The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 77. Dr. Steven Gundry: Everything You Know About Healthy Eating is a Lie!

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Have you ever wondered if certain foods might be secretly impacting your health? Dr. Steven Gundry reveals the hidden dangers of lectins, proteins found in everyday foods, and how they could be affecting you. Join Gary Brecka and Dr. Gundry as we break down key concepts of the Plant Paradox diet in a simple, practical way. Discover the shocking truth about your diet and take control of your health today! 00:00 ​​Intro of Show and Guest 02:40 ​​The Story of “Big Ed” 07:03 ​​Dr. Gundry’s Master Thesis at Yale 09:53 ​​Significant Changes on Dr. Gundry’s Health and his Patients 13:56 ​​Big Career Move and Clinic Set-Up at Palm Springs 15:19 ​​Cardiac Risk Marker 18:00 ​​Supplement Advice for Gary 19:21 ​​Concepts from “The Plant Paradox” (Book by Dr. Gundry) 27:41 ​​“Friends and Foes” in the Plant Kingdom 32:23 ​​Foes: What are Lectins? 37:58 ​​The Linkage between Oral Hygiene and Heart Health 41:52 ​​Clinical Trials and Experimentations 45:19 ​​Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) 49:54 ​​Lifestyle Recommendations from Dr. Gundry 55:47 ​​Learn more about Dr. Gundry and his works 56:41 ​​Final question: What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” Get weekly tips from Gary Brecka on how to optimize your health and lifestyle routines: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU PLUNGE - Use code “Ultimate” for $150 off your order of the best cold plunge & sauna in the US: https://bit.ly/3yYE3vl ECHO GO PLUS HYDROGEN WATER BOTTLE: https://bit.ly/3xG0Pb8 BODY HEALTH - USE CODE ULTIMATE10 for 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/4cJdJE7 Watch “The Ultimate Human Podcast with Gary Brecka” every Tuesday and Thursday at 9AM ET on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Follow The Ultimate Human on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3VP9JuR Follow The Ultimate Human on TikTok: https://bit.ly/3XIusTX Follow The Ultimate Human on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3Y5pPDJ Follow Gary Brecka on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs Follow Gary Brecka on TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo Follow Gary Brecka on Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H   SUBSCRIBE TO: https://www.youtube.com/@ultimatehumanpodcast https://www.youtube.com/@garybrecka Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It turns out that plants and animals are constantly at war and they use biologic warfare to convince their predator that it wouldn't be a good idea to eat them. Now we, on the other hand, had an amazing defense that we had built up against these plant compounds. We had an amazing diverse gut microbiome that loves to eat anything that came down the pipe. If you take what I said about a few plants to the extreme that no plant I'm your host, Gary Brekka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. Today, I have one of the OGs, in my opinion, of the space,

someone that I've actually been following for a number of years. I actually am a big fan of his products. I put my clients on his products. I'm personally on some of his products. So today is going to be a real treat. He is a distinguished cardiologist, a medical researcher, a New York Times bestselling author. He read a book that brought my attention to him years ago in 2017 or 2018 called The Plant Paradox, which was an eye-opening book for me on my biohacking journey. So I am really excited to have you on the podcast today. So welcome, Dr. Stephen Gundry. Well, thanks for having me.

I'm delighted to be here. I'm delighted to have you here. And, you know, I really feel—I talk about this on my podcast all the time. The majority of my guests, and I think you're no exception to this rule, fit my father's definition of life. My dad was a salty old Navy captain. He had a very simple definition for life. And he said, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else. And I feel like knowing a little bit about your story, and I'd love for you to tell your story, that you were on your way to doing something else. And I feel like knowing a little bit about your story, and I'd love for you to tell your story, that you were on your way to doing something else, and you kind of

banged a U-turn, if you will. And I also feel that some of the most impactful people in the world that are making a real difference, full of purpose and passion, are those people that solved the problem in their life. Maybe it was overcoming addiction, maybe it was weight loss, maybe it was chronic disease or Lyme or what have you. And that became their purpose and their passion, their mission in life. And what was that moment for you on your journey? Well, you know, I have to keep crediting this crazy guy from miami florida who i call big ed i'm from miami florida i was oh well there you go and who unfortunately changed my life luckily for the better long term but i was uh you mentioned I was a very famous heart surgeon.

One of the things that made me famous, and there's a bunch of us, we'd be willing to take on any case, no matter how difficult. Fourth time redo, piece of cake. Right. You know, three vows and four coronaries. Yeah. Okay. The really risky stuff. Yeah, the coronaries. Yeah. Okay. The really risky stuff. Yeah, the good stuff.

Right. The blue plate special, as we used to call them. There are people who get a diagnosis of inoperable coronary artery disease. That basically means you got so much crud in all your coronary arteries that you can't put stents in them because it's too clogged up. You can't do bypasses because everything's clogged up. Where are you going to put a bypass? And these people exist. So these people would have a number of centers that they'd head to. And there was a, we all knew each other and, you know, I'm going to New York and I'm going to Mayo and I'm going to Texas Heart and I'm going to Stanford.

And then usually the last stop was me at Loma Linda, California, Loma Linda University. We all knew each other. We're all good friends. And so the guy who I call Big Ed was a 48-year-old guy from Miami, Florida, who, Big Guy, hence the name Big Ed, who had inoperable coronary artery disease. And Big Ed started on the circuit and would go to all these centers, and he'd take his angiogram the movie of his heart around and everybody to look at him and say not touching yeah nothing I could do you know I'd love to help you but I can't this guy spent six months doing this going to these centers and I was the last stop and I looked at his angiogram, and I said, you know, I've got to agree with everybody else. I've got to agree with my buddies.

There's nothing I can do for you either. He says, well, look, here's what's been going on. I've been on a diet for the last six months, and I've lost 45 pounds. Now, he's still a big guy. He weighed 265 when I met him. So he was 300 before. And he said, I went to a health food store, and I've been taking all these supplements.

And he literally brings in a big shopping bag. Right. And he says, you know, maybe I did something in here. And, you know, I'm scratching my professor beard and going, well, you know, good for you for losing weight, but that's really not going to do anything. And I know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine. You've wasted your money. You made expensive urine.

Which I firmly believe. Yeah. And he said, well, geez, I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram, a new cardiac catheterization? Rolling my eyes. Yeah, okay, don't get your hopes up. So the next day, we get a new angiogram, and 50% of the blockages are now gone in his heart, in six months' time. 50% of the blockages. Gone.

And these are atherosclerotic occlusions. Correct. Wow. Yeah. And never seen anything like it. Now, I said, great news. There are places I can do a bypass on you. So I did a five-vessel bypass on him.

And, you know, if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like, like a nail. Now, if I had known what I know now, I would have not even done the bypass. I would have said, Hey, let's keep going. You know, good for you. But I didn't know that. So after we're done, I'm going, tell me about this diet of yours. And what were you doing? And so he starts elaborating. And just almost with serendipity, I went to Yale as an undergraduate back in the dark ages. And back in those days, we could design our own major where we could work with a few professors and we'd have to do a master's thesis and defend our thesis.

And I was selected to do that. And my thesis was you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, manipulate its environment, and prove you derive it a human being. Wow. Yeah. And believe it or not, I wrote my thesis and I defended my thesis, got an honors and gave it to my parents and went off to become a famous art surgeon. So Big Ed's telling me about this diet and I'm going, son of a gun, that's my thesis from Yale. No. Yeah. I said, son of a gun, how did you figure out to do that? That's the ancient human diet.

Yeah. And then I said, let me look at those supplements. Yeah. One of the things that made me a famous heart surgeon is I had designed a way to protect the heart during heart transplant, during bypass surgery, by putting all sorts of ingredients down the veins and arteries of the heart to protect it. And I'm looking through his bag of supplements, and a lot of the ingredients I'm dissolving in a solution

and putting down the veins and arteries of the heart to protect it. He's swallowing the same ingredients. Wow. And it never occurred to me to swallow the dumb things. Yeah. Now, why is that poignant? Because even though I was at the top of my game, a famous art surgeon, blah, blah, blah, I was 70 pounds overweight despite running 30 miles a week, going to the

gym one hour every day, eating a healthy low-fat diet. I had migraine headaches when I did baby heart transplants. I had arthritis so bad I had to wear braces on my knees. I had high cholesterol, pre-diabetes, and high blood pressure. And I was told it was normal because I was now approaching 50, and my father was much the same way, and it's genetic. Here we go. Here we go. That's my favorite. Yeah, it's genetic. So after meeting Big Ed, I said, Son of a gun, I've seen something that I would have never seen, and he's using what I described at Yale. I called up my folks, and I said, hey, do you have my thesis? And they said, oh, yeah, you know, it's in the shrine next to Eternal Flame.

I said, well, send it up to me. The chisel and the hammer. Yeah. So I started, I put myself on my program and I started taking a bunch of supplements that I was putting down the veins and arteries of the heart. And I lost 50 pounds my first year. I mean, you say put yourself on your program. What did it entail?

Basically, I changed the food I ate. I stopped eating what I was told was healthy food. I stopped eating low fat. I stopped eating healthy grains. I stopped eating a lot of fruit that I was told was very healthy. And, for instance, my LDL cholesterol when I started was about 170. My HDL was 32, ridiculously low. I was assured it was genetic and couldn't help it because your father was the same way.

My triglycerides were 170, 150 was quote normal. And nothing you can do about it take take statin um so imagine my shock when three months later my ldl cholesterol which had been 170 went down to 70 my hdl which was 32 went to 80 wow and my triglycerides which have been 170, went to 30. Wow. I had the exact same genetics. I just changed the information that I gave my cells, what time of year it was, basically. Right. And that's what, I mean, just in three months.

And my migraine headaches disappeared. My arthritis disappeared. Wow. My arthritis disappeared. Wow. My hypertension disappeared. And so with that, when I operated on patients, the next thing I did was... Ever wonder how elite athletes recover faster and stay energized? It's the science of cold water therapy. Hi, I'm Gary Brekka, and I want to introduce you to Plunge.

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them up every five to seven years and right we'll see you in five and seven years we'll go under the hood again right so i said i want to keep you away from me from now on and here's here's what I want you to try. And I'll never forget one of the first patients, a few weeks after we sent him home, they said, hey, you know, my blood pressure is really low. What kind of supplement are you giving me that is lowering my blood pressure? And I look at my nurse practitioner and I go, I don't think there's anything that's doing that.

You know, get in here. So their blood pressure would be really low. And most of these people we send home on two, three, four BP meds. I go, well, let's stop one of those. And, you know, the next thing, a couple of weeks later, well, my blood pressure is really low again. Are you sure it's not one of these supplements? Get back in here.

Well, we'd start throwing these meds away. Normalizing. Yeah. Wow. And person after person, a person would call up and say, you're not going to believe this, but, you know, I don't have hip pain anymore. And I know that's not your thing, but isn't that interesting?" And I'd go, yeah, that's really interesting because I don't have knee pain anymore. And so it went. So after a year of this at Loma Linda on a Friday morning, I'll never

forget, I was looking in the mirror before going to work, and I made a bad decision. I said, you know, I've got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people and then teach them how to eat to avoid me in the future. I should teach them how to eat first, and I'll never have to operate on them in the first place. Now, that's a really bad career move for a heart surgeon. It really is. It really is. As my wife likes to... Just good heart, but bad judgment. Bad business judgment, yeah.

As my wife liked to remind me for many years. So in this crazy leap of faith, I resigned my position at the height of my career and set up a clinic in Palm Springs, which is just down the road from Loma Linda. And I asked people, look, I'm going to take insurance. I want you to eat certain foods, don't eat certain foods. I'm going to send you to a health food store, Costco, Trader Joe's. I want you to buy some supplements. We're going to test your blood every three months. What do you say? And that's actually how it started. And then we could see in people's blood work all these, not only they felt it, but we could see it on the blood work.

Yeah. You know, we were talking beforehand, and I try to be very transparent with with my journey and my labs very often i'll post my labs to instagram we were talking before the for the podcast that um i've got you know my cholesterol panel um ldl cholesterol is around 109 my hdl cholesterol is north of 80 my vldl is below 10 i think was seven on my last exam in my triglycerides around 45. So for me, that's a textbook perfect panel. But I have the lipo little a. And externally, when I look at my diet, my lifestyle, red light therapy, you know, adequate sleep, stress management, exercise, I schedule travel and meetings around sleep and exercise. I shouldn't

have, my opinion, elevated lipo little a, right, which is a cardiac risk marker. It's probably the most important cardiac risk marker. Now, why was it not given the attention it needed? Because up until a few years ago, there was no drug available to lower LP little a. There was a supplement available to lower LP little a. Which you told me about. There aren't cute little drug reps coming into the office telling you about a supplement that's essentially free, whereas there's some pretty powerful drugs. And I saw actually as a surgeon that many of my patients with impressive coronary disease carried LP little a. And the traditional wisdom was, well, there's nothing you can do about that, so lower LDL as much as possible. Right.

And what I saw was, and I've written about this, the more statins that we gave you, yes, your LDL went down, but your LP little a went up. And invariably, the people who would fail statin therapy to keep them from getting new stents or new bypass or new heart attack, their LP little a was the actual troublemaker. And we were actually making it worse rather than better by giving people statin drugs right i'm sure that if i went to a traditional cardiologist or primary care they'd say get on a statin right away that's exactly ldl of 109 yeah oh my god low triglycerides hdl there's no way i

would even consider it um but you recommended a supplement for me um which i'm going to take and start to track the progress. But one of the things you talked about was slow-release niacin. That's amazing because that's back to your original theory of supplements that can actually have a profound effect on our physiologic outcomes. And one of my big mantras is that we're usually not as diseased or pathological as we think we are. Very often we're nutrient deficient. And very often when you put the right nutrients back into the human body, really profound things happen. One of the reasons why I'm a believer in your biocomplete three, because I believe that pre-pro and postbiotics have profound impacts on the gut microbiome and the gut microbiome. I think now you're being vindicated because the real science is really beginning to catch up to the gut-brain connection and Dr. Perlmutter's work and some of your work.

And I think it's just astounding to me how a lot of modern medicine thinks that the head and the brain is sort of separate over here and the body is over here and you could be diseased in the body, be fine in the mind. You could have conditions of the mind and be fine in the body and obviously nothing is further from the truth. So this – so let me take you back to 2017, 2018 when you wrote wrote the book, The Plant Paradox, um, because that was, yeah, was it 2017? Um, uh, this is when I first really started to follow your work and you were talking about lectins and, um, how peanuts weren't even peanuts, they're seeds, they're legumes. And I really started to go down the rabbit hole of that. I think you were actually maybe even working with Tom Brady at the time. And it made so much sense to me. And since that time, do you still feel that you have the same view towards certain plants and certain food sources? You have your must avoids and your must haves. And talk a little bit about how that's evolved for you.

Yeah, I think one of the things that maybe I got criticism for was, well, I'm going to say, plants have had these anti-animal compounds since the beginning of time. And if it was that big a problem, then why is it just now becoming such a problem? You made this up, didn't you? Right. Well, no. I saw a lot of those criticisms. Yeah. It turns out that plants and animals are constantly at war. Plants were here first. They do not want to be eaten. They don't want their babies eaten, except in certain circumstances. And they use biologic warfare to convince their predator that it wouldn't be a good idea to eat them by either stunning their growth, making them infertile, making them hurt. That's usually the main driving factor.

Now we, on the other hand, had an amazing defense that we had built up against these plant compounds in terms of acid in our stomach, for instance. Acid breaks down proteins. Lectins are proteins. We had an amazing diverse gut microbiome that loves to eat anything that came down the pike. There are actually bacteria that love to eat gluten, for instance. There are bacteria that love oxalic acid, oxalate, so they love them. But as I pointed out with the seven deadly disruptors guess what

everything's changed in approximately the last 50 years where broad spectrum antibiotics were introduced which i remember when they were introduced in the mid 70s they were miraculous because we no longer had to get blood cultures and cultures and find out what bacteria was growing and test antibiotics. Just blast everything. Just blast everything. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, it was miraculous. We had no idea that, yeah, we were killing the bad guy, but we were wiping out our entire intestinal microbiome. So now rather than the offensive front four protecting Tom Brady,

those guys are all injured. We've gone through the second string. We've gone through the third string. And now the water boy is now trying to protect Tom Brady. And he's getting slammed. So what was true really about 50 years ago, not to mention glyphosate, not to mention proton pump inhibitors, we no longer have this defense system. And that's number one. Number two, the thing we didn't realize was that this defense system, our microbiome, I call them the gut buddies, have to have certain foods to eat to not only foster themselves,

but like we mentioned before, feed us. And feed us and the wall of our gut and our brain, our heart, all these really important compounds. And in the last 50 years, we've completely vo all the stuff that used to be there with every bite. You know, our great-great-grandparents, as I like to say, not only ate whole food, which they did, but they ate their food whole. Then there's a huge difference between that. And one of the rather hilarious things that was advertised for Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Kellogg's Corn Flakes was actually advertised as the world's first pre-digested food. No. Yes.

Really? What do you mean by pre-digested food. No. Yes. Really? What do you mean by pre-digested food? All the work of digestion was done for you by the Kellogg's Corn Flakes Company. So you no longer had to do any work. That's so nice. Isn't that nice? Yeah, so nice. And they didn't bother to mention that there was now absolutely nothing to eat for the other most,

probably the most important part of you is that hundred trillion bacteria. Right. That now are starving to death every day. Hmm. And so this... So it's a one-two punch. Yeah. And so the, you know, the plant paradox, I think, exposed a lot of truths about plants.

But you also don't think that all plants are poisoning us. No, not at all. By any stretch. Some people want to credit me as the father of the carnivore diet, because if you take what I said about a few plants to the extreme, that no plant wants to be eaten, then the answer is don't eat plants. And I've been accused of being not the father of the gardener. I've actually never ever seen you say don't eat all plants.

No. I'm a plant predator. Yeah. You just gotta know... There's night shades and... Yeah, you just gotta know who's your friends and who aren't your friends. Or what cultures always did is they detoxified them, usually with fermentation. Yeah.

One of the years ago, I was reading a book about the Incas who, of course, ate quinoa. But little did I know that, and everybody said, well, quinoa's good for you. Look, look at the inkles. They're great. Little did I know that they actually fermented their quinoa. They let it rot. And then they cooked it.

And it's not on the package directions. Right. You know, I get a lot of my, almost all of my vegetables from an Amish farm, and they do a lot of fermenting of their veggies. Oh, yeah. I get our raw goat milk, raw buffalo milk. In fact, if you've never had a raw buffalo milk latte, you haven't lived. It's delicious. But I've noticed that even in our two teenagers, eating what I think some people would consider a substantive amount of dairy, kefir, kefir vegetables, raw yogurts, raw cheeses, grass-fed meats, their skin actually really cleared up going through the teenage years with the you know with with their sebaceous acne that

oh yeah that they had um which would be the opposite of what you would think they would say avoid dairy avoid gluten um you know all of all these things and uh avoid saturated uh fats and and you know that's the miracle card skin and maybe maybe get on accutane and um and we were able to do it with largely i would say leaning towards a carnivore diet we do eat um veggies and steamed veggies but we get it all from this amish farm and it's just amazing a lot of it is kefir um fermented veggies but so in broad strokes um who are our friends and who are our foes in the plant kingdom? Hey, everyone. If you've been tuning into the Ultimate Human Podcast for a while now, you know I'm very

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We inherited a very interesting mutation from great apes that allowed great apes to actually take over the world during climate change about 14 million years ago. They had a genetic mutation that they could... they lacked an enzyme called uricase, which breaks down uric acid into a harmless substance. Why is that so interesting? It turns out that...

Fruit is actually fructose. The primary sugar in fruit is fructose. Fructose is a toxin that's taken from the gut directly into the liver. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. It isn't absorbed into the bloodstream. Why? In the liver, fructose is converted to two things. One, triglycerides.

Number two, uric acid. Uric acid is a really good way to raise blood pressure and it's a really good way to increase insulin levels. Right. It allowed great apes to take less available fruit in the forest and store fat for the winter, for the lean times. And the rest of the monkeys couldn't. And that's actually why great apes extended across the globe.

That's why there's orangutans in Asia, et cetera. They were able to out-compete other monkeys. We inherited that mutation, which means we could out-compete during fruit season and store fat for the winter. Wow. That other animals couldn't. And that's why we, unfortunately, took over the world. Now, for years, it was called the thrifty gene.

It wasn't the thrifty gene. It was this genetic mutation that great apes had. For fructose. For fructose. For fructose. And one of the problems that I see now is we only, even great apes, only gain weight during fruit season. The average great ape gains about eight pounds during fruit season. Fruit season only happens once a year, even in the jungle. And it only happened for our ancestors once a year in the summer and the early fall. Now we have 365 days of endless summer.

It's always fruit season. And so one of the things that drives us is this storage of fat for the winter. But the other thing that I learned was that we never encountered a grain or a bean until the agricultural revolution of 10 to 12,000 years ago. Never. Why? Because they were toxic until we learned how to cook them. Right. If you look at that civilization from hunter-gatherers to the agricultural, within 2,000 years, we shrunk a foot. Really?

Yeah. Most of us were about six feet tall 12,000 years ago, and we shrunk that much from lectins. Wow. Yeah. And these are brand new compounds that we didn't have a defense system against. And what do lectins cause? I mean, they're like little spikes that kind of get stuck in our gut. Yeah, I think the easiest way to think of them are these little spikes. It's more complex than that.

The method of how they worked was worked out by a professor who's now at Harvard, a pediatric gastroenterologist by the name of Alessio Fasano. He's a really funny guy. Anyway, I've been on a couple of panels with him. But he figured out that gluten, which happens to be a lectin, is a protein that's trying to attach to a sugar molecule on the surface of our intestines. Okay. Now, that's...

Inside the luminal wall of the intestine. Inside the luminal wall. And our intestines are the same surface area as a tennis court. So when we're watching Wimbledon in a couple weeks, there's a tennis court in you and me. We have a bad design. That tennis court is only lined with one cell thickness of cells. So that everything we swallow and all the bacteria that live in us is separated from the rest of us by only one cell. Wow.

Now, those cells are glued together with what are called tight junctions. And I use the example, we all played a game as a kid called Red Rover, Red Rover, where we all locked arms and you came right across. It's too dangerous now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's right across. It's too dangerous now. It's not allowed. Oh, yeah. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's like riding your bike's too dangerous.

Somebody's going to get hurt. Yeah. So we're all kind of stuck together. So what he found was that if a lectin can attach to the sugar molecule lining your gut, and it used to be very hard because there was all this defense against getting there. Right. But now it's wide open. Because because there was all this defense against getting there. Right. But now it's wide open. Because you had all of this microbiome.

Exactly. And you've got all this mucus, you've got all this acid in your stomach, which is now gone because we're all taking antacids. Don't get us started. If it can attach, it makes a compound called zonulin. And there won't be a test, we promise. No, this is right up my alley. Zonulin then breaks that tight junction. It literally cuts it. So now you got a gap. Right. Now, through that gap, lectins, which are foreign particles, can leak through.

Bacteria can leak through. And even undigested food particles can leak through, bacteria can leak through, and even undigested food particles can leak through. Now, what's really a great design is we knew this was going to happen so that 80% of our immune system is sitting right behind that wall because that's where the action is going to come. Right. Now, if this happens every so often, and we know it always does, the immune system says, oh, you know, these are foreign.

I'm going to attack them. I'm going to cause inflammation, and we're going to destroy these guys. But I'm also going to have a picture. I'm going to take a photo of what these guys look like. I'm going to look at their barcode. All of these we recognize from reading a barcode. And our immune system literally has barcode scanners. So they put in place memory. So if I ever see this guy again, I'm going to be ready. So memory T cells waiting. Yeah, just waiting. And now what's happened is this was a once in an every day,

every so often occurrence. Now our complete defensive system is gone. Now these harmless plant compounds of hundreds of years ago now have a direct access to where they want to get now we're breaking those bonds every day and now our day and how do they send alert all to the brain the heart wherever it's inflammation inflammatory cytokines so now we have chronic inflammation because this is happening every day and how do we measure this would Would this be like elevated levels of CPK, C-reactive proteins? Yeah, C-reactive protein is one of the easiest ways. Fibrinogen is another way. There are better tests that we use. I actually measure IL-6, IL-16, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor alpha.

Right. And early when I was doing this, 20 odd years ago, lo and behold, all these... And that was before we could actually measure leaky gut. We can measure it easily now. All these people with, for instance, autoimmune diseases or arthritis or heart disease had these elevated markers of inflammation.

And you go, son of a gun. In fact, we were talking about dentists. One of the first papers that I wrote on heart disease prevention was I took a bunch of people with an elevated C-reactive protein. Half of them, I made them floss every other day. And the other half, I didn't make them floss. Now, why every other day? I hate to floss.

My wife flosses twice a day. She's a nut. I could bring myself to floss every other day. So I kind of designed it for me. Lo and behold, the people who we got to floss every other day. So I kind of designed it for me. Lo and behold, the people who we got to floss every other day dramatically dropped their C-reactive protein. Really? Really.

In fact, I was honored by the American Dental Biologic Dentist Association. I just had a biologic dentist on right before you. For my contribution. This was 15 years ago. And little did I know back then that the same thing that was happening in leaky gut was happening in leaky mouth. And we find some of the same bacterial flora that are causing tooth decay and that are causing cardiovascular disease. Correct. And you would agree that the oral cavity and cardiovascular health are linked.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because I think there's a school of thought that there's no linkage between them. In fact, I did a podcast with a biologic dentist that I think had miraculously changed my life and my wife's life and both of my daughters. And it got censored all over social media. It got checked by the fact checkers. And the flag that was over it was that the oral cavity has no connection to other areas of the body.

It's not connected to the heart, liver, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, or other areas of the body. And therefore, pathology in the mouth doesn't lead to pathology elsewhere in the body. You would staunchly disagree with that. Oh, yeah. We used to take plaque out of coronary arteries when we operated on them and found all these cute little oral flora bugs in the plaque. One of the things that convinces a lot of my patients that we probably should be paying attention to the mouth, people get coronary calcium scores all the time. Personally, I think they're a waste of money and a waste of time, but we won't go down that road today. Right. There are really only two things that are capable of producing calcification.

Number one is bone cells, osteoblasts that make bone. They can calcify things. Right. Number two is bacteria in your mouth are really good at producing biofilms with calcium in it. In fact, plaque is a biofilm of a bacteria that has calcium in it. And isn't it interesting that the only other place that we see calcium is in coronary arteries? And there was only one paper that really got my attention looking at this was they took people with coronary artery calcification. One group was given a low-dose antibiotic for six months, tetracycline, which is very effective against oral bacteria.

The other group didn't. Lo and behold, the coronary calcium score went down went down in the antibiotic group wow which you know association does not prove causation right but my patients go well yeah wait a minute i got you know i get plaque in my teeth and you're right they have to chip it away yeah and i said and yeah and we can see chips of calcium on your coronary arteries. Maybe I could convince you to pay a little more attention to your mouth as well as your gut. Right. So what testing do you recommend that people get to really look at heart health and, you know, how do they take the next step forward? Because I think

there's a lot of confusing, you know, I came from the mortality space where we actually studied trends in mortality. We had very specific data, day, date, time, location, and cause of death for hundreds of millions of lives. And we would triangulate that back into the record. One thing that we did not use were randomized clinical trials, were placebo controlled, randomized clinical trials, we used data, we used the big data, we knew, for example, that there was not a correlation that we saw between elevated LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. So simply having elevated level of LDL cholesterol would not cause us to table rate your life insurance policy, nor to reduce your life expectancy because the data didn't support it. And I'm going to-

That's true. More than 10 or 15 years. Thank you for saying that because I get a lot of flack for that. But I said we just used data, right? And wasn't, we also knew that we saw downstream consequences, presumably from cell wall, cell membranes, reduction in vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, and significant hormonal issues in patients that were put on heavy statin therapy. So even though the statin drug studies would say LDL high, cardiovascular risk high, push LDL down, cardiovascular risk down. We would see the downstream consequences because we had data, day, date, time, a little ahead of your time, are going to be vindicated in a way because big data is going to circumvent the system

and prove that this one randomized clinical trial done in isolation, extrapolated out to the massive population was actually wrong. We realized 10, 15 years down the road, we made a mistake. Sort of like the broad spectrum antibiotic. You want to transform your overall health and connect with me directly? Then you need to visit theultimatehuman.com. On the site, you can ask me your most pressing questions, suggest podcast guests and topics

you'd like to hear more about, and sign up for my completely free newsletter. In the newsletter, I share valuable insights on living a healthier, happier, and longer life, free from harmful chemicals. While you're there, you can also pre-order my book and find the genetic tests I frequently discuss. If you're curious about products I use for a clean, healthy lifestyle, you'll find all of my recommendations from toothpaste to household cleaners. So head over to TheUltimateHhuman.com. Your journey to better health starts here. And now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Yeah. Well, a lot of these drug trials, again, most research, unfortunately, in the United States now is driven by drug companies. I had the pleasure of being trained at the NIH and back in the good old days,

the NIH was really the major grant, um, grantors of, of research. Now it's just a pittance compared to drug companies. And I'll never forget, um, and I won't mention names, but we would do experiments. And one of my colleagues had an experiment that didn't reach statistical significance. And our boss, and we had an entire wing of statisticians at the NIH. Oh, boy. And our boss. Good statistician. He says, you take that up there and you don't come back until you bring me statistical significance.

Oh, yeah. And that was a really important part of my education. And so you look, you can make something statistically significant as long as you know what question to ask. So much of the cardiovascular data is based now on relative risk reduction. Yes, relative. Relative. Peter Tia talks about this, relative risk reduction. And that is just the most bogus way of making an argument of something being statistically significant that you could

possibly... And I've used statistics all my life, and I know how to manipulate them to get the answer I want. And that's scary that I know how to manipulate statistics to get the answer I want. Right. So statistics are not... The question is answered wrong. So I'll give you a great example that I would have thought would have been the end of the cholesterol theory of heart disease. In the last two years, you're right, we try to push LDL cholesterol down and down and down. First of all, there was an association, not strong, but there was an association that lowering LDL cholesterol seemed to mitigate somewhat new heart attacks. Okay. We didn't know at that time, and this was 20 odd years ago, that statins are an anti-inflammatory

drug. And they actually block what are called toll-like receptors, which is how the immune cells read these barcodes. We didn't know that. So we assumed that was the LDL going down when there was the effect of the statin. Now we know that as the statin drug went up, the dose and the LDL went farther and farther, there was more suppression of inflammation on the blood vessel wall. Fast forward a couple years ago, a drug company said, hey, there's a really powerful anti-inflammatory drug that's cheap as anything called coltracine that we use to treat gout from my uric acid and it's really good it just tells your immune system you know we look the other way white cells shut up but it tears up your gut and you know we'll use it works great but people go right okay i'll never get gout again. Right.

So a drug company says, hey, we could make an ultra low dose of coltracine. And we could patent it because it's a new drug. Use. Yeah. And let's take people on maximal medical therapy, on maximal statins, and who've had events, and let's divide them into true groups. One will give this ultra-low-dose anti-inflammatory colchicine, and the other one will give a placebo, both on maximal medical therapy. Okay. Let's follow them.

There have been two studies now, both times. There was an additional 30% risk reduction in the low-dose colchicine group versus the maximal medical therapy without colchicine. Wow. Yeah. And then when they looked at, okay, what's the action? Lo and behold, it was the CRP coming down, C-reactive protein, that actually caused the effect. And when they finally broke out the data, there was absolutely no correlation to serum LDL level. It was the CRP level. Wow. Now you would have thought that that would have

been big news. Right. Only one problem. Statin drugs are the biggest moneymaker of any pharmaceutical drug. No question. So I just never saw the light of day. Low-dose colchicine is pennies. So we're winding down. But for those folks that are listening that haven't been able to follow your work and just broad lifestyle recommendations, because I think there's a lot of noise out there in the marketplace. Clearly, you are a fan of grass-fed, grass-finished meats.

Yes, with Proviso. with proviso and i i warned in the plant paradox seven almost eight years ago now that there's a really mischievous sugar molecule in beef lamb pork and milk called new 5gc and we don't make new 5gc we make a very similar sugar molecule called NU5AC. Fish and poultry have NU5AC like us. We make vigorous antibodies to NU5GC when we eat NU5G. And what's exciting in the new book, Gut Check, is NU5GC can substitute for NU5AC in the lining of our blood vessels, in the lining of our joints, in our blood-brain barrier. Wow. And our brain abhors NU5GC. Hmm. And cancer cells use NU5GC to promote local inflammation, lowering the oxygen tension, and they survive and grow. And that, sadly, we used to think there was clearly an association with red meat and dairy and heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and dementia.

Right. Association does not mean causation. Right. But now with the new research that Nu5GC can substitute for Nu5AC, it's now a causation. Now here's the good news. The more Nu5AC food you eat, you will displace the new 5GC. Wow.

Number one. The best news is that if you ferment your milk product with kefir or cheeses or traditionally made sausages, the bacteria will eat the new 5GC. Wow. And there won't be any new 5GC in it. So, for instance, prosciutto has no new 5GC. Wow. Even though it came from pork.

Okay. A traditional sausage has no new 5GC. Wow. So you're saying maybe improve and increase your fish, poultry intake. Pasture poultry. Pasture poultry. Most of our poultry is poison. Terrible. Pasture-raised.

And knock your socks off with great charcuterie when you're overseas. Or look for the words lactic acid starter culture on any salami or anything like that. You will find producers in the United States. That have lactic acid starter culture. And then what about your grass-fed, grass-finished meats? So use them in moderation. Now, I don't know when this will air, but a good friend of mine has won three James Beard Awards. Jimmy Schmidt has just gotten USDA approval for lowered new 5GC beef and hot dogs by the fermentation process.

So he takes the meat post-slaughter. Correct. From grass-fed grass finished animals and ferments it ferments it and it's delicious and it's low in new 5gc so you can have your cake and eat it and how do they find that producer would you say his name was uh it's called jr ranch jr ranch jr ranch is about to get flooded. Yeah, sorry. Get ready, J.R. I mean, he and I have worked. Bless his heart.

He took it. Community is coming for you in a good way. Yeah, it's delicious. It's really good. Super. Laney, yeah. It's the best hot dog I have ever had. And the hot dogs. Yeah, hot dog.

Really? Can you imagine a hot dog that's good for you? Well, no, I can't. Can you imagine a hot dog that's good for you? Well, no, I can't actually imagine a hot dog that's good for you. Wow. And he's got grass-fed, grass-finished meats, and then he has a fermentation process that— That removes the new 5GC. And just forgive me for a moment, because I don't think I'm familiar with how you ferment meat and how you ferment vegetables. You actually—

Same way? Yeah, you introduce bacterial cultures. Okay. I mean, from vegetables. You actually, yeah, you introduced bacterial cultures. In fact, amazingly enough, I didn't know this, but he and I have become good friends through the years. He had a company that sold grass-fed, grass-finished beef, and he wanted me to endorse it. And I said, Jimmy, I can't because of this stupid molecule. And he said, well, you know, why couldn't we get rid of it?

I said, well, traditional cultures have always gotten rid of it. And he says, well, you know, why couldn't we get rid of it? I said, well, traditional cultures have always gotten rid of it. And he says, okay, how do I do that? And I said, well, when you're making bratwurst, how do you make a bratwurst? He said, well, it's easy. We put bacterial cultures in the sausage. And I said, really? He said, oh, yeah, the FDA has to know exactly what we're putting in there. USDA has to know. I said, really? He said, oh, yeah, all traditional sausages are made that way. I said, Jimmy, you've already got the ability.

I said, you know, ferment the meat. Let's do some tests. And lo and behold, you know, he writes me back about three months later. He says, that's it. There's no new 5GC. I said, bingo. Go for it, buddy. Wow.

Yeah. That's amazing. And so he just got USDA approval. Yeah. That is fantastic. Well, JR is going to get flooded. I know you're tight on time. I really can't even tell you how much I appreciate you giving us your time today.

My audience is going to go crazy over this. Where can my audience find you, find out more about your work, your teachings? How do they get a copy of your book? And where can they find out more about you? Well, the Dr. Gundry podcast is on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast from. Gundry MD is my supplement and food company, drgundry.com. I've got two YouTube channels. If I don't show on Instagram, if I don't show up waving at you when you're surfing the web every day, I've done a very bad job. You haven't done your job.

Okay. And I wind down every podcast by asking my guests the same questions. No right or wrong answer to this question. And that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? The ability to wake up every day with a new question that needs an answer to. Wow. So I'm a huge fan of intellectual curiosity, which I think is what you just identified. So correct. I agree with that. It's fun to be a little kid for your whole life, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's why I love the industry that we are both a part of. Well, thank you for your time today,

Dr. Gondry. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and carving out some time here in London. We're in London, UK. And this will air very soon. And poor JR is about to get flooded. As always, guys. Thanks, Gary. That's just science.