Jan. 19, 2026

The Hidden Cause of Weight Gain, Brain Fog & Anxiety (And How to Reverse It) | ft. Dr. Josh Redd Heal Thy Self w/ Dr. G #451

Show Notes
Guest Profile

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Episode Description

What if the reason you can't lose weight, feel exhausted all the time, or struggle with brain fog has nothing to do with how hard you're trying—and everything to do with chronic inflammation silently destroying your body from the inside out?

Dr. Josh Redd runs one of the largest autoimmune clinics in the country and has spent 16 years helping patients that conventional medicine has given up on. He told me something that changed how I think about nearly every health problem: inflammation for short bouts is life-saving, but when it becomes chronic, it becomes the key driver for almost all disease in our country.

This isn't surface-level health advice. This is the mechanism behind why your diets keep failing, why your gut supplements don't work, and why you might feel like you're going crazy when it's actually your brain that's inflamed.

Dr. Redd explains why eating less and exercising more can actually make things worse, how your brain controls your gut (not the other way around), and why that "healthy" food everyone's recommending might be pouring gasoline on your autoimmune fire. He also reveals why kids today don't have a chance—their brains are so inflamed from diet and blue light that we're setting them up for addiction, incarceration, and mental health crises if we don't intervene before age 25.

Discover:

• The $25 inflammation test—five simple blood markers that reveal whether chronic inflammation is sabotaging your metabolism, brain, and immune system

• Why you can't outrun a bad diet with supplements—and the specific enzyme inflammation shuts down that makes fat loss nearly impossible

• The cortisol steal—how stress literally converts your reproductive hormones into cortisol, explaining why infertility is skyrocketing

• Blood sugar's hidden trigger—why a "healthy" food that spikes your glucose might be causing an inflammatory response unique to your body

• The brain-gut connection most doctors miss—your prefrontal cortex controls digestion, and when trauma keeps you in fight-or-flight, your gut never works properly

• Microglial cells gone rogue—how brain inflammation turns these "little chihuahuas" hyperactive, destroying brain tissue and driving depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline

• The autoimmune reversal truth—why Dr. Redd says yes, autoimmune disease is reversible when you address the actual triggers instead of just suppressing symptoms

• The blue light crisis—how phone use after 5pm destroys your cortisol rhythm, wrecks your sleep, and flares autoimmune conditions

Find Dr. Josh Redd:

Website - https://redriver.health/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drjoshredd/

Book - The Inflammatory Reset

My one stop shop for quality supplements: https://theswellscore.com/pages/drg

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why inflammation is destroying your health

2:10 - The hidden reason you can't lose weight despite eating less

3:22 - The #1 overlooked trigger for autoimmune disease

7:18 - How Dr. Josh Redd discovered his path to treating autoimmune patients

13:41 - Why 90% of autoimmune disease starts in the gut and liver