Kind: captions
Language: en
hello everyone welcome to this live
discussion for the eat to beat disease
inflammation series uh i'm john burns
the ceo of tb12
and today i'm joined by my friend dr
william lee
great to have you here thanks very much
great always great to
have a conversation with you yeah it's
like to get a chance to talk to people
about this so
you've been providing a lot of great
information to the community this week
i know on our end we've received lots of
questions about
inflammation on a regular basis so i'm
grateful to have the chance to talk to
you
uh from a scientist to doctor someone
who's uh very well informed in the topic
of
inflammation and dive into this topic
now
before we get going i think it's very
important uh for me to point out that
we are not providing specific medical
advice and you should seek your own
advice from your own doctor
uh but take what we're talking about
today under advisement is
generally good information that you can
use to inform your health decisions
um now so to get started will let's talk
about
inflammation what is inflammation
such a great question because everybody
sort of seems to have inflammation
on the tip of their tongue it's actually
an incredibly important topic
because the idea that inflammation
can be bad for your body is absolutely
correct
but what we all need to know is that
inflammation is
actually just a natural part of our body
seeking its balance
doing its thing healing from the inside
out a little bit of inflammation
is exactly what um happens when you have
a cut
in your finger or if you um scrape your
knee
when you're riding a bike basically
immediately afterwards
uh your body your immune system responds
by
sending inflammation to the site which
are
a series of reactions to clean up debris
and bacteria
just in case you got infected with that
cut or the scrape and so that's why you
get a little bit of swelling a little
bit of redness maybe a little bit of
pain
and then and this is the key part after
maybe a couple of hours maybe a day or
two it goes away
so a little bit of inflammation cleans
up the mess
then it goes away little inflammation
good a lot of information
bad and a lot of inflammation is what
most people are actually concerned about
when our body
is raging with inflammation and that is
the kind of inflammation we want to
actually
put down yeah i think as you describe it
um
i think to make it simple for for our
audience and people who you know i speak
with a lot
i think what you're talking about is the
difference between acute inflammation
and then the chronic inflammation
and acute is that incidentally you cut
yourself you sprain your ankle
but it's the chronic inflammation which
is so problematic longer term for people
yeah and you know john like almost all
the chronic diseases that
we that nobody wants that we all fear
that we're all trying to
figure out how to stay healthy to stay
away from
diabetes heart disease cancer dementia
obesity
you name it autoimmune diseases all of
those are characterized they have a
common denominator
chronic inflammation so basically
chronic inflammation is where
that normal acute wound healing response
basically doesn't get to be turned down
it's like getting into a car
turning on the volume as loud as you can
and then not being able to shut it off
or another example i give is
you know uh if you were to um try to
find your way out into the forest at
night and you light a candle
to figure out where you're going when
you get to where you're going blow out
the candle you're all set
that's a little bit of acute
inflammation just to get you from a to b
but chronic inflammation is you drop the
candle on the ground and it lights the
forest and fire
and now the whole place is burning
you're not even going to be able to
get to where you want to go that's
chronic inflammation
yeah and i've i've heard some very
interesting things about chronic
inflammation you mentioned some
disease states that can be impacted by
chronic inflammation but
i've even heard recently about you know
another concept neural inflammation
and how inflammation in the brain can
perhaps be a cause and lead to things
like
you know alzheimer's and parkinson's and
other diseases as well
yeah well so um it's absolutely true in
almost any of those neurodegenerative
diseases that you mentioned alzheimer's
parkinson's
ms a whole bunch of other ones we do see
actually inflammation and that
inflammation
is not acute meaning that it didn't
happen yesterday
and it's not going away tomorrow that is
sort of the smoldering fire of
inflammation that's actually going on
whether it's the cause or whether it's
sort of an effect
we don't really know but we do know that
the more inflammations around
you know the more of the forest actually
gets to be burned
and that's really why we want to
actually take care to think about how we
can lower
inflammation in our bodies yeah i think
that's a great analogy the forest
analogy
um so inflammation can be the cause of
many serious disease states and
conditions as an individual who is
interested in their health
and making better choices which i
certainly feel like i am
most of the time are some of the things
that i can do
proactively to combat inflammation and i
read your book
so i know there's a lot of food
solutions but can we talk more about
that
yeah absolutely so you know um first let
me just say as
a as a physician as a doctor that if you
talk to most of your doctors and
and you ask them what do you do to help
your patients get rid of inflammation
they pull out their prescription pad and
a pen and they say i write you
a prescription for something like a
steroid
okay a steroid will turn off
inflammation lickety-split and it's
really powerful but it's got a ton of
side effects as well
and we sort of don't really want to go
there we don't have to
so really the question you're asking is
that what can we do without having to
resort to a prescription
that where we can you know take actions
ourselves to lower
that sort of influence the risk of
having chronic inflammation it's really
the risk
you know like we're not all walking
around on fire most of us
are capable of actually getting into
trouble if we're not careful about it so
a couple of things that we can do first
of all avoid the things that start the
forest fire the
start the chronic information that's one
thing and then secondly
do things that actually can help to calm
it down to calm down the fire to help
put it out and contain it
you want the campfire not the forest
fire and you also
want to avoid things like pouring
gasoline onto the fire so let's talk a
little bit about that
first of all what are the things that
can actually spark inflammation
you know it turns out that eating a lot
of saturated fat
eating a lot of ultra processed foods
eating a lot of extra added sugar and
even artificial sweeteners
can actually contribute towards
inflammation and the reason they do this
is because your body
is used to i mean your body can take a
little bit of that stuff but if you keep
on pounding it down
okay really as sort of the lots of
processed foods and
you know all the things we know that
aren't good for us here's the secret
like underneath the the curtain you're
actually seeing your body
um uh reject the stuff it doesn't like
and part of the way it rejects it is by
turning on the inflammation
and it keeps turning on the more you
feed it the bad stuff the more it keeps
on that
going with that inflammation it wants to
get rid of that the junk
remember i told you inflammation is what
happens when you have an injury and it
tries to get rid of the bad stuff
like the bacteria so in a way um dietary
things that are not so good for you
um are that now other things in your
lifestyle can actually
also increase your risk of inflammation
one thing is not getting enough sleep
not getting good quality sleep you're if
you're pulling up
if you're pulling all-nighters like you
know i'm sure we all did when we were in
college or
much younger days i mean you know you
felt like crafting he crap felt like
crap the next day maybe you could even
pull another all night or the next day
but eventually it's going to catch up to
you and that catching up that feeling
crampy
it's worse than a hangover right i mean
it takes you weeks to really get
to feel back to yourself that's
inflammation going on as well so
not getting upset and by the way here's
another thing not getting enough of
not getting enough exercise not having
enough movement
physical movement i want to talk about
the only the couch potato watching
netflix
we're really talking about is somebody
who just you know
lives a lifestyle where they're not
actually moving their joints or not
flexing their muscles or not actually
you know swinging their arms and legs
humans you know like we are we are
designed
for movement that's why we have so many
bones and joints and muscles in our body
so
one of the things that i think is so
important for you know the folks
um uh who who are part of tb12 to
understand is that
exactly what you guys espouse movement
is
central to helping your body lower
inflammation
yeah it's interesting too as i hear you
talk you know about the choices you make
of what you eat
sleep movement am i correct in assuming
that it's almost like our bodies and our
biology
are wired to have a system
to basically reduce all that
inflammation and to repair and recover
yeah you know we call that a feedback
loop right so basically
a little bit is good a little bit more
is even better a little bit more
sends a signal to our body hey enough
let's go down okay it's like the grade
school teacher you know listening to the
kids talk in the back of the class
you know be creative hang out with
yourselves now wait a minute now you're
a little bit too loud okay now you got
to sit in a corner
so um so our body actually controls the
volume continuously
and um and so that feedback loop was
really really important so
it's here's here's the other thing that
i think is really important for people
to understand that that comes from
science inflammation is not an
on and off switch it really is kind of
like a volume switch
you turn it a little bit louder a little
bit softer and again you always want to
have the opportunity
the option to have inflammation when you
need it just a little bit not too much
and not too long and then get back to
baseline it's it's actually part of our
immune defense
system yeah so the other the flip side
of avoiding the bad stuff is actually to
you know try to take in some of the good
stuff and you know the opposites of the
things we just talked about
regular exercise and by the way you
don't need to work out you know you're
not
trying to be a bodybuilder you don't
need to be a bodybuilder or an extreme
sports person in order to lower
inflammation
you actually want to just have regular
normal
regular movement i mean if you if you
think about it if you have a dog
as a pet you're taking your dog in a
walk every day that actually helps dog
lower inflammation in their body you get
a
healthier animal that's going to be with
your family much longer
same deal with people if you get and
sleep
get good quality sleep you're lowering
your inflammation and of course
besides avoiding some of the harmful
foods eating some of the foods that are
naturally
anti-inflammatory can also be helpful
too yeah and i want to talk a little bit
about the movement thing for a second
because that's a very interesting topic
to me i've been looking into
you mentioned walking the dog there
seems like there's even a lot of
research just
in the benefits of simply walking
creating that movement dynamic
versus you know on the other extreme and
i had a period of my life where
you know you're into these ultra
marathons and ultra distance races and
you might be
running for five hours or you know
riding your bike for 10.
it's almost like you can take it too far
actually and there's a lot of science
that would suggest
simply 20 minutes a day or 30 minutes a
day of brisk walking
can give you a good portion of the
benefits to reduce inflammation am i
correct
absolutely and you know this it's so
simple that anybody can do this
no matter who you are where you live
what you do what your circumstances are
essentially um either just before dinner
or
after dinner you know depending on the
weather go out and go go for a walk
around the block
take 20 minutes um you know you got a
coat put a coat on if it's warm
go out um and and literally just walk
around the block you know
it does you don't have to count steps
you don't have to count distance
if you want to you can you know on your
watch or whatever but the key is really
probably
time i think that if you actually go for
out for about 20 minutes to a half an
hour
and you do want to move briskly so
briskly you know isn't like staring at
your phone while you're walking you know
like
that's not good you probably get you
probably trip over something
yeah you know what you don't want to do
that i mean but i do think that what you
want to do is
you know like move your body the way it
wants to move you know it's like
it's like um you know it's like the
junior high school dance right get on
that dance floor and just swing
move around you know like and that's
basically you want to do briskly
20 minutes it's so easy like you know
around my house
if i walk around the block you know i've
actually done a mile but
you know and and you and you feel good
afterwards you know
so either before dinner or after dinner
at the same time if you've got
a partner family member children or even
a dog
you know that's a great opportunity to
be able to do it yeah it makes a ton of
sense and it's such such good advice
let's come back to the food topic for a
second because i know
you know your book eat to be diseased
had a lot of great information in it
and i'm sure a lot of people in the
community watching this you're curious
about some real life practices
and simple things that they can do um
can you talk
you know you talked about things to
avoid but then things you could
add let's talk about the things to add
there's so much avoidance in
the world of diets and eating let's talk
about some of the things you suggest
that we amplify and eat more of
yeah well look my philosophy is to love
your food
to love your health you know um and and
the reason that's so important is that
you know when i was
taking care of patients from the va the
veterans administration
these guys would always you know they'd
be heavier on older people
most mostly men and they'd be always
bummed out like waiting for the doctor
the other shoe to drop to tell them what
they couldn't do in their life
don't smoke don't drink don't eat this
don't do that and like they were
but when they came to me one of the
things that i always told them is i said
look
i'm not going to do that for you what i
want to you what i want to do is
actually find out what's important to
you what do you love to do what do you
love to eat and so in my book eat to
beat disease one of the things that i
did is i actually wrote about more than
200 different foods
i mean this is a pretty thick book it's
got lots of of um
it's got a lot of lots of foods that
that cut across
cultures you know whether it's comfort
food whether it's mediterranean food
whether it's asian food whether it's
tex-mex
can find stuff in almost every place
that science tells us
activates our bodies hardwired systems
to be able to have that feedback you
talked about lower inflammation
keep our circulation really good help
our regenerate our muscles keep our gut
healthy too which is really really
important for lowering inflammation
protect us against oxidative stress you
know which you know actually emotional
stress does that to us as well and to
build our immunity which has
been so important in the last you know
after we went through last year
and so the idea of eat to be disease you
know there's a couple of things you know
like
um and one of them is to actually to eat
but eat the things that you love
find those foods that you already prefer
that are healthy for you and load them
if you like
you know if you if you like fruits and
vegetables pick
the ones that you already love that you
already like because i always say that
if you start with the ones that you
naturally like then you're already ahead
of the game because you it's not like
you have to learn to like it you already
like it
yeah i think that's great advice one of
the things i know i've told you this
before but
one of the things i love about your
approach is it's a positive
uh approach and you can control the
outcome approach versus the um
the motivation of deprivation which as
you were saying before in the va house
was like it's almost what all of diets
and health you know leads back to you
can't do this you can't do this you can
eat that and
you take a very positive approach which
is one of the things i love about your
work
help me understand from a healthy food
standpoint
um have you come across are there foods
that people
generally regard as healthy but in
actuality
um you might say watch out for them
um that you know people say hey these
are you know
i thought this was good for me but maybe
it's like juice is an example like
sometimes
i feel like people drink a lot of juice
they're like oh but it's natural it's
organic juice i'm like yeah but you're
drinking a 24 ounce
glass of it you know it is such a great
question i and my response to people is
the gosh is in the details you know it's
to clean it up
and and and the and the fact of the
matter is that things that you think
that are healthy that you
get because it's inexpensive it's
convenient you can chug it down easy to
store
you know i always tell people please
look at those details because
uh commercial juices often are sweetened
their sugar sweetened they add sugar to
them
and things that you think they're made
out of like pomegranate juice which is
good for you
when you look on the side oh man there's
like almost no pomegranate juice it's
mostly
sweetened grape juice or something else
and so do look at the ingredients as one
quick way
you know like if you were buying a car
or if you were buying a vacuum cleaner
you're going to be checking out you're
going to do your research on it right
um you're going to be buying some
athletic equipment you're going to be
checking out exactly like
whatever you can find about same thing
with our food um
by the way other things like olive oil
so i didn't realize this but olive oils
many of the commercial ones aren't
all olive oil they've taken canola oil
they've got flaxseed oil they mix them
all together
and they sell it at extra virgin olive
oil so again you know
i think um sort of uh
being sold to you cheap fat vegan is
always good
but actually to pay attention to the
details but that said i mean it's also
very individual
so for example you know if you're on a
blood thinner uh for example
um you want to be careful about some of
the foods that you might eat if you're
on
uh if you've got if you've got um uh
insulin
uh uh issues you got to be careful about
the fruits that you eat as well so you
might want to eat some of them but you
might not
want to eat as much if you are pregnant
uh
and you want to be healthy you know
seafood with healthy omega-3 fatty acids
are good but maybe you
want the mercury that's found in stupid
and get your own healthy
polyunsaturated fatty acids from another
source maybe a plant-based source
so again i think there's a lot of
individuality as well and that's why
getting to know
yourself in your circumstance at the
time
that you're making that decision is
really important getting in touch with
ourselves is something that
um it's the most grounding thing that
you can do for your health
you know getting to to sort of think
about where you are in your life
and what circumstances you're dealing
with and i think some of the choices
that you can make and the things that
you you know suggest i think there's
some that probably
take a little bit of a longer time to
have an impact but there's some that you
start feeling
you'll start feeling better immediately
like i'll walk around the block after
dinner you'll feel better than if you
didn't do it
that night you will feel better yeah
well i'll tell you even and even some
foods can do it there was a study used
looking at kiwis
right so you know little brown furry
things you cut them in half it's like
emerald i love kiwis
so here's the thing research has been
done showing that eating
a couple of kiwis just eating two kiwis
will change your gut bacteria in 24
hours
and in 24 hours you've made more the
fiber in the kiwi and vitamin c has
helped make more
good gut bacteria what does that gut
bacteria do
lowers inflammation helps you lower your
inflammation so
you know it's sort of this when we put
something into our body our body will
respond to it
and it can do it quickly and then
there's this chain reaction of good
things that can actually happen so
that's why making the right choices are
really so important
we do it for our pets we do it for our
children we should do it for ourselves
yeah well i had just a couple more
questions i want to touch on it um
one i want to go back to something you
said a moment ago and i just feel like
it would be a miss if we didn't discuss
it just briefly
um the impact of your emotional
well-being
and your mood on inflammation in your
body particularly you know coming out of
this whole culvert experience for
everyone it's been really really hard
on people of all ages how much does your
mood and your emotional state
impact systemic inflammation in your
body and or just different inflammation
in different parts of your body
yeah you know much more than anyone ever
realized because our brain is not just
for
thinking and cogitating and our emotions
are sort of the outcome
of a lot of things that are going on as
well and if our emotions are off balance
i mean we all know what it feels like to
be
more in balance and we also know what it
feels like i mean all of us do
to feel out of control and lessen
balance when our brain is not in balance
the hormones that our brain secretes
basically are also not in balance and so
it's basically like you know somebody
going to the car dash and turning all
the switches on on
and off and up and down and like
everything is going crazy your fan's
blowing your music's going your
heater's going on and off you know it
and that's what emotional
um that's what when stress emotional
stress does to you so
look um every human on the planet
underwent emotional stress last year
but it's so important for us to get back
in touch with ourselves
and really try to do things that can
help
lower our stress and guess what the
interconnectedness is that
exercising movement can actually lower
stress
um being with people that you like and
love can also
lower stress laughing you know i mean
laughter is
a great medicine it actually makes you
know everybody feels better after
they've laughed about something like
funny
right and that's why by the way if i'm
laughing it makes you smile
it's infectious in the most positive
sense of the word
and eating healthy foods as a community
with people that you care about another
good way
to have that health powwow you know and
you're speaking not only to your friends
about it but you're speaking to your own
body your brain will communicate to your
body and if your body
is better it also helps to control the
emotions in your brain as well
yeah i think that's great advice i mean
it's hard uh in this day and age
especially with everything going on to
remember that we're really social beings
and there's a reason everyone likes to
come together over food is a great
example as you say
um you know i i wanted to ask you just
because we deal so much with athletes of
all ages
um and whether it's tom brady and
professional athletes like tom
you know crossfit champions or you know
people like you or i or others who might
consider
themselves athletes because they like to
play tennis or run or golf or do
whatever they do
um for those athletes that are
really really invested in their training
they might be you know trying to win a
crossfit event or they might be trying
to play
professional sports and they're putting
an extraordinary load on their body in
some fashion through volume or weight or
speed
i imagine they're subject to even
additional
inflammation risk what advice would you
give
those athletes yeah so this has actually
been studied
you know sort of in the lab and and and
also in in people
including in ultra marathoners in people
who are extreme athletes
um olympians you know people that really
have to push themselves
so number one you know um uh
the athletic um world
is remarkable because it really shows
you
the pinnacle of human ability right
that's what we all
celebrate at a game at a competition
you know no matter what it is you know
wrestling boxing
skiing um you know where or even even
riding horses is quite athletic
that's actually showing the human body
um performing at its pinnacle
now here's the thing that we've been
talking about which is balance
balance is not staying at the pinnacle
all the time it's about
getting to the top chilling out and get
reloading and you can get back to the
top if you want it's
it's the kind of it's the cycle it's the
tide coming in
going out you know and that's a really
important thing for
uh athletes to do is to realize you can
push yourself
but what you want to do is to recover as
well as important it is to push
is is the importance of actually
recovery and that's basically if you
think about it if you took
a professional athlete and all you did
every single day is a play that
game you play the super bowl every
single day
all right you're gonna you're gonna wear
out the muscles and what's happening
is that muscles put to that extreme over
that period of time it starts to become
inflamed
and and and it's a natural reaction
because
you know your muscles accumulate lactic
acid there's breakdown
to build new muscle you need to remove
old muscles are there schmutz
in your body that your immune system
needs to clean out
it's all fine and all normal except if
you don't if you don't allow that
downtime to recover then then you start
building up things and that building up
that junk
builds up inflammation even more so they
when they study this in people who are
like
um marathoners like or runners
um if you're actually a jogger okay um
you know
you you do actually get a little bit of
inflammation as your muscles working out
um but then it goes down and then your
muscles are building up they're
regenerating and that's how you get
stronger and stronger
if you're a marathon or training for a
marathon you know as you get closer to
race day
you know your lean body weight you know
your
your your you're you're hyped up you're
like alert
ready for that race you're like
everything is tense ready for that
competition
you know you're in a state of
inflammation in fact it might even take
that state of information to push
through
the ultra marathon but at the end of the
day your body
needs a rest big time to load to calm
turn that volume down
you know every everybody's actually
turned up their favorite song you know
on radio
for a little while to listen to it but
if you don't ever turn that thing down
you're going to blow out your eardrums
same thing for athletes
and so how can athletes do this i mean
number one you know
pro athletes have the have luxury of
having you know physiotherapy
and you know they have a nutritionist
they have a team doc
you know they have schedules i think
it's
it's almost riskier um john for the kind
of the non-pro
athletes that push themselves because we
don't actually have that somebody to
really kind of coach us for the off
switch
with a turn down switch and that's where
i think if you're planning to
you know do anything that is um pushing
yourself
you want to actually balance that for
your health for the good of your health
by actually recovering and i think about
recovery not as
wimping out no absolutely not when
you're recovering is when you're
actually regenerating and building your
muscles so in fact you get stronger
while you're resting
it's only when you actually keep pushing
yourself you don't give your body that
chance
um to regenerate so they actually found
showed that when you're
when you're resting uh like not working
out that's when stem cells can come out
to rebuild
and when you're sleeping that's when
stem cells rebuild your body as well
so you want to get good sleep you want
to have a little downtime
and of course nutrition is really
important as well because you want to um
you know as you actually burn through
your energy
you know your energy expenditure when
you're working out you need to actually
build up your stores again your
your fuel tanks need to be filled back
up yeah and replenish that well you know
it's great it's great advice
and um you know i will say this as we
close will i always enjoy talking to you
because i
take away something new every time and
at least in this conversation you
reminded me how much i like kiwis
and i'm going to drop a couple kiwis
into my morning smoothie tomorrow
and it sounds like other people should
as well so we'll start that tomorrow
that's great well listen it's always
great to speak to you i i you know
i think one of the reasons that you know
we've we always have great conversations
is that
you know we're not we're not extreme
people we're pretty reasonable people
what we do the question is
you know how do we uh how do we keep
thinking about the things that are
important to us and i think that's
really what we've shared in this
conversation is
inflammation is something that we do
want to be mindful of
we want to actually make sure that we
stay in motion you know like that old
saying
a body in motion stays in motion
and that's absolutely true true and it's
something that i think tb12
um really kind of stands for and is so
good for health
yeah and i just i really appreciate your
comments around recovery because that's
you know a big part of what we talk
about here at tb12
and uh we take it one step further and
even say it's about active recovery
right so as you said it's not about
wimping out
it's actually investing in the recovery
process you know eating right
you know hydrating properly even moving
a little bit the day after a hard
workout you know you don't want to do a
two-hour bike ride then just lay on the
couch all day the next day
your body doesn't flush out all the
toxins so go for that go for a longer
walk that that next day so
i think so much what you say resonates
so closely with us here at tb12 so
sincerely appreciate you taking the time
my pleasure it's always great to be
there great talking to you all
good talking john good