 Well, yeah, so I mean, I wrote about this in the plant paradox that I had this gentleman in his 60s, bad diabetic, came in with a heart attack, scheduled him for surgery the next morning, we're in the pre-op room and the guy is trembling like a leaf and he says, I can't go through this. And I've learned enough that if somebody is that terrified, don't go put him to sleep and do it because something probably is not going to work out very well fear. So I said, okay, I'll make you a deal. I said, you got to follow everything I do, tell you to do. And if you do it, I can guarantee you I will not have to operate on you. But if you don't do it, you know, you're coming back here and we're going to do this. Well, that was now 10 years ago. He's not a diabetic. He has no coronary artery disease. He comes in twice a year now and we do stress tests on him. And he became one of my best patients. He was going to do a heart surgery. Yeah, we were wheeling him into surgery and the guy's shaking like a leaf. I don't think I can do this. I said, okay, here's the deal. Wow. That's crazy. Oh, yeah, we always reminisce. He says, you know, it's been 10 years now and I followed what you told me and I said, yeah, here you are. You don't have a scar in your chest. I said, you're really bad for business. So what were the few things you told him that he went out and did? Was there like some specific exact things he did? Yeah. Well, I do this in all my books. My staff always told me, don't say this story because if people get the wrong idea. Jacqueline, I got to know Jacqueline late in his life. He was actually an advisor to our Arthritis Institute in Palm Springs. So, you know, Jacqueline was the godfather of fitness. I mean, come on, let's give him a stew. The juicer. Yeah, the juicer. That was his big mistake, but anyway. So, Jacqueline used to have this expression is that if it tastes good, spit it out. And my, you know, I obviously like to sell books and my, you know, my staff, don't say that because then they think they're going to eat twigs and weeds and it's going to taste awful and, you know, you got to eat bad tasting food. Well, that's not what he meant. He actually meant that you should not be eating for this two inch by three inch piece of muscle, your tongue, but you should be eating for the microbiome for the bacteria and all the other cute little viruses that actually live in your gut, live in your mouth, live on your skin. And if you eat for them, they will take care of you because you are actually their home. We're merely a condominium for bugs. And how many bugs do we have on our body? So, yeah, we have well over 100 trillion bacteria and since the human microbiome project was, you know, finished about five years ago now, I mean, we didn't know that these guys really existed. In fact, I was on my podcast, the Dr. Gunry podcast, we had Dr. David Kessler, who was head of the FDA in the Reagan years, who made the guidelines for the labels, the labeling laws on the back of packages that, you know, show saturated fats and carbohydrates. And the labels, by the way, if we get into this are completely wrong. They were forced on the Reagan administration by big food companies. And so anyhow, if you feed bacteria what they want to eat, and that's all in the longevity paradox, they will take care of you. They will not, they'll take care of the wall, the lining of your gut, and they, you will not actually age, which is kind of cool. So if you take care of them, of the bugs in your body, you will not age. Right. So you got 100 trillion bacteria. You have over 10,000 different species of bacteria. And just last year, they discovered another thousand. So who knows? Right. So 99% of the genetic material that exists in you and me is non-human genetic material. We're only, our genes are actually so unimportant. It's kind of humorous. And when people take a family history, what they're actually finding out is if you, if your parents taught you how to eat, and most people's parents teach the kids how to eat, and your parents had diabetes, or your parents had high blood pressure, or your parents had coronary artery disease, and you eat like your parents did, the odds are that you will do that. Right. For two reasons, the food choices that you made, but more importantly, you inherited your bacteria from your parents and actually your siblings. And so it's not the genes of your parents that mean you are susceptible to heart disease or Alzheimer's or whatever. Right. It's not the genes of your parents. It's typically the, the foods they ate that you're probably eating the exact same foods that cause the same type of problems. Correct. Yeah. I mean, there are, there is an Alzheimer's gene, and my program, according to Dale Bredesen, is the best way not to activate that gene. And there are certain genes that people inherit that make the world's meanest, nastiest, stickiest cholesterol that most doctors don't even measure. And oh, by the way, if you're prescribed a statin drug, you know, a lipid lowering drug, it actually worsens the center particle. So yeah, there are genes, but there's such a small part. Nature Magazine had a big article in late 2018, I think proving that only about seven or 8% of what will happen to us is based on our genes. And 97 or 98% of what's going to happen to us is based on our environment and our food choices. Yeah. Our decisions. Our decisions. Yeah. Now, you said we can, you know, aging is essentially a choice is what I'm hearing you say. But if someone watching this saying, well, Dr. Gundry, you've got white hair, you look older than when you were 10 years old. Yes. So how can, how can you say that you're, you can eat certain things that can reverse aging or can make you not age when you look older than when you were younger? That's true. I am definitely chronologically older. But recently on my podcast, I had Dr. Terry Walls, who I think is very famous, rightfully so, for reversing her MS, her multiple. Wow. Sclerosis. And she did it via diet. She did it initially by eating nine cups of vegetables a day. And I, I dare people to try to eat nine cups of vegetables a day. A lot of fiber, right? A lot of fiber. And we'll get back to fiber because I think that's probably the key. And this is actually what Jacqueline was trying to say, if it tastes good, spit it out. And Terry became famous for telling people that she, when you look in the toilet every morning, you should see a very large coiled snake looking back up at you. And in fact, in the plant paradox in the original manuscript, I had said, when you look in the toilet, you should see a giant anaconda looking back up at you. And my editor, Julie Wills, you know, called me up. She said, do you know there's a movie where an anaconda is coming out, coming out of the toilet? And I said, oh, yeah. She said, I don't think we want that visual in your book. And she said, let's, let's take that out. So, but what we didn't know, what you didn't know, I didn't know is that that giant coiled snake is not the fiber and the roughage that we ate. It's actually bacteria that have eaten the fiber. No way. And the bacteria inside of us. Oh, yeah. That's coming out. That's coming out. So most of your poop is, if you will, baby bacteria. No way. And so the more. So we want to get the bacteria out of us? No, you want them to grow and prosper. And the more they grow and prosper. It sounds like aliens in our body. It's like, you know, you're absolutely right. And one of the things that is kind of hard to embrace is we, we probably only exist as a place for bacteria to live on earth. And, you know, intelligent. If there was no bacteria inside of us, we're done. We would die. So we know that we can breed germ-free mice. An interesting fun fact that I put in the longevity paradox. My fifth grade science project was to build a germ-free mouse environment. This was in 19, 1960. And so this isn't my first rodeo. So, so we can build, we can raise germ-free mice that have no bacteria in them, have no bugs in them. And they live short lives. Really? They have horrible immune systems. They get sick. They get sick. Yeah. And they, so they're basis of so much of what we know. And so you can, so bacteria are incredibly important. And we know now that these bacteria actually teach our immune system from day one. In fact, scary. We used to think that the placenta, where the, you know, the baby, the womb, the uterus, that feeds the baby is sterile. Of course that has to be, because the baby has to be sterile. The placenta is full of bacteria. Feeding the baby. Feeding the baby. And it turns out that the bacteria in the placenta actually give information to the baby's immune system before the baby even pops out of the womb. And so we need these viruses, these good viruses. We need these viruses and bacteria. We need them. And in fact, fun fact, long ago the only way to treat bacterial infections were viruses that could actually infect bacteria and kill viruses. And Eli Lilly company from Indianapolis got its start, this giant pharmaceutical company, as what's called a bacteriophage company. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria. And it turns out that viruses actually are really useful in us as well. We have trillions and trillions and trillions of viruses in us right now. What's the difference between a good virus and a bad virus? If the good virus is doing what it's supposed to do. Okay, let's do a deep dive into microbiology. Okay. And what is the definition of virus? Okay, so a virus is probably the smallest reproducible form of life. However, we want to define life. So most living things are capable of reproducing themselves one way or another, dividing or multiplying one way or another. Just like humans. Exactly. So a virus unfortunately cannot replicate itself. It has to borrow another cell and take over the cell's machinery to manufacture more copies of viruses. And that's how they get reproduced. But in the end, every living creature is here just to make a new copy. And you and I only exist was to make a new copy. And I hopefully actually only exist so my bacteria can make new copies of themselves. I'm a condominium for my inhabitants. And if they're happy and I'm a good landlord to them, they will keep the place nice. They actually would like me to stick around a very long time because I'm their home. So if I give them my tenants what they want, they'll keep me around. Okay. All right. So getting back to Terry Walls. Yes. So Terry Walls and her giant Anacondas. And whenever we do a podcast with her from Iowa, she has these dolls of poop. Really? I gotta read this person. So we've become friends through the years and our diets recommendations are very similar and becoming more and more similar as time goes on. And recently, she and her wife began doing time-restricted feeding. For the last 18 years, during the winter, I only eat calories two hours a day. So 22 out of 24 hours, I'm not eating any calories. And I've done that for 18 years now. So that's pretty interesting time-restricted feeding. Time-restricted feeding means you limit the number of hours you eat in the day. So she and we had talked about this. So she and her wife actually really started doing this. And I see her about once a year. And I noticed on the podcast, she looks the best I have ever seen her. And so we're talking about this. And she said, well, you know, I started after kind of reading and listening and longevity paradox. This is something real. And not just me, other people have done this. And we started doing it. And I started doing it. And then my wife said, there's something here. I'm going to join you. And they have kids. And now she's saying, our kids have noticed that we are getting younger. And I said, well, you know, you're right. I said, because I've known you through the years and you clearly are younger now than when I knew you a few years ago. And she said, yeah, our kids noticed. And they're calling us Benjamin Button because we're de-aging. So I think this whole anti-aging thing is wrong. I think it is really quite possible to de-age. And as I talk about in the longevity paradox, what's fascinating is that, and you can prove this in animal models, that you age as your microbiome changes, number one, but more importantly, that the wall of your gut is, should be impermeable even though it's only one cell thick. And the surface area of your gut, my gut is the same as a tennis court. So inside of you and me is a tennis court, surface area. And the problem is that that wall of our gut is only one cell thick. And these cells are held together with tight junctions. Best example for anyone who's no longer young is Red Rover, Red Rover, which we all played as a kid where we locked arms and people ran across and a big guy locked you. I always ran through. Oh, yeah. Let's go. Oh, yeah. And you're the guy, you know, and the two girls, here comes Lewis. And they don't get to play that in school anymore. By the way, it's too dangerous. Oh, right. Yeah. People like that. So they're all locked arm and arm. And as long as they're locked arm and arm, all those, you know, 100 trillion bacteria and all the other toxins stay on their side of the wall. On the other side of the wall, 60 to 70% of all your white blood cells, all your immune system is lined up on that wall. Why? Because that's basically the border. And if your invading army is coming through the border, you want to have your army on the other side. And what's cool is as long as that wall is intact, you do not age. But as that wall becomes leaky, and that's the whole story of leaky gut, then you begin to age. And Pockerty's 2,500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut. And he was absolutely right. All diseases begin and I add on end in the gut. And, you know, that's actually a good segue into a current problem with a virus that we're not used to. And what I've been trying to do with my patients through the years is teach them how to heal their gut. So anybody with an autoimmune disease has a leaky gut, end of story. And I know this and I can say that because we measure 70% of my practice is autoimmune patients. How do you know if you have a leaky gut, if you haven't been tested or say, would you see rashes, would you see? So I got news for you. If you have an autoimmune disease, you have a leaky gut. Gotcha. If you have high blood pressure, you have a leaky gut. If you have coronary artery disease, you have a leaky gut. If you have diabetes, you have a leaky gut. So leaky gut is the cause of everything of all disease. A leaky gut is the cause of all disease. If you cure the leaky gut, you should be able to heal the disease. So far, so good. So how do we heal the leaky gut? Okay, so it's actually, that's the key. Well, and that's why I got so focused on these cute little plant particles called lectins. Yes. And so there's lots of gut healing protocols out there. And what intrigued me was, you know, lectins are a plant defense system and plants have multiple defense systems, but I kind of got interested in lectins and their little proteins that seek out sugar molecules. Love that sugar. Yeah, get rid of it. They are after specific sugar molecules. And interestingly enough, these sugar molecules line our nose, mouth, intestines. They line the lining of our blood vessels. They line our joints. They exist in the space between two nerves where nerves talk to each other. And these proteins are designed, if they can, to stick to these sugar molecules and act, if you will, like a splinter, an irritant. They are also really good at breaking the tight junctions that hold the wall of our gut together. And if you think about it from a plant standpoint, if you had a system where you could make leaky gut in someone who eats you and your immune system got all inflamed and you felt bad or it hurt to move or you got depressed, by the way, leaky gut is the major cause of depression and anxiety. Really? Stress. Dr. Aiman and I went through this on his podcast. And so if you had a predator who was eating you and that predator wasn't doing very well, a smart predator would say, you know, every time I eat this plant or this plant baby, I die. Yeah, I don't feel good. Or I don't reproduce well or I'm not growing well. I'm going to go eat something else. And we also evolved bacteria that enjoy eating lectins. Believe it or not, there's a bacteria that likes to eat gluten. Gluten is a lectin. And so, unfortunately, now in our modern society, we've killed off most of the defense system against lectins. It's to use a football analogy. If I've got my first string defense injured, my second string injured, and now I'm pulling guys out of the stands to be my linebackers and you're a running back, a lectin, man, you know, you score it every time. Yeah, you may be the worst running back in the world, but if there's nobody there to tackle you, you're going to score every time. Thanks so much for watching, but don't go anywhere. This next one is sure to surprise you. Sugar also takes a huge toll on your immune system. And most of us don't know of a very famous study done