As a widely-recognized researcher, author, and lecturer, Sayer Ji is an innovator and pioneer in nutrition, natural products, and health and wellness. He founded the world’s most widely recognized and referenced natural health resource of its kind, greenmedinfo.com, in 2008 in order to provide the world an open forum to access evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. Today he is one of the most sought after public speakers for the health and wellness community in this country.
1. Tell us a little bit about what led you to start GreenMedInfo.
I’ve always been passionate about health freedom and the ethos of free and open access to information, which is required both for informed consent and a healthy relationship between government and the people. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “information is the currency of democracy.” GreenMedInfo was created to help fill a void in the natural health space, as there was a distinct lack of awareness that a massive database of published, peer-reviewed literature exists to support ancient and natural healing systems, the world over; my desire was to fill it with an open access database, completely derived from the National Library of Medicine bibliographic index MEDLINE, which now contains over 23,000 abstracts on the subject. One of my core missions with greenmedinfo.com was also to popularize and disseminate the information widely, and with about 1,000,000 unique visitors on average each month over the past two years, we are starting to bring that goal to fruition.
2. Can you share with us 5 herbs and foods that promote longevity?
There are wide ranges of foods that promote longevity. In fact, our database contains over a hundred, but my favorites are some of the most simple and overlooked. For instance, vitamin C-rich foods have the unique ability to regenerate steroid hormones in the body, including estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, prolonging and increasing their biological activity as well as preventing their degradation into what are potentially carcinogenic-transient hormone metabolites. This is performed by its role as an electron donor. You can learn the details in my article, “Sunshine Vitamin Regenerates and Detoxifies Your Hormones.” Additionally, pomegranate is really one of the most astounding longevity-promoting foods in existence. For instance, it has been shown to replace the function of the mammalian ovary, and it actually contains estrogen and testosterone bioidentical to human steroid hormones. And can you believe it is actually classified as the fruiting ovary of the pomegranate bush, and it looks almost exactly like a human ovary. You can read more about it in, “Amazing Fact: Pomegranate Can Serve As A Back-Up Ovary.” I could go on and on about the many dietary interventions that have been proven to decelerate aging, but one that speaks to many middle-aged people who have noticed aging skin is the power of both aloe and pine bark in reversing visible signs such as wrinkles. Better yet, for those who occasionally smoke, or, worse, regularly smoke, simply stopping will result in turning back the appearance of biological aging 13 years in only 9 months! You can read more about this in my article, 3 Evidence-Based Ways To Reverse Skin Aging.
3. What does a typical day for you look like?
I wake, make my organic coffee, check my email for my two or three dozen MEDLINE abstracts sent automatically by keyword, and do my daily newsletter, which is the primary way that people stay abreast of what we are doing at greenmedinfo.com. It’s free, and you can sign up in one step here. After about an hour, I either work out or do power yoga, and then visit the local health food store for a smoothie. I then usually work some more, which consists of reading, writing, and working through what is the endless set of responsibilities that a large presence in social media requires today.
4. What are some of your go-to herbs/supplements that are in your holistic medicine cabinet?
My favorites are turmeric, pycnogenol, beta glucan, vitamin C (from a food source), chlorophyll, and the reduced form of coenzyme q10 known as ubiquinol. Oh, and of course arnica, for bumps or bruises. : )
5. If you could eat any meal right now, what would you indulge in?
I love steamed greens, brown rice, salmon—really basic foods, and of course all organic. : )
6. What do you do when you want to stay grounded?
I find yoga practice to be extremely grounding for me. Power yoga tends to really enables me to relax and be present. If I travel, I always try to get a yoga class in as soon as possible, and I find it significantly reduces jet lag (which, it has been said, is really your energetic body still partially located in the place you left, perhaps thousands of miles away!). I also am a big fan of the technologies provided by kundalini yoga and energy medicine. I think we are entering an age where we are all starting to acknowledge that, as C. S. Lewis is believed to have said, “You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” That means our intention, our vibration, our choices largely determine our biological destiny from the top down, and this is actually consistent with some of the physiochemical and molecular explanations of how our body works, coming out of the field of epigenetics.
Sayer Ji is the founder of greenmedinfo.com, on the Board of Governors for the National Health Federation and Fearless Parent, Steering Committee Member of the Global GMO Free Coalition (GGFC), and a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine.