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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeLet Food Be Thy Medicine: EAT THIS To Heal The Body & STARVE CANCER! | Dr. William Li
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150 min read · 30,019 words- 0:00 – 5:45
Kiwi, DNA Repair and the Drain Analogy
- WLDr. William Li
There's these biological systems that keep us fit, keep us healthy, and if we're not careful to take good care of them, they too will wane in their power to defend us, and that's actually how we wind up getting sick. [upbeat music]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
As you were describing that, Dr. Li, I was thinking about a, a, a bath, right? And I was thinking, okay, well, if an overflowing bath, when the water goes up and it starts to leak out, if that's the disease, or let's say that's cancer, every day we're sort of, uh, filling up our bath, let's say. Um, but as long as the drain's working well, v- you know, the water's staying down. It's not getting to the top. But if, I guess if we're doing enough stuff that's actually blocking that drain, then actually we're not gonna be able to repair the, the rising water level, and that water level's gonna sort of spill out, and then we've got a disease, then we've got cancer. It's probably not a perfect analogy, but do you think there's something in that?
- WLDr. William Li
Well, yeah, yeah. Let me, let me kind of, um, build on what you just said. [clears throat] So you've got the drain, uh, keeping the water, uh, flowing and clean and at the right level, and you've got the water coming in, and that balance of where the water line needs to be. Now let's add some more. Now let's take a garbage pail filled with food bits and now let's pour those in the drain as well, okay?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Now you're contaminating the water, and if you have more of the drain opening to remove those bits, you're gonna keep the water clean. But if you actually stop up the drain, then the garbage starts to accumulate, and that's actually part of the problem as well, is damage to our body accumulates over time, and that's why the bad decisions that we make really take a, you know, o- over the course of months or years, they have a consequence. And the good decisions also have the same type of, uh, uh, time, uh, uh, honored ability to build up-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... on our behalf.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, in terms of empowering people, in terms of what they can do, and this is what a lot of your work is about, food has power here. You know, specifically we're talking about DNA damage. Food has the ability to, I guess, make that drain bigger or put new drains in the bath so there's more ability to kinda repair the damage. So, you know, we're talking again about these five defense systems. I've gone straight in for number four that you mentioned, DNA. Could you maybe mention some foods that we can think about consuming that might have an impact on this particular defense system?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, so some amazing research has been done, uh, uh, looking at which foods can help protect our DNA and, and some of them are, are very ordinary, like the, uh, a, a kiwi fruit that you might eat at breakfast. You know that brown fuzzy ball, you cut it open, it's got this emerald green, uh, interior with a little white starburst. You know, it's kind of, um, tart and sweet at the same time. Well, that, uh, kiwi is packed with vitamins and antioxidants, and it's been shown that eating just one kiwi a day can actually, uh, protect your, cause your blood to be fortified to neutralize about 60% of the incoming damage from DNA. And if you eat three kiwis a day, okay, which is pretty easy, right? I mean, y- you peel it, you cut it up, you can put it into a yogurt, okay? It's something that simple. Uh, uh, actually will build, help your DNA build itself back up so that damaged DNA will be repaired. So don't, don't forget, like think about the way of protecting your DNA. Um, I remember an old video game called Missile Command, and this is where from the top of the screen, there are all these missiles that are descending down on your planet. And what you had to do is to be able to, you know, you know, fire and, and try to neutralize all the missiles, and that's what antioxidants actually do.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- WLDr. William Li
But it's really hard to prevent all the missiles from coming in. And so occasionally you actually have one that cre- that gets through the shields and creates a crater. That's damage. And so neutralizing the incoming is like antioxidants, but building back the damaged DNA, well, that's important too, because that's like patching a pothole in the highway, in the roadside, so that y- so other cars don't have a problem on it. And, and so here's a, uh, an example of a food, a kiwi, that can actually do that, but there are other foods that can also have varying degrees of protection of your DNA as well.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it makes me happy, that example, because my dad, who's no longer alive, I remember as a kid, Dr. Li, he used to say to me, you know, "Keep eating kiwi fruits." He'd come back from the supermarket with, you know, uh, these bags of kiwi fruits. He'd say, "They're really, really good for you. They're rich in vitamin C," which of course is true, but obviously you're taking it up a notch now. You're saying, yes, it's rich in vitamin C, but actually it's also helping us repair DNA. And I guess to me, there's a wider point here, which is , you know, my dad, what, 20, 30 years ago probably said it's rich in vitamin C, so thought there was a value on feeding his children that food because of the impacts on our health. And as science progresses, we're, I guess we're learning more about the magic of this, you know, quite ordinary food, the, the kiwi fruits. It makes me wonder how much about food do we still not know? Like we're, we're learning.
- WLDr. William Li
Oh-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Do you know what I mean? It's kinda like-
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... we think we know so much and we, of course, we know more than we knew 20 years ago, but what are we gonna find out in 10 years, in 20 years about the magical properties of these foods?
- 5:45 – 12:47
Food as Medicine: Comparing Foods and Drugs
- WLDr. William Li
Well, what you're actually talking about is what I'm working on, which is the, a new field of research called food as medicine. So the, the slogan or the saying, "Food as medicine," was attributed to, uh, Hippocrates, you know, 3,000 years ago. But in fact- [clears throat] Back then there were no medicines, so food was the only thing that was around. Today we have a lot of medicines, and, and it's because we, in the quest to develop medicines, we've em- employed some really deep science, molecular biology, genomics. We have be- drill right down inside the cell to figure out what happens and why, and what the consequences are, and how the cells work together. Well, one of the reasons that I, uh, uh, went into nutrition was because I realized that food was something that could be used for prevention. You wouldn't wanna use drugs for prevention. But the problem with food, nutrition, the criticism that many of us in the medical world have, you know, about the idea of, of using food for healing was, uh, historically it was a lack of evidence, right? So we have a lot of evidence about drugs. We almost have nothing about foods. I mean, that's the dismissive tone that I think you probably were exposed to as well as I, uh, for most of our education. However, what's happening now, and this is, I'm leading-- I'm one of the people leading the charge in this, we can use the same technologies that are used to develop pharmaceuticals, and instead of throwing a drug into the system to see what happens, we can actually start to throw foods into those system and, and see what happens as well. In fact, you can even compare foods and drugs and see which one wins, and that's something that I've been doing for the last decade, is really trying to use the same rigorous scientific methodology used for drug development-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... in order to be able to study the impact of food.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, and I think you are in many ways uniquely placed to do this and move this field on, because you've got so much experience in the development of drugs and in research, so obviously you know how that whole system works. And because you are this way inclined to see the healing potential of foods, you can actually do that. And I, and I feel that's really important to get that kind of traction, primarily with the medical profession, but also I think across wider society. You know, I've had on the podcast all kinds of people on in the past talking about various aspects of food, like, you know, Professor Felice Jacka from Australia, who conducted the SMILES trial showing how food can impact and in some cases reverse depression. Uh, Dr. Drew Ramsey, this nutritional psychiatrist in New York, using food to help people with their moods. But I do think there's something very fresh about your approach that, um, I, I really, really like and resonate with. This idea that food and drugs can be compared, can you give us an example of that where you've seen that food might have equal benefits if not more benefits than a drug?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, so we, um, have been developing treatments for cancer that are designed to starve a cancer by cutting off its blood supply, and that's the process of angiogenesis that is hijacked by tumors, by cancer cells to get, selfishly develop their own blood supply, right? So I told you the body has normal circulation to feed healthy tissues. Well, cancers can sometimes hijack that. So, uh, one of the way, new ways to treat cancer is actually to, uh, give a drug that can intercept a cancer's ability to recruit a private blood supply. That's starving a cancer, cutting off its blood supply. Can't get oxygen and nutrients, can't grow. Okay. So I, I was one of the people to help develop the systems that develop those drugs. There have been over a dozen drugs that have been approved by health authorities to be able to achieve this in colon cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, so on and so forth. Now, in that same system, we've actually thrown different food substances. And as an example, we took a drug, uh, that is, uh, s- a designer drug to stop angiogenesis, and then we actually, um, also threw, blinded, so we didn't know what, which one was which, um, uh, a substance that turned out to be the powdered extract from just regular green tea, a cup of green tea. And we found that they were, um, in that system, they went head to head against each other, and you could actually get the same effect in that test system. So now the question is, you know, um, we, we, uh, uh, looked at this in a lab, how does this actually play out in real people in the real world? Well, uh, you know, there are studies now that show that even two to three cups of tea a day can lower your risk of developing ovarian cancer, for example, by up to 50%. This is a gigantic study in Europe called the EPIC study that have looked at all the different food patterns and, and dietary consumptions over time to look for these correlations. And so food is medicine research is different from pharmaceutical research, okay? Pharmaceutical research, you take one pill or one drug, and you get a group of people to make them as similar as possible, and then the only thing you do to, to people is give them that one drug. And everything else is, we hope, to control it so that there's no other variables. Well, foods can't be studied like that. You can't give somebody only green tea to drink for, [clears throat] you know, months at a time. Um, or a tomato to eat. That's the only thing they can eat. And foods don't work like drugs. I mean, a drug you could, you could squash a headache, you know, in 20 minutes with a powerful drug or a migraine. But with food, the benefits of food, because it's so much more natural and because it leverages your body's own defense systems, the benefits take time and they build up over time. And so you're talking about s- research studies that could take months or years even to fully appreciate just how beneficial that is. So this is how we do food is medicine research. We look for, um, benefits in real populations of real people, like people drinking green tea. How well does that prevent different types of cancer? Then we back it up to say, can we run a small clinical trial, a small group of people that we can control to see if we get a similar effect? Then we go back into the lab and we kind of say, "Well, now what happens if you feed th-" ... animals that actually with green tea, uh, th- like, can we, you know, or an animal subject, um, can we actually see that benefit? Then we can even go deeper and go, dive that, go, start going that mile deep. What happens at the cellular level? What happens at the genetic level? And so food as medicine is really taking that macroscopic community-wide level view, and then drilling it right down to that molecular pathway. And so I'm, I happen to be one of the people that actually can traverse that entire journey-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... um, with, with what I've done.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It, it's just so fascinating. Very, very exciting about the future. That study you mentioned about, um, a few cups of tea a day reducing your risk of developing cancer, um, was that black tea or green tea?
- 12:47 – 17:13
Black Tea, Earl Grey and Multi-Action Foods
- WLDr. William Li
It's green tea. Um, uh, but black tea actually also has, um, different benefits, uh, as well. So, um, a study out of Italy did something really amazing. Well, so look, let's back up for a second. So [clears throat] what everybody would recognize is green tea, it's kinda like ja- the kind of tea that you would get in a sushi restaurant, Japanese restaurant, you know, uh, matcha. And it's very trendy and, and of course the trend goes back thousands of years in, in Asia. Um, uh, and then there's black tea, uh, classic English breakfast tea or Earl Grey tea. In fact, I have a little tin of it. I happen to have a tin, tin of Earl Grey tea here, right, right here. [clears throat] I, I love tea, and most people have said, [clears throat] this was the thinking previously, that green tea is really great for you because it's green, it's got, filled with antioxidants. Um, uh, and it's got all these polyphenols in it. And black tea, well, you know, when the British brought it back from Asia, they couldn't actually bring fresh green tea. And with this long ocean voyage, they fermented, dried it. And that drying and fermenting actually destroys those polyphenols, so it doesn't have much good. Like, might taste good, but it doesn't really have the healthful properties. Well, this is where science, again, you know, is able to heat up that knife and cut through the, the, the butter to kinda see exactly what the story is. And it turns out that black tea actually is quite active. I studied, uh, Chinese green tea, Japanese green tea, and, and w- studied, um, Earl Grey, and we can... W- And so you can, besides comparing foods with drugs, you can compare foods with foods to find out which is the best kind. I was interested in is Japanese sencha or Chinese green tea, uh, jasmine tea, or is, um, Earl Grey, which one is better when you throw them into the system? And we found actually, surprisingly, that Earl Grey, the black tea w- flavored with bergamot, actually was the most potent tea when you combined all th- when you looked at all three side by side. Other thing about black tea that's really amazing, it's been studied by researchers in Italy, is that black tea actually can call out those stem cells from your bone marrow, uh, to increase their levels in your circulation. And when your stem cells are circulating in your blood, uh, they come out of their hiding spots in your, their storage, uh, container, their, the, the garage that the pa- can- paint cans were stored in. They come out like bees flying out of a hive, and then they circ- circulate in your body looking for organs to repair. So wherever you need a little bit of renewal, regeneration, your stem cells will fix it invisibly.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
And so black tea can actually spark that repair and regenerative process.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
As you are describing these different foods and their actions, I keep thinking back to this list of five defense systems that I'm just fascinated by. And obviously we, we spoke about DNA, number four, but you've now mentioned tea, I think, and, and, and green tea and black tea, it can impact stem cells, but it can also impact other parts of these defense systems. So presumably, are there some foods which only work on one defense system from, from the knowledge that we have so far, and other foods which can kind of hit more and potentially all five at the same time?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, so here's a principle of nature. Mother Nature tends to be incredibly clever and pack multiple roles in any given food. So, uh, while researchers may have only looked at one food-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... in one particular way. So for example, C- key, um, I'm trying to think about, um, something that would be, uh, useful, um, from a whole food perspective that has only been found to do one thing. Actually, [clears throat] I have to say, most of the foods that I know of, that I've done research on, when you take a careful look, they can activate multiple health defenses. So I think that that's really where-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... we're at, is really peeling back and discovering the utility, the multi-pronged utility of different foods.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That makes sense though, doesn't it? Because these defense systems, they don't work in isolation. They're sort of, they help, you know, work t- they, they obviously have to work as interconnected systems together. So it kinda makes sense that food, particularly food that's been around for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, are also gonna have these multiple type effects.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know,
- 17:13 – 29:47
Angiogenesis, Cancer and Inflammation
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
if, if we go to angiogenesis, which you've already mentioned, and that was the first health defense system that you talked us through, this I found really, really interesting when researching your work. Uh, your TED Talk, which of course has been viewed by millions of people now, there was a really interesting slide towards the end where I, I, I very much resonate with this idea, what's the root cause of multiple diseases? Can we, you know, a- address the root cause and then, you know, we're, we're automatically gonna take care of multiple different downstream consequences? And that was a very powerful slide showing that when angiogenesis is working well or when it's not working well, what can happen in the body. Could you just talk us through, um, through that lens, angiogenesis? Um, because I think that's really interesting. And then you also mentioned cancer And blood supply. And again, could you just talk to us about cancer and how it can only grow to a certain, uh, size unless it gets its own blood supply as well, please?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah, sure. Our circulation is, uh, uh, these blood vessels, this network, and the blood is really the vehicle that carries oxygens and nutrients and everything else that our cells need to survive. So when we have the right amount, all of our health, uh, all of our organs are functioning properly. Um, sometimes we need a few extra blood vessels, so if you're working out and trying to build your muscles, when your muscles get bigger, it requires more blood vessels, a b- bigger blood supply. No problem. Your angiogenesis system can actually supply and help to grow more of those blood vessels. But they keep it in proper volume, so not too many, not too few blood vessels. Very important principle of angiogenesis. That's health. We have good circulation. Now, here's what happens in disease when you don't have enough blood vessels. What are some of the [clears throat] typical diseases that, uh, uh, occur when you don't have enough blood flow? Well, one of the things, uh, uh, is, um, after a heart attack, if you cannot grow enough blood vessels, your parts of your heart will get weaker. You can get heart failure, and, and you, and a heart attack can actually be even fatal if you don't have, if you have inadequate blood vessels to try to bypass any temporary blockage. Same thing as a stroke. [clears throat] We know after there's a stroke, uh, sometimes a, a, a clot gets sent to the brain and results in that type of stroke. Your, uh, angiogenesis defense system, uh, is, uh, scrambled to be able to immediately generate bypass, tiny little bypass vessels, get around that blockage to save the brain beyond the blockage. If you can't get enough blood vessels growing in that situation, parts of your brain die and, um, and you wind up being paralyzed or having deficits after a stroke. Um, in diabetes, uh, many people w- with diabetes lose their legs. They have their legs amputated mostly because they have problems healing wounds on their feet.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Now, the reason is because they, their nerves actually beco- they go numb. Their nerves die back, diabetic nephropat- uh, neuropathy. And the reason that the nerves die back is 'cause there's inadequate blood vessels feeding those nerves. So now in diabetes, some of those nerves in your feet and your f- even your fingertips actually are, don't have enough blood supply. They die. When the nerves die-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... you can't feel when you step on a pebble, and you create a little hole. That hole gets infected. That wound now also won't heal because it doesn't have enough blood vessels. That's an example of inadequate angiogenesis and can cause a problem. Th- and so now medical treatments actually have been designed to actually try to stimulate more blood vessels, to coax more vessels in where they're needed, but foods can also help do it as well. On the flip side, when you have too many blood vessels, and this is where cancer comes into play, it turns out that we all have cancer in our body. I mean, cancer is, y- we fear, everyone fears cancer. The, the word actually, you know, causes a shiver to run down most people's spine. Everyone knows somebody who's been touched by cancer, and I, I would say most people know somebody who's died of cancer, actually. And so this is actually one of the most fearsome diseases, but yet biologically, we are a- actually all forming cancers in our body all the time because all it takes for our 40 trillion cells to do is to make those little mistakes. Remember I told you 10,000 mistakes are fixed every day. A few of those going, uh, kind of getting, sneaking through will turn into a microscopic tumor, microscopic cancer, and this is called cancer without disease because a s- tiny little m- mutant cancer can grow up to the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen, and then it's frozen like a pimple. Can't go any bigger because it doesn't have a blood supply, no oxygen, no food, nothing to feed it. And so those little microscopic cancers sit there until our ano- until another one of our defense systems, our immune system, wings by like a cop on a beat and sees this abnormal cell sitting on that street corner in a good neighborhood and then says, "Get in the car. We're taking you away." And so our immune system destroys these microscopic cancers. But some cancers are able to, some microscopic cancers are able to hijack our body's regular angiogenesis defense system and selfishly grow blood vessels to feed themselves. Now, I worked in a lab studying angiogenesis, and we discovered that once an avascular or bloodless cancer is able to get vessels to touch it, th- the moment that that touches it, the cancer can grow 16,000 times in two weeks. So literally, angiogenesis out of control is a trigger, uh, an explosive trigger for tumor growth. And in fact, we know that if you can cut off the blood supply or prevent tumors from growing their blood supply, you can actually keep these cancers harmless for long periods of time. And so this is what foods are able to do. Foods that inhibit angiogenesis, they won't h- they won't stop the good blood vessels from growing because good blood vessels are actually solidly locked into your body. Your, your defense system ensures you're not gonna get rid of your good blood vessels, um, um, with food, but those extra blood vessels tend to be fragile, and those are the ones that, that, that, the, the foods that we eat, and then if necessary, drugs that we can prescribe can really just kind of shear those extra vessels away.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Th- this whole sort of field of angiogenesis and blood vessels I think is going to be fascinating for people because I think many people, you know, everyone's aware that they've got blood vessels inside them. I think a lot of people will think, "Yeah, I, uh, I sort of learned this in biology at school, that there's a heart, and it, you know, the blood vessels, it pumps oxygen around the body. That's how oxygen gets to all my muscles and organs." But potentially it kind of ends there. Like, it doesn't go beyond that. And what I, what I love about that explanation is when angiogenesis is not working well, we're not able to make new blood vessels where we need to, it can cause a whole multitude of different diseases. But also, when it's kind of out of control or gets to these cancer cells, too much angiogenesis can cause problems. And so, and therefore, the question for me, Dr. Li, is if angiogenesis sits at the heart of multiple different conditions, so we can look at it as a root cause, we also say similar things about chronic unresolved inflammation, don't we? We talk about inflammation being a root cause of lots of these chronic diseases. So can you speak a little bit about the relationship between inflammation and angiogenesis? Because it strikes me that they can't be separate. They, they probably sit side by side together in most cases.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah, no, such a great question. I actually worked on research exactly looking at that interrelationship.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
So we know... Well, let's, let's take a look at just sort of something everybody recognizes, and to show how inflammation and blood vessel growth are, go hand in hand. Uh, if you, um, uh, are in the kitchen and you accidentally cut your... You're, you're cutting a piece of fruit and you accidentally cut your, cut your finger or cut your hand. What's gonna happen? You, it's gonna bleed, all right? Now, uh, so you're gonna stop the bleeding. Then a few minutes later, you look at the cut. What's gonna happen? It's swollen, it's puffy, it's red because inflammation's actually gotten there. Your i- immune defenses have sent these inflammatory cells, these sort of kind of super soldiers from our immune system that go there to kind of clean up, um, and prevent any bacteria from rushing into that site. Um, and then shortly thereafter, within a day or so, um, new blood vessels start growing because in- the inflammatory cells, the cells from your immune system, started to release some signals to say, "Hey, you know what? We've cleaned up. It's time to reset the table." And so now blood vessels actually start to grow into it. So in- inflammation sends the signals for wound healing, for healing, the, for blood vessels to grow. By the same token, inflammation then goes away, which is why our wounds don't stay puffy the whole time. The puffiness and redness goes away. The blood vessels grow. You get a scab, and before long, you, you're back to normal. And that's because both inflammation is turned down, turned off, like that, that car volume, the, the car radio, and also angiogenesis, once you get enough, it stops. And so this is getting back to that set point. Now, what happens when you actually have chronic anything? Usually, it's not a good result. So inflammation being really good, a little bit is really good. So you know, uh, I think a lot of people misunderstand, like, "I wanna get rid of all the inflammation in my body." No, you don't, because you want the ability of your body to be able to mount small amounts of inflammation when needed for a short period of time, and then to go away. All right? That's, that's, you want that. That's lifesaving. But what you don't want is for that inflammation to get there and the volume to keep turning up, up, up, up, up, or that it never gets turned back down. That's chronic inflammation, and that's abnormal. So your body, this whole idea of turning up and then turning down, um, the volume for inflammation, if you don't, can't turn it down, the inflammation continues to smolder in your body. A g- a g- example I've given is sort of like for anybody who's listening who's enjoyed going camping.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
You go into woods, you set up a tent. It gets cold at night. What do you do? You build a campfire. And, and that's like a little bit of inflammation, gives you warmth. It serves its purpose. And you know, when it's time to go to bed, um, you know, you either let it burn down and you just, you know, make sure that, um, it- it's all walled off, uh, and you're fine. But that fire, if it doesn't, um, burn down, but actually spills out and catches the forest on fire, now you actually got a problem because now this thing is going out of control. And diseases with chronic inflammation, like lupus, like rheumatoid arthritis, um, like diabetes, frankly, uh, you wind up actually having this, uh, chronic inflammatory state that starts to provoke all kinds of other things. And remember we talked about tumors and angiogenesis. Well, if a tumor is kind of like a wound, it can hijack blood vessels. And you've got inflammation, and now the cancer itself causes some inflammation, you're just making it a, a hell of a lot easier for that tumor to get a blood supply, which means that the cancer is more likely to grow. And in fact, we do see this in patients, patients who are actually chronically inflamed. We know that inflammation is one of those hallmarks for people who develop cancer.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
One of the things I really liked about your approach was you said, "Well, let's put into our body foods that support these five defense systems." And if we can do that and support them, we raise the bar. We become more resilient. Therefore, we've got more headroom to actually deal with the insults that are going to come in in life, whether that's DNA insults from pollution, or whether it's the odd thing that we creep into our diet that we probably know isn't the best thing for us, but you know, we just fancy it now and again. And I really like that approach. And, and I know we're starting off this conversation focusing on some of the things to avoid. We're very quickly gonna get onto the things that people can put in. But yeah, I really, really appreciate that.
- 29:47 – 32:53
Starting With Foods You Love
- WLDr. William Li
The most important thing that we as doctors can do is to listen to our patients and hear them out and try to understand where they're coming from and what's important to them. I always ask my patients, um, you know, "What do you eat? What do you like to eat? What, what brings you joy when it comes to food?" Though the an- that question usually can elicit an answer, like I never, I try to, I'm very careful not to ask that question judgmentally.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- WLDr. William Li
What kind of negative foods do you... How much steak do you eat? Like, I, I don't, I never ask that. I always sort of say, like, "Tell me about what do you enjoy eating?" What brings you joy? What are some of the favorite things that you like to eat? And, you know, again, it's that conversation that invites someone to look deeply within them. I think that, um, you know, uh, I, I... When I was a kid, I studied martial arts and, uh, and, um, one of the greatest martial arts artists ever was Bruce Lee, who I actually read a lot of his writings. He wrote in a philosophical sort of way, and he wrote one of the most important things that if, to succeed in life, whether it's martial- in martial arts or otherwise, is to know yourself, to truly know yourself. And I think that so often we get distracted. We don't have that opportunity to ask ourselves something simple like, so if we had a choice, what would we want to eat? What brings us joy? And my, my strong belief is if we want people to get on a better diet, to get them started and to keep them going on it, we want them to actually feel like it's not a heavy lift, it's something that's doable, and I think there's nothing easier than to say, "Hey, you know what? Something that you already brings you pleasure and joy, something you enjoy to eat already is healthy." So let's start with those things because you already know you love them.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
So, so what I... In my book, Eat to Beat Disease, I have lists of like 200 some foods. I always tell people, you have my book, get a Sharpie, okay? Uh, I, I say a Sharpie, like the marker, permanent marker-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... because it's permanent. You have to make a commitment, all right? Take a Sharpie, a black Sharpie, and circle the foods that you enlist that you already like. No, actually, that you love. All right? And, and, and I, I don't care if it's just one or two. Almost everyone I've met has been able to circle like 10 of them, so I... Or more. But if you find a food that you already love that's healthy and good for you, that activates your health defenses, you are already way ahead of the game.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
We'll be back to the conversation in just a moment. Now, many of us struggle to find time to eat all of these incredible whole foods. That's why I'm a big fan of good quality whole food supplements like this one that's been in my own life for over three years now. It contains over 75 whole food source ingredients, vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, and can help us support our energy, focus, digestion, and our immune system. ATHLETIC GREENS are giving my audience a fantastic offer. One year's free supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first order. You can see all the details at athleticgreens.com/livemore or simply click on the link below. Now, back to the conversation. Love that. Very empowering approach to people.
- 32:53 – 43:23
Olive Oil and Cooking Oils
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oils. Oils are something that can cause a lot of confusion. I know you're a big fan of olive oil. I wanna talk about olive oil and why it's so beneficial. But before we get to olive oil, in the spirit of the kind of foods that we should think about limiting when we are in our supermarket or our grocery store and we're looking around to purchase oils to cook food in, to sprinkle on food, to pour on our salads, what kind of oils should we try and avoid? And then what sort of oils should we try and buy instead?
- WLDr. William Li
You know, so this, like the debate about artificial sweeteners, um, is a loaded topic. And so I, I wanna just start, you know, this component of our conversation by saying the jury is still very much deliberating what oils are harmful to you and, and are most harmful to you. Um, but I think that it's less controversial what, uh, oils are better for you-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... and good for you. I wanna... You know, for your listeners, I wanna kind of give people some real practical things-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... and not just kind of dive into the science of petroleum products, which is what oil- oils are. Let's talk about this. Rule number one, regardless of what oil you actually have, what I would say is don't have too much of it, because oils are fats and fats can be healthier, but there really isn't such a thing as a healthy fat that you should like drink lots of it every single day. Okay? So the point is that there are healthier oils, but you should, we should all limit the amount of oil that we actually intake into our body. All right? Number one. Number two is that, and this is actually broadly speaking, is don't reuse your oil. Okay? Most oils that are reused, when we heat them to cook, whether we're actually, you know, uh... I mean, again, deep frying is generally something that's not very healthy. The process of deep frying actually changes the chemical, the natural chemicals that make up oil in the oil itself and then paint it onto the food, stick it onto the food, so we're eating some of the changed chemicals when we actually eat deep-fried food. Now, look, I mean, I, I've had, I've had some awesome fish and chips, um, uh, when I visited England before. Um, and, and again, and again, as we talked about, you know, every now and then if you're, you spend most of your time shoring up your health defenses, raising your own bar, you know, having a rare treat is totally fine. But when you fry things in hot oil, you're also changing the chemical structure of things. That entire browning, golden browning, crisping of food actually changes the chemical-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... structure of the food itself in, in ways that are potentially carcinogenic, and so just need to be careful about that. The third, re- uh, so, so I was saying, you know, like reusing oil. Here's the thing that's kind of like a little risky. You go to a restaurant to eat, you have no idea if they're reusing their oil over and over and over again. You know? Um, I mean, think, think about in, uh, Asian restaurants, whether it's an Indian restaurant or a Chinese restaurant, they've got these gigantic vats where they're frying tasty little bits up. Um, but they may be reusing that oil for days. So, um, uh, reused oil, not good for you for sure. And, and the stuff that's fried in oil can also change in time. So let's start now talking about just like the oil, the properties of oils themselves. This is where I think rather than kind of walk into the quicksand of trying to say, "Is palm oil better than corn oil? Is coconut oil dangerous for you?" You know, like, we can wade into that jungle with, you know, but I think you need a machete to cut your way out of it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
And so the best way to think about it, to help to give clarity is, you know, are there any healthier oils to use, and how to use them? And this is where I think olive oil really stands out.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Number one, it's part of a healthy pattern of eating that's been revered for thousands of years, and that's in the Mediterranean, traditional Mediterranean diet. And the olives are seasonal. They're pressed. The extra virgin olive oil contains not just fat, poly and mono unsaturated fatty acids, which are better for your body and less damaging for your cardiovascular health, but there's a lot of polyphenols that come from the olive itself. Now, a lot of people don't understand this, but when you look at olive oil, the reason we say extra virgin olive oil, EVOO, you know, that's what the, that's what supermarkets and what restaurants are proud to use now, is because it's not just fat. It contains the polyphenols from the oil. So if, if you were to actually... By the way, this is a good experiment to do for, for your list- listeners. Buy a little container of olives from your grocery store, uh, de-pitted. Make it easy for yourself. And literally, you know, take it home and, and take a, a, a heavy glass or take a, a, a board, like a, like a heavy cutting board, and press those olives yourself. And you'll actually see, if you press hard enough, you'll see some oil come out of it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Now, in a f- in an olive oil factory, I mean, that, that's, that's, so you can actually appreciate where your food comes from, where your olive oil comes from. Now, when you actually press it, you'll see that you've crushed the olives, and some of the bits from the olives are actually in the olive oil. The reason that olive oil tastes so good, it's got that, you know, kind of, um, peppery, vegetal kind of quality to it. Um, it's got a umami flavor. It's not because the fat is flavorful. It's because the bits of olives that were crushed in there-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm
- WLDr. William Li
... are actually in there flavoring it. Now, those bits and the stuff that comes from the meat of the olives contain the polyphenols, one of which is hydroxytyrosol. Hydroxytyrosol sounds like a very ca- complicated chemical name. You don't, your listeners don't need to memorize it by any means, but you should know that that comes from the olive. Now, uh, uh, olive oil will have some of it, only about 20% of the, of, of it. But if you actually press that olive, 80% goes into the olive water and, and it's stuck in the pulp. And so one of the things that I always say is that, you know, if you really love olive oil and you wanna get the most out of it, um, just eat the whole olive, you know? And you can actually cut up an olive and you'll get a little bit of fat, you'll get all that flavor, and you'll get a lot more of the polyphenol. Now, if you're gonna cook with olive, olive oil, I, I, I always say go for extra virgin because of that reason. I would say don't deep-fry. But, but you can sp- you can put, put some on, uh, to food. You can actually saute with it, not too much. All the studies show that about three tablespoons of olive oil, uh, sort of like what you, probably that's around the max of what you'd want a day. So nobody's drinking olive oil. And then the other thing that is, uh, if you wanna choose which olive oil, because I get overwhelmed when I walk into a store and I see all these, like, a whole wall full of olive oils, right? Everybody's marketing. Here's what I do, again. I pick up the olive, uh, and oil, and I look at the ingredients. What do I look for? I look for mono-varietal olive oil. Mono-varietal means it's made with just one kind of olive, and I look for the one kind of olive that, that it, that oil's made from from three different varieties of olive. In Spain, Spanish olive oil, I look for Picual, P-I-C-U-A-L. Picual olives, h- among the highest in, in polyphenols in the oil. So the olive oil will be loaded. Second, um, Greek olive oil. Um, the Koroneiki olive, which is from the Peloponnese s- it, both, both the Picual and Koroneiki are very common olives, so that's a good news. It's not very expensive. Highest amount of poly, one of the top three polyphenols. And the third, for Italian olive oil, I look for, um, uh, oil that's been pressed from a mono-varietal called Moraiolo, and that comes from Umbria. And there, that's less common, harder to find, a little pricier. But I just gave you three olives, uh, Picual, Koroneiki, Moraiolo, uh, that are not, most of them are not good eating olives, but they're great for olive oil. They're packed with polyphenols. If you get, uh, olive oil that is mono-varietal, pressed only from each of those, you can be guaranteed that you're getting sort of the top, the sort of the capo di capo of the polyphenols in the olive oil.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I love that. I, I actually, in, in my kitchen as we speak now, is the Picual olive. It's, uh, well, I would've called it a single origin, but that's because I'm probably used to picking coffee. But as you were describing that, there was such a wonderful energy in your voice and your body language. It, it reminded me of, like, a wine connoisseur talking about the different varieties of wines or a, or a coffee connoisseur talking about that, you know, I get a single origin bean from this particular farm. But I guess it's not that different, is it? It's about going back to where does this come from, how was it processed, what is actually in my hand right now that I'm about to buy.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. And, and you know, there is great pride that we as humans have always had, and it's still within us, to know something about the food that is around us. I mean, you know, uh, if you talk to a farmer, they are proud of what they have. If you talk to a villager, they're really proud of what their community, what grows around their community. And again, I think that, you know, something that maybe that we're fighting against, 'cause I, I wanna draw back the jargon that you raised at the beginning that I think is helpful to think about. What are we, what are we really fighting against, you know? I think we're, we're fighting against our distraction from ourselves, getting to know who we are, getting to know, slowing down so we can actually understand our own pace. We're getting distracted by the- Uh, by the, by the pace of what we're expected to do, and so we've got no time for ourselves, right? I mean, every, every young working parent certainly feels that way.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- WLDr. William Li
You know, like, "Man, I'm so busy. I don't have time for myself." And yet when it comes to food and health, we all need to have that time for ourselves, and I think we should take great pride in saying what it is that we actually love.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. A lot of people talk about the health properties of vegetables. Of course, you promote all kinds of vegetables which have different impacts on the body. But some of the time we're told to sprinkle or pour some olive oil onto the vegetables because it helps us absorb nutrients from them. What's your perspective on that in view of what you've just said about oil and, you know, perhaps not over-consuming it even though it can be healthy?
- 43:23 – 54:12
Food Combinations: Tomatoes, Turmeric and Tea with Milk
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, there's two... Let's unpack that because there's two things that you are describing. One is that in plants, let's take a tomato as a great example. Uh, there are natural substances, natural chemicals, uh, like lycopene. Lycopene is a carotenoid. It helps to make the tomato red. Um, it has lots and lots of healthful properties. It's a powerful antioxidant. I've studied lycopene in a laboratory, and it actually can help starve cancers by cutting off the blood supply. Um, it can slow the shortening of telomeres, um, to slow cellular aging, and it, and it can protect our DNA from even sunlight and ultraviolet exposure. Lots of good things about it. Now, lycopene actually is a, uh, uh, naturally occurs in a tomato on a vine in a chemical form that our body doesn't absorb that well. So if you pick a tomato off the vine and you cut it up and you throw it into a salad, it might taste great. Just got some vitamin C in it. It's a great source of hydration and great flavors, okay? Especially if it's, like, a homegrown heirloom type of tomato. But you're not gonna get the ly- You're not gonna get as much lycopene. You're probably only gonna get maybe 20% of the lycopene that's in there. But you wanna... Like, for me, I wanna get as much of the good stuff as I can. So here's what research has found. If you wanted to convert that chemical structure of lycopene into a form that you can absorb better, your body can avidly absorb, what you wanna do is you wanna heat the tomato, like in a pan, and, uh, with the heat will change the chemical structure from a form your body doesn't absorb that well into a form that your body avidly absorbs. Loves to absorb it. Now you go from 20% absorption to 80% absorption. You flipped, uh, you flipped it around completely. Upended that equation completely. Now you're really absorbing it. Now, here's one additional thing, though. How would you heat a tomato in a pan? You put heat, heat it in water or, uh, nothing? No, not really. You put a little bit of olive oil in it. And why is that? Uh, and, uh, and it's because lycopene is a substance that we call fat-soluble. It's a lipid. It loves to dissolve into fats. So a little bit of olive oil in tomatoes on a pan, sauteed so it's soft. Change the chemical structure. Flavors are really great now. Then you have that. Now when you, uh, eat that tomato sauce sauteed in olive oil, the oil, the olive oil with the lycopene is carried into your body even more efficiently-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- WLDr. William Li
... than if it were cooked in water. And so again, that's an ex- That's just one example of thousands of how oils with fat-soluble foods. By the way, if you didn't wanna, uh, look at olive oil, here's another common snack in, in the United States anyways. Kind of tearing a page book from Latin American cuisine. You have these tortilla chips, and then you wind up actually having a salsa and guacamole. The salsa, salsa is often sort of stewed down tomatoes, um, cooked down tomatoes served at room temperature or chilled, and then the guacamole is just avocado that's been smashed up. Now, avocado has a lot of healthy fats in it. It's, it's, it's a fat-soluble veggie. It's actually quite, uh, nutritious. A- and remarkably, uh, people eating avocado actually shrink their waistline because actually even though you're eating fat, it actually makes you... It burns down harmful fat. It's a whole other story that we had. But if you have guacamole, avocado, with tomatoes, you get more lycopene, and so that happens to be kind of a popular snack, uh, in the United States.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So the right combination of foods can actually help absorb the nutrients. I think black pepper also can do that, right? With certain nutrients.
- WLDr. William Li
Well, right. So black pepper is, so this is an interesting thing. We, most of us have heard that turmeric, which is a kind of a, a root, um, when you cut it open, it's this bright, beautiful, bright orange. A lovely color. And, and turmeric is also a dried spice used in Southeast Asian cuisine, uh, including Indian cuisine is where I first became acquainted with it. It, um, uh, not only makes food beautiful, it actually makes food delicious. It's got a qu- quite a, a lovely taste to it. It's a, it's a spice. Inside the turmeric is curcumin. Curcumin is one of those natural chemicals, kind of like lycopene. It's one of those Mother Nature's treasure chests. Mother Nature's pharmacy with an F, not a PH. And the, the, the, the, the curcumin has a lot of properties. Anti-inflammatory. It's antioxidant. It cuts off the blood supply feeding cancers. Um, it, uh, uh, actually is helpful for your stem cells as well. It's, it really activates almost all of your body's health defenses, and it's good for your gut microbiome. So why not just, you know, enjoy turmeric as a spice by itself? Because it's so potent that our body actually doesn't absorb everything that it could. In fact, our body kind of, uh, it kind of gets, a lot of it gets flushed out, you know, uh, at the tail end. And so what we wanna do to improve our body's extraction of the good, um, the good stuff, the, the turmeric, it turns out that if you have fresh cracked black pepper- All right? There's a substance in fresh cracked black pepper called piperine.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Piperine is one of mother nature's, um, again, you know, these remarkable chemicals that actually, uh, in- influences the body. And piperine helps the body hang onto the curcumin. So if you have fresh cracked black pepper with your turmeric, uh, you a- you're actually creating a one-two punch that allows you to absorb more of the curcumin.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I love that. So the right combinations can actually help us get more out of these incredible whole foods. But I think the wrong combinations potentially can also make certain foods less beneficial. One example I've heard you talk about before is what happens when you put milk into tea? I know you're a big fan of tea. On the last conversation, you spoke about a lot of the benefits of tea. But I think I've heard you say that if you add milk to your tea, that actually you reduce some of the beneficial effects. Is that right?
- WLDr. William Li
You know those scientists that do television shows-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
... to actually, uh, make science accessible to people? This is kind of where we need to go with this, this topic. So look, tea, green tea, uh, especially, has a natural polyphenol that's called catechins, EGCG, uh, uh, epigallocatechin gallate, uh, EGCG. And the catechin, and the catechin is actually just part of the natural substance in the tea leaf. So whether you're, um, brewing tea with a bag, or whether it's loose leaf tea, or whether it's matcha, which is just powdered tea leaves, um, the fact of the matter is that into the brew, into the liquid, the hot liquid, uh, comes all these phytochemicals, including these catechins. So when you sip straight tea, the catechins go right in. They're easily absorbed, uh, by your body. And so, you know, your, our blood levels of catechins go way up. So many things that catechins can do. One of the things that's important is that actually it's, it's a relaxant. It actually helps, uh, lower your stress. It lowers the catecholamines. And so, uh, other things, it helps your lipids. It actually also helps fight cancer. It's anti-inflammatory. Kind of like curcumin, it's, it's a substance that has so many beneficial things that at least when I drink tea, I want, I wanna get as much as I can out of my food. All right. Now, I res- I deeply respect traditions of, uh, of eating and drinking, and one of the things that, um, you know, I know is a tradition in England is, you know, you put, or in Ireland, you actually put some milk or cream into your tea. It actually, um, changes the flavor profile, uh, and, and, and it's lovely. I, I, you know, I've, I've had plenty of teas in England before, and, and I, I, I find it to be just such an, a incredibly, um, uh, uh, nice, I feel great, you know, sort of like having, uh, an English, uh, tea. Put dairy in it, here's what you need to know. Dairy, and I'm talking about cow dairy, right? So not, not nut milk. This is applies to cow dairy. We'll come back to the nut milk in a second. Cow dairy, okay, actually is fat. Milk has got fat in it, like butter, which is made out of milk. And, um, and the fat, when you put it into your tea, does change its flavor, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the fact that when milk or cream is put into tea, the fat molecules in the cow dairy form little soap bubbles. These are microscopic soap bubbles. They're called micelles. Fat likes to stick with fat, and so, um, tea is mostly water. And so when you pour milk into tea, the, the bubbles s- the, the dairy fat sticks together and a little, makes a little tiny soap bubble. And what does it do? Those soap bubbles trap the polyphenols from tea. It traps the catechin. So you've got some good stuff wrapped in a soap bubble of, of dairy, and now when you drink the tea, the catechin is trapped in the soap bubble. It doesn't get absorbed as easily in your stomach.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
And it just rolls down your gut, and a lot of it comes out the other end, okay? And so you're missing out on a lot of the good stuff. You get a great, you know, you get a nice flavor. And so I have, uh, you know, what I'm telling you is that if you're drinking, uh, uh, milk, uh, or, or cow milk, dairy, put it in your tea, you're, you're getting the f- you're getting good flavor, if you, if that's what you like, but you're missing out on all, as, as, most of the, uh, polyphenols. So just be aware that that's what you're actually doing. Now, if you wanna actually still cut the tea with something that is, uh, milk-like, nut milks are fine, because they don't actually f- have the same fatty reaction that the-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow
- WLDr. William Li
... dairy, cow dairy has. So almond milk, uh, cashew milk, um, uh, those, those soy milks, they're all fine.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I mean, that's really interesting, and I like the way you frame it s- with this deep respect for cultures and traditions. Because I hear that, and I think for someone who might be listening or watching this, and they think, "Yeah, but you know what? It's just a part, part of what I do. Like I, I love putting milk in my black tea," or I know some people even put it in their green tea, which I certainly haven't tried before. They might hear that, and they may not want to change what they do, but is this where potentially supplements could come in? Let's say someone, they like the taste of milky tea, but they hear that and think, "Well, I want all those benefits of those polyphenols and the catechins that Dr. Li was talking about. Maybe I can boost that another way by taking a supplement." Is there any merit to that way of thinking? And I guess you could expand that broadly into what is your view of, you know, supplements is a whole huge category. But there are some really good quality supplements out there. Perhaps you could speak to those issues a little bit, please.
- 54:12 – 1:01:38
Supplements, Vitamin D and Food Myths
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, let's, let's pick up the thread on tea for a second, because I, I had this discovery that might be, uh, useful for your listeners who are in exactly that situation where they like the taste of milk in their tea. I discovered there is something called milk tea. And it's actually from Taiwan. It's grown in the mountain, and it actually, it's, it's just pure tea leaves that when you brew it, it tastes like it's got dairy in it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Oh, wow.
- WLDr. William Li
It's quite, it's quite amazing. I mean, i- if, if I made a cup of that for you and then made a cup of, of, of English tea with milk in it, you would have a hard time telling the difference. It's quite remarkable. Milk tea. It's a kind of, I think it's an oolong style tea.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
So it's, uh, mildly fermented and still got green properties. It's got polyphenols in it. But it r- literally, it has to do with the way, the climate, the, the way that it's naturally grown and the type of tea it is. So, all right. So let's move that aside for a second. [laughs] Um, uh, um, all right. Well, so what about supplements? You know, I, I think that we should look to the word itself. A dietary supplement means something to top off. So I always tell people, you know, if you have a choice of getting it from the whole food, the whole food will tend to have a lot of other stuff that's good for you. If you eat whole plant-based foods, for example, you get the fiber, you get the polyphenols, you get a lot of other chemical substances. You get the natural peptides, uh, that are found in foods. But if you got a pure supplement, you might get the one molecule or two molecules that it's been created for, like a vitamin C supplement.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- WLDr. William Li
Um, if you wanna top off your vitamin C, it's pure vitamin C. You're gonna get a lot of it if you, if you take your, take a mul- a vitamin. But you know, if you had citrus, you're gonna get all of that flav- you're gonna get the f- a different kind of flavor. You're gonna, you get some, uh, uh, you do get sugar. You get fiber. You get the limonene and the, and all these other, uh, hesperidin, all these other bioactives that you can't get from-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... a regular supplement alone. That said, you are absolutely right. Supplements can be really important, particularly, uh, for people who have difficulty getting a lot of, of, of, uh, of some nutrients through their food. So for example, um, I think omega-3 fatty acids are a great supplement if you get a high quality omega-3. Not everybody eats oily fish, you know, day in, you know, two to three times a week. You know? You only need to eat, um, um, the amount in each serving with the size of a deck of playing card. So you don't need to eat very much. But you know, that's not something people a- most people do. People who live on the, on the coastline, they might be doing it, but many people don't. Um, so omega-3s are so important to our health. I mean, this has been shown time and time and again. That's a supplement that's, that's definitely worth taking and, and, and it's a lot easier to swallow, um, omega-3s than it is to actually to go to a fishmonger and then to look at what the catch of the day is. That's an example. Another example of a supplement I think is really worth, worth taking, um, is probably vitamin D3.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Okay? Vitamin D, uh, you know, for, for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere where we don't have as much sun, uh, all the time, all year round, and where it's cold so we're indoors a lot and not always outdoors under the sunshine. So I'm not talking Costa del Sol. I'm not talking about South Africa, you know, or Australia. I'm talking about, you know, England, Northern Europe, uh, North America, you know, and sort of the northeastern side. Okay. We don't get as much sunlight, and even if we do go outside, because it's cold, we wear a lot of clothes, and so our skin tends to be covered up. And so vitamin D is made by our skin when sunlight actually hits it. And so we don't, we tend to be vitamin D deficient. So here's an example of where you can eat foods like mushrooms that can have vitamin D, for example. Uh, uh, by the way, I don't know if this is a little, little tip, a tidbit for you. I, I just told you that human skin with ultraviolet radiation from the sun will make more vitamin D. But did you know that if you took just a plain old lowly white button mushroom that contains some vitamin D, if you were to, um, before you eat it, when you buy it, if you slice it, like slice it pretty thinly, and you lay the s- the slices out and you put it in your windowsill so your sun, the sun shines on the slice, it will make more vitamin D.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
You will actually, you will actually convert more vitamin D into the, into the mushroom. So if you're gonna prepare something with mushrooms, sl- slice them ahead of time, stick them in front of a sunny window, no matter what time of the year it is, you know, um, maybe a couple of hours before you, um, cook with it, and the mushrooms will actually give you more vitamin D. But it's, it's not, it's a lot easier to get your regular dose of daily vitamin D, um, by actually just having D3 supplements.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I want to get into some specific foods later on in this conversation, but just to sort of, um, tease people, as it were, right at the start, are there a couple of kind of facts about some specific foods that you think would be surprising for people, that a lot of people may not be aware of?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, uh, first of all, there are a l- there's a lot of mythology about foods and, and some of it's wrong. And when I say myth, I'm referring to urban legends. So as a bit of a teaser, um, most people, most women have heard that soy should be avoided because it's dangerous. So eating soy can, uh, increase your risk for breast cancer. That is a common, uh, uh, thought, but it's completely false. It is an urban legend. Research actually shows that those women who are at highest risk, including women who have breast cancer, the more soy they eat, the lower their chances of death. And so that's an example of an eye-opening, uh, fact that science brings to the table about soy. Uh, and here's another one. Many people have heard that tomatoes should be avoided because they're a member of the nightshade family, which is poisonous, and that, uh, tomatoes contain a deadly toxin called, uh, lectins that should be avoided, and it causes inflammation in the body. Well, that's also completely wrong. There are thousands of lectins out there. Tomatoes happen to have some of the non-toxic ones. Um, and in fact, the studies of tomatoes have actually shown in more than 30,000 people that those men who eat Just two to three servings of cooked tomatoes a week have a 30% lower risk of developing prostate cancer. And so again, two examples of common foods that are surrounded by urban modern mythology that science cuts through like a hot knife through butter in order to reveal what the true health benefits could be.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, later on in this conversation I'd love to get into some more specifics around particular foods. But I think at the start here, just to sort of set the scene, one of the things that really struck me about your approach is, you know, how you look at health and disease. So many of us, you know, I'm a medical doctor. I trained in the '90s in Edinburgh Medical School. You know, we're trained how to diagnose disease and then treat it, and sometimes we talk about preventing disease in the future.
- 1:01:38 – 1:17:36
Why We Don't Get Sick: Veterans and the Five Health Defenses
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you sort of reframed that slightly, didn't you, to sort of ask yourself, well, why is it that we're not getting sick more often? And I think that's a really beautiful, it's a subtle distinction, but it's, but it's such a, a beautiful way of looking at the human body. So can you tell me a little bit about, you know, why did you frame it that way, and by doing so, what answers did you get that can help us all with our health and wellbeing?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. So like yourself, during my education and training in medicine, you know, we're all, uh, responsible for digesting about 4,000 years of Western medical knowledge in, in a few years, and then to be able to in short order turn that around into everyday practice for our patients, right? So that's a tall order just to begin with, and most of it is about di- learning how to, um, detect, diagnose diseases accurately, as accurately as possible, and then coming up with essentially a textbook solution. I mean, that's what we're taught to do, uh, from the very beginning. Recognize the disease, recognize a solution, try to match them up, and then actually deliver that as, as something that we can use to help our patients. And, [inhales] and, uh, I did that for many, many years. And in fact, I was so inspired by the, um, unmet needs for treating diseases, some diseases successfully, like cancer, like diabetes, like blindness frankly, [inhales] I wound up actually being, uh, starting a nonprofit organization [swallows] called the Angiogenesis Foundation. It's a charity where we as a third party set out to develop better treatments for all of these, you know, kind of, um, unbeatable diseases, looking for their disease common denominator. And I'm gonna come back to common denominator in a second. [inhales] And I felt that although, you know, billions of dollars had been spent towards cancer research or research to prevent blindness, as just two different examples, or breast cancer or, or, or Alzheimer's disease, progress in science was formidable, but progress in treatment was way too slow. And my thought was that if we could actually look at what makes diseases common and similar to one another, rather than appreciate only what makes them different from one another. So as a researcher, we tend to take a, uh, take a study, a field of study an inch wide and then dive a mile deep into exploring it. [lip smack] What I wanted to do was to really upend that idea to say, "Well, maybe what we should do is take a look at many diseases and see what the common threads are." Because if we could find that common thread, we might be able to pull the bow back and send a single arrow more efficiently through multiple diseases-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... to have an economy of scale of impact. Okay. [inhales] So when I did that, we wound up becoming enormously successful. I've been involved with 41, about to be 42, FDA-approved treatments for cancer, di- complications of diabetes, and vision loss. And with that kind of success, [inhales] one of the things that it made me realize was the power of science to generate evidence that something works. [inhales] And the other thing that I realized is that treating disease was [swallows] highly valuable [lip smack] but really misses the mark of preventing the disease in the first place. Because if all we do as a sort of in our medical world is invent new things to throw at old diseases [inhales] in this never-ending progression, then we're chasing really the tail of a beast that we'll-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... never catch. And I wanted to be able to actually figure out how to pr- you know, prevent the problem in the first place. Now, a, a, a short story about what actually happened that sparked me towards nutrition is, [inhales] uh, I was a, a doctor for many years in a veterans hospital. This is a hospital in the US that takes care of people who are former soldiers. [inhales] And, you know, as a payback for their service, uh, they can come to a m- a medical center, uh, and, and receive essentially free care. And I, I felt compelled, a, a duty actually when I, uh, finished my training to be able to pay back, uh, the people who helped to, um, support and defend, uh, the country. And so I, I took on a stint, um, at a veterans hospital. [swallows] These were some of my favorite patients. Uh, they were, uh, they were grateful. They were, uh, uh, they had rich lives. They had amazing stories to tell, and they were just nice people. And unfortunately, though, they were pretty sick. So most of the people that I saw were in their 60s and 70s and 80s, were terribly obese. They had diabetes, heart disease, cancer, respiratory illnesses. You name it, they had these terrible problems. [inhales] And the thing that struck me that... You know, 'cause here I was writing prescriptions and sending people to specialists and having them have surgery and all these other interventions. And I was very excited actually at the very beginning to be able to let them know some of the treatments that I myself had been involved with helping to develop. [swallows] But what I realized that was the irony is that these soldiers who were so terribly out of shape in the latter part of their lives- Were once cut, fit, buff, physical specimens that couldn't have even served in the military unless they were in perfect shape. And so I have to ask myself, what the hell happened to these people?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
They were in great shape, and now they're in terrible shape, and that's what led me on sort of this, um, odyssey to think back about what m- must have, like what kept them from being sick in the early days, and then what actually happened to their bodies that led them to deteriorate. And that's where I came back to this health defense, the health defenses that are hardwired in our body. Because l- the sol- like, like soldiers that they were, you know, they once were the defenders of the country, but, um, uh, as they got older, their ability to defend actually waned. And, and so too in our body, I realized there's these biological systems that keep us fit, keep us healthy, and if we're not careful to take good care of them, they too will wane in their power to defend us.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
And that's actually how we wind up getting sick.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it's very powerful what you just shared about the veterans hospital, because I think although that's in the latter stages of their life, I'm sure there's many people listening to this right now, or watching this, who would've resonated with that on some level and thought, "Hey, you know what? When I was at school, I used to swim," or, you know, maybe, "I was on the college or the university squash team or the tennis team, and now in my middle age, I've got a bit of, uh, extra weight. I don't have as much energy." So, you know, but it's on a continuum, isn't it? And, and of course, the end of that continuum, that's where we tend to get involved as medical doctors, Western medical doctors at least. And we say, "Oh, you have this disease now." But actually, I think that's a very powerful way of just showing gradually, without us realizing as we're, you know, getting on with our daily lives, our health can be deteriorating bit by bit. Uh, in terms of these defense systems, you also mentioned at the start of this conversation the word resilience and how what you try and do, uh, or, or certainly food when used as medicine can really help us with that resilience. Perhaps could you take us through these defense systems that you've learnt about? 'Cause I know you've identified five of them. I think that would be really interesting for my audience, what those are, and then I think we'll get to, well, what can we actually do about each and every single one?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, let's talk a, a little bit about resilience first before I talk about the health defenses. So think about how resilient the human body is, right? I mean, um, we can take a, we can take a punch, and we can get back up on our feet pretty easily throughout most of our lives. Um, our body knows how to heal, so if you wind up getting a cold, you tend to recover from it. If you get a cut on your skin, it tends to heal up. Um, if our belly gets upset and we wind up, uh, you know, uh, uh, feeling we're in a toilet, uh, in ways that are not comfortable for us, we'll generally rebound back to our normal health. I mean, that's really-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... most of the experiences that we have as we're younger. And that resilience actually is quite an amazing thing because it has to do with this concept that we learn as doctors, which is homeostasis. Our body wants to stay in a homeostatic position, and that means like a gyroscope, you know, or like a big ocean liner, you know, sailing through, you know, rough seas. There is kind of a set point that no matter how big the waves are, we tend to kind of stay s- our center of gravity is where everything wants to get back to, and that is actually critical health. Now, how, what's the gyroscopes of our health? How do we actually maintain our balance? How do we, how do we veer off to the side but rebound back to that center point, our own center of gravity? And that's where these health defenses actually come into play. So, [smacks lips] uh, our health defenses, uh, which I'm gonna tell you fi- the five of them in a moment, actually started to be developed in our bodies when we were still in our mom's womb. So when our mom's egg d- met our dad's sperm and fertilized in the womb, within about four or five days, these cells, primitive cells, uh, and stem cells, wound up forming our organs, you know, our, our, our circulation, our hearts, our brains, our noses, our hands, our, our feet, our bones. And along the way, at the same time, our body formed these remarkable defenses. Now, these defenses are designed to protect our bodies the same way that in a European fortress, a medieval fortress, there are these defenses, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
You have the moat. You actually have the drawbridge. You have those arrow slits that you can shoot out of. You've got the curved wall. All these defenses that you find in a castle, there is a, uh, counterpart in our body. And in our body, our defenses to keep us healthy and, and resist disease and help us maintain resilience are the following. Number one, we have a defense called angiogenesis. Angiogenesis, two words. Uh, it's actually one word, but it's two component parts of it. Angio meaning blood or blood vessels, genesis meaning growth. So it's how our body grows blood vessels, our circulation. And the reason blood vessels are a defense system is because we've got 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels packed into the average adult body.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
And these are the highways and byways that deliver blood, oxygen that we breathe, and the nutrients from the food we eat to every single cell and organ. And if we don't have enough of these blood vessels, our, our tissues, our organs starve, and many c- times they'll die. So we need to, our body needs to be able to maintain enough, uh, blood vessels and enough circulation. And on the other hand, if we've got too many blood vessels, an overage, an overgrowth, that would be like a, um, a garden that overgrows with weeds. Those weeds actually obscure the function of a garden, and they can actually destroy our health by feeding diseases. Extra blood vessels can feed diseases like cancer, as an example, or arthritis or psoriasis or many other types of harmful, uh, extra blood, unwanted blood vessels. And so the body Maintains its resilience in circulation by literally maintaining a balance, this set point, this gyroscope center of gravity. And the way that I cr- I, I tell people, it's kind of like, um, the old, um, fairy tale Goldilocks. So not too many blood vessels, not too few blood vessels just, but just right. Like the three bears.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
The not too hard, not too soft, not too hot, not too cold, just right. This is a paradigm that follows all the health defense systems. So blood vessels are one of them. Secondly are our stem cells. Remember I said that we formed in a womb with stem cells?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Well, when we're born, we have extra stem cells left over that were not used. So it's kind of like painting a room. Uh, if you're painting a room and you're gonna buy paint, right? You always buy extra paint because the last thing you wanna do is to run out of paint before you finish the job. What do you do when the, when the room has been completed with, from painting, you've got extra cans of paint? So what do you do? You put the cap on, you put it in your garage, okay? Uh, for, for another time if you need to spot check. Well, this is actually what happens with our stem cells. When we're born, w- uh, and our organs have formed with all these stem cells, the overage, and we've got extra stem cells. In fact, we've got 750 million extra stem cells when we're born. That gets packed up into our bone marrow where it basically sits for most of our lives until we need to repair our organs from the inside out. So regeneration, our ability to be able to renew ourselves is another health defense system. A third one is our gut, our gut microbiome. So much has been made of how important our gut bacteria is. Um, I will tell you we're just scratching the tip of the iceberg of understanding our gut bacteria, but I will tell you it is so important that we've got about roughly the same number of bacteria growing inside our body as we actually have human cells.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
And beyond bacteria, there's even viruses that are healthy viruses. Um, uh, I just learned this the other day. You know, we've got about 39 trillion bacteria growing inside our body. Most of them are healthy. And as you know, when we were in medical school, we were all taught, you know, we drank the Kool-Aid-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
... that bacteria are bad, and so one must destroy bacteria, and hence there are antibiotics to match with bacteria. But in fact, most bacteria in our bodies are good, and occasionally there is a bad actor that-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... kind of springs out. And, and so, uh, the, the, but, but what I learned was that there are vi- good viruses as well. In fact, there are 10 times more viruses in and on the body than, than bacteria. So it's 380 trillion viruses. The human virome. Our DNA is hardwired, is a fourth health defense system hardwired to protect itself against damage from the environment like ultraviolet radiation, radon from the ground, any chemicals, uh, or, or solvents we might inhale, uh, oxidative stress, even emotional stress, which can actually fray our, our DNA, our genetic code. Our DNA can protect that. And of course, finally, our immune system, which like a, uh, like the volume switch in a car radio, is perfectly tuned to be able to deliver a little inflammation where it's needed, a lot of immune protection, uh, to be able to ward off invaders from the outside, like bacteria and viruses, and invaders from the inside, like cancer. And that whole system, like a volume switch on a radio, needs to be able to turned up, and when you've had enough, to turn it back down, and ba- and back down to that homeostatic balancing point, that set point. And for all these health defense systems, our body kind of chugs along through life, getting u- keeping us right sort of steady as she goes. Every now and then it's gotta rear up, um, uh, and, and swashbuckle to-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... get rid of some disease, but it comes right back to center. Uh, and that's what foods can actually help to support.
- 1:17:36 – 1:25:29
DNA Damage, Repair and Antioxidants
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Maybe talk to me a little bit about that, because I think that really illustrates this point about our body's defense systems and this resilience that we naturally have. You know, there's an inherent risk, isn't there, to be alive and to be human and to exist in the modern worlds, yet despite that, we're still pretty robust and resilient.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah, no, that's, that's absolutely true. So [coughs] here we are. Our, our genetic code we know is so important to us, and we know that when it functions properly, it makes the proteins that support our life. We also know that when our genetic code has mutations, and everyone has become familiar with this idea of mutated DNA, we, you know, um, uh, it tends to cause problems in our body if it can actually continue. So mutations that form actually all the time, mo- most people don't know this, but DNA fixes these mutations silently, so we are not bothered by them. On average, the, uh, uh, a, a typical person has 10,000 mistakes made in their DNA every 24 hours. It's just a matter of the sheer volume of cell divisions and the machinery cranking along, chugging along. Listen, if you were in a factory, you know, making, uh, a trillion shoes every single day, you are gonna actually make a few shoes that are not gonna be, uh, perfect, right? So 10,000 mistakes that get taken off the assembly line, and then the, the parts that are broken get fixed up, uh, and then, and then everything moves forward. So be- without even knowing it- Our body is, uh, is fixing itself and fixing these natural errors. Now, let's subject the body to planet Earth, right? So we're all born on this planet. We go outside. What's... You know, my, one of my favorite things is to go out on a beautiful, sunny day with blue skies. You know, I, I love the warmth of the sun on my skin. You know, it, it just... From the time I was a kid, it made me happy.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Right? Well, that sunshine is ultraviolet radiation. The same ultraviolet radiation that you get when you get a sunburn on a beach. The same type of ultraviolet radiation you get in a sun tanning booth. And we know if you burn on a beach, sunburn on a beach, or if you go to a tanning salon, you high- you magnify your chances of developing a skin cancer because of the, uh, ultraviolet radiation mutating your DNA. Now, the same thing, by the way, and you talk about continuum, the same thing happens if you're stuck in traffic. So think about it. You're stuck on a traffic on a sunny day, and here you have the sun just beaming right through your windshield, or maybe you have your window open and it's beaming on your arm. How come we don't develop skin cancer in that situation? The, the, the reason is because our body fixes any errors that, that is made by the ultraviolet radiation from just regular sunlight. And what happens in a sun tanning booth or when you burn yourself repeatedly at the beach... Like, getting one or two sunburns, not a big deal. But when you do that repeatedly, you overwhelm the defense systems, and that's where these mutations can actually accumulate. So DNA is actually really, um... By the way, y- you know, we talk about the genetic code. Only 3% of our DNA is actually used to make the stuff that we need for life. The rest of it are all instructions, including instructions on how to fix itself.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right.
- WLDr. William Li
And so this idea of repair, when people hear about antioxidant foods, what they're really talking about is adding foods into your body that can assist our DNA from warding off damage, because antioxidants kind of form like a shield to neutralize the incoming missiles from these, um, uh, uh, activated chemicals or reactive chemicals that can actually damage our DNA. By the same token, the foods that we eat that actually create DNA damage because they have these chemicals that, uh, uh, are, are... can actually generate the chemical ability to damage our DNA, our body has to fight against those as well. And so that's why we need to be mindful. You know, as we make, sit down every day to make a decision about what we eat, or we go to the store to buy some food, we need to realize whatever we put into our body is either going to take our health down or build our health back up, and it all works at the level of the defense systems.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Many people these days have, of course, as, as you've already touched on, super busy, stressed out lifestyles. And they're rushing around, and they either don't have time to cook a fresh, whole meal. They're often buying things on the go that probably aren't the best thing for them. They've probably got high levels of stress, so actually they're probably not even absorbing as many nutrients as they could because their digestive system isn't in the right place to absorb those nutrients. And I found sometimes, you know, a good quality supplement, like let's say a whole food, sometime a green supplement which has lots and lots of difference, phytochemicals, prebiotics, polyphenols in, it could be helpful. A- and sometimes could be helpful in the short term to help them have more energy and feel better so that they can then make those lifestyle choices. So I know a lot of doctors take quite a hard line on supplements, but you've demonstrated some really important ones that I think have been shown in scientific studies to have real benefits, like vitamin D, for sure. So yeah, uh, I really, really appreciate you-
- WLDr. William Li
And, you know, I wanna support and underscore what you just said. You know, the, I, I... You know, there's, there's always something valuable to look at the history of things. Supplementation, um, didn't, wasn't developed to be an online internet scam, [laughs] okay? Supplementation was a really serious effort to improve global nutrition.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Because, you know, back in even the early 20th century, most of the world was undernourished. They, that's different than malnutrition. I mean, maybe there was some malnutrition, too, but undernutrition, un- undernourished means that, you know, we're eating food, but we weren't eating enough of the right things at the right time. And so one of the things that supplements were developed for to do is to really fortify, supplement, top off, uh, you know, um, uh, everyone so that everyone could have an more equal chance of being, uh, uh, of filling up, becoming replete with the key micronutrients that we, our body needs to actually survive. And so I think it's a mistake to disparage supplements as a category. I mean, this is the theme of what we're talking about today.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Let's not, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's not character assassinate entire categories of things. Let's be... I mean, let's, let's be discerning and try to know exactly what we're talking about. There are some dietary supplements that are absolutely valuable, some that, uh, uh, uh, that's research has actually shown, proven to be helpful, and some that are, can be lifesaving, uh, as well. Pregnant moms really need to be taking folate. You know? If you don't have those, um, you'll have neural tube defects in your babies. The, the, the risks go much higher, so you really wanna be able to actually take-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... the evidence. And so this is the other thing I think maybe a useful, um, coat hook or hat hook to hang for your listeners, is that supplements are the real deal because they were once designed, originally designed to help the body top off with, with what it actually needs. But if the marketing, and we're back to marketing now, sounds too good to be true, if the claims sound like they're just magical claims, that's when your, um, that's when your spidey sense, your radar needs to go on that, you know, maybe, maybe there's something not quite, uh, fully honest about what is being told about this, and it's being misrepresented. And so I think that every consumer needs to be able to... I mean, again, this is where I come back to we all have mobile devices. We can easily search something. When in doubt, look it up. Check it out, and then make your own decision if that, if that fits your, if it fits your comfort zone
- 1:25:29 – 1:34:57
Organic Produce, Fruit Skins and Washing
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Organic or non-organic is another topic that people find confusing. If people are able to access organic and they are able to afford it, in your view, are there any benefits to choosing that?
- WLDr. William Li
Right. Well, I wanna just tell everyone that, first of all, I was a skeptic for many years about organic food. I thought it was marketing. I thought the food looked beautiful, was very expensive, and I thought it was mostly marketing. And the marketing message that I received as a consumer was, "Here's this beautiful food that's more expensive. And by the way, we don't grow it with pesticides, and so you've got less harmful chemicals on it." And I, you know, I... It didn't feel right to me, and I had all these questions in my head about like whether or not that's really true, and what do I just wash my food a little bit more? I mean, I, I, I, I wasn't really sure what was real or not. Well, I changed my mind a few years ago, and I'll tell you, I was at the Royal Society in London, actually, at a really incredible meeting with, um, horticulturalists, with, uh, uh, astrophysicists, just a bunch of incredible scientists. And I had the privilege of sitting next to a horticulturalist, and I was, I, I was talking with her about a, a new paper, research paper that had come from, out of the journal Nature, which is a British publication, one of the premier, um, uh, scientific, uh, journals. And I said, "You know, I just read this paper that was really astounded me. They looked at strawberries, and they were looking for the natural substance ellagic acid, which is what makes strawberries tart." And ellagic acid is anti-inflammatory, it helps your immune system, it starves cancer. I've done research on ellagic acid myself, um, and so I know how power- powerful it is. And they were looking at strawberries, comparing organic versus, um, conventionally grown strawberries. Another way to say that is strawberries may- grown with pesticides or not with pe- or no pesticides. And they were looking at ellagic acid in the strawberries. And when they measured the conventionally grown strawberries, they all had some ellagic acid. That was fine, okay. Um, I, I expected that. But then when they measured the organic strawberries, every single organic strawberry they measured had two times or more-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm
- WLDr. William Li
... of the ellagic acid. And I thought that was absolutely astounding that an organically grown fruit would actually have more of that beneficial substance, that Mother Nature's kind of, um, uh, uh, bioactive. And so I talked to the horticulturist and I said, "Okay, so help me understand why." Right? So look, you know, you know when you're talking to a real scientist when, when scientists admit that they don't know something.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Right? So, and, and that's how... Uh, anybody who says they know everything, probably not a scientist. I mean, I, so, so I, I literally, uh, admitted my, my ignorance about this, and I asked the horticulturalist, "Can you help me understand why that might be?" And she gave me this answer that I've subsequently dove deeply, more deeply in, and it's absolutely true. It's true with coffee as well. Mother Nature, um, uh, in part made these bioactives like ellagic acid in strawberries or in coffee chlorogenic acid is another one of these. And w- the way that, um, plants respond to bugs nibbling on the stems and leaves, biting at them, okay, that's the pest, okay. Might make the plant l- not look so nice. All right, might even like, might, might even mar the fruit a little bit so it's not quite as beautiful. But the plant re- reacts to those little nibbles as an injury, as a wound. And in response, in a wound healing response, it produces more ellagic acid.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Or in the case of coffee, it makes more chlorogenic acid. So the little nibbling is part of kind of the way that evolution actually developed, um, how plants respond to create more of these bioactives. So what happens? So why is there this difference? Well, if you actually grow a strawberry with pesticides, there's fewer bugs. The plant looks nicer. Its fruit looks nicer. No bugs, no injury, less ellagic acid being made. And so all of a sudden, like I, this light bulb went off in my head, and I've-- This is a few years ago that I, I, I, I, I realized this and I had this conversation. Everywhere I've looked, uh, any research that's been done, it is true that the bioactives are higher in the organically grown plants. And I, and that started to change my mind about organics because the argument now is not that organics have less bad stuff, the argument is the organics have more good stuff. Now, all of a sudden, I have a different view of the, the nature of how this fruit is grown and what the benefits of growing without pesticides are.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Super clear explanation. Thank you for that. And then taking that one step further, which goes, I guess, beyond organic into non-organic as well, but let's take something like an apple or a carrot. Let's say a carrot, for example. There's all kinds of phytonutrients and beneficial compounds within that carrot. So what happens when we start to peel off the skin off that carrot? Because my view would be, well, a lot of the beneficial properties are in that skin, right? That's what's had to protect itself from the environment, from bugs, as you just mentioned. So when we are peeling off that skin, yes, people may wanna do it for a taste profile, I understand, but aren't we reducing how beneficial that food could be by taking off the outside?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah, I'm glad you described the fact that we might wanna remove the peel for aesthetic purposes, uh, maybe for taste purposes or texture purposes. But the fact of the matter is we know for a fact that skin does actually have good stuff. I'll give you a great example, like in an apple or a pear or a peach. Okay? Um, those are all fruits that, you know, if you took the time to peel it, um, you'll, you'll have a more homogeneous, you know, kind of, uh, looking piece of fruit. But most mothers will tell their kids, "If you eat, if you eat it with the skin, you'll get more stuff," and it's absolutely true. There's not only more fiber oftentimes in the outer layers, 'cause you're talking about outer, outer layers.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Um, but there's also more, uh, phytonutrients and these bioactives. In apples, in pears, and in peaches, there is actually a substance called ursolic acid that's much more concentrated in the outer layer. And ursolic acid is one of these bioactives that stimulates blood vessel growth. It helps us heal. It stimulates angiogenesis so that if we have an injury, um, our bodies will more, will, will speed its healing up. That's could be really important for our cardiovascular system, for example. It helps to promote the growth of blood vessels in beneficial, uh, sort of ways. Now, that's actually on the peel. So, okay, so how can you eat fruit peel? Well, uh, look, uh, if you had to eat six apricots or six pears, uh, or six peaches, you know, that might take a little work. Or eat six apples, that, that's, that's a pretty commit- that's a good commitment to eat six apples, [laughs] um, uh, even in a day. But on the other hand, if you actually get dried fruit, the dried fruit will take a big fruit and shrink it really small. So take a look at an apricot. I could... I might not be able to, I might not feel like eating six apricots, whole apricots from the tree, but I could easily eat six dried apricots, you know, uh, sort of in a, in a, in a, in a dried fruit mix. And so again, if you want the skin, it's not just, you know, eating the li- the fresh fruit, which you can do, um, but you can also get it in a dried form. Now, back to the fresh for a second. This, this, this would be a good reason to buy organic as well because, you know, when you spray with pesticides, for fruits and foods with very thin skins-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- WLDr. William Li
... um, I mean, for carrots, you're really, there's not a skin, it's really just an outer kind of layer of the carrot. The, the fact of the matter is, is that, that, um, if there's pesticides in that area, it's very hard to scrub them, uh, off. I learned, by the way, from a food safety expert at the U- U.S. Department of Agriculture who teaches food safety, even for a regular piece of produce, to wash all the potential pathogens, bacteria, listeria, all these other things that could happen, it's recommended that you actually rinse, whether it's organic or not, you rinse it under cold running water for 60 seconds. I did not realize that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
That, that's been shown. And by the way, another thing I didn't realize is that even, like, an onion you're supposed to rinse off before you actually cut it. Now, I, I, I had previously never really washed my onions. I just figured if I peel off the skin, what's underneath there is pretty clean. But it, and I was told, "No, no, you, you should see the research. You really wanna be able to wash that onion. 60 seconds in cold running water-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow
- WLDr. William Li
... is what you wanna do." So again, back to the fruit skin, um, a great reason to buy, good to have, good to eat, nutritious, more phytonutrients, phytochemicals. Um, a good reason to get organic is because it's harder to wash the pesticides off of it. And, and dried f- dried versions of fruits are also ways of actually getting the skin as well, and that's the other reason to get, if you get dried fruit, get dried organic fruit.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Super interesting. I'm conscious of time. There's so much I wanna talk to you about. Um, yeah, let's go here.
- 1:34:57 – 1:41:33
Autoimmune Disease and Whole Foods
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Autoimmune disease is on the rise massively across the world, frankly, and I'd love to hear a little bit from you about the relationship between foods and the development of autoimmune disease. And I wanna just add there, before you respond, that, you know, I've been practicing now as a medical doctor for almost 21 years. And, you know, maybe 10 years ago as I started to really get tuned into how you might start to use food as a therapeutic tool with your patients, I've noticed that when certain patients with certain autoimmune diseases, like I can remember one, clearly this lady with hypothyroidism. She was on levothyroxine, but she still didn't feel very good at all. When I changed her diet, I helped her change to a completely whole food diet from, like, a standard Western diet that she was at that time consuming, her symptoms went right down. We could halve the dose of levothyroxine I think within a few months. It was really incredible. So maybe, you know, speak to that if you can a little bit about the relationship a- and potentially why that could have worked with that patient.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, so I've noticed this as well, you know, over the, uh, decades of my clinical practice, that autoimmune diseases, which, by the way, uh, let's just make sure our audience, uh, the, the listeners actually, uh, appreciate this, it's not one disease. It is dozens, scores of actually different types of diseases that all share kind of a common denominator that in auto- the autoimmune part of it is that somehow, for some reason, the immune system is triggered in ways that actually the immune response causes, um, harm to your body itself. It's sort of the body attacking the body or the body re- responding, the immune system responding in ways that causes incredible distress at the organ level, right? And so, um, it could be lupus, it could be rheumatoid arthritis, it could be psoriasis, it could be Hashimoto's, it could be celiac. Those are some of the more common ones that people actually talk about. But in fact, there's probably a lot of autoimmune diseases that we don't even recognize yet. And a new one, by the way, which is coming down the pipe, which we believe Long COVID, which many, many people, uh, do have already, and pro- w- I think we're gonna see a whole other-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- WLDr. William Li
... emergence of, of Long COVID as a significant medical problem, uh, in the coming decade. Uh, that also seems to be autoimmune as well, where the body's immune system has overreacted or is overreacting to attack ourselves, our healthy selves. Okay. So if, if we're talking about a- ... panoply of different diseases that, that share this common denominator. Um, w- what's the r- what's the role of food? Well, one thing that actually we do know, as celiac's a great example of this, gluten sen- gluten, um, enteropathy, is that some foods, in, in the case of celiac it's gluten, which is in wheat, uh, and whole grains. Um, uh, for reasons that we don't fully understand, the body sees that and just has a bad reaction. It's kind of like that, you know, the, the, the family member that, you know, the, the black sheep in a family that comes over for your family holiday gathering, and like you just don't have a good reaction to them. Every... We all have, we all have one or two of those people in our families.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
Um, and that's how your immune system kind of reacts to something in food that it just doesn't like, and it gets pissed off. And when it gets angry, it actually starts to have this reaction that makes the entire body unpleasant. Just like that visitor to your home that you just d- don't, don't react well to. Like, you wanna stay in a different room. Well, that reaction is what autoimmune diseases are, and that's why when you talk about, um, you know, the levothyroxine, just to, so your listeners know, like, that's actually trying to replace something that is damaged because of this reaction. You wanna actually see if we can, um, undo the damage a bit, right? And autoimmune diseases are often treated with steroids. What do steroids do? They shut down, they turn down the volume of the immune system. Hey, this rock music is too loud. Let's turn it. The house music's too loud. Let's turn it down a little bit. Okay, so that's what steroids do. It turns out that if you go back, back, back, back to look at what might be some of the root causes, increasingly we're wondering if some of these chemical additives in ultra-processed foods are actually triggering, um, uh, immune responses that are unintended. These are unintended consequences. And so there's a, um, theory that in people who say that they're, they've got gluten, uh, or celiac disease, um, they're actually don't, they don't actually have full-blown celiac disease, but they're al- they're res- reactive, allergic. They're im- immuno, uh, respon- reactive to something that's in packaged food that also has gluten in it. And so, uh, so you're, you're, you're sort of, um, there are things that in these chemical-laced foods that we may not fully appreciate yet. Now it goes back to what your observation with your patient is. So what happens when we take people, and there's many people who spend most of their lives eating things out of a box, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Out of convenience. Uh, it comes from a factory, sits on the shelf for months or years. And you change it to a whole plant-based diet. Mostly plant-based, or a whole foods diet. Okay? Now you're talking about not shopping in the middle aisle of the store. And I have nothing against the middle aisle. There's good treasures in there. But you're spending time in the produce. Or, you know, if you live in a village, you're going to the village market and-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... going first to the fruit and vegetable and herb stand. And you're buying all the stuff, and now you're getting fresh foods that have all these phytonutrients. Um, you're having to take the time to prepare them in tasty ways. Um, you're staying away from that, the boxed, canned, preserved, chemically preserved foods. You're allowing your immune system to, to, um, calm, and you're allowing the phytonutrients to also lower inflammation, and we're getting back to a more natural state. Like, that's how I-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- WLDr. William Li
... that's how I explain the kind of broad observations that you actually had, is probably allowing, un- unburdening the body, uh, pissing it off less, and allowing the body to actually get back to a more natural state that's, where it's capable of being less inflamed. Allow the health defenses to reassert themselves.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I love that explanation. And moving to a whole food diet, no matter who you are, no matter what your current state of health, there's very little side effects, or negative side effects I should say. There's many effects, mostly [laughs] beneficial effects. Very, very few negative side effects of doing that.
- 1:41:33 – 1:45:19
Swapping Foods When You Can't Tolerate Them
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
One thing I must ask, uh, Dr. Li, before we end this conversation is, in our first chat you mentioned many foods which have super helpful properties. Two that come to mind are kiwi fruit. You mentioned how they can actually help repair DNA, which is remarkable. The amount of people who've stopped me in the streets since then to say, "Dr. Chatterjee, since that conversation, I've been buying kiwi, I've been buying kiwi." I've heard it over and over again, so that's credit to you, Dr. Li. But also tomatoes you mentioned. I know we covered lycopene in this conversation as well. But many people contacted me, including some family members, to say, "Listen, I don't tolerate kiwis. Like, I get a really bad reaction when I have them. I don't tolerate tomatoes. I get a really bad reaction when I have them." And of course, this is individual, because not everyone has intolerances or reactions to certain foods. But for people who've heard your great advice and wanted to bring those in, but thought, "Well, I can't have that," how would you respond to them? Like, what would you say to them to, to give them some sort of hope?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, look, uh, what I always tell people is when it comes to food and health, it's not just about the food or any single food, whether it's a kiwi or a tomato. It's really about how our body responds to what we put inside it. So if you, um, uh, don't like kiwis, can't find kiwis, or are allergic to kiwis, all right, those are three easy reasons, or can't afford a kiwi, um, you can do a swap out. Okay? So what's, what is, what are in kiwis? Kiwi's got vitamin C, it's got fiber. What are some other foods that actually have vitamin C that also have fiber? Red bell pepper can actually have that. Um, what if you're like, "Well, I'd like, I'd like something a little sweet"? Okay, guava, that also has vitamin C, and it's also got fiber as well. Now, the research that we discussed last time about the kiwi was research done with kiwi itself, but the properties of the kiwi, which is vitamin C and fiber and some of the other phytonutrients, um, those can be found in other fruits as well. So kiwi, I always say, like, if you wanna kind of stick with the research, you gotta go with the food that was actually studied, but the properties and the principles allow you to actually think about how to swap things out. What... A tomato, great example. I don't really like tomatoes. Um, I'm allergic to tomatoes. Some people have hypersensitivities, like a histamine reaction to tomatoes. I have, I, I remember in college, I had a, um, classmate who, um, would never go to the salad bar. She'd stay as far away as possible because, um, tomatoes kind of gave her this, um, super histamine mast cell reaction. Her whole face would puff up, uh, when she actually had anything that had tomatoes on it. And, um, um, well, guess what? Lycopene, if you wanna get the lycopene benefits, you know, lowers risk of breast cancer by 20%, lowers the risk of prostate cancer by twen- uh, thir- almost 30%, protects your DNA against sunlight. What else has lycopene? Watermelon
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
Watermelon has lycopene as well. So maybe you don't like tomatoes, maybe you can't get tomatoes. Well, what about a slice of watermelon?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
And so again, these swap outs are, are really... And this is something I think is so important, and, and this is what I hope to be able to convey through my book, and I, you know, I, I created a m- a free masterclass. I've been trying to teach people periodically online, um, h- how to do this, is, is think about why something is beneficial for you, and then if you can get that food, that's perfectly fine. If you need to swap it out 'cause you can't find that food or can't afford that food, think about what else might be a good stand-in.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Right? And at the end of the day, it still has to taste good for you. So maybe you don't like tomatoes, but you like watermelon.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Maybe you don't like kiwi, but you actually like guava.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Sorry to interrupt. If you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press Subscribe, hit the notification bell, and now back to the conversation.
- 1:45:19 – 2:02:10
Food, Immunotherapy and Gut Bacteria in Cancer
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
We've mentioned cancer a, a few times in the conversation so far, and, and I completely agree, even the name, I think strikes fear into people. Um, I don't know when you were at medical school. When I was, I was told the statistic that one in four people in the UK at that time, so I started in '95 at medical school, are going to develop some kind of cancer in their lifetime. That has since gone up to one in three. And a few years ago in the UK, it was published that, uh, one in two adults at some point in their lifetime are going to develop cancer. So this is a pretty alarming rise. As you say, we all know people, uh, who are either suffering from, who have suffered from, or who even have died from cancer. You mentioned at the start about soy. I have never covered on this podcast food and how it can help us with cancer, whether that's for prevention of cancer or potentially as part of the treatment regime for cancer. So I wonder if you could speak to a little bit about food and, and how we can think about that in terms of cancer prevention and treatment.
- WLDr. William Li
Well, so there's the whole field of research that was developed in the 1970s by a researcher named Michael... Dr. Michael Sporn from the National Cancer Institute, looking at the opportunity to, of intercepting cancer before it becomes a clinical problem. This is... This whole idea of cancer prevention, i- originally it was looking at chemicals that could prevent cancer from starting at its early stages. Then it became angioprevention, which is can we interfere with angiogenesis so the cancers actually can't grow a blood supply, as a way of controlling it. And now we know that there's plenty of foods that have been studied, um, that actually have been shown to be associated with a reduced risk of cancer, whether it's green tea, whether it's soy, whether it's tomatoes, um, whether it's, um, stone fruit, you know, peaches and, um, uh, plums. Um, uh, there's, there's a, uh, a plethora. In fact, I write about more than 100 different foods in my book, Eat to Beat Disease, that actually have various abilities to, um, uh, im- uh, impact on angiogenesis towards health. Now, what I think is really amazing is how foods can be used during cancer treatment, and the reason that's so poignant, and I think for people listening who m- may know somebody undergoing cancer treatment right now... I mean, look, you're, you're a doctor. We're both doctors. How many times has a patient who has cancer asked us, um, uh, very earnestly, "Hey, Doc, I've got cancer. I'm getting treat- I'm getting my chemo, but what should I be eating? Is there anything s- you can advise me to?" Right? That's such a common question.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
It's a question that almost every cancer patient asks their doctor, and it's a question that almost no doctor can answer. So the typical response that a patient gets is incredibly frustrating, and, uh, and, and aggravating to them because the doctors just say, "Eh, you know what?" Either they say, "I don't know. There's nothing, there's nothing out there because no evidence on food can help." Or they say, you know, "Go eat whatever you want. Go eat some junk food or some fast food because at least you get some nutrition. The most important thing is you don't lose weight." Well, actually, science has said both of those things are not true. Number one, actually cutting down on your caloric intake during cancer treatment actually reboots your health defenses to fight cancer. So intermittent fasting and, you know, uh, manipulating your metabolism, uh, by lowering caloric intake actually is an anti-cancer strategy, number one. Number two, actually, there are certain foods you can eat that actually can help you fight cancer, and the best, most compelling examples all have to do with your health defenses. So, um, there is the newest form, most profound form, uh, uh, of, of cancer treatment that's a biggest advance in 100 years for cancer treatment is immunotherapy. And immunotherapy, which is used everywhere, UK, North America, um, Russia, China, everywhere, is a new type of cancer treatment that doesn't poison the body like chemotherapy does, and it's not even a targeted therapy that's like a heat-seeking missile you, you infuse into the body. Immunotherapy is a lot more simple and more natural in its concept. Hey, let's just use the body's own immune system and harness it to be able to destroy cancer. Because remember we talked about this early on, like cops on the beat. The immune system conducts surveillance and takes out the bad guys, the drug dealers on the, standing on a street corner. Well, what happens if you had cancer, even if it's metastatic and spread? What happens if we allow your own immune system to do it? So this is now reality. Immunotherapy is being given to cancer patients, um, uh, and it allows your immune system to wipe out cancer. It is so dramatic that in about 20% of people, you get a, a phenomenal response, and in a smaller group of people, you can... the, your immune system can wipe out cancer completely. I give an example of in the US, one of our oldest living presidents is President Jimmy Carter. You know, he's a peanut farmer. He came from the state of Georgia. When he retired from his presidency, when he finished his presidency, he went back to his sunny state, and he wanted to build houses in, with this nonprofit, this NGO called Habitat for Humanity. They spent a lot of time outdoors under the baking sun building houses for homeless people, okay? Um, and in so doing, he got a lot of sun damage, which caused mutations in his skin, which led to skin cancer that spread to his liver and his brain. So he was in his early 90s when he was diagnosed with mela- metastatic melanoma. And because it had spread, and melanoma is such a deadly cancer, um, most of his doctors basically said, "This is game over." So he withdrew from public life, he wrote his own obituary, and it was about to sort of just, you know, um, make, uh, uh, sort of meet his maker, and he be- he, he sort of became... He got, he became at peace with himself. But then at the 11th hour, he enrolled into a clinical trial of one of these immune therapies. It's like, it's something called a checkpoint inhibitor. And, um, and he got this infusion, and remarkably, at 90 years old, his own immune system reared up on its haunches and wiped out, and did what it's supposed to do. It wiped out all the cancer in his brain, in his liver, all of his body.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
And he went from having metastatic cancer with brain metastasis, that's a game over kind of situation when you and I are training, to actually having no cancer. And he's alive today with no sign of cancer.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- WLDr. William Li
Happened to my mother, too, who had endometrial cancer, cancer of the lining of the uterus. It spread everywhere, and we put her on a, uh, immune therapy, same kind as the president did, uh, first performed president. And in three treatments only, over the course of nine weeks, once every three weeks. No chemo. Okay? All of the ca- her, her, uh, uh, 80-year-old immune system wiped out every bit of cancer in her body, and she's been completely cancer-free. This isn't even a cure. This is a reset. This is getting back to baseline, restoring health.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Because that's what your body's supposed to do.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
This is kind of really full circle to what we were talking about at the start of this conversation, isn't it? The body's resilience, the body's natural ability to, you know, patrol itself and actually repair damage and be resilient. And it's, it's incredible now that you're talking about these drugs that are being used to really help-
- WLDr. William Li
But, but, but-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... support the immune system.
- WLDr. William Li
But-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But it, but I think, I think what you're coming to is that food can also do that as well.
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Is that right?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. Well, well, now, uh, yeah. Yes, but it's, it's sort of the combination. So remember I said that for this type of immune therapy, 20% of people have these really amazing responses, which means that the majority don't. And for a long time, we were scratching our heads saying, "Okay, uh, what's going on?" Because there's nothing more frustrating than a breakthrough that only works for a small portion of people. We've got to use science to figure out what makes the difference. Well, so one of my colleagues, Dr. Laurence Zittogel in Paris, she's at the, um, Institut Gustave Roussy, which is a, one of the big cancer research centers of Europe, looked at 200 patients with different types of cancer, all getting immune therapy, and she looked at every, compared every, uh, uh, uh, dimension that she could between people who responded and people who did not respond very well to immunotherapy. And you know what she found? The difference was one bacteria in their gut. It wasn't genetics, it wasn't body size, it wasn't obesity, it wasn't concomitant disease. It was actually one bacteria. That bacteria is Akkermansia muciniphila. Now, this is out of the 39 trillion bacteria in the body. This one has been studied, and it stuck out. It's kinda like finding a fossil in the hillside. There's probably a lot of fossils, but they, she found this one. This, uh, bacteria was present in responders, and if you had this, you responded to immune therapy and had a better outcome for, with cancer. And if you didn't have it, man, your outcome was not good. So how do you get this bacteria to grow? Well, it turns out it's all about your diet, because there's no probiotic you can take for Akkermansia. Akkermansia can be grown. You can grow Akkermansia in your gut by having, uh, by help, by eating foods that help your gut secrete mucus. Now, that sounds disgusting to a lot of people. It's gross. Mucusy gut. But in fact, our gut naturally secretes mucus.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Just like our mouth normally secretes saliva. And, and this bacteria, Akkermansia, it's got a, its full name is, Akkermansia is just its first name. Its last name is muciniphila. So Akkermansia muciniphila means it loves to grow in mucus.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
So when you actually eat foods like pomegranates, uh, ju- or pomegranate juice, or cranberries, or Concord grapes, or Concor- or the juice from these, it, it prompts your gut to secrete healthy mucus. It's kinda like fertilizer in the soil.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Your garden's gonna love to grow better. That Akkermansia grows there, um, uh, it actually makes you a responder. So that actually is a difference of how foods can make the difference in one bacteria. Now, two weeks ago, a paper, a landmark paper was published in the journal Science, which is one of the big credible scientific journals, major scientific journal. [clears throat] This is like an 80-person study led by MD Anderson Cancer Research Center in the United States, uh, with the National Institutes of Health, and they looked al- again at melanoma that had spread, people getting immunotherapy, and they found that another bacteria, they found the second bacteria of responders. It's called Ruminococcus. All right? Now, I, I encourage your listeners not to s- stress out about remembering these fancy names. It's kinda like when you go to a, a, a museum, you know, go to the dinosaur hall, you're not gonna remember the, the Latin names of all of the dinosaurs. You're gonna remember, "Man, that was pretty cool, that big one. Yeah, it's called T. rex." But you don't need to remember all the Latin names. So- Um, Ruminococcus, uh, is, is, is part of responder profile for immunotherapy. And what they wanted to find out is what dietary intake was correlated with this healthy bacteria with a good outcome. And it was dietary fiber. And what they found is that those people who ate more dietary fiber had more Ruminococcus and had a better response. So how much fiber? They calculated it. They calculated for every five grams of fiber per day, they got a 30% decrease in mortality. 30, okay, on immunotherapy. Now, what's five grams of fiber a day? This. That's how much you get, five grams of fiber in an average size pear. That's all you need to eat a day to make this difference. Now, think about that. If you had melanoma and if you were getting immunotherapy, your doctor's probably not telling you yet to actually eat fiber. But this is the nature of breaking research in food as medicine. It's not food versus medicine. I'm not on a hilltop waving a thing of kale saying, "Everybody should forget about their medicines and don't go to your doctor anymore." What I'm saying is that food plus medicine, it is another-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... powerful tool in the toolbox, and people with cancer need to know that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, they really do. And you remind me of a story I've heard you share, I think in an interview I saw of yours in the past, where there was a patient who was due to have some immunotherapy, and you checked out her stool and found out that she had no Akkermansia muciniphila. So you halted things for three weeks. You encouraged these kind of foods. That went up, and she responded perfectly. Is that an accurate, uh, reflection of that story?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. That, that, you captured it exactly. And, and so I think that, you know, as we move into the future, we're gonna be putting together this puzzle that, you know, it's, it's almost like we've seen what we need to do for years.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
We, like, we intuitively, we've known that foods can, uh, help us get better, that foods and medicine have got to work together. There's got... You know, why do cancer patients ask that question? 'Cause they know-
- 2:02:10 – 2:10:35
Sugar, Cancer and Fasting
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
When it comes to cancer, Dr. Li, there's a lot now about sugar and cancer, and I think this is where there's a bit of complexity around food, because some of these foods, of course, uh, let's say kiwi fruit or, you know, pomegranate juice or, or the sort of foods you're talking about, of course, some of them can raise our blood sugar. Some of them do contain degrees of sugar. I know they come with lots of other ingredients as well, but how can you help us look at that? What's the relationship between sugar and cancer, and then how does that impact the foods that we consume?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah, it's a great question, and I get asked this a lot. Uh, what I try to do is to, um, make people feel comfortable with the idea that our body, uh, needs sugar. In fact, the organ in our body that needs the most sugar is our brain. It is, it is, uh, you know, sugar is, uh, fuels our metabolism. And the key is that in most people who are able to, your, your body's able to process a, a, a, a, a small amount of sugar without a problem, without any problem whatsoever. And so the sugars that you might have, encounter in your whole foods, so fruits and vegetables, um, uh, those are completely fine. Your body should be able to take care of that. It's the, the sugars that are dangerous for diseases, and the sugars that damage your microbiome, that, uh, uh, s- spark inflammation, that can even damage your DNA, that's the concept of added sugar. So it's a can of soda that's got 10 tablespoons of added sugar to it to make it really sweet. No body, no human body can, can, can tolerate that over any period of time. And so what I try to say is that, like, it's so easy, so tempting when it comes to something like sugar to, to go for that all or nothing approach. No, our body needs a little sugar. Your body can actually handle most sugar when it comes in a fruit or a vegetable. It's just fine. Added sugar, candies, cakes, sodas, okay, um, uh, you know, that those are the ones that easily overwhelm you. So if you're sensitive to sugar, uh, just like you've got diabetes, you gotta sort of cut down or cut out those things and be super mindful, uh, uh, uh, of, of making those type of choices. But fruits and vegetables, you have to look at the human data, okay? Don't focus on how much sugar is in a mango. Mango's a pretty fr- sweet fruit. Take a look at the human data to show that people who eat mango, um, and other tropical fruits have a much lower incidence of s- disease X and Y and Z. Look, it, it, you, you can't argue with the science.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
And you can't argue with the data. Um, uh, sugar itself, uh, nothing that's natural is by itself, uh, inherently evil. And I think that's the thing that I'm trying to get people to think about with sugar. It's a matter of source, it's a matter of quantity, and a matter of degree.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So I wanna be very respectful to your time. Uh, I, I've not even scratched the surface of what I wanted to talk to you about, so maybe we can set up another conversation in the future at some point. But just to finish off the, the sort of cancer conversation, um, I'd love to mention before we end, a few sort of more healthful foods, like mushrooms, for example, that you would recommend people focus on. But where does fasting fit into this? 'Cause we talked about the addition of foods into our diet to help us repair DNA and such like, but there's also a case, isn't there, to actually withdraw foods from our body for a set period of time to help us heal and repair as well, right?
- WLDr. William Li
Right. So again, and similarly to what we were, how we were just talking about sugar, fasting is another topic that's captured the public attention, and people think of sort of fasting as extremes. I think that's what we tend to think when foods in terms of extremes. Um, here's the science. We know that, um, the body needs a certain number of calories just to function in its ordinary state, and we know that if you go on a, if you're lost in the desert or, um, and you don't have any food, you're not gonna be eating, you're gonna starve to death, and at some point, your body's gonna run out of energy, and your systems are gonna collapse, and you'll just shrivel up in a desert, uh, and, and, and be dead. Now, we also know that if you pound yourself and you overload yourself with calories, uh, you're gonna be, uh, unhealthy. Uh, metabolically unhealthy. You know, you can develop diabetes, you can develop all these other chronic diseases, a chronic inflammatory state, and you're gonna gain weight. And when you gain weight, you, uh, the, the fat tissue actually is also more inflammatory. So these are the extremes you want to avoid. You don't wanna die in a desert, uh, starve, and nor do you wanna actually balloon up and become, uh, deadly unhealthy, as I call it. All right. Having spelled out those bookends, let's talk about what the science tells us. The science tells us that if we restrict our calories, okay, that's called fasting. Periods that don't, that we don't eat. By the way, we, we all fast. When you're sleeping, you're fasting. That's why they call the morning meal breakfast, breakfast, is because we're actually breaking our evening fast. So fasting is something we do. It doesn't have to be extreme. But we do know that when we actually restrict our calories, wonderful things happen to our health defense systems. It all comes back to our health defenses. It turns out it, um, helps your body by, by restricting, uh, calories, intermittent fasting, um, our body's defenses and angiogenesis help to starve cancer. It kind of helps our body cut off the blood supply to cancers. Um, we know that when you actually, um, intermittently fast, you call out more stem cells. Your stem cells kind of reboot, and then the fresh ones come out. So it's kind of like, um, trying to think, like changing the batteries-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... in a, in a flashlight. You get refreshment. We know when you intermittently fast, it also reboots your gut microbiome.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
So, um, you know, it kind of takes away some of the bad neighbors and some fresh neighbors, better neighbors, they reorganize the neighborhood. We also know that intermittent fasting helps to repair your DNA, and it even slows down cellular aging at the level of the caps on the end of your DNA, the telomeres, that burn down normally during aging. Intermittent fasting slows that aging process down at the cellular level. And inflammation, uh, and intermittent fasting, by the way, helps us bec- uh, develop a s- more fortified immune system because part of the reboot at the stem cell level is to make new immune cells. So we've got fresh super soldiers produced, coming right out of the oven, uh, for, to help, uh, uh, our immune system. So these are ways that intermittent fasting has been shown to help our defenses. Doesn't mean that you have to do it all the time. It means that this is another technique we can use to kind of up our game, uh, periodically when it comes to our health.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Is it, is it something you do in your own life?
- WLDr. William Li
You know, I, I, the answer is yes
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
And I've been doing this since medical school. I don't know if this, this is, was your experience, but man, when I was in medical school, I have to say it was difficult for me to have three square meals a day, as they say.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
Um, you know, I, I would sometimes miss breakfast. I would sometimes miss lunch. I would, you know, I would try not to miss dinner, but sometimes I wouldn't have a meal for, you know, 'cause I was so crazy busy. And I think I naturally, um, over the course of a week probably skip three meals a week and, you know, that, you, you don't, you don't have to go crazy. You don't have to be, you don't have to be a robot-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... to do in, you know, do intermittent fasting. Skipping a handful, uh, skipping, skipping a few meals a week actually is helpful for your body.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Sounds like you were intermittent fasting by accident before it even became a thing.
- WLDr. William Li
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Uh, final two quick questions if I can. Um, could you leave the listeners with some kinda top foods that you would ideally have them focus on? Appreciate that actually it's very hard to distill everything down to that. Um, but also you wrote your book, we're, we're recording this end of January 2022. It came out, from what I can tell, March 2019, almost three years ago. If you were writing the book now, what new information would you put in it that you weren't able to put in three years ago?
- 2:10:35 – 2:16:37
Dr. Li's Favorite Foods and the Next Book
- WLDr. William Li
Let me start with that question first, because the answer is I'm actually writing my next book right now.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay. [laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
So I'm actually adding all, and, and enhancing the information. So my book, my next book is really kind of a sequel to-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Brilliant
- WLDr. William Li
... this first book, and it's, you know, so it's not on a completely different, it's not switching up the topic. It's like, what have we learned about the health defenses that take things to the next level? So I will, um, kind of, uh, create, not a spoiler, but a teaser, and I will tell you that the next level of where you go with your health defenses is the metabolism. So not only can you actually improve all your, uh, uh, health defenses, but our health defenses are inextricably wired to our metabolism, and our metabolism's obviously wired to our ability to be able to control one of the most important organs in the body, and this is a bit of a surprise, body fat is an organ. So while many people curse the amount of body fat that they actually have, the reality is, back to the set point, we wanna kinda use fat to our advantage. And so that's what my next book is about-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Amazing
- WLDr. William Li
... is sort of more into health defenses, more metab- taking it to the level of metabolism, and then taking it to actually managing fat finally for the right reasons. Now, let's talk about some foods that, that everybody, um, should know about. I, I'm gonna purposefully tell you, um, tell it to people through my own lens because I wanna tell people the foods that I actually enjoy. So I enjoy green tea. Okay? Um, here's my Earl Grey, but I have got lots of tins of green tea. I enjoy coffee. So think about it. If I got tea on one end and coffee on the other. Coffee, by the way, contains chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid is a natural kind of insecticide that the coffee plant makes. And so by the way, something we didn't get a chance to talk about is what research is re- revealing about how we grow our plants. Turns out that the nibbles that insects do on plants, on the leaves and stems, are perceived by the mother plant as a wound. So the response to wound healing with these little nibbles that insects make is that the plant pumps out more bioactives like chlorogenic acid. So the organic coffee bean actually has more chlorogenic acid than a conventionally grown one-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... because the one that's conventionally grown has all these pesticides. Now you don't have as many nibbles, and so it's not only that you have less of the pesticide, less chemicals, but you've got more of the good stuff, which is a good thing. So coffee, I love, I love coffee. I love tea. Um, uh, uh, uh, I like, you know, am- among leafy green vegetables, which we all know are good for us, um, I like Swiss chard. Um, uh, I like some forms of kale. Dinosaur kale. I, I, I like to cook, too. Uh, you know, dinosaur kale, most people don't realize, that's kind of this w- it's got this funny pattern that looks like dinosaur skin, which is why it's darker green. Um, that's the kind of kale that is used to make minestrone soup. So you can actually cook with it and it, and you, and you blend it into the background and you get this wonderful dietary fiber. Mushrooms. I love mushrooms. All kinds of mushrooms. You know, white button. The lowly white button mushroom, packed with a soluble fiber called beta-D-glucan, which boosts your immunity-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... starves cancer. Most people, um, who get button mushrooms eat the cap. The stem actually has got twice as much of the good stuff, so don't throw the stems away. Save those stems. Um, uh, make it into a soup. Uh, cut it up, do a salad. Stir-fry it. There's all kinds of ways you can actually use the whole plant. Um, I like, uh, dried mushrooms as well, like porcini mushrooms, uh, which you can buy in a specialty store or order it online. Amazing flavor for a stew or for, uh, uh, or risotto, anything else you wanna make, or a pasta. Um, I love mushrooms. Um, spices and herbs, I like all kinds of spices-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... or herbs. Uh, rosemary, ba- basil, uh, uh, turmeric, cinnamon, uh, all of those types of spices. I love the flavors. They make your food taste a lot better. Seafood. Um, you know, I do like salmon, but oddly, as I got into looking at food lower in the food chain that actually has great healthy omega-3 fatty acids, polyunsaturated acids, I found that sardines are really delicious. These tinned sardines. And by the way, I started this in medical school, so I'm, I'm kinda giving you a confession. I didn't have time to cook a good meal, and so if I was late night and I wanted to whip up something, I'd boil some pasta, like usually some whole grain pasta, not very much, uh, and I'd, and I would sit around looking at some really good olive oil, a tin, some tinned sardines, um, uh, and a, a squeeze of lemon, and I would literally Um, boil the pasta, put it into a, uh, put it into a pan with a little olive oil. I'd open up a tin of sardines, and just with a fork, cut it up, mix it up, put some fresh ground pepper, squeeze some lemon on it, and bam. Had a Mediterranean meal.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Uh, so I actually do like seafood. Um, uh, uh, like that. I, I... Uh, a odd confession, I actually really love squid ink.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
So when you have squid ink pasta or, or you know, you go to Spain or Italy-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... they have these, uh, uh, the squid ink actually cuts up the blood supply to cancer. It s- preserve your stem cells. So many different, um, uh, great ingredients. And I love a juicy pear in- a peach in the summer. There's nothing much more that I love than a juicy-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... peach. Um-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm
- WLDr. William Li
... but those are just some of the foods that I love. I think one of the greatest things about food is that, and food and health, is that it actually puts the agency of choice into our own individual hands. And so we make our own choices. One of the interesting things that is very clear is our body's health defenses, the five of them we talked about last time, our circulation, our stem cells, our healthy gut microbiome, the ability for our DNA to protect ourselves, our, our bodies from the environment, and also our immune system. These systems, uh, for us to reach our health potential, we wanna make sure that they are not squashed in- inadvertently by foods that we have gotten used to eating.
- 2:16:37 – 2:39:40
Foods to Limit: Sodas, Sweeteners, Processed Foods and Alcohol
- WLDr. William Li
And so let's talk a little about some of those foods that actually impair our health defenses. That's probably the best way of, of thinking-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... about what to avoid. Now, we know that added sugar is, uh, something that is very, that taxes the body's metabolism, right? So if you have a little bit of sugar in fruit, you know, from natural sugars, that's fine, because you're getting a lot of other stuff in fruit as well that, in fact, helps your metabolism and helps your body's ability to be able to digest and metabolize, uh, fructose and glucose, and use that fuel into your body. But if you drink soda, you know, to have those 10 teaspoons of refined sugar that are dissolved invisibly in whatever colored fluid, um, we might be drinking, it tastes great, quenches your thirst. It kind of, our mental blueprint is that, you know, this is something you use to slake your thirst on a hot summer day. And I can tell you that the hyperglycemic state, your body can't handle 10 teaspoons of sugar at the same time. And think about, you know, the people that chug an entire can of soda.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Right? I mean, I've, I've done it myself. There's no way that's good for us. So that overwhelms a lot of our systems. It overwhelms our stem cells. Our stem cells cannot adequately function, properly function to help us regenerate when there's too much sugar around. You know, sugar is, is a concentrated material. It's a solute, meaning that it's dissolved in water. And when there's a lot of things, I mean, think about when you're in a swimming pool or you're in-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... you know, or, or if you're swimming in the ocean for a long period of time. What happens is the water gets pulled out of your skin, or even in a bathtub, your, your skin gets wrinkly because you've sucked out all the, all the water. And that's basically what happens to these cells in a high-sugar environment in your blood. So I would say added sugar with sodas that are so popular, that is something that sits on your health defense systems. Too much sugar also literally damages the ecosystem of your gut microbiome, which is connected to your immunity. Um, unhappy gut, unhappy immunity. You know, we all want to actually be as strong immunologically as possible. And then, by the way, let's kind of, um, just take one step over to the kissing cousin of regular sh- soda, which is diet soda, right? So-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... here, here's the thing. I, I just told you, you know, we might wanna cut down or cut out regular soda. So what do people say? They say, "Well, don't worry, Dr. Li. We just go over to the diet soda. No worries. I drink the diet version. It's much better for my metabolism." Well, science tells us it's not true. And the irony is that people who drink a lot of diet soda with the purpose of not getting a lot of carbs from refined sugar actually still gain weight. This is a kind of a paradox that now makes sense because scientists have figured out that many of the artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas actually harm our gut microbiome. And so when you're drinking that soda and that artificial sweetener that, you know, you, you get that sugar hit on your tongue to go to your brain, man, it's pretty sweet. But all those chemicals go down your gut, and they're feeding our gut bacteria. And the gut bacteria really don't like these synthetic, uh, compounds, these artificial sweeteners, and so they revolt. And as they're revolting, they're actually drown- literally drowning in these artificial sweeteners. And that is bad enough because our gut bacteria actually, you know, helps to lower inflammation. But our gut bacteria also controls metabolism-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... our insulin sensitivity. So when that gets upset, guess what? Our actual blood sugars raise, and we actually have poorer metabolism of our energy, and we actually start to gain weight anyway. So that's, you know, kind of two, just two, just two examples, but there's a lot of other foods that we might wanna be careful about.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Can you just explain that term metabolism? Because it's something that I think the public hear a lot, but I think it's not always that well understood.
- WLDr. William Li
Glad you're asking that question. Here's what I will tell you, 'cause I'm actually working on a project now on metabolism.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
Metabolism isn't that well understood by doctors either.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- WLDr. William Li
And it's actually not even that well understood by scientists. And that's part of the mystery of the human body, that gigantic question mark. What is our metabolism, right? So here we are thinking about metabolism, I think classically, as energy. You know, how do we... H- our metabolism is... These are some assumptions. Our metabolism is something we're born with. You know, I have a lot of body fat, so I got the unlucky straw in family genetics. Look at my sister. She's skinny as a stick. She's lucky she inherited the thin gene for her metabolism, right? So that's one assumption that we make about metabolism. And that infers, and it's wrong, by the way, um, uh, but that infers that- Our body's metabolism is the machinery that's used to take energy that we put into our body, that's our food that we eat, how our body processes that energy in order to be able to load up on fuel, and then how our body takes that fuel in the fuel tank, like filling the-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... gas tank with petrol, and then actually uses that fuel as we get on the highway and drive. That's not incorrect. Okay? But what we're really beginning to realize is that metabolism's a lot more complicated than that because it's connected to our immune system. It's connected to our inflammation. It's connected to our ability to actually maintain our health-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... in the sense that body fat is not necessarily bad. It's actually really good. And so many of the assumptions of metabolism, energy, and all the negative aspects of it, you know, an athlete has got, is, you know, who's in his top shape, has got great metabolism, whereas somebody who actually is obese has terrible metabolism. Not, not as simple as we thought.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that's, that's really, really helpful. So in terms of categories and types of foods that we should think about limiting or avoiding, the first thing you went to was those drinks with added sugar, soft drinks, fizzy drinks, soda, how- you know, in whatever country you're in, however you like to refer to it. I hope it's generally well-known that actually those things are damaging for our health, our immune system, our teeth, and you beautifully explained why that is. Now, before we go to diet drinks, 'cause I'm really glad you brought that up, full sugar fizzy drinks, is it just the sugar that's causing problems because it overwhelms our system and we can't process it? Or is it something else? Is it the sugar and the chemicals and the impact they have on other aspects of our body's health, and potentially those five defense systems that you've written beautifully about in your book? What's going on there? Is it just the sugar or is it something else?
- WLDr. William Li
Yeah. The soft drinks, the sodas that we see so commonly around us, it's part of everyday modern life, you know, for the last 100 years or so. It's interesting. The, the history of soda is really fascinating. It dates back into Europe where, um, people were trying to find additional ways to be, uh, surprised and delighted by beverages, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- WLDr. William Li
So the traditional drinks were always tea or coffee. Of course, the most popular beverage in the world was just drinking water, um, the most important one actually as well. Uh, tea and coffee following close behind, and then there was, uh, wine, right? I mean, these were, for thousands of years, sort of the, the elixirs, so to speak, of our beverages, and carbonation was actually added to fruit juice. First it was a mistake, I think, that was made when they invented it. But then actually it became something to delight folks. You know, kind of like in a, you go to a carnival, you know, and, and you see some spectacle that actually is just some... You walk by and you think, "Oh, my gosh, that's so unusual. That's delightful" That's how sodas were actually, um, uh, drank. And then once actually the, the big industries came in and turned it into a marketing buzz, it started to take on a life of its own. And here's where it morphed. It went from fruit juices that actually had some carbonation, which is just gas, you know, CO2, and that's okay. But what wound up happening is that they started to have less fruit, but they figured out how to put chemical flavorings that actually mimic the f- fruit flavoring. And then of course, nobody really wants to have just a plain, watery-looking carbonated drink, so then they started to add artificial coloring, and then they started to add preservatives. And this goes to the importance of reading a label. Whenever I actually pick up something to drink, you know, from a store, a grocery store, I, you know, uh, uh, I, I'm an explorer, so I love to actually try new things. If I saw a drink in a store that seemed appealing or attractive or intrigue- intriguing to me, I might pick it up, but the first thing I do is I take a look at the label. What is in there, right? So it should be mostly water, so I look for that. And then most, many people don't know this, but the order in which the ingredients appear on a label, at least in the United States, is, um, is synonymous with their c- relative concentration-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... in the drink. And so what you wanna do is, it's usually water, and then it's sugar, all right? So we ta- just talked about that. Or artificial sweetener. And then you start seeing the other things behind it, and I think most people will be astounded and, um, disappointed, rightfully so, that natural fruit juice is usually pretty low on a list of-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- WLDr. William Li
... 10 or 20 ingredients. And so if you're creeped out by not being able to pronounce, understand, identify the ingredients on, on, on a, on a beverage, you're, you should follow your instincts. That's probably not something you wanna put in your body, because your body's not hardwired to handle those chemicals.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I think that's great advice, something I use with my patients as well. People say there's always exceptions. Yeah, there are exceptions, but as a general principle when looking at ingredient labels, I, I completely echo that. If you don't recognize it, you know, maybe give it a miss and choose something else instead. You also mentioned marketing there when you were talking about fizzy drinks, and that really is something that we're fighting. You know, you are trying to promote all this incredible colorful food, but what we're fighting is this marketing machine, and in particularly around, I guess, soft drinks and fizzy drinks and sodas. It's, it's really tragic to see sports stars who are looked up to by children, you know, you certainly have seen this in the UK for many years. You see this in a big way in India, where, like, the big cricket stars are often sponsored and are seen drinking a can of soda. And actually I think this is one of the big problems we're up against, because that just infuses into these young kids' mind that actually I wanna be like that person. Oh, they're drinking that drink? Oh, I wanna drink that and be like them. How much of a problem do you think marketing is? You know, sponsorship, product placements, commercial deals. Is that something we need to be fighting against?
Episode duration: 2:40:48
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