A Surgeons Guide to a Plant Based Diet

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Ken Brown  
 All right, here we are with the gut check project, Episode 29 a super special episode because we have a guest co host, Eric Rieger was unavailable. And so we had a guest co host today it is Dr. Doug Won, who's here. Welcome to the studio, my friend.

Dr. Won  
Thank you so much for having me here. Truly an honor.

Ken Brown  
Well, I think that this is gonna be a really really cool show. You're doing A lot of functional things you're really big into treating the whole person. Your background, I think is really cool. I am gonna warn you though. I hope you're a pretty smart guy because Eric's a smart guy. You got some big shoes to fill in. So why don't we at least find out like if you're, you know, like where you actually came from and everything. Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Won  
Sure. I'm from South Korea, immigrated to Irving, Texas when I was 11 years old and went to elementary, middle school and high school in Irving MacArthur High School, go Cardinals. And then after that, I went to Northwestern University. I majored in biology and biomedical engineering, and then went to medical school at utmb in Galveston, and once I was done with the medical school, pursued orthopedic surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, and did spine surgery fellowship in Michigan, and then came right back to Irving, Texas, to treat my friends and family members and my local community and Irving, the city that I love, I went back to it and been there ever since.

Ken Brown  
Yeah, you're way smarter than Eric. Yeah. Of course right now he's probably arguing I didn't hear anything about Texas Tech. So you know, so in his mind, you didn't go to Texas Tech. You're not nearly as smart. But I guess you did say a few other things Northwestern, double major biology, biomedical engineering and everything. So, yeah, I think that I think the show is going to be really great. What I want to do with this show today, you have you and I have very similar passions. We're really big into the functional medicine side of things. I want to cover some anti aging stuff. I want to talk about how supplements and nutrients can actually augment a lot of these different things that talk about your past. Now. You are one of the most accomplished orthopedic spine surgeons and I can I have to pick your brain before we even jump in. I was actually talking to a very difficult patient of mine and I wanted to throw out a disease and just see if you've ever dealt with any of this. I believe That we have somebody who is smoldering into ankylosing spondylitis. Now this actually happened to one of our co workers, but now I'm treating somebody who's acting a lot like she did. She spent about two years just sort of, you knew something wasn't right. And then pow it just kind of all popped up. Have you had some experience with autoimmune diseases and stuff like that specifically as ankylosing spondylitis?

Dr. Won  
Yeah, absolutely. In our spine clinic, we used to see a lot of patients with ankylosing spondylitis. And then also patients who didn't quite have the the conditions, but they were HLA 27 positive, and they were brewing the different types of symptoms and conditions. And then we also deal with because I also deal with lifestyle medicine. We've actually seen a lot of different kinds of patients with autoimmune disease. And what we usually tell patients is that your genetics and genes may load the gun, but you actually pulled the trigger through your nutrition and lifestyle.

Ken Brown  
i like how you say that. Yeah, totally. So one of the things I just want to get this out of the way that you You're a very accomplished orthopedic surgeon. You're currently involved a little bit of a legal situation that you're appealing. What I think is amazing what you have done is because you have to put your surgical practice on hold for a little bit. Yes, you have shifted, and have still taken on the role of being a doctor, helping people and being an educator, you have not slowed down at all, you are the embodiment of resilience of moving through. I'm super, I think that's really, really neat. And why did you decide to kind of shift gears, I mean, you were going from scalpel. And I get that you have to take a little break from that. But a lot of people like you would just say, I'll use this as a break to go tour the world and say hi to things and you went I'm gonna use this as my opportunity to help more people.

Dr. Won  
Thank you. You know, helping people and making a big impact was my passion. That is a reason why I went into medicine and went into medicine because you know, my father suffered from back and he had four back surgeries, and his life was ruined for about 30 years with severe pain and in life You come up with so many different challenges. Either you can crumble or or decide to just sit back, and then the life continue to punch you, or you can stand back, you know, stand up again, and continue to move on forward. And what got me going was as long as I can make an impact and help all the patients, and my passion was biohacking, which I've been doing, you know, all my life. And what I realized was that in medical school, we really didn't learn how to cure the disease. We learned to manage the disease. And through this experience, I really learned how to better manage and then in many incidences, and cure the patients, and wanted to continue to make an impact and help patients. That's what gets me going and that's what's getting me up every single morning. And no matter what anybody says, as long as I feel good about you know what I'm doing and continue to practice medicine in different way. Through health coaching, and, you know, even approaching and these days, I also teach a lot of doctors in Africa. How to treat chronic disease.

Dr. Won  
You teach doctors in Africa?

Dr. Won  
Yes. 

Ken Brown  
Okay. I got a segway out of that for a second. What? Tell me about that? 

Dr. Won  
Yeah, so I came in contact with a physician who was really into preventive medicine. He's a personal doctor to the president of Cameroon. In Africa right now, they're facing so many different chronic disease. In the past, before the Africa became developed, there was no such thing as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or obesity. But as the countries are becoming wealthier, and countries are becoming more developed, they're now importing American disease such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, and they obviously can't afford to treat the patients with American medicine. So they're looking for ways to treat the patients naturally, and also the citizens most of the people in Africa are still hesitant about Modern medicine. So we got in contact through a mutual friend. And we decided to teach the the physicians there, how to reverse the disease naturally. And then also importantly, to prevent them.

Ken Brown  
Wow and so are you doing some sort of zoom with them? Do you have a lecture series? How are you doing this? 

Dr. Won  
Yeah. So every Saturday morning, I connect through them through zoom meeting. Thank goodness for technology. I don't have to physically be in Africa. I would love to visit the continent, sometime soon. When things free up, but utilizing the technology, we provide the lectures, mostly to physicians, but also just about anyone who's interested. And we open it up to the whole community. And at one point, we had people from seven differen...