521 The "Healthy" Foods That Are Killing You with Dr. Steven Gundry

"Our bacteria control our behavior." - Dr. Gundry If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/521 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 521 with New York Times bestselling author Dr. Steven Gundry. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  John D. Rockefeller said, "Don't forget to give up the good to go for the great." We've got a great episode for you today with Dr. Steven Gundry, author of the New York Times bestselling Plant Paradox book. He is a cardiac surgeon, medical innovator, author, and the mind behind Gundry, M.D. He's also a consultant to self-improvement guru Tony Robbins, Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin, and Emmy Award-winning actress Sheila Ward. And he's the author of more than 300 chapters, articles, and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals on surgery,

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  immunology, genetics, nutrition, and lipid investigations. And he is with us today. And I was blown away. I wish I had more time to ask on so much of the things that we covered. It was that fascinating. And some of the things we covered today are how our bacteria control our behavior, and what happens when we get new bacteria. Also, the plant paradox issue with eating fruits out of season, and how this harms us. How our eating habits are not in line with our reality. Why we are getting so sick from eating plants with a defense system. And why every American should stay away from peanuts and all the

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  other foods that are actually hurting you when you think they're healthy for you. I was fascinated by this, and I want to get him back on at some point to dive in more about how we can live as optimal human beings. Before we dive in, I want to give a quick shout out to the review of the week. This is from Morphine who said, "To say that Lewis's podcast is life-altering is an understatement. I can speak for myself that Lewis's podcast has been a catalyst for me to write my first book and set my moonshot goal in motion. I am profoundly grateful for the contribution he's made to the world to make it a better place. Now let's do something great."

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  So Morphine, thank you so much for the review and I'm so glad that this podcast was the kickstarting launchpad for you to write your first book. And I want to hear more about the success stories from all of you who listen. So make sure to leave a review over on iTunes and let me know how you feel about the podcast and the biggest success you've gained from it for your chance to be considered as a review of the week. All right, I'm excited about this one. It's all about optimizing your body, living longer and feeling healthier than you've ever felt before. Make sure to screenshot this on your phone right now and tag me on your Instagram story @lewishouse to let me know you're listening to it as I like to share a lot of the screenshots on my story as well. And without further ado,

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  let me introduce to you the one, the only, Dr. Steven Gundry. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got the legendary Dr. Gundry in the house. Thank you so much for being here.

• 3:30Steven Gundry?

  Thanks for having me. Pleasure.

• 3:31Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited about this and you just opened it up. Your mission is to end disease and then you're saying it all comes through the gut. Starts and ends with the gut.

• 3:40Steven Gundry?

  Correct.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Everything, what we eat can, can solve the disease we have within us, right?

• 3:45Steven Gundry?

  Correct.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  Based on the foods that we put inside of us.

• 3:48Steven Gundry?

  It can actually extend our lifespan to potentially things that people can't even imagine.

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:55Steven Gundry?

  And it actually has to do not with you and me and what we conceive of our bodies. But it turns out that ninety percent of all the cells that make you and me, me, are actually non-human cells. They're bacteria, viruses, funguses, worms that live in us and on us.

• 4:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:18Steven Gundry?

  And the shocking thing is that ninety-nine percent of all the genes that make up you and me are non-human genes.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  What are they?

• 4:29Steven Gundry?

  They're bacterial and viral genes. And what we've completely missed from the Human Genome Project is that we have actually very few genes. And our genes are about ninety-nine percent the same as a chimp or a gorilla. And we're very different than chimps or gorillas, yet we have virtually the same genes. What makes us different is actually the bacteria and viruses that live in us.

• 4:59Lewis Howes?

  Different bacteria and viruses.

• 5:00Steven Gundry?

  And you can actually show when humans evolved from the other great apes that our bacteria actually changed. And we can actually identify that point in time that the bacteria made us rather than our genes made us.

• 5:18Lewis Howes?

  So the bacteria's made us human, or bacteria made us?

• 5:22Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, they actually, as shocking as it may seem, most of what happens to us is determined by the state and the variation of our bacteria, primarily in our gut. Give you an example. You can take a bowel movement from an obese individual and feed it to a skinny rat. Skinny rats love to eat poop.

• 5:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:51Steven Gundry?

  And those skinny rats will become fat.

• 5:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:54Steven Gundry?

  Because the bacteria have actually manipulated their feeding habits. They actually send text messages to the brain.

• 6:04Steven Gundry?

  To go look for foods that they would not otherwise consume that those bacteria want. And we can actually, there was a cool study in a marathon runner. Uh, you're a great athlete. So there's a woman marathon runner in England a couple of years ago, who developed a very severe, um, infection in her colon called C. difficile. A lot of people have heard of it.

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 6:29Steven Gundry?

  And the modern treatment of this now is a fecal transplant. Uh, taking poop from somebody else and shoving it up your ass.

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:38Steven Gundry?

  And you try to get a fecal transplant from a family member. Cause believe it or not, family members tend to share their bacteria. Um, I share a lot of bacteria with my dogs and they share with me. So they found a cousin who was a good match for her and she got the fecal transplant. And everything went well, or C. difficile went away. We can go into why that happened. But in the next year, this marathon runner gained thirty-two pounds.

• 7:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:07Steven Gundry?

  Without changing anything. And it turns out her niece, cousin, was actually thirty, about thirty-two pounds overweight. And so she was inoculated with obesogenic bacteria. And her bacteria, these little, you know, one cell organisms controlled her behavior.

• 7:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:32Steven Gundry?

  Do, do, do, do.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  Haha.

• 7:34Steven Gundry?

  Now, think about.

• 7:35Lewis Howes?

  So made her, made her more hungry or desirable certain foods?

• 7:38Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  So she changed the way she was eating because she was triggered.

• 7:41Steven Gundry?

  Being manipulated.

• 7:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:44Steven Gundry?

  Being manipulated.

• 7:45Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's kind of like when you're, you know, I, I love candy and sweets. I've never been drunk and I don't drink, but my vice is like, I could eat cakes and candy and brownies all day long. If I choose to. And, and then when I, when I did go off of it, it's hard because I just want to keep going back to it.

• 8:01Steven Gundry?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  Until I changed the habit fully and then I'm like, I don't need it anymore.

• 8:05Steven Gundry?

  Right.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  But it takes that time to kind of transition out of it, right?

• 8:08Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, these are very addictive foods. And it, they're, they're addictive because.

• 8:13Steven Gundry?

  What happens is like simple sugars like in candies and cakes and saturated fats like on the icing and you know the coating on the donut and all. Oh, so good. Yeah, yeah. I used to love them. Yeah. And so these things actually, the obesogenic bacteria can actually live on them. They love it. They love simple sugars. They love saturated fats and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, give me more. And they actually tell our brain to do that. It's kind of like, you remember the movie Little Shop of Horrors with the, with the blood sucking plant? Sure, sure. It was a very famous Broadway show. Sure. So Rick Moranis starred in the movie and there's this blood sucking plant that he

• 8:55Steven Gundry?

  grows and Audrey and Audrey keeps getting bigger and Audrey has to have human blood. And long story short, Audrey, whenever it's Audrey is the speaking part and Audrey says, "Feed me, Seymour, feed me." And it turns out that this whole concept is actually true, that our bacteria control our behavior. For instance, you can take depressed mice and put their bacteria in happy mice and those happy mice will go, will go hide in a corner and not come out.

• 9:33Steven Gundry?

  In fact, in the 1930s, they did an experiment in a, back in those days, most really depressed people were institutionalized. So they did an experiment where they gave them all colonics and cleaned out their colons and then they gave them fecal enemas from happy people. No way. And about two thirds of the depressed people got happy and were released in the 1930s. Wow. So, I mean, it's just, you start looking at this and go, whoa, you know, we're, we're probably looking at the wrong stuff. For instance, one of the things that I'm talking about in Berlin in October at the World Congress of Microbiota, that's what this study is.

• 10:19Steven Gundry?

  We now know that you can take bacteria from young animals guts and put them in old animals guts. And the old animals will become young.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 10:34Steven Gundry?

  It's the fountain of youth.

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  No way. So they'll like their cells will get younger?

• 10:40Steven Gundry?

  Yes.

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  Or they'll have youthful energy or what?

• 10:42Steven Gundry?

  All of the above. They will actually extend their lifespan by about thirty percent.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 10:48Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, because here's the deal. What, what, what I'm trying to get people to understand is this is not about you and me or what we conceive as us. This, we're just a condominium for the people who really run us. And these are all these little one cellular organisms. And what we're beginning to realize is we're a condominium for these bugs. And we're their home. We've exchanged them living in us and actually taking care of us for food and, and shelter for them. And I know. And the really cool thing is, so we can take

• 11:31Steven Gundry?

  bacteria from young animals, you know, and put them into old animals and the bacteria say, man, this place is decrepit, you know, I, I need to do a complete total renovation here. Because this is where I'm stuck and I better make the best of it. And I want everything to be nice. You know, it's like, you know, gentrification of the neighborhood. And this actually.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  So what do they do?

• 11:54Steven Gundry?

  So they actually instruct, here's, here's the take home message. They actually send text messages to the mitochondria. And you probably know all about mitochondria, the little energy organelles.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  In the brain, right?

• 12:08Steven Gundry?

  In every one of you, but the brain has the most of them. And these produce energy.

• 12:14Steven Gundry?

  These mitochondria are actually engulfed bacteria. And as strange as it may seem, the bacteria in your gut send text messages to the mitochondria that say, guys, new sheriff's in town, clean up your act. We want you guys working and humming on all, you know, eight cylinders. It's kind of like General Kelly coming into the White House and, you know, total disarray. And it's going, okay, guys, no more of this silliness. And so we now have discovered some of those compounds that the bacteria in your gut signal the mitochondria to regenerate themselves.

• 12:54Steven Gundry?

  And it's, I mean, it's opening up whole new areas that we never even dreamed of. Wow. So you're really like 170 years old, huh? Yeah, well, people- You've just been manipulating all this for the last 15 years now. Remind, I'll show you a picture when we're all done of me and Mehmet Oz standing together when I did a show a few weeks ago. And one of us is 12 years older than the other person. And you would not guess by looking at our skin who's the old person and who's the young person. Wow. And I was showing this picture to David Sinclair from Harvard, who's one of the great anti-aging researchers in this country and actually in the world. And we were discussing some ways to manipulate mitochondria in the brain.

• 13:39Steven Gundry?

  And I said, let me show you a picture. And he's looking and he says, okay, so Mehmet's a lot older than you, right? And I said, here, let me show you my driver's license. He said, wait a minute, how old are you? And he said, can I have this picture? And I said, yeah. He says, I'm gonna put it in all my talks. Because what I've been doing for the last 17 years is giving my bacteria what all the research that I've done and many other people have done would predict that my bacteria are pretty doggone happy with what I'm doing for them. And they're-

• 14:21Steven Gundry?

  Exchanging that happiness to say, man, this is a great place to live and we're gonna keep this place

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 14:29Steven Gundry?

  Nice and just happy.

• 14:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Steven Gundry?

  And so, yeah.

• 14:33Lewis Howes?

  And so you, you lived in a blue zone, is that right?

• 14:36Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, Loma Linda's a blue zone, that's correct. But when I was living in that blue zone, uh, I was eating a low-fat vegetarian diet. I was running thirty miles a week. I was one of these Clydesdale runners. I weighed seventy pounds more than I do now.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:52Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, I was a Clydesdale.

• 14:53Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot of unhealthy people in blue zones, too.

• 14:55Steven Gundry?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  They have the vegans that just are overweight and you're like, how are you overweight?

• 15:00Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, well, it actually is because you're giving your bacteria the wrong stuff.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 15:04Steven Gundry?

  And that's really part of the plant paradox. The plant paradox is that there's certain plants that absolutely, positively do not want us to eat them.

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  At all, in any circumstance.

• 15:18Steven Gundry?

  Under any circumstance.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  Whether you cook them, or chop them, or slice them, or skin them, doesn't matter.

• 15:22Steven Gundry?

  They were here first and they had it really great before animals arrived because nobody wanted to eat them. And my, you know, my, my research at Yale was in human evolutionary biology, so plants have the same evolutionary drive as animals. They wanna grow and they wanna have babies, seeds.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  They wanna protect themselves.

• 15:42Steven Gundry?

  And they wanna protect themselves.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  They don't wanna die.

• 15:44Steven Gundry?

  Exactly. So, when animals arrived, they had a problem because animals can run, they can hide, they can fight, but plants are stuck. But plants are chemists of incredible ability. So, they can turn sunlight into matter like around your wall here.

• 15:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:00Steven Gundry?

  And so what they use is chemical warfare to actually

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  Defend themselves.

• 16:07Steven Gundry?

  Defend themselves and to even make animals do their bidding. Uh, because, for instance, just throw out an example, most plants want you to eat their fruits because the fruit contains seeds.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  To reseed them.

• 16:22Steven Gundry?

  To go reseed them.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Steven Gundry?

  So you'll eat their fruit. The seeds in the fruits are inedible and you'll either spit them out, or if you swallow them, they'll survive going through your intestines and you'll poop them out someplace else.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  Fertilized.

• 16:39Steven Gundry?

  And fertilized. It's perfect.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Steven Gundry?

  And they're away from mom and dad. So, for instance, if an apple, you know, falls underneath the apple tree. That poor kid doesn't have much of a chance because mom or dad is gonna shade them the next year. But if it gets carried off, um, you know, even a hundred feet away and then it gets dropped, the plant does this on purpose. Crazy. And in fact, you and I love fruit because you and I were designed to eat fruit once a year in the summer to gain weight for the winter. So it was a really good trade off between, for instance, great apes and plants.

• 17:20Steven Gundry?

  But the fascinating thing is manufacturers, food chemists know this, and we are drawn with color vision. And only animals that are fruit predators actually have color vision. Because you wanna know when the fruit is ripe, when it has the highest sugar content. Right. And the plant wants you to know when it's ripe because that's when the seed finally has an impenetrable shell. Oh. And it doesn't want you to eat it before that time. So it tells you, okay, now's the time. The shiniest object is time to eat it. Yeah, yeah. So what colors does it use?

• 18:00Steven Gundry?

  In general, it uses reds and oranges and yellows to denote ripeness. So the next time you're going down the snack aisles looking for all the great munchy stuff, you'll be shocked that most of the companies use oranges, reds, yellows to get your attention because it goes direct into the deep center of your brain and says, ooh, ooh, that color means I should eat it. Uh, I'm gonna get a lot of calories and I'm gonna be the big winner for the winter. Wow. Yeah. If you're doing that every day. Big mistake. For many years in a row. Yes. You're always storing fat for the winter. That's exactly right. And that's part of the plant paradox is that once upon a time, we only had fruit in a

• 18:44Steven Gundry?

  very limited time period. Now we have it accessible all the time. There were no 747s bringing blueberries to Costco in February. They just weren't. So one of the weird things about our computer program is like Tony Robbins is always fun to say, we, we were on version one point zero of our operating system. We've never had an upgrade. And the same goes to the foods and the plants and the fruit we eat. So we were supposed to eat fruit once a year. And when we were eating fruit, our brain says, oh my gosh, it's summer. Winter is right around the corner. You know, we should eat this stuff because winter's a tough time, whether it's dry season, a rainy season, a

• 19:27Steven Gundry?

  cold season. And we better store up fat, just like a bear. You know, bears eating all those blueberries and huckleberries and they're storing fat for the winter. So if you're eating blueberries at Costco in February that came from chili, your operating system doesn't know it's February. It says, heck, it's August and winter's right around the corner. So I better eat some more of this stuff. And this is one of the things that's happening to us in particularly in American society, but now most of the Western country. We're eating things that we have no business eating 365 days a year. And most of us are just getting ready for the winter that never comes.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  Especially if you live in LA.

• 20:13Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  It's never getting cold.

• 20:15Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, never comes.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  You don't need to store that fat.

• 20:17Steven Gundry?

  You really don't. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's part of the problem.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So huh. What are the main plants that we should never be eating then?

• 20:26Steven Gundry?

  Okay, real quick. Uh, up until 10,000 years ago, we lived primarily on the leaves of trees and we ate tubers that grew in the ground, like a sweet potato, a yam.

• 20:38Lewis Howes?

  Love those.

• 20:39Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, they're actually, they're pretty darn good for you. You were actually designed to eat them.

• 20:45Steven Gundry?

  12,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, we switched over to things that we had never eaten before. And those were the grains of grasses and beans. Now, the reason we'd never eaten them before is, number one, we didn't need to. There's never been a documentation of an ape eating grass or grains. Beans are so lethal that five raw kidney beans will kill a human being in five minutes by coagulating their blood.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 21:17Steven Gundry?

  Five raw kidney beans.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  Raw kidney beans.

• 21:19Steven Gundry?

  In fact, you know, most people have heard of the poison ricin, the white powder you send to your elected official.

• 21:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Steven Gundry?

  Lots on the way to Washington, but that's another subject. So ricin is the lectin of the castor bean, and we'll talk about lectins next. A lectin is the plant defense system. These are proteins that are designed to basically kill us in one way or another.

• 21:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:43Steven Gundry?

  And so ricin, so powerful that about four molecules of ricin will kill a human being instantaneously.

• 21:54Steven Gundry?

  There's a great study that was written up in one of the journals about a few years ago, they decided to have a healthy eating day in Boston, and they served the kids beans. And, because it's so healthy, part of the blue zone. And they had 30 or 40 admissions to the hospital.

• 22:15Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 22:16Steven Gundry?

  With severe diarrhea, hypotension, and it turns out that it was all the fact that the beans were undercooked. And beans are a plant baby, and we're not supposed to eat those. And so.

• 22:32Lewis Howes?

  No beans?

• 22:33Steven Gundry?

  No beans.

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  Zero beans?

• 22:35Steven Gundry?

  Unless you use a pressure.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  Pinto black beans.

• 22:38Steven Gundry?

  Pinto black.

• 22:38Lewis Howes?

  None of that, we shouldn't be eating it.

• 22:39Steven Gundry?

  Shouldn't be eating it. You weren't designed to eat it. You have no defense system against it. If you pressure cook, pressure cook it, it's fine.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  Pressure cook it? What does that even mean?

• 22:48Steven Gundry?

  Put it in a pressure cooker.

• 22:49Lewis Howes?

  Pressure cooker.

• 22:49Steven Gundry?

  The modern pressure cooker is as easy as a rice cooker.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 22:54Steven Gundry?

  It's one touch, it's not your grandmother's pressure cooker that blew up in the kitchen.

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  So then it's okay to eat?

• 22:59Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, so you can pressure cook beans. Now, the other thing, we weren't designed to eat grains.

• 23:04Lewis Howes?

  Now, a quick question before you start there, how much of it can we eat? Doesn't matter once it's pressure cooked? Obviously, everything in moderation, but I mean.

• 23:12Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, well, like I was presenting.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Twenty beans are gonna kill me or what?

• 23:15Steven Gundry?

  No, if you pressure cook them, they're fine.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  So good. Okay.

• 23:18Steven Gundry?

  And we talk about how to do this in the Plant Paradox.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  Got it. Cool.

• 23:21Steven Gundry?

  But my personal feeling is the only purpose of eating a bean is to get olive oil into my mouth. And we can talk about that as we go along.

• 23:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 23:30Steven Gundry?

  So grains, for instance, everybody heard about gluten.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:36Steven Gundry?

  All right. So gluten is a lectin. And again, a lectin is a plant's defense system. It's a protein that actually is designed to act like incoming guided missile attacks

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:48Steven Gundry?

  on the inside wall of our gut. And these things actually pry open the lining of our gut and actually break through the border.

• 23:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:59Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, they really do.

• 24:00Lewis Howes?

  That's what causes eczema and causes breakouts.

• 24:03Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, exactly. Acne, brain fog, irritable bowel. This is actually all part of that process.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:12Steven Gundry?

  And so it's fascinating to see people who either have come to see me or have even read the book and then write on Amazon, oh, my gosh, you know, I had this horrible eczema and now a month later it's all gone. And all I did was, you know, take grains and beans and nightshades away from my diet and everything got better. So that brings us to the second kind of group of things we shouldn't eat. All of us are not from the United States, America. We're actually from Europe, Asia, or Africa, every one of us. So even our Native Americans are actually not Native Americans. They're from Asia, you know, get over it.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:59Steven Gundry?

  So none of us were exposed to an American plant until 500 years ago when Columbus started trade.

• 25:09Steven Gundry?

  So getting to know a new plant, a new lectum, in 500 years is speed dating in evolution. And I just don't think it'd be done. For instance, the Italians refused to eat tomatoes for 200 years after their native son Columbus brought them back because they knew how dangerous they were. They were part of the deadly nightshade family.

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:33Steven Gundry?

  And they, when they started eating them, they always peeled and de-seeded their tomatoes because the peels and the seeds actually have the vast majority of the lectum. And it's interesting, years ago, I was, did my fellowship in children's heart surgery in London, England, and I had a house officer from Italy. And he invited me up for pasta and tomato sauce.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 26:01Steven Gundry?

  So I, I brought, you know, it'd be nice if I bought a couple of cans of canned tomatoes, you know, help out.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:07Steven Gundry?

  And he looks at it, he says, "Why did you bring me this? We can't use this." So I said, "What do you mean, canned tomatoes?" He says, "It's got peels and seeds. You can't make sauce with peels and seeds." He says, "Oh, mamma mia, what am I gonna do with you?" He says, "You can't use peels and seeds." And I said, "Why?" He says, "They're deadly." And I said, "Really?" And he says, "Yeah, everybody knows that." And then I thought back, as a child, my mother, my grandmother was French, and she taught my mother that you always peel and de-seed tomatoes before you slice them and, and serve them. So until I went to Yale, I had never had a slice of a tomato with a peel and a seed.

• 26:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:48Steven Gundry?

  And it, this was, you know, this has come from cultures. For instance, peppers, peppers are the same way. They're part of the nightshade family. You'll never open a glass jar of Italian bell peppers and see peels and seeds because they're gone. And the most striking thing is, the Southwest American Indians always peel and de-seed their peppers before they eat them. The hatch chili roast will be happening in another month. And what do they do? They roast their chilies, peel the scarred off part, de-seed them, and then they eat them or they make them into chili powder.

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:27Steven Gundry?

  And, you know, you can prove this in your grocery store. Buy a can of green chilies, chopped green chilies, open it up, you won't see any peels and seeds because they're gone.

• 27:35Lewis Howes?

  So tomatoes and, um...

• 27:39Steven Gundry?

  Peppers, eggplant, potatoes, and potatoes. Now, the

• 27:45Lewis Howes?

  If you peel them and seed these things.

• 27:47Steven Gundry?

  You're safer, correct. But you can pressure cook them and they're fine.

• 27:50Lewis Howes?

  And they're okay.

• 27:51Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 27:52Steven Gundry?

  Now, there's two American beans that everyone should stay away from. Peanuts are not a nut, they're a bean. Ninety-four percent of human beings carry a preformed antibody against the peanut lectin. We can take, rhesus monkeys are cousins. Give them peanut oil and they will develop atherosclerosis, heart disease.

• 28:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:17Steven Gundry?

  If we take the lectin out of the peanut oil and then give them the peanut oil, they will not develop heart disease.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  So if you get lectin-free peanut butter.

• 28:28Steven Gundry?

  There is no such thing.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  Dang it. Okay.

• 28:30Steven Gundry?

  So get almond butter instead. It's much safer.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  Peanut butter?

• 28:33Steven Gundry?

  No, stay away from it.

• 28:34Lewis Howes?

  You should eliminate a hundred percent from your

• 28:37Steven Gundry?

  Absolutely. We can take, and this has been done. Men, feed them peanuts, take their bowel movements. Feed them to rats and you will grow cancerous cells in the rat colon because they've been exposed to the peanut lectin. Yeah.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  Love peanut butter though.

• 28:59Steven Gundry?

  Oh, you know.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  So I can have as much almond butter as I want?

• 29:01Steven Gundry?

  And I went to medical school in Georgia, you know, Jimmy Carter, you know, man, peanuts are everything.

• 29:07Lewis Howes?

  Sandwiches, you know?

• 29:08Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, nope, sorry.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Eliminate it.

• 29:10Steven Gundry?

  Gone.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  Gone.

• 29:11Steven Gundry?

  Say goodbye.

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  This will help me live longer, have a happier, healthier body.

• 29:15Steven Gundry?

  And then I won't have to operate on you, you know, when you have coronary disease. And you'll go, what? I eat so healthy. I'm having my peanut butter.

• 29:21Lewis Howes?

  How many surgeries have you done?

• 29:23Steven Gundry?

  Oh, over 10,000.

• 29:24Lewis Howes?

  10,000. Do you have the, is that what it is? The record?

• 29:26Steven Gundry?

  No.

• 29:27Lewis Howes?

  Someone said it was a record-setting heart surgery, heart surgeries, no?

• 29:30Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Lewis Howes?

  No. How many heart surgeries?

• 29:33Steven Gundry?

  10,000.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  10,000.

• 29:34Steven Gundry?

  10,000. Yeah, it's a lot of heart surgeries.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  What's the cause of these heart diseases? So it's the reason why you have to do so many of these?

• 29:40Steven Gundry?

  It's all in the Plant Paradox. So 17 years ago, I met a guy by the name Big Ed. It was a 30, 38-year-old guy who came to see me at Loma Linda because I'm one of these surgeons who will operate on anybody.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:52Steven Gundry?

  Um, take the risk. Big Ed.

• 29:54Lewis Howes?

  500-pounder or?

• 29:55Steven Gundry?

  Big Ed, actually, when I met him, weighed 265 pounds. But he had such extensive coronary arteries that you couldn't put stents in him. You couldn't do bypasses because there wasn't any place to land. And he's from Miami and he'd be going around the country carrying his angiogram, the movie of his heart, his cardiac catheterization. And everybody's turning him down. And he finally, after about six months of this, comes to see me and I'm looking at his angiogram and I'm going, eh, you know, I don't like to turn people down, but everybody's right. You know, we're not going to do you any good. And he said, well, wait a minute. Here's the deal, doc. I've been on a diet for the last six months and I've lost 45 pounds. Now, this is a 265 pounder sitting across from me.

• 30:38Steven Gundry?

  It looks like a, you know, biker, um, big gut. And he says, and I've, I've gone to this health food store and I've taken all these supplements. And he actually brought in this shopping bag full of supplements. He said, you know, maybe I did something in here. And I'm going, yeah, all right. You know, I'm kind of scratching my professor beard and saying, well, you know, I know what you, good for you for losing weight, but it's not going to do anything in here. And I know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine. Right. And I really believe that. So he says, well, come on, you know, it's been six months. I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram, another cardiac catheterization? I said, okay.

• 31:18Steven Gundry?

  And so we, we get a new cath on him and in six months' time, this guy cleans out 50% of the blockages in his heart. 50% gone. It was pretty darn good. It's unbelievable. Wow. For instance, statistically, on the best statin drug, you know, like Crestor, Lipitor, with the lowest levels of LDL, we scientists at the American Heart Association get crazy if after five years, your plaque burden has decreased a half of a percent. Wow. And we go crazy and we go, oh my gosh, this is a miracle. It's the greatest drug discovery of all time. Right. And we go, really? So this guy, 50% are gone in six months.

• 32:03Steven Gundry?

  So I actually was so excited, I operated on him and did a five vessel bypass. But what, if I knew what I knew now, I'd say, hey, great. You know, another year, this will all be clear. Keep going, you won't need this. So I, I start talking about what he did on this diet. And lo and behold, he gets started on this, I go, timeout. I said, I had this crazy thesis at Yale University that I did for four years back in the dark ages of human evolutionary biology. And my thesis was you could take a gray ape, change its food supply and change its environment and predict you would arrive at a human being. And I actually successfully defended it and got honors, blah, blah, blah.

• 32:46Steven Gundry?

  And so I had given it to my parents and went off to be a famous heart surgeon. And so he's talking about this, I go, wait a minute, you know, this is my crazy thesis. And here I am, this big guy, you know, running and I had predi-

• 32:59Lewis Howes?

  You were.

• 32:59Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  This is 15 years ago.

• 33:01Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, 15 years ago.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:02Steven Gundry?

  You know, running and eating a healthy, low-fat diet and-

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  Why do all the doctors seem like they're bigger?

• 33:06Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we're giving all this advice. And so I called my parents in San Diego and I said, hey, you know, you've got this thesis? And, oh yeah, you know, it's in the shrine.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 33:18Steven Gundry?

  Internal flame.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Hall room of your accomplishments.

• 33:20Steven Gundry?

  That's right. So I said, send it up to me. So I put myself on my thesis and I lost 50 pounds my first year. And I lost another 20 pounds subsequently and I've taken it off. And then I started putting my patients who, you know, at Loma Linda, I operated on, on this program. And their blood pressure went to normal, their diabetes went away, their heart disease didn't come back. And so after about a year of this, I was looking in the mirror on one Friday and I said, you know, I can't do what I do anymore because I can teach people how to avoid me. So I actually resigned my position. And my wife still calls it Black Friday.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  When was this?

• 33:59Steven Gundry?

  Uh, 15 years ago.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  You resigned?

• 34:01Steven Gundry?

  I resigned.

• 34:01Lewis Howes?

  From doing surgeries or from-

• 34:03Steven Gundry?

  From doing, being chairman of heart surgery at Loma Linda.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Just because you felt like this wasn't solving the actual root.

• 34:09Steven Gundry?

  It wasn't solving the problem. It was just putting a Band-Aid on it.

• 34:12Lewis Howes?

  The surgeries?

• 34:13Steven Gundry?

  The surgeries. Yeah. I was just, you know, I was famous for four-time, five-time redo surgeries on somebody who kept clogging up their blood vessels. And it's like-

• 34:21Lewis Howes?

  You could fix them up, but it's like-

• 34:23Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, okay, they're going to be back in a couple of years.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Steven Gundry?

  So, yeah, so I set up an institute in Palm Springs where all I ask people to do is every three months, let me take about 10 tubes of blood out of you and we'll send it to some labs. And I have insurance will pay for it.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:40Steven Gundry?

  And see what, asking you to eat certain foods-

• 34:45Steven Gundry?

  Does and asking you to take certain supplements that you could find at Costco or Trader Joe's does and that resulted in my first book in 2008 called Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. But then subsequently, I've seen about 50% of my practice is autoimmune disease. And people would go come in and say, hey, what do you know about autoimmune disease? And I go, oh, I don't know anything about autoimmune disease, but I'm a transplant immunologist. And that means, how do I get the immune system of you to accept the heart of a pig?

• 35:25Steven Gundry?

  For instance, and I'm actually hold the world record for the longest pig to baboon heart transplant. 28 days, that's the world record. So I started manipulating the immune system by food. And sure enough, you've got an autoimmune disease. We can teach you to get rid of it by changing primarily getting lectins out of your diet. That's it, huh? And changing your gut bugs to be basically friendly gut bugs. And the friendly gut bugs actually tell your immune system that, hey, guys, we're all great down here. We're down at the beach, we're singing kumbaya, beautiful bonfire.

• 36:10Steven Gundry?

  And your immune system is basically the cops and the cops go, oh yeah, we know these kids, great kids. Let's go have a donut. And now, so that's how it's supposed to be. But let's suppose a gang member moves into your neighborhood. Now, all of a sudden, you got, you're putting up bars on your windows and you got neighborhood watch patrols and you're shooting guys with hoodies without asking questions. So what's happened to most of us through some of the foods we eat, like all these wonderful snacks we're talking about, we've, we've let these gang members loose. And the good guys actually can't eat simple sugars and these saturated fats. They, they want leaves and they want tubers. They die off. They die off, exactly.

• 36:54Steven Gundry?

  So the gang members are running rampant and now your immune system is going, oh my gosh, you know, the city's taken over by gang members and we're going to have armed patrols everywhere. And anytime we see anything that looks a little odd, we're going to shoot and ask questions later. And so what's happened to everybody with autoimmune disease is their immune system is just hyper on guard because it's no longer getting the messages from the good bugs. Chill out, everything's cool, you know, kumbaya, love, love, love, peace and love. And that's what's happened. And it's, it's so cool to get somebody who can just, you know, change the food they eat. They may not want it initially, but when they start feeling

• 37:38Steven Gundry?

  better, they go, for instance, on Monday, young lady, thirty six years old, lives out in La Quinta, was sent to me with what's called chronic pain syndrome. Now, a lot of doctors toss this off as, oh, you're crazy, or you're depressed, or you're just anxious, and you treat them with antidepressants. And she was in constant pain. And it was so bad that she actually had to work from home, really couldn't move, and she had a kid and a husband and so she had heard about me. She said, you know, I've heard about you. Um, you know, what do you think? And I said, you know, come on, let's, let's do this. I

• 38:19Steven Gundry?

  said, what's happening is that your pain is actually coming from nerve cells inside your gut that are being stimulated by rogue cops, if you will. And they're trying to tell you that you shouldn't move. So let's start. So I saw her a couple of months later in January, February, and I said, how are you doing? She said, you know, the pain's less, but it's definitely still there. So I said, well, you know, just stay at it. If you can feel a difference, don't give up. So I walked in on Monday, and I almost didn't recognize her. And I said, she's got a giant smile on your face. I said, so, you know, how you doing? She said,

• 39:03Steven Gundry?

  Perfect. I said, what do you mean? And she says, do you know what it's like to not have pain? And I said, well, yeah, I do. Um, now, uh, she said, I forgot what not having pain feels like.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:19Steven Gundry?

  And it, it's amazing. She said, I just feel great. I, you know, it's been so many years. I'd forgotten what, you know, feeling normal felt like. She said, but let me tell you a story. You can't cheat. And I, I said, yeah, I know that, but how'd you find out? She said, well, you know, there was this office party a couple of weeks ago. And all they had, they had some, had some chicken and they had some nachos and they had some guacamole. And she said, I noticed that the guacamole had tomatoes in it. Believe it or not, guacamole is not have, supposed to have tomatoes. Your, your listeners should realize that guacamole should not have tomatoes.

• 40:01Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 40:02Steven Gundry?

  Uh, she said, I figured, well, the safest thing to eat is to put some guacamole on my plate and have a piece of chicken. Cause you know, I want to be nice. She said, I'll tell you, within an hour, my left elbow just started throbbing and then my hands started freezing up. She said, I actually had to leave the party and go home. And she had, I had to lay down and I couldn't get up for about two hours. And she said, and I was trying to be good. And she said, it's, it's amazing that, you know, this could do this.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:35Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy.

• 40:37Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Lewis Howes?

  So you said, you essentially came, was, uh, you know, were doing heart surgeries, 10,000 of them. And said, I don't want to be offensive here. I'll make sure I'm saying the right thing. But you're now essentially a functional med doctor.

• 40:49Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 40:50Lewis Howes?

  In a sense.

• 40:50Steven Gundry?

  Correct. Um, with all, with all due respects to Mark Hyman.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:55Steven Gundry?

  Jeff Bland created the, uh, created functional medicine and Jeff's a friend of mine. I don't know what functional medicine. Right, right, right. What I do is restorative medicine. Great. All of us have the power to heal ourselves. Now, the guy who said this was Hippocrates. And Hippocrates, brilliant. He, he believed that any organism had the ability to have perfect health. Hmm. And that every organism had the ability to achieve perfect health as long as the obstacles to perfect health were removed. Hmm. And Hippocrates believed that the physician's job was to identify the obstacles to that

• 41:40Steven Gundry?

  organism having perfect health, the patient, and remove them from the patient. Right. And the patient would do the rest. Right. Ah, there it is. There it is, yeah. So, what, what I try to do, I basically do detective work. And I think I'm pretty good at finding the obstacles. And many of those obstacles, believe it or not, are lectins. And the other obstacle is you gotta get the gang members out of your gut by basically starving them to death and giving the good guys what they wanna eat. Starving them of the lectins. Starving them of simple sugars. Yes. And lectins and saturated fats, like.

• 42:25Steven Gundry?

  Remove those things. Yeah, they, they have nothing to eat and they leave. For instance, I'll give you an example of something interesting. Uh, we actually have bacteria in our gut that enjoy eating gluten, uh, lectin. Really? Yeah, they love it. But if you go gluten free, they leave, cause they got nothing to eat. Yes. And then a lot of people who go gluten free and don't notice a whole lot of difference, or they just get frustrated and then they, and they have a couple pieces of bread or pizza. Hmm. And then all of a sudden their gut goes, oh, you know. Well, it's because there are bugs that could defend them against gluten. Are gone. Are gone. Oh. And believe it or not, gluten is kind of a, a low level lectin.

• 43:10Steven Gundry?

  There's far worse. The, the worst ones are in the hull of the grain. So for instance, this whole, whole grain goodness. This only started about fifty years ago.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  This thing is whole grain goodness.

• 43:21Steven Gundry?

  No, we've gotten sicker and sicker and sicker because the outside of the hall has the lectins. And we've been throwing it away. I mean, really, the French, seriously, would they have a whole grain croissant? Or a whole grain baguette, really? And the Italians, you know, whole grain pasta. Well, now it's appearing on the menus because the tourists want to see it.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Steven Gundry?

  But the Italians would kill themselves.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Yeah, the first thing I opened up right here is the most popular nut is not a nut, the peanut.

• 43:52Steven Gundry?

  The peanut.

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:53Steven Gundry?

  And a cashew, a cashew is a nut, too.

• 43:56Lewis Howes?

  I can't eat cashews?

• 43:57Steven Gundry?

  No, the Amazonian Indians always threw the cashew bean away.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  What if, what if I manipulate it in a certain way and make it into a sauce?

• 44:07Steven Gundry?

  You could pressure cook it.

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  I can pressure cook cashews, then I can eat it.

• 44:10Steven Gundry?

  Yes, and stay away from chia seeds.

• 44:13Lewis Howes?

  No chia seeds? These are all the things people are telling you to eat right now.

• 44:15Steven Gundry?

  Of course, and that's why everybody's getting sicker. Chia seeds, there's two human studies that show that chia seeds promote inflammation in human beings.

• 44:25Lewis Howes?

  What else do we need to be aware of?

• 44:27Steven Gundry?

  I used to be a big fan of chia seeds.

• 44:28Lewis Howes?

  What do you eat?

• 44:29Steven Gundry?

  You're eat, what you're supposed to eat. You're supposed to eat leaves, you're supposed to eat tubers, like jicama, like sweet potatoes, like rutabagas. You're supposed to eat tons of olive oil. Ton, tons. I use a liter a week of olive oil.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  You drink it or you're cooking it?

• 44:48Steven Gundry?

  No, I pour it on everything.

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh, really?

• 44:50Steven Gundry?

  Yeah, I pour it on everything. The only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. This is what I told Dr. Oz a few weeks ago. Just think the only purpose of food is to get olive oil in your mouth. In Crete and Sardinia, they use a liter of olive oil per week. A Spanish study of sixty-five-year-old people for five years, making them use a liter of olive oil per week against a low-fat Mediterranean diet. At the end of five years, the olive oil users had improved memory compared to the low-fat diet. The women had sixty-five percent less breast cancer than the low-fat Mediterranean diet. And they had less heart disease. Leader week.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  Olive oil.

• 45:34Steven Gundry?

  Leader week.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  That's the fountain of youth, huh?

• 45:36Steven Gundry?

  Yep. It really is.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  Olive oil.

• 45:38Steven Gundry?

  Olive oil.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  It's a secret.

• 45:40Steven Gundry?

  It's a secret.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 45:41Steven Gundry?

  There you go. That's the secret.

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  Uh, there's so much more I want to learn, uh, but we are limited on time here. So make sure you guys get this book. The Plant Paradox, The Hidden Dangers in Quote Unquote Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain by Dr. Steven Gundry. Um, I have one final question for you because there's a lot I want to learn still. Um, first I want to acknowledge you for your, your transformational journey, your journey of doing one thing that most doctors will probably believe is the solution. And then being aware and saying, you know what? Maybe there's a different way.

• 46:17Steven Gundry?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Certain things aren't working past a certain point. It's just a Band-Aid. So let me reevaluate, educate, test it on myself and then help other people. So I want to acknowledge you for the journey you've been on and how much you help people. Um, make sure you guys get this book and you're on social media. What's your?

• 46:34Steven Gundry?

  Go to gundrymd.com.

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  Gundrymd.com.

• 46:37Steven Gundry?

  And I'm on Instagram and come visit.

• 46:40Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Amazing. The Plant Paradox. Your, my final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 46:47Steven Gundry?

  Ooh, uh, well, yeah, this is the school of greatness.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:51Steven Gundry?

  Uh, the, I think I judge myself in the ability of being able to give something to somebody else and having them come back and say, "Thank you." That's all I could ever ask in my life. And whether I was a surgeon fixing a newborn baby's heart or having somebody like that woman come back and say, "I forgot what being without pain felt like and thank you." So that's like, what, what, what makes me feel great? How's that?

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Well, I appreciate it and thank you for coming on. It means a lot to me.

• 47:25Steven Gundry?

  Thanks a lot. I'm glad I'm here. Thanks.

• 47:29Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friend. If you thought this was as fascinating as I did, make sure to send me a message over on Twitter, Facebook, or on Instagram. Tag me @lewishouse anywhere you'd like to connect. Take a screenshot of this right now and post it on your Instagram story to help people swipe up with lewishouse.com/521, which will send them right to the podcast. We've got the full video interview back on the show notes, @lewishouse.com/521, with other resources, links, and information on how you can learn more about the Plant Paradox as well. I'm fascinated with learning about how my body works. It's challenging sometimes because I want to live life and experience different foods and taste things, but I also want to live around a long time

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  and I want to make sure that I'm healthy on the time that I am on this planet. So, "Don't forget to give up the good to go for the great", said John D. Rockefeller. "It's always about those little tweaks that we can apply to our life, our business, our bodies, our minds, that can help us reach the next level." I hope you enjoyed this one. As always, guys, I love you very much. It means the world to me that you continue to listen, that you continue to spread the message of greatness, that you continue to apply what you learn to your life, your relationships, your business, your health, your spirituality, to create a better experience for yourself in this world, but also be a beacon of light for those around you.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  It's all about turning up our light and shining so bright that people around you continue to light up as well and the ripple continues. I love you very much, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.