Dr Ted Barnett

Dr Ted Barnett

Sat, 7/3 2:57PM • 57:35

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, programme, vegan, lifestyle medicine, healthy, food, jumpstart, eating, doctors, diet, protein, ted, gut, lots, fibre, pandemic, rochester, supplement, fact, microbiome

SPEAKERS

Jim Moore, Dr Ted Barnett

Jim Moore  00:13

Hello, my name is Jim, this is my podcast the bloody vegans. You're very welcome to it. Each week I'll be travelling ever deeper into the world of veganism, discovering along the way our multitude of viewpoints from the political and ethical to the practical. I'll be doing this through a series of conversations, each aiming to further illuminate my understanding, and hopefully yours. Of all things plant centric, and this week is no different this week is Episode 89. And I'm going to be chatting with Dr. Ted Barnett's the high tech doctor with a low tech solutions, or indeed, Dr. veggie, he goes by many names. But a truly incredible individual is Dr. Ted. He is on the board and is a staff member at Rochester lifestyle Medicine Institute. And he had been been vegan for many, many years. He talks about the the journey him and his family took to becoming vegan at the beginning of the episode as you're here, but but what we really kind of the subject we really get on to is how plant based nutrition can arrest and even reverse some some real chronic conditions. And what Dr. Ted and and all the wonderful folks at Rochester lifestyle Medicine Institute have created and are now actively delivering is a 15 day jumpstart programme designed to help people along the way perhaps some folks who want to get a handle on their their health want to get themselves into into really good shape, and ultimately track transform their eating habits. So I won't try and explain any further. I think, as you can imagine, Dr. Ted does an incredible job at att talking about the jumpstart programme and all the wonderful benefits of plant based nutrition. In fact, I think this podcast for me felt like almost like a little bit of a private clinic. content was that was a TED lots of questions that I'd done. I've long held in my in my mind, despite you know being vegan for a number of years. So without further ado, here is a conversation between me and Dr. Ted bond. So Dr. Ted is awesome to have you with us. I'd love to get a little bit of a perspective into your journey into the world of veganism. What's kind of brought you here?

Dr Ted Barnett  02:54

Oh, well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me. This is really fun. So I've been environmentalist pretty much all my life. I've been a member of the Sierra Club since I was 18 years old. And in the late 80s, you know, my wife and I got married in 1986. We had a little girl in 1987, and another little girl in 1989. And around 1990, I read the work of Dr. Dean Ornish, who's a cardiologist from California. And he talks about reversing heart disease with diet and lifestyle. And I thought that's pretty interesting. I didn't think that was possible. He actually talks about opening up arteries, with changes in diet and lifestyle. And I thought in medical school, I just assumed that the plaques and arteries were made out of concrete, there was nothing you could ever do about them, they're not going anywhere. It turns out that you can change that with diet and he demonstrated it in a randomised control trial that lasted a year when people had Angel games at the beginning and then Angel games at the end of year, and the arteries were opening up and even more importantly, the patients were feeling better. So being good parents, my wife and I decided we would perform an experiment and our children we decided to become vegan and to be healthy vegan. So right, cuz you know, vegan is a big circle that is basically infinite. And there's a smaller circle inside that which is the healthy vegan version. And we decided to do that. And back then basically we thought of it as being basically low fat, which is still we believe, but there's it's more complicated now. And so in 1991, we we set the date of January 1 1991. That's the best we can come up with the day we actually hit the button and became vegan. And then Nathaniel was born. A year later. He's our youngest. He was born in 1992. And so we've been vegan ever since our kids are 2831 and 33. They're the ganja lists. And yeah, that's kind of the beginning of the story.

Jim Moore  04:59

Appreciate As a medical professional, you know, you obviously had a fair degree of knowledge. But what was the kind of the nutritional training? Like, when you went into your, you know, your formal medical training, you mentioned obviously, that they never talked to you about the fact that you could reverse, you know, plaques in the arteries and so on. But it was that, you know, what was the extent of nutrition as a route to either cure or prevention of serious illness.

Dr Ted Barnett  05:30

So there really was very little nutritional education. You know, that is that that's a limitation of my education. On the other hand, I'm not sure that it would have been very helpful back then, when I was in medical school between I started medical school in 1976. I graduated in 1980, I'm sure we would have just learned the four basic food groups anyway, which is kind of what I learned in the few hours of nutrition we had. But I do remember thinking, you know, protein is the one thing I have to worry about. And here I am on my own, you know, I'm not in college anymore. I'm in medical school, I have to prepare my own food. So there's no dining hall, really. So I do remember going to the store and looking at the backs of containers, like a quart of milk, and the can of tuna fish and thing. Okay. 70 grammes of protein, I'm gonna get enough protein today, I'm all done. Right. And that's all that's all I really knew about was getting enough protein. Of course, now we realise that that's almost the last thing you need to worry about, you know, this is one of my favourite t shirts now is fibre, it's the new protein. And, you know, really, most people in the Western world do not need to worry about protein we need to worry much more about where we get our fibre because that's really what's lacking in most people's diets.

Jim Moore  06:42

Well, on that note, this this kind of, like, sort of modern obsession with protein, I don't, I don't remember it being there. Sort of growing up, it feels like a quite a new phenomenon. It's, I'm guessing is like, you know, it's obviously born out of like, the health and fitness industry and the rising kind of fitness influences and, and this kind of thing, you know, what's your, your view of where that has potentially come from, and why it's kind of worked its way into the mainstream, if you like, in terms of mainstream knowledge of what a healthy diet is.

Dr Ted Barnett  07:15

So really, I can that my experience was that protein was always a big deal. And always the most important thing. So maybe you grew up when you when you're when you're growing up in the 90s? or so? are you growing up at all? I'm not even sure if you are growing up? I'm not sure when that happened? Certainly, certainly, when they discovered protein back and was the late 1800s, I think is when protein was discovered, it became this really obsession. And that's kind of how the whole animal industry got going. You know, let's just talk about protein. You know, obviously, protein from animals is better, all these things are kind of getting brainwashed into people, and it was selling products. And so it was serving a function in that sense. But you know, it really that was always it for me. I don't really know how, how you didn't have that experience? I'm not really sure.

Jim Moore  08:08

Yeah, well, no, it does feel like a sort of, yeah, definitely kind of missed that growing up, it might just be that I wasn't aware, but it feels like now, I see products everywhere with the word protein on you know, I've even seen like a, you know, a Mars bar in the UK, like a, you know, a chocolate bar sort of thing, which is sort of said, you know, a protein Mars bar, and I kind of think, well, how is this being sold as having some health benefits, too, is clearly like, an item of junk food, if you're like in a heavily processed and refined sugar and all the rest of it can't be good for you.

Dr Ted Barnett  08:43

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. So protein sells products, it's really a vicious circle. The food manufacturers know if they that they put the word protein on the front of the package, that people gonna buy it. And then people buy it. And so they say, Well, it seems to be working so they just keep doing it's very circular. I don't know how we're gonna get out of it other than consumers have to stop being so impressed. I have looked at it, you know, in this country in the in the US, the we tell people just ignore what's on the front of the package, read the back and see what the actual ingredients are and what the nutritional information is. Because at that there's less room for them to lie about things on there. But yeah, it's, it's somehow got in there. You know, going back though, so when we made the change back in the early 90s, my fellow physicians really did think I was crazy. And they used to come into my office, I'm a radiologist. So back before everything was digital, and now back, everything was on film, they'd have to come through the office and go over their radiographs with me, and they would look into my lunchbox. And they'd say, Okay, what is it today, Ted? And it was, you know, they there was always somebody making fun of what was in there. On the other hand, one of the things I did learn was that the doctors who made the most fun of me often were the next ones to make the switch. So I've influenced A lot of doctors over the years to become vegan. Yeah. And, you know, because they thought, well, he seems to know what he's doing as a as an interventional radiologist. Maybe he knows what he's talking about as far as food goes. So you know, it's one of the reasons I like to refer to myself as the high tech doctor with low tech solutions. And I think people respect the the high tech part of what I do. But the food part seems too fuzzy. So I got to keep reminding him Yeah, you know, I can fix your artery with an angioplasty if I want. But I think it would be a whole lot better if we fixed your arteries with broccoli, and brown rice and other really healthy food. That's a sweet potatoes, things like that. And so it's, you know, there's plenty people out there who know what I know about food, who don't get the same kind of respect. Why? Because people, it's how humans just how the human brain works, they figure Well, he must really know what he's talking about as far as food goes, because otherwise, because look, what else, you know, he could do if he wanted to. So it's like a surgeon saying, you know, I don't have to operate. Or it's, you know, so it's been a fascinating journey watching that happen

Jim Moore  11:05

is, you know, obviously, you mentioned that you getting a fair bit of teasing, if you like, from within the sort of physician community, from from other doctors and so on. Was there at least an acceptance that you were kind of you were on to something did they did they kind of like, you know, from a from a medical standpoint, except that the diet that you were following was was healthier than that kind of, you know, this the standard American diet, if you like?

Dr Ted Barnett  11:32

I think that's correct, I think, you know, they recognise that it was probably healthier pretty early on, but they didn't recognise the power that it has to reverse disease. And that's what's really remarkable, is watching, you know, patients who go on to a whole food plant based diet, I mean, seeing these huge turnarounds and and it doesn't take very long. And you know, I tell people, it's like putting, you know, you have a gasoline car, and you've been putting kerosene in it, these will fuel all these years. And you wonder why run so much better when you put gasoline? it? Well, it's because that's what we evolved to run on. You know, we're supposed to run on this, you know, basically whole plants and that kind of junk food that is produced by the the food industry. And you know, people sometimes think, well, what we're talking about, it's an experiment, you know, what you liked, especially if I told you what we did with our children. Oh, it's like an experimental diet. That's not the experiment. The experiment is, what is the modern industrial food system? That's the experiment. We know, that's only been around for, you know, less than 100 years? And and, you know, clearly in the last 30 to 40 years, we've been seeing the absolute havoc that that experiment has created for people's health and people's lives.

Jim Moore  12:44

How do you think, you know, given that, it seems to me that it's pretty clear that there is, you know, this been like a rising, and you'll obviously, you'll know this, that's far better than me, but it feels like heart disease, and these kind of illnesses, you know, cancers, strokes, these kind of things like are on the, I've been on the rise for years, our consumption of meat, dairy, heavily processed food, high, refined sugars, all of these things have been on the rise to, it almost sort of baffles me. And I'd love to get your perspective on how that link hasn't been made, you know, on that we've been doing this experiment in like highly processed food and excess meat. And so for years, and it's led us to this, it almost like baffles me that the dots haven't been connected. I'd love to get your perspective on why you think that is? Is it just purely the power of marketing?

Dr Ted Barnett  13:36

Well, marketing has a lot to do with it. Also, humans are very social animals. By the way, it's a really good question. And I'm going to give you an answer. I don't think anybody really knows the answer. But my perspective is that doctors are saying humans are very social animals. Doctors are also social animals. And we're also within a system. And somehow if we see everybody around us doing the same thing, we assume, well, that must be the right thing. They must know what everybody else must know what they're doing. So I'll just keep doing what they're doing. And my goal, when I establish what register lifestyle medicine was to try to operationalize what I think is good medicine, they're really, you know, it's really hard for doctors to actually prescribe healthy diet and lifestyle for their patients because they didn't really have any way of doing that. So a patient with diabetes would go to their doctor, and the doctor would say, well, you should eat better and lose weight. And by that was the end of it. And there was really no way for them to know how to get their patients to do that. Right. So just jumping ahead a little bit. The programme that we've developed this 15 day whole food plant based jumpstart is a way of operationalizing. what we think is the healthiest way to eat, and a doctor can prescribe it. So we can say to his patients, you know, another one zoom, we used to just do it in Rochester, New York, which is in western New York. Now we're all over the world because of zoom. So we've, you know, taught it in probably close to 40 states in the US and a Canadian province. And even we had a patient in the UK. And there, we make sure that there, they tell their doctor, they're going to be doing it, assuming their doctor didn't prescribe it. Now we have a lot of patients who come to us because their doctor did prescribe it. But a fair number of patients find that on their own. And we say, Tell your doctor, because if you're on medication, you may have to come off a lot of your medications, and they may have to be adjusted. So they need to know. But somehow it needs needs to be part of the system back to your original question, the system has to make it easy for doctors to do the right thing. And right now, it's not easy for doctors to prescribe this kind of thing for their patients. And also there's very, it's not really an easy way to make any make a living. So I make my living as a physician, not through lifestyle medicine, but as a radiologist, which reimburses well well enough so that I can basically subsidise this nonprofit that we've started Rochester lifestyle Medicine Institute, and and also subsidise the for profit in quotes as air quotes for we have a for profit medical group as well called Rochester lifestyle medicine group. But that doesn't make any money either. And so if if you had a kid who had just graduated from medical school, medical school and you were advising them, you know, what's the best thing to go go into. So you could pay off your college loans? You probably wouldn't tell them lifestyle medicine yet. But we really need to set up make the system work for people who want to do the right thing. And so it's you know, like I said, Nobody really knows the answer to that question you asked, but it's financial. It's marketing. It's inertia. It's a lot of disbelief. And you know, why did one of the other big things that we teach is people say, Well, if what you're saying is true, why don't I already know this? And so when I teach courses on nutrition and lifestyle medicine, I actually the first lecture for the first two hour lecture is on the history and politics of nutritional recommendations, dietary recommendations, and you find that just just like you said, how much marketing is involved? How much lobbying at various political levels has been going on for many, many years? It's kind of analogous well, is analogous to cigarettes. So you know, you know, I'm sure you're aware of Michael Greger and nutrition facts. You know, he talks about why did it take 6000? Why were there 6000 or maybe maybe more 6000 articles about the connection between smoking and lung cancer? Before the Surgeon General decided to say that you should you shouldn't smoke? You know, what about the first 5000 or 4000 articles? Why didn't that convinced people? It's just because of, you know, lots of complicated reasons, lots of inertia, but I think we are in the situation that's similar to smoking, I mean, more people are dying now from diet than anything.

Jim Moore  17:58

You mentioned that the, obviously that the jumpstart programme has been, like spread across the world through the benefits of zoom, etc. I wonder is this is this been a particularly if there is a positive to come out of the sort of the pandemic and so on? Has was that one of them? You know, was there always an intention to, to make this online make it virtual?

Dr Ted Barnett  18:26

No, our intention was not to make it online or virtual. I mean, we were our goal, actually, we were planning on licencing it we had actually started licencing it to doctors practices around North America, which is a pretty complicated process, because they actually have this programme. And maybe we should back up and explain what the programme is. And then you can understand why how the transition has changed things we chose. Yeah, sure. We chose 15 days for various scientific reasons. Can you imagine what they might be? Alright, so the 50 Oh, sure. Okay. We chose 15 days for because, because it begins and ends on the same day of the week. And so it's three Saturdays, that's how we started up. Okay. Within our office, we said let's bring people in on day number one, we'll do a finger stick. They have every we had 24 people at a time coming 24 to 30 people at a time or coming to our office. We did it that way for two years until the epidemic hit. I'll talk about let me talk about the first two years. We have a little machines that we could give people their lipid profile cholesterol, LDL, triglycerides and also their blood sugar. And on day number one, you'd get a finger stick at 8am. We had all 24 people through the fingerstick machine assembly line by at 930 in the morning, then they would give we'd give them breakfast. And then we give them a programme and then we give them lunch. And then we they got daily emails and the programme was basically a whole food plant based diet, which means I don't know if you've talked about this with your audience. In the past, but I'll just for people who haven't heard about it a whole food plant based diet basically means unprocessed food as close to being grown as possible, and also no oil so we don't allow any oil in our programme. And we also for the two weeks, we ask people not to eat high fat plant foods. So if you've if your listeners have heard of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn at the Cleveland Clinic, he actually is in the movie Forks Over Knives, which I know you mentioned you had seen. And his his programme is a very low fat, whole food plant based diet or VLF, wF PBD. And so the first time we did it, we actually didn't know whether it was going to work. Right? It was, we had two things we didn't know, when we started the first the first day we did, and we had lots of people, we had 24 people come to our office on that first day, because we have a lot of contacts in Rochester, New York, so we were able to get a lot of people to try it out. And there were two things we didn't know. One is whether the diet work, and the other is whether we could get everybody's fingerstick tested in an hour and a half. And we did well on both counts. I mean, it's turned out that for the average for people whose cholesterol is over 200, there's a 44 point drop. In the two weeks, there's a matter of five or six pound weight loss in the two weeks and that people just have amazing results, they feel great. But so that was back in the you know, the early years we were doing doing it every month, people it was usually the first or second Saturday of the month, then of course, then you have to have the the scary music part of your podcast now. Because then we know what happened in March 2020, the pandemic hit, and we, we had to figure out what to do. So we pivoted, we said well, we're gonna do this on zoom, we've had a little practice with zoom already. And so if we can do this and so the programme now is it's still 15 days during the diet, although we have a day minus three check in on Wednesday, we have people have a zoom call because we everyone has to check out their zoom connections, make sure that all works because you can imagine what it'd be like if we tried to run a programme and nobody could get through zoom working. So we have a day minus three which is a Wednesday. And then the first Saturday, we ask people ask people to make the change. And we meet for two hours on Saturday, we then meet two hours on the first Sunday which is day number two and we have a cooking class. And there's a the the next Wednesday we have a check in the next Saturday, we have a virtual potluck so we used to have a potluck in our office on the second Saturday and the number eight and now we do it all virtually. And so people take a pic, they make a dish, they take a picture of it, they print out the recipe and they send it all into our communications director and he produces a booklet for every cohort and during the that Saturday the the virtual jumpstart everybody we go around the room which means basically going around on the gallery and the zoom call. And everyone has to talk about their recipe and give us a you know what kind of obstacles they had to make a and what I tell my staff is it's really great because the cleanup is much easier now we used to spend a couple of hours in our office after everybody left cleaning up after the the jump the re the the part like the not anymore, which is great. We just hang up now and then we have another Wednesday check in and then the final Saturday is a graduation and a lot of people will share their lab results. So

23:28

it really actually in some ways works better. Virtually we have quality control is easier for us. We don't have to worry about what the doctors are doing in their offices who would have licenced it so I actually after the pandemic is over I don't think we're gonna really go back to what the original plan which was to licence it, we're just going to run it basically from our own our own headquarters, and it works great, then we're loving it. We're having a we're having a blast.

Jim Moore  23:54

Yeah, why not? When you can get so many people around the world involved it must it must feel like incredibly satisfying to be able to spread that word so far and wide like you say that people from around the world getting involved for you know, as far as the UK and beyond, I imagine.

Dr Ted Barnett  24:11

Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot of fun. And you know, it's really my my biggest my biggest fantasy is that fantasy is somehow this will lead to world peace. Because we're gonna have people from all over the world who will get to know each other and will be supporting each other in their plant based journeys. Call me naive.

Jim Moore  24:32

I'm sure you I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I've been I'm pretty pretty sure that this will solve the conflicts around the world. So I love it. That's pretty good. Oh, can I can I ask a silly question. So a lot of folks that I have obviously heard many times the kind of the the, you know, oil Come up as this. And in fact, I've heard it is a bit of a contentious issue and particularly around like, coconut oil is an area that I wanted to ask you about. This is probably my silly question. What so there's two parts? What Firstly, what would you describe as kind of the problems from a health point of view with oil? And secondly, does does coconut oil come under that because I often see it kind of touted as this sort of, almost like elixir of, you know, console all the world's ills. But then I've heard other people say, you know, it's full of fat and not good for you, and all these kind of things. So I'd love to get your perspective Firstly, on on oil, and secondly, on specifically coconut oil?

Dr Ted Barnett  25:43

Well, actually, I'll take the question the other way, I'll start with coconut oil, because, honestly, we don't think there's really, we don't really think there's any healthy oils. But Coconut oil is probably the worst. It's very high in saturated fat, it's higher than saturated fat than most animal products. And so it's definitely not a health food, I mean, it's good for skin you want to put on your skin, that's good. But other than that, not recommending plus my understanding of the environmental impact of harvesting the coconuts to get the coconut oil is not great. But going back to why is oil generally a bad idea? So first of all, let me let me say that if when people go through our programme, if they say, you know, I want to put a teaspoon of toasted sesame, sesame oil, idea, she, after I've cooked it, I'll say that's probably fine. Or a teaspoon of, you know, a very flavorful olive oil, something like that, we're not going to, I don't really have any evidence that that is going to be harmful. But generally speaking, what we tell people, what we advise people is don't eat fractionated food. And what I mean by fractionated food is that you've taken a healthy whole food and you've split it up into its components, and then you eat those components. So white table sugar, sugar is a classic example of a fractionated food. You know, if you want to eat sugar cane, knock yourself out, you can have all the sugar can you out, but that's not what happens. We get sugar, you know, sugar cane gets refined into this, basically is white crystal, that's pure sucrose. And the same thing happens with oil, we take a naturally healthy nut, you know, peanut, walnut, or we taking, you know things, even avocado, people are squeezing the oil out of like avocado, and seeing the avocado oil is healthy. And we're selling that as somehow healthy. Avocados healthy walnuts are healthy. And certainly, you know, within reason I mean, we don't we don't want people eating huge amounts of fatty food, fatty plant foods, but you know, a reasonable that is acceptable, it's probably healthy actually. So the other thing that happens when you squeeze the oil out of its container is it's now exposed to oxygen in the air and it begins to oxidise. And so now you have you took something that was healthy like the nut and now you're ingesting it as the oil which now contains free components which create free radicals in your body, and free radicals or you know destructive of cells of DNA. And in fact, that's why we advocate you know, you've probably heard people talk about how great antioxidants are, you know, all the yellow and green, yellow and green foods that have these great antioxidants. That's to take up to take care of those free radicals that are created anyway when you're eating, but in particular when you're eating foods that can really spoil. So something like flaxseed is very hot ground flaxseed is something we consider very healthy. However, flaxseed oil is something we consider very unhealthy. And in fact, for people in your audience who have purchased flaxseed oil, you know that it comes in a little dark bottle, and you're supposed to put it in the refrigerator as soon as you get it home. And the reason is because it oxidises so quickly because omega three fatty acids, the acid, the the, the oils that people really need to get more of in their diet are extremely unstable. And so it's one of the reasons it's been removed from the food supply because omega three fatty acids being unstable, things go rancid quickly. So the food manufacturers have taken it out. It's one of the reasons we Polish rice. You know, brown rice goes bad, whole wheat flour goes bad has to be stuck in the fridge. That's because of the omega three fatty acids that are unstable. But it also improves the shelf life of the food but it doesn't necessarily improve your shelf life

Jim Moore  29:29

was absolutely fascinating. That little bottle that you describe. I have got one of those in my fridge as we speak. Which is now making me question whether it should be my fridge. And the reason I bought it was purely because of the omega three, six claim on the front, if I'm honest.

Dr Ted Barnett  29:52

Exactly, exactly. And so what I so what I tell people is one thing you should only eat food that can spoil food that can't spoil, there's a problem there. So omega three fatty acids. Actually, alpha linolenic acid is the most common common fat on the planet because it's in leaves. And so we just, that's what we should be getting omega three fatty fatty acids is basically from leaves, we can get more if we use ground flaxseed, it's not really clear how much if you're eating a basically healthy diet that doesn't have a lot of omega six fatty acids, it's not really clear how much you need to worry about your omega threes. But if you're, you know, eating a refined diet that has a lot of omega sixes, because they're stable, and that's the food manufacturers want omega sixes in the food because they tend not to go rancid. So again, you should only eat food that can spoil. And that means usually means it often means it's high in omega three fatty acids.

Jim Moore  30:47

as a as a great top tip, eat food that can spoil. And it does make perfect sense you see, you see a lot of things I can think of particularly things like you get loaves of bread sometimes that apparently can last forever. It seemed to be almost radioactive, you think that what is going on with this product that it lasts so long. So I think it's a great top tip. I'd love to get your view on you know, particularly for folks who are perhaps new to the world of veganism and so on and are perhaps tempted in with some of the kind of the process that junk foods that are come out now you see all the impossible burgers and the and the and the moving mountains and the the new Ben and Jerry's flavours and all these kind of things, and they're all really exciting. And you see lots of it on social media and lots of people using it as a barometer. This is this is veganism as landed kind of thing. as a as a doctor coming at this from a health perspective, does that kind of thing? Do you think have a have a place? Does it concern you? What's your kind of perspective on it?

Dr Ted Barnett  32:06

Well, I have obviously mixed feelings about it, it's tends to be very processed. And I look I think any movement to for people to move away from eating animals and consuming animal products is is good. No question because, you know, just just for the health of the planet alone, and there's no point in being a healthy person on a dying planet, it's just not going to. So we need to think about all these things at once. So, you know, I think as, as transition foods, it's certainly a good way for people to get introduced to these things. You know, and it really, it's, I think it's a question of how much the people are going to consume. If somebody has active heart disease, then we want them to do the jumpstart programme as is basically forever, which is because Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn has demonstrated that you can really reverse heart disease with that. And so that's not only whole food plant, a whole food plant based, but also very low and in high fat plant foods. So if someone's basically healthy, and we we encourage them to eat a whole food plant based diet with, you know, a fair amount of added high fat, plant foods is fine, it's probably healthier eating nuts and that type of thing, although it's always worth getting your blood checked, you know, find out what your cholesterol is, like, find out what your LDL is like. But if you're starting with kids, who are basically already pretty healthy. And like our, for example, our kids didn't grow up on, you know, the standard American processed food diet. And they did have a fair amount of you know, I want once in a while would have vegan junk food. And they're doing pretty well. You know, my son, Nathaniel, has the lowest LDL of anybody I've ever spoken to. In fact, his doctors were worried about him. He called I said, Well, I his LDL is 15, one, five. And he said, What do you think I said, well, you're the healthiest person I know. And we don't know anybody has been vegan since before birth. So it's probably okay. So I think it's a good thing. It's raising consciousness that there's, you know, the impossible burger, you know, miyoko is cheese is really wonderful. I think it's good. But I you have to kind of figure what, what's the population you're starting with? And if you're starting with a population that's really sick to begin with, which unfortunately, we have, you know, two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. And I think it's, it's pretty similar in the UK. And it's, you know, there's now over 400 million people with type two diabetes in the whole world. You know, if people with type two diabetes were a country, they'd be the third largest country in the world after China, India and China. And so it's really become an epidemic. So I think you have to put it all in perspective. I think generally, it's a good thing that people understand that there are ways to substitute and have these, you know, fun ways of eating. And so I think overall, it's a good thing. It's just, you know, like anything else you got, you know, Once in a while you get to, you know, hear the voice of your mother or grandmother saying that so much

Jim Moore  35:07

of that. I'd also love to get your perspective on particular things that you think people transitioning into veganism should look out for. And in fact, you know, people who've been vegan for a while, that you hear lots of bits and pieces I've heard I've read lots of things that have scared me over the years about, you know, like, particularly as a, as a dad of a three year old, you know, you know, is he getting ideen? What about enough Selenium? These kind of things? Are there particular things that you should watch out for? And he's kind of the, the whole food plant based approach, going to be a pretty much a cover or particularly if you go through the kind of jumps to hop programmes advice, but you know, what, what's your story on those kind of things?

Dr Ted Barnett  35:50

Well, if there were one, sort of one source I would go to, it would be nutritionfacts.org, Michael Gregory's website, and I would use his app, which is the daily doesn't, I think that's wonderful, the daily doesn't is perfect. In fact, we recommend that to our jumpstarters. To use, though, we asked for the, for the two weeks, we ask people not to have a serving of nuts, which is one of the things on the daily doesn't, but other than that, we want people to use the daily doesn't. And if, if their cholesterol can stay low, even after they add back in some nuts, then that's fine. So I think, you know, don't get caught up in these set of the minutiae, you know, selenium, and chromium or whatever else. But do think about in terms of making sure you're getting lots of fibre, that you're eating lots of Whole Foods, I mean, if you're dealing with a little kid, if you have a three year old, you certainly want them to get you don't have to worry about that, you know, so tofu is great if you're raising your kid. I mean, our kids loves having tofu and soy sauce, meaning basically, it was soy sauce. And you know, you don't have to worry too much about salt and little kid, I mean, they can, if they're not living as soda and, you know, candy bars, then you know, tofu, a little soy sauce, and maybe some garlic powder, it's fantastic. For them, you know, the one thing we always hear about is b 12. And that is true. We don't we, we don't want you to become a b 12 deficient and it is a theoretical possibility on a completely vegan diet to develop a b 12 deficiency. And we tell people to take a supplement, b 12 supplement, there are some foods that you can get the 12 from. But you know, don't worry, don't do it that way, it's so easy to get to take these little supplements, you only have to take them once, you know, once or twice a week, your body stores about three years worth of B 12. Anyway, it takes a long time to become deficient. However, if you become b 12 deficient, you will become really, really sick. And I think you'll appreciate this. If a vegan gets sick or dies from a b 12 deficiency, you can be pretty sure that'll be a newspaper headline. If a meat eater dies from a heart of immediate or dies from a heart attack, that's not a headline that happens in this country alone. That happens 2000 times every day. So we got to put it in perspective. I mean, yes, yes, vegan diet, a whole food plant based diet does have this one kind of limitation, which is that you really should be supplementing with B 12. Now, even that's really not much of a limitation because pretty much everybody over the age of 50 probably should be taking a b 12 supplement anyway even whether the whether or not they're vegan, so I don't consider a huge deficiency but don't be one of these people who thinks you can get enough b 12 from food or grow it in your own gut. Do it for the cause, because you don't want to be the one who's the newspaper headline. It's bad for the cause. So that's the one thing that you really probably should make sure you're getting enough of you know, as far as Selenium goes again, you know, read Michael Greger his book how not to die because you know he talks about getting Selenium from Brazil that's that's probably where you get it. And so but there's so many men all kinds of food anyway. And it's you know, most of these things, think about how we evolved we evolved eating whole plant foods lots and lots of leaves. So lots of green leafy is one of the things that I do on my on the jumpstart is people see me modelling behaviour so I show up with a bowl of greens and I just I first I apologise for eating in front of everybody and then I just everyone smile grab a green leaf and chow down on it you know whether it's breakfast lunch or dinner, people should be eating greens all day long and it's gotten pretty easy you can buy these pre washed greens Now you don't have to do a lot of work unfortunate creates quite a bit of plastic waste, but you know you can get the greens are really easy to get so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Jim Moore  39:37

Right advice? Great advice. In your perspective, is there a particular type of supplement that that you find is better, better absorbed, etc. I've heard lots of bits and pieces around vitamins and minerals and so on that either taken in these kinds of forms, not you know, this form is better than that form and this kind of thing, is there a particular rule of thumb that you would go by? Or is it kind of your standard like supermarket grocery store shelf b 12 supply.

Dr Ted Barnett  40:15

Really any b 12 sets of supplements going to be fine. I mean, we only recommend two supplements, vitamin B, 12, and vitamin D for people who live in temperate climates. And most of us can't get enough sunshine to get enough vitamin D. So those are really the only ones we recommend and again, go by what Michael Greger has in his books, so, you know, one or 2000 units of vitamin D. and the B 12. b 12 is kind of funny because it's got a really interesting way of being absorbed. Your body has a system with that so that with every meal, your stomach produces what's called intrinsic factor. And every basically with every meal, you produce enough intrinsic factor to absorb about 1.5 micrograms of vitamin B 12. You only need about 2.5 micrograms everyday it'd be 12 anyway, and these are micrograms. Not milligrammes are tiny micrograms, tiny amounts. And if you think about it, well, if I only need 2.5 micrograms a day, why are these dosages 100, micrograms, 500 micrograms, 1000 micrograms? Why so much. And it has to do with the fact that some people can't produce intrinsic factor, that that chemical that your stomach produces, that allows you to absorb the B 12. And in that case, you absorb Pat, there's a passive absorption of about 1%. So if you take in a 1000 microgram tablet, a b 12. And you have no intrinsic factor in your stomach, you'll absorb 1% of that, or about 10 micrograms. So that's a situation where it actually kind of makes sense to have them that being, you know, usually, if you're getting 50, or 100, micrograms would be 12 a day, it's fine, or 1000 micrograms a week, it's Yeah, just look at the bottle and see what the recommended dosage is. There's lots of different ways of getting it your store a lot of it anyway. So it's not like there's, it's not like, if you miss it for a day, it's going to plummet in your body, it's going to be there for a long time.

Jim Moore  42:05

Also good to know, good to know. And how about like the, the organic discussion, I've heard lots of people sort of say, you know, you absolutely need to be inorganic, that's the only way to go this kind of stuff. And other people saying, you know, don't worry so much about that worry about just getting greens into getting, you know, a rich kind of colour palette of fruit and vege. What would your perspective, bees is kind of organic and essential, obviously, affordability comes into it, too. But you know, if you can, would you?

Dr Ted Barnett  42:42

Well, if you can be I think organic is always better for a lot of reasons, you know, the farm workers are not getting exposed to as many chemicals, it's better for the land, it's better for the environment, generally, a lot of the food is going to be healthier. But I think, you know, one thing that your listeners should know about is there's two groups of food that we are known as the clean 15. And the Dirty Dozen, I don't know if you've heard of that. But you can you can Google that look up the clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen. So the clean 15 are those foods that are basically going to be pretty low and pesticides and harmful chemicals. Whether or not it's grown organically, and the Dirty Dozen are going to be foods that we really do want to get organic, because they absorb a lot of the pesticides. So strawberries, for example, those those giant, beautiful strawberries that you see in the supermarket, that are probably not organically grown. They're just they can be pretty high and pesticides. And so berries in particular, where you're getting, you know, eating the skins, you might want to try to get organic, but look that up, it's a good thing to know about. And you know, to save money, though, you can get the clean 15 I think avocados are one of those things that because you don't eat the skin and the it's very well protected. And citrus and squash, I believe you'd have to check me on that. I think those are pretty much okay, whether or not they're grown organically or conventionally. So yeah, check out the clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen. But for so many reasons. It's great to eat organic whenever possible to you know, vote with your dollar because it's just so much better for the environment and for the farmworkers.

Jim Moore  44:21

Absolutely. Yeah. I have got another another sort of question on the opinion from a health perspective around the immune system, particularly that's sort of on my mind, obviously over the last kind of year or so almost 18 months. You know, this has been a hot topic I recently read the headline I'm always reluctant to say I read the article because we see so many headlines, but I read that read this headline that ultimately was saying, a study has shown that people on a vegan diet are less likely to suffer the effects of COVID, etc. And I'd imagine this would be Because of a better immune system, but I'm not I'm not entirely sure of the specifics of the study. But I know lots of people have this on their mind, you know about protecting themselves from this kind of thing, improving their immune system. Is there any kind of particular top tips for that? Or is it again about you know, thinking about that, that rich colour palette of, you know, Whole Foods?

Dr Ted Barnett  45:25

Right. So we do know that people with chronic illness, diabetes, heart disease, the cardio metabolic syndrome basically have much worse outcomes, obesity have much worse outcomes, when they do get affected with COVID, unfortunately, and we do know that people who want a whole food plant based diet tend to have a lower incidence of those conditions. Whether or not switching to a vegan diet, during a pandemic makes a difference, you know, I'm not sure we really know we'd have to do a randomised control trial. But it certainly makes sense. And we certainly advocate that, I think it's, you know, sort of the standard of medicine is what's called RCT, the randomised control trial. And it's really not fair to subject lifestyle medicine to the same to that standard. Because random randomised control trials really work best for pharmaceuticals, because you can give somebody a, you can give somebody a capsule, that's a placebo, and they don't know whether they're getting the real medication or not. But I can give you I can't give you a plastic broccoli, you'll know. So it's hard to do those kinds of randomised control trials. But as far as Yeah, you know, as far as switching the vegan diet, it's like it's always going to be healthier. The, the thing about the pandemic, is it took what was already an epidemic of chronic illness, which have kind of a long timescale. And it compressed that timescale. So that having one of these conditions diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease, having one of those conditions puts you It puts you at immediate risk for dying, right, those diseases do not ordinarily put you at immediate risk for dying. Diabetes usually goes on in for, you know, a long time decades. But if you happen to have diabetes, and you catch COVID-19, you could be dead in a few weeks. So it compresses the image of the urgency. So it's, it's, the pandemic has kind of shone a light on that. And now we realise how important it is for people to be generally healthy. And whether that's because they have a better immune system, or their hearts are able to tolerate things better, or whatever it is, you know, we just know for a fact that if you don't have those chronic illnesses, you will do better if you do get infected.

Jim Moore  47:38

Absolutely. Top advice. Top advice is always said, I love it. I've got one final question. And I appreciate your your time. I feel like I'm having consultation is fantastic. But it's about gut health, specifically about gut health specifically, again, something I hear a lot about talked about in this sort of vegan community is gut health, and how important this is, you know, for our overall health, and this gut brain connection, and all these kinds of things, and how, in a bad high hype, process sort of refined sugars for the garden, these kind of things. Again, you'd love to get your sort of perspective on that and and improving our kind of gut health over.

Dr Ted Barnett  48:28

So that is a really fascinating, and it's a big question. I love the question. So in the last few years, we've been talking more and more about the microbiome. I mean, that term has been around for a long time, but it's become more and more on the tip of people's tongues. And the microbiome refers to well, it refers to all the little guys that live on your skin and your gut, in your mouth, even on your eyes. But for the purpose of this, let's talk about what lives in your gut. There's about 10 times more cells in your gut than belong to you. So I forget the number. I think it's 10, your body has 10 trillion cells, and your gut has 100 trillion cells. Now, gut bacteria are very tiny compared to human cells. So that's how you're able to have so many. But there's a lot more DNA. And there's a lot of things happening down there. There's a lot of information that's being transmitted back and forth between you and your gut microbiome. And there's just no way to first of all, there's no way to predict what's going to happen when you put medications in or put supplements in. Because the it's such a complicated system. But we do know that people on a plant based diet develop a different kind of microbiome than people who want an animal based diet. And it tends to be associated with those things that we know are associated with better health. So for example, there's something called carnitine which is found in meat and there's a something called Coleen which is found in eggs, both of which are converted in your gut to something called tmo, which then gets converted to TMA, I guess, and then TMA, oh and ends up in your bloodstream. And that's very harmful to the health of your your blood vessels and can lead to heart disease. Now if you give a steak to a meat eater, they're bacteria will take that carnitine and converted very quickly into TNA Oh, and which is bad for your heart, if you take a vegan who has been vegan for a long time, and you can somehow persuade them to eat a steak, which, you know, it might be kind of hard to do for most of us vegans. But if you could, and they've done it, you'll find that they don't, the bacteria don't exist to produce the the tmo. And it takes a while for that, for someone to go from being a vegan to being a non vegan for those bacteria to show up again. So your bacteria are constantly changing. And we know that you have a much healthier microbiome, if you're on a vegan diet. And even if you're cheating once in a while, it keeps those bacteria around. So people say well, can I have red meat once in a while? Well, maybe every month or so. But if you start to have it every few days, or every week, those bacteria are going to stick around and you're going to be producing those harmful products. So you mentioned organic gardening or organic farming earlier, I like to think of the microbiome as the soil in my organic garden. And one of the premises of organic gardening is that you're feed the soil, you're not feeding the plant, you're feeding the soil, you have healthy soil, you'll have healthy plants. So the way to think about what kind of food you want to put in your body is you're feeding your microbiome. If a healthy microbiome, you'll be healthy, so the food most of the food you're eating, you know, you're gonna absorb some of it for yourself. But think of how to keep that those little guys in your gut happy. So they love having all that fibre because that's where they hide out and it's got little jungle gyms in it and playgrounds and they're having a great time down there. If you're giving them fibre if all you're ever giving them is, you know, meat, dairy eggs that has no fibre, they have no place to hang out. So they just disappear and they get they get replaced by the bad guys. So yeah, it's it's extremely important gut health is extremely important. One other fact, I want to tell you, this is really interesting. So the lining of your colon, it's lined with something called Kalana sites. And most of the most of the cells in your body, their preferred food source is glucose. So that's what we talked about blood sugar in your in your, in your blood, the level of glucose, that's what your brain cells feed on. It's what your muscle feeds on. However, the lining of your gut, the colada sites, their preferred food is what's called short chain fatty acids or scfa, short chain fatty acids, and those like UTI ik acid and propionic acid. They're produced actually by bacteria in your gut, the healthy bacteria, they're actually when you send fibre down there, they converted into short chain fatty acids. And then the Kalana sites use that as their preferred food source, they absorb it right from the gut. So that's one of the theories about why you see so much colon cancer and people who are on a low fibre diet is because they're not their Kalana sites. The lining of the colon is not getting they're not getting the food that they prefer.

Jim Moore  53:13

Wow. That's fascinating. You know, what jumped into my mind is you were talking about the fibre the jungle gyms there. And then obviously, the coal on issues was I was thinking about, you know, these folks who are on this kind of carnivore diet who profess it to be incredibly, you know, healthy for them and all this kind of stuff. And I just think, what on earth must they be doing to their guts and their colons like it must be? Must be a horror show in there. No, it's terrifying.

Dr Ted Barnett  53:44

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, keto and paleo. Not not our favourite. They're, you know, first of all, they're not they're not natural at all. I think people are really jeopardising their health in the long run. You know, if we know that people on the keto diet lose weight, and that seems to make people happy for a while. But yeah, I think they're mortgaging their health in the long run when they they choose to go on that kind of a diet.

Jim Moore  54:08

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, adults, it's been incredible chatting with you. I think everybody I imagine everybody listening to this wants to wants to get on the jumpstart programme. Now I know I do. Where would folks go to find out a bit more and and learn about the jumpstart programme and all you're doing in Rochester?

Dr Ted Barnett  54:31

Oh, thank you for asking. So our website is Rochester lifestyle medicine.org dot o RG you can find us just by googling Rochester lifestyle Medicine Institute. And Rochester lifestyle Medicine Institute is our nonprofit that produces the educational programmes that and the 15 day jumpstart is one of those and that's pretty self explanatory. Once you get to the website, you can learn more about it. You can sign up there's one every month. So there's one coming up in July. We're in the middle of the June One right now. And, yeah, we're connected to a bunch of doctors and health systems around the around the country. And our goal is to really ramp it up. And we've we've one of the things that differentiates our jumpstart from others is ours is very personal. We have facilitators for each group, you know, so you're not alone. And I think that that makes it a little harder to scale it up. But our goal is to scale it up so we can really move the needle on the system. Because, you know, the health care systems, at least in our country, it's really broken. There's 130 million Americans who have one or more chronic diseases who would really benefit from this. So the challenge is, how do we push that out there and make it you know, operationalize it so that the healthcare system can really you know, be able to be able to utilise this to make people healthy and for people to utilise it to become healthier.

Jim Moore  55:51

When I say amazing work it really is and more party I'm sure you will not only make a lot more people a lot healthier, but probably will get to that that goal of world peace as well. I'd imagine this is such a, such a great programme. So yeah, I will make sure that I put all the links in the show notes for the people to take a look at so once again don't said thank you. Thank you so much. Until next time, it's been a pleasure.

Dr Ted Barnett  56:20

been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.