Dr. John Lewis | How Polysaccharides Can Help Your Health

This week on The Hormone Prosperity Podcast, Dr. Kyrin welcomes renowned researcher and nutrition expert Dr. John E. Lewis for a riveting, science-backed (but totally relatable) conversation about how polysaccharides—complex plant sugars—could be the key to reducing inflammation, boosting brain health, and reclaiming your vitality in midlife.

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💡What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why “all sugar is bad” is a myth—and a harmful one

• How plant-based polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran act as supercharged cell communicators

• The shocking lack of nutrition research (and why Big Pharma wants to keep it that way)

• What “food as medicine” really means in a toxic, overly processed food system

• The difference between eating for taste vs eating for health (and how most of us are doing it wrong)

• How Daily Brain Care, Dr. Lewis’s polysaccharide-powered supplement, has helped improve sleep, energy, immune balance, and mental clarity—even in Alzheimer’s patients

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👩‍⚕️Why This Matters for Midlife Women:

If you’re experiencing:

• Mysterious weight gain (hello, “menopot”)

• Brain fog and fatigue that just won’t lift

• Reliance on caffeine to get going and wine to wind down...

You’re not alone, and you’re not broken. Dr. John and Dr. Kyrin break down how fueling your body with the right sugars—the kind that communicate with your cells, not sabotage them—can help you ditch hormonal poverty for good.

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🍽️Big Takeaway:

“You are what you eat, and if you eat garbage, your cells become garbage—and garbage cells can’t heal anything.”
—Dr. John E. Lewis

Whether you lean toward a carnivore, vegan, or somewhere-in-between diet, Dr. John’s message is clear: the key is quality, not dogma. And yes—your health can dramatically improve when you start eating what your genes, cells, and immune system actually recognize as real food.

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🔬About Our Guest:

Dr. John E. Lewis, PhD, is the founder of Dr. Lewis Nutrition and an internationally recognized clinical researcher with decades of experience in physiology and plant-based nutrition. His breakthrough studies on polysaccharides have shown powerful results in chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s, MS, HIV, and more.

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Tune in Now and Take the First Step 

Your health deserves clarity, truth, and transformation. Don’t miss this empowering episode of the Hormone Prosperity Podcast! Click play to listen, learn, and discover how this unconventional approach may be the missing key to your midlife health.

👉 Subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast platform now!

 

► Daily Brain Care supplement by Dr. Lewis Nutrition → www.drlewisnutrition.com

 

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https://bit.ly/thehormoneprescriptionpodcast

 

Together, we’ll empower each other to ask the right questions and find answers that lead to lasting health and happiness. Let's stop the madness and start a movement towards hormonal prosperity! 🌟

 

❓HAVE A QUESTION and want my advice? You're invited to write to me at hello@kyrindunstonmd.com.  

I select e-mails with a clear question around hormone poverty (such as symptoms of Midlife Metabolic Mayhem, diseases caused or exacerbated by hormonal poverty, accelerated aging, early death, etc.) and achieving hormone prosperity using the two hormone prescriptions needed (one written and the other not) that are of reasonable length and detail and of interest to significant numbers of the audience. I regret I'm not able to answer all messages sent.  I appreciate your willingness to contribute to the community.

 

Podcast Episode Transcript:

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (00:00):

What does it really mean to let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food? How do you navigate that in this day and age with all the complex dietary information? My guest today is gonna help shed some light on your dietary quandaries. Are all Sugars bad? GRE greetings, friend. Welcome to the Hormone Prosperity Podcast with me, the hormone prosperity coach, Dr. Kyrin. Here's where intelligent women over 40 go to get credible guidance and inspiration on getting out of hormonal poverty and into hormonal prosperity and the joy and vitality that brings. Go from asking disempowering questions like, what's wrong with me, to asking empowering questions like, what would hormonal prosperity do? Hashtag ww HPD. Join me as we dive into today's episode and get started on your journey off the couch, into your genes and back into life, because bliss is your birthright and a healthy body filled with hormonal prosperity is the vehicle that gets you there.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (01:05):

Welcome. Let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prosperity Coach. Thank you so much for joining me today. As we dive into another episode, talking about your nutritional inputs. There is so much nutritional information out there in this day and age, many of it conflicting, and you are probably confused about which path to go on for your nutritional needs. And I know you're probably not getting supported by your HMO providers because that's not a part of our education. Nutrition really isn't. We're basically taught in, I was as a board certified, O-B-G-Y-N, you get enough calories and you don't want, it's all about calories. And you just want a variety of foods in the sad diet, standard American diet. So that's what I taught for many decades, and that ended me up with midlife metabolic many, he 243 pounds, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, hair falling out, no sex drive, brain foggy, you know, all the symptoms because many of you have them too.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (02:18):

And so I've been on a journey for over a decade to heal myself, which has happened and I have lost a hundred pounds and kept it off for over a decade. So I like to bring you guests who can help inform your journey. I don't really believe there's one diet that's right for everyone. We're gonna talk about that during this episode. We're gonna talk about why all sugars are not bad, why you actually need sugar, and what to do about it. We're gonna even touch on the carnivore diet some more, and something called polysaccharides, which you may or may not be familiar with. So we're gonna talk about this in detail to give you some more inputs into your hormone prosperity journey so you can get to the hormone prosperity that you deserve. I'll tell you a little bit about Dr. John Lewis and then we'll get started.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:08):

So, John E. Lewis PhD is the founder and president of Dr. Lewis Nutrition. He has a long track record as a scientist, author, speaker at events all over the world. He has a passion for educating others about the value of nutrition, exercise, and health through his own experiences and knowledge of eating a whole food plant-based diet for over 27 years, taking certain key dietary supplements and a rigorous daily exercise training program. He's done lots of research in the area of nutrition, which is kind of rare these days. We're gonna talk about why that is. You need to understand that. And please help me welcome Dr. John E. Lewis to the

Dr. John Lewis (03:49):

Show. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (03:52):

So I'd love to talk about nutrition for women over 40. We do, women over 40 are very interested in that because we know that it contributes to our hormonal poverty and our symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. So always interested in learning about new perspectives, helping everybody understand the different options available for diet. I am of the belief that there might not be one diet that's right for everyone. We have very unique biochemical individuality, so I like to give people more information to help them put it in their bodies and decide what resonates as being right for them. And you come Dr. John from a physiology background, and now you're very passionate about teaching others about nutrition and kind of a whole foods plant-based diet. How did you become so interested in nutrition as a physiologist?

Dr. John Lewis (04:51):

That would go all the way back to my bodybuilding days. I got into drug-free competitive bodybuilding as a college student. I was looking for something else to do after high school to do something competitive and bodybuilding. I mean, some people refer to it as a sport. I don't, to me it's more of a physical activity that has sort of an artistic component to it. But to me it's not a sport. It doesn't matter how strong you are or how fast you run or how high you can jump, it's about what you look like on a stage if you take it to that level. But I didn't really appreciate nutrition up to that point in my life, quite frankly. I ate for, for taste lit, which I think most Americans, if not most, every person on the whole planet does. Most people don't eat for health.

Dr. John Lewis (05:35):

And I came from a family that, again, I, I had no health role models at all. We just all ate for, you know, taste. But when I got into bodybuilding, it, regardless of whether you take drugs or not, which I didn't, you still have to be very systematic and really take it as, as like a professional approach, if you will, even if you don't make any money on it, which <laugh>, I didn't do that either. And that was part of the reason why I decided to to not do that very long. But it, it, I always credit bodybuilding for shifting my mindset from just eating, you know, basically just for taste, for eating for a purpose. And once I realized pretty quickly that I was never gonna make a living as a bodybuilder. I was never gonna take drugs. I didn't wanna take those long-term risks that I shifted my focus more from a, let's call it a physical sports performance perspective, to a health perspective.

Dr. John Lewis (06:31):

And I still, my exercise training is still like a bodybuilder. I, that's the type of exercise training I prefer. I I've always loved strength training, but the, the, you know, the number of people that have, I would say the perspective on nutrition for a, for a physical performance purpose is what I mean. It's, it's not even 1% of the population, right? It's a very, very small number of people that have genetic blessings to play sports, to make a living. So that was also part of the reason that I shifted my focus was I felt like working with athletes or people in, in that world was not really my interest. But everyone else, you know, should, even athletes, you should still prioritize your health, which as you know as well as I do, that's what people are not doing today. That's why we're overrun and overridden with chronic disease.

Dr. John Lewis (07:22):

But I, I really started in my training in physiology and looking at how the cells respond to any, any type of, let's call it input, whether it's from exercise or physical activity or nutrition or whatever the case may be, was just very fascinating to me. And so kind of my personal and professional interest melded together, and I had no clue at that point as a student, as a grad student, whether I would do research as a living. I, I was still kind of forming myself in terms of what I wanted to do. And I just sort of stumbled into research. I, at that point in my life, I enjoyed the academic environment. It was laid back in the sense of not being so rigid, like going, you know, like the complete opposite of, say working for a bank where you have to be there at eight 30 in the morning, and then that's all you do till five o'clock and then you go home.

Dr. John Lewis (08:14):

Academics, obviously, you're very flexible. You come and go as you please, as long as you're doing your work and bringing in money to the university, you really can just set your own schedule, which is always what I preferred. So I was also able, even though the University of Miami does and still today does not have any kind of department or center or school of nutrition or dietetics, I was able, because of my personal interests and through just making connections with people and, and just sort, sort of building my own little niche within the university, I was able to carve out this niche for myself. Where at that time, at my peak of my academic career, I was literally one of you could not count all of us on more than two hands, the number of people doing nutrition research at the University of Miami. It was a very, very small number of people. But where it really took,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (09:06):

I would imagine that the, it's not a, a very prolific field because humans in the west generally aren't interested in nutrition. And even all the nutrition information we have is mostly ignored by the lay public, and that's right. The FDA and big food. And so nobody's doing it. And I, I wanna highlight this because everybody listening needs to be made aware that we are not researching nutrition in a very meaningful, impactful way because there's no funding for it. And you could maybe could speak to this, this no funding for it. So that's right. This is why you're gonna get kind of antiquated, outdated nutritional information. I also wanna highlight what you said about people eating for taste. You know, it's, I guess it goes without saying that we don't want to eat things that don't taste good. But it's funny, I grew up my mom's name is Jerry.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (10:07):

We call her granola Jerry, because she was always all about the taste and the nutrition. So I, I was raised and kind of nurtured in an environment that taught me that nutrition was important as a foundational function of the food, not just taste. And I didn't realize that until you just said that people eat for taste. And I thought, well, of course they do, but don't they eat for nutrition too, <laugh>? No, no. Most people don't. So I'm very grateful for that. But yeah. Can you, you talk a little bit about that nutrition science and why isn't there so much research and how does that impact us?

Dr. John Lewis (10:48):

Well, it's huge. And to your point of having so little money devoted or directed toward nutrition research compared to pharmacology and genetics, that was ultimately the reason why I left academics. I had the opportunity with our polysaccharide research only because of the generosity of a family member who had heard my colleague, Dr. Reg McDaniel, give a lecture about his work with polysaccharides. And then we ended up running the Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis studies with, with this family's generosity, with their gift. And then on the other side, on the Rice brand side, it was with a company in Japan that has put their money where their mouth is. They're a small dietary supplement company who funds research on their flagship material. But when we made some really profound discoveries from our Alzheimer's study, including improved cognitive function in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's, I tried twice with NIH and TR twice with the Alzheimer's Association to get these so-called experts in health or whatever they call themselves to recognize the value of what we had on our hands.

Dr. John Lewis (11:55):

And I got zero crickets, not a zilch, nothing in return. And so for me, that was like the beginning of the end of my academic career. I didn't realize it at that time, but it really was an eye-opener for me. So nobody can tell me otherwise. I mean, you only have to look at the budget of NIH. It's the largest, as, you know, the largest science budget on the planet of any organization. And almost the vast majority of it is going to pharmacology. And I guess, you know, some percentage to genetics research. So very little to your point, is going to nutrition and, and essentially drove me out of academics. I refused to spin another 2030, how many more every years of life I have left, banging my head against the wall, making it bleed, trying to get people to recognize the value of nutrition.

Dr. John Lewis (12:39):

And they're, you know, they may talk publicly all they want, but it's a, it's a, it's has been a farce maybe with assuming RFK gets appointed as the director of DHHS, maybe things will change. And I'm optimistic they will. But I mean, my, my time has, unfortunately, if that does align, my time has essentially come and gone in terms of academics. I mean, I'm, I'm still affiliated with the university on a part-time. I still have a part-time faculty position. I do some little bit of teaching, a little bit of work with some students, but I don't have any interest in being in the trenches anymore, running clinical trials. Man, that is a really brutal way to make a living, dealing with human beings and expecting them to participate in your study and, you know, be compliant with the protocol and all these other things that you have to do that is just not, at the end of the day, not a fun way to make a living unless you have a mm-hmm <affirmative>. I mean, if you're operating with, you know, a big pharma budget where you can hire a bunch of people and Right. You know, you, you've got a lucrative, you've got a lucrative budget behind you. But I never had that. I

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (13:44):

Think it's, it's super important. Thank you for highlighting that. Just for, I want everyone listening to, to understand, you're probably listening thinking, well, I don't wanna know about the politics, about nutrition and medicine, but you need to understand it because it is directly impacting what you have access to and what you don't have access to. That's right. And this is why most of the nutritional supplementation that you're going to encounter is gonna be from smaller private label companies. And you're gonna complain. Sometimes I hear people, I've been doing this, you know, in this sector for over a decade now, oh, but they're so expensive, my nutritional supplements, and I, and why do I have to take this and I shouldn't need it? And your regular doctors are gonna tell you, you can get everything you need from food. I know, because I told my patients that for decades because that's what I was taught.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (14:33):

But then when you know better, you do better says Oprah. And it's true that you're, it's just gonna impact what you have access to. So due to certain cons, constraints, Dr. Lewis and many others have to go their own route. And you've actually done a lot of research and provide a lot of supplementation that can be very beneficial for patients. You mentioned polysaccharides, so why don't we start there because I think some people know what they are, but some people don't. And so can you talk a little bit about what they are, why they're important for health?

Dr. John Lewis (15:08):

Absolutely. Well, up until meeting Dr. Reg McDaniel, who shared with me his story, and this is almost 20 years ago, about allo the polysaccharides from aloe vera, I was like, most people that had no clue really what they would do other than be a source of fuel for the cells. That was really, you know, my whole appreciation of saccharides. And of course, as you know, saccharide, carbohydrate, sugar, those are all synonyms. And so we, as Americans, especially what we've been so conditioned for at least the last half century to think, oh, sugar is bad. Oh, no, you can't eat sugar. But Ed, I, to me, that that just, that statement drives me up a wall. I cannot stand anytime somebody makes that statement, number one, is ignorant. And number two, it's factually incorrect because there are lots of different sugars that Mother Nature provides for us, and they have lots of different biochemical structures.

Dr. John Lewis (16:00):

So a monosaccharide, a one molecule sugar, like high fructose corn syrup, if you're eating that stuff every day, it's probably not your best strategy. You're probably gonna end up suffering some effects from that, that won't be positive. But these polysaccharides from aloe vera and Rice brand that my colleagues and I have studied, I would put these up against anything that Mother Nature provides for us for a healing effect or a healing benefit. They are so complex in design, they cannot even be drawn on a piece of paper. They are literally hundreds of glucose units attached together by these very sophisticated structural bonds. And so the, i, the amount of information that is coded within all of that structure that our genes interpret and then instruct our cells in how to function, that is where the magic happens, because you get more information from these polysaccharides than you do from amino acids, fatty acids, certainly vitamins and minerals, very simple structures.

Dr. John Lewis (16:54):

And so these things are just something, you know, it's no wonder humans have been using aloe vera for thousands of years. It's no wonder most of the world eats rice as a staple, although unfortunately they're eating usually white rice. They've had the rice brand stripped off of it, which is the most beneficial part of that plant. But again, these two, these two materials are just incredible. I mean, that they do so many amazing things for us. And this is not talking about treating disease, right? This is not the pharmacological model. This is the nutritional natural model, talking about providing the raw materials that mother nature provides to us, that then again, allows ourselves to function properly as guided by the genes. And then whether that's some sort of process of restoring homeostasis, repair, healing, correction, whatever you wanna call it, that's the nutritional model. And that's why these things are so powerful.

Dr. John Lewis (17:42):

And we've published so many papers from all of our studies, whether it's from Alzheimer's, Ms HIV, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, healthy people. I mean, we've got a massive amount of information that we've published of this work that I'm just so proud of and all of my colleagues who I'm so grateful for and being part of my life and, and this message that I can share with people about how these polysaccharides can really be so beneficial and so helpful. But you really do have to get them from a dietary supplement. I don't know about you. We have here in Miami, we have aloe vera growing in our backyard, but I'm not snipping off the leaves every day sucking that gel down, it tastes nasty. It's 99% water, so you couldn't possibly get enough polysaccharide content from it anyway. But we've done all the hard work for the average person. We've taken the polysaccharides from the aloe vera and the rice brand concentrated into a powder. And that's what we, you know, I'm going out around the world kind of as the, the sugar man, you might, you might say the complex sugar man helping people understand, well, this,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:43):

Here comes the sugar man, <laugh>

Dr. John Lewis (18:44):

<Laugh>, that all sugars are bad for you, is just complete garbage. That's a nonsense statement.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:49):

Okay? So I'm one of those sugar is bad. I'm just gonna be honest with you. I'm one of those sugar, right.

Dr. John Lewis (18:55):

Okay. Well,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:56):

And

Dr. John Lewis (18:56):

In fact, it's like everything else. It has to be taken into context things,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (18:59):

Right? And we cannot live without it, right? So sugar is essential, but too much is the problem and the glycosylation of all of our cells that causes the inflammation. So, and I think that most people listening also are in that camp because just like, you know, a couple few decades ago in the eighties, it was drilled into us. Fat is bad, fat is bad. Well, then they come say, oh, our bad, no fat is good. You need it. All your cells are made in of fat, coated in fat, your brain is fat. And now it's, oh, sugar is bad. So that is the bandwagon that most people are on. So can you help educate our listeners as to, okay, you mentioned rice and you mentioned aloe vera as naturally occurring sources of polysaccharides. Where else might they be getting these? And can you help them understand why these aren't turned into simple sugars in their body readily and then glycosylated their cells and causing inflammation and damage? Can you help everybody understand that?

Dr. John Lewis (20:01):

Well, there are polysaccharides in lots of different plants in the plant kingdom, and, and I don't, one thing about me is I don't profess to be an expert in everything related to nutrition. I, I, anybody who comes off as that way to me is a bit of a charlatan or a show person. I just don't think you're, even if you're the smartest person on the planet, you don't have enough hours in the day to study everything about nutrition. So when it comes to things like all the different mushrooms, seaweed, all the different tubers, I mean, there are grains, there are just so many plants that have these polysaccharides in them. But one of the arguments that my colleagues and I have been making for years is that because of the way the food has food production process has changed. Now, if you're a, if you're your own farmer, you're a different category, which those are very few people today, but you, you have all of this genetic modification of our plants, of our crops.

Dr. John Lewis (20:51):

You have the inputs of all these chemicals into the soil. You have polluted air, polluted water. So all of these things have degraded. Ultimately, the end of the day, all of these changes over the last a hundred years have degraded the quality of our food. So people are not getting even in, you know, just pick anything A tomato from a hundred years ago is a very different plant than it is today. And so you're not getting enough nutrition content. I, again, I can't compare the polysaccharides and aloe vera and rice brand to some of these others. I have a little bit of knowledge about some of the, the different mushrooms, like lion's mane. But what I can say is, based on my review of the literature, just looking at some of these other different types of plants, our research, and not just from the University of Miami, I, I, you could look at some of the research that's been con conducted from other labs and other universities around the world.

Dr. John Lewis (21:40):

Collectively, when you put all this information together, when you talk about inflammation, well, that's exactly where these polysaccharides make as big of an impact as anything. I mean, we've showed time and time again that these, these polysaccharides help to regulate the immune system. So what does that mean? Well, as you know, the immune system has lots of different components to it. So you can look at different things, whether it's, you know, your CD fours, your CD eights, your B cells, your natural killer cells, your dendritic cells. I mean, there's just a whole, you know, it's like a panoply of different subsets within the immune system that helps to regulate not just keeping us protected against infection, but regulating and helping to keep and balance all of our other major organ systems. So classically, what we have determined over this, you know, just for me personally, over this almost 20 year period now, is these polysaccharides essentially function as signaling mechanisms to the immune system.

Dr. John Lewis (22:35):

Again, whether it's, you know, your CD fours or your CD eights or your natural killer cells, we've published a lot of that information, and I'm happy to share those articles with you. And so they just have such a different dynamic effect. And again, we contributed back to the fact that they have this very complex nature that for whatever reason, our inherent intelligence, and I don't know what that means, really, it's the spark of life, if you will, but something within ourselves have this ability to say, okay, this is information that I need, or this is material that I need to function. And again, guided by our genes, everything that we, you know, do is in terms of what we put into our system is guided by our genetic structure. So that's what we've showed time and time again. I mean, when you talk about, you know, high fructose corn syrup, this modified corn saccharide compared to the, the polysaccharide, the complex polysaccharide complex sugar from the aloe vera or the rice brand, they're just completely, entirely different materials.

Dr. John Lewis (23:34):

There's no amount of the polysaccharide that we're aware of that will cause you to have insulin resistance or any of these other things. In fact, even for people who have had like life, you know, altering end stage cancers, very serious forms of neurodegeneration. I have a friend here in town who had very serious cardiomyopathy from taking messenger RNA injections and got him back on his feet. I mean, there are all sorts of different things that, that we have showed beyond just our clinical trials. But anecdotally, in terms of how these polysaccharides, number one, lower inflammation, number two, modulate immune function, number three increase adult stem cell production. Number four, enhance your natural killer cell cytotoxicity number five, balance th one, th two components of the immune system. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And this is, again, not just one article or, you know, one study from, from our lab.

Dr. John Lewis (24:31):

This is around the world. This is an entirely complex amount of information that's been published over the last, well, several decades anyway. So I don't, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's difficult to put all this down into very simple terms. You can only dumb scientific language down, you know, to such a degree where it doesn't even make sense. But it's, it's basically just that these materials, I, the best way I can put it for a lay person is that these materials are recognized by our immune system, and they either, you know, they're almost like adaptogenic, if you wanna look at it from that perspective. Like they have this capacity to either turn things on that should be on to a higher level, or they turn things off that have been dysregulated and are chronically out of control to tamper those things down too. And again, regulating and balancing and cr returning things to homeostasis.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (25:27):

You know, it, it's interesting, I recently interviewed a doctor who is a proponent of the carnivore diet and teaches about that. And so it's interesting that that interview, and this one came kind of back to back because, you know, he really opened my eyes. He was talking about our belief system and how that really is a huge part of what informs our so-called quote unquote nutritional science in the West. They're really about beliefs, but none of the information that was put into the sad diet, standard American diet, actually a lot of that information was never properly researched, but it just became common beliefs among nutritionists. And so they put forth this dogma about what a quote unquote healthy diet was without it being properly researched. And now when people are coming along with these various diets, you know, vegan, vegetarian, ovo, pesco, lacto, vegetarian, carnivorous, paleo, keto, all of these things, now people are starting to really do the research and going back and looking at the original sad diet and saying, yeah, this stuff wasn't researched.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (26:46):

So all that to say, he really helped me confront my own belief system because this idea of I'm going to eat three and a half pounds of meat all day, and that that's a balanced diet, I have a visceral or negative reaction to that when he told me how much steak he eats in a day. But then he was just sharing with me a lot of the data about beef has 70,000 phytochemicals in it. Everybody says animal protein doesn't have phytochemicals. It does. So we have these, these very strong beliefs. So he really opened my eyes and then all the research. But then also what's interesting is I think that <laugh>, to your point that we started with, a lot of people eat for taste, not for nutritional content. Really, most of us in the west are eating a very refined diet full of chemicals, heavily laden with chemicals and not so much a, a natural diet at all.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (27:47):

So, and my question to the doctor who was talking about the carnivorous diet was isn't it really that if we put people to a diet that they're eating just naturally occurring substances, <laugh>, maybe they're gonna get improvement anyway. If everyone's eating high fructose corn syrup, bladen products, if we put them on a carnivore diet, if we put 'em on a plant-based diet, polysaccharide, whatever it is, aren't they going to improve in all these measures anyway? Because those chemical derivatives of protein-like substances have, like you said, the switches that turn off our immune system, turn off our T-cell natural killer cell, all of these, this different cellular differentiation turn off our stem cell production. So does it really matter? And so I wanna kind of put that to you because he kind of said, yeah, you might be right, <laugh>. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.

Dr. John Lewis (28:44):

I, you know, I look at these carnivore movement, to me, this is kind of just another iteration of what Atkins started with his first book back in, what was it, 72? I mean, it's a, it's hard to believe that started that long ago. And then ironically enough, that guy died of some version of cardiovascular disease. But I don't really, I mean to, to me, I just don't, I don't align it all. I mean, of course, I've been eating a plant-based diet for 27 years, so I wouldn't align with the carnivore diet. It makes no sense to me. I can't wrap my mind around the idea that the core of humanity needed to be a carnivore at any point in our existence, in our evolution. It doesn't make any sense to me. I, I mean, if you just look at our teeth, if you look at our gut, we look much more like herbivores than we do a true carnivore in the animal kingdom. So to me, I don't, it just doesn't, I don't understand this movement. I mean, to your point, yeah, if somebody's, if somebody's just seeing

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (29:39):

Data is amazing, the data on disease is just absolutely, it, it, it was jaw dropping to hear about all the research that's being done and really the outcomes they're getting. But I'm with you. You, there's nothing in our body that says we sure we've got the canine. So we are somewhat carnivorous, but certainly not only that. So I'm with you on that, but I'm starting to question after hearing all that research question, my belief system. And so I'm sorry to interrupt.

Dr. John Lewis (30:09):

Oh, no, that's okay. I mean, I grew, look, I'm, I'm, again, I grew up eating for taste. So my dad thought a meal was not a meal if it didn't have three things, a glass of milk, a piece of bread, and some kind of meat. It could have any other vegetables, grains, fruit along with it. And we ate a lot of fruits and vegetables. So I don't want to dismiss that. My parents were just completely negligent of eating, you know, good nutritious food. It was just that, again, if it didn't taste good, it didn't matter. If it was the healthiest thing on the planet, they weren't gonna eat it. But, so I grew up eating beef pretty much every day up until I was 20 something. And then in my early twenties, I cut down to maybe two times per year eating beef. And this was way before I decided to go plant-based.

Dr. John Lewis (30:52):

I just, I don't know, I was eating beef so much that it didn't, it, it didn't resonate. It didn't seem to continue resonating with my system. And I ate a lot of dairy growing up, and I was, I don't know, you know, just constantly constipated. I mean, I didn't know what a bowel movement was without being constipated. And as soon as I gave up dairy, literally within a few days, I was pooping like a champ. I mean, it completely changed my gut. So I knew for a fact from just that own, just that one little personal anecdote, eliminating dairy food outta my life made a huge difference in the way I felt. And, you know, who wants to sit on the toilet for 45 minutes doing his or her business? I don't think anybody does. But that <laugh> that that was my routine for my entire life until I gave up dairy.

Dr. John Lewis (31:39):

And so that for me was a very profound moment in my own little journey of life. But I just, for me, this carnivore stuff just doesn't make any sense. I mean, I, you know, to each his own, I mean, if you feel like that's what you should do and you think your body resonates with it, go for it. I just, to me, it, it's a very difficult bridge. I mean, it's one thing to be, you know, paleo or keto and say, well, I'm still gonna eat some vegetables and maybe some, you know, brown rice or something, and maybe a little bit of berries here and there, but just to say, oh, no, there's no plant that should be part of the human diet. That just doesn't make any sense to me. I, I mean, where does all of the, where do the, the other animals that are being eaten, where do they get their energy and their nutrition from? They get them from plants. No animal makes plants.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:30):

We're all parasitic on plants.

Dr. John Lewis (32:32):

That's right. I mean, animal,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:33):

We all paraic on plants. Every, every living thing.

Dr. John Lewis (32:35):

There's, there's not one animal on the planet that makes Omega-3 fatty acid. Every Omega-3 fatty acid comes from plants. So, you know, it's like, what are you talking about? I mean, it just doesn't, that whole notion of carnivore just makes zero sense.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (32:49):

I know I'm with you. But then the research is fascinating. But, you know, again, they don't have long-term data. And so I, I think that at some point, you know, I I I, I saw a friend a couple years ago, and I hadn't seen him for a while, and he looked emaciated. He had lost so much weight. He, he looked like he had no body fat. And he said he was doing this fruitarian diet that somebody was a proponent of to decrease his inflammation and reboot his immune system and all of this. And I mean, he looked like he was towards death to me, <laugh>.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (33:27):

But it, it's to my point that, you know, he said, well, his doctor's checking all his numbers and everything looks better than it has in decades, right. His cholesterol, his inflammatory parameters, everything. So he reassured me, but I think it's to the point that most people are eating a very unhealthy diet. So if you make any type of radical change to naturally occurring foods, you're going to get improvement. I think that's that's right. And so he said he was only gonna do it for six months, but then what next? And I also don't have this belief that the right, the diet is correct for each one of us. I mean, we come from very diverse areas all over the globe with na, natural habitats in our DNA kind of involved human DNA evolved in many places in concert with the plants that were locally available and the animals that were locally available. So I think there's something to be said for nature's magnificence and brilliance and understanding and orchestrating and engineering, oh, I'm gonna put these people here with these plants and animals because this is what they need and this type of environment.

Dr. John Lewis (34:35):

That's right. So

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (34:36):

Are you a proponent that people talk about what kind of diet in the work you're doing, you've found to be most healthy and beneficial for women, particularly women over 40 with midlife metabolic may mayhem, because that's what we're here talking about mostly. Well,

Dr. John Lewis (34:53):

I, I, again, I, this is my, somewhere between 27 and 28th year of eating a plant-based diet. So that's, I mean, I don't typically, I, I, I don't consider myself much of a preacher <laugh>. I'm more focused on, you know, spreading the message on my polysaccharide research, just because I think it's so profound and potentially beneficial regardless of your diet. And you, and again, you, you're not gonna get these polysaccharides from the diet. You really have to supplement with them. And it doesn't take a lot to, to have major benefit. But I think in general, I mean, if you talk about really just what you've said, eating real food, right? I mean, eating, trying to eat as much real food as possible, the way it looked like it came from Mother Nature. And of course, there, you know, there's processing. I mean, I, before I was on this baby duty night shift, I, I was eating a smoothie as my first meal a day.

Dr. John Lewis (35:41):

So you could argue that using a smoothie, using a blender is processing, right? I mean, it, I'm putting all these different ingredients into my Vitamix, and then I'm blending it up and that's my meal. Well, that's processed, you know, so like, that's another word that drives me crazy. I think people tend to get too outta control with the word processing, because how do you, there's, you know, it's like, it's, it's a continuum. It's not, there's no dichotomy there. So it's, and most of life is a continuum to some degree, but I just think that if you're mm-hmm <affirmative>. Predominantly eating mostly whole foods, and if you buy things that are in boxes or cans or whatever other package, just make sure that you understand what the ingredients are. I mean, that is definitely one thing for people to understand and learn is if you're reading a, an ingredient list, and that's not just the nutrition facts panel, that's everything underneath it.

Dr. John Lewis (36:34):

Make sure that you understand what those words are, and if you're confused or some of those words are just so chemical sounding that you don't even know what the heck they are, I would, my recommendation is put that thing back on the shelf. Like I wouldn't even buy it. Just stick to the, that, you know, as a lot of people advocate for, stick to the, the outer REM of the grocery store. And anytime you continue going deeper and deeper into the store, you're typically in the aisles where it's a lot of stuff that has had so much added to it that it's no longer food. It's more like food like substance.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (37:06):

Yes. I like the use the word refined. I agree with you. Processed can be, it's a spectrum. And putting something in your blender doesn't necessarily mean it's processed in the way we talk about when we talk about processed foods, but maybe refined foods is a better statement to use or, or right. Term to use. And when you look at the extracts, how people have taken food, real whole food, and then they break it down into component parts and put that in food, and then call it food. But it really is a food like product. It's not, it's like particle board in your right house.

Dr. John Lewis (37:45):

And it's the, it's the same with animal food too. I mean, you know, you look at a, you look at a chicken breast and you think, oh, that's real food. But wait a minute, that chicken was given drugs. It was given genetically modified corn and feed and everything else. It was treated in a way that, you know, completely disrespected that poor creature's life. Then once it was killed and, and processed, it was treated with all kinds of chemicals to keep it fresh. I mean, what's clean about that? Please tell me what is clean about all those chemicals that go into, to raising that bird and then turning it into something that's sitting at your grocery store that you then take home and cook. What is clean about that?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (38:27):

Yeah, it's, it's really an engineered chicken. And so it looks like a chicken. It might, that's right. Quack like a chicken. It walks like a chicken. It tastes like a chicken, but it's really not a chicken. And, and I think that really gets to something else I love to talk about. I'll just go on a little mini tangent, which is our compulsive avoidance of the things that we can't see with our five senses we don't think are real, when really the things that we can't see here, taste, touch, feel, smell, all the things that we can't detect with our five senses are really what's essential for our health and our wellbeing, and also make our lives meaningful. I mean, love is the thing, the example that I use, you can't put it in a box, you can't take a picture of it, but everybody knows it's one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful forces on the face of this earth.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (39:17):

You can't see it. You can't experience it with your five senses, but you know it, and it has the power to give life, take life away. And so it's the same with our nutrition. People need to really get out of this fat, well, it looks okay and it tastes okay, right? Right. So it must be healthy. Really, we've gone beyond that. You need to get really granular on the microscopic and even sub subatomic, like, what's happening with this food. So you mentioned earlier you can't, you're going to need to take a, a supplement that you, you can't take enough aloe vera or rice pan. Can you talk a little bit about that? Just because you would have to consume so many calories of these foods that contain polysaccharides, that you can't consume enough to get these health benefits. So where does that statement come from? And so how can people know what they need to do to start incorporating the benefits of polysaccharides into their life?

Dr. John Lewis (40:14):

Well, that's a great question. So again, I mean, if you have, you know, stage four cancer or advanced neurodegeneration, or some very serious cardiomyopathy or something like that, you might need a couple of grams per day. So we're talking what, eight calories. I mean, we're <laugh>, you know, compared to eating whatever the average American Eats today, 2,500, 3000 calories, we are talking about a very, very, very, very small fraction of the amount of macro nutrition that people are consuming, or macro energy, I guess is a better word. So for most people, you get a couple of hundred milligrams per day of these polysaccharides, and you're in good shape. So we're not even talking, I mean, you're more people are spending more money on their favorite Starbucks drink every day than they would be on taking these polysaccharides that have a completely different effect on the body.

Dr. John Lewis (41:05):

So let's not, I don't want anybody to leave this conversation confused that they've gotta, you know, consume just, you know, bucket loads of these polysaccharides every day to, to have any kind of a benefit. We're talking, again, a very, very small amount compared to your food intake. And again, I would just say that, you know, we've done the hard work for you. I mean, we've conducted all these clinical trials, we've validated this stuff. I mean, this is, this is my life's work. I put my name on the label. I mean, I'm not, there's no deception here. This is, this is my life's work, and I'm very proud of this work. You know, Dr. Lewis Nutrition, the brand Daily Brain Care, the flagship product that we created out of out of these clinical trials in Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. But again, I, you know, anybody can benefit from this.

Dr. John Lewis (41:48):

It doesn't have to be somebody with neurodegeneration. I've been on my own formula for 10 years. My mother, who's elderly, she's been on it a little over that. My wife started taking it over five years ago when she was pregnant with our first child. When our first child turned six months of age, when we started introducing solid food to her, I started giving her the polysaccharides. We'll do the same thing with my son when he turns six months old. So these are literally, you know, oxygen obviously is our first nutrient. And then after that we need vitamins and minerals and other essential things. But again, I would put these polysaccharides up against anything else that I'm aware of that Mother Nature provides for us for health and healing benefits. And, and, you know, we don't, we just talk so little about prevention. It's always about, oh gosh, I have this issue.

Dr. John Lewis (42:32):

What do I do about it? Well, how about we prevent things in the first place? Like, let's try to prevent things from happening to us <laugh> in the first place. Let's not get in a state of sickness and then have to figure out what to do about it. Let's not get there in the first place. So take your polysaccharide, your vitamin D, your calcium, your magnesium. You know, there are several things that people are insufficient or deficient in today, but I would put these polysaccharides at, I mean, they're at the top of my list. And for anybody who knows me, the,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (43:00):

So I'm to say I am a, a 52-year-old woman, and I'm having the symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. Number one, weight gain, right? 50 half of us, 50% of us overweight are obese by the time we're 53 quarters of us overweight or obese by the time we're 60. So I've got a weight problem. I am tired, I am caffeine dependent, and I'm having to drink coffee to wind up in the morning. And then I'm so irritable, <laugh>, restless, irritable, and discontent. I gotta have wine to wind down. And then my brain, my thinking function is just foggy and not right. Top 1, 2, 3 symptoms of midlife metabolic mayhem. So you tell me, I'm gonna add these polysaccharides, Dr. John, to my diet, and then what am I gonna notice with those top three symptoms? What's gonna change first?

Dr. John Lewis (43:48):

Well, so that is, that's a great question. So, number one, one of the things that people always report better about is sleep. And as you well know, we have millions of people, they don't even necessarily have to have insomnia, but they have, let's call it disrupted or just not refreshing sleep. So sleep is a big thing that re that people report to us. So sleeping obviously cures a lot of ills, and so that'll be one thing that will happen. Number two, you mentioned energy or feeling fatigued. I've got a lot of people that swear by it in terms of their energy levels. I've, I even have some people that say they cannot take it too late in the day because they get such a boost that it will actually keep them awake. Now, daily brain care has no caffeine in it. It has literally zero caffeine in it.

Dr. John Lewis (44:31):

So this is not working as a stimulant like coffee is it's a completely different mechanism, if you will. This is, again, enabling the cells to function properly guided by this material that the genes recognize. So favorably weight, I mean, obviously that's a huge issue. I would not say that daily brain care is like some fat burner that people like to throw around that term. It's not, it's not necessarily that. But in conjunction with, you know, starting to get back to a more regular diet or a not regular a whole food diet and exercise, of course there is an, there is part of the equation that we have to address with exercise and physical activity. Unfortunately, most people are never gonna exercise their weight to weight loss. It's just not gonna happen. So it really has to come down to nutrition. But I would say that the way the daily brain care works in terms of helping to tamper down chronic inflammation, boost your adult stem cell production and regulate some of these different components of your immune system, all of that is gonna help you to get less inflamed over time, which is obviously huge.

Dr. John Lewis (45:39):

And then when you combine that with the adult stem cell production increase, now you're sending out these amazing stem cells that your own body creates to address areas of, let's call them again, trauma damage, you know, whatever term you'd like to prefer. This could be something like, you know, a joint issue or, you know, something that just continues to nag at you that you can't really figure out. But that would be so important too, to help that person with, you know, the fatigue. And again, I, I don't wanna go too far down the road of, of helping to manage weight, but it's certainly there is a role for all that. I mean, obviously we can't talk about overweight or obesity without addressing the inflammatory component to that. So the way the, the, that this, this formula will help with addressing some of these different issues, I think for the, the woman out there who's in her early fifties and really struggling, it's gonna help her with, with getting to a better you know, better state of health.

Dr. John Lewis (46:38):

I mean, and some people, it actually happens like very quickly. I, there is a group of people I refer to as super responders. It's probably about 20 or 30% of the people who take this formula. They will literally start noticing the, these effects within just a couple of days. That's, again, a smaller number of people. The majority of people will take usually 30 to 60 days, but it's, it's really incredible what these polysaccharides will do. I I just, I don't know of anything else like them in terms of how these effects work and, and just how amazing I, I've just, it is been an incredible ride for me over this nearly last 20 years. And I, I have so much more work to do and mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so much more hopefully lives to touch, but it's, it's just incredible. And even for you, you know, you folks in the carnivore movement, don't be so close-minded that you think you can't enjoy the benefit of these plants just because you're taking, you know, 500 milligrams or a couple of grams a day, that's not gonna throw off your cana your carnivore movement. It's <laugh> it really isn't

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (47:37):

<Laugh>. Yeah. So thank you so much Dr. John for the work you're doing for your passion about helping people get healthier. I am passionate about that as well. Thank you, Dr. Karen. I wanna wrap up. I love these quotes that you shared, <laugh> you shared with me before we started recording that I just wanna share with everyone. You, you literally are what you eat. I once saw a posting on social media and it was a person looking in the mirror. And in the mirror what they saw was the, you know, one cheek was broccoli, the other cheek was cauliflower. There was, you know, a chicken wing on their forehead. And so their whole body was everything they had eaten. And you are what you eat <laugh>. You really, and Dr. John also shared this garbage in, garbage out. So if you're eating garbage, guess what?

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (48:23):

Your cells are gonna be made of garbage. And that's right. Cells that are made of garbage can't run a proper properly functioning immune system. That's right. Cells that are garbage just can't heal your eyes, can't heal everything that needs to be healed and fixed in your body. And I think it was Hippocrates originally who said, let food be thy medicine and medicine. Yes. Be th food. It really is next to oxygen. Thank you for pointing that out, Dr. John, our number one nutrient. Right? That's right. You're deprived of oxygen for a few minutes, you don't have a life anymore. So it is our number one nutrient and food would be, and water our number two and three nutrients. That's right. So make it the best. Optimize that input for yourself. Dr. John, thank you so much. Do you wanna share with everyone where they can reach out to you, find you online and find out more about you and connect with you and maybe even try your products if they're interested?

Dr. John Lewis (49:19):

Sure. Dr. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I'd be happy to come back anytime. If if anyone would like to learn more, please go to Dr. Lewis nutrition.com. DR lewis, L-E-W-I-S nutrition.com. That's our primary website where we have just tons of really good information. I think people will feel inspired by reading a lot of the information, watching a lot of the videos there. And we're under Dr. Lewis Nutrition on, on all the typical social media channels as well. Although those are mostly just short videos, but you can reach us by email, phone any way you'd like. Daily Brain Care is our flagship product from all of this research from my academic career at the University of Miami. And I'm just, again, I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk to you and your listeners today, and if anyone has any issues they think that they might wanna reach out to me about, I'd be more than happy to help. So thank you again for this time. I really am grateful.

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (50:15):

Awesome. Thank you. We're so grateful to have you on as well. Good luck with your seven week old. Hopefully the sleep schedule and the witching hour gets a little bit better. I know how challenging, remember how challenging that can be. So thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to speak with us. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for joining us for another episode of the Hormone Prosperity Podcast, where we teach you how to get out of hormonal poverty and into hormonal prosperity so that you can get off the couch into your genes and back into life. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this episode, especially since we've been talking about the carnivore diet. And now we're talking about this. What are your thoughts on the proper diet and nutrition? So reach out to me on social media and let me know and we'll have a conversation about it. I'll see you again next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all,

Dr. Kyrin Dunston (51:14):

Thank you so much for joining me on your journey from hormonal poverty into the promised land of hormonal prosperity. Loved today's episode. Share it with someone you care about, love the show. Consider writing a review and help other women find it too. Remember, we're all in this together right now. There are well over 100 million women suffering in hormonal poverty with without answers. Please be of service by sharing, rating and reviewing the show. Help us reach at least 1 million of these women this coming year from one previously suffering woman to another. I thank you. See you next week.