The Gut-Longevity Connection with Dr. Steven Gundry
In this Well Beyond 40 interview, host JJ Virgin talks with cardiologist‑turned‑gut specialist Dr. Steven Gundry about the central role of the gut microbiome in health and longevity. Gundry explains how a leaky gut arises when tight‑junction proteins are disrupted—often by lectins, alcohol, gluten, fructose, or stress—allowing microbes and toxins to trigger immune activation and even a "leaky brain." He outlines blood‑based markers (anti‑zonulin IgG, anti‑actin IgG, anti‑LPS, anti‑blood‑brain‑barrier antibodies) that can indicate barrier breakdown, and notes that most autoimmune, thyroid, skin, mood, and cognitive disorders are linked to gut permeability. Using the C. elegans model, he illustrates how gut‑wall integrity predicts lifespan, and argues that preserving the gut wall is a key longevity strategy. Gundry critiques the simplistic view that taking a probiotic or a single prebiotic fiber will restore a healthy microbiome. He describes the Sonnenberg study where high‑dose inulin alone failed to increase diversity or reduce inflammation, but the combination of inulin with fermented foods (yogurt, kefir) succeeded, highlighting the need for a synergistic “assembly line” of microbes that produce short‑chain fatty acids (SCFAs), especially butyrate. He discusses practical sources of SCFAs—vinegars, low‑sugar kombucha, water kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut—and warns about commercial products that add sugar or pea protein. Supplementation is addressed with a focus on nano‑encapsulated butyrate (BioComplete 3) that delivers butyrate to colonocytes, which derive 80 % of their energy from butyrate; deficiency is linked to dysplasia and colon cancer. He mentions the importance of specific microbes such as Akkermansia muciniphila and the need to feed them the right substrates (polyphenols, resistant starch) to support their growth. Stool testing is presented as a useful but momentary snapshot; biodiversity indices (Simpson’s, Shannon’s) can reveal a lack of SCFA‑producing bacteria, guiding targeted interventions. Gundry then debunks the “Blue Zones” narrative, pointing out data inaccuracies, the role of nicotine use, and the physical activity of hill‑based shepherds in Sardinia, Loma Linda, and Andorra as more plausible longevity factors. Finally, he emphasizes “exercise snacking” and hill work as simple, effective ways to boost health, mentions his upcoming book The Gut‑Brain Paradox, and lists his social media platforms. The conversation blends scientific explanation, clinical anecdotes, practical dietary and lifestyle recommendations, and a skeptical look at popular longevity myths.
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Dr. Stephen Gundry, I think it's third time's a charm here on Well Beyond 40 for you.
I hope so.
Yes. Well, you always have something new and different and sometimes a little controversial to say, which makes it even more fun. I don't know about that with Gut Check though. I'm really excited about this book, digging into the microbiome. Why did a cardiologist decide to write this book?
Well, you know, it's funny. Why do we think about the gut? First of all, believe it or not, to be a heart surgeon and a cardiologist, I had to become a general surgeon first. And back in those days, general surgeons actually were the experts on the gut. We did colonoscopies, we did gastroscopy, blah, blah, blah. Then I said, "Ah, geez, I'm not interested in this. I'm much more interested in the heart. Goodbye." But it's funny, I've become good friends with David Perlmutter and Dale Bredesen. Whenever we get together, we go, "Isn't this weird? Here's a couple of neurologists and a cardiologist and heart surgeon, and all we talk about is the gut." It's like, well, that's because Hippocrates, 2,500 years ago, said all disease begins in the gut. I guess we're just all slow learners, right?
Well, but we're learning now.
Yes.
It is funny. I still remember getting sent a client in LA that literally the doctors there were like, she just needs a cheerleader. I'm like, okay, well, I wouldn't really think of me as a cheerleader here, but okay. And she'd been to doctor after doctor after doctor and had been kid— been probiotic after probiotic after probiotic. Probiotic and they're just making her bloated. I'm like, why don't we stop that? Do an elimination diet and look at like what's going on with your bacteria. I didn't even know yet because it like this, the information about SIBO and all the rest of the stuff, it was like coming out early on. So it just started to come out and it's like, oh, so it's very clear that leaky gut and disrupted gut microbiome can wreak all sorts of havoc. But how exactly Like, I think maybe the best place to start, because I always love to hear how someone describes it, and you always have a way of synthesizing and simplifying things. How would you first describe leaky gut?
So, um, first of all, it's not pseudoscience. If you had asked me 25 years ago when I started in this area, I might have said it's pseudoscience.
I was told it didn't exist when I was talking about it.
No such thing. Yeah, no such thing. In fact, I recently had a supposedly prominent cardiologist tell me that gastroenterologists say that there's no such thing and that the microbiome is not very important in the scheme of things. I mean, this was this year and I went, really?
I did.
Well, and you know, our good friend Mark Hyman has a daughter who's a third-year medical student at a prestigious university. And in her third year, she has yet to have a course on the microbiome.
Wow.
So back to your question. Yeah. So we unfortunately have a design flaw in the wall of our gut. The wall of our gut is somewhere between 1 and 2 tennis courts in surface area. So when everybody's watching the Indian Wells PNB— BNP tennis tournament in a few weeks, I want you to look at that tennis court and then look down in your belly and realize that that surface area is in you. That surface area is only one cell thick, and those cells are held together with what are called tight junctions. Now, Those of us at advanced age, and you're over 40, haha, know a game that we all played called Red Rover, Red Rover, where two lines of kids lined up and we all crossed arms and somebody came running across and tried to break through, blah, blah, blah. So these tight junctions are these cells kind of locked arms. And what we've learned, again, a lot of this is, been done by Alessio Fasano, a pediatric gastroenterologist who's now at Harvard. We know that we can have compounds that are very capable of breaking those tight junctions. Lectins happen to be a favorite of mine. And you now establish gaps between the glue that held these things together. Now, why that's interesting is that on the other side of this one line of cells, about 80% of all of our white blood cells are sitting there. Now, we used to see that as a general surgeon all the time when we were down in the belly. There were all these lymph nodes everywhere. And even when we were inside the intestines, there's all these Peyer's patches of lymph nodes of white blood cells. And we go, oh yeah, they're there. That's interesting. And if we are working on colon cancer, we take some out and see if they're colon cancer cells. But we're going, oh yeah, and they're sitting there. What are all those guys doing there? Well, what all those guys were doing there was if somebody's getting past, then you want, most of your immune system, most of your army to be there intercepting these bad guys. And this happens all the time. Again, it's a design flaw. And if something happens, those guys, you know, clean up the debris, you repair the hole and go on with your life. And believe it or not, our gut microbiome had a big deal in protecting us and teaching the immune system who's a good guy, who's a bad guy. That guy. Now, as in all my books and including Gut Check, now that impenetrable wall is broken open daily. And now instead of once in a few lifetime, everything's coming across the wall of our gut. And now instead of these army just kind of sitting there having a donut and a smoke because they don't see much action, now they're wearing a Kevlar vest They've got two AK-47s and their finger is literally on the trigger because they're always being attacked. And on top of that, because they're always being attacked, they send signals up to the rest of us saying, guess what? The border's been breached. The castle wall's coming down and they're coming for you. We'll try to hold them here, but we probably can't. So be ready to defend yourself elsewhere in the body. How's that?
Very good. That's a memorable way to describe it. You know, there's so many things that can cause this. You talked lectins. I'm also thinking alcohol, fructose, gluten, stress, stress, and stress. But how would someone know? Like, what are some of the signs that you might have a compromised gut barrier? Is there a way to test for it? What do you— how do you know?
Well, certainly you can test for it, and there's simple blood tests that can look for leaky gut. You can look for anti-zonulin IgG, anti-actin IgG, anti-LPS, blah, blah, blah. And we do that all the time with our patients. But simplistically, If you've got an autoimmune disease, I can guarantee you, you have leaky gut. If you have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, you have leaky gut. If you have eczema, you have leaky gut. If you have depression, you have leaky gut. If you have brain fog, you have leaky gut. And I make the argument that if you have leaky gut, you have leaky brain. And we can actually measure leaky brain. We can actually measure attack on the blood-brain barrier and we can measure attack on neurons.
So what are those? What are those tests to measure that?
Well, you get anti-blood-brain barrier antibodies. They're pretty cool. So it can be done.
I mean, the reality is You probably have leaky gut. If you're actively working to improve this, likely living the standard American lifestyle, you probably have leaky gut. That's correct. You know, and all those symptoms are ubiquitous. And so probably have it. What, since this is a longevity podcast, what does that mean in terms of both quality of life and longevity if this is going on?
Great question. One of the things that longevity researchers, we look at, there's a really cool model of longevity based on a little translucent worm called C. elegans. And C. elegans is really cool because it only lives 2 or 3 weeks. And it's really cool because it's translucent, so we can You can literally look right through it. And it's really cool because it has a gut and it has its own microbiome. And just like us, it has only one cell wall of their gut, just like us. So what? Well, it turns out almost every, every compound, every activity eating activity that you test on C. elegans turns out to be reproducible in higher animals all the way up to rhesus monkeys. So that model has stood the test of time. In fact, you know, resveratrol, the miracle polyphenol in red, red wine, one of the first tests was on C. elegans and longevity. But so what? The cool thing about C. elegans is you can watch the wall of its gut, and as long as the wall of the gut is intact, the little guy does just great, and it keeps living and going and blah blah blah. As that wall begins to break down, as you get cracks in the wall, as you get leaky gut, You see all the aging that transpires in us. Worm begins to slow down. The worm begins to not be as interested in food. And the more that wall breaks down, that's the end. And so if that's happening in that little guy that we can watch, anything that we can do To not let that happen in us seems like a good idea.
So there you go. All right. Are you like building a new house behind you or what's going on over there?
Unfortunately, I'm in my office in Santa Barbara and I apologize because there is next door to me construction.
All right. I was like, is he remodeling? What's he doing?
What's he— I'm sorry about that. And I tried my earphones and unfortunately they're, they're not working today and I apologize.
So that's okay. Hey, we got you here. We're thrilled. So, all right. So clearly this is a problem with longevity. I think the big next obvious question is, okay, so we assume that unless you've actually been working to improve this, this is likely an issue for you. And leaky brain often means leaky or leaky gut often means leaky brain as well. Yep. How does one go about fixing this?
Well, that's kind of the whole purpose of the book. It all is not doom and gloom. I like to offer solutions. I still see patients 6 days a week, including Saturdays and Sundays. So what do you do? Well, number one, the— our gut bacteria, our microbiome, unfortunately ought to be this robust tropical rainforest of 100 trillion different bacteria, not to mention fungi and viruses and worms. But most of us, instead of this dense tropical rainforest where all these species are interrelated or dependent on each other, we now have a desert wasteland. It's pretty scary in there. Now, the Sonnenbergs, the husband and wife team at Stanford, are pretty depressed about all this, and they think we'll never have anything but a desert wasteland. I don't think so. I think we can reestablish a tropical rainforest, but I think we're naïve in thinking that— for instance, you just got back I'm from California and we're used to forest fires here, unfortunately. If we burn down a forest and we went and planted little seedlings of pine trees all over the place, we're not gonna have a forest for 20 years. And I think we've been naive to think, okay, we can wipe out our gut with some antibiotics or glyphosate or whatever, but all we have to do is swallow some probiotics seedlings and it'll be fine in a couple weeks. It won't be. Don't we wish? So you've got to, number one, you gotta give these guys what they like. Number two, the idea that these bacteria, all we gotta do is give 'em what they like, which is prebiotic fiber and everything will be fine. Well, the Sonnenbergs did a beautiful experiment to say, "Uh, nope, that's not gonna work." What they did is they took some volunteers and they gave 'em a ton of prebiotic fiber in the form of inulin. And inulin's a great prebiotic fiber. It's in the chicory family of vegetables. It's in asparagus, it's in artichokes, it's in sunchokes. Great prebiotic fiber. So they gave 'em these Prebiotic fiber. Then they looked at their gut microbiome diversity, and a more diverse microbiome, the better, the tropical rainforest. And they looked at markers of inflammation. And despite giving them all these prebiotics, their gut diversity didn't change and their inflammation markers didn't change. And they're going, oh, what the heck? So they said, hmm, why don't we give them some fermented foods, postbiotics in the form in this group of mostly yogurts and kefirs and the prebiotic, the inulin. Well, let's see what happens. Well, that combo of fermented foods and prebiotics, lo and behold, their gut microbiome diversity increased. Their tropical rainforest got more diverse. And their inflammation markers came down. So, and I talk about that in Gut Check. It's really, yeah, you want to have a bunch of good guys, but what we now know is there's kind of an assembly line of making the things that we really like, want, like short-chain fatty acid butyrate. But you gotta have a bunch of guys on the assembly line.. And you got to give each guy what it needs to make the next part. And so it's, it's a lot more complex than we ever would have guessed. But the good news is we're beginning to understand the complexity and what each of these guys need to do the job. And that's the exciting thing. You can actually fill in the blanks.
So what would be some of your examples? You talked about kefir and yogurts. Any other favorite fermented foods? I will tell you, I went to Seoul, Korea two summers ago. Really was hoping that I would like fall in love with kimchi because my US experience has been, you know, this is really like, I had a girlfriend. I think, you know, Suzanne Bennett. Dr. Suzanne Bennett brought it to a party we had and I was like, what did you do? Cleared out the room, you know? But no luck. I still do not like any of those things. So what are some of the different fermented foods you recommend that you think that are good to help here?
Well, so you mentioned kimchi and it's clearly an acquired taste.
So is sauerkraut. And smell.
Yeah, so is sauerkraut. Came from a family where we had sauerkraut at least twice a week. And I must say, I, to this day, maybe because of that, don't particularly like sauerkraut. Anyhow, easiest one, quite frankly, is vinegars. And vinegars have acetic acid. And acetic acid is really an important building block of short-chain fatty acid production. And so vinegars are easy. Now, you know, I'm, believe it or not, I'm the father of the fake soda, the fake Coke that became a TikTok thing.
Oh, that is funny.
Yeah. My YouTube was you, huh? In early 2000s. So you, you pour some balsamic vinegar in San Pellegrino or other sparkling water and, or any other vinegar. And it's, it's really easy to do. And it's just loaded with these postbiotics, short-chain fatty acids, water kefirs, kombucha that's low sugar.
What is water kefir? I, I don't understand what that could possibly be.
Well, it's, it's very much like making kombucha. You actually have to add some sugar for the yeast or bacteria to eat, but you basically make a fermented beverage that way. The problem with a lot of kombuchas, first of all, let's admit Americans do not like bitter sour foods. It is against our upbringing, I guess. If you look at lots of long-lived societies, they love bitter sour foods. In fact, one of my earliest expressions was more bitter, more better, because It's loaded with polyphenols. So many kombucha manufacturers add tons of sugar to their final product to make this stuff taste like something an American will use. There are low-sugar kombuchas and seek them out. And that's another easy way to do it.
Any brands that you like there? 'Cause yeah, it does, it's like talk about making a good thing bad. This is why I don't personally like them because I do not like bitter. However, sour and bitter take your sweet tooth away. So, so we've got sweet tooth, big thing here. But any, any brands of these kombuchas that you like or would recommend?
No, you know, the funny thing is I'll recommend one brand and then you can't find it. Well, you can't find it. Number two, these brands for whatever reason, maybe because they have to make money or more often they're bought by a bigger brand, the formula changes. And within sometimes the appearance of you and me on this podcast, people will go, "Wait a minute, I went and got this and holy cow, there's 15 grains." That is what happened.
I had one brand that I loved and I actually met the owner. She'd had gut problems her whole life. She created this brand. I loved this brand. And then they got bought and you know what happened, like it's oldest story in the book. I'm like, oh my gosh, you just added all this sugar into these things that took it away from me.
Yeah, no, that, that's exactly right. And it happens more than once. A lot of these brands recently to add creaminess and texture, they started putting pea protein in some of these milks. And all of a sudden you take a pretty doggone good product and you know, I'm getting calls, "Hey, I thought you didn't like pea protein." "Yeah, you're right." "Well, it's in the brand you recommended." And I'm going, "What?" And you know, I go to the store and go, "Yeah, oh yeah, there it is." So no, I'm not gonna recommend a brand. Sadder about that.
Makes sense. Read those sugar grams, read the back of the label. Let's get more into the, the microbiome. Would you recommend someone testing to see what things look like in there? Is that, does it have any worth? Is it worthwhile, not worthwhile, or just move forward assuming things are not where they should be?
So yes and no. First of all, we all have to realize that whenever we do a stool test, it is a snapshot of that basically day. And it's who's in there that day. So it's a, it's a Polaroid picture and that can be useful, but we're getting better and better with these stool tests. I do use one. I was pretty much against them. I do use one now. Not only do, do we get to know who's in there, but we get to know the percentages of these guys and One of the groups, and I'll say who it is, it's Vibrant Wellness, and theirs is called the Gut Zoomer. But so they use biodiversity indexes called Simpson's Index and Shannon's Index, which are ecological index looking at biodiversity in tropical rainforests, and you can actually get an index. But one of the things that's been very impressive to me is that most people on these tests are very devoid of short-chain fatty acid producing bacteria and short-chain fatty acids in general. And I think that's the take-home message that if most of the people that I'm seeing don't have these bacteria and/or don't have these short-chain fatty acids, which, like in Gut Check, without butyrate and these other short-chain fatty acids, we're screwed. We're— our gut wall's not going to be any good. We can talk about why there's so much colon cancer in young people. Anyhow, so You don't need it. I went years without ever using it with good results. I found it useful in people who we think everybody's doing everything right, and yet something's amiss. And usually it's that they are really lacking these short-chain fatty acid-producing bacteria, and/or they don't have short-chain fatty acids.
And what are some of your favorite ways to improve short-chain fatty acid bacterial production?
Well, shameless plug, my best-selling product at Gundry MD is called BioComplete 3, and it has nanoencapsulated butyrate. Now, why nanoencapsulated? Because you could swallow all the butyrate in the world and it's not gonna get to where it's supposed to be needed, which is down in your colon. One of the things that we should realize, I'll wear my general surgery hat for a minute, the, the lining of our colon, our large intestine, these colonocytes get 80% of their nourishment from butyrate. 80%. We're not talking about blood flow. We're not talking about delivering proteins and carbohydrates. 80% of their food is butyrate. And you go, holy cow. We, number one, why is that? But number two, if it's that important, What happens to them when they don't get it? Well, there's beautiful experiments that you deprive colonocytes of butyrate and they get really mad and they get very dysplastic and they look really funny. And there's a very strong correlation between the lack of butyrate and colon cancer. So, uh, I've had Colleen Cutcliffe from Pendulum Life on my podcast many times cuz I'm a big fan of Pendulum Life. And she makes the example, which I like a lot. Let's suppose I've got a million dollars in the trunk of my car on the LA freeway, and I get hit from behind, and the trunk opens, and the suitcase flies out and opens up, and a million dollars gets spread along the 101 freeway, and people are grabbing handfuls of $1 bills, and it's really not going to do them very much good. It really needed to go to the bank and get deposited. It needed to be delivered where it was supposed to go. And so people who swallow— no offense, I mean, this is her word— butyrate supplements don't realize that butyrate is never going to get to the bank, and the bank is down in the colon. So you've got to either make it in the colon or deliver it there. So that's number one. So that's my shameless plug. And the reason it's my number one seller is 'cause it actually works to do that. Yeah. But you've gotta have butyrate-producing bacteria, and we know who these guys are. And one of my favorites is Akkermansia muciniphila. And it literally took Colleen and her team 10 years to grow human Akkermansia muciniphila in the lab. And it's a heartwarming story. But anyhow, it's hard to do.
Yeah. I got to hear her speak at A4M. I'm like, listen to that talk. You're like, where do I get Akkermansia? How do I start it now?
So, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, and you can swallow it. The problem with swallowing it is, and again, this is where some of our gut tests have come in useful. I will have people on Akkermansia, and yet when we look at their gut, nothing. There's nothing. And you go, well, what the heck? Well, you gotta feed Akkermansia what it, what it wants. And again, we're learning that each of these bacteria— again, it's an assembly line. If you don't have the right guys giving each guy what it needs to make the next thing, then you're never going to, you know, get to the end product. And that's the bad news, but it's also the good news because we're beginning to realize what everybody wants.
So is the right guys then more of a diversity in different types of plants with polyphenols and different types of fibers? And then is there, what's the role for resistant starch, especially with butyrate?
Yeah, so again, these guys long ago evolved with us. Our great-great-great-grandparents ate whole foods And they ate them whole. And what is important to realize is when they ate these whole foods whole, we, our digestive process took away a lot of, you know, the simple sugars, the amino acids from proteins and fatty acids from fats. But there was a lot of leftovers that our digestive process couldn't break down. These long-chain starches, these polysaccharides. And those kind of filter down to the large intestine where the vast majority of our microbiome lives. And they're going, "Oh great, you know, here comes dinner." And there was plenty of this. And as I talk about in the book, as long as you feed these guys what they need, they actually send really cool text messages to your brain. That say, "Hey, thank you very much. Got all we need to eat. You don't need to go looking for anything else." Nice. Now, unfortunately, we don't eat whole foods and we certainly don't eat them whole. Everything has been processed, ultra-processed, and we have stripped away all of that stuff. And so none of that stuff ever gets down to our lower gut. And we've changed the guys who can handle. There are, there are bad guys that just think simple sugars and saturated fats are absolutely delicious and they will swim upstream to get them before anybody else can. And I'll give you a great example from Santa Barbara. So we have whale watching in Santa Barbara, and for a long time, the only whales in Santa Barbara were the California gray whale, and that's all you could see. In the last few years, we now have huge populations of humpback whales, of blue whales, and you go, Wait a minute, humpback whales, they're over in Hawaii. And blue whales, you know, they're way down there. What are they doing here? Well, they follow the food supply that has changed because of ocean temperature change and climate change. And so they're just following the food and here they are. So if we think that, you know, whales are smart enough to follow food, we ought to assume that bacteria are smart enough to follow the food supply and take advantage of food supply. And the other thing we have to realize is that the guys down below who used to be calling the shots are going, "What the heck? You know, we're starving to death down here. Go find some more food. We hear you chewing up there and we know it's coming down. It always has through eons of time." There's nothing there, go find some more. And so this hunger, this constant noise in our head that we're always hungry is actually coming from these poor little guys saying, "Give me something to eat, I'm starving to death, please." So I want to tread into one more topic, which I thought was really interesting considering you worked out of Loma Linda for a while there.
A blue zone, and you talk about in Gut Check, I think, that blue zones are a myth. So I want to know, what did Dan Buettner get wrong here?
So I like Dan. Dan and I talk. Good for Dan. As I write in Gut Check, like Paul Simon and Garfunkel used to say, A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. Dan was at a meeting in Montpellier, France, a number of years ago, where it was a longevity meeting in the early days, and a guy grabbed a blue pen, blue felt-tip pen, and went over to a map of the world,. And he basically said, here's where the longest living people in the world are. And people always wonder, well, where'd the word blue zone came from? It turns out it was the blue magic marker. That's fun fact number one. Really? Really. That's where the term blue zone came from.
Wow. That's very funny. Okay.
So if you have a bent towards vegetarian, vegan diets, you would then go to those Blue Zones and tell a story that these guys eat a lot of whole grains, a lot of vegetables, they don't eat a lot of meat, and blah, blah, blah. So, and it makes a great story, and good for them. So the problem with that is it's not true. And I make the case that, for instance, much of the longevity attributed to these particular places is because of records. These are very poor areas, and it is well known and now recently documented that most of the time when older people die, you don't report their death because you'll lose their pension. And there's been—
Oh no.
Oh yes. And the interesting thing about Okinawa, another Blue Zone, is that almost all records were destroyed at the end of World War II. And the US Army was actually in charge of Okinawa for many, many years. And so people had to go in and tell people how long, how old they were. And so the Okinawan records are just based on, oh, well, you know, I'm that old.
It's kind of like a diet report.
Yeah, it's kind of like a diet report.
Yeah, good old diet recall. Totally forgot I ate all that stuff.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so that's true. I do food diaries on patients and—
Yeah, they're selective, those food diaries.
Well, but even if they're true, they go, well, you know, what about that? And they go, oh, well that doesn't count because—
I was standing up.
Yeah, 'cause that doesn't count.
I was at a party, it didn't matter.
Yeah, exactly.
I only did that on Tuesday.
So yeah. Yes. So, so back to, back to blue zones. So for instance, let's take Sardinia, which is a beautiful example.
Doesn't Sardinia eat cured meats?
They sure do.
I was like, I've been to Sardinia and it was not vegetarian.
Not at all.
In fact, they eat cured meat.
In fact, the really cool thing about Sardinia is, so the, the longevity. So basically you live in two places in life. Sardinia, either down by the water and/or up in the mountains. And the folks up in the mountains have the longevity. The folks down by the water don't. The folks up in the mountains are sheep and goat herders, and they eat a ton of sheep yogurt and goat yogurt. They eat a ton of cheeses, and you're right, they eat a ton of sausages, because that's basically what they live on. The really cool thing, and And this is controversial and it gets me into trouble.
Oh boy, here we go.
But they're smokers. And like 95% of the men in Sardinia are smokers.
But they're not smoking filtered cigarettes from the United States, correct?
I totally agree. Look, Nick— people listen to me and I say, look, nicotine is a really interesting compound and we should be looking at why most of the vast majority of these long-lived people are nicotine users. How— maybe that's a nicer way to say it. Um, Acciaroli, south of Naples, more people 100 years of age or older in any town in the world. They're smokers. Achirole, they're smokers. So, uh, Nagoyan Peninsula, they're smokers. And on the Nagoyan Peninsula, they're sheep and goat herders. Now, yes, they eat beans and corn, but so does the rest of Costa Rica. What makes them different is that they're sheep and goat herders and they're eating fermented foods.
And the rest don't? Are they all—
The rest don't. It's the sheep and goat herders. That are actually the longevity.
Well, so are all these sheep and goat herders living on hills? Yes. You know, you look at all of this and I think everyone wants to pull out a thing and go, it's the this, and it's like, well, what if they live on hills? You know, so they're, they're herding sheep and goats, so they're very active. Nicotine is a very interesting— I mean, we have nicotinic receptors, we have You know, it's a very interesting compound. It's to me just like looking at factory animals. There's a big difference between a, you know, sheep and lamb and, you know, rather lamb and goat out on the, you know, out on the pasture versus some cow in captivity fed all this stuff. You cannot put them together and make the same, you know, the same hypothesis. Different, right?
Loma Linda, where I was for many years, means beautiful hill. Loma Linda is a hilly community.
So it wasn't— and I'd heard something, I'm trying to remember where, that when this book was being written, it was— there was an executive decision to make it a vegan diet because it would be more interesting and palatable and believable for people. I just think that You know, we've got a lot— I've always looked at this going, wait, I've been to a lot of these places and they aren't vegan and they aren't even vegetarian. So what the heck did I do wrong?
Yeah, I mean, for instance, the highest average lifespan of any country in the world is Andorra, this little country between Spain and France up in the Pyrenees Mountains. And these guys are goat and sheep herders and they eat sausages, you know, twice a day. And you go, wait a minute, this is— they all live into their 90s, you know, and it's like, wait a minute, this is the number one place? And it's like—
I just wonder too, hearing all of this, uh, what, what amount of exercise being on hills, having to do hard work how much that must be contributing to this, because I think that when I look at longevity, and especially quality of life with longevity, that exercise seems to be the biggest lever that we could pull on it. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I'm getting— I get a kick. Um, 3 books ago, I wrote The Energy Paradox, where I introduced the concept of exercise snacking. That short bursts of activity actually do extremely good. And I just saw one of our friends extolling the virtues of exercise snacking recently, and I go, yeah, I brought that up 4 years ago. So you're right, it's, it's these, you know, weeding a garden or taking your dog up a hilly slope and down a slope. And there's a really cool study out of Austria that I've mentioned in the past where they looked at people who got the opportunity to either ride a, ride a cable car up to the top of a mountain and walk down, or walk up to the top of the mountain and ride down. And the study, of course, figured, well, you know, people who ride up and walk down they're not going to get the benefit that the people who, you know, walked up and rode down. Well, turns out it was exactly the same benefit because what they didn't take into account is when you're walking down, you're working again, you're breaking against gravity. And that's the, that's the exciting news. So, you know, hills work really good as an exercise program.
I know it's a little hard in Florida.
Ah, yeah, you need— Florida needs some hills.
We need some hills here. Every time I remember the last time I moved here, I'd just gotten a mountain bike. I'm like, what was I doing? But anytime I leave this state, I'm out walking hills because I know the importance of it. So I want to make sure that we have— I'm going to list in the show notes all of our podcasts and all of— how many books do you have out now?
I think this is, I'm just, my 9th book, The Gut-Brain Paradox, will release on April 15th.
Oh, didn't know about that one. Very exciting. Gut-Brain Paradox. All right, staying with the theme there. So we will list all of these. I'm gonna put them at jjvirgin.com/gundry. Tell everybody, where do you like to hang out the most in terms of social stuff?
Ah, well, I've got 2 YouTube channels, Instagram. I'm there almost every day. Yeah, those are easy. The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Cool.
All right, well, we'll make sure we link to all of those, and thank you for continuing to get out there, stir things up, make a ruckus.
Provocateur.
Aha. I appreciate you.
All right.
