Dr. Gundry's private practice: (760) 323-5553

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):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. This week, we’re back with our Rapid Fire Health Lecture Series. Today, it’s all about some F-words you hear me talk about a lot, fasting and fruit. For best fasting tips to healthiest fruits, I’ll be sharing a ton of takeaways to help you thrive, so don’t go away. You won’t want to miss what I think may be the most informative episode yet. We’ll be right back. The Dr. Gundry Podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let’s face it, sometimes multitasking can be well overwhelming like when your favorite podcast is playing and the person next to you is talking in your car, a fan is blasting all while you’re trying to find the perfect parking spot.
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The best keto and intermittent fasting tips. The keto diet is one of the most popular diets around, but also one of the most misunderstood, so today I’m here to set the record straight and give you a quick look at some of my latest research. As you may know, the keto diet has become increasingly popular based on the belief that when your body converts to making something called ketones, you experienced improved energy and weight loss. However, it turns out ketones are not the super fuel they’re made out to be. The truth is, published literature in humans proves that’s exactly opposite the case. Ketones, it turns out, are a lousy fuel. Studies at Boston and the National Institutes of Health show that even at full ketosis the body only gets 30% of its energy needs supplied by ketones, and the brain which most keto experts tell you thrives on ketones, the brain at full ketosis still needs 30 to 40% of its fuel as sugar, as glucose instead of ketones.
So the idea that ketones are some miraculous fuel, are some miraculous fat efficient tool is simply wrong and not based on human research. Then if ketones aren’t a super fuel, why do they have what appears to be some really good effects? Well, as I showed in my most recent book, Unlocking the Keto Code, ketones in fact are signaling molecules. Now, signaling molecules are actually, a communication system that tell cell membranes what to do, that tell mitochondria what to do, that tell your genes what to do, and signaling molecules we now know are the communication system in all our bodies. Ketones normally would’ve only been generated when we were starving, when we had nothing to eat, and ketones are produced in the liver. And the body can use fat as a fuel, free fatty acids for a fuel for almost all of our needs.
The only problem with using free fatty acids is that free fatty acids are big molecules, and they can’t get through the blood brain barrier fast enough to be a good fuel for the brain when it runs out of sugar, but ketones can be made from free fatty acids in the liver. And ketones are water soluble, short chain fatty acids that, good news, can get through the blood brain barrier. So they’re a emergency fuel for the brain when we run out of something to eat. Now, ketones tell your mitochondria, “Hey, something’s up. Food isn’t coming, and we don’t know when food’s coming again. And since you guys are the key for our body to stay alive, mitochondria make energy, make ATP. You guys need to protect yourselves at all costs, and take care of your cells. And don’t work so hard because believe it or not making energy is very damaging to mitochondria.”
So as strange as it seems, ketones tell mitochondria to actually, waste fuel, don’t work so hard. The other things we now know ketones do is they tell mitochondria to make more of themselves. Mitochondria are unique in that mitochondria have their own DNA that’s separate from the nucleus, from high school biology. What that means is that mitochondria can grow and divide, make more of themselves without the cell that they live in growing and dividing. So we now know that ketones tell mitochondria, “Hey, you single mitochondria, I want you to make five twins. And that way there’ll be more mitochondria that don’t have to work so hard and you guys can share the workload and protect yourselves.” And it’s called mitogenesis, so we now know that the reason having ketones around is a good idea at least some of the time, is to tell mitochondria to protect themselves and to make more mitochondria.
And it’s this combination that actually, results in not only weight loss, but in improved health overall. Now, as many of you know, and I’ve written about it in the book, most people who embark on a ketogenic diet, a traditional very high fat, low carbohydrate diet simply quit within a month. That’s because most people, number one, you can only eat so many pounds of bacon covered with cheddar cheese before you really don’t want anymore bacon and cheddar cheese. It just becomes profoundly monotonous. Not only that as I point out in the book, most of the time this is a disaster for your cholesterol numbers. And number two, it’s a disaster for your gut microbiome because your gut microbiome is actually, dependent on fibers and polyphenols to prosper and to actually, make compounds that are good for you and mitochondria. And for many people, besides the incredible boredom of eating ultra high fat diet, many, many, people don’t feel very good.
And as I’ve written about in my book, we see that people who embark on these ultra high fat, low carb diets actually, they’re inflammatory markers in their bloodstream go up quite dramatically, and we have them revert back to my ketogenic diet which has far more fiber and far less fat, and we see these inflammatory markers go away. Now, the good news is that you can get the benefits of producing ketones and the benefits of having mitochondria that not work so hard and make more of themselves without eating a high fat diet, and that’s what Unlocking the Keto Code goes into. So for one thing, intermittent fasting that is time restricted eating, the shorter the time window that we begin eating food and finish eating food if we can compress that to around six to eight hours during the week and take some time off on the weekends, you can actually reliably produce ketones that will help you lose weight without changing what you’re eating.
And the most amazing study was a human study that I write about in the book with Italian athletes, and they took Italian cyclists and they put them on a training table, they all have to eat the same thing. It had two groups. One group had a 12 hour eating window. That means they ate breakfast at 8:00 in the morning, they had lunch at 1:00 in the afternoon, they had to finish dinner by 8:00, 12 hours eating window. The other group had a seven hour eating window. They ate breakfast, break fast at one 1:00 in the afternoon, they had lunch at 4:00 in the afternoon, and then they had to finish dinner at 8:00 at night, seven hour. So the difference between the two groups was one group was fasting five hours longer per day than the other group, but they ate the exact same amount of food.
What happened after the end of three months? The group that had the seven hour eating window lost a lot of weight. The group that had the 12 hour eating window didn’t lose any wight. They both had identical athletic performance, good news, and the group with the seven hour eating window actually, lowered the best marker for aging there is called insulin-like growth factor. They lowered their IGF-1. The group that ate in the 12 hour window had no change in their IGF-1. So just extending the amount of time between when you have your last meal at night and the first meal in the morning can make a dramatic difference in your health without changing what you eat, without being on a boring diet, so that’s the first great news. The second great news is that there are compounds that can actually, have you produce ketones without being on a ketogenic diet.
And those are medium chain triglycerides, so medium chain triglycerides, MCT oil are absorbed in a totally different way of any fat. They’re a liquid, they’re flavorless. You can get them in a powder form and women in general, do better with powdered MCT than liquid MCT. Some women get a little nauseated or diarrhea with liquid MCT, but when you take MCT oil it goes directly to your liver and it’s directly converted into ketones regardless of what you’re eating. So you could have a bowl of fruit and have MCT oil, a tablespoon, and you would actually, make ketones. And those ketones would signal your mitochondria to make more of themselves and to waste fuel to protect themselves. Here’s the other great news, it turns out that 30% of the fat in goat and sheep milk products are medium chain triglycerides, so that means you could have goat or sheep yogurt, plain.
You could have goat or sheep kefir. You could have goat or sheep cheese and make ketones just eating those goat and sheep milk products. And it also explains why a large number of super old people in blue zones are goat and sheep farmers strangely enough, and I talk about this in the new book. Now, here’s the final problem with embarking on a ketogenic diet. Many of you are beginning to hear about the terms, insulin resistance or metabolic flexibility, and briefly, normally our mitochondria can take sugar and convert it to energy, and our mitochondria can take free fatty acids and convert it to energy. But normally we can do that on a dime, very much like a hybrid car. When you’re running on gasoline, you are charging your battery and let’s call the battery fat. When you run out of gasoline, your battery is charged and you can use that battery to continue powering you along the road.
We have a charged battery, it’s our fat. Normally, we burn sugar as our preferred fuel and when sugar drops, we should normally pull out that fat from our battery and use that, and that’s called metabolic flexibility. Unfortunately, the data on whose metabolically flexible and who isn’t is scary. 50% of normal weight individuals in the United States have no metabolic flexibility, so even though you may be normal weight, 50% of you can’t make that switch. Then it really gets interesting, 88% of overweight individuals have no metabolic flexibility, and 99.5% of obese individuals have no metabolic flexibility which means you can’t switch from burning carbs for energy to burning fat. And that’s what’s so hard, number one, about transitioning to a ketogenic diet or even transitioning to cutting back the hours you eat because most people can’t make that switch, and here’s the really scary take home problem.
Normally, when you stop eating about eight hours after you stop eating, you have to switch over in your brain to burning ketones as a fuel. If most of us are metabolically inflexible, that means every night, eight hours after we stop eating, our brain begins to starve to death because it can’t get the fuels it needs. And that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing this epidemic of dementia, memory loss, Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s because the vast majority of us every night because we have no metabolic flexibility our brains starve to death, so think about that. The next time you hear that one of the things we should be doing is eating multiple small meals throughout the day to keep our energy levels up, that’s really one of the worst possible things that we can do for our generalized health and absolutely, for our brain health. So how do you get metabolic flexibility? Well, number one, slowly but surely cutting back on the number of hours you eat during the day. Now, you don’t need to jump into the deep end.
If you eat breakfast at 7:00 in the morning next week, eat breakfast at 8:00 in the morning, and do that all week. The next week, come on, you can now make it 9:00, next week we’ll eat breakfast at 9:00 and so on. And believe it or not after five weeks, you’ll be eating breakfast at noon as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Oh, and here’s the good news, you can take the weekends off. Research out of Chicago shows that when people were asked to intermittently fast during the week but then relax on the weekends, they were much more able to stay with that program long term than if they were asked to do that every day of their lives. The other good news is, you don’t have to calorie count. You can actually, eat a full day’s worth of calories and as the Italian Athlete study shows you can actually, lose weight and still eat all the calories you want as long as you compact that eating window.
Here’s a fun fact you probably, don’t know about me. I’m a bed sheet connoisseur. You see, good sleep is crucial for longevity, but what I sleep on and in makes a huge difference in how much deep sleep I get. That’s why I’m always on the hunt for the best bedding for optimal sleep. I know I may sound a bit precious, but I don’t care. We’re talking about one of the most important mechanisms of your body to help you recover and achieve overall health. A good night’s rest even helps maintain a healthy weight. I’ll go to any length to make sure my sleep is sacred and well sound. That’s when I tried Cozy Earth, silky soft sheets made from 100% bamboo fabric viscose, I was hooked. They’re so lightweight. I felt like I was sleeping on a cloud. Maybe that’s why I sleep so well with Cozy Earth sheets on my bed.
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That’s why I’ve begun drinking MUD\WTR, this tasty coffee alternative contains some of the most powerful mushrooms on earth, like chaga, reishi and lion’s mane. And if you’ve listened to my recent episode about the three healthiest vegetables you can eat, you know mushrooms are on that list. They are superhero longevity veggies. My favorite way to prepare my mushroom charge MUD\WTR drink is with a touch of allulose sweetener and a splash of pistachio milk. And since each cup of MUD\WTR has one seventh the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee, I’m focused and alert, yet still get a good night’s sleep aside from my morning cup of MUD\WTR I also like their rest drink as a post dinner dessert. The rest blend of rooibos, chai, turmeric, cinnamon and adaptogens and herbs like ashwagandha, reishi, turkey tail, valerian root and passionflower, it supports relaxation and better sleep.
Both morning and evening blends of MUD\WTR are plant paradox, compliant, 100% organic, sugar free, gluten-free and kosher certified. I highly recommend you try it out to get more mushrooms in your life. Right now, MUD\WTR is offering a special discount just for listeners of my show. Just go to MUD\WTR.com/gundry and use code Gundry to get 15% off your first purchase. That’s M-U-D-W-T-R.com/gundry and use code Gundry for 15% off. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all suffered from sinus pain at some point in our lives, it can truly deplete your energy and make even the easiest of tasks sometimes feel impossible. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about a revolutionary drug free product that will relieve that sinus pain and change your life forever.
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I want you to eat this for the one meal a day that you’re eating when fasting. Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast for a while you know I eat one meal a day, the so-called OMAD protocol during the winter as part of my fasting protocol for optimal health. And I’ve been doing this now for 23 years and so far so good. So everybody wants to know what do I eat for my one meal? Well, I’m going to reveal this in just a moment, but first I’m going to explain why I practice this intermittent fasting schedule for half the year. So why would I do this? Well, first of all, I do it during the winter because winter would normally be a time of less food, and that’s true even in the jungle. There are times in the jungle, where we all came from originally, where food is not very plentiful. Fruit as you know, only ripens once a year in the jungle, in the spring and summer, and maybe a little bit in the fall, and then it’s not available at other times of the year.
Those of us who grew up in the Northern hemisphere or even Southern hemisphere, where there are strong seasons, you know that the winter seasons is a time of less food availability. You can’t grow it in the winter, you could store it potentially, and even animals are harder to come by in the winter. So there’s good evolutionary evidence that we went through periods of getting a lot to eat and storing fat for the winter, and then living on our fat for extended periods of time and not having much access to food. And so there are circadian rhythms that happen in a 24 hour cycle that most of us are now aware of, but there’s also circadian rhythms that happen with spring, summer, fall and winter. In fact, looking at modern hunter gatherers, they follow an absolute interesting seasonal circadian rhythm with the different foods they ate, and interestingly enough, their microbiome changes dramatically from season to season.
So there’s evidence that we should vary our food and we should vary the amount of food and the types of food we eat from season to season. So from an evolutionary standpoint, I’ve chosen winter and spring as the times where I’m going to cut back on food. Do I do it in the summer and fall? In general, no. Although, last year I did add more OMADs to my diet during the week just for fun, and it really didn’t make much difference one way or another. Now, how the heck do you just eat one meal a day? Aren’t I starving to death all the time? Well, as I point out in my last two books, you don’t want to go from eating 16 hours a day, lots of little meals to eating in a two hour window and fasting 22 out of 24 hours. Most people as I talk about in Unlocking the Keto Code will fall flat on their face, you will have no energy, you will have headaches, you will not want to do anything, but you want to gradually transition to compressing your eating window to a smaller and smaller time period.
I prefer to have my one meal a day at dinner time. Why do I do that? Because both my wife and I work, and it’s really the only time we have to sit down and eat a meal together. So sure, could I eat my one meal a day at lunch or could I eat my one meal a day at breakfast and then not eat the rest of the time? Sure, and those are certainly practical options, but just from a family standpoint, I’ve chosen to eat my one meal a day at dinner. Recently, we’ve had a number of patients because of Unlocking the Keto Code’s influence on them, adopt one meal a day, and I just saw two of them, a husband and team in their sixties adopt this program before their last blood test. And I was particularly, worried, believe it or not, about the wife who even though she was of normal weight and had a normal insulin level, had actually a very elevated insulin-like growth factor 1, IGF-1.
Those of you who’ve read my books or follow me know that IGF-1, a growth factor is a very good predictor of longevity. By that I mean, people who have low insulin-like growth factors tend to live a long time and live well. People who have elevated insulin-like growth factors tend to have shorter lives, and there’s some evidence of increased cancer in those individuals because as we get older, I can guarantee you, there is nothing in us that we want to grow, so growth factor makes things grow. And the evidence from the Italian Athlete study that I reference in the last book shows that people who compress their eating window dramatically reduce their insulin-like growth factors even if they don’t change the amount of calories they eat. And sure enough, this woman was running insulin-like growth factors in the low two hundreds which personally at that age you don’t want. Just switching over to one meal a day for two months prior to the test dropped her insulin-like growth factor from 210 down to a 120. That’s a 90 point drop, and that’s dramatic.
The husband did even better, he started out at about 149 and he dropped down to 89 which once you start getting under a hundred, if you look at my patient population, my super old patients, 95 and above who are doing well, they run IGF-1s of 50 to 70 and it’s very consistent across the board. So it’s one way to manipulate, I think a very important marker of aging which is insulin-like growth factor. And again, the studies both in animals and in Italian athletes suggest that this is a good method to change what’s happening in insulin-like growth factor. Now, what’s the optimal meal to eat if you’re only going to have one meal a day. Now, to begin this conversation, I need to set the record straight. If you read my latest book, Unlocking the Keto Code, it’s actually, not what you eat that matters the most to a healthy metabolism, but how you eat and for how long you eat.
That’s the most dramatic finding of the NIH experiments done by Dr. Ralph de Cabo in mice, looking at not so much the foods the mice were given to eat, but the timing of when the mice got to eat their food. And what he showed was that it really didn’t matter whether the mice were given a high fat diet, a high protein diet, a high carbohydrate diet, the outcome was driven by how short a time period that the mice ate the food that they were given during a 24 hour period. The mice that ate all day didn’t live very long. The mice that compressed whatever they were eating whether it was high protein, high fat, high carbohydrate, compressed that eating window lower and lower, lived the longest regardless of what they were eating and had far less amyloid production and beta amyloid than the animals that ate all day long.
So that’s actually, really exciting news, and as you know, one of my sayings from that book is eat short to live long. So that experiment and the Italian Athlete experiment has convinced me that compressing my eating window is one of the strongest ways I can impact my long term health. So is there any bad news to that study? Well, all of the mice eventually died, but the mice in the high sugar group, most of the mice died from liver cancer. And that’s actually, a very common cancer in mice. So long story short, would I make my one meal a day mostly sugar? No, I wouldn’t, but the takeaway is the beauty of constricting the time that you eat all of your calories during the day gives you lots more options into not being a fanatic, “Oh I can’t have this, I can’t have that because that’s high carbohydrates or that’s high fat or that’s high protein.” Just compressing your eating window gives you tremendous power over your health.
So what would I suggest you have? Well, first of all, I can’t say this enough, the more I can have you eat green things the better off you are. As I mentioned in Unlocking the Keto Code, the more you can eat the rainbow which really means eat polyphenols, the better you’re going to be. I’ve said this before, multiple times a week I will have pressure cooked beans as part of my meal. And that just drives some of my critics crazy, but pressure cooking beans makes them actually, an important part of your diet. I learned this from my years at Loma Linda. The other thing I think everyone should add to their diet is nuts, particularly pistachio, particularly walnuts, and we’ll go into that on another lecture. But every day I change what I eat. Do I have my favorite? Sure, but the great thing is, I don’t think in five years I’ve gotten through all the yes list of all the yes foods, so there’s so much you can do.
Ever since I told my readers to give fruit the boot in my first book, many years ago, people have labeled me as some kind of fruit hater. Well, my wife, Penny, can tell you I am anything but a fruit hater. I have a yard full of fruit trees and vines. In fact, there are lots of fruits I absolutely, love and recommend. So on today’s mini episode, I’m going to share a few of my favorite fruits and why I love them so much. Easy tips for eating fruit in moderation and what it really means to eat your fruit in season.
It’s a little more complicated than you might think. Let’s start with a question I get all the time, is fruit really bad for me? Well, that depends. First of all, our desire for fruit is deep seeded, all great apes as I pointed out in my first book years only gain weight during fruit season, and fruit season only occurs once a year in the jungle, it doesn’t occur all year round. Apes didn’t know that you could genetically or hybridize fruit to bear fruit year round, so great apes only gain weight during fruit season. That’s because as you’ll learn in the energy paradox, that we use fructose the sugar in fruit mainly to add fat to us. Why? Because the rest of the year, there wasn’t much food to eat and those of us who could store fat, we are the fat storing ape after all, we’re much better off.
So we have a distinct desire to get fruit in us and as much as we can find, so that’s why fructose is so desirable. And number two, fructose, unfortunately builds fat, it builds triglycerides. And as a heart surgeon and cardiologist, I can tell you that the more fructose you eat the higher your triglycerides will go, the higher your cholesterol will go, and you are going to get fatty liver disease and run low on energy, so that’s why it’s not such a great idea. But you have heard me say in all my books to eat fruit in moderation. Now, people always want me to say, “Well, what do you mean by moderation?” So here’s the deal, how many servings a day? You may have seen recently that new evidence came out that the idea of eating five fruits and vegetables a day is now being modified.
So that in the good old days, people interpreted five servings of fruits and vegetables is basically, “Well, I can eat five servings of fruit and that qualifies as eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.” But in fact, the evidence is completely different. In fact, if you put rats on the five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and give them mostly fruit and some vegetables, they’ll all get fat and diabetic. If you give them mostly vegetables and some fruits, they won’t do that. So recently, the guidelines have been revised that, the eat five a day should only be two fruits and three vegetables. Now, there’s a provisor of that because the vast majority of vegetables in people’s diets are actually, fruits. Tomato is a fruit, eggplant is a fruit, squash is a fruit. Any of these vegetables with seeds are actually, fruits.
So you’ve got to be very careful. You want to eat vegetables that don’t have seeds, so we’re beginning to realize, “Hey, mischievous, a lot of fruit can be in our diet,” so what do you do? In moderation means probably, one serving at the most per day if you want to do two servings, please use low fructose fruits, and we’re going to get into that in the next segment. One of the biggest recommendations in my best selling book, the Longevity Paradox was to eat in line with the seasons. Now, unless you only shop at your local farmer’s market, chances are you don’t know what’s in season and what’s not, so here’s a few tips. Look at the origin of the fruits that you’re buying. If it’s not grown in the United States, it’s probably not in season anywhere near you. It doesn’t matter that I live in California if I see grown in Mexico or grown in Honduras, that’s not local to me. Particularly, in the winter we all see all these beautiful fruits coming from Chile and Argentina, and they look fresh, but they’re not number one, and they’re certainly not in season.
Bananas are not grown in the United States, so a banana is not an in season fruit no matter when you pick it up, so get a produce calendar. There’s actually, a great website called Farm Flavor where you can find a produce calendar for every state in the union. I’ll put a link on our show notes to it so you can go there. So it’ll tell you what fruits are growing in your state or other nearby states for every month of the year. That way, when you go to the grocery store, you know exactly what’s in season and what isn’t. Now, of course, if you live in California like I do or Florida or Arizona you know that most vegetables and even some fruits are actually, available all year round. Strawberries have been hybridized to produce strawberries throughout the year here in California, that doesn’t mean that they’re technically in season.
Strawberries normally, would only grow in the summer in most areas before they were hybridized, so buyer beware. Now, it’s time to talk about what you’ve been looking for, my favorite fruits. Believe it or not, there are a number of fruits that are quite low in fructose, and you really want to avoid the high fructose fruits. So my favorite ones are berries, particularly raspberries and black berries. Surprisingly, blueberries have now been hybridized so much that they have much higher fructose than ever before, so blueberries of the berry family fall way down the list. Boysen berries, mulberries if you can find them are also low fructose fruits. Now, here’s one that probably surprises you, kiwi fruit particularly if you eat the peel, the furry hairy part has huge amounts of fiber and quite low fructose making it actually, one of the best bang for your bucks in eating fruit, not much fructose, lots of fiber.
Another one is a crispy pear, now, this is totally different than a ripe bartlett pear. A crispy pear is designed to stay crispy and not ripen and it also has low fructose, but remember, once you allow anything, even a crispy pear to ripen fully it becomes a fructose bomb. There are persimmons in the fall that are relatively, low in fructose but be warned, I actually have two different patients who saw that persimmons are allowed on our list because they have a lot of fiber quite honestly. And they went on a persimmon kick and you wouldn’t believe what happened to them, their insulin levels went up, their triglycerides went through the roof and they each actually, gained about 10 pounds just going on a healthy persimmon kick. And believe it or not, that’s what fruit was designed to do. It was designed to have us gain weight.
Passion fruit is fantastic, high fiber, low fructose. Another one of my favorites is pomegranate seeds, do not drink pomegranate juice. You are concentrating the fructose whenever you’re having any juice and that goes along with pomegranate juice, but the pomegranate seeds are actually, mostly fiber and some really cool omega fats that you really can’t get anywhere else but in the pomegranate seed. So those are my favorite in season fruits. A question I get all the time, “Well, what happens if you take an in season fruit like berries and freeze them and then use them in the winter? Wouldn’t that be okay?” All I can tell you is that none of us evolved even recently to have year round fruit even if it was picked in season. So it’s really one of the reasons I invented some of my best selling products, was to give you the benefits of the polyphenols and the fibers in fruits removing the fructose which is the mischief maker, so please don’t fall for that trap.
So that’s my quick take on fruit, you’re going to see some fascinating new things in the energy paradox about fruit and why fructose in all its forms may be one of your biggest energy drainers there are. How about audience question? This week’s question comes from Anastasia Yakovich on YouTube she asked, “Please answer for us, does long fermentation in sourdough bread destroy WGA?” For those of you who don’t know WGA, that stands for wheat germ agglutinin which is a very tiny lectin which can go through the wall of the gut without actually, having leaky gut. The answer sadly is I have so many of my autoimmune patients who have tried long fermented, regular wheat bread and have paid the cost. They almost always, invariably reactivate their autoimmune disease, reactivate their leaky gut, were rapidly finding much better flours and bread companies that make fermented safe flours, and please find them, look them up and use them.
But particularly, if you have leaky gut or an autoimmune disease, please be very wary of sourdough bread in any form that uses wheat or rye or barley or oats. Finally, it’s time for our review of the week. This week’s review comes from Claudette Sheckler who said this after my recent interview with Sayer Ji, “Thank you for having such a great guest, just so interesting and a great plethora of information. Oh Lord, pray for our planet. Thank you, from Guam.” Well, thank you Claudette. As you know, I’ve dedicated my career to getting this important life changing information out to as many people as possible, and you can play a big role in transforming lives too, by rating us and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. You could actually, help increase our ranking so more people can find us in iTunes, and that means more people getting access to this powerful health message by leaving a quick review today you’ll help thousands more people discovering their path to optimal health.

Heather Dubrow (53:51):
Hi, everyone. It’s Heather Dubrow telling you to check out Heather Dubrow’s World on PodcastOne. Every week we discuss the hippest, hottest, newest trends in health, wellness, parenting style and so much more including all things, Housewives and Botched. Download new episodes of Heather Dubrow’s World on Thursdays and Fridays on PodcastOne, Apple Podcast, Spotify and Amazon Music.

Dr. Gundry (54:18):
It’s time for the audience question. This is from Newton Gupta on YouTube. He says, “Thank you, Dr. Gundry, for this great information. What are your thoughts on the prebiotics in a vegetable called bitter gourd popular in Indian cuisine?” Well, great question. In fact, bitter gourd or bitter melon is actually, a very interesting squash family vegetable that unlike most squashes which come from the Americas comes from Africa. As such, the properties of bitter gourd are stuff that we’ve been eating since the birth of humans millions and millions of years ago. That means that bitter melon actually, supports health rather than hindering health, so long story short, enjoy your bitter melon because it’s actually, really good for you. And fun fact, bitter melon is very popular in Okinawa, one of the longest living peoples of the world, so enjoy your bitter melon. Now, it’s time for the review of the week.
This comes from Chad Jaria on YouTube. He says, “I’ve been following you for a few months. The information you share is priceless and has a major effect on how and what I eat or drink as I work on my health dealing with AI. Thank you, sir!” Well, thank you, Chad. That’s why I do this and thank you for writing back, and everybody if you know what I’m telling you is useful to you, please drop us a note and who knows, I’ll be reading your comment next. 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 could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/Dr. Gundry because I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.