Steven Gundry: 00:00 Hey, there. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where I give you the tools you need to support your gut, boost your health, and live your youngest, healthiest life. Before we get started, let’s get to this week’s review of the week. Urm from Hawaii writes, “I see that psyllium is on the yes list of the Plant Paradox diet. Does that mean the husk is safe to eat? Thanks.” Yeah, I’ve reviewed this. Believe it or not, there are a number of plant seeds that have no lectins, and those are plant seeds that, by design, are indigestible in our intestines, and the whole idea is that you’ll eat those plant seeds and poop them out someplace else with a dollop of fertilizer.
So things like sesame seeds are perfectly safe. Things like flax seeds and psyllium seeds are perfectly safe. On the other hand, there are a number of seeds on the no list that unfortunately do have lectins and are designed to protect themselves. So just consult the list, and if there’s any question, just write me, and we’ll try to get an answer for you. Okay? Good question.
If you’d like me to read your review, make sure to subscribe, write, and review my podcast on iTunes. If you’re listening on your mobile device, take a screenshot. Share your favorite takeaway and add a tag me in your Insta stories. I’ll make sure to re-share them in mine. Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. We’ve got a really special one today for you. I’m going to be speaking with Dave and Jann Hales. So since 2017, they’ve chronicled their Plant Paradox journey on their YouTube channel, AZ Life Cooking.
Their journey hasn’t always been a smooth one, but Dave and Jann are going to show how you can easily adapt your habits for a healthier and tastier lifestyle. So on today’s show, we’re going to talk about their journey, share some tips about how to stick with the Plant Paradox diet and discuss how you can get started on your own Plant Paradox journey today. So Dave and Jann, so happy to have you here.

Dave Hales: 02:23 And we’re so excited to be here. Yeah.

Jann Hales: 02:24 Thank you. We’re thrilled.

Steven Gundry: 02:25 All right, so we were talking off camera. You’re from Arizona now.

Dave Hales: 02:25 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 02:32 But originally from…

Dave Hales: 02:34 From Utah.

Steven Gundry: 02:34 … Utah, kind of south of south lake-

Dave Hales: 02:37 North of Salt Lake.

Steven Gundry: 02:38 North of Salt Lake. Yep. And how the heck did you end up in Arizona?

Dave Hales: 02:44 Well, about six years ago, I think… I’ve had Crohn’s disease for about 20 years, yeah, about 20 years, diagnosed for 20 years. I think I’ve had it longer than that, but… And I struggled a lot. Like, I would end up in the hospital six, seven times a year for pain meds for that, and I happened to be reading a study… You’re probably more familiar with this than me, but there’s a big group of nurses that some research university follows. The result said something like 65% of people who lived in a climate similar to California or Arizona where there’s not a lot of weather change, they were 65% less likely to get Crohn’s disease. And then people who had Crohn’s disease and then moved to that sort of climate, about the same number of people saw an improvement in their health.
I’m like, “What do you think about warm, sunny weather?” And she’s like, “Let’s go check it out,” and we moved. And it started us on that journey of healing, and it has made a difference. I mean, it did, the weather did.

Steven Gundry: 03:44 Well, what they didn’t realize in that study and in subsequent studies is what changed was that you actually got more sunlight.

Dave Hales: 03:52 That’s probably it.

Steven Gundry: 03:53 And your Vitamin D level went up.

Dave Hales: 03:55 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 03:56 And I write constantly about the importance of Vitamin D in actually improving the wall of your gut health.

Dave Hales: 04:10 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 04:10 We were just listening to that on your new book.

Steven Gundry: 04:11 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 04:11 Yes, we love it.

Steven Gundry: 04:13 In fact, I just saw a young lady yesterday from the LA area, 15 years old, with… She’s lost 60 pounds in the last two years after developing a Crohn’s-like illness.

Dave Hales: 04:31 Oh, wow!

Steven Gundry: 04:31 And one of the first things we found on her blood test was that her Vitamin D level was 27 nanograms per milliliter. And I like, as you know, people having around 100. And we found, through the years, one of the things that unites all sufferers of GI issues is usually a low Vitamin D level. Vitamin D does two things, and excuse me for taking over here for a second.

Dave Hales: 05:02 No, it’s good.

Steven Gundry: 05:03 But Vitamin D, number one, we know part of the problem with all of these autoimmune diseases is that there’s a type of white blood cell called a T cell. And the T cell normally listens to Vitamin D, and Vitamin D says, “Hey, relax. Calm down. You don’t have to get so crazy. Everything’s not your enemy, and chill out.” In people with autoimmune diseases, the T cell doesn’t listen to Vitamin D properly, so we basically have to use a Vitamin D sledgehammer and go, “Hey, pay attention.” And one of the things that’s fascinating to watch is that, as we get people’s Vitamin D level up, their immune system quiets down.
Number two, we all have lots and lots and lots of stem cells in the lining of our gut, but some of the new research shows that those stem cells, which would normally help repave our gut, just sit there and twiddle their thumbs without being stimulated by Vitamin D to grow and divide. So once again, I think one of the real keys that I’ve discovered through 20 years of this now is the role Vitamin D has. And so you moving from half the year it’s kind of cloudy down to pure sunshine, you invariably got your Vitamin D higher. So good for you. Good for you.

Dave Hales: 06:42 Yeah. We love it, yeah.

Steven Gundry: 06:43 So you [inaudible 00:06:44].

Dave Hales: 06:46 It was a little expensive.

Steven Gundry: 06:48 So how did… And let me go back for one other. You probably had Crohn’s long before you were diagnosed with it.

Dave Hales: 06:48 Yeah, yeah. I did.

Steven Gundry: 06:56 What was going on in your life? Did you… I mean, you just thought you had funny bowels and…

Dave Hales: 07:03 I had graduated college, gotten into my first real job, a small company growing, and I just thought it was all stress related, because I was under a lot of stress at the time.

Jann Hales: 07:12 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dave Hales: 07:13 A new family and new kids, young kids, I should say. And so I just thought it was all related to stress. I’m like, “I’m just overly, overly stressed.” And stress, of course, flares those inflammatory conditions up, so…

Jann Hales: 07:29 And with working such long hours, Dave’s diet, of course, consisted of fast food. I was at home.

Dave Hales: 07:36 Candy.

Jann Hales: 07:37 Lots of candy. I was at home prepping meals, so he didn’t eat a lot of processed food such for dinner. [inaudible 00:07:44].

Dave Hales: 07:54 Yeah, I mean, it was just fast food. I mean, lunch and dinner, fast food usually, yeah, because I was working 60, 70 hours a week and just under a lot of stress. So it took about two years. Initially, they were… Even when I first got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, I would go into the hospital if I was having pain. I’m like, “I have Crohn’s disease,” and they’d say, “You have what?” They never heard of it.

Jann Hales: 08:17 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Gundry: 08:18 Really?

Dave Hales: 08:18 That was 20 years ago. And I even had some doctors go, “Well, let me go look that up because it sounds familiar, but I haven’t… ”

Jann Hales: 08:25 Yeah.

Dave Hales: 08:25 And it’s amazing now. I can talk to almost any person on the street and say, “I have Crohn’s disease.” Like, “Oh, yeah, my sister has that. Or oh, yeah.” I mean, it’s amazing how many more gastrointestinal issues I’ve met in the 20 years since I know I’ve had one.

Steven Gundry: 08:39 Well, that brings up a very good point. When I was in medical school back in the dark ages, we did know about Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. And actually, as a surgeon, I operated on a number of people with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, taking out pieces of their intestines and telling them that you’ll be back…

Dave Hales: 09:02 Right.

Steven Gundry: 09:03 … because I’m going to take out more of your intestines, or you’re going to develop, this is pretty gross, but you’re going to develop fistulas coming out of your skin and that. So it’s devastating. And we’d just go, “Yeah, this is what’s happening to you, and get over it,” and we really didn’t have much of a hope.

Dave Hales: 09:24 That’s exactly what my surgeon told me, literally. Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 09:28 But I think you bring up a very important point. These were rare a while back, and now every other commercial on TV we see for…

Jann Hales: 09:41 Medications.

Steven Gundry: 09:42 … medications and… And I think, and certainly the evidence is that our autoimmune diseases have just gone through the roof in the last 50 years, the last 20 years, and you’re obviously one. Anybody in the family have anything like this, looking back?

Dave Hales: 10:03 Autoimmune diseases, yeah. My Mom has multiple sclerosis. My brother has multiple sclerosis.

Jann Hales: 10:10 Another brother.

Dave Hales: 10:10 Another brother has rheumatoid arthritis. And what else? Jann has rheumatoid arthritis, or had until the Plant Paradox.

Jann Hales: 10:21 Yeah. Game-changer. You made my life. Seriously, I can’t thank you enough. [inaudible 00:10:29] for me before I did this diet.

Dave Hales: 10:33 Yeah, it was bad for her.

Jann Hales: 10:35 It was really hard and to be 44 years old and feel like I was an 85-year-old and not a good 85-year-old.

Dave Hales: 10:47 Because we’re going to be healthy at 85…

Jann Hales: 10:48 Yes.

Dave Hales: 10:48 … and go bike riding and all of that, right?

Steven Gundry: 10:48 Right.

Jann Hales: 10:51 My kids, to make a trip to the store, my kids would have to drive me. They’d have to hold onto me so I could even walk. I couldn’t even go get the mail out of the mailbox. That’s how… And before, prior to this, I was biking 25 miles a day. I was always very, very active, and then it hit and my life just… It was very depressing to go from being so active and everything just to laying on the couch. Or a lot of times, I would just lay in the pool in a float just to give my body a rest from the pain. So thank you. I think that you don’t realize how many people you’ve helped. You really need to realize that, what a difference, what a change you’re making.

Steven Gundry: 11:43 Well, thank you, and that’s why I do this, and that’s why I still see patients every day even on the weekends.

Dave Hales: 11:52 Wow!

Steven Gundry: 11:53 I know. What an idiot, but it’s because of this. It’s because of people writing and saying, “It changed my life.” How many times were you told that there was nothing wrong with you, that this was all in your head?

Jann Hales: 12:11 Constantly, and I would just… I started to question myself and say, “Am I going crazy? Am I imagining the pain? Have I become a hypochondriac? When there’s nothing wrong, I’m just trying to get attention?” And I would go over that and over that in my mind, and that just contributed to the depression because I’m like, “Why do I feel like this? No one can see it, but I feel horrible.”

Dave Hales: 12:44 And she had a doctor say once, “Well, you are getting older.” I mean, you’re 44. You shouldn’t be feeling like this.

Steven Gundry: 12:50 Right. Or you’re going through the change.

Dave Hales: 12:50 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 12:54 Yes.

Steven Gundry: 12:55 Or of course, you’re tired. You’ve got kids.

Dave Hales: 12:58 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 12:59 Sure.

Steven Gundry: 12:59 I’ve heard that a number of times too.

Jann Hales: 13:01 Sure. No, absolutely. That was such a common thing, and I think for women, if you’ve had that said to you, it’s so depressing. And I wasn’t ready to settle. I have grandkids that I want to hang out with. I have grandkids that I want to play with. They’re not born yet.

Steven Gundry: 13:18 Ah.

Jann Hales: 13:22 They’re coming. [inaudible 00:13:23].

Steven Gundry: 14:00 So you’re miserable. He’s miserable. Tell me what happened next.

Dave Hales: 14:07 My sister actually probably… I don’t remember when your book first came out. It seems like it was around April, 2017.

Steven Gundry: 14:13 Yeah, literally two years ago. Yeah.

Dave Hales: 14:14 And I think May of 2017, my sister sent me your book. She just ordered it and said, “Hey, I’ve been reading this book.” Now, she doesn’t suffer from any problems. She just wanted to lose a little weight, but she’s like, “I’ve been reading it, and they keep talking about autoimmune diseases, and I think you should read it.” I had it for about six weeks, and when you’re chronically ill, people are always trying to sell you on something.

Jann Hales: 14:38 Constantly.

Dave Hales: 14:38 And I’ve tried other diets. I’d tried eating healthy. I tried eating super clean. I always lost weight, felt better, but my Crohn’s never improved. So I’m, “Here’s another diet.” And then this was at the same time she was, two years ago, at 44, two years ago, she was miserable. And finally, one day I’m looking at her on the couch. She’s… Her life had just gotten to a standstill, and the book is sitting in front of me, and I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to pick that book up and read it.” So I started flipping through it, and immediately I found some of the stories with patients with rheumatoid arthritis where it had cleared up, and I’m like, “Jann, you’ve got to read this book.” So we come to California a couple times a month sometimes at least because we’re big Disneyland fans. And so on a drive down to California, it’s about 5 1/2 hours, she started reading the book.

Jann Hales: 15:22 And I would share with Dave, “Oh, listen to this, honey. Listen to this.”

Dave Hales: 15:26 And we finished it on the way home and started the diet the next day, and we’ve never looked back.

Jann Hales: 15:33 As simple as that. On the way down, I was so impressed, and the stories of patients that you’ve worked with just made such an impact on both of us that we were like, “We’re doing this.” Even as we were in California that weekend, we tried to just kind of remember the things that we were supposed to eat. But, yeah, we just started right away. We’re like, “We’re doing this.”

Dave Hales: 15:57 And her pain went away almost immediately. I mean, it was staggering. I’m like, “Why isn’t her doctors telling us this stuff?”

Jann Hales: 16:04 Exactly.

Steven Gundry: 16:06 Well, it is clearly part of the problem. Number one, it’s almost too good to be true that it could be that simple.

Jann Hales: 16:14 That’s what we thought.

Dave Hales: 16:14 Right, right.

Jann Hales: 16:17 That’s exactly what we thought.

Steven Gundry: 16:19 Come on, you know. I love the story of a young girl, the college student from Wisconsin in the Plant Paradox, who has Crohn’s or had Crohn’s and cared for by the head of the Mayo Clinic GI department, who felt that Crohn’s is a genetic problem and that’s all it is. And clearly, there is a genetic component to this.

Dave Hales: 16:46 Right.

Steven Gundry: 16:46 I’ll be the first to say that, but it’s a very tiny portion of this problem. So she… For folks who haven’t read the book… Shame on you.

Dave Hales: 16:58 You should read it.

Jann Hales: 16:58 Definitely, you should read it.

Steven Gundry: 17:02 One of her mentors, she was actually funded, sent to college by a woman who wanted… who had Crohn’s disease and who wanted kids to go into careers in immunology. So she actually… She and her husband paid two scholarships for kids who said they wanted to be doctors, and so she was one of these. And this particular woman got cured of Crohn’s disease in her 70s.

Dave Hales: 17:31 Wow!

Steven Gundry: 17:32 Had it all her life. So she sent basically the Plant Paradox list, all the yes foods and no foods, to this young lady. And she said, “Would you mind Skyping with her on the phone?” And this was around Christmastime. And I said, “No, that’d be fine.” So we get on Skype and this beautiful young lady, 20 years old, and she said, “When my sponsor sent me this list,” she said, “I rolled my eyes because I’ve been on every diet for Crohn’s.”

Jann Hales: 17:32 Oh, sure.

Steven Gundry: 18:02 “And my doctor at the Mayo Clinic says that diet has nothing to do with it. It’s genetic, and you’re wasting your time, but this lady is paying my tuition.” So she said, “Okay, I’m going to do it.” And she said, “Within five days, I had the first normal bowel movement of my life.”

Jann Hales: 18:20 Yes.

Dave Hales: 18:20 Crazy, huh?

Steven Gundry: 18:21 And she said, “It all went away.” So she said, “Last week, I called my doctor at Mayo Clinic to tell him my Crohn’s is gone, and he said, ‘That’s ridiculous. This is a placebo effect. You’ve been duped. He’s a snake-oil salesman.'” I’ve never met the woman. “He says, ‘This is genetic. It’s all in your mind.'” And she said, “I was so upset that I’d been fooled. I had a normal bowel movement. I was obviously fooling myself. Then I went in, and my mother was baking Christmas cookies, and I had two Christmas cookies.” And she said, “Within a few minutes, it felt like a bomb went off in my stomach.” And then she had diarrhea a few hours later and cramps and the pain, and she said, “Wait a minute. This is not a placebo effect.” So she said, “I went right back on the program, and I’m fine.”
But she’s looking at me in the camera, and she says, “Why doesn’t my doctor know about this?” And I always say, “You can’t see unless your eyes are open.” And I was lucky enough 20 years ago to see that Big Ed had cleaned out his coronary arteries with food and some supplements. And I’m going… I could have said-

Dave Hales: 19:42 Placebo.

Steven Gundry: 19:43 Placebo effect, or that’s just dumb luck.

Dave Hales: 19:47 Right, right.

Steven Gundry: 19:48 But she was able to see that there was something there. And sometimes doctors just don’t see it. There was a Facebook posting yesterday on my wife’s feed about a person who’s been on the Plant Paradox, was on three medications for cholesterol, for high blood pressure, oh, and also for atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm of the heart. And the doc has been prescribing these meds. And so I guess after about six months of being on the Plant Paradox, they stopped all the meds and didn’t tell the doctor.
And they had just gone to the doctor’s office, and the doctor said, “Now, aren’t you glad that I got you on these meds because you’re staying out of atrial fibrillation, and you have no high blood pressure, and this is going to be something that you’re going to do the rest of your life, and here’s your refills for next year.” And they posted it on Facebook. “Well, now I’ve got two years of prescriptions that I will never fill, and I don’t even bother discussing this with my doctor anymore because he’ll say, ‘That’s impossible,’ even though… He’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re actually taking them,’ or something like that.”

Jann Hales: 21:10 Right.

Dave Hales: 21:11 No, I mean, I’ve been off my medication for a year, and I hated being on it because you look at the list of side effects. I had reactions to them.

Jann Hales: 21:19 You feel the side effects.

Dave Hales: 21:19 I feel the side effects.

Jann Hales: 21:19 Dave has had an allergic reaction.

Dave Hales: 21:20 I hated being on immunosuppressants, but they had the conversation. “You’re either on the immunosuppressants, or you’re on the operating table, one or the other. You pick.”

Jann Hales: 21:32 Well, and Dave-

Dave Hales: 21:32 And I’ve been off them for a year now, and I feel better than ever. Fortunately, my GI has been supportive in that, “Hey, if it’s working, keep doing it.”

Steven Gundry: 21:42 Good for him or her. Yeah.

Dave Hales: 21:42 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 21:45 And Dave actually, with his Crohn’s disease, has had it so severe that he actually had a perforated bowel at one time. He went in in pain. They checked him, and they said, “You need to be on the operating table.” He had drove himself to the hospital, which is not okay, and called me at work and said, “Hey, I’m going to be having surgery and… ”

Steven Gundry: 22:12 Come on down.

Jann Hales: 22:12 I know.

Dave Hales: 22:12 That’s funny.

Jann Hales: 22:12 “Can you come over and pick me up at this time? I’m going to be on the operating table.” What? So.

Dave Hales: 22:18 Yeah. I’m glad to be off the meds and feeling awesome, and I’m going to-

Jann Hales: 22:23 It’s a miracle. It really is a miracle.

Dave Hales: 22:25 As long as we stick to the diet, and sometimes we cheat. I mean, we’re human beings. Sometimes…

Steven Gundry: 22:29 What happens when you cheat?

Dave Hales: 22:31 Immediately you feel it. Like, I can feel it… It’s weird. I feel it in my skin. I get rashes. My gut bloats up. I get in pain. My bowel movements are affected.

Jann Hales: 22:42 I feel it in my joints. My joints will start to get sore and just achy again.

Dave Hales: 22:47 And so quick.

Jann Hales: 22:49 Very quick.

Dave Hales: 22:49 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 22:51 Yeah, it’s funny. I take care of a lot kids with Crohn’s and actually with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and kids are the toughest probably because of peer pressure. But these kids actually echo exactly what you say. They will cheat, but what happens to them when they cheat is enough to just pull them right back. “Geez, eating that pizza at Tommy’s house wasn’t worth it.” Yeah, so the kids are the toughest in a way, but they’re the smartest in a way because they can’t rationalize, “Whoa, oh, oh, and my joints swelled up, and that’s no good.”

Jann Hales: 23:46 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dave Hales: 23:47 Yeah, we need to figure out how to get our kids, even though they’re adults, eating better because even though we do it and they see the result…

Jann Hales: 23:47 That’s definitely our goal.

Dave Hales: 23:53 … they still struggle. I mean, they don’t follow the diet, or they don’t even really eat that healthy, so.

Steven Gundry: 23:59 Well, yeah, and sometimes it’s really hard to get your own kids to follow what they see is happening to you.

Dave Hales: 23:59 Right.

Steven Gundry: 24:09 And they go, “Oh, I’m young. I’m immune to this.”

Dave Hales: 24:12 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 24:12 That’s it. “I’m young. I’m bulletproof. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

Steven Gundry: 24:17 But they have to realize that there is a genetic component to this, and they almost certainly react to lectins. They may not feel it yet, but it’s coming down the road.

Dave Hales: 24:17 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 24:17 Oh, it’s coming.

Steven Gundry: 24:35 Yeah, I’ve talked about… We have two daughters, one who has kind of been on the program almost for the last 15 years and is a real evangelist about the program. On the other hand, our oldest daughter was the antithesis of that and would not do it, would not listen, despite the fact that she was significantly overweight. She had horrible headaches, a lot of depression. And she has two kids, and a year and a half ago, I handed her The Plant Paradox for Christmas, and I said, “Look, don’t do this for me. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it for my grandkids.” And something snapped, and both she and her husband lost 50 pounds.

Dave Hales: 25:35 Wow!

Jann Hales: 25:36 Fantastic.

Steven Gundry: 25:37 And the kids, that’s all they eat. They’ve only eaten this now really for their whole lives.

Dave Hales: 25:44 Wow!

Jann Hales: 25:44 That’s perfect.

Steven Gundry: 25:44 And they love their chocolate cookies and… But the amazing thing is, and I love my daughters dearly, equally, but my daughter who wasn’t a very happy person, now she calls me up and says, “Hey, Dad.” This is now a 40 year old woman. “Hey, Dad. Man, you should… What a great day at work. And I’ve got this great recipe I made. I want to share it with you.” And I’m going, “Who is this really?”

Dave Hales: 26:14 That’s awesome. It really is.

Steven Gundry: 26:16 And I write about this in The Plant Paradox and in The Longevity Paradox that these bugs in us are actually in control of almost everything about our mood, about depression.

Jann Hales: 26:28 Absolutely.

Dave Hales: 26:28 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 26:29 And it’s amazing how you can change all this stuff that you thought was just something in your head. Well, it was something in your head, but it was coming from your bugs.

Dave Hales: 26:40 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 26:41 And after experiencing that, I can say for sure that is so true.

Speaker 4: 26:47 Dr. Steven Gundry’s latest book, The Longevity Paradox, is out now. Like his first New York Times bestseller, The Plant Paradox, this will be a game-changer in helping you reverse disease and live a long, vital life. Pick up a copy today at your local book store, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon, or download the audiobook on Audible.

Steven Gundry: 27:08 All right, so we get this question all the time, and you’re the perfect people to answer this question. How do you get your partner or significant other to join you in this journey when one of you wants to and the other is not so sure.

Dave Hales: 27:23 Well, I’ll tell you my story, and Jann may have a different one, but… I say… When people ask me that, sometimes when I respond on the thing, I’m like, “Even if your spouse isn’t going to do it with you, even if you’ll just go to them and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this diet. Hold me accountable.'” Because I do that with my kids. I’m like, “Hey, you guys, I’ve been off the diet. If you see me eating something, come to me.” And they will. Even though they don’t follow the diet, they’ll be, “Dad.”

Jann Hales: 27:51 They will.

Dave Hales: 27:52 “Is that Plant Paradox compliant?”

Jann Hales: 27:55 And that’s so helpful. And another thing is I feel like everyone, as a person, goes through waves of high motivation to low motivation. And a lot of times our waves will kind of vary. And so maybe at a point where I’m feeling like, “Oh, I just don’t want to do the preparation,” Dave will be like, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s plan this out. What are we going to do?” And so he kind of pushes me a little bit, and at his low motivation points, I push him.

Dave Hales: 28:23 Yeah, that’s true.

Jann Hales: 28:24 So it’s just a beautiful partnership that we have.

Dave Hales: 28:26 And I had to learn how to cook, and I enjoy it now because I think that helps too. So you both need to become kind of chefs in the kitchen, because I think it’s a lot to ask one person to… unless they have a lot of time, but…

Jann Hales: 28:39 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Gundry: 28:40 No, or I’m usually the cook, but my wife is the sous chef and chops and-

Dave Hales: 28:46 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jann Hales: 28:46 There you go.

Steven Gundry: 28:48 She does the cleanup.

Dave Hales: 28:48 Yeah, exactly.

Jann Hales: 28:50 We have deals like that. We definitely do that. One of us kind of cooks, the other one cleans up.

Steven Gundry: 28:55 Okay, all right. And I do love your idea. It’s amazing how many families tell me that their kids are the enforcers.

Dave Hales: 29:04 Right.

Steven Gundry: 29:05 Yeah, it’s really interesting.

Dave Hales: 29:06 They really are.

Steven Gundry: 29:07 I go, “I can’t believe I told my kids to do this.”

Jann Hales: 29:09 Kids love to police.

Steven Gundry: 29:10 Because they rat me out and…

Dave Hales: 29:12 Right, that’s true. Yeah, it’s true.

Steven Gundry: 29:14 So when you started all this, did you really think you were going to do a YouTube channel about this or…

Dave Hales: 29:23 The story behind the YouTube channel is I have a background in filmmaking. I mean, I went to school for that. I’ve kind of worked on and off in television and movies throughout my life. So I kind of have the notion to record things because you just never know.

Jann Hales: 29:23 All the time.

Dave Hales: 29:42 So I thought, “You know what? We’re starting this new diet. We’re going to do it together.” I initially thought by us, by telling Jann to use her phone and me to use my phone, it sort of gave us like a babysitter. Like, oh, we have to record today to talk about what we did, almost making a journal. And I thought, “You know what? I’m going to throw it on YouTube mostly for family and friends. And then who knows? Maybe somebody who’s doing this diet will find our videos.” And a lot more people found it than we thought.

Steven Gundry: 30:08 Yeah, yeah.

Jann Hales: 30:08 That’s for sure.

Dave Hales: 30:09 The review video we did on there is about 300,000 views, and that was never part of the plan.

Jann Hales: 30:09 Mm-mm (negative).

Dave Hales: 30:15 And then we found that that community and the support and all the testimonials that people were sharing with us, that just motivated us to keep doing it. And now we-

Jann Hales: 30:26 Very inspiring.

Dave Hales: 30:27 So now, yeah, we do… We try to do at least one video a week.

Jann Hales: 30:30 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Gundry: 30:32 Good for you.

Dave Hales: 30:33 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 30:33 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 30:36 What was the easiest part of doing all this, if you could choose one thing?

Jann Hales: 30:42 I feel like the easiest part, well, just the encouragement, especially for myself, because so quickly all of the pain and suffering I had been going through, it was working doing the diet. And so that was the greatest reward. I mean, that made it… Giving up the sugar, and I love sugar.

Dave Hales: 31:04 That was the hardest part.

Jann Hales: 31:06 That was the hardest part. And it was nice that we had the video proof of that, so people can look and say, “Well, it wasn’t just all roses and sunshine.” It was hard. It was hard changing our style of eating, but we did it and-

Dave Hales: 31:22 Right. I think the easiest part for me that I tell people was becoming a food snob, because I had eaten so much crap food and not realized all these healthy foods, how much better they taste. I became a food snob. I’m like, “I’m not eating that. Is it grass fed? Where’s that cheese from? If it’s not Italian, I’m not eating it because that’s… ” Like, it was so easy to become a food snob because, not only is it healthy for you, but the food just tastes so much better.

Jann Hales: 31:50 Amazing. It’s incredible how often we will invite people over for dinner and cook a recipe and, “This is amazing. This is so good.” It’s really fun.

Dave Hales: 32:03 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 32:04 I’ll never forget the first time we took lemon cod liver oil and mixed it in with our olive oil in a salad dressing when we had guests over, and they’re raving about the salad. And they go, “What’s your secret?” And I said, “Oh, cod liver oil.” And they’re like, “Yugh, yugh, yugh.” True story.

Dave Hales: 32:27 I believe it. I believe it.

Steven Gundry: 32:30 All right, so you guys obviously have lots of followers. Give me three tips for somebody who’s thinking about doing this or just diving in. Go ahead. Try one.

Jann Hales: 32:46 Be prepared. Be prepared. Be prepared. We found that if we can sit down together on Friday, Saturday, and say, “This is our meal plan for the week. Okay, do we have all of our snacks? What shopping do we need to do? Let’s get a list and have it all.” I will hard boil eggs. I will set up little nut packs so that I can just, as I’m heading out for work for the day, I can grab each of my snacks. I’ll pre-freeze meals. I have all that because we would find that if we hadn’t prepared and we were tired, we were hungry, “Well, let’s just have something that’s going to make us feel terrible.”

Dave Hales: 33:33 Let’s just get fast food just once.

Jann Hales: 33:36 Just once we can do this. So the more prepared you are, the more geared you are for the week, the smoother it’s going to be.

Dave Hales: 33:45 Yeah. And then for me, I think the tip that I always tell people who are going to try this diet, and this was straight out of your book, and I think in your book you say, “Give me two weeks.”

Steven Gundry: 33:56 Yep.

Dave Hales: 33:56 I tell people, “Take it to three and do it 100%, and I mean, do not cheat,” because I’m tired of people saying, “I tried diet A, B, or C,” and then you talk to them, and you’re like, “You didn’t really do it.”

Jann Hales: 34:08 Mm-mm (negative).

Dave Hales: 34:10 You’ve got to treat it like a marriage. If you’re cheating, it’s not going to work.

Jann Hales: 34:12 Yes.

Dave Hales: 34:14 So give it three weeks and do it 100%, because then I figure they’ll probably at least make it two weeks.

Steven Gundry: 34:20 That’s true.

Dave Hales: 34:21 Yeah, so…

Steven Gundry: 34:22 Yeah, you’ve got to go all the way on this. I’ve got posters of Yoda and Yoda dolls in my exam room, and everybody looks at Yoda in my exam room and go, “What’s Yoda doing in there?” I say, “Because Yoda says do or do not. There is no try.”

Dave Hales: 34:39 Right, right.

Jann Hales: 34:39 There is no try.

Dave Hales: 34:39 Right. Yeah, you have to do it.

Steven Gundry: 34:41 And I get so many patients that come in and say, “This diet doesn’t work or this program doesn’t work,” and I’m looking at their labs.

Jann Hales: 34:41 And you just point to Yoda.

Steven Gundry: 34:52 Yeah. And we’ll do… So I’ll say, “Well, what did you have for breakfast yesterday?” “A bagel.” And I go, “Huh?” “Well, that was special because I was out that day, and that was all there was.” And it just goes on. And I used to have people do two-week food diaries and-

Jann Hales: 35:11 That’s smart.

Steven Gundry: 35:13 And it got to be too comical because, “Well, that day, that doesn’t count.” And then you’d see birthday cake. “Well, it was an office party, and I didn’t want to be… ” Well, no, you either do this or you don’t, particularly with autoimmune disease.

Jann Hales: 35:32 Absolutely.

Dave Hales: 35:33 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 35:34 Unfortunately, as you both know, you really can’t cheat.

Jann Hales: 35:38 You cannot cheat.

Steven Gundry: 35:39 You’ll pay the price.

Jann Hales: 35:42 You will pay.

Steven Gundry: 35:42 Yeah.

Dave Hales: 35:43 And I figure it’s not asking much to say, “100%, anybody can do that.” I mean, you can. You’ve just got to decide to do it.

Jann Hales: 35:49 You can. You just have to put your mind to it.

Steven Gundry: 35:51 Yeah, I just ask people to eat like it’s 9,999 years ago, to coin prince.

Dave Hales: 35:57 I like that.

Steven Gundry: 35:57 Yeah. None of this current stuff existed. None of us ate this stuff, and it’s amazing to think about really what we’ve eaten in the last 50 years, the changes.

Jann Hales: 35:57 Absolutely.

Dave Hales: 35:57 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 36:16 Yeah, so. And I talk about in The Plant Paradox, there was a wonderful doctoral dissertation from Akron University, and I’m sorry I don’t remember her name right now. But she looked at the change in consumption of kids from 1900 to the year 2000, what changed in them. And it was called From Farm to Fat Kids, and it looked at everything: sodas, sugars, everything. The only two things that they found was consistent causing obesity in American kids over the last 100 years was the change in pizza consumption and the change in fried chicken consumption.

Dave Hales: 36:55 Wow!

Steven Gundry: 36:55 Yeah.

Dave Hales: 36:56 Not surprising, but yeah, wow!

Steven Gundry: 36:58 Yeah. We forget the pizza wasn’t invented until 1898. It didn’t exist. And we forget that chicken was actually incredibly rare to eat as a food because they were too valuable as hens that laid eggs.

Dave Hales: 36:58 Right.

Jann Hales: 37:16 Right.

Steven Gundry: 37:16 And the only time we ever ate a chicken was when the old hen couldn’t lay anymore, and she became a stewing chicken because she was so tough. And that’s why an instant pot is so useful for pastured chicken because they’re pretty tough.

Dave Hales: 37:31 Right.

Steven Gundry: 37:31 It really helps. Yeah, okay. So you got any favorite Plant Paradox recipes?

Jann Hales: 37:38 I really enjoy the recipes in the book.

Dave Hales: 37:38 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 37:41 They’re fabulous.

Dave Hales: 37:43 They’re amazing.

Jann Hales: 37:43 We feed them to our kids, to friends that come over for dinner. Actually, one of my favorites is by Annabelle Lee. She’s behind California-

Dave Hales: 37:43 Country Girl.

Steven Gundry: 37:43 Country Girl.

Jann Hales: 37:54 Country Girl.

Steven Gundry: 37:55 Yep.

Jann Hales: 37:55 Yes, and she was on your show. That’s how we learned about her actually.

Steven Gundry: 37:58 Yeah, on this podcast.

Jann Hales: 38:00 Yes.

Steven Gundry: 38:00 So now you and her are, you know, like this.

Jann Hales: 38:02 We really are. She’s wonderful. She’s come on our show. She’s cooked with us. One of my favorite things she makes is a meatless chicken nugget. We fed that from kids to adults. Everyone has really enjoyed that.

Dave Hales: 38:16 And then just to give my wife some credit, she took a recipe, the artichoke, the fried artichoke recipe from The Plant Paradox book and said, “I wonder if we could make a batter out of that same mix and use it to coat cocktail shrimp and then make shrimp tacos?” And so we put them in cassava flour, and we toyed with it a little bit and made some shrimp taco recipe with just lettuce, some-

Jann Hales: 38:44 A little bit of lime.

Dave Hales: 38:45 A little lime and-

Jann Hales: 38:46 Goat cheese.

Dave Hales: 38:47 Goat cheese. Well, the goat cheddar cheese.

Jann Hales: 38:50 Avocados.

Dave Hales: 38:50 And there’s some avocados, and they are… We serve them to people.

Jann Hales: 38:51 On a cassava tortilla.

Dave Hales: 38:53 And people think they’re some of the best tacos they’ve ever eaten. And I don’t even tell them they’re healthy because then-

Steven Gundry: 38:58 Why ruin it for them?

Dave Hales: 38:59 Like the cod liver oil story.

Steven Gundry: 38:59 That’s right.

Jann Hales: 39:01 Yes.

Steven Gundry: 39:03 Well, we have our great recipe developer, Kate, in the studio today.

Dave Hales: 39:08 Yes, yes. So I need to tell that our son, who’s the pickiest eater, his favorite recipe is Dr. G’s chile. If we made a whole batch of it and left it for him, he would not complain. So that was some really good chile.

Steven Gundry: 39:20 Very good. All right. So you’ve got a lot of followers, and you’ve helped a lot of people. Got a favorite story that you’ve gotten back from any of your followers?

Dave Hales: 39:31 It’s hard to narrow it down to a favorite story, but I think the-

Steven Gundry: 39:35 Oh, choose one.

Dave Hales: 39:35 Okay. I think the thing is is I have a lady who is her late 70s, I think she was 78 or 79, and suffered from a whole list of things and had a whole list of medications she was on. And she said, “I found out about this… ” Sorry. She said, “I found out about the Plant Paradox,” because she came and watched one of our recipe videos. And then she saw our review, and then she got your book and read it. And she said, “Six months later, I’m off all of my medications. At 79 years old, I feel better than I have in the last,” I think it was 20 years. And that kind of validated like… We felt like we were kind of contributing in a way, like helping bring awareness. That happens all the time now, but that’s my favorite story. Yeah.

Jann Hales: 40:26 Yes, and the love and support, it’s incredible, and really it’s wonderful for everyone to have the support system when you have people around you that are not eating healthy, and you’re like, “Well, maybe just one bite.” No, no. We’re going to stick to this diet. We want to feel good, and we have felt amazing.

Steven Gundry: 40:48 One of your most famous videos is the seven myths of the Plant Paradox.

Dave Hales: 40:54 Yeah, that’s one I wanted to do for a long time because, as you can probably imagine, we get a lot of people commenting, emailing, contacting us through Instagram to let us know how stupid we are for being duped. And I’m like, “Tell my gut that. Live my life.” Even if it is placebo effect-

Steven Gundry: 41:09 Snake-oil salesman.

Dave Hales: 41:11 Even if it’s snake oil or placebo, I’m like, “I don’t care what it is. It’s working.”

Jann Hales: 41:11 It’s working.

Dave Hales: 41:15 Who cares? You know what I mean?

Steven Gundry: 41:17 So what are those seven myths? Go.

Dave Hales: 41:20 That you can’t eat tomatoes, that you can’t eat beans, that you can’t eat fruit, that you…

Jann Hales: 41:30 No lectins.

Dave Hales: 41:31 … and no grains at all and that you… What’s the other one I said?

Jann Hales: 41:35 Lectins.

Dave Hales: 41:36 Oh, that all lectins are bad.

Steven Gundry: 41:38 Hm, yeah.

Dave Hales: 41:38 And then the other one that I put out there as a myth, but it’s just to help people understand, was that you absolutely have to pressure cook beans to remove all the lectins, because I’d seen some people say, “Well, what about the people who don’t have pressure cookers? They live in a third-world country or whatever.” I’m like, well, you can still…

Jann Hales: 41:59 Soak.

Dave Hales: 41:59 … prepare them. It’s just that if you have a pressure cooker, you should use a pressure cooker.

Jann Hales: 42:05 Because it’s so easy.

Steven Gundry: 42:06 It’s so easy.

Dave Hales: 42:06 Yeah, it’s so easy, so easy. So those are the myths. And what people don’t realize, I think, is they either haven’t read the book or they didn’t get to Phase 3, and they just don’t understand the program. They see the yes/no list in Phase 2 and think that’s the program, and I’m like, “Well, finish the book.” So yeah.

Steven Gundry: 42:25 Yeah. I recently had a new patient originally from India, and it was interesting. They said, “Well, everybody in India knows that when we have pulses like chickpeas or lentils, you have to pressure cook them.”

Dave Hales: 42:40 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 42:41 Yes.

Steven Gundry: 42:42 And she said, “My mother taught me that. My grandmother taught her.” And she said, “We’d blow up a few pressure cookers, but everybody knows you’ve got to do that.” And I said, “Well, how did everybody know?” And she said, “Well, because grandmother lived with us… ”

Jann Hales: 42:55 Passed it down.

Steven Gundry: 43:02 “… and passed it down.” Okay, so you’re superstars of the internet. You have vibrant health. You’re both going to live to 120.

Dave Hales: 43:02 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 43:11 And in good health. What’s next? Where do you go from here?

Dave Hales: 43:15 Well, it sounds like a book plug, but in reality your Longevity Paradox book came out at the perfect time for us because we are deciding what do we do here? And now we realize this is a lifelong thing. Our goal is to just be healthy as long as we can possible, and we’ve decided we’re going to stay on the Plant Paradox lifetime.

Jann Hales: 43:34 Lifetime.

Dave Hales: 43:35 And we’ll probably stick with intermittent fasting…

Jann Hales: 43:37 Yes.

Dave Hales: 43:37 … for that time too because that has been a lot easier… When I first saw you say, “I only eat one meal a day,” I was like, “That’s crazy. Nobody can do that.” I do that all the time now. It’s not that hard. So I think that’s kind of our longterm goal.

Jann Hales: 43:52 And also we would love to get our kids…

Dave Hales: 43:55 Yeah, the kids.

Jann Hales: 43:56 … on the ball, and get them on the program just because we have enjoyed such good health. And when you have that in your life, you want to share. You want to share the good news and say, “Hey, do you want to feel awesome for the rest of your life? Do you want to be mobile?” And we just love sharing the message. Also, I know we’re starting to exercise.

Dave Hales: 44:19 Yeah, exercise for sure.

Jann Hales: 44:20 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Steven Gundry: 44:21 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 44:21 Which has been very limited with everything that’s going on, so we’re excited about that.

Steven Gundry: 44:29 Good, good. I read a book a couple years ago, actually before I started writing The Longevity Paradox. The book is called I’m Going to Live to 120, and it basically says, “Okay.” The guy is 60 when he writes this, and he says, “Okay, I have decided that I’m going to live to 120 years of age. What am I going to do now that I have decided to live that long to do that?” And so he breaks down. “Okay, here is… I’m going to do this. That’s what I’m going to do. And how am I going to get there, and what am I going to do along the way?” And I think that’s a great way to look at it, rather than we’re just rushing for the end and it doesn’t look very pretty.

Jann Hales: 45:17 Right.

Steven Gundry: 45:19 We’re not rushing to the end, right?

Dave Hales: 45:21 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 45:21 We’re enjoying it. Smelling the roses along the way.

Dave Hales: 45:24 Right.

Steven Gundry: 45:24 Okay. Well, good. Normally, we have an audience question, but today we have the audience here. So Jann and Dave, you’re going to ask me questions.

Dave Hales: 45:37 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 45:38 All right. And I love this question, so go ahead. Give me the first question.

Dave Hales: 45:41 My question is, because I have Crohn’s disease, even though I feel great, I can’t eat some of the cruciferous foods. Even basic iceberg lettuce, if I eat too much of it, I bloat up, I get cramping. I want to get to… And I haven’t even dared to eat spinach, broccoli, kale for the entire time I’ve been on the Plant Paradox because it affects me so badly. So I want to know can I get my gut to a point to tolerate that and is there…

Jann Hales: 45:41 And health.

Dave Hales: 46:06 Or are there supplements I can take to… because I feel like I’m missing out on those nutrients, so…

Steven Gundry: 46:10 It’s interesting. I just did a podcast with Ben Greenfield this week, and Ben has actually had an epiphany. Ben gets to have lots of epiphanies. And Ben says, “For years, I was cramming kale smoothies down me. I was eating green four times a day, and then… ” I can’t remember if he said I listened to you or something, but you started talking about tubers and resistant starches, and of course, in The Longevity Paradox I talk a lot about that. And he says, “So I just made a change, and now I’m eating mostly resistant starches, and I’m not eating very many greens.” And he said, “What do you think about that?” Well, well hidden in The Plant Paradox is if you have any GI issues, if you have irritable bowel, if you have Crohn’s, if you have colitis, don’t come near these greens.

Dave Hales: 47:14 Right.

Steven Gundry: 47:15 What people… It’s hard to get people to realize that all plants have lectins in them, and they are the defense system. And bitter greens are bitter because they’re trying to tell you that you don’t really want to eat me because I’m going to attack you. And I’ll tell you a personal story that I’ve shared before. A few years ago, my wife Penny bought a NutriBullet, right?

Dave Hales: 47:41 Right, right.

Steven Gundry: 47:41 And she said, “I’m going to make you a kale smoothie, a pure kale smoothie.” Now we eat kale and do fine with it. So she made a kale smoothie, and I drink it on the way to work, and about an hour later, br, br, br, br and intense cramps and then…

Jann Hales: 48:01 I know.

Steven Gundry: 48:02 … a few hours later, I’m on the toilet, and I go, “What the heck? I eat kale all the time.” Well, what I hadn’t realized was I was eating kale leaves, and it was taking quite a while for my digestion to break all those down and slowly hit those lectins. What she had done inadvertently is expose every one of those lectins to an instant bomb.

Jann Hales: 48:27 Oh, wow!

Dave Hales: 48:27 Oh, yeah.

Steven Gundry: 48:28 So yeah. So that’s why you, in general, number one, maybe can never eat those things.

Dave Hales: 48:35 Okay.

Steven Gundry: 48:35 But number two, you don’t have to worry about those things.

Dave Hales: 48:39 Well, that’s good.

Steven Gundry: 48:40 I happen to think there are some excellent components in cruciferous vegetables that you can take as a supplement, and I actually list them in the book. So you’re not missing out on anything. Now having said that, don’t beat yourself up that you’re missing out on something, okay?

Dave Hales: 49:03 Right, okay.

Steven Gundry: 49:05 We also had Dave Asprey on this program, and Dave thinks kale is just lethal and you should never eat kale, so don’t feel bad.

Dave Hales: 49:13 So I’ll think of that.

Steven Gundry: 49:13 Okay. All right, no, so you’re not missing out on anything. And make sure when people are watching your YouTube, if you’ve got a bowel issue, that’s kind of the last thing I want to get in you right now, and if you really want to get those things in you, then cook them to their death before you eat them. They should be-

Dave Hales: 49:36 Because that helps.

Steven Gundry: 49:37 They should be mush.

Dave Hales: 49:38 Okay.

Steven Gundry: 49:39 And actually try an experiment. Pressure cook them and see what you think.

Dave Hales: 49:43 Oh, okay.

Steven Gundry: 49:43 Okay?

Dave Hales: 49:44 In small quantities.

Steven Gundry: 49:49 In small… Yeah, little, tiny doses. Okay, Jann, your turn.

Jann Hales: 49:52 Okay. So as you know, Dave and I have been on the Plant Paradox program for about two years. At the beginning of the year we decided to introduce intermittent fasting, and then about six weeks ago, we decided to do kind of a keto version of the Plant Paradox. I’ve noticed, in that six week time, I’ve lost 10 pounds and about 6 1/2 inches off my waist. I want to continue to lose a little more weight. Before I had my health issues, I was a very small… I was like a size 6 on heavy days, and I’d like to get back down to that. Do you think that I should continue the keto component along with Plant Paradox, or what would your advice be with that and maintaining that size?

Dave Hales: 50:48 Do you have to be on keto your whole life, so to speak, you know?

Steven Gundry: 50:51 [inaudible 00:50:51] who think they’re on a ketogenic diet actually are never in ketosis, and I measure ketones in our office on blood work and…

Jann Hales: 50:51 Right.

Steven Gundry: 51:03 One of the mistakes, and I talk about this quite a bit, is that people somehow think a ketogenic diet is a lot of protein, and it’s absolutely not.

Jann Hales: 51:13 Yes.

Steven Gundry: 51:14 And you’ll notice chapter 10 of The Plant Paradox is the keto version of The Plant Paradox, and I basically want people to eat about 80% of their calories as fat, preferably olive oil or avocados.

Dave Hales: 51:29 Yep.

Steven Gundry: 51:29 If you don’t have the APOE4 gene, and 30% of people do, coconut oil is great. MCT oil is probably safe for everybody. So you can stay on that program really the rest of your life. But I think one of the things we have to realize is that there’s no evidence that our ancestors were always in ketosis. And certainly, looking at modern hunter/gatherers who still live in primitive conditions, they clearly go through periods of ketosis, where there wasn’t any food or they’re walking 20 or 30 miles to the next campground. But when they hit the jackpot, when it’s fruit season, or they find a hive, or the animals are fat and they’re all around them and you can reach out and grab an animal, they’ll eat everything in sight.
And so the idea that we should always be in ketosis, I think, is a big mistake. Dr. Joseph Mercola admitted that being in ketosis chronically made him worse. To Dr. Mercola’s credit, when he does something, he dives in 100% to find out what’s going to happen. And he’s even now backed off that water fasting, which a year ago he thought was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and we know how bad sliced bread is for you.

Jann Hales: 53:06 Yes, we do.

Steven Gundry: 53:07 So he now says, “I made a big mistake in recommending prolonged water fasting.” And I talk about that in The Longevity Paradox, that people don’t realize that we store our heavy metals in our fat cells. And when we lose weight rapidly, those heavy metals come out of our fat cells, and our liver unfortunately has really a lousy system for detoxification of heavy metals. This was actually proven years ago in the Biosphere 2 experiment in Arizona, and if you don’t know about it-

Jann Hales: 53:46 Oh, yeah, I’m familiar with it.

Steven Gundry: 53:47 So these guys lost about a third of their weight in six months, and one of the medical doctors, Roy Walford from UCLA, actually chronicled their heavy metals. And they went sky high, and they stayed high for a year before they came down to normal. So prolonged water fasting, I think, prolonged rapid weight loss is not a good idea, and it’s okay to cycle. Dr. Mercola likes you to break your ketosis once a week. He does it with fruit because he’s got two acres of organic fruit where he lives on his property. I think it’s better to break it with resistant starch, like a purple sweet potato or something like that. Okay?

Jann Hales: 54:33 Okay.

Dave Hales: 54:33 Yeah, that’s amazing.

Steven Gundry: 54:33 And then get right on it.

Jann Hales: 54:33 Thank you.

Dave Hales: 54:35 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 54:35 All right.

Dave Hales: 54:36 Good.

Steven Gundry: 54:36 Thank you for those good questions.

Dave Hales: 54:38 Yeah.

Jann Hales: 54:38 Thank you.

Steven Gundry: 54:38 Yeah, that’s… Your question was spectacular because you guys with GI issues, just don’t go there. It’ll be all right.

Dave Hales: 54:49 But every healthy recipe has spinach, kale. They’re like the staples. I’m like, “Come on, guys.”

Steven Gundry: 54:54 Yeah. So even though I say, “More bitter more better,” in you that bitterness is saying, “You don’t want to eat me.”

Dave Hales: 55:03 But olive oil, that’s okay then?

Steven Gundry: 55:05 Yeah. Olive oil you’re great with.

Dave Hales: 55:06 Yeah.

Steven Gundry: 55:07 Okay, Dave and Jann, it’s so great to finally meet you. Please keep up the evangelical work. You’ve obviously been duped, and thanks for drinking the Kool-Aid.

Dave Hales: 55:19 We’ve got some right here.

Steven Gundry: 55:19 Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So let’s all have some Kool-Aid. All right, so that’s it for the Dr. Gundry Podcast live with YouTube. So tune in next week. I am Dr. Gundry because I’m always looking out for you.
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 can always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/Dr. Gundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.