#144: Building a Golden Gut with Dr. B.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz wants to help you train your gut.
Dr. B is back! That’s right. Everyone’s favorite fiber-loving broc-star, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, is back to celebrate the release of his latest book, The Fiber Fueled Cookbook: Inspiring Plant-Based Recipes to Turbocharge Your Health.
Dr. B burst onto the scene just a few years ago when his book, Fiber Fueled, hit the New York Times Best Sellers List. This groundbreaking book was a guide to optimizing the gut microbiome and improving your health through a diet rich in diverse fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
His new book, The Fiber Fueled Cookbook, goes the extra mile and tells you HOW to train your gut to take on more fabulous fiber with delicious recipes and meal ideas. He even lays out a personalized GROWTH strategy for understanding common gut issues and how to treat them effectively.
Don’t be one of the 19 out of 20 people who are fiber deficient. Train your gut the right way and stop fearing the foods that could help you the most.
About Dr. Will Bulsiewicz
Will Bulsiewicz, MD MSCI, (a.k.a. Dr. B) is a board certified gastroenterologist and gut health expert. Every day, he helps patients and members of his #plantfed community bounce back from restrictive and over-hyped diets, and into a whole new way of living and eating that produces the results they really want…permanently. At the core of his philosophy is what he calls “lifestyle medicine,” that uses food, exercise, and other lifestyle factors to optimize your gut, get you back in control of your health. Through Fiber Fueled and his free tools, Dr. B breaks it down for you, piece by digestible piece, so you can take the simple steps that will help you create incredible shifts in your digestion, symptoms, and life.
Episode Timestamps
14:40 Dr. B explains the Fiber Paradox
18:00 Difficulties when you try to introduce fiber into your diet - empowering you with an understanding of what’s actually happening
20:00 Understanding that your gut is adaptable - stop fearing the foods that could help you
23:30 Dr. B’s insightful thoughts on a meat-only diet
24:45 The many benefits of fiber for health and disease prevention
29:25 Why you need a diversity of plants in your diet
31:10 Addressing common food intolerances like celiac and constipation with a GROWTH strategy -
G = Genesis - getting to the root cause of the issue
37:10 Dr. B’s definition and symptoms of constipation
46:00 Symptoms of gall bladder issues
48:00 If you have mild constipation, crank up fiber, drink water, and take your poop for a walk - fiber, hydration, and movement
50:00 Getting things moving with magnesium
53:00 GROWTH Strategy - R-O-W = Restrict, Observe, Work it Back In
54:38 T = Train Your Gut - Like an athlete, you can train your gut to take on more fiber. When your gut is hurt, you can either restrict it completely, or you can build up to it
1:00:00 Prebiotics - Fiber, polyphenols, resistant starches — legumes and whole grains have all three of these
1:03:00 How many pounds of beans does the average American consume per year?
1:04:00 How much cheese does the average American consume per year?
1:05:00 GROWTH strategy - H = Holistic Healing
1:07:45 Does exercise impact gut health?
1:09:50 Dr. B wants you to become Mic Jagger - Eat at least 30 different types of plant-based foods per week
1:15:45 Gut health game-changers: fermented foods and sprouts - the many paths to a healthy gut and diet
1:21:45 Rip previews some of Dr. B’s recipes
Episode Resources
Dr. B’s Website - The PlantFed Gut
Order The Fiber-Fueled Cookbook
PLANTSTRONG Foods - shop our official unsalted broths- and our growing assortment of other delicious products made without oil, added sugar, or excessive sodium .
PLANTSTRONG Sedona Retreat - October 10th-15th, 2022 - Our Sedona retreat has been approved for 21.5 CME credits for physicians and physician assistants. And 21.5 Nursing Contact Hours for nurses…. And 2.2 CEUs for other healthcare professionals as part of the registration fee for our PLANTSTRONG Retreat.
PLANTSTRONG Meal Planner - Save $10 off the annual membership with the code: PLANTSTRONG
Visit plantstrong.com for all PLANTSTRONG Resources, including books, recipes, foods and the PLANTSTRONG Coaching Programs
Join the Free PLANTSTRONG Community with over 26,000 members
Promo Music: Your Love by Atch License: Creative Commons License - Attribution 3.0
Full Audio Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Today's conversation with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz is brought to you by PLANTSTRONG Foods. You can check out our growing assortment of insanely delicious 100% whole food, plant-based goodness at plantstrongfoods.com, and be sure to save 10% off your first order with the code RIP10. That's my name, Rip, followed by the number 10.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
It gets back to your gut is a muscle. Just like you train to swim, train to run, you can train to eat. Your gut is adapted to whatever it is that you have been eating for the last three months. If you shift your diet in any way, you are asking your gut to catch up and adapt to this new dietary pattern. If you have something that you have eliminated, it's going to be hard for you to bring it back because your gut is not adapted to it. But it can be adapted to it, and this is where you start low and you go slow.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my PLANTSTRONG pea shoots. Thanks so much for tuning into the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I'm Rip Esselstyn and I got to say, you know you're in for a fantastic, riveting interview when you and your guest show up wearing the exact same tee-shirt that says, "Eat plants, take epic dumps." That deserves a big, "Kale yeah," and of course that must mean I'm talking to the one and only Dr. B, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz.
Rip Esselstyn:
For those of you that are not familiar with Dr. Bulsiewicz, he was on last season of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. He is a gastroenterologist who literally burst onto the scene just a few years ago when his first book, Fiber Fueled, hit the New York Times Best Sellers List. This groundbreaking book was a guide to optimizing the gut microbiome, sharpening one's immunity, lowering cholesterol and, of course, promoting weight loss through a diet rich in diverse fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and legumes. You know, what we like to call a plant strong fiber filled diet.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, his new book, The Fiber Fueled Cookbook: Inspiring Plant-Based Recipes to Turbocharge Your Health, goes the extra mile and tells you exactly how to do this with delicious recipes and all kinds of meal ideas. This is especially vital for those with food sensitivities, which include more and more and more of us who often fear the foods that could actually improve their health.
Rip Esselstyn:
Today, we're going to talk about three of the most common gut issues people have and how to treat them with a powerful growth strategy. I want you to know that growth is a wonderful acronym in Dr. B's book that we will discuss in detail, so you don't want to miss it.
Rip Esselstyn:
By the end of this episode, trust me, I think you'll want to be playing some crazy rock and roll air guitar, and you know it's a wild ride when Dr. B is on the show. So, let's get ready to jam. All right PLANTSTRONG people, he's back and he's better than ever, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. Here he is, and you know what? Look at this, we are both thumping our chests loud and proud.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I don't even know where I get my protein from. How dare I thump my chest. I'm a protein deficient vegan.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, but where do you get your fiber? Huh? That's my question for you.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's the question people really need to start asking, honestly. That's what they should be asking, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
They should be, and we did not plan this out. We were both wearing our "Eat plants, take epic dumps" shirts. It fits so nice, doesn't it?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh, man. It is. It's a great, it's a nice cut, it's a nice cut, but even more than that, it's the right message. People need to hear this.
Rip Esselstyn:
It is. It is. Thanks so much for joining me today. I know that you've got a lot going on right now. In fact, you've got two bambinos coming into the world here in the next couple weeks, correct?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
We do actually. Before my book is born, the book birthday, my wife and I are expecting a new one, a baby girl, literally. I mean, hopefully we can get through this podcast. It's any day now.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, the due date is the 20th, right? I think you said.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
The due date is the 20th, and then for what it's worth, we said to the doctor, "Look, we don't want to actually have the baby on the 20th, unless that's the way that God wants it to be." Because we have a hard stop. The hard stop is Thursday, which is the 21st. Yeah, so the baby is coming on Thursday if it doesn't happen sooner, but literally we're coming down to the last couple days here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right, and then you've also got another bambino, which is, Fiber Fueled was insane. I mean, what you did with that book when it came out, you had to deal with, when we were just hitting COVID 19 was in its full stride, and you turned that sucker into a New York Times Best Seller, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. I mean, you're crushing it, absolutely crushing it, but the world needs more Fiber Fueled. We do. There it is, the cookbook. I love it, and the thing that is so amazing to me about this new baby of yours is that it's not just a cookbook. You've got all kinds of new and hot gut health topics, seminal stuff that wasn't necessarily in Fiber Fueled, correct?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. One of my goals with this book, I mean just to frame the context because your audience, I mean look, the PLANTSTRONG family, you all know me, right? We've been hanging out.
Rip Esselstyn:
We have.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
But just to frame this, Fiber Fueled comes out, and my goal with Fiber Fueled is to say to the entire world, not just the plant-based community, let's go outside the plant-based community because we need to shake it into people and they need to hear the power of fiber and why this is so critically important?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I frankly, Rip, I can't explain why this isn't on the nightly news every single night when 19 out of 20 people in the United States are not just mildly deficient in fiber, they are wildly deficient in fiber. This is the key to our gut health. That we have clear research suggesting that by consuming more dietary fiber, we can reduce our risk of multiple different diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, chronic kidney disease. I could keep going.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Right. My goal with Fiber Fueled was, "Yo guys, you need to hear this. Fiber is powerful. It could simply change your life. This is not grandma's old drink, right?" But then what happened is people read this book and they reached out to me with very nice messages saying, "Dr. B, I'm excited. I want to be a part of it. I want to do it," but many of them would say, "I don't think I can eat this way."
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
This where it comes back to an honest conversation. You and I were out there pounding the drum saying, "Guys, this is the diet. This is the diet." It's not going to change no matter what science emerges, we're going to continue to say it's a plant-based diet. But the problem is that there are some people that, on their own personal journey, they are struggling to get there.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
To, the Fiber Fueled Cookbook is my tool to reach out for whoever you are and show you a path that you can implement in your own life that will allow you to accomplish your goals from a health perspective using the power of plants.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Now, one of the things that you had to have on the cover of the new cookbook was the exploding kiwi fruit, which I absolutely adore. Now, I'm going to put you on the spot here for a second, all right?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
And if you get this correct.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
I will buy you dinner the next time we're together.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
If I get it wrong, I'm buying you dinner next time we're together.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, you don't need to do that. Here's my question to you. There's lots of different varieties of kiwis. Do you know what particular variety that is, that exploding one on the cover of your book?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh, man. I do not. I do not. It's on the tip of my tongue. I'm thinking of the Latin, but I don't know, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to give you four varieties.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you tell me which one you think it is?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Is it the Bruno? Is it the Blake? Is it the Chico Early or is it the Hayward?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay. Let's work through this. Let's work through this. Okay, I'm taking you all inside my head as I work through this question. Is it the Bruno? Okay, we don't talk about Bruno. Okay. We've all seen Encanto, or if you have kids you've seen Encanto. We don't talk about Bruno, so it can't possibly be the Bruno. We got the Blake, we got the Rio Chico. Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Chico Early.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. This sounds like you're trying to distract me here.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
It can't possibly be that, so it leaves me with the Blake or what was it? The Humphrey?
Rip Esselstyn:
The Hayward.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Hayward. Okay. All right, so I'm coming from a place of humility. I'm willing to be wrong, but I'm going to take my shot. I'm going with Blake.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, my gosh. You are so close. It's the Hayward.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's the Hayward.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. All right, but anyway, yeah, that's the Hayward and it's the most popular of the kiwis with the nice brown fuzzy on the outside. Do you ever just eat the whole Kiwi, skin and all?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do, absolutely. This is why I actually purchase organic Kiwis so that I can still eat the skin because there's nutritional content in the skin. Actually, what's interesting is they did a research study on constipation. There's a chance when you and I get together, there's always a chance we end up talking about poop.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Let me just go right off the bat, I'm going to fire the first shot and say that there is research with kiwis where kiwis are just as effective as medications for the treatment of constipation, and you just eat two kiwis a day. It's a beautiful thing.
Rip Esselstyn:
You know what? It's so funny you brought that up because I read that. When I was researching what kind of kiwi was on the cover of your book, I read about the Hayward and the Chico Early. That's a real name, the Chico Early. It sounds like a BS name, doesn't it? It talked all about how a kiwi is so amazing at helping to prevent constipation. Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
The other beautiful thing is that we talk about prebiotics. Prebiotics are the food that feed our gut microbiome and kiwis not only are a rich source of fiber, so that's one prebiotic, but also they're a very rich source of multiple different types of polyphenols. Polyphenols are what give the explosion that beautiful color that we so enjoy, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That exploding color is really just an explosion of polyphenols that are coming into contact with your gut microbiome and feeding it and fueling it and making it stronger. This is the artwork on the cover of my two books, but at the same time, this is healthy for gut microbiomes everywhere.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and you know what? Will you continue to hold that up for a sec? Because what's also gorgeous, and again, I don't have a hard copy. They're hardly out there right now, but I did go through the virtual one that you sent me and the recipes are absolutely, they are so beautiful, delicious and inviting. Alexandra Caspero, right, with Plant-Based Juniors helped you with the recipe section.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yep. Alex Caspero, she's from Plant-Based Juniors. She has worked with the PLANTSTRONG family. She's been on your show. She published a book all about how kids-
Rip Esselstyn:
Babies and toddlers, I think.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah, exactly. Plant-Based junior and toddler. I know that she's been at your retreat in the past, it's really cool the family is all coming together. She did the 80 recipes for Fiber Fueled. She did 125 recipes, or maybe slightly less than that because some of them are fermentation recipes, but she did almost all the recipes for the Fiber Fueled Cookbook. Then the photography is done by Ashley McLaughlin, and she is someone who, she did the Oh She Glows cookbook, was a New York times bestseller.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you guys have crushed it, absolutely crushed it. The information, it is just a practical, practical guide. I want to dive in Will, and let's start with the whole fiber paradox, right. We talked about how we have so many people right now in this country that are literally fiber starved, right. Anyway, just the fiber paradox and hit me, hit me with what this whole thing is?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. Well, my books are called Fiber Fueled, but some would argue that I should have called them The Fiber Paradox, because we all know that books called paradox, they sell well, right? Some sort of paradox, people love it. Even when it doesn't make sense, like beans are the healthiest food that exists, and we're going to write a book about how they're a paradox, whatever.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. The fiber paradox is a real paradox, which is that we have to keep it real. There are people who struggle to process and digest fiber. That is not because fiber is inherently bad in any way. That is basically the manifestation of a damaged gut, and when you consume fiber, we as big and strong as you and I are, we lack the enzymes as humans to process and digest fiber, so we are completely reliant on our gut microbiome to do that for us.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's what they're designed to do. They're there for that. We evolved to ask them to do that. But if you have a damaged gut and you present it with a large amount of fiber, it may struggle to keep up with what you're asking it to do. It's a little bit more of a heavy lift than it can handle in that moment.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
People will feel unwell and they'll go, "Oh, fiber is not for me." The fiber paradox is that, actually the fiber is for you. In fact, the person who needs the fiber the most is the person who will struggle the most to bring the fiber on board.
Rip Esselstyn:
Isn't that something else? In your opening statement, I think on this chapter in the book, you talk about how, what 95 or 97% of us are deficient in fiber?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah, 19 out of 20 people, if we walk onto the street, are deficient in fiber. The average woman is getting 15 and 1/2 grams of fiber per day. It's supposed to be at least 25, 25 is the minimum. The average man is getting 18 grams of fiber, which makes us sound like we're doing better than the women are. That's not true. The average man is supposed to get 38 grams of fiber. We're getting less than half the recommended amount, so we have this huge fiber deficiency.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Part of what I'm trying to accomplish here is to actually address this nutritional deficiency where it's as you mentioned right off the top, Rip, everyone says, "Where am I going to get my protein from?" Yet, we're all consuming twice as much protein as we actually need because protein is everywhere, right? Protein is in every single plant. Protein is in animal products. Protein exists in the processed foods. It's everywhere, but fiber is not everywhere.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Fiber is in plants. Fiber is not in animal products. Fiber is not in those ultra processed foods, and so this is why we need to take this diet where we're 60% processed and 30% animal products and only 10% plants, and we need to flip this. This needs to be the opposite. We need to flip it where it's now going from 10%, and we're cranking that up to getting up to 90% or more. That's where we want to be.
Rip Esselstyn:
If we have the vast majority of Americans that are literally fiber starved and they try and introduce more fiber into their diet, is it fair to say then that their gut, their microbiome, because it's not adapted, they maybe get bloating, they get indigestion. They don't feel great, and they're like, "Oh, I can't handle fiber."
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. That's exactly it, and part and part of this is empowering people with an understanding of what's actually happening with their body?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Because they may misinterpret this signal and say, "Oh well, because I had some discomfort, it must mean that I'm not capable of consuming that food," and that could not be further from the truth. The truth is that your gut is completely adaptable. You can make it whatever you want it to be, but it's conceptual. It's a framework that's conceptually similar to exercise. Like Rip, you are an athlete, right. You swam in college, right. Did you just jump in the pool and go compete, or did you practice?
Rip Esselstyn:
Practiced my ass off.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Exactly. How many hours a day were you in the pool preparing for that one event that's going to be over in about 60 seconds, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Too much.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Right, and the same is true for Rich Roll. Rich Roll didn't wake up one day in his forties and go run a hundred miles. He's not Forrest Gump, that's a movie. Rich Roll trained. Rich Roll prepared his body and he challenged himself and he slowly increased those challenges incrementally, just like you would do in the pool.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
You start to swim and you start to challenge yourself and you slowly increase those challenges incrementally until you find that you're capable of doing things that you didn't think that you were capable of doing. Your times are off the charts in terms of swimming, or you're Rich Roll and you're running for a hundred miles, right.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
This is your gut. Your gut is adaptable. It can be trained. Whatever you have done in the past, your gut forgives you and now it's time to move forward.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, what I also find incredibly amazing is how you open up this chapter talking about how, what if I told you that just in the 21st century, we just discovered a new organ. That's essentially what's going on here with the microbiome, right? It's that huge.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
First of all, just to put into perspective how big this is for science, there is a scientific revolution taking place. This is the major discovery that's taking place of our time. It's not like Columbus discovering North America, right? This is the discovery of these microbes that were invisible, and we couldn't see them, and we didn't acknowledge their existence. Until one day about 15, 16 years ago, we developed the laboratory tools that we needed to suddenly take a look.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
What we found was, "Oh my gosh, this is an ecosystem living inside our colon." And this ecosystem evolved with us through 3 million years to the point that we have trusted them with absolutely critical parts of human health. They are connected to our digestion, which is access to nutrients. I mean, gosh, what's more life giving than that? We need nutrients just to live.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Connected to our metabolism, our immune system, our hormones, our mood, our brain health, even the expression of our genetic code. You look at this entire package and you say, "This is basically everything that matters for human health." We didn't even know that this really was a serious thing until very recently, and it's not even human.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right. That's right. Who did most of this research? Was it Rob Knight? Who was it? Is it a confluence of scientists?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
It's a confluence of scientists. It's a confluence of scientists. There are many, and I think each one of them yielded... When you develop a new laboratory technique, Rip, that's a complete game changer there's so much opportunity for many different people to apply that technique. We still are in the very early phases of understanding what's going on here.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
But where we are, Rip, though that's very exciting is we are transitioning from a position where we were just describing what we were seeing to now we are looking at ways in which we can manipulate to achieve a health effect and benefits, and right in the center of it in these conversations-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:23:04]
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. And right in the center of it, in these conversations that are coming out, it's not just drug development. In fact, in many cases it's not drug development. Instead the conversation is shifting back to, what do we eat? It's shifting back to fiber. It's really cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Food, baby. So speaking of the American diet and how Americans just seem to be willing to try anything that hits the newest and latest diet, it seems like we have now progressed to where the Atkins wasn't good enough, South Beach wasn't good enough, paleo, keto, and now we're in this whole crazy carnivore thing. What are your thoughts on a meat-only diet? It sounds so ludicrous to me, but how does that affect gut health?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay. So, unleash the kraken. Here I come. Let's start with this. Okay? We have to create a juxtaposition, which is that, because when you consume an animal product-only diet, I can tell you what the fiber content of that diet is because there is no fiber in animal products. So the fiber intake is zero. The plant diversity in that diet is zero.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And before I move forward with this conversation, let me look at the counterpoint. Number one, what are the health benefits of fiber? In the largest study to date the gold standard study by Professor Andrew Reynolds from New Zealand, he did a systematic review and meta-analysis, which by the way, that is our highest quality evidence that we have, nothing else can touch that, you can't do better than this. And it was involving population-based studies, large-scale population-based studies and randomized controlled trials. He compiled 132 million person years of data.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
We have only been on this planet for 3 million years. This is the entirety of human history more than 40 times over. And he's putting it into one study to allow us to understand, what does dietary fiber, fiber from plants, eating the food, what does this do for human health? Here's what it does, Rip. Number one, less likelihood of having a heart attack. Less likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease. That's our number one killer. Less likelihood of being diagnosed with breast cancer, colon cancer, or esophageal cancer. Less likelihood of dying of cancer, that's our number two killer. Less likelihood of having a stroke, that's our number five killer. Less likelihood of being diagnosed with diabetes, this is our number seven killer.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Randomized controlled trials when people consume more dietary fiber, they lose weight, they lower their blood pressure, they lower their cholesterol. When there was a trend towards reversing Type II diabetes, they just needed more people in the study for that particular part, they didn't have enough people. These are cardiac risk factors. When you take this in composite, people who consume more dietary fiber live longer, period. And I'm talking about a diet that has zero dietary fiber. You could not go lower.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I mean, so you just talked, we went through that litany, that wonderful list there, but what are the ramifications when you aren't doing fiber? I mean it's got to be dramatic.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Let's talk about the gut.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So we know that our dietary choices can affect our gut microbiome in less than 24 hours. They actually did have a study where people consumed an animal product exclusive diet for five days. They monitored their, this is one of the few carnivore studies that actually exists, there's almost none. But during this 2014 study published in the Journal of Nature by Lawrence David, five days on an animal product based diet, what you see is that you lose the short chain fatty acid producing microbes. Those are the probiotic microbes that we get from dietary fiber that are anti-inflammatory, and like everyone agrees, they're good for us. You lose those.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
On the flip side, you grow different microbes that are more adapted to a high fat diet because the high fat diet causes your gallbladder, your liver to produce more bile and the bile actually alters the microbiome. And what you see emerge are bacteria like Bilophila wadsworthia that's been associated with ulcerative colitis, where you see Bacteroidotes that's been associated with colorectal cancer. You see a decrease in the short chain fatty acids, which are anti-inflammatory and explain everything that I just said in that dietary fiber study from Andrew Reynolds. And you see an increase in what are called secondary biosalts, which by the way, are one of the pathways that red meat is carcinogenic, associated with colorectal cancer.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So in just five days, you're causing a shift in your gut microbiome that increases your likelihood of developing autoimmune disease, which by the way, this finding is more than a five day microbiome study, this has been confirmed by other studies, Rip. Red meat consumption connected to increased risk of inflammatory bowel disease, and in five days you discover that you are shifting your microbiome towards a microbiome that would be pro carcinogenic in terms of developing colorectal cancer, our number two cause of cancer death in America, and this also is confirmed by other studies. This is why the World Health Organization has labeled red meat as a likely carcinogen.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So now, the other thing Rip is that we know from Rob Knight's research, the American Gut Project, that the single greatest predictor of a healthy gut microbiome is the diversity of plants in your diet. People that had more varieties of plants had the healthiest gut microbiomes, they were consuming more than 30 different plants per week. They were the healthiest. It was actually above veganism, right? Because if you're a vegan and you're eating the same foods all the time, that's not as healthy as cranking up your plant diversity. So we're talking about the counterpoint, we're talking about diametrically opposed, you can't get further from plant diversity than this. This is zero plants. Zero.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And you talk about over and over again, how it's that plant diversity that's going to give you a biodiverse gut, which is going to give you a healthy ecosystem.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's exactly right. And so if we withdraw all these foods, you have to understand, these microbes, it's hard for us to fathom this because we can't see them with the naked eye. But if I hand every single one of your listeners a microscope and let you take a look, we would see life inside of us. These microbes, they need to eat. Their preferred food is fiber and if you go on a zero gram of fiber diet, you are literally, you could not starve your microbiome any more than this. Now, I don't have data that's long term to prove that you would actually cause serious harm to your gut microbiome and make it so that you are intolerant and worsening your intolerance of foods. I can't prove that, but I can tell you that anecdotally, I've seen this a million times.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, so you just brought up a very important word, which is intolerances, and I think a large part of this new book is people that are battling different food intolerances and for whatever reason, they're excluding plants thinking that that might be a problem. So, I'd love for you to talk about some of the food intolerances that you talk about in the book, whether it's the big three, whether it's, gosh, histamine or whatever.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Let's take it from the top. So a food intolerance is when you consume a food in normal quantities, not eating six pounds of kale and nothing else, right? You consume a food in normal quantities and that food causes symptoms that you do not want, could be gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort, cramping, diarrhea, constipation. These are some of the examples of how a person may manifest a food intolerance. Now, there are many different causes, potential causes of food intolerances in terms of identifying what are the foods. But here's the key I want everyone to know, the problem is not the food. The food is what is activating the symptoms, but the problem is your gut and your gut needs to be healed and how do you know that your gut is healed? Your gut is healed when you take a food that you have been intolerant of and you become capable of consuming it. And now this food that you thought was your enemy has now become your friend.
Rip Esselstyn:
And your term for an unhealthy gut is dysbiosis. Is that correct?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. So dysbiosis is the medical term that we would use when we're being rigorous about it, but you could call it leaky gut if you want to. We're basically talking about the same thing. The only thing that I will say with leaky gut is I would caution your listeners, I know you have very intelligent, well informed listeners, but I would caution them to be careful what they read on the internet. That's all I'm saying.
Rip Esselstyn:
So talk me through, what are some of the big three food intolerances or what are, I should say, the big three when it comes to issues people have, whether it's constipation, whether it's celiac disease, gallbladder dysfunction? You talk about those.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. Love this. So this is a great place for us to start and enter into a conversation that perhaps becomes a little bit of a narrative for this episode today, which is that in my new book, The Fiber Field's Cookbook, I introduce an acronym which is GROWTH, G-R-O-W-T-H. Now growth, first of all in my community and this is your community too, you share the same mindset, growth is an important word in the Fiber Field space because it's about our mindset. We're trying to grow. We're trying to get better. It's not about winning or losing. You still win when you grow and you learn something and you get better at something, no matter what.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
In this case, I'm using it as the acronym to guide and show people, "Let me hold you by the hand and walk you through how to heal your gut." And we start with the letter G, which is where you're at right now, Rip, with this question. G stands for genesis. What is the root cause of your symptoms? We have to understand the root of your symptoms if we want to properly know how to heal you, how to fix it. So we have to start there before we even get into the food. Let's first make sure that we understand what it is that we're trying to fix.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And in the book I bring forward what's called the big three of food sensitivity. I'm taking you, the listener or perhaps the reader, inside my head as a gastroenterologist. I want you to know how I'm approaching your specific issue and thinking about it. The big three of food sensitivity are the three things that I want to make sure are not there. I don't want to miss them because if they are there and I treat you for them, what I have discovered time and again, is that your food intolerances will wash away. So, it's a cool thing when I don't even have to change your diet, I just correct something that's going on with your health and boom, now your gut's back on track again and you didn't even-
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you give me an example of what that would look like?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yes. So here are the big three, and I'm going to give you an example for each.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
First is, let's talk about celiac disease. Celiac disease is a condition where people actually, their immune system reacts when they consume gluten. It affects about 1% of people. If you have celiac disease, you need to be on a gluten-free diet. If I make the diagnosis and I put you on a gluten-free diet, most likely your symptoms will go away entirely.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Number two, constipation, my favorite topic. We've already touched on it, we're back for round two within this podcast and I bet you we'll be back for round three at some point. All right. So constipation, number one cause of gas and bloating. If you have gas and bloating, this may be it. And it's not just how often you go. I mean look, if you poop once every seven days, okay, you're constipated. But there are a ton of people who are listening to us right now that don't realize that they're constipated, they have gas and bloating, they may have some other symptoms, but they poop every day. So they go, "Doctor, I am not constipated. I am pooping every day." Is it a complete bowel movement? Because if it's not a complete bowel movement, you may be backing up and if you're backing up, it's constipation that's causing you to get bloated.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's your definition of a complete bowel movement?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. So it comes to my definition for constipation.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right? It's not the frequency. That can be part of the story. Here's the definition. Constipation is the inadequate evacuation of your bowels that leads to the manifestation of symptoms you don't want. So, inadequate could mean that you're going once a day and you're pooping out 70%, but there's still 30% in there. You feel like you didn't really empty it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Don't you feel... I mean if you don't mind, I'd just like for you, let's just stop for a sec. So yeah, I know for example, when I go to the bathroom, I can tell if I've just primed the pump a little bit, or if, "All right. That's good. I'm good till lunch." Right? Yeah, because usually like clockwork 6:30 to 6:45, there's a little knocking at the door and I'm like, "Oh, that felt like, yeah, 50%, 70%, or that was 100%, I am golden." Doesn't your body kind of know?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I think you-
Rip Esselstyn:
If you're tuned into it.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. I think you do know. I think you do know if you're paying attention to this. I think there's a lot of people, we have turned conversation about bowel movements into something that is taboo. We're not allowed to go there. We should go there. We have to go there because this is way too important to human health. If we're going to measure a person's heart rate and blood pressure and weight and call them vital signs, we should be looking at their bowel movements, right? This is the window into gut health.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Now, how do you know, let me describe a couple of patterns, Rip, just to kind of frame this because you're bringing up some good points here. All right? If you feel like you are not completely emptying and you have gas, bloating, and here are some of the other symptoms of constipation, it could be abdominal pain, it could be anywhere in the belly. It could be around your belly button. It could be framing the abdomen, left upper, right upper, left lower, right lower. These are some of the places. Many people will have nausea. They get full very quickly. They lose their appetite. They have acid reflux. They have a ton of fatigue. Some combination of these symptoms. If you're saying, "Dr B., this is me," the question I'm asking is, are you constipated?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And when you get relief, here's one of the big questions, so it's not just, do you feel like you completely evacuated? The other question is, after you go, do you get some relief at least for a period of time? Many people will go several hours where they'll go, "Look, I have a good morning bowel movement, but then two o'clock, three o'clock in the afternoon, my belly starts getting descended and it gets worse and worse as the day goes on." Yeah, here's the deal, you're having a great morning bowel movement. That's awesome. It's setting you up to start your day, but you need another bowel movement, 2:00, 3:00 in the afternoon. If you had that good second bowel movement, which frankly when you're eating a high fiber diet, we should be pooping two or three times a day, so if you get that good second, big evacuation, I guarantee you you're going to feel that difference. You're going to notice it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you were at, let me think. You weren't, you didn't come to the Plant-Stock, the last one that we had before COVID hit, but you have to drive up this long driveway and we had these signs say, "Honk three times if you've pooped three times a day." And most people, at least in our community, are pooping two to four times a day, right? It's almost like you eat, and then you have this gastrointestinal response, and then you poop, right?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Which is exactly where we should be, right? This is exactly where we should be. And so when it comes to this question of constipation, how do I know as a doctor that my patient has actually gotten themselves to where they need to be? The answer is the gas and bloating are gone.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's so... It was probably three nights ago, and I don't know why, but I got my first stomach ache, just it was doing somersaults and knots, in literally probably a decade. I honestly, Will, I don't think I've had diarrhea, constipation, stomach aches in over a decade. And I got it. I think it was probably, we went out and we had some pizza. Of course, I had no cheese on it, but something probably affected me, but it made me realize how many people are probably just as a normal part of their living are dealing with constipation, diarrhea, stomachs that just don't feel good, bloating, pain. That's no way to go through life.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
No, it's not. It zaps you of your quality of life. It makes you fear your food. This is actually a quite human response. It's not that you're a bad person or that you're maladapted, you're actually just doing what everyone else does, which is when you feel like food is causing injury to you, you try to avoid it. And that's actually not the type of relationship we're supposed to have with our food. Food is supposed to be a source of joy. It's supposed to be one of the top couple pleasures that exists in this life that we lead along with having a great dump.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
The other stuff, we're not going to get R-rated here, we don't have to get into some of the other things that are great in life. Heck a great hug, a great hug or telling your wife that you love them, right? Or the birth of a child. I mean you guys know, this is a wonderful Plant-Strong community. You guys know the stuff that lifts you up and makes you happy and it's all there, but this has got to be part of it. This is part of the essence of being a human is finding joy in food.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
We'll be back with Dr. B in just a sec, but now it's time for another Plant-Strong proof email, and this is from Krista.
Rip Esselstyn:
Our journey started on March 26th 2020 after my husband was told he needed a quadruple bypass within two weeks. I'm going to make this short because our story is longer, but so grateful and thankful for finding out about whole food, plant-based diet and Dr. Esselstyn who called us and told us what to do. We both started eating a whole food, plant-based, no oil lifestyle on May 2nd 2020 after watching Forks Over Knives and made the switch immediately. It was like turning on a light switch. Today, it has been almost 23 months and no open heart surgery. My husband feels great and no longer takes any cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes medication after taking the blood pressure and diabetic medication for 30+ years. My husband was 78 when he was told about his severe coronary artery disease and blockages and he will turn 81 on May 14th. We tell everyone our story and how incredible eating this way has been. Thank you, Krista.
Rip Esselstyn:
Krista, thank you so much for sharing this email. I want you to know that I will be sure to share it with my father as well and it just makes me ask the question, isn't it amazing how much we have the ability to turn back our internal clocks even into our 80s? And it's truly a testament to the miraculous nature of the body and also the miraculous nature of the wonderful whole plant-based foods that we feed these bodies. I want you to be sure to stay tuned because we're going to have my father, Esse, on the podcast in just a few weeks to celebrate Father's Day and if there's other people out there like Krista, it sounds like his sage advice has changed many people's lives and I know he's inspiring people each and every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
Please be sure to follow this podcast and share it with your friends and family so they'll never miss an episode of the Plant-Strong podcast either. Now, speaking of the miracle of food, let's head back to Dr. B.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. So we were talking about celiac, constipation. What's next?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay. So, we talked about celiac, we talked about constipation, then the third is...
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:46:04]
Rip Esselstyn:
What's next?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay. So we talked about celiac. We talked about constipation. Then the third is the gallbladder. So, now, the gallbladder can present in a number of different ways. People hear that the only way that you can have gallbladder issue is if you have gallstones. That's not true. People hear that the only type of symptom that the gallbladder will be is right upper quadrant pain that radiates to your back on the right side. That's not true either. The gallbladder can present with many different types of symptoms. One of the big things in the book, I try to give tips, actionable tips that can open up your minds to possibilities, empower you so that you can have a better conversation with your doctor or figure out what's going on. One of the big things that I look for is, are you waking up in the middle of the night with pain?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That is often the gallbladder, because the issue is that you could have the most rip-roaring food intolerances out there, and the gut will sleep at night, and it will rest. And it will leave you alone. It will give you that respite while you're sleeping. But if you have a bad gallbladder, it doesn't care if it's 3:00 in the morning and you got a big meeting tomorrow morning. It does not care. So with the gallbladder, if you fix the issue, the person's symptoms will go away entirely. And that's the key. So this is what I'm looking for. Celiac, go gluten-free. Boom, you fix the problem. Constipation, make them poop. Boom, bloating and gas are gone. Gallbladder issue, fix this problem. Boom, no food intolerances.
Rip Esselstyn:
But with constipation, when you say make them poop, but in order to make them poop, you got to get that fiber going down the old gullet.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Well, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
No?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Resounding yes! But also let me unpack and get into some of the nuance of this, Rip, because like so many things that exist, there's always scenarios where I just want people to really have an understanding of how to navigate complex scenarios. So here's the deal. Let me say this. If you have mild constipation, you crank up your fiber, you drink some water, you go for a walk. You will poop and you will feel great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Take your poop for a walk.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Come back and do it again tomorrow. The same cocktail, constipation, hydration, movement. It will keep you going and you will be so grateful that you listened to this podcast. But if you are the type of person who is coming in to see a doctor like me, you have moderate or severe constipation, here's the one thing I want to warn you. If you are super locked up and you pour that fiber in there, but you don't get moving, you're still locked up, then the fiber actually can make you feel worse. These are some of the people involved with the fiber paradox. They crank their fiber up. They're still constipated. And then they feel worse. Here's the key, get things moving first. When things are moving, the fiber is your friend. We want to float that log down the river. You don't want it drying up on the rocks.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, it's funny. I know exactly what you mean, because a lot of our six and seven-day immersion retreats, we have people that are severely constipated. And that tumbleweed of fiber and plant-based foods just, it's backing up. But then once, basically, that dam is broken, boy, life is completely different for them.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
They feel so much better. Exactly. So it's something worth thinking about, is if you're cranking up your fiber and you're finding that you feel like your gas and bloating is getting worse, one of the things that I would say is ask the question, could I be constipated? And if the answer is yes, focus first on getting things moving. One of the things that I will use, Rip, is magnesium. Completely natural. It's a mineral. It's a supplement. Most of us are low on magnesium at baseline. You can check it with your doctor. They could check it before you take the supplement. And then you start taking a magnesium supplement to get things moving. Typically, magnesium oxide, magnesium citrate, or magnesium sulfate. Get things moving first. Get the pooping going. Then start to increase your fiber.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And when you do it this way, first, focus on bowel movement, second, cranking up your fiber, you will actually find now the fiber is your friend and is helping you to keep those bowel movements moving. And the constipation's gone for good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Smart. I like that. So gallbladder dysfunction, one of the things that I read in that chapter, and I was not aware of this, you talked about how fat is the macro nutrient that the pancreas, which, I guess, is somehow maybe related, struggles to keep up with the most. It seems to me most Americans are consuming probably 35% to 50% of their calories from fat. Typically, the wrong kinds of fats. And that pancreas, is that connected with the gallbladder dysfunction at all?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
It can be. It can be. So a couple of things. The gallbladder and the pancreas are actually connected through a series of, basically, tunnels. Think of it almost like water slides that are basically intersecting, but leading down to the same pool. These are called our bile ducts. And the bile ducts carry the bile from the river down to your small intestine. But on that path, they're basically intersecting with ducts that are coming from the pancreas. Now, when a person is eating a high-fat diet, you are actually working your pancreas. You're asking your pancreas to go into overdrive to keep up with the requirements of this high-fat diet so that you can process it. And one of the things that we're seeing, Rip, emerge, this is not the backbone of the Fiber Fueled Cookbook, but it is brought forward for people to consider, is that there's a diagnosis called pancreatic insufficiency.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
This is becoming increasingly common in people who, they may think they have a healthy diet. And they're having digestive symptoms, one of which can often be diarrhea or looser stool. And it's that their pancreas is actually struggling to keep up with the dietary demands of their high-fat diet. And if they'd just simply reduce their fat, they would be in a much better place.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm. Got it. Maybe it was me that got us off track here, but I think you were talking about the growth strategy.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay, let's get back on track here. Once we identify the root of our problem, that's G for Genesis. Now let's jump into R-O-W. I'm going to put these three letters together, because they're a part of a dance that's happening with trying to figure out what's causing food intolerances. Restrict, observe, work it back in. Now, you guys, please don't be triggered by me using the word restrict, okay? Because I am not advocating for a restrictive dietary pattern. I am advocating for abundance, all the plants, all of them. But the problem is that we don't have a blood test, or a poop test, or a hair test, or a saliva test that will tell us what we should and should not eat. They are not accurate. So when you're trying to understand your food intolerances, what we can do is we can take one step backwards. It's a temporary step. We take one step backwards so that we can take 10 steps forward.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
We take our food that we're curious about. Let's pretend it's legumes. Am I intolerant or sensitive to legumes? Well, if we take the legumes away, just for a couple days, we see how we feel and then we bring the legumes back. By shifting the currents off, on, off, on, you basically are able to test, and isolate, and see whether or not this is the cause of your food intolerances. And once you figure that out, you're not going to eliminate legumes, trust me. You're going to take what you think is your enemy and you're going to make it your friend. And this is where we move into T, train your gut. Now, you and I have already been talking about this a little bit, so I'm going to accelerate the conversation a little bit. But basically, it gets back to your gut is a muscle. Just like you train to swim, train to run, you can train to eat. Your gut is adapted to whatever it is that you have been eating for the last three months.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So if you shift your diet in any way, you are asking your gut to catch up and adapt to this new dietary pattern. If you have something that you have eliminated, it's going to be hard for you to bring it back, because your gut is not adapted to it. But it can be adapted to it and this is where you start low and you go slow.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. You know what? Let me just make a comment on that. The guys at the firehouse, at Station Two, we started eating all these bean dishes, beans at every dinner. And one of the guys, it just tore him up. Tore him up. That was probably for a good month or so. And then he was fine. But he had to go through a good month before he could actually tolerate the amount of beans we were eating at lunch and dinner.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. So if you take that particular firefighter and we look at what's happening with him, here's the way that we approach this. Number one, the question becomes, is there something else going on? We go back to the big three of food sensitivity and we start with this. Could he be constipated? Because the question is if he is, let's get this young man pooping. And then once this young man is pooping, then we can throw these beans on board and it's not going to have this effect so much, perhaps at all. But if it is the beans and he's struggling, your gut will adapt. I can assure you, your gut will become capable of processing and digesting this food. It did happen to him.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I am not saying that you need to just suck it up. I am saying that instead, think of it like exercise. So let's take a quick example. Rip, is it fair for me to say, let's go outside of swimming. We've been talking about swimming a lot. You like to ride your bike. Is that fair?
Rip Esselstyn:
Love it. Mountain biked for two and a half hours yesterday.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's what I'm talking about. All right. So this gentleman right here, this athlete-
Rip Esselstyn:
His name's... Oh, oh, okay. The firefighter's name was Derek, but okay. Anyway, go ahead. Go ahead.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So I'm going to use you as an example here. You like to ride your bike. You're out riding your bike. You hurt your knee. All right, you limp down to where you're safe. You go home. And the problem is now, here you are and your knee is injured. Clearly, you're not ready to ride your bike right now. We have two choices, Rip. Here's your first choice, okay? You can withhold your choice until the very end. The first option is, Rip, I'm going to tell you right now, I have a strategy where you will never feel pain in your knee ever.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know what that is. Don't bike again.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I'm going to put you on the couch. Not even not bike again. I don't even want you walking. I don't even want you walking, man. Because if you don't walk and you don't put any weight on your knee, you won't have any pain. Now, the problem is you're in great shape for your age. Just in general, you're in great shape. That's going to fall apart. And you're now sedentary. You're laying on the couch. And you gain weight. Your metabolism falls out of whack. And now we have basically put you at risk for metabolic issues like coronary artery disease down the road.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And severe depression, I'm sure.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Among other things. And you're constipated as hell. All right, option number two, I get you hooked up with a great physical therapist. You're not ready for the mountain bike right now. We got to get your knee reoriented. But with this physical therapist, they're going to work you through a program. And it's going to progressively challenge your knee. And every time you challenge your knee, it's actually going to get stronger and you're going to restore function. And the pain is going to be reduced. Now, there may be some discomfort on this path, but we will try to minimize it. And when you emerge on the other side, you have no pain. You are fully functional. You have no athletic restrictions. And you are back up on that mountain.
Rip Esselstyn:
Baby, sign me up. Let's go. Sign me up.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So, all right. Now, I realize this seems so obvious. But this is the exact same choice that we face when it comes to our gut, which is that when your gut is hurt, you can either stop eating food, and that puts you into a restrictive dietary pattern where you actually make your gut weaker and it becomes less functional and less capable, but you feel no pain. Or alternatively, remind me, Rip, the name of the firefighter.
Rip Esselstyn:
His ame was Derek.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Derek, okay. So alternatively, with Derek, we can face this food. We can do it in a way where you don't have to actually feel like you're destroying your body.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I will say, and this is for people that are out there, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong here, but it does seem like legumes probably tend to tear people up more than anything else. And maybe one of the reasons is because, I think, of all the plant-based foods, they are some of the highest in fiber.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's exactly it! Thank you. People are not connecting this dot, but this is an important connection, which is that there are three types of prebiotics that exist. Earlier, when we were talking about kiwis, we talked about fiber. We talked about polyphenols. The third are resistant starches. There are only a couple foods which can offer you all three prebiotics. And by the way, anytime we talk about prebiotics, we're talking about something that is good for your gut, but simultaneously is also challenging your gut. It really fits with the fiber paradox. So there's only a couple foods that have all three. Legumes are one of them. Whole grains are the other. All the prebiotics are there. So you're challenging your gut more. That's why people feel it. But this is also the reason why, if you bring Dan Buettner in here, he's going to tell you that the number one food in the blue zones is legumes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And we bring in Dr. Gundry and he's going to tell you to stay away from them because the lignins and all that other stuff. The whole grains and the beans that are, literally... It's the ultimate paradox, here. It's-
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Well, right. The paradox is what I was alluding to earlier with my little cheeky joke about it. But good science, good science focuses on the big picture and in particular, what happens with humans. Bad science is where you take a test tube study and you never even ask what happens with a human being. So the issue with what is being taught in the plant paradox, that lectins are the source of all of our problems, is based upon test tube studies. But then when you ask the question, what happens when a human being consumes legumes and whole grains that are high in lectins? And the answer is, they live longer, less heart disease, with less cancer, with less diabetes. And you go down the line, and we're talking about in human studies, the most healing foods.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And bear in mind, the other thing too, it has to actually make sense. So if we are attributing all of our major health epidemics to lectins... Let me share with you how many pounds of beans we're consuming on a yearly basis. Now, as a point of reference, the average person in the US is eating 220 pounds of meat per year, which is more than their body weight, by 50 pounds. So anyway, how many pounds of beans, not you, Rip, not you, the average person in the US, how many pounds of beans are they consuming?
Rip Esselstyn:
This is going to be really sad. I'm going to guess 15 pounds.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Dude, you're 250% more than what they're actually eating. The average person in the US, I'm not kidding, Rip, is consuming six pounds of beans per year.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, my God. They're probably baked beans, too.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh, totally. And if we go back to our parents' generation, they were consuming eight pounds of beans. That's not that great either. But they're going from eight pounds to six pounds. We're actually consuming less legumes than the prior generation. And we're going to say that this is the cause of all of our epidemics?
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Isn't that crazy? Let me toss out another thing. A hundred years ago, the average person was eating, guess how many pounds of cheese the average person was eating a hundred years ago?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh, gosh, I would guess two and a half pounds. Something like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Five. And guess what it is today? Guess what it is today?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
40.
Rip Esselstyn:
50. 50. And that's the average. And you and I aren't eating any, so somebody's eating 150 pounds.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Well, and also the cheese is, I mean, look, the cheese that you put out on your deck and it's still there a year later and it hasn't decomposed or molded over, what is going on?
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. I want to ask you a bunch more questions. We got about 20 minutes, if that's cool with you.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. Can I toss in one thing real quick before we-
Rip Esselstyn:
Go for it. Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Then it becomes a Rip Esselstyn, you can pepper me with questions. Like, come back to me. But before we go there, the last letter in the growth strategy is H. And H, perhaps my favorite letter, stands for holistic healing.
Rip Esselstyn:
That was going to be my next question.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
You know what? You're a great host. And so you were probably coming back to it, but I just wanted to finish the thought so that we have the full arc of the growth strategy. H stands for holistic healing. And basically, what I'm saying here is this, there are people who do everything right. Eat good food, sleep, exercise, they meditate, and they still are suffering with issues. It comes back to, we are not just a digestive organ that's working in isolation. We are not just enzymes, meaning proteins, fats and carbohydrates. We are a complete person. We have a soul, a spirit. Our mood affects our gut. This is why in times of acute stress, you will find that most people will manifest some sort of digestive symptoms, bloating, gas, pain, diarrhea, constipation or a combination. And that's acute stress.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And what's happening in the body, just to unpack and explain this real quick, is that your brain, actually, this is the brain-gut access. They're talking to one another. And your brain releases this hormone from the pituitary gland. It's called corticotropin releasing hormones, CRH. CRH initiates the stress response. And there is a cascade of events that start happening in your body as a result of this. And if you follow that waterfall down, at the bottom what you'll discover is that is causing injury to your microbiome. You don't even change your diet. And it's just you feel unwell. And you're not tolerating the same food that you could tolerate, because of the stress. Now, what do we do about the person who's dealing with chronic stress that is unremitting? They have something that is unsettled in their life. And it doesn't have to be trauma with a capital T.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, let's say it's just a job you're not happy in, a relationship you're not happy in.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I just had a patient recently, Rip, she had ulcerative colitis. I could not get her better until she changed her job. And when she did, her colitis went into remission. It was not a nutrition thing. So we have to look at the whole person. This is where I want to elevate us as humans, elevate our nutrition, elevate our lifestyle, but also bring awareness to the importance of taking care of yourself and finding joy, finding love in your life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. And we've talked about taking your poop for a walk. But does exercise affect gut health? I mean, how important is exercise? I would imagine-
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Big time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Big time. Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Big time. Yeah. Yeah. I actually was part of a recent study with some doctors at the University of Nottingham in the UK, Professor Anna Valdez and Amrita Vijay. This is one of my recent publications where we took a group of people and we actually had an exercise intervention. And what's cool is it was literally 15 minutes. That's it. 15 minutes. I'm not saying this is optimal exercise. I think more is better. But what I'm saying is this is a minimal amount of movement. And it actually, without changing their diet at all, without shifting fiber at all, it actually caused a change in their gut microbiome towards microbes that produce short chain fatty acids, towards microbes that help us to process and digest fiber. So in other words, without even changing your diet, you can actually shift your microbiome to make it more accommodating to the fiber that you're preparing to eat through exercise.
Rip Esselstyn:
Huh. The human body is truly, it's a miracle.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
What it comes back to is that there's a-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:09:04]
Rip Esselstyn:
Truly it's a miracle.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
What it comes back to is that there's a currency, right? The currency, the health, is being paid through short chain fatty acids. This is the currency of human health. And so what we end up seeing is, yes, you eat a certain way and you will be rewarded with more short chain fatty acids. But guess what? When you exercise and when you sleep these different things, they can have that same effect.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Short chain fatty acids. And how many of these SCFFs are in animal products?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I mean, that's an easy question. That's zero. I had to pause because I was like, hold on. Is he trying to pull fast one on me yet again?
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm not. Let's talk fiber fueled points. Right? Or fiber fueled unleashed, where you talk about points, and in the first book you were like, and I love the way the goal for people was to eat 30 different types of basically whole plant-based foods, including herbs and spices, correct?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. For optimal biodiversity.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Minimum of 30 per week. But let's crank it up and let's go higher
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. 30 per week. So talk to me about your new game plan here in the cookbook when it comes to plant points. You got the rookie; you got the artist; you got the God; and you have the legend. I mean, tell me about this.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. Well, I'm a big fan of music and I also am a big fan of games.
Rip Esselstyn:
Ooh.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. So to me, if you can gamify something, then it really motivates me, because I'm like, "Ooh, a game. I can't wait. Let's go." Right? And this game does not need to be against anyone other than yourself. But the point is that our food system is not going to introduce diversity for us.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
If anything, they want to contract our diversity because they make more money by selling three different plants, wheat, corn, and soy. Not that these plants are bad, but that we need to go beyond what our food system is going to feed us. So it becomes implicit. Like this is upon us. It's on our shoulders to eat with diversity in our diet.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
How can we accomplish that? Like this. I'm challenging you, all of you, not just do you, Rip. All of you. I'm challenging you to a game where when you sit down at that table, we're playing the game. And you collect as many plant points as you can at that meal. Every single plant counts.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Now, to be fair, just be upfront about some things. If you like take the Italian seasoning that has five different herbs and you sprinkle that you don't get five points for Italian seasoning. Like that's crazy. But if you were to take fresh herbs, and introduce them. Could be basil with your pasta sauce. Boom, that counts. That's an extra plant point. Right?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And every single meal, if you start thinking this way and you start moving towards increasing your plant points, then you are naturally increasing the diversity within your diet. You are naturally fueling a healthy gut microbiome. I can assure you that if you are cranking up the diversity of plants in your diet, unless you are actively trying to undermine me and prove me wrong, you will be increasing your fiber content to the point that it will go way beyond the minimal expectations. And you will be building not just a healthy gut microbiome, but you'll be helping building a healthy dietary pattern.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
So plant points is our way of playing the game. You can do it against yourself. How many points do you get? And in the book I define different types of rock stars, and what kind of rock star you ultimately are? Right? Are you Mick Jagger. Right? Like Mick Jagger, who's he's like 95 years old and he's still selling our Wembley Stadium? Or are you like the garage band that's just getting started? It's okay if you're the garage band. We'll work towards becoming Mick Jagger.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And so tell me. Like today, are you going to become a rock god or you going to be a rock legend?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh man. Like every day I'm doing my best to try to become a rock god.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I may not get there every day, but I'm doing my best.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. So for listeners, that means he's getting 20 points or more. 15 to 19 is makes him a legend. And 10 to 14 makes him a star. So when you become that rock god today at the end of the day, what are you going to play? What music are you going to play? And tell me about your air guitar. What's it going to be to, huh?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
This is the best question I've gotten in any podcast I've ever done. Thank you for throwing this my way.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is it ACDC? What is it?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
No. Okay. First of all, it's got to be a guitar solo, electric guitar specifically. It's got to be a guitar solo.
Rip Esselstyn:
Eric Johnson? Eric Johnson?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
I'm going with Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go turn on this song, like YouTube it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb. And you'll hear the guitar solo. And it's just like, this is Dr. B right now. You just see my face. I'm just, yeah, baby. I love it. I love it. So today at the end of the day, when I get my 20 points and I'm a rock God, I'm going to play and everybody's going to think I'm the biggest cheese ball out there.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
But my family and I last night we watched Marry Me with Jennifer Lopez, Maluma and Owen Wilson. And it was so much fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
And the Marry Me song. I can't get it out of my head.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Uh-oh. But anyway, I'm going to play Marry Me and I'm just going to air guitar no guitar that's there. But anyway. I love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
I do too. I do too. So I love the way you do the points and the gaming and to get people to eat more fiber. It's brilliant.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Well, the other thing, too, is just real quick, is that bear in mind this is not just about you. This can be about the other people in your life that you're trying to bring along for the ride and a way to create inspiration for them. Right? So like with our kids, I have two, soon to be three, kids. When I want my five-year-old son to eat more plants, he does pretty decent consider compared to most other boys, because he's in our family. This is what we're feeding him. But if I want to get him to really crank it up, he's going head-to-head with daddy. And he wins.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk for a sec. You are a huge fan of crowding and sprouting. And I got to say, I don't like fermented foods. I like tempeh. I do like sourdough bread. And you got some amazing sourdough recipes in there between pizza crusts and crepes and breads. Those I like, but stuff that you salt it and you leave it in jars for a while. There's something about it. I don't think I like the taste of it.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Then that's okay. First of all, this can be an acquired taste. Second of all, there are many different paths to a healthy gut. There are many different paths to a healthy diet. We're working on finding what works for you, Rip. And what works for you is going to be different than what works for me. That's just reality. Like I'm not trying to make you the second version of me. That's boring. I think you're more fun being yourself, right?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
But within the world of fermented food, I wanted to tell people this important study that came out last summer, that people need to hear about because this is a gut health game changer. So I've been talking, pounding the drum about diversity of plants these last couple of years. And I actually am broadening it out a little bit to say, let's make sure that when we talk about plant diversity, part of the conversation is fermented food. And here's why.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Stanford University. Professors Christopher Gardner, who by the way, is someone that I work with on the scientific advisory board for a company called ZOE. Also Justin Sonnenberg, Erica Sonnenberg. They're all professors at Stanford. And what they found is that in 10 weeks, by asking people to introduce fermented food into their diet, they were able to increase the diversity of their gut microbiome and reduce measures of inflammation.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Most of us are not eating fermented foods. The takeaway from this study to me is we should be eating fermented foods, not in an obligate way where it's like, we don't enjoy what we're eating. But what we should do is look at the plethora of options and find what makes us excited and go.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I know I hear you there and there's such a vast variety of fermented foods that are out there that everybody should be able to find something that works for them.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. And in the book we have quite a few fermented food options, but there's other things that you could look at too. I mean, I think tempeh is a great one because you don't actually have to ferment it yourself. You just pick it up at the store. Right? But we have tempeh lettuce wraps that I actually did a collaboration with a local Charleston restaurant and they sold out every night by 7:00 PM.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. What about sprouting? I mean, obviously I've had Doug Evans on the show before and he is Mr. Sprout.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Although he got his haircut recently and he needs to have the hair going crazy in order to truly be Dr. Sprout.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
It'll grow back.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It will. It will
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
All right. Sprouting is, I think most people perhaps in the Plantstrong community, this is a higher level of awareness compared to other groups. But most people are not sprouting and they should be. Sprouting is inexpensive. It could not be more nutritious. It is like eating the food as a whole food, all parts of the food, and eating it as fresh as it could possibly be.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
When a seed or a legume germinates nature has an initiation mechanism where it is basically enhancing the protein, the fiber, the vitamins, and in many cases creating medicinal benefits. So as a couple of quick examples, broccoli sprouts are substantially higher than mature broccoli in the key phytochemical, which is suforaphane, which is the cancer-crushing phytochemical.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, by like a hundredfold, right? I mean it's substantial.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
A hundredfold. Yeah. It's substantial. And this is where the bitterness of broccoli sprouts comes from. You consume them. They're super bitter. Embrace the bitter. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Embrace the bitter because that bitterness is smashing cancer and helping to keep you safe and healthy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Another quick example. People that have histamine intolerance. It's a little bit of a big topic. We didn't really get into it very much tonight in our show, but it's really firmly in the book. And there are people who have this issue, and you can sprout peas. And those peas actually in the sprouting process release an enzyme called DAO, diamine oxidase. This is the same enzyme that your body, as a human, uses to break down and process histamine. So if you have histamine intolerance, nature has created medicine. But it's not a pill. It's a pea sprout.
Rip Esselstyn:
Those little friendly guys.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah. And last thing, I don't know if you've ever tried onion sprouts, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
I haven't. I haven't.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh dude. I am telling you, man, that's your homework then, because you are a well-rounded plant-based eater. But for the well-rounded plant-based eater out there, who's tried it all, if you haven't tried onion sprouts, I'm just telling you, you will be addicted.
Rip Esselstyn:
Talk to me? What do you put them on? How do you eat them?
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Sprouts in general, including onion sprouts, salads, soups sandwiches, smoothies. It's the S's.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Right. So onions sprouts. You may not put into a smoothie. That'd be a little bit of a funky thing, but like, man, in a soup and a sandwich. Like you take Derek from the firehouse, and you get your chili recipe, and then you put an iceberg of onions sprouts on top. And I'm telling you, it's like a whole new level that you didn't even know existed.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I want to go through some of the recipes that are in the cookbook.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
Because I went through and these are like some of the ones that I am going to personally make from the book.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I'm just going to start here. There's a beet risotto that looks absolutely like crazy insane. Mango burrito bowl, I'm all about. Big, old, mantastic burrito bowls fill me right up. The pozole. The Indian curry. You've got a creamy Cajun bowl. Breakfast. You got a Trinity overnight oats. It's more of a savory, but you've got the turmeric, the ginger, and the cinnamon, which I mean.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
That's my three. That's my breakfast spice combo. Turmeric cinnamon, and ginger is so good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. You've got an ancient grain porridge of millet quinoa, amaranth, all gluten free for people that have celiac or something like that. You've got a veggie scramble and sourdough toast. Sweet potato waffles, like get out of town. Speaking of sweet potatoes, well, you take sweet potatoes to the next level, and you got sweet potato bars where you put up all kinds of different toppings on.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Is it a Mexican sweet potato? Is it a Mediterranean sweet potato? There's different combinations. I'm all about the combinations.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got a roasted eggplant dip that I'm going to try because I can't stand eggplant, but I'm going to see if I like it. Ginger broccoli pasta salad looked incredible. Edamame pesto pasta. Zippy cilantro bowl. I have that in here because I think it's interesting. And Alex actually mentions it because there's so many people that come to our immersion that can't stand cilantro. It's almost like a certain number of the population, they have this genetic taste where it tastes like soap to them.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Yeah, I know. It makes me very sad for them because it's not their fault. Right? And I absolutely love it, but.
Rip Esselstyn:
You're so empathetic. You really are. You got sweet potato and lentil burgers, sweet and spicy peanut tempeh wraps. And then I'm going to try one of these tonight. You've got peanut butter date cookies. Peanut butter and date, how can you go wrong? And then this is one that just, Mexican hot chocolate brownies made with black beans and cayenne pepper. I want that.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh yeah. Oh definitely. Well yeah, no. Combining the spiciness with that chocolate, oh man, that's money.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. That's world class right there.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And what's cool is actually, one of the things that Alex and I, so going a little bit behind the scenes because you know Alex and your community does too. Going a little bit behind the scenes. We were building up to this book. Right? And these recipes, they don't just materialize out of nowhere. There's a lot of thought that goes into this.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And part of what we wanted to do here is we wanted to celebrate the many flavors from across the globe. So hopefully people as they're listening, and you describe these, like you're touching down in East Asia, touching down in the Mediterranean. You're in Mexico. You're in the good old United States of America. And you can take a world tour with your taste buds and stay at home in your kitchen.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. World tour with the taste buds, I like that.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Why not?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well you've made it very, very inviting and practical and accessible to everyone really. Way to go. Will, let me say that you are truly a disruptive innovator. You are. What I love is the way you're challenging the status quo and you're changing the culture by introducing something that is so insanely simple, but nobody knows about it. And really, you're doing amazing work and I'm so glad that you are part of this, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm not going to say-
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
You're trying to avoid movement because [laughter].
Rip Esselstyn:
I was trying to avoid the word movement.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
You didn't want the pun. When you get around me, it's like the puns are everywhere. Right? So.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's almost like being with Aaron Spitz, the author of The Penis Book.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Never-ending. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. But man, anyway, I'm so glad we're united in getting this message out there.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Well, you know, I think what's really cool, Rip, to be totally honest, and just to kind of riff off of that. First of all, that means a lot from you. And I really mean that. But what's cool is that I just have this image of your dad in the 1990s.
Rip Esselstyn:
Eighties.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
1980s.
Rip Esselstyn:
Early eighties.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
He's running and he's William Wallace. Right? He's got this massive Braveheart sword and he's running across that battlefield screaming at the top of his voice, eat more plants. Right? And he's out there leading this charge. You know, your dad is on the Mount Rushmore of plant-based eating. And here comes the new generation and here comes you and I, and we got our kilts too.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
And we got our Braveheart-
Rip Esselstyn:
Freedom.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
You can take our wives, but you'll never take our food freedom.
Rip Esselstyn:
Fiber.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
We're trying to wake up America because, gosh, America needs it. So we're working on it. We're doing our best.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
We've got a lot of work to do, my friend.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, hit me with the big Plantstrong.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Boom.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, all the best with the new baby.
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz:
Thank you, my friend.
Rip Esselstyn:
Are you ready to become a rock god, just like Dr. B? Well, if so, I want you to play the guitar solo to We Are The Champions by Queen, because when you get an abundance of fiber in your diet with 30 plus rock-and-roll plants a day, you are officially a champion in my book. The Fiber Fueled Cookbook is available right now. And we'll be sure to link to all of these resources in the show notes on the episode page @ plantstrongpodcast.com.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. In the meantime, I'll see you next week, and until then take epic dumps and, oh yeah, keep it Plantstrong. The Plantstrong Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:29:26]
