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Dec. 4, 2018 - Dr. Oz Podcast
37:54
How to Be Well With Dr. Frank Lipman

 It’s one of the most common complaints - how can someone navigate their path to wellness through a crowded landscape of information, misinformation, and an overwhelming amount of options that seem confusing? In this interview, Dr. Oz and Dr. Frank Lipman are cutting through the clutter and giving you a field guide to getting healthy.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I had to change my diet personally because I became pre-diabetic because for many years, I, like most people, thought low-fat was the way to go.
You know, I shunned meat.
I was eating lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of grains.
Here I was this holistic doctor preaching this healthy diet, and I became pre-diabetic.
And when I changed my diet around, when I saw this was happening, I felt so much better.
My numbers came down.
And I see that all the time with my patients.
Hey, everyone. everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
It's one of the most common complaints that I hear.
How can someone navigate their path to wellness through a crowded landscape of information, misinformation, and an overwhelming amount of options that seem so confusing?
It's like you're walking into an airplane cockpit, you don't know what buttons to press.
Today, we're cutting through the clutter and giving you a field guide to getting healthy with the help of one of my good friends, New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Frank Lipman, and his new book, How to Be Well, The Six Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life.
Thanks for being here.
It's a pleasure.
Lovely to be here with both of you.
Well, if you have six keys, you can actually organize it for us.
But before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about this wild terrain that you argue wellness represents today.
and the fact that it's gotten so confusing for the average American?
Yeah, well, first of all, I think it's wonderful I mean, because I've been doing this for so long, to actually see all this information out there being accepted, I love seeing that.
On the other hand, we have these experts who get into wellness for a year or two and put out their information with their Instagrams and Instagrams.
And all the social media, I think it becomes confusing for people because there's so many experts now.
No one knows what to do.
People know that the system has failed them and isn't really working for them, but there's all this sort of conflicting information out there and people are confused.
Well, how do you know?
And I'm just like the average consumer.
How do you know which is legitimate and which isn't?
Because, you know, on the one hand you have the paleo people, on the other hand you have the vegan people on some...
People say, you have to take these vitamins.
And people say, no vitamins.
It's very confusing.
How do you, as a consumer, navigate all that?
Right.
I think it is consuming.
And the premise of the book was to try to create some type of blueprint because the answers are very nuanced.
They're not simple.
Paleo diet is not right for everyone.
It may help a lot of people.
It does help a lot of people.
But it's not right for everyone.
Yeah.
People don't know, you know, certain types like running a marathon may be fine for some person, but does violence to another person.
So what I try to do is take all my experience of doing this for so many years, try to take all the information and the healthy habits and tips that I've seen help people and put it into some type of handbook.
Let's start with some basic definitions.
What does being well mean to you?
Well, that's a great question.
I mean, I think being well is such a personal experience because I think in Western medicine, we have these two extremes.
You're either healthy or you're sick.
And there's this huge spectrum between being sick and being healthy.
And all of us lie somewhere along the spectrum.
So to me, being well is just moving yourself along the spectrum to health.
I don't think there's any such thing as 100% health, but we can all move ourselves on the spectrum towards health.
There's this concept of functioning that I learned originally in Chinese medicine that we don't have in Western medicine.
That you can improve functioning of the organs.
Like an athlete.
An athlete gets fit.
We don't think of the brain or, for instance, being mental athletes, how we can improve functioning of the brain.
So I think, to me, wellness is moving along the spectrum, improving functioning of the different organ systems.
At the very top, you tipped us off that an observation many of us have realized that there's a wellness revolution is real.
But you also acknowledge that there are some false prophets out there and not everyone is as much of an expert as the guy next to them.
So what's giving rise to this time right now in our history?
Why didn't this happen 20 years ago and why might it not happen 20 years from now?
Well, I think there are a couple of issues.
I think the younger generation, the millennials in particular, don't trust the system.
The medical system has failed them.
The medical system is not dealing well with chronic disease in particular, and the millennials have picked up on that.
So they realize that they're not going to get the answer from the government, from health institutions, from industry corporations in general, and they're wary of that.
Our generation, the 50s, 60-year-olds, are worried about aging too quickly.
They're worried about being active and enjoying their grandchildren and enjoying their later years in life.
And we as a medical system have failed this generation too in terms of aging.
Aging well, because once again, we have drugs if you want to suppress symptoms, but we don't have any tools in Western medicine to help people feel better, to function better, to, as I said earlier, to move along that spectrum towards health, that anti-aging idea.
So I think we have all these generations with different needs, and the system per se has failed all of them.
So how does good medicine, that's your term, how does good medicine Help a generation, help a population that feeling they're not getting everything they can, especially in chronic illness management.
Right.
So for me, good medicine is not ignoring Western medicine.
Western medicine is wonderful.
You know, you're a surgeon.
If someone needs, you know, the appendix taken out, if someone needs their heart repaired, if someone needs a broken bone fixed up or an acute infection, they need antibiotics.
Western medicine is wonderful.
It's fantastic at crisis care.
But it's not particularly good at dealing with these chronic diseases.
So to me, good medicine is acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of both.
So if someone comes to me with acute chest pain, I'm not going to say, you need acupuncture and come back next week.
I'm going to send them to a cardiologist or to the ER or whatever it is.
So to me, good medicine is really understanding and acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of all these systems.
You created a mandala around these six pillars.
If you could just give everyone a verbal recognition or representation of what that physical looks like.
And then let's walk through these six things.
So I want to see where the rubber hits the road.
Because these are the challenges that folks are running into.
Sure.
So the mandala was really my...
trying to take all this 40 years of knowledge that I've gained and put it into an Eastern concept.
For many years, I was trying to understand what Eastern medicine meant from a Western perspective.
Because, you know, when you study Western medicine and you start studying Eastern medicine and they start talking about chi and meridians, and you're looking at the same body, it's just different languages.
So I spent many years trying to fit in my Western understanding or into Chinese medicine.
This time I took my Western knowledge and tried to put it into an Eastern concept because I've been, you know, Buddhism, for instance, has been very important for me in terms of teaching me to relax, to become more aware.
I didn't get that spirituality from, you know, I come from the Jewish tradition.
I didn't get that spirituality from Judaism.
But Buddhism, you know, sort of got me into a greater awareness of myself and And the mandala is a focus of meditation in Eastern traditions.
And it's a way to learn about yourself.
So I thought if I can take that concept and use that as a structure and put all the Western...
Medicine or this knowledge I know from a Western perspective and overlay it on this structure, which I found important for my health and well-being.
I thought that would be great because mandalas are used as a meditation and to learn about yourself.
So I took all this information from the West and put it and overlaid it on this Eastern mandala concept.
And mandala, again, is this circular...
Yeah, and it starts, there's something in the middle, and that's where you, the patient, are, and you in control.
You need to be your own best doctor.
So there's you in the middle, surrounded by all these circles, these six circles, how to eat, how to sleep, how to move, How to protect, protecting yourself from all the chemicals out there.
How to unwind or relax and how to connect.
That's all about community, connecting to yourself, connecting to the earth.
So try to be as holistic as possible and put it in this type of structure.
Well, the nice thing too is with a mandala, everything's interrelated.
Exactly.
Because in the West, we also tend to have this separation of things.
In Western medicine, you separate the symptoms even from the disease and you will directly treat the symptom.
But in this mandala that you've created, everything is interconnected.
So one you say is how you eat, but then the next one is how you sleep.
Those are not completely separate.
How you eat will affect how you sleep, and certainly how you sleep will affect how you eat.
So I love the mandala representation because it shows the interconnectedness of every health area.
You articulated that brilliantly.
Absolutely.
And the other beauty of the mandal is you can enter at any point.
Some people are not ready to stop eating sugar, but if you tell them, you know, listening to music can be helpful.
Going for a walk on the beach or in nature can be helpful.
Getting a pet can be helpful.
You know, the underlying concept of the book is that the ordinary activities we do on a daily basis have extraordinary healing effects.
And we don't see that as medicine in the West.
We don't see music that can be medicine.
Nature can be healing.
So the idea of the book was really to take a lot of this ancient wisdom that I've learned from so many cultures and put it into one place.
So can we walk through those sub-series?
Absolutely, yeah.
So the first one is to eat.
And I think that's what a lot of us focus on is the eating.
How do we do that properly, especially in this confusing environment?
Sure.
So that's the first layer because that's the most material and people sort of connect often most easily with that because it's more tangible for them.
How you eat is interesting.
I don't think there's one right diet for anyone, so I don't say you've got to eat a certain way.
But there are certain rules, although I hate rules, that are important.
I think sugar is the devil, especially the amount of sugar we eat.
And After that, sugar and processed food, it becomes a personal journey in a sense because some people do well on a sort of low-carb, high-fat diet.
Other people do well on even a higher-fat diet, a ketogenic diet.
Some people do well on a vegan diet, although I find that younger people may do well for a short time on a vegan diet and then they don't do so well.
As we get older, We tend to do better on a What I see clinically anyway is our ability to metabolize carbs decreases.
So I find most older people tend to do better on a lower carb diet, but that's not everyone.
So the idea is to eat as close to nature as possible and learn to listen to your body.
If you're putting on weight, if you're not feeling as clear as you should, if you're not sleeping well, if your digestion's not as good as it should be, then you need to start looking at these things.
And the whole idea of the book is to teach people to really take control of their own health.
Coming up, Dr. Lipman is challenging everything you thought you knew about salt.
This is going to shock you.
Can I just ask you about meat?
Because it's been a topic that's come up quite a bit.
Yeah.
Folks correlating meat with diabetes or overarching health issues, independent of weight.
Thoughts on that in your clinical practice?
Yeah, I think what we've done to the meat is a problem.
So I think factory farm meat, when you feed cows corn, because Cows are ruminants and they should be eating grass.
When you feed them corn, then you start creating, they become acidic, create all sorts of problems.
We give them antibiotics to prevent infections.
We give them hormones to fatten them up.
So I think that's the problem with the meat.
I don't believe meat for most people, if it's grass-fed and grass-finished, is a problem at all.
I had to change my diet personally because I became pre-diabetic because for many years I, like most people, thought low-fat was the way to go.
You know, I shunned meat.
I was eating lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of grains.
Here I was this holistic doctor preaching this healthy diet and I became pre-diabetic.
And when I changed my diet around, when I saw this was happening and I started eating meat again, grass-fed meat, you know, I I lost weight, but not that I was that overweight.
I felt so much better.
My numbers came down.
And I see that all the time with my patients.
I don't see grass-fed meat as a problem.
I see what we've done to the food, to the meat in particular, as a problem.
So how do you navigate that again as a...
As the average consumer, organic, grass-fed meat is expensive.
Yes.
And you certainly can't afford, most people can't afford to eat that three meals a day.
And if you're eating meat three meals a day, seven days a week, you're going to just go to regular meat.
Sure.
But I'm not suggesting that.
I have...
One of the tips in the book is the perfect plate.
To me, the perfect plate is mainly vegetables.
You know, 70% vegetables.
I do understand that, you know, Good meat is more expensive, so just eat a little bit less of it.
What's interesting is what I'm suggesting as a perfect plate for most people, you can be a vegan or you can be a paleo type of person.
It's sort of a similar type of diet because most of what I'm suggesting is basically healthy plant-based.
Well, that's where it gets kind of comical where the paleo people tell you to eat the big slabs of...
Well, no Paleolithic man was able to...
First of all, they weren't eating cows.
It was more like, you know, a rabbit.
Exactly.
A rat.
Or a rat.
Exactly, yeah.
And it was a small amount of meat, and it would have to last for a long time.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I think that may be the confusion.
I'm not saying people should eat tons and tons of meat, but what I am saying is, you know, first of all, listen to your body, but meat may not be, you know, this problem for you as we've been, you know...
Taught to believe.
That's, I think, a myth for a lot of people anyway.
Some people don't do well on meat.
For instance, I do well on a low-carb diet.
My wife does better.
She needs more carbs.
I can eat more fat.
She doesn't do as well on more fat.
So I think everyone needs to listen to their bodies.
We both had our microbiome tested and very different.
We do very differently on different foods.
Which explains some of the variability.
Can I go back to the carbohydrate intolerance issue again?
How does someone know if they become carbohydrate intolerant?
Because that changes over time.
Yeah, absolutely.
It changes over time.
can change, you know, depending on how stressed you are, how you're sleeping.
I think all these factors, you know, as Lisa was saying earlier, everything works together here.
Definitely over time, I see clinically, there's no question, I have no doubt in my mind, as people get older, as women go into perimenopause, menopause, as men get older, their capacity to metabolize, people become more carbohydrate intolerant.
It doesn't mean they can't tolerate carbs, but their ability to process the amount of carbs they're eating decreases, so they need to decrease their carbs.
I see that as people get older, but I also see if people aren't sleeping as well, if they're More stress than usual.
The same thing.
So I think you've got to learn to listen to your body.
If you're exercising a lot and you're feeling good, most people tolerate carbs pretty well.
But I do see...
But they shouldn't be simple carbs anyway, right?
You shouldn't be eating...
Straight sugar?
Well, that's a no-no anyway.
I'm talking about what we consider healthy carbs.
You know, let's say, you know, brown rice or whole grains or even root vegetable.
I know for myself, I need to, you know, if I'm working too hard, not sleeping as well as I should, then I tend to cut back even further on my carbs.
And I do see that clinically.
So it is a tricky thing.
I mean, ultimately...
Your best decider is you and see how you feel when you eat a certain way.
You mentioned sleep as part of the mandala.
Quick tip.
I mean, we've covered a lot of basic sleep hygiene ideas.
But for folks who are still stumbling, what are the surprising connections you find between the other parts of the mandala and sleep?
Right.
Well...
Sleep is usually determined by what's going on during the day.
So people who exercise during the day tend to sleep better.
People who are less stressed during the day tend to sleep better.
And probably the important thing about sleep that people don't really get is sleep is a rhythm.
It's one of those rhythms of the body.
And a lot of people think they can go to sleep at, let's say, 10 o'clock during the week and sleep.
On the weekend, they can go to sleep 2, 3 o'clock in the morning and then try to catch up their sleep during the week.
And that's a real big mistake because it's important to realize that our bodies, the functioning of all our organ systems are rhythmical and your primary rhythm is your sleep and your wake.
Your wake cycle.
So, you know, going outside early in the morning, getting some sunshine is actually probably one of the better tips for sleep.
So sleep as rhythm is key and people don't really respect our body rhythms.
You mentioned exercises as affecting sleep.
Yep.
What kind of exercise do you recommend?
What do you do personally, Dr. Lipman?
Anything at all or just move?
Well, I call it movement because I think I don't want to scare people off by exercising.
They'll get ourselves running away.
What I do personally, exercise probably my weeks, but I love riding my bike.
So, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'm outside riding my bike.
During the week, I try to do some yoga.
I need to start getting more into strength training.
That probably is my weakness.
I know that.
But I try and move.
I walk a lot during the day.
I walk to and from work.
Besides burning calories, why do we need to move?
Well, exercise is probably one of the best things you can do for your head.
Moving your body is probably one of the best ways to...
To improve functioning of the mind and also to relax your body.
Exercise improves the microbiome.
Exercise has so many important functions on your body.
It's not just about weight.
In fact, probably the least effective way to lose weight is to exercise more.
Exercise affects almost every other aspect of your body and probably least of which is weight.
But moving your body is key and most of us sit too much.
And one thing people don't talk enough about is the functioning of the musculoskeletal system, which is if you're sitting a long time and the muscles and the fascia tighten up and you start getting these aches and pains, which then will inhibit certain movements and it becomes a chronic problem.
So I think moving your body It affects every area of your body, and it's...
Something to think about rather than having to go to the gym every day.
Just move your body.
Because if you go to the gym, let's say, in the morning and you sit all day at a desk, you know, you've probably counteracted the positive effects of going to the gym in the morning.
So just move your body.
So again, we're talking about these key steps for resilience, vitality, and long-term health.
We've covered the three that are sort of predictable, right?
Sleep, food, and activity.
Now let's move to the three that are a little less...
Yes.
How to protect...
What are you protecting?
Well, I think in this day and age, there's such a plethora.
There's so many chemicals out there that people are unaware of, not only in the food we eat and the water we're drinking or liquids we're drinking, the air we're breathing, the cosmetics we put on our skin.
Chemicals are how we clean our houses.
Chemicals are everywhere.
And it's not to make people neurotic about all these chemicals, but just to bring some awareness of the amount of chemicals we're exposed to on a daily basis.
So the Protect chapter or the Protect chapter Ring is all about how do you actually help your body's own detoxification systems because we do have normal detoxification systems which are built in there to counteract some toxins but we're exposed to so many more that it gets overloaded.
So give us one thing we can do right now to help with that detoxification.
Well, I think sitting in the sun, not being scared of the sun is a good one.
We're scared of the sun.
I think being aware of the chemicals we put on our skin, so just being aware of the cosmetics, maybe wearing a few, not as many, and getting ones with less chemicals.
The household chemicals or the household products we use, you can get cleaner products.
The green products.
Yeah, greener products.
A water filter can be helpful.
What do you think of saunas?
I'm a huge fan of saunas.
I have an infrared sauna in my heart.
I'm a huge fan of saunas because that's helping your body sweat out a lot of the chemicals.
So I'm a huge fan.
I think saunas are fantastic if you can do them, yeah.
Exercise, another effect of exercise is stimulating sweating to get rid of toxins.
So everything seems to work together, but yes, I'm a major fan of saunas.
Got a lot more questions to go, but first, let's take a quick break.
I'm just curious how this works, right?
You have busy practice.
A patient comes to see you.
They go through a litany of issues that are bothering them.
They probably feel tired.
They're not sleeping well.
They're not living their life to the 100th percentile.
They're, you know, 33rd percentile of who they could be.
You start going through these things.
I think generally pretty...
Receptive, they're able to act on all these ideas?
Well, yeah, you know, the beauty of a practice is you're sitting in front of someone and you, you know, the skill is to gauge where they're at.
So as a general rule, I'd say the millennials, younger patients that come in are ready to make all these changes.
You don't have to convince them.
Our generation is a little bit less receptive maybe, or you have to Re-frame their thinking or re-brainwash them.
So often you need to use a little bit of fear.
You need to say, listen, you want to enjoy your grandchildren.
You want to be active as you get older.
So there's often a little bit of fear you put in there, not I scare the hell out of them, but you say, listen, you don't really have a choice.
There's no other way to feel vital again if you don't start moving your body.
If you continue down this way, and you're anxious, and you're not sleeping properly, and you're not meditating or learning to relax, your brain's going to suffer, and your memory's going...
The fear part I'm good at.
But I'm just trying to figure out how we mobilize the population.
Yeah.
And I've always been curious, why are there not more Frank Lipman's out there?
Where are the rest of the...
Would you consider yourself a functional medicine doctor?
Yeah, I think I was...
Yeah, functional medicine is definitely part of what I do, but I think I've brought a lot of other things into the picture as well.
You know, studying with yoga teachers, Chinese medicine teachers, and bringing the sort of fascia, the musculoskeletal system.
So I bring a lot of things to the table, functional medicine being an operating system that I would use, yes.
So it's an integrative practice.
Yeah.
So where are the rest of the Lipman's in the world?
How come a listener who's in a You know, in a medium-sized U.S. city, may not actually be able to Google functional medicine or integrative medicine in their town and get someone like you.
Right.
Read the book.
The book helps, but to your point, that's why I asked you about your practice.
And you have a very busy practice.
Part of the reason I wanted you to come on, and I'm trying to invite a fair number of colleagues who I really respect in this space, because there are not that many of you, to get some of the pearls of wisdom to drip off your lips under the podcast.
But And it's very core.
You can read the book, but that doesn't let the user customize the experience the way you normally would.
No, I agree.
I mean, I think it's changing.
I think there more and more...
Younger doctors, you know, I'm training more.
There's another woman I'm bringing into the practice to train.
I think it will change.
I'm not sure why it's taken so long for this to get out.
I think the Functional Medicine Institute is doing a great job by, you know, training doctors as a starting point.
The functional medicine institute is in Cleveland.
And just generally, the one that started in Seattle.
I think they're doing a good job.
But I do feel, you know, and maybe it comes from being trained in South Africa.
You know, you trained originally as a doctor, as a clinician, to take a really good history and do a really good examination.
And I think what happens over time is a wisdom you get from seeing a ton of patients.
And I think that what I'm trying to say is there's going to be more and more doctors who, you know, when you start in functional medicine, you have an operating system, but you do get better and better and wise and wiser the more you do it because you're learning about the human condition.
There's one thing learning a system, which is great, but as you do something over and over, you're learning more about how you're dealing with people.
And a lot of medical practice is learning how to tailor Tailor a treatment to a patient's needs.
But I do think it's changing.
Unwinding is one of the pillars, which I'm so surprised that you put that actually, it's got its own spot.
Are you kidding?
To me, that is probably one of the most important.
I mean, I know if I didn't meditate every day, I think I'd be a wreck.
I think in New York City anyway, most people that come in to me are so agitated.
They can't sleep.
They don't know how to relax.
They don't know how to switch off their monkey mind.
So learning how to unwind is key to health because if you're stressed out, once again, it's going to affect your sleep.
It's going to affect your...
Your gut, it's going to affect all aspects of your health.
So unwinding is a key, key principle.
And number six is connecting, which I want to let people think about on their own, only because there are other ways we can get to that topic.
But there's some things only you can discuss.
And these are some of the controversial parts of your philosophy that we've talked about in the show a bit, but I want to get into some detail here.
Sure.
The first one is around salt, where there's been a holy crusade, a jihad against salt by U.S. government agencies.
Most physicians follow suit.
We've recommended 2,300 milligrams of salt if you're healthy.
If you're hypertensive, 1,500, which is a teaspoonful of salt.
It's not much salt.
No.
So, yet you argue the exact opposite, which is why you need actually more salt, probably.
Yes.
First of all, I think we've demonized the wrong white crystal.
We should have demonized sugar and not salt.
Second of all, once again, it's what we've done to the salt.
We've extracted all the good trace minerals out of the salt.
So, if you're eating good salt, the Himalayan salt, sea salt, I used to recommend it.
You've got to even be careful with sea salt.
In this day and age because of what's happening to our oceans.
But salt, good salt, I think is healthy.
And in fact, what I see a lot is people who start going on to a high-fat diet and start dropping their carbs, they actually become salt deficient because they start...
Excreting a lot of salt.
This is only in the last year or two.
I'm seeing this more and more.
I'm telling people to eat more and more salt because you're probably excreting it and seeing them respond really positively, especially people who are going on to a high-fat diet.
Because they feel more energy, what happens to them?
Yes, they start getting flu-like symptoms.
They start getting constipated.
A lot of the keto flu and these symptoms you see when people start going on a low-carb diet in the beginning, often it's helped by giving them salt and other electrolytes.
But salt, you know, even from traditional medicine, I think the number is 10 or 15% of people are salt sensitive, even from a traditional Western perspective.
So that's one of those ideas that have got stuck in the medical system and in the culture that are not correct.
Just to be clear, salt sensitive means these are people who, when they eat salt, they will get high blood pressure.
Yes, exactly.
Yes.
85% to 90% think salt doesn't play much of a role in their blood pressure?
Exactly, yes.
But that doesn't mean that table salt is good for you.
So if you go to a restaurant and you pick up the salt shaker, you're dumping it all over, you're dumping all kinds of anti-caking agents, aluminum, that's not good for you.
Thank you, Lisa.
I need Lisa to be my friend.
And so for the average person listening right now, how do they know if they're salt sensitive?
Bring your salt with you.
That's to get the good salt.
Lisa's mother and Lisa, they have to put salt in their food because their blood pressures are so low.
Exactly.
My wife, the same thing.
And that's not uncommon.
So that's another area of people who have low blood pressure, have adrenal problems.
Salt is actually incredibly therapeutic and important on a daily basis.
How does one know?
I think...
Some people will know when they put too much salt on.
And once again, as Lisa said, it's the type of salt you use that's really important.
But some people will come in and say, you know, when I use too much salt, I start getting puffy and bloated.
Some people, if they have high blood pressure, I'll tell them, you know, play around with the salt and see what happens.
So once again, it's all about learning about your own body rather than listening to hard and fast rules because we're all as unique as our fingerprints.
Salt is not the only shocking argument you make.
You've also used the word devil in context of describing dairy products.
No, no, no, no.
No, sugar is the devil.
Sugar is the devil.
Dairy is just like the devil's accomplice.
Yeah, dairy is nuanced.
Some people do fine on dairy.
Some people, it does violence too.
That's what I said in the book.
We've also done terrible stuff to our dairy.
Exactly.
We're homogenizing it, all the hormones.
But some people are fine with dairy.
Pasteurizing.
Yeah.
So explain how people can figure out if dairy is a problem for them and what they can do to hack the system if it is.
Okay.
So most people who are sensitive to dairy know pretty quickly if they're sensitive.
They'll either get digestive problems, constipation, bloating, gas...
Some people get skin problems.
Some people can get general puffiness.
Dairy is one of those foods that you can work out pretty quickly if you're sensitive or not to dairy.
So, you know, the idea is to eliminate it for two, three weeks and then reintroduce it.
So dairy is one of those foods I don't think is the devil at all.
I think it's a...
Some people do great on dairy.
Some people don't.
And some people, you know, I'm in between.
If I have too much dairy, I may get some gas.
But...
I think that's an easy one to work out.
Whole fat, 2%, 1% skim?
Whole fat, whole fat.
Why would you want to take fat out of food?
The idea with fat is if it's made by God, it's probably good for you.
And if it's made by man or a factory, it's probably not.
So it's what we've done to the fats that are a problem.
I mean, we've been eating natural fats, saturated fats for centuries.
Hasn't been a problem.
Suddenly it's a problem.
It's what we've done to the fats.
It's the oxidation of the fats.
It's those vegetable oils which are a problem.
It's not those good...
Coconut oil is not a problem.
Fat from grass-fed, grass-finished meat is not a problem.
Egg yolks are not a problem.
We've been...
The idea that fat is a problem is so misinformed.
Even the research now is showing that that was nonsense.
Yeah.
But milk is usually homogenized.
Yes.
Now, I'm not saying, you know, as Lisa said, it's like, you know, it's the type of milk you drink too.
So I'm not really encouraging people to drink milk per se.
I think having a glass of milk is probably one of the worst things you can, not worst things you do.
It's not a particularly healthy thing to do to give your kids a glass of milk, like we all did when our kids were young.
But But milk per se, having yogurt, you know, a good source of yogurt is not necessarily a problem for a lot of people.
When we were growing up, we had milk delivered.
That shows how old we were.
You probably did in South Africa.
In South Africa, yes.
And we used to have to shake the bottle.
Yes.
And after two days, we'd have to throw it away if we hadn't.
And then the milkman would come back.
Exactly.
But now the milk in my refrigerator will last for three weeks.
Right.
And the shelf, and the cupboard.
Well, that's a different kind altogether.
Exactly.
It's all about shelf life, not about its health.
It's all about what we've done to the food.
You know, we demonize foods.
It's more what we've done to the food.
You know, people and cultures have been living for centuries and centuries eating foods grown out of the ground, these natural foods, without any of the problems that we're seeing today.
So, you know, to me, it's really about...
The problem, what we've done to the foods rather than the food itself.
And I think dairy is one of those type of foods.
If you're not going to drink cow dairy, traditional dairy, alternatives?
Do you like soy?
Do you like almonds?
Well, almond and coconut milk.
You know, I... The hot milk now is oat milk, but if you look at oat milk, it's full of sugar.
I mean, I looked at something with oat milk, it had 19 grams of sugar in it.
So, you know, unsweetened almond milk and coconut milk are my favorites.
I'm not a fan of soy milk.
I think soy is a problem for some people.
Why is that?
Because it mimics estrogen?
Yeah, that's part of it.
And people can be sensitive to the soy too.
I'm a fan of fermented soy, but not soy milk per se.
So it may not be the end of the world soy milk, but I prefer unsweetened almond milk and coconut milk.
And make your own.
I have a recipe in the book to make your own.
Finally, sort of a counterintuitive comment you make in the book is that we should not be chasing our bliss.
What are you suggesting we do strive for?
Well, it's about finding purpose in your life and doing something that's meaningful.
I love this new generation, our kids' generation, the millennials, because they want meaning in their lives.
They don't want to work at a job that has no meaning and working in a corporation.
And I love that about them.
So it's all about do something that's meaningful to you, that life has a purpose.
Don't look for that bliss.
Give your heart a reason to keep beating.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for all the people you've taken care of and for being a great guest.
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