Here is the full text of the conversation titled “7 Keys to a Long Life with 100 Year Old Dr. John Scharffenberg & Doug Batchelor”. In this conversation, nutritionist Dr. Scharffenberg shares some of the key secrets to a longer life.
TRANSCRIPT:
Doug Batchelor: Hi friends, Pastor Doug Batchelor. We want to welcome you to this special feature where we’re going to be interviewing a very special guest. And I’m delighted today to have here in the Amazing Facts studios, Dr. Scharffenberg. Dr. John, welcome.
Now, he’s a friend, but I need to in full disclosure admit he is also one of the newer members of our Granite Bay Hilltop Church. And I was just so intrigued with his life, work, and testimony that we invited him here in the studio, and he’s going to share some life-changing information about some of the seven keys to a longer life.
Now, Dr. John’s got an abundance of experience. He’s a physician, nutritionist, and professor of nutrition for years at Loma Linda University, a graduate of Harvard University School of Public Health. You were director of the Pacific Health Education Center in Bakersfield. I’d been there before. You’ve got a special interest in health and longevity. Now, I didn’t mention you were also with San Bernardino.
John Scharffenberg: I was in charge of the San Bernardino County Health Department.
Doug Batchelor: That’s one of the biggest counties in California.
John Scharffenberg: Geographically, it’s the biggest. It’s the biggest county, amazing. I was on the secretariat of the Interdepartmental Committee on Nutrition for National Defense. That was the top nutritionist in the country. And we did surveys of all of our allies around the world.
Doug Batchelor: And you’re also, I think, eminently qualified to talk to us about longevity, because you said according to the Chinese calculations, you’re 100. But the American calculations, you’re 99 years young. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re still driving as well.
John Scharffenberg: Oh, yes, of course. I need my car.
SECRETS TO PEOPLE’S LONGEVITY
Doug Batchelor: So that’s wonderful. Now, if you were going to share seven of the high point secrets to people’s longevity, what they might do or what they might avoid, where would you begin?
John Scharffenberg: I think I would talk about exercise. I think that’s extremely important. In fact, if a woman is obese, but she exercises every day, she will outlive the normal weight woman who doesn’t exercise. If a man smokes and he has high blood cholesterol, has hypertension, but he exercises, he will outlive a man who doesn’t have any of those problems, who doesn’t exercise.
Doug Batchelor: That’s why some of the early settlers, they may have smoked and they ate a lot of dairy and meat, but they didn’t have some of the diseases, because they were working on the farms back then. What else would you add as far as some of the most important features?
John Scharffenberg: There’s been a major breakthrough here in the world of health. We had this Pasteur man who did the flash studies.
Doug Batchelor: Louis Pasteur, yeah.
John Scharffenberg: We discovered the germ theory. Tremendous advance. Then Fleming discovered penicillin. Another tremendous advance.
Doug Batchelor: One of the greatest advances.
John Scharffenberg: Now, since 2010, we have another tremendous advance just equal to those, which people don’t know about. But if you avoid seven risk factors, you can decrease by 80% your cardiovascular disease, your strokes and your heart attack. 80%, you can decrease it.
Doug Batchelor: Now, that’s one of the biggest killers, isn’t it?
John Scharffenberg: That kills more people than the next five leading causes of death combined. And you see, they put all these people on drugs, statins, based on their cholesterol level. They’ve checked it out. Only 93% of the people, it doesn’t help them one bit. But 7% it does, because they have heart disease. Our problem is, we don’t know who has it and who doesn’t. They’re going by cholesterol level and is a poor indicator of atherosclerosis.
Doug Batchelor: So all of this could be remedied by lifestyle changes.
John Scharffenberg: Yes. Now, we should summarize these, what they are. Tobacco, alcohol, inactivity, overweight, too much meat and sugar. Then they added to it hypertension and high cholesterol in the blood. But you wouldn’t have to worry about those if you did the first five, because those all help to decrease the thing.
Doug Batchelor: So one of the most important things you could also do is you exercise and then be careful what you eat and stay away from what, animal products?
John Scharffenberg: Well, the vegetarians are living much longer than other people. They did a study in California of the general population. For the men, what percent of them live to be 85 or older? Well, it’s 48.6% for the vegetarians. But for the general population, it’s 19.5%.
Doug Batchelor: So 48% of vegetarians live longer, but only 19% of the non-vegetarians.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right. Now, the women live longer than the men. So the women, the general population, 39.3% live to be 85 or older. But for the vegetarian women, it was 60.1%.
Doug Batchelor: So the jury is in, if you’re a vegetarian, you’re going to have less disease and you’re going to live longer.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right.
Doug Batchelor: Now, if I remember right, the Bible says that was the original diet for men, a vegetarian diet. So it’s like we were designed for that diet. And if we cooperate with that design, we’re going to live longer.
John Scharffenberg: Yeah, that’s right.
Doug Batchelor: So we’ve talked about the importance of exercise. And I agree with you that we certainly should stay away from, I always say, I don’t like to eat anything that had a mother. And so I’ve been a vegetarian for 35, 40 years, 40 years now, probably. And I hope I feel and look as good as you do at 99.
John Scharffenberg: Now, it’s interesting that when the Heart Association said, cut down on the meat, cut out all that meat.
They said the
vegetarian diet was the best diet in — optimum diet in 2015. They said that. But the world, the population of the US, we’ve belled against it. So they changed it. They said, eat more fruits and vegetables. They didn’t talk about meat or vegetarian diet.
But here’s what they substituted. They said, cut down on saturated fat. No more than 5% to 6% of your calories should be saturated fat. But let me tell you the secret. That means vegetarian diet.
Doug Batchelor: Exactly. I think it’s funny. You get on the airplane and they hand you a package of nuts and it says cholesterol free. Well, all nuts are cholesterol free, aren’t they?
John Scharffenberg: Yes.
Doug Batchelor: So it’s a good idea that don’t eat anything that used to walk, swim, or fly. And you’ll be safer, right?
John Scharffenberg: Yes. Now, I have a little chart here I want to show you. This is very exciting. Show you where the saturated fat is. The red represents the saturated fat. What has the most? Coconut. But fortunately, we don’t grow coconuts here. So we aren’t getting too much. But the other things are the meat fat and the dairy fat, the animal fat. And there’s another one I don’t have listed here is chocolate. That’s pretty high saturated fat too.
But the butter, we shouldn’t be using. And the meat fat, the lard, the bacon, and that kind of thing, we should avoid. That’s what we need to avoid. We should get two essential fatty acids here, the blue and the green. The blue is linoleic acid. That’s in most plant fats. That’s good. But the green is the alpha-linolenic acid. That’s not in many places. You’ll find it in flaxseed. But you have to grind it up, because otherwise it will go right to you. You don’t get any oil.
But these, the body doesn’t make. And we have to have them to live. So eating lots of greens, fruits, and you’ll get these fats that are the helpful fats. Yeah, they’re helpful fats. Soybean, acorn. That will give you your linoleic acid. And for the flaxseed, that’s the alpha-linolenic acid. Chia seeds.
Doug Batchelor: So some of the major things is not just what you eat, but you said we can greatly prolong our lives by staying away from tobacco in all of its forms. Of course, there’s no nutritional value in tobacco in any way. I guess if a person drinks wine, they might get some vitamins. But alcohol’s not good.
LATEST STUDY ON ALCOHOL
John Scharffenberg: Let me tell you about the latest study on alcohol. Dr. Max Griswold at the University of Washington did this study in 195 countries. The biggest study ever done. Funded by a man who has a home just behind the university there, Bill Gates. He funded this study.
Now, Max Griswold wanted to find out how much alcohol is safe. We’ve been saying one drink a day for women, two for men might be OK. But his study showed zero. There’s no level which is safe. Now, he was a social drinker himself. So he wanted to find out how much is safe.
Doug Batchelor: It’s not a biased study. He’s being objective.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right. And he’s got to review his old lifestyle now because of it. But he found out that there’s a zero level. And they said if there was any vitamin value, the negatives of alcohol offset that. And so all of it is dangerous. And it increases your risk of cancer.
Doug Batchelor: They were trying for years to argue a little bit of alcohol might help your circulation. But they saw the downside of cancer, not to mention the problems that alcohol caused with addiction, that it outweighs that.
John Scharffenberg: You know, alcohol is a big problem in causing breast cancer. Middle-aged women and so on. That’s very important. They need to get rid of the alcohol. On a more positive note, since we’re talking about drinking, what should we be drinking? We should be drinking water. Not at mealtime, but between meals. Water should be the main thing.
There’s a committee now, a panel, a group that gets together to see what solutions are the best to use. And they say water is the best drink.
Doug Batchelor: And of course, in North America, you go to the typical fast food restaurant, or you go to a convenience store, and they got like 90 different things you could drink. And not only they have a lot of sugar, but a lot of them now have a lot of caffeine. And a lot of Americans in the soda pop, the tea, and the coffee, industrial strength coffee, folks are sort of hyper-stimulated.
John Scharffenberg: Now, we should be careful of pushing some things too far. Because too much is bad, and too little is bad. Now, for example, water. It’s good. But you can get so much, it drops your blood sodium level, and that swells the brain up. It can kill you. It can kill you, because your brain is swollen.
Doug Batchelor: We had that happen here in Sacramento. A lady was part of a show, a radio program, and they were seeing who could drink the most water and hold it the longest, and this lady died.
John Scharffenberg: Yeah, that’s right.
Doug Batchelor: She drank too much water.
IMPORTANCE OF EXERCISE
John Scharffenberg: Now, again, exercise is another exciting thing. Exercise, if you don’t exercise, you’re going to die sooner. For every hour you exercise, you will live three hours longer.
Doug Batchelor: For every hour you exercise, you’ll live three hours longer.
John Scharffenberg: Yes, that’s a Harvard alumni story.
Doug Batchelor: I want to get up right now.
John Scharffenberg: But, you know, if you get too much exercise, you decrease your life expectancy the same way.
Doug Batchelor: Oh, really? You can overdo it.
John Scharffenberg: You can overdo it, and a lot of people don’t know that, and I hate to tell anybody that, because most people are not getting any.
Doug Batchelor: So, now, walking is a good exercise, right?
John Scharffenberg: Walking is a good exercise.
Doug Batchelor: Do you go downhill skiing, or do you do a lot of walking?
John Scharffenberg: Walking, now, I believe in useful exercise. That’s the word I’m using.
Doug Batchelor: Gardening, farming?
John Scharffenberg: Gardening, yes. Useful exercise, you see? But I think it’s very important in mid-age to get that exercise. Not so much to young people and old people. It’s middle-age. Studies with Alzheimer’s have shown that middle-age exercise can help reduce the risk.
Doug Batchelor: That’s very important. So, am I still middle-age, or am I old now? Well I want to reduce my Alzheimer risk.
John Scharffenberg: 40 to 70.
Doug Batchelor: Okay, then I’m still there. There’s still hope. So, we talked about the importance of a good diet, vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, the right kind of fats, avoiding meat in all forms, I’m hearing. Now, you mentioned butter. Like, would margarine or some vegetable butter imitation is better?
John Scharffenberg: Yes, it’s much better. But the way they did it before was hydrogenated. Made trans-fatty acids, which were not good. But now, they’re having an emulsification process of mixing the oils together without hydrogenation.
Doug Batchelor: So, get the non-hydrogenated.
John Scharffenberg: Yeah, because the hydrogenation produced trans-fatty acids, and you have to put it on the label now.
Doug Batchelor: You know, I have an addiction to peanut butter, and I know a lot of the peanut butter is hydrogenated. And so, I always buy the natural peanut butter now. And I just find your body handles it a lot better. And so, how important is rest in longevity?
John Scharffenberg: Rest is important. Breslow did a study of four factors, mainly. Rest was one of them. Getting the proper amount of sleep, like eight hours –
Doug Batchelor: Seven, eight hours a night?
John Scharffenberg: Seven, eight hours a night.
Doug Batchelor: And you go to bed with the chickens at night, is that right?
John Scharffenberg: Yeah, I do. Eight or nine o’clock, I’m in bed. But I get up at four o’clock. So, you have a good night’s rest.
Doug Batchelor: Yes. Okay, well, that’s good. Now, we’re talking about the practical things of food and exercise and water. How important is it to have a good attitude?
John Scharffenberg: Well, you know, stress is a factor. But we haven’t listed it much because we don’t know how to measure it. So, we don’t know whether it’s one stress or ten stress or what it is.
Doug Batchelor: It’s hard to quantify stress.
John Scharffenberg: We don’t know how to do that yet.
Doug Batchelor: Now, people have stressful situations, but when you have trust in God, you can kind of unload the stress and find peace.
John Scharffenberg: It’s not so much stress as a factor, it’s your reaction to the stress is the factor.
Doug Batchelor: So, having a good attitude and having a faith, and if you’ve got faith, then you can have peace, even though there’s trials in life, that can help with your longevity.
John Scharffenberg: Yes, that’s right.
CHILDHOOD PROBLEMS
Doug Batchelor: Very important. What else do you have to share about some of the keys for longevity?
John Scharffenberg: Well, one of the things that people don’t hear about is childhood problems. ACES, adverse childhood experiences. If you have a six of those, you might lower your life expectancy 20 years.
Doug Batchelor: What would be an example of one of those?
John Scharffenberg: Not taking care of your kids emotionally. You know, you’re the loveliest of them in the house. You aren’t defending anything.
Doug Batchelor: They need love and attention.
John Scharffenberg: Yes. Not getting enough to eat. They’re poor.
Doug Batchelor: If they’re malnourished when they’re young, that can shorten their long term.
John Scharffenberg: Or somebody in the family is mentally off. Or somebody in the family has gone to jail. See, those are all adverse childhood experiences.
Doug Batchelor: Creates stress when they’re young that affects their longevity.
John Scharffenberg: It affects their diseases later in life. It’s very exciting how most diseases that you have in adulthood have started in childhood.
Doug Batchelor: So it’s very important for parents to try and create a healthy environment when kids are young for their longevity.
John Scharffenberg: Now, there are some young people who are resilient and can overcome the bad effects. If they have good mentors. Religious people. Or people who take them out into the country more. Outdoor exercise and things.
Doug Batchelor: That’s great. It’s a challenge for us then to become friends with kids that might be in these high risk situations. Be good mentors to them. Help them get in healthy environments and you can prolong their lives.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right. Understanding how the brain operates in early childhood is extremely important. That’s where public health needs to put its money to make sure these kids have good mentors.
Doug Batchelor: Well, so we’ve talked about some things to do to lengthen your life and avoiding tobacco and alcohol, obesity. And of course, one of the big killers in the world is diabetes right now. And it seems like it’s an epidemic.
John Scharffenberg: But see, with these seven risk factors. Diabetes is decreased 88% —
Doug Batchelor: By simply addressing the diet issues and the lifestyle.
John Scharffenberg: The lifestyle.
Doug Batchelor: Yeah. So some people can reverse their diabetes, certain types.
John Scharffenberg: We know we can reverse it. We can even reverse atherosclerosis.
Doug Batchelor: Really?
John Scharffenberg: Yes. There’s a doctor in San Francisco. He took patients who had clogged up coronary arteries and he fed them proper diet. He put sacks of food on their doorstep. So for a year, he checked them out. And it decreased the atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries tremendously.
Doug Batchelor: By changing their diets.
John Scharffenberg: By changing their diet.
Doug Batchelor: Well, I know people that have been diagnosed with that and they got on a healthy exercise diet regime. And their arteries cleared out. So I’ve heard testimonies of people that have had that experience. You know, I understand that many people have heard of the blue zones. And they did a study of different spots in the world where people seem to have better longevity and they came up with three or four. I heard of Sardinia in the Mediterranean diet. Okinawa. Okinawa, Japan.
But then they said that in North America, it wasn’t so much the location as the faith of the people that live in Loma Linda. And that’s where you’re from before moving here to Sacramento. That they have just an extraordinarily high number of old people.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right.
Doug Batchelor: That not only they live long, but they’ve got a high quality of life and they’re active for a long time.
John Scharffenberg: Exercise is extremely important. You know, we think religion has something to do with this too. But it’s hard to measure it. They have a questionnaire that they went out to a lot of people. And they say, put down zero to 10. Okay. Do you believe in God? Well, for most of us, it’s either 10 or zero. There’s not any between halfway. So a lot of those questions, I didn’t think were applicable for me.
SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
Doug Batchelor: I think we know that having a good social network and relationships is an important factor in health. And they say married people live a little longer than unmarried, typically.
John Scharffenberg: The question to ask about social relationships, do you have one or two friends that you can borrow money from? If you can, that’s a good social relationship.
Doug Batchelor: I also like you, because I know you’ve got a sense of humor. And I think that, what do they say? A merry heart does good like medicine.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right.
Doug Batchelor: So I’m going to make your friend and you’ll lend me money. So in concluding, anything else you want to share that you think that you’d like to say to the viewers you think is an important factor in longevity?
John Scharffenberg: Well, as a nutritionist, my job is to make things concise and simple. So I will give you a university course in nutrition in one sentence.
All right. Here it is. Eat at the proper time. That means no snacking. Eat at the proper time. A variety, not one meal, but over 10 days to make sure you get all the nutrients you need. Eat at the proper time. A variety of natural, non-processed foods in quantities for ideal weight. That’s all you need to know.
Doug Batchelor: Now we’re going to have to put that sentence on the screen because that summarizes, I think, an important lesson in health. But you’re going to tell me something else maybe about cholesterol.
John Scharffenberg: Yes. When you go see a doctor, you ask him, how’s my cholesterol? He says, you’re okay. Don’t worry about it. That’s not enough. You got to know some figures. You got to know what your LDL cholesterol is. If that’s too high, that’s the killer for men, for heart attacks. There’s too many snakes. Or you have to know what your triglyceride is. That’s the killer for the women for heart attacks. That means overweight.
But not only that, the triglyceride tells you the size of the LDL particles. There’s two kinds of particles. One is light, buoyant type. If that’s high, you only have twice the risk of a heart attack. But if the small dense type are there, you’ve got seven times the risk of a heart attack. But if the triglyceride level is high normal, you’ve got 90% of your LDL particles are the bad kind, small dense type, like the diabetic has.
Doug Batchelor: Now, what is the good kind? Isn’t there a…
John Scharffenberg: Well, the HDL, they said, was good. But it’s not as good as we used to think. We think now it has nothing to do with heart disease.
Doug Batchelor: Oh, okay, that’s good to know. I think people need to hear that.
John Scharffenberg: But you need to know from the doctor what your triglyceride level is and what your LDL cholesterol is.
AIR AND SUNSHINE
Doug Batchelor: So don’t just say, if he says, oh, cholesterol’s okay, don’t walk away with that. Find out what the details are. Because that makes a big difference. And now we mentioned the air and the sunshine briefly, but I guess the way to get the right amount of vitamin D and fresh air is, you said, do your exercise in a practical way. I mean, maybe go outside and do some carpentry, do some gardening.
John Scharffenberg: Well, if you’re outside, you get the sunshine. Most work is done inside. The window keeps the vitamin D from getting into, you see. But older people have a hard time because it has to go to the cholesterol in the skin, goes to the liver, goes to the kidneys, all changes, forms — it’s actually a hormone. But we call it vitamin D. Okay, but older people, these things are all working at half speed. So they aren’t getting it. They’re going to have to have a supplement.
Doug Batchelor: So it’s okay to take, and I take a little vitamin D gummy every day.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right, that’s good.
Doug Batchelor: So, and if you are out in the sun, put on sunscreen, especially if you’re a higher risk –
John Scharffenberg: But not for the first 20 minutes.
Doug Batchelor: So get 20 minutes of sunshine. And then you might put on the sunscreen and be more careful about your exposure. That’s good. It probably also matters a little bit what part of the planet you’re on. You’re not going to get as much direct sunshine in Alaska as you are in Guam.
And so, yeah, I know I was in Australia and I walked for a few minutes with my shirt off just to get some sun. I got burnt just about in a couple minutes.
John Scharffenberg: Everybody living north of say Washington DC or New York City, those people are all deficient in vitamin D, practically all of them.
Doug Batchelor: If they’re not taking a supplement.
John Scharffenberg: If they’re not taking a supplement.
Doug Batchelor: Oh, see, that’s very helpful to know.
HOW DO YOU GET YOUR CALCIUM?
John Scharffenberg: Now, I’m speaking more often now to people who are total vegetarians, don’t use milk or eggs. Now, how do you get your calcium? Yeah. The epic Oxford study showed there’s more fractures of the bones in those who don’t get enough calcium. If you get, say, 525 milligrams a day, you have enough. You have no excess risk of a fracture.
Now, how do you do that? Natural way. Cut your salt intake in half. That controls the excretion of the calcium. See? And second thing is, make sure you get enough vitamin D. Your blood levels are up properly. You will absorb two to three times more. So there’s things we can do naturally.
Doug Batchelor: That’s fascinating.
John Scharffenberg: To get the calcium without taking a pill.
Doug Batchelor: So some people are maybe struggling with osteoporosis because they ate so much salt, they weren’t keeping enough calcium.
John Scharffenberg: That’s right.
Doug Batchelor: Interesting. I’d never put those two together. So is there a way to get calcium naturally through foods?
John Scharffenberg: Well, you have to avoid the foods that have lots of oxalic acid or phytic acid. That combines with calcium to make calcium oxalate, which is insoluble salt. You can’t absorb it. So you don’t avoid the foods. You still use the foods for other reasons, but don’t count for calcium in those foods as being very good for you because you aren’t absorbing it.
So there’s other ways to get it. There are some foods that don’t have it. For example, soy has some oxalate in it, oxalic acid, but it’s absorbed well. We don’t understand that yet, but it’s absorbed very well.
Doug Batchelor: So soy is a good thing.
John Scharffenberg: Soy is a good thing. I recommend one of those boxes, one quarter. 100 grams. This 400 gram box, 100 grams a day of tofu. I think it’s so good for you.
Doug Batchelor: Okay, that’s good to know. Now, I’m a vegan vegetarian, so I’m concerned, make sure I’m getting my calcium. I heard something this week that pistachios have all the natural proteins that you might miss if you weren’t eating the B9 and stuff that you wouldn’t get from meat. I heard pistachios are a very good source of that.
John Scharffenberg: Pistachios are good.
Doug Batchelor: Yeah. They’re expensive, but not so bad as California.
John Scharffenberg: I buy those shelled, too. Yeah, they are good.
Doug Batchelor: So Dr. Scharffenberg, you know, I want to tell those who are watching, we have a special offer. Again, it’s stuck here in the Bible. We got a special offer we’re going to send to those that would like to know more about how to have a longer life. And it has these health secrets. This magazine is actually called the Amazing Health — Amazing Health Facts magazine. And you can contact the number on your screen or go to the website and find out more about this.
Well, thank you so much, Dr. Scharffenberg. I think this has been very invigorating. And if people will practice the things that we’re talking about now, that would probably reverse the health crisis and all the money that’s being spent. It would, I think, help the economy. It would help the families. It could turn the country around if they would follow these practical tips on lifestyle changes that would give them more abundant life.
And we want to thank you so much for coming in today.
John Scharffenberg: God bless you.
Doug Batchelor: Thank you so much, friends, for joining us for this special Amazing Facts interview and share the good news that Jesus is alive and coming soon.
For Further Reading:
TRANSCRIPT: How to REVERSE Diabetes & Hypertension with 100 Year Old Dr. John Scharffenberg & Doug Batchelor
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