 What would happen if you stopped eating bread for 30 days? You know bread is a big no-no on the Plant Paradox program. It's loaded with not only lectins, but sugar. And it contains little to no nutritional value, absolutely none. But I know for most people it's a comfort food that goes with just about anything. And don't get me wrong, it's delicious. I love the stuff, but it's absolutely not worth any of the negative health effects. In fact, even if you stopped eating bread for just one month, you would notice some remarkable changes to your health. For starters, you would start to lose weight. Why? Because there are actually four teaspoons of sugar in every slice of bread. That means your simple healthy sandwich has eight teaspoons of sugar, even though it's not on the label. Sugar is empty calories, which means fat gain. Eight teaspoons of sugar just in the bread of the sandwich. Bread can send your glycemic index soaring. Believe it or not, bagels can spike your blood sugar levels faster than a candy bar, honest. And eating bread makes it very, very difficult to lose weight. Let me give you an example. I have a patient who is a very thin woman. She has rheumatoid arthritis. She got rid of her rheumatoid arthritis. Her markers for rheumatoid factor became negative, but she and her husband felt correctly that she needed to gain some weight. And so I speak with them. I see them every three months. In the last three months, she's done a remarkable job of gaining weight. She's actually gained about 10 pounds, which for her is a lot of weight. And she looks better in terms of her weight than she did before. She was very thin. And how did she do it? She started eating bread. Now, that's the good side of the story. The bad side of the story is that her rheumatoid arthritis has now flared dramatically and her rheumatoid markers are sky high again. Why? Because she wanted to gain weight and she knew that bread would do it for her. The side effect of the bread was all those lectins caused leaky gut and it reactivated her rheumatoid arthritis. Now, don't despair. We've got a plan that we can keep the weight on, but get her rheumatoid arthritis gone. But that's to get rid of the lectin in bread. And I'll give you some alternatives in a minute. One of the biggest benefits of cutting bread from your diet has to do with the fact that you're dodging tons of lectins. Now, gluten is the most famous of the lectins in wheat, rye, barley, and oats. But there are other offenders that are just as mischievous. In fact, if you're eating whole grains or all wheat bread, then you're getting a really nasty guy called wheat germ aglutin or WGA. This actually can get through the wall of your gut even if your gut is not leaky. And WGA actually attaches to insulin receptors on fat cells and opens the door to allow sugars into fat cells without any problem. And it just keeps the door open. So it's almost every time you eat whole wheat, you're just opening the door on fat cells to store fat. That's not a great idea. Now, the other thing that you'll notice is that when you eliminate the lectins in wheat, rye, barley, and oats in these breads, you will actually notice that your brain works much better. And that's because leaky gut actually causes leaky brain. And we can measure this in people's blood work. We can actually see the leaky gut leading to leaky brain. And you actually have your immune system attacking your own brain. So getting rid of lectins, less leaky gut, less brain fog, and less weight gain. Now, I know it's easier said than done. But there are a few alternatives that could keep you on track even through the worst cravings. And I'm not talking about gluten-free bread. Gluten-free bread is loaded with other lectins. In fact, one of the most famous studies in celiac disease, which is the extreme form of gluten intolerant, took people with biopsy-proven celiac disease. They were put on a gluten-free diet for a year and a half. That included gluten-free foods and breads. At the end of a year and a half, they were re-biopsy. 70% of people on a gluten-free diet still had celiac disease. Still had celiac, even though they were gluten-free. Why? Because their gluten-free foods had other lectins that were still causing the gut damage. So if you see the words gluten-free, don't say, oh, that's fine for me, that's just as big a problem. The second problem with gluten-free foods is they actually add more sugar than the original product to make it palatable. And as anyone who's tried a lot of gluten-free foods can tell you, is that for the most part these don't taste very good. Now the good news is really because of the plant paradox and its acceptance and the results that people have had, companies are producing breads and pasta products that are not only tasty but are actually good for you. For instance, Jillian Bakery Bread, please read the labels. California Country Gal, Bread Seriously, all make lectin-free options which are really great tasting. Or you can make your own bread and I have an episode all about it right here on my YouTube channel. And if you're craving other grain-based things like chips and crackers, cassava flour or coconut flour are great alternatives and we have recipes in all the books on how to make these crackers. Brands like Jillian Bakery make crackers. Love crackers are perfectly fine. Flacker crackers are perfectly fine and uprising food crackers. These are just a few to name a many. And you can start finding these in grocery stores. You can start finding these in Thrive Market and Whole Foods. You can find them on Amazon. Just take the time to look for these alternatives. There are more and more pasta alternatives. Cappellos which uses almond flour is one of the originals. You can find that in the frozen food sections of many grocery stores now, certainly at Whole Foods. There are a variety of Shirataki noodles which use a konjac root fiber. Miracle noodles is one of the most famous ones. Jovial cassava pasta. Jovial like a happy person have a variety of dried pastas which have fantastic mouth feel that you're looking for. So these are great alternatives that are now available. So you're not going to suffer by giving up bread. You're going to prosper by giving up bread. So do the challenge for me. Give up bread and bread products for a month and watch what happens. You'll be absolutely delighted and your body will thank you for it. What happens if you stop eating sugar for 30 days? Well I'll tell you, sugar is everywhere. It's not just in things like candies and desserts but it's hiding in so called healthy foods too like bagels, flavored yogurts and instant oatmeal. And it's absolutely detrimental to your health. But what if you could cut out sugar for a full 30 days? Well I'll tell you this. You would notice some remarkable changes to your health and your appearance. For starters it would be doing your gut a huge favor. Let me give you an example in terms of health. Years ago there was a study in which participants were asked to take about 100 grams of sugar. Now that sounds like a lot but it's actually far less than is typical for an American diet. One group of participants actually had to have some glucose. Another group had to have some fructose, fruit sugar. Another group had to have a glass of orange juice. Healthy, right? They drew blood on these participants every hour for six hours. And they looked at the white blood cells or immune cells ability to eat phagocetize bacteria and viruses. And lo and behold for up to six hours after having sugar including a healthy glass of orange juice that everybody thinks improves your immune system it completely blocked the ability of white blood cells to eat bacteria and viruses. The very things that are threatening our health. So imagine that that healthy glass of orange juice that you were doing to improve your immune health actually did the exact opposite. It sabotaged your health. Now bad bacteria in your gut absolutely love simple sugars. They have the ability to use them to grow and crowd out the good bacteria in your gut that actually can't use simple sugars. So the more simple sugars in your diet the more bad gut bacteria proliferate and push away the good bacteria that really you need. If you really want to see what happens when bad bacteria get a hold of sugar you can actually watch my science experiment right here on your YouTube channel in which we actually show the effect of giving bacteria and other denizens in your gut the sugar you want. It's quite dramatic and I hope you tune in and watch it. So when you see what's happening with bacteria and other denizens of your gut eating sugar and see the bloating and the gas at this cause it's no wonder that sugar many times is actually the cause of irritable bowel syndrome IBS and other leaky gut issues. Remember Hippocrates knew this 2,500 years ago for those of you who don't know Hippocrates is the father of medicine. And he always said 2,500 years ago that all disease begins in the gut. So knowing this and he was right by the way we want to give our friendly bacteria the foods they want and deny the bad bacteria the foods they want and it's simple as sugar. Now another important point when you're looking at labels and looking for sugar stop looking at sugar what you want to look at is total carbohydrates. Take total carbohydrates take away the fiber that's the next line down. Total carbohydrates minus the fiber will give you the amount of sugar in that serving. And here's the shocker it won't have anything to do with what it says sugar on the bottom. This was changed by the federal government to hide the amount of sugar. For example a bagel has about 300 calories and it says zero sugar. But in fact there's anywhere from 11 to 13 teaspoons in a bagel. There's four teaspoons of sugar in one piece of bread even though it doesn't taste sweet. That's because refined grains like wheat are so pulverized into fine particles that they instantly become sugar. In fact a piece of wool wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than tables sugar. It's that effective as a sugar source. So if you stopped eating sugar your gut bacteria would change dramatically. And what would you notice? Well the first thing you'd notice is that your digestion would change dramatically. The second thing you'd notice is your skin. Now why would you notice your skin? Well first of all the gut and your skin are exactly the same cells. Your gut is basically your skin turned inside out. And what happens on the surface of the gut is reflected on the skin. In fact there's good correlation between sugar consumption and acne breakouts for example. But more importantly sugar is the key component to what are called advanced glycation end products. Which are appropriately named AGES, A-G-E's, Apostrophe S. Advanced glycation products form from the sugar you eat and the protein you eat combined with heat in your body. And this makes one of the strongest chemical bonds that's ever been described. It's called the Mallard reaction. That chemical bond stiffens things, stiffens your skin, stiffens wrinkles and is actually the cause of dark spots on your skin. Some people call them sun spots, some people call them liver spots. These are actually advanced glycation end products that are deposited in your skin. By the way they're also deposited in your brain, they're deposited in your heart, they're deposited in your blood vessels and they stiffen your blood vessels. So what happens when you remove sugar? People are absolutely shocked when their dark spots start going away. In fact one of my famous patients was driving from Oregon to Palm Springs after doing this for six months. And he was driving his RV and his wife said, George, look at your hands. And he turned the steering wheel to look at his hands and almost ran off the road. And what she was pointing out to him that all of his liver spots and dark spots had disappeared in six months time. Because he had stopped eating sugar, causing advanced glycation end products. So if you want to age rapidly, eat your sugar. If you want to age slowly, stop eating sugar. Your skin will thank you. You will shock your friends on how much younger you look just by eliminating sugar. Last but not least, weight loss. Sugar is absolutely one of the leading causes of obesity in the United States. It's full of empty calories that offer no nutritional value. It actually stimulates your body to create extra fat and it actually tricks your brain into craving more of it. In fact studies in rats show that rats will preferably push a lever to get sugar instead of either heroin or cocaine. Now think about that, pushing a lever to get sugar instead of heroin or cocaine. This hits your pleasure center in your brain better than heroin or cocaine. Finally, we now know that the sugar industry for many years paid prestigious institutions like Harvard to tell people and write papers that sugar had no effect on health, had no effect on weight loss even though the evidence was overwhelming that it did. These professors and researchers took big sugar money to lie to us and this made big news a few years ago. So the point is if you stop sugar for 30 days, your gut health would improve, your skin would improve and your weight would most likely improve. So it's not what I tell you to eat that's important, it's what I tell you not to eat. That's rule number one. So the first thing is don't eat grains, period. No grains. Zero grains. Zero grains and that includes rice, that includes corn. I just gave a paper at the American Heart Association three weeks ago at the lifestyle and epidemiology annual meeting where we looked at people with leaky gut and they had already been on a gluten-free diet. So that means they were avoiding wheat, rye and barley and they still had leaky gut. Are they eating rice if not gluten? Right. Yeah, rice doesn't have gluten. Quinoa doesn't have gluten. Buckwheat doesn't have gluten. Corn doesn't have gluten. But we test these people, 70% of people who react to gluten will react to corn as if it was gluten. Wow. And I see so many people who are eating gluten-free who still have autoimmune disease and or leaky gut. So when in this paper we took away not only their gluten but all leptomes, major leptomes, and that includes the nightshade family, unfortunately. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kind of the Tom Brady diet to use another football example. He eats very similar to my program. Take away peanuts and cashews, which are beans. And have people, if they're going to eat beans, pressure cook their beans. Pressure cooking will destroy all leptomes except gluten. And then we take away certain milk products, American cow milk products. And we showed in this paper that not only will they heal their leaky gut, which just by removing those things. But in 9 out of 10 people that we've now retested multiple occasions, they no longer react to gluten by their immune system. Now, I'm not saying that, guess what? If you follow my protocol, then you can have all the bread that you want. No. But it is intriguing that you can re-educate the immune system to not get interested anymore because the gut is sealed. So you could have it once in a while and it shouldn't affect it or penetrate through. Correct. But if you keep doing it every day, every meal, then it's going to penetrate through. It's going to be the same thing. So zero grains, no rice, no corn. Until you heal the gut, then maybe every once in a while. Yeah. And then what we do is we actually ask people, okay, let's reintroduce something. Yeah. And see. How do you feel? Yeah. Don't get too comfortable, though. Don't get too comfortable. And what we do in really bad autoimmune folks is that we will, you know, we're every three to six months, we're re-testing their leaky gut and their autoimmune status. I mean, it's really kind of humorous. Sometimes we see that when people re-introduce things, their leaky gut starts again. I'll give you a great example, a personal example. A couple years ago when we first started doing autoimmune testing, we obviously do it on ourselves. And so I did it on myself and my staff comes running in. So, oh my gosh, you know, Dr. Gundra, you have lupus. I said, I don't have lupus. Come on, you know, where's the lupus? And they said, no, no, no, you know, you're positive for anti-nuclear antibody, which is one of the good markers for lupus in autoimmune condition. And I'm going, well, you know, that's interesting. My family, my father's side of the family has massive psoriasis. My dad was on methotrexate for 51 years. Was it like a steroid or like a cream? Yeah, it's one of the immunosuppressants. Wow. Yeah, he was on an immunosuppressant. So you would have psoriasis all over you? Yeah, well, you would have psoriasis everywhere. Wow. And so I said, and my aunt had it and my cousins had it. So I'm going, you know, that makes sense. I obviously have a predisposition to an autoimmune disease. And I said, I think I'll turn it off because I'm always experimenting with food. That's my job. And so I ate perfectly. I followed the rules for two weeks, remeasured my anti-nuclear antibody, done, gone, turned off. How many weeks? Two weeks. Wow. I said, yeah, that's pretty interesting. So we actually did a study that we presented at the American Heart two years ago of 102 patients with biomarker-proven autoimmune disease, like anti-nuclear antibody, like rheumatoid arthritis, like Hashimoto's, Kelly Clarkson, just to give you an example. And retested them at six months. And most of these people were on immunosuppressants, like what you see on TV every day and we could... Drugs. Drugs. Yeah. And in six months' time, 95 out of the 102 people were negative for their marker of autoimmune disease and they were off their drugs. Wow. 94% success rate. That's not bad. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. So then, so two years ago, I was in New York City working on, actually, the longevity paradox. And I said, you know, I need to re-challenge myself. Let me... You know, things are going great. So I was there for about four days. I had pizza, I had bread, I had ice cream, I had pasta, I had tomatoes. It tastes good. And I felt fine. So I come running back on a Monday to the office and I have them draw my blood. Boom! I'm positive for anti-nuclear antibody again. Wow. And I went, oh, shucks. And I said, well, this is interesting. I'm going to turn it off. So I ate normally for two weeks, retested. Boom! Turned off. Wow. So when I give pronouncements on autoimmune disease, one colleague came up to me one time. She said, what do you know about autoimmune disease? How dare you talk about autoimmune disease? Well, you know, I can make mine come and go. And that's the point. You can stop these things. And all it is is a manifestation of leaky gut. Wow. Okay, so three things you said so far of leaky gut. I'm hearing you say no rice or corn with zero grains, no nightshades, which are tomatoes. Does that mean like tomato sauce or things are prepared certain ways? Yeah. So here's the deal. Peel and deseed your tomatoes. Peel and deseed your peppers. The Southwest American Indians always peel and deseed their peppers before they eat them or grind them into chili. They've known that from time immemorial. The Italians always peel and deseed their tomatoes before they make sauce. And I get to interview chefs all over Italy. Yeah. They all say, you know, you got it. We do this. Yeah, you got to do this. And I say, well, how do you know you got to do this? Wow, my mother. We just know. Yeah. My mother taught me. My grandmother taught her. Yeah. They know. Now here's something that's interesting. Peanuts and cashews. I'm a big fan of peanuts. And I think the last time you came on, maybe the first time you came on, you were like, you can't eat peanuts anymore. And I didn't eat them because I was having like little rashes every now and then. And I was thinking it was probably like the almond butter, nut butter. Consuming so much almond butter and peanut butter. And so I really cut back and I was like, okay, no peanut butter for a while and cut back on almond butter and felt fine. About a couple of months ago, I started eating a lot more peanut butter and noticed it started coming back. And so I shut it off again and it went away. Now, why is peanut butter an issue? Why is it such a big thing? So 94% of human beings are born with an antibody to the peanut lectin. And so now you go, so most of us inherit an antibody against the peanut lectin. And you go, well, wait a minute, when I was growing up and probably when you were growing up, very few people had peanut allergies. Mm-hmm. Now, everybody's got peanut. Well, because our immune system used to be taught by our gut microbiome that, hey, you know, there's some nasty stuff out there, but we got your back and we're going to handle it long before you ever have to deal with it. And you just, you know, let's just, you know, use a Southern California example. There's a bunch of kids on the beach and they got a bonfire, not in the time of social distancing. Right. And they're having a great time and the cops are, you know, looking at the beach. Oh, yeah, we know those kids are good kids. You know, they're not troublemakers. We'll go have a donut and a smoke and just chill. So compare that, that you're in a disadvantaged part of a community and there's gang members and there's shooting. And the cops, everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise. And the cops approach you with, you know, an oozy rather than an ice cream cone. And what's happened to us is that for the most part, our lines of defense against bad things like a peanut lectin are gone. Our gut is leaky so that our cops are always on hyper alert. So a little benign little peanut lectin comes in now. It breaks through. And the cops go, oh my gosh, you know, kill it, kill it. Right. And that's why we got EpiPens with all of our little kids. Wow. Now, the same thing happens. We, most of us, number one, don't have a great microbiome that is able to fend off viruses, fend off bacteria like they should. After all, they're defending their home. Right. But more importantly, probably, because most of us have leaky gut, most of our immune system that should be up in our nose and our mouth protecting us against a virus is down in our gut, attacking whatever is coming through the wall of our gut. And it's completely distracted. Now, where I'm going with this is you hear on the news that people with chronic medical conditions are the people who are most susceptible to viruses in general, to the flu, to the coronavirus, to whatever. And well, why is that? Why would having high blood pressure make you susceptible, more susceptible to dying from a virus? That actually doesn't make any sense. But if having high blood pressure is actually a sign that you have a leaky gut and that most of your immune system is actually down in your gut rather than patrolling the periphery like it should, and your immune system is, I mean, all the troops are down distracted, then it makes completely sense that you would be susceptible to this. And let me give you a great story. Years ago, I was at the, I present a lot of papers at the microbiota meeting in Paris every year, and there was a fascinating paper that there are smelling neurons, olfactory neurons that live in our nose, that live in our kidneys and live in our heart. And you go, well, why would my kidneys need to smell anything? Why would my heart need to smell anything? And it actually intrigued me until I realized in writing my next book, which is called The Energy Paradox, that these smelling organs in our kidneys and our heart smell bacterial farts, the fermentation products of bacteria. And they can smell good farts and they can smell bad farts. And if they smell bad bacteria farts, they actually activate the blood pressure system to make your blood vessels more rigid and give you high blood pressure. And what was striking to me, and I didn't know the reason way back when, is when I had people with high blood pressure and we put them on my program, one of the first things, the first calls I would get is, what are you giving me? What supplement are you taking that's making me lightheaded and dizzying? And, you know, I look at my nurse and I look at me and I'm going, there isn't a supplement that does that. You know, come on into the office, let's see. And of course their blood pressure is really low. And we go, okay, you know, let's cut that high blood pressure bill in half. And then they call back a couple weeks later and say, I'm dizzy again and we bring them back in, sure enough their blood pressure is low. Okay, let's give her that blood pressure. What we were doing is we were changing the bacterial signals in their gut and they were now getting, if you will, good farts that they were smelling in their kidneys and their blood vessels were reacting. And we eventually developed tests that we could prove that in fact that happens and publish that data as well. So this is not science fiction, it's not conjecture. And so we now know that there's this incredible symbiotic organism that is us and the more we learn about the really important part of us, the more it almost makes sense on how we work. And returning to Dr. David Kessler, the head of the FDA, he said, you know, when you and I, Steve, were going through medical school, we were taught that the intestines was just a hollow tube and all they were there for was to absorb protein, fat and carbohydrates, end of story. That's all we were taught. And he says, who could have guessed that, you know, living down there were 100 trillion five pounds of bugs that were essential for the functioning of everything. You know, it's like Dr. Amon says, you know, who would have guessed that mental illness is coming from the gut. Wow. Connected. The brain and the gut. Yeah, the gut-brain connection. He said, who would have guessed because all of us thought that's just a tube. And yeah, there's a few bacteria down there and they're really bad and we poop them out and, you know, it's just waste. Right. Now we know. What more than that? They are us. Wow. Now, there's so many things you've covered here that I want to close a loop in a couple of these. I'm trying to figure out the solution to my peanut butter problem. What's the nut butter that I can eat that's actually okay? So is there one? Yeah. So interestingly enough, we have a number of people with rheumatoid arthritis who react to the peel of an almond. There is a lectin and the peel of almonds. You take the peel off. So the skinned almonds are okay. Yeah. So like Marcona almonds. And there are actually a couple of companies that now make peeled almond butter and you can find them. Really? It shouldn't be an issue then. It shouldn't be an issue. Yeah. So if you're going to choose. That's interesting. Yeah. So walnuts are a great choice. Bistachios are a great choice. Every time I eat a walnut, I sneeze. So there are some tannins in walnuts that certain people react to. So stay with Bistachios, macadamia nuts. I love macadamia nuts. They're really good. Okay. Mac nuts are okay. Yeah. So get yourself some peeled almonds. I'm going to do that now. Try it. Okay. You said American milk is something that we should not have in order to fix leaky gut. Yeah. Is there such thing as non-American milk that is okay to drink? Yeah. So most people can have sheep milk, can have goat milk. Interestingly enough, goat milk traditionally was called mother's milk because the components in goat milk are very different than cow milk. They're far more similar to human milk. And so I actually tell mothers if they're going to give their child some animal milk, please make it goat milk rather than cow's milk. Okay. So are there any other foods that we should not eat to heal our leaky gut? So the more you... And I need to talk about this in Planned Paradox as well. Yeah. The more you... There are a few people that actually react to either the white or the yolk of eggs. Most people don't. Okay. But we test for those. And here's just something to throw out. I don't want to cause widespread panic. Yes. There is a... It's already enough of that in the water right now. That's right. Yeah, we have plenty. There is a lectin in spinach that I was unaware of, but thanks to a company called Vibrant America, they discovered that there are a class of lectins called aquaporins. And they're present in tobacco, they're present in spinach, they're present in corn, they're present in soybeans, they're present in green peppers, and I think that's it. Anyhow, they actually can cause leaky gut and they can cause leaky brain. And I stumbled upon this because I have a few people with really bad IBS and really bad autoimmune disease who are saints. They follow my program. They never cheat. Why would they? Why do they still have issues? Yeah, why do they still have issues? And so when we had these new tests, lo and behold, almost every one of these people reacted to spinach. No way. And they ate a lot of spinach. Wow. And knock on wood so far when we took the spinach away from them, that was the key. Now, don't everybody go home and throw out your spinach. But if you're following my program and my program does have spinach in it and we're still having problems, consider giving up spinach. There's no human need for spinach. Now, you said, what was her name? Is she a doctor? Terry? Terry Wall. Terry Wall. You said she was doing like 10 or 12 cups of veggies a day. Yeah, nine cups of vegetables. The snake looking back at you. Yeah. Now, what should those... Now, why is it important to have nine cups of vegetables and what does that do for your microbiome? Your gut every day. So getting back to Dr. David Kessler, head of the FDA. We thought that carbohydrates were carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Sarches were fine because they're complex carbohydrates. Everybody's wrong. Food manufacturers have figured out how to make a complex carbohydrate, a simple carbohydrate, and make you think it's a complex carbohydrate. But when you read a label, number one, if you have to read a label, you're probably... You should put the package back because there shouldn't be a label on a head of lettuce. Right. Give you an example. But you have to take... If the take-home point from this is... We'll say so many people's lives. Read total carbohydrates on the label. Then take away the dietary fiber. That'll be the next thing under it. So that will tell you the amount of grams of sugar per serving in that package. Do not look at where it says sugar. Do not look at added sugar. It is a lie. So it says zero sugar is zero added sugar. Yeah. So let me give you an example that he used on my podcast, which was a great example. He said, let me... What would you find in a store? The label says it's 300 calories. It has zero fat. It has zero grams of sugar. And it has four grams of protein. And it has 35 grams of carbohydrates. Is that broccoli? I don't know. What is that? It's a bagel. A bagel. A bagel. Wow. 300 calories. 300 calories. Wow. Zero sugar. How does that say zero sugar? That's just it. The label law lies to you. It's got 35 grams of carbohydrates. Now, to make that... Which is sugar. It is pure sugar. In fact, it is better than sugar the way it has been manufactured. So to figure out how much that is, there's four grams of sugar per teaspoon. So let's take his 35 grams of sugar. Divide by four. Let's make it easy. Make it 36 grams. That's nine teaspoons of raw sugar in that bagel. A bagel. So that's number one. All of a sudden you have... How many grams of sugar would that be? That's... Well, so a coke, a 12 ounce coke is about 12 grams of sugar. Wow. So you're basically chugging a coke when you eat a bagel. And it'll actually get into your bloodstream faster than if you chugged a coke. No way. How is it going faster when it's just liquid? Because it's been broken down. You actually have to digest the sugar molecule in the coke. You don't have to digest the sugar molecule in a bagel. Really? Yeah, in main lines. So that's number one. Number two, what nobody knew was the bacteria that most of your bacteria live down in your colon and your lower part of your small intestine. And they're waiting for the complex carbohydrates that you do not digest normally. They're waiting for their meal that always used to come. And that meal never comes anymore because everything's been so finely processed that we don't get those complex carbohydrates down to them. So, they starve to death. Now, what's really cool is that those guys take that meal and they make all these really cool compounds that, number one, keep the wall of the gut intact. Allow the wall of the gut to heal itself. They make compounds that actually are text messages to the mitochondria in all of ourselves, and particularly in our brain, that guys down in the engine room are working under full power. And we've got, you know, Scotty, beam me up sort of thing. You know, give me warp drive five. And we've got the power and, you know, it's okay to go into hyperspace. If they don't make those compounds, your mitochondria go, geez, I've got nothing to work with here, and we've got no backup system. I'm going to sputter down to a crawl. And people wonder why they're fatigued even though they're eating more than ever and they're eating all these sports drinks and they're having, you know, 27 cups of coffee and going, you know, where's my energy? And it's because we no longer have this beautifully designed symbiotic relationship and we starve the most important part of us. And that's why Jack Alliance said if it tastes good, spit it out. So why nine cups of vegetables then? Because that is actually giving those guys what they want to eat. Now, Terry didn't know this back then, but her first book was Minding My Mitochondria or Feeding My Mitochondria. But now we know it's actually, we got to feed those guys. We have to eat for them. Mitochondria. We got to eat for the bacteria. They live in our gut. They're back, they're back, so. Not the mitochondria? Yeah. So in the longevity paradox, here's the really scary thing. Mitochondria are actually engulfed ancient bacteria. Wow. Billions of years ago, cells invited bacteria to live inside them. In exchange for a nice place to live, the cells said, we'll give you what you want to eat in exchange for you making ATP energy for us. And obviously it was a good deal. And because that's continued now. So within us, all of our cells have engulfed ancient bacteria that produce energy for us. And what's so really fun is the bacteria in your gut are the sisters of the mitochondria, which are bacteria in our cells. And they actually talk to each other. Okay. And here's what's really cool. You and I inherited our mitochondria from our mother. Dad did not give us any mitochondria. So all mitochondria are female. And if everything went okay, you and I inherited our gut microbiome from our mother, who literally took a crap on us as we exited the birth canal. And everybody kind of knows that. Mom took a crap on me. Ladies, if you hate your mother, no, she didn't take a crap on you. But your mother gives you your initial dose of bacteria. And that's actually why cesarean section babies who don't get that dose take up to six months to get a normal immune system compared to vaginal delivery because they don't have the proper set of bacteria that educate the immune system. That's crazy. Yeah. Now you're speaking about immune system. How can we boost and protect our immune system in time of pandemic, crisis, stress and overwhelm? What are the things we can do right now? So the first thing you do is you absolutely positively stay away from simple carbohydrates. And I can tell you that if it's in a package, it is probably a simple carbohydrate. Even what would appear to be healthy. So plantain chips. No. Can't eat those? Come on. Read the label and it will scare you to death. Will I eat plantain chips? Sure I will, but I will use them as a dipping chip to get guacamole in my mouth. Or olive oil. Or olive oil. Yeah. I know. So stay away from simple carbohydrates. And what's really scary in times of pandemics is the grocery store shelves are empty. A bread and bagels and pasta and tomato sauce. That's good for you. And milk and ice cream and orange juice. There's five to six teaspoons of sugar in a cup of orange juice. So it's actually good when the shelves are cleared of all the bad things. That's right. Believe it or not, right now most of everything in the grocery store is actually good for you. Because it's all been cleared out of all the bad stuff. But what worries me is all that bad stuff is being consumed. The best way to suppress your immune system is sugar. Sugar absolutely suppresses white blood cell function. So please don't eat like that. But luckily the stores are. And the other thing I remind all my listeners is that we are the only creature that needs or uses toilet paper. Right. And if you follow my program. You will need it. You will not need toilet paper. I have many friends that say they don't need a wipe. Yeah. One little piece just to make sure. One little piece just to make sure. Just insurance but you never know. Yeah. And so I know and I've got some issue that I need more than one piece of toilet paper. Yeah. So if you need toilet paper I got news for you. You've got a leaky gut. You're eating the wrong things. You're eating the wrong stuff. So no simple carbs. Essentially if it's in a package it's probably not good. No sugar. It suppresses the immune system. What else? What boosts the immune system? Yeah. So what boosts the immune system? It turns out that olive oil, the polyphenols in olive oil actually really boosts the immune system. So do components of mushrooms. And you know I make one and we'll get you some called M Vitality which is a mushroom extract. But mushrooms in general even the humble button mushroom will actually boost your immune system. And it does that actually by having the sort of complex sugars that your gut bacteria really, really wants and needs. Exactly. And so it's more of an indirect effect. You give your gut bacteria what they want and need. They in turn will tell the immune system hey we got this. And you know relax and enjoy yourself. The other thing, every human being that I see initially with leaky gut or auto immune disease has a low vitamin D level. I had Mark Hyman on my podcast recently and Mark has never seen vitamin D toxicity. I have been measuring vitamin D levels for over 20 years now. I have never seen vitamin D toxicity. You can't have too much necessarily. I have yet to see it. Could it exist? I mean if you have a whole bottle of day maybe it's not good. Actually Dr. Holick from Boston University who is really the world expert on vitamin D has seen it only once and that was in a physician who by accident was taking a million international units of vitamin D3 a day for six months. That's a lot. That's a lot. Now what is that a whole cup full of day? Well he had been getting it from a compounding pharmacist and it had been mislabeled. So he wasn't doing it on purpose. But for instance I run my vitamin D level greater than 120 nanograms per milliliter and I have for 18 years to prove I'm not dead. So many of the labs now are coming around to saying 120 is absolutely normal and it's not vitamin D toxicity. I have patients, I may have told you this story. It's a great story. Years ago I had two people in their late 70s first time and we get vitamin D levels back in those days we can actually quantify the vitamin D level. And the vitamin D was 270, both of them. And you know I'm looking at them and I was young and naive and I'm thinking why aren't these guys dead? And I said you guys take a lot of vitamin D don't you? They said oh yeah, yeah it's an anti-aging vitamin. And I said it actually is. But I said well how long have you been doing that? And they said oh all of our lives. And I'm going you know you look pretty healthy to me. And in theory vitamin D can give you kidney stones, toxic vitamin D levels. I've never seen it but in theory. Any kidney stones? No, why? And the other theory is it makes your fingers and toes numb. And I said any fingers, toes, numb? No, why? And I'm going huh. So that's when I actually started researching vitamin D. And for instance the University of California San Diego says that the average American should take 9600 international units a day to have a safe level of vitamin D. The other thing that's fascinating is most people with cancer have low levels of vitamin D. And there's some very interesting trials of boosting vitamin D in people who have cancer to prevent recurrences. So right now I think everybody should be taking 5,000 international units but right now. A day? A day. Right now we're probably wise to boost it to 10,000 a day. Wow. I'll give you an example last week when this started and I still see patients every day. I took 100,000 units on Monday. I took 50,000 units on Tuesday and I took 25,000 units on Wednesday and then hit 10,000 units. If I feel I'm coming down with something, I will take 150,000 units three days in a row. 50,000 three times a day for three days. That's nearly a half a million international units of vitamin D in three days. Wow. And I'm not dead. I have my patients do the same thing. None of them have died. None of them have gotten vitamin D toxicity. But I can tell you it always cuts whatever. It's one of the most effective antiviral services. The second thing we need to do is we need to get, if you can, time to release vitamin C. Linus Pauling was right. Vitamin C is incredibly antiviral. But what he didn't know is we can't absorb enough vitamin C and keep it in our bloodstream because it comes out very, very quickly. So get yourself some time to release vitamin C. The stores are empty. Amazon's empty. Right. In the future. Barring them. In the future. Barring that. Go to, it's still there. I go to health food stores every day and just kind of check and see what's there and what isn't. Get yourself just the chewable tablets or get the capsules and take it four times a day. Take 500 to 1,000 four times a day. Yeah. It's still better than nothing. It's still better than nothing. Zinc is a great idea. Get about 30 milligrams of zinc. I'm a big fan of Cursitin, sometimes pronounced Cursitin. It's a compound that's present in the white pith of citrus. It's in apples and it's in onions. And it actually may be the compound that the old wives tale on Apple Day keeps the doctor away. So Cursitin is also very antiviral. Okay. And there's an exciting new paper that was just published yesterday that Astaxanthin seems to prevent the inflammatory response to the coronavirus. Astaxanthin, it is a compound that actually makes salmon red and salmon eat algae and plankton that produced Estaxanthin. It's a really cool compound. Wow. Do you think it's possible that we could defend and arm our bodies and our immune system can be so strong that if any virus like the coronavirus came in our mouth and was in us that we could reject it and not attach to our bodies? Correct. That's the whole idea. Really? It's possible to do that. You are designed to defend it, to defend it. Really? It's like a fullback running through just blocking everyone so you can score. Yeah. You are designed to do that. When your immune system is strong, then you don't get sick. You don't get sick. And it doesn't matter how strong the virus is, you should be able to defend against it. It's when it's weak when you start to get sick. That's exactly right. Wow. You have different parts of your immune system lined up on all your mucus membranes ready for what's coming and what's unfortunate is in a lot of our patients with leaky gut and with autoimmune diseases we can actually measure that they're very deficient in the immune system that makes, for instance, IgA, which lines are the walls of our gut and IgM, which is the second line of defense. And we can see that when we get their gut sealed that, wow, their immune system is back. All their numbers are back up to normal. But that's what's happening. So again, the reason people with chronic diseases are susceptible to the virus is not because they have a chronic disease. It's because that is a sign that a leaky gut in your immune system is impaired. I think you're going to love this one. Many of you know that the vast majority of people who die or collapse during marathons don't die from heart attacks. They actually die from hyponatremia.