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Language: en
hey there it is dr will lee and i'm here
back with my five with dr lee uh program
i've got an amazing guest today
uh but before i introduce him i am going
to
tell you
not to forget to download uh your own
list
of my grand slammer foods now grand slam
foods are foods that activate all of
your body's health defense systems at
the same time so it's a list that i've
actually put together for more than two
hundred foods in my bucket to be disease
and this is sort of like the gold these
are the foods that will actually um
activate your angiogenesis system stem
cells microbiome dna protection and your
immune system so
if you want to actually get a shortcut
to sure health download my grand slammer
list it's in the link uh in my bio all
right today i'm going to be joined by
a really special guy his name is dr
steven gundry you're gonna i'm gonna
introduce him in a second um dr gundry
is best known as a cardiothoracic
surgeon he has had a whole career of
actually helping people through cardio
thoracic surgery and then he actually
became a nutrition
doctor to try to help people avoid
surgery some of you may have read
his book the plant paradox
and now he's got a new book that is
actually called unlocking the keto code
and so we're going to hear about some
new paradoxes he's going to talk about
as well dr gundry's all about health and
happiness and longevity
so i'm going to actually wait to for him
to come on board and i can't wait to
introduce you to him i met him a few
years ago and i did his podcast in los
angeles and what a what a class act a
really great guy
so um
uh
but he's actually got some new science i
want him to share with us uh to be able
to actually figure out what's going on
with uh keto
so
don't see him just yet
um
all right let me just tell you a little
bit of what i'm working on right now
i'm actually working on trying to
understand
how the body's metabolism actually
develops from the time where a baby all
the way through
our young adulthood to adolescence how
does puberty affect that and then what
happens when we're a young adult and
that's actually something that's really
important because that's connected to
our metabolism puberty hormones and also
of course the food that we eat and
probably the food that our mom uh momsie
ate as well so
that's actually something that i'm
working on right now
i am uh just waiting to see when dr
gundry's gonna join us i don't see him
yet
okay we're gonna keep on going uh
and um let's see what else can i tell
you what did i eat today this is a
question i always get like what did dr
lee eat
i had a sumo mandarin orange now what do
i oh where do i get the food list all
you gotta do is go to the um
link in my bio and download the grand
slammer list i'll just tell you there's
like chalk dark chocolate's on there tea
is on there and you'll see some other
great surprises so i had a mandarin
i'm sorry i had a sumo orange today this
is i don't have it with me but it's like
there's this
big
warbly
orange thing and you pop the top open
it's got a really thick skin and you can
always see the dietary fiber that's in
it right from the get-go it's kind of
stringy but man what a juicy seedless
piece of citrus it's got loaded with
vitamin c
which i know is anti-inflammatory the
fiber actually feeds a gut microbiome
and
all kinds of goodness uh like that
so i'm still waiting for dr gundry i
don't see him yet
and i really want to talk to him about
his new book
unlocking the keto code but we'll just
keep going
um so that's what i actually had uh
today i had coffee
now one of the things that and i'm
looking at some of the questions that
are coming in uh here
i had some coffee now coffee contains
chlorogenic acid chlorogenic acid
actually is one of those bioactives
mother nature's kind of chemicals that
actually activate our health defenses
that's really really awesome one of the
things that i think is so spectacular
about it is that chlorogenic acid and
drinking coffee actually
slows down the rate of cellular aging so
our cells all age at their own pace
and when you actually
drink coffee you slow down the burn so
think about your telomeres um as kind of
a fuse like mission impossible you light
the fuse it burns down closer to bam
explodes when you slow down the fuse
you're actually slowing down cellular
aging so
coffee is a great way to do it um i used
to live in italy and so um the way i
kind of learned to love coffee was
really a really strong cup of espresso
so i've got one of those old-fashioned
espresso kind of containers it looks
like a figure of eight like uh and you
unscrew it and you put a little bit of
ground coffee i grind my own coffee from
beans you scoop it in put a little water
in the bottom and you just put it on a
stove top and it'll make this
perfect amazing
cup of coffee
green tea has a different bioactive that
is actually called oop i think i see
somebody hang on a second
all right no that's not him
green tea actually has other bioactives
these are called catechins
and um catechins are
uh
also bioactives they're polyphenols that
are found in green tea
and when you steep your tea bag
one of the interesting things about
steeping your tea bag is the more you
when you steep it uh you dunk it when
you dunk the tea bag actually you're
allowing more of those polyphenols to
get onto the tea so that's a little kind
of a trick
to know if you use whole leaf
green tea and just soak it um let's see
i've got another person coming in
um
let's see
uh
nope um if you have if you actually have
a
um
uh if you're using a whole leaf green
tea you can actually um
um put new hot water in the tea about
three times and you'll still continue to
get the catechins out of there and then
the last thing i'll tell you about
actually
is about putting dairy into milk now you
know i love an english tea as much as
anyone else is what a amazing kind of
ritual
that they do in england um they do black
tea they have a little milk in the tea
but i will tell you that the dairy the
cow fat in milk you put into tea forms
these tiny little soap bubbles and the
soap bubbles surround the um uh the
uh
[Music]
uh okay let's see i think dr gundry here
looks like he's asking me okay go live
doctor
let's let's wait to let's wait to get
them in we'll talk about we'll talk
about tea before these little hey hey
sorry about that henry how are you doing
good to see you i'm great to see you
dougly great to see you i i i love your
glasses we got the blue thing going on
yeah you're right we you know we called
and you know planned all this
all right well look i i've been sort of
um i've just been sort of uh keeping uh
my audience warm up this is a a part of
my program i call five with dr lee so
we've been talking about five different
things that are of interest but the one
thing i really wanted to talk about is
your exciting new book unlocking the
keto code and i'm wondering if you could
tell us more about that because one of
the things that i know we've all heard
about is the ketogenic diet
and i've done some work in that for
cancer but i know that you've done that
looking at other aspects of health and
longevity and one of the things that
you're talking about is the fact that
there's a lot of
misunderstandings about the ketogenic
diet can you tell us what is being
misunderstood and what is the truth
well i i guess the truth always changes
and
one of the things that
i guess i'm known for is that when i
discover something that i was wrong
about uh i tell people um that i was
wrong about something and tell them why
i was wrong about something
so uh when i was writing my last book
the the energy paradox i was i had a
chapter explaining
i thought how ketones work how ketogenic
diet work and you're right one of the
original interests in the ketogenic diet
was in cancer
and otto warburg really spent his career
emphasizing that perhaps a ketogenic
diet could defeat
cancer metabolism
in fact
interesting fact uh he was a
uh
homosexual jew living in nazi germany
and uh
hitler was so afraid of cancer
that he kept out of warburg in his
institute during the entire uh nazi
regime one of the few people
literally wasn't killed um
because of his belief system and it was
that important to hitler
so well
obviously there's something important
about this biology
that we need to actually unlock and
that's the title actually of your new
book unlocking the keto code so let's go
ahead and start unlocking it what what
do you want to what what's new that you
have discovered about
ketosis or ketogenic diets
well one thing uh it's uh
interesting that we were wrong about how
ketones are actually a fabulous fuel
that our mitochondria would prefer to
use above all other things and this is
actually work out of harvard by cal
george cahill and out of the nih by dr
beech and
uh they found that actually ketones even
at full ketosis and those and for people
who want to know what ketones are
ketones are normally produced by the
liver when we are starving
or when we run out of glucose or amino
acids as a fuel
and we switch to burning free fatty
acids and also switch to making ketones
in the liver
and particularly dr veach believed that
ketones were miraculous that we always
ought to be
in ketosis we ought to be starving
and yet dr owens at harvard showed with
human volunteers that even at full
ketosis we can only get 30 of our energy
needs met by burning ketones and
our brain which can survive on ketones
which can get into the brain unlike free
fatty acids
even at full ketosis the brain only gets
60 to 70 percent of its energy needs met
by ketones and the rest has to come from
glucose
and as as you and i know um cancer cells
actually because of this have a
wonderful workaround
uh from
a ketogenic diet
but it turns out the ketones aren't some
miraculous fuel but they're miraculous
signaling molecules and
you and i have spent our careers in
different areas
being very impressed with the ability of
signaling molecules
particularly in plants to
do some fascinating things with
cancer cells with metabolism and what
ketones do
is actually tell mitochondria
to protect themselves at all costs
because as far as the mitochondria knows
the ketone bodies are produced because
you're starving to death
and in extremis if we're starving to
death
you've got to keep your mitochondria
because if the mitochondria die which
are the energy power plants in all of
our cells
that's the end of us
and so
contrary to popular belief
ketones actually tell mitochondria
to protect themselves with a unique
mechanism called mitochondrial
uncoupling
can you explain that i mean now here's
here's what here's what i've actually
heard you say that makes total sense to
me that ketones which the brain uses as
best it can have another function and
that other function is kind of like the
finger on the doorbell to ring the
doorbell to signal
the
something inside the mitochondria to do
something so what is that uncoupling
what does that mean to uncouple
mitochondria believe it or not
uncoupling um was described back in the
1970s
to explain
normally
in our mitochondria to produce atp we
couple
oxygen molecules with protons
from the food we eat and in that
coupling process that joining process
we produce atp much simplistic
the process of trying to get an oxygen
molecule to couple with a proton
requires a lot of work and it's
incredibly damaging to mitochondria
and we hear about uh reactive oxygen
species we hear about free radicals
which are all part and parcel of the
damage that can occur trying to couple
protons and oxygen
so we have a system where if the the
damage gets too high or the pressure
within the mitochondria gets too high
we have pop-off valves very much like a
pop-off valve in a pressure cooker that
releases the pressure releases the steam
and these were are controlled by what
are called uncoupling proteins
and what they do is they open these
trapdoors in mitochondria and allow
protons to escape from
making atp
so they're literally uncoupled from the
process of making atp
and what's here's what's shocking at
rest you and i right now talking 30
of all the calories that enter our
mitochondria for processing into atp
are actually thrown away out these uh
emergency exits pop-off valves
uh and you go well wait a minute that's
that's really dumb as an organism why
should you and i have to eat 30 more
calories just to stay alive
well part of the reason is that this is
dangerous to mitochondria but the other
part is we actually generate heat
by uncoupling mitochondria and
we're warm-blooded animals and so a lot
of this waste is not wasteful at all but
it generates heat
we know for instance most of us have
heard of brown fat that's the fat that
babies are born with it's up underneath
our collarbones and in our back
and we know that brown fat
generates a lot of heat and we've
thought that babies have it to stay warm
well it turns out the brown fat is
called brown fat because it is stuff to
the gills with mitochondria and if under
the microscope it looks brown it's so
dense with mitochondria
and so we now know that in brown fat the
mitochondria are aggressively uncoupled
and that's why it generates heat
and one of the things that fascinated me
in my career is
as you and i know there are a lot of
thermogenic compounds in plants a lot of
polyphenols a lot of phytonutrients
are thermogenic
and we know this we we can see the
effect they do but one of my interesting
aha moments was
these phytonutrients are thermogenic
because they are actually
uncoupling mitochondria and in the
uncoupling process two things happen
heat's generated but more importantly
the mitochondria are protected from
damage number one
number two
when mitochondria uncoupled by for
instance ketones or
polyphenols
they actually are stimulated to make
more mitochondria to actually share the
workload it's called mitogenesis
and you and i know that mitochondria
carry their own dna that are totally
separate from the nucleus
and the cool thing is that mitochondria
can divide
without the cell they're living in
dividing and they can actually
divide and divide and divide
so one of the fascinating things that
ketones do is not only tell mitochondria
to not work so hard
to
blow off steam to protect themselves
but to grow and divide to share the
workload with other new mitochondria
so
one of the beauties of ketones is not
because it's a great fuel but it's as a
mitochondrial protector and
you and i have learned through the years
that mitochondrial dysfunction
is really part and parcel for most of
our disease processes and in fact cancer
and otto wardberg was convinced that
somehow
the cancer cells were genetically unable
to utilize their mitochondria properly
and
he was wrong about that but he was right
that cancer cells have decided
because of mitochondrial dysfunction to
use the ancient process of fermentation
glycolysis
to produce energy instead of relying on
their mitochondria
so you're basically talking about a
completely different
interpretation of the benefits of
generating ketones through a ketogenic
diet you're talking about a different
action on helping to protect our cells
and protect the mitochondria and in fact
actually prompt the mitochondria through
the signaling that's ringing in the
doorbell
to create more mitochondria which
actually just
protects the cell gives us more ability
to have energy and the mitochondria is
kind of like think about it like this
like the battery of your cell phone
you're all your cell phones gonna do all
kinds of stuff but you know that if your
battery and your phone goes bad it's
time to get a new phone that's the end
of it and so that's really one of the
important things so tell us about some
hacks in your book i mean i want people
to go out to buy the book i'm gonna buy
the book so i can actually read it and
learn some you know some tricks but what
are some of the techniques that are
practical that like everyone who's
watching can actually use in their own
life like what's uh what what are a
couple of simple things they can do to
to utilize this
this mitochondria sure well one of the
simplest tricks is something i've used
in my ketogenic diet in my clinic which
actually has a lot of carbohydrates in
it because
you and i know the benefits of plant
phytonutrients and
polyphenols
and it turns out the more polyphenols we
get in our diet and those are the
brightly colored fruits and vegetables
that you know we both talk about
these actually uncouple mitochondria uh
and that's actually how they work but
more importantly mct oil medium chain
triglycerides
are unique
as fats because unlike any other fats
that we could consume
medium chain triglycerides
go directly through the wall of our gut
up the portal vein to the liver directly
and in the liver they're converted
automatically into ketones
now the important part about that is
most people have heard of the atkins
blues or the keto flu
where
following a low carbohydrate diet
you feel awful for
a number of days your brain doesn't work
right you have low energy you have a
headache
and that's because
most of us
can't actually convert
from burning sugar to burning free fatty
acids or even ketones because of high
insulin levels because of insulin
resistance pre-diabetes whatever we want
to call it
but mct oil can bypass that system and
generate ketones instantaneously so i
make a joke you and i could have a fresh
fruit salad which
you might do i probably wouldn't for
other reasons
but i could have a couple tablespoons of
mct oil and i would be in ketosis
whereas you wouldn't be uh
so so i could get the benefits of the
phytonutrients in the fruit but i could
still get the benefits of ketones now
another shocking thing
is
medium chain triglycerides uh carry the
name capra
from the latin for goat so there's
capric acid caprylic acid and so on the
reason they carry those names is that
they were actually discovered that 30 of
the fats in goat and sheep milk is
actually medium chain triglycerides
interesting so that sounded like goat
cheese and sheep's cheese
goat cheese cheap cheese goat yogurt
sheep yogurt and buffalo mozzarella now
unfortunately cow milk doesn't have that
sort of mcts but the great hack is that
you and i could have a piece of goat or
sheep cheese and actually produce
ketones just by enjoying that delicious
piece of cheese and so
what fun is that what a great hack is
that and
interestingly enough if you actually
look at a number of the blue zones and
i'm actually the only nutritionist who
spent most of my career living in a blue
zone and that was loma linda california
where i was a professor for most of my
career
you look at blue zones and one of the
unique factors of four of the blue zones
is the amount of goat and sheep cheese
that these communities eat yeah the the
fifth blue zone okinawa is a blue zone
not because they eat grains and beans
they don't it's because 85 of their
ancient calories came from the purple
sweet potato which is just a fighter
polyphenol you know tour de force of
anthocyanins
so all of these communities in one way
or another were actively uncoupling
their mitochondria
and here's one more really fun fact
this was discovered by a researcher by
the name of martin brand who i'm really
indebted to
martin brand looked at super old people
folks 105 years and older who were doing
well
and he looked at their mitochondrial
uncoupling their the uncutting proteins
and they had the highest
uncoupled mitochondria of any other
people
so
you really want to uncouple your
mitochondria
to
survive
and as i argue in the book there's some
very intriguing
ways to
let's just say prevent cancer or even
defeat cancer and i
bring up my 16 and a half year old
labradoodle huge old girl by name pearl
who a year and a half ago was diagnosed
with inoperable bladder cancer
she literally could not urinate and
the
when the
ultrasound came back they said you know
we're so sorry we can either put her to
sleep or
we can refer her to a veterinary
oncologist for chemotherapy and i said
oh that's okay i treat a lot of cancer
in my office so i'll put her on my
program
you can't have a placebo effect with a
dog
within two weeks she was urinating
normally and when we finally saw the
oncologist
she said well you know they're good for
you for doing that but you know that's
not going to last very long
and we need to give her chemotherapy
this afternoon
and we can probably give her six months
well that was a year and a half ago um
just had pearl out for a walk of two and
a half miles this morning she pees like
a racehorse
and
her bladder works just fine so
um
and
and what was it that you were feeding
pearl i i'm glad you asked i actually
gave her a lot of
polyphenol supplements that uncouple
mitochondria and i make an argument in
the book on how i think this works and
basically
i think
otto warburg was right um
clearly there's a mitochondrial defect
and there are those of us who believe
that
when our mitochondria are dysfunctional
our body
goes back to the ancient
program
you and i are old enough to remember
when windows started if you if you
screwed up and restarted the computer it
would operate in safe mode
yeah and you could do a few things until
you figured it out
but
i i come from the feeling that cancer
cells operate in a safe mode
where they all
rely don't trust mitochondria and they
rely on fermentation and
in safe mode they have no contact
inhibition where
one hitting one cell stops things
and that's what that's the ancient
program of before eukaryotic cells were
formed and i will argue
that if we bring our mitochondria back
online like we recharge the phone
battery
then the cell will trust the
mitochondria again
and become a non-cancerous cell and i've
seen this so many times in my clinic i'm
not making any claims but i've seen this
enough and now i've seen in my dog where
it can't be a placebo effect
that
i think the more and you and i would
absolutely agree about this the more we
can take care of our mitochondria
and our cell membranes with the foods we
eat the better off we're going to be
and the other argument i need to make to
all my keto friends is
a traditional keto diet is devoid of
plant phytonutrient compounds that our
gut microbiome
has to have
to make
use of those prebiotic fibers to make
postbiotics
like butyrate like acetate that actually
also
uncouple mitochondria
and so
when you come down to it this book is
exciting for me
because so many of the healthy things
that you've promoted and thank you so
much for your work
and i promoted others it comes down to
the effect of all these things
uncoupling our mitochondria and actually
making our mitochondria healthy and
working better
well this is like a tour de force
explanation of a very important book
that really takes the whole
discussion about ketogenic diet to the
next level what i love about it you know
you and i are both scientists by our
training is really how do we actually
keep up with the science and help
everyone benefit from learning what
science is teaching us so thank you for
writing the book um where can people get
it where do they find out more about the
where they get the book where do they
find out more about what you're doing
and this is yes
so you know amazon.com it's number one
in multiple categories this week it just
was released
uh barnes noble barnesandnoble.com
please please please go to your local
bookseller i've had multiple new york
times bestsellers they'll have the book
i promise
they've really suffered during
the pandemic and they really need our
help
you can find me at drgundry.com you can
find my supplement food company at
gundrymd.com
i have a podcast the dr gundry podcast
and we've we've had you as a guest um
thank you again
and you can find me on youtube and
instagram just like you and
yeah we're we're scientists that wanna
you know get this useful information
to people to use on a daily basis rather
than keeping it locked up in a lab right
i totally agree uh listen thank you so
much dr gundry for your work
writing the book bringing it to the
audience explain
you know one of the things that i think
is so important is to explain
complicated things in simple ways that
everyone can actually put into use in
their everyday life uh and that's what
we've been doing and so i really want to
thank you again for doing i want
everyone actually to go out and buy uh
unlocking the keto code i'm going to do
it myself i want to i want to dig deeper
into everything we've been talking about
and for anyone watching don't forget to
sign up for my uh
grand slam or list of foods you can
download it the link is in my bio
thank you dr gundry and looking forward
to connecting again
that's right well let's see let's see
each other in person the next time let's
do it all right thanks a lot for having
me appreciate it bye