 Hey, it's Dr. Kendra here. It's Q&A time where I take your questions from social media and your Apple Podcast reviews. I always enjoy hearing from you. So leave your questions on social media or Apple Podcast reviews. I might just feature one in an upcoming episode. But before I get into it, it's important to note that this episode is simply meant to be informative. If you have any concerns about your health, please speak to your doctor. Okay, let's jump in. Question number one. Dr. Gundry, I know you don't typically eat breakfast, but if you were going to, what would you eat? Well that's a great question. As you know, I like to, particularly from January to June, not eat breakfast and not eat lunch and eat all my calories in a two hour window at dinner time. But I break that during Saturdays and Sundays often. So what I do when I break my fast, which is breakfast, I'll usually have plain sheep yogurt. Recently, I put allulose in it to not only give it sweetening, but as many of you now know, allulose is actually a prebiotic fiber that has some very interesting health benefits. So give that a try. Also I like a bar that I make at Gundry MD. I'm partial to the macadamia nut bar. My wife likes the honey nut bar better. But if I'm going to have breakfast, those are my two probably go-to choices. Lastly, believe it or not, I will often have breakfast as a handful of walnuts or pistachios. And that is a great breakfast that, if you've read Unlocking the Keto Code, does not break your fast. So it's a win-win in that way. All right, number two, from Cecilia Sau on YouTube, Dr. G, since soy sauce went through the fermentation process, the lectins in soybeans should be gone, right? Is it safe to use them? Well, yes, the lectins in the soybeans are usually destroyed, but almost all commercial soy sauce in the United States has gluten, yes, gluten. But it's doing there, I have no idea, but almost all commercial soy sauces have gluten. But there's an easy around about this. Get yourself coconut aminos. Tastes just like soy sauce. There's several companies now that make coconut aminos, and that's your new soy sauce. If you can actually find a tamari that's imported from Japan, you're probably safe, but just don't take the chance. In fact, I have a lot of my patients bring their coconut aminos to their local sushi hangout. All right, number three, from Sculpture and Arts on YouTube, can you talk about the benefits of fennel plants, please? Is it a superfood or a super fad? So fennel is really great for you in all forms, whether it's the bulb, whether it's the leaves, you name it, fennel is a superfood. It has some really great prebiotic fiber. It has a marvelous licorice flavor that most people really enjoy. And as you know, there's a lot of fennel recipes in my books and add fennel to your diet. And raw in salads, cook it for a savory winter meal, chop up the fine feathers and leaves and add it to your salads, add it to your soups. It'll give a great new flavor. It is a really versatile vegetable that you need to get in your diet, and it's really affordable. Great question. Number four, from Ave Bami Dahili, I think I got it right, on YouTube. And a person who is once metabolically flexible become inflexible again. If yes, what are the conditions? Oh, brother, is it easy to become metabolically inflexible? An example that I used in my first book, you can take trained athletes, put them to bed rest for 48 hours, and they will become insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible in just 48 hours. And I can't tell you the number of people who during COVID changed their exercise program. They stopped going to the gym for obvious reasons. They stopped spin class. They stopped yoga. They stopped Pilates. You name it, they stopped it. And some of my best metabolically flexible people became metabolically inflexible. It was shocking to everybody how little it took to get them on the wrong side of metabolic inflexibility. The other place I see it, particularly again during COVID, is people got into the habit of eating comfort foods, eating for boredom, having more alcoholic beverages. And I'm not saying there was anything horribly wrong with the last two years in doing that. But I could see it across the board with my patients. And remember, I see patients six days a week and do blood work every three to six months. You can spot it a mile away. What happened to the vast majority of people making these changes? So yeah, once you're metabolically flexible, it is like that to become metabolically inflexible. You can't rest on your laurels. One last thing I'll say, I'll have a person or people who have glowing results after really focusing on their eating. And I'll give them praise and give them gold stars. The next time I see them, everything's changed again. What happened? They said, oh, I'm doing great. I can lighten up a little bit. I can take it easy a little bit. And I'm telling you, this is a lifestyle. It's not a diet that you're on. Number six, from Ryan Sue on YouTube, can you do a video about how to make non-organic food less harmful so we can get rid of the lectins and pesticides for the most part? Thank you so much. Thumbs up. Well, I recently did a YouTube video on which foods you should try to buy organic and which foods you should not really worry about organic. Let me summarize that, but head on over to YouTube and look up that video. If something has a peel that you're going to get rid of or a shell that you're going to get rid of, you're going to get rid of whatever pesticides may or may not have been sprayed on that. On the other hand, so a nut, you're probably not really critical to get organic walnuts for an example. On the other hand, if you're not going to peel something like lettuces, like vegetables that you're not going to peel, then it's probably well worth your money to get the organic version. And I'll add one more thing. If it's in a plastic bag and it's been prepared for you triple wash, in my next book, I'm going to try to scare you into not buying that product in a plastic bag. And it's got so many mischievous endocrine disruptors and preservatives that you're far better off buying the whole head of lettuce, the whole cabbage, the whole broccoli and chopping it up yourself. Yeah, it takes a little bit longer. Get yourself a salad spinner, have fun with a salad spinner, and that's how to treat your produce. Number seven from Andrew Dunn on YouTube. Big question. How does one simply take potassium if the diet is short in it? Supplementation is typically 99 milligrams while the daily required intake is 4,700 milligrams. No, the daily required intake is not 4,700 milligrams. What you want to do is balance your potassium and sodium intake. So if you're going to eat 4 grams of sodium, then you ought to get 4 grams of potassium. That's 4,000 milligrams. But it's actually really easy to do. For instance, get yourself some pressure-cooked lentils or pressure-cooked beans. Those lentils and beans have up to 1,000 milligrams of potassium in a cup. Get yourself some potassium chloride salt, sometimes called light salt. Easy to use, easy to put on your food. If you have a water softening system and a water filtration system, make sure it's a potassium chloride-based system and you will naturally be drinking your potassium. So almost all of our vegetables have massive amounts of potassium. A cup of spinach has 400 to 500 milligrams of potassium. So in a daily diet with lots of green leafy vegetables, you're going to get oodles of potassium. You don't have to go look for potassium pills. If you want a potassium pill, buy potassium bicarbonate. There's 400 milligrams of potassium in a potassium bicarbonate pill. So easy way to get it. Number eight, from Anna Kovac on YouTube. Hey, Stephen, what do you think about growing microgreens at home? Well, that's a great idea. If you have a green thumb, why don't you make some microgreens? But not all microgreens are the same. First of all, don't eat alfalfa sprouts. They have some of the best toxins known to mankind. Secondly, if you're going to use seeds like grains, like wheat, like seeds from sunflower seeds. In the first sprout, the lectin content actually goes higher. So those guys are not what you want to do. If you want to make sunflowers bigger and get the kind of big sprouts, then you're perfectly safe. Finally, if you're going to sprout, use broccoli or radish sprouts. Broccoli sprouts have some amazing compounds called sulforaphanes that really have important factors that stop cancer cells in their tract and also improve mitochondrial health. So if you're going to spend time growing microgreens, broccoli sprouts followed by radish sprouts are two of the best ways to go. Great question. Number nine, this is from Anonymous. Have you or could you do an episode on how to fulfill the essential amino acid profile from plant-based sources, i.e. without supplementation? Thanks. Well, let's put that to rest. Yes, there are essential amino acids that we have to obtain from our diet. And we can argue whether it's 8 or 10 or 12. Some are semi-essential, but no one has ever told a herbivore, a horse, a gorilla, that they need to supplement their diet with animal sources to get all of their complex amino acids and all of their essential amino acids. You can very, very safely and simply get all of the necessary amino acids by eating a varied diet of very different greens. If you're really worried about it, and I'm not, then you can supplement your diet with pressure-cooked lentils or pressure-cooked beans. I personally think that hemp seeds are really one of the best ways to get all the essential amino acids that you need. Mushroom-based foods like corn, and I'm not saying C-O-R-N, I'm saying Q-U-O-R-N, have all the essential amino acids that you need. So don't buy into this. I've got to have each meal have all the various essential amino acids. Beans have some. Rice has another. I've got to combine them. Nobody in nature ever does this. So why should you? All right, that's it for today. Keep those questions coming in. These were great. Thanks so much for watching this episode, but don't go anywhere. I think you're going to love this next one. And most of these you want to try to buy organic. You've probably seen that almost all oats in this country, including organic oats, have glyphosate.