August 7, 2025 • 49 mins
Unveiling the Gut-Brain Connection: Dr. Steven Gundry on Leaky Gut, Microbiome, and Health
In today's episode, we dive deep into the fascinating world of the gut-brain connection with Dr. Steven Gundry, a prolific author and expert on the subject. Starting with a brief introduction about our sponsor, Kyndryl, we explore the historical context of medical insights from figures like Hippocrates and Ignaz Semmelweis. Dr. Gundry shares compelling stories from his practice, including miraculous patient turnarounds attributed to gut health. We discuss the latest in microbiome research, the concept of leaky gut, and how our gut's terrain influences overall health. Learn about the critical role of bacteria in our body's ecosystem, the intelligence of microorganisms, and their impact on our well-being. Join us as we unlock the secrets of a balanced inner terrain and its implications for a healthier life.
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message
00:30 Dedications and Historical Insights
02:06 Guest Introduction: Stephen Gundry
03:04 Remarkable Patient Stories
07:19 The Gut-Brain Connection
12:52 Historical Debate: Pasteur vs. Bechamp
16:58 Microbiome Discoveries and Implications
19:08 Bacterial Intelligence and Communication
26:29 Elephant Communication and Eavesdropping
27:04 Understanding Leaky Gut
27:52 Aging Research and Sea Elegans
29:45 The Role of Tight Junctions in Gut Health
32:46 Impact of Diet and Antibiotics on Gut Health
36:44 Environmental Toxins and Autoimmune Diseases
37:40 Lipopolysaccharides and Immune Response
42:03 The Rise of Food Sensitivities and Allergies
47:05 Gut Microbiome and Food Cravings
48:10 Conclusion and Resources
Find Steven: https://drgundry.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before we start into today'sepisode, I want to tell you
about our sponsor Kyndryl.
Kyndryl runs and reimagines the technologysystems that drive advantage for the
world's leading businesses with a hugeblend of AI powered consulting built on
unmatched managed services capability.
Kyndryl helps leaders harness thepower of technology for smarter
(00:20):
decisions, faster innovation,and a lasting competitive edge.
You can find our friends
. I'm gonna start today's episode with thededications from the book because they
speak to the very heart of this show.
Hippocrates first famously said,all diseases begin in the gut.
(00:43):
and then a hero of this show, IgnazSemmelweis, who died for questioning
his medical school professors atthe Vienna General Hospital as to
the real cause of child bed fever.
Prior to the discovery of bacteria,he correctly identified the cause as a
lack of hand sterilizing, doctors notwashing their hands after touching dead
(01:06):
bodies beforehand, but his practicewas soundly repudiated by his peers.
For his insights, he was declared aquack deported to Budapest and placed in
an asylum where he was beaten to death.
15 years later with the discovery ofbacteria, his insights were proven and his
place as the father of Antisepsis heraldedaround the world, may he rest in peace.
(01:32):
Why am I talking about that?
People may wonder what today's bookhas to do with innovation, but what is
so important on this show is learningand if you can learn effectively if
you have the right terrain, that's animportant word we're gonna talk about.
The terrain is the environment, or evenmore correctly, the ecosystem in your gut.
We need that in a state of homeostasis inorder to learn effectively for synaptic
(01:56):
plasticity, to influence neurogenesis,and ultimately to lead a happier life.
Today's book is written by achange maker, which is why I
opened with those brilliant quotes.
Pioneers take the arrows, and it isa pleasure to welcome a man who's
taken many arrows and is a pioneer, aprolific author who has a great podcast
(02:16):
himself, and is the author of hisbrand new book, the Gut-Brain Paradox.
Stephen Gundry, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me.
Thanks for all those nice words.
You know one of the great Americanhumorous Mark Twain was introduced with.
Glowing words at a meeting, and he said,you know, I, I thank you for all those
(02:37):
nice words, but I don't deserve them.
I also have arthritis and I don'tdeserve that either, so I'll take it.
Nice, man.
You haven't heard that as a resortfor an intro on this show before.
It's great to have you on the show, man.
I, and I know you're under time pressurebecause you're still practicing.
You still see miracles.
(02:57):
What you would, what youused to think were miracles.
Yeah.
In your practice all the time.
Now you see what the turnarounds are.
Let's start with a couple of thoseturnarounds you mentioned in the
book, the lady with Parkinson's, theformer athlete who developed pots.
Let's tell our audience about that.
'cause this will set the tone.
Sure.
And in fact the lady with Parkinson's isa great story 'cause I have a, a follow
(03:21):
up, which is I think very enlightening.
And it speaks to what, for somepeople it's so difficult to achieve
a balanced homeostatic inner terrain.
One of our famous or infamous politicians,Hillary Clinton once wrote a book called,
(03:46):
it Takes a Village, and it really takesa village of this incredible tropical
rainforest that should exist in ourgut that if we can get a balanced
tropical rainforest, the terrain aswas described in the past or wars of
(04:12):
anyhow then we can fix a lot of things.
So this is a woman she's actuallya physician, 62 years old who.
An athlete.
She was a marathon runner and shedeveloped Parkinson's fairly severe
about five years before I met her.
And she was from Northern Californiaand she came to my office in
(04:37):
Southern California and herhusband did most of the talking.
She she had a blank face, the mask ofParkinson's, and she had pretty impressive
tremors even on two medications.
And we, as part of our workup for mostof our patients, we look at autoimmune
markers and also leaky gut markers.
(04:59):
And for a lot of our patients now, welook at their microbiome and who's in
there, what are they producing, whatneurotransmitters they're producing.
Anyway, so this lady had.
Wide open leaky gut.
She was sensitive to the componentsof wheat, rye, barley, gluten she was
(05:25):
sensitive to a number of other thingseggs and some portions of dairy.
Anyhow, so, and she had very impressivemarkers of inflammation and very
impressive markers of neuroinflammation,particularly some of the neurons
that involved with Parkinson's.
So we, we put her on my program, kindof a, basically it's a yes and no list.
(05:48):
You know, eat this stuff,don't eat that stuff.
And sent her away.
My, my pa talked to her on the phone sixmonths in, and she was getting better.
And so her next appointment was in personwith me a year after I first saw her.
And I walked into the room andI actually didn't recognize her.
(06:11):
Here's a woman who's smiling, hasan expression on her face, doesn't
have a tremor, and her husbandjumps up and he comes over and
he gives me this big bear out.
And he pushes me away andlooks me right in the eye.
And he says, thank you forgiving me my wife back.
This is the girl I married.
(06:32):
She's back running.
She's faster than me, you know?
And then all three of usare hugging and crying.
And, and, and when we look at her labs,she doesn't have leaky gut anymore.
She doesn't have thesemarkers of inflammation.
And like about 94% of peopleafter a year, she doesn't have any
(06:52):
antibodies to the various formsof, for instance, gluten of wheat.
And we can measure these in blood.
And I said.
Well, no wonder, you know, thisis, it's all turned around.
You stop attacking your brain.
You don't, you haven't, you haven'tactivated your immune system that
(07:12):
all these bad guys are coming throughthe wall of the gut and they're
heading to your brain and yourbrain's trying to protect itself.
And this is great and, youknow, wonderful to hear.
So and that's who Iwrote about in the book.
Fast forward to this February.
I saw her for her second year followup and she's still looking pretty
(07:38):
doggone good smile on her face.
Really?
No tremor.
I said, you know, and, and I had seenher labs and I said, how's it going?
She said, you know, pretty good, but Igotta tell you, I think I'm slipping.
And I said, well, how do you say that?
She said, it's just a feeling.
It's just a feeling.
There's something not right.
(08:00):
And I said, it's funny you shouldmention that because you now have,
you know, this subtle leaky gut andson of a gun, you now have several
antibodies to the components of wheat.
And I said, I, I would findit hard to believe that you're
cheating, you know, after.
(08:21):
All of this.
She said, oh geez, no.
And I said, well, somehowit's getting in you.
I said, do you go out to eat much?
And they said, no, we really don't.
It's not worth it, you knowit's just not worth it.
And, you know, and we're goingkind of through the list and I
said, and nothing else has changed.
And her husband says, well six monthsago, our 32-year-old son, after what?
(08:47):
He witnessed with his mother moved backin the house and he's going to nursing
school 'cause he wants to be a nurse.
And I said, well, you know, that's great.
And I said, he said he's just sittingthere going could, if he doesn't follow
what we eat, and he's slicing breadon a cutting board that we then use.
(09:15):
Could that be the culprit?
And I said, you know, if you hadasked me this 25 years ago, I
would've laughed you out of the room.
That can't write a couplemolecules of gluten.
But you know, having seen all this inwhat I call my canaries, who were these
really sensitive individuals, I said.
(09:36):
Oh my gosh.
You know, I'll bet you anything.
That's it.
And, and that, that was it.
It, the sun moved back in, hadn'tbeen following, didn't wanna follow.
And so she's being contaminated withsmall amounts of gluten and for her,
that was the trigger that started it.
(09:57):
So fascinating.
Follow up.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And the stories, I just wannatell our audience, the stories
of turnarounds are remarkable.
But Steven's under time pressure.
So I want to actually get as muchinformation to you to influence you
to firstly buy the book or find out,subscribe to this podcast and learn
about this because it makes absolutesense when you read it this way.
(10:20):
But as I started off, sometimes peopledon't believe that, and then years
later we turn around and we go, ohmy God, we were idiots , for decades.
We were idiots.
Just like Semmelweis.
One of the things you said atthe start, which was remarkable.
Was that we know this, we all say peopleact weird around full moons when their
circadian rhythms change, et cetera.
(10:41):
But you discovered something remarkablehere that I'd love you to share.
Yeah.
As as, as part of my training, Iused to moonlight as an emergency
room physician to make money.
And we literally.
Kid you not double staffed onfull moon nights because we.
(11:08):
We just knew.
I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't folk tale.
We knew that the crazies were gonnabe coming out and, you know, flocking
to the emergency room and all thismental illness would show up and
all this craziness would show up.
And we double staffed.
And we've, we've known that the moon,the lunar cycles, the gravitational
(11:28):
pull certainly influences thetides influences we've known.
It influences our behavior, but we hadno idea that this moon gravitational
influence affects the circadianrhythm of our microbiome, and it was
actually the change in the microbiomethat was actually having that effect.
(11:51):
Now most people know about jet lag and.
I and others are absolutely convincedthat jet lag is primarily caused
by the change in the circadianrhythm of your microbiome.
That gets literally, you know, changedoff by three or eight or 10 hours, and
so, I don't get jet lag anymore becauseI, I dose with a whole bunch of probiotics
(12:18):
and prebiotics and polyphenols, andso I reset my gut circadian rhythm and
my, neither my wife and I have any gellag and we travel barely, constantly.
It's incredible.
Incredible.
Yeah.
I thought we'd share avery important distinction.
So how the hell did we get here isthe question, and this all I I, we
(12:39):
often talk about this on this show,show, Stephen, that we're left with
the hierarchical system of war orreligion that we run organizations
with or strategy that was made for
a time of peace where you had acompetitive advantage for a very long
time and all of a sudden it changesand we still cling to the old models.
(12:59):
One of those models we've clung to wasbecause the winner of a battle between
Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp,and we're left with Pasteur's legacy.
But we've recently realized that Bechamp,was actually the one that was correct.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And I, I've read, I think allthe books about both of them.
(13:21):
And they were, they were contemporariesin France, and, and people should realize
that both of them were actually chemists.
Pastore was a chemist.
He wasn't a physician.
And there was a, a competing argumentabout fermentation, about where literally.
(13:42):
How could something, you know,become teeming with life if you
just left it out in the open?
And so they both realized that therewere these organisms that were causing
fermentation, and there's arguments asto which one discovered fermentation,
but it's not really important.
(14:03):
And Boham really believed that there was.
There was nothing evil or badabout these microorganisms.
As long as the balance between bad guysand good guys was, was stable and he
called it the TIR or terrain As we talkabout it that things were just fine.
(14:29):
And as long as there was thisgood balance, maybe some guy
would get out of hand, but.
Because there was a really good balance.
You could kind of overcome that good guy,but if things got out of balance, then
a bad guy could, you know, take control.
But so the, the idea was as long as theterrain was stable, that that was the key.
(14:56):
Now Pastore felt that bacteria wereevil and that all bacteria were bad.
Now.
Why?
Because the French wine industryobviously relies on yeast to
ferment grapes and so does beer.
(15:16):
So wine would go bad and basicallyturn into vinegar, and it was paste
who discovered that it was bacterialcontamination that caused that to happen.
Now.
He made, he was a much better publicspeaker than Boham, and he made the
(15:37):
case to the King of France that itwas bacteria that was the cause of
the French wine industry going bad.
And so, needless to say he was elevatedto, you know, and the, the germ theory
of, causation of disease became paramount.
(15:59):
But there's, there's two books thatactually independently say that on
Past's deathbed, he called eitherBouch Shopper is a colleague to his
bedside and said, you were right.
It's the tir, it's the terrain.
And I like to thinkthat that story is true.
(16:20):
But that actually sets.
Us on our course of the disease theory.
And I think he was wrong and a lot ofpeople in bookshop thought he was wrong.
But a good public speaker usuallywins out, particularly if you
save the French wine industry.
The victors write, the history.
And, and one of the things that,that you talk about here is that you
(16:44):
mentioned, for example, the terror,the territory or the terrain, and.
That is really the microbiome, butthe brain has its own microbiome,
which I thought was fascinatingand I, I'd love you to share that.
there's still a debate about this,but with the Human Microbiome Project
was finally completed in 2017, andwe developed the ability to recognize
(17:09):
bacteria by their own DNA in their RNA.
And so, rather than tryingto culture bacteria.
Or even look for them under a microscope,you could actually look for their
DNA or their RNA signature, and eachbacteria has its own signature, just
(17:32):
like our genes . And so when theystarted looking for these bacterial
signatures, lo and behold structuresthat we assumed were sterile, that.
I was taught with sterile, like forinstance, the placenta was teaming with
a microbiome, that there is some evidencethat fetuses have their own microbiome.
(17:58):
And the same way we now know thatpeople with leaky gut have a much
more rich bacterial population intheir brain than people who don't.
Now, there again, there's.
There's arguments.
I, I go to meetings and there are,there's actually an Irish physician who's
(18:19):
convinced that this is all contamination,but what are those things doing there?
And I think it's much more plausible thatwe've just not been able to recognize
that we are this incredibly complexsymbiotic organism, and it shouldn't
surprise us that we're, you know, a,
(18:44):
chimeric organism that consists of,, bacteria and viruses and fungi, and as
long as everybody knows their place,as long as there's that balance, things
work well, you disturb that balance andall hell breaks loose as we've learned.
We'll come to Leaky Gut andwe'll come to dysbiosis these key
(19:06):
terms , that Steven alluded to.
But let's share a little bit moreabout the intelligence of bacteria.
We mentioned circadian rhythm,but also there's quorum sensing
and then how they communicate.
And then we'll get into actuallyhow they can hijack our appetites
and convince us to eat certain foodsthat they want nothing to do with us.
(19:26):
Yeah, first of all, we have torealize that bacteria have been
around for 3 billion years.
As far as we can tell, they'reclearly the most successful organism.
We think cockroaches are, but I mean,bacteria make them look nothing.
And they figured out.
It turns out these are, andpeople need to get over this.
(19:49):
These are sentient beings, andnow they don't have a brain.
They don't think like they deal, butthey can clearly sense their environment.
They can see who thebacteria is next to them.
They can.
Sense what's called quorum sensing.
They can sense when enough of theirkind is available to literally
(20:14):
make a move to do something.
And cholera actually wasthe first example of that.
Cholera weights for enoughcholera bacteria to make their
move to literally cause leakygut and they can actually read.
What we call the barcode on thecell membrane the cell wall of a
(20:37):
bacteria of who this person is.
Person, sorry bad word.
Who this creature is.
And one of the startling thingsabout this was, for instance, in,
in probiotics frieKyndryly bacteria,we've always thought that you needed.
Living probiotics to make a difference.
(21:00):
And companies spend a lotof money convincing us that
there's a hundred billion livingprobiotic strains in your yogurt.
Well, most, most of those guys are dead.
And like I talk about in thebook, dead Men Tell No Tales,
but dead bacteria do tell tales.
And this was brought out withone of the keystone species
(21:23):
in the gut called Akkermansia.
And there's a company that developeda way of making living human strain,
Akkermansia , and it took a 10year effort and good for them.
It's called pendulum.
I have no relationship.
But anyhow, there was another companythat actually took dead Akkermansia and
(21:45):
fed it to animals and fed it to humans.
And lo and behold, it workedalmost exactly the same.
In fact, some.
Times it worked actually better.
And you go, wait a minute.
What the heck?
You know, it's not growing.
Well, now we know that bacteria, livingbacteria can read the barcode on this
(22:05):
dead bacteria and go, oh my gosh.
You know, Akkermansia is in the house.
Whoa, let's welcome 'em now, you know.
Now let's party.
And so these dead bacteria are partof what we now call postbiotics.
So there's probiotics friendly bacteria.
They're prebiotics, which iswhat frieKyndryly bacteria want
(22:26):
to eat, but then they producepostbiotics from fermentation.
And it turns out that the postbiotics.
Era, and I was one of the firstto write about this in my book.
The energy paradox was really howwe learned the communication system
(22:47):
between the bacterial kingdom.
And in our kingdom, and it's nowcalled the Trans Kingdom communication.
And who would've even imagined now?
I always give a shout out to a professorin Paris Marvin Edeas, who really was one
(23:08):
of the fathers , of microbiota research,and I still do and have learned from him.
And years ago, really, beforethe Human Microbiome Project, he.
Always taught me.
He says, bacteria are talkingto us all the time, and they're
talking to their sisters, themitochondria, they're talking to them.
(23:29):
I go, yeah, right, sure.
You know, what's the language?
Why, you know, why haven'twe discovered the language?
He said, well, you know, we're notsmart enough yet, but you just watch.
We'll discover the language.
And the first language wasthese postbiotics, which were
gases like hydrogen gas, likehydrogen sulfide, like methane.
(23:49):
And we learned that these gases or howbacteria talk to our mitochondria, talk
to our neurons, and then kind of fastforward believe it or not, there is
a society of extracellular vesicles.
I mean, you talk about minutia and I hadthe pleasure of attending this past year.
(24:12):
What the heck are extracellular vesicles?
A lot of people call them exosomes.
And for those who don't know whena little text message, a little
bubble appears on your phone, youknow you, there's a text message.
Well, text message carriesinformation and it often has a link
(24:33):
and it says, click on this linkand I'll open up this information.
So we now know that bacteriaand even plants make.
Bubbles of information that arepieces of cell membrane that
(24:54):
contain, get ready for this living.
Mitochondria instructions, DNAinstructions, RNA, instructions,
and they pop these things.
And they're not antigenic.
And they can go through the cell wall.
They can go through the wall of thegut, they can go through the blood-brain
barrier, and they'll attach to a targetcell and release that information
(25:21):
and go to the nucleus and epigenegenetically change the expression of
our genome . A plant or a bacteria.
And so now we know that holy cow,this communication system is the
most sophisticated internet thatwe, we could possibly imagine.
(25:46):
And to me, I just sit backand Marvel at number one.
How dumb we've been.
But, but number two,I'll give you an example.
You quiet as a mouse, we learn, wethought for years that mice couldn't talk.
Of course they talk, we, it's inthe ultrasonic seat frequency,
(26:06):
so we never were able to hear it.
But when they played at slow speed,they have an incredible vocabulary
and you know, and we now knowwhales talk to each other and, and.
I think one of the greatest thingsis the, the language of elephants
with each elephant has its name.
(26:26):
And if you ever watch thesevideos, they're just hilarious.
So they'll, they'll know a certainelephant's name and they'll play
this elephant noise and you know,they, the elephant will turn around
you, eh, what, what do you want?
And it's like, so it's like, ofcourse this was there, like Marvin
said, but now we're able to.
(26:47):
You know, eavesdrop on the conversations.
I, I think this is just the, the,the challenge for work you're doing.
So pioneering work is never reallyunderstood in its current paradigm.
And then years later you lookback and you, and you rarely get
the credit by the way as well.
So I, I wanted to make sure therewas a record of this as well for you,
(27:08):
but I, I mentioned leaky gut and it'sreally important to understand this.
And I just pulled a little segmentfrom the book here to tee you up.
Because you wrote that a singlelayer of cells is all that
stands between us and everything.
We swallow the same.
Design flaw is repeated inour friend see elegance.
We've mentioned that on this show before.
A single layer of cells is all that standsbetween us and everything we swallow.
(27:33):
That same design flaw is repeatedin this worm sea elegance.
It's kind of a worm.
I'd love you to expand onthis because as the worm ages,
the gut wall becomes porous.
And bacteria are able toleak out of the intestine.
And this is what we call leaky gut.
Yeah.
One of the things in, in agingresearch, so there's this cute little
(27:56):
translucent worm that only lives aboutthree weeks and almost everything
that's been studying in anti-aging,whatever that means in lifespan
extension or health span extensionthat has been observed and see elegant.
Is observed in higher life forms,whether it's rats or mice, Reeses
(28:19):
monkeys, you can repeat it.
So it's become a really good modelfor testing almost every idea.
Calorie restriction, forinstance, polyphenols like
resveratrol, for instance.
So the cool thing about sea Elegans is ithas a gut and it has its own microbiome,
and it's a little tiny gut and.
(28:42):
Interestingly enough, that wall ofthat little tiny gut is only one
cell thick, and our wall of ourgut is only one cell thick Now.
The, the lengths of our intestinesand all the VII and microvilli,
the surface area of our intestinesis at least a tennis court.
(29:06):
Several of my colleagues in the UK areconvinced it's at least two tennis courts.
I once thought it was a footballfield, but so it's big and
it's all just one cell thick.
And these cells we, we have a game.
It's a universal game.
Most cultures have it where youhave two rows of kids and they
(29:29):
lock arms and somebody comesrunning over, we call it Red Rover.
And in the states Australia has anothername for it, but everybody's got the game.
And if they break through thearm, you capture somebody.
And anyhow, so these cells.
Our locked arm in arm with whatare called tight junctions.
(29:49):
And, and this was discoveredby a brilliant researcher who's
originally from Italy AlessioFasano, who's now at Harvard.
And these, so these guys kindahold this wall in attack.
Now, what's good news, bad news isright behind this wall, 80, literally
(30:12):
80% of all of our white blood cells.
Stand guard because if somethinggets through, they want to be
able to attack it, recognize itas foreign, and you know, mop up.
And let's not kidourselves on a daily basis.
(30:32):
Foods that we eat, bacteria canpenetrate this wall, but if this
wall is intact, and quite frankly,if we have a really good microbiome.
They can actually defend against mostof the horrible things we swallow.
They'll be happy to take on thechallenge and they, they're not around
(30:55):
anymore, but that's another story.
So when this happens, when thingscome through, then our immune system,
number one, gets activated, goes towar, but it also sends messages that.
Up to our brain, for instance, toour other organs that, oh my gosh,
(31:17):
we can't hold the line down here.
The hoards are coming across the wall.
We're doing our best.
We don't have enough troops andthey're gonna, they're getting past us.
Defend yourselves.
Get get ready because they're coming.
We can't hold the line.
So what does this haveto do with sea elegance?
(31:38):
As the wall of the gut of seaelegance starts to break down,
sea elegance starts to age.
It starts to slow down.
It starts to be less interested in food.
And as that wall breaksand breaks, the worm dies.
What's exciting to me.
(32:00):
Is as long as that wall is intact, thatlittle guy does not age and does not die.
And all you gotta do is look at C Elganand say, gee, Hippocrates is right.
All disease begins in the gut.
And what we should have saidthat Alessio Fasano said, is all
(32:23):
disease begins in a leaky gut.
And he stole that line from me froma Paris conference, but that's okay.
He's a great guy
. And you gave him a shout out as well, but you tell us also in the book
there's four things particularlythat is leaking through.
I'd love you to share these becausethey'll help us then understand what we
need to prevent against in the future.
(32:44):
Yeah.
So.
One of the things that I gotfascinated with when I got into this
was plants in general don't like us.
They in general don't want to eat usto eat them, and they particularly
don't want us to eat their babies.
Now, there are exceptions but they, theirdefense mechanism, they can't run, they
(33:10):
can't hide, they can't fight, but they're.
Chemists of incredible ability, theycan turn sunlight into matter and we
haven't figured out how to do that.
And so they use biologicalchemical warfare.
So they use proteins that are calledlectins that like to bind onto the
(33:30):
sugar molecules on the wall of our gut.
And this was the brilliantwork of Alessio Fno.
And when lectins like gluten, gluten is alectin bind, they can actually break that.
Locked arm, a tight juncture.
And then you literally have a pathfor these guys to get through.
(33:50):
And these are foreign proteins.
And when they get through, ourimmune system says, what the heck?
You know this guy's, thispassport is not valid.
He's on the no fly list andyou know, he's a terrorist and
you know, I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna arrest him and I'm gonnamake sure that everybody else knows.
You know, he, he's around.
(34:11):
So, so that's one thing.
And lectins is became part of my research.
There's other nasty things like oxalates.
There's, so these, these are all defensemechanisms and they're pretty good.
But long ago there was a balance of power.
(34:31):
We had tremendous defenseagainst their defense mechanisms.
We had this incredible bunchof bacteria that go, ha.
A lectin.
I love lectins.
I have lectins for breakfast.
I mean, there are bacteria thatlove to eat gluten, for instance.
They're mostly gone.
People who are sensitive areoxalates or get oxalate stones.
(34:55):
Believe it or not, we haveoxalate eating bacteria.
We should have, most of thepeople who get these stones don't
have those species of bacteria.
So our, our defense system has beendecimated and I've spent books talking
about that, and we won't do that today.
So that's really one of these guys.
Number two and part of this iswe've, antibiotics are in our food.
(35:21):
They're in Roundup.
Roundup was patentedas a, as an antibiotic.
It wasn't patented as a weed killer.
Yeah, glyphosate waspatented as an antibiotic.
Anyhow, so the other thing that'shappened to us is that, for instance
(35:42):
NSAIDs and as a rugby player, youlived on one form or another of NSAIDs,
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.
These were developed in the mid1970s and they were so dangerous.
Yeah, because they caused leaky gut inthe small intestine that they were only
allowed by prescription and they wereonly allowed to be prescribed for two
(36:07):
weeks because they were so dangerous.
And I've written about how theycaused leaky gut, but now of course
they're the most widespread drug overthe counter, really in the world.
And athletes.
I got very interested in autoimmunedisease in athletes because so many of
them, it was actually because of theirNSAID use that had contributed to their
(36:33):
leaky gut 'cause of an injury or just,you know, chronic injury like in rugby.
How you guys do that is beyondmy comprehension, but anyhow,
pay a price today, Steven.
That's for sure.
You know, an interesting onejust to say to you is that some
of the, some of the players gotthings like Lou Gehrig's disease.
And the, there's a theory that it wasfrom being on the grass, all that I'm out
(36:56):
in the pitches that were being sprayedwith pesticides and that's how they, that
combined with the NSAIDs then was toxic.
Oh yeah.
It's it's sad.
I see.
Sadly, so many Parkinson'sand dementia patients.
And a LS patients who eitherare big time golfers or live on
(37:17):
golf courses, and we can now doenvironmental toxin tests in people.
And it is just frightening.
My patients who are either golfers orlive on a golf course looking at the
organ, pesticides in their blood, it'sjust, you're right, it's just scary.
(37:40):
So the other thing that'sfascinating is we have
essentially two typesof bacteria in our gut.
They're gram negative bacteriaand gram positive bacteria, and.
It was learned a number of years ago thatgram certain gram-negative bacteria on
their cell wall have a very identifiablefeature that's called lipopolysaccharides.
(38:08):
And these are sugar and fat moleculesthat are very distinguishable.
It literally is, is a molecularbarcode about who these guys are, and
our immune system is trained to hate.
The site of these lipopolysaccharidesbecause it basically means that
bacteria, living bacteria have gotteninto your bloodstream septic shock.
(38:33):
Our problem is our immune system readsthe barcode of the wall of the bacteria
to figure out who it is, and the immunesystem can't tell the difference between
a living bacteria and a dead bacteria.
It thinks it's the same.
So this was proven in humans.
We can take dead lipopolysaccharideand inject them into you or me, and
(38:59):
within minutes we'll be in septic shock.
Our blood pressure willfall basically to zero.
We'll become tachycardic,we'll faint, and.
Unless we're revived, it's literallylike we died from an overwhelming
bacterial infection, even thoughthere were no living bacteria.
And the reason I mention it theIceman, VIM Hoff, who I've had on my
(39:19):
podcast became infamous among otherthings because he, using his breathing
techniques could be injected withlipopolysaccharides, which we call
LPSs and just sit there and laugh.
His heart rate didn't change, his bloodpressure didn't change, and he proved
in an experiment that he could train20 people with his techniques of breath
(39:45):
modulation and ice baths to also withstandthis so, so LPSs lipopolysaccharides,
I call in the plant Paradox.
Little pieces of shit because.
That's what they are.
And so we do not like them.
(40:06):
And when they get into us, either throughleaky gut or riding, hitching a ride
on fat molecules called Chylomicrons,our immune system says, oh my gosh.
You know, we're beinginvaded with living bacteria.
And so they.
(40:26):
Send out the warning that, oh mygosh, there's bacteria coming for us.
There's lots of 'em, andthey're really bad guys.
And so L ps LPS is, andwe can measure these guys.
We can measure how many of them are,whether we have antibodies to them.
And one of the things that justblew my mind away that I write about
(40:47):
in the book, so these are evil.
We hate 'em.
What's interesting isthat the soil has tons of.
Lip bulb, polysaccharide, bacteria loadedwith them, and roots are coated with
these LPSs and yet eating root vegetables.
(41:11):
It is really good for youfor, for a lot of reasons.
And I went, well wait a minute, wouldn'twe just the minute these LPSs, you know,
go into our mouth, wouldn't we justgo, oh my gosh, you know, they're here.
They're here, they're coming.
Well, there's some really cool,elegant animal experiments is that
if you introduce LPSs orally, theyactually train the immune system that.
(41:35):
These guys aren't so bad.
And I used to have allergy shotsas a kid, and the same thing.
We start with really finedoses and then you train.
Is it nuts?
Not allergy?
No.
It was actually hay fever.
Okay.
Ragweed, bowel, and yeah.
And grasses.
I mean, it was water and there, there's a
huge uptick in, in those caseswith children these days.
(41:59):
Huge because our immune systemthis is actually a good segue.
So when I was growing up
nobody had peanut allergies.
Kids brought peanut butter andjelly sandwiches to school.
Peanuts were passed out on airplanes.
Nobody had peanut allergies, eventhough 95% of human beings or born
(42:22):
with an antibody, an IgE antibodyto the peanut lectin, born with it.
It's an innate, and yetnobody had peanut allergies.
So, and now of course if a little kidopens a package of peanuts in, grade
school, four kids are getting out theirEpiPens and it's like, what the heck?
(42:46):
Well, and this gets, so if you've got thisgreat terrain, the terrain teaches the
immune system that, number one, whatever'scoming down the pike, we got your back.
And you guys just relax.
(43:07):
I lived in London for a yearand in the eighties and back in
those days, Bobby's had no guns.
They just had a night stick.
And now, and you know,'cause they didn't need 'em.
Now of course you walk in Londonor Paris or any big city and the
(43:28):
police have Kevlar vests and AK47sand their fingers on the trigger.
We were in Paris recently and Ipointed out to my wife, I said.
Watch where their fingers are.
And she said, what are you talking about?
I said, watch, it's on the trigger.
And she's, and she goes,geez, you're right.
(43:50):
So why?
Because now what's happened iswe no longer have a microbiome
that says, Hey, we got your back.
You know, go, go get your nightstick andwe may need you for a little civil unrest.
But that's about it.
But now we don't have thismicrobiome to defend us and.
(44:10):
The wall of the gut isconstantly being penetrated.
And so now our immune system, it is gotKevlar best two AK 47s, their fingers
on the trigger and any little, you know,disturbance and we'll ask questions later.
So this innocent little peanut lectin,which army immune system was taught, yeah,
(44:35):
you know, you don't like it, but don't,you know, don't get all worried about it.
Now that peanut lectin shows upand the immune system is Of course.
Oh my gosh.
And that's what's happened to us.
And that's why all theseallergies are just rampant.
All this asthma is rampant.
'cause our immune system is just 24 hoursa day on guard because the terrorists
(44:59):
are breaching our wall constantly.
Both my kids, Steven have.
nut allergies and certain nuts.
And then incredibly birch tree.
I dunno if you've heard that one.
Yeah.
I grew up around birch trees as a kid.
I grew up there.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, there's, and we see this, oneof the things that's been shocking to
(45:22):
me, we now can do food sensitivity tests.
We used to do food allergy tests, which.
Weren't very useful, but food sensitivitytests we can measure with IgG antibodies,
which it means things literally havegotten through to us and recognized
this forum and these seemingly harmlesscompounds like you wouldn't believe the
(45:45):
number of patients who have GG antibodiesto lemons or ginger or cinnamon.
And it's all because, of thisleaky gut and they're in our food
or they're in our air and yeah.
Steven, as just kindly off air, we agreedhe's gonna come back for part two 'cause
(46:05):
we kind of just gave you all the bad news.
But there's a brilliant metaphor andyou've heard how simply he puts this
often technical information, whichwe love here on the show, Steven.
But you tell us.
Firstly, we've a badly trainedmilitia, which is the gut, which is
why there's fingers on the triggerand it's shooting everywhere.
It doesn't even have any target practice.
(46:26):
But the other thing is brilliant metaphor,and we've all struggled from this.
You're on YouTube, youclick on a type of video.
Maybe it's a conspiracy theory.
Next thing, you're being inundatedwith conspiracy theories, and
this talks to the very reason why.
If you train your gut overit while for eat, say, sugary
food, you'll want more of it.
(46:46):
I'd love you to share thisas a parting metaphor.
Yeah, it's, it's really true.
And I go into this with my wife testingthe internet of looking at wants.
And it's true.
The internet learns and it sends youinformation that you think you want, and
the more you click, the more you get.
Well, bacteria actually control.
(47:09):
Us get over it and theycontrol what they want to eat.
And bad bacteria as a general rule, likes,loves simple sugars and they actually like
saturated fats and they can actually outcompete the good guys for those sugars.
'cause the good guys actuallycan't use those simple sugars.
(47:30):
And so they literally send thesemessages to your brain that, oh,
you know, that's what I want.
And I, the more of theseguys grow, the more.
This information goes to your brainand you, you know, you become addicted
to the foods that these guys want.
(47:51):
And I go in even deeper than that.
And most addictions which is goodnews, is driven by your gut microbiome
looking for things they want.
And that's the good news.
Steven, unfortunately.
Well.
Fortunately for his patients, he'sgonna go and attend to those patients.
Steven, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Where can people findyou to find out more?
(48:13):
I'll put links to the booksand indeed, your podcast.
But where's the best place?
So dr gundry.com.
My website, gundry md.com ismy supplement in food company.
My YouTube channel just nowcrossed a million subscribers,
so very excited about that.
Congratulations, man.
And yeah, and the Dr. Gundry podcast,wherever you get your podcast.
(48:36):
So brilliant.
I
will, I will share all thoseAuthor of the Gut Brain Paradox.
Dr. Steven Gundry, thankyou for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed the gut brain paradox.
I want to thank our sponsor Kyndryl,who run and reimagine the technology
systems that drive advantage forthe world's leading businesses.
(48:58):
A unique blend of AI poweredconsulting built on unmatched
managed service capability.
Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power oftechnology for smarter decisions, faster
innovation and lasting competitive edge.
You can find Kyndryl at www.Kyndryl.com.
Before we start into today'sepisode, I want to tell you
about our sponsor Kyndryl.
Kyndryl runs and reimagines the technologysystems that drive advantage for the
world's leading businesses with a hugeblend of AI powered consulting built on
unmatched managed services capability.
Kyndryl helps leaders harness thepower of technology for smarter
(00:20):
decisions, faster innovation,and a lasting competitive edge.
You can find our friends
. I'm gonna start today's episode with thededications from the book because they
speak to the very heart of this show.
Hippocrates first famously said,all diseases begin in the gut.
(00:43):
and then a hero of this show, IgnazSemmelweis, who died for questioning
his medical school professors atthe Vienna General Hospital as to
the real cause of child bed fever.
Prior to the discovery of bacteria,he correctly identified the cause as a
lack of hand sterilizing, doctors notwashing their hands after touching dead
(01:06):
bodies beforehand, but his practicewas soundly repudiated by his peers.
For his insights, he was declared aquack deported to Budapest and placed in
an asylum where he was beaten to death.
15 years later with the discovery ofbacteria, his insights were proven and his
place as the father of Antisepsis heraldedaround the world, may he rest in peace.
(01:32):
Why am I talking about that?
People may wonder what today's bookhas to do with innovation, but what is
so important on this show is learningand if you can learn effectively if
you have the right terrain, that's animportant word we're gonna talk about.
The terrain is the environment, or evenmore correctly, the ecosystem in your gut.
We need that in a state of homeostasis inorder to learn effectively for synaptic
(01:56):
plasticity, to influence neurogenesis,and ultimately to lead a happier life.
Today's book is written by achange maker, which is why I
opened with those brilliant quotes.
Pioneers take the arrows, and it isa pleasure to welcome a man who's
taken many arrows and is a pioneer, aprolific author who has a great podcast
(02:16):
himself, and is the author of hisbrand new book, the Gut-Brain Paradox.
Stephen Gundry, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me.
Thanks for all those nice words.
You know one of the great Americanhumorous Mark Twain was introduced with.
Glowing words at a meeting, and he said,you know, I, I thank you for all those
(02:37):
nice words, but I don't deserve them.
I also have arthritis and I don'tdeserve that either, so I'll take it.
Nice, man.
You haven't heard that as a resortfor an intro on this show before.
It's great to have you on the show, man.
I, and I know you're under time pressurebecause you're still practicing.
You still see miracles.
(02:57):
What you would, what youused to think were miracles.
Yeah.
In your practice all the time.
Now you see what the turnarounds are.
Let's start with a couple of thoseturnarounds you mentioned in the
book, the lady with Parkinson's, theformer athlete who developed pots.
Let's tell our audience about that.
'cause this will set the tone.
Sure.
And in fact the lady with Parkinson's isa great story 'cause I have a, a follow
(03:21):
up, which is I think very enlightening.
And it speaks to what, for somepeople it's so difficult to achieve
a balanced homeostatic inner terrain.
One of our famous or infamous politicians,Hillary Clinton once wrote a book called,
(03:46):
it Takes a Village, and it really takesa village of this incredible tropical
rainforest that should exist in ourgut that if we can get a balanced
tropical rainforest, the terrain aswas described in the past or wars of
(04:12):
anyhow then we can fix a lot of things.
So this is a woman she's actuallya physician, 62 years old who.
An athlete.
She was a marathon runner and shedeveloped Parkinson's fairly severe
about five years before I met her.
And she was from Northern Californiaand she came to my office in
(04:37):
Southern California and herhusband did most of the talking.
She she had a blank face, the mask ofParkinson's, and she had pretty impressive
tremors even on two medications.
And we, as part of our workup for mostof our patients, we look at autoimmune
markers and also leaky gut markers.
(04:59):
And for a lot of our patients now, welook at their microbiome and who's in
there, what are they producing, whatneurotransmitters they're producing.
Anyway, so this lady had.
Wide open leaky gut.
She was sensitive to the componentsof wheat, rye, barley, gluten she was
(05:25):
sensitive to a number of other thingseggs and some portions of dairy.
Anyhow, so, and she had very impressivemarkers of inflammation and very
impressive markers of neuroinflammation,particularly some of the neurons
that involved with Parkinson's.
So we, we put her on my program, kindof a, basically it's a yes and no list.
(05:48):
You know, eat this stuff,don't eat that stuff.
And sent her away.
My, my pa talked to her on the phone sixmonths in, and she was getting better.
And so her next appointment was in personwith me a year after I first saw her.
And I walked into the room andI actually didn't recognize her.
(06:11):
Here's a woman who's smiling, hasan expression on her face, doesn't
have a tremor, and her husbandjumps up and he comes over and
he gives me this big bear out.
And he pushes me away andlooks me right in the eye.
And he says, thank you forgiving me my wife back.
This is the girl I married.
(06:32):
She's back running.
She's faster than me, you know?
And then all three of usare hugging and crying.
And, and, and when we look at her labs,she doesn't have leaky gut anymore.
She doesn't have thesemarkers of inflammation.
And like about 94% of peopleafter a year, she doesn't have any
(06:52):
antibodies to the various formsof, for instance, gluten of wheat.
And we can measure these in blood.
And I said.
Well, no wonder, you know, thisis, it's all turned around.
You stop attacking your brain.
You don't, you haven't, you haven'tactivated your immune system that
(07:12):
all these bad guys are coming throughthe wall of the gut and they're
heading to your brain and yourbrain's trying to protect itself.
And this is great and, youknow, wonderful to hear.
So and that's who Iwrote about in the book.
Fast forward to this February.
I saw her for her second year followup and she's still looking pretty
(07:38):
doggone good smile on her face.
Really?
No tremor.
I said, you know, and, and I had seenher labs and I said, how's it going?
She said, you know, pretty good, but Igotta tell you, I think I'm slipping.
And I said, well, how do you say that?
She said, it's just a feeling.
It's just a feeling.
There's something not right.
(08:00):
And I said, it's funny you shouldmention that because you now have,
you know, this subtle leaky gut andson of a gun, you now have several
antibodies to the components of wheat.
And I said, I, I would findit hard to believe that you're
cheating, you know, after.
(08:21):
All of this.
She said, oh geez, no.
And I said, well, somehowit's getting in you.
I said, do you go out to eat much?
And they said, no, we really don't.
It's not worth it, you knowit's just not worth it.
And, you know, and we're goingkind of through the list and I
said, and nothing else has changed.
And her husband says, well six monthsago, our 32-year-old son, after what?
(08:47):
He witnessed with his mother moved backin the house and he's going to nursing
school 'cause he wants to be a nurse.
And I said, well, you know, that's great.
And I said, he said he's just sittingthere going could, if he doesn't follow
what we eat, and he's slicing breadon a cutting board that we then use.
(09:15):
Could that be the culprit?
And I said, you know, if you hadasked me this 25 years ago, I
would've laughed you out of the room.
That can't write a couplemolecules of gluten.
But you know, having seen all this inwhat I call my canaries, who were these
really sensitive individuals, I said.
(09:36):
Oh my gosh.
You know, I'll bet you anything.
That's it.
And, and that, that was it.
It, the sun moved back in, hadn'tbeen following, didn't wanna follow.
And so she's being contaminated withsmall amounts of gluten and for her,
that was the trigger that started it.
(09:57):
So fascinating.
Follow up.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And the stories, I just wannatell our audience, the stories
of turnarounds are remarkable.
But Steven's under time pressure.
So I want to actually get as muchinformation to you to influence you
to firstly buy the book or find out,subscribe to this podcast and learn
about this because it makes absolutesense when you read it this way.
(10:20):
But as I started off, sometimes peopledon't believe that, and then years
later we turn around and we go, ohmy God, we were idiots , for decades.
We were idiots.
Just like Semmelweis.
One of the things you said atthe start, which was remarkable.
Was that we know this, we all say peopleact weird around full moons when their
circadian rhythms change, et cetera.
(10:41):
But you discovered something remarkablehere that I'd love you to share.
Yeah.
As as, as part of my training, Iused to moonlight as an emergency
room physician to make money.
And we literally.
Kid you not double staffed onfull moon nights because we.
(11:08):
We just knew.
I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't folk tale.
We knew that the crazies were gonnabe coming out and, you know, flocking
to the emergency room and all thismental illness would show up and
all this craziness would show up.
And we double staffed.
And we've, we've known that the moon,the lunar cycles, the gravitational
(11:28):
pull certainly influences thetides influences we've known.
It influences our behavior, but we hadno idea that this moon gravitational
influence affects the circadianrhythm of our microbiome, and it was
actually the change in the microbiomethat was actually having that effect.
(11:51):
Now most people know about jet lag and.
I and others are absolutely convincedthat jet lag is primarily caused
by the change in the circadianrhythm of your microbiome.
That gets literally, you know, changedoff by three or eight or 10 hours, and
so, I don't get jet lag anymore becauseI, I dose with a whole bunch of probiotics
(12:18):
and prebiotics and polyphenols, andso I reset my gut circadian rhythm and
my, neither my wife and I have any gellag and we travel barely, constantly.
It's incredible.
Incredible.
Yeah.
I thought we'd share avery important distinction.
So how the hell did we get here isthe question, and this all I I, we
(12:39):
often talk about this on this show,show, Stephen, that we're left with
the hierarchical system of war orreligion that we run organizations
with or strategy that was made for
a time of peace where you had acompetitive advantage for a very long
time and all of a sudden it changesand we still cling to the old models.
(12:59):
One of those models we've clung to wasbecause the winner of a battle between
Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp,and we're left with Pasteur's legacy.
But we've recently realized that Bechamp,was actually the one that was correct.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And I, I've read, I think allthe books about both of them.
(13:21):
And they were, they were contemporariesin France, and, and people should realize
that both of them were actually chemists.
Pastore was a chemist.
He wasn't a physician.
And there was a, a competing argumentabout fermentation, about where literally.
(13:42):
How could something, you know,become teeming with life if you
just left it out in the open?
And so they both realized that therewere these organisms that were causing
fermentation, and there's arguments asto which one discovered fermentation,
but it's not really important.
(14:03):
And Boham really believed that there was.
There was nothing evil or badabout these microorganisms.
As long as the balance between bad guysand good guys was, was stable and he
called it the TIR or terrain As we talkabout it that things were just fine.
(14:29):
And as long as there was thisgood balance, maybe some guy
would get out of hand, but.
Because there was a really good balance.
You could kind of overcome that good guy,but if things got out of balance, then
a bad guy could, you know, take control.
But so the, the idea was as long as theterrain was stable, that that was the key.
(14:56):
Now Pastore felt that bacteria wereevil and that all bacteria were bad.
Now.
Why?
Because the French wine industryobviously relies on yeast to
ferment grapes and so does beer.
(15:16):
So wine would go bad and basicallyturn into vinegar, and it was paste
who discovered that it was bacterialcontamination that caused that to happen.
Now.
He made, he was a much better publicspeaker than Boham, and he made the
(15:37):
case to the King of France that itwas bacteria that was the cause of
the French wine industry going bad.
And so, needless to say he was elevatedto, you know, and the, the germ theory
of, causation of disease became paramount.
(15:59):
But there's, there's two books thatactually independently say that on
Past's deathbed, he called eitherBouch Shopper is a colleague to his
bedside and said, you were right.
It's the tir, it's the terrain.
And I like to thinkthat that story is true.
(16:20):
But that actually sets.
Us on our course of the disease theory.
And I think he was wrong and a lot ofpeople in bookshop thought he was wrong.
But a good public speaker usuallywins out, particularly if you
save the French wine industry.
The victors write, the history.
And, and one of the things that,that you talk about here is that you
(16:44):
mentioned, for example, the terror,the territory or the terrain, and.
That is really the microbiome, butthe brain has its own microbiome,
which I thought was fascinatingand I, I'd love you to share that.
there's still a debate about this,but with the Human Microbiome Project
was finally completed in 2017, andwe developed the ability to recognize
(17:09):
bacteria by their own DNA in their RNA.
And so, rather than tryingto culture bacteria.
Or even look for them under a microscope,you could actually look for their
DNA or their RNA signature, and eachbacteria has its own signature, just
(17:32):
like our genes . And so when theystarted looking for these bacterial
signatures, lo and behold structuresthat we assumed were sterile, that.
I was taught with sterile, like forinstance, the placenta was teaming with
a microbiome, that there is some evidencethat fetuses have their own microbiome.
(17:58):
And the same way we now know thatpeople with leaky gut have a much
more rich bacterial population intheir brain than people who don't.
Now, there again, there's.
There's arguments.
I, I go to meetings and there are,there's actually an Irish physician who's
(18:19):
convinced that this is all contamination,but what are those things doing there?
And I think it's much more plausible thatwe've just not been able to recognize
that we are this incredibly complexsymbiotic organism, and it shouldn't
surprise us that we're, you know, a,
(18:44):
chimeric organism that consists of,, bacteria and viruses and fungi, and as
long as everybody knows their place,as long as there's that balance, things
work well, you disturb that balance andall hell breaks loose as we've learned.
We'll come to Leaky Gut andwe'll come to dysbiosis these key
(19:06):
terms , that Steven alluded to.
But let's share a little bit moreabout the intelligence of bacteria.
We mentioned circadian rhythm,but also there's quorum sensing
and then how they communicate.
And then we'll get into actuallyhow they can hijack our appetites
and convince us to eat certain foodsthat they want nothing to do with us.
(19:26):
Yeah, first of all, we have torealize that bacteria have been
around for 3 billion years.
As far as we can tell, they'reclearly the most successful organism.
We think cockroaches are, but I mean,bacteria make them look nothing.
And they figured out.
It turns out these are, andpeople need to get over this.
(19:49):
These are sentient beings, andnow they don't have a brain.
They don't think like they deal, butthey can clearly sense their environment.
They can see who thebacteria is next to them.
They can.
Sense what's called quorum sensing.
They can sense when enough of theirkind is available to literally
(20:14):
make a move to do something.
And cholera actually wasthe first example of that.
Cholera weights for enoughcholera bacteria to make their
move to literally cause leakygut and they can actually read.
What we call the barcode on thecell membrane the cell wall of a
(20:37):
bacteria of who this person is.
Person, sorry bad word.
Who this creature is.
And one of the startling thingsabout this was, for instance, in,
in probiotics frieKyndryly bacteria,we've always thought that you needed.
Living probiotics to make a difference.
(21:00):
And companies spend a lotof money convincing us that
there's a hundred billion livingprobiotic strains in your yogurt.
Well, most, most of those guys are dead.
And like I talk about in thebook, dead Men Tell No Tales,
but dead bacteria do tell tales.
And this was brought out withone of the keystone species
(21:23):
in the gut called Akkermansia.
And there's a company that developeda way of making living human strain,
Akkermansia , and it took a 10year effort and good for them.
It's called pendulum.
I have no relationship.
But anyhow, there was another companythat actually took dead Akkermansia and
(21:45):
fed it to animals and fed it to humans.
And lo and behold, it workedalmost exactly the same.
In fact, some.
Times it worked actually better.
And you go, wait a minute.
What the heck?
You know, it's not growing.
Well, now we know that bacteria, livingbacteria can read the barcode on this
(22:05):
dead bacteria and go, oh my gosh.
You know, Akkermansia is in the house.
Whoa, let's welcome 'em now, you know.
Now let's party.
And so these dead bacteria are partof what we now call postbiotics.
So there's probiotics friendly bacteria.
They're prebiotics, which iswhat frieKyndryly bacteria want
(22:26):
to eat, but then they producepostbiotics from fermentation.
And it turns out that the postbiotics.
Era, and I was one of the firstto write about this in my book.
The energy paradox was really howwe learned the communication system
(22:47):
between the bacterial kingdom.
And in our kingdom, and it's nowcalled the Trans Kingdom communication.
And who would've even imagined now?
I always give a shout out to a professorin Paris Marvin Edeas, who really was one
(23:08):
of the fathers , of microbiota research,and I still do and have learned from him.
And years ago, really, beforethe Human Microbiome Project, he.
Always taught me.
He says, bacteria are talkingto us all the time, and they're
talking to their sisters, themitochondria, they're talking to them.
(23:29):
I go, yeah, right, sure.
You know, what's the language?
Why, you know, why haven'twe discovered the language?
He said, well, you know, we're notsmart enough yet, but you just watch.
We'll discover the language.
And the first language wasthese postbiotics, which were
gases like hydrogen gas, likehydrogen sulfide, like methane.
(23:49):
And we learned that these gases or howbacteria talk to our mitochondria, talk
to our neurons, and then kind of fastforward believe it or not, there is
a society of extracellular vesicles.
I mean, you talk about minutia and I hadthe pleasure of attending this past year.
(24:12):
What the heck are extracellular vesicles?
A lot of people call them exosomes.
And for those who don't know whena little text message, a little
bubble appears on your phone, youknow you, there's a text message.
Well, text message carriesinformation and it often has a link
(24:33):
and it says, click on this linkand I'll open up this information.
So we now know that bacteriaand even plants make.
Bubbles of information that arepieces of cell membrane that
(24:54):
contain, get ready for this living.
Mitochondria instructions, DNAinstructions, RNA, instructions,
and they pop these things.
And they're not antigenic.
And they can go through the cell wall.
They can go through the wall of thegut, they can go through the blood-brain
barrier, and they'll attach to a targetcell and release that information
(25:21):
and go to the nucleus and epigenegenetically change the expression of
our genome . A plant or a bacteria.
And so now we know that holy cow,this communication system is the
most sophisticated internet thatwe, we could possibly imagine.
(25:46):
And to me, I just sit backand Marvel at number one.
How dumb we've been.
But, but number two,I'll give you an example.
You quiet as a mouse, we learn, wethought for years that mice couldn't talk.
Of course they talk, we, it's inthe ultrasonic seat frequency,
(26:06):
so we never were able to hear it.
But when they played at slow speed,they have an incredible vocabulary
and you know, and we now knowwhales talk to each other and, and.
I think one of the greatest thingsis the, the language of elephants
with each elephant has its name.
(26:26):
And if you ever watch thesevideos, they're just hilarious.
So they'll, they'll know a certainelephant's name and they'll play
this elephant noise and you know,they, the elephant will turn around
you, eh, what, what do you want?
And it's like, so it's like, ofcourse this was there, like Marvin
said, but now we're able to.
(26:47):
You know, eavesdrop on the conversations.
I, I think this is just the, the,the challenge for work you're doing.
So pioneering work is never reallyunderstood in its current paradigm.
And then years later you lookback and you, and you rarely get
the credit by the way as well.
So I, I wanted to make sure therewas a record of this as well for you,
(27:08):
but I, I mentioned leaky gut and it'sreally important to understand this.
And I just pulled a little segmentfrom the book here to tee you up.
Because you wrote that a singlelayer of cells is all that
stands between us and everything.
We swallow the same.
Design flaw is repeated inour friend see elegance.
We've mentioned that on this show before.
A single layer of cells is all that standsbetween us and everything we swallow.
(27:33):
That same design flaw is repeatedin this worm sea elegance.
It's kind of a worm.
I'd love you to expand onthis because as the worm ages,
the gut wall becomes porous.
And bacteria are able toleak out of the intestine.
And this is what we call leaky gut.
Yeah.
One of the things in, in agingresearch, so there's this cute little
(27:56):
translucent worm that only lives aboutthree weeks and almost everything
that's been studying in anti-aging,whatever that means in lifespan
extension or health span extensionthat has been observed and see elegant.
Is observed in higher life forms,whether it's rats or mice, Reeses
(28:19):
monkeys, you can repeat it.
So it's become a really good modelfor testing almost every idea.
Calorie restriction, forinstance, polyphenols like
resveratrol, for instance.
So the cool thing about sea Elegans is ithas a gut and it has its own microbiome,
and it's a little tiny gut and.
(28:42):
Interestingly enough, that wall ofthat little tiny gut is only one
cell thick, and our wall of ourgut is only one cell thick Now.
The, the lengths of our intestinesand all the VII and microvilli,
the surface area of our intestinesis at least a tennis court.
(29:06):
Several of my colleagues in the UK areconvinced it's at least two tennis courts.
I once thought it was a footballfield, but so it's big and
it's all just one cell thick.
And these cells we, we have a game.
It's a universal game.
Most cultures have it where youhave two rows of kids and they
(29:29):
lock arms and somebody comesrunning over, we call it Red Rover.
And in the states Australia has anothername for it, but everybody's got the game.
And if they break through thearm, you capture somebody.
And anyhow, so these cells.
Our locked arm in arm with whatare called tight junctions.
(29:49):
And, and this was discoveredby a brilliant researcher who's
originally from Italy AlessioFasano, who's now at Harvard.
And these, so these guys kindahold this wall in attack.
Now, what's good news, bad news isright behind this wall, 80, literally
(30:12):
80% of all of our white blood cells.
Stand guard because if somethinggets through, they want to be
able to attack it, recognize itas foreign, and you know, mop up.
And let's not kidourselves on a daily basis.
(30:32):
Foods that we eat, bacteria canpenetrate this wall, but if this
wall is intact, and quite frankly,if we have a really good microbiome.
They can actually defend against mostof the horrible things we swallow.
They'll be happy to take on thechallenge and they, they're not around
(30:55):
anymore, but that's another story.
So when this happens, when thingscome through, then our immune system,
number one, gets activated, goes towar, but it also sends messages that.
Up to our brain, for instance, toour other organs that, oh my gosh,
(31:17):
we can't hold the line down here.
The hoards are coming across the wall.
We're doing our best.
We don't have enough troops andthey're gonna, they're getting past us.
Defend yourselves.
Get get ready because they're coming.
We can't hold the line.
So what does this haveto do with sea elegance?
(31:38):
As the wall of the gut of seaelegance starts to break down,
sea elegance starts to age.
It starts to slow down.
It starts to be less interested in food.
And as that wall breaksand breaks, the worm dies.
What's exciting to me.
(32:00):
Is as long as that wall is intact, thatlittle guy does not age and does not die.
And all you gotta do is look at C Elganand say, gee, Hippocrates is right.
All disease begins in the gut.
And what we should have saidthat Alessio Fasano said, is all
(32:23):
disease begins in a leaky gut.
And he stole that line from me froma Paris conference, but that's okay.
He's a great guy
. And you gave him a shout out as well, but you tell us also in the book
there's four things particularlythat is leaking through.
I'd love you to share these becausethey'll help us then understand what we
need to prevent against in the future.
(32:44):
Yeah.
So.
One of the things that I gotfascinated with when I got into this
was plants in general don't like us.
They in general don't want to eat usto eat them, and they particularly
don't want us to eat their babies.
Now, there are exceptions but they, theirdefense mechanism, they can't run, they
(33:10):
can't hide, they can't fight, but they're.
Chemists of incredible ability, theycan turn sunlight into matter and we
haven't figured out how to do that.
And so they use biologicalchemical warfare.
So they use proteins that are calledlectins that like to bind onto the
(33:30):
sugar molecules on the wall of our gut.
And this was the brilliantwork of Alessio Fno.
And when lectins like gluten, gluten is alectin bind, they can actually break that.
Locked arm, a tight juncture.
And then you literally have a pathfor these guys to get through.
(33:50):
And these are foreign proteins.
And when they get through, ourimmune system says, what the heck?
You know this guy's, thispassport is not valid.
He's on the no fly list andyou know, he's a terrorist and
you know, I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna arrest him and I'm gonnamake sure that everybody else knows.
You know, he, he's around.
(34:11):
So, so that's one thing.
And lectins is became part of my research.
There's other nasty things like oxalates.
There's, so these, these are all defensemechanisms and they're pretty good.
But long ago there was a balance of power.
(34:31):
We had tremendous defenseagainst their defense mechanisms.
We had this incredible bunchof bacteria that go, ha.
A lectin.
I love lectins.
I have lectins for breakfast.
I mean, there are bacteria thatlove to eat gluten, for instance.
They're mostly gone.
People who are sensitive areoxalates or get oxalate stones.
(34:55):
Believe it or not, we haveoxalate eating bacteria.
We should have, most of thepeople who get these stones don't
have those species of bacteria.
So our, our defense system has beendecimated and I've spent books talking
about that, and we won't do that today.
So that's really one of these guys.
Number two and part of this iswe've, antibiotics are in our food.
(35:21):
They're in Roundup.
Roundup was patentedas a, as an antibiotic.
It wasn't patented as a weed killer.
Yeah, glyphosate waspatented as an antibiotic.
Anyhow, so the other thing that'shappened to us is that, for instance
(35:42):
NSAIDs and as a rugby player, youlived on one form or another of NSAIDs,
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.
These were developed in the mid1970s and they were so dangerous.
Yeah, because they caused leaky gut inthe small intestine that they were only
allowed by prescription and they wereonly allowed to be prescribed for two
(36:07):
weeks because they were so dangerous.
And I've written about how theycaused leaky gut, but now of course
they're the most widespread drug overthe counter, really in the world.
And athletes.
I got very interested in autoimmunedisease in athletes because so many of
them, it was actually because of theirNSAID use that had contributed to their
(36:33):
leaky gut 'cause of an injury or just,you know, chronic injury like in rugby.
How you guys do that is beyondmy comprehension, but anyhow,
pay a price today, Steven.
That's for sure.
You know, an interesting onejust to say to you is that some
of the, some of the players gotthings like Lou Gehrig's disease.
And the, there's a theory that it wasfrom being on the grass, all that I'm out
(36:56):
in the pitches that were being sprayedwith pesticides and that's how they, that
combined with the NSAIDs then was toxic.
Oh yeah.
It's it's sad.
I see.
Sadly, so many Parkinson'sand dementia patients.
And a LS patients who eitherare big time golfers or live on
(37:17):
golf courses, and we can now doenvironmental toxin tests in people.
And it is just frightening.
My patients who are either golfers orlive on a golf course looking at the
organ, pesticides in their blood, it'sjust, you're right, it's just scary.
(37:40):
So the other thing that'sfascinating is we have
essentially two typesof bacteria in our gut.
They're gram negative bacteriaand gram positive bacteria, and.
It was learned a number of years ago thatgram certain gram-negative bacteria on
their cell wall have a very identifiablefeature that's called lipopolysaccharides.
(38:08):
And these are sugar and fat moleculesthat are very distinguishable.
It literally is, is a molecularbarcode about who these guys are, and
our immune system is trained to hate.
The site of these lipopolysaccharidesbecause it basically means that
bacteria, living bacteria have gotteninto your bloodstream septic shock.
(38:33):
Our problem is our immune system readsthe barcode of the wall of the bacteria
to figure out who it is, and the immunesystem can't tell the difference between
a living bacteria and a dead bacteria.
It thinks it's the same.
So this was proven in humans.
We can take dead lipopolysaccharideand inject them into you or me, and
(38:59):
within minutes we'll be in septic shock.
Our blood pressure willfall basically to zero.
We'll become tachycardic,we'll faint, and.
Unless we're revived, it's literallylike we died from an overwhelming
bacterial infection, even thoughthere were no living bacteria.
And the reason I mention it theIceman, VIM Hoff, who I've had on my
(39:19):
podcast became infamous among otherthings because he, using his breathing
techniques could be injected withlipopolysaccharides, which we call
LPSs and just sit there and laugh.
His heart rate didn't change, his bloodpressure didn't change, and he proved
in an experiment that he could train20 people with his techniques of breath
(39:45):
modulation and ice baths to also withstandthis so, so LPSs lipopolysaccharides,
I call in the plant Paradox.
Little pieces of shit because.
That's what they are.
And so we do not like them.
(40:06):
And when they get into us, either throughleaky gut or riding, hitching a ride
on fat molecules called Chylomicrons,our immune system says, oh my gosh.
You know, we're beinginvaded with living bacteria.
And so they.
(40:26):
Send out the warning that, oh mygosh, there's bacteria coming for us.
There's lots of 'em, andthey're really bad guys.
And so L ps LPS is, andwe can measure these guys.
We can measure how many of them are,whether we have antibodies to them.
And one of the things that justblew my mind away that I write about
(40:47):
in the book, so these are evil.
We hate 'em.
What's interesting isthat the soil has tons of.
Lip bulb, polysaccharide, bacteria loadedwith them, and roots are coated with
these LPSs and yet eating root vegetables.
(41:11):
It is really good for youfor, for a lot of reasons.
And I went, well wait a minute, wouldn'twe just the minute these LPSs, you know,
go into our mouth, wouldn't we justgo, oh my gosh, you know, they're here.
They're here, they're coming.
Well, there's some really cool,elegant animal experiments is that
if you introduce LPSs orally, theyactually train the immune system that.
(41:35):
These guys aren't so bad.
And I used to have allergy shotsas a kid, and the same thing.
We start with really finedoses and then you train.
Is it nuts?
Not allergy?
No.
It was actually hay fever.
Okay.
Ragweed, bowel, and yeah.
And grasses.
I mean, it was water and there, there's a
huge uptick in, in those caseswith children these days.
(41:59):
Huge because our immune systemthis is actually a good segue.
So when I was growing up
nobody had peanut allergies.
Kids brought peanut butter andjelly sandwiches to school.
Peanuts were passed out on airplanes.
Nobody had peanut allergies, eventhough 95% of human beings or born
(42:22):
with an antibody, an IgE antibodyto the peanut lectin, born with it.
It's an innate, and yetnobody had peanut allergies.
So, and now of course if a little kidopens a package of peanuts in, grade
school, four kids are getting out theirEpiPens and it's like, what the heck?
(42:46):
Well, and this gets, so if you've got thisgreat terrain, the terrain teaches the
immune system that, number one, whatever'scoming down the pike, we got your back.
And you guys just relax.
(43:07):
I lived in London for a yearand in the eighties and back in
those days, Bobby's had no guns.
They just had a night stick.
And now, and you know,'cause they didn't need 'em.
Now of course you walk in Londonor Paris or any big city and the
(43:28):
police have Kevlar vests and AK47sand their fingers on the trigger.
We were in Paris recently and Ipointed out to my wife, I said.
Watch where their fingers are.
And she said, what are you talking about?
I said, watch, it's on the trigger.
And she's, and she goes,geez, you're right.
(43:50):
So why?
Because now what's happened iswe no longer have a microbiome
that says, Hey, we got your back.
You know, go, go get your nightstick andwe may need you for a little civil unrest.
But that's about it.
But now we don't have thismicrobiome to defend us and.
(44:10):
The wall of the gut isconstantly being penetrated.
And so now our immune system, it is gotKevlar best two AK 47s, their fingers
on the trigger and any little, you know,disturbance and we'll ask questions later.
So this innocent little peanut lectin,which army immune system was taught, yeah,
(44:35):
you know, you don't like it, but don't,you know, don't get all worried about it.
Now that peanut lectin shows upand the immune system is Of course.
Oh my gosh.
And that's what's happened to us.
And that's why all theseallergies are just rampant.
All this asthma is rampant.
'cause our immune system is just 24 hoursa day on guard because the terrorists
(44:59):
are breaching our wall constantly.
Both my kids, Steven have.
nut allergies and certain nuts.
And then incredibly birch tree.
I dunno if you've heard that one.
Yeah.
I grew up around birch trees as a kid.
I grew up there.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
So yeah, there's, and we see this, oneof the things that's been shocking to
(45:22):
me, we now can do food sensitivity tests.
We used to do food allergy tests, which.
Weren't very useful, but food sensitivitytests we can measure with IgG antibodies,
which it means things literally havegotten through to us and recognized
this forum and these seemingly harmlesscompounds like you wouldn't believe the
(45:45):
number of patients who have GG antibodiesto lemons or ginger or cinnamon.
And it's all because, of thisleaky gut and they're in our food
or they're in our air and yeah.
Steven, as just kindly off air, we agreedhe's gonna come back for part two 'cause
(46:05):
we kind of just gave you all the bad news.
But there's a brilliant metaphor andyou've heard how simply he puts this
often technical information, whichwe love here on the show, Steven.
But you tell us.
Firstly, we've a badly trainedmilitia, which is the gut, which is
why there's fingers on the triggerand it's shooting everywhere.
It doesn't even have any target practice.
(46:26):
But the other thing is brilliant metaphor,and we've all struggled from this.
You're on YouTube, youclick on a type of video.
Maybe it's a conspiracy theory.
Next thing, you're being inundatedwith conspiracy theories, and
this talks to the very reason why.
If you train your gut overit while for eat, say, sugary
food, you'll want more of it.
(46:46):
I'd love you to share thisas a parting metaphor.
Yeah, it's, it's really true.
And I go into this with my wife testingthe internet of looking at wants.
And it's true.
The internet learns and it sends youinformation that you think you want, and
the more you click, the more you get.
Well, bacteria actually control.
(47:09):
Us get over it and theycontrol what they want to eat.
And bad bacteria as a general rule, likes,loves simple sugars and they actually like
saturated fats and they can actually outcompete the good guys for those sugars.
'cause the good guys actuallycan't use those simple sugars.
(47:30):
And so they literally send thesemessages to your brain that, oh,
you know, that's what I want.
And I, the more of theseguys grow, the more.
This information goes to your brainand you, you know, you become addicted
to the foods that these guys want.
(47:51):
And I go in even deeper than that.
And most addictions which is goodnews, is driven by your gut microbiome
looking for things they want.
And that's the good news.
Steven, unfortunately.
Well.
Fortunately for his patients, he'sgonna go and attend to those patients.
Steven, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Where can people findyou to find out more?
(48:13):
I'll put links to the booksand indeed, your podcast.
But where's the best place?
So dr gundry.com.
My website, gundry md.com ismy supplement in food company.
My YouTube channel just nowcrossed a million subscribers,
so very excited about that.
Congratulations, man.
And yeah, and the Dr. Gundry podcast,wherever you get your podcast.
(48:36):
So brilliant.
I
will, I will share all thoseAuthor of the Gut Brain Paradox.
Dr. Steven Gundry, thankyou for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed the gut brain paradox.
I want to thank our sponsor Kyndryl,who run and reimagine the technology
systems that drive advantage forthe world's leading businesses.
(48:58):
A unique blend of AI poweredconsulting built on unmatched
managed service capability.
Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power oftechnology for smarter decisions, faster
innovation and lasting competitive edge.
You can find Kyndryl at www.Kyndryl.com.
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