This Is What’s REALLY Causing Inflammation (And How to Fix It) | Dr. Gundry

The idea of fighting inflammation by eating anti-inflammatory foods is like trying to fight a forest fire with a garden hose. All disease begins in a leaky gut from intestinal permeability, and our troops down in our gut are constantly being overwhelmed, and they're sending literal text messages around our body going, oh my gosh, we can't hold hold this horde back any longer. They're coming for you. Heart, be ready. They're coming for you. Brain, be ready. Liver, be ready. They're coming for you. Everybody is now wearing a Kevlar vest, carrying an AK-47, and their finger's on the trigger. And our immune system actually goes, what the heck? There are bacteria loose in us, and that's a bad thing. The entire body becomes inflamed because of this warning system.

What if I told you that aging isn't just about getting older? There's something much deeper going on if you're accelerating aging or if you want to turn back the clock and feel and look much younger. You know, for a lot of people that are experiencing brain fog or fatigue or that stubborn weight gain or the stress or the joint aches, most people think these are normal signs of aging. But I want to tell you, it's anything but normal. And today I'm bringing on one of the world's leading experts in how to reverse aging. To heal your gut and heal your mitochondria of your cell, which will give you loads of energy. It's Dr. Steven Gundry. He's a former world-renowned heart surgeon turned longevity expert, and he's here to uncover the real reasons why your body is aging faster than it should and what you can start doing right now to reverse the damage. From hidden inflammation to toxin overload and mitochondrial breakdown, we're going to be going through how to Reverse aging from the inside out. We'll be talking about everything from gut health to cellular energy to infrared light therapy and the tools that you can use to heal quickly. This episode is brought to you by Sunlighten, the world's leading provider of infrared saunas. We'll share more about how red light therapy and infrared sauna therapy fits into the picture and why I personally use it in my weekly routine. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Yak Show. Dr. Gundry, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks, Josh. Good to see you again.

Yeah, good to see you too. I know we saw each other a couple of weeks ago in Austin, Texas, and I was incredibly excited about So many things you have going on. I know you have a new book out about the gut-brain connection, which is something I know we both share a passion for. And one of the things I, you know, as I was starting to look through, uh, some of your, you know, new content information and stuff you're releasing, one of the things you've talked about for years in regards to disease is inflammation. You know, I think we used to hear about inflammation more. I think we're seeing more of a resurgence of people talking about the root cause of illness today and inflammation being maybe the biggest driver of a lot of chronic health issues. So talk to us a little bit about inflammation and how that drives disease and some of the things that we can start doing to drive that inflammation back down.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's a, that's a, a, a good point. And maybe I'll start from a, a cardiovascular perspective, 'cause that's kind of how I got into this. Watching a guy reverse his inoperable coronary artery disease by changing his diet and taking a bunch of supplements from a health food store. And I thought that was pretty remarkable 'cause I didn't believe that could happen, but there it was staring me in the face. And I should have known that that was possible because one of the fathers of heart surgery and vascular surgery was Dr. Michael DeBakey from Houston, Texas. And Dr. Dubaikie, back in the '50s and '60s, would argue that cholesterol had nothing to do with heart disease, that cholesterol was merely a spackling compound that would patch cracks or potholes or damage in blood vessels. And it would just kind of smooth over an irritated spot, but it wasn't the cause of the irritation. And I should have known he was right because I think he was absolutely right that cholesterol is quite frankly an innocent bystander. That's just a spackling compound. So, if you accept that, and it's interesting when I go to medical meetings now talking about coronary artery disease, more and more people are beginning to say, you know, coronary artery disease probably ought to be looked at as an autoimmune disease in and of itself where we are attacking our endothelial surface of our coronary arteries. So we're coming full circle around 75 years later to what DeBakey was saying. So getting back to your question, so inflammation can certainly cause coronary artery disease, but my big question is, well, where's the inflammation coming from? And people spend a lot of time talking about, well, there are inflammatory foods. And if we eat anti-inflammatory foods, then we won't have inflammation. That's never felt good to me. Living in California, the idea of fighting a forest fire by eating anti-inflammatory foods, forest fire being inflammation, It's like trying to fight a forest fire with a garden hose. And you gotta figure out where the fire is coming from and inflammation. And Apo— Hippocrates knew this 2,500 years ago. He said all disease begins in the gut. And what he really should have said is all disease begins in a leaky gut from intestinal permeability. And it's that inflammation that begins in the gut from our white blood cells attacking foreign substances or bacterial particles like lipopolysaccharides that number one starts a local inflammation. And long ago, that would've happened every so often, skirmish would've occurred, the holes would've been patched up and everything would be fine. Now, as you and I know that leaky gut is 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and our troops down in our gut are constantly being overwhelmed and they're sending literal text messages around our body going, oh my gosh, we can't hold this horde back any longer. They're coming for you. Heart, be ready. They're coming for you. Brain, be ready. They're coming for you. Liver, be ready. They're coming for you. And so, everybody is now wearing a Kevlar vest, carrying an AK-47, and their finger's on the trigger. And there's, there's inflammation.

Yeah, yeah. I know one of the things that you mentioned, Hippocrates there saying, uh, you know, that, that all disease begins in the gut, or with leaky gut is now your, your, your phrasing, or taking it a step further there. And I love the analogy you talked about, even, you know, uh, you know, sort of the idea that inflammation is the fire Uh, and for a lot of people, I think today we're really focused on longevity. We want to look younger, we want to feel younger, but aging is the smoke. And so we need to put out this inflammation. You're saying where the really— where it starts is the gut with those symptoms of leaky gut for so many people. And of course, this is connected to leaky gut. I know you've talked about in your books everything from, uh, Alzheimer's to autoimmune disease, especially a lot of chronic diseases, diabetes, of course, cardiovascular disease. As you've referenced here pretty frequently, talk to us about what are some of the things that people can start to do to tamp down this inflammation? I know that there's millions of things, literally, that people can do, these little things to kind of, like you said, put a little bit of a water hose on it from your backyard. But what are the biggest needle movers in terms of these are the things that really tend to tamp down the inflammation when it comes to the gut?

Well, I think the first thing that almost anybody can do, and it's easy to do, is take some vitamin D3 and add some vitamin K2 with it. But, about 80% of my practice now is people with autoimmune diseases who aren't getting any better on immunosuppressant drugs or wanna get off immunosuppressant drugs. And to a person, they have low vitamin D levels. Even in here in Southern California, about 80% of the people I see have vitamin D deficiency in Southern California. And it's like, that's impossible. It's always sunny. Well, We, of course, wear sunscreen and we wear, you know, long sleeve shirts and we wear hats and oh my gosh, the sun will kill us. And so we just have very low vitamin D. So what? I've been interested in vitamin D for a long time. I ran a transplant immunology lab at Loma Linda for many years. And vitamin D is interesting. Vitamin D basically tells some of our white blood cells, immune cells, not to be so aggressive, not to be so worried. In fact, we know that people with rheumatoid arthritis, their white blood cells do not respond well to vitamin D in terms of calming their behavior down. And there's some, kind of cool papers that you gotta hit these guys over the head with a sledgehammer of vitamin D. The other thing that I think was fascinating to me when I started looking at gut wall repair is we have plenty of stem cells in the wall of our gut. The, the wall of our gut turns over very, very rapidly. The, the lining of our gut is only one cell thick, as I hope people know. And it's at least one tennis court, maybe two tennis courts in surface area. So these guys are constantly being shed, they're constantly being damaged, and there are stem cells ready and willing to take their place. But what's interesting is they're very, very sensitive to vitamin D. And vitamin D basically has to kick them and say, hey, wake up, there's damage right there. You know, turn into an epithelial cell and plug the gap. And what's been interesting to me is that without that vitamin D, those stem cells just kind of sit there and twiddle their thumbs and go, "What do you want me to do? I'm not getting the message." And so early on in my experience, I've been doing this for 25 years now, I would push vitamin D very aggressively on my patients. And as their vitamin D went up, remarkably, we then began seeing the leaky gut begin to repair itself. And it was, I mean, like a 1-to-1 correlation. So, wow. So that's an easy one. The University of California San Diego has a big vitamin D research group. And they're very interested in vitamin D as an anti-cancer agent. And that's a totally different story. But they think the average American, average American in the United States should take 9,600 international units of vitamin D3 a day. That's 250 micrograms in the microgram unit. So, and I certainly take 10,000. And so does my wife and I, almost all of my patients, a bare minimum of 10,000. In fact, I have some people with really leaky gut, aggressive autoimmune diseases that I'll start 'em on 40,000 international units a day. And not even Blake.

So. Wow. I mean, it's, it's, it's powerful. You know, anytime that I have, You know, we look at the top deficiencies in people across the board, especially in the Western world. Vitamin D is always by far number one. I mean, you have other ones that are, you know, up there, choline being one, and other fat-soluble vitamins, and the magnesium in terms of minerals, and zinc. I mean, those are higher, but generally none of them are even— I mean, one, one study I saw, like, around 94% of people, uh, vitamin D deficient. So it's very high up there. And so from a macro level, as you're talking about Um, if people want to heal almost anything, autoimmune disease, inflammation, we got— have to start in the gut at a macro level. Now I wanna talk about a micro level, and this is something you've written about in your books and you've talked about for many years as well, is something that is in the cell, a part of the cell called the mitochondria and mitochondrial dysfunction being at the heart of someone being sick and at the heart of a lot of conditions like hypothyroidism and chronic fatigue and neurodegenerative diseases. Talk to me about the mitochondria, why it's so important today that we care for this little, the, these little tiny parts that are found inside of ourselves.

Well, there's a really, there's a lot of reasons to, to care for our mitochondria. Probably number one is we have to realize that mitochondria are merely engulfed bacteria. And probably 2 billion years ago, we think, A cell ate a bacterium, kind of like Jonah being swallowed by the whale. And the bacteria said, "Hey, I'll make a deal with you. If you don't digest me, if you don't eat me, I'll tell you what, you give me a little food and you give me a little oxygen and I will make ATP for you, the power, the energy power. So much that you can't believe how much benefit you're gonna get. Just as an example, glycolysis, which is fermentation, we can take a molecule of glucose and get 2 molecules of ATP. Using a mitochondria to make ATP out of glucose, you could take that same molecule of glucose and get about 32 molecules of ATP. So, that sounds like a bargain made in heaven. And apparently, that cell took it up. And so, all, you know, eukaryotic cells, most of the plants and animals on the planet use this deal. But, what's interesting is mitochondria maintain their bacterial identity. They have their own DNA. They can divide separately from the cell. And we actually identify the membrane of a mitochondria as bacterial. Now, why is that important? Mitochondria can be damaged. When mitochondria fail, one of two things is possible. One, the mitochondria is ejected from the cell. And it is viewed as a bacteria by our immune system. And our immune system actually goes, what the heck? There are bacteria loose in us. And that's a bad thing. The other thing, as you and I know, is the cell can explode apoptosis and release these mitochondrial contents, which are also viewed as bacterial contamination. But, on the other hand, if you got the right factors, which I wrote an old book on called "The Energy Paradox," if you've got the right factors, you can have these mitochondria repair themselves, mitophagy, and recycle their components without leaving the cell and not being recognized as foreign. So that, that's one factor that I think we don't add into where's this chronic inflammation coming from. I mean, it, it, it's the other fact.

Oh no, no, no. Keep, keep going.

No, go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say it's fascinating, you know, to be, because this is something that, you know, I, I know that I've been reading more on the past several years is that these mitochondria are, are sort of, they're independent. They live within the cell,, but they're independent to the cell. They can go outside the cell. They're bacterial, as you're sharing. And so it's, uh, you know, it's, it, it, it's fascinating sort of this, um, you know, how we have these bacteria that live within us that, as you said, they, it's like they made, we, we made a deal with everything from bacteria to viruses to fungi, even living in our gut microbiome, but how the mitochondria themselves are, you know, that membrane is bacterial. It's just, um, anyways, it's profound. I, I love that you, you had mentioned that.

Yeah. And I think we're, you know, in the new book, I have a chapter on what's called the cell danger response, which is work out of San Diego again that is very intriguing that mitochondria, when a cell is damaged for whatever reason, the first thing that happens You know, we can nerd out all we want is that, believe it or not, ATP is leaked out of the cell. And extracellular ATP is actually a warning signal, a signaling molecule that something is very amiss. And that extracellular ATP is used by that cell to tell every cell around it, "Hey, I just got bitten by a shark. I'm bleeding. Don't try to save me. Get out of the water and save yourself. And I'll, you know, I'll either survive or not." And it's this extracellular ATP that's a signaling molecule. And then, what happens is the mitochondria changes dramatically. To a defensive position and then starts trying to repair the damage to the cell. And it goes through 3 phases. And long story short, this theory, the cell danger response, is that this repair phases in our environment from all the toxins, all the food, all the, you name it, the cell never repairs and it gets stuck in this cell danger response where cells aren't talking to each other, the cell is not repaired, and that's where chronic illness comes from. It's a very intriguing, and it's intriguing because you're right, these mitochondria are, you know, living beings. And yeah, they just happen to be in our cells, but we, We now know that we can send exosomes or little packets of material that contain mitochondria. We can send a damaged mitochondria and throw it on another cell that we don't like. Plants can send mitochondria via exosomes that can get into one of our cells. So we're just scratching the surface of, of what mitochondria really are doing.

It's, uh, it's, it, it, you know, it's fascinating. You know, when I've seen this the most, Dr. Gundry, uh, myself and my, I, I have a, I have a virtual clinical practice and I have a team and we take care of a lot of patients. But when I've seen this issue the most, uh, this cell danger response is with patients with chronic infections. Could be Lyme disease, could be mold, most commonly long COVID. And this is where I see the sort of, you know, a lot of these symptoms you see with the cell danger response in those, those patients. And it's like that oftentimes even via bloodwork's gotten better and a number of things have improved for them, but they still have a remnant of some of these symptoms like fatigue and some of these inflammatory responses. Even when it seems like the virus is gone, I believe due to the cell danger response. What are your thoughts on that and the sort of connection between this cell danger response and chronic infections?

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. In fact, just yesterday, I saw a woman who I've actually been taking care of for a few years that She had chronic fatigue. She had Hashimoto's. She had positive antinuclear antibodies, lupus. You name it, she kind of had it. And she had her right eyeball was chronically inflamed and actually was kind of poking out. And we'd get all these other doctors were getting MRIs looking for pituitary tumors. She actually had a very high growth hormone, which was intriguing to me. And we go, "Hmm, you know, maybe there is a pituitary tumor." She was being treated by an endocrinologist for thyroid eye disease, even though that wasn't her problem because it's just one eye was red. And as part of her workup, um, we got total body scans on her, and lo and behold, she, um, she had breast implants from when she was in her 20s, and she's now in her 50s. And they said, hey, um, it looks like there's a leak in one of these implants, and Lo and behold, I, again, I just saw her yesterday and she finally, she said, "Ah, that's not it." And another doc says, "Ah, that doesn't cause a problem." And, ah, she finally bit the bullet and she had her silicone implants taken out. And, the plastic surgeon said, "Oh my gosh, you know, it's not, it's more than a leak. Both of them were just," everything around your breast were contaminated with silicone. And, did a big cleanup. This was in December. It's now April. So, here's the deal. All of her numbers look so much better, but the best part of all this is that her eyeball is now back to normal. And so she's sharing, and I have pictures of her eyeballs in the chart. And she says, you know what? I'm in this discussion group now of, you know, of women who've had their leaky breast implants taken out. She said, you know what one of the major presentations is in all these women is one of their eyes is all swollen and red. And I went, what? And so, your point is exactly taken. So, here was, I mean, the cell danger response in action. I mean, her whole body was on warning that there was a major attack happening in her body. And not only was that attack centered in her breast tissue, But her whole body was now a Kevlar vest with an AK-47 and the finger on the trigger. And I think that's what we're missing. And that's what I tried to do in this book that, yeah, there may be an issue with a bad root canal or as, as Mark Hyman can tell you, or there may be an issue with leaky gut or there may be long COVID, but the entire body becomes inflamed because of this warning system. And that's unfortunately what you and I see every day is the whole system shuts down.

Wow. Yeah. You know, as we talk about mitochondrial function, I know one of the things that I've seen studies come out over the years on is, there's a connection between mitochondrial function, certain therapies like heat therapy or infrared light exposure. Could, could you walk us through sort of that connection, how light and actually heat could actually impact, uh, and empower the mitochondria?

Yeah. Um, so we can really get crazy. So mitochondria, um, Obviously, making energy is hard work and making energy results in damage to mitochondria through reactive oxygen species. Don't get me wrong, a little bit of reactive oxygen species are a good thing. It's when they get out of control, it's a bad thing. Mitochondria have a a safety valve that when things get too heated up in the mitochondria, normally we're of course trying to couple a proton with an oxygen molecule and make a dance to make ATP. But if things get too heated up, that's when this damage happens. So mitochondria have basically pop-off valves, very much like a pop-off valve in a pressure cooker. And there's actually 5 different pop-off valves in mitochondria where protons can escape the mitochondria without combining with oxygen. Now, that sounds like a dumb idea, But one of the things that happens as protons escape mitochondria is that you generate heat. And we're a warm-blooded animal. Even cold-blooded animals are not cold-blooded. They just go for ambient temperature, but they produce heat as well. Fun fact, I hope most people know brown fat is brown because it has so many mitochondria that it looks brown under the microscope. And brown fat is metabolically active with uncoupled mitochondria. And that's how they produce heat. So what? Uncoupling mitochondria is how mitochondria protect themselves. And so I have argued in the last, I think, 4 books that uncoupling your mitochondria is a really good think. And interestingly enough, if you look at animal models and even humans, uh, people who have the most persistently uncoupled mitochondria within reason, uh, are the healthiest. And the other cool thing about uncoupling mitochondria is the more you uncouple mitochondria, the more mitochondria you make mitogenesis to kind of share the load. I'll use an example. Let's suppose I have a dog sled and I have one dog pulling the dog sled. I'm not gonna go very fast and I'm not gonna go very far, but the dog can pull the dog sled. If I hitch up 5 other dogs to that dog sled, So now I have 6 dogs. Each of those dogs has to do a sixth of the work. They're gonna go a whole lot farther. They're gonna go a whole lot faster with only one problem. I now have to feed 6 dogs instead of 1 dog. And that's actually the benefit of mitochondrial coupling. You actually waste calories, if you will. And mitochondrial uncoupling was first discovered back in the 1930s with one of the most potent weight loss drugs that was ever developed called 2,4-DNP, dinitrophenol. And it killed a lot of people, but boy was it effective as a weight loss drug 'cause it was a profound mitochondrial uncoupler. By the way, nicotine is a mitochondrial uncoupler. That's why smokers are skinny, by the way. The other great mitochondrial uncouplers, heat. So, sauna is a great mitochondrial uncoupler. Red light, it turns out, is a really good mitochondrial uncoupler. And, Years ago, I worked with a company out of Florida who were developing light bulbs that didn't have blue light back when that was really cool stuff. And we started talking about mitochondria and this researcher said, "You know, I'm glad you mentioned that 'cause, you know, mitochondria really love," Red light and near-infrared light. And I said, really? And he said, oh yeah, we can prove it in the lab. And he said, we uncouple them with red light. I really, so to answer your question, you know, red light therapy and saunas and cold, believe it or not, cold plunges uncouple mitochondria. That's how it works.

Wow. I love that. You know, I think one of the things I know you and I both have, we talked about this right before the show, is we both have saunas from Sunlighten. And doing those regularly, you know, for, for me, I do it a lot for longevity, for, you know, I've had so many patients do that with hypothyroidism, a lot of patients with low cellular energy, that low ATP production, or, you know, helping them uncouple the mitochondria. So a lot of chronic fatigue, a lot of people with infections. I've had them use infrared saunas, but it's something I do regularly. And so I think, what are your thoughts on, you know, infrared sauna use? Obviously, you've talked about it a fair amount already. But, in terms of when do you tend to recommend and for what conditions or general benefits infrared sauna?

Well, I think in one of my first books, I joked that either get an infrared sauna or come and visit me in Palm Springs in the summer. You'll get the same effect. It's interesting, actually, we were joking about this a couple days ago. In the summer in Palm Springs, it can get to 120 degrees, but it's a dry heat. But the Germans love to vacation in Palm Springs in the summer and they just sit around and bake in our sauna. And I've always been fascinated because the Germans are very interested in health and They just come to our sauna in Palm Springs. So, but yeah, near-infrared and red light therapy I think is very useful whether you want to use it as an anti-aging option, whether you want to try to get your mitochondria kind of back online. I think it's a very useful thing. I have a lot of my cancer patients, And I think we should realize that cancer is also a mitochondrial dysfunction problem. And trying to get mitochondria back online is part of the therapy to make things work again. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. Well, I wanna encourage everybody, if you are looking for a sauna, I know both Dr. Gunder and I both have Sunlighten in our homes. We're putting them in a, and a, a, a clinic we're opening here in Nashville. So make sure you get a really good brand with strong red and infrared wavelengths there.

Yeah.

As well. And, um, you know, one, one of the, you know, Dr. Gundry, you've written so many great bestselling books. Of course, there's The Plant Paradox. You've referenced The Energy Paradox. I wanna talk about another book you have on the gut-brain, sort of this gut connection to our health here in a minute though. I, I do wanna close the loop though, because there are so many Americans today that struggle with low energy. In fact, I, I read a study recently of something like 1 in 5, 20% of Americans have chronic fatigue. Not just that they're tired, that they're chronically very physically tired. They have a hard time to a degree making it throughout the day without just feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. And so when you, and I know you see this in your practice, is people struggling with fatigue, what are some of the top things people can do in terms of healing their mitochondria and also just generally in order to address the low energy they're experiencing on a regular basis?

Well, read my books.

No.

Of course, yes. No, I think one of the things that has been interesting over the past few years as we've been getting better and better gut microbiome tests. And we forget that the Human Microbiome Project was only completed in 2017. And up until the Human Microbiome Project, we really didn't know who was living in our guts. We could only figure out who was there if they— we could grow them. And we now realize most of these we've never been able to grow successfully. We didn't know who was there. We didn't know what they were doing. We didn't know that they made most of our feel-good hormones. We didn't know that they made GLP-1, for example. And we didn't know how important short-chain fatty acids like butyrate were to the integrity of our gut wall, particularly the colon. And we didn't know how important butyrate and other short-chain fatty acids were to as substrates for mitochondrial health. And butyrate is a, is a backbone of making beta-hydroxybutyrate, a ketone. So, one of the things that's been fascinating to me and my patients who we do these gut tests, close to 100% of my patients with chronic fatigue make absolutely no butyrate and have very few butyrate-forming organisms in their gut. Yeah. And one just has to look around at regular news that there's all these 30 and 40-year-old people developing colon cancer and other cancers. And everybody's going, "Whoa, well, I guess we're gonna need to do colonoscopies in 40-year-olds." Well, no, that's not the answer. We have to figure out why 40-year-olds are getting colon cancer in the first place. And one of the things that I— probably most people don't know is the cells that line our colon are dependent on this short-chain fatty acid butyrate for nourishment. 80% of their calories come from butyrate, butyric acid. And if they don't get that, they number one, get really angry and they get really dysmorphic. And butyrate is also one of the most potent anti-cancer compounds anybody's ever, ever discovered. And so, we've got generations now that have not been, that doesn't have the bacteria to make butyrate, doesn't feed the bacteria the foods they need to eat. And these are soluble fibers that you and I spend a lot of time talking about. And so we're raising several generations now that butyrate is one of the things that's behind all this or lack thereof.

Well, Dr. I have a question regarding that. So, so you had referenced, and I think predominantly that we've, I, you know, I run blood work on patients as well, and this is something we test for, especially when we do it like a GI map and panel, right, is looking at what's your butyrate production. It's incredibly important as you're talking about how important or how beneficial it is. One, somebody can take a butyric acid or butyrate supplement. Somebody could also maybe get some short-chain fatty acids like ghee or grass-fed butter? How helpful are some of those raw fermented or organic, more high-fat dairy products? And then also with that, do those things— how helpful are those? But I know most importantly, probably still, you want to be able to produce this on your own in the right amounts.

Correct. Um, I've had, uh, Colleen Cutworth, head of Pendulum, on my podcast, uh, several times, and she used the example of swallowing butyrate. Uh, let's suppose I have a million dollars in my suitcase that I'm taking to the bank, and I've got it in my trunk of my car, and I'm involved in an accident on the freeway, and my trunk pops open and the suitcase flies out, pops open, and a million $1 bills spread out along the freeway and motorists are stopping and picking up a few bills, but it's not really gonna do me any good and I'm not gonna get the butyrate to the bank where it belongs. And so we look at that and, and in fact, that's, believe it or not, why I designed my product BioComplete 3, which has nanoencapsulated butyrate. Which is delivered to the colon where it's supposed to be. Yeah, butter has butyrate. Butter was named for butyric acid, but there's not much of it. I think the most compelling argument, and I give them full credit in my books, the Sonnenberg husband and wife team, microbiologists at Stanford. First of all, they're the doomsayers of the microbiome. They think we have a desert wasteland for a microbiome. They're correct. And they think we're doomed to have it that way. I disagree. But they did a really cool experiment. They gave volunteers a bunch of prebiotic fiber. It was inulin. Inulin's good stuff. And they looked at their gut microbiome diversity. And you and I know that a more diverse microbiome, the more a tropical rainforest, the better. And they looked at markers of inflammation, C-reactive protein, TNF-alpha, IL-6. And again, all this stuff didn't change their diversity, didn't change their inflammatory markers. And they went, "Well, what the heck? We gave 'em exactly what they wanted to eat." So then they said, "Well, you know, maybe we're missing products of fermentation, postbiotics, like acetic acid, vinegar. And so they gave the same experiment, but this time they gave people fermented foods. It was primarily kefirs and yogurts, but products of fermentation, postbiotics. And they gave 'em the prebiotic fiber. And with that combination, of the fermented foods, the postbiotics and the prebiotics, the gut diversity improved and the inflammation markers went down. Hmm. And I think what's important to realize is we've gotta, a chain of bacteria that each bacteria eats something and then poops out something that the second bacteria needs to eat. To make the third thing that the third bacteria needs to eat. Finally, we arrive at puterate. And so it, it's far more complex than we ever imagined. I guess we should have realized how complex it is. But I think that's exciting. We've gotta, and I, in the books, show people how to do that. You spend your time telling people how to do that. I think you had a book called "Eat Dirt," something like that. Yeah. And I, and I wanna praise you on that cuz I, I bring it up in "The Gut-Brain Paradox." Can we talk about eating dirt for a minute?

Yeah, I'd love to. Let's do it.

Well, so I'm, I'm old enough, in the '50s and '60s, almost all families had a victory garden. During World War II, people were asked to plant a garden in their yard. In fact, 42% of all the food grown in the United States during World War II was in home Victory Gardens. Wow. 42%. Yeah. Anyhow, so we had a Victory Garden and, you know, I'd go out and I'd pull a carrot outta the ground and I didn't carry my spray bottle of antiseptic wash. You know, I, you, brush it off on your pants and you eat the dumb thing, right? And nobody thought anything about that. Well, as you so eloquently point out, dirt has its own microbiome and it's got a phenomenal set of fungi, a phenomenal set of bacteria. And one of the things that I really went down the rabbit hole, so to speak, is that there are huge numbers of lipopolysaccharide-containing bacteria in the soil and in roots. And those LPSs are considered, "Ooh, we don't want LPSs in us. They're one of the major causes of inflammation." But hold on, our soil is full of LPSs and As I was unfortunately forced to admit, LPSs are on leaves, have their own microbiome, grains have their own microbiome. Believe it or not, beans have their own microbiome. And that microbiome happens to contain large amounts of LPS bacteria. And what I argue is that in the good old days when we were eating dirt, we were consuming a large number of LPS particles. And in animal experiments, if you have animals consume LPS, it actually teaches their immune system that LPSs are not the bad guys, that you see them on a daily basis. It's almost like allergy shots. And so we've lost that exposure to chronic ingestion of LPSs. Why is that important? Well, now when LPSs get into our bloodstream through leaky gut or through a high-fat diet, our immune system freaks out and goes, "Oh my gosh, you know, those are bacteria." And, "Oh my gosh," And so I think, again, compliment to you, eat dirt. That's why eating dirt was so good for us.

Well, yeah, I love that you brought that up, Dr. Gundry. I know when I was researching for the book and writing the book, one of the things that I came across were a few studies. And one of the studies— well, of course, there are studies that people have probably heard us reference, other studies regarding everything from having farm animals in your home or having a garden like you're talking about. But there was one study out of Japan And this was a coastal— it was— they found that when people were living on the coast of Japan, they were eating more fish, eating more seaweed. Those people digested seaweed and were able to better absorb and utilize the nutrients in seaweed better than somebody from, you know, anywhere, you know, anywhere else in the world.

Uh, correct.

Yeah. And, and so, and I think there's a very similar thing there. It's almost a natural immunization. I also think there's a connection here of why you should eat raw local food, raw local honey, raw things that are raw, have your victory garden like you're talking about. And, I think there's a lot of benefits that we haven't discovered or new ones that we're just discovering now like you're referencing.

Yeah. I mean, that's a great study and I've referenced it too. It is rather hilarious. So, you actually— only the Japanese who eat a lot of raw seafood have the bacteria that existed in those fish in their gut. And we, you know, we— no animal can digest the cell wall of a plant. Even a termite can't digest wood. It requires its microbiome to do that for it. And I get a kick out of all of us Americans eating seaweed without realizing we don't have the microbiome to break it down. And that's why, for instance, you see cracked cell chlorella 'cause we cannot break the cell wall of a plant.

Sorry.

Yeah. We don't have the enzyme system.

It's so interesting because, you know, we're living in a world where, 100 years ago, for the most part, where people grew up, they— that's where they lived, right? And so you were eating what your ancestors had. You developed a certain gut microbiome, and those bacteria were better able to digest foods from your local area. And then you move, you know, 500 miles away in a completely different region, completely different food system. Or today, it's like you have all of these different foods. And so I think a lot of people are preaching diversity, and I do think diversity is good but probably the ideal is local diversity rather than going out. And if you didn't grow up eating sushi and some of those things— another thing that's interesting, I'd love to hear your take on this, is I was reading on some recent studies on urolithin A and how one of the greatest ways— this was— it's not surprising based on the conversation you're having, but it's not what I expected. One of the top ways to increase your conversion of ellagic acid to urolithin A was just by eating pomegranates more often. You know, that was, that was one of the factors.

Yeah. And you know, again, it's interesting, you, there were literally about 5 different bacteria that are needed to take a gallium and make urolithin A and super old people, 50 to 70% of them have those bacteria. And you and I, only about 20, maybe 30% of people have those bacteria. So, you know, you could eat all the raspberries in the world, all the walnuts in the world, and you'll probably never make urolithin A. But it's interesting that these SuperAgers, they've got the right guys to be the assembly line.

Wow.

Yeah. And I, I'm, I'm a big fan of pomegranate seeds. I'm not a big fan of pomegranate juice. Um, it's, um, yeah, well, you know, a lot of sugar.

Yeah, there is. Yeah, we, we know. It's like, we always, we always try and take something healthy and just eat the whole food, you know. Eat the whole food is part of the message there. Well, another question I have for you— we've talked a lot about the, the dietary impact on the gut microbiome and on the cellular mitochondria Talk to me about emotional stress, because I know that when I, you know, I tend to see sort of the cascade effect with a lot of conditions, and it tends to be insulin and cortisol, right? Insulin, of course, we know that's going to be a big dietary factor with a lot of things, like you're talking drinking the juice rather than eating the whole fruit. But talk to me about this sort of cortisol and emotional stress connection and how that really impacts the gut and then this brain axis.

So, a couple of things in "The Gut-Brain Paradox." First of all, there is a depressive microbiome, there is an anxious microbiome. You can do animal experiments identifying who these guys are, do microbiome transplants from a depressed mouse into a normal mouse, the mouse will get depressed. You can take a depressed mouse, give them happy microbiome, they'll get happy. And there are some interesting human studies on that now too. So, I propose that a lot of this is that we're seeing now with this chronic stress is Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is really good at killing off the tryptophan pathway microbiome. And it's, it's a selective antibiotic. It was actually patented as an antibiotic, not as a weed killer. And so it allows kind of bad bugs to survive and the good guys to be killed off. And it's interesting to me, Roundup came out in the mid-1970s and you kind of look at our anxiety and depression. The Prozac generation came up and Valium about the same time. So, I study cortisol in all my patients and I measure them every 3 months. One of the things that was striking to me Number 1, during COVID I rarely saw elevated cortisol. And, you got to admit, that was a rather stressful time. Most of my obese patients do not have elevated cortisol. They almost all have elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance. In fact, in "The Energy Paradox," I proposed that it wasn't adrenal insufficiency that was troubling people. They had adrenal hormone resistance very much like insulin resistance that their mitochondria among other things weren't receptive to the action of these hormones. So, that's my take on it.

Wow. That's, yeah, it's a really good point. You know, every time I interview you, you have some really good, sort of, uh, you know, thought-provoking or new ways of seeing things, which is something I just, you know, I greatly appreciate about every time we, every time we chat. One thing I'd love to hear just personally from you is what does your diet look like and what are some of the common foods you recommend for patients? So let's say a patient, they're struggling with gut health, they're struggling with mitochondrial health, they've got low energy. What are, what are, what's your Fab Five or favorite 10, or like, what are some of the foods that you really like to consume and recommend to patients regularly for, for these issues?

Well, again, first thing is get your vitamin D up. Second thing you mentioned, get a dog. Dogs will actually give you a great microbiome just because of what they do. And so, number 3, I'll give you an example. My wife and I went out to an Italian restaurant last night. And, we had this huge— each of us had a huge radicchio salad with different types of radicchio and chicories with olive oil. And, they know to bring the olive oil to the table from Sicily and we drench it. And, they know to bring some Parmesan cheese over, real Parmigiano-Reggiano. And then, I actually had quail And it was, I actually, and I had it with cannellini beans. Now, I happen to know that they soak their beans for 48 hours, allow them to ferment. So folks, Dr. Gundry ate beans. And I do several times a week.

Listen, I wasn't going to say, you know, anyways, I appreciate you.

And I do it a couple times a week. I eat pressure-cooked beans. Yeah. My wife had sautéed artichoke hearts as her dinner. And so, and that's quite frankly would be a very typical dinner. A lot of times we really do, we spend quite a bit of time over in Italy and France and I was shocked at the amount of chicory that people use in their salads. Radicchio, frisée, Belgian endive, chicory. I'm shocked at the amount of artichokes that people eat. Raw artichoke salad, we probably have, you know, 2 times a day. And these things, you start looking at what are, what do all these old people eat? And we go through little villages trying to find these old folks and this is what they eat. The other thing which shocks everybody, we eat We eat a lot of raw aged cheeses almost every night. And we eat actual true preserved sausages. One of the shockers that I wrote about in Gut Check, 4 out of the 5 Blue Zones eat a lot of goat and sheep cheeses and they eat a lot of truly fermented sausages. And get over it. That's what they do.

I love it. You know, when you look at the nutritional profile of raw fermented cheese, and of course all the good, you know, bacteria, the K2, it's, it's really, you know, if you, if you digest it well and you tolerate it when you're having no reactions, it's a superfood. I mean, it's—

yeah, no, you're right. And, and there are some really interesting articles that fermentation of casein— and don't get me wrong, I have a number of patients who react to dairy proteins, casein A1 specifically, but whey. But fermentation of casein that occurs in yogurts and cheeses actually break casein into quite tolerable molecules. And I think that probably explains why, you know, traditionally all these cultures had to preserve their milk. With fermentation. And that's the only way to preserve it. And it has health benefits. I mean, there's cool studies in men eating Parmesan cheese that improves their vascular health, improves their longevity. So why not?

Exactly. Well, I mean, you know, your Italian feast sounds pretty great to me. And, you know, I think that one of the takeaways here is that I think You know, when somebody takes a regular, a whole grain, like, you know, like you'd make bread, bread out of, or raw milk, and you turn it into a fermented product, it's a completely different food, radically different food. When you're talking about a pure sourdough bread or a raw cheese or even cabbage into sauerkraut, these are very, very different foods and their healing potential. And I want to, I want to also encourage everybody here As Dr. Gundry and I've been talking, a lot of these, some of these principles we've just been able to just touch on briefly, but he really fleshes these out in an incredible way in his new book. It's called The Gut-Brain Paradox. And if you're a person struggling with really any of the things we talked about, but especially autoimmune disease, gut issues, neurological issues, food sensitivities, weakened immune systems, infections, all of these things. This is really an incredible book. Again, it's called The Gut-Brain Paradox. And if you want to truly get to the root and help heal your gut, I want to encourage you to check out Dr. Gundry's new book, Gut— Gut-Brain Paradox. It's in bookstores nationwide. You can just simply run over to amazon.com and buy the book there as well. And his books are always just absolutely, uh, incredibly written. And I love the blend of science and stories and practical tips that you can apply. In all the books you write, Dr. Gundry. And also just want to give people a few, a few of my biggest takeaways from the episode. One, we talked about if you're gonna get to the root from the macro level, you've got to heal your gut. And that's why his books is so amazing. Also, you've got to heal your mitochondria of the cell. It's so important for producing more cellular energy, and that's giving your body now the battery it needs to heal itself. And there's a lot of ways to do that. Everything from, we talked about, you know, pomegranates, there's adaptogenic herbs, there's a diet very specific like Dr. Gundry's. We talked about infrared sauna and the power of that infrared heat and what that can do for your cellular mitochondria. And, you know, there's, there's just, there's, there's so much power there. So, and also last thing I want to mention is this episode is sponsored by Sunlighten. And so if you're a person who wants to get an infrared sauna, both Dr. Gundry and I have the same sauna.. It's a Sunlight and Impulse sauna. And if you use the code Axe, that's A-X-E, you can save up to $1,400 on your purchase. And, uh, and again, you can find the link in the show notes, uh, for that as well. They were kind enough to offer that cuz they knew both Dr. Gundry and I use that, uh, specific sauna. But Dr. Gundry, I wanna say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. You're, you're always on the cutting edge and that's something I love so much is that, and, and the other thing I love is you're a researcher, but you're also in clinical practice. You're seeing these conditions every single day, helping people overcome them. And so I always really appreciate practitioners like yourself who are doing this in real time, helping patients. So thanks so much.

Well, thanks for having me, Josh. And again, great to see you twice in a couple of weeks.

It was— it was great. Well, hey, thanks again. Thanks, everybody, for watching another episode here of the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into The science and the principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share. Listen, there are millions of people that don't know the truth about the gut and the mitochondria and how to heal. So thank you for texting this to friends, for sharing this on social media. For any of you watching on YouTube, let us know the— your biggest takeaway from the show, that biggest, uh, gem, that piece of advice that Dr. Gundry shared today. Let us know your thoughts on your biggest takeaway, what you're going to take action with here with Dr. Gundry's wisdom today. Thanks so much, everybody.