Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.

Dr. Gundry (00:13):
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Kimberly Snyder (01:21):
Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. My goal is to help you develop a holistic lifestyle based on Four Cornerstone philosophy: food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. This holistic approach will help you feel good, which I define as being connected to your most authentic, highest self. And this is the place from which your energy, confidence, creativity, true power and true beauty will start to explode. Every week we provide you with interviews from top experts in their field or a solo-cast from yours truly, to support you in living your most beautiful, healthy and joyful life. I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder. Founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and holistic wellness, nutrition and meditation teacher. Let’s get started.

Dr. Gundry (02:21):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Well, it seems like every year more and more patients come to my office with full-blown food allergies. It is not my imagination either. Since the year 2000, the rate of food allergy in the global population has nearly doubled in the last 20 years. And in the US it’s estimated that as many as 26 million adults and at least 5 million children may have an allergy to peanuts, shellfish, dairy or other foods.
Well, according to my guest today, there is something that you can do about it. Dr. Kari Nadeau is the Director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University, and one of the world’s leading experts on food allergies. Along with her co-author, Sloan Barnett, she’s written a brand new book called The End of Food Allergy: The First Program To Prevent and Reverse a 21st Century Epidemic. On today’s episode, Dr. Nadeau and I are going to bust some food allergy myths, talk about the best way to prevent your child from suffering from food allergies, and discuss how to get rid of food allergies for good.
Kari, it’s so great to have you on the podcast and nice to meet you.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (03:46):
Thank you so much for inviting me here, Dr. Gundry. It’s wonderful to talk together.

Dr. Gundry (03:51):
Let’s start with the origins of food allergies. One popular idea is something that I think a lot of people have heard about, the hygiene hypothesis. What is that? And what does the latest science say?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (04:07):
That’s a great question. One of the items that we talk about in the book is just like you said, the epidemic of food allergy is upon us. It’s been rising over the past 40 years. There are a lot of environmental cues that are increasing food allergy, as well as allergies and asthma. These are not fun diseases to have. And one of the things that science showed us is that for people that were living on farms, or were eating natural foods, that was really important to their diets and good microbiome, that those people were relatively protected against allergies and asthma. And with all of that knowledge over the past 20 years and as civilization has moved forward and as we have more systematic ways of putting preservatives in foods and having foods be tainted in a way that’s not natural, that has increased the rate of allergies and food allergies in particular.
It’s thought that the hygiene hypothesis is part of that whole idea of being good with “dirt”, being in the farm, eating fresh and good vegetables and having really good diets that are healthy for ourselves. Because otherwise, if we’re too clean as it were, then with too much disinfectants, too much detergents, that hygiene can actually create havoc on our gut sometimes and on our immune system. And that can lead to allergies. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t get vaccinated. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t avoid viruses. That’s not the type of dirt I’m saying to try to understand. What I’m talking about his back when my grandmother was a farmer, the type of lifestyle that people had to be able to be more connected to the environment in a natural way was better.

Dr. Gundry (06:08):
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. //I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, the post World War II days, and we all had victory gardens that had been started in World War II, and we would go out to the garden and pull up a carrot and brush it off on our pants and eat it.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (06:30):
Exactly.

Dr. Gundry (06:30):
Right?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (06:31):
Absolutely.

Dr. Gundry (06:32):
And when I was raising my kids in the ’80s, we had a victory garden and we did the exact same thing. And then there was this movement that said, “Oh, my gosh, think of the germs. You can’t do that. You got to triple scrub it and do a vegetable wash.” So, do we get that all wrong? I mean, should we have learned from our grandparents and parents?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (07:01):
Yeah, I think to some degree, as long as the earth that provided the nourishment for those wonderful vegetables and materials that come out of the earth, as long as that earth isn’t filled with pesticides or [inaudible 00:07:15], then yes, we should just take it out of the ground like you did and brush it off and have a little bit. We need to make sure our planet is healthy and we need to make sure we are healthy ourselves. But yes, we probably need a little bit more good microbiome. And we’ve done a lot of studies now to teach our immune system back to those natural ways and it’s all a balance. We don’t want to have toxic things in the earth. We understand that we don’t want to have infections like what we call botulism.
There are some things that we still need to worry about. But within the balance of understanding what the earth provides us and how to eat well, and how to make sure that we have a little bit of good microbiome, that’s helpful. We talk about in the book, the interesting finding that if you grew up with a dog at home in the first year of life, that also protects you. So that connection, even though hopefully you don’t get a dog if you’re allergic to the dog, but if you do have the chance to have a dog in the first year of life, it seems to help protect you. And that’s probably because the dog is bringing in dirt back and forth from the yard and you’re living with that.

Dr. Gundry (08:25):
Yeah, that’s a really great point and something I often emphasized on a lot of my podcasts. I actually write prescriptions for people to get a dog. And it’s actually some of my most popular prescriptions-

Dr. Kari Nadeau (08:38):
I love it.

Dr. Gundry (08:39):
… but you’re right. And I talk about this in all my books and in the upcoming energy paradox that dogs have huge benefits to your microbiome. And actually, if you have an outdoor cat, which I used to have, they do the benefit if they’re outdoor.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (08:57):
Absolutely. The more animals, the better actually. And your books are wonderful on explaining that. There’s a lot of benefits to being more outdoors, being one with nature, being able to talk to your doctor about what’s good, what’s bad reading your books, because this hygiene hypothesis is important. But it’s not to say that everyone who lives in a farm isn’t going to get food allergy. There are some rare circumstances. What we try to do in the book is to put some nice how tos and give it as a tool set because we know enough now with the food allergy epidemic as to how to try to prevent it. And that’s great that we have that knowledge now.

Dr. Gundry (09:39):
You talk about in the book, there’s a connection between food allergy and the skin. What’s going on there?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (09:48):
Yeah, sure. Great question. Our skin is beautiful. It protects us from the outside environment and our skin as you know, Dr. Gundry, lines the outside, but also lines the inside of our bodies like the gut, and the lungs, because anything that touches air is basically skin to our body. And so what we learned and as well as many other people around the world, is that unfortunately, now babies are born. And for example, babies born in London, 50% are born and get dry skin and eczema and cracked skin in the first three months of life. And what happens there is when that dry skin opens up, both in the lungs, in the gut, as well as outside to the air in our typical skin, that leaves an opening, even if it only can be seen under the microscope. And dust from the air, which typically includes allergens, food allergens too, unfortunately, that comes in.
And all these molecules in the food, some of them are wonderful, but some of them, if put into the wrong circumstance, in the wrong environment, they can really increase inflammation. And so that’s exactly what happens here, from the dust in the air. And people have shown this to be true. This is not just some hypothetical, there’s so much science behind this. It gets into the skin and activates the allergic pathways that were meant in the old times to get rid of parasites. When parasites entered our lungs, or gut, or skin, our body automatically started itching and creating redness and trying to push that parasite out and making tons of mucus so that it would just slip out. And unfortunately, now our bodies have a misfiring. And when that happens with dry skin, we have these bad allergies.
And so it’s really unfortunate, but what we talk about in the book is, well, how can we prevent that dry skin from happening in the first place? Using better detergents, using detergents that are healthy for the planet, and they’re healthy for you, using detergents that don’t have a lot of chemicals and toxins in them will help decrease that dry skin. And then using natural lipids to replenish that skin is also really helpful to try to prevent allergies.

Dr. Gundry (12:08):
You got any favorite natural lipids that you recommend?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (12:14):
Yeah, this is a great question. Oftentimes, what’s out there in the community, and there’s a lot of skin products as you and I know. And I’m sure that your audience has a really good grasp on the different skin products. A lot of them are petroleum based, a lot of them are wax based. And these aren’t necessarily natural. This is not what our skin typically needs. It needs natural lipids. And so people have studied what is naturally missing in people and children with eczema and dry skin. And it’s ceramide. It’s like these glycerols. So there are these manufactured lotions now. One is called EpiCeram. It’s called a tri-lipid, and it gets back exactly what the skin is missing. I’m hopeful that as we understand more about our science, we’re going to understand more about all the amazing aspects of the skin and how to make sure it stays healthy.

Dr. Gundry (13:15):
Well, I am always reminded that Sophia Loren said that her beauty secret was she not only drank olive oil, but she smeared olive oil on her skin. So what the heck?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (13:27):
Yep. Natural stuff.

Dr. Gundry (13:31):
I’m going with olive oil.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (13:33):
Exactly. Good. Good idea. Yeah.

Dr. Gundry (13:37):
Part of the hygiene hypothesis has been that our microbiome has a huge effect in educating our immune system. And even our microbiome probably has a huge effect on, for lack of a better word, eating some of our potential allergens for themselves. What do you think? Is our microbiome just decimated? Is there no hope? What do we do about that?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (14:12):
That’s a great question. I love reading the statistics that we as living organisms, we’re 99% bacteria and 1% us. But living organisms that go around and travel with us every day, they’re pretty much mostly bacteria. And so what we’ve learned is there are some really great bacteria that live with us that can really create, like you’re saying, good gut health, good gut linings, provide factors that protect the skin in our gut and even in our lung. And so the question is, how do we make sure in our diet that we can get that? And we need to be careful but there are a lot of data coming out with fermented foods and fiber and fresh vegetables. But the microbiome that we know to be helpful to fight against allergies or to try to mitigate and reduce allergies are bacteroides species and lactobacillus. And those are the two and some clostridial species that they found to be highly protective.
With that, what do we do with that information now? Now I think we need to do some more science and studies to understand what degree of that microbiome should help our guts. But I do agree with you, in general, we need to really understand how to eat better, so that we can populate our living organism with living bacteria that help us synergistically. Unfortunately, a lot of people with the diets that they have now, it’s not happening and it wreaks havoc. It and causes problems and inflammation and immune system deterioration. So if people can get in the habit of reading your books, following some of your measures for good healthy diets, I do believe that that will help in general reserve good microbiome.

Dr. Gundry (16:10):
Well, thank you for saying that. The Checks in the Mail, seriously enough.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (16:13):
Yeah.

Dr. Gundry (16:15):
Okay. Speaking of my recommendations, as my listeners know, I’m a huge fan of upping your vitamin D levels for health. What does your research show about vitamin D status and allergies?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (16:30):
Yeah, this is great, Dr. Gundry. We’ve talked about some of the reasons why food allergies are on the rise. In some people they’re doubling every 10 years. And we talked about dirt, we talked about dry skin, we talked about dogs. And then there’s two other Ds that need to be taken care of to be able to prevent allergies. And one of them, like you mentioned is vitamin D. And our colleagues in Australia realized that for all the wonderful prevention they’re trying to do for skin cancer in Australia, they did Slip-Slop-Slap. And so they put all the sunscreen on all the children in Australia early on. And that’s great. But they noticed that the rate of allergies in Australia was gone through the roof. It’s almost 10% of all the kids. And my colleague Katie Ellen and her group did a lot of work on this. And they studied 300 different factors. And the one factor that came out was the fact that the kids that had the higher likelihood of food allergy were those kids that had the lower vitamin D levels.
All that’s to say, is that science is behind what I’m going to mention now, which is if people can get better levels of vitamin D, through different features, not necessarily to have to not wear sunscreen, we want people to wear sunscreen, but vitamin D matters. We know that vitamin D helps our immune system. But like anything, there has to be a balance. You can’t go too much, you can’t go too little. So to talk to people like you Dr. Gundry and others to make sure that there’s equilibrium and that we get good levels of vitamin D. That comes with eating a good healthy diet and that does help reduce allergies.

Dr. Gundry (18:15):
Good to hear. Yeah, it’s amazing how vitamin D does interact with our immune system. There have been some very interesting studies on people with rheumatoid arthritis and how their T cells behave. And their T cells, unlike other T cells in people who don’t have rheumatoid arthritis, don’t listen to vitamin D properly. Vitamin D often modulates the activity of T cells. And in people with rheumatoid arthritis, their T cells aren’t modulated as well by vitamin D. And I noticed this early on in my experience with autoimmune patients, they number one frequently had low vitamin Ds, but it would take to me, naively back then, a lot of vitamin D to calm their immune system down. More than I was even used to being comfortable with. And then I got aggressive with it and noticed that the markers for rheumatoid arthritis plummeted, and I went, “Wow, look at that.”

Dr. Kari Nadeau (19:25):
Yes. You’re absolutely right. It’s important to look at all this.

Dr. Gundry (19:30):
What’s what’s the fifth D in all these Ds?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (19:35):
The fifth D which is probably the most important is diversity of diet. And unfortunately, some well-meaning people back in 2000 said to delay the introduction of peanuts and shrimp and tree nuts and a lot of features. That they were worried not because of any other properties, but just because they could possibly create food allergic reactions. And unfortunately, that’s probably not a good guideline. Now the guidelines have turned on their head 180 degrees. And now the weight of evidence is huge around US, around Europe, around all these different countries to say you actually start to diversify the diet again the way our grandfathers did, but on the farm, or wherever they were when we were four to six months of age and trying to start to eat solids and infants are interested and curious with foods, to let them taste different things. Natural, different proteins, have their immune system exposed to all those proteins at once. And the immune system will naturally, like you said with the T cells, those T cells will naturally become ambassadors of tolerance, of good gut health and tolerance. So that when those foods come in, our immune system sees them as natural, “These are nutritious. I don’t need to fight against these. They shouldn’t be allergic.”
But unfortunately, with a lot of the advent of commercial products for infant food, a lot of these guidelines came out. And so people started using staged products that increased sugar content for babies. It wasn’t the best way to diversify that diet. To now we’re going back to what our grandparents would probably say, “Well, of course, that’s the way you should do it. Diversify the diet early and often and regularly.”
And what we’re seeing in the studies of all these great work going around the world showing that diversity of diet is important to introduce different foods early, is if you don’t, that’s the unfortunate part. The rate of rise of allergies is so huge in our society now due to probably a lot of environmental influences. That if you don’t, the rate of allergy is up to eight out of 100 infants. So we need to understand how we can stop that, diversify the diet, and do that regularly and often. What we’re showing right now is that that really does decrease the risk of food allergies, which is great.

Dr. Gundry (22:12):
That brings up another point. What’s the role of genetics in all this? Let’s suppose your mother says, “Oh, I’m allergic to peanuts or my sister was allergic to peanuts. My gosh, I certainly don’t want to expose my son or daughter to peanuts because I’m allergic to them.” What say you?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (22:36):
Yes. That’s the sixth D, in fact, DNA. Where are we at there? We have done lots of studies on this as well. We know that about 65% of children and adults that have food allergy didn’t have any allergies in their family. But families with allergies do tend to have a higher risk of having food allergies in their children. That is absolutely true. We’re trying to understand the genetics. And there’s also genetics to people that have more severe reactions. So we are really understanding this disease better. There’s a lot of hope and promise that we want to deliver upon in the book, as well as based on science. And the genetics are very interesting. There seems to be certain trends in families, but on the whole, environment outweighs the genetics to some extent, but both play a very important role.
But if you do have a family history of allergies and food allergy, that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. It’s not a Theta Compli that by changing your diet, by helping your environment, that actually does mitigate the disease. That’s a good thing to know. I oftentimes tell parents that you shouldn’t make yourself feel guilty. That it’s not your fault. It’s not what you ate in pregnancy. It’s not what you did during breastfeeding. But a lot of these things are happening from external things we can’t control, but for that we can control, let’s change behaviors to improve.

Dr. Gundry (24:12):
You brought up my next question. What about the expectant mothers, the breastfeeding mothers, this guilt trip that whatever they put in their mouth is gonna inoculate their baby and put their baby on a lifelong allergy awfulness thing? No.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (24:32):
Luckily, thank goodness, that does not seem to be the case. Initially, small little pockets of studies came out and that were really confusing. And science is messy, but the wonderful thing is that now we have thousands of data points from many individuals around the globe saying that what pregnant moms eat when they’re pregnant… Actually, it’s better to have more healthy vegetables, less fast food. Use things that have less detergent in them. Very similar to what we’re saying to try to help your baby. That can be used for pregnancy, but people do not need to avoid the food allergens that we typically say are food allergens when they’re pregnant. In fact, it goes the other way. It’s probably better to have them.
And then in addition, same thing for breastfeeding. Even though just little bits of protein can get through to the baby when you eat it as a mom, that’s actually good. So for the moms to also diversify their diet if they can. I know it’s easy to say, harder to do when you’re busy out there, but it would be excellent to be able to provide that sort of guidance for people.

Dr. Gundry (25:48):
Great to know. Okay, now here’s a question that often comes up. And I must say, early in my restorative medicine career, I kind of equated the two, but I now think they’re actually quite different. What’s the difference between a food sensitivity and a food allergy? Are they the same? Are they different? And how do you tell?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (26:12):
Great question. We talk a lot about this in the book, because my patients just probably like yours, Dr. Gundry, there’s a lot of confusion out there in terms of what’s a food sensitivity, what’s a food allergy? How is that different from celiac disease? There are now better diagnostics to differentiate these three things. And that’s great. We are doing so much science, and hopefully most importantly, is that we’ll improve people’s quality of life. That’s what we’re all about.
With that, the food sensitivities… I’ve a lot of patients that come in and say they’ll eat certain chemicals, or certain foods, and then it really causes bloating and headaches. And those are real. That’s quite disabling as well. We know that patients with wheat sensitivities, that’s not fun, either. And so I oftentimes listen to them and their symptoms, and then I’ll tell them, “Unfortunately, we don’t have a perfect way to treat that, but we should listen to what your body is telling you.” And then we’ll actually test just like you mentioned with the T cells. We’ll go in the lab and test whether or not those types of foods are activating their T cells. And they typically are in the very same way that the T cells are activated for like rheumatoid arthritis. And so that’s very different. That’s like an inflammatory reaction to those different foods and they’re not necessarily just proteins. They’re different small molecules, they’re carbohydrates, they’re fats.
On the other hand, food allergies are mostly the proteins. And there, it doesn’t so much matter as much as just having it exposed even on your skin, like we said a little bit that you might breath in. There, people can react with this huge reaction. And that happens within two hours typically. You have itching and mucus development and that can lead to anaphylaxis, [inaudible 00:28:04] sensitivities typically don’t. So those are the big differences. These, the three allergies, that comes with skin prick testing, that comes with what we call IgE testing. That’s why these two things are different. But we’re trying to do a better job because there is a gray zone. And I want to be very compassionate to families and patients that are suffering from these diseases because we don’t have all the answers yet, but patients are my inspiration, as I’m sure they are to you as well, Dr. Gundry, and that’s what pushes us to try to do better.

Dr. Gundry (28:39):
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Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Early on in our office, we did do skin allergy testing, needle prick testing, and IgE food sensitivity testing. Quite frankly, I became desensitized with that. I can say, I actually took allergy shots as a teenager-

Dr. Kari Nadeau (30:28):
Oh, gosh.

Dr. Gundry (30:29):
… and a young adult. In fact, I was at Yale and I had chronic sinusitis. I mean, I was always sick.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (30:29):
I’m sorry.

Dr. Gundry (30:37):
And so they decided to do skin testing on me in the Yale clinic, I’ll never forget. And I was sitting there and I said, “Gee, this is kind of a funny feeling. My throat is swelling up, and oh, this is very interesting.” And I was pre-med and I said, “Gee, I think I’m going into anaphylactic shock.”

Dr. Kari Nadeau (30:56):
Oh, shoot. So sorry.

Dr. Gundry (30:57):
Seriously, just saw the nurse walking and went, “Oh, my gosh.” And of course, gave me a shot of epinephrine. And I said, “What was that?” And she said, “Oh, sorry, we almost killed you.”

Dr. Kari Nadeau (31:08):
So sorry. That’s terrible. Yeah, the skin testing can have that associated with it. That’s terrible. So sorry. Meanwhile, learning about these reactions in a medical student and in college. Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.

Dr. Gundry (31:22):
Anyway, I’ll tell you, as time has gone on, I use a series of tests. You may know about them, actually from the Bay Area. Vibrant America’s the company and I don’t have a relationship. But I started using their tests which are horribly named, called Zoomers. Their initial Zoomer was called a Wheat Zoomer and it looks and still does for leaky gut and looks for reaction to gluten and the gluten family. And then they went on and on. And then they developed a food sensitivity test based on IgG and IgA. And when I first started doing them, I really kind of poo-pooed them because I hadn’t been happy with IgE allergy test. And then, as anecdote after anecdote came of people who took this information and eliminated them, I got more and more interested in them.
Let me just tell you a quick, recent story. I have a woman in her 50s, who had horrible, massive psoriasis. She was on two immunosuppressant drugs, which really made her sick, and she clearly wanted off of them. And that’s who usually ends up in my clinics. And so we actually got her off her drugs. Her psoriasis completely resolved following the Plant Paradox program, except for a two-inch spot in the middle of her back. And a few months ago, we’re sitting in my office and she says, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy. I’m on no drugs. My psoriasis is gone. But isn’t odd that I still have this two-inch patch?” And I said, “Yeah, it is odd.” I said, “I tell you what, would you mind if we do a food sensitivity test on you?” I said, “It’ll cost you 149 bucks.” And she said, “Okay.”
So we do, and they usually get their results about two weeks before I see them back in the office or on the phone. And so inner food sensitivities was almond flour and vanilla beans. And like, so many of my patients, they’re making lots of almond flour cookies and breads and crackers, and she used a lot of vanilla extract to flavor it. So she’s sitting in the office and we’re going over the list and she says, “I’ve seen the list. Two weeks ago, I took out almond flour and vanilla bean.” And she said, “Here’s the weird thing. That spot, in two weeks now, has shrunk down to an inch.”

Dr. Kari Nadeau (34:01):
Wow.

Dr. Gundry (34:02):
Yeah, just by taking almond flour and vanilla extract out of her diet. And it’s those kind of stories-

Dr. Kari Nadeau (34:10):
Exactly.

Dr. Gundry (34:10):
… that really have made me… This isn’t pseudoscience anymore.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (34:16):
That’s right.

Dr. Gundry (34:17):
And of course, you’re on the leading edge of helpfully telling everybody this is not pseudoscience.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (34:23):
Exactly. We need to take each of these cases and each of these patients and how they’re doing and try to understand more. I’m so glad you’re doing that because the one thing we talked about in the book is that this book is for both adults and parents. That there are so many adults out there with food allergies and food sensitivities. And what we were surprised about when we did this big questionnaire throughout the US, 50% of the adults that have food allergies now in the country, they were able to eat the foods. No problem when they were little. And all of a sudden something changes and we, you and I, can probably understand that because the immune system is always developing, there are things that allow us to mature as we get wiser and age, our immune system can change a little bit. But I was surprised to see that so many adults have allergies now. And about 10% of people who are adults in the US have doctor’s diagnosis of food allergies. So we need to get ahead of it, like you said, and try to support and really try to understand for each person, what they need.
I spent a lot of time in the book about the history of food allergy and how we can try to prevent it. But one size doesn’t fit all. People are different. And so they need special personalized ways to help themselves.

Dr. Gundry (35:44):
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And even I treat brothers with fascinating skin autoimmune diseases, young kids, and one will actually have… They’ll have common sensitivities, but one will be far more sensitive. I’m thinking of two children in Texas, who are eight and 11. And the 11-year-old, profoundly reacts to spinach with basically psoriasis.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (36:18):
Wow.

Dr. Gundry (36:18):
And his eight-year-old brother has just the worse different dermatitis, but he doesn’t react to spinach. And so they love to tease each other because one will be eating spinach and go, “Hey, don’t you want to bite?” Yeah, it’s totally different. And you’re right, they have to be personalized.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (36:41):
Yes, that’s right.

Dr. Gundry (36:42):
Which gets me to my next question. What’s a prevention diet?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (36:49):
Well, it really depends on what you’re trying to prevent. I think for all of us, I do-

Dr. Gundry (36:55):
Well, you’re right.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (36:57):
I think like in your wonderful books as well as your recommendations that we need to really think about our diets carefully and thoughtfully. And with the same respect what we’ve learned, to be able to decrease that risk of allergic reactions to improve compliance to make sure that someone doesn’t develop allergies, whether or not they’re infant or an adult. My oldest patient that developed a food allergy was 99. She developed a shrimp allergy when she was 99. She wanted to get rid of it. So we gave her immunotherapy. But all this is to say that, how do we prevent, how do we decrease the risk of food allergies and improve our gut health and our health overall?
I think that by training our immune system with the diversity of proteins early, I think that really helps. That’s what we talk about in the book. Is these are natural. These are food proteins, they don’t have to be done in high amounts. Just a little bit every day, and doing it simultaneously so that our immune system sees all these proteins at once. It drives the body to become tolerant. And that’s great. That’s at least in our hands now and lots of data to suggest that that would be the diet to do at any age.

Dr. Gundry (38:17):
Okay, you mentioned immunotherapy. Now, many people hear that word and they think of every commercial they see on TV of an immunosuppressant drug which I of course, used and pioneered in heart transplant. But that’s not what you’re talking about, I hope.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (38:35):
That’s right, Dr. Gundry. I feel bad that you had to go through these draconian procedures of allergy shots, those are not fun. You can see that a lot of what we do is allergy skin prick testing. And allergy shots, we want to try to forego those, let’s get rid of them. Let’s do better. And the reason we wrote the book this year is because for the first time in our history, we have an FDA approved drug. Yay. And that’s really important because Palforzia, which is a peanut immunotherapy was approved by the FDA last year for food allergy. But at least we have the tools by which to teach us that immunotherapy here is not immunosuppression. It is natural, it’s building up your immune system. It’s building up your immune muscle very slowly, very carefully, because you’re giving back the same thing someone’s allergic to, and you’re modifying and building up those T cells and other immune cells to say, “Okay, this is natural. This is something I don’t need to be so allergic against.”
And so over time, after a year or so, people then change their threshold so that they can eat that item. And for people with dairy allergies, other allergies, it’s really great for them because they don’t have to worry about accidental ingestion, but it’s not easy. And so we talk about this immunotherapy. And then it’s a wonderful start to the end of food allergy. But we’re really at the beginning, there’s so much more we have to do to make it safer and to make sure that people can comply and use it to their advantage. But it is a different type of immunotherapy that people typically talk about. But we would not do shots for foods ever. It’s really about probably oral or sublingual or skin. Those items will probably help a lot.

Dr. Gundry (40:30):
Do you think there’s going to be a pill for a milk allergy a pill for an egg allergy? Is that where you’re going or can somebody do this at home?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (40:43):
You can’t do this at home. You need to deal with a very clinically skilled staff that knows how to deal with food allergy. Most food allergies are still out there and any therapy that’s used for them should be seen as experimental. So if you are interested in immunotherapy and treatment, please look on ClinicalTrials.gov. We provide that resource in the book, because clinical trials are where it’s at in terms of really improving people’s outcome and trying to make something safer. So for multiple food allergies, for milk, we don’t have a milk pill yet. We don’t have a pill for these other nuts, as well as shrimp or fish which most of the planet is more allergic to, and an egg.
With that, there are companies like Alladapt and IGeneX that we talk about that do have products. There’s companies like Novartis and Genentech that are putting things through now to try to make allergy therapy safer. So I think that is coming, Dr. Gundry. I think that we have a lot of hope and promise based on that, and will probably come very soon, in the next few years. I’m excited about that, but we don’t have those pills yet. But like we were saying, personalized medicine is going to be key here. That not one person fits a particular box. And so we need to make sure that whatever we use fits that person’s needs and their goals.

Dr. Gundry (42:13):
Yeah, I’m excited that we are going to be able to retrain the immune system. I gave a paper at the American Heart Association lifestyle and epidemiology meeting in Phoenix this year,-

Dr. Kari Nadeau (42:26):
Oh, great.

Dr. Gundry (42:27):
… looking at people with celiac disease. And we looked at their IgG and IgA responsiveness to wheat proteins, including gluten and the non-gluten proteins. And over a year period, in this report, nine out of 10 patients following our program, not only had no longer celiac, they no longer had leaky gut.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (42:59):
Wow.

Dr. Gundry (43:00):
But nine out of 10 of them, none of them had any IgG or IgA memory of gluten or wheat proteins.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (43:10):
Wow.

Dr. Gundry (43:11):
Yeah. Now, I’m not saying that you can go back and eat wheat. I’m not saying that. But I’m actually more than mildly encourage that we have it within our capability to retrain our immune system and I bet you would say the same thing.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (43:32):
Completely agree. I am always humbled by the immune system and what it can do. The power when it misfires, but also the strength that it provides us as we try to retrain it. And I think that we’ve been talking a lot about infants and babies today, but I want to make sure that your audience knows that this retraining can happen at any age. And that we need to really focus and talk to people like yourself and others to get the right recipe to retrain each of our immune systems and tweak them so that they are improved, especially in this era where we are living with COVID, we are trying to understand this disease, how can we avoid it? But if we do get it, how can we help our nutrition to better train our immune system?

Dr. Gundry (44:18):
All right. Thank you. So true. I think if we learn anything from COVID is that this is a clarion call that we have to arm ourselves and our immune system. And pre-existing conditions basically, in my humble opinion says, you’ve got diabetes or pre-diabetes or leaky gut and your immune system stinks and it’s on fire all the time. And people who have a great gut and are eating properly, certainly my patient population, we just have not seen people develop COVID. Or if they get it, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I had it, but I didn’t know it. They found it on a test, but I didn’t know I had it.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (45:08):
Exactly. I agree. There’s all these other factors where it’s definitely exposing that important aspect of our immune system and our guts and our health.

Dr. Gundry (45:21):
Well, it was great having you on the show.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (45:24):
Thank you.

Dr. Gundry (45:26):
I mean, it’s really an exciting area. I really want people to pick up this book, The End of Food Allergy. And because there is absolute, not only hope, but there are things that people can do and do today, rather than kind of living with this and living in fear.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (45:50):
That’s right.

Dr. Gundry (45:51):
Where do people find your book? That’s probably pretty obvious. But where do I learn more about your book and your work?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (45:57):
Oh, that’s right. Yeah, no, I really appreciate. Thanks for holding it up. I’ll hold it up too. We’ll be comrades. The End of Food Allergy, it’s on Amazon, it’s on Kindle, it’s on Audible. I think you can Google it. We have a great website that’s very interactive. We want feedback. Like anything, this is what we know right now, it gives a nice how to to what to do for your family, or what to do for someone that might have food allergy, and you don’t have food allergy. And it’s all for all ages. But importantly, is this is not something that’s just going to stay as a book. We want to have interaction on the website as well. We want feedback. So we really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today, Dr. Gundry. I hope your audience will also give us feedback and like the book a lot.

Dr. Gundry (46:45):
And what’s the website?

Dr. Kari Nadeau (46:48):
The website is The End of Food Allergy.

Dr. Gundry (46:50):
Oh, well, that’s dah. Okay.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (46:52):
No, it’s great. Thanks for asking. It’s not [inaudible 00:46:55]. It’s great. Thanks, Dr. Gundry. Really appreciate it. I hope you are well and stay safe and healthy.

Dr. Gundry (47:02):
I intend to. We’ll get together again I hope, and great talking about this with you.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (47:10):
Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Dr. Gundry (47:12):
Okay.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (47:12):
Have a great Friday.

Dr. Gundry (47:14):
Bye-bye.

Dr. Kari Nadeau (47:15):
Bye. Thank you.

Dr. Gundry (47:16):
Okay, it’s time for our audience question. How are your health resolutions going so far in 2021? Sadly, studies show that only 8% of Americans who make a New Year’s resolution actually keep them all year, and 80% have failed by the start of February. But on the Dr. Gundry Podcast I’m dedicated to helping you reach your goals, be it losing weight, reversing serious ailments, or simply boosting your energy levels so you can do more of what you love. Every week on the Dr. Gundry Podcast, you’ll learn simple cutting-edge tools to reclaim your health from top wellness experts, or from my talks on specific topics based on my 20 years of research treating patients, seven days a week, simply by diet and lifestyle changes.
Let’s do this. Let’s make 2021 your year to realize your best, most vibrant self for yourself and your loved ones. Subscribe now to the Dr. Gundry Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Music or wherever you get your podcasts, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
Jennifer Berringer on YouTube asked, “Can fasting eat up the bad lectins that go rogue from leaky gut, especially the ones like WGA that dock in cell ports and refuse to move? Also, are there other ways to remove these permanently docked lectins?” Hey, that’s actually a really good question.
First of all, eliminating these lectins is number one rule. If you don’t eat them, they’re not going to get into you. And you brought up WGA, wheat germ agglutinin, which is actually one of the sneakiest lectins there is. We know now that wheat germ agglutinin can get through a normal gut wall. Doesn’t have to be leaky. It’s a very tiny protein. We also know that wheat germ agglutinin does bind to docking ports for insulin, but there’s been some recent research that shows that WGA sticks to a sugar molecule on the inside of your blood vessels called cyanuric acid, which is also on the inside of your joints and it’s also in the space between your nerves. So getting rid of WGA is actually pretty doggone easy. Just do not eat whole grain products, particular wheat, rye and barley.
And oh by the way, there is a lectin in oats that mimics wheat. I recently had a patient, actually this week, whose autoimmune attack on his blood vessels which had been quiescent, we measure this, went through the roof. And when we went through what he was eating, he had started eating pressure-cooked oats on a daily basis for breakfast. And he didn’t read on our little slip of paper that we gave them that you cannot pressure cook oats because you can’t break that lectern with pressure cooking in oats, wheat, rye or barley. And it was I mean, one of the best wake up calls for him. I don’t make this stuff up. This is reported in the literature, and I’m reporting it to you that these things are nasty and cause you to attack your joints, attack your blood vessels, and attack your brain and nerves. Great question. So you don’t need to fast to make this stop. Just eliminating things like whole grains makes a big, big difference.
And yes, your cells are constantly turning over, they’re constantly being remade. You turn over 90% of your cells every three months. So when that cell changes, all those docking ports are changed. So just keep eating and keeping the right way. Great question.
Time for the review of the week. This week’s review comes from Mysten74 on iTunes, who left us a five-star review and wrote, “Thank you so much for the effort and great information you give every podcast. I enjoy every episode. All the data is so interesting and educational.”
Well, thanks Mysten74 for leaving us a review. It helps me and us make sure we’re reaching the widest possible audience to share our message of good health through healthy eating. So keep those notes coming in and hopefully we’ll read yours. And please leave review wherever you get your podcasts, because that’s how we find out how we’re doing and what you need to hear about. And if you probably noticed, a lot of our podcast episodes are devoted more and more to questions that you ask. If enough of you asked a question, we’ll do a podcast. All right. That’s it for today. I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.
Disclaimer: On the Dr. Gundry Podcast, we provide a venue for discussion, and the views expressed by my guests do not necessarily reflect my own.
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 podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast, you could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/drgundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.