today I'm going to talk about how to eat anti-inflammatory foods to heal your brain help you stop feeling tired all the time and to avoid weight gain all right that's a three fer and I'm going to tell you how to do it so to begin let's dive in and talk about inflammation what is inflammation well inflammation is a very important part of our immune system our immune system is part of our normal Health defense so we really want to have a good strong immune system and in fact we want to have a good strong inflammatory system as well I'm going to explain why inflammation uh is so good and also so bad can be so bad at the same time so first your immune system is like an army of super soldiers uh with a lot of different types of cells and each type of cell is designed to uh accomplish a different type of task just like soldiers that have are trained for different kinds of uh with different kinds of weapons that's how you're system also works as well there is a first responder component to your immune system it's called the innate immune uh component of the immune system and that's it's called first responder I call it first responder because when you have an injury tissue damage you cut yourself you fall down scrape your knee all right the first thing that happens is that your immune system wakes up there's a 911 call to your immune system it says let's go send First Responders out there to take a look at the damage and to really clean things up um and and help save the tissue locally all right from infection now think about it you scrape your knee all of a sudden you rip open the skin it starts to bleed and now you've got uh bacteria and germs all kinds of other things kind of floating around into your wound man you could get infected so don't want to do that your immune system sends special cells through your innate immune uh arm of your immune system and these cells are called fagos sites um fagos means devour eating and these cells actually eat up bacteria and other debris got a little dirt particle little speck of this little speck of that and these fagos sites are they have different names they different types there's macrofagos and monocytes and nutrifil listen if you're in the medical community you're going to want to know about what these cells are but if you're just um learning about this and you don't need to know the nitty-gritty let me just assure you that we know about monocytes macrophases neutrophils there phagocytes but they're really First Responders all right um it's like police firemen EMTs they rush to the site um of an accident cut yourself and what they do is they devour all the debris and they kill off all the bacteria all right they eat up all the the cells are dying too they'll eat it up in order to be able to make more room for new tissue that's required to heal so healing actually starts happening right from the get-go after injury now other cells come in white blood cells or Loop go sites all right and they come in uh into the area as well they're kind of like the secondary Squad that comes in and they begin releasing cyto kindes and these are chemical Messengers uh in that space that basically amplifies inflammatory attack against bacteria and for the kleo right that's the innate immune system it's called innate because anytime you get a cut injury that's what's going to happen whether it's surgery or trauma all right now this inflammatory response which I just described to you fago sites white blood cells recreating more inflammation clean up eat Devour the bacteria clean up all the cellular debris Munch up all the dirt clean up that wound for healing this type of acute inflammation meaning acute meaning happening right away after an injury that is so important for normal healing and for health you got to have it so inflammation is a normal healthy uh part of the body process in the body and um it uh goes on to allow you to heal and basically inflammation starts right away very soon think about it you cut yourself what's the thing that happens within minutes say you're you got some swelling in that area bleeding and swelling swelling is inflammation all right um that's going to last a few days and then your immune immune system will say you know what cleaned up most of the spot and um let's back it down so then the immune system uh will start making a signal called Incan 10 I il10 that acts like a volume switch it turns down inflammation eventually turns it off all right so you don't want that continuously we got it all cleaned up EMTs go home fire chief go home the police go back on your beat all right now that's what normally happens and that's why inflammation is good that's why we actually don't want to wipe out all capability for inflammation in our body a lot of people misunderstand it's a it's an urban legend that all inflammation is bad no the ability to have short burst of inflammation is absolutely vital for your health okay so when does inflammation turn bad well inflammation turns bad when that acute response you know that 911 response first responder response doesn't get turned off remember I told you interlop contend is like the off switch volume down go home all right but if that doesn't happen what winds up happening is that the inflammation keeps up growing and growing and growing and bigger and bigger and now you've gone from acute inflammation to chronic inflammation meaning when it actually has supposed to have gone away it doesn't go away and it's there chronically all right this would be an example of this you know if you think about uh why this is bad acute inflammation is like you got to light a campfire if you're out in a campground you know put the stones around the campfire light the fire you know toast your uh uh marshmallows and wieners right it's like basically stay warm tell ghost stories or whatever okay um that's what a campfire is and then and and you want that it keeps you warm it has a purpose but before you go to bed at night Under the Tent or in the camper you're going to put out the fire right so you're going to put out the fire and that's like inflammation go happening because you want it and then being turned off because you don't want it anymore not safe to actually have the the the fire burning all night long necessarily okay now chronic inflammation that fire not only doesn't go out but like a wind blows and and takes a spark out of that campfire and uh blows it into the woods and now the forest catches on fire and now you've gone from a campfire to a forest fire and that's exactly what happens when acute inflammation doesn't stop doesn't turn off and turns into chronic inflammation and then spreads chronic inflammation is like the campfire that became the forest fire you can't put out all right um and by the way why does this happen in the body well it can happen uh if there's a lot of bacteria or virus invading you and you just need to continuously fight it off right that's why you know if you have bad infection your inflam inflammatory response is going to happen for a long time or if you have abnormal tissue growing like cancer um you're going to get an inflammatory response your body says hey this doesn't belong there we're got to keep on trying to get rid of it now now the other thing that happen if you have a foreign body lodged in your B you know foreign body like a foreign object lodged in your body uh and this provoking an injury injury response then you can also get chronic inflammation as well and that's actually what um we we used to see with breast implants uh is you get a little level of chronic inflammation going right around the edge of the capsule for the implant and you know it actually translated into overall body infl uh INF chronic inflammation as well now the other way you can actually get chronic inflammation is if the body's immune system turns against itself all right our immune system is not supposed to attack the healthy us it's supposed to only go after the bad guys you know the the bacteria the viruses the dirt whatever okay or the cancer but there are conditions uh where our immune system misbehaving and actually tackling our healthy cells and that is known as an autoimmune condition autoimmune Auto meaning our self immune it's our immune system reacting against our healthy tissues that's why autoimmune disease is so devastating because it sets into motion chronic inflammation look we're always going to be around our healthy us and so when you're trying to attack the healthy us um and we don't go away it sets into motion chronic attack all right autoimmune disease highly inflammatory lupus rheumatoid arthritis inflammatory bowel disease these are situations of chronic inflammation okay now I'm telling you this because it's important to understand that when you're chronically inflamed that causes you to be fatigued all right your whole body is inflamed and the proteins uh associated with inflammation are called cyoc kindes These are the signals that are released they're like really skyh high in your uh body you can measure them they're all over your body and they also get into your brain because your brain is connected to your blood you get blood flow that goes to your brain as well you got inflammation everywhere including in your brain now let's take a look at the brain effects so you understand uh because we're talking about brain and fatigue and and and uh weight gain and weight loss an inflamed brain is highly compromised when your brain's inflamed you got problems with memory you got um problems with executive function you're not as cognitively sharp as you'd like to be makes it hard to make good decisions and by the way sometimes when you need to need make a good decision is when you're actually choosing food you want to choose healthy food you need to be clear of Mind eating healthy takes a clear head you can't be brain foggy and that's why an inflamed brain makes it hard for you to eat in healthy ways and not only might you choose bad quality food or harmful food you might also overeat all right and if you overeat ultr processed foods in large quantities it's which is actually packed with pro-inflammatory artificial preservatives artificial coloring artificial flavoring artificial colors all right um guess what you overload the calories now you're going to gain weight now it's going to and the extra body fat that you're going to get visceral fat is going to become eventually become more inflamed now You' just added to your inflammation uh your chronic inflation now this time's coming from body fat all right so don't forget when I'm telling you how brain inflammation uh is connected to weight gain but brain inflammation is also connected to fatigue now fatigue is actually um something that we don't truly have a great understanding of believe it or not there's a difference between being tired I need to go to bed versus I am so fatigued I'm wiped out I can't do anything all right and and we've all been there you know think about the time you had a really bad flu and you're laid up in bed man you don't want to do anything you are so tired all you want to do is sleep imagine if you had to do a crossword puzzle or you had to plan a vacation or plan a wedding forget about it it's not going to happen like you're like man let me get over this sickness and and I'll deal with it after that so that's why fatigue actually can happen when the brain is all Al inflamed and when you have whole body inflammation as well and the weight gain we talked about it um as well is that when you're inflamed um in general it doesn't take very much for you know poor decision- making to cause you to overeat or eat Ultra processed foods which helps you gain extra harmful body fat don't forget food is our fuel load up in our fuel if we're not controlling the amount or the quality of fuel we have the amount of fuel we put in our tank or the quality of fuel we put into our tank that's the food that we're eating for our body um our fat cells are going to grow our fat cells are fuel tanks for our body just like you know your gas tank in your car is a storage tank for the fuel you put in at the gas station the petrol all right but in our body uh how we actually store fuel I mean we we put some into our muscles so we can actually you know uh and we've got some in our blood so we can actually do our thing but we store it really well okay uh when you hear about insulin uh uh being coming up and drawing glucose in the cells one place that we sell store uh energy fuel is in our fat cells and unlike a car where you actually have a fuel tank that's rigid so you try to overflow overfill the car's gas tank let's say the clicker is broken on the nozzle you know it'll it'll run out of the car tank it'll run down the bottom of the side of the car run the wheels pull around your feet and guess what you're standing in the middle of a high flammable toxic mess dangerous right fortunately that's why they put the clicker on the gas station so we don't that doesn't happen to us but we don't have a clicker in our body we can keep eating we can keep eating we can keep eating and the foggier we are brain foggier we are the more inflamed we are we might be eating more not making good decisions and guess what happens especially we're eating poor quality food ultr processed food okay not eating anti-inflammatory food we're actually eating pro-inflammatory meaning inflammation stimulating food now whatever was going on in your body from the inflammation is getting a lot worse all right that becomes a real problem because as we eat more bring in more fuel into our body and store more fuel into our fat our fat cells expand oh you're still eating let's put let's load up another Fat cell fuel tank boom it expands all right a fat cell can expand three times in size oh you're still eating I spend another one oh we're out of fat guess what let's use stem cells to create new fat cell uh new fat cells now we're actually creating new fuel tanks and we can blow those up and again and again and again you can kind of see how overeating over time really sets you up for gaining body fat and the first place that actually um is where it's dangerous to gain the fat isn't under your arm isn't under your chin isn't the muffin top th those are cosmetic issues you know you might not feel good um if you accumulate that uh and of course we you've all had the experience right you're taking a shower in the morning you step out you're drying yourself off and out of the corner of your eye you look in the mirror at your naked body and you might see a lump or a bump that you didn't want to be there that's not what I'm talking about the harmful dangerous fat is a St is a kind of fat called visceral fat that accumulates inside the tube of your body I don't care if you're a big person or a thin person all right um you could you still have a tube and that visceral fat grows around inside the tube of your body around your uh AB AB domen in your belly it's called viscera because the word viscera means guts so visceral fat is a fat that grows around your guts it's kind of like a baseball glove that can wrap around your organ and obviously you don't want that to be growing and growing and growing because the bigger it grows it starts to become inflamed huge mounts of fat become very inflammatory and now uh you're you're actually even contributing to the inflammation with excess fat all right you get it so this is why we want to actually think about limiting controlling lowering inflammation and there's a lot of ways to actually do that but you need to sort of think about that so we disconnected the brain with gaining weight with fatigue uh as well all really really important connections now I'll tell you one additional thing that uh where uh inflammation uh can lead you to uh gain extra body fat as well normal healthy fat produces a hormone because our your fat is actually an organ in your body all right called adapost tissue um the the adapost organ produces a hormone called adiponectin that's a p n adipo NE C TI i n adipo nectin it's a hormone hormone made by healthy fat and what adiponectin does is it actually collaborates with insulin okay that's your other hormone for bringing in glucose and a dipine makes insulin more efficient so you can actually take blood glucose uh that's in in your bloodstream after after eating a meal and draw it down into your cells more efficiently so you can really store that fuel a dipine and made by healthy fat now if you have a lot of inflammation and if the fat is inflamed guess what your fat doesn't make a dip antin normally can't make a dipine in fact sometimes a dip intin levels are low if you have low a dipine nectin the insulin won't work well and then you're not going to be able to draw in glucose and then your blood glucose levels will be high that's to set up for metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes right so all these complicated things I'm telling you about are all linked to inflammation in other words that process inflammation that helps us clean up a wound that first responder thing that I talked about at the very beginning of this video um that's so important that turns on and then turns off when it's no longer deleted hey EMTs go back home if it doesn't turn off and everybody's there and piles on whatever is going to happen and then starts to create problems with inflammation and then you it spreads and now your whole body's inflamed and your brain's inflamed and you're not making good decisions and you might be over eating and you're going to be growing fat and you're going to be tired really really tired that is really why uh we're linking all these things together you want to avoid that vicious cycle so let's talk about an anti-inflammatory diet because a lot of people talk about anti-inflammatory diets as if it there's sort of like one Formula One magic formula that all you got to do is follow it and you're going to be healthy not so all right I'm a scientist so I'm quick to tell you when when something is not exactly that simple all right and as most things are nutrition people try to oversimplify things and I think that does a disservice to you guys they're watching videos like this one because you want to know what the details are sure you might want a simple onoff magic bullet but really let's be real uh life is complicated and our bodies are incredibly sophisticated so let's figure out the nuances so you don't take a step in the wrong direction and we understand things more precisely all right okay so what I just told you basically is that the anti-inflammatory diet is a general approach but there's a lot of ways to actually approach an anti-inflammatory diet different types of anti-inflammatory diets but they're all designed to lower or prevent inflammation lower or prevent inflammation chronic inflammation all right so let me just tell you if you want to actually try to prevent uh inflammation super simple way to Embark to get started on an anti-inflammatory diet is simply to cut out Ultra processed foods you know the stuff that you go into the grocery store and you're Buy in a box or a jar or a bag and you uh and it's made in a factory with a machine that squeezes it out they add artificial preservatives artificial coloring artificial flavoring maybe artificial sweeteners all right all these stabilizers take a look at the ingredient um of whatever package thing you're buying and see if you understand if you can pronounce the chemicals but also see if you understand what they're doing in there if you're if you don't understand what those chemicals are actually doing the role of what they're doing in there it's probably good good chance it's an ultra processed food it's almost certainly going to be an ultr processed food it's could be in the freezer section it could be in the dry goods section all right could be anywhere in a grocery store once you start seeing what a factory does to Whole Foods you know the say that if it's something your grandmother if you look at the ingredient label and it's something your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food it's probably Ultra process that's a simple way to to kind of um nail the identification of that as well well look there's a lot of data that's pretty uncontestable now that eating a lot of ultra processed food shortens longevity raises inflammation uh puts you at risk for cognitive function makes you tired all right and also causes you to gain weight and one of the reasons that that Ultra processed foods does is that the chemicals in Ultra processed foods actually damages your gut microbiome these are the healthy bacteria that live in your gut mostly in your colon all right that's sort of the last part of your digestive system 39 trillion of them and these healthy bacteria form a community a colony like a good neighborhood a good neighborhood has got diversity it's got um people that work harmoniously and are friendly with each other they play nicely together and they make the they make the entire neighborhood a safer place that's what good healthy gut bacteria do so when you hear about the gut microbiome and good gut health we're talking about a healthy diverse neighborhood of different types of bacteria that all play nicely together and have a function one of the most important functions of a good healthy gut bacteria is lowering inflammation and the way that gut bacteria lower inflammation they produce something called short chain fatty acids or scaas scfas and these short chain fatty acids we know what they are they're they're chemicals called proprionate berate and acetate if you're a science geek or you're a stickler for details you're going to want to know that the three scaas made by healthy gut microbiome uh that's good for um lowering inflammation are proprionate beate and acetate if you're not a science geek and and you're not a biohacker and you don't want to know about these things don't worry all I'll just tell you is that when you feed your gut bacteria and make them happy and well fed just like a pet dog all right the bacteria uh return the favor you know they show they love you by actually releasing these short chain fatty acids and the short chain fatty acids lower inflammation and they also help to boost the immune system so you've got better immune uh function as well better protective immune function all really good the other thing that the healthy gut bacteria does is it from your gut it text messages your brain and it has your brain release things like social hormones there's a hormone called oxytocin that um healthy gut bacteria releases so listen good stuff right so one way to actually lower inflammation in your body is to cut out Ultra processed foods because Ultra processed foods damage your Healthy gut bacteria when you damage your Healthy gut bacteria you're disrupting the neighborhood there goes the neighborhood and now the bacteria are not so happy they're unable to make those short chain fatty acids and the same at the levels that you need and so rather than tame inflammation inflammation levels start to rise okay so if you want an anti-inflammatory diet cut out ultrapress Foods you know I I know the ideal thing is to cut out all Ultra Ultra processor that's difficult I mean we're surrounded by this uh by by Ultra processed foods but really be mindful to cut them down or or cut them out be even better all right so that's one kind of anti-inflammatory diet another kind of anti-inflammatory diet is to add specific natural chemicals that are found in our food and these natural chemicals are now shown by research to lower inflammation in your body right so the first way is actually just to avoid the things that provoke inflammation the second one is actually Tamp it down turn it down so what are some um examples of bioactives natural chemicals found in foods that turned out inflammation well the one of the simplest ones is Vitamin C seas in Charlie it's called ascorbic acid all right it's a powerful antioxidant but it's also a powerful anti-inflammatory substance as well natural substance so you can actually get into an anti-inflammatory diet mode by eating foods that contain a lot of vitamin C all right what are some examples of of vitamin C containing foods strawberries Tomatoes red bell peppers broccoli and broccoli rub and broccolini Citrus oranges grapefruits all right they're packed with vitamin C cantaloupe has vitamin C kiwi I'm I'm a big fan of the Kiwi very good source of vitamin C kale has vitamin C brussels sprouts a vitamin C guava which is a tropical fruit also has vitamin C and mustard greens I remember my grandmother used to love to cook mustard greens it had a little slightly bitter taste but bitter is better great source of vitamin C all right so if you started eat foods that actually had more vitamin C in it you are on an anti-inflammatory diet that's another way to do it now how do we know this actually works well a study in Japan from the Miyagi Cancer Center Research Center all right in Japan looked at the effect of vitamin C containing foods on a super inflammatory condition autoimmune condition called lupus okay lupus when it flares causes inflammation everywhere it is really uncomfortable and it can even be life-threatening so what this re these researchers did is they studied 196 women who were all kind of middle-aged so they were average age of about 40 and these women were um uh coming from uh hospitals 21 different hospitals in this area of Japan called the Miyagi prefecture and all of the women had in common lupus but they were either inactive or mild lupus all right so not really a problem when I say came from hospitals they were drawn from the records of the hospitals all right all throughout the uh this this area this area of Japan and what the researchers did is they monitor the women by interviewing to find out what they ate and then they also monitored their health conditions to see uh who wound up actually having lupus symptoms or lupus flares a lupus flare is a think about like a like a a flare up on your barbecue grill right you pour some oil in there whoit like the whole thing like lights up well that's what a lupus flare is except that it it takes it causes super acute inflammation on top of the chronic inflammation it's a very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation so they wanted to find out what people were eating and who wanted having flares and here's what they discovered the researchers in this study discovered that those women who consumed the most foods containing high levels of vitamin C strawberries Tomatoes broccoli so on and so forth they had those vitamin C Food eaters had a 74% decrease in the risk of developing an active inflammatory flare of Lupus wow that's amazing we don't really have drugs that can actually do that all right and that's compared to the women who basically had very very low Vitamin C intake Foods intake that uh contain vitamin C all right and in fact This research study even found the amount of vitamin C that had the most beneficial effect and that was 154 milligram per day of vitamin C which is equivalent to the amount of vitamin see found in 1 and A2 largish oranges or 1 and 1/2 cups of sliced strawberries not very much right or two cups of broccoli all right or eight cups of uncooked cherry tomatoes now you might go whoa that's a lot of cherry tomatoes but if you came to my kitchen I could take eight cups of cherry tomatoes and cook it uh into a sauce that you could actually eat easily eat in a meal right so think about it that take extra virgin olive oil i' take some garlic I would sauté it flavor up the O olive oil um I like to sear Tomatoes let them blister and then pop open and then cook it down okay and then turn it low and simmer it and that changes the natural chemical in tomatoes called like aine that's even better because it it's also an anti-inflammatory substance so you can have whole tomatoes Garden Tomatoes or you can really start to ramp up the anti-inflammatory effect of tomatoes by cooking it into a tomato sauce these are all um very reasonable foods to actually eat that can comprise an anti-inflammatory diet all right so the key is that you know even from the amounts of vitamin C in the loop in the Miyagi study the lupus study hey these are actually pretty attainable they're not huge quantities of food uh one and a half oranges couple of sliced strawberries two cups of broccoli you know doable right okay so you can apply this to a 7-Day program of mixing it up uh and having different kinds of vitamin C containing anti-inflammatory foods so you know how would you do this over a week a 7-Day plan all right so here's the suggestion of how you could do this take some of uh your take cantaloupe which is Vitamin C slice it up uh or have some strawberries every morning one morning cantalope one morning strawberries or mix them together however you want to do it all right it's just fine in the morning drink a cup of black coffee all right right I like to drink espresso but you know you can actually have an Americano which isn't quite as strong but if you're going to put milk in it don't use dairy creamer because Dairy forms soap bubbles around the bioactive the useful bioactive and coffee called chlorogenic acid and those soap bubbles when you drink them will actually just run a lot of the good stuff the chlorogenic acid right um through your gut and you won't absorb it into your bloodstream so don't use dairy milk it's the fat in Dairy that actually forms those soap bubbles but you can use um nut milk almond milk cashew milk soy milk those are fine they won't cause those bubbles so drink some coffee in the morning CH chlorogenic acid lowers inflammation for lunch have a salad red bell peppers broccoli or broccolini have a kale salad okay kale with strawberries uh might be a way of doing it and oh by the way if you wanted to uh put some extra virgin olive oil which has hydroxy to resol anti-inflammatory add a little bit of balsamic vinegar into it acetic acid acetic acid helps to fight harmful body fat you know about this whole issue about apple cider vinegar well balsamic vinegar will do the same thing all right now you make that into a salad with kale and strawberries pretty tasty lunch right or you could sauté uh some broccoli or broccolini some sliced garlic which contains allisin hey Allison and garlic is also anti-inflammatory and if you want to mix things together uh with different veggies you can make cherry tomatoes into a sauce you can put on a pasta just don't eat too much or you can use tomatoes and make it into a Ratatouille which is actually a dish from the south of France that has eggplants and tomatoes and onions lots of Veggie delicious it's an absolutely delicious way to have summer vegetables you know then you can also eat maybe for dessert eat a large orange or maybe eat an orange and a half uh a day all right uh and then have a cup of green tea uh because the cakin in green tea one of them is called egcg guess what anti-inflammatory so I don't need to create a 7-Day plan because I just told you a way and a method of approaching it don't this is how I recommend don't go crazy memorizing I got to be this like a robot and I got to do that or a robot look at all the types of ingredients I just told you about the foods that can vitamin C mix it up yourself DIY do it yourself 7-Day plan is a lot easier when it's personalized to you it's a lot easier to stick with it suits your personal preferences all right now what I want to do is look a little bit more in detail at some anti-inflammatory foods because you might not realize how useful some of these foods are so we talked about tomatoes right tomatoes not a vegetable it's actually a fruit and tomatoes by the way originally came from uh South and Central America uh and they weren't red so uh it turns out that Spanish explorers that were looking in South America discovering in South America they found you know the people there were eating this amazing looking fruit uh that was a tomato uh with the vines uh and they uh were given some as a gift and they brought tomatoes on the vine back to their sponsors uh for their voyages or exploration back in Spain and Italy as gifts and they were originally uh orange orange yellow tomatoes in fact they were golden in color right so what they named a tomato when it was brought to Europe is um uh what it resembled now the size of the Tomato was also and the look of the Tomato was kind of like an apple right and so they called it Golden Apple pal Apple Doro would be uh golden Pomodoro oh tomato sauce pomodoro sauce Pomodoro is the Italian word that describes a tomato and that's because tomatoes were originally gold now over time farmers and Growers actually um figured out how to bring out the red color and make a lot of lopine Bloom Blossom you know that lopine is a is a natural it's a carotenoid that actually makes the tomato red and that is actually the super anti-inflammatory stuff that you actually want so lopen has been studied it actually improves brain health and helps cognition uh lycopene can also help to fight fatigue by improving your circulation Mak your circulation healthier and lycopene also has been shown to improve your metabolism by igniting uh Brown fat to fight your white fat now brown fat is a type of fat in your body that if you actually trigger it with lopine and other things like chlorogenic acid and coffee it'll fire up uh kind of like a space heater and when it fires up like a space heater it's got it needs to draw energy to fire up right where do you think it draws that energy from Brown fat firing up has to draw that energy from excess harmful white fat visceral fat in your Tubi your body and so lopine ignites it it's like if you were had a gas range and you wanted to turn on the Range to borrow boil some water what do you do you go up there and you turn a knob click click click whoosh the flame goes on that's what brown fat does and guess what lopine will actually achieve that effect as well okay so that's one example of of a food that we've talked about what about apples an apple day keeps a doctor way right actually it's probably two or maybe even three apples a day that's actually shown been shown to have benefit but guess what apples have apples have a bioactive called chlorogenic acid chlorogenic acid is anti-inflammatory and for those of you who have really sharp ears and great memories you might say wait a minute Dr Lee mentioned chlorogenic acid and coffee too right absolutely coffee has chlorogenic acid but so do other Foods apples also have chlorogenic acid and chlorogenic acid is good for brain health good for circulation so you get better blood flow to the brain all right um improves cognition uh chlorogenic acid also reduces fatigue all right helps you perform better and longer and chlorogenic acid also um turns on the brown fat click click click whoosh to burn down the white fat out of tube of your body and so an apple a day turns on all these processes to actually start to fight harmful body fat lower inflammation there's also by the way dietary fiber and apple and apples which then feature gut microbiome and the gut microbiome releases remember what I told you short chain fatty acids proprionate acetate pate and that guess what that does lowers inflammation we talked about tomatoes we talked about apples oh I think you know if I were cooking uh a lunch preparing a lunch I could easily take that kale chop up some apples as well and make a kale apple salad all right so look I'm just trying to show you that it's possible to mix things up you don't have to be a robot and feel like you're stuck in a box you got to memorize everything be creative all right you got totally be creative um so apples have chlorogen oh let me just mention one thing about apples apples are beneficial because not only the chlorogenic acid and a dietary fiber but apples also have something called ursolic acid on their skin and the ursolic acid is healing because it actually uh stimulates your stem cells to come up to help regenerate the body from the inside out who doesn't want that all right now orsolic acid is in the skin of the apple and the skin of other things like peaches and pears uh as well but in we're talking about the Apple here and this is the reason why you want to eat the skin but if you're going to eat the skin of an apple you want to buy apples that are organic because research has shown that in uh fruits that are sprayed with pesticides like conventional apples the pesticides can penetrate the skin like like 20% penetration into the skin and guess what you can't wash that out all right you can't wash that off so if you buy organic you're going to avoid the pesticide being sprayed on the skin of the Apple all right so that's one one of the reasons you want to buy organic and more on this I'll tell you in video at some point all right we talked about tomatoes we talked about apples here's another the third one of food I'm going to talk about I love to talk about tree nuts what are tree nuts you probably guessed pistachios macadamias uh wuts almonds all kinds of um pecans all kinds of tree nuts they're delicious snacks right well turns out that tree nuts have healthy types of fats called monounsaturated fatty acids they're great source of diet fiber feeds the gut microbiome feeds your Healthy gut bacteria and that leads to the production of the short chain fatty acids lowers inflammation so the tree nut as a snack think trail mix when you eat those snack on them all right tasty great sorts of protein too and if you're over 40 you should be thinking about eating more protein to keep up your muscle weight that's very very important to have protein as we get older all right um and tree nuts are great way to get that protein and to get the healthy fats and to get the dietary fiber um which then helps you got microbiome now TR nuts have been studied for improving brain health it can lower brain inflammation they're also good for lowering fatigue all right and tree nuts have been studied they can actually help weight loss as well why because they stimulate the gut microbiome and they actually turn on thermogenesis as well thermogenesis is that click click click whoosh thermal heat Genesis generating the heat like a space heater and that's what brown fat does to white fat to burn it out of the tube of your body and tree nuts can actually do the same thing now I you know like to include pine nuts in when I talk about tree nuts because it's one of my favorite nuts and if somebody who's really uh knowledgeable or sharp will say wait a minute Dr Le a pine nut is not a natural nut a tree nut it's actually a seed from a pine tree okay you're right I stand corrected but I love pine nuts and they also have healthy fats dietary fiber good for the gut microbiome and I love to kind of just lightly toast pine nuts if you have a a stainless steel uh Skillet um and you turn uh and you turn on your heat uh put the pine nuts on them just move them around over the Heat and you'll start to smell this lovely kind of um what's the right word roasting smell of the pine nuts you don't need to do very much just in order to be able to get some of that Aroma going and then you sprinkle that into a salad or some other cooked vegetable dish absolutely delicious way to actually have that particular um seed which I throw into the hopper of the tree nuts okay now uh let's talk about another food uh this one you're going to be more familiar with probably which is green tea I I grew up drinking green tea uh I can easily drink you know four or six cups of green tea a day um green tea has polyphenols one of the polyphenols is called EG CG all right e is in Edward G is in George C is in Charlie G is in George all right e egcg is this natural chemical that uh uh When We Sip tea gets into our bloodstream and does all kinds of good things it can cut off the blood supply feeding cancers a really powerful anti-angiogenic um substance uh egcg the kaken can also turn on Brown fet click click click whoosh shink down a harmful excess visceral fat in the body can actually shrink your waistline actually because you're getting rid of that fat in the tube the tube shrinks a little bit so you can tighten your belt a little bit more you've lost weight fit in your pants all right the other thing that egcg does is actually lowers inflammation powerful anti-inflammatory and in fact it affects inflammation in the brain as well it's also calming when you're stressed uh you know you're you tend to get inflamed in your body as well tea is a calming beverage and you just talk to anybody from Asia uh who drinks green tea they'll they'll tell you that that's really why they drink it so good for the brain good for fighting fatigue good for weight loss that's green tea definitely one of the foods that you want to know as part of the anti-inflammatory diet DIY mix it up yourself but I'm just giving you the ingredients for making an anti-inflammatory diet you get to choose uh which dishes you make make good choices all right and you're going to have diverse food it's going to be delicious all right now another uh type of food I want to talk about are vegetables that are like kale that are called brassa they contain a natural chemical called suanes that's what makes broccoli have its characteristic um sulfury type of smell all right oat Aroma I should call it um and and suanes which have a sulfur component to it which hence suor Ane actually is powerful anti-inflammatory so broccoli anti-inflammatory and guess what eating broccoli is good for brain health it lowers inflammation in your brain good for fatigue it counters fatigue by countering inflammation and bras uh the sorop fane's also been shown to go like this click click click whoosh turn on the brown fat to activate thermogenesis and burn away the harmful body fat trapped in a tube of the body shrinking your waist size all right so baras vegetable are really good now maybe you were a kid and you didn't eat your broccoli but there's so many other Braska vegetables there's kale there's cabbage there's bok choy all kinds of liy greens definitely worth uh checking out uh uh when you want to plan a healthy meal all right I'm focusing on the healthy elements you can add a few other things to it uh I would encourage you to cut down or cut out anything that's Ultra processed of course check this out I got a free guide on the five drinks to help remove fat from your liver and it's free I walk you through why your liver is so important why you should take care to make sure it's functioning properly in your body and the five drinks I recommend to enjoying to support it all you have to do is click on the link below and enjoy so that's the second kind of of anti-inflammatory diet where you're adding foods that contain natural bioactives that fight inflammation first kind of diet was just removing harmful things that cause inflammation like Ultra processed food second way actually eat more Foods focus on the foods that actually can fight have anti-inflammatory substances that can fight inflammation all right and then the Third Kind of anti-inflammatory diet um kind of Builds on some of those elements that we just talked about but it's actually aimed at improving your gut microbiome remember what I told you your gut microbiome is healthy bacteria a healthy community that lives in your gut and we got to feed them so when we when we go eat something for ourselves our humans El we're eating we're going to absorb it choo choo choo we absorb it in our stomach it gets into our bloodstream hopefully it's good stuff you've chosen so then you've got good healthy bioactives floating in your bloodstream the rest of it goes trickles down your gut okay all the way down to your colon and that becomes the food the pet food for your gut microbiome and just like you if you have a dog or a cat or a parakeet or goldfish you're probably remembering to feed it every day right same deal when we actually think about our gut microbiome we are feeding the healthy bacteria in our gut if we choose to feed them healthy good quality food they're going to pay us back really nicely by giving us those short chain fatty acids so Third Kind of anti-inflammatory diet third approach is just to uh focus on foods that nurture and optimize your gut microbiome remember what I told you good healthy gut microbiome it does the job of lowering inflammation all by themselves all 39 trillion of them all right that's scalable impact right so that's a really effective way of actually uh amping up your anti-inflammation in your body let your gut bacteria do the work for you all right so how do you um support and optimize your gut microbiome using an anti-inflammatory diet what are the components well here's the good news that foods from the produce section of the grocery store the farmers market the colorful Foods you know when they say eat the rainbow those colors are actually coming from bioactives that are called prebiotics they feed the gut microbiome the gut microbiome loves it it keeps it healthy it's kind of the Miracle Grow the fertilizer for your uh healthy gut bacteria so do eat produce that actually is colorful that'll be helpful the second thing uh that that uh happens is that you choose foods for an anti-inflammatory gut microbiome centered diet you want to choose foods with have dietary fiber all right dietary fiber you can look it up um obviously if you have broccoli like a stock of broccoli it's got some stringy stuff in it or a piece of celery you're getting some Fiber and you know it mango also has a lot of fiber even though it's soft but here's a surprise that you might uh not realize is that some soft foods also have a lot of dietary fiber avocado that's a soft green stuff actually is a really really good source of dietary fiber another good source of uh dietary fiber are mushrooms if you're a mushroom lover like I am and you saut some mushrooms you don't need very much oil to sauté them they'll soften up um give off some of other juices the mushroom even though it's soft it's packed with dietary fiber kind of dietary fiber is called beta D glucan all right so you eat foods that actually contain these polyphenols that feed the gut microbiome as prebiotics and then you eat foods that have a lot of dietary fiber and you're feeding your gut bacteria hey you're really on your way to taking good care of your gut microbiome which will pay you back by releasing short chain fatty acids and lowering inflammation in other words by an anti-in inflammatory diet is a diet that actually feeds the gut microbiome and treats it really really well now what about actually eating Foods in this realm that actually contribute bacteria directly Bingo you want to do that for an anti-inflammatory diet as well yogurt all right um I know it's a dairy product but it's actually filled with healthy gut bacteria and uh and if you have whole yogurt that's even better because whole yogurt the full fat yogurt even though it has saturated fat has been shown through human studies that what does is that actually um nourishes our gut microbiome the bacteria and the yogurt contribute to the healthy neighborhood of bacteria in our gut and then it releases short chain fatty acids inflammation goes down with yogurt but what's interesting is that the uh healthy bacteria also control blood cholesterol lower lipids in our blood right that's what your doctor prescribes statins for I know I do that like for patients wow you're telling me that yogurt with good healthy bacteria can actually work in a similar way well it's not similar like a Statin but it does the same thing um and what it does is by activating the gut microbiome you let the bacteria take care of the blood cholesterol and this is why whole yogurt what you want to get you don't want to get the the low fat you want to get the whole all right I'm going tell you why in a second you want to get the whole yogurt actually doesn't cause your blood cholesterol to rise even though you're eating saturated fat and dairy guess what it's anti-inflammatory and your blood cholesterol levels go down with whole yogurt now I made a point about whole yogurt because you don't want to actually get lowfat yogurt even though that's the Natural Instinct of virtually everyone just go ahead and go to the back of a grocery store by where they keep the yogurt and just you know stand there with your camera if you want to and tape people they everybody goes straight for that lowfat yogurt because we've been brainwashed into thinking that the yo lowfat part is actually going to be healthier for us turns out not true not true because recently we've been finding out by research that the low fat yogurt you pull all the fat out of it it becomes kind of a thick runny milk not very appetizing it certainly doesn't taste like yogurt all right doesn't have that creamy mouth feel to it so the manufacturers will add emulsifiers or thickeners food thickeners into it like Kangen and polysorbate 80 and so on and so forth and what research has found is that these emulsifiers these food thickeners some of them actually hurt or kill the gut microbiome exactly what you don't want so ironically people who eat low-fat yogurt and might have damaged their gut microbiome not surprisingly their inflammation levels don't go down they kind of go up and their blood cholesterol even though they're having lowfat yogurt actually goes up because you actually hurt the gut microbiome that make sense all right so yogurt is actually a way of actually adding yogurt is probiotic uh is another way of actually creating this third type of anti inflammatory foods what are some of the other foods that actually can be useful sauerkraut you know you've probably had sauerkraut before it's slice fermented um cabbage white cabbage most people think of sauerkraut as you know coming from Germany perhaps you know but actually it turns out that sauerkraut cabbage originally came from China or at least your the the the original the the the pre sauerkraut before they got this name sauerkraut it was Chinese uh Nomads cross the the desert that wanted to have food they took their cabbage and sliced it up and they fermented and carried on their backs or on camels and now they can actually eat it and in fermenting the Cabbage into the sauerkraut if you wind up capturing good healthy gut bacteria so when you eat sourkraut you get healthy bacteria just like you do with yogurt all right and then ultimately this kind of pickled fermented uh thin sliced cabbage wound up becoming uh a staple in places like Germany which is how we associate sauerkraut with German food all right but actually originally came from China and it was really part of making it lasts a long journey in the desert now another food that actually is probiotic are pickled radishes or pickled muster greens now where do you see this well in your own kitchen because you can actually make it if you're looking for a really interesting tasty way of actually pickling uh preserving radish or mustard greens just go on YouTube and search radish or muscle greens pickled and video and watch somebody teach you how to do it it's like an Asian uh a pickle uh often served uh alongside either as an appetizer or alongside a meal you can you can eat it you get guess what healthy gut bacteria you get good bioactives you get dietary fiber all the good stuff all right and then finally I'd be remiss if I didn't mention in a discussion about a probiotic anti-inflammatory diet kombucha kombucha is actually a fermented beverage um it's got a big mother cap that's actually where all the bacteria are growing it's a little bit sour um but that's actually the good stuff and that's a really super probiotic uh beverage to actually have so we just talked about all these types of foods that you could mix up into your 7-Day plan or 14-day plan but we should really make it a life plan because what's really great about the approach I'm telling you of an anti-infl latory diet is that it's not a stretch these are foods like apples and strawberries and kale uh radishes and mustard greens and sauerkraut and yogurt these are things that you can actually get behind and integrate into your everyday life so that's why I'm not creating like a a robotic set of uh instructions for you enjoy yourself choose in a diverse way to make it really tasty for yourself and you can stick to it all right forget about seven days do it for the rest of your life all right and that's how you're actually going to lower inflammation which then and lowers your risk of developing chronic diseases like diabetes like cancer like heart disease lung diseases like dementia all right and by the way if you're buying anything that's already pre-prepared please even if it's yogurt please check the ingredient label for chemicals that you don't want to put in your body and if you find those chemicals you don't want go ahead and put it back and choose a different one that doesn't have as many chemicals and and you're like you don't have to be a chemist you just have to have a a mobile phone uh that's connected and you can actually search it if you see a um ingredient you don't recognize search it and see if it's actually something that you don't want all right always check the ingredient label for the presence of chemicals in your food that you don't want in your body all right so here are a few uh final Pro tips that will actually help you optimize your anti-inflammatory diet we talked about the first tip I'm going to give you which is to buy organic if you're going to actually want to eat the the the food or the skin organic not only is you know ensures you don't have chemical pesticides sprayed on the skin of the fruit but it turns out organic itself organically grown plants have more bioactives these bioactives are the anti-inflammatory things you know it's the chlorogenic acid um that you actually find in apples for example or the elic acid in strawberries you want more of that and it turns out plants grown in an organic setting will let you have more bioactives in another video I'll explain why that is just take my word for it it's based on science number two if you can't find fresh uh fruits and vegetables Frozen is just fine all right frozen foods are picked on the field flash frozen and then they make it into the freezer uh and then you can have them and store them even if you can't if you don't live in a place where you actually have easy access to fresh food frozen food works just fine all right now preparation of your Foods your plant-based foods can help or hurt uh inflammation all right if you want to actually um uh hurt inflammation fry your Foods because then the things that accumulate on the the crispy yummy crunchy golden brown bits all right you know a think tempura they actually are going to they can actually Stoke inflammation even though you're eating the plant but on the other hand if you sauté or steam the plant or even stew it uh the vegetable you'll keep those bioactives actually intact you fry them you're adding something that's not so good so you're taking one step forward two steps back now the other thing obviously don't boil the vegetables like that that's a guaranteed way to overcook them BL them if you like in hot water and then sauté them in a different way all right so do not overcook your vegetables you know like when you were in grade school and you went to the cafeteria and they had that limp light green dissolving broccoli that nobody wanted to have on their plate that's overcooked all right don't overcook your vegetables make sure you carefully wash your fruits and vegetables because um they could have a lot of dirt and contamination from the field or even from the the storage area in the back of the grocery store or or in the Farmers Market truck that brought it over to you wash it here's a good rule of thumb of how to wash your vegetables to keep them clean when you bring them home rinse them under cold running water for 60 seconds you know that's the sing Happy Birthday twice thing um and then dry them off all right and that's actually I learned from a food expert a San sanitation hygiene expert food safety expert that's how you actually do it so just wash your fuits fruits and vegetabl 60 seconds um is enough now here's a couple other tips if you want to optimize the entire inflammatory aspects don't add sugar to tea or coffee don't add dairy cow milk cow dairy cream um to tea or coffee don't add butter to Coffee either and don't add artificial sweeteners to your tea or coffee you know the sucralose the Spartan the xylol don't do it and the reason you don't want to do it is because those artificial sweeteners have been shown artificial chemical sweeters have been shown to hurt the gut microbiome now even though you're not getting the the calories in guess what your your um blood lipids go up your blood sugars go up because you just wrecked your metabolism by hurting your gut microbiome don't do it all right you want to use Stevia just make sure that in the Box it's pure stevia you want to use monk fruit make sure it's pure when use a little touch of honey that's fine as well all right well look I hope you learned something new with this we talked about a lot of material but this is about taking an anti-inflammatory uh diet and how do you actually use it to your advantage in a practical way using foods that you can get behind that are not crazy things that you got to order online and then become a robot a regim robot to follow and you and you can't remember what to do and you can only do for a short period of time my Approach is are like loaded and backed by science but the key is that you get to be The Driver you get to actually choose how you want to play around with these ingredients to fit your own life all right and remember always never overeat your food so hope you learned something thank thanks for watching and I will see you on the next video hi there if you enjoyed watching this video I know you'll love the next one stay here and check it out and I'll see you there