These Drinks Help Repair The Body & Fight Disease For Longevity | Dr. William Li

All right, grab your favorite mug because today we're going to actually talk about beverages. And I'm going to talk about beverages that can actually help fuel your body for longevity. Are you ready? The first beverage we're going to talk about is green tea. Green tea is one of my favorites. It contains a bioactive called catechin, specifically EGCG. That's epigallocatechin-3-gallate, EGCG. It's a tongue twister. But this natural bioactive in tea, when we drink it, goes into our body and does a lot of amazing things. We do know that it lowers inflammation, which is critical for long-term health, essential for longevity. We also know that it actually protects our telomeres, which are the protective caps at the end of our DNA that start to burn down as we age. So green tea slows that cellular aging process down. Green tea also helps to nurture and keep healthy our vascular endothelium. So vascular is blood vessel, endothelium is the delicate lining inside our blood vessel. This is actually what allows blood to flow smoothly right through the body. The better the blood flow, the longer the life. When your blood vessels are healthy, you have a shot at being healthy. When your blood vessels are sick, you have no chance of actually having optimal health. And so green tea actually facilitates all of this. And green tea has also been shown to be good for your gut microbiome. Healthy gut, healthy life. We do know that people who reach super centenarian ages, they actually have very, very unique gut microbiomes. Green tea actually helps to get you there. My great-uncle, by the way, lived to 104 years old. And he attributed his longevity to living at the base of a tea mountain where every morning at 4 a.m. he would actually get up and walk up to a tea pavilion and sip cups of tea. He probably had 10 cups of green tea every day. So physical activity, green tea, all these things are quite important for longevity. Okay, next beverage, coffee. I have a cup of coffee every morning. I usually have espresso, sometimes a double. It really helps wake me up. And I actually love the taste of coffee. Now, coffee has caffeine. That's the stimulant. But coffee also has a bioactive called chlorogenic acid. And chlorogenic acid, again, helps to slow down the process of cellular aging. It actually protects your telomeres. Again, those protective caps from burning down too quickly. So coffee has actually been shown to be associated with longevity and more vibrant life. You want good quality of life, and coffee definitely is in there. Now, a couple of little tips about coffee. Organic coffee has more of this chlorogenic acid, this anti-inflammatory cellular aging slowdown substance. The other thing, if you want to get the most out of the chlorogenic acid in your coffee, you don't want to use dairy milk. You can use nut milk, almond milk, soy milk. Those are all fine. But dairy milk in coffee forms little soap bubbles. And those soap bubbles wrap themselves around that chlorogenic acid. So when you sip that coffee, the soap bubble actually tumbles down your gut. And you don't actually absorb all of the chlorogenic acid. Some of it just tumbles all the way down and you excrete it. So you're missing out on some of the good stuff. Here's the other thing about coffee. A lot of people put sugar in their coffee. Don't. You want to actually get that pure coffee without actually getting a glucose. Your glucose is going crazy. No added sugar is a general good rule of thumb for health. And so if you're going to drink coffee every morning, I would actually recommend drinking it straight. Next beverage we're going to talk about is pomegranate juice. Now, most of you will know what a pomegranate looks like. Maybe a whole fruit. It's kind of a big, heavy, apple-y looking thing. Red fruit. It's got a little crown at the top. And if you cut it open, inside are all these seeds. And around every seed is this layer of juice. Really sweet. Absolutely delicious. You can put pomegranate seeds on a salad or what have you. But you can also get pomegranate juice. And the way they make pomegranate juice is they cut the pomegranate in half and they press the seeds out. And if you press it out through the skin, you actually get elagitannins. Now, these are natural bioactives that are found inside the pomegranate seed in that juice. And a lot of it is also in the rind. So when you press the juice through the rind, you pick up a lot of the elagitannins. Now, what do these actually do that's helpful for longevity? Well, it turns out that the elagitannins are not only anti-inflammatory, good for healthy aging, but the elagitannins also cause your gut, your lower gut, your colon, to secrete mucus. Now, this is normal. We make mucus in our mouth and we also make it in our lower gut, in our colon. And the mucus in your colon, by the way, helps all the stuff slide through. So you can actually be regular, right? Not constipated. But that mucus also supports the growth of a very, very important healthy bacteria called Ackermansia mucinophila. Now, some people call it mucinophilia. No, it's mucinophila. Ackermansia seems to be a guardian bacteria of our health. We've got trillions of bacteria. We're just beginning to pick through them, but we do know that Ackermansia is really important. Now, what does Ackermansia do? It actually activates your immune system, helps to fight cancer. We do know that cancer patients need Ackermansia in order to be able to respond to immunotherapy. That's not like a nice-to-have. That's a must-have. It can make the difference between life and death. But Ackermansia also helps to prevent diabetes. It looks like it may be helpful for preventing obesity, dementia. We're just starting to pick through this, but there's a fragment of Ackermansia called P9. It's a protein fragment that it makes that actually helps with longevity as well. So, Ackermansia is stimulated by colon mucus, and that mucus is stimulated by lactatans, which you can find in pomegranate juice. Now, if you can't find pomegranate juice, cranberry juice and concord grape juice are also good, but I want to talk about pomegranate juice. Now, it's pretty sweet, so you don't want to have a ton of it. What I always tell people is just have eight fluid ounces. That's one cup of pomegranate juice, and that's it. You're not talking about hydrating yourself with pomegranate juice. We're talking about getting that lactatan in order to be able to get your gut to grow. The Ackermansia muciniphila for overall health, immune health, and also to be able to actually act as a factor for longevity. All right, next beverage, watermelon juice. Now, you might be surprised that I'm talking about watermelon juice because, well, if you just have a watermelon during the summertime, think about how juicy it is. So, you don't need to actually squeeze it out into a beverage, but I can actually tell you, you can buy watermelon juice. You can actually press out watermelon juice. It's really delicious. It's very good for hydration. Not too sweet either, but watermelon juice contains a natural bioactive called lycopene, and you might have heard of lycopene in the context of tomatoes. I talk about tomatoes all the time. Tomatoes are a great source of lycopene, but watermelon juices as well. Lycopene makes a tomato red. Lycopene also makes a watermelon red, and the lycopene in a watermelon has this incredible, remarkable property of being able to be antioxidant and to protect your DNA from the inside out. So, you eat a watermelon, you drink watermelon juice. It's actually acting as a shield to protect your DNA from damage, for example, like from ultraviolet radiation. All right, so sun damage on your skin can be neutralized to some extent if you actually drink watermelon juice before you go out in the sun. How much before? A couple of hours will usually do it. You could also have a tomato salad. We're talking about beverages here, so make sure it's real watermelon and not watermelon flavoring. Make sure it's not sugar sweetened. You just want real watermelon juice. Great for hydration. Great for protecting your DNA against sun damage. It's kind of like sunscreen from the inside out in a beverage that's also hydrating. If you actually want to live a long time, you're going to get a lot of accumulated damage of DNA by being outside, getting your vitamin D, enjoying the outdoors, walking around, exercising. All of these factors come into play. So, why not protect your DNA from the inside out? That's watermelon juice. Hey, if you're enjoying the content in this video, then you will love my resource on what I call the Grand Slammer Foods. These are the foods that support and activate all five of your body's health defense systems. Angiogenesis, regeneration, microbiome, DNA protection, and your immune system all at the same time. I put together a special guide describing these grand slamming foods just for my viewers, and you can get it totally free right now at the link in the caption below. Now, back to the video. All right. The fifth beverage I'm going to talk about is a coca drink. Now, cocoa is made with cacao, which is a dark chocolate, and it can be consumed hot or it can be consumed cool, right? And, in fact, cocoa beverages used to be kind of nectar of the gods in the Mayan culture and in the Incas. They used them ceremonially. So, you've heard about chocolate cacao ceremonies. Well, this is actually where it actually comes from, really treating the cacao as a valuable substance. And the reason it's actually so good for longevity is because there are flavanols, pro-anthocyanidins. So, we don't know every bioactive, but we're beginning to know what some of the important ones are. In cacao, dark chocolate, pro-anthocyanidins in a beverage, when you drink it, will actually get into your body, and they call out special cells from your bone marrow. So, these are called stem cells or progenitor cells. And these stem cells, which live in our bone marrow, come flying out of our bone marrow like bees coming out of a hive, and they circulate in our bloodstream. And you know what they do? They actually regenerate any organ that's damaged that needs to be fixed. And they can also wing by our blood vessels, looking for areas like potholes in a road, in order to be able to patch up and fix. Cocoa drink, cacao, okay, dark chocolate, as a beverage, actually helps us regenerate from the inside out. It's a great way to actually improve blood flow, to support great blood vessel health, which is absolutely critical for longevity. So, here you go. Let's recap. Green tea, coffee, pomegranate juice, watermelon juice, and cocoa. Cocoa drink, all good for longevity. That's what I actually recommend if you want to look for some variety of beverages to actually have. And I've given you little tiny tips on how to actually handle and drink each one. Now, remember, the best beverage for hydration is water. So, you don't want to forget about water. Water is probably the most important beverage to be able to have for longevity. You want to stay hydrated, okay? Always stay hydrated. But water doesn't have the bioactives. All these other beverages we talked about today have those bioactives that are good for good long-term health, vitality, and longevity. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching. Hi there. If you enjoyed watching this video, I know you'll love the next one. Stay here and check it out. And I'll see you there.