you can't figure out why anyone would even put this in their mouth The cheris Chew Rosemary all day long that's right Lavender is part of the mint family hello and welcome back to another episode of gut instincts I'm your host Dr Steven gundry and I'm excited to shed some light on a topic you recently requested through a poll thanks to your suggestion today we're covering herbs and spices so be prepared this is a spicy episode I'll be ranking these herbs and spices from s to f s stands for superfood and f means it belongs in
the trash before we get into it make sure to hit that subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up if you're ready to up your gut health okay first up hopefully is on everybody's table black pepper black pepper has some very interesting properties particularly in that it contains a compound called biop parin biop parin helps you and your body absorb a lot of the important polyphenols and polyphenol compounds that you eat and that your gut bacteria metabolized for you so you'll see often that black pepper or biop parin is an ingredient that helps kind
of supercharge a lot of your supplements so black pepper is really really great now you probably know that I test my patients for sensitivities food sensitivities and black pepper every now and then shows up as a troublemaker that's okay there's actually a replacement for black pepper that you should know about and it's called grains of paradise it was called grains of paradise cuz black pepper used to be incredibly expensive in the Middle Ages and a replacement was found called grains of paradise that tastes very much like black pepper but they also have some really cool
compounds that may actually help you lose weight so black pepper I'm giving it an a it really ought to be used extensively but just be on the lookout to see if you're sensitive to black pepper now you're going well pepper is good how about K and pepper let's be careful with this normal K and pepper is made from you got it K and peppers and normally in the process the peppers are peeled and deed and only the flesh is dried if in fact that's how it's produced then C and pepper doesn't have any of those
nasty lectin but buy or beware a lot of can and pepper is just other peppers ground up can and pepper has also been shown to actually improve the gut microbiome and actually may help you lose weight by causing a thermogenic effect so just in case I like it a lot but I'm putting it down under see to be cautious okay how about basil basil is all part of the mint family and basil and the mint family in general maybe some of the most important herbs that you can get into your diet they contain phenomenal polyphenols
they feed good gut bacteria and quite frankly what would be a piece of bufffalo mozzarella without a bunch of Basil sprinkled on top I think basil deserves its place as a superfood let's stay on that for a second so I mentioned that the mint family is I think one of the great superfoods peppermint is also part of that family as is Sage now Sage is called Salvia in Latin Salvia was named by the Romans because it literally was thought to save their lives sage and again the mint family the compounds that improve your health your
gut microbiome are legendary there are several compounds in the sage family like red sage that been shown to promote longevity and even weight loss the mint family really gets top billing use it wherever you can the more the merer fennel now fennel we've talked about before it's a great vegetable and you can eat it either raw or you can eat it cooked but fennel seeds also have some additional benefits you'll often see people particularly in Indian restaurants and other Asian restaurants have a bowl of fennel seeds to chew on the way out they're not just
freshening their breath these actually really impact the gut microbiome in a very positive way fennel particularly the seeds if you can find them add that to your plan that's a that's a solid a okay here's one of my favorite controversial herb cilantro you'll see cilantro in a lot of my recipes but if you're one of the people that cilantro tastes like soap and I am one of those people you can't figure out why anyone would even put this in their mouth now my wife Penny doesn't taste soap and she loves cilantro so I'll make recipes
with cilantro just for her and I'll put up with the soap taste but I tend to avoid it for that reason so if you're not tasting soap cilantro is another super great herb if you taste soap there's a good replacement in almost all recipes and that's parsley parsley will do just about everything that cilantro will do in terms of flavoring your food it looks like it many people unfortunately grab one or the other in the grocery store and wish they hadn't when they got home but parsley is a great add-on replacement couple of controversial ones
here's Ginger everybody knows how good Ginger is for you how it settles your stomach ginger tea when you're nauseated but imagine my shock when I started doing food sensitivity tests on my patients and lo and behold Ginger showed up time and time again this supposedly fabulous tuber and and it shows up so much one my top 12 of things to really think about getting out of your diet initially having said that many many people don't react to Ginger but because I've seen it so much in my practice Ginger is actually down in the deep and
don't get shocked I have nothing against Ginger I like ginger I had some ginger last night as a matter of fact but it shows up all the time in my patients here's another shocker cinnamon cinnamon who doesn't like cinnamon in their coffee cinnamon helps control your blood sugar cinnamon helps regulate insulin levels who wouldn't like cinnamon imagine my surprise when so many of my patients react to cinnamon and have a food sensitivity to it and it happens over and over again so cinnamon appears on my 12 least trusted spices and foods and that was a
surprise to me as well so I'm going to I'm going to put it down with with can if you don't react to it it's fabulous you see it in a lot of supplements I have it in one of my supplements I'm so impressed with it but just if you have an autoimmune disease be careful about cinnamon Rosemary Rosemary is way up there on maybe one of the greatest foods of all time first of all Rosemary has multiple interesting polyphenols including ining rosem marinic acid and rosemary is the favorite food of The atoles Who live south
of Naples who are the more people over the 100 years of age than any other town in the world actually 30% of the population is over 100 and what's unique about these folks is that the Aeris chew Rosemary all day long they cook with it they chew it raw I'm a huge fan of Rosemary for that reason if it's good enough for the people in airoli it's good enough for me get yourself Rosemary every time I've got Roseberry bushes in my yard that I use almost every day time is another great spice that has huge
amounts of polyphenols and I've rated time in several of my last books as some of the finest polyphenol source of ingredients you can find so there's no wonder that a lot lot of these you know classic spices were classic spices for a reason people found that they did better using these spices all right it's time for a quick quiz here are two facts and One Lie About lavender can you guess which one is the LIE number one there are 10 varieties of lavender number two Lavender is part of the mint family number three lavender contains
vitamin K you have your answer the answer is one there are actually over 450 varieties of lavender well they say variety is the spice of life after all that's right Lavender is part of the mint family and you guessed it lavender Jo joins the other mint members on the superfood list lavender has so many uses besides being a great spice lavender has been shown to induce sleep improve sleep lavender oils applied to the forehead can actually improve your mood so Lavender is right up there with the mint family how about curry powder curry powder is
again a mixture of of various spices that are used in the preparation of Curry including Curry leaves it usually has black pepper often has garlic certainly has a friend that gives it its color turmeric what's really cool about curry powder there are studies showing that people who eat Curry one day a week have a dramatic risk reduction for developing Alzheimer's and Dementia compared compared to people who don't eat Curry once a week and as I've talked about in my books it's because the ingredients in curry are some of the best mitochondrial uncouplers there are and
if you've read any of my books you know that health is related to the health of your mitochondria and isn't it interesting that curry powder is one of those super Foods just this week a paper was published looking at the effect of Curry spices on the microbiome of humans and lo and behold there was a direct correlation to the amount of Curry spices given to patients and the health of their microbiome better microbial diversity better species and the more curry powder that these people were given the better the result so curry powder yeah we've run
out of es room but curry powder talk about improving health and it tastes great so what's not to like so turmeric is incredibly important because of its active ingredient curcumin sadly turmeric is very poorly absorbed from our digestive tract I'm sorry throwing a turmeric root in your smoothie is probably not going to do the job you're looking for but if you if you remember black pepper has biop parent if you're going to put tumeric in your smoothie please get out your pepper shaker and put a healthy dose of black pepper in there lastly if you're
going to get Curry tablets or supplements look for ones that have biop parin as one of the ingredients otherwise it's not going to do you the good that you're really looking for so I'm going to give turmeric an AEG so oregano has many purposes first of all there's multiple kinds of oregano there's Mexican oregano there's mediteran ranian oregano the numbers are endless and they all have a different spice profile but they all also have fantastic polyphenol content the oreganos that I try to get are the Mediterranean oreganos we tend to see more of the Mexican
oreganos here in the United States but get oregano into your spice cabinet and use it as much as you can now oregano oil which is the oil from oregano seed seeds actually has some very interesting antimicrobial anti-ea properties and they're actually are some very good papers that oregano oil can be useful with a provisa oregano oil because it's also bacteria Cal you don't want to use it for a long time cuz the last thing you want to do is kill off your microbiome but oregano used in you know the usual way is is another great
polyphenol containing food lemon verbina now you don't see this very often but if you look for it it's another great way of getting a spice kick into the foods you eat I have it in my spice cabinet I use it quite a bit you're using these as sources of polyphenols you're using these as sources of mitochondrial and couplers but you're going to learn in my upcoming book the gut brain Paradox that spices carry a very interesting secret co-passenger that changes your immune system for the better and I'm going to leave it at that cuz you're
going to want to find out who's traveling along with the spices into your gut and when you find out you're going to be shocked is also right up there in the a column lemongrass very important ingredient in Asian cooking I use it a lot lemongrass gives a fantastic flavor to just about every ingredient or food that you're going to eat it's a grass so you're going to use it as a flavoring I like to buy lemongrass fresh but if you can't find it don't be afraid of using this because I don't want to eat it
because of its lectin content I use it in a little bag a cloth bag but lemongrass is also a great spice but do be concerned because it's a grass it does have elct in it ground cumin cumin is part of chili pepper seasonings in general cumin has that distinctive flavor it's in there because it also is another great polyphenol and cumin is way up on the list of polyphenol containing spices and what would be chili without some Gin please make it the Dr gundry approved way goodness sakes don't put the beans in your chili I
agree with the Texans if if you're going to have beans make sure they're pressure cooked but that's another subject so cuming right up there on the good stuff chamomile so most of us think of this as a tea and that's in fact what it's mostly used for but it can be used as a seasoning you can buy it as a seasoning it has a very I think a mellow flavor to it if you've ever had camel mouth tea it is useful for helping sleep a lot of sleep inducing supplements you use chamomile as part of
their mixture and that's really where much of its effect comes from I'm going to put there okay now for a quick recap all right the mint family the sages the Basils the mint uh the Rosemary lavender all just superfoods curry powder phenomenal for your brain all the other ones oregano cilantro if you taste soap you're with me finnel seeds uh really great black pepper we hit that odium lemongrass use it as a flavoring don't eat it again the big Shockers here is ginger cinnamon and Canan pepper you got to be careful with these guys if
you don't react to them they're great but I've just been shocked with how many people these guys show up if you enjoyed this episode of gut instincts don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button let me know in the comments which herb or spice is your go-to remember eat Smart feel great I'm Dr Gendry and I'll see you in the next video and that is my gut instinct [Music]
