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.
Alejandro Junge…: What I’ve been up to is really being a gypsy doctor healer. I’m traveling around the world helping people everywhere I go, but when I do it intensely, I do it in retreats. I take people to nature and I’ve worked in hospitals sometime with you and I realized that that environment is not the most propitious or auspicious for healing, right? We don’t talk too much about healing in Western modern medicine, but as you know, we’ve been incursioning or studying into that world for a long time. So my kids are living in England. I’m traveling mostly around the East coast, so I’d be close to them and go visit them often.
Dr. Steven Gund…: So maybe we ought step back and catch people up on how we got to know each other. You want to start or you-
Alejandro Junge…: I’ll start.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You start.
Alejandro Junge…: I’ll start. So I was graduating from medical school in Uruguay when an American doctor invited me to do a internship in residency and then a fellowship in cardiology, first at NYU Downtown Hospital, then a Lenox Hill Hospital. I went there and the change in lifestyle got me really sick through the years as things progressed from seasonal allergies to all-year-round ordeal, irritable bowel syndrome and depression, three diagnoses that were made by very prominent specialists at Lenox Hill and I was given seven prescription medications. I did know by that time that that was not going to correct any dysfunction from its root that was just going to force a chemistry in my body that will maybe attenuate or eliminate some symptoms, but also with the side effects possibility, right?
So I knew that already and I realized at that time that is not what I wanted for myself, and therefore, I didn’t want that for my patients either. So I went into an existential and career crisis, ended up in a monastery in India because I had a very profound experience with a meditation teacher or a guru, right? Lived there for a year and a half and I was exposed to Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, chiropractic medicine and many other modalities from all over the world, because in this monastery in India that I went to live in, I was directing the clinic. At any given time, there were 2,000 people in the ashram and they would come to the clinic when they had a problem.
So we would be all these specialists sitting around. I, because I was cardiologist, was given the directorship, right? But we used to consult with Chinese medicine doctor, Ayurvedic medicine doctor. Everybody would give their opinion and my head was burst open into seeing the power of all these other approaches, right? So after that, I had to come back to the United States and ended up in Desert Regional Medical Center, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: In Palm Springs, California.
Alejandro Junge…: In Palm Springs, California. And by that time, my sister who had had a kidney transplant from my mom, my mom’s kidney in my sister failed and she went back into dialysis, right? So when I was in India the first time, I read a lot about enlightenment and these states of super consciousness, of cosmic consciousness and the things that can happen around people that are in that state, just like when Jesus Christ used to wake up the dead or male the blind see, right? So I was very, very interested in all that kind of thing. When I was in India, I started studying, especially about one of them. I won’t mention the name, but it was a very famous guru that was described by a lot of intelligent people to cause miracles. And so I wanted to take my sister-
Dr. Steven Gund…: Who was an avatar.
Alejandro Junge…: Yes, supposedly, right? So I wanted to take my sister there to see if … Because I believed in it and I still believe in the possibility of healing coming from super consciousness or through an enlightened being in that state, right? So first, I went to check it out. I took a few days off from my cardiology practice in Palm Springs and I went to check out this guru.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Guru.
Alejandro Junge…: And I met very interesting intelligent people that told me that, “Yeah, he has powers,” but there were hundreds of thousands of people that went there daily to be close to him, right? So to be really close to him, which is when the miracles happen, you had to bring something to the table. So I went to the hospital that this guru built, which is like the Taj Mahal of hospitals in India, free for everybody and I offered my services as a cardiologist. They say, “Yeah, yeah, sure, write down your name,” and there were 10,000 cardiologists waiting to go there to give service. So I said … Somebody told me that in order for me to bring my sister and assure that she would meet this guru, I had to do something important.
And through my investigations, I found out that the only thing that they didn’t have was a pediatric heart surgeon. So I get back to Palm. The day I get back to Palm Springs, they tell me, “Alex, you have to be at the welcoming party tonight of the $6 Million Man, of the Bionic Man.” I say, “Who is the Bionic Man?” The Bionic Surgeon, you don’t know, yeah.” At Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, they wanted to turn it into a Mayo Clinic, and to turn into Mayo Clinic, they needed the top heart surgery in the world, which was at the time, Dr. Gundry, both adult/pediatric heart surgeon.
I don’t know if your audience know this, but he invented a way of stopping the heart through retrograde cardioplegia. This guy is incredible. So everybody knew that. And so we met, we kicked it off immediately. You told me, “I want to have lunch with you the next day.” We ended up in my house and you grabbed books of mine. Three days later, you said, “I read your books. I need a couple more,” and I said, “You read them?” and I quizzed you a little bit. And you had read them, five books in three days that took me five months to read. And you took a book about this guru. And when you returned the book, I simply dropped it on you. I said, “Listen, I want to take my sister there. She’s on dialysis. To meet this guy, we need a pediatric heart surgeon to come with us and teach their surgeons how to do some surgeries that they didn’t know how to,” and you said yes.
And that was amazing trip that we had. There was some controversial stuff that happened there, which actually you were a witness and we were in the room when this guru was berating me and you basically found a way to stop it, which was incredible for me. We go back a long time. So that’s how we met.
Dr. Steven Gund…: That’s how we met. And when I was recruited to come out to Desert Regional from Loma Linda, one of the things that I had been getting into was that, because of Big Ed, I wanted to not only have a heart surgery cardiology institute, but I wanted to do what was then called alternative medicine or complementary medicine and combine that all under one roof, which really wasn’t done much. And so I was willing and able to gobble up every book you had about the subject.
Alejandro Junge…: Because by the time that you came, I was already into detoxification, functional medicine, gut repair, all of these things and you were like, “I need to talk to you.” And so that’s how you ended up in my house borrowing all my books.
Dr. Steven Gund…: That’s right. So we went to India to … And this guru literally had built a medical school, a hospital that was all for free for everyone. And this guy, tons of books written about him, about the miracles he performed.
Alejandro Junge…: It ended up that one day he tried to molest me and I was so shocked that I started … I had an acute ulcer. I started vomiting blood. And once it was a little bit calmed down, they took me to the hospital because we had to go to work every day. And I don’t know if you remember, but I was making the videos of your surgeries, so they could have a record because they were learning.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Of how to do this.
Alejandro Junge…: So I have to go there, but I was so shocked and there was blood in my mouth and you came to me and you said, “What happened? You don’t look good.” And I said and I looked at you and I wasn’t saying anything, but this guru said to me, “If you say anything to anybody, you will be cursed,” and I was deadly afraid. So you came into my ear and you said, “I think I know what happened to you and you don’t need to say anything. I read some stuff on the internet.”
Dr. Steven Gund…: And needless to say, your sister was not cured.
Alejandro Junge…: Well, no, she wasn’t, but she was so touched with all the love that took for us to go there, that it made her more resilient. And eventually, she got a kidney transplant from a deceased man in a motorcycle accident. She did really well for a few years, for about seven years. Now she’s back on dialysis and on the transplant list.
Dr. Steven Gund…: So that’s how we got going, but then you, like me, began to realize that the traditional practice of cardiology was not what you were cut out for, and certainly, the traditional practice of heart surgery was probably not what, well, I was cut out for it, but there were better things to do.
Alejandro Junge…: Well, the thing is that, when I came back from India and I was hired by this cardiology practice, they hire you for three years and then they make you an associate. They pay you a salary and you have to be making more money than one they pay you to be profitable otherwise. And that translated to seven minutes per patient and then you have to write a prescription because the standard practice of care and if you don’t do it and something happens. So I fell back into … Because this was after my first stint in India and I said … And not only that, all my irritable bowel syndrome and allergies and depression, which had improved during my year and a half in India, went back, came back with a vengeance.
And at that time, I discovered the practices and concepts of detoxification, gut repair through functional medicine and other modalities. And I was diving into it like crazy, but when I really understood it, I just quit the hospital and went, did my own thing.
Dr. Steven Gund…: And that’s where your big book Clean came about?
Alejandro Junge…: Yes. That was around 2008. And then around 2011, I wrote about how repairing the gut can repair your life.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You became a guru to lots of big name designers and celebrities and stars, etcetera, etcetera and you started traveling the world and we’d catch up with each other every now and then.
Alejandro Junge…: We met on planes, right? When going and giving a lecture in Sun Valley.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah, “Where are you going? Oh, I’m going there.” And then we were talking, what, a year ago or something and said, “Hey, know anybody who can do aortic valve replacements with a Ross procedure,” and I had done a lot of Ross procedures, but anyhow, how’d that come about?
Alejandro Junge…: So I had a difficult divorce with the mother of my two young children, and at that time, I was so out of my mind. I was so not present and had a car accident. And the impact not only destroyed bones, which I had to put screws and metal plates to reconstruct all over my body, but it tore the posterior leaflet of my aortic valve. And that caused aortic insufficiency, which started dilating my heart. And we were waiting until 62 to 63 and we decided to do it. But in the month that it took from scheduling the operation until I was on the table with Dr. Ismail El-Hamamsy in Mount Sinai in New York, it had gone to 72, so I had cardiomyopathy. And if that would stay like that, it would’ve gone to heart failure. Incredibly after the Ross procedure, my heart function came back and everything is fine now.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Now the skeptic would go, “Well, but why didn’t you get divine energy and heal your aortic valve?” this skeptic would say.
Alejandro Junge…: I still believe that, if Jesus Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or one of these enlightened beings were around, maybe they could have done that, but I wasn’t going to wait for them, because from 72, it would’ve been too-
Dr. Steven Gund…: Hey, I was at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, so we’re still waiting.
Alejandro Junge…: I didn’t want to wait for that. So I went to the best cardiac surgeon … First, I went to you, but you said, “I’m not doing that anymore.” So then I went to Ismail El-Hamamsy, which is the Michael Jordan of aortic valve surgery and I had surgery. Why? Because modern Western medicine is incredible for acute problems. And that, even though it took some time to develop the cardiac dilation, the ventricular dilation, it was an acute problem because it was from trauma from my accident that broke …
Dr. Steven Gund…: The valve.
Alejandro Junge…: … the leaflet. Right. So Western modern medicine is the best for this kind of problem, right? You break a bone, you have a stroke, you have a heart attack, they open up the artery, they dissolve or suction out the clot and they save your myocardium or your brain …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right, or your knee.
Alejandro Junge…: … or your leg. But when it comes to the chronic diseases of the modern world, that’s where modern Western medicine doesn’t work so well. The chronic diseases of the modern world, even though a divine intervention could heal, we’re not going to wait for that either and we both have developed ways of creating the conditions to heal the gut, which is where we know now 90-something percent, if not 100% of the chronic diseases of modern world either originate from or are aggravated by injury off, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: And here, I brought my girlfriend, this anatomical model of the gut wall. So if we geek out a little bit about the intestines, we can point out and have people see what we always talk about because an image talks more than a thousand words, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah, true. So it is hard to imagine, but the wall of our intestines is literally only one cell thick and we can … It’s at least the surface area of a tennis court. There’s a gastroenterologist/allergist in England who is convinced and has data that it’s at least two tennis courts. I used to think it was a football field. I may still stand by that, but it’s a huge, vast, almost undefended surface area.
Alejandro Junge…: Right. And it’s all folded, so it can fit within. But when I run this, then … So imagine a surface of one-and-a-half tennis court and every millimeter or less than a millimeter, which this is blown up, but these villi would be away from that villi by very, very small. So imagine that surface with cable. The yellow thing here is the nervous system. These are nerve endings into each fingertip of microvilli, right? Now, the cable that you would have to from one and a half tennis court endings, surface, that’s what the nervous system, the second brain that we talk about. And I love bringing this prop because that’s how people really get the image of how huge a brain we have in and around our gut as well as the immune system. I don’t know if you see here, there’s a blowout of a little area in the wall and there’s the immune system here. Here, they’re making their antibodies or whatever it is that the immune system does, right?
And this is a circulatory system, arteries and veins to which the food that is digested supposedly …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Supposedly.
Alejandro Junge…: … goes in and is dumped, goes in through the cell and is dumped into the vein, right? And we both know and we both wrote books about it. Yours is about to come. My book I wrote in 2011 of how this here is the Achilles’ heel of health for humans, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: Because when this goes wrong, it touches every cell in your body.
Dr. Steven Gund…: In fact, one of the things that you and I, when we were in medical school in the dark ages, we, of course, were taught about the vagus nerve, this huge nerve that runs from the brain down to the organs, the heart, the lungs …
Alejandro Junge…: And the mesenteric …
Dr. Steven Gund…: … all the intestines …
Alejandro Junge…: … plexus.
Dr. Steven Gund…: … and we were … Basically, that’s how the brain communicated with all these organs and that is true. But what we didn’t know is that, for every one fiber coming from the brain down, there’s like nine fibers coming up. And it wasn’t the brain telling this what to do. It was this telling …
Alejandro Junge…: … the brain what to do.
Dr. Steven Gund…: … right, “What’s going on?”
Alejandro Junge…: And it’s not even this, it’s what’s happening on the other side of the wall, which is telling this, which is telling your brain, right? And so we have all the zoo, all the microorganisms. And people are talking about a lot about bacteria in the gut, but it’s not only bacteria.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right.
Alejandro Junge…: It’s bacteria, fungus, virus. It’s spirochetes, and probably, bugs that we don’t even know about yet.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right.
Alejandro Junge…: And these bugs, there’s good ones, the common cell ones and there’s the bad ones, which are the pathogenic ones. And they have little substances in their membranes that, when they break, they come and they’re supposed to be like a mucoid coating of these cells, the enterocytes that are kind of like the bricks on a brick wall and the junction between them that should be tight and there’s the cement between the cells, right? They’re bricks in a brick wall. This is very much like the same, but this is alive. So the bacteria here have these substances, these molecules called LPS, lipopolysaccharides, right? And many others like butyrate. And those signal the nervous system, but not only the nervous system, also the immune system, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, absolutely.
Alejandro Junge…: And in this secreted mucinous cover, they’re supposed to be an enzyme called the intestinal …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Intestinal-
Alejandro Junge…: … alkaline phosphatase, which breaks down these lipopolysaccharides, right? The IAP is binded to the membrane but also secreted, right? And it alters the DNA of the bacteria …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sure.
Alejandro Junge…: … and it inhibits some bacteria from growing and it boosts other bacteria, the good ones to grow, right? So it already alters the microbiome in a very good way. Also digests the LPS, the lipopolysaccharides, right? Takes one phosphate out and turns them … Because when the LPS is able to come to the wall or maybe even go …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Go through it-
Alejandro Junge…: … into the blood, then this thing promotes the production of LTR-4 which is a pro-inflammatory in the inflammatory cascade, these different compounds, right? Then makes more nuclear factor kappa B that then translocates into the nucleus and promotes your genes to make more of that enzyme or to make inflammatory cytokines, right? So it’s amazing how we produce things that affect the bacteria and the bacteria produce things that affect us. And this is a symbiosis that we’re talking about, right? And this is literally where I think most of our attention should be and I think that you and I should go and talk to RFK and tell him about this because I believe that, if people go on a gut repair program and then maintain it like that, we would eliminate a huge percentage of the chronic diseases that America and the world is suffering from.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, absolutely. And I’m glad you brought this because I think, in the energy paradox, we all know that plants have roots and roots go into the soil and the plant picks up nourishment from the soil through its roots. And we now know of course, that the soil has its own teeming microbiome …
Alejandro Junge…: And fungus.
Dr. Steven Gund…: … and fungus. I like the word holobiome. Most people think of microbiome, they think of bacteria.
Alejandro Junge…: That’s why the mycobiome name also came into play.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Exactly. So there’s a myco, the fungal biome, and there’s viruses. And I just got back from a big microbiome-
Alejandro Junge…: And parasites and many other things.
Dr. Steven Gund…: And so we now know that the plant actually gets most of its nutrient absorption because of the bacteria and the fungi …
Alejandro Junge…: In the soil.
Dr. Steven Gund…: … facilitating the absorption and breaking down the nutrients, so that the plant could absorb them. And I made the argument that these are our roots and the soil-
Alejandro Junge…: It’s portable. It’s inverted inside out. Our roots are inverted and the soil is portable. You put it in.
Dr. Steven Gund…: We put the soil in. And if you don’t have the right … I’m going to call it holobiome, but most people think of microbiome. If you don’t have the right bacteria and fungi in soil, you are not going to be able to absorb nutrients properly, or like you say, you’re going to get all sorts of other troublemakers.
Alejandro Junge…: The signaling is going to be interrupted. And instead of … Because a little bit of lipopolysaccharides are good …
Dr. Steven Gund…: You’re right.
Alejandro Junge…: … from common cell bacteria because they promote the production of alkaline intestinal phosphatase, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right.
Alejandro Junge…: But then when it’s too much, then the inflammatory cascade is turned on even at the level of the nucleus with the production of cytokines.
Dr. Steven Gund…: [inaudible 00:24:45] my next book, it turns out that, if you eat lipopolysaccharides, it’s like training the immune system like allergy shots. The dose makes the poison, and if you eat LPSs, you’re great. Your immune system says, “Oh, I recognize those guys. They’re not the bad guys that I thought they were,” and one of the shockers-
Alejandro Junge…: There is a lot of LPSs in plants too.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Bingo. And in fact-
Alejandro Junge…: Plants are training-
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sadly, whole grains are loaded with LPSs.
Alejandro Junge…: But the problem is that eating the LPSs with a dysbiosis may be even worse. So that’s, why when I’m helping people create the conditions to repair their guts, sometimes these vegetarian and vegan approaches do not work.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, that’s for sure.
Alejandro Junge…: With some people, I have to go full carnivore. So there’s so many different approaches and so many right approaches and so many wrong approaches that we are becoming aware of. In my book that I published Clean Gut in 2011, I told a story about my gardener at that time, Fermin, who used to come, and we had fruit trees in our garden and we had all kinds of beautiful trees with flowers. And when the leaves were brownish and the fruit didn’t really grow, he wouldn’t spend time there. He would go to the soil. I would follow him. I would be fascinated with his work and he would do things around the soil. I remember, one time, he put this copper wire around it and he said that that is going to help the microorganism and it’s like, “Wow.”
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sure.
Alejandro Junge…: But I remember he said that, “If you want to fix the fruit and the leaves and the flowers, you have to go to the soil and the roots,” which is what we were talking about a minute ago. So it’s incredible how these days there’s so many specialties and subspecialties and we’re dividing in Western modern medicine, the body we divide to conquer and there’s cardiologists and nephrologists. But in functional medicine, everything is seen through systems, right? And systems are all interconnected and different organs … Every system has many organs working and one organ can work for different systems, right? And they all meet right here. We have muscle here, we have nerves, we have arteries and veins, we have immune system cells.
In fact, 70 to 80% of our immune system cells are within and around the gut, right? So all systems meet in the gut. And I say, because I have a lot of functional medicine doctor friends and some of them specialize in hormones, but I think that everybody should start by gut repair, because I believe that everybody walking in the modern world today, it’s impossible to escape the injury to the gut. So at different degrees, everybody’s walking around with gut injury, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I’ve written about this, 100% of my autoimmune patients, about 80% of my practice now is autoimmune people who have been everywhere and on every treatment. And you can put a Band-Aid on it with an immunosuppressant drug and I always say, “I didn’t do a heart transplant on you. What in the world are you doing on a transplant drug for your psoriasis?” and they look at me and go, “What are you talking about?” “You don’t have a transplanted kidney. You don’t have transplanted liver. Why are you on a transplant drug?” “Well, because I need it.”
Alejandro Junge…: “My immune system is attacking me. So we have to depress the immune system.” And if people only knew that the immune system gets confused here …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right.
Alejandro Junge…: … why? Because the immune system works by recognizing surfaces, which in medicine we call antigens, right? And there’s the HLA system, the human lymphocytic antigen system, right? So it’s as if some cells of the immune system have a like scanning …
Dr. Steven Gund…: They have.
Alejandro Junge…: … machine …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Toll-like receptors.
Alejandro Junge…: … that compares with a list of surfaces of your own body. So it measures surfaces all the time, whatever it comes across. And if there’s a surface that it doesn’t recognize as yourself, the immune system starts at building the attack. And this is where it happens and this is such a big surface that the disseminated injury, leaky gut or hyperpermeability or whatever you want to call it these days, turns into systemic inflammation. So then surfaces that are similar to ours start passing through. And I always put this example, I would like to see what you think of this example because it’s so simplistic, but I think it gives people an idea of how autoimmune disease can happen, so let’s say when the gut wall is hermetic and the tight junctions are healthy or tight …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sealed.
Alejandro Junge…: … the only thing that can go from the lumen of the intestine into the blood is when things are finished being digested. So proteins into amino acids, amino acids are absorbed through the cell and dumped into the blood. When fats are digested, they turn into fatty acids and esters and those are absorbed. And the same thing with sugars. When big carbohydrates and sugars are broken down into simple sugars, those are absorbed. Nothing that’s not digested fully is absorbed because these cells are very intelligent, right? But when this is broken, and we can talk about how it breaks afterwards, undigested stuff, microorganisms start passing by and that’s when all hell …
Let’s say you eat chicken and the muscle of the chicken, it’s similar to the muscle of a human. So let’s say little pieces of muscle of chicken start passing, the immune system recognizes that surface as foreign and starts attacking it. But there are parts that are very similar as collateral damage, attack a little bit of your muscle and then you have autoimmune myositis, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right.
Alejandro Junge…: Where did it get confused right here?
Dr. Steven Gund…: When you’re at war and, what I tell my patients, you scrambled the fighter jets and the fighter jets are looking for these enemy combatants, the enemy combatants look very similar to other things in us, not quite the same. But if you’re at war, you …
Alejandro Junge…: Collateral damage is necessary.
Dr. Steven Gund…: … don’t want to make a mistake. You’d rather shoot to kill and ask questions later. And so 100% of my patients with autoimmune disease have leaky gut, intestinal permeability, 100%.
Alejandro Junge…: And dysbiosis.
Dr. Steven Gund…: And dysbiosis, one, two. You got to have both. Luckily, in the old days, we could quantify dysbiosis, but thanks to the Human Microbiome Project. We now can get at least a snapshot of who’s there at any one time. So you’re right. You have to have leaky gut, but you also have to have-
Alejandro Junge…: Some degree of dysbiosis.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You have to have a desert wasteland instead of a tropical rainforest.
Alejandro Junge…: Because if you have leaky gut and you wipe out all the bacteria, suddenly …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Everything’s fine.
Alejandro Junge…: … everything seems fine, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: That’s true.
Alejandro Junge…: But the moment that any organisms start back in, it’s like if you have a roof with holes, when it’s raining, your house gets wet. But if it’s shiny, nothing happens. So antibiotics make it a shiny day for a little bit and then it comes back with a vengeance. That’s why SIBO, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, which is now in fashion, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: It’s very in fashion.
Alejandro Junge…: In antibiotics, as if they were not overprescribed before, are now even triple overprescribed, right? And we say in Spanish, “Pan para hoy, hambre para manana,” bread for today, hunger for tomorrow, right? So at the moment, we’re taking antibiotics, it seems like everything is fine, but then wait for the comeback.
Dr. Steven Gund…: I just got back from the Microbiota Society meeting in Malta a few weeks ago and a wonderful professor of gastroenterology at Hong Kong University gave a two-hour seminar on SIBO and he said, “People have got to realize that antibiotics are one of the biggest causes of leaky gut there is, number one, and number two, the antibiotics that are prescribed for SIBO, yes, are going to kill bacteria guaranteed, but you don’t even know which bacteria you’re trying to kill. Two-thirds of them,” if you actually have SIBO, and that was a big discussion, “are oral bacteria and only one-third are colonic bacteria.” But he said, “People don’t realize that antibiotics are not the problem here. You’ve got to stop giving these guys an environment that they thrive, either by food or antacids or we can go on out … You and I have talked about this.
Alejandro Junge…: We can geek out a lot about this, but now to tie all this up with our history together and with our adventures around the world, what I am much looking into now is, yes, repairing the gut and repairing the conditions and restoring the health of the microbiome and creating the conditions for these cells, these epithelial intestinal and enteric epithelial cells, be able to produce the glycoproteins that create the cement for the tight junction. All of that is great, right? But one of the things that is missing is also contact or the influence of super consciousness. I don’t know if you are familiar with a Spanish from Spain, doctor called San Segarra, who writes about near-death experiences and how he talks about super consciousness, which other people talk about in different terms, right?
But how when ego is suppressed or eliminated and we enter into touch with that intelligence, things can happen that I’m realizing now are actually necessary for complete healing of whatever is going on, right? Because many times, and I don’t know if it happens to you, but I put people on gut repair programs and I help them heal and reverse from severe autoimmune diseases and many chronic diseases, right? But then they go out back in the world, difficult to sustain and then life happens. Somebody dies, you get a divorce, you have an accident, they fire you from work or whatever it is and that disruption …
Dr. Steven Gund…: It’s just enough.
Alejandro Junge…: … in consciousness I think is the number one cause of not only gut disruption, I think is the number one cause of all diseases on the planet, the stress. And we can translate that into science and talk about cortisol production and adrenaline and all the fight or flight reaction chemicals, but there’s a part of it that we still don’t understand.
Dr. Steven Gund…: So wait a minute, are you saying we all need to go live in a hut in the Amazon?
Alejandro Junge…: I don’t think we all need to live in a hut in the Amazon, even though I think we need to somehow return to nature in a way. And there’s many ways to do that, right? Because we have extracted ourselves from nature and we created these artificial environments in which we live. Do you know how many chemicals we’re exposed to just being here?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: From the detergents with which you wash your stuff and the glue with which that hardwood was glued and the paint. So we are … And not only that, our interpersonal relationships, they’re at an all-time low in terms of consciousness. When you talk about spirituality or mysticism, we are in a really bad place. According to Indian traditions, we’re in the Kali Yuga. We’ve been through phases where the whole population was in a perfectly present state, and in that state, which is the state of the enlightened beings or things happen that we don’t still don’t understand. When I go into the scriptures in Indian scriptures, Ayurvedic scriptures or the Talmud in Jewish religion, even in Christianity, you see that things happen.
When I was talking about people believe that Jesus Christ could make miracles, well, not only Christians believe that about certain people, Jews too and Indians too. And so at those states when super consciousness is coming through not so distorted by ego, things can happen, which I read for example, in textbooks and descriptions from Gurdjieff and other traditions, right? There could be even transmutation. For example, hydrogen can be transmuted into any molecule, into any atom. And so for example, the lack of certain vitamins and minerals, when you enter into those states, can even allow the transmutation of molecules inside your body. So we wouldn’t even have to have them from magnesium and you wouldn’t have to have them. We’re all lacking magnesium these days.
Dr. Steven Gund…: That’s right.
Alejandro Junge…: And everybody’s drinking magnesium, right? But at that level of evolution of the human being, things can happen that science will not be able to even explain for a long time. And I don’t know if you watch the Joe Rogan episode with this guy, the actor, Howard, about the new table of elements. Have you heard it?
Dr. Steven Gund…: No. I have to listen to it.
Alejandro Junge…: Oh, you have to. And he explains much of that.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You bring up an interesting point that I talk about in the next book. You probably know, but if you don’t, you need to. Pasteur who’s … Don’t get me wrong, the germ theory was useful, but Pasteur had an archrival by the name of Antoine Beauchamp and they both argued about who discovered fermentation. Pasteur was a great public speaker and he got the ear of the king of France by proving that wine went bad by bacterial contamination. And Beauchamp said, “No, no, no, it has nothing to do with bacteria per se, that this is the terroir, the terrain, and the terrain of bacteria and fungi and yeast, all has to be perfectly balanced. And it’s only when the balance gets disturbed that disease happens and bacteria get out of control.”
And the reason I bring it up is Beauchamp believed that there were subcellular organisms in the blood that we now know they’re there that could transmutate and become bacteria or could become viruses. And Pasteur won and Beauchamp died of-
Alejandro Junge…: And now we’re pasteurizing everything.
Dr. Steven Gund…: And now we’re pasteurizing everything. And there’s numerous accounts that, on Pasteur’s deathbed, he called Beauchamp to his bedside and said, “You’re right. It is to the terroir.”
Alejandro Junge…: So one species of bacteria, it goes even beyond that. Terence Howard, that is the-
Dr. Steven Gund…: Terence Howard.
Alejandro Junge…: That is the episode on Joe Rogan. You have to listen to it. It will change … And of course, there’s a lot of quantum scientists and physicists that are arguing that he’s not right, but I think he brings up a very interesting discussion that correlates with a lot of things that I read in mysticism.
Dr. Steven Gund…: This meeting in Malta, there was also the meeting of the Society of Extracellular Vesicles. Talk about weird, but we now know that, you’re right, bacteria, the biggest infection that happens inside of us is actually viral infection of bacteria, bacteriophages, and bacteria, using these little pieces of their cell wall with information, RNA and even DNA, can send out decoys for these viruses to attack, to keep them safe. But if a bacteria becomes immune to a phage, the bacteria can then, even if it’s enemies of these bacteria or [inaudible 00:43:15], will send this information to the surrounding bacteria. It’ll merge with these bacteria, change their genome so that they’re now immune to these viruses at this subatomic level.
And we sit there, and I bring this up because I was on a podcast yesterday with a neurosurgeon who happened to develop a GI issue and he’s a very enlightened neurosurgeon, but his GI issue, like you, it was getting out of control, so he went to a prominent gastroenterologist and he says, “I’m sure it’s my gut microbiome. This got disturbed. I travel a lot.” The gastroenterologist who’s prominent said, “There’s no evidence that the microbiome is involved in anything.” And he said, “Can you believe that?” I said, “Believe me.”
Alejandro Junge…: He changed gastroenterologists.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You can’t change them.
Alejandro Junge…: “And you have to change your gastroenterologist,” it sounds like.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah. I was on a podcast where I heard the exact same thing. And yet, one of those … The guy who changed everything is Alessio Fasano, a pediatric gastroenterologist. Funny guy, been on a couple panels with. He proved that leaky gut happens. You could measure leaky gut. He proved the mechanisms …
Alejandro Junge…: Well, there’s a study-
Dr. Steven Gund…: … to gastroenterologists.
Alejandro Junge…: There’s studies on necrosis of the endothelia, right? And NEC, it’s called the premature babies have-
Dr. Steven Gund…: I used to operate on-
Alejandro Junge…: Because they’re lacking certain bacteria and certain proteins from amniotic fluid …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right, right.
Alejandro Junge…: … that make the thing mature, right? We can go down the rabbit hole and it’s fascinating, but what I’m bringing into the conversation here is how our state affects that also, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: All right, let’s give the audience a take-home message. Give us one hint of how do we change that state in our lives.
Alejandro Junge…: I’ll tell you right now, everybody’s talking about meditation, right? And there is scientific proof that meditation is incredible for so many reasons, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: True.
Alejandro Junge…: But a lot of people find it difficult to do.
Dr. Steven Gund…: I have a monkey brain, as you can imagine.
Alejandro Junge…: I do too. And a lot of people, when they do it, they do it. They close the door. They have their meditation room, which sometimes is soundproof, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: And it smells good because they have essential oils and a clock and they see and they close their … Right? They close their eyes and they repeat a mantra or they put their attention in their breath, but I believe that we need to take meditation into real life, day-to-day life. And I’ll teach you a way to become present as we speak. We are now talking. You’re looking at me. You’re basically focusing on me and your ears are attentive to what I’m saying, so that you can process, perceive, then intellectualize, understand and then come with questions or other examples or whatever it is in this conversation. But what if I ask you right now as we speak to do … No, no, keep on looking at me. Keep on looking at me, but go wide angle.
Even looking at me, you can see your team. You can see the lights, you can see the microphone, you can see the prop without having to look at it. As we look at each other …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sure.
Alejandro Junge…: … you can see your legs, you can see the walls, you can see everything, but what you’re used to, you’re just looking at me. Now go wide angle and start noticing everything at the same time all the time. And as we speak, not only listen to me, listen to all the noises. I was hearing some cars passing. The air-conditioning, I don’t know if you hear it, it’s permanent there. So there’s noises. So keep on listening to everything and seeing everything. And as we speak, also put some of your attention on your feet and your hands. Let’s say your hands right now, put your attention on your hands. Feel them from inside. Feel the temperature, the humidity, the position. They’re touching your pants. You can tell what material your pants are. All this information you can get from your hand, but keep on doing it.
So keep on seeing everything, listening to everything and feeling not only your hands, but also your feet, your butt against the chair, your back against the chair. Now keep on doing it and notice how the state we are in right now is different than the one that we were five minutes ago. Keep on listening to the air conditioning. Keep on seeing everything. Do you see what I mean?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: But that we can do all day. Now, what that does is this. The things that you can see are always in the present. The things that you can hear are always in the present. Your body, any sensations are always in the present. When you put your attention there, you are anchoring your attention in the present. In certain traditions, they say that attention is like blood flow. It’s always flowing, and blood, there’s only a certain amount of blood, there’s only a certain amount of attention at any given point. And attention, like blood, flows to where there is less resistance. Where is there less resistance? When attention goes into the thinking mind. So how do you experience attention go into your thinking mind? As thoughts.
Now we all know by now or we should know by now that the thoughts that appear in your head all day long are mostly repetitive, and for a lot of people, negative and they’re not voluntary. You don’t decide what thoughts are … At times, yes. If I ask you now, “Tell me about …” you tell that and you bring this up, but most of the time, it’s just happening, right? That’s attention flowing to a thinking mind. And the thinking mind is like ethereal. There’s no resistance. Now when I ask you to put your attention on your hand, you have to activate a nerve that goes from here all the way through the brachial nerve through your hands, the end receptors that tell you temperature, humidity, position, right? And that-
Dr. Steven Gund…: Come back.
Alejandro Junge…: … come back. So there’s electricity running. Electricity when it runs through a cable causes heat because there is resistance, right? That heat is known now to liberate endorphins. Eckhart Tolle talks about this, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: But what that does too is give you a chance, prepares you for that contact with cosmic consciousness or super consciousness, right? And when that happens, healing happens. And I see that, when we go to nature and I help people, I tell them how to do this exercise and we go in nature and we’re walking around seeing everything, listening to everything, feeling our body, smelling everything, people start entering into a state that does not happen when I send people home in the city with a gut repair program, which works amazingly, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Right. Absolutely.
Alejandro Junge…: I’ve developed a gut repair program. You probably too. Mine has been around since 2011 and I’ve been perfecting it. And just like I heard you talk about the super soup of cabbage soup with turmeric and garlic and onion, which all help with LPS and intestinal …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Alkaline phosphatase.
Alejandro Junge…: … alkaline phosphatase, right? And that is really, really great, this program that I created, it’s in my book, Clean Gut, right? And you can do it as described in the book and I walk you there through step by step, right? And it has to do with diet, timing. It has to do … Sometimes you need … Most of the times you need supplements, right?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Yeah.
Alejandro Junge…: Because as opposed to other healing modalities and programs that maybe just eating the right things is fine. With gut repair, what I find is, without glutamine, without magnesium, it just makes it really, really hard, right? So I created that program. I described it in the book. I also created a company just like you, in which I curate and formulate my own products. It’s at cleanprogram.com. You can get the kit. It brings everything that you need. And it’s amazing results, amazing results. But when you go into nature and you learn how to enter more present states, the results that you get in that way, it’s way superior than what you can get by prescribing in the city. Do you see what I mean?
Dr. Steven Gund…: Oh, yeah. But we don’t have to go live in a hut in the Amazon.
Alejandro Junge…: You don’t have to. We have to return to nature in a way. So how do we return to nature? First of all, we have to get rid of as much as possible of all the exogenous toxins that we’re exposed to in the air we breathe, the water we drink and shower, with the medications we consume, 90% of which are just molecules that are not necessary. The active ingredient is only 10%. In the cosmetics we apply on our skin, but mostly in the food-like products that we consume as foods in which real foods are only an ingredient, sometimes.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Sometimes.
Alejandro Junge…: Sometimes. All the aisles in the supermarket, which is 90% of the real estate of a supermarket, and to be in an aisle of product has to have things that kill bacteria and fungi, so that they don’t get rotten in the half-life. A shelf-life. The longer the shelf-life, the shorter your life, right? We need to change this. No going to live in the Amazon, but we need to bring the Amazon into our lives. And how do you do that? Eat real foods. Take care of the materials you construct, the materials you put on your skin, the products that you wash your sheets and the mattress that you use, the toothpaste.
Dr. Steven Gund…: Toothbrush, toothpaste.
Alejandro Junge…: For example, I don’t use toothpaste anymore. I use ozonated olive oil. Incredible. It just restores the gums. It takes care of everything and doesn’t bring in all the nasty things. Some toothpaste, you know why toothpaste makes …
Dr. Steven Gund…: The foam?
Alejandro Junge…: … the foam? It’s because it has foaming making …
Dr. Steven Gund…: Emollients.
Alejandro Junge…: … emollients. There are toxins and BPAs and it’s insane. So not have to go to the Amazon.
Dr. Steven Gund…: You have a video brushing your teeth with olive oil.
Alejandro Junge…: You have to bring the Amazon into. How do you do that? Taking care of the toxins, putting plants, but as much as possible also, go into nature. Go walk barefoot in the forest and breathing and see everything. Listen to everything. Feel your feet. Feel your hands. I think it’s very important.
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