Transcription
It turns out that plants and animals are constantly at war. They use biologic warfare to convince their predator that it wouldn't be a good idea to eat them. Now, we, on the other hand, had an amazing defense that we had built up against these plant compounds. We had an amazing diverse gut microbiome that loves to eat anything that came down the pipe. If you take what I said about a few plants to the extreme, that no plant wants to be eaten, then the answer is: ulate.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Breau, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. Um, today I have one of the OG's, in my opinion, of the space. Um, someone that I've actually been uh following for a number of years. I actually am a big fan of his products. I put my clients on his products. I'm personally on some of his products. So today is going to be a real treat. Um, he is a distinguished cardiologist, a medical researcher, a New York Times bestselling author. He read a book that brought um my attention to him years ago, 20 in 2017 or 2018, called *The Plant Paradox*, which was an eye-opening book for me on my biohacking journey. So I'm really excited to have you on the podcast today. So welcome, Dr. Steven Gundry.
Well, thanks for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
I'm delighted to have you here. Um, and uh, you know, I I really feel we I talk about this on my podcast all the time. Um, the majority of my guests, and I think you're no exception to this rule, um uh fit my father's definition of life. My dad was a salty old Navy Captain. He had a very simple definition for life, and he said, "Life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else." And um, I feel like knowing a little bit about your story, and I'd love for you to tell your story, that you were on your way to doing something else and you kind of bang, bang, a U-turn, if you will, and um, and I also feel that some of the most impactful people in the world that are that are making a real difference, full of purpose and passion, are those people that solve the problem in their life. Maybe it was overcoming addiction, maybe it was weight loss, maybe it was chronic disease or Lyme, or what have you, and that became their purpose and their passion, their their mission in life. And what was that moment for you on your journey?
Well, um, you know, I I have to keep crediting this crazy guy from Miami, Florida, who I call Big Ed. I'm from Miami, Florida. I was take the credit and who unfortunately changed my life, luckily for the better long term, but I was U you mentioned I I was a very famous heart surgeon. Um, one of the things that made me famous, there there's a bunch of us, we'd will be willing to take on any case, no matter how difficult. Fourth time redo, piece of cake, you know. Um, you know, three valves and four coronaries. Yeah, okay. The really risky stuff. Yeah, the good stuff, right? The Blue Plate special, as we used to call them. And what there are people who get a diagnosis of inoperable coronary artery disease, and that basically means you got so much crud in all your coronary arteries that you can't put stents in them uh because it's too clogged up. You can't do bypasses because everything's clogged up. Where are you going to put a bypass to, right? And and these people exist. So these people would have a number of centers that they'd head to, and there was a we all knew each other, and you know, "Oh, I'm going to New York, and I'm going to Mayo, and I'm going to Texas Heart, and I'm going to Stanford," and then usually the last stop was me at Loma Linda, California, Loma Linda University. We all knew each other. We're all good friends. And so the guy who I call Big Ed was a 48-year-old guy from Miami, Florida, who big guy, hence the name Big Ed. Yeah, uh, who had inoperable coronary artery disease. And Big Ed started on the circuit and would go all to all these centers, and he'd take his angiogram, the movie of his heart, mhm, uh, around, and everybody look at him and say, "Uh, not touching this." Yeah, nothing I could do. You know, "I'd love to help you, but I can't." This guy spent six months doing this, going to these centers, and I was the last stop. And I looked at his angiogram and I said, "You know, I gotta agree with everybody else. I got to agreeing with my buddies. There's there's nothing I can do for you either." He says, "Well, look, here's what's been going on. I've been on a diet for the last six months, and I've lost 45 pounds." Now, this's a big, still a big guy. He weighed 265 when I met him, so he was 300 um before. And he said, "I went to a health food store, and I've been taking all these supplements," and he literally brings in a has a big shopping bag, right, and he says, "You know, maybe maybe I did something in here." And you know, I'm scratching my professor beard and going, "Well, you know, good for you for losing weight, but that's really not going to do anything." And I know what you did with all those supplements: you made expensive urine. You've wasted your money.
Expensive urine, which I firmly believe. Yeah.
And he said, "Well, gee, I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram? A new cardiac catheterization?" Rolling my eyes. And yeah, okay. "Don't get your hopes up." So the next day we get a new angiogram, and 50% of the blockages are now gone in his heart in six months' time. 50% of blockages gone. And these are O.S.C. conclusions, correct.
Wow.
Yeah. And and never seen anything like it. Now I said, "Great news. Um, there are places I can do a bypass on you." So I did a five-vessel bypass on him, and you know, if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? Now, if I had known what I know now, I would have not even done the bypass. I would have said, "Hey, let's keep going." You know, "Good for you." Yes. But I didn't know that. So after we're done, I'm going, "Tell me about this diet of yours," and you, "What were you doing?" And so he starts elaborating, and just almost with serendipity, I went to Yale as an undergraduate back in the Dark Ages, and back in those days we could design our own major where we could work with a few professors, and we'd have to do a master's thesis and defend our thesis, and I was selected to do that, and my thesis was you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, manipulate its environment, and prove you'd derive at a human being.
Wow.
Yeah. And believe it or not, I wrote my thesis and I defended my thesis, got an honors, right, and gave it to my parents and went off to become a famous heart surgeon. So Big Ed's telling me about this diet, and I'm going, "Son of a gun, that's my thesis from Yale!" No. Yeah. I said, "Son of a gun, how did you, you know, how'd you figure out to do that? You know, that's an that's the ancient human diet." Yeah. And then I said, "Let me look at those supplements." Going through one of the things that made me a famous heart surgeon is I had designed a way to protect the heart during heart transplant, during bypass surgery, by putting some all sorts of ingredients down the veins and arteries of the heart to protect it. Mh. And I'm looking through his bag of supplements, and a lot of the ingredients I'm dissolving in a solution and putting down the veins and arteries of the heart to protect it, he's swallowing the same ingredients.
Wow.
And it never occurred to me to swallow the dumb things. Yeah. Now, why is that poignant? Because even though I was at the top of my game, a famous heart surgeon, blah, blah, blah, I was 70 lbs overweight, despite running 30 miles a week, going to the gym one hour every day, wow, eating a healthy low-fat diet. I had migraine headaches when I did baby heart transplants. I had arthritis so bad I had to wear braces on my knees. Uh, I had high cholesterol, pre-diabetes, and high blood pressure, and I was told it was normal because I was now approaching 50, and my father was much the same way. And it's genetic. Here we go. Here we go. That's my favorite. Yeah. "It's genetic." So um, after meeting Big Ed, I said, "Son of God, I've seen something that I would have never seen," and he's using what I described in Yale. I called up my folks and I said, "Hey, do you have my thesis?" And they, "Oh, yeah, you know, it's in the shrine next to, right, Eternal Flame." I said, "Well, send it up to me." The chisel and the hammer. Yeah. So I started, I put myself on my program, and I started taking a bunch of supplements that I was putting down the veins and arteries of the heart, and I lost 50 pounds my first year. You say, "Put yourself on your program." What what did it entail? Basically, I changed the food I ate. I stopped eating what I was told was healthy food. I stopped eating low fat. I stopped eating healthy grains. I stopped eating a lot of fruit that I was told was very healthy. And for instance, my LDL cholesterol when I started was about 170. My HDL was 32, ridiculously low. I was assured it was genetic and couldn't help it, 'cause your father was the same way. Yeah. My triglycerides were, yeah, were 170. 150 was quote normal, and nothing you can do about it. Take take a statin. Um, so imagine my shock when three months later my LDL cholesterol, which had been 170, went down to 70. My HDL, which was 32, went to 80.
Wow.
And my triglycerides, which had been 170, went to 30.
Wow.
I had the exact same genetics. I just changed the information that I gave my cells. What time of year it was basically, right? And that's what I mean. Just in three months. And my my my migraine headaches disappeared. My arthritis disappeared.
Wow.
My hypertension disappeared. And so with that, when I operated on patients, the next thing I did was…
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Hey, and now that you got new plumbing, I I don't want to see you back again, 'cause I was famous for reoperating on people, 'cause you'd fog them up every five to seven years, and we'll see in five and seven years, we'll go under the hood again, right? So I said, "I want to keep you away from me from now on," and here's here's what I want you to try. And I'll never forget one of the first patients, uh, few weeks after we sent him home, they said, "Hey, you know, my uh my blood pressure is really low. Um, what kind of supplement are you giving that is lowering my blood pressure?" And I look at my nurse practitioner, I go, "I don't think there's anything that's doing that. You know, get in here." Mh. So their blood pressure be really low, and most of these people we send home on two, three BP meds. Yeah, we I go, "Well, let's let's stop one of those," and you know, the next thing a couple weeks later, "Well, my blood pressure is really low again. Are you sure it's not one of these supplements?" Get back in here. Well, we'd start thr these meds. Yeah.
Wow.
And person after person, person would call up and say, "You're not going to believe this, but you know, um, I don't have hip pain anymore," and I I know that's not your thing, but isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
And I'd go, "Yeah, that's really interesting, 'cause I don't have knee pain anymore," right? And and and so it went. So after a year of this at Loma Linda, on a Friday morning, I'll never forget, I was looking in the mirror before going to work, and I made a bad decision. I said, "You know, I've got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people and then teach them how to eat to avoid me in the future. I should teach them how to eat first, and I'll never have to operate on them in the first place." Now that's a really bad career move for for a heart surgeon.
It really is.
It really is. My life, like, she good heart, but bad uh judgment.
Bad business judgment.
Yeah, as my wife liked to remind me for many years. M. So in this crazy leap of faith, I resigned my position at the height of my career and set up a clinic in Palm Springs, which is just down the road from Loma Linda, and I asked people, "Look, I'm going to take insurance. I want you to eat certain foods. Don't eat certain foods. I'm going to send you to a health food store, Costco, Trader Joe's. I want you to buy some supplements. We're going to test your blood every three months. Um, what do you say?" And that's actually how it started. And then we could see in people's blood work, all these, not only they felt it, but we can see it on the blood work. Yeah. You know, we we were talking beforehand, and um, I tried to be very transparent with with my journey and my labs. Very often I'll post my labs to Instagram. We were talking before for the podcast that um I've got, you know, my cholesterol panel, um LDL cholesterol's around 109, uh my HDL cholesterol is north of uh 80, my VLDL is below 10, I think was seven on my last exam, and my triglycerides around 45. Um, so for me, that's a textbook perfect panel. Um, but I have the lipoprotein(a) and externally when I look at my diet, my lifestyle, red light therapy, um, you know, adequate sleep, stress management, exercise, I I schedule travel and meetings around sleep and exercise. I shouldn't have, in my opinion, elevated lipoprotein(a), right, which is a cardiac uh risk marker. Um, it's probably the most important cardiac risk marker. Now, why was it not given the attention it needed? Because up until a few years ago there was no drug available to lower Lp(a). There was a supplement available to lower Lp(a), but you told me about there aren't cute little drug reps coming into the office telling you about a supplement that's essentially free, whereas there's some pretty powerful drugs. And I saw actually as a surgeon that many of my patients with impressive coronary disease carried Lp(a). And the traditional wisdom was, "Well, there's nothing you can do about that. So lower LDL as much as possible," right? And what I saw was, and I've written about this, the more statins that we gave you, mh, yes, your LDL went down, but your Lp(a) went up. And invariably the people who would fail uh statin therapy to keep them from getting new stents or new bypass or new heart attack, their Lp(a) was the actual troublemaker, and we were actually making it worse rather than better by giving people statin drugs, right? I'm sure that if I went to a traditional cardiologist or primary care, they'd say, "Get on a statin right away." LDL of 109, lower rides, and HDL, there's no way I would even consider consider it. Um, but you recommended a supplement for me, um, which I'm I'm going to take and start to track some progress. Um, but one of the things you talked about was slow-release niacin. Yeah. Um, that's uh amazing because that's back to your original theory of, you know, supplements that can actually have a profound effect on our physiologic outcomes. And one of my big mantras is that we're usually not as diseased or pathological as we think we are. Very often we're nutrient deficient. Um, and very often when you put the right nutrients back into the human body, really profound things happen. Um, one of the reasons why I'm a believer in your BioComplete 3, um, because uh I believe that pre-, pro-, and postbiotics have profound impacts on the gut microbiome, and the gut microbiome is yeah, I think now the you know, you're being vindicated because the you know, the real science is really beginning to catch up to the gut-brain connection and Dr. Pear's work and some of your work. Um, and I think it's just astounding to me how a lot of modern medicine thinks that the head and the brain is sort of separate over here, and the body is over here, and you could be diseased in the body, be fine in the mind; you could have conditions of the mind and be fine in the in the body. And obviously, nothing is further from the truth. Um, so this uh so let me take you back to 2017, 2018, when you wrote the book *The Plant Paradox*, um, because that yeah, was it 2017? Um, uh this is when I first really started to follow your work, and you were talking about lectins, and you peanuts weren't even peanuts, their seeds, they legumes, and I really started to go down the rabbit hole of that. I think you were actually maybe working with Tom Brady at the time. Um, uh, and um it made so much sense to me. And since that time, um you still feel that you you have the same view towards certain plants um and certain food sources. You have your must avoids and your must haves, and talk a little bit about how that's evolved for you.
Yeah. I think one of the things that maybe I got criticism for was, "Well, goodness sakes, plants have had these anti-animal compounds since the beginning of of time, and if it was that big a problem, then why is it just now becoming such a problem? You you made this up, didn't you?" Right. Well, no, I saw a lot of those criticisms. Yeah. U it turns out that plants and animals are constantly at war. Um, plants were here first. Um, they do not want to be eaten, and they don't want their babies eaten, except in certain circumstances. And they use biologic warfare to convince their predator that it wouldn't be a good idea to eat them, by either stunning their growth, making them infertile, making them hurt. That's usually the main driving factor. Mh. Now, we, on the other hand, had an amazing defense that we had built up against these plant compounds, in terms of acid in our stomach, for instance. Uh, acid breaks down proteins. Lectins are proteins, right? Um, we had an amazing diverse gut microbiome that loves to eat anything that came down the pike. They're actually bacteria that love to eat gluten, for instance, right? There are bacteria that love oxalic acid, oxalates. They love them, right? But as I pointed out with the seven deadly disruptors, guess what? Everything's changed in approximately the last 50 years, where broad-spectrum antibiotics were introduced, which I remember when they were introduced in the mid-70s, they were miraculous because we no longer had to get blood cultures and cultures and find out what bacteria was growing and test antibiotics. Just blast everything. Just blast everything. Yeah. And you know, I mean, it was miraculous. Um, we had no idea that yeah, we were killing the bad guy, but we were wiping out our entire intestinal microbiome. Mh. So now, rather than you know, the the offensive front for protecting Tom Brady, those guys are all injured. We've gone through the second string. We've gone through the third string, and now the water boy is now trying to protect Tom Brady, and he's getting slammed. So what was true really about 50 years ago, not to mention glyphosate, not to mention proton pump inhibitors, we we no longer have of this defense system. And that's number one. Number two, the thing we didn't realize was that this defense system, our microbiome, I call them the gut buddies, have to have certain foods to eat to not only foster their themselves, but like we mentioned before, feed us, and feed us in the wall of our gut and our brain, our heart, all these really important compounds. And in the last 50 years, we've completely voided most of the food we eat of these compounds. So it's not so much that the foods are processed or ultra-processed, but in the process of processing, we've taken away all the stuff that used to be there with every bite. You know, our our great-great-grandparents, as I like to say, not only ate whole food, which they did, yeah, but they ate their food whole. Um, then there's a huge difference between that and one of the rather hilarious things that was advertised for Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Kellogg's Corn Flakes was actually advertised as the world's first pre-digested food.
No.
Yes, really. Because what do you mean by pre-digested food? All the work of digestion was done for you by the Kellogg's Corn Flakes company. So you no longer had to do any work. That's so nice. Isn't that nice? So nice. And they didn't bother to mention that there was now absolutely nothing to eat for the other, probably the most important part of you, is that 100 trillion bacteria, right, that now are starving to death every day. H. And so this so it's a one-two punch. Yeah. And and so the um you know, the *Plant Paradox*, I think, exposed a lot of truths about um plants, but you also don't think that all plants are poisoning us.
No.
Um, by any by any stretch. Some people uh want to credit me as the father of the carnivore diet, because if you take what I said about a few plants to the extreme, that no plant wants to be eaten, right, uh then the answer is don't eat plants, right? And I've been accused of being not the father of the carnivore, never ever seen you say, "Don't eat all plants." No. Um, I I'm a plant predator. Yeah. You just got to know shades and yeah, you just got to know who's your friends and who aren't your friends. Or what cultures always did is they detoxified them, usually with fermentation. Yeah. Um, one of the years ago I was reading a book um about the Incas, who of course ate quinoa, mh, but little did I know that and everybody said, "Well, quinoa is good for you. Look, Incas, they're great," right? Little did I know that they actually fermented their quinoa. They let it rot, and then they cooked it. And it's not on the package directions, right? Right. You know, I get I get a lot of my uh almost all of my vegetables from uh an Amish farm, and they do a lot of fermenting of uh their veggies. Oh, I get our um raw goat milk, um raw buffalo milk. In fact, if you've never had a raw buffalo milk latte, you haven't lived. It's delicious. Um, but I've noticed that you know, even in our two teenagers, um eating a what I think some people would consider a substantive amount of dairy, kefir, um uh kefir vegetables, um raw yogurts, raw cheeses, grass-fed meats, their skin actually really cleared up going through the teenage years with the you know, with with their sebaceous acne that that they had, um, which would be the opposite of what you would think they would say, "Avoid dairy, avoid gluten," um, you know, all all these things, and uh avoid saturated uh fats, and and you know, that's the miracle card, skin, and maybe maybe get on Accutane, and um and we were able to do it with largely, I would say, leaning towards a carnivore diet. We do eat um veggies and steamed veggies, but uh we get it all from this Amish farm, and it's just amazing. A lot of it is kefir, um fermented veggies. But so in broad strokes, um who are our friends and who are our foes in the in the plant? Well, one of the things um hardening back to my research at Yale was um we were plant predators. Uh, great, we're we're great apes. Uh, we inherited a very interesting mutation from great apes that allowed great apes to actually take over the world during climate change about 14 million years ago. They had a genetic mutation that they could they lacked an enzyme called uricase, which breaks down uric acid into a harmless substance. Why is that so interesting? It turns out that I've about we fruit, fruit is actually fructose, primarily the primary sugar, and fructose and fruit is fructose. Fructose is a toxin that's taken from the gut directly into the liver. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Doesn't isn't absorbed into the bloodstream. Why? In the liver, fructose is converted to two things: one, triglycerides; number two, to uric acid. Uric acid is a really good way to raise blood pressure, and it's a really good way to increase…
Insulin levels right; it allowed great apes to take less available fruit in the forest and store fat for the winter, for the lean times. The rest of the monkeys couldn't, and that's actually why great apes extended across the globe. That's why there's orangutangs in Asia, etc. Okay, they were able to outcompete other monkeys. We inherited that mutation, which means we could outcompete during fruit season and store fat for the winter—wow—that other animals couldn't. And that's why we unfortunately took over the world.
Now, it was for years it was called the Thrifty Gene. It wasn't the Thrifty Gene; it was this genetic mutation that great apes had for fructose, for fructose. One of the problems that I see now is we—even great apes—only gain weight during fruit season. The average, right, the average great ape gains about eight pounds during fruit season. Fruit season only happens once a year, even in the jungle, and it only happened for our ancestors once a year in the summer and the early fall. Now we have 365 days of Endless Summer; it's always fruit season. So one of the things that drives us is this storage of fat for the winter. But the other thing that I learned was that we never encountered a grain or a bean until the Agricultural Revolution of 10 to 12,000 years ago. Never. Why? Because they were toxic until we learned how to cook them. Right? If you look at that Civilization from hunter-gatherers to the agricultural within 2,000 years, we shrunk a foot. Most—yeah—most of us were about 6 feet tall 12,000 years ago, and we shrunk—wow—that much from lectin.
Wow, yeah. And these are brand new compounds that we didn't have a defense system against. And what lectin cause—I mean, there are like little spikes that kind of get stuck in our gut. Yeah, I think the easiest way to think of them are these little spikes. That's more complex than that. The method of how they worked was worked out by a professor who's now at Harvard, a pediatric gastroenterologist by the name of Alessio Fizzano. And he's a really funny guy. Anyhow, um, I've been on a couple of panels with him, but he figured out that gluten, which happens to be a lectin, mhm, is a is a protein that's trying to attach to a sugar molecule on the surface of our intestines. Okay. Now, inside the luminal wall of inside the luminum wall and our intestines are the same surface area as a tennis court. So when we're watching Wimbledon in a couple of weeks, m, there's a tennis court in you and me. Mhm. We have a bad design; that tennis court is only lined with one cell thickness of cells, right, so that everything we swallow and all the bacteria that live in us is separated from the rest of us by only one cell.
Wow. Now, those cells are glued together with what are called tight junctions. And I use the example: we all played a game as a kid called Red Rover Red Rover, where we all locked arms and you came running across it. It's too dangerous now. It's not all—yeah—oh yeah, it's terrible; terrible, just like riding your bikes; two days, somebody's going to get hurt. Yeah, so we're all kind of stuck together. So what he found was that if a lectin can attach to the sugar molecule lining your gut, mh, and it used to be very hard cuz there was all this defense against getting there, right, but now it's wide open cuz you had all of this microbiome exact, and you got all this mucus, you've got all this acid in your stomach, which is now gone because we're all taking antacids. Right, don't get us started. If it can attach, it makes a compound called zonulin. And there won't be a test, we promise. No, this is right up my alley. Zonulin then breaks that tight junction; it literally cuts it. So now you've got a gap, right? Now, through that gap, lectin, which are foreign particles, can leak through; bacteria can leak through; and even undigested food particles can leak through. Now, what's really a great design is we knew this was going to happen, so that 80% immune system, 80% of our immune system is sitting right behind that wall because that's where the action's going to come. Right? Now, if this happens every so often and we know it always does, the immune system says, oh, you know, these are foreign; I'm going to attack them; I'm going to cause inflammation, and we're going to destroy these guys, but I'm also going to have a picture; I'm going to take a photo of what these guys look like, right? I'm going to look at their barcode. All of these we recognize from reading a barcode, and our immune system literally has barcode scanners. So they put in place memory, so if I ever see this guy again, I'm going to be writing memory T-cells, waiting—yeah—just right, just waiting.
And now what's happened is this was a once-in-a-while, every so often occurrence. Now our complete defensive system is gone. Now these harmless plant compounds of hundreds of years ago now have a direct access to where they want to get. Now we're breaking those bonds every day, and now our immune system is on high alert every day, 24 hours a day. And how do they send alert out to the brain, the heart, wherever? It's inflammation; inflammatory cytokines. So now we have chronic inflammation because this is happening every day. And how do we measure this? Would this be like, um, elevated levels of CPK? C-reactive proteins? C-reactive protein is one of the easiest ways; fibrinogen is another way. Um, there are better tests that we use. I actually measure IL-6, IL-16, IL-10, um, tumor necrosis factor alpha. Right, and early when I was doing this 20-odd years ago, lo and behold, all these—and that was before we could actually measure leaky gut; we can measure it easily now—all these people with, for instance, autoimmune diseases or arthritis or heart disease had these elevated markers of inflammation. And you go, son of a gun! In fact, we were talking about dentists; one of one of the first papers that I wrote, um, on heart disease prevention, mhm, was I took a bunch of people with an elevated C-reactive protein, mh, half of them I made them floss every other day, mhm, and the other half I didn't make them floss. Now, why every other day? Uh, I hate to floss; my my wife flosses twice a day; she's a nut. Okay, I could bring myself to floss every other day, so I kind of designed it for me. Lo and behold, the people who we got to floss every other day dramatically dropped their C-reactive protein, really, really. In fact, I was honored by the American Dental, biologic dentist Association. I just had biology dentist on right before you for my cont—this was 15 years ago—and you know, little did I know back then that the same thing that was happening in leaky gut was happening in leaky mouth. And yeah, so and we find some of the same bacterial flora that are causing tooth decay and that are causing cardiovascular disease.
Correct. Um, and you would agree that the oral cavity and cardiovascular health are linked. Absolutely. Yeah, um, because I think there's a school of thought that there's no linkage between them. In fact, I did a uh podcast with um a biologic dentist that I think had miraculously changed my life and my wife's life and and both of my daughters, um, and it got censored all over social media; it got checked by the fact-checkers, and uh, they flagged that was over; it was that the oral cavity has no connection to other areas of the body. It does; it's not it's not connected to the heart, to liver, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, or other areas of the body, and therefore pathology in the mouth doesn't lead to pathology elsewhere in the body. You would stely disagree with that. Oh, yeah. We used to take plaque out of coronary arteries when we operated on them and found all these cute little Ora Flora bugs in the plaque. One of the I think things that convinces a lot of my patients that we probably should be paying attention to the mouth—uh, people get coronary calcium scores all the time, right? Personally, I think they're a waste of money and waste of time, but we won't go down that road today. Right, there are really only two things that are capable of producing calcification: number one is uh bone cells, osteo uh blast that make bone, right; they can calcify things, right; number two is bacteria in your mouth are really good at producing biofilms with calcium in it. In fact, plaque is a biofilm of a bacteria that has calcium in it. And isn't it interesting that the only other place that we see calcium is in coronary arteries? And there was only one paper that really my attention looking at this was they took people with coronary artery calcification; one group was given a low dose antibiotic for six months, tetracycline, which is very effective against oral bacteria. Okay, the other group didn't. Lo and behold, the coronary calcium score went down, went down, down in the antibiotic group. Wow, which you know, association does not prove cause a right, but my patients go, well, yeah, wait a minute, I got I get plaque in my teeth, and you're right; they have to chip it away. Yeah, and I said, and yeah, and we can see chips of calcium on your coronary arteries; maybe I could convince you that pay a little more attention to your mouth as well as your gut. Right, so what—so what testing do you recommend that people get to really look at heart health and you know, how do they take the next step forward? Because I think there's a lot of confusing—you know, I came from the mortality space where we actually studied um trends in mortality; we had very specific data, day, date, time, location, and cause of death for hundreds of millions of lives, and we would triangulate that back into the record. One thing that we did not use were randomized clinical trials, were placebo-control randomized clinical trials; we used data; we used the big data. We knew, for example, that um there was not a correlation that we saw between elevated LDL cholesterol and um cardiovascular disease. So simply having elevated level of LDL cholesterol would not cause us to table rate your life insurance policy nor to reduce your life expectancy because the data didn't support it. And I'm going true more than 10 or 15 years.
Thank you for saying that because um I get a lot of flack for that, but I said we just used data, right? And wasn't we also knew that we saw downstream consequences, um, presumably from cell walls, cell membranes, reduction in vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, and and significant hormonal issues in patients that were put on heavy statin therapy, um, so even though the statin drug studies would say LDL high, cardiovascular risk high, push LDL down, cardiovascular risk down, we would see the downstream consequences because we had data, day, date, time, location, cause of death, and um, and I think that a lot of people like yourself, um, which are in my opinion a little ahead of your time, um, are going to be vindicated, um, in a way because big data is going to circumvent the system and prove that this one randomized clinical trial done in isolation, extrapolated out to the mass of population was, you know, actually wrong. We realized 10, 15 years down the road we made a mistake, sort of like the broad-spectrum antibiotic. You want to transform your overall health and connect with me directly, then you need to visit theultimatehuman.com. On the site, you can ask me your most pressing questions, suggest podcast guests and topics you'd like to hear more about, and sign up for my completely free newsletter. In the newsletter, I share valuable insights on living a healthier, happier, and longer life free from harmful chemicals. While you're there, you can also pre-order my book and find the genetic tests I frequently discuss. If you're curious about products I use for a clean, healthy lifestyle, you'll find all of my recommendations from toothpaste to household cleaners. So head over to theultimatehuman.com; your journey to better health starts here and now. Let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Yeah, well, a lot of these drug trials, and again, most research unfortunately in the United States now is driven by drug companies. Uh, I had the pleasure of being trained at the NIH, and back in the good old days, the NIH were was really the major grant granters of of research; now it's just a pittance compared to drug companies. And I'll never forget—um, and I won't mention names—but we would do experiments, um, and one of my colleagues had an experiment that didn't reach statistical significance, and our boss—then we had an entire wing of statisticians at the NIH—oh boy, here goes—and our boss, good statistician, he says, you take that up there and you don't come back until you bring me statistical significance. Oh, yeah. And that was a really important part of my education. And so you look, you can you can make something statistically significant as long as you know how, what the question to ask. So so much of the cardiovascular data is based now on relative risk reduction. Yes, relative, relative. Peter Attia talks about this relative risk reduction, and that is just the most bogus way of making an argument of something being statistically significant that you could possibly—and you know, I I've used statistics all my life, and I I know how to manipulate them to get the answer I want, and that's scary that I know how to manipulate statistics to get the answer I want, right? Um, so so they so statistics are not the question is answered wrong. So I'll give you a great example that I would have thought would have been the end of the cholesterol theory of heart disease. And in the last two years—uh, you're right, we try to push LDL cholesterol down and down and down. Right? First of all, there was an association, not strong, but there was an association that lowering LDL cholesterol seemed to mitigate somewhat new heart attacks. Okay, we didn't know at that time, and this was 20-odd years ago, that statins are an anti-inflammatory drug and they actually block what are called toll-like receptors, which is how the immune cells read these sparkos. Right? We didn't know that, so we assumed that was the LDL going down that was the effect of the stattin. Now we know that as the statin drug went up the dose and the LDL went farther and farther, there was more suppression of inflammation on the blood vessel wall. Fast forward a couple of years ago, a drug company said, hey, there's a really powerful anti-inflammatory drug that cheap as anything called colchicine that we use to treat gout from uric acid, and it really good; it just tells your immune system, you know, look the other way, white cells, shut up, but it tears up your gut, and you know, we'll use it; it works great, but people go, right, okay, I'll never get gout again, right? So a drug company says, hey, we could make an ultra-low dose of colchicine and we could patent it because it's a new drug use, yeah, and let's take people on maximal medical therapy on maximal stattin and who've had events, and let's divide them into two groups; one will give this ultra-low dose anti-inflammatory colchicine, and the other one will give a placebo, both on maximal medical therapy. Okay, let's follow them; there's been two studies now; both times there was an additional 30% risk reduction in the low-dose colchicine group versus the maximal medical therapy without colchicine.
Wow, yeah. And then when they looked at, okay, what's the action, lo and behold, it was the CRP coming down, C-reactive protein, that actually caused the effect. And when they finally broke out the data, there was absolutely no correlation to serum LDL level; it was the CRP level. Was—now you would have thought that that would have been big news, right? Only one problem: statin drugs are the biggest money maker of any pharmaceutical drug, no question; someone just never saw the light of day. Low-dose colchicine is pennies. So for—um, we we're we're winding down, but for for for those folks that are listening that haven't been able to follow um your work and just broad um lifestyle recommendations, because I think there's a lot of noise out there in in the marketplace, um, clearly you are a fan of grass-fed, grass-finished meats. Yes, with a proviso. And I I warned in the Plant Paradox seven, almost eight years ago now, that there's a really mischievous sugar molecule fuel in beef, lamb, pork, and milk called Neu5Gc. And we don't make Neu5Gc; we make a very similar sugar molecule called Neu5Ac. Okay, fish and poultry have Neu5Ac, like us; we make vigorous antibodies to Neu5Gc when we eat Neu5Gc. And what's exciting in the new gut check is Neu5Gc can substitute for Neu5Ac in the lining of our blood vessels, in the lining of our joints, in our blood-brain barrier, and our brain abhor Neu5Gc, and cancer cells use Neu5Gc to promote local inflammation, lowering the oxygen tension, and they survive and grow. Right? And that sadly we used to think there was clearly an association with red meat, mh, and dairy and heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and dementia. Right, association does not mean causation, right? But now with the new research that Neu5Gc can substitute for Neu5Ac, right, it's now a causation. Now, here's the good news: the more Neu5Ac food food you eat, you will displace the Neu5Gc. Wow. Number one, the best news is that if you ferment your milk product with kefir or cheeses or traditionally made sausages, the bacteria will eat the Neu5Gc, and there won't be any Neu5Gc in it. So, for instance, prosciutto has no Neu5Gc, wow, even though came from pork. Okay, a traditional sausage has no Neu5Gc. Wow. So you're saying maybe improve, increase your fish um poultry intake, pasture poultry; most of our poultry is—yeah—po—terrible—pasture-raised, you know—um—yeah—and and you know, knock your sock socks off with great charcuterie when you know when you're overseas, or look for the words lactic acid starter culture on any salami or anything like that; you will find producers in the United States that have lactic acids star culture, um, and then what about your grass-fed, grass-finished meats? So use them in moderation. Now, um, I don't know when this will air, but uh a good friend of mine who's won three James Beard awards, Jimmy Schmied, mh, has just gotten us USDA approval for lowered Neu5Gc beef and really hot dogs by the fermentation process. So he takes the meat post-slaughter, correct, from grass-fed, grass-finished animals and ferments it, ferments it, and it's delicious, and it's low in Neu5Gc. So you can have your cake and eat it. And how do they find that producer? What did you say his name was? Uh, it's called JR Ranch. JR Ranch. JR Ranch is about to get flooded. JR, get ready, JR. I mean, he and I have my—bless his heart—he took—community is coming for you in a good way. Yeah, it's delicious; it's really good. Super Lany had best hot and you the hot dogs. Yeah, hot dog. Really? Can you imagine a hot dog that's good for you? Well, I can't—no, I can't—can imagine. I thought good for—wow. And he's got grass-fed, grass-finished meats, and then he has a ferment process that that removes the Neu5Gc. And I'm just forgive me for a moment; don't think I'm familiar with how you ferment meats. And now for vegetables, you actually in—yeah—you introduce bacterial cultures. In fact, amazingly enough, I didn't know this, but he and I have become good friends through the years; he had a a company that sells grass-fed, grass-finished beef, and he wanted me to endorse it, and I said, Jimmy, I can't because of this stupid molecule, and he said, well, you know, why couldn't we get rid of it? I said, well, traditional cultures have always gotten rid of it, and he says, okay, how do I do that? And I said, well, when you're making brw—um—do you—how do you make a brw? He—so that's easy; we put bacterial cultures in in the sausage. And I said, really? He said, oh, yeah; the FDA has to know exactly what we're putting in there; USDA has to know. I said, really? He said, oh, yeah; all traditional sausages are made that way. I said, Jimmy, you've already got the ability; I said, you know, ferment the meat; let's do some tests. And lo and behold, you know, he writes me back about three months later; he says that's it; there's no Neu5Gc. I—bingo—go for it, buddy. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. And so he just got USDA approval. Yeah, that is fantastic. Well, um, JR's getting uh going to get flooded. Um, I know you're tight on time; I really I can't can't even tell you how much I appreciate you giving us your time time today. My audience is going to go crazy over this. Um, where can uh my audience find you, find out more about your work, teachings? How do they get a copy of your book? Where can they find out more about you? Well, the Dr. Gundry podcast uh is on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast from. Yeah, Gundry MD is my supplement and food company; drgundry.com. I've got two YouTube channels; super—if I don't show on in Instagram, if I don't show up uh waving at you when you're surfing the web every day, I've done a very bad job; you haven't done your job. Okay, um, and I wind down every podcast by asking my guest same questions; no right or wrong answer to this question, and that is—um—what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Um, the ability to wake up every day with a new question uh that needs an answer to. Wow. So I'm a huge fan of intellectual curiosity, which I think is what you just identified. So correct, I agree with that. Um, it's fun to be a little kid for your whole life, right? That's why that's why I love the industry that we are both a part of. Well, thank you for your time today, Dr. Gundry. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and uh carving out some time here in London; we're in London, UK, um, and this will air very soon, and poor JR is about to get flooded. As always, guys, thanks; that's just science.