← DR. GUNDRY PODCAST: GUT HEALTH, WEIGHT LOSS, AND NUTRITION
DR. GUNDRY PODCAST: GUT HEALTH, WEIGHT LOSS, AND NUTRITION
4 “Healthy” Foods That Are Secretly Destroying Your Gut | EP 399.B
00:17:00
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- [00:11]
Dr. Steven Gundry
Some of the foods you eat every day might not be helping your gut. In fact, certain foods, even so called healthy foods, could be creating tiny holes in your gut, which, if you've ever had a leaky roof, you know that is not a thing. You want one, not for your house and especially not for your intestines, because your intestines are kind of the roof of your house. But it's nothing to be alarmed at if you know which foods to eat and which to avoid. So today we're taking a closer look at four popular foods that may be doing more harm than good. So stay tuned. A few years ago, the wildfires came through my town in California. I lost my home. But what haunted me wasn't the fire itself. It was what I saw in my clinic weeks later. Neighbors I'd known for years, burning eyes, crushing fatigue, lungs loaded with invisible ash. They couldn't even see. That's when it hit me. The air inside our homes is silently working against us every single day. Not just during wildfires, but right now in your home, from your candles, your furniture, your cleaning products. That's why I created Total Air as part of my new brand, homekind medical grade filtration, the same standard I trusted in the operating room. Now protecting your family at home. Go to homekind.com and use code cleanair for 10% off total air filters. Because every breath matters. Make each one count.
- [01:56]
All right, here we go. Four popular foods that absolutely destroy your gut. Now, you've heard me say it before. All disease begins in the gut, which is why caring for your gut is one of the most important things you can do for your health. So today I'm going to share four widely used foods that could actually be reaching habit on your gut microbiome and the wall of your gut, especially if it's soothed in large amounts. So let's get started. First up, artificial sweeteners. Almost all products with a label reading sugar free or light contain artificial sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, sucralose, which are practically poisoned. You know them by brand names like Sweet and Low, Equal and Splendid. The problem is that these sweeteners actually kill gut bacteria. A Duke University study in 2007 showed that one packet of Splendid that is Super Lows can kill about 50% of your gut bacteria. One packet. This can lead to incredibly bad things happening to you and your gut microbiome every time you do it. I did an experiment showing exactly how it works. You can actually check it out right here on my YouTube page. When you kill off good bacteria, you populate your gut with more and more gang members or bad bacteria. These guys actually hijack your brain and your taste buds and actually make you look for high calorie, high sugar, high fat foods. And the remarkably weird thing about these bad bacteria is they actually extract more calories from the food you eat and deliver it directly to you what you want. And what we talk about is you want gut bacteria that actually extract the food that you eat for themselves so that you can actually eat more food and actually lose weight. That sounds pretty good. So when you're looking for sweet, look for healthy sugar substitutes like allulose, which is my favorite non GMO values and monk fruit. If you want to use stevia, that's fine. But again, allulose is now my new favorite. More and more products using erythritol are safe, but use it a small amount. A lot of my patients, erythritol really gives them some GI upsets. And while it used to be one of the better ones, there's so much better ones on the market now, like allulose. One stereo towards that.
- [04:46]
All right.
- [04:46]
Popular oils like corn and peanut oil. Now, I know you may not be buying these bottles of oils at the grocery store anymore, hopefully not. But the truth is if you buy packaged food or takeout, you're still consuming them in huge amounts. Almost all restaurants use these industrial extracted oils because number one, they're cheap. A lot of them have a low frying heat, smoke temperature. That means they won't smoke up the room when you're frying. And you can use them over and over again even though they accumulate harmful compounds. But the problem with These are, number one, they are primarily short chain omega 3 fatty acids, which, although essential, omega 6 fatty acids are essential. We've been bombarded in our food system with more and more and more omega 6 fats and it's balance between omega 3 fats, omega 6 fats that really make a difference. Way back when, we actually had a pretty good balance between omega 3 fats and omega 6 fats. Now in the old days, we used to have a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. Now in America, we have about 30 to 1 ratio between omega 6 fats and omega ones. No wonder we have so much more inflammation. Other problem with these oils is that they contain lectins. And lectins, as you know, are one of the best ways to cause a leaky gut. Now, leaky gut is exactly what it sounds like. Normally you have a closed intestinal barrier between everything you swallow on one side and you on the other. 80% of all your immune cells, your white blood cells, live against your gut because this is where trouble could come through with leaky gut, the seal between the various cells that mine gut is broken and work from Alessio Fasano, who's now at Harvard, has shown that leptins, including gluten, which is a lectin, are one of the main causes of leaky gut. So banish these seed oils from your diet. Just remember, almost every time you're getting something that's been prepared, packaged or from a fast food restaurant, it's going to be containing these no, no Hoids.
- [07:35]
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- [08:50]
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- [09:30]
Dr. Steven Gundry
What are the best oils? Well, quite frankly, olive oil is still the lowest oxidizable oil for cooking. Yes, olive oil has a low smoke point, but smoke has nothing to do with oxidation. So you're still better off with olive, avocado oil, sesame oil, and one of my favorites, perilla oil. Perilla oil is the preferred cooking oil in Korea and China. It has a very high smoke point and has a lot of really interesting antioxidant compounds. But please stay away from the industrial seed oils and really be careful about your fast food purchases. So read labels carefully. If you see corn oil, peanut oil, condensed oil, those are the oils to run away from. Soybean oil, partially defatted soybean oil. In general, skip the oils, particularly in restaurants. How about oats? Well, sorry. Oats are lectin bombs. Oats contain a protein that cross reacts with gluten, which means even if the oat package says gluten free, that doesn't mean that your immune system doesn't recognize oats as a foreign substance. So oats are mischievous. As my oldest daughter, who's a horse woman, likes to remind me, dad, oats are good for one thing, and that's for fattening horses for winter. And I assure you, you and I are not horses, and we certainly don't need to fatten for winter. And yes, this includes healthy oat milk, oatmeal, and oat flour. Not to mention, almost all of our oats in the United States are sprayed with Roundup glyphosate. And multiple studies documented that almost all oat products sold in the United States, including healthy oat bars, including healthy oat cereal, and even several organic oat products, have glyphosate in them. As you know, if you want to destroy the wall of your gut and kill your gut bacteria, glyphosate is the way to do it. So oats, even if it says organic, organic gluten free, are absolutely a no no because of the cross reaction from the protein in oats with gluten. So all of you folks eating your gluten free oats thinking you're safe in terms of celiac disease and leaky gut, I got news for you. We see this all the time in our office. When we look at people who are eating a healthy oat diet and they've got dramatic leaky gut. All right, fourth item.
- [12:43]
Animal protein.
- [12:45]
Yeah. Truth is, carnivores live shorter lives. There has not been a society ever discovered that eats a high protein diet that has exceptional longevity. I'm sorry, I've looked for it. I've asked my carnivore diet guess to find me one.
- [13:09]
There aren't any.
- [13:11]
In fact, the blue zones, those areas of the world with the longest longevity and health spans, including Loma Linda, California where I was a professor for half my career. All of these areas. One of the universal truths is that there's very limited animal protein eaten in any of these areas. Animal protein stimulates insulin like growth factor which ages us rapidly. Plus unfortunately beef, lamb and pork contain a sugar molecule called Neu5GC which has been shown to cause autoimmune attack on our blood vessels and has also been associated with tumor growth. So lastly, most animals that we eat in the United States are fed corn and soybeans and other leptins. So you are what you eat, but you are with the thing you're eating ate. So if you want to get yourself a double dose trouble, eat animal protein that's been fed corn and soybeans like most are in the United States. And you got multiple reasons why you really want to cut down on animal protein if you've got to eat it. Look for pasture, raised poultry or 100% grass finished grass fed beef. Look for the word grass finished. There's no labeling law that requires how long you have to feed a cow grass before you can actually call it grass fed. So buyer beware.
- [15:01]
Now it's time for the Question of the Week. A question comes from Ellicramer S7G over on YouTube. On my episode about how to take your supplements, she asked Dr. Gundry, you mentioned people with APOE4 genes should not have coconut oil. I have dairy allergies and I use coconut milk. Does coconut milk have the same effect as coconut oil? Well, that's a great question. It turns out that coconut milk certainly has far less of the saturated fats of coconut oil. But there is some My personal preference, people with the APOE4 gene is to use other forms of fake milk like hazelnut or pistachio milk. But remember, always buy the unsweetened variety. But if coconut milk is your thing, it's not as bad as coconut oil. One last thing, mct oils, which in generally come from coconut oil, are actually quite safe and beneficial for Apoe 4s. Thanks for the question. Now it's time for the review of the week. A review from over on my Spanish channel, Dr. Gundry en Espanol. On my episode about taking melatonin, they commented in Spanish, but we've translated it into English. Thank you so much Dr. Gundry. I saw one of your videos where you explained the benefits of pistachios and now I'm adding them to my diet. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your great contributions, they have benefited me greatly. Blessings and greetings from Mexico. Well, thank you very much. We introduced the Spanish channel because regardless of the language we speak, we all want to have good health. And since so many of my patients are Spanish speaking, or at least of Spanish, Mexican and South American origin, I really want everyone to benefit from the knowledge I've learned from my patients. So thanks for writing. We'll keep it up.
- [17:17]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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, our 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.
- [17:40]
Dr. Steven Gundry
Did you know people with gum disease are up to two to three times more likely to have heart attack or stroke? It's one of the clearest examples of something called the mouth body connection, the idea that what happening in your mouth can impact your entire body. As you've heard discussed at length here on the podcast, you see, the health of your oral microbiome is as important as the health of your gut microbiome. Poor oral health has even been linked to serious conditions like heart disease, diabetes and even Alzheimer's. Which means taking care of your teeth and gums isn't just about having a pearly white smile, it's about your long term health. That's why I like what Smile Generation is doing. They connect you with trusted dentists who take a more complete whole body approach to to care because real confidence starts when your health isn't holding you back. To learn more about the connection between oral health and Overall Health, visit smilegeneration.com gundry that's smilegeneration.com G U N D R Y to learn more and find a trusted provider near you.
- [18:48]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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