Interview with Dr. Marcus Wells | Sound Authors Radio

November 25, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, July 4, 2008, Independence Day in the United States. Everybody is outside grilling, already getting ready for the big afternoon. Tonight are the big fireworks. It’s an exciting day for most folks. My first guest on the show is going to be telling us a little about barbequing and things like that. The second guest is going to talk about politics in America, he’s a conservative asking has God stopped blessing America? Our third guest, her name is Arupa Tesolin and she’s going to talk to us about the creative process and the spark. My last guest on the show is going to be a good friend of min. It’s not often that I get to have people I know on the show. He’s a fantastic musician that lives in Serbia and we’ll listen to some of his music. Gaion Ilishick. On my show today the first guest is Marcus Wells. His book is called Thermogenics: The Energy Zone, Seven Steps to Cellular Dieting, but he’s here to talk to us about barbequing, the fourth of July. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Wells: Thanks you very much, I appreciate it.

Dr. Kent: Tell me something about what’s going on in your house today on the fourth of July?

Dr. Wells: Well we’re cutting a little bit back on the barbequing I’ll say, just a little bit. Not completely but I think the method of how we cook and what we’re cooking and how long we’re cooking it is being reanalyzed by the family household and what I mean by that is medical science and technology have looked at some of the products that we’re barbequing these days along with a lot of the fats that we’re cooking along with our barbeque, its being cooked and in the flames dirty caustic agents, carcinogens are being blown back onto our foods, which we consume. This is coming from the fat portion of the meat but also within the meat itself.

The fats creotin that’s inside the meat, the heat that we’re cooking meats at and the length of time we’re cooking it at is creating another carcinogen. We’re getting heterocyclic amines coming from the meats and getting what’s called poly aromatic hydrocarbons. I call those PAHs that are coming from the fat. So we are now having to look a little more closely at what we’re cooking, how long we’re cooking it and how much of it that we’re eating.

Dr. Kent: So what exactly are you eating this year?

Dr. Wells: This year its going to be a lot more fruits and vegetables because the heterocyclic amines, there was a study from the Cancer Institute that several of them are causing cancer of the breast, cancer of the prostate, and of the pancreas. It is again the length of time that these meats are being cooked. It could be fish, it could be beef, it could be pork, lamb; however, all of those meats do have amino acids that when they’re overly cooked that certain products, carcinogens are being produced. All meats are susceptible to this.

I’ll give you a cool recent study done in 2006 at South Carolina University where they looked at post menopausal women who had eaten meats all of their lives. Those who had done this were at a 47% increased risk of getting breast cancer. To add onto that, those women in post menopause who had not eaten any fruits or vegetables were at a 74% higher increase of getting breast cancer. So there is study and indication again from several universities and the national cancer institute that shows that the way we eat, the way we cook, and how much of the overly cooked material does affect our health and is the leading cause of cancer in our society.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about your background, how you got into this. You’re a doctor but this body thermo dynamics is very much your own methods. You’ve got an attractive website with a bunch of thermo things on it. Tell me a little bit about where you’re coming from.

Dr. Wells: Well thank you. as you know I’m a medical doctor but health really extends back many years and also currently there are organic sources of food we need to look at and we also need to reconsider vitamin supplements, antioxidants and again the organics. Based on the fact that food is being overly cooked, overly processed. We’re putting a lot of herbicides, insecticides in our food. We’re putting a lot of not only genetically modified foods, but foods with growth hormones, foods with other kinds of hormones and so we’re being over processed with foods and we need to be very careful about that.

I think our attitudes about foods need to change. We need to look at it as being almost a medicine that is foods do have enzymes in them. They do have antioxidants. We run the risk though when we overcook food to either miss a lot of these nutrients or we receive a lot of artificial things in it. Both are putting us at risk for disease. My interest spanned from that because I’ve seen a lot of cancer in medicine, in practice. I’ve seen it in my research as well and this is still the number one killer if you would in our culture. Heart disease, which are due to a lot of problems with the antioxidants.

A lot of these same things that cause cancer also cause heart disease. So we’re looking at problems with heart disease, cancer and obesity are problems in our country today and I would say that the epidemic of poor lifestyle is the cause of all three of these things. So developing better lifestyles can occur through better methods of cooking. I would recommend for the fourth of July that people would marinade their meats with citrus juice and olive oil and they would boil their food a little more even before grilling it. Certainly pre-heating food before you grill it will also help because the length of time the meat is on the grill is causing this overheating and causing the problems with the carcinogens.

Dr. Kent: Tell us a little bit about now on the fourth of July people do all tend to overeat. Every holiday you get together with your family, you overindulge and then you sit in front of the TV and watch sports. What does that have to do with lifestyle cancer, all of that as well? What does exercise do? Will it lessen the effects of these things? Or is that a completely different thing?

Dr. Wells: What I’m talking about not only does exercise increase the resistance of the heart, the cardio pulmonary system, a better heartbeat and make your lungs breathe better, increase the fitness of the body but we know that by losing weight we reduce cancer, we reduce the amount of cholesterol in the body. But there are several other things going on too. The endorphins and the natural immune system is going to produce better and more vigorously all natural chemicals, our own biochemicals as well, so a more fit body will be able to fight against cancer and heart disease, will also fight against diabetes, reducing the sugar that’s in the blood, excess sugar.

Reducing the adopus tissue again is going to reduce obesity overweight as well but the biochemical and let’s not forget the emotional and psychological factor that exercise has for us. So we know that resistance is going to increase. I think we feel psychologically better when we do this so we have a better image of ourselves over all. We’re talking about leisurely exercise. You don’t have to go and necessarily join a gym to go out and run, play tennis, or just have a walk with a family member.

We’re talking about low intensity exercise, can be just as effective as high intensity exercise so that you can get some aerobic affect to get better oxygenation of your blood so you can get some amount of isometrics for your lifting weights or doing something that is of that affect. But calisthenics, stretching the muscles to improve musculature, also to get better what we call the blood vessels can open up as well. Also the effect of relaxation; these are certain kinds of exercises, simple exercises that can be done at home in your bedroom, at the office, these are all very important components of a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Kent: Let’s say that I were to go outside, grill up hotdogs and hamburgers and cook them to a crisp, and then afterwards indulge in potato salad, heavy in mayonnaise and whatever else and then after that eat some s’mores with Hershey’s chocolate and marshmallows. What am I doing to myself?

Dr. Wells: Well I would be first tempted to come over and eat with you but my nutritional and lifestyle sense would kick in. What you’re doing to your body is bombarding it with a lot of different insults that produce carcinogens or are carcinogens themselves. From charred hotdogs we’re getting what’s called the peroxidation process in your cells which set up free oxygen radicals that cause cancer. This can also cause scarring on the inside of the blood vessels which is the start up your heart disease.

So if you’re eating high fat foods and you’re getting a lot of peroxidation from the oxygen free radicals you’re getting scarring and you’re getting the plak formation inside the blood vessels. So you’ve already started two processes that increase mortality, that is cancer and heart disease. At the same time, because the blood vessels are becoming smaller and smaller, that is their radius, their volume of what blood can go through, a pumping mechanism of the heart has to pump two or three times harder to get the same amount of blood that you normally would give to all the rest of your body.

The brain, the stomach, the bones, the muscles all need to get blood and you’re little heart has to beat that much harder to get that same amount of blood as it normally would have before you had the clotting of the arteries. So what does that do to the heart? Its almost like flipping a horse and what happens is your body is going to tell you, hey there’s a problem here and it usually does that with an internal ping called angina so that could lead if the clotting isn’t improved or the marring in the heart is not improved in the blood vessels it could lead to heart attack and there are other problems that lead from that.

Again, the increasing of the fatty foods can lead to Type II Diabetes. You’re not able to regulate your sugar, your glucose in your blood so this can lead to diabetes which is related to kidney disease, blindness, having ulcerations. Also vascular, having poor blood vessels around the body, which also is related to stroke and heart disease again. So you’re creating a vicious cycle when you’re doing this.

I would like to say no one is saying don’t barbeque, don’t grill, but there are healthy alternatives such as poaching, baking, pan stirring and boiling, watching the amount of fat that’s in your food and getting the exercise in. It can be low intensity exercise. All of these things are going to help work with the nutrition aspect in a healthy lifestyle.

Dr. Kent: The number one thing is to precook the burgers, go out and exercise, but have a good day. I have, what I’m actually making is not hotdogs and all of that but I am part of a local farm share and I have beets that I had to prepare so I spent an hour and a half preparing and putting those beets in the salad. So I’m not really a hot dog eater myself but what’s the value of local organic food. Do you talk about that, think about that?

Dr. Wells: Yeah I do in my book and organics including soy, whey, in the diet as well as more grains, more whole grains, more whole foods, you can still get protein and protein alternatives besides meats or the soys, wheys, kalene, and fermented soy in particular can be there. Now there are healthy fats. There is safflower oil, there’s canola, there’s sunflower oil, there’s flax and flax seed; these are healthy oils.

We’ve even found out that coconut oil actually is healthy. It’s a saturated fat but there are some good saturated fats as well. But it comes to carbohydrates go with more complex carbohydrates instead of simple sugar. When it comes to sugar, there is now stadia which is there as an alternative to honey or to sugar and doesn’t have the negative effects of sugar. So there are plenty of good dietary products that we can be using.

We should be looking at the antioxidants and vitamins because they’re being processed out and we’re not sure if we’re getting all the amount of recommended daily allowance of vitamins and antioxidants. Just the antioxidants by the way, they’re fighting against those oxygen free radicals that cause heart disease and cause cancer. This is Vitamin C, D, grape seed extract that we should be looking at. Co-enzyme 2 and 10, we should be looking more at these as a daily part of our regimen.

Dr. Kent: We don’t have much more time but tell me a little about your book and your website, where we can find out much more information about this.

Dr. Wells: The book is Thermo Genetics and you can go to my website tgx360.com but the book is talking about a way to create a healthier lifestyle through low intensity exercise, ways that can improve your resistance, help your cardiopulmonary system create a better fit you.

We’re looking at the antioxidants, the minerals, the vitamins, and looking at organics. We took a strong look at researching some of the alternatives, health measures that are the antioxidants that fight against cancer, that can burn fats, thermo genetic agents that help control the appetite. Those that can help bring out the cholesterol to the liver and muscles to be burned better. A look at some of the products, I would call them sexy scientific products.

These are natural herbs that can help with the body; some of them are natural aphrodisiacs. Again we talked about thermogenics, the antioxidants, and the vitamins are all included in the book Thermogenics. It’s a new way of creating a healthier attitude and relationship with food. The human body is a natural walking, talking pharmacy. And we need to listen more to the body and what its trying to say to us and we need to take the time to eat more organically, more naturally, and read labels a lot more.

Dr. Kent: Where can we find the book?

Dr. Wells: The book can be ordered through my website, that’s tgx360.com or at infinitypublishing.com is the second route. It will be out in Barnes & Noble as well as Borders but go directly to the website at tgx360 and you’ll be able to get it first hand. I would like to add that there are products with that too.

Dr. Kent: It’s really been an honor speaking with you especially on the fourth of July when most folks over engorge themselves. And even if we’re doing that we can be thinking about what we’re doing to ourselves in the process. So it’s been a fantastic honor speaking with Dr. Marcus Wells, author of Thermogenics: The Energy Zone and his website tgx360.com. Thank you for being on the show.

Dr. Wells: Thank you.

Dr. Kent: My next guest is going to be Ron Berkay; he is an author of Disturbing Questions. Come on back for that.

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