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

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle.
Crush it. Hello everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. And today we have one of my friends who just so happens to be one of the smartest doctors I know.
And he is here visiting from very far away. He lives all over the world.
The last couple of years, doctor, I always can't pronounce. Again, you just told me how to actually say your last name.
Jünger. Jünger.
Dr. Jünger.
By the way, guys, I have the guy who is probably one of the smartest guys when it comes to gut health. He's the king of gut health.
His program is called The Clean Program. We'll get into that.
But I was saying that he travels everywhere, he lives everywhere, and he's in Los Angeles only for a very short time. And so I was fortunate enough to spend time with you.
So thank you for being on the show. Well, I came to LA to be on the show.
Well, that makes me feel really nice. And that's very flattering.
And I don't believe you. I bet you came here for bigger and better, not better shows, but bigger shows possibly.
I don't know about better or bigger. I mean, not better, maybe slightly bigger, but nevertheless, I'm so happy to have you.
But on the podcast, you know what we do every time we have a guest, just to make sure we are very focused and super alert, we take these magic mind shots. And the ingredients are very clean.
They're exceptionally

good. There's everything from ashwagandha.
It's a neurotropic. It's very, very good.
It has ashwagandha.

It has a little bit of green tea in it, and it keeps you alert. But wait, I want to do it.
I'm

going to put it on my story. So let's do it.
Do you actually feel the effect? It's so mild,

but it keeps you leveled. It's not like a crazy jittery thing.
All right. So what we do in this is we actually, we cheers.
Like, cheers. Say, cheers.
This is a magic mind. I'm telling you, it's really, it's great.
You're going to like the taste. Do you like it? I like it.
It's good, right? The taste is great. Most people are shocked that it actually has a really nice flavor.
Okay, so now you're going to be so focused. You're going to be so alert.
I feel smarter already. I was going to say, I expect to have nothing but the best information come out of that noggin of yours.
So now that I've kind of coined you as this king of gut health, why don't we just start with like a little bit of your background? Because what I always say to you, and I actually talk about this, is that you are very qualified. You're not, you know, you're not some schmendrick who is on Instagram just touting the latest and greatest.
You're actually a cardiologist, plus you're a functional medicine doctor, and you've been schooled and you constantly are educating yourself on things that really heal your overall body, your system, and why I like you so much. So besides that, can we talk about how you really kind of, you really kind of honed your program and honed what you feel really are these healing properties? And yeah, so I was born in Uruguay, in South America.

And when I was born, there were not even supermarkets there.

We used to go with my dad to the farmer's market,

and we'd buy and choose our fruit,

and we knew the guy that sold us the meat.

And so life was very simple at the time when I was born.

Later on, it became very Americanized. But meals were cooked from scratch at my mother's kitchen, and we ate all together as a family, and life was simple.
Yeah. And healthy by default.
Once I went to medical school and graduated from medical school, I went to New York. I moved to New York to do my postgraduate training.
So I started with three years of internal medicine at NYU Downtown Hospital, and then three years of cardiovascular diseases to become a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. The drastic change of lifestyle from moving from a simple place like Uruguay, where life was simple and healthy by default, to a fast-paced city like New York living in hospitals in a lot of time in the emergency room three days in a row being on call eating garbage never eating home-cooked meals I remember going to the supermarket and looking at at the boxes and and the smells and and the fact that that you got this colorful box and then you put it in the microwave and in five minutes you had something that looked like a meal that my mother would cook, you know, like a piece of meat or chicken with mashed potatoes.
And it looked like it, right? But it wasn't really. Right.
It looked like it is the key word, right? I started eating from from the hospital cafeteria which now i know it's no i don't know that it's consciously designed but it is designed to make people sick and as is hospital food for the patients you know and when i was on call at night there were vending machines and i used to think oh my god these americans they figure it out it's amazing i was like a I was like a, I was like a Aboriginal in a, in a, in a supermarket, like discovering this new world. I was excited and, and admiring all this.
Right. But then I started eating these things and I started getting sick.
I started gaining weight. I started having seasonal allergies that then became a year round ordealdeal.
Then I started having digestive problems, you know, bad digestion, bloating and pains and constipation, diarrhea. And then I started getting depressed and I started getting really depressed.
So I couldn't take it anymore. I took three days off.
And because I was working at Lenox's hospital at that time, I was almost a cardiologist. I knew everybody.
So I knew the head of psychiatry. I knew the head of gastroenterology.
I knew the head of allergies. So I went to all of them for consultations.
And I ended up with three diagnoses, severe allergies, severe irritable bowel syndrome, and severe depression. and I ended up with seven prescription medications.
Now I get home from my home, my studio apartment that belonged to a building that belonged to the hospital, right? For the residents and fellows. And I put the prescriptions on a little desk that I had.
And I said, I know, because I'm already a doctor and I'm already trained.

And I know that these chemicals are not going to heal me.

They're not going to correct the problem.

They're just going to force certain chemistry in my body that's going to suppress symptoms.

But it's not going to correct anything.

Right. Not only that, but the suppression of symptoms sometimes comes with side effects that turn into other symptoms.
So I knew all of this, but at that point, at that moment, I had the aha moment that I said, this is not what I want for me. And if I don't want this for me, this is not what I want for my patients.
My dream was to help people heal and and what i ended up doing is a prescription writing machine you know you have five ten minutes to see a patient you end up writing a prescription just in case i don't know if you know this but many times doctors put patients on medications to avoid a lawsuit.

Yeah.

Because what happens if something happens and you didn't put them on the medication?

It's better to put them on the medication, even if it has side effects, but you can defend yourself.

Right.

In our training, they used to tell us, imagine that when you write your progress notes, imagine you're in court and there's a jury and there's a judge.

So you write your progress note in that way, that if something happens, you covered all your, all your. Right.
So they're covering your own ass, which is, which is the protocol, because especially in the U.S., you can get sued for anything and everything. Yes.
So this was the world that I ended up in and that made me sick. And I said, nah, I'm going to find my own way.
So this was three months before I graduated. I graduated as a cardiologist and I started looking for solutions for my problems.
My biggest problem at the time was that I was severely depressed. I was actually thinking of killing myself.
And the only reason I didn't even start thinking of the way to do it is because I knew that I would destroy my parents. And as a good Jewish boy, you know, Jewish mama, you know.
You can't do that to your mom. You can't do that to your mom and to my dad.
And so I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to find my way.
Wait, let me ask you a question. So before moving to the United States and before doing the residency and eating all the foods and the chemicals and the processed foods, are you telling me that you weren't or never had any symptoms of depression, any symptoms of allergies? I was a taekwondo champion in Uruguay.
I was competing. I was in school.
I did really well in school. I had a full-on life without any problem.
I mean, I had appendicitis when I was a kid, but that was it. But never any signs of mental health issues? I was the happiest kid on the planet.
I was deeply loved by my parents, my sisters, you know. By your family.
We had a big and beautiful community. It was like the perfect life.
So would you say that the system, the food system here, the health system here is so damaged and so detrimental to your health that it slowly deteriorated, not just your physical health, but your mental health. Well, that's your conclusion.
I'm just telling you my story. Right.
But as a doctor who sees and has had experience, would you say that was not just your experience, but would you say that that would be your opinion? That's what's happening to people all the time and people are not putting two and two together. So they're using these other, you know, rationales for why they're sick.
I don't fully understand the question, but there is a problem with medicine these days and with the medical system and with the medical business, you know, because it is- It's a business. It's a business.
Well, wait, wait, I'm going to explain the question. My question is a lot of times when people are sick or they have a mental health issue, depression, anxiety, they think, oh, it's because I'm working too much or, oh, no, it's because I have this, you know, this circumstantial.
It's a circumstantial reason. But would you say that because of the way we live as a society with the processed food and the drugs and all the other things, that it's a slowly, it's killing us mentally, physically, and we're not even conscious of that? Absolutely.
Okay. Yeah.
We are creatures of this planet, like all other creatures of this planet, right? And if you look at all other creatures of this planet, except the ones that we domesticated and make live with us.

Yeah. this planet, like all other creatures of this planet, right? And if you look at all other creatures of this planet, except the ones that we domesticated and make live with us, you look at that, you don't see creatures, animals in the wild, in their natural environment with depression or autoimmune diseases or diabetes.
There's no monkeys with cancer, right? There may be, but it's a rare thing, you know? Right, right. They live, they reproduce, they eat.
When they find food, they fast when they don't, and then they die. Either an animal kills them and eats them, or they're old, or some accident of nature, right? But we have taken ourselves and put ourselves in this unnatural environment, right, that not only are loaded with chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink and shower with, the medications we consume, the cosmetics we use that are full of chemicals, the cleaning products that we use in our homes, the architecture of our homes.
I don't know if you know, but a huge percentage of pollution in the world comes from architecture, from the making of cement, of glues, of paints. So we are surrounded ourselves with toxic chemicals, but that's not the only problem.
We are also disconnected from our roots, from nature. And we live in this world in which our mind has taken over.
We're not present anymore. And our mind is always imagining either future or past scenarios which make you either sad or anxious or fearful or whatever it is.
And you're always on a flight or fight mode. All other animals are present.
You see a deer and, you know, they're just present. And if there's danger, their ears go up and they look.
And the danger is just that moment. Either they escape or, you know, the tiger kills it or not.
But after that, they go back to being present. We are as if a tiger is chasing us after us all day long.
So there is... The cortisol is so high in our body.
The cortisol. I mean, that is the consequences.
That is the digital print of the chemical consequences of what's happening. But what's happening is really a disconnection from nature, a disconnection of mind, body, and spirit.

Yeah.

And so I got really sick.

I didn't want to take medications,

and I started looking for a different solution.

My most problematic symptom at that time was my depression.

I couldn't get out of bed sometimes.

I covered myself.

I was on call.

They were calling me, hey, are you coming or not coming? I had to force myself. It was really bad.
So I decided not to take the medications and see if I can find something different. So I started going to therapy, psychologist, all kinds of things until I found the concept and practices of meditation.
Because the biggest problem was that I realized that my mind was always producing thoughts, thinking, thinking, thinking all day long. And some people even pride themselves, I can think of two or three things at the same time.
But that's not something that I was actually choosing to do. It was just happening to me.
At one point I was like, I think I'm going crazy. Why am I thinking of all these negative things? If I had the power to decide, I wouldn't be thinking about this.
So who is thinking? Who is deciding these thoughts in my head? I thought I was going nuts. I didn't know that everybody's having the same problem.
Isn't that life though, right? We always think we're the only ones. Yeah.
I was like, am I going crazy? I saw people in the subways in New York speaking out loud to themselves. I said, the only difference between him and me is that he's doing it out loud.
And he's a little bit, I'm a little bit better dressed, but that's it. Yeah.
And you see them and you think, oh, crazy people. But we're all like this.
100%. So when I found the concept of meditation, it said that constant thinking, which is mostly negative and repetitive, that goes on and on, that you would actually shut up if you could.
This is what meditation can slow down and maybe even stop. And I said, whoa, that's what I want.
So I ended up, and this is a longer story longer story and one day maybe we talk about it but I ended up in a monastery in India that I my exchange was going there as the as a doctor as a cardiologist and in exchange I learned how to meditate and do yoga and and I was running this huge huge ashram in in in Maharashtra in India it's a place called Gurudev see the peace and it's actually an ashram in Maharashtra in India. It's a place called Gurudev Siddharth.
It's actually an ashram that has a life enlightened being as a guru. There's a real thing.
A real guru. A real guru.
And what does that mean? A real enlightened being. A person that's fully present in connection, complete connection with nature all the time.
Okay, when you say a real one versus a fake one, how can you tell the difference between a real enlightened being and a fake enlightened being? Well, that's a whole different conversation, right? Because the truth is that you can only see and understand up to the level that you are at, up to your level of presence, you can really see. But when somebody is even more present than you are, and this is also a trick because you're comparing yourself with other beings, but for the sake of this conversation, if somebody is, you don't really realize, they can appear either stupid to you because a lot of enlightened beings are very simple and, and, you know, there's nothing going on in their brain.
They're fully present. Right.
It's not like, is that like the Dalai Lama? The Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, like the Buddha, like, you know, there's at any given point in the world, there are a number of enlightened beings. You know, I've, I've met a few that I think are, I mean, I can't assure you, but you can feel something.
I mean, you could definitely feel a presence. You can see thousands of people follow them, you know? Right.
So how do you tell between a real enlightened being and non-real enlightened being? You know, it's a big subject. Number one, they're not on Instagram.
Well, number one, well, some may be on Instagram. It's not about that, but it's the way they behave.
You watch and you see a consistency of a state. And the reason I believe that she's fully enlightened and has, because when you are fully present, you have powers as it were, right? And now this woman, when I met her, she slapped me on the chest.
It's a long story, but the moment she slapped me on the chest, she put me in a state that no drug or plant or had before or after even came close to. I tried ayahuasca, ibogaine, mushrooms.
I mean, you name it, wachuma. I've tried everything.
I've tried ecstasy. I didn't do it for fun.
I always did it for looking. For searching.
Searching. Searching for something, right? For my peace, for my...
But nothing. And even all combined had put me in the state that she put me when she slapped my chest.
And I cannot even explain it to you and it would even feel weird to you if I tell you. Because basically, it was like as if there was no body.
And my consciousness was everywhere. I could see everything.
I could read people's minds. It was like very powerful.
And it changed the course of my life because I realized that that state that she put me in for a few minutes is what actually we came here to earth to be. We came here to learn how to be, not how to learn, but to be in that state.
Well, I have a question for you. Totally side, it's like a side note, but how does one become so enlightened? Like this woman that you're talking about, who is the most enlightened woman, a guru.
How do you even start that process? Like, what is her background? Where she's even able to become's even she was a baby and her parents were were devotees of another guru Muktananda and when she was a baby they took her to him and and he picked her up and he blessed her and and and she grew up in the ashram in the in the in the monastery oh okay and and he Muktananda kind of trained her. And, you know, she meditated all her life.
And I don't think she ever had alcohol or joint or anything. So she was kind of like brought up in an environment where that can happen.
What's your opinion? Do you think somebody who comes from Canada, the U.S., living our kind of normal societal world now, do you think they can become enlightened like that or that's just virtually impossible just based on life experience and what they're exposed to? Do you think that's even possible? I think it's possible. I think everything is possible.
I think it can happen actually by the grace of God. Really? It just can happen.
You're not jaded? That's how some saints, when you read about it in the Bible, they just suddenly became enlightened. So there's all possibilities.
When I read the scriptures, when I was in the ashram, I used to read all the scriptures. It's hard work, you know? The monks do it in monasteries.
That's how it's easier. I mean, in L.A., running up and down, going to the gym and having a business, it's going to be harder, right? Harder.
I think it's virtually impossible. The thing is that, first of all, people don't even look for that.
Right. Well, you're too busy.
Your brain has probably too much noise in it. Yeah, yeah.
But it's possible. Like, you need to quiet your brain.
But wait, so how long were you at the ashram with this? So I was there for a little over a year. Okay.
Year and a half or something. So what was your day like there? Like, give me the day in the life of what happened.
So this is a big ashram. Okay.
And there was about 2,000 people at any given time. Indians and people that came from all over the world.
Okay. Is it a famous ashram? It's kind of famous.
Okay. The first day that I went there, there were so many famous people, you know.
I mean, I don't know if I can name names. Of course you can.
Meg Ryan was there. Donna Karan was there.
I mean, there was – anyway, there was a lot of famous people, and there was a lot of non-famous people. And there was even poor people, you know, that saved for a year to go there for three days, you know? I was going to say, so like, are people going there to find themselves and search for themselves? Yeah.
And so these famous people who are going, are they going because they're also in search for themselves? How much is the cost to go to this ashram? That's what I want to know. Well.
I want the details. Yeah, I know you want the details, but that's going to take us a...
It doesn't matter. We can do both.
I want to know how much it costs. If I were like, you know, I want to go and find myself at this ashram.
I want to go for what? A week? How much would it cost me? It doesn't cost anything to go there. Okay.
If you take a course, then, like, for example,

what happened to me is I took a course called the initiation course.

Okay.

And there was, like, 400 people there,

and I think it was $400 or something like that.

Okay.

And during that course, right, I was looking around.

We were in a big hall, and there were a lot of people,

and some people were having this.

You know when you see it on TV? Yeah. The yeah they're like freaking out yeah there were people that you know and nothing was happening to me i was like maybe i wasted the 400 my mind was and then by the end of the and then you meditated and then the guru comes and you sing with her.
And then a monk comes and gives a talk. And then somebody came in and gave a talk of their experience.
And when he was talking, something really weird happened. It was as if everything started like getting dark and only his face was in my view.
And then we're getting closer and closer and then we swapped. And I was sitting in the middle of like 400 people.
But my experience at that time was looking through his eyes and I was seeing this body of mine. I was seeing sitting there in the crowd.
And it was weird, right? And as if I switched places with him.

That was the experience that I was having.

Oh, wow.

It was weird.

And so suddenly he finished talking

and everybody started clapping.

And I came back to my body.

And I thought, I was sweating

and I was so nervous.

So I stood up immediately and left.

And when I was going out,

people were stopping me and saying,

hey, great speech. I was like, no, no, it's not me.
And so I left and I went to the cafeteria before everybody left the hall. And I'm sitting there sweating.
And there was this girl who's a famous makeup artist now. His name is Prema Dubroff.
I don't know if you know her. No.
Patty Dubroff. And she actually lived in the ashram at the time and she was assigned to me as my buddy because when you go there it's not the usual thing, how it operates.
Right. So they tell you, hey, if you have any questions...
Go ask this person. Yeah.
Like a buddy. Yeah, like a buddy.
Like a buddy system. Yeah, like a buddy system.
So she was passing by and she saw me and said, what happened to you? So I told her this story. I think, I don't know, I think somebody put something in my drink or something.
I mean, this was strange. And she said, no, no, this is good, this is good.
She said, I actually think that you should come to the next intensive. And I said, you know, hold on.
Let me, no, no, no, come, come, come. She grabs me and she takes me down this hall.

We were walking to go to the office.

She was going to ask when the next intensive was, right?

But then it's when this guru, Guru Mai, comes walking alone,

which I didn't know at the time, but now I know it's a very unusual thing

that she's always followed by hundreds of people, you know?

Everybody wants to just be close to her.

Wow.

She was walking alone and she meets us in the corridor

I'm sorry. thing that she's she's always followed by like hundreds of people you know everybody wants to just be close to her wow she's walking along and she's and she she meets us in the corridor and she's like hi prema hi how are you and and um and she says who is a friend and my friend's alejandro he's a he's a doctor and she looks at me she's what kind of and already i was feeling that the beginning it was like intimidated because she's like this presence, you know, but also very simple and very kind.
And, you know, it's difficult to, but you could feel, I felt that she knew everything about me. And she said, well, what's your name, Alejandro? And what kind of doctor are you? I said, a cardiologist.
Oh, the heart. And she smacks me in the heart.
And she starts laughing and she leaves in that moment i started losing sensation on my feet my legs then my torso then then then and it exploded and it was like i was everywhere i was everywhere i was everything i had what is called the experience of cosmic consciousness. So I had that experience that you read in books.
And I remember everything was slow motion and people were walking. And I knew what they were thinking because I was them, you know.
It wasn't like the experience. I'm having now a normal experience.
I'm inside my body, sitting in your house, in your my eyes yes talking and there's a microphone but that wasn't what it was going on that wasn't it I was everywhere I was everything you know that's so crazy how long did that last so it suddenly I feel my hand is is being you know tugged on yeah and it was prema and and she said are you okay because I was crying you know tears. And it were tears of joy.
I mean, I never felt such peace in such the state that I was put in or that.

So this place did a lot of good for you.

Well, it changed my life. You know, I went to the United States from Uruguay determined to be a cardiologist.
I was going to invent a way of opening the arteries. And, you know, I thought I was going to dedicate my life to that.
And I didn't care about that anymore after that experience. I only wanted to be able to be in that safe all the time.
All the time. I said, this is the possibility that we have.
And I understood that this is what we came here for. This is what we were looking for.
Of course, when I came back to my, you know, she's like, are you okay? And I come back and I'm looking at her. Yeah, I'm okay.
And then for about two weeks, I would go in and out, in and out of that state. I was living in New York at the time.
And suddenly I would go, you know, fall into that state. And when I came back, I was taking my, I had a really beautiful leather jacket with a sheep skin inside.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was giving it away to a homeless guy.
And, you know, it was like, it was weird. If somebody would have caught me at that time and spoke to me at that time, they would put me in a mental institution and would have medicated me.
Wow. But what are you thinking? So I thought...
Abraham Maslow, which is a very famous... What's his name? Abraham Maslow.
He writes about this. Yeah, I know who that is.
He writes about this awakening or spiritual experience that seems a lot like mental disease, like you are completely mentally gone. And that's what happened to me.
And then slowly with time, about two weeks, I just never went into that state again like that. But 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 at the ashram? No, no, I was living in the city and I was driving to the Catskills where these ashrams are. 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.
Oh, 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 different. Whoever came to the ashram, whatever skill they had, they put them to work on that.
Okay. 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. It sounds 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. And 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.
So we were eating mango all day long, and mango juice and mango dessert. So are you eating mango? I love mango, said the woman.
Okay. And are you eating...
So 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? The Reiki master, the meditation master.
Sometimes I had to take over and say, nah. I remember there was a monk that came and he was having chest pain and the Ayurvedic doctor said, oh, we have to take all the foods.
He's a vata. I said, nah, this guy has to go to the hospital right now because he's 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.
Yes. 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 the 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.
A friend of mine right now who's 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, right? Like there's people who, you know, 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, just like 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 homeopath or whatever. You 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 authorization, 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? I 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.
And 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. Like, 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, you know, 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.

So what does that mean?

That means that modern medicine divides and conquers,

meaning there's specializations.

They divide the body in organs. If 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.
So 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. Actually, 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.
So, 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 at the beginning, but like 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 like, 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 say, they want to cover their ass.
They don't want to get sued versus like 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? So 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? And by the way, just to talk about the functional, 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't afford to be healthy. But 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.
And 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 company, you know, 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, you know, I want even further to tell you what I think about it.
I am also here to talk about some, some of the, all the products that I, that I, that I, it affects, it ends up affecting everybody. It 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 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.
By 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 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. Yeah, but like, I vetted you.
I know you. I like you.
I 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.
I was searching for a solution for my own problems when I found a solution, which I was coming into, I spent the time in India, you know, 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. He 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 that characterized, 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 in,

across the highway. Right.
To this place called the weak air spa that is a detox center they 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 we get it off immediately 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. I 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, but 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 has been around for, 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 spot 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.
It's called We Care? Yeah, yeah. So then I, 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 him. 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 like a Mayo Clinic in Palm Springs and they wanted the top cardiac surgeon.
They brought him over. Dr.
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 and 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.
He'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're 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 people always remember one thing about something or something that sticks in your head? He says, I should never eat tomatoes.
Tomatoes 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, well, Dr.
Gundry and I don't agree in a few things.

Is that one of them?

That's one of them, you know.

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. And 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. Really? Yeah.
Because if someone like me who is highly allergic, I break out in hives just by looking at certain plants and, and, you know, in a tropical environment, you don't want to see me. Yeah.
Do I stay away from stuff like that? So now, now this is a great way to jump into the, into the, really the meat of what I came to talk to you about. Okay.
I can talk to you about that. Which is, which is this.
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 and the, 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. Most 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. She's such a nice and hardworking girl.
And I saw her hands. They were cracked and bleeding, right? And I couldn't help myself.
And so I went to talk to her. And I said, I think I can help you this and she said okay so I put her on 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 doesn't have access to you know a lot but she but you know there is a good health system there nobody could help her they put her on what they call biologicals you know, a lot, but she, but, you know, there is a good health system there.
Nobody could help her. They put her on what they call biologicals, you know, which are basically immune depressors.
Because what happens is many of these problems are autoimmune. And your immune system kind of goes haywire and gives you what we see as a disease, right?

We understand it as a disease.

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.

And that's become a problem. That'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.
Just 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 depositing 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. But 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? But 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. Really? If I send blood tests or whatever tests are needed, I only send tests when they're really needed.
if, or in my opinion, before the blood test comes, 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. Really? 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. Okay, 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 does the body, or 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? So, 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. One and a half.

I mean, you're little, so probably one and a quarter. I'm a little bigger, so one and a half.

Some people have two tennis courts, surface of a intestinal wall.

So my intestinal wall, everyone's intestinal wall is about two.

We can see you next time. Some people have two tennis courts, surface of a 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? This is obviously a tube, right? And this is just a little part of the wall.
So here's where the food comes. This is where the bacteria would live, right? And once it passes, see 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, the 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. So 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.
And here in the gut is where we're most exposed to external stuff because, you know, 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. See 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? Antigens 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. So if you 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, 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. So 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, yeah, boom, boom. Well, no, what I want, you're right.
Give me the, you know, so what happened 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, acarmancia mucinophila, oh, and they start taking acramansia.
And this new probiotic. And this, oh, glutamine.
So 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 answer? 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.
So now they detect this bacteria and this bacteria makes this mucinous carbohydrate that coats the gut. 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 didn'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 not a one size fits all probiotic, right? And they were like, well, you can't have one that's

in the, it has to be refrigerated. It has to not be refrigerated.
There's so much information. So before.
So, so my, my program, the clean program. Yes.
Let's put it this way. You, 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 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? But 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.
You 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? How does it work? It's a 21-day program. That's 21 days.
That was a week. There is a seven-day program.
A 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 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.
Oh, 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 it back 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. So 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 the difference, like, what do you offer in seven days that you don't offer in 21? 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.
Oh, I remember this whole thing. You don't let us drink coffee, right? Right.
I remember that. Damn it.
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, 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? There's 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 the 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. You 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 then you have to, 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, is, is the, 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. That 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? And 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.
You know, 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. So 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. You can do it with friends.
I'm going to do it and I'm going to give one to her because I promise her. But why no coffee?, 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 necessarily... So what's the problem with coffee? There's many problems with coffee.
Okay. Tell me.
Well. 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. Okay.
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. Right? So it depletes, eventually depletes you of energy, and then you become dependent on the stimulant effect.
Yeah effect. Some people cannot function if they don't drink coffee in the morning.
Or cannot go to the bathroom. That'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 microvilli 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. Well, 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, you know, speech, vision, right? But this one has to do with the intuition and other functions that are really important, right? Tell me other ones.
Other ones like temperature regulation, mobility of the gut, you know? 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 movement. So the foot is pushed from the up, you know, from one end to the other.
So 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, there's a huge reaction and adaptation mechanism. The 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.
It'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? And there's vegetables that are not like, like eggplants are not allowed. Why? The eggplants are not allowed because they have certain nutrients that are pro-inflammatory, right? Like solanin in, in, in, in, in the eggplants and tomatoes have some lectins.
So there are, 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 thing. 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.
Yeah, because the hormones and the antibiotics affect the guy. 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. 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,

You're not going to 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. No snacking.
As a 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. Yeah.
That's when you have a big meal, you kind of fall asleep, you know, get tired, right? So it takes a lot of energy for the body to digest, right? 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- That 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 are 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. I've been talking to you forever.
No, no, I took your show. I know, you can talk for another five hours, right? I've been talking 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. No 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.
Why? I'll tell you a story. In this last retreat in Argentina, there was this woman that, just like you, intelligent, does a good, 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. She, 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, 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.
So 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? So 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.
These bottles called implantoramas, which are like a little colonic machine that you can take with you, right? So I take them there and give them to the people. So I gave her one and I instruct her to do a coffee colonic.
It's a little bottle. 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. 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, right.
It happened to be that the next activity in the retreat was family constellations. And I don't know if you know what that is.
I was explaining to you before we... Well, yeah, tell 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. And 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.
Yeah. 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 she was zero symptoms something that hasn't happened to her in three years being four days 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. Than yours? By God, yours is very strict and limiting.
I wouldn't say that. I know.
It's all relative. It's all relative and and but him is you know and but i i really respect this guy he's he 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 when detailed journalists go into something and they learn they become amazing yeah he has information like wow so so so there are some some out there right but but a good gut repair program is many times good by itself but many times you need other things right yeah so some people i'm gonna try your retreat i want to go to what you told me i can go yeah yeah you you you'll be my guest next march you said there's 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.
And the flight from here is maybe from LA. You stop in Miami and then you go to Uruguay.
So it's five hours to Miami and then eight hours to 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.
is very fascinating to me. Right.
Like I love you learn so many different like you meet all these different people, healers, doctors. Oh, my, listen.
Like the caliber is crazy. No, listen to what happened to me.
And this is what 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.
I had to fix my car. 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 valves, which is the most important valve. Anyways, it was a disaster.
And one of the things that happened is there was a compression of my L3, L4, right? Lumber. Yeah.
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, right? Lumber, Lumber 3 and Lumber 4. If I show you the MRI, you don't 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 tried 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 functional way of dealing with the body, right? So 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, yeah.
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.
So look, these are all the problems. They say, if I don't see the patient, I can't really tell.
So I say, I am the patient. So she started examining me, making me move.
And she said, you know what? I think I can help you. 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.
So 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, like a diamond, right? Like you don't find them very often. Seek and you shall find.
Well, I mean, you do that too. You 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.
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 have to be curious.
You have to question things. You have to inform yourself.
I totally agree. All right, Dr.
Ungert, I have to wrap this. Where can people find more about your program? Instagram, dr.alejandrejunger.
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 that 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 are my New York Times bestsellers. What happened to the fourth? I don't know.
Listen, I mean... 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. And guys, if you have not, 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, allergy 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.
So 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.

Always a pleasure.

Always a pleasure.