The Secrets to Longevity with Dr. John Scharffenberg on his 102nd Birthday

it. You know, I'm I'm younger than you and I still have a big problem with these kind of things. So, yeah.

Hey everyone and welcome to Chef AJ Live. I'm your host, Chef AJ, and I have a very special show for you today. Today is the 102nd birthday of a plant-based doctor, legendary Dr John Sharpenberg and he's here today to talk about and reveal the secrets to longevity and living to 102 on his 102nd birthday.

Please welcome him back to the show. Happy birthday, Dr Sharpenberg. >> Thank you.

>> Wow, this is amazing. Did you ever think you were going to live to 102? >> No, I didn't think so.

I didn't think I'd live long enough to be married even. >> Well, that is amazing. So, [clears throat] you know, everybody wants to know the secret to longevity, and I think you have a few of them.

Would you like to share them with the audience? >> Yes. You see, I've outlived my father.

I've outlived my two older brothers, 16 and 19 years. But let's look at the scientific stuff. Not just this blue zone hype business, but what do we know scientifically on longevity?

Uh when is exercise in the life important? Lifestyle is more important than the genetics for example. Okay.

Now I've outlived my father already by 26 years. He died at the age of 76 [clears throat] and I'm now 102. Now that's understandable because in the last century there's been a 30 years increase in life expectancy.

So the two generation things make a difference. However, I've outlived my two brothers. We're the same generation and I've outlived them 16 and 19 years.

Now let's look at some of the stuff we know scientifically. We know gender makes the difference. If you're born a boy, more boys are born than girls, but the boys die sooner and the girls live longer.

So born being born or female, you're going to be more have to live longer. [clears throat] That's been studied quite that's been studied quite well. But we don't have any answer to it as to what that reason is.

Then we know that [clears throat] children a lot of diseases children get later in life start early in life and we have this term aces adverse childhood experiences. There's about eight or 10 of them. If you get many of those, you shorten your life just as if you'd been smoking tobacco.

Uh what are some of these experiences? The father is abusing the mother and the children see that. That's one.

Poverty, lack of food for the children is another one. uh emotional abuse of the child. The mother is not spending enough time with the child.

Someone in the family is has a mental pro problem [laughter] or somebody in the family has gone to jail. Those are all little problems that maybe there's been a divorce in the family. In our family, we had none of these.

So, none of those applied to my living longer than my two brothers. Now, the other thing is heart disease, heart failure, heart attack or stroke. They're they're finding out that if you have proper lifestyle, you adhere to seven risk factors, you can decrease your first stroke by 80%.

You can decrease your heart attack risk by 80%. You can decrease your risk of diabetes by 88%. Now, you should know what those factors are.

Here's what they are. drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, uh lack of exercise, inactivity, eating too much, getting overweight, or eating too much meat and sugar. Then they have two others.

One is doing what's necessary to lower your blood pressure. Hypert don't get hypertension. Another one lowering your syrup cholesterol.

So those are the seven major factors to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Okay. Now I look at all those factors with my brothers.

We all had these same factors. So those weren't the problems. But this is a big thing that we are promoting all over the country to get people to have less heart attack.

Now since about 1950 1960 we have lowered our heart attack rate by 50%. [clears throat] Now that's hard to believe but it's true. That came about because the smoking went down.

We have only maybe 9% in California who still smoke who are adults. So smoking is a big problem. If you're still smoke, stop smoking.

It's important. But how about alcohol? Well, alcohol is still a big problem.

We used to say one drink a day for women and two for men might be safe, but now we don't say that any longer. Because there was a man in Seattle, a scientist, University of Seattle of Washington, and his study of 195 countries on alcohol use and heart attack rates and all that was excellent. [clears throat] It was funded by Bill Gates, the wealthy man that owned a home just be beyond the uh the university there in Washington state.

He funded it. And this man who did the study was a scientist. He was a social drinker.

He drank some alcohol. But he checked the 195 countries and he discovered that the best thing to do to prevent any problem from alcohol is not to drink any. He said the limit of our intake should be zero.

And he's having to review his own lifestyle now to see if he should cut down. [clears throat] But th those are the big big principles that are important. For example, exercise.

If you exercise an hour every day, you will live 3 hours longer. Exercise is extremely important. Now, it's important mainly at the certain time of life, mid age between 40 and 70.

That's when it's important. That's when you have more money. You can relax more.

You can have money to buy the food. You don't have to exercise. And they don't exercise.

And that increases our heart attack risk. So, it's important in middle age to still get up and do your your exercise like you should. And I'm talking about useful exercise.

and my home. I did gardening. We bought uh 26 acres of land out in the middle of California up in the mountains, 3,800 ft elevation.

And we had these 26 acres backed into the national forest. We had a stream running the length of the property, but it was all forest land. I had to buy a chainsaw and begin making roads, clearing land for a garden, clearing land for uh a house or things like that.

So I worked hard every day. Uh so exercise is extremely important. I planted two acres of of fruit trees.

I had 80 fruit trees, mostly apples and pears. Uh, I like pimmens, but they don't grow too well. I have to go 1,000 ft lower, and I get pimmen, but I don't get them up where I am.

Uh, one year I planted 3,000 strawberry plants. That went over real well. Everybody likes strawberries.

You make friends that way. But I think the biggest difference between me and my brothers is I went out and exercised. I had to to get wood to warm the house.

I built a new house. That was one thing I did. And we had to warm the house and we cut the wood.

And I did it had three sheds loaded with wood. When I got to be 80 years of age, I decided it was time to buy a wood splitter. So I bought a wood split splitter.

I exerc exerciseed a lot. At age 80, I climbed up in Yuseite half dome. From the floor of yellow of Yuseite up to the top and back was a u at least 13 to 17 mile trip.

It was a long trip. I did it all in one day. Okay.

So, I exercised quite a bit. I was at that time the oldest man to have climbed half known. Okay.

So exercise is extremely important and I did it out of necessity mostly to grow food and to have a house to live in and to heat the house. Okay. [clears throat] So I think that's the primary difference I did difference from my brothers.

My brothers had cards to the physical fitness plants. So they they had that chance to go physical fitness plants. They had my son had two uh gadgets in the house to exercise on.

I have yet to see either of them using either one of them. So they didn't use them. But it was at age 51 that I I went out and started exercise and it really worked.

Uh how about vegetarian guy? I'm a nutritionist. Diet is extremely important but exercise is even more important than diet.

Okay. So we were all vegetarians. So that didn't make the difference between my brother and me.

But in California, we do have studies done by Gary Fraser, Linda University scientist from New Zealand. He's retired now back in Australia, re retired there, but he did the studies of a whole group of about 30,000 Adventists in Southern California. And he discovered for the men in the general population 19 and a half% of the men uh lived to be 85 or more.

But for advent vegetarian men it was 48. 6% who lived to be 85 or more. Now the women live longer than the men.

And for the women in general, 39. 3% of the general population live to be 85 or longer. But for the advent vegetarian women, 60.

1% live to be 85 or longer. So there was a great difference in those who had the vegetarian diet. That is really important for longevity.

Although in our home we were all vegetarian. So that didn't make a difference between us. The thing that made the difference between us is I quit my job, went out and did agriculture, cut down trees, exercise.

My two brothers, they had their card for going to the physical fitness businesses to to do some exercise, but they didn't do it often enough. So cardiovascular disease actually [snorts] kills more people than the next five leading causes of death combined. So that's why I'm stressing that one.

But then I think we've got to get to cancer. That's a big thing, too. And that has to do mostly with diet.

But overweight, overweight and hypertension and lack of vegetarian diet are the things that are keeping the heart attack rates up higher than they should be. We know that a lot of people say you should exercise to get better muscles. That's true.

That's the way we should do it. But a lot of people in these physical fitness places tell you to eat more protein. [clears throat] That's dangerous.

You're destroying your kidneys. They don't know anything about your kidneys and they tell you to eat more protein. Eat more meat, milk, and eggs.

And you go to these physical fitness centers and you see a big shelf of all kinds of high protein foods that they're promoting. And I'm telling them not to do that. do it by exercise.

Get more muscle by exercise, not by the diet. You can do it by diet. But it's not the thing to do because you're damaging the kidney.

One out of seven Americans has chronic kidney disease. And over 90% of them don't know it yet because it hasn't been diagnosed by the doctor. The doctor waits till you have your high high blood levels of some things that tell us that your kidneys are going bad before they tell you you've got a problem.

And that doesn't help happen till the late stage of the disease. And that's too late to change things. So one in seven in the United States has kidney disease and 93% do not know it.

Okay. So, we need to get people on a lower protein diet. That means stick to what we used to say.

We've always said you should get 8/10 of a gram of protein per uh kilogram of body weight. So, you don't need a lot of protein and you get enough almost automatically with if you eat enough food to keep your weight up to where it ought to be. Okay, [clears throat] so weight control is important.

We think that's a major cause of heart disease now. Major cause of hypertension now. We think it's major cause of cancer now.

We got to do something about the weight. Uh our children are overweight. That's bad.

That means we're going to have adult population be being overweight also. So we got to keep our weight down. Well, how do you do that?

Vegetarian diet is one way. Another way is make sure you're not eating between meal. No snacks.

Bigger snacks, bigger slacks. We always say >> that's what Hans Steel used to say that too. So, so we Yeah, I taught Hans Steel.

He was one of my students. [laughter] So, he picked up a lot of those things that I used to teach. Uh, so our smoking is going down with the few that are left.

We should try to get them to go down, but it's hard hard to get them up going down further. But then the cancer is the next big cause of death and we need to do something about that and diet is extremely important there. Obesity is a big problem.

Smoke is still a problem in cancer of the lung. It's a big problem. So but obesity is is a is a big problem for uh breast cancer for example people women who run have less breast cancer than people who don't run.

So exercise is extremely important in lowering the cancer. Now the foods the vegetarian diet is important for a cancer risk. In other words, the higher the protein, the more chance of kidney disease.

The animal uh foods tend to cause more hypertension and it it increases your risk of dying sooner. Whereas the plant foods lower blood pressure, it tends to keep your weight down better. So the kinds of foods that are really good are the beans, lots of fiber in them.

Other things are tomatoes because of the kerotene in it. Betaarotene, but don't take these supplements hoping to lower your cancer rate. Beta carotene we thought would do it but when they gave people the pills with it in in it didn't do it.

It increased lung cancer risk. It increased it uh increased the death rate. And so they say don't take these nutrients supplements hoping to lower cancer risk.

It won't work. But certain vegetables like uh certain vegetables uh that are common foods eaten like uh cabbage will help to lower your risk of colon cancer. >> Is it because they're like the cruciferous vegetables?

>> Yeah, cruciferous vegetables. And that's a a good one to do, but [clears throat] it's a problem. It still has a problem.

Some of these foods have the wrong kind of thing in that cause some problems. For example, if you use Chinese cabbage, it will have the right calcium potassium balance without the phytic acid. And so that would be good.

Uh, but there's ways to lower your blood pressure, too, without having to use pills. [clears throat] Cut your salt in half. We cut down our blood pressure.

So, we got to cut our salt down. Number two, I think if we uh get adequate sleep, that helps, you know, that helps us. uh we we need to le have less protein in our diet and so that means less meat, milk, eggs and cheese.

Uh we can get the calcium that way and make sure you get adequate blood levels of vitamin D from sunshine. That has to do with the absorption of the calcium. Now, the salt keeps you from excreting too much calcium in the urine, but the vitamin D keeps you absorbing more calcium in the intestinal tract.

That's important. Uh then avoid the foods that bother the you from absorbing the calcium that have the oxylic acid or the phytic acid that connects up with the calcium. So it absorbs it makes it insoluble salt so you can't absorb the calcium.

So that's the thing we got to learn how to do. Uh let's see what else is important. Saturated fat.

You shouldn't get more than three to or four or five% of the your s of your protein as amino acids as saturated fat fat. So, saturated fat tends to raise your blood cholesterol. That's not good.

Uh, we need to get rid of a lot of that. Now, the foods all have some saturated fat, but the ones that have too much that we should know about, which is animal foods, meat, milk, and eggs. >> [clears throat] >> And it's the uh oils, tropical oils that we should avoid.

So the coconut oil and the different kinds of oils grown in the palm oil grown in Malaysia, we don't grow it over here, but we import it and they put it in the foods. So we we got to get the right kind of foods that way. So cancer, yes, your tomatoes, your right kind of vegetables, your beans, lots of fiber in them.

Those are things that are very important to decrease the cancer risk. Uh [clears throat] >> Dr Sharenberg, can I ask you a question about something you said? >> Yes.

So you were mentioning something a little bit different than I hear from a lot of the longevity experts about ad adverse childhood experiences accees. Yeah. >> That's not something we can control.

Just like we can't control our genetics. So if we have these ACEs or or not favorable genetics, if we do all these other things you're mentioning, does that still skew the odds in our favor? >> It it does.

But what you need to do with these people is have proper uh people guiding them, helping them, taking care of them, getting them out into the country to exercise and having a kind of a relaxed life by more exercise out in the country. Uh you know, tennis will give you exercise, but not like gardening. I had a Chinese uh couple uh who were living in Australia come to see me and I said, "Can you walk around?

Are you physically fit? We're in a hilly area. " And I had some interesting things to show them.

They Oh, they said, "We can do that. We have a tennis court in our our yard. We play tennis every day.

And I said, "Well, okay, let's start out. " We started out. I was with the husband up front and behind was their daughter with the mother and my wife.

And I overheard the daughter saying to the mother, "Mom, this is no tennis court. Tell them you're pooed out. " [laughter] She was all all worn out already.

Just barely started. 10 minutes in the walk and she [clears throat] was put out. But exercise, a useful exercise, gardening is one way.

Building a house is another way. Lots of ways [clears throat] to have useful exercise. So, not just any kind of useful exercise, but it should be in mid 40 to 70.

That's the time that counts. Okay. Now, what other factors are there that's important?

Uh [clears throat] breast cancer is one thing that's been hard to get down. But uh if you nurse your babies, that helps a lot. So the recommendation is nurse all the babies at least one year.

If all the American women would have 10 babies and nurse them all, we'd cut our breast cancer rate in half. So nursing the baby is important in cutting down breast cancer risk. Okay.

Don't get overweight. What about worshiping in church? Going to the church to worship.

They found that can increase life expectancy by as much as 40%. Taking time off a day to relax is worthwhile. What about isolation?

Isolation from society may increase mortality by as much as 50%. And one study says as much as 93%. So isolation is not good.

We need to get outside and get exercise. How about education? The more your education means you have more ideas of how to live more healthfully.

So that's helpful. [clears throat] Now in our family, all three of us boys had a lot of education. Two of us were physicians with additional degrees.

Uh my brother who was not a physician. Oh, my brother was not a physician. and uh he went to college enough times to have gone to college twice.

So we were all very well educated and so that didn't help us one way or the other because we were all well educated. Now making more money, having a higher income, you know more usually and you live better and so that helpful. But my brother, he earned a lot of money.

He earned more than anybody else. He was a physician orthopedist and he did very well financially, but he died a lot sooner than I did. Uh, here I'm a physician, but my son wrote a paper in English class once that his father was the poorest doctor ever.

[laughter] I I worked with the church. I never got the income from it, you see, like a lot of people do. Uh so, and my other brother had so many kids, he sent him to church school and there was tuition to pay, he couldn't afford to pay it, and his mother had to help him.

Uh so, we all were well educated and financially my brother who was the orthopedist made the most money, but he died soon. His wife died of a a very big stroke hemorrhage in the brain and then my brother had his blood pressure wasn't under control. Had little particular hemorrhages up in his brain and he eventually died too.

Uh here I've outlived all these others so many years. Every year it's getting a year more. you know, I'm living longer and I I got hypertension when I was 80, but that's quite difference than getting it when you're 50, but I did get a little high blood pressure.

So, I take the smallest dose pill there is for that. So, I do still have some problem. I didn't get that till I was in my 80s.

So, that's quite different than getting it when you're 50. When you get it in your 50, it has more years to do damage. >> Do you go to the doctor ever?

And what do they say about you? Like you're a miracle. How do they how do they feel about your health and your longevity?

Because you actually, you know, you had you had a very serious incident about a year ago. You broke your hip and that can a lot of people that's the end of them. But you you went through the surgery and the rehab.

I mean, it was amazing to see your recover. No, these people break their hip are usually in a hospital or something or in a care place within a year or they die within a year, you know, because of the broken hip. But [clears throat] I didn't have any problem.

I got rehabilitated and start working again, >> right? Cuz one of the places didn't even want to operate on you. I know there were two doctors did one operate but a young doctor came in said yes he's worth fixing and they did a good job on my hip fixed it so my full weight could be on that right after the surgery without any pain so I it's been over a year now since I had that operation been about a year and a half or so and I'm doing fine but I had to learn to walk again >> and you know people don't realize you you you not only still drive You drive at night.

You came here on Saturday for a party with all your local friends and you insisted on driving yourself home 4 hours. You even bought a new car. >> Yes.

Yes. I made it home in four hours. But uh education, income, there's genetic background, but that's probably only 10% of our factor of longevity.

Uh how the city is laid out made a difference. Do you have access to recreational for the areas, parks? Do you have access to a lot of alcohol?

Is there a lot of places around that sell alcohol or cigarette smoke or sugar? Of course, every grocery store sells sugar. So, the civic layout makes a difference.

If you walk to school, then you don't need to have a bus to take you to school and that would be worthwhile to get that exercise. [clears throat] So, what about ketosis? You know, there are some kids who have probably mental problems and they are put on a ketoic diet.

That means lots of uh fat, coconut oil, and very little carbohydrate. Now, that take puts them into ketosis, but that you don't shouldn't do. That's not good for you.

But if you go on two meals a day, uh, skipping the supper, eating breakfast and lunch, but no supper, you do get into a little ketosis towards the end of the day. And if ketosis does us any good, you're getting enough there to help you. You don't have to go into a particular dietary thing to get ketosis, but that would be okay to do it that way.

But I I say the biggest thing I think is for us to keep our weight down, not to smoke, not to drink alcohol, and exercise. Those are the biggest things we need to do to to keep our longevity up, be able to live a long time. >> How long have you eaten only two meals a day?

And and tell our viewers what that looks like in terms of when you eat your first meal, when you eat your last meal, and what do you eat for those meals? My son is 77 now and I had to go on two meals a day before they got old enough to see I was eating supper still [laughter] cuz I couldn't put them on skipping supp. So by the time they were all four anyway I was uh not eating supper.

I was on two meals a day. My wife and I want two meals a day. It's good for the wife.

>> Yeah. She doesn't have to make dinner. >> She doesn't have to make the evening meal.

It's simple. It's good. And it's a matter of habits.

Not a matter of hung being hungry. You're not hungry. You get in the habit of this.

You're not used to eating that time of day. So my kids rarely ate between meals. They were picking cherries.

Most kids, every other cherry went in their mouth, every other one in the bag. With my kids, they wouldn't even think about putting a cherry in their mouth. It wasn't time to eat yet.

So, we have evidence that the overweight person is controlled more by his vision, whereas the normal weight person is controlled by how his stomach feel. Uh, so I think it's important. I did a lot of weight control programs.

I've had as many as 200 at one time I put on a diet. And there's a lot of people think think they're going to lose weight because they're in a weight control group, but it doesn't work if they don't follow what the leader says. So, uh, weight control is right right now.

Big thing. We've done well in our country in tobacco, but I've got to tell you that in Eastern Europe, it's terrible. Smoking is still terrible.

And in Eastern Europe, they die much sooner than in Western Europe because they're eating so much more meat and saturated fat. So they're having a problem in Eastern Europe. They are being educated how to eat properly.

[clears throat] Well, these are some of the things we got to think about for right now to get people into a right living habits. Don't eat between meals. Get your exercise.

Those seven risk factors of heart disease prevention are the thing. No tobacco, no alcohol. Uh exercise every day.

Uh [clears throat] keep your weight down. Uh be a vegetarian. You know, the non-vegetarian has three times the risk of diabetes as the vegetarian does.

So being a non-vegetarian has really lots of evidence in favor of it. In fact in 2015 the scientists recommended the government to tell all the people that the vegetarian diet was an ideal diet and it is okay. Any other questions you have?

>> Yeah. So so people want to know what you eat in these two meals. So take tell us what time what time do you go to bed?

What time do you wake up? When do you eat your first meal? What is it?

And when do you eat your second meal? What is it? >> I eat early.

I get up early. I go to bed early. So, I usually eat breakfast at about 6:30 in the morning.

And then the second meal comes about 12:30 or 1 and then I don't eat anymore after that. That's the way it's been for many years in my house. We brought up our children that way.

So, what did I have for breakfast? I'm a fruit eater. I eat lots of fruit.

Uh that's easy. So the early morning meal is fruit and grains. And now vegetables, if I get them, it's the second meal.

Now the one vegetable that's common in this country is potatoes. And you have to be careful because they have a high glycemic index. What's that mean?

That means their blood sugar goes up like eating ice cream will do it. And I know one dietician no longer eats potatoes. But every time they do that uh glycemic index on potatoes, it depends on out what else is with the meal, what the number comes out comes out different every time.

I'm not really so on the idea that you shouldn't eat potatoes. I think potatoes are still good for you. Okay.

So, I'm still for the potatoes. Uh, I like grains even for the second meal. Rice.

I was used to rice several times a day at home when I was growing up. I was used I grew up in China. >> Yeah.

How what how long when did you leave China for the United States? How old were you? [clears throat] >> I came to China to come to the US permanently when I was 16.

Now, I went to school in in Michigan and the teacher didn't have any of my records because of the wars and everything. We didn't have any educational records. And they said, "What like what year would you like to be in this year?

" I said, "I'd like to be a senior this year. " She said, "Fine, you'll be a senior. " At that moment, I skipped my junior year [laughter] and I became a senior.

My girlfriend was a sophomore [laughter] and the teacher had her pet girl she wanted me to go with and she thought this was uh too far a distance in age with my girl I was going with in 10th grade. And we were only three months difference in age. [laughter] She's the one I eventually married.

>> I was going to ask you when you met your wife and when you got married. >> I met met her in high school, but then she came to Glendale for nursing and I went to Lolinda for medical school and every weekend I would hitchhike into Glendale and at 10:00 the dean throws you out of their parlor [laughter] at the nursing school and you have to hitchhike back. and I get attacked by and those were the days we were trying to get medical students through early so we had a three-year course in medicine not four years we'd skip summer vacations and uh so we had school on Sundays there I'd get back to the pathology exam I remember coming in early in the morning for pathology exam I didn't have time to study my brother had a lot of old exams and I had them But I only had time to study one exam.

I picked the right one and the teacher gave the same exam over again. And I was so excited. So when my brother had a got a markdown on some question, I gave a better answer.

It ended up he had 83 for his test score. Mine was 76. I had worse than he did.

And so in pathology lab, the teacher who had this examination, I went up to him with my two papers and I said, "It looks like every year you might give the same exam but expect different answers. " [laughter] And he said, "You must have a good collection of exams. " He said, "Would you like me to take it back and and regrade it?

" I said, "No, thank you. " I knew he would knock it down more. So, I didn't want to give it back to him.

All the kids were watching me do this with the professor. That was my exciting thing in my pathology class. >> Dr Sharenberg, what role does stress play on our health and ourity?

>> You know, stress, I think, is a big problem, but we don't know how to measure it. So we don't know we it doesn't come in our tests very often as a factor when it is a factor because we don't know how to measure it. Now a lot of Europeans think they know how to measure it but what they're using for measurement doesn't work.

It doesn't really tell us. So that's our problem. We don't know how to measure it.

If we knew how, I think we would be shown up as as a big factor for many diseases. >> I know you said what you eat for breakfast, fruit and grain, but I don't think you said what you ate for your your final meal of the day, which I think is around 2 p. m.

, which is lunch or or liner maybe. >> Yes, it's it's my lunch. Uh, and my wife used to try to figure out how to have one one dish meals, you know, round circle thing with something in the middle or and I she had a lot of one dish meals.

She she enjoyed doing that, but I was used to uh eating eggs occasionally. I did use milk. I didn't get up old enough.

I didn't know I should use skin milk. So when I went to Harvard to get my masters in public health, I was so skinny. My mother called me up said, "You can't do health education.

You look too skinny. " I said, "Mom, I'm just studying it. So when I get to looking healthy, I'm going to talk about it.

" So I was skinny and I tried to gain weight. I must have drank over a gallon a day of milk, whole milk. I didn't use skim milk.

We didn't know about cholesterol in those days. I was just studying that in my research at Harvard in 1950. And anyway, I gained 30 pounds.

My cholesterol went up to 400. Terribly high, skyhigh. [clears throat] And when the doctor examined me, I came back and teaching in medicine.

I came back and he checked me out. He said, "Your cholesterol is high. " And uh so I had to figure out how to lower it.

And I had a program I was putting people on to lower their blood cholesterol. And here I was having it to do it for myself. No more eggs.

So I stopped using any eggs. I didn't use butter anyway. I was using margarine.

Okay. So, that was no problem. Uh, but I tried to avoid all the cheese.

Uh, and anyway, I got in six months, I got my cholesterol down to normal. But, uh, uh, >> that's fantastic. So, what do you eat for lunch or what normally on a on and do you cook for yourself?

Well, [clears throat] I oftenimes eat out now for lunch. I I have breakfast myself here with dry cereal or cooked cereal. I think cooked cereal in general is better than the dry cereal.

But I look at the cereal boxes and see how much sugar is there in this added added to this particularly breakfast cereal and and I if there's more than five grams, I don't use it. But occasionally there's one that is under five that has a lot of salt and then I have to cut it down to cut it out. But so I use lots of cooks here.

I like to have granola. I love granola. And if you buy in the store, they've add 20% sugar to it.

So you make it yourself without sugar. Uh so for breakfast, granola is great. Uh tofu I like in place of the eggs.

I use a lot of tofu. I use a lot of rice. Now I use rice even for lunch.

So tofu rice for lunch is good for me too. [clears throat] Uh I used quite a bit of macaroni. Uh pastas, but my you know pasta doesn't grow well in my garden.

Does it in yours? [laughter] >> I don't think you can grow pasta anywhere. >> Uh, but pasta nutritionally seems to be okay, but really you want to have things that grow out of the garden and pasta doesn't grow in the garden.

Okay. I like Chinese food. Uh, yesterday I was at a Chinese restaurant and what did I have?

I had tofu and I had uh snow peas and I had mushrooms. Mushrooms [clears throat] not great nutritionally but very very tasty adds to the taste. Uh but rice and all [clears throat] these Chinese restaurants it's white rice but I grew up on brown rice.

Now brown rice in China they fed to the prisoners. PE the good people always ate white rice wealthy people but [clears throat] brine brown rice is what we tried to teach them to use. So brown rice is good.

I use rice often times. I I used to think I liked rice better than potatoes. Ended up thinking no I'm back to potatoes as being more important.

So I eat a lot of potatoes. I eat a lot of rice. Uh I don't eat enough greens.

>> [clears throat] >> You see, greens in China were grown using human fertilizer to grow them. And if you ate that, you got your amoeba, got amiic dysentery. So I wasn't used to eating fresh salads.

But when I read in this country that the people ate the salads lower their heart attack rates greatly, I thought that's great. So I learned to use salads more. Okay.

Uh so I I'm learning to eat them better. >> That's fantastic. So any special uh plans today for your birthday?

>> Anybody plans? I'm going down to finish up my Christmas shopping. >> Nice.

Nice. But anyway, uh, for weight control. Now, you had a problem with weight, didn't you?

>> At one. Yes. Up until >> you had a problem with weight.

>> Not anymore. [laughter] >> And I haven't had a problem with weight. I've had gotten up to 160.

Uh, but when I get up that high, I quickly get it down, get it back down. So, I'm weighing now about 150 152 and I keeping it there pretty steady. >> So, in closing, any last words of wisdom or advice for those of us youngans that want to live as well and as long as you [clears throat] >> I say we've got to keep our weight down.

Don't eat between meals is the main thing. You got to not eat between meals and you got to get exercise every day. Those are the big points.

No alcohol smoking. Everybody should know that. >> What are you doing for exercise these days since you're not using your, you know, chopping wood?

>> I think walking. I I walk quite a bit. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I think that's important. Walking is a good exercise.

>> Do you What What's in your future? Do you have any u appearances or you know people would love for you to speak at the plantp powered party in Vegas and do you have any upcoming lectures or where could people find you or can they find you? >> Well, they can find me here at home through the email telephone but but anyhow there are people beginning to find me and mostly it's your friends.

Yeah. Well, we love you. We were so >> we were so saddened when you left a year ago to move nearer to your son.

We understand that. But we so enjoyed the party on Saturday and seeing you and we'd love for you to come back again and more often. And we would love to have parties for you even when it's not your birthday.

>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Well, I'm excited really about groups getting together, working together.

I think for weight control it's important. Have a group who are overweight working together to lower their weight together. I think that's important.

>> Absolutely. So community is important in general regardless of one's goal. >> Yeah.

Right. Right. >> Yeah.

Nice. Well, Dr Sharpenberg, we wish you every happiness today and always. And we so appreciate finding you a few years ago.

Just a hidden treasure. And thank you so much for inspiring people with your, you know, with your life. We'd love for you to write a book, Dr Sharpenberg, in your spare time.

>> Yes, I'd like to do that. I'm excited about what I know. Nutritionally, we have good evidence for what I'm saying.

It's not just guessing. It's good evidence scientifically. >> Yep.

Well, we we look forward to that book. Thank you so much and happy birthday and we wish you another 102 years. Thank you.

>> Thank you, Dr Sharpenberg. And thanks to all of you for watching another episode of Chef AJ and Friends.