Speaker 1 (00:06):

Hello, my name is Alcira Velo, and I heard for the very first time Dr. Gundry, he was invited to Dr. Mercola’s podcast. So it was just after the launch of his book, The Plant Paradox. That time I was having a very bad eczema on my hands. I had no skin. I was suffering from a lot of anxiety because of the itchiness and the pain. And what physicians, dermatologists, and even an allergy physicians said to me that they could not help me, that that was like nine months that I stood going from one place to the other. And at that time I was doing the pallio diet, which did not work for me, even though I thought that I was eating very healthy. And when I heard Dr. Gundry, it was like he was talking to me. So it was totally a call from God because I was desperate back then.

(01:02):

I, I felt like my skin was disintegrating. So the next day I bought the book, The Plant Paradox. I read it and I started right away to implement the diet. I think that I was eating more than I’m used to with the diet. It was, I found it delicious and in 27 days I was able to recover the skin.

Speaker 2 (01:28):

Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Today let’s talk about pain and what to do about pain. Now, you know, if you watch commercials on TV, you’ll think that pain is something you should cover up with a pill and that you don’t deserve pain. And thank goodness you’ve got a little pain helper that can get you through your day with no fuss, no must. But pain is actually your body’s warning system. And if you actually ignore the root cause, it often comes back even stronger. And what you may not know is that a great number of these pain pills will relieve your pain, but will actually make your pain worse and worse the longer you use them. And that’s probably not a good idea.

(02:23):

So today I wanna talk about smarter ways to manage pain naturally. And when common solutions may actually create more problems. Okay, so why in the world do we feel pain in the first place? Well, pain can be from inflammation. And inflammation is the body’s method using the immune system to produce local repair and local cleanup. And inflammation is often the first, you know, cause of pain. But pain can also occur when either muscles or nerves are not getting enough blood flow. For instance, the pain you feel from angina or a heart attack is directly related to the lack of blood flow to a particular area of the heart. We see many patients who have the same issue in their legs called claudication, where they can walk to a certain extent and then they get pain or cramping primarily in their calves or sometimes in their butt.

(03:40):

And it’s because the muscles are demanding more blood flow than the narrowed arteries can provide. So that pain is poor circulation. You can absolutely get pain from nerve irritation. Something as simple as a muscular spasm is often a real cause of, for instance, sciatica, bulging discs, arthritis in the spine can absolutely cause nerve irritation. As I mentioned, muscle tension, muscle spasm can not only hurt by itself, but also compress nerves, which also causes pain. And what we often don’t even think about is that gut dysfunction can actually cause pain. You can get cramping in your gut, you can get pain in your gut, and that’s a whole different category. Normally, inflammation is useful to take care of an acute problem. For instance, let’s suppose, uh, you have a cut on your finger for whatever reason. As that cut is healing, you’ll notice that it’s bright red on either side of that cut.

(05:13):

That’s inflammation. Those are white blood cells cleaning up the mess and fighting whatever bacteria had made it through your skin into you. And so that’s a normal process of fighting issues, cleaning up, and then repairing. So inflammation is a normal process. Now, the same thing happens, as an example, in our gut. Our gut wall, which is only one cell thick that’s thinner than a human hair, and is as big as at least one or two tennis courts in surface area, gets penetrated almost daily. Our immune system, 80% of all of our white blood cells line the winding of our gut because this is where mischief comes through. Now, same thing. Think of that as a cut in the wall of your gut. Your immune system is ready and willing to be there to handle the repair work, to get any invaders, and be done with it.

(06:30):

The problem has come now in that this every now and then process is happening daily, and it’s happening more and more so that instead of an acute problem, like you cut yourself, imagine that you cut yourself in the same spot every day. And imagine, number one, that that cut doesn’t heal, but imagine that that redness gets more and more. So that’s chronic inflammation. So it’s this chronic inflammation that really is not being dealt with that is actually behind so much of our chronic pain issues. All right, so what do you do if you’ve got a acute painful injury? Well, before we talk about medications, and believe me, we’ll talk about it, first of all, there are two things that we can use, temperature. Now, a lot of people, even to this day, uh, what am I supposed to use when I injure myself? Is cold good?

(07:38):

Is hot good? Should I do both? Should I jump in the sauna and then jump in the cold plunge? Well, first of all, ice is actually better for acute injuries, for swelling, for acute inflammation, and for fresh muscle strains. You don’t have to look far to see that many of the professional athletes, whether they’re soccer, whether they’re football, whether they’re baseball, whether they’re basketball, kind of the first thing that happens to them is they’re hopping in an ice bath, or you’ll notice them on the sidelines having ice on their knee or their shoulder, and ice really damps down inflammation. It also, as anyone noticed, it really does numb your pain. And because the ice actually constricts blood vessels, you actually prevent white blood cells from getting to the area which are producing the inflammation in the first place. On the other hand, heat and hot baths are really great for stiff muscles that are acutely injured, chronic aches, stress and tension, and joint stiffness.

(08:59):

Now, one of the great things about, for instance, a hot bath is you can put Epsom salts in your bath water. Now, Epsom salts, quite frankly, is magnesium. And the nice thing about magnesium is that magnesium is a muscle relaxant. And anyone who’s taken milk of magnesium, which is concentrated magnesium, knows that it really relaxes your bowel muscles and out comes your problem. The cool thing about Epsom salts is that you can get a lot of magnesium delivered locally through your skin, but it doesn’t cause diarrhea. So I have many patients who have low levels of magnesium who really can’t tolerate oral magnesium capsules or tablets, uh, because it gives them loose bowels, but they’re really tolerant of Epsom salt baths. And so a hot bath with Epsom salt is a great way to improve things. Now, one of the more interesting things in pain relief has been the popularity of Botox.

(10:23):

Now, it’s one of the new surprising benefits of Botox, both for headaches and for migraines. Now, obviously, Botox is, you know, use it as a cosmetic, but it really does help block certain pain pathways. And again, Botox is blocking neural signaling. That’s how it makes your wrinkles go away. Chronic migraines, Botox is now approved for chronic migraine treatment, and it works literally by blocking these overactive muscles and blocking nerve signals. That’s how it works. And it does help people significantly. But headaches more often are actually connected to stress, sleep issues, neck tension, believe it or not, food sensitivities, gut inflammation, and even dehydration. Many of you who’ve read my books and have listened to me know that I used to suffer from migraine headaches, like my father did. And I thought it was genetic. I did baby heart transplants with migraines, and I don’t recommend that.

(11:40):

On the other hand, I have not had a migraine headache for over 30 years. Why? Because I changed my diet and my migraines subsided. I have a fairly sizable practice in people who come to me with migraines, and every one of those people had leaky gut and food sensitivities. And when we took those foods out of them and repaired their leaky gut, their migraines went away and stayed away unless they fell off the wagon. And interestingly, usually when they fell off the wagon, their migraines returned, and usually that’s enough to convince you that maybe you wanna get back on the wagon. I’ve written about, uh, a famous patient of mine who I call Jill, who’s a nurse, and Jill suffered from severe migraines, but she also was an avid gardener and a home canner. And she, her favorite relish was a zucchini and tomato relish.

(12:57):

And we took her zucchini and tomato relish away from her because of the lectins. And among other things, her leaky got healed and her migraines went away. But she really missed her zucchini tomato relish. So we did an experiment the next year when she was canning. She canned her zucchini tomato relish, and half of the batch, she pressure cooked as she canned. And so she had the non-pressure cooked and the pressure cooked. She first tried her zucchini tomato relish that was not pressure cooked, and she had a migraine. And after that subsided for a couple days, she then tried her zucchini tomato pressure cooked relish, and lo and behold, she had no migraine. And that’s because for most things, pressure cooking destroys the lectins. So now Jill is a happy camper as long as she pressure cooks her treasured zucchini tomato, uh, relish. But that’s just an example of how one certain food can trigger a migraine and how you can detoxify it.

(14:17):

So my patients, it’s easier to change your food than getting shot up with Botox. All right, what about pain medication? Sometimes you gotta, uh, the pain is so bad, you just gotta break it with pain medication. Dr. Gundry, what happens if I take Advil or Aleve, ibuprofen, or Naprosyn every now and then? First of all, these medications were introduced in the mid – 1970s, and they were so dangerous that the FDA required that they could only be written as a prescription, and the prescription could only be taken for two weeks. They were that dangerous. Dangerous how? Unfortunately, these are like swallowing a hand grenade. They cause localized leaky gut. And I’ve written about this. They actually cause localized extreme mitochondrial uncoupling, and in that area, the lining of the gut dies, and you get leaky gut. This was known about in the 1970s, and that’s why they were prescription-based.

(15:43):

Nothing’s changed except now they’re the widest used over-the-counter medication. There is, but the reasons they were so dangerous has not changed. Number two, we know that chronic use of these medications is associated with kidney damage. And I see this all the time in my chronic pain users of ibuprofen and naprosyn. They cause high blood pressure, and I see this all the time. But what’s really dramatic, and I’ve documented this in many of my books, athletes take them for a sports injury, and within a couple weeks, in some cases, they have such leaky gut that they develop an autoimmune disease, like Crohn’s, like psoriasis, like… I, I, I’ve seen almost everything. And it’s because of this damage to the gut wall, which we can measure. So there’s real reasons not to use these. Now, these affect pain by being what are called COX-2 inhibitors. So one of the alternatives that I like a lot is a compound called Baswalia.

(17:06):

And Baswalia actually acts as a COX-2 inhibitor, but it doesn’t cause leaky gut. And I’m so impressed with Baswalia’s effectiveness. It’s one of the main ingredients of my Gundry MD product, Peak Mobility Plus. So there are alternatives to the most popular pain relievers out there. And as I tell my patients, literally one ibuprofen is literally like swallowing a hand grenade. So why would you wanna do that? Now, there’s other ways to support a healthy pain response. And one of the things that we see all the time is pain disrupts your sleep, but improving sleep quality disrupts pain. Now, people talk about reducing inflammatory foods. We live in Southern California, and the idea that we could fight a forest fire with a garden hose is the idea that you can fight chronic inflammation by reducing inflammatory foods. What you actually wanna do is reduce the foods and the painkillers that are known to cause leaky gut.

(18:30):

And simply removing those foods goes a long way towards repairing leaky gut. We also know that omega-3 fats, like fish oil, like alpha-linolenic acid, short-chain omega-3 in flax oil, in canola oil, in perilla oil, in ahi flour oil, goes a long way towards stopping inflammatory LPSs from going through the gut wall. And again, the more you support your gut wall health, your bacterial health, the more you’re gonna mitigate chronic inflammation happening in the first place. I’ll say it over and over again. The walking may be one of the greatest health tools ever invented. And most people, regardless of their pain, can usually walk, even if it’s slow. If that’s a big problem, then use a pool, because pools take much of your body weight away. And so walking in a pool is what is actually how most athletes rehab from their injuries. So always consider going to a, you know, neighborhood pool or the Y and walk in the pool to rehab.

(19:58):

We talked about magnesium. Epsom salts work great. Consider keeping up more magnesium-rich foods, and dark leafy greens are a great source of magnesium. When all else fails, consider breathing exercises. It’s amazing how box breathing can absolutely distract you from pain. When I’m doing wall sits, which I do a couple times a week, or I’m getting ready for ski season, and I wanna extend my wall sit, I use box breathing to distract myself from the fact that my quads are really in pain. And it’s amazing how you can extend your wall sit just by using breathing techniques to distract you from the pain that you’re feeling. All right. So remember, pain is information. So instead of simply silencing it with a pain pill, ask why your body is sending out that information, where it’s coming from, and then think about alternative ways of dealing with it.

(21:25):

Now it’s time for the question week from my video discussing Volter Longo’s new study on protein. @timothyericlain4141 asked this about sardinia. “What? Sardinia low in animal protein? You have never been there or know its history to say a thing like that. The Mediterranean diet has always had lots of animal protein, fish, eggs, dairy, pig, lamb, beef, seafood, et cetera, et cetera. Sardinia is an island, rocky, dry-ish, maybe good for olive trees, perfect for sheep, pig, cattle in general. With such a long coastline, why wouldn’t we eat fish or seafood, which is animal protein anyway? Well, that’s a great response, except it’s incorrect. Sardinians are one of the quote blue zones that are noted for their lack of significant animal protein in their diet. But hey, I agree with you about one thing. The one thing that separates Sardinians from other cultures is that they eat a lot of goat and sheep yogurt, a fermented food, and they have a lot of olive oil.

(22:37):

Interesting, if you compare the groups that live in the mountains who are sheep and goat herders with people who live down by the sea, who are actually fish eaters, the goat and sheep herders actually have more longevity than the folks who live down by the sea, made a big point of in my longevity paradox. So you’re right, I have not been to Sardinia, but I’ve been to a great number of the islands around Italy, but I’ve read every paper that’s ever been written about the Sardinian diet, and I’m sorry, it’s not a high meat diet. Now it’s time for the Review of the Week. The Review of the Week comes from EardReady on Apple Podcasts. They said Dr. Gundry should run for health secretary and promote universal healthcare. Great health tips. I read his books and listened to his podcast frequently. Very helpful. I’m familiar with medical terms a little bit and I grasp pretty much everything he says.

(23:32):

He’s a heart surgeon. He knows a lot about hearts, so he can’t go wrong. Well, thanks very much. I can assure you that, uh, heart surgeons can go wrong. I try since I see patients six days a week now for over 25 years and know what works and know what doesn’t work, and I’m a researcher at heart and write papers about my research, and I’m glad to hear it’s useful for you.

(24:03):

That’s a wrap on today’s episode. And before you go, I wanna leave you with one task. If anything you heard today made you think, made you wanna dig deeper, or gave you something you’re going to pass along to someone you care about, please take 15 seconds and leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I know that sounds small, but those reviews are how Apple and Spotify decide which shows to surface to new listeners. And this show only grows when people who’ve never heard of it suddenly find it. That person finding this podcast today could hear something that genuinely improves their life or the life of someone they love, maybe even saves one. Everything I share here comes from my research when writing my next book and my clinics, where I’ve been seeing patients six days a week for over 25 years, working with nutrition and supplements as the primary treatment.

(25:06):

This is real world medicine. Help me get it to more people. And thank you. Truly thank you. I’m Dr. G, and I’m always looking out for you.