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The Dr. Gundry Podcast
4 Biohacking Tricks That DON’T Work - Dr. G's Quick Health Tip | EP 383.B
00:22:55
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Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of angie. One thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. And for decades, Angie's helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter. Get all your jobs done well@angie.com welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast, where Dr. Stephen Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements, and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long, happy life.
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Four Biohacking tricks that don't work or might be a waste of your hard earned money okay, biohacking, I know it's all the rage right now. Dave Asprey and Brian Johnson are two of the biggest names in the biohack movement. And I could go on and on and on. Let's talk for a second about what the heck is biohacking? I don't know. It's a really cool term and it sounds really cool, but obviously the idea is to hack or modify your basic biologic physiologic functions with tricks. And if you've read any of my books, you know that I'm a big proponent of a lot of tricks to modify your physiology, to modify your mitochondrial health. And I could go on and on, but biohacking seems to have caught on. And it ranges from, oh, cold plunges to red light therapy to saunas, just to mention a few. And it can go even farther. So I've written a lot about cold therapy, sauna therapy, red light therapy, so we're not going to really bother about that today. But here we go. Here's where you really ought to think about how to spend your money properly. Number four is stool tests. Now here's a problem with a stool test, and there are a number of very good companies out there that can test your stool in a variety of ways. But the number one thing that you have to realize is that a stool test is merely a snapshot of your microbiome that day. It's merely a Polaroid picture of that instant in time. And if you've read my books or read the literature, you know that your microbiome changes dramatically from day to day day, depending on what you eat and even what the things you're eating ate. In fact, very good studies have shown that changing your diet for three days will dramatically change your microbiome. For instance, if you adapt a completely plant based diet for Three days, your microbiome will change to take advantage of of those plant compounds. Similarly, if you decide to go carnivore for three days and only eat animal products, surprise, surprise, your microbiome will change dramatically to take advantage of those particular foods that you're eating. It's kind of like you have hopefully somewhere around 10,000 different species of bacteria in your gut, and at any one time they'll take advantage of the foods that they're given. And so the guys who can ferment animal protein, if you're eating animal protein, will flourish and populate your gut. And the bacteria that take advantage of plant protein will just kind of wither away and just kind of wait their time. Similarly, if you're eating lots of plants, those guys now have something to eat and they'll reproduce. And the guys who were eating the animal protein fermenting, that now go nothing to eat. We can't grow, we can't divide. We'll wait on the sidelines. So with that in mind, you gotta be really careful about what information you expect to obtain from a gut microbe test. Now, having said that, I do use gut microbiome tests in my office. I personally like the Gut Zoomer Vibrant Wellness. But you gotta be careful with the interpretation. And interestingly enough, one of the things I found consistently is that most people who come to me with an autoimmune disease or with irritable bowel all suffer. Almost 100% of them suffer from a lack of bacteria that make short chain fatty acids. And you've heard me talk a lot about how important short chain fatty acids are, like butyrate, like acetate, like propionate. And interestingly enough, almost all my patients are lacking in those short chain fatty acids and in the bacteria that manufacture those short chain fatty acids. The other thing that I've been fascinated with using this test is that a great number of my patients in this category are lacking a class of bacteria. And there's about 24 different bacteria that so many of my patients lack. And surprise, surprise, they just happen to be the bacteria that are in Gundry MD 24 strain probiotic. Now, the good news about that is, really, without a stool test, if somebody comes to my office with an autoimmune disease or irritable bowel, I almost now automatically put them on Gundry MD24 strain probiotic and Gundry MD Biocomplete 3, which, as you may know, is really one of the only bioavailable forms of butyrate that's produced. So in a One, two punch. I pretty much solved the mysteries for most of my patients, and that's one of the reasons that I keep seeing patients six days a week, so that I can tell you what's missing in most of your gut. Now, having said that, you can take all the probiotics in the world, which are friendly bacteria, but if you don't, don't give those bacteria the precursors that they need, both prebiotics, fiber and postbiotics, precursors of these materials, they're not going to grow and thrive. And I've seen this repeatedly in patients who come taking lots of probiotics. And yet their gut work and the rest of their blood work shows that the bacteria that they really want aren't being fed properly. So it's a one, two punch. So are stool tests useful? Well, if you want to know what you ate yesterday, absolutely. But on an overall view, they're not going to help you that much. So if you like this, make sure to, like, subscribe and tell your friends because I hope you like this information. Number three, vitamin IV treatments. I know, this is really exciting. Everybody knows that the ultimate antioxidant is a compound called glutathione. Now, glutathione is essential for the antioxidant absorbing ability in your mitochondria. The problem is you really can't swallow glutathione. There's a lot of companies that hype liposomal glutathione, but most of the time it's not going to be absorbed. Secondly, you could swallow glutathione, but it's going to be gone virtually instantaneously. And you need to be manufacturing glutathione 24 hours a day. Now, the good news is your liver is very capable of manufacturing glutathione for you. And two of the components that are incredibly useful to help your liver manufacture glutathione is N acetylcysteine, better known as nac, and the amino acid glycine. And the combination of glycine and NAC makes glutathione. Now, here's the problem with that. You could swallow nac, but it doesn't last very long. So you basically would have to swallow timed release nac, which I do, and glycine multiple times a day, which I do. Now, why don't you just get IV glutathione? Great idea, except it's only going to last for as long as the IV is running and then it's gone. Now, I also have several patients who have embarked on These therapies and one of them had a really severe reaction to IV glutathione. So buyer beware. How about vitamin C? How about high dose B vitamins? How about methylene blue? Same thing. There's no doubt that high dose IV vitamin C is extremely useful for treating sepsis. I have used it to save people's lives in the ICU who are dying of septic shock. There's no question that continuous IV vitamin C has some interesting anti cancer properties. But the problem with any of these compounds is it's a fairly instantaneous effect and once you stop the infusion, the effect goes away very rapidly. That's true of taking vitamin C as a supplement. Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin and it's excreted in your urine, so it only lasts for two to four hours. So knock your socks off, go get a needle poked in your arm and take all these and you'll have this fabulous event for a few minutes, maybe a couple hours. But don't be naive that this is a long term solution to a problem that can be fixed by food and appropriate use of supplements. That's why I personally think they're a waste of money and I've never had one. Happy New year everyone.
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This is the time when people start thinking about how they want to move, feel and age in the year ahead. And one system that's almost always overlooked is your skeletal system, which is far more than just bones. It's an active organ system that influences metabolism, hormones, immunity and long term mobility. That's why I use the Juvent micro impact platform every single day. Juvent delivers gentle targeted micro impacts, not the harsh high frequency vibrations you see on other platforms that can stress soft tissues. It's like a mechanical nutrient your bones and joints actually need. What really excites me is that these micro impacts may help stimulate your body's own stem cell production and improve microbiome diversity, according to a recent study. And it only takes about 20 minutes a day. I use it while checking my emails on my phone. It's that gentle. So if your goal this year is to stay active and independent for decades to come, visit juvent.comgundry and use code GUNDRY to save $300. Your future mobility starts now.
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Now. Why do people report feeling so much better? One thing is the placebo effect is very powerful. And if I'm shelling out a large amount of money and having somebody poke me in the arm, I'm gonna probably feel better because I spent a lot of money and somebody poked me in the arm, and that's been shown over and over and over in human trials. The placebo effect is incredibly powerful. Now, I'm not saying that you might not feel better temporarily. That's not what I'm saying. But the effect is so short lived. Again, we're talking about value for money and I just don't think that's where to put your money. Are there IV treatments that are worth the money? Well, I'm intrigued, and I use the word intrigued with peptides exosome extracellular vesicle therapy. I'm leaving tomorrow for a big meeting in Malta on extracellular vesicles. I wrote about them in Gut Check. You'll learn a whole lot more of them in my upcoming book, the Gut Brain Paradox. Simplistically, exosomes, or extracellular vesicles, are a communication system between primarily bacteria and us and a way of exchanging information. And the more we're learning about this system of communication, the more we're realizing we can harness this information for the delivering literally messenger rna, microrna, even mitochondria, even cellular peptides to targets within us like our own mitochondria. This is a brand new field, but there's even now two societies directed to extracellular vesicles. So I'll have more to report in a week. Is it ready for primetime? Sorry. Absolutely not. So keep listening folks, because I'm about to review the number one biohacking thing that is a complete waste of time. Okay, biohacking. Number two, biological age testing. Now, the Kardashians have really made this popular by getting their biologic age done on their show. Now, what's the difference between chronological and biological aging? Good question. Chronological just says, okay, I'm now 74 years old and I can't change my chronological age. Well, I could lie, as some people do, but my chronological age is how long I've been on this planet. So I've been around three quarters of a century. Biological age tries to tell you that even though you're chronologically 74, from a biologic perspective, from a physiologic perspective, maybe, maybe you're a lot younger. For instance, this oura ring purports to tell me that my biologic age, my heart age, is nine years lower than my chronological age. Now, how do they do that? They look at my VO2 max, they look at my activity, and they use kind of a cool formula to make me feel really good about myself. I'll give you a hilarious example. In the last few weeks, I have been primarily in France, hiking usually 8 to 10 miles a day in hilly terrain. And my heart rate variability when I do that goes sky high, which is also supposedly a really good indication that my biologic age is fantastic. Despite that, Aura told me that I lost a year in biological age doing what Aura told me was really good for me and that my heart rate variability was now sky high. And yet my apparently biologic age dropped. I came home for the last week, I actually injured my hamstring doing something really stupid. So I haven't been walking very much. And lo and behold, when I haven't been walking very much, my heart rate variability plummeted, yet my biologic age went back up. So, I don't know. The point of all this is those sorts of biologic tests are not ready for prime time. Now, what about methylation tests? Here's the problem. We turn DNA off and on by, among other things, attaching methyl groups. There won't be a test, but a methyl group is a carbon and three hydrogen atoms, and methylation is purported. And there's some evidence that methylation of DNA is a really good way to track how fast or slow you're aging. The problem is these methyl groups are constantly attaching and unattaching to DNA. So once again, you're getting a snapshot of time, of how many methyl groups were attached to your DNA at the time your test was was done. If you did it two weeks from now, you might get a completely different snapshot of what that was doing. So once again, I'm not a big fan of right now spending your money to figure out how biologically old you are. The other thing that's fascinating to me, you'll notice that most of the people who are shelling out their money for this are actually young people. And does it really matter when you're 42 years old, whether you're 42 or 38 in terms of biologic age, maybe when I'm 90, I might feel better that my biologic age is 80, but do I really care at that point? For instance, I just saw a new patient yesterday who flew in from New York City to meet me. And the first thing that this person said was, oh, my gosh, look at your hands. You're how old? 74. And your hands are so young. What the heck? And my wife recently saw a person who recognized her from the Internet. He says, how old are you? And my wife said, I'm 74. He said, There is no way you're 74. You are so much younger. So I tell you what, Just show them your hands, show them your face, and don't shell out your money for these tests yet. I'm not saying they're not interesting, but it's not where you want to spend your money. And now I'm happy to review the ultimate biohacking scam. Number one on my list right now, today, are stem cell treatments. What? Here's the deal. I have a lot of patients who have shelled out a lot of money for stem cell treatments of various kinds. They've had autologous stem cell treatment. They've gone to Mexico or Costa Rica and had amniotic fluid stem cell treatments, placental treatments, umbilical cord stem cell treatments. As a general rule. Here's what I can tell you has happened to most of them. Most of them come back feeling better, particularly stem cell treatments in a painful joint. And these treatments seem to work very effectively for three months, six months, maybe a year. But here's the point. If you don't change your underlying behavior, if you don't change your underlying gut physiology, if you don't change your microbiome diversity, if you don't heal the wall of your gut, then all those stem cell treatments will be undone because you haven't changed what brought about the need for those stem cells. And that's my problem now. Years ago, I was approached by a major firm from Korea who wanted me to become their stem cell representative in America. And it was, quite frankly, a very lucrative offer. And I said, so we're going to use autologous stem cells. We're going to take them from people's fat, and we're going to grow them, and then we're going to inject them back in. I said, how do the stem cells know where to go? And they said, oh, that's easy. The stem cells know to go where they're needed. And I went, well, now wait a minute. The stem cells are already in us, right? And they said, oh, yeah, absolutely. We got plenty of stem cells. And let me assure you, you have plenty of stem cells. You have huge amounts of stem cells lining the wall of your gut just waiting to repair the wall of your gut. The point is, you need to activate your own stem cells. And I've laid out how to do that in all of my books. Your stem cells are there. They're just waiting to be turned on. And I'll give you one final trick. One of the best ways to turn your stem cells on is vitamin D and intermittent fasting. So please, at the end this point, don't waste your money on stem cell treatment. Spend your money on making your own stem cells wake up and go to where they're needed and then stop doing the damage. On the days of Brutal so is your feelings brutal? String Pluto TV String Pluto tv string Pluto TV for free. 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I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone's life when you take the time to share it with them. There's also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let's do this together.