Expert Profile #2 - Dr. Steven Gundry

Portrait Artist: Natalya Kopylova
About, Food/Nutrition
3-minute Read

Dr. Steven Gundry has an incredible story of how he made the switch from being a talented heart surgeon to becoming a best-selling author and one of today’s well-known nutrition experts. Gundry graduated cum laude at Yale University in the early 1970s and has been heavily involved in medicine (mainly in the fields of cardiology and immunology) ever since.  As a cardiac surgeon, he patented multiple tools still used in heart surgery and was known for keeping hearts beating for extensive periods outside the body.
 
In the early 2000s, Dr. Gundry had a patient who he calls “Big Ed” that threw a curveball in his career path. Big Ed was a special case who had seen multiple doctors about his clogged arteries and had been continuously told that nothing can be done to help him. After Dr. Gundry had said the same thing, Big Ed explained that he lost forty-five pounds in the past six months and had been taking a number of supplements. Gundry congratulated him on the weight loss and said something along the lines of, “Good for you, but that isn’t going to help your heart.” Big Ed insisted that a new video be taken of his heart and Dr. Gundry was astounded to find that half of Ed’s artery troubles had been wiped away!
 
Thanks to this moment, Dr. Gundry started helping people that he would perform surgeries on to then adjust their diets and start taking supplements so they never had to have the same operation again. He also stated that he had performed multiple surgeries on the same patient several times. In one instance, he operated on someone NINE times. About a year after meeting Big Ed and when Dr. Gundry realized his methods were working, he decided he should be helping people before they ever need surgery so he started his own restorative medicine practice at the International Heart and Lung Institute in Palm Springs, California.1
 
From there, Gundry started to study his own patients more enough to write multiple books. His first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution, was published in 2009. It focuses on weight loss and shows his root principles. His following book is what really sparked his popularity – The Plant Paradox. In both of these books, Dr. Gundry shows his interest in longevity by helping us achieve “dying young at a ripe old age” through adopting a healthy, sustainable diet that eliminates processed foods and strengthens our guts.
 
Most recently, he released a new book, The Longevity Paradox. Other than reading his books, you can also visit his website at gundrymd.com, watch videos from him on his YouTube channel, or listen to him on The Doctor Gundry Podcast or on one of his dozens of podcast interviews.

Impactful Tips & Quotes

Here are some of the tips and quotes from Dr. Gundry that I’ve found most valuable:
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• “I love cardiac surgery. But giving people the tools to heal themselves transcends just about anything I can do with a knife, needle, and thread.”2

 

• “Calories merely tell us how much energy is contained in a food, not how much energy your body can derive from it.”3  Dr. Gundry explains that for longevity purposes, it is more about the quality of the food you eat than the quantity.

 

• “Research has shown that it takes at least six weeks of continuous practice to instill a new habit.”4

 

• “My research has shown that if you can work your way up to consuming the equivalent of one bag of dark green leaves (lettuce, spinach, or other greens) daily, your life will change dramatically for the better.”5

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• More than 80% of Dr. Gundry’s patients are deficient in Vitamin D3 and “anyone in my practice with leaky gut or an autoimmune disease has low levels.” Dr. Gundry states that this essential vitamin prevents leaky gut as well as bone degeneration. He also relates a lack of Vitamin D to prostate cancer and obesity.6 Take at least 5,000 IUs per day and if you have an autoimmune disease, take 10,000 IUs per day.7

Resources

1. Muscle Intelligence Podcast: Dr. Steven Gundry, Rethinking Everything You Knew About a "Healthy Diet."
2. Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution - p. 131
3. Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution - p. 24
​4. Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution - p. 47
​5. Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution - p. 132
6. The Plant Paradox - p. 113-114
7. The Plant Paradox - p. 275