January 2, 2025 • 59 mins
From chronic illness to unstoppable health—Dr. Jules Cormier shares how shifting to a plant-based lifestyle transformed his life.
As a Ninja Warrior competitor and medical professional, he reveals the powerful connection between food, movement, and recovery.
Learn how small dietary changes can help you overcome chronic conditions, optimize performance, and build a foundation for lasting vitality.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Play Empowered Athlete podcast.
(00:03):
I think you're going to love this episode I have with me, Dr. Jules Cormier.
He's from the eastern part of Canada.
He'll explain where because he's probably better at Canadian geography than I am.
Even though my great grandparents are from Quebec, that part I can find.
I don't know. Most of us never made it to the eastern shores of Canada,
(00:23):
even if it's practically beautiful.
Dr. Jules is an M.D.
He's a practicing M.D. He's a professor, teacher as well.
He's working with patients every day.
But the cool part and the reason why we have him on the podcast is,
you know, he had the normal sort of we'll call it the program
journey of what medicine sort of teaches us.
And then he had his epiphany, just like many of us have had or want to have.
(00:47):
And he turned plant based.
He then realized that, wow, maybe some of the things we're learning
might not be done in the middle like the way we want it to be.
Maybe there are better ways to live and we can actually really exploit
in the best way possible the power that our system has through eating,
through sleep, through mindset, all these things we talk about.
But he's a practitioner himself.
(01:08):
He likes to do Ninja Warrior. Love that kind of thing.
And he's busy every day working on this writing.
He's got a great website.
Dr. Jules, welcome to the podcast.
Awesome. Thanks so much for the invite.
Really cool to be here.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think the most important thing for all of us
is, you know, our story, you know, I had written this book in my tagline
(01:33):
was this from ordinary to extraordinary.
You know, we all start off pretty ordinary, but then the choices we make
sometime become clear in our lives.
So it's also a little bit about, you know, as you were growing up
and your activity level, your eating level, what were you then?
And sort of did it sort of show what you were going to become one day?
Or was this something like never imagined would actually happen?
(01:55):
Love to hear the story.
Yeah, so I'm from the East Coast, Canada.
I grew up there, still living to work there.
I went to Quebec to do my medical training,
but moved back home to New Brunswick, we border Maine.
Like sports are my life.
I mean, it's been my identity and mental health and physical health all my life
(02:18):
has just revolved around sports.
I would say I'm a multi sport athlete.
So my main sports were racket sports when I was grown up,
then transition to a lot of basketball.
Basically, when I started doing medical school,
I kind of lost my sports and went into more solo type sports,
(02:39):
a lot of climbing sports and rock climbing. Right.
So rock climbing became a big, huge part of my life for four years.
And that kind of naturally evolved into the sport of Ninja Warrior,
which I do now.
So, I mean, I've never been I've never gone, I think more than four or five days
(02:59):
without either a workout or a sport.
I mean, now I'm 43 now.
I still train probably at least 10 hours per week.
Easy when my kids go to sleep.
So when my kids go to bed, I go in the gym,
build a pretty intense Ninja Warrior gym in my garage
so I can train on obstacles right there.
(03:20):
And the rest of the time is spent either on a bike or running or allysthenics.
But yeah, sports has been there for me throughout my life
and a big part of who I am.
How about the diet stuff?
Were you good at eating along the way?
Was that you or were you the normal?
(03:40):
I have a pretty bizarre life story here where I mean,
raised by a single mom with my twin sister, my older brother,
ate a super ultra processed diet while growing up
because that's all we could kind of afford.
Just happy to have something on the plate.
Now, my story can be summed up as a little bit of an aha moment.
(04:05):
I had multiple chronic diseases, asthma, migraines,
GERD.
I had something called phonic idiopathic or tachycardia,
which is a medical term for you have hives and we don't know why.
And then four episodes that were my game changer,
a condition called exercise induced anaphylaxis or cholinergic angioedema.
(04:32):
Basically, in a nutshell, during a basketball match,
I had my faith swell up.
My fourth episode put me in a hospital with an EpiPen and an IV thinking I was going to die.
I mean, you can imagine this being devastating for an athlete,
being told that when your body temperature rises or you exert yourself too much during exercise,
(04:52):
you're going to develop hives, then angioedema, which is swelling.
And if it continues to get worse, you develop anaphylaxis.
Well, I mean, that's the type of reaction people would get when they're allergic to peanuts or
seafood. So I was heavily medicated for years with puffers and medication.
So I would say that's when I started.
(05:15):
At some point, I was nodding during a conference.
I remember looking at my colleague and apologizing, saying,
look, I'm like on three max dose antihistamines right now, just to control my rashes, my antihistamines.
I'm on puffers for my asthma. I was in a rough place.
And that was probably my rock bottom where I started thinking, all right, the kind of
(05:40):
modern medical system is not really helping me right now manage my symptoms.
And when it really changed is when my first born daughter, who's 12 now,
was born with the same conditions as me.
So asthma, eczema that got infected, I was in a rough place.
Asthma, eczema that got infected. She was on multiple courses of antibiotics.
(06:04):
Her tachycaria hides on her body.
And I remember the one of the first times that we drove her, like we had an emergency
asthma attack as a doctor, I was trying to manage it at home with the puffers we had.
But at some point she was in distress.
And I recognized that, okay, we need to get her to an ER right now.
(06:26):
After that stint, I mean, it's a weird feeling being a patient in the medical system when
you work there. And even more so when your colleagues are putting IDs on your arms and
giving you medication for your anaphylactic reaction, right?
So I decided to start looking at lifestyle medicine, including evidence-based nutrition.
(06:53):
Everything seemed to point towards less meat, less processed foods, more healthy plants.
That led me to find out about kind of the pioneers of the plant-based movement.
Within about a year, transitioned to a whole food plant-based diet.
Never had a hive since my third month. Never took a med since.
(07:15):
Never ever had another episode of exercise-induced anaphylactic even during my
Ninja Warrior competitions where my pulse is in the 180s.
And then kind of that aha moment that was like many small aha moments in succession
brought me to get certified in nutrition from plant-based nutrition from the University of
(07:38):
Guelph, the first Canadian university to offer plant-based certifications.
And then from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, which promote a plant-predominant
dietary pattern, right?
So, and now I teach that now it's a huge part of my practice.
It's a huge part of why patients send me messages, ask me questions, come to see me.
(07:58):
I teach lifestyle medicine to interns that I teach.
And I've never looked back, never had another hive since.
So it kind of changed my life for the better, for sure.
These stories are so,
so both common, but also very seemingly little acted on because we all are sort of,
(08:28):
I think the question is like, are we trapped somehow by just the decisions we made to allow
for, you know, a predominance of if we optimize on the cost of a calorie being as low as possible
to make calories available, then the way you do that is highly processed foods.
(08:50):
We have to make a lot of compromises on the integrity of that food.
It looks like it, but it isn't it anymore.
It's in the groundwater with it was Roundup for a long time, which is glyphosate
was the food processing approach.
It's then what do we do to keep it in a package so that we can keep it longer?
So, and then you go on and on and on.
And we've all adopted that diet, but never really thought about the implications of that.
(09:14):
And the other day, I would love to take credit for this, but someone said it this way.
So simply, you know, if your entire body is just a bunch of cells and the way that cells are built
is with the nutrients that you take in.
And the only way that you can build a cell is with nutrients.
Because if you don't take in food or liquids, you'll die.
So the new cells will die, right?
Which is ultimately so then if you were taking in quote unquote, not good stuff in building
(09:37):
those cells on top of that, what outcome would you get?
Where is thinking about how would you build a strong cellular base?
And nature has sort of solved this factories have not.
And so what do we have to do to sort of bridge this gap?
Because we actually know the answer, but we're not living that way predominantly.
(09:59):
What you're feeling?
Are we making progress?
Is this just a knowledge problem?
Is it the corporate system? Like, where are we on this, Dr. Jules?
Well, firstly, when I started transitioning, I was surprised because I was like, well,
look at all this data out there talking about people reversing their conditions.
(10:23):
And I always say, look, I base my practice in peer reviewed, high level quality studies,
meta analysis and systematic reviews.
So my anecdote means nothing.
But when you look around and you have thousands and thousands of anecdotes that all say the
same thing, that's where it starts to gather momentum.
(10:45):
Now, I had the same issues as most people when transitioning, it was creating friction
with my life, right?
I mean, when you're going on vacation and you can't find anything healthy to eat, you
kind of have this mismatch between biology and our environment, right?
I do feel we're making progress, right?
Though, because I mean, we were 16 doctors where I work, all of them are on board.
(11:12):
We're literally, as we speak, building a lifestyle medicine intervention program that
we can share with our patients.
Now, 20 years ago, I would have said if it was that important, I would have certainly
learned about it in medical school.
But now I'm realizing that if I don't put any effort into integrating this in our medical
(11:39):
school curriculums, no one else will.
But so I think we're making progress in terms of spreading awareness towards plant
predominant nutrition.
Our Canadian food guide went plant-based, but they don't call it plant-based.
People don't like the term because people get defensive because you're challenging
(12:03):
culture and tradition and eating patterns are highly personal and really something intimate
that we keep to each other, right?
But I think we're making progress.
Countries are having plant predominant food guides that are evidence-based because we're
starting to remove the lobbying of these big companies and corporations out of the decision
(12:24):
making process, right?
We're having the first Canadian plant-based university level certification started two
years ago.
I was part of the first group of graduates.
We have the American College of Lifestyle Medicine that promotes plant-based nutrition.
Now in 170 medical residency curriculum sites in the US, we have one in
(12:49):
Canada.
We have our, hopefully, my site will become the second.
So we're just dipping our feet in the water, but I really think that we're gaining
momentum and I can't wait to see how the system changes and the culture changes around
lifestyle medicine in the next 10, 20, 15 years.
(13:10):
I really think even the next 5, 10 years, there's going to be a much more, like a bigger
explosion of healthy foods and awareness around the magic and miracles that can happen when
just people fuel with good whole foods, right?
So simple.
That's such an ironic statement, healthy food.
Yeah.
(13:31):
What would they be?
Like we would want non-health.
More on eating is not, yeah.
Right?
Exactly.
The thing that we have to bridge.
First, I love that you said, look, the medical system can sort of blame what we were
taught before, but we have to own it because what was decided 100 years ago, we don't just
own that anymore.
(13:51):
We're like, oh no, like we needed to move from a horse to a car, right?
I mean, like that was a change and same thing can happen in the medical system, but that's
the system.
It can't just keep blaming the people before.
So I love that.
That's great.
I think the piece that I also feel strongly about is that we need to, at minimum, start
(14:12):
to do a correlation or causality between what we eat and how we feel.
If you have a car and you went to a really crummy gas station and got some gas that was
really bad for your car and you started driving down the street, it would be knocking, like
this not getting the right kind of performance.
You'd be like, I'd never go back to that gas station again.
(14:34):
People know the connection.
Put bad gas in an engine, engine doesn't work well.
It's a well-designed engine.
It's the ingredient that goes in.
Then they get themselves and they put this food in and then we blame everything else.
We blame, well, that's got to be genetic.
It's got to be something in my history.
It can't be me or it's environmental.
It's not me.
(14:54):
It's not what I eat.
It's not what I do.
But until we really embrace that it is what we do, what we eat, how we live, that is how
come how we would feel, that is all the good data in the world won't really get us there.
We have to connect these two.
What do you, when you talk to both patients and people and you write about this, like
how do we think about that part of this?
(15:17):
Well, firstly, I'd say if the only gas station for the next 100 miles sells crummy gas
and you need to drive three hours to get good gas, I think the barrier is the friction.
Right.
And so when people are on the spectrum of change and contemplating change, it's always
(15:37):
has to be the expected outcome is going to justify the friction that I have to go through
to get there.
Now, it was simple for me.
Look, I had been living with chronic disease and multiple medications for decades, never,
and just, this is, I was just dealt a bad hand of cards and just lived my life and took
(15:59):
my pills.
Right.
But when someone, when my daughter got sick, it's going to threaten the things I love that
were outside of me.
I'm saying, I have to do something about it.
Right.
So the amount of misery and suffering that people will go through before looking inwards
and looking at their own lifestyle is quite impressive.
(16:21):
But studies show about 20% of people are contemplating are my either medical conditions
or the possible consequences of my choices.
Are they maybe related to my lifestyle?
Now, you can't make someone change who doesn't want to change, but you can help them
contemplate change.
(16:42):
Right.
And that starts with just kind of, well, creating awareness, but also making sure that
people who actually want to change have that tool, have these tools and that support.
And that's, I think that's where we're running into barriers.
Right.
Because as your analogy with gas station suggested, it's just very easier and instant
(17:08):
gratification for the possibility or avoiding that McDonald's or that crap food with the
possibility of maybe down 20 years down the road, not having a heart attack.
People have to kind of use their emotional brain of I want something good now versus,
(17:28):
and that often outweighs the rational brain of I want to prevent something bad later.
Right.
And we're such in that hamster wheel of going fast all day long and that people may,
I mean, they build their habits around what causes the least friction around them.
And obviously we're living in this food environment, which kind of here always nudges
(17:51):
you towards less healthy choices.
And the only way you're really going to say, I want to make the best choices for my health
long-term either you're really, really deeply emotionally connected to why you want to change
AKA I don't want to in my aha moment happened while rock climbing with my daughter, literally
(18:13):
saw someone in his sixties, rock climbing, like a, like a boss with his young daughter.
And I was like that, I want that to be me.
I want to be rock climbing in 20 years from now and rock climbing with my daughter.
And at the time I was not plant not fully plant-based and I was still kind of battling
(18:37):
this demon of what happens if I get a fifth episode of exercising, do kind of lax it's
and that's the episode that takes me out.
So I had this dark cloud hanging over me that motivated me.
Now, how do we help people motivate themselves when they don't, when they haven't hit rock
bottom, right?
Not everyone has that aha moment, but these people, we just need to kind of try to modify
(19:02):
the environment and make healthier choices easier and more accessible on a daily basis.
Now, I always say small changes that add up over time and incremental changes that kind
of add up and compound is probably the way to go for these people because not everyone
is as motivated maybe as us two of going full out 100% plant-based within a few months there.
(19:26):
But that's the challenge, right?
I mean, I have a group on Facebook of about 7,000 people that my small community that
are interested in just kind of learning more and a few thousand of those that are really
probably serious about making a transition, but there's such misinformation, conflicting
(19:46):
information online, people don't know who to believe, don't know if plant-based nutrition
is just a trend.
I mean, I can't imagine being part of the general public consuming that information.
It must be so confusing, right?
Yeah, you know, they completely agree in the community does help kind of content you produce
(20:06):
is very helpful.
I do find the irony of life, you know, so someone would say to you and me, don't tell
me what to do.
Like I don't want to become that, but they're happy to have Kellogg's and General Mills
and other companies in McDonald's tell them what to become.
(20:28):
Yeah, but they're not arguing.
I guess they're better marketers than we are.
I don't know.
Yeah, but that message is so subliminal that people just live their lives not realizing
the impact of that marketing and the placement of the aisles at eye level of your kids,
seeing that Lucky Charms cereal box.
And I mean, it's all habits that build because we're just unaware of our daily choices.
(20:51):
And we never take five minutes to be introspective and to question these choices, right?
Yeah, no, I know.
And, you know, I'm in that category where I'm in my 60s now and I'm doing ultra marathons
with my daughters.
And I don't know if there could be a better place I could have ended up with to have that
blessing to be able to get out there, have this experience, do the training with them,
(21:16):
you know, spend the time, you know, at some points, your kids will be old enough.
They don't need you every day.
And so I'm like, oh, but what if we can just go for a run in the park in the morning at
six o'clock and go for a seven mile run together and then, you know, have an hour that we wouldn't
have had together and we can chitchat away.
And so, and then we get to both do excursions and expeditions, but you have to build that
(21:43):
capability if that's what you want to do.
Otherwise, you know, I guess the best you could do maybe is just have food with them,
but no other experience.
So I do think that there is a medium and a long-term benefit, but an idea that you're
starting to solve for what the medical system really has not been able to really solve for.
(22:04):
You know, some of the diseases that we're trying to use all these medications to sort
of mitigate are actually solvable through food.
So let's talk for a minute, uh, cause I love, you know, you have such great articles, you
know, like whether it's traveling to Las Vegas and being able to eat well, or, you know,
(22:27):
do we need a pill if we can go exercise to which choices should they make in some of
the nutrients that I bring in?
Give us your sort of general kind of programmatic way of thinking about this evolution into
good eating and good living.
Hey, it's Nathan Crane, founder of Plant Powered Athlete.
And I want to thank you for tuning into the Plant Powered Athlete podcast.
(22:50):
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(23:13):
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Thanks again for tuning in.
So if someone says, I give live events where part of the community, a few hundred people
(23:36):
come and they hear me talk about plant based nutrition.
And one of the most common questions is, I don't know where to start.
This is very intimidating, right?
So what I do is I talk about this spectrum.
So spectrum would be if we go from more disease promoting to more disease preventing, and
(23:57):
we would put food groups on a spectrum, we'd likely see ultra processed foods, red and
processed meats, other animal products like white meat.
And then we'd see fish, dairy and eggs.
And then we'd see old plants, which are fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds and whole
grains, right?
So I say, all right, the issue now is that people are getting 80, even worse, 80 to 90%
(24:21):
of their calories from either ultra processed foods and animal products with about 50 of
them being ultra processed foods.
And they're getting five or 10% from real food that grows from the ground, from a plant,
from a tree.
And an evidence based ratio would be 80% old foods and anything else.
(24:44):
So a lot of people, they find that much less intimidating.
So I'd say the lowest hanging fruit is just reducing the amount of ultra processed foods.
And they're like, how do we do that?
Well, sometimes it's as simple as making small changes to what you're already eating.
Now studies show that tweaking what you're doing instead of changing what you're doing
(25:04):
is much easier.
And very often we want to be very specific in what people change.
So instead of saying, I'm going to go plant based, I say, no, look at the meal that I
have to go, look at the meal that's the most easier, the easiest for you to change.
Maybe it's your breakfast because you have breakfast every morning.
(25:24):
You're not out of the house.
You're not vulnerable to the environment.
You're at home.
You have control to making yourself a breakfast.
And that could be if you're eating bacon and eggs, well, how about maybe oatmeal, right?
And if you're eating oatmeal, maybe soy milk inside instead of regular milk.
Maybe whole wheat bread instead of the white bread.
(25:48):
And on the spectrum, you have whole, you have white bread, whole wheat bread, maybe Ezekiel
bread, maybe sourdough bread.
Even bread exists on the spectrum, right?
So I say, just take a step towards the right side of the spectrum.
And that could be, for some people, is very intimidating to consider a plant based meal.
So I say, focus on what you're adding instead of what you're removing, right?
(26:11):
So if you look at what you're doing already, if you're already having a smoothie here and
there, maybe dump some Chia Flakes and Hempseas in it for some omega-3 and complete protein,
right?
So very often, the message to the general public, I'd say, make small incremental changes
and tweaks and swaps that get you closer to the right side of the spectrum.
(26:34):
But when I'm talking to someone one on one, say, tell me what you ate this morning.
Tell me what you ate yesterday.
So we can make swaps, right?
I want everyone to be 100% plant based.
I want everyone to be whole food, vegan, all the good things for the planet, for the animals,
for health.
But that's very, very intimidating because I remember when I started transitioning, I
(26:59):
didn't transition for ethics or for the environment.
I transitioned so I wouldn't have another fifth episode of anaphylaxis, right?
So when I started, I was just kind of starting with instead of bacon and egg in hand slices,
I can do oatmeal.
I'm not going to do steel cut oatmeal that I'm going to boil on the stove for 30 minutes.
(27:25):
I'm going to do instant oats and start with that.
Start with a little bit of maple syrup.
I start, well, now 12 years down the road, now I have whole sprouted oats.
I was able to graduate towards less and less processed versions.
And even food processing exists on a spectrum, right?
So even oats, you have the instant oats and you have the steel cut.
(27:47):
And the most important thing is to try to meet people where they're at and make small
incremental changes.
That's what applies to about 80 to 85% of people.
We'll see 20% of people say, just tell me what to eat and I'll do it.
Other people, you just show them the data about the prevention of chronic diseases.
And they're like, I'm so I'll change.
(28:08):
I'm going to go as plant predominant as possible.
And some people have to recognize that plant predominance or being plant-based,
that's an umbrella term.
Some people can eat a Mediterranean style diet and be super healthy.
Some people can go flexitarian and eat meat a few times a month.
If their overall dietary pattern is healthy, that's probably over.
(28:32):
That's probably okay for health, right?
So I think just starting by seeing where people are at, meeting them there and making small
changes or swaps and tweaks to what they're already eating is probably the way to make
it more sustainable for most people.
That's great advice.
I love that.
You know, the other thing as a piece of advice always is if you have something around and
(28:55):
available or don't have it around and available, that is a way to help yourself, right?
If you don't have the ultra-processed foods in the house, then you're not going to eat
them.
But if you did have some blueberries and strawberries and some apples and bananas,
then you're probably likely to eat them.
But if they're not there, you can't.
So sometimes it's buying them.
Now we hear that, you know, eating that way is more expensive.
(29:17):
And there's, of course, many perspectives on that.
One would be a lot more expensive to have to go to the doctor and spend thousands of
dollars on your deductibles than it would be to buy the food.
But, you know, at least in the United States, the Walmart is the largest grocer and they
are moving as many foods as they can to be organic and available.
(29:38):
And they do have a price points that are relatively reachable.
This is not whole food pricing.
And so it isn't that we're not having availability anymore.
There's, you know, thousands and thousands of Walmarts around.
So we can get access to the food.
And if we put it in our house, that's a good starting point, I would imagine.
(30:01):
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, for an example would be if you it's funny how if I ask the kids if they want
fruits and veggies, they're like, no.
But if you put it on the table in a bowl or on a plate, I mean, they're going to see
it.
People like seeing vibrant colors with good presentation.
And all of a sudden they develop an appetite board.
(30:24):
And I think you mentioned something plant based on a budget or it's healthy.
It's expensive eating healthy.
I mean, if you're eating ultra processed plant based foods, I think it will be.
But I mean, a bag of lentils or beans or chickpeas or I mean, these things in tofu, I mean,
if you compare it to the meat that people are eating, I would argue that it's probably
(30:47):
even much cheaper.
And whole wheat pasta and legume pasta.
I mean, if you're eating ultra processed foods from the health section of the grocery store,
which are organic and GMO free processed foods, that's not the type of plant based diet I'm
necessarily promoting to my patients.
(31:07):
I mean, a bunch of bananas and apples and oranges and berries.
If they're out of season in Canada, they can get expensive.
But I mean, have a bag of frozen veggies and produce in your fridge.
There's I think the whole thing that it's expensive is blown way out of proportion because
I think my grocery bills are actually much lower now than they would have been considering
(31:31):
inflation when I was a mediator.
Right.
Yeah, I think that back to your point in the beginning, which is data.
You're an evidence based guy.
You look at the data.
You're not just going off of I like it.
You know, like, well, I could just try that, but I'm going to read all these papers and
(31:52):
figure out what I should be doing.
I like that.
Another part of this is the movement piece.
Of course, you know, for everyone who doesn't know Ninja Warriors is like an obstacle course
for adults, really, in a sense.
You know, it's a fun thing.
It's about body weight strength and it's about building up resiliency in the system
(32:15):
because it is a lot of strain.
We're not going to lift hundreds of pounds or movement of you said running and biking.
How does the movement piece integrate in your mind relative to the eating as well?
Well, firstly, what I noticed one of the first things is that my recovery just you're eating
(32:39):
an anti-inflammatory diet, right?
Now, if you look at inflammation as normal part of exercising, the inflammatory response
is great acutely to help with adaptation, but you don't want to be chronically inflamed
and you want to recover quickly.
Now, if you look at the top foods, the top 100 foods in terms of their antioxidant content,
(33:03):
they're all plant foods.
Okay, their spices, their berries, their whole grains, their nuts and seeds.
If you're eating a plant predominant diet made up of all these foods, it's obvious that
you're going to be able to recover sooner.
You're going to be able to train harder.
You're going to be able to train more often.
So for me, the and if you've seen Ninja Warrior, it's a high impact sport.
(33:27):
I mean, we're a lot we're doing Laches, Bar Laches for 8, 10 feet with your joints being
stretched to the maximum.
So you have to have a huge foundation of strength underneath that.
I wouldn't recommend someone to just try Ninja Warrior without a solid foundation of calisthenics
and bodyweight training.
(33:47):
But I really give credit to my diet on being able in my 40s to train anywhere from 10 to
15 hours of hard training and recovering enough to do the same thing the next day.
I mean, obviously my VO2 max improved when I ran my first few marathons.
(34:12):
I always give the example that I used to require taking puffers before my 5k runs.
And my first half marathon was ran sub two hours without using puffers at all, which
is something that for me was mind boggling running in the 20, 25 Ks without needing my
(34:34):
asthma inhalers.
I mean, so and I would have never been able to do that without having experiencing highs
or tachycaria back in the day.
So I think not only does an anti-inflammatory diet help promote more efficient movement,
more efficient recovery and better endurance.
I mean, for me, I was hindered by my chronic medical condition.
(34:58):
So it took care of my eczema went away, my asthma went away, things that would have
absolutely get triggered by any type of physical exercise and movement.
So I feel I have my diet to thank because I've been a lifelong athlete, but I've been
doing things in the last five, seven years that I would have never imagined possible
(35:21):
before going on a plant based diet, whole food plant based diet, just because of the
amount of the speed of which I recover in comparison to in my early 20s.
Right.
Yeah.
I think my longevity in this sport has a big, big part to play is the diet.
Yeah.
(35:41):
It would be at least I don't like the word impossible, but let's just use it for a second.
I think it would be impossible to imagine that, for example, if I told you what, you
know, I set out to do this year from a physical exercise point of view, that you would believe
that you could get there, but to do it in a way that it isn't creating the normal response,
(36:06):
which is I got injured or something like that.
So, you know, to run 3000 miles is about averaging eight miles a day.
You know, I'm doing 150,000 pushups, which is 450 a day, 30,000 pull ups, which is almost
a hundred a day, and then 300 crunches a day.
In addition to, you know, still riding my bike almost 2000 miles.
(36:28):
And, you know, at 64 years old, it's not, it's time.
I would say it's not hard.
Like it's, it's, I know it's an effort.
I know in like seven days I say, Oh, can I do the hundred pull ups?
In under 10 minutes, you know, can I put some speed into that?
And like, but, but all that foundation isn't because I was some privileged Olympic athlete,
(36:53):
right?
This is about all the other choices that all build up towards that.
And I'm not sure anyone wants to have those goals, but if you did, you could get there.
You can get there by sort of the foundation that you build to the point you make.
The system actually responds very well.
When it's healthy, the mitochondria continued to grow muscle growth happens.
(37:17):
You know, I don't need Ozempic.
That's for sure.
Like, cause I can barely keep the weight on.
Yeah.
And so, but this is just eating, sleeping, exercising mindset community.
This is like, that's it.
That's the biohack.
I mean, how do you feel about that?
(37:37):
Is it like, if you said, oh, I'm 42, whatever you said, 43 years old, and you had 20 years
from now, you could do the same if you put yourself on a plan to get there, that would
be pretty exciting.
Like, and well, in addition, I ran a hundred mile race to 200 mile gravel bike race this
year, did a 50 mile race, a 30 mile race.
Like, you know, the recovery is fast.
(37:59):
Like, how does that happen?
Like I'm asking it in a sort of a leading question way, right?
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's a tough question to answer because let's say that you look at why aren't
people doing these things in their 16, 17 and 80s because most people have chronic diseases
(38:24):
that have played their existence up to that point.
And I mean, we know that about 80% of chronic disease are causally and directly linked to
the lifestyle you live, right?
So the reason you'll be able to do that in your sixties and seventies and eighties, and
hopefully me as well, is because we'll, our lifestyle will have made it so that we've
(38:47):
avoided all these, our top killers, right?
We've avoided auto-immunity, inflammation, hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, heart
disease, cancer, right?
So that's why, I mean, your muscles are made to move and they're made to do these things.
So for me, it's not a surprise that I have some patients here hiking in their eighties,
(39:10):
hiking mountains on predominant diets.
And I'm not surprised because they've avoided the common conditions that cause like loss
of health span and lifespan.
I, it's difficult to imagine because about, I mean, over 70% of the population is not
(39:30):
over 70% of the population is either overweight or obese.
So obviously if you're able to run 10K at a lightning fast speed in your fifties, it
appears like a big deal because most people are not doing that.
Most people are coming to see me on a daily basis, right?
But I mean, if you eat a diet that's anti-inflammatory, that supports gut health, that supports your
(39:54):
microbiome, your microbiome produces these same compounds that very often we extract
and put into medication.
I mean, yeah, you're, you're just food is medicine, right?
But the dose matters.
So if you eat healthy food and you do exercise and you sleep well, you must be doing it.
You have to be doing it in a dose that will help you thrive.
(40:17):
So you talked about biohacks.
I mean, I just give a live talk to 200 people about two weeks ago on, it was called everything
in moderation, stop stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
I have patients sending me messages saying, what do you think about sauna and cold plunge?
I'm like, yeah, I use these things.
(40:38):
I love these things, but they're right at the top of the pyramid, right?
These things will improve performance by five to 7% where, where good sleep hygiene reduces
mortality by something like 300%.
I mean, you're not comparing.
So if my patient comes to see me and says, I'm going to start taking creatine for muscle
(41:00):
protein synthesis and endurance, but I'm sleeping five hours per night.
I mean, the takeaway there is that you're still in, you're still in debt.
You're still probably stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
So you need to get the foundation right.
And a lifespan and health span is not based in hacks.
(41:22):
They're based in daily choices that you make over decades that accumulate either in the
right direction or in the wrong one.
There's no, there's no hack.
There's no secret.
It's work and it's believing in why you're wanting to do it and to try to change your
environment and mindset so that your choices don't create much friction with your life.
(41:45):
All simple concepts, but really hard to do if you're not connected to why you want to do it.
And if you're living in an environment that constantly nudges you in the other direction.
Right.
Yeah. No, I agree with that.
You have to, you have to make the breakthrough of this is your life to live and you should
live the life you want to live, not the life someone else tells you to, whether it's an
(42:08):
advertisement or bad advice or what's in a food aisle.
You know, the other thing, and it's just, all I am is sort of a case study.
I don't really care to even talk about it half the time, but in that 20 years,
I think maybe I was sick in the past 20 years once.
I got COVID.
(42:30):
I have been sleeping, you know, fantastically for the past 15 years.
You know, I still have a pretty stressful job by trying to run a company.
Someone called stress.
I don't find stress to be problematic, but they get all can come together.
That's the only reason I want to talk about it is that what you said is, look, if you
(42:53):
were to invest in your 401k, put money in when you're 30 years old, 40 years old, 50
years old, then you'd end up with a nice nest egg when you were 70.
Well, we can do the same investment in ourselves and our lives along the way.
So that when we turn 70, the nest egg is our vitality, you know, being actually resilient
(43:16):
to be able to spend time the way we want to spend time and that it isn't the state of
being old.
It's just some biological marker by time that we've constructed.
But it is the choices, you know, I didn't tell you this before, Dr.
Jules, but I've written down what I've done every day for the past 24 years.
And in that is this somewhat activity history of, you know, continuing to increase, you
(43:41):
know, what I do, which then sets the path for the future.
So it was incremental.
It was one push up, one mile.
Those were hard 24 years ago.
But this is my point is this is what our system will respond to do.
It's when treated well, it becomes stronger and better.
It's irony of all of this body wants to heal.
(44:04):
Right.
If you just can kind of can remove the things that are pro inflammatory and increase the
thing that are anti inflammatory, it's the same thing as your 401k that that anti inflammatory
cushion just builds with time.
And absolutely, absolutely.
You can age gracefully and do amazing things into older age.
(44:27):
Yeah.
Let's talk about protein for a second.
Of course, yeah.
Or at Planned Paradise, we think about protein all the time.
This is building block love for your a little bit deeper.
But I'll tell you, you know, that one of the things that I found in the dietary change
was starting a day with protein versus carbohydrates changes the appetite profile.
(44:49):
It makes you stronger and feel better.
And it sort of sets you up for activity as well as just healthy living.
How do you think about the amount of protein, the timing of protein, the form of protein?
Where are your thoughts on that right now?
Yeah.
Our point, so number one, if we were just talking from a non athlete perspective, but
(45:11):
just a general population perspective, increasing protein will help preserve muscle mass, but
it's most satiating one other than fiber, other than fiber and very satiating macronutrient,
where it just helps promote like weight maintenance.
Right.
So I think that helps with appetite.
(45:31):
It has the highest thermogenic effect of all the macros.
And for some reason in the plant based community, people that are probably watching this now
have seen the RDA being promoted around 0.8.
Okay.
Now I disagree with that a little bit because if you look at the data,
(45:52):
there's absolutely benefit of being higher.
Okay.
So for sure, as an athlete, I'm in the 1.6 to 2 grams per kilogram camp.
It's helped me recover.
So the studies show that people recover faster, are less sore.
They maintain muscle mass, they maintain bone mass, they have less cardiovascular risk.
(46:16):
It's not about not only the protein, it's also about its source.
Right.
So people need to understand that protein comes in the package
and your body doesn't necessarily recognize whether these amino acids are coming
from animals or plants, but they do recognize what else is coming in with it.
Right.
So if you're eating all your 200 grams of protein coming from red meat,
(46:38):
well, the cholesterol, saturated fat, the heme iron, the TMAO that gets, I mean,
very inflammatory linked to fatty liver, increased cardiovascular risk, diabetes,
heart disease, cancer.
So, I mean, it's not about just the amount of protein you get,
definitely about the quality and the source of protein you get.
(47:00):
So, and then there's convenience.
Now, if someone wants to get all their protein and chickpeas,
they're going to be eating a whole bunch of chickpeas.
So for me, I do consume 99.9% of my calories through Whole Foods.
I use, I still use protein powder because it's absolutely convenient.
(47:21):
It's easy to integrate and it helps me hit my protein goal.
Now, if you're aiming for 0.8 grams per kilogram per day of protein,
I don't think you need, you don't need protein powder,
but I think if you want to go towards a more, and that's a normal,
there's a big difference between normal and optimal.
Okay.
So, if you want to optimize, I think average person should probably be
(47:45):
at least in the 1.2, 1.6 range.
And if you're an athlete and you really want to recover and perform at your best,
I think you should optimize around 1.6 or higher.
So protein absolutely was a big, a big worry of mine when I started
transitioning towards a plant-based diet, because I was an athlete long before
(48:05):
going plant-based.
So the, where do you get your protein was one of the few scientific articles
that I published.
And I think I published a part one and a part two,
just because I wanted to make sure that people understood that it's not difficult
to get protein on a plant-based diet.
You just need to know where to get it.
(48:26):
You need some, and you need to also to consider that you want to not just
survive, you want to thrive, right?
And you want to make sure that your muscle mass and your bone mass are as high
as optimal as you can so that if you start, stop being active into old age,
you at least try to keep that muscle mass there as long as possible.
(48:47):
Right?
So I'd say I'm a little bit against that 0.8 gram per kilogram per day RDA
that you see.
Definitely I see people should prioritize protein, not just for weight or appetite,
for thermogenesis, but for performance and recovery for sure.
Yeah.
I think we're, we're in a bit of a good moment for protein.
(49:09):
I think the awareness is coming up.
You know, we've been through some crazy moments, you know, the high carb, the this,
the that, and I think that, you know, still there's the, for everyone who
listening who doesn't know, there's three macronutrients there, fat and
protein and carbohydrates having, you know, I would have to argue with all my
(49:30):
friends, you know, this, you know, I don't believe in balance.
I believe in integration because I think balance sometimes has us, you know,
normalizing down rather than to optimal to your point.
Absolutely.
But in that we won't have a problem getting enough carbohydrates in a day, no
matter what we eat, that'll always.
Yeah.
In fact, that comes along, but you do have to focus on protein because it is a
(49:54):
little bit more unique, but available.
So yeah, I think there are a lot of people, this is one of those, you know,
myths of sorts, maybe we'll call it the old wives tales we might have called.
You can't get enough protein if you're plant based, you know, I don't know if
the industry has pushed that.
How many people come to you saying that?
And then, you know, how do you start to educate them about if plant based
(50:17):
becomes more important to you, that you're not going to lose out on your
protein quantity?
Yeah.
Well, so yes, it's absolutely a worry of a lot of people going plant based.
And I think that's all wives tales, old anecdotes, or I don't know where it
stems, but I can say that it's not backed in evidence.
And there's always that concept of protein being complete or incomplete
(50:39):
and plant protein being incomplete.
So it's so people think it's synonymous with inadequate.
Obviously, that's been debunked a long time ago.
All plants contain all essential amino acids.
And if you eat enough calories from a variety of plants, your body does the
completing by itself with the amino acid pool that circulates for a day or two.
(51:02):
So we've said enough about completeness of protein because that's been debunked.
Now, but if people equate going plant based as eating salads, then, yeah, they
might be protein.
They're probably still hit that point eight grams per kilogram threshold.
But and they'll survive.
(51:23):
And they won't be thriving.
So where I try to make sure that people understand is just making small
changes that don't create a lot of friction like brown rice, quinoa.
If you're going to have grains, I have a little bit more fiber and protein that
they're processed counterparts, making sure that legumes play a part in your
(51:47):
diet.
But soy products, soy milk, tofu, tempeh, and other things that are
protein, and make sure that protein is the star of the plate.
Right.
Now, if you do that and then you kind of decorate your plate around with other
plants, I don't think you'll have any issue in hitting an optimal one point
(52:09):
two to one point four.
But if you're not doing that and you're kind of just eating your white rice and
your and your cereal and you're calling yourself plant based, it might be
difficult to get to the higher amounts of protein.
I think that's why that's where protein powders come as a supplement that you
can just use to top off.
(52:31):
And it's funny how I have a lot of people.
I don't know where this came from either, but it's like protein powder has
a negative reputation.
Right.
People have no issues taking a whole bunch of vitamins and mineral
supplements.
But people forget that protein is a supplement as well.
We've extracted protein and we put it in supplement form.
(52:52):
Right.
Yes.
So other supplements are demonized, but protein powder is considered a highly
ultra processed food.
That's where I say processing exists on a spectrum.
And there's a difference between a Twinkie and a protein powder.
Right.
Even if they're both processed products.
(53:13):
So yeah, I mean, most important thing is to try to debunk these myths of
protein completeness and protein powder being ultra processed or unhealthy.
There we have data showing that people that use protein supplements typically
favor and like have a better cardio metabolic profile and they're healthier
and they maintain muscle mass and bone mass for longer.
(53:34):
So, I mean, people can argue with the data all they want, but I mean, it's
pretty clear cut that people that have higher protein intakes considering
that that protein source is a healthy protein source.
Yep.
Leaner meats, seafood, and even more preferably focusing more on plant
protein have less chronic disease and live better in age.
(53:57):
Right.
Yeah.
I think it's cute that Canadian pea protein has become a big item.
Right.
Canadians are growing peas and they have a whole market for it now.
Huh?
Yeah.
Yep.
Exactly.
And I mean, now if you open up the Canadian food guide, you'll see half of
(54:19):
the plate being fruits and veggies, 25% being whole grains and 25% being a
protein food group.
I don't know if your listeners are aware, but in 2019 we updated our
food guide in Canada based on science, all of it is based and we've removed
the meat and substitute food group and the dairy food group and they
(54:39):
replaced it with the protein food group.
Wow.
And if you open up the pamphlet, it says try to prioritize plant
protein, right?
So our food guide is plant-based.
We just don't call it that because that can rub people the wrong way.
Right?
Yeah.
It's sort of curious what we learn and how to unlearn to your point and then
(55:02):
have to relearn.
I think over time we'll realize we can argue anything if we want, but it'd be
hard to argue that nature hasn't sort of figured it out itself.
You know?
It seems to do okay when we don't intervene and we're the ones who are
messing up a long way.
(55:22):
So if we just follow good role models, which is nature and the food system,
and then the rest of animals who do seem to do pretty well, right?
They, some of them are a bit omnivore, but they all know some of these big
animals like the bison who can get to 2000 pounds can just eat grasses and
(55:42):
they're not strong and as rough and tumble as they come, you know, like talk
about.
So it works, right?
So I know we're getting close to your need to get back into the flow here.
If you were, you know, the first you've been giving such amazing advice, very
practical, evidence-based, also very much self-effacing in that, you know,
(56:06):
you went through this journey.
I'm so happy that you figured out your health journey because my gosh, when
we're in chronic pain, there is nothing that makes a day harder.
But when we feel good, some days I always remember like, when you really
feel good, just say to yourself, you know, I feel really good today.
Because when you don't feel good, you really focus on that and we take for
granted feeling good.
(56:26):
So as a good reminder.
Great point.
I like this question people ask me and I'm sure they ask you, but in a simple
way, if they said, if there's one thing I could change tomorrow, Dr.
Jules, what could I do tomorrow that I should repeat every day?
What would you just give that piece of advice to our listeners?
Oh, that's a great question.
So I would probably.
(56:48):
If I'd be to talk to the general public and and not to one person, I would be
presenting and people would ask me one, one change.
I would say, get rid of ultra processed sugars, we've eaten beverages.
There's probably the worst of the ultra processed foods that we have in our
diet that people are consuming.
(57:09):
Try to remove foods that contain added sugar.
If we just can do that, I think that's.
That's a big part of that 50% of calories, Canadians are in probably
Americans as well, 50 to 60% of calories on a daily basis are coming from
ultra processed foods with these foods.
Being the main culprit.
Now, if I'd be to talk to one patient, I'd say, what did you eat yesterday?
(57:33):
What do you eat today?
And I try to find where I can have the biggest bang for the buck.
And that would be trying likely trying to change either an ultra processed
food item or a ready to process meat and changing that towards a plant
source of protein studies show that if you can change animal protein for
(57:53):
plant protein, risk of cardiovascular disease and chronic disease kind of
plummets with every increment of calories that you increase from plant protein.
So I try to find where we can sneak in a new plant protein in people's diets.
Right.
And I hope that it can be something that's sustainable and that people enjoy
(58:14):
creates little friction with their lives.
You're able to do long term.
Well, that's fantastic advice.
Thanks for doing what you're doing and writing what you're writing.
If people want to follow you or hear more about you, what are good places for
them to take a look?
Well, there's my website, PlantBasedDrJules.com.
I also have the Dr. Jules Plant Based Podcast, which is something like 60
(58:39):
episodes.
I'm at the end of my first season and I'm on Instagram at Dr. Jules Cormier
and on Facebook at Dr. Jules Cormier on YouTube as Dr. Jules Cormier.
A whole bunch of free content that people can go download some recipe books and
some nutrient charts and tips and tricks to get people on their way transitioning
(59:00):
towards a healthier diet.
Well, that's great.
I'm sure we'll all be checking that out.
Thanks so much for your time.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome experience.
Welcome to the Play Empowered Athlete podcast.
(00:03):
I think you're going to love this episode I have with me, Dr. Jules Cormier.
He's from the eastern part of Canada.
He'll explain where because he's probably better at Canadian geography than I am.
Even though my great grandparents are from Quebec, that part I can find.
I don't know. Most of us never made it to the eastern shores of Canada,
(00:23):
even if it's practically beautiful.
Dr. Jules is an M.D.
He's a practicing M.D. He's a professor, teacher as well.
He's working with patients every day.
But the cool part and the reason why we have him on the podcast is,
you know, he had the normal sort of we'll call it the program
journey of what medicine sort of teaches us.
And then he had his epiphany, just like many of us have had or want to have.
(00:47):
And he turned plant based.
He then realized that, wow, maybe some of the things we're learning
might not be done in the middle like the way we want it to be.
Maybe there are better ways to live and we can actually really exploit
in the best way possible the power that our system has through eating,
through sleep, through mindset, all these things we talk about.
But he's a practitioner himself.
(01:08):
He likes to do Ninja Warrior. Love that kind of thing.
And he's busy every day working on this writing.
He's got a great website.
Dr. Jules, welcome to the podcast.
Awesome. Thanks so much for the invite.
Really cool to be here.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think the most important thing for all of us
is, you know, our story, you know, I had written this book in my tagline
(01:33):
was this from ordinary to extraordinary.
You know, we all start off pretty ordinary, but then the choices we make
sometime become clear in our lives.
So it's also a little bit about, you know, as you were growing up
and your activity level, your eating level, what were you then?
And sort of did it sort of show what you were going to become one day?
Or was this something like never imagined would actually happen?
(01:55):
Love to hear the story.
Yeah, so I'm from the East Coast, Canada.
I grew up there, still living to work there.
I went to Quebec to do my medical training,
but moved back home to New Brunswick, we border Maine.
Like sports are my life.
I mean, it's been my identity and mental health and physical health all my life
(02:18):
has just revolved around sports.
I would say I'm a multi sport athlete.
So my main sports were racket sports when I was grown up,
then transition to a lot of basketball.
Basically, when I started doing medical school,
I kind of lost my sports and went into more solo type sports,
(02:39):
a lot of climbing sports and rock climbing. Right.
So rock climbing became a big, huge part of my life for four years.
And that kind of naturally evolved into the sport of Ninja Warrior,
which I do now.
So, I mean, I've never been I've never gone, I think more than four or five days
(02:59):
without either a workout or a sport.
I mean, now I'm 43 now.
I still train probably at least 10 hours per week.
Easy when my kids go to sleep.
So when my kids go to bed, I go in the gym,
build a pretty intense Ninja Warrior gym in my garage
so I can train on obstacles right there.
(03:20):
And the rest of the time is spent either on a bike or running or allysthenics.
But yeah, sports has been there for me throughout my life
and a big part of who I am.
How about the diet stuff?
Were you good at eating along the way?
Was that you or were you the normal?
(03:40):
I have a pretty bizarre life story here where I mean,
raised by a single mom with my twin sister, my older brother,
ate a super ultra processed diet while growing up
because that's all we could kind of afford.
Just happy to have something on the plate.
Now, my story can be summed up as a little bit of an aha moment.
(04:05):
I had multiple chronic diseases, asthma, migraines,
GERD.
I had something called phonic idiopathic or tachycardia,
which is a medical term for you have hives and we don't know why.
And then four episodes that were my game changer,
a condition called exercise induced anaphylaxis or cholinergic angioedema.
(04:32):
Basically, in a nutshell, during a basketball match,
I had my faith swell up.
My fourth episode put me in a hospital with an EpiPen and an IV thinking I was going to die.
I mean, you can imagine this being devastating for an athlete,
being told that when your body temperature rises or you exert yourself too much during exercise,
(04:52):
you're going to develop hives, then angioedema, which is swelling.
And if it continues to get worse, you develop anaphylaxis.
Well, I mean, that's the type of reaction people would get when they're allergic to peanuts or
seafood. So I was heavily medicated for years with puffers and medication.
So I would say that's when I started.
(05:15):
At some point, I was nodding during a conference.
I remember looking at my colleague and apologizing, saying,
look, I'm like on three max dose antihistamines right now, just to control my rashes, my antihistamines.
I'm on puffers for my asthma. I was in a rough place.
And that was probably my rock bottom where I started thinking, all right, the kind of
(05:40):
modern medical system is not really helping me right now manage my symptoms.
And when it really changed is when my first born daughter, who's 12 now,
was born with the same conditions as me.
So asthma, eczema that got infected, I was in a rough place.
Asthma, eczema that got infected. She was on multiple courses of antibiotics.
(06:04):
Her tachycaria hides on her body.
And I remember the one of the first times that we drove her, like we had an emergency
asthma attack as a doctor, I was trying to manage it at home with the puffers we had.
But at some point she was in distress.
And I recognized that, okay, we need to get her to an ER right now.
(06:26):
After that stint, I mean, it's a weird feeling being a patient in the medical system when
you work there. And even more so when your colleagues are putting IDs on your arms and
giving you medication for your anaphylactic reaction, right?
So I decided to start looking at lifestyle medicine, including evidence-based nutrition.
(06:53):
Everything seemed to point towards less meat, less processed foods, more healthy plants.
That led me to find out about kind of the pioneers of the plant-based movement.
Within about a year, transitioned to a whole food plant-based diet.
Never had a hive since my third month. Never took a med since.
(07:15):
Never ever had another episode of exercise-induced anaphylactic even during my
Ninja Warrior competitions where my pulse is in the 180s.
And then kind of that aha moment that was like many small aha moments in succession
brought me to get certified in nutrition from plant-based nutrition from the University of
(07:38):
Guelph, the first Canadian university to offer plant-based certifications.
And then from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, which promote a plant-predominant
dietary pattern, right?
So, and now I teach that now it's a huge part of my practice.
It's a huge part of why patients send me messages, ask me questions, come to see me.
(07:58):
I teach lifestyle medicine to interns that I teach.
And I've never looked back, never had another hive since.
So it kind of changed my life for the better, for sure.
These stories are so,
so both common, but also very seemingly little acted on because we all are sort of,
(08:28):
I think the question is like, are we trapped somehow by just the decisions we made to allow
for, you know, a predominance of if we optimize on the cost of a calorie being as low as possible
to make calories available, then the way you do that is highly processed foods.
(08:50):
We have to make a lot of compromises on the integrity of that food.
It looks like it, but it isn't it anymore.
It's in the groundwater with it was Roundup for a long time, which is glyphosate
was the food processing approach.
It's then what do we do to keep it in a package so that we can keep it longer?
So, and then you go on and on and on.
And we've all adopted that diet, but never really thought about the implications of that.
(09:14):
And the other day, I would love to take credit for this, but someone said it this way.
So simply, you know, if your entire body is just a bunch of cells and the way that cells are built
is with the nutrients that you take in.
And the only way that you can build a cell is with nutrients.
Because if you don't take in food or liquids, you'll die.
So the new cells will die, right?
Which is ultimately so then if you were taking in quote unquote, not good stuff in building
(09:37):
those cells on top of that, what outcome would you get?
Where is thinking about how would you build a strong cellular base?
And nature has sort of solved this factories have not.
And so what do we have to do to sort of bridge this gap?
Because we actually know the answer, but we're not living that way predominantly.
(09:59):
What you're feeling?
Are we making progress?
Is this just a knowledge problem?
Is it the corporate system? Like, where are we on this, Dr. Jules?
Well, firstly, when I started transitioning, I was surprised because I was like, well,
look at all this data out there talking about people reversing their conditions.
(10:23):
And I always say, look, I base my practice in peer reviewed, high level quality studies,
meta analysis and systematic reviews.
So my anecdote means nothing.
But when you look around and you have thousands and thousands of anecdotes that all say the
same thing, that's where it starts to gather momentum.
(10:45):
Now, I had the same issues as most people when transitioning, it was creating friction
with my life, right?
I mean, when you're going on vacation and you can't find anything healthy to eat, you
kind of have this mismatch between biology and our environment, right?
I do feel we're making progress, right?
Though, because I mean, we were 16 doctors where I work, all of them are on board.
(11:12):
We're literally, as we speak, building a lifestyle medicine intervention program that
we can share with our patients.
Now, 20 years ago, I would have said if it was that important, I would have certainly
learned about it in medical school.
But now I'm realizing that if I don't put any effort into integrating this in our medical
(11:39):
school curriculums, no one else will.
But so I think we're making progress in terms of spreading awareness towards plant
predominant nutrition.
Our Canadian food guide went plant-based, but they don't call it plant-based.
People don't like the term because people get defensive because you're challenging
(12:03):
culture and tradition and eating patterns are highly personal and really something intimate
that we keep to each other, right?
But I think we're making progress.
Countries are having plant predominant food guides that are evidence-based because we're
starting to remove the lobbying of these big companies and corporations out of the decision
(12:24):
making process, right?
We're having the first Canadian plant-based university level certification started two
years ago.
I was part of the first group of graduates.
We have the American College of Lifestyle Medicine that promotes plant-based nutrition.
Now in 170 medical residency curriculum sites in the US, we have one in
(12:49):
Canada.
We have our, hopefully, my site will become the second.
So we're just dipping our feet in the water, but I really think that we're gaining
momentum and I can't wait to see how the system changes and the culture changes around
lifestyle medicine in the next 10, 20, 15 years.
(13:10):
I really think even the next 5, 10 years, there's going to be a much more, like a bigger
explosion of healthy foods and awareness around the magic and miracles that can happen when
just people fuel with good whole foods, right?
So simple.
That's such an ironic statement, healthy food.
Yeah.
(13:31):
What would they be?
Like we would want non-health.
More on eating is not, yeah.
Right?
Exactly.
The thing that we have to bridge.
First, I love that you said, look, the medical system can sort of blame what we were
taught before, but we have to own it because what was decided 100 years ago, we don't just
own that anymore.
(13:51):
We're like, oh no, like we needed to move from a horse to a car, right?
I mean, like that was a change and same thing can happen in the medical system, but that's
the system.
It can't just keep blaming the people before.
So I love that.
That's great.
I think the piece that I also feel strongly about is that we need to, at minimum, start
(14:12):
to do a correlation or causality between what we eat and how we feel.
If you have a car and you went to a really crummy gas station and got some gas that was
really bad for your car and you started driving down the street, it would be knocking, like
this not getting the right kind of performance.
You'd be like, I'd never go back to that gas station again.
(14:34):
People know the connection.
Put bad gas in an engine, engine doesn't work well.
It's a well-designed engine.
It's the ingredient that goes in.
Then they get themselves and they put this food in and then we blame everything else.
We blame, well, that's got to be genetic.
It's got to be something in my history.
It can't be me or it's environmental.
It's not me.
(14:54):
It's not what I eat.
It's not what I do.
But until we really embrace that it is what we do, what we eat, how we live, that is how
come how we would feel, that is all the good data in the world won't really get us there.
We have to connect these two.
What do you, when you talk to both patients and people and you write about this, like
how do we think about that part of this?
(15:17):
Well, firstly, I'd say if the only gas station for the next 100 miles sells crummy gas
and you need to drive three hours to get good gas, I think the barrier is the friction.
Right.
And so when people are on the spectrum of change and contemplating change, it's always
(15:37):
has to be the expected outcome is going to justify the friction that I have to go through
to get there.
Now, it was simple for me.
Look, I had been living with chronic disease and multiple medications for decades, never,
and just, this is, I was just dealt a bad hand of cards and just lived my life and took
(15:59):
my pills.
Right.
But when someone, when my daughter got sick, it's going to threaten the things I love that
were outside of me.
I'm saying, I have to do something about it.
Right.
So the amount of misery and suffering that people will go through before looking inwards
and looking at their own lifestyle is quite impressive.
(16:21):
But studies show about 20% of people are contemplating are my either medical conditions
or the possible consequences of my choices.
Are they maybe related to my lifestyle?
Now, you can't make someone change who doesn't want to change, but you can help them
contemplate change.
(16:42):
Right.
And that starts with just kind of, well, creating awareness, but also making sure that
people who actually want to change have that tool, have these tools and that support.
And that's, I think that's where we're running into barriers.
Right.
Because as your analogy with gas station suggested, it's just very easier and instant
(17:08):
gratification for the possibility or avoiding that McDonald's or that crap food with the
possibility of maybe down 20 years down the road, not having a heart attack.
People have to kind of use their emotional brain of I want something good now versus,
(17:28):
and that often outweighs the rational brain of I want to prevent something bad later.
Right.
And we're such in that hamster wheel of going fast all day long and that people may,
I mean, they build their habits around what causes the least friction around them.
And obviously we're living in this food environment, which kind of here always nudges
(17:51):
you towards less healthy choices.
And the only way you're really going to say, I want to make the best choices for my health
long-term either you're really, really deeply emotionally connected to why you want to change
AKA I don't want to in my aha moment happened while rock climbing with my daughter, literally
(18:13):
saw someone in his sixties, rock climbing, like a, like a boss with his young daughter.
And I was like that, I want that to be me.
I want to be rock climbing in 20 years from now and rock climbing with my daughter.
And at the time I was not plant not fully plant-based and I was still kind of battling
(18:37):
this demon of what happens if I get a fifth episode of exercising, do kind of lax it's
and that's the episode that takes me out.
So I had this dark cloud hanging over me that motivated me.
Now, how do we help people motivate themselves when they don't, when they haven't hit rock
bottom, right?
Not everyone has that aha moment, but these people, we just need to kind of try to modify
(19:02):
the environment and make healthier choices easier and more accessible on a daily basis.
Now, I always say small changes that add up over time and incremental changes that kind
of add up and compound is probably the way to go for these people because not everyone
is as motivated maybe as us two of going full out 100% plant-based within a few months there.
(19:26):
But that's the challenge, right?
I mean, I have a group on Facebook of about 7,000 people that my small community that
are interested in just kind of learning more and a few thousand of those that are really
probably serious about making a transition, but there's such misinformation, conflicting
(19:46):
information online, people don't know who to believe, don't know if plant-based nutrition
is just a trend.
I mean, I can't imagine being part of the general public consuming that information.
It must be so confusing, right?
Yeah, you know, they completely agree in the community does help kind of content you produce
(20:06):
is very helpful.
I do find the irony of life, you know, so someone would say to you and me, don't tell
me what to do.
Like I don't want to become that, but they're happy to have Kellogg's and General Mills
and other companies in McDonald's tell them what to become.
(20:28):
Yeah, but they're not arguing.
I guess they're better marketers than we are.
I don't know.
Yeah, but that message is so subliminal that people just live their lives not realizing
the impact of that marketing and the placement of the aisles at eye level of your kids,
seeing that Lucky Charms cereal box.
And I mean, it's all habits that build because we're just unaware of our daily choices.
(20:51):
And we never take five minutes to be introspective and to question these choices, right?
Yeah, no, I know.
And, you know, I'm in that category where I'm in my 60s now and I'm doing ultra marathons
with my daughters.
And I don't know if there could be a better place I could have ended up with to have that
blessing to be able to get out there, have this experience, do the training with them,
(21:16):
you know, spend the time, you know, at some points, your kids will be old enough.
They don't need you every day.
And so I'm like, oh, but what if we can just go for a run in the park in the morning at
six o'clock and go for a seven mile run together and then, you know, have an hour that we wouldn't
have had together and we can chitchat away.
And so, and then we get to both do excursions and expeditions, but you have to build that
(21:43):
capability if that's what you want to do.
Otherwise, you know, I guess the best you could do maybe is just have food with them,
but no other experience.
So I do think that there is a medium and a long-term benefit, but an idea that you're
starting to solve for what the medical system really has not been able to really solve for.
(22:04):
You know, some of the diseases that we're trying to use all these medications to sort
of mitigate are actually solvable through food.
So let's talk for a minute, uh, cause I love, you know, you have such great articles, you
know, like whether it's traveling to Las Vegas and being able to eat well, or, you know,
(22:27):
do we need a pill if we can go exercise to which choices should they make in some of
the nutrients that I bring in?
Give us your sort of general kind of programmatic way of thinking about this evolution into
good eating and good living.
Hey, it's Nathan Crane, founder of Plant Powered Athlete.
And I want to thank you for tuning into the Plant Powered Athlete podcast.
(22:50):
And as a special thank you, I want to give you a 10% discount code on our plant powered
protein, scientifically formulated, super clean, organic, high quality plant powered
protein designed with health and performance and longevity in mind with three super high
quality adaptogens that have been shown to help improve energy, increase focus, endurance,
(23:13):
speed up recovery and help your body thrive.
So the 10% discount code, you can use the word podcast at checkout and you can get plant
powered protein at our website at plantpoweredathlete.com.
Thanks again for tuning in.
So if someone says, I give live events where part of the community, a few hundred people
(23:36):
come and they hear me talk about plant based nutrition.
And one of the most common questions is, I don't know where to start.
This is very intimidating, right?
So what I do is I talk about this spectrum.
So spectrum would be if we go from more disease promoting to more disease preventing, and
(23:57):
we would put food groups on a spectrum, we'd likely see ultra processed foods, red and
processed meats, other animal products like white meat.
And then we'd see fish, dairy and eggs.
And then we'd see old plants, which are fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds and whole
grains, right?
So I say, all right, the issue now is that people are getting 80, even worse, 80 to 90%
(24:21):
of their calories from either ultra processed foods and animal products with about 50 of
them being ultra processed foods.
And they're getting five or 10% from real food that grows from the ground, from a plant,
from a tree.
And an evidence based ratio would be 80% old foods and anything else.
(24:44):
So a lot of people, they find that much less intimidating.
So I'd say the lowest hanging fruit is just reducing the amount of ultra processed foods.
And they're like, how do we do that?
Well, sometimes it's as simple as making small changes to what you're already eating.
Now studies show that tweaking what you're doing instead of changing what you're doing
(25:04):
is much easier.
And very often we want to be very specific in what people change.
So instead of saying, I'm going to go plant based, I say, no, look at the meal that I
have to go, look at the meal that's the most easier, the easiest for you to change.
Maybe it's your breakfast because you have breakfast every morning.
(25:24):
You're not out of the house.
You're not vulnerable to the environment.
You're at home.
You have control to making yourself a breakfast.
And that could be if you're eating bacon and eggs, well, how about maybe oatmeal, right?
And if you're eating oatmeal, maybe soy milk inside instead of regular milk.
Maybe whole wheat bread instead of the white bread.
(25:48):
And on the spectrum, you have whole, you have white bread, whole wheat bread, maybe Ezekiel
bread, maybe sourdough bread.
Even bread exists on the spectrum, right?
So I say, just take a step towards the right side of the spectrum.
And that could be, for some people, is very intimidating to consider a plant based meal.
So I say, focus on what you're adding instead of what you're removing, right?
(26:11):
So if you look at what you're doing already, if you're already having a smoothie here and
there, maybe dump some Chia Flakes and Hempseas in it for some omega-3 and complete protein,
right?
So very often, the message to the general public, I'd say, make small incremental changes
and tweaks and swaps that get you closer to the right side of the spectrum.
(26:34):
But when I'm talking to someone one on one, say, tell me what you ate this morning.
Tell me what you ate yesterday.
So we can make swaps, right?
I want everyone to be 100% plant based.
I want everyone to be whole food, vegan, all the good things for the planet, for the animals,
for health.
But that's very, very intimidating because I remember when I started transitioning, I
(26:59):
didn't transition for ethics or for the environment.
I transitioned so I wouldn't have another fifth episode of anaphylaxis, right?
So when I started, I was just kind of starting with instead of bacon and egg in hand slices,
I can do oatmeal.
I'm not going to do steel cut oatmeal that I'm going to boil on the stove for 30 minutes.
(27:25):
I'm going to do instant oats and start with that.
Start with a little bit of maple syrup.
I start, well, now 12 years down the road, now I have whole sprouted oats.
I was able to graduate towards less and less processed versions.
And even food processing exists on a spectrum, right?
So even oats, you have the instant oats and you have the steel cut.
(27:47):
And the most important thing is to try to meet people where they're at and make small
incremental changes.
That's what applies to about 80 to 85% of people.
We'll see 20% of people say, just tell me what to eat and I'll do it.
Other people, you just show them the data about the prevention of chronic diseases.
And they're like, I'm so I'll change.
(28:08):
I'm going to go as plant predominant as possible.
And some people have to recognize that plant predominance or being plant-based,
that's an umbrella term.
Some people can eat a Mediterranean style diet and be super healthy.
Some people can go flexitarian and eat meat a few times a month.
If their overall dietary pattern is healthy, that's probably over.
(28:32):
That's probably okay for health, right?
So I think just starting by seeing where people are at, meeting them there and making small
changes or swaps and tweaks to what they're already eating is probably the way to make
it more sustainable for most people.
That's great advice.
I love that.
You know, the other thing as a piece of advice always is if you have something around and
(28:55):
available or don't have it around and available, that is a way to help yourself, right?
If you don't have the ultra-processed foods in the house, then you're not going to eat
them.
But if you did have some blueberries and strawberries and some apples and bananas,
then you're probably likely to eat them.
But if they're not there, you can't.
So sometimes it's buying them.
Now we hear that, you know, eating that way is more expensive.
(29:17):
And there's, of course, many perspectives on that.
One would be a lot more expensive to have to go to the doctor and spend thousands of
dollars on your deductibles than it would be to buy the food.
But, you know, at least in the United States, the Walmart is the largest grocer and they
are moving as many foods as they can to be organic and available.
(29:38):
And they do have a price points that are relatively reachable.
This is not whole food pricing.
And so it isn't that we're not having availability anymore.
There's, you know, thousands and thousands of Walmarts around.
So we can get access to the food.
And if we put it in our house, that's a good starting point, I would imagine.
(30:01):
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, for an example would be if you it's funny how if I ask the kids if they want
fruits and veggies, they're like, no.
But if you put it on the table in a bowl or on a plate, I mean, they're going to see
it.
People like seeing vibrant colors with good presentation.
And all of a sudden they develop an appetite board.
(30:24):
And I think you mentioned something plant based on a budget or it's healthy.
It's expensive eating healthy.
I mean, if you're eating ultra processed plant based foods, I think it will be.
But I mean, a bag of lentils or beans or chickpeas or I mean, these things in tofu, I mean,
if you compare it to the meat that people are eating, I would argue that it's probably
(30:47):
even much cheaper.
And whole wheat pasta and legume pasta.
I mean, if you're eating ultra processed foods from the health section of the grocery store,
which are organic and GMO free processed foods, that's not the type of plant based diet I'm
necessarily promoting to my patients.
(31:07):
I mean, a bunch of bananas and apples and oranges and berries.
If they're out of season in Canada, they can get expensive.
But I mean, have a bag of frozen veggies and produce in your fridge.
There's I think the whole thing that it's expensive is blown way out of proportion because
I think my grocery bills are actually much lower now than they would have been considering
(31:31):
inflation when I was a mediator.
Right.
Yeah, I think that back to your point in the beginning, which is data.
You're an evidence based guy.
You look at the data.
You're not just going off of I like it.
You know, like, well, I could just try that, but I'm going to read all these papers and
(31:52):
figure out what I should be doing.
I like that.
Another part of this is the movement piece.
Of course, you know, for everyone who doesn't know Ninja Warriors is like an obstacle course
for adults, really, in a sense.
You know, it's a fun thing.
It's about body weight strength and it's about building up resiliency in the system
(32:15):
because it is a lot of strain.
We're not going to lift hundreds of pounds or movement of you said running and biking.
How does the movement piece integrate in your mind relative to the eating as well?
Well, firstly, what I noticed one of the first things is that my recovery just you're eating
(32:39):
an anti-inflammatory diet, right?
Now, if you look at inflammation as normal part of exercising, the inflammatory response
is great acutely to help with adaptation, but you don't want to be chronically inflamed
and you want to recover quickly.
Now, if you look at the top foods, the top 100 foods in terms of their antioxidant content,
(33:03):
they're all plant foods.
Okay, their spices, their berries, their whole grains, their nuts and seeds.
If you're eating a plant predominant diet made up of all these foods, it's obvious that
you're going to be able to recover sooner.
You're going to be able to train harder.
You're going to be able to train more often.
So for me, the and if you've seen Ninja Warrior, it's a high impact sport.
(33:27):
I mean, we're a lot we're doing Laches, Bar Laches for 8, 10 feet with your joints being
stretched to the maximum.
So you have to have a huge foundation of strength underneath that.
I wouldn't recommend someone to just try Ninja Warrior without a solid foundation of calisthenics
and bodyweight training.
(33:47):
But I really give credit to my diet on being able in my 40s to train anywhere from 10 to
15 hours of hard training and recovering enough to do the same thing the next day.
I mean, obviously my VO2 max improved when I ran my first few marathons.
(34:12):
I always give the example that I used to require taking puffers before my 5k runs.
And my first half marathon was ran sub two hours without using puffers at all, which
is something that for me was mind boggling running in the 20, 25 Ks without needing my
(34:34):
asthma inhalers.
I mean, so and I would have never been able to do that without having experiencing highs
or tachycaria back in the day.
So I think not only does an anti-inflammatory diet help promote more efficient movement,
more efficient recovery and better endurance.
I mean, for me, I was hindered by my chronic medical condition.
(34:58):
So it took care of my eczema went away, my asthma went away, things that would have
absolutely get triggered by any type of physical exercise and movement.
So I feel I have my diet to thank because I've been a lifelong athlete, but I've been
doing things in the last five, seven years that I would have never imagined possible
(35:21):
before going on a plant based diet, whole food plant based diet, just because of the
amount of the speed of which I recover in comparison to in my early 20s.
Right.
Yeah.
I think my longevity in this sport has a big, big part to play is the diet.
Yeah.
(35:41):
It would be at least I don't like the word impossible, but let's just use it for a second.
I think it would be impossible to imagine that, for example, if I told you what, you
know, I set out to do this year from a physical exercise point of view, that you would believe
that you could get there, but to do it in a way that it isn't creating the normal response,
(36:06):
which is I got injured or something like that.
So, you know, to run 3000 miles is about averaging eight miles a day.
You know, I'm doing 150,000 pushups, which is 450 a day, 30,000 pull ups, which is almost
a hundred a day, and then 300 crunches a day.
In addition to, you know, still riding my bike almost 2000 miles.
(36:28):
And, you know, at 64 years old, it's not, it's time.
I would say it's not hard.
Like it's, it's, I know it's an effort.
I know in like seven days I say, Oh, can I do the hundred pull ups?
In under 10 minutes, you know, can I put some speed into that?
And like, but, but all that foundation isn't because I was some privileged Olympic athlete,
(36:53):
right?
This is about all the other choices that all build up towards that.
And I'm not sure anyone wants to have those goals, but if you did, you could get there.
You can get there by sort of the foundation that you build to the point you make.
The system actually responds very well.
When it's healthy, the mitochondria continued to grow muscle growth happens.
(37:17):
You know, I don't need Ozempic.
That's for sure.
Like, cause I can barely keep the weight on.
Yeah.
And so, but this is just eating, sleeping, exercising mindset community.
This is like, that's it.
That's the biohack.
I mean, how do you feel about that?
(37:37):
Is it like, if you said, oh, I'm 42, whatever you said, 43 years old, and you had 20 years
from now, you could do the same if you put yourself on a plan to get there, that would
be pretty exciting.
Like, and well, in addition, I ran a hundred mile race to 200 mile gravel bike race this
year, did a 50 mile race, a 30 mile race.
Like, you know, the recovery is fast.
(37:59):
Like, how does that happen?
Like I'm asking it in a sort of a leading question way, right?
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's a tough question to answer because let's say that you look at why aren't
people doing these things in their 16, 17 and 80s because most people have chronic diseases
(38:24):
that have played their existence up to that point.
And I mean, we know that about 80% of chronic disease are causally and directly linked to
the lifestyle you live, right?
So the reason you'll be able to do that in your sixties and seventies and eighties, and
hopefully me as well, is because we'll, our lifestyle will have made it so that we've
(38:47):
avoided all these, our top killers, right?
We've avoided auto-immunity, inflammation, hypertension, cholesterol, diabetes, heart
disease, cancer, right?
So that's why, I mean, your muscles are made to move and they're made to do these things.
So for me, it's not a surprise that I have some patients here hiking in their eighties,
(39:10):
hiking mountains on predominant diets.
And I'm not surprised because they've avoided the common conditions that cause like loss
of health span and lifespan.
I, it's difficult to imagine because about, I mean, over 70% of the population is not
(39:30):
over 70% of the population is either overweight or obese.
So obviously if you're able to run 10K at a lightning fast speed in your fifties, it
appears like a big deal because most people are not doing that.
Most people are coming to see me on a daily basis, right?
But I mean, if you eat a diet that's anti-inflammatory, that supports gut health, that supports your
(39:54):
microbiome, your microbiome produces these same compounds that very often we extract
and put into medication.
I mean, yeah, you're, you're just food is medicine, right?
But the dose matters.
So if you eat healthy food and you do exercise and you sleep well, you must be doing it.
You have to be doing it in a dose that will help you thrive.
(40:17):
So you talked about biohacks.
I mean, I just give a live talk to 200 people about two weeks ago on, it was called everything
in moderation, stop stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
I have patients sending me messages saying, what do you think about sauna and cold plunge?
I'm like, yeah, I use these things.
(40:38):
I love these things, but they're right at the top of the pyramid, right?
These things will improve performance by five to 7% where, where good sleep hygiene reduces
mortality by something like 300%.
I mean, you're not comparing.
So if my patient comes to see me and says, I'm going to start taking creatine for muscle
(41:00):
protein synthesis and endurance, but I'm sleeping five hours per night.
I mean, the takeaway there is that you're still in, you're still in debt.
You're still probably stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
So you need to get the foundation right.
And a lifespan and health span is not based in hacks.
(41:22):
They're based in daily choices that you make over decades that accumulate either in the
right direction or in the wrong one.
There's no, there's no hack.
There's no secret.
It's work and it's believing in why you're wanting to do it and to try to change your
environment and mindset so that your choices don't create much friction with your life.
(41:45):
All simple concepts, but really hard to do if you're not connected to why you want to do it.
And if you're living in an environment that constantly nudges you in the other direction.
Right.
Yeah. No, I agree with that.
You have to, you have to make the breakthrough of this is your life to live and you should
live the life you want to live, not the life someone else tells you to, whether it's an
(42:08):
advertisement or bad advice or what's in a food aisle.
You know, the other thing, and it's just, all I am is sort of a case study.
I don't really care to even talk about it half the time, but in that 20 years,
I think maybe I was sick in the past 20 years once.
I got COVID.
(42:30):
I have been sleeping, you know, fantastically for the past 15 years.
You know, I still have a pretty stressful job by trying to run a company.
Someone called stress.
I don't find stress to be problematic, but they get all can come together.
That's the only reason I want to talk about it is that what you said is, look, if you
(42:53):
were to invest in your 401k, put money in when you're 30 years old, 40 years old, 50
years old, then you'd end up with a nice nest egg when you were 70.
Well, we can do the same investment in ourselves and our lives along the way.
So that when we turn 70, the nest egg is our vitality, you know, being actually resilient
(43:16):
to be able to spend time the way we want to spend time and that it isn't the state of
being old.
It's just some biological marker by time that we've constructed.
But it is the choices, you know, I didn't tell you this before, Dr.
Jules, but I've written down what I've done every day for the past 24 years.
And in that is this somewhat activity history of, you know, continuing to increase, you
(43:41):
know, what I do, which then sets the path for the future.
So it was incremental.
It was one push up, one mile.
Those were hard 24 years ago.
But this is my point is this is what our system will respond to do.
It's when treated well, it becomes stronger and better.
It's irony of all of this body wants to heal.
(44:04):
Right.
If you just can kind of can remove the things that are pro inflammatory and increase the
thing that are anti inflammatory, it's the same thing as your 401k that that anti inflammatory
cushion just builds with time.
And absolutely, absolutely.
You can age gracefully and do amazing things into older age.
(44:27):
Yeah.
Let's talk about protein for a second.
Of course, yeah.
Or at Planned Paradise, we think about protein all the time.
This is building block love for your a little bit deeper.
But I'll tell you, you know, that one of the things that I found in the dietary change
was starting a day with protein versus carbohydrates changes the appetite profile.
(44:49):
It makes you stronger and feel better.
And it sort of sets you up for activity as well as just healthy living.
How do you think about the amount of protein, the timing of protein, the form of protein?
Where are your thoughts on that right now?
Yeah.
Our point, so number one, if we were just talking from a non athlete perspective, but
(45:11):
just a general population perspective, increasing protein will help preserve muscle mass, but
it's most satiating one other than fiber, other than fiber and very satiating macronutrient,
where it just helps promote like weight maintenance.
Right.
So I think that helps with appetite.
(45:31):
It has the highest thermogenic effect of all the macros.
And for some reason in the plant based community, people that are probably watching this now
have seen the RDA being promoted around 0.8.
Okay.
Now I disagree with that a little bit because if you look at the data,
(45:52):
there's absolutely benefit of being higher.
Okay.
So for sure, as an athlete, I'm in the 1.6 to 2 grams per kilogram camp.
It's helped me recover.
So the studies show that people recover faster, are less sore.
They maintain muscle mass, they maintain bone mass, they have less cardiovascular risk.
(46:16):
It's not about not only the protein, it's also about its source.
Right.
So people need to understand that protein comes in the package
and your body doesn't necessarily recognize whether these amino acids are coming
from animals or plants, but they do recognize what else is coming in with it.
Right.
So if you're eating all your 200 grams of protein coming from red meat,
(46:38):
well, the cholesterol, saturated fat, the heme iron, the TMAO that gets, I mean,
very inflammatory linked to fatty liver, increased cardiovascular risk, diabetes,
heart disease, cancer.
So, I mean, it's not about just the amount of protein you get,
definitely about the quality and the source of protein you get.
(47:00):
So, and then there's convenience.
Now, if someone wants to get all their protein and chickpeas,
they're going to be eating a whole bunch of chickpeas.
So for me, I do consume 99.9% of my calories through Whole Foods.
I use, I still use protein powder because it's absolutely convenient.
(47:21):
It's easy to integrate and it helps me hit my protein goal.
Now, if you're aiming for 0.8 grams per kilogram per day of protein,
I don't think you need, you don't need protein powder,
but I think if you want to go towards a more, and that's a normal,
there's a big difference between normal and optimal.
Okay.
So, if you want to optimize, I think average person should probably be
(47:45):
at least in the 1.2, 1.6 range.
And if you're an athlete and you really want to recover and perform at your best,
I think you should optimize around 1.6 or higher.
So protein absolutely was a big, a big worry of mine when I started
transitioning towards a plant-based diet, because I was an athlete long before
(48:05):
going plant-based.
So the, where do you get your protein was one of the few scientific articles
that I published.
And I think I published a part one and a part two,
just because I wanted to make sure that people understood that it's not difficult
to get protein on a plant-based diet.
You just need to know where to get it.
(48:26):
You need some, and you need to also to consider that you want to not just
survive, you want to thrive, right?
And you want to make sure that your muscle mass and your bone mass are as high
as optimal as you can so that if you start, stop being active into old age,
you at least try to keep that muscle mass there as long as possible.
(48:47):
Right?
So I'd say I'm a little bit against that 0.8 gram per kilogram per day RDA
that you see.
Definitely I see people should prioritize protein, not just for weight or appetite,
for thermogenesis, but for performance and recovery for sure.
Yeah.
I think we're, we're in a bit of a good moment for protein.
(49:09):
I think the awareness is coming up.
You know, we've been through some crazy moments, you know, the high carb, the this,
the that, and I think that, you know, still there's the, for everyone who
listening who doesn't know, there's three macronutrients there, fat and
protein and carbohydrates having, you know, I would have to argue with all my
(49:30):
friends, you know, this, you know, I don't believe in balance.
I believe in integration because I think balance sometimes has us, you know,
normalizing down rather than to optimal to your point.
Absolutely.
But in that we won't have a problem getting enough carbohydrates in a day, no
matter what we eat, that'll always.
Yeah.
In fact, that comes along, but you do have to focus on protein because it is a
(49:54):
little bit more unique, but available.
So yeah, I think there are a lot of people, this is one of those, you know,
myths of sorts, maybe we'll call it the old wives tales we might have called.
You can't get enough protein if you're plant based, you know, I don't know if
the industry has pushed that.
How many people come to you saying that?
And then, you know, how do you start to educate them about if plant based
(50:17):
becomes more important to you, that you're not going to lose out on your
protein quantity?
Yeah.
Well, so yes, it's absolutely a worry of a lot of people going plant based.
And I think that's all wives tales, old anecdotes, or I don't know where it
stems, but I can say that it's not backed in evidence.
And there's always that concept of protein being complete or incomplete
(50:39):
and plant protein being incomplete.
So it's so people think it's synonymous with inadequate.
Obviously, that's been debunked a long time ago.
All plants contain all essential amino acids.
And if you eat enough calories from a variety of plants, your body does the
completing by itself with the amino acid pool that circulates for a day or two.
(51:02):
So we've said enough about completeness of protein because that's been debunked.
Now, but if people equate going plant based as eating salads, then, yeah, they
might be protein.
They're probably still hit that point eight grams per kilogram threshold.
But and they'll survive.
(51:23):
And they won't be thriving.
So where I try to make sure that people understand is just making small
changes that don't create a lot of friction like brown rice, quinoa.
If you're going to have grains, I have a little bit more fiber and protein that
they're processed counterparts, making sure that legumes play a part in your
(51:47):
diet.
But soy products, soy milk, tofu, tempeh, and other things that are
protein, and make sure that protein is the star of the plate.
Right.
Now, if you do that and then you kind of decorate your plate around with other
plants, I don't think you'll have any issue in hitting an optimal one point
(52:09):
two to one point four.
But if you're not doing that and you're kind of just eating your white rice and
your and your cereal and you're calling yourself plant based, it might be
difficult to get to the higher amounts of protein.
I think that's why that's where protein powders come as a supplement that you
can just use to top off.
(52:31):
And it's funny how I have a lot of people.
I don't know where this came from either, but it's like protein powder has
a negative reputation.
Right.
People have no issues taking a whole bunch of vitamins and mineral
supplements.
But people forget that protein is a supplement as well.
We've extracted protein and we put it in supplement form.
(52:52):
Right.
Yes.
So other supplements are demonized, but protein powder is considered a highly
ultra processed food.
That's where I say processing exists on a spectrum.
And there's a difference between a Twinkie and a protein powder.
Right.
Even if they're both processed products.
(53:13):
So yeah, I mean, most important thing is to try to debunk these myths of
protein completeness and protein powder being ultra processed or unhealthy.
There we have data showing that people that use protein supplements typically
favor and like have a better cardio metabolic profile and they're healthier
and they maintain muscle mass and bone mass for longer.
(53:34):
So, I mean, people can argue with the data all they want, but I mean, it's
pretty clear cut that people that have higher protein intakes considering
that that protein source is a healthy protein source.
Yep.
Leaner meats, seafood, and even more preferably focusing more on plant
protein have less chronic disease and live better in age.
(53:57):
Right.
Yeah.
I think it's cute that Canadian pea protein has become a big item.
Right.
Canadians are growing peas and they have a whole market for it now.
Huh?
Yeah.
Yep.
Exactly.
And I mean, now if you open up the Canadian food guide, you'll see half of
(54:19):
the plate being fruits and veggies, 25% being whole grains and 25% being a
protein food group.
I don't know if your listeners are aware, but in 2019 we updated our
food guide in Canada based on science, all of it is based and we've removed
the meat and substitute food group and the dairy food group and they
(54:39):
replaced it with the protein food group.
Wow.
And if you open up the pamphlet, it says try to prioritize plant
protein, right?
So our food guide is plant-based.
We just don't call it that because that can rub people the wrong way.
Right?
Yeah.
It's sort of curious what we learn and how to unlearn to your point and then
(55:02):
have to relearn.
I think over time we'll realize we can argue anything if we want, but it'd be
hard to argue that nature hasn't sort of figured it out itself.
You know?
It seems to do okay when we don't intervene and we're the ones who are
messing up a long way.
(55:22):
So if we just follow good role models, which is nature and the food system,
and then the rest of animals who do seem to do pretty well, right?
They, some of them are a bit omnivore, but they all know some of these big
animals like the bison who can get to 2000 pounds can just eat grasses and
(55:42):
they're not strong and as rough and tumble as they come, you know, like talk
about.
So it works, right?
So I know we're getting close to your need to get back into the flow here.
If you were, you know, the first you've been giving such amazing advice, very
practical, evidence-based, also very much self-effacing in that, you know,
(56:06):
you went through this journey.
I'm so happy that you figured out your health journey because my gosh, when
we're in chronic pain, there is nothing that makes a day harder.
But when we feel good, some days I always remember like, when you really
feel good, just say to yourself, you know, I feel really good today.
Because when you don't feel good, you really focus on that and we take for
granted feeling good.
(56:26):
So as a good reminder.
Great point.
I like this question people ask me and I'm sure they ask you, but in a simple
way, if they said, if there's one thing I could change tomorrow, Dr.
Jules, what could I do tomorrow that I should repeat every day?
What would you just give that piece of advice to our listeners?
Oh, that's a great question.
So I would probably.
(56:48):
If I'd be to talk to the general public and and not to one person, I would be
presenting and people would ask me one, one change.
I would say, get rid of ultra processed sugars, we've eaten beverages.
There's probably the worst of the ultra processed foods that we have in our
diet that people are consuming.
(57:09):
Try to remove foods that contain added sugar.
If we just can do that, I think that's.
That's a big part of that 50% of calories, Canadians are in probably
Americans as well, 50 to 60% of calories on a daily basis are coming from
ultra processed foods with these foods.
Being the main culprit.
Now, if I'd be to talk to one patient, I'd say, what did you eat yesterday?
(57:33):
What do you eat today?
And I try to find where I can have the biggest bang for the buck.
And that would be trying likely trying to change either an ultra processed
food item or a ready to process meat and changing that towards a plant
source of protein studies show that if you can change animal protein for
(57:53):
plant protein, risk of cardiovascular disease and chronic disease kind of
plummets with every increment of calories that you increase from plant protein.
So I try to find where we can sneak in a new plant protein in people's diets.
Right.
And I hope that it can be something that's sustainable and that people enjoy
(58:14):
creates little friction with their lives.
You're able to do long term.
Well, that's fantastic advice.
Thanks for doing what you're doing and writing what you're writing.
If people want to follow you or hear more about you, what are good places for
them to take a look?
Well, there's my website, PlantBasedDrJules.com.
I also have the Dr. Jules Plant Based Podcast, which is something like 60
(58:39):
episodes.
I'm at the end of my first season and I'm on Instagram at Dr. Jules Cormier
and on Facebook at Dr. Jules Cormier on YouTube as Dr. Jules Cormier.
A whole bunch of free content that people can go download some recipe books and
some nutrient charts and tips and tricks to get people on their way transitioning
(59:00):
towards a healthier diet.
Well, that's great.
I'm sure we'll all be checking that out.
Thanks so much for your time.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome experience.
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