 So welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast today. I'm going to answer one of the most requested questions bone broth What do I think about bone broth? Well, as you know bone broth has been the rage for gosh I don't know the last five years or so and you know Some people think it is absolutely the miracle cure for for whatever ales you It's talked about for gut health for bone health for joint health and As it's still cold and flu season You may be thinking of curling up with a nice cup of chicken soup, which after all is a Kind of bone broth and maybe it will actually make you feel better So in other words is bone broth good or bad for you or is it a little of the both? so in today's episode I'm going to try to break down some of the pros and cons about bone broth and Try to explain where the idea bone broth came from in the first place and Let's go for a ride in the bone broth kettle so Claims of bone broth bone broth Improves your joint function and improve it heals a leaky gut And I want to talk a lot about that as we go along because most of my patients who I see Who have been using bone broth? Use it to heal a leaky gut Some people believe it's incredibly important to help overcome food intolerances and allergies Maybe it boosts the immune system Does it rebuild bone? Does it rebuild collagen in your joints in your skin? Does it make your hair grow thicker? Do you get improved nails with it? all of these are claims of bone broth and interestingly enough You heard these similar claims back in days before bone broth with Gelatin for instance, so it's quite a list and any time you have that big a list You want to have some degree of healthy skepticism because there are now a number of companies Well intention companies well run companies that do want you to think that bone broth is the cure-all for everything so bone broth been around a very very very long time and One of the things that's Interesting it seems to span some version of it spans Many many many cultures so the Japanese have tonkotsu Which comes from pork bones that have been cooked forever and ever and ever in Korea It's so long tongue which is a rich broth made from ox bones And then of course, there's Jewish penicillin chicken soup with matzah balls and all of these traditions came about particularly among the poor because if you for instance ever had true pasture raised beef and pasture grass fed and grass finished you'll notice that a lot of the Pieces of beef are quite tough In fact one of my patients just yesterday was complaining that he was making stew out of grass fed and grass finished beef And it was really tough And as wise as you idiot, that's because there isn't all that marbling from all the corn and soybeans So people would cook all of these meats that were attached to the bones for an extended period of time and The longer you cooked it the more gelatinous it became and that gelatinous material is actually where all the Collagen and all the good stuff is I grew up in the Midwest and my mother would make a pot roast Once a week and whether we wanted it or not And she would put it on the stove first thing in the morning And it would cook all day and what started out as a very very tough piece of meat with lots of gristle By the time it went on our table at night. It was just soft and mushy and so Unbeknownst to me. I was having a bone broth concoction at least once a week She would also do the same thing with sparrows. She would actually put them in a pot of sauerkraut and Cook them all day and by the end of the day There was the spare of the pork meat along with all the collagen and gristle had fallen off the bones and had mixed in with the sauerkraut To this day I I hate that dish because I had it once a week whether I wanted it or not But the point is Even as much as you know a generation ago for me This was a part of my normal cuisine and that came my mother's family was primarily German and that was traditional long-term German cooking techniques So there's a long history in in bone broth It's been described as long ago as the Middle Ages and it was called Restorer it kind of restored a broth and then there was beef tea in Britain speaking of growing up Many of you can relate to the fact that consomme Which is basically beef broth was considered a great soup and even at fancy restaurants You would start with a bowl of beef consomme which was bone broth And if it was a really fancy restaurant They would chill the beef consomme and it would be literally a chilled bowl of gelatin with beef flavor So at that time it was considered a delicacy So and I can remember when we'd go to a fancy restaurant Having a bowl of consomme was considered the ultimate in fine dining Fine dining that the poor were having back in the Middle Ages. So me amazing how things come around so First of all, let's talk about Scientifically back prose of drinking bone broth bone broth is a great source of Some amino acids that do make collagen But let's get rid of a myth first of all You can eat all the collagen you want But one of the things you have to understand is we do not absorb Collagen from our intestinal tract All protein no matter what it is is broken down into Individual amino acids and those amino acids which are small protein building blocks are then absorbed Through the wall of our gut now once they're absorbed through the wall of our gut You then reabsorb you then reassemble those amino acids Into the proteins that you need But there's actually no Instruction book that came with the collagen you ate in bone broth To make sure that you take those individual amino acids and once you absorb them Make them back into collagen You'll use those amino acids to make what your body thinks it needs One of which is collagen, but certainly not all of which is collagen So just taking collagen in whatever form There's not going to guarantee that you're going to make collagen on the other side So that's one of the biggest myths out there that the more Collagen and bone broth the more collagen you're going to manufacture Now it's great to have the building blocks to do that But remember you can get those of building blocks without using bone broth And that's the important thing you can make collagen out of other amino acids now bone broth in general contains a Amino acid called glutamine Now glutamine is interesting because we do know that the intestinal cells that one layer of cells that lines our gut and That lining is the size of a tennis court inside of us Those cells love glutamine They actually use glutamine to grow and repair themselves, and that's scientifically proven so the fact that bone broth has glutamine is a very Scientifically valid way of feeding gut cells But I'm always reminded professor From Louisiana State University Russell Blalock Who was a neurosurgeon? He's retired now, but he's written a number of books on What are called neuro excitotoxins and one of his pet subjects was Glutamine becoming a neurotoxin in excess Turning into glutamate which is in fact a neurotoxin And I was so impressed with his research when I first started doing the plant paradox That I urged people that if you were going to use glutamine as a supplement or Glutamine-containing foods like bone broth to help heal a leaky gut that you should probably do this for a limited period of time. I Think probably three months is a maximum period I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but he would probably say less than that in any event I don't think that you need to have bone broth as a Standard part of your diet to keep your gut healthy But I do think it does play a good role in produce and having glutamine available to cells For a reparative process, so that's probably my tip for the number one reason that this is useful Now number two a lot of proponents of bone broth Say that bone broth correctly is high in glycine And now we're going to take a little trip down nerdy road here There is some very very fascinating data particularly in animals That there are certain amino acids that age us rapidly that turn on a compound called m-tor or Tor Tor in our cells and you're going to learn a lot about this in the longevity paradox Long story short, there are certain amino acids called methionine That absolutely positively activate m-tor and if m-tor is activated quite frankly You're not going to live as long and you actually may produce cancer if m-tor is turned off then It's actually compatible with living a very long time and living well and not having cancer Okay, so what does that have to do with bone broth? Well bone broth does not have a lot of methionine which is a very very very common Amino acid in animal protein But it does have a lot of another amino acid called glycine so what? Experiments and pigs show that if you put pigs on a methionine restricted diet They will live about twice as long as Their litter mates who eat a normal methionine diet same calories in both groups Just by eliminating methionine. Well, that's pretty cool except It's hard to have a methionine restricted diet with the exception of vegans because vegans actually Plant proteins have very little methionine and you're going to hear that argument from me again and again and again in the longevity paradox Back to glycine You can take pigs put them on a regular diet and add glycine to their diet and Glycine appears to act as if the pigs were eating a methionine restricted diet Now because I'm such an incredible nerd I take Glycine tablets twice a day because I don't like hedge my bets so but bone broth Has quite a bit of glycine and not much methionine so of the animal protein products out there It's probably a pretty interesting safe bet So those are the those are the pros of bone broth so if you want to use it to feed your Intestinal cells the enterocytes for a while. That's great If you want to experiment with it as a longevity technique because of the glycine that's okay, but it is animal protein and as you'll see in the longevity Paradox and as you learned in the plant paradox In the end animal protein ages us. I wish it didn't but it does and Having said that as you learned in the plant paradox beef lamb and pork All have a sugar molecule called new five ac Sorry new five GC That can promote heart disease and cancer in us Chicken and fish don't have it So my personal feeling if you can find true pastured chicken You're probably safer with chicken bone broth than any other thing and in fact back in the good old days a stewing chicken was how we ate chicken and we actually made Chicken soup from stewed chicken because we got all of that collagen from the tough old bird Okay, does this stuff go directly into your joints? Well, unfortunately, it doesn't go directly into your joints again You get the bill building blocks So it's to me a lot easier to consume things like haluronic acid as a supplement a lot easier to consume Condroitin sulfate MSM acetyl L glutamine Temporarily to get the same effect So you don't have to have bone broth But if you're going to have bone broth, I would head towards chicken rather than beef Pork or lamb as your best choices Okay, are there proven studies that bone broth in fact makes your joints better as baked makes your skin better In fact, there's very few studies that have ever Substantiated anything about this. In fact, there are some good studies that show that the collagen and bone broth is Not a reliable precursor as a supplemental source of collagen and this is published data so Unfortunately, it's just not the great panacea that people would like it to be Now having said that and I get this from my patients and I get this on the internet We have a recipe for bone broth in the plant paradox cookbook and it's really easy to do So it's in the book But what you do is you take four pounds of pasture raised animal bones You take two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar Put in some salt. Please use iodized sea salt. It's readily available now Even Morton's makes it iodine is a critical component in your diet to make thyroid hormone Please ditch the pink salt and ditch the plain sea salt and get iodine in your diet I see a mini epidemic of hypothyroidism in this country and getting some iodized sea salt in people's diets is miraculous and getting their thyroid back to normal As an aside if you're not going to do that buy yourself some spirulina tablets You can get it at Trader Joe's. It's organic. It's cheap Take about four a day and you'll get plenty of iodine that way. Sorry for the aside Throw in some onions some parsley some garlic Put it in a pressure cooker or a slow cooker or a stock pot and just like my mother did just cook it all day If you're using a pressure cooker, it'll take about 90 minutes 10 hours in a slow cooker then just Put it in a stock pot if you don't have either of those and just cover it and just put it on simmer for the day Medium low heat will be fine When it's done you take a strainer you pour it through the strainer and there you go You've got your own set of bone broth. You can even I think Put it in approved ice cube containers like silicone ice cube containers And then you've got your own little bullion cubes freeze it And then you can use that as your stock when making a lot of my other recipes or your own favorite recipes You don't have to just keep it in the refrigerator so Great way to make bone broth. You can get the you know leftover bones whenever for instance We have we had a pasture turkey for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year And we saved the bones from both of those birds and we cook those bones all day long actually two days And that's where we got our bone broth. So we're set now for several months Because we're not going to use it very often, but we're we're done and recycled our bird So that's my take on bone broth. It is not the miracle cure all of you want it to be But it's a great source of glutamine. It's a very interesting source for glycine But just remember it's still an animal protein and it goes with those provisos So I've um, I've had a few anecdotes from patients who have gone on a bone broth diet And that's interesting. Some of them say they absolutely felt better Others said they didn't notice any difference But I can tell you one thing that is interested in me in those people who Tell me they're doing a lot of bone broth Uh, as many of you know For years I've measured a surrogate marker for whether mTOR is activated Called insulin like growth factor one IGF one And I talk a lot about that in plant paradox and I talk even more about it in the longevity paradox Long story short Super super old people who are thriving in their late 90s and early 100s Have as a general rule Very low insulin like growth factors and that makes sense because again Keeping mTOR Suppressed and not activated is probably one of the keys to longevity and health span So I've had several people and you know, this does not make a series because I don't have enough When they tell me they've been on bone broth for A period of time before the tests and most of my people I test every three months Every one of them who've gone on Daily or using bone broth their insulin like growth factors have gone up 50 or 60 points Uh from previous And everything else that we measure their sugar intake their carbohydrate intake Their other animal protein source intakes hasn't changed All they did was add bone broth Again does not constitute proof and I'm not claiming that it constitutes proof But anecdotally what I suspected might happen In those few patients who have gone on bone broth They've definitely increased their insulin like growth factor one Do I think that's a bad idea? Yeah We'll find out when They're 100 and I'm 100 whether or not it was a bad idea or not and you know, I'm I'm doing everything I can to Report back to you at at 150 As you know our saying in the office is 150 is the new 100 so uh, so that's That's the anecdotal story. Uh again I think it's great to use as a short term process, but I don't think it's a long term solution for much of anything Okay question Jean asked I just purchased plant paradox quick and easy. Thank you gene Uh, do the vegetables have to be organic? Well, here's the deal and I talk about this in the book and I've talked about this in all the books Do what you can do with what you got wherever you are And I would love it if you can buy organic They are coming in more and more and more and more stores Walmart has a huge organic section One of the things that's getting scarier and scarier is not only Is it against the law to spray spray pesticides on organic vegetables? but Organic vegetables are not going to have any of the biosides and herbicides like roundup and it's perfectly legal to weed kill with roundup around vegetables Around weed around soybean around flax seeds around canola and even around wine grapevines So organic you're going to number one make sure you don't have any pesticides, but probably more importantly You're not going to have glyphosate on your vegetables And glyphosate is is really the modern terror That monsanto did not tell us about as you'll see in Both the plant paradox and the longevity paradox About 95 percent of people have glyphosate in them in their urine 95 percent of breastfeeding women have glyphosate In their breast milk Almost all california wines have glyphosate and you go well, so what it doesn't hurt anything. Well, glyphosate Roundup was patented as an antibiotic Not as a weed killer Now think about that for a second. What does antibiotic mean? It means it kills living things And antibiotics kill bacteria So what nobody knew because monsanto didn't tell anybody Is that roundup glyphosate kills your intestinal bacteria as if you were swallowing antibiotics What's even scarier is MIT researchers have now proven that glyphosate is a direct cause of leaky gut And you've heard me say over and over again that I think almost all diseases Are at their basis from leaky gut So yes, organics is a little more expensive But it's right there next to the other stuff and in the long run Your health and your long-term health May be a whole lot better By spending 50 cents more on that organic vegetable now And not having to take 12 prescription drugs when you're in your 60s or 70s Like so many Americans are So a little investment now is going to pay off long term Having said that don't sweat it if you can't afford it or you're out someplace And you're going to have a meal or you're at a friend's house That's not the time to make your stand But do it as often as you can when you're under control and that's why to eat organic Okay Good question, Gene So thanks again for joining me on the Dr. Gundry podcast Make sure you subscribe to the show on itunes or your favorite podcast carrier Keep sending in your questions because that's what i'm here for And i'm here because i'm dr. Gundry and i'm always looking out for you