Steven Gundry

Gundry advocates a low-carbohydrate diet. In 2022, he authored Unlocking the Keto Code which promotes a lectin-free ketogenic diet consisting of goat and sheep dairy products, fermented foods, grass-fed beef, shellfish, olive oil and red wine. Gundry's ketogenic diet encourages the consumption of polyphenols, time-restricted eating and "mitochondrial uncoupling" to facilitate weight loss.

In November 2021, Gundry published a poster abstract in Circulation which claimed that mRNA vaccines against the COVID-19 virus "dramatically increase" inflammation and that this was associated with heart disease. Commentators in British media cited the abstract as evidence of the mRNA vaccines being unsafe. The abstract was not peer-reviewed before publication. The American Heart Association issued an expression of concern, warning that the abstract may not be reliable and that, among other problems, there were "no statistical analyses for significance provided, and the author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used”. The Reuters Fact Check team concluded that it did "not provide reliable evidence that mRNA vaccines increase risk of heart disease". Full Fact noted that the claims in the abstract relied on results from a test for which there was little evidence that it could accurately predict the risk of heart attacks.

Gundry has authored books focused on food-based health interventions. Although not mentioned in his first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution: Turn Off the Genes That Are Killing You and Your Waistline (2008), his second book, The Plant Paradox (2017), advocates avoiding lectins, a class of proteins found in numerous plants. In 2018 he published an accompanying recipe book.

In 2002 Gundry began transitioning from Clinical Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine (a well-known Seventh-day Adventist institution near Los Angeles) to private practice by starting The International Heart & Lung Institute in Palm Springs, California.

By mid-2000s Gundry was providing dietary consulting through The Center for Restorative Medicine, a branch of his private surgery practice. While not an accredited dietitian, Gundry's advice focused on heart health and followed conventional wisdom of Western diets such as drinking a glass of red wine per day, increasing intake of plants and nuts, reducing simple carbohydrates, and consuming fish and grass-fed meats.

People reported in 1990 that an infant boy's heart spontaneously healed itself while waiting weeks on life support for a transplant from Gundry and Leonard Bailey. The boy's recovery made the need for a heart transplant unnecessary, and he received a successful four-hour surgery from Gundry to repair the mitral valve.

Gundry graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1972 and went on to earn a medical doctorate at the Medical College of Georgia (a division of Augusta University) in 1977.

Steven R. Gundry (born July 11, 1950) is an American physician and low-carbohydrate diet author. He is a former cardiac surgeon and researcher, who currently runs his own experimental clinic investigating the impact of diet on health. Gundry was involved in a case in 1990 where an infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (a usually fatal disease requiring multiple operations), avoided heart transplant surgery after spontaneously healing. Gundry is the author of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain, which promotes the controversial lectin-free diet.