The Dr. Hyman Show - How to Know if Gluten is Driving Your Inflammation, Autoimmunity, Migraines, and More

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

View the Show Notes For This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal Get Ad-free Episodes & Dr. Hyman+ Audio Exclusives The foods many of us eat every day, like breads and grains, may have an effect on our health in ways we may not even be aware of. From inflammation to a leaky gut, insulin resistance, and even autoimmune conditions, gluten often plays a role in degrading our health, as do modern farming practices that douse grains with harmful pesticides. In today’s episode, I talk with Maggie Ward and Dr. Terry Wahls about the connection between gluten, leaky gut, and autoimmune conditions. This episode is brought to you by Rupa University, AG1, and FOND. Rupa University is hosting FREE classes and bootcamps for healthcare providers who want to learn more about Functional Medicine testing. Sign up at RupaUniversity.com. Get your daily serving of vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, and more with AG1. Head to DrinkAG1.com/Hyman and get a year's worth of D3 and 5 Travel Packs for FREE with your first order. Get FOND's amazing bone broth today. Just go to fondbonebroth.com/drhyman and use code HYMAN20 to get 20% off your purchase.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. There's a myth that we have to eat grains to be healthy. We do not. We do not need to eat them. Now, you can eat them, but basically don't buy the propaganda that we need them. It seems that every day more and more patients come into my office bringing ever increasing amounts

of healthcare information with them. And I love it when this happens because it means people are taking ownership of their health, but it also means I have to stay on the top of my game. So as a healthcare practitioner, how do you make sure that when a patient walks into your office and says, hey, I really want a Dutch Complete or a GI map, that you have the right answers and tools? The answer is Rupert University. They're the number one educational institute for root cause medicine with over 20,000 practitioners a year learning about functional and specialty lab testing. Not only do they have absolutely free

live classes hosted every week, but they bring in industry experts to teach in-depth six-week boot camps on all the most popular functional tests. If you want to level up your knowledge of functional lab testing, make sure to visit rupainiversity.com. You know that my goal is to live to be 120 and thrive while doing it. Well, I'm always looking for tools and strategies to help me get there. And I want to share with you one of the tools that I found and that I love, a nutritional supplement called AG1. AG1 supports your body's universal needs like nutrient replenishment, gut optimization, stress management, and immune support. By giving your body the nutrients it can easily absorb and utilize, AG1 supports your daily

performance and elevates your baseline health. I drink AG1 every day and ever since I started, I have consistently felt better and had more energy throughout the day. I just add a scoop to my water in the morning and feel the effects all day long. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 now and you'll get a free welcome kit that includes a shaker bottle, canister, and metal scoop, along with 10 free travel packs with your first purchase. go to drinkag1.com forward slash hyman. That's drinkag1.com forward slash hyman. Check it out. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Feehan, one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Bread, grains, and flour are some of the most common foods and ingredients that many people eat multiple times

throughout the day. But the modern grains you're eating aren't the same as what your grandparents ate. Gluten in many grains can cause irritation to your gut, leading to issues such as leaky gut or even autoimmune disease. In today's episode, we feature conversations from the doctor's pharmacy about the link between eating a high grain diet and health conditions, including autoimmunity. Dr. Hyman answers your most asked questions about grains and why you may want to rethink eating bread. He then speaks with Maggie Ward about gluten. And finally, with Dr. Terry Walls about why individuals with autoimmune conditions would want to remove gluten from their diet. Let's dive in. There is no such thing as an essential

carbohydrate. There are essential fatty acids, right? The Omega-3s and there are essential amino acids, which we need large doses from protein, but there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Even the National Academy of Sciences Dietary Reference Index says there's no biological requirement for carbohydrates. Now that's not to say they're not okay to eat. They're not good for us. I mean vegetables are carbohydrates, broccoli is carbohydrate, there's carbohydrates in nuts.

It's not that they're bad, but it depends on the type of carbohydrate. So first of all, there's a myth that we have to eat grains to be healthy. We do not. We do not need to eat them. Now, you can eat them, and we'll talk about how and why, but basically, don't buy the propaganda that we need them. In fact, for most of human history, we haven't had grains. Until the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, 12,000 years ago, we never had any grains or any beans.

We basically were hunters and gatherers. Our bodies worked very well without them. And yes, there are plenty of vitamins, minerals, fiber, or nutrients in whole grains, but you can get all that from other sources, including vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and other foods that don't have the same baggage as grains. Now, there are some cases where, you know, patients and people can eat grains and be

healthy, but I'm going to talk about how to be very careful about it. Particularly people who do not do well with them are people who have insulin resistance, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, people who are overweight, obese. Now how many people is that? Well, one in two Americans is pre-diabetes or diabetes. Seventy-five percent overweight, 93 percent are metabolic and healthy. So maybe six percent of the population can tolerate them and not get into trouble. I mean that's not too good.

So I think we'd be very smart about what we're doing. And after you talk about what kind of grains, how we're eating them, and how different grains affect us differently. Now, in terms of whole grains, that's just a bunch of BS, right? If you look at the marketing propaganda from the food industry, it's talking about whole grain flours. We think it's healthy. It's just a bunch of nonsense. For example, I want you to read labels carefully

so you can tell whether what you're buying is actually truly healthy or not, or just marketing hype. For example, you can get a whole grain cookie crisp cereal, sounds great. Whole grain cookie crisp cereal. Well, the cookie crisp doesn't sound healthy, but it's got 22 grams of sugar, right?

How much is that? That's five teaspoons, five and a half teaspoons of sugar, right? How much is that? That's five teaspoons, five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your serving of cereal that you give your kid in the morning. Not a health food, right? Not a health food. Just because they put a few flakes of whole grain flour doesn't make it healthy, right? Also understand your body. Below the neck, your body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar. Sugar and flour are the same in the body. I mean, actually, flour might be a little worse because it has only glucose, whereas

sugar has fructose and glucose, which are different metabolism, but they're both bad. You know, basically eating two slices of whole wheat bread can raise your blood sugar more than having two tablespoons of table sugar. Think about that. So whenever you eat something containing whole wheat flour, you might as well be mainlining sugar unless certain caveats are taken into consideration, which we'll talk about in a minute. So also you're not eating the same grains that we used to eat, right?

We're not eating ancient grains, heirloom grains. We're eating these new hybrids that are developed. For example, like dwarf wheat. Dwarf wheat was a very important innovation in agriculture, led to the Nobel Prize being awarded to the scientists who were able to hybridize, not GMO, but hybridize wheat so that it was short and stubby not tall and thin and then it produced much more starch and much more drought resistant much more resilient and could help you know feed the world which all sounds great except for one thing there's a starch that's produced there called amylopectin a which is a super starch it's the worst and it's basically the wheat we're eating

today not only that they spray with glyphosate often at the end to desiccate it because these are harvest. And basically just bad news. And the new hybrids have higher amounts of gluten in them and more likely to cause autoimmune disease. So basically, we want to be very careful. Now, heirloom strains like zea wheat, like I was talking about, might be okay, or unformed wheat or other types of whole grains like farro,

which have gluten, might be okay. But they're more grains like farro which have gluten might be okay but they're more ancient grains that people are not consuming and by the way they're not eating i said whole wheat berries right i used to make you know wheat berry something like we have wheat berries and salad we cook them up and do that but that's not that confident right so we have we have so much uh flour it's mostly dwarf wheat, it's mostly sprayed with glyphosate, it's super high glycemic index, high gluten antibodies, definitely not helpful, definitely not helpful,

and definitely not something you should be consuming. Even healthy grains may be problems. Like if you over consume grains that are healthy grains, even if it's like amaranth or brown rice right when they turn into flour they're basically pulverizing it and the surface area is much higher and it's quickly absorbed and it spikes your blood sugar so even it sounds like I'm having brown rice bread or something it's actually maybe even worse so make sure you're really smart about what you're reading

look at the labels very carefully and look at where the food is on the label. By the way, I think most people should eat food with labels. I mean, it basically, you know, is a can. It has sardines and olive oil, salt, fine. But if it's, you know, has 45 ingredients, you should just not eat it. Put it back. What about oatmeal? Oatmeal is such a health food, right?

Meat? Not really. It actually raises your blood sugar, and most of the oatmeal we eat is actually pretty refined oatmeal. It's not steel-cut oats. It's not whole oats. Those might be a little bit better. But when you eat oatmeal, it basically spikes your sugar. In one study, they looked at kids who had oatmeal, eggs, or silken oats, basically same calories, right? Same calories. And the kids were a little overweight and they basically said,

okay, if you're hungry, just tell us and we'll give you food. And when they looked and they put a catheter in their vein and basically tried their blud hour and they want to eat. And the kids who ate oatmeal had 81% more food in the day because they were hungrier. And their blood sugar spiked more, their insulin spiked more. They had more adrenaline, more cortisol, more stress hormones. So basically eating oatmeal is stressful for the body

and led to all these things that cause weight gain. So I'm not a big fan of starting the day with oatmeal. Now, it depends if you have whole oats and you put nuts in there and fat and other things, it slows the absorption, it might be okay. But just your quicker oats, definitely not. Now, what about gluten? Now, you all heard about gluten-free, gluten's bad for you, and it's not. And generally, it's pretty new in the human diet, especially the dwarf wheat, which I mentioned,

which has much more gliadin proteins that are much more inflammatory. Now, some people are fine. If you're healthy, if you don't have a leaky gut, not everybody's sensitive. About a third of the population has the gene for celiac. About 1% of the population has celiac. And by the way, there's been about a 400% true increase in celiac disease in 50 years, right? Because of the damage we've done to our gut. And part of that damage is from the new wheat and the gluten and the antibiotics and things. But basically, we have a society that

is now rampant with gluten sensitivity, which probably affects up to 20% of the population, whereas true celiac is about 1%. But your body really doesn't know what to do with gluten. And celiac disease is an autoimmune disease, and it can cause over 50, maybe 100 different diseases, like type 1 diabetes, like rheumatoid arthritis, like osteoporosis, like colitis, like iron deficiency, anemia, I mean, the list goes on, because of how it affects your gut.

Now, a lot of us, I said I had this non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and basically our body starts to react, creating inflammation, and so we don't want that. And sometimes it's worth doing a trial of a gluten elimination diet, basically to see how your body does. Do it for three weeks, see what happens, add gluten back, see what happens. You might be fine.

For example, I don't have a reaction to gluten. I do to dairy, but I don't have a reaction to gluten. I've checked. I don't have any bodies to gluten. I do to dairy, but I don't have a reaction to gluten. I've checked. I don't have any bodies. My gut was okay. So basically, I can eat gluten, but I don't eat that much of it because it's mostly flour, right? I don't eat the wheat berries. But there are other grains.

Now, one of the problems is that Dr. Alessio Fasano at Harvard, the world expert in celiac and gluten, basically talks about how everybody who eats gluten has some little damage to their gut because gluten increases something called zonulin. Zonulin is a protein that's produced in our bodies, which actually causes damage to our gut lining. It creates a leaky gut, little tight junctions, which are like Legos that are stuck together, come apart. It's only one cell thick between you and a sewer. And then you end up flooding your body with all these foreign proteins and antibodies I mean foreign proteins and antigens and also bacterial toxins and proteins that are really quite bad And so basically 60 to 70 percent of our immune system is right under our gut

So a lot of our inflammatory diseases are caused by gut I mean, I was reading about insomnia recently that there's been a big correlation between dysbiosis and bounces in the gut flora, leaky gut, and sleep disorders. So even sleep, for example, may be a factor. Now when we have these leaky gut food particles, antigens, microbes leak through our protective lining to activate our gut immune system, and that creates systemic inflammation, it can cause obesity, heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, but also obviously allergies, skin disorders, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. So I think everybody with gluten has some degree of leaky gut, but some people can manage it and can tolerate it. Other people can't. And so I think we have to really take stock of the fact

that gluten and celiac is a real problem. And if you don't look for it, you don't find it. I started a company called, I co-founded a company called FunctionHealth.com where we do full celiac testing. Often your doctor won't order it and they won't do the right one. So you can go to FunctionHealth.com and learn more. So now gluten-free, by the way, isn't necessarily healthy either. Gluten-free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies, right? So remember, we haduten-free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies, right? So remember,

you know, you had fat-free yogurt. Well, fat-free yogurt, your Yoplait fat-free yogurt has more sugar per ounce than a can of soda, right? It doesn't make it healthy, right? Remember what we call them, snack bowl cookies, right? Fat-free but full of sugar doesn't mean they're healthy. So just because it says gluten-free doesn't mean it's healthy. I saw a package of potato chips the other day that had gluten-free on the cover, right? Coca-Cola is gluten-free. It doesn't mean it's healthy. So the word gluten-free doesn't mean anything. It just means that the gluten's not there and that's fine if you're celiac, but it doesn't mean it's a health food. And usually it's replaced with something more harmful in terms of maybe other refined grains that are more glycemic in nature, additives, tons of sugar, high glycemic flours, refined oils. So just remember, gluten-free cookies, sell a cookie. And by the way, not all grains are bad in food. What the

heck should I talk about the ones that I I'm concerned about, like oatmeal, corn, wheat. And yes, gluten is a real issue for people. Other forms of grains are not so problematic, right? So, for example, quinoa is a South American grain that's very, very helpful. That actually has a lot of protein in it, has amino acids in it. It's problematic because we're taking the food from the indigenous people in South America, which is their staple. Now they can't even afford it, so that's a whole nother problem. Even other grains, for example, like Himalayan tartary buckwheat, which is from the Himalayas, super dense in nutrients, 132 phytochemicals, lots of

protein, lots of fiber, lots of magnesium, lots of minerals of minerals that can be fine so I was on to make pancakes from himalayan buckwheat flour but we don't want to eat all the traditional grains for eating that are in Twinkies and cookies pizza not good so also you know you can start to make other things with like real I make the buckwheat pancakes which are actually quite good you make buckwheat bread so you can and by the buckwheat pancakes which are actually quite good you make buckwheat bread so you can and by the way buckwheat's not even a grain so it was a flour what about the bread do we have to give up bread well no not necessarily there's lots of bread made with the whole kernel grains not just the flour or no flour you can make it with nuts and seeds um rye bread bring up rye

can be healthy that's gluten for many people but uh it can be problematic but actually this is super helpful in many ways and in germany I went to visit a friend once and they had a meat slicer in their house and I'm like what's that for like you know what they have in a deli to slice the you know whatever the meats and that's the cutter bread I'm like what do you mean yeah we can't cut it with a knife it's too dense so literally this fresh bread comes out and basically my rule for bread is because stand on it rule for bread is if you can stand on it and it doesn't squish, you can probably eat it.

So basically if it's made from whole kernels and it's made from nuts and seeds, other types of flours, it can be actually fine. I have recipes in my book, Food What the Heck Should I Cook for non-flour breads and they can be quite delicious. And how often should you eat whole grains? And by the way, when you're eating grains, only whole grains, right? Get away from flours, whole grains. So brown rice, quinoa, black rice, you know, stay away from flours,

but eat whole grains, right? Brown rice, black rice, red rice, quinoa, other grains can be fine. Farro, barley, if you want, if you're not gluten sensitive. And even, you know, Himalayan Thai buckwheat, it's not something you eat as a whole grain, but that flour is okay because it doesn't have a high glycemic load. And when you mix it with eggs and other things, it can be great. So you shouldn't be eating a lot, particularly if you're a diabetic, pre-diabetic, and some resistant, overweight, you probably want to cut them out for a while until you're healthy

and then you can add them back. Probably, you know, half a cup a day is fine. I think that's okay if it's whole grain, probably once a day. So what are the things that I talked about? And it can be, again, not the main dish, right? You know, in some countries they do eat a lot of grains, right? In China, oh, they eat rice and they're thin. Or, you know, in India, they eat rata rice. Well, you know, I just, you know, came back from Nepal and, you know, they were eating a lot of rice, white rice, but these guys were literally carrying 70, 80 pounds on their back up and down the Himalayan mountains all day long. So they needed the energy. But if

you're not doing that, I would stick away from a lot of grains. Buckwheat, the Himalayan taro, buckwheat's my favorite. You can go to bigboldhelp.com and learn more about that. Whole kernel rye if you're not gluten sensitive. Quinoa, also it's not a grain, it's actually a pseudo grain. Black rice, red rice, sorghum, teff, millet, amaranth, all can be great. What about white rice? White rice is something that a lot of cultures eat.

Now white rice doesn't always have to be bad. There's research that's been done on white rice that if you cool it and then you reheat it, not too hot, but that if you cool it and then you reheat it not not too too hot but just if you basically cook it and in potatoes and then put it in the fridge let it get cold and then kind of reheat it gently actually causes something we produce called resistant starch which helps resist the digestion of it it's lower glycemic it actually can help with your microbiome,

it's great for as a prebiotic, and maybe even improve metabolism. So you can use that. So what grains should I avoid if I might be gluten sensitive? Well, all the gluten containing grains, wheat, barley, rye, spelt, camomile, farro, bulgur, oats, semolina, couscous, any refined grains, all these you want to avoid.

And I think grains can be part of a healthful diet, but only if you're metabolically healthy and only if you're eating the right grains and only if they're whole grains. So in general, we need to recognize grains for what they are. They're a recreational treat, not a staple. An occasional indulgence is fine, not an everyday thing. For me, I'm not a fan of most grains. It's fine to include them in small amounts of your diet, but only if they're whole grains, only if they're organic, only if they're gluten-free.

By the way, if you're not gluten-sensitive, you may be able to tolerate a little bit healthier gluten grains, but for most people, they're problematic. And if you're wondering who should not be eating them, well, if you have type 2 diabetes or high blood sugar, prediabetes, if you have weight issues, cravings, if you have food sensitivities, digestive issues, autoimmune diseases, if you feel bloated after you eat, our blood tests show that you have high levels of inflammation markers, probably not great to eat a lot of grains at all. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark here. I am a big fan of bone broth because it's a game changer when it comes to gut healing and skin health. With so many bone broths on the market now, it can kind of be

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2024. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. So gluten is the most predominant protein that's in some grains, wheat being the most common one. So wheat, rye, barley, although wheat also encompasses things like spelt and kamut and Barrow and triticale. Yeah. So there are other grains within that family. Even oats is often have like- And even oats. And we'll talk a little bit more about oats because they can go either way. But

it's mostly wheat that we eat in the form of bread, crackers, pasta, right, all the flour that comes in through our diet, we're getting gluten in many foods. And it's not necessarily a bad thing for everyone. But it is really the most common food sensitivity, and something we see in so many people that we work with here at the Ultra Wellness Center. So I really wanted to kind of dive through it a little bit more of what is the big picture and who needs to be careful and how we do that. So Maggie, is this like, how come gluten's all of a sudden a thing? Because when I went to medical school 30 years ago, I was like, you had celiac disease. Maybe a few people had it.

It was like very small percent of the population, 1% of the population. But now you've got, you know, like maybe 20% or more having gluten sensitivity and all these issues. We have a 400% increase in celiac disease in the last 50 years. It's been proven by research. It's not just a fad. What's going on? Right. Well, I think when it started, right, it was the prevalence was thought to be a lot lower and we know it to be a lot more common. I think it's still a minority of the population. It's missed and underdiagnosed quite a bit because yes, in medical school you learn about celiac disease, but I think the thinking is that for someone to have it, they would have, you know, diarrhea all day every day. And we know that.

If you lose weight and diarrhea. Yeah, and we know that's not the case. I mean, I've had some people with no digestive issues and come back positive on a celiac panel. But for them, they had rheumatoid arthritis or another autoimmune condition going on. It just was presenting differently. So I think for that reason, doctors aren't always screening for it. But so there's that issue of celiac.

But then I always kind of describe it as a spectrum. There is a gluten sensitivity spectrum out there. And many of us fall somewhere on a spectrum. There is a gluten sensitivity spectrum out there, and many of us fall somewhere on the spectrum. Most of the folks that come to see us, I think, fall on the end of the spectrum where, you know, it may not be celiac. We can't really determine that based off the testing we've done, but they have to pretty much treat themselves as if. So that's, I think, where it's- It's not an on or off phenomenon.

Right. You either have it or you don't. Because traditional medicine, you go to the doctor, they go, well, if you have an abnormal biopsy of your intestine, you have celiac. Otherwise, you don't. So don't worry about it. Right. Right.

So there's a whole other area of gluten sensitivity. And for many people, it's making them really sick, even if it's not celiac. I also think there's something going on with the quality of gluten. You know, I saw it years ago. And I had so many folks telling me when they came back, like, oh, you know, I was eating pasta in Italy. I was eating bread in France and I was fine. And I come back here and I get so sick. So that's part of this epidemic of what we're seeing of gluten sensitivity is it, you know, they hybridized it, went back in the 50s and added more gluten. Many of our breads, they put more gluten in it. Gluten is what makes bread

spongy. So you put it in there and you get these nice big loaves of bread and more is better in this country. So I think that's a part of it. We spray it with glyphosate and various pesticides and there's a good chance people are reacting to that. And that destroys the microbiome. Exactly. So once you muck up with the gut microbiome, you're going to have a lot of digestive and

other issues. So that I definitely think is, I can't tell you how many people tell me I eat it abroad and I'm fine. Not our celiac folks, but many other folks that are really sensitive. So the spectrum is what is being missed, I think, in conventional medicine. And, you know, we, I don't always- I just want to underscore what you just said. There are some key reasons why we're seeing this increase. So one, it's the change in the kind of wheat we're eating, right? They've hybridized it. The dwarf wheat has way more gluten proteins and the way more inflammatory gluten proteins

than heirloom wheat. Right. You spray with glyphosate, which not all wheat is full of glyphosate, but a lot of it is. And that causes damage to your gut, which causes more leaky gut and more gluten reactions. Yep. damage to your gut, which causes more leaky gut and more gluten reactions. It also is sprayed in the preservative when it's put in the bread called calcium propionate, which is actually a toxin that causes problems with behavior and attention and focus. So it can cause a lot of brain issues for people. And then on top of that, we've created a background level of dysfunction in our gut over the last decades by our poor

quality diet, starved sugar, low fiber, processed food, which damage our microbiome, makes it more likely we have a leaky gut. We've taken antibiotics, we take acid blocking drugs, we take steroids, we take hormones, all of which mess up our gut. We have increased rates of C-section, increased rates of bottle feeding. All these things make your gut more likely to become gluten sensitive. Right, it sets you up to become more sensitive. So that's why we're seeing this sort of escalation of gluten sensitivity over the last 50 years, and it's real.

Right. And you know, not many of us are eating these like whole wheat berries. I mean, we're eating in the form of flour. So even if you get organic bread, whole grain bread, I mean, it's still refined carbohydrates. And you're selectively feeding things in your gut. You probably don't want to be feeding too much and throwing off your blood sugar. So when people go gluten-free, I do think part of the reason they feel better, as long as they don't start eating a lot of gluten-free junk, is they transition over to more whole

carbohydrates, whole foods. And they feel a lot better for thatfree junk is they're they transition over to more whole carbohydrates whole foods yeah and they feel a lot better for that reason too so for that reason you know free junk food is still junk food cakes and cookies if it's gluten-free is still cake and cookies right exactly um so so i really wanted to bring attention to that because we see i can't tell you how many symptoms i've seen get better you know know, not across the board, but just I've had brain fog get better taking gluten out. I've had joint pain get better. I've had skin get better. So, you know, people joke around,

like do you take everyone off of gluten? I'm like, if you saw how many people got better off of gluten, you'd take it, you know, take another guy too. Well, yeah, we see people who come to see us who are ill. Yeah, right. And so we have a select, we call it selection bias. But I would say, you know, when people walk in the door

with any kind of chronic illness, for me, checking gluten antibodies and what we call a Cyrix-3 test, which we'll get into, which looks at way more proteins around gluten, is like checking their blood pressure. Yeah. Or their temperature. Right. It's a vital sign for me because it's so common. It's such a big deal.

And, you know, I just saw this guy the other day who had all this severe lymphedema and inflammation in his body. And he had one of the worst gluten tests I've ever seen. And he didn't know it. And he's like 50 years old. So anytime anybody comes in with a chronic issue that's not getting better, especially anything that's inflammatory or digestive in any way or neurologic, it's the first thing I look at. Yeah. And I think the question I get a lot too is like, well, why was I okay eating gluten through, you know, my younger years?

And why is it an issue now? And I'm like, well, even with celiac, right? That's a genetic condition. You're technically born with it, but when it develops can really vary. So you need to have like the genetic predisposition, gluten in your diet and some type of trigger. So an infection, you know, a really stressful event, you know, toxins again, something has compromised your gut lining and now you're reacting to these proteins. So for some people, it might not even

be a life sentence. I mean, if they have celiac or something similar, they have to be really careful. But other people, sometimes if you get the gut sorted out and healed, they can tolerate. Yeah. When I was really sick with mercury poisoning and when I was really sick and I had gut issues, I couldn't eat any gluten. And now, I mean, I don't eat a lot, but now it doesn't really bother me and I don't really have antibodies, so I fix my gut.

And I think we see a lot of these patients who may not have any symptoms for years and years, like you said, and when they're 50, they get an autoimmune disease or they get something, and you check and they have celiac, they actually have celiac, or they have really severe gluten sensitivity. And I think, you know, you say it's genetic,

about 30 plus percent of the population has the gene for celiac, but only 1% get it. And I think it's all the things you're saying, it's all these insults that are from the environment, our diet, antibiotics, et cetera, that make us susceptible. Right. Your genes are never going to say you're going to get that disease. It's usually your environment that needs to turn those genes on.

So yeah, it's true. And even though you have the genetics, yeah, it doesn't mean that it's not a way to diagnose for it. But it's good to know your genetics, though, too. And it's a spectrum. You know, like you look at the antibody test and there's a normal level, right? Like there's, you know, 0 to 20 or whatever on the antibody test on your blood level. But when you think about it, there is no normal level of antibodies to gluten in your blood,

right? And you talked to Dr. Leslie Fasano who's been on the podcast, who's the world's expert in gluten at Harvard and brilliant guy. And he said, you know, look, if you have any antibodies, it means three things. One, you've been eating wheat or gluten. Two, you have a leaky gut. And three, your immune system doesn't like it. Right.

So if the level is five, it's not as bad as 20, but it's not as good as zero. Right. And you don't want to go to 20, right? So be careful. A lot of people say, oh, my tests are fine. But it's a spectrum. It's a continuum. It's not on or off.

Right. And it's always worth doing an elimination diet because the cost is low, the benefit's high. There's really no downside to getting off it for six weeks, let's say, or even two weeks and seeing what you'd feel like. And if your symptoms get better and then you eat it again and you feel worse, there's your answer. Right, right. I think it's a little tricky too, though, with gluten, because typically with elimination diet,

you know, two to three weeks off of that food, you should feel better. We've had a lot of people where it's up to three months, right, before. I saw it clinically for a while, and now that we're testing for it more, you see these antibodies to gluten stay around for a long time after someone's been off of it, right?

You're no longer getting exposure. Those antibodies should come down. The inflammation should come down. So that's something to keep in mind for listeners because I've had a lot of people say, you know, I went gluten-free for three weeks and I didn't feel all that much different. And then I'm like, I think you got to give it longer. It's around that three-month mark that a lot of people like, you know, my joints finally started feeling better around that point. So that's something to keep in mind. A stradipatient when she was off for 10 weeks

before she started to feel better with psoriatic arthritis. Right, yeah. And usually it's a combination of a few other things that need to be sorted out, but you really wanna give yourself a good time period. So if you've never done up to three months, you should. And it sneaks in in a lot of places, which we'll talk about, but most folks who are fairly sensitive

have to be 100 plus percent off of it, or they will still be reactive. And it's 150%. I mean, if people have, Dr. Fasano said to me once, is if you have a thumb fall, a thumbnail fall of gluten in three months, you're back to zero. Like you can't even cheat a little bit if you want to do it because your body then creates an immune response. And I remember a patient who had rheumatoid arthritis and she was very good, but she was trying all the functional medicine stuff. She would get a little bit better. It wasn't cutting it. And I said, look, you think you're gluten-free? And I went through her diet and she was getting some and maybe she had some soy milk with barley malt and this and that.

So I said, why don't we put you on just a 10-day ultra-clear plus shake, which is what we were using back then, which is basically a rice protein, low allergenic, just no other food, just this shake for 10 days, see what happens. Everything went away. Yeah. And I was like, wow, you know? And I think I saw her like three months later or six months later, and she had completely changed.

She lost 40 pounds. Her arthritis was gone. She felt great. Right, right. I think, you know, one of the things I just want to emphasize is that whatever condition you have, almost anything really in medicine, it should be on your list of things to think about. were really caused by celiac and gluten, but were masquerading as something else. Osteoporosis, iron deficiency, schizophrenia, autism, cancers, you name it, autoimmune diseases, migraines. I mean, just disease after disease.

And if you really look at that list, and that's just, I think, a short list compared to things I've seen over the last 30 years, you're gonna think that pretty much anybody who has a serious chronic illness or has chronic symptoms or is just not feeling great should check for it and also should try an elimination diet. Right, right. And this is where, too, testing can be helpful because there's some people that think they're 100% off of it. You know, I've had several folks come in already knowing they have celiac or very sensitive and they're off of gluten. You know, I've had several folks come in already knowing they have celiac or

very sensitive and they're off of gluten. We still test them. And the antibodies that we're looking for, this is through the Cyrex3 panel that we do, there's about 32 different immune markers that they're looking at. It varies parts of the gluten protein and wheat and other proteins within wheat. But so it's a very sensitive test. And these antibodies shouldn't be in your system if you have not been eating gluten and they come back positive. And that's like, okay, you're getting some hidden sources. When you eat out, are you, you know, doing all the precautions you need to do?

Have you checked your body care products? Is your house gluten-free? There's so much contamination that happens in the house of, you know, not everyone in the house is gluten free and they're sharing space and food. So this is where you have, the testing can be really helpful to kind of dig in. And again, traces can make a difference, even if you don't have celiac for someone that's really sensitive. So tell us about like some of the common things we see. One of the cases you had was a thyroid issue. Yeah. So I wanted to kind of focus on autoimmunity

because that's a lot. Anytime I see someone with autoimmune condition condition, if they're not gluten-free, I'm like, you got to start there just to make sure that's not triggering it. Because again, even if you don't have celiac. I want to emphasize what you said. Anybody who has an autoimmune disease, gluten should be on your list of what to check and what to eliminate. It is easy to do and you can have profound results. Absolutely.

Yeah, because even if you don't have the celiac, what we so often find is that when you take gluten out, these other antibodies to the thyroid, other conditions of autoimmune conditions, they get better. The numbers start getting better. So we've seen that clinically and now we test for it so much more. So even even on celiac, we do find it can trigger a lot of other autoimmune-like conditions. So that's, I was kind of wanting to focus on two cases around autoimmunity. The first one is a 38 year old woman with Hashimoto's, which is the autoimmune condition you can get with your thyroid. Very common and a lot of reasons to have it. But she was interesting.

She was a really intense triathlete. So very competitive, high exercise person. She came with severe fatigue just in for nutrition because I think she, you know, wanted to focus on nutrition and weight loss, which is not typically what you see with low thyroid function. But her thyroid antibodies were extremely high, some of the highest I've ever seen. And she also had a liver enzyme that was elevated too. So I was, you know, wondering if there maybe was a toxicity component to that. And I do think she was a bit malnourished given the high level of exercise that she does.

Some of her nutrition labs, even her cholesterol was coming back low, which could indicate that she wasn't getting all the nutrition or maybe not absorbing all the nutrition she needs. So like I always do with On Immune, I'm like, let's take all the gluten out. She kind of did her own research and went full on paleo, which, uh, takes out all the grains and all the legumes, which sometimes really can make a difference for folks that are gluten sensitive. Um, and I really focused again, getting enough good fats and protein, good quality carbohydrates in her diet.

Um, with the exercise piece, you know, I was thinking there could be an adrenal component to that and your adrenals are very closely linked to your thyroid. So she, you know, worked on some other lifestyle things and did some yoga and restorative stuff that I think was important. But, you know, when you see Hashimoto's, which is very common, right, one in five women have both thyroid, a lot of that is autoimmune,

thyroid conditions, probably the most common autoimmune disease in the country, is not all related to gluten, but probably I would say a third of my patients who have Hashimoto's when I check their gluten antibodies are elevated. Right. It's a piece of the puzzle, right? And when they get off gluten, they get better. Right. Exactly. It's so often a piece of the puzzle. It's usually not the only thing, but it's definitely a big component for a lot of folks. And, you know, again, being a high level triathlete, your digestive system takes a hit to

that, you know, and I think she got a little bit of leaky gut where before the gluten may not have been an issue. And she'd also had a daughter soon before. And, you know, sometimes just the process of going through a pregnancy can switch what goes on with the immune system as well. And on her blood test, she found elevated. Yeah. So I had her, you know, she didn't do any specialty testing with us. I just had her, she had a good local doctor who did more integrative stuff. And I said, have them do a celiac panel and not just check tissue transglutaminase, which is what the kind of the gold standard, so to say, right for blood work is for celiac. You can check for antibodies to glidin, which is part of the gluten protein.

You could check for deaminated glidin. So I wrote out what to ask her doctor for and they ran it. And she did not have the tissue transcutaneous, which right, mostly is what they're going to look for for celiac, but she did have anti-gliadin antibodies. And I was like, you should not have those, you know, so you may not have celiac, but you could have something similar. So, yeah, so that's a good point. Cause a lot of doctors will check the basic test and they'll say you're fine. And they only check like one antibody called TTG. But they don't check the any glide in antibodies, which are less specific, but actually more sensitive. So they'll show up

often when the other one doesn't. And they do indicate a level of leaky gut, a level of wound sensitivity, and they are definitely contributing to all sorts of issues for people. Right. And we did some other nutritional stuff. She was low in iodine and we did some sea vegetables and things, which is important for thyroid. So again, there's other things that are going on.

But that, you know, when I had a two-year follow-up with her, obviously we had a few follow-ups in between, but she said her digestion was great, her energy was great. Her thyroid antibodies, you know, what I think we hear in conventional medicine is like, you got autoimmunity, you have it. You know, why check antibodies? It doesn't go away. So her thyroid proxidase, which is one of the ones they check, came down to less than zero, whatever the normal is. And her thyroglobulin antibody, which is the other one, is slightly elevated, but came down significantly. So that's remarkable.

So she had one of the highest levels of autoimmune antibodies you'd ever seen. And after getting her gut sorted and getting the gluten out of her diet and optimizing her nutritional status. Doing stress reduction. She actually had a complete normalization in one of them and almost normal in the other one,

which quote doesn't happen in traditional medicine. And she's on armor. She's on some thyroid support. She does feel better with it. And I think there's, you know, often a need for it. But, you know, she pretty much reversed her autoimmunity by going paleo. That's amazing. So that was pretty remarkable.

It's nice to see when things, you know, kind of quickly turn around for some folks. What about this other case you had? So this other one was a bit more complicated. She's a young woman, 27 years old, but she has mixed connective tissue disease which, you know, is kind of a combination of similar lupus or scleroderma. It's kind of a mix of where autoimmunity can affect many different tissues. Yeah, so it's a bad autoimmune disease. It is a bad one.

It affects like all the tissues and organs and skin and liver and kidneys and muscles and so on. Right, right. And then she came in with all those symptoms, you symptoms, a ton of joint pain, a lot of digestive stuff, which she said she kind of always had her whole life, fatigue. She was depressed. She had weight gain, probably because she was so inflamed. She wanted to lose about 20 pounds or so.

And her symptoms did start in her teens with some exercise stuff. And then by the time she came to see us, again, only just in her 20s, she was getting arthritis in her hands. So she was on autoimmune suppressant medications. She was on Celsap, but she had been on a lot of things over the years. Omeprazole for her reflux because she had a lot of the digestion issues. She was on a low gluten diet.

Yeah, yeah, that doesn't count. That's what I always talk to people. What is low? It's like being a little bit pregnant. What is low gluten? I was like, you have all these conditions. You have to take gluten diet. That's what I always talk to people. What is low gluten? I was like, you have all these conditions. You have to take gluten out. And she had done testing. I think some specialty tests that did show she was reactive to gluten and soy before. And that's why she was low. But I told her, you know, you got to be a hundred percent. And she said, you know,

I do feel like my headaches are worse and my stomach's worse when I have gluten. So we got her strict gluten-free and I kind of low grain. I try to get it low allergen overall. I told her to come off the coffee, no alcohol, anything else that could be inflammatory to her gut. And you also did this test, which was not the normal test. So you mentioned a little bit earlier. So when you go to the traditional doctor, they'll do a celiac panel. They'll do the TTG. They'll do sometimes gliadin antibodies. But we at the Ultra Wellness Center do a different test from the lab called Cyrex, which looks at not just a few proteins in the wheat, but all sorts of different, like dozens of different-

The gliadins, glutenins, there are different parts of the gluten protein. So they're breaking down to these smaller units. So you can really get a closer, you know, look at what the immune system's reacting to. And there's a section there of transglutaminase. So it's not the same thing as tissue transglutaminase. You can't diagnose celiac with it. But what Cyrex says is that folks that have these other transglutaminase reactions are more likely to have an autoimmune condition related to gluten. So this is where it's like, okay, it may not be celiac, but you probably have something very similar. So out of 32 markers, 30 of them came back positive on a low gluten diet. I mean, she wasn't eating a standard American diet at all. She did have a celiac panel. Her tissue transglutaminase, again,

that gold standard was borderline high, which should not really be showing anything. And her deaminated gliadin was high. She did have the genetics. It's called HLA-DQ2 and DQ8. The DQ2 is positive, which brings your risk up pretty high for celiac. We also did a Cyrex-4, which is known as kind of their autoimmune profile as well. So they're looking at dairy. Dairy we know is big allergen in and of itself, but a lot of people that react to gluten seem're looking at dairy. Dairy we know is big allergen in and of itself, but a lot of people that react to gluten seem to react to dairy. And they've, you know, with paleo, a lot of folks take out all grains and sometimes that is helpful. According to Cyrex research, oats, and oats have been identified a long time ago, even when they're gluten-free, when they're not contaminated with gluten,

there is a protein in there very close in structure to gluten. So many people do react to it. I see that a lot. I mean, oh, I run the gluten-free oats. And I'm like, no. If you are still having any symptoms, then you should just get rid of all the oats. Yeah. So I tend to throw oats in the gluten category. And then they also suspect rice, which I've always thought of as a low-allergen grain, but we do have a lot of folks that seem reactive to rice, corn, and millet. So those are the ones I kind of focus on. They also check corn, soy, some of these other common allergens. Yeah. And so what happens is, you know, the way I think about it is gluten is sort of the gatekeeper, right? When you eat gluten, you become sensitive to it. It opens up the channels in the gut, creating what we call leaky

gut. And then other foods get in and you get these cross reactions. So you get other grains, you get dairy, you get soy. But it's really the gluten that's sort of started the whole thing. And if you fix the gluten and you heal the gut and you get rid of all those other foods for a short time, maybe three months, six months, maybe a year, you can heal the leaky gut and then become able to tolerate a much wider diet. Absolutely. So I think that's a fear of so many people when they start reacting to so many things.

I'm like, you know, a lot of these foods are not at fault. You know, there's something else compromising your gut. Like the innocent bystander. What's that? Like the innocent bystander. Yeah. And I'm like, once that gut gets healthy, you know, your immune system's not going to be seeing it and reacting as much.

And she, because she was on these immunosuppressants, we did a different type of leaky gut test called the mannitol lactulose test, which basically looks at what's leaking through the gut. And she did come back with increased permeability between the cells that line the digestive tract. So, you know, this is, the gut is where you need to focus for autoimmunity because so much of the immune system lines that. So if that's not healthy and it's leaky, that's probably what's triggering autoimmunity for folks. We used to think that fat was bad. And it's sort of a legacy of why we started to get into this sort of carbohydrate binge, essentially, was based on very poor science in the 60s that showed that fat was the cause of heart disease, but it really was very

poor science. It was observational data. It was cherry-picked data. They actually didn't look at the randomized controlled trials when they came up with the dietary guidelines, which actually didn't show that it was harmful, that fat was harmful. So back in the 70s, you know, we were finally looking at the link between diet and disease in America. And the McGovern Report, George McGovern created dietary guidelines for Americans, which basically stated that we should be cutting out the fat and increasing the carbohydrate content of our diet. And then we got the food pyramid in 1992. We should have 6 to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta a day. When you look at the graphs of that period of time and the obesity pandemic,

we see now the epidemic, we see that is exactly when the hockey stick rise and obesity and diabetes came in. So it's the worst possible thing that happened to us. And, you know, we, we really need to think about how we should, um, if we're going to eat carbohydrates or bread, we have to rethink bread entirely. When you look at modern bread it's it's extremely finely milled flour and with a lot of surface area so when you consume it it's quickly absorbed just like sugar and in fact i guess it's worse than sugar in terms of its glycemic index and that causes you to spike insulin levels after your blood sugar goes up your insulin spikes and that insulin spike causes a cascade of phenomena that leads

to all the chronic diseases we see, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and much more. Infertility, I mean, I can go on and on, acne. And that phenomena of insulin resistance is driving inflammation in the body. It causes you to store fat around the middle. It causes you to crave more carbohydrates and food. It causes you to eat more overall. It slows your metabolism down. It really is a hormonal immune catastrophe. And that's really because of the kind of flour we're eating. So we really need to cut that out if we want to stay healthy. It doesn't mean we can't have different kinds of bread. And there's many kinds of bread. And in Food, What the Heck Should I Cook, which is my cookbook, there's a couple of great recipes for seed and nut breads. There's other breads like Lynn's Life, which are

made from just, you know, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, psyllium husks, eggs, and the lime milk and lemon juice and baking soda. And it's delicious bread, but it's not made from flour. It's made from nuts and seeds. So I think we really can reimagine bread. And also that we can look at all kinds of other grains that might be helpful and beneficial and how rich in phytochemicals. Because basically when you're eating modern white flour, it's just completely devoid of any nutrients. And the reason they call it enriched flour is because when they first started making

it and people started eating it, they would get massive nutritional deficiencies because of the lack of the B vitamins that are in the whole grain. So they would get thiamine deficiency, berry, berry berry pellagra you know and and uh it was a terrible time of vitamin deficiency and it was because of the refining of the flour that's how we began to actually discover vitamins because when we started milling the flour so fine whether it was rice or whether it's other grains or flour we saw this massive rise in really serious nutritional vitamin deficiencies. People don't think of, oh, I'm eating a bagel or I'm having a piece of bread with dinner, then I'm actually harming myself. But the truth is we are, we are really harming ourselves when

we have white flour. We eat 133 pounds of flour per person per year. That's like a little, like a third of a pound a day, basically, or a little more, right? That's a lot of flour. The second is just this phenomena of increased glide in proteins and gluten, and the number of gluten proteins that are inflammatory. And that combined with all the other stressors in our life that cause leaky gut from environmental toxins to food additives to chronic stress to, you you know microbiome changes and antibiotic use and other medication you know we're in a situation where we're seeing rampant leaky gut and gluten is one of the biggest drivers of leaky gut because it creates a

damage to what we call the tight junctions which is a little sort of uh a little sort of lego lock kind of things that put the cells together and and when you when you consume gluten this is work by alessio fasano from harvard who discovered that it increases a compound called zonulin in the body in the gut zonulin is a very important molecule that will cause a weakening of the tight junctions and it can be helpful like you know if you get certain infections or diseases, you want to flush the gut out. But this actually creates this chronic leaky gut and you absorb all the bacterial toxins and food proteins and you can get inflammation in the body and autoimmune disease and allergies and much worse. So I think, you know, that those two things, both the sugar content

and the leaky gut damage from gluten and bread, are the two biggest real threats. You know, all of us to some degree have some permeability in our gut, and the more wheat we eat, the more permeability it is. But not all of us are sick, and it's a subtle dynamic that we have to be in balance with. However, if you are suffering from allergies, autoimmunities, asthma, migraines irritable bowel reflux all these chronic illnesses uh they they really can be linked to leaky gut even obesity heart disease dementia um all of those things can be linked to damage and leaky gut because it's inflammation

but even cause inflammation will cause you to have these chronic illnesses. So leaky gut and the inflammation that's a consequence of that, plus the effect of the sugar content of bread on our biology are the two biggest threats that we face today from eating bread. Most of the bread we eat is from regular wheat, dwarf wheat flour. It's highly refined and it's quickly leavened and it's made into all kinds of bread products that often have added sugar and high fructose corn syrup and it's it's bad no one should ever really eat that i hate to say it then you know sourdough bread if you're getting for example maybe an heirloom grain or you get your flour from an organic non-dwarf wheat source more heirloom grains. There's iron corn wheat. There's currants

Oh, which is a new strain of wheat developed a sourdough bread can be regular that helps to digest the Enzymes that may make gluten less of an issue It's easier to digest and it's been used for thousands of years with sourdough starter So that that's sort of an upgrade and improvement But it really depends on the flower you're starting with if you start off with crappy flour and white flour from dwarf wheat, it's not a good idea. And then there's, then there's, you know, some interesting things where we see in Europe, when people go to Europe, they don't have the same intolerance to wheat that they do in this country. And there they don't actually use the same wheat. They don't use dwarf wheat. And also

their process of making bread is not like a quick, you know, one hour leavening. They make leaven it for 12 hours overnight and that changes the composition of the proteins and this gluten and allows it to be less reactive. And then there's, you know, all sorts of other sort of grains that you can use that contain gluten. Like in Germany, my favorite breads are those German rye breads or whole grain breads and they're not made from flour, They're made from whole grains. So essentially, you get a meat slicer to cut it because it's so thick. If you stood on it, it wouldn't squish at all. And you can't cut it with a regular knife because it's too dense. That's a really great bread.

Nobody's really made that here, but that's made from whole kernel grains. And so, you know, whether you're looking at, you know, sort of trying other kinds of gluten grains like spelt or rye or certain oats, I mean, you may be able to tolerate those, or you might not tolerate the dwarf wheat that is the prevalent wheat in this country. But my typical philosophy is, you know, if you're not celiac and you're not non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or you don't have a wheat allergy that you probably should minimize your intake of wheat in general although you can have you have some of these other forms of sourdough or german rye or einkorn wheat or you can make your own that's

probably okay from time to time but again it also depends on you know how how dense the bread is how milled it is how thin the flour is. Because if you are, forget about gluten sensitivity, if you're dealing with weight and metabolic issues, which is almost 9 out of 10 Americans, it's the devil. You know, it just spikes your blood sugar, spikes your insulin, makes you gain weight, more inflammation, and you end up in the vicious cycle. What is the WOLF protocol?

What is the concept of the diet? Why are the principles of the diet used in the way they are? And what are the key take-homes around that? And then let's get into the research of how this works. So first we'll talk about the dietary approach. So the way you might think about it when I talk to the public is sort of a pre-Walls diet is a Mediterranean diet, which everyone agrees is a great diet, more vegetables, legumes, more fish. So nice, healthy diet. And then the first level of my diet, we have people stress, and the goal is nine cups of vegetables, three cups of greens, three cups of sulfur-rich vegetables in the cabbage, onion, mushroom

family, and three cups of deeply colored things like beets, carrots, berries. And then I want them to remove gluten, casein, and eggs because they're the three most common food antigens that can cause an excessive immune response. No more waffles. No more waffles. No more waffles. You actually know, I make cashew waffles. I make all kinds of great things. You can kind of cheat.

There are things you can do. So that's the first level. And you can do that as a vegetarian. And that is fairly close to a gluten-free, dairy-free version of a Mediterranean diet. Then the next level becomes more paleolithic. So we reduce the gluten-free grains and legumes to no more than two servings a week. We add in and stress organ meats, seaweeds. If you're going to have nuts and seeds, we suggest that you have them soaked and sprouted. Why organ meats? Why organ meats? Because organ meats are something people avoid, right?

Liver, kidneys, thymus. Well, they don't know how to make them. They're actually delicious. It seems like the poor man's food, you know, steak and kidney pie. Yeah, yeah. What's the rationale for the organ meats? Well, first off, our ancestors would have eaten those. They're a third of the carcass when you harvest an animal. So that would have been an essential part of the diet. And interestingly enough, if there was plenty of meat, they left the muscle

meat behind and took the organs. So the liver, great source of vitamin A and the fat soluble vitamins is so A, K, a moderate source of E, a great source of B vitamins, a great source of minerals that are very easily absorbed as opposed to the minerals in plants, which are a little more difficult for us to absorb. And then great source of coenzyme Q, creatine, carnitine. So really, really marvelous nutrition for us. And a lot of those are mitochondrial nutrients, right? They are mitochondrial nutrients. And which is important for healthy aging and everything. You know, Terry, it's interesting because if you look at, I've done this before, you Google like liver nutrition facts, right? And then like, and then the nutrition facts for the most amazing vegetable you could possibly

imagine or grain or bean. And it just, it's like, it's like Michael Jordan at high school basketball. It's like, it's that big of a difference. It's shocking. It's like, not just a little bit, it's like three, four, five, 10 orders of magnitude more nutrients in liver than in almost any other food. Correct. Correct. Absolutely. Which is shocking. The liver is absolutely a superfood. The one nutrient it does not have is vitamin C. That's all right. So that's a good reason to eat your salads and your berries to get the vitamin C. Now, the caveat I'll have is for my carnivore friends who eat only meat,

I have to caution them to be careful about how much liver they have because you don't want to overdose on vitamin A. So liver is really great for you, six to eight ounces a week. So that's up to a six to eight ounces a week. So that's, you know, up to a half pound of liver a week. You know, the first nation people in Alaska, they actually would give it to the explorers because they wanted to kill them. So they give them polar bear liver and they literally die from vitamin A poisoning. So liver is really great. It is our family's favorite dish. So my family makes liver for me on my birthday because they know it's a special meal for us. We just really

love that a lot. For me, it was a poor man's meal because we were very poor in New York City when I lived as a kid with my mom. And we lived in this tiny one-bedroom apartment and we'd have liver and onions and rice. And I thought that was like a fancy meal, chicken liver. And you realize it was like, because we're poor. Well, you know, and it is actually quite handy because it is relatively inexpensive. You can get organic liver very inexpensively because the market doesn't understand how valuable that nutrition is. Another really great organ meat, of course, is heart. Heart is sort of like filet mignon. That is just so delicious, incredibly delicious. And then oysters, clams, mussels, those are all organ meats. It's really? Quite delicious.

What about the liver toxicity, like of liver? Because people go, oh, liver is the wastebasket of the body, where the toxins go, isn't it bad to eat that? So where the toxins go is really the fat of the animal. So people like bacon. So if you're worried about toxicities, be sure that your bacon is organic. And if you're concerned about- The liver is fatty.

Liver is fatty. I would certainly have it be organic. And I think that is prudent. My preference is have liver, get it from an organic animal. So Terry, just to summarize the dietary principles, it's getting rid of gluten, dairy, and eggs. It's getting rid of grains and beans. It's getting rid of, obviously, all processed foods, sugar, alcohol. Processed sugars. Right. More vegetables.

Lots more vegetables. And tell us about your nine cups of vegetables and the different kinds of vegetable categories. Because I think it's really important to help you understand it's not just any vegetable that you need. You need vegetables that contain certain compounds, which are medicines for the body. So we want to have lots of greens. Greens are a great source of carotenoids, luteins, zeaxanthin, myozoaxanthin. These are essential nutrients for your retina and also for your brain, because your eyes are really just extensions of brains. They'll reduce the risk of macular degeneration, of cataracts, and dementia.

You're also going to get a great source of vitamin K. And in neuroimmune conditions, MS, and cognitive decline, there's a severe... in epidemiologic studies, the vitamin K levels are extraordinarily low in those population groups. So lots of reasons to get your greens. Now we're going to go on to why I want you to have cabbage, onion, mushrooms. So the sulfur is a really great support for your detox, great support for making glutathione, intracellular antioxidants, great support for your mitochondria. And that's the broccoli family. And the onion family.

Yes. Also good for your blood vessel endothelial function. And then mushrooms. There are a wide variety of mushrooms that stimulate your natural killer cells, priming your adaptive and innate immunity. They also are associated with better nerve growth factor production in animal models. And in human studies, associated with much lower rates of cognitive decline and depression. Wow. Well, I feel good about taking my mushroom powders every morning. So take your mushrooms. I have mushrooms in my tea every day. So lots of reasons to have your

mushrooms. Okay. So that's the food part. Now you've taken this approach. No, no, no. You didn't get the colors yet. So then we're also into three cups of colors. And I want to have a wide variety of colors. Okay. Wait, wait. Before you go on. So the government says five to nine servings. A serving is a cup so you're talking about not five to nine you're talking about 18 cups just so people get the idea no nine no 18 18 servings nine cups 18 servings right you know and i'm not trying to have you um eat more than what your appetite will allow you the point i'm trying to have you do is you eat your protein, and we have strategies for vegetarians or meat eaters,

and you eat lots of vegetables. You don't need to be hungry, but you're not eating junk. When you're hungry, you're eating these vegetables, and we want to have sufficient protein and lots of vegetables. Now, when you do do that you're going to poop people um and of course we have to make modifications for people who have inflammatory bowel disease who can't have as much fiber so when we talk about this mark this is for the public. This is for what you start. And then you assess your response. And if you're having loose stools, you're going to have less fiber. If you're still

constipation, more fiber, more fermented foods, more sauerkraut and kimchi. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. We'd love to hear your comments and your questions. And please leave us a rating and review. And of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me on all social media channels at DrMarkHyman. And you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel at DrMarkHyman. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more.

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