 It turns out there's actually scientific basis for not eating or fasting to protect yourself and to actually increase the function of your immune system. Who knew? Welcome to the Dr. Gendry Podcast. There's something you are likely eating every day. It can negatively affect your waistline, complexion and overall health. And even worse, your immune system too. I'm talking about sugar. Unfortunately the sweet stuff can lower your body's ability to fight off illness. As a matter of fact, researchers have found that eating any kind of sugar has the potential to reduce your body's defenses by 70% for up to 6 hours after you ingest it. So during the current crisis limiting your sugar intake is more important than ever. On this episode of the Dr. Gendry Podcast I'll talk more about the effects sugar has on your body's ability to fight off harmful viruses. I'll also share tips for conquering sugar addiction once and for all and how you can enjoy sweet foods without eating the enemy. So tune in. This is not an episode you want to miss. Okay, so let's start with the basics. What is sugar? Well, sugar comes in so many forms that it's actually incredibly difficult to figure out what you're eating has any sugar. So for instance, sugar is a carbohydrate and a carbohydrate is just a collection of carbon atoms and depending on how those carbon atoms are arranged, it's one of the main sources of finding glucose and glucose is a simple sugar molecule that is the primary fuel that we use to fuel the mitochondria, those little organelles that live in all of ourselves. But unfortunately glucose is actually not readily available. It's usually combined with other forms of sugars. So let me give you an example. Sucrose, which most people think is plain old sugar, is half glucose and half fructose. So that white sugar, cane sugar for instance, sucrose is half glucose and half fructose. Most fruit sugars are primarily fructose, which isn't glucose at all. And in fact, we'll talk about how fructose is incredibly damaging to almost everything in your body. There are absolutely other forms of sugars. For instance, the sugar in milk is called lactose. And some people, particularly of non-European descent, are unable to digest lactose because we no longer have the enzymes that we had as a child. So these are all forms of sugar. But the important thing to realize is modern food processing has taken the sugars that have been bound together with chemical bonds in nature to make starches. And starches are simply sugar molecules that have been bonded together in long chains. The importance of that is normally starches because of all these chemical bonds take quite a while to during digestion break these chemical bonds. Now why is that important? Because long ago you could eat a starch such as, for instance, a whole grain like rice or a whole grain like wheat. And it would actually take a long time to break those individual starches down into glucose. But modern manufacturing has now been able to break these starch molecules into individual sugar molecules and still disguise them as starches. So what that means is a piece of bread, a plain old everyday piece of white bread, whole wheat bread, actually has the equivalent of four teaspoons of sugar in it even though it doesn't taste sweet. In fact there's so much sugar in white bread that when we calculate a glycemic index that is, if I eat this, how much does my sugar level go up in my blood, white bread is 100. In other words it's actually the highest rated of anything you can eat. Let me give you another example that I talked about on another podcast. A bagel has about 35 grams of sugar. Even though if you read the label you'll see zero sugar and that's because manufacturers have manipulated the system to hide the sugar content. So starting with the basics, here's how I want you to look at any package that has a nutrition fact on the back. Take a look at total carbohydrates. That's the total number of sugar molecules in grams. Then you take the fiber. Fiber is that indigestible starch or sugar molecules that we personally can't digest but our bacteria love. So you take total carbohydrates minus fiber and that will actually give you the grams of sugar per serving. Now grams mean nothing to most of us. So here's an easy tip. There's four grams of sugar in each teaspoon. So for instance that bagel with 33, 35 grams of sugar, divide that by four there's somewhere between eight and nine teaspoons of sugar in that bagel. Now why is that so important because researchers actually many, many years ago found out how detrimental sugar was in any form to our immune system's ability to function. Now there are actually a number of papers in humans written in the 1970s on the effect of ingestion of very different kinds of sugar and we'll go through that real quickly. On the ability of white blood cells to actually engulf, that means eat, bacteria in this case. So what they did is they took a bunch of healthy volunteers and they gave them different forms of sugar. They gave them glucose. They gave them fructose. They gave them starch. They gave them orange juice. Now the equivalent amount of sugar that they gave them was about the sugar in two cans of soda and believe it or not there's about 12 teaspoons in a can of soda of sugar. Now that sugar is mostly sucrose not glucose. What they found was they took blood from these people for six hours every hour after they ingested whatever sugar they gave them. And they found with each passing hour the ability of white blood cells to eat bacteria and kill them dramatically felt like 70% ineffective after one hour of eating any of these sugars including orange juice. And that effect lasted for about six hours. It gradually went back to normal. So imagine that that healthy glass of orange juice you're having this morning to ward off the coronavirus is actually impairing the ability of your white blood cells, your defenders to defend you. It literally paralyzes them and is that really what we want to do in this time? Same way with a bagel. So a bagel is approaching a can of soda and the amount of sugar. And what's fascinating is that bagel will raise your blood sugar faster than a can of soda. It actually has a higher glycemic index. So in this day and age the idea of eating healthy is completely perverted in terms of protecting ourselves against viruses. Now it gets even more interesting. It turns out they took then some diabetics and they found that diabetics their white blood cells at their basic state didn't work half as well as normal people's white blood cells. Why? Again it was because the elevated sugar in their bloodstream suppressed the white blood cell function. Now here's the best news. If you've listened to other of my podcasts you know that one of the only good things that came out of World War II in terms of scientific knowledge was that concentration camp survivors fascinatingly were immune literally from infections. They did not get sick. They did not get cold. Now granted most of these people sadly starved to death or were killed. But the survivors the fact that they never got sick prompted scientists to investigate why starvation was good to protect you from harm in terms of bacteria and viruses. And this study was replicated in healthy volunteers and they actually put volunteers on a five day water fast. And they did the same thing. They took blood each day and they looked at the ability of white blood cells to engulf bacteria and kill them. And lo and behold with every fasting day as blood sugar declined the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria increased. So if you've ever heard the expression feed a cold and starve a fever it turns out there's actually scientific basis for not eating or fasting to protect yourself and to actually increase the function of your immune system. Who knew? Now I don't want everybody to go on a five day water fast. But the point of all this is even a 12 hour fast in these individuals was shown to improve their white blood cell function. And I got news for you any of us can do a 12 hour fast. Hey you're going to do fasting for seven to eight hours every night just add on another four or five hours before you eat breakfast in the morning or eat dinner early and you will actually increase your white blood cells ability to defend you. Why wouldn't we want to do that? So sugar is really bad for you and bad for your immune system and it's hidden in almost everything we eat. Now I get the question constantly but what about natural sugar? That's got to be a lot different than cane sugar. Well sorry natural sugar is no different than any other sugar. For instance honey is still sugar, maple syrup is still sugar, orange juice is still sugar. So don't make the mistake that just because it's natural means it's better for you and please don't pick up the can of soda that says all natural cane sugar or organic sugar. Sugar is sugar. This is a white substance and if we know anything about white substances, white substances are addictive. And speaking of all natural, cocaine and heroin are all natural and they're addictive. And it turns out that the white substance sugar is equally addictive. In fact it's actually more addictive than heroin or cocaine. How do we know? Because we can easily addict rats or mice to heroin or cocaine and they will press a lever and get their heroin or cocaine. When we introduce them to sugar water, within two days the rats will preferentially hit the button for sugar water instead of heroin or cocaine. And we now know that this actually hits the same pleasure centers in the brain that heroin and cocaine hits, but it hits it even harder. So it's no wonder that we like sugar and it's no wonder that we're so hard for us to give it up. So think about that the next time you're craving something sweet and think about that the next time you're trying to wean yourself off of sugar. So how about orange juice? Remember I mentioned orange juice had the exact same effect. One of the things we have to realize and remember I am not against fruit in season, but season is a very short time normally. But when we take the sugar in fruit and extract all the fiber that was in fruit and we extract all the other polyphenols that are in fruit and just mainline sugar like apple juice or orange juice, we actually take away any of the possible benefits of that fruit and instead are literally mainlining sugar. And what we found in the last ten years is that most of the foods that we like, the highly processed foods, the juices, the fructose in those highly processed foods are one of the biggest drivers of obesity, one of the biggest drivers of mitochondrial dysfunction, and one of the biggest drivers of a fatty liver and insulin resistance. And in my upcoming book, The Energy Paradox, you're going to find out why fructose in particular is so deadly to our mitochondria and to our health. So fructose in the form of fruit during fruit season, okay, but just be cautious about any fructose as a sweetener in food, as a sweetener in beverages. And remember, high fructose corn syrup is in almost every prepackaged food energy bar. If you see the word corn syrup or all natural syrup or anything like that, brown rice syrup, these are all code words for fructose. And just beware. Now one question I get asked all the time, okay, so we now know in humans that sugar ingestion in any form impairs our white blood cells ability to ingest bacteria and viruses. What happens once they ingest them? Well, this was the work that was done by Dr. Linus Pauling back in the 50s and 60s, the famous vitamin C doctor. And I've done this on other podcasts, but it's worth mentioning again. It gets a little complicated. Vitamin C is actually manufactured in all other animals, except us, guinea pigs and African monkeys from glucose. There's a five-step process. We lack the final enzyme to do that, so we can't manufacture vitamin C. But vitamin C is concentrated in our white blood cells 50 times higher than in our blood. So there's actually a gradient to bring vitamin C into our white blood cells and concentrate it there. The problem is glucose competes with vitamin C for the same pumps that pump vitamin C into our cells. And what Linus Pauling showed was the higher your blood sugar glucose. The more glucose is in the cell instead of vitamin C and up to 70% of the killing ability of white blood cells is lost because you don't have enough vitamin C in your white blood cells. So two reasons not to have sugar. One, it stops white blood cells from eating bacteria and viruses in the first place. And number two, if they eat them, they can't kill them if your sugar is up. Double whammy. OK, I somehow on Twitter somebody said that I said that sugar feeds viruses. I've never said sugar feeds viruses. There's absolutely viruses don't eat sugar, number one. What I've said is that sugar impairs your white cells ability. And those are the studies we just went over. So please, let's stop the myth that sugar feeds viruses. That's not the problem with sugar. Well are there good substitutes for sugar? Well, first of all, if you're going to eat fruit, please eat fruit in season. If you're going to eat berries, believe it or not, the modern blueberry has the highest sugar content. They've been bred for sugar. If you can find wild blueberries and you usually have to find the frozen, they're the safest of the blueberries. But interestingly, blackberries followed by raspberries, followed by strawberries, have the least sugar content of the berries. One of the best, which is no longer available right now, it's not in season, is pomegranate seeds. So if you can find pomegranate seeds, it's actually one of your best choices. Not pomegranate juice, pomegranate seeds. You always want the whole fruit. So those are my advice for those kind of products. Now there's several quite safe sweeteners. One is stevia. The other is monk fruit or lohangou. Those are actually two of the safest. A third is inulin. Now inulin has a sweet taste. It's available in products just like sugar. It's also available mixed with stevia in sweet leaf sweeteners. The beauty of inulin is, as I've written about in the plant paradox, inulin feeds good gut bacteria. So you get the sweet taste, but you actually get a benefit in feeding good gut bacteria. Now what about other artificial sweeteners? Well if you've read any of my books, you know that most artificial sweeteners, including sucralose, that's an neutrosweet and saccharin, actually kill gut bacteria. In fact, a Duke study showed that one packet of Splenda will kill about half of your gut bacteria. So these are absolute no-nos. The other thing we have to remember, from any, we'll call them fake sugar, non-caloric sweeteners, including stevia, including saccharin, including monk fruit, is that we have sweet receptors in our tongue. We don't have sugar receptors. We even have sweet receptors in our gut. We don't have sugar receptors. Those sweet receptors tell our brain, they send a message up to our brain that said, hey, just ate sugar. That's actually the only sweetness we ever knew. And get ready for it. It's coming. Well, when sugar doesn't arrive in your brain, your brain literally says, wait a minute, I know this guy just ate sugar. Where is it? He's been cheated. Go back and get some more and try again. And one of the reasons that I was addicted to Diet Cokes, ate a day, was that every time I drank a Diet Coke that had no sugar, my brain felt cheated and made me go look for more. So this is one of the sad things about non-nutritive sweeteners. Your brain tastes sugar and doesn't understand why and he hasn't arrived. So we really have to be cautious, particularly when we're trying to wean ourselves off the real stuff that we don't make the mistake of using even stevia, even monk fruit as a replacement for that sweet taste. As you've heard me say before, the key is to retreat from sweet. Now the good news is, you actually become habituated to the taste of sweetness. And you have to retrain your receptors. And you do this by, as I wrote about in Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution, I used to put two packets of sweeteners in my coffee. Okay, so we're going to cut it in half. We go down to one packet and we do that for a week and then we tear off half the package and we put in half a packet. And then we do that for a week or two and then we put in a quarter and we do that for a while. You step down the amount of sweetness you add in, strikingly, you'll find that the taste of sweetness comes back. In fact, I now primarily eat 90% chocolate, cacao. And that sweetness, and it's not sweet, normally, is just as sweet as when I used to eat milk chocolate. Now, if I started off eating 90% chocolate, I'd go, eh, this stuff is so bitter. So work your way up. Start with 72% chocolate and limit yourself to a square. And you'll find over the weeks, you're going to wean yourself off. This is a habit that can be broken, but it's really difficult to go cold turkey. Does it get easier? Yeah, like I say, I drink my coffee black now. I don't use any sweetener and I have 90%, even 92%, 95% cacao chocolate. And I'm delighted with that. But again, I couldn't have done it cold turkey. Okay. Now, is there such thing as a sugar blocker? Well, there aren't truly any sugar blockers, but there are a number of products that can mitigate against the effect of sugar. Now, one recently I've talked about is selenium. And it turns out that selenium deficiency in humans actually potentiates the COVID-19 virus ability to do harm to you. And a study in China showed that people with normal and high selenium levels were far less affected by the COVID-19 virus, whereas people with low selenium levels were very affected. And selenium has actually been shown to affect blood sugar concentration. So how do you get selenium? Well, the easiest way is to eat three Brazil nuts a day. That's it. Don't eat too many. Selenium can be bad for you in too much to excess amount. But three a day will give you actually about 300 micrograms of selenium. And that's all you need every day. Now, I shouldn't tell you that because there's going to be a run on Brazil nuts everywhere and I won't be able to get any. And please don't hoard them. The second thing that you can do is there are carb blockers. Now, what carb blockers do is actually they prevent the absorption of starches or the breakdown of starches. And there are a number of carb blockers on the market and they actually are effective. The other thing that's very useful is chromium. Chromium picolinate. And chromium picolinate is available in supplements. You can actually find a supplement at Costco with chromium in it. It's usually combined with cinnamon. And it turns out that true cinnamon, not the fake cinnamon, actually helps mitigate the effect of sugar and actually helps lower sugar. Now, one more trick. Magnesium is essential for insulin to get sugar out of your bloodstream into your muscle cells where it belongs. And most of us are magnesium deficient. So much so that in surgery, in heart surgery, most of my patients are so deficient in magnesium that we actually have to give them two grams of IV magnesium every six hours for 48 hours during and after heart surgery to get their magnesium levels up. Why do we want to do that? Because, quite frankly, magnesium is one of the best ways to calm extra beats of the heart. And for those of you who get cramps in your legs, magnesium and potassium are the ways we prevent cramps in legs. So magnesium supplements are everywhere. Get some magnesium in your system and you can handle sugar. Now, that doesn't mean that, oh boy, I take selenium, I take magnesium, I take chromium and I take cinnamon and I can have all the sugar I want. That's not what I'm saying. But you need to give yourself the best defense you can because I know you're going to be eating sugar. You can't help it. It's addictive. What about diabetics? Can they take these supplements? Absolutely. Now, let me be clear about this. This is the time for diabetics to take their diabetes seriously. And we know that diabetics are one of the highest risk groups for bad outcomes with the COVID-19 virus. And that's because your immune system doesn't work well. Now, here's the good news. I have actually never ever met a type 2 diabetic that we couldn't reverse to normal by following the plant paradox program. But you don't have to take it from me. In fact, during World War II, when there was rationing of food by law, the incidence of diabetes plummeted to almost zero in the United States and Britain and Holland and Norway. The deaths from diabetes plummeted during rationing. Rationing involved rationing sugar, it involved rationing flour, and it involved rationing milk and orange juice and meats. Son of a gun, most of these are great sources of sugar. So in four years time, diabetes was pretty much wiped out of all of these countries. Now, here's the bad news. From 1945 back up to 1950, the rates of diabetes went back to their pre-war levels once rationing was stopped. So here's the tip. You're at home. There isn't any meat anymore. Here's the best opportunity you have to start the plant paradox program. You're cooking from home, cut back on simple sugars, cut back on processed and ultra-processed foods, and watch what happens to your diabetes. It's time for us to save our own lives, and this is how we're going to do it. Okay, any other benefits of cutting back on sugar? Well, I talk a lot about this in the plant paradox and the longevity paradox. It turns out that there are compounds in all of us called advanced glycation end products, and they're nicknamed AGES for short. And advanced glycation end products are formed from sugar, protein, and heat. For instance, when you're out charring your steak or grilling your hamburger and you see that nice crust that forms, those are advanced glycation end products. Even when you roast your vegetables and it browns, those are advanced glycation end products. So sadly, the more sugar in our diet, the more advanced glycation end products we make, and the faster you age. And as I've written about in all my books, if you look down in your hands and you see age spots, those brown spots or liver spots or sun spots, those are advanced glycation end products. And the cool thing is, as I've documented, you can make those disappear by cutting back on sugars and proteins, and by the way, heat. So sugar not only hits your brain with a high, but it kills you and ages you quickly. So this is the time, folks. We're at home. We're trying to protect ourselves. Let's get ourselves off our sugar addiction and just get any of my books and we'll help you out. And follow me on YouTube, too, because we got a lot of tips as well. Okay, that's it for today on sugar, and it's time for our audience question. Star Hill Studios on YouTube asks, what about eating olives? Is that the equivalent of eating olive oil? What do you think about the high sodium content, healthy or not? So it turns out that the fruit of an olive actually contains a lot of polyphenols and a lot of the beneficial polyphenols that are in olive oil. You're pressing a lot of those polyphenols into olive oil, but the great thing is olives and olive oil go together. In fact, in the Mediterranean, you not only use olive oil, but you eat olives. In fact, olives are snacked on before dinner in almost every meal I've ever eaten in France, in Italy, in Spain. So, eat your olives. Now, there is actually a huge sodium myth in this country about how bad sodium is for you. Sodium in the form of olives is actually not only not bad for you, but actually may be beneficial for you. And in fact, if you're following a fasting diet or a ketogenic diet, there's very strong evidence that made by Dr. Finney years ago that you need to increase your salt intake during these times, particularly if you're fasting or restricting calories, because uric acid builds up in your bloodstream and can actually damage your kidneys and cause kidney stones. And increasing your sodium chloride salt will actually prevent this. But let me give a word of warning for all of you going to get your pink salt or your sea salt. Please, we have an iodine deficiency in this country. So, by iodized sea salt, it's readily available now. Even Morton's makes iodized sea salt. And you would be amazed how many of my patients with low thyroid function, once we get them on iodized sea salt, their thyroid function improves dramatically. So that's the tip for today. Boneless skinless chicken breast. For years, it was every dieter's favorite protein. It was low in calories, low in fat, and to be honest, low in flavor. But what most commercially available chicken is high in is in two things. Lectins and antibiotics. And today, I want to talk about both of them. First, lectins. By now you know what a problem lectins are for your health. But how the heck can protein be filled with lectins? Well, you've heard the phrase, you are what you eat, right? It's true for us and it's true for animals including chickens. If they spend their day scratching for bugs and grubs, fine. They're eating right. And they're good for you. But most chickens are fed lectin-heavy grains like corn and wheat along with lots of soy. It's a diet designed to fatten them up quickly. And when you eat that artificially fattened up meat, you guessed it, you get fat fast. Even if you're eating those diet-friendly boneless skinless breasts. But what about those antibiotics? Well, antibiotics have been used in agriculture for years to keep animals healthy for sure. But also to help them gain weight fast. And all the broad spectrum antibiotics farmers use on poultry has a huge and terrible impact on human health too. In fact, eating antibiotic-laced meats can make us more susceptible to certain ailments. Take UTIs for instance, that's a urinary tract infection. A form of E. coli known as EXPEC is responsible for over 90% of urinary tract infections in adults. And DNA matching reveals that many UTIs are caused by eating contaminated chicken meat. Even worse, those UTIs are proving to be drug resistant. Likely because chicken is laced in antibiotics and the infections have a chance to become accustomed to and resistant to those antibiotics. Now that's just one example. If you do enough research, you'll find tons of examples of problems caused by the antibiotics in chicken, dairy, and meat. So what should you do? Well, step one is shopping for antibiotic-free meat. Or for going meat entirely. And the good news is as the public becomes more aware of the dangers of large scale antibiotic use, antibiotic-free meat is becoming more readily available. But the bad news is 80% of commercially raised meat in this country is still laced in broad spectrum antibiotics. So you've got to be picky, especially when you're not the one cooking. But if you really want to eat chicken that's good for you, you need to take it one step further. That means committing to eating only pasture raised chicken. Not organic, not cage-free, not even free range. Those don't guarantee anything other than that the chicken maybe had access to a door that goes outside for five minutes a day. That's the federal regulation. But pasture raised chicken means chickens have been allowed to run outside, eat bugs and grubs the way nature intended. And that means they're not loaded with lectins or antibiotics. So if you must eat chicken, make sure it's pasture raised and antibiotic-free. Or just say no. And I love chicken, but I just say no unless I see pasture raised and I know the farmer who raised it. It's fermented, but is it good for you? A couple weeks ago we talked about those loopholes people look for when they start on the plant paradox plan. And I get it, it's hard to start making healthy changes. So it's natural that people look for little cheats and work around so that they can still enjoy the foods they love. Which is probably why I get so many messages from people asking about foods like kombucha, miso, yogurt, and especially sourdough bread. Why? Because all these foods and more are made using the age-old process of fermentation. So today I want to shed light on the truth about fermentation, including which fermented foods are A-OK on the plant paradox plan in which you should probably avoid. Yes, even though fermentation kills lectins. And that's where we'll start, with the relationship between lectins and fermentation. Maybe you've heard me say it before, fermentation kills lectins. It's true. The fermentation process where sugars are converted to acids, gases, or alcohol deactivates lectins, making them safe to consume. And the fermentation process also creates plenty of gut-healthy probiotic bacteria. So you'd think it'd be a win-win. So why is it that we can go nuts on some fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and true fermented pickles, which you likely won't find at the grocery store, but there are others that you still need to avoid? Well, let's talk a bit about the fermented problem foods, starting with one of the most popular, yogurt. Sure, it's fermented and that's fantastic. But if you're buying yogurt here in the United States, chances are it's still pretty terrible for your gut for two reasons. First, most yogurt you see at the grocery store is loaded in sugar, whether it's from added fruit, little bits of candy, or it's just plain old sweetened. And as you know, sugar feeds those bad bugs in your gut. Not great. And second, even if you find a yogurt that's low in sugar and high in protein, chances are it's still made with A1 milk. That's most of the milk found in this country after all. Instead, look for unsweetened goat, sheep, or coconut milk yogurt. You'll enjoy that tangy, fermented flavor without the added sugar or the dangerous casein A1. Okay, next up, everyone's favorite fermented drink, kombucha. Now, I've talked about kombucha here on this channel before, because I get a lot of questions about it. And I understand it's everyone's favorite health drink. It's a little sweet, a little bubbly, a bit fruity, and if you're trying to kick soda, it seems like a really good alternative. In fact, tons of my patients drink kombucha on a regular basis. And I'm actually okay with it. But it's another one of those foods where you've got to read the label really carefully, because some kombucha has almost as much sugar as soda. And yes, even if that sugar comes from fruit, it's still sugar and it's bad for you. Plus, if kombucha is really high in sugar, that means it was added after the fermentation process. Just to keep your taste buds and your bad gut buddies happy. So if you're going to drink kombucha, read the labels and pick the lowest sugar bottle you can find. Now, I can't talk about fermented foods without talking about the one you asked the most about, sourdough bread. I think someone asked me about bread at least once a day and I understand bread is delicious. And for a lot of people, including my wife, Penny and I, it was one of the hardest things to give up at first. So it's often one of the first foods people look to replace. And if you've done the research, maybe you've seen that sourdough bread is fermented. Plus, with white flour being lower lectin than wheat flour, maybe it's okay to eat, right? Well, if you must eat wheat bread, white sourdough bread is your best bet. But don't trick yourself into believing it's healthy. You see, even though part of the flour and true sourdough bread is fermented, that's what makes it rise, the fermented starter is mixed with lectin loaded non-fermented flour, especially in commercially available loaves. So unless you're making bread yourself and letting the whole dough ferment, which admittedly would make a really sour bread, you're still eating non-fermented wheat with every slice. Now, believe it or not, bread isn't the only controversial food out there, which brings me to my last questionable fermented food, miso. What makes it questionable? Well, it's made of soy, and soy in general is double trouble. First, it's loaded in phytoestrogens. Those are estrogen-like compounds that trick your body into doing strange things hormonally speaking. Second, it's a bean, and you know that beans are loaded in lectins. But when you check out my upcoming book, The Longevity Paradox, you'll notice that I include miso in quite a few of my recipes. Why? Well, miso is an essential part of the Okinawan diet. That's the diet of some of the longest-living people on earth. And you can feel good about telling people to go ahead and add a little miso paste to their diets, especially if they want to live a long, healthy life. You see, the soybeans and miso are fermented for six months minimum, so that you can bet that the lectins are pretty darn dead by the end of that time. Just be aware, it is a high sodium food. So if you're concerned about your salt intake, use moderation. But don't skip out on miso entirely. It's actually pretty fantastic for your immune system, your gut, and your overall health. And if you're looking for fermented foods you can eat, remember, sauerkraut and kimchi are amazing for your health. And so are goats, milk, and coconut milk yogurt. If you're comfortable in the kitchen, try fermenting your own pickles. Just please peel and de-seed the cucumbers first. And don't forget, just because it says fermented on the label doesn't mean it's magically good for you. If you're not sure, it's best to skip it, or leave a comment and ask me directly. Mwah! Ghosts, goblins, haunted houses. It's the time of the year that you want to be scared, right? So today I'm going to take you on a tour of the scariest room in your house, your kitchen. No, not because it's filthy. I know we all try our best to keep our houses and especially our kitchens clean. So what's so spooky about it? Well, even if you've been eating a healthy diet for years, you've probably got some secret spooky foods stashed in your pantry. I'm talking about diet foods that aren't good for the diet or your gut at all. Now, you already know about things like beans, wheat, and other lectin-heavy grains and legumes, so I'll skip over those, even though I'm dressed like one of the spookiest foods of all, the peanut. But they're not the only foods messing with your system. In fact, some of the biggest health food trends may actually be doing more harm than good, like gluten-free. But wait, you said gluten is bad for me, so why isn't gluten-free food good? Well, some of it is, but if you're shopping the gluten-free section of your average grocery store, you're still buying food that's high in lectins, brown rice flour, corn flour, oat flour. Plus, most gluten-free foods are loaded in sugar, far more than the gluten-containing food they replace. So even though they're gluten-free, they're terrible for your gut. Low-fat. Turns out the biggest diet trend in the 80s and 90s, low-fat food was dead wrong. The truth is, eating fat doesn't make you fat. In fact, foods rich in healthy fats are diet staples for some of the healthiest people in the world. And here's the thing about fat. It makes food flavorful. So when big food companies take the fat out of food, they have to do other things to keep it delicious. They add tons of salt and even more sugar to replace the flavor from fat. That's right, they're taking out something that could be good for you and adding unhealthy ingredients in its place. Green juice and smoothies. Here in Southern California, juice stores are everywhere. If you're drinking straight-up kale juice, that's not inherently bad for you. But here's the thing, you're better off eating your greens. That way you get to enjoy all that gut-healthy fiber instead of throwing it out. In fact, you're better off throwing out the juice and eating the fiber left in your juicer. You know, the stuff that most people throw out. It's actually good in baked goods or mixed into a goat yogurt. And don't get me started on bottled green juice or smoothies. Most of them have tons of added sugar. And sure, that sugar may have come from fruit, but you know what I say. Fruit is nature's candy. That means you shouldn't go overboard and need a ton of it. And those juices and smoothies, some of them have four or five, even six servings of fruit each. Not exactly moderation, if you ask me. Yogurt. In the past few years, it seems like Greek yogurt is the new whole grains, in that it's a trendy health food that pops up in everything. But here's the thing about Greek yogurt. It's not Greek at all. It doesn't come from Greece. In fact, the Greek yogurt sold in this country comes from regular old American cows. So it's got plenty of KCNA1 in it. That's the protein most people who think they're lactose intolerant actually have a problem with. But what about the probiotics? Well, most yogurt on the shelves is actually pretty low in live active probiotics, if they have any at all. And flavored yogurts are so high in sugar that it balances out any benefits. Sports drinks. Please don't fall for the advertising. Just because your favorite athlete is selling the drink doesn't mean it's healthy. And sure, if you're training for eight to ten hours a day like an elite athlete is, you can probably get away with the occasional sports drink. But why? They're high in sugar or worse artificial sweeteners. And for the average person, you're better off drinking water at the gym or to recover from a workout. So what's the big takeaway here? Just because it's marketed as healthy doesn't mean it's actually healthy. Shop smart. Read labels carefully. And whatever you do, don't fall for marketing tricks. I think someone asked me about oxalates about once a day. It's a buzzword in diet and wellness right now. So today I wanted to share a brief video to shed light on the truth about oxalates. And my opinion may surprise you. But first I need to ask you a quick question. Are there any health topics you'd like to know more about? If so, reply in the comments and let me know what you're curious about. After all, I created this channel for you and I want to make sure you're benefiting from it. So if there's anything you want to know, go ahead and leave a comment below. But now back to oxalates. And like I said, I'll keep this video brief. First of all, what's an oxalate exactly? Well, oxalates, sometimes called oxalic acid, are naturally occurring compounds found in lots of foods, especially spinach, rhubarb, black tea, and even chocolate. Its purpose in plants is to get rid of extra calcium by binding to it. In implants, that's fantastic because excess calcium can block plants from getting the nutrients they need and kill them. But when it comes to human nutrition, oxalates are a bit more controversial because as I mentioned, they bind to calcium and also minerals like iron. Now for most people out there, this isn't a big deal because the new compounds formed in your body are simply excreted as waste. No big deal. So why is the nutrition community making such a huge fuss about oxalates? Well, I'll be the first to say, like with many foods, there are people who need to avoid oxalates, specifically people whose doctors tell them to skip out on oxalate-rich foods. That's typically people who have struggled with kidney stones in the past because there's some thought that oxalates can contribute to kidney stones if and only if you're already prone to them. And if you suffer from Crohn's disease, you may also be told to avoid oxalates. So if your doctors suggest you steer clear, skip the high oxalate foods like spinach, rhubarb, kale, and tea. There are hundreds of full lists online. But some people have been claiming oxalates are dangerous even for healthy people and that eating high oxalate foods can leach calcium from your body, depriving you of nutrients and lead to things like leaky gut, irritable bowel, and numerous other digestive issues. Bacterial issues, including yeast infections, malnutrition, and even autism. In my opinion, those people are dead wrong. I get it. It's easy to look for one simple culprit to explain away all your health issues. And it's true. There are some things that really do cause massive health problems for a lot of people, like sugar, lectins, and unhealthy fats. But based on my research, oxalates are not the nutrition supervillain that people in the health community are claiming. Yes, oxalates can cause issues in a very small number of people. So certain people should avoid them if their doctors tell them to or you notice that you reacted them. That being said, for the vast majority of people, oxalates are perfectly safe and given that some of the healthiest foods in the planet are also oxalate rich. In my opinion, giving up oxalate rich foods is actually bad for most people's health because you'll also be giving up all the phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and fiber that come in healthy oxalate rich foods like sesame seeds, spinach, rhubarb, and dark chocolate. All foods I love and eat just about every week. Now, if you are worried about calcium absorption, the solution is simple. Eat more calcium rich foods. And I'm not just talking about dairy, broccoli, almonds, kale, and even pressure-cooked lentils are pretty calcium rich. Now, if your doctor says it's fine to eat foods with oxalates, but for some reason you still want to limit them, try cooking them. Studies have found that steaming or boiling things like spinach can reduce the oxalate content. So you can still enjoy the other benefits it has to offer and make sure to drink plenty of water too. Just remember, oxalates are fine for most people and 99% of the time they're not something to be avoided, especially if you're sticking to foods on my plant paradox yes list. So don't worry too much. Go ahead and eat that piece of chocolate because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here.