390: The Gut–Alzheimer’s Connection | Dr. Steven Gundry
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Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West in the world of medicine. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and here we explore how modern Western science and traditional Eastern wisdom come together to unlock the body's full healing potential. Each week, we'll dive into powerful tools, techniques, and approaches from both sides of the world to help you optimize your health and live with vitality. Let's bridge the gap between ancient practices and cutting-edge medicine. Let's get started.

Hello friends, welcome to the ancient health podcast where East meets West. I'm your host Dr. Chris Motley and today I have a very special guest Dr. Stephen Gundry is here with me at the Health Optimization Summit and we're gonna talk about your new book The Gut-Brain Paradox and I have been devouring this doc and first of all I just want to say thank you so much for joining me today. Hey, thanks for having me. It's great. It's truly a privilege, truly an honor and

And I don't want to take time away because you have such wisdom, but I do want to tell you a quick story. One of my friends was on a long time ago. You had your first book out. His name is Jeremy Coward. He's a big-time photographer in Nashville, and he was on TV with you.

And he said, you need to connect to my friend Chris. And I got a follow from Dr. Gundry. And I was like, you should have seen my face. I was like, Dr. Gundry, just follow me. And then we messaged back and forth just a little bit, but I was just like,

doc, you took your time out. Like you're super busy and such. And I would just really seriously thank you so much. Cause you know, you look up to people and you're like, oh man, that doc just. But you're so famous when you reached out. I said, wow. Oh yeah. Yeah. Doc. Thank you. Hey, first of all, thank you again. And,

I know people do know who you are, Doc, but some of my first ways that I like to talk about or conversations in the podcast is knowing a bit about you. I know that you have your practices in California, but there are like a few basic things you want people to know about you. Like tell us about yourself, how you work so hard, like you're in the office so long. I love to start off with that. People know you.

Oh, gosh. Well, I grew up primarily in Omaha, Nebraska. Really? In Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wow. Midwestern guy. Midwestern guy. But then I went to undergraduate Yale. And back in those dark ages, they literally used to kid. They said, did you ever have to shoo the cows off the runway to land the planes in Omaha? Yeah.

But just as an interesting story, when I was a heart transplant surgeon at Loma Linda, we would fly all over the place to harvest baby hearts. And we literally flew into Greeley, Colorado, named after a West Young man, Horace Greeley. And there said...

"Keep circling, 'cause we have to get the cows off the runway." True story. And I'm going, "Oh my gosh, it's finally come full circle. I finally had to get the cows off the runway to land a plane." But it was in Greeley, Colorado. - Greeley, Colorado. And you're a mid, I mean, I love it. It's like your work ethic comes, I can see, stems through from that Midwestern vibe. - No, that's true.

And you just worked as a Midwesterner. I grew up in Topeka, Kansas. Oh, well, there you go. And I grew up there until about 11 or 12. We moved to Nashville. And I always thought that the Midwestern mentality was really cool because there was a lot of farmers where we lived. And it was always a community where you worked hard and you helped your neighbor. It was always like, you help me out, I help you out. And it was really, really fascinating. And I

I think like my mom's half, my mom's Korean and half Asian. And both parents are like pretty hard workers. And it's almost like they're workaholics. And I think it didn't help growing up in the Midwest where it's just all farmers and all hard workers, you know, so.

It's really, really, I'm really appreciative. Again, I can't say too much. I'm a little bit like nervous in some ways, but I don't want to be nervous. But first things first, I really am grateful that you've put the information out there about the relationship between the gut and the brain. And I do like to ask you what inspired you to write this book because it's got really great information.

Well, you know, I've been talking about the microbiome actually before the term was actually coined. The term microbiome was coined in 2002. Really? It did not exist before that. No way. Yeah. And I'm blanking on the researcher's name who coined the term.

But the Human Microbiome Project wasn't completed until 2017. So we didn't know that these guys were down there. You know, we used to joke that you swallowed food, magic happened, and whatever you didn't absorb went out your rear end. And...

And that was all we knew, right? And when the Human Microbiome Project came out, you know, now all of a sudden, oh my gosh, you know, there's 10,000 different species in this teeming tropical rainforest. And the stuff that's coming out your rear end is actually mostly bacteria and dead bacteria. Isn't that crap? And so what in the heck are those guys doing down there? And

So, you know, a number of years ago, maybe 10 years ago, there was the talk of the second brain. The neurons that were in the gut were more neurons than in the spinal cord. So the interest started going, son of a gun, what are all those neurons doing down there? And, well, they're doing something, and, well, they're probably talking to the brain. And lo and behold, the information, there's this

big nerve, as you know, the vagus nerve that goes from the brain to the organs. And we were all taught that that's how the brain talked to the organs and slowed the heart down and made the bowels move. And lo and behold, for every nerve fiber going from the brain down to the gut, there's nine nerve fibers going from the gut to the brain. And you go, whoa, we got that one wrong. So what's traveling on that information highway?

So then, so we said, oh, it's all those nerves down there talking to the nerves up there. Then, lo and behold, when the Human Microbiome Project came out, most of the things that we assumed the nerves in the gut were doing or making hormones, it was actually the microbiome that was talking to the nerves and sending messages of the vagus nerve. So with each, you know, passing few years, you get a whole new,

picture of who's really in charge. And as I like to remind myself, bacteria have been around for three billion years. You and I, we can debate. We've been around maybe 100,000 years in our current form, maybe 60,000. So you go, well, every animal, even a termite,

has a gut microbiome. And what are those guys doing in there? And why are they there in the first place? And one fun fact, termites cannot digest wood. No animal can actually break cellulose, the cell wall of a plant. No animal has a digestive system. So how do these animals do it? They require fermentation from their microbiome to break down plant compounds.

And as I talk about in the book, a little bit later in the book, it turns out that one of the things that probably made us human was the utilization of fire. Because fire can break down the cell wall of a plant. So that we can consume it and we can actually try to eat it then. And we don't need. And we don't need that much room in our gut to do what needs to be done.

That's why, because it's just so surprising when you have the recent research about how much of our body is actually bacteria. Because I was reading the book, it's like 1% to 3%, and it's like how many trillions of bacteria are in our gut. Yeah, there's probably 100 trillion bacteria in our gut. I mean, to me, think about that many critters. Yeah, critters, you're right. I went to medical school in the south of Georgia. Critters is a perfect term.

So, I mean, this, one of the profound statements or profound thoughts within the book, by the way, I love the first, the title of the first chapter or the first. It's, you guys just got to check it out. We're talking about like the impact of neuroinflammation because I remember when I was reading your book, I was such a big fan of the plant paradox and we were talking about, and

I remember watching videos about how you would scrape out the seeds out of your tomatoes and you would make sure that lectins were in the gut. I use one product, I'm not plugging anything, that had to do with trying to remove lectins because I was finding that people would have high amounts of yeast when they had lectin inflammation. And I'm not saying it's connected. That was really one of those eye-opening points where I started to see that people were having cognitive issues. But I should have paid more attention to it.

You're talking about neuroinflammation. You're talking about, like, if the biome's disrupted, it can lead to your brain being inflamed. Is that correct? That's correct. You know, long ago, first of all, our great-great-grandparents ate whole food, and they ate whole food whole. And...

If you think about that, what we do now is we don't eat whole food, but we certainly don't eat food whole. We, you know, pulverize it and extract. And so our great-great-grandparents, so they were, and all this food was grown in six feet of organic loam soil. And all the animals we ate, ate the grasses and et cetera that was eating this.

Now, unfortunately, but way back when, so our gut microbiome kind of migrated down to our colon, most of it. And we would extract, you know, sugars and amino acids and fats from whatever we ate. And there was a lot left over in the form of primarily soluble fiber.

That would drift down to our gut microbiome who really liked that stuff. That's what they wanted. And they got it every day. And what we now know is when they got what they wanted to eat, they sent text messages up to the brain or via the cable. The vagus nerve said, hey, we're full. We got everything we want. You don't have to go looking for anything more. Our needs are met.

And back then, everybody was skinny. So fast forward now, we may eat a potato in the form of a potato chip and we'll extract some fats and a few carbohydrates, but there's nothing left over. And so this is true of all of our processed and ultra-processed foods. So

Nothing now is going down to these guys down there. And they're going, I hear you chewing up there. I heard you swallow. I know it's coming and it doesn't get there. And they send text messages up to your brain. What the heck? You've been cheated. We didn't get anything. Go find some more.

And so there's this chronic drive of appetite driven, believe it or not, by a hungry gut microbiome. And they are sending, I love the way you put that, they're sending text messages back up because it's really about communication. It's what it is. And when there's that many cells and they're telling the brain, hey, something's going on up there, is that when we see like there's something that we intake? Yes.

And let's say somebody has a burger and fries from not the best source. And you're right, they're breaking down some, you know, things in their gut that probably is not the most beneficial. As that microbiome is inter-countering that, when it sends a signal back up to the brain, does that itself, I was looking at the book, it's telling the brain that this is not the best for me. And the brain can actually have some kind of damage. I don't want to say damage, but some imbalances there too. Well, yeah, so.

One of the things that we've learned, again, thanks to all the modern research, is that in my office,

They make compounds from soluble fiber that are called postbiotics. And I wrote an old book called The Energy Paradox introducing the word postbiotics. Because I had been around. No one had ever heard of it. What the heck is a postbiotic? And this was the communication system between the gut microbiome and actually all of our cells, our mitochondria, our brain. Wow. And prebiotics.

For years, I've had the privilege of lecturing or attending the big microbiome meeting that's usually in Paris, the Microbiota Society. And I got to know the organizer, Dr. – I hope it's coming to me in a second –

I kept asking. I said, you talk about the bacteria are talking to their sisters and the mitochondria and they're talking to the brain. And I said, how are they talking? And he says, well, there's text messages. And I said, literally text messages. And he said, yeah. I said, well,

What are they? He said, just wait. Just wait. We'll find them. Marvanitas, sorry. Marvanitas, okay. And sure enough, within a couple of years, these text messages were discovered. And the language of the microbiome to us are these postbiotics, like short-chain fatty acids, for instance. And it gets even wilder than that that I talk about in the book. So that's pretty cool.

But now you go, is that all there is or is there another layer? And so I just recently attended, you're going to love this, there's a society for extracellular vesicles, exosomes. Exosomes, yeah. There's a society and there's a meeting, annual meeting. For exosomes. For exosomes and extracellular vesicles. And so now we go, well, wait a minute.

So just for the listeners, so bacteria, and believe it or not, plants, can pop off a little bubble of a membrane that contains DNA, mRNA. It can contain mitochondria. It can contain instructions.

And it can pass through the gut wall and get into the bloodstream. It can go through the blood-brain barrier. It's not recognized as foreign. And it will actually bind to its target cell and release its contents into the cell with instructions. And literally like a bubble of a text message. And there's the text messages.

And you go, what the heck? This is such a complex system. And it's like, well, wait a minute. Who's driving the bus? Yeah, that's what I was—yes, who's driving it? Let me give you an amazing example, which is a little off the subject. But there's an amazing book called

called the plant eaters. I mean, the light eaters. Plants are, eat light. And this researcher has been spending her life looking at plants. And she went to the Brazilian jungle with a team that was investigating a vine. And this vine likes to wrap itself around another shrub.

And the vine itself has leaves that are shaped like an oval. As the vine infiltrates this other plant, its leaves turn into jagged leaves that look exactly like the other plant. No. Seriously.

Now you go, wait a minute. So everybody says, holy cow, plants can see. And they can see what the other leaf looks like. And so they make themselves look like that. And so they spent years looking for these photoreceptors on plant leaves on this vine. Couldn't find any. So then one of the researchers said,

Wait a minute. We should look at the microbiome of this plant and the microbiome of the plant that it's trying to imitate. And it turns out it's the microbiome of the plant that, with exosomes, tells the DNA of that plant to make a different shaped leaf. Oh, my goodness. And you go, what?

Are you kidding me? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah. What? It's like it's all little guys down there sitting in text matches saying you got to change shape to get into that plant. Yeah. Now I know. It's like science fiction. So, and the beauty of all this is we're really beginning to understand not only is this a symbiotic relationship because –

If we treat them right and we have the right guys in there, then they're going to do right by us. The problem, as you and I know, we haven't treated these guys right. And they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it any longer. And so getting back to your question about like neuroinflammation, number one, we have a horrible microbiome that could have protected us from a lot of like plant compounds like lectins.

But they've also been incredibly important for teaching our immune system, our white blood cells, who are good guys and who are bad guys. Who do we need to be worried about? Who, don't worry, we cut your back, we ignore this. And without that education, our immune system, if we have leaky gut, which most diseases, I happen to think, are caused by leaky gut. Hippocrates thought so.

Our immune system is 80% of our white blood cells are down lining our gut. Why? Because mischief can come across. And if mischief is kind of constantly coming across,

Our advanced troops, our army down there going, oh my gosh, we're getting overrun. Every day, we're getting overrun. So they send messages up to the immune system in our brain, our glial cells, and going, we can't hold off much longer. They're coming. They're getting past us. Protect yourself. Arm yourself.

protect the neurons. And that's where all this comes from. I love the way you put it because it communicates the glial cells. I love in the book how you talked about that there are structures called dendrites. And those dendrites are like interconnect these little vines and your glial cells will go into hyperactivity to try to remove all the dead branches when they get that signal down, those text messages from the gut. And so they go into hyperactivity, I guess. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, they're the bodyguards of the neurons.

And it's almost what's, you know, one neuron talks to another neuron by these dendritic processes, right? And so if they get the message, like, oh my gosh, the hordes are coming, you know, protect those neurons at all costs. So these glial cells, and we've watched them in real time under electron microscope.

they will nibble back these dendrites. No. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's really spooky. Like Pac-Man just eating away. Yeah, just eating away. And it's like, you know, the attack is coming and everybody back to the castle and pull up the drawbridge from the moat. And so the other thing I like to talk about is people go, well, what about, you know,

beta amyloid and tau proteins that's the cause of alzheimer's not we've spent 20 billion dollars on anti-plaque drugs and it's been a waste of time

And so I tell my patients, look, you remember 9-11? And they said, well, I don't remember 9-11 well. I said, what happened after 9-11? We started putting concrete barriers in front of our airports, in front of our federal buildings, anything that we felt needed protection against a terrorist with a car bomb or with a truck trying to ram through. Yeah.

So when I have a patient with brain fog or mild cognitive impairment, or they come in with their scan of all the amyloid, I said, those are just concrete barriers that have been put up by your glial cells to protect those important neurons. Wow. It's a sign that you are under attack, and this is just throwing barriers down in the attack. Gosh.

Doc, I'm going to replay this and watch this so much more because it makes sense because in the book, when you have those barriers and it's putting up and they know that there's invaders that could be coming up. And I'm not trying to jump ahead, but I love when you talk about Alzheimer's. They get the plaquing. They get those things put up. You were talking about like chlamydial pneumonia. You were talking about different things that are up there. Is it like the body's like protecting because those things are around? Right. A healthy gut makes such a difference in so many aspects of health.

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Exactly. And it's the same way with the oral microbiome. I mean, if you think about it, and Dale Bredesen's become a good friend. Oh, yeah, yeah. The top of your mouth, it's a direct shot into your brain. I mean, it's just that far. So, you know, if you've got a gingivitis, particularly in your upper jaw, I mean, it's a direct shot. Wow, it's true.

And I'm not trying to get too story time because it makes so much sense. I remember I had a patient that did like different thermography and they did a neural zoomer. And she had had so much inflammation, like high amounts in all aspects. And, you know, I do some –

E.A.V., I'll check some currents that go through the teeth. And she had two teeth that were right here. And wouldn't you know it, she went and I took her to a, you know, I didn't take her. I said, go to this doctor. They pulled back the tooth and it was soft bone. They had an infection that was eating its way up into her sinus. Yep.

And then they cleaned it, and you're right. And then most of her singles went away. Yeah. That's okay. This is great. So with the inflammation, sinuses, you can have stuff that can go up from that area. When...

When you eat something, and this is my thought too, like if you had something in your teeth, I love the way you put in the book that when you chew, you're given a signal like this is coming down the pipe. Yep. So your body kind of goes into a reactionary state, like I know what I'm about to put down in there is not going to be good. So the body would go into hyperinflammation all around too, right? Oh, yeah. One of the things that fascinated me was

You may remember from medical school, there's a term called gustatory rhinorrhea. Yeah. And, you know, you eat something particularly spicy. Yep. And your nose starts running. Yep. And, well, mucus is mucopolysaccharides, which are primarily sugar molecules that are the targets. Lectins are proteins that want to attach mucus.

to specific sugar molecules. So we literally lay down a carpet of mucus to capture the lectins before they cause any more harm. Ah. Honest. Mic drop. Yeah, I mean...

That's why your nose starts running after all this. I love this. Like, you know, really, other than birds, we are the only animal that would take one bite of jalapeno pepper and then take a second. That's true. Seriously, Doc, I love the mechanism that you just said about the polysaccharides, the way it's laid down, and it's like it's beautiful mechanics of how our bodies work. Yeah. Okay, I know your time's precious, but I love going through these things.

I made one couple thoughts here because I know my patients and the people watching. Now, I love that you said your glial cells have like an innate relationship with your gut buddies. I love the way you get gut buddies. Now, also too, there's also you said astrocytes, right? Which work with your glial cells to support. So the astrocytes, are they like the cells that basically communicate with your glial cells and they're up in the head and your brain? Correct. Yep.

There are two support systems for the neurons. So you could, we could postulate, or I could just say, like, if a person does have Alzheimer's or a person has some neurological impairment, like, it's coming from that gut lining. It's coming from some form of digestive issue. Correct. Man. Because I have a lot of patients that have severe amounts of early-stage dementia, and it has to be their digestive system then because I want people to know that. This is great. No, it really is. I mean, again—

This is, we think of it as something new, but Hippocrates was saying this 2,500 years ago. All disease begins in the gut. And I'm just a slow learner, I guess. No, I'm, so it's profound. And when you, when we talk about like not eating lectins,

Or detoxifying them. Detoxifying them or pushing them out. And I know it's a very general thing for me to say that everybody's different. And because you have great products, you have a great line. Do you have...

I really like the part about when you're talking about keto, it's not for every single person either. And I'm sorry, I read it, I was like, wow, I got to look into that. Is there a particular diet that, not say it fixes everything, but you kind of gravitate towards people out there? Or you say, no, everybody's different? Well, a lot of it depends on really the state, the wall of your gut, and the state of your microbiome, how dysbiotic your microbiome is.

If we had a great microbiome, like our great-great-grandparents probably had, or like super old people, super old people have a gut microbiome that's equivalent to a 30-year-old.

And these super old people have a distinctive gut microbiome that loves to eat what are called xenobiotics. These are all these endocrine disruptors. These are microplastics. And people go, wait a minute, bacteria don't eat plastic. Well, excuse me, we know that we can clean up an oil spill with bacteria because they are after carbon atoms and plastics anyway.

are from petroleum. And so if you've got the right bacteria, they'll eat this stuff. The problem is those guys aren't around anymore. That's right. And so...

Unfortunately, about 80% of my practice is autoimmune patients who just are not getting any relief from anything. And a lot of people with, you know, just profound IBS, they almost eat anything. And they're bloating and they've got water coming out their rear end. And it's like, I can't eat anything. So in those people, it's very useful initially. And it's the last part of the book. It's called The Chicken and the Sea Diet. Yeah.

To just eliminate all plant compounds and you don't go on a carnivore diet. It's not beef, lamb, and pork and milk, which contain this really nasty sugar molecule called NU5GC. But you use... I love it.

pastured chicken and wild fish and wild shellfish, which have the identical sugar molecule that's in us called Nu5AC.

And what's been really remarkable is these folks really turn around their gut issues in a matter of months. Now, some of these people are just so intolerant to plant compounds that it's really hard to reintroduce them at all. But most of the time, if we can get the wall of the gut repaired and get a defensive microbiome that'll start eating the stuff, and believe me, it takes a long time.

When I first started this years ago, I was pretty naive. I said, "Eh, we can fix leaky gut in two weeks." Now, because of tests like Vibrance WeedZoomer and all, it takes most of my patients, even perfect adherence,

Nine months to a year to fix everything. So they, because the individual out there, you don't want to get them discouraged. It's like it would take you at least a year to like help heal that. Oh, yeah. It's interesting. You know, we think about this, particularly living in California. So if a fire burns down a forest, which we should have a tropical rainforest in our gut. Hillary Clinton was right. It takes a village. Fair.

But so the forest burns down and we can go put little seedlings in and it's going to take years and years and years for 20, 30 years for this forest to repopulate and all these plants

connections be made. And so we've been really naive that, oh, well, I took a dose of antibiotics and don't get me wrong, you and I both know they can be life-saving, right? I literally was in medical school when broad-spectrum antibiotics were introduced in the mid-70s. Yeah.

Mid-70s. What did it, I mean, I don't want to get sidetracked, but was it like a crazy thing when you saw it and you're like, oh, this is the best thing that ever came out? Oh, we were just so happy. I mean, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, now we just got a shot done. Yeah. We don't have to culture stuff. We don't have to test. And I had, speaking of Georgia where I went to medical school,

Right after broad-spectrum antibiotics came out, we started to see what was then called pseudomembranous enterocolitis. Oh, man. Which we now know is C. difficile. But we didn't even know the bug. So our head of surgery, Arlie Mansberger... Now, general surgeons were the original gastroenterologists, believe it or not. Really? There were no gastroenterologists back then. We did all the scopes. We did everything.

So Arnie Mansberger, and this is literally the early 70s, said, you know, I think something has happened in these people's gut from the antibiotics. And I don't know why, but I think all the good guys are gone and the bad guys have taken over. So the reason I remember this so well is because once a week, medical students had to take a crap in what was called the honeypot.

And Arlie Mansberger, we'd go back to his lab, and he had a wearing blender. I kid you not. And we'd put the medical student's poop in the wearing blender, and we'd put it in an enema bag, and we'd stick it up the rear end of these people. And within two or three days, they were cured. Now, of course, now we call it a fecal transplant, which is one of the treatments for— It is? Right.

And he had these pictures, you know, from the scopes. And, you know, everything was just, you know, it was a big pussy mess. And then three days later, you have this perfectly looking mucosa and everything. And everybody goes, ah, those are doctored pictures. Nobody knew how to doctor a picture back then. No, not at all. That's Photoshop.

And so I got to, you know, looking back, and this is in the early mid-70s, I actually got to see what we now know was happening in medical students. So you were doing fecal transfers back then, and you were seeing the benefits and power of all those bacteria that were missing out of the people with gut money, and it was getting disrupted. Yeah.

Even back in the early days, like when this new terrain was coming up, when this was occurring, like you're starting to see all this degradation of the gut lining, all these things. And I know you've talked about it in your other books, but I want to ask, like, was it because of pesticides or food? Like, what was like the big driving force where you saw all these people starting getting horrible guts? Well, I think three things, and I talk about this in The Plant Paradox, and it tends to get ignored, and I keep bringing it up.

So there were a number of disruptors to our gut that occurred in the 70s. Number one, it was broad-spectrum antibiotics given to us. But also, a scientist in Ohio was treating some chickens who were sick with tetracycline, an early broad-spectrum antibiotic. And he noticed that

that not only did they get better, but they grew fatter and faster than the chickens who weren't given the tetracycline. And he said, son of a gun, it makes these chickens grow.

And so that's actually how antibiotics were first introduced to livestock to make them grow faster and fatter. What? Yeah, because it actually changed their microbiome and it actually made them store fat because they actually had leaky gut and you store fat particularly down in your gut. And that's actually how it started. So...

And so that became standard practice to give animals antibiotics to grow. So we took them, the animals took them, so that's number one. Number two, simultaneously in the mid-'70s, NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, were developed by drug companies. Because I was back in the time when the only anti-inflammatory we really had was aspirins.

And aspirin was pretty notorious for causing gastric ulcers. Bleeding, that's not a good thing. And so drug companies said, hey, we've got a really cool drug that will relieve pain, but it won't cause gastric ulcers. Now, what they didn't bother to tell anybody, because there weren't scopes that could get passed into the small intestine, they knew that it actually caused damage to the small intestine.

So the FDA, in their wisdom, said, well, this is life-saving, painkiller, but it's so dangerous that it can only be by a prescription and you can only use it for two weeks. It's so dangerous. Now, of course— Just for two weeks. Two weeks. That was on the package directions. You could only use it for two weeks. Now, of course, it's, you know, the number one Advil, children's Advil,

Aleve, Motrin, yeah. Yeah. So Motrin was only by prescription, and Advil was only by prescription. And only for two weeks. You could not renew it. And you saw this, like you had this triple threat, this combo. I'm sorry, I'm getting back at two weeks. You could only do it for two weeks. Only two weeks.

So you have the antibiotics and you have the NSAIDs. Then, literally simultaneously, the proton pump inhibitors, the H2 blockers, came out, which was a miracle in itself because now I didn't have to go do vagotomies on patients, which I talk about this, and ulcer operations. But nobody bothered to wonder, well, wait a minute.

Acid is probably really there for a reason. It's probably there to break down proteins. It's there to kill off bacteria. They don't like acid. And what we didn't know was that there was an acid gradient. Most bacteria hate acid.

The acid in our stomach is gradually diluted by the alkaline pancreatic juices in the bile so that by the time it gets down to the colon, the ileocecal valve, most of the acid is gone. But there's a gradient that keeps these acid-hating bacteria down in the colon. Now, if you stop taking—if you stop acid production—

Lo and behold, number one, lectins can get through, which is a protein. Number two, bacteria can get through. But more importantly, bacteria in the colon, which have really no business being up in the small bowel, go, hey, it's really nice up here. There's no problems up here. We'll move on up the line. So they get SIBO. Yeah. So they get SIBO.

And so many of these people. And that's why they get that little valve like where they move back. It's like where the people get appendix around that ileocecal valve and they move right back up in that area. Oh, my word. This is making so much sense. Yeah. So, I mean, it was really. And fourth problem that we really didn't recognize was glyphosate. Roundup.

Now, most people don't realize that glyphosate was patented by Monsanto as an antibiotic. It wasn't patented as a weed killer. Yeah, it was an antibiotic. What? And it was just actually a funny discovery in a pond outside a Monsanto plant, I think in Alabama, that they noticed that the stuff coming out of the plant, that plants wouldn't grow in the pond.

And they go, what the heck? And so that's how it all started. So you go, well, wait a minute. If it was an antibiotic and we knew all this, how in the world did the FDA and the EPA allow Roundup? And it's actually really easy because Monsanto convinced the FDA that plants to grow use

what's called the shikimate pathway. I love that word, shikimate pathway. Shikimate, think about that. So it sounds kind of Asian, doesn't it? It sounds a little, oh, you're shikimate. And humans don't use the shikimate pathway. So they go, hey, you could drink a gallon or roundup, no problem for a human.

What they didn't bother to tell anybody is that bacteria use the shikimate pathway, which is how they patent it as an antibiotic. So now we know, thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, that glyphosate actually kills off our gut flora. In fact, bad news, it really kills off the tryptophan serotonin pathway bacteria that

produce lack of depression, lack of anxiety. And now all those guys have been killed by glyphosate. Are you kidding, Doc? So it's just, I mean, it's the perfect storm and it all started in the 1970s.

In that perfect storm, all 19 centers, all this happened in my year. Well, I was a medical student. Talk about how divine or like the energies of the universe brought you about to like know all these and help so many millions of people. Yeah. So it all happened back then. So the Shikimate, like...

Yeah, I've never heard that, Doc. That's like, I'm serious. If you told me, I thought you'd make it up. You know what I mean? Look it up. You'll say, what the? Yeah, that's a shikimate. What the shikimate are you talking about? So when you find these things coming in and people are saying, okay,

That's why the gut lining back then, it just got destroyed. And now even like in a Chinese medicine world, I'll see so many people that have like just really injured ileocecal valves and really rough appendix. It gives a lot more light to it. But more and more, since we're seeing this degradation and you're talking about it, like no wonder we're seeing like the depression and the anxiety and all the mental things that are going on. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

That's why I didn't know that it cut off that tryptophan and that whole area of the gut biome. It's going to make a lot of sense to the people watching. I mean, guys, you got to check this out because when you talked about that 5GC, that's mind-blowing, about the keto, and it all works together. I'm going to research more about this, Doc. This is really like I'm reeling over. I got to get to the next point. I'm going to ask you something. All right, all right.

It's so good. Now, what about the keto diet? Because I know we touched on it, but when you say not the downsides of the keto for the brain, and just want to clarify, because I get a lot of people ask me about keto. They ask me about carnivore. Is the fats not the best, or is it too much saturated fat in that area? No? No. The problem...

So I wrote a whole book a couple books ago called Unlocking the Keto Code. And ketones actually don't work the way people think they work. Ketones are actually a signaling molecule to what's called uncoupled mitochondria. And we could spend the next two hours talking about mitochondrial uncoupling, but we're not going to do it. I'd love to, but yeah. It basically makes your mitochondria waste fuel.

But in the process of wasting fuel, it actually stimulates more mitochondria to be made. So it causes mitogenesis. So each mitochondria actually has to do less work. And it's a protective mechanism that was actually discovered in the 1930s when the ketogenic diet was used for seizure disorders in children. Yeah, 1930s.

This is 1930, the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet. The term was a doctor at the Mayo Clinic. Back in those days, there was no treatment. There was no phenobarbital. There was no Dynalampin. But he noticed that these kids with these really bad seizures, they'd be in status epilepticus for days and they wouldn't eat properly.

And as they starved, they began to stop seizing. And he said, what the heck? What's going on? And so they actually started noticing that these starving kids had ketones in their blood. And he says, well, geez, we can't starve these kids.

But let's think, you normally, if you're eating carbohydrates, you'll make glucose and you won't make ketones. But if you're starving, you're using, releasing fat from your fat cells, some of the free fatty acids are taken into the liver. The liver converts them into ketones because ketones, free fatty acids, all of us can burn free fatty acids in every cell.

Even our brain could use free fatty acids as a fuel, but free fatty acids are too big to get through the blood-brain barrier. Ketones are, simplistically, free fatty acids that are small enough to get through the blood-brain barrier. So that's...

it turns out that they said, oh, ketones are this miraculous brain food, and we still hear that. It has nothing to do with that. They're actually uncoupling mitochondria and the neurons, and the neurons actually get warmer, and mitochondria do really good with high heat, believe it or not. And that's actually how they work. That is... I could talk to you about this all day. I nerd out with things like this, but... Me too. It's...

I am. I mean, Flav, like to me, some of this information is not just like too overwhelming to me in the sense that like that it made me not want to go dive deeper. Like this kind of information wants me to dive deeper. And I'll end all the people out there would, too, because I have a lot of people that are nerds that watch my podcast. Oh, good. And I'm really grateful to it. And I love it.

One of the things I've got to make sure because I make sure I'm good on time. Okay. So, Doc, I want to make sure. A few more thoughts though too. When we're talking about the inflammation aging, that was one of the things too. We were talking about longevity. We're here at this conference and such. Does this really create a lot more aging, skin aging and such when you talk about gut and the microbiome?

Well, just remember that our gut is really our skin turned inside out. Whoa. Sorry. I love it. I love these terms. Go with your stuff. And so what's happening on the lining of your gut is reflected in a great number of people on the skin. So eczema, that's leaky gut. Acne, leaky gut. Skin aging is leaky gut. And, you know, people...

You know, I'm 75 years old, and people go, what? You know, let me see your hands. That doesn't look like a 75-year-old. You look great, Doc. Seriously, good job. So, you know, I'm trying to keep my, you know. Keeping your microbiome going. Yeah, because really I'm their home.

And I assume that they'd like their home in the best possible shape. And so if I give them what they want, they'll help the home they live in. And again, when you look at these super old people, they're not biohacking. All they've done throughout their life is to keep their microbiome happy and keep the wall of their gut intact.

You know, it's funny you mention that, Doc, because my grandmother, she passed away in 93 or 94. And one of the things she used to always tell me was that when she was younger, their version of like their dessert was they would just take high fat buttermilk and they did a whole bunch of buttermilk. And sometimes they throw a little biscuit in there, but she says buttermilk was her thing. And

Honestly, I think they were so poor they couldn't put any pesticides on some of the stuff they had. And she lived, she would, I would pick on her. I'd call Nana and I'd be like, Nana, you don't want to eat too many of those honey buns. And she would get so irate. She goes, hey, I lived this long. She was like,

She goes, look at all the other people. Like, I'm doing pretty good. So I would just leave her alone, you know, because you're right. The food quality is different. And even Asian culture, because my mom's Asian. They always say that Asians don't look like they age well, but they eat so much good fermented food, right? Exactly right. Exactly right.

There's nothing intrinsic in the DNA of Asians that they don't age like Caucasians. It's like, are you kidding me? It's what their gut microbiome has been given. That's true. And I always thought that, like with my cousins over there, they were taught at a young age to eat tons of fish.

and rice and lots of fermented foods and they had like lots of natto because they had a lot of soy soup and it was like and their guts weren't wrecked because they had all these things that were actually fortifying the gut lining exactly and now what do i i used to eat doritos and corn dogs with mustard oh my goodness i'll stop there but i could eat a pound of peanut m&ms sitting

Oh, my. Oh, no. Let's not go there. I know. I know. But when people ask you, though, this, I know we're getting close to time, but when they talk about probiotics, okay, and you have your thoughts of probiotics, what is it you would suggest to people for the general? Like, should they take so many billions or trillions, or you say, is there a certain form, or what's your thoughts? The problem is, and I'll use the example I use for my patients in Palm Springs, which is in the desert. Yeah.

let's say I sell you some grass seed in Palm Springs, probiotics, and you come back there for three months and say, you sold me bad grass seed, it didn't grow. And I said, well, what did you do with it? And they said, well, took it out in the sand and spread it around. And I said, yeah, did you fertilize it? No, you didn't tell me to. Well, did you water it? No, you didn't tell me to. They said, well, what did you expect was going to happen? And what we're now finally realizing is

This is a really complex system. So you just can't swallow probiotics. You got to give them what they want to eat, prebiotics. But more important, you actually have to give them postbiotics in the form of fermentation products to actually complete the cycle. So it is a cycle. You have to like put all the key components for them to work. Exactly. We may, for instance, everybody is constantly

kind of heard of this postbiotic called butyrate, short chain fat ass, incredibly important. But there are actually about six steps of bacteria to manufacture a component that, for instance, bacteria one eats something, poops out something that bacteria two needs to eat, to poop out something that bacteria three needs to eat,

until you get to butyrate. And if one of those bacteria is missing, you'll never complete the cycle. And that's what the beauty of the Human Microbiome Project was. Son of a gun, there's an assembly line in there. That's exactly right. And you could swallow all the probiotics in the world. Like Princess, I have a ton of people who take acromancea muciniphila. Good product, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Pendulum.

But when we look at their gut microbiome, they don't have any acromionceum. And it's like, but I'm taking it. Yeah, because you haven't – it doesn't have all the things it needs to grow. That makes sense because that's why some individuals would come to us and say, hey, I took a whole bunch of this probiotic and I –

I actually either got like really big gas or I got that because assembly line, some of there's a place broken in the assembly line. Right. Exactly. Because you hear it sometimes too on social media. Like some people say, well, I took a lot of provox and it never worked for me. And I'm like, and then why is it working for some other people? And this is the exact reason why. Yeah. It's much more complex than any of us ever thought.

But you know what I love about what you do, Doc, is you take these complex cases and you give good verbiage and make it very understandable. I hope that's what I'm... Hey, you do, Doc. All right. Thanks. That's great. I appreciate it.

So I know like I could, I really could keep talking to you, Doc. And I know this is like a chance in a lifetime to be able to do an interview with you because I seriously mean it. We'll come back. I'd hope one day you do another one with me. And I say that all seriousness, but I'm so grateful and thankful. But let's talk about the book. It's coming. Like, can you tell us about all the events that are happening around the book? Like you're going to New York. You're going to have a book signing or in a book party. Yeah, we're going to be on some TV shows, you know,

the gut brain paradox. I think we'll see me on Times Square on the billboard. So that'd be kind of fun. That'd be good. I mean, and I know people know who you are, but like with all social media and such, do you find yourself doing a

quite a bit on like Instagram and you know on Twitter or text and such where you usually plant yourself you can usually find me on my YouTube channels on Instagram hopefully I pop up every morning while you're scrolling through your feed oh thank goodness

And people can find me. I can't walk through a Costco without being tripped every five minutes, or every five feet, what am I saying? Yeah, you know, Doc, when you do good work and you help people, people, they want to tell you how much they care about you and they thank you for it, you know? And that's the truth, though.

Well, we know that you have to get going because everybody's going to want to see Dr. Stephen Gundry at the event. But from all of us here at the Ancient Health Podcast, remember, guys, please check out his new book. I want all you guys to get this book. I'm telling you, I've been devouring it, and it's very easy to understand and readable. And check out every avenue that Dr. Gundry's is on social media. Follow him. We appreciate you guys following us today. Doc, we appreciate you. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Pleasure. Thanks, guys. Have a good day.

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Remember, true health is about balance, mind, body, and spirit. So stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore how ancient wisdom and modern science can work together to help you thrive. Here's to your health, balance, and well-being. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and I look forward to our next episode together.