#175: Dr. John McDougall - Truth Bombs and Starches for the Win
Dr. John and Mary McDougall
We’re honored to welcome Dr. John McDougall back to the podcast for another hearty discussion.
Dr. McDougall was on the podcast on Episode 151, and we took a look at his storied life and career as a pioneering physician and talked about his discoveries that informed his unwavering practice of a starch-based diet.
In this episode, Rip dives in on very specific topics to get his opinions on procedures like mammograms and colonoscopies, bone density scans, blood pressure medications and other pills, as well as treatments for hormone-related diseases like male pattern baldness, endometriosis, body odor, bad breath, and more!
Dr. McDougall has been in practice for almost 50 years and, if there’s everyone who has earned the right to state their researched opinions, it’s him. Yes, he has strong opinions about modern medicine, but his point is clear and simple. So many of these screenings, procedures and medications can be diminished or even eradicated with PLANTS, and more specifically, a starch-based diet.
He doesn’t want his patients to undergo treatments that are harmful, painful, and expensive — when so many of the solutions are simple — It’s the FOOD.
Episode Resources
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey everyone. I need to let you know about a couple things that have transpired with our food line over the last week, and they're both super exciting. First, we just got a fresh batch of our dessert inspired guilt-free granolas into our warehouse, and I want you to know that they are better than ever, and I mean it. We've updated our flavors to include an all new dark chocolate that is going to win over your hearts just like it has mine. And all four of our flavors will crush your cravings while fueling you up with whole grains and of course, no added sugars. The second thing I want to let you know about is we just announced the launch of our brand new product line. It's our PLANTSTRONG teas. You might be wondering, what in the world are you doing making teas? Well, listen up. It's been a year in the making, but what we've done is we've taken our whole food plant-based philosophy around food, and now we've applied it to teas.
All of our teas contain 100% unrefined hand plucked teas with specially selected herbs, fruits and spices, and we never use extracts or flavorings, which almost 99.9% of the teas on the shelf use. Now what we've done is we've also taken our evidence-based health-promoting ingredients, and all these are deliciously blended and artfully crafted by these industry leading tea masters that we've found in Sri Lanka. I'm telling you, it is the best tea on the planet. Our hot teas include our PLANTSTRONG breakfast tea.
We have a black cumin vanilla chai, a golden chamomile that's got turmeric and ginger, and just a touch of black pepper. And lastly is a nod to our friend Dr. Michael Greger. We've got a gooseberry green and this tea includes amla, which according to Dr. Michael Greger and others, this amla, or it's better known as Indian gooseberry, is the number one most antioxidant packed whole food on the planet. And I want you guys to try all these new teas. Let me know what you think and check out our family ice teas as well. And keep in mind, if you're in a hurry, we have a select number of PLANTSTRONG tea tumblers available as part of our special hot tea tin bundles. Say that five times fast. It will be a great gift to kick off your new year. Just visit plantstrongfoods.com to see all of our product offerings.
John McDougall:
But my position has been a low remain that you ought to hear McDougall's message first. All right, give me a chance. And what we're talking about is something that costs you nothing, something you should be doing to have a good bowel movement, something to be doing just to cut your food bill. Or if you believe in animal cruelty, something you should be doing. Or if you believe in saving planet Earth, something you should be doing. Just give me a couple of months.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Happy Holiday Week, my cruciferous cousins. I hope that you're all decking those halls and jingling those bells with all of your loved ones. This week I am honored to welcome an absolute icon in the whole food plant-based movement. I'm inviting him back for his second appearance on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. We have one heck of a hardy and rousing discussion as we're closing out the new year.
I'm talking about none other than Dr. John McDougall. He was on the podcast over the summer. It was episode number 151. And so if you haven't listened to that, I highly recommend that you check it out and I'll be sure to link to it in the show notes. In that episode, we take a look back at his storied life and his career as a pioneering physician, and we talked about his discoveries while he was working with patients on the big island of Hawaii that really informed his unwavering practice around a starch based diet. Today, I took the opportunity to dive in on some very specific topics and get John's opinions on procedures like mammograms and colonoscopies, bone density scans, blood pressure meds, and other meds, as well as treatments for hormone related diseases like male pattern baldness, endometriosis, body odor, bad breath, and a whole lot more.
Dr. McDougall has been in practice for almost 50 rocking years, and I think if there's anyone who has earned the right to state their researched opinions, it's John. And yes, John has some very strong opinions about modern medicine, but his point is it's clear and it's super concise that so many of these screenings, procedures, and medications can be diminished or even eradicated with the power of plants, and more specifically, a starch based diet. He does not want his patients to undergo treatments that are harmful, painful, and expensive when so many of the solutions are just dropped dead simple, because when you get down to it's three words. It's the food. And as John mentions in the interview until the end of the year, you can download many of his books for free at his website, drmcdougall.com, and I'll be sure to link to that in the show notes as well. Enjoy this gift of health and wisdom from none other, and Dr. John McDougall.
All right, I am here with none other than Dr. John McDougall. John, welcome back to the PLANTSTRONG podcast.
John McDougall:
Well, thank you for the invitation. We got a lot of response last time I was on your show, so you have a great, great listening audience.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you sure did, and for anybody that's interested, if you want to go back and hear that episode, it was episode 151 with Dr. John McDougall. John, I love that conversation that we had, just sharing your story and everything about being a starchivore, it was kind of a high level view of you and what really motivated you to get into all things, whole food plant based. But as you like to stay a starchivore. To get things warmed up, I'd love to get you warmed up by talking about... You say that 99.9% of humans are actually starchivores.
John McDougall:
Or have been.
Rip Esselstyn:
Or have been.
John McDougall:
Rick, I used to say there were 10 billion people who put footprints on this earth. A professor corrected me and said there's actually a hundred billion. And out of those hundred billion people, 99.9999% of them were starch eaters. They obtained the bulk of their calories from starch. They weren't vegan. They ate anything that got in their sight, including human beings, other human beings, but the dominant food available in any culture except for the extremes of the environment. Like the Inuit Eskimo, we can talk about. The dominant food, the most reliable food is starch. It's not kale. It's not broccoli, it's not cauliflower, it's not pea pods, it's rice, corn, potatoes, wheat, barley, sweet potatoes. That's where people got their calories. And I make a big distinction. I know I keep people off guard a bit by talking about starch, but unless they understand starch, they're never going to get it.
They're going to be grumbling on nutrient dense, non-starchy, green and yellow vegetables because it's so hard to get enough calories. And besides that, they're not dependable as far as crops go. They're expensive to grow in modern culture, it's starch. And until the world gets their arms around starch, we're not going to have control. The world population, it's not going to be freed from the problems we have today, and individuals just trying to cure their diabetes and their rheumatoid arthritis and so on, until they understand that they need to be eating oatmeal for breakfast, hash brown potatoes, pancakes, and waffles.
They need to be eating for lunch and dinner bean burritos, moo shu vegetables over rice, those kinds of things. Sweet potatoes. In the last two nights in our home, we had sweet potatoes one night, and that's all we had. And I'll tell you, they were so good. And then the last night, Mary fixed some baked potatoes along with some steamed green, yellow vegetables. Again, just phenomenal. That's where the sugar is. That's where the sweetness is. That's where the satisfaction is. And you as a runner, you as an athlete, a world class athlete, you know this. The starch eaters win. They do it on pasta, they do it on... you know what I mean.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. We supplement with the green leafies and all that.
John McDougall:
We do too. It was kind of shocking. You know John Mackey?
Rip Esselstyn:
I've heard of that guy. Yes.
John McDougall:
Yeah. Well, as you've been good friends with him, and you've worked with him. But I remember one time, one of the first visits, John came to one of our weekends, one of our advanced study weekends, but he couldn't wait to get out of the dining room to tell me, "I saw green and yellow vegetables on the trays. The buffet there there's all kinds of green and yellow." Well, of course! These add color, interest, flavor, aroma, some bulk nutrients, but they can't be the center of the meal plan. It's got to be the beans and rice and corn and pasta and so on. Always has been, always will be. And I realize that there are a lot of people who get a little different message. They get the nutrient dense message. But I have to say it's pretty hard to sustain that if you believe it in total.
Rip Esselstyn:
Tell me this, John, if you had to pick between beans, pasta, bread, or potatoes, and you could only live on one of those for a month, which would it be?
John McDougall:
A lifetime? I would pick potatoes. I'm Irish. That's my family descent is, descendants are Irish. And of course they went through the potato famine, which half the people starved. So very, very strong association between Irish and potatoes. It's not the ideal food, it's just what I particularly like. The question comes up, in fact, I have given this several time in lectures, and maybe when you attended one of the advanced study weekends, I went through what I thought was the optimal diet. I mean, you eliminate standard potatoes because of the solanine poisoning. You eliminate wheat, barley, and rye because of the gluten.
Rice has some problems, et cetera. So what is it? And I run into this Rip with real patients. They all attend our 12 day program, and they're overwhelmed with their problems of dying of cancer or heart disease or diabetes. And they'll get to the end of the program and they'll say, "I really tried to learn what I was supposed to do, but I didn't, and I'm dying. Can you tell me just in a couple of sentences what I'm supposed to eat?" I tell them, "You go home and you live on sweet potatoes and green and yellow vegetables. That's your diet until you figure it out." Because I think the sweet potato is the most ideal of all starches. And it happens to be one of the lowest protein foods that we should be consuming. You can't get any lower than sweet potato. Only 3% of the calories are... Maybe 10%, maybe 5% depends upon which table you look at are protein and protein is evil.
If I had to pick one thing I had to correct in people's hearts and minds, it was the idea that they had to have a protein. I'm pouring out my sun milk on my oatmeal this morning, and they're advertising to me that it has like 63 grams of protein. I almost put it back. No, I didn't really, but if you want to talk about something that's destructive to people on the planet, it's protein. Anyway, if you had to play this game and it becomes real life with my patients, you go home and you eat nothing but sweet potatoes and broccoli and cauliflower and a few of those things, just make to it interesting. Throw a little salt on it. And for most people, a little salt would be okay. A little sugar would be okay, but not much.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you mentioned oatmeal John, and you said before we went live here, that for breakfast, you always have oatmeal, you make it yourself?
John McDougall:
I do. I'm the cook in the morning. Mary gets out of bed and it takes her a while to wake up.
Rip Esselstyn:
So-
John McDougall:
I'm up two or three hours earlier than she is.
Rip Esselstyn:
How do you make your oatmeal and what kind of oats do you use?
John McDougall:
Just plain old oats. I don't have any special, kind of have to look at the boxes. I buy it in 30 pound bags. It's just rolled oats. And I get up and I have scoops. I put in two and a quarter scoops in. Purified water. We have clean water. And I cook that up, just plain. And then also what I've discovered is that when I buy fresh fruit, it spoils. And that's troubling to me. Not only do I not like to eat spoiled food, but it's a waste of money. So what I found is that you could go to the grocery store and you could buy frozen berries. Frozen guava. Frozen pineapples. You all kinds of frozen fruit in a bag, just frozen fruit. And so I get up in the morning and I throw a little of that in one of my bowls, and I cook it up in a microwave. I'm not afraid of microwaves. And then I mix the fruit and the oatmeal together. And that's breakfast.
Rip Esselstyn:
Dr. Greger did a whole episode on the microwave and all the hazards with it. And he determined at the end that the most dangerous thing was if it fell on your foot.
John McDougall:
Well, you have to be careful they don't leak. And you can buy detectors. You don't want to get microwaved yourself for sure. But I've held that position for 40 years. Is that conventional cooking or microwave basically the same? A microwave is so convenient. Why put obstacles up in front of people that aren't necessary? We want to make this as easy, as enjoyable as possible. So they'll make the transition and they'll stick with it.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you're tackling the breakfast in the family for you and Mary, and then Mary does dinner. What do you usually do for lunch?
John McDougall:
Usually leftovers. She made a great white bean soup a couple nights ago, and she buys bread that is Take & Bake bread. Again, the grocery store, we don't have the convenience. We used to have in Santa Rosa, California, going to a local bakery that made oil free bread. But there are some Take & Bake breads that are really good, and they're pretty whole grain. And so she throws those in the refrigerator and I think they last months. And so she cooked up a pot of beans in her slow cooker, the same slow cooker she's had for 40 years.
Rip Esselstyn:
So Chef AJ hasn't talked her into getting the Instant Pot?
John McDougall:
No, no. We have one. I think Chef AJ bought one, sent it to us, sitting on the shelf over there. So anyway, that's what we had. And my point being is I had that yesterday for lunch. The leftovers.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice.
John McDougall:
It's often leftovers. So Mary will three sweet potatoes. Boy, I'll tell you, you can buy some big sweet potatoes at the right market. And we'll, I'll only eat one, she'll only eat maybe a half. And then the next day for lunch, that's what I have. I can hardly wait. But we don't eat out, except when our grandson comes to visit us. He goes to college up here and he's big at eating out. He's vegan, he's healthy, really healthy diet. But there's this really, really good Vietnamese restaurant town. virtually oil free. I'll tell you if you ever end up in Portland, Oregon. I'd love to take you there. It's got fresh spring rolls that are just, they're perfect. And I order a couple of those. And if I want to spoil myself, I use a little peanut sauce on it.
It was done really well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. So John, you just mentioned how you felt like protein was one of the most destructive things, I should say-
John McDougall:
It's evil. It's the worst thing that has ever happened to planet Earth and people, the promotion of protein.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so you feel like the paleo, keto, the carnivore diets are evil. What are some of the hazards? What makes it evil?
John McDougall:
Well, Loren Cordain, The Paleo Diet, we can talk about him for a while. Some good things they did was get dairy and sugar out of the diet. You know, can say good things about it. But they basically tell you if you'd eat any animal you want, even wild animals, endangered species, just eat them. And as I mentioned earlier, people used to eat people, even children, which so that would fit the paleo diet. Loren Cordain talks about something called rabbit starvation. And that's where you get over 35% of your calories is protein, and you die.
You get sick and die from that much protein. And the reason they call it rabbit starvation is rabbits are very trim animals, not much fat, mostly muscle. And so he even warns people about rabbit starvation. Well, the paleo diet can hit 35% protein. And if you follow some of the variations of the keto diets, you're hitting over 35% protein. These are dangerous diets. Now that's at the extreme, at the usual amount that people are eating, not even people following these diets. People following these diets are maybe consuming 20, 25%, 30% of their calories as protein, maybe 40.
But the average Americans consuming maybe 20% or 15% of their diet is protein, that's hazardous. For example, through a typical lifetime of people eating, person eating an American diet, when they get to age 70, on average, they've lost 25% of their kidney function from the wear and tear cause. By the amount of protein in the typical Western diet, they've lost 25%. Now it doesn't matter because you only need about 25% of your kidneys to clear all the waste. So you'll never notice it. But it becomes a real issue for anybody who's lost kidney mass. And I take care of a lot of really, really sick people.
I take care of people who have lost 90% of their kidneys. In that case, when you've lost, say you've lost half your kidney mass, and that would be somebody that gets in an auto accident, loses a kidney, has an infection, or donates a kidney or a recipient of a donated kidney. They only have half their kidney mass. In that case, the standard recommendation from nephrologists, the kidney doctors worldwide, is the donor and the recipient need to be on a low protein diet to preserve the kidney mass. Now, they really don't emphasize that Rip.
The conversation is casual. "Go see the dietician. The dietician will teach you a low protein diet and you need to be on a low protein diet. Now come on here, let me show you my dialysis machines. They're really cool, and let me tell you how much money I make on these things." And that's where you spend your life three, four hours a day, three, four times a week on these dialysis machines. Whereas my patients who've lost as much as 90% of their kidney mass, they'll go on a healthy diet. And the healthy diet I use as an example, would be the Kempner Diet, which is 93% sugar. Okay? It's white rice, fruit, fruit juice, and table sugar. In this case, using that as an ideal. I don't use that in all practical terms because I find people do well without those kinds of restrictions. But Walter Kempner, I mean, you want to talk about the father of diet therapy. This man was curing people of diabetes and heart disease and kidney failure and rheumatoid arthritis even before I was born. That was a long time ago.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wasn't he with Duke back in the forties and fifties, is that correct?
John McDougall:
He came to Duke in 1934. He was invited by the head of the internal medicine department at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And he brought his diet to popularity in 1939. A very, very interesting, man. I have a whole lecture on Walter Kempner on my website. It's in my December 2013 newsletter. But this guy, I mean, he's the doctor who I look upon as my most important mentor as a fellow medical doctor. I mean, he taught me how effective diet therapy could be better than any drug or surgery available in most cases of chronic disease. He taught me how you don't have to worry about simple diets. Most of us, we were worried about calcium and vitamins and proteins and so on. He showed me that the simplest of diets, white rice, fruit, fruit juice, and as much as 2,000 calories of simple sugar. Table sugar today supplied all your needs. He gave a vitamin pill too, but that's whole nother story.
But doctors don't think in those terms. Neither do customers, neither do food companies. They don't understand Rip, they just plain and simple don't know about human nutrition.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned that you did a thing on Walter Kempner, and I think it was you said, 2013 McDougall Newsletter. For anybody that's listening, John's got the most amazing archives of McDougall newsletters. Going back to what John? The eighties?
John McDougall:
I started it online in 2002.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
John McDougall:
But I have my previous newsletters that date back to '86. They're on my website too. My website is just a trove of information. It represents 46 years of my work. It's all free. And on that website, in addition to my work, I have the files of Nathan Pritikin. Nathan Pritikin, he put together, before he died, he put together a summary of his favorite articles on diet therapy. And it's a book about this thick, all right. It sat on my shelf in my office until October of 2017 when it was burnt along with every other thing I had in material possession in wildfire. But illegally, I copied that darn thing and I put it on the website. And so you can go to my website now, you can put up Nathan Pritikin and you can have his... Only 50 copies were ever printed. As far as I know, no copies exist.
But anyway, it's there. And then I did the same thing with Walter Kempner's work, two volumes, again free. I was able to find out where they were, and I got copies from some of the people who used to work with him. Actually, I don't need to mention the name, but it was people who worked for him. They gave me copies, two volumes, and I said, "I need permission to do this." And they didn't know where I'd getting permission, so I went around a little bit here and there and looked for some people to just give me permission. There wasn't anybody to give me permission, so I copied them.
And they're on the website, volume one and volume two free of Walter Kemp's work. Volume one is in German, volume two is in English. So it's all there for you folks. And there's a lot of young guys coming up that have new and wonderful ideas about nutrition, you need good fat diet and all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't even want to talk to them until they've studied the work of Kempner and Pritikin. They don't deserve the stage until they really understand the work of these two pioneers. And it's there on the website. So if anybody ever wants to get into a discussion, a friendly discussion about the truth about human nutrition, you better become familiar with these two pioneers.
Rip Esselstyn:
There you go. John, you, do you remember the film, the documentary Forks Over Knives?
John McDougall:
Yeah. I had a lot to do with it.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know you did. I know you did. So if you remember, there's a scene where I'm going up the fire pole with just my arms about my legs, and I'm saying, "Real men eat plants." And the reason why is I was going through a lot of your old newsletters, and I saw one from 2012, and the title was Sperm Counts Reduced by Eating Meat and Dairy. And it was this Danish study of 701 young Danish kids. Why do you think meat and dairy reduces sperm count? Do you have any idea?
John McDougall:
Yeah, I think so. It has to do with the chemicals. Meat and dairy is high on the food chain. And so it picks up all kinds of phytochemicals and phytoestrogens and xeno estrogens, which are chemicals that are made in Estrogen activity. And so as a result of eating meat, you're eating a whole bunch of these chemicals. And what they do is they raise havoc on your semen and your sperm.
But not only do you have less fewer sperm per volume, which is dropped about at least in half. And reports come out all the time in the newspaper. But you read it 30 years ago from my work, there's more deformity in the sperm. It produces genetic defects, including down syndrome and other defects because the lack of plant foods in the diet and in these chemicals. And I'll tell you something else that I think only well many of your listeners will relate to is the ejaculate has a decrease in volume in people who eat meat. In this day and age, some of your listeners should understand how important it is. So you've got bad sperm, you've got half the sperm, and you don't have enough fluid to make any impression that I would be impressed by.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it makes sense.
John McDougall:
I bet none your others guests talk about that.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, no. But that's why I love having you on. You talk about that, people, they stay away from it.
John McDougall:
I'm a medical doctor and I've cared for 12,000 patients, and so I've really earned the right to talk to people about...` I don't get embarrassed. I'm there to help them get over some serious problems. And so as far as any boundaries go, as long as I'm decent and respectful and scientific, I'm going to tell you the truth.
You just are not going to be a man if you're going to eat a lot of meat, plain and simple. No matter what movie you're in, you're not going to make it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. Real men eat-
John McDougall:
Also, you have the problem of erectile dysfunction.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, yes, exactly.
John McDougall:
We're not just talking about bad sperm, we're talking about getting it up.
You plug the vessels to the penis and you ruin the nerves to the penis. And it's not Viagra deficiency, it's a matter of poor blood supply of the penis, just like you have to your heart and your brain.
Rip Esselstyn:
If you remember from Forks Over Knives as well, Terry Mason was in there and he said it's the canary in the coal mine that kind of lets you know you got some heart disease probably going on.
John McDougall:
The sad thing is people have known there's really nothing new. That's kind of why I don't do the newsletter anymore, and I just take care of patients and run our clinic. But there's really nothing new to tell. I kind of ran out of subjects. And all the other stuff it just comes back to the same message is that people need to eat, they live on a starch based diet with fruits and vegetables, and you need to stay away from animal foods and oils. That's it. Two sentences.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's super simple. It's super simple. Let me ask you this, John, because it seems like every year or two or three, there's a big thing in the news about a celebrity that's passed away from colon cancer, colorectal cancer. We had Vince Lombardi back in the seventies, Charles Schultz, back in the seventies. So I would love to hear what your thoughts are on some testing. So for example, colonoscopy, are you a fan of that or not?
John McDougall:
No, no. My August, 2010 newsletter begins the discussion, and I did a newsletter in 2017, which you can find on our website that talks about colonoscopy. This is not the gold standard. Well, it is the gold standard if you're making money, it's a heck of a gold standard. It's like $3,000 to have one done. Whereas you can do just good as far as detecting colon cancer and saving your life, which is most important by doing stool tests, which could be like $3. These colonoscopies are dangerous. I've had several people who I've known who've died, but by getting the routine checkups, let me think about it for a minute, Rip. When you agree to a colonoscopy, you're agreeing to risk your life today based upon a theoretical possibility that you will have a reduced risk of dying of cancer in 20 to 30 years. That's a hell of a bargain.
So no, I think people should not get colonoscopies, but should they have some type of colon cancer, they should. Not because it'll reduce the risk of dying, it will not. It will reduce the risk of dying of colon cancer. Everybody you save from colon cancer, you kill on the operating table or through anesthesia or other treatments. So all the wash. You won't live any longer. In fact, there's really no early detection tests that improves overall survival, reduces overall mortality. They reduce disease specific mortality. In other words, mammography may reduce your risk of dying of breast cancer, but the subsequent treatments, chemotherapy, radiation, et cetera, it takes an equal number of people.
So nobody's alive any longer. You just look at overall mortality. Anyway, I do recommend that people have one sigmoid exam around age 60, and they could also start doing stool tests. You could do a couple different blood tests, there's a new test that costs about 600 bucks called a Cologuard, which is heavily advertised because it makes a ton of money. That I think is a reasonable thing to do. So if you do a sigmoid exam and/or you check your stool. And that's the way it should be done. In 2016, the Canadian task force on preventative medicine told Canadian citizens to stop getting colonoscopies.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's a statement.
John McDougall:
Well, it's big business though, Rip, I mean, I have colleagues that drive Teslas.
You can't overlook the dollar. The money drives everything. So if you think these are bad people, you're wrong. They're just people.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you are a fan though of the flexible sigmoid exam? You said it's-
John McDougall:
No, when I started doing them as a general doctor, I used the silver sword.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's that mean?
John McDougall:
In other words, it was not flexible. It was about this long. And that was something I did every day on my patients. And not every patient had one every day, but every day I did one. And this was really, really a painful experience. Now with the flexible, it's almost nothing. And the cancers that make a difference as far as disease-specific mortality, not overall mortality as far as dying of colon cancer, are those you find by a sigmoidoscope. Adding the extra six feet with a colonoscope really doesn't even improve disease specific mortality. So just get a sigmoid exam, say around age 60. You stop doing them, by the way around 75. In, that window it's worth your while. After 75, you're wasting your time and money.
Rip Esselstyn:
And what are your thoughts, I think related to this as far as like bile problems issues, diverticulitis, polyps, constipation, all that stuff?
John McDougall:
Well, again, there's a really, really interesting lecture that I have on my website. It's on GI diseases, but it's in a book that I published in 2006 with a book publishing company, and it's still a national bestseller.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John McDougall:
It's called Dr. McDougall's Digestive Tuneup. Whole Foods used to carry it up until recently. I don't know if they still do, you still buy it on Amazon. It's a great little book. And it is really, I mean, it's the only book that describes what a bowel movement should look like. I do that in this book. Like I say, I'm a doctor. And you can count on pretty much all the illnesses all the way from bad breath, where you start in your mouth to esophagitis, adenocarcinoma in the esophagus to stomach ulcers, gallbladder disease, colon cancer, diverticulosis, diverticulitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, hemorrhoids. Pretty much it has to do pretty much a hundred percent with what you put in your bowel. Why do I know this? Well, I know this because one of my other mentors, Denis Burkitt, and by the way, I did a newsletter on him in my January, 2013 newsletter, and the only video recordings of Denis Burkitt and Nathan Pritikin and I did, no others exist.
And they both can be found in the January, 2013 is Burkitt and the February, 2013 is the Pritikin. And I've done some on Roy Swank, who's another one of my heroes, and Walter Kempner would not allow his picture to be taken. But I discussed in my December, 2013 newsletter. Look, I didn't invent this, all right? I stand on the shoulders of some really, really important people, and I've been a conduit, which I'm happy about. But this dates me by not just a lifetime, but by hundreds of years. People have been talking about should you be vegetarian or should you be a carnivore? This goes back to the biblical days.
Rip Esselstyn:
John. How do you remember 2013, 2012? How do you have such a sharp mind at remembering all the newsletters and where it is?
John McDougall:
Maybe I still have good circulation to my brain. I don't know. Really the truth of the matter is I put a lot of work into everything that I've ever done. I'd never wanted people come back to me and say, you were wrong. You have to correct this. And the truth is the truth. And if you search hard enough and you're able to evaluate what's going on from a reasonably objective point of view, you can hit narrowing on the truth. I would spend one to two weeks every month writing these newsletters and we're talking about eight to 12, 16 hour days that I work on each newsletter. So I have not had to correct any of my work, none of my books, none of the newsletters that I've written.
Basically nothing. I've added a few things here and there and on our books, which we have 13 national bestselling books, whenever there was an update that was necessary or an emphasis that was necessary, I did... Actually copy that, this is a subject in my newsletters. The last newsletter I wrote was just before the fires, and it was about the barbaric and brutal treatment of breast cancer victims. That's the last newsletter I wrote. But I've written two books about treating breast cancer.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, speaking of breast cancer John, and I think you alluded to it when you're talking about colonoscopies, so you also are not a fan of mammograms, right?
John McDougall:
Absolutely not. Well, which I just did an interview and people will find it on YouTube. Peter Gøtzsche. He was the head of the Cochrane Collaboration for 20 plus years. He became a friend of mine. And I don't know whether you came to the advanced study weekend, a lot of the people did when I gave the professionals weekend. But he was our only outside guest. I did the rest of the lectures. And I brought Peter in, head of the Cochrane Collaboration from Copenhagen, flew first class, paid him a lot of money, and he has written several books. And one is called Mammography: Truth Lies and Controversies. If you want to get into the details, get this book. There's also a paper that he wrote, which you can find on PubMed. I'd have to look it up for you. Just recently it was within the last 10 years, which summarizes his stand.
Or you can go to my website or just look up McDougall and Peter Gøtzsche and you'll find a interview I did with him about two months ago. And I can't tell you the number of people who wrote me, including Michael Greger, and told me how important this interview was to talk about mammograms. So I'm still busy trying to bring the truth out. Yeah, no, absolutely not, I recommend strongly against screening. There's a difference between screening and diagnostic. Screening is when you cast this huge net over the public and you catch a whole bunch of people. That's what you do with screening tests. It's just great for business. It's called disease mongering. You turn people into patients. That's what we do. Disease mongering. Anyway, Peter does a great interview. RI got him to talk to the public and you'll want to listen to that. It's well with your troubles.
Rip Esselstyn:
I like it. So anybody that wants to know more about why not to do mammograms, listen to that, John so I don't know if you remember or not, but my whole family and I, we came to one of your McDougall vacations. It was in Costa Rica. You guys really knew how to deliver quite an experience. We still are talking about some of the zip lining and the rafting trips and the sail boating and the hikes. But every day you would give one talk. And I remember part of one of your talks, you talked about osteoporosis and osteopenia. And if I remember correctly, and this is what I'd love you to mention, is that you were like, it's kind of a made up disease, if I'm not mistaken.
John McDougall:
Based on the bone mineral density test.
It's based on a test. To really diagnose osteoporosis, you have to have somebody have a fracture with an unusual mild stress. In other words, if you get hit by a car and have a fracture, I mean that happened to you, but somebody takes a step or has a minor fall and they fracture a bone, that you diagnose osteoporosis. The bone mineral density test is an unreliable test. And what it does is it measures the amount of mineral in the bones. Bone mineral density. There's an article, you can find it. I wrote a direct... I don't only direct you to the important articles. Under hot topic, the hot topic's osteoporosis. The first article is about how women over the age of 60, 65, 70% of them flunk the bone mineral density test.
They either are diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia based upon bone mineral density test. Why? Because it's normal. It's natural. It's supposed to happen. The female body stores two pounds of mineral for the baby, for the fetus, for the breastfeeding. When you go to menopause, you don't need to carry around that two pounds of mineral. So you naturally normally get rid of that mineral. Doesn't change the strength of the bones, it's just that the mineral is no longer there. But unfortunately, women become victims of the pharmaceutical business with some very dangerous drugs as a consequence of this misleading test.
So again, this is something, I'm a doctor, I have a duty to my patients. I have to tell them what I believe to be the truth. And Rip, I've been doing this for, well, 47 years now. I've seen 12,000 patients. I certainly have not been shy about my opinions. And to this date, I still have weathered the test of time. I haven't found anybody, at least in my face that tells me I'm wrong. No, I don't know what they say behind my back Rip, but I'll tell you, nobody's ever come to me and said, you know what? You really, really missed that one. You hurt a whole bunch of people. It doesn't happen. And I'm proud of that. But it's because I really work hard.
It's not because I'm a genius or anything, it's just because I'm a doctor and I have an obligation to still have my patients. And when they come to me, they, they're buying an expert and they better get the best expert possible.
Rip Esselstyn:
So we have probably, I think the latest stats that I've read are about 116 million Americans that right now are on some sort of a hypertensive medication. What are your thoughts on blood pressure and all these meds that are being dispensed for elevated blood pressure?
John McDougall:
I don't know, it just fits in with the rest of the medical business. Now, just like with colon cancer, I didn't mention one of the basic messages is to fix the food. Same thing with osteoporosis. I didn't mention it, but one of the basic messages is to fix the food. And so it is with high blood pressure. I practice by the standard recommendations for treating high blood pressure. Those put out by the National Health Service. That's the British Organization for Medical Care, the National Health Service. I follow those recommendations for treating with medication. I follow the recommendations of the American Heart Association, I follow the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration. What they say is this, that you should initiate therapy if the blood pressure is sustained at 160 over a hundred millimeters of mercury. The American Medical Association says it should be initiated.
Now listen to this. If the blood pressure is sustained at 150 or higher, okay, I do this. If you claimed to be my patient who came to me and 99% of the time, or actually our data is clearest. So it shows that 90% of the time we reduce or stop blood pressure medications. But say you're one of those people who really did run a blood pressure of a lot greater than 160 over 110, I put you on the right medication, which happens to be really a cheap medication which has been used, it's been used since the 1950s. It's so called Chlorthalidone. So you get a little water pill and you get a lot of encouragement to eat well and lose the weight. And the thing is that treating high blood pressure really helps very few people. It helps people at the extreme. The ones that are really, really, really, really sick benefit from statins or benefit from, well, they don't benefit from heart surgery.
I don't care how sick they are. That's a whole nother story. Rip, probably your listeners have gotten the message so far.
Rip Esselstyn:
For sure.
John McDougall:
This is from listening to us. What's going on is criminal. But again, I have to tell you, I'm a physician. That's my main goal. And I have a responsibility to my patients and I can't let them undergo treatments that are harmful and unnecessary. And over my career, many people have come to me and said, "Look, you've got very, very successful diet books. You've got a really successful diet." Especially my colleagues have come to me when they read my books. They said, "You're such a good diet doctor, why don't you just stick to diet? Why do you have to meddle in heart surgery and cancer therapy and mammographies and osteo? Why do you have to meddle in that? Listen, we got a good business going, just leave us alone."
And that's been the conversation for my whole career. And I've dealt with my colleagues at many levels, and plain and simple, they're not telling the people the truth, they just aren't. But there's a lot of money behind this Rip. And that's the problem is that, well, you see it. For example, if you watch, and I spend way too much time doing this, watching cable news, every single advertisement is paid for by the drug companies. Well maybe 90%. You got a whole bunch of immune suppressing drugs and they're basically all the same. If you watch them, they'll say, we use this special drug for rheumatoid arthritis. Well we also use it for ulcerative colitis. And if you have a little eczema, we'll put you on the same drug too. They suppress the immune system and then they tell you for 90 seconds after the pitch.
Of course it's a dancing couple in the field having a wonderful time and enjoying life in their children. But they run through a whole dialogue about how you could die. You could get cancer, you could get infections, you'd be crazy to take this drug if you listen to what they're saying. Some people may need these kinds of medications because their life is tough and they won't change their diet. But my position has been and will remain that you ought to hear McDougall's message first. All right? Give me a chance. And what we're talking about is something that costs you nothing. Something you should be doing for to have a good bowel moment. Something you should be doing just to cut your food bill. Or if you believe in animal cruelty, something you should be doing. Or if you believe in saving planet Earth, something you should be doing, just give me a couple of months and then go buy the stuff that they're selling for 20, 30, 50, $70,000 a year.
That's what they're making on these drugs. They're selling medication to type two diabetics. It's probably a third of the commercials. Type two diabetic medications. Type two diabetes is a hundred percent curable with weight loss. And the best way to lose weight is with the program you and I teach. So even if you go on the Atkins diet, even if you have your teeth wired together, even if you're put in a prisoner war camp, your diabetes will go away a hundred percent of the time. But nobody tells you that. They tell you, you got to take this whole bunch of new drugs. And you know why they tell you you have to take up a whole bunch of new drugs that they're advertising now? Is because in 2008 they finished up six studies.
Three of them were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 2008. The Advance, the Accord, and the Veterans Study were published in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine. All of the studies, all six, there are no others. All six showed you increase the risk of dying, dying of heart disease, sudden death, weight gain by taking these medications. So the FDA came after the drug companies in 2008 and said, "Look you guys, we've approved anything that lowers blood sugar and didn't kill the patient immediately. You got to at least stay alive for a while."
So it won't approve anything that lowers blood sugar. But you know what, that's not enough. You got to show that people end up living longer or don't have fewer heart disease. So they change their pitch, they changed their research. Now they have a bunch of drugs out there that they advertise, "Oh boy, we reduce your risk of cardiovascular mortality like by about one to 2%. That's what you do." Or Ozempic the new one now for diabetes everybody's on for weight loss.
"And by the way, you take our diabetic medication, you might lose 10, 20, 30 pounds." That kind of drug and there's some sister drugs to it, are being sold to the public off-label to lose weight. My goodness, all you got to do is change the kind of diet you and I recommend. And they all lose weight. There are no overweight people following a starch based diet with the addition of fruits and vegetables. As long as they keep the nuts and seeds and avocados and the derivatives of these high fat plant fruits out of the diet. There's no such thing. But before 1980 I'll show you the research [inaudible 00:52:47].
Rip Esselstyn:
So you say out of the diet as far as the nuts in the seasoned avocados or minimize it, what is your-
John McDougall:
Well what I don't think they're unhealthy Rip, it's just that for people what happens is a little bit is not enough. It's like alcoholism. And so you start giving them permission for nuts and seeds and avocados. Ones that want to lose weight or, you have to lose the weight to get rid the type two diabetes and you start giving permission. What you've done is you've sabotaged these people. So what I teach is that nuts and seeds and avocados are not unhealthy, but they're 90% fat. They're just loaded with calories. How do you expect to lose weight if you eat these? Well the research says if I only eat an ounce a day, I'll gain weight. Well, you don't eat an ounce a day. I know you don't.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you eat nuts?
John McDougall:
Yeah, I do. In fact Rip, per price instance, we got together in person many years ago. I probably lost 20 pounds. And so for me, I'm getting older let's face it, I'm 75 years old. And that's a natural part of aging you do lose weight. It will happen. It happened to your dad, it happened to me. It happened to Colin Campbell. Even though you're in good health, you don't carry around the pounds you used to for a whole bunch of reasons. None of them unhealthy. Just like dying is not unhealthy. It's going to happen.
And so I try and put some effort into keeping my weight on. And Mary's thin too. She's probably lost 15 pounds since you saw her last time, but she's 76 years old. We don't need to carry around that kind of weight anymore. So anyway, so there are people out that need to gain weight and nuts, seeds and avocados just like I told you, I had a little peanut sauce with my favorite Vietnamese spring rolls.
Rip Esselstyn:
Every once in a while when you're feeling little spry.
John McDougall:
But I'll tell you, if they sold that peanut sauce in gallon jars, I'd be in trouble.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me ask you this, you mentioned alcohol. What are your thoughts on caffeine and alcohol? Because it seems like this culture is a fan of both.
John McDougall:
Alcohol is a real serious problem for about one in 10 people. And I consider it a serious irresponsibility for a health professional to recommend alcohol. Maybe nine out of 10 people are listening to this doctor's message about a drink is okay, but one out of 10, here's the message. He goes home and beats the wife and kids and gets in an auto accident, kills the family on the way home. They should never be mentioned in the same sentence. Alcohol and health. Now if you drink because it's sociable or relaxing, alcoholics know when they're alcoholics, if they're honest with themselves, they have no doubt they have a problem. But a lot of people don't get honest with themselves. So I think alcohol poison's a very serious thing that has to be dealt with carefully. Caffeine's kind of an interesting thing, but this is tea by the way. I'm drinking. Non-caffeinated tea, by the way. Coffee's a whole different thing and there've been a lot of research done and I think it falls in the category. People like to hear good news about the bad habits.
Rip Esselstyn:
I've heard that before.
John McDougall:
Well they do. But I've reviewed the literature and I have to admit, I have had a cup of coffee once in a while and the literature says that it prolongs longevity and it makes you keener. And especially there are studies down on college students said they give them one cup of coffee after lunch and it just perks them up just like they never had lunch.
So I would have to say, as long as you give this positive message of longevity and having a keener mind, you don't forget to tell people that coffee causes terrible indigestion. And decaf coffee causes as much acid indigestion as regular coffee. Every serious coffee drinker knows where every bathroom is in town, because they're constantly urinating and defecating. People have to understand that this is a stimulant, this is a drug. And if you're having problems sleeping at night, think about the coffee. If you're having problems lecturing and your pointers going like this, think about the coffee. They'll see. What else? Anyway, there's some main points about coffee. It is a drug, it has some positive things and some negative things, but I have to separate that from alcohol because as I've seen, I don't know whether you've had these experiences Rip, but I've seen people's lives absolutely destroyed by alcohol.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think we all have. But with the caffeine, you also, in one of your newsletters, and I can't remember the year or the month, maybe you do. But you mentioned how, and I think it was around cholesterol and in this particular newsletter, you were advocating for people to try and get their cholesterol to about 150. You mentioned that caffeine can raise cholesterol.
John McDougall:
Yeah. There are a couple of other alkaloids. Thank you very much. That's the other thing I should have added. That was a very confusing thing in the 1980s because well done research, and I read this research carefully, showed that coffee raises cholesterol in some studies, but not in others. And when you got down to the methods, you figured out why.` It had to do with the methods of brewing. If you percolated the coffee, what happens is the cholesterol went up about 10%. But if you put it through a paper filter, the paper filter took out the two fatty acids that raised cholesterol. And so it doesn't raise cholesterol, like most coffees done through a paper filter these days. And now also I want to mention that regular coffee raises cholesterol about 10%, decaf raises at about 11%.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John McDougall:
Don't fool yourself. I mean, you may not get the jittery nuts with decaf, but the acid ingestion is just as bad as decaf. The cholesterol rise is just as much, the high blood pressure rises as much.
Rip Esselstyn:
I just want everybody to know, and I want you to know how much fun I have going back and reading the old newsletters that are on your website. Really it's a blast. I want to talk about one thing that I found because I think this in and of itself could get men worldwide to drop the meat in the dairy and basically become starchivores and become PLANTSTRONG. And you have a whole thing on hormone dependent diseases. And one of the things you mentioned is male pattern baldness. When I look at you and Colin and Essie, well, let's leave Greger out of this, right? But it's this one study that it's referenced in a Japanese book that appeared in the journal.
John McDougall:
Dr. Inaba.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, exactly right. Can Hair Grow Again? And anyway, can you remember that at all or do you want me to-
John McDougall:
It happened to me when I was a young doctor in Hilo, Hawaii is one of the dermatologists down the hall, he brought me this article entitled, Can You Grow Your Hair back by Dr. Inaba. And I thought he was just pulling my leg. He's just teasing me. And it was published in oncology and dermatology or something, some obscure journal. And it was about Dr. Inaba. What he'd observed was that there was no male pattern baldness in Japan. In Japan prior to World War II. And then after the war, when people started eating the western diet, not only did male pattern baldness appear, but so did prostate cancer and heart disease, obesity and so on.
So he made the connection and he also talked about the hormones and how the hormones change when you change your diet. And people who watch the hair loss commercials know that they sell anti testosterone medications to keep your hair long. I was living in Hawaii and we spent a lot of time down in Waikiki. Plus my patient practice was probably half Japanese. And what I'd observed was that the older gentleman who came to Hawaii visiting from Japan, they always had a full set of hair. Whereas the Asian Americans who had been born and raised in Hawaii, they're bald, just they're as fat and greasy and bald as whites and blacks. It didn't matter what color your skin was.
I thought you were going to talk to me about the body odor.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I'd love to hear about the body odor because that's something that I think most men are not fans of.
John McDougall:
This is the thing, but again, I watch too much cable news, but they have this, I don't know, woman who comes on the TV and she's got this tube of stuff. Mary probably remembers the name of it, and it says it takes care of body odor every place on the body, you can put it between your butt cheeks and it won't stink 24 hours later.
Excuse me? Honey, this body odor thing has become a real sales gimmick. But what people need to understand is this stink, whether it comes out of the mouth or the flatus or the vaginal area or the sweat glands, is all due to the food and it's the animal foods. What happens is you eat these foods, you're taking in a high amount of sulfur. And sulfur stinks. I mean, you think about rotten eggs or the sulfur pitch you've visited at Yellowstone. It's a most repulsive odor that the human body comes into contact with. There's even a toothpaste or a mouthwash called SmartMouth wash. Smart is the name of the product, which talks about how it deactivates sulfur and that all bad breath is caused by sulfur. These are the commercials that I'm hearing. Well, sulfur, let me give you some numbers here.
If you're going to compare beans and beef, same amount of calories, same amount of protein, you compare beans and beef. Beef has four times as much sulfur, 400% than beans. You compare chicken and rice, seven times, difference. You compare tuna fish and sweet potatoes. There's 12 times difference in the sulfur content of these foods. And sulfur's an element you'll remember from your chemistry, elements are neither created or destroyed. They have to come from someplace and they have to go someplace. So in this case, all sulfur comes from the ground and it is incorporated in animal tissues. And what happens when you eat these things is that they break down the sulfur dioxide, which is a really stinky part of sulfur, and they go in your intestinal tract and they're absorbed to the bloodstream and they flow through the bloodstream and they're exhaled. Every breath you exhale, you cannot brush this stink away.
It comes out of your lungs the sulfur does. And so you have bad breath that you can't get rid of. You get rid of the sulfur, and then it comes out of the body, the body odor, and then it comes out of the flatus. And you've heard, in fact, I have an article August, 2002 newsletter, which is entitled, Bad Farts Meets Stinks. And one of the things I joke about rip is I joke about, people in our program, they'll laugh and they'll say, have you heard of McDougall today? Because, well, you switched, especially initially to this kind of diet. You have more gas to your bowel bacteria, just. That's not a problem. But then I come back to them and I say, well, that may be true, but at least our bowel gas smells better. I said, their bowel gas smells like something died.
But the thing is, we've gotten to a point where we're telling women. Listen I'm a doctor, okay, I've done thousands of vaginal exams. This is a real problem for women. Not all women, only women who eat the western diet. I can just assure you that's the case. They have odor that must really, really bother their life from their vaginal secretions. That sulfur comes out there too. And now they have a tube of cream that you can put between your legs, a little drop, take care of the stink for 24 hours. So maybe for 24 hours you're a little more attractive.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, they're not getting to the weak causation of what's going on there like everything else.
John McDougall:
And smell is so important. Smell determines whether you fall in love or not. Not so much sight. It's how a person smells that determines whether you're attracted to them or not. That's how you pick a mate. And the perfume industry knows this. They say a perfume is a cost of a thousand dollars to make you smell. They think you're going to cover up the real stink to make you sexually more attractive. They sell four pheromones. Take care of the stink first and see how things go in your life. Let somebody really smell like you smell like. And another kind of interest, I give a whole lecture. It's on personal attractiveness.
Rip Esselstyn:
John. It's funny you mentioned all this. When I was on the Dr. Oz show several years ago, he asked me to take three Chicago firefighters and put them on this and do before and after biometric screenings to get these guys healthy. And one of the guys mentioned how before he started doing this, his wife would go into the bathroom after he used it and say, "Oh my God, the paint is peeling off the walls. I mean, that's how bad his bathroom habits were. And he said, after he started doing this, it was like, no, it wasn't unpleasant whatsoever. And that in and of itself is a pretty exciting thing.
John McDougall:
Well, we studied our patients at our clinic. We had like 60 people who went through the program in 2002. And I had my dentist to bring over his measuring instrument called a Halimeter and measures the amount of sulfur and the breath, and we dropped the sulfur content and the breath of these participants in half in seven days. But I was going to tell you, I mentioned our son goes to college up here in same state we live in. Our grandson, not our son. Our grandson. And Mary does his clothes and she came out of the room one day and she says, "You McDougall's have a certain scent that's exactly the same. Jason smells just like you."
The point I want to make is there's under some underlying odor in your body, naturally present that is not being communicated to other people because of the foods you eat. The details on how this odor is important and attractive is that women have in their olfactory lobes, they have 50% more of [inaudible 01:08:35] than a man does. Women are so sensitive to smell. You guys wonder why in the heck you're having trouble having somebody fall in love with you or being close to you. I know why. You can fix this in seven days. The heck with the dying of heart disease or colon cancer. Let's talk about something that's immediate.
Rip Esselstyn:
There you go. Seven days. I like that. John let's move on to another hor hormone kind of dependent issue. And that is lately in the news, Amy Schumer. She's a comedian, very, very famous comedian. She's been talking about how as long as she can remember, she's had painful, painful, painful PMS. And you have a whole newsletter on this particular topic. What can you say to some of the women out there that are having painful menstrual cycles?
John McDougall:
Well, it has to do with food. But I sound like a broken record. I'm sure people would. I know what he is going to say. It has to do with the food. And then the first chapter in my book, the McDougall program for women. And remind me to tell you that we're giving all the books I own away for free right now. I'll tell you how to get them. If you remember to ask one,
Rip Esselstyn:
I will tell you. I will ask you.
John McDougall:
Well, you can have this book for free if you visit our website along with six other books. It's something Heather did. It wasn't my idea. She got in the Christmas spirit. Heather's my daughter, she runs the program. And a couple days ago she said, "Dad, I just put up all your books for free on the website." And they're all for free there;s six books, national bestsellers. Anyway, in the McDougall Program for Women, chapter five, it talks about how what you eat changes your sexual hormones. There are cino estrogens, which are the chemicals that you get from eating. It's the changes in bowel bacteria that changes the estrogens that you enter your body. It's the fiber that has anti-estrogen effects. It's the phytoestrogens that are in the plant foods. Just a whole bunch of things. And the way it affects women, which is a good share of the rest of the book that I talk about, is you have 50% higher estrogen levels in your body when you eat the western diet.
So you overstimulate everything. You overstimulate your breasts and they become tender. It's part of the development of breast cancer. I mean, of all the things involved in breast cancer, estrogen is the most important factor as to whether you get it and whether or not you survive it. It affects your uterus. And what happens is it causes the endometrium, remember 50% higher in the Western diet. It causes the endometrium to grow too thick. And so at the end of the month, what happens is a woman sheds a tremendously thick endometrium and she has heavy bleeding. And sometimes because the food cheats, it forms clots. She'll have intermenstrual bleeding, although she'll bleed a third time, she's not supposed to. You stimulate that uterus and it breaks down into uterine cancer. You stimulate the muscle of the uterus. Well, we're talking about the inside lining. You get proliferation of the inside lining and it will get so bad.
They call it uterine cancer, endometrial cancer. You stimulate the muscle of the uterus and you develop a proliferation of the muscle cells, which are known as fibroids. That's how you get fibroids. After menopause, fibroids disappear. And I tell them, my women patients are in their fifties and forties, they got a fibroid. Some doctor told them they need hysterectomy. I said, just wait. Nobody goes through menopause it goes away. And if you change your diet and drop your estrogens right now, at least it won't get bigger. And they'll sure help them go away too, unless you take hormones. And by the way, in this book, The Mcdougall Program, I talk about how I use hormone replacement therapy. But you have to do it under the right circumstances.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey John, supplementation. I know that you probably get asked this all the time, but for the audience, what supplements are you a fan of, if any?
John McDougall:
B12. Mainly to avoid a controversy. Plus, I think there's a risk of about one in a million of developing B12 deficiency. So I recommend B12 supplementation. That's discussed in two newsletters on my website. But as far as the other supplements, they're dangerous. They're not just a matter of wasting your money, peeing your purchase into the toilet. They actually cost you disease. Last month, excuse me, it was June of 2022 in the journal, American Medical Association came out a statement from the American Medical Association that you should not be using beta care to or vitamin E. Because it increases your risk of various diseases, cancer, heart disease, et cetera. There have been so many official statements that people should not take these supplements. So you shouldn't be taking beta carotene of course, shouldn't be taking retinol, which is the animal form of vitamin A as pills, excuse me, in plants, they're perfect.
Okay. But we're talking about pills. Vitamin increases your risk of heart disease. Folic acid increases your risk of heart disease, breast cancer, all kinds of problems. So you don't want to take these things. Folate is wonderful, comes in plants, right? Folic acid is a pill. Now, there's this whole pregnancy thing about how you have neural tube defects. And by the way, I've been in this business a long time. I've been on too many deliveries, and I have in present in the delivery room when two babies were born without brains. And I've seen dozens of children born with a spinal column opened up at the base, and they're paraplegic the rest of their lives, their whole lives. So it's a serious problem. It's due to folate deficiency. And we have a natural campaign for women to take folic acid. Doesn't work, even though we've put it in the grains and flowers, even though women are told to take folic acid, they don't realize they have to take it before they get pregnant.
You should have them taking folic acid from birth, except the national campaigns. The evaluation says it doesn't work yet. Eight out of 10 neuro tube defects are caused by folate deficiency. Plants. Plants. It's not corrected by folic acid. That's the problem. So this is another reason we should be raising our females from birth on a high folate diet. And by the way, lack of folate in a male damages in sperm. So they have trisomy 21, which is down syndrome, increases down syndrome. So it's not just a little girl. A little boy should be fed right too.
Rip Esselstyn:
What about DHA and EPA? There's a lot of talk about-
John McDougall:
That's fraud too. I hate to offend my friends who are selling these in the back room.
The human body makes all the DHA and EPA you need. ALA, alpha-linolenic acid is from plants, so it's just sales crap. Plus you do some harm, you cause bleeding problems. I show you research on flaxseed oil, increasing the risk of not only a number of... These are experimental animal studies. Not only the number of animals get cancer, but the size of the tumors, they're a thousand fold larger when you take these flax seed oils, it's Omega 3s. Touch this stuff. Vitamin D is another big one. And by the way, just to give another plug, I give a series of lectures and I'll finish the next one on Saturday.
The series that I've been doing is a half day seminar where I lecture for two hours. We have two hours of question and answer, and I usually end up lecturing for a little more than two hours. The first one it was on protein, second one was on fats, the third one was on carbohydrates. And this Saturday I'm doing the one on vitamins and mineral supplements. And one of the big pushes is on that I have to talk about, well, there are two. Vitamin K again, doesn't work, but you're being pushed. I mean, vitamin K comes from green leafy vegetables. And also the derivatives come from the effect of bacteria in your bowel on the vitamin K you get from vegetables. Again, a sales pitch. Doesn't work. The other is vitamin D, which is really, really a sad thing. Medicare just stopped paying for vitamin D testing. Such a fraud.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's an expensive fraud.
John McDougall:
And it's harmful to take these supplements. I could show you about each studies that show, when you take doses of vitamin D that are commonly sold on the internet, anything over a thousand international units, I'm talking about doses of vitamin D at a thousand international units are greater across adverse effects, including increasing your risk of falls and fractures. This stuff is dangerous. Vitamins are crucial. They're absolutely crucial. But they can come from plants. 11 of the 13 vitamins are made by plants. One is not a vitamin, it's a hormone. It's called sunshine vitamin, vitamin D. It's always been a sunshine vitamin. And the other is B12, which comes from bacteria.
Rip Esselstyn:
John, let me ask you this. Cause you know that I've got a food line where we sell cereals and soups.
John McDougall:
That's good. Really good stuff.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to know, are you involved with your McDougall soups at all still? Because-
John McDougall:
Yeah. We still have approval of all the soups, all the stuff that comes out. And the thing that you can count on has no animals and no oils. It's called Dr. McDougall's Right Foods, not Dr. McDougall's Perfect Foods.
We tried Dr. McDougall's Perfect Foods, which is food without any salt or sugar. Pretty good program for us. And I had to tell Robert Pritikin pretty quickly, no salt, no sale. And we stopped producing them after the first run on our line. But yeah, we developed a company in the early 1990s. We're in 6,000 stores across the country still. And we have a great following. Probably not as big as your following, but people buy our soups, and they use them in the right way. They make a couple of baked potatoes and they put the pea soup on the top. They have a quick lunch.
Rip Esselstyn:
our PLANTSTRONG kind of ready to eat meal solutions are right below the McDougall. So I think every time I go and buy either McDougall or PLANTSTRONG chilies and stews and stuff like that. Before we leave, John, tell me is there anything that you're super jazzed and excited about right now as you're turning 76 and forging forward in this amazing life?
John McDougall:
Well, Mary and I have had an amazing life. We've owned airplanes. We've flown all over the world. We had ocean going sailboats. We've raised three highly successful children. Now we're raising seven highly successful grandchildren. We had almost a fairytale life.
But it's almost over. I know some people, like your dad lived to be in close to 90, but let's face it. We're in the last phase of our life and we realize it. So I certainly would like to see my dietary and medical care message get out. But I've been investing a lot of time in helping the planet. And we have a new website that I developed ,Mary and I developed. It is found at McDougall Foundation, www.McDougallFoundation.org. You got it up there and it tells how important it is to reduce individually your carbon dioxide output by 80% by changing to a healthy diet. And how half of the greenhouse gases are a consequence of the animal agricultural industry. So we've got to change the diet if we're going to have a sustainable future. I hate to be too negative about this, but there's no way of getting around it.
If you're aware, we're talking about problems that are imminent and maybe probably irreversible within eight years. And we built up so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and it doesn't seem to be stopping at all. I look out the highway out here on my window, and that's just seems to be as many polluting cars and trucks as there ever was. And we know that. I mean, since Al Gore gave his lecture in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth, he says that if you consider all the carbon dioxide produced prior to his lecture and since this lecture it that we produced more CO2.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John McDougall:
Than before 2004. But we have to stop doing that. Lots of efforts are being made and I'm involved in those. And I drive an electric car and I live as close as I can to a low carbon output. We eat, of course, a vegan diet. It's not enough. And I told you last time, it was nice enough for you to ask me again, it's not enough to save our kids and grandkids to do these things, just particularly at the pace it's going at. Good grief. But there is a website that I would encourage all of you, I have nothing to do with this except I was able to save enough money. I'm going to make a big donation to these people, otherwise I have no connection. I did an interview with Ye Tao, Y-E-T-A-O, two names, he's the founder of this website, and he has the answer that will give our children and grandchildren a future.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's the website?
John McDougall:
It's Meer. Meer.org. And what it does is he unties the connection between CO2 and global warming. And that's what has to be done. Because the CO2 is way out of control. If you look at what's happening, you'll never come to a conclusion that will solve the problem by... We get every car off the highway today, every airplane out of the sky. You're not going to do it. We're so far in debt. Well, so what he's done is he's disconnected the carbon dioxide problem and the warming problem.
And his website, and it sounds like you visited it, his website has to deal with reflecting the heat off of planet Earth by using mirrors. And he talks about how we can take aluminum, just the waste product from aluminum tin cans along with the waste product of plastic bottles, and we can make enough mirrors to lower the temperature of the planet so it's livable. But we got to start, like I said, I wish it was as simple as everybody becoming a vegan, even though it seems impossible, or getting all renewable energy, which we're making progress at. But I think if you're going to be realistic about what's going on and you really have a concern about the future, and I'm sure you do, I'm sure all of you do.
Then visit meer.org and see what you could do to help. They accept volunteers that say, we have plans on donating a considerable amount of our money saved for a lifetime to this organization so that we can help them along the way. If I knew of any cheaper answer, I'd do it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you for sharing that. And thank you also for starting the McDougall Foundation as well to help mitigate all-
John McDougall:
I ain't dead yet and I use your dad as an example of what I hope I will be like as I get... I think he's 15 years older than I am.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned Kempner and Pritikin before and how you're just a conduit and you're just standing on their shoulders. And I want to say, there are so many of us that are now conduits and we are standing and have been on your shoulders that are a mile wide. And how much we appreciate your ferociousness, your commitment, and your unrelenting resolve to have that fighting spirit, that fighting McDougall spirit that just doesn't seem to ever leave you. And we love you for it.
John McDougall:
Well, thank you for having me on. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with your faithful listeners. There's a good reason that they're good followers of yours, Rip, you deserve it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you. And John, I look forward to the next time.
John McDougall:
Well, any old time, some guest doesn't show up, give me a call. I got all the time in the world.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would love to. I would love to. Okay. Hey, Merry Christmas John.
John McDougall:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
And PLANTSTRONG and [inaudible 01:26:30] baby.
John McDougall:
All right, we'll do it. Hey, I'm never going to give up and neither are you. We don't have a day job, so we're going to do this.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right. Once again, DrMcDougall.com is the website if you want to download some of John's books for free until the end of 2022. And once again, have a wonderful, wonderful holiday and be sure to keep it joyful, peaceful, and always PLANTSTRONG. See you next time.
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
