The most durable longevity advice keeps returning to sleep, strength, food quality, stress, and connection. In this conversation from the source, the useful thread is not novelty. It is agency: what the body can learn when the signal is clear and the dose is respected.
- Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, episode 400. So to celebrate, we're doing something very fun. Over the years, we've been fortunate enough to sit down with some of the greatest minds in the study of longevity, and we ask them all the same question. What is one thing that you can do today to improve your health? We've collected their best answers and we're sharing them all with you over the course of two very special episodes. Make sure you're subscribed to our channel so that you can hear from all of our incredible guests. Details are in the description. So get ready for a masterclass in wellness hacks, detoxifying your home and rewiring your brain for success. Let's get into it with the incomparable danger, Dave Asprey, people do not like pain. No, they don't. And you make a, a strong argument to embrace small amounts of pain to help this process. - Let's talk about that. - Yeah. - There's a mindset that says, well just push through it. Let's grind. You can handle pain and you and I to be successful in our careers this way. We've both faced adversity in our careers. I've got three, I've had three knee surgeries, screw in my knee. I've done lots of injuries. You can push through the pain. It doesn't always work, and it doesn't create the kind of life you want. And if you never experience pain, then you don't have the life you want. So there's a new concept in the world of biohacking that's a part of the book and it's called Bicep. - Yep. - Brief, intentional, conscious Exposure to pain. Now, at first you'd say, what are you talking about? I don't like pain. Well, nobody likes pain except maybe a few people. And they're in the book too. So it turns out there's an tattoos - Piercing. Exactly. You talk about it in the book. - Yeah. There's this entire set of ancient knowledge where monks used to whip themselves just for like five minutes, called self-flagellation,
and they'd flog themselves on, on their back. And I remember I read this like in seventh grade and I was horrible. They think they're such sinners. Like they're dumb. That's not why. And then you say yogis, they lay on a bed of nails. I'm asking my parents, why do they do that? Because they have powers. Nobody knows. Well, it's the same thing. And anyone who's worked with addiction, how many tattoos are there? Right? I'm not judging. I have a tattoo of a caffeine molecule. I tattoos are bad for you, by the way. I just wanted one anyway, but - By the way, yeah, - So it's because tattoos hurt and because intentionally experiencing moderate pain for a brief period changes dopamine signaling in the brain by up to 250% in one of the studies I found what that means, because dopamine rewards you for pursuing a goal, it means it takes less motivation for you to avoid the addictive substance. Less motivation for you to skip the junk food. Less motivation for you to do the work you wanted to do or to go to the gym or to do personal development work. So it turns out you could eat really spicy chili peppers. Oh wait, high lectins. I'm not gonna do that even though I live in Texas. I though I love them, - But if you ferment them, you're fine. - Oh, I haven't tried that. Okay. I will try that - Hot sauce. - Okay. And you think that's not gonna set off my lectin sensitivity? - No, I think you'll be okay. - I'm gonna give it a shot. Alright. That would be a gift. Or you could eat wasabi. There you go. That, - There you go. - Or bio - Hackers. Japanese wasabi. Our wasabi is horse rash with green food coloring. - Yes. Yeah. Real Japanese wasabi for - Sure. - You could also do what biohackers do. You could do a cold plunge or a cold shower, and there's abundant evidence. I've taught this for 15 years now, here's all the reasons you might wanna do some cold therapy for your metabolism and for endorphins and all. There's another thing, and it is the dopamine sensitivity. And that's entirely different from the metabolic benefits. So embrace the suck for one minute, a day brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain. And then every decision that required willpower requires less willpower. This is why the monks were flagellating themselves, because if they did that in the morning, it took less willpower for them to stay in the state. They chose. Since I'm assuming your goal,
if you read heavily meditated, is you wanna be able to choose your state and to stay in it for as long as you want. And to be able to switch states at will instead of having the world switch them for you. This is an important practice, and you can do it lots of different ways. And it's not about harming yourself at all. It's just about briefly saying, I'm the boss. - I wanna kind of finish where we started with my monkey brain. People want to quiet their mind, whatever that means. What's the biggest mistake they're making and what's a simple trick to start? - Well, the biggest mistake people make is that thinking the voice in their head is them. It's very clear that you have a separate consciousness inside of you. I call it the meat operating system. Some would call it the ego. It is designed to keep your meat alive as if your brain wasn't there. And it's angry that your brain is there because your brain keeps interfering with survival behaviors like eating all the pizza, right? So there's this inherent conflict in there. So if you feel guilt and shame and frustration over the angry, bitchy voice in your head, I had a very mean voice in my head. I don't have any voice in my head anymore. And just understand it's not you. And you can laugh at it because it, it's like the mean girl movie. That's what it does. And it's just trying to manipulate you and understanding that it's not you creates a ton of freedom because now you're dealing with someone that you might say it's an advers an an adversary, or you might just say that it's a very misguided, very simplistic consciousness. It's there for a reason and that makes it much easier to set it aside and then learn some of the breath work the very quick and fast breath work exercises in heavily medi, in heavily meditated, they will, they'll change your ability to regulate your nervous system. So when you find, oh, I got dysregulated and the voice in my head's, okay, then do four of these breaths and know the voice for what it is that is not you. There's nothing wrong with for having the voice and it'll shut the hell up. And then you're back in your
state and you go about your day. And it is so liberating to be able to, you know, oh my gosh. It's not that I'm a bad person, it's not that I hate myself. It's that there's a fearful, angry unhealed voice in my head. And you can do something about that. It's not you. That's the biggest mistake. - And this is quick. I don't have to have a chamber for two hours, sit on a rug and - You don't - Chant, - You don't. I talk about chanting, I talk about all the altered state breath work and all the reality though, healing, true healing and true forgiveness. It's an altered state. And I go through pretty much every technology we know about in the book technology or techniques. So a lot of these are very ancient techniques to allow you to shift into a state where you can let things go. And instead what we do oftentimes in the west is we have the thoughts and we just try to apply willpower and just push anyway. It doesn't work that way. So you switch your state into, it's like going into the settings on your phone to change things. You have to be in the settings menu to change things or it doesn't work. So how do you get into the settings menu in your head? You can do it with breath work, you can do it with a bunch of other practices. You can do it with meditation, but even the type of meditation matters. So there's a roadmap for going in and changing your setting. - Wow. You talk about inflammatory habits that people have. Yeah. What are three inflammatory habits that our listeners can try and change today? - So one would be prolonged sitting. You know, it's been said sitting is the new smoking. But you know, I think it depends on the person, right? But - For those of you who are listening, we both stood up. - But so does that mean you can never sit? Of course not. But it's move, get up and move. So many people are sedentary and we know this, right? But let's put it into practice in simple ways. So if it is getting up and stretching, getting a standing desk, getting out and just walking on your brakes and moving around it, it improves productivity, improves cognitive function, it lowers inflammation levels. So I think that's one, I would say having a
healthy, balanced relationship with technology would be number two. And that's going to be, what does that mean? That means setting boundaries. Like maybe using those apps on the, on our smartphones that shows you screen time or locks you out and don't like go back. Don't try to override the app to allow you back in. - Hold that thought because I want to check this. I'm picking up my phone for those listening. - Yeah, so we both from a blue light standpoint and a visual stimulation standpoint and the FOMO inducing content on social media of this sort of, I'm not enough comparison, this sort of stress anxiety response that people are having. I mean, a lot of the times in the day people check their phones. The research is staggering how much we check our phones. So that's gonna be, and then we give practical ways to solve that. I mean, there's many ways to solve it, but just to have some checks and balances with technology. And three, I would say, look at the products you're using in your home. Look at the products you're using on your skin. Our skin is our largest organ and it absorbs a lot of what we put onto it. So resources like the environmental working group or the EWG with their skin deep initiatives and other initiatives to educate yourself on these things that are largely unregulated. We don't have a lot of protection as far as consumers are concerned. And there's really lack of education as far as consumers are concerned.' cause they're just going getting the shiny bottle that has good branding, but let's actually find out what's on the label and what's in it. - Yeah. There are so many, not only toxins, but endocrine disruptors in our common household products, in our skin products. Yeah. And most of our sunscreens. And there's good research that these things are absorbed, like you point out. Yeah. We just don't know the average consumer. Be wary.
Americans don't eat enough fruits and vegetables and everybody knows that the Center for Disease Control knows that. I was recently assailed on a podcast. How dare I tell people not to have a smoothie? - Really? - Oh yeah. Because what a wonderful way to - Get - Your, to get your fruits in. - Well, the problem is, okay, there's a couple things about fruit. First of all, people identify some fruit with something being natural. They're like, fruit is natural, so it's good for you. The fruit that we eat today is not natural. Oh, - Thank you for saying that. - Yeah. So the, the oranges we find today, the bananas, the strawberries, they're completely different from the ancestral pieces of fruit we might find in the past. So for example, if you look at an ancestral banana, it's very small, it's full of seeds, it's tart, it's not sweet. In the same way that humans br gray wolves into chihuahuas for fun, right. To create a breed that they enjoyed. They have bred fruits and vegetables. - Yeah. Through - Thousands of years of selective breeding. And so today our bananas are the chihuahua equivalent to the ancestral gray wall for the ancestral banana. So that's the first thing to remember. The fruit we find today is not natural. However, if you want to eat something sweet, a piece of whole fruit is still the best thing to choose because whole fruit contains fiber in water. So yes, there's fructose in there, yes, there's glucose in there, but the fiber is gonna slow down the impact of that on your blood. Now the problem arises when you denature that piece of fruit. Bingo, right? You smoothie it, you pulverize the fiber particles, you juice it, you remove the fiber entirely, you dry it, remove the water, et cetera. Then you're just concentrating the sugar molecules. And it doesn't matter if those sugar molecules came from an orange and are in an orange juice or if they came from a bee root and are in a can of Coca-Cola to your body. It's the same molecules. So we have to be super careful and keep debating this message. - You hear that folks? Yeah, you're right. One of my favorite expressions is eat whole foods. Yeah.
But eat them whole there. There's no smoothie machines in the San Diego Zoo. There's no juicers, no in, they eat things whole. But you're right, our fruit, it doesn't even resemble anything anymore. It's - A human invention. Yeah, - It's - A creation. - Yeah. - And actually oranges didn't even exist in - That's right. Nature. - Right. They have been just made up. It's amazing. - Yeah. I actually used to live in a community nearby here. Redlands, California. Yeah. Next to Loma Linda and Redlands invented the naval orange. Mm. Yeah. And that's it. Literally, it was a, a cross and I - Thought they were invented in China. Oranges, maybe a different - Green. Yeah, a different breed. Naval orange are fascinating. Yeah. So invented in Redlands, California. - Fascinating. There you go. - Yeah. So, and you're right, it was an invention. It was a, it was hybridized totally. For sugar content. - Exactly. - And now we have carra carra oranges, which are just pure sugar. Yeah. And of course we, we were designed to seek out sweet taste. It's dopamine. I mean what 60% of our taste buds are sweet receptors. Yeah. - And people often confuse, you know that feeling when you get, when you eat something sweet sort of rush, it can be confused for energy. Yeah. You might think that's energy, it's not energy, it's dopamine. Right. It's the pleasure molecule. And that's also quite difficult to understand. When you eat sweet foods in the morning, you're not getting energy, you're getting dopamine, but your mitochondria suffering within. - Alright. Now another thing that you talk about, which is very important is when we eat sugar or even glucose or even protein, we squirt out a hormone called insulin. Yeah. Let's talk about insulin and let's talk about insulin resistance. Why is that kind of the one two punch of this? - Well, first of all, insulin tends to get a bad rep, but it's actually vital, right?
People who absolutely don't have the ability to produce it, if they don't inject it, they will die. So when your body experiences a glucose spike, there are a few processes that take place that are not very good for you. So mitochondrial damage, glycation inflammation, et cetera. So your body knows that if there's a big glucose spike happening, it should try to get that glucose level down. And so what it does is that your brain calls your pancreas and is like, yo, we got a big glucose spike. Can you grab this extra glucose and store it away? And so your pancreas sends out insulin fantastic hormone and insulin grabs extra glucose and stores it away in your liver and your muscles in your fat cells. Okay? And that's fantastic because it gets that glucose level down. Now the problem is that over time, as your body produces more and more insulin to deal with more and more glucose spikes, you become resistant to it. It's a little bit like the first time you drink a cup of coffee in your life, you are awake for 48 hours. That stuff is strong. You're like, whoa. And then three months later, all of a sudden you're drinking 10 coffees a day just to stay awake because you've become habituated to it. Your body has become resistant to the caffeine in the same way you can become resistant to the insulin. Right? And that's a problem because when insulin levels rise too much and you're too insulin resistant, it can no longer do its job of grabbing the extra glucose and storing it away. So then your glucose levels start to rise dangerously. And that's what's called type two diabetes or pre-diabetes. But actually it's, it's a spectrum, right? It's insulin resistant spectrum from normal metabolically healthy to all the way to type two diabetes. And that's really something we wanna try to reverse insulin resistance. - Alright, so what are the hacks? - Okay. - To do that - In my second book in the method here, I focus on four most important ones. So the first one is a savory breakfast. We've covered it. The second one might sound a little bit strange, it's vinegar. So a tablespoon of vinegar and a big glass of water before one of your meals a day. Do you know what molecule is in vinegar
that has this effect on glucose levels or no? - Well, I'm a big fan of vinegars and I love acetic - Acid. Exactly. And so acetic acid slows down the breakdown of starches in your stomach. And as a result, when you have this vinegar drink before a meal, it can cut the glucose spike of the meal by up to 30%. So week two of the method, I introduce vinegar in two days, once a week or once a day, sorry, week three, the hack is called the veggie starter hack. That means once a day before a meal begin the meal with a plate of vegetables. Why? Because vegetables contain fiber. And when we have fiber at the beginning of a meal, it's gonna slow down gastric emptying. And so just slow down the speed at which any glucose molecules will arrive into your bloodstream. And then final hack of the glucose guides method is after one of your meals a day, use your muscles for 10 minutes. So you know how I explained that your muscles are a place where insulin stores extra glucose? Well, your muscles, as they contract, they need energy. And the first place they look is in your bloodstream. They look for glucose molecules. And so we can use this to our advantage. If you go for a 10 minute walk, if you dance in your living room, if you even do just some simple calf raises, whatever movement and muscle contraction you can do is gonna soak up some of the excess glucose from your meal. So savory breakfast vinegar, veggie starter movement. And after four weeks of that, you're already on a much better glucose situation. - Are we over pacing ourselves in the United States? I mean, you live here as well. - I think it's difficult because there's not such a deep food culture here. Therefore it's very easy to get brainwashed by marketing messages and the the food landscape we live in. So with, with this work and with these hacks, I'm hoping to bring to light some of these very easy cultural and somewhat European habits and to explain the science behind them so that everybody can apply them. - Alright. And you've put this into practice, just one thing to say, okay, here's what you do. You did an experiment with 2, 700 participants. Yeah.
Tell us about that. - Well, all the hacks are based on clinical trials and studies that I haven't run. Right? I was just looking at all the research and synthesizing it into these tips. Before the second book, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to run an experiment? Now for all the scientists listening, no control group, no placebo, no randomization, right? It's just an experiment. But what I did is I recruited 2, 700 people and I got them to do the four week method before the book came out actually. And I got feedback on all of the recipes, et cetera. So here are the results. So during these four weeks, they just did the savory breakfast vinegar, veggie starter and movement. And the rest of the time they, whatever they wanted, they ate, they drank whatever they wanted. Right? After the four weeks, 90% of people were less hungry. 89% of people reduced their cravings. 77% of people had more energy, 58% were sleeping better. 58% said their mental health had improved. 46% said their skin improved. And 41% of people with diabetes improved their diabetes numbers just by adding these four hacks in, not changing anything else. So if that's not encouraging, I don't know what is. - Alright, so we've heard about brain hacks, glucose tricks, and the toxic stuff hiding in your home. Now, you might think improving your health requires a total lifestyle overhaul, but Cynthia Thurlow believes sometimes the simplest thing you can do is the healthiest. Let's talk about your program because a lot of your book correctly states that most of us are insulin resistant, metabolically, inflexible, and asking somebody, as I've written about, to suddenly, instead of eating breakfast at seven or eight o'clock in the morning, your first meal
of the day is at noon, is like falling off a cliff. And most people can't do it because they cannot access their fat in their fat stores because of high insulin levels. And I like the fact that you've got this 40 day transformation. Tell us what you've learned, obviously, and what I've learned that you gotta, you gotta do this one step at a time. You don't want to jump into the deep end. - No, I agree with you. I think it's not sustainable if we are in a position where we feel like we're in a lose lose. Like you're asking me not to eat as frequently, but now I'm gonna feel like I'm starving. And so it's reminding people that it's baby steps. It's as simple as, you know, the first week of my program really speaks to cleaning out your pantry, start, you know, reducing the amount of carb processed carbohydrates that you're eating. If we know the average person is consuming 200 and 300 grams of carbs a day, lowering, that can be terrifying. But understanding that, that we're looking to do a couple different metrics. We're looking to reduce our carbohydrates not too too low of a level.' cause moving too quickly can be problematic. And then we're asking people to increase their protein. So we know protein can be very satiating. Protein is important, especially as we're getting older because we actually have more protein requirements as we're aging, as opposed to when we're younger. And I find that if we start kind of making little changes, and by those little changes, it's like, let's reduce our, let's be cognizant of how much carbohydrate we're consuming. So start tracking macros, start being conscientious about eating a little bit more protein with your meal. Maybe you're having four ounces of chicken, try six. And I find that that can be helpful. I think that's the first thing. The other piece of it that I think is very important is, is teaching people to stop snacking because you have to rip off that bandaid. Once people understand they don't have a buffer in between meals, all of a sudden they're like, okay,
if I'm not going to eat in between my meals, I need to eat enough for breakfast and enough for lunch and enough for dinner to be able to get successfully to that next meal. So I think the snacking piece is also very, very important. And then the next big step is going from dinner to breakfast. And for many people, they're convinced if they don't have a snack before bed, if they don't have dessert, if they don't have that glass of wine that they're gonna starve. And I remind them, even thin people have plenty of stored energy, we're not going to starve, but we're gonna make sure you're gonna have a nice piece of protein, you're gonna have some non-starchy vegetables, you're gonna add in some fat, you're gonna be absolutely fine because you're gonna spend most of that time sleeping. So a lot of what I'm doing is coaching people. And I know even in your book MIT code, you increase the the fasting amount by an hour, like each week, which I think is brilliant. So you're making it very sustainable. And I tell people that the more carbohydrate dependent they are. So if you're someone that is metabolically unhealthy, insulin resistant, leptin resistant, et cetera, it's gonna take you longer to get to a point where you're gonna be able to go longer without eating. And that's okay. So sometimes it takes people a couple weeks to start being able to utilize fat as a fuel substrate. Others it takes longer. And that's okay. But it's really designed to be a stepwise approach. And also the other piece is the other lifestyle pieces like going, getting a little more sleep, becoming physically active. Many people really aren't physically active. We've gotten conditioned where we're in a, you know, climate controlled environment 24 7 with very little physical activity. And you and I both know that insulin resistance starts in our muscles. So I remind people that, you know, I'll encourage' em, take a 10 minute walk after a meal. And sometimes they're initially not understanding why that's, that's so important. But understanding that with each muscle contraction, your u you know, your body is using up some of that glucose or taking, thinking of your muscles of the sponge, using up some of the, the blood sugar that's circulating to be able to dissipate it and bring your blood sugar levels back down.
But that's like a kind of a high overview of my methodology and one that I found has worked really well for thousands of patients. - Yeah, I think in my first book there's a fascinating study looking at people who were asked to walk for either 10 minutes before their meal or 10 minutes after their meal, same distance, same, you know, speed. The people who walked before the meal didn't lose any weight. The people who walked after the meal lost weight even though it was the same meal. And again, I think this goes back to, you know, our ancestral signaling. If we walk, we gathered something and then we ate, and okay, we're done, let's store that. On the other hand, if we eat and then we start walking again, our computer program says, wait a minute, I don't know if this guy's gonna walk for a mile or 20 miles. The last thing I want to do is store this stuff. You know, I wanna make it available. And yeah, this is important signaling information. And that's why in Europe it's fascinating. The number of people who just stroll after a meal. They're not running, they're, you know, they're just walking and enjoying the environment. And I think we can all learn from, from that. - Well, and I, I think it's ironic, my husband and I used to joke about all the middle aged people that used to walk in our neighborhood. And at the time when you're in the throes of young kids and you're working and you know, it just became this thing that you observed. And now we have become the middle aged couple that walks in the morning, walks in the evening with our dogs. And I, I really fervently believe that that type of, I always think of it as neat exercise or neat physical activity. We know that degree of thermogenesis has so many benefits and just walking for 10 or 15 minutes after a meal is such a great way. Like, if you're out to dinner and maybe overate, like take a walk
after dinner, stroll around. I mean, it's such an easy way to help support your health without having to, you know, go to extreme lengths to do so. - Yeah. And like I always say, the the best prescription I've ever written is to get a dog. - I have two. Yeah. - I've got four, unfortunately. So, oh, two of them are rescue, so we can't resist a, a rescue dog. Oh, well. But yeah, dogs make you, you know, go out and walk at least twice a day whether you want to or not. Even in the dead of winter, they don't care, nor, no, - They don't. I jokingly laugh about, you know, I have dogs that walk several miles in the morning and several miles in the afternoon and they're better behaved because of that. Same, when I had, you know, my boys were younger, I used to tell my husband my goal was to make them tired. So we did a lot of physical activity and, and I think for so many of us, we just forget that parking a little farther away from the grocery store, you know, not taking the elevator. Like there are little things that can add up to that degree of additional physical activity that can be very beneficial. - Yeah, you're right. You know, I always advocated, look folks, take the elevator up, but then walk down the stairs and there's this amazing Austrian study that I cite of people who were either asked to walk up a ski lift and then ride the, the ski lift down or ride up the ski lift and walk down. And it turns out that they thought that the people hiking up were gonna get much better, you know, effect. Turns out it was exactly the same because you're actually working against gravity both ways. So that's okay. Take the elevator up and walk down. It's a good way to just get in some exercise that isn't too painful. - Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think on a, a lot of levels, one thing that I think people find interesting is they'll go to a very intense class bootcamp, CrossFit, and then they'll sit all day at work. And I have to remind people, like,
I don't care if you set a timer so that every hour you walk to the bathroom or you get some water, or you, maybe you do two laps in your office space, but if you go and do intense exercise and then sit for 10 or 12 hours a day, you have just undone all the benefit of what you were doing in the gym or at your local bootcamp class. So just encouraging people to be physically active throughout their lifetime. And I, and I'm sure both of us, you know, I saw so many of my patients that were in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, and the ones that were thriving, I always wanted to know, what do you do that you think has moved the, the needle, the farthest for you? And some of them talked about mindset and some of them talked about remaining like on top of, you know, electronics. So they could still communicate with their younger family members. And then many of them would say, I walk in nature every day. I do yoga, I do meditation. And so I very much reflect on how much my patients have taught me over the years and the things that have always stood out. And I'm like, I get it now. Like, I understand why they always encourage you, like be active. Like don't just sit in your house or sit at work and then, you know, drive home and, and then be sedentary for the bulk of your your day because that has a huge negative impact on your, on your health in general. - It's all, you know, doom and gloom. And we're sitting here saying, you know, we need the nanny state to make all this not happen to us. Yeah. But that's not gonna happen. Right? So what do, what do our listeners do about all this? And you've got a lot of really good recommendations. Yes. So kind of have at it help us out here. - Yeah. So the last fourth of the book is solutions. Even a lot of DIY stuff, a lot of products that are doing a lot of great things. And I think of it like this, I think of, you know,' cause there's a lot. So I think of go from in to out. So the most vulnerable is you open your mouth
and you're drinking and you're eating. So what are, what are you doing there? Right? Yeah. Don't eat the food that has been wrapped and everything. And of course ultra processed food is barely food anymore and it's chemicalized, so that's a no-brainer. And then, you know, one of the first things I think everyone should run out and do if they don't have their own natural spring that's tested, obviously that's the golden standard, filter your water. But filter is not just filter, right? I would, I kind of think of water as like break it down, deconstruct it because it's, it's all, it's virtually all contaminated with something, right? An RO system, reverse osmosis, right? Or distillation and then add some electrolytes back into it. That's the bare minimum. And you also save on plastics and buying all this other stuff. That is the thing. And we need to stay hydrated. So start there, few hundred bucks, now you have your own water system and then, then look at your food. Like obviously the less takeout, the less ultra process. So start whole food and you know, if you, you know, can't afford organic or farmer's market stuff, there's the dirty dozen, the conventional ones that are, you know, that little sticker on the fruits and vegetables. If it has nine, if it's not labeled saying organic, you can look and say if it's, if it's nine, it's organic. If it's four or three, then you're seeing that it's sprayed with chemicals and or could be a genetically modified fruit. So if you can't afford it, you need to wash. Think of it in terms of common sense, an apple, romaine lettuce, celery, nectarines, things
that you're gonna be eating directly. You're not peeling like a banana or something. So those you wanna wash, right? I use baking soda and hydrogen peroxide, let it soak. You can use oxygen bubblers to clean all of that stuff. So clean, clean your food if you can't. And also organic too. You just clean your food. So that, that's where I would start. And then as you kind of expand from there, what are you, what are your daily habits that you're doing? What are you washing your body with? What are you slathering on your skin? And women, unfortunately the beauty products are riddles no - Worst. - Yeah. Riddled with this stuff. And you're doing it constantly that MAs mascara that doesn't wipe off PFAS again, that that lip, that lipstick that doesn't wipe off PFAS again, that concealer, PFAS again. So it's like you're criminalizing all this stuff and then obviously that's not good for your skin either. Right. And we, you know, we're trying to, you know, - It's the, the old story of the, of the lip balms and lip mo moisturizers. Exactly. They actually Yeah. Dry it out. Exactly. And so you have to put more on and you Exactly. They literally become addicted Exactly. To the product. You originally started to moisturize your lips with - You interrupt to that sea bum, that natural lubrication that the skin has, and you enter up that whole process, not to mention whatever chemical, you've just kind of dry, usually dried it out like you said, and then you become dependent on it. And it takes a little bit to break that cycle. You know, just stop using that stuff. Think of, I think of things like if you're going to use, you know, if you're in a dry area or whatever and you're, you know, listen, you gotta look at hydration and everything else, but, you know, think of it as nutrition, right? So coconut oil, shea butter, even - Olive oil, - Olive oil's great. You know, it's like there's a lot of, you got a great olive oil too, don't you? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's like yummy. I mean,
- If it was good enough for Sophia Loran, - Come on, - It's good enough for me - To put on - My skin. - Come on. And you feel it. Oh yeah, you feel it, you feel the difference. You feel it's, it's natural. Like everyone likes to smell good too. So essential oils, man, there's a infinite better, better result. Like again, like this whole thing is set up from my perspective, Divorcing nature. If we go just like that, oh my God, I bought into the idea, I need a moisturizer on my lips now. You just came in there and, and shut yourself off or, or disrupted the natural rhythm of your, of your little microsystem of your lips, all of this stuff. If you divorce yourself from all of those things and chemically your yourself, especially from a personal care standpoint, then you're a victim to that now side effect. But if you look at this stuff of like, oh, what can I literally get a benefit of from a moisturized standpoint, but also as a nutritional side, then it becomes a whole nother thing, right? Lavender. Yeah. Incredible healing agent as well as smelling, smelling good. So yeah, you can still smell good, but also it's also parasympathetically dominant for your body, so it helps to pull, pull you down in this calm you. Yeah. Calm you down. And so, so it's, it's going back to that common sense and I think ultimately through the book, I just wanna wake people up to, we're all into patterns. We're all into habits and we're just ingrained in and it takes a little bit to go, oh, I had no idea that that convenient little slippery dental floss. I didn't realize it had chemicals of PFAS in it connected to kidney cancer. Well I certainly don't want to use it now,
but it's convenient, right? Yeah. And until you disrupt that, so this book can, can be startling, right? It can be overwhelming. Yeah. But the point is just making one step, one step at a time. - What if I told you that one of the most powerful things you can do for your health has nothing to do with food supplements or exercise. What if the answer is kindness science journalist Marta Roski has the research and the numbers are staggering. What is it about, you know, loneliness and the social distancing that, that's so damaging to our health? I mean, you in the book and compare it to the health dangers like cigarette smoking or bad nutrition. I mean, is it that bad? - It's that bad. I mean, we evolved as social apes think about exactly our closest cousin chimpanzees, even though they're not so domesticated, they're still the closest we have. And as just like they are, we, they are, we are very social, right? We evolved to live in a tribe and when we are outside of the tribe, all these negative processes start cascading down in our bodies, starting with the fight or flight response, right? So this kind of stress response, when you are alone on the savanna, obviously a lot of bad things can happen to you when you're outside alone without the help of the others. And all the stress systems started working cascading, lots of hormones gets released, including cortisol, adrenaline, all this stuff that generally has bad effects on your health. Just to simplify it very much here, and as you've said, you know, loneliness is so bad for us that when, for example, scientists put all these numbers together, they show that a complex measure of social integration. So for example, how many friends you all have, whether you know your neighbors, whether you're involved in your community, whether you have a romantic partner, all is taken together.
It can lower your mortality risk by about 65%. Whereas cigarettes, it's only about, I mean by cigarettes, I mean stopping smoking, if you are a very heavy smoker, this can lower your mortality risk by about 50%. Whereas diet and exercise, it usually hovers between 20 and 30%. So we have 65% versus 20 to 30%. So this is really, really huge impact on our life if we were, if we had this kind of really well built social network. - So are you saying that if I wanna live a long time, I better go get a romantic relationship if I don't have one? - I mean, it's, it'll be very good for you. Yes. Especially for men, actually some, we bizarrely studies tend to show that men profit much more from a romantic relationship committed romantic relationship than the women. And even more bizarrely. Whereas for women, the romantic relationship does have to be definitely happy for men. Even a so, so romantic relationship actually helps too. So scientists are still quite surprised by this. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that women tend to organize the social life of the family. But definitely there is some kind of effect like this in research. It's been, you know, replicated over and over again that men can profit even from a mediocre romantic relationship. - And what, and is there evidence that when a divorce happens or a loss of a spouse for other reasons, that men will do worse from all that? - Yes, unfortunately there is something called the widower effect. And there is also, again, plenty of research showing that we, especially within the first week after a spouse dies, the second spouse can pass, is much more likely to pass away as well. This effect has been known for centuries, recently has been really thoroughly con confirmed by,
you know, proper modern studies. But it does exist. So it's, it's really risky, especially the first seven days after the spouse passes. - Yeah, no, I've definitely seen that in my own practice where, you know, one of the spouses may actually be exceptionally healthy and the, and the unhealthy one passes away. And you're right, within a very short time period all of a sudden that that spouse, I've even seen spouses admitted to the hospital within a couple days of each other, when one gets severely ill, the next one ends up in the bed next door. So - Yes. - Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I wanna get back to volunteering for a minute. My father took early retirement at age 62' cause his, his father had died at age 54. And my father was just absolutely convinced that, you know, he was gonna die, you know, in that age. And he was shocked that he was still alive at 62. But it's fascinating, he initially it, he, it retirement was not for him. So he became a, a greeter at Walmart. I don't know if you know Walmart at one of our giant stores. And he, he really loved it. But then he became, he started volunteering at his local hospital and became kind of head of the volunteers at the hospital. His only problem was he, he lived until he was 91. And you know, he said, you know, if I realized I was gonna live on his 90th birthday, he says, you know, if I lived knew I was gonna live to 90, I wouldn't have retired at 62. But you know, I think that volunteering was, you know, what had him make it to 91. So is, is volunteering that important after, after you retire, or can you volunteer even while you're doing other jobs? - I mean, definitely volunteering or generally caring
for other people being kind is extremely important. And there is lots of research on volunteering showing that anywhere it can lower your mortality risk anywhere between 22 and 44%. So at least as much as healthy diets, so eating, let's say six portions of fruits and vegetables a day. So this is a very, very powerful effect. Once again, there are studies showing that volunteers, for example, spends about 37% less time in hospitals and people who don't volunteer. So there is really a lot of things going on here. So, but also kindness, just sim simple, everyday kindness can work. You don't have to formally volunteer even though definitely it has very strong benefits, but generally caring for other people just being helpful even in formal settings. It activates this, what scientists call caregiving systems in our body that basically calm down our stress response because you cannot care for other people if you are extremely anxious. So the body systems that are responsible for stress have to kind of calm down if you are when you're caring for virus. So it has very beneficial effects on our bodies. - You know, oftentimes when I bring this up with my patients, they say, well I have, I don't have a clue in how I go about volunteering for something. Did you ever run into that in your research? It's like, I mean, how do you volunteer? - That's a, that's an interesting question that I said again, you know, it can be formal volunteering, but it can also be just being kind in everyday life. There are, there is also research showing that just so-called random acts of kindness, right? So opening doors for other people, letting others ahead of in traffic, making coffee for your spouse or buying cookies for other people at work. Such things also activate this caregiving system just basically thinking about others and can really lower your levels
of stress hormones in your body. I actually, when I was writing growing Young, I did some fascinating experiments like, I mean experiments because it was just sample of one, so not that scientific, but I did it in collaborations with scientists from King's College London who actually checked my cortisol levels three times a day when I was engaging in acts of kindness on Sundays and on other days I was just living my life as usual. And what they discovered is that on the days when I was doing plenty plentiful kindness, so I would basically wake up in the morning and think, okay, how can I be nice today? And I would, it was actually lots of fun actually doing that. So I would do these very small things, but just, you know, maybe buy a sandwich for a homeless person or just pick up some trash on a, on a street where I live. Just very small things. But on those days, my cortisol levels were much healthier than on all the other days, even though completely independent on how actually stressful these days were for me. So it was very fascinating for me to see it on myself, even though there is lots of proper research on big samples showing exactly the same thing that when you do kind things, when you help others, it comes down your stress response, you get better cortisol, healthier cor cortisol response as an effect. - So now wait a minute. Suppose you wake up tomorrow and it's the day you're supposed to be kind and you go, I don't wanna be kind today. This is not a good day to be kind. And then you had to be kind. So would it drop your stress levels or did it make you stress that you had to be kind? - I mean, maybe for some people I actually experienced it as a lot of it's very, it was very pleasurable, you know, just even planning the kindness, I I truly enjoyed it. - I don't know about you, but I'm holding a few more
doors open tomorrow. Now, speaking of things that are free and powerful, you do this 20, 000 times a day without thinking about it. But what if you're doing it wrong? James? Nestor has the answer. Give a, give our listeners one, one exercise, one trick that they can do at home starting today right after they turn off the podcast. - Yeah, TIMOs a little intense. You wanna acclimate yourself with some milder versions, breathe through the nose, try some slow breathing first. So one method, this seems so deceptively simple, people are gonna say there's no way this can work, but just try it. It's to inhale to account of about six. So inhale, calmly, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and exhale to account of about 6, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Keep breathing in that pattern. If you have a blood pressure monitor, put it on before you do this. And if you have a pulse oximeter, that's good too. Heart rate variability good as well. But just by breathing this way, we are increasing oxygenation to our brains, we're slowing down our heart rate and we can have a huge impact on our blood pressure. I have borderline higher blood pressure. I've done this for a couple of minutes and seen my blood pressure go down 10 or 15 points. If you imagine. That's what happens to the body after a couple minutes of focused proper breathing. What can happen after a couple of days? What can happen happen after a couple weeks or months while we're seeing these people are able to take control of their health in some miraculous ways. - Now I had a, a wonderful yoga instructor that moved Ecuador, but during the class he would always have us do tricks with nasal breathing
that you mentioned in the book. And he would, and I'm gonna let you describe it, but we would breathe from alternate size of our nose and we would compress one nose and we'd breathe in and we'd breathe out through the other nostril. And you say in the book that this was not mumbo jumbo yoga practice, that this was actually activating activ either parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous systems. Yes. - So there's 20 years of studies on this stuff and dozens of studies confirming this. So when we breathe through our right nostril, that is more of a stimulating response. This isn't a hardcore sympathetic response. So the heart rate's going to increase, blood movement is going to increase. You're gonna get hotter, you're gonna be stimulating the left quote unquote logical side of your head, confirmed in EEG studies at at very respected institutions left side. You are gonna calm yourself down. So your heart is gonna slow down, you're gonna cool yourself off, you're gonna be stimulating more of the right creative side of your brain. So yogis have been doing this stuff for, you know, more than a thousand years. They have a, there's a whole school called Nadi Shahana where they practice this. But I think it's so fascinating that science is now confirming it. We can measure what happens when we do this stuff. And even stranger is our noses. Another miraculous thing with the nose here are covered with erectile tissue. It's the same tissue as you know, where, and throughout the day our noses will switch from right nostril breathing to left nostril breathing. One will open as the other closes every 30 minutes to about four hours. So no one knows exactly why our noses do this. But if you look at how these different
nostril breaths affect us, it's probably to help balance us throughout the day, stimulate us when we're getting tired, calm us down when we're getting stressed. So another reason you should be breathing through the nose and letting your nose do all that. - Any advice for, I know this has been an advice, Joe, where do you go? What are the resources for somebody who wants to strike out on their own? - It's all about adding value to people. And I know you do this on your show as much as you can with, with all the different topics you cover. And I think if, if people truly organize their thoughts and their life better, they will have a better life. And so what I mean by that, you know when, when this stuff started happening, whatever, you know, over a month ago I remember just saying, okay, how can I take inventory of my life? And if you're listening or watching this right now, you can literally get out a piece of paper and a pen. I have this journal, I have tons of notes from you when I have had you on in here. And I literally just will take inventory on the categories of my life that I'm struggling with. And so you can put my health as a top category. Am I happy with my health? Am I setting myself up to have more energy, more clarity, more focus? Do I feel good? You know, it's not about having the perfect physique, but is the body giving you the energy you need to, to be passionate, to like be clear, to not react to people all the time, but respond in a more peaceful way. And if it's not, then okay, let take inventory on what's off. Lemme take inventory on my finances. Have I looked at my banking account lately? Do I know where my money's going? Do I know when it's coming in? Take inventory. What about my physical space? I cleaned out my closet in the first week after all this happened. I was like, man, I'm just holding onto a lot of junk that I don't need. So let me clear this out and organize and take inventory.
My relationships. What's, what do I need to organize and take inventory? So all these areas of your life I would write down and start to organize, am I happy with these categories of my life? Do I have too much baggage that I need to let go of in these areas? If so, what are those action steps? And when you start to organize and have an awareness of all the inventory, it gives you peace of mind. When you don't know where things are, it makes you feel stressed out. When you don't know, you know how your body works, you're gonna be unclear, it's gonna stress you out. When you don't know where your money is, it's gonna stress you out. When you don't know all these things, it's gonna stress you out. So focus on inventory and I think those would be great steps to start with, is to just have organization of your life so then you can go take action. It's kind of like, I dunno if you remember back doing when you had a test or a quiz or homework to work on, when you take homework home and you put it in your room, Dr. Gundry, and you say, you know what? My room is messy right now, so let me put this homework thing on hold and I'm gonna actually clean my room and then I'm gonna go do the homework project that I've gotta do. It's like, it's hard to be productive on something we need to get done when we have a messy room. And so you've gotta declutter your life so that you can have a clear mind to take action on your homework or the project you're working on. - You and my mother, come on, did you - Right? - Did you talk to her or what? - And you gotta make your bed. If you make your bed every morning. It's a something I started doing about seven years ago and I wish I would've listened to my mom earlier. But I'm telling you what, this one simple act of making your bed, it will, will transform the way you feel about yourself the rest of the day. And you'll come home to a clean space and it just feels better coming home and and untucking the covers and getting in. It makes you feel at peace that day. - Now we're only halfway done in part two. Jim Quick is going to supercharge your memory.
Ariana Huffington is going to tell you why sleep is the most underrated health tool on the planet. And Dr. Dale Bredesen is going to give you seven steps to protect your brain for life. So make sure you're subscribed. In the meantime, pick one thing from today's episode and do it not tomorrow, today. Because as you know, I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.
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Longevity can sound complex because the field moves quickly. Yet the strongest signals remain familiar: sleep, muscle, metabolic health, purpose, relationships, and inflammation control. Simple does not mean small. It means foundational.
A longer life matters most when capacity stays with it. Strength training preserves tissue. Protein supports repair. Sleep organizes hormones, memory, and immune function. Daily movement keeps glucose and circulation responsive.
Chronic stress is not only a feeling. It changes sleep, appetite, blood pressure, inflammation, and decision-making. Practices that restore nervous system tone are not indulgent. They protect the terrain longevity depends on.
Expert advice only matters when it becomes lived practice. The useful question is not how many interventions you can stack, but which few you can repeat with precision for years.
The body adapts best when the challenge is deliberate and the return to calm is protected.
Choose one foundation to improve first: sleep, strength, nutrition, or stress recovery.
Track how your daily rituals affect energy, focus, mood, and training quality.
Let longevity feel practical: fewer promises, more repeatable signals.
