Latest / Age Like a Badass Mother / Ep. 3: Michael Klaper, MD - Food and Lifestyle Choices Supersede Genetics

Transcript

Ep. 3: Michael Klaper, MD - Food and Lifestyle Choices Supersede Genetics · Age Like a Badass Mother

• 0:00
  Hi, friend.
• 0:01
  This is one of my favorite episodes.
• 0:04
  Doctor Clapper famously says it's the food.
• 0:07
  It's the food, it's the food.
• 0:09
  When it comes to our health.
• 0:11
  Stay tuned for his advice on staying vibrant and healthy into old age.
• 0:16
  But there is a correction.
• 0:17
  Doctor Clapper accidentally mixed up the alpha and beta receptors in the breast cancer discussion about 17 minutes into our discussion.
• 0:26
  Alpha promotes growth of breast tissue and beta puts the brakes on growth.
• 0:33
  Soy prefers beta receptors.
• 0:37
  So have you heard the latest?
• 0:39
  We've got merch that gives a wink and a nod to our gloriously feral childhoods.
• 0:44
  Go to age like a badass mother.com to check out our branded t shirts, water bottles, and totes that tell the world you're aging like a badass mother.
• 0:54
  And also support the podcast.
• 0:57
  And if you're looking to boost your health and lose weight by adding more plant based meals to your life after the show, head over to, well, elephant.com to download my free cookbook that I made with Love just for you.
• 1:11
  I've adapted some of your favorite foods like lasagna, sloppy joes, and cupcakes to make them whole food, plant based, oil free, guilt free, and delicious.
• 1:21
  And if you're really ready to take charge of your health and even reverse diseases, I did check out my ace plant based eating course while you're there.
• 1:30
  Thank you.
• 1:31
  Thank you for being part of this community.
• 1:33
  You truly mean the world to me.
• 1:36
  Now let's hear from Doctor Clapper.
• 1:39
  I'm Lauren and I'm Lisa, and we're flipping the script about growing older.
• 1:43
  Our guests have been influencers since before that was even a thing.
• 1:47
  Welcome to the anti Anti-Aging podcast.
• 1:50
  Welcome to aging like a badass mother.
• 1:56
  What do Benjamin Franklin and today's guest, Doctor Michael Clapper, have in common?
• 2:01
  They both believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
• 2:05
  Doctor Clapper has devoted the last 35 years of his medical career to helping people understand the power of food and lifestyle choices to prevent the need for hospitalization and surgery.
• 2:17
  When he is not seeing patients, Doctor Clapper is busy educating future doctors about nutrition in medical schools.
• 2:24
  His initiative, called Moving Medicine Forward, teaches medical students about the power of plant based healing.
• 2:31
  He said, quote, this is what I wished I learned about nutrition in medical school, unquote.
• 2:38
  Doctor Clapper has recently relocated to Vancouver with his wife, Elise, who is a yoga teacher, to join a rogue lifestyle medicine practice.
• 2:48
  You can go to Doctor clapper.com doctor for CLA, pr.com to find the latest health information through his numerous articles and videos, and subscribe to his free newsletter, Medicine Capsule.
• 3:04
  You'll see that he has a way of taking very complicated medical jargon and making it understandable.
• 3:10
  And that's why Lisa and I wanted to have Doctor Klapper on our podcast.
• 3:14
  Because if anyone can explain the correlation between aging well and eating well and lifestyle, it's this man.
• 3:20
  So please welcome Doctor Clapper.
• 3:22
  Well, what a lovely introduction.
• 3:24
  Nice to see you all. Nice to see you.
• 3:27
  So, Doctor Clapper, we usually start by asking people, how old they are.
• 3:33
  Is that okay if we ask you that? Absolutely.
• 3:35
  I'll be turning 77, in next July.
• 3:40
  So, I'm right in the middle of some research.
• 3:42
  How old do you feel?
• 3:43
  Oh, I feel about.
• 3:44
  I did when I was in my late 40s.
• 3:47
  Certainly a sunny side of 50.
• 3:50
  But right around there, I can still run and, And play sports and, and go hiking in the mountains and living my life like I used to.
• 4:01
  Oh, that's.
• 4:02
  That's really good.
• 4:03
  That's what we all want. That's why we're here.
• 4:06
  Tell us a little bit about, you know, just for people who don't know, I think there's going to be a lot of people who are familiar with you who listen to this, but for anybody who's not.
• 4:15
  Can you give us a little background?
• 4:16
  I grew up eating the standard American diet.
• 4:19
  We got a standard medical education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago.
• 4:26
  And I thought I was going to be doing blood and guts medicine, and fixing people up in the emergency room and delivering babies and fixing broken arms for for my whole career.
• 4:36
  That changed, early in my career.
• 4:39
  I was witnessing, you know, my first five years of general practice.
• 4:43
  I saw so many people getting more obese, more ill, more hypertensive, diabetic, and, eventually having strokes and heart attacks.
• 4:52
  Despite my best effort, I felt like a complete failure.
• 4:55
  As a physician.
• 4:57
  So much so that I left general practice and, went to become an anesthesiologist.
• 5:02
  And, I did most of my anesthesia residency until I wound up on the cardiovascular anesthesia service dealing with people's hearts and blood vessels.
• 5:13
  And day after day, I'm putting people to sleep and watching surgeons open their chest and the arteries in their heart and pull this yellow gunk out of their arteries, called atherosclerotic plaques.
• 5:23
  And there were causing their heart attacks and strokes.
• 5:26
  And there were already studies in the journal showing not only that this is largely the fat of the animals these people are reading, but that this is actually a reversible disease.
• 5:35
  A plant based diet would will help melt these plaques away.
• 5:39
  And I had a great interest because my father died of clogged arteries.
• 5:43
  I know I've got those genes.
• 5:44
  And I knew that if I didn't change my diet, I it was going to be my body on that table with that Stryker.
• 5:50
  So going up my sternum.
• 5:51
  And I sure didn't want that.
• 5:53
  So I changed my diet at age 31 and, to a plant based diet.
• 6:00
  My body loved it. My, members all got immediately better.
• 6:06
  20 pound spare tire of fat around my waist melted away, and 12 weeks, my blood pressure went to normal.
• 6:12
  My cholesterol went to normal.
• 6:14
  I felt great waking up in a nice, lean body every day.
• 6:18
  And I realized that point.
• 6:19
  I didn't want to be an anesthesiologist and spend my career putting people to sleep. Literally.
• 6:24
  I would rather go back to general practice and help them wake up, because if what they're eating is why they're sitting in front of us overweight, hypertensive, diabetic, clogged up and inflamed from what they're running to their arteries every four hours.
• 6:38
  It's the food. Stuff. Oh, yeah.
• 6:41
  And so I did, much to my parents dismay, I left my anesthesia residency.
• 6:47
  Do you know how much money you're giving up?
• 6:49
  Yes, ma'am, I know.
• 6:50
  But it's not in truth for me any longer.
• 6:54
  And, I'm a I'm a germ GP at heart, and I wanted to go back and, and give my patients the calcium they really deserved.
• 7:03
  And so I did.
• 7:04
  And, the patients who, followed my advice, I found someone in the area who could give plant based cooking lessons, and those folks who, changed their diet to plant based ones noticed the same wonderful effects I did.
• 7:17
  They lost weight.
• 7:18
  Their high blood pressures came down, their cholesterol, high blood sugars came down, and I could get them off their medications.
• 7:25
  Something I else, I was told never happens.
• 7:27
  But you have to get these people off their blood pressure medicines.
• 7:30
  I'll stand up and pass out on you if you don't.
• 7:33
  And that was 35 years ago.
• 7:36
  As you mentioned, in 1981, I went completely vegan.
• 7:40
  And, you know, you can't unring the bell.
• 7:43
  You know, once you look behind the curtain, you can't pretend you don't know what's behind the curtain.
• 7:47
  And I saw what a plant based diet can do.
• 7:50
  And there's no going back to conventional practice where just beta blockers and statins and, you know, and hope they don't have their stroke when you're on call it.
• 7:58
  You know, that's the basic strategy these days.
• 8:01
  And so I became a plant based physician ever since and and have helped hundreds and hundreds of people a year off their medications.
• 8:10
  I spent eight years on the staff at, true North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California, where, applied plant based nutrition was done in all its glory.
• 8:20
  You know, saw the power of that, dietary style to actually reverse these killer diseases.
• 8:27
  And finally, after I, you know, this obvious healing paradigm was firmly fixed in my head.
• 8:33
  And again, why didn't somebody tell me this in medical school, first of all, and why isn't somebody telling the young doctors, about this powerful tool the most powerful therapeutic tool they'll ever wield far more than statins and ARBs?
• 8:49
  Why isn't somebody telling the young doctors this and, little voice on my shoulder said, well, how about you, doc?
• 8:58
  And so for the past 2 or 3 years, we've been going to the nation's medical schools.
• 9:03
  And, telling the young students again, it's this is not etiology unknown, these diseases, it's the food they're eating.
• 9:11
  And yet these people in a plant based diet, and you'll see these diseases reverse.
• 9:16
  And the students are very open to, to this understanding.
• 9:19
  And it's been the most satisfying part of my career is to give them the lecture.
• 9:23
  I wish so to give it be a medical school, as you mentioned.
• 9:26
  I'm listening to you and I'm like, yes, yes, like where all three of us are here because we we have experienced that transformation.
• 9:34
  And then you experience that transformation and you took it to the masses of your patients, and now you're doing what we've all wished.
• 9:42
  Also is that doctors would be doing this.
• 9:45
  But, but I'm, I'm so curious that, that you were able to infiltrate and penetrate the medical establishment.
• 9:54
  Can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely.
• 9:57
  That's such a key point because I knew that, that if we go through the standard, curriculum committee and have to submit 20 different forms, this is a heretical stuff to the medical establishment.
• 10:12
  It should it goes against their intellectual understanding of what is causing these diseases.
• 10:18
  It shakes up their treatment protocol.
• 10:21
  You got to have the dietician, you know, on the treatment team.
• 10:24
  And after you see the patient clinic, we want you to see Miss Jones, a plant based dietitian.
• 10:28
  Before you leave, she's going to talk about what to eat.
• 10:31
  Show you some videos you eat, like she's saying, and you come back and see me in a month.
• 10:34
  Let's see if you're not leaner and healthier.
• 10:36
  That's how practice should be done in the 21st century.
• 10:40
  But we've been traditionally holding the dietitian at arm's length.
• 10:43
  Well, we've got to bring her on to the treatment team.
• 10:46
  Who's going to pay for that?
• 10:47
  Well, and I mentioned the dietitians need to be trained too, because I don't think the nutrition and dietetics, they're not trained this way.
• 10:53
  Right? No.
• 10:54
  But there's getting to be more and more plant based dietitians around.
• 10:58
  It's really spreading through their ranks gloriously.
• 11:01
  It's so exciting to see.
• 11:03
  And of course, finally it challenges their financial model because they get it.
• 11:08
  They get paid for treating disease, putting in stents and doing surgery.
• 11:11
  You don't get, paid for, telling people to eat broccoli, but we got to change the financial system.
• 11:18
  So there's tremendous resistance.
• 11:21
  And so we didn't even want to tangle with that Brier patch of, of bureaucracy.
• 11:27
  It turns out, that people in your endeavor, actually, and communications and education, which is what this part is about, health, have, you know, tilled the soil for prepared the soil, if you will, in there now, in every medical school class, lecture two, there's 20, 30 students.
• 11:47
  They've seen films like Forks Over Knives.
• 11:50
  They've seen what the health is in conspiracy.
• 11:53
  And they've listen to podcasts, or your people are talking about this and relating their, experiences.
• 11:59
  And so that makes it much easier.
• 12:01
  So what happens is that, we find out who, is there anyone on a medical school staff that's a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine?
• 12:11
  Do they have a lifestyle medicine interest group?
• 12:13
  And we give the students in that group and we communicate with them. Dr..
• 12:18
  Who's the head student of the lifestyle medicine interest group, and we get her or his name, and we go right to the students, and then they arrange the lecture time, they send out the notices, and where we get these big audiences online, and we go right to the students, we just do an end run around administration.
• 12:38
  The it's the information age.
• 12:40
  And and it's been much easier.
• 12:42
  But also we've made wonderful inroads.
• 12:45
  The comments I get back from the students, thank you for this lecture.
• 12:50
  So we're so we're going we want to start bonfires and every med school and have the flames.
• 12:55
  It's going to be a bottom up revolution.
• 12:58
  I can't tell you how many times I showed Lauren, because when I was at the Whole Foods medical and Wellness Center, you know, I created a lot of educational, presentations, because, you know, it starts with the education.
• 13:12
  They have to understand even why this is something that they want to attempt.
• 13:15
  And, video clip that I used often, which is one of my favorites, is do you have ears? Do you have a tail?
• 13:22
  The dairy, your dairy bed from, where you talk about it in conspiracy is one of my favorites.
• 13:29
  Oh, my, there's so many reasons not to eat dairy products that comes out of the udder of a cow.
• 13:35
  It's it's, it's not a healthy price meant for to turn a 65 pound calf into a 700 pound dairy cow as rapidly as possible.
• 13:45
  It's filled with growth factors that promote cancer in humans is full of estrogen.
• 13:50
  So the cows are all pregnant now.
• 13:51
  It gives women breast lumps, gives guys prostate cancer.
• 13:55
  It's filled with hormones and antibiotics and and can bovine viruses.
• 14:00
  And it's dirty stuff to begin with.
• 14:03
  There's so many reasons.
• 14:03
  For what? For what?
• 14:06
  So we can get some calcium in some protein.
• 14:08
  We can get calcium from green leafy vegetables.
• 14:11
  This were cows get their calcium. Right.
• 14:13
  And and and protein or plenty of that around in the beans and peas etc..
• 14:19
  So, there's no reason to consume dairy products, especially now you go into the grocery, any grocery store, and there's all these wonderful dairy substitutes know there's plant milks made from rice and hemp and oh, and all these wonderful plant milks, these nondairy yogurts and ice creams and cheeses.
• 14:37
  No one's saying their health foods are their treats, you know, to pour in your cereal a little bit, but but, but it completely takes away the reason to eat dairy products. So, so I tell people, we'll just go to the bathroom, have a look in the meridia, the area of big ears and long snout and whiskers.
• 14:56
  Are you baby calf?
• 14:57
  If you're not a baby girl.
• 14:59
  So I've been trying to reach the young med students, with the message before what I call farmaco sclerosis gets into their brains where they think that drugs and surgery are the only treatment for these and illnesses they're being asked to treat.
• 15:14
  When they're treating dietary diseases.
• 15:16
  They need to get to the root of it.
• 15:16
  Of course.
• 15:18
  Thank you. Yes.
• 15:20
  Nothing else to do at this point.
• 15:21
  Speaking of dairy, like, I have this friend who, you know, gave her kid a ton of milk.
• 15:28
  And, you know, for all the reasons he needs this, he needs calcium, blah, blah, blah.
• 15:32
  And I was like, well, given some soy milk and, you know, explain the reasons.
• 15:37
  And she was like, well, then his testicles are going to shrink up.
• 15:40
  And his, you know, just all the and people think that the soy is bad for breast and prostate.
• 15:47
  Can you, can you just like, address that?
• 15:50
  Back in the, late 1980s, author John Robbins wrote this book, diet for New America, about the reality of animal agriculture.
• 16:00
  Once you went to the planet and our bodies and the animals, and, I joined with, John Robbins, formed an organization called Earth Save and for, throat laid a, 1980s and early 1990s were going across the country.
• 16:16
  Telling people reasons that they should reduce their meat consumption.
• 16:21
  Well, I think that, and indeed, if you look at the meat consumption in America in the mid 1990s, it started taking a nosedive.
• 16:29
  Now, I can't say this is, totally due to Mr.
• 16:33
  Robbins myself. Work.
• 16:35
  But but there was definitely a decrease in meat consumption.
• 16:37
  Well, that must have set off alarm bells in Denver and in Houston.
• 16:42
  And, folks, where the meat folks, meat producers, live and hang out because by the mid 1990s and because of them, because now soy burgers and soy hot dogs and soy and tofu, etc.
• 16:56
  were were on the ascendancy in the media, this huge anti-choice Toonami got unleashed.
• 17:02
  And I think it was, the from the, from the meat and dairy folks, and they put out the most outrageous claim for this phytoestrogens in soy, you know, and they say if you feed your baby soy milk or soy formulas, like giving them birth control pills and, and soy, it's going to turn your son gay and it's going to give guys man boobs.
• 17:23
  Oh, this thing and and and echoes of that are still rattling around and it's and and it's in your question that you posed and we all run into this.
• 17:34
  I run into it every Q&A that I do.
• 17:36
  Yeah.
• 17:37
  And and it's in it's in all of our, our heads.
• 17:40
  And also they were very effective in planting the seeds of doubt.
• 17:44
  Well, it turns out, that after the initial alarm bells stopped clanging, the scientists, kids that wait around in other, people in Japan and China have been eating lots of soy last year.
• 17:56
  They don't have an increased risk of breast cancer.
• 17:58
  Fact they got a decreased risk of breast cancer and they don't get more gynecomastia.
• 18:03
  Young men have, etc..
• 18:07
  And and, and now by their time by the 90s and certainly the 2000 to 2000, we've seen three, four generations of children raised, nursed on soy formula who've now grown up their adults.
• 18:20
  They don't have a higher risk of breast cancer because they have a lower risk of breast cancer.
• 18:24
  They don't have a higher risk of homosexuality or prostate cancer.
• 18:27
  Any of those things that were thrown in our faces that none of that was true.
• 18:32
  And ironically, you know, the major, gets the last bat here.
• 18:37
  It turns out that soy products are actually protective against breast cancer.
• 18:41
  And little did the folks know and we didn't know back in the 90s.
• 18:45
  There's two kinds of estrogen receptors on breast tissue.
• 18:49
  One of them, the, the beta receptor, if stimulated, will increase cancer growth.
• 18:55
  But it turns out the alpha receptor, actually suppresses cancer growth, makes the cancer cells more resistant to malignant change.
• 19:03
  And guess what?
• 19:04
  The soy phyto estrogens stimulate the alpha receptors that that inhibit cancer growth.
• 19:11
  And so nature made them just to make a beeline to be cancer protected.
• 19:15
  So all those scare tactics were, were just that, you know, unnecessary, you know, and saying two gallons of soy milk a day.
• 19:24
  It's, it's a trick.
• 19:25
  It's a it's a half a cup on your cereal in the mornings, and so little splash on your berries in the evening is how we use it.
• 19:31
  But it's certainly not to do anyone harm.
• 19:34
  It's got lovely proteins, and the fighting messages are actually beneficial.
• 19:38
  Well, I mean, tofu and tempeh and and a mommy and the soy products are such good options for people, instead of meat.
• 19:44
  So, but I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but, you know, the it just goes to show, like the meat industry and the pharm pharmacy industry, like how much money and power they have.
• 19:55
  Because I have a friend who's very it was a very high powered PR person in New York, and the beef industry actually flew them to one of their big conferences.
• 20:03
  They paid a lot of money because she's her her firm is very expensive.
• 20:07
  And she had to sign an NDA and they were actually, wanting to roll out that, this sarcopenia, I think they called it if you did it that you would get if you didn't eat meat.
• 20:19
  And she, she turned down that she turned it down.
• 20:21
  She didn't take it on.
• 20:22
  But like, that's those are the ends that they'll go to, to, to make a profit.
• 20:28
  Right.
• 20:29
  Yeah.
• 20:29
  Absolutely.
• 20:30
  And they're so cynical and so venal.
• 20:33
  You know the word it's an appropriate adjective.
• 20:37
  In there.
• 20:38
  Sarcopenia is is a wasting of muscle.
• 20:40
  And when by definition is people become frail in old age, they're in this, you know, in sarcopenia and it's not a good thing.
• 20:48
  And you want to be able to get up out of a chair.
• 20:50
  You want to be able to, they'll do it open car doors and things that require some muscular activity, no doubt.
• 20:56
  And so certain needs to be avoided.
• 20:58
  But to think that the answer to why they need meat, it's kind.
• 21:00
  Of like kwashiorkor.
• 21:01
  Just a it's a calorie deficit right there.
• 21:05
  Well, that's another disease of their implying that it has nothing to do with, sarcopenia prevents after pain by using those muscles, by getting some advanced equipment or some little light dumbbells.
• 21:19
  And as you're, as you're sitting watching TV, doing some curls and, and, and going to the gym, or as I said, you can do it all in your living room witless molest you, use it or lose it.
• 21:30
  Mother nature tells us.
• 21:31
  Yeah.
• 21:31
  And it's a real issue here.
• 21:33
  It's not a matter of eating more protein.
• 21:35
  But I do have a question.
• 21:36
  I do have a question about that.
• 21:38
  You know, I totally understand the protein myth, and I've.
• 21:42
  You know, written about it and talked about it a lot.
• 21:45
  But I do keep hearing, that as we age, our protein needs change.
• 21:52
  Is that true? I've, this has entered the the lexicon of the dogma of as people get aging and what they do and it might be true, but we're talking about are we talking about an extra five, ten grams of protein and have an extra homemade sandwich, or an extra scoop of lentil stew and get on with your life?
• 22:12
  It's not that big an issue here.
• 22:14
  If you want to make a statement, you're doing up a green smoothie.
• 22:18
  You want to put a tablespoon of of pea protein in there.
• 22:20
  Fine.
• 22:21
  But, it shouldn't it's the implication that you better be a meat.
• 22:26
  So it's the same if you're eating enough calories, you're getting your adequate protein.
• 22:30
  That's the key thing.
• 22:31
  If you're eating whole plan for if you're reading rice and beans and, and, lentils and chickpeas, you're going to be getting the protein you need.
• 22:39
  It's not an issue really.
• 22:40
  And then I think, like one other myth I just want to touch on before we move on, because I think that we have or a lot of women listeners just, especially because of the name age, like a badass mother.
• 22:52
  We're going to have a lot of women who listen to this.
• 22:55
  And as I encourage people to go plant based, I think that a lot of them, they will they've they're like, well, I'm starving all the time.
• 23:04
  And I this isn't working because and I find out after I question them, they're not eating carbs.
• 23:09
  They're not they don't want the brown rice.
• 23:11
  They don't want the oats. They're skin.
• 23:13
  They're scared of potato.
• 23:15
  They're scared of the things that keep you full.
• 23:18
  And so they have one foot in the plant based and one foot in the low carb.
• 23:23
  And can you just address that, the low carb thing like we've been so brainwashed about that.
• 23:29
  Actually the the issue there making. Yeah.
• 23:32
  You got to get out your machete and start acting through the underbrush all the laws that the cars make, if had no carbs, will not in their whole form.
• 23:43
  The carbohydrate that is in beans and rice and potatoes will not turn into fat.
• 23:49
  You will burn it off as he but is basically goes to your muscles for glycogen storage for energy.
• 23:56
  Before the Western diet got there, the average Chinese person was eating 2000 calories a day in rice and their skin.
• 24:05
  They were lean.
• 24:05
  You can't build fish by eating the, whole, whole carbohydrate foods.
• 24:12
  And so, so, yeah, so people who eat rice and beans and greens, and fruits and vegetables wind up lean.
• 24:18
  And that's the classic body image of when you think of vegans, you think of fat people.
• 24:22
  Oh, there it goes.
• 24:25
  Are all it's mostly fiber and water.
• 24:27
  These foods, there were little carbohydrates are in the bean, in the rice.
• 24:31
  And so you either store or you burn it off. It's not going to turn.
• 24:34
  And your brains need it.
• 24:35
  And your brains absolutely need the glucose.
• 24:37
  It's in those carbohydrates.
• 24:39
  Now, if you're if you're eating the Snickers bars and energy drinks and Oreo cookies.
• 24:45
  Yeah.
• 24:46
  They're, you know, if you just and high fructose corn sirup and various, forms will turn into fear, their body is going to turn that into triglycerides and you to run into problems.
• 24:57
  But if you're eating whole plant foods, there are no fat giraffes or no fat antelope.
• 25:02
  I mean, they've been brilliant to the the keto guys and the paleo folks and the and the meat folks.
• 25:08
  Oh. You got it.
• 25:09
  Yeah. Carbs make it fat.
• 25:11
  Don't eat them carbs.
• 25:12
  But we are carbohydrate burning organisms.
• 25:15
  The mitochondria and every one of our cells preferentially burns glucose as its desired fuel.
• 25:21
  Know we are.
• 25:22
  We are sugar burning creatures.
• 25:23
  That is an emergency fuel. Now, in times of starvation and calorie deprivation, you dip into your fast stores.
• 25:30
  But to think that running on fat and being in ketosis is somehow healthy, it's like driving your car from LA to Seattle in passing gear.
• 25:40
  You're going to burn out the bearings and then.
• 25:42
  In, well, they're putting the fear of food into people.
• 25:45
  It's terrible.
• 25:46
  And so many of us rightly, we move away from the term vegan.
• 25:50
  There's so much value to that, with a whole food plant based, you know, full circle thing, but whole food, okay, this is food like you could recognize growing in the garden.
• 25:59
  There's a cucumber.
• 25:59
  There's a tomato there. Logo.
• 26:02
  Those are the foods you were telling you keep your belly full of and you're going to wind up lean and healthy.
• 26:07
  And yes, they're high carbohydrate foods. Lettuces.
• 26:10
  Well, I was, you know, that that evening of lettuce and rice and beans and greens, it just doesn't. Yeah. Yeah.
• 26:14
  The opposite happens.
• 26:17
  You get nice and lean.
• 26:18
  So we've got to keep, coming back to the same truth.
• 26:23
  You know, every, all the powerful animals on the planet are plant years and, and plant foods and a whole for whole for will not make you fat.
• 26:32
  My mom raised me on the Atkins diet, which was the predecessor to the keto, and I'd wake up in the morning, she'd be smoking a cigaret, throwing up a hamburger, no bun for me for breakfast.
• 26:43
  My lunch was like, you know, baloney and cheese, no bread.
• 26:47
  And by the time I got home, I was starving and I would just stuff my face with whatever I could get into it.
• 26:52
  It was terrible.
• 26:54
  And, you know, had heart disease by the time I was 46.
• 26:58
  No surprise there from just clogging up my arteries.
• 27:02
  And that's a good lead into I wanted to ask Doctor Klapper, how you address the genetic component of these things with your, the medical, doctors, your training.
• 27:13
  Right. That's very important.
• 27:15
  And that used to be a real conversation stopper there.
• 27:18
  Well, it's it's in your genes.
• 27:18
  If you're right, I'm here.
• 27:21
  My father died of heart disease.
• 27:23
  My grandfather heart diseases were also that heart disease.
• 27:26
  So, that's in my genes.
• 27:27
  And, yeah, you might have a propensity to put out more, lipoprotein a fluid, type cholesterol, etc..
• 27:37
  But we've learned a couple of things.
• 27:38
  One, you can't really change your.
• 27:40
  Well, I can't even say that anymore because now we know you may have the genetic blueprint for a particular disease state, but whether those genes actually get active and manifest largely not completely, but largely depends on the food you are running through your the cells every meal, you know, because within minutes of eating anything, molecules of that food are washing through every cell in your body where your DNA lives unfolded and your genes are exposed and the food molecules wash over your DNA and they play your DNA like a piano.
• 28:15
  They turn genes, they turn genes off, they induce enzymes.
• 28:19
  You shut enzymes down.
• 28:21
  Every meal brings in that all the nutrients it brings in information.
• 28:25
  Every meal changes us on a genetic molecular level.
• 28:29
  And the genes are going to be turned on by broiled steak.
• 28:33
  The genes that we know drive aging and, and, and cancer initiation, those genes are going to be a totally different set of genes than those in be turned on by the old smoothie like my wife just made me this morning.
• 28:47
  With every one of those plant based meals, you are flooding your tissues with antioxidants that quench free radicals, molecules that promote tissue repair, that promote membrane stabilization, that promotes cellular healing.
• 29:00
  It's difference between 1 and 0, the difference in an animal based meal in a plant based meal Sims called epigenetics.
• 29:07
  And it's what is turning your genes on and off by environmental factors and most powerful, which is the food.
• 29:12
  But there's other things in in the water, etc..
• 29:15
  But yes, these genes are not immutable dictators of your of your medical future.
• 29:22
  They are, they're malleable.
• 29:24
  They're depending on what you, you know, how you treat your cells, what?
• 29:28
  You run through them every day.
• 29:30
  So, so, yes.
• 29:32
  And most doctors that they think about it, my patients never going to change their diet.
• 29:36
  Americans will never change what they eat.
• 29:39
  No, it's a waste of time to talk to about it.
• 29:42
  Yeah.
• 29:42
  Let's see what medication we can use to pound down that cholesterol level and pound down those blood pressures.
• 29:49
  And that's where matter of modern medicine is stuck in, in the muck there.
• 29:54
  That. But they don't understand.
• 29:58
  And they weren't taught about the stunning power of the patient's daily diet, to affect the how the body function.
• 30:07
  Okay.
• 30:07
  Yes, I was raised on the Atkins diet, but I absolutely do have the genetic profile for somebody for heart disease.
• 30:14
  I have the high LP, little aa I have in my cholesterol.
• 30:19
  I've been eating this way for eight and a half years.
• 30:21
  Whole food, plant based diet, no oil, and my cholesterol is still super high.
• 30:26
  But what I've learned from you is that's cholesterol that my body loves to make.
• 30:31
  For whatever reason. I don't know why.
• 30:33
  Maybe we don't know. Maybe we do.
• 30:35
  But I'm not getting cholesterol from chicken or eggs or fish or cheese.
• 30:40
  And why do certain people like me make so much cholesterol?
• 30:43
  Do we know that, Let me start.
• 30:45
  What Lauren just shared with us is really profound.
• 30:49
  And cholesterol.
• 30:49
  Is that an evil molecule?
• 30:51
  Your liver is making it right now.
• 30:52
  As we're speaking. Why?
• 30:55
  Because your body uses it for many different things.
• 30:59
  Your adrenal glands, say the cholesterol molecule and turn it into cortisol.
• 31:03
  And it does grown and, essential molecules that your adrenals need for life.
• 31:08
  If you're a woman with ovaries, you know, they take that cholesterol molecule and turn it into estrogen.
• 31:13
  Estradiol and, and important female hormones.
• 31:16
  Us guys, our testicles take that cholesterol from the liver and turn it into testosterone.
• 31:22
  And all those male male hormones, they're, it's an essential molecule.
• 31:26
  It's not a matter of toning down that bad cholesterol.
• 31:31
  But the question is, where is the cholesterol coming from?
• 31:34
  And Lauren already mentioned the key difference with the standard Joe Sixpack, your meat eating American guy, with a cholesterol of 240.
• 31:47
  Every third molecule.
• 31:48
  They say that your dietary cholesterol only affects about a third of the, of your total cholesterol.
• 31:53
  Well, that means that every third molecule in in an omnivores, bloodstream is countless chicken collisions.
• 32:00
  Pig CliffsNotes, fish cholesterol.
• 32:02
  And it comes in with all the oxidized cholesterol molecules, all the saturated fats, all the free radicals, all the fryer oil, all the advanced glycation end products that damage, so, our, cell membranes, it's a it's a dirty, molecular marauder filled mixture, that accompanies that.
• 32:29
  Those cholesterol molecules from cows, pigs, chickens, etc..
• 32:33
  And those molecules are the ones that damage the lining of the arteries that allow the, the, the actual insulation molecules to get in.
• 32:42
  So to play formation in Loren's long term vegan bloodstream, her cholesterol might be two, four.
• 32:49
  Didn't know what it is, but, if so, every one of those colossal molecules was made by her own liver for its own reasons.
• 32:58
  And and whether her adrenal glands heal.
• 33:01
  We need some more cholesterol for steroids.
• 33:03
  And this is where we need to go for this.
• 33:06
  Another reason.
• 33:08
  Thus, the liver said, okay, we'll we'll put in some more cholesterol this morning, and the needle goes in the vein, oh, you're closer to 40.
• 33:17
  But that also might have been coming down.
• 33:20
  It might have been going up here.
• 33:21
  We give these numbers such power.
• 33:24
  But the question is, are they turning?
• 33:26
  Are they injuring the arteries?
• 33:28
  All the are the walls of the arteries.
• 33:30
  Is it actually fostering plaque formation which is the final most important place, either closing plaque or isn't it in Lauren's case.
• 33:40
  Yeah.
• 33:40
  That cholesterol that her liver's making is flowing through the bloodstream, but it's not damaging the artery walls.
• 33:45
  She's not developing plaque in.
• 33:47
  Very importantly, the plaque formation is an inflammatory process.
• 33:51
  It's also off inflammation.
• 33:53
  And inflammatory markers, as she mentioned, like, high sensitivity CRP and Milo proxies, oxidation, phospholipids.
• 34:01
  Those are showing up in the bloodstream as those plaques get bigger in order and ready to rupture.
• 34:07
  So I tell people, don't just measure your cholesterol, check your oxidized cholesterol and your inflammatory markers like, aging CRP and my proxies.
• 34:17
  If they're not elevated, then they're inflammatory.
• 34:20
  Fire is not burning in the walls of your arteries.
• 34:24
  And then I say, as Lauren did, go over and get an ultrasound scan of your carotid arteries, and if there's no plaque there, then you don't have the disease. Yeah.
• 34:33
  Well, you know, I went plant based in the 80s.
• 34:36
  I didn't know any of this.
• 34:37
  I did it for other reasons.
• 34:39
  And, I've always had. Excellent.
• 34:42
  My doctors have always told me, you know, you've got the you've got the labs of a 19 year old.
• 34:46
  But a few years ago, I went to a family reunion, my father's side of the family, and they my entire father's side of the family has, you know, high cholesterol.
• 34:55
  Everyone's taking statins.
• 34:56
  And my cousins all in my age range.
• 34:59
  Same thing.
• 35:00
  But guess what?
• 35:01
  They're all eating the same thing that my father ate and that my father's father ate.
• 35:05
  A they eat a lot of pork, you know, they're from the Philippines.
• 35:08
  It's a high pork, high, high beef consumption.
• 35:11
  And so, but, you know, and so it's really fascinating, because they, their assumption is that, well, that's just, you know, it's in our it's in our genes.
• 35:20
  Everybody in the family has it.
• 35:21
  I'm like, well, but everybody in the family doesn't have to have it.
• 35:24
  We inherit not only our genes from our parents.
• 35:26
  We inherit our eating habits.
• 35:29
  Exactly, exactly. Wow.
• 35:31
  But no matter what your cholesterol is, take care of your arteries.
• 35:34
  And, And you don't want to be eating lots of fried anything and a lot of sugary stuff in a lot processed foods.
• 35:41
  And keep your restaurant meals down to one to twice a month.
• 35:44
  Be be very prudent with all that.
• 35:46
  Take care of your arteries.
• 35:48
  It's not a matter of just being vegan there.
• 35:50
  And because, if you've got high help, you layer whatever you want to be extra careful about not to damaging those artery walls.
• 35:58
  With a lot of fried and processed foods.
• 36:00
  We've talked to several female doctors about menopause and things like that.
• 36:06
  Is there, like, a comparative thing for men, do they?
• 36:09
  I've heard of Andrew Pause.
• 36:11
  I've heard of menopause.
• 36:13
  Is that really a thing or.
• 36:15
  Like, what are their changes like?
• 36:17
  Yeah, like women are going through hormonal changes as at a certain age range.
• 36:21
  And so we're curious because we're a lot of the doctors we've had on are sort of helping our women listeners age well, and that's a big part of the process.
• 36:30
  So what what about for men?
• 36:31
  Is there an area they could ease through?
• 36:34
  Similarly, what about us guys?
• 36:36
  What happens to us as we age?
• 36:38
  Well, I don't have the muscles.
• 36:40
  I did when I was 35. No doubt.
• 36:43
  And 76.
• 36:44
  Mother nature is, letting me know that I'm not, that, this life does not go on indefinitely.
• 36:51
  And, there's, I'm looking at the literature and, the question is, is there anything we can do to, reverse the inevitable decrease in function that we get?
• 37:06
  There's such a difference, among guys, as we age and, you know, the overarching specter of what you need to be taking, testosterone and, you know, the doctor, maintain your virility.
• 37:19
  Almost nothing from nothing in this life.
• 37:21
  There's a definitely, price to everything.
• 37:24
  Taking testosterone, results in everything from increased risk for liver damage.
• 37:30
  And your testicles will atrophy and, increase prostate cancer risk, etc..
• 37:37
  For what?
• 37:38
  To maintain function.
• 37:39
  If you want to maintain function, you want to maintain your muscles that use them.
• 37:43
  Go to the gym, guys.
• 37:45
  Or buy some weights to have at home and use those muscles to keep them fit.
• 37:50
  Your mother Nature is so clear about that.
• 37:52
  Well, any of the organs, bones.
• 37:54
  I was going to say it goes for bones to write for.
• 37:57
  Because this the whole osteoporosis thing, right?
• 38:00
  It's largely disuse.
• 38:01
  The atrophy of the bones or bones of dissolving because you're sitting all day in front of computers.
• 38:06
  There's really no it's just a matter of maintaining good function there.
• 38:12
  There's no magical if I just take a bunch of creatine and carnitine and and testosterone, magically, my muscles.
• 38:18
  No, it's not going to work like that.
• 38:18
  Yeah.
• 38:21
  Your arteries, your liver, everything.
• 38:23
  You can't do one thing in the body.
• 38:25
  The the everything sort of cascades of reactions.
• 38:30
  And so I would really caution guys, make your own testosterone by working out in the gym, taking some water.
• 38:36
  So I have some hand weights and a weighted vest and, and stress there by a little bit.
• 38:41
  That's how you keep your, you know, your muscle mass and your bone mass, and healthy levels.
• 38:46
  So more weight bearing.
• 38:48
  Yeah.
• 38:49
  It's going to be weight bearing.
• 38:50
  And swimming is very nice.
• 38:50
  Cycling is very nice.
• 38:53
  But it doesn't really strengthen your bones or your muscles very much.
• 38:57
  The swimming will certainly help your endurance.
• 38:59
  It's a wonderful thing to do.
• 39:00
  But, while you're at the pool there, pick up the weights there and, do do awake or exercise as well.
• 39:08
  Now, I've seen so many ill effects from hormones and supplements.
• 39:12
  And it's it's cheating, mother nature.
• 39:14
  I would, and it's unreal expectation.
• 39:18
  The placed on these agents that certainly are going to be young and healthy again.
• 39:23
  It doesn't work like that.
• 39:25
  And I think that's why we, we call our podcast the anti Anti-Aging podcast, because we're looking for ways to age.
• 39:33
  Well, not to try to stop it or reverses because that's not going to happen.
• 39:36
  Right? Right. Nobody's going to hear what.
• 39:40
  Well, and Lauren and I had an experience recently where we went to, chef AJ gave a conference in Sacramento and among the participants were, there was a, gentleman in his 80s who was wheelchair bound with a do you remember what his he had a lot of different diseases going on, but he, in his early 80s went whole food plant based, changed his lifestyle.
• 40:08
  And he walked into that auditorium and he gave a speech.
• 40:11
  And in his 80s, he was able to stop the disease process.
• 40:16
  Likewise, there was a woman in her 70s who had been morbidly obese and went whole food plant based in her 70s and lost over 100 pounds.
• 40:25
  Same thing.
• 40:25
  She walked up and and, so, can you speak to that a little bit like, for our listeners who want to age well and might think it's too late to, you know, they they're set in stone.
• 40:38
  What would you say to that?
• 40:39
  Thank you.
• 40:39
  When you look at the major forces that impinge upon us and turn these lovely youthful bodies that we all had when we were young, into old, and aged bodies.
• 40:52
  They're. What are the forces?
• 40:54
  At least three come to mind.
• 40:56
  One is, is disuse atrophy.
• 41:01
  We stop using the muscles in the joints and, in the bones, etc..
• 41:07
  So we we, we give up much of our strength and mobility.
• 41:11
  Second is, is molecular damage to the tissues, oxidation, fried foods, sugary foods, processed foods full of things are full of free radicals that rip electrons know off our proteins and off our cell membranes.
• 41:26
  The food stream coming through, should be a, healing and and localizing an antioxidant rich food stream that gives the chemical message to the cells in the tissues, you know, things.
• 41:42
  Okay, it shouldn't come in with a bunch of free radicals and, and, and advanced glycation end products.
• 41:50
  They're rip electrons off your proteins, off your cell membranes.
• 41:55
  So. So the food stream, and, and its amount of, ability to, to quench oxidation, is an important issue.
• 42:04
  And the lack of that is when it goes to aging and there is the improper use.
• 42:11
  Of, when we injure ourselves, so much of of the aches and pains and infirmities of old age, our cumulative injuries, the, from the we, truck driver, those of us who drive a lot or sit in front of computers, what happens to our lumbar spine is, from lack of a lack of mobility of the disc squished down and the nerves get compressed.
• 42:38
  And we have pains on our legs that makes us move less.
• 42:41
  And so our muscles atrophy more.
• 42:43
  The we set up these these spirals of disuse.
• 42:47
  And it can happen, you know, anywhere from, the rock drummers or, and the jackhammer operators.
• 42:56
  I after a while, you know, they go into their old age with really severe hearing loss and, and it's an injury.
• 43:02
  And, so it's important to, to pay attention to the signals your body is giving you mechanically.
• 43:10
  If if you've got a chronic pain, it's not a matter of just taking ibuprofen or going to the chiropractor.
• 43:16
  What is your body saying every time I move my shoulder this way.
• 43:20
  That's it. Sure.
• 43:20
  Well, what is there?
• 43:22
  What have you been doing with that shoulder that has now is the stretch and strain your the ligaments around your shoulder joint.
• 43:29
  And now they're complaining.
• 43:30
  There's it's a message to you.
• 43:31
  Stop and look at what you're doing.
• 43:33
  But those of us who just, you know, have a drink, alcohol or or just take some pain relievers and blow out, after years of that, you've got a lot of accumulated injuries.
• 43:45
  So, so the disuse, the toxic food stream, the, the mechanical injuries that we ignore and, and accumulate, I think those were three really big factors that turn us old and sore and weak.
• 43:59
  Yeah.
• 43:59
  And that in turn makes us less likely to maintain our, our vitality.
• 44:04
  So, again, the food stream, is really important.
• 44:08
  You know, those first will.
• 44:10
  Green, yellow veggies are full of antioxidants.
• 44:12
  You know, a big salad every day is really important.
• 44:15
  And in this, stop with the chips and chips and the chips and all the processed, oily, fried, junk foods there.
• 44:23
  So get that food stream whole and plant based, full of them, full of, phytonutrients that the nurses choose to keep using that body, challenge yourself, keep growing.
• 44:34
  Keep taking those on hikes in the woods and do another extra mile every weekend.
• 44:40
  You know, you get out in nature as much as you can.
• 44:42
  I think we are suffering from nature deficit disorder.
• 44:45
  Indeed.
• 44:47
  And I think that's really ages us in a really insidious way.
• 44:51
  But I think that's part of the problem as well.
• 44:53
  Well, we hear so much about connection and community now and how important that is for our health and aging.
• 44:59
  And Lauren had brought up that you, your wife Felice, and you guys met later in life.
• 45:03
  Can you address that and how that impacts, aging and health and, and that experience?
• 45:08
  Can you share that with us?
• 45:10
  And were you married before?
• 45:10
  Is this your first marriage?
• 45:13
  No it's not.
• 45:14
  I had a practice one before, you know, so this one I'm going to do.
• 45:18
  Right.
• 45:18
  It is such a gift to have a woman of this of.
• 45:22
  And all you women you all know about love you all.
• 45:25
  You're all treasures on this planet.
• 45:28
  And all women, if you give them love, they blossom and you want to take care of them.
• 45:33
  I want her to be the most confident and most powerful and and, and actively, tasting of life.
• 45:41
  And she can be and, and so it's my honor to, to, to make every day a gift to her.
• 45:49
  What how can I help with what can I do to love you more?
• 45:52
  Because there's one like this ain't coming around again.
• 45:55
  Yeah, they're my age.
• 45:56
  Well, I can see right now how much she's doing for you.
• 45:59
  You glowing in the well at the end of our lives, we're going to be asked one question.
• 46:05
  You were given a human heart and time on this planet.
• 46:08
  Why did you do it, Wonderful words.
• 46:12
  How did you meet Ellie? 35 years ago.
• 46:15
  And when she.
• 46:15
  When I was working at Earth Day, John Robbins, back in the 80s, she was the head of volunteer at, at Earth.
• 46:22
  Said we became friends. Nothing romantic.
• 46:24
  We went our separate ways and we stayed in touch from time to time.
• 46:29
  But, I had been living in New Zealand and, for three years, and they came back, I was looking for a job and passed through Florida.
• 46:37
  We're. Yeah, Lisa's living here.
• 46:39
  And, and we had we shared a meal together and, at her house, and she walked me out to the driveway, and we shared a kiss on the driveway that said something here for you, fella.
• 46:52
  Oh, I love it.
• 46:54
  And you two are so beautiful together.
• 46:57
  I love Elise.
• 46:58
  It just I could see the connection that you have and you really complement each other.
• 47:03
  And she's such a beautiful soul.
• 47:05
  So happy.
• 47:06
  Yes. About that.
• 47:08
  She does your gender credit.
• 47:09
  She's a very, No doubt.
• 47:12
  Well, thank you.
• 47:13
  Thank you for for sharing with us today. You're.
• 47:16
  You're lovely. Yeah.
• 47:17
  I think we did some good work today. We did.
• 47:19
  Thank you so much.
• 47:19
  We got to keep spreading the word.