The School of Greatness
How To Prevent & REVERSE Disease With THESE FOODS To Live Longer | Dr. William Li
Mon, 10 Mar 2025
I'm going on tour! Come see The School of Greatness LIVE in person!Get my new book Make Money Easy here!What if the secret to living well past 100 lies within your gut? In this eye-opening conversation, renowned physician and researcher Dr. William Li reveals groundbreaking discoveries about the connection between gut bacteria and exceptional longevity. I was fascinated to learn that scientists have identified four specific bacteria that flourish in the digestive systems of "super-agers" - people who live healthily beyond 110 years old. Dr. Li shares his unique approach to understanding disease through common denominators like blood vessels and gut health, explaining how our microbiome communicates directly with our immune system, brain, and virtually every bodily function. Beyond the technical research, he offers incredibly practical, accessible steps anyone can take to restore gut health, reset their metabolism, and potentially extend both lifespan and healthspan - no expensive supplements or complicated regimens required.Dr. William Li on YouTubeEat to Beat Disease by Dr. William LiEat to Beat Your Diet by Dr. William LiIn this episode you will learn:How four specific bacteria present in super-agers' gut microbiomes may hold keys to exceptional longevity and healthWhy 70% of your immune system actually resides in your gut, and how it communicates with your bacteria through the intestinal wallThe surprising connection between gum disease, gut bacteria, and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson'sWhy simply skipping breakfast 2-3 times weekly might be one of the easiest and most effective longevity practicesHow resistant starches from refrigerated potatoes and green bananas can help cultivate the specific bacteria found in centenariansFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1743For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mark Hyman – greatness.lnk.to/1695SCDr. Will Bulsiewicz – greatness.lnk.to/1621SCGlucose Goddess – greatness.lnk.to/1575SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. William Li and what is his approach to longevity?
You can go to lewishouse.com slash tour to get your tickets right now. I'm very excited. I hope to see you guys there. Thank you for all of your support, as always, for being here and listening to this show. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode with Dr. William Lee. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest.
We have the inspiring Dr. William Lee in the house. So good to see you. Thank you for being here.
Good to see you, Luis. Thanks for having me.
Very excited about this because you've been on the show a couple of times and you've been a researcher, a scientist, a physician for many years. mostly helping people figure out about how to cure cancer. That's kind of where your background is around the cancer world, but you've also gone in different places around medicine and science and research.
And currently you're diving in deep into the longevity topic, which is really interesting. We were just talking off camera about a new approach to what you're seeing that the you know, supercentarians, I guess, are experiencing. And a lot of people want to know right now how to live longer, but also how to live healthy longer, how to have a good health span as well.
Because it's not fun if you live to 100, but for 25 years, you're on machines, you can't walk, you can't move, and you're not healthy. And so I think that's what a lot of people want. So the first question I wanna ask you is, why do you think people care so much about being immortal or living for as long as they can? And what are some of the new things that you're seeing in the longevity world?
Great questions. Okay, so first of all, I am a cancer researcher, but I will tell you how I got into cancer research and then ultimately into longevity research. I'm interested in common denominators of health or of disease. In other words, in academic research, you see people taking an inch of a territory and diving a mile deep, and they're super experts in this stuff.
I took a different approach. I wanted to figure out how everything was interconnected and what are the common denominators between cancer, heart disease, blindness, arthritis, Alzheimer's. If you could drain the Pacific Ocean, how do all those islands connect?
And my feeling is that if you could get an economy of scale of knowledge, if you could figure out those connections, you could pull the bow back and send a single arrow through multiple conditions at the same time. Really? That was my approach, which is why I started the Angiogenesis Foundation. It's a not-for-profit organization. It's focused on the common denominator of blood vessels. Wow.
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Chapter 2: How do gut bacteria influence brain health and longevity?
Your lower gut, which we classically think as gut bacteria, your gut microbiome, you know where it is in the gut? Do you know what part of the gut, anatomy-wise, what section of the gut? The lower gut? Yeah, lower gut. I have no idea. So imagine your gut from mouth to end, anus, 40 feet long.
Is that what it is? Yeah.
The last 25% is your colon- Uh-huh. Right? You've heard of colon cancer and everything else, or colonoscopy. So that's the last part. It's basically where everything gets, all the stuff gathers before you get rid of it. But that's actually where the gut bacteria is. And it's in a particular part, a little sac in your colon called the cecum, spelled C-E-C-U-M. And you know what's in the cecum?
It's the appendix. Now, a lot of people have had their appendix out. Okay, we used to think it's an unnecessary organ. Maybe, just maybe, that appendix plays a role that we didn't suspect. What's that role? We don't know, but we suspect it might play some air traffic control role for your gut microbiome. Wow.
All right, so what I get excited about is new discoveries about our body that we didn't know. By the way, we're talking about gut brain. Do you know that recently- We've discovered that your brain has its own microbiome. We've got bacteria that grow naturally, healthily in our brain. Wow. And it's 20% of the same bacteria that's in our gut that's actually found in our brain.
So they're connected. We believe so. Because we used to, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but we used to treat Alzheimer's and dementia as focusing on the brain, correct? Like, let's look at the brain and see what's wrong or what's off and try to treat the brain. Yeah. Versus now you're saying...
Well, it's the gut, it's the whole body that's connected to the brain, so we have to look at everything.
And we're beginning to sort of ask new questions about what might be some of the contributing factors, not just the tiny little plaques in Alzheimer's disease, because by the way, We've actually made a little bit of progress in that area, but after billions and billions of dollars, like we haven't made enough. Really? Right.
I mean, if you think about it, like if you want to return on investment, you would not actually call Alzheimer's research to be good because for the bang for the buck that we put in there, we're actually getting very little bang.
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Chapter 3: What are the four key bacteria found in super-agers?
The immune system lives in the... The walls. In between the drywall of the house. Yeah.
So it's kind of like the insulation or whatever inside the drywall.
Yeah.
And whatever's in the house is the bacteria. Exactly. The people, the dogs, the cats, all moving around.
Plants, whatever, yeah. Exactly. So what do we eat that affects our gut microbiome, the healthy bacteria, directly affects our immune system.
And impacts our brain. And then it impacts our brain. How much of what we eat impacts our brain?
More than we think. More than we think.
Like either giving us clarity and focus versus cloudiness, giving us... You know, that's what I'm working on right now.
And I do know that there are people that are working on this. So, you know, you laid it out the right way, Lewis. You eat something, it goes into your mouth, it tumbles down through. Yeah. Whatever our human body, our human cells don't absorb goes on to feed our gut bacteria. Okay. Or poison our gut bacteria in the case maybe.
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Chapter 4: Which foods can cultivate beneficial gut bacteria?
When you and I are born, my operating system and your operating system, pretty much the same. Our OS was exactly the same. Yeah, exactly. All right. And so why is it that our, I mean, maybe your metabolism and my metabolism are closer than more different, but, you know, because we take care of ourselves, but why is it that people develop such divergence, so different?
Metabolisms, for example, or maybe longevity patterns. And it turns out, you know, just like your laptop, you know, if you take care of your laptop, you turn it off at night, you clear the case. Yeah. Yeah, you update the software. You make sure that you pad it when you're traveling. Clean it. Clean it, all that kind of stuff. And let's say I'm not so careful. I drop it.
It gets really hot in the car. I spill coffee on it or whatever. What do you think is going to happen to our operating system? Or I download all kinds of stuff. Let's go break. Well, what's going to happen is that your computer operating system and mine are going to diverge. You're going to go this way. I'm going to go that way.
And actually, definitely for our metabolism, but probably for our longevity as well, You know, that's actually what happens. We start to diverge our patterns. We're all born the same way. And the reason I'm bringing this up, because I think for anybody who's listening to this or watching this, people tend to think I'm the fate of my genetics. You know, there's nothing I can do about it.
So screw it. I'm just going to do whatever I want to do. Do whatever, drink whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what I want to really emphasize is that we are all hardwired to actually heal. We can get back to that healing. We can heal to get back to our original state, which is designed like the laptop to function its entire life of the device with an intact operating system.
You know, what do you do with your what do you do with your computer? You know, hopefully you don't have to reinstall the operating system. Take good care of it. But if you don't take good care of it, clean the cache, do a virus scan, you know, like clean it up. Yeah. Take good care of it. And that's kind of how I think people should think about longevity is that it's not like just set a number.
Okay. This is not like booking a seat in a movie theater online. I'm going to get that number and that's what I want. Okay. Good luck. You know, I think that, you know, it's a journey. We need to focus on today and keep focusing on as far as we can actually see and keep doing that. You know, it's like longevity. You know, there's a quote from E.L.
Doctorow, who is a novelist, who once said, like, writing is like driving at night. You can't see beyond your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. And that's kind of how I think about longevity, living as long as you can go. I mean, you know, but you want to actually make sure that you're enjoying yourself and you're fully aware of what you're doing along the same line.
Yeah, 100%. And seeing what's in front of you, not just only focusing on how do I make it to 100 or 110, just enjoying the moment. The rise is important, but honestly, like, so is what's directly in front of you. Sure. If someone watching or listening has... maybe neglected their health for many years. And they're now living in excess weight or maybe even obesity.
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Chapter 5: What role does gut health play in preventing diseases?
How much of a block, if someone is smoking every day or vaping or doing cigars or pipes every day, or they're inhaling some type of smoke, how much of a dam are they creating in the flow of health throughout their nervous system, their bloodstream, their... I don't have the number for you, but it's pretty significant.
In fact, it's so significant that some of the researchers looking at environmental toxins have been even looking at not only smoking and vaping, but looking at even cooking. Think about the line cooks at a restaurant.
The smoke, you mean?
And all the fryer smoke.
The grease and everything coming up.
Listen, you and I- That was good. We probably have spent more time, we've probably done our time standing in front of a grill in the summer, right? Of course. And we're- flipping the burgers or grilling the steaks. Hey, you know, like that's part of the, you know, that's part of growing up, you know, and doing our thing, all right? Think about all that stuff that we're breathing.
Oh, man.
Okay? Fortunately, you know, like most people aren't grilling everything. It's minimal, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you're a line cook, in a restaurant. You're going there doing that- Eight hours a day. ... at the station eight hours a day every day. Okay? So what I'm saying is that what we expose our bodies to makes a big difference. So these are choices that we make.
And researchers and public health and policymakers, I think that there's starting to be a convergence And recognizing that, you know, if we want a healthier society and healthier individuals, all right, we got to just be a little bit more alert to the fact that what we're exposed to can have like a really, really big impact in ways that we didn't think about before.
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Chapter 6: How can someone reset their health in 90 days?
And therefore, it's going to create some type of fogginess in your thinking or in your mind. And if your thinking or mind is... a lower energy, a lower frequency, thinking, tired, it's gonna send it back to the gut. It seems like it's kind of connecting at the same time. So when you eat something healthy, hopefully it's impacting your mind or your brain to think better.
And if you're thinking better, hopefully your gut is being impacted in a better way also.
And that's connected to longevity because one of the goals that we all want to have is we want to be clear in mind. We want to have good cognition. It's not just about memory. It's really about decision-making. What am I going to do today? What am I going to do next week? And making good decisions, right?
I mean, you know, like I just think that rather than pick a number, you know, I'm going to do 150 or whatever. Let's think about this whole journey and everything we need to do to enjoy life. where we're going. You want to go on vacation, right? You want to really plan your vacation. Where are you going to eat? What are you going to pack? You know, what's the weather going to be like?
100%.
And if you could, I've got a couple final questions for you, but if you were to focus on a few supplements you think people should be taking to just non-negotiables that you think is going to help their gut, their lifespan, everything, what would those few supplements be?
I can only tell you what I do. Okay. All right. Because I don't think I can really fairly address, this should be for everybody, the non-negotiables. But I'll tell you for me, I know that it's hard for me to get enough vitamin D. So I'll take a vitamin D supplement. I know it's, even though I enjoy seafood, And I like plant-based sources of omega-3s. It's hard for me to get enough.
So an omega-3 supplement is good for my brain, good for my heart. It's good for my muscles. So I take an omega-3 supplement. I think those are, for me, non-negotiables. I just don't get enough. And I think most people don't get enough either, honestly. Because I do work in this area, you know, I have an unfair advantage of seeing the results of research and thinking, oh, wow.
Why don't I do this if I've been seeing this? So I do take some probiotics, and it's all based on the research that I've actually seen. So that bacteria I told you, Lactobacillus ruderi, you can find it in food. Sometimes it's in yogurt. It's in sourdough bread, but I don't want to eat too much sourdough bread. It's a carb.
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