Dr. Michael Greger: 0:00

But then what I realized is that each one of those diseases has this age-related component. Yes, having a high cholesterol can increase your risk of heart disease as much as 20-fold, but an 80-year-old has 500 times the risk of having an heart attack compared to a 20-year-old. So age is a risk factor for not just heart disease but also cancer and dementia and on down the list. So instead of just playing whack-a-mole and hitting kind of one disease at a time, by slowing down the sands of time, by slowing down aging, we can address all these different chronic diseases together. If all cancer was cured tomorrow, the average life expectancy would only go up about three years. And the reason is because we don’t die from one age-related disease, you just die from another. Oh, the reason you die from cancer is because you were going to die next year of a heart attack, but then cancer got to you first, right. So by slowing down aging we can kind of hit all these diseases together.Ella Magers: 1:05

Hey there and welcome to Rise and Thrive with me, ella Majors. I created this high-vibe podcast from a place of profound curiosity, fierce compassion and the deep desire to connect you with the wisdom of inspirational wellness, health, fitness and conscious leaders and change makers. Here’s to discovering our blind spots and embracing life as the adventure it is. The time is now. Let’s do this. Hey, hey, everyone, ella here, and today’s episode is with the Dr Michael Greger. I’ve been a huge fan of his for so many years. I’ve actually met him I don’t know how many years ago on the Holistic Holiday at Sea, the vegan cruise, when I was doing a book signing and he was giving a talk, and now we got to spend a little bit of time together. It’s a short interview. He’s a very busy man because his new book, how Not to Age, is available as of today, december 5th, so that’s exciting. So I’m going to talk a little bit more about that before we dive into this interview, but first, as usual, I’d like to start with a personal celebration, which is that I am going on a vacation, yes, this month going to Guatemala with my man, quinn. We are going to stay on Lake Atitlan, lagode Atitlan, and that’s right in Guatemala, surrounded by volcanoes. We’re going to be visiting some sacred ancient Mayan sites, hiking those volcanoes, exploring the villages around the border of the lake, or some kayaking, maybe even hang glide or paraglide, and when we get back we’ll record a podcast and share all about it. So I’m really excited about that. It’s been a rough month with the passing of my fur baby, shy, who I am posting about like crazy on Instagram. I get up early every morning and I’m writing our story. She was such a character and I’m grieving. I’m grieving pretty hard and approaching myself with curiosity and compassion, like I help my clients do, and it’s tough and that’s just life, right. So, yeah, so I’m excited to take this trip. I think it’s going to be amazing and I can’t wait to share it all about it with you all when I get back. So the few more announcements to make. First of all, thank you to all of you who donated to Hogs and Kisses for Giving Tuesday and those of you who donated to any nonprofit that has a mission of making this world a kinder, more compassionate place. Just wanted to give you a shout out and thank you. Thanks to your donations, we met our goal and so we are now moving forward in preparation for welcoming rescued turkeys onto the land at Hogs and Kisses. We’re expanding our fur family into a fur and feather family at Hogs and Kisses Remember, we do have a BNB that is on Airbnb right there. And so, yeah, thank you guys. Thank you so much for helping us make that happen. Another announcement I’ll be taking the rest of December off from publishing new episodes, so we’ll take about three weeks. We’ll be back in January. Just a great time for you all to catch up on any episodes you’ve missed on this podcast or on our sister podcast, the Vegan Life Coach podcast. So, yeah, just get a little caught up. I’m going to do some interviews and prepare for making 2024 a season two, remember with amazing guests. I cannot wait for some of these guests to come out, these episodes Some super fun ones. So I’m not going to give it away. But yeah, and if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter called the Way, it is coming out tomorrow, it’s usually the first Wednesday of every month, the Way Wednesday where I give my top latest badass discoveries, like songs I’m obsessed with or quotes. I’m pondering books, I’m reading other podcasts, I’m listening to workouts I’m doing. I kind of just share what’s up with me and things that I think could be helpful for you too. And last, if you’re loving these episodes, I have a small request, in the spirit of giving this holiday season, that would make a huge impact and take you all of 30 seconds to leave a rating and review. It really helps people find us and know that it’s worthy of a listen. I know there’s a lot of shows out there these days, so if you enjoy this one and could contribute by leaving a review, I’d be so grateful. All right, so back to today’s episode with Dr Greger. It’s a short one, a fun one, a very informative one. Let me tell you a little bit more about him in case you’re unfamiliar, because when I think about holistic health, I really think about not only nutrition and sleep and exercise, but also purpose and living our purpose and finding meaning in life. And if there’s anybody who does that, it’s Dr Greger. He’s a founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a physician and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition. His science based nonprofit, nutritionfactsorg, offers a free online portal hosting more than 2,000 videos and articles on a myriad of health topics. Dr Greger is a sought after lecturer and has presented at the conference on World Affairs and the World Bank, testified before Congress and was invited as an expert witness in Oprah Winfrey’s defense in the infamous meat defamation trap. A graduate of Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University School of Medicine, dr Greger is also an acclaimed author. The how Not to Die cookbook and how Not to Die. It became instant New York Times bestsellers. More than a million copies of how Not to Die have been sold and all proceeds Dr Greger receives from the sales of his books and speaking honor area are donated directly to charity. How cool is that? All the links will be in the show notes, so make sure you check them out and, without further ado, let’s do this.Dr. Michael Greger: 8:02

I’m so sorry about that. It’s so good.Ella Magers: 8:06

Oh good, how are you?Dr. Michael Greger: 8:08

Good, thank you.Ella Magers: 8:09

Are those all your dogs?Dr. Michael Greger: 8:12

Oh yeah, no, actually not the. We got a new one since, so there’s one more, no way. So what is it? Five? You got to do a new holiday card. Oh my God.Ella Magers: 8:23

Oh, that’s amazing. Oh my gosh, all rescues, all rescues. Thank you, I just lost mine two weeks ago at 17.Dr. Michael Greger: 8:31

Yeah, she was 17.Ella Magers: 8:34

Yeah, she was plant based. Wow, a rescuer. She was about three when I got her, so she was 15 years Wow.Dr. Michael Greger: 8:43

Yeah, but love that.Ella Magers: 8:47

So good to have you here, happy to be here. You know what? I met you. This was many years ago. I’m sure you hear this all the time, but you were speaking at the Holistic Holiday at Seacruz. Oh yeah, fun yeah. And I was doing a book, signing myself. And I gave you a book and you said to me, because my book is very fitnessy, oh nice, yeah. And you said we’ve got to get those crossfitters.Dr. Michael Greger: 9:10

That was your words.Ella Magers: 9:12

Excellent. Do you think we’ve made any progress on the crossfit front? I’ve been trying. I’ve been doing my best.Dr. Michael Greger: 9:16

Well, we need to clone you. That’s the answer.Ella Magers: 9:19

Yes, that would be good. That would be good. Well, yeah, I’ve got so many questions for you. We’ve got this new book coming out. I want to talk about that. Also just want to say that when you deliver information, dr Gregory, you almost sing it. Like I was listening to your talk one of your TED talks yesterday, and I just thought you know you almost sing the information. Has anyone ever told you that?Dr. Michael Greger: 9:44

That only happens when I’m really good at a talk, when I’ve memorized that and that you know the new talks, it takes a while to get into the groove, yeah, but once I have a talk down, you know, once I can be like coming up with my grocery list while I’m giving the talk for the next day or something then it’s really good. Then I know the timing, yeah. So eventually it gets there. But this new talk, the aging talk, it’s going to be a while before it sounds sing-songy.Ella Magers: 10:11

Well, it’s so engaging and I think that’s so important right when you’re delivering this, you know such evidence-based this research to lay people right and it’s engaging. So, thank you, thank you for doing that Absolutely Well.Dr. Michael Greger: 10:27

All the information in the world is useless unless there’s people like you in the trenches actually putting it to use and giving it to people. So very excited Cool.Ella Magers: 10:36

Can you also confirm that you are a real life human being, that you’re not superhuman? Because, seriously, I feel like this should be an episode on productivity. I don’t understand how you do what you do. Well do you have a work-life balance? Is there a balance? God? No, no, okay, god no.Dr. Michael Greger: 10:55

But what I do have is a big staff, so that’s what I have. That I mean. So I mean you really you can’t do this. I mean so we have 14 people on staff full-time and about 100 or so active volunteers at any one time, and so it’s like I mean, how else can you turn through thousands of articles?Ella Magers: 11:13

Yeah.Dr. Michael Greger: 11:14

You know. So it’s really kind of a team effort. So, yeah, there’s no way I can do it alone. But yeah, and what’s nice is that we have staff on each side of the globe and so when you know, I go bed at night, I give them a big load of work and it’s all done. In the morning I can take it back, so we have this kind of 24-hour cycle that keeps it rocking.Ella Magers: 11:33

What time do you go to bed?Dr. Michael Greger: 11:35

Oh, I’ve been trying to be much better. That’s one of the pillars of lifestyle medicine that I’m still working on, but I’ve been trying to do a lot better. There was a very bad time when I was doing it three hours a night. So I’ll bed at 1130, up at 230 every night, and I found I was just not as productive when I was unconscious and so I was like, let’s get doing. But what really stopped me, besides being absolutely miserable, was that people think that they’re most more productive than they actually are when they’re sleep deprived. So it’s not just that they are much less productive, but they don’t realize it. Like that’s this funny thing People think they’re doing great. You know, there’s like certain people on drugs like I’m so creative, oh my God. And then you look back on what you wrote and you’re like, oh my God. So, yeah, it felt like I was, you know, getting a lot more done than I actually was. But yeah, so I’m really trying to get seven hours of sleep now, okay, which is what I recommend people get, and I’m able to do that now. Next week I’m on the road, the book is out. That’s harder, right? Some of these book signing lines going for four hours and then I got some early flight the next day and it’s going to be difficult to stick with it, but having control of my same thing with diet when I have control of my diet, I have no bad food in the house. Even if I want to eat some crappy, it’s like too bad, there’s nothing, right, right, but when you’re on the road, you just do your best just to make it to the next gig.Ella Magers: 13:05

Yeah, and this will actually come out on the day that your book is available, so this will be yes. There’s never been. That’s exciting. That’s the day.Dr. Michael Greger: 13:13

So then I got 100, doing 100 cities for the next six months 100 cities and how many languages is this book coming out? Oh, that’s a good question. I know how not to die ended up 36 languages. I don’t think I even named 36 languages, but this one I mean. I know we’re in the Big E’s. We have a German edition, a Spanish edition. I’m not sure how many we’re up to, but probably less than a dozen so far. But we’ll see how it does and it does really well. Hopefully other countries to pick it up.Ella Magers: 13:43

Well, longevity is all the rage, you know. Yeah, what inspired you to decide on this topic for this book?Dr. Michael Greger: 13:53

You know, it reminds me a lot about my last book, the I’m not to diet book. You know, both the diet and anti-aging industries are these, you know, multi-billion dollar behemoths. Right, and with so much money in the mix, the temptation to promote products providing all sorts of you know preposterous claims is apparently irresistible. Right. And so, you know, even an educated layperson seeking basic practical advice in either arena living longer or lighter is faced with this just inscrutable barrage of pills and potions. And you know, even as a physician, with a luxury of waiting, you know, neck deep in the medical literature, it’s been a challenge to tease out the you know naked truth from the emperor’s garb. But, you know, in the end I realized that just makes this endeavor that much more important, right? If it took me three years to go through all the science, right, and I’m afraid the you know, casual observer would just have, you know, there’d be no hope from, you know, separating facts from farce, yeah.Ella Magers: 14:52

So when I look at all the longevity studies out there, one of the things that comes to mind first is, of course, the blue zones and the centenarians, and so I’m sure that that’s in the book, right, yeah, but the question I have because I haven’t seen the book yet is you know, many of these zones do include fish and olive oil and wine, Like those are three at least for the in Greece.Dr. Michael Greger: 15:20

Right, the Mediterranean.Ella Magers: 15:21

Even the Mediterranean. So is there longevity because of some of those foods or is it in spite of, or were you able to figure that out?Dr. Michael Greger: 15:32

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So what you want to do is look at kind of a Venn diagram of what. So you know, of all the different blue zones. What do they share in common? So they can each do their own little thing, but what is kind of the core? What do they share, kind of the core tenants? So thankfully we have over 150 dietary surveys that have been done in blue zones. We can actually kind of lay it out. And so there’s a blue zones organization, started by Dan Butner, that did that. And so they came up with blue zone food guidelines and you could, you know, look them up. There’s 10 of them, and number one is eat a diet at least 95% plant-based. And then the next one is reduce processed foods, and then the one after that is a daily dose of beans, telling people to eat more legumes as like the healthy source of protein, all the blue zones as their primary source of protein, with some kind of legume. And then drink mostly water that’s the best beverage. Nuts is the healthiest snack. And then cut down on fish, cut down on eggs, cut down on sugar, cut down on dairy, cut down on meat, that’s all 10.Ella Magers: 16:41

Wow, got the memorized. Did anything surprise you while you were doing your research?Dr. Michael Greger: 16:47

Oh my God the whole book, like I knew so little about going into. I learned as much as anybody else doing one of these books. In fact, there were entire areas of science that were not discovered when I graduated from medical school, like micro RNAs have old chapter on that. It undermines the entire central dogma of biology which we all learned. But it didn’t even exist, wasn’t discovered till after I got out. So completely new, completely excited, totally nerded out, had a great time, and so lots of stuff was really kind of shocking to me and really changed my own diet a lot, really. So what I found about exercise, sleep, red wine, resveratrol, nad supplements, vitamin D, fish protein restriction, micro RNAs I mean just the list goes on and on. Where it’s like I went in thinking, oh, I’d probably recommend this supplement, this supplement, similar, and then they’re like oh God, so glad I looked, and that’s why there’s 13,000 citations, it’s because I wanted to cover every possible, every anti-aging supplement that’s ever been purported, every organ system preserving your vision and your hearing, and your on down the list, and so, yeah, it was just a huge project.Ella Magers: 18:01

Can you share any specifics about what you changed in your diet? I’m so interested to know this.Dr. Michael Greger: 18:06

No, totally so. I’m now using a spice called papali, which is a long pepper which is kind of the black pepper family, has something called pipe longumine, which is maybe a senolytic compound which destroys these so-called zombie cells in the body, these pro-inflammatory cells in the body that contribute to the aging process. Wheat germ I remember my mom used to give me wheat germ. I was like she was totally right all along.Ella Magers: 18:29

Mom’s always right.Dr. Michael Greger: 18:30

That should be the lesson. Yeah, so wheat germ is something called spermedine, which is this kind of house cleaning process by which your cells kind of clear out accumulated debris that adds to the aging process, the most concentrated source of which is in wheat germ. Started eating cardamom, eating more tempeh than I used to, started growing my own mushrooms. You can grow oyster mushrooms, just like you can like sprouts, broccoli, whatever you can grow moisture, it’s so cool. So, yeah, strawberries, eating more strawberries, because some called phycidins, some curse, people eat fresh, frozen or freeze dried strawberries. You know, normally I’d be like, oh well, I’d choose blackberries because they have five times the manateoxins as strawberries, or I’ve got to choose one minus one. Nope, because there’s this crazy compound in strawberries that has the effects that you really can’t find anywhere else, kind of in the plant kingdom and concentrated form. So, all right, strawberries it is. So I actually, you know, going on the road, I have these little packets of freeze dried strawberry powder, which I’m not putting my, you know, hotel oatmeal or whatever, and yeah, so keep it going on the road.Ella Magers: 19:31

Do you fly to the locations and then stay?Dr. Michael Greger: 19:33

in a hotel, Mostly mostly, yeah, mostly yeah.Ella Magers: 19:36

You don’t have a big tour bus and you get a.Dr. Michael Greger: 19:38

Tour bus, that’s what I need. Yeah, come on, Dr Greger.Ella Magers: 19:42

I need the Greger tour bus. Yes, it needs to be wrapped right Like moving billboard. Yeah, there we go right exactly. This is promoting. That’s hilarious. No, I’m very serious.Dr. Michael Greger: 19:54

Well, no, no, that’s how I started out. I started out on the road, living out of my car After I got out of med school and finished my post-grad school medical training, where I just needed to get this information to everyone’s hands. So I started traveling to all the medical schools and staying on people’s couches and, just you know, didn’t own a pillow. You know I was on the road full time, but only a certain number of years you can do that before you finally want to, and then five dogs later.Ella Magers: 20:22

Yeah, oh yeah, exactly.Dr. Michael Greger: 20:24

Yeah, much better.Ella Magers: 20:25

See, if you had a big tour bus, you could bring all your oh my God, that’s true Tour babies, right? Oh, that’s true, if you need a manager new manager here.Dr. Michael Greger: 20:33

I could get your tour, bus You’re totally right.Ella Magers: 20:37

Oh, that’s amazing. Okay, so let me see if I can phrase this correctly. You had the how Not To Die book, and now you’ve got how Not To Age. They seem very related, you know, because when you’re aging, you can’t be dying yet. But then there’s the health span versus lifespan and all of this. How do those all kind of fit, how not to die and how not to age. Do you see where I’m kind of going with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally, yeah, so you know I talk about.Dr. Michael Greger: 21:04

There’s no such thing as dying from old age. There was a study of 14,000 consecutive autopsies and all the centenarians not a single one, died of old age. They died from disease, most commonly heart disease, which is the number one killer of men and women in general. So even people that look perfectly fine, their physicians said they were in perfect health. Ah, when you actually cut them open, or if they die up, no, they died from disease. And so, wait a second, if everyone dies from disease, and why wasn’t? How Not To Die? All the longevity book anyone needs, right? It’s just 15 chapters, easy, 15 leading cause of death. I come out with the old diet maybe preventing, arresting, reversing each one. But then what I realized is that each one of those diseases has this age-related component. So, yes, having a high cholesterol can increase your risk of heart disease as much as 20-fold, but an 80-year-old has 500 times the risk of having an heart attack compared to a 20-year-old. So age is a risk factor for not just heart disease but also cancer and dementia and on down the list. Instead of just playing whack-a-mole and hitting one disease at a time, by slowing down the sands of time, by slowing down aging, we can address all these different chronic diseases together. You know, if all cancer was cured tomorrow, the average life expectancy would only go up about three years. And the reason is because we don’t die from one age-related disease, we just die from another. Oh, the reason you die from cancer is because you are going to die next year of a heart attack. But cancer got to you first, right. So by slowing down aging we can kind of hit all these diseases together.Ella Magers: 22:41

Okay, interesting. Now what about from a? Well, I mean, we’re looking at the fitness perspective. That fitness is very. You know, what I learned working in the fitness industry is that it had had very little to do with true health, right, it had mostly to do with how people looked on the outside. So, coming from that angle, there’s the protein thing. Right, and we need protein to build muscle, and people in the fitness, they want to build muscle, and yet in a lot of longevity, experts talk about reducing protein, although you do need a little more, right, when you’re older. Can you talk to that a little bit? Is this a give or take? Like you either have muscle or you can live long Right, right.Dr. Michael Greger: 23:21

No, that’s literally what I thought when I was going into it. When I was going into it, I was because I was aware of the anti-aging literature and thinking and knowing that you know excess protein can increase, you know, lean mass among younger middle-aged individuals. And so was there going to be the seesaw. There’s a like. You have to have one at the expense of another. But when it comes to protein aging, less may indeed be more. Reducing protein intake, meaning restricting protein intake down to recommended levels. It’s the only thing that I could find that could block all 11 of the aging pathways boosting NAD, improving immunity, decreasing oxidative stress, inflammation, insulin resistance, as well as a cancer, promoting growth hormone, igf1. And, surprisingly, no benefit to adding extra protein to the diets of older men and women in terms of muscle mass, muscle strength or muscle performance. It just doesn’t work. Instead, with the excess protein, what you get that most Americans get causes a drop in the pro-longed-jevity hormone FGF21, a drop in testosterone, a worsening of the age-accelerating hormone M-Tour. So we really should try to stick to the recommended level of 0.8 grams per healthy kilogram body weight, which comes out to be about 45 grams through the average height woman and 55 grams through the average height man.Ella Magers: 24:35

Hmm, very interesting. Okay, yeah, because even some of the longevity experts are still touting protein, protein, protein.Dr. Michael Greger: 24:43

Well, they’re not touting it based on the evidence. They’re not touting it based on the literature. I mean, the anti-aging literature is very clear. I mean, the most potent thing you can do is methionine restriction in terms of longevity. Methionine is an amino acid found in concentrate in certain proteins. So that’s why caloric restriction works, because you’re actually cutting down on methionine, because you’re eating less protein. Or you can just keep calories the same, cut down on protein, that’ll lower your methionine, or you can keep the protein the same and just shift from animal sources to plant sources tend to be lower in methionine. Any of those above can decrease methionine, which is kind of our best bet of one kind of silver bullet for longevity, and so that’s why we think caloric restriction works. It’s really it’s not about the calories. It’s really about and not just protein in general, but specific amino acids, like the sulfur-containing amino acid, cysteine, methionine, branched-chain amino acids. We really want to keep those minimized. It certainly gets sufficient levels, but not to get excess levels in terms of improving our lifespan.Ella Magers: 25:44

Now, when you bring all this new stuff home and you’re saying, okay, we’re going to add this, I’m going to add this how does this affect your family?Dr. Michael Greger: 25:51

Are they like oh God, why is there parsley and everything all of a sudden? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean at this point they just know that all of a sudden, no more bananas in the smoothies because of the new study or whatever.Ella Magers: 26:07

It’s just like yeah all right, okay, wait, why no bananas in the smoothie?Dr. Michael Greger: 26:11

Oh, yeah. So yeah, this new study. I just did a webinar about it. There’s an enzyme in bananas called polyphenoloxidase. It actually destroys some of the nutrition in berries and cocoa, and so if you mix it up in a smoothie, you’re actually particularly if it waits around for a while You’re actually getting less nutrition, had you not add banana. So I encourage people, you know, do frozen mango instead or something like that.Ella Magers: 26:33

But yeah, oh, it is a lot right. It can be a little overwhelming. So I eat a huge kale salad every day. That’s my amazing. I love it, I love it except and then I realized I was drinking a matcha tea. Oh yeah and then my iron levels were low. Yeah so then I was like okay, no, I have to wait an hour.Dr. Michael Greger: 26:51

Yeah, my kale salad, and right, yeah, yeah, yeah.Ella Magers: 26:54

It’s a lot. How do you help? Yeah, no, no, no.Dr. Michael Greger: 26:56

Well, first of all, the really core tenants. Right, it’s really the basic common sense, lifestyle factors that can really mean the big difference. You know, living a decade or more. It’s the not smoking, not being obese, regular exercise, more fruits and vegetables. It’s really the basic stuff. Never too late to start eating healthier, to start moving, to stop smoking, and so that’s like 80% of the problem, right? Okay then, yes, if you want to really optimize, right, and you, you seem to me as the optimizing type. Okay, yes, there’s all sorts of cool stuff we can learn and we can tweak, but I don’t want people to be like, just throw their hands up in the air and be like, oh, it’s too complicated and right, eat whatever garbage put in front of them. Food industry loves that kind of Muddying of the waters, but no, no, I mean really the core tenants of healthy eating. Healthy living is really the basics they get in most of the way. There, you know. And so, and that’s why I really try to emphasize in the book, in fact, the whole conclusion is time back. Okay, let’s take a step back here. It’s two important things. I know there was a lot here, but then, yes, there certainly is Stuff, for you know every other little. You know body function you want to optimize. But let’s not force for the trees, you know.Ella Magers: 28:08

Yes, I get that completely very good. And then the last kind of question about aging. So sticking on the physical level skin yeah. I think you know that’s a big thing. I mean, I’m 43. I’m looking down, I’m like oh, my elbow. I’m like having getting old lady elbows, is that? So I like down thing, and then I just Approach it with compassion and say that’s just part of the process and blah blah blah. But is there things we can do, because you know most collagen?Dr. Michael Greger: 28:33

is animal-based. Tons of stuff we can do. Well, yeah, it’s animal-based, because animals make collagen, like ourselves, we make collagen. You don’t have to eat collagen, thank you. It’s like saying you know, it’s like. It’s like I want to be smart, I’m gonna eat brains like this, but can you give us like two or three? There’s lots of things we can do for our skin. The single most effective thing to slow the Signs of skin aging is protect your skin from sun damage, though ambient air pollution can also Contribute. But it’s really, you know, daily sunscreen, spf 15 or higher. We want the mineral sunscreens, the titanium or zinc, and so that’s really the most important thing. In terms of diet, the carotenoid nutrients in certain colorful fruits and vegetables are deposited in the skin. Give you this kind of healthy glow. Both light and dark skin, and Not just appearance, actually improves skin elasticity, collagen status, facial wrinkles, probably due to this kind of inside out sunscreen effect. So you actually, you know, do these experiments where you burn people with lasers. You know before and after eating more. You know sweet potatoes, and you can get significantly less redness after eating these healthy foods. Drinking extra water can improve skin dryness and roughness. Honey bush tea can reduce eye wrinkles. Cocoa powder Can increase skin thickness, skin thinnings a real problem in old age. Elasticity to increase wrinkle severity. Almonds can also decrease wrinkle severity, again because of probably some UV resistance in the skin Ground. Flaxsees can improve skin smoothness. Soy foods can improve skin elasticity, fine wrinkles. And then, in terms of topical treatments, most of the anti-aging creams actually don’t work better than just simple moisturizers. But the gold standard anti-aging skincare is the daily facial moisturizer with the sunscreen. And you know we have randomized controlled trials proving that randomized people more sunscreen can significantly cut down a visible skin aging. There are these retinoids is a prescription retinoid called Tritinium or retinae that can actually reverse signs of existing sun damage, but a Small fraction is absorbed into your bloodstream and actually may increase your risk of premature death. So I don’t recommend taking. In fact, that was just a video that went up, I think, today talking about the concerns about that low concentrations of alpha hydroxy, alpha hydroxy acids. Skin lotions can improve facial photo damage but also increase skin photosensitivity. So then, can make things worth in the long run. But there are a few things that I found that could be useful. Topical vitamin C and topical nicotinamide can reduce wrinkles and salinus and improve skin firmness, and so I have recipes for like DIY. You know, vitamin C serums. There’s like 2,000 times cheaper than you can get at retail. Basically just mixing three grams of bulk ascorbic acid Into 30 grams of water into like a one ounce dropper. It costs you about a nickel per ounce as opposed to like a hundred twenty dollars an ounce.Ella Magers: 31:30

Oh my gosh.Dr. Michael Greger: 31:31

And then topical nicotinamide is even more expensive over two hundred dollars an ounce but all you do is mix 1.4 grams of bulk nicotinamide for every ounce of your favorite skin lotion. Apply pea-sized amount To each side of your face once a day. That’s like a 5,000 percent discount.Ella Magers: 31:54

Dr Gregory now. Thank you so, so much for everything that you do. You know this is a show about holistic health and a big piece of that is live in our purpose, and you certainly do that day in, day out. I love that you have rescued animals as well at home, and I appreciate you so much. Can you just tell us where to get this book that is out today?Dr. Michael Greger: 32:14

You can get this book anywhere from your local public library or any bookseller, and all the proceeds from all my books are all donated directly to charity.Ella Magers: 32:23

You’re amazing. Thank you so much, dr Greger.Dr. Michael Greger: 32:26

Thanks, you have the good work.Ella Magers: 32:27

Hey, you too. Bye, bye. Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Rise and Thrive with me, ella Majors. I truly hope you found it inspiring and, if you did, please help me spread the word by leaving a rating and review on your Favorite podcast player and by sharing the show with your friends. As you probably know by now, my life’s purpose is to use my voice to make this world a more conscious and compassionate place, and your reviews and shares Make a huge impact. And last, I’m getting a ton of insanely positive feedback about my short and sweet Monthly newsletter called the way short, for the way out is through. I give my top five latest badass discoveries, insights and explorations, like Vegan products and recipes. I’m obsessed with books and shows I’m loving and workouts that have me fired up. Head on over to my website, ella Majorscom, to sign up and check out all the other awesome resources I have for you and projects I’m involved with, including hogs and kisses farm Sanctuary, where our mission is to create the best life for farm animals while inspiring compassion for all living beings. Thanks a lot, and I’ll see you on the next one.