Q&A with Dr. Greger 18

Michael Greger (0:00)

We have lots of choices to make about our diet. Add to that doing the right thing when it comes to treating a chronic disease, fighting a virus, or losing weight, and suddenly our nutrition choices can seem almost overwhelming. Well, I'm here to help. Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Today in a recording of one of my Q&As, I talk about the best way to take turmeric, how to mitigate chronic pain, and the special properties of the hot pepper compound capsaicin. Hello everyone, this is Dr. Michael Greger coming to you live from Stationary StradMilk. Did not make anybody as seasick. Let us get to your questions. Oh my god, lots of questions are already up. Let's see what we got. Let's tap the side, Banath, 4200 asks, how to make skin more whiter naturally and what to use as a natural sunscreen. So the safest sunblock are the mineral sunscreens, you know, like zinc or…

what's the other one?

Is it titanium?

The mineral sunscreens as opposed to the chemical sunscreens. So that would be the safest. You can also wear a hat, not go out during midday sun, et cetera. There is a lot of research on skin whitening on various topical things you can do, but it's not something I ever did research in because it seemed like kind of, you know, it's just kind of a cosmetic thing in people's minds, and that's not something that I've ever really focused on. So I'm sorry, I cannot help with that. It's not because I wouldn't tell you if I did know, it's just that it's not something I looked into the research over. Next question, what are the recommendations on alcohol? The recommendations on alcohol is to minimize your intake. It doesn't matter whether you eat on birthday, holidays, special occasions, of course, only if you don't drive, et cetera. But on a daily basis, we really should try to eat and live healthfully, and that includes minimizing our alcohol intake, primarily due to cancer risk.

Even light drinking, defined as less than a single drink per day, significantly increases breast cancer risk, for example, in women. And that's because of this carcinogen that's formed called acid aldehyde when alcohol is metabolized in our body. So even alcohol containing mouthwash, which you then spit out, can still produce carcinogenic levels of this compound in the mouth. It happens almost instantly. So I would recommend using alcohol-free mouthwashes, even if you don't swallow. Next up, is it better to take vitamin D early in the day? Oh, and for sleep, can I dissolve vitamin D tablet for three minutes in my mouth right before a meal? Does it count as taking with a meal? Okay.

It doesn't matter what time of day vitamin D is taken. I don't know of any soporific or sleep-inducing effects of vitamin D or sleep-impairing effects, and so it shouldn't matter from a sleep standpoint. And you could put a vitamin D tablet, you don't have to swallow. You can let it dissolve. You don't think there's any benefit, and probably your taste kind of grows. And does it count taking it with meal? Yeah, so having vitamin D in your stomach at the same time as the biggest meal of the day is probably the way to go. That's only because vitamin D is fat soluble, and so you want to have fat in your stomach, and typically it just helps with the absorption. And so you actually get higher levels in your bloodstream eating with meal than on an empty stomach.

Okay, we have TheArchedLife asks, What do I make of the newer studies associating lung cancer in never-smoking women under 60 with a diet consisting largely of fruits and vegetables? That is something I would be very surprised to learn. Please send me that study and I'll be happy to give my thoughts on it. It's not something that I have run across. But having said that, I've been deep in writing, so I haven't seen all the latest coming out. But, that would surprise me very much, if that were the case. Can I please comment on if, on it seeming, whole food plant-based communicators seeming we need some grammar help here, seeming to have as much or more issues than friends, families eating standard American?

Can I please comment on it seeming if communicators have more issues, like psychological issues? I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Maybe if you're thinking of people that are eating whole food plant-based diets, who have disease issues, and you're saying, oh, wait a second, why are all my whole food plant-based diet friends have all these issues and all my carnivore friends not have these issues? Maybe an example of reverse causation, meaning why are they on whole food plant-based diets? No one's on whole food plant-based diets. Why would someone go on a whole food plant-based diet? To try to save their lives because they just got diagnosed with cancer or heart disease or God knows. And so they improve their diets, and that's why they're on these diets. Very rarely does someone just spontaneously be like, I want to prevent disease and go on a whole food plant-based diet. I don't know if that's what you're talking about, but that's a possible answer if that's the scenario.