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

Speaker 1 Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He lives all over the world. The last couple years, Dr.

Speaker 2 I always can't pronounce it. Again, you just told me how to actually say your last name.

Speaker 1 Junger.

Speaker 2 Junger. Yeah.

Speaker 2 dr junger 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 flattering.

Speaker 2 And I don't believe you. I bet you came here for bigger and better, not better shows, but bigger shows, possibly.

Speaker 1 I don't know about better or bigger.

Speaker 2 I mean, not better, maybe slightly bigger, but nevertheless, I'm so happy to have you.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And the ingredients are very clean. They're exceptionally good.

Speaker 2 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 my story so let's do it do you actually feel the effects it's so mild but it's like it keeps you leveled it's not like a crazy jittery thing all right so what we do in this is we actually

Speaker 2 we cheer it's like cheers

Speaker 2 Say, cheers. This is some magic mind.
I'm telling you, it's really, it's great. You're going to like the taste.

Speaker 1 Do you like it? I like it. It's good, right? The taste is great.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I feel smarter already.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, I expect to have nothing but the best information come out of that noggin of yours.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Because what I always say to you and I actually talk about this is that you are very qualified.

Speaker 2 You're not, you know, you're not some schmendrick who is on Instagram just touting the latest and greatest.

Speaker 2 You're actually a cardiologist, plus you're a functional medicine doctor and you have, 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.

Speaker 1 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 yes i was born in uruguay in south america when and when i was born there were no not even supermarkets there we used to go with my dad to the mark you know the farmer's market and we buy and 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 and we ate all together as a family And life was simple

Speaker 1 and healthy by default.

Speaker 1 Once I went to medical school and graduated from medical school, I went to New York. I moved to New York to do my post-graduate training.

Speaker 1 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 Lennox Hill Hospital in New York.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 in hospitals, a lot of time in the emergency room, three days in a row, being on call, eating garbage,

Speaker 1 never eating home-cooked meals. I remember going to the supermarket and looking at the boxes and...

Speaker 1 and the smells and the fact 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 like a piece of meat or chicken with with the mashed potatoes and it looked like it right but it wasn't really right it looked like it is a keyword right i i started eating from the hospital cafeteria which now i know it's

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I used to think, oh my God, these Americans, they figured it out. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 I was like an aboriginal in a

Speaker 1 supermarket, like discovering this new world.

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 excited and

Speaker 1 admiring all this.

Speaker 1 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 ordeal.

Speaker 1 Then I started having digestive problems, you know, bad digestion, bloating bloating and pains and constipation, diarrhea. And then I started getting depressed.
And I started getting really depressed.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I knew the head of gastroenterology. I knew the head of allergies.
So I went to all of them.

Speaker 1 for consultations and I ended up with three diagnoses, severe allergies, severe irritable bowel syndrome, and severe depression. And I was, and I ended up with seven prescription medications.

Speaker 1 Now I get home from my

Speaker 1 home, my studio apartment that belonged to a building that belonged to the hospital, right, for the residents and

Speaker 1 fellows. And I put the prescriptions on a little desk that I had and I 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.

Speaker 1 They're not going to correct the problem. They're just going to force a certain chemistry in my body that's going to suppress symptoms.
But it's not going to correct anything. Right.

Speaker 1 Not only that,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 from my patients.
My dream was to help people heal.

Speaker 1 And what I ended up doing is a prescription writing machine. You know,

Speaker 1 you have five, 10 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.

Speaker 1 a suit a lawsuit yeah you know because what happens if that you know, if something happened and you didn't put him on the medication, it's better to put him on a medication, even if it has side effects, but you can defend yourself.

Speaker 1 Right. In our training, they used to tell us: imagine that you are, when you write your progress notes, imagine you're in court and there's a jury and there's a judge.

Speaker 2 So you write your progress note in that way that if something happens, you covered all your all your so it's it was right so cover your own ass which is which is the protocol because especially especially in the U.S., you can get sued for anything and everything.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 So this was

Speaker 1 the world that I ended up in and that made me sick. And I said, nah, I'm going to find my own way.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I was actually thinking of killing myself.

Speaker 1 And the only reason I 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,

Speaker 1 you know, Jewish mama, you know.

Speaker 2 You can't do that to your mom.

Speaker 1 You can't do that to your mom and to my dad. So I'm like, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to find my way.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 Are you telling me that you weren't or never had any symptoms of depression, any symptoms of allergies?

Speaker 1 I was a taekwondo champion in Uruguay. I was competing.

Speaker 1 I was in school.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 But never any

Speaker 2 signs of mental health issues.

Speaker 1 I was the happiest kid on the planet. I was deeply loved by my parents, by my sisters, by my, you know, by your family.
We had a big and beautiful community.

Speaker 1 It was like the perfect life.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 1 Well, that's your conclusion. I am just telling you my story.
Right. And my story.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And people are not putting two and two together. So they're using these other

Speaker 2 rationales for why they're sick.

Speaker 1 I don't fully understand the question, but there's a problem with medicine these days and with the medical system and with the medical business, you know, because it is.

Speaker 2 It's a business. It's a business.
Well, wait, wait, I'm going to explain the question.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 we live as a society with the, 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.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Okay.
Yeah. We are creatures of this planet, like all other creatures of this planet, right?

Speaker 1 And if you look at all other creatures of this planet, except the ones that we domesticated and make live with us,

Speaker 1 you look at that, you don't see creatures, animals in the wild, in their natural environment with depression or autoimmune diseases or diabetes.

Speaker 1 There's no monkeys with cancer.

Speaker 1 There may be, but it's a rare thing. Right, right.
They live, they reproduce, they eat,

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 or some accident of nature.

Speaker 1 But we have taken ourselves and put ourselves in this unnatural environment, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you know, but a huge percentage of pollution in the world comes from architecture,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And we live

Speaker 1 in this world in which our mind has taken over. We're not present anymore.
And

Speaker 1 our mind is always imagining either future or past

Speaker 1 scenarios which make you either sad or anxious or fearful or whatever it is and it and and you're always on a flight or fight mode all other animals are present you see a deer and and you know they're just present and if there's danger they they their ears go up and and they look and And the danger is just that moment.

Speaker 1 Either they escape

Speaker 1 or, you know, the tiger kills it or not but but after that they go back to being present we are as if a tiger is chasing us after us all day long

Speaker 1 so so there is cortisol so high in our body the cordy so i mean the the that is the consequences that is the the the you know the the digital print of the chemical consequences of of what's happening but what's happening is really a disconnection from nature, a disconnection of mind, body, and spirit.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I couldn't get out of bed sometimes. I mean, I covered myself.

Speaker 1 I was on call.

Speaker 1 They were calling me, hey, are you coming or not coming? So I had to force myself.

Speaker 1 It was really bad. So

Speaker 1 I decided not to take the medications and see if I can find something different.

Speaker 1 So I started going to therapy, psychologist,

Speaker 1 all kinds of things until I found the concept and practices of meditation.

Speaker 1 Because the bigger, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Why am I thinking of all these negative things? If I had the power to decide, I wouldn't be thinking about this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Isn't that life, though, right? We always think we're the only ones.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was like,

Speaker 1 Am I going crazy? I saw people

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he's a little bit, oh, I'm a little bit better dressed, but that's it. You know,

Speaker 1 and you see them and you think, oh, crazy people, you know, but we're all like this

Speaker 1 so so so when i when i found the the concept of meditation it said that constant

Speaker 1 the thinking neck 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 long story longer story and one day maybe we talk about it but i ended up in a monastery in india that that I, my exchange was going there as a doctor, as a cardiologist.

Speaker 1 And in exchange, I learned how to meditate and do yoga.

Speaker 1 And I was running this huge, huge ashram

Speaker 1 in Maharashtra in India. It's a place called Gurudev Siddha Peeth.
And

Speaker 1 it's actually an ashram that has a life enlightened being as a guru. There's a real...
the real thing. A real guru.
A real guru. And what does that mean? A real enlightened being.

Speaker 1 A person that's fully present

Speaker 1 in connection, complete connection with nature all the time.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But when somebody is even more present than you are and this is also a trick because you're comparing yourself with you know but but for the sake of this conversation um if somebody's is

Speaker 1 you don't really realize they can appear either either stupid to you because a lot of enlightened beings are very simple and and you know right there's nothing going on in their brain they're fully present right it's not like

Speaker 1 is that like the dalai lama the dalai lama like 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 met a few i've met a few that i think are i mean i can't assure you but you can feel there's something i mean you could definitely feel a presence you can you can see thousands of people follow them you know right so how do you tell between

Speaker 1 a real enlightened being and non-real enlightened being you know it's a it's a it's a big it's a big subject number one they're not on instagram well number one well some some some may be on instagram it's not it's not about that but it's the way they behave

Speaker 1 You watch and you see a consistency

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 that no

Speaker 1 drug or plant or or had

Speaker 1 before or after

Speaker 1 even

Speaker 1 came close to i tried ayahuasca ibogaine mushrooms i mean you name it what chuma i've tried everything i've tried i've tried ecstasies i tried i every i i didn't do it for fun i always did it for 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 it would even feel weird to you if i 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 i could i could read people my people's minds it was it was like

Speaker 1 very

Speaker 1 wow very powerful and 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.

Speaker 1 We came here to learn how to be, not how to learn, but to

Speaker 1 be in that state.

Speaker 2 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 this the most enlightened woman, a guru?

Speaker 2 How do you even start that process? Like, was she like, what would what is her background? Where she's even

Speaker 1 she was a baby, and her parents were devotees of another guru, Muktananda. And when she was a baby, they took her to him and he picked her up and he blessed her.

Speaker 1 And she grew up in the ashram, in the monastery. Oh, okay.
And

Speaker 1 Muktananda kind of trained her and she meditated all her life. And

Speaker 1 I don't think she ever had it.

Speaker 1 alcohol or

Speaker 1 joint or anything.

Speaker 2 But she was kind of like, she was kind of like brought up in an environment where that can happen.

Speaker 2 What's your opinion?

Speaker 2 Do you think somebody who comes from our, from like, you know, from Canada, the U.S., like living our kind of normal societal world now, do you think they can become enlightened like that?

Speaker 2 Or that's just virtually impossible, just on based on life experience and what, like, what they, they're exposed to? Do you think that's even possible?

Speaker 1 I think it's possible. I think everything is possible.

Speaker 1 I think it can happen actually by the grace of God, you know? Really? It just can happen.

Speaker 2 You're not jaded. You don't think it may happen?

Speaker 1 That's how some saints, when you read about it in the Bible,

Speaker 1 they just suddenly became enlightened.

Speaker 1 So there's all possibilities. But

Speaker 1 when I read the scriptures, when I was in the ashram, I used to read all the scriptures. It's hard work.

Speaker 1 The monks do it in monasteries.

Speaker 1 That's how it's easier. I mean, in LA, running up and down, going to the gym and having a business, it's going to be harder, right?

Speaker 2 Harder. I think it's virtually impossible.

Speaker 1 The thing is that, first of all, people don't even look for that. Right.

Speaker 2 Well, you're too busy. Your brain has probably too much noise in it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But it's possible.

Speaker 2 Like, you need to quiet your brain. But wait, so how long were you at the ashram with this?

Speaker 1 So I was there for a little over a year. Okay.
Year and a half or something.

Speaker 2 So what was your day like there? Like, give me the day in the life of what happened.

Speaker 1 So, so, this is a big ashram. Okay.
And there was about 2,000 people at any given time.

Speaker 1 Indians and people that came from all over the world. Okay.

Speaker 2 And is it a famous ashram?

Speaker 1 It's kind of famous.

Speaker 1 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 Caron was there.

Speaker 1 I mean, there was...

Speaker 1 Anyway, there was a lot of famous people. And there was a lot of non-famous people.
Right. And

Speaker 1 there was even... poor people, you know,

Speaker 1 that saved for a year to go there for three days, you know?

Speaker 2 I was going to say, so, like, are people going there to find themselves and search for themselves? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, these famous people who are going, are they going because they're also in search for themselves? How much does the cost to go to this ashram? That's what I want to know.

Speaker 2 Well, I want the details.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know you want the details, but

Speaker 1 that's going to take us.

Speaker 2 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 long?

Speaker 2 How much would it cost me?

Speaker 1 It doesn't cost anything to go there. Okay.

Speaker 1 If you take a course, then, like, for example, what happened to me is I took a course called the initiation course, and there was like 400 people there, and I think it was $400 or something like that.

Speaker 1 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, oh,

Speaker 1 having this, you know, you know, when you see it on TV, the Christian

Speaker 2 people fall, you know, yeah, they're like freaking out.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 there were people that were, you know, nothing was happening to me. I was like, you know, maybe I wasted the $400.

Speaker 1 My mind was, you know,

Speaker 1 and then by the end of the and then you meditated and then the guru comes and they you sing with with her and then a monk comes and you know 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

Speaker 1 getting dark and only only his face was in my in my view and then we're getting closer and close and then we swapped and I was sitting in the middle of like 400 people.

Speaker 1 But my experience at that time was looking through his eyes. And I was seeing this body of mine.
I was sitting there in the crowd. And it was weird, right? And as if I switched places with him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I thought, oh, and I saw it when I was sweating. And I was so nervous.

Speaker 1 And so I stood up immediately and left and when I was going out people were stopping me say hey great speech I was no no it's not me

Speaker 1 and so I left and I went to the cafeteria before everybody left the the hall and I'm sitting there sweating and there was this girl who's a famous

Speaker 1 makeup artist now his name is Prema Dubrov I don't know if you know her no Patty Dubrov and she 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 right so they they tell you hey if you have any questions you go ask this person like a buddy yeah like a buddy system yeah like a buddy system so she was passing by and she saw me say what happened to you so i told her this this story i think i don't know somebody put something in my drink or so i mean this was strange and she said no no this is good this is good

Speaker 1 i i actually think that you should come to the next uh intensive and i said really you know hold on let me no no no come come come she grabs me and she takes me down this hall and we were walking to go to the office she was gonna ask when the next intensive was right but then it's when this guru gurumai comes walking alone which i didn't know at the time but now i know

Speaker 1 it's a very unusual 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 was walking alone and she's and she she meets us in the corridor and she's like hi prima hi rumai how are you and and um and she says

Speaker 1 who is your friend and oh my friend's alejandro he's a he's a doctor and she looks at me says what kind of and already i was feeling that at 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 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 and it exploded. And it was like,

Speaker 1 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 remember everything was slow motion and

Speaker 1 people were walking and I could, I knew what they were thinking because I was them, you know.

Speaker 1 It wasn't like the experience. I'm having now a normal experience.
I'm inside my body, sitting in your house, in your podcast, looking through my eyes, talking. And there's a mind.

Speaker 1 That wasn't what it was going on.

Speaker 1 That wasn't it. I was everywhere.
I was everything.

Speaker 2 That's so crazy. How long did that last?

Speaker 1 So suddenly I feel my hand is

Speaker 1 being tugged on.

Speaker 1 and it was prema and and she said are you okay because I was crying you know like tears and it were tears of joy I mean I never felt such peace and 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 I I went to the United States from Uruguay determined to be a cardiologist I was gonna invent a way of opening the arteries and you know I thought I was gonna dedicate my life to that and I didn't care about that anymore after that experience.

Speaker 1 I only wanted to be able to be in that state 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.

Speaker 1 This is what we were looking for. Of course,

Speaker 1 when I came back to my, you know, she's like, are you okay? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I come back. I'm looking at her and 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 a sheepskin inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was giving it away to a homeless guy. And, you know, it was like, it was weird.

Speaker 1 If somebody would have caught me at that time and spoke to me at that time, they would have put me in a mentor institution and would have medicated me.

Speaker 2 Wow. But what are you thinking? So I thought.

Speaker 1 Abraham Maslow, which is a very famous. What's his name? Abraham Maslow.
He writes about. Yeah, I know who that is.

Speaker 1 He he writes about this this awakening or yeah or spiritual experience that seems a lot like mental disease like like you are completely mentally gone and that's that's what happened to me but 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 I That state, I went in and out.

Speaker 2 You said for two weeks?

Speaker 1 For two weeks, I was in and out.

Speaker 1 In that state, little time. Right, right, right.

Speaker 2 But I thought you were staying. Weren't you staying at the ashram? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I was living in the city and I was driving to the Catskills where these ashram is.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay. So I wasn't understand.
I thought the ashram was in India.

Speaker 1 No, no, this ashram was in New York. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 I didn't know. I didn't know they had an ashram.

Speaker 1 They have ashrams all over the world. There's one in LA too.
Oh, there is. Yeah.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Now this is making more sense to me. Yeah.
So then when you found meditation and it kind of helped change the way your brain works, basically, and it calms you down.

Speaker 1 Well, it changed everything because after that, I ended up going to India as a cardiologist to be the, but they put me when I got, when I arrived there, they put me as the director of their clinic.

Speaker 1 But there was a lot of

Speaker 1 other doctors. There were.

Speaker 1 Ayurvedic doctors, there were Chinese medicine doctors, there were chiropractors, hands-on healers, Reiki masters.

Speaker 1 All sorts of. Whoever came to the ashram, whatever skill they had, they put them to work on that.

Speaker 1 Okay, so there were people that were engineers that were working on the lighting system and the water filtration system.

Speaker 1 It's a community, everybody's doing something.

Speaker 2 It's like a kibbutz, it sounds like it sounds like it's like a kibbutz, yeah.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So, the Ayurvedic medicine doctor asked some questions. I asked some questions.
The Chinese medicine doctor asked some questions. So, everybody asking questions.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But the Ayurvedic medicine doctor said,

Speaker 1 because it was mango season, and there's like 300 types of mango in the, you know, it's a big ashram, lots of trees, you know. So we were eating mango all day long and mango juice and mango, you know.

Speaker 1 So are you eating mango? I love mango, said the woman. Okay.
And are you eating spice? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So basically the Ayurvedic medicine doctor said she's a pita constitution and we have to stop all her fiery pita is fire we have to stop all the fiery foods so she stopped all the all the the spices the the you know and and the mango and and she said she doesn't need any any medication if she does that and within two days i mean the the the first day she left and i was checking on her because i thought she's gonna need antihistamine or or pretines.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And that happened to me with all the practitioners there, right? The Reiki master, the meditation master. Wow.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I had to take over and say, nah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He's a vata. I said, nah, this guy has to go to the hospital right now because

Speaker 1 his artery,

Speaker 2 he's having an unstable angina which which means that there's a blood clot that's forming and unforming and 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 aerovat you know your ayurvedic doctor or your whoa chinese medicine doctor this is where the rubber meets the road in my opinion yes so so that and that patient i everybody had an opinion I said, we have to tame this herb.

Speaker 1 And I said, no, we need a car right now.

Speaker 1 And I am actually going to go in the car with him to Bombay, into a hospital, to get a and it was to get 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 in him and immediately he felt better and it saved his myocardium otherwise he would have had a a bigger heart attack.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, this is my point.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'm convinced he has a major infection, but he refuses to take antibiotics, right? Because

Speaker 2 he's on the opposite end of the spectrum, right? Like, there's people swinging, you know,

Speaker 2 probably somewhere in the middle would be nice, but some people are very extreme and he won't take anything.

Speaker 1 This is a huge problem today.

Speaker 2 This is the problem.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 would never go to a you know

Speaker 1 a naturopath

Speaker 1 or whatever yeah that's you know that's

Speaker 1 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 in my understanding is this when there's an acute problem western medicine has incredible solutions incredible tools.

Speaker 1 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 arthritisization, you put a stent on, you go to a good traumatologist, orthopedist,

Speaker 1 who can, I mean, I had a car accident, I had my leg reconstructed, pins and

Speaker 1 mails and things, you know,

Speaker 1 and I can use it now. So Western medicine is in modern Western medicine incredible for acute problems.
For chronic problems, not so much.

Speaker 1 So they want to use the same tools and solutions for chronic problems than for acute problems. So what do they do?

Speaker 1 They cut you and they give you medications, surgery and medications, and it doesn't work, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 you and you

Speaker 1 it's an art to combine right it's an art it's an art to combine and what that experience gave me it's it gave me a taste of the palate 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 what I'm even going back to when you're telling me when you first moved to the states and they gave you a seven medications for your depression, for your anti-hist, for your allergies and for something else.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 People only know what they know and only have access to what they have access to. Yes.

Speaker 1 So it's changing now, you know, with the with the advances and the and the growing of functional medicine, which I know you're familiar with.

Speaker 1 Functional medicine is a new way of thinking about the body, right?

Speaker 1 Who was created or invented or

Speaker 2 designed? Basically, the way I see functional medicine is like

Speaker 2 you're working with the body as a whole, like holistically.

Speaker 1 And 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

Speaker 1 an Ayurvedic medicine doctor or a Chinese medicine doctor.

Speaker 1 So what does that mean? That means that modern medicine divides and conquers, meaning there's specializations. They divide the body in organs.

Speaker 1 You have an eye problem, you go to the eye doctor, ophthalmologist. You have a brain problem, you go to the neurologist.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And different organs participate in different systems. For example, the intestines, right?

Speaker 1 They are part of the digesting and absorbing system. They are also part of the immune repair and defense system.
They are also part of the nervous system.

Speaker 1 The intestines participate in most systems or all systems of the body, right? And that's where all systems kind of meet, physically meet

Speaker 1 in the intestines. So that is the big difference between functional medicine and Western modern medicine.
So, okay. So if you, if I'm having a chronic disease,

Speaker 1 if I'm having a chronic problem and I don't, I don't know, I'd rather have both opinions. I would go to a functional medicine doctor and be thought of holistically.

Speaker 2 But what happened? I think what's happened, I think a lot of times, because

Speaker 2 we just kind of touched upon this at the beginning, but like the medical system, the health system is so screwed up right now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 looking at the body as a whole.
So

Speaker 2 people are getting missed. A lot of things are like that are there that are making them sick

Speaker 1 is being missed. This goes back to when we started talking about our separation from nature and

Speaker 1 then so

Speaker 1 when you when you look at ancient civilizations or or cultures, you see that the people that were in charge of healing right the you know what we would call the doctors now, were not just the doctors.

Speaker 1 They were also like spiritual healers. And

Speaker 1 sometimes the priest and the doctor was the same person.

Speaker 1 The healers

Speaker 1 in the Amazon tribes.

Speaker 1 It's a different thing. Medicine today in our culture, in our modern culture, became completely prostituted and

Speaker 1 degenerated and distorted by

Speaker 1 interests, right? So you go there, they have five minutes to see you, they're going to write you a prescription. Next,

Speaker 1 that's it. Your insurance pays not paid.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Do you know how many people are being are staying sick because they can't afford to see a functional medicine doctor?

Speaker 2 And by the way, just like to talk about the functional, like that's just MDs, okay? Functional medicine doctors are a living fortune. I mean, I go into a doctor's office,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 who are not multi-gazillionaires can't afford to be seen or can afford to be healthy.

Speaker 1 But listen, that's what's happening with modern civilization. It's terrible.
It's degenerated not only

Speaker 1 in the healthcare aspect, in many, in many aspects, right? So that's what's we're living now the concept.

Speaker 2 But that's a big one. I mean, I think

Speaker 2 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? Yeah,

Speaker 1 you can have 10,000 problems until you have a health problem. Then you only have one problem.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Yes.
Right? Like, no other problem,

Speaker 2 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're not, you have nothing.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 People are saying whatever they need to say because they're being paid by sponsors, by

Speaker 2 you know by whoever to push their products their brands their services their telemedicine issues like this is what's happening listen i i am talking about these things and i and i agree with you and i and and you know i went even further to tell you what i think of it i am also here to talk about some some of the of the products that i that i that i so it affect it ends up affecting everybody it does but the difference 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.

Speaker 2 And that's the problem.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The people who are actually sometimes not the best.

Speaker 2 you know, representatives of themselves or the best orators or the best media spokespeople are typically the ones that I see who are actually the most knowledgeable, have the most integrity, who I'd like to get my information from.

Speaker 1 By the way, by the way, you're one of them. This helped me really focus.
It did.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 2 Well, this is a good example, right? Because, like, yeah, like everybody needs to make money and have brands and sponsors who help them, right?

Speaker 2 But you have to be discerning who you work with, who your products are, who you're listening to. Like, you're saying yourself, like, you're like, well, I have my clean program.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but like, I vetted you.

Speaker 1 I know you i like i tell you i tell you one way in which i i myself distinguish between yeah who is just doing it for business and

Speaker 1 and maybe this is not humble of me to say right but my company and my program is a result

Speaker 1 of my own problems a solution search for i was searching for solution for my own problems when i found the solution which

Speaker 1 i was coming into because i spent the time in india you know with right right right we got sidetracked yeah yeah yeah yeah with all the meditation and the and the and the vegetarian food and the you know all this so my symptoms got a little better right then but when my when i finished my time in india i had to come back and and and go work so i i started working in a hospital again and again seven minutes prepatient eating in hospital cafeteria running being on call again my symptoms doubled doubled down i was more depressed and more allergic and and until one day some guy that I knew I had seen 10 days before knocks on my door.

Speaker 1 He was from LA, a producer, always very, you know, edgy and red in the face from alcohol and coffee.

Speaker 1 And, you know, 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.

Speaker 1 His eyes were white and he didn't have the redness from the, that that you know that that characterized him. I said, what happened to you? Did you get plastic surgery? And he said, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 across the highway

Speaker 1 to this place called the Week Air Spa,

Speaker 1 that is a detox center.

Speaker 1 You go there, you juice all the time, and you have colonics and you have massages.

Speaker 1 And I was blown away when the results say, come, come. I go there and it turns out that the owner is an Argentinian woman.
I'm from Uruguay. We hit it off immediately.
She started telling me.

Speaker 1 I told her about my issues. She said, why don't you try the program here? I did.
And

Speaker 1 my depression lifted and gone away. My allergies disappeared.
My irritable bowel syndrome disappeared. I was like, oh my God,

Speaker 1 this is kind of magic. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 I couldn't explain in my medical mind what had happened to me until I found functional medicine.

Speaker 1 And when I found functional medicine and I learned about the detoxification system and the other systems of the body and

Speaker 1 how the gut breaks and how to repair, that's when I said, oh my God, of course,

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 on my own path.

Speaker 2 And I'm still... So did you use her program, the WeCare program to base your clean program on?

Speaker 1 No, no, there are similarities, right? But no, after learning functional medicine and really understanding and having more and more and more experience, I came to to

Speaker 1 my own conclusions and

Speaker 1 put together from different sources and I put together my own.

Speaker 2 Well, how long has the program been around, the clean program?

Speaker 1 The clean program has been around for since 2000. I mean, as the clean program.

Speaker 2 Yeah, as a clean program.

Speaker 1 It's been around since 2008.

Speaker 2 Right. It's been a long while.
And where is her program, The We Care? Is that even around?

Speaker 1 That's a spot in Desert Hot Springs. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've never even heard of it.

Speaker 1 It's very famous. All the models go there.

Speaker 2 It's called We Care.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 he was like the top surgeon in the world. And, you know, he invented a way of stopping the heart, which was new,

Speaker 1 with retroverse cardioplegia with called. I mean, the guy is like a genius, right?

Speaker 1 And they had hired, we called him the bionic surgeon because he was in La Malinda and they paid $6 million to transfer him to desert hospitals. They wanted to create to Palm Springs.

Speaker 1 They wanted to create a Mayo Clinic in Palm Springs and they wanted the top cardiac surgeon. They brought him over.

Speaker 2 Dr. Gundry? Yeah, Dr.

Speaker 1 Gundry.

Speaker 2 Where does he live now? Is he there now?

Speaker 1 No, no, he's, 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.

Speaker 1 And then his wife had a problem. So I helped his wife

Speaker 1 with this allergy problem and he said, oh my God. So he started paying attention.
Eventually, he quit working

Speaker 1 as a heart surgeon. Now he's doing functional medicine.

Speaker 2 No way. He's doing functional medicine.

Speaker 1 He wrote a book

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 the gut.

Speaker 2 No, I know. Well, I know that Dr.
Gundry, though, seems to be like, he's very business

Speaker 2 Like, he's like doing all sorts of stuff. He's got like a supplement line.

Speaker 1 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 mean, I like.

Speaker 2 I remember that you guys had like a relationship. I remember years ago, you told me you guys were

Speaker 2 very good friends. I remember you were really telling me.
And so like he, because he now, well, he's got his podcast, his books. But all I always remember about Dr.

Speaker 2 Gundry, you know how like people always like remember one thing about something or something that sticks in your head? He says that I should never eat tomatoes.

Speaker 2 Tomatoes are terrible because it has a quality that is very lectins.

Speaker 1 He talks a lot about lectins. He wrote a book called The Plant Paradox.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, Dr.

Speaker 1 Gundry and I don't agree in a few things. Is that one of them? That's one of them.

Speaker 2 What's this whole thing? Why does he hate lectins so much?

Speaker 1 Well, because as a molecule in itself,

Speaker 1 it's a molecule.

Speaker 1 These are molecules that are thought to be a defense mechanism of the plants because plants cannot run and escape from the predators so so they manufacture these chemicals that that deter that make the animals that eat them feel bad either itchy or or allergic or something right or stomachache and some of these chemicals are these lectins so so 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

Speaker 1 so some of these lectins are actually cause some stress in the body, but

Speaker 1 the adaptation mechanisms that the body trigger and turn on to deal with that are actually reinforcing you. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because if someone like me who is highly allergic, I got like I break out in hives just by looking at certain plants and,

Speaker 2 you know, in a tropical environment, you don't want to see me. Yeah.
Do I stay away from stuff like that?

Speaker 1 So now

Speaker 1 this is a great way to jump into

Speaker 1 the meat of what I came to talk to you about okay i can which is which is which is this i told you 10 of problems approximately ballpark in my head that people suffer from are acute 90 are chronic problems now 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 and right well thank god we're putting our attention there because this is true and this is my understanding and my experience in my practice around the world i see people all over the world i don't have an office i most people i treat i treat i treat for free these people my my ex-wife's cleaner in in uk when i went there and i saw her and i can send you some videos to to edit on the podcast she had severe eczema she's such a nice and hardworking girl and i saw her hands they were they were cracked and bleeding right and i could i couldn't help myself.

Speaker 1 And so I went to talk to her. And

Speaker 1 I said, I think I can help you with 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.

Speaker 1 And this is a problem she had for years. And then she went to all the doctors that she could in the UK.

Speaker 1 I mean, she doesn't have access to, you know, a lot, a lot of, 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,

Speaker 1 which are basically, basically

Speaker 1 immune depressors. Because what happens is many of these

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What we see as diseases are adaptation and survival mechanisms that have been turned on for too long and then they become a problem. That's when we detect them as a disease, right?

Speaker 1 But it's not really a disease. And I explained to you with something from my own specialty, cardiology, right?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So this animal, the human being, is now running

Speaker 1 like a fish out of water, stressed out of

Speaker 1 my 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.

Speaker 1 Just like a scab forms when you cut yourself, the scab forms, and under the scab, the skin heals.

Speaker 1 And then, when the skin heals the scap falls and 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 let's say yeah yeah i get what you're saying

Speaker 1 the gazelle that's being run by a by a tiger you know the cortisol goes up adrenaline goes up you know blood pressure goes up heart rate goes up there's going to be microfissures but then when they escape the 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 your whole thing what i'm saying is it's how to prevent 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 we need first of all we 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,

Speaker 1 if I send blood tests or whatever tests are needed, so I only send tests when they're really needed.

Speaker 1 If, or in my opinion, before the blood tests come, many times already with a gut repair program, by the time the blood results are there and you have the second appointment, the problem is already even much better or completely gone in two or three weeks.

Speaker 2 Really? Yeah. So before you even do blood work, you work on the gut.

Speaker 1 Well, sometimes I do blood work anyways. Okay, but what you're saying saying is a lot of things to consider, but gut repair is that's where the Achilles heel of human health exists.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to explain it to you. Oh, sorry, this is yours.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 I brought a

Speaker 1 model of

Speaker 1 a part of the intestine.

Speaker 1 This is the intestinal wall, and these are the microvilli.

Speaker 2 By the way, for those of you who are just listening and they're not watching this, Dr.

Speaker 1 Unger brought a

Speaker 1 an anatomical model, and he's showing me with his pointer how what what we're having how and what happens in your gut okay go ahead so the gut 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 micro villi

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 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 okay right digestion and absorption right so so and and life depends on it in the in nature

Speaker 1 sustenance and food is very important so so the gut is a is in all animals is a really important organ and and and system right so what happens is this surface if we now get an intestine and and iron it out and we flatten out all this this villi and microvilli the surface of your intestine would be between one and two tennis courts of size.

Speaker 1 One and a half. I mean, you're little, so probably one and more and a quarter.
Oh, yeah. I'm a little bigger, so one and a half.
Some people have two tennis courts. Surface of

Speaker 1 an intestinal wall.

Speaker 2 So my intestinal wall, everyone's intestinal wall is about two

Speaker 1 between one and two tennis courts, depending on your size and

Speaker 1 age and sex. Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, so, and this is, and this is what happens. Each microvilli

Speaker 1 has a blood supply system and a nerve and muscle system this yellow here is the nerves this red artery and vein and this is the wall so this is inside the body and here would be outside the body this is where the food would come right this is obviously a tube right and this is just a little part of the wall so here is where the food comes this is where the bacteria would live right and once it passes see this there's a one layer of cells here.

Speaker 1 This one layer of cell is like a brick wall. Each cell is like a brick.
And it's stuck to the next cell, cell right next to it, by cement.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So those little components are the ones that these cells select, absorb, meaning they go through the cell, the nutrients, and they are dumped into the blood, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So what happens is everything that's happening outside the body, meaning inside the digestive tube, it's outside the body. Now, now

Speaker 1 many things are just sipping in without the intelligent selection of the body. The body selects only the building blocks, amino acids, fatty acids, simple sugars.

Speaker 1 But when these gaps are broken and the gut is leaky or hyperpermeable, undigested food starts, no, peptides or proteins start passing through. And here,

Speaker 1 in the gut, is where most, we're most exposed to

Speaker 1 external stuff because, you know, your skin touches your clothes and

Speaker 1 the air and if you're in the swimming pool, the water, your lungs is only what,

Speaker 1 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 what what's happening your intestine you're dumping thousands of of kilos in your lifetime of of stuff there that the body has to deal with so the the body is exposed to external stuff in the gut more than anywhere else.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 yeah this is this is one cell it's showing you one cell from the immune system so there was the immune system is in this 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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 each immune system cells is like a computer and it has like a like a scanner. And it scans surfaces all the time, all day long, and then it compares it with its record.

Speaker 1 And if there's a certain and genetically you have all the surfaces that are acceptable to you like your proteins and your muscle yeah yeah yeah that

Speaker 1 you have them you have like a code like so the the the 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 the it doesn't have a surface amino acids is a is a is a building yeah but a protein already has a surface so if you've a many many amino acids so you're losing me so let me ask you a question because too much information too so so so so the the the immune system starts scanning surfaces and because this is broken the gut is leaking yes it's hyperpernova now the blood is getting undigested food and bacteria and viruses and okay quite so it starts reacting i understand

Speaker 2 well kind of but i do understand a question i'm having is in simple terms right because people who are listening are like okay okay, Dr. Unger, tell me how to repair my gut.

Speaker 2 Give it to me simply, easy, digestible. Excuse the pun.
How we can repair our gut.

Speaker 1 So see, this is the problem with the medical world that

Speaker 1 in even the functional medicine world and every and every

Speaker 1 healing

Speaker 1 modality world that you want to talk about. There is no simple digestive

Speaker 1 people here. You want the bum bum.

Speaker 2 Well, No, what I want, I mean,

Speaker 1 right, give me, give me the, you know, so, so, what happened is this, everybody's talking about gut health and gut injury and gut repair and leaky gut and

Speaker 1 everybody wants simple information. So, you, so, you hear, oh, acromancia mucinus, mucinophila.
Oh, and they start taking acrimansia. And you say, oh,

Speaker 1 there's this new probiotic, and there's, oh, glutamine. So, they start taking,

Speaker 1 oh, you have to avoid a

Speaker 1 gluten. So, they avoid gluten.

Speaker 1 And there is no integration of, you know, because

Speaker 1 the what the number one reason, cause of gut injury is actually mental and emotional. It's it's stress, trauma, pain.

Speaker 1 So, so, so, how can I give you a probiotic and

Speaker 1 glutamine and expect easy answer? It's not like that.

Speaker 2 That is such a great, I'm gonna clip, I wanna clip that because I think that's like a big thing, right? You're 100% right.

Speaker 2 Like, when I thought, you know, when I have gut issues, they're like, oh, yeah, acromancia.

Speaker 1 Or, oh, no, why don't you take glutamine?

Speaker 1 So now they detect the body. Totally true.
Yeah, and this bacteria makes this mucinous

Speaker 1 carbohydrate that coats the gut wall.

Speaker 2 And they're like, oh, just take a probiotic.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Right. And the problem is, I think, even probiotics, right?

Speaker 2 Because what my body is missing is not necessarily what your back like body is missing so like one pro it's not a it's not a one size fits all probiotic right and they're 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 with medium to severe gut injury

Speaker 1 will not

Speaker 1 heal completely just by changing a few things and taking a few supplements and like simple things. Yeah, they make it a little better and, you know, but it's not going to heal completely, right?

Speaker 1 It takes, it takes more. And so that's what the clean program is, it does.
It gives you the

Speaker 1 parameters

Speaker 1 in many aspects. You know,

Speaker 1 there's an aspect about anxiety and so there's meditation.

Speaker 1 There's a bunch of things, right? And then also every expert has their way of looking at it right but but it

Speaker 1 who who do i trust the people that have been at it for the most for the longest time and that have the best results i have incredible results with my patients because i and i understood for so many years and i i've been exploring for 20 something years now i've been i've been so what's in it

Speaker 1 so 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 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 that the

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 to support support.

Speaker 2 How long is the program?

Speaker 1 Well, how does it work?

Speaker 1 It's a 21-day program and it has...

Speaker 2 21 days. I thought it was a week.

Speaker 1 There is a seven-day program. A seven-day.
There is a seven-day program.

Speaker 1 But biology has its times.

Speaker 1 I know we're all in a hurry in this society, but you can't produce a baby in six months. It takes nine months.
Right. You can't.

Speaker 1 There's certainly you cut your skin. You can't, you can't, it's not going to heal in three days.
It's going to take

Speaker 1 to 10 days for the scalp to come off and the skin.

Speaker 2 So then why do you have a seven-day program?

Speaker 1 So the reason I have a seven-day program is to give people a taste.

Speaker 1 Because when people hear 21 days,

Speaker 1 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, the seven-day program is even a little harder than the 21-day program.

Speaker 1 Oh, it is. Yeah, because

Speaker 1 the 21-day program has its schedules, 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.

Speaker 1 And there's a list of foods that you can and you cannot eat.

Speaker 2 It's not like a weight loss program.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 weight is a result of inflammation, many ways, and this is an

Speaker 1 and of gut injuries and this is a way of healing and weight comes off.

Speaker 1 It's a very common side effect of the clean program is people lose weight when they need to lose weight.

Speaker 2 But then you gain a bath because of your it depends.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So hopefully after you finish the program, and if you do the seven program, the seven day program, then hopefully you will get inspired to continue until it heals.

Speaker 1 And sometimes 21 days is not enough either some people have to be careful and and do stuff for more than 21 days so tell me what you what how tell me what the difference like what do you offer in seven days that you don't offer in 21 so what i what i found out is that that that to make the first seven days of the 21 day program a little more oomph

Speaker 1 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 that and then you you know because people that drink coffee every day they have headaches and people that are oh, I remember this whole thing.

Speaker 2 You don't let us drink coffee, right? Right.

Speaker 1 So so so so and people that eat eat glue. I mean, everybody is different, but but you don't start feeling well until

Speaker 1 until you're in your second week. And then on the third week, it's like, wow.

Speaker 2 No coffee at all?

Speaker 1 Yeah, for zero coffee. So the seven-day program, what I did is I added some Ayurvedic principles and intermittent fasting.

Speaker 1 oh god you said the worst thing you can possibly say to me well yeah maybe i can change your mind about that because because um that's really how nature designed things to be nature when you say you added some intermittent fasting can you give me an example there's a 24-hour period in in the seven-day program that you don't eat that you you only drink tea and it's it's from 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 so what do you you do when you want to, like for active people who work out like me?

Speaker 2 Yeah, what do you do?

Speaker 1 For people that work out, like you, I tell them not to work out because you're killing me right now, Dr.

Speaker 2 Unger.

Speaker 1 Well, and this is the problem. This is the problem with, you know, you want to be, you want to be the best mother and the best wife and the, and, and, and, and you want to be in the best shape.

Speaker 1 And you want to, yeah. But if you want to fix your gut, you're going to have to make some changes.

Speaker 1 You know, if you break a bone, you're going to have to have a cast for for for some time until until it gets better.

Speaker 1 Until it solds back together, right?

Speaker 1 And then then you take the cast so the clean program is like a cast for the gut and then you have to analogy and then you also have to understand that there is a whole energy distribution system let's call it that way there's the energy that we all know about and everybody's talking about which is the energy that mitochondria produce where the at where the atp is is is a is the the result of the burning through the Krebs cycle of of sugar, right?

Speaker 1 But there's another type of energy that we we don't really understand in the western world that is the one that comes into your body when you when you sleep why do you i why can you be exhausted one day you go you have a good night's sleep and you wake up and you're full of energy where is that is that why the mato 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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If you're going to spend that energy exercising and working out, it's the repairing.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I get it. You're diverting your cash flow into other things that are not what needs to be done.
True.

Speaker 2 In full transparency, and

Speaker 2 transparency.

Speaker 2 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 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?

Speaker 2 Can I have it?

Speaker 1 Because I'm like, yeah, maybe you will. I sent you one.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't have it, by the way. I think my neighbor stole it because it comes in a really or somewhere or Amazon.

Speaker 1 I'll send you another one.

Speaker 2 Can you send me like two?

Speaker 1 I can send you three if you want.

Speaker 2 Three. Okay.
You can do it with friends. I'm going to do it and I'm going to give one to her

Speaker 2 because I promise her. But why no coffee? Like, why is coffee bad for you and your gut? Because there's so much, like, there's so much data saying that coffee is actually could be healthy.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of things that are not good when the gut is broken that are completely fine when the gut is repaired.

Speaker 2 So, once the gut is better again, you can then drink coffee.

Speaker 1 You can then reintroduce certain things. Okay, why? You're going to go just back to what you were doing before, but you can reintroduce certain things.

Speaker 2 But what if your gut isn't necessarily?

Speaker 1 So, what's the problem with coffee? There's many problems with coffee. Okay, tell me.

Speaker 2 If it's not mold, if it's a really high-quality organic coffee.

Speaker 1 Okay, so 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 and so that one one of the reasons i take people but even if it's organic and really good coffee the coffee is an exciting it's it's a stimulant stimulant yeah right so so it depletes eventually depletes you of of of energy and then you become dependent on the stimulant effect.

Speaker 1 Some people cannot function if they don't drink coffee in the morning.

Speaker 1 Or cannot go to the bathroom if they don't drink.

Speaker 2 That's what I was going to say. It makes you like people who are constipated, like

Speaker 2 if they don't drink your cup of coffee. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Why?

Speaker 1 Now let's go back to let's go back to the gut. So imagine there's a little nerve inside every microville.
There's trillion. I mean, I don't know how many, but billions probably of microbilli

Speaker 1 in the

Speaker 1 one or two tennis court surface, right? And

Speaker 1 imagine this with a little nerve in a tennis court.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Well, that's why they say the gut is your second

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They're all important, right? Because this one has to do with mentation, ideation,

Speaker 1 you know, speech, vision, right? But this one has to do with the intuition and

Speaker 1 other functions that are really important, right? Tell me other ones.

Speaker 1 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 peristatic movement.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the foot is pushed from the above from one end to the other so you need that in order to make good poops right right and if you don't have a good gut if the nervous system is is busy doing other things like adaptation and survival mechanisms because there's a mess there's a broken there's a broken gut there's a lot of antigens there's a lot of surfaces coming in the 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 even even if if it's good to have them in the gut it's not good to have them in your blood so when oh when when that happens oh there's a huge reaction and adaptation mechanism the body's now in survival mechanism okay what wait the 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 there's a whole and in my book it's it's explained really well and each food that i take out from the 21 day program there's a reason for right?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Because a lot of people have some kind of negative reaction, adverse reaction.

Speaker 1 And it's not always the same.

Speaker 1 It's not an allergic reaction necessarily, but these are triggers.

Speaker 1 These are some of the nutrients that these plants have, that these these vegetables have, or these fruits have, that may not allow the healing of the gut completely.

Speaker 2 Okay, another one that we should say right now.

Speaker 1 For example, bananas. I don't allow bananas in the program because they actually constipate you a little bit.
Yeah. You know, so

Speaker 1 there's vegetables that are not allowed, like

Speaker 1 eggplants are not allowed. Why? The eggplants are not allowed because they have certain nutrients that are pro-inflammatory, right? Like solanine

Speaker 1 in eggplants and tomatoes have some lectins so there are there are so no tomatoes on this plant so no tomatoes on this plant on this plant no night shades no night shades yeah so so and then no obviously no gluten obviously no processed food so every 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 in the fields and eating worms and and and and and little bugs, as opposed to chickens that never see the sun or the light of the day and

Speaker 1 cannot even run because they're in

Speaker 1 this.

Speaker 2 So free range.

Speaker 1 Yeah, free range.

Speaker 2 Do you say free range or do you say organic in your program?

Speaker 1 Free range, antibiotic and hormone-free.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because the hormones and the antibiotics are.

Speaker 1 The most similar to wild game. possible and wild game is even better which means animals that are that are living the way that nature designed them to live.

Speaker 1 Same thing with cows.

Speaker 1 If you're going to eat cows, then be them grass-fed, free-roaming, happy cows, and not cows from

Speaker 1 feedlots fed with grains and given antibiotics.

Speaker 1 So, you know, and

Speaker 1 if it's fish from the sea or the rivers, not from

Speaker 1 fish farms, where they give them all kinds of chemicals as well. Right.

Speaker 2 For the 21-day program,

Speaker 2 there's no intermittent fasting on that. You have your shake, your meal.

Speaker 1 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 second day, of the next day. No snacks.
As minimum. At minimum 12 hours.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's when 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?

Speaker 1 So, 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.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 in our history, we didn't have food available all the time. So, when there was food, evolution took the makes total sense to me.

Speaker 2 What about sim, like, what are some symptoms that people

Speaker 1 could have to know if they even have even if they 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 i'm convinced that there's really almost no one with a completely healthy gut really yeah yeah because it's inevitable we live in we live in this world we we we do get stress we have a timetable i saw you looking at your watch we have things to do we have and we are exposed to chemicals and you know i was looking at my watch because i was saying oh my god i hope i'm not like going like you must be i've been talking to you forever no no i'm i took your i know you can talk for five hours right

Speaker 1 so so

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's why we have a 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.

Speaker 1 And there's a list of foods that you can and you cannot eat. And it's basically the five big ones are no dairy, no sugar, no coffee, no alcohol, no gluten.

Speaker 2 No life, number six.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's so much life. You know, I'm now running retreats.
I guide retreats. I know you said that.

Speaker 1 I take people to very

Speaker 1 natural environments and I take a bunch of other healers with me, ayurvedic medicine doctors, massage therapists, some biohackers that are really good. And I bring all of them with me and

Speaker 1 we gather about 30, 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, very smart woman. She comes to me, for years, she's been having digestive issues.

Speaker 1 And lately, like two weeks before she came to me, she was diagnosed with SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, right? So

Speaker 1 the story is that she gets bloated like crazy and she wakes up in the middle of the night and

Speaker 1 she's constipated. I mean, she has many, many other symptoms of SIBO, but they come and go and it's confusing.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You know, were you born by C-section or natural birth, which is already a difference?

Speaker 1 Were you breastfed or not?

Speaker 1 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 oh their mother died or or they had a 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 even her way of expressing herself, confusion.

Speaker 1 So I looked at her and said, listen, I see two huge problems here. I'm not sure about your diagnosis of SIBO.
I see that you're constipated.

Speaker 1 She was pooping every five, six days, which is a big problem. So I have this, this

Speaker 1 i buy here in la and i smuggle them to to to argentina these bottles called implantaramas which are like a little colonic machine that you can take with you right so i take them there i give them to the people so i gave her one and i and i instructed her to do a coffee colonic it's it's a little bottle

Speaker 1 with a tube you put it inside your your butt and then you you pump it up and and the the thing goes right either water or water and coffee or coffee right so i for her, we needed some coffee because she, I mean, she's severe constipation.

Speaker 1 And I said, and maybe what you need to heal is a trauma. And it just, it's like an intuitive thing because I just saw her get so disturbed after she was telling me about this family problem, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, what is family constellations?

Speaker 1 So it's a therapy mode in which a therapist, in this case, a psychologist, gets the whole group of people and says,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They text what the problem is.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 She went into the family constellation. She had a huge breakthrough

Speaker 1 of something that happened with her father.

Speaker 1 I didn't go into it very, very deeply when we were talking because, you know,

Speaker 1 we were,

Speaker 1 but so she went into that. She had a huge breakthrough, went to her room, had coffee anima, had the best poop of her life.
And the next day, flat as a board, zero symptoms. She was completely fine.

Speaker 1 For the next five days,

Speaker 1 zero symptoms. Something that hasn't happened to her in three years.
Being four days in a row, five days in a row without symptoms.

Speaker 2 Do you think it was the family constellation or was it the coffee enema?

Speaker 1 I think it's a combination. I think it's a combination.

Speaker 1 That's why I'm saying that sometimes even the clean program, which is a great, or any gut repair program, I mean, mean i i found a few that are really good around the world there's there's 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 uh strict and and and limiting than you know he's vegetarian than yours but yours very strict and limiting i won't say that

Speaker 1 i know it's all 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's he has great results he's not even a doctor.

Speaker 1 He was a journalist who was very sick himself and then started studying. And then, you know, when detailed journalists go into something and they learn, they become amazing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He has the 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.

Speaker 1 So some people.

Speaker 2 I'm going to try your retreat. I want to go to it.
You told me I can go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You'll be my guest.

Speaker 2 Next March, you said.

Speaker 1 The next one, we're planning on March 30 in Uruguay.

Speaker 2 Not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump away from here, but I'll go. How long is it? Five days?

Speaker 1 A week? The retreat are seven days. Yeah, and the flight from here is maybe from LA.
You stop in Miami and then you go into Uruguay. So it's

Speaker 1 five hours to Miami and then eight hours to Uruguay.

Speaker 2 That's far. Wow.

Speaker 1 It's far, but it's going to be one of the best experiences of your life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Like, I love, you learn so many different, like, you meet all these different people, healers, doctors.

Speaker 2 Like, the caliber is crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, listen to what happened to me. And, and, and, and this is, this is what I am an optimist.
And I believe that things can go not back to how they were.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you the story and then we define. I had a car accident that you know about.
I remember. And I just told you about it.
I had to fix my accuracy.

Speaker 2 How many years ago it was that, though?

Speaker 1 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 valves, my aortic valve, which is the most important valve.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If I show you the MRI, you don't need to be a doctor.

Speaker 1 You can see the L3 and L4 are kind of destroyed and inflamed and white on the on the MRI and you can see the discs are barely even existing the bone bone and bone are kind of touching right so I try to avoid surgery since I mean I've been having bad back pain for five years lately it was in I mean it was it was really bad it really limited my life so I get I get to Argentina and my sister had met this woman who is a a neurosurgeon radiologist and and but she developed a way a functional way of of dealing with with the body right

Speaker 1 so so it's called bam biomechanics and you can find it on online she's on instagram her name is teresa salazar when i met her i i kind of playfully said oh you're also a radiologist yeah yeah so i have a patient who's having back pain check check out the mri so i showed her my mri so she said

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So this is obvious, but you know,

Speaker 1 the MRIs are very gossipy. They give you too much information.
And sometimes

Speaker 1 from gossip, you know, from 30 gossips that you get, one may be really important. So look, these are all the problems.

Speaker 1 If I don't see the patient, I... I can't really tell.
So I said, I am the patient. So she started examining me, making me move.
And she said, you know what? I think I can help you.

Speaker 1 When the retreat ended, I went to see her and her mentor, who's an 84-year-old surgeon, Tato Peva, unbelievable guy, 84-year-old neurosurgeon who still plays competitive basketball.

Speaker 1 And when I met him, I felt like I was in an Indian monastery. He's like this very present guy.

Speaker 1 And he saw me and he said, I think I can help you by injecting ozone in the disc space between the vertebrae, right?

Speaker 1 So I went there and they did the procedure and that my pain is completely gone now that guy he's old school I said how much do I owe you I don't charge colleagues so so what I'm saying is there are still people around the world that are that are in it for the right reason and and and it's not a fortune to see them and and and I see a lot of these people and I see I see more and more but you know that you're number one it's very few and far between.

Speaker 2 You have to, it's like a, it's like a, 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.

Speaker 2 Especially.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Seek and you shall find. Listen, I mean, sometimes he finds you.

Speaker 1 When I was at the retreat, I went there to help people. And I ended up being helped myself.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 So sometimes you seek and you find, and sometimes it finds you.

Speaker 1 But you have to be open and you have to ask, and you have to, you know, you have to question.

Speaker 2 You have to ask. You kind of have to get yourself.

Speaker 1 You question things. You have to inform yourself.

Speaker 2 I totally agree. All right, Dr.
Unger, I have to wrap this.

Speaker 2 Where can people find more about your program? You

Speaker 1 Instagram, D-R, Dr. Alejandro Junger.
That's my Instagram handle.

Speaker 1 Also, Clean Program has an Instagram page. Oh, okay.
Or cleanprogram.com, or you can read one of my books.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Those are my books. You can start there.
Four books.

Speaker 1 I've written four books, three of them on New York Times bestseller.

Speaker 2 What happened to the fourth?

Speaker 1 I don't know, you know?

Speaker 1 Listen, I mean,

Speaker 1 I didn't put much attention on promoting it.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I know you're 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,

Speaker 2 and even if you don't think you do, it's a great thing to even do.

Speaker 1 The thing is, with the gut, it's very tricky because symptoms may appear far away from the gut that may seem unrelated to the gut, like depression, like allergies, like skin problems, rashes, allergic problems.

Speaker 2 That's what I was saying to you earlier. A lot of these things that may, you think it may be something else that's causing it, a lot of times it starts in the gut.

Speaker 2 So if you can clean up your gut, excuse that pun again, clean up your gut,

Speaker 2 you can be surprised at how much better you feel. So I would definitely check out the clean program.

Speaker 1 Repair your gut, repair your life. Wow.

Speaker 2 You should put that on a sticker. Maybe that could be your next book, your fifth book.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm writing something about the mind now.

Speaker 1 Oh. Clean mind.

Speaker 2 Clean mind. I like that.
Anyway, thank you for coming on the show.

Speaker 1 Thank you for having me. Always, always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 Always a pleasure.