287: Dr. Steven Gundry on Reversing Disease by Healing Your Gut and Why Everything You Know About Health Might Be Wrong

In this episode, Light Watkins sits down with Dr. Steven Gundry, a world-renowned heart surgeon turned bestselling author and nutrition expert, to unpack a fascinating journey of personal health transformation and professional reinvention.

Dr. Gundry shares how he was once at the top of his career—performing complex heart surgeries, running marathons, and following what he thought was a textbook “healthy” lifestyle. Yet, despite it all, he was 70 pounds overweight, battling high blood pressure, migraines, arthritis, and prediabetes. The turning point came after an encounter with a patient named “Big Ed,” who reversed half of his arterial blockages through diet and supplements alone. That experience led Dr. Gundry to question everything he learned in medical school.

He eventually left his prestigious surgical career to pursue a radical new path—teaching people how to avoid chronic illness through food and lifestyle. It wasn’t easy. He risked his reputation, nearly went bankrupt, and had to rebuild from the ground up. But what he discovered along the way would go on to help thousands reverse disease and reclaim their health.

In this conversation, Dr. Gundry breaks down why some so-called “healthy” foods might actually be harming us, how the gut and brain are deeply connected, and why most of us are living with a condition called leaky gut without even knowing it. He also shares practical tips—like why fruit should be seasonal, how vitamin D plays a crucial role in healing, and how changing your diet for just 30 days could lead to major improvements in how you feel.

Whether you’re health-curious, dealing with chronic symptoms, or just want to age well and think more clearly, this episode is packed with insights that are easy to understand and even easier to try.

Transcript

SG: “So here I am at my top of my career, a world famous heart surgeon, but I was 70 pounds overweight despite running 30 miles a week, doing 5K, 10K on the weekends, going to the gym, one hour every day, eating a healthy, low fat diet. So when I was told that this was genetic, 'cause my father had much the same stuff. I called my parents and I said, Hey, do you still have my thesis? And they said, oh yeah, here in the shrine. They said, well send it to me. So I put myself on my thesis, had started swallowing a bunch of supplements and my first year I lost 50 pounds. My high blood pressure went away, my prediabetes went away, my migraines went away, my arthritis went away, my high cholesterol went away. And I'm going, that's pretty cool. So what I did at Loma Linda is when I would operate on people, I'd put them on my diet and I'd send them to a health food store. And so I did this for a year and we'd see the same things happen to my patients. And sure enough, their blood pressure is low, and these are people on two or three high blood pressure pills. Or a diabetic, Hey, my blood sugars are really low. Well, let's back off on your insulin, and so on and so forth. And this was reproducible. And so after a year of this on a Friday morning before I went into work, I was looking in the mirror. I said, you know, I've got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people and then teach them how to eat to stay away from me afterwards. I should teach ' how to eat, and they'll never have to see me in the first place. Now, that's a really bad career choice.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Before becoming a bestselling author and thought leader in nutrition and preventative health. Dr. Steven Gundry was at the top of his game, a world renowned heart surgeon, a professor, medical innovator.

Then came big ed, a 48-year-old man with completely blocked arteries, turned down by every major heart center as inoperable with no medical options left Big Ed took matters into his own hands. He cleaned up his diet. He lost 45 pounds, and he started taking dozens of supplements from a local health food store.

Six months later, he lands in Dr. Gundry's office, and when they re-scanned his heart, Gundry was stunned. 50% of his blockages had disappeared. It was something that Dr. Gundry had been taught was impossible and yet, there it was. That moment forced him to confront a hard truth. What if everything he had learned in medical school was wrong? 

And he ended up walking away from surgery. He risked his reputation. He nearly went bankrupt, all because he couldn't ignore what his gut literally and figuratively was telling him.

 In this episode, you'll hear how Dr. Gundry reversed chronic disease through diet. Why the health system doesn't want you to be well and why some healthy foods might not be doing you any favors. We'll start with the story of big Ed, followed by the leap of faith that caused Dr. Gundry everything, but it also gave him a whole new life. 

Let's dive in. 

[00:03:15] LW: Dr. Gundry, welcome to the podcast.

It's an honor to be here with you and to be able to pick your brain about health and wellness.

[00:03:21] SG: Well, thanks a lot and light. Thanks for reminding me that we met up in Tucson, Arizona pre Covid. So there you go.

[00:03:30] LW: I met Rich Roll back then, and he's become a friend, and there was a guy, Dr. Joe and Dr. Garth Davis, and just so many people who are now prolific as writers, as content creators in the wellness space. We all came together back during those MINDBODY green days, so very fond memories.

But anyway, tell me a little bit about your backstory. I know from your, Wikipedia, you were born in Nebraska and all that, but now you're this, renowned heart surgeon and also a thought leader in the wellness space. So can you just give us a little montage of how you started?

Were there any breadcrumbs that were leading you in that direction and where you are now?

[00:04:13] SG: Yeah, so usually I start with telling the story of Big Ed, who really, unfortunately ruined or changed my life. But since we're going backstory back in the dark ages, the benefit of going to Yale as an undergraduate and back in those dark ages we were allowed to design our own major.

And if we were lucky enough, we could have a hypothesis that for four years we would research and then defend. We would write basically it's a master's hiding in a bachelor degree.

And so I, I had a hypothesis that you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, manipulate its environment, and prove you would arrive at a human being.

And so anyhow I spent four years researching that and. Wrote my dissertation and defended my dissertation, and I got an honors and I gave it to my parents and went, you're right. Went off to become a very famous heart surgeon and never even thought about it again. So fast forward, I became professor and chairman of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Loma Linda University here in Southern California.

And my partner and I, Leonard Bailey pioneered infant and pediatric heart transplant. I pioneered protecting the heart during long operations with a device I designed and I became very famous for taking on patients that everybody else turned down. , fast forward to about 1995 when a guy who I call big Ed comes to my office in Southern California and Big Ed was 48 years old. He was from Miami. And he had a cardiac catheterization, which is an angiogram where we look at the blood vessels in the heart and all of his blood vessels were clogged up. They were so clogged up that you couldn't do a bypass 'cause there wasn't any place to land a bypass.

You couldn't put stents in because you know how many we, we call it a full metal jacket. Anyhow, so he, like many other people would go around the United States, two centers and surgeons who were also idiot enough to take on inoperable cases. And so he spent about six months going to various centers and there was a route that these people would travel looking for one of us idiots to say, yeah, I'll take you on.

So he spent six months doing this and he ended up in my office, the last resort. Everybody had turned him down for really good reason. So he arrives bearing his angiogram from six months earlier from Miami. And I look at his angiogram and I go, I'm sorry. I agree with everybody else.

They're right. Nothing I can do for you either. It wouldn't, it's not gonna work. He says yeah, yeah, everybody's been telling me that. But let me tell you what I've been doing. I've been on a diet for the last six months and I've lost 45 pounds now. This guy was 265 pounds when I met him. Hence the name Big Head.

And he says, I've gone to a health food store and I'm taking all these supplements. And he literally had brought in a giant shopping bag full of supplements. And I'm scratching my professor beard and I'm going, well, good for you for losing weight. And I know what you did with all those supplements.

You made expensive urine, which is what I believed back then. And I said, it didn't do anything in here. And he goes, look, I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram, another cardiac catheterization? I'm rolling my eyes going, ah, don't get your hopes up. But yeah, you've come a long way.

Okay? So we get another angiogram on the guy, and in six months time, this guy has cleaned out 50% of the blockages in his coronary artery, 50% of them. That's number one. Impossible. It cannot happen. At least that's what I was taught. And there I'm looking at it. And now what did I do? Well, if all you got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So now there's places I can land blood vessel. So I take him to the operating room and I do a five vessel bypass. And, but the researcher in me goes after we're done, I said, tell me about this diet and let me look at those supplements. So he starts rattling off what he's been doing for the last six months and we get a couple sentences in.

I go That's my thesis from Yale of what ancient man ate. And then I go, lemme look at those supplements. So like I mentioned, it was very famous for protecting the heart during heart surgery and transplant. And I would put a bunch of. Chemicals and stuff down the arteries and veins of the heart to protect it.

And this was well worked out. And I'm starting to look through his supplements and lo and behold, a bunch of the stuff that I was putting intravenously into the heart, he was swallowing and I'm going, son of a gun. So now why it was so serendipity or poignant? So here I am at my top of my career world, famous heart surgeon, but I was 70 pounds overweight despite running 30 miles a week doing 5K, 10 k on the weekends, going to the gym, one hour every day, eating a healthy, low fat diet.

I was a Clydesdale runner, big fat guy running, and I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, pre-diabetes. I actually operated on babies with migraine headaches and I had when else did I, oh, I had such bad arthritis in my knees. I had to run with braces on my knees. But, running split free.

So when I was told that this was genetic, 'cause my father had much the same stuff. And so I called my parents and I said, Hey, do you still have my thesis? And they said, oh yeah, here in the shrine. They said, well send it up to me. So I put myself on my thesis, had started swallowing a bunch of supplements and my first year I lost 50 pounds and I lost subsequent another 20.

And I've kept it off for 30 years now. And so. My high blood pressure went away, my prediabetes went away, my migraines went away, my arthritis went away, my high cholesterol went away. And I'm going, that's pretty cool. So what I did at Loma Linda is when I would operate on people, I'd put my, put them on my diet and I'd send them to a health food store or Costco or Trader Joe's.

There wasn't an Amazon back then. And I'd say, look, I want you to start doing this 'cause I never want to see you again As a heart surgeon, I was very famous for re operating on people. 'cause we, people would clog these things up in five years and we'd do it again because it was unstoppable, right? That's what we were taught.

And so I did this for a year at Loma Linda and we'd see the same things happen to my patients. They'd call and say, Hey, you know, my blood pressure's really low. What supplement are you giving me that's making my blood pressure low? And I'd look at my nurse one, there's nothing, I said, get in here.

Let's see. And sure enough, their blood pressure be low, and these are people on two or three high blood pressure pills. And we go, eh, let's get rid of one of those. And then a month later, Hey, my blood pressure's really low. Well, let's get rid of another one of those. Or a diabetic, Hey, you know, my blood sugars are really low.

Well, let's back off on your insulin, and so on and so forth. And this was reproducible. And so after a year of this on a Friday morning before I went into work, I was looking in the mirror. My wife calls it Black Friday for good reason. I said, you know, I've got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people and then teach them how to eat to stay away from me afterwards. I should teach ' how to eat, and they'll never have to see me in the first place. 

Now, that's a really bad career choice. But I went in and I actually, with my wife's permission, resigned my position at the head of my career. And I went out to Palm Springs, which is just down the road from Loma Linda and I opened up a clinic and I basically said, Hey, I wanna give you a, yes list of food, a no list of food. I want to give you a list of supplements to go buy every three months we're gonna do blood work on you. Then insurance will pay for, or Medicare will pay for. And let's see what happens. Are you game. And that's actually how we started. 

And so after, believe me I was an academic heart surgeon and academic heart surgeons don't make money, like private practice heart surgeons, but made a very nice living. You do not make a nice living teaching people how to eat which my wife reminded me of for many years, but she said, you just, yeah, okay, you had to do this. You've ruined our lives, but you had to do this. And so anyhow, so that actually resulted in the first book, Dr.

Gundry's Diet Evolution. And we talked off camera. My editor was Heather Jackson at Random House. And so it came out right at the start of the Great Depression, if you remember 2007, 2008. And it did well, but it wasn't the blockbuster she and I thought it was going to be. 

Subsequently in that book, I had mentioned two people with autoimmune diseases, one of who got rid of their autoimmune disease. One of them had fibromyalgia. The other one I think had Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and they both resolved. And so after the book came out, people started calling the office saying, Hey, what do you know about autoimmune disease? I see such and such happen. And I go, I don't know anything about autoimmune disease, but I'm a.

Heart transplant surgeon, and I'm a heart transplant immunologist. My, my research was, okay, how do you fool the immune system into accepting a heart from somebody else or from a baboon or a pig? And so I know a lot about the immune system, and if you want to play, let's play. And so that today 80% of my patient population are autoimmune disease patients who haven't gotten any better going elsewhere.

And that resulted in my monster bestseller of The Plant Paradox in 2017. And the rest is history.

[00:15:50] LW: That was such a perfect summary. 

I've got a couple of questions about that journey, particularly about Black Friday and then what happened after Black Friday, because that's In the trajectory of the guests that I typically interview, that's the moment where they hit the most resistance, right?

You're about to take the dive off the cliff and you don't know if the parachute's gonna open, but you have 

[00:16:15] SG: It basically didn't.

[00:16:17] LW: you have this feeling inside, like you have to do it, right. You have to do it. So I want you to talk a little bit about that moment and did you run it by any of your co, I know you ran it by your wife, did you run it by your colleagues?

 What was that conversation like and what did you have to overcome mentally and maybe even emotionally that allowed you to take that leap of faith?

[00:16:38] SG: Well, in heart surgery I was always a disruptor almost from day one. For instance, I was the father of minimally invasive heart surgery. I showed that you could do two valve replacements in a human being through a two inch keyhole incision, and that's impossible. We showed that you could do.

Infant heart surgery and send them home the next day. I showed that you could protect the heart by pumping protective agents backwards through the veins of the heart rather than forwards through the arteries, which were closed. And as a young man, I gave a paper at one of the major cardiovascular meetings and Deton Cooley, one of the gods of heart surgery, got up after I gave my talk.

And he said, Dr. Gundry is trying to protect the heart by giving the heart an enema. And it's coming out. The lesbian veins, there were veins in the heart called the thebesian veins, and I guess you probably couldn't get away with that in this day and age, but, so here I am, a young man and the one of the fathers, the greatest of all times of heart surgery is mocking me.

Believe it or not, it's still the most widely used device now to protect the heart during heart surgery to this day. So I was used to being, a rogue, a disruptor. And my colleagues, said, what are you doing? You know that this isn't what you do. This is not your game.

And I'm going, look, my I have been disrupted and I have to realized that everything I've been taught was wrong. And it's like, how can I not do this? Because, it's like if everybody, if like Patton said, if everybody's thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. Or like Shaggy saying what his mother told him, if you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room.

[00:18:57] LW: Right. Did you know a doctor named Dr. Levi Watkins from John Hopkins? That's my uncle.

[00:19:03] SG: Oh, really?

[00:19:03] LW: He apparently had something to do with the defibrillator or something like that when it comes to heart surgery.

[00:19:08] SG: yeah.

Yeah. Awesome. 

, like for instance, you don't not make a lot of money teaching people how to eat that. It's not the way our system is structured and you still have bills to pay. And I was seeing patients five days a week and. We were running outta money and we had to sell our house. We had to start renting. I actually had to have my parents sign for car loans on used cars 'cause I had no credit. And we met with a bankruptcy attorney and I, I look in the mirror and I look at my wife, I say, I am not gonna declare bankruptcy.

[00:19:53] SG: I'm not gonna do this. How am I gonna get out of this? So I said, well, I could see patients on Saturday too. I don't have to take the weekend off. So I opened up my office on Saturday. So I started working six days a week and we inched out of insolvency and I said, shoot, I can see patients seven days a week, and.

Yeah, so I started seeing patients on Sunday and

[00:20:23] LW: Christmas. Why not? We either can see patients on Christmas, new Year's Day.

[00:20:27] SG: I do see patients on Christmas and New Year's Day. So anyhow. Yeah. So, and it was actually that kind of got us through until the Plant Paradox came out and almost simultaneously serendipity is, is so wonderful. 

[00:20:45] LW: Tell me what made you think you could write a book being your first book? Because that's a big lift to work seven days a week and then try to write a book on top of that.

[00:20:54] SG: well I, as a, as an academic heart surgeon with a lab and I was, I was trained at the NIH and Trained at the University of Michigan, which is a big academic center. I wrote as a resident, I wrote 34 papers as a surgical resident. I was called the American Airlines resident 'cause I was always hopping on a plane to give a paper tox plane.

I've written over 300 articles in journals, so I was, I hate to write, but I was used to writing. So that part really wasn't hard although when I wrote Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution random House bought the book, and then Heather Jackson, my editor, said, this is wonderful, but now you're going to rewrite it for your audience.

And I'm like, whatcha talking about, I wrote it for my audience. 

She said, no, you didn't. Your audience is a 35-year-old female who is gonna buy this book for her husband or her father, and that's your audience. I said, well, that's not my patient. She said, I don't care. That's your audience. So I actually had to rewrite the book for the legendary 35-year-old female.

[00:22:09] LW: And she apologized later because you wanted to write more about intermittent fasting 'cause you had been practicing that eating one meal a day for or eating within a window of a couple of hours and she limited to what, like two pages or something like that

[00:22:22] SG: Yeah. Yeah. I had a whole chapter on intermittent fasting, time restricted eating.

[00:22:27] LW: before everybody else was talking about it On a broad scale.

[00:22:30] SG: Long before, and I had been practicing it since 2000 and I put in all the research and everything and she said, look, this book is crazy enough. This is really crazy. I'm not gonna let you do it. It is just too risky. And I said, no, no, no. You know, You've seen the research.

I'll tell you another funny story about the research on a similar subject, and she said. I'll let you have two pages, sure enough, there's two pages in there. And so when we were in Tucson at the same meeting, she came up and she said, I knew you were gonna be a great author. I knew you were gonna be a great success. I'm sorry it didn't work out with Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution, but can you ever forgive me about taking away your chapter on intermittent fasting? She said, yeah, I, you were so ahead of everybody else on everything I should have known better. And I said, eh, it's okay. But I said, it's in there. I'm just point people to it, so at least it's in print.

[00:23:27] LW: What do you think it is about your writings? 'cause you're on your, we're gonna talk a little bit about your, I think it's your ninth book that you've had out and you've had many bestsellers. When you have an academic or researcher writing a paper, obviously that's very different type of reading for the lay person.

What do you, what you've hit a chord with the general audience who wants to learn more about health, learn more about diet. What is it about you and your approach that you think resonates so much with regular people? People who are maybe casual, readers of dietary stuff, or listen to Andrew Huberman or, Dr.

Hyman and people like that, or your podcast. What is it what is it about the way you approach. Wellness and diet that really just resonates. 'cause you have a lot of hot takes as well, which we're gonna get into.

[00:24:16] SG: Well, I think I'm a good explainer in chief. In heart surgery, I was known for being able to take a very complex heart operation and dumb it down so that the practicing guy on the street could use it in his own practice. And so I, but I, I give a lot of credit to my father. I was I was.

State Debate champion two years in a row in Nebraska State original Oratory Champion Yale Debate team. And so I'm good at explaining things, or arguing, but my father started off as a salesman and worked his way up at Mutual Oma Insurance to executive vice president of Mutual Oma in charge of the chairman's office.

And he was in charge of sales training for many years. So I guess, I'm just a good salesman. But it, it is understanding, it's making something very complex, hopefully understandable. So.

[00:25:26] LW: It's interesting you brought up debate because I watched your interview with Dr. Mike, which was very contentious and you were just like, I'm curious, what were you feeling? 'cause they were pushing back on all of your claims and taking everything out of context and, basically being very dismissive.

Right. So what were you feeling when you were on the, because I'm sure that's not the first time you've heard those kinds of rebuttals to some of the takes that you have on diet and wellness.

[00:25:53] SG: Well, one, somebody I think described it very well because you're right, I just let them have at

[00:26:02] LW: Mm-hmm. 

[00:26:02] SG: He says, you ever see these videos of the silverback gorilla who just sits there and the little gorilla is crawling all over him and picking on him, and he just sits there and he is picking his teeth.

And he said, and finally just swats him. And he says. You're just a big silverback, really. So, you just, you acted like you really didn't have time for these young bucks and let 'em have their fun and you'll have the final say. That may be the best description. It's like, these guys just are so 20 years behind that in what in 30 minutes, I'm gonna bring them up to speed that, you know, it's like, I'm still in trying to catch up with Hippocrates.

I'm a slow learner. Hippocrates said that all disease begins in the gut. Uh, 25.

[00:26:57] LW: I feel like a true teacher is one where you, you ultimately end up questioning the things that you've held firm for many years. And at some point you have to move beyond that, and you have to see if it still holds up to the assumptions that you may have learned in medical school.

You never really question in a meaningful way. And with young people in general, because I did a little research on Dr. Michael, he's a 35 years old. He's still, I'm, look, I don't know him. I'm sure he's a great guy. He is got a massive following. So he is doing something right.

But anytime you have a younger person versus someone who's had a lot more life experience, usually they're exceptions. Usually the younger person is sticking more to conventional wisdom. There's value to that, and the older person has the benefit of having stuck to the conventional wisdom for however long. And then at some point, as you get older and older, you start seeing exceptions. And then more exceptions. And then more exceptions. And you realize the exception is actually the norm. And the rule applies to, I call it the TSA, effication of Amer. Like the lowest common denominator. Yes everybody needs to. Come off processed foods at some point or whatever. But if you really want to get a little more granular with it, there's some things that you could do that sort of fast track the thing that, like in big Ed's case, you know, like when you have those kinds of situations where pretty much everybody gives up on you, like, what can you do?

And I feel like that's who you're talking to or people in those, or to at least avoid finding yourself in those kinds of situations.

[00:28:34] SG: Yeah. It's like, in my upcoming book, the Gut-Brain Paradox, I quote Carl Sagan, science only advances when we question conventional wisdom. And usually it takes tremendous courage to question conventional wisdom. But if you don't do that, science never advances. 

[00:28:59] LW: So let's talk a little bit about, I wanna move more into talking about your book, but what are some of the, what are some of the hotter takes regarding diet that you have been echoing through your previous books? I know lectin is a big thing, and the idea of fruits not being on all year long. Indulgence

[00:29:19] SG: you know, Let's talk.

[00:29:21] LW: Okay. 

[00:29:24] SG: So when I wrote Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution, one of my sayings was Give fruit the boot. And if you can remember, Dr. Mike and his colleague jumped all over me that, you're saying that you know a cup of grapes, you're better off eating a Hershey's candy bar. And I said, no, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there's more sugar in a cup of grapes than there is in a full size Hershey's candy bar. I'm not making a value judgment that our children should eat Hershey's candy bars. What I am saying is, guys, there is more sugar and the wrong kind of sugar in a cup of grapes than there is in a Hershey's candy bar.

You decide, I report, you decide. And so where did all this come from? Well. When I wrote Dr. Gundry's diet evolution, Heather Jackson said, wait a minute. You know what do you mean great apes only eat fruit in the winter and they only gain weight during fruit season.

I said, she said, what do you mean jungle is always fruit? No, there's not always fruit in the jungle. It ripens seasonally. And I said, look, there is actually whole books written about the fact that great apes only gain weight during fruit season. And it's like, and I literally had to send her the book that's still in my office in Palm Springs.

She said, well, what's with that? Well, it's actually a great story and it's worth telling right now. 10 million years ago, what are now great apes suffered a genetic mutation and they lost an enzyme that's called uricase. And don't write it down. When a monkey eats fruit it cannot store fruit as fat. It burns the fuel.

Grade Apes, unfortunately, because they lack this enzyme, fructose in fruit, is taken directly to the liver from the intestines. It doesn't go into the bloodstream and it's a toxin. Fructose is a really bad toxin, and it's converted into two things. It's converted into triglycerides, which is the first form of fat we make from sugars and starches, and it's converted into uric acid.

Now, some people hear the word uric acid, gout, and uric acid is really good for causing insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is really good for storing fat. So this genetic mutation actually had a huge survival advantage to great apes because about 10 million years ago, and again, this was my crazy research at Yale 10 million years ago, there was climate change and forests shrunk dramatically, and so great apes actually could out compete other monkeys so they could take fruit and store it as fat and make it through the hard times, and other monkeys were stuck and that's actually why they took over the world. 

That's why there's orangutans, in Indonesia, blah, blah, blah. Just so happens that we inherited that mutation and it used to be called the thrifty gene that, well, there were hard times and we could make it through hard times because we had a thrifty gene and we just keep eating and sore fat for the winter uhuh. We now know that thrifty gene is that genetic mutation that allows us to convert fructose into fat and create insulin resistance to make sure we keep the fat there and not use it up. So we don't have a thrifty gene. We have a genetic mutation that allowed us to be the FAT ape 

[00:33:46] LW: Right, and it takes about 10,000 years for a genetic mutation to occur. Is that correct?

[00:33:51] SG: Well, it depends, it's funny. Most believe it or not, most bad genetic mutations actually have a benefit, or they wouldn't persist. It may not be obvious what that benefit is. But even the APOE four mutation, the Alzheimer's gene we're pretty convinced, had a benefit who, there's a, another gene that makes this really nasty corkscrew cholesterol called lipoprotein little, a lp, little a, that seems to be a horrible thing, but it had a benefit to its bearers back when they had it.

So, yeah, so we are a wash in fructose. Unfortunately, table sugar is half fructose.

[00:34:41] LW: How familiar are you with the glucose goddess? That whole approach to eating. If you eat protein first, then you can eat the grapes. It won't have the same spike in your blood sugar and this kind of thing. Is that something you've, you're,

[00:34:54] SG: had her on my podcast. We actually, we've had her twice. So we both agree that like a fruit smoothie may be one of the most lethal things you could possibly put in your mouth. Um,

[00:35:05] LW: Matter when you have that smoothie? can something offset the spike?

[00:35:10] SG: Tell you what you and I will go down to the San Diego Zoo. We'll look

[00:35:15] LW: There's no juicers down there for the a.

[00:35:18] SG: There's no juicers. There's no. Yeah. Like somebody I was posting that, we crawled out of our cave and there was no breakfast. I got news for you, somebody said, oh, we didn't crawl out of our cave. We were born perfect human, and I have a, protein smoothie every day. I said, wow, you mean there were blenders back? It's like, come on. These things, this is, these things did not exist. We have not been breaking down food into rapidly digestible things until incredibly recently.

[00:35:54] LW: Yeah, your take is to toss the juice and keep the pulp and use the pulp for your yogurt or whatever it's that you're eating. 

So in your recent book, the Gut Brain Paradox, this is a part of the paradox series. What is the gut exactly? Is it your intestines? Is it your stomachs? Is it your esophagus? Is it the whole elementary system?

Well, what are we talking about?

[00:36:17] SG: yeah. Your gut is actually starts at your mouth and nose goes down the esophagus,

[00:36:24] LW: all of that.

[00:36:25] SG: all of that and goes through your stomach, your small intestine, your large intestine and then comes out your rear end. And it's funny, I had one of the former heads of the FDA on my podcast a couple years ago and we were laughing 'cause we're similar age back in the dark ages.

We thought that this was basically a hollow two and food went in and magic happened and whatever magic didn't touch, we put out the rear end and. And then, we realized that there were digestive enzymes and then we realized that there were hormones that came out of the gut and it really wasn't until the human Microbiome project I.

It started in 2006 and ended in 2017 that we realized that number one, there were a hundred trillion bacteria that lived in our gut. And there's a thousand species of bacteria that live in our oral microbiome. In our mouth and nose. There's 700 bacterial species that live in our skin.

There's probably 10,000 bacterial species that live in our gut. And that's not to mention the fungi and the molds, and the viruses. We're just starting to figure those guys out. And so there's this huge tropical rainforest of, all these different denisons that are dependent on each other.

And what the shocker was, was that these guys are actually in control of almost everything that happens to us including the way our brain works, including the foods we're looking for or not looking for, including our addictive behavior. And was when we actually discovered the language that bacteria use to communicate with our individual cells.

And this was, this was as big as breaking the Enigma code in World War ii. You history buff, the Germans had a code that was unbreakable and you couldn't know when these German bombers were. Where they were going when they're going, and it was called the Enigma Code and it was eventually broken.

There's a wonderful movie about how it was broken

[00:39:10] LW: The Native Americans right.

[00:39:12] SG: It was a Brit, yeah. And the good news is they didn't tell the Germans that they broke it. And so it actually, many people think it, it saved Britain because the Germans didn't realize that now they were telegraphing where they were going to be, all the bombers were gonna be.

Anyhow, that, that communication system is so intricate and with each passing year, we're learning another piece of this communication system. And it's just like. Oh my gosh. I had no idea that this language existed. I had no idea how bacteria were talking to us, commanding us to do things. I'll give you a perfect example.

We hear the expression quiet as a mouse. For up until a few years ago, we believe these poor little guys couldn't speak. They didn't have a language and hence the name, quiet as a mouse. Lo and behold, they speak at ultrasound levels. We can't hear them. When they started playing this back in, in speed that we could hear.

Mice have a complex language and it's like, well, of course they do. We just didn't have the ability to understand it 'cause we couldn't hear it.

What we didn't know is that bacteria have a complex language and now luckily we broke the code and it's like, whoa, is this a complex language? And now we can understand it and it's like son of a gun.

So, and that's what each of my books build on is the complexity of this language.

[00:41:08] LW: And what about the brain part? That combination. Are you talking about just your physical brain? Are you talking about your, the intelligence of the entire body? Are you talking about emotional health, spiritual health, psychological health? What are we actually talking about?

[00:41:22] SG: All of the above. So, and again I get back to well, so Hippocrates then I wrote about this a few books ago. Hippocrates used to teach that there was a green life force energy that all of us and animals had that wanted us to have perfect health and perfect life, and that there were external factors that suppressed this green life force energy.

And that a purpose of a physician was to find out what these external factors were and then teach the patient to remove these factors, and then the green Life force energy would take over and take care of business. And so. I actually believed him. And so I just am a detective to find out what are these factors and let's remove them.

How real is that? Well, one of my patients is a Buddhist scholar who knows Sanskrit very well, and we were talking one day, he says, I'm gonna go back to the Vidic text and just look to see what Buddha had to think about all this. And he comes back, he says, you're gonna love this. The Buddha and Ides, I guess were contemporaries.

He says, the Buddha wrote that enlightenment comes from the intestines and it's like, son of a gun. You know, These guys knew this, and so I guess the bacteria we're talking to them long ago.

[00:43:01] LW: All right, so you have it all broken down in the book. What To Eat more of, what To Eat Less of. Can you give us just a little synopsis of what the protocols are for optimizing that, that brain Gut connection?

[00:43:17] SG: Yeah. First of all, I think the number one thing that I have to tell everybody, you gotta get more vitamin D in you. You most human beings are profoundly vitamin D deficient, and certainly anyone with a darker skin color absolutely has to swallow more vitamin D. And even if you get a tan, you stop manufacturing vitamin D from sunlight.

Sorry about that. The University of California, San Diego, one of the biggest vitamin D research units in the country thinks the average American. Should be taking 10,000 international units a day of vitamin D three, 10,000. I absolutely agree with that. Most of my patients with leaky gut autoimmune disease or Vitamin D deficient, vitamin D actually fosters a diverse microbiome, and vitamin D is essential for repairing the wall of your gut.

[00:44:20] LW: And you said everybody has leaky gut. You've pretty much

[00:44:22] SG: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody I've got has leaky gut. Get over it.

[00:44:26] LW: And leaky gut just means what? Literal holes in your gut where the unprocessed food leaks into your body.

[00:44:32] SG: bad news, is we have a design flaw. Our gut, what we talked about before, the lining of our gut. Is the same surface area as one or two tennis courts.

So when everybody's watching the BNP Paraba Indian Wells Tournament tennis tournament in a few weeks, look at that tennis court and that tennis court is inside of us.

It's probably two or three tennis courts, but it's got a design flaw in that there's only one cell thickness between everything we swallow and all of our microbiome and us and those cells are held together with what are called tight junctions. They're locked together, but I got interested in them because lectins gluten happens to be a lectin, but lectins are plant defense compounds, but lectins can attach to the wall of the gut and flip a chemical switch and break that tight junction.

So now we have a gap. Now. So what well. 80% of all your white blood cells line the wall of your gut. 80% are down there. Why? Because mischief comes through the wall of the gut and your army wants to be ready. Now things can break the wall. They got pretty Dogg uneasy, but those guys are ready. They'll grab 'em.

Vitamin D, we'll repair the wall, the gut, the microbiome. We'll make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately, as I write about in all the books, we now are under. And always assault through leaky gut and our immune system. Our white blood cells go, oh my gosh, we are being overrun down here. These guys are getting past us.

We need to alert the rest of the body. We need to alert the brain. Hey guys, the brain has a really cool set of white blood cells called glial cells that are the bodyguards of the brain. They get the messages. Holy cow, the bad guys are on the way. We've gotta protect the neurons. We gotta get our Kevlar best on.

We gotta get our AK 40 sevens. We gotta throw roadblocks in the way of these guys. We gotta put up barriers in the way of these guys, and everybody wants to know, well, where are all these amyloid coming from and the tau proteins and all these tangles in the rain. Guess what? Those are roadblocks and barriers because they're common.

They're not, and we can describe that this is how the brain is trying to protect itself. But as anybody knows about roadblocks and barriers now, you can't talk to other nerves. You can't talk to other neurons. And brain fog is a classic example of leaky gut.

[00:47:25] LW: What is brain fog? Is that just when you're forgetful and you

[00:47:28] SG: yeah, you just, it's like, what was I doing?

Who was I talking to? It's a, you wouldn't believe the number of young women that I see as their primary complaint of brain fog, and some people call it mommy brain senior moments. It's all because of this breakdown, it's fixable. That's the exciting thing. I wouldn't see patients six days a week if it wasn't fixable.

I wouldn't waste their time. I would certainly wouldn't waste my time.

[00:47:56] LW: What I love about your approach, from what I've read and what I've heard in interviews is yes, some of the things you say can seem extreme to people who take it out of context, right? You shouldn't eat a lot of nightshades unless you peel them and dece them. You shouldn't eat fruits that are out of season, et cetera, et cetera.

But your whole thing is, look, I'm not telling you never to do this stuff. Just give it 30 days. Just, cut back for 30 days. See how it affects your body. If it has a significant positive effect, then great. Now you know, if it does it, maybe you work it back in and it's not that big of a deal.

[00:48:29] SG: Yeah. In fact, in the plant paradox, once you seal your leaky gut then and get your microbiome robust you can handle some of these things and everybody's got a spot that, that they can handle. Some people, there's certain things they can really never introduce again, but most people they can, get away with not murder, but they can have some of this stuff.

That's the exciting thing.

[00:48:55] LW: Who should people go to get tested and to get labs done? Do you do telehealth from your office or

[00:49:03] SG: Yeah, I, we, I have a telehealth gundry health.com and we do leaky gut tests on, on blood work. We can even do it on a couple drops of blood. We send you the kit and then you talk with one of my trainees and yeah, so you can do that country health.com. I still see patients in the office and happy to see you.

It takes a while to get in, but yeah, I still actively see patients.

[00:49:34] LW: But since you've seen pretty much ubiquitous leaky gut, we can assume that all of us have some of it, and it's best to just start to to incorporate, maybe disregard or removing some of these foods from our diet. How, people have been eating a certain way for 20, 30 years.

They may not even realize what the symptoms are of feeling better sometimes. So what have you seen in some of your patients who's, who start to, like a big ed for example, how do you know when you're moving in the right direction? How do you know when you're leaving that leaky gut behind?

[00:50:08] SG: Well, it is interesting. Most people notice changes within the month. I used to write, look, you're gonna hate me for six weeks and then you're gonna start to love me. And it's actually remarkably true. 'cause I'm taking away, a lot of people's favorite foods. But as these things leave and as your gut microbiome gets better, as your leaky gut heals you, you notice it.

One of my patients years ago when I. Ask him how he was doing. He says, feeling well never tasted so good. That's a nice way of putting it, I think.

[00:50:46] LW: Yeah, I like that. And you walked through a whole like day's worth of eating

[00:50:50] SG: It, in general, one of the things that I think is important for us, particularly in the United States to remember a lot of this happened when Roundup was introduced in the 1970s. And glyphosate is just ubiquitous in us. It's in all of our grain products, even if it has nothing to do with GMO anymore.

All of our weed, all of our oats, all of our corn is sprayed with Roundup to harvest. It's in California wine. Roundup is, and you can see in the book Roundup, is a great way to kill off really friendly bacteria in your gut that make you happy. And Roundup is a really good way of destroying your gut wall.

And it, it's interesting, and I've written about this a lot of my patients, and I wrote about it in gut brain paradox. A lot of my patients with autoimmune disease result their autoimmune disease. And they go over to Europe and they can't help themselves. They have baguettes and croissants and pizzas and they do not react.

And they go, oh, Dr. Gundry cured me. I could have all this stuff. This is great. And they come back to the United States and they have, they start eating our bread and our pizzas. And within a couple weeks, they're on the phone going, what the heck? My psoriasis popped, or my joints are stiff, or I'm depressed and what the heck?

I thought you cured me. I'm going, ha you started eating our stuff again. Our, even if they're eating, they're organic artisanal breads. They still have glyphosate in them, unfortunately. So, be careful out there.

[00:52:33] LW: You have a different take on nicotine. Talk

[00:52:36] SG: Yeah. So one of the things when I was writing actually several of my books gut Check, one of the really interesting things about the Blue Zones, I. Which doesn't get enough press is that the vast majority of the blue zones are heavy smokers. And you go, what the heck? Smoking's really bad for you.

And, Hey, I'm a heart surgeon. Smoking's really bad for you. But one of the things that, we should realize, even as a heart surgeon, back in the day, most of our patients as heart surgeons were smokers. And it was great for it because they were skinny and smokers. Their, the blockages in their coronary arteries were at the front part of the coronary arteries where there was a lot of bending and the rest of their blood vessels were absolutely gorgeous, pristine.

And so it, it was hog heaven for us heart surgeons. Now it's a different story, but anyhow, so you start looking at these blue zones, and one of the most telling is in Sardinia an island off the coast of Italy, only the people who live up in the mountains are, have longevity. People live down by the sea, don't.

And the men, 95% of the men are smokers and the men actually outlive the women because only about 25% of the women are smokers. Men should live about seven years less than women. And yet here these guys are. And the same thing is true in at Chii south of Naples. The same thing is true in Aria, Greece.

The same thing is true in Okinawa. And the same thing is true in Nagoya Peninsula. The only exception is Loma Linda where I was profess that's the only exception. So you go, well, we a minute. What the heck is nicotine doing? And yes. Tobacco and smoking tobacco or vaping. Tobacco is really dumb. It's really stupid.

It produces oxidative stress. But nicotine is a really interesting longevity compound. And I go into that and they jumped all over me. And Dr. Mike, believe it or not, a British physician study showed that British smoking physicians have 30% less Parkinson's than non-smoking physicians. And they flippantly said, oh yeah, that's 'cause all the smokers are dead.

No, these were age match controls. These. Shouldn't we be curious why this horrible thing? Smoking seems to have a longevity benefit, shouldn't we be curious why nicotine ha might have some benefits? That's all I am asking. So then you look at how nicotine works and you go, oh, that's a very interesting longevity compound. It's the dumb delivery device that's the problem. Heart surgeon says smoke. Say that.

[00:56:01] LW: Well, LA last question. I don't wanna get political, but whether you love him or hate him, RFK, he's now looked like he's gonna be ahead of the what is the health department or whatever Minister of Health, what would you like for him to look into? In terms of the way that we treat health and wellness in our country.

[00:56:18] SG: Well, here's the problem. Sickness is good for business

And what we, Dwight Eisenhower, when he retired said, beware the military industrial complex. And he was right. What we have to do is we have to beware the big agriculture, big pharma, big medicine, big chemical complex. And here's the problem.

Money talks and I, god bless him. I wish him luck, but to break that. Trifecta or Quad fact, but money still makes people elected to Congress and the Senate and state offices. And I profiled some of this in previous books, how deep these tentacles go.

And to me it takes a grassroots approach.

Every individual has to take their own health under control. I just don't see how you're gonna break this control from big pharma, big medicine. We'll see. Good luck.

[00:57:37] LW: Yeah. And, like you say, everyone needs to have, take responsibility for their own health as well. And what I love about your approach is you do have some ideas that are counterintuitive to what we've been taught culturally about how health and wellness works. And so I think the invitation is to start with, reading what you've put out there and doing your own research and testing it out and seeing what works from your own direct experience and doing more of that and doing less of the stuff that doesn't work.

Like for instance, whenever I eat grapes, I oftentimes get a headache. When I eat mangoes, I get a headache. When I eat an apple, I get a headache. And now it makes sense. Why. I'm getting those headaches 'cause I'm very sensitive to sugar and I thought eating fruit over eating a strawberry shortcake was actually a healthier choice.

But turns out maybe that's not the case. And so just want to thank you very much for for your work and for coming onto the podcast. The book is The Gut Brainin Paradox and prove your mood, clear brain fog and reverse disease by healing your microbiome. You also have a pretty big YouTube channel, almost a million subscribers.

You have a lot of other books. You have a massive social media following. So there's a lot of entry points into the ecosystem. But I would say start with this book, the Gut Brainin Paradox. 'cause it sounds like it's a good summary of all of your other writings and the evolution of your thinking around all of this.

[00:58:59] SG: Yeah. And I think the other thing that people hopefully realize is I'm not afraid to change my mind when new evidence is presented. Unlike some individuals who haven't changed their mind, you know, despite new evidence and, you know, it's, it's okay. I, you're supposed to learn. You're supposed to change your mind.

[00:59:21] LW: Well, that's what makes you a true scientist, right? Because that's what it's all about. it's testing your own assumptions.

[00:59:27] SG: That's exactly right. We're trying to prove ourselves wrong as scientists. That's actually, you make a hypothesis to prove yourself wrong. That's the whole idea, and it's okay to prove yourself wrong.

[00:59:40] LW: Well, thanks again Dr. Gundry.

[00:59:42] SG: Great to see you. I thank you.

[END]

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode with Dr. Steven Gundry. If you'd like to follow Dr. Gundry's work, you can find him on the socials @drstevengundry that's Steven spelled S-T-E-V-E-N-G-U-N-D-R-Y. 

And be sure to check out his new book, The Gut-Brain Paradox. It's a great entry point into his research on healing from the inside out. And if you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Gundry. Make sure to check out episode 98 with Max Lugavere on how food affects your brain and your mood, and also episode 94 with Liana Werner-Gray, where we dive into healing from illness through natural foods and a positive mindset.

And if you know someone else who's out there making the world a better place, please send me your guest suggestions to light@lightwatkins.com. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to rate and review the show. It does help to make more people discover these meaningful conversations. 

I'll see you next week for another story about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. And until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart. Keep taking those leaps of faith. And remember, if no one has told you lately that they believe in you. I believe in you. Thank you and have a great day.