Steven R. Gundry - The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

Without a doubt, my encounter with the patient who changed my lifes arc, Big Ed, started me on the path that led from my first book, Dr. Gundrys Diet Evolution, to the one you now hold in your hands. Thank you again, Ed. Since the publication of my earlier book, tens of thousands of patients have come to Palm Springs or Santa Barbara to see me at the International Heart and Lung Institute, and within it, the Center for Restorative Medicine. Hundreds of thousands of other people have written to tell me about the success they have experienced by following Diet Evolution and the subsequent program, Matrix, on which this book is based. Without my patients tireless search for health and their willingness to let me examine their blood test results every three months for years on end, The Plant Paradox would never have come to fruition. As my dedication says, everything I know, or learned, is because of you.

Once again, my wonderful wife and soul mate, Penny, has not only endured many days and nights without the presence of my brain and attention while I was writing this book, but also the many days and nights without my physical presence while I traveled to present the results of my research to a worldwide audience. She has also been my best critic of my early versions of the manuscript and crazy ideas for supplements. Thank you again for your patience and love. I have banked that love and promise to repay it with interest!

As with my first book, this one would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of my collaborator, Olivia Bell Buehl, who takes my wordy manuscripts and employs her word-smithing magic to transform them into readable and usable books. This one has been more of a challenge on many levels than our first, but Im so glad we both persevered to deliver to you this wonderful guide for your health.

My office is under the direction of Susan Lokken, my right-hand woman aka administrative assistant and office manager, who somehow gets me where I need to be, gets patients what they need, and keeps order in an environment that is constantly besieged by requests from people worldwide to somehow get them past the seven-month waiting list and in to see me tomorrow to address a life-threatening health issue. Without Susan, nothing in this book would have happened.

Another huge thank-you to Adda Harris, who reversed her own personal health issues by following the Plant Paradox, and now somehow juggles patient care and training while always showing a welcoming concern for any issue a patient might have. As we say, You go, girl!

I cannot say enough about my former nurse practitioner, Jean Epstein, who collaborated on many of my research papers, and brought joy and comfort to so many of our mutual patients. Not a day goes by that we dont all miss you.

I cannot resist mentioning my younger daughter, Melissa Perko, who manages my wifes store Zense on El Paseo Drive in Palm Desert, but who also dives into my office for four months every summer to bring order to chaos. I know how much it means to you to have a chance to boss your father around! And how much it means to me to have you nearby!

The kickoff for the Plant Paradox Program couldnt have happened without my dear friend and supporter, the great chef Irina Skoeriesand I thank her for her enthusiasm and tireless commitment to making vibrant health a reality for everyone. Having witnessed her skill in salvaging several of my toughest patients with nourishing and delectable food, I knew she had to develop the Three-Day Kick-Start Cleanse for Phase 1! Thank you, Irina!

Another heartfelt thanks to Celia Hamilton of Palm Springs, who has guided so many of my patients back from the brink of despair and toward thriving health with her loving care in teaching and living my principles.

Any of you who have visited my office have encountered my fantastic team of Blood Suckers, who have convinced you to relinquish up to a dozen vials of blood every few months without pain! Believe me, nothing I have learned and written here would have been possible without Laurie Acuna and her team. Thank you all.

I owe a huge debt to my agent, Shannon Marven, president of Dupree-Miller, and her great associate, Dabney Rice, who connected me with Harper Wave and who then consistently and calmly kept everything on track.

Thank you to my editors, Julie Will and Sarah Murphy, as well as publisher Karen Rinaldi at Harper Wave. You took my all-encompassing ideas and gently, but firmly, brought forth this guide to achieving great health! And thank you to the great support team at Harper Wave, Hannah Robinson and Elizabeth Preske, my copy editor Trent Duffy and production editor Nikki Baldauf, Brian Perrin in marketing, and my publicists, Victoria Comella and Nick Davies.

You may have never heard of me, or my work, without the amazing team at GoldenHippoMedia, who collectively made www.GundryMD.com the premier health information portal it has become. They are also responsible for producing and marketing my formulas for supplements and skin-care products for GundryMD. To all 450 team membersand you know who you arethank you, each and every one! I wanted to name you all, but, well, that would take a whole other book!

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Dr. Steven R. Gundry

Steven R. Gundry, MD, is a cum laude graduate of Yale University, with special honors in human biological and social evolution. After graduating Alpha Omega Alpha from the Medical College of Georgia, Dr. Gundry completed residencies in general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Michigan and served as a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health. He invented devices that reverse the cell death seen in heart attacks; variations of these devices became the Medtronic Gundry Retrograde Cardioplegia Cannula, the most widely used device of its kind worldwide to protect the heart during open-heart surgery. After completing a fellowship in congenital heart surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, in London, and two years as a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Gundry was recruited as professor and chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine.

During his tenure at Loma Linda, Dr. Gundry pioneered the field of xenotransplantation, the study of how the immune system and blood vessel proteins of one species react to the transplanted heart of a foreign species. He was one of the original twenty investigators of the first FDA-approved implantable left ventricular assist device. Dr. Gundry is the inventor of the Gundry Ministernotomy, the most widely used minimally invasive surgical technique to operate on the aortic valve; the Gundry Lateral Tunnel, a living tissue that can rebuild parts of the heart in children with severe congenital heart malformations; and the Skoosh Venous Cannula, the most widely used cannula in minimally invasive heart operations.

As a consultant to Computer Motion (now Intuitive Surgical), Dr. Gundry was one of the fathers of robotic heart surgery. He received early FDA approval for robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery for coronary artery bypass and mitral valve operations. He holds patents on connecting blood vessels and coronary artery bypasses without the need for sutures, as well as on repairing the mitral valve without the need for sutures and the heart-lung machine.

Dr. Gundry has served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs and was a founding board member and treasurer of the International Society of Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery. He also served two successive terms as president of the Board of Directors of the American Heart Association, Desert Division. Dr. Gundry has been elected a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Cardiology, the American Surgical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the College of Chest Physicians. He has served numerous times as an abstract reviewer for the American Heart Association annual meetings. The author of more than three hundred articles, chapters, and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals on surgical, immunologic, genetic, nutritional, and lipid investigations, he has also operated in more than thirty countries, including on multiple charitable missions.