How to Thrive in the 21st Century with Dr. Russell Jaffe: Rational Wellness Podcast 273
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Dr. Russell Jaffee discusses How to Thrive in the 21st Century with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
1:38 Dr. Jaffe points out in his new book, Thriving in the 21st Century, that our healthcare system places very little focus on prevention other than getting vaccines, a colonoscopy, monitoring your blood pressure and taking a statin.
4:30 Dr. Jaffe said that we could save a million lives a year in three categories, the first of which is diabetes. If you follow Dr. Jaffe’s recommendations for diet and lifestyle, you will achieve a hemoglobin A1C of 5 or less. You should also measure levels of glucose, insulin, and fructosamine, as well as hemoglobin A1C. You should not eat sugar or any sweeteners and you should shop around the perimeter of the market. There is enough sugar in marinara sauce to qualify as dessert. If it’s a whole food, and it comes from a plant, like a vegetable, eat it. If it comes from a processing plant even if it looks like or tastes like food, then you should not eat it.
14:12 Dr. Jaffe writes about avoiding anti-nutrients in food, which he uses loosely to describe sodium, fat, sugar, and artificial sweeteners, and at another point he uses it to refer to persistent organic pollutants, solvents, toxic minerals, mold, and radiation. He also recommends avoiding eating grains but he prefers eating grasses, as well as lots of fruits, vegetables, fungi, sprouts, nuts, and seeds. No grains, no cow dairy, no meat, no farmed fish. Grasses include grasses quinoa, halophytes, buckwheat, and millet and they provide anti-toxic fiber that binds toxins that come out of your liver, that need to get bound up and eliminated.
17:32 Dr. Jaffee will not eat farmed fish and he will only eat fish that is line-caught, so it will be fresher and not frozen.
25:05 Dr. Jaffee recommends avoiding eating all oils, including olive oil. He recommends naked salads without dressing. Even though some research shows olive oil to be healthy, Dr. Jaffee says that it is almost impossible to get really healthy extra virgin olive oil since what is sold in stores in the US is not quality olive oil and is often already oxidized and rancid and contains other oils mixed in. Dr. Jaffee gets his oil from eating nuts and seeds.
29:47 Eating an alkaline diet is very important to reverse metabolic acidosis. Metabolic acidosis means too little magnesium inside the cell. It means eating a diet that has too little magnesium and too much calcium, too much sodium and too little potassium. If you take magnesium supplements with choline citrate, you triple the uptake of the magnesium and you correct the metabolic acidosis. Correcting metabolic acidosis is a huge opportunity to feel and function better. If you don’t neutralize those metabolic acids by taking in foods that are alkaline, you’ll end up with metabolic acidosis and all the cardiovascular cancer, autoimmune consequences of metabolic acidosis. Dr. Jaffe recommends eating foods that make the body more alkaline, the most important of which are green leafy vegetables and certain seeds and nuts. Acid forming foods are things like sugar, oil, grains, meat, and fish, so these things should either not b e eaten or they should be condiments. There is a free chart that you can see that lists foods that will make your more alkaline on drrusselljaffe.com. Dr. Jaffee recommends lots of GGOBE foods: garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts, and eggs. These foods should be staples in your diet.
Dr. Russell Jaffee is a MD, PHD, and the author of the new best selling book, Thriving in the 21st Century. Dr. Jaffe has both worked at the National Institute of Health, and he is a Certified Clinical Nutritionist, and he has also studied with a Taoist priest and acupuncturist for 7 years and he has taught acupuncture. He has contributed to the birth of the Functional Medicine movement and he wrote or contributed to over 100 scientific articles and reviews. Dr. Jaffe has developed the first lymphocyte response assay for food sensitivities and he continues to be the lab director of ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies and is the founder and chairman of a nutritional supplement company, Perque. His web site is drrusselljaffe.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss and also athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting-edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates, and to learn more check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.
Hello, Rational Wellness Podcasters. Our topic for today is how to thrive in the 21st century, with Dr. Russell Jaffe. Dr. Russell Jaffe is an MD/PhD, and he’s worked at the National Institute of Health. He’s also a certified clinical nutritionist. He’s studied with a Taoist priest and acupuncturist, and he’s even taught acupuncture. He’s contributed to the birth of functional medicine. He’s one of the OGs, and he continues to lecture and teach. He wrote or contributed to over 100 scientific articles and reviews. He developed the first lymphocyte response assay for food sensitivities, and he continues to be the lab director for ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies. He’s also the founder and chairman of a nutritional supplement company, PERQUE. Dr. Jaffe has a new book out, Thriving in the 21st Century, your guide to adding years to life and life to years. Welcome, Dr. Jaffe.
Dr. Jaffe: I’m glad to be here.
Dr. Weitz: So one of the things you point out in your book, isn’t it a shame that in America our highly-touted healthcare system does not place any focus on prevention, other than getting vaccines and a colonoscopy, and monitoring your blood pressure and taking a statin. How much money we could save with prevention.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, we could save a million lies a year in three different categories. We could save a trillion dollars a year to fund the transition from our current sick care system. We call it a healthcare system, but it’s not a healthcare system. Tom Harkin used to say, “We have the greatest sick care system in the world. We’re looking for a healthcare system.” Don Berwick, Elliott Fisher, other enlightened, aware, plugged-in people, very much … Don Berwick ran Medicare for President Obama, you know? Folks like that.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, Tom Harkin was a prominent senator from Iowa, a big supporter-
Dr. Jaffe: Tom Harkin wanted to be president. Not only was he a senator and a very nice guy, and beloved by NIH because he got their budget through every year, but importantly he thought that healthcare and defense were the issues of his day. He ran for president on those two issues. He didn’t make it.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, but he was one of the big supporters of nutritional supplements and-
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, Tom Harkin, to his credit … I know this little gem, this little anecdote. He called up the budgetary director of NIH and said, “Either I’m going to write in what now has become the Center for Integrative and Alternative Medicine, but I’m going to write it in to the budget, or you’re going to voluntarily start it.” They did. Anything Tom Harkin wanted, if it was within possible boundaries, they would do it because he got their budget. There were very few senators that NIH listened to. He was one, and he was a nice man. He was a gentleman. He had many of the qualities of a great public servant. I’ll get off the soapbox, but yes, unfortunately we train doctors in sickness care. We have a symptom-reactive system, which is really a sick care system. What we call prevention is prevention light.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Dr. Jaffe: Okay, so I indicated that we could save a million lives a year in three categories. The first is diabetes. Diabetes kills half a million Americans a year. Diabetes costs, diabetes kills. Diabetes is a choice, a lifestyle choice.
Dr. Weitz: You mean, diabetes is not caused by a deficiency in metformin?
Dr. Jaffe: No. In fact, we have done the most successful outcome study in type 2 diabetes and in type 1 diabetes, starting from best standard of care. According to the American Diabetes Association, starting from best standard of care, we divided groups. One group was the placebo. That is, they followed the advice of the ADA. In the experimental group, we reduced the hemoglobin A1C by a full percent, which added 20 years to the lifespan of the participants, on average. We’ve done other studies in fibromyalgia. We have the most successful-
Dr. Weitz: How did they lower the hemoglobin A1C?
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, they followed our advice about what they would eat and drink, what they would think and do.
Dr. Weitz: Good, and let’s contrast that with a recent study that I’ve got the name of it. I think it’s maybe called the ASSURE trial in which they lowered hemoglobin A1C more aggressively in type 2 diabetics, and they found that they actually had an increase in mortality. The reason why, because they did it with heavier dosages of more drugs, and not with diet and lifestyle.
Dr. Jaffe: All correct, and according to the Health Studies Collegium, of which I’m a fellow, your best outcome value for hemoglobin A1C is 5%. If you-
Dr. Weitz: Right, but that’s-
Dr. Jaffe: Wait, wait, wait. If you follow my lifestyle advice, you like me will achieve a 5% hemoglobin A1C. When you try to do this pharmacologically rather than physiologically, I predict it will fail. So that study was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it obscures the fact that your hemoglobin A1C shouldn’t be less than seven. It should be less than five. And since I lost weight … About six or seven years ago, I was 60 pounds heavier. I lost the weight, and I’ve lost it enough that I’m not going to find it again. My hemoglobin A1C for the last five years has been 5%. Now, it gets complicated. All of these issues get complicated. Sometimes you want to measure fructosamine rather than hemoglobin A1C. Sometimes you want to measure glucose or insulin along with hemoglobin A1C. But the marker of diabetic risk is hemoglobin A1C, or fructosamine. They’re measuring the same thing.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, because they’re both measurements-
Dr. Jaffe: They’re measuring how much … They’re measuring how much sugar is stuck onto a protein. Dr. Paul Gallop identified this factor in 1967. I knew Paul Gallop. He was a mentor to Carl Franzblau, who was my mentor. So I’ve known about hemoglobin A1C since the 1960s, and it is now an all-cause morbidity/mortality indicator. Not just diabetes, but including diabetes and all the consequences of diabetes, including cardiovascular, et cetera.
Dr. Weitz: And we ideally shouldn’t have any sugar glomming onto our protein molecules.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, what I say is you’re sweet enough as you are. You don’t need to add sugar to your diet, and I mean that.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: And I mean that. I’m on the deck right now at my R&D center, in the kitchen, which is 20 feet away. You will not find any sweetener. Yes, we do have a little raw honey because occasionally someone comes by and in their tea, they want some honey. But you do not need to add sugar at all to your diet, which means you stay away from packaged goods. You stay away from boxed produce or items. You shop around the perimeter of the market, which is where the whole foods are. You eat whole foods. I eat quite well. I would say I eat quite well. I’m very happy with the garden that I have, and the Whole Foods Market that’s nearby, and I shop around the edge or the perimeter of the market. I very rarely go down the aisles. I look at the aisles. They’re very pretty, but there is enough sugar in marinara sauce to qualify as dessert. There’s enough sugar in CLIF Bars to qualify as dessert. These are thought of by most people as healthy choices. Well, we make marinara sauce but we make it from tomatoes.
Dr. Weitz: Well, I bought my marinara sauce at Whole Foods.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, buying at Whole Foods you still have to be careful.
Dr. Weitz: I know.
Dr. Jaffe: You must be an informed consumer, and what I say is the following. If it’s a whole food, and it comes from a plant, like a vegetable, eat it. If it comes from a plant, which means a processing plant that processed something into something that looks like something, that tastes like something, that’s not what I’m talking about. So I’m not a big fan of these meat replacements. In fact, I’m very critical of the fact that the people who are producing plant-based foods are producing it in a commercial production facility. And when you get into the details, you find that in order to do that you have to use a whole bunch of chemicals that are not good for you. But, you have to have shelf life. You have to have other considerations, and so forth and so on.
So the bottom line is, we’re on our own. We have to be informed as consumers, then we have to act on what we know. And what I know is that if it’s a whole food, I’ll eat it. I’ll eat a wide variety of foods in a wide variety of ways. But, if it comes from a company that makes it look like food, it looks like food. It fools you. It makes a fool out of you if you think that that is food. That’s not food. I’m going to get off my soapbox, but I’m very sure that if people ate the foods that they could digest, assimilate and eliminate without immune burden, and then they stayed well-hydrated and they moved around a bit, because in order for your fluids to reach the point that they need to get to, you need to move, which means walking so many steps. And something mindful, some relaxation response or meditative technique or mindfulness technique.
If you balance out those four, you can live and thrive in the 21st century. 80% of people today are in survival mode. They’re just surviving, getting by one day at a time. They don’t really feel very well. They’re not very nice to the other people around them, and they’re in survival mode. They base their decisions on the 20th or 19th century data. I’m telling you that the 21st century is much more intoxicated, therefore we need much more of the antitoxin nutrients, the vitamins, minerals, cofactors and et cetera. We need much more of that today to deal with the toxic burden.
Dr. Weitz: Right, because-
Dr. Jaffe: I think most people know-
Dr. Weitz: Even eating around the perimeter, eating the whole foods, we also have to be careful that many of those whole fruits and vegetables are sprayed with pesticides and herbicides and other toxins.
Dr. Jaffe: No, no. No, no. I should have been clearer. When I shop, I buy only the organic or biodynamic. I do not accept commercial celery or tomatoes.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: Because I know that the commercial whole foods are contaminated, and therefore I would have to take more supplements to deal with the toxins that are in the commercial food. So I amend what I said before. You eat organic or biodynamic, or leave it alone.
Dr. Weitz: So in your book, you talk about anti-nutrients in our food. Interestingly, you use that term to … At one point, you refer to sodium, fat, sugar, biocides, artificial sweeteners you also describe as anti-nutrients, persistent organic pollutants, solvents, toxic minerals, mold, radiation. Now, I’m kind of used to hearing the term anti-nutrients used in the context of the paleo diet or Dr. Gundry, and they’re usually referring to lectins and phytates, which are typically found in grains and beans, and even vegetables with seeds.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, as we outline and clarify in the book, you eat grasses. You do not eat grains.
Dr. Weitz: Now, explain-
Dr. Jaffe: No, no. Let me continue. Let me continue.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: You eat low on the food chain. You eat lots of fruits, vegetables, fungi, sprouts, nuts, seeds. There’s a wide variety of low on the food chain. This is less expensive, so it helps fight inflation. It’s healthier, because the higher you eat on the food chain, the more you eat fish and meat, or cow dairy products or grains, the more problems you will have. So I solve this problem by saying, no grains, no cow dairy, no meat, no farmed fish. No farmed fish, which means you probably can’t eat in a restaurant because almost all the fish in the restaurant is farmed, for economic reasons, for a variety of reasons.
Dr. Weitz: No, unfortunately that’s true. In fact, I recently went to a seafood restaurant and they didn’t have a single wild fish except Scottish salmon, which they were saying was wild even though it was grown in pens in the ocean.
Dr. Jaffe: Right.
Dr. Weitz: We had a whole debate as to how-
Dr. Jaffe: No, no. Yes, I mean if you see-
Dr. Weitz: It could be both farmed and wild at the same time.
Dr. Jaffe: No, no. That’s a perfect example. You go to a fine restaurant. You want to eat well, but they’re telling you that the salmon is wild because it was in the ocean. Well, farmed fish are always farmed in the ocean. You don’t farm fish on land. You always farm the fish in pens. But worse, worse, fish will eat anything. So what they throw in is the spent waste, the nitrogenous … So it’s nitrogen-rich waste from the water treatment plants. So not only do you get the toxic metals, you get aluminum. Not only do you get that, you get fluoride, and so forth and so on, and it goes on and on and on.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: So the answer is-
Dr. Weitz: Now, do they-
Dr. Jaffe: That I eat well. I eat well, but I eat from my garden. I eat low on the food chain, and I eat a wide variety of foods in a wide variety of ways.
Dr. Weitz: Right, so you have wild fish but not farmed fish, and-
Dr. Jaffe: No, no. Here’s what I do. This is really what I do. I go to the store, usually the Whole Foods Market where they have on ice a whole bunch of fish. But the eyes of the fish are cloudy, which means they’ve been frozen and thawed. I say to the young person standing behind the counter, “Which is the line-caught fish?” Generally they don’t know, but they can go in the back and talk to the senior person who does know. Maybe one, out of all the beautiful fish, maybe one is actually line-caught. I want them to know that some consumers want line-caught fish, and are going to ask for it, so they should have two.
Dr. Weitz: So what is-
Dr. Jaffe: If the consumers ask for it, the business will follow. The consumers are the leaders. They think that they are reacting to the marketing pushes. That’s an issue. But the consumer really leads, and what the consumer seeks, like more fruits and vegetables, more seaweed, and nuts and seeds and so forth and so on, there will be more of that.
Dr. Weitz: So tell our listeners what the significance of line-caught fish means.
Dr. Jaffe: Oh. Oh yes, very important. In the Chesapeake Bay, which is near where I live, for the first time in history, they’re finding fish with cancer. Fish don’t get cancer. You may not know this, but fish do not get cancer. But there are so many biocides, there are so many hormone disruptors, there are so many solvent residues, there is so much toxic metal, et cetera, that fish like rockfish have … About one-third have a growth, a cancer. That’s very ominous. We should eat line-caught fish, never frozen, or leave it alone. You can eat something else.
Dr. Weitz: So-
Dr. Jaffe: If you try grasses … If you try grasses like quinoa, or halophytes, or buckwheat, or millet, you’ll find that they are delicious and they mix with almost anything. So no grains, lots of grasses. Grasses provide fiber. Grasses provide the anti-toxic fiber that binds toxins that come out of your liver, that need to get bound up and eliminated.
Dr. Weitz: But don’t whole grains-
Dr. Jaffe: Most people don’t eat-
Dr. Weitz: Don’t whole grains have fiber as well?
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, yes. Whole grains have fiber. They also have glyphosate, which is bad for you. They also have hormone disruptors. They have solvent residues; surprising, but they do, and toxic metals. And on top of that, other-
Dr. Weitz: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Dr. Jaffe: Other-
Dr. Weitz: Let’s just play devil’s advocate here. How do they have toxic metals?
Dr. Jaffe: It turns out the fertilizers that are used are measured for N, nitrogen, K, potassium, and P, phosphorus. But a farmer will spread the cheapest fertilizer that they can get away with. Even the organic fertilizer contains lead, mercury, arsenic, nickel and cadmium.
Dr. Weitz: And some of those metals like … They’re in some of the soil, anyway.
Dr. Jaffe: Also true, and in the air.
Dr. Weitz: And they’re also in the water.
Dr. Jaffe: In the air, in the air. Well, yes-
Dr. Weitz: But isn’t quinoa grown with the same fertilizers and the same water and the same soil?
Dr. Jaffe: No, it turns out that grains … All of the grains have been genetically manipulated. None of the grasses have been genetically manipulated. There is commercial reason why grains have been manipulated. There is commercial reasons why grasses have not. Grasses don’t sell as much as grains. But in my house, there are no grains because the grains are too contaminated, and I would have to take even more supplements than I now do.
Dr. Weitz: I’ve really been enjoying this discussion, but I’d like to take a minute to tell you about a new product that I’m very excited about. I’d like to tell you about a new wearable called the Apollo. This is a device that can be worn on the wrist or the ankle, and it uses vibrations to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. This device has amazing benefits in terms of getting you out of that stressed out sympathetic nervous system and stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. It has a number of different functions, especially helping you to relax, to focus, to concentrate, get into a deeper meditative state, even to help you sleep, and there’s even a mode to help you wake up. This all occurs through the scientific use of subtle vibrations.
For those of you who might be interested in getting the Apollo for yourself to help you reset your nervous system, go to apolloneuro.com and use the affiliate code, Weitz10. That’s my last name, WEITZ10. Now, back to the discussion.
Dr. Weitz: So in the book, you mention that in recent years, decades I guess, our heart health has improved. However, cancer has increased and this is particularly in the U.S. Why is this?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, the main reason why heart disease decreased was fewer people smoke cigarettes. It turns out that that has leveled off, so we now have the second greatest killer is heart disease. The first greatest killer today is cancer. Do you know that everyone makes cancer cells every day, and should identify those cancer cells during restorative sleep? During sleep time, there are a few five-minute time windows when the pineal tells the pituitary to tell the glands and organs of the body what to do, including identifying through natural killer cells and cytotoxic T-cells any abnormal cells that have formed that day, and eliminate them by a process called apoptosis. It’s Greek, but it’s apoptosis. It means programmed cell death. A cell comes by and marks the cell as abnormal. Another cell comes by and injects into it something that kills it and prevents cancer. So, I get restorative sleep and I want my natural anti-cancer mechanism to protect me. I don’t need more than nature and nurture to protect me.
Dr. Weitz: Right. So you recommend avoiding all oils, including olive oil.
Dr. Jaffe: Yes. I know I … The sugar, I think we can agree.
Dr. Weitz: You mean, I can’t use olive oil in my salad?
Dr. Jaffe: No. No, naked salads. Naked salads, but in the salad, put in edible flowers. Put in some fruits.
Dr. Weitz: I can’t eat the salad in my underwear? I have to be naked.
Dr. Jaffe: No, you don’t have to be naked. You can try being naked. No, naked salads. We’ll get into the … It turns out-
Dr. Weitz: The naked salad restaurant.
Dr. Jaffe: No, it turns out-
Dr. Weitz: That could be a new franchise.
Dr. Jaffe: That could. It turns out that walking barefoot stretches out the very sensitive cells on the bottom of your feet. It turns out there are lots of nerves on the bottom of your feet. There are lots of nerves in your hands, and it makes healthy sense to walk barefoot.
Dr. Weitz: Grounding.
Dr. Jaffe: I live out in the woods. I don’t have to worry about other people. You have to decide how much clothes you wear, but have naked salads that are interesting, that have seeds and nuts and edible flowers, and maybe some seaweed and some this and that. So make salad the main part of your meal.
Dr. Weitz: But isn’t olive oil really good? I’ve seen all kinds of studies on the benefits of olive oil in reducing cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
Dr. Jaffe: Let me tell you the truth, and I’m going to tell you a story, but it’s a true story. One year at olive harvest time, we were in Tuscany. We helped shake the trees and knock the olives off, and then take these nets and schlep the olives to the oleandro. This is the place that makes extra virgin olive oil. It is viscous. It is green. It is aromatic. It is not, not what you buy in the store as EVO or EVOO. It turns out, I said to the man in charge of this oil processing plant, “How much? I want to buy some.” He laughs. He says, “We eat this. We don’t make enough of this to sell.” And to illustrate the point … There is a point to the story. In the morning, there was a mountain of spent olive mash outside the oleandro.
This big truck called Bertolli came by and picked up the olive mash, the spent olive mash. The first time they processed that, they were going to call it extra virgin olive oil. It turns out if you get deeply into the oil industry, you find out there’s a lot of malfeasance. There’s a lot of chicanery. There’s a lot of, it’s olive oil, but it’s olive oil with a whole bunch of other oils. Or, it’s olive oil that has been rejected by the true Italians, Greeks, Spaniards who know extra virgin olive oil. They know this. But I have tried diligently to find any place that sells actual extra virgin olive oil. I can’t. So, I’m afraid that there is a good reason … And this is now the scientific reason. When you separate an oil from a seed or a nut, immediately on exposure to air, the oxygen in the air goes after the delicate, unsaturated, beneficial oils. So you have oxidation, which is called rancidity. Then they add chemicals to mask the rancidity. The rancidity doesn’t go away, but they add chemicals that make it seem to go away, and on and on and on. I have reached the point where I eat whole foods. I get my oil from seeds and nuts. I don’t use edible oils at all, because the more I learn about them the more contaminated and problematic they become.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, so why is eating an alkaline diet so important, and what does this consist of?
Dr. Jaffe: Yes, it’s essential to eat alkaline, which means that the acids of metabolism do not build up in your cells. We have an epidemic today of metabolic acidosis. Metabolic acidosis means too little magnesium inside the cell. It means eating a diet that has too little magnesium in it, probably too much calcium, maybe too much sodium and too little potassium, but I’m going to focus on magnesium. If you take magnesium supplements with choline citrate, you triple the uptake of the magnesium and you correct the metabolic acidosis. That’s a big deal. Correcting metabolic acidosis is a huge opportunity to feel and function better.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, but isn’t acid really important? We need hydrochloric acid to bring down-
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no. Now, now let’s not … Let’s not get lost in the weeds. Yes, your stomach should have a pH of one. It turns out that people with ulcers lack stomach acid, and people with plenty of stomach acid do not have ulcers. So giving proton pump inhibitors is out of date, passe, should not-
Dr. Weitz: Yet, one of the most commonly-prescribed classifications of drugs for almost any gastrointestinal problem.
Dr. Jaffe: One of the most common, and I’m saying that it creates more problems. It shifts the problems. It doesn’t solve anything, and if you follow my alkaline way advice, your stomach will be acidic. Your intestines will be alkaline. Your microbiomes, of which you have hundreds … We talk about the microbiome of the gut, but there are hundreds of different microbiomes all over your body.
Dr. Weitz: Yes, for sure.
Dr. Jaffe: They are all optimized by an alkaline diet that neutralizes the metabolic acids. If you don’t neutralize those metabolic acids by taking in foods that are alkaline, you’ll end up with metabolic acidosis and all the cardiovascular cancer, autoimmune consequences of metabolic acidosis.
Dr. Weitz: So, what are the most alkaline foods, and should I drink alkaline water?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, with regard to the foods, we have produced a free chart that’s available through drrusselljaffe.com and other websites that we support. A chart of the food effects on body chemistry, not acid-ash residue, which is usually what is reported, which was fine in the 19th and 20th century. In the 21st century, you need to know the food effects on body chemistry. The most alkaline foods tend to be the green leafy vegetables, certain seeds and nuts. But go to the website drrusselljaffe.com, download for free the chart, which will tell you about the foods. Now, what about-
Dr. Weitz: When you talk about … Hang on one second. When you talk about the acid alkaline residue, essentially what you’re saying is, is it’s not whether or not that food itself is actually acidic or alkaline. It’s whether or not it produces an alkaline effect in the body.
Dr. Jaffe: Yeah, yes. Citrus fruits … Citrus is acid in the glass and alkaline in the body. So yes, it’s the effect on the body, not what the pH is in the glass.
Dr. Weitz: Right. And then the most acidic foods are which?
Dr. Jaffe: What I’m saying is that you want to eat alkaline. The acid-forming foods are things like sugar and oil and grains and meat and fish, so they should be condiments in your diet. Thomas Jefferson said, “Let staples become condiments, and let condiments become staples.” Now, what does that mean? That means you should have lots of GGOBE; lots of garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts sprouts and eggs. They should be staples in your diet. If you have something high on the food chain, you should have a little bit. The amount that fits in the palm of your hand turns out to be enough.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: So now very important, the question of water. Mineral waters are all alkaline, and they benefit because of the mineral content. You need to know the dissolved solids. You need to know the mineral content of the water. If the water was made alkaline by adding bicarbonate, that will impair your digestion. That will fool your body, and make a fool out of you.
Dr. Weitz: Is that how most water is made alkaline?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, first of all most bottled water comes in plastic. You should only get water in glass. If you get water in glass, the better waters … Pellegrino, Apollinaris, Mountain Valley, Gerolsteiner … They’ll be displayed. They’ll be present, and they’ll give you a choice of plastic or glass. You always choose glass, because plasticizer leaches out of the plastic into the water and harms you, so you don’t do that. In order to be in thrival mode, in feeling-good mode, you need to get hard, mineral-rich water in glass, or well water that is mineral-rich. Most tap water is greywater. Most tap water has too many chemicals and too little beneficial mineral.
Dr. Weitz: What about purified water rather than well water?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, I fortunately have a deep well in both of my homes, so that’s where we get our water is from the tap, but it’s well water.
Dr. Weitz: But isn’t some well water high in arsenic or lead or other toxins?
Dr. Jaffe: Well no, that’s a very good point. Even though we live out here in the woods, and are protected and so forth and so on, every six months I have analysis done. Thus far, it has come back that my water is so pure that I could sell it. [inaudible 00:36:47]
Dr. Weitz: You live out in the woods, Doc? Where do you live?
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, Vienna, Virginia.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay.
Dr. Jaffe: I’m 15 minutes from Dulles Airport, half an hour from the Capitol, but lost in the woods.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: And we have a permaculture biodynamic food forest in our front yard. We have seven mushroom guilds in our back yard. We eat as much as we can from the garden.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great.
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Dr. Weitz: So let’s go into nutritional supplements. I think one of the more controversial things you mentioned are certain nutritional supplements that you do not recommend, and-
Dr. Jaffe: Well, I do not recommend foolish or silly things. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of foolishness in very profound, important ways. For example, a vitamin you need a little of to activate enzyme catalysts in the body, but substrates … Substrates like NAD, like ALA, like taurine, substrates, you would need 10 grams or more a day to move the needle in regard to a substrate. There’s a lot of misinformation that abounds, including in professionals who don’t-
Dr. Weitz: So you mentioned-
Dr. Jaffe: Wait, wait.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah?
Dr. Jaffe: Professionals who know. They know what they are told. They know what they are told. Now, what they are told is wrong. As a biochemist, as a physiologist, I can tell you that what they say is wrong, and I’ll tell you specifically what I mean by that. But, supplements are essential in the 21st century. I take a dozen supplements a day, sometimes twice in a day, because I feel better and I function better.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: And I get exposed to much less toxic matter, but I’m exposed to some.
Dr. Weitz: Sure.
Dr. Jaffe: I take the supplements that help me thrive in the 21st century.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I take about 30 twice a day.
Dr. Jaffe: Okay.
Dr. Weitz: So-
Dr. Jaffe: So today, the 21st century is just very different than the 20th or 19th century. We can’t look back at the studies then and apply them today without understanding how limited is their applicability. You have too much bad and too little good in the diet. People tend to be dehydrated. Even one or two or 3% dehydrated is a terrible stress on your heart and kidneys. They don’t think properly, and they don’t act, move properly. You need to balance it all out. You can’t take two B6 to equal a B12. You can’t just think about exercising, and not move around and walk or exercise.
Dr. Weitz: You can’t take two B6s to equal a B12.
Dr. Jaffe: You can’t, but people try and do that.
Dr. Weitz: So some of the supplements … I want to go into a few of the supplements that you don’t recommend. I also want … You mention NAD, so I want to hit that one, too. But in your book, you recommend or you explain that you don’t recommend silver, and some people use silver as an antimicrobial.
Dr. Jaffe: Silver is an antimicrobial if you use it in your commode or sink.
Dr. Weitz: What about-
Dr. Jaffe: This is true. The silver that is sold as a supplement today was originally used by plumbers to prevent the water from being too contaminated. So silver is antimicrobial, but when you take oral silver, the silver is associated with other silver. Silver likes to aggregate with other silver. That means the size of the particles at the time you take them is too high to be absorbed.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: You get what I’m saying? At the time you take the silver, it’s a placebo. At the time you take the silver, it has grown to a size that is no longer bioavailable. But the people who-
Dr. Weitz: Doesn’t it depend upon the product you’re taking?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, everyone says that their product is better and that the other products are verstunken. Everyone says that.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, that’s shocking.
Dr. Jaffe: Of course. But where is the evidence? Particle size is a known analytic tool. Eurofins can measure it. I actually do third-party post-production testing on every supplement we produce, because in addition to using the best vendors, in addition to using the best protocols, the least-contaminated protocols, all active ingredients … That’s different than most companies. We don’t have any binders, fillers, excipients, flowing agents. We have twice as much space to put active ingredients into the product.
So there’s a lot to be said about silver as an example of a placebo. I have looked at all of the literature that I can on silver, and what I find is that one-third of people benefit and that is exactly what you would predict for the placebo effect. It typically is 32 to 35% placebo, and hopefully the pharmaceutical or the thing you’re testing it against will be more than that. But it would be very easy to take 20 or 30 people and give them the silver, measure the particle size of the silver at the time they take it, measure the silver in the urine and stool. Measuring silver in the blood, very complicated, probably not routine. But in the urine, in the poop, yes. And what we have found … I will just mention this … Is that all the silver is in the poop. None of the silver is in the urine, because the silver didn’t get in the person.
Dr. Weitz: Because it’s all too large molecular weight silver.
Dr. Jaffe: It’s all too large, and the counterions that they use to keep the silver in suspension favor aggregation. They favor coming together. Really, yes they do. So if you use a smarter counterion, you would have less aggregation but you would still have the problem.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, so another supplement you don’t recommend is zeolite, and that’s often in some of the binders we use to help eliminate heavy metals and mycotoxins and other types of toxins in the body.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, let me jump to the conclusion. The best way to get rid of those bad things is to have enough ascorbate, enough garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts and eggs, enough magnesium and choline citrate, enough omega-3 fatty acids, and enough zinc. Zeolite is another example of something that comes out of industry. The people that advocate zeolite, and I know them personally, do not want to tell you the truth because they want to sell you the product. The truth is, zeolites contain toxic minerals. So when you give a zeolite and then you measure in the urine toxic metals, and you find toxic metals coming out, it’s not because the zeolite bound them and eliminated them. It’s because the zeolite is contaminated with toxic metals. By definition a zeolite contains multiple minerals, especially large, heavy toxic minerals. I have not recommended zeolites. I have not recommended silver, because I know the biochemistry and physiology.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. The next one on the list is curcumin, which is many of our favorite nutritional supplements for inflammation, for gut healing. There’s many, many curcumin products on the market, and everybody’s developing a particular formulation that’s better absorbed, better utilized. There’s water-soluble forms, there’s fat-soluble forms, there’s …
Dr. Jaffe: Let me clarify the turmeric/curcumin issue. No. The reason I say it so simply and clearly is if you make a curry, the heat and the turmeric with the other components of the curry, including piperine from black pepper, make the curcumin bioavailable. If you take a curcumin supplement, you’re taking a placebo. If you take a curcumin or turmeric supplement, you are taking something that will not be absorbed, that will change the microbial ecology of your gut, and you’re doing an experiment that I wouldn’t do.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. I mean, I’ve seen tons of studies showing the benefits of curcumin, even anti-cancer properties, modulate so many inflammatory factors in the body.
Dr. Jaffe: Let me clarify for you, because I read that literature but I read it as a biochemist and a physician and physiologist and so on. What they present is the positive results of mostly in vitro, which means in the test tube, experiments. With regard to the human trials, almost all have failed. They don’t get published, but most of the curcumin, curcumin plus piperine, turmeric/curcumin/piperine bioavailable form … You can spin people around because-
Dr. Weitz: Because you’ve got great … Let’s be honest.
Dr. Jaffe: Wait, wait. No, many people [inaudible 00:49:13]-
Dr. Weitz: None of the negatives-
Dr. Jaffe: No, no, let me finish.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: Let me, please. You can spin people around but turmeric, which contains curcumin, does not release the curcumin until it is heated in the presence of other things. So I advocate having a curry once a week as a healthy, anti-cancer food. I do not recommend taking turmeric or curcumin in any form, because the more they manipulate it the more contaminated it becomes.
Dr. Weitz: And you also don’t recommend collagen, which is a very popular supplement these days.
Dr. Jaffe: Collagen happens to be near and dear to me, because I did my PhD on collagen. The way you build collagen is from within. You have 50 billion dendritic cells. You have 50 billion cells that build collagen throughout the body where it’s needed, exactly as it’s needed. There are many different kinds of collagen. When you take a collagen supplement, it is probably type 1, or type 1 and type 3, and it’s a placebo. Collagen does not build … Taking a collagen supplement does not build collagen in the body. I know this for a fact. I have known this for a fact for 50 years. Right now, right now, collagen is in vogue. It’s very cheap to make, but it has too much glutamate. That means it’s called collagen, but it’s the skin and the bones and whatever is left after they render everything from the animal.
Which means, too much glutamate, too much proline, too much glycine, not complete protein. Collagen is not a complete protein. It’s a very poor protein compared to, say, egg protein or any other complete protein, like beans and rice make a complete protein. So collagen is near and dear to my heart. I know a lot about the synthesis and function of collagen, and I know that swallowing collagen is a placebo.
Dr. Weitz: Well, for those who are still listening to this podcast who haven’t turned it off, another sacred cow-
Dr. Jaffe: I want to [inaudible 00:51:43].
Dr. Weitz: Another sacred cow that you’re about to kill-
Dr. Jaffe: But I want to get to what I do. I want to get to what I do recommend, not be hypercritical. But unfortunately-
Dr. Weitz: I’m sorry, I just-
Dr. Jaffe: Unfortunately-
Dr. Weitz: These are controversial views, and I thought that people should hear some of them.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, they’re controversial if you don’t know the facts. What I’m saying is absolutely factual based on the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature. Nothing that I have said about other supplements … Nothing that I have said about other supplements is other than evidence-based. I know that this is correct. I know that this is controversial. I know that most people won’t like what I’m saying, but I’d really like to get on to what I do recommend, but we can talk about helping people avoid placebos.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, let’s get on with some of your favorite nutritional supplements that you think can help us thrive in the 21st century.
Dr. Jaffe: Well, the first is ascorbate. It’s not a vitamin. It’s called vitamin C, but it’s a substrate. You need a lot of it. The amount you need is based on the C cleanse. You need to do a C cleanse once a week. Just follow the directions. They’re available online. We’ll walk you through it. But you do a C cleanse once a week, and you adjust your daily intake of ascorbate to be three-quarters of the amount that causes the cleanse. You’d be surprised today how much ascorbate it takes to cleanse. It might be 10 grams. It might be 30 grams. It might be 50 grams. But we will explain to you how to do a C cleanse in a couple of hours, and then adjust your vitamin C dose on a daily basis to about three-quarters spread through the day. So you might, if you take a lot of vitamin C, you might get up in the morning, take a jogger’s bottle, take a quart of liquid, put the vitamin C in it, cap it, and sip on it throughout the day.
Dr. Weitz: And you recommend ascorbate rather than ascorbic acid.
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, oh, oh. Ascorbic acid is almost always synthetic. Ascorbic acid should never be consumed as a supplement. Yes, it should always be fully buffered, fully reduced, L-ascorbate.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: Then, then we get to the next category which is polyphenolics, which goes along with the ascorbate, specifically quercitin dihydrate and soluble OPC. You take that as a supplement, then you move on to magnesium with choline citrate. This triples the uptake of the magnesium. It corrects the choline deficiency that most people have, and the citrate is alkalinizing and works to resolve metabolic acidosis, not cause it. So when you see supplements, and the supplement has a chloride or a sulfate or a carbonate or something like that, which is very common, or an oxide, that’s very common and very profitable, and near two, three, 4% bioavailable. The maximum bioavailability uptake of magnesium or calcium, but we’ll focus on magnesium, is one-third through the ion channel. That’s a fact.
We have discovered how to get magnesium in through neutral pores by making nanodroplets, and we do. That’s why we give choline citrate every time we take magnesium. Then, almost all of us take in too much omega-6 fatty acid and too little omega-3. So I recommend an omega-3 index to find out how much omega-3 you have. But aside from the test, you should supplement with three to six grams a day … I actually take nine grams a day, of EPA and DHA.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: There are some people who say, “You only need EPA.” Other people say, “You only need DHA.” They work for the companies that sell an algae product that’s just DHA, or an EPA derivative. You need both. You need EPA for body and brain. You need DHA for brain and body. You should take a supplement that is micellized in a soft gel, that is high quality. That means distilled under nitrogen to avoid interoxidation and to get rid of the toxic metals that were in the fish oil, because the fish was swimming in the ocean. So, distilled under nitrogen, omega-3 fatty acids as EPA/DHA, three to six grams a day, maybe a little more.
Then zinc; men need zinc, women need zinc today either as a lozenge or as a capsule. We have devised novel delivery systems. They’re called tabsules; everything you like about tablets and capsules, nothing that you dislike about tablets and capsules. A unique delivery system called the tabsule, which includes all active ingredients. We have 40 active ingredients in our multivitamin. We have a triple detoxifier. There’s phase one, phase two and phase three. You want to have all three detoxifying working for you. I recommend a diet that has plenty of fiber, but you might take some additional fiber which should be unprocessed. Denis Burkit taught us that you need 40 to 100 grams of unprocessed fiber a day. You need 40 to 100 billion probiotic organisms a day, and I would add to that the symbiotic of recycled glutamine. Glutamine with PAK recycles 10 times, so you take much less and you never build up glutamate but you get the benefit of glutamine as an energy source to repair your gut.
Dr. Weitz: What was that, recycled glutamine?
Dr. Jaffe: Recycled glutamine. This is glutamine which contains pyridoxal alpha-ketoglutarate, PAK. The PAK recycles the amine that comes off the glutamine, and puts it onto another glutamate from which you can extract energy 10 times.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting.
Dr. Jaffe: So we recommend a gram and a half of glutamine with PAK, not 15 grams as Judy Shabert or Doug Wilmot recommend. Because if you take 1=50 milligrams you do get an effect, but you imbalance the arginine/glutamine ratio, and other things become pharmacologic not physiologic. We favor physiology and are rewarded for that, so we use recycled glutamine.
Dr. Weitz: Just one more thing I’d like to hit on really quick is, you mentioned NAD precursors. I think you just mentioned that the amounts that people take are not really going to be effective.
Dr. Jaffe: Well in the body, in the cells, there are buckets. There are gallons. There’s a lot of NAD. If you take a supplement that has 250 milligrams, that’s a high dose.
Dr. Weitz: So by the way, just real quick for people listening, NAD is a super-important molecule for longevity. People who are trying to promote longevity often recommend taking either NR or NMN, which are HAD precursors.
Dr. Jaffe: There are people who sell products because they’re profitable. The people who advocate for the kinds of products you’re talking about know at some level … At some level, they know they’re selling a placebo. Because in order to measurably, which you can do … In order to measurably influence the NAD or NAD precursors in the human body, you’d have to give at least five to 10 grams.
Dr. Weitz: Of either of the precursors?
Dr. Jaffe: Of any of the precursors, because there is so much in the body that you’re diluting the little bit you are taking into. It’s a substrate. We have a profound lack of understanding of biochemistry and physiology. If it’s a vitamin, you need a little bit to activate an enzyme. If it’s a substrate like NAD and FAD, it’s a placebo. Joe Bellanti did an open-label trial, and he’s often quoted. He’s my friend. He’s a very good guy. He did an open-label trial. It seemed to be promising. Then he did a placebo-controlled trial and proved that NAD or its precursors are placebos.
Dr. Weitz: All right, Dr. Jaffe. I think that about wraps it for me. Any final thoughts for our listeners and viewers?
Dr. Jaffe: Well, I just want to leave you with the fact that you can thrive in the 21st century if you’re intelligent about what you eat and drink, and what you think and do. It’s a combination of all of the above. I would like to be a good representative, to show you how well I function and feel. By most measurements I’m a 35-year-old, but in fact I’m more than twice that on my birth certificate.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: You can feel and function like a young person at any age, and you should.
Dr. Weitz: Have you had your biological aging measured?
Dr. Jaffe: I do it every six months, and I’ve been getting progressively younger.
Dr. Weitz: And are you using the DNA methylation?
Dr. Jaffe: No, DNA methylation turns out to be massively misunderstood. There are 10,000 enzymes that influence methylation. If you measure the methionine to homocysteine ratio, you know about methylation. If you take a methylating form, as a methyl (E)-12 form, you will induce hypermethylation which is not recommended. I recommend physiology before pharmacology. Giving methyl forms of B12 is pharmacology, not physiology.
Dr. Weitz: Oh, no. I’m talking about like some of the testing that’s now available where they measure the-
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, well yeah-
Dr. Weitz: Like the true age test, where they measure biological age via the extent to which-
Dr. Jaffe: Let me-
Dr. Weitz: Hundreds of thousands of sites on the DNA are methylated or not.
Dr. Jaffe: Let me jump in on that. 92% of your lifetime health is lifestyle. 92% is lifestyle.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: 92% is about what you eat and drink, think and do.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Jaffe: 8% is genetic. Now I’m going to switch to be Eric Lander. Eric Lander was advising President Biden. He now runs the Broad Institute at MIT. He’s a wonderful human being, and he points out that if you measure the entire genome, all the DNA, all the RNA, all the different RNAs, you can influence a result. You can change the trajectory by 10%. Let’s talk about diabetes, which is the best-studied condition genetically. He will point out that you can gain or lose about 10%. This means 8% of the population currently has diabetes. If you know that you have a 7.2 or an 8.8% chance of having diabetes, what are you going to do differently? Eric is very clear that people doing gene probes are looking through a glass darkly, and confused. I measure functional metabolic products; hemoglobin A1C, hsCRP, homocysteine, omega-3 index, vitamin D levels, 8-oxoguanine, that’s a urine test that’s a little unusual, but it’s the measure of stress in your DNA. So I get all the information without the confusion.
Dr. Weitz: Excellent.
Dr. Jaffe: So, no I don’t.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Jaffe: I don’t measure all of these, because I know a lot about methylation. It’s very important that it flow … That it flow physiologically, not be driven by a hypermethylating compound.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Sounds good, Dr. Jaffe. How can everybody get a hold of your book and find out about your supplements?
Dr. Jaffe: Oh, thank you.
Dr. Weitz: Can you tell me?
Dr. Jaffe: Drrusselljaffe.com is the website. There’s also a YouTube channel called Dr. Russel Jaffe. The book is available as a Kindle, as a print, and very soon as an audio book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold. And yes, please take a look because if you’ll invest 72 minutes a day, you can save your life.
Dr. Weitz: Excellent. I’ll put all those links in the show notes, and there will also be a complete transcript so you can go and if you want to review anything that Dr. Jaffe taught us today. Thank you, Dr. Jaffe, for another excellent podcast.
Dr. Jaffe: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five-star ratings and review. That way, more people will be able to find this Rational Wellness Podcast when they’re searching for health podcasts. And I wanted to let everybody know that I do now have a few openings for new nutritional consultations for patients at my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition clinic. So if you’re interested please call my office, 310-395-3111, and sign up for one of the few remaining slots for a comprehensive nutritional consultation with Dr. Ben Weitz. Thank you, and see you next week.
