Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long happy life.
Dr Gundry 0:23
It’s that time of year again July 11, my birthday and national poly phenyl day in this special episode, I take a deep dive into what poly phenols are, how to get more of them in your diet and discuss my latest research about the incredible benefits of poly phenols to help you live a long, happy life. And also I’d like to invite you to join me in the celebration today, July 11. and record yourself doing a shot of olive oil posted on social media with the hashtag poly phenyl de and tag my Instagram account at Dr. Steven Gundry. And I’ll be sure to repost Stay tuned after a short message from our sponsor. I’ll be right back to get the poly phenol parties started. The Insane benefits of poly phenols Alright, national poly phenol day is July 11. And national poly phenyl month is here. So let’s have a party for poly phenols, a powerful compound naturally occurring in certain foods that help you thrive. Here are my top three reasons why you need to get more poly phenols in your life. But first, it’s important to note that poly phenols do not work as antioxidants. Not a day goes by that I see some health guru refer to barley phenols. As antioxidants, I can assure you that poly phenols do not work as antioxidants. The world expert on poly phenols Marvin II days from Paris, France, addressed an entire group of us poly phenol researchers years ago and said any of you who believe that poly phenols work as antioxidants leave the room now because I have no time to convince you otherwise, that’s pretty blunt. So what do they do? Well, these plant compounds are produced by plants to protect their mitochondria from damage particularly by sunlight from stress. And these compounds actually protect the mitochondria and plants by uncoupling them and we’ll get into that in a minute. Now, how do we get poly phenols? Well, when we eat plants that contain poly phenols, or the babies of plants, like their seeds or their fruits, we absorb those poly phenols through our gut, but hold on poly phenols are very poorly absorbable compounds, maybe one to 10% of the poly phenols that we eat, actually get absorbed intact through our gut wall. That’s a problem because they’re really useful. What we didn’t know until recently is that our gut microbiome is actually dependent on poly phenols as an important energy source. So the gut microbiome eats poly phenols. They have to have poly phenols. To grow and divide the gut microbiome then takes poly phenols and turns them into absorbable compounds that can get through the wall of our gut. So we got to have two steps in the process. We have to eat poly phenols. But we have to have a diverse gut microbiome that can be fed the poly phenols. And then and only then do they make post biotic compounds that deliver the poly phenols to us. So we have to have the middleman and that’s one of the things that’s been missing from polyphenol research until recently. Now, let me give you an example of how this works. So there was a fascinating study, looking at the microbiome and inflammatory markers. In a human trial, one group drank several glasses of red wine a day. A second group drank the same wine with the alcohol removed. And then the third group drank gin with the same amount of alcohol that the wine drinkers got. The experiment was designed to look at the diversity of the gut microbiome, both of the red wines with and without alcohol, increase the microbiome diversity Eat, and the inflammatory markers in the body of these people fell. Here’s the bad news. There was absolutely no benefit for the gin drinkers. The point of the study was to separate whether it was the alcohol that might have an influence rather than the poly phenols. It turns out Sorry, folks, the poly phenols was what made all the difference. Why? Because it gave the microbiome what they wanted to eat. And the microbiome in turn made those poly phenols available to among other things tell our immune system to calm down. Now number two, poly phenols are important to uncouple mitochondria. And with every passing day, we’re realizing that one of the secrets to extend health span the number of years we remain healthy and vigorous. poly phenols are some of the best, strongest mitochondrial uncoupling. Now, mitochondrial uncoupling simply as a way of saying that making energy making ATP is extremely hard work and extremely damaging to mitochondria, and mitochondria or I have a blow off valve in that pressure cooker so that when the heat and damage of a pressure cooker gets too high, they can blow off steam, and little did we know that poly phenols are one of the best ways to ensure that pressure cooker can blow off steam and it’s got a fancy name called mitochondrial uncoupling. Another poly phenol that a lot of people have heard of is resveratrol. Now resveratrol the red wine poly phenol is fascinating. It can activate a special family of genes called sirtuin genes. These genes are metabolic regulators and help protect our mitochondria from damage by in you guessed it, uncoupling mitochondria, among other actions. In doing so, these sirtuin genes can also help preserve your NAD plus stores. Now I’ve written about NAD plus in the energy paradox and unlocking the Keto code. And it’s now a buzzword and longevity. But keeping your NAD stores high are incredibly important. And activating sirtuins is a really good way to do this. Now, the other exciting news is the poly phenols can also target multiple signaling pathways to regulate the mTOR signaling pathway. And you’ve heard me talk about mTOR many many times before either called a mammalian target of rapamycin or the mechanistic target of rapamycin. Okay, so what are the best ways to get poly phenols in your diet? Well, first recommendation is eat the rainbow. poly phenols are these intense colors, the yellows, the oranges, the reds, the purples, the blues, that you see in colorful fruits and vegetables. Those are the poly phenols black coffee is loaded with poly phenols. Tea whether green or black is loaded with poly phenols extra dark chocolate loaded with poly phenols Extra Virgin Olive Oil loaded with poly phenols red wine loaded with poly phenols. So anytime you’re having a spice, which most spices have intense colors, those have poly phenols. Most herbs have their benefit because they are sources of poly phenols. So making your food tastes delicious, is just a great excuse for getting more poly phenols in your life. Now, it’s often hard for most people to get enough poly phenols in their diet from food alone. And that’s why when I was looking at my patients and trying to figure out how I was going to get them to have more poly phenols and a pleasant forum, I decided that the easiest way to do it was to have them drink their polyphenols in the form of a beverage that I called Vital reds. I knew how powerful while the phenols were. But I also knew that most of my women patients really didn’t want to take capsules or tablets. They weren’t fond of swallowing a bunch of pills. But I knew from my female patient population that they would drink something. So I purposely made vital reds for my female patients to get adequate poly phenols in them. And what I did was take extracts of very important poly phenol containing berries and foods that had a much higher concentration of poly phenols than you would ever be able to eat and put it in a tasty beverage that you can store And then of course, the rest is history. That was the first product of Gundry. MD, and it’s still one of our largest sellers for good reason.
Now you don’t have to drink vital rats, you can mix it in coconut yogurt. It’s phenomenal that way. You can make popsicles out of vital reds, I like to throw it in the pancake or waffle mix, the one of our people swears they taste like fruity pebbles. I’ve even seen people use vital reds as a meat rub. And talk about gearing your food a phenomenal flavor. That’s probably the best. So if you’re thinking of marinating something and red wine, next time, Rob on vital reds, the more poly phenols I can get into you, the better your long term health. Now it’s time for our audience question from voyage vixens on Instagram, how many poly phenol? Should we be getting daily for the best health outcomes? And how do we measure this if it’s just with food? Or should we be taking a poly phenol rich supplement daily to ensure we’re getting enough? Well, voyage? vixens? That’s a great question. Quite frankly, I don’t think you can possibly get enough polyphenols in your diet just from food. As I’ve written about in my books, if you look at ancient hunter gatherers or even modern hunter gatherers throughout the year, they eat over 250 different plant species and those plants are grown in six feet of organic loam soil, and they are loaded with poly phenols. Even if you’re eating and organic diet and go to the farmers market every weekend, most Americans only eat 30 different fruits and vegetables throughout the year. All of these have different poly phenols. So my personal opinion backed up on what I do is take poly phenol rich supplement to add poly phenols to your diet. And don’t forget there are great foods that contain barley phenols. Like my favorite olive oil. And remember, July 11, my birthday is national polythene all day. So get some barley vegetables in your diet. Great question. Now it’s time for the review of the week. Ali B on Apple podcast gives the podcast five stars and writes this review. Always great information. Growing up in a very poor rural community. No one ever knew anything about nutrition and science as it relates to overall health. As a result, my diet up until 21 was awful. I spent the last 10 years trying to learn all I can become healthy. I recently learned that I have moderate plaque. And I’m so upset that my only option for my cardiologist is to take a step. I am so hoping that Dr. G will do a podcast soon on this very topic stands for plaque. And are there other alternatives? Well, that is a great question Ali B. And let me just say this, the cholesterol theory of heart disease is only one of many theories of what causes heart disease. And if you’ve read my previous books, and if you’re looking forward to reading my next book, gut check, which will be out in January 2024, you’ll see that the cholesterol theory of heart disease is not all that great. Now, having said that, let me just give a point about statins. Do I prescribe statins? Yes, I will. But I do in a particular context. Let’s suppose you break your leg, someone else will put a cast on it. And you’ll wear that cast until the bone re knits and heals. And then you’ll take the cast off, you certainly wouldn’t wear a cast for the rest of your life. I feel the same way about plaque and coronary arteries. So if you have a stent, or you suffer a heart attack, or you do have a coronary bypass, like what I used to do, then I have no problem prescribing a statin temporarily until we correct the underlying issues that caused you to have that problem. And once we correct that, and we can certainly measure it with blood tests, and how do we correct it? We teach you to follow the plant paradox eating plan, then there’s no longer any need for you to take a step. And that’s what I do in all of my clinics. That’s a great question. Number one, are statins useful? Yes. For a particular purpose. Do you need them long term? Well, that’s up to you quite frankly, my job is to teach you how to get off of those statins.
Speaker 1 14:57
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