Unknown Speaker 0:00
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
Now, have you been fasting or meal skipping with little to no results? You’re not alone. If you’ve read my book, unlocking the Keto code, you now know that 50% of normal weight people are what we call metabolically inflexible. This means that they are actually insulin resistant, which quite frankly, is the same as pre diabetic. This means that they have a high fasting insulin level. That means that they cannot make a switch from burning sugar as a fuel to burning free fatty acids as a fuel, because they can’t release fat from fat cells. And we’ll get into that in a minute. Now, even worse, 88% of overweight people are insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible, and 99% of obese people are insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible. So if you’re in that category, and the vast majority of Americans are, one of the problems is that your mitochondria are dependent on using sugar as a fuel. One of our problems is we use insulin as a key to taking extra sugar and extra protein and delivering it into muscle cells to use as a fuel. And a muscle cells are hungry, it’s easy to unlock the door and deliver the fuel. But the vast majority of us are resistant to the action of insulin, they’re not listening to the sales pitch. So insulin instead takes the extra calories that we eat, and unlocks the door to fat cells and says here, we’re going to store this for later because a famine is going to come it always has in the past. And we’ll be ready, we’ll have our batteries charge. So when insulin levels are high, trying to deliver this, one of the things that most people don’t know is that a high insulin level prevents fat cells from releasing fats back into the bloodstream. And think about if you’re trying to put something into storage with a moving van, you certainly wouldn’t want another guy with a different moving van, taking what you put into storage out. And that’s actually a great design. So when insulin levels are high, like most of us, unfortunately, we can put fat into storage, but that insulin blocks fat from coming out. Well, we can run on both sugar and free fatty acids or ketones. And we should be just like a hybrid car. If we run out of sugar, if our blood sugar drops, instantly, those fat cells should start releasing free fatty acids into our bloodstream. And we can run on those our mitochondria go great. I’m now using fats that’s been stored wonderful, I’m perfect. But the vast majority of us have a high insulin level. So when we stop eating, and our blood sugar starts to go low, our insulin levels still high. And so even though we would like to get to all that fat, the high insulin level prevents that from happening. It’s literally water water everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink. Okay, so what happens when we try to do intermittent fasting or meal skipping is that our blood sugar drops and we get hangry we get grumpy, we get a headache, and we get really hungry. So that when we start eating, our brain says hey, I I gotta have sugar. Get me sugar, I am literally starving to death. And so what happens to everyone is that we crave carbohydrates, because our brain says, that’s what I need. And so you could be skipping a meal while still metabolically inflexible, but you in general over eat, and you overeat primarily on carbohydrates. And I see this all the time in my patients who are really trying hard to follow an intermittent fasting program, but they just don’t realize that as long as their insulin levels are elevated, they’re going to have a really hard time making it through this period of not eating. And when they finally start eating, they almost invariably over eat. Now there’s one other solution that most people unfortunately are not aware of. So you can’t get to all that fat that you stored when your insulin levels high. But there’s another option, and it’s a bad option. You can break down muscle to provide glucose. And it’s called gluconeogenesis. So if you insulin levels high, and you can’t get to that fat, your body instead will actually start cannibalizing your muscle to get the glucose that it needs to keep running. What’s so bad about that? Well, remember, muscle in general, is what your insulin sells the food you eat to. And if you’ve got lots of customers lots of muscle, then it’s an easy sale and insulin doesn’t have to go up. Reason example of this is many of you have heard about this miracle weight loss drug ozempic. And it’s cousins. And it’s given away like water. In Los Angeles, I see it every day. The problem is that the studies done on ozempic Weight Loss shows that 50% of the weight loss that’s achieved is lack of muscle. In other words, muscle mass going down accounts for 50% of the weight loss. And so it’s no wonder that when people stop that drug, their weight balloons, because now you don’t have as many customers to sell the food you ate, and it goes right into fat. And so the same thing happens when we try to muscle through not eating. With a high insulin level. We’re literally stealing protein from our muscles to make blood sugar. So it’s a double whammy. So what does all this have to do with fasting? Well, if you’re metabolically flexible, your body works like a hybrid car, and it switches over literally instantaneously. When you run out of gas, glucose, you just start burning battery power and you’re fat. And because your insulin is low, you just switch back and forth. But when your insulin levels high, you literally sputter to a stop or start stealing from your muscles. And when you start eating, you are ravenously hungry and you overeat. Some of my patients say well, but I’m going to eat lectin free foods or lectin light foods, and I’ll be fine. And so they eat a bag of cassava chips, or they eat a bag of plantain chips, because they’re so hungry. And they come in and we look at their results and they’re not losing weight. And their triglycerides are elevated and they still have an elevated insulin. And we go through their diet. And they’re shocked when I show them. The carbohydrate content. I have a bag of cassava chips or a bag of plantain chips. And they go but but there’s no lectins in that. I said Yeah, but they’re still carbohydrates. And this actually proves to you that your brain is telling you to seek these things out. And when we finally break through that, just because something’s lectin free doesn’t mean it’s a safe food, eat it We’re trying to lower insulin levels, then we actually make some progress. All right now you’re saying, Well, what the heck am I supposed to do?
I’m like most Americans, I’m insulin resistant. I’m metabolically inflexible help. Well, as I explained in the Keto code, becoming metabolically flexible is not as difficult as you think. So, first of all, MCT oil, or powder, so MCT oils are unlike any other fat MCT is are absorbed directly through the wall of our gut. And they go directly to our liver, where they’re made into ketones, and ketones you and your brain and your mitochondria can use as a fuel, even though there is no glucose. So this is a really good trick to get you through these anxious times. As I mentioned before, women do better with MCT powders in general MCT oils give a lot of women a queasy stomach, and even loose bowel movements, even diarrhea. So plenty of MCT oils, try to get C eight MC teas, and please coconut oil is not going to do the job for you. Most of the fats in coconut oil are not MC teas. And I see this mistake made all the time. People see that MCT oil is from coconut oil, so they assume that coconut oil has a lot of MCT oil as it doesn’t and you will not get the benefit by using coconut oil, you’ll get the benefit by using MCT oil. Now how about diet. The problem is when you’re doing these sorts of programs, you want to eat more protein because you can take that protein and break it down into glucose without affecting your muscle mass. Also, nuts are a great source of protein and nuts also really are satiating and you can get through this program. Now, muscle strength training is actually one of the best ways to increase your metabolically flexible mitochondria. The more muscle mass you make, by strength training, the lower your insulin levels go. And remember 70% of your muscle mass is in your butt and your thighs. So when you go to the gym, concentrate on lower body exercising, and you don’t even need to go to the gym like I say take some exercise snacking breaks. Brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes. do squats and deep knee bends while you’re brushing your teeth. You’re going to use those deep muscles to do it. Do a plank do a modified plank, you’ll actually use almost all of your muscles to do a plank or push up. Hot therapy like a sauna builds flexibility. Cold Therapy like taking a cold shower or just even a 15/32 blast of cold after your shower will activate mitochondrial uncoupling poly phenols and the more poly phenols you get in your diet, the more metabolically flexible you become. And there’s a lot of foods that have MCT oil like goat and sheep, cheeses and goat and sheep yogurts. So all of these tricks will get you metabolically flexible.
Now when you think of coffee, you might think about Melky, sugary frappe pay of some sort. You might think latte or a cappuccino. They’re everywhere these days. If you think that’s normal, sorry, folks, you’re wrong. In most other areas, the world cultures actually get the benefits of coffee because they don’t add anything to it, including milk. Now there’s two reasons you’re actually drinking coffee, caffeine, probably obvious and the poly phenols and coffee which may not be obvious. Now coffee because of the caffeine and because of the poly phenols helps uncouple your mitochondria and I’ve written an entire book about how important it is for your health to uncouple your mitochondria basically make your mitochondria have real work less hard and tell your mitochondria to divide and make more of themselves to share the workload. That’s what uncoupling does. And caffeine and the polyphenols and coffee are both great ways to do that. The other recent evidence is that poly phenols are actually some of the favorite food of your gut buddies. And the more poly phenols that you add to your diet, the more diverse and happy your gut buddies become. So poly phenols, are actually a prebiotic. Now unfortunately, the when you add milk to your coffee, the proteins in milk bind to those barley phenols. And they’re unfortunately totally unavailable to feed your gut buddies, they basically become worthless. So what do you do? Well, let me give you an example of what not to do that’s actually staring us in front of our faces. There are several cultures that add milk to tea, like the British, and I trained in London for a year or so that is something they do. And there are several cultures that do not like the Japanese and Chinese. Now, only the Japanese and Chinese actually get a benefit from the tea, because the milk proteins have not bound up the poly phenols. Sadly, the British have lousy longevity. And the Japanese and Chinese have fantastic longevity and one of the factors is the fact that they’re not binding the polyphenols in their tea. Sadly, it’s even been shown that this affects blueberries that you mix into yogurt. binding the blueberry poly phenols with the yogurt makes them unfortunately useless. Now some people will tell you that adding milk helps to prevent staining of their teeth due to the poly phenol binding. Please do not listen to this. In this case staining your teeth is a good thing. And if you’re super concerned about it, just use a straw or brush your teeth or do an oil pull after you drink your favorite beverage. Now America loves coffee. If you must add a creamer to your coffee. Use something like coconut milk creamers, or macadamia nut creamers, but buyer beware, macadamia nut milk and I won’t mention the brand now has added pea protein to make it more creamy. And as you probably know p protein is loaded with lectins however, there are some macadamia creamers not melt that don’t have that p protein added. So read the label carefully. Coconut milk is always a great idea, because it will not bind to those poly phenols. Now I see far too many people trying to be dairy free and adding almond or oat milk to their coffee. Quite frankly, they’re destroying their gut. And they’re ill. Now why because almond milk unfortunately is made from the peels with the peels and the whole almonds. The peel actually contains a lectin. And as I’ve written about before, and you’ll see in the new upcoming book that almonds and almond flour are some of the most food sensitive producing compounds that my patients react to. Sorry about that. But what about oatmeal? Well, oats and oat milk have become trendy. But I urge you to go on the internet and look for a recent YouTube posting of a young woman who was wearing a continuous glucose monitor and went to Starbucks and or had a oat latte and traced her blood sugar levels. They shot through the roof and then a half hour crash down into the 40s or 50s and she literally had to be woken up from her nap. So this stuff is Just pure unadulterated poison, sugar poison. And as I’ve released in previous videos, oats, even organic oats in this country have levels of glyphosate, Roundup, and another cancer causing chemical in them. According to Consumer Reports in the Environmental Working Group, it is not a healthy option. If you got to have a creamer use a coconut milk or macadamia nut creamer that virtually has no protein. Or look for a number of the popular MCT creamers out there, which don’t use for the most part these problem makers. Now interestingly enough, as you know, I spend a lot of time in Italy. And I’ve always been fascinated that the Italians may have a cappuccino in the morning. But almost all baristas will cut you off from cappuccinos about 10 o’clock in the morning and only agreed to serve you espressos or if you must have a little foam, a espresso macchiato. Now a macchiato in Italy is just a little dollop of foam on the top. It is not the crazy macchiatos that you get at a place like Starbucks, which is this sugary, ridiculous drink. So even the Italians understand that they really don’t want to mess with a good thing for most of the day. Now, some of the world’s longest living people, people with the longest longevity actually boil their coffee all day, and then drink it black. Why are they so smart? It turns out that the longer the coffee grounds are exposed to the water.
The longer the poly Fein halls are taken up in the beverage and the coffee you’re drinking. So boiling it all day, as strange as that seems, is actually a really smart idea. Now the other thing that surprises people is your drinking coffee for two purposes, caffeine and the poly phenols. The more dark you brew the coffee, like French roast or dark rose, the less poly phenols are in that coffee. So if you’re going to buy coffee for roasting, or for drinking, try to buy the lightest rose. Surprisingly, everybody thinks that the darker the coffee, the better it is the more poly phenols. But it’s exactly the opposite. You want light rows. Worst case scenario, medium rows, stay away from the extra dark rows, like French rows, and you’ll be doing yourself a favor by giving your gut buddies more of the poly phenols that you’re actually drinking coffee for. And for goodness sakes stop putting milk in your coffee. It does not do a body good and does not allow your gut buddies to get the benefits that they’re looking for. And in turn, they’ll help you. So have a cup of joe but Abbott black folks, if you really miserable, add my new favorite sweetener allulose to it. Add a macadamia or coconut creamer or add a MCT creamer and you’ll get the smooth as you want with all the drawbacks. Everyone thinks of butter is a great source of butyric acid,
a short chain fatty acid, which is really great for you. Wrong, butter is not a great source of butyric acid. Yes butter is named after butyric acid, but there really is very little butyric acid in butter. Number two most butter comes from a one cows. So even if you’re getting grass fed butter, it’s probably from an A one cow and that butter has casein a one in it. And casein a one is that protein, that great number of people and a great number of my patients to react to as a foreign substance. So how do you know which is which? Well, most cows in the United States are Holsteins, the black and white cow. Irish butter is from Holstein cows. So even if it says grass fed, it’s the wrong breed of cow. If you can find butter from Guernsey cows and it does exist, or Jersey cows, which have about half as much casein a one as Holstein cows, you’re better off or find a way to butter grass fed and it is increasingly becoming available in the United States. Also, Southern European butters, primarily in France, Switzerland, and Italy, are almost exclusively from A to cows. Finally, goat butter, which is available is an aid to butter. So if you got to have butters, that’s the way to go. But not so fast. That’s not my only issue with butter. And that is the type of cow. There is a very recent study out of Norway that was reported at the first of this year, they took people who had stable angina. Now many people have heard of angina I deal with angina every day stable angina is people who have known blockages in their coronary arteries. And when they exercise, they get chest pain, angina, or heaviness in their chest, or their our makes, etc. And when they stop, that pain goes away. And when they start, that pain comes back. And it’s very predictable. And it stays the same day after day. And there’s not a lot, quite frankly, to worry about in people with stable angina. So in this study, they took people with starting with stable angina and they look at how their stable angina progressed to unstable edge. And unstable angina, as the name implies, means that all of a sudden, it’s kind of happening all the time, or they have a heart attack. That’s called acute coronary syndrome. And that’s kind of how you end up in the emergency room. So going from stable angina to unstable angina is not a good thing. They looked at three parameters in their diet, they looked at butter consumption, they looked at milk consumption. And they looked at cheese consumption. And here’s the mic drop, butter consumption correlated directly and as the biggest cause of turning stable engine to unstable engine, the chart was off the chart, ladder. Number one correlated from a stable engine going to unstable and in other words, the more butter they ate, the worse it got. Number two, milk, milk drinking was right behind Butter. Butter was by far number one, milk was number two. And that’s actually what made the news. Dairy is bad for you if you have heart disease. But what really didn’t make the news was cheese consumption. It turns out that the more cheese people ate, the better their engine a God. And the less likely they were to have unstable engine. Exactly the opposite. Now, what the heck with that? Well, it turns out as I’ve written about before, that cheese has fascinating compounds that are really, really good for your health, primarily poly amines, and the fermentation products that go in to making cheese cheese. Cheese is a fermented food. And one of the interesting things most four out of the five blue zones, goat and cheese consumption is one of the major reasons why they have great health. This new study once again puts butter consumption way up on the warning list and cheese consumption. Particularly true fermented cheese, not cheese products like we see in the United States as probably pretty doggone good for it. So, one of the reasons I don’t recommend the call Coffee and butter trend is the butter in your coffee. On the other hand, olive oil and MCT oil in your coffee is a much better choice for your health. And so get rid of the butter in your coffee. And just go for MCT oil, MCT creamers and or olive oil and you’re going to be much better off. Okay, so to summarize, if you were to eat a lot of butter every single day, you would be doing your heart a major disservice. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it in moderation. And what do I mean by that, quite frankly, I and my wife really don’t use butter in the United States at all. We’re much happier using olive oil and perilla oil, and sesame oil on almost everything we eat, and drink. And soy butter really doesn’t have much of a place in our diet. In Europe, particularly in southern Europe, where we spend our time. Butter is actually incredibly rare. On the menu, olive oil is the most prevalent, and you often believe it or not have to ask for butter. And luckily the butter is grass fed. Some chefs particularly in Italy, a will use butter in their recipes with olive oil mixed together. And that’s where we’ll have it and we view it as a special trait. Well, what about baking and cooking? Well, as you know, it is not a health food. You can easily substitute butter with Parilla or Hollowell for baking. If you really want butter in this country. Look for the goat butter, the Italian butter, the French butters and you can find them you can even find Italian butter in Costco. But But But what about the MC teas in butter? Well, I’m sorry, butter is not a great source of medium chain triglycerides. medium chain triglycerides only account for about six to 8% of the fats in butter. And that’s not much. So if you think you’re getting a huge boost in MC teas from butter, think again. The other interesting thing is that most of those MC T’s in butter are actually the longer chain MC T’s C 12 which has no ketogenic effect. So in other words, you’re not getting the supposed health benefits from butter that you think you’re getting. If you really want to get benefit. Think about using goat and sheep, yogurts or cheeses, and I even have a recipe and unlocking the Keto code for out Capra Chino, where we actually put goat yogurt or goat cheese, blend it in coffee, along with MCT oil, and you’re way ahead of the game. Finally, take this to the bank. Irish butter has a picture of a black and white cow on the label and bless their hearts. They’re trying to tell you that that’s the wrong breed of cow. Thank you for doing that. Talk about truth in advertising. That’s it. Stay away from the Irish butter.
Unknown Speaker 33:36
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