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Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast where Dr. Steven Gundry shares his groundbreaking research from over 25 years of treating patients with diet and lifestyle changes alone. Dr. Gundry and other wellness experts offer inspiring stories, the latest scientific advancements and practical tips to empower you to take control of your health and live a long happy life.
Dr Gundry 0:23
We’ve grown up being told that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I think it’s time for a tasty twist and avocado a day. We’ve been misled into thinking that all fruits are good for us. But the truth is some can harm our health. Fair not though because there are fantastic fruits out there that can truly benefit you. That’s why today I let you in on where and when to find them. And I reveal the shocking truth about one of America’s favorite snacks peanut butter and jelly sandwiches hidden within that peanut butter are sneaky lectins you probably want to avoid, but don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with delicious alternatives that will leave you unable to taste the difference. Plus, prepare to be amazed by my mind blowing superfood secrets. Superfoods are incredible for your health, but it’s crucial to know the right way to eat them. Today I set the record straight and give you everything you need to maximize their benefits. Get ready for a whole new level of wellness. What happens if you eat peanuts every day for 30 days? Well, one thing is for sure you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice. Sorry, peanut and peanut butter lovers, but this nut can actually take years off your life. Shocking. Well, if you’ve been told your entire life that peanuts are a healthy choice, you’re not alone. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, especially when it comes to food and your health. So today I’m going to set the record straight on this dangerous nut. Starting with some myth busting. First of all, peanuts are not a nut. They are a bean leg you they have nothing in common with nuts. So let’s start there. We should call it a ping bean. kind of cute. Myth number one. Peanuts support energy due to being a rich source of protein and fiber, which assists in the conversion of carbohydrates into energy. What a joke where do they make this stuff up? Peanuts are beans, they’re not nuts. And as you know, legumes including peanuts are lectin bombs. I’ve I’ve as I’ve written about in my previous books 95% of human beings have a pre formed antibody to the peanut lectin you are born hating the peanut elective. Now you’ve all heard of peanut allergies, this is actually not an allergy. It’s not an IgG IGE it’s an I G A and I G G moderate modified antibody. And so you’re born with that. Now, why do most people not feel that when they peanuts? Well, luckily for most people, the effect of eating the peanuts is not felt. Although you don’t have to be a permit to know that in recent years. peanut allergies, and anaphylactic shock from eating peanuts has gone through the roof. In fact, as you may know, lots of little kids are carrying epi pens of adrenaline to school in the case that some little kid brings a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school. The reason that’s happened is most of us now have leaky gut. Most kids have leaky gut. And so our immune systems have been activated to be on the watch for the peanut lectin. But here’s the problem with peanuts. Peanuts are a incredibly rich source of Omega six fats, particularly nasty Omega six fat, which is called linoleic acid. That Omega six fat get ready for this. There are 5000 times more omega six fats in peanuts than omega three fats, the good Omega three 5000 times more omega six fat that. And if you listen to one of my other podcasts, you know that these Omega six fats actually cause aldehyde formation, which is one of the main drivers of inflammation and mitochondrial aging. And that’s the last thing that you want from a food
94% of people carry this antibody. So that’s why, number one, peanuts are not a great way to support your energy. Myth number two, peanuts support weight loss because they’re satiating. Well, why they may be satiating? These certainly will not support a healthy weight, especially in the long run, because these compounds cause inflammation, cause leaky gut. And one of the best ways to make people gain weight is to cause leaky gut. And I’ve written an entire book, the energy paradox about how leaky gut contributes to weight gain, not weight loss. We store fat in our gut as a fuel supply for our immune system, attacking the things that come across our gut, like the peanut lectin. Here’s one of my favorites. Peanuts support heart health. Sorry, as a cardiologist who has performed over 10,000 heart surgeries, this one is a no go. Believe it or not, if you want to produce atherosclerosis, heart disease in monkeys, you feed them peanut oil. If you remove the peanut electon from peanut oil, and give it to the monkeys, they don’t develop heart disease. And yet, peanut oil has the peanut lectin. So if you want to produce heart disease, in monkeys who don’t get heart disease, give them a peanut oil, and you’ll get heart disease. Need I say anything more? Now you’re going but wait a minute, the peanut skin in Spanish peanuts? Has resveratrol? Isn’t that good for heart health? Well, that’s like saying that water is good for you. But a tsunami must be the best there can be. The problem is there was very tall content is in the peel of peanuts, and only Spanish peanuts by the way. And it’s so minimal that you’d have to eat pounds and pounds and pounds of peanuts to get the resveratrol content in one glass of wine. And all those pounds of peanuts would give you all those Omega six fats, none of the omega three fats and give you a walloping dose of the peanut lectin which will be guaranteed to cause coronary artery disease. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea. Now talk about wrecking your heart health. We’ve actually done studies of rats, who were fed bowel movements from peanut eating humans. Now before you start to say, Oh, rats love to eat poop. They just think poop is delicious. So feeding rats, poop from peanut eating humans actually cause damage to the rat gut and to the rats themselves, just from the poop of peanut eating human. And when you gave them poop from humans who didn’t eat peanuts, you didn’t see the same thing. So to answer your question, if you ate peanuts for 30 days, you’re going to virtually guarantee some very serious health issues. The good news is that there are plenty of delicious healthy alternative to peanuts. So what should you eat instead of peanuts? Well, as you know, my number one go to nut is a pistachio. Pistachios have the highest source of melatonin, known to mankind. They are very rich in melatonin, and you go well wait a minute, I don’t want to go to sleep. Melatonin is the sleep hormone. But if you’ve read my most recent book, unlocking the Keto code, we are only two anti oxidative Those that are present in mitochondria. One is melatonin, the other is glutathione. And so melatonin is really good for your mitochondria. And so, the stashes are a great source of melatonin. How about macadamia nuts? One of the great things about macadamia nuts is they not only have almost no Omega six fat, they’re loaded with mono unsaturated fat oleic acid, which is the same fat and olive oil, but they’re also loaded with omega sevens, which may be one of the best promoters of heart health there is. So get grabbed some macadamia nuts. Now, just be careful. If I want, my patients do actively gain weight if they’re getting too skinny, I have the meat, cups and cups of macadamia nuts. So just because I say macadamia nuts are great for you doesn’t mean that you want to have five cups a day. How about pili nuts pili nuts are one of the healthiest nuts in the world. As a matter of fact, check out episode 232 with Jason Thomas, the Paleo editor on my YouTube channel or where wherever you get my podcast, another great option. I have a nut mix that I give to all of my patients in my office, which include macadamia nuts, walnuts, and pistachios. And every one of them actually has to have a little cup while seeing me. That combination is great for munching on. It’s also great to take to parties. I use it if I know I’m going to a party where I’m going to be tempted. I just have a handful of Gundry nut mix before I go. I’m satiated don’t need to go picking up things I shouldn’t be picking up. So it’s great alternative. Everybody says yes, but my kids need peanut butter. Well, there are a lot of better alternatives. Although very expensive. Pistachio and pili nut butter are great. If you’re going to get almond butter, please please please find peeled almond butter. It exists there’s several companies that make it but the peel and almonds have a really nasty lectin that I really think you need to avoid. hazel nut butter is another great option. And it’s becoming more and more available. Although not from a nut but from a seed. Tahini from sesame seeds is great too, if you’re looking for kind of the same mouthfeel as peanut butter. Okay, if you want to ruin your health, go on the peanut a 30 day challenge and watch what happens. I’ll see it in your blood work.
What happens if you only eat fruit for 30 days? Well, to tell you the truth, not only would you gain a ton of weight, you would absolutely destroy your health. The truth is the main purpose of fruit is to help us put on weight. Yes, you heard that right. It turns out we have a genetic mutation that we inherited from great apes that allows great apes and us to take fruit, particularly the fructose in fruit and turn it into fat in the form of triglycerides. And there are entire books written about the fact that great apes only gain weight during fruit season. And contrary to popular belief, fruit only ripens once a year even in the jungle. And that fruit season happens right before the winter, which even in the jungle is a time of less food and certainly less fruit, that genetic mutation to use fruit as a way of putting on weight we inherited from our great ape cousins. That means that fructose is the best way to produce weight gain primarily by get this destroying your mitochondria his ability to make energy. So fructose consumption is so bad for you. That papers in here Humans and in animals show that fructose consumption inhibits gassho transmitter production. Now you going wait a minute, what the heck does a gas Oh transmitter have to do with anything? If you’ve read the energy paradox and unlocking the Keto code, my last two books, you know that gas Oh transmitters are gases that actually communicate information to our mitochondria to our cells. These gases dilate blood vessels. These gases make mitochondria work properly, and they’re actually essential to our health. And yet fructose consumption stops the production of gas Oh transmitters, which is believe it or not a really bad thing. A recent paper showed that fructose consumption rather than glucose consumption was the main cause of fatty liver disease. And if you haven’t heard of it by now, we are plagued with fatty liver disease. non alcoholic steatohepatitis is the fancy name for it. But many people have heard of the word flock Gwah flock GWA is goose or duck liver that has become fatty by feeding ducks and geese, healthy whole grains and fruits. And in fact, some flock was produced by feeding stuffing geese with figs and they make so much fructose that they produce fatty liver disease. It also causes hyper Yersinia, what’s hyperuricaemia hyperuricemia is high uric acid. uric acid is the detoxification product of fructose. Fructose kills mitochondria. Fructose kills kidney cells. So we tried to detoxify it and one of those toxins is uric acid. If any of you have ever had gout, if any of you have had uric acid, kidney stones, that’s from uric acid, and one of the biggest drivers of uric acid production is fruit consumption. Finally, we now know that people who eat a lot of fruit because of their high uric acid production, develop high blood pressure, just from the uric acid from fruit consumption. So why in the world would you want to do any of those things, and you’ve heard me say it over and over again, give fruit the boat, but you don’t have to give up fruit altogether. I have three simple rules for consuming fruit. First of all, stick to low sugar fruit. Really, one of the best ones that’s available year round, is a kiwi fruit. And please don’t cut the peel off. The peel has some of the best poly phenols that you can find. And Kiwis are actually loaded with fiber, and they really have some of the lowest glycemic index of any other fruits. Second, berries, believe it or not, raspberries and blackberries are actually lower in sugar content than strawberries or blueberries. Now part of the reason is, particularly strawberries and blueberries have been bred for sugar content. And you’ll notice that, particularly strawberries and blueberries are now huge compared to what they used to be. And that’s because of the sugar content has been increased because you’ll eat more of them. Stick with blackberries and raspberries. Finally, pomegranate seeds. Pomegranate seeds with the seed are great sources of some of the best poly phenols money can buy. Don’t buy pomegranate juice that’s just drinking fructose sorry about that. Buy the seeds and eat them. Throw them in your salads, throw them in your yogurt. Eat them by a handful, however you want to get them. Those are the safest fruits. But remember, just consume fruit in moderation. Use it as an additive to something you’re already playing it eat like a yogurt like a salad. That way it’s really very difficult to overdo fruit consumption and just act like a great egg. It’s only available normally once a year. If it’s coming from somewhere else, like Argentina like Chile like Mexico, like Central America. It is officially out of season here in America. And please don’t buy it and eat it. How about some of the worst fruits? Well, the idea that an apple a day keeps the doctor away might have been true 100 years ago, when apples were small and better. Now, of course, apples have been bred for sugar content for fructose content. And even the names give them away honey crisp ambrosia Come on. They’re now the size of a small cantaloupe rather than what they were before. And believe it or not, the best part of an apple is actually the peel. The problem is that almost all peels have been treated with pesticides and preservatives that make them really unacceptable. If you can find a small organic apple in season from a farmer, that’s your safest bet that remember a current Apple has more sugar than a candy bar. And I can tell you what you probably rather have ripe bananas Believe it or not a ripe banana has 15 grams of sugar. Yeah, sugar, you don’t have to give up bananas if you love them, but please eat them green. Now what means green, it should be difficult to get the peel off of a green banana. And if you actually have to peel it with a knife, that’s the best definition of a green banana. Now a lot of people don’t like the taste of green bananas, I get it, freeze them and put them in a smoothie with some of your favorite greens, some of your raspberries and blackberries. And that’s a great way to enjoy a banana. How about grapes, everybody knows a grapes have resveratrol? Well, sorry, people grapes are some of the worst fruits out there one cup of grapes as two times the amount of sugar as a Hershey’s candy bar. These things are in fact, nature’s candy. There’s very little fiber in modern grapes. And remember, the benefits of grapes have always been in the seeds and the skin. And I’m old enough to remember when grapes were actually only available with seeds. They’re still available in Japan and parts of Europe with seeds. And I got news for you people eat the entire thing, because the grape seed and the skin are really the only beneficial parts of the grape. There are other fruits that deserve your attention. An avocado is actually a single seeded Berry. And so even though it’s a fruit, please feel free to have an avocado and avocado a day definitely keeps the doctors away. There are other interesting fruits that are beginning to show up in farmers markets. Mulberries have some of the greatest poly phenol content that you could find. Same with boys and berries, a cousin of blackberries, a crispy pair. Now crispy bear are those hard pairs that you see particularly in the fall, they have various different names. danjou pair is one of them. If they’re crispy, that means the sugar content is quite low. They’re really great to add interest to your salads. That’s actually how I use them. And remember pomegranate, there’s also a very cool Omega five fat and pomegranate seeds that deserve your attention. All right, remember, fruits picked out of season and flown here. Number one don’t have the benefits you’re looking for. And as I’ve written about in the plant paradox, if the fruit is picked, unripe, the fruit normally has a lot of lectins in it to dissuade you from eating it only when it ripens on the plant, or the lectins destabilized and killed by the mother plant itself. But when you pick fruit, unripe, fly it here in the United States, and then use gas ethylene oxide to fake ripen it, those changes don’t occur. And so eating fruit from somewhere else is doubly bad. The sugar content is sky high compared to old days. And in the old days, the only way to have fruit was to have it locally picked. So give fruit the boat. But if you’re gonna have it stay in season and use low sugar fruits as your first choice.
Why too much of these nine superfoods may lead to health problems. All right, let’s start with health problem number one from cruciferous vegetables. Now don’t get me wrong. Cruciferous vegetables are phenomenal for you in so many ways. They’re Salford containing vegetables and sulfur is really one of the best things that we can get into our diet. But I see people who eat cruciferous vegetables several times a day. They have cauliflower rice, they have cauliflower mashed potatoes, they have broccoli, they have bok choy, they have kale, they have swiss chard. And I see gradually over the passage of a few months, their thyroid become suppressed. And it’s such that when we back them off on their cruciferous vegetables, their thyroid function returns to normal. So we know that in fact, it was too many cruciferous vegetable. And I see this more and more because people have been told that this is a superfood, and you have to eat it every day, several times a day, too much will suppress your thyroid. And again, I see patients six days a week, I look at their bloodwork every three months, so I can see when someone has changed what they’re doing. And I became very impressed about 10 years ago, when people went on cruciferous vegetable kicks, and their thyroid got suppressed. And when we removed those low and balled their thyroid returned to normal, so too much is a good thing for your thyroid. Now, kale is also a cruciferous vegetable. Now there’s a few health influencers out there that want to warn you away from kale. I did an amazing experiment on myself. Unbeknownst to me a number of years ago, when my wife, Penny got a magic bullet and decided that she was going to make me a kale smoothie before I went off to work. Now I can handle the various aggressive plant compounds in cruciferous vegetables. But when you grind these things up and release them out of each cell, within two hours of downing my kale smoothie, I was visiting the toilet and most everything came out why? Because I released all these plant defense compounds or my wife did. So just be careful that you really want to use these in their intact form. Don’t grind them up into a smoothie. Don’t worry about the amount of heavy metals in kale, you’re simply not going to eat enough of it, I hope to make a difference in your life. Okay, how about cucumbers and squash? One of the things that people need to know about is that anything with seeds in it is technically a fruit. And fruits have sugar in them, particularly fructose, which is as you know, one of the leading causes of insulin resistance. And I see many people eating healthy fruits like squash and cucumbers, who inadvertently have elevated insulin levels, elevated triglyceride levels, and when we take away these healthy vegetables, they get better. Additionally, if you go to France or Italy and you find a crudity table, all the cucumbers will be peeled and deseeded. That’s because cucumbers have lectins in their peel and in their seat. Recently I had a patient with some really bad leaky gut. He was gluten free for 10 years because he was intolerant to gluten, yet still had issues. So we did our panel of leaky gut and lacking testing. And we found in fact, he still had very massive leaky gut, still being gluten free. He still had antibodies to the various components of wheat. But interestingly, he lit up to the cucumber lectins and cucumbers were a huge part of his diet. So now we know that for him, the lectins and cucumbers were part and parcel with why he was still having issues. Even something lectin free like a sweet potato. We forget that these are still starchy vegetables, and particularly if you have insulin resistance if you have elevated insulin levels. If you have high triglycerides, then even lectin free foods are not your friend and will get you into harm’s way not make you healthier. Blueberries now blueberries if you ate them in season, they’re great for you. And in season means back in the good old days that blueberries really produced once a year in the light late summer and early fall, and you would only get blueberries for a few months out of the year, and then you would never see them again. The second thing is that blueberries have been raised for sugar content. When I was growing up, blueberries were these little tiny bitter things that you got to put sugar on. Now they’re the size of a grape. Even organic blueberries are getting bigger and bigger. Blueberries had been raised for sugar content. Now I see this over and over again, in my patients, they go to a big box store, and they buy these big boxes of organic blueberries from Chile, from Argentina from Mexico, and they eat them like candy without realizing that they are candy. They are nature’s candy. And we see their triglycerides rise, we see their cholesterol rise, and we see their hemoglobin a one C and their insulin rise, all because they’re eating healthy blueberries. So what are you going to do? Number one, look for them in season. And whenever possible up for wild blueberries, not the ones that are size of grapes, you’re actually trying to eat the blueberries for their poly phenol content. And again, the smaller they are the more poly phenols which is why you want to eat them in the first place. Next up Brazil nuts. Now, Brazil nuts are a great source of selenium. But you can absolutely overdo it. And we’ve actually seen people get selenium poisoning. Now, the great news is you only need three Brazil nuts a day to get all the Selenium you need. Now what’s so good about Selenium? It turns out selenium is incredibly important for your thyroid health, but perhaps more important, Selenium is really critical to help insulin, get sugars and proteins out of your bloodstream and into yourself. But there’s a limit to where selenium will backfire on you. And you probably unfortunately won’t feel it. But we’ll see it on your bloodwork. So Surya de they’re great for you do not munch on Brazil nuts every day. Next up coconut oil. Now, coconut oil is Hey, saturated fat. Now a lot of people hear that coconut oil has medium chain triglycerides, which it does. And people say wow, medium chain triglycerides. That’s what I want on a ketogenic diet. And I agree. The problem is the vast majority of the fats in coconut oil are not medium chain triglycerides. And even one of them that is carbon 12 is a medium chain triglyceride that has no ketogenic effect. In fact, most mutagenic effects are with carbon six and carbon eight. So coconut oil, sadly, is not going to help you lose weight, it may actually have the opposite effect. I’ve even seen patients who use coconut oil throughout the day for energy, develop fatty tumors under their skin. And when we took their healthy coconut oil away from them, that improved and they shrunk. Finally, if you carry the APOE e4 gene, the Alzheimer’s gene, coconut oil may not be your best friend. Yes, there are some interesting stories on the Internet of people who were given coconut oil and their memory issues improve. Unfortunately, they were short term. They got better for about three months and then rapidly got worse. And that by a year there was absolutely no effect and probably worse effect. Take my advice. Coconut oil is not your friend. If you have the APOE e4 Jade, and 30% of people carry that gene. All right. Healthy comm Bucha I’m a big big fan of fermented drinks, like vinegars, like Kim Bucha, like Kiefer’s, but young Bucha, like other fermented foods is Taney and smart marketeers have realized that to get you to actually keep coming back for kombucha, they have to add sugar. Now don’t get me wrong, you have to add sugar to tea to get fermentation. That’s okay. But once that sugar is used up and you don’t need In much, you shouldn’t have to have more sugar to sweeten the can Bucha. So buyer beware, you have to look at number one serving size. Thankfully most can butchers now as serving size is one bottle. But buyer beware, you better see the word one bottle rather than half a bottle or two servings per bottle. The second thing you want to look at is total carbohydrate. And probably most importantly, is calories buyer beware, the less sugar, the better off you are, the more sugar this becomes a dangerous superfood. Next one up, dark chocolate. Hey, Amy, huge fan of dark chocolate, dark chocolate contains some of the best poly phenols you can buy. But you’ve got to be really careful about how much sugar has been added to that dark chocolate. And in general, the more bitter the chocolate, the better. And in general, you should look for dark chocolate that’s now been made with allulose as the sweetener, and they’re available, you have to look for it. Now there have been some recent studies about lead and cadmium and chocolate, I got news for you. There’s always been lead and cadmium and chocolate. But you’re not going to be eating much of this all day, you’re going to have a square or two. If you’re really worried about it, have some activated charcoal and some chloro or take one of my supplements that contain them. But in general, I see chocolate eaters all the time we measure heavy metals. In the end, I’ve never found a chocolate eater having elevated lead and cadmium levels. They have other reasons to have elevated levels, but not chocolate. Look for the less amount of sugar the better look for the higher amount of fiber the better. And as a general rule, the higher the percent of cacao, the better off you are, but too much sugar and it will not be a superfood. I see patients who think that because I recommend dark chocolate, that they can have a whole bar a day. And guess what, it won’t work. I’ve even done that experiment on myself. And guess what? It doesn’t work. So that’s why I can tell you how dangerous these things are because I see it in my patients. And if I tell my patients to not do something, I’ll try it on myself first to see what the consequences are. How many other influencers, you know, have done that with their patients. Finally, beans and legumes. If you don’t pressure cook beans, they are one of the lectin rich foods that you need to avoid. Luckily, brands like Eden, like jovial pressure, cook their beans, and they’re readily available now. So there’s no excuse not to buy pressure cook beans, which takes the worry away. There’s also no excuse not to have instant pot or a modern pressure cooker in your home so that you can pressure cook the lectins out of whatever you’re going to eat. Now sadly, many people produce an impressive amount of gas with too many beans. And yes, you can gain weight eating too many beans. And I see this with my well meaning patients who are insulin resistant. The sugars in beans are converted into triglycerides, which are stored as fat. Now if you’re not insulin resistant, and remember, about 80% of Americans are insulin resistant. This is probably not a problem for you. But if you are insulin resistant like 80% of Americans are and you still want beans, please use lentils. Lentils have far less sugar than regular beans, and they have more protein. So you’re gonna get a benefit in both ways. And there are pressure cook lentils that you can get from eating. So too much of a good thing can be very dangerous to your health. So just because you’ve heard that there’s a super food out there. Oftentimes super foods can become super bad. Really quickly.
It’s time for the question of the week. This comes from Nadia HR On YouTube, Dr. Gundry have a question regarding intermittent fasting, I have trouble with the eating window because I just do not feel hungry at 7pm. I have a low carb lunch around 1pm. And then I can go on well until 9pm Or even later without any sense of hunger, I cannot see myself eating at six to 7pm Just because I need to keep the time window. What do you suggest? Thank you? Well, now the I suggest that if you’re not hungry at six or seven o’clock, don’t eat. Believe it or not. There’s incredible evidence that shows eating one meal a day around the noon time has tremendous health benefits. So you don’t have to eat in a six hour or seven hour window. And you certainly don’t have to eat at six or seven o’clock at night. And if you’re not hungry, the first rule is don’t eat. Great question. Now it’s time for the review of the week. This comes from Ole follow on YouTube. This doctor needs to be cloned and put into every medical school to re educate doctors with correct information about health. He is brilliant and a gem of a person do anyone with common sense about how to improve their health in a sustained way. I just love learning from his simple to understand videos. I respect this man immensely. Well, thank you Holy follow what you’re talking about me, I think you are trying to make sense of all the confusing information out there. And thankfully, my patients who I continue to see six days a week continue to teach me what works and what doesn’t work. I don’t know. I’m just the conduit from my patients on to you. So thanks for recognize that and I’m gonna keep doing this every week because I’m Dr. Gundry. And I’m always looking out for you.
Speaker 1 41:48
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