 Welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. Well, by now, if you've listened to me over the years, you know all about the microbiome, the trillions of bacteria living in your gut. These tiny gut bugs, as you know, are incredibly important for the health of your entire body. But my guest today says it's not the whole story. There are fungi living in your gut that can have a dramatic effect on your health, good and bad. Dr. Mahmood Gahoon is an expert on fungi, and he's the director of the integrated microbiome core and the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western University in Cleveland. He's also the author of a brand new book called The Total Gut Balance. On today's episode, he and I are gonna discuss the effect of fungi in the gut, the best foods for improving your gut health, and the three things that you can do today to boost whole body health. Dr. Gahoon, it's a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for having me. It is going to be really fun because you are going to open the door on a whole class of other critters that are living in our gut that people need to know about. So how would you get started getting interested in fungi of all things? Oh, that's a long time story. What happened when I went to England to do my doctorate? My supervisor gave me a paper and he said, this is what you are gonna be working on. And guess what? It was about how candida is affected by antibiotics and steroids. And that's when my passion to work with candida started in 1974. Wow, that's a long time ago. It is, it is. So we're gonna get into candida or candida as many people say. So why did he get you interested in that? 1974, come on. You know, it was interesting because it's something in you. For a long time, we really did not have much role for fungus in general and candida in particular for diseases. But suddenly because the way medicine is changing, new antibiotics, new therapies and also people becoming more immunosuppressed. They have low, weak immunity. Suddenly we started to see more and more of these fungal infections. So to me, it was an exciting new area to try to understand how can we really manage this new emerging disease. So let's take a step back. So fungi are with us all the time. They're in us and they're a part of what I call the holobiome. Absolutely. As you mentioned at the beginning, a lot of people think of the microbiome as bacteria. But in fact, in our body, we have not only bacterial community, we have also fungal community. And guess what? They play together. If they play together nicely, it's good for us. However, if they are fighting, which as you know happens, it causes a lot of issues including gut issues. Gotcha. So these guys are actually down there having a good time throwing balls around and not like that, right? But they communicate with each other, right? Yes, they communicate with each other. And also, if fungi is present at a low level or low abundance, it actually is very helpful. So everybody is afraid of Candida. But 50% of us have Candida in us, both in our skin as well as in our gut and mouth for that matter. So as long as it is low level, what it does is start to break down ferment food which provides nutrients to the bacteria, the good bacteria, and then they are happy also growing together. The issue starts happening if, for example, as you know, somebody take antibiotic. If you have an antibiotic, you are killing not only the bad bacteria which is causing an infection, we are killing also our good friends in our gut. And their role, this bacteria, they are really good cops. They keep Candida under control. So when you kill them, Candida have a field day and start to increase in number or overgrow and then cause issues for us. So when people hear the word antibiotics that basically means anti-living things, but most antibiotics that we consume or take kill bacteria but they don't necessarily kill fungi. Is that right? Yes. A lot of the antibiotics, absolutely, as you said, they kill bacteria. To kill fungus, we have what you call antifungal. It's antibacterial, antifungal. And the compounds that kill or the antibiotics that kill bacteria, they target some structures in the bacteria which we don't have in the fungus. That's why they don't kill it. Gotcha. So we should have renamed antibiotics, I guess, differently. But, and I think it's interesting because back in 1974, I was in medical school and right around that time, the first broad spectrum antibiotics had been introduced. And for us in medicine, it was great because we no longer had to identify an individual bug and wait for cultures. We could just napalm everybody and sit back and say, boy, aren't we clever? And I'm certain that your professor said, guess what? Those clever MDs are out there wiping out everybody and the fungi are now reaping the benefits. Is that kind of what happened? Exactly what happened. And I can give you a simple example which was true even then. When women take tetracycline, the antibiotic tetracycline to kill bacteria, guess what happens? They develop thrush because the lactobacillus in their body keep candida under control but this antibiotic is killing it. And then now we are having this wild candida go haywire and cause infections. So that's really true with many situations as you say, especially with the broad spectrum antibiotic because you are, as you say, napalm them. So these guys exist in us. They're in most of us and you're right. They kind of have a two-fro relationship with bacteria. I got interested in them researching my next book as you know, soil health also contains its own microbiome and the interplay between fungi and bacteria at the base of roots actually is essential for the plant to absorb nutrients from the soil. And you're right. There are, without fungi in the soil, bacteria can actually not get their job done of helping the root system. Go ahead. Yes, absolutely. Like they build a synergistic relation as you know. So they work together. It's like the kids playing in a sandbox. If they play nicely, they help each other. And a lot of the time in the roots of our plants really both bacteria and fungus work together which will help them take nutrients. So it's not only they help each other but also they help the plant to grow. So having both of them and this synergistic or complementary relationship is very important for the growth of plants and even, as you know, for breaking down all the dead leaves. Now we are in winter. So yeah, I mean, it's fantastic collaboration here. Yeah. And so we're gonna get to this. So I think one of your first points is that fungi are not exactly the evil empire that we have to fear taking over our bodies. Absolutely, absolutely. I think if our immunity is good, if we are eating the right food, the right lifestyle, we can keep it under control. And we don't have to be absolutely terrified of this. There is a way in our hand to try to control that. Got it. Okay, so these fungi that are in us are classified as the mycobiome as opposed to the microbiome. But I agree with you that our microbiome includes both our bacteria and the fungi and actually a bunch of viruses and parasites and wonderful single cell. Yes, yes. Really, it's, as you say, it's like a population. You know, different background, different races, they all live together. The same in our gut and our skin. We have, as you mentioned, bacteria, fungus, viruses, parasites, they all are living there and they all really play good and bad together. And that's why it's very important for us to understand this so that we can control them and give a total gut balance, as you would say, for when we have microbiome is in balance. Great. Let me give an example for our listeners and our viewers that actually brings this home on a, maybe on a more, not a microscopic level. Recently, as you know, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park over a lot of objections. They had been killed off. And one of the things that people had noticed since wolves were eradicated was the elk population. Their natural predator is a wolf. And the elk population actually grew ridiculously. And what they found was that the elk population was eating small saplings during the winter, particularly near streams, and the beaver population in Yellowstone was decimated. They left. And one of the first things they noticed when wolves came back was they began controlling the elk population. And particularly in winter, the elks were no longer eating the little saplings in the streams. And now with wolves back in, the beavers are back and the songbirds actually lived in these little saplings by the creeks and the songbirds had left Yellowstone. You actually didn't hear birds. And now the songbirds are back. So you're right. So let's just assume that all of us have been taught that Candida or fungi are really evil in us, like a big bad wolf. And we really ought to eradicate them, because they're evil. But you're right. This is an important part of the ecology of us. Absolutely. And I think let's just agree that, I don't particularly want to meet a wolf. But that wolf is a very important part of the ecology. Right? Absolutely. And so you're bringing it back to you. Fungi are incredibly important part of the ecology of us. Absolutely. The other thing I think just to make people be at ease when they think about fungus is everybody talks about Candida. But actually in our gut, we have good fungus as well, such as saccharomyces, which is the baker's yeast, which we use for bread and this sort of thing. We have it there and when you have it, our study shows that it can control Candida. Also, one study I published when I first started to work on the microbiome, I was interested in the HIV infected patients where we looked at oral complications of HIV, which as you know, better than me, it is thrush. So we did this study and we found to our surprise that if there is a yeast called picae, P-I-C-H-I-A, if it is there, Candida is not there. And if it is Candida there, picae is not there. So it's exactly what you said. There is an environment. If we had picae, we are able to keep Candida under control. So there are good fungus as well as bad fungus. Yeah, as a matter of fact, in heart surgery, I, against the advice of my colleagues, after we would give antibiotics to all of our heart surgery patients, I would give them capsules of saccharomyces to swallow beginning day one after the heart surgery. And my colleague would go, why the heck you're giving people yeast and fungi? And I said, yeah, but this guy is gonna tamp down Candida because so many of our patients would get oral thrush and we'd have to give them nice statin and they'd be sucking on lozenges. And nobody ever got thrush after I started giving them these capsules. And it's like, wait a minute, you're giving a fungus to stop a fungus? But you're right. Honestly, honestly, your thought was well ahead of the game. And now the good news is the science is proving that this is the case. It's good to have these yeast saccharomyces to try to control Candida. So I am really very pleased because now we have more scientific evidence to support what you've been doing well before. We started looking at next generation sequencing and this sort of thing. Well, I learned actually this trick and then I've mentioned it before. I did my children's heart surgery as a senior registrar at Great Ormond Street in London, England back in the 80s. And after heart surgery on babies, the sisters, the nurses would send the mothers down to the local greengrocer to buy fresh yogurt. And they would come back with the fresh yogurt and they would feed these little infants who I operated on yogurt. And smart American going, don't do that. There's things in that yogurt and we have to harden, we have to be sterile. And the sisters would say, you stupid American, you just killed off all the wonderful bugs in this kid and I'm gonna put it back and we'd butt heads. But I said, you know, they're probably right about this. So yeah, I learned that many, many years ago the nurses taught me. Absolutely, that's why like in your recent work and ours, we are saying, look, take some of these fermented foods because this is good. And yeah, I mean, it's really, I am very excited about this because now it's becoming clear what we need to do to try to keep these little critters under control and have a good health. Okay, so keeping little critters under control. There's a fancy word for that called dysbiosis. Yes. What, what the heck does that mean? Dysbiosis, as you say, it's really the scientific terms for imbalance. Remember, to have a good healthy gut with no digestive symptoms, you need to have the balance between bacteria, the fungus and the viruses for that matter, even though we don't know as much about the bacteria and fungus. So they are all happy, like as I mentioned before, playing in the sandbox. The problem, if we have nice kid playing in the sandbox, they helping each other. You get some little other kid who wants to fight with everybody, that's where the imbalance start. And in our gut, we are seeing, when we talk about imbalance or dysbiosis, we have an increase in the bad or pathogenic organisms and a decrease in the beneficial one. So what we need to do is try to bring back this balance so that they play nicely again. Okay, so how, I know I've written a lot about this and you write a lot about this, how did the bad kids take over? Did they just not get sent to the principal's office enough or what's happened? I think it is to do with the way they eat. What you eat, what type of food you eat, certainly can feed the wrong organisms there. It's like the garden. The garden, in the summer we love our garden, even though you guys in California have always nice roses, we need to feed and grow the nice roses and kill the weeds. And that's what we need to do. We give them nutrients, we give them the right filterisans. The same in our gut. If we can give them the right food and really avoid the ones that will encourage the bad guys, we are gonna have a better situation. Also, if we can have some really lifestyle approaches which are also important because our studies are showing is not enough just to control this diet by just the food or the different kinds of food. We really need to have less stress, more sleep, and this sort of thing. Okay, so wait a minute. You're saying that sleep and stress might affect our microbiome? Yes. Is that what you're saying, Professor? They are, and you know why? Because studies now are showing that there is communication between our gut and the brain. We call it gut-brain access. For a long time, we thought the brain is really the master switch. Tells us everything what to do. But now we know also the gut talks to the brain, so it is bi-directional, two-way communication. So if you have stress, you are gonna have dysbiosis or imbalance in your gut. That's why we really need to have less stress even though this day and age is very tough to have, but really it's very important because we had a lady, she had complete imbalance or dysbiosis. I looked at her food, what she eats, she eating perfect food which is gonna support the beneficial organisms and reduce the bad one. But then we looked at the questionnaire which she fills and we found that she is severely stressed. So I advised and that's what we really recommend is you need to do a little bit of meditation. You need to do a little bit of relaxation. Go out to Yellowstone Park, go out to nature because that all will help you de-stress and hopefully is gonna help your gut balance. Yeah, now you're absolutely right. In fact, in my last book, The Longevity Paradox, we make a big point that it is a huge two-way street and that things like yoga and meditation have actually been shown to even change gut bacteria for the better. And certainly we find that reducing stress allows the gut wall to heal. Okay, we mentioned Candida before. I can't tell you a day doesn't go by that someone doesn't walk in and tell me that they have Candida or they're being treated for Candida or that Candida is the cause of all their problems. All right, set the record straight. Okay, look, when we look at Candida, Candida definitely is responsible for a lot of infections, especially in people who are, as we mentioned, on antibiotics, cancer patients and any situation where you have imbalance and weak immunity, okay? That's true, but at the same time, Candida also lives in our body. We did a study when I was at UCLA many years ago. We found that 40% of healthcare workers in the hospital, they have Candida in their head and they are fine. And that's another story, I'm not gonna go there, but if we go back to the gut, we have Candida. As long as Candida is at low abundance or low level, the numbers is low, it's fine. In fact, it can help us. And I just... Oh, wait a minute, stop right there. Candida can help us? Yes. Oh my gosh. It can help us in at least two ways. All right, we're listening. Number one, it will train our body immunity to start to improve, to be able to respond to Candida when it really grows. That's number one. Number two, it can help our body also break down some of the food, the nutrients, which will help bacteria to grow and then that really complete the circuit. So as long as it is at what we call colonization level, it's just sitting there, not too many of it, less than we'll say one or 2% of the total fungal count, that's fine. When it starts to go up, overgrow more than 10% of the fungus there in your gut is Candida, then you will start to have issues and you need to control. All right, so this is a news flash for all my listeners and I tell my patients this, so it's not a news flash to them. So Candida in the right amount is not a bad guy. It's a wolf in Yellowstone Park. But okay, so how does this population grow to a point where it becomes a problem? What happens, what are we doing wrong? I think there are, it's multifactorial, a number of factors. Some of them, for example, if you are sick in hospital, then you are likely to have Candida because you are in antibiotics, you are all chemotherapy in various aspects. So that's one thing which we already will establish. The other thing which is really well known is what we eat. If we eat a lot of refined sugar, Candida loves refined and processed sugar and it can grow very fast. So if we are eating all the time sweets, we put so much sugar in our coffee and tea. I remember when I was a young boy, we used to have tea in the morning with my brothers and one of my brothers used to put so many sugar. My father used to say, look you are drinking sugar with tea instead. So it's very important that we cut down refined sugar because that is gonna be really an important factor for Candida to grow. Also, if we eat lean proteins, that also will keep Candida under control. Finally, we showed and others that if you have a vitamin deficiency, especially A, B and C, you are likely to have more growth of Candida. So you can see there are a number of dietary as well as, of course, factors which is beyond our control sometimes. So the average person walking around who has gut issues, is it from Candida in the most part or is it much more multifactorial than that? I really would say it's multifactorial. I mean, Candida will be one part but also, for example, if we have protobacteria, protobacteria, which is bacteria as we are saying, if it is increased in abundance and in its level, also it becomes pro-inflammatory or in other words, it causes inflammation. It's a good red flag for inflammation. So it's just like the balance of good bacteria and good fungus. If you have too much bad bacteria like people who eat red meat with high fats, guess what they're doing? They are feeding the bacteria that loves bile which is pro-inflammatory. It means it could cause more inflammation. If you have really lean proteins from fish, from plants then you are encouraging the good guys. Now, the same with respect to Candida. If Candida, we are giving it the food that it loves, it's gonna grow. Hmm. All right, so let's suppose you found a person with an overgrowth of Candida. Give me the steps that you'll recommend at Case Western to get this balance back again. I think now with this, the new knowledge of the microbiome and how these organisms microbiome and microbiome, which you mentioned the fungal community, the first thing we need to tell them is that really they need to try eating the right food. Try to avoid, we need to really restrict the growth or eliminate these organisms by not giving them food. Starve them to death. Starve them to death. Don't eat sugars, don't eat, especially refined sugars. Make sure you take your vitamins. We need to also try to take some fibers because we want to encourage the growth of the good bacteria because those good bacteria can keep Candida under control. Now obviously, if somebody have an infection and whatever, that's another story. Of course, we have to go into antifungals and we are lucky these days, we have really some good antifungals. It's different from the days, as you remember, when we had only amphotericin B. That was it. It was terrible. Now we have better drugs for that case, but for ordinary person, I think if they can follow the right diet, starve the bad guys, feed the good guys, make sure you are really having food like cruciferous vegetables, which you love, you are gonna have anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant components there, then you are gonna go a long way to rebalancing your gut. All right, let's myth-bust for a minute, and we haven't talked about this, so you're probably gonna bust my myth. There's a lot of advice on the internet for a anti-candida diet that you should never eat fermented vegetables, that you should never eat cheeses, and you should never eat mushrooms because mushrooms are fungi. I can bust that. Okay, bust that, would you please? So first of all, mushrooms, great food because they have fibers, there's a lot of fibers. Oh, thank you so much, thank you, okay. Yeah, no, no, I think this is definitely a misconception. Now, don't eat fermented food. As we mentioned before, saccharomyces, which is a good yeast, it helps us. So fermented food is a good thing to have. Now, of course, you don't want to go after the fields, go to the fields, and start picking mushrooms if they are poisonous and whatever. No, this is your problem. If you go to a good market or a place where they sell the right stuff, which is not toxic, mushrooms is great, as well as you are gonna be fine. Probably if you eat a psychedelic mushroom, you won't care. Just an editorial comment, okay. No, so that's great because I can't get over the number of people, and I have mushrooms on my diet, and I have fermented foods on my diet, and I have aged cheeses, and people go, well, I have candida, I can't do that. That's gonna promote the growth, and I'm going, where does this stuff come from? And thank you, thank you. All right, I wanna talk about one of my actual interests that I don't talk about, but we're gonna talk about it today, biofilms. Now, the Academy Awards are coming up. There are probably gonna be no biofilms that we're gonna watch. What the heck is a biofilm, and why should we worry about this? Let me tell you, we all have biofilms. The best example is the plaque in our teeth. Every morning and evening, I hope, we brush our teeth. Why? We want to get rid of the biofilm or plaque. The plaque is a biofilm. Now, what are they, what are they? So I can tell you, in my studies, we showed that the first thing for an organism or a bacteria or fungus to start causing troubles, it sticks to a surface, such as the teeth, okay? Once it sticks, it starts to produce what you call matrix. So what is this matrix? It's like a jello. If you have a jello, and inside the jello, we have raisins or M&M's. So the raisins and M&M's are the bacteria and fungus. The jello which covers them is the matrix. So as if they are living inside a city covered by this matrix which protect them. You're talking about the film, the matrix. That's, biofilm and microorganism have a matrix, definitely have a matrix, which as you say, in a way it is like a film. It protects these organisms. They become resistant to all antibacterials, as well as we showed that they are resistant to our immune cells. They cannot go there and kill them. So now, let's go into the gut, okay? In the gut, not many people looked at that. Most of the studies were on the catheters and knee replacement stuff and whatever. We in 2016 published a paper where we showed that the bugs in our gut, which is, we found that Candida, Tropicalis, one of the species there, E. coli, which is a bacteria and Siracia marcescens, they all increase in these Crohn's disease patients, compared to their relatives with no Crohn's. And then, we found that they come together and they stick together. They start, as you said, communicating and talking together and they produce this huge biofilm. And we called it digestive plaque. It's like digestive biofilm, but it is a plaque because in, you know, to make it easy, it's all in our digestive system. Now, when they form that, that is a bad news. Why? Because then they start to change. For example, Candida, instead of staying as a round cell like Baker's yeast, they start to form these filaments or like threads like and those start to go and start damaging our gut lining. Okay? So that's why. So they can literally drill into our own cells. Absolutely. They can go in and they, I, before, I don't want to get too complicated, but I tell you, before I started to do biofilms, I started Candida is able to secrete enzymes that can break down the lining, you know? And we showed that it's a beautiful picture where he's, I know, I mean, I'm crazy. I like these pictures. I know, you're getting really nerdy on me here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you see the filament like this and ahead of it, you have all these spot of enzymes which breaking down and going to cause leaky gut, as you say. Now you've got everybody scared of Candida again. And we were both were trying to quiet everybody down. Okay, so how often are these biofilms happening? I mean, they're on our teeth every day. So are you saying that that's happening down below and we don't know it? You know, it is there, but when there is the right harmony or this balance, when you have balance, the biofilms that forms are with the good guys, they don't have the ability to go and start causing trouble. The only issue when you are, as I give an example in Crohn's disease, for example, they overgrow and they are made of organisms that are pathogen or cause disease, then they are a problem. Gotcha. You know, believe it or not, you're probably aware of this that there is one theory of coronary artery disease that is an infectious theory of coronary artery disease and that bacteria and fungi and mouth organisms, some people want to call them nano bacteria, I don't think we have to go there, but that they set up these biofilms on the coronary arteries and it's these biofilms that are, we can't attack them with our immune system, but we try and it's actually, the plaque starts with biofilms. I kind of like that theory and I've actually written about that. Again, it's a theory. I get it, I get it. But, so okay, so we don't want biofilms. Candida is a good guy unless it gets out of control and if you feed it sugar, it potentially can get out of control. So give us three things that people can do today or start doing today to make sure that they're fungi or good guys and happy and everybody loves each other down in their gut. Yes. Number one, we need to cut refined sugars. Okay. Very important. Number two, it's very important that we have good vitamin levels in us, like vitamin A, B, and C, okay? Number three, we need to give resistant starch or fibers to feed the good bacterial guys that can keep Candida under control. Okay, I write about this a lot, but for our listeners, give me some resistant starches or fibers that we should be eating. Like you can find it in banana in the unripened side. Thank you for saying unripened, I appreciate it. Yes. We can say in oatmeal, you can see it in sweet potatoes. Yeah, all of these are great sources for resistant starch. And why really they are important to have resistant starch or carm? You know, I know you will ask me, I can now start, you and I are in the same wavelengths. Why are we saying about the resistant starch and not simple sugar? Because simple sugar, we can break it down in our intestine and they really can affect our glycemic index, they start to, if we don't, if we have too much of them, they convert into fats and we become obese. Whereas the resistant starch, our body cannot break them down. So they go down into large intestine where these good microbes are there and they start to eat them up and break them down. When they do this, what's happening, they start producing good molecules or good compounds. We call them metabolites. And what happens, these metabolites are great because then they can communicate with our brain and make our, increase our immunity, make us in a better mood. So that's why it's really possible to control these organisms and have a happy gut. All right. So you mentioned vitamin A and C and E and I would throw in vitamin D is really important. But most people don't know about vitamin A. Where do we find this stuff? I think there is a lot of vegetables that have vitamin A. Crosophers, vegetables have a lot of vitamin A. So, you know, broccoli, brocolini, all of those stuff, they have it. And vitamin A, why I mentioned it? Because studies have shown that kids who had candida issues in their gut, gastrointestinal issues, they really were deficient in these vitamins, including vitamin A. So having vitamin A is gonna help you to really fight candida in addition to the other factors which we talked about. And another great source of vitamin A is cod liver oil. Yes, yes. And unfortunately when I was growing up, I got a gulp of cod liver oil every day. And I must say the modern cod liver oils don't have that fishy taste, which is so don't be afraid of cod liver oil anymore. You know it's so funny you said, when I was little boy in our school, every morning we used to come and they give us things that, you know? Yeah, yeah, everybody had to do it. And you had to hide the flavor because it was pretty bad. So tell me, you've been at this a long time. What's the latest things you're working on? What's the latest breakthroughs that we should pay attention to? Because for most people, they never even heard about fungi and the gut. They know about candida. What's happening? You know, thank you for asking this question. I really, first of all, when we observe that, okay, they come play together the bad guys, they make biofilms. Now I'm starting to look at, okay, how can we develop ways to get rid of this biofilm? And I put a grant for the National Institute of Health and I can tell you, I'm happy to tell you that I just got funded. Congratulations. Thanks. It's a big deal, folks. To look at the interaction between bacteria and fungus in our gut, especially Crohn's disease. Because once we know this, we are gonna be able to come out with method, even better method than we currently have. So it's exciting to do this. Because you and I can't swallow a dental hygienist to go down there and pick at the biofilms. Absolutely, absolutely. We published a paper in April of 2019 and where we developed a probiotic. And I have for the sake of transparency, it's a company which I co-founded called Biome Health, BIOHM Health. And we showed that this probiotic, which not only have bacteria, but also have fungi, good bacteria and good fungi, is able to break this biofilm, you know? So it was published in Mbio, it's an American site for microbiology journal. And I think we are really moving in the right direction, not only in this, but also trying to understand in other situations of where the dysbiosis happens, you know? So, all right, so that's exciting and it's okay to give yourself a shameless plug. So, all right, so how do people find you? Where's the book? Tell us. Okay, you can find it, of course, in Amazon, bars and novels, but also there is TotalGutBook.com. You can find it also. If people would like to learn more, there is, I have a website called Dr. Microbiome, which really describes different ways how you can control your gut and also there is a community built where people help each other and this sort of thing. So do you have a lot of Candida suffering? People visit your site? You know, a lot of people, I must say, they call me and they tell me about Candida and I try to, as like you did, alleviate their fears, you know, and try to help them, what's the best way? We don't have to have a pill for everything. We are able to hopefully do something without that except in extreme cases. Wow, we don't have to have a pill for everything? Yeah, you and I both figured that out a few years ago, I guess, and good for you for telling people that we don't have. Actually, before we go, what about this notion that once you get Candida, you will never get rid of it and you will have chronic Candida the rest of your life and it's in you forever and that's it. Good luck. I don't agree with that. I really don't agree with it. I think because I did an experiment with my students once and I said, I want to take samples of your mouth, you know, just I want to see who has Candida and guess what? 50% of the students, they are healthy, sport playing guys, they have Candida and they are healthy. So to me, if you have Candida in your gut, it's okay if it is at low level. The only problem is if it starts to overgrow and you start to have, for example, digestive issues, constipation, bloating and whatever, then you need to start to look at that. But don't worry, Candida is a good guy. You know, one last thing I want to say about this is Candida, I call it the, it is the organism that cause infection of the immunocompromised. If your immunity is down, you may have issues, but if you don't, don't worry, you should be fine. Follow-up question. What do you tell all these folks who watch TV and see every immunosuppressive drug known to mankind to treat every autoimmune disease, should they be more aware of Candida in them? I think if you are immunocompromised and there is Candida, as long as it is at low level, which you can know about it, there is a test. Again, I'm going to give a shameful, we, this company, which I mentioned by you, we do got testing where we are able to evaluate both our heavy profile of bacteria and fungus. And if it is low, don't worry, it's okay. It's fine to watch it, but you don't have to be really paranoia to have paranoia about this. Okay. That's what I think. Very good. All right, now at the end of our program, we always have an audience question, so, you know, we've got fans from around the world. And here's a question from Tore Schelebold, who asks, is IGF-1 in red meat equally present in game like elk and deer as in beef? Well, now, wait a minute. So IGF-1 is a growth hormone and it is present in, for instance, human milk. It's much more present in cows' milk and sheep milk and goat milk than in human milk because baby cows have to grow quickly to avoid wolves, for instance, and elk have lots of IGF-1 in their milk. When I write about animal proteins like beef or even fish or even chicken, the more animal protein-specific amino acids that you eat, in general, the more IGF-1 you will produce. But IGF-1, per se, the hormone is not the big factor in beef. So the answer to your question is eating elk or deer, you're going to have the same animal proteins that would promote an increase in IGF-1 as you would in beef. I think maybe your question is about the sugar molecule, a Nu5G, which is present in the blood vessels of beef, lamb, and pork, cattle, lamb, and pork, but it's not present in fish and chickens that we can have an autoimmune reaction to that causes another theory of coronary artery disease and autoimmune attack on our blood vessels. It's also present in deer and elk, unfortunately. So on the other hand, deer and elk, if you actually got it wild, it's gonna be far better for you because it's not farm raised on grains and soybeans and given antibiotics. But word of caution, most elk and deer that you buy at a restaurant, as well as bison, is farm raised, so just be cautious. And you can go compete with wolves anytime you want, coming from the Midwest, go get an elk tag if you want to. So. All right, so that's it for the Dr. Gundry podcast. Stay tuned for next week episode, but tell your friends about this because there's some really great myth-busting today going on, and I want everybody to hear this one. Thank you again, Dr. Gundry. Thank you very much. It's really good expression. 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.