A New Way to Age with Suzanne Somers

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Aging…it's a constant, and something every human experiences, every single day.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: But how do we age gracefully? What separates someone who's living their best life, engaging with friends and loved ones, from the one who isn't able to?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Today, my good friend Suzanne Somers joins us from her backyard in California, where she just found some new hummingbirds entering the world.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: And Suzanne just released her new book, A New Way to Age: The Most Cutting-Edge Advances in Antiaging.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Today, we'll talk about the best methods for you to grow older with vibrancy, freedom, and confidence.

Narrator: Welcome to Be HEALTHistic, the podcast that’s more than just health and wellness information — it's here to help you explore your options across traditional and natural medicine, so that you can make informed decisions for you and your family. This podcast illuminates the whole story about holistic health by providing access to the expertise of Doctors Steve and Drew Sinatra, who together have decades of integrative health experience. Be HEALTHistic is powered by our friends at Healthy Directions. Now let's join our hosts.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Hi folks. If you like what you hear today and you want to listen to future conversations on all things integrative and holistic health, subscribe to our podcast at BeHealthisticPodcast.com. Also, check out and subscribe to the Healthy Directions YouTube channel, which features video versions of our episodes, plus extra videos you won't want to miss. And finally, we have more with me, Dr. Drew Sinatra, my dad, Dr. Steve Sinatra, and other health experts at HealthyDirections.com.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: So Suzanne, it's really great to be with you today! In fact, I have your book here, I love this book. I mean, A New Way to Age…I mean, can you beat that? I mean, that's absolutely awesome.

Suzanne Somers: I bet you're just focused, in this book, on your chapter, huh? (Laughs)

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I believe in synchronicity. Remember, in our chapter, we talked about Lp(a). Your son has a high Lp(a), and so does my son, Drew. Right, Drew?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Well, I haven't tested in a while, but I did in the past — yes.

Suzanne Somers: Let me dumb it down for me, and for all the lay people out there. What I learned from Dr. Sinatra, and it's in this book and in my last book, is…you said to me, and it was profound, "I've had guys on my operating table with a cholesterol at 350, HDL, and I think I'm going to go in there and find him riddled with heart disease, and I don't." You said, "Conversely, sometimes I've got them, and their cholesterol's 140, and I find them riddled with heart disease."

Suzanne Somers: You said, "What's the difference? It's because doctors are not checking the second component of LDL, which is the most important. That's capital L, small P, little A." As you described it, and I think that this is a great visual for your audience — if you have high numbers in your second component of your LDL, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, that's like having razor blades on the inside of your arteries. That's bad.

Suzanne Somers: You know, with my son…after the book came out and I said to him, because I'm sure Drew is the same thing, they're around the same age. It's a very stressful time for young men. They're filled with the, "Did I make it? Did I do it? Did I do enough? Am I enough?" all those things. "Do I own my house? Do I not own my house?" all these stressful things. And his doctor wanted to put him on a statin.

Suzanne Somers: And you said to me, "I can count on one hand the amount of patients I've put on statins." And that really made me pay attention, because there's such a push to put, pretty much, all men on statins — which causes more problems than its ever solved. I mean the muscle wasting, for one, but also, we need cholesterol. And this eliminates the cholesterol completely, but the plaque you have is the plaque you have, so you're not out of the woods. What you did for Bruce, I believe, was ultimately life-saving by putting him on lumbrokinase, which is the most potent of the natural blood thinners.

Suzanne Somers: My blood pressure, right now, has gone kind of high, because I've had this fractured hip and I've been in a lot of pain. It's almost over now, and I've been taking lumbrokinase to get my blood pressure down. So, there are other ways, and that's what A New Way to Age is all about is…all right, here's the standard of care. But if you're not a standard of care type of person, like I am…I only go to standard of care, which is allopathic medicine, when absolutely necessarily. When nothing else can work, then I go there — but if I can do it naturally, I'd much rather. And I have found that there are a lot of people like me. So if that's who you are, if you'd rather go natural first, then this is the book for you.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I agree. There's a lot of good stuff in that book, I'll tell you.

Suzanne Somers: There is. Well, even in the heart section, the EECP — enhanced external counterpulsation. But all you have to remember, to your viewers, is EECP. Man, that's kind of incredible. It's…you lie on a table, and a lot of hospitals have invested in this. They wrap blood pressure cuffs around your calves, your thighs, your buttocks, and then it pumps the blood, and pumps the blood, and pumps the blood. And they claim that they can grow new arteries, that it's a way of keeping that muscle so strong. So these are the new things that people aren't going to hear about unless you go out of your way to talk to doctors like you, or read books like mine. And I find what you and I are doing is really exciting.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, it is.

Suzanne Somers: I think you are probably the leading…I call you integrative cardiologist, because you do work in both worlds. But I say you've got a big foot in alternative, and I think that you're probably the leading cardiologist in this country, in this arena. But probably the world, because not many cardiologists have stepped out of the box as you have. And it's a very brave thing to do, but you've helped so many people, giving them other options.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Well, that's the whole key. Even my son, Drew, I mean, he's a naturopath. I'm sort of blessed, because I have one step in the pharmaceutical world. I mean let's face it, Suzanne, if you're having a heart attack, my gosh, I mean…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: We do the best in the United States with thrombolytic therapy, stent, angioplasty. If you're hit by a car and have broken bones, if you have an obstetrical emergency…

Suzanne Somers: Yeah. I don't want…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: …there's nothing better than the USA, with conventional medicine. And some of our drugs are phenomenal, they really are.

Suzanne Somers: Absolutely.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I mean you take an asthmatic, and they can't breathe…

Suzanne Somers: Absolutely.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: …pharmaceutical drugs are the only option. You have to keep your foot in the pharmaceutical world.

Suzanne Somers: Absolutely.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: But then Drew is in the naturopathic world — and you're in both worlds, and I'm in both worlds. So Drew, you want to say something about the naturopathic world, about…

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Sure. Well, Suzanne, I got to say, 10 years ago, at the 2010, 2011 Anti-Aging Medicine Conference, that was my first real introduction to anti-aging medicine, so thank you for your talk then.

Suzanne Somers: Thank you.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: No, I mean…my eyes were opened then.

Suzanne Somers: I'll just say one thing about naturopaths. I think that naturopaths are highly underrated, because you have the freedom to do what the allopathic doctors, in many cases, cannot. And there are many times that I go to a naturopath as my first option because of that. Anyway, go on…I'm glad you're in that field.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was saying, I mean, I don't know how old your son is, but I'm going to be 40 soon and I wanted to get your input on this. Why is it important for someone like myself to learn about anti-aging medicine? Like, your listeners, the people that read your books — why is it important that they do these things at my age?

Suzanne Somers: Well, I remember I interviewed a guy, a famed futurist, his name is Ray Kurzweil. He said, "How long do you see yourself living?" I said, "Honestly, with the way I take care of myself, I see myself 90, 100, 110 maybe." He said, "So, tell me this. On your 110th birthday…and your brain is working, and you got strong bones, so you can walk and stand and do all that." He said, "Do you want that to be your last day?" I went, "Well, not really." I said, "What's the catch?" He said, "You can't limp into it," meaning you can't expect to get to 100 or 110, and then start taking care of yourself. You've got to start at your age — the sooner you start, the better your outcome.

Suzanne Somers: Recently, I spoke to a group of caretakers, who took care of people who are in nursing homes. Usually, I speak to larger audiences than this, but this one was about 250 people and the guy who owned the chain of nursing homes, once a year, takes all his employees for a weekend of lectures and a nice time. He really takes good care of them. So I went out and I spoke to them, and I said, "First of all, thank you for the work that you do. I am sure that every day, as you're taking care of these poor souls, you say to yourself, 'Man, I hope this never happens to me.'"

Suzanne Somers: And then I looked at them and I said, "What are you doing different? Not one of them ever, ever thought they'd end up in a nursing home. You don't expect to be in a nursing home. Your dad doesn't. I don't. The sooner you start, the better shot you have at not ending up like these people who don't know who they were and don't know who they are."

Suzanne Somers: I always felt so terrible about President Reagan — this vibrant, incredible, incredible man. I had the pleasure of knowing him a little bit. Imagine, at the end, he never even knew he was President of the United States. That's no way to live, that's not living.

Suzanne Somers: So, anti-aging is making the right choices. And we make choices all day long, and every choice matters, really matters. Every time you go…you can have an organic salad, or you can have some hamburger filled with excitotoxins and chemicals and everything. Every time you choose the organic salad, you made a choice to hedge your bet, to not end up in that decrepit, frail…one of the big three, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's — and then the ultimate stop at that nursing home. None of us want to end up in the nursing home, so you got to start now.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Well, that's what I love about your book, too. You make it so simple with starting with something as simple as diet. The foods you eat today can make a tremendous impact on your aging throughout your life.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, and it's your fuel. Food is our body's fuel. Now, if you had a Maserati, you would never, ever, ever put inferior fuel into your Maserati. Yet look what we put into our bodies, a much better machine than a Maserati. It's re-educating — and you can do that in your practice, as your dad has done with his practice and his books — of explaining to people, the better the care you take of yourself right now, the better you feed yourself, the better you sleep yourself, the better your thoughts, the better your outcome. It's those simple things, valuing sleep, eating quality organic food…

Suzanne Somers: Oh, God, Stephen, you would have gone nuts yesterday. I went to my garden, and from my garden, I was able to pick fresh chard, and kale, and butter lettuce, and romaine lettuce. And I've got two artichokes that I'm going to pick today. They're just perfect. All these…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, the perfect food is artichoke. Keep going…I love it.

Suzanne Somers: Well, when you just cut them like I'm going to do today and bring them right to the kitchen, they are sweet and unbelievable. So, the more you value food and quality food, the more fun you have cooking it and tasting it. You just heard, Drew, your father, his eyes…I could see his eyes roll back in his head about just-cut artichokes.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: He loves artichokes!

Suzanne Somers: So do I. Well, it's because…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: With non-alcoholic fatty liver disease being on the rise in our country, and all the liver transplants that are going…I think one of the best things you can give to support your liver is eating artichoke, hands down.

Suzanne Somers: Artichoke, yeah. And then, if you are going to drink…if I drink, like I do like to have a cocktail tequila, there's something so enjoyable about this cocktail that we have at 5:00. We have tequila, one, just one, with ice. We talk…we talk in a different way, because the phones are down. And I put on Diana Krall on Sonos, and we sometimes dance, and it's a very relaxing thing to do. But if I'm going to have that cocktail, before I go to bed, I always take three milk thistle, one NAC, N-acetyl cysteine, and one SAM-e just to keep my liver,l like…put back in my liver what that tequila might have taken away.

Suzanne Somers: By the way, clear tequila has little to no sugar, so you don't gain any weight on clear tequila. And I've never had more than two, because I hear if you do, you'll never forget it. (Laughs)

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Well, when it comes to any alcohol, less is more, so that's well said. One tequila is good. That's good.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, but you know what it is? It's ritual. Ritual is part of the human experience. Like in the morning…people ask me why my marriage is in such good shape. And I go, "Well, we have great coffee in the morning and a tequila at night." He makes the greatest coffee, and…organic coffee, and he brings it to me around the bed. Not across the bed, because then it's hot and it could spill, God forbid. Brings it around to me, and then he waits for me to sniff it and take a sip, and then rate it thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It's almost always thumbs-up — but what a great way to wake up in the morning, that's part of the ritual…is hearing the sound of it bubbling in the little kitchenette we have in our bedroom. And I lie in bed and smile, knowing something really nice is going to be brought my way any moment. That's the stuff of life.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Sure, especially in view of your hip situation right now. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Oh, my God. When they said to me I had a stress fracture, I thought, "Okay, so what?" I didn't know, you can't…first of all, you can't leave your bed for six weeks. And for me, it's gone on for, like, four months.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Here we are, we're born a day apart, and I had a hip replacement almost 10 years ago…and now you're having a hip issue now.

Suzanne Somers: I know. I didn't have a replacement, because mine was fractured. The doctor said if I had broken my hip, it would have been easier. He said a fracture, you just have to lie still. He put a stabilizing rod in there, and my body hates it, my body keeps reacting, it keeps getting inflamed because my body's going, "What is that thing that's alongside your femur?" So…

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Suzanne, are you doing any red light therapy, or PEMF therapy?

Suzanne Somers: No.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy?

Suzanne Somers: Like Ondamed?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah, something like Ondamed, or any kind of PEMF device that just helps bring in blood flow to the area, to help heal it?

Suzanne Somers: I don't know about red light, you can tell me about red light. I'd like to know about that. I have an Ondamed machine…the problem is, this makes me sound so stupid — we can't figure out how to work it, it's so complex.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: No, it is. It is complex. That's why you need to go to those review courses and stuff like that.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah. Suzanne, I'll tell you this. My mom actually just had a hip replacement, and she was in tremendous pain — like an 8 out of 10, even on the pain meds. So I bought here one of these photobiomodulation red light, near-infrared light panels. I sent it to her and now, three weeks later, she's walking the golf course every single day. And she's out of pain.

Suzanne Somers: After we hang up, you have to tell me where to get that.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah, sure.

Suzanne Somers: I'll order it today. Thank you, Amazon. (Laughs)

Dr. Drew Sinatra: It will help. It will help with the pain, and the inflammation, and the healing.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, yeah, because, at the height of my pain, I would say it was 9 and 10, and with pain meds. It just didn't help…and I hate taking pain meds, I hate it.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah. No, no one does. Suzanne, going back to your book…and Dad, I think you've got a similar question that I have right now. Writing this book, for you, what stood out? I mean what was an “a-ha” moment researching it, talking to these doctors, interviewing all them? Where was this moment that came where you were like, "Wow, I didn't even know that?"

Suzanne Somers: There are many things that I learned. My books, for me, are me educating myself. Senolytic activators…I'd never heard of senolytics, and then I started thinking about, of course, aging is about worn-out parts. And what I'm writing about in this book is…pay attention to the language of the body. Those aches, those pains, those creaks, the joints, your hair, your skin, your nails. Your body's talking to you all the time. And the longer you live, the more your parts wear out — no matter how good you take care of yourself.

Suzanne Somers: What I heard about senolytics, senolytics clears out cellular debris. And what I love even more is that it's a supplement that is affordable for everybody. It's about eight bucks a week. You take it once a week, on Fridays. It's like, I live in a 100-year-old house here, and I've got old pipes. The oleander bushes grow into the pipes, and then everything gets backed up. Then you got to call the Roto-Rooter man. Senolytic activator is like the Roto-Rooter man for your cells. It goes in and cleans out the cells — it is essentially euthanizing them, so that now your aging cells are young and happy again.

Suzanne Somers: And then the other thing is NAD. What is that? Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Are you impressed?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Dinucleotide, yeah. NAD plus, yeah.

Suzanne Somers: Are you impressed that I can say dinucleotide?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yes, I am, yep.

Suzanne Somers: For the people out there who don't know, senolytic activator — very affordable, cleans out cellular debris, making your cells young and working better again. And then the NAD with that long name repairs DNA breaks. So now you've got something repairing, and something cleaning out. You don't need to be Einstein to go, "Well, that makes sense." I take NAD every day, but I only take the senolytic once a week. And I love the whole concept of it.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: It's interesting…I was on the phone with my son in Europe, and he takes NAD IV, actually sub-Q.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah. No, no, god, that's heavy-duty. That's, what, the six-hour IV?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Well, he's had an IV several times, but now he gives it to himself sub-Q. He notices a change very, very quickly, in fact. No, I think NAD is going to be one of these remarkable anti-aging supplements of the future. Even now, I mean…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: …David Sinclair says it's the one thing that we all need.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: At our clinic, we've had patients with Lyme disease that just have never gotten better, patients with mold disease that aren't improving. For some of them, having an NAD IV is the biggest thing, the best change they've ever seen with their health.

Suzanne Somers: NAD IV is a…it's a huge commitment, because it's from four to six hours on an IV.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Correct.

Suzanne Somers: I had mold several years ago. 10 years ago, our house burned down in Malibu. By the way, if you live in Malibu, eventually, your house will burn down. It just does, going to burn down. So I feel like that blade has passed over my head now, I'm back in a new house. The house that we moved into in the interim was beautiful. I thought, "Well, why don't we buy this rather than go through the whole painful thing of rebuilding?" And in the four years that Alan and I lived there, I got mold in my intestines, and he got mold in the central nervous system running parallel with his cerebellum. What this mold was doing was eating through the central nervous system, causing facial tics and facial spasms.

Suzanne Somers: Now here leads back to this book, to the heart section. It was getting so bad that I took him to Dr. Roy Sweat, that famous chiropractor in Atlanta who…Nick Gonzalez sent me there. When I got to Atlanta, he said, "Oh, by the way, he's 86 years old, and he's got a tremor." I said, "He's an 86-year-old chiropractor with a tremor?" He goes, "Yeah, but he doesn't actually touch you." He created something called the Atlas Orthogonal Machine. So he laid him on a table and then with an x-ray…and he could see that Alan's neck was out of line. And he pushed a button, and it aligned it. I said, "Oh, great," and then the facial tic stopped. He said, "It's not going to hold." He said, "You're going to have to find something else."

Suzanne Somers: So then we went to Nick in New York. We went to Jonathan Wright in Seattle. We went to a doctor to chelate him in Los Angeles all summer. When the summer was over, I said to the chelation doctor, "What's in Palm Springs?" He said, "Well, Dr. Dan Johnson in Palm Springs can chelate him." When we got to Dr. Dan Johnson's office, Al was having an episode — and this is mold so bad that his eyes, he was having trouble opening them, and he was having trouble closing his mouth, like lockjaw.

Suzanne Somers: And this doctor, who we didn't know, said, "May I examine you?" So he looks at Alan's shoulder, and he said, "Do you realize you are crooked?" I've been with Alan for 50 years and I never noticed he was crooked, but he had had an injury as a kid, and then the mold got in there. And we compensate, because we don't want to look at the world like this, we want to look at the world at a level, So if our body's not level, we make our body crooked so that our eyes are level. He said, "I think you have serious jaw misalignment."

Suzanne Somers: When we got into this doctor's office…and this goes back to the heart, so that's why I'm telling you this, and mold. I'm answering for both of you. When we got back to the doctor's office, Alan now could not open his eyes, I mean, at all. They were slammed shut, and he could not close his mouth. The mold had eaten through the central nervous system, and nothing was working. And then the doctor took a panorama of his neck and said, "Your jaw is out of line." And then Alan told him about this terrible thing that happened to him as a kid. He was hung by anti-Semites and left to die when he was eight years old, so we had…dealing with two things.

Suzanne Somers: This doctor…I started to cry, and he touched my arm and he said, "I can fix this." And when you want to believe, you believe. And I looked in his eyes and I thought, "I believe you." What he described to me, that these heart attacks that none of us lay people understand, is that if the jaw…I don't have to tell you this, Steve, or you, Drew. The trigeminal nerve and the vagus nerve comes from the gut up through the heart, behind the ear, and up into the brain, right? Now, if your jaw is in line, everything's cool, everything's working great. But what if your jaw's out of line and it's sitting on those two nerves, like a kink in the hose.

Suzanne Somers: And I think, that day, Alan was going to have a stroke. And that day, he ground down Alan's teeth, put an appliance in, moved his jaw over, and aligned his jaw. And I can't say that it happened overnight, but now Alan rarely, rarely has an episode. And I thought, in this heart section, by putting you, Dr. Sinatra, EECP, and the jaw as, have you ever thought about the jaw in heart disease, would be three arenas that people might not have thought of relative to the heart. Because what kills women? Heart disease is still killing women, especially as we get older. I think heart is the number-one killer and then cancer is second, but you can correct me. I'm not sure. I think…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: It's still heart. You're right.

Suzanne Somers: It's so easy to let your blood pressure get out of whack, and all the things we're talking about with the Lp(a) — and the lack of understanding of so many doctors who don't look at that second component, like you do. So this is why I feel educating the public…in my way, I take what you all and all your brilliance say, and my talent is — because you know how many times I call you back when I'm interviewing you. I can dumb it down and once I understand it, then I know my readers will all understand it, so that we can get the most benefit from what you all have to teach.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Well, you said it, that's the gift of your book. You dumb it down, where your reader understands it.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Even the chapter that you did on NAD and the “fountain of youth,” and autography…this is tough information. This is very hard information to assimilate, I mean, there's no doubt about it.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: One of the things that I really liked about what you said about the clearing of senescent cells, these cells…borderline that are struggling, that are dying. Well, the more you can clear them…

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, get the garbage out.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: We have a “fountain of youth.”

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, get the garbage out.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: In your book, you were writing about the clearing of these senescent cells, and it was very interesting. You talked about the theaflavins in black tea, and you talk about quercetin. And Drew and I have been quercetin users forever. I mean, I think quercetin is…

Suzanne Somers: Absolutely, as an anti-inflammatory.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, it's one of the most potent anti-inflammatories around. I just did a podcast on this — not a podcast, a little video about it, a two-minute video, on onions and quercetin. I'll never forget this Zutphen Elderly Study, this was a study that came out in the 1990s. It was about aging Dutchmen, and they were only looking at aging Dutchmen, and they were looking at one endpoint in the study, both Drew and Suzanne — death. They didn't care if you died of heart disease, or cancer, or whatever. They just cared if you died, that was the only endpoint they looked at.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: And what they found out…and this is incredible, this is unbelievable. What they found out was that the more quercetin you took into your diet, whether you ate apples or onions, which contain a lot of quercetin, or took in a lot of black tea, which contains a lot of quercetin. Those three items, but the more quercetin you took in over your lifetime, the longer you lived. It was an incredible…

Suzanne Somers: Well, it's an anti-inflammatory, and you…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yes, it's a potent anti-inflammatory.

Suzanne Somers: You and I…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: And you wrote about that in that chapter on NAD. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: To me, it was just like…it was nirvana, because I'm a big quercetin user. Drew's a big quercetin user.

Suzanne Somers: You and I, as cooks — how can you cook without an onion?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: You're right.

Suzanne Somers: It's impossible, it's impossible. Before I know what I'm going to make, I grab a couple of onions. I put the onions down and I think, "Okay, now where do I go from here?" I just finished reading a book about curcumin, and the powerful anti-inflammatory properties of curcumin. It was a page-turner for me.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Well, curcumin is like an autography-inducer.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: In other words, it gets in there, cleans up the garbage. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I like your terminology. Instead of saying autography, let's say cleaning out the garbage, I like that even better. You know?

Suzanne Somers: I loved Nick Gonzalez, and I will always miss Dr. Nick Gonzalez because his approach to curing cancer, although he would not use the word cure, was clean it out, feed it right, clean it out, feed it right. I said to him, "What do you mean?" He said, "I feed them pancreatic enzymes an hour away from meals on both sides." He said, "Depending on the stage of the cancer." He said, "They're like little Pac-Men. They go in and Pac-Man…these enzymes eat debris. Cancer is debris, chemicals are debris, toxins are debris." He said, "And then these little Pac-Men poop out the debris of all the debris they just ate, and then you need to clean it out with coffee enemas."

Suzanne Somers: Well, someone said to me…I've had cancer seven times, I don't know if you know that. I beat it every single time, and someone said to me, because I…10 years ago, had not a terrible cancer, but a DCIS in my other breast. I'd had a tumor in the right one, and then I had it on the other one…and how crazy it was, to be doing coffee enemas and pancreatic enzymes. I said, "Let me ask you this, is a coffee enema any crazier than chemical poison?"

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Right.

Suzanne Somers: So, we all go where we're most comfortable. And I believe in the concept…when I went to Nick Gonzalez's funeral, it was in upstate New York, one of those little churches that look like George Washington used to go there, packed with his patients. Every single one of his patients looked healthy, there wasn't one gaunt, there wasn't one that had been on chemo. They all had a spring in their step and color in their cheeks. I looked at all of them and I thought, "Right. Clean it out, feed it right, clean it out, feed it right."

Suzanne Somers: And then, it's not as quite as simple as that, it's organic food. It's real hard to get any food in me that's not organic — and real food. If you can pick it, pluck it, milk it, or shoot it, you can pretty much eat it. I'm not afraid of any of the healthy organic fats, like you teach. I love butter, and cream, and sour cream, and olive oil. I love a great steak, I love it. And I think there's been a lot of misinformation, and you have done a lot to correct that. With Ancel Keys and that study and Dwight Eisenhower and how, because Dwight Eisenhower ate bacon and eggs, everybody decided that eggs and bacon and cholesterol were the culprits. And I think you've had a lot to do with turning that paradigm around.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, yeah…I mean, this whole cholesterol paradigm. I mean, a lot of it is a myth. But the truth is, sort of, the Lp(a). That little Lp(a) particle is really the truth about cholesterol.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Suzanne, I want to get back to what Nick Gonzalez and you were inferring. I think pancreatic enzymes are so important, and digestive enzymes. I mean, incredibly important. And I believe that, if somebody takes in digestive enzymes after their big meal or even after two meals a day…it's my belief that if you supplement with digestive enzymes, you're taking away a lot of the stress of the pancreas.

Suzanne Somers: Absolutely.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: When the pancreas wears out, or when the pancreas has to grow stronger or bigger, that allows the possibility of mitosis to get into play, and carcinoma. So I'm a strong believer in digestive enzymes.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: And I'd like to bring Drew in, because this pancreatic enzyme, I think…and Drew, being a naturopath, is really involved with the GI tract. So Drew, is there anything that comes to mind that you think is something our listeners could glean from having Suzanne on, as well as myself, about the GI tract?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah, I think Suzanne had an awesome chapter in her book about heartburn medications, right? These PPIs, these H2 blockers that so many people are on because a lot of people have heartburn, and it's very uncomfortable when you do experience that. So I really liked what you said there — but the interesting point is, and I think this is what we should discuss is you give these drugs to suppress acid, but really, we need hydrochloric acid, as we age, to digest our proteins appropriately.

Suzanne Somers: Right. And also, if you've had radiation, like I…when I had breast cancer in my 50s, it was a tumor. And so, I had radiation — a decision, personally, I would not make again. Oh, gosh, after that, I had acid reflux just terrible, and they put me on Nexium and it was just awful. And I went to Dr. Galitzer, my anti-aging doctor, and he said, "Whatever you're taking is frying your kidneys." And I said, "I feel awful on this."

Suzanne Somers: And so, I was writing a book at that time, and that's when I learned about hydrochloric acid. That as we age, we stop making sufficient hydrochloric acid and without hydrochloric acid, you can eat the greatest food in the world, but you won't get all the benefits of it because you have no way to break it down. But if you've had radiation, as so many women who’ve had breast cancer, it inhibits your body's ability to make hydrochloric acid for life.

Suzanne Somers: Now, look at the bonanza. Now they got a women who's going to be on Nexium, or some version of that for life. And what is that foreign molecule going to do to the GI tract? My understanding of chemicals in the GI tract, and eating through the barrier wall, then leaking out and leaky gut and all that. I sure don't think that taking a major pill like that every day or twice a day for the rest of your life can serve you well. Do you?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Well, no, it creates long-term harm. I mean, we know that those PPIs are causing dysbiosis, so like a massive imbalance in the gut microbiome and leading to all these nutrient deficiencies. Malabsorption with B12, and other good nutrients like iron, for example. They're terrible, I try to get people off those things as fast as I can.

Suzanne Somers: Well, for those who are listening, listen to Dr. Drew here because you're not serving…to me, my personal opinion, I'm not a doctor. But it's not serving you well. And replacing, like you just said, the lost acid solves the problem.

Suzanne Somers: Now, when I first started on hydrochloric acid replacement because of the radiation damage, which is why I wouldn't do radiation again, personally — I'm not telling anybody not to do that. I started taking one, that did nothing. I took three, that did nothing. I took six, that did nothing. In the beginning, and it was awful, I needed to take nine capsules…

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Wow.

Suzanne Somers: …of hydrochloric acid to get relief. But now, it's been many, many years and I take three, and that's all I really need to take. So it does repair itself, but my GI tract was at such a loss. When I look at my email and Facebook comments, everybody's got something wrong with their stomach. We're under the greatest environmental assault in the history of humanity, and it's affecting our guts, and it's affecting our kids' guts.

Suzanne Somers: Did you see that stat from the Environmental Working Group? They took the cord blood of newborns…

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yes.

Suzanne Somers: …across the economic spectrum, from the richest to poorest, tested every baby. They hadn't even had a sip of breast milk. Tested them for 287 different toxins, and every single baby tested positive for 180 toxins, minimum.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: They're swimming in a sea of toxins, even before they're born.

Suzanne Somers: And that's their immune system.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Correct.

Suzanne Somers: Is that how we're supposed to start out life? That means that the womb wasn't clean. And I've said to many doctors, if a couple could plan a pregnancy, that they first get the microbiome of both the mother and father in balance before you try to grow an egg in it. Because, otherwise, you're growing it in an unhealthy, imbalanced environment.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Well, timed back to…

Suzanne Somers: We have to do something.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah, I mean, timed back to everything we've talked about today, I think of detoxification as being part of anti-aging medicine. You have to have that on board. And I believe in daily detox, you’ve got to do something every single day to stay above the curve, with all these chemicals we're being exposed to.

Suzanne Somers: And I think far-infrared sauna is another great way to detox.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Oh, a great way.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, I have one in my house here. We put it in this lovely…your father's been to this house. It's way, way over there and, at night, it's awful. I know I should go there, but it's this long walk way over there. The other night, I walked way over there, and I encountered a bobcat.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Wow.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah, it was kind of interesting, but he didn't like me, and I didn't like him. But I was bigger than him.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: You know, Drew, I think our listeners need a little bit more explanation of the far-infrared sauna. I mean, I brought this up many times, but remember this. The toxins that we take in in our food supply, the heavy metals, the insecticides, the pesticides — they live in the subcutaneous fat just beneath our skin. So if you go in a far-infrared sauna, for example, and you sweat — that sweat is endowed with all these chemicals and pollutants and heavy metals. So if anybody can do a far-infrared sauna once or twice or even three times a week, I'm all in on it.

Suzanne Somers: I know that…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I remember a high-ranking cancer doctor, his wife developed breast cancer. He called me up and he asked me about the far-infrared sauna. And I said, "I've been doing it for years, I think it's one of the greatest things." He called me up and he said the one thing that he felt that his wife cleared her breast cancer was from a far-infrared sauna. I mean…

Suzanne Somers: I agree, I agree. And they say you can stay in like 45 minutes, an hour because it's much lower, it's at 140 — much lower than a regular sauna, which you can only stay in for 10, 15 minutes. But to keep wiping down, to get those toxins off you, keep wiping down. And, when you get out, to have magnesium. The other thing…

Dr. Steve Sinatra: And Drew likes a cold shower! He likes the cold-hot.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Yeah, I do frequent cold showers or plunges between.

Suzanne Somers: That's because you're 40.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Well, that way, you're washing off all those toxins as they're coming out. I've always been taught to…

Suzanne Somers: It makes sense.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: …do that cold therapy, too, which is really good for detox, as well.

Suzanne Somers: What is cold therapy?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Oh, so like hydrotherapy. So if you do a hot shower, you always want to end it on cold, because that's like you've got the vasodilation happening with the warm, and then the cold is causing this tremendous vasoconstriction, which is helping pump toxins out of your system.

Suzanne Somers: Interesting.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: It's like hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold is really the way to do it.

Suzanne Somers: That's what they do in Finland.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Correct, yeah.

Suzanne Somers: I guess they knew, way back then.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Exactly. Well, Suzanne, as we wrap up here, I've got a question that I've been dying to ask you ever since I've read some of your books, and saw you lecture years ago. What was it, for you, that was the turning point in your life for getting down this whole natural medicine route? I mean, was it the breast cancer time, when you first developed that — or was it something else that kind of turned the light bulb on in your head?

Suzanne Somers: Cancer was my veiled gift, and I say that with all due respect. I had, in my 20s, three severe hyperplasias in my uterus. In my 30s, I had melanoma on my back. In my 40s, I had my uterus removed because of cancer. In my 50s, I had a breast cancer, a tumor. In my 60s, I had DCIS in the other.

Suzanne Somers: When I had the tumor, I asked myself, "What am I doing in my diet and lifestyle to play host to this disease? What am I doing?" And I realized, at that time, I wasn't valuing sleep. I thought I was eating right, but I wasn't, really — I didn't even know what organic food was. Your dad and I grew up on organic food, because it was called food. When your dad and I were kids, they never thought it was a good idea to spray poison on our food.

Suzanne Somers: And then, I remember the day my mother brought home…we used to get an ant infestation in the kitchen, and she'd make a sticky paste with Ivory soap and put it along their trail, and they'd step in it and taste it and hate it, and they'd leave. And then one day she brought home this spray can of poison and, wow, it just killed them all. And then she went around the bottom, and then my dad got some for outside the house. And that was the beginning of the chemicalization of us, and it started with the generation of your dad and I…and that is why, I believe, cancer is now an epidemic.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Suzanne Somers: Cancer…no one wants to hear those words, but out of every negative, there's something positive. You get a cancer diagnosis, and you really do a lot of self-examination on your choices, your diet and lifestyle habits, your thoughts, forgiveness. Forgiveness is a big one. I believe cancer is beatable, curable. I've done it seven times now.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Amazing.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: That's kudos to you, Suzanne. That's awesome. That's a…

Suzanne Somers: Thank you, darling.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: That's a…

Suzanne Somers: You know I love you.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, geez. That's incredible, unbelievable.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: You know, I could maybe sum this up. Drew and I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago, on diabetes. During the podcast, I was talking about boosting AMPK. One of the ways of boosting AMPK is using metformin.

Suzanne Somers: Metformin, right.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: You like berberine, as well. Is that correct?

Suzanne Somers: Right. Well, that's the natural version of it.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yeah.

Suzanne Somers: What do you think of metformin?

Dr. Steve Sinatra: You know, I used to like it years ago. I still have about 1,000 tablets in my cabinet. And I still take it from time to time, I mean…

Suzanne Somers: If you want to lose weight, metformin and AMPK activator, that's the magic formula.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Right. No, it probably is, it probably is. In fact, it's kind of interesting, I started taking metformin again, and I lost about eight or nine pounds. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Oh, yeah, because you're just not hungry. You're just not hungry when you take it.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yeah. No, it works well, it works well. Then, in your book, I want to quote this because I thought it was really…it was by Faloon, in that chapter on…I thought your chapter on NAD was just awesome, I got to tell you.

Suzanne Somers: Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: He says the most effective way of suppressing excess mTOR, again, excess…

Suzanne Somers: Right, M-T-O-R.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Right, is to activate AMPK with metformin…

Suzanne Somers: Correct.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: …or berberine, basically. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Right.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: In other words, in this alphabet soup of modern medicine…and Drew and I go to these conferences and I'll tell you, when you study about autography, mythography, mTOR, all this stuff — it's like alphabet soup. But yet, if you can put it together, it's the simple things. And Suzanne, that's what I really like about you — you say it so simple. Instead of saying autography, you say garbage.

Suzanne Somers: In my simple Irish way, Stephen.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: We're both Irish, remember that.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: My mother's Irish.

Suzanne Somers: Yeah. (Laughs)

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Suzanne, let's just close up right now, I think you really said it…

Suzanne Somers: Here we go.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: What's a pearl we can give our listeners about Wellness Wisdom — if you were to just pick, in a phrase, your all-time anti-aging strategic plan, what would that be?

Suzanne Somers: I have to go back to what seems very obvious with me, that bioidentical hormones are the game-changer. And that's…if aging is about worn-out parts, this puts back what you've lost in the aging process, including your mind. The estrogen feeds the mind, and I don't know who I would be if I were not on hormones, and I've been on hormones for 20 years. Every day's a good one, and every day's a good one for Alan.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: That's great.

Suzanne Somers: So if anybody's on the fence about it, I highly recommend it.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yeah, and actually, Drew, you're into hormonal replacement, as well, right?

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Oh, absolutely. I mean most women that come in, and even men, too, they're in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s — I have them on bioidentical hormones, because I believe in them so strongly and people feel really good on them.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Maybe, in the future, we should do a whole podcast on bioidentical hormones. Not just for men only, but for women and men. I mean, that's a whole topic itself.

Suzanne Somers: And younger and younger, because of the chemical assault. People are draining out of their hormones at a much younger age than they used to. It used to be 45, 50. It's very common now, especially if you live in someplace like New York City with all the EMF towers and electromagnetic radiation and fields and all that, as you know so well. The young women are not doing well, and I know it because I hear from them all the time. They don't feel right, they can't sleep, they don't like their hair, their hair is stringy, their skin is prematurely aging. They don't like…these are the simple things, nails. But their periods aren't right, they can't conceive, it goes on and on and on.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Oh, yeah. That's…

Suzanne Somers: There's a way to put us all back together.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yeah, and I agree, electromagnetics…

Suzanne Somers: Terrible.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: …fits into that picture very, very strongly. You know?

Suzanne Somers: Terrible.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Anyway, this has been great.

Suzanne Somers: Thanks, folks!

Dr. Steve Sinatra: I just enjoyed…you know, we haven't done a podcast for over a year. Is that right, Suzanne?

Suzanne Somers: I think so. Anyway, this was a good one, let's do it again.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Yeah, we'll do it again. I think the male and female hormonal saga could be expanded greatly over the next…

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Let's do that. I'd love to talk about that.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: All right, so…

Suzanne Somers: Okay, me too. Okay.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: It was great talking to you, Suzanne, and…

Suzanne Somers: Yep, have a good day. Bye.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: Thanks, Suzanne.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: Thanks so much.

Suzanne Somers: Bye. Thanks. Bye.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: That’s our show for today, folks. If you have a question or an idea for a show topic, please send us an email or share a post with us on Facebook. And remember, if you liked what you heard today and you want to be an active member of the Be HEALTHistic community, subscribe to our podcast at BeHealthisticPodcast.com, or on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your favorites. You can also find more great content and information from us and the Healthy Directions team at HealthyDirections.com.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: I’m Dr. Drew Sinatra.

Dr. Steve Sinatra: And I'm Dr. Steve Sinatra, and I am so thankful for sharing this incredible day with Suzanne Somers.

Dr. Drew Sinatra: And this is Be HEALTHistic.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be HEALTHistic with Drs. Drew and Steve Sinatra, powered by our friends at Healthy Directions. See you next time.