 Welcome to the Dr. Gondry podcast. You know, when it comes to supplements, I am a huge nerd. In fact, I use dozens, more than dozens of supplements every single day. And they have a major impact on the way I look and feel. But the truth is, it wasn't always that way. I used to joke that supplements only made for expensive urine. I truly believed that about 20 years ago, like most physicians. And while I've changed my opinion on that, it's true that not all supplements are created equal. Unfortunately, many of the supplements you'll find on store shelves are, number one, totally useless, and can actually be dangerous for your health. Which is why high quality supplements are so important. They can have a dramatic effect on your health and longevity and are well worth the time and money in my opinion. But how do you decipher between a pure, clean supplement that will do what it says on the label and one that's completely bogus? Well, my guest today is here to help. He's Dr. Hector Lopez, a physician-scientist with a uniquely diverse background in sports medicine, exercise science, nutritional biochemistry, and clinical research. Dr. Lopez co-owns and directs an integrated triad of B2B companies within the dietary supplement functional foods and medical food spaces. Today, he and I will reveal the shocking truth about many of the supplements on the market, share some insider tips for choosing the highest quality supplements, and discuss the amazing new compound discovered by Dr. Lopez himself that can help you boost your energy and help you lead a longer, happier life. Hector, it's so great to have you on the show and nice to meet you in person. Likewise. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Dr. Gundry. Thanks for having me on. Pleasure. Now, many listeners know that over 20 years ago, I resigned my post at Loma Linda to start my own clinics focused on nutrition and lifestyle changes, and I've seen firsthand how diet changes and supplements could improve health in a way that Western medicine simply cannot. So, let's talk about your triad of B2B companies. What are they and what do they do? Yeah, so essentially, I probably went through a similar experience in that I transitioned away from clinical medicine into the industry full-time. I had been consulting previously, always had one foot in the dietary supplement space, if you will, or functional food space. One of my companies is based on regulatory compliance, so supplement safety solutions. We brought a program to the industry that we called NutriVigilance. We coined that term, and you're probably familiar, of course, with pharmacovigilance in the pharmaceutical world, and so we saw a huge need in the space, in the dietary supplement space, to be able to bring in a group like such as ours, which is also physician-based, who also understands the dietary supplement space, understands how ingredients work, many of the mechanisms generally, and also understands the regulation, the FDA regulation specifically related to how to cover post-market safety surveillance. Basically, that means anyone who brings a product to market is supposed to have a system in place to be able to monitor and surveil if there are ever any sort of health-related complaints, if there are any safety signals, what we call, and so that's essentially what supplement safety solutions does. The other company is called the Center for Applied Health Sciences, or CAHS, and that's an Ohio-based research institute. My partners and I there basically run human clinical trials, mostly focused on the dietary supplement space. Of course, throughout all of medical education, medical training, you're often on the wards, and you hear, oh, there's no evidence to support that, or oh, there's no evidence supporting dietary supplements. Well, I'm here to say that there certainly has been for a long time, but unfortunately sometimes when you're a resident or a medical student and the attending says there's no evidence, it's unfortunately sometimes because there's no evidence they're aware of, but there's often quite a robust amount of evidence. We've actually run at CAHS over 150 human clinical trials over the last 10 years, and all of them focused on either a dietary ingredient or a combination of multiple ingredients in a multi-ingredient finished product, looking at the safety and the efficacy to substantiate claims. Then finally, the third leg to the three-legged stool, as we said, the triad, is a company that mostly holds intellectual property discoveries or discovering novel ingredients and trying to commercialize that intellectual property, but it's all evidence-based, so we do the discovery, the development, the incubation, and then the validation and substantiation ultimately going all the way from in vitro preclinical studies all the way to human clinical studies. So almost think of it as a mini pharma model, but focused on just leveraging the wonderful treasure trove that nature has afforded us and trying to bring ingredients and new products to market that are safe and effective to optimize health and human performance and of course longevity as well. So what are some of the biggest problems for so many of the supplements on the market today? I mean, why can't I just throw something in a capsule and say it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, which by the way, folks, is not good for you. Why I can I could do that, right? Yeah, so I think, look, what one of the issues with the dietary supplement space, of course, it's often maligned by the media and even individuals in our profession, obviously in the medical establishment. But the truth of the matter is there's a very low barrier to entry, right, to get into the dietary supplement space. I mean, essentially, all you need to do is if you've got the capital and you've got the funding, you can go to a contract manufacturer of which there are hundreds, of course, in North America alone. And you could just let them know, hey, I want to be able to bring a product to market, a weight loss product to market, for example. And these individuals may not have any training, any background at all in nutritional biochemistry, let alone even health and nutrition or medicine or anything related to the dietary supplement space. And so they can just jump in, dive in, have a label, a product on the market with very little barrier to entry. Of course, there's no approval process per se. And that sets up a scenario where you can have bad actors who come into that space and bring a product to market that may have dubious health benefits, if any, and could actually be harmful. So if they don't understand ingredients, dosing, sourcing, which is huge, and adulteration, which could also be a problem, then you could sort of see where there's a setup for bad scenarios to occur. So is there, I mean, is there any way the consumer sitting is standing in a shelf in a health food store or looking at Amazon? And there's we won't name something, but how about naming names? Yeah, without naming names. Actually, I got to tell this story. Long ago, actually, after my first book came out, there were several supplement companies approached me for putting my name on some of their supplements. And again, we won't name names, but one of these companies was in New Jersey, where you are located. And it was not you. But I was I was watching these supplements come down a conveyor belt and they would be divided into two lines and different labels with actually doctors' names were put on each one. And one doctor, quite frankly, got about four times the amount for the same supplement that the other doctor wasn't very famous. But they were the exact same supplement. And the point of all this was that neither of these doctors had actually designed these supplements. They were merely putting their names on it. And the cachet of one doctor was apparently made his supplement much more expensive than the other supplement, which was identical. And until I actually founded Gundry MD, I refused to put my name on this sort of thing. I wanted control over the ingredients based on my 20 years of experimenting with myself and patients and allowing them to, yeah. So that happens all the time, right? It absolutely does. Yeah, the wonderful world of white labeling or private labeling, right, as we call it in the industry. Right. And you're right. The issue with that is it could be it could very well be a wonderful formula, could be a great formula, could be good to have validated, branded, patented ingredients with safety and efficacy. But again, you lose touch of you lose that accountability if the individual whose names on the obviously on the label has no real input on the design of the formula and doesn't really understand their product. And that leaves that leaves that brand open to a lot of potential pitfalls there. And that is just one example of some of the nefarious things that can happen in the industry. But by and large, I think the majority of players in the space are trying to do the right thing. And their hearts in the right place, of course, is the old adage, right? The road to the road to hell is paved in good intent, right, with good intentions. But and you know, my corollary to that the road to health is paved with good intestines. I like that. I like that. That's the first I hear that for that. I like that. That's great. That's great. So yeah, ultimately, it becomes a challenge for a consumer to, I guess, make a decision and understand which products on the market are reliable and have a strong scientific substantiation behind them or have a strong quality assurance quality control team behind them or an individual such as yourself, a professional who's representing the brand and designing the products behind the brand. So that's that that's key. There are some, I would say there are some opportunities to look for certain seals on the label that you also need to be careful there as well because some seals can just be, you know, you can make up a seal and have it on the label, of course. But others are important. We actually, for example, at our regulatory compliance company, developed a seal called NutriVigilance Verified. And so that lets you know that at least someone is watching the cookie jar who's a third party, not an owner in the company, but of course a physician directed third party who's looking out for pre and post market safety. You could also look for other seals that are involved with third party testing as well, independent testing to make sure that what's on the label is actually what's in the bottle. Yeah. And, you know, we all of our Gundry MD products, you know, our third party tested goes, again, don't take my word for it. We want somebody else to verify that that's in there. So that's something that a consumer should look at when they're, you know, picking up a jar in a health food store. Are there any dead giveaways that you might not be getting what you think you're getting in that product? Well, there is this practice to look for. It's the practice of proprietary blends that tends to happen. Now, here's the thing with proprietary blends. If the intention of the proprietary blend is not to fairy dust or sprinkle in small doses of well reputed, I guess, premium ingredients, then there would be nothing wrong with proprietary blending if that's really what it's doing is protecting someone's intellectual property. However, that creates an opportunity for someone to do it for the wrong reasons. So they may they may have an ingredient proprietary blend that has four ingredients and two or three or four of the ingredients are very low cost, very low quality. And and maybe there's one ingredient that's that's a price, a cost driver so they can prop blend it in order to reduce the overall cost of their product and increase their margins still selling the product at a standard retail price. So that's definitely something to look for. It doesn't mean 100 percent of proprietary blends are utilizing this practice. But I think by and large, there are very few reasons to have a proprietary blend these days, because, for example, we have multiple ingredients on the market that we've commercialized that are ingredients that we license to the industry. So the all industry can use it, but they can use the trademark version, which you know is patent protected. And that's the ingredient that has also been through the rigors of safety testing and human clinical trials. And hence you can make substantiation based on that branded proprietary ingredient, but it can be fully disclosed on the label. And so I think that's something to look for. I think that's a very good point. I know there are a lot of well thought out blends, well documented blends. But so many companies want to catch your eye with, you know, something that may have a very legitimate benefit. And the clinical studies show that you should be taking 200 milligrams of this compound twice a day to get the observed clinical benefit. And in this particular product, there's two milligrams. And unfortunately, most people see the name, but they don't really see how much of that is there. And you're right, it's usually a cost saving reason, unfortunately. So particularly if you see almost the exact same product that it says it's the same stuff, and the one is, you know, a quarter of the price of the other one, usually you'll find the reason on the back if you're bothered to look. That's right. That's right. And I think another telltale sign or something else that's a tool that your consumers can look for is understand that by law, all ingredients have to be listed in order of weight predominance. So even if it's a nutrition facts panel and not a dietary supplement that would list out the individual ingredients like a food, for example, a protein product or a protein fiber macronutrient based product, they can also make sure that that the order of ingredients listed matches what they're looking for. If they're buying a product because they want a high quality protein, then you better make sure that that protein is first or second on that list. Are there any ingredients that our listeners should avoid when they're looking at all this? Well, you know, that's that's a bit of a loaded question. It is because it really depends on so many variables. But I think that's important for consumers to work with someone who's knowledgeable in the space and understands the dietary supplement space and can someone that consumers can trust that ideally a health care professional who also has additional training and experience and expertise, such as yourself in nutrition or nutritional biochemistry and nutritional sciences in general. But, you know, there are some designer stimulants that have made their way onto the marketplace that that consumers should be aware of because, of course, there can be some substantial interactions with, for example, psychotropic medications or antidepressants or antipsychotics and anti-anxiety medications. So, yeah, there's there's some designer stimulants. I would also say there are also some ingredients that are not really dietary ingredients, but have made their way into dietary supplements as well. They're essentially drugs that are masquerading or they're unapproved, misbranded drugs that are masquerading as dietary supplements. And these are some things like SARMs or certain hormonal modulators that that could be used sometimes in in certain circles of the dietary supplement space. But they tend not to be mass market. They tend not to have as much exposure. They're sort of trying to fly under the radar as well, and they and they may sell it at very small retail specialty retail centers. Hmm. OK. Any ingredients that people should look for? Or is that a loaded question? Do. Well, I think, you know, I often end up getting asked, and I'm sure you do as well, right? What's the best supplement I should be on, right? What's it? And there really is no best for everyone, right? Because one size fits all means one size fits nobody. And there should be a degree of customization, if you will, to what an individual is looking for, depending on what their goals are. But I think generally some of my I'll tell you some some supplements that I take, for example, that are non-negotiables. So I'm definitely on a high quality, marine based omega three fatty acid product. So an EPA, DHA, DPA supplement. I like Astaxanthin. I also am on magnesium, usually a magnesium that's a chelated form of magnesium, either magnesium, threonate or a bisglycinate. I also do take some products that are higher in the curcuminoid polyphenol category. I also take even though I take it for general health and wellness and longevity, I take creatine monohydrate, which I know may sound like a surprise, right? Because most people associate creatine with bodybuilders or sports nutrition, but there are some enormous general health and wellness side benefits to creatine. So I also take creatine. And then, of course, I do take NAD three, which I know we'll talk about a little later as a longevity, kind of super nutrient matrix. And I think those are sort of the non-negotiables. And then I rotate other ingredients that I guess you could consider more specialty types into my regimen. Yeah, vitamin D3 is a big one, I'm sorry. I was going to say, vitamin D3. There's now actually 17 separate studies correlating higher vitamin D levels with lessening or avoiding COVID-19 higher the better and the lower the worse outcome. 17 studies now. That's right, yeah. Yeah, what do they say? Where there's smoke, there's usually fire, right? There's a whole lot of smoke there. Yeah, there's a lot of smoke there. I'm sorry, folks. Get some vitamin D in you, please. Absolutely. You've got to arm yourself against this virus. Yeah, regardless what other strategies you're using, social distancing, masking, et cetera, even vaccination, whether you're a pro or anti-vaccine, it doesn't matter. I mean, you're still going to respond better. And your outcomes are going to be better if you're metabolically tuned up, if you will. And certainly vitamin D optimization is one method or one strategy, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. OK, you mentioned NAD3. And I want to dive deeper into this. As you know, one of the things that you've done and other research have done are you're always discovering new amazing compounds. And one is NAD3. And I take this myself. So thanks to your discovery. So tell me, what is it and what does it do? Yeah, so NAD3 is basically the product of our team, our IP discovery team, looking at longevity and looking at leveraging what we know are already health-promoting activities. We know their health span and lifespan-promoting activities, many of which are very much in vogue. So things like thermal stress, sauna, cryotherapy, cold plunging, of course, exercise. And that could include both resistance training and cardiovascular conditioning and aerobic exercise. High, low, and medium-intensity exercises, fasting or caloric restriction, the consumption of Mediterranean diet or polyphenol-rich foods that are not inadvertently inflammatory, because some of them can obviously cause issues in certain individuals. So all those behaviors, all those activities, what we set out to do is we said all those activities have not only is it the behavior, but that behavior is translating into a certain molecular or biochemical signature within the body, within cells. And so we said, what if we could look at the pattern of what genes, for example, are being turned on or what switches are being flipped on, what switches or genes are being flipped off in order to promote those health span and longevity benefits? And so that was one thing we did is we took a look at that. The other thing that happened to us was serendipitously one of the ingredients that the NAD3 is focused on. We already had brought to market about eight years ago. And we did a lot of preclinical animal safety work, mechanistic work, and then human clinical work, over 10 human clinical trials on an ingredient called theocrine. And one of the things that we ran into serendipitously was this is an ingredient we mostly used as a new tropic sort of brain health promoting ingredient good for cognition, mood, focus, concentration, and alkaloid like caffeine except without any of the blood pressure or hemodynamic, as we call blood pressure heart rate issues that you can get with caffeine for cardiovascular stimulation. And one of the things we noticed was we saw in an eight week study, we saw a decrease in triglyceride levels and LDL levels, LDL cholesterol levels, in subjects who were taking 200 milligrams or 300 milligrams of this ingredient. And that was totally unexpected. We were only looking at it for safety in that cohort. And we said, something is going on here metabolically. It was a robust signal. It wasn't just the p-value was really robust, so we knew something was happening. And then we started digging in a little further and doing some more animal work. And we discovered that one of them was also activating a pro-longivity compound or enzyme in the body known as sirtuin, sirtuin 3. And so we put those two pieces together, the fact that we wanted to look to a molecular signature of longevity, along with what we already knew about theocrine. And then finally, the third part to what allowed us to bring NAD3 to market was we felt it was a big shortfall with the current approach of being so pro-NAD+, promoting in terms of, well, you just throw more NAD precursor at the problem, and you'll make more NAD+, which I'm sure consumers and listeners have heard a lot about in the news when looking at anti-aging or longevity. And we thought that was sort of leaving a lot on the table in terms of what we could uncover for real longevity benefits. So let me stop you for a second, because I think a lot of consumers, a lot of our listeners may have heard of NAD, NAD+, I'm going to be talking a lot about it. I talk a lot about it in the longevity paradox. I'm going to talk a lot about it in the energy paradox. But just in kind of a nutshell, what the heck is NAD+, and why should I care? Yeah, so NAD+, is one of the most life-sustaining important co-enzymes in the body in every cell. So I don't want to play or under-represent how important it is. It's incredibly important for being able to transfer electrons through most chemical reactions in the body. But most intriguingly, it's also a substrate or a fuel to drive this complex of enzymes known as certuans. And without NAD, you don't get certuans working the way they should. So you do need a good, healthy pool or status of NAD+, in order to run your life and live your life to the maximum. So anything from energy to metabolism to immune function, you name it, health and human performance, you do need NAD+. And it's actually derived from vitamin B3, essentially. But the body can make it from amino acids itself. And we, of course, consume precursors to NAD+, in the form of vitamin B precursors or equivalents, niacin equivalents, which is vitamin B3. So that's my, I guess, nutshell explanation for NAD+. Yeah, I mean, you literally have to have the mitochondrial energy electron transport chain work. It's that important. If you want ATP, you've got to have it. OK, so I don't want to interrupt you. You'd be dead in seconds without it, right? That's exactly right. You wouldn't be here without it. OK, so all right, so continue the story. Yeah, so then basically, we started exploring and screening a library of dozens of different compounds that we thought could be important to amplify the effects of theatrine that we already had and we knew. And so we stumbled into the matrix of three ingredients that make up NAD3, which really are the ones that turned on an enormous number of signals that all were sort of checking the boxes for longevity benefits, for helping with cellular resilience and improving your ability to handle environmental stressors as well as metabolic stressors endogenously. So we started looking at gene expression models in in vitro, meaning in cells. And we started looking to see the effects of exposing these cells to the NAD3 matrix in various iterations until we landed on the one that was optimal NADL. And that meant the right ratio of the ingredients as well as the right combination of ingredients. We then translated that into human work as well. And the nice thing about NAD3 is that the three ingredients that make it up, the constituents of it, which is theocrine. The second ingredient, the supernutrient, is wasabi-yaponica extract. And wasabi-yaponica is part of the family of the Brassica sort of cruciferous vegetable family. But it's even more potent in the concentration of these really powerful compounds that are known as isothiocyanates. It's one of the reasons that broccoli and broccoli sprouts, for example, with sulfurefane and glucoraphanin and glucosinolates have received a lot of attention and praise recently as well for longevity benefits. But wasabi, we felt, was one of those under-recognized, under-utilized botanicals. And sure enough, it lit up when combined with theocrine and our third ingredient ended up being copper-1 cuprous niacinamate or nicotinate. Basically, it's a stabilized form of copper. Copper can exist in two different chemical forms based on the charge or the oxidation state. It can exist as copper-1. It can exist as copper-2. And your listeners might be able to identify when something patinas, when you have the copper, and if patinas, it turns, it goes from the brilliant copper color to sort of that greenish aquamarine, aqua blue, blue-green color. And that means it's been oxidized to copper-2 state. The body uses copper in its plus-1 state in all of the enzymatic reactions. So this combination is what makes up NAD3. And it synergistically increased many different important genes that we know are associated with all those activities we mentioned before that increase health span. You said, well, we kind of stumbled on this. And obviously, with what you do, you don't stumble on things. There is serendipity, as you know, and as I know, in research. And oftentimes, you're looking for something to do something, and oh my gosh, it did this instead. And so anyhow. Yeah, the wonderful discovery. Yeah, so you didn't just stumble on this. No, there was definitely a strong thesis behind it. And what happened is, to your point, we serendipitously and systematically landed and arrived at the optimal combination with NAD3. So what studies now have been done looking at NAD3? How do you know it works? Yeah, so a couple of different lines of why it works. So first of all, there was a study that we were involved in that we were co-authors and published with a group of colleagues of ours at Auburn University. Donald Lam was the lead author. And basically what we did is we looked at the effect of strength training. Middle-aged individuals who were average age 60 years old took about 16 of those subjects. Strength trained them for 10 weeks using whole body resistance training just twice a week. And we did is they took muscle biopsies from the leg, from the basis lateralis, the quadriceps muscle, and basically looked to compare it to a cohort, a comparator of young 22-year-olds, on average 16-22-year-olds that were already recreationally weight training and active. And what we saw is that the strength training actually caused the muscle to have a profile that was much more after the 10 weeks, of course, not free, but post, the muscle was much more reminiscent of the and it mirrored the molecular profile of the young, healthy, recreationally trained individuals. And what we looked at was the levels of NAD, NAD plus, we looked at NADH in the muscle cell, looked at an enzyme in a protein called NAMPT, which is one of the rate limiting enzymes the body itself uses to make NAD plus from scratch, de novo. We also looked at the sirtuin levels, and those levels were also elevated after training. So before training, there were a lot lower, of course, in the middle-aged individuals. After training, it essentially more or less normalized or made them more youthful. And one of the things we did with NAD three is we studied it in a muscle cell model first in vitro. We've recently published that data in the journal Nutrients, actually published last month. And it basically showed that we were able to dramatically reduce something known as NLRP3, inflammatory zone, which is this big central hub that helps to drive inflammation, chronic and severe inflammation is usually going to be accompanied by high levels of NLRP3, inflammatory zone. So we were able to dramatically drop that, and we saw increases in sirtuin levels, sirtuin three, sirtuin one, global sirtuin activity. So we mimicked with NAD three the things that we saw in humans that happened with healthy resistance training over a 10-week period of time. And that's just one example of why we're excited about NAD three. We did about five pre-clinical studies first, and now we're in the middle of a big human trial with three different arms. We actually just finished the last subject a couple of weeks ago. And so we're now analyzing all that data and getting ready to present it. And we're excited about what we're gonna see in actual humans who took NAD three every day for a 12-week period of time. We're looking at things like the epigenetic clock reversing biological aging in humans. We're also looking to see what genes were turned on and off to see that it actually correlated with what we saw in the cells. And we're looking at various inflammatory markers, as well as the individual's ability to control their glycemic response and insulin response as well to foods. Doctor, is this exercise in a bottle? Come on. Yeah, I would always, I'd always warned my patients when I was practicing, right? But anyone who promises you that, it's, yeah, turn around and run fast and long, yeah. Look, what we're trying to do here is just amplify the healthy behaviors that we already know work. And that's really what we set out to do. So we didn't wanna replace, we don't wanna replace healthy behaviors. We don't wanna replace your calorie restriction, your healthy Mediterranean diets, your meditation, your social connections, all the things that we know work with the blue zones and the individuals that are super centenarians, the exercise obviously being one of them. We just want to basically supplement and amplify all those behaviors and all those activities. Yeah, I think that's well said. I think one of my fundamental principles is these are supplements. So they supplement your healthy behaviors. They are not a replacement for healthy behaviors. And I should put an advisor for anybody who's listening, you know, whenever you're gonna start a new regimen, whether it's a fitness regimen, whether it's an eating regimen, whether it's a supplement regimen, always check in with your physician or your health person before you do that, okay? And I think you'd agree. Absolutely, 100%. All right, you know, this is fascinating stuff. As you know, I am a fan of this product, so I guess I'm a fan because I like the research that went behind this and I've been taking it actually for quite a while now and my wife takes it as well. So this is, you know, you're at an exciting area. Are there any more exciting discoveries in longevity research that you're working on? Can you give us a teaser? Yeah, so we're actually expanding the preliminary work we've done because it's still early days and as you know, all scientists will always say more work needs to be done, right? It's never over. There's more derivative stuff coming. What we're doing now is combining NAD3 with other ingredients. So we're looking at some, you know, the synergy on top of synergy. What happens when you combine it, for example, with polyphenols that are found in olive oil or extra virgin high quality olive oil? We're looking at what happens when you combine it with rosemary extract or things like coffee fruit or coffee berry extract. And we're finding some fascinating things on the pre-clinical side and now we're gonna wanna move that into the clinical realm. And one other thing I'll mention here, Dr. Gundry is that unlike many ingredients that are touted for longevity on the market, this one has one other unique aspect to it and that's that it's experiential and it's something you can feel. When you consume the product NAD3, for example, every morning with your coffee or your tea, it definitely will give you a little bit of a neurotropic lift. It'll give your mood or your affect a little bit of a lift and you'll feel sharper and we have that data, that's not just anecdotal data, that's born itself out in more than 10 human clinical trials we've conducted on one of the components, theocrine, within it. So it's something that we know is working on a molecular level and it's something you can feel, right? Which is sort of a bonus and we're excited about that. That's great. And who wouldn't wanna feel a little bit better in the current state of affairs? Absolutely, absolutely. All right, yeah, and actually all of those compounds that you mentioned are high on my list of additional compounds that I actually take and recommend. So yeah, keep looking at those. I think you're absolutely on the right track. All right, well Dr. Lopez, this was a lot of fun. It's been great to have you on the show. Likewise, it was great talking to you. Every now and then we need some nice deep science so that people can learn about all this. Where can people find out more about you and your research and your companies? So online, supplementsafetysolutions.com and the C-A-H-S, the C-A-H-S dot com. And then I also have a Twitter account but I usually don't, I don't do much social media so I don't do Instagram or Facebook. I'm getting a lot of pressure these days though to get some more exposure out there and get some more of our work that we're doing out into the public domain. But this is a wonderful way to do it for sure. All right, well good. All right, well keep up the good work and I can't wait to hear of your latest discovery and feel free to let me be a guinea pig whenever you want me to be. Oh, we sure will. Thanks a lot for having me on, it was a lot of fun. Thank you. All right, take care. All right, it's time for our audience question. This week it comes from Bell Shearer on YouTube who is asking for advice on following the Plant Paradox Program without losing any weight. I'll answer quickly here but for more information check out the how to eat more calories the healthy way video on my Dr. Gundry podcast YouTube channel because I go into that. So briefly, yes, weight loss is often a pleasant consequence of following our program but we also have a number of people who actually are trying to gain weight and one of the best ways that I've found through the years to get people to gain weight is to have them increase their consumption of macadamia nuts and sometimes it takes a lot of macadamia nuts to do it. On the other hand, if high triglycerides and high insulin levels are not your problem and quite frankly, most people with low weight that's usually not a problem. Feel free to use starches like there's now some fantastic pastas that are made out of cassava flour, sorghum flour, millet and knock your socks off with using those and you will for the most part gain weight using those products and they're lectin-free. Same proviso though. These are not free food to have if you're trying to actually get weight off of you. So many times we see people inadvertently start to gain weight when they start eating lectin-free starches in the mistaken thought that these are free and you can have as much as you want but great question but go to the YouTube channel and you'll see my answer. Time for the review of the week. Suzanne Elliott watched the episode where I explained my modified vegan fast. She said, very interesting podcast. I've been on the Dr. Gundry diet now for about 18 months and have lost 16 kilograms. That's almost 35 pounds. I have to say that I am amazingly surprised by the changes in my body. I no longer have a ravenous appetite. After listening to your video last night, I thought I'd skip breakfast today and not snack. I can't believe I was able to do it. I'm so grateful for your program, Dr. Gundry. I watch all your videos. I read all your books. I wish I'd known all your information 50 years ago. Yeah, me too. I'm 70 just like you. Thank you very much for your work and thank you, Suzanne Elliott. It's your sort of writing in that keeps me doing what I'm doing and good for you, keep doing it and try the modified vegan fast once a month. See what you think and we're right back in. All right, that's it for today. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next week and I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.