Dr. Mehmet Oz (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) on Food, Medicine, and the Future of Healthcare

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_02] So, Dr. Oz, television personality turned government official, this is such an interesting thing. He's going to be the new administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS. He's going to be in charge of all Medicare and Medicaid. What does he know or think about these parts of our government?

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_02] You know, Medicare and Medicaid combined with Social Security is the biggest part of government spending. So it would be interesting to know what he thinks about. Like on his show, he would talk about all sorts of things ranging from medicine to alternative medicine to various other methods of healing. I want to know how he's going to be in the government.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_02] So I did have a podcast with Dr. Oz several years ago. This is a republishing of it, but he does describe his approach to medicine. And I think this is, as a citizen, this is useful. That's why I wanted to share it again. He's going to be working closely with RFK Jr. He's been working closely with Marty McCary, who's also been on the podcast, new head of the FDA. So here's Dr. Oz.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_00] This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_02] Here with Dr. Oz. Welcome to the show. You're very kind to have me. Dr. Oz, I feel like you're a superhero to me. Even your name, like Dr. Oz, it's like a superhero name. And then there must be a secret identity, you know, underneath. But you've done so much good in the world. I love your basic philosophy of let's connect the patient directly with medicine or the resources the patient needs to help themselves. I like the idea of removing the gatekeepers in many cases.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_01] So we've burdened a lot of folks with the belief that they can't become the world experts on their bodies. And that's a significant mistaken assumption because when you give others, you abdicate your own responsibility to your own health, and you give that power to somebody else, then they can manipulate it. Now, oftentimes, a well-meaning physician will do their best to help you out, but it doesn't always work out the way that it should work out for you. You need to have a plan B.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm arguing that for most of us, plan B should be the first step, which is understand your body, customize what's done to you. Any advice offered to you, you ought to triangulate with at least second opinion. This is, by the way, an interesting observation. Just to give you some numbers because you're a good numbers person. How do you know I'm a good numbers person? Because you do a lot of business, folks. I listen to the podcast. If you ask the average person about second opinions, you know, think about getting it. One in 10 will get a second opinion.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01] And the excuse that's often put forth is that, you know, I don't have time, don't have money, don't have expertise to find the right second opinion. Lots of reasons. Plus, what good is it going to do? It turns out that one in three times, one third of the time, when you get a second opinion, it changes the diagnosis or the treatment that's recommended. So it's a pretty big deal. And then folks will say, oh, it's just a minor procedure. You know what a minor procedure is, James? It's a procedure to somebody else. If someone's going to cut your skin, that's not minor anymore. So, you know, go ahead and put your hand up.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes they make shots at you. But by putting your hand up, you're actually making the healthcare system work better. Because every doctor that you talk to will be able to opine on the other doctor's opinions. And by doing that, they'd be like little bees, you know, going to different flowers. You're going around fertilizing the entire forest.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_02] You don't, what I worry about with second opinions, and I agree with you, because we've seen many examples on the podcast. I think it was Ray Dahlia who said he got a third opinion on a cancer diagnosis and he didn't even have cancer.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01] So, Ray's a good example. Ray's maybe the most logical person I've ever met and incredibly insightful about the craziness we have around emotions that cloud our analytic minds. It's not that emotion's not important. Obviously, it's critical. But you ought to use the analytic mind as well, which is why I think Ray does such a beautiful job, as you teased out, of just getting people to be honest. You know, not all opinions are equal. They should be valued and respected, but they don't all carry the same weight when it comes to making the final decision.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_02] I think that's important because, and look, I want to, the main reason we're here is I want, I love this book, Food Can Fix It, that you wrote. The subtitle, which I'm always bad at remembering, the superfood switch to fight fat, defy aging, and eat your way healthy. I read the book. It's great. I felt lucky as I was reading the book because I'm like, oh, I do this, I do this, I do this. Some things I don't do, but I do most of it. And so I felt blessed.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_02] I just turned 50, so I feel very, I actually feel in the best health of my life in part because I switched my nutrition about five or six years ago. And I switched it to mostly the things you recommend here. So I'm really excited to talk about this. These ideas have personally touched me and in part because people like you are releasing this information that's so valuable that society has forgotten. One thing I always worried about, and just to continue with what you're saying, is it's important for people to realize everyone's got an agenda.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_02] So as you just said, when you go to the second doctor, they know the first doctor's opinion, but they want your business. So they're going to, they're going to, you have to know, understand, and the FDA, they have their agenda when they approve drugs. And the lobbying industries for every drug company or food industry or whatever. So in the government, like everybody's got their own agenda about health, and it might not be the same as your personal agenda. You know, and there's a saying, it's a recession when your neighbor loses his job. It's a depression when you lose your job. So you have to choose yourself for health.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_01] That's stated, all we should expect is transparency. People all have their own motivations, and that's normal, completely healthy. It's what makes America run. Fantastic. I have very few complaints about people who selfishly make decisions. In fact, I think most of us should be a bit more selfish in that we abuse ourselves at the expense of others, and that actually is a bad role model.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_02] Well, why do you think that happens? Because I think there's a, like, I'm happy to, I've had a podcast about this recently also. I'm happy to tell you to take your pills, but it's really hard for me to take my pills. Why does the individual have a hard time helping themselves?

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_01] I think a lot of this comes from parenting. Think about this. When you, as a mom or dad, do everything for your kids, what you're messaging to your kids is they have to do the same thing for their children and for their relationships. Give, give, give, give, give. And giving is a good thing. You want to give, but not to the expense of yourself. And if you're on a plane and the auction goes out, right, you reach for the auction and put it on your face first. You don't put it on your child's face, not because you don't love your child, but you need to be awake enough to take care of your child.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_01] And too often in traditional and otherwise healthy families and relationships, we sacrifice all for our kids. But the kids aren't going to model that well because kids aren't going to treat themselves the way you treat them. They're going to treat themselves the way you treat yourself. So if you give up your entire career, if you gain weight, if you don't manage the basic issues in your life effectively because your kid's soccer practice comes first, your kids are going to do the same thing when they have to make that decision. I would argue take care of yourself. Make sure you're in good shape.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_01] Make sure you can actually play soccer with them and then take them to soccer games.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_02] I think that there's almost concentric layers from that. There's yourself, then there's your relationships, like the parents should take care of their own relationship even before they hug and cuddle with the kids because the kids will model that later on in their relationships. And then out to health and to food and to medicines and to every area, to career, which I might ask you about later after we talk about the book.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01] Well, the best example of all is health. I mean, everything else comes out from that as well, but in health, people will frequently abuse their bodies because they can't cope with the stress that's caused by a job obligation they have or relationship that they're in. They stress eat, which is, by the way, a very effective way of coping with stress. Why do people stress eat? It works. Very simply stated. Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't understand the science of it.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_02] So I'm stressed. I feel like instead of eating like broccoli, I feel like eating chips.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, because broccoli doesn't actually hit your brain like dopamine the way sugar does. Really? Sugar hits your brain like crack cocaine. It smacks the dopamine receptors. It gets you feeling really good. It helps you cope. It works. However, it's maladaptive. So in a small little- Meaning? Meaning that short term, it'll do the D, but long term, it's a bad problem. And it's not the right way to deal with the process. Because if you're stressed out by, let's say, a malevolent person in your life, go deal with the malevolent person in your life. Don't medicate with sugar.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_01] Or, by the way, narcotics or any other medication. If you can't sleep at night, the best solution is not a nightly sleeping pill. It's to figure out what's ruminating that's causing you to not be able to sleep. What's going on deep inside your body, maybe because of the food you're eating that's preventing you from getting a night of rest that you know is so vital to your well-being. And when we don't deal with the root cause of problems, which at its very core is what this book's about, then you end up putting layers of paint on it.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_01] Listen, if there's a crack in the wall in this beautiful studio we're taping in now, you don't just paint the crack. You fix the crack. Otherwise, the paint's going to chip off anyway. So go to the root issue. Food was always how we fixed it. Because when you walk into a grocery store, you walk into a pharmacy. That's exactly how our bodies receive that. So if you ignore the fact that the indoles, which are chemicals found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli that you mentioned earlier.

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_02] That's because I want to get that spinner that you talk about in the book and turn broccoli into pasta. Exactly. And then I can replace my pasta cravings. That works, by the way.

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_01] And that's one of the hacks that gets you there. But if you ignore the benefits of broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables in helping your liver detoxify your body, thus being correlated with reduction in some ailments, maybe even cancers, then you're throwing away a beautiful opportunity to help yourself. And part of the reason I didn't write this book for 10 years, because I've written, I think this book is my eighth New York Times bestseller. And I don't take credit for this myself because I never do these books by myself. I work with teams. I pull all the data.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_01] I have researchers and writers and editors, people who really help me tease out what's most important. But when I finished my seventh New York Times bestseller, I stopped writing because I thought I said everything I felt I needed to say at that time. But over the last decade, there's been a gargantuan advance in the ability of science to tell you why your mom was right, to underline and emphasize why certain foods make a big difference to pain and depression and mental cognition and your heart and your cancer risk and all these other things, including your weight,

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_01] that historically we thought were true, but we didn't know why. Because science is much better at proving that a gunshot to the chest is well treated with a suture, which is, by the way, my specialty is heart surgery. That's a truthful statement. Easy to prove, easy to validate. Science is not so readily able to show that subtle metabolic processes in the billions of humans that are on the planet all react the same way to the same piece of broccoli.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_02] I think that's because if you think about just the nature of scientific testing, you can do a study that lasts over five years has many more ways to go wrong than a study that lasts for three seconds. So if you're shot in the heart with a gun and you operate and the guy lives, then that proves that this is a viable method.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_01] And antibiotics can work within days. Again, much easier to show than giving you broccoli every day and showing that it affects colon cancer rates. However, over the last decade, we've gotten much more sophisticated in understanding the mechanisms of why these chemicals in foods make a difference.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_02] So let's talk about specifically food can fix it. Let's fix some things. And again, I think this is great because it shows it. I think over the past hundred years, there's been this separation of, oh, food is something we eat as opposed to food as fuel, food as medicine, food as the way our body lives and thinks and grows and fights for our health. So let's talk about it.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_02] But, you know, there's a lot of things you talk about, but let's talk about brain function. That's the one that I was, the chapter I got most interested in. Like, how can I make my brain better? And by the way, this book has, you know, a 21-day diet that you recommend because in part, 21 days is a number. And I think to help change habits. Let me explain that for a second.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01] And I promise you, I'll remember to get to the brain.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_02] Your memory better be good because I just turned 50 and I get worried about my memory now. Well, we related it. We just found out.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01] Yes, and her cousin.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_02] So we're linked genetically on this.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_01] So what was I saying? No. So first off, the interesting thing about the human brain is until 10,000 years ago, it was dependent on whatever we could go out there and capture, wild animals, fresh berries, fruits, whatever. Şatalhöyük was the first real human settlement. And it was in Turkey, which is where my ancestors are from.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01] And we see that humans got smaller, shorter, and probably sicker when we moved into large communities where you had to create food not for your betterment but for the community's betterment.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_02] So would you agree with Yuval Harari sentiment in Sapiens that wheat domesticated us? Yes. And that it was kind of a net negative on human health?

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_01] Well, Sapiens is a profoundly important book for a lot of reasons. One of the most important is because it respects the power of food over us. And interestingly, he raises Yuval in that book the provocative insight that we left Africa 70,000 years ago. And all of us homo sapiens, we're all snapping ourselves in the back, giving ourselves rotator cuff injuries, congratulating ourselves for taking over the planet. But we've had evidence of the species in existence for 250,000 years. What took us so long?

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01] What we were doing in North Africa for 180,000 years, hanging out, doing nothing. And what got us to finally move out was the ability to believe, to have an understanding that non-tangible concepts could actually be truthful and were as valid as things you could touch. So faith being an example, but not even faith in religion, just capitalism is a faith. I believe that we could unify ourselves in larger groups. Food fell off the wagon.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_01] It stopped becoming critical because when you move from the family unit of 50 to the community of 500,000, 50,000, make an army, whatever, most ancient armies were 30,000 in that range. So these are lots of mouths to feed. You just put calories in people. And you had to specialize. Somebody had to specialize in making food. Right. And the specialist began doing just that. But you give up some vital nutrients that feed our brain. So back to your question about what makes the brain healthier. Our brain cells are primarily made of fat. We are all fatheads.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_01] You can say that and not be insulting someone. It's a truthful statement. You want fats that are flexible, that are malleable, because the brain neurons speak to each other through their membranes. And the membranes are where the fat's stored. It's a lipid layer. And so when you have omega-3 fats, which are the fats that fish have, because fish live in cold water, many of them, the salmon, et cetera, they have to be able to move in cold water. Well, fats that freeze in the cold, butter, right?

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_01] Or some of the other fats aren't as good as omega-3 fats, which stay very flexible. Now, they're fragile, but they're flexible.

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_02] So what does that mean? So that means that they can just go through the brain easier to feed the brain?

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_01] And they all get into the brain, but the brain uses them to make membranes, to make cells. So you want a brain cell that's rigid like a block and can't bend, or you want a brain cell that's flexible, malleable, and can receive information, exchange information, and communicate more readily. You want brain cells that are able to learn and prosper and grow and nurture themselves. And we know that children who are given neonates, who are given omega-3 fats, seem to do better.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_02] So it seems though, again, we have this artificial industry that feeds the brain for very short term, like let's say Adderall. I'm not making any judgment one way or the other, but there are all these things now that we give our kids to kind of boost the energy, and there's coffee and so on. What are foods that just long-term just feed the brain, make you smarter, avoid dementia, and so on?

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_01] Omega-3 fats because they help with cognitive function, and they help with stress management. And when your brain is able to cope with stress more readily, it's less depression. So like salmon. Omega-3, salmon, sardines. You can also get vegetarian sources. They're not quite as good, but walnuts, flax seeds, et cetera. Second, a lot of the deep, richly colored fruits and vegetables are helpful. Blueberries are basically brain berries. They're full of antioxidants. These colorful vegetables and fruits have those colors to protect themselves from the oxidation of the sun.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_01] So they're very specifically helping these plants and vegetables thrive. When you eat them, you get those benefits. You know, red wine has resveratrol in it, which specifically affects our cells and alcohol, interestingly, because it allows us to be more social. You know, red wine for breakfast doesn't work. Red wine, you know, at dinner with your friends when you're talking, allows your brain to sort of step back from the day-to-day mundane issues and begin to call to higher elements of our cells to talk. And that trains the brain. It's like a muscle. You've got to use it to keep it going.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_01] And we know that certain foods are really toxic to the brain. You know, for a lot of people, wheat is an irritant to the brain. There's a wheat brain belief that many hold. I think there's some validity to it. We're not even 100% sure which of the elements within wheat, although I could postulate, are problematic. But they, for some people, cause inflammation of the brain. Fried foods, sugary foods, they tend to delus a bit. Weight gain is a major issue for the brain. Do you eat sugary foods at all? No. I won't. I'll eat fruits that have natural— Foods that have sugar naturally, I'm fine with.

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_01] Otherwise, generally, I'll look at the information packet on the back, and if it's more than four grams of sugar per serving, I won't take it.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_02] Even though with fruits, like, chemically, it's all just sugar. It all just boils down to the same thing.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_01] No, it's not true, and I'll tell you why.

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[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_01] Generally, I look at the information packet on the back, and if it's more than four grams of sugar per serving, I won't take it.

[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_02] Even though with fruits, like chemically, it's all just sugar. It all just boils down to the same thing.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_01] No, it's not true. And I'll tell you why. Because it comes as a packet of fiber with sugar. If you mix fiber with sugar, the glycemic index effect is much different. So yes, if I took a teaspoon of sugar, which is 16 calories, by the way. So put sugar in your coffee or your tea. Don't put artificial sweeteners in there. They don't work anyway. But if you have a teaspoon of sugar, that 16 calories by itself goes right to my bloodstream, stimulates insulin, and I go through the usual cycling. I take that same amount of fiber, of sugar with fiber, and the fiber holds it in my gut.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_01] So it slowly is released into my bloodstream. And so when I get it, I don't get the big hormonal surge that's required to cope with the 16 calories of sugar, and I can deal better. Our ancestors never had access to sugar. There's no sugar in the wild. It's really hard to get it out of the food you eat. We had access to salt, which is a much safer additive than sugar. But sugar in the high-dose form that we're giving it to people right now is a major problem.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_02] So is this kind of the difference between smoothies and juicing? A lot of people are into juicing, put their fruits in a juicer, and boom. But then you're left with the sugar. You're not left with the fiber.

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_01] I think a smoothie with the fiber is a better solution. However, a juice is not a bad food. It's rich in antioxidants, other nutrients, other benefits. It doesn't have fiber. So I'd much rather you get the fiber with it if you can. But our reason we're having problems in health in America is not because of our juices. We're having problems in America because of carbonated beverages or the sugary beverages and readily added sugar to almost all the processed food. So it's hard for you to find a processed food these days that doesn't have something in the sugar or salt added in significant doses.

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_01] Right.

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_02] There's that saying, when you go shopping, go shop on the end aisles and not any of the middle aisles because that's where all the processed foods are. For good reason.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_01] And when you begin to appreciate the majesty of the body, how spectacularly well it functions when it's given the right kinds of nutrients, then you begin to appreciate the power of food to fix it. But it's not just the nutrients. It's also the community that it builds as a sacredness to food that's always brought us together as a people. It's, you know, every oral tradition, the Bible and before and after always focus around the role of food, a feast. There are reasons that come together.

[00:25:48] [SPEAKER_01] There's the temperature of the food because chicken soup works in part because the steam loosens up mucous membranes and helps you with head coats, but, you know, other viral elements because they set up shop in your nose. You have, you know, cold foods for aches. You have foods that have a texture that's stimulatory. All of this is forgotten in the modern era when we see food only as a utilitarian source of calories.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_02] You just mentioned aches. So let's say I'm in pain for some reason. I have whatever, stomach pain, back pain, headache, whatever. You also mentioned foods as medicine in the book. What are some examples there?

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_01] Well, all those pains are different. So for a nerve pain, for example, which is one of a couple of the examples you gave, vitamins B6 and B12 tend to be very effective. Where can I get B12? You mentioned in the book, mostly for only from meats. Yes, but organ meats primarily. B12 is a real problem for a lot of people because they don't absorb it normally when they get older. So when we're children, there's a chemical in our stomach called intrinsic factor that

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01] allows us to absorb the, you know, the B12 in our small intestine. But we don't make enough of that as we get older or for on certain medications, ulcer medications in particular, tends to hinder the ability of us to absorb some of these nutrients. So you need to take it sublingually. So they have B12 lozenges. You put it under your tongue and it absorbs through the mucous membrane beneath the tongue.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_02] What if I, this is a stupid question, but it's stupid only because I've done it. What if you get an IV getting you with B12?

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_01] Well, B12 needs to be inserted into you periodically, you know, once a month, maybe. So you need to get an IV once a month. Injections, intramuscular injections are traditionally, that's what doctors gave patients. Made them feel better. Some of it was placebo effect. People still do it today for sciatica pain, you know, leg, you know, nerve pain in the legs. And, you know, anecdotally has some impact, but we know that the nerves are coated with an insulation and that insulation needs B vitamins to be healthy.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02] So more foods that have B, B12, B6.

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_01] Without that, it's like electrical cables that when, if you don't have the insulation, they begin to short out. So you run into problems. You get firing pain, nerve pain, et cetera. Whereas you mentioned stomach pain. Well, irritable bowel and sometimes inflammatory bowel are correlated very closely to certain foods that you're eating. So, you know, things like colostrum make a difference. They actually, it's in your mother's milk before you get the milk, but you can get bovine versions. Some people, that makes sense. But food itself is probably more important than anything else you'll give because it

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_01] has a unique ability to provide bacteria in the gut. Remember, we don't actually digest our own food. We outsource it to bacteria. There's trillions of bacteria in your gut. There's actually more bacteria in your gut than there are cells in your body. So you need the bacteria to digest. And think about this. Our body could never keep up with the changing food that we would experience from season to season. And nomadically, if we're moving across lands, we never would have been able to keep up. So bacteria shift with us.

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_01] So they allow us to digest the food that we're eating that day. And those bacteria break the food down into particles that we can then absorb through the intestinal system. If you don't have the right bacteria, you can't do it healthily. So if you're eating foods that naturally have probiotics in them, yogurt, kefir, kombucha, whatever you're eating, pickles, sauerkraut, these foods naturally have probiotics in them. Then you eat foods that feed those bacteria, artichokes, lignans, allium plants like onions and garlic. Those feed the bacteria.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_01] Well, now you've got a great solution. You're eating the right bacteria and you're feeding those bacteria so you have the right bacteria to protect you. There's 500 species of bacteria in your gut. Most of them are, they're trying to help you. You want those bacteria. But the bad guy bacteria, the ones that are toxic to you, that could kill you, and there are plenty of those too, they don't need to eat all that stuff. They'll eat junk food. And when they gain the upper hand, they slaughter all the good guy bacteria.

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_02] So I want to hit some of the other topics in the book, but the book has so many topics. There's no way to cover it all, but we'll hit one or two others. The standard one people always ask about and it's always talked about is weight loss. And I'll tell you just for me, when I was about 44, 45, I realized, uh-oh, my metabolism just dropped. Like everything I ate was now somehow staying in my body. So I had to completely change the way I ate.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_02] But like, what's, which is hard to do, but what's, what's the best way to, you know, start building up a regimen and what foods one should eat for weight loss?

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_01] Well, you mentioned three weeks earlier in the conversation. I'm just going to point out that the advice I'm going to give you, I want you to try for three weeks. Okay. And the reason we picked three weeks is your brain has brain derived growth factor. It's got like miracle growth for the brain. You need new nerve cells to be made to change your pathway to behavior because you can't get rid of behavior. You have to replace the behavior. So you need to give yourself a couple of weeks to train yourself. But if you don't like what I'm offering, then switch to another idea. You will find an idea eventually that works for you. But here's my secret to keeping my weight.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_01] This happens to work for me, works for a lot of people, but it doesn't work for everybody. In fact, we, on the show this year, we have a big diet called the Pegan Diet. It's the paleo married the vegan because they're both great, but they're different from each other. And it's hard to stay on either one alone. So we made a Pegan Diet because you can do that for a long time. So the most important thing for a diet for me, the most effective one is the one you'll do. So you have to love the diet. If you don't adore the food, it's not going to work. Don't torture yourself. Find the diet you love.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_01] The food tastes good to you and it happens to be healthy for you. So the general rule is the thumb. Their brain is not looking for calories. It's looking for nutrients. If you eat nutrient-rich food, your brain will stop forcing you to eat. I'll give you an example. Nuts. A lot of people who are dying say, I don't want to eat nuts. I'll gain weight. Too many calories in them. I've never seen a study that didn't show that nuts help you lose weight. Why would nuts help you lose weight if they have calories? Because they're little trees. They're baby trees.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_01] They're the embryos of these rich, nutrient-dense food sources. So when you eat a cashew or a walnut or whatever, peanuts aren't tree nuts. So peanuts are legumes. They grow beneath the ground. But the tree nuts are all going to become trees one day. And they have nutrients, fiber, vitamins, proteins in them. So when you eat those foods, you have so many nutrients, your brain says you can stop eating. You don't have to keep eating those nuts. So you stop. And therefore, you don't overeat. Dairy is another good example.

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_01] You take full-fat dairy or 2% fat dairy and you adulterate it by making it 0% skim milk. Well, for most people, it doesn't taste so good. But interestingly, you also gain weight. Or at least you don't lose weight more than you would have normally. Now, that's paradoxical. How's that possible? I'm taking the fat out, right? It's got less calories. Well, it turns out the fat in milk and dairy, if it's not irritating you, dairy is irritating to a lot of people. But if you're going to eat dairy, the 2% fat is just fine because those fats satiate you. They make you feel better. And your brain says, hey, thank goodness I got some nutrients here.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_01] I'm not going to make you eat more. If you take the fat out of milk, what's left? Sugar. Now, I don't have a problem with milk, but drink it the right way. If I did have a problem with milk, if I was intolerant or got inflamed or bloated because I pay attention to my body, I wouldn't drink it at all. But adulterating it to make it low fat or no fat is not the right way to go. Gluten-free foods is one of the biggest problems in America, not because it doesn't really work. It's a false promise. The argument was gluten is a problem for you. That's why wheat's making you fat.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_01] Therefore, cut the gluten out. Take the wheat. Take the sticky stuff out, the protein, the gluten. Add some fake stuff into it. You'll be okay. No, it doesn't work. You gain weight. If you have a problem with wheat, don't eat the wheat.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_02] Don't look for a culprit in gluten. In terms of the gluten-free, I like how you say in the book, eat foods that are closest to what you would find in nature as opposed to something processed and processed and scientifically engineered and so on.

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_01] Eat food that comes out of the ground looking the way it looked when it was picked.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_02] Now, another category I'll ask, and this will be the last category, even though there's, I mean, this is so much useful information. I encourage people to get the full information in the book. There's the full diet plan. There's every, there's a thousand categories, but energy. I need, I have a full day from six in the morning till 10 at night every day. What should I eat to keep my energy balanced and I'm pacing? You mentioned the great thing, which is that we have a limited supply of energy and we got to kind of pace it out, but I just, I want to boost energy.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01] So I'll give it to you, but at its very core, what you really, I think want to do is to titrate out your energy as you need it. You have enough energy for the day. Okay. I'll explain. Most people think, I mean, I'll have my coffee first thing in the morning. Coffee is a, it doesn't give you energy. Caffeine releases your energy that you already have in your own energy bank and you use it right then. So you don't get more of it. You just use it all. It's like having a credit card. You just use it earlier in the day. By the time the afternoon comes, you're wiped out.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_01] There was a great study done in Israel where they asked parole judges, parole judges to keep track of when the paroles were granted. And they just give a lot more paroles out in the morning. And the reason for that is in the morning, they're not tired yet. In the afternoon, they get exhausted. They get decision fatigue. The best way to deal with the decision fatigue, the lack of energy is to eat sugar. And so you end up with this crazy cascade. So my argument is the following. When you first get up in the morning and you jump in the shower, you're late for work, you actually probably don't need coffee. You're probably already pretty jazzed up from being woken up.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_01] Just delay your morning coffee a couple hours. It'd be an hour to do that little experiment for a couple of weeks. Instead, first thing in the morning, have some green tea. Because green tea, younger tea, has other polyphenols, other chemicals that stimulate you, but it doesn't have as much caffeine. So you're stimulating a different part of your body. So with what? What do you eat instead of? So I have a green tea, first thing in the morning. I have some Greek yogurt with blueberries. It gives me a little calorie, a little nutrition, but primarily things that are good for you. My hormones are very flat.

[00:35:23] [SPEAKER_01] I'm not getting ups and downs from too much sugar. Will you eat protein? Yogurt has a ton of protein. Greek yogurt is dense to protein. So those little capsules are 100 calories and tons of protein. So you have to have protein. Eggs, just get it in some way, but you have to get your protein. And that will keep you sort of flat for the first couple hours. Have your first coffee at nine. Then you're getting, now you can sort of settle into your pattern. And then I would have a cup of coffee around then. You could have one in the early afternoon. Then I would switch to something like dark chocolate late in the afternoon.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_01] Dark chocolate has caffeine also, not too much sugar. You can't eat that much for that reason, right? Dark chocolate's milk fats and coloring. Dark chocolate's caffeine. And because it's sort of dense and bitter, you're not going to eat too much of it. And that's what I would traditionally recommend to someone. That way you have a little green tea to get you going in the morning. Your first coffee is later in the morning. So you're not just chugging it down. You're sort of using it to keep you in the late morning doldrums. You have another coffee right after lunch to get you through that little down period. Then a piece of chocolate that's five in the evening. And by the time you get to dinner, you're still going okay.

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_01] And the other thing, big advice here, don't make decisions in the morning. Make them in the afternoon. Store your decisions up. Like I mentioned with the parole judges, you have a certain amount of decision-making chi. A lot of people confuse energy with just exhaustion from doing stuff. So in the morning, automate your life. Do the same thing. You have the same breakfast, go the same way to work. Don't challenge yourself in the morning. You know, you can do forward-looking work there, but don't get caught up in the day-to-day mundane issues. Save that stuff for later in the afternoon so you don't feel exhausted.

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_01] Because it's not about energy management. It's about time management.

[00:36:52] [SPEAKER_02] So, I mean, you're involved in so many projects. TV show, websites, books, charity. You must be changing focus a million times in a day, which is very difficult to do. And you're on this podcast, for instance. It's just, what's your daily routine like? Like, how do you kind of pace throughout the day? And then that'll be the final question, but I do, and then I'm going to recommend the hell out of food and fix it.

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_01] So I get up almost always the same time in the morning, around six. I do a quick seven-minute yoga routine, which is basically some calisthenics with sun salutation. I have an example of what I do on dros.com, but it's all over the web. You know, I started doing them with The Oprah Show. So they're, you know, easy to find. And then I shower, shave, shower, off to work. I don't eat anything. I'm busy. I got stuff to do. I sit in the studio or I go to the hospital once a week at seven in the morning, and we do briefings.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_01] About halfway through briefings, which are an hour and a half long, I'll grab some Greek yogurt and some berries. Again, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. They have it delivered to the studio. I don't think twice about it. I like it. It tastes good to me. I'll add something here and there once in a while, but that's basically my morning. Then I go out in the studio. We make our shows. By lunch, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten that much. So I have a big lunch, and I feel a little tired after lunch. And here's what I do. I nap every day almost. Five minutes, 10 minutes, not longer. It feels so good.

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_01] It dwarfs any other tactic I've ever used to re-energize myself for the afternoon. And we are biologically supposed to nap about eight hours after we get up. So for me, I get up seven and a half, eight hours. I usually nap around 1.30. I get up at six, so it's right for me. But everyone's different. Find your spot. But I strongly recommend it. And you're not being lazy. You're going to function so much higher in the afternoon if you take a little nap. And then I go back to an afternoon show. Usually we tape two shows a day when I'm taping. And then I go back for more briefings. All through the afternoon, I'm snacking on dark chocolate.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_01] I don't really drink coffee at all unless someone surprises me with some. I'm fine with tea or nothing or the dark chocolate. And then I'll definitely have something that's sugary. I mean, that's chocolatey in the late evening as I'm briefing. Then I have a good-sized dinner around 6, 6.30. I won't eat anything after 7.30 because I go to bed around 10.30. So I want three hours without any food in my stomach. To digest. To digest. And I sleep so darn well. And I pride myself on it. And I don't brag about a lot of things, but my sleep on – and the reason is I worked at it.

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_01] It didn't come naturally to me. I'm a heart surgeon. We're taught never to sleep. Sleeping is a sign of weakness. I had to completely reboot myself. The same time every day going to bed, getting up, same routines to make sure that my body's honed. And I had to deal with issues like ruminating and anxieties that everyone else has with different tactics. And I have a whole sleep hygiene approach to bedtime about 15 minutes before I go to bed so that I'm actually tired when I put my head on the pillow at 10.30. What's the protocol there? Turn the bright lights off, no screens, because it turns off melatonin secretion in the brain.

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_01] I'll have – I need some warm tea. I'll have it around – an herbal tea around 9. I actually sit in the bed and read for 15 minutes or so before I fall asleep. It makes me feel tired. I deal with any junk that I've got that – I don't want to ever go to bed mad about anything. If I've got the things that I'm thinking about, I write them down. These are not rocket science ideas. They've been around probably since the dawn of humanity, but they work. Writing things down works? Yes, write them down because then you're not – listen, I can't fix them at 10 at night. Let me just write it down.

[00:40:09] [SPEAKER_01] I'll remember first thing in the morning. Oh, that's the other thing. When you first get up in the morning, don't check your emails. Send out emails. Be proactive. You know, all the – I want people doing work in the morning. I don't want to be doing their work. So I want to send stuff out that needs to get that – tell the kids to do this. Ask my wife if she'll do this. This is a favor. I have to ask her if it's a favor. But then when the incoming start happening, which, you know, is pretty early in the morning, I'm ready for it because I got my stuff off my chest.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, Dr. Oz, thanks so much. Valuable information, but also food can fix it. There is so much valuable information in this book. I think it's life-changing ideas, life-changing suggestions. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:40:50] [SPEAKER_01] Taking a lesson out of your playbook, I'm actually starting the podcast. Oh, really? Yes. Part of my interest in doing this was to see how you guys function so beautifully, and I congratulate you on your success. But we're going to do a podcast about – well, food can fix it, but the show version. You know, how do I get the biggest stars in food to make food sexy, cool, and hip? Because it really is.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_02] Well, if you have me on your podcast, I will tell you my – what I call the Airbnb diet, which works. And it goes along with the idea that you say you pack your lunch, or you did when you were in graduate school. So now. Similar idea. So anyway, thanks so much, Dr. Oz. I really appreciate it. Take care.

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