#29 A Surgeon’s Guide to a Plant Based Diet

Ken Brown
All right, here we are with the gut check project, Episode 29 a super special episode because we have a guest co host, Eric Rieger was unavailable. And so we had a guest co host today it is Dr. Doug Won, who’s here. Welcome to the studio, my friend.

Dr. Won
Thank you so much for having me here. Truly an honor.

Ken Brown
Well, I think that this is gonna be a really really cool show. You’re doing A lot of functional things you’re really big into treating the whole person. Your background, I think is really cool. I am gonna warn you though. I hope you’re a pretty smart guy because Eric’s a smart guy. You got some big shoes to fill in. So why don’t we at least find out like if you’re, you know, like where you actually came from and everything. Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Won
Sure. I’m from South Korea, immigrated to Irving, Texas when I was 11 years old and went to elementary, middle school and high school in Irving MacArthur High School, go Cardinals. And then after that, I went to Northwestern University. I majored in biology and biomedical engineering, and then went to medical school at utmb in Galveston, and once I was done with the medical school, pursued orthopedic surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, and did spine surgery fellowship in Michigan, and then came right back to Irving, Texas, to treat my friends and family members and my local community and Irving, the city that I love, I went back to it and been there ever since.

Ken Brown
Yeah, you’re way smarter than Eric. Yeah. Of course right now he’s probably arguing I didn’t hear anything about Texas Tech. So you know, so in his mind, you didn’t go to Texas Tech. You’re not nearly as smart. But I guess you did say a few other things Northwestern, double major biology, biomedical engineering and everything. So, yeah, I think that I think the show is going to be really great. What I want to do with this show today, you have you and I have very similar passions. We’re really big into the functional medicine side of things. I want to cover some anti aging stuff. I want to talk about how supplements and nutrients can actually augment a lot of these different things that talk about your past. Now. You are one of the most accomplished orthopedic spine surgeons and I can I have to pick your brain before we even jump in. I was actually talking to a very difficult patient of mine and I wanted to throw out a disease and just see if you’ve ever dealt with any of this. I believe That we have somebody who is smoldering into ankylosing spondylitis. Now this actually happened to one of our co workers, but now I’m treating somebody who’s acting a lot like she did. She spent about two years just sort of, you knew something wasn’t right. And then pow it just kind of all popped up. Have you had some experience with autoimmune diseases and stuff like that specifically as ankylosing spondylitis?

Dr. Won
Yeah, absolutely. In our spine clinic, we used to see a lot of patients with ankylosing spondylitis. And then also patients who didn’t quite have the the conditions, but they were HLA 27 positive, and they were brewing the different types of symptoms and conditions. And then we also deal with because I also deal with lifestyle medicine. We’ve actually seen a lot of different kinds of patients with autoimmune disease. And what we usually tell patients is that your genetics and genes may load the gun, but you actually pulled the trigger through your nutrition and lifestyle.

Ken Brown
i like how you say that. Yeah, totally. So one of the things I just want to get this out of the way that you You’re a very accomplished orthopedic surgeon. You’re currently involved a little bit of a legal situation that you’re appealing. What I think is amazing what you have done is because you have to put your surgical practice on hold for a little bit. Yes, you have shifted, and have still taken on the role of being a doctor, helping people and being an educator, you have not slowed down at all, you are the embodiment of resilience of moving through. I’m super, I think that’s really, really neat. And why did you decide to kind of shift gears, I mean, you were going from scalpel. And I get that you have to take a little break from that. But a lot of people like you would just say, I’ll use this as a break to go tour the world and say hi to things and you went I’m gonna use this as my opportunity to help more people.

Dr. Won
Thank you. You know, helping people and making a big impact was my passion. That is a reason why I went into medicine and went into medicine because you know, my father suffered from back and he had four back surgeries, and his life was ruined for about 30 years with severe pain and in life You come up with so many different challenges. Either you can crumble or or decide to just sit back, and then the life continue to punch you, or you can stand back, you know, stand up again, and continue to move on forward. And what got me going was as long as I can make an impact and help all the patients, and my passion was biohacking, which I’ve been doing, you know, all my life. And what I realized was that in medical school, we really didn’t learn how to cure the disease. We learned to manage the disease. And through this experience, I really learned how to better manage and then in many incidences, and cure the patients, and wanted to continue to make an impact and help patients. That’s what gets me going and that’s what’s getting me up every single morning. And no matter what anybody says, as long as I feel good about you know what I’m doing and continue to practice medicine in different way. Through health coaching, and, you know, even approaching and these days, I also teach a lot of doctors in Africa. How to treat chronic disease.

Dr. Won
You teach doctors in Africa?

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
Okay. I got a segway out of that for a second. What? Tell me about that?

Dr. Won
Yeah, so I came in contact with a physician who was really into preventive medicine. He’s a personal doctor to the president of Cameroon. In Africa right now, they’re facing so many different chronic disease. In the past, before the Africa became developed, there was no such thing as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or obesity. But as the countries are becoming wealthier, and countries are becoming more developed, they’re now importing American disease such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and they obviously can’t afford to treat the patients with American medicine. So they’re looking for ways to treat the patients naturally, and also the citizens most of the people in Africa are still hesitant about Modern medicine. So we got in contact through a mutual friend. And we decided to teach the the physicians there, how to reverse the disease naturally. And then also importantly, to prevent them.

Ken Brown
Wow and so are you doing some sort of zoom with them? Do you have a lecture series? How are you doing this?

Dr. Won
Yeah. So every Saturday morning, I connect through them through zoom meeting. Thank goodness for technology. I don’t have to physically be in Africa. I would love to visit the continent, sometime soon. When things free up, but utilizing the technology, we provide the lectures, mostly to physicians, but also just about anyone who’s interested. And we open it up to the whole community. And at one point, we had people from seven different countries connecting seven different countries in Africa.

Ken Brown
Oh, wow. That is that is fantastic. So even before you had to kind of take this little hiatus from actually cutting on people and doing spine surgery, you’ve been thinking about this for a long time. You’ve been working towards the changing, changing the disease progress, you made a living for many years taking care of the end problem of people having wearing their bodies down, then you as the spine surgeon go in, and you take away their pain and you help them. But even then you were thinking, and what can we do to prevent this?

Dr. Won
Yes. Oh, absolutely. So we’ve been giving free seminars on how to prevent and reverse chronic disease naturally, for about three years. I initially did not necessarily want to give the seminars myself, I’m not a good public speaker. And so I wanted to set up the infrastructure and then invite one of the physicians to do it. And he did it in a couple of times, but it took him away from the family. And it takes a lot of effort to prepare different topics. So I thought this was so important. And as you know, when we’re in medical school, maybe we had an hour or two hours of lectures of nutrition, and how to reverse the disease naturally. Well, actually, we didn’t learn anything about how to reverse the disease naturally in medical school. We learn how to just manage the disease. And so once I saw the light, I said, I have to share this information with everyone as many people as possible

Ken Brown
Even as a gastroenterologist when I trained as a fellow, it is called the division of gastroenterology and nutrition. And I think we got like, half hour a week on nutrition. I know that it’s supposed to a split the title. Gastroenterology and nutrition.

Dr. Won
Yeah. And look at the hospital. You know, once I had a patient after a very big surgery, and he had a mild, MI you know, mild heart attack. And the next morning when I went up to the patients for patient had eggs, bacon cheese, for breakfast and lunch, I said, this is wrong, and then go to any hospitals, whether it’s Dallas or anywhere else, go to the cafeteria, the hospitals are serving disease causing food in the cafeteria and to the patients. I said this is wrong, right. That is the true crime. And I said, you know, it was one of our mission to to really empower the people and teach me How to Prevent and reverse the disease themselves.

Ken Brown
We should do a video where you actually come to my hospital to the doctors lounge. They give free food to the doctors and you walk around that doctors lounge. There’s bags of m&ms. I’ve taken pictures of this. There’s m&ms there’s, this is really funny. There’s actually bowls of like gummy bears. And I’ll watch and people will just go by just grab a head. Start eating on the way out. I’m like, there’s so many things wrong with that. Not just the food, but a lot of hands been in that bowl.

Dr. Won
Yeah, actually, I got in trouble with that one of the hospitals here locally in Dallas I actually took a picture of what they were serving at the doctors lounge and then post it on the social media. Oh, and then I got called into the principal’s office. The hospital CEO.

Ken Brown
Oh, before we get called into the principal’s office, since I’m not good at this part. This is what Eric does real well. One thing disclaimer both Dr. Won and myself are real doctors yet this is not intended to treat anybody or give any medical advice if you have that unusual rash or joint pain or anything, this is not here to cure or treat you. But this could help cure whatever it is or not, or at least reverse what’s going on by lifestyle changes, not through medical advice. And the other thing that we always need to do is really give love to our sponsors. Our sponsors Atrantil my baby, my little polyphenol complex, which we’re going to get into a lot of stuff about this because Dr. Won is a whole food plant based doctor. And those vegetables all have polyphenols similar to what we have, in Atrantil. And we do know that that actually can work like the Mediterranean diet, and do all different kinds of things. And of course, the KBMD health CBD, I’m a big fan of cannabadial, we get into the science of it, we’re going to learn more and more. I don’t know if you’ve gotten too much into that. But the one thing that we talk about a lot because I start meeting scientists, like we have discussed before when you have when doctors say there’s no science and then you’re meeting the bench researchers that are out there. There’s gonna be a field like you’re an orthopedic spine surgeon you’re a subspecialty of a subspecialty. I’m a gastroenterologist I’m a subspecialty of a sub specialty. I guess yours is sub sub sub because you did spine after orthopedic. Your your next level, even though you didn’t go to Texas Tech, we’re gonna forgive you for that.

Dr. Won
Thank you.

Ken Brown
Yeah, that’s, this is just for Eric because he gets so upset if we don’t discuss that. But even when you’re sitting there as a sub sub specialist, we’ve got all these people with knowledge in other fields, that then you start realizing you could be a sub sub specialist. So I’ve met researchers that I call Endocannabinoidologists because they understand so much on the molecular basis of the endocannabinoid system, which I think eventually we’re going to get to, but I think all of it gets corrected if you eat right and live the right lifestyle. So our little disclaimers go to Atrantil.com or go to KBMdhealth.com and take a look at the CBD. So that’s usually a Does that a whole lot smoother? That’s not really my…

Dr. Won
I think you did great.

Ken Brown
We have to get that out of there. So, all right, getting back to you, because I this is a rare opportunity to have somebody with both your background, your your skill set. And now this this continual pursuit, this continual change. I’m very similar to you, I’ve realized at this stage of my life, that moving forward is what keeps me happy. Always trying to see okay, what what can we do? What can we do for the next thing? What can we do for the next level? I try to always talk about a recent news article or something and I want to bring this up. Not to put you on the spot. Dr. Won, How old are you?

Dr. Won
I am 48 years old.

Ken Brown
You don’t look it 48 years old. Awesome. An article just came out out of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which takes on the myth that life begins at age 40. This is kind of interesting, according to this very large study, that they looked at over 257 different countries, different socio economic stages and all that. Fascinating that you’re saying that Africa is now getting these Western diseases

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
So it’s it’s, it’s impervious to everybody. The whole world is having the same crisis that I think we face. We just got there a little quicker than everybody else.

Dr. Won
Oh, absolutely.

Ken Brown
What they looked at is that there is a U shaped curve for happiness. And as it turns out, it bottoms out at age 47.2. And the reason why I bring this up is that there’s a lot of people and they were trying to figure out why is it genetics? Is it that the stressors are too much? Is it that disease start setting in right about then you start realizing your own mortality and all these other things. They don’t know exactly why, but they were able to account for education, marital status, all these things. And they did show that although it bottoms out by 48 49, people are able to find their way out and they can usually do it through community and through purpose.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
So both you and I are beyond that now. So now we’re in the happiness zone. And I think that you’ve done exactly that you got through a little curveball and you’re like, I’m just gonna keep moving. and I’m going to do this through community and purpose. And what it sounds like, is that the first thing you did is say, I’m going to give free lectures. Tell me about that.

Dr. Won
Yeah, so we’ve been hosting a free seminar, teaching people how to prevent and reverse their chronic disease, and through whole food plant based nutrition. And there’s a it’s not just in nutrition itself, but it’s a whole lifestyle. And that’s why we don’t like to call it you know, plant based diet is a plant based nutrition and lifestyle. And what I realized was I started going into plant base once I lost a few of my colleagues to cancer, they’re physicians, and I myself, always thought, Hey, you know, there’s a chance that I might die from cancer and the reason for that is because I’ve done a tremendous amount of a minimally invasive surgery and use two interpretive X ray machines and, and got significant amount of radiation exposure.

Ken Brown
Just explain real quick, minimally invasive and why you would have to be using an X ray machine

Dr. Won
So a traditional spine surgery, you would make a big incision, right and then open up the spine, take away the, you know, the fat, the fascia and the muscle and then strip all of them off and gain access to the spine. And the whole concept of minimally invasive surgeries, not disrupting the soft tissue, you would make a very small incision, and then utilizing the X ray machine at the time. Now these days, you can use imaging guidance with minimal amount of radiation. But when we were first starting out 15 years ago, it was the typical X ray machine. We were protected with Lead But still, we got a lot of exposure to radiation. So I used to joke around saying I’ll probably die of cancer someday. But what I realized was that I don’t want to die of cancer Who does? So I started doing just a lot of research how to prevent cancer. And I just, you know, went through about thousand different papers, scientific papers, I realized we all have cancer cells, every single one of us have cancer, so we have cancer. So when we’re diagnosed with cancer is a clinically significant cancer that we which we can prevent In many times and reverse, even the study from the MD Anderson state state study showed that number one cause of a cancer was diet. Number two was the tobacco. Number three is obesity, which leads back to the diet, right? And then the genetics makes up the smallest percentage, you know, no more than five to 10%. So we actually have to control

Ken Brown
Use your analogy one more time with a gun. I like that.

Dr. Won
Yeah, it is the gene or genetic loads the gun, and then the diet and lifestyle pulls the trigger. And so in that we now with better understanding of epigenetics, that the the genes are like the light switches, depending on our nutrition and lifestyle, we actually have the ability to turn them on and turn them off. So So through that approach, I discovered whole food plant based nutrition, which has worked wonders for me, instantaneously, within six weeks, I lost about you know, 25 pounds, and after age 40. They said if you do exactly the same activities level eat same thing. You’re going to gain about a pound or 2 every single year, if you know then within 10 years, that’s additional 20 pounds. And so starting 40…

Ken Brown
I’m sorry to interrupt. I just want to clarify this one thing you chose to go plant based Whole Foods based on the thousands of articles that you researched.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
So you were not like watching Netflix and stuff. I’m going to I’m going to follow this what the health diet or I’m going to do the game changers This is based you are not influenced you did it all on your own correct?

Dr. Won
Yeah. So I actually did it before all those documentaries came out. And the researchers were there. And and what happened was one of my friends from medical school, he came to visit me at one time and then he gave me a book called China Study. And I thought, maybe because he knew that I was also into business. This was about economics book. I didn’t even see the cover. And then I kind of put it in the bookshelf and I forgot about it for a long time. And then once I started doing the research, there’s a The China Study kept on coming up. And I said, Wait a minute, I think I have a book called China Study. Written by Dr. Campbell from Cornell, and now pulled it out, read it cover to cover, along with other studies, and then realize you can actually reverse the disease. And this has been the studies been going on, you know, there’s been studies since 1950s. And so I was convinced I said, You know what, I’m going to do this for myself. And without even trying at first thing I did was wait is, you know, important, but not the most important thing, but I instantaneously lost 25 pounds. And I was back at the weight when I was in high school. And you haven’t seen many you know, you don’t most people think there’s not too many, you know, overweight or obese Asians? Well, in America, there are plenty not and maybe not in Asia, and I was becoming one of them. And so instantaneously, I was back into my high school weight. And then I started exercising on regular basis, and I felt so much better and now I’m I feel better and stronger than when I was in high school. And until about, you know, three years ago, I couldn’t even do a single pull up. And and now I can do quite a bit and my goal is by the time I’m 50 I’m going to be able to do muscle up.

Ken Brown
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I got to actually Eric super into CrossFit. So he can teach you the whole technique on that.

Dr. Won
That’ll be great.

Ken Brown
We can sit there and do that. It was on last week’s show of the week before we actually discussed the fact that when coke really started penetrating China, that’s really when their obesity problems started the high fructose corn syrup and all that

Dr. Won
Oh, yeah. Yeah, all the the processed food, right. And then, you know, along with the, you know, meat consumption, and as a developed countries are getting wealthier and wealthier they’re eating just like American Standard American Diet, right, all the processed food, all the sugar, all the the, you know, high fat animal products. Even in America, average Americans consume about 250 pounds of animal products every single year, which is a tremendous amount, right? And so, and then the China’s Study…

Ken Brown
How many pounds?

Dr. Won
250 pounds. I thought that’s a that’s a lot right? That’s average Americans since I’m I don’t eat any somebody is eating 500 pounds of meat every single year right?

Ken Brown
I’m gonna look at that cow and go. I’m gonna eat half of you this year. The whole cow.

Dr. Won
That is a tremendous amount. I think they said also during the Superbowl, I don’t know how they come up with the numbers. Every every year during the Superbowl people consume about 1.6 billion chicken wings. Oh my god.

Ken Brown
1.6 billion chicken wings. Yes. For the for the Super Bowl.

Dr. Won
Super Bowl.

Ken Brown
All right. Yeah, that is a lot of wingless chickens running around.

Dr. Won
Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know that the chicken these days doesn’t look anything like the chickens from let’s say even hundred years ago, because they’re genetically modified, you know, and they have so much more antibiotics. They have so much more chemicals, growth hormones, and so people are so concerned about eating food that’s not Genetically modified but most people in America don’t know where the food comes from. And they don’t really think about it especially when it’s in a hamburger or chicken sandwich which they really do need to pay attention whether you’re plant based or not, you should really know where your food comes from.

Ken Brown
You know, I mean I love having you on here because even as gastroenterologist and even though I think like kind of we want to treat the whole body I’ve I have not spent that much time really going over the whole diet thing because I naively am like okay, this is the weight I want to be. This is kind of what I want to look like when I’m when I’m at the beach is you know, if I start not seeing the the ABS or we go from that six pack to the four pack to the two pack to the no pack. Then I just start working out more. Yeah. And I got a little rude wake up call. Last week I went to I have a functional medicine practitioner. His name’s Kevin Wilson. It’s smart wellness now. And you know, they they do real Like deep dive into the blood work so it isn’t just HDL LDL, it’s you know, it’s LDL, C it’s Apolipoprotein B, it’s all this. And my cholesterol went up. I’m feeling better than I ever felt what? And he’s like, yeah, you’re doing something wrong, buddy. Yeah, and you know, and quite honestly, I’m pretty much paleo so i don’t i don’t really do dairy or gluten, but I will mowdown some meat. Got to eat my 500 lbs. So you got me rethinking. So he’s given me three months to try and reverse this. So I’m starting a little bit slow and so I’m not I’m gonna start watching your videos for sure. Because I did the thing that most people do. I went and watch Game Changers on Netflix and and which is a very fascinating documentary in the sense that that got more traction than what the health and knives over forks and all those other vegan propaganda ones, because I think that they were talking about performance.

Dr. Won
Yes,

Ken Brown
What you’re describing is exactly that you’re you this is not an ethical thing. This is not a a conscious choice. You were like, No, I did my research this, I can be healthier.

Dr. Won
Yes. I mean, I did this because for my health, and you know, I always tell people that I want to live until 120 years old, I may have had a better chance if I actually started when I was in my 20s.

Ken Brown
You know, that will just be you. And Dave Aspy having tea together because he says the exact same thing on his podcast.

Dr. Won
I think he says he wants to live forever. And so I don’t know if that’s possible yet. But they said he, if you do it, right, the kids who are born today have a potential to live until 150 years old

Ken Brown
A hundred and 50 years old, have the potential?

Dr. Won
Have the potential. But but the sad thing is the kids you know, between age 10 to 12 years old, what percentage of the kids actually have early signs of atherosclerosis? 75%

Ken Brown
What?

Dr. Won
75% of the kids between age 10 to 12 years old, have already fatty strix.

Ken Brown
No!

Dr. Won
They all found that the…

Ken Brown
That’s nuts there’s no way!

Dr. Won
Even the fetuses are now showing up. unfortunate event because, you know, whatever, you know, may have happened. But when they do an autopsy on fetus, even the fetus, some of the fetus actually have, you know, some fatty Strix, depending on Mother’s, you know, a vascular system. Right? So, you’re starting at life already having early signs of cardiovascular disease, what is that? Right? And so when mom said, you know, I’m really, you know, sensitive to listen moms who are pregnant, and then also parents, they have such a difficult, you know, challenges, you know, feeding their kids, but they’re not really thinking about what they’re serving them, right. And I cringe when I go to a breakfast, and then you know, next table, you know, parents are serving their kids bacon, or hotdogs, and the kids and the food that is known by World Health Organization as a group one carcinogen, right. So I think we need to really step back and educate the public and help them see what they’re putting on their, on their table. And when I saw the article where the kids, you know, between 10 and 12 years old, 75% of them had already have signs of, you know, cardiovascular disease. I mean, that’s terrible. We’re not doing something right. And we spend so much money on managing the disease, which we don’t do very well. But and, you know, completely forgetting about preventative medicine because there’s no money in preventive medicine. Right? That’s that was our mission is to actually go to community and and teach them how to eat properly. And so, so we’ve done not only lectures at our clinic, but also if anybody wants to hear us talk. We’ll go and give a talk. And we’ve gone down to the south side and then the African American churches to church in Richardson at Methodist, you know, pretty much 99% Caucasian, you know, congregation. Or you know, community centers who wants to learn about…

Ken Brown
You still have the guts to go to a nice Korean BBQ establishment and give a talk? I like Korean bbq man!

Dr. Won
Yeah, you know, for whatever reason Koreans were known for Korean barbecue, but in Korea actually. Their health is declining like in China because the meat consumption has increased processed food, and then their lifestyle is changing. But you know, they used to be one of the healthiest country in the world, because they were too poor to actually eat meat. It wasn’t available. Everyone wants to eat. So if you look at all the countries, all the cities and along the Blue Zones, the the cities that have the most amount of centenarians, most people are poor. So by being rich, yeah, you may have money to spend it, but you’re actually ruining your health.

Ken Brown
Alright. So I was going to ask you this, and it’s a perfect it’s a perfect segue right now. So I was talking to one of my patients today that she’s going to be a guest here shortly what happens to have Crohn’s disease and gives back to the community just like you she works as a counselor and does all this and she happens to be a speech therapist for underprivileged kids with autism. So part of this, you know, they, they send them with the with the school system. And so her and I started talking, I started talking about how last week we did a whole show on a chemical that makes plastic flexible, called DEHP you’ve been exposed to it a ton as a doctor. So have I that’s what IV bags are. That’s what the tubing is, all the catheters and tools that we use to be flexible so that we’re not puncturing where we don’t want to use this chemical dehp. And when you said in utero, they’re finding stuff as it turns out in utero, if a if a woman is exposed to it, it just goes to the fetus and causes all kinds of stuff.

Dr. Won
Oh, wow.

Ken Brown
So what her and I talked about is I’m like man, well, what can what can you do to circumvent this autism at you know, I mean, basically epidemic She’s like they’re too poor to eat healthy.

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
So now you just said that when countries were poor, they ate healthier. So let’s talk about the cost of, of living your lifestyle. Is it possible if I don’t have a high income to eat a plant based whole food diet?

Dr. Won
Absolutely. When people are thinking Whole Foods plant based, I think a lot of people get that confused and they think it’s vegan. And then and they get meat replacement products, which are actually quite expensive. Right?

Dr. Won
So when you do…

Ken Brown
This guy did that when he watched game changers and it didn’t work out well.

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
Because I think the either the fillers or the soy or something may be very inflamed.

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
So I backed off.

Dr. Won
So one of the things I really you know, it’s also talked to the vegan community is that you know, they’ve already given up the meat which is the one of the most difficult thing for a lot of people. However, they also need to get away from the processed food because most of the the meat replacement products are processed. So when you’re eating a whole food plant based, you are eating non processed or minimally processed food. And so the best place you know, and the best pharmacy is actually with F, you know, FARMACY right Farmacy is in the produce section, that is the medicine, that’s where people need to go shop. And so if you get dried beans, it costs pennies, right? Versus, you know, getting ground beef or getting chicken breast. So actually eating whole food plant based can be very, very inexpensive. That’s why and along the the Blue Zones, the you know, like nicoya, Costa Rica, Okinawa, Japan, you know, Sardinia, and aquaria. All those countries, all those communities, people were relatively poor, they’re not wealthy at all, even especially like nicoya they were eating mostly beans

Ken Brown
Where’s the Nicoya?

Dr. Won
Costa Rica.

Ken Brown
Okay.

Dr. Won
Yeah. And it’s one of the cities and Blue Zones that has the most amount of centenarians, right? And and there were most they’re all 98% eating plants because they were too poor to eat meat. And they’re living beyond and then they didn’t necessarily go to the gym, you know, or CrossFit or 24 Hour Fitness, because they walked every day everywhere, they didn’t have cars, right? So they’re moving their body every single day. They’re eating mostly plant, and because that’s all they had available to them. And then they had sense of community and, and they had sense of purpose. And you mentioned purpose earlier, I think that is so critical. You have to have a reason for living, right? You have to have why, as long as you have why, and sense of purpose, no matter what challenges are in front of you, you can overcome them. And that’s how powerful human beings are. And if you decide to just give up, that is a failure. And no matter how many mistakes you make, how many, you know, failures and debt that you face, as long as you stand back up, and then continue to, you know, pursue your purpose and your why I think Most people will be very, very happy.

Ken Brown
Yeah, I think that you saying that you came at 11 years old, you started your journey, probably not the easiest time in your life.

Dr. Won
Not at all, I didn’t know how to speak English. And but all our family, you know, including my parents, we worked as a janitors, you know, don’t want to get my parents in trouble. But when we’re 12,13,14 years old, we used to go help our parents, you know, clean the toilets in the building and then I still pass by one of the buildings we used to clean when I was 14 years old. And and that’s what we did as a family. And then they, you know, open to the flea market store. My mother was shot at, you know, twice when she was working at the flea market store when she was being robbed. Right. And luckily, they missed, thank goodness and then where my parents lived after I left for college. There was a drive by shooting at my parents house. They got the wrong House, it was supposed to be the next door. But my parents were asleep. And then fortunately, their windows were shattered. And so, you know, we grew up very humble. And a lot of people think that, you know, you’re a doctor, you must have come from a doctor family. That wasn’t the case at all. And we live in the government assisted housing. But, you know, our parents always gave us you know, good foundation, and always, you know, taught us to have purpose in life. And that really, you know, sunk in with us for you know, since we were little child Yeah, and, and in always the life force, you know, living the life with purpose, and, and that was our mission.

Ken Brown
So, you come over here you go through this kind of hardship. Now, we kind of tongue in cheek, talked about how I hope you’re as smart as Eric obviously Eric’s a very smart guy. He’s my crna and he’s he could he’s still continues to do whatever he wants to do he has entrepreneurial spirit very, very like minded like us. He’s very big into purpose into raising his kids the right way and all that stuff. But your your academic background is super impressive. I mean, you know, just for the average person that says, Oh, that’s a doctor. Now there’s levels of doctor, there’s levels of med schools, you gotta really work to get into some of these places. And I, I’m just so impressed that you basically have to put your career that you were worked so hard to do, and you went awesome. I’m gonna work on this now. I love that. I think that is the coolest thing. And I’m learning for you. So I want to ask you a couple quick questions.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
Because these are the arguments that I get. So the community that I’m in I’m in fact, I should. We’ll we’ll talk afterwards, but I’ve been part of some really cool entrepreneurial groups, where it’s just like minded people that all they do is sit around and say don’t step on this land mine. I blew off my left, you know, theoretically, in a business sense, I blew up my left foot doing that I wouldn’t do that, try this software instead try this thing and you know, you read books and stuff like that. Well, a lot of these people are the Paleo community, and they’re really smart people, Chris kresser, Rob Wolf, you know, become friends with them in these groups. And what what I’m hearing is, is that in Kevin Wilson, my doctor is not plant based. He’s very big into paleo and all these other things. So a couple curveballs towards you.

Dr. Won
Sure.

Ken Brown
All right. Let’s talk about the thing that I get asked a whole lot. Lectins. So you said Dr. Beans do this, what’s your thought on lectins? Do they create and then that’s going to lead us into the microbiome and and eventually into your entrepreneurial spirit where you continue to grow? So that’s where I want to head with this. But can we talk about lectins real quick?

Dr. Won
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a you know, very interesting topic. And so if you think about the Lectin especially in the beans, no one can eat them being raw. You don’t eat dry beans, you can eat it, you can’t digest it, and we don’t recommend it. Right? Because if you eat it, you’re going to get nauseated, you’re probably gonna throw up. However, if you cook them properly, right, all the lectins are gone, right? And so lectins are there so that the plants can protect itself and so a little bit it’s actually healthy for you because you’re stressing your body. However once you cook them…

Ken Brown
Hormesis.

Dr. Won
Yes, absolutely right.

Ken Brown
The term Hormesis means that you stress your body a little bit so it adapts.

Dr. Won
Yes

Ken Brown
That’s why we exercise that’s why we fast that’s why we do things.

Dr. Won
That’s why you know, we get exposed to heat that’s why we take cold showers right?

Ken Brown
I don’t take cold showers. I refuse to go that route. I’ll sit in a sauna but I will not do a cold shower.

Dr. Won
You should try it you know maybe 10 seconds first and you know 15 seconds in the beginning you hate it. But you’ll learn to love it. But the lectins…

Dr. Won
We’re gonna get to elections really quick. Just Just this reminds me my late father in law passed away a few years ago, we were watching a show on navy seals. And a Navy SEAL actually did a obstacle course, where he first soaked himself in warm water, and then did the course. And then they put him in ice water. And then within a sofigel probe, they show that he dropped his core temperature and then through various Navy SEAL techniques, he raised his core temperature. And so my father in law, this is on Christmas, this is about 10 years ago, goes you know, it’s Dallas, it’s not that cold, but it’s cold enough. It’s It was like 30 or 40 or something. He goes, I bet you can’t even get in that pool. I went out there with my son and my father in law and I jumped in and like a total weenie jumped out in about 10 seconds. So the whole cold thing I think that’s funny, but all right, that’s the whole point is is that lectins can do this. Let’s get back to lectins

Dr. Won
Yeah, so but once you actually properly cooked the meals, yeah, I recommend soaking them at least for eight hours or even 24 hours.

Ken Brown
Soaking the beans first?

Dr. Won
Yes, soak the beans minimum of eight hours. If you have a pressure cooker you don’t need to soak them you just dump it in there and you cook it

Ken Brown
Do can beans qualify?

Dr. Won
The can beans are already cooked so you don’t even need to cook it you can just open it and start eating them.

Ken Brown
Do you find can beings unhealthy or do you always do whole food?

Dr. Won
At the house we have both dry beans and canned beans because to make it a little bit more convenient, right. And the can beans are, the studies have shown that they still retain just as much nutrients. And so when I’m really busy, I would open up a can can beans with the my whole grains and mix them up along with different kinds of spices and then along with different greens, but once you cook the bean most of the lectins are gone. So there’s really nothing to worry about. And so you don’t need to take Lectin you know, supplements or anything like that. If you properly cook the food, then there’s really no issues with lectin and if you think about it, so beans are the most known for lectins right? Every single one of the cities, right? There’s one common theme among Blue Zones, five cities that has the most amount of centenarians, right? The research by Dan Buettner from National Geographics every single one of them that the common theme was Beans, beans, beans, beans

Ken Brown
Shut up! Really?

Dr. Won
Every single one of them there was their main source of protein was their beans.

Ken Brown
Dang. And I’ve actually been avoiding them because I’m trying to you know, I’ve just kind of go with the no grain thing.

Dr. Won
Yeah, so the beans is one of the healthiest thing one can consume. Not only it’s a great source of protein, but also it’s also has so many fodder nutrients. And I consider them as a superfood really, really cheap. Super food,

Ken Brown
What are your favorite beans?

Dr. Won
All of them, but we have at the house about 10 different kinds of beans. And then when I make grains I usually mix like black beans, pinto beans, white beans, navy beans, kidney beans, along with let’s say buckwheat brown rice, wild black rice, barley, mix them up, and then that’s how I make the rice and so rice and beans. I don’t you know we definitely avoid any refined grains such as white rice,

Ken Brown
Oh you do?

Dr. Won
Yeah, I we avoid any kind of white anything that’s white right?

Ken Brown
Okay, so I hope that helped my wife is listening my wife’s Puerto Rican.

Dr. Won
Uh huh.

Ken Brown
So i mean…beans and rice. Yeah, it’s just pretty much it’s whatever. I’m like, Honey, what are we having? She’s like salmon, and beans and rice.

Dr. Won
Yeah. That’s good. And you just got to put in some greens.

Ken Brown
But but but but you avoid the white rice

Dr. Won
White rice. Yeah. So the…

Ken Brown
As a Korean you still avoid white rice because we love I mean, that’s actually our favorite. If we’re going to globalize our cuisine for my family, I got a 15 year old a 13 year old and we essentially eat Japanese in this order. Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese almost anytime we get a chance to eat out.

Dr. Won
You’re inner asian.

Ken Brown
I’m we are definitely Yeah, it’s a it is it is definitely our favorite cuisine. So we end up eating a lot of rice.

Dr. Won
Yeah. So interesting fact is that the, the in Asia, you know, while back the white rice was you know, it’s extra process right? So this was actually for aristocrats or the wealthy individuals, all the poor people ate brown rice, which is less processed it’s unprocessed. Right? And so the the poor people actually live longer they were healthier than rich people, right? Same thing happened 100 years ago, the rich people ate white bread, right? And then the the poor people ate the whole grain bread. And guess what it was a poor people who are healthier, right? So you know, grains, especially white grains, they’re extra processed. And so and also raises your blood sugar level much, much faster and raise you know, increases more insulin production or release of insulin. So we try to avoid anything that’s processed. So including the the grains. So if you eat you know, brown rice or you know buckwheat barley, black white rice those are the grains that I would recommend that I say it’s whole grains not grains, whole grains,

Dr. Won
Whole grains?

Dr. Won
whole grain.

Ken Brown
Beans, beans, okay lectins get destroyed when they get soaked and then followed by cooking and or canned.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
And then…

Dr. Won
Because canned beans are cooked.

Ken Brown
Can can beans are cooked and as far as the grains, so yeah, the This works really well for you. And I know right now that there’s, you know what I’ve seen with diets, especially when people make a living like if they have a book or so I mean, I hung out with Rob wolf, the guy looks amazing. He’s been keto for 10 years. And Chris kresser is essentially you know, straight up paleo and, you know, I know his blood work is amazing. We’ve talked about that. And so there are, you know, the the things that actually work it’s not working for me. My doctor just told me that’s why I’m like, Oh, yeah, we need to we need to call Doug, I need to I need I need to eat his brain and figure out what’s going on here because maybe my genetics, so you use the term epigenetics a little while ago. Explain what epigenetics actually is, because there’s some confusion around this.

Dr. Won
Yeah. So just to simply put it way I like to explain it is our gene is like a light switch. Right? So we are born with certain genes, unfortunately, for some people, and they may have a greater risk of developing certain type of disease. But just because you carry the gene does not actually mean you’re actually going to develop those disease. But there’s a lot of external factors, environmental factors, including the cancers, right. And so by a proper nutrition and lifestyle, you actually have the ability to turn the genes on or turn them off. So what that tells us is that you actually have a full control. So you know, like Elizabeth Blackburn who won a Nobel prize from UT Southwestern for discovering telomeres did a study with the

Ken Brown
She’s the one that discovered telomere races?

Dr. Won
Yeah. So along with the telomeres, and that’s what she, she won the Nobel Prize,

Ken Brown
Did not know that wow, out of here, out of here in Dallas

Dr. Won
Yeah at UT Southwestern.

Ken Brown
That’s, that’s impressive.

Dr. Won
So she did the research with Dean Ornish, and they got group of patients who had early stage prostate cancer. And then when they did the genetic study, all the over 500 cancer genes were actually turned on. And then they spent three months changing their diet and lifestyle. And then they did the the genetic study again, all the genes were actually cancer genes were turned off over 550 cancer genes, Uncle genes are turned off. So you only took them three months o so especially prostate cancer, right? Especially if you catch them early stage, you really want to treat them with diet and lifestyle change. They said the the traditional surgery, whether it’s a chemo or the surgery does not prolong only one out of 49 people actually live longer after getting traditional, conventional medical treatment.

Ken Brown
Well, when you start looking at some of this, I listened to a podcast called medical reversals. It was on Freakonomics, the Freakonomics podcast. And they they actually had some doctors on there. And they and if you look back at all these medical reversals, so basically your doctor says, do this, and then we go, Oh, no, that was wrong, because now we’ve looked at our cohorts of 10,000 patients over 10 years. We can go on and on about that the estrogen replacement therapy, one of the things that’s been brought up and I brought this up to my doctor because my cholesterol is statins and statins have not been shown to improve lifespan. And so the question is, do they actually decrease the incidence of events, but it has not been shown to improve lifespan. So now I start. I’m at that stage in my career in medicine where I’m starting to question so many things. I’m having patients come to me, and well, let’s throw this one out with autoimmune disease. And you and I were talking about this I treat a lot of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis. I use drugs like Remicade and humera. Have you had any experience with as an orthopedist you’re going to be exposed to rheumatoid arthritis, you’re going to be exposed to ankylosing spondylitis. Poly arthropathy from these other things. Have you had any wins with using your method?

Dr. Won
Absolutely. So some of them are my patients and some of them are attendees to our free seminars. And I gave an example of Denise she gave us a permission to talk about her. And so she came to us suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis and she’s been on multiple medications, even methylstrexate as in the past and humira. And humira costs 25 to $50,000 a year. Right? And one of the side effects is heart failure. And she began to have a severe heart issue. So they had to take her off. And and she she was in severe pain. And so I said, you know, you got nothing to lose. You tried everything else. So why don’t you try a whole food plant based nutrition, and that’s what she did. She did that. January 1, 2018. Within two months, she was in remission. All the pains were gone

Ken Brown
On her alright rheumatoid arthritis?

Dr. Won
Rheumatoid arthritis.

Ken Brown
So rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune means you something turns a genetic switch on and your body starts attacking yourself. In gastroenterology, I see it with all sort of colitis, Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, autoimmune hepatitis. In your field. You see it with the joints.

Dr. Won
With the joints rheumatoid arthritis, but we also I’ve seen patients with multiple sclerosis, right? And actually, this was another patient who walked in or not walked in, came into the clinic on a wheelchair and had multiple sclerosis. So we actually…

Ken Brown
In a wheelchair?

Dr. Won
In a wheelchair.

Ken Brown
That’s very advanced MS

Dr. Won
It’s pretty advanced. And and the patient went whole food plant based, and was six to eight months later, when they came back for a follow up visit. He actually walked out walked in with a cane. So he still had weakness, but it got him off the wheelchair and now he’s able to strong enough to actually walk with a cane.

Ken Brown
Just diet change?

Dr. Won
Just a diet change. And he was off to all the medications and he’s not the only one and there’s a one lifestyle medicine physician even up in New Jersey, a good friend. She was initially infectious disease doctor and during her residency or fellowship, she woke up one day completely paralyzed.

Ken Brown
What?

Dr. Won
And that’s how she discovered she had multiple sclerosis. And to a point she was walking with a cane and she was bad to get on a wheelchair. And she made the she discovered she read an article about blueberries, right? She said No way. There’s no way and this can’t be and she starts researching and really realized the autoimmune disease starts from the gut. And she needed to find a way to decrease inflammation. And she needed to once she healed her gut, and she changed her complete, you know, nutrition when whole food plant based. 10 years later, she ran a marathon.

Ken Brown
I’m sorry, I don’t have any Kleenex. Do you have any Kleenex because I have tears of joy. I just had an orthopedic surgeon say that. Everything starts in the gut. Oh,

Dr. Won
Yeah. We think that you know, a lot of the the lifestyle medicine physicians and believe that autoimmune disease may be in a different sort of autoimmune disease, whether it’s rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, maybe it disease, it all starts from the gut. And then it manifests to a different disease based on our genetic makeup. And so our treatment method whether it’s, you know, lupus, multiple sclerosis, you know, Hashimoto thyroiditis, it’s all pretty similar. You know, they may, we may make little bit of a different protocol for them, but overall as a whole food plant based, and many of them improve significantly.

Ken Brown
Wow, that is. So we’ve actually, that’s actually a common theme that we talked about, we have brought some people in, but my thing is we’ve got lots of data to show that when you have an inflammation in your gut, that leads to an inflammatory cascade that can cause this epigenetic phenomenon. And so somebody sitting around listening, so I want to talk about what else you have going on, which means that you’ve taken it to the next level, but I everything about, about this show and about what we want to do is talk science first. Clearly, you’re a brilliant And you know, you’re, I’m a, I’m a gut doctor. So you know your s-h-i-t. So I wanted to throw this article out at you because it’s fascinating that we can talk disease. And I could sit there and say if you’ve got rheumatoid arthritis if you got ms if you have anything, but there’s also one underlying thing that happens to all of us and you keep talking about the Blue Zones. A recent review article, my little secret weapon will eventually be able to disclose who it is, but she sent me an article yesterday. And with you coming on it is a review article on the new insights for cellular and molecular mechanism of aging and aging related diseases. herbal medicine is a potential therapeutic approach. So in other words, what this title says is, yo we’re all aging. And why do you want to load the gun faster than it should be loaded? So what this article looked at is they go into the background A little bit where 900 million people in the world are over the age of 60.

Dr. Won
Wow.

Ken Brown
And you just pointed out that it doesn’t matter where you live now it looks like it’s it’s pretty much spreading everywhere. So aging, which can be divided into both pathologic and physiologic. So if you are perfectly healthy, you’re going to physiologically age if you choose to load your gun faster, that’s pathologic aging. And this article gets into really cool geeky science about the complex biological processes and the decline of tissue and origins and structural degeneration and then they go into telomeres and then they go into the fat, a common thing keeps popping up. And it is reactive oxygen species or oxidative stress.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
So stress at a cellular level, or inflammation at a subtle level leads to aging.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
So if you didn’t care about anything about the fetus having a heart attack or a 10 year old having coronary artery disease, We spend a lot of money trying to look younger. I just got done talking about the other article that said that at age 47, maybe that’s when men look in the mirror and go, Oh, I’m I’m there. I don’t know. It all comes down to reactive oxygen species. This leads to they can actually get into the actual mechanism. So one of the things I run into that we have discussed, which is I’m sure you’ve run into because I think your field is a little bit less holistic than gi, which is probably because the gut affects so many things. But I imagine if you’re trying to talk to one of your colleagues at a conference and say hey, plant based they probably look at you like what?

Dr. Won
Yeah, I’m I don’t represent typical look of orthopedic surgeon right? So if you imagine orthopedic surgeon those of you who don’t know like in medical school, we are like the cords pedic surgeon smart jocks, right? Everyone’s hitting the gym, you know, bone broke me fix. Big guys, ex-thletes, right? And then somehow I snuck in as a nerd, right?

Ken Brown
So I have I have a friend who played football for the San Francisco 49 years played at the University of Notre Dame. And we have or he’s very good friends with orthopedic surgeon named Brian rhadigan. And he played linebacker for Notre Dame, and if there is ever the avatar of what I thought this guy was just jacked, and you know, and he’s an orthopedic surgeon now for Notre Dame.

Dr. Won
Wow.

Ken Brown
But anyways, yeah, so yeah, you you are talking different than the typical orthopedic surgeon.

Dr. Won
Yeah. And so but yeah, but I think even with orthopedics, and also especially in spine, some of our patients, after if they choose to follow our diet and lifestyle modification, they came back even with herniated disc, most of the inflammation was gone, pain was gone, and so they they would cancel the surgery. I said Congratulations, right. And so if I can help patients, that surgery is definitely the last resort.

Ken Brown
Say that one more time you got paid to operate and you were happy when you didn’t have to operate?

Dr. Won
Yeah, absolutely. Because there’s plenty of patients who’s not following the lifestyle modification and who is in agony, who failed all the conservative treatment, who’s going to need the surgery. But you know, what I would love to be able to do is to prove to the medical community that so many of the surgeries and procedures that we do are completely unnecessary, because if people are willing to make the lifestyle modification, if the physicians actually know and teach their patients, how to make the modification, because most of them do not know. Right, then I think, you know, many people can avoid significant surgical procedures, whether it’s a cardiac cath open, you know, open heart surgeries, which we know that does not extend anybody’s life, right. And same thing with spine surgery. And, you know, orthopedics is a little bit If you break a bone, you broke a bone and you need surgery to fix it right?

Ken Brown
Don’t try to hobble into whole foods after that skiing accident.

Dr. Won
I don’t think that whole foods is going to fix that broken bone, but it may help you heal faster, but you’re probably going to still need surgery. And so that is one of my mission and I get a great enjoyment out of it. And you know, I remember one patient who walked in who had a thoracic herniated disc. And you know, in order to do the surgery, we have to do a thoracotomy. So basically cracking our chest open the compress the lung in order to get to the spine from the front. And I said, you really don’t want to have this surgery. We can do it if you want to. However, why don’t you give me three months make this changes come back in three months. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll go ahead and do the surgery. She came back to clinic and three months along with her husband, she lost 40 pounds. He lost 60 pounds, right? And she said her pain was gone. And she said doctor, I don’t need your service. anymore awesome congratulations. So I think it is very possible and you know once once you have seen that I just get a kick out of it

Ken Brown
I’m feeling like a little jerk right now because we did a show on using cell phones while there people around the bathroom doing social media posts and I I told everybody to keep doing that because it creates hemorrhoids so they can come see me. I feel like a jerk. I’m over there encouraging, sit on the toilet longer and make an appointment with me.

Dr. Won
That’s funny.

Ken Brown
Oh, you’re making me look bad man. I want to talk about something about this article because I we use the term reactive oxygen species all the time. Now one of the things that they got deep into this article is about a lot of the end origin disease that kills most of us. cardiac disease strokes. dementia. A lot of it comes down to blood vessels. Yes, the endotheliam meaning that as our blood vessels, all this inflammation leads to endothelial dysfunction, and impaired activity and arterial stiffness. And the reason why I bring this up is because I’ll plug this the polyphenols and Atrantil we do know that they actually improve the most polyphenols when taken in. There’s literature for this. But when we first launched Atrantil we did it strictly for people that bloated and then we had all these people that kept staying on it. And that’s when I started backing up because I was looking at one little problem then went, Oh, this is actually it’s sad that it’s that I’m now learning because all I’ve been doing is doing plant based, but I started with a pill and now I’m working my way to lifestyle. Yeah, which you’re doing lifestyle. And you realized, Hey, I can help people in different ways. So you noticed immediately that endothelium is really important. And when we talked before and you brought me some gifts, I would like to talk about what else you have going on here because very clearly, you have put some serious thought into this. And then I came backwards. I started with a plant based product to treat something and now I’m learning about a plant based lifestyle. Yeah, you did the opposite. You started plant based lifestyle and said, I’m going to produce the best product for that. Yeah. So tell me what you got here.

Dr. Won
Yeah, so one of the things that we developed was, is called Neo Nox is a nitric oxide booster,

Ken Brown
Neo Nox

Dr. Won
neo neo, no x, no x, and this product was developed without intention of developing a supplement company. what we realized was as I was doing research, even as a physician, we knew that heart disease was a number one killer, but I didn’t realize how severe it was. It is actually the number one killer of both men and women worldwide. Right? And, you know,

Ken Brown
Yeah we start seeing once women go into menopause. Yeah, they get the same risk as men.

Dr. Won
Yeah, exactly. And, and so and a lot of women just getting neglected and they think it’s a man’s disease. And but women develop a cardiovascular disease just as much as the guys and, and one in three deaths in us is related to vascular disease. So pretty significant amount. And it all comes down to endotheliam and nitric oxide, what I realized was the most important molecule in our body because it saves endotheliam, and is produced it within our endotheliam. However, as we age, by the time you’re 40, you lose about 50% of your ability to produce it. By the time you’re 60 you lose about 85% of your ability to produce nitric oxide

Ken Brown
Say that one more time.

Dr. Won
So by the time you’re 40, you lose about 50% of your ability to produce nitric oxide, which is the most important molecule in our body.

Ken Brown
Why do why do we do that?

Dr. Won
So a few things number one is produced in your endotheliam. Right intercellular is basically the inner lining of your artery. And so, as we age, we develop atherosclerosis, we damage the endotheliam. So therefore, we lose the ability to produce the, the nitric oxide, but along with that…

Ken Brown
So the inflammatory process damaging the endotheliam does not allow us to produce the one molecule to repair the endotheliam.

Dr. Won
Exactly. And so and not only the nitric oxide, is that the strongest vasodilator that lowers of blood pressure, and then also vasodilate the vessels so they’re more nutrients and oxygen can be delivered to the end organs, right. It also stimulates the stem cells and activates the stem cells and mobilizes the stem cells,

Ken Brown
nitric oxide does?

Dr. Won
Nitric oxide, and that’s how we really actually got into the nitric oxide because we knew we needed to boost the nitric oxide to our patient when we’re doing orthopedic stem cell therapy, right to to help them prevent either You know rotator cuff tendonitis and tear surgeries

Ken Brown
We had we had weighed with 10 on our show the orthopedist.

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
From Fort Worth that had the the Panama stem cell clinic.

Dr. Won
Yes. Yeah.

Ken Brown
We deep dived into stem cells. That’s some cool stuff. Yeah.

Dr. Won
And but, but most people are looking for that magic pill. They want the injections, right? And the stem cell therapy, but you need to activate them and people who needed the most are typically 60 Plus, right, sometimes 40 Plus, but most of the patients we have arthritis are 60 Plus, but they can’t really activate their stem cells because they don’t have any nitric oxide. That’s part of the reason why people develop cardiovascular disease. people develop diabetes, right? people develop erectile dysfunction, which is a vascular disease. Right. And so that’s, that’s why the even Biograph Cialis only works on 50% of the population.

Ken Brown
So one of the reasons why game changers has been so much more well received is that they have a whole segment on nighttime boners Yeah. And how eating a plant based diet actually improves erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
And so and not just erectile dysfunction actually improves nocturnal erections I should say. Yeah, boner seems a little bit unprofessional.

Dr. Won
You are a doctor.

Ken Brown
But um, yeah. So that’s, that’s one of the things so it’s, it’s when you talk anti aging or you talk sexual performance, that’s what people spend all their money. Yes. They don’t sit there and go, Oh, I’m going to have a heart attack. Yeah, when really, it’s all the same process. It’s all the same thing. The thing that’s making you look older, the thing that’s making you not perform as well in bed is the exact same that’s going to kill you!

Dr. Won
Exactly. And, and, you know, the dementia, which are mostly now we’re realizing that is a vascular disease also, because you’re just not getting enough blood to your brain, right. And so, and also lack of energy, you know, after age 40, everyone’s fatigue suffering from fatigue, lack of energy, because mitochondrial biogenesis is actually initiated by nitric oxide also. So it helps nitric oxide stimulates the production of mitochondria, which is the energy source.

Ken Brown
There we go. Yeah, so that’s the that’s the energy source of every cell. Every cell has a little power plant. Yes, it’s called the mitochondria

Dr. Won
And mitochondria dysfunction is one of the major problem that people face, especially 40 plus. So there’s so many different things and even diabetes and insulin resistance. Without nitric oxide, nitric oxide depletion will increase insulin resistance also. So so there’s so many nitric oxide is serves also as a messenger. And you can all it also is gas you can almost think of it as hormone. And so it’s so critical that we decided and we were initially looking for nitric oxide products to to give to our patients, especially the stem cell therapy patients, but we couldn’t find one that was you know, with the high quality product. Most of the products unfortunately are made for younger group of people who are working out at the gym for that, you know, extra pump.

Ken Brown
NO Explode! Get your pump on! Do this go to and then you find out that 99% of them have nothing in it

Dr. Won
They have nothing in it, they have a lot of caffeine different stimulant that gives them energy, but it’s not really delivering more oxygen and more blood to where it needs to go. So we decided that, you know, we’re going to produce pure nitric oxide booster ourselves initially just to give to our patient and that was part of the package for stem cell therapy.

Ken Brown
Oh, really. So like that was like, Look, if I’m gonna, if I’m gonna go through the trouble of either injecting you’re operating on you, then you’re going to walk out of here with at least a bag that’s going to help you recover, improve and have I don’t want to waste my time is basically what you were saying.

Dr. Won
Yeah, because we we were encouraging to change their diet and lifestyle, encourage them to eat for for patients with the current severe cardiovascular disease. Our protocol is having them eat dark green leafy vegetables six times a day, right because this green leafy vegetable that contains most amount of nitrate that gets converted into the nitric oxide. And so we also tell them…

Ken Brown
How does it get converted?

Dr. Won
So when the nitrate actually gets converted initiated by the bacteria is in the posterior third of your tongue, right? So so that’s why we strongly recommend people not using mouthwash, right antiseptic mouthwash, because not only kills bad bacteria, but also good bacteria. So the mouthwash is actually associated with the cardiovascular disease. So so that’s the first thing to you. Yeah. And then also…

Ken Brown
Dude you’re blowing my mind! You’re like the smartest orthopedic surgeon I’ve ever met. Once again, we’ll get back to it. In medical school, our big job was you take the it’s really hard to get into orthopedic surgery. You take the smartest person from med school and by the time they an orthopedic surgeon they’re the dumbest, you have done the exact opposite man.

Dr. Won
Yeah cuz you don’t really have to think about it right. And and, you know, once we’re in we’re at the VA hospital, during the residency. We had a patient you know, who hadn’t you know, MI We got an EKG, we’re getting a medicine console. And then they said, oh, we’re too busy with consoles. You guys are, you know, residents, you take care of it. And then we said, Well, I think the patient have St. Depression Wait a minute, I think we got the EKG upside down elevation, and then the medicine residents that will be right there. So we try to forget about the medicine but but…

Ken Brown
Yeah, so that is so i i went deep into the whole nitric oxide thing, because I like to work out. I did it strictly because I was like, Oh, yeah, I’d like to get some more. And I was freaked out that it starts out that the bacteria has to convert the nitrate

Dr. Won
Yeah, nitrate into nitrite. And your saliva contains significant amount of nitrate. And so and then your bacteria on your tongue converts it into nitrite. And when it goes into your stomach, your stomach has to be acidic enough in order to actually convert it into nitric oxide. So when patients are also on proton pump inhibitors, they said that One of the most disservice that’s done to the large population, and people are Nexium Prilosec, because it doesn’t make your stomach acid acidic enough. But also the the proton pump inhibitors actually stimulates the the AMDA, which is inhibits the nitric oxide synthase, the enzyme that actually produces the nitric oxide. So the proton pump inhibitor also has a strong correlation with the heart disease.

Ken Brown
Oh my god. So that’s why there’s the correlation.

Dr. Won
Yes. It’s because it inhibits production of nitric oxide. That’s where the correlation comes from.

Ken Brown
Dude! I’m on ppi’s. I’ve tried to come off. I’m like all my patients.

Dr. Won
I was on it too.

Ken Brown
I end up with horrible heartburn.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
Like I will sit there and just go oh my gosh, screw this. I don’t care if there’s a slight risk of dementia or have a slight risk of corner, coronary artery disease. I’m in a lot of pain, pain trumps everything.

Dr. Won
Absolutely. I was actually at one time. I thought I was having a heart attack in the middle of the surgery.

Ken Brown
You had a reflux?

Dr. Won
Because I had such a bad reflux.

Ken Brown
Wow.

Dr. Won
And so and then you know I would stop surgery anesthesiologists would have to give me antacids so I can get back into surgery. And, but once I went a whole food plant based within three weeks, I used to sleep with three pillows. Within three weeks, it was gone, my seasonal allergy was gone. I lost weight, and then my reflux was completely gone.

Ken Brown
If I can figure out a way to get my patients and myself off of a PPI that it’s funny, there’s always going to be one trigger that will get somebody to pay attention, right?

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
And it’s the it’s the thing closest to home. Yeah, I, I, I steal the samples that they give us. And I just I get terrified. The one thing I do whenever I travel, it’s like, Okay, I need to make sure that I have my contact case, my glasses, my PPI, and then everything else is kind of secondary. It’s like, yeah, I’ll buy underwear. If I forget underwear. I’ll do whatever but I need those Three things I need to be able to see and I do not want that heartburn to come back. Wow. But nitric oxide?

Dr. Won
So the one of the patients, the group of people, we definitely recommend nitric oxide supplement. And the booster is people who are on PPI who can’t seem to come off, but they really do need to make an effort to do whatever is necessary to come off of it.

Ken Brown
That’s interesting. So what why what why can’t I just go to Walmart and just buy no explode? what’s what’s unique about yours?

Dr. Won
Yeah, so it’s well balanced because there’s a two main pathways nitric oxide gets produced. Number one is the endothelial pathway. And so you have to balance that along with the the nitrate nitrite pathway. So you know for endothelial pathway may work well for if you’re young and you’re endotheliam is not damaged. So most of the products that you see in the market is really just geared towards endotheliam it’s not balanced between the endotheliam and nitrate nitrite pathway. So we were able to come up with a formula that balances the two and so that you can actually elevate the nitric oxide through the nitrate nitrite pathway. And then so then you can increase the endothelial progenitor cells. So by also you know eating like dark green leafy vegetables, use this as a supplement and then in a nutritionally increasing the, the nitric oxide that will help start to repair the endotheliam once you do that, then then endothelial will function properly. So, so it’s balancing the two and most of the products out in the market are really geared towards young gym goers, you know, who wants to grow their muscle, and then a lot of times they don’t even make nitric oxide. That’s …

Ken Brown
Yeah,everything is either arginine or citrulline.

Dr. Won
Yeah, so it have to be and we now know that arginine really doesn’t work

Ken Brown
Yeah, I was listening to a podcast on that where I went, Oh my God, I’ve spent so much money, because I have been taking I’m that I’m that the the I’m gonna call myself an idiot. I will research the heck out of something for my patients. But I will knee jerk if I’m like, Oh, cool. I can work out harder. Yeah, yeah, I’ll take that. And not do my homework on it.

Dr. Won
They say the doctors are the wrong and the worst patients, right?

Ken Brown
Yeah,

Dr. Won
But the, we use the Arginine does get converted to citrulline and makes the nitric oxide, right. So, in the beginning, most people thought, okay, if we give them arginine, it would work. However, in order to make enough nitric oxide if you had intact endothelium, you have to each serving has to be about 10 grams. If you have 10 grams of Arginine, most likely you are having diarrhea. And so, you know, yeah, you may boost the nitric oxide a little bit, but you’re having diarrhea at the same time. I think that would be a pretty significant side effect.

Ken Brown
It’s gonna affect the workout.

Dr. Won
Yeah. It’s gonna definitely work out. Yeah. Yeah,

Ken Brown
You want get that PR on that deadlift or that squat. Oh, no you don’t want that!

Dr. Won
And so the better method would be boost. With the citraline, that it goes to the urea cycle. And so you don’t have to have a high dose and then that actually gets converted into arginine. And then that would actually make the nitric oxide but you also want to have the proper amount of cofactors so cofactors such as a methylfolate. So the metallized activated folate ascorbic acid. And then those you know, you We also put in the pine bark extract which actually stimulates the…

Ken Brown
I’m unfamiliar with that.

Dr. Won
Yeah nitric oxide synthase, which owns and actually produces the nitric oxide also can pass through the blood brain barrier, and so that it actually stimulates the nitric oxide synthase within your brain also, and so that increases the blood circulation in the brain as well.

Ken Brown
I have never come across that. I mean, I try and read a lot on this stuff. So Alright, so that’s interesting. You put a lot of thought into your nitric oxide booster you don’t use citrulline or arginine, what do you actually use in there?

Dr. Won
So we we do have citraline in there.

Ken Brown
Okay,

Dr. Won
Because we also want to stimulate the endotheliam . pathway along all along with a pine bark extract and also we have the the ingredients to stimulate the nitrate nitrite pathway along with the cofactors so we have all the ingredients and then also antioxidants important because the the nitric oxide is unstable a radical and so so then therefore we need antioxidant to allow it to stay in there longer. And then one of the cofactor is actually a bH4 which actually gets stabilized by curcumin, the in the studies have shown so we actually have curcumin in turmeric in the our neo nox product as well.

Ken Brown
Oh, awesome. So we’ve got the nitric oxide and what else what else do you have?

Dr. Won
So we also have a new antiox. As you mentioned, inflammation is the root cause of most of the disease. And so we want to help people keep the inflammation down, as well as you also mentioned oxidative stress, right? And so people need to consume more antioxidant most of the antioxidants are in plants. And that’s why you know, plant based

Ken Brown
Polyphenols!

Dr. Won
Polyphenols right? And so what we have found was one of our main ingredients is amla, Indian gooseberry powder, which is the most powerful…

Ken Brown
So I just wanna clarify. amla is indian gooseberry?

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
Oh, I’ve always thought of them as different things. Yeah, I have read about gooseberry and its ORAC potential. And amla because we use that I put that in my subscription box because of the anti diabetic insulin resistant effect.

Dr. Won
It’s the same thing. So you mentioned ORAC score. So we all know that blueberries it has a high antioxidant capacity, right? And so ORAC score wise is about 4500. And then the ginger which we also know it has high antioxidant capacity as well as its anti inflammatory, which is about 49,000 and tumeric, which we know it’s like the king of superfood, right, but it has about 120,000 or ORAC Score, indian gooseberry is about 265,000 so it is by far the most powerful antioxidant food on the planet there’s really nothing that’s has more antioxidant capacity. And so so we included the emla which is an Indian gooseberry powder along with tumeric curcumin which is the active ingredient. But you know turmeric has about 300 active ingredients and curcumin is the most well known and most studied and but the studies have shown that you want to have not just curcumin because that’s a one active ingredient. You also want to have the turmeric powder as well.

Ken Brown
I love that you put some thought into this as somebody in the supplement industry. You’ve put a ton of thought into it. That’s exactly what we did when we researched every single ingredient for Antrantil three ingredients we source it, it’s pure, I look I went to your website, I saw that you do all the things that we do also which is GM, GMP facilities, made in the USA, you know exactly where you source it.

Dr. Won
Yeah, and these are all we also have physician advisory board. And so this this is produced with the the thoughts and advices from all our advisors, and there they all practice lifestyle medicine, anti aging, longevity medicine. And they’re all you know,

Ken Brown
It doesn’t seem like you need a whole lot more than you, you seem to have the stuff figured out.

Dr. Won
Yeah, but definitely we wanted to do it with as a team effort. I definitely want to give them the credit that they deserve as well.

Ken Brown
That is awesome. And then what else did you bring some Neo greens? What are those?

Dr. Won
Neo greens, and one of the things that we recommend to everyone is at least eat 30 different kinds of plants every single week. So then you give diversity to your gut microbiome. And as you you probably know, so much more than I about the gut microbiome and gut health. And but one of the things that we recommend to people is eat 30 different kinds of plants every single week in order to maximize the diversity of gut microbiome. And I know it’s difficult with busy schedule. In average, Americans consume about 10 to 15 grams of fiber per day, right? We recommend eating 70 grams of fiber per day.

Ken Brown
70?

Dr. Won
70.

Ken Brown
Because it’s not just I mean, you’ve got soluble and insoluble. So just saying fiber. A lot of times people will be like, I can’t do that I’ll get so gassy. You have to realize there’s two different kinds of fiber

Dr. Won
Two different kinds.

Ken Brown
And the vegetables really offer the insoluble fiber which does something different.

Dr. Won
As well as soluble.

Ken Brown
As well as soluble.

Dr. Won
Yeah.

Ken Brown
And then they both do different things. They feed, they feed the bacteria, they help you go to the bathroom, they do different things, but they lower the cholesterol, they do all that stuff.

Dr. Won
And and most people initially will feel bloated, that’s already a sign that they have, in my mind, poor microbiome, right? Poor gut health, and they don’t have the right type of diversity, right type that bacteria. That’s why they’re getting bloated, they have to get over that phase. So if they’re bloated, we tell them slow it down. Just go easy, right? Don’t go from 10 grams to 70 grams overnight because you’re not going to feel good. But also one of the starter kit for plant based is actually toilet paper. You will go to the bathroom. Quite often, and which is actually good for you, right?

Ken Brown
I want you to listen to so I mentioned a few of these people, but I’ve been on there. I’ve been on a lot of these podcasts, which is how I become develop relationships. Chris kresser had a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist on, you have to understand that the whole concept of the microbiome and dysbiosis and leaky gut, it’s the last people to show up are the academicians of my field. So he actually had a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist on where he said, He’s like, well, the whole concept of bacterial overgrowth tseebo may not be that it’s as simplistic as bacteria growing where it shouldn’t be. It’s probably more relevant that we’re not feeding them what they need so that they can diversify in the way that they want to be. We are limiting that. And when you look at the the the plasticizer that we’re talking about DEHP, they have linked that to a higher incidence of a Clostridium species which produces chemical or a protein called p kressal, which has been linked to autism. So then we keep coming back to the same thing it’s, if your microbiome doesn’t do what it should it can do bad things against you if you feed it bad things so if you give it the diversity so this Mayo Clinic guy, he blew my mind because it was they’re doing like Mr PCR analysis and all this other stuff and he said maybe we should be feeding the foods that people think are causing them the bloating and maybe eventually the bloating will go away. That’s exactly what you just said.

Dr. Won
Yes.

Ken Brown
That’s crazy.

Dr. Won
Yeah, I mean, that’s that is done the main cause. So initial bloating doesn’t mean you’re you’re allergic to the plant food or, or beans or whole grains. You just don’t have the the diversity of microbiome in your gut, and but it can be changed. So that’s why we recommend people eating 30 different kinds of plants, and not everyone can do that consistently. And so so that’s why we developed Neo greens which has about 35 different ingredients. It also has a pretty biotics has a digestive enzyme. But most importantly, it has, you know, fermented organic fruits and vegetables, so they can digest it easily. But, again, I always stress that this is a supplement, but we want people to eat real food, right? Eat the real fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and beans and nuts and seeds. And then they will begin to repopulate their gut. And so our gut microbiome looks completely different than what it is and you know, the Indians in South America, and then also Africans, right? It’s because those countries, they eat a lot more fiber and more, and they have a diversity of microbiomes. And that’s why they don’t have heart disease, diabetes, all the things are changing now, especially like in Africa, and then obesity is rising heart, you know, over 10 years ago, heart disease was not even a top 10 cause of death. Now, it’s number four. Stroke is number five cause of death, and that diabetes is rising, tripled over the past 10 years. And so That’s why we’re importing all these disease to all these third world, developing countries. But, but if people would go back and then stop eating processed food, if it comes in a box has more than few ingredients, you should put it down. Right? And then shop along the edges of the the grocery store, right? And eat real food. Right? And then and not too much, right. And so that’s one of the best way to to live long is you know, decreasing the the calorie intake each day, right?

Ken Brown
Dude, I love everything you’re saying. So what’s the name of your Netflix special? So I can watch this?

Dr. Won
Oh, well, this this podcast.

Ken Brown
No in all seriousness, your your the name of your New York Times bestselling book that explains all this?

Dr. Won
We’ll be working on it real soon.

Ken Brown
So how can anybody connect with you? Oh, and by the way, you’re going to give us a code. So anybody that’s watching this can try some of your stuff.

Dr. Won
Yes,

Ken Brown
Put in code GCP gut check project GCP

Dr. Won
GCP and then everyone would get 15% off

Ken Brown
Awesome. Well how can anybody find you? How can they connect with you?

Dr. Won
Yeah, so our website is Neo Gen nutrition com. So as N-E-O-G-E-N nutrition.com,

Ken Brown
Awesome. Alright, that was a chock full visit. Let’s go ahead and close it down.