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Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Dr. Steven Gundry - Renowned Heart Surgeon | How Hidden Gut Triggers Are Sabotaging Your Health
01:02:15
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- [00:00]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
I was obese, I weighed 228 pounds, I had high blood pressure, prediabetes, and I was told that was normal because my father had the same things. I put myself on my thesis, I started taking a bunch of supplements. Everything of my conditions reversed. I said that's really cool. So that was my motivation.
- [00:20]
Scott Clary
Dr. Stephen Gundry is a former world renowned heart surgeon turned nutrition pioneer. After performing countless heart surgeries and inventing breakthrough surgical devices, he shifted his focus to the role of nutrition in reversing disease.
- [00:32]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
I looked in the mirror one Friday and said I should teach them how to eat and never have to operate on them in the first place. Opened up a little clinic. That was a really bad career decision at the time. It was ruined my life, but saved my life.
- [00:46]
Scott Clary
Founder of the center for Restorative Medicine and author of bestsellers like the plant paradox, Dr. Gundry now leads a movement challenging conventional health wisdom. His podcast and research continue to redefine wellness and longevity. This episode explores innovation, resilience and transforming expertise into global impact.
- [01:04]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
All inflammation comes from the gut. Better way of saying is death begins in the gut. The good news is, thankfully, all disease can be reversed from the gut. Life's too short. Do what you love. As long as you're doing what you love, there's nothing better to do.
- [01:22]
Scott Clary
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- [02:17]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
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- [02:33]
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- [02:34]
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- [03:20]
Scott Clary
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- [05:12]
Audience/General Speaker
Dr. Gundry, so you were a very distinguished heart surgeon. You led groundbreaking cardiac research for decades. What made you completely pivot to studying the gut brain connection?
- [05:23]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
So, yeah, I rose to become professor and chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda University here in Southern California. And pioneered with my partner Leonard Bailey, who's now deceased, infant pediatric heart transplantation, pioneered artificial heart, minimally invasive heart surgery, blah blah blah, and was, among other things, very famous for operating on people who nobody else wanted to. And 30 years ago now. 30, yeah, a gentleman, 48 year old gentleman from Miami, Florida who I call Big Ed in all my books was sent to me with inoperable coronary heart disease. So what that means is all of his blood vessels were so clogged up, you couldn't put stents in them, you couldn't do a bypass because there wasn't any place to land. And this guy would, like many other people with this, would go around the country to various centers where there were idiots like me who would take on these difficult cases. And you know, he went to Columbia, New York City, went to the Mayo Clinic, he went to Stanford, he went to Texas Heart Institute and everybody turned him down. And he spent about six months doing this and then wound up in my office which was kind of part of the circuit. And I looked at his Angie Graham, the movie of his art from Miami of six months earlier and said, you know, I gotta agree with everybody else, I can't help you. There's nothing here to work with. And he says, yeah, that's what everybody says. But let me tell you what I've been doing. He says, I've been on a diet for this six months and I've lost 45 pounds. Now this was a guy who was 265 pounds when I met, hence the name Big Ed. So he had actually been over 300 pounds. And he said, I went to a health food store and I've been taking a lot of supplements. And he literally brought in this giant shopping bag full of supplements. And he says, you know, maybe I did something in here and I stroking my professor beard and going, well, you know, good for you for, you know, losing weight, but that's not going to do anything. And I, I know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine, which I firmly believed back then. And he says, Look, I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another cardiac catheterization, another angiogram in my heart? Don't get your hopes up, but yeah, okay, so we do an angiogram on him the next day. And this guy, in six months time has cleaned out 50% of the blockages in his heart. Gone now. Never seen anything like that in my life. Now if I knew what I knew now, I would have said, hey, that's great, let's keep going, good for you, Goodbye. But I said, hey, now there's actually places to land bypasses. So good news, we're going to do a five vessel bypass on you. Yay. And I did so. But the researcher in me, after we were done says, hey, tell me about this diet and let me look at those supplements. So I went to Yale as an undergraduate, and back in the dark ages, we could design our own major. And I had a major. It was basically a master's thesis. You had to do a thesis and defend it. My major was basically you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, manipulate its environment, and prove you'd arrive at a human being. And that was my thesis. And I defended it and got an honors, and I gave it to my parents and went off to become a famous heart surgeon. So as big as talking about what he's eating, I'm going, holy cow. You know, that's, that's my thesis from Yale. You're eating exactly what ancient men did. And so I said, let me look at those supplements. And like I said, I was actually very famous for protecting the heart during heart transplant and during heart surgery. And I put a bunch of funny chemicals down the veins and arteries of the heart to protect cells from dying. And he was swallowing a number of the things I was using down the veins and arteries if the heart ever occurred to me to swallow the dumb things. So I, the reason it was so poignant was even though I was a famous heart surgeon, I was obese. I weighed 228 pounds, I was running 30 miles a week, going to the gym one hour a day. I had high blood pressure, prediabetes, arthritis, so bad in my knees. I wore braces to run. I had migraine headaches. I don't recommend doing baby heart transplants with a migraine. And I was at high cholesterol. And I was told that was normal because my father had the same things. And so anyhow, my, I called my folks, said she still got my thesis. And they said, yep, and I said, send it up I put myself on my thesis and lost £50 my first year. I started taking a bunch of supplements. Everything in my conditions reversed. I said, that's really cool. So then I. Every one of my patients that I operated on, I gave them a list of, okay, here's foods I want you to eat. Here's food I don't want you. I want you to go to Costco or Trader Joe's or a health food store, and I want you to buy these supplements. There wasn't an Amazon back then. And I want you to stay away from me. I don't want to operate on you again because quite frankly, most of the time we'd redo an operation in five to seven years because you just clog things back up. So that was my motivation. And after about a year of this at Loma Linda, seeing the changes that happened to people, their diabetes went away, their high blood pressure went away, their arthritis went away, their headaches went away. I looked in the mirror one Friday, Black Friday, and said, I've got this all wrong. Instead of operating on people and then teaching them how to eat, I should teach them how to eat and never have to operate on them in the first place. So I went in and I resigned my position at the height of my career and moved down the street to Palm Springs, California, and opened up a little clinic and said, hey, I'm a researcher. I want to tell you what to eat, not to eat. I want you to go buy some supplements. I want to draw your blood every three months and insurance will pay for it. And let's see what happens, okay? The rest is history. My. That was a really bad career decision at the time for a heart trans. For a heart surgeon. But you're right, things finally worked out. But it was. Ruined my life, but saved my life simultaneously.
- [13:03]
Audience/General Speaker
When did. Through this journey. We're gonna fast forward because I know you've told this story many times, but we're gonna fast forward to sort of what you're working on right now. But through this journey, what was the inflection point of the impetus to start studying the microbiome, the gut brain connection? Because there's a lot that happened in between.
- [13:25]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
One of the things when I first, you know, started on this part of the journey was, well, I better figure out a lot smarter people than me have been before me in this area, and maybe I should find out what they know. And I actually started reading a lot of the old texts from Hippocrates and the people who studied Hippocrates. And there was A nun in the Middle ages of Helen O. Bingen, who had a nunnery, an infirmary that people would come to for the cure. And she was a devotee of Hippocrates. And I'll get really California speak for a minute. And Hippocrates said that all of us had a green life force energy that wanted us to have perfect health and that external factors would suppress this green life force energy. And it was the purpose of a physician to identify those external factors that was suppressing the green life force energy and teach the patient to remove those. And if that happened, then the green life force energy would produce perfect health in the patient. And it sounds really hokey, but what was very clear, Hippocrates believed, and he was right, that all disease begins in the gut. And how he knew this has been my quest for the last 30 years now. And so early, like in the year 2000, I was writing that, you know, this is all gut related. This was, this is. Hippocrates knew this. We should probably call it the brown life force energy, which would be a better description. But the, the more what happened during the early 2000s is the human Microbiome project came about and it was a 10 year project to identify these denizens of our gut. And you know, lo and behold, there's a hundred trillion bacteria that live in our gut. And our gut goes from our mouth all the way down to our rear end. And with every passing year, we not only have figured out who they are and what they do and the intricacy of the involvement of this organism, we're a symbiotic organism and we exist in many ways as the home for our bacteria. And a few books ago, I made the claim that bacteria have far more genes. This collection of bacteria has far more genes than we have. And these bacteria divide constantly and they obtain actually more genetic information from viruses that are called phages, that infect them and change them. And bacteria can exchange genes between each other and become different. And so I made the claim that what we've done is we've uploaded most of our information processing most of our decision making to our bacterial cloud. Much like much of what you and I are doing right now won't exist. It's, you know, up in the cloud. And because that was the only way to make this high powered computer work, and that brain just happens to be receiving much of its information from the bacterial cloud. And believe it or not, with each passing year, that's becoming more and more evident. So this book is, okay, how is this bacterial cloud influencing what we think is our normal thought processing. And how far, how deep does this go? How deep is this connection? And it's really deep.
- [18:15]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
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- [20:52]
Audience/General Speaker
ScottClary you just referenced people that understood a nuance of this, like thousands of years ago. But this research is relatively new, so.
- [21:03]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
There'S a gap there.
- [21:04]
Audience/General Speaker
So why for the longest time did we not try and explore this more?
- [21:09]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
I think one of the huge pieces of this was, for instance, I had the former head of the FDA on my podcast a few years ago, and we were, and we were the same age and we were chuckling that back when we were in medical school, we thought the gut was this hollow tube and we swallowed things and magic happened and what, you know, and we absorbed things and then whatever we didn't need was pooped out the rear end. And that was about all we knew. And then we discovered that there were actually more nerves, neurons in the gut surrounding the gut than there were in the spinal cord. So the, the word second brain came about. And then we began to realize that, oh my gosh, there we, we couldn't, we didn't know these bugs existed because the only way we could identify these bacteria was either look at them under the microscope and they all look kind of similar, or we try to grow them and most of these bacteria wouldn't grow. We didn't have the techniques. So with the human Microbiome project, once the genetic code was cracked, you could use computers to look at the genetic code of microbes. And the genetic code of microbes is different from every microbe. And then look at stool. And rather than trying to culture bacteria, trying to look for bacteria, all you need to do is look for their genetic signature. And when they did that, lo and behold, there's 10,000 different genetic signatures that we thought, oh, maybe there's a hundred or so. And, you know, and there's, there's a trillion, a hundred trillion of these guys living in us. And then it gets even better. Each of these different species have, you know, different subclasses and geniuses. And like just last week, there's a really cool bug that I write about that's a very important bacteria called Akkermansia mucinophil fella mucus loving Akkermansium. And it's really important, and we get into that if you want to, but it took researchers 10 years to actually grow this bug. You couldn't grow it, and now it's done. But now we know that there is a cousin of Akkermansia, not mucinophila, another guy who's probably even more important, and we didn't even know he existed because we didn't know that little signature difference. So now everybody's excited. Oh my gosh, now we got to grow this guy. So the, the other thing is, if you had asked me 30 years ago what I thought about leaky gut, I would have told you it was pseudoscience. It was woo woo. And thanks to people like Dr. Alessio Fazano, who's a pediatric gastroenter gastroenterologist now at Harvard, who literally broke the code to find out, does leaky gut exist? I guarantee you it exists. He proved it. We can prove it. We can measure it. So all of this kind of pseudo stuff, how Hippocrates knew this, I don't know. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. But the longer I do this and the more science we apply to this, the more it's like son of the Gun. You know, there is this brown life force energy that it was these guys.
- [25:20]
Audience/General Speaker
Incredible. That's incredible. So then, so what does this disprove? Because obviously second brain means that it's controlling and influencing almost every part of our body to a degree. But what are the major things that it's disproving that we thought and held true before we had this research?
- [25:37]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Okay, that's a, that's an excellent question. I, for one, I was a heart surgeon, a cardiologist who thought the cholesterol theory of heart disease was a pretty good theory. It turns out it's a horrible theory. Michael Debakey, one of the fathers of heart surgery, said cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease. It's an innocent bystander. And you go, huh? So inflammation in the lining of the blood vessel is actually the cause of heart disease. And cholesterol just happens to be a spackling compound that tries to cover up what's going on on the blood vessel. We could get back to big Ed, but for the purpose of how he did it, because I've written about how he did it. Inflammation. All inflammation comes from the gut. People go, well, if I eat anti inflammatory foods, I'll stop inflammation. And since there are wildfires in California nearby me right now. I can assure you that fighting inflammation with anti inflammatory foods is like putting out a forest fire with a garden hose. And we, we learn repeatedly you can't do that. So you have to find the source of the inflammation. And all disease begins in the gut and the inflammation is coming from the fat that the lining of our gut is. It's got a design flaw. And that design flaw is the lining of our gut is about one to two tennis courts in surface area insiders. And it only has one cell thick. Everything you swallow is separated from the rest of you by only one cell. Now those cells, this is one cell. Those cells are held together by a glue that's called a tight junction. Are you old enough to play Red Rover? Red Rover? Yeah.
- [27:51]
Audience/General Speaker
Yes.
- [27:52]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
The reason I have to ask now is it's illegal, actually play red? Yeah. Schools ban it. Why? You cannot play. It's too dangerous, of course. So these cells are bound together, they're locked arm and arm, you know, like Red Nover. And so everything you swallow is here, all the bacteria are here, and there's only one cell between, standing between everything you swallow, all the bacteria and us. Now, on the other side of this wall, 80% of all your white blood cells are there. Why? Why are they there? Because this is where trouble could come across. Now, trouble can come across. There's no question that trouble comes across, but it's usually a small incursion. And then the guys put out the incursion and that's the end of it. But what has been shown over and over and over again now is that this incursion goes on every day, every night, and that there is a chronic incursion across the wall of the gut. And the immune system not is doing battle at the wall of the gut, but the immune system literally sends out warnings in the form of hormones called cytokines that among other things, go up to your other organs, go up to your brain and says, oh my gosh, we're under a massive attack. Take cover or prepare the defenses or. We have a set of immune cells in our brain that are called microglia that are kind of the bodyguards of the neurons. They're that important. And when these bodyguards get alerted that mischief is on the way up, they actually take action to try and protect the neurons. And they do it in a bad way. They actually make neurons stop talking to other neurons to protect themselves. That's where brain fog comes from. We now know that Parkinson's comes from the gut, dementia comes from the gut, Alzheimer's comes from the gut. And getting back to the original question, heart disease comes from the gut. And better way of saying is, death begins in the gut. But the good news is all disease comes from the gut. And thankfully, all disease can be reversed from the gut.
- [30:37]
Audience/General Speaker
So that would be the question that everybody wants answered. So what do you start to do to make sure that your gut, your microbiome, is working properly so that you don't have all these diseases?
- [30:51]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Well, nobody used to have these. One of the things that's been fun, looking at ancient cultures or the cultures that don't have these diseases that, believe it or not, there are cultures that have no heart disease. Just as an example, there's a group of islanders in Papua New guinea called the Katavans, that a Danish researcher, Stefan Lindbergh, spent his life studying. These were a group of islanders who smoked like fiends, and they had no coronary artery disease, no stroke and no cancer. And he spent his life trying to figure, well, how can that be? And it turns out that they, because of what they ate, had a perfect microbiome, had a perfectly intact wall of their gut. And yeah, smoking's bad for you. And people accuse me of telling people that smoking's good for you. Well, it turns out that four of the blue zones, or heavy smokers, so maybe we ought to be interested in why it wasn't killing them. It might have been helping them, but that's another subject. But these people were able to defend against the bad parts of smoking by having an antioxidant rich diet, among other things. So, and you look at these cultures that don't have what we have, one of the things that's remarkable is that they have this really incredible tropical rainforest of gut microbiome. And Hillary Clinton would say, it takes a village, but we used to have this incredible tropical rainforest and it could handle anything that came down the pike. And this tropical rainforest was capable of making sure that nothing bad got to the wall of the gut. And if the wall of the gut was damaged, they made compounds that actually rapidly repaired the wall of the gut. Now, as any of us know, our tropical rainforest is a desert wasteland. We have destroyed it in lots of fascinating ways. Number one, antibiotics, broad spectrum antibiotics. I was actually in medical school when broad spectrum antibiotics were introduced. And we just thought it was the greatest advance in the history of mankind. Because before then, we had to try and figure out what bacteria was causing an infection. We had to try to grow it, we had to test antibiotics against it. And it was a time consuming process. And usually we were wrong. Then all of a sudden we had an AK47 and sat on automatic and we could mow down every living bacteria known and unknown. But we had no idea that we were also killing off these guys that lived in our gut because we didn't even realize they were there. And then we found out that you could make animals grow faster and fatter if you gave them antibiotics. So almost all of our animals were given antibiotics. And so presto, change. Oh, that's one thing that happened. Then glyphosate came along. Roundup. And most people don't realize that Monsanto patented glyphosate as an antibiotic, not as a weed killer. Oops, that should make us worry. And speaking of the brain, it turns out the glyphosate targets the bacteria that live in our gut, that make the feel good hormones, the anti anxiety hormones, things like serotonin and things like gaba. And we have to have the bacteria actually make those hormones for us. We didn't know that. We thought neurons did that. And now we've killed those guys off. So is it any wonder that we have this epidemic of anxiety and depression that, you know, it's just unbelievable? Yes, we have things to be depressed about and anxious about, but the epidemic is staggering. And it's just, we've just killed off this incredible part of us unwittingly, hopefully unwittingly. And building it back is part of this book. It can be built back. The tricks are in the book to help you build it back. And that's part of the start.
- [36:08]
Audience/General Speaker
I was going to say, I was even curious if the food supply. We, we live in the US and everybody always comments on the food in the US versus the rest of the world. Is it.
- [36:20]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
The question was, is it even possible.
- [36:22]
Audience/General Speaker
With the kind of food that we can go buy at the supermarket in the US to actually build this back?
- [36:28]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
It's really difficult. It's really difficult. One of the things that becomes, at least to me more and more clear is the glyphosate is, is everywhere in our environment. All of our grains are sprayed with glyphosate. Even our organic grains are contaminated with glyphosate. Most of our wines in America have glyphosate in them. Our schoolyards are covered with glyphosate. Our yards have glyphosate. We spray our weeds. And so this is, it's ubiquitous. It's in our water supply. One of the things that's been fascinating to me, much of my Practice is autoimmune diseases, and we're really good at reversing autoimmune disease. And you choose the autoimmune disease. We're pretty good at reversing it. It takes a while, but these people who had psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis or eczema, they'll go over to Europe and they can't help themselves. They have a croissant or baguette or a pizza, which would normally flare their rheumatoid arthritis, just as an example. And they don't react. And they go, oh, this is great. Dr. Gundry has cured me. I can have these foods again. And they come back to America and they start eating our food, and within weeks they're on the phone going, what the heck? You know, my finger just blew up. What the heck? I thought you cured me. I said, no, you weren't having any glyphosate over there. And it's just remarkable. I have a new patient who's French. We're taking care of his son who had some really awful autoimmune disease, and he's getting better in the. The parent has become a patient, and the parent, his son lives in the United States and he's moved to America to be with his son, the whole family. And this guy is a young entrepreneur and very health conscious, very physical. This guy's put on £20 in a year, moving United States, and he has not changed a think. And he said, what the heck are you, you know, what are you doing to me here? And it's. Yeah, it's true.
- [39:04]
Scott Clary
A quick shout out to the HubSpot Podcast Network for supporting Success Story. Now, if you like Success Story, you're going to love other podcasts in their network. One of my favorites is Create like the Greats. It's hosted by Ross Simmons, obviously brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. You're going to join Ross on Create like the Great Ross dissects the genius behind history's most remarkable creators and their legendary work. So you're going to get this blend of history and business and creativity. He has a great voice, always good for a podcast, and he has a decade of practical experience. He's going to break down some of the best creative processes that built influential companies, brands, and stories in a way that anyone can apply. So whether or not you're fascinated by history, creative thinking, or you simply want to improve and systematize your own creativity without sacrificing productivity, this podcast is your perfect listen. Go listen to Create like the greats wherever you get your podcast, a huge shout out to Lingoda for supporting today's episode. Now, if you're ready to master a new language, Lingoda is the online language platform trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide. Lingoda offers live classes with real teachers available 247 you you can choose from German, English, business English, French, Spanish or their newest addition, Italian. What sets Lingoda apart? The smallest class size in the market. It's just you and up to five other students. Or if you want, you can go one on one for personalized attention. Their native level teachers don't just teach language, they share culture too. And you'll speak confidently from day one. With Lingoda's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum, students report being able to navigate real conversations in weeks, not years. And if you're using Lingoda for business, their CEFR aligned courses ensure that you're learning internationally recognized language standards that employers value. Between sessions, you're going to reinforce your skills with downloadable materials and bite sized practice exercises. And all success story listeners, they put together a special deal. Try lingoda free with three group classes or one private class. Plus you save on any course with my link. Try.lingoda.com success story and code Scott25 don't miss this chance to transform your life through language learning.
- [41:16]
Audience/General Speaker
You know, you speak a lot about like cognitive implications, neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, dementia, and if I, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I was reading that studies have found that some Alzheimer's patients have five to ten times more bacteria in their brains from gut translocation. That was one of the points in the book. So we're talking about two different ideas. On one side we don't have enough bacteria and we've killed it all. On the other side, it's moving to other parts of the body. So can you explain what's happening?
- [41:49]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Yeah, there, you know, you gotta have these guys in their place. And I almost like to think about it as a nuclear reactor. A nuclear reactor is a great source of energy as long as that nuclear reaction is kept in a containment vessel. And if we keep our bacteria where they belong in their containment vessel, then everything's fine. But if that containment vessel gets damaged, then radiation on the loose is not a good thing. And so leaky gut was. Happens. It just so happens that bacteria can leak through the wall.
- [42:45]
Audience/General Speaker
We don't have the rainforest anymore. We don't have the. So it's just. It gets out. Okay, I got it.
- [42:50]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
It gets out. And the sad thing is that even our defenses, these guys can travel up the vagus nerve. They can go through our bloodstream. We now know that, you know, healthy volunteers have bacteria in their bloodstream, and the concentration and who these bacteria are also make a difference. One of the shocking findings of Parkinson's. Years ago, we were convinced that Parkinson's, you know, happened a spot in the brain called the substantia nigra. And that's true. And there are findings that correlate with Parkinson's dementia called Lewy bodies, which is basically a dead neuron surrounded by these microglia. And one of the things about Parkinson's patients is they have a very strong history of constipation. And so researchers said, I wonder if these problems are down in the gut too. And they started doing biopsies, and lo and behold, they'd find these Lewy bodies surrounding the gut. And then researchers with animal models found that if you caused leaky gut as the first thing, and that you would produce Lewy bodies in the neurons in the abdomen. And then you would see that the Parkinson's came from the gut up rather than the brain down. And it's just upended all of our concepts about, you know, what came first, the chicken or the egg. And Hippocrates was right.
- [44:39]
Audience/General Speaker
So you mentioned when you write a book, it's because there was a big question that needed answering, and obviously this was the big question. This is something that can completely upend and turn traditional medical science on its head, really. A complete 180 from what we know. When you go down this rabbit hole and you start to research all these topics, what do you think would be the most controversial or most difficult to swallow idea that you've discovered That's a good thing.
- [45:06]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Most difficult to swallow. Some of our, quote, healthiest foods to, in my view, or some of our most unhealthiest foods? Number one. Number two, one of one of my friends, Mark Hyman, has a daughter who's a third year medical student in a very prestigious university. And she has not had a course on the microbiome in her third year, you know, now three years into medical school, has not had a, had a course on the microbiome. And it's, we're, you know, and I've, I've been on podcasts where I've been mocked and, you know, that, you know, what would Hippocrates know? Back in those days, you did bloodletting. And what turns out bloodletting was actually a really good idea. I used to give a lecture because I was a Surgeon and surgeons were barber surgeons. And bloodletting was used because bacteria actually have to have iron to grow and reproduce. And back during the plagues and things like that, people who were anemic, the bacteria couldn't reproduce as quickly as possible. So as strange as it seems, many of these really bizarre ideas had a basis in truth. Same way with snake oil. I'm often described as a snake oil salesman. Snake oil. It turns out that Chinese laborers who built the railroads used water snake oil because it was really good for their rheumatism and arthritis. And. And it turns out that water snake oil is one of the richest source of omega 3 fatty acids. Fish oil. It's much more than fish oil. And so snake oil was actually an incredibly. I have a couple books about snake oil. And when it was adulterated, then that, of course, is where the snake oil salesman came from. But snake oil was really good for you. From the Japanese, from the Chinese laborers.
- [47:32]
Audience/General Speaker
Why, why does medicine as an industry.
- [47:37]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
Why does it have such a hard.
- [47:38]
Audience/General Speaker
Time adopting new ideas? Like why, for example, would somebody mock you? Why would they not say, that's an interesting idea.
- [47:46]
FreshBooks/Indeed/Vanta (advertisement speakers)
Let me research it.
- [47:47]
Audience/General Speaker
Let me understand where you got your information from, because that seems like the normal human response to when you're challenged. You don't. You, you shouldn't have this autoimmune reaction to a new idea. You should explore it, learn it, you know, get better.
- [48:01]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
I'll give you a personal example. Number of years ago, I saw two patients in their late 70s in my office, new patients. And we always measure vitamin D levels. And traditionally we're taught that vitamin D should be no higher than 80 nanograms per milliliter. And you don't have to remember that because it's wrong. And we're told that anything above that, you'll get vitamin D toxicity and you will get a very elevated calcium level. You will make kidney stones. You could get numbness in your fingers and toes, and it's really bad for you. So I'm seeing these two patients for the first time, and they have vitamin D levels of 276. Both of them. One was 276, one was 278. And I'm looking at him and I said, you take a lot of vitamin D, don't you? And they said, oh, yeah, it's a, it's a longevity drug. And I'm, you know what? You know, And I said, do you have. And I'm looking at their labs and their kidneys are fine and their calcium is normal. And I say, you got any numbness in your fingers and toes? No. Why? I said, well, as far as I could tell, you should be dead. And that's what I was taught. And they looked at me and they said, you don't know very much about vitamin D, do you, Sonny? And I said, just what I've been taught. They said, well, maybe you ought to read about it. So I did. And these guys were right. And for instance, the University of California, San Diego, has a huge vitamin D research unit, and they think the average American should be taking 10,000 international units of vitamin D3 a day. 10,000. They've never seen vitamin D toxicity up to 40,000 international units a day. Nor have I. And yet I have patient after patient, just one yesterday, who we had them. I like patients to be somewhere between 100 and 150. And if you want to go higher, it's fine with me. I had a patient who we were running at about 115 for an autoimmune issue, and they came back in, it was 67, this type. I said, what the heck happened? Did you forget? Oh, no. My physician read me the riot act that, you know, if I didn't get my vitamin D down, he was going to be stopped being my physician. And I'm going, wow. And I hear this all the time. I hear from cancer doctors. So all I can tell you is that we're in a way taught that we're, we're unquestioned authorities on subjects. And how dare you not take my advice? That's one thing. The other thing that was very useful for me in my career as a heart surgeon is I had the opportunity to join a group out of Boston called the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. And it was formed by a pediatrician who noticed that practicing physicians were 20 years behind current research knowledge in their field. And so they got a bunch of us. And sure enough, in the fields of cardiology and heart surgery, the practicing physician in general was 20 years behind current knowledge. In fact, on one podcast, I was told that gastroenterologists believe that the microbiome is a fantasy. And it's like, what?
- [52:01]
Audience/General Speaker
Yeah, ongoing education should be mandatory if you're responsible for somebody's well being.
- [52:08]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
But the ongoing medical education in this country is driven by drug companies. That's the only source of ongoing medical education.
- [52:17]
Audience/General Speaker
Interesting look at the incentives. And then. Last thing I want. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
- [52:25]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Yeah, sickness is good for business. I hate to say that, but.
- [52:29]
Audience/General Speaker
Well, that's how, that's how you found yourself out of a job.
- [52:33]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
That's exactly right.
- [52:35]
Audience/General Speaker
One last idea that I want to go into. I think it's going to be relevant for this audience. Cognitive performance, mental fog, that's the bane of any high performing individual. Yes, of course all these things are important, but how do you always have that energy, that focus, being able to.
- [52:55]
Scott Clary
Recall the words you want to recall.
- [52:57]
Audience/General Speaker
Whenever you need to recall them? What is the playbook for peak performance?
- [53:05]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Well, I think again, I think Dale Bredesen, who wrote the End of Alzheimer's, who I think is probably the smartest neurologist in the country, Dave Promagger is also a friend. One of the things that amazes us when we get together and I just talked to Dale on Friday, is who would have believed that a heart surgeon, cardiologist and two neurologists, when over we get together, all we talk about is the gut and it's like we go, who would have guessed this? That And Dale and David would be the first to tell you that if you get your gut intact, if you get that biodiversity, if you get the tropical rainforest, if you seal the wall of your gut, then everything starts to repair itself. And I can go into other things that I am very passionate about. It's this sugar molecule that's in beef, lamb, pork and milk called Neu5GC that profoundly affects brain performance. And I am very controversial about that because Neu5 GC is not in US yet. We have a similar sugar molecule called Neu5AC. They differ by one molecule of oxygen, Otherwise they're identical. Neu5GC breaks down the blood brain barrier animals try desperately to keep. Even animals who have neu5gc won't let it in their brain. And yet neu5gc, we make antibodies to neu5gc every time we eat a new 5cc GC containing food, and that includes grass fed, grass, finished beef. Sorry about that. But the happy news is that it's not present in fish, it's not present in chicken or poultry, it's not present in fermented food products. So for instance, it's loaded in milk, it's loaded in goat milk, it's loaded in sheep milk, but if you ferment it into a yogurt or a cheese, the bacteria eat that compound. Fun news, if you ferment meat, if you traditionally make sausages, and sausages are traditionally fermented with bacteria, the bacteria eat the neu5 GC. For instance, prosciutto doesn't have neu5 GC even though it came from a pig, because the bacteria in a traditionally prepared sausage has no neu5gc. So that's the good news to take home with you.
- [55:56]
Audience/General Speaker
No, I just think that there's. Listen, what you eat, what you put into your body, it's this minefield and it's very hard to navigate. And there's so many bits of information about eat this, eat that, this diet, that diet, and a lot of it seems to conflict. So I think that this is why just some generalized guidelines as to what to put into your body is so important, so that you, again, you're, you're operating your best right now, but you're going to live a long life and you're going to feel good well into your future. And that's really what people need. They just need this very simple operating.
- [56:31]
Scott Clary
Guideline, how to live life.
- [56:32]
Audience/General Speaker
And they're already, they're. Listen, they're already running uphill by living in the US and only being able to shop at a US Grocery store.
- [56:39]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
So they are.
- [56:40]
Audience/General Speaker
I know they. I know they are. Everyone knows it, everyone feels it, but nobody really can put a finger on why. And this is kind of, this is what you're doing. Okay. If people, if you wanted people to take away one thing from this book, and obviously you can get it anywhere you get books. I think it's coming out in April of 25.
- [56:59]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
April 15th.
- [57:00]
Audience/General Speaker
Okay.
- [57:00]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Yeah.
- [57:01]
Audience/General Speaker
So April of this year, you get on Amazon and I'll put all the show, I'll put all links in the show notes as well. But if you want people to take one thing away from this book, what would that, that idea be?
- [57:10]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
That most of what appears to be lack of control on your part, anxiety, depression on your part, brain fog, lack of higher executive functioning is not your brain's fault. It's actually coming from your gut. And it is a fixable problem. And the, the simple steps are in the book. It's. It's doable. As I wrote in the Plant Paradox, you'll hate me for about six weeks and then you'll start, then you'll start to like me. And in fact, one of my newer patients said, you're right, I hated you for six weeks and now I love you, and that's why I'm here. But yeah, it's doable. It's going to take some work. But you're right, folks, particularly who are listening to your podcast, they know that their executive functioning is paramount. And they, and a lot of people, I mean, I see people now in their 20s and 30s who, their brains aren't working. Right. You know, they know it, they're. Yeah. And it's like, what the heck?
- [58:31]
Audience/General Speaker
It's very scary. It's very, very scary. Especially when you're self aware enough to understand that you don't think as clear as you did a year ago and you're like, oh my goodness, where am I going to be in 10 years from now?
- [58:43]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
That's exactly right. So. And we can actually, believe it or not, we can measure leaky brain. If you have leaky gut, you got leaky brain. And we can actually measure neural inflammation. And the nice thing is, and the reason I do this is that we can measure it going, well, and so we can correlate that to people going, oh, wow, you know, I started, you know, I'm thinking we're clear. Yeah. Because look, these neurons are not inflamed anymore. And so we can actually see it. So it's, it's not. I mean, we. The nice thing is we can quantify this now. That's why I keep doing this.
- [59:24]
Audience/General Speaker
People are going to get the book that's sort of the entry point into your world. If they don't know you, if they know you already, obviously they know where to find you. But if they want to connect with you other places, if they want to go check out your podcast, your newsletter, YouTube channel, drop the links where they can go, but also tell the listeners if they want to work with you in some capacity or what you just mentioned how they can measure improvement.
- [59:48]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Where would they go for that?
- [59:49]
Audience/General Speaker
Would they be working through you, through someone else? Someone who wants to sort of take their health to the next level?
- [59:55]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Yeah. So, you know, I still take on patients. I usually see my physician assistant first, but then I see them. I work six days a week. I see patients on Saturday and Sunday. Why? Because quite honestly, I still like to see what I would have called miracles happen. And I mean, it's just exciting watching. And I describe a lot of these people in the book. It's just exciting to watch somebody take a potentially, you know, irreversible disease like Parkinson's and a year later they don't have Parkinson's. And it's like, wow, why wouldn't I want to help this person? So that's, that's why I do it. Yeah. So they can find me at the Dr. Gundry podcast. I've got a couple YouTube channels, Dr. Gundry.com my supplement and food company GundryMD.com and if I don't wave to people on the Internet every day as they're surfing, I'M doing something wrong, I guess.
- [61:01]
Audience/General Speaker
Okay, perfect. Last question. So obviously you have tons of advice that you can teach over to people, tons of wisdom from your career. And I usually ask this question from the context of life advice you pass on to your kids. But I can give you, I can give you both options. Like you can give life advice you'd pass on to your children, or it could be health advice. What would be one last, like, bit of wisdom that you want to leave the audience with that you think your kids would want to know?
- [61:28]
Dr. Stephen Gundry
Well, first of all, never retire. It is the worst possible thing that I think anybody could do. Number two, it sounds really silly, but life's too short. Do what you love. And if you literally do what you love and make a career out of doing what you love, then good things will come your way. It may take a lot longer time than you thought, as my wife likes to remind me, but as long as you're doing what you love, there's nothing better to do.