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):
My favorite blue light glasses company, BLUblox has rebranded. This is such exciting news. Blue Blocks is now called BON CHARGE. Not to worry. They’re still the same great holistic wellness brand with a huge range of science backed products to optimize your life in every way. From blue light glasses to EMF management and circadian friendly lighting, BONE CHARGE products help you naturally address the issues of your modern day of life. Before I discovered BON CHARGE, the blue light from my laptop screen would leave me feeling straight up lousy. Not only can it cause headaches and fatigue, but it can actually lead to poor sleep quality and weight gain over time. That’s why in all my paradox books, I recommend limiting your screen time a few hours before bed and wearing blue blocking glasses, like the ones from BON CHARGE, when you’re watching TV or working on your computer.
BON CHARGE offers high quality lenses for daytime nighttime and for color therapy. Exactly in line with the suggested peer reviewed academic literature, they have over 40 hip frames and you know how I love a good pair of stylish specs and come in prescription non-prescription and readers. They have frames for whatever you need. Get yourself a pair and get your energy back. Sleep better by blocking out that unhealthy blue light, go to boncharge.com/gundry and use coupon code Gundry to save 15%. That’s B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com/gundry and use coupon code Gundry to save 15%.
The Dr. Gundry Podcast is brought to you by Progressive insurance. Let’s face it, sometimes multitasking can be well, overwhelming. When your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting, all the while, you’re trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive insurance. They do the hard work of comparing rates so you can find a great rate that works for you, even if it’s not with them. Give their nifty comparison tool a try, and you might just find getting the rate and coverage you deserve is easy.
All you need to do is visit Progressive’s website to get a quote with all the coverages you want, like comprehensive and collision coverage or personal injury protection. Then you’ll see Progressive’s direct rate and their tool will provide options from other companies all lined up and ready to compare, so it’s simple to choose the rate and coverages you like. Press play on comparing auto rates quote at progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, comparison rates not available in all states or situations, prices vary based on how you buy.
Do you have a hard time going number two when you’re in a new place, say traveling? You’re not alone. Studies show 40% of people experience a phenomenon called travelers’ constipation. That’s why I never leave home without my trustee Akkermansia probiotics from Pendulum Life. You see, Akkermansia is a special, good gut bacteria that only recently has been stabilized in pill form as a supplement. And Akkermansia is really the holy grail of probiotics. It produces mucus to protect your gut from these pesky lectin rich ingredients found in nearly every meal at a restaurant, no matter how hard you try to order clean menu items. I recently did an experiment myself on a recent trip to Europe and didn’t take my regular lectin blocking supplement, only Pendulum Life’s Akkermansia. Boy, was I pleased by the result. No constipation, no upset stomach issues or diarrhea. And best of all, I had regular anaconda size poops in the toilet all throughout my vacation.
You see, the appearance and frequency of your poop says a lot about your overall gut health. And I can say without a doubt, hearing from my patient’s results and my own, taking Akkermansia is worth the investment. Sadly, we lose this warrior probiotic strain in our lining as we age and you can’t repopulate through food. Whether you’re traveling this summer or not, I highly recommend you gift yourself with smooth operations in the bathroom by a dose of daily Akkermansia. Take advantage of the special deal for listeners of The Dr. Gundry Podcast today. For 20% off your first membership, go to www.pendulumlife.com and use my code GUNDRY20 at checkout. That’s P-E-N-D-U-L-U-M-L-I-F-E.com and use my code GUNDRY20 for a 20% discount on your first month of membership.
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Dark chocolate, olive oil, red wine. What do these foods have in common besides the fact that I like them? Well, if you guessed polyphenols, then you are absolutely right. On today’s episode, I’m going to talk all about these amazing micronutrients, polyphenols. What they can do for your health, why my critics are wrong about them, and the best and worst sources of polyphenols out there. And I’ll invite you to join me in celebrating all the wonderful benefits of polyphenols on national polyphenol day. A holiday my team created to educate people about them on July 11th, my birthday. Let’s dive right in to discuss the power of polyphenols for feeling and looking your best. All right, what the heck are polyphenols? Phenols are a chemical ring structure that’s incredibly common in plants primarily and polyphenols simply refer to lots of these phenol rings joined together.
Now, plants protect themselves from harm. We often don’t think about this, but plants have to harvest sunlight, the photons in sunlight and their mitochondria, yes, they actually have mitochondria, take sunlight and convert it into sugars and oxygen. And the process of that production is actually very damaging to the energy producing organelles in plants. And they literally protect themselves from this damage by manufacturing polyphenols. And polyphenols are actually the way the plant… Actually, if you will sops up the damage from what are called reactive oxygen species, ROSs, some people know them as free radicals. As much as a plant needs sunlight, it turns out the plant is damaged by sunlight simultaneously. The polyphenols are the plant’s method, if you like, of sunscreen. Now interestingly, the more a plant is stressed, for instance, the closer it is to the sun, the higher the altitude, the more it’s stressed by other factors like poor nutrients, not enough water, other harsh conditions, the more polyphenols the plant produces.
Now, fun fact, most plant polyphenols are actually in the leaves, where in fact the energy production is done. And if you’ve ever doubted about why polyphenols are so important to a plant, every fall, you get to watch a beautiful color display of polyphenols. Now, we often talk about the leaves are changing color. In fact, those colors are actually the polyphenols in the leaves that you didn’t see because all of the green chlorophyll was hiding those colors. But as the chlorophyll, the energy producing part of the plant dies off, the polyphenols remain. This fall, when you’re looking at the brilliant color displays, you can actually in your own eyes, see the power of polyphenols that the plant was using to protect itself during that exposure to sunlight.
Now I mentioned that polyphenols are concentrated in leaves, but the same thing holds true for the fruit of the tree, and the fruit can be damaged by sunlight. Many plants concentrate polyphenols, particularly in the skin of that fruit to protect it from harm. And for instance, great winemakers have known this for a very long time, that the more the vines are stressed, the higher the elevation, the underwater they are, the more polyphenols will be present in the grapes of that particular vine. And great winemakers have known for some time that it was the polyphenols in the grapes that brought all the characteristics and benefits from the wine that the vintners were looking for. But getting back to the point, for instance, we’re going to talk about olive oil. Olive oil happens to be a great delivery device for polyphenols and the polyphenols were in the olives, and when you eat an olive, you are eating polyphenols. When you squish an olive and extract the oil, the benefit of olive oil is not oleic acid, which is a monounsaturated fat, the benefit is in the polyphenol content.
And one of the best ways to assess polyphenol content in olive oil is that if it makes you cough as you drink it or eat it, that’s a very potent sign of the level of polyphenol. But there’s actually more polyphenols in olive leaves, and that’s why olive leaf extract is actually an incredibly great source of polyphenols. And if you want to munch on a few olive leaves, be my guest. Polyphenols protect the plant from damage from free radicals, from reactive oxygen species, and we eat plants and we eat the plant polyphenols either in their leaves when we eat lettuce, believe it or not, we’re eating polyphenols. When we’re eating red leaf lettuce, we’re eating more polyphenols than in green lettuce. In fact, years ago, Rutgers University patented a red romaine lettuce that they showed had considerably more polyphenol content than regular romaine lettuce.
I’ve forgotten the name of it now, but it was something red, but they received a patent because of the polyphenol content. Polyphenols protect plants from damage. Now years ago, we used to think that polyphenols were primarily antioxidants. And for years and years and years, we measured the polyphenol content by what was called an ORAC rating, O-R-A-C, that’s the oxygen radical absorbing capacity, and looked at whether these compounds could actually absorb free radicals. And for years and years and years, this was the standard by which we judged polyphenol content. Unfortunately, it turns out that these compounds, when we swallow them are not doing that at all. If you hear people say that the reason to get polyphenols into your diet is that they are antioxidants, number one, don’t believe them. And number two, that’s not how they work.
You’ll actually see exactly the power of polyphenols, and it has nothing to do with their ability to absorb free radicals or as antioxidants, but their power is actually far more important. And one of the most recent findings is that polyphenols are actually prebiotics. In other words, if you remember, prebiotics are what your friendly bacteria, the probiotics like to eat. First and foremost, whoever says that polyphenols are the plant defense system against being eaten and that polyphenols because of that, are extremely damaging to your health, first of all, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Number two, that’s not how polyphenols work for the plant, and they’re not a defense system of the plant. That’s what lectins are for. That’s what phytates are for, not polyphenols. The second thing is, people who say polyphenols are bad for you actually don’t realize that polyphenols feed friendly bacteria. And there’s a host of evidence about the incredible benefit of polyphenols in actually changing the gut microbiome for the better.
In fact, I’ll give you a little tease. There’s a fascinating study, looking at the microbiome and inflammatory markers in three trials in human beings. One group had to drink several glasses of red wine per day. The second group had to drink the same red wine that had the alcohol removed, and you can go to a store and find non-alcoholic red wine. And the third group got to drink gin in the same alcoholic amount that the red wine drinkers were drinking. And lo and behold, what they found was that both the red wine with and without alcohol, changed the gut microbiome to a much more friendly microbiome. In other words, it increased the gut buddies. And the result was that multiple markers of inflammation fell in both of those red wine drinkers, whereas no effect was found in the gin drinkers. Why? Because the gin, even though it had alcohol, didn’t have any polyphenols. The idea that polyphenols are somehow a plant defense system is absolutely wrong, and human studies back up the fact that it’s the polyphenols, not the alcohol in red wine, that is the beneficial effect.
And its benefit is not the polyphenols directly, but it’s the polyphenols being eaten by certain gut bacteria and basically fertilizing good gut bacteria. The other thing we know is that polyphenols in general, when you eat them are incredibly poorly absorbed. Maybe only 10% of all the polyphenols that you eat are ever absorbed. But again, the good news is that these polyphenols are eaten by your gut buddies. And it’s the products that your gut buddies make from these polyphenols in the form of postbiotics that I talk extensively about in the energy paradox, that is one of the main ways that polyphenols benefit our health. That’s actually the exciting new science of polyphenols and how they work. All right, so let’s play devil’s advocate. Some critics like Dr. Paul Salidino say that the health benefits of polyphenols are overrated. And here’s why they say that, because polyphenols aren’t absorbed and that polyphenols are dangerous. They’re a plant defense system. Well, they’re right that polyphenols aren’t absorbed very well. And who in the world wouldn’t want that? I don’t know. I certainly would.
Matcha has become a huge trend. And the good thing is that it’s actually amazing for your health when sourced from the right place. I always recommend only purchasing Matcha from Japan, since almost all other Matcha contains dangerous pesticides, which is why I love Pique Tea Sun Goddess Matcha it’s sourced from a lush valley at the tip of a Japanese archipelago. This Matcha is unrivaled impurity, as it is sourced at the furthest distance from environmental toxins. The Sun Goddess Matcha from Pique Teas, also a polyphenol powerhouse that helps support gut health and healthy aging. On top of that, Match supports the body’s natural detoxification system and promotes a healthy, bright complexion since it is rich in chlorophyll. It really is an all in one package deal.
Since I’ve begun drinking Pique, I’ve saved a lot of time during lunch break between patients that’s because Pique Tea is so easy to make. All I do is just add one scoop of powder to 12 ounces of hot or cold water. That’s it. No brewing or whiskey needed. For days that I am craving something sweeter, I add walnut milk and a couple of drops of allulose for sweetness, and it’s delicious. Switch up your routine and try out Pique Tea, get five percent off and two free Pique sampler packs containing six of their best selling teas. One for you, and one for a friend when you spend $110 plus at http://piquelife.com/Gundry, code Gundry get you five percent off statewide. That’s P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com.
As you know, I love my coffee in the morning, but I do love to switch it up to make sure my body is getting an array of nutrients, be it from food, supplement, or liquid form. That’s why I’ve begun drinking MUD\WTR instead of my mid morning cup of coffee, this delicious coffee alternative contains some of those powerful mushrooms on earth, like chaga, Rashi, and lions main. I’ve spoken about the power of adaptogenic mushrooms. Plenty of times on my podcast, they have plenty of benefits, including supporting your focus, immune system, and overall health. My favorite way to prepare my Mud Water drink is with Spirulina monk fruit and a splash of hemp milk. And since each cup of Mud Water has one seventh, the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee, you’ll be able to start focus and alert during the day all while being able to get a good night’s sleep. Then at night after dinner, I love to enjoy their rest drink, an evening blend made to support relaxation and better sleep. It’s caffeine free and made with rubious, Chai, turmeric, cinnamon, and a dream team of functional adaptogens and herbs.
MUD\WTR is plant paradox compliant, 100% organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, and kosher certified. And I highly recommend you try it out right now. MUD\WTR is offering a special discount just for listeners of my show. Just go to mudwtr.com/gundry and use code Gundry to get 15% off your first purchase. That’s M-U-D-W-T-R.com/gundry and use code Gundry for 15% off. Suffering from sinus pain, congestion, or seasonal allergies? We’ve all been there. And sometimes over the counter or prescription drugs and messy nasal sprays don’t target the pain in congestion, but good news with Tivic ClearUP, you are now able to say goodbye to these conditions without the chemicals and drowsy symptoms other solutions cause. This easy to use FDA approved medical device was created by doctors and neuroscientists to help reduce sinus pain and congestion. This bioelectronic technology is as easy to use as simply gliding the device on areas of your face, where you are experiencing sinus pain.
I began using Tivic ClearUP once I feel congestion coming on and it works almost instantly. It’s helped me get a better night’s sleep and better breathability. Try Tivic ClearUP today with a 60 day risk free trial. Go to tivichealth.com. That’s T-I-V-I-Chealth.com and enter promo code GUNDRY22 to receive $20 off plus free shipping on your ClearUP device. Tivic ClearUP works when nothing else can. We talk a lot about different areas of health and wellness on the podcast. One area I don’t think I’ll ever stress enough is the importance of not wrecking your delicate oral microbiome with harsh chemicals in your toothpaste and mouthwash. You see, your oral microbiome is the gateway to your body, and you need to make sure it’s in good shape. And that’s why I want to tell you all about Guru Nanda’s coconut and mint pulling oil.
Pulling oil is a natural and effective way to remove the bad bacteria from your mouth while retraining your good oral buddies. And it’s very easy, just follow these simple steps. Shake the bottle well, pour into the measuring cup provided by Guru Nanda, gently swish between teeth for two minutes. You can work up to 10 minutes. More minutes equals faster and better results. Spit. Step five, rinse and brush, viola, it’s that easy to clean your teeth and mouth, freshen your breath, and maintain the health of your oral microbiome. Guru Nanda pulling oil can help you achieve all of your oral health goals from whiter teeth to fresher breath. To try America’s number one, pulling oil for yourself, the right oral care is crucial to your overall wellbeing.
Guru Nanda is offering something special for our listeners. For a limited time, you can save three dollars off each bottle purchased exclusively at Walmart. To redeem, grab your Guru Nanda pulling oil at Walmart and check out using the 51 Savings app. That’s not all, Guru Nanda also likes to treat his friends so he’s giving away $500 gift cards. Just go to gurunanda.com/win for your chance to win a $500 Walmart gift card. I love the summer, especially that warm early morning sun. We have a saying in my home, sun’s out, Gundry’s out. I was outside recently enjoying the glorious weather in my new Michael Phelps Swim Spa by Master Spa. Once you see a Michael Phelps Swim Spa in action, you will understand my obsession. It combines the benefits of a pool with a therapy of a hot tub. It comes in a variety of sizes to compliment almost any yard, even if it’s a small backyard.
Michael Phelps Swim Spa by Master Spa has a water current, so you can swim, do aquatic exercises, and have fun with the kids. This will reinvent family time. The water buoyancy can really help relieve pressure on aching joints too. Plus, it’s pure bliss using those massage therapy seats of the Swim Spa. And since it’s heated and you can use it year round in any climate. Michael Phelps Swim Spas are 100% made in the USA by Master Spas, the world’s largest Swim Spa manufacturer. I’m so impressed that this spa can do so much and our good friends at masterspas.com want to help you to achieve your own piece of backyard tranquility. They’re offering listeners of Dr. Gundry Podcast big savings right now. You’re going to love your Michael Phelps Swim Spa by Master Spas. Go to masterspas.com, put in the promo code Gundry to say $1,000 on a Michael Phelps swim spa or $500 on a Master Spas hot tub. That’s masterspas.com, promo code Gundry. Is it even summer without a Michael Phelps Swim Spa? That’s masterspas.com promo code Gundry.
The other thing that’s obvious when we look at any of the blue zones, those areas of the world popularized by the national geographic journalist, Dan Butner and Loma Linda is the only blue zone in the United States, by the way, where I was a professor for much of my career. Blue zones are notorious for having an incredibly high intake of polyphenol rich foods. And we could break them down individually, but let me assure you that each blue zone has its own set and different sets of polyphenol rich foods. We’ll just take one example, the Okinawans, the older Okinawans, 85% of their diet was a purple sweet potato. And the purple sweet potato has an incredible concentration of one particular polyphenol called an anthocyanin. It’s actually the same polyphenol family that gives the dark blue color to blueberries and blackberries. This is just concentrated in the flesh of a purple sweet potato.
And luckily, we’re seeing purple sweet potatoes in a lot of our grocery stores now. They’re now being grown commercially. 85% of the Okinawa diet was a purple sweet potato. It wasn’t beans, it wasn’t rice, it wasn’t soy. It was a purple sweet potato. To think that horrible, dangerous polyphenol was somehow impacting the health of the Okinawans in a negative way, certainly goes against the evidence. That’s probably the strongest… If you look at societies who have great health and longevity, that’s probably the biggest single argument about why we should be getting more polyphenols in our diet. And I could go on and on. The famous PREDIMED study from Spain, which some of my critics say is just one of the worst studies in the world, and they’re usually low fat critics. The PREDIMED study from Spain that I’ve written about in most of my books, took 65 year old people who had a heart attack and they randomized them into three groups.
One group got a liter of olive oil per week. That’s about 10 to 12 tablespoons a day. And they actually had to pick up their liter of olive oil once a week, use it, take the empty bottle back to the clinic and get it refilled. The second group had to have the same number of calories in mixed nuts, and most of the nuts were walnuts and hazelnuts. And if you’re guessing walnuts and hazelnuts are great sources of polyphenols, you are correct. The third group had a low fat Mediterranean diet. Now all three because they lived in Spain, ate a Mediterranean diet. What’s impressive is that the walnut and the olive oil group at a 30% reduction in new events, new heart attack, new stents, compared to the low fat group. And the women in the olive oil group had an 87% reduction in breast cancer rate.
And what I talk about in the energy paradox is that the olive oil group and the nut group actually had improved memory after five years compared to the low fat group who had actually decreased memory. And the evidence that I present in the energy paradox makes it pretty clear that it was the polyphenol content in the olive oil and the nuts that was responsible for those effects. And again, another stake in the heart of people who say polyphenols are bad for us. Now maybe you’re wondering, okay, so what are the best dietary sources of polyphenols? Well, it turns out that leaves are great sources of polyphenols. If you are thinking tea, for instance, it turns out that tea is a great source of polyphenols. And tea, whether it’s green, whether it’s black, whether you grind up tea leaves like in Matcha. And just an aside, please, if you’re going to use Matcha tea, buy it from Japan, not China. The Chinese Matcha tea is unfortunately full of pesticides, but that’s another subject.
Polyphenols are concentrated in fruits. Olives are loaded with polyphenols, cacao, the fruit and the bean are loaded with polyphenols. Coffee, believe it or not coffee fruit and coffee fruit extract is available. We use it here at Gundry, MD. You can buy coffee fruit powder, but the coffee bean is another great source of polyphenols. Yerba Mate tea is another great source of polyphenol. Anytime you can get leaves, you’re in great shape. And then, when you start looking at most of the spices that we think of as leaves like parsley, like sage, like rosemary and thyme, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Simon and Garfunkel. If you go down to Scarborough Fair, you are actually buying polyphenols. In fact, the Romans were so impressed with the ability of sage to improve their health, that the Romans named sage salvia, as in salvation.
And so when we look at these spices, particularly the leaves, we see that it’s the polyphenol content that people were after. Now, vegetables, the darker the vegetable, the more the polyphenols. And polyphenols in general have a very bitter flavor. And some of you remember from my first book, Dr. Gundry’s Dyad of Evolution that one of my favorite phrases was more bitter, more better. And that’s because the bitterness is actually the polyphenols. If you look at countries and cultures with longevity, one of the fascinating things is that they have a preference for bitter foods. And one of the most interesting things about chocolate is that anybody who has had cocoa nibs or 100% dark chocolate knows it’s profoundly bitter. And it was actually the Dutch that figured out that people would consume more chocolate if they took away the polyphenol content by treating it with alkaline.
If you see on a label of cocoa powder Dutched process or alkali process, you’ve actually removed the polyphenols from chocolate. Run from those. There’s a number of candy companies, particularly Nestle and Cadbury and Mars who have actually patented ways of adding polyphenols back into chocolate that they have taken away. In a way it’s like looking at fortification of cereals, where all the vitamins and minerals have been removed from cereals and breads, and they’re now fortified with eight essential vitamins and minerals. There are actually patents to add back polyphenols. Why have they done this? Because both animal trials and human trials have shown that the polyphenols in chocolate are actually responsible for improvement in cardiovascular flexibility. I’ve published papers about polyphenols increasing the flexibility of blood vessels in humans. I’ve published papers about the ability of polyphenols to stop making blood vessels sticky on the inside.
And again, these are human studies of polyphenol extracts, improving both vascular health and in other human studies, improving brain health. What a great thing. What else should you look for? Again, talked about olive oil and probably more than you want to hear. More bitter, more better in olive oil. If olive oil makes you cough, you’re on the right track. Red wine. If the grape vs are made to suffer, to work for a living by being planted in dense rows, by underwater, by under watering them, what’s called dry farming, by being planted in rocks, by being planted in high elevations, you’re going to increase the polyphenol content. Please, if you can look for organic grown wines, look for biodynamic grown wines. There are a number of wineries now in the United States, particularly here in California that are biodynamic wine growers.
I’ll mention two of my favorites, Beckman in Santa Barbara County, Ampelos Vineyard in Santa Barbara County, and also Spears are organic and biodynamic, the first two biodynamic. A great number of wines in France and Italy and Austria are now biodynamic. And a huge number of them are organic. I just had an organic wine from Sicily last night, as a matter of fact. Look for the label, knowing that believe it or not, you are going to get more polyphenol content and that’s the bang for your buck. Same thing with seasonings. We’ve had chef Jimmy Schmidt three times James Beard Award winner on our podcast, and he will assure you, and he assured us that seasonings are going to be loaded with polyphenols. And again, all the great spices of the middle ages, were actually pursued because of their polyphenol content. And here’s a fun fact, what’s the highest polyphenol content of any spice?
Come on. Think about it for a minute. I’ll give you a clue. You probably studded your Easter ham with it. If you said cloves, you’re correct. Cloves have the highest polyphenol content of any food. And if you think I take clove supplements, you’re right. Because of that, if you saw it, I put all my supplements in the longevity paradox and there’s cloves. And it turns out that cloves was one of the highest sought after spices in the middle ages, right behind black pepper, which is loaded with polyphenols and cinnamon, which is loaded with polyphenols. In fact, as you start looking at the middle-aged spices, you’ll notice that people were willing to pay huge amount of money for polyphenols. And I got news for you, people don’t pay huge amounts of money just to make food taste better. They were looking for the health benefits of polyphenols way back then. And we’re only now beginning to realize what the ancients knew that we’re only now discovering.
Are there foods with high polyphenol content that I don’t recommend? Yeah. It turns out that there are some really interesting polyphenols in soy. And I do talk about them in the upcoming book. You can make soy safe in two ways. Number one, you can pressure cook it. Number two, you can extrude it under high pressure and high heat as texturized vegetable protein, which is TVP, one of the favorite fake foods of Loma Linda cuisine. Or you can actually use soy isolates, soy protein isolates, or soy protein hydrolyzates, but you’ll eliminate the polyphenols in the latter. Beans, pressure cook your beans, soak beans. You’ll still get the polyphenol content in beans, but you won’t get the lectins. Those are the two proviso. The other thing that’s interesting, believe it or not, whole grains have polyphenols, but as those of you know, the problem with whole grains is twofold.
Number one, the lectin content of whole grains, you cannot pressure cook the lectins in oats or wheat or rye or barley. I’m sorry. They can’t be destroyed. The other problem with whole grains is that so much of our American food supply in whole grains has been sprayed with Roundup. And glyphosate is one of the biggest disruptors of your gut and your energy that we could have ever invented. Long story short, polyphenols were designed to protect the plant from damage. Polyphenols were the sunscreen for the plant. Polyphenols were not insect insecticides. They were not toxins or poisons. They were to protect the plants’ energy factories. And when you eat plant polyphenols, lo and bold, you are not eating antioxidants. You are feeding your gut buddies the food that they need, and they in turn, turn those polyphenols into health promoting compounds. All right, before we close, mentioned at the top of the lecture, I want to invite you to join me in celebrating national polyphenol all day coming up, July 11th.
Wow, national polyphenol day and Dr. Gundry’s birthday, all in one. As you probably know, my favorite source of polyphenols is olive oil. To celebrate, I’m going to ask you to do a shot of high quality olive oil and share your video or photo of taking an olive oil shot on Instagram, by tagging me @Dr.StevenGundry, all one word and using the hashtag, polyphenol day, just like it sounds, P-O-L-Y-P-H-E-N-O-L-D-A-Y, day. I’ll be sure to repost so we can help others know about the power of polyphenol. This is actually going to be really fun. I hope you’ll join me. Get your shot of olive oil ready on July 11th, my birthday. Bottoms up to your health, to my health, national polyphenol day. This is going to be really fun, #polyphenolday.
It’s nearly that time again. My favorite holiday, July 11th is national polyphenol day, and also my 72nd birthday. Yay. And do you know what the greatest gift I could ever receive the honor to equip you with the tools to incorporate these powerful compounds called polyphenols into your diet. And that’s what today’s episode is all about. You’ll learn what polyphenols are and are not, why they are so crucial to overall health, and what foods to find them in. We’ll be right back. And when I return, we can get this polyphenol party started.
Heather Dubrow (45:49):
Hi everyone. It’s Heather Dubrow, telling you to check out Heather Dubrow’s World on Podcast One. Every week, we discuss the hippest, hottest, newest trends in health, wellness, parenting style, and so much more, including all things housewives and botched. Download new episodes of Heather Dubrow’s World on Thursdays and Fridays on Podcast One, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Dr. Gundry (46:18):
Okay. It’s time for the audience question. This week’s question comes from Ryan on iTunes who asks, “What is your opinion on nebulizing hydrogen peroxide? Dave Asbury has it as a tool for one of his hacks.” Well, there are others, including Dr. Joseph Brucola who have really gotten in to the nebulized hydrogen peroxide as a treatment for COVID-19, and also as a potential preventative for COVID-19. I’m not going to join in the chorus one way or another. I don’t recommend it to my patients. Even some of these advocates say that there is a slippery slope with the use of this. And I think I’m going to leave it at that. There’s far better ways to protect yourself that I’ve talked about before. The number one way to protect yourself is to not have a leaky gut and inflammation. The number two way, which goes along with that is to get your vitamin D levels up folks.
Number three way, if you’re going to take high dose vitamin D like I do, please take vitamin K2 with vitamin D. It will actually take any calcium in your system and put it in your bones, take it away from your blood vessels. And if you believe that coronary calcification is scary, you certainly want to take the calcium out of your arteries and put it into your bones. That’s the way to protect yourself. Review of the week. This week’s review comes from Devie Weiss on iTunes who wrote, “I have a very large podcast library, but Dr. Gundry’s is my absolute favorite podcast. I never miss an episode because I learned so much from every single one.” Well, thank you very much, Debbie.
And I also saw you asked a question that I hope to answer in a future episode. I love getting feedback from listeners and I especially love seeing all of your interesting questions. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, please rate and review us on iTunes and then drop your question into your review. I can’t wait to see it because you guys really have great questions. And why do I want all these? And why do I do this every week? Because I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you, see you next week.
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 podcast. And if you want to watch each episode of The Dr Gundry Podcast, you could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/drgundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
