If You Do Not Eat THIS, Your Colon Cancer Risk Skyrockets

[00:00:00]You said increasing fiber leads to you being more resilient against uh some of these different toxins going in your body.

[00:00:08]Like, what are the main, I guess, foods that people are not eating to have proper fiber intake? And then, how much fiber should they be getting?

[00:00:15]>> Fiber, again, there's multiple types of it. So, if you're just wanting the kind of insoluble fiber that moves stuff through you quickly, which does also play a role in preventing your body from absorbing plastics, but also, you know, chemicals from being able to damage your colon, that's found in like every fruit and vegetable and whole grain, okay? I would say fruit and vegetables are great. Whole grains are like oats, really, really good.

[00:00:41]The the the fermentable fiber is really something unique to fruit skins of berries, um mushrooms, onions, artichokes, oats, resistant starch like green bananas or potatoes that are cooked and then cooled. This is like you're getting this fermentable type of fiber that is a very different type of than just the move stuff through you, make you poop kind of fiber, right? This is the stuff that's feeding the gut bacteria and making that gel, that viscous gel. And so, you want to you want to be eating berries, you want to be eating mushrooms, you want to be eating like artichoke or onion, garlic. You want to be eating um oats.

[00:01:21]You want to quinoa, you know, like those sorts of things have the fermentable type of fiber. You know, the other thing that that's doing is when the gut bacteria are eating, I say eating, they're fermenting it, right? Not only is it making a viscous, you know, barrier in your gut, it these these bacteria are like little chemical factories, they're like little pharmaceutical factories inside your gut. And they're making compounds called short-chain fatty acids, things like butyrate, things like acetate, propionate. These things are getting into your circulation and they're acting as signaling molecules to the rest of your body. It's a way it's a way for the bacteria in your gut it's so interesting like these bacteria in your gut can communicate with other organs in your body including the immune cells. And so what happens is when you're when the gut is is fermenting these and making these short-chain fatty acids, it's causing your immune cells to make a very specific type of immune cells. First, it's causing them to make T regulatory cells. These are cells that are very important for preventing autoimmune disease, you know, preventing your your body from attacking its own tissue.

[00:02:25]And the other thing they're doing is it's causing your immune system to make cytotoxic T lymphocytes. These are killing cancer cells. So you again, fiber is at the is at the core for helping you prevent colon cancer so through many different ways. And another way is that it's actually increasing the production of a type of immune cell that kills cancer cells. So you ask how much fiber to get it's like literally it's about you know, men and women differ based on their body weight. It's also you can think about it based on how many calories you consume.

[00:02:58]So you're supposed to get 14 grams for every thousand calories you consume. I think on average like you know, 25 to 30 grams is a good place to be and people are not getting that. So >> The common expression is an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

[00:03:17]What would be your fruit that you would recommend?

[00:03:19]>> Apples are great. The pectin so the skin of fruits I mentioned skin I only mentioned berries but apples is also another skin that has the fermentable type of fiber as well. And mine would be blueberries.

[00:03:31]Mine would be blueberries and we talk about why I'm like obsessed with blueberries but >> I'd love to talk about that. I do want to ask like why do you think maybe this is I don't have the data to support this but at least in my life and the guys I know they're not eating fruit. Like why do you think people aren't eating fruit as much anymore?

[00:03:49]Because me personally like I when I was younger, I was able to eat fruit without like any type of averse reaction, but uh then like I don't know, makes my mouth itchy now and I've heard about all these pesticides in it. Like uh I'm just kind of I've been told things about the carnivore diet and just eating steak and guys don't need fruit because when they were uh in the olden days, they would just hunt animals and women would pick berries.

[00:04:15]Like I I hear that kind of sentiment.

[00:04:17]Like W- Why do you think guys aren't eating fruit?

[00:04:20]>> I think I I think all those reasons. I think people people are scared of fruit because they they think that it has too much sugar.

[00:04:26]And they don't realize that the fruit is very different than added sugar because it has the food matrix. It slows the glucose response. It also has a lot of beneficial compounds. So [snorts] many.

[00:04:38]It has micronutrients like vitamins and minerals, but it has these polyphenols and flavanols and like all these compounds we haven't even discovered yet that are like doing beneficial things like improving cognition. I mean, literally. So um I I think that it's it's unfortunate that people aren't eating fruit. Fruit is good for you. And like eat seasonally. Like that that was also something that people If If you want to eat like your ancestors, like that's that's what was done, too, right? Like guys were eating fruit. I mean, give me a break.

[00:05:07]Um the carnivore diet I think has become popular. Men love meat, you know, they love meat. So like of course you're going to want to like find a justification in your brain to like eat more meat and only eat meat. [laughter] Like give me a break. Like who Yeah. And um you know, restrictive diets when you go from like a standard American diet or like, you know, restrictive diets can really help.

[00:05:29]And that is a very very restrictive diet. One, you're going to eat fewer calories. There's going to be benefits in that in and of itself. And that's just Anyone that tries to argue otherwise it's just not true. You do you you're going to calorie restrict when you're eating just meat. Like you just can't eat as much. Like you're not eating as much, right? It's not as diverse. Um is it good long-term, like 10 years down the road? I don't think so. You're going to you're going to have micronutrient insufficiencies and deficiencies, and that will accelerate aging. Like that's something I studied in my post-doc.

[00:05:59]There's you magnesium, like there's not a lot like you're not going to get magnesium from from muscle meat. Now, maybe if you started doing organ meat, you'll get a little bit more diverse, but still you're not going to get enough of a lot of these really important micronutrients. So, >> I view it as the most effective way to have an elimination diet and figure out like what are the actual factors that I have food sensitivities to. Um but like I want to ask with all the pesticides and different things in our fruit and vegetables, like where do you where do you get fruit at?

[00:06:28]>> Yeah. So, unfortunately, especially conventionally grown vegetables and fruit, they're they have not only pesticides, but they have forever chemicals. Like these are chemicals that are staying around in our body for quite a while. Um years, not just, you know, like BPA has a pretty quick half-life. Like you're excreting it every few hours, but you're constantly exposed to it. So, it is a concern. The pesticides are a concern. Obviously, like organic is better, but you still have to wash the vegetable. You have to wash it really good, and that does help.

[00:07:04]What also helps give me peace of mind is there are so many long-term observational studies looking at people eating fruits and vegetables. I mean, countless.

[00:07:14]Indefensible. Thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of them, okay?

[00:07:18]Showing that people that eat fruits and vegetables have a lower all-cause mortality, lower cardiovascular mortality, lower cancer, everything, lower Alzheimer's disease. Like if it was so bad, and and this is like, you know, pesticides have been around for a while now. So, we're talking we're talking, you know, at least like even in like starting back in what was it like the 1960s when they had when they had the DDT? They've they've like phased out and like come in with new ones, you know, but like at the end of the day like there's nothing there's nothing but benefits nothing but benefits. Now, you'll maybe find this one study that some carnivore dug up and it's like so what? Like you know.

[00:07:54]>> Like you can't counter like literally hundreds of thousands of studies like showing benefits. And then so that that does help with like it's like well, if it was so bad and that is because the fiber. It is like like it's because the polyphenols it's because the micronutrients because there's so many beneficial things in these, you know, fruits and vegetables that are happening that it outweighs the negative amount of like the little bit of pesticide. That's that's really like my, you know, my take on it. Um so you know, that's that's the way I view it. I think that it's overwhelming in terms of like the benefits. I think, you know, the thing with fruit and vegetables is that people think about it as I've made a case for fiber and I think that I don't even think that the carnivore people are thinking they they think fiber is just about like making you poop and it's really not. It's really not. It's a like you're literally like protecting your your body from absorbing all these chemicals and like microplastics and stuff. Like the viscous stuff that's made like you're not getting that with me. You're not.

[00:08:59]>> Fiber is the thing that makes you full as well, right?

[00:09:02]>> It is satiating. Yes, it is satiating.

[00:09:04]And I'm saying fiber there's different types we talked about it, right? But also when people think about fruits and vegetables they only think about the vitamins and minerals. It's the phytochemicals.

[00:09:13]Those are the things that I'm talking about. This is the sulforaphane, the resveratrol, the curcumin. These are the things I'm just mentioning ones that people have heard about.

[00:09:20]There's I mean, literally thousands and thousands and thousands of them and so many we haven't even identified. Ones that we have identified, I mean, it's they're activating genetic pathways in our body. Like we were meant There are gene sequences of DNA that have been identified like little short like 12 repeats of like nucleotides that get active when you eat certain phytochemicals. Like that's amazing.

[00:09:42]It's amazing and it's like the fact that we have a sequence, like it's got to be in a certain sequence and they're in all these different pathways that are involved in making stem cells and increasing autophagy, the clearing out of stuff in our body, in you know, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, everything that's part of what I would say resilience, right? Stress response, the response to stress, adaptations to stress, right? We have like these G these genes have this very specific sequence in them, antioxidant response element it's called, and it's like a very specific sequence of DNA that's activated by things like polyphenols in blueberries, by sulforaphane in in cruciferous vegetables, um by like some of these compounds in like, you know, turmeric and root root vegetables and stuff. Um it's it's found in like citrus. I mean it it makes sense, right? Like we're supposed to eat these things. Like they're activating genetic pathways in our body. They're meant to be turned on.