All posts by David Gottfried

Episode 25 Nick Polizzi

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The first time I watched the documentary Sacred Science, I was flabbergasted. I just couldn’t fathom that someone, i.e. producer Nick Polizzi, would make such a film. “Why in the world would he take those sick people into the Amazon rainforest for a month? Who would do that?” I remarked to my wife Sara afterward.

Nick Polizzi is a rare documentary filmmaker. His mission is to learn and teach us about medicinal plant science and hidden secrets. Sacred Science was a blockbuster. Not only is it a highly artful and entertaining, it’s inciteful of the potential of the 44,000 Amazonian plants that can potentially heal us. And yet only about 1% have been studied.

Traditional medicine has much to learn from medicine men of the Amazon. They’ve been studying and passing down knowledge for centuries.

I’m excited to introduce you to filmmaker Nick Polizzi in this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show. He’s funny, charming, witty and insightful. Afterall, who arranges for eight ailing patients to go down and into the jungle to heal in isolated huts under the care of Peru’s indigenous medicine men? Click above and listen in now.

Here’s to healing in natural ways,
D

Episode 24 Hunter Lovins

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I remember the first time I met Hunter Lovins. We were on a joint trip to China, invited by a group sponsored by the mayor of Shanghai. Our mission was to help brainstorm the future sustainability of a city that wanted to double in size in about ten years, adding the equivalent density of San Francisco.

On the morning of the first day we boarded a bus to tour the old city, where they’d started to tear down many of the historic structures for their growth on steroids. I looked over at a woman standing next to Amory Lovins, who I’d met before at a few early U.S. Green Building Council meetings at the renowned Rocky Mountain Institute, one of the foremost environmental NGO think tanks in the world, which Hunter cofounded.

She had on a large black cowboy hat, pointed red and black cowboy boots and a large thick oval metal belt buckle securing her thick brown leather belt around her dark blue jeans. Long braided brownish blonde hair hung down over a checkered pink and white flannel shirt. She looked fit and strong. Later I learned that Hunter was an active rodeo barrel racing champion.

During our intensive US/China brainstorms on how to mitigate the environmental impact of the massive development plans for Shanghai and decades later of good work and interactions, I’ve come to admire Hunter’s prolific mind and passion for nurturing business and capitalism to solve our ecological problems in a win-win.

In this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show, Hunter says, “It has become really apparent that there is a business case for sustainability. Activists used to think that it was simply a moral imperative that we would lose life as we know it on the planet, and that remains true, but what has changed… is that companies have realized that when you behave more responsibly to people and the planet, you make more money. Surprise!”

Hunter has an incredible background. She’s president of Natural Capitalism Solutions and has been a professor of sustainable business at several MBA programs. She’s an author of more than 14 books, global keynote speaker, and Hero of the Planet award winner by Time Magazine. Hunter was Rocky Mountain Institute’s CEO for strategy and has a law degree.

It’s my pleasure to invite you to listen in to our conversation as Hunter Lovins and I discuss the future of business and our planet in this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show.

Episode 23 Alan Christianson

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A few years ago I was in the Caribbean at a business mastermind. On the first morning, I woke up early and took a long walk on a pathway along the sparkling ocean. Just as I was hitting stride about a mile from the hotel, I was startled by an exuberant call.

“Excuse me!”

I jumped to the side of the road as what looks like an ironman triathlete passes me on… a unicycle? Sweat is pouring off the guy’s face, drenching his joy. It was Dr. Alan Christianson.

“Hey, David,” Dr. C shouted. “Great morning for a ride.” I nod my head up and down in awe. I wipe my forehead.

Fast forward one year. I’m in Dr. C’s Prius driving to another business event when he tells me that his other favorite morning sport starting at 5 a.m. is to lift boulders next to his home in Arizona and place them on a wall he’s building. Once the wall is finished, he takes down the boulders and builds another one. And he’s not even in prison.

Not only is Dr. C an uber athlete, but he’s similarly driven in his functional medicine practice. He’s also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Adrenal Reset Diet. At his clinic, he helps patients with thyroid problems, adrenal issues, weight loss, and hormonal imbalance. Dr. C brings a rare blend of intellect, care, humor and cutting-edge personalized medicine.

It’s my pleasure to invite you to join Dr. C and me in this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show. You’ll learn how to boost your health and take individual control of your weight, energy, stress and future.

To your health,
David Gottfried

 

Episode 22 Dale Bredesen

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How do you want to age? Most of us fear living out our years in a nursing home as we drool away with an absent mind.

According to my wife Dr. Sara in her new book Younger, the number of people 65 and older that get alzheimer’s disease is expected to triple and that our risk doubles every five years. By age 85 our risk hits fifty percent!

Most of us know someone who has experienced this disease. They lose their memory, language, problem solving and cognitive capabilities.

This week’s Regen360 podcast show features a global expert in treating alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Dale Bredesen practices at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and is a UCLA professor of medicine specializing in neurology. His research and trials give us great hope that alzheimer’s can be reversed through an intensive functional medicine protocol over three to six months.

Dr. Bredesen points out that if we envision a roof with 36 leaking holes and a drug that patches just one hole, we still have a leaky roof. So we need to treat the totality of holes to stop the condition. The key, as always, is to address the multiple root-causes.

Tune in now…

To living younger,
David

Episode 21 Bill Browning

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I remember the first time I heard Bill Browning speak. It was in 1991 at the AIA convention in Boston. Initially, I was sitting in the rear, but I moved to the front row after he’d started so that I could catch every word. Bill is a bit soft spoken and speaks at his own cadence, stopping to smile, chuckle and sprinkle his thoughtful words with humor or more like an erudite riddle. He spoke about terms I’d never heard before: life cycle assessment, embodied energy, blackwater treatment. I wrote so fast in my notebook that it’s a wonder that I didn’t break my pen.

Please join me in this week’s Regen360 podcast show where I have the pleasure of interviewing Bill Browning. We talk about Biomimicry and some of his favorite green projects. We reminisce about the early days of green building such as the greening of the White House.

At that first green convention for me, I learned that Bill had started the green development services arm of the renowned Rocky Mountain Institute, under the tutelage of Amory Lovins. I’d read Amory’s book Soft Energy Paths in my solar engineering course at Stanford in 1981. It was the first time I’d heard the term Amory invented: Negawatt, meaning that a watt of energy saved is equivalent in power to a watt generated, but has a zero ecological footprint.

Bill went on to write several important sustainable building books, including Green Development. We first worked together when I founded ASTM’s green subcommittee and then the U.S. Green Building Council in 1992. Bill was our first environmental organization member and is still active 25 years later.

What I love about Bill is his mind. It’s prolific, almost photographic and critically analytic. It seems that all concepts come easy to Bill and his unique ability is the synthesis and articulation. He can apply his focus to almost any topic, but sustainability and the future survival of humans and other species is his main concern.

Please join me to hear my interview with Bill Brown in this week’s Regen360 podcast show. You’ll understand why Bill is so dear to the world and our future, and worth every minute of your time.

To our sustainable future,
David

Episode 20 Sara Gottfried

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Today is a huge day. We’re about to all get YOUNGER!

Given my emphasis on a clean diet [ketosis as of late] and a crazy level of weekly cycling [I even have my own coach], I figured I was in prime health for my age.

Well, as I learned and perhaps you too will discover, I was flat out wrong!

You see, apparently, my healthspan score was sub 60 points out of 100 despite my heroic efforts. I might be fit and able to ride 100-mile centuries, and recently up Haleakala volcano in Maui, the highest cycling climb in the US [10,023 feet up], but I was not tuning my genes and performing essential daily practices.

As you’ll learn in this week’s Regen360 podcast interview: that means turning on the good genes and off the bad ones. And yes – we have a huge amount of control over the nature and quality of how we live every single day.

I’m absolutely thrilled to share my interview with none other than my brilliant, beautiful and best-selling author wife, Dr. Sara Gottfried for this week’s Regen360 podcast interview. Today is also special because Dr. Sara’s third book, YOUNGER, publishes today. And given my insider track, we were able to score an exclusive book launch interview.

We discuss the progression of Dr. Sara’s work in going from hormone balancing and diet to taking on our DNA, gene switching and epigenetics. You’ll learn that we each need [and must] reach higher, learn about and then integrate this incredible body of knowledge.

How we live each day is imperative. Of course, we also want to live a long life. But what’s most important is the quality of each day. What good is getting to 70 or 80 and finding that we can’t walk, have Alzheimer’s and no energy or muscular strength?

As you know, I come from green building where we like to measure and data is paramount. We cherish and celebrate the beautiful performance of a LEED Platinum building that produces all of its own energy [net zero], captures and recycles water, and has zero waste.

Well, what’s the equivalent of a LEED Platinum healthy body; one that is vital, fit, energetic, strong and mentally alert for the long haul? Dr. Sara calls this our healthspan score.  Listen in now…

To boosting your healthspan,
David

Episode 19 Peter Ellis

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Every so often you meet someone who just blows your mind. At first, you don’t think they’re for real, but then you realize that such an extraordinary human being actually does exist.

I first met the renowned architect Peter Ellis about twenty years ago. His firm at the time, SOM Architects, had asked me to join their team to compete as the development, construction and design team for San Francisco’s Presidio Letterman complex. I’d be the sustainability consultant for the 26 acre ground up mini town within the old Army base located along the fabulous waterfront. A more prominent site was extremely rare anywhere in the world.

What was so unusual was how Peter intuitively understood the natural development potential of that inspiring site above the Bay. I think he must have been camping out on the site since he knew it’s natural characteristics so well: winds, groundwater tables, solar exposure, gradations, history, and indigenous species.

Whereas competing designs proposed building enormous monuments that felt more like cold windy urban downtowns, Peter sketched out a new town complete with main street, pedestrian access throughout, and mixed use appropriately scaled buildings surrounded by huge open parks. He had coffee and bike shops, and rental apartments along with new senior housing and a hotel, opening up the historic site to the public.

Even though we came in the runner-up position to George Lucas’ film production company, Peter and I remained friends and colleagues. He went on to design large cities, including Jaypee Sports City that would house a million people in India, 30 miles south of New Delhi. His city and campus design practice embraced new concepts on transportation, water, energy and waste. Another specialty is Peter’s focus in re-structuring of America’s 19th-century cities, always looking for how they could contribute positively to the natural environment.

It’s a true pleasure to share with you my conversation with Peter about his vital work in this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast. I hope you’ll join me in being inspired by Peter’s vast vision and love of architecture that sustains.

Thanks for your support,
David

Episode 18 Rick Hanson

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What is your most important organ that you take for granted?

We worry about our weight. Many of us stretch and do yoga for flexibility. We meditate for reducing stress. We try to limit carbs, sugar, and GMOs for our health…

But what about our brains?

In this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show we dive deep into our neural networks as we focus on how to heal and optimize our brains. My guest is Rick Hanson, Phd, author of several bestselling books including Buddha Brain and Hardwiring Happiness. He’s a Senior Fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.

It’s time we let go out of our Stone Age brains. We’re no longer under threat of being eaten and can learn to take in the good and utilize plasticity to manifest a different path forward.

-David

Learn more about Rick Hanson here!