The 30 Minute Expert Series - Clean Gut ...in 30 Minutes: The Expert Guide to Alejandro Jungers Critically Acclaimed Book

INTRODUCTION

At a Glance

This book is an extended review of Clean Gut: The Breakthrough Plan for Eliminating the Root Cause of Disease and Revolutionizing Your Health, by Alejandro Junger, MD, published in April 2013. Trained as a cardiologist, Junger has become convinced over time that a healthy gutcomprising the bodys digestive tube and gastrointestinal nervous system, lymphatic tissue, and florais essential to optimizing ones overall health. Moreover, he argues the vast majority of diseases and chronic ailments originate in a damaged or dysfunctional gut.

Junger provides an overview of the biology behind gut functions and the personal path that led him to the insights he shares in Clean Gut. He explores how the human gastrointestinal system is subjected to a variety of assaults from modern diets and lifestyles, and he explains why healing the gut is crucial to both curative and preventive medicine. Clean Gut offers a dietary program designed to restore gut health, including more than sixty recipes, healthy cooking tips, lists of foods and drinks to avoid, and examples of specific gut-mending foods, vitamins, and supplements. Junger also provides a list of recommended U.S. treatment centers, health practitioners, books, and films.

This review of Clean Gut starts with a look at the books origin and the authors background, before moving on to a survey of the favorable and unfavorable reviews that have appeared in the short time since its publication. Next is a synopsis of Clean Gut and an in-depth analysis of the books key concepts, including examples from the book, as well as suggestions for applying the concepts in everyday life. This is followed by a recap of the reviews main themes. Lastly, youll find a list of key terms used in Clean Gut and recommendations for further reading, in addition to those found in Jungers book. This assessment of Jungers popular health program may encourage you to buy a copy of Clean Gut for yourself and experience firsthand his recommendations for attaining a robust gut and lifelong, holistic good health.

Understanding
Clean Gut

ABOUT THE BOOK

With Clean Gut, Dr. Alejandro Junger builds on the widespread success of his first book (cowritten with Amely Greeven), Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Bodys Natural Ability to Heal Itself (HarperOne, 2009), which offers a detailed detoxification and cleansing program intended to jump-start the bodys innate healing ability. In Clean Gut, Junger narrows his focus to investigate what he maintains is the source of myriad illnesses: a dysfunctional gut, or gastrointestinal system, that is the result of unhealthy diets, antibiotics, and the growing toxicity of the entire planet.

After six years of working as a resident and fellow in the United States, Jungers own health had deteriorated to such an extent that he was overweight, depressed, and suffering from a variety of ailments. To cure himself, he read self-help books and began studying at a meditation school in upstate New York, where he experienced what he called a spiritual rebirth. He also accepted an assignment in India, where he learned aspects of holistic medicine not taught in Western medical schools, such as ayurveda and acupuncture, and began to truly understand integrative or functional medicine, which combines Eastern and Western practices. Food is considered all-important in this functional medicine model, and Jungers concept of practicing medicine expanded greatly; simultaneously, many of his ailments disappeared.

He returned to the U.S. eager to put his new understanding into practice, but soon faced a health care system that concentrated on surgery, tests, and drugs instead of the holistic way of attempting to determine the root cause of disease before addressing the physical symptoms. Unearthing that root cause eventually led him to zero in on the gut and design a dietary programpresented in Clean Gutto repair and restore gastrointestinal health.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Alejandro Junger was born and raised in Uruguay, where he grew up eating fresh, unprocessed foods. Immediately after graduating from medical school in 1990, he moved to New York to embark on three years of studying internal medicine at New York Universitys Downtown Hospital, followed by a three-year cardiovascular fellowship at Lenox Hill Hospital. Endless workdays and a steady diet of processed, unhealthy foods wreaked havoc on Jungers health, and he began seeking alternative treatments to feel better.

After completing his training, he spent a year practicing in India, where he learned many new modalities of health care. The next step in his journey toward practicing open-minded medicine, as he calls it, was an introduction to a spa in Palm Springs, California, where he further explored the connection between detoxification and alleviation of systemic, chronic inflammation.

For the past decade, Junger has practiced in southern California and New York City, seeking to integrate Eastern and Western medicine and increasingly extolling the benefits of detoxification. In 2009, he wrote Clean with Amely Greeven, and within two years, the book had rocketed to the top of the best-seller lists, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and garnering celebrity endorsements and an admiring public that is eager to find a solution to their medical problems. This widespread recognition of Jungers practicesDr. Oz now calls Junger the father of detoxprompted him to form a company called the Clean Program Corporation, which today employs several individuals and sells packaged cleansing products. The success of his books has made him a frequently featured guest on television programs hosted by Dr. Oz and Martha Stewart.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Since the mainstream media does not usually review diet and exercise books, the opinions quoted in this section are excerpted from blogs that specialize in nutrition, food sensitivity, and related topics, as well as from reader reviews.

The Upside

Clean Gut hit the number-five spot in the advice/how-to category of the New York Times best-seller list just a few weeks after its publication in late April, 2013, perhaps due to glowing endorsements by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and the broad popularity of Jungers first book, Clean. Clean Gut is essentially a sequel to Clean, and harnesses the current enthusiasm for detoxifying cleanses in all forms.

The book and Jungers medical theories also received backing from noted academic Robert Thurman, who calls the book amazing in a backcover blurb and says the program fits perfectly with holistic, empirical, and time-tested nutritional and spiritual methods. Television personality and physician Dr. Oz has repeatedly hosted Junger and endorsed the Clean programs on his national show and website, as has Martha Stewart.

Several diet and health-focused bloggers around the world have discussed their experience with Jungers cleansing programs: Alejandro has really made me think about the foods I am putting in my mouth. [He] has made me question previously held beliefs, writes licensed massage therapist Brian Hicks in his Banyan Tree Healing blog. Functional medicine practitioner Amy Myers, MD, recently interviewed Junger on her podcast series and enthusiastically recommended the book to her listeners, writing a glowing blurb for the dust jacket. Fashion designer and health activist Donna Karan is also a fan of Jungers medical views.

The Downside

To date, Clean Gut has not met with any significant negative responses or reader reviews. In the blogosphere, the only wholly dismissive comment gleaned from an extensive Web search was on the blog of an economics professor, Matt Metzgar, who writes on health-related topics. Though Metzgar admits he hasnt read the book in its entirety, he contends the