 Okay, let's get into today's question and answers from Kelly McBruhner on my recent IG post that read, if you can eat one bite for your taste buds and two bites for your gut buddies, you'll make great changes to your health with this small adjustment. What does this mean, Kelly asked? Can you please give us some examples of what this looks like in reality? Like can I have pizza if I then eat two servings of veggies? Or negotiating, Kelly? No, that's not what I meant, but good question. So let me give you an example from last night. I actually had some grilled radicchio that was wrapped with prosciutto and then had a little balsamic vinegar over the top. I was eating for my taste buds because quite frankly, I really liked the taste of prosciutto. Interestingly enough, prosciutto is an aged fermented ham and I was getting a really great taste from the balsamic vinegar and the prosciutto. Now it just so happened to be wrapped in radicchio, which has a very bitter taste. I've become accustomed to bitterness, but that would probably not be the taste I was looking for. But radicchio is one of the best foods for my gut buddy. So I got a taste that my taste buds really enjoyed, but I also was using it as a way of getting what my gut buddies really wanted out of that meal. And so it was a win-win for me. It's the same way with most of the foods that we're eating. We really want to think of eating for our gut buddies first, but then give our taste buds something that we're interested in. For instance, one of the best ways to enjoy dark chocolate, and we'll get into that in a little bit, is put a square of dark chocolate in your mouth and let it melt in your mouth. You will actually get a prolonged pleasant taste experience and in the process you will swallow a whole bunch of very important polyphenols that actually give your gut buddies exactly what they need. So it's a win-win for your taste buds and your gut buddies. Now in terms of pizza, there are now pizza crusts that are available, that are lectin-free or lectin-light. One of them that I recommend is cappellos by the plain crust. And then put some, what I do is I buy, believe it or not, pesto from Costco, Kirkland brand, which uses basil from Liguria, Italy, where I hike all the time, and Parmesan cheese. And I use that as my topping. And then put some mozzarella cheese on it. I like to put arugula on top of it, and you've got yourself a great pizza that your mouth will like, I guarantee you, but it's going to deliver stuff that your gut buddies are going to like. So great question. Some Ray Lentz on YouTube. Dr. Gundry, I see a lot of talk about walnut oil and its benefits. What's your take? Well, I'd much rather you have walnuts than walnut oil. A couple reasons for that. Certainly, walnuts have lots of interesting polyphenols that have been shown in study after study to benefit your brain health and your heart health. The Predamed study in Spain really demonstrated this extremely well. Walnut oil, on the other hand, has a lot of the omega-6-fat linoleic acid. Yes, it does have the omega-3-fat linolyneic acid, and I know those are tongue twisters and they sound almost identical, but walnut oil is actually one of the higher oils in linoleic acid, and you really don't want that as part of your diet. They're far better, safer oils out there. Olive oil is a better choice. My favorite, if you're really looking for a healthy oil, is perilla oil or sesame oil. So walnut oil is way down the list, but walnuts are great. And try to have a handful of walnuts every day. From Frank Pallas on YouTube, have you reviewed Moringa? Well, no, we've actually never done a podcast on Moringa. Moringa is a fascinating polyphenol supplement. I used to take a lot of Moringa. It's kind of fallen out of my regimen at the moment. I may bring it back. I try to cycle through polyphenols because, quite frankly, our ancient ancestors 250 different plants and species on a rotating basis, and some were available part of the year, other parts of the years. And I think it's a good idea to vary the polyphenol-based supplements you're using. And I certainly do that in my practice. From Jezmina Piskulik on YouTube, thanks for sharing your knowledge and please keep it coming. I'm kind of wondering, wouldn't it be possible to get rid of lectins and peanuts by pressure cooking them? Wouldn't it be great if it worked? Well, yes, pressure cooking will get rid of lectins and peanuts. Interestingly, I went to a medical school in the South at Georgia and lived in the South for quite a while. And boiled peanuts are an incredibly popular way of eating peanuts. So I researched how best to get rid of lectins and peanuts, and it's well known that they have them. It turns out that roasting increases the lectin content and the allergenicity of peanuts, whereas boiling actually lessens the lectin content, unlike boiling most lectin-containing foods. So great question, and so obviously there was some method to the Southern tradition of eating boiled peanuts rather than roasted peanuts. Great question. From Bill Cullen on YouTube, based on my recent video about peanuts. What about sunflower seed butter, Doc? Well, I've done a whole seed lecture on YouTube, but once again sunflower seeds are loaded with lectins, number one. And number two, unfortunately, they're very high in that short chain omega-6 linoleic acid. As you know, some of my colleagues in complementary medicine warn about our overconsumption of linoleic acid that is present in most seed oils. So no, ditch the sunflower seed butter. I know it looks sexy, but it's really bad for you. From Hippo Homeschooler on Instagram, based on my recent post about shortening your window of eating. I have very bad adrenals. I feel like it's imperative I eat in the morning to cause less stress on them. What do you think? Well, most people who think they have bad adrenals, number one, don't. I measure cortisol levels in all my patients. And it's incredibly unusual for me to see adrenal fatigue. I may have seen it six times in 10,000 patients. It's that rare. Most people who think they have adrenal fatigue, as I've written about in my books, actually have adrenal resistance in their receptors for the cortisol hormone. And that's secondary to eating multiple small meals a day. So the best thing you can do to support your adrenals is to stop eating multiple small meals a day. Also on the same IG post about time-restricted eating from Hey Jamie Fish, have the benefits of shortening your eating window been studied on both men and women? Are there any variations of this practice based on your gender? Well, that's a great question. And I invited an expert on my podcast, Cynthia Thurlow. And she's on episode 247, where we go into this exact same question. And she and I both agree that one of the differences for men and women really apply to women of childbearing age, women who are actively lactating, or women who are actively trying to get pregnant. This is a time not to practice time-restricted eating. Your body has a unique sensing system of food availability. And if you're trying to get pregnant, if you're pregnant, or even if you're breastfeeding your baby, you want to have your body absolutely convinced that there is not a famine, that things are ripe for having a baby, or growing a baby, or feeding a baby. And this is not the time for time-restricted eating. From Ms. Hagsoni on Instagram, I'm extremely sensitive to melatonin supplements, even .5 milligrams. It gives me a headache. What does this mean? Many thanks. You may actually be sensitive to something additionally in that supplement, because quite frankly, you produce melatonin. And so you can't be sensitive to melatonin. Melatonin comes up every night, and I assure you it won't give you a headache. On the other hand, there may be one ingredient or another in that melatonin supplement. That's the problem. Here's my suggestion. Since pistachios have the highest concentration of melatonin of any food, let's do an experiment and have yourself a handful of raw roasted pistachios before you go to bed. And let's see what happens. From Kim S. based on my recent YouTube video about the benefits of dark chocolate. I'm waiting for Dr. Gundry to address the recent concerns over high levels of heavy metals found in dark chocolate. Now one of the things we can do is I recommend you watching my video with Katherine Arnston, energy bit lady, about the benefits of chlorella, binding heavy metals and clearing out heavy metals. Yes, there are amounts of lead and cadmium in chocolate. Just as there are amounts of lead and cadmium in kale. We've always known that chocolate has lead and cadmium in it. That's not a big surprise. And yet all of a sudden it seems like a big surprise. All of the health benefits of chocolate vastly outweigh the small amounts of lead and cadmium in these products. Now what can you do about if you're worried about it? Well the great news is that chlorella in activated charcoal bind heavy metals in your gut. And as you may know, heavy metals are excreted only during weight loss. Heavy metals stay in your fat cells until you do rapid weight loss when they're excreted as you use up fat. And those heavy metals are then dumped into bio from your liver because we don't have a way of detoxifying them and they're put into your gut. So the great way is you can bind them with chlorella or activated charcoal. And that's actually why I designed my product, UNTOX, which contains both of those ingredients. But the benefits of dark chocolate that doesn't have any milk in it far outweigh the small amounts of heavy metals in chocolate. It's blown way out of proportion. From Phil Crossie on YouTube, what's that red drink you always have next to you? Phil, it's Vital Reds, my original signature product that started Gundry MD. And I never start my day without Vital Reds because it's chock full of polyphenols, friendly bacteria, thermogenic compounds, and the entire gamut of B vitamins for energy. Vital Reds, that's that red drink that you see every week. Make sure to check out the next one here. The big difference between Gundry MD Vital Reds and other Reds powders is that I choose the ingredients for this formula based on clinical results.