Recap: Improve blood vessel health to slow aging | Dr William Li
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Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're discussing how to improve blood vessel health. About 18 months ago, New York Times bestselling author Dr. William Lee sat down with me to explain some simple steps that we can take to not only slow down the deterioration of our blood vessels, but also to actually reduce any existing blockages that we may or may not yet know about.

Is it destiny that our blood vessels are going to get damaged over time? Or are there ways that we can slow that process down or perhaps even reverse that process? The answer is, and this is what's quite striking, it's possible to take somebody who has existing established blockages in their blood vessels,

who would otherwise be requiring a stent, the plumber, call the plumber, put the equipment in, or requiring drugs like the statins, all right, that if you actually give them an intensive regimen of lifestyle change, starting with their diet,

You cut down or cut out the saturated meats, no red meat, remove that. Okay. And you upend their dietary equation by putting them on high fiber foods, fruits and vegetables with high fiber.

What does that do? Oh, it feeds your gut microbiome. Now your gut bacteria are happier. They restore their community, their ecosystem. Now they're working in your favor. All right. This lifestyle change. Now you can eat foods, more foods, fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes, seeds that actually then renew, regenerate the damaged lining. So, you know, just like our

Skin renews itself and our hair, for most people, renews itself, right? Which is why we need a haircut and the skin sheds, which is why people have dandruff. All right. There's a renewal of the blood vessels. If you eat foods, lots of foods that actually have healthy bioactives, natural chemicals that can stimulate regeneration. So an example would be anthocyanins that are present in dark chocolate or they're present in blueberry.

Blueberries, they will actually help to renew, replace those old damaged liner cells in your blood vessels. Now you're actually regenerating damaged tissue. So what's quite fascinating with intensive lifestyle change, starting with diet, replace unhealthy fats with healthier fats. Omega threes are better than butter and palm oil and lots of other less than healthy fats. Cut down the amount of oil.

omega-3s are a very healthy form of fats you can get them from nuts and seeds you can also get them from seafood which is known to be heart healthy you're actually protecting the liner you're starting to dissolve by replacing regenerating the liner okay you're actually also dissolving some of the plaques that have accumulated so it's sort of like mother nature's toothbrush using the natural substances that are present in your foods and you can replace and reverse heart disease

Diet, by the way, is only part of the equation. There's other things like regular physical activity that's helpful. Why is that? It gets the blood, your juices flowing, literally, gets your blood flowing. That's important for reversing heart disease. Stress, lowering stress and sleep.

This sounds great. It's very much in line, interestingly, with the advice for things that have got nothing to do with blood vessels. It's always interesting how much alignment there is at the maximum level. Are there real clinical trials and studies that support this? Because I think some people will be listening and saying, well, reversing heart damage, that sounds a bit radical. I know that Will's a doctor, but are you way out on a ledge? Is there the data to support what you're saying?

Yeah, well, first of all, I was a skeptic on this for many years. Okay. I'm part of a cadre of life scientists that actually I've been involved with biotech drug development. So for me,

My wheelhouse actually has been to develop the latest new drugs and actually I've been involved with developing stem cell therapies and gene therapies for heart disease. So I'm not a kale waver. Okay. I'm not somebody that sort of stepped away from the fold. For those of you who are on video, you'll see that Will doesn't look like a kale waver either. But if you're just on audio, you know, it's harder to tell. Yeah. So...

So I believe in medicine. I believe in advancing medicine. And I was a skeptic. I'm like, how can lifestyle do it? But I have to say,

From the very beginning, we know that after you have a heart attack, that if you go for what they call cardiac rehabilitation, cardiac rehab, that's what every patient leaving the hospital undergoes to recover from a heart attack. It's a manner of actually diet and lifestyle and reduction. And if you really take it pure clinical studies that have actually compared interventions to lifestyle management, I would cite the work of Dr. Dean Ornish, who

who is a professor at University of California, San Francisco. He's at the Preventative Medical Research Institute. He's actually done a career, probably 40 or 50 years worth of research looking at the reversal of heart disease that does not require the hardware and pharmaceuticals. Again, it's not a silver bullet. It is not a one-step deal. It's a pretty big commitment for somebody who's lived their life to actually suddenly

be, quote, scared straight and that because you've had a heart attack or you've had a big warning sign and now you need to actually change your diet and find new ways to eat that bring you joy and then to learn how to lower stress. I mean, how many of us live in a continuous state of stress, especially if you're building a career?

I'm running a startup doing this podcast, have children, I'm 100% in a permanent state of stress, Will. And I can tell you, training in medicine, I mean, just being a doctor going through the training is high stress all the time. That's not good for us. And so one of the reasons why people that work at a high level of stress, probably like you and me,

That's why we enjoy vacation so much is that when we take a break, our body truly thanks us for it. Our minds also do as well. Our gut bacteria also thanks us for it because we tend to be more active and probably eat slightly healthier things and take it easy on ourselves. And so I think this idea of self-renewal

It's very important for not only preventing disease, but reversing disease. And that's why I'm trying to emphasize it is definitely possible to reverse heart disease. It's not, you know, just pop a pill in your mouth and swallow it, chase it down with a drink of water. It's a commitment to a better lifestyle, a healthier lifestyle.

I don't think you're saying to people that everyone should stop taking their statins who has currently got them from doctors. I think I don't believe you're saying that. Is that right, Will? You're saying that there is ultimately this enormous impact that you can have through your diet and your lifestyle, which, you know, there's real scientific data to support. Am I is that fair? Am I putting words in your mouth?

No, no, you are absolutely correct. And as I said, I'm a big believer in using the best tools. But my own philosophy is that if you put somebody on a medicine, the goal should always be as a doctor to figure out how to get them off the medicine.

And if all you do is to renew the prescription over and over, you just tell the patient, just take it. That's what you need to do. We're not doing enough. And I think what patients and people need to realize is that if you actually have cardiovascular disease, there's a tour of health care that you can do for yourself. It doesn't rely on a doctor. There's no anesthesia required. It doesn't require a pharmaceutical. It requires something that you do at home.

which is caring for your heart health. And that's done with diet, physical activity, sleep and stress management. I think it's brilliant. I really want to talk a bit about aging because we've talked a lot, obviously, about heart health and we're very conscious that might affect your ultimate length of your life. But at first glance, aging doesn't seem very linked to heart health. To me, it doesn't really seem obviously linked to your core research about

blood vessels, but I know we were having a discussion prior to this call and we're talking about aging and dementia. Could you tell us a bit about how your research has taken you here, what the links are with sort of all of the things about our blood vessels?

First of all, people think of aging in a very particular snapshot-y sort of way, right? We think about our grandparents. We think about a picture of an actor that we know who's now at the twilight of their career or their life. And look at all that gray hair. Look at all those wrinkles. That's a snapshot in time. Here's the reality. The moment we are born, the moment the doctor delivered us and gave it that little swat on the butt to allow us to take our first breath,

that's when the aging clock starts. We are aging from the moment we are born. - That's very depressing. - Well, but I would say that's only because our social construct of aging is looking at the terminal components of our life. But if you rethink aging in a different way and say, you know what, aging is completely normal. It starts from the time we were born and we just continuously advance, you know?

Right. So don't think about it as getting better and then getting worse, which I think, after all, my children are all terribly keen to be older. And then that suddenly switches, doesn't it, for different people at different ages? You know, I think, you know, I remember a long time ago, turning 30 seemed like somehow that was a tip. But I know other people who, frankly, didn't get there till they were 50 or 70.

Well, you know, so here's an interesting thing. When I was in medical school, which was in the 90s, we were looking at the average longevity of people to be like in the early 70s, 72. Now people live to 86, 87, 88 routinely, right? And so think about that from a

societal perspective, our whole society, when we live in a country and a nation that has means and resources, everyone actually gets older. By the way, here's another thing for you. 100 years ago, most people only lived to 40 or 50. So we've pretty much doubled our lifespan. I mean, here we are bitching and moaning about not living to 100 or aspiring to live to 120.

I would say step back and take a look at the big picture. A hundred years ago, we didn't live half as long as we live now. That's it for this week's recap. If you're listening to this, you're already on your way to living healthier through better nutrition. And at Zoe, we're doing everything we can to help you on your way. So we've developed Daily 30, a delicious dietary supplement to add to your meals.

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