 So, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. We're picking up where we left off last week. I'm answering questions you may have sent in from YouTube, email, or other social media. So here it goes. We'll dive right in. So C writes, what do you recommend for children around the age of three to eat? Should young children take supplements in general? Well, that's a great question since I have grandchildren of four and two years of age and luckily my daughter and her husband have chosen to feed their grandchildren from the plant paradox and the plant paradox cookbook. So all I can tell you from personal experience is that both of these kids are thriving and they love the food from both of the books. So there's absolutely no reason to teach these kids any other way of eating. And quite frankly, the earlier you start kids eating correctly, the easier it's going to be for them to avoid temptations. It's always important to realize that children in Japan do not come out of the womb wanting to eat sushi and crab brains and bitter things. They were trained by their parents to appreciate those tastes. So there's no reason you cannot train your children to eat properly. There's no reason that they have to grow up on chicken McNuggets and macaroni and cheese and a pepperoni pizza and white pasta with butter as the only foods they'll eat. That's the answer to that. In terms of supplements, there are now very, very, very good studies in humans and children looking at academic performance and learning ability and the level of fish oil, omega-3 long chain fatty acids like DHA that they take and that are measured in their bloodstream. In other words, the more omega-3 index, which looks at two months of these fats in your blood, the higher this is, the better the academic performance is and the better they do it in tests. There's one study that actually shows that their social behavior is much better than kids with low levels of omega-3 fats. So please get DHA or a fish oil or if you're following a vegan or vegetarian diet, there's algae-based DHA. There are small capsules that even kids can have. There's actually some capsules that are chewable. And lastly, believe it or not, lemon-flavored cod liver oil has no fish flavor and you can mix it into olive oil or even mix it into the things you're baking and you can get this into kids without them knowing it. The other thing I think is important for kids is to have a small dose of vitamin D3. Depending on their size, anywhere from about 500 micro-international units to 1,000 micrograms of international units is a good thing. If you want to give them a multivitamin, that's fine with me. But if they're eating a very high plant-based diet, they're going to get lots of vitamins and minerals from the plants that you feed them. So it's not essential for that. One other proviso is, as most of you know, we do not manufacture vitamin C. We're one of the few animals that don't. And so the idea of getting vitamin C in us at an early age is probably a good idea. And there's plenty of vitamin C tablets available, even the chewable ones that are sugar-free are available. No, you don't have to drink a glass of orange juice every day to get vitamin C in them. It's pure sugar. And please keep your kids away from juices. It's just a sugar bomb. Okay, Carolyn writes, please discuss specifics of ApoE4. What oils do you recommend? I think I've heard you say to stick only with avocados and avocado oil, olive oils and olives, ghee question mark. And my big question, do we avoid coconut oil? Well, Carolyn, that's a great question. As you know, 30% of people carry either a single copy or a double copy of the ApoE4 gene. And this is unfortunately nicknamed the Alzheimer's gene because it does increase your risk of Alzheimer's. But let's be clear about this. It does not cause Alzheimer's disease. The vast majority of people with Alzheimer's disease do not carry the ApoE4 gene. However, if you look at people with the ApoE4 gene, if you have the single copy, it about doubles your risk of Alzheimer's disease. You carry the double copy, which only about 2% of the population carry. It actually, it's an eight-fold increase in Alzheimer's disease. So in my work, and I see a lot of patients who are referred with this gene, saturated fats, particularly animal saturated fats, seem to be the big mischief maker in producing fairly high levels of oxidized LDL, the small dense LDLs that in turn go rancid or get rusty. And with the ApoE4 gene, not to get too nerdy and technical, we have a very poor processing system in our brain for moving cholesterol in and out of our neurons. And because of this mutation, cholesterol moves in and out of cells all the time. But in people who carry the ApoE4 gene, that cholesterol movement goes into the cell, but doesn't come out of the cell properly. And so it tends to build up. It also builds up in arteries. That's how I got interested in it, because ApoE4 people have a higher rate of coronary artery disease and carotid artery disease than normal. So in general, animal fats, particularly cheeses, are mischievous to you. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of people with the ApoE4 gene love cheese. In fact, I've always thought of doing a survey and just asking, what's your favorite food? And then predicting what your ApoE status would be. People with the ApoE4 gene love cheese, so it's not your friend. Now, so ghee is an animal fat. So no, ghee is not a good choice. Butter is not a good choice. It's another animal fat. In general, low fat proteins, such as in fish, is a far better choice for you than bacon or short ribs, just to give you an example. Now, coconut oil. I've followed a lot of people in my practice with these genes. And when they use coconut oil, these small dense LDLs definitely go up. And they go up actually substantially. And when we take coconut oil away from them, their small dense LDLs drop. Actually, quite impressively. So as much as I like coconut oil for the general public, I think if you have the ApoE4 gene, you're better off avoiding it. Now, what about MCT oil? Well, MCT oil are medium chain triglycerides. And yes, it is a part of coconut oil. But it's handled in a different way. Quite frankly, I haven't made up my mind yet on whether this should be treated like coconut oil or it's a separate variable altogether. I think to be safe, if I had the ApoE4 gene, I would probably limit my MCT oil. But the jury, at least my jury, is out on that. Okay, Val Wright, Dr. Gundry. I know that xylitol is on your list of approved sweeteners. I never used it before preferring swerve, which is erythritol. I'm in Florida with my sister visiting mom. We found xylitol at the local health store. I used it to make simple syrup, one cup water to one cup sweetener. Then I used it to make lemon drops, basically martinis, which are equal parts lemon juice, simple syrup, and vodka. I know, I know that that is not on the plan, but it's so hot here and they sounded good, that's a good excuse. Within a few hours, we were both having violent watery diarrhea and I vomited twice. At the time, we attributed it to eating at a barbecue earlier, which might be, and we thought we were food poison. A week later, I made the lemon drops again. Obviously, it's very hot in Florida. The same thing happened. Now we know it was the xylitol. Have you heard of this happening with this product? So here's the deal with sugar alcohols in general. Sugar alcohols can in some people, particularly if you use a lot of them, produce what's called an osmotic diarrhea. It actually pulls remarkable amounts of water into your gut. Now you notice when we develop recipes at Gundre MD or in the books, we actually only use these sweeteners with a lot of high fiber. And the fiber actually absorbs that water so that you don't have that watery diarrhea effect. And you'll notice that's actually where we use these sweeteners. So the idea of taking a cup of xylitol and then making lemon drop martinis, at least for you, is really not a good idea. Interestingly, I know the creator of all the Atkins bars very well, Jimmy Schmidt, who's a James Beard chef. And Dr. Atkins cornered the market on malatol. And malatol is another sugar alcohol that actually has some pretty good watery diarrhea effects. And Jimmy, to his credit, put a large amount of soluble fiber in those bars to mitigate that effect. He tried to talk Dr. Atkins out of not using that sweetener. But Dr. Atkins owned the world market for it. So that's the sweetener in Atkins bars. So are people different? Yes, people can react to erythritol the same way. So it's just another of the sugar alcohols. Oftentimes you have to fiddle with sugar alcohols to see which one is going to be best for you. And there's a lot of them out there. Another option is to use inulin, which is not a sugar alcohol. It doesn't have as much sweetening power. But it feeds gut bugs fantastically. It's available in a product called Just Like Sugar. And it's one of my go-to baking products. OK, Elizabeth writes, hi, Dr. Country. Very excited for the start of your podcast. Thanks. One thing I've been wanting to hear your thoughts is on kombucha. I'm trying to work as many fermented foods into my daily eating as possible. And I've found that home-brewed kombucha is something I really enjoy. However, it is made with sugar, which isn't the greatest. To your knowledge, does the fermentation process make this beverage actually healthy? Or is it just another sugary drink? Well, so good for you for making kombucha at home. Most of the commercial kombucha, with a few exceptions, and I'll give a shout out to Kavita, which is up the road in Ventura. Kavita has several kombuchas, which are incredibly low sugar, particularly the coconut and the coconut mojito. Most kombuchas are actually very sugary drinks, particularly the flavored kombuchas. And quite honestly, these companies do this because plain kombucha is an acquired taste to be nice. And so they want to make this a commercial product, so they do put large amounts of sugar. Now, you can make kombucha at home. And of course, one of the ingredients is sugar because the fermentation process uses sugar to ferment. You can put a lot of sugar in and allow the fermentation to continue and to continue. And you'll get actually a fairly high alcohol content in the kombucha. And you'll notice that even in the commercial kombuchas, there's a little bit of alcohol noted on the label. The point is, when you finish the final product, there should not be any residual sweetness. If there is, you've either put too much sugar in in the first place, or you haven't allowed the fermentation process to continue to the end. So traditionally, kombucha is sugar-free because the yeast have used up the sugar in the fermentation process. Good. All right, here we go over to Instagram. Tam with twins at Dr. Stephen Gundry. Our nettle and raspberry leaf tease OK. I stopped drinking these when I started Plant Paradox because they are not listed with scary foods, but also not listed as Plant Paradox compliant. And I read an article that said nettle root is a super lectin. Is nettle leaf lectin free and red raspberry leaf OK? Please advise as you can. Thank you. So there are a lot of foods that are missing from both the good food and the bad food. And in the new book, the Plant Paradox Quick and Easy, we're actually adding a lot of good foods to the good food list. Quite frankly, the original book and even the Plant Paradox cookbook, we didn't want to make this overwhelming and be an encyclopedia of all the good foods out there simply because most people don't have a whole foods or similar places where they can get a vast variety of vegetables. But there are a lot of important vegetables and a lot of important herbs that are perfectly safe. And so in the Plant Paradox Quick and Easy, which will be out January, you'll see that new list of foods. The same way with the bad foods, we've also added, if something doesn't appear on either list, you probably shouldn't eat it, but there's so many exceptions to the rule. For instance, black raspberry leaves have huge amounts of polyphenols. Raspberry leaves have huge amounts of polyphenols. And this little fun fact, the leaves of the fruits that have polyphenols have far more polyphenols than fruits. So for instance, if you want the polyphenols in apples, which are actually really good for you, the polyphenols, you're going to get far more polyphenols in apple leaves than you will in the apples themselves. It's actually the same with olive oil. Olive leaf extract has far more polyphenols than olive oil in a far more convenient form. So teas are actually a really good way of extracting polyphenols. When you're drinking green tea or black tea, for instance, what you're doing is using hot water to extract the polyphenols. So the good news is, no, there aren't any lectins in these teas. You're getting the extract of polyphenols. So enjoy to your heart's content. Don Catalina at Dr. Stephen Gundry. Just getting into your books, and I've been doing the no sugar, high fat, low carb, intermittent fasting for one month and trying to stay away from lectins. And we'll print out a cheat sheet to make this easier. Love your cooking videos online also. Thank you very much. We enjoy doing them. Love the egg roll in a bowl. Is that similar to crack slaw? Yeah, they're actually very similar. Crack slaw, a lot of the recipes that we've seen, unfortunately, use peanuts. You could certainly substitute macadamia nuts or walnuts. I like pistachios a lot on that. But usually, crack slaw has some sugar, so just be careful and modify the recipe. But that's just another great way. OK, so now we're going to Twitter. So we've got some questions on Twitter. Maria Miller, author of Maria M176. Dr. Gundry, what is your advice for a mom to be? And what would you tell a nursing mom? One of the things I think is important for pregnant moms to realize is that the idea of intermittent fasting or multiple day fast is a no-no. Remember, you're feeding two individuals, and there's no need for intermittent fasting when you're pregnant. But the foods you're eating during that pregnancy and the really critical amount of fish oil that you should be taking, and if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, make sure you're taking algae-based DHA. The most important thing I think for a pregnant mom to realize is that her baby, your baby's brain, is being built by stealing DHA from you. Your baby's brain is half DHA. And there's some excellent research showing that mother's DHA is dramatically depleted at the end of pregnancy because your baby stole it. Now that's OK. The baby has to build its brain. But it's really critical for you to keep your DHA up and to supplement while you're pregnant to keep the DHA and your baby up. There's actually some very interesting studies looking at intelligence and learning ability in babies who were born to mothers with low DHA and mothers who had high DHA and were supplementing with DHA. And these babies actually have better learning ability and better memory. And there's even one study that shows they have less chance of asthma if the mother was taking DHA. So plant paradox works great for pregnant moms. Same with the nursing moms. Again, you're feeding the baby, number one, but you're also feeding the baby's gut microbiome. And so many women are unaware that about 5% to 10% of all the calories in your milk are sugar molecules that your baby cannot digest. They're long chain oligosaccharides that your gut bugs need. And it takes a good three to six months to establish the community of the microbiome that's going to be your baby's microbiome. So you're feeding your baby for two reasons. Yeah, you're feeding the physical baby, but probably equally important and maybe more important is you're actually feeding the gut bugs, the microbiome, that's going to tell your baby's immune system and educate your baby's brain throughout the rest of its life. And it starts from the moment that baby comes out. So plant paradox works great for both pregnant mothers and nursing mothers. OK, next. Ah, here's a good one. Harlequin recruiting, a D-O-M-D-R-E. Dr. Gundry, is there a good substitute for ketchup? Well, that's a great question. First of all, ketchup is not a source of a vegetable. Believe it or not, there are some websites that say that ketchup counts as a single serving of vegetables. It's certainly a single serving of sugar, but that's about it. Ketchup can be made by peeling and de-seeding tomatoes and concentrating them. You can even get tomato paste from Italy, which is made without the peels and seeds. There are also online several options for using beets as a ketchup substitute. And I've tried them. I think they're quite interesting. If your kids are addicted to ketchup, they're probably not going to be too interested in it. But for an adult who wants a different from ketchup, it's a really good substitute. But make your own ketchup out of tomato paste from Italy, or make your own by peeling and de-seeding tomatoes and then concentrating it down, and you'll have a much better product. Uh-choo-choo-choo. Ah, Sandra Bachman at S-B-A-C-H 6242. Dr. Gundry, are there lectins in cayenne pepper? That's an excellent question. A lot of, for instance, I'll do it tangentially, in Hatch, New Mexico, Hatch chili powder, which I actually use, is made from peeled and de-seeded chili peppers. So the peels and seeds are thrown away before the pepper is ground up. And actually, the Southwest American Indians always had this practice, because they knew that the peels and seeds were removed. Cayenne pepper should be prepared that way in terms of cayenne pepper powder. So you should be able to use it safely. If you have any question, it's really easy online to get Hatch chili pepper powders. And you know for certain that those don't have the peels and seeds in them. That brings up an interesting question. What about hot sauces in general? In general, most hot sauces are fermented. So the peppers undergo a fermentation process. And again, traditional cultures always use fermentation as a way of degrading lectins in the food they ate. So most hot sauces, just like Tabasco or Crystal, for instance, have been fermented for a long time. And then in the case of Tabasco, it's been aged. So most hot sauces should be safe. On the other hand, sauces, fresh sauces, are probably a lectin bomb with the unpeeled tomatoes with the jalapenos. So be careful with that. So that's the difference. Let's see if we got any more here. Ah, here's a good one. If I fracture your name, I apologize. Asif Imtiaz Ahmed at As-dim-tiaz-a-h. Dr. Gundry, what about black peppers? I assume you mean black peppercorns, I hope. So black peppercorns actually have no relationship to peppers. And black pepper is actually one of the best spices that I think anybody can eat. In fact, in the Middle Ages, the original spice trade was started to get black peppers out of India. They were prized as a medicinal substance. And we now know that one of the components of black pepper, which is called bioparen, is an agent that allows you to absorb so many polyphenols out of food and also so many vitamins to give you an example, which I think is a great example. We know turmeric, the spice, its active ingredient is curcumin. Unfortunately, curcumin is incredibly poorly absorbed. So if you're making turmeric smoothies every morning, quite frankly, you're wasting a lot of money on that turmeric because you're not going to absorb that active ingredient. On the other hand, we know that curries have both black pepper and turmeric as some of their ingredients. And there's very interesting studies out of India and Indonesia where curry eating is incredibly common, that people who eat one serving of curry per week have a dramatic decrease in Alzheimer's disease compared to people who are non-curry eaters. And that's because curcumin is one of the few antioxidants that actually can cross the blood-brain barrier and protect your neurons. And I think it's fascinating that curry, which has black pepper, which allows you to absorb curcumin, is protective. And that's why it's protective. So if you're going to have your turmeric smoothie in the morning, shake some black pepper in. It's actually going to make it even more kind of spicy and delicious. So black pepper is actually great for you. And I put it on almost everything I eat so that I can absorb those nutrients better. Let's see. Ah, OK. Anti-Pam. Hi, Auntie. At Anti-Pam 52. Dr. Gundry, sir, where does wild rice fall on the lectin list? Is it OK or to be avoided? So wild rice is a grass. It is not rice as we know it, but it is a grass, so it does have a lectin. You can pressure cook wild rice. It actually works really well in a pressure cooker, and we have recipes for that. So it's not a safe substitute for rice. On the other hand, if you're going to have rice, as you know, you're safer with white basmati rice from India, which is different than American basmati rice. It actually has far more resistant starch than American basmati rice. But if you're going to have rice, I prefer you use a pressure cooker, just like a rice cooker. But if you don't, however you cook it, please cool it down to room temperature or put it in the refrigerator for a few hours. That will actually increase the resistant starches. And then you can reheat it. Some people think that if you reheat the cold rice that the resistant starch will be gone again, that's actually not true. You will actually lock in the resistant starches by cooling, then they won't become less resistant once you re-cook. Let's see. Ah, here's a good one. Be you today at Rosella 115. Dr. Gundry, what canned or jarred chopped tomatoes do you recommend? I know, eatings for beans, but tomatoes? So if you can find them and they are available, try to find tomatoes or tomato sauces or tomato puree from Italy. Most of the Italian products, you can find, have chopped tomatoes that have been peeled and de-seeded. You gotta look around for them. I'm not gonna name any brands because everything's different in every store. Sometimes going to an Italian specialty shop is one of your best options. And sometimes when I'm in a city where I know there's an Italian specialty shop, I'll actually pick up a few cans and put them in my suitcase to bring them home. But they do exist. Okay, okay. Actually, one last one. Can we do one last one? Liz Harold, Liz Harold Music. Dr. Gundry, is unsweetened almond milk approved? Yes, it absolutely is. And thank you for bringing that up. I had a question earlier today about vanilla flavored almond milk. If you see a flavor on almond milk or a flavor on coconut milk or a flavor on hemp milk, that means by definition, there's a lot of sugar in there. So please look for the unflavored variety or unsweetened variety. And then if you need sweetener or a flavor, use like sweet leaf has multiple flavors. You can use any extract like almond extract, orange extract, have fun with this, but don't buy the sweetened products. Okay, so that's it for this week. Thank you for all of your questions. We love getting them and we're gonna get to all of them if we can because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.