“Start Your Day With Gratitude”
This episode is all about energy. Plus, we talk about fasting for healing the gut and powering the mitochondria.
Dr. Steven Gundry MD is one of the world’s top cardiothoracic surgeons and a pioneer in nutrition, as well as medical director at The International Heart and Lung Institute Center for Restorative Medicine. He has spent the last two decades studying the microbiome and now helps patients use diet and nutrition as a key form of treatment. He is the author of many New York Times best-selling books including The Plant Paradox, and The Plant Paradox Cookbook, and The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age and released The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone in March 2021. He also is the founder of Gundry MD, a line of wellness products and supplements.
20 years ago, Dr. Gundry decided to prevent health issues. He retired as a cardiologist to teach patients how to eat, guiding them on how to get ahead of the problem, not fixing it after the fact. He shifted towards a more proactive approach to health through food and diet changes. At his waitlist-only clinics in California, Dr. Gundry has successfully treated tens of thousands of patients suffering from autoimmune disorders, diabetes, leaky gut syndrome, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases with a protocol that detoxes the cells, repairs the gut, and nourishes the body. He is also the host of The Dr. Gundry Podcast.
In this podcast, Surprising Ways To Improve Energy, we cover:
- Why do so many people have low energy
- What to know about glyphosate, the pesticide in Roundup weed killer
- About the deadliest energy disruptors
- How to heal your gut with intermittent fasting
- The 3 most critical nutrients for your mitochondria
Why So Many People Have Low Energy
So much of what Dr. Gundry does in restorative medicine is deal with people who have fatigue and malaise. It’s a fancy way of saying that they are tired, don’t want to do anything, have brain fog, and it’s hard to get out of bed. Over 60% of people say that lack of energy is their biggest concern. Leaky gut is the number one cause of inflammation—80% of our immune system lines our gut. We require vast amounts of energy to feed our immune systems. You have brain fog because your immune system is taking all the energy to protect your body. Overall, low energy is from chronic inflammation and leaky gut.
The Deadly Energy Disruptor: Antibiotics
According to Dr. Gundry, there are 7 Deadly Disruptors and 7 Deadly Energy Disruptors. Well, number 1 is the same for both lists: antibiotics. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were introduced 50 years ago. Antibiotics kill your gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is there to protect you, so the antibiotics are doing you a disservice. Plus, most of the antibiotics produced globally are fed to animals to make them grow faster and fatter. Unfortunately, those antibiotics remain in the flesh of the animals. Even if we’ve never taken an antibiotic in our life, those antibiotics get into us when we eat animals from factory farms.
What to Know About Glyphosate, the Pesticide in Roundup Weed Killer
Another problem that is depleting energy is Roundup and the pesticide glyphosate. It’s now about the 50th anniversary of Roundup. Roundup was patented as an antibiotic, not a weed killer. It kills the bacteria in our microbiome. Plus, Roundup causes leaky gut. Unfortunately, Roundup is sprayed on all conventional weed, corn, oat, flaxseeds, soybeans, and canola. The Roundup is used on these plants to dry them out because it’s far more efficient to harvest a dead plant than a living plant. In addition, Roundup is in our wines, oatmeal, oat bars, and organic oat products. It’s one of the biggest energy disruptors. Millennials are the first group of human beings to be continually exposed to Roundup and antibiotics.
What Is The Problem With Processed Foods?
We have foods that normally would take a huge time to digest and we process them. These processed foods are so broken down that they are predigested. We now have simple sugars, simple predigested amino acids, and simple fats. These things all arrive simultaneously at our mitochondria. So, it slows your energy production. Most of us no longer have what’s called metabolic flexibility. Typically, we should be able to go from fat burning to sugar burning. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. It’s time to give your mitochondria less work to do, less time they have to do it, and give them more time to recover. This recovery time happens during fasting.
Fasting Will Build Up Mucus & Rebuild Your Health
The microbiome is your number one defense system against plant toxins. There is a war between plants and animals: humans have a microbiome, and plants have toxins. We used to have a phenomenal layer of mucus that protected us. The more you fast, the more you produce mucus. You can rebuild this defense system that, quite frankly, has been decimated in almost all of us in Western culture. The way to rebuild your health is through fasting. Once fasting is part of your lifestyle, you can clean up the mucosal lining, heal the gut, then introduce plants back into your diet.
The 3 Most Critical Nutrients For The Mitochondria
MCT Oil is converted to ketone bodies. The mitochondria can use ketone bodies as an energy source even if you have insulin resistance.
The more melatonin-containing foods you can eat, the better. Pistachios have the highest melatonin content of any food. Melatonin is a critical anti-inflammatory, antioxidant molecule.
If you want more energy, get lectin-containing foods out of your diet.
Dr. Steven Gundry 0:00
Give your mitochondria less work to do give them less time that they actually have to do a lot of work and give them more time to recover. And that recovery time is during fast.
Dr. Mindy 0:16
I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again, my name is Dr. Mindy Pels. And I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of The recenter podcast, I bring you the one and only Dr. Steven gundry. So if you’re not familiar with Dr. gundry, his work he is a four time New York Times best selling author. He is most famous for the plant paradox. And his new book, the energy paradox really goes deep into everything we need to know about the mitochondria. So in this conversation, we had some awesome highlights that I have been wanting to ask Dr. gundry for a while. So you’re going to hear us talk about energy. And it was really interesting what he says about millennials, and how Millennials are the first generation to have completely grown up with to chemicals in their environment that are depleting their mitochondria of health, causing them to their energy to tank and for their brains to be inflamed. That was fascinating. He then went on to talk about fasting, of course you guys know I love fasting. And I really want to know what his opinions were on fasting for healing the gut for fasting for power, powering up the mitochondria. So we dove in to fasting, we then morphed into more on what we can do from a planetary stance, what can we do to overcome the chemicals in our environment to help with regenerative agriculture situations. And then we ended with some of the best tips for mitochondrial health. In our rapid fire at the end, he had some really good hacks for improving mitochondrial production, so you get more energy. I think you guys will hear in this interview, what a loving man is his final, you know, I always ask everybody at the end of every resetter podcast what their message for the world is. His was awesome. And you can tell that this man is really passionate about changing the world. So a great discussion, excited to share it with you. And the last thing I’m going to tell you is I have had a question about lectins for a very long time. I have wondered that if you have a sensitivity to lectins if it was a sign of a leaky gut. And if you overcame that leaky gut, could you have lectins again, so those of you that aren’t willing to give up plants, this is the episode for you. I’m so excited to share it with you. Let me know what you think. Leave me a message. leave us a review on iTunes. Dr. gundry, his thoughts on energy, his thoughts on leaky gut and what we can do as a human race to be healthier and happier. happy to share this with you guys.
Did you know that you are supposed to have certain bacteria in your gut to be able not only to keep your immune system strong, but to produce neurotransmitters like GABA, we love Gabba Gabba is a neurotransmitter that calms us. And you also need bacteria to be able to balance hormones like estrogen. You hopefully have heard me talk about the Astra bilum and how if it’s damaged, you won’t break estrogen down? Well one of those key bacteria is called lacto, back sylius Rama knows and Organa phi has just put it in a really cool product called balance. So balance is a powder, you put it in a drink. I actually put mine in yogurt, it was so yummy. And mixes in really easy, tastes really good. And it has an abundance of this key bacteria we need to keep ourselves calm and to be able to metabolize hormones. So check it out. I’m really excited. I’ve been mixing it with harmony, which I figure oh my gosh, give me some more progesterone give me some more Gabba and everybody’s gonna want to hang out with me because I’ll be the most chill person on the planet. Not only is it giving me that really cool side effect, but it’s also really tasty. So I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve tried a lot of probiotic powders only to be disappointed by Tastes well Organa fi delivered this time with their balance product. So check it out, they come in these really easy to go. Pack, it’s so easy to throw in your purse in your backpack take with you. And as Organa fi has so generously done for my audience is they will give you 20% off when you use this code. So it’s Organa phi.com, forward slash pells. That’s Organa, phi o r g, k, NI, f phi.com, forward slash pells. And you will get 20% off. So check it out, combine it with harmony. And let me know how your mood changes really cool product. So impressed with Organa phi and the quality that they’re delivering to us, but also the feeling that we can experience as we take the products. So as always, I hope that helps. Let me start with this idea. When you first put the energy paradox out, I my first thought was, wow, is this book ever needed. So many people are just like dying with low energy. So before we get into how we change that, can you help my audience understand why so many people are depleted right now?
Dr. Steven Gundry 6:21
Yeah, I think, you know, I actually, when I started the book, I really hadn’t planned to write the energy paradox. It wasn’t on my schedule. But I was going, I was driving into Orange County to do a PBS promotion to, you know, get some money for Public Television. And there was going to be a hostess joining me. And as I’m driving in, I got a call and said, You know, so and so isn’t going to be in today. She doesn’t have it in her to come into work today. Man, this was a millennial. And I went, Whoa, you know, where are we going to do this? Well, don’t worry, you know, we’re gonna get through this, and it’ll be fine. But it really haunted me that, you know, a millennial would, you know, just didn’t have it in there. And I realized that, so much of what I do in restorative medicine is actually dealing with people who have what we call fatigue and malaise. no better way of saying is, we’re just, you know, tired. We’re, we just don’t want to do anything. We’ve got brain fog. It’s hard to get out of bed sometimes. And why should that have been were the best fed people in the world we exercise. And yet most of us are over 60% of people complain that lack of energy is one of their biggest complaints. And so that’s why I went into this. I think one of the best way to explain this is, there was a study done in comparing the hodza
ancient hunter gatherer tribe in Tanzania, to desk workers, and it was a Duke University study. And I’ve actually had them on my podcast, the Dr. gundry podcast. And what they their hypothesis was that these Hodges, who walked Oh, eight to 10 miles a day, they’re very fit, they’re very lean, they’re very healthy. They have a wonderful gut microbiome. And the premise was, well, these houses are thin and healthy, because they are energetic, and they use up all their energy and all of this walking, and we’ll compare it to desk workers who sit around all day. And I bet you will find that the energy expenditure by for desk workers is much less than the hodza. And that’s why the desk workers are so fat. Well, lo and behold, the energy expenditure for the desk workers was identical to the hodza. And yeah, and so whenever we’re in research, we make hypotheses that don’t work out. Sometimes we should say, oops, my hypothesis was wrong. And why is that? Well, these guys said, Oh, well, our hypothesis is right, that all people have the same energy expenditure, no matter how much what you’re doing or not doing. And you know, when I read that article, I said, this doesn’t pass the sniff test. What is it about these energy, these desk workers that they’re spending so much energy, but they’re not doing it? And so my, my research has shown that if you have a leaky gut, and leaky gut is the number one cause of inflammation and this wasn’t my Discovery up awkward. He said this 2500 years ago that all disease begins in the gut. And our 80% of our immune system lines, our gut all of our white blood cells line our gut. Because if you have a leaky gut and most of us in modern society do and we go into why that is, I was gonna say, that’s the obvious question. Yes, we produce, we require huge amounts of energy to feed our battle troops or our immune system. And they consume huge amounts of energy to do this. Now, one of the things that I think is very useful for people to understand recently, obviously, we’re, we’ve been worried about the COVID virus. But before all this, the flu virus is a really good example, when you get the flu. You feel like crap, you know, you don’t want to move, you don’t want to do anything you want to binge watch Netflix, and you hurt. And people always used to say, well, it’s the flu virus that causes this, well, the flu virus has no ability to do that. But your immune system says, Hey, this is a nasty little invader. And we need all of our troops at the ready, we need to give them all the energy they need. So we want to take away energy from muscles, we want to take away energy from the brain, because we need all energy to protect us against this virus. How do we do that? Well, we want to make muscles hurt. And we want to make the brain basically not think. And if we do that, we’re good. And so the idea that we hurt, and we have brain fog, is actually because our immune system is taking all that energy to, quote, protect us. And if we think about it, 24 hours a day, 365 days, a year now, with this chronic inflammation that most of us have, because of leaky gut. It’s no wonder that we’re all tired. We’re all exhausted, our brains don’t work properly. And even if you’re 30 years old. This is now happening. And that’s quite frankly, one of the main reasons.
Dr. Mindy 12:28
So then what’s the the the elephant in the room is what is causing everybody to have a leaky gut?
Dr. Steven Gundry 12:35
Great question. So you know, I’ve talked about in all of my books, starting with the plant paradox, what I call the seven deadly disruptors. And in the energy paradox, I talk about the seven deadly energy disruptors. And number one is actually the same in both lists. And that is antibiotics. Now, broad spectrum antibiotics, we broad spectrum antibiotics were introduced, literally 50 years ago. And they were miraculous. Because Doc’s like me used to have to try to figure out okay, which what bacteria is giving you this problem, we had a culture, we had to isolate it, and then we would prescribe the appropriate antibiotic. Now and broad spectrum antibiotics came out, it was like we were all given, you know, ak 40, sevens and shotguns. And we didn’t have to do any of this, we just go. And we would kill everything. And we go, wow, this is miraculous. Little did we know that we were also killing all of our gut microbiome, those hundreds of trail hundreds of 1000s of trillion bacteria that live in our gut, that actually protect the lining of our gut from the things we eat. The other things we had no idea was that most of the antibiotics produced in the world are fed to animals, to make them grow faster and fatter. And unbeknownst to us, those antibiotics remain in the flesh of the animals. So even if we’ve never taken an antibiotic in our life, those antibiotics get into us when we eat animals that are from factory farms. And, unfortunately, because of loopholes in FDA laws, even though for instance, right now, it’s illegal to feed chickens antibiotics. If on a factory farm with 100,000 chickens in a warehouse. If the veterinarian who is paid by the big agriculture company thinks that one chicken out of those 100,000 chickens is sick, he’s allowed to dose the entire 100,000 chickens with antibiotics. Cause he’s worried about that one chicken. And there’s some recent studies looking at even organic chickens, about 60% of them have antibiotic traces when you actually look at them. Because of this loophole. This second thing that’s happened to all of us is Roundup, glyphosate. Roundup. It’s now about the 50th year anniversary of Roundup, and round up was actually patented as an antibiotic was not patented as a weed killer. And it kills bad bacteria in our microbiome number one. And number two recent studies show that roundup in and of itself causes leaky gut without any other necessary thing. Crazy. Yeah. And as most people I hope are aware, roundup is now in everything roundup is no longer use just on GMO crops. roundup is now sprayed on all conventional weed, all conventional corn, all conventional oats, flax seeds, soybeans, canola, to what’s called a desk and to dry these plants out because quite frankly, it’s far more efficient to harvest a dead plant than it is a living plant. Because it weighs less. And so it’s spread on everything. It’s in almost all California wines. It’s, it’s in our oatmeal, it’s in our old bars. It’s even in organic oat products, because it actually drifts from field to field. So roundup is one of the big energy disruptors. And interestingly enough, Millennials are actually the first group of human beings who have true out their lives been continuously exposed around up and antibiotics through Wow. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy 17:06
So what are we seeing in them?
Dr. Steven Gundry 17:08
Well, we see fatigue, we see brain fog, we see depression, we see, you know, it’s like, no wonder this wonderful young woman didn’t have it in her to, you know, come in that.
Dr. Mindy 17:24
Are those two things more detrimental when you’re younger?
Dr. Steven Gundry 17:27
Well, it happens at all age groups. But I think the scary thing, and I actually was with my younger daughter today is 39. And we were actually, actually over the weekend. And you know, we were saying that, you know, her generation are some of the people often call millennials the, you know, the don’t care generation or, or no incentive generation. And I don’t think quite frankly, it’s their fault. I think they’ve been bombarded with these energy disruptors, all their lives, they’ve never known what it’s like to not have these chemicals in them. So interesting.
Dr. Mindy 18:12
What’s so what’s the antidote to it? Like one of the things I want to get into with you is fasting we do my community does a ton of fasting. And the more I understand the food industry, the more I understand concepts, like you just said, I think the only way out is for us to fast because we have to tap into a mechanism where the body can self heal from these kind of chemical traumas.
Dr. Steven Gundry 18:37
Yeah, and that’s a very good point. Of course, you know, fasting is a part of all great religions. The part of the energy paradox that’s interesting is that this, let me step back one step. The other thing that’s inundated us for, again, for the first time is processed foods and ultra processed foods. We’ve actually taken foods that normally would take a huge time to digest to break down into simple sugars into simple amino acids and into simple fatty acids. And as I talked about in the book, mitochondria, which are the energy producing organelles, and almost all of our cells are really good at handling one of these compounds at a time, they’re really good at taking sugar and making ATP. They’re really good at taking amino acids and making ATP and they’re really good at make taking free fatty acids and making ATP. And these things would normally arrive kind of one at a time. As we digest them sugars would arrive for you know acids or would arrive second and probe and fats would arrive much later. Now we’ve altered processed foods. So we’ve broken down we’ve literally pre digested all of our foods So we now have simple sugars, simple pre digested amino acids, and simple fats. And what’s happened to all of us is that these things all now arrive simultaneously at our mitochondria. And it’s literally like rush hour in LA. And what happens is all this traffic tries to get on the mitochondrial freeways. And what happens is nobody moves anywhere. And it’s literally an I show in the book, how your energy production from these simple you know, foods just crawls to slow down. So to get to your question fasting, most of us no longer have what’s called metabolic flexibility norm, normally, our mitochondria can switch on a dime from using sugar as a fuel to using fats as a fuel. But the vast majority of us no longer have that ability to switch back and forth. And some people call it metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, metabolic flexibility and flexibility. whatever we want to call it, one of the answers to this is to give your mitochondria less work to do give them less time that they actually have to do a lot of work and give them more time to recover. And that recovery time is during fasting. Now, it also allows the wall of the gut to heal, the less time that you have to spend time digesting food, the more time the lining of God has to repair itself less work it has to do the better. So it’s kind of a one two punch. Now, one of the things people hear about intermittent fasting, time restricted eating, and they go Oh, that’s great. I’m gonna jump right in. Tomorrow, I’m going to have a break fast. I’m gonna break my fast at noon. Yeah, normally, I get up and have breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning. But I hear so much good things about fasting, I’m going to start fasting break my fast at noon. What happens is the vast majority of people and we see this in my clinics for the last 20 years. They can’t make a switch from using sugar as a fuel to using fat as a fuel. And they fall flat on their faces. They they get tired, they get headachy they get hangry. They their energy, just tanks and they go Geez, no, fasting isn’t for me. I’ve just not made for that. Yep.
So what we have to do, at least what what I do in my clinics, is I hold your hand and we take you a step at a time into this. So simplistically, if you’re used to eating breakfast at seven, I say, Okay, look, this week, we’re gonna eat breakfast at eight. And Come on, give me an hour, you can make it. If you want to have a cup of black coffee, if you want to have a cup of tea, great. Let’s start eating at your clock. We’re going to do this all week. And then on the weekends, take the weekend off, relax. Don’t, you know just go back to your normal ways. Next week, we’re going to start at nine o’clock. We’re going to do that all week, take the weekend off the following week, we’re going to start at 10 o’clock. And so on until after five, six weeks, we’re now up to starting our first meal at noon. The whole idea is you wouldn’t go out if I if we took you to the gym and I gave you a 50 pound dumbbell and say I want to I want you to do 10 barbell curls, you know, most of us would go Oh, are you kidding? I can’t do that, you know, give you a five pound way oh, I can do that. We have to train our energy producing cells to handle this. And it’s just like taking on a new exercise program. And we found over the last 20 years that people when we ask them to gradually introduce this can get to a point where an eating window of six to eight hours every day is very easy to achieve. And the good news is human studies and certainly our clinic has shown that if I give you the weekend off if I don’t just hit you over the head seven days a week, it becomes a lifestyle that you can that you can do and actually appreciate it doesn’t feel like you know this is work. Yeah,
Dr. Mindy 24:54
yeah. Yeah, we have across our platforms. We have hundreds and 1000s of people that We fast together, I call it fast training week, every every month, and we take a five day period. And we do exactly what you just said, practice exercising the fasting muscle. And one of the things that I’ve seen is that fasting can supercharge those mitochondria. Once you get the hang of it quicker than any supplement, any bio hack, anything I have ever witnessed. It’s like you put the body in alignment with what it’s actually requesting. Are you guys finding the same thing that fasting is is no pun intended, but it’s like it’s the fastest path to mitochondrial health.
Dr. Steven Gundry 25:36
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, human studies now bear this out. And I go into some of those human studies and, and rat and mouse studies that it’s actually probably the most potent health span, promoting tool. And at least in animal studies, including rhesus monkey studies, it is the most potent life extension tool there is, regardless of all the other supplements and don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of supplements, even though I thought they make an expensive year and years ago. But yeah, if you want to, you know, one tool, getting you to reduce your eating window to, I prefer six hours a day, but even six to eight hours. It’s a profound effect.
Dr. Mindy 26:29
Nothing that I love to talk about more than wine. So I got to tell you about dry farm wines, which is my absolute favorite place to get wine from for many different reasons. One, they’re keto friendly. And I, you didn’t hear that wrong. They are literally keto friendly. They have no added sugars, no added toxins, and they will leave you feeling amazing the next morning. So go check out their website that not only is the wine incredible, but the people behind the wine are amazing. You guys know how I love people who are on a mission to serve the world. Well, Todd white and his crew are on a mission to help people drink healthy wines and enjoy the whole experience. So they taste amazing. And if you go to dry farm wines, calm, backslash, Dr. Mindy pills, they will actually send you a bottle for a penny. So give it a try. Let me know what you think. And cheers to an incredible Wine Experience. I think that the changes that happen to the microbiome with fasting you we talked about the mitochondria. You know, one of my questions that I have from your earlier work the plant paradox was is it possible that these plant toxins are were more inflammatory on a leaky gut? And if we actually heal that gut, they would become less inflammatory?
Dr. Steven Gundry 27:58
Yes, that’s absolutely correct. Some people, I guess, in a way missed the point of the plant paradox. I am not anti plant, I am a confirmed plant predator. But you got to know you know who your friends are, and who’s got your back I knew has it in for you. And if you look, there are societies that do perfectly well eating lectin containing foods, like beans, for instance, like the Nightshade family, yet, those people have an incredibly diverse microbiome, like the hands is that Antos have an amazing diverse microbiome. And that microbiome, as I talked about in the plant paradox is your number one defense system against these plant toxins. There’s, there’s a war going on between plants and animals, and they’ve got their offense and we’ve got our defense and our defense was this diverse microbiome, among other things. The other thing that we used to have was this phenomenal layer of mucus that, you know, protected us, mucus is actually there to absorb plant lectins lectins look for sugar molecules and mucus is the way we do it. What’s very fascinating and I talked about this in the longevity paradox and the energy paradox. The more you fast, the more you produce more mucus, and you produce a microbiome called Ackermann, CMU sin of philea mucus and mucus loving eckerman Co. That actually, it’s a fascinating story and I’m sorry for rambling but it’s so cute. This bacteria loves mucus, it eats mucus, the more mucus it eats. The more it stimulates your gut wall to make more mucus. So it’s a win win. And the more you fast the more Ackermann sia proliferates, and the more mucus you make. So you can rebuild this defense system that, quite frankly, has been decimated in almost all of us in Western culture.
Dr. Mindy 30:27
So do you think if I’m somebody who has been eating plants, I get really bloated, I my energy gets drained. Could I use fasting as a tool to start to clean up that inner mucosal lining, heal the gut, and then start to re periodically re reintroduce some of these plants? And if so, does the length of the fast matter?
Dr. Steven Gundry 30:52
So not necessarily, you know, there’s a there’s a very famous paper looking at rheumatoid arthritis. So they took 20 women and they put them on a 30 day water fast. And they all went into remission of their rheumatoid arthritis markers. And then they put them on a vegan diet. And the vegan community always points to this study that and they always write a vegan diet. Here is rheumatoid arthritis. Well, the people on when they went on the vegan diet, 50% of people stayed in remission. 50% of them re went right back into rheumatoid arthritis. So the vegan diet did cure rheumatoid arthritis. The fasting cured rheumatoid arthritis. And just like you point out, those people who during that fast were able to repair their gut could tolerate you know, these plant toxins lectins, but 50% of them the 30 days was not enough to completely repair their gut. I’ve published papers at the American Heart Association, looking at people who follow my program, which includes intermittent fasting but removing these troublesome plant lectins like gluten happens to be one of my gluten intolerant patients, and there’s oodles of them. 70% of them are also intolerant to corn. And so many people who go on a gluten free diet, think that corn is gluten free, and they’re safe with it. But long story short, nine out of 10 people who we follow for a year, who had severe gluten sensitivity, and leaky gut. Any year their leaky gut is healed. And fascinatingly, 90% of them no longer react to gluten, which is a pretty nasty. So I think I’m not telling people, okay, if we heal your leaky gut, you can have all the pasta and bread and everything you want. But what I am saying is we’ve documented that the immune system can be retrained, to not get so worried about these particular compounds. And I think that’s huge motivation. Certainly for my, for my patients, about 70% of my patients suffer from an autoimmune disease, that they’ve been all over the country of the world, and they can’t get rid of it and knock on wood when they go on the program. It goes away. So it’s actually really exciting.
Dr. Mindy 33:47
So if you look at glyphosate alone, that’s a really hard chemical to avoid. Absolutely, you know, you can say I’m going to do no antibiotic me, I’m going to stay off an antibiotic, but it’s in our rain, it’s in our soil like so that again, this is why I love fasting as a possible tool to start to repair. But if we’re getting daily exposure to glyphosate, how do we avoid it?
Dr. Steven Gundry 34:10
So you know, even Mark Hyman is a friend of mine who eats very clean. Even Mark has been shocked that even with, you know, multiple years of eating clean, he’s still got impressive glyphosate on his blood test. And it’s like, oh my gosh, you know, if mark is like that, imagine what, you know, the average American has. So there’s, I think there’s several steps. First of all, again, the more the more resistant your gut wall is to glyphosate, the better. I’m a fan of humic acid or salad, which in one study does appear to block the effect of glyphosate on leaky gut. The other thing I’m afraid As using glycine glyphosate substitutes for glycine in our DNA, among other things. And you can, in theory, and I think it’s correct, if you flood your system with glycine, if you take an excess of glycine, then glyphosate has no spaces to substitute for glycine. So I’m a big fan of glycine, I take three grams, 3000 milligrams every night for two reasons, number one, to keep my system flooded with glycine. But number two, and I talked about this in the energy paradox. glycine, particularly when you take it at night lowers your body temperature, and we go to sleep by dropping body temperature. In fact, it’s actually critical to drop body temperature. So I think it’s a win win. I protect myself hopefully against glyphosate. And it lowers my bio temperature and and helps me go to sleep. So and it’s cheap. It’s just an amino acid. And so you know, it’s here’s a, there’s a trick from the energy paradox. Yeah, I
Dr. Mindy 36:17
love that. And can you just how about a just a cup of bone broth?
Dr. Steven Gundry 36:21
Yeah, so bone broth does have glycine, I, I’m quite worried. And I’ve seen in my patients that there’s an awful lot of lead bone broth. And so I’m not a big fan of bone broth. I make a veggie broth that has glycine in it. And that’s what I use instead. So
Dr. Mindy 36:44
yeah, so and then my other thought on this is one of the things that has been really disturbing to me as I watch my community, is how many people are unaware of the chemical exposure in their foods and in the in the environment? How do you think when we look at only 12% of Americans being metabolically fit, we look at the example that you gave of the millennials being, you know, having brain fog? How are we going to get out of this? How are we going to help the human race because this, the odds are stacked against us right now?
Dr. Steven Gundry 37:18
Well, certainly, big government, big food, Big Pharma doesn’t want us to get out of this. sickness is very good for business. And, you know, I’ll tell you a funny story years ago, a bunch of manufacturers in a large Midwestern city that has a medical school came to me and they said, you know, we want to set up healthy eating program for our employees. And you know, would you be interested in consulting them? I said, Well, look, you know, you’ve got a world famous medical school here. You got fabulous hospital system. Why don’t you just go meet with them? And they said, well, as a matter of fact, we did. And I said, Yeah, okay. So and they said, he said, You got to be kidding us. We are not in the health care business. We are in the sickness business. Wow. Yeah. They said, point blank. They said, Why in the world? Would we want your employees to be healthy because your employees live in our town, and we’re dependent on your employees being sick. Thank you very much. Ladies. They
Dr. Mindy 38:34
were honest. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So personal responsibility is what I hear in that.
Dr. Steven Gundry 38:40
Yeah. And, you know, my job that I’ve been doing for 20 years is to teach people, okay, here’s, you know, you the deck is stacked against us. But here’s, you know, here’s, you know, the way the best way we can deal with this. And, you know, there’s simple steps like you know, whenever you can eat, eat organic, get to know, farmers at farmer’s markets. I’ll never forget, I was lecturing in Phoenix A few years ago, pre COVID. And I was at a farmers market in downtown Phoenix, on on a Saturday. And there was a pastured eggs pasture chicken side. And so I go up and I say, Oh, hi, you know, what, do you feed your chickens? And they looked at me like, What do you mean? Oh, we don’t feed them anything. They work for us, their, you know, their farm animals. I said, Really? You know, don’t don’t give him any grain. Why that’d be crazy. And he said, Oh, thank you. Thank you. Bless your heart. They do this. You know, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and new kinds of farmers in my family. The chickens were there to go out eat bugs in the field, and they come back and they’d lay their eggs and They were a farm animal, they’d go out and dig through cow pies and spread the manure. And if we if we could only convince everybody to you know, let’s go back 100 years and let’s read it, let’s reset the clock. And we can make farmers can make a good living. By doing this we on my podcast, we introduce we interviewed farmer Dan from Texas and farmer Dan raises lectin free chicken. He eggs Yeah, he fat pastures them. And then he does supplement them but they’re worth no lectin grains. And now he’s got a booming business and he’s teaching his you know, neighboring farmers are going, Hey, you know, you’re you know, you’re making some money here and I go, how do we get in on this? So it just takes one person. I’ll give you another example on another podcast recently. Most California wines have life estate. But there’s a big movement, particularly in California and Washington and Oregon, to do at least organic wine, or more importantly, biodynamic wines. And I happen to mention a biodynamic winery in Santa Barbara County where where I have one of my offices, Beckman vineyard, Steve Backman. And they have been biodynamic for the last 10 years at least. And, you know, good for them, good for the environment, good for everybody. And I actually got a note from him over the weekend, he said, somebody heard your podcast, heard them, they called, and they’re now a member of my wine club. And, you know, thank you for getting the word out. Because this is important. And it’s all going to be individual and people can make a living. Number one doing these things. And number two, will save ourselves save our kids. And, you know, if we do regenerative agriculture with a first step and saving the planet, yes, but it’s all gonna, nobody is gonna make anybody do this. We all have to individually do it, and encourage, you know, our friends and neighbors to do it. And that’s the only way it’s gonna happen.
Dr. Mindy 42:32
Yeah, and I also think it’s awareness. So books like what, like the energy paradox, the way you started off this podcast, and then just help because when you’re low in energy, um, I’ve been there when I was 30 years ago, when I was 20. I had chronic fatigue syndrome. And, you know, I didn’t understand why. And I healed it through diet, right? And it just took one doctor informing me. So I do feel like an awareness with with people like you, as we wake people up, hopefully we can move people into action. Do you feel like as a human race, we we were moving in a positive direction? Or do you feel like we’re moving we’re standing still or moving backwards.
Dr. Steven Gundry 43:15
Sometimes I get very excited. They’re certainly in medicine. there’s far more interest in functional medicine, I call it restorative medicine. I train, third year family practice residents in my clinic, they rotate for a month with me and, and I get really excited to see how excited they get, believe it or not, they’ve never been taught that they should measure fasting insulin levels, they have never heard of that booth, you know, right. before they go into practice. They’ve never heard of a fasting insulin level. And they get real excited. They say, Oh, my gosh, this is why I went into medicine. This is what I thought I was going to be doing. And then they go back to a person and they go to their professor, and they said, Oh, why don’t you tell me about this, this is, you know, this is what I want to do. And they go, you know, you idiots, you’re so naive. Look, to make a living in family medicine, you’re gonna have to see one patient every 10 minutes. And you’ve got $300,000 in student debt. And that’s the old and you’re, you know, you’re you need to write eight prescriptions every 10 minutes. And that’s the only way you can make a living and they come back into my office and some of them are in tears. And they say, you know, the system is rigged. I you know, how do I kind of how do I get out? That’s when I get depressed. Yeah, but you know, so that’s why we have to have people demanding that and I’ve talked about this. Women particularly you know, women have fun More autoimmune diseases than men, women get far more all cybers disease than men. And women are not taken seriously, their complaints are brushed under the rug, you know, of course you’re tired. You’re a 40, or a woman with two kids and you work a job? Of course you’re tired. No, that’s actually not, right. These hodza women who are walking eight miles a day carrying do good, they’re not tired. They have a word for tired in their language. True. So true. Yeah. And so you know, particularly women and men too. But women have to keep searching have to keep demanding that, you know, your complaints are real. They’re not in your head, although I’ve talked about the book, it is in your head because you got a leaky gut. And that’s caused that leaky brain, you have neuro inflammation. And you you gotta keep insisting somebody has to take you seriously, like chronic fatigue. That’s an autoimmune disease that’s from leaky gut. And some it’s not just Oh, you’re complaining female?
Dr. Mindy 46:15
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying that. Because my platform is a lot of women from the age of 45 to 65, that find fasting because they’re feeling unheard. And doctors are giving up on them. And there’s nobody giving them answers. So I’m so grateful for that statement. I really appreciate that. And we’re trying to empower women to make better choices and take their own power back. So when a doctor like you says that that’s really powerful. I appreciate that.
Dr. Steven Gundry 46:43
So I mean, it’s, it’s just, I, you know, I just get so people end up in my office have been going to multiple clinics, multiple universities, and they many people, you know, professors say, yeah, it’s all in your head, you know, here, I just saw one who is just given an antidepressant. And yeah, and she’s got wide open leaky gut, she’s got two autoimmune diseases. And I’m sorry, you need Nana depressant, and I go, what and she said, I didn’t feel it. You know, I knew I was coming to see. But that’s, but that’s how we, we view so many, you know, women’s complaints. And it’s just wrong. Just absolutely sad.
Dr. Mindy 47:26
It’s very sad. What just so that we’re forming a book list on our of our all of our podcast guests, what’s one book that has really changed your life that you feel like everybody should read?
Dr. Steven Gundry 47:39
Oh, I’m actually kind of if you want to learn more about lifestyle, and I just happen to have another guest. So that’s a good one. It’s called white wash. And it’s called the story of a weed killer cancer and the corruption of science. And it’s a juicy little thing. The other thing I would recommend, so it’s I just have it here. And I didn’t plan on this. This is a really powerful Merchants of Doubt, Merchants of Doubt. And it’s, it’s using the tobacco industry method to cast doubt on any science that exists, including everything that we’ve talked about today. And it uses the playbook of the tobacco industry to make you believe, make you question science. And it’s fascinating how this web is, is done with big food, for instance, now, and big chemical like glyphosate. So that’s just, that’s just a couple of good, good ones to
Dr. Mindy 48:55
be awesome. Okay, Two other quick questions. If you had to pick three nutrients for the mitochondria that you were like, absolutely are necessary. Everybody should be feeding their mitochondria, these three nutrients, what would they be?
Dr. Steven Gundry 49:09
Well, so one of the easiest ways to get started is MC MCT. Oil, medium chain triglycerides. medium chain triglycerides are actually converted virtually instantaneously into ketone bodies. And ketone bodies can be used by mitochondria as a energy source, without even if you have insulin resistance, or metabolic, metabolically inflexible. The second thing that I talked about in the energy paradox is the more melatonin containing foods I can get into you the better and fun fact pistachios have the highest melatonin content of any food. Now, everybody says well, wait a minute. I don’t want to go to sleep after eating pistachios. melatonin and gluta sigh on are the two important anti inflammatory antioxidant molecules, mitochondrial repair molecules there are. And melatonin actually has very little to do with sleep. But Melatonin is essential to repair mitochondria. So that’s the number two food. The number three food is the first rule of the plant paradox. What I tell you not to eat is far more important than what I tell you to eat. So if you want more energy, get lectin containing foods like whole grains, like non pressure, cooked beans, and the Nightshade families like tomatoes and peppers and potatoes out of your life temporarily, and you’ll be amazed what happens.
Dr. Mindy 50:54
That’s amazing. I love that. Okay, last question. If you had one message for the world that you could get into everybody’s brain, what would that message be?
Dr. Steven Gundry 51:04
Well start your day with gratitude, be thankful for whatever has happened to you. And when you look back, some of the worst things that you think ever happened to you were actually in one of the most positive things that ever happened to you, you just didn’t recognize it at the time. So be great. Be grateful every day, even in the worst of time.
Dr. Mindy 51:30
Hey, resellers, I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you’re enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I’ve learned in just interacting with so many people is that we’ve really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the reseller podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it’s impacting your life. So please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you to make it better. We are now officially in season two. And we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have that mindset changers can give and to really deliver you something that you’re not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube from the bottom of my heart. I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you and let’s get healthy together.
What does Dr. Gundry say at 34:54 – he is a fan of fulvic acid or ? (what?) I don’t think he is saying salad. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s something like salijet?
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I will continue to share as we all have the same goal of helping so many feel their best! I am a surgical nurse, wife, mother of three boys, daughter, sister, aunt, and I am a personal trainer/wellness coach. Will love learning more and would love to meet you. I will continue to learn!!! ???????? Thank you
Thank You! I absolutely loved this episode! I am one of the fortunate ones who has healed their gut enough to reintroduce some of my beloved lectins (carefully cooked of course)! Thank you so much for asking Dr. Gundry about the lectins, it affirms my healing. What a great conversation.
Dr. Gundry’s book, “The Plant Paradox” (I chose his Quick and Easy version) was recommended to me recently by a friend. I was/am in the process of recovering from a bad flare-up of Diverticulitis. It took being on two regiments of Broad Spectrum Antibiotics, over 20 days worth, that were treating symptoms that were not responding, then a 2nd visit to ER where they did a CT scan to discover that I have Diverticulitis. Two hard-core antibiotics, taken at the same time, for the next 10 days was prescribed, along with pain and nausia medication. I missed 2 weeks of work. After all that I ended up having to be treated for a yeast infection… It’s been over a month and a half… still dealing with some residual symptoms… there had to be a better way. I have a history, over many years, dealing with: Severe Acid Reflux GERDS (requiring a nisson fundiplication surgery, done twice), Emergency Colon Resection surgery, due to a blocked colon, IBS, and now Diverticulitis… among other issues… I started reading Dr. Gundry’s book and was somehow lead to this podcast… it lit my fire to delve quickly and deeply into his book. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I now have hope. I now know there is a different way. I now know I am in contol and can heal my “gut” and learn to maintain my own health through dietary and environmental choices. My journey has just begun… I have hope for my future.
Thank
What an interesting and informative conversation. I have just removed tomatoes and added pistachios to next week’s order.