How 10,000 Heart Surgeries Led to a Diet Revolution That Could Save Your Life! | Dr. Steven Gundry EP 708

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0:34Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the Summit of Greatness 2024. Head over to lewishouse.com slash tickets and get your tickets today and I will see you there. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:56How many surgeries have you done? Oh, over 10 ,000. 10 ,000. Is that what it is, the record? No. What's the cause of these heart diseases? and the reason why you have to do so many of these? It's all in the plant paradox. So 17 years ago, I met a guy by the name Big Ed. It was a 38-year-old guy who came to see me at Loma Linda because I'm one of these surgeons who will operate on anybody. Wow, Big Ed. Take the rip, Big Ed. 500-pounder? Big Ed. Actually, when I met him, he weighed 265 pounds, but he had such extensive coronary arteries that you couldn't put stents in them, you couldn't do bypasses because there wasn't any place to land.

1:34And he's from Miami, and he'd be going around the country carrying his angiogram, the movie of his heart, his cardiac catheterization. And everybody's turning him down. And he finally, after about six months of this, comes to see me. And I'm looking at his angiogram, and I'm going, eh, you know, I don't like to turn people down, but everybody's right. You know, we're not going to do you any good. And he said, well, wait a minute. Here's the deal, doc. I've been on a diet for the last six months, and I've lost 45 pounds. Now, this is a 265-pounder sitting across from me. It looks like a biker, big gut.

2:08And he says, and I've gone to this health food store and I've taken all these supplements. And he actually brought in this shopping bag full of supplements. He said, you know, maybe I did something in here. And I'm going, yeah, all right. You know, I'm kind of scratching my professor beard and saying, well, you know, I know what you good for you for losing weight, but it's not going to do anything in here. And I know what you did with all those supplements. You made expensive urine. And I really believe that. So he says, well, come on. You know, it's been six months. I've come all this way. What would it hurt to get another angiogram, another cardiac catheterization?

2:43I said, okay. So we get a new cath on him. And in six months time, this guy cleans out 50 % of the blockages in his heart. 50 % gone. It's pretty darn good. It's unbelievable. Wow. For instance, statistically on the best statin drug, you know, like Crestor, Lipitor, with the lowest levels of LDL, we scientists at the American Heart Association get crazy if after five years your plaque burden has decreased a half of a percent. Wow. And we go crazy and we go, oh my gosh, this is a miracle. It's the greatest drug discovery of all time. Right. And we go, really? So this guy, 50 % are gone in six months.

3:29So I actually was so excited I operated on him and did a five-vessel bypass. But if I knew what I knew now, I'd say, hey, great. You know, another year, this will all be clear. Keep going. You won't need this. So I start talking about what he did on this diet. And lo and behold, he gets started on this. I said, I had this crazy thesis at Yale University that I did for four years back in the dark ages of human evolutionary biology. And my thesis was you could take a grade eight, change its food supply, and change its environment and predict you would arrive at a human being. And I actually successfully defended it and got honors, blah, blah, blah.

4:12And so I had given it to my parents and went off to be a famous heart surgeon. And so he's talking about this. I go, wait a minute. You know, this is my crazy thesis. And here I am, this big guy, you know, running and pre-diet. You were. Yeah. This is 15 years ago. Yeah, 15 years ago. Yeah, yeah. You know, running and eating a healthy, low-fat diet. Why do all the doctors seem like they're bigger? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we're giving all this advice. And so I called my parents in San Diego. I said, hey, you know, you've got this thesis? Oh, yeah. You know, it's in the shrine. Yes. Internal flame.

4:45The whole room of your accomplishments. That's right. So I sent it up to me. So I put myself on my thesis and I lost 50 pounds my first year and I lost another 20 pounds subsequently and I've taken it off. And then I started putting my patients who, you know, at Loma Linda, who I operated on on this program and their blood pressure went to normal. Their diabetes went away. Their heart disease didn't come back. And so after about a year of this, I was looking in the mirror on one Friday and I said, you know, I can't do what I do anymore because I can teach people how to avoid me. So I actually resigned my position.

5:22My wife still calls it Black Friday. When was this? 15 years ago. You resigned? I resigned. From doing surgeries or from? From being chairman of heart surgery at Loma Linda. Wow. Just because you felt like this wasn't solving the actual route. It wasn't solving the problem. It was just putting a Band-Aid on it. The surgeries. The surgeries. Yeah. I was just, yeah, it's famous for four-time, five-time redo surgeries on somebody who kept clogging up their blood vessels. And it's like. You could fix them up, but it's like. Yeah. Okay. They're going to be back in a couple of years. Yeah. So, yeah.

5:53So I set up an institute in Palm Springs where all I ask people to do is every three months, let me take about 10 tubes of blood out of you and we'll send it to some labs. Insurance will pay for it. Wow. And see what asking you to eat certain foods does and asking you to take certain supplements that you could find at Costco or Trader Joe's does. And that resulted in my first book in 2008 called Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. But then subsequently, I've seen about 50 % of my practice is autoimmune disease. And people would come in and say, hey, what do you know about autoimmune disease? And I go, I don't know anything about autoimmune disease, but I'm a transplant immunologist.

6:43And that means how do I get the immune system of you to accept the heart of a pig, for instance? And I actually hold the world record for the longest pig to baboon heart transplant, 28 days. That's the world record. So I started manipulating the immune system by food. And sure enough, you've got an autoimmune disease. We can teach you to get rid of it by changing, primarily getting lectins out of your diet. That's it, huh? And changing your gut bugs to be basically friendly gut bugs. And the friendly gut bugs actually tell your immune system that, hey, guys, we're all great down here. We're down at the beach.

7:33We're singing kumbaya, beautiful bonfire. And your immune system is basically the cops. And the cops go, oh, yeah, we know these kids, great kids. Let's go have a donut. And now, so that's how it's supposed to be. But let's suppose a gang member moves into your neighborhood. Now, all of a sudden, you're putting up bars on your windows and you got neighborhood watch patrols and you're shooting guys with hoodies without asking questions. So what's happened to most of us? true some of the foods we eat, like all these wonderful snacks we're talking about. We've let these gang members loose. And the good guys actually can't eat simple sugars and these saturated fats.

8:15They want leaves and they want tubers. So they die off. They die off, exactly. So the gang members are running rampant. And now your immune system is going, oh my gosh, you know, the city's taken over by gang members. And we're going to have armed patrols everywhere. And anytime we see anything that looks a little odd, we're going to shoot and ask questions later. And so what's happened to everybody with autoimmune disease is their immune system is just hyper on guard because it's no longer getting the messages from the good bugs. Chill out. Everything's cool. You know, kumbaya. Love, love, love.

8:51Peace and love. And that's what's happened.

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9:53Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.