Ep. 99: Revolutionizing Health: Dr. Michael Klaper on Nutrition's Power to Reverse Disease

What if the key to preventing and even reversing chronic disease is already on your plate?

Dr. Michael Klaper shares why nutrition is still missing from medical education, how a plant-based diet can transform health, and what every doctor and patient needs to understand about food and disease. Drawing on over 40 years of clinical experience and insights from his new book Moving Medicine Forward, this conversation is both eye-opening and empowering.

You’ll learn:

• The link between diet and chronic disease
• Why doctors aren’t trained in nutrition
• How plant-based eating supports heart, brain, and long-term health
• Simple shifts that can improve longevity

Dr. Klaper's website and book can be found at:

https://www.movingmedforward.org/

Lecture: What I Wish I Learned About Nutrition in Medical School

https://www.movingmedforward.org/medicalschoollecture

This episode is sponsored by Grand Teton Ancient Grains

https://www.ancientgrains.com/

Free Shipping

https://www.ancientgrains.com/shipping-policy

Websites, Cookbook, Classes, and Merch

https://wellelephant.com/ecookbook/

https://www.agelikeabadassmother.com/

https://wellelephant.com/

ACE Plant-based Eating Course https://discover.wellelephant.com/ace-plant-based-eating-course-reg/

Shop Merch https://age-like-a-badass-mother-shop.fourthwall.com/

Follow us and reach out at:

Email: lauren@agelikeabadassmother.com

Facebook: @WellElephant

Instagram: @agelikeabadassmother 

https://www.youtube.com/@agelikeabadassmother

#DrMichaelKlaper, #PlantBasedMedicine, #FoodAsMedicine, #WholeFoodPlantBased, #DiseasePrevention, #ReverseChronicDisease, #LifestyleMedicine, #HealthyAging, #AgeLikeABadassMother, #PlantBasedHealth, #Podcast,

Transcript

0:00

Hi, friend. Are you ready to unlock the secrets to vibrant health? My guest this week is Dr. Michael Clapper. We dive into his groundbreaking insights on how a plant-based diet can revolutionize your wellbeing and challenge the norms of modern medicine. Discover the powerful stories and science behind his mission to put food at the heart of healthcare. So whether you're curious about nutrition or you're ready to transform your life, This episode is your gateway to a healthier future. This episode is brought to you by Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They're an organic family farm and on-site mill producing high quality grains without pesticides, herbicides, or glyphosate, just real food grown and milled with care. I absolutely adore their products. They offer ancient grains like einkorn, ember, millet, and rye, plus fresh flowers and traditional pastas. They're stone-milled, bronze-dyed pasta has incredible texture and actually holds onto your sauce. Learn more at ancientgrains.com and you get free shipping when you fill a box. Details are in the show notes. And now here's Dr. Michael Clapper. Dr. Michael Clapper is a pioneering physician with over 40 years of clinical experience known for his work in using nutrition to prevent and reverse chronic disease. His new book, Moving Medicine Forward, challenges the medical status quo and makes a powerful case for why food should be at the center of modern healthcare. You can find out more about him and his book at movingmedforward.org. Please welcome Dr. Michael Clapper. Hello, welcome. Good to be with you and your viewers. Thanks for the invitation. Of course, just in case my viewers or listeners don't know, I've actually interviewed you before. You're on episode three. So if they want to go and listen to how you came into lifestyle medicine, and I think we talked a lot about the benefits of soy and protein and blah, blah, you know, all that kind of stuff, just go to that one because we're going to try and cover some different ground today. So. em First, I just wanna start off by asking you some fun questions because I feel like you're making the rounds a lot with your new book and maybe a lot of people know some about you. But um let's start with some questions like, what's your favorite movie? my, I'm a big film fan. In recent years, it's gotten all taken over with action films and violence, uh but there's some thought provoking films. The one I saw lately is called the AI doc. And I highly recommend it. It's a very informative documentary on the realities of AI produced by the people making the AI and their concerns. So I highly recommend that one. It's a good one. That's good, mean, can you watch that just regular streaming platforms? films, it's in the theaters, but I'm sure it's going to be on Netflix. If you look for it, you'll find it. They want it out generally. So see, can you show to us? Okay. Do you have a favorite song? Oh my. uh I'm a classical musician fan and when I walk in through the forest and hum to myself, uh it's often the theme from Beethoven's Ninth and ah some Schubert melodies are really nice as well. But I hum the classical themes myself. really find them couple. Wow, wow. And so do you play a musical instrument? I used to play the clarinet and piano, but a hopeless amateur when it comes to that. I'm a fan rather than a performer for sure. Okay, so do you have like instruments at home or have you stopped playing? You do? piano and a small keyboard and my clarinet. so you do still play. When I have the time, feel it's stolen time. I feel guilty. I've got so much to do. I've got a to-do list down my arm here, especially when my wife is out shopping and I'll play her card out. that's so funny. My husband used to play the clarinet. think when he was in middle school, that was his instrument too. Yeah. gosh. um Do you have like a hobby? I mean, or is that your hobby? Well, when I was in college and I was an undergrad, I minored in astronomy and I loved the nighttime sky. It was just so beautiful and truthful and stunningly humbling. And now it's getting really exciting with the satellites and the space travelers they're putting up there. So it's fascinating to get even a better view of the Moon like we got last week. But I really enjoy astronomy and I'm an avid birder. I love watching the birds. uh distress as their numbers are disappearing, but I'm a big fan of the birds and so between the birds and the stars keeps me busy. It keeps me looking up very good. right. I guess that's why I've heard you talk about Galileo before, because you are, that's interesting. Okay, what have you said about Galileo for people who don't know? I commensurate with him. I'm certainly not on his intellectual level, but the story goes that. He invented the telescope. Well, he modified it. It was invented by other people. But he constructed his own telescope and turned it on the planet Jupiter one night in 1607 and saw something that changed his life, changed all our lives. Back then, the dogma was that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around the Earth. uh And the Catholic Church had a great investment in that view because if they're the greatest power on the earth, then they're the greatest power in the whole universe, et cetera. So they wanted to keep that dog by the way it was. But here's Galileo, he turns his telescope on Jupiter one night and he sees the planet and going around Jupiter, these four pearl-like moons, the moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. and they're beautiful to watch. You can see them move through the telescope. But he realized, good heavens, we are not the center of the universe. Here's four objects not going around the Earth. They're going around Jupiter. We are not the center of the universe. So he runs down to the court where the wise men and the scholars and the priests and the doji, they're already set up his telescope and says, look, we're not the center of the universe. And he expected this response of great revelation. what response did he get? Oh, they refused to look through the telescope. they don't want to see that because that blows their whole power game. And refusing to look through the telescope has become a clinical chestnut in science that people don't want to see the truth. Well, here we are, as witnessed in my book, my work, where we're trying to get medical schools and doctors to see that the cause why their patients are sitting in front of them with bodies that are overweight, hypertensive, atherosclerotic, diabetic, and what they're eating, it's the food your patients are eating. they don't want to see that. They oh have no training in it. It threatens their financial model. And on some level I can empathize with Galileo, what he felt like, what he ran into. I've got a similar uh obstacle to overcome here. So yes, I'm a big Galileo fan. My heart goes out to him. I take inspiration from him. Yeah, I mean, that really is the heart of what we're gonna talk about today. That's exactly it. I wanna do a little bit of background before we get into that. um For those who, I mean, I feel like a lot of people know this information, but for those who don't, um let's just start with a little bit of background. First of all, I know that um you worked at the Cook County ER. How did that affect you? Well, it was kind of a three-way bank shot, so I'll tell you the story in depth. uh I was a fourth year medical student at the University of Illinois in Chicago. And during that fourth year, instead of uh trying to date the pretty girls uh over here at the stewardesses that would come in on the international airport, uh I would spend my Saturday nights in the trauma unit at Crook County Hospital. I would see the worst of what humanity does to each other. The shotgun blast and the blunt club assaults and the stab wounds and the 38 Saturday night special pistols. And I would walk out of that trauma unit Saturday, Sunday morning, shaking from what I had seen. And I saw the effect of violence and made such an important, such an impression on me, I decided if I can't rid the world of violence, at least I can get the violence out of my own life. And so I made a point. of studying the philosophy called ahimsa, uh a Sanskrit word for nonviolence. And you can live a life with that as a guiding principle. And I took it seriously and I started reading the books of the Indian saints and Mahatma Gandhi about living a life of nonviolence. Well, I thought I had that one down until I became an anesthesia resident in Vancouver. And one night I'm out for dinner with a fellow resident and I'm pontificating about about living a life of nonviolence while I'm polishing off a porterhouse steak at the local Kegan Cleaver. And my friend looks at me and says, that's all very nice, Michael. But if you want to get rid of the violence in your life, you might want to start with that piece of meat on your plate. Because in satisfying your desire for the taste of flesh in your mouth, which is really what this is about, you are paying for the death of the animal and for the next one in line at the slaughterhouse. Well, I love animals. on a dairy farm caring for the cows and the chickens. I don't want to be paying for their death. And when he said those words, all the old rationalization sprang into my mind. Well, that's what they raised them for and the animal's dead already. But before I could get those words out of my lips, the little voice in my ear said, you know, he's right. He's right. And when I went up to pay for the steak dinner, I felt complicit with it in a crime because I'm paying for the death of these animals. Well, after that, there I was, that was the end of my meat eating and dairy followed shortly after that. And, and so I adopted a plant-based diet. I was also seeing in the operating room, what, what the standard meat-based diet does to people's arteries. And my dad died of clogged arteries. I know I've got those genes. So between. what I was seeing in the operating room with the clotting arteries from the standard diet. And what I knew in my heart from that night in the restaurant, that was the end of my meat eating. Well, my body loved it. Within 12 weeks, a 20 pound spare tire of fat melted off my waist. My high cholesterol went to normal. My high blood pressure went to normal. I felt great waking up in a nice lean body every day. And at that point, you can't unring the bell. You know, once you see it, then I realized why my patients in general practice were all getting more obese and diabetic from what they're eating. And so at that point, I didn't want to be an anesthesiologist anymore. I wanted to go back to general practice and help people wake up. So that was a major, my time in the trauma unit in County, drew me to the role of nonviolence and that in turn got me onto plant-based nutrition. and I became a plant-based doctor after that and then become the happiest doctor I know because my patients get healthy now. So, three-way bank shot from Thank You Trauma Unit at Crook County. You have to really help me along my way. man, I can't even imagine what that must have been like. you know, it's funny because I try not to post a lot of graphic things about animals because so many of those things come across my social media feed and it makes me, it haunts me. And you know, I already don't eat them, so I don't want to look at it anymore because I already know. But my friend said to me yesterday, my God, have you seen this video? And it was disturbing, you know, about what they do to the animals in the slaughterhouse. And I was like, I haven't seen this particular one. I have seen so many. And she said, and I've talked to this person before about not eating animals, because she always says she's an animal lover. And she said, well, you know, this is really getting me thinking now about not eating animals. And I'm like, my gosh, well, maybe I really should be posting that kind of stuff. But I don't know. What do you think about that? What are your thoughts? I mean, people do risk their freedom to get these videos because it's illegal to show what goes on in a slaughterhouse, because if we saw it, they'd be losing customers. I mean... Indeed, I'm sure you know Paul McCartney's famous statements that have slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegetarians. mean, if people really saw about what it takes to turn those beautiful, innocent animals into that piece of flesh on their plate, they would have the same reaction. So how do I feel about those videos? They have a role. The truth is the truth. And they're most valuable for people who are totally new to the idea. And if it helps, if it shocks people, good. them move along to a plant-based diet. I've never heard a carrot scream. I've heard a calf scream. I've heard a cow scream. I've never heard a piece of broccoli scream. You know, if they want to get the violence out of their life, then those videos have a purpose. If you're already vegan, if you've already been through that, you read the books, seen the videos, there's no reason to put that in front of your eyes again. And so, so they're kind of the entrance fee that people embarking on their plant-based journey kind of have. to pay unless they're just focused on their waistline and their cholesterol. Okay, fair enough. Whatever it takes. know, he said there's, you know, there's three doors, if you will, that people come through to adopt a plant-based diet. One is their health. It's the definitive treatment for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, it reverses these conditions. But it also is there are people who just don't want to the animals for what it inflicts upon them. And finally, the folks who care about the planet, when it dawns on them, when the word gets out that growing all this animal flesh is why we're cutting down the forest, why we're sucking the rivers dry, why the soils are eroding from growing all this animal flesh. they say, I don't want to contribute to the degradation of the planet. All roads lead to Rome. All those doorways lead to a plant-based diet. Fine with me. As they say, the cow doesn't care why you don't eat her. You see about just do it just get out of it. So they have a role, but but if you're already there, you don't need to stir up your night's sleep thinking about new images of that horror. it's terrifying. so yeah, it just got me thinking like, this is what it takes. Like maybe I do need to show one every once in a while, you know? All right, yeah, yeah. Okay, so can you explain what happens inside of our bodies when we ingest something like a cheeseburger and fries and a milkshake versus what happens to our bodies when we eat a bowl of brown rice and beans and kale and tofu and veggies? Oh my, that is such a profound question and the answer is large and complex. I'll try and bring it down in terms, but it is so profound. when one changes their daily food stream from one based on animal flesh, so bacon eggs for breakfast and cheeseburger for lunch and chicken for dinner, dairy, that's your basic food stream. And you then, for whatever reason, your own cholesterol, the animals, whatever reason, you change to a plant-based diet. The change you have created in your body from going from an animal-based food stream into a plant-based food stream is so profound that it changes the entire physical of every system in the body. So let me quickly run through that. When you bite into that cheeseburger, uh yes, there's a piece of meat and cheese in there. So a whole bunch of saturated fat flows through your arteries. It makes you more obese. It fans inflammation. uh It causes disruption of many enzyme systems through the body, but also along with the saturated fat and the cholesterol, and this is oxidized No one eats raw meat. So the very act of grilling the burger, broiling the steak, frying the chicken oxidizes the cholesterol in the animal's muscle. So when you're biting into that chicken flesh or uh the burger, you're getting the oxidized cholesterol, which is far more likely to cause plaques in the artery walls. So saturated fat, comes with oxides cholesterol, but also the... uh uh The animals in the feedlot are fed bushels of grains that are sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. uh And uh they're given hormones and antibiotics as growth promoters. All these bio-concentrate in the animal's flesh. When you bite into that burger or the chicken wing, ah you're getting all the concentrated toxins that the animal was fed during its lifetime. Plus there's this issue now of microplastic. Well, first of all, you don't have to give antibiotics to broccoli. And when you steam broccoli, you don't create oxidized cholesterol and free radicals, et cetera. So again, the plant kingdom offers a much safer kind of food. There's this issue of the microplastics that are concerned. The oceans are filled with everything from floating plastic bags to the fish nets that the commercial fishermen cut loose. that are made of polypropylene, polyethylene. Out in the tropical sun, the sun beats down, these plastic age, they break up in the storms to tiny and tiny little pieces of plastic that are taken up by the small fish, the sardines, the anchovies eaten by the bigger fish, then the tuna and the salmon. So the people who eat the fish get these microplastics. They are showing up in our brains, our arteries, our heart. We don't know what, all that they but none of it is good. They release carcinogens, they stimulate blood clotting. So that's an issue if you eat fish, but the people who don't eat fish are, well, I'm safe, I don't eat fish. Not so fast because it turns out that only half the commercial fish catch is sold to restaurants and supermarkets to be eaten as fish. Half the commercial fish catch is ground up and added to animal feed as a protein. extender. So it's added to cattle feed and chicken feed and pig feed. And so that accumulates in those animals flesh. So as you're biting the burger and the chicken, you have the microplastics are coming in. So that's in the meat. ah cooking the animals uh flesh, as I said, uh creates free radicals that rip electrons off your DNA, off your genes. Again, steaming broccoli doesn't create that. There's a whole list. If people want to see the effects of eating a meat-based diet, go to our website, movingmed.org. And there's a video there that I show to them, that's a lecture I give to the medical students. Called what I wish I learned in medical school about nutrition and in this video You'll see the entire list of what floods through your tissues with every meat based meal I call it the red tide and it's it's salty and sugary and oxidizing and and causes disruption of Enzyme systems throughout the body and it's one reason we wind up Obese and diabetic and hypertensive and kind of from this toxic food stream. Well when you shift to a plant-based All those molecular marauders, disappear. And now every salad, every vegetable soup, every plate of steamed greens, floods your tissues with phytonutrients that promote tissue repair with antioxidants that neutralize free radicals that give the chemical message to your tissues of shh, calm down, everything's okay. And it's a high water content diet from all the and salads so the blood is less viscous, it's more watery, so there's more free flowing blood that surges through the capillary beds of your brain, your heart, your kidneys, bringing these nutrients to your tissues even more effectively. The magnesium and potassium in the plant foods works their way into the walls of the arteries so the arteries dilate a little bit. That creates a tremendous increase in blood flow through the capillary beds. throughout the body. On every level, the food stream is different, the hormone levels, the cows and the dairy are all pregnant now. They've genetically modified the dairy cows. So their milk is, they're sucking milk off large pregnant bovines. The milk's full of estrogens that give women breast lumps, give guys man boobs, give them prostate cancer. Well, those disappear. And so weight loss becomes easier. The chances of developing these hormone-driven cancers go down. oh It heals tissues throughout the body. So that change in going from an animal-based food stream to a plant-based food stream is so profound. People need to take advantage of that and the doctors need to know about that so they can feel confident in urging their patients to adopt this kind of diet. And it forces the doctors to learn a skill that I was never taught in medical school called de-prescribing. You got to get these patients off their medications because their high blood pressure comes down. If you keep them on those potent medicines, they'll stand up and pass out at you from low blood pressure. The patients were taking insulin for type 2 diabetes because their insulin receptors are all clogged up with the fat they're eating. Well, the whole fruit plant-based diet is naturally low in fat, so their insulin receptors open up. on a plant-based diet, their own insulin works fine. And if they keep injecting insulin, they will have dangerously low blood sugar. So you gotta learn how to stop the insulin. So there's an art to getting people off these medications. because they turn into normal, healthy people right before your eyes, it's the most exciting transformation in all of medicine, which I'm trying to communicate to my colleagues here. So I just like, what changes when you go from an animal-based food stream to a plant-based food stream? Everything is physiology and that allows for these wonderful health transformations that we see when people adopt that kind of diet. mean, yeah, and you talked about just, you touched on diabetes that people think, people always think that's disease of like carbohydrates and sugar. And you just said it's fat, it's fat clogging up your insulin receptors, right? I mean, it's, yeah. people think diabetes, sugar, sugar, bad sugar, bad carbs, low carb diet. Well, when you go in a low carbohydrate diet, you got to get your calories somewhere. What takes this place? Fat. It goes on a high fat diet. And as our vaunted secretary of health and human services, I was proud to declare we've ended the war on saturated fats. Well, you're going to find out the hard way that saturated fats not only fan inflammation, But they clog up insulin receptors. You're going to see an epidemic of type 2 diabetes here. But the glory of plant-based diet is a reversible disease. We're taught the opposite. Once on insulin, always on insulin. As I said, not only can you get them off, it's when you have to get them off. the secret is to cut back on the fats in the diet. You need some fats, but get it out of olives and avocados. and walnuts don't pour a lot of glass bottles there. cutting back on saturated fats, open up the insulin receptors and type two diabetes goes away. No one ever told me that in medical school. It's a reversible disease. I wish someone had told me that, but it's one of the many benefits you get from adopting a whole food plant-based diet. So the answer is not low carb, it's low fat to type two diabetes. Okay, I want, I mean, I want to talk about your book and why you wrote it because it just seems like, well, it's like you said about Galileo, they're refusing to look through the telescope. Why, I mean, I know why, and also I read your book, but um I know why, but like, why? Why won't they look through it? And also, I think you brought up something really valid in the book. If, we do go to teaching nutrition in medical school. What nutrition do we teach them? So yeah, can you answer those two things? Why won't they look through the telescope and then how would we decide what would get taught? Oh, profound questions. Thank you. Well, two aspects there. Why don't doctors know anything about nutrition? know, the haunting cry I hear from patients, why does my doctor know what to tell me to eat? ah Well, there's layer upon layer of betrayal of our patients when it comes to medical school education. Nutrition is barely mentioned in all four years of medical school. ah And when you do get an hour-long nutrition, it's about scurvy or berry-berry diseases you're never gonna see. So it's not taught. ah But when I mentioned this to my doctor colleagues, they say, listen, I know anything about nutrition. I don't have time to do this counseling. I don't get paid to do this counseling. so the... for the practice of medicine has become sclerotic, has become fibrosed. And we never ask about the patient's diet. They say, I don't know what to ask my patients. And if they told me, wouldn't know what to do about it. So we never even ask about it for one thing. Plus it's a threatening message. The idea that the American diet is the driving force behind the obesity, diabetes, et cetera. uh It challenges the model of disease that most Doctors are, it's all genetic. It's all the stress or whatever. that challenges a model of disease. uh It challenges their uh practice model. And that in my book, I'm advocating, you know, for the doctors who say, listen, I don't know anything about nutrition and I don't have time to do the counseling. My message to them is you don't have to know anything about doctors. There are plant-based dieticians now who will happily do that counseling for you. You need to find one. and set up a referral uh relationship. So after you see your patients say, want you to contact Ms. Jones. She's going to talk to you about what to eat. She's going to show you videos. You eat like she's telling you in her plant-based instructions. You come back and see me in a month. Let's see if you're not leaner and healthier. You know, that's how medicine should be practiced in the 21st century. that, you know, pulling the dietician onto the primary care practice team. they don't want to do that. And finally, of course it challenges their financial model. If we stop doing so many coronary bypasses, there are going to be less money paid to the surgeons, et cetera. And they don't want their golden goose threatened anyway. So these are the big factors. in fact, there's other layers that one reason that the doctors aren't taught anything in medical school is that who's making up the curriculum. uh Certainly big pharma who's making all these these drugs to treat the symptoms of disease. They don't want that golden goose threatened anyway. And they're the ones who fund the research studies and what studies are gonna fund that show that their drug works. And so that's what the medical students are shown. And so they get what I call pharmacosclerosis setting in their brain. They think that drugs are the first thing to reach for when it comes to helping your patients. And then Big Ag, the meat and dairy industry, they give millions of dollars to the medical schools and they shape up some of the, they have influence as far as what is taught. So all of these factors conspire to keep this panoply of ignorance in place there. So doctors go through four years of med school without any real basic knowledge of nutrition, how to use it to reverse these diseases. So this is the mouth. we got to climb with our Moving Medicine Forward initiative, but it's the mountain worth climbing. We can't let things stay as they are. We owe it to the patients, we owe it to the animals, we owe it to the planet, we owe it to the kids who are going to inherit this planet. On every level, it's got to change. And medicine's becoming unsustainable. It's such a wasteful system. People come in overweight and clogged up and you do these bypasses. they get infections and they limp out of the hospital after generating a half a million dollar bill worth of care to do what? go ahead right to the fast food restaurant, start eating more cheeseburgers, more buffalo wings, to clog up their graphs again. That was wasted money. That money could have been used to send kids to college, put internet in everybody's house, fix the roads, fix the bridges. That money could be used to benefit everyone instead of just keeping the cycle of disease going. So on every level, the system has got to change. And this matter starting to teach the medical students about nutrition, which is why I'm going to the medical schools and giving the students this lecture on what I wish I learned in medical school about nutrition. So they come out as uh nutritionally aware doctors who know the power of a plant-based diet to reverse disease. uh Now this comes back to getting medical schools to teach nutrition and what will be taught. I was very pleased when Mr. Kennedy announced that he got 53 medical schools to agree to include 40 hours of nutrition as part of their standard medical school curricula, which is great. It sure beats the one hour or so that they're currently giving. sounds like good news. But the question is what exactly are they going to be teaching? Yeah, we saw his food pyramid, so. And the meat and the dairy guys have Mr. Kennedy's ear and that's what's going to get prominence. And I don't want the students getting inculcated that you need a carnivore diet and a paleo diet because those that's in packing your intestine full of meat three times a day is a recipe for an epidemic of colon cancer, of heart attacks, of strokes, of vascular dementia, of a leaky gut and autoimmune disease. uh That will be a the diet of disaster. And finally, uh gave a, when we talk about a new vision of nutrition education, I gave um a lecture in Seattle and afterwards the professor of surgery comes down and says, that's all very nice doctor. the, which, what court, the, uh curriculum that we pack into these medical students' heads during four years is so jam-packed with courses. What do we want us to take out of the curriculum to get in your nutrition course? want us not to teach in pathology? You want us not to teach anatomy? What should we take out so we can get your nutrition course in? But again, that's a misunderstanding of the process. I don't want them to take anything out. Nutrition is so fundamental to medicine. It needs to be woven into every course during those four years of medical school. The first two years of medicine, medical school, our basic sciences, anatomy, physiology. oh Well, nutrition should be in every one of those. The anatomy of the digestive system, the physiology of how the digestive system works, the biochemistry of how food is turned into energy. uh Pathology, all those diseases have a nutritional uh origin there. the first two years, nutrition needs to be woven into the basic sciences. And then the last two years as the medical student rotates through the various clinical specialties, you start with obstetrics, delivering babies. Well, nowadays the women are getting obese and developing type gestational diabetes. The kids are coming, developing so big you gotta do cesarean sections. From what they're eating, there should be nutrition rounds on every obstetric service. Move on to pediatrics. The kids are getting obese and diabetic. There should be nutrition rounds on every pediatric service in the hospital. Then you move on to internal medicine. Well, all those people there with the colloid arteries and the renal failure are there from what they are eating. There should be nutrition rounds on every internal medicine service. Surgery rotation. What are they doing in the operating room? They're taking out gallbladders and amputating legs from what their patients are eating. It should be woven into every aspect of medical education, they shouldn't have to remove anything. But that would produce a physician who came out knowing the importance of what their patients are eating. They would ask about it every visit. they would, you know, every, in chapter seven of our book, oh it's called A Day in the Disease Reversal Clinic. And in fact, every doctor's office should be a disease reversal clinic. But to put that idea in the doctor's head, I gee, I could reverse these diseases, that should be the awareness that every doctor should be graduating with. So that's the purpose of our book and our nonprofit initiative here of Moving Medicine Forward. If people want to see what we're doing and help us uh go to, as you mentioned, movingmedforward.org. so this brings us back to Mr. Kennedy. So what are they going to be teaching in those medical school curricula? And our organization has taken it upon ourselves. we are going to be riding herd and watching over the shoulders of every one of those 53 medical schools. We want to see the curriculum that they are presenting and we want to make sure that the science behind plant-based nutrition and its ability to reverse diseases are fully and honestly represented. I'm not saying that they can't produce shows, though I defy them to show me studies showing that a carnivore diet reverses atherosclerotic plaques and lowers high blood pressure and reverses type two diabetes. I want them to present their studies showing that, but I just want the plant-based studies honestly represented there. So that's our next focus of activity of our nonprofit organization. And the book is a help in that campaign. Yeah, and just so that people, we touched on this, but didn't really say it outright is that you're going to the medical students and it's not even through school. You're reaching out to like clubs and things and really trying to reach the students with this information so that they request it, so that they ask for it, so that they know it and they graduate with that. I think that's an important point. people say, well, how do you get into the medical schools? They don't want to hear this message. They're right. The administration does not want to hear this message. As I said, it threatens every level of their intellectual and financial model. So we take advantage of the fact that this wonderful organization, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, which promotes a plant strong diet, has interest groups in most every teaching hospital, of a medical school and many community clinics. There are what are called lifestyle medicine interest groups, LMIGs, the LMIGs. And these are medical students, medical residents, surgical residents, attending physicians who understand the importance of lifestyle medicine, getting to the root of disease and especially plant-based nutrition, which they don't emphasize as strongly as I think they need to. So what we do, we go right to the students, we get the name of this leader of the local element there. We contact her or him. We say, how would you like a lecture by Dr. Clapper showing you the science behind how a plant-based diet reverses these diseases? Because my lecture on mechanisms of disease reversal show here's how a plant-based diet lowers high blood pressure. Here's how a plant-based diet reverses that to diabetes. So they understand the science that this is not California woo stuff. this is official physiology. So they feel confident when they leave to start recommending uh plant-based nutrition for their patients with some authority. And hopefully they'll do it in their own lives and they'll get the benefit of that as well. So we go right to the LMICS and the students are so grateful. They are so open to this message that... uh that you can't unring the bell. Once they hear it, see it, it changes what they see the next day in outpatient clinic, that overweight diabetic patient. Now they understand why they are overweight and diabetic and what can be done about it. So it's an exciting time. And by the way, we're going right to the students and they're very responsive. It gives me great hope to see their response. That's just so smart that you're doing that. mean, because you can't start arguing with somebody who's been practicing medicine for 40 years, they're doing it the way they do it. And I personally am grateful for you doing this. I don't know if you know, but I reverse my heart disease with a plant-based diet because, uh well, I say, you know. Even my cardiologist says I reverse disease, but I still have that nasty LP little a and all that nonsense. But um yeah, I mean, you can't argue with it. I I had a high calcium score. had two kind of clogged up arteries. now I've had, I'll show you my Cleveland Heart Lab panel. Just everything that's in my control is in green except for my... uh Yeah, I know you I'm holding something up for those who are just listening. Yeah, everything that's in my control is in green except for my A. What is it the Apo B? That's a yeah, that's a little elevated. It's 115. It should be below 90. My LP little a is so off the charts. I probably should be having a heart attack this second. But thank you. Can I take a minute to talk about this? This is so important, especially for the vegans who may already be watching your program here. uh I used to feel, well, all you need to do is adopt a plant-based diet. Your arteries will magically clear up and everything will be fine. Vegans won't get clogged arteries. They won't get heart attacks. Well, 50 years of medical practice smartened me up on that and humbled me down quite a bit. It turns out that there is this molecule that our body makes called Lp lipoprotein Lp little a and it's a very genetically determined your the blueprints are in your genes in your liver and it churns out this type of cholesterol that has a protein around it a boby lipoprotein a That makes it a really aggressive molecule it burrows into the walls of the arteries it sets off inflammation sets off blood clotting Foster's plaque formation. And I thought, why does your body make this stuff? It says molecular assassin. Well, it turns out it's probably a holdover from our ancient caveman days when, cave woman days, when if you got your leg bitten by a saber tooth tiger, you want molecules in your blood that promote blood clotting. and inflammation is the first stage of healing. You want these molecules and it got us through those. ancient saber to tiger days and we were hitting each other. right, to pass on these genes. back then and when we're old days, we're hitting each other with battle axes, whatever you want to be able to clot your blood. So throughout history, it was a useful molecule. But now in the 21st century, it's working the opposite direction. It's setting us up for heart attacks and strokes. and, and vegans get it. I've got it. Mine is my LPLA is sky high. I've got some plaque in my arteries that I'm working to reverse. So even vegans, can't be to cocky cure. So what can you do is oh lower all the other particles in your blood that might be contributing to plaque formation. And that's where this other number, ApoB comes in. These are the total number of particles in your blood that can contribute to plaque formation. You want that as low as possible. That does respond to diet, but it responds to statin drugs as well. And it's not a matter of, if you've got high LP little a and you've got high ApoB, Of course of statins till those plaques melt away is not a sign of defeat You know, it's a matter of dealing with now with your biology whatever it takes But to all the vegans or to everybody out there get your LP for the lay checked in your APO bean number determined and that'll give you a true estimate of your actual risk of getting a heart attack or stroke and I'm so proud of you for encountering that and then doing what you need to do to lower down all those other numbers And indeed, that's how you reverse the disease. you. mean, so maybe I do need a statin. Dr. Greger just kind of laid it on me. He was not happy with me. But I mean, like I have no inflammation in my body. I have all my other numbers too. That was the other thing. I have no oxidized LDL, no ADMA. What is it? HSCRP all low, LP, PLA2, all that kind of stuff, MPO. So no signs of inflammation from eating this way, but still maybe I really do need to think about the statin because my LP What is it my LDL is? 116 now 113 Yeah, that's a great number, but lower is better. And maybe if you visualize you. on that for 11 years to get it that low. So I don't know if it's going any lower to tell you the truth. I might need a stat maybe. I don't know. But maybe just for a year or two to your arteries clean up, people can visualize the health of their arteries if they get an ultrasound scan of their carotid arteries or uh a study. uh as CT angiogram, they inject a little dye in the vein in your hand and then take a CT scan as it's going through your arteries, they can see the contour of the arteries. If you don't have plaque built up there, great. I don't have plaque in my carotid arteries, they looked. a great sign and maybe that's all you need to do and that you don't actually need a statin. ah But if you've got plaque in your arteries and you're doing all these other things, a year or two on statins might save you a stroke there. So work with your cardiologist because you're vegan doesn't mean you're bulletproof here. But get that cholesterol down as low as you can and you're doing a great job doing that. Well, I've been trying for 11 years, but. mentioning these inflammatory markers, uh HSCRP, myeloperoxidase, fossil lipase, these are enzymes in the body that are active when you've got active plaque building up and getting ready to soften, these numbers are up. But hers are way down. So it says she doesn't have a lot of actual plaque and they're not getting ready to rupture that set off blood clots. So she, there's a good chance that Lauren herself, doesn't need the statins, but that's between her and her cardiologist. Though asking a cardiologist if you need statins is like, you know, barber if you need haircuts, you know. trying to put me on a statin before he even gave me all those medical tests. And this is the second one I've gone to. It's, but anyway, maybe I need to find a. are clear and your inflammatory markers are low, you probably don't need the statin. So Lauren probably doesn't need it. But if your markers are up and your plaques, and you already show plaques, you probably should be on a statin for a year two or three till you can melt those plaques away. what about, how does that affect dementia? Like if. real issue. There's, the classic Alzheimer's dementia, but most of dementia these days is actually a vascular dementia where the tiny little blood vessels in the arteries clog up and you wind up killing off brain cells from lack of blood flow. And so there's even true Alzheimer's where these tau proteins and amyloid proteins get deposited. There's still a huge vascular component. When you look at the arteries of Alzheimer's patients, thicken and shrunk down. So all the way around, oh Dr. Hostler said you're as old as your arteries, a person's as old as your arteries. So this far in bad atherosclerotic blood vessel disease really raises your risk of dementia. So keep those arteries as open as you can. And that again, comes down to a plant-based diet. Keep eating your greens. um Okay, I have a couple quick questions from listeners. Somebody wants to know, is coloring your hair cancer causing? She had follicular lymphoma years ago, but she still wants to color her hair. Yeah, no? Wow, interesting question. You know, we live in a sea of carcinogens, know, from diesel exhaust and asphalt particles and pesticides and glyphosate and all this stuff and in the meats and the hormones. It's a carcinogenic existence we're living here. And we all have our individual resistance. Not everybody gets cancer all the time. Most people don't get cancer. So, but the Earth as we've created it, at this point is not friendly to our health, including our cancer risk. So she got a follicular lymphoma. it have anything to with hair dye? uh It may well be a virus. In fact, there are poultry viruses, chicken viruses that seem to promote lymphoma growth. And so she may have gotten her lymphoma from what she was eating, the contaminants, et cetera. uh Leah has been cleared that now she wants to color her hair. Does the hair dye increase risk of lymphoma? If I were her, I wouldn't press my luck at this point. When it comes to carcinogens, less is more. And oh so I can't say there's a one to, yes, hair dye causes lymphoma. No one knows that, but it's one more. piece of the one more straw on the carcinogenic camel's back if you will. Why put that on? There's probably now non-toxic vegetable based dyes that I would stay away from the peroxides and the oxidizing agents if I were her. So maybe the non-toxic ones might be okay. make an effort. Ask chat GPT about non-toxic paradise. You'll probably find it knows everything else. What do you think about these? um I don't know if it's pronounced NAD or N-A-D plus supplements. What do you? These are mitochondrial additives, know, like adding these to your gas tank, these additives that make the gas burn hotter there. uh your cells, Isn't it? Which makes me nervous. It's like if it's boosting up your good cells, can it boost up your bad cells? Lord, you are so wise in that observation. You know, as we say in biology, in any complex. system from the Amazon rainforest, your own body, where nature's doing her complex things. The outage is you can't do one thing. You can't do just one thing. We fight it medicine. I'm giving this child an antibiotic to clear his ear infection. Well, that's what you think you're doing, doctor, but you're also killing off the doctor in the child's gut, which is going to make the gut more leaky, which is going to allow food proteins to leak into the bloodstream, set off immunization. Everything sets off cascade. of reactions. So to say, I'm taking this NAD to help fix my mitochondria. I'm taking this calcium to make my bones stronger. Well, that's what you think you're doing, but the biology is so complex that you may well be setting off change of reaction, which as Laura says, how do you know you're not feeding cancer cells? How do you know you're not plotting mutations in your nerves? How do you know? Because nobody's done, the only way to know is to give people these supplements, and follow them for 20 or 30 years. See what happens to them. Does it increase their risk of death of brain tumors, whatever? And you need to know this, but no one's gonna do those studies. Nutrition studies are so difficult to do. You'd have to take a thousand people, put them all on the same diet every day for 30 years. Half you give the NAD, half you give a placebo NAD and follow them for 30 years and see who's still No one's going to do that study. People change, but they eat all the time, they travel, they're stressed. You can't get too comparable populations. And so we don't really know the effect of these. There's a lot of marketing, but just because it sounds like a good idea on the ad doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do to your body. So get your NAD boosters from green vegetables and fruits and all the wonderful foods in a plant-based diet. your body take a walk every day, get enough sleep, love in your life, laugh a lot, that's how you boost your NAD, rather than taking it morally. That's good. Well, thank you, Dr. Clapper. You're just so I could talk to you forever. And I do have a ton more questions. We'll have to have you back. em We'll have you back. But yes, everybody go check out movingmovingmedforward.org and read this book. It really is eye opening. If you want to know why your doctor doesn't know about nutrition, this is going to tell you why. And we didn't even cover the insurance companies, which I thought that they would be on board with this, but no, you cover why they're not. yeah, it's everybody else's, everybody is. One question, this is my last question. I don't think I asked you this before. I ask everybody, do you have a favorite health or beauty product? What do you do? You're 78 years old, is that right? Gorgeous. Wow. Do I have a health or beauty problem? No, I do. I'm just racing the changes that are happening in my body. I've got a bottle of moisturizing lotion that I put on my hand, the skin of my hands and my face every other night. That's about it. Get enough sleep is best by far. The best beauty, I think, is to get enough sleep, drink enough water, eat a bunch of raw foods, have a big salad every day, get out in the sunshine, laugh a lot, as much Loving your life as you can and you'll stay beautiful on the inside. That's all that matters. Thank you, thank you, Dr. Clapper, you take care, bye-bye. the best to you and your viewers. Thanks for the interview. Bye bye.