#91: The Plant Paradox: Rethink Your Diet with Dr. Steven Gundry

[00:00:00] Hala Taha: [00:00:00] You're listening to YAP, Young And Profiting podcast. A place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host Hala Taha. And on Young And Profiting podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life.

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we're chatting with Dr. Steven Gundry, a cardiothoracic surgeon turned wellness and nutrition best-selling author. Dr. Gundry was one of the most famous heart surgeons to ever exist. But at the height of his career in 2002, the doctor felt he had a new calling and turned his focus to nutrition. He wanted to help his patients avoid surgery altogether through the healing power of food.

Dr. Gundry is the author of The Plant Paradox series, which contains six best-selling books on how to lose weight and feel better. His upcoming book, The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone comes out March, 2021. He is also the host of the Dr. Gundry podcast and is the founder and director of the International Heart and Lung Institute in California.

Tune into this episode to learn about The Plant Paradox and why you should pay closer attention to what you're eating. We'll also go deep into Dr. Gundry's unconventional I'd advice, including the [00:02:00] dangers of beans and other foods with toxic lectins. We'll also get an understanding as to why organic foods

aren't necessarily good for you. And we'll uncover Dr. Gundry's logic for giving fruit, the boot. Hey, Dr. Gundry, welcome to Young And Profiting podcast. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:02:16] Thanks for having me appreciate it.

Hala Taha: [00:02:18] . I'm so excited to have you here because it's not too often that we have a medical doctor on the show. So to give my listeners some context of who you are, you've had a really unique career journey.

You really have a passion for helping people live healthier, better lives. You worked in medicine for over 40 years as a cardio thoractic surgeon. Hopefully I said that, and a heart surgeon. And now you focus on something very different. You focus on nutrition, helping people change their diets so they can actually avoid surgery down the line.

And in fact your nutritional philosophy called The Plant Paradox. You had a series of books that came out with super popular. It's one of the most well-known [00:03:00] nutrition diets out there. And now you teach her, you spend your days teaching patients about diet and nutrition and helping people live longer, healthier lives with your advice and research that you've done on the topic.

So tell us, how did you change from surgery? Something very invasive, something pretty reactive into concentrating more on the preventative side with nutrition. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:03:22] I got to go way back to the dark ages. When I was an undergraduate at Yale university, back in those dark ages, we were allowed to manufacture, design our own major.

And I had this crazy major in human evolutionary biology, where I had thesis that I had to defend. And the thesis was you could take a grade. And manipulate its diet and manipulate its environment. And you could prove that what you would end up where there's a human being. And I actually defended my thesis and gone and honors, [00:04:00] and then gave it to my parents and went away to medical school.

And it became a very famous heart surgeon did more infant and pediatric heart transplants and any surgeon in the world and became very famous for protecting the heart. During heart surgery became very famous for redo operations, minimally invasive operations, artificial hearts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I became chairman and professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine for most of my career. And then a little over 20 years ago. I was confronted with a gentleman that I call big ed and big ed as the name implies was a very large fellow is in his late forties. And he had inoperable coronary artery disease.

Now what that means is he had so much crud in his coronary arteries that you couldn't put stents in them. You couldn't put bypasses in them because there was no place [00:05:00] to jump to dual bypass. And they had gone around the country to various centers with idiots like me, who would normally take people like this on and everywhere.

He went a big name, centers, turned him down saying you're hopeless. So he'd been doing this for about six months. He's from Miami, Florida. And he arrived at Loma Linda bearing his angiogram, the movie of his heart cardiac catheterization from six months earlier. And was looking at his angiogram. And I said, I gotta agree with everybody else

who's seen you. I'd love to take you on, but they're right. I'm not going to help you. And they're there, right? He says look, here's the deal. It's been six months since that angiogram. And I've been on a diet. And I've lost 45 pounds. Now, this guy was 265 when I met him and he says, I've gone to a health food store and I've taken all these supplements and you [00:06:00] actually have brought in a huge shopping bag full of stuff.

And he says, maybe I did something here in my heart, I'm scratching my professor Baird and going, wow. Good for you for losing weight, but that's not going to do anything. And I know in what you did with all those supplements, you made expensive urine. You wasted all your money and, he says look, I've come all the way from Miami.

Couldn't we get another angiogram and just see, and I go, don't get your hopes up, but, okay. So we get a new angiogram, a new cardiac catheterization, and in six months time, this guy has cleaned out 50% of the blockages in his coronary. Yeah. Thank God. And I never seen anything like that.

Never seen read a report, medical review of anything like that. So I said wait a minute now. Now I'm interested. Tell me about this diet. So he starts talking [00:07:00] and you know what paragraph? And I go, wait a minute, timeout, SATs my thesis from college. And I said, that's exactly what I said, humans ate and how'd you get my thesis?

And I actually called my parents who lived in the city in San Diego. I said, Hey, you still have my thesis. And they said, yeah, we got it. It's, it's here in the shrine. And next to the eternal flame. And I said send it up to me. In the meantime, I said tell me about these supplements.

And he starts pulling them out and I go, oh my gosh, I was using a number of these supplements to keep hearts alive for 48 hours sitting in a bucket of ice water for transplantation or to resuscitate them. And I was giving them down the veins and arteries. And it never occurred to me to swallow the dumb things.

[00:08:00] Big ed was swallowing. A lot of the stuff that I was using to protect the heart. The irony of it, all of this is despite being, a very smart heart surgeon. I was a big fat guy. I was 70 pounds overweight despite the fact that I was running 30 miles a week, I was doing five Ks, 10 Ks on the weekends I was going to gym 

every day for an hour. And I was eating what was considered a healthy, low fat diet. And yet I had pre-diabetes. I had high blood pressure. I had arthritis. I had to wear braces on my knees to rhyme and but I was told I had high cholesterol. I told her I it's genetic, you're screwed. Long story short, my parents sent me my manuscript, which I keep right up here and I put myself on my diet.

And I lost 50 pounds my first year. And I started taking a bunch of supplements and low and all my pre-diabetes went away. My hypertension  went away. My [00:09:00] arthritis went away. My cholesterol completely flipped normally. And I started putting people I operated on as a professor. On my program after I operated on them and we were starting to see the same things that were happening to me, we were thrown away their high blood pressure medication, and we were throwing away their diabetes medication.

And I did this to prevent them from ever visiting me again for a bypass. And then sadly about a year into this, looked in the mirror on a Friday morning on the way into work. And I said, I've actually got this all wrong. I shouldn't operate on people first and then tell them how to avoid me for the rest of their lives.

I used to teach them how to eat, so I'll never have to operate on now. That sounds very altruistic, which it is, but it's really a stupid career move for a heart [00:10:00] surgeon, because even in academics, you can make it pretty nice living as a heart surgeon, but as I subsequently found out, it's almost impossible to make a living, teaching people how to eat.

Anyhow. I didn't know that. Then I resigned my position at Loma Linda at the height of my career and set up an Institute in Palm Springs, which is just down the road from Loma Linda. I decided to research this. I've been a researcher all my life, and I asked people, Hey, I want you to do this. I want you to eat this stuff.

I don't want you to eat this stuff. I want to send you to Costco or trader Joe's and I want you to buy some supplements. I don't want to sell them to you. And I want to see what happens. We're going to draw blood on you every three months and insurance will pay for it. Medicare will pay for it. And let's see what happens and that's actually what started it all.

And low and behold, and I publish my research and presented it. [00:11:00] And low and behold, you could document that things dramatically changed when you changed foods or even added a, what seems like a silly supplement. And you could see when somebody was taking it or when they.  That's a long winded how I got 

here.

Hala Taha: [00:11:16] It's an amazing story. So I appreciate you sharing that. I think people would definitely find that story interesting. Something that I just want to say here is that my father was a general and vascular surgeon. He just actually recently passed away. And later in his life he had something happened with his eye and he couldn't do surgery anymore.

And he too also ended up focusing on nutrition and he was writing a lot of books. He has three books that he never put out that were on his behalf about lowering your cholesterol through nutrition. And so I think there might be a trend overall with surgeons realizing that maybe there's something more to nutrition, to diet that we've been missing all along.

And so I really appreciate that the work that you do, and I know how powerful, nutrition can be because all throughout my [00:12:00] childhood, I heard all about it from my dad. Really cool stuff back to your story. When you transitioned and you said there wasn't that much money and nutrition.

You were at the height of your career. I'm sure. If you're married, maybe had your wife pushed back on you or other people, your colleagues might've pushed back on you. How did deal with the naysayers? When you were making this career move. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:12:22] My wife, I think also didn't know what she was getting in for him.

She, it's, I think the, the best career advice is do what you love and love what you do. And everything eventually, will work. A lot of times, it didn't feel like that we actually had to sell our house. We had to rent, we got to a point where we couldn't even afford to buy or lease a car.

We had to have my parents signed for it because my frankly were broke. Through all [00:13:00] of that. We just, we kept doing it and we just kept saying you have okay.  We're, we don't have the money we used to, but I was, I was really happy because people would walk in and they'd, they'd have an auto-immune disease or three or four auto-immune diseases.

And they went away. And they're off of their medications or all have a person who just recently we had a gentleman from, oh gosh, now, 15 years ago, who was scheduled for a coronary bypass. He had a heart attack. He was in our hospital. We had them ready to go. Down in the operating room, egos. I'm so scared.

I don't think I can do this. I don't think I'm going to come through. And I went, oh, okay. I understand. I said, he says, isn't there something we can do? And I said yeah, if you become my best patient, I promise you, I will never operate in. He said, I'll do it. I'll do it. And that was 15 years ago.

And it's so funny, on the fifth anniversaries, we [00:14:00] just celebrated his 15th anniversary. He's never had an operation. His stress tests are negative. He used to be a horrible diabetic. He's not. And so it's that sort of thing that says money and all cracked up to be it's, giving the person a new lease on life that really, I can operate on

10,000 people, which I have, but to influence now, millions of people to take control of their health. I get up every morning. I see patients seven days a week, even on the weekends, I just finished in my weekend clinic in Santa Barbara. And I just keep getting up because every day, usually I get to see something really exciting happening to 

somebody.

Hala Taha: [00:14:46] I completely agree sometimes it's not just about the money. It's about the work that you do and the value that you contribute to the world. And you're obviously making a huge impact. You've had so many people benefit from the plant paradox, diet, even people like celebrities, Kelly [00:15:00] Clarkson when, on your diet.

So can you tell us at a high level? Oh, very cool. Very cool. Can you tell us at a high level what your plant paradox diet is? Plenty of questions in terms of, diving deep into it, but at a high level, what is it and how does it benefit people in terms of diseases and auto-immune diseases? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:15:22] Yeah.

So at the very basis of the plant paradox diet, it's the rule number one. It's not what I tell you to eat. That's very important. It's what I tell you not to eat. That actually makes all the difference. And most diets say, eat this, eat it does. And where I start is, okay. There are certain things that really, you were not designed to eat, that you do not have a good defense system.

Plants simplistically actually in reality, don't want to be eaten. One of the hard things for us to imagine [00:16:00] is that plants have a life and they don't want to be, and they don't want their seeds, which are their babies eaten. And they have defenses against being eaten because they can't run hide.

And some of those defenses I focused on which are called lectins and lectins have actually been known about for, well over a hundred years, actually 150 years now. And lectins are sticky proteins. And by that, I mean that they are proteins that look for sugar molecules to stick, to bind. And those sugar molecules just happened to align are digestive track, our swallowing tube, our intestines.

They lie in the surfaces of her joints. They lie in the surfaces of our blood vessels. They even line the spaces between nerves, where one nerve talks to another [00:17:00] and not only my research, but many other people's research have shown that lectins disable their predators by attacking one or more of these surface areas.

So I happen to think that leaky gut is the cause of all disease and I'm not the only one who thinks that Hippocrates 2,500 years ago said all disease begins in them. And in fact behind me, I don't know if you can say it. The road to health is paved with good intestines. What I found and based on the work of a Dr.

Fasano, who's now at Harvard Medical School, he proved that one of the lectins, which is gluten and most people aren't aware that gluten is elected, but it is gluten causes leaky gut by binding [00:18:00] to the sugar molecules in our gut. And actually breaks the wall of the gut apart and now have shown that lectins are the cause of coronary artery disease.

I've published two papers to that effect. There's very good evidence that leaky gut. In particular caused by lectins is a major cause of auto-immune diseases. And I've published a number of papers on that. So when you start looking at these misuse of little guys and then get them out of your diet all sorts of cool things happen.

So what, where are they most. Mostly they're in grains, they're actually in the hall of grains. And so that includes, wheat, rye, barley, oats, and it includes the pseudo grains like keenwah and buckwheat rice, particularly brown rice. And then they're in the nightshade families. They're in potatoes, eggplant, [00:19:00] tomatoes, peppers, bell peppers, even goji berries are a nightshade and they're in beans, and legumes.

And so those are the major sources for them. And peanuts, which are actually a bean and cashews, which are actually not a nut either. That's most of the place where they live. 

Hala Taha: [00:19:22] Yeah. It's so interesting. It's so many foods that conventionally we're told are good to eat in long living populations. They always talk about eating beans.

They say that beans can help prevent diabetes and heart health and obesity. And so what do you say to that? Is it really black and white? Should we just not eat beans? At all or some of these, peanuts that you're mentioning. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:19:45] What I say is you got to know your enemy and you have to detoxify your enemy.

I have beans probably three four times a week, but I have soaked and pressure [00:20:00] cooked beans. And luckily for me and my patients, pressure cooking destroys the lectins in beans, soaking contributes to leaching lectins, and also interestingly enough, if you soak beans properly, they actually ferment. Most people don't know this.

The foam that occurs when you're soaking beans is actually fermentation. Just like the foam that would occur as beer is fermenting or as wine is fermenting and fermentation is one of the traditional ways that all cultures have made lectin containing foods, safety, for instance, the anchor. Soaked keenwah for 48 hours, then they allowed it to ferment and then they cooked it.

And unfortunately it's not on the package directions. So often, and I travel the world, looking at these long lived cultures and studying, okay, how'd you [00:21:00] do this? And in fact, they all have ways of detoxifying these harmful. And by the way, all the blues zones do not eat beans and grains. That's one of the biggest myths out there.

For instance, the Okinawans, the old Okinawans, the modern Okinawans actually are not the oldest living people in Japan anymore, but the older Okinawans, 85% of their diet was a purple sweet potato, 85%. 6% of their diet was fermented soybeans and the term in the form of miso  they did not eat tofu. And the other, like 4% of their diet was white rice, not brown rice.

The idea that they're long and healthy because they're eating beans and rice is actually not. 

Hala Taha: [00:21:53] That's so interesting. And I'm glad that you say we can still eat beans because my boyfriend is a vegetarian and he wants bean tacos like [00:22:00] three, four days a week. And I'm like what am I going to eat it?

Beans aren't okay. So you say pressure cooking and soaking them. We'll make them healthy. How about like a can of beans that you find in a store since they're soaking? Are those okay or not okay? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:22:12] No, 

it turns out there's only two companies that pressure cook their beans. One of them is Eden E D E N. And the other one is a fairly new company called Jovial.

Just like it sounds a jovial person and jovial, not both of those companies soak their beans and then pressure cook them. Both Eden does not use a BPA lining and Jovial has all their beans in glass, which is even better. So they're both doing it right. I have no relationship with either of these companies.

So I'm not telling you that to get chip. And the really good news is that you can, I've got a whole shelf and we can just open a can of jovial [00:23:00] or a jar of jovial or a can of eaten beans and knock your socks. But the beans at the drive-through to get your being taco is one of the biggest mischief makers known to mankind.

Plus that taco is either going to be made out of corn or it's going to be made out of wheat flour. And both of those are just the perfect lectin load that you can imagine. But wrapping in lettuce. 

Hala Taha: [00:23:30] Yeah. Very true. And speaking of corn, and we're talking about vegetables in general, let's talk about organic and this big word, organic that everybody uses.

Everybody thinks, oh, if it's organic, it's good. Tell us about why that's not. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:23:42] First of all, we have to understand that the word organic can apply to a lot of very toxic things. For instance, arsenic is organic and I think no one would recommend having organic arsenic. Cocaine is all organic. [00:24:00] Heroin is all organic.

So just because something is organic. Yeah. Mean that it's good for you. What is important is that one of the things that people are going to learn about him in my new book, The Energy Paradox, which will be out in March of 2021 is. Our soils have been so depleted of vitamins, minerals, nutrients, the soils have a microbiome which has been destroyed.

And so the food that we're eating today bears absolutely no resemblance to food of a hundred years ago. In fact I love to show us to a physician groups that I speak to and the slide says our soil is now so depleted of these essential nutrients that we could eat mass amounts of food grown in our [00:25:00] soil and never

get the amount of nutrition we need. And I asked people, okay, when I said, this is a US Senate document and when was this document in the US Senate? And people go, oh, 2000 and I go, nah, and they go, oh yeah. Okay. In 1980 Nope. It was 1936, that this document was introduced and we knew way back then that our soils bear no resemblance to

what they should have. I'll give you a fascinating example from COVID. There is a paper and some people know that we should take selenium to help protect us against COVID. And that paper came out of China and there are some selenium rich soils in China, and there are some selenium, poor soils. And this paper showed that people who lived [00:26:00] in selenium, rich soil country, and China had a much lower incidence of getting COVID than people who lived in the selenium poor soils.

So that's just one, so this is a micronutrient and by the way, You can get all the selenium you need by eating three Brazil nuts a day. That's all you need. Brazil nuts are a rich source of selenium. So long story short organic is a great idea, but organic wheat, organic corn, organic rice, organic tomatoes are just as lethal as their conventional variety.

On the other hand, organic broccoli or organic sweet potatoes or organic cauliflower. You're much better off having that, but be aware. I can't tell you the number of people [00:27:00] who have autoimmune diseases who are eating organic and still have their autoimmune disease. And it's when we take away, tell them no, don't eat this stuff, have all the other organic stuff you want, but stop eating this.

In fact, we do some sophisticated tests with leaky gut and we find that of the people who are sensitive to wheat proteins, gluten being one of them, 70% of people who are sensitive to. We will be sensitive to corn. And when they eat corn, their immune system thinks they're eating wheat. And that's why I have so many people who come to me with celiac disease, which is the extreme form of gluten intolerance who have been eating gluten-free for years.

[00:28:00] And still have celiac disease and that's because they've been eating gluten-free and mostly gluten-free foods are made of corn. And when we take the corn away from them, then their celiac goes away. 

Hala Taha: [00:28:16] So interesting. It's so true. I just went gluten free and everything is either corn or rice. And like you're saying those both have lectins, right?

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:28:23] And, 

And I'm glad you brought up rice. It's one of my pet peeves don't get me wrong. Rice is wonderful. It used to eat it all the time, but we have to realize that 4 billion people use rice as their staple. But 4 billion people use white rice as their staple, not brown rice. Are 4 billion people

that's stupid that they're taking the good part of rice and throwing it away. No, the lectins are in the hall of rice and they've been taking the lectins off of their rice for centuries. We, again, we have to look at how traditional [00:29:00] culture dealt with these products. For instance, if you think back, really whole grain pasta, come on.

Really, wheat croissants in France, whole wheat begets in France. The French would laugh you out of the room and the Italians would too. Of course now in the tourist plays back when they're returned. There was there's whole wheat pasta in Italy, but it was never part of their staple cause they were taking away the hall on these products.

And it was only 50 years ago when whole grain goodness was re-introduced and one of the principles of the plant paradox is, guess what? Nobody had these things 50 years ago, autoimmune diseases were incredibly rare. And now, 50, 90% of the ads on TV are for an auto-immune disease drug. 

Hala Taha: [00:29:53] Yeah. It's so fascinating how, like we like had it right

potentially. And then now we went backwards and [00:30:00] we have it wrong and we have adverse side effects and we're seeing that now. How about bleach, because with race and all those pasta products, I thought the bleach was really bad for us when they're making it way. Or do I have that wrong?

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:30:14] No they're actually where the final way of actually getting the hall fall off of grains was the Swiss roller mill, which was invented in the late 19 hundreds. There's a lot of controversy. It's called the Swiss roller mill, but Austria claims they invented. That's fun. So they invented a very quick way of actually stripping the haul off of wheat and grains.

So there's really bleached white flour is a whole subject in its own. If you want to go down there, I'm happy to do that because it's actually a big part of the energy paradox. You want to talk about bleached white flour. 

Hala Taha: [00:30:57] Maybe we'll get back to it later. I want to [00:31:00] talk about. Really because first of all, was listening to one of your podcasts and to your point of the soiled, having no nutrition, nutrients anymore, I heard that you said that oranges have 70% less of vitamin C than they did 50 years ago.

And I've been noticing as I've been buying fruit lately, that it doesn't taste like anything anymore that like I buy a peach and it barely tastes like anything. So interesting. So I definitely want to get your opinion on the supplements that we should be taking and why supplements are so important now.

But I first want to talk about fruit because I know that you say give fruit the boot. So tell us why we should be giving fruit, the boot, because again, this is very unconventional advice. I've been, always told that fruit is the candy of nature. You should eat as many fruit as you want. You can have as much as you want.

And according to you, that's not true. So why is that? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:31:51] So again fruit is not fruit anymore. I'll give you, it has been hybridized for sugar [00:32:00] content and that sugar in fruit is called fruit dose. Now, just so we all understand sugar cane, what we consider sugar. Is a molecule of fruit toast combined with a molecule of glucose.

And that makes sucrose, so table sugar is 50% fructose. Most people have heard of high fructose corn syrup. It's not all that different from table sugar. It's 55% fructose and 45% glucose. So it's now in everything. So fruit, when I wrote my first book years ago, Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. One of the points of that book was that great apes only gain weight during fruit season.

And my editors at random house said, wait a minute, fruit is nature's candy for it's good for you. You should eat all the fruits you can. I said, yeah, but [00:33:00] here's the deal. Even in the jungle, fruit only ripens once a year. And they what? And I said, yeah, great apes only gain weight during fruit season and theirs.

They said, send us some papers. And then there's actually an entire book on my shelf dedicated to the fact that great apes only gain weight during fruit season. Now, why is that? It turns out fruit dose is actually an incredible mitochondrial toxin. So all of the guys who are having your energy, fruit smoothie in the morning, you ought to realize that you're actually poisoning your mitochondria, the energy producing organelles and all yourselves.

So fructose is actually not put into our circulation. It's absorbed directly into our liver where it's detoxified into two things. One is triglycerides, which is fat. The second is uric acid, which causes [00:34:00] gout and hypertension and fructose. What isn't detoxified actually paralyzes mitochondria. And if you look at the literature, fructose is the number one cause of fatty liver disease, which is an epidemic, it's a major cause of insulin resistance, which everyone will learn about in the energy paradox. So fructose we use to make triglycerides to store fat for a winter. That's believe it or not. Why a berries, all those huckleberries and blueberries in the fall to fatten up for the winter and fun fact, we use the same metabolic system as a bear.

We once upon a time only saw fruit in the summer and early fall. And it was very useful for us because way back when there wasn't much food in the winter. So we followed that pattern as well. Now what's happened in the last 50 years is two [00:35:00] things. Number one, fruit has been hybridized for sugar con.

And look it up, Dr. Google at a cup of seedless, grapes has more sugar than a whole Hershey's bar folks. And yeah, it has about six teaspoons of sugar. And I can tell you what I'd rather have to eat. I'd rather have a Hershey bar. Don't eat that either. But my point is this stuff has been changed.

Let me give you a great example from this week. There is a chain of high-end supermarkets in Southern California called Bristol farms. There are competitors for whole foods, and I was in Bristol farms in Santa Barbara this weekend. And as you walk through the front door, there's a huge display of apples and they were Honeycrisp apples.

And these apples are the size of grapefruit. And [00:36:00] gorgeous and size a grapefruit, and then you go around and there's this little bag and it says new, exciting, small apple. And I walk up to him and I go, and the apple is about the size of what we now consider a crab apple and my wife and I went, oh my gosh, look, those are what we used to eat as kids.

That's what we used to grow in our backyard. And that apple would have about four bites literally. And the Honeycrisp. First of all, the name ought to tell you something, honey, crisp. I wonder what that tastes like that, honey, crisp, we held the apple up that apple would make about six Honeycrisp and yet we say, oh, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.

All the benefit of an apple is in the fiber and actually in the peel, the right sugar and these things have been bred for sugar content. And your point is exactly right. [00:37:00] Oranges have been bred for sugar content bananas have been bred to grow year round. There's no bananas that used to grow year round.

Give you another example. We have a couple Blackberry and raspberry bushes in our area. And they produce for about six weeks and then they're done. They stopped back in July and we'll see him again next year in the end of may. I could go to the store and I could buy raspberries and blackberries today that came from Mexico or came from Chile.

And the fact that we can have fruits 365 days a year now makes it an endless cycle. To our genetic program and we are constantly storing fat for the winter that never comes. So that's why if you're going to [00:38:00] eat fruit, eat it, organic, eat local and heated in season. Otherwise. The fruit, the boot. 

Hala Taha: [00:38:07] Yeah.

That's super solid advice. So what's the alternative here because it's very scary to think that the soil is depleted. That fruit is not the same. That even if you eat fruit, you're not getting the nutritional value. It's mostly sugar. It has fructose. It's really bad for you. So what do we do instead? It's pretty scary.

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:38:23] We should eat like our ancestors. And interestingly enough we can debate what the ancient diet was, but our ancestors ate a lot of tubers. I got to tell you one of the things that made humans, human is the advent of fire and the harnessing of cooking. And we could give an hour talk on that, but we were the only animal that could break down the cell walls of plants with bacteria.

And we were able to get a huge amount of [00:39:00] nutrition that no other animal could get without fermentation by bacteria, in their gut. The other thing that, so tubers actually were a huge part of our ancient diet. We ate a lot of leaves and one of the things I try to remind people is that gorillas and chimps get most of their nutrition from leaves.

And a gorilla eats 16 pounds of leaves every day. Now I've tried to do that. It's quite, it's an all day event and I can't do it, but the point is gorilla has gets all its protein from leaves. And in fact, the largest animals on earth. All their protein from leaves or grass. And the idea that we somehow have to have animal protein for muscle growth, it just flies against any logic.

And there are, of course, some great vegan and vegetarian athletes who have shown. [00:40:00] Amazingly enough, you do not need animal protein. Do I eat animal protein? Yes, it does. My wife. Yes. Primarily we eat wild shellfish and wild fish. And it's usually on the weekends. We mostly vegan during the week and we have

for years and years. And I think there actually are some benefits to eating wild fish and particularly wild shellfish that we'll get into in another one of my books, but not today. So.  

Hala Taha: [00:40:30] Cool. Okay. So last question on plant paradox, and then we're going to move into your new book, energy paradox. We were just talking about meat.

I want my listeners to understand why you say we are what our food eats. Can you explain that concept to us quickly? 

Yeah, 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:40:46] my patients have taught me this. So you are what you eat, but you are what, your thing, your eating aid. And so if you feed a chicken, organic [00:41:00] corn and organic soybeans, so you have an organic chicken, that chicken is not a chicken.

It is an ear of corn with feathers and Actually learned this in England, when I was training there, way back in the eighties, there was so much fish meal that chickens were fed ground up fish and chickens had pale flesh that smelled like fish and tasted like fish. And kids, we took them to Kentucky fried chicken for the first time over, there they go, Hey, this is stash.

And we go now look, here's a drumstick now it's fish. And they were right because the chicken had become what it had was eating. And here's the scary thing. Don't believe me. If you look corn has a specific carbon configuration it's called a C four carbon molecule. You can do analysis of [00:42:00] Americans and 70% of all the carbon atoms that make up

us our corn, urban Adams, 5% of Europeans are corn, carbon that's because almost everything we eat has been fed corn or came from corn. And here's the really scary thing. None of us ever a corn until 500 years ago when Columbus came to America and started bringing corn back, this is a incredibly modern food that we have no adaptation for genetically.

And yet 70% of us are now corn. 

Hala Taha: [00:42:42] This is crazy. I don't know. There's so many questions I have for you. I'm going to have you back on this. Yeah. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:42:47] And don't get me wrong. I'm from Omaha, Nebraska. The Cornhuskers.

Hala Taha: [00:42:51] I love corn. I eat popcorn every night. I'm probably 90%. Cool. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:42:56] Please don't do that.

Change to sorghum popcorn. [00:43:00] It'll change your life. It'll get some, get yourself some sorghum, popcorn, sorghum, and millet have no lectins. They're phenomenal. 

Hala Taha: [00:43:09] Good to know. Okay. So let's move on to your new book. It's called Energy Paradox. It comes out in March, 2021 and a major theme in your book is the fact that leaky gut syndrome can cause fatigue.

So can you give us some context into what leaky gut syndrome is? I think you touched on it lightly before. And then also what this new book is about, how is it different or more enhanced than the plant paradox? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:43:33] So we have an epidemic of fatigue and tiredness in this country and it's reaching

into young people in their twenties and their thirties. And it's not just because you have two kids and they're driving you crazy. It's because of leaky gut. And if you had asked me 15 years ago, what I thought about leaky gut, I would have told you it's pseudoscience, but now I can tell you that all [00:44:00] disease begins in the gut.

Now, why does fatigue beginning in the gut? And it's because. When you have a leaky gut, you have not only lectins, but actually bacterial particles that get across the wall of your gut and 70 to 80% of your immune system lines your gut and your immune system is designed to recognize foreign invaders and attack them.

And your immune system requires huge amounts of energy. And we will divert energy to our immune system at all costs. Just as an example, think about the flu. When you get the flu, you feel like crap, you don't want to move. You're achy. You just want to lay there. You don't even want to do anything that's because your immune system has actually delivered.

All of your energy resources to fighting the flu virus. And so your spouse to feel awful and have no energy because it's all been [00:45:00] take rationed. What's happened to all of us now is we have chronic continuous, low grade inflammation. And all of our energy resources, unbeknownst to us have been diverted into this chronic low grade inflammation that stems from leaky gut and the book is all about, okay, here's why you got it.

And here's what we're going to do about it. And it's a six week process and we'll seal your leaky gut and get your energy. 

Hala Taha: [00:45:31] Yeah. And I hear all the time that people are tired and they think it's because they're busy or they think it's because I feel like they have all excuses in the book as to why they're tired and they think it's normal.

Is it normal to be tired? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:45:44] No, that's the problem. In restorative medicine, we call people like that though walking well, they figure that tire nose is a part of being normal now. Giving an example. I'm now, I've turned 70 this summer. [00:46:00] I work seven days a week. I'm supposed to be retired.

I'm supposed to be at the retirement center having a great time. So the idea that we should be tired, at 30. Okay. Busy and, we have all these commitments. That's been fed to people to cover up the fact that there's something really wrong and we have to come to grips that fatigue is actually a sign that's trying to get our attention.

That there's something actually pretty doggone wrong. And if we don't get control of it early. That's when, oh my gosh. Gosh, I've got pre-diabetes or gosh, I've got high blood pressure or gosh, I've got arthritis or gosh, my brain. I can't remember things as much as I did anymore, but heck I'm 40 now and that's normal.

It's not. 

Hala Taha: [00:46:53] So interesting. I have to have you back on, in March to talk about your new book once I get a copy of it so we can dig deep into that. [00:47:00] Yeah. Thank you so much. The last question I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life? 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:47:08] Oh, I started the show with that. Do what you love and love what you do.

And particularly now during COVID look, this is the alternate opportunity to. Okay. Things, maybe you maybe don't have a job. Maybe the job isn't doing what you want to do. This is the time. If there was ever a time to do what you want to do, and it's going to take some work, you're probably going to suffer, but it'll pay off because your happiness is worth more than all the money there is.

Hala Taha: [00:47:48] I totally agree. I totally agree. Once you follow your passion, life is just so much more fulfilling, so much happier, so I can totally agree with that. And where can our listeners go to find more about you and [00:48:00] everything that you do.

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:48:01] So they can I have a podcast that Dr. Gundry podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, it's now on podcast one, the largest podcast service in the country.

You can go to drgundry.com. You can go to my supplement line gundrymd.com two YouTube channels. You can find me on Instagram, Steven Gundry. If I don't pop up on your inbox someplace, when you're searching, I've not done my job properly. 

Hala Taha: [00:48:30] Yeah. He's everywhere. And we'll stick all his links in the show notes and some more additional information.

So you guys can find out more about the plant paradox. So thank you so much, Dr. Gundry, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. 

Dr. Steven Gundry: [00:48:42] And Hala, thank you for having me on and hopefully we'll see you in February or March. 

Hala Taha: [00:48:47] Yeah, we'll do. Thanks for listening to Young And Profiting podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dr.

Gundry. And if you're a new listener, please take a few moments to subscribe to the YAP and drop us a [00:49:00] review on Apple podcasts. Apple podcast reviews are the most coveted kind of reviews for podcasters. We love Apple podcast reviews so much because they act as social proof for new listeners and they largely impact our podcast rankings.

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