The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Hey, I’m Dr. Jules! I’m a medical doctor, teacher, nutritionist, naturopath, plant-based dad and 3X world championships qualified athlete. On this podcast we’ll discuss the latest in evidence-based and plant-based nutrition, including common nutrition myths, FAQs and tips on how to transition towards a healthier dietary pattern and lifestyle that creates little friction with your busy life!
The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Dying Teaches Us How To Live: A Doctor's Reflection
Death comes for us all, yet most of us live as though immortal. As a physician who's witnessed countless final moments, I've observed a heartbreaking pattern: people realizing too late that their health was never guaranteed, but rather the culmination of thousands of daily choices.
This episode dives deep into what the deceased might tell us if they could speak again. The bedside confessions are startlingly consistent: "I thought I had more time." "I was too proud to change." "I wish I'd started healing sooner." These aren't just emotional pleas—they reflect a medical reality that the scientific literature confirms. According to the Danish Twin Study, roughly 80% of our health span and lifespan is determined not by our genetics, but by our lifestyle choices. While genetics may load the gun, it's our daily habits around nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress management that pull the trigger.
Most chronic diseases aren't random acts of nature or bad luck—they're slow-building consequences of lives led on autopilot. The damage accumulates silently for years: high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, insulin resistance, inflammation. By the time symptoms appear, significant harm has often already occurred. Yet this sobering reality comes with empowering news: you still have time. You're not powerless. The body has remarkable capacity for healing when given the right conditions. Sustainable health isn't built through 28-day challenges or miracle supplements, but through consistent choices made over months and decades. What small change could you make today that your future self would thank you for? Because someday isn't on the calendar, and later is never guaranteed. Your body is listening even when you're not—what message are you sending it?
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Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules
Hey everyone, welcome to Season 2 of the Dr Jules Plant-Based Podcast, where we discuss everything from plant-based nutrition to the main pillars of lifestyle medicine. On medicine hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode might hit a nerve and, honestly, that's the point. We're going to dive into a topic that's hard to talk about but impossible to ignore, and that will affect us all Death and dying. Now, before you hit pause, stick with me, because this episode isn't just about dying, but about living and about what we can learn from those who've passed, especially when it comes to health, to lifestyle and to the time that we still have with the people that we love. Now, my brain is always going 100 miles an hour. That's just how I'm wired, and I ask a lot of questions, and often these questions don't have clear or easy answers. But here's one question that has followed me throughout my entire medical career Could we have prevented this death? And, as my colleagues would confirm, we've seen it all. Some patients will die peacefully, surrounded by family, surrounded by love, and others go suddenly from an accident or a heart attack or stroke, and some people die miserably after years of suffering and years of ignoring their health. Some people suffer slowly. Some people are gone in seconds. But every time it makes me wonder Was there something that we missed? Was this really just bad luck? And could this person still be here if something had changed either in the way they live their life, the way they eat, the way they move? Now, every single day, I meet people that walk around like everything's perfectly fine. Their blood pressure is 180 over 110. Their HbA1c is 8.2% and their LDL cholesterol is like a 5.3. But then they look at me in the eye and say I feel fine, I feel okay, I don't want that treatment or I don't want that intervention because I feel great, and sometimes, that's true, they do feel great until they don't. Now, on a daily basis, I intervene when some patients seem to be either minimizing their symptoms or completely in denial and I tell them look, if I would have these numbers, I probably wouldn't sleep too well at night, because patients tend to minimize what doesn't give immediate symptoms.
Speaker 1:But our top killers typically have risk factors that go unnoticed and undiagnosed for years, things like high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, sleep apnea, kidney failure, liver failure. They can often progress for years without giving any noticeable symptoms. Yet in Canada, the top two killers are cancer and cardiovascular disease, conditions that are directly linked to how we live our lives. Now, maybe these patients have simply never been told the full picture, maybe they don't want to know, because the truth is, while facing your health can be terrifying. We live in this state of cognitive dissonance where our brain basically blocks out that negative energy so that it doesn't clash with our perception of the life that we live so that it doesn't clash with our perception of the life that we live. But I'll tell you what's even more scary than facing the facts Sitting by a hospital bed Watching someone realize that they waited too long and it's too late Now.
Speaker 1:Some people believe in wake-up calls or aha moments, and others say it's luck, and one of my favorite quotes is luck is opportunity meeting preparedness. Now, I've never had a near-death experience, but I came close once and years ago I had a severe allergic reaction out of nowhere, got diagnosed with cholinergic angioedema. Basically, my throat was swelling up, my face was swollen, my eyes were swollen shut, I had chest pains and I had trouble breathing. Now, as a doctor that had been in practice, I knew exactly what was happening to me and I picked up the phone and called the direct line to the ER and told one of my colleagues get a bed ready. I'm coming in anapaphylactic reaction. Now, in that moment that my throat was closing and my heart was racing for the first time in my life, I thought this could be it. This doesn't just happen to other people.
Speaker 1:Over the years I've sat with patients in their final days. Some of them could still speak, others just held my hand, and if I felt close enough to that patient, sometimes I'd ask if you could tell the world one thing, what would it be If you could tell the world one thing? What would it be? Now here's what I think we'd hear if the deceased could speak again. They might confess things like I thought I had more time, or don't be like me I was too proud to change. My ego kept me from picking up the phone and booking that appointment. I'd give anything for one more walk with my grandkids.
Speaker 1:A lot of patients keep saying I'll start tomorrow, but then tomorrow never comes, or things like I wish I'd started healing mentally, physically and spiritually a lot sooner. They might warn us that we're not invincible, that the junk food, the cigarettes, the energy drinks, the ultra-processed food they don't feel dangerous, but the damage accumulates slowly over time. I have some patients that admitted to me that they had laughed at some of the health advice that I gave to them. They thought it was overblown, until they realized that it wasn't. One of my patients told me I just realized that pills will never undo the years of damage. Now I tell my patients you can fight biology for a while, but in the end biology always wins.
Speaker 1:We all will die someday, but how we live and how we die, that's up to us and for the most part it's directly linked to how we live our lives. There's a study called the Danish Twin Study where they concluded that something like 80% of our health span and life span is determined by our lifestyle choices, by what we eat, how we move, how we connect, how we manage stress, how we sleep and what we put in our bodies. Now a lot of people will say heart disease runs in my family. Now genetics do load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. And there's this science. There's new emerging science of epigenetics, understanding that we are not doomed by our genes, doomed by our genes. We can actually modify how those genes are expressed through lifestyle interventions and things we eat and how we live Now.
Speaker 1:Some people who have passed away might beg us to take care of our body, to move every day, to walk, to dance, to try to find happiness, try to find purpose, trying to live a life that's aligned with our values. And some people might say dying slowly was a real nightmare. One of my patients once told me that his greatest regret was not cooking more with his family, making real memories out of real food that feeds the body both physically and spiritually. Another one says that he shouldn't have waited, that prevention matters, that life isn't just about surviving but about living. Now here's the truth.
Speaker 1:Most chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancers, they're not just bad luck. They're often the results of tiny micro-cho choices that we make every day and that accumulate over time. But the good news is that we have more control than we think and lifestyle medicine works. Nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, care, purpose, connection it all matters. And if you're listening to this, it means that you still have time, more than they did. Now the real tragedy isn't dying, it's wasting the time that we had, thinking that we'd always have more. And remember that you don't need to be perfect, you just need to start. Even small changes can rewrite your whole story, and I've seen patients completely turn their lives around. But sustainable change takes time. It takes small improvements to create positive reinforcement and build confidence. Now, sustainable lifestyle choices they build over months and years and decades.
Speaker 1:I know the internet tends to offer us quick fixes and solutions and 28-day abs or 6-week weight loss plans, but the way you live and die will be determined by things that you do 80% of the time over the long term. If you find yourself always trying this new hack or this new trend or this new fad that is meant to rebuild your health within weeks or days, you might be looking at the wrong place. Now, before we close out this episode, I want to leave you with this we don't get to choose how our story ends, but we do get to choose how it unfolds. And every time you skip a checkup or ignore symptoms, or every time you say I'll start on Monday, those moments they matter, and so do the ones where you actually decide to show up for yourself. Now the truth is quite simple but sobering.
Speaker 1:Most chronic diseases aren't random acts of nature and aren't bad luck. They're slow building consequences of the life we lead and the life we ignore. But you're not powerless. You're not even close to being powerless. You can nourish your body, you can move with purpose, you can rest, you can reconnect, you can realign with what matters, you can live a life where your behaviors are aligned with your values. Because if dead people could talk, I think they'd say don't waste your time. Don't wait for pain to be your wake-up call. Start now, while you still can.
Speaker 1:So I want you to ask yourself what's one small change that you could make, starting today Not tomorrow, not next week, not on New Year's Now whether it's improving the way you eat, the way you move and the way you sleep and the way you connect, the way you manage stress. You still have time. Use it well Now. Let's be honest. Most of us live our lives like we've got forever. We scroll on our phones, we snack on ultra-processed foods and we stress on things that don't matter. We tell ourselves that we'll deal with our health later. One of the hardest lessons that I've learned at the bedside of dying patients is that later is never guaranteed and someday isn't on the calendar.
Speaker 1:And when the end does come, whether it happens slowly or suddenly, it's not the big achievements that people talk about. It's the missed moments. They don't say I wish I had more money or I wish I had worked more weekends. They say I wish I had gone for that hike with my kids and I wish I called my mom more often and I wish I'd taken care of my body before he gave up on me. So here's what I want to leave you with today.
Speaker 1:Health isn't about perfection. It's about presence. It's about being here fully and joyfully for your kids, your partner, your passions, your purpose. You don't need a six-pack and you don't need to run marathons to be healthy. You just need to start respecting your body, feeding it real food, letting it move, letting it rest, letting it feel and letting it heal. Your body is always listening, even when you're not, and if there's one gift that you can give your future self is live a life that you won't regret.
Speaker 1:So after this episode ends, don't just move on with your day. Take a minute, turn off the noise and ask yourself what's one thing that I've been avoiding? What would the future me, 10 years from now, wish that I had started today from now? Wish that I had started today. Either write it down or tell someone, or do something, because as long as your breathing changes, possible, healing is possible. There's always hope. You have time, but don't waste it Right on. Thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for opening up your mind to hearing things that shake us and make us feel emotion. That was the point of the whole episode. I reflect on life and I reflect on death regularly probably too much but it does help me align my behaviors with my values. Cool, you have an awesome day. Keep an open mind and make small incremental changes that accumulate over time. We'll see you at the next episode, peace.
