Longevity, Lectins, and LPS with Dr. Steven Gundry

Boomer Anderson 0:06
Welcome to Decoding Superhuman, this show is a deep dive into obsessions with performance and how to improve the human experience. Twice a week, I explore the latest science, technology and tactics with experts in various fields of human optimization. I’m your host, Boomer Anderson. Enjoy the journey. Super humans. It’s Boomer Anderson. We are back today. And my guest, he really needs no introduction. But I’ll give it to you. Anyway. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Gundry. And he’s probably best known for his work as a cardiothoracic surgeon and heart surgeon. Dr. Gundry has worked in medicine for over 40 years, is the director and founder of the International heart and lung Institute, as well as the Center for restorative medicine and policy. springs and Santa Barbara, California, both beautiful places. His education includes a pre med, a Yale University Medical School at Medical College of Georgia and his residency, well surgical residency was at the University of Michigan, where he participated in a prestigious research program run by the National Institute of Health. Dr. Gundry was one of the first 20 surgeons to test the implantable, left ventricular assist device, which is really a type of artificial heart, something I didn’t know. And he’s also got patents on numerous medical devices. If that wasn’t enough, he’s written over 300 articles or chapters and books. And he has published well now several international best selling books. These include Dr. Gundry, diet evolution, the plant paradox, the plant paradox cookbook and his latest the longevity paradox. This conversation with Dr. Gundry is something I’ve wanted to talk to him About are really filled with questions I wanted to ask him for a long time. I originally intended to discuss both lipopolysaccharides as well as lectins. But given the time limit and Dr. gundry schedule, we only got to one of those. And that was lectins. When the plant paradox came out, it turned the health world Lions Head, talking a little bit about why we should avoid lectins and why there are certain types of lectins that are worse than others. So of course, we cover that in today’s podcast, we get into how to test for lectins Are there any genetic predispositions that make you more lectins sensitive? We talked about the carnivore diet peptides and of course at the end because he mentioned that we get an alcohol. The show notes for this one are at decodingsuperhuman.com/drgundry and enjoy my conversation with Dr. Stephen Gundry.

Dr. Gundry This is an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining. A pleasure to be here. So I want to get things started with a concept that has been brought to my attention a few times on this podcast, which is the Holo biome, and I know you discuss it a little bit in your latest book. Do you mind just educating us what is the holo biome?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 3:21
Well, most of us have heard by now the term microbiome, which refers to the bugs that that live in our gut. And actually the micro biome is getting further divided into the micro biome, fungi that live in our gut. But there are also a complete set of flora that live in our mouth, live in our nose that live on our skin. Live in the genital tract and women and men as well. And this and there’s actually a cloud of bacteria and viruses that surround us. And people have coined the term holo biome, and I actually like that term a whole lot better than micro biome. So I, I use it in the longevity paradox quite a bit, but it’s okay if most people think it’s the microbiome. The reason I think it’s a better term is there’s there’s more and more evidence that the oral microbiome and has a huge effect, not only on coronary artery disease, but more and more on dementia and Alzheimer’s. And there is such a thing that Dale Bredesen, who wrote the end of Alzheimers and I described as leaky mouth. Most people are aware of leaky gut. leaky mouth may actually be maybe more important in terms of dementia than leaky got.

Boomer Anderson 4:57
Wow, okay, so leaky mouth sounds like it could be that The next trend after you know leaky brains catching on lately, pretty soon leaky mouth is going to catch on. But I want to talk a little bit about the longevity paradox and a couple of things that you brought up, and have been quite well known for turning the health world on its head lectins and then lippopolysaccharides. First, I would love to just dive a little bit into lectins. For those who are unfamiliar, if you don’t mind just talking a little bit about lectins what they are and then why are they a problem.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 5:34
So lectins are part of the plant defense system against being eaten. And one of the hardest things to convince people is that plants have a life and that plants do not want to be eaten. They were not put here on earth for us to munch on them. And they want to grow and they want their babies their seeds to grow. So they use As part of their defense system, proteins that are called lectins. Some people think I’m saying leptin, the hunger hormone. Some people think I’m saying lessethan the amaliant in so many of our foods, but it’s lectins. These are sticky proteins that look for specific sugar molecules to bind to. And we actually know what those sugar molecules are. The sugar molecules line, the lining of our intestines that a line the lining of our joints actually line the space between two nerve endings. They line the blood vessels that all of us have, and in the theory of why lectins cause disease lectins seek out these spots. There’s very good experimental evidence and clinical evidence that I publish that lectins are capable of Causing leaky gut and probably the major cause of leaky gut. This was first discovered by Dr. Fasano from Johns Hopkins University and explaining how gluten work just so that everybody’s oriented gluten happens to be elected. So when people say, Well, lectins don’t cause a problem. Well, actually, they do. And gluten is just one of many left. So in fact, if I was going to have a hierarchy of mischievous lectins, gluten would actually be towards the bottom. And we can talk about that if you want. So that’s in a nutshell what lectins do. So if they stick to a substance, they are basically a foreign protein, a splinter in anybody’s had a splinter under their skin, and it gets all red. And that’s our white blood cells are immune system attacking that foreign protein that’s splintered. So lectins are foreign proteins and they are attacked wherever they attach. And, again, there’s really good evidence that leaky gut, which can is caused by lectin ingestion is a major cause of aging period. They are a major cause of arthritis. They are a major cause In my opinion, and I’ve recently published two papers of coronary artery disease. They new paper out last week suggests that osteoporosis is caused by leaky gut. And in this particular paper, it was caused by glue. So you know, we have an epidemic of us your process and osteopenia, including and men now which was never seen, and I think we just put it at the doormat of lectins and go from there.

Boomer Anderson 9:00
Why are we only now starting to come to this knowledge of lectins? Because lectins have been around, or at least from my research since 18 8018 a fresh what I know you’ve really driven been the driving force behind bringing lectins to light. Why do you think now is the right time? Or the time?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 9:21
Yeah, and I’m certainly not the first to make to make an issue about lectins. It’s interesting that the blood type diet was electon, an anti electon diet. It was couch in blood type, but it was actually elected elimination diet, and it wasn’t sexy enough to make an elective elimination diet. So it was a blood type diet, but it was a lectin elimination diet model. I think I brought it to the forefront because in the plant paradox, my original book, I pointed out that there were Seven Deadly disruptors in our society now that have allowed lectins to become mischievous. We have a very good defense system against plant Flecktones. And it actually has to do with stomach acid lectins or protein can be dissolved by stomach acid. But more importantly, the microbiome getting back to the microbiome. There are bacteria that actually enjoy eating lectins. There’s even a bacteria that likes to eat glue. But two things have happened. Number one, the overuse of broad spectrum antibiotics both in humans, and probably more importantly, in animals that we eat. There’s animal their antibiotic residues, least the United States and most of our beef, most of our pork, most of our chickens. There’s a little Backing up on chickens right now, but these antibiotics kill the microbiome. And so you you’ve really lost that part of the defense system. Another I think important thing is the use of antacids and acid producing acid in our stomach is essential to break down lectins. And with the widespread use now of over the counter proton pump inhibitors. We’re seeing huge numbers of people with thinking that to get rid of heartburn, they need to take these things but they’re stopping acid production and so they’re just letting lectins loose into us. I think the third thing and I won’t bore the listeners with all seven. The third thing I think that’s important is the overuse of non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. insets and these are the popular painkillers like ibuprofen And an approximate that are over the counter. We have them to children. And drug companies have known and published data that these act like swallowing a hand grenade, they actually blow holes in the wall of our intestines. Just one will do it. And these things are ubiquitous. So I think those three or I lectins have become problematic and where whereby they won’t be in other cultures, one for things. All right, I’m on a roll. Definitely life. glyphosate, Roundup. roundup spin around now for 50 years used to be used for GMO plants. It’s now used as a desiccant to dry and kill the plant for harvest. So it’s used in almost all American wheat almost all American corn, soybeans, oats, flax Sorry, not flax canola. And so these products are fed to animals. And glyphosate is in animals that we then eat. But it’s in almost all the products that we consume that are based primarily on grains.

They’re in almost every oatmeal product in the United States there, sadly in almost all California wines. And the important thing about glyphosate is that glyphosate was patented by Monsanto as an antibiotic was not patented as an herbicide. And, gee, I guess they knew something. So glyphosate is just wonderful for killing off your Holo biome. And through work from MIT life is safe, by itself is capable of causing leaky gut without any other necessity for anything else. So it’s it’s kind of a perfect storm and Europeans, luckily are beginning to realize this, I think, Belgium this coming year 2020 will ban round up and I think Germany is right behind. But there’s tremendous economic pressure, particularly brought by Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, in the EU to continue to keep roundup actively in, in crops.

Boomer Anderson 14:28
So I want to come back to this in one second, because I’m sure there are a few wine drinkers listening to this show that are heartbroken that California Cabernet may not be available to them anymore. But one of the things you said earlier about the mischievous lectins my understanding is is that not all lectins are created equal. And that some we should definitely avoid and you’re mentioning that gluten is at the bottom of that list, which is probably the most popular of the bunch. can go through some of the other ones. Just what types of foods we should be definitely avoiding.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 15:04
So as a general rule lectins are in almost all grains and pseudo grains. There’s two grains that do not contain lectins. And because they have a halt, and a great number of lectins are actually on the outside of the sea. And so one of the worst of the lectins is called wheat germ of gluten. And everybody thinks that we’re Germans really good for you. Well, we German gluten is elected, but it’s actually an incredibly tiny lack of protein, and it’s capable of infusing across the gut wall without the need for leaky gut. Most lectins are actually very large proteins and they’re not capable of being absorbed. And so they actually have to produce a leak in the gut to get into the body. And believe it or not, gluten is One of these larger electrodes, but we term a gluten is capable of diffusion without any problem. The problem with wheat germ agglutinin is it is a insulin like molecule and we German gluten has been shown to attach to insulin receptors in muscle and even nerves and block the effect of insulin. It also attaches to the insolence receptor and fat cells, and actually, in that case actually ushers in almost continuously sugar to be turned into fat. And as I talked about in the plant paradox and the longevity paradox, I happen to think that grain particularly wheat, and rye, and and oats became popular because they allow more weight gain per calorie consumed than just about any other food. And back when there wasn’t much food, anything that was capable of helping you gain weight would be a winner. Even if it was making you achy or sick or depressed. If you had weight on you, you’d survive and have babies. Evolutionary pressures work really well.

Boomer Anderson 17:23
So, aside from WGA is something that we should all avoid from a grain.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 17:31
And you know, and the point of all this is if you whole grains really only became popular about 50 years ago, maybe even less. Europeans have been smart enough for years to throw the hall away. We can rye because that’s where the mischief is. And you know, a Frenchman eating a whole grain but get or a whole grain croissant is Just kind of really, and, and you know, up until American tourists showed up in Italy, the idea that you would have whole grain pasta is just anathema. And so these cultures for thousands and thousands of years have been throwing the hall away. Right? Rice has only been cultivated for 8000 years and 4 billion people use rice as their staple, but most of them take the hall off of brown rice and eat it white. Now, how could they be that stupid because everybody knows how good brown rice is for you. At least

Boomer Anderson 18:39
that’s what they tell me.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 18:41
Yeah, yeah, you can’t tell you the number of vegans who I see with autoimmune diseases. And it’s the brown rice that was one of the big culprits for them. When we get rid of their brown rice. Among other things, I get better way. leads me to the other things beans have beans and legumes, probably the highest lectin content of any food group. Now it’s possible to kill destroy lectins with pressure cooking. Certainly soaking the tradition of soaking and changing the water multiple times over 24/48 hours is effective in diminishing the amount of lectins but it’s not perfect. And again, when you look at traditional cultures on how they’ve figured out how to do the activate or destroy most lectins soaking is huge fermentation the bacterial action on grains for instance, keen Well, most people don’t realize the Incas had three detoxification processes to get the lectins out of keno. They soaked it for 48 hours that Then allowed it to ferment, and then they cook. And it’s not on the package directions. So, you know, these aren’t we say, Oh, you know, the Incas thrived on keynote. Well, yeah, they knew how to handle these. These mischievous compounds. They didn’t know why they were doing it. But they knew that if this happened, they weren’t sick. And if they didn’t do it, they were sick.

Boomer Anderson 20:27
This is fascinating. And that, you know, maybe it’s just our own laziness with the keen law that we didn’t figure this out. But can we transition a little bit into how to test for leptin sensitivity? Because, you know, I’ve heard you mentioned before TNF alpha is sort of a way to test for it, but also adiponectin. Yeah. Are there other tests that we should be using and why those two?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 20:54
Well, I wrote a paper years ago looking at people with elevated adiponectin levels. Most people if they know about adiponectin, which is a hormone, it’s associated with good things being thin lack of insulin resistance. But the literature is also replete with human examples, that people with rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune disease have elevated adiponectin levels, which makes sense. There’s a very large study out of United States, the Women’s Health Initiative that showed that skinny women with high adiponectin levels had a very high incidence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but that doesn’t make sense if this hormone is so good for you. So I looked at a large number of people and it was 800 or so who had an elevated adiponectin level and it was using one lab. There’s different measurements throughout labs, but in this lab 16 And above was where our cutoff was. And then we looked at TNF alpha levels, which is an inflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor alpha. And we showed that if we took lectins away from this population, then their TNF alpha level would fall to normal. And subsequently, we’ve shown that their autoimmune disease for the most part biomarkers of autoimmune disease 94% of 102 people followed for six months were biomarker negative for their autoimmune disease and we’re off of all you know, suppressive drugs, not a bad.

Boomer Anderson 22:41
Pretty good return.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 22:43
I there’s there’s a company out of the United States called vibrant America that has developed a lectin sensitivity test, and it’s got a really dumb name. It’s called the lectin z. Rumor.

Boomer Anderson 23:03
Somebody needs their ending work there. Yeah,

Dr. Stephen Gundry 23:07
they well they started with a test a few years ago called the wheat Zoomer, which specifically look for the components of wheat. And that’s how they measure leaky gut, among other things, and then they got the branch to a corn zoom or a lectins zoom or a dairies nomer and a consumer and neuros. But the interesting thing we’ve been using that test now for over a year, and they’ve, they haven’t published the data, I’ve seen it, it’s actually very impressive if you are sensitive on their tests to lectins and they can actually figure out which specific ones you are sensitive to. You will have elevated markers of inflammation compared to people who are not sensitive collections. And I think it’s actually I think it’s very, very important. These are human data. I mean, the correlation is incredibly strong. If you’re, you test positive for their tests, to lectins you will have elevated inflammatory.

Boomer Anderson 24:20
This is something that the average person can buy over the counter or do you need a doctor to prescribe it?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 24:26
At the moment you have to have a doctor to prescribe it but any doctor can order it. It’s it’s, it’s used to be a fairly expensive test. Each one of these tests individually were $199. They’ve if you act today sort of thing for four or five of them are $100 apiece, so like five of them are for 99 and again, if you act today, they will throw in a free food sensitivity panel as well. And I’m, I’m not associated with them except I have done several educational programs on their behalf because I’m so impressed with this technology. But that’s not a pitch for them. But you asked, Where can you find out? The other thing? I think what’s important to realize is that if you have an autoimmune disease, or if you have a family history of an autoimmune disease, and interestingly, if you had a lot of tonsillitis, or you’ve had your tonsils removed, the odds are really, really strong that you are sensitive to lectins. And

Boomer Anderson 25:41
that’s a it’s a, it’s actually easy way to judge. Before I go into a question about genetics, this is more of a personal one. Given my history with cardiovascular disease. You don’t have time for that 45 minute jog. Frankly, who jogs anymore. You need to Something fast, efficient and leaves you wanting more. My favorite tool for this and I love it is the Carol. She is a life changing bike that provides you all the endurance you need into 22nd bursts. Yes, you heard that correct. That’s 40 seconds of Max effort, including the warm up and cooldowns you get a kick ass workout in eight minutes and 40 seconds how the Carol’s the resistance bike powered by artificial intelligence, which personalizes and optimizes the resistance, so you hit your maximum intensity levels and maximize glycogen depletion every single time. The proof is really in the pudding. Carol’s effectiveness was independently verified by the American Council on Exercise. I gave the Carroll bike spin health optimization summit in London this year, and she kicked my ass so much that I had to get one Check out Carol Carol fit ai.com that’s CARL fit ai.com if you have limited time and want to kick ass workout, which basically everyone that listens to this show does use the code decoding 150 for $150 discount. Head over to Carol fit AI com to secure your cardiovascular disease Do you consider autoimmune condition?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 27:31
Yes. I mean there are many theories of quandary artery disease or cardiovascular disease and certainly, the cholesterol theory of heart disease is a theory. Let’s continue to remember that there is the infectious theory of cardiovascular disease, which I like a lot and it gets actually back to leaky mouth. And then there’s the autoimmune theory of cardiovascular disease which I like a lot And I think it’s a combination probably of the three of these. But in the last year I’ve presented two papers at the American Heart Association Institute. Institute for vascular biology, and the vascular biology and thrombosis sessions, where we’ve shown that there are some markers for lectins causing inflammation on the inside of blood vessels mediated by an inflammatory cytokine called aisle 16. And we’ve shown that if you remove lectins from the diet, then I’ll 16 plummets, and a marker for five year risk for coronary artery disease for actually a heart attack, called a puls test p-u-l-s. That I have no relationship to the score, the risk score dramatically follows When you remove lectins from the diet and this marker goes down, so yeah, I think there’s now published human data that an autoimmune attack on blood vessels is part of this process. The other thing that I talked about in all my books is that there is a sugar molecule and beef, lamb and pork called New 5 G. That is different from the sugar molecule that lines our blood vessels, which is called New 5 AC and there won’t be a test for your listeners that we make an auto antibody to the lining of our blood vessels. When we encounter new five GC when we eat beef, lamb pork, and my personal feeling is that that explain. That’s all you need to have to explain why there are more Multiple studies associating red meat eating with increased cardiovascular disease and has nothing to do with the fat and it has to do with this silly sugar molecule. And I and other researchers discovered the sugar molecule years ago, when we were doing xeno transplantation. That’s, for instance, pig was our donor of choice, I actually still hold the longest record for a pig to baboon heart transplant in 28 days.

So we we attack this sugar molecule on the lining of a pig heart. And recently, which is total aside, pigs have been genetically engineered to express the human sugar molecule rather than new five GC. And it actually looks very exciting that this may break the law. jam of why you don’t see a lot of pig to human heart transplants. So, and it actually confirms the fact that it’s this dumb sugar molecule that cause my animals to reject their pig heart attacking their blood vessels.

Boomer Anderson 31:17
This is fascinating. And I could go down this wormhole for hours with you. Yeah, let’s not let’s come back to the lectins at genetics, or their genetics or any sort of gene snips that you see that show increased in predisposition to leptin sensitivity?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 31:36
I don’t I’m not aware of any. There is. Certainly there’s certainly a very strong family history component to this. And it goes as far as family histories of ageism as a topic dermatitis, lymphoma, leukemias we we see in number of people with lymphomas who knock on wood. When we get lectins out of their diet, we’ve had some excellent response rates to do this. We’ve seen several people with multiple myeloma, were getting lectins out of their diet was a was a big step.

Now, I mean, having said that people with autoimmune diseases,

in general have to be pretty perfect on their diet. And sadly, in in general, you can’t cheat. And we we actually publish this data as well. On the other hand, I just said a abstraction to the American Heart Association, lifestyle and Epidemiology conference that I can’t discuss. But it looks like if you kind of continue to keep lectins out of your diet, you will retrain your immune system to be tolerant to, to at least the lectins in wheat. I’ll leave it at that, which is actually pretty exciting.

Boomer Anderson 33:15
So if I were to extrapolate a conclusion there, if you had somebody who was showing sensitivity to certain lectins, but not others, that elimination diet for a period of time could potentially work, is that right?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 33:30
Correct. And, you know, the my program, certainly an elimination diet are, you know, harder elimination diets, the joke that the carnivore diet, which come on is is an Atkins diet.

Boomer Anderson 33:45
I’m going to come to that in a second and I’ve got a lot of questions there. Okay.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 33:50
You know, a carnivore diet if you actually were using grass fed, grass finished animals and fish wild fish is I think a very Useful elimination diet. Do I think it’s a great diet long term? No, but we could get into that for a lot of reasons.

But yeah, there’s a I think, with testing that we’re doing, most people can do not react to a to milk cheeses for instance. They, most people do not react to eggs or egg yolks, but there are a subset of people in my practice that have been really good on the plant paradox but they still have issues with leaky gut or IBS or even an autoimmune disease that we can’t quite camp out. And these people when we do this full testing, they’re usually the ones that react to all forms of dairies or all forms of egg. And when we take those things get better and just something for everybody. Just freak out. About there is actually a lectin in spinach called an aquapourne which can be absolutely mischievous for some people. And that doesn’t mean don’t go eat spinach as your listeners are hearing, I hope but we’ve actually taken spinach away from three people with really nasty autoimmune diseases and it’s made a big difference for them.

Boomer Anderson 35:25
And in some cases, I imagine this is a permanent removal, but in most cases, is this like a 90 day removal or?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 35:33
Yeah, we, we found long ago I’ve been doing this for 20 years now long ago, I was pretty naive that you know, you could cure leaky gut, maybe two weeks. In general, three to six months is usual time I’ve had one woman take nine months to do it. I had will call on my podcast last week. He thinks could take up to two years. I haven’t seen that in my practice. But again, there are some tough cookies out there.

Boomer Anderson 36:09
What do you think of peptides as just potential for that I realized this is a little bit of the Wild West, if you will, but peptides in their potential for healing, not just leaky gut, because we’ve seen this with like BBC 157, but also for somebody who has liked insensitivity.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 36:31
Um, I take a more in a way, minimalist approach to all this. Number one, my patient population is insurance based or Medicare based, I even take Medicaid, Medicare well, and so they’re the ability of people to afford exotic treatments, at least in my practice was not in the cards but I I use the example let’s suppose you and I are out in a boat on a canal in Amsterdam, and we spring a leak in the bottom of our boat, and water is coming in. So we essentially have two choices. One is we grab a bucket, and we start bailing. And I happen to think that most of the treatments for leaky gut has giving people buckets. And if you got more of a bigger hole, you need a bigger bucket. On the other hand, if lectins are one of the major causes of leaky gut, then to me, it’s a lot easier to put your finger in the hole and stop water from coming in. So I view taking lectins away is my finger in the hole. So far, that concept has worked very well for 10s of thousands of people that I’ve seen. So would you know would peptides help? I’m sure you know, I think Make make a formula Gundry MD, which I think is superb formula for sealing leaky gut that does have some peptides in it called Total restore. But there are lots and lots of other products. And I’ve seen people think that they could take one or more of these products. And that’s all they have to do. And they don’t have to change their eating habits, at least for people with autoimmune diseases, that that is not the perfect choice.

Boomer Anderson 38:33
So that that’s perfect. And I think there’s two questions that I want to ask you. We may not have enough time to get to these before we get to the rapid fire. carnivore. Why do you think it’s so successful for people with autoimmune conditions? And then you said long term, maybe not the best idea.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 38:51
So, you know, I’ve been complimented by several of the big carnivora advocates on convincing them how evil plants are. And it’s true. There are lectins and actually all plants. And my argument is that the longer you’ve known electon and eaten electon and have a microbiome that’s capable of eating that lectin the safer certain plants are for you, the more your immune system is educated. Fun fact, believe it or not, the Japanese have the only microbiome capable of digesting the cell wall of seaweed, and none none of the rest of us have.

Boomer Anderson 39:39
So that’s super foods out the window.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 39:42
Yeah, you can grind it up. I mean, that’s why you have to break through the cell wall of chlorella for it to be useful, because we we have no ability to digest the cell wall of plants. And, believe it or not, cooking food was probably the real impetus us to making us humans because we can break down the cell wall of plants with cooking.

So that’s an aside. So the carnivore diet. I mean, let’s let’s give credit where credit is due actually, the original cart carnivore diet was described by Samuelson back in. For Adkins. It was called the drinking man’s diet. And he was an aerial photographer, and he had a little book that sold two and a half million copies. And he basically says, All you’re going to do is eat meat and eggs and bearnaise sauce, and you’re going to have a couple martinis. And he realized that straight alcohol had no carbohydrates. And he became wildly popular. He was described by Harvard nutritionist as a mass murderer and he actually They had the last laugh. He died at 96 which is pretty doggone good run. He’s one of the oldest living nutritionist anyway. So and a carnivore diet if you did it right if you didn’t go to your local butcher shop grocery store and buy factory meat and to these guys credit they want you to know this detail, which in in Europe has been done since people were eating animals was always knows to tell us, you know, everything but the point because it used to be described.

That’s not done in you know, and some people call it an Atkins diet is a dirty carnivore diet or dirty keto diet.

So I think it’s, I think, if you want to do it as a short term solution for helping to heal gut getting elected out of your system. I have nothing against it do I think it is a long term strategy? No. And here’s the reason I think that’s true. Number one, there is not a long list society ever described or ever found that follows a carnivore diet, there aren’t any. And all of the Long live societies that we know of including where I spent most of my career Loma Linda, California, the only Blue Zone the United States eat a primarily plant based diet. And I propose in the longevity paradox that the commonality of all the Blue Zones is actually very little animal protein. The commonality is, they don’t all eat beans, they don’t all eat grains. I’m sorry, that’s just not true. Two of those systems It is use a leader of olive oil per week and several of them don’t use any oil. So but all of them have very little animal protein in their diet. And that gets back down to stimulating this receptor m tour. But we could

Boomer Anderson 43:18
talk about that for hours and tours fascinating in the interest of your time, because I know you’re gonna have to go soon. My last question I’m gonna forego my traditional six and ask about wine. come full circle here. You mentioned earlier glyphosate in wine. I know you visited Europe quite frequently, actually. Yes. And you still drink wine? How How much should people be drinking and what should they look for in terms of type like bridal? Maybe even country, if you don’t mind comments in there.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 43:54
Well, it’s interesting. There are actually are few individuals who I’ve shown that red wine. Drinking red wine does not affect ketosis, which is actually good news. I really look for organic or preferably biodynamic vineyards. They are far more prevalent in Europe, particularly France and Italy, Spain as well. Australia has a number of biodynamic vineyards now that I’ve visited, and I drink, mostly French and Italian wines. There are there’s an increasing movement for organic and biodynamic in California and certainly in Washington State and Oregon. Good news is that the organic California wines seem to have very limited glyphosate, if, if any, there’s a couple that do, but it’s caused by drif fields that you don’t being sprayed on either side. So I’ll give you the best example of what’s the right amount of, first of all in Europe, flying is part of his beverage is served with a meal. In the United States, unfortunately, we use wine as a pre meal. And wine, any alcohol in itself can cause leaky gut, and we have to be aware of that. On the other hand, as I talked about the longevity paradox, there was a gentleman by the name of Luigi Carneros in the 1500s, who wrote a book that he died at 102. And he basically followed a calorie restricted diet at the age of 65 onwards and he wrote a chapter in this book every 10 years to show people how to do this. And it’s it’s really kind of action was called How to live to be 100. A Guide to the sober life. And when I first picked it up, I went, Oh dear, this is too bad. You got to be sober to do this. But Luigi had 500 mils of good red wine every day of his life. So Wow. You know, two thirds of a bottle of red wine. So, you know, do not do this experiment at home professional wine drinker on a closed course. No,

Boomer Anderson 46:30
but I think it’s fascinating.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 46:32
Here’s a guy who actually really did the first description of intermittent fasting calorie restriction and a live hundred and two in the 1500s is pretty doggone impressive. That’s his and he’s actually tied for the oldest living nutritionist in Western society ancel keys, and so he’s also live 202 and funfact ancel keys from the University of Minnesota. Retired Italy, to a town south of Naples just above Accio. Rowley, which is the longest living village in the world. And so and he drank a lot of olive oil, and that’s red wine. So

Boomer Anderson 47:12
he’s a pretty controversial figure and himself. But

Dr. Stephen Gundry 47:17
yes, yes, we’ll

Boomer Anderson 47:19
I think we’ll leave the controversy for another time. Dr. gundry, where I, you’re incredibly easy to find online, but where would you like the listeners to go to?

Dr. Stephen Gundry 47:29
So they can go to Dr. gundry. com. You can also go to gundry. md. com, which is my supplement line. You can find my books everywhere. They’ve been translated into 36 foreign languages at last now, so pretty easy to find, even in Lithuanian.

Boomer Anderson 47:51
Wow, wow. That’s an exotic one. Dr. gundry. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the education and taking the time.

Dr. Stephen Gundry 47:57
Thanks for having me on. Maybe we’ll come back and go down another rabbit hole man.

Boomer Anderson 48:02
Oh and tour sounds like a good one. That’s for sure. Alright superhumans, as I mentioned at the beginning, I only got to really drill down on one topic with Dr. gundry. Today, and a man with this much knowledge, I could talk to him for hours. So if you want them back around to please email me podcast at decoding superhuman calm if you enjoyed this episode, or just want your friends to listen to it, share it on all the socials, Facebook, Instagram tag decoding superhuman, I’d love to hear from you guys. Dr. Gundry covered a lot, right. We got into lectins we got into glyphosate wind, and I’m sure there are certainly few habits that I’m going to reevaluate after this podcast. Feed out over to iTunes and leave us a five star rating on the way out. It’s extremely appreciated. Again, the Show Notes for this episode or decoding superhuman comm slash Dr. Gun Dream and I hope you enjoyed it. superhumans have an absolutely epic that