20+ Healing Foods Most People Have Never Heard Of | Jordan Rubin

Jordan Rubin healed himself of Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and cancer using food as medicine — and the foods that saved his life are ones most people have never considered putting on their plate. In this conversation, Jordan and Dr. Axe walk through more than 20 underused healing foods, from organ meats and glandulars packed with natural peptides, to ancient fermented foods like kefir and natto, to wild berries consumed by the world's longest-lived cultures. Each food comes with the science, the history, and practical ways to actually use it.

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

• 0:00Josh Axe?

  What are your thoughts on deer antler?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  If you are weak, if you are older and you want to be young again, deer antler is absolutely awesome.

• 0:08Josh Axe?

  And so talk to me a little bit about bee bread.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  So the Bible says, eat a little honeycomb and it is good for the bones.

• 0:15Josh Axe?

  When you were dealing with Crohn's and colitis, it was the number one food you consumed on a daily basis.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Kefir has more peptides than yogurt because of the unique fermentation with bacteria and yeasts.

• 0:28Josh Axe?

  Why sheep milk over maybe, you know, cow's milk?

• 0:31Speaker 01

  There is twice the amount of whey protein or lactobulbin in sheep milk.

• 0:35Josh Axe?

  Really?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Four times the amount of vitamin D.

• 0:38Josh Axe?

  Talk to us about Natto and what makes it such an incredible healing food.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Josh, this is the superfood that nobody's ever heard of that would transform the cardiovascular health of this nation, transform our bone health. I don't even know where to start because it's so amazing, but think about this.

• 1:07Josh Axe?

  I just wanted to say how incredibly grateful I am for each and every one of you who makes this community so special. And as a thank you, I'm going to be giving away over $5,300 in prizes to many of you. I'm talking about a sunlight sauna, a red light therapy mask, cellular blood work testing, Manukura Manuka honey, and eco hydrogen water flask, a signed copy of my New York Times bestselling book, and more. To enter, subscribe to the Dr. Josh Axe Show on YouTube. For 10 bonus entries, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm excited for many of you to win free prizes.

• 1:48Josh Axe?

  By the way, the only way you can be signed up in these is if you are subscribed to the podcast. The giveaway ends December 14th and we'll announce the winners on December 22nd. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review so you can be entered to win.

• 2:04Josh Axe?

  So you've heard of turmeric, you've heard of ashwagandha, you've heard of amazing healing foods like salmon and pomegranate, but what if there were foods that you were unaware of that could be your secret to health and healing? Well, today I've brought on Jordan Rubin, one of the world's leading experts in using food as medicine. And today we're going to dive into over 20 foods that you've maybe never heard of that could help you experience a breakthrough in your hormones, your immune system, fighting cancer, and experiencing longevity. Welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show and Jordan, welcome to the show again.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  It's great to be here. I'm super excited to share these powerful hidden gems that people can consume every day, that people have been consuming around the world as condiments, as side dishes, maybe even as beverages or desserts that can bring healing to the body and the mind.

• 3:02Josh Axe?

  Well, no, and you've got a lot of experience with this in curing yourself. You cured yourself many years ago, along with, of course, God's help of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease and autoimmune disease. You healed yourself of cancer using food-based medicine. So these are foods, when we say they're healing, they have incredible healing properties. And what I would love to sort of just dive right into from the start here is I want to talk about peptide-rich foods. There's this whole, we see this ground swell today of people talking about peptides like BPC157, TB500, GHKCU, but the original peptides are found in foods. In fact, body protective compound that BPC157, it's found in stomach acid and stomach linase.

• 3:44Josh Axe?

  You know, so organs and glandulars have been used for a long time as these peptide-rich superfoods. Let's start there and talk about peptide-rich superfoods, specifically organs.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it is something that could take up the entire show because bovine pancreas, which has been called sweetbreads, along with thymus, has been used and consumed for thousands of years. And right there, you've got something that mimics insulin in pancreas. And then thymus is where they get TB500 from. You can consume these as foods. They're not super tasty, but you can, or as supplements. But organs are amazing. Kidney is amazing. Liver is amazing. The peptides in organs attract to your body's organs and tissues like a magnet, and they have all the nutrients you need to restore your own organs and tissue. Thyroid is so amazing.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Testes or orchid extract has bio-identical testosterone in it. Mammary glands, as well as uterus and ovary, has estrogen and progesterone in very small doses, and the peptides to trigger your body to make its own hormones. That's the ultimate peptide source, if you ask me.

• 5:00Josh Axe?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. You know, coming on the show, I wanted to do some continued just sort of research on thymus gland. And it really is amazing. Again, people are using TB500 today. That's naturally found in thymus gland. So is thymus and alpha 1, so is violins. So there's all of these peptides that we've sort of isolated, but those are found naturally in thymus gland. There's actually studies on using thymus gland and its extracts at fighting and treating cancer, at boosting immunity, fighting infections. And the great thing is people can do these organs and glandulars as supplements, but also as food. You know, liver, of course, is one. Salt tied it up and, you know, olive oil and coconut oil with garlic and onions. Eat it with some ketchup or barbecue sauce. Listen, it's not everybody's favorite. Probably the best way to do it is you could buy a brand like Forces of Nature.

• 5:44Josh Axe?

  You know, it's got hard in there in liver and you don't really taste much, really any of the glandular in there, which is, which is a great way to go as well. But yeah, these are, if you want to get more peptides naturally in your diet, eat more organs.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and if you're daring, I may have last week brought a water buffalo liver home from the Missouri farm and sliced it up and swallowed some raw pieces. Warning, that's only for people that are very daring, but bottom line, doesn't taste great. It has this weird bitter acrid flavor to it, but there's a reason. And when you see the red color of an organ, when I opened up that, I brought a heart, a kidney, and a liver home with me, it is amazing. It's like purple, blue, red, loaded with blood. It was the original blood transfusion. My grandmother suffered from polycythemia when she was younger, and she also had certain issues with her blood.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  She had pernicious anemia and she consumed in the hospital, Josh, this is crazy, raw liver in the 1940s.

• 6:51Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  That was a medicine instead of a blood transfusion. Now we can get it today in capsules, or as you mentioned, in a mix with ground beef.

• 6:59Josh Axe?

  You know, I even think about thyroid glandular as an example. You know, today, a lot of times the, you know, when somebody's taking level of thyroxine, which, by the way, I mean, studies have come out showing it is 90% of people on the drug don't need it. It's not really doing them any good. There are studies though, or there's, there are, you know, what some people will do instead is they'll take Armor or Nature Throid, and basically that's either bovine or pig glandular or the extract where they take the T4 and T3. They use that as more of a bio-identical hormone for the thyroid gland. But the reality is you can take thyroid gland as a supplement and it has some inactivated T4, T3, but it also has peptides. It also has a compound called T2 as numerous compounds that are going to support thyroid

• 7:44Josh Axe?

  function. Now, the way these work on your body is you're not going to feel as immediate of an impact as you would taking, let's say, a concentrated peptide, but over time, you're building up your resources, you're improving some of their communication, and people will notice a difference in long-term health and improving things like their thyroid health or their testosterone or their immune system by taking these organs and glands. One in particular I'd love for you to talk about is bone marrow.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Bone marrow is absolutely amazing. It has stem cells that are floating in it. And bone marrow is a delicacy for animals and humans. I take bones from our water buffalo, which I just talked about, and I give it to my small dog. I'll spoon out the marrow. She will lick it till it is completely dry. There is something about bone marrow that's beyond just the fats, beyond the small amount of proteins that make all animals love it. It quite literally is like a bone marrow transplant in the sense of oral consumption. And so if you can consume bone marrow, sometimes at finer restaurants they have it. People don't think about that much as a healing oil.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Even topically, bone marrow and its stem cells regenerate tissue.

• 9:00Josh Axe?

  It's powerful. You know, there's a, there's a supplement I love to take too, and many, like, you know, I love doing bone broth. I love doing bone marrow supplements. And the thing is, people can go and buy these organs and glandulars. They're very easy to consume as the actual organ or actually as a supplement. And again, incredibly powerful. Now, there's another one that I've heard you talk about many years ago, and this isn't an organ per se, but it is an animal product, and it's colostrum. And this is an incredibly peptide-rich food, and a lot of times I don't think people are aware of all of the benefits of colostrum and its peptides.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Colostrum is so powerful that it is banned by the NCAA because it contains actual IGF-1, which is the peptide that increases growth hormone in your body. So if you want something that is rejuvenating, bovine colostrum is amazing, whether you're consuming it raw and frozen, like some local farms will have. It sells out quickly. So if you're someone who is part of a raw milk co-op, ask them if they have any colostrum. And by the way, don't worry about the babies, the calves being robbed of their colostrum because modern milk breeds animals to produce enough milk for about five calves. There's always extra colostrum.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  And the reason that it is saved, Josh, which is amazing, farmers use colostrum to treat calves that have diarrhea, which can kill them. This is not just normal loose bowels or infections because colostrum not only contains peptides, but it contains immunoglobulins and so much more. Colostrum may not be the miracle that some purported to be, but it is a super rich source of peptides, and it's been consumed for thousands of years.

• 10:45Josh Axe?

  That's amazing. You know, one of the things that you know that I've talked about a lot, even on the show, is not only looking at what the science says, but also what does ancient wisdom say? And in Chinese medicine, you know, they would really look at different parts of the animal, and they understood that different areas of the animal would support organs. So we've talked about this principle, you and I have both taught on this, and that's like supports like. So if somebody is consuming something like, we talked about organs and glandulars, thyroid supports your thyroid, liver supports your liver, heart supports your heart. In addition, there are certain foods that have these unique peptides and properties that support, you know, different organs and areas of the body. One of those is deer antler. And this is something that was used predominantly in Chinese medicine for building something we

• 11:29Josh Axe?

  would call yang and qi energy. So it's like your mitochondrial health. It's more anabolic and androgens supporting in the body. What are your thoughts on deer antler?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I love it. And deer antler and colostrum are two of the richest foods in growth factors. So if somebody has failure to thrive, say that you have a child who is not growing and developing properly, both colostrum and deer antler contain that IGF-1. Deer antlers also banned in both Olympic and NCAA competition. Why is it banned? Because the deer antlers are shed each and every year, that velvet, and it regrows almost like magic. And that growth is captured in deer antler extract. It is probably one of the most masculine,

• 12:19Speaker 01

  powerful, traditional Chinese, not herbs, but substances known to man. If you are weak, if you are older and you want to be young again, deer antler is absolutely awesome. Years ago, I had a group of friends who went on a 40-day workout program using kettlebells and other equipment. And part of the deal was you had to take a shot of deer antler extract before and after the workout. It was a 10-year-old aged extract that when you opened the jar, it smelled raw and rotten. Now, you can get deer antler in capsules, et cetera, mostly from New Zealand. And I've been to these farms where they're raising

• 13:01Speaker 01

  the deer. The antlers are beautiful. They're amazing. Traditional cultures have consumed deer antler velvet around the world, wherever animals were hunted, elk the same, moose the same. They are truly the regenerative parts of an animal, and they are powerful when consumed in supplement form.

• 13:17Josh Axe?

  I love it. There's one more peptide-rich category of foods I want to talk about, and people are somewhat familiar with this category, but still not talked about very often. That's certain types of seaweed. It could be spirulina, it could be chlorella. But these are foods that are incredibly rich in peptides as well. What's really unique about spirulina chlorella, and you know this because I heard you speak on this first, spirulina chlorella really are more microbial in nature. They're kind of in the family of bacteria, right, in terms of their properties, but also they are very rich in peptides. Talk to us about these amazing blue-green algies.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Blue-green algies are truly unique, and they're part of the protist kingdom. They are cyanobacteria. Some people call them phytoplankton. They're single-celled organisms that have everything needed for life. I remember years ago, Josh, before I was even an adult, I read a book on the power of spirulina. It was so popular in health food stores. There used to be these green footsteps that you could walk and follow to get to the display. People called it manna from heaven. Spirulina and chlorella are very rich in proteins, they're rich in peptides, they're also rich in nucleic acids. They literally have RNA, ribonucleic acid that you can eat. They also have chlorophyll. They are amazing. Now,

• 14:36Speaker 01

  with chlorella, you want to buy cracked cell because the cell wall is hard to digest, whereas spirulina is not. And not only is spirulina amazing as a standalone, but there are minerals that have been bound to the peptides in spirulina called peptide-powered minerals that can amplify the effects of magnesium, iodine, chromium, zinc, et cetera. And that technology is awesome. So spirulina is something that's great. It's becoming popular again. You can add it to smoothies, kind of a little fishy tasting. It also has a quote-unquote "plant" version of B12. So you're going to get mild energy from it, but most of the

• 15:19Speaker 01

  benefits in spirulina, I believe, come from the 60-plus percent protein, primarily in peptide form, that signals the body to repair itself.

• 15:29Josh Axe?

  That's pretty incredible. You know, I want to move into a different category. We talked about a lot of these incredible peptide-rich foods. Now, there is another compound that's rich in peptides as well and proteins, and it is something called bee bread. Okay, so I want to talk about the superfoods and compounds found that bees make. And so talk to me a little bit about bee bread.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Bee bread is absolutely amazing. Bee bread is a combination of a few things. There's a little pollen, there's a little propolis, et cetera. And if you can get it, it is so amazing. Josh, I've done a few things over the years that made my wife very frustrated, and in this case, the UPS guy. I used to get honey from North Carolina where the apiary and the beekeeper would not even spin it. He cut it out with a room-temperature knife and shipped honeycomb in glass jars only with bee bread, all the goodies. And I used to think that the kombucha I ordered from California, this was before people were drinking

• 16:29Speaker 01

  kombucha, then I thought that sauerkraut that I ordered was hard for the UPS guy to bring over with this, like, explosion. But the worst was honey. Imagine the UPS guy coming with honeycomb dripping from a jar that broke. But I would eat that every day. Not only was there benefits from the pollen, the propolis, there's a little bit of royal jelly that I would add to it, but the honeycomb itself has peptides. So the Bible says, eat a little honeycomb, and it is good for the bones. It has proline, which we now know is one of the three amino acids that are necessary for collagen. And so we think of honey as a sweetener, but honey actually has amazing properties in its unfiltered, unheated

• 17:14Speaker 01

  form that is absolutely regenerative for your skin and for your body. And they are only discovering more benefits of honey. And what couldn't be amazing in something that can last for 10,000 years? There is honey that we find that is thousands of years old. It destroys bacteria, it destroys yeast, it is a powerhouse. But one thing it can do with its peptides intact is help you become less sensitive to allergies, and you can build strong muscles from consuming the small amount of peptides in honey products.

• 17:49Josh Axe?

  I love it. You know, I think, you know, I was reading up on, you know, years ago on bee bread and also learning it's fermented. You know, it's something that they ferment, which of course unlocks even some more of those nutrients, those peptides, make it more absorbable. This is not something, I mean, I rarely ever see bee bread anywhere. Now, you can go online and order it, but tremendous benefits there. And I also want to say, there are a lot of other compounds that are healing in honey, such as royal jelly, such as, you mentioned propolis already with that. What are some of the benefits of royal jelly and propolis?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Royal jelly is the food of the queen bee. And so it was chosen to specially take a normal bee and make it larger and more powerful. The queen bee lives longer, is more beautiful, if you're into bees. I'm thinking the B movie right now. It's just absolutely awesome. It is known as a rejuvenative, rejuvenative food in traditional Chinese medicine. And propolis is highly anti-infective. So it is great for your throat. It's an amazing throat spray. It is very sort of tannic. It's resinous. It dries things out. So if you've got excess

• 19:01Speaker 01

  phlegm or mucus, it's drying, soothing, and it prevents the beehive from getting ruined from rain and from all kinds of sort of outside influences. So propolis can help you become resilient in your immune system, but it is amazing for infections.

• 19:20Josh Axe?

  You know, one of the things I was reading about honey in general is that one of the reasons why it's lasts thousands of years, one, it's, of course, it's so incredibly rich in phytonutrients and peptides and a number of just things. But also, it has an ability to create the perfect moisture levels.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:37Josh Axe?

  And so if you put it on your skin and your body, one of the reasons why, you know, I'm thinking about this, so when Arwin was really little, she ended up getting cradle cap on her head. And we had tried several things. We tried aloe, we tried silver, we tried a number of things. None of them really seemed to move the needle. We went and put honey on her head, and in four days, went 100% completely gone. It was really, really incredible. And part of the thing there is, is when you have eczema or psoriasis and any of those issues, sometimes it's too damp, sometimes it's too dry. It tends to be too damp typically. So honey helps create that perfect moisture level, also has these natural antibiotic properties, especially manuka honey, which is why it's a great sort of face mask for acne, a lot of benefits there. And propolis, the other thing that's amazing about honey

• 20:19Josh Axe?

  and propolis, is that they're also gentle. Like, we have at home a propolis product we use with our daughters. And as long as your child is one years old or older, they can start using propolis at one years old. So it's an immune modulator, an immune booster. It's gentle enough for kids, but really also still incredibly powerful. So I love, I love these honey products. And of course, again, you know, But you know, one of the problems is a lot of these, you know, there's a study out of Texas A&M that found that 76% of honey products are fake honey. They've been stripped of all of their pollen, they've been stripped of all of their nutrients, and it's basically just, you know, sticky sugar, right?

• 21:02Josh Axe?

  And so when you're buying honey, do it the way Jordan talked about, go to your local farmer's market, go buy manuka honey online, or just get a good local honey. That's where you're going to get the greatest benefits of these amazing, you know, longevity foods.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And if you have honey that's crystallized, which usually means it's unheated, and has some of the yucky brown stuff on top, which really is bee bread, take a scoop of it, I just like to put it in my mouth and let it dissolve. It is absolutely awesome. For a throat fix, you can add some propolis and maybe a drop of lemon oil. It's like a lozenge without it, and I'm a big fat guy, that didn't sound right, but I love fat. Sometimes I will take raw butter and honey and just like let it dissolve in my mouth. It is absolutely awesome.

• 21:45Josh Axe?

  That's so powerful. Well, I want to talk about another incredible super food that maybe some people have heard of a few times, but maybe never, and that is Natto. Talk to us about Natto and what makes it such an incredible healing food.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Josh, this is the superfood that nobody's ever heard of that would transform the cardiovascular health of this nation, transform our bone health. I don't even know where to start because it's so amazing, but think about this. Natto, which is traditionally made from either fermented soy or fermented garbanzo beans, you can use other legumes as well, is a condiment in Asia and Indonesia. They consume it regularly, and it has three of the most powerful nutrients or compounds known to man. Number one, Natto kinase. If you're somebody who has microvascular issues, or, and this is huge, if you have received the COVID shot, experienced COVID,

• 22:39Speaker 01

  or long COVID, Natto kinase is absolutely amazing. It breaks down scar tissue in the body called fibrinogen, and can actually lower the risk of cardiovascular disease by a massive amount. Natto kinase is produced in Natto, and I can't think of a better cardiovascular booster than Natto kinase from eating Natto. Number two, vitamin K2 MK7. So this MK7 also is great for the heart. It helps put calcium in your bones and where it belongs, like your teeth, instead of your arteries. So that's a one-two punch for cardiovascular health.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  And number three, Natto is made with the fermentation of Bacillus subtilis, which is my favorite probiotic. We call it a soil-based organism. I formulated with it since 1998. I started using it in 96. It helped me overcome Crohn's colitis, and I still use it and consume it today. I love it. That makes Natto, Natto. And if that wasn't enough, there's a compound called genocine that is part of Natto, whether it's soy or whether it is garbanzo beans, that helps your bones, helps your hormones. It is an amazing women's health booster, and I read an article on it this morning,

• 24:01Speaker 01

  that it outperforms certain hormone replacement therapy in head-to-head studies. We know that everybody in America, if not the world, either had COVID, received the shot, or was with somebody who experienced COVID or had the shot, and they have some kind of a viral shedding and spike protein. We can't say it when promoting a product, but if we're not promoting a product, I will tell everybody that this is something I would recommend using for three to six months for everyone on the planet. My mom's staying with me for a few days, and she has circulation issues. I lost both my grandfathers to heart attacks, one at 55, one at 62.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  So I'm now taking these Natto ingredients as well as giving them to my mom. And you can find Natto in an Asian market. You can find it in really any ethnic market, frozen or fresh. You just need to consume a little bit every day. You can consume it with rice as it was traditionally done. It's a little stinky, which is why people don't consume it. But I would have to say Natto is a top five superfood, and Natto is loaded with peptides. The soy or garbanzo bean, when it's fermented by Bacillus subtilis, breaks down into powerful peptides that could suppress appetite, boost your gut, and more. I can't think of a better superfood, and we were talking off the air, Josh.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  I bet one-tenth of 1% of Americans have heard of Natto, much less consume it.

• 25:29Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, the other thing is I'm thinking in my head about some of the benefits when you combine these together. I mean, if you're combining Natto along with royal jelly together for women with menopause, I mean, it is one of the most powerful, you know, combinations on the entire planet. You know, I actually have my mom on this as well. My mom, when she was, you know, some people are still getting different strains of COVID, and it's still causing some of these issues. And so my mom was kind of slow to recovery this time around, and she started taking this, you know, this, you know, Natto along with some other supplements, and helped her start to experience a breakthrough. Really, that and astragalus were the two she started doing, and propolis, and seeing a big breakthrough with. But yeah, to your point, you know, one of the issues with COVID is causing this blood coagulation,

• 26:11Josh Axe?

  and we need spike protein issues, and of course, Natto kinase sort of acts like this proteolytic enzyme in a way of helping break that down, get the blood moving, that sticky blood moving and flowing again, maybe better than anything else out there.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, very exciting. That fibrinogen is causing the clots, or it's part of the clots, and when you break that down, things can be smooth, and it's a great brain booster. Vitamin K2 is amazing for the brain, and so is Natto kinase. I think, Josh, in general, Natto kinase is going to be huge on the rise as a supplemental ingredient. Because in a post-COVID nation and world, we need things that help us thin out our blood, but in a way that's not like a blood thinner, so to speak, in a healthy way, but also boosting microcirculation, supporting the gut. I call it, I got to remember this, like a cardio-osteo-immuno-metabolic gut stack.

• 27:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah, it's so good. You know, I want to talk about the next food here, and this is a food that actually, I would say, I believe you said this, is that when you were dealing with Crohn's and colitis, it was the number one food you consumed on a daily basis, healing yourself, and it's kefir.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  It is, and I remember, Josh, probably when I was a teenager, because my dad is a chiropractor and a naturopath, he had kombucha under the sink, and he had something that they called, what is it, like the Himalayan mushroom or something? And it was really kefir grains, and we would make different milks out of it. And man, combining kombucha and kefir warm in the kitchen was some kind of odor. But kefir is absolutely amazing. Kefir is very similar to the beverage that Dr. Eli Mechnikoff found when he saw the longest-lived cultures in the Caucasus region, the Georgian Republic and surrounding regions. He saw 85 to 90-year-olds spry and healthy, very different

• 28:03Speaker 01

  from the civilized cultures he was observing even over 100 years ago. And he wrote a book called The Prolongation of Life, and he said that the dairy beverage that these Caucasians were drinking that was fermented was the leading cause of their longevity. Some people thought it was the probiotics, which helped somewhat, but I know, and science shows us now, it was the combination of peptides and nutrients. Kefir has more peptides than yogurt because of the unique fermentation with bacteria and yeasts. And if you get a full-fat, preferably raw kefir, because you can make it yourself,

• 28:43Speaker 01

  it is truly amazing. It can help people that are underweight, that are weak, that are sick, and especially if you make it raw. People have consumed kefir exclusively for 40 days, and even in convalescence, like where they didn't move at all, they would gain muscle and inches on their thighs if they were emaciated. It is literally a bodybuilding food for men and women if you don't exercise. And it's also a rich source of highly digestible calcium, phosphorus, B12, and so much more. It has dozens of strains of probiotics. They have it flavored at health food store groceries, which are fine,

• 29:25Speaker 01

  but look for an A2 version if you can find it, or better yet, order some kefir grains online. It's easier to take care of than a sourdough starter, and make it yourself with raw or organic A2 milk.

• 29:39Josh Axe?

  I'll tell you, so we're working on our homestead, you know, we're building here in Nashville area, and so Chelsea's incredibly excited for us to, you know, get our own cows and have those on a daily basis, because right now she's doing sourdough. She's got that starter going. Looking forward to getting the kefir starter going as well. Here's one I've actually never talked about on the, well, talked about maybe once on the show before. Mastic gum.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Mastic gum is very interesting because it helps with something that so many people deal with, which is heartburn, GERD, and more in particular, H. pylori. So Helicobacter pylori is a leading cause of ulcers and upper GI distress, but it also causes more than that. Mastic gum is such a great remedy for this. Now, we talked earlier about propolis being resinous and tannic. Resins of trees are amazing. So think about frankincense, think about myrrh. We often avoid these or ignore these, and most Americans have never even tried it. But mastic gum was chewed back in the old days for people to help their digestion.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Now, interestingly enough, typical gum that you chew, even with sugar alcohols versus sugar artificial sweeteners, actually robs you of your digestive juices. Mastic gum does the opposite. By consuming it in supplement form or chewing it if you can find it, it can destroy H. pylori, help with ulcers, help with GERD, and so much more. And it really is a hidden gem in herbalism, and you know, Josh, I've been doing this for over 30 years, and I've seen things become popular, then they fade away, then they become popular. This is one that is just a hidden gem that people don't know about. And when you combine it with something like zinc, it has even more gut healing properties,

• 31:26Speaker 01

  even extending to remedying gut hyperpermeability or leaky gut.

• 31:31Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, I've started to see people using in different products, you know, combining this, you know, mastic gum with things like zinc carnicine and other compounds, glutamine, for, you know, kind of full-on gut healing, which is really powerful. There's another one, glutamine. You know, there's so many things that, you know, there are so many peptides people don't realize are peptides. Glutathion's a peptide, creatine's a peptide, right? And so to be, you know, these, I mean, these super, these foods. In almost every superfood we're talking about today, these are also incredibly high in peptides. Now, there's another one I want to talk about, and I know you and I, by the way, this episode is making me so reminiscent of when you and I started doing a lot of videos and content together. I mean, you know, so many years ago.

• 32:13Josh Axe?

  And one I remember was talking about very early on, which it kind of, it's funny, it kind of goes in waves. It's like, it's, people talk about it and then they don't, you don't hear about it for a long time. Black seed or black cumin. Talk to us about this.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  First of all, cumin is amazing. In the Bible, Jesus was blasting the Pharisees for all the outward things they do, but forsaking loving God and loving people. He said, "You tithe dill, mint, and cumin." If they were tithing dill, mint, and cumin, it must be valuable resources, worth their weight in gold. He didn't say gold and silver and copper. He said dill, mint, and cumin. Cumin, along with many other spices, is so amazing. Black cumin in particular, not only has these incredible benefits that cumin has, which the number one is the respiratory tract.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Cumin is clinically studied to support respiratory health, improve breathing, even endurance, et cetera. It's also a great antimicrobial, as all spices are, but black cumin also has powerful antioxidants, such as anthocyanins, which you'll find in blueberries and grapes, et cetera. So it is absolutely a superstar. You'll see people say that black seed raises the dead. I don't quite know that, but it contains powerful compounds in its oil form. What I love, if I can get it, is finding black cumin when the oil's already been extracted and having the pressed pomeas or cakes and consuming it. It is absolutely amazing.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Cumin is something that we might use in chili occasionally, but that's a spice that people have sitting in their cabinet for like 10 years when it should be used. Find recipes. Lamb goes great with cumin. Cumin or black cumin, use it in your food. Like the other spices we love, it can be a huge benefit. But really, think about endurance and respiratory health for the long term. Not necessarily if you're fighting a cold or a flu, but you just need to build that endurance. COPD is a great condition that so many people have that natural remedies don't seem to be a fit for, but black seed or black cumin would be excellent for them.

• 34:29Josh Axe?

  Yeah, when I've looked at the studies, I mean, the biggest thing is maybe one of the greatest inflammation reducers of the respiratory tract and body. It really is so powerful. And, you know, and of course, it's also one of the main ingredients in certain, in Middle Eastern hummus recipes. And so, you know, that's, of course, you know, I'm sure Jesus had some hummus in his day. I mean, that was part of the, you know, sort of Israeli diet for a very long period of time. But black seed is sort of a, the relative of cumin. You have cumin and then you have this black cumin that is even more potent, but it's great to get both in your diet on a regular basis.

• 35:05Josh Axe?

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• 35:52Josh Axe?

  All right, Jordan, now I want to turn to ancient longevity superfoods, okay? And one of the first here I want to ask you about is a berry that has been prized and talked about in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. In fact, it's part of a berry, a blend of three berries that's used as medicine in Ayurvedic medicine, and that's amla berry.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Amla berry, amylaki, emblica, Indian gooseberry, there's all kinds of names. It is truly amazing. It is loaded with polyphenols and elagic acid. And I could almost do a mic drop because when it comes to cellular health, there's hardly a combo that is better than elagic acid combined with other polyphenols. When you consume emblica, amylaki, or amla berry, it is very astringent because it is loaded with tannins. And these tannins are hydrolyzable tannins, which help things move through the body and add moistening to the digestive tract, which is why emblica or amla is one of three fruits

• 36:56Speaker 01

  in the trifala or trifala remedy that is known as the number one colon conditioner detoxifier and now prebiotic in all of Ayurveda. Another thing that it does, it helps the nutrients you consume from food work better because it opens up your cleansing channel through the bowel. It doesn't work like a harsh laxative. It works like a bowel conditioner and it can be consumed regularly, even every day, which I consume it every day just as an overall booster for health. But it is absolutely awesome. And again, I would say 99% of people have not heard of amla berry

• 37:39Speaker 01

  or Indian gooseberry, but in India, everybody consumes it at one part of their life or another. If they're constipated, if they have loose bowels, if they have a sluggish liver, all of that is helped and improved through consuming amla berry or the trifala or trifala combo.

• 38:00Josh Axe?

  Well, and one of the nutrients you didn't mention there with it too, that makes it so powerful, is one of the most vitamin C-rich superfoods in the world. I mean, again, think about elagic acid with vitamin C, with these antioxidants, with these polyphenols. I mean, these are some of the things, when you're talking about beauty, when you're talking about longevity, when you're talking about cellular health, I mean, incredibly powerful. And I, trifala, I remember you and I doing some research in the past and studying this and also looking at it in animal studies for longevity, being incredibly beneficial. Of course, you mentioned gut health, constipation. I know these are things that you reference, but again, there's so much good research on amla and trifala. And, you know, I think a lot of times if people are having digestive issues, they're turning to like psyllium husk.

• 38:40Josh Axe?

  But really, the, you know, trifala has so many more benefits even beyond just what we think of with, you know, creating healthy bowel movement.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And the longevity study you mentioned, which I am shocked has not made worldwide news many times over, combining trifala with a probiotic helped increase longevity in fruit flies by nearly 67%. And you might think, well, who cares about fruit flies? Fruit flies are one of three animals or insects where most of the longevity research is done in laboratory setting before it's consumed in humans. There's something about the drifila fruit fly that has similar attributes. So when we're talking about calorie deprivation, a keto diet, et cetera, they test it in fruit flies. So consuming a probiotic, which we do every day, along with trifala and amla is the main ingredient,

• 39:34Speaker 01

  game changer for longevity.

• 39:36Josh Axe?

  I love it. Another thing, you know, you actually talked about this not too long ago, is sea buckthorn.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Sea buckthorn is one of my new favorite fruits. Not only is it a hallmark in permaculture and regenerative agriculture, also known as sea berry, it is amazing as a source of omega fatty acids, including omega-7 and omega-9, which is monounsaturated. But the newest research on sea buckthorn, which I'm so excited about, is that it stimulates stem cell production by over 100% in a matter of hours. And if that weren't enough, it increases nitric oxide, boosts SOD, glutathione, and catalyze. So it's a peptide and stem cell stimulator de jour.

• 40:21Josh Axe?

  So Jordan, I just had a stem cell expert on the show here, and he was telling me, he was on a trip, I think it was somewhere in Asia, and he asked them, hey, what is the most, you know, the greatest longevity food out there in supplement? And he was expecting to hear ginseng, danquai, you know, fo t. And this whole group of people said, no, it's sea buckthorn.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Sea buckthorn is awesome. You can get it frozen again in Asian markets. It actually is a berry that contains a lot of fat in it. And we grow it on our farms in very small amounts. I wish I could grow it everywhere. But it is really amazing. The oil is wonderful. But the fruit itself, if you can find it or find it in supplements, will help you boost your general stem cell production, nitric oxide circulation. And it contains proanthocyanidins that I believe are more powerful than grape seed and pine bark, pyknoginol. So it is really going to be, I think, experiencing its heyday very soon.

• 41:20Josh Axe?

  That's amazing. I want to talk about indigenous berries and how maybe those are unique to... And also, I'd love for you to talk about how even eating the things that are local to where you live can positively impact our health, our longevity. And again, and I know there's one you're going to mention here that everyone's gonna be like, "What? I've never heard of that before." But of course, it's everywhere in the United States.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is so awesome when you can understand that the plants we consider, maybe even ornamental, are absolutely powerful for us. I call them America's forgotten superfoods. And as I began studying seven years ago, the benefits of fruit tree leaves and edible fruits, it totally opened my mind. Now, if you live in a development, you're mostly spraying these particular plants, which is going to cause all kinds of health issues. But we look at longevity foods. Mulberry is so high at the top. So Josh, I didn't tell you this, but recently I found a farm in California and I ordered Pakistani mulberries,

• 42:24Speaker 01

  frozen, that variety. And I've been making mulberry, blueberry smoothies for the last two weeks. Not only are they rich in anthocyanins, but they contain loads of pectin. I'm making smoothies a little early and I'm having to spoon them because the combination of blueberry and mulberry is so rich in pectin. Mulberries are something people have heard about. They've heard about the songs and the nursery rhymes.

• 42:49Josh Axe?

  Yeah, and then the pectin, that's gonna make it gelatinous.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 42:52Josh Axe?

  And so, you know, growing up in Ohio, we would have, my grandparents had this amazing lake I would go to in the summers and swim at, and they owned 50 acres. But mulberries grew everywhere. So we would harvest them and make pie, mulberry pie, you know, every summer.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  So good. And then the leaves, I just saw a study yesterday, a group reached out to me. There is an herbal drug that extracted certain compounds from mulberry leaf, and they're using it for diabetes. And I myself have seen multiple people consume mulberry leaf as a tea and have a major lowering of blood sugar and even healthy metabolic rate and weight loss. Mulberries were consumed by the Hunzas. And the Hunzas are known as the longest-lived people on the planet. So they used to make these Hunza trail mixes with certain dates and mulberries. The reason you don't see mulberries in a store is because they are more perishable and have not been hybridized as much as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries,

• 43:52Speaker 01

  which we see all the time. If you go again to an Asian market, you can find frozen or fresh mulberries very infrequently. It's kind of like fresh figs. It's something you need to buy all that you can when you find it. I absolutely love mulberries, but I'm gonna throw a couple other berries out there that people haven't heard of. There's a plant species called Viburnum. It's actually a genus. And they have different members. One is high bush cranberry. So these are cranberries that would grow in our area, right here in Tennessee. And we planted many of them. They are delicious and they're amazing. And then there's another that's known as rusty blackhaw, or by multiple names.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  But you'll know it, Josh, for its bark that is prized called cramp bark. So cramp bark is great for people that have heavy menstruation, PMS, or hormone imbalances. The berries of the cramp bark are rusty blackhaw or blackhaw. They're a Viburnum species. They are delicious. They're beautiful. They're rich in tannins, and they grow everywhere. I was in my neighborhood, and now that I am completely obsessed with trees, I take pictures of different trees, plug it into AI to see what it identifies as. We have ornamental mulberries, ornamental pawpaws, ornamental persimmons.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  There's like a food forest in our neighborhood. Now, the trees are likely sprayed and not to be consumed. People don't realize that there's medicine all around them. Even something like American beauty berry, which is this beautiful purple color, small berries, they are absolutely amazing. We've talked about this before, a little more popular, aronia berry, or choke berry. It's called choke berry because when you eat it, it'll make you choke at the end. But aronia berry is believed to be richer in antioxidants than maki berry, acai berry, and far greater than blueberries and others, again, because it hasn't been tampered with or hybridized. It is absolutely awesome. And here's the last one. No one's gonna recognize this unless you're in the Middle East.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  This is sumac berries. So sumac, we think of poisoned sumac. But sumac, smooth or staghorn, those berries are used in a Middle Eastern spice that is rich in elagic acid again, is rich in anthocyanins and vitamin C. They use it to make what they call poor man's lemonade. And we grow this on our farms as well. And when I drive throughout middle Tennessee, it is everywhere. Sumac is amazing for coughs, colds, flus, upper respiratory health, and more. And literally, it is growing in ditches and in alleys on the side of the road. You'll see these sort of beautiful purple cones that would be like a staghorn sumac.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Now, if you're wondering, "Well, Jordan, how do I know if it's poisonous?" Poisoned sumac is white and kind of yucky looking. Sumac that we can consume as a spice, or as a condiment, or as a fruit, or as a lemonade substitute is brightly colored, shades between red and purple, and it blooms usually around the fall.

• 47:01Josh Axe?

  Now, let's move away from the berries. By the way, I will say, you know, a lot of the berries we talked about. Now, mulberry, I would not include in that category. A lot of these berries, they are very sour and astringent. So you mentioned choke berry. It makes me think of, so sometimes if I want to kind of support my digestion, I'll do trifala. But I do it as a straight powder. And I almost choke on it every time because it is so sour and astringent. It's one of those berries, along with some of the others you talked about. But you know, these are great things. Again, you can get them in powder form, supplement form. You can get the real thing. Of course, mulberries, you know, great, you know, you can actually, Chelsea and I did this recently. We went and we bought some plants. We also got some from the farm. And you know, we're planting berry plants all over the place. And I know even growing up,

• 47:43Josh Axe?

  my dad had blackberry bushes and raspberry bushes. And every summer, we would, you know, we would eat those. And they were fantastic. So a great thing to do at home. So now, this isn't a berry, but this is a food that's consumed in one of the longest-living cultures in the world, and it's purple sweet potatoes.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Purple is a color of health. There are cultures that consume their base carbohydrate staples. And instead of just getting energy, nutrients, they're getting powerful antioxidants called anthocyanins. I love purple sweet potatoes, especially the ones that don't just have purple on the outside. They're delicious. And it just makes me happy to look at them. Put a little butter on that purple sweet potato. It doesn't taste as sweet as a yam or an orange sweet potato, but it is powerful. Purple corn is similar. So if you look at cultures around the world, they will eat brightly colored foods because it doesn't simply feed and nourish them. It is anti-inflammatory.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  It's great for the heart. And anthocyanins are great for the eyes. That's why bilberry is so good for the eyes, or one of those reasons. Bilberry is a blueberry cousin. Purple sweet potatoes are amazing. If you're gonna consume sweet potatoes, might as well consume purple. And you can get them at most health grocery stores today, year round. They are awesome.

• 49:07Josh Axe?

  I have a very exciting announcement. We just found out that Heal Yourself is officially a New York Times bestseller. And that's entirely because of you. I just want to say thank you for showing up. Thank you for sharing this work. And thank you for believing in the power of cellular health. If you haven't grabbed your copy yet, you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite book retailer. Also, if you've already ordered but haven't claimed your bonuses yet, make sure to go to healyourselves.com and enter your email and your order number, and we'll send you hundreds of dollars in free content. Again, that's healyourselves.com. By the way, that free content includes a peptide guide, natural healing recipes,

• 49:48Josh Axe?

  a masterclass, and loads of other free content. I'm so excited for you to read this content. I hope it's gonna change your life.

• 49:57Josh Axe?

  You know, I think about some of these foods we've talked about, looking at the longest living country, one of the top two longest living countries, or heirs of the country, Japan, and specifically looking at Okinawa, and they're doing a lot of Natto, they're doing a lot of purple sweet potato, they're doing a lot of seaweed. I mean, these are just staples in their diet, supporting longevity. Now, I want to move into a fully different category here and close out with this, is looking at foods that have what I would call go beyond fats, that really help regenerate and heal the cell membrane of our cells. And so what I want to talk about is something that I think I probably had at your house for the first time, and that is duck eggs.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Duck eggs are awesome. I'm an egg fanatic, I will say, and not only do we produce the world's healthiest eggs, not for everyone's consumption, unfortunately, just ours, but I studied all the different species of eggs. Chicken eggs are great. Now, our chickens eat 100 different foods every day because we pick up food scraps from Sprouts Farmer's Market, and Urban Market, and other local stores, so they're the healthiest eggs in the world. But as you look into other cultures, they consume quail eggs. They're super tiny, and they're hard to crack. You almost have to get a device to do it. They are less allergenic and more nutritious. Goose eggs are amazing. Turkey eggs are one of my favorites, but by

• 51:18Speaker 01

  far, the most sustainable egg that is produced by an animal that's great for the environment, that could replace chickens if we were willing, are duck eggs. So, we raise ducks, and ducks perform duties on our farm. They are natural pesticides. Our ducks can consume all of the pests in a four-square-foot radius. I'm talking about ticks, I'm talking about, you name it, aphids. They'll literally eat aphids right off of our plants. We have them in our orchards to provide pest control, and the gift they give us is the most nutritious,

• 51:58Speaker 01

  commonly consumed egg in the world, called a duck egg. The cholesterol level is almost triple. Now, people might be saying, "Oh, my gosh, that's terrible." I disagree. If you want to know what the best brain food is on the planet, it's an egg yolk. Josh, there was a study recently that showed people who consume one egg a week have a 47% less likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease. 47%! Now, we know infrared sauna helps with age-related neurodegeneration, so eat eggs, go in the sauna, you're going to be around for a long time in body and mind. Duck eggs have more protein, they have more vitamins, more minerals, more antioxidants, like lutein, cryptoxanthin, zeaxanthin, and you can see

• 52:43Speaker 01

  when you crack a duck egg, there's much more yolk than there is white. Duck eggs are prized in Asia. In fact, I've consumed what you call century eggs. They are duck eggs that Asians will bury and consume 10, 20, or 30 years later. They are black, which is a little frightening, but they believe in these eggs so much, they consider that a sacred food. They consume it with Natto, which again, would be like the most disgusting, amazing combo ever. I have consumed six, 12, or more duck eggs a day. This was the staple for my son, who played college football, with, I don't want to say skinny jeans, meaning

• 53:24Speaker 01

  like skinny jeans. My wife and I are definitely on the thin side. To build a 265-pound college football player, it took a lot of work. And even skin repair, there was a study, Josh, done, that consuming copious amounts of egg yolks, particularly duck eggs, could help repair burn victims better than testosterone or an anabolic steroid, which is so amazing because, think about it, an egg yolk has everything it takes to build your body. It is the perfect food.

• 53:57Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. I've been thinking about, you know, when you look at the research, I mean, the vitamin E levels are radically higher, the choline is so much higher, and so, those are so crucial for healing. You know, I, by the way, I've got several thoughts here. One is this, when you had talked about this sort of combination of the black duck egg with Natto, my daughters love the TV show Bluey, and so they make this concoction for like the date night for the, you know, for the parents, and it's like a concoction of like the grossest stuff in the refrigerator leftovers, that's like unedible, and I'm thinking about, you know, if we would make the worst plate of what we talked about, where you've got, you know, you've got the black egg, you've got the, you've got the Natto, you know,

• 54:39Josh Axe?

  dust it off with some, you know, amla berry, and then maybe some, I don't know, but it would be...

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Little pancakes on the side.

• 54:47Josh Axe?

  There you go, pancakes on the side. So, but, these foods are so incredibly healing. In the next category, it's an egg that I want to talk about, but it might be the most nutrient-dense of all of the eggs, and that is caviar and fish roe.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  It might be the most nutrient-dense food on the planet. If eggs are good for the brain, fish eggs are uber-good for the brain, and my favorite is salmon roe. They're a little larger, and you can get this, again, in an Asian market. It seems like those Asian markets know what's happening.

• 55:18Josh Axe?

  But I've seen the Whole Foods market.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yes, online as well. You don't need to get caviar from the beluga fish that is so expensive, but salmon roe or fish eggs not only has EPA and DHA, it has ETA, which is a powerful, lesser-known omega-3 fatty acid. It's got phospholipid-bound protein. So, we talked about egg yolks and choline. This has an entire protein source and fat source combined, and these phospholipids work directly on the brain. Fish roe or fish eggs is also one of the richest sources of vitamin D in your diet, and it blows away any omega-3 supplement, it blows away any protein powder. Honestly, I'm surprised that

• 56:00Speaker 01

  people don't consume more of that, and the salty taste actually is a hydration pack all in one. So, think about it, it's like a protein powder omega-3 hydration formula all in one. It's an acquired taste. But again, we keep pointing back to these ancient cultures, particularly in Asia, that prized these foods. Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world. He was an acclaimed dentist. He quit his practice and visited the 14 healthiest cultures on the planet in the 1940s, and he found that those who lived near rivers and streams, and waterways, ocean, were among the healthiest people on the planet, and when young people

• 56:43Speaker 01

  were getting close to conception age, they would always consume things like fish roe. And look at the infertility crisis we're facing. Every food we talked about today, Josh, can boost fertility, from sea bucklorn, to spirulina, to Natto, to organs, and definitely fish roe and duck eggs. These are the superfoods that are not as popular today. They're not found in every store, but we've formulated with them, we order them, we've searched for them, and it gives a variety of nutrients and compounds in our diet that no one else has. I've talked to people like you do every day that are suffering from serious diseases.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Terminal cancer is, I can't even count how many people contact me about that on a daily basis. And when I say to them, "You're not going to be a statistic. You're not going to be the same as everybody else who was given this death sentence." Why? Because you're going to eat different foods, you're going to think different thoughts, and you're going to move differently. The foods that we talked about today, if you will incorporate just some of them into your diet, black human, you will become more resilient, and you will not fall prey to the statistics that everyone who's 80 years old is on 12 medicines in the US, or people can't walk, or you have to go to assisted living, or you forget things. You can be an overcomer by how you fuel your body.

• 58:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah, absolutely agree. And one of the other things that's so incredible about caviar and fish roe, and salmon, in particular, salmon roe, is it has these high levels of, you know, phospholipids, you know, like phosphatidylcholine. I mean, talk about amazing for repairing the cell membrane and supporting the exchange of nutrients in and out of the cell, and also great for conditions like... MS and any sort of neurological condition incredibly powerful and reparative. And so it's one of nature's greatest healing foods and I totally agree. I think thinking about what is your health struggle or what is your goal? Adding in some of these superfoods into your diet has tremendous benefits. And if you don't like the taste, the great thing is you can get them typically packaged in a way where you hardly taste them or don't taste them at all here in most cases now.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't want to belabor the point on fish eggs, but salmon roe also contains astaxanthin, which very few foods do. And that's why I always say if someone's going to eat a protein, sockeye salmon's hard to beat because not only does it have great sources of protein, omega threes, but also astaxanthin, which is one of the only antioxidants that can cross the blood brain barrier and quench singlet oxygen radicals. All the berries we talked about are amazing. Greens are amazing, black cumin's amazing, but astaxanthin stands alone and it's found in salmon, particularly wild sockeye salmon and salmon roe.

• 59:26Josh Axe?

  Now, there's two last foods I want to hit on here. And by the way, the last one that we're going to hit on is maybe the single most powerful, or at least up there for fighting cancer and balancing hormones specifically in women, men as well, incredibly powerful. But the next one I want to hit on before that is sheep milk. Why sheep milk over maybe, you know, cow's milk? And I know you're probably going to try and bring buffalo, water buffalo milk into the mix, but why is this type of milk from things like sheep and buffalo superior to most cow milk today?

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Well, just this morning, Josh, you know, even though I love water buffalo milk, I made sheep milk smoothies for the family, including my mom who's visiting. And I'm so excited to do that because sheep tend to produce less milk and concentrate the nutrients. There is twice the amount of whey protein or lact albumin in sheep milk.

• 1:00:13Josh Axe?

  Really?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Four times the amount of vitamin D. If you consume it as a yogurt or a kefir, you need no thickeners because it has so many solids, you're getting more bang for your buck. My mom was like, can you water down my smoothie a little bit? It's too rich. I'm like, come on, mom, it's nutritious. Sheep milk is absolutely amazing. It tastes delicious. And here's the thing, you don't have to own and raise sheep like we do. I found a great sheep milk yogurt at Costco that has one ingredient, sheep milk.

• 1:00:44Josh Axe?

  Wow.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Cultured with probiotics. So sheep milk is a treasure. You can usually find it parts of the year because sheep don't produce milk year round. Goat milk's good, sheep milk's better. It also, you'll love this, has five to 10 times more medium chain triglycerides as other dairies do, and it tastes great. I don't know if I told you, but my favorite ice cream in the world is a sheep milk ice cream. And for one of my kids' birthdays, I had it flown in from the only place they make it, which is in California. And if you travel to Europe, Brevi is the name of sheep milks. You can get sheep milk yogurt, sheep milk that's raw and anywhere.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Costco, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Publix, Kroger, you can find sheep milk cheese called Manchego or other cheeses. Try for raw, but even pasteurized sheep milk is very good for you. It's a superfood. And if you want a food bar, take two ounces of sheep milk cheese and you're going to get 18 grams of protein, great fats and more calcium than you probably get in a day.

• 1:01:51Josh Axe?

  Wow, amazing. All right, last superfood here. Sprouts and micro greens. So we've heard of things like broccoli. What about broccoli sprouts? What makes those so powerful?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Broccoli sprouts are amazing, as are onion sprouts, as are lettuce sprouts. I love sprouts. When you take a plant that can form into a mature seed, but you consume it at the sprouting stage, it's like potential health benefits consumed. Now broccoli's good. Broccoli sprouts have been shown repeatedly in major research studies, including at Johns Hopkins University, to be anti-cancer because of compounds that are typically sulfur based. One is known as glucoraphanin. And there's one other called myrosinene that you'll also find in mustard seeds, et cetera.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Consuming sprouts that, by the way, you can grow yourself in your kitchen. At our farms, we have these amazing sprouters because we'll feed sprouts to our animals sometimes when it is in the winter, but it is absolutely wonderful. If you are somebody who wants to prevent cancer, aid in detoxification, or if you're a female who wants to balance your hormones, or a male that wants to lower those toxic estrogens, zenoestrogens and xenobiotics caused by plastics, consume broccoli or kale or cabbage sprouts. In fact, I would rather consume the sprouts than the mature vegetal. Some people find those hard to digest, but broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kale

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  sprouts are much easier to digest. They're delicious. You can add them to salads. You can juice them, puree them. They really, they're like the eggs of the plant kingdom.

• 1:03:38Josh Axe?

  Yeah, one of the main compounds that you, that was sort of partnered with the other compounds you talked about is sulforaphane. And this compound, to your point, great in cancer studies, helps get rid of excess estrogen, especially if you have a male or a woman who has hormone imbalance. And, you know, for men, we know that excess estrogen causes their testosterone to drop. For women, it increases the risk of estrogen and ovarian based breast cancers. Doing that on a daily basis is incredible at clearing that out, balancing hormones. And, you know, there's so many misconceptions about hormones that you mentioned the importance of cholesterol. I mean, that's what you make your hormones out of. You know, if you want testosterone and progesterone and progesterone, your body makes a lot of those from cholesterol.

• 1:04:21Josh Axe?

  You have to have that in order to heal. And these superfoods give the body nutrients, it gives them peptides, it brings in these incredibly important fat soluble compounds that help the body heal at the cellular level, at the organ level. And these are a lot of the foods that our ancestors might have eaten or certain cultures locally, you know, all had, as we talked about, their kind of local superfoods to their area. But a lot of these are sort of missed on us and we're not, we're not getting these anymore today.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And here's a hot take. If you want to find someone who's a high achiever, who's got brain power and drive, find someone with high cholesterol, particularly HDL, but even total cholesterol. And if you want to find someone that's unmotivated, that has low libido and low brain power, find someone who avoids egg yolks, avoids saturated fat and is on a statin drug to lower their cholesterol below 100. You show me someone who has a cholesterol level of 96, who's getting straight A's from their doctor, I'll show you someone who you don't want to be around. Cholesterol is the super molecule for your brain, for your hormones and for your body.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  And that's why consuming fish roe, duck eggs and organ meats is the way to live a long and vibrant life.

• 1:05:42Josh Axe?

  Well, Jordan, one of the things you and I have both been passionate about is finding the world's most healing foods for various conditions. So, you know, what are those foods most healing for hormones? What are those foods most healing for gut issues in the immune system? And so this was fun today to cover some of these healing foods that maybe are unheard of, that could be the secret for somebody who's listening, unlocking healing in their body. And I want to just say, thanks, everybody for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Yak Show. I want to say thank you to Jordan Rubin. I want to encourage you, go out and check out Jordan's incredible work. He is the co-author with myself of The Biblio Diet, New York Times bestselling book. If you want to learn how to eat based on the Bible, you could check that out on amazon.com and bookstores nationwide. Jordan has an incredible social media page.

• 1:06:26Josh Axe?

  If you follow him on Instagram, just go search at Jordan Rubin. Is that right?

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Jordan S. Rubin.

• 1:06:32Josh Axe?

  Jordan S. Rubin. And Jordan also now has a podcast. I want to encourage you to go and check out the Jordan Rubin podcast as well, all over Apple, Spotify, wherever you can find podcasts as well. I want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here. Do me a big favor, subscribe. It's the number one thing you could do to support the show. Also think about, who is somebody that would enjoy this? Do you have a friend who's into superfoods and natural healing and advanced nutrition like you are? Well, hey, do us a favor and share this episode with them. It helps us reach more people, helps us heal the planet. And I want to say thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. We'll see you on the next show.