| 1 | Dr. William Li | "Try It For 1 Week" - Most Effective Way To REVERSE AGING IN DAYS! I D... | 67749 | 3116 | 226 | 88.4 | positive | 23:58 | Everyone wants to live longer. The real goal isn't just longevity. It's staying as healthy as possible at any age or as long as we can, but scientists are trying to understand why some people maintain their health well into the later decades, eighties, and nineties, and above. While others develop chronic diseases and die much earlier. Can the foods you eat actually slow the biology of aging? Let me give you six foods that actually can help tackle those hallmarks of aging. Number one. Hi, I'm Dr. William Lee, physician, scientist, and New York Times bestselling author of the books, E2B disease, and E2B your diet. Right now, there's growing interest in high-tech approaches to longevity, genetic testing, experimental therapies, longevity, biohacks, and all kinds of new devices and blood tests and wearables. And while the science behind these approaches is fascinating, what if some of the most powerful influences on how we age are actually much simpler, less expensive, and available to everyone? In my own family, for example, my great uncle lived to 104 years old, very intact and independently. And one habit he maintained every day was drinking green tea and going for a morning walk. And of course, no single food or daily workout determines how long one lives, but it does raise an interesting question. Can everyday foods influence the biology of aging? And that's what this video is all about. And what I want to explore with you today. Why are scientists studying aging? Well, it's really interesting because, did you know that there are more people living past the age of 100 today than at any time in human history? In other words, longevity is already happening. The scientists are trying to understand why some people maintain their health well into the later decades, 80s and 90s and above. While others develop chronic diseases and die much earlier. Well, it turns out that there are a set of biological processes that help to explain what's happening inside the body as we age. And this has been giving a name. It's called the hallmarks of aging. And they include things like damage accumulating in our DNA as we age, changes in how ourselves produce energy through a power plants called mitochondria. Increased inflammation is aging. In fact, it's called inflammation. We can mitochondria, gradual decline in the body's ability to repair and regenerate ourselves and a number of other hallmarks as well. In other words, aging reflects gradual decline and changes in the systems that normally defend and maintain our health. But here's the encouraging part. Many of these systems, these hallmarks, are actually quite resilient. Our health defenses are very resilient. And the hallmarks can actually be tackled. And by the way, these signals can come from our environment including our diet, the food that we eat. So that's one of the things I want to talk about because one of the things I've always found fascinating is how food provides much more than nourishment. In other words, calories, energy. Foods provides biological signals. Every time we eat something, those signals, they come from bioactives, natural chemicals found in foods. I call it mother nature's pharmacy with an F pharmacy, not a pH, mother nature's pharmacy, the deliverable signals that influence our cells inside our body. And that can actually influence our metabolism, make it better. Influence our circulation. So a better blood flow. Influence our gut health, so our gut microbiome is healthier as well. And many of those food bioactives can calm inflammation. Food even influences how our cells respond to stress. So when we're talking about healthy aging, I think it's more helpful to talk about specific foods in everyday habits rather than sort of hand-wavy, general nutrition advice, you know, eat black-based foods, eat the rainbow. I think it's helpful to get really, really specific. So one of the things that I want to do is to flip the script a little bit. Instead of thinking about longevity through biohacking or high-tech solutions, I think it's worth asking some practical questions about which foods can we eat to support the systems that protect our cells and our organs as we age, right? It makes a lot of sense. How do we get longer a healthier with simple solutions? After that, we can actually go for the more complex ones, but how do we keep it simple? So let me give you six foods that I like to put into my own life that are regular parts of my diet, that actually can help tackle those hallmarks of aging. Are you ready? Let's go. Number one, green tea. As I mentioned earlier, my great-uncle drank green tea every day and he lived 204 years old. What does green tea contain? It contains polyphenols called catechins. And these catechins help cells defend themselves against oxidative stress. This is stress that can damage DNA and actually contributes to faster aging. Clinical studies show that drinking three to four cups of green tea per day, all right? Now my great-uncle probably drank 10 cups of green tea a day, but this clinical study show even three to four cups a day can provide meaningful health benefits, including lowering the risk of many chronic diseases, including cancer. Now, in my own routine, I like to sip green tea. Usually later in the day, I find it very, very relaxing. So that calming effect, in addition to helping to protect my cells, I think is actually something that I benefit from getting better rest and actually allows my body to kind of restore itself. And I want to give you a little pro tip. If you want to maximize the benefits of green tea polyphenols, here's what I want you to try. Try matcha. Matcha tea is made by taking tea leaves and grinding the entire leaf into a powder. So you get all the polyphenols, not just the ones that actually steep from soaking the leaves in the hot water. So you get that whole leaf polyphenol, you get a lot more catacin plus you get the fiber from the leaf as well. And that nourishes your gut microbiome. And guess what your gut microbiome does? Get lowers inflammation. It improves your metabolism. It improves your immune system. And so this is just the tip of the iceberg of the research that shows how green tea can help to address those hallmarks of aging. Ready for the next one? Number two is broccoli and crucifix greens. Now, I know, probably when you were a kid, you Rogerized when your mom talked about broccoli for dinner, but I will tell you that broccoli is actually a family of foods, broccoli, broccoli, leany, broccoli, raw, and crucifix greens in general, are a large family of foods that contain substances that help counter those hallmarks of aging. These vegetables contain powerful bioactive substances called isopheocyanates, isopheocyanates, ITCs. And these ITCs actually help to protect yourselves. And the improvement metabolism to help burn down extra harmful visceral fat and they also reduce inflammation as well. So, little pro tip for when it comes to cooking them. Now, I would never eat broccoli or broccoli any raw. I know that some people kind of up into salads, but I need to saute my broccoli. And I just saute it in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of garlic, and maybe add some chili flakes. You combine all the polyphenols and bioactyls from those simply, and will make your cooked delicious dish, activate even more of your health defenses and even counter those hallmarks of aging more effectively. Now, by the way, when you cook vegetables and they taste really good, you want to chew them, right? Because you want to savor the flavor. It's important to chew the plants, and not just try to wolf down and swallow the veggies like you might have done when you were a kid. But I'll tell you, there's a secret to chewing. When you chew, chew, chew, plants like broccoli, crucifix vegetables, your teeth are breaking down the plant cell walls. Plants are made out of cells as well. When you chew them, you're breaking down those cell walls like stamping onto a shoe box, and they collapse, and when they collapse, you know what, those plant cells release? They release an enzyme called mirrozenase, and that enzyme, mirrozenase, activates the ITC, the ISO-phiosinates, and releases all the active stuff that can help protect ourselves. So chewing itself actually is beneficial in terms of countering inflammation, and improving our overall health defenses to counter those hallmarks of aging. So make sure you cook your vegetables in ways that you actually enjoy. All right, food number three, spinach. Speaking of greens, one of my favorites is spinach, and spinach grows low to the ground. It's a good source of natural nitrates that come from the soil. And when you chew spinach, we're talking about chewing our food, what happens? Something amazing. When you're chewing your spinach, the healthy bacteria on your tongue actually interact with those nitrates. And the tongue bacteria, the microbiome on your tongue, converts those nitrates into compound. And when you swallow that bite, it's absorbed into your bloodstream as nitric oxide, NO. What's nitric oxide? Well, nitric oxide is a signaling molecule that does a lot of things in a body, but one of the things I want to point out is it helps to improve your circulation. You get better blood flow, which is really important as we get older to be able to really bathe our organs, including our brain, our heart, our muscles, in plenty of oxygen and micronutrients. Now, these blood vessels are delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell in the body. Are really important for reaching a really extreme age. Are there studies of centenarians? These are people who have made it to 100 or older show that those who get into that position, those lucky people, you know what? They actually have healthier blood vessels than people who don't make it that. And that's been established with research that does something called proteomics, with you basically draw some blood and you look at all the proteins in the blood. And you compare the people who reached to 100 above to those who didn't. And we find that the molecules that are different in the people who made it to 100 and older, centenarians actually protect and improve circulation. Nitric oxide, by the way, is one of those things that is preserved in those older people. Now, what's interesting is nitric oxide does something else really important. It helps our body regenerate through our own natural stem cell. Now, I know a lot of you have heard about stem cells. You go to the strip mall, corner mall, getting injection into your knee or your shoulder. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, those types of stem cells, in my opinion, as a doctor, not yet ready for prime time. I know that they can benefit some people, but there's also some risks. And we don't know how to make them work well enough. But guess what? Mother nature is much, much smarter than what's going on in the corner of strip mall because our body has its own stem cells. In fact, when we're born, we actually have about 70 million stem cells that get stored after we're born in our bone marrow and in our skin and some of our organs as well. And whenever nitric oxide is in our bloodstream, which eating spinach can actually do, guess what? That nitric oxide calls out the stem cells like bees coming out of a hive. And those stem cells circulate in our bloodstream and they look for organs and tissues to fix, to repair. Anything damage gets a repair. Think about it like a road crew that's driving along the highway looking for potholes. But guess what? They actually have their asphalt with them so they can just plug the hole, patch it, make it drivable as soon as they spot it. That's what stem cells do to help us repair and regenerate ourselves. Now, why is that matter for aging? Well, one of those hallmarks of aging is guess what? Stem cell depletion. Not enough stem cells coming out in our bloodstream. So here's a way with nitric oxide coming from spinach that we can eat and chewing it that can actually help to replete or replenish some of those stem cells. Now, what's interesting is that different foods support different hallmarks of aging. Some protects DNA, some protects circulation. Others nourish the gut microbiome, healthy gut bacteria. By the way, if you're interested in how food interacts with the biology of your health, including aging, immunity, metabolism, and circulation, and your genesis, what I study, please subscribe to this channel. I share new sites and practical strategies like this regularly. Now, let's take a look at another example of a food that can help combat those hallmarks of aging in order to keep us healthier longer. And ready for the next one? Number four, eggs. Another food that supports healthy aging is eggs. Eggs are a great source of protein, which helps to maintain a muscle mass as we go older. They also contain all nine essential amino acids, and they're a really great nutrient dense food. Eggs also contain something called coldine. In fact, they're one of the richest sources of coldine, which your body uses, your brain uses to make neurotransmitters. These are actually the hormones that go around in your brain to signal one cell to another cell to have better brain function. Eggs also contain two bioactive compounds called lutein and zia-zanthin, the C-E-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N, lutein and zia-zanthin. And guess what these two compounds do? They help to protect your vision. Now, as we get older, our senses can sometimes dull, and the one sense that I think is one of the most important to enjoy a long healthy life is good vision. And there are many disease of the aging that involve damage to your vision. Eggs containing lutein and zia-zanthin, by the way, you're found in the yoke, actually protect your vision from the conditions of aging and cause of vision loss. One of them is called age-related macular degeneration. I've worked in this area before. There's some remarkable treatments that can prevent vision loss from this. Because what? Eating eggs protects your retina, the sensitive carpet of nervous and the back of your eye that you need for good vision. Now, I want to give you some pro tips when it comes to eggs. When you're cooking eggs in a pan, let's say you're scrambling eggs or you're doing a sunny side up. Rather than use butter, I would tell you to try using extra virgin olive oil. And so that's what I use instead of butter. All right, butters got saturated fats, extra virgin olive oil, it's got polyphenols. It's a simple way to add heart healthy polyphenols into your body right at breakfast time. Now, another simple trick that you can use when you're cooking eggs is to add a little bit of spice to it, a little pinch of turmeric, some little fresh cracked black pepper. You know, it actually adds just an interesting color, but it actually makes the age. There's so much more protective turmeric contains natural bioactives, including substances called curcumin, which is a powerful anti-inflammatory compound, inflammation, one of the hallmarks of aging, and it's antioxidant as well, which means it protects your DNA, which is another hallmark of aging is damaged to the DNA. The black pepper, by the way, helps your body absorb more of the curcumin from the turmeric. So you sometimes food combinations can actually be really helpful. But this is a simple way at another layer, beneficial compounds, i.e. extra virgin olive oil, maybe a little bit of turmeric, a little bit of black pepper, extra way to actually add health to your meal. Food number five, one of my favorites, beans. I'm talking about black beans, kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas, other kind of legumes, but let me just tell you about beans. Beans are inexpensive, widely available, they're shelf stable, you can put them in your pantry for months and maybe even years, all right? And beans contain many, many beneficial compounds, including their a great source of plant protein, all right? We all know how important protein is, a good source of dietary fiber, which feeds our gut microbiome, healthy gut bacteria, beans contain some polyphenols, and beans contain resistant starches, which can also help us have better gut health, as well better gut health, better immune health, lower inflammation, better metabolism, right? Okay, so when you feed your gut microbiome with beans, for example, healthy gut bacteria, you know what they do? They produce compounds called short chain fatty acids, scaffas, SCFA scaffas, and guess what those scaffas do? They help to reduce inflammation and they improve metabolic function, really important. In fact, my friend, Dan butiner, who was actually credited for studying the blue zones, these are places where people live exceptionally long lives very well and very healthy. Dan points out that these blue zones have a common thread, which is that all of the people there eat beans as the common denominator, especially among centenarians, people make it to 100 and older. And you know what, I love beans, because you know you can cook them into a soup or stew, you can make a vegetarian chili. It's an inexpensive way to make a bunch of food that you can share with a lot of people, and the leftovers will be tastier even the next day. So it's an inexpensive way to really generate a lot of health in pragmatic ways. And if you look at the ancients, go back to archeology. And you can actually see people were eating beans going all the way back to Roman times. You can find evidence of beans left over there. All right, food number six, one of my favorites, pomegranate. Pomegranates contain natural substances that bioactive is called elagiotenins. And when you eat pomegranate juice and swallow those elagiotenins, your gut bacteria actually metabolize the elagiotenins and they produce a substance called Eurolythin-A. You are ol-I-T-H-I-N and the letter A. Now Eurolythin-A actually does something really important. It supports the health of your mitochondria. Mitochondria are the energy factories of ourselves. And one of the hallmarks of aging is declining mitochondrial function, kind of like your batteries running down low. And by supporting mitochondrial health with Eurolythin-A, which you can actually get by eating pomegranate, which has elagiotenins, okay, you see how it all makes sense? Guess what? You actually boost your cells power energy power. Give you a little more power. And you think about it, aging is kind of slow down. You don't feel quite as energetic. This is one way of combating that hallmark of aging at the mitochondria level. Now pomegranates are not the only food that contain elagiotenins. Other foods are strawberries, habalagiotenins, raspberries, habalagiotenins. And guess what? One of the tree nuts, walnuts, are a great source of elagiotenins as well. Super easy to find all these foods that I've actually talked about and very simple to include in your diet. Look, fighting the hallmarks of aging so that you can age more gracefully without suffering as much damage as you age. Is as simple as choosing your own foods and sticking on your plate in ways that you can keep up with. Not just once in a while, but you know on a regular basis. Now having told you what foods to include, that can help counter the hallmarks of aging, I want to tell you about some foods to limit as well. The reason you want to limit these is because they actually speed up those hallmarks. They actually put fuel on those hallmarks that can actually make you age faster, right? So here are some foods that you actually want to reduce. Cut down or cut out. And those are ultra-process foods. Don't want to eat a lot of those. They actually make your aging go a little bit faster. You don't want to have extra added refined sugar. Now I know there's a big conversation about sugar, what I would tell you is that when you actually eat a lot of sugar and you overwhelm your metabolism, that actually makes those hallmarks of aging worse. And then finally, you want to stay away from cut down or cut out artificial additives. You know, preservatives, colorings, flavorings, artificial sweeteners, you know why? Research is still early, but they're showing that those chemical substances can disrupt the gut microbiome. Remember I told you just how important, healthy gut microbiome is, right? Releasing those scaffas, helping to boost our immunity, even keeping our metabolism good and even text messaging, our brain for brain function, really, really important. So it wouldn't stay away from ultra-process foods, excessive refined sugars, and artificial additives that you can find in so many packaged foods as well. There's another mention to slowing the biology of aging that doesn't always get enough attention. I want to actually take the time to just spell it out for you now. And that is not just what we eat, but when we eat the time that we eat during the day, okay? Now think about it. Our human metabolism evolved with periods of eating, usually during the day, and periods where it was harder to find food, where you went without food, right? And by the way, that's called fasting when you don't actually eat food. And every day, every night when we're sleeping, or we're sleeping, we're not eating, so that means we're naturally fasting. So on a daily basis, every 24 hours, we are partially eating, and we're partially fasting. And that partially fasting is called intermittent, which means every now and then fasting. You've probably heard a lot about intermittent fasting, but I want to kind of break it down into something simple. I'll make a bigger video about this on another time, but allowing a 12-hour overnight fasting window. That means you're not eating for 12 hours, right? So let's say you finished dinner at seven o'clock, and you put your dishes away, and you're not gonna eat anymore, until the next morning at 7 a.m. for breakfast, at 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., that's 12 hours, right? That 12-hour window of fasting allows the body to carry out its own biological maintenance and repair process, really, really important. So what does this mean? It means you don't want to eat too late. When you eat too late, you're cutting into those 12 natural hours of fasting. Now, some people fast even longer, which can be better, all right, beneficial. I'm not gonna go into the extremes, because I really don't believe it's helpful for people to think that extremes are the way to go. I can't sustain that, but I'm just telling you, if you leave a window from seven o'clock to, in the evening to seven o'clock in the morning, that's your 12 hours of not eating. If you start cutting into that, and have a midnight snack at 10 o'clock, or 11 o'clock, you're just shortening the window of fasting and giving your body less time to repair itself and to rest, okay? Including your brain to drain toxins. So what you wanna do is keep your fasting window at least 12 hours, figure it out. You don't have to squeeze it all into a few hours eating, but you wanna actually give yourself plenty of room to add you repair and rest and recover. And guess what? Simple habits, like eating early and not snacking, and then trying to get good quality sleep. If you eat really late, you're not gonna get good sleep on a regular basis if you keep it eating late all the time, right? So avoid your midnight snacks, get a good night's sleep, your body is gonna be thinking for it, because it's gonna be repairing and restoring itself during that fasting window. So it's not just what you eat, and you don't wanna eat too much. That's like how much you eat, but it's also when you eat as well. Try to keep yourself, give yourself a good 12 hours of not eating, and your body's and your health is gonna thank you for it. Let me put this all together for you. Scientists have identified the hallmarks of aging. This is the biological processes that occur to make us look and feel older and function older as we get into our later years. Here's the hallmarks of aging, but many of these hallmarks can should be countered and can battle them using things that we have available to us every day, including what we eat, what we donate, what we limit, when we eat and how much we eat, don't eat too much, because it can overwhelm your metabolism, flood your body with calories and ultimately body fat. So these are the kinds of small choices may consistently, all right, that we can do every single day that actually help our cells age more healthily over time. At the end of the day, these day to day choices they influence the quality and speed at which we age and feel older as well. If you're interested in how food interacts with your body's natural health defense systems, including your immune system, your metabolism, your circulation, your stem cells, and aging, subscribe to my channel, and I would love to hear from you. Tell me in your comments what foods or habits have helped you stay as healthy as possible as you age. Let me know in the comments. Thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next video, Dr. Lee out. Hey, if you like that video, then you're gonna love this one. Check it out. | ↗ |