The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #297 - Steven R. Gundry, MD

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Steven R. Gundry, MD

I got into, I guess, a lot of controversy when I suggested in Gut Check that one of the reasons that four out of the five blue zones were at incredible longevity was the fact that they were all heavy smokers.  The fact that a single cell organism can direct the behavior of a complex organism like a rat, like a monkey, like a human, like a wolf in Yellowstone Park, ought to give us pause that there really is something there to pay attention.

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics blind hearing.  Are you ready? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Oh my goodness, friends, today's episode is with a legend. It is such an honor to have Dr. Steven Gundry back on the show. I've had him on the show a few times before. And in today's episode, we dive into his newest book, The Gut Brain Paradox. We talk about so many fascinating, mind blowing things, such as how your microbiome can actually affect your personality, how intuitive eating may actually cause you to eat the wrong things, the benefits of nicotine, problems with red meat, and so much more. These show notes for today's episode will be at Melanie Avalon.com slash gut brain. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. There will be two episode giveaways for this episode. One will be in my Facebook group. I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with Dr. Steven Gundry. Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited about the conversation I'm about to have and so honored. And here is the backstory on today's conversation. So today's guest is truly a legend. Everybody loves and knows Dr. Gundry. He has so many New York times, best sellers. He created a whirlwind of a movement with his whole plant paradox world. And I've had him on the show before for two of his prior books, which were the energy paradox and unlocking the keto code. So I'll put links to those interviews as well. But today's episode, so the backstory is we were supposed to record this, I think two or three weeks ago, I had read your book gut check, which came out, I think in 2024, like sort of recently.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Yeah, January of 2024.

Melanie Avalon

When I was prepping for this show, I knew your new book had the word gut in it. And so I just quickly looked one night, probably had a little bit too much wine in me and was like, Oh yeah, gut check. This is it. I'm going to read this 2024. So I read the whole book, which was fabulous. And then I was talking about it on the intermittent fasting podcast a few weeks ago and realized that that was not your newest book.  And I had a little panic moment because I think I was supposed to interview you like in two days. So I scrambled and requested to reschedule, which you were so, so kind to do. So thank you so much. So we are here today with your actually newest book, which is The Gut Brain Paradox, Improve Your Mood, Clear Brain Fog, and Reverse Disease by Healing Your Microbiome. And friends, this book is a whirlwind of fascinating insight, including quite a few things I had never even heard about, but at least not in the context of the way you talk about them. And I'm sure we can talk about that in today's episode, but the book dives deep into the latest research on how our gut microbiome actually affects our brain, our neurotransmitters, the signaling it does, how it affects our cravings, our personality, its effects on things like cognitive decline and dementia, and then of course how things like ketones affect the brain. There is just so much in here. I have so many questions. So Dr. Gundry, thank you so much for rescheduling, and thank you so much for being here.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Well Melanie, thank you so much for reading two of my books. I appreciate it.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, of course. It was like all of your stuff was just a month straight because I was working on all because I read the Wrong book you poor thing. No, no, no, it was it was wonderful.  I think I'm looking at your list I think I've actually read all of your books except for the cookbooks, which don't really I mean they count But they're not like a not like a book book Here's a big question I have for you in this book You decided to specifically tackle the role of the gut microbiome and how it affects the brain Which you do touch on in your other books, but this is like a deep deep dive into it Here's a very specific question. I would like to start off with because it's something I've wondered for a long time Which is the thing we often hear is we'll vaguely hear how the microbiome Creates, you know x percent of neurotransmitters like 80% of our serotonin or you know x percent of this thing But I've also heard that because of the blood-brain barrier that neurotransmitters created in the gut aren't intended to actually cross into the brain so What is the correlation here when it comes to the microbiome making neurotransmitters and how those actually? Should affect our brain or not?

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Interestingly enough, it really wasn't until the Human Microbiome Project was completed in 2017 that we really began a deep dive into these organisms that we really didn't know much about until then. It's almost like, if you think about a deep dive submersible going, you know, five miles underwater and into places where you would not think anything could survive because the pressure is too great, there's no oxygen, there's no sunlight, there's no nothing. And imagine everyone's shock that you get down there and there's this whole, you know, community of fish and mollusks and organisms and like, what the heck? You know, these guys shouldn't be able to survive down there and yet here they are, they're thriving. And it's like, we had no idea that they were there.  Well, it's the same way with like, for instance, neurotransmitters. For years, for instance, we thought the vagus nerve was basically designed for the brain to tell the organs basically what the brain wanted the organs to do, like the heart, the lungs, the gut, and that it was a telephone cable that set down instruction. Lo and behold, when somebody bothered to look at the nerve fibers in the vagus nerve, for every one nerve fiber going from the brain to the gut, there were actually nine nerve fibers going from the gut to the brain. And you go, well, that is weird. So then everybody said, well, then it must be that the vagus nerve exists because there are a bunch of neurons in the gut. In fact, there's more neurons in the gut than there are in the spinal cord. So maybe the neurons in the gut are calling the shots for the brain and they're transmitting up the vagus nerve, things that they want the brain to know about what's going on in the gut.  And that sounded good. And so for a number of years, we talked about the second brain that lived down in the gut. And then when the human microbiome project was completed, we realized that, oops, the neurons in the gut are actually getting information from the gut microbiome. And that the gut microbiome can use telephone cables of the vagus nerve to send information like neurotransmitters to the brain and also use the bloodstream to send neurotransmitters to the brain. And lo and behold, with each passing year, we've learned the complexity of the communication system between the gut microbiome and the brain is so much more complex than we could have ever possibly imagined on so many levels.  And as I talk about in the book, we now know that the gut microbiome, among other things, can produce little packets of information, and I like to call them text messages, called exosomes or extracellular vesicles that contain micro RNA, contain mitochondria, contain DNA that can pass through the blood brain barrier and can merge with neurons, among other things, can merge, can deliver mitochondria,

Steven R. Gundry, MD

whole mitochondria. And it's like, holy cow, this is much deeper than any of us could possibly fathom, just like what are all those creatures doing down there, you know, six miles underwater.  And the exciting thing is, as we begin to realize how complex this system really is, the more a lot of us are beginning to appreciate, not only that we are a symbiotic organism, but that perhaps, because of the wealth of information and computing power that the microbiome has, that perhaps we've underestimated just how much control the microbiome literally exerts on everything that happens to us, including our behavior. In fact, it certainly appears to me and others now that the passengers on the bus are actually driving the bus. Once we accept that, then opportunities exist to maybe influence who's living down there and take advantage of the knowledge of what they can do for us. And that's the point of the gut-brain paradox.

Melanie Avalon

It's so incredibly fascinating. Literally after reading the book, it makes you wonder just how much of everything that you're experiencing, at least in your brain, your emotions, your goals, how much of it is being controlled by your microbiome. It's really crazy.  Okay, so there's a lot of studies on germ-free mice. You reference a lot of them in the book, and sometimes it'll be a negative effect for the mice. Sometimes it'll be a positive effect, like it'll get rid of their anxiety or something like that. If we were a clean slate and didn't have a microbiome, do you think there would be actually beneficial effects from that or negative effects? I get very confused by all the germ-free studies, like I said, because sometimes they seem to be positive and sometimes they seem to be negative.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

You know, the germ-free mice have been very useful. In fact, my fourth grade science project in elementary school, I kid you not, was to build a germ-free mouse lab.

Melanie Avalon

Really? In fourth grade?

Steven R. Gundry, MD

in fourth grade. So I've been interested in this for a very long time.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, you cannot do that now. I don't think it's a fourth grader. They'd be like nope animal rights activists

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Exactly. So the germ-free mice, number one, they don't live as long as mice with a microbiome. And I think that's one of the things we've learned about perhaps how important the microbiome is. But one of the fascinating things about germ-free mice is because they don't have a microbiome, you can then study the effects of introducing a particular set of microbiome into a germ-free mice and kind of see what happens.  One of the interesting thing about rodents is that rodents really love to eat feces. And they will gobble up all of their littermates' feces and eat them and you can actually do these experiments by just introducing rodent droppings or human feces into germ-free mice cages coming from whoever's microbiome you want to study and look at the effects. And it was actually the first inkling about the power of the microbiome influencing behavior was giving germ-free mice feces from obese mice. And lo and behold, once you introduce these feces from obese mice, the germ-free mice would become obese. And you could take germ-free mice or you could kill off their microbiome with antibiotics and then these fat mice and then introduce skinny mice microbiome. And lo and behold, they'd lose all their weight and become skinny. And it's like, what the heck? You know, how is this behavior happening? And you could actually watch how these mice would eat or not eat or how they would actually convert more of the food they ate into absorbable compounds if they had obesogenic bacteria or how they would waste calories if they had lean bacteria. So that was actually how it all started. Then you can actually use rodent models of depression and anxiety. And sure enough, you can take depressed mice feces and give them to germ-free mice and they'll get depressed, and so on. And so that's how germ-free mice actually got a name for themselves. So it's a very good model for actually kind of honing down on how the microbiome influences behavior.  Yeah, it's the slight son of a gun. I like to use the example, and if we were on video, I would hold up my cell phone and put it up near my brain. The human genome is actually rather small. Sand fleas have more genes than we do. Corn has more genes than we do. And so the gene theory of behavior, while it's cute, doesn't really cut mustard. On the other hand, bacteria have fewer genes than us, but because of the huge population of bacteria, we have probably about 100 trillion bacteria in our gut alone. And the fact that bacteria divide and reproduce nearly constantly, and that bacteria share genetic information between each other, they transfer genes to each other all the time, and bacteria are constantly being infected by viruses, also transferring genetic information to bacteria, that some of us believe that just like I'm on a computer right now and so are you, but our computers don't really have a lot of computing power. We have transferred most of the computing power up into the cloud where all the hard work is done. And I and others now think that we have transferred much of our computing power to our microbiome because they have, if you will, a faster processor.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

And that our brain just happens to be like a cell phone, a pretty good receiver for the information that's being performed in the cloud. And the more you embrace that, the easier it is at least to live with yourself.  And one of the purposes of the book is, believe it or not, much of the things we do are not our fault. And when you get into an argument with your husband or significant other, you can say, it's not me, honey, it's my microbiome. Again, bacteria have been around for 3 billion years and they are the ultimate survivors. And the idea that, and we've been around in current form for 100,000 years. So they might have had some useful information to direct our behavior because we after all are their home. And getting this creature, mobile creature to do the things that they want might after 3 billion years have worked out. And since you read Gut Check, you'll know that I started Gut Check my previous book with the story of toxoplasmosis, a single cell organism that almost all women know about. And toxoplasmosis, just briefly, can absolutely positively as a single cell organism direct human behavior for its purposes. And we can leave it at that or we can tell the whole story. But the fact that a single cell organism can direct the behavior of a complex organism like a rat, like a monkey, like a human, like a wolf in Yellowstone Park, ought to give us pause that there really is something there to pay attention to.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, so actually to that point, and maybe this is a little bit of an esoteric question, but I'm trying to get a grasp on, let's say the bacteria have intentions of directing our behavior, would mental health conditions like depression or anxiety or something like that be the actual intended mental state of the human by the microbiome, or is it just that the microbiome is creating certain neurotransmitters that lead to that?

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Great question. So I talk a lot about it in the first part of the book about the battle between two competing chemists in France in the 1800s, Louis Pasteur and his arch rival Antoine Boucham. And Pasteur believed that germs, bacteria, were bad. And Boucham said, no, no, no. Bacteria are neither bad nor good. There are bad ones and there are good ones. And if everything is in balance between, let's just call them bad guys and good guys, then everything reaches a state of homeostasis where everything functions just fine.  It's like a tropical rainforest. There are upper level predators. There's lower level predators. Certain things need something else to eat. Certain things need something else to grow. And if that balance is stable, the ecosystem thrives. Boucham said if that, and he called it terrain, if that terrain becomes unbalanced, if one or more species gains the upper hand, then that's when we start seeing a disease process. Pasteur was a much, apparently, a much better public speaker. And I've read every book written about the two of them. Pasteur won the undying gratefulness of the King of France when he discovered that bacteria contamination of the yeast fermentation process of wine was the cause of wine going bad. And one would think that the King of France would find that very useful information. So Pasteur won, and his germ theory, of course, became the standard of modern medicine, became the standard of pasteurization. And Boucham actually kind of was relegated to obscurity, although there's several accounts and several books that on Pasteur's deathbed, he called Boucham and his colleague Bernard to his deathbed and said, you are right, it is the terrain. So maybe he had the word. But the more now, because of the human microbiome project, the more we realize that our gut is this incredibly balanced terrain. And if certain bacteria get the upper hand, that that's when you see the results of these bacteria getting the upper hand, like depression, like anxiety, like food cravings, like addictions.

Melanie Avalon

could you take it, I don't know if it's too controversial, but it's like if a person was suicidal, could that even be from the microbiome? Because that seems like that would be not in the interest of the microbiome.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Well again, it's the bad guys that, for instance, you know, I spend a whole chapter looking at addictive behavior. And what's fascinating, and again, a lot of this was originally done in rodent studies, you can get a mouse addicted to cocaine or morphine or fentanyl or alcohol. You actually see a distinct microbiome. Now, this has been done in humans as well, as I write about in the book. And people who enter, we'll use alcohol as an example, who enter rehab programs for alcoholism, the more of these addictive microbes for alcohol that a person has, the less likely they are to successfully beat their alcohol addiction, and the more likely they are to relapse, the less of this abnormal group of microbes, the more effective rehab is, and the less likely they are to go back and rehab.  What's really interesting is the the recidivism rate for rehab programs is about 90 percent, about 90 percent fail, 10 percent go on. And you choose the addiction, it's about 90 percent. So if you then start looking at, well, how do these bad guys get what they want? It is usually from pain. Certainly in the opioid addiction realm, we can track it by pain. And so they create pain by producing leaky gut, which causes inflammation, which creates pain, which drives you to seek more pain relievers. And interestingly enough, the more you seek these pain relievers, the more these bacteria grow, and they take more of these compounds for themselves, requiring more pain reliever for you to ingest. And that's how the cycle keeps going. Now, did they want you to kill yourself with the morphine? No, that wasn't their intention. They just wanted you to get more of this stuff. But, you know, I talk about a young lady who had anorexia nervosa and bulimia, and we know now that there is a dysbiotic set of bacteria that drive this behavior. And in this one young lady's example, she was hospitalized on a feeding tube because she refused to eat, and her parents approached me and asked to see if we could try manipulating the gut microbiome in her leaky gut. And she had very leaky gut, and she had a very dysbiotic gut microbiome. So we started repairing her leaky gut using her feeding tube and introducing probiotics and prebiotics. And within three weeks, she was off of her feeding tube. She's home now. She has not relapsed.  It's been about a year. And she no longer is averse to certain foods. And I think, and again, I just use one example in the book, but I've been continually impressed that we probably, if we directed our rehab programs towards rehabbing the gut, as well as the mental processes that have contributed to so many addictive behaviors, that we probably have a much better success rate.  In fact, this morning, I was just text by a psychiatrist who runs a rehab center in Beverly Hills trying to get me to associate with his clinic because at least this one individual thinks I'm on the right track. So just this morning.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, wow. I love the potential there really makes you rethink and you mentioned this in the book, but makes you an rethink the whole intuitive eating movement because how can you eat intuitively if I mean, you could be eating intuitively based on what your the bad microbes are telling you to eat.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Exactly right. For instance, the bad guys, just as a general rule, can thrive on simple sugars and saturated fats. They love this stuff.  They can use this stuff. On the other hand, the gut buddies, as I call them, can't utilize those. They can't ferment them. They require long chain carbohydrates, complex starches, polysaccharides to eat, to ferment. One of the things that I point out in the book and others have pointed out is that our processed foods and ultra processed foods have been devoid of these fermentable fibers. The other thing that's interesting, SIBO is a hot topic, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. These guys that head up into the small bowel are actually the type of bacteria that can take advantage of these simple carbohydrates and fats.  They head up and take over this area of the bowel where they're not supposed to be there. I'll give you an example. One of my clinics is in Santa Barbara. 20 years ago in Santa Barbara, there's whale watching in Santa Barbara. The only whales you ever saw in Santa Barbara was the California gray whale. That's all fine and good. They're not very cute and they're kind of boring, but they're there. Now, over the past 20 years because of climate change, in the Straits of Santa Barbara, we not only have a huge population of blue whales and we have humpback whales and we now have killer whale pods. It's like, what the heck are those guys doing here? Well, they're following food supply that didn't exist 20 years ago because of climate change.  To me, if a large animal like a whale will follow food supply to places where it's changed, it makes intuitive sense to me that bacteria who have been around for 3 billion years will follow food supply. They'll take advantage and they'll direct your behavior to get more of the food they want and your poor gut buddies are starved to death and you lose those guys directing your behavior.

Melanie Avalon

That's crazy about the whales. I'm getting all the flashbacks to Free Willy. I'm just like one of my favorite movies.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Yeah, actually, I know the woman who runs the whale watching service in Santa Barbara, and she's a fan. She said, you got to come out of the boat.  We got killer whales. I said, what? No, there's no killer. She said, I'm telling you, we got killer whales and humpback whales. I said, I don't have to fly to Hawaii to see humpback whales. No, they're right here.

Melanie Avalon

Wow it's amazing we're talking earlier about different substances like alcohol and opioids and such i was wondering if you're going to touch on this topic in the book and you did. I am dying to hear your thoughts on nicotine and the brain i personally actually use nicotine patches for the cognitive benefits i've never smoked or anything like that yeah what is the nicotine and does it relate to the microbiome.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

I got into, I guess, a lot of controversy when I suggested in Gut Check that one of the reasons that four out of the five blue zones were at incredible longevity was the fact that they were all heavy smokers. I'm a heart surgeon and I've never had a cigarette in my life. I think I've tried two cigars and didn't like it. I would never, ever suggest to anyone that they smoke.  On the other hand, I make the case based on evidence that nicotine has incredible ability to produce mitochondrial and coupling, which I happen to think is one of the key factors in longevity and mitochondrial health. And isn't it odd that four of the five blue zones are heavy smokers? In fact, like Sardinia's is a wonderful example. The only part of Sardinia that has exceptional longevity are the people who live in the mountains. The folks who live down by the water don't have exceptional longevity. And the reason they have exceptional longevity is that the men, 95% of the men smoke and only about 25% of the women smoke.  And it's the men who, men in general, live about seven years shorter lives than women. You guys are the greater sex. But there, the men actually live longer than the women. I was first turned onto this years ago with the study of the Catavans, which are an island race in Pepe, New Guinea. And the Catavans have exceptional longevity, but they are heavy smokers. They smoke like fiends. And what was interesting about them that caught researchers' eyes was that there was never been a case in Catava of heart disease, stroke, or cancer, despite the fact that these guys were heavy smokers.  And so you go, well, it must be, you know, they eat all these antioxidant-rich foods. And smoking really causes oxidative stress, and that's why I'm really, really against smoking. But one of the interesting things about these people who are heavy smokers and have longevity is they eat incredibly rich antioxidant diet. And I propose to people that these people have mitigated, to a large degree, the negative effects of tobacco smoking because of their antioxidant-rich diets.  Now, so nicotine is a really unique mitochondrial and coupler. You're right. Nicotine patches may very well have a place, and certainly a number of biohackers, Dave Asprey comes to mind, are big proponents of the use of nicotine. Dave likes to joke, not really, that almost all of the great contributions to literature, science, whatever, was because of three drugs, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine. So anyhow, so no, please don't smoke, but nicotine needs our interest.  Now, the question is, there is a nicotine-seeking microbiome. Now, the question is, I am not convinced that nicotine per se is addictive, but it may be that nicotine does have an effect on the microbiome in a way that will make you go seek out more nicotine. I think it's too early to tell. I think those experiments need to be done by people. But let's not throw nicotine under the bus. Let's throw tobacco smoking and vaping under the bus.  Nicotine is very interesting.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, I'm fascinated by it. I actually, I was recording with Dave in his studio and we had a little debate about nicotine versus alcohol because I love my nicotine.  I also love my dry firm wines. He's not a huge alcohol fan, so.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Well, you know, there's a very interesting paper, since alcohol has become up as the evil of all evils. There's a very interesting paper that's been done in humans where they gave humans red wine, grape juice, or gin in equivalent calorie amounts. And looking specifically at the red wine had a much more diverse microbiome and less inflammation. Grape juice really had no effect and gin actually hurt the microbiome and produced more inflammation.  So I think we have to take this in context. Four out of five blue zones use alcohol as a part of their diet. But it's fermented alcohol. It's sake in the case of Okinawa, but it's red wine and all of the other blue zones. And Loma Linda is the exception. But having been a professor at Loma Linda for much of my career, I can assure you that a great number of the Adventists in the privacy of their own home consume wine.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's funny. It's kind of like I just learned in Prohibition 1920s, they actually didn't ban consumption of alcohol, just selling of it.  So maybe there's some loopholes there in Loma Linda. Oh my goodness. It makes sense if you think about it with that study, and not that I know all the nuances of what's happening, but if you just think about it, it seems like pure distilled alcohol might more likely have a sterilizing effect versus fermented wine where it's got all of these polyphenols, which you talk about all the time.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

and all these postbiotics from fermentation. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. Oh, which speaking of, okay, so speaking of fermentation, I was really excited to read your section in this book on fermented meat.  The thing I was talking about on the intermittent fasting podcast when I had the epiphany that I had read the wrong book was I was talking about, I had never heard of this, the NEU 5GC versus the

Steven R. Gundry, MD

New 5GC and New 5AC, yep.

Melanie Avalon

Who knew? Could you tell listeners this blows my mind? I had no idea about this.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

Yeah, I actually, I wrote about this in The Plant Paradox in 2017, and I'll give you a little backstory. I was a xenotransplant researcher where our objective was to use a pig as a model for heart transplant. My colleague and one of my great teachers, Leonard Bailey, did Baby Fay, a baboon to human transplant. But baboons clearly are not who you want to be transplanting, for whatever reason. But pigs, since we eat pigs and we use pig valves, that seems to be a good choice. And pig hearts are very similar to human hearts in many, many ways. So the problem with pigs, if you put a pig heart in, say, a baboon, that baboon will hyperacute reject the pig heart and clog all the blood vessels in a matter of hours. And so our research was, well, why is it that this hyper rejection, it's called vascular rejection, and we located a molecule that lines pig blood vessels called Neu5Gc. And pigs, cows, sheep have this sugar molecule that lines their blood vessels. We have a nearly identical sugar molecule called Neu5Ac. The G and the A are capitalized. These molecules are virtually identical. They only differ by one molecule of oxygen. Here's the bad news. We can feed Neu5Gc to humans, and we will make aggressive antibodies to Neu5Gc. We hate it. We just think it is the worst compound in the world. Now, we knew about this from my research and others, and I wrote about it in the Plant Paradox.  Back then, we knew that we made antibodies to Neu5Gc. We knew that Neu5Gc was very similar to Neu5Ac. And we knew there's a strong association between meat eating, milk drinking, and heart disease, leaky gut, arthritis, and dementia. Very strong association. And cancer. Now, association does not mean causation. I'm the first to agree with that. But I propose, another propose, that because of molecular mimicry, because Neu5Ac in our blood vessels was so similar to Neu5Gc, that we might attack our blood vessels, attack our brain, attack our joints, because Neu5Ac looks so much like Neu5Gc. And that's kind of where it left. When I wrote GutCheck, the new evidence was that Neu5Gc can be substituted for Neu5Ac in the lining of our blood vessels, in our blood brain barrier, in our joints. And because it's foreign, we attack the Neu5Gc molecules. And what's really exciting is, the more Neu5Gc can take Fuji, the more it's incorporated into your blood vessels, et cetera, and the more you attack it. The exciting news is, if you eat Neu5Ac containing foods, and that's poultry, and shellfish, and fish, the Neu5Gc is displaced with Neu5Ac, and so you can push it out. And that, to me, is actually very exciting in that there's a way around this. Cancer cells cannot make Neu5Gc. They have to acquire it from the diet. And cancer cells use Neu5Gc to produce local inflammation from our white blood cells, attacking it, and they can actually thrive in an oxygen-poor environment. So that's why they use it. And that's, so now I propose, and others have proposed, that we now have a causative link between the consumption of beef, lamb, pork, and milk, and these various problems.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

What's really exciting, and I wrote about it in gut check, when I look at these long-lived people, they do, they have things that are remarkably in common. many of these zones are yogurt and kefir eaters of goat and sheep milks, and the fermentation process of taking milk and fermenting it, the bacteria eat all the new 5GC.  The other thing that's remarkable is the country with the longest lifespan in the world is a little country called Andorra between Spain and France. It's up in the mountains, Pyrenees Mountains. These guys are goat and sheep herders, and they eat goat and sheep yogurts and cheeses, but they eat a ton of sausages. And it turns out that traditionally prepared sausages are fermented by injecting bacteria into the sausage, and the bacteria eat the new 5GC. Fun fact, prosciutto parma ham has no new 5GC, and traditionally prepared sausages have no new 5GC. So that explains how, again, there's a contradiction. It's like, holy cow, they're eating all these bad things, and yet they have remarkable health because the fermentation of these products produce all these cool postbiotics like polyamines and spermidine, which clearly extend lifespan. And so here you have these smokers eating all these white foods and all these sausages who have exceptional longevity. And it's like, son of a gun, maybe we really ought to rethink the blue zones.

Melanie Avalon

I love this. I love that you are, like you are finding these things that, you know, nobody else is talking about. And that works for me because I, well, I do eat a lot of meat and seafood. Whenever I have like red meat, I usually also have chicken or fish with it.  That's funny. One other thing you talk about in the book, speaking of the immune system, I've been haunted by the idea of LPS for like a decade. Ever since I found out what it was, I was like, I became convinced that LPS was my problem in life. And I would talk with my therapist and she'd be like, Melanie, not everything is inflammation. I'm like, but it is like, it's the LPS. So you provide a new perspective on LPS that it actually, per listeners, this is lipopolysaccharide, basically toxic byproducts that are created from the microbiome and leak into our bloodstream and can create an immune response. But you actually make the case that that LPS educates the immune system and that we should expose ourselves to LPS. I'll let listeners read the book to get the full picture, but a quick nuance question I have about it is, is the LPS that we find naturally on a plant, like eating dirty plants like you talk about, compared to created more endogenously in our gut, is that recognized the same way by the body? Does it respond the same way?

Steven R. Gundry, MD

No, yeah, the amazing thing that I guess really surprised me is that, for instance, you can take LPSs. And LPSs are the cell wall of gram-negative bacteria. And our immune system cannot tell the difference between the cell wall of a living bacteria or the wall of a dead bacteria. It assumes it's a living bacteria, and that would not be a good thing to have in your bloodstream. So our immune system, you're right, really does not like LPSs.  In fact, we can do fun experiments by injecting LPSs, which are sterile, they're not living bacteria, into healthy volunteers, and they will go into septic shock. Their blood pressure will drop, they'll faint, they'll literally get no blood pressure, as a response to these guys. Now, the ice man, Vinhoff, became famous because he used his breathing techniques and was able to be injected with LPSs. And Loewenbold, he just sat there and smiled and laughed at all the researchers. And he trained 20 people in his breathing techniques, and they too withstood the insult of being injected with LPSs.  Well, so what? You can take LPSs and inject them into the colon of an animal, and nothing happens.  But if you inject LPSs into the small bowel, where they're not supposed to be, all hell breaks loose. So then I started looking at, well, where else are these bacteria that make LPSs in? And it turns out that they are in the soil microbiome. They are actually in the microbiome of leaves, believe it or not. They're in the microbiome on olives, they're on the microbiome of all these spices. And fun fact, they're in the microbiome of whole grains.  And I had an epiphany that son of a gun, and I talk about this in book, when I was a teenager, I had horrible allergies. I was allergic to ragweed, grasses, etc. And I got allergy shots. And allergy shots take this compound, and they give you little micro doses of it, and slowly build up more and more. And your immune system basically says, oh, yeah, I see this guy every day. It's not a big deal. I recognize this guy. I don't have to get all excited about it. And it's just part of my environment. So it no longer reacts.  Well, what's fascinating is, if you ingest LPSs, it trains the immune system that, oh, these guys are around all the time. This is not a big deal. So that if I see these guys leaking out of my colon, I don't have to go crazy. Now, part of the problem is, 100 years ago, 70 years ago, we were eating LPSs all the time. I had a victory garden when we were growing up in the 50s and 60s, where we'd pull carrot out of the ground, brush it off on our pans, and eat it. We didn't spray it with antibacterial lotions. And so much the better. And you look at these cultures, they're not washing their vegetables. And people were eating whole grains. Now, they were fermented whole grains. And I make a very strong point about that. We let our bacteria take care of some of the mischievous lectins. But we were being exposed constantly to LPSs. And I submit to people that the reason spices, besides having great polyphenols, they're actually a great source of orally ingesting LPSs.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

And the nice thing is, LPSs are present on dried spices. So spice up your life, but you're actually getting LPSs to train your immune system to not get all bent out of shape when you see these guys.

Melanie Avalon

Well, I love that so much. I needed to hear that when I was in therapy for years, being scared of helping. Thank you so much, Dr. Gundry. I am just obsessed with your work. It's really incredible. It's incredible how you are so, like you've reached a really large popular audience. And I think people may hear your, the titles of your books and think that it will be some sort of, you know, like clickbait flash diet thing, but you're like so legit, like, you've got the science and you bring these new perspectives and things I've never heard about. So just thank you so much.  And friends, get now the cut brain paradox. Just one last question to end with, which is the way I always end the show. What is something that you're grateful for?

Steven R. Gundry, MD

I'm grateful for my patients. I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't be where I am without my patients.  I see patients six days a week. I see them Saturdays and Sundays. The only time I don't see them is on Fridays when I'm at my food and supplement company, Gundry MD. And the reason I see them is I've learned so much from them through the years, about 80% of my patient population are people with autoimmune disease. And we have an amazing success rate with them.  But if it wasn't for them, I'd have no reason to get up every morning because every morning now I get to see what 30 years ago I would have said was a miracle and I get to see it every day. And so I am so grateful that 25 years ago my patients joined me in saying, hey, I want you to eat certain foods.  I want you to not eat certain foods. I want you to go to a health food store, Costco or Trader Joe's and buy some supplements. And I want to do blood work on you every three months that insurance will pay for. And I want to see what happens, okay? And some of these idiot patients said, yeah, that sounds like fun. And now I get to see this every day. And it's just a bad example. I'm a kid in a candy store. And if I don't see these miracles and learn from these patients, and the nice thing, people go, I'm about to turn 75. And I just signed a 10 year lease for my clinic in Montecito. And it's like one of my new patients said, look, you're 75 years old, you don't have to do this anymore. And I go, oh yes, I do.  I have to learn from you guys. I have to let everybody know what I learned from you guys and thank you for coming to my office. And so there you go.

Melanie Avalon

Well, thank you so much. That is so incredible. Please keep doing what you're doing. We'll put links to everything in the show notes, and I would love to have you back for the next book.  You're just like the best. Thank you so much.

Steven R. Gundry, MD

And we, unfortunately, we just signed another two book deal. So I'll be, I'll be back.

Melanie Avalon

All right. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you, Dr. Ganjabi. Bye.  Bye-bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. For more information, you can check out my book, What Win Wine? Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine, as well as my blog, melanieavalon.com. Feel free to contact me at podcast at melanieavalon.com. And always remember, you got this.