THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Your Gut Controls Your Mood, Cravings, and Even Personality w/ Dr. Gundry

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Is Your Gut Controlling Your Mind? What if I told you that your thoughts, cravings, and even your personality might not be coming from your brain—but from your gut? Today, I sit down with Dr. Steven Gundry, a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and best-selling author, to uncover the shocking truth about the gut-brain connection and how the bacteria in your gut could be running the show. For years, we've been told that mental health is all about brain chemistry. But Dr. Gundry reveals that your gut microbiome directly influences your mood, cognition, and even addictions. Whether it's sugar, alcohol, or even opioids, the bacteria in your gut can literally create cravings, fuel addiction, and manipulate your behavior. And if that doesn’t wake you up, he also shares how healing your gut can help reverse depression, anxiety, and even improve your personality. We also break down the hidden dangers in your diet, from glyphosate (a common herbicide) to ultra-processed foods that are destroying your gut lining and wreaking havoc on your health. Plus, Dr. Gundry gives practical steps to rebuild your microbiome, including the power of fermented foods, the dangers of certain antibiotics, and the key nutrients your gut NEEDS to thrive. This episode is a game-changer—whether you’re looking to improve your mental clarity, kick an addiction, or just take your health to the next level. Listen up, take notes, and start paying attention to your gut—because it might be the real driver of your life. Key Takeaways: How your gut bacteria control your cravings and addictions The surprising link between gut health and mental health disorders Why antibiotics and common foods are wrecking your microbiome The #1 nutrient missing from most people’s diets A simple step-by-step plan to heal your gut and transform your brain Dr. Gundry dropped some eye-opening truths in this one, and I know it’s going to change lives. Go grab his new book, “The Gut-Brain Paradox,” and share this episode with someone who needs it. Max out! 🚀 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start he's got about five thousand ten thousand dollars worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're

on a regular basis like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app and I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're gonna get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also.

So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. ["The Admirals Show Theme Song"] head. This is the end. Welcome back to the show everybody. So today is going to be a really interesting journey. We're going to talk about, ironically, we're going to talk about your mental health. We're going to talk about cognition, but we're actually going to connect it through your microbiome through the gut.

And I've got a very special man I want to have on the show for a long time. He says a lot of interesting things that has gotten my attention over time. And he's a world renowned cardiothoracic surgeon who sort of shifted into a little bit more of this work right now. He's got, sold a couple million books, New York Times bestselling author. And today we're going to talk about the Gut Brain Paradox, which is the title of his new book. And this is going to be interesting today because I got some tough questions for him. So Dr. Steven Gundry, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot. I appreciate you having me on and looking forward to it. So am I very much. I wanted to talk with you for a long time, even in some of your other books. But it's interesting when I thought, well, we're going to have them want to talk about the gut. I didn't know we were really going to spend a lot of our time on mental health, frankly, cognition and the brain and that connection. So everybody stay in here today because I think you're going to hear some things that you've never heard before. At least I had not heard before. So let's start out.

Let's go a little bit bigger picture. A big topic on our show has been depression and mental health. And we've, we've covered it from all different types of angles, never from the gut. So how is the gut connected to depression or mental health overall? Uh, well, where shall we start? Actually one way I get people's attention is that many, many people take an antidepressant, an SSRI, serotonin reuptake inhibitor,

and they notice that it takes about a month to kick in. Right? I mean, that's typical. If these things worked by actually increasing serotonin up in the brain, then they ought to kick in within 24 hours, but they don't. So how in the heck are they working? Well it turns out and it's in the book, it's been published that these antidepressants actually change the gut microbiome and It's the change in the gut microbiome that quite frankly takes at least a month

That actually causes the effect that they're looking for it has nothing to do with the fact that they're SSRI. And we now know that there is a specific dysbiotic gut microbiome that associates with depression. There's a specific dysbiotic gut microbiome that associates with anxiety, with ADHD. Each of them have a specific imbalance. And you can even now spot the troublemakers and you can actually manipulate the gut microbiome to get a better balance.

And that's actually what these drugs do. What does So in any ecology, like a tropical rain forest, there are You know thousands and thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of different species that all cooperate to make that tropical rainforest balanced and One of my favorite examples is Yellowstone Park a number number of years ago it was decided that wolves are bad actors and wolves are evil and we really ought to get them out of Yellowstone Park. Now it was mostly because the ranchers didn't like them, but anyhow wolves were eradicated from Yellowstone Park.

Imagine what happened was that wolves of course are an apex predator and wolves controlled the elk population. Without bulls, the elks overgrew. And the elks ate a lot of the saplings. The saplings were actually used by beavers to build beaver dams. The beaver dams weren't there because there weren't any beavers. The fish population changed and the entire ecosystem collapsed. When they realized that, because of the balance of one bad actor, a wolf, when they reintroduced wolves back into Yellowstone, it took a few years but lo and behold, the balance, the ecology of Yellowstone Park returned. So dysbiosis

means normally, as unbelievable as it sounds, we have at least 100 trillion bacteria in our gut. We have many more viruses in our gut. We have many lots of fungi in our gut, lots of molds in our gut, and I could go on and on, but at least 100 trillion bacteria. And there's probably, the number goes up every year, about 10,000 different species. And these different species literally all communicate with each other. They're dependent on each other. They recognize bad guys. Some of the good guys, which I call keystone species, will actually make compounds to try and suppress the bad guys' growth. But most of us, in the United States at least, have what's called a dysbiotic microbiome. This tropical rainforest, this balance, this interdependent of species has been completely screwed up. In fact, you and I off camera, we're talking about Palm

Springs and the desert where I am right now and you used to be. It's basically our tropical rainforest and our gut is now a desert wasteland. And so that's dysbiosis. Why? I want to go back to the anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication just for a second because I don't want everybody that's taking it to get off of it right away and go, I'm just gonna start cleaning my gut and I'm gonna be great. If that's accurate what you said, then why is it that you need it for, why is it that when people decide they're no longer going to stay on these medications that their counsel to stage off of them over time if it's just gut connected or are you saying the gut is

contributory in addition to maybe a serotonin issue or those two are correlated? So I want to understand that just a little bit more. Yeah, there's there's lots of pieces to this puzzle. Right. One of them is there's a herbicide called Roundup that its active ingredient is glyphosate. And it turns out that we were taught that Roundup glyphosate is harmless to humans because it goes after a plant growing pathway called the shikimate pathway. I love that word, the shikimate pathway. Easy to remember.

Yeah, easy to remember. And we research humans don't use the shikimate pathway so we could drink Roundup supposedly and be fine. Now, unfortunately, nobody bothered to mention that bacteria use the shikimate pathway to reproduce and fun fact Roundup was actually patented as an antibiotic, fun fact, not as a herbicide. So Roundup glyphosate actually specifically targets the tryptophan bacteria pathway. And tryptophan is the precursor for the feel-good hormones like serotonin. And so unwittingly, let's be nice, we have killed off much of our serotonin pathway bacteria just by eating foods that contain

glyphosate. And sadly, almost all of our grain products are sprayed with glyphosate prior to harvesting. Glyphosate isn't used just on GMO crops. And those foods we eat, and they're fed to our animals. So glyphosate is just one of the best ways to knock off your feel-good bacteria known to mankind. And isn't it interesting? Yes, social media contributes to all this, but isn't it interesting that the huge epidemic started when Roundup began being increasingly used? What do you do about it then?

I mean, we're talking about antibiotics and you brought that up, but I mean, we're setting up the stage here a little bit. I always like to kind of cut to the, cut to the end of the movie and then come back to the middle in a minute. But you know, I know everyone's listening to this going, you know what? I, I, I, I believe that probably my gut has contributed to my mental health wellbeing. I think over the next 10 years, whether what you said or not about, you know, reentuptake inhibitors or not, that's going to be interesting to see.

But having said that, what would you, someone says right now, Hey, listen, I, I, I do struggle with my mental health. I have tried other things. It's not worked. Is there a test I should do to test certain bacteria in my gut? Is there a certain diet recommendation that you have? And obviously this is in the book, so they should get the book. But, but also since you're on the show, I'm supposed to to ask you this so what would your answer be to that? Well interestingly enough and I show a lot of examples in this book and in the previous books

of most most of these people with anxiety and depression have what we call leaky gut or intestinal permeability. Now if you had asked me 25 years ago when I first started in this area what I thought about leaky gut I would have told you it was pseudoscience and it's not. This has been well worked out in humans. A lot of it was spearheaded by a professor who's now at Harvard, a pediatric gastroenterologist by the name of Alessio Fasano, originally from Italy, funny guy, been on a couple panels on him. Anyhow, he actually showed the mechanism where gluten, and most people have heard of gluten part of wheat, rye, barley. Gluten is a lectin, my favorite subject, how gluten causes intestinal permeability, causes literal holes in the wall of the gut.

And he and others showed how you could measure the presence of intestinal permeability, how you could actually grade it. And I've published numerous papers that over the period of about a year, nine months to a year, most people by following my program will seal their leaky gut. And I show in the book, among other things, that one of the consequences of doing this is that people are usually able to wean off their anti-depressant medicines because they find they no longer need them.

And you're right, no, everybody listening, no, don't stop your anti-depressant medicines and swallow a probiotic. That's not gonna work, I can assure you. Right, right. So hey guys, I wanna jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret

how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you wanna change your future, you gotta change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably gonna produce the same results. But if you can get into a new environment where you're learning new things

and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend, Brendal Bruchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software

to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influences like the Avengers of influencers and of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influences like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved.

Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. What makes a leader? It's a tough question, but one thing's for sure. A true leader leads by example and a true leader takes risks too. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example and who approach life with a palpable passion, there's the Range Rover Sport.

Each Range Rover Sport model offers a dynamic, sophisticated take on sporting luxury. The Range Rover Sport offers focused on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability with industry-leading features like adaptive off-road cruise control that monitors ground conditions and acclimates to the present terrain. Agility, control, and composure are achieved with dynamic air suspension, and adaptive dynamics reduces unwanted body movements to deliver smooth and composed handling. True sophistication and excellent maneuverability, all in a seriously stylish package.

Sophisticated refinement meets visceral power in the Range Rover Sport. A new dimension of sporting luxury. Build your Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax. Here's the thing, get a hand of your taxes and waiting around and worrying if you're gonna get money back or what you owe and then waiting and wondering some more. You don't have to do that anymore. Right now you can get a TurboTax expert who can do your taxes as soon as today. An expert who gives your taxes their individual

undivided attention as they work on your return while you get real-time updates on their progress so you can focus on your return, while you get real time updates on their progress, so you can focus on your day. Isn't that what you wanna be able to do? Have an expert get your taxes done, figure out whether you're getting any money back, and when you're gonna get it back, and doing it the sooner the better for everybody.

An expert who will find you every possible deduction, and file every form, every investment, everything, with 100% accuracy, so you don't need to worry about it. All so you can get the most money back guaranteed. No waiting, no wondering, no worries. Now this is taxes. Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax live full service.

Real time updates only in iOS mobile app. See guarantee details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. You know, I was a little boy. I, uh, I was very ill, uh, till I was about eight years old. I mean on antibiotics constantly. And so I assume that's why even now I don't have a great immune system. So I speak and I travel and I shake hands, you know, a hundred nights a year, at least I'm, I get sick a lot. And so I've been prescribed antibiotics more than about anybody that I know. I mean, I'm sure there are people far more sick than me,

but I've had antibiotics most of my life and we have had other people on that have talked about the gut and how antibiotics can be very detrimental to your gut. So now I'm wondering, and I want like your opinion about this for people that have children that are getting antibiotics prescribed or even themselves, your overall viewpoint of antibiotics, how it impacts the gut and how that might impact our mental health, our cognition and other things, because we're very quick to prescribe them, aren't we? I mean, it's just, it's the thing and I'm wondering if you, you know, think there's a whole bunch of adverse consequences to doing that on a regular basis.

whole bunch of adverse consequences to doing that on a regular basis. Oh absolutely. I'm old enough to have been in medical school when broad spectrum antibiotics were introduced in the mid 1970s and we really thought they were miraculous because beforehand if we were lucky, we would culture a bacteria that was the troublemaker and then we'd find out what antibiotic, we'd test antibiotics against it over a couple more days to find out which antibiotic worked. Well, now when broad spectrum antibiotics came out, it was instead of taking a 22 caliber rifle at the bacteria, now we had a shotgun or an AK-47 on automatic and we could mow down everything. We didn't have to do a culture, we just said, bam! And they were miraculous.

I mean, they really were. I can remember well what we didn't know we didn't know That these guys down in our gut even existed It wasn't until the human microbiome project in the early 2000s to the mid 2017 is when it was completed. We didn't even know those guys were there or how many of them were and what they did. So we have wiped out most of our flora and it's literally, since I'm now in California and we love to have forest fires out here and fires. Imagine we have a forest fire and let's just think of our gut microbiome as a forest

and we burn it to the ground. Now we could plant all these little seedlings but it would take 20 to 30 years to get that forest back to this incredible ecosystem. And there are papers, and some of them are referenced in my books, that you could take a round of antibiotics and it could take up to two years

to begin to even reestablish something that almost resembles a working ecosystem. Two years after a single round of antibiotics. The thing that we're also learning is, number one, these bacteria, and I talk a lot about it in the book, these guys actually are intelligent, sentient beings. No, they don't have a brain. No, they don't think like we do. But they, for instance, see, they don't see with their eyes, but they can count numbers of bacteria around them.

They know who the bacteria are around them. They share information with each other. They educate our immune system. And they do a great job of letting the immune system know who's the good guys and who's the bad guys. And in the good old days, they would tell the immune system, hey, we got your back, we're going to handle most everything that comes down the pike, whether it's a virus,

whether it's a bacteria, we'll fight to the death against these guys, immune system, you you go handle anything that kind of gets past us, not much is gonna get past us. If you see something get past, be ready. So I use the example, I trained in London, England in children's heart surgery. Back in those dark ages, the police, the Bobbies only carried a billy club.

They had no weapons. Now our immune system should basically have a billy club. Now, of course, we're getting no information from our gut bacteria about that'll take care of business. So now our immune system is got a Kevlar best, you know, two AK 47s and their fingers on the trigger. And that's where our problem lies. And we've, we're basically a very poorly trained militia now instead of a, a well organized. So, Hey guys, I just walked in the studio

we're gonna record an episode and guess what I just did before I walked in. Walked into my pantry got my AG1s out poured it in my glass made myself a drink of AG1s. I do it every single day for me I do it a couple times a day. Why do I use AG1? Number one supports my energy. Number two digestion. Number three immunity support. And actually I feel a different mood when it comes on my body gets a little bit more calm yet I've got more energy. I love AG1. One of my commitments is to take AG1 every day in 2025. It's literally on my goal list. So what are your health goals for the year and I think whatever they are, AG1 can

probably help support them. So this new year try AG1 for yourself. It's the perfect time to start a new healthy habit. AG1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift when you sign up. You'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of D3K2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com slash Ed Mylett to get this offer. That's drinkag1.com slash Ed Mylett to start your new year on a healthier note. So a few weeks ago I wore this cashmere sweater on the show. Lotta you said you loved it. And I gotta be honest with you,

when I used to try to elevate my style, the brand stuff I'd buy would break the bank with me. I hated spending money on stuff like that. But with Quince, I get high end, versatile pieces at prices that you and I can actually afford. Now you can upgrade your lifestyle without spending all your money to do it and paying huge price tags.

Quince has all the must haves like Mongolian cashmere crew neck sweaters from 50 bucks, iconic 100% leather jackets, and versatile flow knit active wear. The best part of all, all Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash ed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

That's q u i n c e dot com slash ed to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash ed. 65 day returns quince.com slash ed. Well, one of the, one of the, I'll use your analogy. One of the bulletproof vests we can use is to have the right nutrients in our gut. Right? Yep. And you say in the book that there, we've identified certain nutrients that must exist. And if they don't exist, the bad guys start to take over and blow us up. Can you share with us what some of those nutrients are, how we could get them as

well? Yeah, here's, here's one of the other, I think surprising things that I've written about in the last three books. Most people know probiotics, friendly bacteria. Probiotics have to eat something and the things they like to eat in general are long chain sugar molecules, starches, sometimes called resistant starches, sometimes called soluble fiber. What we didn't know is that when they eat these things, they make a communication system called postbiotics. And postbiotics are, believe it or not, gases that communicate.

They're short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, and there's a whole host of new post-biotic compounds called exosomes and extracellular vesicles, which are literally packets of information that bacteria pinch off, go through the wall of our gut, pass through any membrane, even to our brain, and then deposit that information by latching on to say a neuron and telling the neuron literally what it wants the neuron to do. And it's really Star Wars. And I have the pleasure of attending these meetings and lecturing at these meetings. And the level of complexity that our microbiome exerts on just about any level you care to think about is just, it's, and I talked about this before, we have very few human genes.

Believe it or not, a sand flea has more genes than a human. Bacteria have like tenfold more genes in our microbiome than we have, and they're constantly reproducing, and they're constantly changing genes, exchanging genes. So I and others believe that we have decided to make decision-making uploaded to our bacterial cloud, much like there's not much happening in my computer right here, you and I are being uploaded to a cloud. And that because we are a symbiotic organism, we've left these sorts of decision making to this microbiome, to these bacteria. And we need to get over the fact that it might just be that the bus driver is not driving the bus. It's the passengers. He pointed to his head, guys, at the brain is what he's saying.

He's saying that. And it's probably the passengers who are directing most of the things that happen to us. So I'm going to push you on this again. So if I'm listening to this, I want to take an actionable step on this. I want to get the passengers cooperating with the driver or helping the driver with sense of direction. I love my our analogies today.

Are there two or three nutrients I want to ingest or supplement and are there two or three? I don't want these are contributing to the passengers, the inmates running the asylum, so to speak. Yeah. So one of them probably most, I think, at least from me and my understanding, important paper was written a few years ago. There's a husband and wife microbiology team at Stanford by the name of the Sonnenbergs. They took a bunch of healthy volunteers and they gave them a lot of prebiotic fiber.

It's called inulin. It's a nice fiber. They looked at their microbiome diversity and a more diverse tropical rainforest, the better. And they looked at inflammation markers. And they gave them all this prebiotic fiber because everybody knows that that's what the probiotics want to eat. Nothing happened.

There was no more, there wasn't extra diversity. There was still inflammation markers. And they went, hmm, let's try this. Let's give them the prebiotic fiber, but let's also give them fermented foods in this study, which believe it or not, everybody thinks fermented foods, probiotics, no. Fermented foods are postbiotics. And so let's give them fermented foods. And in this case, it was mostly yogurts and kefir, but it could be vinegars, it could be kimchi, it could be sauerkraut. And also give them, you know, the inulin, and then see what happens. And lo and behold, and then see what happens. And lo and behold, with the addition

of these post-biotic fermented foods, then the gut diversity began to get more diverse, and then the inflammation markers went down. So to phrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a village. And what we're learning is that these really important bacteria that are going to make really important things for us, for our brain, like serotonin, like butyrate, there's got to be four or five other bacteria kind of on an assembly line. And bacteria one has to eat something to kind of poop out, produce what bacteria two needs to eat. Bacteria two needs to poop

out what bacteria three needs to eat, and so on. And if you've got one guy missing or if you've got the component that's missing, then you're not going to finish up with a car on the end of the assembly line. And that's, again, discovering the incredible complexity of this ecosystem is mind boggling. But now that we are beginning to understand and we're beginning to understand what each of these guys need, then we can rebuild that assembly line and we can get this stuff back.

So that's a long, go ahead. No, that's a great answer. I have to tell you, I've always kind of looked for like, is there any overlapping? And so just for the audience, this idea of fermented foods guys and fermentation, I can tell you has come up multiple times now with people that I've talked to about the gut and the brain and overall health as well. And it's just something, you know, we all talk about,

hey, make sure you eat your creatine or make sure you're getting your macros, all these fitness people. But this idea of fermentation and eating fermented foods is something that seems pretty consistent. And I have to tell everybody also this, I share this with you as well. You know, the good thing about having 800 episodes I've had anti-aging people on brain health, mental health experts, you know, muscle building, physical strength, cardio, all the, and one of the things that keeps coming up, if you ask almost everybody, what's the next frontier of health of wellness, physical strength, cardio, all the, and one of the things that keeps coming up, if you ask almost everybody, what's the next frontier of health, of

wellness, of strength, of mental outlook, of energy, of all of it, of anti-aging, is the gut microbiome. It is, this is the next frontier. And I have a, I have a feeling that over five, six, seven years, this is going to be one of these like light speed, uh, evolutionary things that we learn more and more about. We're going to talk about personalities in just a second, but before we go there, we talked about eating fermented stuff is probably good for us. Is there something that the bad stuff feeds off of? Is it like sugar? Is there something don't put in your body? This is the thing. Don't

put in it. If you put it in, you're screwing your gut up. What would that be? Well, you're right. Sugar is, is right up there. Easily, digested carbohydrates. Easily digested carbohydrates are bad for you. So for instance, a piece of bread has four teaspoons of sugar. And it doesn't taste sweet. So it literally, it has a glycemic index above table sugar. But what we know is that there's basically bad guys and good guys and there's nothing wrong with bad guys

as long as they're in balance with the good guys. The good guys quite frankly can't use simple sugars. And let me explain why. Most of the good guys in our gut live down in our bowel, in our large intestine. We do have a microbiome in our small intestine. We even have, believe it or not, a microbiome in our stomach. We absolutely have an amazing microbiome in our mouth. The oral microbiome actually loves sugar, as any of us might guess. The bacteria down in our gut evolved to kind of take whatever was left after digestion got all the simple sugars absorbed through the wall of our gut and all that was left were these complex starches that were very difficult for our digestive system to break down.

And they came rumbling down and they go, oh, dinner. And that's what we want to ferment. We we hear a lot about SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It turns out that, first of all, it's not as rampant as people think. But then we won't go there. But two thirds of people who have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth have oral microbiome living down in their small intestines where they're not supposed to be. Now why are they there? Because they can utilize simple sugars.

And they're just sitting there going, okay, you know, it's coming, it's coming down the pike. And we're gonna grab all that stuff because we can out compete for that food source. The second thing that's happened is none of us, because of processed foods and ultra processed foods are eating any Soluble fiber that works its way down to the guys and they're down there going what the heck?

You know, where's all this great stuff? I hear the mouth chewing. I know it's coming and it never shows up Hmm and interestingly enough so this these bad bacteria I hear the mouth chewing, I know it's coming, and it never shows up. And interestingly enough, so these bad bacteria, as I talk about in the book, they literally send text messages to your brain that say, go get some more of that stuff. That's what we want. And we basically, get over it folks we command you to get what we want. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So what are some

of your relationship green flags? Maybe it's when your partner thoughtfully listens to you or anticipates your needs. We often hear about the red flags that we should avoid but what if we focused more on green flags in friends and partners? If you're not sure what green flags look like, therapy can help you identify what they do look like and how you feel when you get them. And it's something you deserve more of in your life, whether you're dating, married, you're building a friendship, maybe you're just working on yourself. It's time to form relationships that love you back and that feel good in your life.

Therapy with BetterHelp can teach you positive coping skills and how to set boundaries in your relationships and in business and it empowers you to be the best version of yourself which is really what this show's about. They've got more than 30,000 credential therapists with a wide range of specialties. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash ed show to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. H E L P dot com slash ed show. So let's stay on that. So, so your gut is, I know this is in the book, so I know this from reading the book, but I want to make sure everybody gets this.

The gut is actually directing your appetite. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Okay. This is really, this is really important when you have food cravings, which almost everybody listening to this has a craving or something that's coming from your gut. Craving is it craving it because it needs more of it or is it craving it because the bad guys are like, give me more of this stuff. That's bad for you. Which, which is it? Well, but you are, it is dictating your appetite, correct? Oh, absolutely. Okay. No, your thoughts come from the bacteria in your gut. And in the previous gut check,

let's pause for a second. Let me try to convince people how powerful these little critters are. these little critters are. Most people know about a parasite called toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women are told not to scoop the kitty litter of their cats because cats can be infected with toxoplasmosis. And toxoplasmosis, and listeners, bear with me because it's a wonderful story

to tell the power of one cell organisms. Toxoplasmosis has, like many parasites, has two life cycles. It has to have an intermediate host to get to where it wants to go. And where it wants to go is a cat, whether it's a cute little kitty cat or a tiger, it wants to get into a cat. But it's chosen as its intermediate host, a rat.

Now you would think that would be a really dumb decision because rats hate cats. In fact, rats are deathly afraid of the smell of cat urine and they will run the other direction. So how this happens is big cats with toxoplasmosis poop in the water or poop on the ground and toxoplasmosis enters a rat by drinking water. The toxoplasmosis goes to the rat's brain and rewires the rat's brain using dopamine receptors to do two things. Number one, it makes the cat incredibly sexy and it makes the smell of cat urine one of the best aphrodisiacs it has ever smelled. Now, believe it or not, any animal that could be predated upon

by cats would be useful to toxoplasmosis. So getting back to Yellowstone Park, it turns out that wolves can carry toxoplasmosis. And it just so happens that pack leaders of wolves are more infected with toxoplasmosis than anybody else. Why? It turns out that these guys take risk, they run to danger. Now why would you infect a wolf? Because the other predator in Yellowstone Park are mountain lions and mountain lions are the only predator of wolves.

And so that's what happens. Tigers in the jungle, chimpanzees are infected with toxoplasmosis. And chimpanzees are infected because the tiger is the major predator of chimps. And it just so happens that in the jungle, humans are one of the favorite predators of big cats. And so toxoplasmosis loves to infect humans. In fact, this was actually discovered by the US Army, who at one point wanted to infect troops with toxoplasmosis so that they would run to danger. And it turns out that the vast majority of motorcycle fatalities are infected with toxoplasmosis. That's amazing. One little cell organism can completely rewire your behavior. And that's just one.

And so now we know that these little organisms literally rewire our behavior to get what they're looking for. And that includes different foods. And it also includes drugs, as that chapter probably blew your mind. It did. Well, you're going... let me tell you why I wanted you on more than anything. Okay, we're going to meet in the middle here and it's one of the most interesting questions I've ever been able to ask on the show.

So I've been really contemplating how I wanted to phrase it. So I want to share something with you first. My audience most know this, but this will be shared with people that aren't in my audience. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict who got sober. My dad was sober for 35 years. And it became kind of the work of his life. My dad wasn't, he was in a 12-step program, but I mean he wasn't just in it. My dad did six meetings a week, all of his life, even through chemotherapy. My dad's life work, even though he was a banker, was really, he was fascinated with and he helped thousands of people get sober.

This issue of alcoholism, drug addiction, addiction in general, forget alcohol or drugs, but addiction in general. So when my dad first got sober, it was just going through his steps. And then after a few years, he said, you know, know Eddie I'm not so sure that you know we're starting to believe that I got the gene. They would say the gene, the alcohol gene and that some people once they start pouring this stuff on their body want more of it and then as he got my he always said if I could if I ever opened up my own treatment center I'd be going to work on this gene thing and then as my dad got older and he had cancer and we would talk more about addiction in general, my dad said to me, and this is just a working layman, this is not a medical guy at all, right? But he said, Eddie, I'm starting to wonder if these cravings don't come from my brain, but they come from my gut. And my dad passed away with that question lingering.

And my dad passed away with that question lingering. And you talk about addiction in the book, but as you're talking about these bacteria begin to crave more of what you're giving it or they want, do you think that there's the prospect or the possibility that people would struggle with, let's say chemical addiction in general, that gene my dad called it may in fact not be a gene, but maybe some type of bacteria that when they put this stuff in their body, they crave more of it than someone who doesn't have the presence of that bacteria. I know we'd be speculating, but I'm fascinated by the prospect of that when your thoughts about it? Yeah, I, um, I take care of a lot of addictions in my practice,

uh, almost as a, as a sideline. But one of the things, and I, I make, I think at least a case that we should consider first of all, is your dad would tell you the resitivism rate of treatment, you know, it's 70 to 90 percent of people. More like 90 and I have many friends who have been at a center right down the street from where you are many times in my family, that same place which is the most famous place and their recidivism rate is like 88 percent. So go ahead. But no, you're right. Betty Ford is about 90 percent. You're correct. Right. And so you and you know, God bless, you know, maybe, you know, maybe your mom beat you and whatever. But when you start looking at, well, why is it that all of these various therapies, it just isn't working, then what is in fact driving this? And what I make the

case in the book is, well, if we know that, for instance, food cravings are driven by the gut microbiome. And there's so many studies showing this, both in animals and in humans. Then you start looking at the other addictions, whether it's nicotine, whether it's alcohol, whether it's hard drugs. And it turns out that there are bacteria that associate, you can name the bacteria that associate with that addiction. And one of the most amazing things is they get you to crave these things by manipulating your brain because the more of this you take the more they grow and the more they get what they want I think the scariest part is with you know, the opioids or in fentanyl is that they get what they want by causing pain and pain is what seeks pain killers and

And pain is what seeks pain killers. And the more of these pain killers you take, the more they overgrow dysbiosis, the more you have leaky gut inflammation, and the more you seek out pain. What's really scary is, and these are animal controlled experiments, you can addict an animal to heroin and they will become more, they will need more and more and more to achieve the same effect. You can give these animals antibiotics and wipe out their gut microbiome. Suddenly, they just need a tiny pinch of heroin to have the same effect. And it's like, wow. Then you take the microbiome of these addicted animals and basically do a fecal transplant of this addicted microbiome back into

these animals. And all of a sudden, they're right back to having they need a huge amount to have the same effect. And you go, son of a gun. So I'm actually, there's a large group, a rehab group in downtown LA, who want to start working with me because they said, you know, we think you're right that whatever we're doing isn't working folks and why don't we go to the gut and it's not going to hurt. It's not going to hurt and I obviously, you're a doctor, I'm not and I'm just a child of an alcoholic, one that got sober, but they're

all over my family. And sometimes I wonder like, why is this hit certain families? Is there some prevalence of something in their brain is what I used to think. And now if there's so much impact on the gut, on the brain, maybe we've been looking in the wrong place and maybe it's in their gut. And I just think it's fascinating research. If it's true that the gut, which it is creates cravings. If it, you know, it's feeding off sugar, it wants more sugar, whatever it might be.

And that's giving you the thought then could that be true with whatever this alcohol is doing? And, and, um, man, am I super interested in someone who could find the answer to that and, and anybody with addiction, you know, um, you know, one of the things to start is whatever that program might be, but it also might be, could it not hurt to start treating your gut health and to take a look there for whatever your addiction is sugar, caffeine, a drug or alcohol,

where you're probably going to find that addiction. It sounds to me in your gut and that's what's impacting your brain. Is there any way we know if we've got a healthy gut on the external? So take, and this isn't a pretty topic, but like, is there something with elimination that we should know? Like this is indicating your gut's working, how many times you eliminate, what it looks like,

it's odor, anything like that, that say, yeah, my gut is off or on at least a little bit. Yeah, you know, it's funny, I've become good friends through the years with Dr. Dale Bredesen, wrote the end of Alzheimer's and Dr. David Plurmaier who wrote Grain Brain, etc. And They're both neurologists and I'm a heart surgeon and cardiologist and we laugh Because all we talk about is the gut it's like, you know

Why you know how in the world did all of us, you know, end up down there? Well, you know, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, 2500 years ago said all disease begins in the gut. That's what he said. And you know, I'm just a slow learner, I guess. But so getting back to poop, I may have seen some of my YouTube videos on poop. It's like I catch myself laughing. I'm going, heart surgeon's talking about what your poop should look like. But I've been focused on the gut for 30 years now.

I'll give credit where credit is due. Dr. Walls from Iowa, University of Iowa, Terry Walls, basically cured herself of end stage MS. She was wheelchair ridden by changing her diet. And I can say that she and I program are virtually identical. She started eating nine cups of vegetables a day. And in doing so, she, and you don't have to, but God bless her, that's one way to do it. In doing so, she started saying, you should look into the toilet

and see a giant coiled snake looking back at you when you look in the toilet. Now when I wrote The Plant Paradox, which was my monster bestseller eight years ago now, I wrote in the manuscript that you should look in the toilet and see an anaconda looking back up at you. And my editor at Harbor Collins said, Do you realize there's a movie there where an anaconda is coming out of the toilet? And I said, Oh, yeah, she's, I don't think we

want to use a visual of the anaconda. So I've, we put in a giant coil snake. And what people should realize, which I don't think people realize, I didn't know, is that most of what comes out your rear end is actually living and dead bacteria. It's not waste products, honestly. to build a tropical rainforest, a diverse, wonderfully balanced ecological system, then quite frankly, a giant coiled snake is there's a bunch of happy bacteria singing kumbaya down in your toilet and that's what you should be looking for. Wow, this is so interesting. Such an interesting conversation. My gosh. It's just,

if you think about it, really these conversations, I mean you were doing it, but these conversations about the gut, at least as far as I know, really in the mainstream weren't taking place even a decade ago like this. It's almost like this is sort of a new frontier of the you know, hopefully preemptive medicine. Yeah, I mean we quite frankly we really didn't know those guys were down there. I had former head of the FDA on my podcast a while back and he and I are the same age and we were reminiscing that when we were in medical school, you know, food went in, went down a pipe, magic happened. You absorbed some of this stuff

and whatever you didn't need went out the rear end. And that was kind of what we thought. That was it. That was it. And now, you know, now we actually can understand the magic and, but it was but we're just naive. I'll give you an example. Dr. Mark Hyman is a friend of mine,

and we were off camera talking before I was on, or he was on my podcast, or I was on his. He has a daughter who's a third year medical student at a very prestigious university, and I won't mention it. As of her third year, she has yet to have a course on the microbiome, seriously. And he and I are just shaking our heads going, holy cow. Now that is interesting. It's still taught the same way. You know, in the book, I promised everybody I'd ask this question because this this part was hard for me to get my head around I get how it could affect your mental health. I

Think I get a little bit of that. I think I understand certainly cognition brain fog those other things that you talk about I get that but personality It's a different leap for me a little bit And so you stipulate that your guts actually impacting who you actually are. Yeah, because as my friend, Dr. Joe Dispenza says, your personal, your personality is your personal reality. And so this is now the filter in which you're actually processing the world, you're actually saying here, this is a lot for one episode, but how is it that you believe it impacts personality? Well, because you can actually identify species of bacteria that associate with, for instance, an outgoing personality.

You can specify bacteria that make a very closed personality, and angry personality. And again, all I got to please, if a little one cell organism can make me become a wild, crazy guy looking for excitement, just one little organism in my brain, then imagine what coordinated effect of a hundred trillion organisms could do. We have to get over the fact that we're a symbiotic organism. And many of us think that the only reason really that we exist is to provide a decent home for these guys. Bacteria have been around forever and forever.

And number one, they're mad as hell at what we're doing to them but that's another subject but if we you know if if Hippocrates was right and I certainly think he was then we ought to put our attention down there in fact I have I have a Buddhist scholar who's a patient of mine and we're discussing this one day he says you know the Buddha Buddha and Apocrates were contemporaries. And he says, I'm a Sanskrit scholar. He said, I'm going to write you what I find out. And so he wrote me, he says, you're not going to believe this. The Buddha said that enlightenment begins in the intestines.

That is crazy. Is this getting good you guys? Like you don't always hear a podcast like completely different than other stuff you've heard before. You're such an interesting man. The way you deliver the information is so interesting. You're really cut out for social media. That's why you've become so famous.

Obviously, you're very smart man as well. Let me ask you one last question. By the really cut out for social media. That's why you've become so famous. Obviously, you're a very smart man as well. Let me ask you one last question. By the way, I've really enjoyed today. I really, I knew I would enjoy talking with you, but I've enjoyed it even more than I realized I would. It's like, it just flew by. Sometimes I look up at the clock and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I got 40 more minutes to go. Today, I look up and I got five minutes left and I've got a bunch of things I'd love to talk to you about still. So thank you.

So here's the question and then I'll give you the first answer for you. If I were to say, okay, I you got me interested in this whole gut thing here a little bit more. And if I even knew a lot about it, I've learned more today than I knew before. And so if someone asked you, what is something I should do now? The first thing you would say is go, go get the gut brain paradox book. That's one I'll check that box for you. Thank you.

Books sold. What's the other thing? Go do this. I know that's hard to say in the medical world, but like, hey, start doing this. It'll help your gut. So you got to... I can heal a leaky gut. It'll take me a while, but I can heal leaky gut. And I can even sell you supplements that will heal a leaky gut. It'll take me a while, but I can heal a leaky gut. And I can even sell you supplements

that will heal a leaky gut. In fact, my number one and number two selling supplements, Gundry MD, are leaky gut supplements. But, as I tell all my patients, I'll heal your leaky gut. But if you keep swallowing razor blades, you will slice it right back open. So one of the things that I really urge people to do, 100% of my people with leaky gut, when they see me, we do sensitivity tests to lots of different foods.

100% of them are sensitive to gluten, to the components of wheat. 70% of them are sensitive to corn. A huge number are sensitive to the nightshade family of vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, white potatoes, eggplant, even goji berries and nightshades. Just get those out of your diet. Beans that aren't pressure cooked are loaded with these razor blades. Get those out of your diet. Within nine months to a year, 100% of my patients are no longer sensitive to these compounds, which is really exciting.

Now, why is that? Because number one, these compounds literally cause leaky gut. They are razor blades and they leak through the wall of the gut and your immune system goes crazy. It goes, oh my gosh, you know, these are bad actors. They shouldn't be over here. And number two, what's fascinating to me, and this kind of finishes back up with glyphosate, about 80% of my patients have autoimmune diseases,

often many of them. We get them to a point where their autoimmune disease resolves, goes into remission, and about 94% of people do within a year. Not bad. Awesome. Not bad. So they go over to Europe on vacation, and they eat baguettes, and they eat croissants, and they eat pizzas, and they have tomatoes, and they don't react. and they do great. And they're going, Oh, Dr.

Gundry cured me. You know, I can have all this stuff and they come back to the United States and they start eating our stuff and even the sourdough bread or whatever. And within a few weeks, they're on the phone going, what the heck? You know, my psoriasis popped up or my joints are hurting. I said, no, there wasn't any glyphosate in the food you ate over there. You came back and started eating our stuff and I see it over and over and over again. Okay, I just made a note. What? Gosh darn it, this was a good conversation today. Thank you.

me to know. What? Gosh darn it. This was a good conversation today. Thank you. I enjoyed this so much. We'll do this again. We'll do it again. I have, I know for sure this isn't going to be your last book cause you're cranking them out like crazy. I can't help myself. Well, it's wonderful. You know, each book leads to a next, you know, finding and I'm already working on, on the next one because I can't help myself. Yeah, I'm a kid in a candy store. Bad example, but it's... Yeah, stay away from the candy for your gut. Yeah. Well, when it comes out, you're invited back on.

This was great. They will do it in person next time though, when I'm out in LA. I would love that. All right. Yeah. All right, everybody. Dr. Gundry was awesome today and go get the gut brain paradox and share this episode. This one, this will be a viral one. All right. God bless you everybody. Max out. This is the Ed Mylan Show.