The School of Greatness - 521 The "Healthy" Foods That Are Killing You with Dr. Steven Gundry

Episode Date: August 9, 2017

"Our bacteria control our behavior." - Dr. Gundry If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/521

This is episode number 521 with New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Stephen Gundry. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. John D. Rockefeller said, don't forget to give up the good to go for the great. We've got a great episode for you today

with Dr. Stephen Gundry, author of the New York Times bestselling Plant Paradox book. He is a cardiac surgeon, medical innovator, author, and the mind behind GundryMD. He's also a consultant to self-improvement guru Tony Robbins, Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin, and Emmy Award-winning actress Selah Ward. And he's the author of more than 300 chapters, articles, and abstracts in peer reviewed journals on surgery, immunology, genetics, nutrition, and lipid investigations. And he is with us today. And I was blown away.

I wish I had more time to ask on so much of the things that we covered. It was that fascinating. And some of the things we covered today are how our bacteria control our behavior and what happens when we get new bacteria. Also, the plant paradox issue with eating fruits out of season and how this harms us, how our eating habits are not in line with our reality, why we are getting so sick from eating plants with a defense system, and why every American should stay away from peanuts and all the other foods that are actually hurting you when you think they're healthy for you.

I was fascinated by this, and I want to get him back on at some point to dive in more about how we can live as optimal human beings. Before we dive in, I want to give a quick shout out to the review of the week. This is from Morphine, who said to say that Lewis's podcast is life altering is an understatement. I can speak for myself that Lewis's podcast has been a catalyst for me to write my first book and set my moonshot goal in motion. I am profoundly grateful for the contribution he's made to the world to make it a better place. Now let's do something great.

So Morphine, thank you so much for the review, and I'm so glad that this podcast was the kick-starting launchpad for you to write your first book. And I want to hear more about the success stories from all of you who listen, you to write your first book. And I want to hear more about the success stories from all of you who listen. So make sure to leave a review over on iTunes and let me know how you feel about the podcast and the biggest success you've gained from it for your chance to be considered as a review of the week. All right, I'm excited about this one. It's all about optimizing your body, living longer and feeling healthier than you've ever felt before. Make sure to screenshot this on your phone right now and tag me on your Instagram story

at Lewis Howes to let me know you're listening to it, as I like to share a lot of the screenshots on my story as well. Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only, Dr. Stephen Gundry. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legendary Dr. Gundry in the house. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.

I'm excited about this and you just opened it up. Kind of your mission is to end disease and then you're saying it all comes through the gut. Starts and ends with the gut. Correct. Everything what we eat can solve the disease we have within us, right? Correct. Based on the foods

that we put inside of us. It can actually extend our lifespan to potentially things that people can't even imagine. Wow. And it actually has to do not with you and me

and what we conceive of our bodies, but it turns out that 90% of all the cells that make you and me, me, are actually non-human cells. They're bacteria, viruses, funguses, worms that live in us and on us. Wow. And the shocking thing is that 99% of all the genes that make up you and me are non-human genes.

What are they? They're bacterial and viral genes. And what we've completely missed from the Human Genome Project is that we have actually very few genes. And our genes are about 99% the same as a chimp or a gorilla. And we're very different than chimps or gorillas, yet we have virtually the same genes. What makes us different is actually the bacteria and viruses that live in us. Different bacteria and viruses. And you can actually show when humans evolved from the other great apes that our bacteria actually changed.

And we can actually identify that point in time that the bacteria made us rather than our genes made us. So the bacteria has made us human or bacteria made us? made us human or bacteria made us yeah they actually as shocking as it may seem most of what happens to us is determined by the state and the variation of our bacteria bacteria primarily in our gut give you an example you can take a bowel movement from an obese individual and feed it to a skinny rat. Skinny rats love to eat poop. Right. And those skinny rats will become fat. Really?

Because the bacteria have actually manipulated their feeding habits. They actually send text messages to the brain to go look for foods that they would not otherwise consume that those bacteria want. And we can actually, there was a cool study in a marathon runner. You're a great athlete. So there's a woman marathon runner in England a couple years ago who developed a very severe infection in their colon called C. difficile. A lot of people have heard of it. And the modern treatment of this now is a fecal transplant, taking poop from somebody else and shoving it up your ass. And you try to get a fecal transplant from a family member, because believe it or not not family members tend to share their bacteria i share a lot of bacteria with my dogs and they share with me so they found

a cousin who was a good match for her and she got the fecal transplant and everything went well or c difficile went away we can go into why that happened but in the next year, this marathon runner gained 32 pounds without changing anything. And it turns out her niece, cousin, was actually about 32 pounds overweight. And so she was inoculated with obesogenic bacteria and her bacteria these little you know one cell organisms controlled her behavior wow now think about so it made her made her more hungry or desirable foods yeah exactly so she changed the way she was eating because she was triggered being manipulated wow being manipulated well it's kind of like when you're you know i i love candy and sweets eating because she was triggered. Being manipulated. Wow. Being manipulated. Well, it's kind of like when you're, you know, I love candy and sweets.

I've never been drunk and I don't drink, but my vice is like I could eat cakes and candy and brownies all day long if I choose to. And then when I go off of it, it's hard because I just want to keep going back to it. Oh, yeah. Until I change the habit fully and then I'm like, I don't need it anymore. But it takes that time to kind of transition out of it, right? Yeah, these are very addictive foods. And they're addictive because what happens is, like, simple sugars, like in candies and cakes, and saturated fats, like on the icing

and the coating on the donuts and all. Oh, so good. Yeah, yeah. Used to love them. Yeah. And so these things actually, the obesogenic bacteria can actually live on them. They love it.

They love simple sugars. They love saturated fats. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, give me more. And they actually tell our brain to do that. It's kind of like, you remember the movie Little Shop of Horrors with the blood-sucking plant? Sure, sure. It's a very famous Broadway show.

Sure. So Rick Moreno starred in the movie, and there's this blood-sucking plant that he grows, and Audrey keeps getting bigger, and Audrey has to have human blood. And long story short, Audrey is the speaking part, and Audrey says, feed me, Seymour, feed me. And it turns out that this whole concept is actually true, that our bacteria control our behavior. For instance, you can take depressed mice and put their bacteria in happy mice, and those happy mice will go hide in a corner and not come out. In fact, in the 1930s, they did an experiment in a—back in those days, most really depressed people were institutionalized. So they did an experiment

where they gave them all colonics and cleaned out the colons and then they gave them fecal enemas from happy people no way and about two-thirds of the depressed people got happy and were released in the 1930s wow so i mean it's just you start looking at this and go, whoa, you know, we're probably looking at the wrong stuff. For instance, one of the things that I'm talking about in Berlin in October at the World Congress of Microbiota, that's what the study is. You can take bacteria from young animals' guts and put them in old animals' guts, and the old animals will become young again. No way. I mean, like— It's the fountain of youth. No way.

So they'll, like— Their cells will get younger? Yes. Or they'll have youthful energy or what? All of the above. They will actually extend their lifespan by about 30 what yeah because here's the deal what what what i'm trying to get people to understand is this is not about you and me or what we conceive as us this we're just a

condominium for the people who really run us and these are all these little one cellular organisms and what we're beginning to realize is we're a condominium for these bugs and we're their home we've exchanged them living in us and actually taking care of us for food and shelter for them. That's crazy. I know. And the really cool thing is, so we can take bacteria from young animals, you know, and put them into old animals. And the bacteria say, man, this place is decrepit. You know, I need to do a complete total renovation here because this is where I'm stuck and I

better make the best of it and I want everything to be nice you know it's like you know yeah genderfication of the neighborhood and this actually what do they do so they actually instruct here's here's the take-home message they actually send text messages to the mitochondria and you probably know all about mitochondria the little energy organelles. In the brain, right? In every one of you, but the brain has the most of them. And these produce energy.

These mitochondria are actually engulfed bacteria. And as strange as it may seem, the bacteria in your gut send text messages to the mitochondria that say, guys, new sheriffs in town, clean up your act. We want you guys working and humming on all eight cylinders. It's kind of like General Kelly coming into the White House in total disarray, and he's going, okay, guys, no more of this silliness. And so we now have discovered some of those compounds

that the bacteria in your gut signal the mitochondria to regenerate themselves. And it's, I mean, it's opening up whole new areas that we never even dreamed of. Wow. So you're really like 170 years old, huh? Yeah. Well, people-

You've just been manipulating all this for the last 15 years remind me i'll show you a picture when we're all done of me and memedaz standing together when i did a show a few weeks ago and one of us is 12 years older than the other person and you would not guess by looking at our skin who's the old person and who's the young person wow and i was showing this picture to david sinclair from harvard who's one of the great anti-aging researchers in this country and actually in the world and we were discussing some ways to manipulate mitochondria in the brain and i said let me show you a picture. And he's looking and he says, okay, so Mehmet's a lot older than you, right? And I said, here, let me show you my driver's license.

He said, wait a minute, how old are you? And he said, can I have this picture? And I said, yeah. He says, I'm doing for them. And they're exchanging that happiness to say, man, this is a great place to live, and we're going to keep this place nice and clean and just happy. And so, yeah. And so you lived in a blue zone, is that right? Yeah, Loma Linda is a blue zone.

That's correct. But when I was living in that blue zone, I was eating a low-fat vegetarian diet i was running 30 miles a week i was one of these clydesdale runners i weighed 70 pounds more than i do now really yeah i was a there's a lot of unhealthy people in blue zones too oh yeah and they have the vegans that just are overweight and you're like how are you overweight yeah well it actually is because you're giving your bacteria the wrong stuff and And that's really part of the plant paradox. The plant paradox is that there's certain plants that absolutely positively do not want us to eat them. At all.

In any circumstance. Whether you cook them or chop them or slice them or skin them. It doesn't matter. They were here first. And they had it really great before animals arrived because nobody wanted to eat them. And my research at Yale was in human evolutionary biology. So plants have the same evolutionary drive as animals.

They want to grow, and they want to have babies, seeds. They want to protect themselves. And they want to protect themselves. They don't want to die. Exactly. So when animals arrived, they had a problem. Because animals can run, they can hide, they can fight. But plants are stuck.

But plants are chemists of incredible ability. So they can turn sunlight into matter, like around your wall here. Wow. And so what they use is chemical warfare to actually defend themselves and to even make animals do their bidding. Because, for instance, just throw out an example, most plants want you to eat their fruits because the fruit contains seed to go reseed them. So you'll eat their fruit the seeds in the fruits are inedible and you'll either spit them out or if you swallow them they'll survive going through your intestines and you'll poop them out someplace else fertilized and fertilized it's perfect yeah

and they're away from mom and dad so for, for instance, if an apple falls underneath the apple tree, that poor kid doesn't have much of a chance because mom or dad is going to shade them the next year. But if it gets carried off, you know, even 100 feet away, and then it gets dropped, the plant does this on purpose. drop the plant does this on purpose crazy and in fact you and i love fruit because you and i were designed to eat fruit once a year in the summer to gain weight for the winter so it was a really good trade-off between for instance great apes and plants but the fascinating thing is manufacturers, food chemists know this, and we are drawn with color vision. And only animals that are fruit predators actually have color vision because you want to know when the fruit is ripe, when it has the highest sugar content. And the plant wants you to know when it's ripe because that's when the seed finally has an impenetrable shell. And it doesn't want you to eat it before that time. So it tells you, okay, now's the time.

The shiniest object, it's time to eat it. Yeah. So what colors does it use? In general, it uses reds and oranges and yellows to denote ripeness. So the next time you're going down the snack aisles looking for all the great munchy stuff, you'll be shocked that most of the companies use oranges, reds, yellows to get your attention because it goes direct into the deep center of your brain and says, ooh, ooh, that color means I should eat it.

I'm going to get a lot of calories and I'm going to be the big winner for the winter. Wow. Yeah. But if you're doing that every day for many years in a row, you're always storing fat for the winter. That's exactly right. And that's part of the plant paradox is that once upon a time, we only had fruit in a very limited time period. Now we have it accessible all the time.

There were no 747s bringing blueberries to Costco in February. They just weren't. So one of the weird things about our computer program is, like Tony Robbins is always fun to say, we were on version 1.0 of our operating system. We've never had an upgrade. And the same goes to the foods and the plants and the fruit we eat. So we were supposed to eat fruit once a year.

And when we were eating fruit, our brain says, oh, my gosh, it's summer. Winter is right around the corner. You know, we should eat this stuff because winter's a tough time, whether it's dry season or rainy season or cold season. And we better store up fat, just like a bear. You know, a bear's eating all those blueberries and huckleberries, and they're storing fat for the winter. So if you're eating blueberries at Costco in February that came from Chile, your operating system doesn't know it's February. It says, heck, it's August.

And winter's right around the corner, so I better eat some more of this stuff. And this is one of the things that's happening to us in particularly American society, but now most of the Western countries. We're eating things that we have no business eating really 365 days a year and most of us are just getting ready for the winter that never comes especially if we live in la yeah it's never getting cold yeah never comes you don't need to store that fat you really don't yeah but that's you know that's part of the problem. Wow. So. Huh. What are the main plants that we should never be eating then? Okay.

Real quick. Up until 10,000 years ago, we lived primarily on the leaves of trees, and we ate tubers that grew in the ground, like a sweet potato for a yam. Love those. Yeah. They're actually, they're pretty darn good for you. You know, you were actually designed to eat them. Very good.

They're actually pretty darn good for you. You were actually designed to eat them. And 12,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, we switched over to things that we had never eaten before. And those were the grains of grasses and beans. Now, the reason we'd never eaten them before is, number one, we didn't need to. There's never been a documentation of an ape eating grass or grains. Beans are so lethal that five raw kidney beans will kill a human being in five minutes by coagulating their blood. What?

Five raw kidney beans. Raw kidney beans. In fact, you know, most people have heard of the poison ricin, the white powder you send to your elected official. Yeah. Lots on the way to Washington. Yeah, yeah. But that's another subject. So ricin is the lectin of the castor bean.

And we'll talk about lectins next. Lectin is the plant defense system. These are proteins that are designed to basically kill us in one way or another. Oh, my gosh. to basically kill us in one way or another. And so ricin, so powerful that about four molecules of ricin will kill a human being instantaneously. There's a great study that was written up in one of the journals about a few years ago, they decided to have a healthy eating day in Boston,

and they served the kids beans because it's so healthy, part of the blue zone. And they had 30 or 40 admissions to the hospital with severe diarrhea, hypotension. And it turns out that it was all the fact that the beans were undercooked. And beans are a plant baby, and we're not supposed to eat those and so no beans no beans zero beans unless you use a pressure pinto black none of that we shouldn't be eating it shouldn't be you weren't designed to eat it you have no defense no matter how it's cooked, boiled. If you pressure cook it, it's fine. Pressure cook it. What does that even mean?

Put it in a pressure cooker. Pressure cooker. The modern pressure cooker is as easy as a rice cooker. Got it. It's one touch. It's not your grandmother's pressure cooker that blew up in the kitchen. So then it's okay to eat. Yeah.

So you can pressure cook beans. Now, the other thing, we weren't designed to eat grains. Now, just a quick question before you start there. How much of it can we eat? Does it matter once it's pressure cooked? Obviously, everything in moderation, but I mean. Yeah, well, like I was presenting. Like 20 beans are going to kill me or what?

No, if you pressure cook them, they're fine. It's all good. Okay, cool. And we talk about how to do this in the plant paradox. Got it. But my personal feeling is the only purpose of eating a bean is to get olive oil into my mouth and we can talk about that as we go along okay so grains uh phil for instance everybody heard about gluten yes all right so gluten is a lectin and again a lectin is

a plant's defense system it's a protein that actually is designed to act like incoming guided missile attacks on the inside wall of our gut. And these things actually pry open the lining of our gut and actually break through the border. Really? They really do. That's what causes eczema and causes breakouts. Yeah, exactly. Acne, brain brain fog irritable bowel this is actually all part of that process and so it's fascinating to see people who

either have come to see me or have even read the book and then write on amazon oh my gosh you know i had this horrible eczema and now a month later it's all gone and all i gosh, you know, I had this horrible eczema, and now a month later, it's all gone, and all I did was, you know, take grains and beans and nightshades away from my diet, and everything got better. So that brings us to the second kind of group of things we shouldn't eat. All of us are not from the United States. America, we're actually from Europe, Asia, or Africa. Every one of us. So even our Native Americans are actually not Native Americans. They're from Asia.

Get over it. So none of us were exposed to an American plant until 500 years ago when Columbus started trade. So getting to know a new plant, a new lectin in 500 years is speed dating in evolution. I just don't think it will be done. For instance, the Italians refused to eat tomatoes for 200 years after their native son Columbus brought them back because they knew how dangerous they were. They were part of the deadly nightshade family. Really?

And when they started eating them, they always peeled and de-seeded their tomatoes because the peels and the seeds actually have the vast majority of the lectins. And it's interesting. Years ago, I did my fellowship in children's heart surgery in London, England. And I had a house officer from Italy. And he invited me up for pasta and tomato sauce.

So I brought, you know, it'd be nice if I bought a couple cans of canned tomatoes, you know, help out. And he looks at it, he says, why did you bring me this? We can't use this. So I said, what do you mean? She said, canned tomatoes. He says, it's got peels and seeds. You can't make sauce with peels and seeds. He says, oh, mama mia. What am I going to do with you? He says, you can't use peels and seeds. I said, why? He says, they're deadly. And I mean, what am I going to do with you? He says, you can't use peels and seeds. I said, why? He says, they're deadly. And I said, really? And he says, yeah, everybody knows that.

And then I thought back. As a child, my mother, my grandmother was French, and she taught my mother that you always peel and de-seed tomatoes before you slice them and serve them. So until I went to Yale, I had never had a slice of a tomato with a peel and a seed. Wow. And this was, you know,

this has come from cultures. For instance, peppers. Peppers are the same way. They're part of the nightshade family. You'll never open a glass jar of Italian bell peppers and see peels and seeds because they're gone.

And the most striking thing is the Southwest American Indians always peel and deseed their peppers before they eat them. The hatch chili roast will be happening in another month. And what do they do? They roast their chilies, peel the scarred off part, deseed them, and then they eat them or they make them into chili powder right and you know you can prove this in your grocery store buy a can of green chilies chopped green chilies open it up you won't see any peels and seeds because they're gone so

tomatoes and um peppers eggplant potatoes and potatoes now. If you peel them and seed these things. You're safer, correct. But you can pressure cook them and they're fine. And they're okay. Yeah. Got it. Now, there's two American beans that everyone should stay away from. Peanuts are not a nut.

They're a bean. Gosh, it's so good, though. 94% of human beings carry a preformed antibody against the peanut lectin we can take rhesus monkeys our cousins give them peanut oil and they will develop atherosclerosis

heart disease if we take the lectin out of the peanut oil and then give them the peanut oil they will not develop heart disease so if you get lectin free peanut butter there is no such thing it okay so get almond butter instead it's much no peanut butter no stay away from you should eliminate a hundred percent from your absolutely we can take and this has been done men feed them peanuts take their bowel movements feed them to rats and you will

grow cancerous cells in the rat colon because they've been exposed to the peanut lectin yeah i love peanut butter oh you know so i can have as much all the time as i want and i went to medical school in georgia you know j Carter, you know, man, peanuts are everything. Sandwiches, you know? Yeah. No, sorry. So eliminate it. Gone.

Gone. Say goodbye. This will help me live longer, have a happier, healthier body. And then I won't have to operate on you, you know, when you have coronary disease. And you'll go, what? I eat so healthy. I'm having my peanut butter. How many surgeries have you done?

Oh, over 10,000. 10,000. 10,000. Is that what it is, the record? No. Someone said it was a record-setting heart surgery. Heart surgeries, no? Yeah. No.

How many heart surgeries? 10,000. 10,000. 10,000. Yeah, it's a lot of heart surgeries. What's the cause of these heart diseases? And the reason why you have to do so many of these? It's all in the plant paradox.

So 17 years ago, I met a guy by the name big ed it was a 30 38 year old guy who came to see me at loma linda because i'm one of these surgeons who will operate on anybody wow yeah take the red big ad 500 pounder big ad actually when i met him weighed 265 pounds but he had such extensive coronary artery disease that you couldn't put stents in him you couldn't do stents in him. You couldn't do bypasses because there wasn't any place to land. And he's from Miami. And he'd be going around the country carrying his angiogram, the movie of his heart, his cardiac catheterization.

And everybody's turning him down. And he finally, after about six months of this, comes to see me. And I'm looking at his angiogram. And I'm going, you know, I don't like to turn people down, but everybody's right. You know, we're not going to do you any good. And he said, well, wait a minute. Here's the deal, doc. I've been on a diet for the last six months and I've lost 45 pounds. Now this is a 265 pounder sitting across from me. It looks like a, you know, a biker, big gut. And he says, and I've gone to this health food store and i've taken all these supplements

and he actually brought in this shopping bag full of supplements he said you know maybe i did something in here and i'm going yeah all right you know i'm kind of scratching my professor beard and saying well you know i know what you good for you for losing weight but it's not going to do anything in here and i know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine. And I really believe that. So he says, well, come on. It's been six months.

I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram, another cardiac catheterization? I said, okay. So we get a new cath on him. And in six months' time, this guy cleans out 50% of the blockages in his heart. 50%. Gone. Pretty darn good. It's unbelievable. Wow. For instance, statistically on the best statin drug, you know, like Crestor, Lipitor, with the lowest levels of LDL, we scientists at the American Heart Association get crazy if after five years,

your plaque burden has decreased a half of a percent. And we go crazy and we go, oh my gosh, this is a miracle. It's the greatest drug discovery of all time. And we go, really? So this guy, 50% are gone in six months. So i actually was so excited i operated on him and did a five vessel bypass but what if i knew what i knew now i'd say hey great you know another year this will all be clear going you won't need this so i start talking about what he did on this diet and lo and behold he gets started on this i don said, I had this crazy thesis at Yale University that I did for four years back in the dark ages of human evolutionary biology. And my thesis was you could take a grade A, change its food supply, and change its environment, and predict you would arrive at a human being. And I actually successfully defended it god honors blah blah blah

and so i had given it to my parents and uh went off to be a famous heart surgeon and so he's talking about this wait a minute you know this is my crazy thesis and here i am this big guy you know running and i had pre-diet you were yeah this is 15 years ago yeah 15 years ago yeah yeah you know running and eating a healthy low-fat diet. Why do all the doctors seem like they're bigger? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we're given all this advice. And so I called my parents in San Diego. I said, hey, you know, you've got this thesis?

Oh, yeah, you know, it's in the shrine. Yes. Internal flame. Whole room of your accomplishments. That's right. So I said, send it up to me. So I put myself on my thesis and I lost 50 pounds my first year and I lost another 20 pounds subsequently and I've taken it off.

And then I started putting my patients who, you know, at Loma Linda, I operated on, on this program and their blood pressure went to normal. Their diabetes went away. Their heart disease didn't come back. And so after about a year of this i was looking in the mirror on one friday and i said you know i can't do what i do anymore because i can teach people how to avoid me so i actually resigned my position my wife still calls it black friday when was this uh 15 years ago you resigned i resigned doing surgeries for doing being chairman of heart surgery at loma linda yeah wow just because you felt like this wasn't solving the actual solving the problem

it was just putting a band-aid on it the surgeries the surgeries yeah i was just you know it's famous for four time five time redo surgeries on somebody who kept clogging up their blood vessels and it's like you could fix them up but it's like yeah okay they're going to be back in a couple years yeah so yeah so i set up an institute in palm springs where all i ask people to do is every three months let me take about 10 tubes of blood out of you and we'll send it to some labs i have insurance will pay for it wow and see what asking you to eat certain foods does and asking you to take certain supplements that you could find at Costco or Trader Joe's does. And that resulted in my first book in 2008 called Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. But then subsequently, I've seen about 50% of my practice is autoimmune disease.

And people come in and say, hey, what do you know about autoimmune disease? And I go, I don't know anything about autoimmune disease, but I'm a transplant immunologist. And that means how do I get the immune system of you to accept the heart of a pig, for instance. And I actually hold the world record for the longest pig to baboon heart transplant, 28 days. That's the world record. So I started manipulating the immune system by food. And sure enough, you've got an autoimmune disease. We can teach you to get rid of it by changing, primarily getting lectins out of your diet. That's it, huh? And changing your gut bugs to be basically friendly gut bugs. And the friendly gut bugs actually tell your immune system that, hey, guys, we're all great down here.

We're down at the beach. We're singing kumbaya, the beautiful bonfire. And your immune system is basically the cops. And the cops go, oh, yeah, we know these kids, great kids. Let's go have a donut. So that's how it's supposed to be. But let's suppose a gang member moves into your neighborhood. Now all of a sudden you're putting up bars on your windows, and you've got neighborhood watch patrols, and you're shooting guys with hoodies without asking questions.

So what's happened to most of us, through some of the foods we eat, like all these wonderful snacks we're talking about, we've let these gang members loose. And the good guys actually can't eat simple sugars and these saturated fats they they want leaves and they want tubers or they die off they die off exactly so the gang members are running rampant and now your immune system is going oh my gosh you know the city's taken over by gang members and we're going to have armed patrols everywhere and anytime we see anything that looks a little odd we're going to have armed patrols everywhere. And anytime we see anything that looks a little odd, we're going to shoot and ask questions later. And so what's happened to everybody with autoimmune disease

is their immune system is just hyper on guard because it's no longer getting the messages from the good bugs, chill out, everything's cool, you know, kumbaya, love, love, love love love peace and love and that's what's happened and it's it's so cool to get somebody who can just you know change the food they they may not want it initially but when they start feeling better yeah they go for instance on For instance, on Monday, a young lady, 36 years old, lives out in La Quinta, was sent to me with what's called chronic pain syndrome. Now, a lot of doctors toss this off as, oh, you're crazy or you're depressed or you're just anxious and you treat them with antidepressants. And she was in constant pain. It was so bad that she actually had to work from home.

Really couldn't move. And she was in constant pain. And it was so bad that she actually had to work from home, really couldn't move. And she had a kid and a husband. So she had heard about me. She said, I've heard about you. What do you think? And I said, come on, let's do this. I said, what's happening is that your pain is actually coming from nerve cells inside your gut that are being stimulated by rogue cops, if you will. And they're trying to tell you that you shouldn't move.

So let's start. So I saw her a couple of months later in January, February, and I said, how are we doing? She said, you know, the pain's less, but it's definitely still there. So I said, well, you know, just stay at it. If you can feel a difference, don't give up. So I walked in on Monday and I almost didn't recognize her. And I said, she's got a giant smile on your face. And I said, so, you know, how are you doing? She said, perfect. I said, what do you mean? And she says, do you know what it's like to not have pain? And I said, well, yeah, I do now. She said, I forgot what not having pain feels like. And it's amazing. She said, I just feel great. It's been so many years, I'd forgotten what feeling normal felt like. She said, but let me tell you a story. You can't cheat.

And I said, yeah, I know that, but how'd you find out? She said, well, there was this office party a couple of weeks ago. And all they had, they had some chicken and they had some nachos and they had some guacamole and she said i noticed that the guacamole had tomatoes in it believe it or not guacamole is not have supposed to have tomatoes your your listeners should realize that guacamole should not have tomatoes but uh she said, well, the safest thing to eat is to put some guacamole on my plate and have a piece of chicken because, you know, I want to be nice. She said, I'll tell you, within an hour, my left elbow just started throbbing and then my hands started freezing up.

She said, I actually had to leave the party and go home. And she said, I had to lay down and i couldn't get up for about two hours and she said and i was trying to be good and she said it's it's amazing that you know this could do this wow yeah this is crazy yeah so you said you essentially came was uh you know we're doing heart surgeries 10 000 of them and said i don't want to be offensive here i'll make sure i'm saying the right thing but you're now essentially a functional med doctor yeah i don't in a sense correct um with all with all due respects to mark hyman yes jeff bland created the uh created functional medicine and jeff's a friend of mine i don't know what functional medicine means. Right, right, right. What I do is restorative medicine.

Great. All of us have the power to heal ourselves. Now, the guy who said this was Hippocrates. And Hippocrates, brilliant. He believed that any organism had the ability to have perfect health. the ability to have perfect health, and that every organism had the ability to achieve perfect health as long as the obstacles to perfect health were removed. And Hippocrates believed that the physician's job

was to identify the obstacles to that organism having perfect health, the patient, and remove them from the patient. And the patient would do the rest. Ah, there it is. There it is, yeah. So what I try to do, I basically do detective work. And I think I'm pretty good at finding the obstacles. And many of those obstacles, believe it or not,

are lectins. And the other obstacle is you got to get the gang members out of your gut by basically starving them to death and giving the good guys what they want to eat. Starving them of the lectins.

Starving them of simple sugars and lectins and saturated fats. Remove those things. Yeah. They have nothing toins and saturated fats. Remove those things. Yeah. They have nothing to eat and they leave. For instance, I'll give you an example of something interesting. We actually have bacteria in our gut that enjoy eating gluten. Really?

Yeah. They love it. But if you go gluten-free, they leave because they got nothing to eat. And then a lot of people who go gluten-free and don't notice a whole lot of difference or they just get frustrated and they have a couple pieces of bread or pizza. And then all of a sudden their gut goes, oh. Well, it's because there are bugs that could defend them against gluten. Are gone.

Are gone. Are gone. And believe it or not, gluten is kind of a low-level lectin. There's far worse. The worst ones are in the hall of the grain. So, for instance, this whole grain goodness, this only started about 50 years ago. This thing is whole grain goodness. No, we've gotten sicker and sicker and sicker because the outside of the hall has the lectins and we've been throwing it away i mean really the french seriously would they have a whole grain croissant or a whole grain baguette really and the italians

you know whole grain pasta well now it's appearing on the menus because the tourists want to see it yeah but the ital Italians would kill themselves. Right. Right. Yeah, the first thing I opened up right here is the most popular nut is not a nut. The peanut. The peanut. Oh, my gosh.

And a cashew. A cashew is a nut, too. I can't eat cashews? No. The Amazonian Indians always threw the cashew bean away. What if I manipulate it in a certain way and make it into a sauce? You could pressure cook it. I can pressure cook cashews.

Then I can eat it. Yes. And stay away from chia seeds. No chia seeds? No. These are all the things people are telling you to eat right now. Of course. And that's why everybody's getting sicker.

Chia seeds. There's two human studies that show chia seeds promote inflammation in human beings. What else do we need to be aware of? I used to be a big fan of chia what do you eat you're eat what you're supposed to eat you're supposed to eat leaves you're supposed to eat tubers uh like jicama like sweet potatoes like rutabagas you're supposed to eat tons of olive oil. Tons. I use a liter a week. Of olive oil. You drink it or you're cooking with it? No, I pour it on everything.

Oh, really? Yeah, pour it on everything. The only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. This is what I told Dr. Oz a few weeks ago. Just think the only purpose of food is to get olive oil in your mouth. In Crete and Sardinia, they use a liter of olive oil per week. A Spanish study of 65-year-old people for five years, making them use a liter of olive oil per week against a low fat Mediterranean diet. At the end of five years, the olive oil users had improved memory compared

to the low fat diet. The women had 65% less breast cancer than the low-fat Mediterranean diet, and they had less heart disease. Leader week. Olive oil. Leader week. That's the fountain of youth, huh? Yeah. It really is. Olive oil. Olive oil.

It's a secret. It's a secret. Okay. There you go. That's the secret. There's so much more I want to learn, but we are limited on time here. So make sure you guys get this book, The Plant Paradox, The Hidden Dangers in quote-unquote healthy foods that cause disease and weight gain by Dr. Stephen Gundry.

I have one final question for you because there's a lot I want to learn still. First, I want to acknowledge you for your transformational journey, your journey of doing one thing that most doctors will probably believe is the solution and then being aware and saying, you know what, maybe there's a different way. Certain things aren't working past a certain point. It's just a band-aid. So let me reevaluate,uate educate test it on myself and then help other people so i want to acknowledge you for the journey you've been on and how much you help people um make sure you guys get this book and you're on social media what's your

go to gundrymd.com gundrymd.com but i'm on instagram and come visit amazing amazing the plant paradox here my final question for you is what's your definition of greatness oh well yeah this is the school of greatness yes uh the i think i judge myself in the ability of being able to give something to somebody else and having them come back and say thank you that's all i could ever ask in my life. And whether I was a surgeon fixing a newborn baby's heart or having somebody like that woman come back and say, I forgot what being without pain felt like and thank you.

That's what makes me feel great. How's that? Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for coming on. It means a lot to me. Thanks a lot. I'm glad I'm here.

Thank you. There you have it, my friend. If you thought this was as fascinating as I did, make sure to send me a message over on Twitter, Facebook, or on Instagram. Tag me at Lewis Howes anywhere you'd like to connect. Take a screenshot of this right now and post it on your Instagram story

to help people swipe up with lewishouse.com slash 521, which will send them right to the podcast. We've got the full video interview back on the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 521 with other resources, links, and information on how you can learn more about the plant paradox as well. I'm fascinated with learning about how my body works. It's challenging sometimes because I want to live life and experience different foods and taste things, but I also want to live around a long time, and I want to make sure that I'm healthy on the time that I am on this planet. So don't forget to give up the good to go for the great, said John D. Rockefeller.

Don't forget to give up the good to go for the great, said John D. Rockefeller. It's always about those little tweaks that we can apply to our life, our business, our bodies, our minds that can help us reach the next level. I hope you enjoyed this one. As always, guys, I love you very much. It means the world to me that you continue to listen, that you continue to spread the message of greatness, that you continue to spread the message of greatness, that you continue to apply what you learn to your life, your relationships, your business, your health, your spirituality to create a better experience for yourself in this world, but also be a beacon of light for those around you.

It's all about turning up our light and shining so bright that people around you continue to light up as well and the ripple continues. I love you very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Bye.