Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a leading figure in plant-based nutrition and author of Eat to Live, is making waves with his transformative Eat to Live Health Retreat in Southern California. Recently featured on The Glen Merzer Show, Dr. Fuhrman shared insights on how his retreat offers a sustainable solution for those battling food addictions and chronic health conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
At the retreat, guests are immersed in a supportive environment that fosters long-lasting lifestyle changes. Dr. Fuhrman explained, "Many people know what to do but struggle due to food addictions. Our retreat helps them break free, reboot their systems, and reintroduce the enjoyment of healthy eating." Unlike traditional health retreats, which often result in temporary improvements, the Eat to Live Health Retreat equips guests with tools and techniques to maintain their health journey at home. "It's not just about what you achieve here but how it impacts your life long-term," he emphasized.
A cornerstone of Dr. Fuhrman’s philosophy is what he calls the “Nutritarian” diet—a balanced approach that prioritizes nutrient-dense, whole foods without the extreme restrictions of fad diets. He’s seen countless individuals lose weight, keep it off, and thrive on this approach, proving that sustainable health is achievable without depriving oneself.
Dr. Fuhrman also addresses the social and psychological challenges of adopting a plant-based diet, emphasizing the importance of self-esteem and inner wisdom. In his words, “Real self-worth isn’t about others’ approval; it’s about compassion for others and gratitude for life.”
Intrigued? Discover more in this insightful episode on The Glen Merzer Show and learn how Dr. Fuhrman’s unique approach might just transform your health journey for good.
For those considering a dietary shift, whether plant-based or simply healthier, this episode offers invaluable insights into a lifestyle that can improve physical health and mental resilience. Watch the episode here.
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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Dr. Joel Fuhrman on Diet, His Health Retreat, and His Story!
Glen Merzer: Welcome to the Glen Merzer show. could find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. And please remember to subscribe. You could find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. My guest today is one of the best known doctors in the whole plant food movement, Dr. Joel Fuhrman.the author of about a dozen books, seven of which were New York Times bestsellers, perhaps one of the most famous I have here in hardcover eat to live. Most recent book is called Eat for Life, and he's coming to us from his retreat in Southern California, the Eat to Live Health Retreat. Dr. Fuhrman, welcome to the show.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Thank you. Looking forward to talking to you today.
Glen Merzer: Well, let's talk first about this retreat since that's where you are. People can find information about it at drfurman.com, but tell us about.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, it's been a dream of ours, my wife and myself, for years to have a place where people can come that was safe. know, so many people know what to do, but because of their food addictions, they need some help to...get started to abstain from their addictive triggers and to reboot their system to enjoy and get their taste muscle back and get withdrawal done from their unhealthy food habits. And we've had so many people, literally more than a thousand people have come through here in the last five years that have changed their lives in such a profound way that's been so touching for our heart and so rewarding for us to watch people, not just get rid of diabetes and heart disease and have the psoriasis and asthma go away. but to really be able to know how to leave here and be tuned in to enjoy living and eating this way for the rest of their life. You know, that's the key. mean, people go to health retreats all the time and you know, some of the big famous ones they go to, but inevitably they gain the weight back. They go back to eating sloppily again and they don't stick with it. It's not what you accomplish while you're at the retreat. It's how that time period impacted your life that you can now enjoy living that way consistently to see the progress continue and be maintained for the rest of your life. So that's what we really feel we're proud of to achieve that. So many people that have lost 30, 40, a hundred pounds, but kept it off and kept losing till they reached their ideal weight and not see the recidivism and weight regain and people going on and off diets. You know, I always taught people that if you go too strict, like with intermittent fasting or juice fasting, even water fasting oryour diet's living, you know, just living on sprouts, you get, see some great results, but most of those people lose the benefits because they can't maintain that way of living. And when the stricter you go and then you go excessive calorically restriction, the obsessed, addicted mind gets obsessed with food a month, you know, a couple of weeks or a month later. And with their metabolic rate excessively slowed now, they start eating their, that same amount of calories or more and inevitably the weight comes back and they usually overshoot the weight. It's usually not long-term beneficially normative for most people. And so we do it differently here. We try to discover the person's precise caloric window, the type of food they like and get them on the right menus that they can and recipes they can take home with them. So they can see it working here, losing at a reasonable clip because we always say, you're a nutritarian you're eating so healthfully and you're at your ideal weight or you're a nutritionarian and you're eating so healthfully and you're moving in the direction of your ideal weight every single week. Because if you're overweight and not moving, you're not on the right program. You're not eating too much, you're eating the wrong food, you're something wrong, right? So we get them on the right program to make sure it's working for them. And then they leave here with the tools, both intellectually and emotionally, how to continue that. And a lot of what we do here is teaching the emotional wisdom people need to be able to continue to be seen as a health nut or seen as culturally and socially not fitting in to everybody else on a suicide, on a race to commit suicide with food and self-destructive foods. And it becomes a social challenge and a cultural challenge when they public.
Glen Merzer: what do you teach people about how to cope with that social challenge, how to have that inner wisdom that allows them to continue on the diet in spite of the society around them?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Thank you. I just did a podcast on that by the way, that exact precise subject just on this emotional wisdom. So it has to do with when you live in America and you're culturally raised in this country, not only you're exposed to recreating with dangerous foods till you're an addict, but you also go after your self-esteem by wanting to please other people and have other people like you. You're culturally trying to impress other people and you feel your self-worth is measured by how much people approve of you. And that doesn't work. come in conflict. Number one, that's an empty barrel that never can be filled. The more you're seeking other people's praise and the more you're driven for that, the more you're gonna be emotionally unhealthy in later life. We know, for example, that children who are abused or parents don't show them consistency and unconditional love, then the child grows up seeking affection, approval, and overly looking for other people's...you approval in some way, which is detrimental to the own self. You got to lose the ego and realize that the more you're trying to get approval from other people, the more you want that need like it's like junk food for the soul. It never leads to lasting happiness. What we try to teach people is how to have self-generated self-esteem, not externally generated. It's not dependent on what other people think of you. It's dependent on what you think of them. In other words, now internally generated self-esteem means that I feel good about myself because I have compassion for other people and I use my intelligence and my creativity to have goodwill for them and the world at large. And I can appreciate and have gratitude for all the beauty and the wonder of the world outside of myself. So instead of trying for me to be the center of the universe and people like me, I'm enthusiastic and passionately excited about the beauty and the excitement of world, nature, arts. and other people. And if a person says to me, ew, if I had to eat that way, I'd rather be dead, just shoot me right now. You know, because what's the fun of eating? If you're not going to enjoy eating, who wants to be alive? Instead of trying to protect your ego and making it into an argument or defend yourself in some way, you take your own ego out of it. this is every interaction with another individual is an opportunity to show them that you can compare about them, have compassion for them and have interest in their life setting the groundwork for maybe you having the opportunity to have creative goodwill for them and use your own role modeling to be a role model for them to see if they can, maybe you can have a positive influence in their life in some way, intellectually, emotionally, or nutritionally. But you can't have that emotional connection to enable to have a good effect on other people unless they feel you care about them as a human being and see their value and importance. If you're trying to always be superior to everybody else, to other people, to be above people, to have like you how great you are, or so if, you want those likes on Facebook, you're always looking for people to like you. Life becomes constant turmoil and constant stress and how this person liked you or didn't like you and whether this person said something to offend you and whether blah, blah, and protecting you, it all becomes, it goes nowhere. And it becomes a cause for people not to be able to follow a diet. Cause they get too much negative feedback from their social community and their family.
Glen Merzer: Do you think social media is making this problem even worse with the likes and the way that the analytics of social media that drive people towards conformity?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, think it's, you we learned right from the beginning that whether it's our looks, our grades, our athletic ability, how much clothing we're wearing, how wealthy we are, how much, you know, we're always trying to impress others by being better than them. We're not really learning how to be happy. We're not really how to learning, you know, so we're not really learning things that can be sustained throughout all of life, whether you're, whether you're aged, whether you're how good you look or don't look, how athletic you are or not, how, you know, we all have the ability to like the outside world and to appreciate reality and to be compassionate for others. And we all have, we all, we all are equally important. And our insights are complicated and worthwhile and human life matters. And what I'm saying is we've learned to devalue human life and think that the only life that matters is our own or the people in our tribe and everybody else we can be cruel to. we have, as you know, we have wars, we use people, populations as scapegoats, there's contempt and there's just this...especially in modern times in America, we've cultivated that through our social network. But we've also, as you say, it's possible that social media has even worsened it and worsened the destruction of the human fabric that connects people. Furthermore, I'm suggesting, and I talked about this in my book, Fast Food Genocide, that eating junk food and fast food and unhealthily exacerbates the anger, frustration and lack of ability to think logically of the human brain and makes you more weakened and susceptible to conspiracy thinking, lies, and even being arrested for violence. We know that I talked about after the Civil War, there were so many attacks on Black Americans. Many of them were exacerbated by widespread prolagra in the South, which is caused by niacin deficiency from people eating corn, molasses, and pork, and not eating enough vegetables and beans. And I'm saying the nutritional deficiencies, exacid caused people to be homicidal, suicidal, and easily angered. A lot of these people were put in prison for decades because they were so violent and their brains were so distorted. It wasn't until about, I think about 1915 when a medical doctor discovered that this was due to anisine deficiency, started having the prisons grow vegetables and the prisoners could be, a lot of the prisoners were able to be released and be well and be healthier. That's the original term redneck because Palabra is called a red causal necklace, it causes a red neck. But we're seeing that today. We're seeing easily angered people with not good reasoning skills, not compassionate, and that's I think, and due to nutritional inadequacies and junk food eating. And I'm not saying it's everything, but I think it's one of the reasons why Trump has come to power and so many people think so in such selfish-and distorted in distorted ways to, know, almost, you know, narcissistic sociopathic, you know, to try to put, you know, such, you know, to move so many in our country in the wrong direction. And a lot of it's a lot of reasons why, but one reason is the food. And we know there's a relationship between candy and fast food and not just depression, but criminal behavior, drug, drug use and drug abuse are linked to unhealthy eating.
Glen Merzer: you mentioned before that one of the arguments we're up against is people who say, if I have to eat like that, rice and vegetables, just shoot me. And the reality is that tastes change, they're adaptive. And I would respond, gee, if I had to eat that fatty pork, just shoot me. So,there is a challenge of getting people to realize that they could change their own tastes and then appreciate food that's healthy rather than appreciating food that's killing them. Do you find it difficult to get people to take that step and realize that?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, as you know, I've been doing this for 40 years. yeah, I I think there's that dual challenge. I've been very successful on my PBS television shows, I've had five years or more of exposure on public television where one of the most biggest fundraisers for public television of all times, many millions of people were exposed to my work. And then they bought this package as a donation to the station of like 10 videos and four books or something. And the point I'm making right now is that a doctor can't speak to a person for 15, 20 minutes in a medical visit, even for an hour and expect to change a person's life. That person has to take the initiative and be willing to study and read and listen and learn. And yes, with enough exposure to enough information, that person's whole outlook can transform if they're taught enough information, but they can't get it in a 15 or 20 minute lecture or podcast. They need to say, you know, this sounds, I'm inquisitive enough and important enough where I should want to learn more. And then if they learn more, as you know, besides my work, there's lots of assets that people can learn from. But I've spent my life developing educational materials so people can see the benefit, see the science behind it, and also know that you can make the recipes taste fantastic. I've got 2,000 recipes at drfuhrman.com. And I also sell products. sell ketchup and Thai curry sauce and mushroom Alfredo sauce. and soup mixes and I sell stuff to make, show people, number one, it could taste really great. Just put some Thai curry sauce on your broccoli, Rob, and snow pea pods and water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and onions and straw mushrooms and put some, you know, put it in a pot, walk in and put some Thai curry sauce. You have a whole meal. It's fantastic. But I'm saying, but I'm so not in making it taste good and teaching them how to make the recipes, but I'm also showing if you have no time, if you feel you can't be in the kitchen cooking all day, we still can make it easier for you. And it's not more work than doing conventional eating or going to fast food restaurants. Time you drive there and wait for your food. The point I'm making is that we take away the stress factor. And if people learn enough, there's no rational reason why they shouldn't live healthily. The reason they don't is because when they're addicted, the addictive mind has neuroplasticity, has lost certain degree of neuroplasticity and it's rewired and the primitive brain once it's what it wants so badly that it looks to make rationalizations why it's okay, why they can't do this, why they can't eat healthy. it doesn't taste good or it's too time consuming or I wouldn't like the food or my family wouldn't eat this way, my travel, my business and my wife. So the mind comes up with an excuse. I know when people listen to me talk, I lecture to like a thousand people of a medical conference, let's say. And I know what I'm thinking in an hour lecture. They're thinking, This sounds good, scientifically supported, interesting, but not for me. I couldn't do that. There's always some reason why it's good for somebody else, but not for them, because we know that this concept of desire and food and addiction and trained likes is so powerful. And we have to convince a person, like you're saying, to have that period where they actually feel worse and detoxify, not feel better the first couple of weeks where the food doesn't taste as much good as well as their old diet, where they learn the recipes, retrain their taste muscle, and actually get their body acclimated to eating this food so they can like it as much or more as their old diet if they gave it the time and the commitment. But you're right. It's difficult for people to make that step, and it's difficult for people to learn enough information to be able to stick with it. I've-
Glen Merzer: You've used the term addiction a few times. There's a good case to be made that sugar is an addictive food. Do you feel that, what other elements in the standard American diet do you feel are addictive? Do you feel that fat is addictive? Meats are addictive? Dairy?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yes.
Glen Merzer: Yes to all three?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: And salt, sugar oil. But let me define, but by the way, sugar is not sugar. Sugar is not just sugar. Sugar is white flour. White flour is sugar. It converts into the body into sugar, the same as if you ate a sugar cube. It's just eating sugar. The same glucose speed and amount enters the bloodstream. So when you eat white rice, white flour, know, croissants, bagels, pizza, buns, you know, when you eat that stuff, pasta, you're eating plain sugar. And the Nutritarian diet that I recommend, by the way, gets its fat from nuts, seeds, and avocado. The American diet gets its fat from oils and animal fats. There's a complete biological difference, a huge difference here. Animal fats and oils both enter the bloodstream very rapidly, causing a caloric rush of fat. So when you take in bacon or French fries or salad dressing with olive oil on it, you're getting about 40 to 50 calories a minute of fat entering the bloodstream. After that meal, You could have 300 to 400 calories of oil in your blood, of fat in your blood. That high level of caloric rush acts on the brain in the dopamine to make you dopamine insensitive and habituated to a high calorie rush into the bloodstream. So you could eat sugar or you can eat apple juice or you could eat honey and you could eat bread and pasta and pizza and get a caloric rush of carbohydrate or glucose in the bloodstream. But it's that combined caloric rush that makes food so addicting. If I served you a salad with tomatoes and red onion and some baby bok choy and lettuce in there, I put on a nice dressing. Maybe it was a garlicky tomato sauce with almonds and walnuts in the sauce or something. And then you had a bowl of vegetable bean soup with that and maybe a couple of nectarines for dessert or something. You'd be satisfied, but you're not gonna get a caloric rush from it. Most people wouldn't be satisfied from that. It doesn't hit their brain with enough calories and they've habituated to this caloric rush. They gotta have a chocolate bar. They gotta have an ice cream cone. They gotta have some French fries. They gotta put oil on that meal. They gotta have something greasier fried with more calories in the bloodstream or they feel they're empty. They don't feel satisfied. They habituated to this need to have a heightened caloric rush. They become calorie consuming. They can't stop wanting some more calories because of the substances do not put calories in the blood that fast. So when you eat a bean or let's say you eat a nut, like a walnut or an almond, you get the fat in your bloodstream, or one or two calories a minute comes in. It takes three hours to digest that fat, not three minutes with oil. So the three hours it took to digest the fat from the nuts and seeds means your body is only dealing with two calories, three calories, four calories of fat in the blood, which have been preferecly burned for energy, not stored as fat. But when you put 100 to 200 calories of fat in the blood, you didn't just have to turn on fat storage. stimulate the brain, but it also deactivates insulin receptors and makes you more prone to diabetes. Now, overweight people are pre-diabetic because fat on the body makes the insulin receptors not work, which makes you insulin resistant. But I'm saying both fat on the body and fat in the bloodstream both have the effect to magnify insulin resistance. When you eat a nutrition diet, you get the fat off the body and you get the fat out of the bloodstream. Even though you're eating fat, you're eating fats that enter the bloodstream so slowly and are not stored as fat. They're burned for energy because they're not entering the bloodstream as quickly. Because you're eating whole foods as your source of fat. So yes, sugar, oil, and salt, SOS, are addicting. And they're overstimulating. And they actually make you desire more calories. And when you're off salt, too, things taste naturally salty. And when you're on a high salt diet, you're excreting a lot of salt in your urine and your sweat. You're always putting out excess salt. And when your sweat is salty and when your urine is salty, you're chronically losing other minerals that are flushed out as the body has to excrete the excess of sodium. So you can't even go run a few miles without getting a cramp in your leg. They gotta be taking water pills or Gatorade or something to replace the electrolytes they're lost. Us, Nutritorians, I can be outside in the heat all day long, climbing a mountain and I'm sweating like a pig. I'm not going to cramp up because my sweat is not salty because I'm not chronically habituated to a high salt diet. So my kidney and my skin doesn't release salt. It holds onto my sodium in my blood. Go ahead.
Glen Merzer: In Eat To Live, you popularized the formula health equals nutrition divided by calories. When you use the term, Nutritarian, do you define Nutritarian as someone who has optimized that formula in their diet?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, to maximize human longevity, we're looking to have a high cellular density of nutrients. You have to eat a high nutrient diet to have a lot of cellular density of nutrients. So the secret to longevity is not that complicated. It's having a high level of antioxidants and phytochemicals in your tissues with a wide nutrient diversity and having low levels of body fat. So you want to achieve that high levels of nutrient concentration with lower body fat, because if you start to get heavier, you're diluting your nutrient density in a bigger vat of tissue. It's going to be done. You're going to have the nutrient density. We got to have low body and body fat itself is a biologically active tissue that causes inflammation and suppresses immunity and causes cancer. Body fat causes cancer and then causes infection. Relates you susceptible to disease. So there's no such thing as a healthy overweight person. So what I'm saying right now H equals N over C means your healthy life expectancy is linked to the nutritional bang per caloric buck of your diet, because ultimately that reflects the nutrient bang per body weight of your tissues, right? So we're saying, and we're a green vegetable dependent animal. If you don't like green vegetables, you better live close to a hospital. It's not gonna help you anyway, but the point I'm making right now is that our cells have built-in protective mechanisms to be able to repair DNA that's damaged, to silence DNA that's abnormal, that doesn't cause damage, to remove toxins and carcinogens, and to repair broken cross-links and methylation defects. The body has the ability to repair itself, but only if you have a high level of nutrients, and especially green vegetable-derived nutrients. Even the gut lining is based on exposure to a lot of green vegetable-derived foods, especially the mixture of raw and cooked, especially just simple things like lettuce and baby bok choy and arugula, things like that have tremendous healing properties for the immune system. So yes, I'm saying the only proven methodology to slow aging and to maximize human lifespan is these five words, moderate caloric restriction in the context of micronutrient excellence or moderate caloric restriction with micronutrient excellence. And we're defining moderate caloric restriction as the right amount of calories so you maintain your ideal weight. If you excessively have excess body fat, you're overshooting your caloric window for you, what you need. And when you're eating beans and nuts and vegetables, you're all satisfied with fewer calories. The point I'm making right now is the diet that maximizes human lifespan is also therapeutically effective to reverse disease like asthma, psoriasis, diabetes, and hybrid blood pressure but the diet that maximizes human lifespan also makes you satisfied with the right amount of calories. So you can eat instinctually. We're not going around starving ourselves. We just desire less calories. We're satisfied with less because our body is well nourished.
Glen Merzer: Now, I've come to the point where my weight is back down around 140, which is what I was in high school. There was a period in my life, a lot in my 30s and 40s where my weight was more like 150, sometimes 155. And if it's the case that my optimal weight is 140, then all I can tell you is that when I was 155 in this country, what people called me was skinny. Because when you're in a country that's so overweight, you could actually be perhaps 10 or 15 pounds above your optimal weight, and people will call you skinny. But I'm now back down to 140. And what I find is that it's just hard to gain weight on the foods that I eat. So when you talk about moderate caloric restriction, I'm not sure that I practice moderate caloric restriction because it feels like I'm eating all day long. If I get hungry, I might have a slice of whole grain bread with jam. But the meals are things like brown rice and vegetables, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, potatoes. And I'm eating plenty, but I'm not gaining weight. I'm not sure that I'm practicing moderate caloric risk. I'm not eating 4,000 calories a day. I don't count my calories, but it's probably 2,500 calories a day. But somehow-the weight stays off. Do you feel that maybe I'm just getting lucky and I can eat more or do you feel that I would do better eating even less?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: No, I feel you would do better eating better, not less. You might be, you ate a little, maybe if you ate a little improved your diet a little, you could probably get build a little muscle.
Glen Merzer: What would improve my diet?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: So let me just say this. Number one, As we age, it's important to maintain our muscle mass, right? And I'm saying moderate caloric restriction is different from person to people. People, you got to eat enough to maintain your weight. You don't want to get too thin. I don't want to get below 140 either. I weigh about 145 pounds. I weighed probably close to 150 pounds when I was younger, and now I weigh 145 at age 70. But I'm maintaining my muscle mass and my strength and my size. You can do a lot of chin-ups. can do a 50, 70, 50, 70 pushups. I'm exercising my body regularly. maintain the muscle mass as we age and exercise is part of the approach too. Feeling that perhaps my dietary nutrient exposure might be, and protein exposure might be more favorable than yours, allowing me to eat somewhat fewer calories and still maintain more body muscle or body mass. It may be the case
Glen Merzer: door open for a second and close. So say that again, it may be the case that you're able to have caloric restriction compared to me. the case that
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: yes, my caloric needs for the day are not as large as yours. And I'm a little heavier than you, maybe a little more muscular than you, maybe. And I could maintain my muscle size and strength with fewer calories than you can.
Glen Merzer: And why is that?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: It's probably because of both the nutrient content and the protein content of my diet is higher than yours. You're eating, especially the brown rice you're eating. Brown rice is relatively, it's high in arsenic. I'm getting more nutritional variety with more green vegetables, with more beans, with more nuts and seeds. Maybe my higher intake of beans that are higher in protein than rice. Less rice, more beans, more nuts and seeds. less potato and rice and sweet potato. In other words, as you're an isochloric diet, I'm talking about a 2000 calorie diet compared to a 2000 calorie diet. As we take out some whole wheat bread and some potato or rice, and we put nuts and seeds in the same amount of calories, you get more protein and you're able to sustain yourself. And particularly with beans too, the combination of green vegetables, beans and nuts and seeds give me more high biological protein from plants. that maintained my muscle mass, and don't have to eat as many calories. So the studies, if you asked me, what was the most profound and important studies of the last decade in human nutrition, I would say the eight studies we have, these large studies from different parts of the world involving thousands of researchers, showing that more animal protein in the diet leads to shorter lifespan in a dose-dependent manner. As you dial up more animal protein, you dial down your length of life. While at the same time, what these studies show is as you increase your plant protein, you increase your lifespan and chances to be a healthy centenarian.
Glen Merzer: Let me jump in there. Clearly, plant protein is superior to animal protein, and there are all kinds of reasons why animal protein would shorten your life. My question is, if you take two vegans, both on whole plant food diets, healthy vegan diets. And one of them eats more beans and lentils, gets more plant protein. And the other one eats beans and lentils, but maybe a little less, gets less plant protein, but still both healthy diets full of whole plant foods. Do we know, do you feel that we know that that higher protein level on the two healthy vegan diets makes a difference. And if so, if it is better to have more protein, there must be a limit. So where do you suggest that limit would be?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, here's what we do know. We know these things pretty solidly because we repeated them in many studies showing this, corroborate each other. And that is plant-based or vegan diets that are too low in fat that exclude nuts and seeds. People do not live as long The seven day Adventist health study too was so significant for looking at people that were seven day Adventists that don't drink alcohol and exercise regularly and eat relatively healthily, not junk food eaters compared to the average American. They're relatively healthy. They don't eat a lot of animal products, those that do. And those studies showed, and now it's been corroborated by several other studies, that when you take the fat out of the diet and make the diet too low in fat, take out nuts and seeds thinking fat is the bad guy. They had worse lifespan. And the people, the flexitarians that ate animal products a little bit lived longer than the vegans who didn't eat nuts and seeds. But the vegans who ate nuts and seeds still lived the longest. So we're showing that the same thing the wheel study showed. It showed that women with regard to breast cancer who ate the most vegetables lived the longest, but those that ate some fruit with the vegetables lived even longer. Those that ate beans, and so what I'm saying right now is that all these studies show that nutritional diversity and variety improves long-term outcome. And excluding a whole food group like nuts and seeds or beans was shown to be detrimental. And the other studies on animal protein and plant protein also showed the same thing, that longer lifespan is linked to both green vegetable consumption and bean consumption and nut and seed consumption. We have many studies, I've reviewed more than a thousand studies on this issue to show that green vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds added or subtracted from the diet either adds or takes away lifespan. And no threshold effect, matter of fact, more green vegetables and more green vegetables still increases lifespan. And so we're talking here about, yes, the highest protein plant foods are greens, beans and nuts and seeds. And their exclusion to include a diet that's more macrobiotic designed or more potato-based or more rice-based is going to reduce and less nuts. And I can analyze a diet side by side, one with two ounces of nuts, one without two ounces of nuts. And you'll see more protein, more zinc, more copper, more phosphorus, more vitamin E, more, you you'll see more of all the important, the same 2000 calories. I'm talking about an equal amount of calories and less desire for cal, and less desire to overeat and lower body fat percentages on the same body weight, more muscle fat ratios. So the answer is to your question is, I think we have evidence to suggest that it probably is true that a diet, especially as we get older and our protein bioavailability and that ability to digest protein goes down, that a diet too high in fruit could be too low in protein for an elderly person. If you're making the diet 60 % fruit, I eat fruit at every meal, but I'm not gonna make my diet mostly fruit. wanna get my protein supporting foods like green vegetables, beans and nuts and seeds in there. You know, so what I'm saying, a diet too high in fruit or too high in rice or too high in, you know, or too much of one food where you're having too much of a staple of just one food all the time is not going to be as favored as a desire with more nutritional variety. I even advocate that people eat different types of mushrooms, not even one type of mushroom. Don't just eat the same type of mushroom all the time. Get three or four varieties of mushrooms you usually. Don't eat the same kind of green vegetables. Eat different types of green vegetables. They're the same type of nuts. And of course, we're talking here also about making sure at least half your nut intake comes from the high omega-3 nuts and seeds like flax, chia, hemp, and walnuts, because that's... And low body fat also helps you maintain a favorable omega-3 index. As you know, one of the old timers, so to speak, in this plant-based movement, and as a medical doctor doing this work, I've seen many elderly vegans over the years and many people who've come from the American Natural Hygiene Society, including their leaders and to old time doctors who passed away. And many of them develop neurologic deficits in later life due to a low omega-3 index. And we pay attention to that today. We make sure we pay attention to obviously B12, but certainly also to the omega-3 index, because we know we have more than a dozen studies showing a low omega-3 index is linked to shrinkage of the brain and heightened risk of neurologic problems in later life.
Glen Merzer: Now, do you yourself eat whole grain bread?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: I do, but I eat that brand called Ezekiel bread because it's made from like sprouted grains. Right. Because it's sprouted, it's higher in protein. It's less it's less glycemic. I don't eat conventional like bread made from like whole wheat flour. It's the either Ezekiel bread or the manna bread. The types of brands that are made from the whole grain. It's much more chewy and and you know what mean? Less less soft and mushy type of bread.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. I also eat the Ezekiel bread. Yeah. Now, let me tell you my reaction to nuts and seeds. I do eat nuts and seeds, but I became a vegetarian at 17 because there was so much heart disease in my family and there's high cholesterol in my family, both sides of my family. So I have found that on a whole foods, whole plant food diet, I can usually keep my serum cholesterol around 160. And I have a sprinkling of nuts and seeds. But I find that if I let myself eat more nuts and seeds, and I'm not talking about a pound of nuts and seeds, but maybe two ounces instead of one ounce or something, my cholesterol goes up to 200. And I don't know if that matters because you know,
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: what's the LDL cholesterol and what's your oxidized LDL?
Glen Merzer: Well, I don't know the oxidized the LDL cholesterol would be around a hundred So not optimal levels, but my question to you is does it really matter if
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yeah, doesn't matter you look at it because you're You know, it matters in meat eaters and people overweight, a person who has so much... because it's the oxidized, it's the myeloperoxidase, the HSCRP, the oxidized LDL, all these things that are going to be perfect on you, whether your cholesterol is a little higher or a little lower, it's not going to matter.
Glen Merzer: That's what I reassure myself.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yeah. It's not going to be an issue. could do all, So in other words, you and I aren't going to have heart disease. can just scan our necks or scan our hearts. You're not going to find no salt black in there, but in any case... So here's the... Let me address that issue. Okay?
Glen Merzer: Yeah.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Because the studies don't corroborate that. They show that as a person eats from one ounce to one and a half ounces to two ounces to two and a half ounces, cholesterol goes down because nuts and scenes bind cholesterol, the sterols and stannols, especially oxidized LVL and pull it out onto the stool. So your experience is contrary to the data we have from many different studies. The reason for that, and here's let me explain why, is that, Body fat, when you have excess omega-6 fat stored as body fat, it lowers your omega-3, omega-6 ratio. So if you're eating nuts and seeds and you're going over up to, know, over ounce and a half to two or two and a half ounces, you wanna make sure you're eating more omega-3 nuts and seeds and not more omega-6, especially if you're not lean. See, if you're lean, the extra omega-6 nuts I eat are burned off for energy. I can't raise my cholesterol because my body fat's only 11 % body fat at age 70. and I'm burning those extra omega-6 fats for energy. I'm not storing as fat. Fat you burn for energy can't do anything negative to you. So the extra omega-6 fats I eat can't hurt me if I'm keeping my body fat low. But if my body fat was high and I was overeating nuts and seeds because I'm overeating past my caloric window and I'm putting on body fat, then it could be a negative. You follow me?
Glen Merzer: Yeah, well, I think my body fat is low too, but there
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: I know if I'm saying that, but I'm finishing off to say that then you could be eating an excess amount of omega-6 to omega-3 nuts and seeds have to switch the ratio the other direction and you get more benefit and more bang for the buck by eating more omega-3. So all these things play a role, body fat, omega-6 omega-3 ratio, whether you're burning off the extra omega-6. It's just like when you know body fat makes you insulin resistance and fat in the bloodstream makes you insulin resistant too. But nuts and seeds don't put hardly any fat in the bloodstream if you're eating at an appropriate caloric level when you're not overweight and you're burning off those fats when you are when you're eating a meal. By the way, if you go lower than... Some of the events of studies show that people who ate an ounce and a half or more nuts and seeds lived the longest, and people who ate under an ounce didn't live as long, and people who ate under a half an ounce didn't live as long. Because you absorb more of the phytochemicals, the antioxidants, and prevent cancer and increase lifespan from the vegetables when you include some nuts and seeds with that meal.
Glen Merzer: So- Well, then let's talk about the specific nuts. I know you approve of walnuts. What about cashews?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: You, Glen, I'm saying eat about a half an ounce of nuts with each meal to maximize the absorption of those beneficial phytochemicals, giving you about an ounce and a half a day. And yes, the cashews, the pistachio, the pecans, those are all high omega-6 nuts. And you shouldn't eat for you. If you wanted to go to an ounce and a half a day, that would be good, but you shouldn't eat more than a half an ounce of the non-omega-3 nuts.
Glen Merzer: So which nuts do you recommend?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Walnuts are the only nuts that are high in omega-3, but the seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds are high in omega-3 too. And hemp seeds are the highest in protein. So by adding more hemp seeds to your diet, you could get more omega-3 and more protein, enabling you personally to eat a little less calories and still get a little more and still maintain or maintain muscle mass, a little higher protein as we age. Don't forget your need for protein increases slightly as you get older. And we want to maintain our muscle mass as much as we can. So for you, eating a little more bean in your diet and a little more hemp seeds in your diet and even walnut would help you achieve this parameter, those parameters making for a longer lifespan.
Glen Merzer: Well, I just bought some hemp seeds, so I'm going to take your advice. Now, you told me before we began that I could talk to you about anything we want. So here's the question. Let's go. Let's do the Joel Fuhrman story. Were you born in a nutritarian household?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Definitely not.
Glen Merzer: Okay, so tell us about your childhood and how you came to learn to eat this way and promote this kind of diet.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, I was maybe a young teenager, maybe 11, 12 years old or something, when my father overweight and sickly started reading that not just Shelton's books. The first book he read was, You Don't Have to Be Sick by Jack Duntrop. Have you heard of Jack Duntrop?
Glen Merzer: No.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: He was one of the founders of the American Natural Hygiene Society. And then Shelton, you've heard of Herbert Shelton, I'm sure.
Glen Merzer: Yeah.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: So we always had Shelton's hygienic reviews and all of Shelton's books in the house. So when I was an early, a young teenager, I first thought my father was crazy. I said, dad, how could you be right? And how could Shelton be right? And everybody else and every other doctor in the world is wrong. How could everybody be wrong about this and Shelton be right? It doesn't make sense. And I read his books, know, Syphilis, the werewolf of medicine and how contagion didn't matter. I knew that it didn't make any sense to me. Some of Shelton's work was too far out and I knew wasn't correct. after reading a lot of it and going to hygiene conferences and seeing all the healthy people recover their health, I knew there was something here of value and you had to go through and analyze the value and the important part and maybe the part that was off a little too, you know, a little too crazy as well. But certainly that was my entry and starting point into this field of natural medicine. By the time I was, you know, when I was on the world team in figure skating, you know, I was third in the world in pairs figure skating with my sister, my younger sister, Gail. And I was always trying to eat for good health and stamina and not getting sick for performance. So I was eating healthfully in my teenage years. And, know, we,
Glen Merzer: but you were eating meat, right?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, I think, you know, I was eating a lot of steak and lamb chops up to the age of 10 or 11 or 12. But once I passed through that age, you know, once I was 13, 14, 15, 16, we already cut back animal products, maybe to once or twice a week. And once I became older, I was cutting them back even more, maybe to hardly ever. You know what mean? A couple of times a month. So I started to move to a plant based diet in my teenage years. The time I was a real world class competitor, I was eating mostly, I was eating a whole food plant based diet in my late teens and early twenties, competing and exercising all day long. I'd be having my whole, I had a bathtub full of food in the backseat of my car because we exercising like six hours a day, training, lifting weights, going to class, running up hills with weights on our back, skating and training all day long.
Glen Merzer: Now, until what age did you do the competitive figure skating?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Well, I was on crutches for a year. So I missed out on the 76 Olympic Games, but I still competed after the 76 Olympic Games when I got back in shape again. You know, I lost a lot of progress with my heel injury, but I was able to come in third in the World Professional Championships in the end of 76 after missing the Olympic. I was second in United States in 1973. The number one team retired. So we were ranked number one in the country in 74 if I had just not gotten hurt. could have had a, you know, but, but you never know. get hurt. I smashed my heel bone through the bottom of my foot. You know, it was a really bad injury, but you never know, you know, maybe the fact that I've become a, I want to become a doctor if I didn't get hurt, maybe, maybe I would have continued in ice skating. I still skated and competed. I still skated and performed in shows and taught skating. Even when I was going to pre-med and through medical school, I was still like teaching skating, doing some shows, you know what mean? Stuff like that. But then once you start entering medical school, all that and pre-med in medical school, kind of hardly did it anymore. And then I skated occasionally, but not much since then.
Glen Merzer: Had, even when you were skating before your injury, were you thinking of becoming a doctor?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: No, not at all. Not at all. I was totally focused and blinded.
Glen Merzer: You were just going to be a competitive skater?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: You know, I was just in there trying to be the best I could possibly be, the best in the world in ice skating. My whole world was that. wasn't till...left the skating world and reevaluated my life and then said, well, I was in my family's shoe business. My father had about a dozen shoe stores. And then I started dating my wife, Lisa. And in the back of my mind, was thinking now, I'm in this business world, but I really would probably like being a doctor specializing in nutrition more. So I started thinking, is it too late for me? I should take some biology courses. I didn't take the pre-medical requirements. But then I started dating my wife, Lisa, and I said to her, know, she was going to medical school. And I'm saying, what do you go to medical school for? Doctors don't even help people practically. They just give people poisonous drugs to facilitate the meeting more junk. And so she said, if you're so passionate about it, why don't you go to medical school and change things? And I said, well, I thought about that, but I can't because I'm already 26 years old and I haven't taken any pre-medical requirements and I graduated from college. So she encouraged me and said, go back to the postgraduate pre-med programs, one of Columbia. Quit your father's shoe business. You can do it. You can go back and just go back for a year. If you want to do medicine, go to medicine and drop the business. So I did that. So with that, so we started dating. We got married. dropped the, we hadn't got married yet. I went back to the postgraduate pre-medical program at Columbia and took all my pre-medical courses in one year. Took the MCAT, applied to medical school and got into University of Pennsylvania, which is an Ivy League medical school and the rest is history. So you never know how things affect the world and whether one thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. And I've been very blessed, very blessed to have a career that I've had a positive effect on so many thousands of people. And even if you affect 10 people or a hundred people and you see the benefit to their life, it touches your heart. I really felt very lucky in that way.
Glen Merzer: So that heel injury led to quite a few best sellers and a thriving career.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: It might be the case. What's funny, I was talking to Gordon McKellen, was the United States singles champion when I was a skater. I was talking to him last year. And I said, Gordy, do you remember when we came out of East Germany through the Berlin Wall? And you started saying, the escape, the escaped. And I was eating an orange at the time and I choked on the orange and I got stuck in my throat and I couldn't breathe. And I'm going like this and I can't breathe, I'm dying there. And everybody's laughing at me, think I'm joking around or doing something. And then I finally laid on the floor, like I think I'm gonna die and you came over and punched me in the back and the orange popped out and you saved my life. Do you remember saving my life in 1973? And he goes, no, I'm the one responsible for you, all those people and all those books and all those people you've helped, you've nurtured. All those people who have, I'm the person responsible here. I said, yeah, you're responsible and my wife's responsible and this person responsible. So you never know all these things that happen. Why they happen. Right.
Glen Merzer: Well, it would have been ironic if you'd been killed by an orange.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yeah. Right. I almost was killed by an orange while I was laughing. Can you believe that?
Glen Merzer: Yeah. Not good. But you still do recommend eating oranges, right?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yes, I do. I love oranges still.
Glen Merzer: Now, Once you decided to become a doctor, you had always been, since a teenager, apparently attracted to eating healthy foods rather than junk foods. But at what point did you say, no, no animal foods at all? A vegan diet. I know the word vegan isn't the word you tend to use. You tend to use the word, Nutritarian. But you are, correct me if I'm wrong, a vegan. At what point did you say zero animal?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Okay. Let's see if we can unpack that. initially when I wrote Eat to Live, I said, if you want to be vegan or if you want to be little of animal products, eat a little bit of animals. Don't eat too much of them. But I even gave people in Eat to Live and the first version to tell people that, you know what? Do this 90%. And if you want to eat a bagel or some unhealthy food, just do it a little bit at a time. But you know I found over the years? That negatively messed up people because keeping their foot in both worlds kept them under the stress of wanting those foods. He kept lighting the fire under those desires to keep eating them. Like telling an alcoholic, go to the bar and drink alcohol on the weekends. It just makes you want alcohol. When you divorce yourself and don't put them in your world and don't eat them, you don't like them. You don't need them. You don't think about them and you don't want them anymore. So my recent book, Eat For Life, is somewhat different for Eat To Live because I'm actually stricter. because I found over the years that people have less chance of recidivism and higher chance of sticking with it long-term when they actually do it without so much going back and forth. Because cheating doesn't work well for some, especially people who are addicts.
Glen Merzer: Okay. So that gets to your role as an educator and as a doctor, but what about as a person in your own life? When did you say, more, I'm a vegan, no more animal foods?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: No, I hardly ate any animal products most of my life adult life, maybe once a month or a few times a year on holidays and special occasions. But now in the last, I'd say, the last decade or so, pardon my dog, there's somebody delivering something. But anyway, in the last, with all the excess pollution of the ocean, more plastic dumping, more contamination of the seafood supply, and there's a higher link now of PDS, Parkinson's Dementia Syndrome and even ALS, people live around waterways eating more seafood, particularly bivalves and shellfish, but inland lakes as well from agricultural one-off causing more algae overgrowth, the overgrowth of cyanobacteria putting more BMAA toxins into the fish supply and into the food supply. So over the last decade, I'm not even going out occasionally out to a restaurant or occasionally on an occasion having a piece of fish once in a while. saying, you know, I... I used to like once in a while have a little lobster, have a little crab meat or have something that just tasted good just for the recreation of it once in a great while. But now I don't do that anymore because the link to the link to it because it's really toxic, chemicalized, polluted stuff nowadays.
Glen Merzer: So it's only in the last 10 years or so that you've become fully vegan.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yeah.
Glen Merzer: I understand. I understand. But, you know, you are an expert on health. You make the case for our diet based on health. There are other people, as you well know, who come to this from the point of view of animal rights, who come to this from the point of the planet, and all roads converge because all roads converge to the same diet. Have you interacted at all with people who've come to the same vegan diet, not always as healthy a vegan diet?from those other perspectives and do you feel companionship towards people who've come to this diet from animal rights, from the environment?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: You know, how could you not? Look what's happening to our environment. What we don't care about our children, future generations, how selfish and narcissistic is that to destroy the planet? So we rape it and then leave nothing for people to come after us and maybe have them suffer and we're facing the potential of extinction of the human race, but it doesn't just become extinct. There's going to be a hundred years of suffering before it would become extinct, of people suffering and starving. And we're seeing 18 million people die every year of pollution-related deaths. now we see what... So how distorted and evil is it not to us fight to protect our planet for other people coming after us? And that- And that it's not, I'm thinking it's not just the oil companies, it's eating meat, right? Eating meat and lamb is a major factor, governing climate change and polluting the environment and cutting down the rainforests. And yes, it has to be intimately related because we all are intimately related. And we're connected with each other, we're connected to each other, and we're connected to our children, and we're connected to other people's children when we're responsible for that. And we've got to take care of the world in regenerative organic agriculture. is where it's at. It's best for your health. You put both nutrients in the food and you're best for the planet at the same time. So regenerative organic agriculture. And the world's not going there. And so few of us fighting for this.
Glen Merzer: Right. But I would add regenerative vegan agriculture because we don't need to use regenerative agriculture as an excuse to keep eating cows. You know, there are these regenerative farms that still are selling cows for people to eat. And they seem to think that the cows are healthier to eat when they're rotated from paddock to paddock. I don't think there's any way to make a cow healthy to eat.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: that's true. we have, most of the studies done on animal protein, animal product intake and red meat intake and disease is done in South, in Australia and areas of the world where the cattle is pasture raised. Having pasture raised versus feedlot raised doesn't make the cattle suddenly healthy for you. That's just an argument of the, and don't forget the animal food industry, the dairy industry, even the sugar and fast food restaurant industry, and the drug industry, billions and billions of dollars to spend on trying to affect the thoughts and to protect their industry with media exposure. So we're fighting an uphill battle, but our planet's at stake here. This planet's at stake and our future of the human beings on the planet are at stake here. So we've really, so yes, now's the time to put the line in the sand and to stand to outwardly and vocally express your position and not to be affected negatively by the negative impact you're gonna get from people pushing back.You know, it's just one third.
Glen Merzer: And that means protecting the land, protecting the forest and protecting the oceans. Some people seem to feel that they could give up meat and still eat fish, but it's the oceans that are very much responsible for keeping our climate livable. Now you mentioned a relationship between ALS and seafood. So could you tell us about that? Because if you ask most people, they'll say ALS, we don't know what causes it. But is there in fact a seafood connection?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Absolutely.
Glen Merzer: Tell us about it.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: There's strong link between Parkinson's and dry cleaning fluid and dry cleaning your clothing or working in a dry cleaner. So that's an important link that's been discovered as well. But we know that we have higher instance of ALS around people who eat lake fish from the agriculture runoff causing algae overgrowth and more cyanobacteria growing on the algae, which puts a toxin called BMAA into lake fish. But we also have a huge amount of BMAA, 50 times the amount in bivalves and crabs and lobster and shellfish, because they're bottom feeders and these toxins filter down and settle in the bottom and they're taken up. And bivalves are clams, oysters, scallops and mussels, Bivalves are clams, oysters, scallops and mussels and shellfish are very high in BMA and is clustering of ALS and PDS, Parkinson's dementia syndrome, around Chesapeake Bay and around areas of the country next to coastal waterways where they take in shellfish and clams and people eat more of them.
Glen Merzer: So have studies shown that people who've developed ALS had a high intake of bivalves? Yes. And that's the basis of this proposition that it's
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yes, we have now a known toxin that causes neurologic damage when an exposure is dose-dependently toxic. just for interest, as I recently stopped eating cherimoyas. You know what a cherimoya is?
Glen Merzer: I think so. That little fruit, isn't it?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: The green fruit, it looks like a smooth avocado, but its shape is pretty great. It's really delicious. Cherimoyas, atemoyas, soursop, sweetsop.a custard apple. It's a whole family of Caribbean and tropical fruits that are really delicious.
Glen Merzer: So why did you stop eating them?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Because it's a neurotoxin in there that is linked to Parkinson's disease if you eat it regularly. So I ripped out the five charmoia trees in my yard here and I replanted it with sapote trees and persimmon trees. Yeah, isn't that crazy? I don't eat star fruit either. There's another toxin in star fruit.
Glen Merzer: What about peanuts? There's a aflatoxin that has been associated with peanuts.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Yeah, there's no... You'd have to eat, unless you're living on peanuts, the small amount of aflatoxin doesn't seem to be a risk. And peanuts don't taste that good raw. They mostly are roasted, so you don't get the nutrient and protein content you would have gotten had you eaten a raw peanut or a Spanish peanut. You know what's really good? Those jungle peanuts, they're expensive but you know, little striped peanuts, they're called jungle peanuts. can buy them on Amazon and they really taste good without having to cook them. they're, and they're
Glen Merzer: Where are they grown?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: I don't know. I think they're grown in like the Amazon jungle or something. You know, they're really, they're cool. I have those once in a while, but yeah, but I mean, there's so many varieties of food we can eat a little bit of this and a little bit of that is all very good for you. A little, know, and you know, every there's, there's always some natural toxin in certain plant foods, but because there's small amounts of toxins and we have, we're not eating a lot of one type of toxin. The body has the ability to just build up its defenses, the detoxification, and keep those things out of our body appropriately. And they build up more strength in our natural body's detox abilities. It's just when we overwhelm it with one type of toxin. That's why it's not even good to eat like a whole cup of flax seeds every day. You can expose it, it's too much cadmium. Flax seeds are really good, but have one or two tablespoons, don't have like a whole cup of it. In other words, nutritional variety is safer and also better for long-term health.
Glen Merzer: Well, Dr. Will Bolshevitz has an expression, diversity of plants, and that's- Well, guess I Something I endorse.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: I would agree with that as well.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. Now, let's talk about cancer since we've been talking about toxins. If you were to have a patient who was given a terminal diagnosis, let's say a glioblastoma, I had a dear friend of mine who had a glioblastoma and the only treatment he was given for it was Avastin. And Avastin is a drug that makes the claim that instead of glioblastoma killing you in 12 months, you may last 13 or 14. And that's what happened. If you have a patient with a cancer to which there's no known no effective treatment, what do you say to them? And is there any, you know, hail Mary kind of supplement or food that you would recommend that, you know, just might give a person some hope?
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Okay. We don't have time for me to go into the answer that in detail, but I'm going to give you a broad overview, okay? Because the answer is that The garden variety cancers like breast and prostate cancer are generally the estrogen positive are generally slow growing cancers and those do respond to nutritional excellence. And I do give people, know, that, you know, bok choy juice and beet juice carrot, you know, mixed together. I do give them greens in there. I do give them some extra turmeric and turmeric curcumin and mushroom extracts and EGCG. I do give them a special diet designed for that cancer. Yes, but each cancer has some different features that might make the recommendations a little bit differently. Like for example, some tumors are more methionine sensitive and some is more glucose sensitive. So the more methionine sensitive cancers, I may be particularly careful to be low in protein. And those cancers, I don't have them eating soy foods and hemp seeds and want them low protein to keep methionine even lower. And there were some cancers like you mentioned, like gliobastomas that are sensitive to sugar that in those cancers, brain tumors are sensitive where I put them on a keto plant-based diet where I don't restrict methionine protein, but I restrict fruit and keep them almost all eating all green vegetables and nuts and try to get them moderate and carbohydrate restrict for that kind of... So the answer is there might be little different tweaks based on little different cancers, you know what I mean? But we are able to achieve better outcomes than people just relying on conventional drugs. And there's a lot of studies that document this. This study is, for example, that women with breast cancer followed for 10 years, a little flaxseed, polygons from flaxseed, reduced risk of cancer death, breast cancer death, deaths by 71%. We're talking here about the same dietary portfolio that prevents cancer has been shown to extend lifespan and prevent recurrence in people who have cancer. And in my lectures and presentations, and I even published a study on this in the International Journal of Disease Prevention and Reversals listing all these people who don't have cancer or advanced cancers. For example, one woman had metastatic ovarian cancer with four liters of metastatic fluid taken out of her collapsed lung, given six months to live. This is now 27 years later, she's still alive with no cancer. Another woman with metastatic ovarian cancer, all quiz when you kill the cancer with the aggressive cancer with chemo, you don't kill all the cancer cells, some escape chemo and they grow back and kill you. But the body's immune system made very strong can seek out, identify and destroy the remaining individual cells where it couldn't deal with such a large tumor burden to begin with for an aggressive cancer like that. I have lots of patients with metastatic breast cancer who have never been of alive two decades or three decades later either, who have done exceedingly well. And so I'm saying to you that with the slow growing cancers like garden variety breast cancer and prostate cancer, chemo isn't even worth it. It doesn't work well. You don't extend life enough for the risks you get and the diets affected to make to, but with a very aggressive cancer like early stage aggressive premenopausal breast cancer or varying cancer, then chemo might be indicated. And then we still do the diet because even though chemo is indicated, chemo doesn't give a long life. could be the cancer comes back and kills them and the cells that grow back now are chemo resistant. In other words, I can't do that question justice because it's complicated based on different types of cancer. But yes, the dietary and nutritional excellence that we incorporate along with appropriate treatment and sometimes the appropriate treatment is nothing, Is the key factor enabling a person's longevity more so than what the oncologist can do with chemo.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, thank you Dr. Fuhrman for joining us today. We will put a link in the show notes to your retreat and people can find you at drfurman.com.
Drfuhrman.com. And thanks again for joining us.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman: My pleasure. Good luck and best of health to all of you. Thank you.
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