Episode 413: Dr. Alejandro Junger: The Gut's Impact on Depression, Skin and Allergies + a Gut Repair Program

28:47But weren't you in that state when you were doing the exchange with them back when you were at the ashram? So that state, I went in and out. You said for two weeks. For two weeks, I was in and out. In that state, little time. Right, right, right. But I thought you were staying—weren't you staying at the ashram? No, no, no. I was living in the city, and I was driving to the Catskills, where this ashram is. Oh, okay. So I wasn't understanding. I thought the ashram was in India. No, no. This ashram was in New York. Oh, okay. I didn't know they had an ashram. They have ashrams all over the world. There's one in LA too.

29:20Oh, there is? Yeah. Oh, okay. Now this is making more sense to me. Yeah, yeah. So then when you found meditation and it kind of helped change the way your brain works, basically, and it calms you down. Well, it changed everything. Because after that, I ended up going to India as a cardiologist. When I arrived there, they put me as the director of their clinic. but there was a lot of other doctors there were Ayurvedic doctors there were Chinese medicine doctors there were chiropractors, hands-on healers Reiki masters all sorts of whoever came to the ashram whatever skill they had they put them to work on that so there were people that were engineers that were working on the lighting system and the water filtration system it's a community, everybody's doing something It's like a kibbutz, it sounds like.

30:14It's like a kibbutz. Yeah, it sounds like a kibbutz. But it's a different kibbutz because in kibbutz, you're just working. Right. Here you're working. On yourself. Yeah, yeah. So there's lots of time for meditation. But I was the medical director of their clinic. So what we used to do is we used to put a patient that came in a circle. Right. And we were all there. So the Ayurvedic medicine doctor asked some questions. I asked some questions. The Chinese medicine doctor asked some questions. So everybody asking questions. By the end, if we have to examine, we examine. And by the end, we all give our opinion.

30:45And at the beginning, I was like, you know, like a woman came with hives all over her body. I wanted to give, and she was actually starting to wheeze. So she was having a severe histaminic or allergic reaction. I wanted to give her antihistamines or even prednisone. But the Ayurvedic medicine doctor said, because it was mango season, And there's like 300 types of mango in the, you know, it's a big ashram, lots of trees, you know. So we were eating mango all day long and mango juice and mango dessert, you know. So are you eating mango? I love mango, said the woman. Okay. And are you eating... Yeah.

31:23So basically the Ayurvedic medicine doctor said, she's a pitta constitution and we have to stop all her fiery... Pitta is fire. We have to stop all the fiery foods. So she stopped all the spices and the mango. And she said she doesn't need any medication if she does that. And within two days, I mean, the first day she left, and I was checking on her because I thought she's going to need antihistamine or prednisone. But with the dietary changes and a few other instructions, there were some oils that she gave her. In two days, she was completely fine. So I was blown away. And that happened to me with all the practitioners there, right?

32:09The Reiki master, the meditation master. Wow. Sometimes I had to take over and say, nah. I remember there was a monk that came. He was having chest pain. And the Ayurvedic doctor said, oh, we have to take all the food. He's a vata. I said, nah, this guy has to go to the hospital right now because his artery, he's having an unstable angina, which means that there's a blood clot that's forming and unforming. See, this is where it becomes dangerous, this whole thing, right? Because when do you listen to you and when do you listen to your Ayurvedic doctor or your Chinese medicine doctor? This is where the rubber meets the road, in my opinion.

32:47Yes. So that patient, everybody had an opinion. I said, no, we have to drink this herb. I said, no, we need a car right now. And I am actually going to go in the car with him to Bombay, into a hospital to get a— And it was the right decision. It was a right decision because he got a cardiac catheterization. There was a blood clot. There was a severe lesion. They put a stent in him and immediately he felt better. And it saved his myocardium. Otherwise, he would have had a bigger heart attack. Okay, well, this is my point. So if you weren't there, let's say, for example, like I have a lot of friends of mine.

33:22A friend of mine right now has been sick for like two weeks, okay? Came back from a very crazy trip. And, you know, I'm convinced he has a major infection, but he refuses to take antibiotics, right? Because he's on the opposite end of the spectrum. Probably somewhere in the middle would be nice, but some people are very extreme. And he won't take anything. This is a huge problem today. This is the problem. People take sides. Right. Just like in politics, just like in sports, they take sides. So there's people that would never see an MD with a gun to their head. And there's people that would never go to a, you know, a homeopath or whatever.

34:04You know, that's bullshit. The truth is that everything is useful. Everything. Everything has its place. But when do you know when to do what? The big distinction, in my understanding, is this. When there's an acute problem, Western medicine has incredible solutions, incredible tools. For example, if you break a bone or you're having a heart attack, or even if you're having a stroke, something acute, you go to the hospital, you get a cardiac catheterization, you put a stent on, you go to a good traumatologist, orthopedist, who can, I mean, I had a car accident. I had my leg reconstructed, pins and metals and things, you know?

34:46I remember. And I can use it now. So modern Western medicine is incredible for acute problems, for chronic problems, not so much. So they want to use the same tools and solutions for chronic problems and for acute problems. So what do they do? They cut you and they give you medications, surgery and medications, and it doesn't work, right? The thing is that of the problems that human beings are suffering from, and I don't know this to be 100 % accurate, but just to give you an idea, 10 % are acute problems. 90 % of people are suffering, or 90 % of suffering is caused by chronic problems. And for chronic problems, then you have a lot of things.

35:29And it's an art to combine, right? It's an art. It's an art to combine. And what that experience gave me, it gave me a taste of the palette of healing modalities that exist. I mean, there wasn't every healing modality practitioner in the world, but, you know, there were a lot. There were Chinese medicine doctors. I read medicine doctors, chiropractors, and other things that I hadn't even heard of. Right. But I'm even going back to when you were telling me when you first moved to the States and they gave you seven medications for your depression, for your allergies, and for something else. Oh, yeah, for your IBS, whatever.

36:06Like, were there some of those meds that you could have done naturally that would have been okay? When do you – like, you know what I mean? People only know what they know and only have access to what they have access to. Yes. So it's changing now. Okay. With the advances and the growing of functional medicine, which I know you're familiar with, functional medicine is a new way of thinking about the body, right? Who was created or invented or designed. You're thinking as basically, the way I see functional medicine is like you're working with the body as a whole, like holistically. An easy way to tell somebody what functional medicine is, I say, it's as if you grab a modern medicine doctor, but you teach him how to think like an Ayurvedic medicine doctor or a Chinese medicine doctor.

36:57So what does that mean? That means that modern medicine divides and conquers, meaning there's specializations. They divide the body in organs. You have an eye problem, you go to the eye doctor, ophthalmologist. You have a brain problem, you go to the neurologist. You have a heart problem, you go to the heart doctor, cardiologist. You have a liver problem, you go to the hepatologist. You have a gut problem, you go to the gastroenterologist. Right. It's divided by organs. But functional medicine tells you, like Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and many other ancient modalities, that the body is not really a set of divided organs.

37:35Actually, it's a set of systems. So in functional medicine, we think in systems. And there are seven systems, right? And each system has many organs participating in it. And different organs participate in different systems. For example, the intestines, right? They are part of the digesting and absorbing system. They are also part of the immune repair and defense system. They're also part of the nervous system. The intestines participate in most systems or all systems of the body, right? And that's where all systems kind of meet, physically meet in the intestines. So that is the big difference between functional medicine and Western modern medicine.

38:25So, okay. So if I'm having a chronic disease, if I'm having a chronic problem and I don't know, I'd rather have both opinions. I would go to a functional medicine doctor and be thought of holistically. But I think what's happened, I think a lot of times, because we just kind of touched upon this at the beginning, but the medical system, the health system is so screwed up right now. And there's so much money in big pharma and the food system is all screwed up that there's no trust anymore. That's the first thing. People are going to doctors, look what's happening. They're writing a prescription because they want to cover their ass.

39:03They don't want to get sued versus looking at the body as a whole. So people are getting missed. A lot of things that are making them sick is being missed. This goes back to when we started talking about our separation from nature. Right. So when you look at ancient civilizations or cultures, you see that the people that were in charge of healing, what we would call the doctors now, were not just the doctors. they were also like spiritual healers. And sometimes the priest and the doctor was the same person, you know, the healers in the Amazon tribes. It's a different thing. Medicine today in our culture, in our modern culture, became completely prostituted and degenerated and distorted by interests, right?

39:58So you go there, they have five minutes to see you. They're going to write you a prescription. next. Yeah. That's it. Insurance pays, not pays. It's a... But then also, let me just interject, okay? Because then if you go see a doctor that's not covered, that will have maybe more than five minutes to see you, they are all a fortune. Doctors have now made it impossible for the average person to come see you. Any good doctor worth their salt are now concierge doctors, and they are private doctors with a huge price tag. Do you know why people are staying sick because they can't afford to see a functional medicine doctor?

40:38And by the way, just like to talk about the functional, like that's just MDs, okay? Functional medicine doctors are a living fortune. I mean, I go into a doctor's office, a functional doctor, they want to give me 77 tests. Each test is 500 bucks. By the time I'm walking out of there, it's thousands and thousands of dollars and I'm not even at the root of the problem. So if I'm who I and I make a nice living so if I can't afford it sometimes or I'm like shit that's expensive like I don't want to spend that money I've got all these other expenses how could people who are making really like just a very fair like a small amount of money do it they can't they're making it so you people who are not multi gazillionaires can't afford to be seen or can afford to be healthy.

41:29But listen, that's what's happening with modern civilization. It's terrible. It's degenerating not only in the healthcare aspect, in many aspects, right? So we're living now the consequences. But that's a big one. I mean, I can't think of any other situation where anything's more expensive because if you don't have your health, you have absolutely nothing. So like, who cares? You can have 10 ,000 problems until you have a health problem, then you only have one problem. Exactly. Yes. Right? Like no other problem, every other problem goes away once you have your health compromised. So that to me, that's why I always say health is wealth, because without that, you have nothing.

42:09And so how do we, like, unless people listen to podcasts and get these like bite-sized pieces of information from trusted sources, that's why I'm always saying trusted sources, because everybody, it's become a cash grab. People are saying whatever they need to say because they're being paid by sponsors, by whoever to push their products, their brands, their services, their telemedicine issues. Like, this is what's happening. Listen, I am talking about these things, and I agree with you, and I want even further to tell you what I think about it. I am also here to talk about some of the products that I, it ends up affecting everybody.

42:54It does. But I'll tell you the difference, okay? I'll tell you the difference. Everyone needs to make a living, but you need to know that you're talking to someone who has integrity. And that's the problem. People don't know who have integrity because a lot of people who are great talkers, they're great talkers, they're great salespeople. but they don't have the wherewithal to even give you advice on your health or your longevity. The people who are actually sometimes not the best, you know, representatives of themselves or the best orators or the best media spokespeople are typically the ones that I see who are actually the most knowledgeable, have the most integrity, who I'd like to get my information from.

43:35By the way. By the way, you're one of them. This helped me really focus. It did? It did. Good. Well, this is a good example, right? Because like, yeah, like everybody needs to make money and have brands and sponsors who help them, right? But you have to be discerning who you work with, who your products are, who you're listening to. Like you're saying yourself, like, you're like, well, I have my clean program. Yes. Yeah, but like I vetted you. I know you. I like you. I'll tell you one way in which I, I myself, distinguish between who is just doing it for business. And maybe this is not humble of me to say, right, but my company and my program is a result of my own problems, a solution search for.

44:21I was searching for a solution for my own problems when I found the solution, which I was coming into. I spent the time in India. Right, right, right. We got sidetracked. With all the meditation and the vegetarian food and all these. So my symptoms got a little better, right? But when I finished my time in India, I had to come back and go work. So I started working in a hospital again. And again, seven minutes per patient, eating in a hospital, cafeteria, running, being on call. Again, my symptoms doubled down. I was more depressed and more allergic. And until one day, some guy that I knew, I had seen 10 days before, knocks on my door.

45:03He was from LA, a producer, always very edgy and red in the face from alcohol and coffee. And when I opened the door, he came to visit me and I was like, oh my God, what happened to you? He was like 10 kilos less. His skin looked amazing. His eyes were white. and he didn't have the redness from the, you know, that characterized him. I said, what happened to you? Did you get plastic surgery? And he said, no, no, no. I come from a detox center. I said, detox? I didn't know that you were on drugs. He said, no, no, no, no, that kind of detox. He said, come, come, I'll show you. And he took me to 10 minutes away, across the highway.

45:44Right. To this place called the We Care Spa that is a detox center. You know, you go there, you juice all the time and you have colonics and you have massages and this and that. And I was blown away when the results is come, come. I go there and it turns out that the owner is an Argentinian woman. I'm from Europe. I wiggled it off immediately. She started telling me. I told her about my issues. She said, why don't you try the program here? I did. And my depression lifted and gone away. My allergies disappeared. My irritable bowel syndrome disappeared. And I was like, oh, my God, this is kind of magic.

46:19I didn't know, I couldn't explain in my medical mind what had happened to me until I found functional medicine. And when I found functional medicine and I learned about the detoxification system and the other systems of the body and how the gut breaks and how to repair, that's when I said, oh my God, of course, this is what, this is how doing that program completely resolved all my issues. So I started studying and eventually I quit the work in the hospital and I went on my own path. So did you use her program, the We Care program, to base your clean program on? No, no. There are similarities, right?

47:02But no. After learning functional medicine and really understanding and having more and more and more experience, I came to my own conclusions and put together from different sources, and I put together my own. Well, how long has the program been around, the Clean Program? The Clean Program has been around since 2000. I mean, as the Clean Program. Yeah, as the Clean Program. It's been around since 2008. Right. It's been a long, a while. And where is her program, the We Care? Is that even around? That's a spa that's in Desert Hot Springs, yeah. I've never even heard of it. It's very famous. All the models go there, all the actresses.

47:40It's called We Care. Yeah, yeah. So then, you know, when I learned that, and at the time, I was working in Palm Springs. The heart surgeon in the hospital that I was working, Desert Regional Medical Center, was Dr. Gundry. And he was like the top surgeon in the world. And, you know, he invented a way of stopping the heart, which was new, with retroverse cardioplegia. I mean, the guy is like a genius, right? and they had hired, we called him the bionic surgeon because he was in Loma Linda and they paid$6 million to transfer him to Desert Hot Springs. They wanted to create, to Palm Springs. They wanted to create a Mayo Clinic in Palm Springs and they wanted the top cardiac surgeon and they brought him over.

48:21Dr. Gundry? Yeah, Dr. Gundry. Where does he live now? Is he there now? No, no, I think he lives in Santa Barbara now. He quit, he quit. But what happened was he was there and I started talking to him and telling him and he was like a little bit skeptic and then his wife had a problem. So I helped his wife with this allergy problem. And he said, oh, my God. So he started paying attention. Eventually, he quit working as a heart surgeon. Now he's doing functional medicine. No way. He's doing functional medicine now? He wrote a book about the gut recently. Well, I know that Dr. Gundry, though, seems to be like he's very business savvy.

49:00He's doing all sorts of stuff. He's got a supplement line. I think he's like a super genius kind of guy. He's a, you know, he's a, he's an interesting guy. I like him a lot. We went to India together. I remember that you guys had like a relationship. I remember years ago you told me you guys were tight. We were very good friends. I remember you were really tight. And so like he, cause he now, well, he's on his podcast, his books, but all I always remember about Dr. Gundry, you know how like people always like remember one thing about something or something that sticks in your head. He says, I should never eat tomatoes.

49:33Tomatoes are terrible because it has a quality that is very... Lectins. He talks a lot about lectins. He wrote a book called The Plant Paradox. Yes. Yeah. Dr. Gundry and I don't agree in a few things. Is that one of them? That's one of them. What's this whole thing? Why does he hate lectin so much? Well, because as a molecule in itself, it's a molecule. These are molecules that are thought to be a defense mechanism of the plants because plants cannot run and escape from the predators. So they manufacture these chemicals that deter, that make the animals that eat them feel bad, either itchy or allergic or something, right, or stomachache.

50:14And some of these chemicals are these lectins. But I think that focusing on that is a mistake because there's also something called hormesis, which is the good stresses in life, right? So some of these lectins actually cause some stress in the body, but the adaptation mechanisms that the body trigger and turn on to deal with that are actually reinforcing you. Yeah. Because if someone like me who is highly allergic, I break out in hives just by looking at certain plants and in a tropical environment, you don't want to see me. Yeah. Do I stay away from stuff like that? So now this is a great way to jump into really the meat of what I came to talk to you about.

51:00Okay, I can talk to you about that. Which is this. I told you 10 % of problems, approximately, ballpark in my head that people suffer from are acute, 90 % are chronic problems. Chronic problems, 99%, if not 100 % of chronic problems are directly related to gut, to the gut. And this is why the gut became such a fashionable thing. And everybody's talking about the gut now and the microbiome, right? Well, thank God we're putting our attention there because this is true. And this is my understanding and my experience and my practice around the world. I see people all over the world. I don't have an office.

51:40Most people I treat, I treat for free. These people, my ex-wife's cleaner in UK. When I went there and I saw her, and I can send you some videos to edit on the podcast. she had severe eczema and she's such a nice and hard-working girl and I saw her hands they were they were cracked and bleeding right and I couldn't help myself and I so I went to talk to her and um and I said I think I can help you with this and she said okay so I put her in a gut repair program and you should see what happened she I mean it changed her life and this is a problem she had for years and then she went to all the doctors in that she could in the UK I mean she She doesn't have access to, you know, a lot, but she, but, you know, there is a good health system there.

52:24Nobody could help her. They put her on what they call biologicals, you know, which are basically, basically immune depressors. Because what happens is many of these, these problems are autoimmune and your immune system kind of goes haywire and gives you what we see as a disease, right? We understand that this is, but, but the thing is that. Nature is incredibly intelligent and we are not born with any information or pre-information or programming to get sick. In fact, the body doesn't know how to get sick. What we see as diseases are adaptation and survival mechanisms that have been turned on for too long and then they become a problem.

53:09That's when we detect them as a disease, right? But it's not really a disease. And I'll explain to you with something from my own specialty, cardiology, right? Which happens to be the number one killer of people in the world. Heart attacks, cardiovascular disease, right? Coronary artery disease. So what's happening? So this animal, the human being, is now running like a fish out of water, stressed out of high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic inflammation. So the artery starts getting fissures, starts getting little injuries, right? And the body intelligently deposits a little bit of cholesterol.

53:50Just like a scab forms when you cut yourself, the scab forms, and under the scab, the skin heals. And then when the skin heals, the scab falls, and it's healed, right? The same thing would happen in the artery. The plaque of cholesterol would go there, it would heal, and then the cholesterol would be reabsorbed if the injury was just a short-term injury. But the injury is there every day, so the cholesterol is deposited every day. Now, eventually, the cholesterol deposits so much that it narrows the passage of blood through the artery, or it breaks, it bleeds, a clot is formed, and you have a heart attack.

54:30But it's not a disease. It's an adaptation survival mechanism. The problem is that we keep on, the injury is permanent. Right. In nature, injury is momentary. You know, let's say. Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying. How do you change it? The gazelle that's being run by a tiger, you know, the cortisol goes up, adrenaline goes up, blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. There's going to be microfissures. But then when they escape the tiger, they go back to being present and eating what nature designed them to eat. And so plaque of cholesterol would deposit, it would heal, and then it would be reabsorbed, right?

55:06But no. Right, I get it. So what do we do to prevent? So your whole thing is how to prevent it. 99%, if not 100 % of chronic diseases are either directly initiated by gut injury or related to gut injury. So what do we do? So what we do is we need to, first of all, when people come to me, the first thing I do when a chronic problem comes to me is I put them on a gut repair program. Even before I get the blood tests, if I send blood tests or whatever tests are needed, I only send tests when they're really needed, in my opinion, before the blood tests come, many times already with a gut repair program, by the time the blood results are there and you have the second appointment, the problem is already even much better or completely gone in two or three weeks.

55:52Really? Yeah. So before you even do blood work, you work on the gut? Well, sometimes I do blood work anyways. Okay, but what you're saying is... There's a lot of things to consider, but gut repair is... That's where the Achilles heel of human health exists. And I'm going to explain it to you. Oh, sorry, this is yours. Yeah, I brought a model of a part of the intestine. This is the intestinal wall, and these are the microvilli, right? By the way, for those of you who are just listening and they're not watching this, Dr. Unger brought a model. An anatomical model. And he's showing me with his pointer how and what happens in your gut.

56:33Okay, go ahead. So the gut is a tube, right? And the tube has a surface, right? And this surface in the gut is increased by foldings, which are called villi and microvilli. So why did the body evolve to do that? What we think is that it's to increase the contact surface of the intestines because there's a lot happening there that needs to happen, right? Digestion and absorption, right? And life depends on it in nature. Sustenance and food is very important. So the gut is, in all animals, is a really important organ and system, right? So what happens is this surface, if we now get an intestine and iron it out and we flatten out all this villi and microvilli, the surface of your intestine would be between one and two tennis courts of size.

57:34One and a half. I mean, you're little, so probably one and a quarter. Oh, yeah. I'm a little bigger, so one and a half. Some people have two tennis courts, surface of an intestinal wall. So my intestinal wall, everyone's intestinal wall is about two tennis courts. Between one and two tennis courts, depending on your size and age and sex. Wow. Yeah. And this is what happens. Each microvilli has a blood supply system and a nerve and muscle system. This yellow here is the nerves, this artery and vein, and this is the wall. So this is inside the body, and here would be outside the body. Here's where the food would come, right?

58:19This is obviously a tube, right? And this is just a little part of the wall. So here is where the food comes. This is where the bacteria would live, right? And once it passes, see this, there's a one layer of cells here. This one layer of cell is like a brick wall. Each cell is like a brick. And it's stuck to the next cell, right next to it, by cement. This is called the tight junction. Now, why did the body design this wall so hermetic? It's because it doesn't want undigested food or even digested food to go directly into the blood. the cells are intelligently selecting the small broken down, digestion breaks down proteins into amino acids, carbohydrates into simple sugars, and fats into fatty acids.

59:13So those little components are the ones that these cells select, absorb, meaning they go through the cell, the nutrients, and they're dumped into the blood, right? But if the cells are, the cement between the cells is broken down and there's a gap between the cells, this is what's called the leaky gut. So what happens is everything that's happening outside the body, meaning inside the digestive tube, it's outside the body. Now many things are just seeping in without the intelligent selection of the body. The body selects only the building blocks, amino acids, fatty acids, simple sugars. But when these gaps are broken and the gut is leaky or hyperpermeable, undigested food starts, you know, peptides or proteins start passing through.

1:00:10And here in the gut is where we're most exposed to external stuff because your skin touches your clothes and the air. And if you're in the swimming pool, the water. Your lungs is only water. That's all the limits between the outside of the body and the inside of your skin, your eyes, your lungs, and your intestines. What's happening in your intestines? You're dumping thousands of kilos in your lifetime of stuff there that the body has to deal with. So the body is exposed to external stuff in the gut more than anywhere else. So that's why the body deposited or sent all its troops, like 70, 80 % of our immune system is in the gut.

1:00:58See these cells here? Yeah. This is one cell. It's showing you one cell from the immune system. So the immune system is in the gut wall, but it's also in the blood. Okay, so let's go into like, so is leaky gut the main reason why people have gut issues? Leaky gut and changes in the microbiome are the gut problems, the gut disease, I mean, the gut injuries or the gut problems that trigger most diseases. And I'm going to explain to you, for example, autoimmune diseases, right? What's happening is the immune system works by recognizing surfaces. It's called the HLA system, human lymphocytic antigen system, right?

1:01:45Antigens are surfaces that your body, each immune system cells is like a computer and it has like a scanner. And it scans surfaces all the time, all day long, and then it compares it with its record. And genetically, you have all the surfaces that are acceptable to you, like your proteins and your muscle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have like a code. So the immune system scans the surface of what it sees, and if it doesn't recognize it, it attacks. So what happens is when you absorb amino acids into the blood, it doesn't have a surface. Amino acids is a building. But a protein already has a surface.

1:02:28So we have many amino acids together. Okay, you're losing me. So let me ask you a question because it's too much information. So the immune system starts scanning surfaces. And because this is broken, the gut is leaking. Yes. It's hyperpermeable. Now the blood is getting undigested food and bacteria and viruses. Okay. So it starts reacting. I understand. Well, kind of. But I do understand. The question I'm having is in simple terms, right? Because people who are listening are like, okay, Dr. Unger, tell me how to repair my gut. Give it to me simply, easy, digestible, excuse the pun, how we can repair our gut.

1:03:09So, see, this is the problem with the medical world. I know, it's not simple. And even the functional medicine world and every healing modality world that you want to talk about. There is no simple digestive... There's no simple. People, here you want the... Well, no, what I want... You're right. Give me the... So what happens is this. Everybody's talking about gut repair, health, and gut injury, and gut repair, and leaky gut, and everybody wants simple information. So you hear, oh, acramansia mucinophila. Oh, and they start taking acramansia. And you say, oh, there's this new probiotic. And there's, oh, glutamine.

1:03:50So they start taking glutamine. Oh, you have to avoid gluten. So they avoid gluten. And there is no integration of, you know, because the number one reason, cause of gut injury is actually mental and emotional. It's stress. trauma, pain. So how can I give you a probiotic and glutamine and expect easy answers. It's not like that. That's such a great, I want to clip that because I think that's like a big thing, right? You're 100 % right. Like when I thought, you know, when I have gut issues, they're like, oh yeah, acromantia. Or, oh no, why don't you take glutamine? That's the latest. Yeah. The latest thing.

1:04:36So now they detect this bacteria. And this bacteria makes this mucinous carbohydrate that coats the gut. Yeah. And they're like, oh, just take a probiotic. So you get these geniuses that come and they talk to you about this and this and this. And you put a patient in front of them and many times they don't really know what to do. Right. And the problem is, I think, even probiotics, right? Because what my body is missing is not necessarily what your back leg body is missing. So it's not a one-size-fits-all probiotic, right? And they're like, well, you can't have one that has to be refrigerated.

1:05:10It has to not be refrigerated. There's so much information. So before— So my program, the Clean Program, let's put it this way. Most people with medium to severe gut injury will not heal completely just by changing a few things and taking a few supplements and like simple things. Yeah, they make it a little better, but it's not going to heal completely, right? It takes more. So that's what the Clean Program does. It does. It gives you the parameters in many aspects. You know, there's an aspect about anxiety, and so there's meditation. There's a bunch of things, right? And then also every expert has their way of looking at it, right?

1:06:01But who do I trust? The people that have been at it for the longest time and that have the best results. I have incredible results with my patients because I understood for so many years, and I've been exploring for 20-something years now. So what's in it? How does it work? So, for example, when you take glutamine, you have to take it on an empty stomach. You have nothing to eat before. The best way is when you wake up in the morning. Nothing to eat afterwards for at least 30 minutes. There's a lot of details. Oh, okay. There's a lot of details, you know. And if you don't do it that way, yeah, it may work a little bit.

1:06:38you may get a little better. But the type of healing that I am interested in, really creating the conditions for the healing mechanisms of the body to do their work optimally because the body can heal of anything. There are no incurable diseases, only incurable patients, those who didn't find the way, right? So you need to find, if you have a chronic disease, you need to find a solid, good gut repair program. And there are a few around the world. I believe that mine is one of them because I see the results. So I created supplements and two supports. How long is the program? Well - How does it work?

1:07:19It's a 21-day program and it has - 21 days, I thought it was a week. There is a seven-day program. The seven-day, yeah. There is a seven-day program. But biology has its times. I know we're all in a hurry in this society But you can't produce a baby in six months It takes nine months Right, you can't You cut your skin It's not going to hit in three days It's going to take a week to ten days For the scalp to come off So then why do you have a seven day program? So the reason I have a seven day program Is to give people a taste Because when people hear 21 days They freak out So what I did is I started going around the world trying to find out what else can I do to accelerate and potentiate so that seven-day program is even a little harder than the 21-day program.

1:08:08Oh, it is? Yeah, because the 21-day program has its schedule, which is very easy. It's a liquid meal for breakfast, solid meal for lunch, a liquid meal for dinner, and there's a way to take the supplements, and there's a list of foods that you can and you cannot eat. It felt like a weight loss program. Well, weight is a result of inflammation in many ways, and this is a gut injury. This is a way of healing and weight comes off. It's a very common side effect of the clean program is people lose weight when they need to lose weight. But then you gain a bath because of your... It depends. If you go back to doing whatever you were doing before the clean program, you're going to go back to exactly where you were.

1:08:49So hopefully after you finish the program, And if you do the seven-day program, then hopefully you will get inspired to continue until it heals. And sometimes 21 days is not enough either. Some people have to be careful and do stuff for more than 21 days. So tell me what do you offer in seven days that you don't offer in 21 days? So what I found out is that to make the first seven days of the 21-day program a little more oomph. Because when you do the 21-day program, it takes five days for some people to start feeling. Sometimes you feel worse at the beginning and then, you know, because people that drink coffee every day, they have headaches and people that are.

1:09:32Oh, I remember this whole thing. You don't let us drink coffee, right? Right. I remember that. So, and people that eat gluten. I mean, everybody is different, but you don't start feeling well until you're in your second week. And then on the third week, it's like, wow. No coffee at all? Yeah, and zero coffee. So the seven-day program, what I did is I added some Ayurvedic principles and intermittent fasting. Oh, God, you said the worst thing you can possibly say to me. Well, yeah, maybe I can change your mind about that because that's really how nature designed things to be. When you say you added some intermittent fasting, can you give me an example?

1:10:14There is a 24-hour period in the seven-day program that you don't eat, that you only drink tea. And it's from lunch, you finish lunch one day, and to lunch the next day, you don't have any dinner, you don't have any breakfast. What do you do when you want to, like for active people who work out like me, what do you do? For people that work out like you, I tell them not to work out. You're killing me right now, Dr. Unger. Well, and this is the problem. This is a problem with, you know, you want to be the best mother and the best wife and you want to be in the best shape. But if you want to fix your gut, you're going to have to make some changes.

1:10:50You know, if you break a bone, you're going to have to have a cast for some time until it… It gets better. Until it sold back together, right? And then you take the cast. So the clean program is like a cast for the gut. It's an analogy. And then you also have to understand that there is a whole energy distribution system. Let's call it that way. There's the energy that we all know about and everybody's talking about, which is the energy that mitochondria produce, where the ATP is the result of the burning through the Krebs cycle of sugar, right? But there's another type of energy that we don't really understand in the Western world.

1:11:31that is the one that comes into your body when you sleep. Why can you be exhausted one day? You go and you have a good night's sleep and you wake up and you're full of energy. Where is that? Is that why the mitochondria were not working when you were exhausted? Now they're working? It has nothing to do with mitochondria. It's a different type of energy. This is the energy that Chinese medicine understands way, way more, right? So these energies, the ATP that's produced by mitochondria and this other energy that we don't understand very well, right? This energy is used for all your functions during the day, right?

1:12:04And repair and defense, and it takes a lot of energy to use that. If you're going to spend that energy exercising and working out, it's the repairing. I understand. So you're diverting. Totally, I get it. You're diverting your cash flow into other things that are not what needs to be done. In full transparency, do you remember years ago, you sent me the clean program. I think it was like the seven day program. And you wanted me to do the program. And I was like, I remember now it's all coming back to me. I was like really nervous because I love food. I didn't. And I wasn't allowed to drink coffee.

1:12:44So I gave it away to my friend. And she did it. And she loved it. She thought she really like felt great. Like she really did. She thought it was a great program. and I totally forgot about this. And when I said that you're coming back on the podcast, she's like, oh my God, are you going to get one of those clean programs? Can I have it? Because I'm like, yeah, maybe you will. I sent you one. I mean, I don't have it, by the way. I think my neighbor stole it because it comes in a really, or Amazon. I'll send you another one. Can you send me like two? I can send you three if you want. Three, okay.

1:13:16You can do it with friends. I want to do it and I'm going to give one to her because I promise her, but why no coffee? Like, why is coffee bad for you and your gut? Because there's so much data saying that coffee actually could be healthy. There's a lot of things that are not good when the gut is broken that are completely fine when the gut is repaired. So once the gut is better again, you can then drink coffee? You can then reintroduce certain things. You cannot go just back to what you were doing before, but you can reintroduce certain things. But what if your gut isn't necessary? So what's the problem with coffee?

1:13:52There's many problems. coffee. Okay, tell me. If it's not mold, if it's a really high quality organic coffee. Okay. So that's the first problem, that it's not organic. Most coffee is totally polluted and full of chemicals, right? So that's one problem. And so that's one of the reasons I take people. But even if it's organic and really good coffee, the coffee is an exciting, it's a stimulant. A stimulant, yeah. So it depletes, eventually depletes you of energy, and then you become dependent on the stimulant effect. Some people cannot function if they don't drink coffee in the morning. Or cannot go to the bathroom.

1:14:32That's what I was going to say. It makes you like people who are constipated. Like if they don't drink your cup of coffee. Yeah, why? Now let's go back to the gut. So imagine there's a little nerve inside every microvilli. There's trillion, I mean, I don't know how many, but billions probably of microbele in the one or two tennis court surface, right? And imagine this with a little nerve in a tennis court. One nerve next to the other, next to the other. It's a huge nervous system. There's more nerve cells and neurons and dendrites and synapses in and around your gut than inside your brain. Well, that's why they say the gut is your second brain.

1:15:17Well, second in the chronology of how we've been talking about it. But in terms of importance for your life, I don't know if it's the second. They're all important, right? Because this one has to do with mentation, ideation, speech, vision, right? But this one has to do with intuition and other functions that are really important. Tell me other ones. A lot of ones like temperature regulation, mobility of the gut. So it ends up being, because these muscles contract and they are the ones that, and these are muscles too, they are the ones that cause the peristaltic movements. So the foot is pushed from one end to the other.

1:16:02So you need that in order to make good poops. Right, and if you don't have a good... So if the nervous system is busy doing other things, like adaptation and survival mechanisms, because there's a mess, there's a broken gut, there's a lot of antigens, there's a lot of surfaces coming in, undigested food, good bacteria, bad bacteria, it doesn't matter what, because we have good bacteria in the gut, right? But if those goes into the blood, it's not good. Even if it's good to have them in the gut, it's not good to have them in your blood. So when that happens, Oh, there's a huge reaction and adaptation mechanism.

1:16:40The body's now in survival mechanism. Okay. Wait. In survival mode. What about fruit when you're repairing your gut? So there's certain fruits that are okay. There's certain fruits that are not. There's a whole, and in my book it's explained really well. And each food that I take out from the 21-day program, there's a reason for, right? So there's some fruits that are not allowed during a gut repair program. Like? Like oranges, like citric. Lemons are fine, but oranges are not fine. Why? Because a lot of people have some kind of negative reaction, adverse reaction. And it's not always the same.

1:17:18It's not an allergic reaction necessarily, but these are triggers. These are some of the nutrients that these plants have, that these vegetables have or these fruits have that may not allow the healing of the gut completely. Okay. Another one that we should stay away from. For example, bananas. I don't allow bananas in the program because they actually constipate you a little bit. Yeah. You know? So, and then there's vegetables that are not allowed. Like eggplants are not allowed. Why? The eggplants are not allowed because they have certain nutrients that are pro-inflammatory, right? Like solanin in the eggplants and tomatoes have some lectins.

1:18:04So there are... So no tomatoes on this plant. So no tomatoes on this plant. No nightshades. No nightshades. Yeah. So, and then obviously no gluten, obviously no processed food. So everything has to be real food and not food-like products. How about protein, like chicken, beef, like animal protein? Completely fine if the chicken comes from running in the fields and eating worms and little bugs, as opposed to chickens that never see the light of the day and cannot even run because they're in this... So free range. Yeah, free range. Do you say free range or do you say organic in your program? Free range, antibiotic and hormone free.

1:18:47Yeah, because the hormones and the antibiotics. The most similar to wild game possible. And wild game is even better. Which means animals that are living the way that nature designed them to live. Same thing with cows. Yeah. If you're going to eat cows, then be grass-fed, free-roaming, happy cows, and not cows from feedlots fed with grains and given antibiotics. So, you know, if it's fish, from the sea or the rivers, not from fish farms where they give them all kinds of chemicals as well. Right. For the 21-day program, there's no intermittent fasting on that. You have your shake, your meal. There is a 12-hour window that you have to respect 12 hours between the last meal of one day and the first meal of the next day.

1:19:43No snack. As minimum. At minimum 12 hours. Why? Because it takes about eight hours to finish digestion and absorption. And then when digestion, because what happens is this, digestion takes a lot of energy. That's when you have a big meal, you kind of fall asleep, get tired. So it takes a lot of energy for the body to digest. So when digestion is happening, other functions that require a lot of energy have to be slowed down because there's a lot of energy being directed to digestion. Because digestion is so important. In our history, we didn't have food available all the time. So when there was food, evolution took the…

1:20:26That makes total sense to me. What are some symptoms that people could have to know if they even have a gut that needs repairing, that maybe are not so obvious besides stress? Most people walking around in the modern world have some degree of gut injury. I'm convinced that there's really almost no one with a completely healthy gut. Really? Yeah. Because it's inevitable. We live in this world. We do get stressed. We have a timetable. I saw you looking at your watch. We have things to do, and we're exposed to chemicals. I was looking at my watch because I was thinking, oh, my God, I hope I'm not going, like, you must be.

1:21:09I've been talking to you forever. No, no, I took your show. I know, you can talk for another five hours, right? I can talk for five hours. So, you know, you have to rest your digestive system. So you take away the foods that are difficult to digest. You take away the foods that cause triggers in the body and you reduce the work of digestion. That's why we have a liquid meal for breakfast and a liquid meal for dinner in the 21-day program. And then the lunch is regular food, but only real food with no chemicals. And there's a list of foods that you can and you cannot. And it's basically the five big ones are no dairy, no sugar, no coffee, no alcohol, no gluten.

1:21:48No life, number six. Yeah, there's so much life. You know, I'm now running retreats. I guide retreats. I know you said that. I take people to very natural environments. And I take a bunch of other healers with me. Ayurvedic medicine doctors, a massage therapist, some biohackers that are really good. And I bring all of them with me. And we gather about 30, 40 people in these places. And we put them on the clean program. And they also have all these other therapies. and that really accelerates healing because that's the other thing is we're busy. So yeah, maybe you're avoiding, maybe you're eating right and you're avoiding the things that you need to avoid and you're taking the right supplements and it's still not going to work.

1:22:33Why? I'll tell you a story. In this last retreat in Argentina, there was this woman that just like you, intelligent, has a good living, knows a lot of people so she can see many specialists. She has money. Yeah, very smart woman. She comes to me. For years, she's been having digestive issues. And lately, like two weeks before she came to me, she was diagnosed with SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, right? So the story is that she gets bloated like crazy, and she wakes up in the middle of the night, and she's constipated. I mean, she has many, many other symptoms of SIBO, but they come and go, and it's confusing.

1:23:14So when I sat down with her and I started talking with her, In functional medicine, we do our history taking in a different way. We start when they were born. You know, were you born by C-section or natural birth, which is already a difference? Were you breastfed or not? When you were little, did you miss school because of lung infections, ear infections, throat infections? Did you get antibiotics? And then at some point in life, there's a defining moment where things change. For some people, it's an accident or surgery or their mother died or they had a traumatic event of some type and life changes, right?

1:23:52So when I got to that point, I realized there was a heavy history, a familiar thing with her father and who had died. And I could see, because I'm really focused when I'm talking to her, I could see that the moment we got to that point in the history taking, even her way of expressing herself, confusion. So I looked at her and I said, listen, I see two huge problems here. I'm not sure about your diagnosis of SIBO. I see that you're constipated. She was pooping every five, six days, which is a big problem. So I have this, I buy here in LA and I smuggle them to Argentina. This bottle is called implantoramas, which are like a little colonic machine that you can take with you, right?

1:24:40So I take them there and give them to the people. So I gave her one and I instructed her to do a coffee colonic. It's a little bottle. At least she gets coffee. With a tube. You put it inside your butt and then you pump it up and the thing goes. Either water or water and coffee or coffee. So for her, we needed some coffee because she had severe constipation. And I said, and maybe what you need to heal is a trauma. And it's like an intuitive thing because I just saw her get so disturbed after she was telling me about this family problem. Right, right. It happened to be that the next activity in the retreat was family constellations.

1:25:21And I don't know if you know what that is. I was explaining to you before we... What is family constellations? So it's a therapy mode in which a therapist, in this case a psychologist, gets the whole group of people and says, who has a problem that they want to explore, right? So people come. They put them in the middle of the circle. And he starts asking in a very particular way about the problem. They text what the problem is. And then, so then let's say the problem is with the father and the sister. So then they choose somebody to represent the father and somebody to represent the sister. And they go into this thing.

1:25:58And the way that they're guided into this conversation, they have to speak. Even the ones that are representing them, they have to say what they feel. Something happens. I don't know. She went into the family constellation. She had a huge breakthrough of something that happened with her father. I didn't go into it very, very deeply when we were talking because, you know, we're, but, but so she went into that. She had a huge breakthrough, went to her room, had a coffee enema, had the best poop of her life. And the next day, flat as a board, zero symptoms. She was completely fine for the next five days.

1:26:39She was, she was zero symptoms. Something that hasn't happened to her in three years, being four days in a row, five days in a row without symptoms. Do you think it was the family constellation or was it the coffee enema? I think it's a combination. I think it's a combination. That's why I'm saying that sometimes even the clean program, which is a great, or any gut repair program, I mean, I found a few that are really good around the world. There's ones that I really like. There's a guy in Argentina called Nestor Palmetti, and he has a center where people go out for retreats as well. He's way, way more strict and limiting than, you know, he's vegetarian.

1:27:16Than yours? Yours, by God, yours is very strict and limiting. I wouldn't say that. I know. It's all relative. It's all relative. But I really respect this guy. He has great results. He's not even a doctor. He was a journalist who was very sick himself and then started studying. And then, you know, when detailed journalists go into something and they learn, they become amazing. He has information. Like, wow. Wow. So there are some out there, right? But a good gut repair program is many times good by itself, but many times you need other things. Yeah. So some people... I'm going to try your retreat.

1:27:56I want to go to it. You told me I can go... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll be my guest. Next March, you said. The next one we're planning on March 30 in Uruguay. Not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump away from here, but I'll go. How long is it? Five days? A week? The retreats are seven days. Yeah, and the flight from here is maybe from L.A. You stop in Miami and then you go to Uruguay. So it's five hours Miami and then eight hours Uruguay. That's far. Wow. It's far, but it's going to be one of the best experiences of your life. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm very interested in these things, especially when it's not like, you know, what's happening outside of the U.S.

1:28:37is very fascinating to me. Right. Like I love you learn so many different. Like you meet all these different people, healers, doctors. Like the caliber is crazy. No, listen to what happened to me. And this is why I am an optimist. And I believe that things can go no back to how they were. I'll tell you the story and then we'll define. I had a car accident that you know about. I remember. And I just told you about it. How many years ago was that though? That was seven years ago. Okay. And it broke one of my heart valves. I had to have open heart surgery to change one of my aortic valve, which is the most important valve.

1:29:14Anyways, it was a disaster. And one of the things that happened is there was compression of my L3, L4, right? Lumber, lumber three and lumber four. If I show you the MRI, you don't even need to be a doctor. You can see the L3 and L4 are kind of destroyed and inflamed and white on the MRI. And you can see the discs are barely even existing. The bone and bone are kind of touching, right? So I try to avoid surgery since, I mean, I've been having bad back pain for five years. Lately, it was really bad. It really limited my life. So I get to Argentina and my sister had met this woman who is a neurosurgeon, radiologist, but she developed a way, a functional way of dealing with the body, right?

1:30:07So it's called BAM Biomechanics. You can find it online. She's on Instagram. Her name is Teresa Salazar. When I met her, I kind of playfully said, oh, you're also a radiologist. Yeah, yeah. So I have a patient who's having back pain. Check out the MRI. So I showed her my MRI. So she said, you know, there's two very obvious lesions here. She pointed to the obvious lesions, which the surgeon at Mount Sinai in New York was going to operate and fuse those bones, right? Totally. This is obvious, but you know, the MRIs are very gossipy. They give you too much information. And sometimes from gossip, you know, from 30 gossips that you get, one may be really important.

1:30:49So look, these are all the problems. If I don't see the patient, I can't really tell. So I said, I am the patient. So she started examining me, making me move. And she said, you know what? I think I can help you. that when the retreat ended, I went to see her and her mentor, who's an 84-year-old surgeon, Tato Beva, unbelievable guy, 84-year-old neurosurgeon who still plays competitive basketball. And when I met him, I felt like I was in an Indian monastery. He's like this very present guy. And he saw me and he said, I think I can help you by injecting ozone in the disc space between the vertebrae, right?

1:31:28So I went there and they did the procedure and my pain is completely gone. Now that guy, he's old school. I said, how much do I owe you? He said, I don't charge colleagues. So what I'm saying is there are still people around the world that are in it for the right reason and it's not a fortune to see them. And I see a lot of these people and I see more and more. But you know, number one, it's very few and far between. It's like a precious stone. You have to really, really look and dig for it, like a diamond, right? Like you don't find them very often. Seek and you shall find. Well, I mean, you do that too.

1:32:14You help people all the time for free, but most people don't. And so seek and you will find. Okay, well, I'm going to keep on seeking. I found you. Seek and you shall find. And listen, sometimes it finds you. When I was at the retreat, I went there to help people. And I ended up being helped myself. Exactly. So sometimes you seek and you find, and sometimes it finds you. But you have to be open and you have to ask and you have to question. You have to ask. You've got to be curious. And you have to question things. You have to inform yourself. I totally agree. All right, Dr. Ungert, I have to wrap this.

1:32:49Where can people find more about your program? Instagram, dr.alejandrajunger. That's my Instagram handle. Also, Clean Program has an Instagram page. Oh, okay. Or cleanprogram.com. Or you can read one of my books. I have three New York Times bestsellers and a fourth book. They didn't make it, but Clean, Clean Gut, Clean Eats, and Clean Seven. Those are my books. You can start there. Four books? I've written four books, three of them, and New York Times bestsellers. What happened to the fourth? I don't know, you know. Listen, I mean, listen. I didn't put much attention on promoting it. Well, I mean, I know you're the real deal, and I love that you came on the show.

1:33:33And, guys, if you have any gut issues, and even if you don't think you do, it's a great thing to even do. The thing is, with the gut, it's very tricky because symptoms may appear far away from the gut that may seem unrelated to the gut, Like depression, like allergies, like skin problems, rashes, allergic problems. That's what I was saying to you earlier. A lot of these things that you think it may be something else that's causing it, a lot of times it starts in the gut. So if you can clean up your gut, excuse that pun again, clean up your gut, you can be surprised at how much better you feel.

1:34:12So I would definitely check out the clean program. Repair your gut, repair your life. Wow. You should put that on a sticker. Maybe that could be your next book, your fifth book. Well, I'm writing something about the mind now. Oh. Clean mind. Clean mind. I like that. Anyway, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Hi. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.