Dr. Gundry's private practice: (760) 323-5553

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.

Dr. Gundry (00:13):
Love snacking on popcorn? Me too. But as a corn-based product, boy does it wreak havoc on our gut health? You see, corn is a lectin bomb. Eat enough of it or corn based products like tortilla chips and popcorn and eventually these sticky proteins or lectins found in corn tear tiny holes in your gut lining, which can lead to all sorts of inflammation.

Dr. Gundry (00:36):
But never fear, you can still have your pop snack without the leaky gut side effects. I’m talking about Nate’s Nature Popped Sorghum. Nate pops up sorghum kernels, just like you would corn kernels and they’re delicious. For movie night, Penny and I love Nate’s Nature Popped Sorghum. It’s easy to digest, lectin-free, non-GMO, organic, high in magnesium and tastes great, just like popcorn.

Dr. Gundry (01:03):
They even have a variety of flavors to choose from, including masala, ghee butter, avocado oil and sea salt, rosemary and garlic and my wife’s favorite is the pink Himalayan sea salt. To try the better-than-popcorn popped sorghum for yourself, go to www.naturenatesllc.com and use the promo code, Gundry Podcast, to get 15% off your first order. That’s naturenatesllc.com, N-A-T-U-R-E-N-A-T-E-S-L-L-C.com and use the code Gundry podcast for 15% off your order.

Dr. Gundry (01:50):
Improving yourself starts with shifting your patterns and building healthier habits. That means making time to fit yourself in every day, managing your stress and focusing on your sleep so you feel more energized and refreshed. Fitbit Sense is the advanced health watch that gives you tools to do just that. It’s the world’s first smartwatch with an EDA sensor that can actually indicate your body’s response to stress.

Dr. Gundry (02:16):
Fitbit premium members get a detailed breakdown of their stress management score, which is really cool because it shows how your heart activity and sleep are affected by stress. And whenever you need to take a breather, you can do guided mindfulness sessions to help calm your body and mind.

Dr. Gundry (02:33):
Right now, you get a six month trial at premium when you buy Fitbit Sense. With Father’s Day coming up, this could be a great gift for dad or in the spirit of self care, buy it for yourself. Visit fitbit.com and check it out.

Dr. Gundry (02:50):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. All right, it’s Q&A day where I take your questions from social media and Apple Review comments and answer them. Let me tell you, I just love hearing from you and your questions really inspire me. And some of these even spur me to research and include these topics in my next book. And so keep them coming, folks. I love it.

Dr. Gundry (03:16):
Here we go. From Instagram @timothygeorge asks, “Can you go over the most important, but not so common blood tests that we should be adding to our yearly physicals like the ones you mentioned in The Energy Paradox. Or perhaps are there others as well? Amazing book, by the way, life changing. I’m lucky to have a general doctor who is very open to your teachings and will order labs that you say. Thank you.”

Dr. Gundry (03:47):
Okay. So that’s a great question, Timothy George. I put a whole list out in The Energy Paradox for those of you who have not gotten it yet. So there’s certain tests that you really should get from your doctor or your healthcare provider that are cheap and easy to obtain and then we can go into more esoteric ones.

Dr. Gundry (04:13):
First of all, your doctor is almost certainly going to get a fasting blood sugar, a fasting glucose. Quite frankly, that isn’t half as important as a fasting insulin level. Now, I can tell you, training third year family practice residents like I do in my clinics that most of them haven’t even heard of a fasting insulin level.

Dr. Gundry (04:40):
So if your doctor looks at you funny, just say, “Humor me.” Please order fasting insulin level. It’ll cost you about $8, quite frankly. That’s number one. If that fasting insulin level is above 10, then you’re in trouble and you have insulin resistance. It’s useful to get a hemoglobin A1C.

Dr. Gundry (05:05):
You see, I got my A1C down on half the commercials on TV. Hemoglobin A1C looks at how you’re handling sugars and proteins for the two months prior to the test looking backwards in time. But what’s surprising is a hemoglobin A1C should be 5.6 or less. The closer you get to 5.0 the better, but you wouldn’t believe the number of people I see with a normal hemoglobin A1C who have elevated insulin levels.

Dr. Gundry (05:44):
The other tests that some doctors can order is a HOMA-IR, H-O-M-A I-R. The IR stands for insulin resistance. A HOMA-IR is another really good way to see whether or not you have metabolic flexibility, which of course is one of the major subjects of The Energy Paradox. And about 80% of us in this country have no metabolic flexibility.

Dr. Gundry (06:21):
Our mitochondria don’t have the ability to switch on a dime to burning sugar for fuel, to burning free fatty acids for fuel. And the more longer all of us study the various chronic diseases, including dementia, including diabetes, including heart disease, the more and more we’re realizing that this is a mitochondrial dysfunction problem. So all of these will actually help you point to mitochondria dysfunction.

Dr. Gundry (06:55):
Now, there’s some good general purpose inflammation markers. The easiest one to get is hs-CRP. The HS stands for either highly sensitive or heart specific. Either one is just fine. It’s the same test. It’ll give you a generalized marker of inflammation in your body. Another useful one is fibrinogen. If you’re a woman, ferritin is actually a useful marker for inflammation.

Dr. Gundry (07:31):
Now, most doctors associate ferritin with iron levels, but I can tell you, it correlates very poorly with iron levels. So if you’re a woman and you have an elevated ferritin level, that means we need to look further into inflammation markers. So those are some simple markers to get. We can get more esoteric.

Dr. Gundry (07:54):
One thing that I urge everybody to get is to have their APOE4 genotype. You’ve heard me talk about this, you’ve heard Dr. Dale Bredesen, you’ve heard Dr. Perlmutter talk about this. The APOE4 gene determines whether you’re going to make a lipoprotein that carries fats around your body. The APOE4 genotype, which about 30% of people carry, is sometimes called the Alzheimer’s gene.

Dr. Gundry (08:30):
Now, you really want to know whether you carry that because whether you follow me, whether you follow Dr. Perlmutter or whether you follow Dr. Bredesen, this is not sealing your fate that, “Oh my gosh, I carry the Alzheimer’s gene. I don’t want to know I have that. I’d rather not know.” You can actively do something to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s if you carry this gene and it’s well worth your money to find out about that.

Dr. Gundry (09:01):
The other one I would get in terms of a genetic test is the MTHFR mutation, and if you say that out loud, we would bleep you from network television. We laughingly call it the mother effer gene for obvious reasons. It determines whether or not you carry a mutation that you can’t convert vitamin B12 and folic acid into their active forms, which are methyl B12 and methylfolate.

Dr. Gundry (09:33):
And knowing that actually gives you power to get methyl B12 and methylfolate into you as supplements. So if you have, for instance, anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide tendencies, you may in fact carry one or more of these MTHFR mutations and it’s really a good idea to figure you’re out if you have that.

Dr. Gundry (10:02):
Now, for the real nerds in the audience ask to get an Insulin-Like Growth Factor Level, IGF-1. It’s one of the best ways of looking at how slow or fast you’re aging, and there’s some fun tricks to play with influencing IGF-1.

Dr. Gundry (10:27):
Just a word of warning, if your IGF-1 is high above about 200 to a 250 and you’re over the age of 40 or 50, that increases your risk of developing cancer. On the other hand, if your IGF is very low, it’s very unusual to develop cancer. Insulin-Like Growth Factor is simply that. It is a growth factor that stimulates cancer cells to grow. So that’s a good start and thanks for asking that question.

Dr. Gundry (11:04):
David Favela from Instagram asks, “Do I need amino acids? If I am a vegetarian, where can I get them from? Any specific foods or supplements? Is it true that if I don’t eat meat, I need to supplement because they are only found in meat.” Well, here’s the good news. Gorillas and horses don’t ask about where they can get their amino acids and as far as I can tell, gorillas and horses do very well with muscle mass.

Dr. Gundry (11:37):
So amino acids are present in plants and in animals. They are the building blocks of protein. There are essential amino acids that we do not manufacture ourselves and so we have to obtain them from our diet. Now, so much emphasis in the vegetarian and vegan community is combining foods so that you don’t miss out on certain essential amino acids.

Dr. Gundry (12:11):
And so much, I think, wasted time is devoted to… Okay, grains are devoid of a couple of essential amino acids and beans are devoid of other essential amino acids, but if you combine grains and beans you’ll cover the base for essential amino acids. Believe me, there are plenty of essential amino acids in a vegan or vegetarian Plant Paradox program. You will get it from the leaves that you eat. You will get it from the roots that you eat. You will get it from the nuts that you eat.

Dr. Gundry (12:53):
There are, for instance, several nuts like sacha inchi and baruka nuts, baru nuts that have all the essential amino acids covered and so you don’t have to go looking anywhere else. One thing that is very interesting about vegans is vegans actually have low levels of creatine, which is a protein. And there are interesting studies that vegans are deficient in creatine, and there are some interesting studies that vegans have smaller brains than non vegans because they’re lacking creatine.

Dr. Gundry (13:35):
So if you’re a vegan, I do recommend supplementing with a creatine supplement and they’re not animal derived. You can get vegan creatine and just supplement with creatine as part of your diet. Great question, though from Lucas Waszak on Instagram. What’s the ideal age to begin fasting? Well, fasting covers a lot of territory as I talk about in all my books, particularly The Energy Paradox.

Dr. Gundry (14:07):
So as I’ve talked about before, if you’re a woman of childbearing age and you want to get pregnant or you’re planning to get pregnant, then quite frankly time-restricted eating, water fasting, juice fasting is not for you. I’ve seen so many patients that fasting or intermittent fasting has actually prevented them from getting pregnant and when we had them stop that practice, that started things.

Dr. Gundry (14:42):
Also, if you or a family member have a tendency to focus on controlling your eating habits, then this is not for you. This absolutely is not the direction you want to go in your relationship to food. On the other hand, if you look at hunter-gatherer societies, I got news for you. They’re not waking their kids up at eight o’clock in the morning for a bowl of oatmeal to send them off to hunt berries.

Dr. Gundry (15:18):
The kids don’t eat until the adults eat and many of them do not eat until 10, 11, or 12 noon with their first meal. And in fact, the idea of eating breakfast, as I’ve talked about before, is a modern nuance that was actually fostered in great part by the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes company in 1906, telling you and convincing you with a massive advertising campaign that breakfast is the most important meal, and it simply is not.

Dr. Gundry (15:53):
So if you want to make this a part of normal family activities of skipping breakfast, as an example, or eating an early dinner and not snacking at night, that’s a normal, healthy practice. And the more you introduce your kids to this style of eating early on, you’re going to set them up for a much healthier lifespan to come.

Dr. Gundry (16:23):
[Holly Boyko 00:16:23] from Instagram asks, “What is the best fiber you would suggest to eat weekly daily? Thank you, Holly, from Ohio.” Well, so there’s so many great sources of fiber it’s hard to start. Certainly the fiber in vegetables, in leaves, in radicchio, in Belgian endive, in curly endive…

Dr. Gundry (16:51):
I posted on Instagram recently, a salad that I had from a chef outside of Missoula, Montana for the wellness weekend that was just every last wonderful chicory family of vegetables that was absolutely delicious. And I’ve mentioned before, whenever we’re visiting Southern France and Italy there are chicory vegetables in every salad on every plate with every meal.

Dr. Gundry (17:20):
So we’re beginning to see radicchio, which some people call this Italian red lettuce. It’s this bright red and white firm ball. It’s in many, many, many grocery stores now. Belgium endive is everywhere now. It’s in Trader Joe’s. Grab yourself ahead of those. Pickup some Belgian endives and just mix them in your salads. It’s an easy way.

Dr. Gundry (17:44):
On the other hand, ground flaxseeds is a great source of fiber. It’s a great source of a short-chain Omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid. But if you’re going to buy ground flax seed, the minute you open the package, put it in the refrigerator because it goes rancid. Preferably buy whole flax seeds, grind them in a coffee grinder and then sprinkle them on your salads, put them in your coconut yogurt, put them in your goat or sheep yogurt. Great way to introduce fiber.

Dr. Gundry (18:18):
Psyllium husk. You can get ground psyllium husk anywhere. And don’t forget that resistance starches, for instance, like a purple sweet potato, that you cook then cool and reheat is another great source of fiber. And not to forget jicama. Get yourself some jicama. Many places now have it pre-sliced, use it as a dipping chip for guacamole, and guacamole has a lot of fiber.

Dr. Gundry (18:53):
Avocados are a great source. Plenty of places to get your fiber. And remember, you’re eating the fiber to feed your gut buddies. And the more you feed them, the better your health. All right. From Instagram, @grainfreeforlife asks, “What do you think about Botox?” What do you mean, “What do I think about Botox?” Yeah, if you like to have a frozen forehead that has no expression, please enjoy it all you want.

Dr. Gundry (19:27):
Botox has been shown to be useful for some people for treating migraines. It has been shown to be useful for treating other neurologic conditions. But remember, it’s a slippery slope and there are package warning directions because of the potential and real side effects of using Botox, so buyer beware.

Dr. Gundry (19:58):
Palm Springs, quite frankly, may be one of the Botox capitals of the world, including here in Southern California, and every time my wife, Penny talks about, “Maybe I should get Botox like lots of my friends.” We hop in the car and we had to Santa Barbara, which may be the anti-Botox capital of the world and I show her what normal people look like and that holds her back for a while. So if you want it just be careful, okay?

Dr. Gundry (20:37):
Have you ever tried meditation and felt like it just wasn’t working or maybe you felt like you just weren’t doing it right or didn’t know where to begin? I felt exactly the same. That is before I tried the mindfulness app, Headspace. In just minutes a day, this easy to use app can help you get your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations.

Dr. Gundry (20:58):
And you know me, I only share health tips backed by extensive research, which is why I love that Headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research. In fact, Headspace is backed by 25 published studies detailing its benefits. For example, just 30 days of Headspace lowers stress by 32% and just four sessions can reduce burnout by 14%.

Dr. Gundry (21:27):
So if you’re looking to boost your mood to help you handle daily stresses better, improve sleep, and sharpen your focus, check out Headspace: Meditation Made Simple Today. Here’s the best part, you can try it for free. Go to headspace.com/gundry. That’s headspace.com/gundry for a free one month trial, with access to Headspace’s full library of meditations for every situation. For the best deal out there, go to headspace.com/gundry today.

Dr. Gundry (22:02):
What if there was a way to enjoy foods like bread and crackers without wrecking your health, feeling the food guilt or experiencing that dreaded carb crash? Well, I’ve got news, with Uprising Foods you can. Made from 100% yes foods like flax seeds, apple cider vinegar, blanched almond flour, psyllium husk, and MCT oil, snacks by Uprising Foods let you rest easy.

Dr. Gundry (22:28):
Plus they crunch, they toast and they taste like the classics. And best of all, they’re full of fiber, which your gut buddies love. My wife, Penny, and I like to slice the Keto Cube bread very thin, toss it in the toaster and then slather them with my polyphenol olive oil and Uprising crackers are wonderful to serve with my lectin-free hummus recipe.

Dr. Gundry (22:50):
Now, I recommend trying their sampler bundle, which includes two boxes of rye crackers, two boxes of sea salt crackers, and two cubes of sourdough bread. To try them out for yourself, go to uprisingfood.com/gundry and try the sampler bundle. It’s only 48 bucks and you get six products to try. That’s uprisingfood.com/gundry. And the first 1,000 people to use my code, Gundry, at purchase will get free standard shipping. Hurry while supplies last.

Dr. Gundry (23:24):
Dressing well is very important to me, both at work and working out. Makes me feel better and even adds a pep in my step when I’m looking sharp. That’s why I’m happy to tell you about Ten Thousand, a men’s fitness line I recently discovered. I like their shorts, especially. They’re super comfortable, extremely stylish, and best of all, they’re breathable and lightweight. Perfect for warmer weather.

Dr. Gundry (23:45):
And Ten Thousand even uses high quality silver ion for natural odor protection. Simply put, these are the highest quality best fitting and most comfortable training shorts I have ever worn. They’ve got a whole line of clothes to choose from plus 10,000 offers free shipping and returns and a lifetime guarantee. And right now, Ten Thousand is offering 15% off your purchase. Just go to tenthousand.cc and enter code Gundry to receive 15% off your purchase. That’s tenthousand.cc and enter offer code Gundry.

Dr. Gundry (24:26):
From Instagram [@albinjosejay 00:24:33], “How do you rid yourself of insomnia?” Well, insomnia has many, many, many contributions. We know that an abnormal gut microbiome is a big source of insomnia. We know that viewing blue light late into the evening, watching TV screens, watching your phone, watching, reading on a computer are really great ways to keep you awake.

Dr. Gundry (25:07):
Eating close to bedtime is a great way to keep you awake. Recently in The Energy Paradox I wrote about this trick, which is kind of fun to try. Get yourself some glycine capsules. Glycine is an amino acid. Take about three grams of glycine right before you go to bed. Glycine interestingly drops your body temperature and strange but true, you have to have a drop in body temperature to induce sleep. That’s another thing. Get yourself one of these new cooling mattresses. It really works.

Dr. Gundry (25:49):
The other thing for some people is get yourself one of the heavy blankets and wrap yourself like a toddler in it. Another trick. In other words, eliminate the causes that are keeping you from falling asleep. And in my books, I’ve got lots of tricks with other supplements for helping you initiate sleep.

Dr. Gundry (26:13):
From Instagram, [Jeffin 00:26:15] asks, “What should we do to restore our microbiome post-COVID vaccine? I use your Power Blues, Vital Reds, polyphenol olive oil, MitoX, Total Restore vitamin D and vitamin C, is this sufficient?” Well, first of all, there’s no evidence that I can find, that I’ve ever heard about that the COVID vaccines, any of the three that are commercially available, change your microbiome or destroy your microbiome.

Dr. Gundry (26:47):
Now, catching COVID changes gut permeability. That much has been well shown, but these vaccines are not going to change your microbiome. Having said that, as I’ve said over and over and over again, a diverse healthy microbiome and a intact gut wall is one of your best protections that you have available from preventing viral illnesses, including COVID-19. But you don’t have to worry about, if you’ve gotten the vaccine, getting your microbiome back in order, but a great question.

Dr. Gundry (27:37):
[Erin O’Kelso 00:27:37] on Instagram asks, “In relation to Aleve ibuprofen being the equivalent of swallowing a hand grenade, for your microbiome how does prescribed Adderall or Vyvanse sit?” Well, first of all, these compounds like Aleve or ibuprofen don’t destroy your microbiome. They actually destroy the wall of your gut, and in my upcoming book, you’ll actually find out why that happens and it’s a real eye-opener.

Dr. Gundry (28:09):
This is not conjecture. We know why these actually poke large holes in the wall of your gut. So they don’t bother your microbiome, but once you got a leaky gut, once you have a hole in your gut, then even friendly bacteria can become enemies. They can become frenemies and that’s what we want to prevent.

Dr. Gundry (28:35):
I looked briefly, there does not seem to be an effect of out Adderall and Vyvanse on the gut microbiome, but I’ll go back to, again, saying that there is more and more and more and more evidence that anxiety, depression, ADHD, the microbiome gut-brain connection Is driving a lot of this.

Dr. Gundry (29:09):
And the exciting news is changing your microbiome, giving your microbiome prebiotics that we just talked about a few minutes ago may be paramount to getting these things under control naturally. And Furuto on Instagram asks, “What is the best way to lower triglycerides, especially if it’s part of your genetic makeup? Both my husband and I are on The Plant Paradox.”

Dr. Gundry (29:40):
Well, Anne, thank you very much for being on the program. Yes, there is a genetic component of familiar hypertriglyceridemia, but it’s incredibly rare and I have a number of patients who have been told they have that and run triglycerides of 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 and all of them have come down dramatically by following The Plant Paradox program.

Dr. Gundry (30:11):
Now, I have had the pleasure of having Jim Hector on my program, The Diet Myth from England and he and I agree that there are some people who are super sensitive to carbohydrates, particularly fructose, fruit sugar in producing triglycerides. And I’ve written about this extensively in The Energy Paradox. And people who are super sensitive to sugar and starches, if you want to keep your triglycerides down, you really can’t eat very many sugars and starches. I happen to be one of those people.

Dr. Gundry (30:56):
On the other hand, if you’re not super sensitive to it and you can challenge yourself, I’ve done this before my blood tests, then they are not going to be your major problem. But as a starting point, fructose is instantaneously changed into triglycerides in your liver. So a great place to start is really either eliminating fructose from your diet and remember, simple table sugar is half fructose, so getting sugar down lowers triglycerides.

Dr. Gundry (31:31):
[Yuday 00:31:31] from Instagram asks, “What’s your morning routine look like?” My morning routine is one of three of my dogs jumping on my head, usually at about 5:30 in the morning and saying, “Okay, quit ignoring me. Let’s go.” And that involves having some espresso. I have a couple of cups of espresso, black, or I put MCT powder in it, and we’ll go into that. We’ve written about that in all the books.

Dr. Gundry (32:14):
I don’t eat breakfast as you know, and then I take my three dogs for a hike, we have about two miles through our neighborhoods and then I come back and head to work. And as you know, I see patients six days a week, including on the weekends and I’m here at Gundry MD on Friday. That’s what my morning routine looks like.

Dr. Gundry (32:42):
Oh, and I take a bunch of supplements in the morning and I take a bunch of supplements at night. And as you know, I’ve listed all the supplements I currently take in The Longevity Paradox for those of you who are interested.

Dr. Gundry (32:58):
From Apple Reviews [@idolisa 00:33:00], “Love, love, love the podcast.” Thank you, Ido Lisa. “My question is in my early 20s, I had severe ulcerative colitis. Subsequently, I had to have the large intestine removed completely and they reconstructed my small intestines so that I don’t have to have an ostomy bag.” Aha, you had a pouch. “Can I get three most important tips on energy and eating in my situation?”

Dr. Gundry (33:27):
Well, first of all, I want to make sure that you’re taking a methyl B12 and putting it under your tongue every morning. About 1,000 micrograms will do it. If you want to be safe and take 5,000 micrograms, so be it. You most likely don’t have a lot of your, what’s called terminal ileum left, or it’s been used to make your pouch and so you won’t absorb B12 very well.

Dr. Gundry (33:56):
You lack intrinsic factor or the absorption of B12 sites, and that’s a really easy trick. The good news is as you know, I take care of a large number of people who had ulcerative colitis, who don’t have it anymore, thanks to the program. You really don’t have to. If you’re following The Plant Paradox program, you’re on the right track.

Dr. Gundry (34:20):
As you know, we know that some people can get ileitis from these same culprits, so the more you can do to protect your remaining gut, the better. So feed your gut buddies, they’re still critically important to you and keep up the good work. I’m glad you follow the program.

Dr. Gundry (34:42):
@thehealthyschoolbus on Instagram, “Can we use Acacia powder as a prebiotic?” Absolutely. That’s another really great prebiotic. The other thing, I think, we need to understand that a lot of these gums like guar gum, like gum arabic, like Acacia, which have been villainized in the past as really, really bad for you. The tide is turning. These are phenomenal sources of prebiotics and the more prebiotic fiber I get into you, the happy your gut buddies are and the more they will make post-biotics, which will make you happier.

Dr. Gundry (35:31):
Anonymous Road, “You say, ‘no wheat grass,’ but then recommend eating grass-fed meat. What gives?” All right. You and I are not cows. We do not have three stomachs that allow for fermentation of lectins. You and I have not been eating grass ever in our lives. We were not designed to eat grass. There’s no evidence of any primate eating grass and so you were not designed to handle the lectins in grass.

Dr. Gundry (36:08):
On the other hand, a cow or grazing animals have been eating grass for millions and millions and millions and millions of years. They’ve been designed to detoxify lectins in their three stomachs by fermentation. So if you had a stomach that fermented grasses, you could probably get away with grasses. The problem is cows were never designed to be fed corn and soybeans, which have a totally different set of lectins.

Dr. Gundry (36:48):
And sadly, we know that cows do not react well to the lectins in corn and soybeans because they get horrible heartburn. And half the world’s supply of Tums is actually mixed into cattle feed so that they don’t get heartburn and they keep eating. So calcium carbonate is in cattle food, so they don’t react to those lectins. So the reason you want grass-fed and grass finished beef is they’ve got the system to handle those lectins. They’ve evolved to handle them and you haven’t, sadly. Good question.

Dr. Gundry (37:30):
Kim FS on apple gives the podcast five stars and says, “Dr. Gundry, you’re the best. I appreciate the way you choose special guests for your show. It’s really important to have updated information coming in consistently. The health world seems constantly changing, especially lately and your quality podcasts help keep me motivated to stay lectin-Free. Speaking of which, is there any way we can prepare and consume ancient Himalayan buckwheat so it can be on The Plant Paradox.” Yes, Liz.

Dr. Gundry (38:03):
“My second question is, do you venture to share your opinion on the safety or potential benefits of ozone therapy? Would love to hear from you on that topic?” Well, way back when I was first investigating lectins and whether certain foods had lectins, I was really, really hopeful that buckwheat was going to be lectin-free.

Dr. Gundry (38:28):
And I was really disappointed to unfortunately find multiple papers showing that buckwheat has lectins. Having said that, you can use a pressure cooker to destroy the lectins in buckwheat. So get your ancient Himalayan buckwheat and cook it in a pressure cooker and you should be perfectly safe.

Dr. Gundry (38:50):
Ozone therapy. That would be, quite honestly, a major topic and because ozone therapy has such a slippery slope in terms of its harm, that… Quite frankly I have never had to use or recommend ozone therapy for any of my patients as part of their therapy. So all I can say is there’s a lot safer ways to fix what ails you than ozone therapy. We’ll leave it at that.

Dr. Gundry (39:31):
All right. @brianjayroth on Instagram, “We fed your daughter your yes foods since she was eating solid. She’s now almost three. However, we see that she doesn’t digest cooked sorghum. It comes out in her poop the same way it looks on the plate. We cook it really well in a pressure cooker. Why is this happening and should we just avoid feeding her this for now?”

Dr. Gundry (39:53):
So we see this happen sometimes with corn with other people, that the corn is completely undigested as it poops out. This may be actually some digestive enzyme insufficiency. And even if she’s three, I’d suggest taking some digestive enzyme capsules and mixing it in her food. There are multiple digestive enzymes that are very cheap and just see, first of all, if that makes a difference. If that doesn’t make a difference, there’s no human need for sorghum so just take it out of her diet.

Dr. Gundry (40:30):
@iamdavidfavela on Instagram, “When is the best time to eat pistachios? Four hours before bed or 10:30 AM? And if it’s in the morning, will they make me feel sleepy?” All right, here is a myth that we’re going to destroy right now about melatonin and I talk a lot about melatonin in my upcoming book. Melatonin has been associated with sleep for as long as anybody cares to think about but, spoiler alert, melatonin does not make you sleepy.

Dr. Gundry (41:08):
I know, I know that’s what you’ve been told. Melatonin is produced by your brain for a completely different purpose and that’s to rejuvenate and repair your mitochondria and that’s why if you’re going to eat a nut, pistachios have the highest source of melatonin of any food, in fact, quantum levels higher than any other food and they won’t make you go to sleep. So eat your pistachios, eat your other melatonin foods for the benefit for repairing your mitochondria. But great question. Okay.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
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Dr. Gundry (42:15):
That’s all the time we have for today. Those are great questions. Keep them coming in. We will do another Q&A very soon I promise you because you keep sending it in, I’ll keep answering them, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you and your questions. See you next week.

Dr. Gundry (42:39):
Thanks for joining me on this episode of The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of The Dr Gundry Podcast, you can always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/drgundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.