Eat THIS To Repair DNA, Slow & REVERSE AGING in Days! | Dr. William Li

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]You don't want to actually speed up aging. You don't want chronic diseases.

[00:00:03]In that case, what are some of the foods that are better and supportive of healthy aging? Are you ready? Let's talk about them. All right, the first thing I'm going to tell you for more natural, healthier aging and to slow the aging process is to eat more colorful fruits and vegetables.

[00:00:22]All right. What do I mean by colorful fruits and vegetables? Well, you know, uh berries, very colorful. Uh bell peppers, uh fruits, apples and oranges and lemons and limes and grapes. All right, you can tell all these uh colorful foods, stone fruits, peaches and pears and plums. I mean, think about it. You go to the farmers market and you see big piles of these uh fruits and vegetables. It's like looking at a rainbow, like a kaleidoscope of color, okay? Now, here's the thing. The natural substances that give fruits and vegetables their beautiful colors, their their diverse colors, are actually polyphenols.

[00:01:03]Polyphenols that protect your body against the stress of aging, protect it against free radical damage, which damages your DNA. These are stresses, a kind of a chemical stress, and protect you from inflammation as well. All right. This idea of stress, free radical damage, and inflammation, these are just some, three of the key drivers of premature aging. So, when you want to eat the rainbow, you're actually opposing or countering some of these key parts of aging. You're countering uh stress, countering damage to your DNA from free radicals, and you're countering inflammation. This is really, really important.

[00:01:39]Now, researchers from China have published uh in Frontiers in of Nutrition, which is one of the big journals, that berries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries are especially good at reducing that kind of oxidative stress that stresses out your cells, speeds up aging, so it that process, and they berries lower inflammation, okay? And in fact, when they studied large populations, they found that those people who consumed the highest level of foods containing these antioxidant polyphenols actually showed the fewest visible signs of aging. Their skin looked better, looked less aged, less wrinkled, or less sagging.

[00:02:19]Um and when they compared the berry eaters, all right, to people who didn't eat berries, um they found that uh the people who didn't eat berries had more wrinkles and more skin sagging. Really important, all right? So, this is actually visible. You can actually see it.

[00:02:33]The take-home point here is that polyphenol-rich foods, and fiber-rich foods, too. These fruits, these berries contain dietary fiber. In fact, pound for pound, raspberries are one of the most fiber-rich foods um that are out there, all right? But, polyphenols and dietary fiber, um raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, dark chocolate's another one with polyphenols and some dietary fiber, and nuts, tree nuts, almonds, cashews, macadamias, walnuts, all right? These foods actually protect your DNA, they protect against cellular stress, and they lower inflammation. And as a result, this is what the researchers have been finding, they actually help to protect your skin against the ravages of aging, improve elasticity, that's the stretchiness of your skin, they support healthy cell turnover.

[00:03:22]What's cell turnover? Well, it's your new skin replacing your old skin, right?

[00:03:27]We all know that old skin doesn't look that great. New skin rejuvenates it, right? You ever have a facial or a skin skin scrub? You see all that stuff that comes off of it, all right? That's exposing the new skin and getting sloughing off the old skin, so your skin looks fresher, less wrinkled, less saggy, okay? More has has more resiliency.

[00:03:46]So, how do you do this? Well, I recommend just adding it a handful of fresh berries um to your breakfast everyday or if you're having oatmeal or yogurt, what great foods to ask dairy to because they're also healthy. The oatmeal contains beta-D-glucan which is in lots of fiber for your gut health.

[00:04:06]Yogurt is a probiotic food. I always get whole yogurt. Add some berries to them.

[00:04:11]That's a way of lighting up your polyphenol load starting right off the at the beginning of the day.

[00:04:16]The other thing you could do is nibble on a small square of dark chocolate. All right? Now, how dark?

[00:04:23]Most of the studies show that darker the better. All right? So, I say 80 85% or better.

[00:04:30]That's pretty dark and that kind of dark chocolate is kind of bitter. So, here's my practical tip for you.

[00:04:36]Um take a square of really dark chocolate um and if it's too bitter for you, combine it with a cup of black coffee.

[00:04:45]All right?

[00:04:46]Coffee plus chocolate equals mocha. So, if you actually have coffee which is also slowing down the ravages of aging and dark chocolate, you can put the chocolate right in there or you can get chopped cocoa powder dark chocolate powder.

[00:05:01]Stir it up in there and then you make your own mocha or just eat it together.

[00:05:05]Sip some coffee, nibble on a chocolate.

[00:05:07]It's the same effect. It's just actually in your tongue as opposed to in the cup.

[00:05:11]Now, here's the other thing. Another practical tip. I recommend keeping a small bowl of mixed nuts. All right?

[00:05:19]Again, walnuts, pistachios, pecans, cashews. Um I just made some uh toasted cashews and I put on some rosemary powder. Um a little bit to light up the spice and rosemary has rosmarinic acid which is also anti-inflammatory and slows down cellular aging. All right? Um and so when you eat some of those nuts, you actually get some healthy fats. You get lots of dietary fiber to feed your gut microbiome and inflammation comes down.

[00:05:48]With lowered inflammation, you actually have your countering those effects of aging.

[00:05:54]Okay.

[00:05:56]That's my first tip.

[00:05:57]Second tip.

[00:05:59]To slow down the effects of cellular aging, I recommend you incorporate healthy fats uh into your diet. And guess where some of the biggest benefits are?

[00:06:10]It's right, in your brain. You want healthier brain aging, you want to have a healthier fats.

[00:06:16]So, you know, you might say, "Dr. Lee, aren't all fats bad?"

[00:06:21]Not really. Actually, our body needs fat, some fat actually survive. Healthy fats, um everything in moderation, but healthy fats uh like omega-3 fatty acids, uh which you can get from seafood, not just uh uh salmon, uh mackerel, and sardines, and anchovies. They actually have a lot of good omega-3s, but you can even get it from um lighter white white flesh fish that don't look like they're oily, but they actually have omega-3s. Cod, hake, halibut, flounder, um I know and even seafood like clams and mussels and squid, shrimp, lobsters, crab, they also have omega-3s as well. Okay? They live in the sea, at the end of the day, they're nibbling on things that actually have the plankton that actually contain the omega-3s, so they get some of the benefits as well. So, you eat that, you get the benefits. Point is, healthy fats lead to healthy brain. As we age, we want our brain, our noggin, to be really, really sharp.

[00:07:17]You don't like seafood, you can't get seafood, or you're allergic to seafood, omega-3 dietary supplements, worth it.

[00:07:23]Okay? One of the few supplements that I think we probably don't get enough of the uh that the uh actual real deal from our whole foods. So, I'm cool with actually supplementing or topping off with omega-3s.

[00:07:36]How do we know this is important?

[00:07:38]Well, um at least when it comes to omega-3s, healthy omega-3s, uh researchers at Qingdao University in China actually did a study and they published this in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and they found that the omega-3s that you find in foods, like I said, salmon, flaxseed, walnuts, they can lower inflammation in the body and by lowering inflammation, they counter uh the uh ravages of aging, but they found that countering is actually in cognitive function. That's brain function, executive functions. So, here's what they did. These researchers looked at more than 100,000 people and they found that those who ate more omega-3s, regardless of the source, were less likely less likely to experience memory loss, okay, or cognitive decline as they get older. Very, very important.

[00:08:28]In fact, just upping the amount of omega-3s um daily, all right, just increasing omega-3s every day, how do you do that? Take a supplement every single day, led to a 10% lower risk of developing cognitive issues, right? So, this adds to the growing evidence that our brain function is something we can nurture even as we age to counter the ravages of being elderly. So, most of us think of look at really old people and we go, "Wow, I never want to be like that." Well, there are lots of older people who have really sharp brain function and those are the people you want to be like, all right? And omega-3s are actually one of those things that can help to fight dementia and cognitive decline.

[00:09:12]All right. Now, I'm a scientist as well as a doctor, so I'm going to tell you the questions I ask is, "Well, how do omega-3s work?" Well, it turns out omega-3s lower brain inflammation.

[00:09:23]Remember, inflammation is one of those hallmarks of aging. As you age, you become more inflamed, so omega-3s counter that and that seems to be key to keeping our brains actually sharp. Okay.

[00:09:35]Let me give you some practical tips about omega-3s. All right, as I said, you can eat seafood, all the list I gave you, the salmon, the the mackerel or the cod or the hake or shrimp and clams and mussels and squid, all right? Um and by the way, not only is it beneficial for your brain, it's also beneficial for your heart. Omega-3s are well known to be beneficial to cardiovascular disease. They actually help the lining of your blood vessels, your endothelial cell lining. I study blood vessels, so I know a lot about the 60,000 mi worth of blood vessels in your body. Omega-3s help to pave the road, the highways along those 60,000 mi of of the journey. Every bit of oxygen that we breathe and every nutrient that we eat has to fly down these highways and byways in your body. Omega-3s make that process really, really good. Okay, what's another healthy fat? Well, I alluded to this earlier, extra virgin olive oil.

[00:10:31]Now, there are some omega-3s, there's some monounsaturated fatty acids and omega-3s, all good for vascular health, all good for brain health, but extra virgin olive oil has polyphenols like hydroxytyrosol and oleocanthal.

[00:10:46]Now, these are super potent anti-inflammatory polyphenols that can lower inflammation everywhere in your body, including your brain, all right?

[00:10:56]How much omega-3s do you need to eat? Uh well, you know, in fish about this amount in the fish, a piece of fish about the size of a deck of cards, all right? What about extra virgin olive oil? Well, anywhere between three to four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil has been associated with better health, better aging, overall better organ health, all right?

[00:11:19]You might say three to four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, man, that seems like a lot. Well, if you go to the Mediterranean, and I did a gap year before I went to medical school, and I lived in the Mediterranean, in Italy and Greece, you can find foods that are actually cooked um with extra virgin olive oil.

[00:11:39]Um and you know, when you're cooking cooking the process, check out some recipes, you'll see quite a bit of extra virgin olive oils used. Um and when you eat it over the course of breakfast, lunch, dinner, okay, it's pretty easy to get three to four uh tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

[00:11:55]Now, I always tell people, if you're going to get olive oil, get the ones that have the highest amount of polyphenols. And you may have heard me mention this before, but I'll say it again.

[00:12:05]There are three types of olive oil, okay, three types of olives used to make olive oil that have the highest levels of polyphenols.

[00:12:15]There is a uh Spanish olive called the Picual, p i c u a l olive, very high in polyphenols. Fortunately, it's a very common uh olive in Spain. So, uh uh the second one in Italy is uh is Moraiolo. Moraiolo is from Umbria, uh although you can find them in other uh olive groves uh throughout Italy. Um less common, a little bit more expensive. Um uh and then in Greece, Greek olive oil, you look for um olive oil made with Koroneiki olives.

[00:12:50]These are from the Peloponnesus, the southern part of Greece.

[00:12:53]Between Koroneiki olives, Moraiolo olives, and Picual olives, these are three varietals of olives that are super high in these healthy inf- inflammation-lowing polyphenols that are good for uh brain health uh uh as we age to counter that inflammation. So, how do you find these uh when you go to uh a grocery store?

[00:13:16]Well, listen. Uh I used to be confused by this. You go to this huge wall of different types of extra virgin olive oils. Here's what I do. I look for Greek, I look for Ital- Italian, I look for Spanish olive oil. Fortunately, there's there's quite a lot of choices to choose from. Then I look for monovarietal. Monovarietal means that inside that bottle is extra virgin olive oil that comes from one and only one variety of of of olive.

[00:13:42]Picual from Spain, Koroneiki from Greece. These are two very easy ones to find. Moraiolo from Italy from Umbria, a little bit more difficult. But if you're having trouble finding these monovarietal olive oils in your grocery store made with Picual, Koroneiki, or Moraiolo olives, guess what? You can order them online. All right. Just throw all of just enter in the names of those olives, monovarietal olive oil, and they'll ship it to your house. Okay? Now look, olive oil is sort of liquid gold.

[00:14:14]It tastes great. It really the polyphenols that give you a little bit of peppery and zing in the back of your throat after you have it. Little bit of sourdough bread, all right, a great way to have have it. Or if I'm cooking eggs, and by the way, eggs are also good for the brain for brain health, I don't use butter or I don't use seed oils. I actually use extra virgin olive oil. Now you get the polyphenols in your scrambled eggs as well or your or your fried egg. So look, let me just wrap this up by telling you a couple of things. Number one, we all age every single day. Every day we're alive, we're aging. All right?

[00:14:51]And it's not until we eat to reach the second half of our life that we really start to see and feel those effects of aging. And the foods that we eat can actually counter the speed at which we we age and and therefore how we feel and how we look. All right? So if you want to live long and live well and look good at the same time, what you want to be able to do is to add life to your years and not just years to your life. This isn't only about longevity, it's about thriving, it's about looking good, feeling good, uh a sharp brain as I mentioned to you. So, nourish your body as you age with intention and remember that the choices that you are making today lay the foundation to how well you're going to look and feel and think in the years ahead.

[00:15:36]If you like this video, uh please subscribe. If you know somebody who could benefit from what you just heard, please share the video with them. And with that, I can't wait to share with you the next video. So, I will see you in that next video. Dr. Lee out. Hey, if you like that video, then you're going to love this one.

[00:15:57]Check it out.