Episode Overview
Episode Topic
In this episode of Holistic Health Habits, host Surani Fernando sits down with Dr. Eduardo Corassa, a pioneering clinical nutritionist, writer, chef, and speaker from Brazil. Dr. Corassa, the founder of Saude Frugal, is renowned for his work in intermittent fasting, prolonged water fasting, raw foodism, and frugivorismo. This episode explores his journey from being a top Counter-Strike player to becoming an advocate for natural and holistic health. Dr. Corassa shares his insights on achieving optimal health through raw and vegetarian diets, the science behind fasting, and the importance of living in harmony with nature.
Lessons You’ll Learn
Listeners will gain valuable knowledge on the benefits of a frugivorous diet and how it can lead to improved health and longevity. Dr. Corassa discusses the principles of natural hygiene and lifestyle medicine, emphasizing the importance of eating raw foods, proper nutrition, and the role of intermittent fasting in promoting health. He also touches on the impact of mental and social health on overall well-being. By understanding these holistic approaches, listeners can make informed choices to enhance their health and quality of life.
About Our Guest
Dr. Eduardo Corassa is a clinical nutritionist and the founder of Saude Frugal, a movement dedicated to promoting health through natural and holistic means. With nearly two decades of experience, Dr. Corassa has authored several scientific books on topics such as diabetes, cancer, and the diet of Eden. His dedication to raw foodism and frugivorismohas made him a leading figure in Brazil’s holistic health community. Dr. Corassa’s expertise in nutrition and his commitment to living a natural lifestyle provide a unique perspective on achieving optimal health.
Topics Covered
The episode covers a wide range of topics, including the benefits and challenges of a frugivorous diet, the science and practice of intermittent and prolonged water fasting, and the historical and biological basis for raw food diets. Dr. Corassa also shares his personal journey, from his early years as a gamer to his transformation into a health advocate. Additional topics include the importance of mental and social health, practical tips for incorporating raw foods into your diet, and the scientific evidence supporting the benefits of a natural lifestyle.
Our Guest: Rewriting the Rules of Medical Training with Dr. Eduardo Corassa
Dr. Eduardo Corassa is a renowned clinical nutritionist, writer, chef, and speaker who has significantly impacted the world of natural and holistic health. As the founder of Saude Frugal, Dr. Corassa has dedicated his career to promoting raw foodism,frugivorismo, intermittent fasting, and prolonged water fasting in Brazil and beyond. His unique approach to nutrition and health stems from his personal journey of overcoming severe health issues and his dedication to understanding the science behind natural living. Dr. Corassa’s work emphasizes the importance of living in harmony with nature and adopting dietary practices that align with our biological heritage as frugivorous animals.
With nearly two decades of experience in the field of nutrition, Dr. Corassa has authored several scientific books on topics such as diabetes, cancer, and the diet of Eden. His expertise is not only theoretical but also practical, as he has personally adhered to a raw food diet and engaged in extensive fasting practices for many years. Dr. Corassa’s approach is grounded in the principles of natural hygiene and lifestyle medicine, which advocate for a holistic view of health encompassing diet, exercise, sleep, and mental well-being. His commitment to these principles has earned him recognition as a leading figure in Brazil’s holistic health community.
Dr. Corassa’s background is as diverse as it is impressive. Before dedicating his life to nutrition, he was one of the world’s top Counter-Strike players, traveling globally to compete. This unique history has given him a profound understanding of the connection between diet, lifestyle, and performance. Through his company,Saude Frugal, Dr. Corassa offers guidance and education on achieving optimal health through natural means. His seminars, workshops, and writings provide valuable insights into how individuals can improve their health by adopting raw and vegetarian diets, practicing intermittent fasting, and embracing a more natural way of living.
TRANSCRIPT
Surani Fernando: Welcome to another episode of Holistic Health Habits, where we delve into the world of natural and holistic living. I’m your host, Shiran Fernando, and today we have a special guest joining us, Doctor Eduardo CORASSA. Doctor CORASSA is a clinical nutritionist, writer, chef, speaker who is also the founder of Saude Frugal He’s a pioneer of intermittent fasting and prolonged water fasting, and raw foodism and frugal frugivore ism in Brazil. Doctor Corassa has a wealth of experience in promoting a raw and vegetarian diet, and he’s here to share his insights on achieving optimal health through natural means. Welcome, doctor. Corassa, thanks for joining the podcast.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: It’s my pleasure. I’m. glad and also, thankful for the invitation so I can share a little bit more of my work. Great.
Surani Fernando: Yeah. I’m really excited to dive into this discussion. just to start us off, you know, you’ve got a really interesting background. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, but, you know, personal and professional and you know how you ended up in the world of nutrition and holistic health.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah, it’s quite funny because I was really, really, really sick child. yeah. But when I was 17, I became one of the best Counter-Strike players in the world. I was traveling the whole world to compete in a computer game, a shooting computer game that was really famous and is still famous now. And we used to travel to Korea, United States, Europe and like a lot of places, and with that being 17 years old, making somewhat a good money to travel the world and shoot people in the head in a video game, we didn’t have too much, you know, like information about life or perspective on life and how should I take care of my body so I could influence my work, my my gaming performance? So I started, like, to smoke, drink and, you know, eat to do everything wrong. From junk food to smoking, drinking, partying. so my health deteriorated really, really fast. And then I started looking for answers because I was really sick. But worse than that for me back then was to not be able to play as well as I could. So I was losing my spot on the team and that made me like, you know, run for to make it better. Right. So with that said, I was, you know, somewhat lost. Where should I find the answers? And then I started like, we had a coach.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: There was a hockey player before, and so he emphasized nutrition and exercise for playing better video games. And I was like, video games. So I made the connection and I started, like, exercising and eating better, eating better, according to what I knew back then. And I improved a lot of my gaming. So because when I started playing, I was eating at home. Rice and beans, you know, we I wasn’t I wasn’t traveling the whole world. So in the start of my gaming career, I was just eating rice, beans and some meat at home. You know, it was sleeping early, having a normal, more healthy life. But I didn’t realize it, the connection with it. So I was lean and fit. So when I started to get better on the game, I was like waiting, weighing 100 kilos, like 220 pounds, something like that. Okay, so I was like all made sense. And I went to a lot of medical doctors so I could heal myself from my back pain because I got better habits, somewhat better habits. But I was still having a lot of symptoms, and I wanted to a lot of the medical doctors, and they were all obese, looking sick. And I was like, this doesn’t make any sense because if they’re not healthy, how are they going to teach me about health? You know, they’re fatter than me.
Surani Fernando: Right? Right.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: So I was I knew I need to make changes, make changes. And I was I had two surgeries scheduled, one for my nose, one for my back. I had several health issues, several, several. But I, you know, you get used to it. Everybody around you also are a little bit sick. So you end up getting used to it. And then I stumble upon the at the internet, raw food diets, and I type on Google and like people saying, I cure cancer, cure heart disease, cure diabetes, I, I, I am better at sports, I can think better. And I was like, yeah, I already tried all kinds of allopathic medicine, all kinds of orthopedic medicine, but I didn’t try to eat and live more like animals. Do you know, like I’m more like this made sense. This makes sense. And I started like, looking to the vegan diet and the scientific benefits of it. I felt like, yeah, let’s make it a try. You know, like at the same day, at the same moment when I found this information, after like half an hour reading, I went downstairs because I was I came back to live with my parents and I was like, I was 22 back then. And I said, like, okay, so don’t cook for me because I’m not eating cooked food anymore. Ever. And then it started. It started a long, long journey. So where I, where I am right now, eight, almost 18 years ago, 18 years afterwards, that is, I realized that health is produced by healthful living. And the healthier I live, the healthier I am. So the more low I age and the better I age, the better I have more functionality.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: So you want to be more beautiful. You eat better, you live better. You want to be more intelligent. You live better. You want to be more coordinated and more fit and more fast in sports or strong taking. You take care of yourself better. It’s that simple, you know, so people just don’t realize it. But, if we take better care of ourselves, ourselves, disease doesn’t happen. For 18 years now, I haven’t had one sick day. Not even a sore throat. Not even, you know, like fever or any kind of symptoms whatsoever. And I was the sickest of the sick, sick child I could imagine. And nowadays I’m, you know, I’m one of the fittest and for sure the healthiest person I know. Like in my in my circle of people, for sure, I know raw foods that are longer than me and, you know, maybe even heavier than me because my past was so bad. But I was so glad. And, most people maybe don’t know me because I in Brazil, a lot of people know me. but I have been living on raw foods for 18 years and have done several water fasts. The longest was 40 day water fast, 39 day water fast two years ago. So natural hygiene. The science of health, a lifestyle medicine created in America, are from medical doctors that believe that health is produced by healthy living. Saved my life and I got so motivated, so dedicated to share this message with the world, thinking that I could cure the world with it.
Surani Fernando: Okay, I’m definitely interested in Abou will come back to the the that 39 day fast. very curious about that. But, you did say 39 day. Is that is that true? Like days? No. Okay.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Exactly. Days. 39 days.
Surani Fernando: I am yeah. I have heard of like long. I think the longest I heard was, you know, something like 28 or something like that, but, but I just wanted before we get into that, I wanted to understand, like, the you know what? saoji frugal means what it stands for and what you offer under that umbrella.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Saude frugal. The name of my company that I created, it means saude means health. Frugal means from frugality, from the Greek word that means simplicity and also fruits. So because we are frugivorous animals, that means like only anthropoid primates, the animals that share 99 or 98.5 of our DNA, they have this opposable thumbs, the capacity of see the full spectrum of colors, the capacity to sense the sweet taste and walk on two legs. If you walk on two legs, then have these other capacities. You are an anthropoid Primates and our biology classify us as frugivorous animals. Animals that are made primarily for fruits and vegetables. Doesn’t mean we cannot eat meat. We cannot eat a lot of other stuff. But we are made to eat primarily fruits and vegetables. And that. With that being said, you can take a look, for example, get a cat and put like a salmon on his front and put like a mango, see what the cat will eat, and then put a human being in front of a rabbit and an apple. If he eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, you get, you know, his diet. So or instincts or anatomy physiology. Biochemistry doesn’t. It’s not like that. Right. So okay it It because we cannot kill other animals that easy as other other carnivores does, we cannot there’s a lot of ways to prove that we are frugal animals, you know, like frugivorous animals. So that’s why the name of it, I wanted back then when I created. I just wanted the world to understand that, you know, we can be held, but we can be healthy. We just need to understand these basic biological principles. That is, for example, fruits has a perfect nutrition nutritionist cocktail that provides, the perfect nutrients, the perfect nutrient composition for our body to thrive. So if you’re not eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, at least throughout your day, you’re, you know, you could be healthier than you are right now.
Surani Fernando: Okay. And as a, you know, like, you know, someone who is eating a raw diet, do you eat meat at all, like raw meat or does that enter into your diet at all?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah, for sure. You can be a raw foodist without being vegan, but it takes a somewhat effort, don’t you think? Like, eating, because it’s different when you just buy the piece of meat, then when you just eat the, when you eat the when you eat in its natural state, like when you, you get a rabbit on your hands and kill it with your, like, mouth. And, you know, he starts chewing on the bones and the skin, and you read the organs, you read the brain. You know, it’s quite different for us, right? We, the the the the the steaks and the sirloin and, you know, like how Brazilians say the picanha, you know, we eat the best parts of the animal, but like, cut clean and, you know, on the, on the, on the barbecue, you know, like a salted and seasoned. It’s wonderful though. Okay. No, I know I don’t, I haven’t eaten, I haven’t eaten meat for 18 years now.
Surani Fernando: Okay, okay. Wanted to clarify that. Yeah. I mean, the frugivorous diet, you know, it’s self-explanatory that it wouldn’t include that. But if it’s you’re talking just raw and mainly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah it depends.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Right. Because for example, a lot of people come to me and say like, oh, but, anthropoid primates, like, the chimpanzee eats meat. And I’m like, yeah, right. But, you know, like they eat meat, that’s for sure. But it’s not. It’s not the same because one they don’t have sometimes they can go out without food. So when we don’t have food for sure I would eat. I would even eat meat, you know, if I was starving, you know, in a jungle and I couldn’t choose. And second of all, if you think about it, it wouldn’t be the tastiest thing to eat when you, you know, if there’s mangoes and there’s, like, a rabbit going by the mangoes. Sweet. The mangoes. Easy to eat. The mango doesn’t attack you back. The mango, you know it. Draw it, draw your senses. It attract your senses. Because the smell, the taste, the colors, it’s all part of the process of, you know, eating something. And for sure, meat doesn’t appeal to us in its natural state. Right? You have to. Right? It’s an acquired taste and acquired habit, and that’s for sure.
Surani Fernando: I mean, yeah, but even when I think of like when I think of the meat that I would eat that is raw, like in terms of, you know, fish, tuna and salmon, but they’re also prepared, like you’re eating the best cut of that. And, exactly, exactly.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: And I and I don’t say I’m not like a hypocrite. I used to eat sushi and I used to love it. Even without soy sauce, you know? but, you know, if you get the, the, then it would be hard to get the fish. And when you get the fish, it would be hard to, you know, skin it and, you know, take the bones out and take the flesh, you know, like.
Surani Fernando: It’s not.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: The easiest and not the most pleasurable thing to do, that’s for sure. Yeah.
Surani Fernando: And what would you say? Because I know, like, a lot of people have their theories. You know, the frugivorous, there’s the carnivore diet. There’s the vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, with the nutrient part of it, like the, well, the, let’s say just the macronutrients which the protein, the carbohydrates, the, the fats, the, the, the balance of that, what you need in your body and amino acids that people say. I mean, you know, you’re hearing more people saying now that you can only you can get that better from a varied diet which includes meat and vegetables and fruits and things like that. But if you’re sticking to one like the frugivorous diet, how do you get all of the things that apparently we need?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: I have been studying nutrition for almost 18 years now. It’s almost a decade, right? Most two decades I have went to nutrition university. I went to, you know, courses abroad in Brazil. I have read hundreds of books and hundreds, maybe thousands of scientific articles during all these times this long. And for sure, you you hear a lot around, but we don’t even need to go into the science of nutrition because I always can present a lot of articles, scientific articles, but we can take a look at our past. We are primates then, that’s for sure. Like or we came from the rib of Adam and Eve or we are we became we are descendants from primates. There’s just these two perspectives out there. Right. So I’m a man of science. I’m not the I don’t have the theological perspective of Garden of Eden, but still, if you take a look back, even to the Garden of Eden of the Bible, or if you take a look back in science, we came out of the jungles of Africa. That’s like a no brainer in science that there’s no question around it. And before during that time, for eight millions of years, we didn’t have cook, how to cook it, how to develop a stove, pans, pots, forks and knives and spoons and salts and, you know, seasoning. So what would you eat if you were naked in the middle of Africa? In an African jungle, you eat like a primate, you know, like why primates eat primarily fruits and vegetables? Because that’s what they can eat.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: And that’s because what what that attractant. So if you take a look or an anatomy physiology and biochemistry is all adapted for pursuing fruits and processing fruits. So with that being said and in its history you can take a look at several science. It will show that we were fruit givers animals for millions of years until the last ice age, the last ice age got the globe. All frozen fruits and vegetables didn’t grow anymore. And what happened? We started like, we start cooking food for our survival. So we learn that Troy starch at the fire, throws meat at the fire, throwing beans, rice, potatoes you could eat without, like, getting sick. Because how do you eat raw potatoes? How do you eat raw beans? How raw? How do you eat raw grains? Yeah, grains are birds foods. Birds have beaks so they can pick that small small quinoa seed. And then they can sprout the quinoa seed on their pouches. That means they are granivore animals. That means that animals that are made to eat or to eat to eat grapes, who are pigs, for example, they have like a snout, snouts, snouts, a big nose. You can snout.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: They can sense, they can sense the tubers under the earth 100,100 times better than us, so they can feel the tubers under the dirt. They can they have like, the, the pores that they can excavate the, the, the, the earth so they can get to these tubers and then they also have amylase in big quantities, enzyme that is made to break, break down starch so pigs can eat starch like raw starch, like a, you know, a potato or beans and rice without even having to think about it. Okay. So, because that is tasty for them. So if you think out through our evolution, we have been eating primarily fruits, vegetables and nuts and seeds almost exclusively. And that suits well all the anthropoid primates, because if you take a look at gorilla macronutrient ratio or a chimpanzee or a bonobo, they primarily fruits and vegetables. So it’s pretty much a 90, ten, ten diet, 80% carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat, and a lot of medical vegan doctors have been proven. They have proved in scientific articles to reverse heart disease, cancer, diabetes, you know, downregulates, aging itself, etc. have shown that this macronutrient proportion ratio, it would be the best for human beings. And now the blue zones, the longest living societies on the planet, also live on that proportion. Also in that ratio.
Surani Fernando: 8010. Oh, sorry. 8080 ten 1080 1010 okay.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: So it’s it’s a no brainer. People can talk a lot because humans are adaptable like every other species. You can get your kids and feed him whiskers like these cat food that has corn, that has like carrots, that has like, preserved meat with preservatives and, you know, like weeds. Does that make the the cat, only for animal, or does the cat still a carnivore animal? The cat still a carnivore animal, but he can digest it anything when it’s processed, when it’s cooked. But that isn’t the best idea. It doesn’t. That isn’t the best scenario. That isn’t the best health. That isn’t the best nutrient proportion for him to live long. You can take a look at Eskimos. They live on meat. Masai live on meat. The two tribes on Earth that live on meat. They have the shortest lifespan on the planet. The longest lifespan is the people that are doing 80, ten, ten.
Surani Fernando: And can you just clarify for the listeners, like 80, ten, ten? Like what is that like what breakdown is that?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein, 10% fat okay. So for example, a banana is probably 90% carbohydrates or 92 4% protein and 3% fat. Now that would be like, you know, because people don’t understand that the calories come from all these three macronutrients. Yes.
Surani Fernando: Yeah. And then, you know, with the carbohydrates that obviously is broken into like what the what is sugars. How does that fit in. Because, you know, obviously there’s the fruits and then there’s the vegetables.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah. Are all whole foods have all these three macronutrients. But for sure broccoli have like 25% protein, a lot less carbs and 10% fat. And so depending on, most plants are rich in carbohydrates. There’s no plants that are protein and even meats people talk about like meat being a high protein food. If you take a look at, for example, I think it’s steak or no, I think it’s rib. I think it’s like 20% protein or something like that, 80% saturated fat. So it people we misclassify the foods for it’s primarily macronutrient ratio. Okay.
Surani Fernando: So broccoli has 20%. What protein I thought it had a couple of percent per I mean it was a couple 3% or something.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Protein 25% of the calories from broccoli comes from protein.
Surani Fernando: Oh okay.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: So if I eat a kilo of broccoli I would get around 30g of protein. But okay, really low in calories. So a kilo of broccoli would be.
Surani Fernando: Only.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: 270 70 calories. That’s why it provides less protein because it’s providing less calories. But still, it is a high protein food. If you compare it to other foods.
Surani Fernando: And like do you, would you say that there are then some foods like raw foods that you would not eat because they need to be cooked? Like for example, you you mentioned, you know, that the some animals have specific enzymes to break down specific foods, and that’s natural for them, but maybe not for us. That’s why we decided to put them on fire. Like, would you say that there are some things that you just then wouldn’t eat because you don’t cook it?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: That’s, that’s that’s pretty much it because like I have been eating, eating tubers or things like that, no foods that need to be cooked for like almost 18 years.
Surani Fernando: Like potatoes.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah, yeah. Because it’s not natural for human beings. And the proportion of nutrients inside of the potato is not the best one for us. So that’s one of the main causes of modern diseases. People are not eating because, for example, you can live off ten grams, ten milligrams of vitamin C, you are not going to die without it. But if you get like the 100g that you should by eating fruits and vegetables would be a lot better. I don’t remember that the RDA for vitamin D, I’m just, you know, getting an example. Yeah, yeah.
Surani Fernando: And so I know that a lot of people talk about spinach, that, you know, if you eat too much with the oxalate, you know, that’s why they cook it. Your thoughts on that? Do you eat spinach?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah. For sure. come on, people are eating like, you know, old mammal memory, ruminant secretions. You know that they’re eating like the secretions that come out from a cow state. They’re like they’re eating like a ham that comes out from the butt of a pig processing. And, you know, just realize they’re eating white flour and we’re eating white rice and sugar, you know, like. Yeah. And they’re talking about like the oxalates in spinach. So. Okay, you know, show me who’s dying of, like, oxalate access, you know, like, by eating some spinach in a salad, you know, like.
Shiran Fernando: Yeah, I think it’s like. I mean, it’s everything in moderation. I mean, I eat raw every now and then, like, spinach in a salad. And then when you hear things like, oh yeah, if you just eat it all the time, then like kidney stones and stuff. But I mean, it’s like it’s, you know.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: That’s the thing I asked, like for people show me the science. Because of, for example, a lot of readers, a lot of people are on my work comment like my doctor said, that I cannot eat broccoli anymore because of my thyroid, and I’m like, okay, I had some. I have done some scientific videos to my channel about it, but think about it, where is the size that he came out with that information? He’s coming out with that through his own head, you know, like he’s making that up that that is not science. He he heard somebody that got a wrong concept about something and he’s just perpetuating without showing scientific data. So it’s just his opinion. And yeah, it’s your opinion. You know, like it’s the least kind of evidence you can have is the opinion of somebody.
Surani Fernando: Yeah. I mean there’s yeah, there’s so much stuff out there. And I think for the average person, like someone listening that’s trying to navigate everything, it can be like, you know, the Wild West, like trying to navigate or you should do this. You should do that. Like you need this if you want this result or. Yeah. And I mean, I’ve said this to say this to everyone that, you know, know whatever the, the, the diet, the the thing that is the common denominator is like no one agrees on eating processed food. Like it’s more like a focus on whole food. But then, yeah, you go into some different like different theories. And you know what you were saying before about like going back to the ancestors, you know, before the Ice Age, you know, playing devil’s advocate. A lot of people would say, you know, certain life expectancies. You did mention the blue zone. And I think that’s a good example to say, like, tell us a little bit more about that with the, with their diet, with life and the life expectancy.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: It’s like, for sure we can talk about, data on life expectancy back then because we don’t have it. It’s all speculation. People are talking about like, early base, life expectancy was short, but for sure they were they were being killed by, you know, like by a lion in the middle of the jungle. They were not, like, dying from heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Life expectancy was shorter, like our ancestors, because life was harsh. You know, like living in the jungle. If you break a bone, if you break a leg on the middle of the jungle where you’re going to find food, where you’re going to find shelter, you’re going to be, you know, a lot of food, you know, so it’s not the same life expectancy that we are talking about. Because if you take a look at the blue zones, they have these healthy habits. They have pretty much the same life expectancy that we expect. Blue zones are famous for getting to 100 years of age, or even semi or supercentenarians, as we call more than 110 years of age. So come on, where are you guys? Are, you know, like creating this life expectancy myth because a lot of people in Brazil also talk about that. But think about it, fruits and vegetables are scientifically correlated with increased health span and lifespan. That means they reduce disease and then reduce them. So exercise also does the same thing. Sunshine also does the same thing. Sleep also does the same thing. So all these lifestyles and habits that I’m proposing that we are as hygienists propose for 200 years ago, for 200 years from now on and, back then, from now and now, it’s been called lifestyle medicine.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: There’s so much scientific data that improves your life that is like, you know, Wayne. Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. crying like, you know, people are always giving excuses. No, no, no, I’m not going to eat healthy or, you know, exercise every day or going to sleep early. Yeah. Life expectancy back then was really low. So, you know, I can eat, drink and be merry and, you know, like it’s absurd. We know scientifically and we know empirically every, every any person that already tried health living. And we know from good judgment that the better you take care of yourself, the better you live then the more you live. So I but for sure back then, you know, there’s data from 100 years ago that we didn’t have sanitation. So for sure people were living shorter because there were a lot of babies dying at birth. So that make the the the data confused. Confusion in the data. So for sure if you take some person, if you take like a group of 1000 people and they take good care of them, then from early age to the end of the age, the end of their lives, we have like a really fresh plant based diet, exercise, sleep, intermittent fasting, etc. and get another 100,000 persons yet another group having worse lifestyle ever, or even a normal lifestyle like a usual healthy lifestyle. I’m pretty sure we are going to see dramatic differences in terms of biomarkers and, you know, lifespan and health span as we call in science.
Surani Fernando: And I’m curious as to what a day in the life of Eduardo it looks like. Um we breakfast lunch dinner. Yeah. You know exercising as well. You know maybe the mental health thing as well. What does that look like that.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: That’s pretty cool because hygienists were visionaries back then. They suggested a lot of stuff 200 years ago, and now we are actually proving it. So if you think about it, our ancestors didn’t eat pretty frequently. Okay. So that is pretty much like, there’s no way around. You have to do intermittent fasting a lot of the time, a lot of times in nature, because there’s not as much food around. So I wake up around 5:05 a.m., I fast until noon, and then I go out to and then I go out to exercise around ten, ten, 30, 11 I exercise until noon one noon 30, and then I have lunch. I have a really huge lunch of fruits and maybe some nuts in the end. So today I had persimmons, I had papaya, I had tangerines, and I had guavas, some stuff from my garden, some stuff from, Farmer’s Market really close. And then I going to take a siesta after lunch. And then I’m coming back to work, work, work until around 5 p.m.. I go to make dinner. I make dinner until, you know, I try to have dinner always before the sun sets. And then I start my fasting until the next day.
Surani Fernando: Okay. What time is sunset there in Brazil?
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: it depends. Right. because in winter it’s 530 somewhere. It’s 6:30 p.m..
Surani Fernando: Oh that’s early. I mean, yes, you if you do the sunset thing in Spain, I mean, it’s just normal, like, you know, almost ten right now. So, I have.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Been, I have been many times to Europe, like Portugal and France. And it’s crazy seeing the sunset at 9 p.m..
Surani Fernando: Yeah, yeah. and like what you said about the life expectancy thing, I always think about that. And I think about the diet and, you know, a lot of things and theories make sense. But, you know, it’s been really eye opening to me coming to Spain, which also has a lot of old pop and older population that are surviving, but they’re, you know, eating red meat. They’re drinking. They’re, eating lots of fried food. and like, I just always wonder about that. And I’m thinking, okay, like, you know, you’re in wait all the way to your 90s. One thing that I do see a difference in their lifestyle is that they’re integrated into society up until the, the, the end of their life. You see, when you go to bars, you know, there’s always like 3 or 4 generations, there’s babies running around and there’s older people, like a group of 85 year olds having a little beer together. And to me, it makes me think it’s also that the mental health and the social aspect that keeps us mentally young and survive. But what are your thoughts on that? Because the diet doesn’t match. What, what a lot of what a lot of dietitians would recommend.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Are like health and disease are multifactorial. So it depends on a lot of perspectives, a lot of, angles, not just diets, but for sure in science, we have shown that a low protein diets actually upregulate mechanisms of repair and downregulate mechanisms of mitogenesis. So the more we eat and the more protein we eat, the more we grow and the less we repair. So we need a balance between autophagy, the repairing learning mechanisms, and the growing mechanism. So that’s why it’s important to eat a low protein diet and a low calorie diet if you are aiming for longevity and health span. But if you are trying to become a bodybuilder, for sure you shouldn’t be eating just fruits and vegetables like you. Primarily fruits and vegetables like I do. But, that is like, it’s pretty well-established in science, the the nutrient sensing pathways, all the biological mechanisms that happen. But, one thing that is pretty important that most people don’t realize it is metabolic programing. So when you are born, before you’re born, you’re already being you are already carrying the genes of your parents. So for example, if I smoke, my child will have damage in his epigenetic material. So everything that I’m doing in life is actually molding like a constructing my DNA, not constructing.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: It’s the worst word for it. But like, you know, changing my DNA for the next generation. So my DNA will be connected to the mother’s DNA to generate the child. So when the child is also in the womb, she is being metabolic, being, being programed metabolic to function in later age. So my dad was an immigrant from Italy, his family, during the World War, right? So they were really, really poor living, living the living a natural life, you know, planting all the food they eat and they didn’t have money, etc.. So he was he didn’t even have electric lights at home 80 more than 80 years ago in the, you know, like the countryside of Brazil, his bone structure were like this. He looked like a gorilla. He was so strong and built big, built because he had such a perfect lifestyle in his early years. So that’s a lot of things we have to consider. Okay. one of the main things is how the person is getting to the later age. Because for sure that’s one part. But maybe the person is is sleeping early every day, are not having chronal disruption.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: That means they’re not seeing electric lights and nights. They’re not with their circadian rhythm. This is synchronized with the actual time because our brains must synchronize using primarily the light of the sun to know what time of the day it is to make the biological functions. correct. So if the person’s living healthy all their life, but their diet is not as good, for sure the body will manage to get to a advanced age. But if you if you get all these lifestyle rights and even the diets right, you get to a later age, even better. So you know, yeah, for sure. A lot of people do a lot of bad stuff, but the body is really impressive in keeping keeping yourself alive and functional. But we are paying the price. That’s no, there’s no way to question it or go around it. If you take a look, the average human like 65% of the population is overweight or obese. You know, like it’s insane. We are sicker than ever before in history, but people just don’t realize and give excuses, excuses like, ah, I’m going to live to a hundred because my grandpa used to live to 180. Not bad stuff.
Surani Fernando: Yeah, It’s really interesting to dive deeper into, you know, the roots of that. I mean, I we’re kind of like at the end, but I did want to ask you about the fasting thing because that’s some that’s a personal interest of mine is something I’ve been doing more, the deep diving into, like, I always kind of did do that, that, that 16 just because my body never wants to eat straight away in the morning and I can hold on, but I don’t think I really did a properly with like then do the new trance that I had off to that, but recently have been doing more of the like 36 hours, fast like once a month at the beginning of my cycle. And I do feel a difference with like, it’s almost like a spring clean. but like, curious about your approach to that, how often you go into longer fasts and, you know. Yeah, the science behind that.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah. For sure. I why I started fasting back then because I was really sick and I could feel like my body when I became a real fooler. That’s one of the main things when you really start living more close to nature, your biology started talking to you. To you, that means your neurocircuitry. Your instincts are actually showing you the way. And I could tell, like I was not hungry at all for natural food. I had, like, disgusting. I was disgusting, but for industrialized food, for sure, I would feel like it. So when I saw that I was not true, truly hunger, truly hungry. But I was pathologically hungry. I had an appetite instead of hunger. I knew I needed to fast, and I started reading the science behind it. And even, the best person I can recommend back in the days is Herbert Shelton. Doctor Herbert Shelton was the biggest super fasting supervisor in the whole world, and he supervised more than 40,000 water fasts. And then, if I can, an.
Surani Fernando: A water fast is where you don’t drink the water or you do drink the water.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah, I ended up actually writing a book about it, and now it’s translated to English that it’s a hygienic fasting nature surgery because that that I was going to talk about that because we differentiate the usual fast from the hygienic fast. Why? Because the hygienic fast is nature’s fast is the optimal way to fast. And that’s I’m pretty sure of it is the way the way animals would be would fast in nature. So for sure hygienic fast is a water only fasting. No calories whatsoever, no coffee, no tea or nothing like that. It’s just water fasting. But with the four stages of rest, that is mental rest. Sensorial rest, psychological rest, mental, sensory rest, physiological rest and physical rest. So it’s not just about fasting. It’s about like if you if you sleep late, you are throwing out of sync. You’re out of energy mechanism. So for autophagy to happen, the process of fasting, of rebuilding and repairing and recycling, you need to sleep properly. So a lot of people try to fast without sleeping and you know, it’s quite absurd.
Surani Fernando: What about like you know the like doing a little bit of exercise before breaking the fast.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: if it’s a water fast I wouldn’t recommend it if it’s you know, an intermittent fasting like we do every day, that’s for sure. I always exercise and then eat. Never done the opposite.
Surani Fernando: Yeah, very interesting. Well, this has been super interesting. Given me a lot of food for thought especially, you know, talking to different people, different nutritionists. it’d be amazing to have, like, you and a bunch of other nutritionists, you know, obviously with different, practices discussing together. That would be super cool. Maybe we can do that one day. but yeah. Do you have anything else you wanted to add, like any final words for our listeners? You know, just if you’re like number one practical tip, if we had to take anything away from this conversation, especially to start off in a journey to doing to adopting some more of the principles that you’ve talked about in this podcast.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: for sure. It would be a pleasure to, make another podcast with you. I’m glad for the invitation. I’m pretty sure I can contribute a lot of other topics because I have a book, a scientific book on diabetes. I have a scientific book on cancer. I have, a book that is called, the, The Gardener, The Diets of Eden. You know, I have a I have made an incredible research, really deep research on the science of, on focusing on health. Right. So, although it sounds pretty hard or harsh or, you know, like out of, out of the norm.
Surani Fernando: Extreme extreme.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Extreme. Exactly, exactly. Extremely extreme lifestyle. He is the truth. It is what we would be doing in nature and is going to provide you the best results for healing your body, for our achieving a better spiritual, you know, like a better, you know, like, mental performance, etc. but you can work with 80%, 70%, 60%, 50% of the best lifestyle habits ever. You know, it’s not all or nothing, but for sure. Better you you want results the more you have to put in the effort, right? Yeah.
Surani Fernando: And I think that’s what people some people think okay, it’s all or nothing. But then there is a sliding scale I guess, to, you know, yeah, the benefit you’ll achieve. But you can still do a little bit. Everything counts right towards your goals. Or are you always your, your approach like, you know, like all or nothing? I think a lot of people might struggle with the adapting an extreme sort of practice when it comes to then family life, social life, you know, participating in things that there, there might be used to.
Dr. Eduardo Corassa: Yeah, for sure. There’s social aspects. There’s a lot of aspects that we have to realize it. But, you know, what can we do? We have to show people the, the, the truth, and they have to choose what they want for them. I have I, I’m, I still go to barbecues with my friends, you know, although I know that even the, the smoke that goes out of the barbecue barbecue place is actually, toxic for my brain, you know, like, for my body. I’m there because socialization is also important, you know? But I don’t eat the food that they eat. But I’m there to socialize and to interact because being lonely is worse than being obese for chronic diseases, according to studies. Wow.
Surani Fernando: Yeah, I can, I could, I could see that. I can see that for sure. Well, thank you so much, doctor. It was a pleasure having you on. I’m sure our listeners have gained a valuable and new insights, you know, in the world of holistic nutrition, and they might be able to implement some of your tips in their daily routines. For those who want to learn more about Doctor Clara’s work, be sure to visit his website at saude. Frugal Com.br, which will be in the show notes. And don’t forget to subscribe to Holistic Health Habits for more thought provoking episodes. Until next time, I’m Sani Fernando. Take care and stay healthy.