Your Gut Controls Your Mood, Cravings, and Even Personality w/ Dr. Gundry

Is Your Gut Controlling Your Mind? What if I told you that your thoughts, cravings, and even your personality might not be coming from your brain—but from your gut? Today, I sit down with Dr. Steven Gundry, a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and best-selling author, to uncover the shocking truth about the gut-brain connection and how the bacteria in your gut could be running the show. For years, we've been told that mental health is all about brain chemistry. But Dr. Gundry reveals that your gut microbiome directly influences your mood, cognition, and even addictions. Whether it's sugar, alcohol, or even opioids, the bacteria in your gut can literally create cravings, fuel addiction, and manipulate your behavior. And if that doesn’t wake you up, he also shares how healing your gut can help reverse depression, anxiety, and even improve your personality. We also break down the hidden dangers in your diet, from glyphosate (a common herbicide) to ultra-processed foods that are destroying your gut lining and wreaking havoc on your health. Plus, Dr. Gundry gives practical steps to rebuild your microbiome, including the power of fermented foods, the dangers of certain antibiotics, and the key nutrients your gut NEEDS to thrive. This episode is a game-changer—whether you’re looking to improve your mental clarity, kick an addiction, or just take your health to the next level. Listen up, take notes, and start paying attention to your gut—because it might be the real driver of your life. Key Takeaways: How your gut bacteria control your cravings and addictions The surprising link between gut health and mental health disorders Why antibiotics and common foods are wrecking your microbiome The #1 nutrient missing from most people’s diets A simple step-by-step plan to heal your gut and transform your brain Dr. Gundry dropped some eye-opening truths in this one, and I know it’s going to change lives. Go grab his new book, “The Gut-Brain Paradox,” and share this episode with someone who needs it. Max out! 🚀 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:30Ed Mylett?

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• 2:03Speaker 01

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• 2:13Speaker 02

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• 2:20Speaker 01

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• 2:38Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Meyer Show.

• 2:43Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the show, everybody. So today is going to be a really interesting journey. We're going to talk about, ironically, we're going to talk about your mental health. We're going to talk about cognition, but we're actually going to connect it through your microbiome, through the gut. And I've got a very special man I want to have on the show for a long time. He says a lot of interesting things that has gotten my attention over time. And he's a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon who's sort of shifted into a little bit more of this work right now. He's sold a couple million books, New York Times bestselling author. And today, we're going to talk about the gut-brain paradox, which is the title of his new book. And this is going to be interesting today because I've got some tough questions for him. So Dr. Stephen Gundry, welcome to the show.

• 3:27Ed Mylett?

  Thanks a lot, Ed. Appreciate you having me on and looking forward to it. So am I, very much. I've wanted to talk with you for a long time, even in some of your other books. But it's interesting, when I thought, well, we're going to have him on to talk about the gut, I didn't know we were really going to spend a lot of our time on mental health, frankly, cognition, and the brain and that connection. So everybody stay in here today. Because I think you're going to hear some things that you've never heard before, at least I had not heard before. So let's start out, let's go a little bit bigger picture. A big topic on our show has been depression and mental health. And we've covered it from all different types of angles, never from the gut. So how is the gut connected to depression or mental health overall?

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Uh, well, where shall we start? Actually, one way I get people's attention is that many, many people take an antidepressant, an SSRI, serotonin reuptake inhibitor. And they're, they notice that it takes about a month to kick in, right?

• 4:32Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  That's typical. What, if these things worked by actually increasing serotonin up in the brain, then they ought to kick in within 24 hours, but they don't. So how in the heck are they working? Well, it turns out, and it's in the book, it's been published, that these antidepressants actually change the gut microbiome. And it's the change in the gut microbiome that, quite frankly, takes at least a month that actually causes the effect that they're looking for. It has nothing to do with the fact that they're SSRI.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  And we now know that there is a specific dysbiotic gut microbiome that associates with depression. There's a specific dysbiotic gut microbiome that associates with anxiety, with ADHD. Each of them have a specific imbalance. And you can even now spot the troublemakers and you can actually manipulate the gut microbiome to get a better balance. And that's actually what these drugs do.

• 5:54Ed Mylett?

  What does dysbiosis mean? Just for everybody's edification, because I don't think, I bet 90% of the people don't understand the term. I didn't before I started reading your work.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  So one of my favorite examples that I think resonates. So in any ecology, like a tropical rainforest, there are, you know, thousands and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of different species that all cooperate to make that tropical rainforest balanced. And One of my favorite examples is Yellowstone Park. Now, a number of years ago, uh, it was decided that wolves um are bad actors and wolves are evil. And we really ought to get them out of Yellowstone Park.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Now, it was mostly because the ranchers didn't like them, but anyhow, wolves were eradicated from Yellowstone Park. Hmm. Imagine what happened was that wolves, of course, are an apex predator and wolves controlled the elk population. Without bulls, the elks, elks overgrew. And the elks ate a lot of the saplings. The saplings were actually used by beavers to build beaver dams. Uh, the beaver dams weren't there because there weren't any beavers. Uh, the fish population changed and the entire ecosystem collapsed. Hmm.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  When they realized that, because of the balance of one bad actor, a wolf. When they reintroduced wolves back into Yellowstone, it took a few years, but low and behold, the balance, the ecology of Yellowstone Park returned. So dysbiosis means normally, as unbelievable as it sounds, we have at least a hundred trillion bacteria in our gut. Hmm. We have many more viruses in our gut. We have many, lots of fungi in our gut, lots of molds in our gut, and I could go on and on, but Hmm.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  at least a hundred trillion bacteria. And there's probably, and the number goes up every year, about ten thousand different species.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  And these different species literally all communicate with each other. They're dependent on each other. They recognize bad guys. Some of the good guys, which I call keystone species, will actually make compounds to try and suppress the bad guy's growth. But most of us, in the United States at least, have what's called a dysbiotic microbiome. This tropical rainforest, this balance, this interdependent of species has been completely screwed up. In fact, you and I off camera, we're talking about Palm Springs and the desert,

• 9:09Speaker 03

  where I am right now and you used to be. It's basically our tropical rainforest in our gut is now a desert wasteland. And

• 9:24Speaker 03

  so so that's that's dysbiosis.

• 9:29Ed Mylett?

  Why, I want to go back to the anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication just for a second because I don't want everybody that's taking it to get off of it right away and go, I'm just going to start cleaning my gut and I'm going to be great. If that's accurate, what you said, then why is it that you need it for? Why is it that when people decide they're no longer going to stay on these medications, that they're counseled to stage off of them over time? If it's just gut connected, or are you saying the gut is contributory in addition to maybe a serotonin issue? Or those two are correlated? So I want to understand that just a little bit more.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, there's lots of pieces to this puzzle.

• 10:09Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  One of them is there's a

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Herbicide called Roundup that its active ingredient is glyphosate. And it turns out that we were taught that Roundup glyphosate is harmless to humans. Uh, because it it goes after a plant um growing pathway called the schicchamate pathway. Uh, I love that word, the schicchamate pathway.

• 10:44Ed Mylett?

  Easy to remember.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, easy to remember. And we were sure humans don't use the schicchamate pathway, so we could drink Roundup supposedly and be fine. Now, unfortunately, nobody bothered to mention that bacteria use the schicchamate pathway to reproduce. And fun fact, Roundup was actually patented as an antibiotic. Fun fact, not as an herbicide. So, um, Roundup glyphosate actually specifically targets the tryptophan bacteria pathway. And tryptophan is the precursor for the feel-good hormones like serotonin.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  And so unwittingly, let's be nice. Uh, we have killed off uh much of our serotonin pathway bacteria just by eating uh foods that contain glyphosate. And sadly, uh, almost all of our grain products uh are sprayed with glyphosate prior to harvesting. They're not glyphosate isn't used just on GMO crops. And those foods we eat and they're fed to our animals. So glyphosate is just one of the best ways to knock off your

• 12:10Speaker 03

  feel-good bacteria known to mankind. And isn't it interesting? Yes, social media contributes to all this. But isn't it interesting that the huge epidemic started when Roundup began being increasingly used?

• 12:27Ed Mylett?

  What do you do about it then? I mean, you brought that up, but I mean, we're setting up the the stage here. You know, a little bit. I always like to kind of cut to the cut to the end of the movie and then come back to the middle in a minute. But, you know, I know everyone's listening to this going, you know what? I I I believe that probably my gut has contributed to my mental health, well being. I think over the next 10 years, whether what you said or not about, you know, reantuptake inhibitors or not, that's going to be interesting to to see. But having said that, what would you someone says right now, hey, listen, I I I do struggle with my mental health. I have tried other things. It's not worked. Is there a test I should do to test certain bacteria in my gut? Is there a certain diet recommendation that you have?

• 13:13Ed Mylett?

  And obviously, this is in the book, so they should get the book. But but also, look, since you're on the show, I'm supposed to ask you this. So what would your answer be to that?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Well, interestingly enough, and I show a lot of examples in this book and the previous books of most, most of these people with anxiety and depression have what we call leaky gut or intestinal permeability. Now, if you had asked me 25 years ago, when I first started in this area, what I thought about leaky gut, I would have told you it was pseudoscience. And it's not. This has been well worked out in humans. A lot of it was spearheaded by a professor who's now now at Harvard,

• 14:03Speaker 03

  a pediatric gastroenterologist by the name of Alessio Fazano, originally from Italy. Funny guy, been on a couple of panels with him. Anyhow, he actually showed the mechanism where gluten and most people have heard of gluten as part of wheat, rye, barley. Gluten is a lectin, my favorite subject. How gluten causes intestinal permeability, causes literal holes in the wall of the gut.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  He and others showed how you could measure the presence of intestinal permeability, how you could actually grade it. And I've published numerous papers that uh, over the period of about a year, nine months to a year. Most people by following my program uh, will seal their leaky gut. And I show in the book, among other things, that one of the consequences of doing this is that people uh, are usually able to wean off their antidepressant medicines because they find uh, they no longer need them.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Uh, no, and you're right. No, this, everybody listening, no, don't stop your antidepressant medicines and swallow a probiotic. Uh, that's not gonna work. I can assure you.

• 15:33Ed Mylett?

  Right. So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you gotta change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably gonna produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com/ed. My friend Brendon Burchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well.

• 16:14Ed Mylett?

  I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute, as do a whole bunch of other influencers, like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com/ed. That's growthday.com/ed.

• 16:34Ed Mylett?

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• 17:17Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/mylet to see if you qualify. That's R-O dot C-O slash my let to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co/safety. R-O dot C-O slash safety. So when I ended up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating, and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed, and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists. They use a 10-point quality inspection system. Here's all I can tell you. The stuff has lasted over time.

• 18:01Ed Mylett?

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• 18:37Ed Mylett?

  You know, I, when I was a little boy, I, uh, I was very ill, uh, till I was about eight years old. I mean, on antibiotics constantly. And so I assume that's why, even now, I don't have a great immune system. So I speak and I travel and I shake hands, you know, 100 nights a year at least. I'm, I get sick a lot. And so I've been prescribed antibiotics more than about anybody that I know. I mean, I'm, I'm sure there are people far more sick than me, but I've had antibiotics most of my life. And we have had other people on that have talked about the gut and how antibiotics can be very detrimental to your gut. So now I'm wondering, and I want, I'd like your opinion about this, for people that have children that are getting antibiotics prescribed, or even themselves, your overall viewpoint

• 19:21Ed Mylett?

  of antibiotics, how it impacts the gut, and how that might impact our mental health, our cognition, and other things. Because we're very quick to prescribe them, aren't we? I mean, it's just, it's the thing. And I'm wondering if you, you know, think there's a whole bunch of adverse consequences to doing that on a regular basis?

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Um, I'm old enough to have been in medical school when broad-spectrum antibiotics were introduced in the mid 1970s. And we really thought they were miraculous. Because beforehand, um, if we were lucky, we would culture a bacteria that was the troublemaker. And then we'd find out what antibiotic, we'd test antibiotics against it over a couple more days to find out which antibiotic worked. Well, now, when broad-spectrum antibiotics came out, it was, instead of taking a 22 caliber rifle at the bacteria,

• 20:21Speaker 03

  now we had a shotgun, or an AK-47 on automatic. And we could mow down everything. We didn't have to do a culture, we just said... Bam, and they were miraculous. I mean, they really were. I can remember it well. What we didn't know, we didn't know that these guys down in our gut even existed. It wasn't until the Human Microbiome Project in the early 2000s to the mid 2017 is when it was completed. We didn't even know those guys were there, or how many of them were, and what they did.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  So, we, we have wiped out most of our flora. And it's, it's literally, since I'm now in California, and we love to have forest fires out here and fires.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Imagine we have a forest fire, and let's just think of our gut microbiome as a forest. And we burn it to the ground. Now, we could plant all these little seedlings, but it would take 20 to 30 years to get that forest back to this incredible ecosystem. And there are papers, and some of them are referenced in my books, that you could take a round of antibiotics, and it could take up to two years to begin to even reestablish something that al- almost resembles a working ecosystem.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Two years after a single round of antibiotics. The thing that we're also learning is, number one, these bacteria,

• 22:10Speaker 03

  and I talk a lot about it in the book, these guys actually have, are intelligent sentient beings. No, they don't have a brain. No, they don't think like we do. But they, for instance, see. They don't see with their eyes, but they can count numbers of bacteria around them. They know who the bacteria are around them. They share information with each other. They, um...

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Educate our immune system. And they do a great job of letting the immune system know who's the good guys and who's the bad guys. And in the good old days, they would tell the immune system, hey, we got your back. We're going to handle most everything that comes down the pike, whether it's a virus, whether it's a bacteria. We'll fight to the death against these guys. Immune system, you you go handle anything that kind of gets past us. Not much is going to get past us. If you see something get past, be ready. So I use the example.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  I I trained in London, England, in children's heart surgery. Back in those dark ages, the police, the bobbies only carried a billy club. They had no weapons. Now, and now our immune system should basically have a billy club. Now, of course, we're getting no information from our gut bacteria about that'll take care of business. So now our immune system is got a Kevlar vest, you know, two AK-47s and their fingers on the trigger. And that's where our problem lies.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  And we've we've basically a very poorly trained militia now instead of a well organized.

• 24:17Ed Mylett?

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• 25:00Ed Mylett?

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• 25:42Ed Mylett?

  I've changed my mornings. The whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/ed10 right now or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Well, one of the, one of the, I'll use your analogy. One of the bulletproof vests we can use is to have the right nutrients in our gut, right? Yep.

• 26:26Ed Mylett?

  And you say in the book that there, we've identified certain nutrients that must exist. And if they don't exist, the bad guys start to take over and blow us up. Can you share with us what some of those nutrients are, how we could get them as well?

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, here's, here's one of the other, I think, surprising things that are written about in the last three books.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Most people know probiotics, friendly bacteria.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Probiotics have to eat something and the things they like to eat in general are long chain sugar molecules, starches, sometimes called resistant starches, sometimes called soluble fiber. Uh, what we didn't know is that when they eat these things, they make a communication system, uh, called postbiotics and postbiotics are, believe it or not, gases that communicate.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  They're short chain fatty acids like butyrate and there's a whole host of new postbiotic compounds called exosomes and extracellular vesicles, which are literally packets of information that bacteria pinch off, go through the wall of our gut, pass through any membrane, even to our brain, and then deposit that information by latching on to say a neuron and telling the neuron literally what it wants the neuron to do. And it's, it's really Star Wars and I have the, I have the pleasure of attending these

• 28:16Speaker 03

  meetings and lecturing at these meetings. And the level of complexity that our microbiome exerts on just about any level you care to think about is, is just, it's, it's, and I've talked about this before, we have very few human genes, um, believe it or not, a sand flea has more genes than a human.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Bacteria have like tenfold more genes in our microbiome than we have. And they're constantly reproducing and they're constantly changing genes, exchanging genes. So I and others believe that we have decided to make decision making uploaded to our bacterial cloud, much like there's not much happening in my computer right here and you and I are being uploaded to a cloud. And that because we are a symbiotic organism, we've left these sorts of decision making

• 29:29Speaker 03

  to this microbiome, to these bacteria. And we need to get over the fact that it might just be that the bus driver is not driving the bus, it's the passengers.

• 29:42Ed Mylett?

  He pointed to his head, guys, at the brain is what he's saying. He's saying that.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  And it's probably, it's probably the passengers who are directing most of the things that happen to us.

• 29:54Ed Mylett?

  So I'm gonna push you on this again. So if I'm listening to this, I want to take an actionable step on this. I want to get the passengers cooperating with the driver or helping the driver with a sense of direction. I love my, our analogies today. Are there two or three nutrients I want to ingest or supplement? And are there two or three I don't want? These are contributing to the passengers, the inmates running the asylum, so to speak.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. So one of them, probably most, I think, at least from me and my understanding, important paper was written a few years ago. There's a husband and wife microbiology team at Stanford by the name of the Sonnenbergs. And they took a bunch of healthy volunteers and they gave them a lot of prebiotic fiber. It's called inulin. It's, it's a nice fiber. And they looked at their gut microbiome diversity and a more diverse tropical rainforest, the better. And, and they looked at inflammation markers. Okay. And they gave them all this prebiotic fiber because everybody knows that that's what

• 31:06Speaker 03

  the probiotics want to eat. Nothing happened. There, there was no more, there wasn't extra diversity. There was still inflammation markers and they went, hmm, let's try this. Let's give them the prebiotic fiber, but let's also give them fermented foods in, in the study, which believe it or not, everybody thinks fermented foods, probiotics, no. Fermented foods are postbiotics. And so let's give them fermented foods. And in this case, it was mostly yogurts and kefir's, but it could be vinegars, it could

• 31:46Speaker 03

  be kimchi, it could be sauerkraut. And also give them, you know, the inulin and then see what happens. And lo and behold, with the addition of these postbiotic fermented foods, then the gut diversity began to get more diverse and then the inflammation markers went down. So I, to phrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a village. And what we're learning is that these really important bacteria that are gonna make really important things for us, for our

• 32:27Speaker 03

  brain, like serotonin, like butyrate, there's gotta be four or five other bacteria kinda on an assembly line. And bacteria one has to eat something to kind of poop out, produce what bacteria two needs to eat. Bacteria two needs to poop out what bacteria three needs to eat and so on to, and if you've got one guy missing, or if you've got the component that's missing, then you're not gonna finish up with a, a car on the end of the assembly

• 33:06Speaker 03

  line. And, and that's again, discovering the incredible complexity of this ecosystem is mind boggling. But now that we are beginning to understand and we are beginning to understand what each of these guys need. Then we can build, rebuild that assembly line and we can get this stuff back. So that's a long way. Go ahead.

• 33:35Ed Mylett?

  No, it's a great answer. I have to tell you, I've always kind of looked for like, is there any overlapping? And so just for the audience, this idea of fermented foods, guys, and fermentation, I can tell you has come up multiple times now with people that I've talked to about the gut and the brain. And overall health as well. And it's just something, you know, we all talk about, hey, make sure you get your creatine or make sure you're getting your macros, all these fitness people. But this idea of fermentation and eating fermented foods is something that seems pretty consistent. And I have to tell everybody also this, I share this with you as well. You know, the good thing about having 800 episodes, I've had anti-aging people on, brain health, mental health experts, you know, muscle building, physical strength, cardio, all the, and one of the things that keeps coming up, if you ask almost everybody, what's the next frontier?

• 34:20Ed Mylett?

  Of health, of wellness, of strength, of mental outlook, of energy, of all of it, of anti-aging is the gut microbiome. It is, this is the next frontier. And I have a, I have a feeling that over five, six, seven years, this is going to be one of these like, light speed evolutionary things that we learn more and more about. We're going to talk about personalities in just a second, but before we go there, we talked about eating fermented stuff is probably good for us. Is there something that the bad stuff feeds off of? Is it like sugar? Is there something don't put in your body? This is the thing, don't put in it. If you put it in, you're screwing your gut up. What would that be?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Well, you're right. Sugar is, is right up there. Easily digested carbohydrates.

• 35:03Ed Mylett?

  Easily digested carbohydrates are bad for you.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Exactly. So for instance, a piece of bread has four teaspoons of sugar.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  And it doesn't taste sweet. So it literally, it, it has a glycemic index above table sugar. But what, what we know is that there's, there's basically bad guys and good guys. And there's nothing wrong with bad guys as long as they're in balance with the good guys. The good guys, quite frankly, can't use simple sugars. And let me explain why.

• 35:43Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Most of the good guys in our gut live down in our bowel, in our large intestine. We do have a microbiome in our small intestines. We even have, believe it or not, a microbiome in our stomach. We absolutely have an amazing microbiome in our mouth. The, and the, the oral microbiome actually loves sugar, as any of us might guess. The bacteria down in our gut evolved to kind of take whatever was left after digestion,

• 36:24Speaker 03

  got all the simple sugars absorbed through the wall of our gut. And all that was left were these complex starches that were very difficult for our digestive system to break down. And they came rumbling down and they go, oh, dinner. And that's what we want to ferment.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  We, we hear a lot about SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It turns out that, first of all, it's not as rampant as people think, but, and we won't go there. But two thirds of people who have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth have oral microbiome living down in their small intestines where they're not supposed to be. Now, why are they there? Because they can utilize simple sugars. And they're just sitting there going, okay, you know, we're, it's coming, it's coming down the pipe. And we're gonna grab all that stuff because we can outcompete for that food source.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  The second thing that's happened is none of us, because of processed foods and ultra-processed foods, are eating any soluble fiber that works its way down to the guys. And they're down there going, what the heck, you know, where's all this great stuff? I hear the mouth chewing, I know it's coming, and it never shows up.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  And interestingly enough, so this, these bad bacteria.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  As I talk about in the book, they literally send text messages to your brain that say, "Go get some more of that stuff. That's what we want." And we basically, "Get over it, folks. We command you to get what we want."

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• 38:54Ed Mylett?

  So let's stay on that. So your gut is, I know this is in the book, so I know this from reading the book, but I want to make sure everybody gets this. The gut is actually directing your appetite.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

• 39:05Ed Mylett?

  Okay, this is really, this is really important. When you have food cravings, which almost everybody listening to this has a craving or something, that's coming from your gut. Is it craving it because it needs more of it, or is it craving it because the bad guys are like, "Give me more of this stuff that's bad for you"? Which is it? But you are, it is dictating your appetite, correct?

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely.

• 39:25Ed Mylett?

  Because you think it's your thought. Okay.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  No, your thoughts come from the bacteria in your gut. And in the previous book, Gut Check, and let's pause for a second. Let me try to convince people how powerful these little critters are. Most people know about a parasite called toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women are told not to scoop the kitty litter of their cats because cats can be infected with toxoplasmosis. And toxoplasmosis, and listeners, bear with me because it's a wonderful

• 40:11Speaker 03

  story to tell the power of one cell organisms. Toxoplasmosis has, like many parasites, has two life cycles. And it has to have an intermediate host to get to where it wants to go. And where it wants to go is, is a cat. Whether it's a cute little kitty cat or a tiger, it wants to get into a cat. But it's chosen as its intermediate host, a rat. Now, you would think, uh, that would be a really dumb decision because rats hate cats. In fact, rats are deathly afraid of the smell of cat urine. And they will run the other direction.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  So, uh, how this happens is, big cats with toxoplasmosis poop in the water or poop on the ground. And toxoplasmosis enters a rat by drinking water. The toxoplasmosis goes to the rat's brain. And rewires the, the rat's brain using dopamine receptors to do two things. Number one, it makes the cat incredibly sexy. And it makes the smell of cat urine one of the best aphrodisiacs it has ever smelled.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  And it drives the rat, number one, to find a cat and then go run to the cat.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Now, believe it or not, any animal that could be predated upon by cats would be useful to toxoplasmosis. So, getting back to Yellowstone Park. It turns out that wolves can carry toxoplasmosis. And it just so happens that pack leaders of wolves.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Uh, are more infected with toxoplasmosis than anybody else. Why it turns out that these guys take risk, they run to danger. Now, why would you infect a wolf? Because the other predator in Yellowstone Park are mountain lions. And mountain lions are the only predator of wolves. And so that's what happens. Tigers in the jungle, chimpanzees are infected with toxoplasmosis. And chimpanzees are infected because the tiger is the major predator of chimps.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  And it just so happens that in the jungle, humans are one of the favorite predators of big cats. And so toxoplasmosis loves to infect humans. In fact, this was actually discovered by the US Army. Who at one point wanted to infect troops with toxoplasmosis. So that they would run to danger.

• 43:29Ed Mylett?

  Whoa.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  And it turns out that the vast majority of motorcycle fatalities uh, are infected with toxoplasmosis.

• 43:40Ed Mylett?

  That's amazing.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  So one little cell organism can completely rewire your behavior. And that's just one. And so now we know that these little organisms literally rewire our behavior to get what they're looking for. And that includes different foods. And it also includes drugs, as that chapter probably blew your mind.

• 44:10Ed Mylett?

  It did. Well, you're, you're going, uh, let me tell you why I wanted you on more than anything. Okay, we're gonna meet in the middle here and is one of the most interesting questions I've ever been able to ask on the show. So I've been really. contemplating how I wanted to phrase it. So I want to share something with you first. My audience most know this, but this will be shared with people that aren't in my audience. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict who got sober. My dad was sober for 35 years. And it became kind of the work of his life. My dad wasn't, he was in a 12 step program, but I mean, he wasn't just in it. My dad did six meetings a week, all of his life, even through chemotherapy. My dad's life work, even though he was a banker, was really, he was fascinated with, and he helped

• 44:51Ed Mylett?

  thousands of people get sober. This issue of alcoholism, drug addiction, addiction in general. Forget alcohol or drugs, but addiction in general.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:59Ed Mylett?

  So when my dad first got sober, it was just, you know, going through his steps. And then after a few years, he said, you know, Eddie, I'm, I'm not so sure that, you know, we're starting to believe that I got the gene. They would say the gene, the alcohol gene. And that some people, once they start pouring this stuff in their body, want more of it. And then as he got, he always said, if I could, if I ever opened up my own treatment center, I'd be going to work on this gene thing. And then as my dad got older and he had cancer, and we would talk more about addiction in general. My dad said to me, and this is just a working layman, this is not a medical guy at all, right? But he said, Eddie, I'm starting to wonder if these cravings don't come from my brain, but they come from my gut.

• 45:42Ed Mylett?

  And, and my dad passed away with that question lingering. And I'm, you, you talk about addiction in the book, but as you're talking about this, these, these bacteria begin to crave more of, of what you're giving it, or they want, do you think that there's the prospect or the possibility that people would struggle with, let's say, chemical addiction in general? That, that gene my dad called it may in fact not be a gene, but maybe some type of bacteria that when they put this stuff in their body, they crave more of it than someone who doesn't have the presence of that bacteria. I know we'd be speculating, but I'm fascinated by the prospect of that. When your thoughts about it?

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I take care of a, a lot of addictions in my practice, almost as a, as a sideline. But one of the things, and I, I make, I think at least a case that we should consider. First of all, is your dad would tell you the resitivism rate of treatment.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  You know, it's seventy to ninety percent of people.

• 46:55Ed Mylett?

  More like ninety, and I have many friends who have been at a center right down the street from where you are. Many times in my family, that same place, which is the most famous place, and their recidivism rate is like eighty-eight percent. So go ahead.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  No, you're right. Betty Ford is about ninety percent. You're correct.

• 47:12Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  And so, and you know, God bless, uh, you know, maybe, you know, maybe your mom beat you and whatever. But when you start looking at, well, why is it that all of these various therapies, uh, it just isn't working? Then what is in fact driving this? And what I make the case in the book is, well, if we know that, for instance, food cravings are driven uh, by the gut microbiome, and there's, there's so many studies showing this, both in animals and in humans.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Then, then you start looking at the other addictions, whether it's nicotine, whether it's um, alcohol, whether it's, you know, hard drugs. And it turns out that there are bacteria that associate. You can name the bacteria that associate with that addiction. And one of the most amazing things is, they get you to crave these things by manipulating your brain, because the more of this you take, the more they grow, and the more they get what they want. I think the scariest part is with, you know, the opioids or fentanyl, is that

• 48:38Speaker 03

  they get what they want by causing pain. And pain is what seeks painkillers. And the more of these painkillers you take, the more they overgrow dysbiosis. The more you have leaky gut inflammation, and the more you seek out pain. What's really scary is, and these are animal-controlled experiments, you can addict an animal to heroin.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  And they will become more, they will need more and more and more to achieve the same effect. You can give these animals antibiotics and wipe out their gut microbiome. Suddenly, they just need a tiny pinch of heroin to have the same effect. And it's like, wow. Then you take the microbiome of these addicted animals. And basically do a fecal transplant of this addicted microbiome back into these animals. And all of a sudden, they're right back to having, they need a huge amount to have the same effect.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  And you go, son of a gun. So I'm actually, there's a, a large group, a rehab group in downtown LA. Who want to start working with me because they said, you know, we think you're right that

• 50:13Speaker 03

  whatever we're doing isn't working, folks. And why, why don't we go to the gut? And it's not gonna hurt.

• 50:20Ed Mylett?

  It's not gonna hurt and I, and I obviously I'm, you're a doctor, I'm not. And I'm just a child of a alcoholic, one that got sober. But, but they're all over my family. And sometimes I wonder like, why has this hit certain families? Is there some prevalence of something in their brain is what I used to think. And now if there's so much impact on the gut, on the brain, maybe we've been looking in the wrong place. And maybe it's in their gut. And I, I just think it's fascinating research. If it's true that the gut, which it is, creates cravings. If it, you know, it's feeding off sugar, it wants more sugar, or whatever it might be. And that's giving you the thought, then could that be true with whatever this alcohol is doing? And, and man, am I super interested in, in someone who could find the answer to that.

• 51:02Ed Mylett?

  And, and anybody with addiction, you know, you know, one of the things to start is whatever that program might be. But it also might be, could it not hurt to start treating your gut health? And to take a look there for whatever your addiction is, sugar, caffeine, a drug or alcohol. Alcohol, you're probably gonna find that addiction, it sounds to me, in your gut. And that's what's impacting your brain. Is there any way we know if we've got a healthy gut on the external? So take, and this isn't a pretty topic, but like, is there something with elimination that we should know? Like, this is indicating your gut's working, how many times you eliminate, what it looks like, its odor, anything like that, that say, yeah, my gut is off or on at least a little bit?

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it's funny, I've become good friends through the years with Dr. Dale Bredesen, who wrote The End of Alzheimer's, and Dr. David Palomino, who wrote Grain Brain, etc. And they're both neurologists, and I'm a heart surgeon and cardiologist. And we laugh, because all we talk about is the gut. And it's like, you know, why, you know, how in the world did all of us, you know, end up down there? Well, you know, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, 2,500 years ago, said, "All disease begins in the gut." That's what he said. And, you know, I'm just a slow learner, I guess. But, so getting back to poop, I, you may have seen some of my YouTube videos on poop.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  And, you know, it's like I catch myself laughing, I'm going, heart surgeons talking about what your poop should look like. But I've been focused on the gut for 30 years now. And here, I like, I'll give credit where credit is due. The, Dr. Walls from Iowa, University of Iowa, Terry Walls, basically cured herself of end-stage MS, she was wheelchair-ridden, by changing her diet. And I can say that she and I program are virtually identical.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  She started eating nine cups of vegetables a day. And in doing so, she, and you don't have to, but God bless her, that's one way to do it. In doing so, she started saying, "You should look into the toilet and see a giant coiled snake looking back at you when you look in the toilet." Now, when I wrote The Plant Paradox, which was my monster bestseller eight years ago now. Uh, I wrote in the manuscript that you should look in the toilet and see an anaconda looking back up at you. And my editor at Harper Collins said, uh, do you realize there's a movie there where an anaconda is coming out of the toilet?

• 53:52Speaker 03

  And I said, oh, yeah. She's, I don't think we want to use a visual of the anaconda. So, uh, I've, we put in a giant coiled snake. And what people should realize, which I don't think people realize, I didn't know, is that most of what comes out your rear end is actually living and dead bacteria. It's not waste products. Honest. And so if we're trying to build a tropical rainforest, a diverse, wonderfully balanced

• 54:31Speaker 03

  uh, ecological system, then quite frankly, a giant coiled snake is, there's a bunch of happy bacteria singing kumbaya down in your toilet. And that's what you should be looking for.

• 54:49Ed Mylett?

  Wow, this is so interesting. I, I, uh, such an interesting conversation. My gosh, it's just, if you think about it, really, these conversations, I mean, you were doing it, but these conversations about the gut, at least as far as I know, really in the mainstream, weren't taking place even a decade ago like this. It's almost like this is sort of a new frontier of, of, um, you know, hopefully preemptive medicine.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we, quite frankly, we really didn't know those guys were down there. I had former head of the FDA on my podcast a while back and he and I are the same age. And we were reminiscing that when we were in medical school, you know, food went in, uh, went down a pipe, magic happened, you absorbed some of this stuff and whatever you didn't need went out the rear end. And that was kind of what we thought. That was it. And now, you know, now we, we actually can understand the magic and it, but it was, we were just naive. I'll give you an example. Uh, Dr. Mark Hyman is a friend of mine and we were off camera talking before I was on,

• 55:56Speaker 03

  or he was on my podcast or I was on his and he has a daughter who's a third year medical student at a very prestigious university and I won't mention it.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  As of her third year, she has yet to have a course on the microbiome. Seriously, and he and I are just shaking our heads going, holy cow.

• 56:19Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, now that is, that is interesting. It's still taught the same way. You know, in the book, I promise everybody I'd ask this question because this, this part was hard for me to get my head around. I get how it could affect your mental health. I, I think I get a little bit of that. I think I understand certainly cognition, brain fog, those other things that you talk about. I get that. But personality, it's a different leap for me a little bit. And so you stipulate that it, your guts actually impacting who you actually are. Because as my friend, Dr. Joe Dispenza says, your personal, your personality is your personal reality. And so this is now the filter in which you're actually processing the world you're actually saying here.

• 57:01Ed Mylett?

  This is a lot for one episode, but how is it that you believe it impacts personality?

• 57:07Speaker 03

  Well, because you could actually identify species of bacteria that uh, associate with, for instance, an outgoing personality. You can specify bacteria that, that make a very, you know, closed personality and angry personality. And again, all I gotta, please, if, if a little one cell organism can make me uh, become a, a wild, crazy guy looking for excitement. Just one, one little organism in my brain.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  Then imagine what coordinated effect of a hundred trillion organisms could do.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, and we just, you know, we have to get over the fact that, you know, we're. We're a symbiotic organism and many of us think that the only reason really that we exist is to provide a decent home for these guys. Bacteria have been around forever and forever and number one, they're mad as hell at what we're doing to them, but that's another subject. But if we, you know, if Hippocrates was right, and I certainly think he was, then we ought to put our attention down there. In fact, I have, I have a Buddhist scholar

• 58:43Speaker 03

  who's a patient of mine and we were discussing this one day. He says, you know, the Buddha and Hippocrates were contemporaries. And he says, I'm, I'm a Sanskrit scholar. He said, I'm, I'm going to write you what I find out. And so he, he wrote me, he says, you're not going to believe this. The Buddha said that enlightenment begins in the intestines.

• 59:07Ed Mylett?

  That is crazy. Is this getting good, you guys? Like, you don't always hear a podcast like completely different than other stuff you've heard before. You're such an interesting man. The way you deliver the information is so interesting. You're really cut out for social media. That's why you've become so famous. Obviously, you're a very smart man as well. Let me ask you one last question. By the way, I really enjoyed today. I really, I knew I would enjoy talking with you, but I've enjoyed it even more than I realized I would. It's like, it just flew by. Sometimes I look up at the clock and I'm like, oh my gosh, I got 40 more minutes to go. Today I look up and I got five minutes left and I've got a bunch of things I'd love to talk to you about still. So, thank you. So, here's the question and then I'll give you the first answer for you.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 59:50Ed Mylett?

  If I were to say to you, okay, I, you got me interested in this whole gut thing here a little bit more. And if I even knew a lot about it, I've learned more today than I knew before. And so if someone asked you, what is something I should do now? The first thing you would say is go, go get the gut-brain paradox book. That's one. I'll check that box for you.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:00:09Ed Mylett?

  Book sold. What's the other thing? Go do this. I know that's hard to say in the medical world, but like, hey, start doing this. It'll help your gut.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  So you gotta, I can, I can heal a leaky gut. It'll take me a while, but I can heal a leaky gut. And I can even sell you supplements that will heal a leaky gut. In fact, my number one, number two selling supplement, Gundry M D, are leaky gut supplements. But as I tell all my patients, I'll heal your leaky gut. But if you keep swallowing razor blades, you will slice it right back open. So one of the things that I really urge people to do, a hundred percent of my people with leaky gut, when they see me, we do sensitivity tests to lots of different foods.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  A hundred percent of them are sensitive to gluten, to the components of wheat. Seventy percent of them are sensitive to corn. A huge number are sensitive to the nightshade family of vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, white potatoes, eggplant, even goji berries or nightshades. And just get those out of your diet. Beans that aren't pressure cooked are loaded with these razor blades. Get those out of your diet.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  And within nine months to a year, a hundred percent of my patients are no longer sensitive to these compounds, which is really exciting. Now, why is that? Because number one, these compounds literally cause leaky gut. They are razor blades and they leak through the wall of the gut. And your immune system goes crazy, goes, oh my gosh, you know, these are bad actors. They shouldn't be over here. And number two, what's fascinating to me, and this kind of finishes back up with glyphosate. About eighty percent of my patients have autoimmune diseases, often many of them.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  We get them to a point where their autoimmune disease resolves, goes into remission. And about ninety-four percent of people do within a year. Not bad.

• 1:02:30Ed Mylett?

  Awesome.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  Not bad. So they go over to Europe on vacation and they eat baguettes and they eat croissants and they eat pizzas and they have tomatoes. And they don't react. And they do great. And they're going, oh, Dr. Gundry cured me. You know, I can have all this stuff. And they come back to the United States and they start eating our stuff. And even the sourdough bread or whatever. And within a few weeks, they're on the phone going, what the heck? You know, my psoriasis popped up or my joints are hurting. They said, no, there wasn't any glyphosate in the food you ate over there.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  You came back and started eating our stuff. And I see it over and over and over again.

• 1:03:19Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 1:03:21Ed Mylett?

  Okay, I just made it know. What? Gosh darn it, this was a good conversation today. Thank you. I enjoyed this so much. We'll do this again. We'll do it again. I have, I, I know for sure this isn't going to be your last book because you're cranking them out like crazy.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  I can't help myself.

• 1:03:38Ed Mylett?

  Well, no, it's wonderful.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  You know, each book leads to a next, you know, finding. And I'm already working on, on the next one because I can't help myself. Yeah, I'm, I'm a kid in a candy store. Bad example, but it's.

• 1:03:55Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, stay away from the candy for your gut.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Ed Mylett?

  Well, when it comes out, you're invited back on. This was great today. We'll do it in person next time though, when I'm out in LA. I would love that.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:04:04Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. All right, everybody. Dr. Gundry was awesome today and go get the Gut Brain Paradox and share this episode. This one, this will be a viral one. All right, God bless you, everybody. Max out.