Life, Health & The Universe
Life, health and the universe are all connected. In a world where we are more connected than ever, we have become disconnected from ourselves. In this podcast, along with guests, I discuss ideas in a celebration of life, an exploration of health and some wonderment of the universe.
Contact Nadine: https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/contact
Life, Health & The Universe
Beyond Medicine: Embracing Natural Solutions for Optimal Health
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Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. John E. Lewis, PhD, the driving force behind Dr. Lewis Nutrition, as we promise a deep dive into the transformative power of nutrition and exercise. From his sports-filled childhood to his journey as a drug-free competitive bodybuilder, Dr. Lewis reveals how these experiences shaped his understanding of nutrition's impact on physical performance and health. We explore his steadfast belief that health is the ultimate gift, transcending material wealth, and the urgent need for a shift in perspective to prioritise prevention and nutrition over pharmaceutical solutions.
Dr. Lewis shares his groundbreaking research in Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, shedding light on the critical role of the immune system and the potential benefits of polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran. He candidly discusses the challenges in advancing non-conventional health solutions amidst a healthcare system often resistant to change. Listeners will gain insight into the frustrating barriers faced in Alzheimer's research and the necessity of questioning traditional medical practices to embrace innovative approaches.
As we wrap up the episode, Dr. Lewis offers practical health strategies for optimal living, emphasising the importance of a plant-based lifestyle, adequate vitamin D intake, and stress management. Hear how his personal transition from a standard American diet to a plant-based one has led to significant health benefits, and why he advocates for informed dietary choices. This conversation is not just about rethinking health and nutrition; it's an invitation to challenge societal norms and prioritise well-being in our daily lives.
You can find John's full profile in our Guest Directory
https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/person/dr-john-lewis
today we are joined by dr john e lewis, phd, very formal um name there. John is the founder president of dr lewis nutrition. He has a patch, a passion for educating others about the importance of nutrition, dietary supplementation and exercise for health and and, in particular, he studies and applies clinical nutrition for the benefit of mankind. Dr Lewis embodies the model of health he promotes to others by eating a whole food, plant-based diet for over 27 years and taking certain key dietary supplements. He also utilizes a rigorous daily exercise training program, which I'm super interested to hear all about. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you here. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into our conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Nadine, for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. Welcome to our conversation today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Me too, Welcome to our conversation today. Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm going to hand straight over to you to give us a brief introduction from your side of things. I've read my little intro and then we'll get stuck into talking all about the things health supplementation, nutrition and optimal exercise. I think they're the things.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that more or less covers it. Well, I've spent, I would say, the better part of my life being involved in something related to either physical activity or sports or nutrition or all of the above. So depending on which stage in life I was in would have been, you know, something related to all of that, even going all the way back to when I was just a little kid, four or five years old, and started playing baseball. So from there I played sports through my childhood and teenage years and then I got into drug-free competitive bodybuilding in college. I didn't pursue that too long because I realized pretty quickly that to really do anything in bodybuilding you need to take drugs and I just I wasn't willing to do that. I didn't. I didn't see myself making a living as a bodybuilder and I just didn't. It didn't resonate with me to do to go down that road. I mean, I don't really hold it against people who do. Obviously you still have to train very hard. You can't just stick a needle in your butt and and then expect to look incredible. You still have to work very hard. But I just wasn't willing to take those risks. But what competitive bodybuilding did for me? Was it really sort of formalized or created more of a professional orientation in my own mind about the value of food and nutrition and how nutrients impact our functioning. I really didn't think you know anything about that till I actually started studying physiology to the degree of you know that level of learning about all the technical ins and outs of cellular physiology. But I mean, up until that point I had played sports, as you know, just being a competitive person and loving the pursuit of, you know, playing games. But really bodybuilding, to have any level of success, even if you are natural, you really have to have a very professional approach to it, otherwise, you know, you can't do anything.
Speaker 2:So I give bodybuilding that much credit at least, even though I didn't pursue it that long and also I just couldn't. I couldn't handle it on top of a very demanding profession or work schedule. I just worked too much and as I was launching my academic career at that time in my life and I'm working, you know, 60, 70, 80 hours a week and then I'm trying to compete in bodybuilding on top of it, it just didn't. You know too much. There's just only so many, so many hours in a day and you only have so much energy in the gas tank, so to speak. So and then after that, after I got out of the competitive aspect of bodybuilding, I still can. I still can, even to this day, all these years later, I still train as a as a bodybuilder, if you will like. That's the type of routine that my body likes and and that's the type of training that I do. We can talk about that more later.
Speaker 2:But I really shifted my focus from more of a physical performance, sports orientation to a health performance, which you know. Obviously, if you're blessed genetically to be able to play a sport for a living, you know you're one of a very select few people all around the world. But for everyone else, if you're not taking into consideration what you're doing in terms of your behaviors for your health, then you know. Obviously that's a big reason why we have rampant chronic disease throughout humanity today. But nonetheless, as I changed my perspective around health and really looking at how health is your truly, I mean other than the amount of time we have in this life I feel like health is our number one gift. I mean, unless you're born, you know, with some genetic issue, that's obviously very sad and unfortunate, but for those of us who are not. You know your health is really.
Speaker 2:I don't care how much money excuse me how much money you have or other physical possessions, if you're not healthy, you know really what. Don't care how much money excuse me how much money you have or other physical possessions, if you're not healthy, you know really what does all that matter, right? I mean, you can have all the money in the world, but if you're not healthy look at Steve Jobs he died when he was what? 58, 59? He was a billionaire, but his money couldn't save him from pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, if you think of health as your number one priority in your life or your number one gift, I think we would have so many, you know just such a better world, right? I mean, I can't really speak to the Australian experience per se, this is more of the US experience, but I know we're just being. Our country is literally going down the tubes due to chronic disease, and that's why I'm doing what I'm doing to some degree, although I don't, quite frankly, I don't have the time To spend, you know, like you know, in a one on one business. That's why I got into the dietary supplement world, because I felt like I had the opportunity to affect more lives. The opportunity to affect more lives sort of across the board, you know, as opposed to just working like in a one-on-one type of job or business.
Speaker 2:But it's just so for me, like my mission in life, my purpose is to help people understand the value of health and how to achieve it through nutrition and supplements and exercise. And then, oh, for 20 or so years I spent all that time in academics at the University of Miami, at the medical school, running clinical trials in these same areas. And then I was very fortunate to have met a couple of people who introduced me to their stories in life related to polysaccharides. Their stories in life related to polysaccharides One Dr Reg McDaniel, about aloe vera and the other, ms Barbara Kimley, about rice bran, and I mean they just complete. Not only did they change my career, they changed my life, because that's why I'm actually talking to you today.
Speaker 2:That's a big part of the work that I did excuse me as an academic. And then it was really kind of excuse me the beginning of the end of my academic career when we started making some of these very significant discoveries with these polysaccharides. It ended up leading me down a path that I didn't really realize what I was doing at that moment, but it took me down a path of ultimately exiting academics and going into business because we made some very profound discoveries in Alzheimer's disease that I thought at that moment was going to project me down a research career the rest of my life, but it was not meant to be. I could not get more funding from the NIH and the Alzheimer's Association. I had something really exciting on my hands and I got no response from it, and so over about a four-year period from the point we published our first article from our Alzheimer's study in 2013 to May of 2017, when I left academics at that point, I had decided I'm not spending whatever you know, years or decades left of my life trying to get these so-called experts in health, these bureaucrats, to recognize what we had on you know the table here, what we were presenting as an opportunity to really help people with neurodegeneration, and it was very obvious to me at that point that these people are looking for opportunities with pharmaceutical companies or with you know some sort of a genetics or you know something in the pharma tech world that doesn't really have anything to do with nutrition. So, while they may present publicly that they have interest in nutrition, the reality is is that we presented data to them that are still profound. I mean, here we're talking 11 years later, going on 12 years, next year, and there's still never been anything else to show the benefit of these polysaccharides on.
Speaker 2:That we used in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease again demonstrated effects on all those different outcomes that you can compare to, certainly the five FDA approved drugs for dementia. Any kind of diet, any other dietary supplement, exercise, hyperbaric oxygen, acupuncture, red light therapy, music therapy, sound therapy you name it Any other kind of treatment has not showed anything like what we did. We showed clinically and statistically significant improvement in cognitive function according to the ADAS-COG, which is the gold standard for assessing cognitive function in people with any type of dementia. That assessment has been published in probably thousands of articles over the last several decades, so it is the gold standard for determining someone's level of cognitive function. And again, nothing else has shown that in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease. So when I made this discovery again I was on cloud nine, I was on top of the mountain. I thought, oh, my goodness, I'm onto something here that's going to be truly groundbreaking and having the opportunity to help a lot of people I don't know.
Speaker 2:In Australia, but in the United States, alzheimer's is now the sixth leading killer of Americans. Australia, but in the United States. Alzheimer's is now the sixth leading killer of Americans and it's costing us somewhere between $500 billion and a trillion dollars per year in direct and indirect care costs medical costs. It also wrecks the caregiver. It's not just a disease of one person, it's actually a disease of two, in the sense that you have the person who is dealing with the disease and then you have the caregiver who has the worst health outcomes of any other type of caregiver, be it cancer, hiv, heart disease, whatever. So you're actually talking about a disease that not just kills the person who gets it, but it kills the primary caregiver. And then, of course, it's wrecking us financially, at a macro level in our economy. So it's, and then there's no.
Speaker 2:Again, I mentioned the five FDA approved drugs for dementia. They don't do anything. I mean they might delay progression of the disease for a few months to up to a year, but then after that the person just continues falling off the cliff and I mean forget a treatment. The scientific community cannot even come up with any consensus on what actually causes the disease. There's kind of an ongoing. It's almost like a joke that if you meet somebody with Alzheimer's disease, you've met like an N of one. In other words, there's no average to this disease. Everybody has his or her own unique course or ideology of what's going on. So we, you know again, I mean, we were just like blown away.
Speaker 2:And oh, by the way, I should also credit, besides Dr McDaniel, a family, a lady, ann Brazel, who was listening to Dr McDaniel give a lecture about his successes with people with Alzheimer's, parkinson's and MS, and she came up to him after his lecture and they decided to um, they decided to, you know, start talking about what he was doing, and she and her husband ultimately decided to um make a donation to research. Uh, because they had some extra money and they had had four family members die of Alzheimer's disease, and so it was only through the generosity of this one family that we even had the opportunity to run that study. Otherwise you and I probably wouldn't even be having this conversation today. The fact that we had this one family be very generous, give us money to run this study. We ran this study, we got these incredible results, and then we could not get the government or the Alzheimer's Association to give us more money to extend this line of research. The government or the Alzheimer's Association to give us more money to extend this line of research, despite the fact that we had results that were better than anything else out there and still today are better than anything else out there you can find in the scientific literature.
Speaker 2:It still is, on one level, mind-boggling that this even happened, but again, it didn't deter me from pursuing or what I feel like is my own mission in life, which is again to talk about these polysaccharides that most people have no clue about, and to share this message of hope and hopefully help people along the way. And so that's who I am today and, as you mentioned in your intro about me, I live. What I feel like is a life that hopefully helps to inspire people on a personal level too, because I feel like if I weighed 400 pounds and I was at a lecture, at a conference giving a lecture, and I look like I couldn't even walk across the stage without falling down from a heart attack or a stroke, you know who would take me seriously, like you wouldn't. Even you'd look at that guy and say, well, he may know what he's talking about, but he doesn't practice it. So for me, that level of let's call it face validity or credibility is very important, not only from all of the work that I have done in my academic career and all the research I've conducted, but also, just, you know, personally living a life of using the things, the tools that I advise other people and suggest people to utilize in their own lives, and not be a hypocrite.
Speaker 2:You know, live. Whatever it is that you believe in and whatever it is that you say you think should be done, then do it. You know, like there's to me, there's nothing worse than a hypocrite. So that's who I am and that's what I'll continue to do for the rest of my life, and I really can't see doing anything else, quite frankly. I mean, this is what I love to do and I love to help people and and hopefully, build a successful business along the way, although I will say that from leaving academics although I felt like I had gotten punched in the gut a few times by these bureaucrats that wouldn't give me more funding well, certainly, being in the business world has been no bowl of cherries either. That was your preparation.
Speaker 1:That was your preparation.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, I've been punched in the gut many times over the last seven and a half years. In fact, I even have a company right now knocking off my product.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which is, I'm sure, a challenge when it comes to any kind of supplementation. Like other people on that, that's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:but you know what I don't? I mean younger. When I in my younger days, I would have gotten angry, I would have wanted to pursue legal action and get caught up in a bunch of uh you know really bad feelings. Now I just have to like, I just have to put it in the back somewhere and just keep moving forward. If people want to steal and be devious and unethical and all that, yeah, you put your energy into the wrong thing about fighting. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Right, instead of keeping your energy where it's important for you, and that's that's right. Your message out there.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm sorry that was a very long winded introduction.
Speaker 1:That's great Good to have some background, and there was a whole bunch of things that um jumped out. Um like obviously the the alzheimer stuff is really um prominent. I've I'm 50, so I've got friends who are around the same age, whose parents are in that kind of age bracket, and I've heard, at least I reckon, half a dozen people in my kind of um circles of people I know that have a parent that's um, got dementia or alzheimer's, and it's umilitating, so sad and like to them there.
Speaker 1:see, it seems like there's, it's just like that's. That's it, that's the way it is. It's just going to get worse and there's no positive outcome. So really, yeah, obviously, like would love to talk to you about the product, your products and how they work, but I think it's really interesting and we don't necessarily need to go down this rabbit hole. But what you were saying about, like the fact that you you couldn't get funding none of the people that you would hope would be promoting this kind of discovery to help the exponential amount of people that are experiencing Alzheimer's billions of dollars being spent like we got to go. Come on, people listen, like what, what's going on here? And I reckon that, like I take my hat off to you, you've been doing this work for over a decade like this is really a testament to uh, there probably not being any such thing as an overnight success, success, right, you've been working, really, you've been working your butt off for this and um, like.
Speaker 1:I reckon that you would come up across a whole bunch of people that go oh no, well that you know the professionals aren't advertising it, so he must be mad. That's right, yeah, but it's like you've got nothing to lose. You've got nothing to lose If the prognosis from the medical profession is one of like, oh well, you know, too bad, this is what you can expect to see. You know, that decline that you talked about over a period of time. There's nothing we can do about it. Compared to you, who's got something where you've proven it, you're not just like some quack who's you know, pretending that you've got this miracle cure. You've actually done the work. You've done the background research, you've got the papers written and it's like well, it's a no brainer. Why wouldn't you go down that path instead of the conventional?
Speaker 1:There you go, there's my little soapbox rant your perspective when, like, people do still trust the medical profession and for some, for some purposes, it is good, right it like we, we do need it, but there are a whole bunch of there's a whole bunch of like undercurrent of stuff where you kind of go actually they're not working in our favor. You talk about that. Actually, you've got a TEDx talk that you did in 2013, tedx Miami. It's just a 12-minute video. I watched it last night and you talk about health care. Can you kind of give us a little like what because it's totally how I feel, like when you have, um, you know, health, health centers where you go to the doctor, but no one's healthy there, correct?
Speaker 2:no, of course not. Well, and I I I mean, where do we begin? Right, like the United States, we're spending. It's now like four point five trillion dollars per year that we're throwing into this black hole, basically, and it just it's so disturbing, nadine, on so many levels.
Speaker 2:For example, we call what our system is health care again, and I'm sorry I can't really speak to the Australian experience too well, but I don't know if you guys call it health care. Speak to the Australian experience too well, but I don't know if you guys call it health care. It's not health care. I mean, just think of those words for a second. Our system is management of chronic disease, and it drives me nuts when people like sugar is another word, we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 2:But you know, use of the language for me is as a, as a scientist, as a writer and author, all these things that I've done in my career for me, language, use of the language, is so crucial and critical and your words mean something, right, I mean it's obviously actions speak louder than words. But when you say something or you put something in writing, people will hold you account, and so I don't like the use of health care system in the United States. I mean we may have an opportunity with, you know, trump getting reelected and now Robert Kennedy hopefully taking over as secretary of health and human services. I actually feel, for the first time in my adult life, inspired that we might actually have some change that can be, you know, truly powerful not just talk about it, but you know, actually some good change related to agriculture and food and FDA and CDC and all these other things.
Speaker 2:But I mean we just waste so much money on the wrong things that unfortunately go all the way back to really when the American I mean my own sort of superficial research suggests that the Rockefeller Foundation started the American Medical Association because at that time in the early 20th century Rockefeller owning, you know, having basically a monopoly in petroleum at that time he wanted drugs made from petroleum, and so one of the ways that he helped to achieve that was to create the American Medical Association. That was funded to poo-poo anything that came from nature, that came from nature, and so there was this gigantic shift from physicians before that using anything from nature to help people, you know, combat an illness or virus, bacteria, whatever. And then, once the AMA poo-pooed all of that and then they started using pharmaceuticals that were based on, again coming from petroleum, I mean it just completely shifted everything. And so how ludicrous is it that we talk about medicine as being medicine, as being the foundation, and nutrition is the alternative? Does that make any sense? I mean, you know, people are just going through life, they're just kind of like not thinking. They don't spend the time to critically evaluate anything. They just go through life and they don't even question things.
Speaker 2:But there is no medicine. There is not one human that has ever been deficient in a medicine Not one, not one of us. There's no such thing as a medical medicine, pharmaceutical deficiency. There's no such thing as a medical medicine, pharmaceutical deficiency that is. Anybody who believes that is I'm sorry, you're ignorant, stupid, misinformed, brainwashed, whatever. There is no such thing. You're not deficient in a statin drug, in a high blood pressure medication, in a lipid medication, in a depression medication, in an erectile dysfunction medication. There's no such thing. You didn't require that to make up some medical deficiency. We didn't evolve to need synthetic chemical medications. Everything starts with nutrients, oxygen being our first nutrient, and then after that vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, all these other amazing things that plants give us.
Speaker 2:But we have got it so wrong. We look at not prevention. In any sense of our system. There's no such thing as putting a value on prevention. So all we do is wait till people get sick and then they go see a physician and their nurse and all these other medical people, and then they get loaded up on medications and then they just go into this cycle where they just they take more and more medications, because now you have all of this polypharmacy that gets going once you have two or more medications. Of this polypharmacy that gets going once you have two or more medications, and God only knows what polypharmacy effects are, because they're not studied. No companies are studying how their drugs interact with other drugs. There's no money behind that. So polypharmacy is just a total Pandora's box.
Speaker 2:And so you start down this path and all you're doing is putting band-aids on symptoms and then eventually you just die because you've basically depleted your body's capacity to take care of itself and repair itself, because you've basically never given it the proper nutrients and nutrition that it needs. You just keep sucking in all of these, you know, copious amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrate, but meanwhile the real nutrition, the micronutrition, is completely ignored, on top of taking all these medications to treat symptoms of diseases that largely could be prevented in the first place, again, if people ate well and supplemented with a few things and exercised every day. So, man, this is I mean, this is a soapbox. I could just go on. You know, I could just keep running down this soapbox for hours.
Speaker 1:I know, and it's like so. It's become so societal, hasn't it? It's like the expectation that's been created for people like it's like you're and I talk I've talked about this a lot in other um podcasts with people it's like that you, you're given a story, you're given an outline of like you know, you get you, you get your, you grow up, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you buy a house, you have kids, you retire, you get sick, you go on a medication and you die, right, right, yeah, that's pretty well. It's like it's normal. I'm 50. I think in australia, it's pretty normal for a 50 year old to be on at least one type of medication right it could be hormone replacement therapy for women.
Speaker 1:I guess it could be high blood pressure, diabetes, like something for you know, metformin for polycystic ovarian syndrome, like there's a whole bunch of common ones that you know. Most women would probably be on by the time they're my age, and no doubt there's a whole bunch of other ones. Um, but, it's like that's the expectation that's created I couldn't have said it any better.
Speaker 2:You're absolutely right. We have like this. It's almost like a fairy tale. We're presented as children and, like you said, you, you have this progression that you've been led to believe. It's the same thing with this whole notion of people always looking for magic bullets. Like every time I talk about anything, I mean, whether it's the nutrition focus or supplement focus or exercise people always want to know what's that one thing I can do? Like people never look at their lives holistically and say, okay, I need to do all these things. No, I want to know that one thing. What's the magic bullet? Like people are so and then you want it instantly right. Like there's no capacity to like take steps and evaluate and then make changes in a way that you can say, okay, this worked, this did not, let me do this, let me do that.
Speaker 1:No, people want it like that and that's why we've become so dependent on drugs because you, you have all the time to be sick, right or go down or like, discover, like, what actually is it that I'm missing from my nutrition or my lifestyle? Yeah, Because we're busy, too busy.
Speaker 2:I call it the Tylenol syndrome. You know, like people, you get a headache, you want to take a Tylenol and 10 minutes later your headache's gone. I've had people almost probably half the people who start taking daily brain care or flagship product. They want to know how quickly it will work. And I'm like, well, you know, don't think of it like that, like this is nutrition, this isn't taking a Tylenol for a headache and 10 minutes later your headache's gone.
Speaker 2:The body has to take time to respond and it does that in a very methodical way, and some people are super responders. I get people who will tell me oh, wow, in like a couple of days I started having more energy, better sleep, all kinds of things happen. But the super responders are, you know, a pretty small percentage of people. Most people take 30, 60, 90 days and then they start feeling these effects. But we're just, we have so many almost like disillusions about the way the body works. And you know, again, we live in this fast paced, instant gratification society where no one has patience for anything. Now, I mean, forget just the children, now adults. It's like talking to adults with no attention span drives me nuts. I mean, they can't even focus on one topic for more than three or four minutes, if I'm lucky, and then they're, you know, jumping to other things. It's like, man, like you gotta like slow down and take a breath, or something like you gotta like bring yourself back down to earth and put both feet on the ground, like I mean again.
Speaker 2:I could just go on so many different tangents around this. We would spend hours on this conversation yeah, and I don't? We can have a whole series of interviews around this conversation.
Speaker 1:It's not not the fault of those people. It's the message of this is what you do, right, and if you don't question it or if you're caught up in that cycle, then you don't even realize it's like the matrix right. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:You want to take the red pill or the blue pill.
Speaker 1:I don't know which one's the best, which one will work fastest.
Speaker 2:Somehow I got red-pilled. I don't know how it happened, but I've kind of been red-pilled my whole life. Luckily, I don't know, maybe I have an angel or somebody who sits on my shoulder. I'd say hey, john, wake up. Hey, mcfly, anybody home, don't fall for it. I've been lucky. I've been resistant to all of that programming and messaging. I don't know why I didn't grow up in a family that, for example, I didn't have anybody in my family who ate for health. We all ate for taste, so it wasn't like there were people in my family who had, you know, this orientation toward health. Somehow it just happened for me. I don't. I guess it was my own interests in learning about the body and and wanting to be healthy, because I didn't.
Speaker 1:I didn't model that from anyone in my family and wanting to be healthy, because I didn't model that from anyone in my family. Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. Actually, it's like evolved over time, but yeah, it's become like a thing. I think that we're probably people know where we're coming from, like.
Speaker 1:I think we're coming from a position of like natural health empowerment, like taking back your personal power and your choices when it comes to what you put in your body and being more conscious about that body and being more conscious about that and actually being more aware of um the impact that you can have.
Speaker 2:That's right, exactly.
Speaker 1:The possibilities. Right, it's like and, and I and I think we're talking from a perspective of um, not only you know good preventative lifestyle practices, which you're obviously a great demonstration of, but also the fact that your products have been shown in trials to help improve people who already have symptoms. Right To like reverse those negative effects.
Speaker 1:So that's a word I heard you say like I don't want to go. Uh, you know, if you, I'm sure that you'll tell us exactly what the research shows in terms of that reversing. Like we don't want to go making any promises or claims that aren't proven right. But that's right's right, but you have got, you know, plenty of medical papers and and research under your belt to support this um product.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Which is.
Speaker 2:Which is daily brain care. Daily brain care is our flagship product and yes, I am very proud of this product. It's been it's kind of like my inanimate baby, if you will. It's basically the culmination of my life's work and of course I'm not a one-man show. I have lots of colleagues who have worked with me along the way. So by no means am I taking credit for this individually, especially with Dr McDaniel, I mean I love this man dearly. He's still kicking it every day. He's now 87, 88, still goes to his office every day, still fighting the good fight, still looking for money for research. I mean, what an incredible man. I have been so blessed and grateful to have met this man almost 20 years ago who again changed the course of not just my career but my life. But Dr McDaniel is just an incredible person who's only tried to help people. I mean person who's only tried to help people. I mean he.
Speaker 2:I'll just tell you very quickly he was a trained pathologist who about 40 years ago it was 85, 86. He had a group of guys with HIV come to his office. They were taking this aloe vera product and they had no viral load and their CD4 cells were normal. Total medical heresy, like you can't explain it from a medical perspective. And so they were asking him hey, dr McDaniel, can you help us? You're a pathologist, can you help us understand why this aloe vera product is helping us be healthy? Basically have no sign of being infected. And it took a while. He thought he was being pranked. Basically he thought it was a big joke. And at that point in his career he's just running his pathology unit at a hospital. He didn't have any interest in nutrition. But ultimately those guys changed his life and then he started down this road of trying to find out and figure out why aloe vera, why these polysaccharides in aloe vera were so incredible. And it led him down a road of basically going from a pathologist to practicing nutrition and that's where he's been for the last 40 years. So then, from the point of that happening in his life to about 20 years later, and then he and I met and now here he and I are, 20 years later almost We've been sharing this journey together in polysaccharides. But it's an incredible story, nadine.
Speaker 2:I mean I mentioned the cognitive findings that we had in our Alzheimer's study. We also showed and this goes back to why it was so effective for HIV. But we showed an improvement in overall immune system functioning according to the CD4 to CD8 ratio, which is incredible. That's not just important for people with Alzheimer's, that's important for all of us. Our CD4s are our helper cells, our CD8s are our cytotoxic cells. So keeping that ratio optimized is important for all of us, especially as we pass middle age and go through the remainder of our lives.
Speaker 2:We showed a decrease in two proteins called TNF-alpha and VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor. Our paper was probably the first one that published that finding in people with Alzheimer's disease. Those proteins are classically looked at as risk factors for cancer and heart disease, but our paper was probably again the first one in this population. Excuse me. We showed just under a 300% increase in adult stem cell production according to CD14 cells, which we know from other research. Cd14s have the ability to turn into neurons, so these are very important adult stem cells and we showed in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease. I didn't mention on average these people were 79.9 years of age, so just under 80 years of age. They didn't just have Alzheimer's, they had diabetes, depression, different forms of heart disease. So imagine being able to turn on that adult stem cell production process to that degree in people at that age and at that level of impairment, I mean again, it blew us away. So when you put all of that together and that was in the first paper we published three other papers since then but you have all of this going on in the immune system, you're improving the overall immune system's functioning, you're lowering inflammation, you're increasing the adult stem cell production. All of those physiological changes and findings support what happened on the cognitive or the practical side. And so it's also important for people to remember.
Speaker 2:I know I'm sure a lot of people, a lot of your listeners, when you hear the immune system, you think of immunity against virus, bacteria, fungus, anything infectious, and that's absolutely true. I'm not saying that's not true, but our immune system is much more than that. What our immune system is I love the analogy of the symphony orchestra is I love the analogy of the symphony orchestra. So you've got the conductor in front of the symphony doing this with, you know, the wand and whatever it is that the conductor does, I have no clue. But the symphony, you know. You have different groups of instruments out there and they're all playing music and the conductor is keeping everything coordinated and playing properly. Look at the immune system as the conductor.
Speaker 2:The immune system is talking to all of your other major organ systems and keeping everything playing properly, in balance, working the way they're supposed to. So if your immune system is not functioning properly, it's not surveillance, it's not keeping all these inflammatory signals in check, either pro or anti-inflammatory. You cannot possibly expect all of the other major organ systems to be working properly and doing their jobs as well too. So it's just incredibly important, this immune system that literally is from head to toe. It's got all these different tissues, glands, cells. It's just an incredible organ system. And when you think of I mean besides our brain and our heart and our liver of course, without any of those we obviously don't live. But when you think of the importance of the immune system in that context, of how it keeps everything else in balance and functioning properly, that's why it's so, so crucial to keep your immune system fed just as well as you would any other organ system.
Speaker 2:But again, we published all of that in our first paper from 2013. We've published three papers since then. We also published three papers from our multiple sclerosis study, which again showed incredible findings related to things like reducing infections, which I didn't know at the time until we ran the study. But people with MS actually don't die of the neurodegeneration or the demyelination, they actually die from infection. That's the leading cause of mortality in people with MS. So we showed like a huge reduction infections from the baseline to the 12-month evaluation. We showed all sorts of improvements in immune system functioning, inflammation, quality of life, measures, functionality. We published three papers from that study. So that's seven papers that we've published in combination from those two clinical trials.
Speaker 2:And I would put our work up against without sounding like an egomaniac or anything, but I would put up our work against anything else in these two very serious neurodegenerative diseases that led to the creation of daily brain care under the Dr Lewis nutrition brand, against anything else out there. And to your point, I want to also make sure that people never say that Lewis said you use nutrition to treat disease. I'm not saying that at all. I want to be very clear. What I'm saying is that the body is so smart and this inherent intelligence that each one of us has I don't care we could have a million Einsteins, I don't think we'll ever figure this out. There's some intelligence or spark within us, but that spark causes the genes to interpret everything.
Speaker 2:Every time we bend our elbow and stick something in our mouths and swallow it, that is literally coded information that our genes look at that information and they say, okay, it's this, it's that, it's this, it's that. And then they guide the cells and how to function properly. And so that works, either to your benefit or your detriment, depending on you know what it is you're feeding yourself or your detriment, depending on what it is you're feeding yourself. So the power of nutrition again, obviously oxygen being our first nutrient, and then after that we need all these other things. But all of that nutrition is so important in allowing the body to repair, restore and heal itself. And that's why I put these polysaccharides from aloe vera and even the rice bran up against anything else that mother nature provides to us, because I have just seen, time and time again, people with all sorts of very serious health challenges, not just in neurodegeneration, but they take these polysaccharides. The genes interpret that information because it's like rocket fuel. There's no other nutrient that has the combination and the complexity of structure, of information of these polysaccharides and then that allows the body to basically return to homeostasis, whether that's through healing itself from inflammation, oxidation, neurodegeneration, carcinogenesis, atherosclerosis, you name it. There is a whole host of things that I have seen.
Speaker 2:But allowing the body to heal itself through the power of nutrition is a completely different paradigm and model compared to the pharmacological approach, where they take a chemical or a synthetic material and then they try to alter a metabolic pathway which creates adverse effects by the way. But they try to alter that metabolic pathway which creates adverse effects by the way. But they try to alter that metabolic pathway to treat a symptom of a disease. That's what drugs do. So, please, no one put words in my mouth. I am not saying we are treating disease at all. I want to be very strict and very careful with the language that I am not claiming to treat disease at all. Here I am claiming we are providing the raw materials that the body needs, that the genes interpret, and then they tell the cells how to function and the body restores itself. That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, one Disclaimer, but I would like to add yeah, sure, you're not claiming that you know this cures. However, we all have a choice, right, we have a choice of what we put in and it does have either a negative or positive impact, and that actually includes our thoughts, no questions and how we feel about the things that we're putting into our body that can actually affect the expression of that food or that supplementation as well. So, um, yeah, we all, I, I think that it's important to like, not point and blame and, and you know, say they told me to do it and it didn't work, or whatever it's like. Well, we, we all make choices, um, and, you know, for better or worse sometimes. Um, I'm conscious that we're edging closer towards the end of our hour.
Speaker 1:I would love for you to talk a little bit. I reckon that you could talk a lot about it, because this is the, the uh, the main thing polysaccharides and also um, and you've kind of talked about. You have talked about that kind of preventative uh approach and the, the studies you've done. So I feel like we've covered that kind of like. This is going to help people to, you know, potentially feel better and help their bodies to heal and repair, but I'd love to hear about your practices in terms of prevention as well. So those two things polysaccharides the abridged version.
Speaker 2:Yes, if there is one, well, you can always bring me back any time.
Speaker 1:Well, we can bring you back and also I'd love to include links to the papers that you've got for people to peruse at their leisure. But yeah, tell me a little bit about polysaccharides, like I feel like saccharin. Like you mentioned sugar, is it got anything to do with sugars? It's complicated, right, because we hear sugar's not good for us, but then polysaccharide sounds like it's a sugar.
Speaker 2:They are sugars, yes, so, yes, I'm glad you asked me that, because actually I jumped ahead into the research and other things and then didn't even define this word, that I think sugar is one of the most misused words in the health and wellness field industry, whatever. But sugar, saccharide and carbohydrate are all synonyms. They all mean the same thing. So, please, folks, when somebody tells you or you're listening to somebody say all sugar is bad for you, that is a very ignorant statement. That is absolutely untrue. Sugars are dependent on their structure and they're dependent on the source that they come from. So there are essentially simple and complex carbohydrates for because I know we don't have a lot of time here but when you compare simple sugars like high fructose corn syrup that now, unfortunately, is put in everything as a sweetener it's cheap, it doesn't cost a lot of money and it's almost, quite frankly, addictive. But it spikes your glucose, it spikes your insulin, it sets you up for metabolic complications down the road. So I would encourage any of you you read a label that says high fructose corn syrup on the ingredients, I would probably consider putting that back. And then you go all the way to the very end, on the total opposite end of the spectrum. Those were monosaccharides, by the way, these are polysaccharides, so a monosaccharide is one unit or one molecule of sugar, like a high fructose corn syrup.
Speaker 2:Polysaccharides, poly, many saccharides, many sugars like the ones from aloe vera and rice bran that my colleagues and I have studied. These things are complex, very, very dense structures. They're almost like 5D in orientation. They can't even be drawn on a piece of paper, and that's the reason why they can't even be drawn on a piece of paper, and that's the reason why, or part of the reason why, these things are so incredibly effective for people and their health. And so when you talk about these polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran, these are completely different.
Speaker 2:Again, these are not the same thing as a high fructose corn syrup and yet they're all sugars. So that's why the all sugar is bad for you statement drives me up the wall, because it's just simply not true. There are lots of sugars in nature. They come from lots of different plants and materials, and so, just again, be mindful of the language and be mindful of the use of this word sugar, because it's just incredibly and poorly misused. And so our research showing these complex sugars are so beneficial for human health again are on another level, and that is part of my mission is to help people understand the differences between all these different types of sugars and why you cannot just make these blanket statements that, again, at best they're ignorant and at worst they're just untrue, they're just not correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is complicated, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Because there is a problem with people's metabolic health at the moment in society all over the world, and part of it is because of those monosaccharides like the yeah that we find in a lot of food or in inverted commas food, Food-like substances, Food-like substances, palatable food-like substances that we see on our supermarket shelves and yeah, so it is complicated, but it's kind of good that you call it, that you don't actually refer to them as sugars in your you know, when you're talking about your product, you talk about polysaccharides, so I guess a lot of people wouldn't necessarily make the connection that's right and aloe vera.
Speaker 1:We know like for many of us, we know that if you have an aloe vera plant at home, you can snap it open, you can put it on a cut and it has like antiseptic or healing properties, soothing for sunburn. So we know that it's kind of like a. Well, I'm assuming most people know that it's um, got healing properties and so that it's because of those polysaccharides yeah, okay, cool it's, so you're so saccharines so that was a great abridged version, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I tried to be as brief as I could.
Speaker 1:And I feel like we've kind of yeah, as I said, I feel like we've kind of covered off on how this product works for people who are unwell and why it's a really great I won't say alternative, I'll say addition to someone's lifestyle choices when they're trying to heal and manage health challenges, but from the other end of the spectrum or even partway through that spectrum of health or even partway through that spectrum of health. So you've got your own health practices that you and you expressed at the beginning of our conversation the importance of you know demonstrating what it can be like to be a healthy human Right. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that and just to like about the benefits for Joe blogs, who isn't currently unwell, might not be like at the perfect end of the spectrum where they're doing all of the things and how that can kind of like. So what, what do you do and what would you recommend like for people to get optimal health?
Speaker 2:I guess Well, as I mentioned at some point in our conversation, I grew up in a family that did not eat for health. We ate for taste, period. I mean we ate the typical standard American diet of a lot of milk, a piece of bread and some sort of beef. It could be you know whatever, but it had that meal, had to be those three things. It could have other vegetables and grains and whatnot, but that was the way we grew up and that's maybe a bit of a Southern American style of eating, but nonetheless that's a pretty typical American approach.
Speaker 2:And so, not having any kind of model of health in my family again, as I got into bodybuilding and then sort of shifted from there to a health perspective and really started taking a deep dive even beyond my training school, but they didn't take like health and wellness to the degree that I've taken it to. With all due respect to them If anybody is still alive and maybe still wouldn't hear me make that statement, I don't mean any disrespect about that but they were very focused in, you know, certain things that they did that really didn't have much to do with what I'm now doing. But I say all that to say that as I began looking into the research about eating all of this animal food that I grew up eating and then reading study after study after study, literally hundreds and thousands of articles out there showing all the possible effects, the ramifications, the negative effects of eating animal tissue. It led me down a path over about a 12-month period to basically eliminate all animal food the possible effects, the ramifications, the negative effects of eating animal tissue. It led me down a path over about a 12-month period to basically eliminate all animal food. So for those of you out there caught up maybe in the keto, paleo, carnivore movement, you probably won't really respect what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:But again, for somebody who ate a lot of animal food, as a young child and through my 20s and I actually didn't say it before, but I was actually sick a lot as a child and we won't go down that road either I had lots of throat infections. My sister and I were constantly sick either from tonsillitis or strep throat or whatever, and I have some theories behind that too. That, again, we can save for another conversation. But as I look back on it, that was kind of like it was also helping me connect the dots to making the kind of change and taking the approach that I ended up taking down this path of now, as you mentioned, eating a plant-based diet for 27 years. So for me, in my own personal experience, based on what I've chosen for myself and also based on a lot of science and again, I know the carnivore crowd will not agree with me, but I just believe that eating plants even if you don't eat, say, a totally plant-based diet, eating mostly plants you just get so much more nutrition than you do from eating animal food, and so that would be the first thing that I would recommend to people. Again, I don't really spend a lot of time in a one-on-one setting with people in my business.
Speaker 2:But the other thing is these polysaccharides and not to beat that story to death so much but you don't really get these from food Like. We also have aloe vera growing in our backyard here in Miami, but the interleaf gel is 99% water, so you could not possibly get enough of that gel if you consumed it every day. Plus, it tastes like crap anyway. Nobody would really get the benefit of that. Consuming it orally, it's okay to put it on a sunburn or a cut, as you mentioned, but to really truly enjoy the benefit of this incredible plant. You need to get it in a, in a concentrated powder form and we've done the hard work like that for you and daily brain care and then, of course, daily activity.
Speaker 2:I mean I think you know our bodies are meant to move, right. I mean we're supposed to move every single day and so we have a tendency in this built environment around the developed world, where we're sitting in offices or office buildings all day and we're not really moving too much, very few people are doing really hard manual labor where they're stimulating the body properly. So it's important to do something like 30 minutes every single day. I mean I work as much as anybody and I still try to make that commitment every single day to move. I mean, if I'm in an airplane or traveling, you know one day or something, then obviously that may be not possible. Or if I'm very sick, you know that may not be possible for a couple of days, but I still. I just don't feel well if I don't do some training every single day. So for me those are like my three pillars. I didn't really talk too much about, you know, the other supplements that I take as well, for example vitamin D. I think a lot of people are deficient or insufficient in their vitamin D, so D3 is cheap. If you're not getting out in the sun every day, then that's certainly something that you can take and help you to maintain your health and wellness.
Speaker 2:And then other things. I mean I'm constantly as you've seen me in this conversation I'm constantly drinking water, like I think good, filtered, clean water is very important. We obviously need to be hydrated every day, although some people are big fans of dry fasting. I don't know about how long people really should do that. That's not really something. I've studied too much and I know that's got some religious implications or philosophy behind it as well, but I'm always drinking water.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, sleep. Sleep is just so important for us. You got to get your six to seven to eight hours of good sleep every day. It's not just for helping us rest, it's actually cleaning out all of the metabolic byproducts and waste, especially from the brain. There is good research suggesting that insomnia and people who have trouble sleeping will ultimately be at greater risk of dementia because all of that plaque that builds up every day that we're active and our brains are very busy taking care of what we're doing every day. You've got to clear all that out, and that happens when we sleep. And so if you're not sleeping, you're not allowing your brain to basically clean itself. The lymph system, there's the glymphatic system that goes through the brain and it's very important for pulling all that stuff out of the brain. So you've got to sleep. Whatever you have to do to achieve that, you've got to get your sleep. And then, of course, other things like stress management. I mean, for me my exercise training is kind of like my stress management tool.
Speaker 2:I'm not the best meditator. I've tried meditation on and off for many years. I'm just not. I don't know. My brain just doesn't really work very well with trying to go completely dark, if you will, and be thoughtless, I don't know. For me that's a very tough bridge to cross. I don't seem to be able to get there, despite my efforts. And I mean I've never smoked in my life.
Speaker 2:I drank a little bit of alcohol when I was in college hanging out with my buddies, but I don't really drink alcohol anymore. I mean I've maybe had one or two sips of alcohol in the last 12 or 13 years. I never really cared for the taste of it. Anyway, and for the ladies out there, there's actually research that shows that even a little bit of alcohol don't be misled by the wine industry even a little bit actually increases your risk of breast cancer. So I would be very cautious about you know, whatever you think is a minimal amount of alcohol intake, I would encourage you to look into the research that shows that even just a little bit of alcohol intake can increase your risk of breast cancer. So, ladies out there, please, please, look into that.
Speaker 2:And I don't know. Those are for me, those are the tools and the strategies and the behaviors that I use to optimize my health. And again, for me, you know, being this is important. I mean, it's not just my profession, it's my personal life being healthy and functional. I mean I don't think any of us, ideally no one, wants to end up in a nursing home where you have other people, you know, bringing your food and showering you and toileting you. I mean, who wants to end up like that? I mean, unfortunately, a couple of my grandparents did, but nobody wants. I don't think anybody truly wants to end up that way.
Speaker 1:And they don't necessarily have to right. I think that's my point. Like you, don't have to.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you just utilize some of these things that we're talking about today, if not all of them, you don't have to end up in a nursing home where somebody's cleaning you every day or every other day.
Speaker 2:So to me, I mean, it's just so much important there, of course, is no cure for mortality but it's just so much more important to try to live your best, highest quality of life while we are here and then hopefully just expire one day in old age, and then hopefully just expire one day in old age as opposed to living, you know, years or decades at the or the end of your life where you're miserable, your family's miserable, taking care of you, you spend all of your savings on all this expensive medical treatment and then at the end you die a miserable death and your family is left with a miserable memory around your death. So why would you not want to try to do what you can do to prevent that?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely what? Yeah, very good points. I uh, I do. I've got a whole page that I haven't even looked at yet, so we are definitely gonna have to have another conversation um yeah, like about, I'd love to talk about the, the plant-based diet I am.
Speaker 1:I eat meat, but I I think that for both parties, um, food quality is really important and like something that can be quite challenging for us, even if we think we're eating well, so that that would be one that we can go down next time, amongst other things. But for the time being, um, we have reached the end of our hour and um I'm conscious that you are a new parent and I'm a parent also. My children are my youth.
Speaker 2:You might see my wife banging on the door back there.
Speaker 1:Hey, I need you.
Speaker 2:You said it was an hour. That's enough. Cut it off.
Speaker 1:So I really appreciate you taking the time. It's been a really great conversation. We're going to put all of the I'd love to share the links to the papers that you've been talking about and also, obviously, your product, in our guest directory so people can find that easily. We will organize another chat if you're up for it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, that would be my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, I would love it. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I wish you all the best of luck and look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you so much, for I've really enjoyed our conversation. I wish you all the best of luck and look forward to seeing you again soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:It's been my pleasure, it's been great.