How To Prevent & REVERSE Disease With THESE FOODS To Live Longer | Dr. William Li

I'm going on tour! Come see The School of Greatness LIVE in person! Get my new book Make Money Easy here! What if the secret to living well past 100 lies within your gut? In this eye-opening conversation, renowned physician and researcher Dr. William Li reveals groundbreaking discoveries about the connection between gut bacteria and exceptional longevity. I was fascinated to learn that scientists have identified four specific bacteria that flourish in the digestive systems of "super-agers" - people who live healthily beyond 110 years old. Dr. Li shares his unique approach to understanding disease through common denominators like blood vessels and gut health, explaining how our microbiome communicates directly with our immune system, brain, and virtually every bodily function. Beyond the technical research, he offers incredibly practical, accessible steps anyone can take to restore gut health, reset their metabolism, and potentially extend both lifespan and healthspan - no expensive supplements or complicated regimens required. Dr. William Li on YouTubeEat to Beat Disease by Dr. William LiEat to Beat Your Diet by Dr. William LiIn this episode you will learn:How four specific bacteria present in super-agers' gut microbiomes may hold keys to exceptional longevity and healthWhy 70% of your immune system actually resides in your gut, and how it communicates with your bacteria through the intestinal wallThe surprising connection between gum disease, gut bacteria, and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson'sWhy simply skipping breakfast 2-3 times weekly might be one of the easiest and most effective longevity practicesHow resistant starches from refrigerated potatoes and green bananas can help cultivate the specific bacteria found in centenariansFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1743For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mark Hyman – greatness.lnk.to/1695SCDr. Will Bulsiewicz – greatness.lnk.to/1621SCGlucose Goddess – greatness.lnk.to/1575SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back my friend to the School of Greatness. It is a beautiful day. It's a blessed day and I'm grateful for another opportunity to live on purpose. I hope you're doing well today. I've gotten so many messages lately from so many of you who have just been so grateful for the content we've been providing, for the interviews, for the guests, and it means a lot to me. Every time I get a message from someone on social media, or when someone comes up to me on the street and just says hello, and their biggest takeaway from the show, it really means a lot to me. And I was traveling the last couple of weeks doing some press for the new book that's coming out called Make Money Easy. It's coming out very, very soon. If you haven't got your copy

• 0:41Lewis Howes?

  yet, make sure to go to Amazon right now and get your copy of Make Money Easy: Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life. But so many people have just been coming up to me lately and really thanking me for the show. So it means a lot to me. If you see me out on the streets anytime in LA, or if you are coming to one of the book tour stops, that's right, I'm going on tour, seven cities. We're going to Austin, Texas, New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, Nashville, Tennessee, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Just let me know your favorite part of the show. What's really resonated with you, how it's supported you in your life. That's what this show is all about. It's to help you improve the quality of your life, and I hope this episode does that for you. We have got a big one. His name is Dr. William Lee. He's a physician,

• 1:26Lewis Howes?

  a scientist, and a researcher, and we had him on the show before. It got millions of views over on YouTube and the audio, but he is back. And Dr. Lee reveals how our gut bacteria communicates with our brain, our immune system, and overall health in ways that we are just beginning to understand. He's going to share some simple changes to our diet and lifestyle that you haven't heard before on any other show, on how it can nurture beneficial gut bacteria, and potentially adding healthy years to our lives. We all want to live longer, and we all want to live healthier with the current days and years that we have. His practical approach proves that optimizing your longevity isn't a

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  About expensive biohacking, but about working with your body's natural healing systems. And he's going to share the four specific gut bacteria that stand out in people who live beyond 100 years and which foods help them flourish. This is going to be so powerful. Please share this with one friend and really send this out to a friend that you think could improve the quality of their health, or maybe their mind's been a little bit foggy, or they've been feeling stressed or anxious. There is so much that's connected to the gut, what we eat, and our, our mood and our brain health and our brain function. So it's not always about losing weight or something like that, but it's about optimizing the way our brain and our

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  immune system work in tandem. And that's what this is about. So share this with one friend. If you're enjoying this, please leave a review over on Apple Podcast or on Spotify. Make sure you're following us on those platforms as well. So you can stay up to date on all the biggest guests that we have coming out every single week. And also make sure to get a copy of Make Money Easy, the new book, which is about creating financial freedom and living a richer life. And if you want to come see me live in person, I'm going on tour. You can go to lewishouse.com/tour to get your tickets right now. I'm very excited. I hope to see you guys there. Thank you for all of your support as always for being here and listening to this show. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode with Dr. William Lee.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. William Lee in the house. So good to see you. Thank you for being here.

• 3:43Dr. William Li?

  Good to see you, Lewis. Thanks for having me.

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  Very excited about this because you've been on the show a couple of times and you've been a researcher, a scientist, a physician for many years, mostly helping people figure out about how to cure cancer. That's kind of where your background is around the cancer world, but you've also gone in different places around medicine and science and research. And currently you're, you're, you're diving in deep into the longevity topic, which is really interesting. We were just talking off camera about a new approach to what you're seeing that

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  You know, super centarians, I guess, are experiencing. And a lot of people want to know right now how to live longer, but also how to live healthy longer, how to have a good health span as well. Because it's not, it's not fun if you live to a hundred, but for 25 years, you're on machines, you can't walk, you can't move, and you're not healthy. And so I think that's what a lot of people want. So the first question I want to ask you is, why do you think people care so much about being immortal or living for as long as they can? And what are some of the new things that you're seeing in the longevity world?

• 4:56Dr. William Li?

  Great questions. Okay, so first of all, my, I am a cancer researcher, but I will tell you how I got into cancer research and then ultimately into longevity research. I'm interested in common denominators of health or of disease. So in other words, you know, uh, uh, in, you know, in academic research, you see people taking an inch of a territory and diving a mile deep. And they're super experts in this stuff. I took a different approach. I wanted to figure out like, you know, how everything was interconnected and what are the common denominators between cancer, heart disease, blindness, arthritis, Alzheimer's? Like, if you could drain the Pacific Ocean, how do all those islands connect?

• 5:39Dr. William Li?

  And my feeling is that if you could, you could get an economy of scale of knowledge, if you could figure out those connections, you could pull the bow back and send a single arrow through multiple conditions at the same time.

• 5:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:51Dr. William Li?

  That's my, that was my approach, which is why I started the angiogenesis foundation. It's a not-for-profit organization. It's focused on the common denominator of blood vessels.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:01Dr. William Li?

  Forty million, forty, uh, it's, we've got forty, uh, four hundred miles worth of blood vessels in our brain. And that's a fraction of the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our body. And it connects every organ, every cell. And so these are the highways and byways of health. And when they're messed up, compromised, diseased, that becomes the, uh, the common denominator of disease. So that's really kind of like my unique angle to look at diseases, anything from cancer to blindness to wound healing. And now I'm looking at aging, uh, you know, in a slightly different way, uh, which is...

• 6:42Dr. William Li?

  I've had a whole career of building brick by brick, looking at what are the hallmarks of hallmarks of cancer, hallmarks of diabetes, hallmarks of aging now. All right. And that is actually how we advance the science. That's how we advance our understanding of ourselves. And the quest for longevity, immortality. Okay. I like how you said the quest for immortality being an ages old enterprise. Okay. Pursuit. Pursuit is, I think is part of our humanity. Like, we always want to know how we can actually

• 7:22Dr. William Li?

  go beyond our own limitations. I think that's probably ultimately what has led this interest. And of course, it's a huge interest now. I mean, if you look at the success of books like Outlive by Preetar Tia and David Sinclair's books, people, you know, are gonzo, they go gonzo over these like incredible books written by really amazing people. But I'll tell you, the first emperor of China, okay, set off to try to find that little elixir, the vial. Remember that Indiana Joe's movie where they're looking for some like vial of immortality? Hey, you know, this has been going on for a long time. And the first emperor of China didn't find

• 8:06Dr. William Li?

  it. He wound up dying. And before he died, he built like the 10,000 terracotta warriors to look over his tomb. That was his ultimate solution to immortality. That was before science, before Google's calico to try to conquer blindness, before all the amazing work that's going on right now to build up those brick by brick by brick, you know, and putting in the grout in between to be able to build up that wall of understanding. So we are still looking.

• 8:38Dr. William Li?

  We're beginning to have a better understanding. But my approach to it is to say like, all right, so what are the common denominators of people who live a really long time? What are we finding? And you know, my friend, and I think yours is Dan Buettner, you know, from the Blue Zones. The guy is amazing because he found like, oh, it's place, it's where you live. And where you do, what you do in terms of where you live that actually can contribute. So I'm a researcher, so I take a, I ask that same question from a slightly different perspective. Right, right.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, he has a number of different like things, which is community and your activity level and the foods you eat. And having a purpose and kind of these.

• 9:16Dr. William Li?

  He's into beans.

• 9:17Lewis Howes?

  Beans, they get the beans, right? Yeah. And, but that may not necessarily like, I guess, be the only solution, right? If you follow these kind of core tenants that he has from the Blue Zones. And we're also seeing that some of those Blue Zones are no longer Blue Zones, I think, or they're diminishing their Blue Zones because of the way people are changing their food intake or things like that, I think, right? Like the place in Japan.

• 9:39Dr. William Li?

  And there may be more Blue Zones that haven't been discovered yet.

• 9:42Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. And so are there, what are the new things that you're observing? That most people aren't noticing about people that live well into their hundreds?

• 9:54Dr. William Li?

  All right, so let me take you on a little bit of a journey into our gut. Now, everybody knows that gut health is important for overall health. And even the people who are the experts, you know, and I've gotten into this space now. We don't know entirely, we don't have the whole answer. All right, and you know, you're talking to a real scientist when, because real scientists tell you, we don't know everything. Right. All right, so, but what's good scientists do is they observe. We take a look at what's going on and we, we see what is common, what we've come up with ideas. And so what's really interesting is to think about gut health, not just in terms of

• 10:38Dr. William Li?

  somebody in the middle of their life, you know, like a 30 or 40 or 50 year old person who, you know, has inflammation and how do I actually get over my autoimmunity? That's important too. But I got interested in it because we're beginning to understand that people who have dementia. Actually have problems with their gut health. And what is the connection between your gut and your brain? Well, that's a gut-brain axis. But what if the problem with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, you know, vascular dementia? What if, what if the common denominator actually isn't the little sticky plaque or the little single molecule that people have been diving on and billions of dollars have been spent?

• 11:20Dr. William Li?

  What if there is another factor that has been hidden in plain sight? Which is our gut bacteria?

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow, and how the gut impacts the brain?

• 11:30Dr. William Li?

  The brain, yeah. And until recently, we didn't have the tools. We didn't have that, um, the tools in a toolbox to be able to look at it. But today, and this is pretty new. We can actually take a sample of poop. Okay. Uh, uh, send it off to a testing machine. And I'm oversimplifying, obviously.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  And get the, and get the lab details on the bacteria, right?

• 11:55Dr. William Li?

  And, you know, we are able to do the crime scene investigation of our poop to figure out what bacteria are in there. And we get a pretty good approximation and we can find out what are the standouts? Okay, so like there's 39 trillion bacteria. You can't count every single one of them.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  39 trillion?

• 12:12Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, in your gut microbiome.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:14Dr. William Li?

  So we can't get every single one. But if there are standouts, oh, man. You've got like four or five really bad guys that are like popping out in high levels. We know you've got a problem. Or if you're missing a handful of really good guys. All right, we're beginning to say, hmm, maybe these good guys are playing a bigger role. And this is the story that's emerging on dementia. That your gut bacteria, and by the way, it's not just in your poop. Your gut starts in your mouth. And we're beginning to realize that gum disease and bacteria that are either growing or not growing in your mouth might actually be one of the trigger points for dementia.

• 12:55Lewis Howes?

  Gum disease.

• 12:56Dr. William Li?

  Gum disease.

• 12:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:57Dr. William Li?

  Gingivitis. All right.

• 12:59Lewis Howes?

  What is, so, okay, so it sounds like it starts with the mouth and then it's the gut. Cause what you put in the mouth is going to be in the gut as well.

• 13:05Dr. William Li?

  That for food, yes. But, but all throughout, from your mouth all the way to your tailpipe.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 13:11Dr. William Li?

  You've got bacteria growing.

• 13:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:12Dr. William Li?

  By the way, so the two biggest concentration of bacteria, when you talk about gut bacteria, one is in your mouth. Our mouth is packed with bacteria. Good bacteria. When bad bacteria overgrow, you get bad breath, you get cavities, you get gum disease, you get all the things that, you know, like, you know, pretty quickly, right? Sure, sure. Okay. When you're, so there's a big concentration in your mouth and we're beginning, we're still beginning to figure out what those are. Your lower gut, which we classically think as gut bacteria, your gut microbiome, you know where it is in the gut? Do you know like what, what part of the gut anatomy wise, like what section of the gut? The lower gut? Yeah, lower gut. I have no idea.

• 13:56Dr. William Li?

  So, you know, imagine your gut from mouth to end, anus, 40 feet long. Is that what it is? Yeah. The last 25% is your colon, right? You've heard of colon cancer and everything else, or colonoscopy. So that's the last part. It's like, it's basically where, like, everything gets, all the stuff gathers before you get rid of it. But that's actually where the gut bacteria is, and it's in a particular part, a little sack in your colon called the cecum, spelled C E C U M. And you know where the, what's near, in the cecum? It's the appendix. Now, a lot of people have had their appendix out, okay? We used to think it's an unnecessary organ. Maybe, just maybe, that appendix plays a role that we didn't suspect.

• 14:41Dr. William Li?

  What's that role? We don't know, but we suspect it might play some air traffic control role for your gut microbiome. Wow. All right. So what I get excited about is new discoveries about our body that we didn't know. By the way, we're talking about gut-brain. Do you know that recently, we've discovered that there, your brain has its own microbiome? We've got bacteria that grow naturally, healthily in our brain. Wow. And it's 20% of the same bacteria that's in our gut, that's actually found in our brain. So they're connected? We believe so.

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  Because we used to, we used to, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but we used to treat like Alzheimer's and dementia as focusing on the brain, correct? Like, let's look at the brain and see what's wrong or what's off and try to treat the brain.

• 15:28Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  Versus now you're saying, well, it's the, it's the gut, it's the whole body that's connected to the brain. So we have to look at everything.

• 15:36Dr. William Li?

  And we're beginning to sort of ask new questions about what might be some of the contributing factors, not just a tiny little plaques in Alzheimer's disease. Because by the way, we've actually made a little bit of progress in that area, but after billions and billions of dollars, like, we haven't made enough.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:53Dr. William Li?

  Right? I mean, if you think about it, like, if you want to return on investment, you would not actually call Alzheimer's research to be good because for the bang for the buck that we put in there, we're actually getting very little bang.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  And we, we still don't know how to reverse Alzheimer's or prevent it, I guess, or?

• 16:08Dr. William Li?

  Not, not really, but, but, but I'll tell you that, that what I'm excited by is this idea that maybe there could, this is the, the theory.

• 16:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Dr. William Li?

  Could there be some bad bacteria or the absence of some good bacteria in your mouth even? Okay. Uh, or the lower gut that actually is a trigger for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:33Dr. William Li?

  You know? By the way, there is a, there is a bacteria, a probiotic that's been researched to show that it can actually really slow down the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. It's called lactobacillus plantarum and it's a probiotic called PS128. And, you know, it's surprising that a probiotic could had such a profound effect on the brain.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  What is that called again?

• 16:56Dr. William Li?

  PS, like Paul and Sam, 128. And the actual bacteria is called lactobacillus plantarum. Okay. So I'm just sharing with you discoveries, okay, uh, about the brain. And, and so what I got interested in terms of longevity, and I'm not a neuroscientist and I'm not a dementia specialist, but I am somebody that is sort of really good at framing out.

• 17:24Dr. William Li?

  If there's a connection between gut and brain, maybe we should be looking at the connection between gut and longevity.

• 17:31Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 17:32Dr. William Li?

  And that's where some of the really exciting new stuff is coming out as well.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  And so what is the main things that you've been able to observe then about the gut? And how it relates to people that live over a hundred?

• 17:42Dr. William Li?

  So first of all, people who live to a hundred are called centenarians, right? Sent like a hundred.

• 17:50Dr. William Li?

  And we think that if you could live to a hundred, like that's a hundred candles on your birthday cake like.

• 17:55Lewis Howes?

  It's a big deal.

• 17:56Dr. William Li?

  That's a big deal, right? That's a big, that's the big birthday.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  That is.

• 17:59Dr. William Li?

  All right. Now, I have to tell you, my great uncle lived to a hundred and four.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:04Dr. William Li?

  Okay, I was at his a hundred.

• 18:06Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 18:06Dr. William Li?

  Birthday party and I, I saw a hundred candles on this cake.

• 18:08Lewis Howes?

  That's impressive.

• 18:09Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, so I, I, I know it can happen in my own family.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  Did he have the energy to blow all the candles out?

• 18:14Dr. William Li?

  Not only did he have the energy to blow the candles out, he planned the party himself.

• 18:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:19Dr. William Li?

  Okay, he invited the guest list. He actually, I mean, he, he made the guest list. He planned the meal, you know, he hosted the thing. So, so it's possible.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Dr. William Li?

  Okay, now, most people think that, you know, living to a hundred would be like a crap shoot, a long shot. Like, oh, if I could in a healthy way, I'll live to a hundred, be great. But you know, I, cause I've been doing some research on this. It turns out today, you know how many people live, are a hundred years old now?

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  I think you said it was close to a million or over a million?

• 18:55Dr. William Li?

  Today, there are 722,000 people who are centenarians living in the world. Um, you know, almost a quarter of, three quarters of a million of people that are a hundred.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  That's a lot of people.

• 19:07Dr. William Li?

  That's a lot of people, a lot more than most people suspect. And what that means is that it is possible to actually get there, which means that we can begin to study these people. And that's what, where like I think some of the most exciting and provocative stuff actually is, right? So.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  And people are studying their gut bacteria.

• 19:28Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, and now we can just, now we can actually study the poop.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:32Dr. William Li?

  And the microbiome of people who are a hundred and older. So, centenarians are people who live to a hundred. But it turns out that there's something called a super centenarian or an ultimately a superager. And these are people that live to 114, 115 years old. All right. And like, they're really interesting, so. A research study was done out of Italy, looking at people across the lifespan from young adulthood, you know, like 20 to 40, 40 to 70, 70 to 90, 90 to 100, and then like the superagers, okay, like 100 to 115 or 114. And in today's technology, all right, like, believe me, I think that wearables are great.

• 20:16Dr. William Li?

  I think that, you know, biohacking devices are quite amazing. But I think it's even more amazing that we can actually study the gut microbiome of like these superagers.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 20:27Dr. William Li?

  So the question is, is there something in the gut microbiome in superagers, 100 and above, that pop out as important? It's not present in people who don't live that long. Okay. It turns out there are four bacteria that are standouts in people that live to 100 and beyond.

• 20:52Lewis Howes?

  Does that mean there are four bacteria in people that live 100 beyond in their gut bacteria that people under 100 don't have?

• 21:02Dr. William Li?

  They have more of it.

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 21:03Dr. William Li?

  They have more of it. Like, for them, it really stands out as a super big spike.

• 21:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 21:10Dr. William Li?

  These four bacteria, you want to hear about them?

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 21:12Dr. William Li?

  All right. They've got names that, one of the names you might have heard of, I think we talked about it on my last time I was on a podcast. But there is four bacteria. One of them is called Odoribacter.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  Odoribacter?

• 21:24Dr. William Li?

  Odoribacter. Okay. One of them is called Ocellobacter.

• 21:31Dr. William Li?

  One of them is called Cristin, Cristin sinella. And then the fourth one is our old friend Akkermansia.

• 21:42Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 21:42Dr. William Li?

  And we've talked about Akkermansia before, which, you know, it's sort of been making the rounds as an important gut bacteria. I think the last time I was here, I was telling you that There have been discoveries that if you have cancer and you're on immunotherapy, which jacks up your own immune system to attack the cancer, it's not chemo. It's one of the most natural ways of approaching cancer. It's resulting in complete responses, meaning stage four to stage zero. Okay.

• 22:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:14Dr. William Li?

  Turns out, Akkermansia, having this gut bacteria, may wind up being one of the critical pieces that you have to have to connect the dots for that to happen. Okay, to really get a great response.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  To help you reverse cancer.

• 22:28Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, help your own immune system reverse cancer.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow, interesting.

• 22:32Dr. William Li?

  Gut bacteria talks to your immune system. Seventy percent of your immune system lives in your gut. All right, and so you've got the right bacteria. They know how to speak the right language to your immune system to tell it to do what it's supposed to do.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  Seventy percent of your immune system lives in the gut.

• 22:50Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:51Lewis Howes?

  Where's the other thirty percent?

• 22:52Dr. William Li?

  Scattered in different tissues in your body.

• 22:54Lewis Howes?

  Really? Wow.

• 22:54Dr. William Li?

  But you know, by the way, you know where the immune system lives in the gut? It's actually in the wall of the gut. Think of your gut as a garden hose. Cut that garden hose open and look in the cross section. There's a little empty stuff in the middle. That's where the bacteria live.

• 23:08Lewis Howes?

  That's where your immune system is.

• 23:10Dr. William Li?

  Your immune system lives in the wall of the garden hose. Inside the wall.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  And the bacteria is...

• 23:16Dr. William Li?

  The bacteria live inside the cavity of the garden hose.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:19Dr. William Li?

  And they talk to each other like college students shouting at each other through a cheap wall in a dorm room.

• 23:25Lewis Howes?

  So the immune system is kind of like the insulation in a house. Is that right? In the walling of the house?

• 23:31Dr. William Li?

  The immune system lives in the wall, in between the drywall of the house.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so it's kind of like the insulation or whatever, inside the drywall.

• 23:38Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Lewis Howes?

  And whatever's in the house is the bacteria.

• 23:40Dr. William Li?

  Exactly.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  The people, the dogs, the cats, all, you know, yeah.

• 23:43Dr. William Li?

  All moving around.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  Plants, whatever, yeah.

• 23:45Dr. William Li?

  Exactly. So what do we eat that affects our gut microbiome? The healthy bacteria directly affects our immune system.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  You know, and impacts our brain.

• 23:54Dr. William Li?

  And then it impacts our brain.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  How much of what we eat impacts our brain?

• 23:58Dr. William Li?

  More than we think, more than we think.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  Like either giving us clarity and focus versus cloudiness, giving us...

• 24:05Dr. William Li?

  You know, that's what I'm working on right now. And I do know that there are people that are working on this. So you know, you laid it out the right way, Louis. You eat something, it goes into your mouth, it tumbles down through.

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Dr. William Li?

  Whatever our body, our human body, our human cells don't absorb, goes on to feed our gut bacteria. Okay, or poison our gut bacteria in the case maybe. So you know, you put something good in your system, it's gonna do something good. Put something bad in your system, it's gonna like mess up the bacteria. All right. And then our bacteria then begins to talk to our immune system, our brain. It helps to work on our, our healing mechanisms as well. I, you know, I study angiogenesis, how our blood vessels grow, you know, that circulation. I've done research, there's one bacteria called lactobacillus ruteri. Okay. And we found that if you have a wound in the lab,

• 25:01Dr. William Li?

  and you feed these animals with a wound, this probiotic in their drinking water, you actually double the rate of wound healing from the inside out.

• 25:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:12Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  It's like Wolverine. So you become Wolverine.

• 25:15Dr. William Li?

  Without the claws.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  So it just, there's a probiotic that you can drink as a human now also?

• 25:21Dr. William Li?

  Well, it's a, you can, you can, it's a tablet or you can chew it, yeah.

• 25:24Lewis Howes?

  Chew or swallow.

• 25:24Dr. William Li?

  Lactobacillus ruteri. So lactobacillus ruteri, by the way, is an amazing bacteria because it, it's normally in the gut. It's a healthy gut bacteria. So you know, like, we pulled it out and made it in something, but it's normally in the gut. Used to be present in everybody. After the 1930s and 40s, with the advent of antibiotics coming out, like it became, maybe it's there, maybe it's not, not surprisingly. Okay. And so a lot of people don't have it.

• 25:52Dr. William Li?

  But this bacteria lowers inflammation, improves your immune system. And by the way, we do know for a fact, this is one bacteria that text messages your brain to release a social hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is the social hormone that your brain releases when you are super happy to see somebody. Go to the airport to meet. A friend or a relative you haven't seen for a long time, you give them a big hug. You feel great.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 26:24Dr. William Li?

  Oxytocin.

• 26:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:25Dr. William Li?

  Um, oxytocin is what your brain releases when you have a kiss. I'm not talking about like pecking a cheek.

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  Passionate kiss.

• 26:34Dr. William Li?

  Deep passionate like French kiss. Oxytocin. Oxytocin is also what your brain releases when you have an orgasm. Okay, so this is a very important brain hormone. This bacteria makes your brain release it. Okay, now.

• 26:48Lewis Howes?

  And this isn't a drug. This is just like.

• 26:50Dr. William Li?

  This is like, I'm just telling you a normal. Well, I'm telling you, this is a normal physio. I'm talking about the physiology, like how does it normally works? Okay, by the way, moms would uh give the babies, her babies, this bacteria because, and this is like a crazy story, that normal gut bacteria at around uh seven or eight months of pregnancy, there'd be a signal sent to the gut. Hey, you know, the, the, the cake's almost done. All right, bun's almost ready to come out of the oven.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:25Dr. William Li?

  All right, and then these bacteria would hit your ride on a blood cell. It's like calling an Uber.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  Sent it to the baby.

• 27:32Dr. William Li?

  And then take the bacteria, your normal blood cells would take the bacteria, drop it off at the nipple, right? Uber, okay, destination. And then when the baby takes their first suckle.

• 27:44Lewis Howes?

  They get a rush.

• 27:44Dr. William Li?

  They get, they get the rush of the bacteria. That's how, that's another way that moms actually give babies there. They get the injection of bacteria, including lactobacillus rhamdellae, right? Okay, now, this bacteria.

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  So it's important to do breastfeeding then?

• 27:59Dr. William Li?

  Oh, yeah, it's part of the reasons. You'll, you'll also get immune cells and a lot of other good stuff uh from breastfeeding.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Side note, how long should a mother breastfeed a newborn?

• 28:10Dr. William Li?

  You know, I think it's, it's very individualized based on the mom and the baby, but like I, I would say that the, the categorical yes, unless there's a medical reason not to do it, is you definitely breastfeed. That's like the, that's like the non-controversial thing.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 28:25Dr. William Li?

  Hundred percent.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  Breastfeed. Don't go right to a bottle or formula or something like that.

• 28:29Dr. William Li?

  Cause mom. I can tell you that the companies that make formula, they can't mimic mother nature.

• 28:35Lewis Howes?

  They cannot.

• 28:35Dr. William Li?

  They can try, but they can't do it. Not anywhere close.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  Right. So unless there's some reason the mother is unable to do it.

• 28:41Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. I mean, there are legitimate medical reasons where, you know, it's impossible. It's, it's, uh, uh, there's complications, all that kind of stuff. And I totally get it. Like then you gotta make accommodations for it. But still, you know, it is always better for the baby, uh, for the, um, uh, for the mom to actually, uh, breastfeed. By the way, so I'm, you know, diving into all this stuff. You find all this like fascinating stuff out, uh, about the gut microbiome. And from the beginning of life, like babies, all the way to the, um, to the far reaches of life. Like these super agers, if he's four bacteria, by the way, you know, the odorobacter, the acilobacter,

• 29:24Dr. William Li?

  the, uh, chrystinella, uh, the acromancia, they all do, they all play functions in the body. And we're figuring them out. They improve your metabolism. They lower inflammation. They help your immunity. They lower your cholesterol. Okay. They help your brain health.

• 29:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:42Dr. William Li?

  So all the things that we know are important, these bacteria seem to be doing the job in the super agers. And there are foods that we can eat to grow these bacteria, to cultivate these bacteria. Oh yeah.

• 29:56Lewis Howes?

  What are the key foods that we can eat to cultivate the best bacteria to help us live longer?

• 30:01Dr. William Li?

  So, you know, among all these four, let me kind of just throw a few out there for you. It turns out pomegranate is really good. Um, it's got bioactives like allogentanins that actually help your gut nurture the acromancia. Okay.

• 30:19Dr. William Li?

  It turns out that chili peppers can do the same thing. Black raspberry turns out can do the same thing. Oh, by the way, for acromancia, here's like a new discovery as well. I'm all about like my, my science background is all about discovery and like pushing the frontiers of things. He on acromancia?

• 30:39Dr. William Li?

  It's a bacteria. A bacteria has a shell around it, like a beetle has a hard shell around.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Dr. William Li?

  Recently, they've discovered that around Akkermansia, the shell of Akkermansia, there's a piece of the Akkermansia that they gave it a name. It's called P, as in Peter, Peter, not P9. All right. They've now discovered that that P9 bacteria, the P9 fragment of Akkermansia, actually causes your body to secrete its own GLP-1.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

  Which is the fat burning.

• 31:15Dr. William Li?

  Which is the same thing that we use for prescription weight loss drugs. Your bacteria's been doing this, your healthy bacteria's been doing this behind the scenes this whole time.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 31:24Dr. William Li?

  Right? So this is what I'm saying is like, you know, we learn a lot from pharmaceuticals, but we might actually learn a lot more from what the gut bacteria are doing. Mother Nature's kind of like.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  So fascinating. So it seems like, how much disease stems from the gut?

• 31:39Dr. William Li?

  More than we think.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Dr. William Li?

  You know, probably a good number of our neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. I think that a lot of diseases of aging, for sure, the chronic diseases.

• 31:53Dr. William Li?

  We do know that.

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  Diabetes is from?

• 31:55Dr. William Li?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

• 31:57Lewis Howes?

  Cancers are from the gut?

• 31:59Dr. William Li?

  Cancer, probably cardiovascular disease, you know, like the big ones, you know, all the big ones. Our diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, probably even lung diseases.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  Because the, you know, the society is talking a lot in the last few years about mental health. Like, it seems like there's a lot more anxiety, depression, ADHD, and these types of mental health conditions or diseases that are accelerating in mass numbers.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  But based on what I'm hearing you talk about, it almost sounds like if we stop thinking about mental health, not stop thinking about it, but focus more on gut health. It sounds like it connects to the brain and the mind and it'll create more alignment in ease versus dis-ease.

• 32:45Dr. William Li?

  More, it's a new frontier. It opens up the avenue for more solutions. And by the way, because the gut also connects to other parts of our body as well. You know, again, remember I told you like, I'm all about the common denominator. Pull that bow back and send a single arrow through as many things, many problems as you can. Imagine if we could actually tackle mental health, mental wellness and physical wellness all at the same time. And you know, gut bacteria clearly plays a role. It's not, you know, it's not, it's not the only thing, but you know, it is the undiscovered country.

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  Cause there's a, who is the, uh, the doctor, Dr. Emeron Mayer, I think it is. I don't know if he, he's got a book called Gut Brain Connection. I think somebody like that that's talking about these things as well. And it seems like a lot of the things that are stemming from the brain disease or challenges is in the gut.

• 33:35Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  And it's also linked to longevity, it sounds like it's why.

• 33:38Dr. William Li?

  Exactly. Exactly. Well, this is what we're beginning to really, uh, I would say unravel and take, you know, go into the layers of the onion to say, all right, if gut health is important for you in your, you know, normal active adult life, which we now know it is, what role could it play towards actually fostering, supporting, maybe even triggering those signals for longevity? I mean, maybe, listen, I mean, so I always talk about our body like this. We're all different, you know, we've got different genetics, we've got different, you know, like, of course, most people say they've got different metabolisms, but it turns out that when we are born, it's like taking a laptop out of the box.

• 34:23Dr. William Li?

  Our operating system is all set. When you and I are born, my operating system and your operating system, pretty much the same. Our OS was exactly the same.

• 34:33Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 34:33Dr. William Li?

  All right. And so why is it that our, I mean, maybe your metabolism and my metabolism are closer than more different, but, you know, because we take care of ourselves, but why is it that people develop such divergence, so different?

• 34:48Dr. William Li?

  Metabolisms, for example, or maybe longevity patterns. And it turns out, you know, just like your laptop,

• 34:55Dr. William Li?

  you know, if you take care of your laptop, you turn it off at night, you clear the case. Yeah, you update the software, you make sure that you pad it when you're traveling.

• 35:07Lewis Howes?

  Clean it.

• 35:08Dr. William Li?

  Clean it, all that kind of stuff. And let's say, I'm not so careful. I drop it, it stays, in case it's really hot in the car. I spill coffee on it or whatever, you know, what do you think is going to happen to our operating system? Or I download all kinds of stuff?

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna break.

• 35:21Dr. William Li?

  Well, what's gonna happen is that your computer operating system and mine are gonna diverge. You're gonna go this way, I'm gonna go that way. And actually, probably for our, definitely for our metabolism, but probably for our longevity as well. You know, that's actually what happens, that we start to diverge our patterns. We're all born the same way. And the reason I'm bringing this up, because I think for anybody who's listening to this or watching this, people, people tend to think, I'm the fate of my genetics, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. So screw it, I'm just gonna do whatever I want to do.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  Eat whatever, drink whatever, yeah.

• 35:53Dr. William Li?

  You know, what I want to really emphasize is that we are all hardwired to actually heal. We can get back to that healing, we can heal to get back to our original state, which is designed, like the laptop, to function its entire life of the device with an intact operating system, you know? What do you do with your, what do you do with your computer? You know, you know, hopefully you don't have to reinstall the operating system. Take good care of it, but if you don't take good care of it, clean the case, do a virus scan, you know, like clean it up.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Dr. William Li?

  Take good care of it. And that's kind of how I think people should think about longevity is that it's not like just set a number. Okay, this is not like booking a seat in a movie theater online. I'm gonna get that number and that's what I want. Okay.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  Luck.

• 36:41Dr. William Li?

  Good luck, you know, I think that, you know, it's a journey. We need to focus on today and keep focusing on as far as we can actually see and keep doing that, you know, it's like longevity, you know, there's a quote from E.L. Doctorow, who was a novelist, who once said like, um, writing is like driving at night. You can't see beyond your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. And that's kind of how I think about um, longevity, living as long as you can go. That, I mean, you know, but you want to actually make sure that you're enjoying yourself and you're fully aware of what you're doing along the same.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. And seeing what's in front of you, not just only focusing on how do I make it to a hundred or a hundred and ten, just enjoying the moment.

• 37:25Dr. William Li?

  The horizon is important, but honestly, like so is what's directly in front of you.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure. If someone watching or listening has maybe neglected their health for many years and they're now living in excess weight or maybe, maybe even obesity and they've been on a pattern and a routine of eating poorly, drinking a lot of excess alcohol, whatever it might be, and just not taking care of their health. And you were to prescribe just a 90 day game plan to reset their metabolism and try to get the right things going again? How, what would you prescribe that individual? And how much do you think they could actually

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  recover and start to heal from years of, of not taking care of their health?

• 38:17Dr. William Li?

  First of all, I think that. We're able to recover a lot of our health and heal ourselves by making small moves. And this is really important.

• 38:28Lewis Howes?

  Not extreme moves.

• 38:29Dr. William Li?

  Big moves are, some people can do them. Most people can't maintain big moves. All right. Small moves, almost anybody can actually do. And of course, you know, people are very complicated. And you know, the scenario you described is somebody who's like, you know, been super unhealthy their whole lives and, you know, not done the right things and are overweight and alcohol. I mean, I think you were stacking. You know, I mean.

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's not that extreme, but maybe it's, you know.

• 38:56Dr. William Li?

  You know, like.

• 38:56Lewis Howes?

  Twenty to forty pounds overweight.

• 38:58Dr. William Li?

  How about this, like the typical person who hasn't taken care of themselves for most of their life.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  Maybe not too extreme.

• 39:02Dr. William Li?

  What can they actually do, you know? And maybe it's not ninety days. I would say, you know, like, hey, you know, I think you should take a look at things that you can actually do in a month or two. Give yourself a little runway. All right. Take it easy on yourself because stress and, you know, putting too much pressure on yourself doesn't actually help. But some of the principles I will tell you that is supported by evidence, scientific evidence and clinical evidence is number one. I would say, uh, switch to eating more of a plant-based diet with whole foods. All right. So I just said a mouthful there because what I'm saying is that, um, eat more foods that you are buying whole and fresh and cook them yourself.

• 39:46Lewis Howes?

  Not processed.

• 39:47Dr. William Li?

  Not processed. Okay. So you can cut down on your ultra-processed foods and focus more on your whole, fresh foods. Immediately, you're going to be flooding your body with more of Mother Nature's pharmacy. That's pharmacy with a F, not a P H.

• 40:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:03Dr. William Li?

  All right. And, and that's going to start healing and prompting your gut to start doing it as well. But you're going to start getting a lot of stuff that is not prescription.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Before you go to the next point, can you make a distinction? If you can explain to people, because I don't think people truly understand. When you eat one processed meal, what is happening with a processed food? Whether it's ultra-processed or just processed and not its complete whole food, uh, that you cook? What happens when it enters the mouth of ultra-processed food or something that's processed? It goes through the gut and out. What is happening to your body with that versus?

• 40:43Lewis Howes?

  Just single ingredient, whole foods cooked and, and in the system.

• 40:49Dr. William Li?

  First of all, I think that this idea that the word, I mean, we're now beginning to have this conversation about ultra-processed foods as a, as a society. Right? Uh, and, and it's, and it's, and it's damn well time that we actually did. All right. Because we do know that ultra-processed foods aren't good for you, but the word process and ultra-processed often gets confused. So let's start there. Okay. So raw foods are, I mean, whole food ingredients are like going to the grocery store and just eating the food without doing anything to it.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Banana, apple.

• 41:22Dr. William Li?

  Exactly.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Spinach.

• 41:24Dr. William Li?

  Oh, right.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  Carrot.

• 41:25Dr. William Li?

  Right.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  Single ingredient. Yeah, single ingredient.

• 41:28Dr. William Li?

  The salad bar is a great example of really just like whole individual ingredients that you put into a bowl and just eat them one by one. Most foods that we cook, by cooking them, we're processing.

• 41:40Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 41:40Dr. William Li?

  I don't know if you've ever seen, uh, so anything that we do to manipulate food is processing. So if you've ever made pasta by yourself, you take a big pile of, of flour and you crack some eggs in it and you just take your fingertips and work it and you then roll it up and roll it out and cut it up and, okay. So that's processing.

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 41:57Dr. William Li?

  So that's different.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  Than ultra-processed.

• 41:59Dr. William Li?

  Going to ultra-processing, which is having a factory extrude the ingredients, shape them into animal crackers or whatever, and then adding flavors.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  Coloring.

• 42:10Dr. William Li?

  Adding coloring, um, adding stabilizers, adding olcifiers, and then throwing in all these like chemical ingredients that you can't, pronounce or you have no idea what they do in there. That's ultra-processed.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So the difference between something minimally processed first ultra-processed, what happens to the gut? The bacteria in your gut and the body and immune system with having those different options.

• 42:37Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. And I'll tell you what we know as it relates to longevity. So first of all. I try to break it down really simply. Our body is like your car. When you put our food is our fuel. When you go to the filling station, you get a choice. You're going to actually put in like you got four different kinds of fuel you could put in. All right. If you put in good quality fuel, it your car is going to drive better. Over the long haul, it's going to drive better. Every now and then you put in some crummy cheap fuel. It's all right. You're not going to notice, but if you do that day in and day out, you're going to notice it for sure. All right. So you put something good into your body. Your body is going to respond really well. You put something bad in your body. Your body is also going to respond accordingly.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 43:20Dr. William Li?

  In a negative way. So simply, in simplest terms, that's actually what the difference is between ultra processed, which isn't really good for you and your body is going to revolt. It's and it's going to trash your body from the inside out in ways, some ways we know, in other ways, we don't even know yet.

• 43:37Dr. William Li?

  By the way, the whole conversation about ultra plastics for microplastics. All right. Hey, you know what? If you've ever see like the amount of machinery and plastic that has to, you know, the other machines that the processed food has to go through. Who knows how much ultra, you know, microplastics that you found in ultra processed foods?

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  It's like leaching through, yeah.

• 44:00Dr. William Li?

  That that remains to be, that remains to be seen, you know? And and so what I say is that the least amount of processing you can have for your food, the more you can be assured that it's going to be a quality food that you're actually going to put into your body and your body will react well. So what's what's going on when you feed your food minimally processed whole foods? Your body is going to extract immediately as many of the polyphenols as it can out of it. Goes in your stomach, gets absorbed into your bloodstream. Those polyphenols go to town. The effect of a polyphenol of eating polyphenols and there's a lot of polyphenols in foods. Strawberries, blueberries, an orange, an apple, broccoli.

• 44:44Dr. William Li?

  All right, when those, all those polyphenols. Basically get into your bloodstream and think about it. Like.

• 44:54Dr. William Li?

  Starting a symphony of effects. You know, if you ever go to like, listen to a symphony orchestra. It's not just usually one instrument that goes off. The whole, the whole orchestra goes off. And that's what happens when we eat poly foods with polyphenols. The dietary fiber tumbles down. We might absorb some of it. Some of it we don't absorb goes tumbles down all the way to your lower gut. What does it do? It feeds our gut microbiome. We've got 39 trillion hungry little baby birds in a nest waiting to be fed. Okay. And the dietary fiber we eat actually feeds them. How important is this? And we know it's really important.

• 45:35Dr. William Li?

  Not only because dietary fiber seems to be eating dietary fiber lowers the risk of diseases like dementia, diabetes, cancer, improves outcomes for cancer. But for cancer, for example, there was a study from the MD Anderson Cancer Center that looked at people with melanoma. Okay. Deadly form of skin cancer, getting immunotherapy. So they're getting the state of the art treatment, requires their own immune system to go to town. That's the 70% in your gut, requires a gut bacteria. Gut bacteria need to eat. Okay, gotta feed them. Turns out for every five to six grams of dietary fiber, it decreased mortality by 30%. Mortality, death. Okay, death.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

  Decreased it.

• 46:20Dr. William Li?

  Decrease it by five to six grams of dietary fiber per day. Now, what does that look like? Dietary fiber, five to six grams. You get an, a medium sized pair has five to six grams of dietary fiber. Not a big ask.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay, you do one of those a day.

• 46:35Dr. William Li?

  One of those a day or, or, or the equivalent to get the dietary fiber. All right, so, and again, now you get all the polyphenols and so like powerful effects. How quickly does it actually, does dietary fiber? And these polyphenols, how quickly can they change your?

• 46:52Dr. William Li?

  The fate of your gut bacteria? Within 24 hours.

• 46:55Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 46:55Dr. William Li?

  You can start getting changes. So, and I wrote about this in my book, Eat to Beat Disease. You have kiwis, okay, and you measure the gut microbiome. And you can, within 24 hours after eating one kiwi, you can start to grow more healthy gut bacteria in the first day. All right. By four days, you start growing other bacteria that are healthy as well. So, you know, like you're asking me, what about the, what about the dude who actually hasn't been taking care of himself? Look, this is what I'm telling you. Go eat some whole fresh foods that you prepare yourself. Okay. Cut down some of that ultra processed stuff. I'll talk about what the ultra processed stuff does in a second. And you'll start to get these changes. You're hardwired to do this. Your body wants to do it.

• 47:39Dr. William Li?

  You know, let it do its job.

• 47:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Dr. William Li?

  Okay.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  And you'll start to feel the effects, or maybe, or at least your body will feel the effects within 24 hours.

• 47:47Dr. William Li?

  Well, you, you're, the changes start fast. And so, you know, definitely within a few days, you will start to feel much better. I mean, listen, you ever, you ever go like on a, like a crummy food bender, uh, and then, right?

• 48:00Lewis Howes?

  Don't feel good.

• 48:01Dr. William Li?

  Don't feel good. And then you say, you know what? This is, this sucks. I'm going to actually like eat healthy now. You start getting it back pretty quick.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:10Dr. William Li?

  Like, I, I am so glad I'm doing this, right? So the changes happen fast. So I think, you know, uh, so number one, it is in, within everyone's power to be able to actually make these moves. Okay. That count simply by shifting to whole, uh, good, healthy foods. Cause you know, the bad stuff with the artificial kind of preservatives and artificial coloring and all that. They, you know, the simplest way to think about what they might do besides dump chemicals into your body is they can kill your gut bacteria. That's not what you want to do. You know, killing the gut bacteria, by the way, is like, we're talking about the symphony. Beethoven's Fifth, you know, or Handel's Messiah, big choir, you know, in a big concert hall.

• 48:53Dr. William Li?

  You know, like hurting your gut bacteria, like ultra processed foods with all these artificial things. It's like sending in, um, uh, uh, it's like sending in hooligans from our, from a, uh, British, uh, football game.

• 49:09Lewis Howes?

  Screaming.

• 49:10Dr. William Li?

  Screaming into a concert hall and kicking over all the instruments.

• 49:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow. That's what processed foods do. Ultra processed. What are other things that? Ruin the gut bacteria then besides ultra processed foods.

• 49:24Dr. William Li?

  Well, alcohol will do it. Smoking also can affect it. Not getting enough good sleep. Not getting exercise can also affect your gut.

• 49:32Lewis Howes?

  What about vaping?

• 49:34Dr. William Li?

  Vaping, oh yeah, vaping is also, I mean, look, cigarettes, vaping, cigars, pipes. It's all part of the same continuum. There's not, there's nothing better about vaping. In fact, research has actually shown that the flavoring that they put in vapes are actually probably even worse. Uh, than some of the stuff that you have in just a plain cigarette. So, you know.

• 49:55Lewis Howes?

  So vaping or smoking or cigars, that doesn't help the gut bacteria?

• 49:59Dr. William Li?

  No, not at all.

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  Does it impact it in a negative way?

• 50:01Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it impacts it in a negative way. Really? Yeah. Because guess what? All those chemicals, instead of eating them, now you're inhaling them and they go right into your bloodstream. Instead of from your gut, your stomach, it just goes right into the bloodstream for your lungs. And now, you know, everything is affected. That 60,000 mile channel of highways and byways is delivering whatever the menthol flavor or the whatever flavor you got. All over the place. You really don't want that.

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

  How much of a, a block, if someone is smoking every day or vaping or doing cigars or pipes every day or. They're inhaling some type of smoke, how much of a.

• 50:40Lewis Howes?

  Damn are they creating in the, the flow of health? Uh, throughout their, their nervous system, their bloodstream, their.

• 50:47Dr. William Li?

  I don't have the number three, but it's pretty significant. In fact, it's so significant that. You know, some of the researchers looking at environmental toxins.

• 50:57Dr. William Li?

  Have been even looking at not just, not only. Smoking and vaping, all right, but looking at even like cooking.

• 51:06Dr. William Li?

  Think about the line cooks at a restaurant.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  The smoke you mean?

• 51:09Dr. William Li?

  And all the, the fryer smoke.

• 51:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the grease and everything coming out.

• 51:13Dr. William Li?

  Listen, uh, like you, you and I.

• 51:15Lewis Howes?

  That was good.

• 51:16Dr. William Li?

  We, we probably have spent more time, we've probably done our time.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:21Dr. William Li?

  Standing in front of a grill.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:22Dr. William Li?

  In the summer, right?

• 51:23Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 51:23Dr. William Li?

  And we're flipping the burgers or.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:25Dr. William Li?

  Grilling the steaks. Hey, you know, like that's part of the, that's, that's part of the, the, the, uh, you know, that's, that's, that's part of growing up. You know, and, and doing your, doing our thing. All right. Think about all that stuff that we're breathing. We know that, that grilling meat puts carcinogens into the meat. What do you think we're breathing in? Okay, fortunately, you know, like most people aren't

• 51:48Lewis Howes?

  It's minimal.

• 51:48Dr. William Li?

  But if you're a line cook in a restaurant, you're going there doing that

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  Eight hours a day.

• 51:54Dr. William Li?

  At the station, eight hours a day, every day. Okay, so what I'm saying is that like how what we expose our bodies to makes a big difference. So these are choices that we make and you know, researchers and public health and policymakers like, I think that there's starting to be a convergence in recognizing that, you know, if we want a healthier society and healthier individuals, all right, we gotta just be a little bit more alert to the fact that what we're exposed to can have like a really, really big impact in ways that we didn't think about before. Now's the time, now's the time to think about it.

• 52:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so number one, I think I took you off track for a second. Number one is eat more plant-based whole foods.

• 52:34Dr. William Li?

  And and less ultra-processed.

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  Less ultra-processed. Was there more to this? Was there more steps to this?

• 52:39Dr. William Li?

  Uh, no, I think that's probably a good first step. I mean, of course, there's a lot of little minis. Second thing I would tell you is don't overeat.

• 52:46Lewis Howes?

  Don't overeat.

• 52:47Dr. William Li?

  Look, we live in a culture of abundance.

• 52:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:51Dr. William Li?

  The more there is, the more you want to eat, right?

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Easy access, too.

• 52:54Dr. William Li?

  Easy access, okay? And easy access to the cheap stuff, which is the ultra-processed stuff, which is the definitely the bad stuff, right? So not the good stuff.

• 53:01Lewis Howes?

  Forget to overeat, overeat fiber, overeat like the healthiest.

• 53:05Dr. William Li?

  You know, honestly, I would tell you, don't even, don't, don't even overeat the good stuff. And here's the reason.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 53:11Dr. William Li?

  Oh, yeah. Because the fact of the matter is, is that our bodies are designed to take in food as fuel. All right. Um, like remember I gave you the analogy, the gas, the car at the filling station, getting your tank filled up, right? So that's basically how we interact with our food. We're just like in a car, you don't really think about your fuel until the meter runs low, the gauge runs low. Then you're like, shoot, where can I find a gas station? That's all you can think about. And that's basically how our body works. Like, we don't think about eating until, you know, our

• 53:45Lewis Howes?

  Get angry.

• 53:45Dr. William Li?

  The fuel tank goes, uh, you know, your tank's running low. Now like, okay, I gotta get something to eat. Okay, so that's the same way. And what happens is that when we Go to the filling station with a car. We put hopefully high quality fuel into our gas tank, which is a metal container in the side of the car. We fill it up, right? And what happens when the gas tank in a car fills up to the top? It goes click and now no more gas comes out. We get out, we put it away. Okay, and then we drive off, right? Our tank's full. Our body doesn't have a clicker.

• 54:19Lewis Howes?

  Wouldn't that be amazing?

• 54:20Dr. William Li?

  If we had a clicker?

• 54:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if we had a clicker and it said, okay, you've eaten, all you need to fill your tank today. Stop eating, don't burn it now, go run.

• 54:28Dr. William Li?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what the, we, we kind of do have a clicker and I'm gonna tell you what it is. We, if you eat slowly.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:36Dr. William Li?

  You will actually feel satiated, full. And if you stop there, stop. Before you're full, you're satisfied before you're full. Now, this requires a little bit of finesse for you to know yourself, okay?

• 54:53Lewis Howes?

  Well, also when you're eating, when I eat ultra-processed foods, I never feel full. It's like I can have two pizzas and candy.

• 54:59Dr. William Li?

  And you want more and more.

• 55:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the clicker doesn't turn on with ultra-processed foods like it would with whole foods where you feel like, oh, I got a lot of good fiber in me, I got some good grains, I got some, you know, meat or beans or vegetables, like, I feel satisfied.

• 55:14Dr. William Li?

  So that's the key thing. Feeling satisfied, knowing you're satisfied and stopping. No matter what's else, like, I don't care if you haven't cleaned your plate, stop, stop, quit the clean plate club.

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 55:28Dr. William Li?

  Okay, you gotta quit it, all right? Then in that case, you shouldn't have put so much food in your plate to begin with.

• 55:33Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 55:34Dr. William Li?

  Right? So this is my overarching second piece of advice for somebody who wants to take better care of themselves. Don't put too much food in the plate. Don't feel like you have to clean the plate. Take your time eating so that when your stomach starts to get full, you'll start feeling that you're satisfied.

• 55:53Dr. William Li?

  You don't have to feel full, like we're trained to eat until we're full. Yeah. All right. But you know, like, listen, anybody who's been at a big Thanksgiving dinner will know this, right? So you've been hungry all day, you can't wait for that meal with all the amazing food and all the amazing family. Look forward to it every, every year. And you go there and it's time to eat and you pile your plate up and you're eating. Okay. And you're like, oh my God, I gotta go back and get more, right? So you go back and get more, you take one forkful of that second plate and you cross that line. And you're like, oh, it's food left over. Yeah. And then you feel like, oh, man, I don't think I can eat anymore. And then you are on the couch feeling crummy for the rest of the day. That's crossing the line. You ate so fast, you didn't pay attention, right?

• 56:35Dr. William Li?

  So, second piece of advice for people, don't overeat. Okay. Third, third thing? Third thing is something that everybody can do. Like, um, by the way, Louis, I'm telling you, all things are, don't cost a lot of money. Exactly. In fact, they will save you money. Yeah. All right. That's the key thing. You don't have to be, you know, like a super wealthy person and buy all this and order all these supplements and do all this crazy stuff and track your glucose and all that. You don't need to do all this stuff. This is a simple way to heal yourself and get started because your body's got the operating system already hardwired into you. Yes. It's an easy first step for anybody. Now, third thing is every now and then skip a meal. I do it about three times a week, two to three times a week.

• 57:19Dr. William Li?

  Easiest meal for me to skip is breakfast. Okay? I, I get up, I take, I take my time. If I, if my work day starts early, if I got a ton of stuff I gotta do. Sometimes I'm so busy, I just don't even have time to eat breakfast. Um, and that's totally okay. We were told by our moms, we gotta eat breakfast in order to have, you know, to learn something at school. Sure. Have enough energy. Totally not true. Yeah. By not eating breakfast, what we are immediately doing is extending this fasting period from overnight. When we weren't eating after, you know, when we went to sleep. Now you're still not eating until, let's call it lunchtime. You've extended your. Quote fasting period.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:02Dr. William Li?

  Maybe 12 hours. Okay, that's the easiest way to do intermittent fasting. You don't have to like go into a schedule and do anything else. I always tell people like, don't bother going into these crazy plans. Just skip a meal or two. And even if you don't do it every single day, which you know, it's probably hard for everybody to skip breakfast or skip lunch every single day. But if you do it two or three times a week. Okay, you'll be fine.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:27Dr. William Li?

  These are the easy steps. This is the third thing I would do. Fourth thing I would do is say, get on your feet and go for a walk after dinner.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:34Dr. William Li?

  Okay. And by the way, when I'm saying a walk, I'm saying like a brisk walk. Like, you know, don't drag your feet. Walk until, you know, like you're feeling it, you know, like you're feeling like you're getting some good exercise. If you can do it with a friend or a family member, even better. Catch up on things. If you don't have anybody to walk with, hey, there's something called podcast.

• 58:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:57Dr. William Li?

  Listen to School of Greatness.

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:58Dr. William Li?

  Okay, listen to an episode, listen to this episode. All right, and by the time it's done, you'll have actually gotten some pretty good exercise and movement. If you can squeeze it in to do a workout plan or join a gym or go swimming or cycling. More power to you, but I'm saying you can do it.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  Walk.

• 59:15Dr. William Li?

  The really, really easy way, anybody can do is just walk. Unless you're in a wheelchair. Okay. This is something you can do to actually start to gain your health back. All right, that is the next thing. And then the final thing that I think is a start, because you can't stack too many things on. Is try to get some good sleep.

• 59:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:34Dr. William Li?

  Just get some good sleep. And by the way, you know why? Because when you sleep really, really well, and look, even if you don't sleep well now, there's at some point in your life, you did get good sleep. So we all know how to do it. All right, when you get good sleep, deep REM sleep, dreaming sleep. What happens is that your body regenerates itself. Your stem cells get, start to regenerate, your brain cleans itself out. By the way, have you heard of the glymphatic system in the brain?

• 1:00:03Lewis Howes?

  I've heard it, but what does it do?

• 1:00:04Dr. William Li?

  Okay, so there is a hidden sewer system in our brain called the glymphatic system. You've heard of lymphatic system, but the glymphatic system, they say glymph because the cells in our brain are called glia. G L I A. So glymphatic system is a sewer system that's normally closed during the day. And so, you know, like here we are during the day, you know, we're doing this podcast, we're doing other things, you know, you prep before, you gotta do some stuff afterwards, me too. All right. You know what's happening? We're building up toxins in our brain, oxidative stress, all kinds of stuff is going on in our brain. When we sleep tonight, okay, hopefully I'm going to get some good sleep and hopefully you too.

• 1:00:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:49Dr. William Li?

  All right. When we get good sleep, and only when we get good sleep, the glymphatic systems open up. It's like the sewers of Paris drains the toxins from your brain. All right. And that's how we regenerate the freshness of our brain. That's why they say get a good night's sleep before an exam. All right. And if you don't, by the way, you get brain fog. You know why you get brain fog? Because you've kept those toxins in.

• 1:01:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow. If someone, say, has one glass of wine or one drink of alcohol before they go to sleep, and they say to themselves, ah, it's not that much, it's just one glass or one drink, how much does that impact on the brain to not be able to recover, flush out those toxins, and feel fully rested?

• 1:01:35Dr. William Li?

  Different for everybody.

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:01:37Dr. William Li?

  Okay. Now, I, you know, I think in general, what I would say is that I have an opinion about alcohol. Okay. And my opinion about alcohol is this, from the time that humans started to grow grains and, you know, and ferment them, all right, we've been having alcohol and alcohol is part of human ritual. We celebrate birthdays and funerals and wakes and holidays with it. So to me, I think that, you know, drinking some wine, having some alcohol is really part of our humanity. All right. The problem becomes when we actually start really abusing it and drinking too much of it. And here's a reason. The alcohol in all

• 1:02:19Dr. William Li?

  alcoholic beverages, the ethanol, okay, which is present in all of them, that's a toxin. So whether you drink a little or a lot, you know, the bottom line is still a toxin. So the more you have, the more toxicity your body's, more toxin your body's got to purge.

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:33Dr. William Li?

  Every now and then, it's probably not a big deal. Like have, have a great glass of wine or bottle of wine on your birthday. Don't drink all bottled.

• 1:02:41Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:02:41Dr. William Li?

  Enjoy it with some friends. Okay. Like social drinking and that context, I think is okay.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  But if you're doing it every night, just one glass?

• 1:02:48Dr. William Li?

  What I would tell you is this, you know, your body's got to work against that to clear it. And everybody's body's different. You know, your liver might work a little bit more efficiently than mine. So you're going to clear a little bit better. And the faster you clear it, the better the sleep you're going to get. And by the way, alcohol itself is a brain toxin. So it knocks out a few neurons. You got to regenerate those. So you're going to regenerate them when you're sleeping. Right? So it's all interlinked. And so I don't like to character assassinate any food, really. I think, you know, like, you know, you gotta, you gotta enjoy. If you're going to want, if you want to live for a long time, you want, aiming for longevity. You know, life is for the living. So you've got to live your life. I'm a big believer in that.

• 1:03:30Dr. William Li?

  But just, but you've got to be aware of what it is you're putting into your body and how your body is responding to it.

• 1:03:36Lewis Howes?

  So again, these four bacteria that are in the gut of people that are living well beyond 100. We talked about those before. You give a few different foods that can support you. And I guess the fourth one.

• 1:03:50Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's more for, for, for all these bacteria. Like, I'm not going to, let's not go through every single one.

• 1:03:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:03:57Dr. William Li?

  This is like still a relatively new area of research for me. But I'll tell you, I was surprised to discover that resistant starches can grow some of them as well. You know what a resistant starch is? Starch, right? It's a carb, right? Like rice and all this other kind of stuff. Banana, all right? When you actually change the starch, so it becomes a little harder to digest, like you refrigerate like day old rice. Okay. It becomes a resistant starch. A potato, you're going to roast some potatoes. All right. You stick them in the fridge. The next day, the, the natural chemistry of the potato, the starches changes. You got some resistant starch.

• 1:04:37Dr. William Li?

  Resistant starch can grow some of those bacteria that are found in ultra ages, super ages.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:04:43Dr. William Li?

  Okay. Also, some natural foods, green bananas, resistant starch, plantains, resistant starch. All right. So any roasted potato, stick in the fridge, have it the next day. You actually have created your own resistant starch. So those actually also can help grow some of the healthy gut bacteria as well.

• 1:05:06Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. What I mean, what are the things that are blocking us beyond the processed foods? Beyond smoking, alcohol? Here's actually a question I have for you about this. If you're eating all the right foods, but you say. Take a Tylenol once a day, or take Ibuprofen once a day, or take some type of chemical compound that is a drug, even if it seems like it's safe over the counter. What does that do to the gut microbiome when you take a Tylenol, Advil, Ibuprofen, or some type of pain?

• 1:05:39Dr. William Li?

  We don't know, and it's going to be different for different medicines. Like, I will tell you that a some medicines might actually be very harmful. Okay, and I think that we're just still at the beginning of discovering, like, our consciousness has only been recently raised as researchers to think about the gut microbiome. There's a lot more work to be done, but

• 1:06:02Lewis Howes?

  Few years in.

• 1:06:03Dr. William Li?

  We're just a few years in, but I'll tell you, there are some surprises. And I know that on your program, you've actually had people in, coming in and talk about longevity drugs like rapamycin and metformin. You know that metformin's been discovered to improve your gut microbiome.

• 1:06:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:06:19Dr. William Li?

  Yeah. So medicines aren't always bad. Some of them might actually be good. We were just trying to figure this out and understand it.

• 1:06:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, interesting. I guess I'm curious if there are side effects that would also hurt. Maybe they'd help in some way, but then hurt in some other way. I'm not sure, but

• 1:06:34Dr. William Li?

  We don't really know yet, and I think that's really part of this new frontier. I'm really excited about because I think that, you know, when I went to medical school and I was learning and studying and reading all these books and, you know, like, we're digesting 4,000 years of medical knowledge. You graduate medical school with your stethoscope around your neck, figuring that, you know, like, okay, I probably know most of what there is to know. Heck no. We are still discovering new cells in the body, new organs in the body, new pieces of our physiology and how our body works that we didn't even imagine. So that's what's exciting to me

• 1:07:15Dr. William Li?

  as a medical researcher, the physician, as a scientist, and then, you know, like, part of what I do is, you know, as I write books, I like to translate some of the most exciting, but also pragmatic, like, practical things we're discovering that you can actually do something about.

• 1:07:29Lewis Howes?

  This may sound a little woo-woo, this question, but how much do our thoughts and our mindset impact? Our gut, but also our overall health.

• 1:07:39Dr. William Li?

  Oh, I think it's huge. As it relates to the gut, we do know that it's a two-way street. So if we're depressed or, you know, like some other thing is going on in our brain, inevitably the gut's going to be affected in some way. We're, as I said, like we don't have it all figured out yet.

• 1:07:56Lewis Howes?

  But it's impacting it.

• 1:07:57Dr. William Li?

  Probably not for the better.

• 1:07:59Lewis Howes?

  So stress, overwhelm, anxiety, depression, bad thoughts.

• 1:08:04Dr. William Li?

  And it may actually, it may be a.

• 1:08:07Lewis Howes?

  Gut signaling the brain?

• 1:08:09Dr. William Li?

  Signaling back to the brain, you know, like, like two people playing pickleball.

• 1:08:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:08:14Dr. William Li?

  You know, like batting, you know, like nasty thing, nastiness back to each other. That could well be happening, okay, with, with, with brain and gut. Um, we do know that it can be good, you know, there's beneficial gut-brain interactions. So it makes sense that there might be some negative ones, but I can tell you that, um, I think that the, um, uh, that too often we disconnect mental wellness with physical wellness. We call them two separate things. You know, the psychiatrist or the therapist deals with this and, you know, medical doctors say, oh, well, I deal with the liver or I deal with the kidney. Yeah, you know, what we're beginning to realize is there's all this interconnectivity. And again, back to what I do. I'm all about the common denominator of health and the common denominators of disease.

• 1:08:59Dr. William Li?

  If we can actually take a science-based approach to look at, you know, uh, how everything is connected. It's that idea of like draining the Pacific Ocean and seeing how the islands are connected. We get a lot more mileage out of that than just taking an inch wide and going a mile deep and thinking that you've got the answer.

• 1:09:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it almost sounds like if you're eating unhealthy foods, ultra-processed foods, it's more than likely.

• 1:09:28Lewis Howes?

  Going to have an impact on the way you think because you're going to feel a certain thing, or maybe the the signals are setting something up, oh, this is not enough. I need more nutrients. I need something else. And therefore, it's going to create some type of fogginess in your thinking or in your mind. And if you're thinking your mind is a lower energy, a lower frequency, thinking tired, it's going to send it back to the gut. It seems like it's kind of connecting at the same time. So when you eat something healthy, hopefully, it's impacting your mind or your brain to think better. And if you're thinking better, hopefully, your gut is being impacted in a better way also.

• 1:10:05Dr. William Li?

  And that's connected to longevity because one of the goals that we all want to have is we want to be clear in mind. We want to have good cognition. It's not just about memory. It's really about decision making. What am I going to do today? What am I going to do next week? And making good decisions, right? I mean, you know, like I just think that rather than pick a number, you know, I'm going to do 150 or whatever. Let's think about this whole journey and everything we need to do to enjoy where we're going. You want to go on vacation, right? You want to really plan your vacation. Where are you going to eat? What are you going to pack? You know, what's the weather going to be like? Like, all these, all these components, I think, are, at least from my perspective. Longevity is not just about the big number.

• 1:10:49Dr. William Li?

  It's really about your health span and the quality of your life along the way. And that's, to me, is really the exciting thing, is really the science of that enjoyment along the way. I'm, I'm a big believer in joy and in pleasure. And in making life worth living.

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent. And if you could, I've got a couple of final questions for you. But if you were to focus on a few supplements you think people should be taking to

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  Just non-negotiables that you think it's going to help their gut, their lifespan, their everything. What would those few supplements be?

• 1:11:26Dr. William Li?

  I can only tell you what I do.

• 1:11:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:11:28Dr. William Li?

  All right, because I don't think I can really fairly address, this should be for everybody, the non-negotiables. But I'll tell you for me, I know that it's hard for me to get enough vitamin D. So I'll take a vitamin D supplement. I know it's, even though I enjoy seafood and I like, you know, plant-based sources of omega-3s, it's hard for me to get enough. So an omega-3 supplement is good for my brain, good for my heart. It's good for my muscles. So I take an omega-3 supplement. I think those are, for me, non-negotiables. I just don't get enough. And I think most people don't get enough either, honestly.

• 1:12:04Dr. William Li?

  Because I do work in this area, you know, I have an unfair advantage of seeing the results of research and thinking, oh, wow, why don't I do this if I've been seeing this? So I do take some probiotics and it's all based on the research that I've actually seen. So that bacteria, I told you, Lactobacillus reuteri, you can find it in food. Sometimes it's in yogurt, it's in sourdough bread, but I don't want to eat too much sourdough bread. It's a carb. Lactobacillus is what makes the sourdough bread tangy, which people like, but you can't eat that much sourdough bread. Lactobacillus reuteri is also in the Italian version of Parmesan or Reggiano cheese.

• 1:12:47Lewis Howes?

  So good.

• 1:12:47Dr. William Li?

  Big, you know, orange wheels. Okay, it's a starter bacteria for it. You don't want to be eating too much of that. Shave a little bit on, okay, but you're not going to be eating like mouthfuls of it. So I can't get enough of that. And I've seen enough research from what I've done to know that it's good for my immune system. It lowers inflammation. I've seen really good data in animals from the lab that it reduces the development of colon tumors and breast tumors. It also improves your metabolism, your lipids. It text messages your brain for that oxytocin. So.

• 1:13:24Lewis Howes?

  What's that one called again?

• 1:13:25Dr. William Li?

  Lactobacillus reuteri. And by the way, it's Lactobacillus reuteri is spelled R E U T E R I. I'll give it to you so you can put in the show notes.

• 1:13:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:13:36Dr. William Li?

  Lactobacillus reuteri. And I'll tell you, I actually order the kind, like this is stuff you get on Amazon. I get the kind that you can chew.

• 1:13:43Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:13:43Dr. William Li?

  Children's chewable version. You know why? Because there's other data in humans that this healthy bacteria in the gut, remember I told you the gut starts in the mouth, actually kills the bacteria that causes cavities.

• 1:13:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:13:59Dr. William Li?

  I brush my teeth, then I'll chew up a couple of these babies.

• 1:14:03Lewis Howes?

  I want some of them.

• 1:14:04Dr. William Li?

  I'll swish them around and then I swallow it. Good for the upstairs, good for the downstairs.

• 1:14:07Lewis Howes?

  I'm in.

• 1:14:08Dr. William Li?

  Right? And remember I told you, we're beginning to see links between gum disease, gingivitis, bad bacteria in your mouth, and dementia. Okay, so, you know, I didn't have to convince you very hard on that one.

• 1:14:21Lewis Howes?

  No, I'm in.

• 1:14:21Dr. William Li?

  All right.

• 1:14:22Lewis Howes?

  I'm in. You take these every day?

• 1:14:24Dr. William Li?

  I do. And then, you know, and then I happen to be involved with the research on Akkermansia. And I know that there are people say it's been so talked about on, you know, on social media and YouTube and podcasts. I like, I do the research on it. Okay. So I, and my colleagues are doing the research on it. So I'm looking at it and this bacteria actually is really, really important. And I'm a cancer researcher, so I know just how important that can be. So I do take that back. I do take that probiotic, but I also don't rely on probiotics. Like for my Akkermansia, I also drink some pomegranate juice and I'll, you know, have dried cranberries and, you know, I, I try to make, I use supplements as a top off, which is what supplement means.

• 1:15:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:10Dr. William Li?

  All right. But I try to get most of my things from foods. Yeah.

• 1:15:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So what is that one called? The Akkermansia?

• 1:15:16Dr. William Li?

  Akkermansia, A K K E R M A N S I A.

• 1:15:20Lewis Howes?

  That's the probiotic name or not?

• 1:15:21Dr. William Li?

  That's the name of the bacteria and the probiotic.

• 1:15:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, it is. Okay, cool.

• 1:15:24Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 1:15:27Dr. William Li?

  So.

• 1:15:27Lewis Howes?

  So those four things are the main that you take? Vitamin D, omega three, and these two probiotics?

• 1:15:33Dr. William Li?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Lewis Howes?

  You might throw some other stuff in there, but those are the main?

• 1:15:36Dr. William Li?

  Those are the main ones I do.

• 1:15:37Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:15:37Dr. William Li?

  You know, I mean, look, everyone's gonna be different. Everyone's gonna have different needs. I might add some, you know, based on research that's coming out. So I, you know, I try not to create a little, you know, a box of things that to say, you have to do this.

• 1:15:55Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:15:56Dr. William Li?

  Or, you know, you're not going to be healthy. This is what I do. And people always ask me, so I'm happy to share it with you.

• 1:16:02Lewis Howes?

  That's great. You've got some amazing books, Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet, that cover all the research that you've done and give people way more tips than what we've talked about here. This is a great starter and you're on YouTube every week. People can check out youtube slash Dr. William Lee to see your content where you dive into the research and you share more. And you're doing it what, two, three times a week right now?

• 1:16:27Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, three times a week and then we actually add more content whenever I can. And the way that I trim my YouTube is that I look really closely at what people, you know, my audience and people who hear about me, they want to ask me. So I get lots of, I could collect the information, like what are the questions that people want to know? And then I create my YouTube content based on answering what people want to know.

• 1:16:48Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest pain that people are facing around their health today that you've been answering?

• 1:16:52Dr. William Li?

  You know, confusion about what they should do. They get so much misinformation, it becomes confusing for them. And so what I always try to tell people to do is that I'm trying to give you information that's based on science and I know to be true as well as we understand it now. You can count on me to be a trusted source of information. I'm a scientist, so if I don't know it, I'm going to tell you I don't know. And that's okay, because we can't know everything, you know? And I think that, and you know, and just like what we talked about today, I'm a pragmatic, but I'm a practical person. Do what's practical. You don't have to do what's expensive. You can't, you know, this is not, health is not elitism. Health is universal. It's something we can all do because we're all hardwired to actually heal. We're hardwired to have good metabolism. We're hardwired to have our health defenses.

• 1:17:38Dr. William Li?

  So if you have been off the path, don't worry, you can get back on it, you know? Just, you know, follow your own signals with a little bit of guidance and you can get there.

• 1:17:50Lewis Howes?

  This is powerful. I want people to go subscribe to your YouTube, check you out, all your books, DrWilliamLee.com. You're going to be updating people there. You have a newsletter, all these different things people can check out. Also, I want to get a link or a list of all the supplements you talked about and add it to the show notes. So I'll get that from you later and I'll add it to the show notes on YouTube and all the different audio platforms. But this has been very powerful. I appreciate you for, for revealing some of the new research that you're discovering and you're seeing that I haven't heard anyone talk about, which is kind of understanding the gap, the gut bacteria connection. To longer term health and longevity. And I think it's really important that we need to start exploring more of this. And I'm assuming over the coming years, you're going

• 1:18:33Lewis Howes?

  to be talking more about this on your YouTube channel about what you're discovering and sharing the research and the science that people can have for themselves.

• 1:18:41Dr. William Li?

  Yeah, it's so exciting what we're actually finding out in terms of how to live long and live well. To me, that's the alignment. You want years and quality at the same time. That's what I'm focused on like a laser beam.

• 1:18:56Lewis Howes?

  Dr. William Lee, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

• 1:18:58Dr. William Li?

  Thanks for inviting me again.

• 1:18:59Lewis Howes?

  Powerful. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneymeasbook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment, moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

• 1:19:41Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And

• 1:20:25Lewis Howes?

  now it's time to go out there and do something great.