EP 954B - The Longevity Paradox

Guest Bio: Steven R. Gundry, MD

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.In 2000, inspired by the stunning reversal of coronary artery disease in an “inoperable” patient by using a combination of dietary changes and nutriceutical supplements, Dr. Gundry changed the arc of his career. An obese chronic diet failure himself, he adapted his Yale University thesis to design a diet based on evolutionary coding and the interaction of our ancestral microbiome, genes, and environment. Following this program enabled him to reverse his own numerous medical problems. In the process, he effortlessly lost seventy pounds and has kept them off for seventeen years. These discoveries led him to establish the International Heart and Lung Institute—and, as part of it, the Center for Restorative Medicine—in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara, California. There he has devoted his research and clinical practice to the dietary and nutriceutical reversal of most diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer, arthritis, kidney failure, and neurological conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, using sophisticated blood tests and blood flow measurements to maximize his patients’ health span and longevity.

This research resulted in the publication of his bestselling first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline, in 2008. Following up on the success of that book, he has become one of the world’s authorities on the human microbiome and the interaction between the gut, the foods we ingest, the products we use, and our physical and mental health and well-being. In recent years, more than 50 percent of his practice has been devoted to the reversal of challenging autoimmune conditions in patients referred to him by health professionals around the world.

Dr. Gundry has been named one of America’s Top Doctors for twenty-one years in a row by Castle Connolly, the independent physician rating company; to Palm Springs Life Top Doctors for fifteen years in a row; and to Los Angeles Magazine’s Top Doctors for the last six years.Dr. Gundry is the creator of the nutritional guidelines for the Six Senses Resorts and Spas worldwide and a senior scientific advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors. He has been invited to lecture at both the Stanford and MIT Brain Summit meetings on the impact of the gut on brain health and its deterioration. In 2016, he founded GundryMD, his own line of nutriceutical and skin-care supplements.Dr. Gundry’s wife, Penny, and their dogs, Pearl, Minnie, and Sadie, live in Palm Springs and Montecito, California. His grown daughters, Elizabeth and Melissa, their husbands, Tim and Ray, and his grandchildren, Sophie and Oliver, live nearby.