Dr. Steven Gundry – Can you give us a quick summary of what your life looked like before going into biohacking?
Aggie Lal – I was a travel influencer for over a decade. I was on the road 300 days a year. A lot of gelling around, about 60 countries a year. And I, you know, constantly changing time zones. So my circadian rhythm completely disrupted on daily basis. From one hand, I love it. I love being in nature, I love learning about new cultures. From the other, constantly exhausted. And so I originally, I was like, you know, it’s normal to be exhausted. We all are exhausted. We all drink coffee three times a day or four times a day. It can’t be that different. But at 30 years old I got, I didn’t even know what gut was at 30, which is embarrassing, but I didn’t, so I was forever bloated no matter what I did. My skin was like, just like, painful. I had acne that was genuinely painful. My hair has been falling out in patches and I was just like, dang, I think my body’s trying to tell me something. And so I decided to slow down and figure out what I can do about my health.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Did you think at that time that traveling was a part of this? Or I mean, what went through your mind getting all these signals that hey, this is really worrisome?
Aggie Lal – Oh, I think it was such a interesting mix between being a massive people pleaser and being hypervigilant about everyone else’s overworking and coming from a place of like, proving myself all the time. So working really hard, traveling all the time, not getting enough sleep, being vegan. I mean the list was endless and really just not having the education to even know where to look. That was the hardest bit.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You were a vegan for years.
Aggie Lal – Eight years.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Eight years. And you most of the time felt pretty terrible. Is that right?
Aggie Lal – Yes. So the first six months were awesome, right? Like when I first got into the vegan diet, I was like, this is great. I feel fantastic. My goal was to lose as much weight as possible and I did. So, you know, I thought like, cool. Mission accomplished, I’m good. And only over time, first thing I didn’t realize was a bad thing was that I was constantly hungry and nibbling and snacking. I thought it was a good thing, right? Like they say, have seven meals a day.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
Aggie Lal – Yeah. And have little meals. I would always have snacks and I would have breakfast in the morning and less than two hours later I would need to have something. But I thought it was like, oh good, you know, that means that I’m gonna be skinnier and they tell me that it’s a good thing. Then I just was constantly tired, feeling quite anxious, like that low level anxiety of just like, being on edge and just not feeling great in my body. So that’s how it started. Obviously we know the rest, what happened after eight years, so feeling like maybe I’m not trying hard enough in this vegan thing, so I’ll go even more vegan, and even more raw, and even less fat. And that just got even worse and worse and worse. And that’s the annoying thing that people often say like, oh, you didn’t try hard enough. I’m like, eight years is a long time to try something that isn’t working. So that has been true to me. Maybe there are people out there that thrive on vegan diet. That’s amazing. I just was not that person.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, some of my sickest people when they come to me are vegans and they come to me because I was a professor at Loma Linda University for many years, and Loma Linda is a vegan/vegetarian adventist institution. So, obviously I know a lot about that diet and-
Aggie Lal – But question for you, would you say that there is a massive difference between vegan and vegetarians when it comes to health? Or for you that would be, would you put them in the same category?
Dr. Steven Gundry – My problem with particularly the American Vegan Diet, just as a generalized statement, is that in general they’re pasta and grain and beanitarians. And if I was gonna select some food categories that are really bad for your health, that’s what I would select. Can you successfully be a vegan? Yeah. I joke for a lot of my patients that what I want them to be is a gorilla who lives in Italy. And they look at me odd, what do you mean by that? Well, I want you to eat a lot of leaves and pour olive oil on everything. And vegans in other parts of the world, I think do much better than us because they don’t concentrate on necessarily our grains. Grains, they’re full of glyphosate in this country.
Aggie Lal – Yes. That’s the thing, right? Like, and when I was a vegan, that was in 2016 where it was just the very beginning of all the vegan cheeses. So I now look, I think about it, I’m like, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was like, oh my god, it’s vegan. It’s vegan cheese, it’s vegan butter. Instead of questioning, hey, it’s pure seed oils with god knows what’s inside. I was just like, oh, if it’s vegan, it’s like, healthier for me. And you know, now I don’t have to eat butter. I was like, afraid of butter. But like, no, it’s vegan butter, so I’m good.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You’re right, I think a lot of people say, well, I’m not feeling well because I am having a lot of fats on this vegan diet, even though they’re healthy fats. And so I’ll become a fat-free vegan because there’s folks who, you know, demonize all fats.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, I mean even, you know, and again, I don’t wanna ever talk badly about anyone, but I have personally tried Medical Medium diet that has worked for a lot of people. And one of the things he recommends is to eliminate all fat and try lemon juice to put on your vegetables. I was so miserable. Like I genuinely felt like, as a woman, we need fat, you know, we need good fat for our hormones. You know, we get infertile, we lose our period. We’ll talk about it in a second. But like that has been like the biggest thing for me that I, that is such a good indication whether the diet is good for you, right? And back in the day, the way I would know what works, what doesn’t would be, am I skinny? If I’m skinny, it must be working. But I didn’t realize that it’s just like a ticking bomb, that it’s gonna blow up sooner than later. And I’m still very fit, but I’m not doing it at a cost of my own health.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Sounds like a good idea. You write and you mentioned that you visited lots of doctors and many of my patients have seen 6, 8, 10 different healthcare providers, physicians, Medical Medium, whatever, before they get to me. So, how did you go on a journey to find answers?
Aggie Lal – Oh, just so painful. You go to a doctor, it’s like, oh wait, you have skin issues and then hair issues and then bloating. So you need three different doctors. No one ever thought it was like, maybe it’s the symptom of a root cause of something that is going on in your body now. It was like, no, no, you need to go to one doctor. I was like, I went to see a dermatologist. She’s like, oh, you need Accutane. For those who don’t know, it’s basically a prescription for destroying your liver. Six months destroy your liver starter pack, basically. That’s the most frustrating thing in my health journey. Or for anyone who wants to heal that it feels like we’re being sent from one doctor to another. It’s two weeks in between and you’re in this limbo forever trying to find answers and feeling like one expert’s telling you one thing about, okay, for my skin I’m doing this drug, but then this drug is making me, you know, I can’t get pregnant and so I have to get on birth control because of that drug, and birth control is making me depressed, and also I lose ovulation and all of these crazy things. So it’s just like, it’s a chain effect from one drug to another.
Dr. Steven Gundry – In this health journey, was there an aha moment that you finally said, wait a minute, or what was the tipping point?
Aggie Lal – I met a naturopath and she suggested a gut test. And it turned out that I have so many food sensitivities and high levels of inflammation. And she was like, oh, I think you have leaky gut. Just like a, you know, that’s the case. Why don’t we do a couple of things to help you heal your gut and if you can just introduce a little bit of butter, for example, to your diet. And I was like, no, no, no. And then took another year, I was like, screw it. I’m at this point where you feel like really, really sick. I treat it as medicine instead of thinking whether I’m being a good person for eating butter or a bad person or you know, introduce the liver, because it’s like, this story we tell, you know? You’re eating meat, you’re a bad person, you don’t care about animals, but you can deeply care about animals and have like, the reference for their life, right? It’s like, for the circle of life, and appreciate that what they do for you. It doesn’t mean that I’m unconsciously just being so quote unquote “whatever” about it. And so that, you know, I remember having chicken liver, it tasted terrible, but the next day I had so much energy and I was like, wow, this is better than coffee. So that was the beginning.
Dr. Steven Gundry – You basically call this biohacking and that’s a great word. You were successfully running biohacking courses online. You got so good at this, right?
Aggie Lal – Yes, and the thing is, I didn’t even want to. I just asked the women in my community, hey, I wanna share with you everything that I know. Would you be interested if I shared with you via email? That was a few years ago. And got over 15,000 women that signed up to this little email challenge. And I was like, wow. Like, that’s crazy. I thought I was all alone in this. Turns out it’s very common for women to feel that way. And so that was like, the beginning of my journey. because obviously I’m not a doctor, I don’t consider myself an expert. I’m nowhere near the caliber of you, but like, my whole thing is like, I just help women figure out where to look and showed like this, you know, Dr. Gundry, Dr. Mindy Pelz, you know, like these are amazing people that you can follow and learn from and I’m just like, almost like your bestie, your support group, into helping you navigate this crazy landscape of misinformation that’s out there.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So what inspired you to write a book? Why not just keep doing this online stuff?
Aggie Lal – Well, I think you can relate. It’s like, when you learn something, it’s great. When you have to teach somebody, it’s like, oh. All of a sudden I need to clean up my knowledge because I know all of these things. As a challenge I decided to just give it a go and see if I can organize myself. Number one question I get on social media every day, where do I start? And I don’t wanna tell people, go buy my course or follow somebody. I do, but then I was like, what if I can just put everything, the basic principles of how to live according to your cycle? What are antinutrients, you know, how to support your gut, how to avoid all the toxins that are in our environment. And if they wanna learn more, that’s totally up to them. But just, yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – That’s what you did.
Aggie Lal – That’s what I did.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So now this book is about women, but it’s not only for women, right?
Aggie Lal – No.
Dr. Steven Gundry – What can men gain from a book of biohacking like a woman?
Aggie Lal – Great question. I think first of all, I read so many books directed towards men. It was just all there was, right? It was just neutral. But a lot of times it was with men in mind when it comes to fasting or whatnot. And so I wanted to create an alternative and just kind of see, okay, how about all of that advice that I read about? What does it really mean to me as a woman? So I worked with a medical team. I don’t do these things alone. So I have a group of medical team that help me kind of like, clean everything up and just check studies and I consult with them and I always like to think, you know, you’re doctors, you already know these things. But most men are not aware of the female cycle. They don’t know where his partner, you know, is? Like, is it day 14? And if it is day 14, what does it mean to him? What does it mean to her? And how we can support her? And I think that would be, I think the biggest like, health trend in the future, is for men to also be so aware you are surrounded 50% by women, right? So for you to know what we’re going through is gonna be a superpower. You can use it to your unfair advantage at work, in dating with your partner, with your daughter. I mean, the list is endless. And I even get dads these days, it’s like, oh, I wanna learn my daughter’s cycle because she’s struggling and I wanna make sure that she feels supported. So I think that’s like, the new wave that’s coming.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Perfect. Well, a lot of your book is devoted to living, you know, with the female cycle.
Aggie Lal – Yes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So, women in general are never taught much about this. Maybe because for years most physicians were men. Even most physicians in gynecology and obstetrics were men. That’s changed recently, but let’s get into that. Why should women and men understand cycles?
Aggie Lal – Well, just because as you, when you look at just like a simple graph of what’s happening in your body every day versus my body, we need to move through life very differently. And having that grace and understanding that women are different. They’re just not less hairy version than men. And we need to be celebrated. We need to be catered for very differently than men need to be catered for. And I think that women are slowly waking up feeling like, wow, no one told me that if I go on a pill, I’m not gonna have ovulation. Ovulation is my superpower. My bones get stronger, I get more insulin sensitive. Like, I just get more attractive. I’m more likely to get a raise. I’m like, these are all like, some nice perks of having an ovulation. I have never been sat down in my life by anyone, and you know, be educated about how amazing it is to actually celebrate your ovulation instead of just getting on the pill and, you know, numbing it and pausing it for years.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And unfortunately you guys are not told that it increases your risk of developing blood clots in the veins and it actually really manipulates your microbiome probably in a bad way.
Aggie Lal – I can see that why, I mean, first thing you do, it’s like having a pill on an empty stomach or whenever you choose to have it. It’s really interesting that it’s not about not being on the pill. And I always say that. It’s about having an informed decision that if you take it, you know exactly the potential of what’s gonna happen in your body and then you can make an informed decision. But I think a lot of times someone tells you you have mommy brain and that’s it. Find a better doctor. If you feel like you’re not being treated seriously or your exhaustion’s not treated seriously, find a better doctor. And so oftentimes women were treated as if they’re dumb. And so, she doesn’t need to know the side effects. She’s not gonna understand what’s in that pill anyway, so you’ll be fine. Kind of like, really dismissive. And at the end of the day, women are intelligent. Does it mean that we will stop taking the pill? Probably not because sometimes it is the best solution for where you are in life. But you just have to know everything at the potential of your depression, of your bloating, or weight gain, and et cetera, et cetera, right?
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. You have the right to make an informed decision.
Aggie Lal – Yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. And it’s true with most medication. You know, as a surgeon, we had to get informed consent. They knew all the risks that was associated with me, you know, slitting their chest open and operating on their heart.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, you couldn’t just say, oh, you’ll be totally fine. Like, you had to inform everybody that you were operating, this is what the potential is. It’s one 1% but-
Dr. Steven Gundry – But, yeah, that’s right. But a lot of times with particularly prescription medications that, and particularly with women, it’s not an informed consent.
Aggie Lal – Exactly. And so that has been my like, biggest mission, to kind of just help women understand the side effects of what they’re putting into their bodies.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right, now you say in the book that a woman’s period is the fifth vital sign. What does that mean?
Aggie Lal – Well, it’s our superpower, again. So imagine you and I start a new diet. It’s gonna take you a long time for you to figure out whether this diet is making you sick or not. I’m probably just gonna lose my period sooner or later. And that will be a very good sign for me that this is not, something is not working. And so a lot of times I see fitness experts that are sharing this, you know, high processed carb diets with their followers, and it’s like, you know, I haven’t had a period and I have a PCOS but I look great. And I’m like, well no, because the way you look is not an indication whether your diet is healthy or not. And so fit vital sign is for women to understand, okay, body temperature, if it’s high, I’m dealing with some sort of infection. If my period is gone, this is your body telling you like yo, like something massive is happening in your body that it’s a sign we’re not thriving. So again, much faster feedback for you. Unless you get a temperature, it would be really hard for you to realize that your diet is not great for you as a man. For a woman, we are gonna get that feedback much sooner, especially with fasting, especially with exercise routine.
Dr. Steven Gundry – We were gonna talk about that a little bit later, but let’s do that right now. A lot of, particularly male biohacking, is really interested in fasting, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating. And I personally am a big fan of it for a lot of people. But I think we have to use a lot of caution for women. You want to go into that?
Aggie Lal – Oh yes, so I don’t even think, I got SIBO a few years ago and I did the Elemental diet. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.
Dr. Steven Gundry – First of all, I actually have never seen SIBO in a human being.
Aggie Lal – Really?
Dr. Steven Gundry – Really.
Aggie Lal – Wow.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And that’s a controversial statement but-
Aggie Lal – Wow. I already feel like we’re getting in trouble here, but yes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah, that’s right. Oh yeah. Everybody’s gonna write in. You are supposed to have bacteria in your small intestine.
Aggie Lal – Oh wow.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And those bacteria are supposed to make hydrogen gas and methane gas. And the way we test for SIBO is to see if you make hydrogen and methane gas. The small intestine is the last frontier of the microbiome because we have had really no way to test what is, what was, living in there. But the evidence that hydrogen gas is a post-biotic signaling molecule of incredible importance, I’ve been spending three books trying to convince people of that. And the last thing anyone wants to do is kill off those bacteria that are essential, if for nothing else, their long-term brain health.
Aggie Lal – And so yeah, but you go to a doctor, what does he say?
Dr. Steven Gundry – I know.
Aggie Lal – Two antibiotics. Not one.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Two, yeah.
Aggie Lal – You get two. And so I decided to try Elemental diet, which is like a form of fasting, and three weeks in and lost my period. And I was like, oh, okay. So I guess I can’t be really doing extending fast. Something is off. And then I started doing research, found the work of Dr. Alisa Vitti and how she talks about fasting according to the cycle. I got really intrigued because I actually, I love fasting. I just always did it every single day for 17 or 18 hours because I would listen to Dave Asprey when he does 20. I’m like, I’m gonna be better than Dave. I’m gonna do it, you know, even harder and even better, you know? And finally when I started doing it according to my cycle, I realized I’m like, oh, I can get the benefits. I still get to keep my period. That’s how I know it’s good. My period is healthy. I am not really PMSing. And that gave me so much permission to try everything what’s out there, but just with the right mindset, without pushing myself too much. And I think, I always say, that men thrive through challenge. You know, you guys love a good challenge. You love building things, big companies, this, and we have that too, but that’s testosterone, right? Like, always going better. We thrive through nourishment and through love. Like, we’re known for like nourishing. And I think we often forget to do that to ourselves. And so that’s what I have been testing for the last couple of years and I was like, oh, I can get the same results without the stress and without the whole like, masculine mindset of like, pushing myself every single day.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And how about if you are trying to get pregnant? Does that change things in your fasting routine?
Aggie Lal – I think it’s so individual per woman, right? Like, it would be super hard to tell. Like, I know that with, if I was to, I mean I’m hoping to get pregnant this year, so we’ll see. Again, I can talk from experience, but I definitely tone down on fasting because my stress levels are so high and I’m not getting a ton of good sleep recently. Book launch, this and that, you know, getting married in a couple of months, which is also really stressful. It’s just so much to plan. And so I realized I’m like, I don’t need another stressor to add to that. If I had a slightly slower schedule, I would continue fasting according to my cycle probably even more. I just love the autophagy and I genuinely feel incredible after fasting. And I see the benefits. I just feel like for me right now it would be too much. And I kind of want to just make sure and send a signal to my body. It’s safe to procreate and that safety comes from, there’s enough food. And you don’t have to worry.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Right, yeah, exactly. So we’re dancing around the issue, but infertility is a bigger and bigger problem for… I mean, sperm counts are 50% what they were 50 years ago. Infertility in women is going up. What’s going on? Got any thought?
Aggie Lal – All the endocrine disruptors, like there are studies that, you know, we are exposed to 168 chemicals a day as a woman and that’s a very conservative number. And so no wonder if all you do is consuming seed oils that create inflammation and toxins that confuse your endocrine system. The body doesn’t even know if it’s, you know, whether it’s safe to get pregnant, whether, you know, the estrogen, you know, like it’s too much estrogen, right? Because of all the estrogen mimicking chemicals, and we need more progesterone, right? So like, how do we actually support our progesterone? And another thing that annoys me is when I see a video on Instagram with a woman eating a tub of ice cream, like, this is the time of the month. I’m like, no, it’s not this time of the month, it is time to have healthy nature carbs like sweet potato or whatever you feel like that will nourish you. Yes, you need a little bit more carbs because progesterone needs a little bit of carbs, but it’s not time to have a tub of ice cream and chips and all the processed foods because that’s just gonna scrap your hormones even more. So like, we make the problem even worse, and we normalize these ridiculous, BS, like, coping mechanisms that are making our hormones even worse.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Well, since you brought it up, what foods did you cut out that made you feel better? As you know, you know, I get into trouble by telling people it’s not the foods I tell you to eat that’s important. It’s actually the foods I tell you not to eat that are actually really important.
Aggie Lal – So, I agree with you. Like, that’s actually, your work has been monumental. And I think all of these diets and a lot of books are like, focused so much on what you should be eating and you have this like, very strict list of 17 things and da da da. And for me it was just like, cutting absolute non-negotiable of glyphosate, right? So like, where’s glyphosate? Wheat, soy, corn, I’m not gonna have that. I’m not gonna have seed oils just because they create inflammation. And fish, you know, from going vegan, what do you do? Start eating fish. What fish did I have? The highest and heavy metals. Did my heavy metal test. Super high mercury and extremely high. But I was like, whoa, but I was eating sushi. I thought I was like, doing something better for myself. And so cutting out just these three alone and the antinutrients has been monumental in my health journey to just, you know, the processed foods. And it’s almost a little easier because turns out that if you eliminate a lot of vegan products, like cheeses, the butters and whatnot, that’s very easy to eliminate, you know, that.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Were there any foods that you added in that you said, oh my gosh, you know, this is, I feel better eating these foods?
Aggie Lal – Red meat. I always avoided red meat and I had anemia growing up, but I just was so scared that red meat would make me fat and give me cholesterol and would age me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m trying to think what I was thinking a few years ago. But I think it was this big like, idea that only like, big men would eat meat, and if I wanna stay like, a lean woman, I shouldn’t eat meat. And that, adding beef liver, grass-fed beef liver, as well was like a big one. And I think just actually giving myself permission to, once I eliminate the things that are making me sick, just experiment what feels right and doesn’t. But the biggest one has been definitely introducing red meat. It almost, I eat more red meat than I do chicken, or fish or anything like that. Which for me that was like, the biggest change.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Interesting. All right. Let’s talk about weight loss. To cut calories to lose weight, why is this a problem?
Aggie Lal – What do you think?
Dr. Steven Gundry – I think it’s ridiculous. I have no calorie counts. I have no macros in any of my recipes in my book because one of the things that we didn’t know about until the Human Microbiome Project is that there’s a whole bunch of folks, I call them gut buddies, that are capable of eating a lot of the calories we eat if we eat for them. And you can often get away with caloric murder by eating things that they’re going to eat.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, 100%. I mean, for me it’s the same. You know, when I was vegan, I was calorie counting, kale smoothie drinking, oat milk latte drinking girl. And so I was constantly hungry and, you know, I probably was living on 1000 calories a day and then fast forward within two years, I was probably on 3000 calories. And I was the fittest, skinniest, because I started working out. For me to work out, I need to eat to build muscle. The more muscle I built, the more insulin receptors I have, you know, the muscles are more metabolically active, I can get away with more food because I keep myself busy on top of that, right? Like, I’m feeding my gut, so I’m able to metabolize food very differently. And there is, I mean, so many things that we touched upon, calorie restriction often leads for a short term weight loss, right? Because you eat and that’s the idea that there is the basal metabolic rate. And please correct me if I’m, you know, I’m not a doctor, but there’s the basal metabolic rate, which is, let’s just say 1200 calories for you. And so if you eat 1100, then you should lose weight. But your body is smart and it’s gonna adjust over time and you’re just gonna have to either yo-yo back, I mean you’ll have to yo-yo back. There’s no other way, right? Because if you keep on eating less, your body will slowly adjust that basal metabolic rate to be lower and lower until it’s, you can’t go any lower and you’re gonna have feel constantly exhausted and tired and you know, you don’t wanna go with that path of being like, they do studies of frats that are on calorie restriction. They get aggressive and whatnot. So you can do that, or you can just eat as much as you can. Not as much as you can, like according to what feels right. And it’s like, I think there’s another layer that I find really interesting with women that a lot of studies are done on men or postmenopausal women. And if you’ve worked with women and you’ve known women and we’re constantly bombarded by so much diet advice that it’s very, very hard to find a woman who has an extremely healthy relationship with food. You know, who’s struggling with weight. Because the chances are there’s this psychological issue that she’s afraid of eating full meals, or she is overeating, or has a refeeding syndrome. So she decides to cut and then she goes to the fridge and she eats more. And so unless you actually have worked with women one-on-one in your life, then it’s so easy to say that certain calorie restriction would work. But once you’re a woman and you work with women, you realize actually, no, that doesn’t work. I watched my mom being on a diet for 20 something years and constantly yo-yo. Losing, going back, and then after a few years, no matter how much she would restrict, she just wasn’t able to lose weight.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Because 80% of my patients have autoimmune diseases when they first come to me, and most people with autoimmune diseases are women, we have a huge female practice. Plus, I have a female wife, two female daughters, and three female docs.
Aggie Lal – So you had to learn.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So I’ve had to learn, but you’re right, social media is a big part of this.
Aggie Lal – There’s a massive pressure like, through social media in general, that even if you’re not trying to lose weight, you’re gonna hear how to lose weight sooner or later. And the message is the skinnier the better, or whatever it might be. Not like, hey, you should just focus, your period is like, the most important thing. Actually having a healthy thriving menstrual cycle where you actually feel like, you know, you’re not in pain and it’s not like, you know. It’s like, why is PCOS or endometriosis and all of these conditions so common right now, and infertility, right? So it’s clearly we have, that’s a real pandemic of women not being able to figure out their hormones. I don’t think as, I think the generation after us will not even care about weight. They’ll be like, I don’t even care. I know that if I fix my hormones, weight will come.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Hey, the generation after us will all be dead unfortunately if we don’t change something. Unfortunately, if we go the way we’re going, baby boomers, me, will be the longest living generation. And everything looks like unless we do something that the baby boomers will be the longest and everyone that follows…
Aggie Lal – They’ll be shorter, yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Will be shorter. And that’s actually really scary.
Aggie Lal – And I mean there’s so many things you can do, right? Like the information’s out there, it’s just we need to stop waiting for people to save us and just take responsibility and educate yourself as much as you can.
Dr. Steven Gundry – So, let’s talk about eating in restaurants. You apparently used to be very afraid of eating in restaurants.
Aggie Lal – Yes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – But you’re not anymore.
Aggie Lal – I don’t think, you know, having a lifestyle of going out is the best lifestyle on the planet. I’m not going to lie. But because I know what I know, I would go and I’m like, oh my God, this I can’t have, and this will not be good. And it feels like they somehow mixed one good ingredient with four ones that you can’t have. And so I moved to Bali in Indonesia and that’s a very different approach to food where you most likely make your own food. So they let you pick and make your own salad. But at the top it says we use ghee and coconut oil to prepare your dish. Let us know if you would like it steam, fried, and what oil to use. We’re in 2024 and no one ever talks about how the food is being prepared. You are almost being, you know, difficult about asking questions if you’re like, I’m sorry, what oil is this? You know, or can you use olive oil, or this and that? So I realized that, again, this is gonna be another food trend when the restaurants need to be way more transparent, where they’re getting their ingredients from, and what oils they’re actually using. And the moment I stopped caring about what people perceive me as, I was just like, I’m just gonna ask for coconut oil, or I’m just gonna ask for habit. You know, with ghee it gave me a, just made me feel a little bit more relaxed. And I think that’s another thing, that if the diet or a wellness practice is making you stressed, is it a wellness practice or maybe not anymore, you know? Because it’s like, part of it is like, you’re meant to feel well and if you feel like that certain role is making you feel miserable, then perhaps it’s time to take a step back and realize like, what can I do to adjust it?
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. I think that’s a good point. And I’ve mentioned this through the years. One of my good friends Tom Guy years ago said, Steve, the menu only tells you what the chef has in the back. And he says, you look and you say, oh, that ingredient I want, but that’s with this dish and I don’t want the rest of that dish and this ingredient I want, but that’s in that dish.
Aggie Lal – But that’s how I order unfortunately.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. And that’s how I order. And if the chef won’t do that, then you don’t want to come back to that restaurant.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, I agree.
Dr. Steven Gundry – It’s very simple. But quite frankly I can almost always find something to eat using that method. And that’s what I teach my patients. Look, just say, look, you’ve got it back there.
Aggie Lal – It’s just always spread between different dishes.
Dr. Steven Gundry – Yeah. Mix it up for me, would you? You know, just, you know, one from column A, one from column B, one from column C.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that’s exactly what I do.
Dr. Steven Gundry – It’s been a very good trick. And yeah, so that’s, you know.
Aggie Lal – And I think a lot of people say like, oh, you know, this is so unrealistic. I don’t wanna be difficult. But at the end of the day it’s a little bit like oat smoke. Why is oat smoke at every coffee shop? I went to my favorite coffee shop and he’s like, serving now only oat smoke. And I ask why? And he’s like, honestly, because people just kept asking and we can do the same about seed oils, about using ghee about not using even… Okay sure, if you wanna have a piece of toast, maybe just have einkorn wheat or organic so you avoid glyphosate if that’s really what you have to live with. But like, we are in charge, you know, like if we are bringing the businesses, where your money goes, that’s, you know, this thing grows literally. So if you’re not demanding these things from restaurants, of course, they wanna continue trying to get away with seed oils and, you know, not so great ingredients.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right. With every book I write, there’s always a few major surprises that I discover when researching. In fact, I try to make it difficult for myself. I try not to write an outline of the book I’m going to write because invariably I go down rabbit holes and it completely changes what I set out to write. Was there any big surprises in researching your book or one that you could mention?
Aggie Lal – Yeah, so the way the book has been created is me having some ideas, then asking those questions to my medical team so they can actually do some research through different papers. And then we have a meeting and they see it. The biggest one is about ovulation, I’d say, just because there are studies that, you know, strippers that were ovulating were getting twice as many tips as women on the pill, for example. They were considered more attractive. It’s like, wow, that’s really interesting. There are studies about our inability to smell pheromones of men and the other way around. So we can’t really mate properly with another human being because pill numbs that ability to pick up on whether or not the partner would be a good match. And we obviously, you know, we call it chemistry or whatever the fancy word we’re using. But ultimately we have a very strong internal intuition for hormones, you know, biology, that is helping us keep the species alive. And I wanna make sure that you’re a strong healthy partner. And same goes for men, right? So that’s completely over, you know, just not, the system isn’t working as well if we’re constantly surrounded by endocrine disruptors and men have low testosterone and women are, you know, full of toxins. And the second one is, I guess it’s just unprocessed emotions and how the trauma lives in our bodies and how the missing piece sometimes is someone just like, not being able to process every emotion, like anger for women that is just kinda like living there and it could be a root cause of a lot of disease. Like, your body keeps the score, so yeah.
Dr. Steven Gundry – All right, based on your experience, give our audience one thing that they can start doing today to make a difference in their health.
Aggie Lal – I would love to encourage all women listening to this podcast to start living according to their cycle. And if you don’t have a cycle anymore, try to live according to the moon cycle. I think we’re by nature lunar and it just doesn’t stop happening the moment you’re in peri or menopause. So that would be my biggest invitation. And for men to actually educate yourself about your partner’s cycle, your mother’s cycle, your sister’s cycle, and just see what is it that I can learn from to use it to your advantage, really. And just see like, oh cool. Like, can I use that information to become a better partner or a better friend?
Dr. Steven Gundry – Perfect. All right. Now before I let you go, I usually have an audience question, but since you are here, I’d like to invite you to ask me a question that maybe you want an answer to. I don’t know if I can give one, but.
Aggie Lal – I mean, I feel like, just even our podcast the other week, I wish it was just going on and on forever. But I think my biggest one is, is there anything throughout your career that you have changed your mind on and why?
Dr. Steven Gundry – Oh, absolutely.
Aggie Lal – The biggest one.
Dr. Steven Gundry – There are people who are nutritionists who have not changed their stance on anything in 30 years. And they, despite the research, despite the discovery of The Human Microbiome, and I think one of the things, if you had asked me 20 years ago when I was just starting this, what I thought about leaky gut, I probably would’ve told you it was pseudoscience. And if you had asked me, it’s good science. And the more I think we realize how important intestinal permeability is, leaky gut is, that’s something I really changed my mind on and you know, that’s all I concentrate on now. Because Hippocrates was right, all disease begins in the gut.
Aggie Lal – Yeah, and it’s also like, a metaphorical way of understanding that. Because I think a lot of times you can understand it literally, but it’s also that everything that goes in your body can be the root cause of what is happening, right? So I think a lot of times people just get weird about this because they’re like, oh, it’s like too, they take it almost like too literally. But there is this like, deeper level, of everything that you put inside of your body goes through your gut and you know-
Dr. Steven Gundry – Well, and with, I happen to think that’s women’s superpower because you have a gut instinct that men, number one, don’t understand. But that’s a real thing and-
Aggie Lal – Yeah, and so when you say like, the dis-ease of your body begins in the gut, which is like the lack of intuition or the disconnection from the gut. I would like, that’s how I personally understand that. Even saying that it’s not exactly everything I put in in my body, but it’s like, as I’m listening to everyone around me the dis-ease in my body begins because I am disconnecting from gut my intuition, and what my body has been trying to tell me. And I think when you do Elimination diet or whatever and see that I’m like, oh, I eat this, this makes me not feel good. But we’re so numb and we mix so many things that back in the day when I was not feeling very healthy, if you ask me what’s making me sick, I would never be able to tell you. Now I can because I have it and I immediately feel like, oh, that doesn’t sit well. So I think that’s just like, a really beautiful way of just remembering that your body’s always giving you through bloating or constipation, or it’s like, sending those signals, whether this is working, this is not working. And I think it’s pretty beautiful.
Dr. Steven Gundry – It’s funny you should mention dis-ease. One of the first lectures I started doing was about dis-ease and disease is the absence of ease. And ease I defined as eating, attitude, spirituality, and exercise.
Aggie Lal – Oh, I love that.
Dr. Steven Gundry – And it is a four corner table and just one leg of that table will produce dis-ease. And our objective is to have all four balanced.
Aggie Lal – And put your body at ease.
– Yeah. At ease. If you found this video helpful, I think you’re gonna love this one. If you’re gonna have a burger, have it protein style, and please avoid the cheese. These things, like melty American cheese, this isn’t cheese folks. It’s actually plastic. Please don’t eat it.
