 So, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. You know, have you ever shrugged off pain because you were just too busy? Or maybe you were just scared about what the doctor might discover? Now, as a doctor, I've just got to say, don't do that. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. No, that's actually not it either. But if you won't take it from me, my guest today is going to tell you how ignoring your body's distress signals can actually be downright dangerous. He's Philip Stutz, an entrepreneur and author who was diagnosed with an extremely rare auto immune disease that actually I happen to know a lot about because I've operated on it many times. That diagnosis turned Philip's world upside down, challenging his relationships, his health, and his sense of purpose. On this episode, Philip and I are going to talk about the steps he's taken to live with his condition and the tools you can use to battle almost any kind of problem in your life. Philip, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Dr. Ben. Good to be here. So, let's start with your diagnosis back in 2012. What happened? Well, the diagnosis was in 2012. I probably had this disease well before that. And I think, you know, it was even said I probably had it for years and years and there was a deficiency. I have eculasia, which is an esophageal disease, where basically the muscles and the nerves in my esophagus do not work. They won't work. They'll never work again. We believe that the doctors have believed that there's something in my gut probably tacked my esophagus and caused us. This affects like one out of 100,000 people. Most of those people are in their 60s, 70s, 80s. I was in my 30s when diagnosed. I've had 15 minor procedures on my esophagus, three major surgeries. The first two surgeries failed and the third one sort of stabilized me and I'll never forget that I was being treated at the Mayo Clinic, the other ones who did the last surgery. And I was about a year after the surgery and I went to the doctor and I said, I know this is an incurable disease. And my long-term outlook on this and they said, well, Phillip, you've got a big problem. We've had to repair you. You've had multiple surgeries. It's not a really good, you're not in a really good place. There is no cure and frankly there's a good chance the next five to 10 years we're going to have to remove your esophagus with the potential of putting a feeding tube in the rest of your life. And this is the moment that I feel like I understand a lot of people going through a lot of health issues because for five, seven years before that, I had never even googled at Galatia. I just said, well, the doctors say to take all this medication. By the way, all the medication has certain long-term dementia effects, a lot of the PPI pills and I was taking a handful of them because the doctor told me to. I remember driving home from the Mayo Clinic and saying something has to change. Like, I don't know what that means, but I've got to change. Well, we'll talk about the process in a minute, but for the first five months, I just flailed around without any kind of strategy to fix the problem. And I was dumping milkshakes basically because I didn't want to eat because it's very hard for me to eat. Yeah, stop there. People who've never heard of Acalasia, how did you discover that something was wrong with your esophagus? I would be eating food and I was like, it was really hard to get the food down. Like I couldn't figure out why. And so I'm chugging water with every bite and it felt like it was sticking. Sticking, sticking in the esophagus. And so I didn't know what was going on. I went to the doctor about it and they said, oh, you just need to go on some medicine, well, the medicine nothing changed. And they said, oh, we need to do the balloon test where they basically expand your esophagus and that didn't work. And then they said, we don't know. So they sent me to Hopkins and Mayo Clinic. And then finally, the diagnosis came a year and a half after I first went to the doctor. Wow, yeah. And you went to multiple doctors. I went to three doctors. Yeah, and they couldn't figure out what was going on. And so I said I had to change. But I didn't know what that meant. Had no data, nothing to back it up. I didn't do any blood tests or anything like that. So I just started taking dairy-based shakes every day because it hurt to eat. So I just wanted to have meal replacements. And then I went to, and this is how we met, was through Peter Diamandis. But Peter Diamandis has a conference called the Abundance 360 Conference. And I went to it in January 2017. And he said, on stage, pull out your notebook and write down a moonshot. And a moonshot is something that people say is impossible, and you plan to make possible. And I'm at this business conference because I have a couple of businesses. And I write down in my notebook, I'll find a cure to this disease in five years. Now, this is the ignorance of an entrepreneur because there is no cure to this disease. It's a rare disease. So there's no money behind it. That's right, you're not going to make any more out of it. And well, there's no money behind research to figure out a cure to this disease. There's nothing, right? So I decided, and Diamandis said two things, right? Or do something immediately to get you some aluminum and go out there and try to get some positive stuff. So I wrote an article for Ink Magazine about how I was playing to cure this disease. Because I felt like it would hold me accountable, right? And so two things happened. That article came out in March of 2017. And a couple of weeks later, Diamandis had a webinar on a new author who had this diet out called the Plant Paradox. And this is true, we'd never met or anything like that. And I go, well, I've got to get my diet in order because I need to get off medication and I need to cure the disease. So there's two different tracks I needed to kind of pursue in this sort of moonshot that I decided to undertake. And so the article produced a lot of flood of people that wrote to me and said, you're crazy. When you say you want to do things like this, most people are negative back at you. But there's one woman read the article, said she had the disease as well, said she knew some doctors, made some calls on my behalf, found a doctor at Johns Hopkins, who I got in touch with. And he said, I believe I can help you find a cure. Now, it may not be a cure, it may be improvement, but improvement has never been done before on this particular disease. And so for the last two and a half years, I've worked with a team from Johns Hopkins to begin, I call it a clinical trial because for the layman it's an easy way of looking at, but it's like a single case that they are putting together where they have extracted stem cells out of my thigh. They'll grow them, they'll culture them, and then they will insert them into my esophagus to try to regenerate, repair a lot of damage, and then regenerate the muscles and the nerves. Now, that started in April of this year, and I just got word that there was a contamination in the lab, and we have to start over again. But the fact is that we're moving towards this single use treatment, which has the potential for a cure. And it all started when I just took my head out of the sand, stopped being paralyzed by fear of the disease, and I couldn't do anything, and decided to take action. And on the diet side, your book spoke to me in a way that nothing else had. And so I, in July of 2000, so two years ago, started the diet. And I no longer take any medications for an incurable disease. Excellent. And through your process, I've improved pretty much all my vitals for everything I have in my life. So this two-track approach I have has really been effective in trying to treat and live with the disease I have. Yeah, you know, the longer I've been doing this now, I think, and I think probably the folks at Hopkins would agree that this is an auto immune disease, that you are attacking your esophagus, probably the junction between the muscles and nerves. And the longer I've been doing this, I'm coming to the realization that almost all disease processes are at their base in autoimmune attack for one reason or another. And let me give you an example. Recently, it's actually a humorous example. There's a very famous cardiologist in LA whose name I will not mention. And he and I share several celebrity patients, their names I will not mention. And this very famous cardiologist thought I was a quack. And celebrities often seek out what people call quacks to give them advice. And so even though I was a very famous professor, blah, blah, blah, and he just thought my whole idea is we're quackery. So he had a patient about a year ago who was an elderly gentleman with atrial fibrillation, which is where the top part of your heart just wiggles uncontrollably. And there is a thought that atrial fibrillation is caused by inflammation of the heart. And there's now pretty good evidence that that's true. And this guy kept coming in to this famous cardiologist saying, I've started this diet, Dr. Gundry's diet. And I went out of atrial fibrillation and I'm in regular sinus rhythm. And the guy says, that's impossible. Let's hook up the EKG. I'm going to put a monitor in you. And sure enough, he's in normal sinus rhythm, without cardioversion, without drugs. And he says, this is all in your mind. And so this guy kind of kept doing that stayed in sinus rhythm. And then he went out to dinner one night and ate kind of off the diet and woke up that night in atrial fibrillation. And he goes in to the doctors. And he says, yeah, you're back in atrial fibrillation. See, I told you it wasn't the diet. He said, no, you don't understand. I cheated. And he says, I'm going right back on this. A week later, he flips out of atrial fibrillation. So he's done that now over the past year about four times. And so his doc, who is now a big supporter of mine, says, this is ridiculous. He says, you're right about this. You stopped his atrial fibrillation by getting out the inflammation that was in his heart muscle. And so we'd now actually become colleagues. And we actually both send each other patients. So I no longer quack, because he actually had to see it to believe it. I think there was a famous quote from the Bible about that. But that's another story. Well, you know, it's interesting, because I see this on a lot of the message boards for your diet, how hard it is. Oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. And I always say, look, and you say this, and it's true. It's like, just do your best. This patient is doing his best. And sometimes he's going to, like, I'm on the road a lot. So when I'm home, it's 100% compliant. And when I'm on the road, I do my best. But I also can tell, and things like, I have to get back on my medication when I get off the diet, which is rare, but it happens sometimes. And I don't beat myself up. And I think the other thing is, I didn't go all in on day one. I kind of introduced the diet and then tested things and tried it out for a while. And you know, there's a good analogy. It's called kicking the can. If you want to kick the can 200 miles, you're not going to make the kick in one kick. It's going to kick it 10 feet at a time, 10 feet at a time. Just kick the can. Keep kicking the can. Make progress. And I think, for me, that has been, if I know I'm doing my best, then if I go out and there's nothing compliant, and I try my best, then that's OK, too. I mean, it's what you got to do. No, it's true. Even in my first book, I said, do what you can with what you got wherever you are. And sometimes, and I've tested this on myself, and I've actually, in two of the papers I've written, when we first started testing for autoimmune diseases, I obviously tested myself, and I came back with a marker called anti-nuclear antibody. And my staff come running in and say, oh my gosh, you got an autoimmune disease. And I said, well, you know, that doesn't surprise me because my father's side of the family had horrible psoriasis. My dad was on methotrexate, powerful immunosuppressant for 50 years. And I said, that doesn't surprise me a bit. I said, you know, I think I'm going to turn this off. And so I ate absolutely what I tell people to eat because all of a sudden I cheat or just can't find what I want. And within a month, when I retested, it was gone. And I said, oh, that's pretty cool. So recently, last fall when I was on my most recent book tour, I was in New York City. And I said, you know, it's time to test this again. So I cheated, I had pasta, I had a piece of bread. And I came back to Palm Springs, drew my blood, bam, it was positive again. And I said, this is really cool. And so I said, okay, clean for a week. Let's see how fast I can turn this off. Week later, same lab, negative. So when I tell people that this is a fixable problem and I tell people with autoimmune disease, you really should not cheat. And I'm telling you this from personal experience. I was on a panel a couple of years ago and famous thyroid physician before we started, she said, I don't know how you can talk this way. What do you know about autoimmune disease? And I said, well, I actually have one. She shut up. Yeah, so I'm in this game not only for myself, but because I had so much experience in transplant immunology. I gained a lot of experience on how the immune system works and what it's looking for. And leaky gut, dog gonad is really the cause of all this. And as each year goes by and we have more and more sophisticated tests of leaky gut. And if you had asked me 15 years ago, if anybody had leaky gut or Dlaffia, I don't know, pseudoscience, she's not pseudoscience anymore. So I think it's fascinating. You know when you can't be completely compliant and you can feel it. I absolutely can. I mean, like the other night we were at a restaurant with some clients and there was nothing there. And they had a Caesar salad, but I shouldn't have dairy and there's probably, you know, there's dairy interlaced in a Caesar salad, but it's not meat or non-grass fed meat. But even for me, meat is even a little bit of meat's tough for me, like for digestion purposes and then for acid reflux. So if I can just avoid meat, then I've at least done a little bit better in that particular situation. But when it was over, I mean, my stomach was on fire. So I can just tell. And you know, the funny thing is, so I have a couple of marketing agencies and I kind of look at the way for normal people to look at this and that are having issues. Like for me, there's a synergy in how you approach this and how we do like marketing, which is you got to look at the data first. And when marketing, you know, we always look at customer data or a network in politics too. So we work at voter data and we try to understand what these people care about before we communicate a message. And when, you know, in the process that I've worked with you, it's like, you need to get the blood data. Go take your blood test. Let's look at that. Let's see where you have problems. And through that, now, when I go to the blood labs, everybody knows me by name now because it's every six months and there's a lot of blood tests because of what I have. So they're like, how is it possible for you to take this many blood tests? But, you know, and I do, and then we get that feedback. And in marketing, we take that and we build a strategy around that, what we find from the data. And for you, you've taken my blood work and said, okay, here are the supplements you need to go. Here, let's test all these things. Let's see where you can improve and get better. And in marketing, we then run a bunch of tests and then we try to convert customers. And then what we've done on the supplement side is we found the supplements that really worked and what we need to up over the years that I've worked. You know, so I keep doing blood tests and keep getting the data back. And I keep altering and, you know, just transitioning a few supplements here and there where I increase some, maybe don't take as many on other things. And through that, you know, my blood test that you've seen, everything has improved. Like I'm 45 years old right now and I'm heading in the right direction in every single test. That's the diet, that's the supplements. And, you know, and then I've got this, you know, potential cure that I'm trying to fight for. Now I say cure, but, you know, I'm a medical profession that's, they don't like for me to say that. But that's what, you know, I think it's about progress. And this really started two and a half years ago. I didn't just do it overnight. And for the first five years, I stuck my head in the sand and didn't do anything. And a lot of the criticism I get online when I tell my story is, well, it's easy for you. You know, these supplements are expensive, all this stuff. And that's all true, but it's your life. And I didn't realize that. I understand how they feel. For five years, I didn't want to even look at this. And then I decided, you know, I needed to change and I changed gradually. But the supplements, it's your life, it's your health. If it extends your life 10 years and you have more time with your family, like that's what it's all about. And I didn't get that for a long time. And I get it now and I'm really grateful for it. Yeah, you know, I used to think supplements made expensive urine. And because we measure so many things on everybody, I can actually get to the point years ago that I could tell when somebody was taking a supplement or had stopped it and I could show them on a blood test. You know, yeah, I did stop that or I could even tell if they changed brands. Just actually yesterday, we had a blood test looking for a particular variable. And I said, you're not taking this anymore. They said, well, I am, but I ran out of the one you recommended and it wasn't my product. And I got this one. And I said, well, look, you know, here's your previous test on the other one and here's this one. And they go, holy cow, you saw that. And I said, yeah, it's not expensive urine. It really isn't. For instance, I'll give you, there's a paper published this week of a clinical trial with Parkinson's disease. And there's a compound called the enocidal cysteine and there won't be a test study. And it's usually called NAC. And NAC is one of the ways we make probably the best antioxidant in the world called glutathione. So they have a Parkinson's trial giving people NAC twice a day and the actual clinical trial, they also got NACIV once a week and the other folks got placebo. And the trial is now, I guess, a year and the NAC people have improved their Parkinson's symptoms by about 15% against the placebo group. Now, 15%, if you've got Parkinson's, that may be the difference between you being able to walk or even talk. Sure. Compared. So, I mean, here's a dumb supplement which is actually pretty doggone cheap. And I've been actually recommending it for Parkinson's for years but here's the first clinical trial said this dumb supplement is doing something in Parkinson's brains to improve this. Well, it's interesting you say that because my father, who I loved dearly was just diagnosed with Parkinson's. And as most people, I went through this process as well. There's this confusion, there's this, I don't know what to do, oh my gosh, I have to change my life. My father is 75. He's never had any health conditions in any time his entire life. And then, boom, right? Yeah. And so, of course, having my experience, I'm like, well, probably need to start putting yourself on at least the plant paradox diet because I think it'll reduce a lot of the inflammation. But my question back to you is regarding Parkinson's, what advice would you have, diet-wise, on Parkinson's for people who are either just diagnosed or have Parkinson's? Yeah, so my father actually had Parkinson's and he had it for 20 years and he died at age 91. But interestingly enough, my mother and I dove into him as soon as the diagnosis was made and he did not change his medication for 20 years. In other words, his Parkinson's was stable for 20 years. And people hear that and they go, well, that's impossible. But I now have a number of patients who've come to me with actually fairly advanced Parkinson's and tremors. And they not only have reduced their tremors, but they have not progressed. What do you think is the- So here's the deal. The dietary part of it. This is- And it's gonna work for some, maybe. Well, the research was fascinating. So there's this diagnosis called a Lewy body. And there's even Lewy body dementia. There's Parkinson's dementia. And a Lewy body is a dead neuron surrounded by glial cells. And glial cells are actually the bodyguards of neurons. They're a part of our immune system, white blood cells that are specifically designed to guard neurons, protect them. And the theory, which I know it's more than a theory now is that Parkinson's begins in the gut. And it occurs in the gut because in animal models, people with Parkinson's get constipation. And everybody goes, oh, why do they get constipation? That's weird. So they started animal models and they found that next to the gut about there's lots of neurons. And they found Lewy bodies next to the gut. And they went, what are those doing down there? They're supposed to be up in the brain. So we now have human data with trans-colonic biopsies of Lewy bodies in people with Parkinson's in the gut. So the latest theory, and again, it's more than a theory, is that Parkinson's is caused by Lewy gut. And the first place that this happens is in the neurons down in the gut. And long story short, if these glial cells, these body guards, scents, lectins, scents, pieces of bacteria, they try to protect the neuron. They kind of circle the wagons. And they do such a good job that the neuron stars to death because it actually can't get nutrients. It's kind of like pulling up the drawbridge when the hordes are attacking. And the people inside star because the hordes are outside. What happens then, we think, is that this information is transmitted to the brain via the vagus nerve. And the brain says, oh my gosh, nerves are under attack. Circle the wagons in the brain. And so it comes from the gut. So the first thing we do is seal the gut. And to me, one of the easiest steps to do is get rid of lectins that are causing the leaky gut in the first place. So I mean, we're getting to the point now where almost all research on the brain is actually focused on the gut and leaky gut. And like I wrote about in the books, there's now two studies that people who had this giant nerve that comes, we thought, from the brain down to the gut to tell it what to do, the vagus nerve. In the good old days, we used to cut the vagus nerve for ulcer treatment. What we now know is that for every nerve heading down from the brain to the gut, there's nine nerves from the gut heading up to the brain. So people who've had vagotomy in the past have a 50% reduction in Parkinson's compared to people who have the vagus nerve attack. And you go, holy cow, have we gotten this wrong? So we've cut the connection, the warrens of the brain that something's going on in the gut. And so everything happens in the gut. This is fascinating. I mean, you know, Hippocrates said 2,500 years ago. But don't you feel like, oh, sorry, go ahead. All disease begins in the gut. Right. But don't you feel like there's been, maybe this isn't it, maybe it's the explosion of social media, social prevalent. Do you feel like there's an explosion of dementia in Parkinson's now, like there's never been? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, these were very odd conditions. I mean, you know, I grew up in the 50s and 60s and you know, there was somebody in your neighborhood was kind of a little off in their 80s and 90s and everybody kind of knew. But that was the exception. And now, I mean, it's exploded. This is an epidemic and it's exploding. 50 million people in the next few years are gonna have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or dementia of some sort. And you look back and you go, this didn't exist. You know, or it was incredibly rare. What's happened? And that's what I've tried to piece together in all my books, is here's what's happened. And the more I look into this, the more I realize that what's happened is our gut has just become a leaky sieve because of the things that's happened to us. Let me give you one amazing example. The CDC follows the obesity rates in the United States and they track it every year by state. And if you've never looked up the CDC data on obesity by state over the last 20 years, it's the scariest stuff you'll ever see. It just, it goes from little bits of obesity to more obesity to more but obesity. And the south is the epicenter of this massive obesity epidemic. So the CDC said, you know, let's start tracking other things. So they started tracking antibiotic prescriptions that were written per state. And it turns out the antibiotic prescription rate per state tracks exactly the obesity rates. And they have this beautiful graph. Anybody can find it on the CDC website of looking at antibiotic prescriptions and obesity. And the most antibiotic prescriptions are written in the south. And so you go, well, wait a minute, how can antibiotics have anything to do with obesity? Well, we now know that when we take antibiotics or when we give animals antibiotics and we eat those animals, and the runoff from those animals that gets in our water supply, we have killed off our entire microbiome, which it looks like is there for a really good reason among other things to protect us against obesity. So here's just one concrete example from the CDC in humans that swallowing an antibiotic is gonna make you fat. And so don't get me wrong, antibiotics are lifesaving, but we have absolutely abused these things. Everyone who comes in for a sniffle or a scratchy throat gives me an antibiotic. And when I was in medical school, pediatricians, we used to go through their offices and they just write an antibiotic for every sore throat. And I go, but wait a minute, you don't know that this is a bacteria. And they said, well, yeah, but if I don't give mom an antibiotic to give to her kid, she'll go down the block and get it from my colleague competitor. And so, you know, I've got to stay in business. It's an economic model. And it's an economic model. Yeah, I mean, you know, I also look at, well, and I grew up in the South. So this, I recognize everything you're saying and I live in the South now actually, but I, listen, what started, you know, seven years ago was something that life-changing and almost, I mean, I really feel like I went into a depression over it. I probably hurt relationships because of how I was suffering through my own health and didn't want to avoid it and all that stuff. But I look at it now, I mean, you talk about the Parkinson's or dementia and I go, well, this is a blessing what I have. It's a blessing on a lot of fronts because I am so like, I'm going to spend the next 30 years eating organically, taking right supplements, following what my body needs. I never would have thought like that differently. On the other side, and I think this is the part that affects so many people, especially the ones that I talked to through my own path, is that, you know, like, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. This disease is the best thing that ever happened to me in my relationships. I now realize there's a finite time in this world and I'm, you know, in my mid-40s now and I can either live an exceptional life and love the people around me and give them everything I have, or I can be in my home and be depressed and treat people poorly and I did those things before the disease. When the disease gave me clarity in my life that I have to live for other people, I have to give for other people and I need to put my health as the forefront of my own life as well. And as crazy as it sounds, the disease is an absolute blessing in my life and if the worst thing that happens is that my esophagus is removed and I have a feeding to the rest of my life and I'm young, okay, I still have the love of my wife and my little girl and my family and my friends and that is more important than anything else I'll do and that's truly how I feel about it. And I don't know if I, that took a long time to get there and that's sort of my advice to other people which is what is the silver lining in what you have and move forward and make progress? Yeah, I mean, this is the only house you're ever gonna live in. That's right. I get one chance. Yeah, this is it. But I don't think I ever thought that way. The disease brought some clarity, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing and people say, well, you know, supplements are so expensive but we'll go to Starbucks and buy a $5 cup of coffee which will pay for most of your supplements for that day and you think nothing of a $5 cup of coffee anymore and it's, I mean, it's just fascinating that we won't give the attention that this needs, you know, we'll keep our house painted, we'll mow the grass, we'll do all of that. Well, you know why? Because you can't see it. You can see the grass. You can see that restaurant you wanna go to. You can see that Starbucks. But what's inside of your gut going on right now? You don't see it every day until it's too late. Right. And now, you know, an amazing thing is with these new tests you can actually see what's going on in your gut. And one of the things I tell people, incidentally, your skin is glowing. And when I tell people- I'm 72 years old. Exactly. And on the internet, apparently I'm, I'm what, 74 years old or something like that. Right, I actually just turned 69 but we can't change Google for some reason. But yeah, so I'm 74. So people don't realize that the lining of our gut is literally our skin turned inside out. And what we see happening on the inside of our gut is actually reflected on our skin. And you see kind of old people and their skin is frail and friable and they got bruises. That's actually telling them that the inside of their gut is breaking down. And you see women with adult acne, rosacea, that's not adult acne. That's actually what's happening on the inside of their gut. And if you start looking at your skin, you'll actually get a perfect view in the mirror every day of what's happening in your gut. And that's why your skin looks so good. Yeah, well thank you. I appreciate it. The other thing I think is important is that these conditions, even yours I think, we can at least stop it. But so many times it is reversible. I think I mentioned this before recently, we had a woman with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, the same thing that Kelly Clarkson had that she doesn't have anymore. And she saw my PA the first couple of times and then I finally saw her. And we measure anti-thyroid antibodies every time. And when I first met her, she said, now I always say, tell me about yourself. She said, well I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and that's why I'm here. And I looked at her chart and I said, no you don't. And she said, well yes, I do, that's why I'm here. So I pulled out her chart and in most recent labs, all of our markers for antibodies against your thyroid were gone. And I said, you don't have it anymore. You had it, but it's gone. But that's impossible. And I said, well you're here because that's not impossible. And it was just this moment of clarity. I don't have the disease, just like Kelly Clarkson. She had it, now she does. So my wife has a thyroid issue. She's been on thyroid medication for years and years and years. And once she got on the Paradox diet, it's the first time, once we did the recent blood test, it's the first time in almost 20 years that she has reduced that thyroid medication. And her head exploded on that. Because the problem is people don't undertake what this diet, because there's not an immediate result. And she went on it for six months and we did the blood test again and she saw the result and she went, okay that's it, I'm on, I'm done. But you have to be committed. You have to be committed to it. And again, do your best, but be committed to it. Right. Now normally we have some audience questions, but I guess you have the audience questions for me. Well you did answer my Parkinson's questions again. I guess the only question is there's a great saying that the honest brokers out there that are trying to do good in the world have to speak the loudest and that can annoy people sometimes. There was a lot of people in the marketing world right now, they're screaming from the hilltops and they're, you know, but the most honest sometimes have to speak the loudest, right? Some, your diet supplements that we've worked together on have all improved people's lives. And thus you've risen in the sort of medical sort of world of, you know, supplements in your store and your books. How did that happen for you in a way that kind of rose above the noise of a lot of people out there that are selling things that don't help people? So. And I'm a marketer, so I'm always curious. Well, I mean, the good news is that I've been a researcher all my life. And so when I embarked on this new journey 20 years ago, I kept my research hat on and I would tell people every three months, I want to tell you what do you want? Do you want to go get some supplements? Go get them at Costco, get them at Trader Joe's. There wasn't an Amazon back then. Go to a health food store. I want to see what happens. And then I started publishing my results, American Heart Association, European Heart Association and showed that in fact these things happen. And it really was, and people would always say, would you please come out with your own supplements? I don't want to go to 12 stores. So I think I'm the only person who has supplements that the supplements are actually based on my research and the research of others that actually show that this is why you should do this. And interesting, when Vital Reds first came out, a lot of my patients were taking it and I didn't know it. And we can look at stickiness of arteries and we can look at flexibility of arteries. And some of my patients, I'd start saying, yeah, this is interesting. You've always had sticky arteries and you're doing anything new and they go, oh yeah, I've been taking Vital Reds. And I go, really? And I go, wow, that's what I would predict Vital Reds would do, but I didn't have any data. And then, so we've actually stopped some people's polyphenol supplements because they're taking Vital Reds, because we've been able to prove that we can observe the effect of Vital Reds. So I think that's what makes me unique is that it's based on research, it's not just conjecture. And the other thing that makes it unique is the program works, it does. All of, you know, through social media, social media has propelled this forward. And you know, every day I thank all my folks on social media and we've spawned so many sites, creative in my kitchen, Lekton Free Mama, just to name two, and there's lots of you. This is a movement and because it works, just this morning on Instagram, someone, a woman was writing about her MS and feeling so discouraged. And somebody said, well, I cured my MS by following the plant paradox and you really need to look up Dr. Steven Gundry. Yeah, so it's that sort of thing, because MS, you can go into remission, you can cure MS. So the other question I have is, you know my condition, especially with my esophageal disease, are all lectins created equally or are there some lectins that you know in knowing some of my case and feel free to speak freely about it, doesn't bother me? Are there things that I should avoid more than others if I'm doing my best and I'm on the road and I'm like, I don't have many options, what would you say, hey, you should, if you're gonna do your best, avoid this, do these things? So my opinion, one of the reasons my first book was called Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution is my thoughts evolved. And you know, to think that I haven't learned anything in the 12 years since that book came out is kinda, I hope I've learned something. And I've learned a whole lot in the two years since the plant paradox came out. And one of the things with these new tests we're able to see things, I'll just throw one out, which is a shocker. All plants have lectins. And the more we've been used to a plant lectin, the more we have a defense system of our microbiome against lectins, the more we have acid in our stomach against lectins, the better we do. But with these new sophisticated tests, and I'll just use one example and don't go running in panic, there is a lectin that is called an aquaporin and there won't be a test that's present in potatoes, tomatoes, soybeans, spinach, and corn. And there's the word spinach. And what this does is it actually can cause, number one, leaky gut, just by eating it, if you react to it, and it causes leaky brain. It actually opens the blood-brain barrier. And I've gotten interested in this because I see a lot of people with movement disorders like Parkinson's, like pseudo-Parkinsons, and we're finding that these people, every one of them, so far, is sensitive to spinach. And you could have knocked me over. My blood test, you told me I was sensitive to spinach. Exactly. And who would imagine? Because a safe food in a restaurant, well, I'll have a steamed spinach or sautéed spinach. So we'll see. Now, I see a lot of people who absolutely cannot tolerate gluten. And yet 90% of people who can't tolerate gluten cross-react to corn as if it was gluten. Wow. And that surprised me as well. So even over, let's just say, non-graphic, well, I guess it's corn and soy-fed meat, it'd be the same thing, right? It's the same thing. And then my problem is when I go to restaurants and I guess, oh, there's a lot of organic options, right? And again, do your best. Yeah, do your best. But that's always a tough thing for me. Because are you wondering, well, if there pesticides on these greens, what's worse? I don't know. Yeah, so I guess ask for a sweet potato. There you go. And in the worst case scenario, when I'm traveling, we have this giant bag of nuts. And worst case scenario is I fill up on nuts before I'm going to a social engagement. And then you just, yeah, I'm OK. Your appetite's suppressed. And have a glass of red wine. Right. So yeah, so things are evolving, and it's exciting. And I'm going to be looking and looking and looking. Well, listen, Phil, thanks again for being on. And thanks for sharing your story. Absolutely. And yeah, get some stem cells. And do remember that you can activate your own stem cells by fasting. I do, a little bit of intermittent every day. OK. All right, so that's it for the Dr. Gundry podcast. And if you like what you hear, come back again and see us next week. Because I'm Dr. Stephen Gundry, and I'm always looking out for you.