EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Dr. Steven Gundry

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm expert shepherd.

[2] I'm joined by expert Padman.

[3] Hi.

[4] Today we're going to talk to Dr. Stephen Gundry.

[5] He's a cardiologist, a heart surgeon, a medical researcher, and author.

[6] Dr. Gundry has performed over 10 ,000 surgeries, Monica.

[7] Wow, that is a lot.

[8] That is about a thousand more than you or I have done, which is very impressive.

[9] And he's moved his focus onto diet.

[10] He's written three books, The Longevity Paradox, The Plant Paradox, and Dr. Gundry's diet evolution.

[11] Now, listen, when I read up on him, he's got his critics.

[12] Yeah.

[13] But rest assured, I did take those points, and I confronted them with them, and we had a nice dialogue about it.

[14] Great.

[15] So if you're up for that, please enjoy Dr. Stephen Gundry.

[16] Wonderly Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[17] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[18] I'm going to do some repulsive things while we talk, one of them being chew tobacco.

[19] So I just want to warn you.

[20] I don't know where your sensitivity to that may lie on the spectrum.

[21] Nicotine is very good for you.

[22] It's the delivery device.

[23] I know.

[24] I cannot get, let me tell you what's going on.

[25] I smoked forever.

[26] I haven't smoked for 14 years.

[27] Of those 14 years, I've been on the nicotine lozenges, okay, for the bulk of that time.

[28] The lozenges, by my estimation, started making my skin red.

[29] And when I would cut them out, the redness would go away.

[30] So now I'm on old -fashioned chewing tobacco, all because of the vanity of my skin.

[31] And I now must quit this on August 12th before I go back to work.

[32] and I'm not sure which delivery system I can use, because I do like nicotine in my life.

[33] What are your thoughts on that?

[34] What about drops or sprays?

[35] They make a nicotine spray?

[36] Oh, they do.

[37] It's just like a little breath, mouth mint?

[38] Basically.

[39] Really?

[40] Yeah, nicotine spray.

[41] Oh, I should look into that.

[42] Yeah, Dave Asprey uses that.

[43] Oh, he does.

[44] Oh, we're having him on here.

[45] Well, yeah, so you've got to pick Dave's brain about that.

[46] Okay, great.

[47] Because, yeah, in fact, during our podcast that Dave and I did together, live, you know, sprayed a little nicotine.

[48] Oh.

[49] His stick is the only great thoughts, the only great everything ever happened over coffee and cigarettes.

[50] Yeah, uh -huh.

[51] He says it's the two, you know, caffeine and nicotine produce the best brain hit that anyone can have.

[52] Yeah.

[53] And nicotine, it's interesting.

[54] Smokers have a very low.

[55] incidence of Parkinson's and dementia.

[56] Right.

[57] I've read two different studies that it may delay the onset of Parkinson's and also Alzheimer's.

[58] Yes, exactly.

[59] And then the downside right of nicotine is it raises your blood pressure.

[60] That's one of if you have some, you know, hypertension or something.

[61] It's not good for you.

[62] I happen to have inordinately low blood pressure.

[63] So I'm not worried about mine spiking a little bit.

[64] Cool.

[65] Now, Dr. Gundry, you are from where?

[66] Originally?

[67] Of course.

[68] Your origin story.

[69] Well, I mean, we're all from Africa, so let's go over it.

[70] That's right.

[71] That's true.

[72] Omaha, Nebraska.

[73] Omaha, Nebraska.

[74] Okay.

[75] And what did mom and dad do in Omaha, Nebraska?

[76] So I start with my mother first.

[77] She was valedictorian of Central High School, which was a class of about a thousand.

[78] And then she went off to a two -year college and then, you know, made the mistake of marrying my father.

[79] No. And she became actually a housewife.

[80] They actually kind of trained me, tell you those stories.

[81] But my father started off selling shoe repair parts working for my grandfather.

[82] And my grandfather, when I was 10, said, look, there's no future in selling shoe repair parts.

[83] And you need a real job.

[84] And so my mother had grown up down the street, actually, from Warren Buffett.

[85] Oh, sure.

[86] Same street.

[87] But she knew the owner, the president of Mutual of Omaha insurance.

[88] She made a call, and my dad got into the executive training program.

[89] And with only two years of college, I rose to Executive Vice President on Mutual of Omaha in charge of the chairman's office.

[90] No kidding.

[91] And at that time, that was the single big building in downtown Omaha, right?

[92] That's exactly right.

[93] Yeah, one big megalith.

[94] So it's fair to say that you grew up in a pretty nice lifestyle in Omaha?

[95] We were lower middle class in a middle class neighborhood, but my mother, she was raised actually upper middle class, even upper class.

[96] And she always acted as if that's what we were.

[97] One of the kids down the block was the son of a dentist, and the dentist had this wonderful Cadillac Eldorado convertible in 1958.

[98] It was gorgeous.

[99] And my father drove a company Chevrolet station.

[100] wagon, 1956.

[101] And I convinced all of my friends that the 56 Chevy was a vastly superior car to the Cadillac Elbrador.

[102] And so I learned.

[103] Did you get any traction with that argument?

[104] I learned very early age to be a good salesman.

[105] Well, my dad sold cars for a living and he sent me down at some point and said, I don't care what you're going into.

[106] You're going into sales.

[107] There's no job that you're not going into sales.

[108] You have a great new idea.

[109] You're a very new idea.

[110] You're a very going to have to go into your boss and sell that idea if you anything name it and that was his take on life now you ended up at yell was this an extension of mom wanting to aspire to greatness no interestingly in the area where we lived in omaha nebraska there was a separate school district that was separate from all the omaha regular school districts and we went to was called westside high school and it was nicknamed Hollywood High.

[111] The vast majority of the valedictorian salutatorians' top of the class usually ended up in Ivy League schools.

[112] So there was this, you know, this is what you're going to do.

[113] And it was all.

[114] It was more the trajectory of the high school.

[115] Yeah.

[116] Well, actually, in kindergarten, we were given IQ tests.

[117] My teacher, Ms. Cosette, called my parents in.

[118] She said, you know, he tests right now at an 11 -year -old level, and I was five.

[119] And she said, here's the deal.

[120] He will be great at whatever he's interested in.

[121] But if he's not interested in it, and don't even try.

[122] And actually, she was absolutely right.

[123] But my grandmother, my maternal grandmother when I was like five, gave me this whole set of books.

[124] There are little paperback books called the Zim Nature series.

[125] One book was insects.

[126] One was, you know, amphidiums, one was mammals.

[127] And I would just devour these things.

[128] Yeah.

[129] So in school, in early years, my mother and I would sit on the couch every, every night, my mother would have flashcards for math, for vocabulary, and just, you know, every night, grill me. You know, that was normal.

[130] You didn't watch TV.

[131] You did flashcards.

[132] Right.

[133] So I think my mother said, look, I guess I'm going to live through my son because that's my track, you know, in the 50s.

[134] Yeah.

[135] And my father actually always wanted to be a doctor.

[136] But then I wasn't in the cards.

[137] They came from a very actually poor family.

[138] Right.

[139] So you end up at Yale and you immediately know you're going into medicine.

[140] I knew actually when I was 10 that I was going into medicine because I found a book in my elementary school library called All About You.

[141] And it was kind of a book, all about you.

[142] And I said, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

[143] So just a genuine interest in it.

[144] Yeah.

[145] And then you end up at Yale.

[146] And what do you do undergrad there?

[147] Well, I started as a philosophy major.

[148] Okay, good.

[149] Then they had a program.

[150] This was in the late 60s.

[151] You could design your own major.

[152] So I decided to write a thesis called human, biologic, and social evolution.

[153] What does that mean?

[154] The thesis was you could take a great ape, manipulate its food supply, and its environment, improve you would arrive at a human.

[155] Uh -huh.

[156] And so I combined the departments of biology, anthropology, and psychology as my mentors.

[157] Now, what was your food argument to that?

[158] As an anthro major, I'd like to hear your food argument.

[159] So what happened was, and there's actually a book in my future, so I can't tell you everything.

[160] But long story short, you have to compete in an area of food supply that you can compete successfully in.

[161] And that's what will happen to you.

[162] If you can compete for food in an environment, then you'll win.

[163] If you can't compete for food in that environment, you won't survive.

[164] Right.

[165] So four or five million years ago, there was climate change.

[166] And where Great Apes, which was in Africa, primarily in the Rift Valley, although we can argue is also South Africa, we had a lot of climate change in the forest, dense forests began to recede.

[167] we came from a line of great apes.

[168] We were arboreal apes.

[169] We actually lived in trees.

[170] Fun fact, the reason we have a shoulder joint that works the way it does, we actually should have named the Playground equipment, ape bars, not monkey bars, because actually great apes have a universal shoulder joint that allows us.

[171] Breakiation to walk on the underside of branches, whereas monkeys have to climb on the top.

[172] of branches and that allowed great apes to actually get farther out on a branch to get to fruit and that's actually how they beat out monkeys on fruit.

[173] Eventually, that began to dwindle.

[174] And it turns out that we actually found a new place to compete and that's in streams and water and ocean.

[175] We actually spent a great deal of time as an aquatic ape.

[176] And that's actually why you and I are hairless, by the way.

[177] Who are you citing for this?

[178] Where did you get this chapter?

[179] So my mentor in anthropology, actually in paleontology, who was David Pilbine, who was at Yale at that time, and then he went on to Harvard and became the chairman there.

[180] But there's actually some fascinating evidence that most of our characteristics that we take for granted are because we were able to occupy a space, that no other animal occupied, and that was streams and lakes and probably the Indian Ocean.

[181] It doesn't mean we were swimming and living in the ocean, but we could go where nobody else could go.

[182] There's no competition.

[183] To explain to me, the loss of hair is a result of, as we became upright, our contact patch with the sun diminished, and we no longer were processing as much vitamin D, and we had to lose hair.

[184] to absorb more vitamin D. Does that jive with...

[185] No. No. The only hairless animals actually are aquatic animals, dolphins, whales, elephants, hippopotamus, is, believe it or not, elephants were aquatic.

[186] Their trunk was a snorkel.

[187] It wasn't for getting leaves off of trees.

[188] They were an aquatic animal.

[189] So the only evidence of hairlessness is in aquatic animals also.

[190] Well, really, let's just be clear.

[191] The dolphins aren't hairless, humans aren't hairless, none of these are hairless.

[192] Yeah, we all have little hairs.

[193] Yeah, we have more hairs per square inch than a chimpanzee.

[194] It's just very fine.

[195] It's just very fine.

[196] Yeah.

[197] And hair is a drag in water.

[198] If you actually look at the hair patterns on your back or even on your chest, you'll notice that the hair patterns follow the flow of water.

[199] And we also have two, I'm a hairy guy, probably have some Neanderthal in me. Should you be so lucky?

[200] Yeah.

[201] I was disappointed.

[202] I didn't have much.

[203] Funny, my daughter, who is born a Grin Christian, she had addiction problems.

[204] She overcame, happy to say.

[205] She got her 23 and me and found out she's 3 % Neanderthal.

[206] And so I know she got it from me. But the funny thing is we have some interesting discussions on what that means.

[207] have 3 % Neanderthal and believe strongly in the Bible as a text.

[208] Is there ever a peaceful end of that conversation?

[209] Yeah, actually, I think it's actually made her more willing to interpret the Bible as, well, maybe, you know, the time periods, maybe those are not accurate and maybe, you know, she's come to.

[210] So maybe inch away from the literal more into the metaphorical?

[211] Yeah, exactly.

[212] Okay.

[213] Well, that's big of her.

[214] But back to hair patterns.

[215] Yes, please.

[216] Underneath our clavicles, or collarbones, there's a swirl of hair.

[217] It doesn't go one way or another.

[218] When you do this in water tanks, looking at flow, this is a swirl pattern right here.

[219] It doesn't follow a path of water.

[220] Kind of fun.

[221] Interesting.

[222] So when you left Yale, you successfully defended your dissertation and you graduated beyond that.

[223] you went to medical school.

[224] Medical College of Georgia.

[225] Well, and Monica is from Georgia.

[226] I am.

[227] What part?

[228] I'm from Duluth, Georgia.

[229] Yeah, yeah, MCG was a big school.

[230] Oh, it was.

[231] What city is that in?

[232] Augusta.

[233] Oh, okay.

[234] Home of the Masters?

[235] Oh, wonderful.

[236] Medical students used to work the first aid tents at the Masters.

[237] Oh.

[238] It was really cool.

[239] I bet you made a lot more money, catting, though.

[240] No, no. I'm just saying if you're going to pick medical tent or caddy.

[241] you probably would have made a lot more money in kidding.

[242] And so there you became a cardiologist and a surgeon.

[243] Well, I was a medical student and had two actually wonderful mentors.

[244] William Strong was the head of pediatric cardiology.

[245] And MCG was fairly unique in that they wanted to actually train doctors who were going to be doctors.

[246] And so from year one, you would actually start rotations following a doctor around or going to a doctor's office and seeing what they did.

[247] So I had already figured out that I was going to be a heart surgeon at that point.

[248] Actually, my family, my father, was transferred to Atlanta, Georgia.

[249] So while we lived in Georgia, I was at Yale, and I needed a summer job.

[250] And I come back from Yale, first summer, and I had gotten this job as a radiology tech in one of the hospitals.

[251] So I show up the first day, and they said, who are you?

[252] And I got this job.

[253] And they said, well, the guy who hired you is gone.

[254] And, you know, we don't need you, so have a nice day.

[255] And I'm going, geez, you know, I need a job.

[256] And, you know, I want to be in the medical field.

[257] And they said, well, there's a big inner city hospital called Grady.

[258] Why don't you go down there?

[259] They always need people.

[260] And I said, okay, so I go down to the big inner city hospital and I go to the, you know, employment office.

[261] They said, well, you know, what do you do?

[262] And I said, well, I'm a pre -med student, you know, at Yale.

[263] And they said, well, you don't want to be here.

[264] You know, you want to go up to the professional employment office.

[265] And I said, okay.

[266] So I go into the professional employment office and they say, well, you know, what do you do?

[267] It's a pre -med at Yale.

[268] And I said, you know, this may be your lucky day.

[269] Because we have this program here at Grady where we take medical students during their summer and we train them as scrub nurses.

[270] We always take medical students, but on Friday we selected people, and this morning, this was a Monday, one of the people we selected can't come.

[271] This is unique.

[272] You're not a medical student, but if you could tell us that you'll do this for the next four years in the summer, we'll take.

[273] a chance on you.

[274] And I said, would I?

[275] Yeah.

[276] So all of a sudden, you know, in the summer, I'm trained as a scrub tech in the inner city hospital of Atlanta, Georgia.

[277] Little did I know.

[278] And once I became a scrub tech that the training system at Grady for surgeons was you were 36 hours on call in the hospital and then 12 hours off.

[279] And that was your life.

[280] Can I ask really quick, because this is kind of well known.

[281] Students in their residency have these hours.

[282] What on earth is the theory behind why we would want someone sleep deprived doing this?

[283] The theory was your mentor did it, and that's how we...

[284] No one's raised their hand and said why.

[285] Right.

[286] And that's how we weed the shaft from the wheat.

[287] That's how we find the best and the best, and how you can land an airplane totally sleep deprived, blah, blah, blah.

[288] Yeah.

[289] At that time, what was the thoughts on amphetamines for people on those shifts?

[290] Was it?

[291] Never saw anybody use it.

[292] You didn't?

[293] Ever in my career.

[294] Oh, okay.

[295] Coffee, yes.

[296] I mean, some of the orthopedic surgeons would have beer available.

[297] Oh, great.

[298] Perfect, seriously.

[299] And anesthesiologists, now anesthesiologists don't want to do.

[300] generalized, but we usually knew the kids in medical school who were going to go into anesthesiology because they had a real keen interest in mind -altering drugs.

[301] Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[302] Yeah, they were administering acid and other things probably in their pre -time.

[303] Yeah.

[304] Well, there is some statistics on the high rate of addiction among anesthesiologists.

[305] That's a big toolkit to trust somebody.

[306] Yeah, no, it's very true.

[307] Yeah.

[308] And, again, it makes sense if you're interested in drugs.

[309] You're probably interested in drugs.

[310] So you found yourself there, and then at what point in medical school do you say I want to take the surgeon path?

[311] Well, so, you know, almost by accident, I'm now a trained surgeon because what happens, talking about the poor residents, the residents would actually train us to do the operations.

[312] It's true, and they would sleep on a gurney.

[313] And so the scrub nurses and scrub techs would actually do the operations.

[314] This was a knife and gun club, you know, stab wounds, shotgun wounds, gunshot wounds, a lot of belly surgery.

[315] And so...

[316] Tons of bleeding.

[317] Lots of bleeding.

[318] Never forget one time, we're hauling a gentleman down the hall to the operating room and who's bleeding profusely in his abdomen.

[319] And all of a sudden from underneath his gown, he pulls out a gun and starts waving it.

[320] And, you know, we're all, oh, geez, you know.

[321] And the head surgery.

[322] and says, don't worry, he's bleeding so fast, he'll be out in a second.

[323] And sure enough, you know, he's waving like this.

[324] It's lightheaded.

[325] And then we jumped on him and, you know, save his life.

[326] Now, as a young man from Omaha, Nebraska, did you feel like you were an episode of MASH or something?

[327] How were you computing what you were witnessing?

[328] Yeah, it really was, you know, MASH every night.

[329] And did that give you some adrenaline and a thrill?

[330] Was it exciting?

[331] No, yeah, it's very exciting, particularly, like I say, when you're, you're a young person and all of a sudden you, you know, you've got this, for lack of a better word, authority or you need to save somebody's life.

[332] Yeah.

[333] And the poor residence conced out, you know, on the gurney, you go, you know, I got to get this guy through this.

[334] Well, yeah, it gives you a purpose in a real.

[335] Yeah, exactly.

[336] And it says, you know, I was meant to do this.

[337] So you start doing surgery.

[338] You start doing surgery on the heart, correct?

[339] Correct.

[340] Yeah, in residency.

[341] So you have to, once you graduate from medical school, you have to go do a residency.

[342] And in those days, and actually still, you have to do a general surgery residency first and then, you know, prove competence in that.

[343] And then you do a cardiothoracic surgery residency.

[344] It's usually two or three years.

[345] So it's about eight years of training to become a cardiothority.

[346] Is any of that overlapping with your medical school?

[347] No. It's not.

[348] So you're talking 16 years out of your BA, for BS.

[349] So 16 years later, you're now employed officially as a surgeon.

[350] Well, and then I did a fellowship in pediatric cardiac surgery over in London, England.

[351] Okay.

[352] We're now another year beyond.

[353] Oh, my God.

[354] Are you dragging a gal with you throughout all this?

[355] Yes.

[356] You are.

[357] Yeah.

[358] And is she your wife currently?

[359] No, not my wife currently.

[360] Oh, okay.

[361] This gal that was with you, was she at any point like, okay, enough with the fellowships and residency.

[362] Let's get you with a practice.

[363] Residents do not, did not make much money.

[364] They were basically indentured servants.

[365] That's actually how the system came about.

[366] Yeah, the weird part of being on that track is you basically do have a lottery ticket in your back pocket, but it's just not going to come to maturity for like 16 years.

[367] And is it, is that part maddening at all?

[368] Like, I know I will have enough money for a house, but I can't get it now.

[369] Well, I actually had a house, if you were an idiot, you would moonlight and work in emergency rooms at night.

[370] I wanted my kid, we had two young kids and I wanted my kids to have a house and not live in an apartment.

[371] So through most of my residency, one night a week, I would, even though we're on call, 36 on and 12 off, those 12 hours one night a week, I would work in an emergency room to make enough money to have a house.

[372] Right.

[373] And you're still going to.

[374] You're still going to keep this position about no amphetamines.

[375] Yeah, no amphetamines.

[376] All right.

[377] Surgeons often kind of pre -select themselves because they can work without much sleep.

[378] My brother -in -law is a cardiologist, and he wanted to be a art surgeon, but he said, there's no way, you know, I can work with that little sleep.

[379] And so I'm going to be a cardiologist because I can get more sleep.

[380] This is a very weird system.

[381] I just have to, once again, and say out loud, I think it's a very bizarre system.

[382] that we would want.

[383] There's all these great studies on sleeps.

[384] They've tracked some of the biggest tragedies and environmental tragedies being from, you know, the Valdez guys had been up for 31 hours, the people in the Titanic had, there's just all this proof that people just aren't operating optimally at.

[385] Well, and the good news is, you know, the systems have radically changed.

[386] There are now time periods.

[387] Oh, that's good.

[388] Okay, so that has changed.

[389] Yeah, it really has change.

[390] Okay.

[391] Do you specialize in pediatric surgeries or you're just doing them all?

[392] So I'm doing them all.

[393] I was one of the last of generation that tended to do all things.

[394] So I, you know, did lung surgery, esophageal surgery, adult heart surgery, and pediatric heart surgery.

[395] There's a few of us, you know, dinosaurs that did that.

[396] Yeah.

[397] And my argument was I actually learned things by operating on a kid that I could apply to adults and vice versa.

[398] I was one of the originators of infant and pediatric heart transplant, along with my partner Leonard Bailey, who just passed away a few months ago.

[399] Really?

[400] And so what age was this first?

[401] So this was in the 80s.

[402] So anyhow, I finished my pediatric cardiac surgery fellowship in 1986 and was recruited at the University of Maryland in Baltimore.

[403] Fairly shortly after that, we started our pediatric heart transplant program at Maryland, and I went out to Loma Linda University here in Southern California to learn from Leonard Bailey, who had done baby Fay, the famous babooned human transplant, because he was I mean, he was the expert.

[404] And we took our team out there and learned everything.

[405] And I went back to Maryland and he called me actually a few weeks later.

[406] And he says, hey, you know, how you doing?

[407] And I said, oh, great.

[408] Thanks.

[409] He says, well, it sounds like you're really happy.

[410] And I said, yeah, I'm really happy.

[411] And he says, well, that's too bad because I kind of like you to come out and be my partner.

[412] And I'll split everything, you know, 50 -50 with you.

[413] So I walked into my boss, Joe McLaughlin at Maryland.

[414] said, Leonard Bailey, he wants me to come out and be his partner.

[415] And what do you think?

[416] And he said, oh, shoot, man. And he says, geez, if Leonard Bailey calls you and says, I'll split everything with you.

[417] He said, I can't stop you.

[418] He said, go out there.

[419] Yeah.

[420] So that's actually how I ended up here in Southern California.

[421] Uh -huh.

[422] And did you take to it like a little dolphin in water?

[423] No, well, it was a culture shock.

[424] Yeah, it's much different.

[425] Because I was from East Coast, South, Midwest.

[426] And quite frankly, the area around Loma Linda, San Bernardino is not the guard spot of America.

[427] No offense to my friends.

[428] It's not the jewel of California.

[429] That's true.

[430] Yeah.

[431] So it did take a little getting used to.

[432] It slowly infects you though, doesn't it?

[433] Oh, yeah.

[434] You're like, oh, I don't like it out here.

[435] I don't like it out here.

[436] And then you keep visiting home.

[437] And then as you visit home, you're like, oh, maybe I do like it out there.

[438] It's kind of a slow, slow moving infection, I guess, California.

[439] I have to imagine as a surgeon, you have kind of a compartment in your head that allows you to treat this body like a engine with a bad head gasket you can't possibly be evaluating this person's emotions and stuff while you get in there and do the physical mechanical activity of fixing someone's body true now with that said knowing that we don't want you emotional when you're doing that we want you very pragmatic is it extra rewarding when a little baby's heart starts beating and you know that that little baby is going to make it versus an adult?

[440] Yeah, I think one of the attractions of congenital heart surgery is if you don't fix this, this baby has no future, has no life.

[441] Right.

[442] There's this old saying that surgeons carry around a graveyard in their head where, you know, we go to visit every now and then to realize that there will be bodies in what we do.

[443] And we have to come to grips with that and move on.

[444] So, yeah, to this day, I have kids who are now adults come in, who I did their operation when they were one hour old and completely redid their heart.

[445] And, you know, they graduated from college.

[446] And they come in and we do a photo.

[447] And, you know, it's pretty cool.

[448] The mental gymnastics I feel like I would have to do is I would have to enter each operating room going, this child's going to die.

[449] So there are no stakes.

[450] All that can happen is I can now make it live or prolong its life.

[451] Like, I feel like that's the mental trick I'd have to do for myself.

[452] Yeah, and I became very famous for operating on people who nobody else wanted to operate on.

[453] Fifth time redos, three valve replacements, five bypasses, cut out half your heart.

[454] We called it the blue plate special.

[455] and so and yeah and what i had to do and the reason i think i became good at it is you have to have the attitude you talk to the patient and say you know are you somebody who wants to roll the dice because this is dangerous stuff we're talking about right and you know if you tell me you know i think i'm going to make it let's do this but if you say you know i've got some bad feelings about this i'll say let's let's not do this right in the parts this is just a kind of a morbid question, I guess.

[456] The parts, these valves, all that is generally from human cadavers?

[457] Are animal parts, pig valves?

[458] What's being used?

[459] Yeah, all of the above?

[460] Is one animal better for longevity than another?

[461] Like, as a primate, it would feel like a primate would be a more natural.

[462] Well, unfortunately, we can't do that, but no one is finicky about using animal parts that we eat.

[463] So we use cow valves.

[464] We use pig valves.

[465] We had a series of using Gortex, the stuff you make waterproof stuff out of valves and publish several papers on using Gortex valves in children.

[466] And did those prove to be...

[467] They work temporarily, not long term, but sometimes we have to do a kind of a patch to get through.

[468] Sometimes with children's surgery, we know there are four operations to get this kid to kind of a fully functioning adult.

[469] And, you know, God bless parents for saying, okay, you know, I, yeah, I, I, I, you know, I, I, can see it, okay, in six months we're going to do this, and then in a year we're going to do this.

[470] And it's okay because, you know, I got my kid and let's do it.

[471] Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I guess knowing that there's going to be five is preferred to, let's have one, hey, six months later, hey, we got to go again.

[472] Yeah, a year later.

[473] Guess what?

[474] I guess when you know what course you're charting, it gets a little more easier to deal with.

[475] Yeah, digestible.

[476] Stay tuned for more armchair experts.

[477] if you dare What's up guys This your girl Kiki And my podcast is back with a new season And let me tell you it's too good And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest Okay, every episode I bring on a friend And I don't mean just friends I mean the likes of Amy Polar Kelle Mitchell, Vivica Fox The list goes on So follow, watch and listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app Or wherever you get your podcast We've all been there.

[478] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[479] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[480] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[481] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[482] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[483] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[484] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[485] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[486] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[487] Okay, so what caused you to change your?

[488] focus.

[489] In the late 90s, I met a guy who I call Big Ed in all my books.

[490] He was from Miami, Florida, 48 years old.

[491] He had inoperable coronary artery disease.

[492] Now, what that means is everything was so clogged up that you couldn't put stents in because there was another clog right down the road.

[493] And you couldn't do bypasses because there really wasn't any place to jump past in line.

[494] There's no good piece of wire that wasn't corroded.

[495] Yeah, exactly.

[496] There's just no place to do it.

[497] So he went around the country going to these centers, Columbia University in New York, Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Texas Heart Institute, Stanford.

[498] Those were the usual spots.

[499] If nobody else would take somebody, they'd wind up in La Malinda with me. So he had spent six months going around and everybody tells him, no, can't do anything for you.

[500] Have a nice day.

[501] And so he arrived.

[502] Literally, have a nice day.

[503] One day.

[504] Yeah, yeah, right.

[505] So he arrives in my office with his angiogram, you know, the movie of his heart, video of his heart, from Miami six months earlier.

[506] And I'm looking at it, and I said, you know, I don't like to turn down people, but I agree with everybody else.

[507] You know, there's nothing I'm going to do for you.

[508] And he says, yeah, I know, that's what everybody says, but I've been on a diet for six months, and I've lost 45 pounds.

[509] And I'm still a big guy.

[510] I met him.

[511] He was 265 when I met him.

[512] And he says, I went to a health food store.

[513] And I bought all these supplements.

[514] And he literally brings in this shopping bag full of supplements.

[515] He says, you know, maybe I did something in here in my heart.

[516] And, you know, I'm scratching my professor beard and going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[517] Well, good for you for losing weight, but that's not going to do anything in here.

[518] And I know what you did with all those supplements.

[519] You made expensive urine, which I firmly believe.

[520] And he says, well, look, you know, it's been six months.

[521] I came all this way.

[522] Why don't we get a new angiogram?

[523] Why don't we get a new catheterization and see?

[524] So we did.

[525] In six months' time, this guy has cleaned out 50 % of the blockages in his heart.

[526] They're gone.

[527] Now, he's still got blockages.

[528] But now that the surgeon in me says, great news, you know, there's places to land bypasses.

[529] So I actually do a five -vessel bypass on them.

[530] I'm going good for me, good for you.

[531] But the researcher in me, and probably, you know, this thesis from Yale, comes back.

[532] Afterwards, I say, tell me about this diet of yours.

[533] He gets maybe, you know, a paragraph in, and I go timeout.

[534] I said, this is actually my thesis that I wrote in Yale about what made a human a human.

[535] Literally got on the phone to my parents who lived in San Diego.

[536] And, you know, I say, do you still have my thesis?

[537] And they say, oh, of course, you know, it's in the shrine.

[538] Sure, sure.

[539] So then I started looking through his bag of goodies.

[540] And I was also famous for heart preservation during heart surgery, keeping hearts alive.

[541] I have a catheter that's named after me, blah, blah, blah.

[542] And we were using ingredients in the protective solution that we'd put in hearts.

[543] And a lot of the ingredients that we were putting into this solution, he was swallowing.

[544] And it actually never occurred to me to swallow the dumb things.

[545] Yeah, what were the ingredients in that solution?

[546] Alpha -lapoic acid is one of the ingredients.

[547] We had a cousin, I guess you could say, of grape seed extract.

[548] We had magnesium.

[549] He had just willy -nilly kind of gone to a health food store and just kind of, I guess he talked about.

[550] Kind of grabbed stuff.

[551] And so here I was, top of my game as a heart surgeon, but I was 70 pounds overweight.

[552] I was pre -diabatic.

[553] I had such bad arthritis in my knees.

[554] There were braces on my knees to run.

[555] but I was running 30 miles a week and I was going to the gym one hour a day and I was eating what I thought was out of it.

[556] How on earth were you running 30 miles a week going to the gym one hour a day and doing surgery?

[557] Well, you get up at 4 o 'clock in the morning.

[558] That's how you do it.

[559] My wife would kick me out the door.

[560] I know Marvel actors that are working out less than that.

[561] Yeah, that's what I would do.

[562] Wow.

[563] And again, I didn't need much sleep.

[564] So that's what you do.

[565] Uh -huh.

[566] But I was a big fat guy and migraine headaches.

[567] So your own, this, I do, always loved this.

[568] I remember going into the emergency room with like an asthma episode.

[569] I was like 16 or something.

[570] And when we pulled up to small town emergency room, the doctor on call was outside smoking a cigarette.

[571] And then I went in there and he's, you know, starts listening to my lungs.

[572] Do you smoke?

[573] Yes, I do.

[574] You got, you cannot smoke.

[575] You got to stop smoking.

[576] Like, weren't you smoking out front?

[577] And he's like, yeah, just, just you got to stop smoking.

[578] There's something, I don't know why.

[579] There's something satisfying when doctors are in.

[580] in a state of ill health.

[581] I don't know why.

[582] Do you get that, Monica, at all?

[583] No, I feel the opposite.

[584] Oh, you do?

[585] Okay.

[586] Yeah.

[587] I kind of like it.

[588] I go, oh, they're just as human as everyone.

[589] Knowledge isn't going to safeguard you for making bad decisions.

[590] That's true.

[591] That's true.

[592] Anywho.

[593] So you had to take kind of stock of your own health at that moment.

[594] Yeah.

[595] Well, I was told that this was normal.

[596] You know, I had horrible cholesterol.

[597] And they said, you know, you're 40 -ish and this is normal.

[598] and, you know, your father is exactly the same way, and that's genetics, and, you know, get over it.

[599] Yeah.

[600] So I actually got out my thesis, and I put myself on my thesis and started taking a bunch of supplements and started sending my blood work up to the University of California, Berkeley, which had the best at that time system for looking at cholesterol.

[601] Lo and behold, you know, in the first year, I lost 50 pounds.

[602] Subsequently lost 20 pounds, and I've kept it off now.

[603] Well, what had you changed diet -wise?

[604] I like to use the expression.

[605] I became a gorilla who lives in Italy.

[606] I started eating a whole lot of leaves.

[607] Grillas eat 16 pounds of leaves a day.

[608] Started using a whole lot of olive oil.

[609] And I think that...

[610] Like spoonfuls?

[611] You drink it?

[612] Well, the only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth, in my humble opinion.

[613] Oh, okay.

[614] Three of the blue zones, the longest living people on Earth, use a liter of olive oil per week.

[615] That's about 10 to 12 tablespoons a day.

[616] So that's what I do.

[617] But those blue zones also have a lot of other things in common.

[618] The thing that they have in common, they only have one thing in common.

[619] The only thing they share, all the blue zones, is a very limited animal protein in their diet.

[620] Yeah, so primarily plant -based diet.

[621] Correct.

[622] Yeah, so that's significant.

[623] Yeah.

[624] Other than just the olive oil.

[625] That's a very big part of it, right?

[626] Yeah, olive oil is pretty good stuff.

[627] But there's...

[628] I do love it.

[629] There's several blue zones that don't use olive oil, so we can't, you know, say that that commonality is not true of all blue zones.

[630] Right.

[631] The only commonality of all blue zones is very limited animal protein.

[632] Yeah, which is a real bummer for my diet.

[633] I know.

[634] Well, and again, I grew up in Omaha, so...

[635] Man, steak central.

[636] The beef state, you know?

[637] Yeah.

[638] Wow.

[639] So you started, have you seen the documentary Forks Over Knives?

[640] Sure.

[641] Yeah.

[642] Did you like it?

[643] No. You didn't like it.

[644] I mean, if you like propaganda, it's a great propaganda movie.

[645] Oh.

[646] But in that you have a cardiologist as well, right?

[647] No. He's not a cardiologist?

[648] No, he's a general surgeon.

[649] Esselstone is a general surgeon.

[650] Okay, but you have a surgeon taking this group of patients, putting them on a whole food, plant -based diet, and you're...

[651] And a no fat.

[652] And you're getting all these miraculous results from coronary distress?

[653] No. Well, you're saying you don't believe, in the movie, he's touting results.

[654] Correct.

[655] So you're saying you don't believe the results?

[656] Well, the results are that he had a 50 % dropout in his group.

[657] So they never actually completed the program.

[658] It's just like Dean Ornish's results.

[659] It's interesting.

[660] And I totally respect all these gentlemen.

[661] But Dean Ornish, after his initial small study where he also had a 50 % dropout, despite now 25 years on, Dean Ornish has never published a study of his results.

[662] And if his results are reproducible, one would think that the father of the plant -based no -fat diet would certainly update us at some point in his career of the results of his study.

[663] But he never has.

[664] Well, just really quick to defend, which I have no horse in any of these races, but a 50 % dropout on a lifestyle food diet study, to me, does not seem high at all.

[665] That seems, I'm shocked 50 % of people even stuck around and did the diet.

[666] You know, I don't think that in itself is indicative of any kind of.

[667] But you're then left with very few people.

[668] Well, half.

[669] The group is only about 30 people, and they drop down to 15.

[670] So you really, it's very hard.

[671] you know, he's not been able to actually, because the numbers are small, make statistical significance out of this.

[672] Yes.

[673] I guess what I'm pointing out is that I don't think there's a topic in science.

[674] Maybe psychology sometimes rivals it.

[675] There is no topic in science that is more frustrating for the consumer than nutrition.

[676] There is no consensus.

[677] There's every single variety of explanation.

[678] humans are almost impossible to study.

[679] We do so many things.

[680] There's so many variables.

[681] The notion of isolating this or that variable is almost preposterous.

[682] Even when I would look at those early smoking statistics.

[683] Now, I definitely think smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.

[684] Don't get me wrong.

[685] But they're also ignoring that smoking is a suite of behaviors generally.

[686] Smokers drink more.

[687] Smokers do a lot of things more.

[688] But you're going to isolate this one aspect of their life.

[689] lifestyle and hang everything on it.

[690] Speaking of smoking and lung cancer, the Catavans, one of the blue zones in the South Pacific, Papua New Guinea, the Catavans smoke like fiends.

[691] They wean children off of breastfeeding with cigarettes.

[692] Yeah, and there has never been a case of lung cancer in Catavan, and they live into their 90s with no medical care, and there's actually never been a case of coronary artery disease or stroke in a Catavan.

[693] Yeah, and one of the anthropologists that studied them did check.

[694] Mest x -rays, and they're like, how could this be these people smoke all day long?

[695] The conclusion's always meant, oh, their tobacco, obviously, is far less.

[696] So, again, nicotine is good for you except for the delivery device.

[697] And what smoking does is produce huge amounts of oxidative stress.

[698] And we use vitamin C as one of our ways of soaking up oxidative stress.

[699] And so smokers, interestingly enough, have incredibly low levels of vitamin C. vitamin C is actually essential to repair collagen in blood vessels.

[700] Blood vessels are always flexing, and the collagen in them, which is basically the rebar and breaks.

[701] And the collagen breaks then get exposed and we actually put little patches on them, and that's actually where the start of these plaques come from is collagen breaks.

[702] Smokers, because they don't have any vitamin C, don't repair their collagen breaks.

[703] and smokers, we used to love to operate on smokers, because smokers would have their blockages very what's called proximal in their coronary arteries.

[704] Close to the heart.

[705] Close to the start of these blood vessels.

[706] And the rest of their blood vessels were gorgeous.

[707] Plus, smokers were skinny.

[708] And, you know, it's just, man, this is great.

[709] Thank you very much.

[710] Thank you for smoking.

[711] Yeah, thank you for smoking.

[712] In and out, we're so happy.

[713] So the Katomans have an incredibly vitamin C -rich, in the kind of the fruits and vegetables that they eat on this island.

[714] And I've proposed that the reason that they've actually figured out, they didn't know it, but their diet is full of vitamin C. And so they compensated for this oxidator stress from smoking.

[715] I'll take smokers, and if people stop smoking, in general, they gain weight.

[716] And I don't want that.

[717] So I'll make, you know, a deal with the devil to say, okay, look, you smoke, but you're going to chew 500 milligrams of vitamin C every four to six hours.

[718] You're going to take time to release vitamin C twice a day, and we're going to, you know, we're going to negate this negative.

[719] Try to neutralize.

[720] Yeah.

[721] And then let's work on all the other stuff.

[722] And, you know, then once we got all that controlled.

[723] So, yeah, again, nicotine is good for you except for the delivery to us.

[724] Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

[725] Maybe I should start doing interveniously, just shoot up.

[726] Several ways.

[727] Try this spray sounds exciting.

[728] Get Dave Asprey on here.

[729] Yeah.

[730] He'll probably bring his spray.

[731] Yeah, maybe he'll shoot me up.

[732] Yeah, you want a little hit.

[733] Yeah.

[734] First spray is free.

[735] So you just gave me a clue about your kind of priorities, which is for you in that moment with the smoker, putting on weight, explain to me why that for you is the worst option possible.

[736] I've told anyone who will listen that if there was one blood test that I'd want to, want you to get.

[737] If there's one blood test, you should have a fasting insulin level.

[738] A fasting insulin level will pretty much predict what's going to happen to you.

[739] If it's low, you're most likely never going to develop cancer.

[740] You're never going to get dementia.

[741] You're never going to get coronary artery disease.

[742] If it's high, you're going to get cancer.

[743] You're going to get dementia.

[744] You're going to get coronary artery disease.

[745] You're going to get fat.

[746] You're going to get high blood pressure.

[747] An elevated insulin level is generally saying you're consuming a lot of sugar or carbohydrates and your body's creating a bunch of insulin to break that down.

[748] Or even protein.

[749] This was actually one of the mistakes that Adkins made.

[750] Adkins didn't know we don't waste energy and we have actually very little need for protein.

[751] So when we eat too much protein, we don't waste it, but we convert it into sugar.

[752] It's called gluconeogenesis.

[753] why because we have a sugar storage system called fat and so even high protein will actually produce high insulin levels and make you fat is that assuming and again here's another great place where there is no consensus and lots of debate but are you saying that in the caloric model once the protein exceeds let's say you're burning 2 ,200 calories a day and you exceed the amount of protein that would equal 2 ,200 calories.

[754] The rest of it is then converted to sugar.

[755] Correct.

[756] Okay, because there's a couple different models, right?

[757] There's a guy we heard on Sam Harris that's really interesting.

[758] He said, that is horseshit.

[759] It's not calories and calories out.

[760] Oh, that's correct.

[761] It is not calories in calories out.

[762] That is absolutely correct.

[763] He's like, it's way more chemistry.

[764] You could eat the wrong 2 ,000 calories and you could eat the right 2 ,000 calories.

[765] Well, it's even beyond that.

[766] None of these models actually used the fact.

[767] that you have a microbiome of hundreds of trillions of bacteria that eat the food you eat.

[768] If you have bacteria that will actually eat most of the food you eat and keep it for themselves to make baby bacteria, then you could eat, which is what I propose people do, eat to feed them, and you can eat huge amounts of food and huge amounts of calories, but they will eat it and you won't.

[769] On the other hand, we know that there are Obesogenic bacteria who will actually pass what you eat directly onto you, into you.

[770] And so you could have two people who literally eat the same thing have completely different outcomes.

[771] There's a great study that was published in Lancet a few years ago of a woman marathoner in England who developed C. diffusil, horrible infection in your colon.

[772] and the treatment is a fecal transplant.

[773] We've talked about it a lot here.

[774] Yeah, C -diff is like 98 % effective or something.

[775] Yeah, it really works.

[776] We want crapsils for everything.

[777] We're very into the crapsil movement.

[778] Yeah, crapsils, cool thing.

[779] Yeah.

[780] In fact, at Medical College of Georgia, we did the first fecal transplants for C -difacil back in the 70.

[781] I thought you were going to say for hazing of the fraternity.

[782] No, and actually, the reason I know this is because the medical students, once a week, a honey pot was passed around in the medical students and we had to take a crap.

[783] Oh, wow.

[784] And then they took it into early Mansberger's lab and it went into a wearing blender, I kid you not.

[785] Uh -huh.

[786] And then we filled an enema bag full of medical student poop.

[787] Yeah.

[788] And we gave fecal enumas to people.

[789] We didn't know it was C. Diffisil back then.

[790] It was called pseudomemoritis and a colitis.

[791] And it came at the start of the broad spectrum antibiotic era.

[792] And nobody knew what it was, but this smart guy, Arley Mansberger, said, I'm sure what's happened is our gut floor is all screwed up, and we ought to give them a normal gut floor.

[793] And medical students, they have normal gut floor.

[794] So, yeah.

[795] Presumably.

[796] Except for the anesthesiologist.

[797] Yeah, we're good, Mike.

[798] We don't need your food.

[799] You can keep yours.

[800] There might be other stuff in there, Mike.

[801] For fecal transplants, you try to get a relative who will share actually a lot of your microbiome.

[802] So they got a cousin of this woman who was about 40 pounds overweight.

[803] They gave this marathoner, a fecal transplant, with this poop.

[804] And she recovered.

[805] She went back to her usual routine running schedule.

[806] And over the course of about a year and a half, this woman gained 30 pounds.

[807] Changed absolutely nothing about her diet.

[808] Didn't change her exercise program.

[809] She was seated with obesitygenic poop from her cousin.

[810] Right.

[811] And you can actually, I mean, you can prove this in animal models.

[812] You can take germ -free rats, get obesogenic poop from humans, give this to the germ -free rats, and they will become obese.

[813] You can actually get lean poop from lean people and give it to germ -free rats.

[814] Oh, it just keeps expanding.

[815] I don't know if you know Dr. Eric Topal, but he's great when we had him on.

[816] He's always posting new microbiome stuff.

[817] One of them just, I'm sure you're aware of it, was this elite athletes seem to share some kind of...

[818] They have a bacteria that actually can turn lactic acid into buterate and all the other short chain fats.

[819] Bouturate goes right to mitochondria and makes them very efficient.

[820] So, yeah, elite athletes can take lactic acid, which supposedly is horrible, and actually reprocess it into fuel that's really good for you.

[821] Right.

[822] All because of their, yeah.

[823] Yeah, and even the people who are doing, because the C -DIF fecal transplant is only legal in a few states.

[824] And in Canada, they're much more open to it.

[825] But one of the things they scream for is, yeah, you don't want anyone with any kind of mental health issues.

[826] You also think that's a microbiome thing.

[827] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[828] Obesity, and now the list is just growing.

[829] So it's more and more evidence -mounting that what's in our gut is having some huge downstream effects on overall health, right?

[830] Yeah, you know, Apocrates said 2 ,500 years ago that all disease begins in the gut.

[831] Now, he didn't have the human microbiome project, but this guy was so prescient that, you know, he recognized.

[832] And I actually, now, you know, after 20 years of this, really all disease begins and can end in the gut.

[833] I think I've been so shocked with the, everybody who's got a disease process has leaky gut and a weird microbiome.

[834] and the good news is you can fix it well the one thing that makes a ton of sense about it is it's the main source of foreign material you're putting in your body like that that's the main you know that's where it's most dangerous you're just shoving stuff in this hole in your body and it's all foreign yeah and it's got god knows what on it and you need a lot of things down there to help break up all that and safeguard you from foreign pathogens that could be harmful so it makes a ton a sense.

[835] Of course, before I had you, I watched a couple of your talks.

[836] And I guess I did this about four weeks ago, and I was drawn into it.

[837] I found it to be a very logical debate.

[838] I embraced it.

[839] And I'd say for the last three or four weeks, I have not had lectins.

[840] Now, I want you to break down your belief about lectins and give us a short, brief history of how lectins evolved and what their purpose was and how much we're eating and like and then subsequently just to warn you i've also read criticism of that that i'd like to hit you with so sure tell us about lectins so lectins are part of the plant defense system against being eaten plants were actually on earth before animals arrived and they had it actually pretty good it was the garden of eden because nobody wanted to eat them and then their initial predator was insects and plants of course can't move so they They are biochemists of incredible ability.

[841] So they, and I'm speaking of hallucinogenic substances, lucidens are probably a good plant defense system as well because you won't remember what you ate or where you found it.

[842] Oh, on the contrary.

[843] If you're an addict like me, you'll never forget what shape of what shroom made you feel wonderful for six hours.

[844] We continue.

[845] All right.

[846] So lectins are proteins, and they're called sticky proteins because they're actually looking for particular sugar molecules to bind to.

[847] And the initial theory of lectins was that they bound to a sugar molecule called sialic acid, which sits in the space between nerve junctions where one nerve talks to the next nerve, and they bind to that sialic acid and stop nerve transmission.

[848] And so a paralyzed insect is a wonderful thing if you're a plant.

[849] That's the initial theory of why lectins existed.

[850] But interestingly enough, lectins also stick to the sugar molecules that line our gut.

[851] That, in fact, one quickie, if you take a bite of a jalapeno pepper, you'll notice your nose starts to run because you actually produce large amounts of mucus to deal with the lectins you just ate.

[852] And one of my favorite sayings is we are the only animal on earth except a bird that will take a second bite of alipino pepper.

[853] Oh, yeah.

[854] That's one of the harder ones for me to stop.

[855] I love it.

[856] Yeah.

[857] Stay tuned for more armchair experts, if you dare.

[858] So what we now know, and this was actually worked by Dr. Fasano at Johns Hopkins.

[859] Dr. Fisano wanted to figure out why cholera made you have just such impressive mass of diarrhea and how gluten, which happens to be a lectin, might mimic the effect of cholera.

[860] And so he found that gluten, which is a lectin, combined to the cells that line our gut called the enterocytes, and it'll flip a switch that produces a compound called zonulin.

[861] And zonulin is what the cholera bacteria uses to break the tight junctions that hold all of our little cells together.

[862] And what's interesting about our dumb gut is we only have one cell thickness of our gut wall.

[863] There's only one cell.

[864] Very thin.

[865] It's the surface area of a tennis court inside of us.

[866] And it's all just one cell thick.

[867] Talk about a dumb design if you think about it.

[868] Because like you said, all this foreign stuff is coming in.

[869] And you've got hundreds of trillions of bacteria living in there and you've got one dumb cell to keep that.

[870] Do you think that's to enable lots of expansion and contraction?

[871] Obviously, it would get thicker, it would be less elastic?

[872] No, it was to enable the absorption of amino acids, fatty acids.

[873] But it needs to be thin enough that the right stuff can pass through.

[874] Because we actually, these little inner sites will bite off little pieces of amino acids and fats and sugars, and then they kind of pass them through and then poop them out their other side into our lymph system or our bloodstream.

[875] And so it's got to be one cell thick.

[876] But the problem is, so these guys are all held together with locked arms like Red Rover, Red Rover.

[877] The cells of your stomach lining.

[878] All of your intestines.

[879] We basically have this carpet inside of our intestines.

[880] It's actually our root system.

[881] So we have roots.

[882] Our roots are rooted in our microbiome, and that's our dirt, just like a plant.

[883] And so, anyhow, they turn on zonulin.

[884] Zonulin hits another receptor.

[885] that breaks the tight junction.

[886] Now, you got a leak.

[887] So now, not only collectants, which are foreign proteins, and bacterial particles or living bacteria, can now come across the gut wall.

[888] Now, what's interesting is, because of this kind of bad system of one -cell thickness, about 60 % of all of our immune cells, our white blood cells, line the lining of our gut.

[889] And they're there because that's where the mischief is going to come across.

[890] And so that produces inflammation.

[891] Inflammation, you put a splinter under your skin, it turns red.

[892] That's all your white blood cells coming around to attack that foreign protein.

[893] Now foreign proteins come across your wall, and now you've got inflammation.

[894] When you say that this is breaking that apart and that's binding to that, now how observable is that?

[895] Has someone observed that under a microscope?

[896] There's a beautiful article a few years ago in Scientific American, where Dr. Vizano lays this out beautifully and complete with illustrations and it's gorgeous and I actually show my patients this.

[897] But yes, we can now measure this in human beings and there's several labs that do this.

[898] What's been interesting to me is initially we started measuring zonulin in people looking for leaky gut.

[899] But what's actually more accurate is to look at antizonulin and what's called anti -actin.

[900] Actin is one of the molecules that makes the tight junction.

[901] And if you have a leaky gut, you will actually make antibodies against zonulin and actin, and you can pick it up.

[902] So what's really interesting is with my patients, particularly people with, for instance, an autoimmune disease, we can pretty much prove that 95 % of people who swear they are gluten -free are eating gluten and that gluten is causing leaky gut.

[903] We can measure anti -zonulin.

[904] And we can show that by educating them, that three months, six months, nine months down the line, you will stop having all these markers of leaky gut.

[905] You will actually reverse all the markers of an autoimmune disease, a biomarker of autoimmune disease, and I've published this data in the American Heart Association Circulation Journal, took 102 patients with biomarker -proven autoimmune diseases, including myself as one of the subjects.

[906] Most of these people were on immunosuppressant drugs.

[907] In six months' time, 95 out of 102 were biomarker negative and off of immunosuppressant drugs, including myself.

[908] And...

[909] Now, really quick, did this study, most of some of the criticisms?

[910] of this study that you had no control group?

[911] Correct.

[912] Why didn't you have a control group?

[913] Because they're all their own control.

[914] In other words, they had a positive biomarker.

[915] So, for instance, they had rheumatoid factor, or they had anti -CCP3, or they had anti -nuclear antibody, or they had double -stranded DNA.

[916] Measurable amounts of them.

[917] Yeah, but why not put those people on a placebo and see if at the end of your study, they, too, didn't experience some reversal?

[918] Because I'm in the business of reversing autoimmune disease, so it would be against my practice.

[919] I'm only saying as a study that would have had a control group that people wouldn't attack.

[920] So I've been a researcher all my life, and you can use an individual as his own control.

[921] You can look at pre and post.

[922] But wouldn't you need to have administered a placebo to that person?

[923] What placebo could I do in terms of food?

[924] Well, you could do a food delivery system to them that did have gluten in it.

[925] But I don't have a food delivery system that I...

[926] Do you want to borrow mine?

[927] I eat it.

[928] I pretty much eat it.

[929] Okay.

[930] So I brought that up.

[931] So you found, though, of your hundred and how many?

[932] Yeah, 102 patients that I published.

[933] We now have over 500 patients with the same result.

[934] Okay.

[935] And let me give me a great example.

[936] That person up in my practice in Santa Barbara came to me a year ago.

[937] A 75 -year -old woman who has known she's celiac, and celiac is the extreme form of gluten intolerance.

[938] Interestingly, in the Plant Paradox book, I cite this interesting study out of Europe, where they took a large number of people with biopsy -proven celiac disease.

[939] That's the gold standard of celiac, where you take a bite of intestine and look at it under their microscope.

[940] They put them on a gluten -free diet for 16 months, a observable gluten -free diet.

[941] At the end of 16 months, 70 % of them were still celiac with biopsy, despite a gluten -free diet.

[942] So that study really intrigued me. And now that we have these new methods to look for gluten, we can actually, I can tell you right here that 95 % of the people that claim to be gluten -free have detectable large amounts of gluten in their bloodstream.

[943] Where do you think the most common, like, where is it coming from that people would not realize?

[944] Great question.

[945] Restaurants number one.

[946] Oh, sure.

[947] You don't know what the hell you're getting.

[948] I have the pleasure of knowing a lot of restaurateurs and chefs and to a person.

[949] They say there is no way that you can eat gluten -free in a restaurant.

[950] And if we tell you, we'll do gluten -free for you, don't believe us.

[951] It's impossible because they're always dusting things with flour.

[952] Sure.

[953] If something, so let's say you're griddling a piece of salmon, and the salmon next to it has the dusting of flour, some of it will flip over, but the griddle itself will actually have remnants of flour.

[954] And that level for someone with celiacs is one molecule.

[955] Really?

[956] One molecule will do it.

[957] It's so impressive.

[958] So let me give me this example.

[959] So this woman, she and her husband have been married all their lives.

[960] She's constant in an abdominal pain, just cramping, bloating, just miserable, just miserable.

[961] And her husband has always thought she was a nut, but, you know, a lovely nut.

[962] And she's been to several universities.

[963] They tell her, you know, you're celiac, you got to eat gluten -free, and you're obviously not doing it.

[964] She's living on corn chips and corn tortillas and corn muffins because gluten -free.

[965] Yeah.

[966] So we get these tests, and sure enough, she's got leaky gut.

[967] But she's got wheat germaglutin, which can only come from whole wheat.

[968] She's got all the markers for gluten in her bloodstream.

[969] She has this protein in corn that is called the corn wheat epitope.

[970] And what it basically says, when you eat corn, your immune system thinks it's wheat.

[971] She was eating corn, and she carried this epitope.

[972] So every time she ate corn, her immune system thought she was eating wheat.

[973] Okay, I was going to say.

[974] So at one point, her immune system started attacking gluten.

[975] Correct.

[976] And that this corn molecule is so similar that now it's attacking that as well.

[977] Correct.

[978] Yeah, exactly.

[979] Again, now, I just want to, because I can be stupid in this area, how do we know that?

[980] How do we observe that?

[981] How do we see?

[982] Do we put her white blood cells in a petri dish?

[983] Yeah, basically that's what you do.

[984] Really?

[985] Yeah.

[986] Okay.

[987] So you can make antibodies to these various components and put, them in a beaker and measure whether those antibodies attack.

[988] And there you are.

[989] Okay.

[990] So that's how it's time.

[991] Okay.

[992] So here's this loan.

[993] She's obviously eating gluten.

[994] She goes out to restaurants quite a bit.

[995] And she's eating corn and she reacts to corn.

[996] And we also test her for lectins.

[997] We test her against dairy.

[998] Test her against eggs.

[999] She doesn't react to dairy.

[1000] She doesn't react to eggs.

[1001] Thank goodness.

[1002] But she was like the poster child for lectins, getting back to lectins.

[1003] Okay.

[1004] She reacts to, you know, tomato, she reacts to bell peppers, she reacts to peppers, she reacts to beans.

[1005] They're all gluten -free.

[1006] So we take this out of her diet.

[1007] We repeat her in three months.

[1008] She's still got a leaky gut, but now she has one little type of gluten in her, and everything else is gone.

[1009] And she's feeling a whole lot better.

[1010] Her husband, you know, is going, you mean, this wasn't in her head?

[1011] And, you know, she isn't a nut.

[1012] And I said, well, you know, look.

[1013] This is in the long tradition of not believing women.

[1014] Right.

[1015] No. Yeah, that's true.

[1016] It is.

[1017] No, and I get on my horse about this.

[1018] Women have to find someone who will believe them.

[1019] So now she's totally green on all these charts.

[1020] She has no leaky gut.

[1021] Really quick.

[1022] What is the most conclusive piece of evidence?

[1023] for Leaky Gut.

[1024] So I think the best ones are anti -Zonulin and anti -actin.

[1025] You can certainly measure anti -LPSs, those little pieces of shit than I talk about.

[1026] And you can measure zonulin, but zonulin is actually way down the list of predicting leaky gut.

[1027] I think that was one of our mistakes.

[1028] Okay.

[1029] Yeah, anti -zonulin and anti -actin are two of the best ways.

[1030] So let me give you another example.

[1031] Please do.

[1032] I love your examples.

[1033] So, this is a woman from L .A. She had a lot of brain fog as one of her manifestations.

[1034] And she's young in her 50s, and in her role, she does not need brain fog.

[1035] So we did these tests and found out, of course, that there was gluten in her, even though she was gluten -free, and that she had leaky gut.

[1036] And we also did a bunch of tests looking for leaky brain.

[1037] We now know that.

[1038] that there can be a leak in your blood brain barrier.

[1039] There is supposedly an impermanable wall between your bloodstream and your brain.

[1040] Impregnable, Monica.

[1041] And it's called the blood brain barrier.

[1042] Oh, yeah.

[1043] And we now know that this blood brain barrier can be breached.

[1044] And you can develop antibodies against brain tissue, and we can measure antibodies to different parts of the brain, including the myelin sheath, MS.

[1045] Sure.

[1046] And we can measure antibodies to the cerebellum, the movement area.

[1047] So we get these tests.

[1048] And lo and behold, she lights up leaky brain.

[1049] She's got leaky brain.

[1050] She attacks her cerebellum.

[1051] All these diseases sound like zombie diseases, don't they?

[1052] Leaky gut, leaky gut, leaky brain.

[1053] Well, if you had asked me about leaky gut 15 years ago, I would have laughed you out of the room.

[1054] Sure, sure.

[1055] Some swampy in a long cold.

[1056] Yeah, you've got leaking gut.

[1057] Yeah, the bog one.

[1058] And now.

[1059] I mean, it's fascinating that you can detect this.

[1060] And the good news is it's okay to detect it, but you can prove that at least by the interventions I do, and I'm sure there's other ways to do this.

[1061] You can stop this.

[1062] So anyhow, we just, I'm going to meet with her this weekend, as a matter of fact, and we just got her new results back.

[1063] So the really cool thing, we've been doing this for six months.

[1064] She no longer has leaky gut.

[1065] There's no gluten in her anymore.

[1066] But the brain results are the best part.

[1067] And I've only started doing this in the last six months.

[1068] My preposition was that when we sealed the leaky gut, we'd seal a leaky brain.

[1069] Now she must have had six markers of brain attack.

[1070] We're down to just a teeny marker of one of the, the rest of them are all gone.

[1071] And this is in six months.

[1072] And I'm just so excited to see her tomorrow to say, son of a gun, you know, my dumb theory looks like it's working out here.

[1073] Yeah.

[1074] And, you know, she feels much better and, you know, her brain is working better.

[1075] So this crazy stuff like brain fog, we can now actually put measurements on this.

[1076] The tests are getting so sophisticated now that this is no longer pseudoscience.

[1077] These are measurable things.

[1078] You can see a progression of repair.

[1079] So if I were to do a blood panel.

[1080] And you isolated antibodies I had to these different things, right?

[1081] You could do a designer diet for me. Exactly.

[1082] Because currently it sounds like you're saying eat almost nothing.

[1083] No, the thoughts.

[1084] I haven't gotten through my yes list yet.

[1085] Hold on.

[1086] We got meat that's creating the 1A casein, right?

[1087] That's milk.

[1088] Yeah.

[1089] So you can have goat and sheep cheese.

[1090] Oofalo mozzarella.

[1091] But we got all legumes are gone.

[1092] So beans.

[1093] You can pressure cook them and destroy the lectins.

[1094] Okay.

[1095] Now remember, no human being ate a grain or a bean until 10 ,000 years ago.

[1096] I hate to disappoint Dr. Esslston.

[1097] No human being did because they were so lethal because of the lectin content.

[1098] And you had to cook them forever and ever.

[1099] Most cultures soaked beans for 48 hours and changed the water every four or six hours because lectins will soak out of solution and they'll cook them a long time.

[1100] but you can pressure cook and destroy lectins.

[1101] Okay, so you're not saying to stop eating those.

[1102] No, no, no. Oh, you're just saying prepare them correctly.

[1103] Well, there's the famous red beans case where there was a dinner party, everyone got violently ill, and it was pretty conclusively demonstrated that the red beans had caused.

[1104] The Boston Healthy Eating Day was the same thing.

[1105] They undercooked beans, and 23 children and four teachers wound up in the hospital with bloody diarrhea, all trace to me. In the escalation of diarrhea, just step one, you don't want diarrhea.

[1106] No, adding blood to this area.

[1107] That's really, yeah.

[1108] That's when it's gone as bad as you can go.

[1109] So is this a recommendation for every person or people who are experiencing?

[1110] I'm so glad you asked me their question.

[1111] Yeah.

[1112] Yeah.

[1113] So my practice now has evolved to about 70 % autoimmune diseases.

[1114] My father, side of the family, my father had severe psoriasis.

[1115] My father was on metatrexate for 50 years.

[1116] Oh, wow.

[1117] Yeah.

[1118] When we first started testing and had tests available for autoimmune disease, I came back positive for anti -nuclear antibody.

[1119] Not bad, but positive.

[1120] And my staff came running and said, oh my gosh, Dr. Guthrie, you got lupus.

[1121] I don't have lupus.

[1122] You know, look at me. And they said, but, you know, you're positive for this marker.

[1123] And I said, yeah, it doesn't surprise me to one iota because, you know, my father satir family, bad psoriasis.

[1124] Yeah.

[1125] I don't have psoriasis, but, you know, there's my marker.

[1126] So I said, I think I'll turn it off.

[1127] So, you know, I just, I stopped cheating.

[1128] You know, I'm always experimenting.

[1129] And so a month later, my anti -nuclear antibody is negative, right?

[1130] So I recently redid that last fall in New York City.

[1131] I said, you know, I'm going to see if I can activate my nuclear antibody.

[1132] So I went and had pasta.

[1133] I had bread.

[1134] And I came back and my inner nuclear antibody was back turned on.

[1135] Bingo.

[1136] And I said, that's cool.

[1137] And I think I'll turn it off.

[1138] And so I went a week, perfect, and a nuclear antibody turned back off.

[1139] So I'm very sensitive of these things.

[1140] You know, thanks because there is an inheritable component.

[1141] Sure, yeah.

[1142] I don't think it's very strong, as most people think, but there is an inheritable component.

[1143] Okay, get back to your question.

[1144] In the good old days, 50 years ago, most of us had a fantastic defense system against lectins.

[1145] Otherwise, none of us would be around.

[1146] And it was primarily our microbiome.

[1147] Our microbiome actually loves to eat lectins.

[1148] There is a gluten -eating bacteria that loves gluten.

[1149] And we had a very, very, very thick mucus.

[1150] layer that covered our lining of our gut.

[1151] And lectins are sticky proteins that are looking for sugar, and mucus is muco -polysaccharides, lots of sugars.

[1152] So the mucus actually absorbs the lectins.

[1153] So they can't get anywhere near where they want to bind to, which is the actual cell surface.

[1154] What's happened to us in 50 years is primarily two things.

[1155] Number one, antibiotics.

[1156] Antibiotics are in us because we swallow antibiotics willy -nilly.

[1157] We get a sniffle and somebody gives us antibiotics, even though it's a virus.

[1158] It's in almost all the meat we eat, and all the chickens, all the beef, all the pork has antibiotics.

[1159] And it's in our water supply because it runs off from the factory mills.

[1160] And quite frankly, we flush our antibiotics down the toilet.

[1161] And so the antibiotics have really wiped out this incredible defense system against lectin.

[1162] The other thing, and this is part of the seven deadly disruptors that I talk about, the second thing that I think really needs to come to the forefront, is glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup.

[1163] Glyphosate was patented by Monsanto as an antibiotic.

[1164] It was not patented as an herbicide because it actually, kills bacteria.

[1165] It kills bacteria just like it kills plants.

[1166] It interrupts what's called.

[1167] On contact.

[1168] I think that's the commercial for around it.

[1169] It stops the shikimate pathway, which is how cells reproduce.

[1170] Plants have it, bacteria have it.

[1171] Humans don't.

[1172] And so that's how they got it passed because, oh, it won't hurt us because we don't carry the shikamate pathway.

[1173] But what they didn't tell us was our bacteria do.

[1174] So glyphosate is in everything of the 33 oat products, cereals, granola bars.

[1175] It was in every one of them, often at toxic levels.

[1176] It's in 93 % of 73 pregnant women's urine that was tested.

[1177] It's in women's breast milk.

[1178] It's in almost all California wines, including several organic ones, because the fields are sprayed with it.

[1179] So this stuff kills off our microbiome.

[1180] The other thing it does that we didn't know, but Stephanie Chef from MIT has shown, that glyphosate in and of itself, disrupts the tight junctions.

[1181] So it causes leaky gut without any other thing.

[1182] So, for instance, corn, most corn is GMO.

[1183] Most corn that's fed, all corn that's fed cattle and pigs and chickens is GMO.

[1184] When there's a protein, a lectin in GMO corn called the cry protein, and the cry protein in and of itself will break tight junctions.

[1185] So it's, I mean, we're beginning to identify why everything.

[1186] everything's gone wrong, really so quickly.

[1187] This has only been 50 years.

[1188] Yeah, yeah.

[1189] We're in a nosedive, health -wise.

[1190] There were no autoimmune diseases 50 years ago.

[1191] I mean, there were a few of them.

[1192] Back in those days, we called them the tests we had were called funny tests because it was so odd, you know, to have an autoimmune disease.

[1193] And now, you know, I was watching TV last night for a few minutes.

[1194] And every commercial was for an autoimmune disease.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] And it's like, you know, happy smiling, you know, 20 -year -olds.

[1197] What's disheartening and misleading is I would compare it to gun fatalities.

[1198] So if you just look at the statistic that gun fatalities have gone down, you would be inclined to think that shootings have gone down.

[1199] But in fact, shootings haven't really gone down.

[1200] Our ability to treat gunshot wounds has increased dramatically.

[1201] So it's kind of a misleading statistic.

[1202] And likewise, while one side of the.

[1203] equation is just getting worse and worse and worse, our ability to treat the symptoms has gotten better, so it feels like it's almost in homeostasis, but it's not.

[1204] It's like we're making these leaps forward on the treatment side, but the prevention side, nothing's happening, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

[1205] Correct.

[1206] Yeah, I mean, as I tell all my patients who are on a immunosuppressant, which, you know, when I first started this, people would go, when do you know about autoimmune disease?

[1207] And I go, I know absolutely nothing.

[1208] about it, but I know a whole lot about the immune system because I was a transplant immunologist.

[1209] I could put a pig in a baboon, a pig heart in a baboon, and have it lived for a month when the previous record was five hours.

[1210] So I'm really good at...

[1211] Making sure organs don't get rejected by understanding how the immune system works.

[1212] So when people with autoimmune disease, you know, came in and I said, hey, you know, let's play.

[1213] Let's see what your immune system is so interested in about you.

[1214] And that's how I, you know, I started on this.

[1215] To your point, the other problem that's happened, because we know now that the gut microbiome teaches your immune system what it should be interested in and what it shouldn't be interested in.

[1216] And it basically says, hey, we got your back.

[1217] We're going to handle most everything that comes in here.

[1218] we've been doing this for, you know, millions and millions of years, and you just kind of stand by and look for odd things that get by, but, you know, just relax.

[1219] What's happened now is we don't have that microbiome to teach our immune system that we got your back, and now everybody's got a leaky gut.

[1220] So our immune system, all the cops, you know, are, oh, my gosh, you know, that looks like a foreign protein, let's shoot it, and we'll ask questions later because we've got to protect to everybody.

[1221] I used to have allergies so bad that I got allergy shots all through college and in my young adult life.

[1222] I don't have any allergies anymore.

[1223] And that's because I've sealed my gut, taught my immune system to chill out, and they're not interested in things.

[1224] Yeah, but I think specifically, like, I'd be curious if I were Monica is like, so I have arthritis, my wife's got this rash that she's been contending with for three months.

[1225] So we're obviously, obviously super interested at this point.

[1226] And we're all, yeah, we're all eating in the same kitchen.

[1227] And Monica's like, should I be doing this?

[1228] I feel fine.

[1229] Right.

[1230] Like, do I need to take this on?

[1231] Maybe it'll make me feel better, but I don't feel bad.

[1232] There are some people just blessed, you know?

[1233] Well, I think some people have a better, you know, microbiome, for instance.

[1234] Maybe they've been on less antibiotics throughout their life.

[1235] Exactly.

[1236] I mean, for instance, one of the tip -offs early on was I noticed a lot of my patients with autoimmune disease had their tonsils out as kids.

[1237] And tonsils are actually the first line of defense against lectins.

[1238] They kind of guard your harbor.

[1239] And I'm convinced that tonsillitis, we didn't know any better, was just somebody who really reacted to lectins.

[1240] So the argument that my colleagues citing the blue zones eating whole grains and beans, none of these blue zones have antibiotic exposure.

[1241] None of these blue zones have glyphosate.

[1242] I think what's missing in the argument about lectins is our defense system against lectins, which was pretty doggone good, at least in Western society, is trashed.

[1243] Well, I do think that people's overall concern with the point you're making is it would appear that what is clearly evident is that our huge influx of corn subsidized food products, are, you know, refined wheat, all the processed food that if you look epidemiological, if you track that history, you're going to see a really perfect correlation.

[1244] And they are nervous you're warning people about plants, which they feel like is clearly the right direction as opposed to I love plants.

[1245] I'm a plant predator.

[1246] You just got to know who has your back and who wants to do you in.

[1247] And my mother was trained by my grandmother, who is French, and she was taught always peel and de -seated tomato before you eat them because they're lethal.

[1248] And, you know, I've interviewed chefs in France.

[1249] So you'll eat tomatoes as long as they've been stewed, I guess.

[1250] Yeah, or pressure -cooked, or peeled and seeded.

[1251] Okay.

[1252] De -seated.

[1253] Instead of limiting everything you're eating, why aren't we putting all of our energy into growing the right bacteria and introducing it?

[1254] As opposed to trying to treat it on the other side when everything's already flawed, why isn't that the emphasis?

[1255] Crapsels.

[1256] Yeah.

[1257] So, you know, part of the problem is that almost all probiotics get destroyed by gastric acid.

[1258] And to the credit of the researchers who just did the new autism trial of crapsils.

[1259] So there was a very, very well -designed trial, taking autistic children, who we know have a very altered microbiome, and sterilizing their gut, giving them.

[1260] you know, gut -specific antibiotics, and then putting them on acid reducers, like, you know, like nexium or prylosec, to stop acid production in the stomach, and then giving them crapsils, which are fecal pills, in an enteric -coated capsule that could make it through whatever stomach acid was left.

[1261] I mean, a beautifully designed study.

[1262] I mean, they did it right.

[1263] And they did it, I think, for three months.

[1264] They've now out two years.

[1265] years.

[1266] The kids in the in the treatment group have had a 50 % reduction in their autism behavior.

[1267] And it's stayed now for for two years.

[1268] Oh really?

[1269] Yeah.

[1270] And I think I mean that's if if there's any study that proves the gut brain connection in in autism, this is the definitive study.

[1271] The problem is for instance, there's this really cool bug called acrimonsia musinophilia, which is essential.

[1272] I know.

[1273] Say it one more time.

[1274] Acromancia, musinophilia.

[1275] Acromencia, which is essential for making the mucus that lines our gut.

[1276] It actually stimulates ourselves to make mucus, and it eats mucus.

[1277] That's why it's called musinophilia.

[1278] It loves mucus.

[1279] And the more it eats, the more mucus we produce.

[1280] And so it has to be there.

[1281] The problem is nobody's come up with a way to get it into us.

[1282] They're trying, I know they will, but there's been just log jams with this.

[1283] The other thing we have to realize is that almost all the probiotics that are available to us are not native species.

[1284] They are foreign to us.

[1285] And they actually, they go on vacation in our gut for about two weeks and then they leave.

[1286] Say, hey, ha, had a nice time.

[1287] Airbnb butt, I guess.

[1288] I'll have to coin that.

[1289] And so they leave.

[1290] We should have at least 10 ,000 different species.

[1291] And it's this tropical ecosystem.

[1292] system and everybody's dependent on everybody else and most of us after a round of antibiotics may only have one or two species left in us the the folks in stanford have said that it may take two years to reestablish a gut flora after a round of antibiotics which is really scary it is really scary so yeah i'll hear you say this and then i'll watch forks over knives and then uh there's a dude i follow on Instagram, who's a doctor who promotes a carnivore -only diet.

[1293] He's got claims, you know.

[1294] So it's nearly impossible.

[1295] Everyone has equal credentials.

[1296] Everyone has different conclusions.

[1297] So I am very cynical of that.

[1298] But I am in the unique position as I was when I got sober, which is, I don't believe in God, but I'm willing to try anything to not die from alcohol and drugs.

[1299] That's a less bad option for me than death.

[1300] Likewise, I've tried a bunch of shit that I would never try intellectually.

[1301] I did an Aravedic cleanse, totally helped me after every single Western option.

[1302] So because I dislike joint pain so much and skin rashes, I'm open to everything.

[1303] I am happy to try everything because it's going to cost me nothing, basically.

[1304] So I am at one time cynical of all claims, and then the other time I'm totally willing to try all things.

[1305] Yeah.

[1306] And then we'll get that Dr. Eric Topel's going to give us a body scan with an iPhone, too.

[1307] He's promised to do that.

[1308] Yeah, you know, actually, Eric and I were both at the University of Michigan together in our residencies.

[1309] Oh, really?

[1310] Uh -huh.

[1311] You know, back in the old dark ages, you know.

[1312] Great school, you know, Monica.

[1313] Really good school.

[1314] Probably better than...

[1315] Good school.

[1316] Okay, well, Dr. Stephen Gundry, your first book is Dr. Gundry's diet evolution, turn off the genes that are killing you in your waistline.

[1317] And the other one is Paradox.

[1318] So the most famous one is the Plant Paradox.

[1319] The Plant Paradox.

[1320] Then the Plant Paradox cookbook was also a New York Times bestseller.

[1321] Then the Plant Paradox is quick and easy, also in New York Times bestseller.

[1322] And the most recent one is the longevity paradox, how to die young at a ripe old age.

[1323] Oh.

[1324] I want to die young at a very long.

[1325] That's what we want.

[1326] We, you know, we all want to get old, but we don't like what it looks like.

[1327] No. We want to be young.

[1328] Yeah.

[1329] I want to be arrested basically at this everything and then just keep this going.

[1330] Well, actually, you know, I was saying I can't wait for tomorrow because I get younger every day.

[1331] Actually, if you look at pictures of me from 11 years ago, I'm younger than I was 11 years ago.

[1332] Now, is there a risk in your business that things are moving so quickly?

[1333] I know that in the short time my stepfather had prostate cancer and he did die of it, the leaps that were made in those two.

[1334] years in treating that disease were staggering, as are the information that's coming in about microbiome and whatnot.

[1335] Do you feel the challenge or the danger of printing up these books knowing that something new is going to be revealed?

[1336] So your first book didn't have lectins in it, right?

[1337] Right.

[1338] Actually, I did mention them, but they were way down the list of things to work out.

[1339] Right.

[1340] It wasn't the priority.

[1341] Right.

[1342] And believe or not, that's why my first book was called Diet Evolution, because my thoughts evolve.

[1343] In fact, my thoughts of all.

[1344] In fact, my thoughts of in two years for the longevity paradox.

[1345] What frustrates me and David Perlmiter, Grain Brain, is that we've only known about the microbiome for the last five years.

[1346] And yet you will have individuals who have preached the exact same diet for 20 years, 25 years, regardless of what we now know.

[1347] It's when the blanket statements come out that this will help everybody.

[1348] I think just like the prostate cancer, people are getting their genome mapped first, and they're finding out that there's 11 different options for different genomes.

[1349] So it's like the notion that one thing is going to be great for all humans is a little.

[1350] So the good news is that, you know, I want people to eat like it's 9 ,9199 years ago.

[1351] And we were actually doing pretty doggone good.

[1352] We had big brains.

[1353] We were taller than we are now.

[1354] And why not go back, you know, 10 ,000 years and just start with that?

[1355] We did good.

[1356] Okay.

[1357] Well, my osteology class, those early hominid bones were not taller than ours, but...

[1358] No, homo sapien was a big dude, about six feet tall, and a brain size was 15 % bigger than it is today.

[1359] Well, ours was 1 ,500 Cc, and the Neanderthal was 1650, 1650.

[1360] Yeah, they were the biggest brains.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] And they actually, you know, they had...

[1363] I did hear you say we lost a foot in height, and I just want to be on record that I don't agree with that.

[1364] We lost a foot in height after the Industrial Revolution.

[1365] We went down to about five feet.

[1366] That's why there's all these little bitty beds over in England and all the little bitty coats of arms and armor.

[1367] We were small.

[1368] Now we've gotten big.

[1369] Part of that, of course, is all the growth hormones that it is in everything.

[1370] Yeah, thank God for my shoulders.

[1371] Which is scary.

[1372] Dr. Gundry, thanks so much for giving so much of your time to us.

[1373] Yeah, very intrigued by all this, and it was a good time.

[1374] Thank you so much.

[1375] Thank you.

[1376] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1377] Welcome to chapter two of the Moonlight fact series.

[1378] What's that?

[1379] Another Moonlight fact check.

[1380] It's the second one.

[1381] Oh, I thought you were doing like.

[1382] Hooker's on the point.

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] It was dipping into that voice a little bit.

[1385] Or what's that song that has like talking?

[1386] Very white?

[1387] Talking at the beginning.

[1388] Uh, yeah.

[1389] No, it's like, no, it has like...

[1390] Are you talking about Teddy Bandergras?

[1391] No. And actually, maybe it's not at the beginning.

[1392] It might be in the middle of the song.

[1393] What is it?

[1394] What are some of the words?

[1395] It's a female singer.

[1396] Oh, female.

[1397] It's so popular.

[1398] I mean, was so popular.

[1399] What?

[1400] She's always late to concerts.

[1401] What is her name and what is the song?

[1402] It's very popular, but not really doing anything.

[1403] Currently, Whitney Houston?

[1404] No, no, no. I believe this person is with us still.

[1405] Still with us, okay.

[1406] I'll think of it.

[1407] Okay.

[1408] We'll circle back.

[1409] Do you know the trick where you say, like, tell the audience what you think I said to you.

[1410] Okay, you ready?

[1411] Okay.

[1412] I love Laura.

[1413] Well, it's supposed to look like I love you.

[1414] Oh, it didn't.

[1415] But it's olive oil.

[1416] Oh.

[1417] Say mouth, mouth olive oil to me and I'll tell you what it looks like.

[1418] Okay.

[1419] you do thank you i love you too it totally looks like i love you i think it's olive juice fuck wabi wobb rob yes that makes more sense because well first of all of juice is in the thing yes it's no i've heard this too though i think he's i'm backing you up but it's not even impressive like that's like just saying if you say the words i dove ju if you mouth that well it's like oh great it doesn't even make sense well that's the point all Olive juice is a thing, I think.

[1420] No. Well, the oil is the juice of the olive.

[1421] Look at it.

[1422] The part of oil was the part that I thought you said, Laura.

[1423] No, the oil parts.

[1424] Okay, you said I love you for real.

[1425] Oh, good way.

[1426] You passed that test.

[1427] That was a good pass.

[1428] Because oil doesn't look like, yeah.

[1429] Say olive juice.

[1430] This is horrible for podcasting.

[1431] Really?

[1432] Yeah.

[1433] Rob's right.

[1434] Sorry.

[1435] Yeah.

[1436] Don't be sorry about being right.

[1437] Celebrate.

[1438] Do the chicken dance on Main Street.

[1439] Okay, so this is probably one of the harder facts checks you ever done because I didn't even understand most of the chemical words he was saying.

[1440] Yes.

[1441] I couldn't really debate him because I don't even know what those chemicals are.

[1442] There was a lot of jargon.

[1443] Chemistry talk.

[1444] I hope people stuck with it because it was interesting.

[1445] I was super interested in it.

[1446] Yeah.

[1447] Hard to fact check because I don't know a lot of these things.

[1448] I bet you wouldn't even be able to spell him.

[1449] Even if you were listening to what he was saying, you couldn't even type it into a keyboard.

[1450] No. You'd have to maybe put your phone up to it.

[1451] Voice dictation.

[1452] Yes.

[1453] And then you're liable to get the wrong word.

[1454] You wouldn't even know if that was spelling the word you just heard.

[1455] That's right.

[1456] There's virtually no way to check.

[1457] So just take it easy, guys.

[1458] If I miss some facts, that's why.

[1459] Okay, great.

[1460] All right.

[1461] So, he said that we're hairless because of the proximity to water, we were aquatic animals.

[1462] Yeah.

[1463] And then you said because of the uprightness and the contact patch with the sun.

[1464] Uh -huh.

[1465] Okay, so according to Scientific American, scientists have suggested three main explanations for why humans lack fur.

[1466] The aquatic ape hypothesis suggests that six million to eight million years ago, ape -like ancestors of modern humans had a semi -aquatic lifestyle based on foraging for food in shallow waters.

[1467] Fur is not an effective insulator in water, and so the theory asserts that we evolved to lose our fur, replacing it as other aquatic mammals have, with relatively high levels of body fat.

[1468] Imaginative as this explanation is and helpful in providing us with an excuse for being overweight, paleontological evidence for an aquatic phase of human existence has proven elusive.

[1469] Good.

[1470] I didn't buy it.

[1471] The second theory is that we lost our fur in order to control our body temperature when we adapted to life on the hot savannah.

[1472] Our ape ancestors spent most of their time in cool forests, but a furry, upright, hominid walking around and the sun would have overheated.

[1473] The body cooling ideas seem sensible, but even though lacking fur might have made it easier for us to lose heat during the day, we also would have lost more heat at night when we needed to retain it.

[1474] That's where a blanket comes in or snuggling.

[1475] Sure.

[1476] Recently, a colleague and I suggested that ancestors to modern humans became naked as a means to reduce the prevalence.

[1477] Remember, prevalence?

[1478] What I said wrong?

[1479] Oh, right, prevalence.

[1480] Trigger.

[1481] Of external parasites that routinely infest fur.

[1482] A furry coat provides an attractive and safe haven for insects such as ticks, lice, biting flies, and other ectoparasites.

[1483] These creatures not only bring irritation and annoyance, but carry viral bacterial and protozoan -based diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, West Nile, and Lyme disease, all of which can cause chronic medical problems and in some case, death.

[1484] Mm -hmm.

[1485] So.

[1486] Yeah.

[1487] Well, so right, mine wasn't either, but I do recall that it, yeah, I knew it was about walking.

[1488] Temperature.

[1489] Yeah, yeah.

[1490] Although I was vitamin D, whatever.

[1491] I totally buy this.

[1492] I buy the second one, personally.

[1493] Okay.

[1494] Because you don't see a ton of hairy African.

[1495] but you go to Russia, girl, you're going to see some body hair.

[1496] And so they got into that cooler climate and it came back.

[1497] That's interesting.

[1498] Yeah.

[1499] That seems pretty self -evident.

[1500] But Indians have a lot of hair and it's hot there.

[1501] Do the men have big hairy chests and backs?

[1502] They have hair.

[1503] They have hair.

[1504] Yeah.

[1505] But not like you see these Russian guys look like they're wearing a sweater.

[1506] No, but Indians have a lot of hair.

[1507] I do.

[1508] But you don't have hair all over your shoulders and stuff.

[1509] But I have hair on my arms.

[1510] That's like the kid in middle school who told me I looked like a werewolf.

[1511] Well, that boy was a jerk.

[1512] Was it a boy or girl?

[1513] He said a kid, okay.

[1514] Obviously a boy.

[1515] And yeah, he's a jerk.

[1516] But he was talking about my arm hair.

[1517] Yeah, I just, I don't find you to be crazy hairy, first and foremost.

[1518] Thank you.

[1519] I take care of it.

[1520] Okay.

[1521] You're just some grooming involved.

[1522] But I just the super hairy guys, that to me, that's, that reeks in northern.

[1523] Okay.

[1524] I mean, I'm going to stand by my...

[1525] That Indians are hairy.

[1526] Yeah, and it's hot.

[1527] You say, do we have more hairs per square inch than a chimpanzee?

[1528] I read a lot of articles saying about the same amount.

[1529] Okay.

[1530] So, sure.

[1531] He said our hair patterns follow the flow of water.

[1532] I read no evidence of that.

[1533] Right.

[1534] Oh, you know what else?

[1535] I think Furrow would also follow the flow of water.

[1536] It would move in the direction that the resistance is opposite direction of the resistance.

[1537] Uh -huh.

[1538] And I don't mean the political movement.

[1539] I mean, water is resistant.

[1540] But he means like the swirl, the swirl of your chest hair.

[1541] You wouldn't know so you don't have any.

[1542] Right, I don't.

[1543] I have a couple of two.

[1544] You're proud of that, right?

[1545] No. Why?

[1546] Well, I grew up in the, the symbol of maleness was Bert Reynolds.

[1547] And he had a full rug on his chest.

[1548] Yeah.

[1549] So I think I wanted that.

[1550] Oh, okay.

[1551] And Aaron has a nice hairy chest.

[1552] I mean, it's an overly hairy, but it's, you know, He's clearly got testosterone.

[1553] Okay.

[1554] I look like a 13 -year -old female.

[1555] I understand all of that.

[1556] And also, men shave their chest.

[1557] Well, it now proved to be great.

[1558] But I'm talking more like junior high.

[1559] Some guys are sprouting some shrubbery on their chest.

[1560] And I'm bald as a baby's buns.

[1561] I get it.

[1562] Not all babies, Indian babies are very hairy at their butts.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] Oh, are they?

[1565] No, I'm teasing.

[1566] Oh, that's my mom.

[1567] Could be true I would have given you some of my arm hair You could have just pasted it glued it on my chest Yeah Yeah the only problem was it was I was in the locker room You were a baby child baby That's true Yeah because we're talking 87 88 is when these guys Started getting a little hair upstairs Well as you said I had hair all over my butt So I could have given that hair Give me some of those tail feathers Yeah You know I wrote a whole sketch I could not get this sketch up on stage I tried like 10 different times.

[1568] Just no one ever found it funny.

[1569] It was all about just how many ways you could say pubic hair, basically.

[1570] There was a very serious conversation.

[1571] It was about the secondary hairs that grow in in adulthood.

[1572] And I was calling them secondary hairs or auxiliary hairs, not primary hairs.

[1573] Okay.

[1574] And the whole thing was just how many words could I come up with for pubic hair?

[1575] No one says secondary hair or auxiliary hair.

[1576] Right.

[1577] And just no one ever got a kick out of it.

[1578] Maybe I'm going to email him.

[1579] Danny McBride see if he likes it I bet he does Hey Dan Dogg Shep Monster You gotta think out this sketch From the groundings That I never really got to do But here it is Yeah no one liked it But I got a hunch my soulmate Will What if I started out the letter Calling him Dan Dog It'd be over right He could never respond to an email He's like I've been so nice Why is he doing this to me Dynamo Shep Doctor Hey bro you ever thought about Colum pubic hair, secondary hair, or auxiliary hair?

[1580] And if so, did you laugh yourself, silly, brother?

[1581] Oh, God.

[1582] Okay, he says Neanderthal.

[1583] Yeah, he says it wrong.

[1584] Yeah, he says it.

[1585] Incorrectly.

[1586] He says it like most people say.

[1587] Yeah, oh, yeah, definitely here.

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] Not in Deutsche one, though.

[1590] Is that, were it originally?

[1591] Primarily, yeah, I think they're the ones that first coined the phrase Neanderthal.

[1592] Because they don't have a T -H sound there.

[1593] T -H there is tall.

[1594] T. Yeah, T. You know, that's the opposite.

[1595] In India, a lot of, like, I think I've already talked about this.

[1596] A lot of the names that are T are pronounced T -H.

[1597] Oh, sure.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] Like Thammie and Tham and Tham.

[1600] Yes.

[1601] Yep.

[1602] Exactly.

[1603] And Tiffany.

[1604] Yeah.

[1605] Ooh, Tiffany might be the worst.

[1606] Tiffany.

[1607] Tiffany.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] If your name is Tiffany and your mother, yells out the window.

[1610] Thiphany, you're bummed.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] Okay.

[1613] So you said there are high rates of addiction and anesthesiologists.

[1614] Do you say anesthesiologist?

[1615] I say anesthesiologist.

[1616] Yeah.

[1617] I say anesthesiologists.

[1618] Oh my goodness.

[1619] You love your THs.

[1620] That's how it's spelled.

[1621] Sure.

[1622] Just like Neanderthal.

[1623] I'm right about that.

[1624] I bet in Germany they say anesthesiologist.

[1625] We got to get that thing.

[1626] Google Home or whatever it is.

[1627] So we can just, yeah, we can blurt out and we can get real -time fact checks.

[1628] So it takes us too long to type the shit in.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] So, yeah, it's true.

[1631] They do have a high rate.

[1632] Wait.

[1633] Oh, anesthesiologists do have a high rate of addiction.

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] There was an article.

[1636] What if you hit me with a figure like 85 % of them are addicted?

[1637] So I guess there was a big article called opioid addiction in anesthesiology.

[1638] a long time ago and then I was published and then in this article it said addiction still remains a major issue in the anesthesia workplace between 19 so this is old between 1991 and 2001 80 % of u .s. anesthesiology residency programs reported experience with impaired residents and 19 % reported at least one pre -treatment fatality oh yeah yeah yeah I have also disagree.

[1639] I made up points.

[1640] I think they did do amphetamine back in residency.

[1641] I mean, I know you thought that you wouldn't.

[1642] No, I've had doctors tell me that that was a thing.

[1643] Just like, you know, in the military, the Air Force guys, they call them go pills.

[1644] So when they fly on like a bombing rate or something and they need to come back, they have amphetamine.

[1645] They're called go pills.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] And they pop them.

[1648] I think maybe some people did and some people didn't.

[1649] And it could be true that no one in his class was doing them.

[1650] That's possible.

[1651] Yeah.

[1652] Okay, he said gorillas eat 16 pounds of leaves a day, but although maybe he said 60 because they can eat up to 40 pounds, which is a lot.

[1653] Well, those silverback males are 400 pounds.

[1654] If you're 400 pounds, eat 10 % of your body, wait, let's see, that would, no, that still doesn't.

[1655] That means I would eat 20 pounds of food today.

[1656] Oh, my God.

[1657] How many pounds do you think you eat?

[1658] I think I eat three pounds of food today.

[1659] Only three?

[1660] Two, three pounds.

[1661] And then I, you know, I drink 10 pounds.

[1662] of water.

[1663] You're going to drown yourselves.

[1664] I might.

[1665] I heard water's bad for you.

[1666] Well, it is bad for you.

[1667] If you drink it too quickly, you can drown yourselves.

[1668] Yes.

[1669] That's what they do it for initiation, so then people die.

[1670] Uh -huh.

[1671] This was one of the actual articles that was countering that lectins are bad.

[1672] It said, sure, lectins in a certain quantity, just like water in a certain quantity, can be toxic.

[1673] Oh, interesting.

[1674] Yeah.

[1675] Okay.

[1676] you were talking about sleeping.

[1677] Oh, because you were saying, why don't they sleep?

[1678] Yeah, what a ridiculous plan.

[1679] Yes.

[1680] And you said the Valdez guys had been up for 31 hours.

[1681] Yeah, that was a guess.

[1682] I, yeah, I don't have hours.

[1683] Sleep -deprived operators failed to prevent the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown and the Exxon Valdez.

[1684] I said Valdez, a second note, Valdez oil spill.

[1685] And during the Civil War, some historians think that Confederate General Stonewell while Jackson's confused command during the battles of June 1862 was due to sleep deprivation.

[1686] I don't doubt that at all.

[1687] Having read both a Robert E. Lee book and a Grant book, you know, those guys were getting fucking hammered at night and they're waking up at sunrise.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] I'm sure they had all kinds of things going on.

[1690] Oh, yeah.

[1691] Folks was unhealthy.

[1692] I mean, they're unhealthy now in a different way.

[1693] That's true.

[1694] Yeah.

[1695] I think we're healthier now than then.

[1696] Well, we know more.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] Yeah.

[1699] Certainly on stuff like that.

[1700] But then you look at the amount of obesity and heart disease and all those things.

[1701] And those are, and now that our life expectancy has not fallen for a couple years and you start going, well, again, I don't think we're healthier.

[1702] I think the treating our dysfunction has gotten better.

[1703] Yeah, you're right.

[1704] We're probably not healthier because now there's so much junk added into food.

[1705] Oh, everything's processed.

[1706] Oh, corn.

[1707] Hardest.

[1708] Corn everything.

[1709] When we lose sleep, it seems we lose our ability to think on our feet to take a new information and adjust our behavior, according to a study published in the June issue of the journal, Sleep.

[1710] Researchers at Washington State University figured this up by rounding up 26 volunteers.

[1711] Half went without any sleep for two days, while the other half slept normal hours.

[1712] Over the course of the week, the scientists tested everyone's ability to complete decision -making tests.

[1713] In one test, the volunteers had to click a button when they said.

[1714] saw certain numbers and hold back when they saw others.

[1715] Then the rule was switched.

[1716] The well -rested group did better on this task in general, but when the rule was reversed, none of the sleep -deprived volunteers were able to get the right answer, even after 40 tries.

[1717] Oh, boy.

[1718] Okay.

[1719] I've been having sleep issues.

[1720] Oh, tell me. Like a month ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and then I was awake for hours.

[1721] Mm -hmm.

[1722] That was weird for me. Yeah.

[1723] I think I talked about this on here because you said, well, Welcome to your club.

[1724] Mm -hmm.

[1725] Then it happened again on Saturday night.

[1726] I was up for four hours in the middle of the night.

[1727] I watched Bill Maher.

[1728] I thought that was going to make me fall asleep, but didn't.

[1729] I was still awake after that.

[1730] Oh, boy.

[1731] That was not fun.

[1732] And then last night, I could not fall asleep at all.

[1733] At all.

[1734] And then I finally went to sleep around one, and then I woke up at six.

[1735] I hate to point this out, but, you know, the number.

[1736] number one sign of depression is poor sleep.

[1737] That's the first thing they ask you.

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] This is not a great sleep record.

[1740] I was up three times last night, but two of the times were from Dee Money.

[1741] She woke me up at 1230 and then at two and then I woke myself up at three.

[1742] Similarly, could not fall back to sleep.

[1743] Decided to have more melatonin at 3 a .m. even though I'd wake up at 6, woke up at 6.

[1744] Very groggy for the first five hours.

[1745] I was awake.

[1746] Oh, no. That's the hard thing about taking those things.

[1747] I know.

[1748] Well, I learned a lot.

[1749] I didn't know what else to do.

[1750] I was like, I can't.

[1751] I got to wake up in a few hours and I still haven't really haven't slept yet.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] Three of the blue zones use a liter of olive oil per week, he said.

[1754] I did see that a lot of the blue zones.

[1755] Well, there's like sites about like how to eat like they do in the blue zones and olive oil is on that list.

[1756] The other biggest corollary was that they had, the lowest amount of meat consumption, which I hated to read.

[1757] Well, yeah.

[1758] So, okay, so he said, unless maybe I couldn't, maybe I misunderstood this.

[1759] I think he said the Katavin blue zone.

[1760] Uh -huh.

[1761] Again, I wouldn't even know what that starts with, a cue, a C, a K. Exactly.

[1762] So I didn't know and I looked it up and I don't know.

[1763] But the blue zones are the Italian island of Sardinia, Sardinia, Okinawa, Japan, Loma, Linda, California, Costa Rica's isolated Nacoya Peninsula, and Akaria, an isolated Greek island.

[1764] Those are the blue zones.

[1765] So I'm not sure which one he was talking about.

[1766] And he was talking about that they smoke a lot there.

[1767] But I'm Papua New Guinea.

[1768] Oh.

[1769] Yeah, only there.

[1770] That's not a blue zone.

[1771] Interesting.

[1772] He said they smoke a lot.

[1773] But when I was looking at blue zone stuff, which I do find very interesting, it was saying that the notable elements, are that they put family ahead of other concerns, semi -vegetarianism, majority of food consumed is derived from plants, consistent moderate physical activity, social engagement, legumes commonly consumed, and less smoking.

[1774] Right.

[1775] So.

[1776] But the Papua New Guinea thing, although maybe not a blue zone, I have no idea, but I do know that they do smoke and they have no lung cancer.

[1777] Yeah.

[1778] Well, yeah.

[1779] Yeah.

[1780] I mean, certainly they must have some.

[1781] lung cancer.

[1782] But when they did the ethnography and gave him chest x -rays.

[1783] Right.

[1784] No issues.

[1785] Right.

[1786] He said homo sapiens were six feet tall, which I guess he, I don't know if he meant the first homo sapiens, but.

[1787] I don't know what he meant either.

[1788] I don't know.

[1789] But the Cro -magnon.

[1790] Cro -magnon.

[1791] Cro -magnan people.

[1792] Mm -hmm.

[1793] They were five feet, four inches, males.

[1794] Right.

[1795] Those were early hominids.

[1796] It went australopithecines.

[1797] and then it went maybe chrome magnins.

[1798] And then you get into Homo sapien.

[1799] There's a first version of us.

[1800] And then Neanderthals are Homo sapiens.

[1801] They are Homo sapiens.

[1802] And then you have Homo sapiens sapien, which is the final iteration, which is us.

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] So I don't know what the Homo erectus or.

[1805] How tall they were.

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] But I did hear him say one time in an interview, which he didn't restate here, but that he said hunting and gathering folks once we went to an agrarian.

[1808] and lifestyle, cultivated food that we lost a foot of height, which is not...

[1809] He said it here.

[1810] Yeah.

[1811] Did I say that's not true then?

[1812] I think you'd said I didn't think it was true.

[1813] Yeah, I don't think it's true.

[1814] So also, though, one thing to note was, remember, his hands were...

[1815] Beautiful?

[1816] It looked like a 20 -year -old's hand.

[1817] There's no deny.

[1818] Whatever you want to say, Dr. Gundry looked like a beacon of health.

[1819] Yeah.

[1820] His skin was radiant, like a teens.

[1821] Yeah.

[1822] And his hands had no wrinkles.

[1823] No, his hands were suspiciously youthful.

[1824] They looked like he had a hand transplant surgery.

[1825] I know.

[1826] They looked much younger than mine, wouldn't you agree?

[1827] They looked younger than mine.

[1828] They were incredible.

[1829] So here's the other part.

[1830] I have no idea.

[1831] I have no idea of what he's saying about lectins is right or wrong.

[1832] How the hell would I know?

[1833] Yeah.

[1834] I do know that I have been not eating them.

[1835] Yeah.

[1836] And I do know that my skin has been very nice.

[1837] I'm waiting to see if my hands get a little more youthful But so far I'm feeling kind of good Good and you know me I'll try anything I don't care Even when you say the blue zones It reminds me of the China study It's like all of a sudden the China study figured everything out That's horseshit they didn't figure everything out I doubt the blue zones figured everything out People are going to be endlessly frustrated with all these claims The bottom line is I think here's one of the big problems Is all of these diets or philosophies on eating tend to assume you're dealing with one type of human being.

[1838] This is where I think none of them will ever win.

[1839] None of them will ever include everyone.

[1840] I think our physiology just it differs enough that different diets work better for different people.

[1841] Yeah, I agree.

[1842] So I don't think there's ever going to be one book that saves everyone from all ailments.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] Although I agree with him in that like it's true that there are outside circumstances that are affecting our microbiome and things like that, like the pesticides and antibiotics and all of those things, they do have an impact.

[1845] Well, I was in lockstep with them on all the microbiome stuff.

[1846] I really was.

[1847] Well, thanks for sorting through all that, highly technical stuff.

[1848] You're welcome, and I'm sorry if I didn't get everything.

[1849] No, you got all the most important stuff for me, the early human evolution stuff.

[1850] Yeah.

[1851] Yeah, I liked it.

[1852] All right.

[1853] Well, I love you.

[1854] And, um, you know, stay tuned for the third chapter and installment of Moonlight fact checks with your host, Bronica Bradman.

[1855] Good night.

[1856] Good night.

[1857] Follow armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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