 So welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know when it comes to your health I believe that knowledge is power and every day I get questions about how to live a healthier happier life You know, it's important for me for you to get the tools and knowledge you need to make it a reality for yourself Your family and even our community in your community So today, I'm going to answer a few questions people have asked me about my new book the longevity paradox on my social media Channels like my Instagram page at Dr. Steven Gundry By the way a big thank you to each and every one of you that actually participated in Asking a question, you know, we actually had an amazing response. It's and I read every one of them and hopefully We'll get to a whole bunch of them So if I didn't get to you this time, it doesn't mean it wasn't important and it doesn't mean I didn't read it because I read Every one of them and there were a lot so I'll try to get as many as we can do on that. No, let's get started to cover as much ground as possible So we'll start with a question from Nicky new PS If you have an autoimmune condition, should you follow the plant paradox or the longevity paradox diet? That's a great question so the they're actually equally as effective for Autoimmune disease, but I think it's far more important particularly in Calming down the autoimmune condition to really start with the plant paradox and go through the phases Properly the longevity paradox is really okay. Now that you've got the plant paradox figured out You've got the essentials. Okay. Now. How do we translate this? Into dying young at a ripe old age But the first thing you've got to do and I've got to do is get your autoimmune disease in remission and the good news is Most people who follow this program go into remission and that's the exciting news Okay, next question is from Mike doc McInnes Do you recommend any modifications for athletes and are those trying to build muscle? Another great question number one you do not have to make any Modifications if you're trying to build muscle if you do want to increase Protein I have no problem with that if you're actively trying to build muscle My personal feeling is you'll get just as much benefit by adding a plant protein like hemp for instance as adding an animal protein and Depending on how young you are you're going to be able to for lack of a better word Get away with more animal protein If I have my druthers in animal proteins I'd much rather you get proteins from Pastured or omega-3 eggs or from wild fish and wild shellfish And let me just give a quick proviso Tuna is not a great source of animal protein for anybody Particularly shashimi grade tuna if you want to use the tuna in cans It's actually from small tuna and doesn't have a lot of mercury But most of the people that I see with high mercury levels in my practice are either big time shashimi or sushi eaters or Dentists and it's obvious why a lot of dentists have high mercury's Now here's an interesting one Tatian Petruzi wrote in and asked the longevity paradox states the importance of living in sync with seasonal shifts How about the people that live in tropical areas? We have year-round availability to many fruits and vegetables even if we're eating locally grown produce How do we have cyclical micro biomes? excellent question and What most of us have to realize that even in tropical climates? Initially traditionally plants only produced fruit once a year in cyclical periods of time Modern plants have been hybridized even in the tropics to produce fruit Over a much longer period of time that doesn't make it natural I mean here in Southern, California We can grow strawberries 365 days a year These are Frankenberries quite frankly they will ripen have sweetness without actually even getting red and That doesn't mean that they're grown. They're grown locally. They're available. That doesn't mean we should be eating them Strawberries we should be only be eating in the true summer just like an apple. We can have apples grow nearly year-round I have Apples that in my backyard that are producing full apples right now in its may that's bizarre But it's been bred to do that So even in tropical climates you have to realize that almost everything that you're getting Even growing naturally has been hybridized over the last 50 hundred years So you got to be very careful with even in the tropical climates So let me give you let me give you an example about eating in a tropical climate the last remaining hunter-gatherers live in tropical climates and Even studying those people we know that out in the bush there are only certain times of the year that fruit and Honey is available and other times of the year It's never available and they actually switch from a very Animal-centric diet to a very fruit and honey-centric diet and their microbiome switches dramatically in those swings and I think and there's evidence to suggest this That this swing in the microbiome this change in diversity of the microbiome Maybe one of the factors that contributes to longevity Certainly up until a hundred years ago We had huge shifts in our diet from fruits that are were available to no fruits available so if you're living in Places where year-round fruit is available the easiest way to do that is okay I'm going to choose three months where I'm going to eat fruit and the other nine months I'm not going to and you choose your three months and that makes it easy Cat J7 asked it seems many brands are coming out with cheese yogurt and milk from grass-fed cows Is that automatically compliant? I'm concerned for hidden or misleading ingredients so there are a lot of grass-fed products that are coming out unfortunately most of the Animals in the United States the cows are Holstein, which have casein a1 jerseys have a mixture of casein a1 and casein a2 Guernsey cows and Swiss Browns are a2 and there are still some herds of Guernsey In fact if you look for ice cream makers You'll usually find Guernsey cows because Guernsey's have a lot more fat in their milk than the other cows And that's prized in ice cream makers in fact That's where I started to find a2 cow milk herds by tracing down ice cream makers So having said that just because it's grass-fed doesn't mean it's not going to have casein a1 as its primary protein So do your homework if you have to call the company call the farmer and Find out where it came from the good news is the vast majority of cows in France, Italy, and Switzerland Are a2 cows the other great news is that goats sheep and water buffalo are all a2 So that those cheeses are perfectly safe In fact, I had some I was in New York City And I went to my favorite Italian restaurant and they had buffalo mozzarella imported from Italy, and I knew it was safe So I had it so there you go. So next I'll answer a question from Conley May She wrote in and said your supplementalist doesn't include calcium My mother had osteoporosis, and I'm wondering what someone concerned with bone health should be supplemented So believe it or not even our federal government has reversed itself and said there is no woman who should be taking a Calcium supplement believe it or not. In fact calcium supplements have been Indicated as causing calcification in arteries and causing calcification in kidney stones Rather than going into bone as I wrote about in the longevity paradox. There's and in the plant paradox There's some pretty scary information that lectins particularly in corn and soybeans cause osteoporosis in chickens and in fact 10% of all chickens even organic chickens which are fed organic corn and soybeans are lame at the time they're killed and in fact One of the reasons you have a hundred thousand chickens in a warehouse Crammed up against each other is they actually hold each other up because they have so much osteoporosis in their bones My wife Penny who I mentioned before Marathon runner had osteopenia because she was eating a heavily grain based runners diet When we stopped her doing these big runs and took away her grains Lo and behold her osteopenia went away And I see that in so many of my patients without giving them these horrible quite frankly bone-making compounds So please you'll get plenty of normal calcium in the leaves and Vegetables that you eat you don't need to supplement, but it's a great question Okay, our next question from Becky dot Frito is about exercise After reading the longevity paradox. I'm trying to figure out how much I should be running What do you recommend for weekly mileage? I feel good and still stay young. I currently run about 20 to 25 miles a week Okay, so let's divide by seven. That's about three Maybe maximal four miles per day. I Do personally believe you should have one or two rest days in that sort of program when we look at Damage to heart muscle and we can measure that with a very sensitive test Called cardiac tropon and I It looks like for most of my patients when they exceed About five miles of running and this is you know a reasonable clip This is not, you know world-class athlete clip that they begin to make We can measure this myocardial damage and when we ask them to back off on that distance Then they go back to normal If you look at the literature and there's now a lot of literature on Ultramarathoners marathoners even half marathoners who do it chronically for their lives They do damage the right ventricle of their heart And they get fibrosis of their heart I've had several long-term long-distance runners who Unfortunately in my practice have died of congestive heart failure from their right ventricle be working poorly And they had normal coronaries So it's just a word of warning Obviously there are a lot of great ways to get endorphin manufacturing and running was one of them But just remember that dr. Sheehan one of the great fathers of running died from metastatic prostate cancer And the literature is full of long-distance runners who have died in the act of long-distance running So three to five miles knock your socks off my dogs And I do about two and a half three miles at a jog in Hills every day The good news about dogs is we have to take a break for you know The potty stops and so I get to get a little rest, but that's perfectly fine Our next question is from so Cal a rocker gal Okay What are your thoughts about the amino acid ergo theanine that seems to be the hot ingredient lately? Well, actually that's compound. It's not an amino acid It is a compound that is found in some mushrooms, and I'm a big fan of it myself I take a lot of mushroom supplements just to get ergo thionine in me The interesting thing of it is this is one of the few compounds that crosses the blood-brain barrier And if you've read the literature recently There's a very interesting study in humans out of Singapore that show that eating two cups of mushrooms per week Either cooked or raw doesn't matter and two cups of cooked mushroom if you take two cups of mushrooms and cook it You will have a very small amount Those people who ate on average two cups of mushrooms per week had a 90% reduction in Alzheimer's compared to people who did not do that and you'll see in the longevity paradox that Mushrooms and even mushroom broth has a huge place in the recipes And that's because mushrooms are one of the richest sources of Polyamines these really cool compounds that promote longevity in every study that where they've ever been introduced So get more mushrooms in your life. They're a great source of ergo thionine Yeah, good stuff Alcohol Always a popular topic and this comes from prep dress What is the safest alcohol to drink besides red wine? I don't like red wine. Can I have white wine? Well, first of all the idea of all these things is Try to not to negotiate but As you have probably read and seen in my pyramid That there is a very interesting French study showing that the polyphenols in Champagne in a study among French women Lessened dementia and Alzheimer's in the champagne drinkers now I mentioned this constantly because my wife has that study attached to our refrigerator door and Just last night we were talking about with her the health benefits of champagne so I'll have my red wine and She'll have a glass of champagne Quite frankly if you get champagne from the Pinot Noir grape and a lot of Champagnes are Pinot noir based or at least a blend that was what the study was done So do I think red wine is the best source of polyphenols that benefit health? Yes, but champagne may be a close second If you're going to have white wine Please have white wine that was aged in oak barrels because you actually get the benefit of the oak polyphenols in the white wine, but so Many white wines particularly in this country have been adulterated with sugar to make them more pleasing to the palate at the wine bar and You just have to be aware that white wine in general will have a much higher sugar content than red wine Oh and by the way fun fact Champagne is normally at the final production a small amount of sugar is added called the dosage There are non dosage Champagnes and quite frankly we have a number that my wife drinks Cuz we're trying to stay and ketosis most of our time Okay, so the next question comes from one of my Original big fans and a shout-out to lectin free mama and thanks for sending this question in I Know you've come out against juicing in the past But it is a time-honored tradition of cleansing and detoxing If we choose organic yes list veggies press it at home and pair it with fat to slow absorption Is there anything inherently bad about juicing as a form of detox? If so, what do you suggest instead? Well, you're gonna hear me and my letters talk about detoxing and how we quite frankly do it Completely wrong and I'm gonna have a lot to say about that. So stay tuned However, the best part of juicing is being thrown away in terms of the pulp The pulp is what feeds your friendly bacteria. So you've heard me say this over and over again particularly with fruits juice your fruits throw the juice away and then eat the pulp and I think a Blendtec or a Nutribullet or a Magic bullet or a Vitamix is a far better way to handle your vegetables than juice I really think you're throwing the best part of the plant away by juicing and you if you want to Detox with vegetables just use the whole thing Now, you know having said that the juice So many of the juices I see have been mixed with oh well We're gonna throw the juice of an apple in or we're gonna throw the juice of a cucumber in and quite frankly These are fruits and all you're doing is getting a lot of sugar in your diet And that's certainly not good for detoxing But excellent question Okay, here's a great question from Maddie underscore Moe Is it safe for type 1 diabetics to fast slash do calorie restrictions any other tips for us type 1 diabetics wanting to live to 100 plus So I I take care of an NFL football player who is a type 1 diabetic and I can tell you that he follows my ketogenic program to a tee he routinely runs fasting blood sugars of 32 to 36 and plays competitive football and I think as long as you can generate Ketosis not ketoacidosis. They're two totally different things That you can successfully fast intermittent fast as a type 1 diabetic and If you'd asked me that 20 years ago, I would have said don't be ridiculous But now that I am taking care of actually a number of type 1 diabetics I'm very impressed that even you guys Done properly can really fast and do ketosis Safely you have to obviously monitor yourself or have a physician monitor you But with the new modern continuous glucose monitors and the modern ketosis monitors I think it's absolutely one of the things you should Introduce into your program to live to be a hundred plus It's actually exciting times for type 1 diabetics really is Okay, our last question is from Ellie Chandler Can we eat the skins of sweet potatoes ginger and turmeric? Hey, that's a great question Believe it or not the lectins in Tubers are actually out in the skin for the most part So as a general rule in less your pressure cooking your sweet potatoes or turmeric or ginger I'd rather you peel them or eat out the insides I have a lot of patients that we do pressure cook Their yams and sweet potatoes because we found That a lot of people Are still sensitive to those lectins and tubers and Remember even the tubers of plants the plants really don't want you to eat their storage system And so we got to get around their defense mechanisms. So just pressure cook them. It's really easy or Peel your turmeric and ginger Okay, so that's all the time for questions we have today You know, it's great hearing from you keeps sending them in stay tuned for more Question-and-answer sessions like this in the coming months. It's actually one of our most popular Podcasts so you keep sending them in I'll keep trying to answer them So we'll see you next time and send them in because 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 podcast because I'm dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you