Healthy Cells, Healthy You with Janet Walker
A podcast about the science, research, and lifestyle changes that will help reduce and repair damage to our cells. Topics include epigenetics, gut and digestive health, fibroblast growth factor, weight management, immune support, skin repair, healthy living, sleep, surgical procedures and more. Hosted by long-time producer and writer for the award-winning PBS health and information programs, American Health Journal and Innovations in Medicine, Janet Walker.
Healthy Cells, Healthy You with Janet Walker
The Gut-Brain Connection: Unlocking Mental Well-being with Dr. Stephen Gundry
Explore the groundbreaking insights of Dr. Stephen Gundry, a leading authority in the field of gut health, as we uncover the fascinating connection between your gut and your brain. Join me, Janet Walker, on Healthy Cells, Healthy You, where we examine how the gut microbiome impacts everything from your mood and emotions to addictive behaviors and food choices. Dr. Gundry's revelations challenge the traditional understanding of mental health by focusing on the microbiome's role in shaping personality and desires, likening it to a tropical rainforest that thrives on diversity and balance.
Tune in to uncover how you can harness the power of the microbiome to achieve optimal health and well-being.
Together, we'll build Healthy Cells, and a Healthy You!
Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing an internationally known doctor for the Better Wellness Podcast. His research has helped thousands of patients heal through diet. We took a deep dive into his newest book, the Gut-Brain Paradox. So stay tuned to hear this very special one-hour episode of Healthy Cells Healthy you. Welcome to Healthy Cells. Healthy you. Welcome to Healthy Cells, healthy you. I'm your host, janet Walker. I've been working in the healthcare community for over 30 years and for 20 of those years I've also worked as a writer and producer for the award-winning national PBS health information television shows, american Health Journal and Innovations in Medicine. You can watch current episodes of Innovations in Medicine on your local PBS channel or you can stream our programs on the American Health Channel, the Better Health Channel and TV Healthy Kids. I'm also a new host for the award-winning podcast Better Wellness.
Speaker 1:For the award-winning podcast Better Wellness, our very special guest today is the one and only Dr Stephen Gundry. Dr Gundry is the director of the International Heart and Lung Institute in Palm Springs and the founder and director of the Center for Restorative Medicine in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara, california. After a distinguished career as a heart transplant surgeon and a professor and chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda University, dr Gundry changed his focus to curing modern diseases via dietary changes. His best-selling books include Gut Check, unlocking the Keto Code, the Energy Paradox and the Plant Paradox. He has written more than 300 articles published in peer-reviewed journals on using diet and supplements to eliminate disease, among them, heart disease, diabetes and autoimmune diseases. He is the host of the top-ranked nutrition podcast, the Dr Gundry Podcast, and the founder of GundryMD, a wellness brand.
Speaker 1:Today, we're talking about his newest book, the Gut-Brain Paradox. Hello, dr Gundry, welcome to Better Wellness. We're so happy that you were able to join us today and I'm honored to talk to you about your newest book. Well, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Our mutual friend, wellness expert, david Delrahim, has wonderful things to say about the book, so I was really looking forward to reading it and I'm so glad I did Now. You've authored many bestselling books focused on food-based health interventions.
Speaker 2:What motivated you to write this book and were there any surprises when you were researching for it? There was a lot. I try to write my next book as a follow-up to the previous book, which was Gut Check. It was becoming abundantly clear, particularly in gut check, about the incredible sophisticated communication system that we've been able to decipher between the microbiome or the holobiome. The microbiome or the holobiome as I call it, and our emotions, our brain health, our brain aging, addiction, food choices. And with each passing year we're getting more and more nuanced in how much communication there is between the microbiome and our brain and how much control is exerted on our brain by the microbiome. And so I said let's go down into those rabbit holes. And, like I write about in the book, there were lots of surprises that awaited me Any more. Not surprised by much, but lots of surprises in this book, particularly, I think, in terms of our personalities and our food choices and, maybe most importantly, our addictive behaviors and how much association there is between the gut microbiome and all of that.
Speaker 1:So in your previous books you taught readers how to reverse disease and improve health by preventing or repairing leaky gut, and in this book you go a step further and delve into the role and importance of the microbiome on brain health. So let's give our listeners a basic education about the microbiome and leaky gut. First, what is it? Starting with the microbiome?
Speaker 2:Well, so the microbiome is this collection of organisms that most people associate with bacteria that live in our intestinal tract, and there's a hundred trillion bacteria that live in our colon alone. In our colon alone, that's like eight times more bacteria in our colon than there are trees on earth, just to give you an idea.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:That's a lot, and that doesn't even mention the thousand species of bacteria that live in our mouth, the 700 species of bacteria that live in our skin. We even have a bacteria cloud around us and so collectively, these are all called the holobiome, but the microbiome. Really, we didn't know how complex it was up until the Human Microbiome Project was started in 2006 and finished in 2017. Figuring out who lives down, there was one thing. Figuring out what those guys were doing down, there was another.
Speaker 2:What we now realize is that this is akin to a tropical rainforest, and a tropical rainforest obviously there's lots of diverse animals, plants, insects, bugs, et cetera all knit together in an ecological system and kind of each member of this community is dependent on multiple other members for their survival, and what we now know is that we can actually apply the same ecological principles to looking at our microbiome, much like we look at a tropical rainforest. And, simplistically, the more diverse our microbiome, the more different members of our microbiome good guys and bad guys the healthier we are and the healthier our brain is and our thought processes are. On the other hand, the more kind of desert wasteland rather than a tropical rainforest we have in our gut, the worse off we are in terms of our gut health and our mental health, in terms of our gut health and our mental health, and so that's a kind of starting premise of understanding the microbiome.
Speaker 1:And so we learn from the book that it's not just our bodies that are affected by the microbiome.
Speaker 2:How does it influence our brain function and mental health? Well, it takes a while to wrap our head around the fact that, sadly, or good news.
Speaker 2:So much of our thinking processes, so much of our emotions, so much of our desires isn't actually coming from here. It's actually coming from the wants and needs of our microbiome. And that's hard for advanced creatures like us who think, you know, we're the smartest whatever existed. But it's amazing how these little one-cell creatures can have such a profound effect on us. But let me put it this way, it's akin to who's actually driving the bus the bus drivers or the passengers and from a bacteria standpoint, this microbiome is actually our largest organ that actually exists in us, and we're a symbiotic community. That means we do stuff for them and they do stuff for us. And as our great-great-grandparents probably knew, as I say, our great-great-grandparents ate whole foods and they ate those foods whole. And in eating whole foods whole, yeah, we got sugars out of it, we got proteins out of it, we got fats out of it, but there was a lot left over and these include prebiotic fiber and that would, if you will, trickle down to our microbiome, who needed those foods to flourish and eat. And as long as they were getting their part of the bargain, everything was just fine.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to now, we have mostly processed and ultra-processed foods.
Speaker 2:We've removed pretty much all the stuff that our microbiome used to get, and so our microbiome can hear us chewing up there, they hear us swallowing, they know food's on the way, and then nothing arrives and they go what the heck?
Speaker 2:I know he's eating, I can see, I can hear food. Nothing's coming down for me, for me, and they literally send text messages to the brain. To number one I know you're eating, but you're not eating enough, because I'm clearly not getting it and my ancestors used to, so go eat more. Number two I am not satisfied with the things you're eating and I'm hangry if we all know that expression and so it actually totally changes our outlook. A lot of the book is spent trying to convince people about how real this is and how our microbiome, depending on who's down there and depending on what we give them to eat, has profound effects on our weight, on depression, on anxiety and even addictions. And the good news, despite all that bad news, is that we now know what they're looking for and we now know how to give them the good stuff to make us feel good.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you a little more about that in just a minute, but let's talk a little bit about leaky gut, and I'm sure many of our listeners have heard of it but don't really know what it is and how it impacts our health. So can you explain leaky gut? What is it and what is dysbiosis?
Speaker 2:So again, if you have a functioning tropical rainforest, you've got all these members of the community that are kind of dependent on each other In dysbiosis. It means basically that all the balancing that goes on between these different species is thrown off so that there's too many bad guys and not enough good guys. Now most people say, oh geez, we don't want any bad guys. But that's actually not true. You actually have to have a balance of good guys and bad guys. The example I like to use is Yellowstone Park. Many people may remember that a few years ago wolves in Yellowstone Park were eradicated, because wolves are obviously bad guys and we don't want wolves running around eating elk or whatever. So wolves were eradicated in Yellowstone Park. Well, lo and behold, what happened was that wolves predate on elk. Elk no longer had a natural predator, so elk good guys overgrew predator. So elk good guys overgrew and they got hungry and they ate all the little saplings. And, interestingly enough, beavers have to have saplings to build beaver dams, and so beavers didn't have any saplings, so beavers died off. And without beaver dams you didn't have fish in the ponds and next thing we know we didn't have raccoons that were eating the fish, et cetera, et cetera. So the ecosystem completely got unbalanced by eliminating a bad guy. So when they reintroduced wolves back in Yellowstone Park, it took a number of years to level out, but the bad guy was necessary to keep everything else in balance.
Speaker 2:And so it's the same way with our gut microbiome. It's this balance, or what I call in the book, the terroir or terrain, that's the most important, and as long as that terrain is rich and balanced, we're in great shape. So that's dysbiosis and sadly, we can actually measure who's in there, we can do counts, we can know what they make, what they don't make, what's lacking. So to answer your first part of your question, what the heck is leaky gut? It's tossed around. First of all, it is not pseudoscience. A professor who's now at Harvard, who's a pediatric gastroenterologist, by the name of Alessio Fasano, figured out how leaky gut happens, how to measure it, and it's not pseudoscience. We measure it every day in blood tests.
Speaker 2:Simplistically, the lining of our gut, from our mouth all the way down to our rear end, is the same surface area. If we laid it out flat as a tennis court, probably two tennis courts. So when we're watching the BNP Paribas Indian Wells tennis tournament in a few weeks, pnp Paribas Indian Wells tennis tournament. In a few weeks there's a tennis court inside of us, a surface area. Now we have a design flaw. The lining of our gut is only one cell thick and so everything we swallow, all the bacteria, are separated from us, the rest of our body, by only one cell. Now those cells are held together with glue, if you will. That are called tight junctions, and most of us are old enough to remember a kid's game called Red Rover, red Road.
Speaker 1:I remember that one.
Speaker 2:You know it's now illegal in school. It's too dangerous. Anyhow, remember, we all locked arms and the kids came running across and we all squealed and right, your arms broke. So think of these cells as having crossed arms, all locked together. So we now know that there are a number of compounds, including lectins, which I've written a lot about, that want to attach to the wall of the gut and they make a chemical that actually breaks that tight junction, or multiple tight junctions. So now we've literally got a gap. Now we've literally got a gap. Now. So what?
Speaker 2:Well, on the other side of this wall, 80% of all of our white blood cells are standing guard right there. Why are they all there? Because this is where mischief can come across and they want to be ready for eating whatever comes around. That would happen intermittently in the past, and we had some really good systems to make sure it didn't happen. We had a great gut microbiome, we had a lot of mucus, et cetera, et cetera, and if somebody got across the white cell and said, oops, that's a bad guy, I'm going to eat him, let's patch the hole Now, because we don't have a great gut microbiome, because a lot of the microbiome are bad guys, and not a lot of good guys.
Speaker 2:This leaky gut is happening literally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So now our white blood cells are basically overrun. They're overwhelmed by all this trouble coming across the gut. So it's not just oh my gosh, we need more troops down here. These guys are getting past us and we're going to send messages up to the brain to fortify yourselves.
Speaker 2:All hands on deck, protect this important structure, this important structure. There's an immune system in our brain that I talk about, called the glial cells, which are the brain's, the neuron's, bodyguards, and they spring into action and they actually believe it or not, kind of pull up the drawbridges on the castle because the hordes are coming and they try to protect the neuron at all costs. The hordes are coming and they try to protect the neuron at all costs. In the process of doing that, they actually sever the connections of one neuron talking to another. And no wonder we have brain fog and memory issues. And the book details how Alzheimer's comes about, parkinson's comes about and simple memory loss, and it's all related to what's actually going down in the gut in the first place.
Speaker 1:Interesting. You just mentioned Alzheimer's and addiction. Most people don't associate gut health with mental health, which is one reason the book is so enlightening mental health, which is one reason the book is so enlightening. What specific bacteria are associated with depression and how do they affect neurotransmitter levels?
Speaker 2:So that's a great question. One of the things we've known for a long time that there's a amino tryptophan that is actually manufactured by gut bacteria, and gut bacteria then use tryptophan to make a lot of the feel-good hormones like. We'll use serotonin, for example. And serotonin a lot of people have heard about serotonin because it's the feel-good hormone, but also a lot of people are on antidepressants, and most of these antidepressants are what are called serotonin reuptake inhibitors, ssris. We're taught that normally in our brain we use serotonin as a neurotransmitter and then we break it down when we don't need it anymore, and these compounds supposedly work by stopping that breakdown. So there's more serotonin left in the brain and you feel happier. Well, if that is actually how they work, then one would think that I could swallow an antidepressant today and tomorrow. I'd be happy because I now have plenty of serotonin, because I'm not breaking it down. As anyone who's taken these antidepressants knows, that isn't what happens. It can take a month or more to notice a change in depression. So you go, what the heck? Well, now we know that these drugs work by actually changing the microbiome into a more diverse microbiome that in turn, makes more tryptophan and makes more serotonin, and that doesn't happen overnight. It takes weeks to make that change. So what we used to think was something that was happening up here is now happening down here.
Speaker 2:What's equally troublesome is these particular bacteria are incredibly sensitive to an herbicide that all of us have heard of called Roundup, and its active ingredient is glyphosate. Now, glyphosate is worth knowing. Glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic by Monsanto, not as a weed killer, and glyphosate actually specifically kills off the tryptophan pathway bacteria, but it spares other bad guys. So every time we eat glyphosate-laden food and it's in all of our brain products, and GMO has nothing to do with it anymore Glyphosate is sprayed on all of our weed, all of our corn, all of our oats, and we're eating it every day, and so we've literally killed off those bacteria that make all the good stuff in our guts. So it's kind of a double whammy.
Speaker 1:Is that why eliminating those food items from our diet is helpful to our gut. Not just that we're eliminating the wheat or oats, but actually the chemicals that they were processed with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, glyphosate roundup was introduced in the mid-1970s and we are surrounded by glyphosate now. I mean it's in California wines, for instance, it's in our schoolyards, it's everywhere. So one of the things that I've been fascinated with through the years is there's been a lot of low-carb diets that have come and go through the years the Atkins diet in the 70s, the paleo diet, the carnivore diet is the latest iteration, the high-protein diet. And one of the things that was interesting in all of these diets particularly like, I use the Atkins diet when Atkins took away all your carbohydrates, of course it was mostly grain products and sugars like fruit, and then as the program progressed, you usually added these things back in and invariably people's weight would start going back up, and even wheat belly the same way. And then what? What do you do? Well, go back to phase one, take all these things away from you know it's the evil carbs that we're doing it.
Speaker 2:Well, I have a lot of 80 of my patients have autoimmune diseases that end up seeing me and 94% of them go into remission within nine months to a year, and a lot of these people. Then they go on vacation to Europe and they go to France or they go to Italy and they can't help themselves. They eat croissants and baguettes and pizza and they don't react. Their stomachs feel great, their joints don't react, their stomachs feel great, their joints don't hurt, their psoriasis doesn't flare. And they go I'm cured.
Speaker 2:And they start having our bread and they start having our pizza and they start having our corn and all of a sudden, within weeks, they're on the phone going what the heck? My psoriasis is back on my elbow. What the heck? My finger just swelled up. What the heck? I thought you cured me. No, you encountered our glyphosate-laden food again and you didn't have it over in Europe because it's mostly banned, and I write about this in the book. So just because you can have these carbohydrates, these evil things, over there, doesn't mean once you're cured, you can probably have them over here. It's because of the presence of glyphosate.
Speaker 1:Wow, I wonder if our manufacturers will ever fix that. Probably not right.
Speaker 2:I doubt it. I've said on other podcasts, unfortunately sickness is really good for business.
Speaker 1:That's a shame, but true. Let me ask you this Is dysbiosis and leaky gut forever, or can diet and lifestyle changes help improve both physical and mental health?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's not forever, and that's the whole purpose of this book. It is fixable Now. If you had asked me 25 years ago how fast you could fix leaky gut, I was a little naive and I thought you could do it in a couple weeks. It usually takes most people nine months to a year to fully seal their gut. Now we can see it improve. We measure this every three months, but we can see it improve each time we measure these tests. So it's not like you're stuck for nine months or a year, but the improvement is measurable. We can watch it. We can watch the gut microbiome change from month to month.
Speaker 2:And the exciting thing and I have a lot of examples in the book is that as this improves the depression, lifts the Parkinson's symptoms subside the addictive behaviors subside, and that's what is so exciting Symptoms subside the addictive behaviors subside, and that's what is so exciting. I still see patients six days a week, on the weekends, saturday and Sunday. I see them, and the reason I do that is usually not a day goes by that I get to witness what 30 years ago I would have called a miracle, but now it's. If I don't see it, we're not doing something right, and so, yeah, it's just, it's really exciting to watch this happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, in part thanks to all your previous books and earlier research, a lot of the general public understands that there is a gut health connection, but for most people I think this gut brain connection is pretty new. Can understanding that lead to better treatment options for mental health disorders?
Speaker 2:treatment options for mental health disorders. Well, again, I think that's one of the exciting things that I'm excited about in this book in particular, one of the things that's challenging in any mental health condition, in addiction, is that the recidivism rate is horrible. The recidivism rate is horrible. 90% of addicts subside to their addiction again, despite excellent treatment or treatment over and over and over again. And we talk about this in the book and it's because we actually, I think, are not addressing the actual cause of that, and that's the gut microbiome driving this behavior.
Speaker 2:And to me, the exciting thing is I don't think we have to blame the way we blame that. This is not you know, oh, you're a bad person because you can't stay away from these things. This is not. You know, oh, you're a bad person because you can't stay away from these things. Or you know, you're psychologically impaired because you can't do these things. It's actually coming from the root problem is down in the gut. And, again, the uplifting thing about it is that these are addressable issues, but we've been addressing the wrong place. We're trying to fix this and we have to fix the gut.
Speaker 1:In what ways does the communication between the gut and the brain influence things like our mood, cognition, behavior, and what specific mechanisms are involved in this interaction?
Speaker 2:Well, it's in two simple ways. First of all, we now know that there are bacteria in the gut that are associated with mood. We've identified bacteria that predict a depressive personality. We've identified bacteria that predict an anxious personality. You can take happy mice and feed them stool from depressed humans. And how do you do that? It turns out, mice love to eat poop, it's just you know. And these happy mice will become depressed. And you can take depressed mice and feed them stool from happy people and they'll become happy. And that's just one example. There's numerous other examples of this. For instance, we now know that a baby's personality has much to do with the microbiome that is established at birth and in the first one or two months of life, and so the good news for a parent is, if you've got a really grouchy, colicky baby, the odds are it's the microbiome that's making that baby grouchy and colicky and not a very good baby, rather than your baby's just a bad baby.
Speaker 1:Well, that explains why my two kids' babies had such different personalities. One had a sensitive, colicky stomach and one didn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting. And I have two daughters and they're genetically very similar but they're almost polar opposites in their mood and blah, blah, blah and you go. Well, she came out of the box that way. She came out of the box and it turns out yeah, they came out with that set of microbes and it's just fascinating that this could occur.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you a question that actually isn't on my question list, but when you were mentioning that the poop-eating mice it brought it to mind In your book. You talked a lot about fecal transplants. I've never heard that before. Where is that performed and who gets that, and how does that help someone? So?
Speaker 2:fecal transplants. They're not allowed in the United States because of the FDA, unless under certain conditions, but in Europe, particularly, they are used to treat C difficile. They're used for a lot of other things, and I talk about fecal transplants that have been used in autistic kids and the results are remarkable. And there's even a study where autistic children are given fecal transplants in the form of capsules and they have a hilarious name they're called crapsules crapsules and they dramatically alter the autism in these kids.
Speaker 2:And so we now know that these bacteria have far-reaching effects on so many things that we thought had nothing to do with. You know, the brain like autism.
Speaker 1:So do you think fecal transplants will ever be FDA approved or part of mainstream medicine in the United States?
Speaker 2:The FDA for correct reasons. You can't control everything that's coming in and at this moment we don't know who all the bad guys are. Are we bringing in viruses that we can't measure yet? So I think at the moment it'll still be investigational, but I don't think we have to wait for that. We know now enough about what the good guys want to eat, what the bad guys like, and the book is okay. We know all this now. Here's how to not give the bad guys what to eat, here's how to give the good guys what to eat, and the rest of the book is.
Speaker 2:But wait, it's not just give these guys a bunch of prebiotics and everything will be fine. We now know that, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a village and we may need an end product, like a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate that a bunch of good guys make. It's really important for us, but we didn't know that it would take, like four other different bacteria each making a product that the next bacteria needed to eat, to make the next product that the next bacteria needed to eat, to finally get to the final guy who then makes butyrate. And we had no idea that it was that complex. But again, it takes this terrain, this tropical rainforest, and we shouldn't have been so naive. And it's all in the book how to Rebuild your Tropical Rainforest.
Speaker 1:So what practical steps do you recommend for restoring gut health, and how can these interventions potentially improve our physical well-being and our mental well-being and cognitive function?
Speaker 2:Well, number one here in Southern California, when my patients walk through the door, 80% of them are vitamin D deficient. And you go, wait a minute. We're in Southern California. There's sun every day of the year. How could that be? Well, we've used sunscreens and we're so afraid of the sun we cover up, we wear long-sleeved shirts in the sun, we wear a hat in the sun and we're just very vitamin D deficient.
Speaker 2:So what? Two things? Number one we know the higher your vitamin D level, the more diverse your microbiome is, the better that tropical rainforest is. I mean, it's direct correlations. Number two we now know that vitamin D is essential to keep that wall of the gut intact and to repair any breaks in the gut. Number three, which may be the most important, is that vitamin D tells our white blood cells, our immune system, to calm down. Don't get so excitable, get your finger off the trigger. And so it's a three-prong. And it's amazing, 100% of my patients with leaky gut and autoimmune disease have low vitamin D levels 100%. So that's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two I tell people that, yeah, I can heal your leaky gut and yes, it's going to take us a while to do that. But if you keep swallowing razor blades, you're just going to slice it right back open. Razor blades, that you're just going to slice it right back open. So that's why, among other things, I talk about lectins, which are plant defense proteins that literally act like swallowing razor blades. Their job is to make their predator, us, not feel very good in so many different ways, and we just don't pay attention. So, removing these offenders, getting a high vitamin D and then fostering a more diverse microbiome by using not only fermented foods, which give some of the precursors for building butyrate, but also giving these guys the raw materials of prebiotic fiber, that's how to do it and it's outlined in the book and it's actually easier to do than people think.
Speaker 2:For instance, an easy-to to use fermented food is vinegar. Vinegar is an amazing fermented food. Kefir, goat and sheep yogurts are a great way to do it and, fun fact, a traditionally cultured sausage, even prosciutto, is a fermented food and it's loaded with postbiotics. So great news. You look at some of these super long-lived societies in the quote blue zones and the remarkable thing is these guys almost all of these societies eat a lot of fermented foods in the form of yogurts and in aged cheeses. And, surprise, surprise, sausages and fermented meats across the board and you go wait a minute minute, those are all bad for you. Amen, that's, that's evil. Well, it turns out that these societies are eating fermented animal products and, like the thing that was stunning to me is the. The people with the longest lifespan, as a country usually surprises people. It's a little country between Spain and France called Andorra, and Andorrians have a lifespan of like 90 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah pretty nice. And what do they do? Well, they're sheep and goat herders and all they basically eat is sheep and goat yogurts and cheeses and sausages. They have sausages for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you go. How can they be the longest living people? You know they're eating bad food. The thing that really, really shocked me years ago I presented a paper at a nutrition conference in Toulouse, France. Toulouse is famous for foie gras and famous for sausages. Cassoulet is from Toulouse.
Speaker 2:These guys eat what would seem to be the worst diet in the world, if you wanted to design one. And yet they have the lowest incidence of heart disease in all of france. And you go. What the heck? Well, remember we, we have to, we have to question conventional wisdom. And if conventional wisdom says all these guys have heart disease and they ought to die horrible, painful, slow deaths, how come they're doing this? Well, it's this fermented food that they're eating, and I go into that in detail in the book. It's like son of a gun. That in detail in the book. It's like son of a gun. Here's why what we thought might be bad for you is probably pretty doggone.
Speaker 1:Good for you. How interesting. Now, the book is full of wonderful research, clinical studies and real patient examples, but it also gives readers two detailed options for dietary changes to restore their gut and improve their health. Are these short-term protocols to heal the gut or are they long-term lifestyle changes?
Speaker 2:Well, of the two programs, the first one is really what I use in my clinics for the vast majority of my patients. It's what was in the plant paradox and gut check and it works for the vast majority of people. But I see some real hardcore troubled people, particularly suffering from addiction or mental illnesses or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, and these people I've found through the years that their gut wall is such in bad shape that they're quite intolerant to almost all plant compounds, regardless how good they might be for you or me. People accuse me of being the father of the carnivore diet, because if you take my recommendations to the nth degree, then all plant compounds wish you harm, because you're their predator and we ought to get rid of all plant compounds. Not so fast, but I found through the years that these people seem to be far more sensitive to plant compounds in general. And so in the last program in the book called the Chicken and the Sea, I basically have my patients eliminate all plant material, all fruits. My patients eliminate all plant material, all fruits and basically use pastured chicken, wild fish, wild shellfish and fermented primarily sheep and goat milk, as well as fermented meats like prosciutto, for example, or a true fermented sausage and the turnaround in these people using that is really nothing short of remarkable, and I profile a few of these people in the book. Do I think that's a long-term strategy? No, I think this is an intensive care to get the gut wall healed and then let's reintroduce some of these actual beneficial plant compounds. I'm a confirmed plant predator, but you got to know who your friends are and you got to know who doesn't like you very much, but it's been remarkable. Now why not put them on an all-beef diet?
Speaker 2:We really don't have the time to do that today, but beef, lamb, pork and non-fermented milk have a really mischievous sugar molecule that's called NU5GC, capital G, capital G. We have a sugar molecule that we share with fish and poultry called NU5AC, capital A. The molecules are virtually identical, except for one molecule of oxygen. When we eat NU5GC containing foods, our immune system makes aggressive antibodies to it. We hate it. System makes aggressive antibodies to it. We hate it. Our brain hates NU5GC and one of the things we've learned now is that when you eat NU5GC, it causes leaky gut, it activates your immune system and it causes leaky brain and it leaks into the brain and causes neuroinflammation. And it leaks into the brain and causes neuroinflammation. So that's why I specifically went for poultry and seafood or fermented beef or pork or fermented milk product, because the fermentation process eats the sugar molecule NU5GC, so it's not there anymore. And, fun fact, prosciutto, which obviously comes from pigs, has no NU5GC because the bacterial fermentation has eaten it.
Speaker 1:Interesting Now the book indicates that people should avoid foods that cause an immune system reaction, which isn't the same as foods they're allergic to Correct. So should people have IgG and IgA antibody tests to know which foods they're sensitive to and, if so, where do they go for that kind of testing?
Speaker 2:Well, we do that in all my patients their blood tests Quite frankly through the years. Because I've done so many, I don't think people have to do it and I've listed in the book some of the biggest troublemakers to save you the time and effort. And some of them surprise a lot of people, for instance. For instance, almond flour is a big mischief maker for so many of my patients. White mushrooms are a big mischief maker for so many of my patients. Shockingly, lemons are a big mischief maker. Peaches are notorious and I really agonized putting that down because I went to medical school in Georgia and Georgia is a peach state for obvious reasons, but it's amazing how many people are sensitive to peaches. Cinnamon ranks really high and, surprisingly, ginger ranks really high. So those are just a few examples.
Speaker 1:So things people think are very healthy actually are not.
Speaker 2:May not be so Correct.
Speaker 1:So the diet protocols look like something that are livable day to day and there's a long list of safe foods, and people might even find it fun to incorporate some of the items that they're not familiar with, like chicory or tempeh or quince, Although removing certain categories like gluten, corn and dairy from cows could prove a challenge to people. But what about the special occasion? Is a slice of birthday cake, a special holiday meal or trying a new food on vacation? Okay, the occasional cheat day? Or will that undo all their hard work up to that point?
Speaker 2:The answer is it depends. You can. I have some people who want exposure to their mischief makers will kind of undo everything they did. The good news is that's not true for most people. Once you repair leaky gut, you can. I don't want to say get away with murder, because that's not what you want to do, but I've talked about this and I've written about it in previous books, and let me give you an example. This and have written about it in previous books, and let me give you an example.
Speaker 2:We do autoimmune testing on all of our patients because most of them have an autoimmune disease, and we decided years ago to do it on ourselves. And so when we first got back my autoimmune testing, my administrator came in and said Doc, you have lupus. I said I don't have lupus. Anti-nuclear antibody is a marker for lupus. He said I don't have lupus. She said, yeah, you're positive for anti-nuclear antibody. And I go well, that's kind of interesting because my father's side of the family, my aunt and my father, had severe psoriasis. My father was on methotrexate and immunosuppressant for 51 years and I said well, okay, I do have a family history, for this Family history has a little piece of it and I'm always experimenting with food, so that's my job. So I said you know, I'm going to be perfect, I'm going to follow the yes list, I'm not going to do any of the no for three weeks and I'll retest my blood. Sure enough, I was negative for anti-nuclear antibody. Good, so here's the best part.
Speaker 2:A few years ago, I was finishing editing one of my bestsellers, the Longevity Paradox, in New York City, and we were supposed to finish on a Friday afternoon. We didn't finish and I said what the heck, I'll stay the weekend and we'll finish Monday and I'll fly home. So I had the whole weekend and my wife wasn't with me. I said, you know, I wonder if I can activate anti-nuclear antibody my lupus. So I cheated I had bread, I had pasta, I had sliced tomatoes, I had beans, I probably had birthday cake.
Speaker 2:And I came back and tested myself. Sure enough, I was positive, positive for, and it was actually pretty high. And I went wow, that's really cool, believe it or not. I said, I wonder how long it'll take me to turn it off. So I said, okay, we're gonna draw my blood once a week until it's gone. And you know I'm gonna, I'm gonna be perfect one week later. It's negative. Wow, okay. So what does that teach me? Number one I can produce leaky gut by going whole hog cheating for a weekend. But the good news is my microbiome is pretty doggone good shape. My wall of my gut yeah, it got opened up. My immune system says oh geez, here we go again. But I sealed it very quickly. And now do I want to cheat on a weekend and do that? No, I don't, but most people can't do that, and so it's like a professional. You see the car commercials Professional driver on closed doors Do not attempt this at home. So maybe that's a good way to finish this off I'm a professional driver in a closed door.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a hopeful story, though for people it's not too late.
Speaker 2:No, it's never too late. One of the things that was really exciting to me in writing this book is the addiction story, and the thing that is hopeful is we know that. You know addiction is at an all-time high and we have lots of reasons. We can thank drug companies, we can thank social media or whatever, but in the end all these treatment programs for whatever addiction you choose, fail miserably. The recidivism rate, the failure rate is about 90% and you know this is despite intensive counseling and these people often end up going back and back and back and yeah, they clean up their act and then they fall right back off.
Speaker 2:And what the exciting part of the book is we now know that there is an addictive microbiome that they want you to get these substances, not to actually benefit them, and they use primarily pain, sometimes dopamine, as a way of getting you to seek more of this out. And the more pain they create by causing leaky gut, the more of this substance you will ingest or inject and the more they will get. And the good news is and this has been shown in experimental animals, it's been shown in humans that you can break that cycle and get this addictive microbiome out of you, and I have several really touching stories in the book about people who have finally overcome this addiction by working with food and their gut rather than and don't get me wrong, all the psychological help is appreciated, but I actually now have a big center in LA who wants to work with me because they realize that this is not up here, it's coming from down here.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for joining us today, dr Gundry. It was really such an honor to have you here, and I know that on my next trip to the grocery store I'm going to be armed with my list to start on one of the outlined dietary protocols in the book. So thank you again. So so much Thanks for having me. I hope we can talk to you again sometime when you come out with your next book, perhaps.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We're going to start working on it very shortly. Great, I can't stop.
Speaker 1:And it's a good thing for the public that you can't. Thank you again so much to Dr Stephen Gundry for being with us today. You can get your copy of the Gut-Brain Paradox by visiting his website at drgundrycom. That's d-r-g-u-n-d-r-ycom, or wherever books are sold. Thank you so much for listening to the Healthy Cells, Healthy you podcast with me, your host, Janet Walker. This podcast first aired on the award-winning Better Wellness podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So subscribe, be well, and thanks for listening.
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