Latest / NHA Today Podcast / Dr. Joel Fuhrman: You're 90% There - Here's What's Missing | NHA Today
Transcript
- Stephan Esser: Hi, it's Dr. Esser with the NHA Today podcast. And today I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by a mentor, a friend, and an incredible advocate for the NHA for decades. Dr. Joel Furman, MD is a board certified family physician, New York Times bestselling author, nutritional researcher who has specialized in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional methods for more than 30 years. Helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world seeking to recover from obesity, food addiction, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, the list. goes on, Dr. Furman, thank you for joining the podcast today. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Thank you. Great to be here. I'm glad to see you're having fun with this. looks so great to see you you having enjoying this. Stephan Esser: So, all right. Absolutely. I mean, as you always say, right? I mean, eating well and feeling well is a joyful thing. So, you know, I have some fun questions to start us out with. You're about to go on a four week road trip around the U.S. What are the six foods that you're wanting to find and eat daily and why? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: to find and eat daily or to take with me. Stephan Esser: Yeah, the six sort of classes of foods you might think are crucial. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: You know, I love citrus fruit. I gotta have like some kind of citrus fruit to peel some oranges or something or neck, you know, something like. Stephan Esser: I like it. Okay, that's one. What else? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: I mean, could do without some of those others, but I could need to do anyway. Well, I have to have salad every day, you know, so I have to some, you know, sprouts and lettuce or something to make, you know, so and then. Stephan Esser: Salad, there's two. Okay, with that being said, what's your favorite sprout? Like that you just like the mouth feel the taste of? Favorite sprout. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: I don't know. I just the mixed sprouting mix, know, the high-glucophoraphan broccoli sprouts mixed in or whatever, you Yeah. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Okay? Just all of them there. like it. Okay, so we got some citrus, we got some sprouts, four more things that you're wanting on this trip of yours. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: I usually, I can make the orange to mix with some nuts to make a salad dressing out of it. So the orange can cover me then. So then I get, you know, the nuts and seeds I have to have like, I guess my first choice would be walnuts, to bring walnuts with me. But that's for, that's for like health, but for taste, I'd like pistachio nuts in the shell. Because the pistachio, I like the taste of those the best. So walnuts. Stephan Esser: Okay, so we got some nuts or seeds. That's a third category. Okay. Okay, so we got citrus. Very nice. driving down the highway, throwing some shells out the window, going through, I like it. So we got citrus, nuts, sprouts, already chokes, okay, already chokes. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Right. Right. And then my favorite vegetable, my favorite cooked vegetable are artichokes, artichoke hearts. So I gotta have steamed artichokes. Those are my favorite green vegetable. Stephan Esser: That sounds nice, nice, okay. Do you like it where you're like pulling the leaves off and like taking it with your teeth or do you just like the hearts? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: I eat both, but of course I like the heart the best. I cut the choke out and I cut it in half, I cut the choke out, then I steam it for about 18 minutes. Then I'll eat the outer, pull a little bit off the outer leaves, but the heart and the top of the stem are the best part. Stephan Esser: Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. All right, so we've got citrus, walnuts, sprouts, artichokes, two more things. Two more things, what else? Okay, we got those as part of your nuts category, so I'm still giving you four. Two more. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: pistachio nuts. ⁓ let's see. I guess one of my favorite things, green peas, Especially the English peas in the pod raw. I really love those, know. Last one is about a pea persimmons. ⁓ persimmons are mango. Persimmons are a good mango, you know. Stephan Esser: The ream piece, like the fret like... Okay, those are nice. Those are nice green peas. Okay, last one. ⁓ first summons, very nice. There you go. All right, so anybody who sees Dr. Furman on his trip around the US, these are the things to get him. Make sure he's full of these yummies. So, you know, it's interesting. I've heard you for so many years talking about food, like it's a powerful thing. So give me kind of your elevator speech on why food is so powerful real quick for me, right? Somebody's like, why is food so powerful, Dr. Furman? Go for it. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: You Well, because we want to have a happy life. And when we're sick, we can't, it's hard to be happy if we're sick and have medical problems. And so food is the, you could say the major or most prominent predictor and influencer of our health and happiness in life. Because it affects our body and our brain. And it also affects, you know, What we eat when we're young or what we eat before you conceive a baby, when a woman or a man is getting ready to conceive, their diet affects the health of their child and their diet before they conceive can affect the whole lifespan of that child being born. The entire lifespan, we could say the six months before they give birth, what they ate can have profound effects on the whole life of that child for the rest of their life. Whether they have allergies, whether they an autoimmune disease, whether they get childhood cancer. whether they have a pretty dispensary towards metabolic syndrome, the matter what it's like, it's so food is so important to not to, to people who ignore it are just headed for tragedy in their life and, and, they're, children too. Stephan Esser: Yeah, powerful stuff. Now, I know that you are not a big advocate for counting calories, but instead you developed over time a very unique perspective on nutrients density. Can you tell us a little about that equation that you came up with years ago that I always love hearing about? And I think it's so valuable for all of us. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Yes, the H equals N over C means your healthy life expectancy, how healthy you're to be and your age combined later later life, is proportional to both the nutritional nutrient content and the nutrient diversity of your diet per calorie. So we're striving, so N over C means... Stephan Esser: So that, is this what we're looking for? H equals N over C. So your health equals nutrients over calories. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Yes, yes, h equals n per se. Right, so the more empty calories you eat, the more things you shove in your mouth that have no nutrients, the more you shorten your lifespan. because the principles of longevity, ⁓ which are the as the slowing aging, which are the as the improving the immune function to reverse disease, you have to have a high nutrient density in the cells of your body. Now, how do you get a high nutrient density in the cells of your body unless you've eaten the stuff? It doesn't come in by magic. So you have to, so it's the nutrient concentration and diversity in the cell, which can be measured. We can measure that. And then you have the toxicity in the cell, right? As we want low toxicity, high nutrient. But we know that the nutrient level in the cell is what enables the body to reduce toxicity. And so it's an inverse relationship. As the nutrient levels go down, the toxicity goes up. And when we're exposed to endogenous toxins that are from the external pollution in the external world, without a high nutrient density and nutrient diversity, there's no way of getting those toxins out of the body. And they become much more damaging. So a lot of the things we're exposed to, we can't not breathe air, but we can fill ourselves with nutrients to deal with any pollution we encounter in that air. So that's the two principles. The next one is body fat percent, which people are socially and Stephan Esser: Love it. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: You know, they've normalized to be afraid to talk about people's weight and body fat percent. But as your body fat gets high, it produces more pro-inflammatory substances and weakens immune system and increases obviously the toxicity and the inflammation in the tissues. ⁓ So you could say, let's ⁓ you know, estrogen in the breast or estrogen exposure. alone is not going to cause breast cancer or heightened estrogen exposure. But you mix the heightened estrogen with toxicity and inflammation, and then boom, you've got you know, which is cauldron of ingredients to create a cancer bomb. You know, so we, so body fat is part of that pro-inflammatory. It produces more estrogen, of course, body fat produces more estrogen and localized estrogen in breast and prostate tissue that raises the risk of cancer. But it's really the inflammation coming off the fat supply that turns on the flame, you know. Stephan Esser: Fascinating and there are two words that I love that you said in there about the nutritional piece that I think you really put your concept of Nutritarian living into perspective that was diversity and Nutrient density and I love that right because so many people sit down to their plate They're like I have a salad and it's a bunch of iceberg lettuce with you know a weight a little wilted, know, whatever and That's not what you're talking about Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: You just can't eat kale all the time and expect to good health. You need a variety of these nutrients and you increase their synergy when you have a variety of foods. That's why these diets that, and also diets that like exclude nuts and seeds or exclude fruit or exclude this or exclude that, the more diversity you have, the better obviously, it's still getting Stephan Esser: Awesome. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: your nutrient needs met. ⁓ And so ⁓ calories do matter, because of body fat matters. But ⁓ here's the thing. When you achieve nutritional optimization, which includes having the right diversity of fibers and lignans and phytonutrients, when you achieve that, your instinctual drive to want to overeat disappears. So nutrient density and dietary quality is a major factor enabling people to be comfortable with the right amount of calories. When they're not nourished properly, they get an overwhelming drive to overeat. So you know that the hottest thing in that right now is the GPL, the GPL-1 inhibitors, know, they, ⁓ not inhibitors, agonists, where they, they're taking endogenous, exogenous hormone. You know, your body produces those hormones and it doesn't just produce those hormones to stop appetite. It produces a host of other factors in biochemical events that make you not want to overeat. When you eat the right foods is particularly Stephan Esser: Right. Right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: the right foods, the three most important foods that releases the triggers that prevents you from overeating are green vegetables, pulses or legumes, know, legumes and beans and lentils, and nuts and seeds. So when you don't, so those foods, we actually have appetite and apistat lowering effects. So we're talking about a tremendous amount of everything in America is relying on a drug or a synthetic ingredient. where the answer is really in the proper food supply. Stephan Esser: I love it. You know, it's interesting your take on all of this and I want to rewind a little bit. You know, what attracted you to medicine? What brought you to this table to begin with? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: I wasn't attracted to medicine. I had no attraction for medicine at all. I went to medical school because I went to all the natural hygiene conventions when I was a teenager and in my young ages and I got enthusiastic about using nutrition as a therapeutic modality to get people well with reverse disease. So I to medical school, applied to medical school with a specific intent to be an anti-medicine doctor. You know, it's funny because my wife, I met her at a party, we just started to date. Stephan Esser: Beautiful. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Even before we started to date she was saying she's applying to medical school. And I said, what are you applying to medical school for? Doctors just give out poisons while people continue to eat themselves to death. Doctors have like no positive role. So she said, well, if you're so passionate about that, why don't you go to medical school and change things? Now I was thinking about that beforehand, but I thought it was like too difficult. I already graduated from college as a business major. I couldn't go back. I had no pre-medical requirements. Stephan Esser: Hahaha Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: But obviously at that point I decided to just drop my family's shoe business and go back to Columbia full time for the postgraduate pre-med courses and then take the MCAT and go to medical school for what I wanted to do, which was be an anti-doctor. Stephan Esser: I love it. And now hundreds of thousands of lives impacted later, you have done that good work. But now prior to medicine, you were in sports, right? So you were competing at a high level in sports. Tell us about that. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Yes, I was second in the United States in pairs skating with my sister in 1973. And then in 1974, I got hurt and I couldn't walk. So I tried to get back into competition again, but I had lost so much shape and I did a long fast, which was really, I can't believe my parents allowed Dr. Vetrano to fast me that long. But I fasted so long that I couldn't get my muscular conditioning back in time to train for the 76 Olympics. So at the 76 national championships, I hadn't achieved my strength back yet. So I came in fourth in the United States and missed the Olympic team by one place. And I got more strength back after that, after the Olympics. I got back a little more and I came in third in the world professional championships then. Stephan Esser: Uh-huh. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: ⁓ so I could have gotten for just a few more months. Maybe I could have made it to the Olympics, but to get back in condition again, but I hadn't had enough time to, you know. Stephan Esser: Well, it sounds like it was our advantage that you didn't. So you ended up in medicine and doing all this other stuff. Because who knows? Made it to the Olympics, who knows what would have happened? So, right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: That's exactly true. I know I say that, we talk about that too, but if I didn't get hurt, if I didn't do this, I didn't do that, well yeah, but I became a doctor and I've helped a lot of people, so that's always good. Stephan Esser: Well, I was gonna say, so you put your passion not only into clinical visits with patients, retreats that are awesome that you're doing, online work which we're gonna talk about, but you've also written a plethora of bestselling books. So for the viewers out there, for everybody who's watching today, what is your favorite book that you've written and why? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: know, have I've written 12 books and about 12 booklets ⁓ of the 12 books. ⁓ of them have become New York Times bestsellers. Right. Now, ⁓ most favorite book is not a New York Times bestseller. It's one of my books that did not become a bestseller. It's called Fast Food Genocide. Fast Food Genocide, because it goes into the history ⁓ ⁓ food movement and put some historical context. ⁓ Stephan Esser: Yeah, congratulations. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: and the effect that food has on whole segments of our population, particularly how it's destroyed the wealth and health of Black Americans because of the, so food politics, know, so it's, doing the research I found very interesting in writing it. You know, when I wrote Eat to Live, which was published in 2004, which was my best, my, the most millions of books with my best-selling book. Stephan Esser: Right, right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: In my research for Eat2Live and collecting all the file cabinets of research articles, then I decided to write disease proof for your child because so much evidence came up that there was a stronger influence on long-term health on what you ate when you were young compared to what you eat when you were older. So because there was so much powerful effect of, have a negative effect of unhealthy food while cells were replicating and growing. that I wrote the book, Disease Proof Your Child, which was also a labor of love that's not a best-selling book, did not become a New York Times bestseller. Stephan Esser: Interesting. So if you had to choose one book that you want everybody who's viewing this right now to buy and read, which one of your books do you think every single viewer should read? ⁓ Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Well, they should read the one that's most updated with the most updated modern research, and that's Eat for Life. More than 2,000 scientific references. They can use it as a text. It's easy to read. Each chapter has a summary, like a two-page summary of what was in the chapter. for any kind of either lay person or even a health professional, they have all the references laid out on any particular subject they need. So I'd say read that book, Eat for Life. Stephan Esser: Eat for life. Nice. I love it. Now, not only have you used printed media to transform lives for good, the internet and online access certainly in the last 20, 30 years has really changed the game for you as well. Is that correct? Kind of with your ability to transform lives and influence people. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: For sure, for sure. you know, it enabled me also in my membership at drfuhrman.com, I answered when people paid to join the membership, they can have access to me to ask me their own health questions. It's an online forum. So it's not one-to-one. It's they're not using their real names. And I'm opening it so everybody can see the answers. So everybody can learn from the answers I give somebody else. And they can still ask me their questions, but it's an educational forum for everybody to read and benefit from the answers. So I've answered over, I think, 15,000 questions there that are searchable to people's health questions. Yeah. Stephan Esser: Perfect. Love it. Beautiful. Well, and we as humans, right, all so many of the things we experience are very similar, aren't they? And the challenges we can learn from each other. You're speaking at the NHA Health Conference in Ohio this June. Can you give us a sneak peek on your topic, Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Yeah. I guess I'm s- Stephan Esser: Or is it top secret? it's too top secret, just give us a little, know. I love it. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: It's too top secret that I don't even know myself. It must be something about, you know, having maximizing our health span, you know, through as we age. It's got to be something like that. Stephan Esser: Aha! I like it, I like it. So in other words, you've got to sign up for the virtual or come in person to hear this topic. It's so cutting edge and so secret, which I love. know, exercise, I know you're also an advocate for, and when you talk about your own personal health, I know we were sharing a couple of minutes ago about your beautiful retreat where you're planting new trees and beautiful growth of things, but you also love you play tennis, you go skiing, you do all these things. You know, here's my question to you, right? Basic one. Why do you exercise on a regular basis? What are your top three reasons? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: because I enjoy it. ⁓ you know, it really, ⁓ it's like, it's my recreational activities. And I, and I also, ⁓ also do it because, I like maintaining ⁓ my ⁓ capabilities, youth to, to walk up a mountain or to, or to ski down a mountain or to surf on a surfboard. I mean, it's good to go for a job. ⁓ So. So I want to maintain and ⁓ lengthen my ⁓ health span, Stephan Esser: So maintain that function and performance. ⁓ Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Maintain function and performance here. Stephan Esser: I love it, I love it. You know, what about the person who doesn't like to exercise? What's the first thing you say to them with regards to exercise? How do you help to try to move them in direction of, you know, incorporating that? What are some of the things that you share with them that might, you could share with our viewers who are on the fence about adding exercise in? Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Well, you know, they don't have to do as much exercise as I'm doing because even five or 10 minutes of exercise a day has a huge benefit. You know, it's funny, even a tenth of a teaspoon of ground flax seeds has remarkable benefits for people. they don't have flax seeds, just having a tenth of a teaspoon is a benefit, you know. Just having, just exercising five minutes to 10 minutes a day has a benefit, you know. I... attract people who are willing to make changes and improve their lifestyle because they wanted to see large benefits. If they're not willing to maybe eat healthfully, change their diet or exercise, maybe I'm not the right doctor for them. They should go to somebody else. You I don't have to treat every, I don't have to help everybody. Some people you just can't help, right? So. Stephan Esser: Right? Yep. Now talking about helping people, right? You and your daughter are doing some exciting new ventures. And if our viewers don't know, your daughter is going to be speaking at the NHA conference again this year. And she is a full-fledged doctor herself now. Tell us about the work you guys are doing in your clinic there in California. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Right. Our clinic is called Longevity RX, but I closed down the retreat. I'm no longer doing the retreat. we're not open for that anymore, but we do have this office in Rancho Santa Fe right here in North San Diego County where we do obviously consultations, but also we have some really high tech regenerative equipment. Because one thing we talk about is that women are indoctrinated. with this religious zeal to get mammograms. So they do breast screening. Healthy women are radiating their breasts. Now why would a healthy person with nothing wrong with them, radiate their breasts where radiation can cause cancer? And of course the nonsense of course that the radiology ⁓ business ⁓ wants to tell people, it's not the radiation isn't gonna hurt you. It's the same as if you want an airplane, it's nothing, you know what mean? Which is totally not true. It's concentrated in the breast. Stephan Esser: Right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: It's repeated over and over again. Dense tissue absorbs it more. So we have a machine that does a breast screening called a QT imaging machine with 248 cameras, a very high tech machine that's better, much higher resolution and better than MRIs, ultrasounds and mammograms. So we have the equipment to screen a woman's breast tissue without exposing her to radiation. if they want that. And we have an Echolite machine which can just, which measure bone density without radiation. We have a lymph of a piece, lymph equipment that can build back bone, help assist in build back bone. Of course with exercise too, but lymphob helped turns on the osteoblasts and can help heal ⁓ osteoarthritis, but also can really make the bone more dense. But it's not like you come in and get one treatment. People have to get like 12 to 20 treatments on the machine and they still got to exercise, but we can repeat the Stephan Esser: Right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: The Echolite REMS, do we compete the, to see the bone density is improving so we can document improvement in bone density and the Echolite REMS give you more accurate fragility score than a regular DEXA scan. And then we have the ⁓ immortal chamber, is a, ⁓ which a person just gets into this chamber with red light, pulsed electromagnetic therapy, inhaled hydrogen, acoustical vibration and meditation. Stephan Esser: Awesome. Wow. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: All happening in the chamber simultaneously as an anti-aging thing. We have one of those at the office too. And I also have a soft wave TRT machine, which is able to give those soft shocks to break up calcifications. Like a person has a bad wrist or a frozen shoulder, a carpal tunnel or knee arthritis. can use the, it's a type of shock wave that's more gentle, that covers a wider and deeper area. with a fluid, electromagnetic fluid shock with a bladder. So it's really helpful for ⁓ injuries to help. ⁓ And the combination of having these multiple types of regenerative equipment like the soft wave with the lymphomachine, it's not to do with lymph nodes or lymph system, it's LIMFA. It stands for the type of electronic signals that help turn on ⁓ cells to grow and build bone. But in any case, that machine is also used to help faster recovery from injuries, like tendon injuries. So they have them a lot in Europe with the soccer teams and tennis players use them in Europe to help recover from injury. So we have these, we had to send a doctor to Italy to get the machine because we couldn't get it back over. They couldn't get it back over the mail with the tariffs or the restriction of sending stuff in. So we had to send a doctor that would carry pieces of it back in various suitcases. So it was kind of, kind of funny, but anyway, so yeah, we have some. Stephan Esser: Nice. Huh, well, now it sounds like you've got the high tech combined with the foundational nutrition. You've got the best of both worlds. You've got it all in there. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Yes, it really is effective because when a person walks in with something bothering them, like their knees hurt them or they have plantar fasciitis or because a lot of people, almost like half the people are walking around in pain, you know. So, yeah, as you know, you're into this too. yeah, so we can help their pain as well as get them in better health and help their. And also, you know, when we're picking up a person with some advanced testing. Stephan Esser: Right. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: We can get them, they have more motivation to make the nutritional and lifestyle changes we want them to make. Otherwise, you're just telling a person, you know, eat healthy and exercise, take the right supplements. They never come back, they don't listen to you. They don't want to listen. But if you show them that there are things definitively wrong in their blood tests, that they have maybe some early stage cancer marker that we have to fix, then they'll be willing to, okay, what do I have to do to fix this? So it does increase the compliance and motivation by doing some a little bit more extensive testing and treatment. Stephan Esser: Fascinating. Well, I enjoyed and I think our viewers did as well today about kind of your journey in where you are now and what you're sharing with people through all the different mediums. ⁓ And, I wanna ⁓ ask to leave us with a couple words that you had to the folks here who are viewing today. I just kind of leave it with some words of inspiration and encouragement. Here at the end, whatever you wanna share, Dr. Furman, the floor is yours. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Well, you know. You know, I go to these health conferences, even NHA conferences, and you see a lot of people that know this information who are not applying it rigorously. it's, they're still, you know, their food addiction and their effects, the social network they're living in is so powerful that it makes it so difficult to make the full commitment to doing this. So they know it, they're enthusiastic about it. but they're not getting the same benefits. They're not getting the benefits they should be getting. And I'm saying here, different from most anybody else, the money is in the last 10%. Do know what mean by that? I mean, you were like a professional athlete too. Like you can be good at something, but you got to go all the way and train everything properly to really get the full reward out of it. And if you really want to see the full benefit, where you really enjoy eating this way the most, and you really instinctually feel you're getting the full benefit, which means you're right body fat percent. You can't just do this part of the time at 80 % or 90%. You got to go for it all the way. So I'm just leaving you with the concept that it's easier to do it all the way. It's harder to have your foot and your one leg in both worlds. It's like an alcoholic who keeps drinking on the weekends and keeps making you want to drink more. thinking you can't give up those foods, they just keep making you want them more the more you eat them. But when they're not in your world and you're learning how to be creatively, make healthy foods taste great with the recipes you love without compromising, this gets easier and you don't want those other things anymore. So I'm saying, know, jumping with both feet, it's easier, not harder, because those things will stop calling your name and then you'll see the results. that are so magnificent to really see the full benefit you get from that little extra effort. You're already putting in 90 % effort, it's a little bit more that makes all the difference in the world. Stephan Esser: Love it. All right, everybody out there, you heard the words. Let's apply it, let's make it happen. And come join Dr. Furman at the NHA summer for the annual conference to hear what he has to share about healthspan, which is top secret. All right, Dr. Furman, thank you again for joining today. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Thank you, Dr. Esselstyn. Great to have you, great to see you running these things, doing these things. Great.