The Cause Behind Diseases and Unhealthy Diets with Dr. Gundry and Lewis Howes

What makes us different is actually the bacteria and viruses that live in us. We have different bacteria and viruses. And you can actually show when humans evolved from the other great apes that our bacteria actually changed and we can actually identify that point in time that the bacteria made us rather than our genes made us. The bacterias made us human or bacteria made us? Yeah, they actually, as shocking as it may seem, most of what happens to us is determined by the state and the variation of our bacteria, primarily in our gut. Give you an example. You can take a bowel movement from an obese individual and feed it to a skinny rat. Skinny rats love to eat poop. And those skinny rats will become fat. Really? Because the bacteria have actually manipulated their feeding habits. They actually send text messages to the brain to go look for foods that they would not otherwise consume that those bacteria want. And we can actually, there was a cool study in a marathon runner. You're a great athlete. So there's a woman marathon runner in England a couple of years ago who developed a very severe infection in her colon called C. difficile. A lot of people have heard of it. And the modern treatment of this now is a fecal transplant, taking poop from somebody else and shoving it up your ass. Wow. And you try to get a fecal transplant from a family member because believe it or not, family members tend to share their bacteria. I share a lot of bacteria with my dogs and they share with me. So they found a cousin who was a good match for her and she got the fecal transplant and everything went well or C. difficile went away. We can go into why that happened. In the next year, this marathon runner gained 32 pounds. Wow. Without changing anything. And it turns out her niece cousin was actually 30, about 32 pounds overweight. And so she was inoculated with obesogenic bacteria and her bacteria, these little, you know, one cell organisms controlled her behavior. Wow. Now think about. So it made her, made her more hungry or desirable certain foods. Yeah, exactly. So she changed the way she was eating because she was triggered being manipulated. Wow. Being manipulated. Well, it's kind of like when you're, you know, I love candy and sweets. I've never been drunk and I don't drink, but my vice is like I could eat cakes and candy and brownies all day long if I choose to. And then when I, when I did go off of it, it's hard because I just want to keep going back to it until I changed the habit fully. And then I'm like, I don't need it anymore. Right. But it takes that time to kind of transition out of it. Right. Yeah. These are very addictive foods and they're, they're addictive because what happens is like simple sugars, like in candies and cakes and saturated fats, like on the icing and you know, the coating on the doughnuts and all. Oh, so good. Yeah. Used to love them. Yeah. And so these things actually, the obesogenic bacteria can actually live on them. They love it. They love simple sugars. They love saturated fats. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me more. And they actually tell our brain to do that. It's kind of like, you remember the movie little shop of horrors with the, with the blood sucking plant was a very famous Broadway show. So Rick Moreno started in the movie and there's this blood sucking plant that he grows and Audrey and Audrey keeps getting bigger. And Audrey has to have human blood. And long story short, Audrey, whenever it's odd, Audrey is a speaking part. And Audrey says, feed me, Seymour, feed me. And it turns out that this whole concept is actually true that our bacteria control our behavior. For instance, you can take depressed mice and put their bacteria in happy mice. And those happy mice will go, we'll go hide in a corner and not come out. In fact, in the 1930s, they did an experiment in a back in those days, most really depressed people were institutionalized. So they did an experiment where they gave them all colonics and cleaned out their colons. And then they gave them fecal enemas from happy people. No way. And about two thirds of the depressed people got happy and were released. In the 1930s. Wow. So, I mean, it's just, you start looking at this and go, whoa, you know, we're probably looking at the wrong stuff. For instance, one of the things that I'm talking about in Berlin in October at the world Congress of microbiota, that's what the study is. We now know that you can take bacteria from young animals guts and put them in old animals guts and the old animals will become young. No way. It's the fountain of youth. No way. So they'll like their cells will get younger or they'll have youthful energy or what? All of the above. They will actually extend their lifespan by about 30%. What? Yeah, because here's the deal. What I'm trying to get people to understand is this is not about you and me or what we conceive as us. This we're just a condominium for the people who really run us. And these are all these little one cellular organisms. And what we're beginning to realize is we're a condominium for these bugs and we're their home. We've exchanged them living in us and actually taking care of us for food and shelter for them. And it's crazy. I know. And the really cool thing is so we can take bacteria from young animals, you know, and put them into old animals and the bacteria say, man, this place is decrepit. You know, I need to do a complete total renovation here because this is where I'm stuck and I better make the best of it. And I want everything to be nice. You know, it's like, you know, yeah, gentrification of the neighborhood. And this actually what do they do? So they actually instruct here's here's the take home message. They actually send text messages to the mitochondria and you probably know all about mitochondria, the little energy organelles in the brain, right? In every one of you. But the brain has the most of us. And these produce energy. These mitochondria are actually engulfed bacteria. And as strange as it may seem, the bacteria in your gut send text messages to the mitochondria that say, guys, new sheriffs in town, clean up your act. We want you guys working and humming on all eight cylinders. It's kind of like General Kelly coming into the White House and, you know, total disarray and it was going, okay, guys, no more of the silliness. And so we now have discovered some of those compounds that the bacteria in your gut signal the mitochondria to regenerate themselves. And it's, I mean, it's opening up whole new areas that we never even dreamed of. Wow. So you're really like 170 years old, huh? Yeah. Well, people have just been manipulating all this for the last 15 years. I'll show you a picture. When we're all done of me and Mehmet Oz standing together when I did a show a few weeks ago. And one of us is 12 years older than the other person. And you would not guess by looking at our skin, who's the old person and who's the young person. And I was showing this picture to David Sinclair from Harvard, who's one of the great anti-aging researchers in this country and actually in the world. And we were discussing some ways to manipulate mitochondria in the brain. And I said, let me show you a picture. And he's looking and he says, okay, so Mehmet's a lot older than you, right? And he said, let me show you my driver's license. He said, wait a minute, how old are you? And he said, can I have this picture? And I said, yeah, he says, I'm going to put it on my talks. Because what I've been doing for the last 17 years is giving my bacteria, what all the research that I've done and many other people have done, would predict that my bacteria are pretty doggone happy with what I'm doing for them. And they're exchanging that happiness to say, man, this is a great place to live. And we're going to keep this place nice and clean and just happy. And so, yeah. And so you lived in a blue zone, is that right? Then Loma Linda? Yeah, Loma Linda's a blue zone, that's correct. But when I was living in that blue zone, I was eating a low-fat vegetarian diet. I was running 30 miles a week. I was one of these Clydesdale runners. I weighed 70 pounds more than I do now. Really? Yeah, I was a Clydesdale runner. There's a lot of unhealthy people in blue zones too. Oh, yeah. They have the vegans that just are overweight. And you're like, how are you this overweight? Yeah, well, it actually is because you're giving your bacteria the wrong stuff. And that's really part of the plant paradox. The plant paradox is that there's certain plants that absolutely, positively do not want us to eat them. At all. In any circumstance, whether you cook them or chop them or slice them or skin them. It doesn't matter. They were here first and they had a really great before animals arrive because nobody wanted to eat them. And my research at Yale was in human evolutionary biology. So plants have the same evolutionary drive as animals. They want to grow and they want to have babies, seeds. They want to protect themselves. And they want to protect themselves. They don't want to die. Exactly. So when animals arrived, they had a problem because animals can run, they can hide, they can fight, but plants are stuck. But plants are chemists of incredible ability. So they can turn sunlight into matter, like around your wall here. And so what they use is chemical warfare to actually defend themselves and to even make animals do their bidding. Because for instance, just throw out an example, most plants want you to eat their fruits because the fruit contains seed to go reseed them. So you'll eat their fruit. The seeds in the fruits are inedible and you'll either spit them out or if you swallow them, they'll survive going through your intestines and you'll poop them out someplace else. Fertilize. And fertilize. It's perfect. And they're away from mom and dad. So for instance, if an apple falls underneath the apple tree, that poor kid doesn't have much of a chance because mom or dad is going to shade them the next year. But if it gets carried off, you know, even a hundred feet away and then it gets dropped, the plant does this on purpose. And in fact, you and I love fruit because you and I were designed to eat fruit once a year in the summer to gain weight for the winter. So it was a really good trade-off between, for instance, great apes and plants. But the fascinating thing is manufacturers, food chemists know this and we are drawn with color vision and only animals that are fruit predators actually have color vision because you want to know when the fruit is ripe, when it has the highest sugar content. And the plant wants you to know when it's ripe because that's when the seed finally has an impenetrable shell and it doesn't want you to eat it before that time. So it tells you, okay, now's the time. It's the shiniest object. It's time to eat it. So what colors does it use? In general, it uses reds and oranges and yellows to denote ripeness. So the next time you're going down the snack aisles looking for all the great munchie stuff, you'll be shocked that most of the companies use oranges, reds, yellows to get your attention because it goes direct into the deep center of your brain and says, Ooh, that color means I should eat it. I'm going to get a lot of calories and I'm going to be the big winner for the winter. Wow. If you're doing that every day, many years in a row. Yes. You're always storing fat for the winter. That's exactly right. And that's part of the plant paradox is that once upon a time, we only had fruit in a very limited time period. Now we have it accessible all the time. There were no 747s bringing blueberries to Costco in February. They just weren't. So one of the weird things about our computer program is like Tony Robbins is always fun We were on version 1.0 of our operating system. We've never had an upgrade. And the same goes to the foods and the plants and the fruit we eat. So we were supposed to eat fruit once a year. And when we were eating fruit, our brain says, Oh my gosh, it's summer. Winter is right around the corner. You know, we should eat this stuff because winter is a tough time, whether it's dry season or rainy season or cold season. And we better store up fat just like a bear. A bear is eating all those blueberries and huckleberries, and they're storing fat for the winter. So if you're eating blueberries at Costco in February that came from Chile, your operating system doesn't know it's February. It says, heck, it's August and winter's right around the corner. So I better eat some more of this stuff. And this is one of the things that's happening to us in particularly American society, but now most of the Western countries. We're eating things that we have no business eating 365 days a year. And most of us are just getting ready for the winter that never comes. And if you want to learn about the key foods you need to eat to master your health, make sure to watch this video right here. The lining of our gut and actually break through the border. Really? Yeah, they really do. That's what causes eczema and causes breakouts. Yeah, exactly. Acne, brain fog, irritable bowel.