Speaker 1:
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:
Matt, thanks a lot for joining me.
Matt Tittlow:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Gundry:
It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Matt Tittlow:
Likewise.
Dr. Gundry:
All right. We’ve talked a lot about butyrate on this show and in my book, but I love hearing other perspectives on the subject. Why is butyrate so essential for gut health?
Matt Tittlow:
Well, how we look at it is really about vegetables, and I’m interested in your feedback, but in the end, something around 95% of Americans aren’t getting enough fiber. You’ve talked about this endlessly, right? So if we’re not getting enough vegetables, then we’re not getting enough fiber. If we’re not getting enough fiber-resistant starches, we’re not getting enough butyrate. So if the foundation of gut health is vegetables and the foundation of gut health is fiber-resistant starches, polyphenols, you said that a few times, well, then shouldn’t the foundation be founded in butyrate?
Dr. Gundry:
For everybody who hasn’t heard about butyrate, butyrate is one of the short-chain fatty acids, and that doesn’t mean much of anything. Butyrate was named butyrate or butyric acid because it just happens to be found in small amounts in butter, and that’s where the name butyrate came from.
Matt Tittlow:
Got it.
Dr. Gundry:
So what’s so unique about short-chain fatty acids, particularly butyrate, in gut health and brain health? Why this silly little compound? Why is it so important?
Matt Tittlow:
Well, you said it a little bit in the intro, and that was about balance. Right? So when we look at the gut and we look at the whole body, we think about whole body balance. And when you’re looking at the short chains and the signals they send to liver and muscle and brain and heart, and how some of these neurotransmitters or hormones are transporting or let’s say transmitting across the vagus nerve, then it just stands to reason that if these signaling molecules are connecting to all these other organs and that the core organ of the gut is the core organ for health, then these short chains should be extraordinarily important and foundational in our opinion, maybe second only to sleep in terms of human health. That’s how we can view it as why short chains, why these small fats, these short chain fats are so important.
Dr. Gundry:
The other thing that amazed me years ago in studying colon health is the lining of the colon are single cells called colonocytes, a great name. And you would think that most of the cells in our body need blood flow to them and get oxygen delivery and nutrient delivery, and yet the colonocytes get 80% of their energy by eating butyrate. So butyrate is basically the sole source of nutrients to the lining of our colon. And if you didn’t know that, you do now, but that’s what really amazed me, that wait a minute, every other cell in our body, it gets plenty of nourishment from blood flow and blah, blah, blah and oxygen, but these cells have to have butyrate to survive and do well.
And we hear a lot on the news, almost every day, about this amazing rise in young people getting colon cancer, for instance. And of course, the answer is, well, everybody’s got to get colonoscopy now at age 45 or maybe 40. And no, the answer is, isn’t anyone curious why all of a sudden, colon cancer is happening in young people? And it’s because these cells are dependent on butyrate and there’s no butyrate anymore. So these cells become angry and dysplastic and cancerous and it’s like, well, you don’t need more colonoscopy. You need more butyrate.
Matt Tittlow:
Yes. I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Gundry:
You’ve mentioned fiber and clearly, as I talked about in gut check, you could eat all the fiber in the world and you might not make butyrate-
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
Because you don’t actually have the chain of cells, bacterial cells that can manufacture butyrate out of that fiber. Is that part of the problem now that our gut microbiome is a desert wasteland rather than a tropical rainforest?
Matt Tittlow:
Definitely. I think you said that in a previous podcast, and I think there are several things that I think the consumer really should know that we should all know, and that is that one, what you just said, that we don’t actually have the factory workers. Right? So you send the fiber, there’s a factory, but there’s no factory worker. This can’t be converted to what you said previously. It could be glyphosate, it could be antibiotics, but the bottom line is those gut buddies that you say, those factory workers aren’t there to actually convert that fiber or resistant starch or polyphenol into butyrate. That’s number one.
The second is if we have such a polyphenol, a lack of polyphenols in our diet or fiber and basically vegetables, and let’s say 95% of us aren’t getting this, doesn’t that stand a reason that 95% of us don’t have enough butyrate? Is this not the deficiency that we are not talking about? For example, we know vitamin D is deficient, so we take vitamin D. we know magnesium is deficient, so we take magnesium. It could be iron, but vegetables, that is arguably the most deficient in the American diet, and hence, butyrate is that secret deficiency that I don’t want to just limit to colon cancer. I would like to limit it or expand it to just human health [inaudible 00:06:38].
Dr. Gundry:
Right.
Matt Tittlow:
And you’ve said things along these lines. I’m interested in your feedback on does that mean if 95% of us aren’t getting enough resistant starches, polyphenols and fiber, and our gut buddies aren’t there to turn those into butyrate, then does that mean we have one of the largest deficiencies in the American diet here in butyrate?
Dr. Gundry:
Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, one of the things that’s unfortunate is we can measure vitamin D levels, we can measure magnesium levels, although most people don’t realize that almost all of our magnesium is kept inside cells and we will actually deplete magnesium out of our cells to keep our blood levels at a normal range. One of the things that shocked me years ago in heart surgery is magnesium is really critically important for keeping heart rhythm regular, preventing skip beats, for instance, atrial fibrillation. And we found that even though almost all the people we operated on had normal magnesium levels when they came in, we had to give them huge doses of magnesium intravenously every four to six hours for 48 hours after heart surgery to suppress all these extra beats. And that’s because they were total body deficient in magnesium and we just didn’t realize that. It’s the same thing with butyrate. Now, a number of companies have been able to track butyrate levels in the stool, which is really the only way now we have of tracking butyrate.
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And when I use those tests on some of my more mischievous patients, almost universally, they don’t either have butyrate-producing bacteria or they may have those bacteria, but they don’t have levels of butyrate. And interestingly enough, a great number of these people don’t have the short-chain fatty acids that can be assembled into butyrate. And it’s just almost all of my folks with leaky gut, for instance, or autoimmune diseases are profoundly deficient in butyrate. So what you’re saying is, well, there’s a little bit of butyrate in butter. We should have a stick of butter every day and then not worry about it, like my good friend, Dave Asprey, would want to do.
Matt Tittlow:
Yeah, exactly. But it’d be difficult, right, to get diet and hence Bio Complete 3?
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So I talked years and years that quite frankly, you could swallow all the butyrate in the world and it’s not going to get to where it needs to go. Number one, most of the time, butyrate is broken down by acid in the stomach. And number two, you really want butyrate to be delivered to the colon-
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
A long way away from your mouth. In fact, I had had a pendulum life who makes several butyrate-producing strains on my podcast, and she brought up a very good example of what I was trying to describe. Let’s suppose you have $1,000,000 in a suitcase in your trunk and you want to deliver it to the bank to deposit.
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And there’s an accident and your trunk flies open and the suitcase lid pops, and the $1 million in $1 bills is now strewn around the highway. And all of the people stopped for the accident are very excited, and they’re picking up the $1 bills. The problem is those $1 bills are not $1 million, and it’s not going to deliver to the bank where it needs to be.
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And I think that was a beautiful example of there are a number of butyrate supplements on the market, but they’re not going to get delivered to the bank, and that’s why we were so excited to partner with you.
Dr. Gundry:
… Why we were so excited to partner with you, because you guys had a way of delivering butyrate to the bank, right? You want to tell us how all that came about?
Matt Tittlow:
It came about eight years ago, and I first tried sodium butyrate, and it stunk up the office.
Dr. Gundry:
This is true.
Matt Tittlow:
It’s terrible. It is so difficult, and to your point, it’s metabolized in the small intestine, in the stomach, et cetera, so it doesn’t get to the bank, to use your metaphor, right? And so, we tried various encapsulation methods, et cetera, until finally about six years ago, we solved that issue in terms of smell, in terms of delivery. We collaborated with you and your team about a little over five years, maybe five and a half years ago. I thank you for actually being of the first, right? We had a lot of books that talk about vegetables or butyrate producing bacteria, prebiotics, helping produce butyrate, but very few are saying, “Look, we’re going to deliver this right to the colon.”
You popularized this. This, I think, is tremendous. To me, it’s not tremendous because people are being helped. That’s a big part of it, but the second part is, for me, in dietary supplements, the core of it has been the multivitamin, but the core of human health has been gut health, and the core of gut health are these short chains, polyphenols, things of this sort that you’ve been talking about. Have we missed the mark? A little bit. I’m not saying multivitamins are bad. I’m just saying that that might be step three and that this is step one, is getting butyrate directly to the colon, and that’s what we did about five and a half years ago, and now we have a couple patents. We call it core biome. It’s made from fermented sources, it’s made in the United States. This is the only one in the world. Patented, fermented, regulatory status, and made in the USA.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, and there it is.
Matt Tittlow:
There you go.
Dr. Gundry:
There’s a husband and wife team, microbiome researchers at Stanford, the Sonnenburgs.
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And they teach, and correctly, that our gut microbiome literally is a desert wasteland with very few core species left, and it’s supposed to be a tropical rainforest. It would be wonderful to say, “Well, yeah. We need to make a tropical rainforest,” and they’re a little bit pessimistic that we could ever rebuild our tropical rainforest, but I respectfully disagree.
Matt Tittlow:
Yes.
Dr. Gundry:
But I think they’re right, and one of the things that impressed me was they did an experiment with humans, and they gave them a prebiotic fiber. Prebiotic fibers are what gut bacteria like to eat. That’s their food, and inulin happens to be a good prebiotic fiber, and so they gave volunteers lots of inulin. They looked at their gut microbiome diversity, and a more diverse microbiome is better than a desert wasteland. They looked at their inflammatory markers, like C-reactive protein, just as an example. And lo and behold, despite getting all this wonderful prebiotic fiber, which ought to feed gut bacteria-
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
… There was really no change in gut diversity or inflammatory markers, and they go, “Well, what the heck?” So to their credit, they said, “Well, we’re missing postbiotics of bacterial fermentation,” and so they gave these people these prebiotics, the inulin, but they also gave them postbiotics, and it was mostly in the forms of yogurts and kefirs, and repeated the experiment. Lo and behold, it was the combination of the postbiotics and the prebiotics that then improved the gut microbiome diversity and started to lower the inflammatory markers.
I think that’s a really important take-home point, because it’s one thing to tell everybody, “Eat your vegetables.” Hard to get people to eat their vegetables, and it’s another thing to say, “Take a bunch of prebiotic fiber, like inulin,” but it’s another thing to say, and this is why, again, we are so excited to have partnered with you, “Let’s take this one step further. Let’s get these postbiotics, like butyrate. Let’s get them delivered where they can then start impacting leaky gut, intestinal permeability. Let’s get the wall of the gut, and then we’ll have a better chance at getting the else back to normal.”
What’s so interesting, I mean, from day one when we introduce this product, it is our best-selling product, and it’s not a placebo effect, which I knew it wouldn’t be, but most of the patients who I see in my office with leaky gut, I don’t even sell Bio Complete 3 in my office, but they either have found it on their own or it’s the first thing we start them on. And it is just amazing that the vast majority of people who buy Bio Complete 3 have never met me and have never read my books, and yet we get these incredible compliments that, “Holy cow. I’ve been eating yogurts and I’ve been eating vegetables and nothing worked, and what the heck? How did you do this?” So, good for you.
Matt Tittlow:
We get the same sort of testimonials. It’s just unbelievable. What I’d like your feedback on how we view this, and I’m interested in your feedback, is healing versus health. It’s a little bit of a nuance, right? I’m splitting hairs here, but you just mentioned essentially leaky gut and healing that epithelial layer, the gut, the lining of the gut.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah.
Matt Tittlow:
If so few of us are getting enough fermented foods, which you were just referring to essentially, and so few of us are getting enough of these fermented foods and resistant starches and polyphenols, then are we starting at, essentially, a sick state? Is our baseline, as the American public, sick? And so, is that first step probiotics, right? My point isn’t that probiotics are bad. My point is at step one, or is healing step one? And our view, and your view, is that we need butyrate delivered directly because our baseline is sick, so we got to hit that to heal, to fix that, so that the prebiotics can work, that the probiotics can work, that all the other nutrients can work. Thoughts on your end? That’s our view. Any thoughts on your side?
Dr. Gundry:
Well, yeah. So I see patients, to this day, six days a week, and I don’t need to, we’ll get into that, I need to see patients six days a week, but I practice what I call restorative medicine. That, to me, is different than functional medicine, complementary medicine, or alternative medicine, because one of the things that in longevity studies, we use this little worm called C. elegans, and it’s a little worm. It’s great, because you can see right through it, and it actually has an intestinal tract, and it only lives about three weeks. Every study that’s ever been done on a substance, a polyphenol, for example, that extends lifespan, first started out in C. elegans studies.
What’s unique about C. elegans is C. elegans survives as long as the single cell layer lining the wall of its gut is intact. As long as that wall is intact, that little worm lives, but as the wall begins to break down, as we get cracks in the wall, then the little guy starts age, it starts to slow down, it starts to eat less. All the things that we associate with our aging happens within three weeks, and we can watch it, and as long as that wall is intact, then it’s fine. So Hippocrates 2,500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut and in gut check. I take that one step further. Death begins in the gut. So you’re right; I think for most Americans, and probably most people in the world, we start by closing those gaps in the wall of the gut.
Butyrate is one of the best compounds that’s ever been discovered to help those colonocytes close the gaps, repair themselves, and then you’re right. Then, we layer in the probiotics, the friendly bacteria, right? But those guys have to have something to eat, right? The other thing that C. Elegans shows is friendly bacteria, probiotics, if you’ve got leaks in the wall of the gut, those friendly bacteria can go through the wall of the gut and be viewed as foreign invaders. So you got to seal the wall of the gut as the starting point. And that’s so exciting about your product.
Matt Tittlow:
So, should this be the multivitamin for the gut?
Dr. Gundry:
Absolutely, and again, it’s amazing how many people, just out of the blue, and they take it, go, “Well, what was that all about?” Right? It’s like, “What’s in there?”
Matt Tittlow:
Yeah. I was actually thinking about the fact that we, as consumers, we know that fish is good, and we’ve reduced fish to omega-threes. I’m not saying it should. I’m just saying we’re a little bit reductionist, right?
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah.
Matt Tittlow:
So, we understand that fish is good. We think omega-threes are good. We know that vegetables are good, but we haven’t reduced that to butyrate. What do you think we need to do to do that? You have, obviously, a megaphone. You’re doing it with Bio Complete 3, but it’s interesting that we’ve-
Matt Tittlow:
… Complete 3. But it’s interesting that we’ve noted that omegas are associated with fish, but we haven’t noticed that butyrate is associated with vegetables. Are we on the cusp? Is this just the beginning? What do you think is the future?
Dr. Gundry:
Well, plant-based diet is a good place to start, but the problem is so many of the plant-based diets out there are actually detrimental to gut health with lectins, et cetera. Interesting, most cultures who have learned how to handle plants, handle plants with fermentation. And we’ve lost that in our desire to be efficient. I was raised on Wonder Bread and Wonder Bread came about because the American consumer didn’t want all those big holes and wanted a nice squishy thing. It was great to take a piece of Wonder Bread and squish it down into a little ball.
And you can’t do that with fermentation of wheat. You have to control it chemically. And so for convenience’s sake or for palatability, we’ve actually lost touch with what traditional cultures have always done to make these plant compounds less harmful to us and available to us. The fermentation of wheat actually had some health benefits, but we don’t have that anymore. Now we just see the negative aspects of, for instance, wheat and gluten. So we got a long way to go.
Matt Tittlow:
We do. So bottom line, [inaudible 00:23:47] butyrate in the colon plus fermented foods, for example.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, and one thing I think that’s interesting, so everybody says, “Well, we need probiotics because Dr. Gundry and everybody says we have a desert wasteland, so we should just swallow probiotics, friendly bacteria.” As I talk to my patients, one of my offices is in Palm Springs, and I used the example of well, let’s say I sell my patients some grass seed in Palm Springs. And they come back in a couple of months and said, “You sold me bad grass seed. It didn’t grow.” And I said, “Well, what’d you do with it?” And they said, “Well, I took it out on the sand and threw it on there.”
And I said, “Well, did you water it?” “No, you didn’t tell me to.” “Well, did you fertilize it?” “No, you didn’t tell me to.” “Well, what did you expect was going to happen?” And it’s the same way with most probiotics. If you don’t feed the probiotics what they need to grow, number one, you’re throwing your money away, but what did you expect was going to happen? And that’s one of the reasons Bio Complete 3 not only has probiotics, but it has prebiotics. But even with those two, if you don’t seal the wall of the gut with butyrate that makes it where it needs to go, that’s not going to be all that effective. But seal the gut, probiotics, prebiotics, and you’re on your way.
Matt Tittlow:
I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Gundry:
So can people eat butyrate other than having a little butter?
Matt Tittlow:
I think we mostly convert it, right? In other words, resistant starches and fermented foods and polyphenols.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah. I think that’s the important take home message. People go, “Well, what should I eat? Where’s the butyrate?”
Matt Tittlow:
Yeah, where-
Dr. Gundry:
Where do I buy it?
Matt Tittlow:
Yeah, where do I buy it? Well, you can try Bio Complete 3. But other than that, no. You’re converting it. And if you don’t have the gut buddies as you’d say, those factory workers to actually convert it, then yeah, it’s essentially wasted, or you bloat or feel distended, that food baby sort of a feeling. So yeah, it just really comes down to sealing it.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah. I recently had a guest on our podcast who’s a pediatrician who’s into functional medicine, and she mentions in her book that butyrate taken as a supplement is worthless unless it’s your tri-biome.
Matt Tittlow:
Yes.
Dr. Gundry:
That’s really the core biome.
Matt Tittlow:
Core biome. Exactly.
Dr. Gundry:
Speaking of tri-biome, telling me all about tri-biome.
Matt Tittlow:
Man, I didn’t know you would lead with this. Or not lead with it, but-
Dr. Gundry:
It was singing like a segue.
Matt Tittlow:
But segue into it, I should say. Yeah. I’m excited to partner with you on this. This is huge. I don’t want to say too much.
Dr. Gundry:
Okay. But can you give us a hint?
Matt Tittlow:
But the hint, you actually, I think hinted already and that is these butyrate-producing bacteria, they need food. What do they eat? What do they need? This I think is tremendous. I think it’s incredibly valuable. It’s in your gut checkbook. I’m excited to partner with you on this. I think it’s the next generation of what’s needed for all of us who are trying to optimize our lives.
Dr. Gundry:
I mean, the exciting thing with the Human Microbiome Project and now being able to identify these vast number of species in our gut that we didn’t even know existed and what each little individual member of the factory workers do and what they need to have to do their job to make the part for the next assembly of another part, as that science advances and it advances every year. We can take a great product like Bio Complete 3 and go the next step to, okay, where do we go from here? What have we learned in the five years since Bio Complete 3 came out that now that we know, okay, now we know this, this, and this? And that’s what’s so exciting.
Matt Tittlow:
Me too. Like you’ve said, you reserve the right to change your mind with new data.
Dr. Gundry:
That’s true.
Matt Tittlow:
And we did the same thing, and I read your book and we’ve been working on this for quite a while. Yeah, you have to source it. You have to file patents, you have to do research. I’ll send you and your team the latest research. We just got it’s short chain fatty acid response just about a week ago. I’ll send it to you. It was incredible. You’ll be very intrigued by those results. And then we’ll have full microbiome responses in another week or two. And then from there, we’ll keep on going. But bottom line, what you know already is good, but I’m saying what we just did on our specific product that we’ll partner on is very telling. And yeah, you’ll be excited.
Dr. Gundry:
Any myths you want to bust about postbiotic supplements, for example? I think the form I book, The Energy Paradox, I don’t think anyone had even heard of a postbiotic. Now it’s the buzzword. And I like to think that I was helpful in that. So now everybody’s talking about postbiotics and any myth busting?
Matt Tittlow:
In terms of a myth bust, I would say that, let’s go back. What we’ve been doing is we “heat treating killing probiotics” and calling those postbiotics. And I think for various reasons that can be good. It can be for efficacy, it could be for stability, et cetera. But the myth that I would like to bust is that a short chain is not a postbiotic. That is not true. It is a postbiotic. Short chains have been for decades postbiotic. They are the actual result of that fermentation process of the resistant starch, the fiber, the polyphenol, the fermented food. That is the end product. So the truth is short chains, butyrate is a postbiotic, period.
Dr. Gundry:
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. I think everybody… The nomenclature has gotten out of hand. Dead bacteria are useful and dead bacteria convey information and dead bacteria can be read by other bacteria, like dead akkermansia actually has utility and other bacteria in the gut say… Even though it’s dead, they read the barcode and say, “Oh, akkermansia is in the house. Great.” And unfortunately the nomenclature says, “Okay, that’s a postbiotic. It’s a dead bacteria.” Not so fast. That’s a dead bacteria. I think the product of bacterial fermentation in terms of gasotransmitters, in short-chain fatty acids, even medium-chain fatty acids, even polyphenols that have been fermented by gut bacteria, those to me are postbiotics. Don’t get me wrong, dead bacteria are wonderful, but I’m not sure we ought to be jumping on the bandwagon that that’s also a postbiotic.
Matt Tittlow:
Right. And I think we get lost in nomenclature and I think skip that nomenclature. Because if we’re just talking about the average consumer, let’s take me and my family, we’re trying to get our kids to school on time. We’re trying to get lunches made. We’re trying to get dinner made. We’re trying to show up as our best selves at work. We’re not thinking about a definition of a postbiotic versus a prebiotic, et cetera. What is that end benefit? Am I bloating less? Do I feel better? Am I more regular? This I think is absolutely critical. And this is what kind of a postbiotic plus the prebiotic, what you just said is that end benefit.
It’s you’re bloating less, you’re more regular, et cetera. One thing, speaking of just practical applications, and we went from myth busting to just practical applications, is about vital signs. I know I’m segueing here a little bit of a transition, but I wanted to ask you about or comment on vital signs. So I went to my vet for my dog. There were three questions. How is he feeling, like energy levels? And then it was what is he eating? Essentially, what kind of food is he, is he ingesting? And then also how is he pooping? But when I go to my doctor, I get none of those questions. It’s what is the problem. And then you try to hit that problem. Let’s say it’s brain, what’s going on. What about pooping is a vital sign? I just can’t imagine that I’d be incredibly stressed and-
Matt Tittlow:
… imagine that I’d be incredibly stressed and, yep, everything’s good, pooping great. It just seems odd that we look at height, we look at weight, we look at blood pressure and skip everything else about lifestyle and pooping as an actual vital sign that you would mark down on your medical chart. I know it’s a heck of a segue from myth busting, but any thoughts on adding that to the medical community’s list of vital signs?
Dr. Gundry:
Unfortunately, you are up against big corporations that really would not want people to worry about toilet paper they use. In fact, as I tell my patients, look, we’re the only animal that uses toilet paper. Does your dog use toilet paper? Does a bear in the woods use toilet paper? No. And you wouldn’t believe, I say, “When you wipe, there shouldn’t be anything there.”
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And they go, “You’re kidding, right?” I said, “No, shouldn’t be there.” And you wouldn’t believe the number of people who come back in and say, “I don’t need toilet paper anymore, what do you think about that?” Now we’re talking.
Matt Tittlow:
And don’t you think this is partly a function of butyrate status?
Dr. Gundry:
Oh yeah. Absolutely.
Matt Tittlow:
I guess that’s a myth bust that you can simply just take psyllium and poop better and then that’s the end.
Dr. Gundry:
That’s the end, right.
Matt Tittlow:
That’s the beginning, maybe. Butyrate status is maybe the end.
Dr. Gundry:
So let’s talk last about how we came to partner, collaborate with Bio Complete 3. Now you’re a pioneer in this. I like to think I’m a pioneer in this. I mean, this was the first to market of your core Bio.
Matt Tittlow:
Right.
Dr. Gundry:
And we wanted to partner with you to bring health to people that you don’t even need to read my book, it’s that effective. It’s been literally five great years.
Normally we have an audience question when we conclude, but I hear you’ve got a question or two for me.
Matt Tittlow:
Yes.
Dr. Gundry:
Okay. Hit it, you’re the audience question.
Matt Tittlow:
So we are very keen on innovation, pioneering. We’re not afraid to be first, and neither are you. But there’s always some inspiration. Sometimes it’s a walk in the woods. Sometimes it’s books. What is your, not inspiration for life, but inspiration for formulation? What usually is that key, that thing that turns your brain on that says, “Hey, this might be my next new product or the next new ingredient and my next new product.”?
Dr. Gundry:
Well, a lot of times, and again, one of the reasons I keep seeing patients six days a week is invariably someone will ask me what I know about a supplement perhaps. And a lot of times I don’t know much about it. Rather than saying, “Well, that’s not important,” I’ll go, “Well, I’ll find out.” Or somebody will say, “I’m thinking about taking such and such. What do you think?” And I’ll say, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to try it on myself and I’ll get back to you.” Or, “I’ll try it on my wife and myself.” Or, I’ll ask 10 or 20 patients who have an issue and I’ve read that X might be useful in fixing this issue, and I don’t make that product. I’ll go, “Go buy this at the health food store on Amazon. I have your blood work at baseline. We’ll see you in three months and let’s see if that affected what I suspect it’s going to affect.”
And if that happens then I go, son of a gun. Look at that. Supplements don’t make expensive urine. I literally see that every day. Or I’ll have patients who are doing well taking a supplement, whether it’s one of mine or somebody else’s and then they stop for whatever reason, and we’ll see it on their blood work. And I’ll go, “Did you stop X or Y?” And they’ll go, “Oh yeah, I wasn’t doing anything for me.” And then I’ll go, “Well, that’s funny. Look at here.” And they go, “Whoa, I didn’t feel any different.” But you could see it on vascular flexibility or inflammatory markers. So that’s one thing.
And then with each book I go down a rabbit hole. And with Energy Paradox, I knew nothing about this communication signaling system of gases that are generated by bacteria that are a messaging system. For instance, I just got back from a conference in Malta where the Microbiota Society was meeting and I was lecturing on the microbiota and addiction. And there was a conference right afterwards, an entire two days of the Society of Extracellular Vesicles. And I wrote about them in Gut Check. But there’s a society devoted to extracellular vesicles, which are basically text messages containing information, containing RNA and DNA, even mitochondria, that not only bacteria pop off, that goes through our gut wall and into us that tells ourselves what to do, but plants have these extracellular vesicles that tell bacteria and us what to do.
So there’s this amazing trans-kingdom communication between fungi and plants and bacteria and higher animals. And because we’ve finally begun to decode the language that has always been there, we just didn’t hear it. It’s like, I’ll use an example. It was thought that mice don’t talk or don’t have a language, quiet as a mouse. Turns out they speak in ultrasound and so we can’t hear it. And when they use ultrasound it turns out these guys talk all the time. And it’s like, we didn’t know that because we didn’t hear it. And it’s like we now are discovering the language. And now that we can know that language, that’s where we need to go next to figure out what are those languages that we can develop that will impact human health.
Speaker 1:
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