Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times, my trouble is from parasites. I’m certain I need to do a parasite cleanse. Let’s au Dr. Gundry. Well, that’s what this is about. Let’s talk about parasites. Now, parasites have been around ever since we’ve been around. Parasites are associated with just about any creature that you can imagine and parasites can be really mischievous. Malaria is caused by a parasite. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite. Liver flukes are caused by parasites and tapeworms or parasites, and I could go on and on. On the other hand, there are many more microscopic and macroscopic parasites that can invade our gut and can cause temporary and or permanent mischief. That’s the difference of what we’re gonna talk about today. Parasites, as the name implies, take advantage of their host. They take away, they give nothing back. They live off the largess of the host.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
We, on the other hand, are home to commensurate organisms or symbiotic organisms. We give them something usually in the form of food and they give us something back in the form of compounds like short chain fatty acids like butyrate for an example, or in the form of gaso messengers. So parasites, bad symbio, commensals good. The difference is knowing who’s who and whether they’re actually the problem. So parasites are not considered part of your normal gut flora. With a couple of exceptions, there are most likely a few worms, nematodes that may be part of our normal intestinal flora. Now, I say that most worms are not part of our normal flora. I trained, uh, at the Medical College of Georgia in Georgia, and we would routinely see children infected with what were called hook worms. Uh, long ago pork was infected. Pigs were infected with parasite called trichomonas, which could have devastating effects on us.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
These are parasites that can invade through our gut and actually get into our airways in the form of oak worms into our bloodstream and cause long-term damage. But there are a few nematodes that may actually be beneficial in our, and there are interesting studies of people with really profound allergies and or autoimmune diseases who have purposely treated themselves with intestinal nematodes like pinworms, and noted that their allergic reactions improved or their autoimmune diseases improved. One of my patients routinely imports worms from Thailand, uh, which he swallows to balance his intestinal health. Um, do I recommend that? No. Is it harming you? Doesn’t seem to be, but we are watching. So where do parasites come from? Well, mostly they come from contaminated water or from contaminated food. Most often it’s in the soil or in the water where these plants are grown. Many times these parasites are transferred by poor wash, hand washing people who are picking them in the fields or even in the food preparation.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Many of them are innocent bystanders of some of our most private foods, like for instance, lettuces, Giardia, which is one of the most common parasites that I see giving problems with. People are usually f foodborne oftentimes in in salads. Now, away from the United States, parasites are still a big deal. Tape worms. I’ve had patients acquire tape worms and past tape worms, liver flukes, particularly in Southeast Asia. Giardia, as I mentioned before, is rampant in tropical conditions. Now, before we go on and why these guys are interesting and what we do about it, if you like what you’re hearing so far, make sure to like us subscribe and tell your friends about us so they can benefit from this content as well. Okay, so what do parasites do? Well, parasites are looking for food and they wanna compete for the food that we eat. Other parasites want to actually bind onto our intestinal wall like a tape worm or other worms and just be bathed in all the food that we eat, that we are digesting, and they get to eat that free of charge.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Many of them can damage the wall of the gut leading to increased intestinal permeability. Now, certain parasites release toxins and enzymes that actually weaken the tight junctions in the gut wall. I routinely test for parasites in all my patients with their gut zoomer tests. And this looks at over a hundred different parasites from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms like worms, for example. And I can tell you that 95% of my patients with leaky gut do not have parasites. And the ones that do are by far the common garden variety parasites like Giardia. And quite frankly, Giardia is number one in all the parasites I see in my patients bottom line, parasites can contribute to leaky gut. But if you’re having a health issue, if you are having fatigue, if you’re having, if you have an autoimmune disease, don’t assume parasites are to blame. Okay?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
So how do you test for parasites? Here’s the bad news. Traditionally, doctors are trained to send a stool specimen for ova and parasite testing. In fact, just this last week, I had one of my patients develop some very impressive diarrhea, very loose stools, multiple times per day, often watery. And it not only came out of the blue, but it persisted for about three weeks. And we tried some of my usual tricks and the tricks really weren’t working. So eventually she said, I give up. I am, I’m gonna go to the emergency room and they’re gonna find out what’s wrong. I say, Hey, great. She went to the emergency room, they tested her for stool for oin parasites, and I well, and I told her, I said, they’re not gonna find anything. She said, I gotta find out. I said, fine, get the test. And she said, you were right.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
They didn’t find anything. And I said, look, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I can tell you that most stool for O and parasites do not find parasites because number one, a lot of these parasites have to lay eggs, if you will, and you’re not gonna see those eggs if they’re not actively producing eggs of them. And most of these parasites are very microscopic and you’re not going to see them well in a stool. So what can you do? Well, luckily with the advent of RNA and DNA stool tests like the gut zoomer done by Vibrant Wellness, we can now actually identify all these organisms by their RNA and or DNA signature. And each of these organisms has its own signature. So we don’t actually have to look for these organisms per se, we just have to read the RNA and DNA in the stool and identify who’s there.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And that test is a revolutionized looking for parasites. And because that does look for all these possible parasites, I can tell you unequivocally that most of us, most of us with leaky gut, with autoimmune diseases, it’s not the parasites that are at the culprit behind all this. Now, occasionally they are there. So if you suspect, particularly if you’ve traveled the world or traveled even to Mexico or the Caribbean or South America and you come back feeling different, by all means get a full R-N-A-D-N-A examination of your stool. You’re probably going to find that you’ll be listened to by a functional medicine doctor more than a conventional doctor. ’cause quite frankly, conventional doctors, even GI doctors are not trained in this. And so it’s not their fault that they’re using an antiquated test. The newer tests are far more useful. Okay, so what do you do when you do find these parasites?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well, the good news and the good news for me is that a lot of these natural treatments really do work. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the age old natural treatments for parasites, for the most part, are very effective, very effecti. So some of the things that I frequently recommend, wormwood, oregano, oil, garlic, berberine, and d Limon, all work in combination. And sometimes they’re all in one uh, product or another. For instance, Gundry MD Total Restore contains a lot of these ingredients to change the gut environment, to make it less hospitable for these parasites and help strengthen the gut lining. You can use additional products like I also mentioned, but Total Restore is a good place to start. Now there are pharmaceutical options. I get a chuckle that Ivermectin, which became popular during COVID, is approved by the FDA as a dewormer, and it’s a really effective dewormer.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Now, the interesting thing about Ivermectin is that Ivermectin is sold in most feed supply, uh, stores, horse supply stores as a horse dewormer and certainly during COVID, uh, some of my more clever patients who wanted to use it as an antiviral ended up going to feed stores and buying out all the ivermectin. And you can still still see Ivermectin on the shelves in a feed store if if you want it. The reason FDA approved Ivermectin as a dewormer is that Ivermectin is a incredibly potent mitochondrial uncoupling. It’s so potent that it actually works like two four D Nitro phenol, which was the decoupling discovered during the World Wars. It works so well as a mitochondrial coler that the worm stops making a TP and dies. Now, the reason they approved it is because Ivermectin is not absorbed in our GI tract. They knew how potent Ivermectin was as a decoupling, but also knew in studies that it couldn’t be absorbed from the human intestinal tract.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
So that’s why they approved it. Just keep that in mind. Ivermectin is actually a really cool anti-cancer agent, but we can’t absorb it. So other pharmaceutical options, sometimes in really stubborn cases, we’ve gotta use a parasite specific antibiotic that specifically interrupts the cell cycle of parasites. The good news is, in the last five years, thanks to these new tests, I’ve only had to resort to a pharmaceutical option in in one patient who really was resistant to uh, every trick we had for Giardia. And again, Giardia is by far the most common parasite that I see people obtaining from time to time, particularly when traveling to foreign countries. So the long story short, if you’re thinking of a parasite cleanse, think about the products that I just mentioned, which are effective. But before you think about doing that, the odds are your issue is not coming from a parasite.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And all the hype that you see on the internet is not backed up by actual stool gut testing in the proper way, looking for parasites the way they should be sought out. You’ve heard me talk a lot about glyphosate, but today I want to introduce you to two herbicides that are even more alarming, paraquat and diquat. Now compared to these glyphosate, looks like the warmup act. Now stick with me because I’m gonna show you how these herbicides work, and most importantly, how you can protect yourself and your family. Now, Paraquat, the so-called one sip can kill you herbicide, it’s one of the most toxic weed killers ever made. Now, Roundup glyphosate is bad for your gut. We know it wipes out good bacteria and wrecks your gut lining, but paraquat, it goes even further. First of all, the National Institutes of Health found that farmers exposed to Paraquat have a 2.5 times greater risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Now, that’s not a small number. That’s actually a massive red flag. Now, why does this happen? Well, Paraquat creates these things called reactive oxygen species, R oss, basically reactive oxygen species blow holes in your mitochondria, the tiny power plants that keep your cells running. And once your mitochondria go down, your neurons, which require mitochondria to make energy, these are the cells in your brain, they start to die off. And that’s when you see tremors, stiffness, and all those hallmark Parkinson’s symptoms. Now, it gets even more interesting because I’ve written about this. There’s actually a connection between paraquat and lectins and Parkinson’s, and here’s where things get really more alarming. Now, paraquat doesn’t just stay in your gut and kill off gut bacteria, but Paraquat is frequently in the past, sprayed on grain products and soy products and beans for harvesting. These products have lectins. Interestingly enough, Paraquat can hop on these lectins and be carried via your vagus nerve into your brain, very much like Trojan horses.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So lectins carry paraquat across your gut barrier and into your vagus nerve. And like I’ve written about and has been studied, these can go directly to the movement center in your brain called the substantial nigra, where paraquat does its worse damage, huh? But the good news is that Paraquat is banned in the US as it is over most of the world because it’s such a actor. But you didn’t think that chemical companies would stop there, did you? Of course not. Here’s the bad news they created Diquat. You’ll notice the last four letters are identical, and that should be a tip. Tipoff Diquat is the chemical twin of Paraquat. It’s basically the son of Satan, and that’s Diquat. It’s Paraquat chemical cousin. So what many people are becoming wise to the dangers of Roundup and glyphosate? And we used to think of Roundup as a weed killer that would kill weeds in Roundup resistant GMO crops.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And that’s true, that’s how it started. But for years now, we’ve known that Roundup was sprayed on conventional crops like corn, like wheat, like oats, like soy as a desiccant. Now, desiccant means drying agent. The object of the game in harvesting a plant is you really want the plant to finish its cycle and to die and dry up, because harvesting a crop when it’s dead and dry is much cheaper than when it’s wet and full of water. Water costs weight also because big food doesn’t have the time or the inclination to wait for a crop to become dead. Roundup is used to kill the crop and dry it up on the agriculture schedule, not on mother nature schedule much more efficient. Now, the problem has been that the Roundup is certainly not washed off the crops and it’s fed to our animals, and we eat that from our animals, and it’s fed to you in the forms of grain product.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Now, we are finding that these companies are using diquat as a replacement for glyphosate as a dest on crops. Now, you don’t know about Diquat, but you know about glyphosate. So if anybody asks, oh no, we don’t spray our crops with Roundup anymore. Oh, that’s wonderful. The problem is Diquat is so dangerous that it’s been banned in all countries, except you guessed it, the United States. So now they can use a safe herbicide and spray it on our crops making you think it was a safer option. But the problem is animal studies show that diquat damages your gut wall, disrupts your microbiome and harms major organs just like paraquat, just like Roundup. And yet we’re unaware that it’s even happening here because because it’s approved by the EPA, nobody has to put it on a label. No one has to let you know that it’s been used in the process of harvesting a crop.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So what this tells us is that when regulators crack down on one toxin, the industry just swaps in another wolf in sheep’s clothing. For example, Syngenta, the maker of Paraquat, just agreed to a multi-billion dollar settlement for thousands of farmers who developed Parkinson’s after years of using this chemical and internal company memos show they knew how dangerous paraquat was. They tracked its links to Parkinson’s for years and work to discredit scientists who spoke out, sound familiar? It’s exactly what we saw with glyphosate and Roundup, and it’s happening all over again with Sun of Paraquat Diquat. Okay? Now, I don’t tell you this to scare you. I tell you this, to keep you informed so that you can make the right choice for yourself and your family. Now, until these chemicals are banned like they are in many countries in the world, we have to take matters into our own hands.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So here’s what you can do. First, avoid the big offenders, grains, soy and beans, quats favorite targets. Now, unfortunately, all the scientists who would normally be tracking this and be protecting us at the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, have just been fired by the current government. So it’s really up to us to protect ourselves. So how do we do that? Well eat polyphenol rich, lectin free foods, things like avocados, mushrooms, herbs and spices, and plenty of olive oil. To protect your mitochondria, find a supplement that helps block these herbicides. There are several that are offered on the market. There’s some question as to whether or how well they work. Rev up your liver detoxification. We have phase one and VA phase two, liver detoxification enzymes. So many people in the United States, including many of my patients, have fatty liver disease. Fois for a liver, dandelion leaves, dine, which is a component, believe it or not, of orange peel, not lemon peel, milk thistle, whose active ingredient is silly Marin.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
All of these increase phase one and phase two liver detoxification enzymes. This is actually why I designed Gundry MD complete liver support. It actually has all these ingredients, and I take it every day to protect myself. Moreover, if you live near farmland or a golf course, get a good HEPA plus carbon air filter, use a reverse osmosis water filter and keep shoes out of your house to cut down on chemical dust. And if you’re a golfer, God help you. I can’t tell you the number of people in my practice who are golfers or who live on a golf course who come to me because they have the signs and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. And this has been written about extensively. I don’t just see this in my practice. It occurs, and now you know that there’s something being sprayed on almost everything that’s banned everywhere in the world except here.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
So it’s up to us to protect ourselves. You’ve probably heard of detoxing, but here’s the truth. Your body already has a detox system. The problem is most people’s guts are too damaged or overloaded to do the job. That’s why I focus on repairing the gut lining, because when it’s strong toxins, parasites and harmful bacteria get blocked at the source. So what do I recommend to my patients and acetyl d glucosamine? Now, it helps bind and neutralize lectins sticky plant proteins that can damage the gut barrier by reducing lectin related stress. It helps keep harmful particles from entering your circulation licorice root, known traditionally for its soothing properties, but modern studies suggest it can help the gut lining repair itself and calm irritation. So when the gut lining is soothed, the body is better able to flush toxins naturally instead of being overwhelmed by immune reactions.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Wormwood historically used against parasites. But what’s really interesting is it actually supports the microbial balance in the gut, which is key because an overgrowth of bad bugs leads to toxic byproducts, cinnamon bark, and clove bud. Now both are natural antimicrobials. They can help discourage harmful bacteria, fungi, and even parasites, lightening the toxic load on the gut and the liver. Now, clove in particular has been studied for its effect against parasitic organisms, Maya Taki mushroom. Now mushrooms are rich in beta glucans and polysaccharides that support immune cells like macrophages and natural killer cells, which are critical in recognizing and eliminating toxins, microbes, and waste. It really helps the body clean house at a cellular level, berberine, a plant alkaloid that supports microbial balance in the gut and healthy metabolism. Now, research shows it helps reduce harmful bacteria while promoting beneficial species. Now this creates a cleaner gut environment that produces fewer toxins, marshmallow root.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Now you probably heard the word marshmallow and no, I don’t want you to eat those soft, sugary things, but actually that’s where this came from. Now, marshmallow actually provides mucilage a soothing gel-like substance. The coats, the gut lining, think of it as a natural barrier that helps trap irritants before they can cause damage. Zinc. Now zinc protects against malaria. Vitamin A and zinc have been shown to reduce Giardia, one of the most common parasites of our gut. What’s more, it actually is protective against toxoplasmosis dli. Now this is a component of orange peel, which is incredibly effective at supporting both phase one and phase two detoxification enzymes in the liver activated charcoal. Now, charcoal has been shown to bind environmental toxins so that they can’t get through your gut wall, and you will eliminate them in the process having bound them up. Now, I’ve combined most of these in my product, total Restore, which was designed to do exactly what it says, restore your gut health. So remember, real detox doesn’t come from a crash cleanse or a fancy juice fast. It’s about giving your gut what it needs to do its job every day. So if you wanna try this out, you can always grab a couple of these ingredients on their own. Or to make your life easier, I put them all together in one formula called Total Restore.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel, where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together.
