Top 10 Foods You MUST EAT To Preserve Health

A few years ago, I had a patient in his early 50s. He was a little bit overweight, but other than that, he looked fairly healthy. He had a busy career and no major complaints. But when I saw his lab work, it told a different story. His blood sugar, A1C, insulin, and triglycerides were all high. He had prioritized his career and had great success, but it was now on the fast track to diabetes and heart disease. And he didn't even know it. So I told him something you'll never hear from most doctors. I said, "You can turn this around, not with pills, but with food." So we made a simple plan, just 10 staple foods for a foundation, along with a lower carb eating style and a shorter eating window. And then within months, his energy was back, his numbers were normal, and his health trajectory had completely changed. Hello, health champions. Today, we're going to talk about the power of eating the right foods, when you know which ones work with your body instead of against it. We're going to talk about 10 different foods in no particular order. And the first one is extra virgin olive oil. I think of it as liquid gold, and I think it should be the foundation of just about any diet. It is the cornerstone of what's called a Mediterranean diet. And what they have found in those countries, especially Crete, is that the more the consume olive oil of a good quality, extra virgin olive oil, the less heart disease they have. And it contains something called oleocanthal, which is an antioxidant that can help reduce an inflammatory cascade involving the cox enzymes. It also contains polyphenols, which is another antioxidant that helps protect your LDL cholesterol from oxidation. And one of the most potent factors in heart disease is when we have our LDL particles yet oxidized and damaged, because then they shrink and they take on completely different properties than big, fluffy, healthy LDL. And the vast majority of the fatty acids, the fat in olive oil, is called MUFA, Mufas, or mono unsaturated fatty acids. And what they have found is that can even increase your metabolic flexibility. So even though there are some specific things in olive oil that can help you, the main thing that we need to understand is that in the countries where they have very low heart disease, they get about a third of their calories from extra virgin olive oil. Whereas in the countries like the United States and a lot of Western cultures, where we have high heart disease, we eat the same amount of soybean oil and high omega-6. And harshly processed so-called vegetable oils. So it's not that this is a miracle. It's just that they eat a real food, whereas we eat a damaged processed toxic food. Number two is grass-fed beef liver. And there are other livers that could be also very beneficial, but the most available and economical is probably beef liver. But try to make sure that it's grass-fed and preferably organic because the liver is a filter and a detox organ. So if the animal wasn't healthy, then maybe that liver isn't so healthy either. And liver is basically like nature's original multivitamin. So jam packed with nutrient that back in the day before they even knew what vitamins were, they would take basically cod liver oil and they would take liver. And they knew that these had some properties that had some things in them that were very beneficial. So today we know that it contains retinol, which is the active form of vitamin A. It has tons of B vitamins and it has the most bioavailable and usual form of iron called heme iron. And these nutrients help your body optimize your mitochondria's energy output. And obviously everything in your body needs energy. It's not just that you use some energy when you walk around and when you do things. You have a baseline energy requirement. All your cells are performing work all the time. And your mitochondria are the things that are producing that energy. So if we can provide nutrients to help the mitochondria do that better, we're kind of raising that whole baseline of function. And liver is rich in various vitamins and nutrients. Besides these, also that help enhance immune function. Number three is fermented vegetables. So what our ancestors used to call preserving food, we now know is also about preserving health. It's kind of a side benefit. And what happens when you preserve it is that you culture the vegetables and you develop a culture of bacteria, they're called probiotics. Pro means four and bio is life. So it's like four life. And they help populate and keep your gut healthy. And when we do that and we strengthen that gut bio, we also strengthen the gut barrier. And so much of our health depends on what's happening down in the gut. The absorption of nutrients, the level of inflammation, so many things are linked to our health. And when we have a healthy environment and a strong gut barrier in our guts, now that helps the toxins from the pathological bacteria to get out into the bloodstream. So that barrier shields us from that. So we end up with less endotoxins, less inflammation and also less allergies. Number four is garlic. And this is one of my favorite things to put in food. It's a flavor booster with benefits. And whatever the recipe says, I double it or quadruple it. I put garlic on just about everything. Sometimes I use a whole bulb when the recipe calls for a clove. And I do it for flavor because I love it. But it also contains a compound called allyson, which signals to the body to increase nitric oxide. And nitric oxide is another signaling molecule in turn that helps improve basal dilation, that signals the body to dilate the vessels. And what that does is it improves circulation and it can lower blood pressure. So we always regulate circulation by vasoconstriction and vasodilation. And when we eat garlic and we help produce a little more nitric oxide, we kind of push that balance a little bit in favor of vasodilation and improved circulation. But allyson is also antibacterial and it helps control the pathogenic bacteria. And thereby it helps maintain a healthy biome. So if you suppress the pathogenic, the pathological bacteria now, you're kind of favoring the healthy ones. You push that balance a little bit in your favor. And this helps reduce the gut-driven inflammation. Again, we're creating a better environment down there. And a lot of the inflammation in the body come from imbalances in the gut. And this allyson also supports endothelial health. And endothelium is the inside of your blood vessels. So that has a lot to do with how your arteries and your blood vessels function. So if they get a little happier, now you can also get some cardiovascular benefits out of that. Number five is nuts and seeds. And that's a group of foods. But I always have a hard time picking just one because then it's like that becomes so much better than all the others that weren't mentioned. So my favorite nuts are going to be pecans, walnuts, and macadamias. And among the seeds, I like the chia, the flax, the hemp, and the pumpkin seeds. And the reason I like those are that they are very widely available. They're affordable. But also that what they have in common is they're very high in fat, protein, and fiber. And they're very low in carbohydrates and sugar, especially in net carbs. Because by the time you subtract the fiber, they're all down in the low single digits. And generally nuts and seeds are very rich in minerals and antioxidants as well. Minerals like magnesium and zinc and selenium. And rich in polyphenols that are antioxidants. So what they do now is they lower inflammation. And like we've talked about so many times, the inflammation, the low grade chronic inflammation, is the cause of the vast majority of chronic degenerative. of the disease. So all the cardiovascular disease and the dementia and so forth, it is related to inflammation. So anytime we can lower inflammation, that's a good thing. When it comes to selenium, there's one nut in particular called brisil nut that is so rich in selenium that it quickly gives you what you need, but you also need to be careful. One to two brisil nuts per day will give you enough selenium to put you well above the daily requirement, but not above the toxicity level, because it is quite easy to get over the toxicity level. If you eat even just three or four nuts per day, now what's going to happen is it actually becomes counterproductive. And a lot of people develop sensitivities to brisil nuts because they just eat too many. A good example for zinc is pumpkin seed and they're a great snack food. The other seeds I mentioned like chia seed and flax, you're not really going to snack on them. They're kind of tough to get through and there may not be that tasty by themselves, but pumpkin seed is delicious, likely roasted, likely salted, and it has tons and tons of nutrients. And because nuts and seeds are so rich in fat protein and fiber and low in carbs, they help the body stabilize blood sugar. Whatever other foods you eat along with it are going to be absorbed slower and that will tend to stabilize your blood sugar and control those spikes. Number six is pasture raised eggs. And eggs are pretty amazing. I've done several videos about them with way more detail, but it's basically a nutrient packed superfood, especially if it's raised the right way. So pasture raised where the hens go outside, they get sunshine and fresh air and some exercise and they eat grass and seeds and bugs. Now they get so much healthier than the poor tormented creatures in cages that get fed synthetic foods and chemicals and hormones that the nutrients, the critical nutrients like essential fatty acids and vitamin D and many other things in there can be three to five times higher. So even though you're going to spend more money on a pasture raised eggs, you are being kinder to the animals and you're getting so much more nutrients for your money. So people often complain about how expensive pasture raised eggs are. And I agree they've gone up quite a bit, but eggs are still very affordable. So even if they're like 75 cents each, if you get like the really good ones, now you can still make an omelet with three of them and that's two dollars. So and if you eat even just scrambled eggs or some soft boiled eggs and you eat three or four, for just a few dollars, you basically have a whole meal. And it contains a number of things, but we'll pick a few here. So co-ling is something that fuels neurotransmitters. It's a component of acetyl co-ling, which is one of the most important neurotransmitters in the body. It also has vitamin K2, which is important for helping calcium go where it's supposed to go. If we're low on vitamin K2, calcium can have a tendency to get stuck in the arteries where we don't want it, whereas vitamin K2 helps get it into the bones where we do want it. And eggs are also rich in protein, which is very satiating. It's very filling and satisfying. And of course, it supports muscle. Now, one additional benefit with eggs is that the combination of amino acids in the egg yolk and the egg white, when you eat both together like you're supposed to. That's why they are included in the whole egg. Nature doesn't make those separately there together, so you can eat them that way. Now, you can utilize much more of that protein. A higher percentage of that protein actually becomes building blocks in the body. And part of why that's important is that if you can utilize it for building blocks, now it becomes protein. It fulfills its purpose. But if you can't combine it, if you can't utilize it, that extra protein is going to turn into glucose. So it's not like it's a terrible thing. It's not like there's massive amounts of protein that becomes glucose, but the more we can limit that, the better. And the higher the percentage of amino acids, we can combine and utilize and turn into body tissue, the less we turn into glucose that starts affecting blood sugar. So very often, we talk about foods in terms of their differences and all the different chemicals and the components that they have that might do something for us. But I want to just look at the bigger pictures and really emphasize something here that what all these foods have in common. Everything I'm talking about in this video is unprocessed. It's a whole food. It comes from the earth pretty much in the same shape that we found it. If you can pick it or hunt it or find it or take it from a tree or dig it out of the ground, that's a whole food. And you process it minimally. And when you take it home, it still looks the way it did in nature. And when it's unprocessed, what that really means is that all the nutrients that nature put in there are still present. That's not the case for processed foods. They remove a lot of the things that your body needs. And because all the nutrients are present, one characteristic of unprocessed food, of whole food, is that it's not shelf stable. It is going to spoil. And it's very inconvenient. But if it doesn't spoil, then it doesn't have a whole lot of nutrients. They basically destroy nutrients so that they can make it shelf stable. Then they can buy a certain quantity. And it's easier to sell it before it goes bad because they have months or years to do it. That reduces losses. And it makes the food cheap. But it's not the type of food that your body is looking for. It's not the type of food that supports your body if it's processed. Another thing that all the foods have in common is that they are low carb. And that is critical because the diseases that kill most people are the chronic degenerative diseases, metabolic diseases, like insulin resistance, diabetes, and so forth. Cardiovascular disease, dementia. So when we keep it low carb, relatively speaking, you have to figure out what that means for you. And I've done lots of videos about it. But 300 grams of carbs per day is not a good idea. These foods also contain healthy fats. Some foods have more, some have less. But they're all natural fats. And your body loves healthy fats. It's the foundation of your food. So you have EPA, which is part of visual. EPA in DHA stands for icosa pentanobic acid and docosa hexanobic acid. They're very long complex twisted molecules that are fantastic to make your cell membranes work the way they're supposed to. But you also have healthy, clean, stable saturated fatty acids. You also have mono unsaturated fatty acids, like we talked about with olive oil. And you have a small amount of alpha-linolinic acid. That's omega-3 fatty acids that occur in some plants. And primarily in the seeds. There's not many other foods that have them. But what they do is they help reduce inflammation. They help balance your omega-6 to omega-3 ratios. But even though they have all these different good fats, they are actually low. All the foods we're talking about are low in alpha-linolinic acid, also abbreviated L-A. And that's the omega-6's, which yes, we need its essential. We get a small amount even of the alpha-linolinic acid. But it occurs primarily in grains and seeds and legumes. And that's what they make the commercial's so-called vegetable oils from. And as a result, all the stuff that you buy in the supermarket as a vegetable oil pretty much is extremely high in omega-6 and it's pro-inflammatory. And all the foods we're talking about here, they have natural fats that humans have eaten for as long as we've been around. And they're very low in the vegetable oils and the mass produced oil. that most people get like a third of their calories from today. So while it is super, super important that we eat all these foods that we're talking about with these characteristics, the biggest thing that they do is that they replace the other food, the damaging food. So the processed food full of sugar and starch and these Omega-6 seed oils, they are the ones creating inflammation, they're the ones creating disease. So if we start eating real food, that means we're going to stop eating the garbage food and the garbage food is what drives the inflammation and the metabolic disease. So yes, it's important we eat certain foods, but realize it's even more important that we stop eating the stuff that interferes with the body's function. Number seven is berries and there are many different berries that are good virtually all of them, but my focus is going to be on blackberries, raspberries and blueberries because they are super dense in nutrients, but they're also very low in carbohydrates. They have a lot of fiber and they have a lot of flavor, but just enough sugar to give you that nice flavor. So we often call them natures candy. They have enough sugar to be really, really tasty, but not so much that they start interfering with our carbohydrate intake and with our blood sugar. And berries are rich in polyphenols, especially a couple called anthocyanins and allagic acid. Plus they also contain a lot of vitamin C, manganese and soluble fiber that's going to help support your gut health. And polyphenols, that's an antioxidant that help reduce oxidative stress and in turn what that does is it helps protect your LDL from damage. And like we talked about before, LDL is not a bad thing. It is the oxidative stress that causes damage and causes shrinkage to the LDL and now they become a bad thing. It's not the LDL by itself. So if we can reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, now we're making our LDL healthier. And allagic acid is another antioxidant that helps reduce oxidative stress and oxidative damage as well as inflammation. Number eight is salmon and especially wild caught. And this is a food with multiple benefit, multiple levels of benefit. And the most obvious is that it's the richest source that we have pretty much of EPA and DHA, those long complex essential fatty acids that become our cell membranes and participate in so many signaling processes and health care. And they displace a lot of other inflammatory fats. So if you have too much omega-6s in your body, those omega-6s, they're pro-inflammatory and they're going to find their way into these cell membranes. Whereas if you eat less omega-6s and more of the omega-3s, especially the EPA and DHA, they're going to take the place of those pro-inflammatory fatty acids and now you get healthier cell membranes overall. And one of the things that live in the cell membranes are all the different receptors. Cells have thousands or tens of thousands of receptors per cell. And if you have healthier cell membranes, you have healthier receptors. And one of those is the insulin receptors. You can actually improve insulin receptor function by getting healthier cell membranes. And eating salmon or other fatty fish a few times a week will also improve your omega-6 to omega-3 ratios. But again, even more important than eating more omega-3s is to eat less omega-6s. Because if you keep eating all that fried food and you keep eating all those salad dressings made with soybean oil, then the omega-6s are always going to be too high. And if we improve those omega-6 to omega-3 ratios, we're going to improve our inflammation when it reduce overall inflammation. But we're also going to reduce inflammation in our arteries, which is where cardiovascular disease happens. So if we can improve inflammation, then we also can improve cardiovascular health. And another thing that's linked to that, of course, is metabolic health. Food number nine is avocados. And this is another one of my favorite foods. I buy a lot of avocados. And to me, it's sort of the perfect plant food. It's like the best plant food ever made. The closest thing we get to an animal food in terms of how concentrated and satisfying and rich it is and creamy it is. It's pretty amazing. There's really no other plant food like it. And the major fat in avocado is oleic acid. And it's called oleic. It was named after olive. So in olive oil, it's like 75% oleic acid. And avocado has something like 74. And there's basically the same thing in terms of the mono unsaturated fat, which is what oleic acid is. And this oleic acid helps reduce the inflammatory signaling in the body. So again, it's one component of reducing inflammation. Avocados are also very rich in potassium, which supports cardiovascular health. And the signaling systems around the heart, the pacing of the heart, have to do with potassium. And avocados are also very rich in fiber. And a lot of people don't realize this because to them, they think fiber is like sawdust. And they think it's a null of R or a brand muffin or something. And a viewer recently said that, "Oh no, Dr. Eckber, your wrongs avocados don't have any fiber in it." But yes, it does. It has like 7 grams per 100, which is a very, very high amount. And also why, if you look at the total carbs in avocado, they may seem a little high, but by the time you subtract the fiber, avocados are extremely low in net carbs. But the fiber in avocados is soluble. And that means it absorbs water. And that can actually sort of become a gel. In chia seeds, if you put that in water, it becomes gel-like because they also have a lot of soluble fiber. And back in the day, when they raised oats to the heavens for all their health benefits and for all their cholesterol, lowering and heart benefits, it's because it has some soluble fiber in it. Now, it doesn't have nearly as much as avocado. So if you're looking for that soluble fiber, then avocado is a much better choice. And what this fiber does is it slows down the glucose absorption. It smooths out your glucose spikes, and therefore your insulin spikes. And this fiber also supports gut health. Your bacteria in the gut, they just love a good source of fiber. And number 10 is non-star-chefedgibles and leafy greens. And a lot of people get confused when I talk about these things because they hear that you should eat low carbohydrate. And then someone else tells them that non-star-chefedg and leafy greens are all carbohydrate, which is true. But it's not the carbohydrate that is bad. It is the sugar and the starch. And you're not going to find virtually any sugar or starch in these foods. What you're going to find is you find a lot of water and you find a lot of fiber and you find a lot of micronutrients. And basically, these foods are like natures, multivitamin. And they're very low carb, they're very high fiber. Because of this, you really cannot eat enough of the vegetables we're talking about and eat too many carbohydrates. Because there's so much fiber and water, even the carbs in here, you process them so slowly that even in a keto diet, you can eat a large quantity of the vegetables. And besides the fiber, there's a lot of different nutrients. There's a lot of polyphenols. There's a lot of phytonutrients that support your gut health and your biome. And I can't tell you enough about how important I believe that is. And these vegetables also contain a lot of antioxidants that will help reduce oxidative stress. And I want to point out that these are natural antioxidants. They're going to fit right in with the balance in your body. unlike a lot of synthetic and pills and capsules that you take as antioxidants because those you can actually overdo. I'm not a fan of those. You could take small amounts of them. They do serve a purpose in some combinations, but you don't want to take thousands and milligrams of those because an antioxidant is something that will slow down oxidation. And that's not only a bad thing. When we make energy, we oxidize the food to make energy. So if you take too much antioxidants, like you can take too much if you take them in a pill form, now you're actually going to interfere with the energy production. If you eat the natural food though, you're not going to run into that problem because these are natural antioxidants. They fit better and you're not going to get a quantity that becomes a problem. And they also contain a lot of phytonutrients, a lot of plant chemicals that support liver detox. The liver has a job of transforming toxic compounds into less toxic compounds that are water soluble and that the body can get rid of. And this plant food contains a lot of compounds that assist the liver that fits into those detox pathways. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.