Well, hello, hello, guys, you're listening to Beauty Bytes with Dr. K, Secrets of a Plastic Surgeon, and it's time for an amazing podcast.Today we have a very well-known guest, Dr. Stephen Gundry.
He is an American physician and he is a cardiothoracic surgeon.Also, you did some emergency medicine, I've heard.You've written a book called, The Plant Paradox, Hidden Dangers of Healthy Food.
And you're gonna teach us today about what we should be doing to better our diets.It's somewhat controversial, your lectin-free diet, but I am so curious to learn about inflammatory issues that come up with us.Welcome to the podcast.
Well, thanks for having me and happy to chat about inflammation and where it comes from.
Yeah, so tell us what is the paradox about plants?Because I thought it's all good to be eating green leafy vegetables, fruits, and you know, things that come from plants.
Believe it or not, plants were here first.They were on Earth about 80 million years before predators arrived.And the first predators were insects. In fact, the Garden of Eden was probably for plants because nobody wanted to eat them.
Well, when insects arrived, plants couldn't run, they couldn't hide, they couldn't fight, but they're chemists of incredible ability.
So they use defensive compounds to try to convince their predators by making them feel bad that it wouldn't be a good idea to eat them or their babies, their seeds.
And depending on the plant's place in the world, these things are pretty impressively designed to convince first insects, and now us, not to eat them.
And so the plant paradox is, you're right, there's a lot of plants that are pretty doggone good to eat.In fact, I'm a confirmed plant predator.But you gotta know who's your friends and who doesn't have your back in the plant world.
Yeah, so the concept of lectins being present in these vegetables and plants, can you explain for the audience, what's a lectin?Why is it bad or inflammatory?
Well, so lectins are part of the communication system between cells and actually between plants and animals.Lectins are proteins and lectins want to bind to particular sugar molecules.
And those sugar molecules that lectins want to be bound to have been worked out for well over almost 150 years now.Blood typing was actually based on lectins and there are
different sugar molecules on different blood cells that determine whether you're a type O or type A or type AB, and that we use lectins to decide which blood type you are.So lectins have been around for a long time.
And it's only recently that we've realized that lectins, because of this binding capacity, are used by plants to, among other things, cause intestinal permeability, leaky gut.
Now, if you'd asked me 25 years ago when I first started doing what I do now, what I thought about leaky gut, probably would have laughed you out of the room and told you it was pseudoscience.And many people still think that.
I can assure you that there is true science behind intestinal permeability.In fact, I just returned from Malta for the Targeting Microbiota meeting, which is an annual meeting of microbiome researchers.
There is absolutely no question about leaky gut and how it happens.So maybe we can put that out of the way.Lactans want to reach the wall of the gut.The lining of our gut is the same surface area as two tennis courts inside of us.
And unfortunately we have a design flaw. intestinal barrier is only one cell thick.
And those cells are held together, a lot of kids used to play a game called Red Rover, Red Rover, where we had two lines of kids and they all crossed arms and people came running across and tried to break through.
Our cells are bound together in the wall of our gut by what are called tight junctions.And They're crossed arms because we don't want things to get through the wall of our gut.
Now, what lectins do is, and this was worked out by a professor of gastroenterology, pediatric gastroenterology, who's now at Harvard, Alessio Fasano.Lectins job, and gluten, by the way, happens to be a lectin,
is to get to the wall of the gut and attach, and it makes a chemical, and there won't be a test, I promise, called zonulin.And zonulin hits another receptor and breaks that junction.So now you got a gap.
And through that gap, lectins, which are foreign proteins, can get through the wall of the gut. Pieces of bacteria, which we call LPSs, can get through the wall of the gut.
And believe it or not, undigested food particles can get through the wall of the gut.Now what's fascinating is, because of this kind of design flaw, 80% of all of our white blood cells, immune cells, line our gut.Why?
Because that's where trouble comes through. they literally attack these.Now, what happens is that's where inflammation comes from.And if it's a one-time occurrence, not a big deal.We patch the hole, put things back together.
But when it's a literal everyday occurrence, then we literally, our immune system goes, oh my gosh, We are under constant bombardment.We need to go to threat level five.
We need to send out warning systems to all the rest of our body to prepare for war, be ready for war, tell the brain we're at war.And so we're now understanding that
chronic inflammation is actually all part and parcel to leaky gut intestinal permeability.And we should have realized this.Hippocrates said 2,500 years ago that all disease begins in the gut.
And the longer I've been at this, the more I realized, what a, how he knew this is just amazing.But with every passing year, we're confirming that he was right.
So is this akin to the concept of glycolation, where sugar molecules attach to our own proteins and, you know, the aging process begins when collagen and other particles get, you know- Well, yeah, well, it's the same principle in glycation, of course, we know that sugar and protein can be bonded together with heat, which we have in our body, unfortunately.
And as you know, as a plastic surgeon, advanced glycation end products, glycation is one of the hallmarks of aging, particularly skin aging, but it happens in the rest of us.
Now, what's interesting about this is plants, in their wisdom, have selected particular sugar molecules that they are interested in attaching to.And Those sugar molecules, sialic acids, are present in the wall of our gut.
They're present in the lining of our blood vessels, the glycocalyx.They're present in our blood-brain barrier.They're present in our joints, the surface, and they're also present in our myelin sheath.
And with sophisticated blood tests, we can actually identify where these lectins are attaching to.And the good news is we can get them to detach and we can heal leaky gut.
Now, if you asked me back when I was naive, how long it would take to heal somebody's leaky gut, I'd say a couple of weeks, no problem.Literally, I've published papers that it takes nine months to a year minimum to actually see a leaky gut.
So it's not an easy process.And why I got interested in lectins is I can tell you a lot of great foods to eat.I could sell you some supplements that will actually help repair leaky gut.
But if you think of lectins as razor blades that want to slice open the wall of your gut, then you could repair your gut.But if you keep swallowing razor blades every day, you'll just slice it right back open.
And this is actually what unfortunately I see in my patients.The other, I think, important principle is we all talk about, well, we should eat anti-inflammatory foods. because inflammation is behind all this.
Well, the problem with that concept, as you and I living in Southern California know, that's like fighting a forest fire with a garden hose.And having lost one of my homes to a fire a few years ago, it won't work.
And so, as I teach my patients, you can eat all the anti-inflammatory foods you want, you can eat take all the anti-inflammatory supplements you want, but if you keep swallowing razor blades, you're not going to do any good.
And so that's where I started teaching my patients 25 years ago, that there were certain compounds that you probably ought to minimize in your diet or detoxify them, make them non-harmful by for instance, fermentation by pressure cooking.
And if you look at traditional cultures, traditional cultures have always figured out a way to make potentially very harmful plant compounds edible.That's what's exciting.
That's very logical.And yet, there are some claims that it's pseudoscience.What do you say to those critics and of what scientific evidence do you have to support your position?Everything you're saying makes a lot of sense to me.
Well, for instance, in my last bestseller, Gut Check, which came out this year, there were over 663 references about exactly what I'm talking about.So, You can't make 663 references on pseudoscience.
Some of them are my papers, but most of them are not.Alessio Fasano, once again, two years ago published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that Hippocrates was right.All disease begins in a leaky gut.Now, Wow.
And he proved, and you can do this with anybody's blood, that gluten, in this case, causes leaky gut exactly in the mechanism that I told you about.In fact, he's the guy who discovered the mechanism.
And so to say that, oh, you know, these things aren't harmful is to deny reality.
You're not dismissing all plants, just certain plants.So what are the bad type of plants that we should avoid?
Great question.So plants have a strategy based on, we don't need to get in the weeds, so to speak, but grasses in general want their babies, their seeds, to drop directly beneath them because they've found a really good place to grow.
And there's no need to, and they're gonna die off that winter, and there's no need for them to be carried off elsewhere.So these guys are actually particularly interested in you not eating their babies, because let's suppose you're a bird.
They don't really want a bird to grab those seeds and fly off because where they are works extremely well for them.So grasses in general have very high amounts of defense compounds.Beans, for instance, same thing.
They're an annual plant and they want their seeds to drop and grow right there.And they're loaded with lectins.In fact, hopefully most physicians were taught that five raw kidney beans will give you hemorrhagic colitis and potentially kill you.
Now, no one hopefully is dumb enough to eat five raw kidney beans, but that just gives you the idea of how potent the lectins in beans are.It is true that cooking and soaking lessens the lectin content of beans, but
What most people haven't learned is that cultures that ate beans fermented their beans.Beans actually, each bean is covered with bacteria.And when you soak beans, those bacteria ferment. the lectins on the coating of beans.
And that's why you actually, if you've ever soaked beans, you'll notice that foam comes to the top.And that foam is the fermentation of the bacteria eating the lectins.Fun fact. All right, so getting back to it.
On the other hand, there are plants that want you to eat their babies to carry them off to another place where they won't compete with their mother.And for instance, fruits are in that category.
And you and I know that we're one of the few animals that have color vision.And the reason animals have color vision is that animals with color vision are fruit predators.And the plant uses the color of fruit to tell two things.
tell the predator when the sugar content is high, which would be very useful to the predator, and also when the seed is coated with an impenetrable coating so it can resist digestion in that animal's gut.
And that animal will eat the fruit, benefit from the sugar content, and then walk off and deposit those seeds with a generous dollop of fertilizer. And every parent wants their children to go off and go someplace else eventually.
So, and that's the system plants use.So you can, and you can classify plants as a high lectin containing plant or a low lectin containing plant, depending on what their outcome and how they want to survive depends on.
I think that makes a ton of sense.Are there certain foods that you recommend in terms of longevity or kind of improving, you know, health span and gut health along the road?
Yeah.Again, I've written now several books about this, The Longevity Paradox, Gut Check, my most recent one.And one of the things that we talked about
at the microbiome meeting literally last week, is we're beginning to realize more and more based on research, on animal models, and also up to Reese's monkey models, that longevity is directly tied to the integrity of the wall of the gut, the lining of the gut.
And as long as that gut wall is intact, you literally won't age.
Now, that's a pretty wild statement, but this was first discovered, and there's this cute little worm that we all study in longevity called C. elegans, and it's a little bitty worm that's translucent, and it only lives a few weeks.
And the great thing about it is it has its own GI tract, and it has a single cell layer.
And what's been discovered with C. elegans is as long as that layer is intact, C. elegans does just fine, as that layer begins to get holes, begins to get pores, porosity, begins to break down, That's when the aging process starts.
And you can watch this little worm slow down, not move as much, not eat as much.And all the compounds that have been studied, I'll just give you one example, like resveratrol, the famous polyphenol in red wine and grapes.
All the compounds that enhance C. elegans lifespan, all of them affect the integrity of the wall of the gut.And so like Dr. Desano says, all disease begins in a leaky gut.
So as long as we can keep that gut wall intact, or what I do is repair that gut wall or teach people how to do it, you're good to go.And that's the exciting thing.
Now, you mentioned in your work, butyrate as a compound that can help repair the gut.And maybe you can dive into that.I know you must love prebiotics and probiotics.Yeah, dive into that.
So the holy grail of gut wall integrity, and actually longevity is this short chain fatty acid called butyrate, butyric acid.
And what's startling is that the lining of our colon, the cells that line our colon, I don't think you and I were taught this, are 80% dependent on butyrate for their fuel. they don't get their fuel from our capillaries, from our oxygen.
In fact, as you and I know, the colon is devoid of oxygen, but 80% of their fuel is butyrate.And if you don't make butyrate
Multiple good experimental models show that those colonic cells become dysplastic, become damaged, become leaky, and that's the process that starts.Okay, so we need some butyrate.Not so fast.
Unfortunately, there are certain colonic bacteria that are really good at making butyrate. Sadly, most of those colonic bacteria are not present in most of the patients I study.They're absolutely not present in people with colon cancer.
And just as an aside, everybody hears, oh my gosh, colon cancer is happening in 40-year-olds and 35-year-olds.And what's the answer?Well, we have to get early colonoscopy.Now we have to get it at 45 instead of 50.
No, the answer is, why is that happening?Well, it's because nobody has any butyrate-producing bacteria.And as I talk about in Gut Check, the Sonnenbergs, the husband and wife team at Stanford, sadly showed that you could take healthy humans,
give them a ton of prebiotic fiber.Prebiotic fiber is what bacteria want to eat, and in this case, it was inulin.
And you can look at their diversity of bacteria in their gut, and you can look at their inflammatory markers, and absolutely nothing changed.And they go, well, what the heck?We're giving them all this great fiber.
So then they took another group of people and said, okay, we're gonna give them all this fiber, but we're gonna give them fermented foods.And in this case, it was primarily in the forms of yogurts and kefirs, but vinegar is another example.
Sauerkraut is another example.We're gonna give them that with the fiber.And lo and behold, it was the combination
of these fermented foods, which we now call post-biotics and the prebiotic that finally started producing butyrate, finally started to lower markers of inflammation.
And what's startling, again, this is what us nerds talk about at the microbiome meetings.
You have to have an assembly line of bacteria and you may need four or five different bacteria, each with their own need for a compound to finally arrive at butyrate.And so it's not as simple as we thought it was.
And the good news is that if you look at super old people, just because of the culture that they arrived in, this was just part and parcel of how you ate.And when you look at them, their gut microbiome is just a tropical rainforest.
And unfortunately, yours and mine, America is a desert wasteland.And so you can rebuild the tropical rainforest, but it takes quite a while.And just to get back to a forest fire,
burn down a forest, we can plant all these little seedlings, but it'll take 20, 30 years to get a forest back into ecological community.And what we learned is it takes a long time for us.
One round of antibiotics can destroy your gut microbiome for up to two years, one round.
That's terrible.I mean, this year alone, I've taken antibiotics twice.
To do like, I definitely would eat yogurt, drink kombucha and like have, you know, all kinds of fermented foods.I actually think ethnic diets have like you said, a lot of fermented foods in them.So culturally.
Yeah, culturally, you know, these ethnic diets that usually have figured out how to, you know, handle all this.But even with doing all this stuff, it is really hard to establish these populations and help them out.
With the newer gut microbiome tests that are available, we can actually watch these populations of bacteria either grow or not grow.And we can manipulate, we can ask a patient, hey, you know, for the next month,
we're gonna seed your gut with these particular probiotics and then we're going to get the precursor.These guys like to eat.And all these guys have different tastes.And the science, we maybe know 1% of what we need to know, but at least,
We now know that we can start figuring out what these guys like and what they don't like and how to get them back growing.
And which stool microbiome testing do you like?Have you done the Viome testing or is there a particular?
Yes, I have.I have nothing against Viome, but because a lot of my patients will bring them in and I personally think they're kind of worthless.I use a test called Vibrant Wellness, the gut zoomer.
And they were called zoomers before Zoom calls, by the way. And we can actually not only identify bacteria, and all these tests will identify bacteria, but what's
What we haven't known for a very long time is, okay, we can name this bacteria and we can say, well, maybe this is a good guy and this is a bad guy.But we're beginning to realize now that you gotta have a balance of bad guys and good guys.
And bad guys aren't necessarily bad guys.I use the example in my patients in Yellowstone Park a number of years ago, you took the wolves out of Yellowstone because they were evil and bad.
And of course, once the wolves were gone, the elk had no predator and the elk overgrew and they ate all the saplings that beavers used to be, beaver dams and beavers left and the fish population plummeted.It was a mess.
When they reintroduced this horrible apex predator, then everything balanced.
And what's really exciting is we're just literally at the tip of the iceberg, knowing how all these species interrelate and who's got to bring what to the party to make the final product, which in this case is butyrate, which started us talking about.
Amazing.I hear so much talk about the bacteria of the gut.Should we also be thinking of the fungal mycelial elements?Like so much of us are, we're colonized with Canada and other fungal elements.What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, absolutely.And we're, we're way behind the curve with, uh, the fungal population in our gut.We're also, we spent an entire day last week devoted to phages.And you may remember probably for a minute in bacteriology that there are viruses
that attack bacteria, and they're called bacteriophages.And fun fact, the original pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, was founded as a bacteriophage company.And we now know that in terms of infections
Bacteria are infected by phages nearly constantly, and bacteria have this phenomenal, fascinating defense system against phages that I won't bore you with.So, we now know that we can actually make
that can target specific bacteria and actually infect bacteria with DNA or RNA and have them start making something that's beneficial for us.And so we spent a whole day manufacturing phages. Interesting.You're right.It's the infancy.
The Human Microbiome Project really just finished in 2017.
It was great to identify all these bacterial species, but now that we've identified them, figuring out what each one contributes and how to manipulate that, that's the fun part, but it's also the hard part.
Yeah, it really is.Is there a value in if you have a leaky gut getting a fecal transplant?Because this seems like such a direct route to a healthy gut.
That's a great question.Yes, fecal transplants do work.As you probably know, the FDA is not allowing fecal transplants because there have been, sadly, people who've been infected with viruses and other things that you don't want.
On the other hand, crapsules, which are- Crapsules.Crapsules, which are capsulized feces, have been shown in autistic children to dramatically improve the symptomatology of autism spectrum disorder.
And getting these things to implant is difficult, but there is a science.We spent two days looking at what are called extracellular vesicles, and I talk about that in the new book.And
Just to kind of- Like exosomes?You mean like exosomes?
Yeah, so exosomes are actually small extracellular vesicles.And bigger extracellular vesicles are called EVs.And we, there's the science now of manufacturing these to carry information.And it's really,
It's mind blowing that we now know that bacteria can pop off exosomes or extracellular vesicles that contain instructions to our individual cells.
and they cross through the wall of the gut, they can cross the blood-brain barrier, and they can deliver information.In fact, we spent a whole morning, you can deliver healthy mitochondria. through exosomes.
And you can unfortunately also deliver unhealthy mitochondria and poison a cell with, and this is actually a bacterial technique.Anyhow, we're just scratching the surface of this incredibly complex language
that bacteria in us, we call it trans-kingdom communication, There's communication between the fungal kingdom and us, the bacterial kingdom and us, the plant kingdom of us.So let's go full circle.
We now know that plants have exosomes and that living plants actually, probably their benefit is in these exosomes that we swallow, that resist digestion, that give us information.
Oh my God, it's so all interconnected.
And then you think about the neuroendocrine connection of the gut where so many skin disorders manifest from neurologic anxiety and, you know, your skin gets terrible and the gut and the skin are the connected ectoderm of the body, right?
That's exactly right.What, you know, what I got into this very much like, like you is that we, Our gut is just our skin turned inside out, simplistically.And it's a much bigger surface area than our skin.
So what happens in the gut is reflected in our skin.And that's why skin health is so important. You look inside and you find out the reason.I mean, acne is quite frankly from the gut.Psoriasis is from the gut.Eczema is from the gut.
You heal the gut, it goes away.
So fascinating.What about microplastics in the food we're ingesting?I think I saw you say not to cut food on a plastic cutting board anymore, which I've done for 30 years.
I know.No, you're right.Yeah, so these guys are sad, They're endocrine disruptors.They are estrogen-like compounds.And what's really scary is they're easily absorbed through our gut, and they go into all of our tissues.
from a cardiovascular surgeon standpoint, a recent paper came out looking at carotid plaque and the, oops, where did you go?I just lost you.Oh, I lost my, no, my camera's on.
Okay, good.The more microplastic that was found in carotid plaques, the more coronary artery plaque that you saw in people.And it's like, oh my gosh, what have we done?Yeah, there's a correlation.And it's in our plastic water bottles.
You're right, it's in our plastic cutting boards. Is there an escape?
Well, as I talked about in Gut Check, it turns out that if you look at super, super, super old people who are thriving, late 90s, early 100s, and again, look at their microbiome population, they have a microbiome that likes eating these things.
People have heard on the news that we've engineered bacteria to eat oil slicks, which is true.So it's not surprising that these guys have a microbiome that eats plastic.And part of what I wanna do is make sure I've got plastic eating microbes.
And how will we do that?I need to make friends with these people.But you wonder too, because I see patients who are sometimes I see 80, 85 year old ladies whose skin is so beautiful and gorgeous.
And literally all their generation had was oil of Olay and like simple things like rose oil or, you know, who knows if they're using olive oil or coconut oil.
Yeah.And so, you know, These people that simple basic things versus how many different toxic chemicals and preservatives are in our current skincare, lotion, hair dye, deodorant, and the things that modern women put on their faces is very different.
You know, sadly, there's microplastics in the fish we eat.There's microplastic in almost all the foods that we eat now.
You know, Sophia Loren says to this day that she owes her great beauty to olive oil, not only drinking it, but putting it on her skin.And there's a lot to, daily, I mean, there's a lot to be said for that.The polyphenols in olive oil are remarkable.
My husband's an interventional cardiologist.He told me I should drink a shot glass of olive oil every day.
He's absolutely right.I agree with him.
And in fact, I happen to make olive oil with the highest amount of polyphenols that's been studied at Gundry MD.There's a shameless plug.
No, tell us some more.What are some of the supplements and things that we need to be adding back to combat this assault on the gut?
Well, I think several things.It's no probably secret that 80% of the food we eat is processed or ultra-processed.And simplistically, we have completely stripped all fiber out of our food.
And back, our great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents, they ate whole food. and they ate it whole.They weren't having smoothies.They weren't having protein bars.They had whole foods and those whole foods were loaded with fiber.
Even traditional poor cuts of meat were actually loaded with fiber in the tendons and ligaments and gristle. And we would, you know, cook these things forever.
And it turns out that bacteria are happy to eat that fiber as well, but everything is now devoid of fiber.So it's no question that our bacteria have absolutely nothing to eat.
And in the process of, you know, eating a turnip or even a carrot, a great amount of the starches that were available were very slowly broken down and couldn't be broken down completely.
So there was always something coming down the gut to the large bowel where most of our flora live.And they were just waiting for it.Now they never get any of that fiber.And so Eating a high fiber diet is really important, but...
Most of the fiber we're told to eat are fibers from grains.And those are number one, not digestible by our gut microbiome.And number two, they're the biggest source of lectins.So what we're looking for is soluble fiber.
And- Like for example, from which fruits and vegetables?Apple.
So for instance, apple pectin is great, but you know, apples have been bred for sugar content. And they're just a giant ball of sugar.
The best fiber sources, in my humble opinion, are the chicory family of vegetables, radicchio, chicory, Belgian endive, asparagus, artichokes, artichoke hearts are phenomenal source of fiber.
Sweet potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, another great source of fiber. You can get green bananas.Don't let them ripen.Another great source of fiber.So those are tricks all in the book, in all my books.
Any other really important supplements that we're missing?I know you don't like corn and popcorn.That made me very sad because I love popcorn.
Well, it's interesting, you know, the South American Indians and the Mexicans who develop corn as a food, knew how dangerous corn was, and they treated corn with lye, and it's called micturization.And what that did to corn was two things.
Number one, it removed the hull from corn, and the hull contains most of the damaging lectins. But it also, corn unfortunately, compounds in corn bind niacin, vitamin B3, which we could spend an hour just talking about the benefits of niacin.
But when the Spanish invaded, they brought corn back to the New World and corn did extremely well in Northern Italy.In fact, you go to Milan and those areas, polenta is a staple.
What nobody noticed was that treating corn with lye had been done, and so they made hominy and hominy grits in Mexico, and that was then turned into flour, which was called masa flour, masa harina flour.
And that was the only way you ate corn because it was so dangerous.It was not known that that should be done.
And what's sad is for several generations, a hundred or so years ago, children in Northern Italy were born with mental retardation called cretinism.
and they had very small brains, and it was from the corn that they ate that bound niacin, and niacin is essential for neurodevelopment.In fact, to this day, corn is banned in France as a human food and should only be fed to pigs.
So go to France, you will not see corn on most of the menus because France abutted Italy and they noticed what was happening.
Talk a little bit about alcohol in the gut. What does alcohol do?Does it wipe out everything and give us?
No, actually it turns out there's been very good human studies looking at giving humans red wine or grape juice or gin and looking at their gut microbiome.And it turns out that both red wine and grape juice improve gut microbiome diversity.
Believe it or not, the wine does better than the grape juice.On the other hand, gin had a very negative effect on the gut microbiome.What we see is there is a level of tolerance where alcohol is clearly lethal to the gut lining.
And it's binge drinking that actually is the mischief maker in all of this.And binge drinking, you know, just doesn't occur over in Europe.And people, you know, drink, people will drink a liter of wine per day with their meals.
In fact, there's a very famous Italian by the name of Luigi Carnaro, who lived in the 15th century and lived to 102 years of age.And he actually wrote a book chronicling his life.
He was in his 60s when a physician told him that if he kept doing what he was doing, he was a dead man.So he actually did calorie restriction.And long story short, hilariously.
He believed that part of his solution was not to eat a whole lot, but to have at least a liter of good red wine every day.I'll leave it at that.
That's a perfect lead into what I was going to ask you about ozempics and maglutides and intermittent fasting.And what is this?Is it going to heal the gut?Because we do have gut rest, which is wonderful.
And it sounds like, you know, you know, when you're in fasting state, you're also working on different type of energy.Yep.
Correct. you've got to have gut rest.And people realize you have to put the brain at rest.And people haven't realized that you got to have the gut, have a chance to repair the wall and, you know, work out of scripts in San Diego, sadly,
average American is eating 16 to 18 hours a day.We're constantly eating and there has been no time for gut rest.So one of the great things about intermittent fasting is gut rest.My worry now, there are bacteria that
make GLP-1 agonists, and they're gone.We can bring them back.One company that I like a lot, Pendulum, now sells a product called GLP-1 with those bacteria.But the GLP-1 that I see that my patients use, and I will not give it to my patients.
They unfortunately can't go get it. What we see and what's seen experimentally is that around 40 to 44% of the weight loss is muscle mass. And muscles are what burn calories.
And so that's why even in trials with placebos, once they stop these drugs, the weight comes back with a vengeance.And drug companies know this.They know that they've got you for life once you got on this.They're not dumb.
Now, some studies have shown that if you work on resistance training in high protein and you preemptively
That's true.But most people that that's true, but most people don't do that.
Yeah.But you've got to get a good provider.Like we, we are definitely doing that for patients and emphasizing not losing facial fat, which keeps you beautiful as well.
Yeah.That's another part is you will know.Yes.
We don't want a zempic face.No, but a zempic body and like losing visceral fat around the gut and the organs of the gut is I think really beneficial.
Yeah.And then in terms of your own longevity regimen, I like to end the podcast with just asking people what supplements are they taking?What are your lifestyle practices?What is your secret to staying youthful and having a long life?
Well, I take probably, well, I take about 120 supplements a day.Yeah, and we'll find out when I'm 120 if it worked.
But one of the things I've been doing now for 25 years is that I eat all my calories during the week in a two hour window from five to seven o'clock at night.I gotta take the weekends off. And I've been doing that for 25 years.
As far as I know, I'm the first person who ever wrote about intermittent fasting in my first book back in 2005.So I think if you, and this is,
Experimental models, even up Teresa's monkey show if you want longevity and you want to do one thing, intermittent fasting is the most powerful way.Now you don't have to do a two hour window.
It looks like a six hour window is about perfect for eating.So that's an 18 hour fasting window.And however you want to manage that is fine with me.
If I could take away 115 of your supplements and you only had five left, which would those be?
Oh, that's easy.And I talk about that in all my books.Absolutely the most important supplement that every human being should be taking is vitamin D3.And it should be supplemented with vitamin K2.I believe you should take both MK4 and MK7.
The second most important supplement is DHA, fish oil, long chain fatty acids.
The third might surprise you is that you should get a lot of alpha-linolenic acid in you by either liquid form in the form of perilla oil or flaxseed oil, or in the form of supplements with perilla oil or
There's a very interesting oil called aji flower oil.I'm working on a paper, it's not out yet, looking at one of the best ways to prevent lipopolysaccharides from being absorbed is alpha-linolenic acid, the short chain omega-3 fat.
So that's, and lastly, time to release vitamin C, 1000 milligrams twice a day.We are one of the few animals that do not manufacture our own vitamin C and it is essential and you gotta provide it continuously.
Well, this has been amazing.I've learned so much and I feel like I have a second podcast I need to do with you now on vitamin D and vitamin K and vitamin C. So I really want to thank you for coming on the podcast.
And I know everyone wants to know where to find you and how to get ahold of the Plant Paradox.
Well, so the Plant Paradox, wherever you find books, it's the granddaddy of my books.It started it all.It's been translated into 36 languages. and wherever you buy your books, go to your local bookseller.
You can find me at my supplement and food company, gundrymd.com, drgundry.com.I've got the Dr. Gundry podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, two YouTube channels, you'll find me, Instagram.
find here.That's right.Well, thank you so much for coming on.And you can you guys you can find me on my Instagram.It's beauty by Dr. K doing amazing things with people's faces, health and longevity.
I am a super fan of doing things to improve our health span and lifespan.And don't forget to check out our website beauty by Dr. K calm Dr. Gundry, I'm gonna have to send you some of my amazing skincare for you to check out.
I would love the vitamin C and resveratrol based skincare as well. That's it for now, guys.Stay beautiful.
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