Naren: Hello everyone, this is Naren your co-host. Today we will be discussing what is the origin of diseases for the let it flow podcast series. I’m, I’m, so glad to be joined today with my dear friend and and the expert the author of the book let it flow. Doctor Edmond Kwan, good afternoon Doctor Kwan. How are you this afternoon?

Dr. Kwan: Hi how are you I’m really excited to be here today

Naren: yeah it’s a great topic you know. It’s a topic that I guess has fascinated mankind for a long time especially people in the in the medical field. What is the origin of diseases. So let’s jump in?

Dr. Kwan: well you know I think when we look at diseases we think that all these diseases exist in a separate plane or just a separate entity. So when doctors look at diseases they put all these diseases in different categories and say okay this high blood pressure is here heart disease is there lung disease is there cancer diabetes and that’s and, and, they treat all these diseases as a separate entity. However I believe that all these especially chronic diseases, what are chronic diseases? Diseases that that are like high blood pressure heart disease and diabetes diseases that stay with us chronically for for our lifetime. So these are chronic diseases. These are not diseases that that suddenly pop up but but but diseases that that stay with us for many many years. So do we call these chronic diseases in in our modern societies, majority of us fall into chronic diseases. Especially as we age. So, so, just to go over just the chronic diseases, the most common chronic diseases that I think we think of are diseases like high blood pressure, everybody’s familiar with that, right, diabetes heart disease stroke even obesity is considered chronic disease and Alzheimer’s and even cancer. So these are probably the most common but not all-inclusive there are other chronic diseases that I’ve I’ve not included in here, but basically for us to treat all these diseases properly, I really believe that you have to find find and know what the origin of disease diseases are, right. If you know what causes them, then it’s much easier to treat, right Naren?

Naren: yeah yes absolutely. So what you’re saying is all these chronic diseases at least you know for example the ones you named they all have a common origin

Dr. Kwan: yes as and as I sort of outlined in my book let it flow, I talk about how these diseases begin and it’s it’s simply one thing you know men human beings basically we evolved from from a single-celled organism basically to this complex, complex, human being with multicellular with the cells all over making up 30 trillion cells 37 trillion cells were made up of so we go from one little literally one little cell organism to this immensely complex organism. So in order to basically be able to get nutrients and oxygen throughout the entire or to all the cells we needed to develop this really a complex system called the circulatory system. It’s basically vascular Highway, that is used to deliver all these nutrients and oxygen to every single cell in our body and this mechanism, when it gets broken then the diseases occur and what happens when when there’s an issue with this circulatory system, oxygen and nutrients do not get to the cells, and as you know even when you are trying to grow a plant in your house, if you don’t provide the adequate amount of sun, sunlight, and and water it will not grow properly. It may grow a little bit if there’s little amount of sun and maybe if you provide a a little bit of water then it’ll it can grow a little bit but not that well, and so that’s that’s kind of what happens in our body. If you provide the cells with just enough oxygen and just enough nutrients maybe it will survive, but it certainly will not Thrive, and we call this state disease. So I believe that basically all these chronic diseases arise from our cells simply not getting enough oxygen. Period oxygen and nutrients, and that is due to poor blood flow. So if the blood flow in our body is not good then it doesn’t bring the oxygen and nutrients because in the blood basically oxygen and nutrients are traveling and so

Naren: Right

Dr. Kwan: when the when they don’t get enough then the disease follows

Naren: but I was just listening to Bill Gates and one of the things he’s fighting is malnutrition and he said two brothers growing up in the same house, one could be growing normally and of course when you’re malnutrition it affects your IQ it affects your physical abilities and the other one is not and he said something to do with inflammation that causes the malnutrition and then it continues for the entire life of the person and then of course they do die also right, so so are you saying that you know again as we age something happens when it comes to chronic diseases and our ability our, our, propensity to get them because, this this system that transport oxygen and nutrients is somehow affected.

Dr. Kwan: yes so basically what happens is you talk about inflammation but the the thing that precedes inflammation is injury. So basically what happens is our cells get injured first. That’s the primary or the first thing that happens. So our cells get damaged or injured. Why do they get damage or injured? For instance if if they’re bacteria or virus invades our body that’ll injure, injure. The cells. If we ingest toxins that’ll injure the cells if we eat processed food or foods that are that are that are many times man-made, these are not recognized by our body and they injure the cells. Pollution injures ourselves, smoking injures ourselves, even being too stressed out and stress itself can injure the cells. So the first pro first very first thing that happens in our body is injury. So when injury occurs in our body the cells now must repair or, or, or, or, heal from the injury, right, and this healing process is called inflammation, and what inflammation simply means is it’s an immune response. It’s a response by our immune system, because it is injured, not only does our immune system protect us against foreign Invaders like bacteria and viruses but it also helps us to heal and it also helps us to heal against injuries. So this all-encompassing system that we have, this is a amazingly beautiful and and complex system called the immune system, and so whenever we get injured or, or, our bodies damaged or something goes into our body that doesn’t belong there, our body triggers inflammation. Now inflammation is in general a good thing, right, I think people are confused about what inflammation is this process is called acute inflammation, where where injury occurs the immune system is mobilized and then it gets rid of what’s invading our body like bacteria or virus, then It prepares for healing. So this is all a great thing and a good thing for our body and we need as you are well aware we need a good immune system to be healthy, right.

Naren: yes

Dr. Kwan: however what happens is when a bacteria invades us, our immune system is usually able to get rid of it quickly, and it’s out of our system. So sometimes though this bacteria can linger around then our immune system doesn’t kill it all or some of the bacteria actually remains in our body, but, but, hidden and dormant. So this type of scenario can also lead to inflammation that won’t turn off, or other things that can cause this what we call chronic inflammation, very different from acute inflammation is that when we ingest toxins or, or, or, food that is a specially processed or contains chemicals our body continues to unleash inflammatory response, because it’s one thing if you ate this bad food today or in just the toxin today and stop. However, most people who eat the this type of food processed food, they’re eating this every single day. So the immune system is always turned on and this is called chronic inflammation and that toxin from or the chemicals from that those processed food is damaging the cells. So when the cells are damaged obviously we need immune system because the immune system is there to protect us. So really inflammation is a protective response that is built in our body. We all have it we need it and it’s actually good for us but however when, when, chronic inflammation occurs because we are subjected to this type of injury on a chronic base, on a daily basis, and it’s never stopping, our, our, immune system has to continue to stay on and not shut off, and this is what causes the damage. So, really the damage is from the damage really comes from not necessarily from inflammation because inflammation is trying to protect us the damage is coming from the ingested toxin. So when the ingested toxin goes into our body our inflammation follows, and we tend to blame inflammation chronic inflammation is really what’s really bad for us, but really chronic inflammation is there to protect us and, and, so when chronic but the problem with chronic inflammation is that ourselves then are injured further because with chronic inflammation our blood vessels especially the smallest of the blood vessels that we have in our body called the capillaries those capillaries actually get shut off and some of them actually clot off some of them disappear and some of them just stop working. So those are the capillaries for capillaries those of you who are not familiar capillaries are those very smallest blood vessels in our body that is involved in oxygen and nutrient exchange with our cells. So through the capillary, we pass off the oxygen and nutrients to our cells, and then the cells get back the waste product and carbon dioxide. So there’s this exchange and this really this we call this micro circulation. This is critical to our survival because every cell will be able to get the proper oxygen and nutrients it needs. If the capillaries shut off then this process is interrupted and then the cells will die. So we need to preserve this system,

Naren: right so let me come back to the so the origin of diseases so in your mind is, the cells are getting injured because of chronic inflammation, right.

Dr. Kwan: Yes

Naren: and the chronic inflammation happens because

Dr. Kwan: well

Naren: We keep doing the same thing again and again

Dr. Kwan: yes cells are injured and then the response to injury is inflammation, chronic, and if the cells are continue to be injured we have to our body mobilizes this inflammation on a chronic basis and we call that chronic inflammation

Naren: Right, then

Dr. Kwan: eventually what happens to chronic inflammation as I said is capillary gets shuts off, and then our cells don’t receive enough oxygen. So essentially our cells become hypoxic. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the word hypoxia, hypoxia means lack of oxygen. So our cells are basically receiving very small amount of oxygen

Naren: now what’s the relationship between that and let’s say Alzheimer’s or diabetes.

Dr. Kwan: so let’s I’m going to just go over just the diseases that I’ve outlined and how this affects each of the diseases

Naren: yeah

Dr. Kwan: so for instance high blood pressure what is high blood pressure people just know high blood pressure is oh my blood pressure is high and it’s not not good for me and they know that having high blood pressure leads to increased heart attack and stroke but beyond that I think most people don’t know what really high blood pressure is. What high blood pressure is, is, basically in your arteries the pressure in that system is elevated, elevated, and why is it elevated? Well the process that begins or the things that trigger this high blood pressure is that the blood vessels themselves get damaged. So when there’s a damage to the blood vessels, or arteries then the healing then there’s a injury. It’s called injury from as we talked about before from toxins and bad foods smoking stress. So those cells are injured in the blood vessels themselves and the blood vessel then respond with chronic inflammation when there’s chronic inflammation then the the healing process occurs during the healing process the blood vessels tries to heal and becomes thicker and stiffer that’s how the healing process in the blood vessels occur and I’ve gone over this atherosclerosis in another previous podcast basically so when the blood vessels themselves get stiffer and less flexible our blood vessels need to be really flexible. So when the blood vessels are not flexible then they’re very stiff and it doesn’t receive the blood like it would from the heart because heart is pumping it out to the blood vessels. So when the blood vessels are stiffer, heart has to pump harder to get the same amount of blood through that tightened really pipe because ultimately at the end of the day what heart is trying to do is pump the blood to the cells, all the cells in our body, right. I mean trying to bring oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in the body so when the the pipe is tightened it has to work harder to pump pump the same amount of blood because now that that pipe is tighter. So when that situation occurs, heart is pumping really harder. When it’s pumping harder the pressure in that pipe goes up and that’s what we call high blood pressure and the problem with blood pressure high blood pressure is that it stresses the heart if that pipe is tighter hard is that heart is essentially a muscle trying to pump it through and it can’t it can’t do it without even working really hard so then hard has to work harder then heart diseases occur can occur with heart muscle becoming thicker and even working harder and that’s how you end up with heart attacks and and and problems like that so that’s high blood pressure but the problem with that even high blood pressure is the high blood pressure itself because now the pressure in the tube that pipe is getting higher are capillaries which are the end vessels that deliver oxygen nutrient to the cells those are very small tiny blood vessels, and because they’re tiny they have very thin walls and they’re very fragile. So when you have high blood pressure the capillaries can rupture. We have a protective response built in, so when the blood pressure goes up those capillary shuts down to prevent it from rupturing. So when it shuts down our cells don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients. So if high blood pressure then high blood pressure is just more than just high blood pressure problem causing heart disease and heart attacks but high blood pressure can actually really the ultimate problem with high blood pressure is our oxygen and nutrients are not being delivered to ourselves. Let’s look at another really common really common disease that many Americans have and

Naren: so I have a question for you Doctor.

Dr. Kwan: yes

Naren: is this and I use the word hypoxia, right, which is the cell’s not getting enough oxygen

Dr. Kwan: yes lack of oxygen is called hypoxia

Naren: lack of oxygen so so blood pressure is not caused by hypoxia but blood high blood pressure

Dr. Kwan: well high blood pressure itself is initially triggered by hypoxia as well because remember, blood pressure high blood pressure is is caused by

Naren: oh I see

Dr. Kwan: our blood vessel walls basically our blood vessels are made up of our blood vessels are basically blood vessel walls, right.

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: and our blood vessel walls themselves are not getting they get being damaged and they themselves are not getting enough oxygen

Naren: Right

Dr. Kwan: when they don’t get enough oxygen they become thicker and stiffer and so that as you see this is like a vicious cycle because of that now, because of the high blood pressure our cells in the distant part of our bodies are not getting enough oxygen and nutrients because of the high blood pressure

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: you see how that works but so really this hypoxia is involved not only as a as an initiator but it also is involved when the when the disease with the onset of disease it even gets worse and this kind of is like a Snowball Effect and it’s a vicious cycle. So it’s then high blood pressure elevated blood pressure in our blood vessels themselves can cause more damage to the blood vessel because now the pressure is high. It’s banging on the walls of the arteries of our blood vessels and when you bang on it it’s damaging it more. So that now causes further injury which triggers further inflammation with sugars further healing response and thickening of the arteries more. So high blood pressure is a vicious cycle

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: so there’s a lot more to it than just high blood pressure

Naren: got it. So you’re going to talk about the some of the other diseases and the relationships with hypoxia

Dr. Kwan: yeah yes diabetes is one of the most prevalent problems that we have in our society and I think most people think of diabetes as just being simply a sugar problem, Oh my sugar is high that’s diabetes, yes, that’s that’s just on the surface that’s what it seems like however diabetes is really much more than that basically diabetes just a refresh our memory diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin or insulin not working properly. So diabetes basically is a problem where our cells in our society most of diabetes is called type 2 diabetes and this is caused by basically eating too much refined carbohydrates and our cells become no longer response to the insulin that we have in our body. The Way Way insulin Works in our body is that when you eat something especially carbohydrates and refined carbohydrates, sugar is released into our bloodstream and only way to get the sugar into our cells because sugar is needed to make energy. The cells in order for the cells to receive the sugar it needs insulin, an insulin is produced by our pancreas. So that’s just basic summary however in diabetes in diabetics basically, the insulin that they release into this into our bloodstream and into the cell the cells don’t respond to the insulin that’s in the bloodstream and the reason why is because we eat so much so much sugar meaning sugar is contained in even bread pasta white rice all that stuff all the in a in a processed food contains abundant amounts of sugar so we eat this insane amounts of sugar the only way for our body to handle that sugar is by releasing insulin. So insulin gets released made by the pancreas and released into our bloodstream. It’s used to basically bring the sugar into the cell but if there’s so much sugar after a while our cells no longer responds to the insulin. Do you understand do you follow me there Naren?

Naren: yes

Dr. Kwan: the cells no longer respond cells no longer respond to even in the presence of insulin. So, what happens is the sugar level in our bloodstream keeps going up despite insulin being secreted by our pancreas. So this is called type two this is called initially insulin resistance this situation, meaning that the the cells are resistant to the insulin so insulin resistance is essentially a pathway or a stepping stone to diabetes. So in our society the majority of the cause of Diabetes Type 2 diabetes is through this pathway, through insulin resistance, meaning that we eat so much so much refined carbohydrates that our cells no longer respond even when insulin is around, but so that’s that’s just diabetes in general but the but the real damage from diabetes comes from from really our blood vessels being damaged what happens is when we have diabetes or elevated blood sugar you don’t even have to have diabetes you could just have insulin resistance or pre-diabetes or elevation of blood sugar. Everyone has their blood tests done usually once a year that fasting blood sugar that’s to find out how much sugar what the level of sugar is blood sugar is after an eight hour fast and they could determine whether you have diabetes and so in some resistance or or pre-diabetes. So basically when you have a sugar problem, there’s a high level of of sugar level in your bloodstream and high levels of sugar in your bloodstream is literally a poison. Number one it attaches on to extra sugar attaches onto everything in the bloodstream. Any molecule that’s there or the wall it sticks to everything you hear that sugar is sticky well it’s sticky inside our bloodstream. It also causes free radical formation. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that free radical because our mitochondria in our cells are being overworked it produces X abundant amounts of free radicals and free radicals themselves can really wreak havoc in our bloodstream. Also the also the sugar itself blocks an enzyme in our bloodstream called nitric oxide synthase. I think a lot of people are familiar with nitric oxide. Well nitric oxide does is it it causes our blood vessels to expand. So nitric in the presence of nitric oxide our blood vessels expand, and it’s secreted by the endothelial cells in our bloodstream and this nitric oxide is crucial and athletes know this. We foods like spinach kale these things have high amounts of nitric oxide. That’s why it’s good for you. That’s why athletes eat lots of it dilates the blood vessels and increases and improves the blood flow but sugar blocks this enzyme that makes nitric oxide. So as I went over already sugar causes not only direct damage by sticking to everything, it blocks this enzyme and reduces the nitric oxide content in our blood stream it also causes increased free radical formation and then elevated sugar as I talked about before in itself will cause further elevation and sugar in our bloodstream, and also this, with diabetes and not only not only does it attack the the bigger vessels bigger blood vessels, in diabetes attacks even the tiniest of the blood vessels like our capillaries. So it destroys our blood vessels all the way down to the smallest of the capillaries. So really I call diabetes really the ultimate disease of our circulatory system. It ends up destroying every blood vessel in our body and as you can imagine it’ll cause hypoxia to the cells because it’s destroying the smallest vessels. It ends up destroying larger vessels so the blood flow to every organ in our body is decreased with diabetes. So, patients with diabetic diabetes know it well they end up having all the circulatory problems. What are the circulatory problems like heart disease they have stroke they lose their kidneys they lose their vision and they usually end up with the limb amputations because the blood flow doesn’t get there and they have neuropathy and neuropathy occurs because the nerve itself doesn’t get enough blood flow and they’re hypoxic. They don’t get enough oxygen and when nerves are hypoxic they die and that’s called neuropathy. So they have basically no numbness and no feeling in their in their in in their legs and foot and legs. So they end up with that issue. So diabetes basically affects every inch of our body because it’s attacking every blood vessel and it’s causing basically hypoxia to every single cell in our body and many believe that diabetes itself is precipitated by even, even, hypoxia to the pancreas and injury and inflammation and, and damage to the pancreas. So so again hypoxia not only causes but is it also the result of this these diseases

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: so it’s an it’s basically diabetes is a devastating a devastating disease and you do not want to develop diabetes so you have to be very proactive and treat these problems very early on

Naren: let me ask you this all these diseases the chronic diseases, why do they why do they happen more for people as they age as opposed to when they are young?

Dr. Kwan: well because you know the the diseases are basically occur especially the chronic diseases occur as a cumulative damage, right?

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: it’s like an it’s like you getting a brand new car you know even if you beat up the car it’s usually pretty good for 50 000 miles but you know after you’ve beaten for 50 over 50 000 miles and all the symptoms show up right the car starts breaking down.

Naren: right

Dr. Kwan: similar with our body you know in the beginning you could you know your 20 year old you can do a lot of bad things you could smoke eat bad food you don’t exercise you do eat a lot of sugar our body still stands you know because it’s that it’s got that new car effect it’s it’s not being damaged it’s being damaged but it still could withstand that but these damages accumulate after a while and it seems like from my observation they usually strike most people in their 50s and 60s. So that so like in high blood pressure, I talked about before in America, half of Americans 50 percent of Americans over the age 60 have high blood pressure

Naren: Right

Dr. Kwan: so that’s a devastating number. Half of Americans over the age 60 have high blood pressure, half of those people haven’t gotten it under control. So it is extraordinary amount extraordinary amount of people. So 25 percent of the people over age 60 have not has not gotten their blood pressure under control and the other 25 percent have high blood pressure that’s being treated but the so these are big numbers and it occurs because their blood vessels are getting stiffer and more damage when they get older. Diabetes same thing the our pancreas is getting damaged, damaged, and finally our cells just cannot withstand this but the diabetes I mean unlike high blood pressure diabetes can occur fairly early much earlier than than 50s. Nowadays diabetes are very common among even adolescents and teenagers and early adult, adult, life it’s simply that we’re eating an incredible amounts of refined carbohydrates and the thing about diabetes is many, many, people don’t know that they have diabetes and many certainly aren’t being treated for it because our doctors are not really looking for it as as much and they’re not treating people early on when you have a rise in your blood sugar that’s got to be really taken care of quickly. Otherwise if you leave that alone that goes from insulin resistance slowly to pre-diabetes to diabetes. So that can occur and that could actually occur fairly quickly and so with diabetes you must be proactive. Otherwise you’re going to suffer all the consequences of having all your blood vessels damaged

Naren: right let me ask you this at least half if not more of America has one or more of chronic diseases right so what would you advise be to them like let’s say they already have it I mean as the author of this book let it flow, can you do anything to reverse it so it’s too bad it is the way it is

Dr. Kwan: no no the nice thing about all these diseases is that many of them can be reversible many are reversible. Again I think many of the healthcare providers don’t quite understand this or because they’re busy treating. So many people that are sick these diseases can be reversed and certainly if you treat them earlier, they can be reversed faster. If they’re these chronic diseases have been around for a long time it’s going to be harder to reverse. However you can certainly get it under control and even begin to reverse these. There’s the there’s a beautiful study done back in 1980 from 1980 by a doctor from Australia Doctor Karen O’Dea she took 10 Australian Aborigines who were living in an urban area I mean these are people that live in the Outback in the wild eating you know the whole food diet, eating you know what they hunt together however when you bring them back into a modern society, they’re eating the same thing that everyone every one of them us are eating this Western diet filled with high refined carbohydrate. So she took 10 of these people who had diabetes and a lot of metabolic abnormality. She took these people out in the wild and did an experiment told them you couldn’t you cannot eat anything from a store or restaurant you could only eat what you hunt and gather. In just seven weeks every one of these people lost about average about 20 pounds. Their diabetes has largely resolved in their metabolic abnormalities including lipid profile has had normalized and they were all becoming fairly healthy, just in seven weeks.

Naren: Wow

Dr. Kwan: so many of the diseases were reversed without any medication. So we need to be clear about this. We we can reverse this disease but the way the disease starts being treated in the modern society is that we throw medicine at it. When you throw medicine without doing any lifestyle changes the diseases cannot be reversed, remember this, there are diseases cannot be reversed using medication, or surgery, okay. Cannot be. These chronic disease only way they can be reversed is through lifestyle change but I am not advocating that you should not take medication. Medication, is absolutely necessary in many cases because you cannot live with high blood pressure for a long period of time without causing major heart damage and blood vessel damage and causing cell damage because they’re not getting enough oxygen and nutrients. So you must treat high blood pressure, but along with treating high blood pressure you must make Lifestyle Changes such as such as being on a changing to a whole food diet. That’s probably one of the most important things whole food diet and taking out a lot of the refined carbohydrates or man-made sugar, like breads pasta limiting it I’m not saying you can’t eat it at all but limiting the amount of intake of those kind of food. Eating more whole grains, a lot of vegetables and you could eat meat. I’m not a vegan. I’m not advocating that anyone needs to be a vegan, you can certainly eat meat try to eat good Quality Meats and you want to eat good amount of fats. That’s what you want to do that’s one of the most important things you want to do and you want to not eat excessive amounts. I think Western Society is filled with eating food in excess amount especially holidays, but I think we do that at pretty much most of the meals, eating until you’re 110 percent full we’re talking about eating modest amounts and that’s good. Then you’ll maintain your weight or even lose weight. So that again eating good food and eating modest amount of food is probably the most important thing along with some sort of physical activity. Our body was made to move. We were designed with all these muscles that allow us to move jump and do all that run. So we must use it. We must use it and keep our body fit that way we will be able to burn all those refined, any any sugar excess sugar that we have or refined carbohydrates, if we ingested them we could burn it off. If you let it if you sit after you eat that kind of food, it’s just going to convert into fat or it’s going to contribute to us becoming a diabetic. So if you don’t you want to avoid that, you want to increase your physical activity so you could either eat less of it and or burn it off and many times you want to burn, burn, it off and, and, having good amount of muscle also will maintain your muscle mass which will if you have more muscle mass you’ve heard that muscles burn a lot more sugar than fat. Fat simply will not do that muscle and as we get older certainly our muscles become smaller it’s called sarcopenia. Our muscles shrink naturally and our metabolism slows. All those things contribute to sugar level going up it up up in our body and and then we become a diabetic and we end up with all the other issues as well and you know diabetes is all this is related to high blood pressure, to heart disease stroke and everything. I hope you understand that when you get diabetes when you have diabetes you damage your blood vessels and when you have blood vessel damage you get high blood pressure. When you have high blood pressure along with blood vessel damage, it’s not only damaging certain blood vessels it’s damaging blood vessels to your heart called coronary arteries. Then you have heart disease. If you damage the blood vessels because blood vessel damage that doesn’t occur in one area of the body, it occurs everywhere in the body. So if you do damage to the blood vessels in your neck and the blood vessels that’s going through your brain, that’s called stroke, okay, and if you have less blood flow to the parts of the brain then you’re not going to get enough blood flow in those cells are going to become hypoxic they lack oxygen then you’re going to get Alzheimer’s, if it’s particular area of the brain called hippocampus. If you don’t get enough blood flow to the Substantia Nigra of the brain and that’s called Parkinson’s disease. If you don’t get it to other parts of the body it’s called ALS you heard of a Lou Gehrig’s disease. That’s what Stephen Hawking had and get ALS. All these other neurodegenerative diseases basically stem from that part of the brain not getting enough oxygen. And so everything is related basically so everything starts fundamentally from getting getting enough oxygen to all those cells and how do we get enough oxygen to all those cells? Well by keeping our blood vessels healthy and keeping our blood vessels healthy means, eating food that’s not going to inflame us. It’s not going to cause damage basically. When you the cells are going to become inflamed if you damage them. If you don’t damage them they’re not going to become inflamed because then our immune system does not need to be turned on. If they’re not damaged. So you don’t want a damage the blood vessels. By excess by increasing your activity basically, you’re going to keep some of the weight off. Studies have shown that even gaining weight obesity is related to inflammation, inflammation, because when you have when your body gains weight the fat cells basically become if that cells are are are called adipocytes they’re endocrine organ endocrine glands and for those of you who don’t know endocrine, means that it it secretes hormones. So the so obesity the the adipose tissue in our fat cells secrete hormones and they actually regulate sugar metabolism and fat metabolism in our body, and they also control hunger Center. So if as you become more obese, those things are lost. So your metabolism and sugar goes down your hunger goes your your hunger Center basically it shuts off, it kind of shuts off and ignores the even when you eat a lot of food. So people who are more obese end up becoming more hungry. They never they don’t ever satisfy with the amount of food they eat. They keep eating so these are all again all all related and and also the fat cells secrete all kinds of inflammatory cells into our body and into the bloodstream, that’s going to cause major damage. So people who are obese end up getting same problems. Heart disease, they not only get diabetes they get high blood pressure they have heart disease and they develop stroke and and more cancer and, and, even cancer I say. Cancer is even an issue of blood flow. Really lack of oxygen lack of oxygen causes also cancer

Naren: thank you so much for your time and if you haven’t already got a gotten a copy of the book let it flow please go to amazon. Com and you can have your own copy. It’s either available both on Kindle as well as in in print version. So thank you so much for listening and please share this episode with your friends and family through social media thank you so much

Dr. Kwan: thank you Naren.