Speaker 1 (00:11):
What if you eat sauerkraut or kimchi every day for 30 days? All right. So sauerkraut and kimchi are actually becoming readily accessible. So what the heck is that? Well, if you’re new to fermented foods, uh, fermented cabbage, uh, has been around probably since the beginning of civilization. Uh, kimchi, as many of you know, is from Korea and has been a staple of Korean cuisine for centuries. Typically, kimchi is made from cabbage. It can be made from radishes or scallions or cucumbers, or often a combination of these vegetables. Sauerkraut traditionally is made from cabbage. What exactly is the reason to do this? Well, several reasons. First of all, remember that long ago, there was no refrigeration. And so a vegetable-like cabbage, which is actually pretty good for storing in a root cellar, eventually goes bad. But if you use fermentation, you actually break down a lot of the sugars into compounds that preserve that food for an extended period of time.

(01:46):
Also, the fermentation process produces a lot of hugely, we now know, beneficial compounds that are good for your health. So let’s just talk about the fermentation process for a minute. Bacteria and/or yeast eat sugar. And they turn that sugar into ATP, the energy currency, through a process called glycolysis, which we call fermentation. It’s actually a very inefficient process. You and I don’t use much glycolysis. We use oxidative phosphorylation, but we won’t talk about that today. So in the process of glycolysis, you convert these sugar molecules, among other things, into alcohol. That’s why when you ferment grapes, uh, you get wine that has alcohol in it. When you ferment, uh, yogurts, you actually get a small amount of alcohol in it through the fermentation. And certainly with kombucha, you do get a small amount of alcohol. But the big benefit is that you get what are called postbiotics.

(03:01):
Now, postbiotics are the leftover products of fermentation. Those include the dead bacterial cell walls and/or the dead yeast cell walls. And if you’ve read my new book, Gut Check, you know that these dead bacteria or yeast carry information, and they carry information down to your gut after you swallow them. Regardless of whether they’re living or dead. Now, that brings me to an important point. You will see in like whole foods, you will see fresh sour kraut or fresh kimchi, and you will also find sauerkraut or kimchi in glass jars or even cans where they have been pasteurized. The great news is that it really doesn’t matter whether those bacteria are living or dead on us. Most of the time when we eat living bacteria in these foods, those bacteria are killed by our stomach acid. They never make it past stomach acid. But the dead bacteria does make it past stomach acid.

(04:33):
And it turns out it’s the cell wall of the bacteria that actually carries the information that tells our gut microbiome kind of who’s in the house. And that’s really exciting news. This was first proven a few years ago by the husband and wife team at Stanford, the Sonneberg’s. And I’ve talked about the study again, but it’s important to hear this study. We know that prebiotics are really good for friendly bacteria. It’s what our probiotics, friendly bacteria, want to eat. And it makes sense that if we ate a lot of prebiotic fiber, that our friendly bacteria would be really happy, and our friendly bacteria would make us really happy, not so fast. The Sonnenbergs took some humans. They gave them a ton of prebiotic fiber, and they looked at whether or not they had improved gut microbiome diversity. The more different kinds of bacteria in your gut, the better.

(05:43):
Let’s leave it at that. The less types of bacteria in your gut, the worse. So they looked at the microbiome diversity, and all this fiber didn’t change the gut diversity. And they looked at markers of inflammation, and all this fiber didn’t change the markers of inflammation. And you go, “Well, what the heck? I thought that, you know, that’s what was needed.” So then they took another group, they gave them the same prebiotic fiber, but this time, they gave them fermented foods. Now it was primarily in the form of yogurt and kefirs. But the point is, these had postbiotics in them. And lo and behold, when the prebiotic fiber was combined with the postbiotics from the fermented foods, lo and behold, the gut microbiome diversity bloomed lots of new species, and lo and behold, the markers of inflammation plummeted. So getting back to sauerkraut and kimchi, what’s going on?

(07:03):
Well, here’s the one two punch. You now have the fermented foods. You have the postbiotics, the dead bacteria, the dead yeast, all the other short chain fatty acids that are made with fermentation, plus you got oodles of fiber in the various forms of cabbages, radishes, scallions that the gut bacteria then eat because they’ve been primed with the postbiotics and the fermented food. So that’s what these ancient cultures obviously knew. Now, which came first? Did they know that that’s why they were doing it? Probably not. We didn’t have these really cool tests that we have now. But they number one knew that they could preserve foods that they otherwise couldn’t store using this technique. And oh, by the way, people through centuries who were eating foods preserved this way were clearly healthier than people who weren’t doing it. The other thing that these cultures learned almost from day one, that plant compounds that exist in a lot of foods to prevent us from eating them, and these are the plant defense compounds like lectins, like oxalates.

(08:39):
These were eaten in the fermentation process. And that actually brings me up to one of the questions that we’ve gotten about kimchi. Much of kimchi has red pepper flakes in them. And as you know, the peel and the seeds of peppers are loaded with lectins, and yet I tell you to eat kimchi. What gives? Well, it turns out that the fermentation process eats the lectins even in the peppers. That’s why hot pepper sauces that have been fermented are perfectly safe to eat, whereas hot peppers that haven’t been fermented are not safe to eat unless you peel and de- seed them. So that explains the paradox of why I would allow you to have those pepper flakes in your kimchi because they’ve been fermented and rendered harmless. Now, what happens if you eat this stuff for 30 days? First of all, please, please, please. If you’re not used to eating fermented foods or you’re not used to eating a lot of fiber, start slow.

(10:01):
Your gut bacteria think fiber is delicious, and they ferment that fiber and tell you how happy they are by producing lots of gas and bloating, and may even change your frequency of your bile movements. Now, the good news is, if you start slow, you will adapt to that. And within 30 days, you’ll be up and running on a generous dose of sauerkraut and kimchi, but please, please, please, don’t eat the whole jar the first day. I don’t want cards and letters coming in saying, “What’d you make me do that for? I’m miserable.” Start slow and then work your way up. Studies have shown that humans who have done this actually have remarkable improvement in inflammatory markers, have remarkable improvements in gut biodiversity, and that’s what’s going to happen when you eat these foods for 30 days. But please, please start slow. Also, be careful. A number of these products, because Americans in general don’t like sour and tangy, a lot of these products to get them more palatable will put a remarkable amount of sugar into their products.

(11:35):
Now, it’s okay to add a little bit of sugar to start the fermentation process, but it’s not okay to add sugar to make it palatable to you. If it really bothers you, the tartness, what I like to do is I like to use allulose, which is a true sugar that has no calories, but it is a prebiotic in itself. And so, use allulose to make that taste more to your liking. Again, read the label, look for added sugar content. It’ll surprise you how many of these companies have added a lot of sugar to make you like the product. The other last benefit, particularly if it’s made with garlic and scallions, I’ve talked a lot about this. There’s some really cool compounds in garlic and scallions called Allicin, which really helps repair the lining of your blood vessels and your blood-brain barrier, which is called the glycocalyx.

(12:47):
And so anytime you can get these compounds in you, the better.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
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.