 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. During this episode, I'm going to be speaking with the legendary Randy Jackson. Let's hear the applause, everybody. Randy is toured with the iconic rock band Journey. Don't Stop Believing. Produced some of the most successful records in music history, written bestselling books, and starred as one of the original judges of the TV hit show American Idol. In fact, we all know a very famous American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson, who used my book, The Plant Paradox, to fix her autoimmune issue and lose weight. But back to my guest, Randy Jackson. After years of being overweight, Randy considers getting healthy to be one of his biggest accomplishments to date. And now he's paying it forward by helping others do the same. So today, Randy and I are going to discuss his amazing journey to health. We'll also show you how you can transform your health by making better choices every day. So, Randy, welcome to the program, and I really commend you for taking charge of your health. Dr. Gundry, thank you so much, man. Listen, I'm a huge fan. I know Kelly's a huge fan. I've been following you for a long time. I'm so happy to be doing your podcast. I'm a big fan. Well, thanks so much. And now, like me, you struggled with your weight for years. Now, why did you think this was such an issue for you? Did it have anything to do with the way you were raised? I think it had to do a lot with the way I was raised, and, you know, I was in sports all my life until I graduated college, and, you know, I just wasn't working out anymore. I, you know, had a very sedentary lifestyle, and, you know, I grew up living a good eating life in Louisiana. Everything's fried. Everything's with a ton of sugar, a ton of butter. Everything is, everything is, they like to say, and when you have a sedentary lifestyle, it just pounds on you. Then that problem compounds because you get heavier and you don't want to run. I used to always see people running on the street, and I would say to my friend, yeah, those are the skinny people. It's easier for them to run. They don't have to carry around the sector, 150 pounds. So, you know, it was a different thing for me. I arrived at the 358 and had to make some changes. Yeah, and, you know, what was it like for you? I mean, being on television every single week and, you know, your weight issues were obviously obvious. What was that like? You know, it was really tough because I had low energy. It was hard to move around, get around. I got tired often. And what really, really happened to me is I felt like I was sick. I had the flu, couldn't quench my thirst. I felt very lethargic for a long time. I finally go to my doctor and said, let's run some tests. I was there the next day. But that night, I was feeling terribly bad and I wound up in the emergency room. The doctor gave me one test and came back that I developed type 2 diabetes. So blood sugar was over 500. I had to make some serious, serious changes. So was that the wake-up call or did you know this was coming? But you just kind of said, eh, you know. You know, I knew something was coming. And as I always say, we as men and a lot of other people, especially men, know we hate going to the doctor. We procrastinate. We put it off. You know something's going to happen from living this bad life, eating like a racehorse and not working out, just driving yourself to all ends, you know something bad's bound to happen. So it did for me. You know, I'm glad you brought that up. I saw a patient yesterday, a new patient, who has all the markers. A young man has all the markers for type 2 diabetes with high insulin levels and high blood sugar and high hemoglobin A1C. And I'm explaining this to him. And he says, well, how do I know that this is a bad thing? How do I know that bad things are going to happen to me? And I give him some of the statistics. And he says, well, yeah, but that's probably not going to happen to me. So I lean into him. And I said, so you just have to ask yourself, do I feel lucky? And luckily, Clint Eastwood came through for me. And it worked. And I think that's a great point you bring up. I think most of us men basically say, hey, that's not going to happen to me. I'm the lucky one. You know also, doctors, funny we're talking about this because one of the reasons that being a celebrity, I wanted to voice my whole health concerns and everything is because exactly that. You think it's going to happen to somebody else. It's never going to happen to somebody like me because people have this notion that all the stars have everything all checked. All the boxes are cool. You're the most beautiful. You and I are very beautiful, Dr. Country. We have everything. And then we get this incurable disease. So if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. That's part of the reason because people think that it doesn't happen to the stars. Yeah, you're so right. And I take care of a lot of stars. And most of them, I never say a word about. But I'll give you a quick answer. Just some names here. Tell us some names on the podcast here. That's right. No, I won't mention names. I will tell you a story that really goes along with this. So I see a star who's a character actor. His character actor is a fairly pudgy individual. And for years, I've been seeing him now for six, seven years. And he has type 2 diabetes with high insulin levels. And he keeps telling me, look, my career depends on me being this kind of fat, lovable guy. And I said, but you don't understand. Bad things are going to happen with this. I said, well, your chance of getting cancer is so much higher than a normal person. And I see him twice a year. And every year, say the same thing. Last year, he calls me out of the blue. And he says, I just got diagnosed with prostate cancer. What do you think about that? And I said, what do you mean what do I think about it? I told you that this was going to get you. And here it is. He says, yeah, you're right. You've been telling me that. Now what do I do? So it's, you're right. We assume that we're going to be the lucky one. And thank you for speaking out that you can have the most talent in the world. You can be the greatest star in the world. You can be so good looking and have the best pair of glasses like you do. And I like to do. And it's still going to happen if you don't pay attention. Yeah, that's the real truth about it. And by the way, I always think it happened to anyone. And there's so many bad things that could come with type 2 diabetes. And listen, type 2 diabetes, I have that. But it's not the only problem. You could develop a series of other problems as you well know. You bet. That's just the tip of the iceberg. OK, so back to you taking charge of your life. Now you decided to undergo gastric bypass surgery. And believe it or not, back in my older days, I used to do gastric bypass surgery. So that's a big deal. It's gotten certainly better in years. But what made you decide to take this leap and undergo the surgery? Because I needed something to really wake me up and almost shock me into the reality of what was ahead of me. So because I think you try the medications, you try the oil, you try whatever. So I say to my doctor, what's going to help? Says, what I've been telling you for 10 years, lose some weight. It's going to be easier to manage your type 2 diabetes. And I looked at alternatives. My mother-in-law had had the procedure done some years before. She looked amazing. She turned her health around. Because when you're lighter, you want to work out. You just can't wait to jump up and run and do stuff. But when you're heavy, you're like, oh, god. I don't have the energy. I don't want to. This is going to hurt my body. So I had it done 17 years ago by one of the originators of the surgery, Dr. Foghi. And I haven't looked back ever since. But what happened for me, though, was once you get it and you drop a ton of weight, the real work really begins. How do I keep it off? How do I stay healthy? I've gone through this major massive surgery to lose the weight. What am I going to do now? Half of more of the people put it back on. Some people put on half of it, a third of it back. It's just I didn't want that to happen to me. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I take care of a lot of patients who have had bypass surgery, gastric bypass. And in fact, you're right. Half the people actually regain all their weight, and most of them regain a significant amount of weight. And that's how they end up in my office. So it is not some people, I'm sure, accused you, well, you took the easy way out. You had gastric bypass surgery. But you're right, unless you change, even something as drastic as gastric bypass, isn't the cure all that people think it is? No, and it's not easy. It's a four, four and a half hour surgery. The recovery's a long time. This is serious major surgery. And how are you going to go through that and the recovery of that and then put the weight back on? No, not me. It's not going to happen. So I had to really change my lifestyle, completely change it. So that's what led me to where I am now, because I had to make a serious life change. So I say to people, I had to actually divorce food and start over. That's a good way of looking. So OK, so what did you stop eating and starting? Let's talk about stopping. What did you stop? Stop everything. Because after the gastric bypass surgery, you have to fast for a couple of weeks. You can have like broths or whatever, whatever. So it gave me a chance to reset also to test what I was allergic to. So because I got, am I gluten intolerant? Am I, what's going on? Dairy, what is happening? So I also did that test, found out some things that didn't really jive with my system. And I just started rebuilding one at a time. And as I say, before this, I tried every diet. I was vegan for a long time. I was vegetarian for a long time. I was a pescatarian. I ate mostly this high carb, high meat diet. I mean, I tried all the diets. I tried pregnant women's urine. I tried, you name it, I tried all of them. So I really had to really come up with my own thing that was going to work for me. And I said, I got to find something I can stick to. I had to find a food education. So I went to nutritionists. I really studied hard to really understand the effects on food in the body. And so were there mental blocks that you had to overcome as well? Yes, because I'm used to eating fried food. Listen, in the South in Louisiana, if it ain't good tasting, it ain't good for you. Somebody with a big belly and they say, boy, you must be living good right now. So, I mean, you know, if you're having a big belly, you're living life to the highest. That's why in Mardi Gras, they call it Fat Tuesday. That's right. And so one of the things that we now know actually about gastric bypass, which is actually exciting, is that your gut microbiome actually changes almost immediately following gastric bypass surgery. And that's actually one of the new exciting findings about that maybe this surgery isn't just all about, you know, stapling your stomach smaller or bypassing some of your intestines, maybe at the root of it, it's really changing your microbiome for the better. And part of the reason that I did it is a lot of people that had type 2 diabetes and diabetes, it helped to almost reverse it, where they wouldn't have to be insulin dependent and they could take oral medication. So, it really changes everything. So, I thought to myself, I'm not gonna do this and I have to go back and redo it again. Because I know people have done it again. Yep. Because they put more of the weight back on. So any people give us kind of one trick that you learn kind of before and after. Obviously you learn that probably the Louisiana diet is not exactly the best diet in the world. It tastes good, but it's not good for you. It's drowned in butter and sugar and salt, but it's not good for you. I did learn that, but it tastes hella good, I gotta tell you. I had to really divorce that and stop eating the way that I was eating when I was still down there. Of course, cut all the sugar and most of the carbs and really one nutritionist said to me, which is something I still hold close to my heart, you gotta find what's gonna work for you. So there's no one-size-fits-all. Some people can be vegetarian and live a great life. Some people can be vegan and live a great life. I need it, I call myself a flexitarian. I eat a little morsel of whatever I like whenever I wanna eat it, but I'm not confined to one certain food groups because the boredom will cause you to say, I'm starving, I'm so starving, I could eat a horse and you will try to. So the triggers that led me to where I was, I started hearing in my brain and trying to retrain myself. And then someone turned me on to a couple of years ago, something called a leaky gut with this guy named Dr. Gundry, this cool doctor. And the rest is history. And the rest is history. So I started applying that and became a huge fan of this guy, Gundry. Oh, we're gonna have to have him on the podcast, absolutely. He's a smart guy. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, you know, it is amazing. So much we now know of our brain's behavior in seeking out certain foods is actually controlled by the microbes that live in our gut. And the idea that these little one cell creatures could hijack your brain to give them what they wanna eat is so preposterous on the surface. But now with the microbiome project, we know that in fact, bad bugs can hijack your brain. This intelligent brain to give them what they want. Send you messages, you don't know where they came from. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You know they're there, you're not making it up that you wanna eat four bowls of jambalaya and finish it off with two cheesecakes. Not one, but two cheesecakes. Yeah, two, yeah. They don't call it fat two, they burn up unless they're intelligent. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. I used to know Chef Paul Prudhomme quite well. Yes, what a great chef though, what a great chef. A great chef, and I used to, I'll tell you a quick story. I walked into K-Paul's one night and he was in the back. He had just gotten over gallbladder surgery. And he, you know, he's so huge that his wound didn't heal. And it actually was wide open. And he's sitting in the back on his stool and he says, hey Doc, come here, I gotta show you something. So I saunter on over. And he pulls up his chef apron and he says, look at this, it's healing good. And this is wide open incision from his gallbladder. I go on, Paul, how many times I tell you, this is not working for you. And sadly, you're right. He never overcame kind of the voices to keep feeding himself. So good for you for, you know, overcoming those voices. And let me say something, doctor, you know, it is not easy. This is really difficult. It's really hard to retrain your eating habits, the ways that you grew up, the things that you still love. You know, you're out at parties, you're out at events and I'm a very social person because I'm in a social business. So it's all I do is entertainment. So all the time. So it really, you have to really get a grip on where you're going. I'm so glad you brought that up as well because I see a number of young people with pre-diabetes, type two diabetes, in their teenage years. And I'm taking care of a young Hispanic woman in the Palm Springs area. And I saw her a couple of weeks ago and she's been doing great, but we always find out, well, you know, catch up on how they're doing. And she said, I made a really big decision over the Christmas holidays and I want you to be proud of me. I said, what'd you do? She said, well, my whole family goes back to Mexico to visit, you know, all the grandparents and the cousins. And she said, I didn't go. And I said, well, why not? She says, because I knew that, you know, they would feed me the foods that have made me, you know, diabetic and I wouldn't be able to resist it because they'd be forcing it on me. And she said, it was just easier for me to stay home because I would have fallen right, you know, down that rabbit hole again. And, you know, for a young woman, she's 15 years old to kind of have that knowledge. That knowledge is power. And so- It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. So you're right. You know, you're constantly surrounded by these social pressures. And let's just talk about that for a second too. Louisiana, when you go there, someone just said to me, do you think, oh, I'm going to New Orleans for the first time. Everybody tells me, forget my diet. Okay, this is starting to be a bad thing, man. Like, I get it, you know, you're going to France, forget the diet, you're going to Italy, the pasta, I get it. But don't quite forget the diet. Maybe you just have the morsels of the things you like, you know, the small portions. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. You can, you know, you can sample things and not lose control. But so many people, particularly early on in the process, often, you know, one or two days of heading the wrong direction, just opens the floodgates. And it's, you know, you actually can change the entire character of your gut microbiome in three days of bad eating. You can go from a great set of bugs to a bad set of bugs in three days. It's that fast. And as you and I both know, once those bad bugs, yeah, once those bad bugs get in you, man, they hijack your brain. They're having a party inside you. Yeah, and they're breaking furniture and throwing things through the windows. The bug party people, yeah. All right, so these are great tips. Through the years, have you figured out anything else about maintaining, you know, a normal weight? Well, I say the leaky gut, which led me to the Unify Helplabs formula that we've come up with because now I know it's something you've probably known all your life. That's why you're the great genius doctor by everything starts in the gut. Everything, the gut is everything. So a healthy gut, probably a healthy life. So tell us about this new venture, Unify Helplabs. What inspired you to start this brand? You know, people will ask me all the time, dog, how are you keeping the weight off? What are you doing? What's happening? And you know, I often say to them, you know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that and everybody goes, well, what are you taking? Well, so I thought about that for a while, a couple of years. And I thought, you know, maybe I should create something that takes the guesswork out of what are you taking? Because the average person's house, Dr. Gundur, we should do this. You and I should make some house visits so people's houses just randomly unannounced and see the 40 bottles of vitamin sitting on top of the counter. And, you know, you don't know how much prebiotic, probiotic, you don't know what to take. You don't know if I should take 18 trillion of this. You know, I mean, it just, I just think I wanted to take the guesswork out so people are not really overdoing it. Because I believe this all sort of thing is too much. Yeah. Well, you know, okay, I'm gonna take you up on that. So you and I, we need to do a TV show where you and I knock on doors and go into people's houses and go into their kitchens and open up the cabinets and... I got this before too, the doctor and the dog. The doctor and the dog. Oh, I love it. We would have such fun. We, yeah. All right. All right, so get your connections going. I'll do it with you, okay? Let's go, man, you're on. So what's next for you besides the doctor and dog? I mean... Well, you know, I'm just continuing working. I have a pretty big management practice. We got a couple of TV shows that are in development now. You know, and we're just, we've got products out. We're doing our thing. We're just having fun. Out there, if you're wondering, Dr. Gundry and I are very young. Absolutely, you know, people talk about anti-aging. What people really should be focusing on is de-aging. And I, for one, not only believe it, I live it and you just have to look at pictures of me from 10 years ago, I look exactly, or if not better than I did 10 years ago. So you can de-age. Let me ask you a question. How did you do that? What do you mean? I tell my gut bugs to keep me humming on all eight cylinders. And again, you know, Hippocrates, you know, the father of medicine 2,500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut. I mean, you talk about a smart guy, holy cow. And he was absolutely right. And as I talked about in the longevity paradox, aging begins and ends in the gut and begins and ends in leaky gut. And if you don't have a leaky gut and you have great bacteria and you practice things like time-restricted feeding, like an exercise program using, I like high-intensity interval training as part of my exercise program, you can't actually stimulate stem cells to replace all of your important organs, including your brain and your heart. And so we, you know, we hear about stem cell therapy. These stem cells are extracted from people's fat. So we have plenty of stem cells. We just have to turn them on. And that's the secret. So again, you can actually activate stem cells by intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding. You can actually activate stem cells by taking vitamin D. Vitamin D is one of the best ways to activate stem cells there is. You can activate stem cells by high-intensity interval training or HIIT training. So those are just a few quick recommendations. And if you follow my rules in the longevity paradox, you know, we say in our office that 150 is the new 100. So. Whoa, I love that. So let's, let's go. You and I, you and I raced to 150. What do you say? Let's race 150, let's go. All right. I'm at 30 now, so let's go. Oh, okay, very good. Well, I went to Tony Robbins' 60th birthday party last weekend and I challenged him that we're gonna race to 100, but because he is who he is and can do wonders, I've got a few years head start on him towards 100. So he has to catch me. I'm, you know, we'll see if we can do it. All right, so I got, I gotta let you go. I know you're busy. You're gonna work on the doctor and the dog program as soon as we get off there. This is a big hit. I feel it, I feel it. So where can my listeners find out all about you and all the great things you're doing? Where do they find you? They can find me online at randy.scorejaxson, you know, randy.scorejaxson. They can also log into the Unify Health Labs website. Okay. That information. The dog and the doctor, the doctor and the dog. Either way, if you want top billing, that's okay, but it'll be a great show. Since you're gonna produce it, I'll let you have top billing. I just want to wear a stethoscope as well. Oh yeah, there you go. I'll never use it, I just want to wear it. I'll tell you what, you know, you send me some glasses, I'll send you a stethoscope. That'll be a deal. It's a deal, it's a deal, it's a deal. All right, now before I let you go, we have an audience question that we always get asked. So Roy Ludwick on YouTube asks, when and how do you take your many supplements during the day, especially when you're doing intermittent fasting? So actually, Randy, I'm gonna turn that to you first. So any recommendations on when to take supplements? I usually do my intermittent fasting. I usually don't eat past eight at night. So I usually do the intermittent fasting and I usually have breakfast around 10.30. So I have everything in the morning because if I don't do it, I'll forget it during the rest of the day. Yeah, it's interesting. I take my supplements, I take some in the morning and some at night and I've just gotten into a habit of doing that. My wife would like to do it twice a day but she almost always forgets the night time and so I agree with you. What I tell my patients is, whatever regimen you devise to get them into you is the regimen that will work. And you know, my wife takes hers once a day and like you do, I take mine twice a day. She's even younger and healthier than I am. Yeah, so that was a great question and Randy, that's a great answer. So with that note, take your supplements, everybody and we'll see you next week and stay tuned for the dog and the doctor. Hello. Coming to a TV show near you. That's right. Thank you so much brother. Take care. 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.