935 Dr. Steven Gundry: The “Healthy” Foods You Should NEVER EAT, Boosting Your Immune System and COVID-19

This is episode number 935 with New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Steven Gundry. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former.

Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now let the class begin. [Foreign] Michael Pollan said, Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

This is all about how to optimize.

The immune system and what foods you should never eat that you think are healthy and the foods you need to be eating to reversing aging. Super excited about this episode. Welcome, welcome, welcome. In a time of stress and anxiety and uncertainty and worry and isolation, I want to make sure we bring you some of the best information possible to help you optimize your health, your immune system, and truly have a greater life. And Dr. Steven Gundry is a renowned cardiologist, surgeon, medical device inventor, and author. Although he has performed thousands of heart surgeries in his 40-year career, Dr. Gundry's current focus is empowering people through diet to reverse and prevent ailments. He's a director and founder of the International Heart and Lung Institute, as well as the Center for Restorative Medicine in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara, California. And he helps patients learn to take control of their weight, health and energy by using his surprisingly simple diet advice. He's a New York Times bestselling author of books like the Plant Paradox and the Plant Paradox Cookbook. And he also has a new book called the Longevity Paradox as well, and the Dr. Gundry podcast, which he is the host of, which is extremely insightful. In this interview, we talk about the myths and facts about how to boost your immune system, the difference between good bacteria and bad bacteria in your gut, the importance of carbohydrates and dietary fiber in defining the true amount of sugar in the foods we are eating. He shares some of his patients' stories and how they were able to essentially reset their health, how to stay healthy in times of pandemic and social distancing, and so much more. The lessons he learned as a heart surgeon. Everything in between, very excited for you to hear this. And you have the ability to truly change someone's life today by sharing this with a friend. Just send the link lewishouse.com/935, post it on your Instagram story or Twitter or social media, or send someone a message on text. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, you can copy and paste the link and share it with a friend before we get started. I'm so excited about this episode and without further ado let's dive into this one with the one and only Dr. Steven Gundry.

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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got the inspirational Dr. Steven Gundry in the house. Thank you so much for being here. Very excited.

Thanks for having me and thank you for your distance.

Yes, we've got some social distancing right now. I'm very excited about this because we've seen a big response to the last couple interviews that we did on YouTube specifically during this time of crisis. And I wanted to bring you back on to really focus on how we can optimize our bodies, our minds, our hearts in times of crisis. And you have been a heart surgeon for 40 years. Is that right? You were a philosopher at Yale.

Yeah.

Then you went heart surgery and you changed the game in heart surgeries and now you are helping people essentially reverse autoimmune disease and become healthier, happier, whole human beings through nutrition. And you realized a long time ago that fixing the heart medically can only take you so far.

Yeah, that's right.

We have to fix something else and what is that?

Well, you got to fix, you know, why, for instance, you got heart disease in the first place. And I was taught, as all my colleagues were taught, that heart disease is kind of inevitable, that, you know, that's the leading cause of death for both men and women.

It's inevitable for all of us, that is.

Yeah, pretty much, that's what we were taught.

At some point.

Yeah, and then even if you get it, let's say you get coronary artery disease, that the best we can do is slow it down to slow the progression. And what I realized, thanks to Big Ed, who I talk about in all my books, who reversed his coronary artery disease.

This is a man who had 100, who was 100 pounds overweight.

Yeah, he was really overweight. He was late 40s, he had inoperable coronary artery disease. Everything was clogged up, wow. And this guy went, and so you opened him up. No, well, he had gone to six different centers in the United States saying, do something. And everybody who saw him said, well, no, there's no place to do bypasses, there's no place to do stents, because everything's clogged up, have a nice day. And so this guy spent about six months doing this. and he went on a diet during this time and he went to a health food store and he bought a bunch of supplements, kind of willy-nilly quite frankly. And so when I met him, he was still a huge guy, weighed 265 pounds. And he brings me his angiogram, the movie of his heart from Miami, Florida. And I look at it and I go, you know, I agree with everybody else. There's nothing I'm gonna do for you. And he says, well, yeah, that's what everybody says, but here's the deal. you know, I've gone on this diet, I've lost 45 pounds in the last six months, and I've taken all these supplements, and, you know, maybe I did something in here, you know, and I'm scratching my person.

So the video is from six months prior.

Prior.

Wow. Okay.

And I said, well, good for you for losing weight. And, you know, I know what, know what you did with those supplements. You made expensive urine, which I fully believed. And he said, well, you Why don't we do another angiogram? What would it hurt? So I go, yeah, don't get your hopes up, but okay. So this guy has cleaned out in six months time half the blockages in his coronary artery. Gone, shrunk. And you go, I've never seen this before. That doesn't happen.

This was what, after 30 years of doing this? After 35 years?

Yeah, that doesn't happen. Come on, that's impossible. You don't clean things out.

The only way to clean it out is through surgery.

Right.

Yeah.

Or put a stent in. So let me give you an example. And this is kind of off the subject. So if you work out with weights and you happen to wear a wedding ring or an aura ring, you get calluses, right? So calluses are your body's response to protecting itself against an irritation. and you build up layers and layers. So it turns out that these plaques inside arteries is a response to an irritation. And you build up calluses. And think about it, if I took off this ring and started working out with weights, this callus would go away because there's no longer any irritation. And what Big Ed showed me was he had removed the irritation so he no longer needed calluses and his heart started to heal. And it literally goes away. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years, is teaching people how to remove the irritation to the inside of their blood vessels and the calluses miraculously go away. They don't miraculously go away. You don't need them anymore. Right.

Was there a moment when you were doing deep in your practice where you were like, I'm not gonna work on another heart until they actually follow this plan and start losing weight and start eating the right things? And then if there's no hope, then maybe I'll dive in. But was there a point where you're like, Never again will I do... Well, yeah.

So, I mean... I wrote about this in the Plant Paradox. I had this gentleman in his 60s, bad diabetic, came in with a heart attack, scheduled him for surgery the next morning. We're in the pre-op room and the guy is trembling like a leaf. And he says, I can't go through this. And I've learned enough that if somebody is that terrified, don't go put him to sleep and do it, because something probably is not going to work out very well. fear. So I said, okay, I'll make you a deal. I said, you gotta follow everything I do, tell you to do. And if you do it, I can guarantee you I will not have to operate on you. But if you don't do it, you know, you're coming back here and we're gonna do this. Well, that was now 10 years ago. He's not a diabetic. He has no coronary artery disease. He. And, you know, he comes in twice a year now and just, you know, and we. do stress tests on him. And, you know, and he, that he became one of my best patients. Wow. And, you know, so you were gonna do a surgery. Yeah, we were wheeling him into surgery and the guy's shaking like a leaf going, I don't think I can do this. And I said, okay, here's the deal. Wow.

That's crazy.

Oh, yeah, we always reminisce. He says, you know, it's been 10 years now and, you know, I followed what you told me. And I said, yeah, here you are and you don't have a scar in your chest. I said, you,'re really bad for business.

So what were the few things you told him that he went out and did? Was there like some specific exact things he did?

Yeah, I do this in all my books. So, we're actually, my staff always told me, Don't say this story, because if people get the wrong idea. Jack Elhaye, I got to know Jack Elhaye late in his life. he was actually an advisor to our Arthritis Institute in Palm Springs. And so, you know, Jack was the godfather of fitness. I mean, come on, let's give this dude the juicer. The juicer. That was his big mistake. But anyway, so Jacqueline used to have this expression is that if it tastes good, spit it out. And my, you know, I obviously like to sell books and my, you know, my stuff. Don't say that, because then they think they're going to eat twigs and weeds and it's going to taste awful and you know, you got to eat bad tasting food. Well, that's not what he meant. He actually meant that you should not be eating for this two inch by three inch piece of muscle, your tongue, but you should be eating for the microbiome, for the bacteria and all the other cute little viruses that actually live in your gut, live in your mouth, live on your skin. And if you eat for them, they will take care of you because you are actually their home. We're merely a condominium for bugs.

And how many bugs do we have on our body?

We have well over a hundred trillion bacteria. And since the human microbiome project was finished about five years ago now. I mean, we didn't know that these guys really existed. In fact, I was on my podcast, the Dr. Gunderson podcast, we had Dr. David Kessler, who was head of the FDA in the Reagan years, who made the guidelines for the labels, the labeling laws on the back of packages that show saturated fats and carbohydrates. And the labels, by the way, if we get into this are completely wrong. They were forced on the Reagan administration by big food companies. And so anyhow, if you feed bacteria what they want to eat, and that's is all in the longevity paradox, they will take care of you. They will not, they'll take care of the wall, the lining of your gut, and they, you will not actually age, which is kind of cool.

So if you take care of them, of the bugs in your body, you will not age.

Right. So you got a hundred trillion bacteria. You have over 10,000 different species of bacteria. And just last year they discovered another thousand, so who knows? Right. So 99% of the genetic material that exists in you and me is non-human genetic material. We're only, our genes are actually so unimportant it's kind of humorous. And when people take a family history, what they're actually finding out is if your parents taught you how to eat, and most people's parents teach the kids how to eat, and your parents had diabetes or your parents had high blood pressure or your parents had coronary artery disease, and you ate like your parents did, the odds are that you will do that. For two reasons, the food choices that you made, but more importantly, you inherited your bacteria from your parents. and actually your siblings.

So it's not the genes of your parents that mean you are susceptible to heart disease or Alzheimer's or whatever. It's not the genes of your parents, it's typically the foods they ate that you're probably eating the exact same foods that cause the same type of problems.

Correct. Yeah. I mean, there is an Alzheimer's gene and My program, according to DL Bredesen, is the best way not to activate that gene. And there are certain genes that people inherit that make the world's meanest, nastiest, stickiest cholesterol that most doctors don't even measure. And oh, by the way, if you're prescribed a statin drug, a lipid lowering drug, it actually worsens this other particle. So, yeah, there are genes, but there's such a small part. Nature magazine had a big article in late 2018, I think proving that only about 7 or 8% of what will happen to us is based on our genes. And 97 or 98% of what's going to happen to us is based on our environment and our food choices.

Our decisions.

Our decisions, yeah.

Now you said we can, you know, aging is essentially a choice is what I'm hearing you say, but if someone watching this saying, well, Dr. Gundry, you've got white hair, you look older than when you were 10 years old.

Yes.

So how can you say that you can eat certain things that can reverse aging or can make you not age when you look older than when you were younger?

That's true. I'm definitely chronologically older, But recently on my podcast, I had Dr. Terry Walls, who I think is very famous, rightfully so, for reversing her MS, her multiple sclerosis. And she did it via diet. She did it initially by eating nine cups of vegetables a day. And I I dare people to try to eat nine cups of vegetables.

A lot of fiber, right?

A lot of fiber. And we'll get back to fiber because I think that's probably the key. And this is actually what Jacqueline was trying to say. If it tastes good, spit it out. And Terry became famous for telling people that she, when you look in the toilet every morning, you should see a very large coiled snake looking back at you. up at you. And in fact, in the Plant Paradox in the original manuscript, I had said, when you look in the toilet, you should see a giant anaconda looking back up at you. And my editor, Julie Wills, called me up, said, do you know there's a movie where an anaconda is coming out of the toilet? And I said, oh yeah, she said, I don't think we want that visual in your book. And she said, let's take that out. But what we didn't know, what you didn't know, I didn't know, is that that giant coiled snake is not the fiber and the roughage that we ate. It's actually bacteria that have eaten the fiber.

No way. And bacteria inside of us. That's coming out.

That's coming out. So most of your poop is, if you will, baby bacteria.

No way.

And so the more- so we want.

To get the bacteria out of us?

No, you want them to grow and prosper. And the more they grow and prosper.

It's like our aliens in our body.

It's like, you know, you're absolutely right. And one of the things that is kind of hard to embrace is we We probably only exist as a place for bacteria to live on Earth. And, you know, intelligence.

If there was no bacteria inside of us, we're done. We would die.

So we know that we can breed germ-free mice. And interesting fun fact that I put in the Longevity Paradox, my fifth grade science project was to build a germ-free mouse environment. this was in 19... 1960. And so this isn't my first rodeo. So we can build, we can raise germ-free mice that have no bacteria in them, have no bugs in them. And they live short lives.

Really?

They have horrible immune systems.

They get sick.

They get sick, yeah. So they're the basis of so much of what we know. And so you can, so bacteria are incredibly important. We know now that these bacteria actually teach our immune system from day one. In fact, scary, we used to think that the placenta where the baby, the womb, the uterus, that feeds the baby is sterile. Of course it has to be, because the baby has to be sterile. The placenta is full of bacteria.

Feeding the baby.

Feeding the baby. And it turns out that the bacteria in the placenta actually give information to the baby's immune system before the baby even pops out of the womb.

So we need these viruses, these good viruses.

We need these viruses and bacteria. We need them. And in fact, fun fact, long ago the only way to treat bacterial infections were viruses that could actually infect bacteria and kill viruses. And Eli Lilly Company from Indianapolis got its start, this giant pharmaceutical company, as what's called a bacteriophage company. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. And it turns out that viruses actually are really useful in us as well. We have trillions and trillions and trillions of viruses in us right now.

What's the difference between a good virus and a bad virus?

If the good virus is doing what it's supposed to do. Okay, let's do a deep dive into microbiology.

Okay. And what is the definition of virus?

Okay, so a virus is probably the smallest re-producible form of life, however we want to define life. So most living things are capable of reproducing themselves one way or another, dividing or multiplying, multiplying one way or another, just like humans. Exactly. So a virus, unfortunately, has to have, cannot replicate its.

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Self. It has to borrow another cell and take over the cell's machinery to manufacture more copies of viruses. that's how they get reproduced. But in the end, every living creature is here just to make a new copy. And you and I only exist was to make a new copy. And, you know, I hopefully actually only exist so my bacteria can make new copies of themselves. I'm a condominium for my inhabitants.

Duplication, yeah.

And if they're happy and I'm a good landlord to them, they will keep the place nice and they actually would like me to stick around a very long time because I'm their home. So if I give them my tenants what they want, they'll keep me around.

Okay.

All right, so getting back to Terry Walls.

Yes.

So Terry Walls and her giant anacondas. And whenever we do a podcast with her from Iowa, she has these dolls of poop.

Really? Yeah. I gotta meet this person.

So we've become friends through the years and our diets recommendations are very similar and becoming more and more similar as time goes on. And recently, she and her wife began doing time-restricted feeding. For the last 18 years, during the winter, I only eat calories two hours a day. So 22 out of 24 hours, I'm not eating any calories. And I've done that for 18 years now. So that's pretty interesting time-restricted feeding. Time-restricted feeding means you limit the number of hours you eat in the day.

Wow.

So she, and we had talked about this, so she and her wife actually really started doing this. And I see her about once a year and I noticed on the podcast, you know, she looks the best I have ever seen her. And so we're talking about this and she said, well, you know, I started, you know, after kind of reading and listening and, you know, longevity paradox. This is something real. And not just me, other people have done this. And we started doing it. And I started doing it and then my wife said, you know, there's something here. I'm going to join you. And they have kids. And now she's saying, our kids have noticed that we are getting younger. and I said, well, you're right. I said, because I've known you through the years and you clearly are younger now than when I knew you a few years ago. And she said, yeah, our kids notice and they're calling us Benjamin Button because we're de-aging. So I think this whole anti-aging thing is wrong. I think it is really quite possible to de-age. And as I talk about in the Longevity Paradox, what's fascinating is that and you can prove this in animal models that you age as your microbiome changes, number one, but more importantly, the wall of your gut should be impermeable even though it's only one cell thick. And the surface area of your gut, my gut, is the same as a tennis court. so inside of you and me is a tennis court.

Crazy.

Surface area. And the problem is that that wall of our gut is only one cell thick. And these cells are held together with tight junctions. Best example for anyone who's no longer young is Red Rover, Red Rover, which we all played as a kid, where we locked arms and people ran across.

And a big guy like me always ran through. Oh yeah, let's go.

Oh yeah. And you're the guy, you know, break their hair. The two girls, ah, here comes Louis. Ah. And they don't get to play that in school anymore, by the way, it's too dangerous.

Oh, right.

Yeah, too good hurt. There's like people like that. So they're all locked arm in arm. And as long as they're locked arm in arm, all those, you know, 100 trillion bacteria and all the other toxins stay on their side of the wall. On the other side of the wall, 60 to 70% of all your white blood cells, all your immune system is lined up on that wall. Why? Because that's basically the border. And if your invading army is coming through the border, you want to have your army on the other side. And what's cool is as long as that wall is intact, you do not age. But as that wall becomes leaky, and that's the whole story of how we got leaky gut, then you begin to age. And Hippocrates 2,500 years ago said, All disease begins in the gut. And he was absolutely right. All diseases begin and I add on, end in the gut. And, you know, that's actually a good segue into a current problem with a virus that we're not used to. What I've been trying to do with my patients through the years is teach them how to heal their gut. So anybody with an autoimmune disease has a leaky gut. period, end of story. And I know this and I can say that because we can't, we measure 70% of my practice is autoimmune patients. How do you know if you have a leaky gut?

If you haven't been tested per se, would you see rashes? Would you see...

So I got news for you. If you have an autoimmune disease, you have a leaky gut. Gotcha. If you have high blood pressure, you have a leaky gut. If you have coronary artery disease, you have a leaky gut.

If you have diabetes, you have a leaky gut. so leaky gut is the cause of- Of every disease?

Of all disease.

A leaky gut is the cause of all disease. If you cure the leaky gut, you should be able to heal the disease.

So far, so good.

So how do we heal the leaky gut?

Okay, so it's actually- if that's the key. Well, and that's why I got so focused on these cute little plant particles called lectins. Yes. And so there's lots of gut healing protocols out there. And what intrigued me was lectins are a plant defense system and plants have multiple defense systems, but I kind of got interested in lectins and they're little proteins that seek out sugar molecules. I love that sugar.

Yeah, gotta get rid of it.

Yeah, they are after specific sugar molecules. and interestingly enough, these sugar molecules line our nose, mouth, intestines. They line the lining of our blood vessels. They line our joints. They exist in the space between two nerves where nerves talk to each other. And these proteins are designed, if they can, to stick to these sugar molecules and act, if you will, like a splinter, an irritant. They are also really good at breaking the tight junctions that hold the wall of our gut together. And if you think about it from a plant standpoint, if you had a system where you could make leaky gut in someone who eats you, and your immune system got all inflamed and you felt bad or it hurt to move or you got depressed. By the way, leaky gut is the major cause of depression and anxiety. Really?

Stress.

Dr. Amen and I went through this on his podcast. And so if you had a predator who was eating you and that predator wasn't doing very well, a smart predator would say, you know, every time I eat this plant or this plant baby, I die. Yeah, I don't feel good. Yeah. Or, you know, I don't reproduce well, or I'm not growing well. I'm gonna go eat something else. And we also evolved bacteria that enjoy eating lectins. Believe it or not, there's a bacteria that likes to eat gluten. Gluten is a lectin. And so unfortunately now in our modern society we've killed off most of the defense system against lectins. It's to use a football analogy, if I've got my first string defense injured, my second string injured, and now I'm pulling guys out of the stands to be my linebackers and you're a running back, lectin Man, you know, you're scoring every time. Yeah, you may be the worst running back in the world, but if there's nobody there to tackle you, you're gonna score every time.

So what would you say are the four or five different foods that heal leaky gut and defend against viruses?

So it's not what I tell you to eat that's important. It's what I tell you not to eat.

Not to eat. Okay, what are the four rule number one?

So first thing is don't eat grains. grains, period.

No grains.

No grains.

Zero grains.

Zero grains. And that includes rice, that includes corn. I just gave a paper at the American Heart Association three weeks ago at the Lifestyle and Epidemiology Annual Meeting, where we looked at people with leaky gut, and they had already been on a gluten-free diet. So that means they were avoiding wheat, rye, and barley. and they still had leaky gut.

They're eating rice is not gluten or.

Right, yeah, rice doesn't have gluten. Quinoa doesn't have gluten. Buckwheat doesn't have gluten. Corn doesn't have gluten. But we test these people, 70% of people who react to gluten will react to corn as if it was gluten. Wow. and I see so many people who are eating gluten free who still have autoimmune disease and or leaky gut. So when in this paper we took away not only their gluten but all lectins, major lectins, and that includes the nightshade family, unfortunately, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kind of the Tom Brady diet to use another football example. he eats very similar to my program. Take away peanuts and cashews, which are beans, and have people, if they're going to eat beans, pressure cook their beans. Pressure cooking will destroy all lectins except gluten. And then we take away certain milk products, American cow milk products, and we showed in this paper that Not only will they heal their leaky gut, which just by removing those things, but in nine out of ten people that we've now retested multiple occasions, they no longer react to gluten by their immune system. Now, I'm not saying that, guess what, if you follow my protocol, then you can have all the bread that you want. But it is intriguing that you can re-educate the immune system to defend itself against these things. To not get interested anymore because the gut is sealed.

So you could have it once in a while and it shouldn't affect it or penetrate through.

Correct.

But if you keep doing it every day, every meal, then it's gonna penetrate the same thing. So zero grains, no rice, no corn, until you heal the gut, then maybe every once in a while.

Yeah, and then what we do is we actually ask people, okay, let's reintroduce something and see how you feel.

Don't get too comfortable though.

Yeah, don't get too comfortable. And what we do in really bad autoimmune folks is that we will, every three or six months, we're retesting their leaky gut and their autoimmune status. I mean, it's really kind of humorous sometimes we see that when people reintroduce things, their leaky gut starts again. I'll give you a great example, personal example. So years ago, when we first started doing autoimmune testing, we obviously do it on ourselves. And so I did it on myself and my staff comes running in, oh my gosh, you know, Dr. Gundry, you have lupus. I said, I don't have lupus. Come on, where's the lupus? And they said, no, no, no, you're positive for anti-nuclear antibody, which is one of the good markers for lupus, an autoimmune condition. And I'm going, well, you know, that's interesting. My family, my father's side of the family has massive psoriasis. My dad was on methotrexate for 51 years.

Was it like a steroid or like a cream?

It's one of the immunosuppressants. Wow. Yeah, he was on an immunosuppressant.

So you wouldn't have psoriasis all over your body?

Yeah, oh you would have psoriasis everywhere. And so I said, and my aunt had it and my cousins had it. So I'm going, you know, that makes sense. I obviously have a predisposition to an autoimmune disease. And I said, I think I'll turn it off because I'm always experimenting with food. That's my job. and so I ate perfectly. I followed the rules for two weeks, re-measured my anti-nuclear antibody, done, gone, turned off.

After how many weeks?

Two weeks.

Wow.

I said, Eh, that's pretty interesting. So we actually did a study that we presented at the American Heart two years ago of 102 patients with biomarker-proven autoimmune disease, like anti-nuclear antibody, like rheumatoid arthritis, like Hashimoto's, Kelly Clarkson, just to give you an example. And retested them at six months. And most of these people were on immunosuppressants, like what you see on TV every day. And we can- Drugs. Drugs. And in six months time, 95 out of the 102 people were negative for their marker of autoimmune disease and they were off their drugs. Wow. 94% success rate. That's not bad.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good. So then, two years ago, I was in New York City working on actually the Longevity Paradox. And I said, you know, I need to rechallenge myself. Let me, you know, things are going great. So I was there for about four days. I had pizza, I had bread, I had ice cream, I had pasta, I had tomatoes.

Tastes good.

And I felt fine. So I come running back on a Monday to the office and I have them draw my blood. Boom. I'm positive for anti-nuclear antibody again. Wow. And I went, oh shucks. And I said, well this is interesting. I'm gonna turn it off. So I ate normally for two weeks, retested, boom, turned off. So when I give pronouncements on autoimmune disease, one colleague came up to me one time, she said, what do you know about autoimmune disease? How dare you talk about autoimmune disease? Oh really? Well, you know, I can make mine come and go. And that's the That's the point. You can stop these things. And all it is is a manifestation of leaky gut.

Wow. Okay, so three things you said so far of leaky gut, I'm hearing you say no rice or corn, which is zero grains, no nightshades, which are tomatoes. Does that mean like tomato sauce or if things are prepared a certain way?

Yeah, so here's the deal. Peel and de-seed your tomatoes. Peel and de-seed your peppers. The Southwest American Indians always peel and de-seed their peppers before they eat them or grind them into chili. They've known that from time immemorial. The Italians always peel and de-seed their tomatoes before they make sauce. And I get to interview chefs all over Italy. They all say, You know, you gotta.

We do this.

Yeah, you gotta do this. And I said, well, how do you know you gotta do this?

Well, my mother.

We just know. Yeah, my mother taught me. Well, how'd you know? My grandmother taught her. Yeah.

They know. Now, here's something that's interesting. Peanuts and cashews. I'm a big fan of peanuts. And I think the last time you came on, maybe the first time you came on, you were like, you can't eat peanuts anymore. And I didn't eat them because I was having like little rashes every now and then. And I was thinking it was probably like the almond butter, nut butter, just I was consuming so much almond butter and peanut butter. And so I really cut back and I was like, okay, no peanut butter for a while and cut back on almond butter and felt fine. About a couple months ago, I started eating a lot more peanut butter and noticed it started coming back. And so I shut it off again and it went away. Now, why is peanut butter an issue? Why is it such a big thing?

So 94% of human beings are born with an antibody to the peanut lectin. And so now you go, so most of us inherit an antibody against the peanut lectin. And you go, well, wait a minute, when I was growing up, and probably when you were growing up, very few people had peanut allergies.

Now, it seems like everyone does.

Everybody's got it. Well, because our immune system used to be taught by our gut microbiome that, hey, you know, there's some nasty stuff out there, but we got your back and we're gonna handle it long before you ever have to deal with it. And you just, let's just, you know, use a Southern California example. There's a bunch of kids on the beach.

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And they got a bonfire not in the time of social distancing, right? And they're having a great time and the cops are, you know, looking at the beach and they're like, oh yeah, we know those kids are good kids, you know, they're not troublemakers. We'll go have a donut and a smoke and just chill. So compare that, that you're in a disadvantaged part of a community and there's gang members and shooting and the cops, everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise and the cops approach you with an Uzi rather than an ice cream cone. And what's happened to us is that for the most part our lines of defense against bad things like a peanut lectin are gone. Our gut is leaky so that our cops Cops are always on hyper alert. So a little benign little peanut lectin comes in now.

It breaks through.

And the cops go, oh my gosh, you know, kill it, kill it. And that's why we got EpiPens with all of our little kids. Now, the same thing happens. We, most of us, number one, don't have a great microbiome. that is able to fend off viruses, fend off bacteria like they should, after all they are defending their home. But more importantly, probably because most of us have leaky gut, most of our immune system that should be up in our nose, in our mouth protecting us against a virus, is down in our gut attacking whatever is coming through the wall of our gut. And it's completely distracted. Now, where I'm going with this is you hear on the news that people with chronic medical conditions are the people who are most susceptible to viruses in general, to the flu, to the coronavirus, to whatever. and well, why is that? Why would having high blood pressure make you more susceptible to dying from a virus? That actually doesn't make any sense. But if having high blood pressure is actually a sign that you have a leaky gut and that most of your immune system is actually down in your gut rather than patrolling the periphery like it should. And your immune system is, I mean, all the troops are down distracted, then it makes completely sense that you would be susceptible to this. Yeah. And let me give you a great story. Years ago, I was at the, I present a lot of papers at the microbiota meeting in Paris every year. And there was a fascinating paper that there are smelling neurons, olfactory neurons, you know, that live in our nose, that live in our kidneys and live in our heart. And you go, why would my kidneys need to smell anything? why would my heart need to smell anything? And it actually intrigued me until I realized in writing my next book, which is called the Energy Paradox, that these smelling organs in our kidneys and our heart smell bacterial farts, the fermentation products of bacteria and they can smell good farts and they can smell bad farts. And if they smell bad bacteria farts, they actually activate the blood pressure system to make your blood vessels more rigid and give you high blood pressure. And what was striking to me, and I didn't know the reason way back when, is when I had people with high blood pressure and we put them on my program, one of the first things, the first calls I would get is, what are you giving me? What supplement am I taking that's making me lightheaded and dizzy? And, you know, I look at my nurse and I look at me, I'm going, There isn't a supplement that does that. You know, come on into the office, let's see. And of course, their blood pressure is really low. And we go, okay, you know, let's cut that high blood pressure. pill in half. And then they call back a couple weeks later and say, I'm dizzy again. And we bring them back in. Sure enough, their blood pressure is low. Okay, let's get rid of that blood pressure. What we were doing is we were changing the bacterial signals in their gut. And they were now getting, if you will, good farts that they were smelling in their kidneys. And their blood vessels were reacting. And we eventually developed tests that we prove that in fact that happens and publish that data as well. So this is not science fiction, it's not conjecture. And so we now know that there's this incredible symbiotic organism that is us. And the more we learn about the really important part of us, the more it all makes sense on how we work. and returning to Dr. David Kessler, the head of the FDA, he said, you know, when you and I, Steve, were going through medical school, we were taught that the intestines was just a hollow tube and all they were there for was to absorb protein, fat and carbohydrates, end of story. That's all we were taught. And he says, who could have guessed that, you know, living down there were a hundred trillion five pounds of bugs that were essential for the functioning of everything. You know, like Dr. Amen says, who would have guessed that mental illness is coming from the gut?

The gut. Wow. And the connected, the heart and the brain and the gut.

Yeah, the gut-brain connection. He said, who would have guessed? Because all of us thought, that's just a tube. And yeah, there's a few bacteria down there and they're really bad and we poop them out and, you know, it's just waste. Right. Now we know much more than that. They are us. Wow.

Now, there's so many things you've covered here that I want to close a loop on a couple of these. I'm trying to figure out the solution to my peanut butter problem. What's the nut butter that I can eat that's actually okay?

So, is there one? Yeah, so interestingly enough, we have a number of people with rheumatoid arthritis who react to the peel of an almond. There is a lectin in the peel of almonds.

You take the peel off.

You take the peel off.

So the skinned almonds are okay.

Yeah, so like Marcona almonds. And there are actually a couple of companies that now make peeled almond butter, and you can find them.

Really?

Yeah.

It shouldn't be an issue then.

It shouldn't be an issue. Yeah, so if you're gonna choose... That's interesting. So walnuts are a great choice, pistachios are a great choice.

Every time I eat a walnut, I sneeze.

So there are some tannins in walnuts that certain people react to. So stay with pistachios, macadamia nuts. I love macadamia nuts. They're really good.

Mac nuts are okay.

Yeah, so get yourself some peeled almonds.

I'm gonna do that now.

Try it.

Okay. You said American milk is something that we should not have in order to fix leaky gut. Is there such thing as non-American milk that is okay to drink?

Yeah, so most people can have sheep milk, can have goat milk. Interestingly enough, goat milk traditionally was called mother's milk because the components in goat milk are very different than cow milk. they're far more similar to human milk. And so I actually tell mothers if they're going to, you know, give their child some animal milk, please make it goat milk rather than cow's milk.

Okay. And is there any other foods that we should not eat to heal our leaky gut?

So the more, and I know you.

Talk about this in Plant Paradox as.

Well, but yeah, the more you, there are There are a few people that actually react to either the white or the yolk of eggs. Most people don't.

Okay.

But we test for those. And here's just something to throw out. I don't want to cause widespread panic.

Yes.

There is already enough of that in.

The world right now.

That's right, yeah. We got plenty. There is a lectin in spinach that I was unaware of. but thanks to a company called Vibrant America, they discovered that there are a class of lectins called aquaporins, and they're present in tobacco, they're present in spinach, they're present in corn, they're present in soybeans, they're present in green peppers, and I think that's it. Anyhow. they actually can cause leaky gut and they can cause leaky brain. And I stumbled upon this because I have a few people with really bad IBS and really bad autoimmune disease who are saints. They follow my program, they never cheat, why would they? Why do they still have issues? Why do they still have issues? And so when we had these new tests, lo and behold, almost every one of these people reacted into spinach. No way. And they ate a lot of spinach and knock on wood so far, when we took the spinach away from them, that was the key. Now, don't everybody go home and throw out your spinach. But if you're following my program and my program does have spinach in it and we're still having problems, consider giving up spinach. There's no human need for spinning.

Now you said, what was her name?

Is she a Dr. Terry?

Is that her name? Terry Walsh. Dr. Terry Walsh.

You said she was doing like 10.

Or 12 cups of veggies a day for nine cups of vegetables. The snake looking back at you. Now what should those, now why is it important to have nine cups of.

Vegetables and what does that do for your microbiome in your gut every day? So getting back to Dr. David Kessler, head of the FDA, we thought that carbohydrates were carbohydrates and you know and complex complex carbohydrates, starches were fine because they're complex carbohydrates. Everybody's wrong. Food manufacturers have figured out how to make a complex carbohydrate, a simple carbohydrate, and make you think it's a complex carbohydrate. So when you read a label, number one, if you have to read a label, you should put the package back because there shouldn't be a label on a head of lettuce. Right. To give you an example. But you have to take, if the take-home point from this is we'll save so many people's lives, read total carbohydrates on the label, then take away the dietary fiber. That'll be the next thing under it. So that will tell you the amount of grams of sugar per serving in that package. Do not look look at where it says sugar. Do not look at added sugar. It is a lie.

So it says zero sugar, zero added sugar.

Yeah. So let me give you an example that he used on my podcast, which was a great example. He said, let me. What would you find in a store? The label says it's 300 calories. It has zero fat. It has zero grams of sugar. and it has four grams of protein and it has 35 grams of carbohydrates.

Is that broccoli? I don't know, what is that?

It's a bagel.

A bagel?

A bagel.

And 300 calories.

300 calories.

Wow.

Zero sugar.

How does that have zero sugar? I thought the.

That's just how it turns into sugar. The label law lies to you. It's got 35 grams of carbohydrates. Now, to make that turn into sugar... Which is sugar. It is pure sugar. In fact, it is better than sugar the way it has been manufactured. So you take, to figure out how much that is, there's four grams of sugar per teaspoon. So let's take his 35 grams of sugar, divide by four. Let's make it easy, make it 35 36 grams. That's nine teaspoons of raw sugar in that bagel.

In a bagel.

So that's number one. All of a sudden you have- How.

Many grams of sugar would that be?

That's, well, so a Coke, a 12 ounce Coke is about 12 grams of sugar. So you're basically chugging a Coke when.

You eat a bagel.

And it'll actually get into your bloodstream faster than if you chugged a Coke.

No way. How is it going faster when it's.

Just being It's been broken down. You actually have to digest the sugar molecule in the Coke. You don't have to digest the sugar molecule in a bagel. Really? Main lines. So that's number one. Number two, what nobody knew was the bacteria that most of your bacteria live down in your colon and your lower part of your small intestine. And they're waiting. for the complex carbohydrates that you do not digest normally. They're waiting for their meal that always used to come. And that meal never comes anymore because everything's been so finely processed that we don't get those complex carbohydrates down to them. So they starve to death. Now, what's really cool is that those guys take that meal and they make all these really cool compounds that number one, keep the wall of the gut intact, allow the wall of the gut to heal itself. They make compounds that actually are text messages to the mitochondria in all of our cells and particularly in our brain, that guys down in the engine room are working under full power and we've got Scotty beam me up sort of thing, you know, give me warp drive five and we've got the power and you know it's okay to go into hyperspace. If they don't make those compounds, your mitochondria go, geez, I'm not, I got nothing to work with here. and we got no backup system, I'm gonna sputter down to a crawl. And people wonder why they're fatigued, even though they're eating more than ever and they're eating all these sports drinks and they're having 27 cups of coffee and going, Where's my energy? And it's because we no longer have this beautifully designed symbiotic relationship and we starve the most important part of us. And that's why Jacqueline said, if it tastes good, spit it out.

So why nine cups of vegetables then?

Because that is actually giving those guys what they want to eat. Now Terry didn't know this back then, but her first book was Minding My Mitochondria or Feeding My Mitochondria. But now we know it's actually, we gotta feed those guys. We have to eat Eat for them.

Mitochondria.

We got to eat for the bacteria. The living, the back, the back, so.

Not the mitochondria?

Yeah, so in the longevity paradox, here's the really scary thing. Mitochondria are actually engulfed ancient bacteria.

Wow.

Billions of years ago, cells invited bacteria to live inside them. in exchange for a nice place to live, the cells said, we'll give you what you want to eat in exchange for you making ATP energy for us. And obviously it was a good deal, and because that's continued now. So within us, all of our cells have engulfed ancient bacteria that produce energy for us. And what's so really fun is the bacteria in your gut are the sisters of the mitochondria, which are bacteria in our cells. And they actually talk to each other.

Okay.

And here's what's really cool. You and I inherited our mitochondria from our mother. Dad did not give us any mitochondria.

Okay.

So all mitochondria are female. And if everything went okay, you and I inherited our gut microbiome from our mother, who literally took a crap on us as we exited the birth canal. And, you know, most everybody kind of knows that, you know, mom took a crap on me.

Yeah.

Ladies, if you hate your mother, no, she didn't take a crap on you. But your mother gives you your initial dose of bacteria. And that's actually why cesarean section babies who don't get that dose take up to six months to get a normal immune system compared to a vaginal delivery because they don't have the proper set of bacteria that Educate the immune system.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Now, you're speaking about immune system. How can we boost and protect our immune system in time of pandemic crisis, stress and overwhelm? What are the things we can do right now?

So, the first thing you do is you absolutely positively stay away from simple carbohydrates. And I can tell you that if it's in a package, it is is probably a simple carbohydrate, even what would appear to be healthy. So plantain chips.

No, I can't eat those. Come on.

Read the label and it will scare you to death. Will I eat plantain chips? Sure I will, but I will use them as a dipping chip to get guacamole in my mouth.

Or olive oil.

Or olive oil. Yeah. So, yeah, I know. So, stay away from simple carbohydrates. And what's really scary in times of pandemics is the grocery store shelves are empty of bread and bagels and pasta and tomato sauce.

That's good for you.

And milk and ice cream and orange juice. There's five to six teaspoons of sugar in a cup of orange juice.

So, it's actually good when the shelves are are cleared of all the bad things.

That's right. Believe it or not, right now, most of everything in the grocery store is actually good for you because it's all been cleared out of all the bad stuff. But what worries me is all that bad stuff is being consumed. Yeah. The best way to suppress your immune system is sugar. Sugar, abso- you- ever walk out of.

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Absolutely suppresses white blood cell function. so please don't eat like that.

Okay.

But luckily the stores are and the other thing I remind all my listeners is that we are the only creature that needs or uses toilet paper. Right. And if you follow my program... You won't need it. You will not need toilet paper.

I'll be I have many friends that say they don't need a wipe. Maybe take one little piece just to make sure. Just make sure.

Just insurance, but you never know. Yeah. And so, you know, I know when, you know, I've got some issue that, you know, that I need more than one piece of toilet paper.

Yeah.

So if you're, if you need toilet paper, I got news for you. You've got a leaky gut. You're eating the wrong things.

You're eating the wrong stuff. So no simple carbs. Essentially, if it's in a package, it's probably not good. No sugar. it suppresses the immune system. What else? Either boosts the immune system. So what boosts the immune system?

Yeah, so what boosts the immune system? It turns out that olive oil, the polyphenols in olive oil actually really boost the immune system. So do components of mushrooms. And, you know, I make one and we'll get you some called M Vitality, which is a mushroom extract. But mushrooms in general, even the humble button mushroom, will actually boost your immune system. And it does that actually by having the sort of complex sugars that your.

Gut bacteria really, really wants and needs.

Exactly. And so it's more of an indirect effect. You give your gut bacteria what they want and need, they in turn will tell the immune system, hey, we got this, and you know, relax and enjoy yourself. The other thing, every human being that I see initially with leaky gut or autoimmune disease has a low vitamin D level. I had Mark Hyman on my podcast recently and Mark has never seen vitamin D toxicity. I have been measuring vitamin D levels for over 20 years now. I have never seen vitamin D toxicity.

You can't have too much necessarily.

I have yet to see it. Could it exist?

I mean, if you have a whole bottle of day, maybe it's not good.

Actually, Dr. Holick from Boston University, who's really the world expert on vitamin D, has seen it only once, and that was in a physician who by accident was taking a million international units of vitamin D3 a day for six months. That's a lot.

That's a lot. Now, what is that, a whole cupful.

A day or something? Well, he had been getting it from a compounding pharmacist, and it would have been mislabeled. So he wasn't doing it on purpose. But for instance, I run my vitamin D level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter and I have for 18 years to prove I'm not dead. So many of the labs now are coming around to saying 120 is absolutely normal and it's not vitamin D toxic. I have patients, I may have told you this story, it's a great story years ago. two people in their late 70s first time. And we get vitamin D levels back in those days we could actually quantify the vitamin D level and the vitamin D was 270, both of them. And you know, I'm looking at them and I was young and naive and I'm thinking, why aren't these guys dead? And I said, you guys take a lot of vitamin D, don't you? They said, oh yeah, yeah, it's an anti-aging vitamin. it actually is. But I said, well, how long have you been doing that? And they said, oh, all of our lives. And I'm going, you know, you look pretty healthy to me. And in theory, vitamin D can give you kidney stone, toxic vitamin D levels. Never seen it, but in theory, any kidney stones? No, why? And the other theory is it makes your fingers and toes numb. and I said, any fingers, toes? No, no, why? And I'm going, you know, huh? So that's when I actually started researching vitamin D. And for instance, the University of California San Diego says that the average American should take 9,600 international units a day to have a safe level of vitamin D. The other thing that's fascinating is most people with cancer have low levels of vitamin D. And there's some very interesting trials of boosting vitamin D in people who have cancer to prevent recurrences. So, right now, I think everybody should be taking 5,000 international units, but right now- A day? A day. Right now we're probably wise to boost it to 10,000 a day.

Wow.

I'll give you an example. Last week when this started and I still see patients every day, I took 100,000 units on Monday, I took 50,000 units on Tuesday and I took 25,000 units on Wednesday and then hit 10,000 units. If I feel I'm coming down with.

Something, you think more about it.

I will take 150,000 units that's three days in a row, 50,000 three times a day for three days. That's nearly a half a million international units of vitamin D in three days. And I'm not dead. I have my patients do the same thing. None of them have died, none of them have gotten vitamin D toxicity. But I can tell you it always cuts whatever it's one of the most effective antivirals there are. the second thing we need to do is we need to get, if you can, time to release vitamin C. Linus Pauling was right. Vitamin C is incredibly antiviral. But what he didn't know is we can't absorb enough vitamin C and keep it in our bloodstream because it comes out very, very quickly. So get yourself some time release vitamin C. The stores are empty, Amazon's empty. In the future. Barring that, it's still there. I go to health food stores every day and just kind of check and see what's there and what isn't. Get yourself just the chewable tablets or get the capsules and take it four times a day. Take 500 to 1000 four times a day.

Yeah, it's still better than nothing.

It's still better than nothing. Zinc is a great idea. Get about 30 milligrams of zinc. I'm a big fan of quercetin, sometimes pronounced quercetin. It's a compound that's present in the white pith of citrus, it's in apples, and it's in onions, and it actually may be the compound that the old wives' tale, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So quercetin is also very antiviral. And there's an exciting new paper that was just published yesterday that astaxanthin seems to prevent the inflammatory response to the coronavirus. Astaxanthin, it is a compound that actually makes salmon red and salmon eat algae and plankton that have that produced s. Dizanthin. It's, you know, it's. It's a really cool compound.

Wow.

Yeah.

Do you think it's possible that we could defend and arm our bodies and our immune system could be so strong that if any virus, like the coronavirus, came in our mouth and was in us, that we could reject it and not attach to our bodies?

Correct. That's the whole idea.

Really?

You are designed.

To defend it, to block them all.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

It's like a fullback running through, just blocking everyone so you can score.

Yeah, you are designed to do that.

I mean, when their immune system is strong, then you don't get sick.

You don't get sick.

And it doesn't matter how strong the virus is, you should be able to defend against it. It's when it's weak when you start to get sick.

That's exactly right. Wow. And you know, I mean, you have different parts of your immune system lined up on all your mucous membranes ready for, you know, what's coming. And, what's unfortunate is in a lot of our patients with leaky gut and with autoimmune diseases, we can actually measure that they're very deficient in the immune system that makes, for instance, IgA, which lines our walls of our gut and IgM, which is the second line of offense. And we can see that when we get their gut sealed that, wow, their immune system is back, all their numbers are back up to normal. But that's what's happening. So again, the reason people with chronic diseases are susceptible to the virus is not because they have a chronic disease. It's because that is a sign of a leaky gut in your immune system. system is impaired.

Fix the leaky gut, you won't get sick.

You won't get sick. That's what, you know, people, my patients go, this is so weird. You know, I used to get a cold two times a year and now I don't get cold and all my friends do. I just, yesterday, two days ago, I was talking with one of my patients who's a psychologist and I won't tell you where she lives, sure. She was at a gathering two weeks ago. and three of her family members got coronavirus, including her mother and five other people. And she didn't get it. And she says, I'm convinced it's because of the way I eat.

Really?

Yeah.

We are a society of weak immune systems, it seems like.

Oh yeah, we're just I mean, we're just set up. It all kind of goes back to how we eat and the types of foods we eat. And the amount of antibiotics we take. We didn't know that the broad spectrum antibiotics that all of us took for every little sniffle, for every little cough- that hurts us. We're killing off our microbiome. It was just like put napalm on this tropical rainforest.

How important is probiotics right now?

That's a great question. So we are unfortunately, just because of our lifestyle, very deficient in probiotics.

So should we be taking them?

We should be taking them, but most probiotics are pretty worthless because they're not protected from acid in the stomach or bile in the first part of the duodenum, which will kill them. Most probiotics never make it to the gut. So, you got to look for a probiotic that is actually encapsulated- Time released. That's either a spore forming probiotic or that's encapsulated so it resists gastric and bile digestion. For instance, Gundry MD makes a 24 strain probiotic that is in a capsule that prevents digestion. All of our probiotics in like Vital Reds, in like Bio-Complete 3 are spore-forming probiotics that cannot be killed by gastric acid. So it doesn't matter if you see, oh, this has got a hundred billion probiotics. If it doesn't have a system for getting it into your gut, it won't get into your gut. But what's more important than probiotics? and we need them. What's more important is prebiotics. So that's the food that the probiotics have to eat. And that gets back to the crazy nine cups of vegetables every day.

So you need the prebiotics, the vegetables in your gut for the probiotics to feed off of.

Exactly. So you gotta give them what they eat. So like I tell my patients in in Palm Springs, if I sold them grass seed and say, go plant some grass seed, and they come back a month later and say, hey, you sold me bad grass seed, it didn't grow. And I go, well, what'd you do? And they say, well, I put it out on the sand. And I said, well, did you water it? No, you didn't tell me to. What did you fertilize it? No, you didn't tell me to. I said, well, of course it's not gonna grow. So you could swallow all the probiotics in the world, but if you don't give them what they need to eat, and that soluble fiber, they're not going to grow. And that's the sad thing we've learned is we don't feed these bugs what they need. And that's why, you know, for instance, I make pre-bio thrive, which is a bunch of different prebiotics, which is feeds the bugs.

Because if you're not eating your veggies, you gotta take that to support you. I want to be mindful of time and finish with a couple of final questions. We've talked about the gut. and how leaky gut is the cause of a weak immune system.

Yep.

We talked a little bit about the brain-gut connection, but we haven't talked too much about the heart in terms of how does the heart affect the immune system with social distancing. As a heart doctor who's specialized in this for years about the heart, how important is human connection and taking care of forgiveness in the hearts, taking care of letting go of anger, resentment, and not being able to connect and touch people. How much does that hurt our immune system in your mind?

It's we're, you know, we're a, as anybody realizes now, we're an incredibly social creature and social interaction among great apes is really one the keys of any great ape society. Apes are constantly grooming each other. Even the big daddy silverback gorilla will groom somebody else and even a big daddy silverback will hug a little baby. And so we really depend on that interpersonal connection. and we're actually very ill-equipped for social distancing. It is, if you will, it is not in our DNA to social distance. And I think all these Italians sitting on their balconies singing to each other and all of, you know, we have to have that interaction. So number one during this time period, This is the time to get a dog or a cat or some other animal. Gerbils are actually quite cuddly. Don't put them where you shouldn't put them. Yeah, get a pet.

A lot of love in a pet.

A lot of love in a pet. And you don't have to social distance from your pet. The other thing that's great is it turns out that animal adoption is way up, way up. And if you really think, well, eventually I'm gonna go back to work, offer to foster an animal from a shelter for a while. The dog or the cat will love it, you will love it, you're not under a time commitment, you don't have to adopt them.

And you might fall in love and adopt them.

Exactly.

You fall in love with a cat.

You fall in love with a dog. It's true.

You have animals?

Oh, we have four dogs. Wow. Four dogs. I used to have a cat in medical school because obviously a dog in.

Medical school too much time.

Too much time.

I love cats too. When you get the right cat?

Yeah, the right cat.

So, okay, to connect, to make sure we heal the heart and have a strong, healthy heart during this time, have a pet or adopt or foster, what else can we do?

You know, I think pick up the phone. It is amazing what the sound of a human voice will do. And, you know, get on FaceTime, get on Zoom, Skype, however you want to connect, face-to-face interaction can do a huge amount of good. One of the problems with most social media, which is based on Twitter or whatever, is there's no eye contact. And humans, most of our communication skills actually involve eye and eye expression. And one of the problems in our current social media and Twitter accounts, nothing wrong with it, but there's no being able to read a person's expression. And just, and you're, you know, one of the great things about talking to you, Louis, is that you actually express that you are interested in what I say.

Most people don't express when they're interviewing you.

Yeah, no, and so when somebody says, You, that makes you feel connected.

You feel excited.

You say, oh, I want to give you more. I want to share with you more. So get, you know, get on, get on Facebook time or get, you know, whatever, however you want to connect and make a visual connection. And yeah, we, and then hug your dog or your cat.

You know, it's interesting. Most people, as I've studied interviewers over the years, because I always want to become better, a lot of people sit side to side. and, you know, in an interview talk show style, they sit kind of like this, and they'll kind of, they have to lean their whole body, but they can always kind of get away from the eye contact. And I've always made it intentional to be like, no, we're sitting across the table from each other, getting as close as we can, although we're, right now, we're at least six feet away. But I typically like to be not make it uncomfortable, but make it, like, locked in, because when, when I've been sitting side by side or kind of kitty corner or whatever, I just feel like the people are more disconnected, you know?

Yeah.

And so for me, it's always been intentional of like, we've got to have the setting right so we are across from each other as best as possible. Sometimes when I'm on a stage or something like that, when you have an audience, it's different. You want to be side by side, but in an interview without an audience.

I think it's important. So, now the other thing, speaking of social distancing, since we're on the subject of bacteria, It turns out you and I have a bacterial cloud around us of bacteria. And there's really pretty interesting data that everybody's got a spot where you start to feel uncomfortable as someone gets near you. And it's actually that bacteria, yeah. Really. That bacteria cloud interacting with your bacteria. bacteria cloud. And it turns out that there's some pretty good data that the reason all humans kiss and exchange precious bodily oral fluids is because your bacteria are trying to make sure that they are compatible with that person you're kissing. And there's actually some interesting data that your bacteria choose the one that you should be with.

-Wow. -Who knew? -So, it's your bacteria that chooses the love of your life.

-Exactly.

-Not what they do or who they are or how they look. It's the bacteria that connects you.

-Yeah. -Interesting.

Can that bacteria change over time to make you want to fall in love more or reject the person?

-You know, that's a great question, but we know that mouthwash actually destroys your oral bacteria.

Number one, don't take mouthwash.

Oh, no, it's one of the worst things you can do. In fact, good studies, good human studies show that mouthwash raises blood pressure because, yeah, because mouthwash kills oral bacteria, which are essential, fun fact, to make nitric oxide that dilates your blood vessels, which is another gasotransmitter. transmitter. And without the oral bacteria, you won't convert enough nitrates into nitric oxide.

So, can you brush your teeth? Can you use toothpaste?

Yeah, you can use toothpaste, but I prefer people use toothpastes that are based on coconut oil. Or use baking soda.

Wow.

Baking soda is still one of the best.

So, no mouthwash at all. Is there like an organic mouthwash Wash that people can take.

So do some either coconut oil or olive oil pulling. Put a tablespoon of olive oil in your mouth. And do it for 2 minutes. Even a minute will do it. You'd be amazed. No, no, swallow it.

Swallow it.

Remember, I'm trying to get a liter of olive oil into you per week. Come on, 10 to 12 tablespoons a day.

Swallow it. Swish it in your mouth. Swallow it. And what will that do? That'll clear the the smell of the bacteria.

Yeah, it'll do everything. It's really cool. I mean, that's why, you know, that's.

Why- Any olive oil, like any olive oil doesn't matter.

Yeah, I mean, go to Costco. You know, I make an olive oil that one tablespoon a day is the equivalent to having a liter per week. Gundry MD Polyphenol Rich Olive Oil comes from this biodynamic farm in Morocco. unbelievable stuff. Amazing.

Well, this has been, this has been powerful. We've got, I've got to be respectful of your time because you got to get out of here. But this is amazing. You've got an amazing book, the Plant Paradox, which was a massive hit and is still selling like crazy. The Longevity Paradox, which is more recent.

Book, which, which is still still number one on Amazon. Wow.

And it's amazing. And this is teaching you how to essentially reverse aging. and how to not, you said anti-aging was not a thing, but- De-age. De-age.

That's what we're gonna do, folks. De-age.

De-age your life. That's what this is all about. Some great people have backed this. And you've given us some great tips today about boosting the immune system, how to stay safe and healthy right now. So where can we support you? Where else can we go besides your books and podcasts? What's the best place to go?

Yeah, so find my podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, Dr. Gundry podcast, www.drgundry.com if you want my supplements or my foods or my olive oil, go to gundrymd.com Find me on Instagram, I got two YouTube channels, putting out recipes all the time.

Amazing. Love it. Dr. Gundry, thank you so much for your time, for being here.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Louis. Thank you for good eye contact.

That's it.

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