Dr. Gundry sits down with New York Times List #1 Bestselling author, four times over, Dr. David Perlmutter. During their conversation, Dr. Perlmutter shares why gluten is such a big threat, why the sugar industry is “in a tizzy”and the importances of critics!

Dr. Perlmutter says that despite the success of his book “Grain Brain” and many others, he still has critics, highlighting the struggles of spreading his anti-grain, anti-sugar medical stance in a world that still very much abides by an ‘everything in moderation’ attitude.

Critics, he says remind us that “we’re on the right track.”

If you’re one of the people who prefers to learn the inconvenient truths – and act on them before it’s too late – this episode of the podcast is for you!

Get in touch with David Perlmutter:
Website – Instagram – Twitter

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Full Transcript:

Steven Gundry: 00:37  Before we get in to this week’s episode, let’s take a look at our review of the week. Very excited for this podcast by Danny Haber. “I just listened to the interview of Dr. Will Cole and loved it. I am a fan of Dr. Cole on The Keto Diet Podcast and had just picked up Ketotarian as a birthday present for myself and was so excited to hear him interviewed by Dr. Gundry. I try, and listen or view pretty much everything that Dr. Gundry puts out to the public. He’s incredibly well. There’s more, but I don’t have it.” Thank you very much for Danny Haber. If you want me to read your review, make sure to rate and review the Dr. Gundry podcast on iTunes.

Steven Gundry: 01:22  Okay. Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. This is an exciting show plan for the New Year and I couldn’t have a really better guess. We’ve got an exciting roster of guests and we’re starting off with the four-time number New York Times bestselling author of Grain Brain and many others, Dr. David Perlmutter.

David P.:  01:44    Two sons, a different mother. Twin sons, a different mother was, I think … Was that a Dan                   Fogelberg album? I’m not sure.

Steven Gundry:   01:50   Actually, I think it was. I think it was. You’ve just released the fifth anniversary edition of Grain Brain, and it’s got the latest developments in scientific research. This was absolutely Earth shattering when it came out. You had your share of critics and you still have your share of critics.

David P.: 02:13 Gratefully.

Steven Gundry 02:14 That’s right. I like to keep my enemies close to me and critics, I think, are very useful because actually you don’t wanna keep eating the same Kool Aid and drinking the same Kool Aid. It really does make you think are you actually on the right track? What are the biggest changes that have happened in the five years since Grain Brain came out?

David P.:  02:39   I’d say that even before changes, I think the bulk of the book has been really to the extent that the world has validated our messaging that simple carbohydrates are bad for the brain, that we should eat more dietary good fat and that gluten represents a threat through the mechanism that we just talked about inflammation. We proposed back then five years ago that people could be sensitive to gluten who did not have Celiac disease, meaning there was such a thing as non-Celiac gluten sensitivity. That was validated 2017.

David P.: 03:21 In fact Harvard researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association absolutely validated this notion of non-Celiac gluten sensitivity and even beyond that made it very clear that people who react to gluten, and don’t have Celiac disease can have manifestations apart from the gut. It can involve the skin, the joints and, yes, even the brain which is what we talked about back in 2013.

David P.:  03:50  was really kind of taken just two days ago on CNN News Online how a dietician, again reaffirm that if you don’t have Celiac disease, go ahead and eat all the wheat that you want because there’s no danger in it whatsoever. Wheat as a threatening food, I might just follow-up, not just because of the gluten issue, but also because it’s powerfully challenging your system in terms of the carbohydrate load which is what we don’t want to do. The argument has always been well, we’ve always eaten wheat, we’ve always eaten bread.

David P.:04:27 Well, for 99.6% of our time on this earth, we did not eat wheat, we did not eat bread. It’s a brand new thing that just happened yesterday when we developed agriculture. What has happened in the past five years that has gone into this revised edition has really been validation of the ideas that we put forth. Now, the United States dietary advisory committee totally supportive of the notion that it’s not the fat, we know it, never was the fat, it is the sugar.

David P.:05:01 When the US Dietary Advisory Committee comes around and makes that bit of a change, it’s huge because now we have governments supporting these ideas as well which do fly in the face of industry. Industry right now, the sugar industry for example is really having a tizzy as it relates to their product because I think the word is out that sugar is not the best choice in terms of the human diet and that’s what this science has said, that’s what went into the new book.

David P.:  05:34  How exciting for us that it’s been so validating. Beyond that, what didn’t go in to the first edition of Grain Brain was any information related to the human microbiome the role that our gut bacteria are playing and just to let your viewers know, Dr. Steven Gundry has a new book coming out that really focuses on that in terms of longevity. Very exciting manuscript to have the opportunity to read. You did a great job.

Steven Gundry: 06:02 Thanks.

David P.: 06:04 Having said that, that sort of information enters into the new revised edition especially in terms of the prescriptive, what can you do beyond cutting carbs, eating more dietary fiber and eating more dietary fat, what can you do to specifically nurture your gut bacteria now that we know how important that is in terms of health longevity and disease resistance.

Steven Gundry: 06:33 What do you counter we should be eating whole grains including wheat because of its fiber content? Don’t we need insoluble fiber for our gut microbiome?

David P.: 06:49  You are 100%. We do need fiber but it is absolutely not what we’re going to get from wheat. It’s a huge leverage point I think for the wheat industry, the grain industry to say we’re high in fiber. The reality is that that fiber is delivered in such a way that it is threatened. It’s delivered along with a lot of carbohydrate that we don’t need. It’s delivered along with a lectin by the name of gluten that we’ve just been talking about. Interestingly there was a study that came out last year that look at cardiovascular risk for individuals on a gluten-free diet and it found that in comparison to those not on a gluten-free diet, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that those individuals who restricted gluten actually had a higher cardio vascular risk.

David P.:                       07:43                Immediately the media decided to spin that information and say, “See, if you don’t eat wheat, you’re increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease, but in the conclusion to this study, the authors from Harvard actually said, “The reason this is because people who go gluten-free tend to overall reduce their consumption of fiber.” That said, “You and I both know that nothing is worth for your health.” It’s the type of fiber. We want good fiber from fiber rich prebiotic foods that can nurture our gut bacteria.

David P.:                       08:16                When you go gluten free and you should, you really have to be cognizant of still making sure you get adequate amounts of dietary fiber or you will in fact experience an increase risk for cardiovascular disease and other inflammatory disorders. I believe though I don’t have data just yet to indicate that. Other things will be increased like Alzheimer’s, diabetes and probably even cancer.

Steven Gundry:             08:42                Yeah. I think you’re right. In fact one of the things I caution people is two things. Number one, just because you go gluten-free, most gluten-free foods actually make up with having more sugar in that product than the gluten alternative. You’re actually eating a higher sugar-based diet in most of the package gluten-free. The other thing that was fascinating to me that I mentioned in The Plant Paradox, you can take a number of subjects who have biopsy proven Celiac disease, the gold standard. Put them on a gluten-free diet for 16 months, re-biopsy them and 70% of people on a gluten-free diet will still have Celiac by biopsy and my opinion is that’s because they’re actually very lectin rich diet that just has been … Glutens has been removed.

Steven Gundry:             09:40                In fact I’ve recently been looking at my gluten sensitive people and it’s true. You can be gluten sensitive without having Celiac and there’s this method you can’t have Celiac without having the Celiac genes, and where this myth came from is beyond my comprehension because I have a number of people with Celiac disease that don’t carry the genes, but lastly the interesting thing is that these people when we test them against corn for instance, about 90% of people who are gluten sensitive react identically to the corn lectins and the corn proteins. It’s been shocking to me.

David P.:                       10:25                There’s a really very straightforward mechanism that explains that because once you have breached the gate, in other words, once you’ve increased that permeability by virtue of a gluten exposure, et cetera, you allow other antigens then to make their way through the gut lining to be presented to the toll like receptors on a certain white blood cells that then initiate these sensitivity reactions. It’s very common then to see casein sensitivity, corn sensitivity, other forms of food intolerance or actual allergic reaction or sensitivity in relation to individuals who have bonafide gluten issues.

David P.:                       11:10                Again, it’s all about what goes on at the level of that integrity of the gut lining which plays a huge role. As a matter of fact, an inflammation throughout the body and truly even brain health is affected by permutations of this gut barrier. We have a new book coming out. It’s for professionals. It’s called the Microbiome in the Brain. I’m editing that book.

David P.:                       11:39                We have four Harvard researchers that are contributing. We have researchers from Oxford, MIT, UCLA, University of British Columbia, each contributing chapters, so really the state of the art relating the gut to the brain which is certainly nothing that we learned in neurology camp or I would bet in cardiology camp for you, but what a world it is that this notion of the body being integrated and having these relationships is now really become front and center and how great it is because it gives us so many more tools to treat issues that we can consider focusing on the gut wall integrity as a way to reduce that mechanism inflammation that is operant in Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, even Alzheimer’s and autism.

David P.:                       12:37                When we see reports of fecal microbial transplants proving effective, published reports, University of Arizona, Harvard researchers and collaboration in autism, fecal microbial transplant and really dramatic results, that is very encouraging and really helps to support our notion of this profound integration of seemingly desperate body parts.

Steven Gundry:             13:02                Yeah. We’re truly symbiotic organism and the more we realize how dependent we are for the denizens that live in our gut, in our mouth, on our skin. Dale Bredesen would say in our nose. The more we realize how much control they have over our faith which is basically The Longevity Paradox that I come out with in March, the more we’re realizing how little we knew about these single cell organisms that control about of us.

David P.:                       13:44                That’s right. Frankly that’s why it wasn’t found in the first version of Grain Brain and it is incorporated now. It wasn’t a decision to omit it, it just at five years ago, we didn’t really know this stuff, and then I wrote Brain Maker because it was so very, very exciting but I’m very grateful for the followup on Grain Brain, the new version, the revised edition, now number one itself in Alzheimer’s and America, on Amazon. It’s great that people are really understanding that we don’t have a treatment for this horrendous disease affecting 5.4 million Americans, costing us $228 billion a year, costing us a trillion dollars globally and yet we know that it is significantly preventable.

David P.:                       14:40                I mean, that’s something to get your arms around. Last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Richard Kennedy published a meta-analysis, a review of other studies, 10 studies on the effectiveness of the currently marketed also called Alzheimer’s drug which approach just about a billion dollars in sales here in America, and he found that these drugs, the cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine not only are ineffective but actually speed cognitive decline. Think about that.

David P.:                       15:16                The very drugs that people are receiving as prescriptions to help them with their Alzheimer’s is actually making them cognitively worse in comparison or if they didn’t take it. It would be like selling somebody a blood pressure pill that raised the blood pressure or a drug to treat diabetes that actually raised blood sugar. What’s really breathtaking is no one is talking about it. It was published by the American Medical Association in their online publication.

David P.:                       15:47                It’s an interesting world in terms of what makes the news and what doesn’t make the news. I think your mission, my mission has been there has been another side of the story here. We don’t have a treatment for the disease, and yet is preventable based upon what you the consumer choose to do. If you choose to be influenced by what you’re seeing in media which is basically designed to make you engaged in some activity, then you have to be satisfied with what they’re going to provide for you, what you will click basically.

David P.:                       16:20                On the other hand, to be empowered by knowledge and read the books, and listen to the podcast and then make a decision in our world, it would be lower your carbohydrate, lower your sugar. Get physical exercise, pay attention to your quality of sleep reduce stress, make connections with other people. Those are the keys to general health and certainly brain health and heart health as well.

Steven Gundry:             16:45                Yeah. In my upcoming book speaking of exercise there’s a phenomenal study in women and women as you and I both know get more Alzheimer’s disease than men which surprises most people but unfortunately it’s true. Women who have a regular exercise program beginning early in life have a 90% less incidence of developing Alzheimer’s and even if you carry the APOE4 gene, if you develop Alzheimer’s it will come about 13 years than the control group. I mean, simply starting an exercise program in early life or mid life, like you say prevents a currently untreatable disease.

David P.:                       17:39                That’s right. Not only is exercise in women able to offer them to offer that incredible advantage but even carrying what you mentioned the so-called Alzheimer’s gene, the APOE4 allele, other research has demonstrated a significantly less accumulation in the brain of a toxic protein called beta amyloid when measuring cardiovascular fitness. In other words the more fit you are, the lower level of this important dangers protein in the brain beta amyloid even if you carry the APOE4 allele. What is it telling us? That Alzheimer’s is not primarily or exclusively a genetic condition.

David P.:                       18:21                If mom had it, your risk is increased. If you carry the APOE4 allele or have some of this MTHR issues or have a high blood sugar or have a certain other genetic risk factors obviously your risk is increased, but the biggest risk factors, and this is really very important are modifiable. The biggest risk factors are higher blood sugar and sedentary, being sedentary. Those are the biggest risk factors of all with reference to a disease Alzheimer’s for which there is no treatment.

David P.:                       19:00                Bill Gates recently said that treatment without prevention is not sustainable and John Kennedy said that, “The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.” Obviously the sun is pretty much shining for the viewers of this podcast. What’s the message and that is get out and start your 20 to 25 minutes of aerobics every day, resistance exercise, great as well. Cut your sugar, eat more appropriately as both you and I have described in the information that we put out.

Steven Gundry:             19:32                It’s holiday season or right after the holiday season when people are gonna see this. Everybody is probably gonna go crazy. I guess Gayle King on CBS said that she ate a jelly donut and forgive her because it’s the holidays. How do you … Is it okay to cheat? Give me an example. Do you ever cheat? If you do …

David P.:                       19:59                Let me first say that yourselves don’t know that it’s a holiday, your anniversary, your birthday, Shavuot, Kwanzaa, you name it. Yourselves don’t know that. They never take a day off and just give up because it’s a holiday. With that and nor do your gut bacteria for that matter which outnumber yourselves 10 to 1. They don’t know that it’s New Year’s Eve. That’s my birthday it happens to be. They don’t know that.

Steven Gundry:             20:30                Happy birthday.

David P.:                       20:32                Do I cheat? I am not perfect by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. Could I exercise more? Yes. Do I ever miss a day in exercise? Of course I do when I travel. I think two things. Number one, it’s not worth beating yourself up over because by and large you’re doing what you think is best and the best you can but it doesn’t support the notion of everything in moderation. I’m often offered that as a counter to my messaging. Well, doc, I believe in everything in moderation and I always say at a time like that, therefore a little bit of crystal meth from time a time, a little sniffing of glue. Hey, everything on moderation, so don’t believe it. I think we need to do our very best. I mean, when I was on the CBS this morning program, several weeks ago, I guess this is when this airs.

Steven Gundry:             21:28                Right.

David P.:                       21:29                The first slide they offered up to counter my argument about sugar was from the sugar industry saying, “Well, in moderation, a decades of research show us that this is a good idea.” No, it isn’t. Nobody believes that. Why offer it up when I take my time to appear on your program and offer up the best information from my heart to yours just so you can be healthier and prevent disease. You take a deep breath and you smile, and you continue doing what you and I do every day and that is trying our very best to get out the message as we see it. People need to understand that what you say and what I say is absolutely going to change, week to week, year to year.

David P.:                       22:16                Why? because the science changes and we do our darnedest to stay on top of that science so that when things are a little bit different from Dr. Gundry three years from now that’s a good thing we should embrace that and not criticize it because we continue to learn things.

Steven Gundry:             22:32                No. It’s absolutely right. People say, “Well, your message in The Plant Paradox was different than Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution, what happened. That was 10 years.

David P.:                       22:43                Evolution is what happened.

Steven Gundry:             22:44                It was evolution, and I said guess what, I learned a whole bunch of things I didn’t know. I am honest enough to say I was wrong or I made a mistake and here’s why and here’s the new information. Good for you. There’s a lot of new information in your new book that wasn’t there five years ago.

David P.:                       23:08                There’s always things online criticizing we who are outliers and one of them is, “Gee, Dr. Perlmutter just told us that we should be on a low fat diet.” Well, yeah. That was 18 years ago and I would bet that did the same thing. That’s the best that science had to offer was a low fat diet was appropriate in line with the Ornish diet that we should keep our fat really, really low and even Predikin. Well, we now know otherwise. We now know that dietary fat is a gift and that is line with this other research study that has shown that good dietary fat is good for the human body. That’s a study that’s been going on for about two million years, and it’s still going on, going steady and it works.

Steven Gundry:             24:01                Yeah. I’ve been very impressed with the study out of Spain that you’re well aware of where they took 65-year-old people and they followed them for four years with three versions of a Mediterranean diet. The first version they had to use a liter of olive oil per week and they actually had to return their empty bottle to the clinic and get a new one. The second group had to have the equivalent calories of Walnuts and the third group had a low fat Mediterranean diet.

Steven Gundry:             24:30                The initial part of this study was to look at memory. Lo and behold, the olive oil group and the walnut group not only had preserved memory but actually had improved memory at the end of four years whereas the low fat group as expected actually had memory decline during those four years.

David P.:                       24:51                That’s right. That was called the PREDIMED study, P-R-E-D-I-M-E-D, and it basically showed that Mediterranean diet is good but adding more fat, and the leader of the pack was the one liter of olive oil, was even better and not just better but much better with further 40% reduction even in risk for cognitive decline. I drink a liter of olive oil about each week. It’s not that much. I put it on everything. One thing I think that’s very important is now that people have heard that, they go out to dinner, they’re gonna say bring me some olive oil to put on my salad or whatever. Bad idea.

David P.:                       25:32                You don’t wanna ever ask for olive oil at a restaurant unless it is this Michelin five star and you can see the bottle because the stuff that passes for olive oil at restaurants is typically 51% olive oil and then 49% something else, typically canola oil, so you definitely want to steer away from that. My and I go so far as to bring a small bottle of olive oil to the restaurant. No big deal. Nobody seems object. It’s not like you’re bringing your own wine in which case they wanna up charge you.

David P.:                       26:03                That said, we bring olive oil. Traveling is difficult, but you buy it when you get there and then you use it. Olive oil is really very, very important and it is pure fat, so we are dramatically adding dreaded fat calories to our diets and we’re doing it because it’s going to help us live a longer and healthier life. Who knew?

Steven Gundry:             26:26                Interestingly enough the olive oil group actually lost weight over those four years drinking a liter of olive oil per week so, so much for the theory that fat causes weight gain.

David P.:                       26:38                It’s unfortunate that being fat and eating fat share the name. It’s anything but synonymous. Increasing your blood sugar, increasing your consumption of sugar and carbohydrates is associate with gaining weight and even increase risk of mortality. An interesting study was published in the journal of The Lancet in 2015. This is a study that involved 18 countries in five continents and demonstrated during the course of this study that those individuals whose diets were at the highest range of carbohydrates had about a 28% increase risk of dying, of mortality during the study whereas those whose diets favored dietary fat had a 23% reduced risk of dying.

David P.:                       27:30                Even saturated, the dreaded saturated fat higher levels of consumption in this comprehensive study was associated with a 20% reduction in risk of becoming dead. That’s pretty profound published in The Lancet which is one of the most well respected peer reviewed journals but it’s hard for that to compete with sound bites that say I’m gonna have the muffin or the glazed donut because I like it.

Steven Gundry:             28:00                You and I attract almost the same critics and a lot of them are the no fat of folks like Ornish like Michael Greger, like Esselstyn, like T. Colin Campbell and his son. What do you say to those naysayers that say, “No, no, no, no, no. They only evidence is that no fat is the only way to go, and a high carbohydrate diet.”

David P.:                       28:30                I would say two things. First of all, always good to have a discussion rather than writing blogs that castigates somebody who doesn’t share your perspective which has been done by several other people that you’ve mentioned, but I would say that we’ve got to embrace the diet of our ancestors which was higher in fat. I think that Dr. Campbell’s work The China Study made some very important good points. One of the things he really emphasized was a relationship between increased risk for colorectal cancer and consumption of red meat, and I think he was absolutely correct in making that information known, because I think it’s very real because by and large red meat is a horrendously awful food that I would never touch.

David P.:                       29:21                Do I eat grass fed organically raised red meat? I do from time to time, but typical factory farm red meat is something that we should all avoid based on how upon those animals are treated, the foods that they eat and the drugs to which they are exposed. Now, as far as Michael Greger goes in terms of How Not to Die, that was his book, I would indicate that … And I’ve had the opportunity on stage to debate him and I would say that he does make some points that going more for a plan-based diet or in his case exclusively I think there are a lot of upsides to that.

David P.:                       30:02                I would say that moving forward I am validating the notion of a diet that is mostly plant-based is really a good one but if a person chooses to add some wild fish, a free range chicken, grass fed beef to that diet, I’m not pointing any fingers, but I think there’s a lot of merit to the notion of favoring plant based foods with the understanding that you still got to make sure you get plenty of dietary fat so adding that liter of olive oil for example with the understanding that you have to be very careful of being sure you’re getting adequate balance of vitamin D on a plant-based diet and vitamin B12 as well.

David P.:                       30:44                I think everybody has something very important quite literally to bring to the table and I recently had … I did a podcast with a chiropractor named John Douillard who wrote a book indicating that we should be eating wheat and more gluten containing foods. His contention was do that, but do it seasonally as that would mimic our ancestors. As it turns it, I’ve known him for probably 20 years, I love the guy and I always have, and I told him that.

David P.:                       31:17                He had his position and you know my position on gluten, and yet we had this incredible respectful dialogue. When one person was talking, the other person would listen and we concluded with making our points and we posted the blog, the podcast and what was incredible was the commentary that we got had very little to do with what we said but had everything to do with the fact that we at least listened to each other and respected each other’s positions which is so darn rare in this day and age of sound bites and the aggression that we’re seeing between people of different political parties for example and people that have different agendas.

David P.:                       32:00                We’ve lost this ability to communicate and therefore learn from others which is a prefrontal cortex type of activity as oppose to behaving from the Amygdala where we suddenly respond negatively and impulsively and that person is wrong, end of story. We have to reconnect the prefrontal cortex. It’ll make us more understanding, more empathetic, more compassionate and more able to understand the long-term consequences of the actions that we choose to pursue today.

Steven Gundry:             32:31                Absolutely right. Bury deep within The Plant Paradox and The Longevity Paradox is actually a high plant fat vegan manifesto, and I like you think that we should have scare people towards a plant-based diet eliminating gluten, and my opinion other lectin. In fact, I tell people that the only purpose of food is to get olive oil on your mouth, but now my current saying is I want you to eat like a gorilla who lives in Italy. Just eat a lot of leaves with olive oil and you’ll be fine.

David P.:                       33:17                Look at the elephant. You mentioned the gorilla. Look at the amount of … If I don’t eat … If I just eat plants, I’m going to be … My muscles are gonna [inaudible 00:33:24]. Well, that’s not reality. I mean, you do have to have dietary protein but I think most Americans dramatically overdo that part of the equation which really feeds in quite literally to raising blood sugar through gluconeogenesis, and also increases activity of certain pathways. We call one the mTOR pathway whereby we really are threatening our free radical status, our antioxidant status and the amplification of gene pathways that really are not doing us any good.

David P.:                       33:59                You and I differ. There’s no question about it. You have a strong emphasis on lectins, I have … I think it’s important. I think less so, but look at us. I mean, did I not just write an extremely supportive blurb for your next book because by and large, I think you’re out there really doing some great stuff. Again, we don’t agree on everything. There are no two humans walking the earth who can agree on everything, and that’s the way it is. My plea is that people be able to engage each other with respect and it’s so lacking today.

David P.:                       34:36                As you know that television program that I as recently on, on CBS, I was just there to give their audience information about what they can do to improve their health, and be a little bit more resistant to Alzheimer’s because we don’t have treatment and yet they found that to be threatening to the sugar industry and on and on. That’s not the agenda. I would be delighted to have a conference and to converse with higher ups in the sugar industry. Tell me what you’ve got. Talk to me about your research that shows we should be eating more sugar. I’d love to see that research. I can promise you, I’ve done the work and looked at the research, and I’ve not been impressed by any of it so if you’re holding something back, by all means, produce it. That should be the hold standard for the recommendations we make for the betterment of others, not because we’re concerned about the bottom line.

Steven Gundry:             35:35                You’re right. Unfortunately most of our information we get from big pharma, big food, big food, big agriculture, and big chemical. It pervades our media, it pervades most of our medical schools as you and I both know, and there’s just got to be … I think, it has to be a grassroots effort. Individual have to do it.

David P.:                       36:05                It’s happening. People like yourself, that’s grass roots, writing these books, doing this podcast, but are we to believe that really good choices for our health or having our foods sprayed with glyphosate, with Roundup, eating a lot of sugar, using artificial sweeteners, avoiding dietary fat, are we to believe that? Well, that’s what major forces are at work to try to convince us are the right choices to make, and it’s not true. A day before yesterday, I had to connect in Charlotte, North Carolina to get back to my home, and during my stay in the terminal it was breathtaking to look at what Americans look like now.

David P.:                       36:52                I can assure you it’s not in a good way, from a health perspective. Importantly, a lot of it isn’t the fault of the individual, it’s the messaging that they’re getting that is working its way into their decision-making process that diet drinks are better than sugar sweetened drinks. You should drink any of them if you wanna remain thin and resist having diabetes. Artificial sweeteners increase your risk of obesity and diabetes not because Dr. Perlmutter is sitting on your show today, that’s what the best scientific literature is telling us a study of over 70,000 women in France demonstrated, and that sugar is okay in moderation.

David P.:                       37:34                Well, you know what, that’s not in your interest. It’s in the interest of people who are trying to sell sugar in genetically modified food. No, it’s not good for you so people say, well, the only reason that you and I say these things is because we’re selling something. Not selling a thing here. This is information that we put out hopefully that people will embrace and then be able to making informed decisions with reference to their lifestyle choices.

Steven Gundry:             38:04                Yeah. You and I, without podcast are absolutely free that have no commercial interest telling people how to eat, and suggesting here’s how to cook something even. We’re trying to get the message out. I love your comment about moderation. Dale Bredesen who wrote The End of Alzheimer’s and I were at the Harvard MIT Neuroscience Conference a year ago, and one of the professors stood up and he says, “Well, don’t you think that we should practice everything in moderation?” I said, “Well, that’s fine. if you want moderate dementia and moderate heart disease and moderate arthritis please go right ahead because that’s what you’re gonna get.

David P.:                       38:48                It’s true and again it’s a convenient sound bite that people latch on to that has absolutely no meaning. Again, everything in moderation is okay if you want to still have dramatic risk for these diseases. I mean, face it. Your risk of Alzheimer’s is 50-50 if you live to be age 85. That’s a flip of a coin and we can do better. We can absolutely do better. Dr. Bredesen is fond of saying, “We all know cancer survivor but we don’t know an Alzheimer’s survivor.

David P.:                       39:20                I think the best way to be an Alzheimer’s survivor is to not even play the game. Not even be diagnosed the disease. In other words, let’s focus on prevention as it relates to Alzheimer’s. We fully understand what are the risk factors. That’s why write these books. That’s why this new revised edition of Grain Brain is number one in Alzheimer’s today because people recognize we have no treatment and yet it is preventable. I think that this is information that is not convenient, It’s an inconvenient truth because people don’t wanna make this dietary changes because people just love in an addictive way their sugar, and their high carbohydrate breakfast. It takes some cognitive engagement to make these changes if you want to increase your odds that you will remain cognitively intact in your ’70, in your ‘80s, in your ‘90s.

Steven Gundry:             40:20                Yeah, I do not want to end up in my later years drooling in my bowl of oatmeal at the chronic care facility facility. I know your father suffered from this, my father had Parkinson’s dementia and he lived to 91 but his last year or so was not a good year for him.

David P.:                       40:44                I always say as it relates to even Parkinson’s prevention what we now know what has just been published is that just in fact this past week is an incredible study that now has demonstrated that children with ADHD who receives stimulant medications may have as much as a nine-fold increase risk down the line for developing Parkinson’s disease as an adult. I read that study last night and that’s pretty breathtaking.

David P.:                       41:15                We also know that Parkinson’s is dramatically related to the gut that store particular proteins in the gut that can then ultimately make their way to the brain. Interesting to note that people who have had an appendectomy have about a 20% reduced risk for Parkinson’s. I’m not advocating that everybody go out and have an appendectomy but at least maybe the take home message today is at least maybe reconsider giving your kid an ADHD drug or taking that type of stimulant medication yourself.

Steven Gundry:             41:50                Yeah. All right. We’ve got to wrap it up. What happens on my podcast, I answer an audience question before we finally say goodbye to you. If you’ll just stay with me for a second, we’ll finish up. The audience question is from Farida Sultana and she asks, “Pasture raised eggs, how do you have them, boiled, scrambled, half boiled or raw?” Great question. I actually only have pasture raised eggs in the United States from a farmer in Santa Barbara who answered the question correctly when I met her at the farmer’s market, “What do you feed you chickens?”

Steven Gundry:             42:34                She looked at me quizzically and she said, “I don’t feed them anything, they work for me. They’re farm animals. They go out in my forest,” she has orchards, and they eat the bugs. In persimmon season you should see their yolks because they are bright orange. They’re eating the bugs in the persimmon. I don’t feed them anything. I said, “Great. I wanna buy from you.”

Steven Gundry:             43:01                I tend to eat those sorts of pastured eggs. If you find pastured eggs that the chicken are not fed corn and soy beans, and we can now find those, please get that. Most of the eggs I eat quite frankly are in Italy, in the south of France where I know the farmers at the farmer’s market and the yolks are so unbelievably orange, they almost hurt your eyes to look at them. I have them poached and I put them in a bowl and I pour about an inch of olive oil in the bowl, and I put some salt and pepper and stir it up. I have basically egg and olive oil soup for breakfast. What say you?

David P.:                       43:44                Well, first, I think that your viewers have to just embrace the notion that you are listening to a cardiologist, an interventional cardiologist tell you how he eats his eggs, which is really not what we would have heard a few years ago. We were told that if we ate eggs the world would come to an end, and to this day, I would indicate that on menus at the restaurant when you’re at a hotel look at the menu and you’ll still see the egg white omelet.

Steven Gundry:             44:14                Oh, yeah.

David P.:                       44:14                Why would that be? Well, because you don’t wanna have the yolk because that has terrible things in it including cholesterol. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Eggs are a wonderful food. I tend to scramble but I like soft boiled, I like hard boiled. When I travel, I think it’s great. Like you, I use a lot of olive oil on my eggs. Generally, if I’m gonna make eggs I will also sauté some spinach, onions, and mushroom at the same time and make an omelet which gives me even a bigger excuse for the addition of olive oil.

David P.:                       44:51                My secret ingredient is truffle salt. I love truffle salt on my eggs. I do eat salt. I eat it every day. I’m on a powerfully ketogenic diet in which case it’s quite clear that I need added salt, added magnesium, added potassium so that’s my meal and that typically occurs around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon.

Steven Gundry:             45:15                That’s a good point. I tell my patients if they’re gonna eat eggs to have basically a four yolk and one white omelet and have lot of mushrooms and onions and spinach in that omelet. They look at me crazy. I’ve actually gotten chefs who make it for me when I’m traveling and they look at me, “Wait a minute. You mean you want an egg white omelet?” I said, “No, no. I want an egg yolk omelet.” The yoke is a beneficial part. The white is animal protein.

David P.:                       45:47                I mean, here you have a wonderful source of cholesterol which is so wonderful to have in the diet. Again, this is a neurologist speaking with a cardiologist and look where their narrative has come in just a few short years. As really supported by our most well-respected research. We’re making progress. We’re making great progress. Each time we light that single candle and I think the outreach is fantastic.

Steven Gundry:             46:16                Great. Thanks again for joining me. It’s always a pleasure to see you. How can my audience find you in the book?

David P.:                       46:25                Well, the book is everywhere. It’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, local bookstores. Again, that’s the revised edition of Grain Brain. My website oddly enough is drperlmutter.com. That’s drperlmutter.com where my free newsletter is provided or subscription for that.

Steven Gundry:             46:47                And it’s great.

David P.:                       46:47                Thank you. I do Twitter and Instagram. That’s David Perlmutter as well. Facebook is David Perlmutter MD and all those fancy things that people do these days to get their message out.

Steven Gundry:             47:00                All right. Thanks a lot. I appreciate you having …

David P.:                       47:03                Good to see you. Bye-bye.

Steven Gundry:             47:05                Thanks for joining me on the Dr. Gundry podcast. If you’re doing The Plant Paradox 30-day challenge. I wanna send you some encouragement. I’m gonna do it as well because I wanna have a 30-day challenge every now and then. I know it’s tough when you’re making a lifestyle change, but stick to it. It’s gonna be worth it. You’re doing a great thing for your health as we just been talking on this podcast, and trust me, your body and probably most importantly from what you’ve heard today, your brain is gonna appreciate it and it’s gonna reward you for years to come.

Steven Gundry:             47:40                If you don’t know about the challenge, head to drgundry.com for more information, and you’re gonna find this podcast I hope really enlightening, and I’ll see you at the challenge which is ongoing right now. Thanks for listening to the Dr. Gundry Podcast because I am Dr. Steven Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you, and today your brain.

Steven Gundry:             48:08                For more information about this week’s episode, please take a look at my show notes below and on drgundry.com. In the show notes you’ll also find a survey, and I’d love to find out more about you. Please take a few minutes to fill it out so I can do my best to provide information you’re looking for.

Steven Gundry:             48:27                Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Check back next week for another exciting episode, and make sure to subscribe, rate, and review to stay up to date with the latest episodes. Head to drgundry.com for show notes and more information. Until next time, I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.

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