Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.

Dr. Gundry: 00:13 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know, I think we all agree when you look good, you feel good. And as I’m sure you’ve experienced, you know, updating your hairstyle, getting a spa treatment, or spending a few extra minutes in front of the mirror in the morning can certainly elevate your look. Now, that being said, nothing can replace the appearance-boosting benefits of proper nutrition.

Dr. Gundry: 00:43 And if you have any doubt about that, I recently posted an Instagram picture of me taken 11 years ago and another picture of me taken just recently and did a little contest to see who looked old or younger. But the point of all of that is no matter how you voted, and thank you for voting that I looked younger, if you look, I have not aged in 11 years. Personally, I think I de-aged. And if you look at me in the mid nineties to now, 25 or more years ago, I actually looked much younger than I did when I was 45.

Dr. Gundry: 01:25 And I’m a whole lot older than that, so I’m living proof, and I practice it every day, that nutrition is actually the number one factor in how you age and actually how your skin ages. Now, I’ll give you an example. Years ago, actually, in the mid nineties, my wife Penny had actually quite a bit of sun damage on her chest. And I know a lot of you worry about that. In fact, if you look at her now, she has no sun damage. She has no wrinkles there.

Dr. Gundry: 01:59 How the heck did she do that? And how the heck did I do this? Well, we didn’t go have treatments. We didn’t have laser. We didn’t have anything. We just changed what we ate and added a few supplements, and I’m going to talk about some of those things that you can do every day. So, here are my five beauty tips, doctor approved, for beautiful hair, skin and nails.

Dr. Gundry: 02:27 There’s one protein out there that’s essential to beautiful hair, skin and nails, and that protein is collagen. It’s actually the most abundant protein in the human body. And it’s made in all mammals and all animals, but it’s not made in plants. So, one of the things right away, if you see some jar that says plant collagen, you can actually put it back because it does not contain collagen. Now, everybody wants to have collagen, and so the big trend is, “Okay, I got to have bone broth for collagen.”

Dr. Gundry: 03:13 You don’t have to have bone broth for collagen. You make collagen out of certain amino acids. And as long as you get those amino acids in your diet, you will make collagen. Now, why is that important? Because I realized there’s this huge rage for bone broth. And while I have nothing against bone broth, and it’s actually in a few of my recipes, the hype that you should take large amounts of collagen and then suddenly, instantaneously, you will make more collagen is actually not proven in studies. That’s actually very important.

Dr. Gundry: 03:55 One of the things we all have to remember is we do not absorb collagen that we eat as collagen. We have to break down protein into individual amino acids. Those amino acids are then absorbed through the wall of our gut, and then they’re rebuilt as we need them into the various proteins in our body. Now, since collagen is a very abundant protein in our body, we’re building collagen all the time. But the thought that swallowing collagen builds collagen is unfortunately not true.

Dr. Gundry: 04:42 But what you do need is you need a couple of amino acids to absolutely, positively build collagen. One of them is L-lysine and the other one is L-proline. Now, one of them’s an essential amino acid. That means we can’t make it. We actually have to eat it. The other one is a nonessential amino acid. That means we can build all we want from other amino acids. But there’s some great sources that you should know about for these compounds. And as long as you’re getting those compounds in your diet, you’re going to have plenty of the materials to make collagen whether or not you’re eating bone broth or collagen supplements.

Dr. Gundry: 05:30 So, for instance, the root vegetables, like beets, like leeks, are great sources of these amino acids. It turns out that Parmesan cheese, yes, that longevity-producing cheese is actually a great source of these as well. In fact, actually, most milk products, as long as they’re A2 milk products, are actually really good sources of these amino acids. Another fun fact. Avocados are great sources of these amino acids. Nuts are also a good source of these amino acids.

Dr. Gundry: 06:06 So, the long story short. If you’re eating the Plant Paradox Way, you’re going to get plenty of these two building block amino acids to make collagen. But here’s what’s so interesting about making collagen. Collagen has to be locked together. I like to think of collagen as the rebar in our blood vessels in our skin, and we actually knit molecules of collagen together with an very essential vitamin that most of us are absolutely not getting enough of. That’s good old vitamin C.

Dr. Gundry: 06:50 Now, we talked about this before, but we’re one of the few animals that don’t produce vitamin C on our own. Us, monkeys, and Guinea pigs. We’re a interesting combination. We think, long ago, we had so much vitamin C in our diet that we didn’t need to manufacture vitamin C. In fact, fun fact. Vitamin C is manufactured from glucose, from sugar. And the thought is that if we didn’t need to manufacture vitamin C, we could use that glucose to make fat to make it through the winter. So, we have an enzyme system to make vitamin C genes that do that. There’s five genes that make the enzymes. The last gene is called a ghost gene, which is turned off in us.

Dr. Gundry: 07:43 There’s some interesting new research that we can activate that ghost gene with a compound in, get this, olive oil and olive leaf extract. So if you think I take olive oil and olive leaf extract, you’re absolutely right, because there is some human trials that says we can manufacture vitamin C from these compounds by turning on this ghost gene. But back to vitamin C. Vitamin C is essential for knitting collagen together. Now, let me give you the perfect example of that.

Dr. Gundry: 08:21 Almost everybody notices smokers have far more wrinkles than non-smokers, and that’s because smoking actually produces huge amounts of what’s called oxidative stress. And the way we handle oxidative stress is the antioxidant vitamin C. In smokers, what little vitamin C there is in us is completely used up. So, what does that have to do with wrinkles?

Dr. Gundry: 08:50 Well, vitamin C actually re-knits the collagen rebar back together after it’s been damaged by sunlight. If you don’t have any vitamin C, that collagen doesn’t get remixed together, and you get those wrinkles and crevices. So, you could have all the collagen in the world. You could take bone broth 27 times a day. If you don’t have vitamin C, you’re not going to complete the process of linking collagen together.

Dr. Gundry: 09:26 So, how do you do that? I really recommend that you take an extended time release vitamin C twice a day. Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin. After you take a vitamin C tablet, it’s gone in about two or three hours. There’s other interesting evidence that the more vitamin C you make, the less you absorb. And in fact, if anybody’s tried to take a lot of vitamin C when they have a cold, you’ll notice that vitamin C in high doses actually gives you diarrhea.

Dr. Gundry: 10:00 So, get yourself a timed release vitamin C. Take a thousand milligrams twice a day. If that’s a pain in the neck, buy the little 500 milligram chewable vitamin Cs. Please get the sugar-free variety. Throw a few in your pocket. And four times a day, chew on a vitamin C. You’ll actually be shocked with the differences that you’ll see over the coming months as your collagen begins to re-knit each other. There’s also really interesting studies in animals who have a genetically blocked vitamin C production. Those animals live half as long as their brothers and sisters who make vitamin C continuously. And it may be one of the secrets of longevity that I talk about in The Longevity Paradox.

Dr. Gundry: 10:59 So, vitamin C may be one of the great keys to great-looking skin, particularly this summer. And if you don’t like wrinkles, number one, don’t smoke. Number two, take your vitamin C. Okay, so let’s take a quick break, and I’ll be right back for more tips for this summer and great skin and hair and nails.

Dr. Gundry: 11:21 Hey, podcast listeners. Dr. Gundry here, and I need your help. I’m always trying to improve this podcast so I can bring the most valuable and insightful information to you, the listeners. In the show notes for each episode of this podcast, you’ll find a link to a survey. Please just take a few minutes to fill it out, so I can learn more about you and what you would most like to hear us discuss on the show. Your opinion really matters, so thank you. And now back to the show.

Dr. Gundry: 11:50 And we’re back. So, we’re on to tip number three for stronger, shinier hair and healthy-looking nails. Believe it or not, I want you to go down to the beach, and I want you to get a whole handful of sand and start chewing it. Not really, but there’s a component that sand is made of called silica. And it turns out it’s silica that’s actually essential for getting that thickness and shininess in not only our hair but our nails.

Dr. Gundry: 12:24 The other component that’s really important is a B vitamin called biotin. Now, there are silica supplements. I actually have silica that is liquid form that I put in my coffee and Penny’s coffee every day for, I don’t know, the last 15 years. Has no taste. There are several companies that manufacture it. They’re pretty much all the same.

Dr. Gundry: 12:51 And we routinely have biotin. It’s in a number of my products. We also take a biotin supplement. A word of warning. We’ve recently discovered that some blood tests, particularly cardiac markers that I measure in our patients, are affected by biotin. So, just to be on the safe side, before you’re going to have a blood test at your doctor’s office, stop taking your biotin supplement about a week before. All labs are telling doctors to tell this to patients. But I can tell you, I have yet to hear a patient tell me that they’d been told to do that. We tell all of our patients, when we schedule blood work, to stop biotin.

Dr. Gundry: 13:42 But other than that, it doesn’t do anything harmful. It just screws up the measurement on a couple of cardiac markers on a blood test. And I don’t want your doctor going, “Oh my gosh. You’re going to have a heart attack,” just because you’re taking biotin that screwed up a test. So, biotin and silica are really, really essential, and they’re an amazing trick. You can also find a lot of these products even at Costco, and I’ll mention one that actually works quite well and it’s called Hair, Skin and Nails.

Dr. Gundry: 14:12 I have no relationship with them, but I actually send my patients to Costco to get it. It’s a great, small product. It’s a gel cap, so that’s a great way to get some of these compounds. Number four. I got a great insider’s secret to protect your skin. And I’ve told you over and over again that the best protection from your skin is actually from the inside out. It’s the compounds that you take, swallow, that actually protect your skin.

Dr. Gundry: 14:45 One of them, once again, is vitamin C. Vitamin C is going to replenish your collagen. Number two. There’s a lot of evidence that polyphenols, those wonderful dark pigments in fruits and also in vegetables, these have been shown to protect against sun damage. But there’s another really great trick that’s really fun, and it was discovered in a South American fern that’s called polypodium. You’ll see it as Fernblock, and there’s a lot of supplements on the market that use Fernblock.

Dr. Gundry: 15:24 This substance has actually been shown to block the effect of UV rays when you swallow it. So, you don’t put it on your skin. You actually swallow it, and it’s a great trick that’s reasonable. And it’s been proven in clinical trials to protect your skin. Now, a word about sunscreen. You probably saw recently that there was a rather scary article that the components in sunscreens, many of which are estrogen-like compounds that I talk about in all my books, are found in high amounts in kids and adults who were using the standard sunscreens.

Dr. Gundry: 16:11 And like I’ve told you over and over again, the last thing that we want is estrogen-like compounds in minute amounts messing up with our hormonal system. And one of the scary things about this article is they have proven what all of us were suspicious. These compounds are absorbed through our skin and they are present in us who use sunscreen in rather high amounts, so eat your sunscreen. That’s the key to all of this.

Dr. Gundry: 16:48 Of course, there are sun blockers that work. Some of them contain zinc. Some of them contain some types of titanium. Look for those, and look to make sure they don’t have, like I talk about in the books, a compound called paraben or methylparaben, which are also estrogen disruptors.

Dr. Gundry: 17:12 On to tip number five. Okay. As we age, many people get what they think are sun spots or liver spots or brown spots. In fact, they have nothing to do with the sun. They have to do with the amount of sugars that we eat and the amount of proteins that we eat and the heat that all of us have in our body. Next time you go have a great grass-fed, grass-finished steak, you’re going to say, “I want it charred.”

Dr. Gundry: 17:52 Well, that char is actually the sugar in that steak, the protein in that steak, and the heat. And those two molecules are bound together with one of the strongest chemical bonds that’s ever been described. It’s called the Mallard reaction. We have protein, we have sugar, and we have heat. So, 24 hours a day, we’re making charred bits in us. And those charred bits appear on your skin as sun spots. Believe me, you don’t want these things. They’re showing that you’re actually aging dramatically quickly in your brain, in your heart and on your skin.

Dr. Gundry: 18:38 I used to have a lot of those. I have kind of a half a one left, and it’s gradually fading away. I actually use one of my products to help. But the important thing is you want to slow down the aging process from within. And one of the best ways to do that is I like to use prebiotics. Those are the foods that feed friendly bacteria. As we talk about a lot, you want your friendly bacteria to actually eat most of the sugars that you ingest before they get to you. And like my good friend Dr. Terry Walls always likes to say, you want to eat the equivalent of nine cups of vegetables a day.

Dr. Gundry: 19:31 Most of us are never going to do that, but her point is well taken. She wants you, and I echo her, is she wants you to see this giant coiled snake in the bathroom toilet once or twice a day. And you’re only going to get that if you give the bugs in your gut the foods that they want to eat. So, prebiotics are the key to having them eat the foods you eat so that you can actually eat more and it won’t get passed on to you and you won’t get those ugly sunspots. And in fact, the ones you have will go away, as I’ve written about extensively in all my books.

Dr. Gundry: 20:17 So, that’s it for my five beauty tips for great hair, skin, and nails. Now, let’s get to my favorite section of the show, your questions. Instagram user Loriept123 asks, “Are there any chips that meet the requirements of the Plant Paradox Diet?” Well, there actually are increasingly, almost day to day, appearing more and more chips that are coming out on the market that are using components like plantains cooked in the proper oils like coconut oil or red palm oil. There are some sorghum chips coming on the market. I’ve tried them. There are a number of taro root chips on the market, and there are a number of coconut flour or coconut chips on the market.

Dr. Gundry: 21:19 But two things. Number one. A lot of these products are cooked in inappropriate oils, number one. Number two, just because a starch is a resistant starch doesn’t make it not a sugar. And I have so many of my well-meaning patients who say, “Oh, resistant starches are perfectly safe,” and then consume two bags of plantain chips a day. Or one of my patients was having plantain pancakes three times a day every day or were having almond flour or sorghum flour tortillas at every meal. And they were wondering why they were not losing weight but, in many cases, actually gaining weight.

Dr. Gundry: 22:23 These don’t contain lectins, but they’re not free foods. You can’t have bags and bags and bags of these chips. I’ll give you a perfect example. I, on myself, did an experiment looking at sorghum popcorn. Sorghum popcorn is an amazing replacement for regular popcorn. It tastes exactly like popcorn, only it’s little, little, bitty popcorn. It has the smell of popcorn. So, I said, “Hey, this is great. I love popcorn. It kills me, so I’m going to have sorghum popcorn. I wonder what will happen when I have a generous bowl of sorghum popcorn before dinner every week for two weeks.”

Dr. Gundry: 23:06 I thoroughly enjoyed my sorghum popcorn. I checked my blood. My triglycerides, which is the first form of fat that we manufacture from sugars and starches, which normally run very low on me, 40 to 50 … I’ve done 30 before … jumped up to 118, which is still normal. But I can tell you that’s dangerously high. Darn it, but it was a resistant starch. But I was having that resistant starch every day, and that was too much for my system. Unfortunately, I see this all the time. So, please, just because they’re available doesn’t mean that they’re user friendly for huge amounts.

Dr. Gundry: 23:56 Here’s my advice. Use these as a way of getting guacamole into your mouth. Use them as a chip. And so 10 of them will go a long way in getting a serving of guacamole into your mouth instead of eating a bag without that fat of guacamole. So, that’s my tip for the day on using these new chips. Yes, they are available, but please be careful.

Dr. Gundry: 24:26 Okay, so that’s it for today. Please try out my doctor approved beauty from the inside out tricks and see what a difference they’re going to make for you. You will actually, over months, see a big change. And remember, 90% of all the cells in our body are changed, are replaced every three months. So, imagine what happens when you give your new cell the building materials, the building blocks it needs to be a gorgeous cell.

Dr. Gundry: 25:03 And you will actually see that difference in the mirror, and other people will actually notice. People will actually go, “Have you had some beauty treatments? Have you been to a spa? What are you doing?” And that’s the beauty tip for today. Eat for beauty. I’m Dr. Gundry, and those tips are coming from me because I’m always looking out for you.

Dr. Gundry: 25:32 Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast, you can always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/doctorgundry. Because I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.