This is tthe title of a book by Steven R Gundry. For anyone interested in health and well-ness, this book is worth a read just for that. It's not another lose weight diet book. I said it in another post, I'll say it agian, Diet is the cornerstone of our health.

This book changed my life. I don't believe it to be a cure all end all, but it most certainly helped me. To be perfectly clear, I was already gluten free and ketogenic. Everything in this diet book I was already eating, but one of the main points it the book is: it's not about adding things to your diet, it's about what you are taking out. It's not the root of all evil sugar and carbs either, because I had already cut those.

I didn't need to lose weight(130ishlbs). I needed to be healthy, which I most certainly was not. Diagnosed with multiple auto-immune disease(mainly lupus amd psoriasis which caused depression). I refused to believe my immune system would willingly attack itself without good reason. I also refused to take any medication that had worse side-effects that what I was taking them for. Yay! Clear skin! Ohh... By the way, sorry you have Lymphoma now though, but your skin is clear! No thank you.

But, as I've also said just recently in another post, proper nutritional and diet information is over-shadowed by weight loss as its primary concern. Good luck getting said info from a doctor. Weight loss or gain, should be a symptom of proper health, not the standard or goal to achieve what is considered 'healthy'.

I was beyond frustrated trying to find what it meant to be 'healthy' not just getting skinny. This book even acknowledged that both ends of the spectrum are concerns, not just being obese. And nowhere else, through all my research did I find any of the info contained in this book. How our gut works, how it absorbs nutrients or lack there of, and, most importantly, how to naturally heal it!

Not mainly through pre/probiotics(although also available not necessary) either, but by stimulating your natural gut flora with proper nutrition.

Not through some pill and not magically over night. Although he does recommend certain supplements, like vitamin D or fish oil, he bases those recommendations of what he has seen in his thousands of patients with proper medical tests.

I highly recommend this book to anyone fed up with modern western medicine that is only covering up symptoms(heartburn, joint pain, obesity, auto-immune diseases, cancer, etc.) of the cause and thinking they are doing a good job. I could rant on forever about how I feel about doctors, but I'll omit that from this post.

Again, I'm not saying this book contains the miracle cure, but it worked for me!

Very interesting, thanks for posting about this. I have autoimmune skin disease and it's driving me nuts. Good job I know how to overcome depression.

What would you say the key points of this (The Plant Paradox) approach are?

I know exactly what you mean, especially with the depression. The main part is about taking foods that contain certain proteins, called lectins, out or your diet. It's not necessarily adding a whole bunch of things. It goes very in depth into how the gut works and how what we eat affects it.

Gluten is more or less the scapegoat lectin, but there are worse ones than that. The main issue with these lectins is that your gut can't digest them and they actually break through the intestinal wall and wreak havoc by latching on to a cells hormone receptor. They cause inflammation throughout the body as well. This is where the root of almost all auto-immune diseases stem from, inflammation.

Another one of the main points is that you are what you eat ate. This means that by forcing cows and chickens to eat corn and soy, not part of our or their natural diet, to fatten them up, you are basically eating corn and soy. Cows get heartburn so bad they stop eating and the farmers have to give them a constant supply of Tums to keep them eating.

The book is highly informative with cited sources throughout. It also highlights many farming practices that are illegal in other parts of the world, but perfectly legal in the good ol' USA.


My psoriasis is healing, arthritis and other pains are gone, had a bald spot on the top of my head that is disappearing, and I feel better than I did in my teens, 30 something now. I was underweight and that is stabilizing too. He also mentions IBS and other bowel related problems stemming from lectins. Now I can also relate to this as well. For those of you who aren't familiar, just be thankful.

I didn't believe it at first, but he had patients with IBS problems who eventually made it to the point they didn't need TP. Well... This may be a bit too much info, but my bowel movements stabilized to the point I don't need TP.


This is the only book I have found that gives actual health advise and guidelines with actual science behind it.