like this category of food called stone fruit, and it's seasonal. Ah. Right?

Like So a peach peaches. Plums. Yeah. Right. And those are very seasonal, and, they grow on trees, and they have a little stone in the middle like an apricot.

But it turns out the flesh, and the color of the of these are very bright, and they're they actually have a lot of sweetness to them, rich with polyphenols. And the skin of these fruits also contains something called Ursolic acid, which actually is not only, good for your immune system, but Ursolic acid also helps your circulation. So you wanna actually have good blood flow. As we get older, our blood flow naturally kind of slows down, doesn't get as isn't as good as it should be. Mhmm.

You know, it's kinda like an old set of piping plumbing. So you wanna keep the plumbing working really, really well. That's our circulation. So our solic acid helps us keep good blood flow, helps us regenerate our blood vessels when we need to. Critical for brain health.

So gut health and brain health, it's not just simply the gut brain access through the microbiome. The circulation is also really important.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, I I I think the problem with that for me, William, is that I love peaches, but, like, there's, like, maybe a few weeks in the summer where you can get a really ripe delicious peach that doesn't taste mealy and gross.

Dr. William Li
Right. No. No. You're you're absolutely right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I love that. But, it you can get them frozen, which I use.

Dr. William Li
And frozen fresh.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Skin usually.

Dr. William Li
Usually not. But but you can get the polyphenols in it. And that's by the way, that's another kind of, important practical tip for people, that always ask me like, well, I can't I can't get fresh food all the time. Should I just go for the frozen? Is it gonna be, it's gonna lose a lot of the nutrients?

Dr. Mark Hyman
No. It's more. I've

Dr. William Li
got more. More.

Dr. Mark Hyman
More. Yeah.

Dr. William Li
Because the people that that create froze frozen fruit, they pick the they pick it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
They wait. That's really ripe.

Dr. William Li
And they freeze and they pick it when it's super ripe because it's gotta taste great. And they skin it, and they freeze it right away. It's flash frozen. It's it's got it doesn't degrade. Polyphenols degrade while it's on a truck.

Yeah. Alright. This doesn't have a chance to even degrade. So I encourage people to get fresh fruit if they can. You know, my only thing is that I wish they would actually pack fresh fruit in something other than plastic bags because now we're beginning to look at microplastics.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Nanoplastics. Nanoplastics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think, you know, it's always hard because it's fruit. It's something that degrades really fast, so they pick it when it's not ripe. On tomatoes, they pick them when they're not ripe. So you're kinda not getting really the the full explosion in polyphenols. Okay.

So we got, stone fruits, brassicas, nuts, coffee, and tea.

Dr. William Li
Alright. And berries. And berries. I put berries in there because I'll tell you the amazing thing about berries, they are kind of the candy of nature. Nature.

Right? They're small. They're beautiful. They're sweet. Mhmm.

You can eat a bunch of them. I and that's why candies. I just there are there are candies that are shaped like berries. Right? So the the the thing about berries, though, is that they are great source of vitamin c.

They've got great antioxidants. They also have these polyphenols that are kick ass. So like And fiber. And and dietary fiber as well, of course. The the key thing is, you know, people always say, well, is a sugar in in berries gonna be harmful or fruit gonna be harmful?

You know, this is where all not all calories are the same. Yeah. Fruit contains so many other good things that along with the natural sugars, which are most for most people, your body can actually tackle. You're getting all these other benefits, that that you wouldn't be getting if you had a can of soda with just added sugar to it. Right?

So that's the key thing. Sugar isn't all sugar because the thing that it's contained in is gonna be different. So And

Dr. Mark Hyman
it's also when you eat the fruit. Like, if you eat it at the end of a meal as opposed to at the beginning, it's gonna change your blood sugar, which you're gonna have

Dr. William Li
in the Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So not it's not important what you eat. It's when you eat too.

Dr. William Li
And and how you eat it as well. Right? Because, basically, if you put sugar on top of fruit, which is, you know, kind of old school way of eating your grapefruit Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Your peaches in syrup. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly.

Dr. William Li
So, you know, again, this is why I think when we talk about ingredients, you know, it's easy for us to talk about polyphenols and dietary fiber. But at the end of the day, people eat food in context and together. And so, how we eat what we eat is really, really important. How is we prepare it is also really important. So, like, for fruits, I like to eat it just fresh.

Right? Yeah. Seasonal. And and berries, are would be something that I would relive. You know, there there's a study So

Dr. Mark Hyman
you're gonna need a greenhouse on Mars, basically.

Dr. William Li
Yeah. Well or Desert Island. Right? I mean, you know, you need to you need to be able to grow all this stuff. But, but dried fruit, by the way, is also a great way because you can get dried berries.

You can get brownstone fruit. Like, can't you can't get apricots all year round, but you can get dried apricots. Or dehydrated ones. Or dehydrated ones. Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That may be less sugar. Right?

Dr. William Li
Yeah. Yeah. If you get dried fruits, you actually get the skin on it. Right? So, like, if if I had to eat six apricots whole, I might have difficulty doing it on a regular basis.

Yeah. But I could easily eat six dried apricots

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. William Li
You know, as a snack. So if you want that fruit skin but that brings up a whole other issue about organic versus nonorganic.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. William Li
Because, interesting thing that's been discovered by botanists, people who study plants, not doctors, not health and wellness people, but botanists Mhmm. Have studied polyphenols. And they found out that polyphenols are produced by most plants. The polyphenols are good for our body, are produced by most plants as a wound healing, substance for the plant itself.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah. They're not they're not for us. They're for the plant's own defenses and repair and healing and protection. Right?

Dr. William Li
Right. So what happens is that when you when a plant is growing, vegetable, fruit, tree, bush, shrub, is growing in its natural state. Right? Because we're we're looking at a planet now. We don't wanna be add we don't wanna be adding the crap to the planet.

We need to kind of let everything restore. We need a pal plan to go back into its homeostatic state.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Regenerate.

Dr. William Li
To regenerate by itself. Okay? In its that balanced state, plants that we eat, or or parts of the plants are growing with little insects. Mhmm. It's natural in the environment.

And these insects are nibbling on the leaves and stems of these plants and what they do is they produce polyphenols in response to the nibbling, in response to the injury as part of healing. This is what the botanists are saying. Now so if you grow a plant in its natural state without pesticides, it's gonna make more polyphenols because it's it's healing. So all the time.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Under stress. Yeah.

Dr. William Li
Right? If you spray with pesticides, not only do you get the bad stuff on the skin that you can't easily wash off. A study about at the University of Massachusetts showed that about 20% of pesticides gets absorbed into the skin of an apple. Mhmm. You can't wash that off.

Mhmm. It's just in there. So if you're gonna get dried fruit, get the organic kind, and you're gonna get more polyphenols as a fringe benefit.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's a really incredible thing that most people probably never thought of. It didn't really occur to me. But you're right. When you have plants that are coddled by pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers, They don't have a lot of stress. They're not getting attacked.

They're they're basically kinda basically coddled. Right. They don't develop any resistance to disease or stress molecules. And those stress molecules that they create are their protection, but they're also our protection. Right.

That's really the whole crux of what we're talking about here.

Dr. William Li
And, by the way, let's let's let's dive a little deeper on that. Not only are they protection for our human cells, but now because they are also prebiotics, they're also protection for our gut bacteria as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I was thinking that.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland
I was

Dr. Mark Hyman
like, you are not only getting polyphenols for all these other benefits for your biology, but you actually you're helping your microbiome.

Dr. William Li
You know, it's a grand it's a grand slammer. Right? Baseball analogy. You know? You hit the ball and then you drive all the runs in.

Okay? And that's basically what these polyphenols are. And it all starts with how we treat the plants. And I know you've written about this, you know, sort of like, how do we actually do regenerative agriculture? How do we kick there?

Look. It's a bigger problem any one person can actually solve. But as a one person, we can make that decision of what we're actually gonna feed ourselves when we go to the market.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Alright. So I want I wanna get into, like, specifics of different foods and controversies and things. But first, what else would you bring quickly to Mars if you're going that you absolutely need for optimizing your health and beating disease? I'm gonna tip my list. I'm I'm curious about your list.

Dr. William Li
Yeah. You know, I I have to say, I'm I'm assuming there's not gonna be any, easily fishable oceans, on another planet.

Dr. Mark Hyman
But you you you'll see. You can just have it there. Not even have to grow it or have it, you know, grown their brain. But just the brain is there. What what are you eating?

Dr. William Li
You you know, like, I I think food I think finding a source of omega threes

Dr. Mark Hyman
Absolutely.

Dr. William Li
Is absolutely critical because all next on my list. Yeah. Well, our body doesn't make them. Right? And a lot of foods don't make them either.

All the plants do make the precursor to omega threes, but it's hard for most people to eat enough of them to actually get what they need. And so, you know, this is one of the, instances where I do think that you should eat as much marine omega threes as you can get your hands on, and you should eat plant based sources of omega threes. But then, you know, if you you still have struggling, then you should actually get dietary sup a good high quality dietary supplement. And the key about omega threes, it's good for gut health, it's good for brain health, good for immune health. It's one of these strange molecules that has been discovered to have virtually no bad effects and almost all good effects.

You know, it's it's I'm always cynical and sus I it's a little suspicious when something does everything, but omega threes really kinda hit it out of the park.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Alright. So so, basically, your meal on Mars is grilled wild salmon, rich in omega threes and also polyphenols, so that's the yellow color, with a nice side of broccoli and a side of green tea to sip along with it. And dessert, you're having berries and and peaches and nuts.

Dr. William Li
Yeah. That's pretty much. I love that. Yeah. You know?

And and by the way, you know, we're talking about omega threes. You talked about salmon, and, it is a common perception. I'm not calling it a misperception. I'm calling it a perception that you need to have salmon and tuna, really oily fish like mackerel and anchovies, which not a lot of people eat, but it turns out and I wrote about this in my book yesterday. I'm right

Dr. Mark Hyman
in my bag here.

Dr. William Li
Fish that are not commonly thought as oily fish actually also have omega threes. Cod, haddock, flounder, all have omega threes. Seabass has omega threes. By the way

Dr. Mark Hyman
But not I mean, Chilean sea bass is high in mercury, so you don't wanna be that one. You mean you mean

Dr. William Li
Well, Chilean sea bass is actually not really a bass. It's a it's a it's a pedigree of of the Toothfish? Toothfish. Right? Yeah.

So it's not even again, marketing. Right? We get we get tricked on things. But it turns out recent studies have shown that sea bass, particularly the Asian sea bass Yeah. You get in a Chinese market and steam it for you with a little bit of ginger Yep.

And soy. Actually, it's been discovered to not only have, omega threes, but they contain a peptide, a protein, that stimulates better circulation

Dr. Mark Hyman
I know.

Dr. William Li
And wound healing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

Dr. William Li
So, again, you know, this is the more we look into our foods, the more we're discovering that some of the things that we've been eating for generations Yeah. Actually contain good substances that can keep us healthy.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right. I mean, the Rocker for Health Foundation is very much focused on this. They're spending $200,000,000 to identify the phytochemicals in the plant kingdom that are regulating our biology and what they do. So it's really it's pretty amazing. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.

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