Dr. Steven Gundry (00:00:00):
Welcome back to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. This is part two of our 400th episode, Extravaganza. In part one, we hacked your daily routine. Here in part two, we’re protecting your health for the long haul. Memory, sleep, inflammation, disease prevention, and brain protection. The big stuff. I’ve been saying it for years. Growing old does not mean your best days are behind you. And every guest you’re about to hear proves exactly that. Let’s start with a man who literally wrote the book on memory, Jim Quick.

Jim Kwik (00:00:40):
Here’s the thing, Steven, because I, I get this comment a lot. I train at Google and Facebook and they’re like, “Jim, I don’t have to remember this. I have a search end and we organize the world’s information.” Here, here’s my answer for this. I’ll give you a couple answers. Number one, our life in the book, I have a quote from a French philosopher that says, “Life is the C between B and D. B is birth, D is death, C is choice.” And we always can make these, these choices. And part of the things is our life is a reflection of all the choices we’ve made up to this point of our, of our existence, right? What are we gonna eat? Where are we gonna live? Who are we gonna spend time with? What are we gonna do for a living? All these things, right? But we can only make good decisions based on the information we know, and that presupposes we remember it.

(00:01:21):
And so that’s why memory is so important. But the other reason why, it’s not just about mental intelligence, it’s about mental fitness. There’s these, you know, things that are happening like digital dementia where we’re outsourcing our memories to our smart devices, and it keeps our to- dos, it keeps our calendars, it keeps our phone … How many phone numbers did you know growing up? How many? Like-

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:01:44):
A lot.

Jim Kwik (00:01:44):
All. Yeah, a lot. How many phone numbers do you know or whoever’s listening? How many phone numbers do you know right now? One, two, three, maybe. And there could be somebody you text and call every day, but you, if your battery is dead, you don’t have your phone with you, you honestly don’t know who the, what their number is. And not that I wanna memorize 200 numbers, right? I mean, I certainly could teach somebody how to do that, but we’ve lost the ability. It should be concerning we’ve lost the ability to remember one, or a pin number, or a passcode, or a conversation we just had, or something we were gonna say, or why we went to the store. We go to the store to buy one thing, we come back with two bags full of things, except for that one thing that we went, you know, the absent after someone’s name.

(00:02:23):
And that’s why I believe memory is a muscle. And there’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s a trained memory and an untrained memory. And this also goes to not only digital dementia, um, but also what I talk about in the book, digital deduction, where if you don’t have to think anymore, and then there’s a technology that tells you where and when to turn, right? Or what’s recommended for you, because there’s an algorithm. We’re finding children, they don’t, when they’re tested, they don’t have the same analytical ability of previous generations because the technology is doing all the thinking for them. So they don’t have to develop these, uh, thinking, uh, fitness, like the critical thinking, divergent thinking, rationalization and, and so on. So technology is wonderful. It allows us to have this conversation right now and everyone to listen for it. But technology is a tool for you, for you to use.

(00:03:10):
But your brain is like a muscle. It’s obviously not a muscle, but it, it acts like a muscle. But if I use a technology like Lyft or Uber to go five blocks when I could have walked, or I use an elevator when I could have walked up three blocks of, you know, flights of stairs, there is a physical toll to my body. And if I put my arm in a sling for 12 months, it wouldn’t stay the same. It wouldn’t even grow. It would grow worse. It would atrophy. And that’s what digital dimension and digital deduction is. The high reliance on technology where we don’t have to maintain a level of mental fitness. And so I would encourage people to be able to exercise their brain like they exercise the rest of their body.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:03:51):
Wow, that’s a, that’s a pretty good way to end all this. So, all right, I, I ask everybody who comes on the program. Give, give our listeners one thing they can do today to get a better brain. Just, just one thing. How do we start?

Jim Kwik (00:04:06):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:04:07):
Just one.

Jim Kwik (00:04:07):
Absolutely. I would say this. I would say first … Oh, God, I wanna take like 10 things.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:04:13):
Yeah, I only want one.

Jim Kwik (00:04:15):
One thing, one thing. I would, I would say this. I would say sit down and design your morning routine, your morning routine. My … Everybody has their morning routine and the things that they do to win that day, because if you wanna win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day. First, you create your habits and your habits create you. My morning routine, if people Google it, or we did a whole podcast episode on it, millions of downloads and views on this. Jim Quick’s morning routine focuses on the brain. The 10 things I do every morning to jumpstart my brain, and I would just say find something in the morning for you instead of picking up the phone, because that’s rewiring your brain to be distracted, and it’s rewiring your brain to be reactive. Two things that will hurt your peace of mind, your positivity, your productivity, your performance.

(00:05:01):
I would say replace picking up your phone with one thing that’s good for your brain, whether it’s eating a good brain food, taking deep diaphragmic breaths. Well, some fun thing I, I teach people to do is brush their teeth with the opposite hand because it engages the opposite side of your brain because as your body moves, your brain grooves. But what it really does is it forces you to focus first thing in the morning because you can’t be doing that and being distracted. So it trains your fit, your, your focus and your presence muscles, and that’s how you’re gonna achieve the most, because the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing. So my challenge with everybody, look at your morning routine and replace picking up your phone with something else that’s more brain friendly.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:05:42):
Now, can everybody remember that, please? <laugh> You gotta brush your teeth with the other hand. And actually, I’m gonna add something. While you’re brushing your teeth, you have to do deep knee bends. You gotta do squats. You’re just sitting there anyhow, just ending there. I like- Do some, yeah, do some deep bends and brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Okay, that’s the lesson today. What’s one thing that might surprise them that women can do today to support their hormonal health?

Dr. Taz Bhatia (00:06:11):
That might surprise them.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:06:12):
Might surprise

Dr. Taz Bhatia (00:06:13):
Them. Okay. We’ll see. I don’t know if this is- Maybe

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:06:15):
Surprised you.

Dr. Taz Bhatia (00:06:17):
Well, this surprised me, but this might be so simple. Uh, women, according to Eastern systems of medicine, need to sleep from 10:00 P to 5:00 AM. If they’re not sleeping continuously between that window of time, then Chinese medicine ayurvedic medicine predicts that they’re going to have hormone disruption and that they’re gonna drive themselves faster into a hormone crash or into early menopause or perimenopause or many of these things. So many women tell me, for example, “I slept in or I sleep in on the weekends or I do this or I do that. ” They were very specific about the 10:00 P to about 5:00 AM. So that was surprising to me, very connected to hormone health. I think the other thing that is very surprising for many women is the importance of protein. You know, I think many women don’t understand that their blood sugar fluctuations and instability impact hormones directly and vice versa.

(00:07:13):
So if they can get, you know, blood sugar smart, a lot of times they can balance their hormone shifts much better.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:07:18):
Perfect. All right. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to join in the audience question. Yes. And we teed this one up for you, so I want you to hit it out of the park. Now, so this comes from Voyage Vixens on Instagram. Is it possible to avoid any kind of menopause side effects by either diet or lifestyle practices? And if so, how?

Dr. Taz Bhatia (00:07:42):
So this is a great question. And part of why I wrote the book, because the short answer is yes, you can avoid menopause side effects with a healthy diet, a good, healthy gut that’s working well, minimizing toxins, and really focusing and prioritizing on sleep and structuring a life that works for you, right? Where at least 80% of the time, you’re sort of living in kind of an easy, not easy, that’s not the right word, a very even pace. So that makes your hormone shifts much more bearable, sometimes not even noticeable. A lot of our patients sail through perimenopause and menopause without any side effects whatsoever. So the answer is yes, and I write about it here. This is a whole book to help you get balance and avoid it. Now, some women, despite their best attempts and really trying hard, still have side effects. Well, there are remedies that help with that.

(00:08:33):
There’s everything from nutrient remedies, herbal remedies, then of course there’s hormone replacement therapy. So there’s a really big toolbox to help women, and I hope every woman listening will reach in, grab the one that works for them, and really get answers rather than kind of suffering in silence.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:08:49):
Jim Quick just showed us how to build a better brain, and Dr. Taz brought the energy. Now, here’s the thing, you can do every brain hack in the world, and it won’t matter if you’re not doing this one thing, sleeping. ct was talking about this long before it was trending, and what she’s about to share might change your bedtime routine tonight.

Ariana Huffington (00:09:14):
As you know, the reason New Year resolutions don’t work- Correct. … is because they’re so big, and people do them maybe for a week, two weeks, and then they give up. So our, um, behavior change, um, prescriptions are all based on what we call microsteps too small to fail.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:09:35):
Okay, so that’s … Give me … So it’s the new year. Give me an example of a micro step that you can’t fail at.

Ariana Huffington (00:09:45):
Great. Let’s say that you want to reduce your addiction to your phone and to social media and to technology, which as you know, is a growing source of stress.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:10:00):
Yes.

Ariana Huffington (00:10:00):
Because we are all increasingly addicted to this thing, and we find it hard to disconnect at night to go to sleep. 72% of people sleep with their phone by their bed, so if they wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or for whatever reason, they’re tempted. Even if they tell themselves, “I’m not going to look at my phone.” If they can’t immediately go back to sleep, they go to their phone. And that, again, all the science tells us is incredibly disruptive to getting deep sleep. So, um, one of my favorite micro steps, and we have, like, over 700, is peak a time at the end of your day that you declare the end of your working day. It’s an arbitrary end, because the truth is that anybody who has an interesting job does not really have an end to their day. <laugh>

(00:10:58):
I mean, you could spend all night l- right, answering emails and handling things.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:11:03):
Correct.

Ariana Huffington (00:11:04):
I could do the same. And if anybody tells me, “Oh, I can do everything I could possibly have done by the end of the day,” I say, “I think you should change jobs.” Your job isn’t interesting and challenging enough. <laugh> Right?

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:11:18):
Right, you’re right. Yeah.

Ariana Huffington (00:11:19):
So given that, we need to pick an arbitrary end to declare an end, and we declare the end by turning off our phone and charging it outside our bedroom. So that’s a little step. It’s a ritual, but it’s very significant because you have a clear demarcation between your day life with all these challenges and problems and your nightlife, which should be all about recharging and reconnecting with a deeper part of ourselves. We’ve even produced a little, um, product, which is a charging station that looks like a phone bed. <laugh> And, um, it has a little blanket. It can charge up to 10 phones and iPads. It could be for the whole family, and you’re supposed to put your phone under the blanket, tack it in, say goodnight, and reconnect in the morning, and you are fully recharged, both the phone and you.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:12:20):
Perfect. Now, you know, my, my friend, Dr. McCullough, would say that the other reason not to have your phone by your bed is the, uh, electromagnetic waves that are constantly coming out of your phone.

Ariana Huffington (00:12:35):
Right.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:12:36):
And disrupting, uh, almost every l- every cellular function that we have. And you’re right, sleeping with a cell phone near your bed is a really dumb idea.

Ariana Huffington (00:12:46):
And even if you turn it off, and you don’t have to worry about the electromagnetic waves, it’s still a reminder of everything you have to deal with in your life, because our phone should never really be called a phone anymore. <laugh> The last thing we do on our phone is phone anybody. That’s right. Um, it’s really the repository of every challenge, every problem, every demand on your time and attention, and we need to disconnect from that.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:13:18):
Is there, is there a time during the day that people should have a timeout from a phone like we used to have in kindergarten? <laugh> We had, we had to take a half an hour nap whether we wanted to or not?

Ariana Huffington (00:13:29):
Absolutely. First of all, at Thrive, for example, we all are meetings, you know, leadership meetings, product meetings, anything are device free. Because you know what happens at meetings? Uh, people claim to be taking notes. They’re not. They’re alleviating boredom. They’re texting, they’re updating their Facebooks, whatever. And we tell everybody, “Listen, if you have something more important to do, don’t come to the meeting. If you’re in the meeting, you need to be 100% in the meeting.” And what’s happened at the moment, our attention span has been dramatically reduced. I mean, it’s now actually lower than that of the goldfish. <laugh> And so anytime we, there is a moment of boredom in the conversation, whether it’s over dinner or in a meeting, we automatically go to our phone looking for stimulation.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:14:32):
Uh, what were you saying? Oh. <laugh>

Ariana Huffington (00:14:35):
Exactly. So if we can stay present, then we’re really going to be able to contribute.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:14:42):
Right. I approach this, uh, as you know, from the gut and food, and the longer I’ve been at this, the more impressed I am with the power of not only foods, but also the microbiome, the guts that live in our, uh, gut, the bugs to actually affect our anxiety and depression. And, you know, I have some personal experiences with that with one of my children, and it, it is amazing, at least, uh, in my humble opinion, the power of food, certain foods, uh, to absolutely make your brain crazy. Any, any mother of a four-year-old knows that, uh, you know, a trip to Disneyland with simple carbohydrates, uh, you get a, uh, you know, hyperactive child who suddenly then collapses, screaming and crying, and you can see just immediately the power of certain foods to affect brain function. Uh, have you, i- is … I’m sure Thrive is incorporating that into your point.

Ariana Huffington (00:15:50):
Absolutely. And we have incorporated, um, the number one gundry rule, which is that, uh, your health depends more on what you don’t eat rather than what you eat. Because people may follow different prescriptions. I mean, they may be vegan, they may be meat eaters, but if they can stay away from sugar and simple carbohydrates and processed foods, that’s already a big victory. And also, as you know, this, uh, sleep movement and diet are incredibly interconnected. Like I have all the science in the sleep book that if you are sleep deprived, your body physiologically craves carbs and sugars. So it’s not even a, a mental decision. <laugh> It’s like physiological.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:16:53):
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. Uh, years ago in my first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet of Evolution, I had a study of, uh, actually college students who were put in a sl- sleep lab, and they were allowed to sleep for eight hours, and then they were awa- awakened, and they looked at a hormone that suppresses hunger, uh, called leptin, and the leptin level was nice and high. So they then took them and allowed them to only sleep six hours, and their leptin level was very low, but the hunger hormone ghrelin went sky high. So then, so that actually proved, in fact, what we’re talking about, that lack of sleep makes you hungry, and it makes you hungry for simple carbohydrates. I learned that as a heart surgeon to stay awake all night, you know, I just eat simple carbs to stay awake. But the interesting thing is they took the same students, they told them that they were going to let them sleep for six hours, but they let them sleep for eight hours.

(00:17:57):
Interestingly, they behaved as if they only had slept for six hours. <laugh> Their hunger hormone was sky high. So psychologically, they were prepared for a short sleep period. So- Amazing. It’s amazing, you know, the power of even anticipation of what’s going to happen. Um, do you ever use an aura ring?

Ariana Huffington (00:18:20):
You know, I, I love the order ring, and I used to use it, but now after, um, all the work I’ve done on sleep, I’m kind of good on sleep. <laugh>

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:18:30):
You don’t need it anymore.

Ariana Huffington (00:18:32):
Well, it’s like I, I, I do get my eight hours, uh, 95% of the time, like in all our lives, you know, something happens, there’s a delayed flight- Yeah. … or there is jet lag. Uh, but 95% of the time, it’s my biggest priority. And I tell a lot of my friends, if they are trying to lose weight or, um, get fit and they wake up before they’ve gotten enough sleep to go to the gym, I said, no, turn off the alarm and sleep. It’s more important to get enough sleep. And enough sleep, as you know, varies, you know, 99% of people need seven to nine hours, you know, your number may be seven, somebody else maybe nine, mine is eight, but there is one to one and a half percent of the population that has a genetic mutation and they don’t need a lot of sleep.

(00:19:33):
We know it if we have it. I know I don’t have it. Uh, there are the people who wake up after four hours and they’re feeling great and …

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:19:42):
Yeah. Well, you know, Michael DeBakey, one of the most famous heart surgeons in the world, uh, only slept about four hours and he lived into his late 90s, uh, on four hours of sleep.

Ariana Huffington (00:19:55):
The problem is the people who worked for him, if they thought that because Dr. DeBechan slept for four hours, they should too, that’s the problem. And there are some people in positions of authority who have this genetic mutation, and that’s where we need to inform people. There is a test, as you know, there is a genetic test- Yeah. … people can take if they’re not sure. But normally, I think if you have any kind of awareness, you should know if you have the genetic mutation or not.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:20:25):
No, it’s true. My, uh, my brother-in-law, who’s a cardiologist, really wanted to be a heart surgeon, but he knew that he could not go, you know, without the sleep that heart surgeons often do. And so he became a cardiologist- <laugh> … So he could sleep more. And he’s, he’s obviously much more intelligent than I am. <laugh> But yeah, I could, uh, I, the longest I ever went without sleep, uh, seriously, was 72 hours on call in my residency program. And then I went for, then I slept for four hours and actually went to see an orchid show. It’s a true story. Now, looking back, um, you know, we, most residents before the rules of how long a resident could stay in the hospital, we were so sleep deprived and made, quite frankly, bad decisions. Um, but, you know, our, our mentors had done that and dog on it- Right.

(00:21:20):
… if they were gonna do it, um, you had

Ariana Huffington (00:21:23):
To- You would do it. But we, we’d done a lot on the Thrive Media platform about, uh, doctor burnout. As you know, it’s a real crisis. Yes. And

(00:21:33):
They increase in doctor suicides, and we had a great surgeon from Cedar Sinai who wrote a very powerful piece, um, about his own experience and the changes that have to happen. So we are trying to put a spotlight on this crisis in the same way we’re trying to put a spotlight on the crisis you mentioned among teenagers, and we’ve launched a program of, um, mental health on campus. We have, at the moment, uh, Thrive editors in over 70 universities- Ah. … working with students, um, writing about what’s happening, because as you know, a lot of colleges don’t have enough mental health facilities or, um, the ability to provide the help that students need, but which often is incredibly simple. Um, just the right foods, the right sleep and movement can deal with an enormous amount of mental health problems. We’re not talking about, you know, bipolar disorders or schizophrenia, we’re talking about garden variety, depression, and anxiety, and they’re so connected to what we eat, how much we sleep, and are we moving?

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:22:50):
And those three things are the things that really are lacking in, you know, in most colleges. When you find out about your brain, you, there are steps you can take at any age to make a difference.

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:23:07):
You bet. I mean, that’s what’s exciting. I mean, I really think that’s a foundational message of my life. You’re not stuck with the brain you have. You could make it better. In fact, if you sleep better tonight, your brain will actually work better tomorrow. Um, if you eat better today, your brain will actually be better today. If you eat badly today, your brain is gonna be worse today on, in the, um … I have a new show that goes along with the book on public television, and I have Lisa Gibbons, uh, who’s a friend of mine. She’s a news personality. Uh, she’s beautiful, she’s smart. Her mother and her grandmother died with Alzheimer’s disease, and as I got to know her, I’m like, “You wanna come see me, because we can tell years.” And she goes, “Well, why would I wanna know? ” And I said, “Well, if you knew a train was gonna hit you, wouldn’t you wanna at least try to get out of the way?” And so I have her brain at 51, and then I did it, and it looked terrible, and then I have her brain at 62, and it looks stunningly beautiful.

(00:24:16):
Why? Because she does all of the right things. So genes aren’t really a death sentence. They should be a wake-up call for you to do the right things to prevent what you’re vulnerable to.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:24:29):
Yeah, no, you’re right. In fact, I, I just recently joined you on, uh, public television with the longevity paradox, and you’re right, genes actually have so little to do with, with our destiny and our long-term health, and our long-term brain health. Uh, you know, 30% of us carry the APOE4 allele, which is a predictor of increased risk of Alzheimer’s, and so many of my patients come to me carrying that gene, but they, you know, the fascinating thing is, and I’ll tell anyone who will listen, I have a number of people now in their late 80s carrying the 4-4 allele, which not a good thing to have, but they’re doing great. But I have a 97-year-old gentleman who’s a 3-4, and he still runs his company, and his three daughters will not let him retire, uh, because he’s so good at what he does. And so I’ll, any of my ApoE4 folks, I’ll say, “Hey, you know, 97 and you’re running your company,” of course they’re gonna say, “Why doesn’t he retire?” Uh, tell anyone who listens, don’t retire if you’re smart, um, because, uh, particularly, uh, men and now increasingly women in the workforce, being engaged, um, in everyday activities of work is, back me up on this, is important in, in your life.

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:25:59):
So in the mnemonic Bright Minds where I talk about the risk factors, R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying, and so being engaged, y- you only wanna be engaged as l- long as you wanna be able to think. And I had one woman said, who is 60 and she’s like, “You know, I dieted and I exercise. I don’t really wanna do that anymore.” And I said, “As long as you’re okay with the consequences of aging, which is depression and dementia, then why worry about it? ” But I’m not okay with it, and I need to keep my brain actively engaged in order for it to work at an optimal level. And quite frankly, you know, I have four children and I love them, but I never wanna have to live with them. I never wanna be a burden and I don’t want them taking my keys from me.

(00:26:57):
I don’t want them telling me what to eat or what to wear. Uh, I wanna be independent, but that means I need to be making good decisions for my health so my brain doesn’t do what it often does with aging. It’s, it deteriorates. I’ve seen way too many 80, 90, 100 year old brains, and most of them, except for a select few who loved their brains throughout their life, look terrible, and I’m not okay with that.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:27:28):
Yeah. Uh, uh, this has been great. Um, you know, I think that’s so important. And I tell anyone who will listen that it is never too late. And in the number of stories I have of people, uh, you know, on the way out in their mid 80s suffering from diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, you name it, who are now in their mid 90s and they’re, they’re thriving individuals. Now, I wouldn’t have believed this. It was possible, you know, in, in most of my career, but I think your message, um, that your brain is malleable, I think the sooner you get to work on it, the better. I think we could both agree on that, but it is, it’s never too late. Uh, Lisa Gibbons is a great example, uh, to turn things around.

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:28:19):
Yeah, it’s never too late to have a better brain and a better life, and it starts with love, love of yourself, love of your brain, love of your family, so doing the right thing, um, and, and the scans just always give me hope that I can tell how much better people can be. And, and I always tell people, whatever we see is good news, because you have what you have. And if it’s great, we celebrate, and if it’s bad, we go to work and rehabilitate it. And I did the big NFL study when the NFL was lying they had a problem.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:28:56):
Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:28:57):
And, uh, high levels of damage, it’s like, stop lying about it, but 80% of my players get better when I put them on a rehabilitation program, you are not stuck with … If you’ve been bad to your brain, well, now is the time to make a decision to be better to your brain, and it can be better for you.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:29:19):
All right. Takeaway, is there one thing today that, that somebody can do to, to help their brain? Just one, I know there’s bunches of them. Give us one today.

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:29:31):
So I worked with BJ Fogg for six months. Uh, he’s a professor at Stanford on creating tiny habits. You know, it’s the smallest thing you can do today that will make the biggest difference. So the one thing, three seconds a day, whenever you go to make a decision, ask yourself, “Is this good for my brain or bad for it? ” And if you can answer that question with information and love, love of yourself, you’ll begin to change … Your brain in such a positive way.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:30:02):
All right. Very good. So where can viewers and listeners find the end of mental illness and learn more about you?

Dr. Daniel Amen (00:30:12):
So the, the book will be everywhere on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever great books are sold. They can learn us, about us at amenclinics.com. So Amen, like the last word in a prayer, clinics.com. And we’re in the middle of a six week challenge, uh, to get people’s brains healthy. Because the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health, and we’re creating brain warriors to move this revolution forward just like you’re doing as well.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:30:48):
Time to hear from my dear friend, Dr. Valter Longo, who has done some of the most groundbreaking research on longevity. If there’s one thing that people could do today to prevent cancer, what would you say? One, one thing.

Dr. Valter Longo (00:31:06):
I would say- That

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:31:07):
Put you on the spot.

Dr. Valter Longo (00:31:08):
Yeah. Either the longevity diet or the fastingmaking diet, right? So those are, uh, and people think that somehow I stumbled on that, but no, I didn’t stumble on the longevity diet. I didn’t stumble on the fasting making diet. It was 30 years of searching for what’s best for you, right? And so, you know, I started with Roy Walford. I was gonna say,

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:31:26):
You had a great mentor.

Dr. Valter Longo (00:31:27):
I had a great mentor. And, and, and there was a beginning, right? In my year number, year one in, in my PhD at UCLA, Roy Walford is in Biosphere two- I

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:31:37):
Know.

Dr. Valter Longo (00:31:37):
… doing the first human calorie restriction study, right? So I think that that’s where I started and I, I thought this is great. It teaches us a lot, uh, teaches us a lot, but it’s not what people are gonna ever do, right? Because it, it was obvious. Yeah, so then there was 30 years of, like, w- what are people actually willing to do? So for example, a few years ago, we published a paper in, in, um, in nature metabolism that, uh, something we always wanted to do. Like, and this is also answering your question, because most people have a bad diet, right? That’s just a reality, you know? For whatever reason, they have a bad diet. So we say, “Okay, why don’t we start with mice? They have the worst diet that we can think of, right?” So we give them high fat, high sugar, high calorie, right?

(00:32:21):
Sure enough, these mice become huge, like most people in Europe and the United States, and then, and then it’s just incredible how many problems, human problems that develop, very high cholesterol, heart problems. And then they died way earlier than <laugh> than people on the normal diet, not like great diet, a normal diet, a controlled diet. And it was just unbelievable how much earlier they died, right? How rapidly they died. Uh, then we just give them FMD, faster than we can diet once a month. It just reversed everything, the cholesterol problem, the heart problems, the lifespan problems, remarkable, right? The insulin sensitivity problems. Uh, so, so just five days a month, together with a terrible <laugh> the worst diet that you can imagine, uh, it fixed all the problems. Now, I’m not saying, of course, we, we work very hard in getting everybody to eat the longevity diet, but it’s just not, uh, realistic for the majority and possibly the great majority of people.

(00:33:18):
This is why in Italy now, hey, FMD, what about every three months? It’s a, it’s a big, uh, gamble, right? Because, hey, it’s like, is it possible? Now, in mice, you had at least once a month. Now you wanna go once every three months, this is a miracle, but we’ll see, right? We’ll see, we’ll see what it can do, right, to the, the- Yeah. … worst, uh, health profile population in Europe.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:33:40):
That’d be great. So let’s, let’s take a second and back up. Uh, people who’ve read my book, so I write about the fasting mimicking diet, uh, your invention and good for you, and, but what, what is that? Can give us simply, y- yeah, you’re mimicking fasting, but you’re allowing people to eat like three to five days of a low calorie,

Dr. Valter Longo (00:34:09):
Low protein, low sugar, high fat, 100% plant-based.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:34:14):
But you’re allowing them to eat.

Dr. Valter Longo (00:34:16):
Yes.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:34:17):
And one of the things that I completely agree with you, um, why have it plant-based if you’re going to use this for, well, for everybody, but specifically for treating cancer patients? What’s the logic?

Dr. Valter Longo (00:34:33):
The logic was, um, looking around the world, and we have two versions, and, you know, one of them also, you know, inspired in part by your work. We have two version. One is for everybody, and one is for people with inflammatory issues, right? So the inflammatory one is very different from the … So the autoimmunity ones are very different from the other one. But, but the idea for, for everybody was to go and look around the, uh, longevity areas of the world, you know, Southern Italy and Okinawa and Loma Linda and just using ingredients that are very widely used in those areas, right? So reach the, the fasting mimicking properties, but do it with extremely healthy food that most people, uh, would not argue with. And, uh, and it was a good idea, right? So for example, in one study in mice, w- with inflammatory bowel disease, we saw that if we used the fasting making diet versus water only fasting, the prebiotic ingredients were feeding the, the lactobacilus and be feed the bacteria, so you see a grow- growth of the good bacteria in the gut to the mice, and that worked better than the water only fasting, right?

(00:35:45):
So, so I think in general, uh, that, that was the rationale. Now, for the non-inflammatory, we’re about to publish the first 15 cases, right, of autoimmunities using the non-inflammatory. And the non-inflammatory one, it’s missing a lot of vegetables, you know, is no nice shades and no tomatoes and no … So all of, yes, all of those are gone and much more than that, right? So we’ve been practicing that, um, you know, both with the everyday diet and with the, um, and with the fasting making diet. So it’s a special fe- festiving diet which we call LENA, uh, low inflammatory non-allergenic. So that, that, those are the two major categories. Now there are, there are different FMDs, like Alzheimer’s, much higher calories with a ketogenic supplement in between. That’s what we just finished a trial in Italy, a multi-center trial on that, um, and so there are a few different versions, but, uh, there’s one for diabetes that it’s a little less starches, um, and, uh, you know, allowing the physicians to have a, a, you know, a more aggressive, uh, um, intervention as far, uh, as far as, you know, starches, uh, in, in the diet.

(00:36:54):
But, uh, yeah, those, let’s say those are the four main ones.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:36:58):
What the heck is a fasted snack? <laugh>

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:37:02):
It’s my favorite part of the whole book.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:37:04):
All right, good.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:37:05):
So in researching everything that I did for Fast Like a Girl, I found some research on something called a fasted snack. And what the study showed was that you could take two groups of people and one group you can say, “Okay, you’re gonna fast 13 hours, and then you’re gonna break your fast.” The second group, you’re gonna go at 13 hours, and then we’re gonna ask that you go two hours more to 15, but that you eat what is essentially a fat bomb. So you’re eating high fat, it is low calorie, and it is low protein, because we know protein will pull you out of autophagy. So you wanna have this pure fat bomb, and it had some very specific requirements. They did this over a 30 day period, and what they found in the study was that the group that elongated their fast by having a fasted snack lost more weight, and most of it was around the belly, and had greater improvements in their metabolic numbers.

(00:38:05):
Whereas if somebody just went 13 hours and stopped there, they had less of a result. So in Eat Like a Girl, I wanted to bring in the fasted snack and bring back this idea that there are some things you can eat, and I actually had my chefs create some recipes of things that you can eat in the fasting window that will continue all the healing of fasting, but you’re eating and that kills the hunger.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:32):
Yeah, and that’s been in my, actually the last three books, a lot of this is work from Dr. Walter Longo.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:38:38):
Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:39):
And-

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:38:39):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:40):
Yeah. Now, he has a bar that he used.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:38:42):
Yes.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:43):
And it’s mainly a nut bar, and nuts in general won’t break your fast.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:38:47):
Yeah. Uh,

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:47):
You’ll stay in ketosis.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:38:49):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:38:50):
You’re right. I don’t know where this idea came from that a 12-hour fast is, is fasting and that it’s good for you. All the studies show that 12 hours of not eating isn’t really going to benefit

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:05):
You.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:39:05):
Yeah.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:05):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:39:06):
And you’ve got to push that window.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:08):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:39:08):
And you’re right. A lot of folks, it’s hard to get past that 12 hour- Right. … because, you know, we’ve been brainwashed. Okay, you know, you stop eating at 8:00 and you can start again at eight, and that’s 12 hours. Yeah. And that’s really good for

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:22):
You. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:39:23):
It doesn’t bear out in human studies. Yeah. You’ve got to go farther than that. Yeah. But you’ve got to get past that, oh my gosh, I’m dying of hunger or I’m, I’m going to go exercise and everybody knows I need to eat before I exercise. Yeah. But let’s not go down that.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:38):
<laugh> Yeah, we can talk. That’s a whole nother episode. <laugh> Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:39:41):
Our, our hunter gatherers didn’t eat before they exercised. No, they didn’t. And modern hunter gatherers don’t, don’t eat before they exercise. That’s right. So you exercise to go eat.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:39:52):
That’s right. I’m so grateful to align with you on this because in Fast Like a Girl, I mapped out six different length fasts. And when we first mapped it out, I had so many people say to me, “Nobody wants to do a three-day water fest.” And I was like, “Really? ‘Cause I built my whole YouTube channel off a three-day water fast.” And when I actually laid out what you’re saying, like, think of it as a healing state and then you get to decide, how long do you wanna hang out in that healing state? What we have found is, I mean, we, every January, we do a three-day water fast. Last January, we had 100,000 people worldwide do a three-day water fast with us. People want to fast that long, but tools like a fasted snack now help us train ourselves to get to those positions.

(00:40:41):
So I want people to see the miracle their body is when you go into those longer fasts. So I, I love that we align on that.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:40:48):
Yeah. And there’s a really cool Chinese study that I wrote about last couple books. So they took, they did a 14-day water fast on volunteers and half the group, 14-day water fast. The other group were given a hundred calories of prebiotic fiber, undijustable bio them, but fed the gut microbiome. And the guys, it was a male study, sorry. <laugh> But the guys who got the prebiotic fiber, 14-day water fast had absolutely no hunger. And it’s because you were feeding the microbiome. So if you’re gonna do a water fast, please feed your microbiome.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:41:29):
I love that you bring this to light because in the book, I have what I call the foundational five food principles for women, and one of them is eat for your microbes, not your taste buds. Because if you always are thinking about your microbes, as you know, your taste buds will change. Yep. And we have done that in these long fasts where we’ll take, like, a prebiotic powder and have people put it in water- Yeah. … and the hunger goes away.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:41:55):
Oh, yeah. It’s called the gut-centric theory of hunger- Yeah. … and I

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:41:58):
Think it’s

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:41:58):
Absolutely real.

Dr. Mindy Pelz (00:42:00):
Yeah.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:42:01):
Now, staying on the theme of things harming us without our knowing, Dr. McCullough is going to talk about something that’s probably in your pocket right now. I have to warn you, after this, you’re going to want to put your phone down. I like to ask all my guests, guests, uh, about one best practice for achieving longevity. If you were gonna do one thing, uh, what’s your trick?

Dr. Joseph Mercola (00:42:27):
Uh, I can share this with you offline, but there, I, I have a super RSSB for PubMed. I, uh, I’m going through reading t- about 2000 studies a year now, the full study, not just the abstract, and the, and the 80 keywords that I’m looking at are all for longevity and, and subvariance of it. So this is an area I’m beyond passionate about. So I’m, I’m, I’m … So I want to give you a good answer, but I think that the, the ultimate answer is just to fund … Do the fundamental basics because right now, the best we can do to hope to do is live to 120 in pretty good shape. Yeah. ‘Cause that’s, that’s exactly where we’re … No one’s living beyond that now with our current technology. So, and I think if just do the basics. And I really … So I wrote fat for fuel, get metabolic reflexion.

(00:43:10):
I’m running keto fasting. Do the partial fat fasting. Get the benefits of autopage and get the rejuvenation benefits activate. The other thing is, is does it activate your stem cells so that when you’re rebuilding and getting the, all the extra carbs and the good branch chain amino acids and you’ve exercised, those stem cells are activated and they go to rebuild the tissues that exactly what you need to do. So you get that thing going. Thirdly, you’ve got to stay away from EMF. These are sort of the primal three ones that, you know, because the, the, the … Almost everyone, a- almost everyone doesn’t understand the importance. And I’m really spending lots of time in writing this new book, and hopefully it’d be out either late this year or early next year. It’s, I’m almost finished writing it and helping people understand why it actually has to … It goes back to NAD, which is the fundamental core of why CMF exposure is so, such an issue, and NED is required as a substrate for PARP, poly ADP rivals polymerase to repair the DNA damage.

(00:44:07):
It lays down the matrix for, uh, the DNA enzymes, repair enzymes to come in and work. And every time, every time you have a single stranded break, it sucks out two, two or three NAD+ molecules. And you do that for a while and you’re just NAD levels go down into the toilet and you just can’t, this NAD to NADH ratio, then ADPH goes crazy and you just suffer premature aging.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:44:34):
So don’t put this next to your bed.

Dr. Joseph Mercola (00:44:36):
Well, my phone is actually quite close to my, my, my bed, uh, maybe two feet away, but it’s in airplane mode and it’s in a Faraday bag. So, because I mean, emergencies happen. Right.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:44:50):
Thank

Dr. Joseph Mercola (00:44:50):
God we have this technology. You know, if I have to call someone, so I have someone breaking in, I’ve got to talk to the police or something, I need that phone. But I do, you certainly don’t need it on. And the, the real challenge is that we have so many teams. I think it’s, it’s crazy. I think, I forget the specific numbers, but it’s like 70% of the six to 17 year olds are going to bed with their phone.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:45:11):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Mercola (00:45:12):
It’s just insane. It’s, it, you know, because they don’t understand the damage they’re doing and just, you know, cell phones, cell phones, the one you just held up, they, there is no doubt in my mind I have two old chapters of this in my new book that’s coming out are indeed the cigarettes of the 21st century. People just don’t see it yet. There’s no que- and I go through all the analogies, the PR agencies, Hills and Knowlton that, that backhoe industry used and how they were able to scam and confuse the pub for 30 years af- actually probably for 50 years after the science was known that it caused this. Even after the surgeon general issued a report, and believe me, the situation is far worse with telecommunications in the wireless industry because they have, they have totally, uh, corrupted the federal regulatory agencies. So anyway, it’s on a tangent, but, you know, so, you know, EMF.

(00:46:00):
EMF’s a big issue. You’ve got to understand it. You have to act on it. And if you don’t, you can do, you can have the best strategy, you can take the best polyphenols in the world, you can do ste- stem cell transplants. It doesn’t matter. You’re dying prematurely because of this toxic exposure that virtually no one understands. It’s like cigarettes in the 30s.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:46:19):
Well, I, from now on, I am not gonna smoke my cell phone anymore. <laugh>

Dr. Joseph Mercola (00:46:23):
Absolutely. Okay, good. That’s a good, good strategy.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:46:27):
I wanna touch finally, uh, because you spend a lot of time in the book. We, we started with this, antibiotics. Mm-hmm. Come on, that’s all pediatricians are good for- <laugh> … Gi- giving kids antibiotics when they walk through the door. Where do you stand on them?

Dr. Elisa Song (00:46:42):
Well, I mean, that is also another whole chapter, and it’s called what every parent and practitioner should know about antibiotics. And we have with antibiotics, um … I mean, we know antibiotics can be life-saving. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the antibiotics are really one of the most important public health inventions of the 20th century, but we’re no longer in the 20th century, and we’re now in the 21st century where antibiotic resistance is quickly becoming a leading cause of death worldwide. So we need to understand the impact of, um, inappropriate and, you know, excessive use of antibiotics. Now, for children, especially when some studies show that up to 70% of antibiotic prescriptions written for children are inappropriately prescribed, it’s yes, the public health concern, but it’s also the individual patient concern in front of you where knowing that even just one round of antibiotics can significantly increase the subsequent risk of developing anxiety or depression or mental health concerns.

(00:47:42):
We know this in adults too. Yeah. The more rounds of antibiotics, the higher the risk. And we certainly have our epidemic of teenage anxiety going on right now. And so, um, we need to understand when it’s appropriate to use antibiotics, which can be hard to do as a parent, but, you know, you really wanna make sure that it is absolutely necessary, like you said, is there a culture? Can we wait for the results to make sure it’s bacterial before we start the antibiotics? And when antibiotics are used, hopefully necessarily, we understand how to restore the microbiome. That’s really key because then we can mitigate, prevent some of the downstream effects of microbiome disruption that may not be immediate. They may show up years or decades down the road, but the stage was set with those antibiotics.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:48:30):
We talked about this off camera. How do you, as a parent, talk to the pediatrician- Mm. … um, about your desires versus perhaps the not so newly trained pediatrician’s desires. Is there a balance? How, how do you strike a

Dr. Elisa Song (00:48:53):
Balance? Yeah. It is very tough because as more and more parents become enlightened, aware of- With

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:48:58):
Dr. Google. <laugh>

Dr. Elisa Song (00:49:00):
Or Dr. Google, yes. <laugh> It’s really important to find a pediatrician who can partner with you, and that can be challenging. I mean, fortunately, there are more and more pediatricians who are really, um, recognizing that how we’re practicing conventional pediatrics, it’s not helping our kids thrive for the long term. It’s not helping them become thriving adults, which is our, our goal as parents and as pediatricians. And I have the honor of really being able to teach a lot of pediatric practitioners who are coming to me saying, “I need this knowledge.” I mean, in fact, I had this one, I am head of A4M’s pediatric education, and at our last pediatric conference, a gentleman, pediatrician who was, um, in his 60s, came to me with just very distraught, and I, I thought, “Oh my gosh, what is he gonna tell me? ” Uh, and so, um, and so he came up to me and he said, “I, I can’t believe I didn’t know this sooner.” And he was thinking back about all the patients that he’d seen and I wish I had known.

(00:49:54):
And I said, “You know what? You didn’t know them, but now you know, and you can continue to help your patients moving forward.” But there still are too many pediatricians who are not yet enlightened and aware, which is … I mean, partly I wrote the book for practitioners, because I’ve had practitioners who, one of the, um, schools of nurse practitioners, uh, doctorate of nurse practitioner degree, they’re now requiring my book as reading for all of their students, which is amazing. I mean, this, this is what we want. This has to become not the alternative medicine, but the conventional standard of care. So as a parent though, especially when it comes to antibiotics, I mean, I have a list of six questions to ask before you start the antibiotics, but the number one question, and I would say this is for adults too, the number one question to ask is, “Hey, doc, is this antibiotic really necessary?” And it seems like a silly question to ask, but some of the studies have found that doctors are twice as likely to prescribe an antibiotic, even if they think it’s not necessary because it’s a viral infection, they’re twice as likely to, to prescribe the antibiotics if they think that the patient wants

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:51:00):
One. You outline in most of your books, and I do too. What steps can our viewers and listeners do? I mean, are, are there action items that we can do every day?

Dr. Dale Bredesen (00:51:14):
Absolutely. And the most important thing I would say is for people to know where you stand. So now we have new tests, which you don’t, now you don’t have to go and get a, a expensive PET scan. You don’t have to go get a spinal tap. I mean, who wants to go for spinal taps? You know, I don’t want to have a spinal tap, uh, unless I have, uh, encephalitis or something. <laugh> So, um, you can avoid that now. So there are blood tests that you can do. So you want to know your PTAW-217, your GFAP and your NFL, and there’s something called brain scan that will give those to you. And you, I actually had it done at my, at my kitchen table a few weeks ago to check my like, okay, good. If you know your cholesterol, you know, you know, you know your, your blood pressure, um, you should know what your PTAO 217 is.

(00:52:00):
And there’s a new one coming called super PTAL 217 that’s even more sensitive. So this can tell us even before you are symptomatic where your brain stands. Are you on the, are you synaptoblastic you’re making synapses or are you synaptoclastic? One of the surprising things we found is that you literally, just like sleep and wakefulness, your brain has two modes, connection, protection. And so when you’re in connection, the blood flows differently, your trophic support is on, you have oxidative phosphorylation, you’re using oxygen, all this sort of stuff. When you then switch to the protection mode, you’re making amyloid, you’ve got that barrier, you’re changing your metabolism, your cytokines are going, all these sorts of things. So you have a, a literally a switch. So we wanna look at this and as far as what to do on a day-to-day basis, we think of the seven basics and the two specifics.

(00:52:54):
So the seven basics, which you’ve talked about as well, uh, plant-rich mildly ketogenic diet, which has worked very, very well for metabolism. You wanna have, most importantly, metabolic flexibility as you, as you write about, and then exercise. And it looks like HIT is actually probably the most helpful for people in terms of rate reduction. But aerobic exercise and strength training are very much synergistic because they give you by different mechanisms. They improve that. And of course, the strength training improves your insulin sensitivity. So these things are very helpful. And then sleep, you wanna have seven hours, you know, at least an hour and a half of REM. I encourage everyone have a wearable. You can see, make sure your oxygen saturation is at least 94% at night. The claim is 80% of sleep apnea in the United States goes undiagnosed. Hmm. People don’t look for it, and it’s a common contributor.

(00:53:49):
And then stress, of course, is a big one, and then brain training or s- brain stimulation, detox, and some targeted supplements, like Dr. Gundry’s supplements.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:53:59):
Bless

Dr. Dale Bredesen (00:53:59):
You. Well, yeah, that will, that will … You know, no question. These are gonna help you sport. By the way, we had in the trial, one of the patients who, a couple actually of the patients who finished the trial stopped all their supplements. This is from Dr. Kat Toops, who’s done a fabulous job. I really appreciate her fantastic work. She’s an outstanding psychiatrist and has been involved in over a hundred clinical trials. She gets great results, but a couple of people, when they finish the trial, they stopped them and she said they just went right down. So you can see, yes, these things were doing something. Uh, so these things are all, these are the kind of the seven critical pieces that we can all do each day to reverse decline and to prevent decline.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:54:39):
I have the same thing, you know, taking supplements is often pain in the neck. Yeah. And take a lot and you take a lot, but, and my patients sometimes get tired of it and they do a self-experiment- Yes. … in between visits and they’ll go, “Hey, I wanna tell you, you know, I, I stopped my supplements for two months before I did the blood test because I wanna show you that, you know, they’re a waste of time.” And it’s striking. Yeah. Uh, what the changes you actually see. And they go, “Oh my gosh.” You know, let’s say, they don’t make expensive urine like I used to think.

Dr. Dale Bredesen (00:55:13):
Right. And, you know, the having optimal supplements is important. You know, I often hear as a neurologist, “Oh, you know, supplements aren’t a cure for Alzheimer’s.” Of course they’re not. We’re not claiming they are. What we’re saying is that when you have that silver buckshot and when you’re, uh, when you’re optimizing your cognition, they are part of an overall optimal protocol. Yeah. Of course, some people will need certain ones and some others won’t, but you can get an idea, obviously, you know, we have a better than ever ability to look between the advanced imaging, things like arterial spin labeling and the new, there’s new AI around looking at volumetrics in the brain that can predict who is headed for cognitive decline. Dr. Cyrus Raji, a professor at, uh, WashU we work with has done a fabulous job. He’s able to show who’s headed for what.

(00:56:05):
We can get an idea, as I mentioned, from the biomarkers, things like PTAO-217, and then we get an overall idea of all the contributors from homocysteine to HSCRP to your gut. And I think, you know, if you look at the things that are missed the most, it’s gut health, as you talk about, it’s oral microbiome, it’s sleep apnea. These are the things that are being missed repeatedly that are critical for optimal cognition.

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:56:32):
Seven steps to protect your brain. I could listen to Dr. Brennison all day. We’ve thrown a lot at you over these two episodes, but none of it works. If you’re not present for your own life, Dr. Younger is going to close us out with something I think we all need to hear. The guy who kind of changed everything is Alessio Fazano, a pediatric gastroenterologist, funny guy, been on a couple panels with him, he proved that leaky gut happens. You could measure leaky gut. He proved the mechanisms- Yeah,

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:57:08):
Well, the

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:57:08):
Studies- Gastroenterologist.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:57:09):
There’s studies on necrosis of the endothelial, uh, right? And NEC, it’s called the- Yeah. The, the, the- the premature babies have- Because they’re lacking certain bacteria and certain proteins from amniotic fluid- Right. … that make the- Right. … the thing ma- mature, right? I mean, we can go down the, the rabbit hole and it’s fascinating, right? But what I’m bringing into the conversation here is how our state affects that either, uh, also, right?

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:57:41):
All right, let’s give the audience a take-home message. Give us one hint of, okay, how do we change that state in, in our lifetime, I mean, in our lives.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:57:53):
I’ll tell you right now. Okay. Everybody’s talking about meditation, right? And there is scientific proof that meditation is incredible for so many reasons, right?

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:58:02):
True.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:58:03):
But a lot of people find it difficult to do-

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:58:06):
I

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:58:06):
Have a

Dr. Steven Gundry (00:58:06):
Monkey brain, as you can imagine.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (00:58:08):
I do too. <laugh> And, and, and a lot of people, when they do it, they do it, they kind of close the door, they have their meditation room, which sound, sometimes is soundproof, right? Oh, yeah. And it smells good because they have essential oils and they clo- and they see it and they close it, right? They close their eyes and they repeat a mantra, 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.

(00:59:08):
Even looking at me, you can see your, your team, you can see the lights, you can see the microphone, you can see the prop without having to look at it, uh, as we look at each other- True. … you can see, you can see your legs, you can see the walls, you can see everything. So, but the, what you’re used to, you were 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 mean, I was, I was hearing some cars passing by, they’re conditioning. I don’t know if you hear it’s, it’s, it’s permanent there. Yep. So there’s, 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.

(00:59:54):
Let’s say your hands right now, put your, uh, attention on your hands, feel them from inside. If Feel the temperature, the humidity, the position. They’re touching your pants. You can say, 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 now not on 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? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And you know that-

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:00:34):
Yeah.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:00:35):
But that we can do all day. Now what ha- 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 and your sensations are always in the present. When you put your attention there, you’re 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 does, how do you experience attention going to 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.

(01:01:37):
And they’re not voluntary. You don’t decide what thoughts are … You know, at times, yes. Uh, if, if I ask you now, tell me about, you tell me about that and you bring the … But most of the time it’s just happening, right? That’s attention flowing to the 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 breaking nerve, through your hands, the end receptors that tell you temperature, humidity, position, right? And that, and come back-

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:02:12):
Take your

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:02:12):
Back. So there’s electricity running. Electricity, when it runs through a cable, causes heat because of there is resistance, right? That heat is known now to liberate endorphins. I mean, Eckhart toilet talks about this. Yeah. Right? And, 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 to a state that, that does not happen when I send people home in the city with a gut repair program. Which works amazingly, right? Right. I’ve developed a gut repair program. You probably too. Mine is up, has been around since 2011 and it’s been, I’ve been perfecting it.

(01:03:20):
And just like I heard you talk about the super soup of cabbage soup with turmeric and, and garlic and onion, which all help with LPS and intestinal, uh- Alkaline

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:03:34):
Phosphatase. <laugh>

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:03:35):
Alcala and phosphatase, right? So, and that is really, really great. This program that I created is in my book, uh, 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? Yeah. 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? Yeah. So I created that program, I’ve described it in the book. I also created a, a, a company just like you, in which I curate and formulate my own products. It’s cleanprogram.com. Yeah. You can get the kit. It brings everything that you need and, and, and it’s amazing results.

(01:04:37):
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, do you see what I mean?

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:04:58):
Yeah. So, but we don’t have to go live in a hut in the Amazon.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:05:02):
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. You know, the active ingredients is only 10%. In the cosmetics, we apply on our skin, but mostly in the food-like products that we consume as foods. Yeah. In which f- real foods are only an ingredient sometimes. <laugh> Right? Sometimes. Sometimes. All the aisles in the supermarket, which is 90% of the, of the real estate of a supermarket, and to be in an, in an aisle, a product has to have things that kill bacteria and fungi so that they don’t get rotten in a half life, right?

(01:05:49):
A shelf life, the longer the shelf life, the shorter your life, right? We need to change. This … Okay, no, 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, you know, your sheets and you … And the mattress that you use, the, the, you know, the toothpaste-

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:06:13):
Toothbrush.

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:06:14):
Yeah. Toothpaste. Like for example, I don’t use toothpaste anymore. I use ozonated olive oil. Incredible. It just restores the gums. It takes care of everything. So we ha- and, and doesn’t bring in all the, the nasty things, you know? Some, some toothpa- you know, we know why toothpaste makes, uh, um-

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:06:35):
The foam?

Dr. Alejandro Junger (01:06:36):
The foam? It’s because it has foaming, making- Yeah. Emollients. There are, there are toxins and BPAs and … I mean, it’s insane.

Dr. Steven Gundry (01:06:44):
When I look at all the guests we heard from, the thing that strikes me is that they all agree on one point. Your health is not some distant goal. It’s something you build today, right now, with the very next choice you make. Maybe it’s a glucose hack from Jesse. Maybe it’s putting your phone in another room before bed. Maybe it’s holding a door open for someone, or maybe it’s just taking a deep breath through your nose. Doing 400 of anything is not an easy feat, especially a podcast. It’s hours and hours of behind the scenes coordination, from guest bookings to editing. So I wanna take this time to recognize the incredible team that puts this show together each and every week. Thank you to our fantastic producing team of Laney Neal, JC Ray, Nicole Hong, and Zachary Stein, and our very talented crew, far too many to name, but they all know who they are.

(01:07:53):
I’m looking at you guys. Thank you for our editors, and thanks to our friends and the crew at PodcastOne, Kathy Langley, Alistair Walford, and Eli Duvorkin. And last but not least, thank you. The incredibly engaged audience that shows up every single week that challenges me, that asks the most amazing questions. I do this because I love it, and because you deserve to have the latest science-backed research at your fingertips free of charge to help you live the longest, healthiest life possible. For the 400th time and many more to come, I’m Dr. Gundry, and I’m always looking out for you.