The Gut MD: “95% of Serotonin is Made in the Gut!” The Food You Eat is Tied to Anxiety & Depression

turns out that 95% of Serotonin is produced not in your brain in your gut come on I was in a dark place and making that change completely radically transformed my health and because I had that moment I'm a medical doctor and I care a lot so I felt like I have no choice I have to bring this into the clinic a board certified award-winning gastroenterologist two time New York Times bestelling author the man with the master plan for the microbiome welcome Dr buwit Dr will btz Dr will btz we got 38 trillion microbes now this is by the way more than we have human cells really yeah we are less than 50% human how many times should we be pooping a day let's just get right to it I'm just curious like I'm so glad that you asked this question inflammation influences anxiety and depression oh 100% you could do all the right things physically but if you don't heal emotionally or psychologically you can't take off as a human being 100% that is fascinating I think this is the missing piece that a lot of people haven't heard and they need to hear wow welcome back everyone to the school of greatness very excited about our guest we have the inspiring Dr will btz in the house who is the US medical director at Zoey um and also a New York Times bestselling author and also a gastroenterologist amazing welcome to the show very excited than you my friends it's great to be here I'm very excited there's so many things I want to talk to you about the first one being being the connection between the gut and the brain and how much gut health actually impacts mental health there's a lot of anxiety stress overwhelm mental diseases or um just blurriness mentally it feels like in society today how much does our gut health impact our mental health yeah well we've seen these conditions that are escalating uh depression anxiety different um uh mental health disorders different cognitive disorders including Alzheimer's disease Parkinson's things like this and uh and the question is what the heck is going on here and when you see things changing this quickly it's not genetic so you have to take a step back and say what is it about our environment what is it about the way that we live that ultimately is resulting in this effect because we didn't have all these mental health issues 50 years ago well they existed they existed but they didn't exist to the uh the level of intensity or the number of people that are being affected by these things as what we see today right right and and these are complex issues so to sit here and pretend it's just this one thing you know hey it's the gut microbes that's all that matters that would be oversimplifying it but but I think that the important point though that the listeners need to hear is that they do play these gut microbes do play a role so in order to introduce this conversation I feel like let's take a quick moment take a zoom out and let's talk about the microbiome which is the the living microorganisms that are a part of our body there are 38 trillion microorganisms that exists covering all external surfaces of our body so they're on our skin on our on the top of our head our scalp literally they're crossing my eyeball as I sit here and look at you and talk to you um but they're so small I can't see them so thankfully they're not affecting my vision in any way so these are like little bugs little bugs how many 30 trillion 38 trillion bugs 38 trillion we call them gut bugs but really we're talking about bacteria bacteria that is around that's on that's on the outside of our body and our inside of our body well so here's an interesting thing about that it turns out that what's inside of our body we're talking about our intestine yes is actually outside of our body yeah bizarre I know our intestines on the outside of our body okay so here's the thing your tube is a your intestines are a continuous tube it starts at your mouth now you you're a tall guy much like me okay but the average person in the United States somewhere between 20 and 28 feet okay is this continuous tube of intestines 28 feet okay the tube is never broken all right there is no point where things that enter into the tube leave the tube and go into the body unless they're absorbed by the body interesting so basically what that means is because it's a continuous tube it starts at your mouth which is outside of your body things are outside of your body you swallow them down you may think of them as being inside your body but actually they're within this tube and they never actually enter into your body so all the way through this is actually an external facing surface interesting you're interacting with the outside world which is one of the key points to understand is that you're you're interacting with the outside world within your intestines so this is the reason why by the way leis that 60 to 70% of our immune system lives in the wall of your intestine this is the home of your intestines like people may think of the bone marrow as being hey that's that's where immune cells live no no they're born there they may be born in the bone marrow but then they move to other places much like you were born in Ohio and I was born in New York and now you're here and I'm in chareston um the immune cells move and most of them take up residence within the mining of the intestines and the reason why they're there is because this is actually where we're interacting with the outside world and so we need our defense systems in place in that location all right so anyway so here we are we got 38 trillion microbes now this is by the way more than we have human cells so we are yeah we are less than 50% human wait how many human cells do we have uh about 30 trillion 30 trillion human cells 38 trillion what non-human cells non-human cells really yeah so they're clearly outnumbering us there is no doubt you are definitely less than 50% human and actually if we took your 30 trillion cells um if we took your 30 trillion cells and we removed the red blood cells and the platelets which by the way aren't like the classic cells like when we think of cells I think we all have a picture in our mind of like the cell with the organel the mitochondria all these things right so if you took just those cells you are actually about um 90% microbial and only 10% human and so a microbe is not a human Element no it's not and it's also not a part of our body um they take up resonance after birth that's crazy yeah so the water breaks the water breaks uh mom goes into labor and for the first time the baby is exposed to the outside world and with that come a flush of these microbes and actually passing through the birth canal is a gift from nature because as as a child passes through the birth contr canal for the first time it's being exposed to this world this microbial world that dominates and they've been around leis um so like humans we've been around for about three three and a half million years um ARA which live inside of our microbiome okay they're not bacteria they're not fungi they're these weird things but they produce gas right so when you pass gas think of ARA um they there's a a archaeologic site in Greenland where they found four billion year old ARA four billion years and we think that that's the oldest life on this planet wow so these these microbes uh they have been around forever they've survived everything that exists no matter what happens in this world no matter what happens there will be microbes they will continue to exist um and they're an important part of us as humans which is really the key point because um we can't be our best selves without our microbes there to support us come on really so wait so how much of our bodies is actually human versus non-human what's the percentage uh so human versus non-human clearly less than 50% human Okay clearly less than 50% some would argue 10% human and then if we were to talk about your genetic code you are less than 1% human come on yeah so what are we we're a mish M we're super organisms we're super organisms wow that are a mish mash of these microbes and we think of ourselves in isolation like Hey we're these we're these big strong humans um but actually the big strong humans would be quickly broken down in Weak humans if they didn't have these microbes to back them up they back us up if we didn't have these alien organisms crawling over our body we would not exist is what you're saying well I mean we think of them as alien but they're more native than we are they've been around for four billion years interesting so yeah and so now with the gut brain connection so the gut uh we rely on these microbes this is where they live they are most concentrated within our colon that's their number one location yes they're on our skin and our mouth and a woman's vagina all these places but they're most concentrated in the colon and and they're involved in these core essential parts of human physiology digestion of our food access to nutrients shaping our immune system which is inflammation our metabolism on multiple different levels these microbes are key players in our metabolism um our hormones so like for men androgenic hormones that make us feel masculine they play a role in that yes there is there are connections between microbes and erectile dysfunction wow yeah really absolutely go okay this is how we get guys to listen to the show okay how do I have better rection all right now what do I do um but for women too for women too it's connected to um estrogen and estrogen metabolism and multiple different conditions including uh endometriosis polycystic ovary syndrome Etc wow so um and then the last part is our brain um which is what you started this question with and our gut brain connection our gut brain connection and we can unpack this to describe the multiple ways that those microbes are communicating to our brain but the bottom line is that your brain clearly has a best friend and its best friend is your gut and they're they're talking to each other like teenage girls all day long they're just on the phone non-stop or texting um all day long and the brain is taking signals from your gut and adapting to them but it goes both ways because the brain is sending signals back to the gut which can affect the way that we digest our food wow so can you have a healthy brain if you have an unhealthy gut uh I think that the healthiest to have the healthiest brain possible it is essential to have a healthy gut really yeah I think that we need to be quite intentional about the way that we go about these things because we can kind of just stumble into our health um or we can wake up and see that here we are and we have 38 trillion microbes they're constantly evolving and changing the food that you eat today will change your microbiome by tomorrow and with those choices you are shaping the microbiome and that microbiome will affect Health throughout your entire body including your brain including your ability to function including your ability to maintain memories including your ability to focus and get stuff done and your long-term cognitive Health which includes things like uh Alzheimer's and things of this variety wow so if someone is feeling like they have symptoms of some type of Mental Health Challenge they're feeling maybe they have ADHD or they have depression or depressed thoughts or they have anxiety or stress or overwhelm what are three things they could do to start recognizing how to fix them well I'll give you three things and they all connect back to the microbiome um I would start with food the food is the food is our most powerful lever that we can pull in terms of shaping and changing the microbiome and there are simple choices that anyone can make um and this doesn't have to fall under a dietary pattern or a label it's just changing the way you eat what would be for that first one what would be the top five foods that everyone should eat daily to optimize their gut microbiome okay I can give you a top five but can I start with this essential rule yes which is diversity of plants M all right so eating as much variety of different plants in our diet we have to be intentional about this if this is what we want because the problem is the food system is not going to do that for us you go into the supermarket they've distilled it down to 75% of the calories in our Supermarket is three foods what are those three foods wheat corn and soy wow yes that is 75% of the calories in the supermarket now granted most of those are ultr processed right so I'm here to advocate for real food fruits vegetables whole grains seeds nuts and legumes that's at least five we could add mushrooms all right those are broad categories and we can get more specific if we want to but to me it's about getting that variety and this is not just an idea or a concept this is actually scientifically proven so in a in a study called the American gut project which by the way was International but it was run out of UC San Diego um they what they found is that at the end of the day when they did their analysis above everything else there was this one rule the diversity of plants in your diet was the number one factor in predicting who had the healthiest gut and the number is 30 30 per week 30 30 different plants wow per week now all fruits vegetables whole green seedson nuts and wums include those 30 they count okay all of them right so you want to have 30 different ingredients every week of plants at least wow at least but you know what I don't even tell if I've tried 30 different plants in my life Le it's like you and I need to spend more time together exactly right it's like 30 wow that's incred you start take a smoothie it could be Monday morning okay take a smoothie bananas uh blueberries um greens of your choice whatever ones you like chia seeds hemp seeds chia seeds hemp seeds flax seeds um we're already up to six okay right you want to add in some raspberries or some other kinds of berries we could easily get this up to 10 got got you're making pasta sauce why would you just do pasta sauce why not throw some plants in there oh there you go right onions garlic uh basil oregano um those count too spices count why is the you know if someone's like listen I just like my five to 10 plants a week I I eat healthy plants I eat mostly plants I nonprocessed Foods is that good enough or is it really more about the you adding more and more of the diversity as possible as opposed to just broccoli and spinach by itself the average person in the United States 10% % of their calories comes from actual plants the number one plant is the potato uh right we're not talking about optimal nutrition here there's a reason why people in the United States are suffering through the health related issues that they currently have we need to make changes if we simply added more fiber to our diet we would radically transform the health of this country really yes and that person who's not necessarily eating a lot of variety but is eating a lot of plants number one I give them a standing ovation their diets great starting point they're way better off than the average American is right now right we all though should be looking to optimize we all have opportunities to do better so if you take that diet and you add more variety to it they will reap the rewards of that and the reason why is because every single one of these plants has unique properties that are are number one going to affect our microbiome right so these microbes they're kind of like us in in many ways Lewis um they have personalities they have some of them are are not nice um they have clicks they have certain ones that they tend to hang out with and they work together um they also have taste buds they have different food preferences not every microb Believe It or Not likes kale right but you can train it to like kale or you can get rid of the ones that don't like kale I guess you can trade it to like kale but there's going to be a lot of microbes that are going to be hungry if the only thing that you ate was K interesting right so every single plant is feeding certain families of microbes interesting so the more diverse and expansive that you have with your plant diversity the less hungry you'll be as well is what I'm hearing 100% so if I just eat broccoli and spinach and kale few times a week versus I might never feel like I'm uh full and know it's like I still want more right so I need some different carbs or some snacks or things to feel more full but if I'm hearing you say right if you have more diversity of plants more frequently you're going to feel more satiated you're going to get the fiber that your body needs to be less hungry as well yeah so so satiation like feeling full um is an important concept these days right we have all seen the roll out of OIC and these other gp1 type agonists what is this glp1 that we're talking about here this is a hormone it's a gut hormone already produced by your body right and makes you feel full now I'm not sitting here and going to try to pretend that like what you e is going to have the same effect on your body that a drug does that's not what I'm trying to do here but I want people to understand that here we exist where 95% of Americans 95% are deficient in fiber this is our most prevalent nutritional deficiency and fiber is what actually leads to the release of go1 and go1 is what exactly go1 is glucon like peptide 1 which is a gut hormone which is what OIC is OIC is gop1 okay and it has these different effects in our body including helping us to control our blood sugar and making us feel full interesting which is the reason why OIC is used for diabetes and for weight loss when someone takes an external drug like OIC to create a chemical I guess formulation inside of the body the brain the gut the nervous system things like that to either turn on or turn off certain things how effective is that versus you know having 30 plants a week and just eating the foods that will make you feel that will turn on these hormones that you're talking about that the drug would do and make you feel more satiated in a Fool by itself so um first of all we have to fully acknowledge that these drugs are highly effective like there is no doubt that they work they're getting results they're getting results but what are the long-terms effects of these we have no clue right we have no clue we don't have the data yet to say what the long-term results of these are what we do know with complete Clarity is that if you stop using the drug by the way they're very expensive they're very exp thousands of dollars per month wow right and are we ready to commit to doing this for the rest of our lives because when you come off of the drug you go right back to where you were before yes you rebound immediately so um flip side though I think I think it's important at the same time as we're having this conversation about OIC and these types of weight loss drugs again like I'm not here to vilify them okay but when we're doing that instead of changing the way that we eat the behaviors right the the problem that exists with this is like yes we can measure weight loss and when people lose weight there are different things that can certainly improve and they become more healthy but is the only thing that matters for human health our weight that is not the case there is so much more to um us as humans and our determinance of our health Beyond just whether or not we're obese skinny or what our body habitus is and so we need to look at that bigger picture the bigger picture is that when we optimize our diet we have opportunities to improve ourselves metabolically which includes improving our weight which includes improving our blood sugar control but we also have opportunities to prevent other diseases far beyond what OIC is capable of preventing what also sounds like you know as I'm hearing you talk about this it sounds like if someone's taking something like OIC to lose weight if that's their main goal like I want to lose weight I want to take this drug it's going to help me be less hungry but if someone's losing weight but they're just still eating processed foods and they're not having plants and they're just eating less junk but they're still eating junk how would that affect the brain and the gut connection to feeling good Beyond just losing the weight um so the the the data are clear that when we consume an ultra processed diet which in the United States today 60% of calories are Ultra processed foods so more more than half these are foods by the way that did not exist 100 years ago crazy right so like what we're describing was not possible for our great-grandparents there's no way they could evade the diet that we currently eat because these Foods did not exist and our kids 70% of calories in our kids come from Ultra processed foods wow and there's no doubt that they cause a shift in the microbiome it's a shift towards what we call disbiosis so it's the opposite of what we see when we eat a diverse diet diverse diet leads to a diverse microbiome and that is a healthy microbiome when we shift towards Ultra processed foods we're actually Contracting the microbiome we're empowering the ones that love Sugar We're empowering the ones that um create inflammation and they're signaling the direction they want to go in they want you to go in hey you want you want more of this sugary drink you want more candy you want more chips they're telling your brain you need this there are there are interesting studies to suggest that our taste buds and our Cravings are driven by our microbiome wow yes it's almost like we don't have control sometimes or maybe it's felt in the past like I want this so bad yes I can stop myself but my desires and Cravings are just like I'm going to go to the store and buy candy right now and is that the microbiome kind of signaling and constantly telling us get this go buy this you need this I think that they play a role in that full yes I think that they play a role in that whole impulse um and yes that certainly exists but also the Beautiful exciting thing is our taste buds can change mhm right those impulses can change and you can get yourself to a place where what you crave is actually something that's good for your body and nourishes your body how long would you say it takes to change your taste buds from not craving sugar and processed foods into craving a diverse plant-based healthy options I think it really you really start to see the benefits of four weeks four weeks of doing it consistently of doing it consistently but by the way don't I don't recommend that people try to flip a switch um now there are some people that works for it but like to me we want what what I want is sustainable right something that you can actually stick with not extremes not extreme we don't want yo-yo we don't want to be swinging all over the place right so we want consistency sustainability and we want it to taste good yes so start with the stuff that you enjoy introduce simple sustainable choices and build from there right and as we start to build we start to build momentum and our microbiome is given a chance to to change with us wow so I say four weeks is what it takes to really make this huge change but really I would rather that you do it over the course of six six months a year right because then by consistently doing this you are actually going to completely reshape your microb body so getting back to the question about you know Ultra processed foods and um and brain health um what you're going to create with these ultr processed foods an inflammatory microbiome and inflammation is an essential feature that exists in many different cognitive disorders and mood disorders including depression including anxiety so from my perspective inflammation influences anxiety and depression oh 100% how much would you say sorry to cut you off there but how many what's the percentage of the human population would you say has an inflamed gut and brain oh gosh um it's hard to put an exact number on that but I think what we see if we were to zoom out even in America then may yeah in America if we just focus on what's Happening Here in the states if if you zoom out for a moment think of all of the digestive disorders that exist so obesity digestive disorders metabolic issues immune issues meaning autoimmune type issues that are like hugely On The Rise um hormonal issues right and you go down the line and you think of these things and I haven't even got to the brain yet heart issues and basically what I'm saying is the gut microbiome is a player in all of these different wow conditions wow so if the gut microbiom is is a player in these conditions and you have these conditions present you've already proven you've already proven what the state of the microbiome is and then the question is how is it affecting your brain right and could you could you have better energy better focus better ability to to do um tedious hard things during the day and the answer would be yes and the way that that starts is by changing changing your diet wow yeah so the number one thing you said is food we covered some of these foods and 30 different plants and 30 different plants yeah what are the next two things we talked about the top three things so on food real quick before we move on there's a study called uh the smiles trial okay where they took a plant predominant not it was not vegan it was a plant predominant Mediterranean diet uhhuh so it has some fish and shellfish things like that 100% and it was um as effective as medication for the treatment of major depression really yeah just putting them on that nutritional food plan yes for some reason I don't like the word diet because I feel like it's a restriction yeah as opposed to an addition of Heth right it's not about like eating less and starving yourself I think that's what people associate the word diet to it's like starvation cutting out all foods that I enjoy and being miserable that's what people think when they think of diet and so I'd like to try I try to keep correcting myself to being like what's the healthy food plan what's the nutritional abundance plan that we're going to step into abundance is the right word for what we're talking about here 30 different plants or more I'm asking you to add more variety not take away not restrict so it's the opposite of what we've been told by traditional fat diets yes so all right number two yes so we want to improve our mood okay exercise so exercise clearly improves our mood um can be used as something to help in the treatment of major depression and the question is how is it doing that and one of the answers to that question is actually through the way that exercise shapes our microbiome how do they shape by microbiome it depends on what exercise you're doing okay so um what kind of exercise do you like I'm curious I like to lift really heavy me too and I like to run about two to three mile I ran four miles last night but I usually run two and a half to three at about a seven M hour Pace cool so not too intense not like too slow but kind of like a steady Pace yeah um do you switch up your exercise every once in a while to see if you can get better gains I daily do different sets and different kind of like body parts I guess but I'm I'm constantly following a program to either intensify or add reps or add weights yeah yeah so I'm getting more gains in fact I just put up 220 I haven't done 225 in years but I started like six months ago maybe four months ago being like how many can I do and I did three yeah it's like okay let me see what I can do over the next few months and like couple weeks ago I did 11 and a half for epsode 225 so I feel like I'm back at almost College when I did 15 when I was training football yeah and I feel like I could do more than that now that I have more wisdom and knowledge and nutritional and training and Recovery information so it's amazing to be in your 40s and thriving yes and that's and I'm actually lifting my heaviest weight in my 40s as well yeah let's go let's go yeah dude I'm pumped let's go get the cameras and let's go lift right now exactly um so but I like to play Pickleball I want to make sure I'm doing like some athletic movements also not just like I'm on a bar I'm jogging on a treadmill but it's like okay I need to do some pickle ball I like to do ping pong I like to do different activities I like to dance Sal Al so I'm also making sure that I'm doing lateral movements not just in the gym because I know how important that is for Mobility stretching all these different things ice tub sauna like I'm incorporating as many diverse activities as possible well this is the point and I don't know that you were intentionally trying to set me up there because we haven't talked about this before but actually diversity of exercise is actually a relevant idea really yes so much we could we talk about different types of foods have a different effect on our microbiome different exercises have a different effect on our microbiome they did this study where they looked at marathon runners and they identify that there was this one bacteria called vonella that was disproportionately represented Within These marathon runners so the scientist this was by the way done I believe at Harvard in Boston um the scientist asked the question what's the deal with this villanella like why why would the runners have more this specific thing and the answer was quite interesting the villanella was breaking down lactic acid when we run endurance exercise lactic acid ACC accumulates in our muscles that creates muscle fatigue if you want to be a better Runner and have greater endurance you would break down lactic acid the microbes are helping that's interesting they have another study done by rugby players in Ireland uhuh all right and they looked at their microbiome these rugby players and they discovered that there was a shift within their microbiome towards actually more anti-inflammatory bacteria that interact with fiber to produce what are called short chain fatty acids wow which are the most anti-inflammatory molecules out there and these short chain fatty acids which people may have heard of them butyrate acetate proprionate um these short chain fatty acids have healing effects right there in your gut they help to shape the microbiome they affect the immune system they affect our metabolism wow and they enter the bloodstream and they travel all the way to the brain and they affect the brain including the blood brain barrier that's interesting because playing playing football growing up in high school and college I always felt like I healed very quickly I felt like I would like when I get a scrape or a cut or I'd get like a bruised like it wouldn't really show and I don't know if that was because I was training in certain way that was explosive and power and speed that my microbiome I guess were helping me recover faster I have no idea yeah like a rugby player I know well it's interesting because you think about all the great athletes for example in the NFL and you see these guys do you know like Adrien Peterson comes to mind where some of the recoveries that he had during his career crazy were crazy and they defy like the rules of recovery yes um and it makes you wonder if there's something is that genetics is that microbiome is that yeah are there other factors in play here but what's interesting is because you have this shift in the microbiome towards these anti-inflammatory molecules okay well I just mentioned that depression has an inflammatory component to it right so here we are and we discover that exercise is actually good for helping our moood M and what I'm saying is what's happening under the hood if you lift up the hood and take a look is there's this shift in the microbiome and now you don't even have to change your diet I mean I do want you to eat more plants right but exercise alone helps you improve your anxiety or stress or depression yes and that and that shift that's happening in the microbiome is actually helping you to get more from your fiber so you don't change your diet you eat the same fiber now you get more from it but what if you also changed your diet at the same time that you were implementing this exercise we did one and two food and exercise this is why they synergize so well so would you say your gut microbiome influence your mood more than anything else I think that the answer is yes and the reason why I say that is they have these bizarre studies that they've done where they take people and they inject into them something called lipopolysaccharide what is that all right lipop polysaccharide is produced by bacteria that live inside of us like eoli so we've all heard of ecoli okay so this is like they inject a disease inside of us so they're injecting this thing that you find in ecoli into a person's bloodstream wow okay and then they track them over the next couple of hours we're talking about humans we're not talking about mice right now MH and they see what happens and here's what they find number one because this bacteria has entered into the bloodstream um they get increased levels of inflammation in the body number two their mood and their motivation to work dips wow all right number three they socially withdraw all right so what's going on here basically what I've just told you is that when they inject this eoli type stuff which I by the way want to unpack that in in a quick moment when they inject this ecoli based stuff called lipopolysaccharide it basically activates inflammation which affects their mood and it also makes them socially withdrawn and they think that what's happening is that the body is starting to shut down to preserve energy because it needs to fight the infection so that's number one it's going to slow itself down it's not going to have the energy to talk to people or be motivated 100% And then they socially withdraw why would they socially withdraw we're social creatures we come from living in tribes of people right and you want to protect one another if you're sick you don't want to pass that on to someone else so when you feel sick there's this natural inclination to socially withdraw to interesting to protect the others now is this injection through this study is that causation or is it I guess correlation I guess what is it the difference between like did it cause them the microbiome to be depressed or is it part of the correlation of it it could be something else that is causing that okay so we we have these studies where there's correlation uh you have uh a group of people with major depression and you study their microbiome and you discover that their microbiome is damaged yes okay they have what we call disbiosis or weaky gut right um now what's causing what that's the question right because there's a correlation but you can't prove that the microbiome caused the depression or similarly you can't prove that depression caused the microbiome change yes right so then it raises the question how do we then prove this and there's a couple ways that you prove this through interventions and when you take this lipopolysaccharide basically what you're recreating is what happens when a person has a damaged gut interesting because when you have a damaged gut those microbes they live inside the tube of the intestine and as we discussed at the very beginning of the show that tube is outside of our body we have a single layer of cells um called the uh the gut epithelium that basically protect us because on the other side of the epithelial layer is 60 to 70% of our immune cells wow okay so the immune system is there to protect us on the other side and the single layer of cells it's like the wall of our castle and when our gut breaks down when our microbes are damaged when we don't have enough anti-inflammatory short chain fatty acids you start to see this gut barrier breakdown MH we get what people may call weaky gut and what weaks is the lipopolysaccharide this lipopolysaccharide that they were injecting in this study basically what they were recreating they were not recreating an infection they were recreating chronic inflammation interesting that comes from a damaged gut wow so when you have inflammation because your gut is out of whack or is not healthy it's going to cause you in some ways to feel lower energy anxiety depression or some type of I guess symptom that doesn't cause you to be your best self is what I'm saying 100% and I think that these these can exist on an entire Spectrum right this could be a bad day yes right um but it could also be something that is um more chronic and clinical such as major depression yes and like for me personally like this is where my personal Journey started was that I was in a bad place with my own health really and one of the issues that I had was I was depressed really yeah and I just wanted to be by myself and this is when you were in medical school before or after so I was in my gastron neurology training I was in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill if you looked at me on paper you thought that everything was perfect yet there I was laying under a blanket in a dark room watching um reality television wow like all of us do we're depressed like I've been there I've been there wow below deck baby below deck that was your that was your drug of choice so this was when how how many years ago was this this was uh 12 years ago 12 years ago so you're you're in medical school I was in no I so I graduated medical school in 2006 so we're talking about roughly 2012 now okay so I was a board-certified internal medicine doctor I finished my internal medicine training was the chief resident Northwestern wow and then I moved on to the University of North Carolina I was on a grant from the NIH and I was studying both at the school of Public Health which is like one of the top three schools of Public Health in the country I was doing that and working during the day as a gastrologist in the hospital and I was miserable wow and um and my life was in a bad place um I also had high blood pressure high cholesterol um from a mood perspective tons of anxiety high levels of depression again like I just wanted to lay in a dark room by myself under a blanket and be left alone that's all I want to do but you had made it you were at the top of your field you were an expert you were you know leading a hospital in the department so why do you think you were sick even though you were a doctor all I know is this that I did not want my own medicine in that moment oh the things you were prescribing to others the things that was subscribing to others and that I had been trained by great doctors to do I didn't want that in that moment wow and because so the tables had turned now I'm the patient and I needed something to help me and I tried to um exercise my way out of this so I'm going work out harder I'm a type a right right so I go hard sass oh hardcore 45 minutes of of weight training a day hit training cardio yeah jump on the treadmill for either a five or a 10K or jump in the pool because I was in North Carolina do 100 laps dang that's intense yes and Triathlon training I grew stronger um or faster or whatever athletic measure you want but um I still felt unwell really maybe felt a little bit better but felt a little bit better but I really felt unwell and you had a big gut I had a big gut really yeah yeah and um and I needed something to change and the weird and bizarre thing about it is that I grew up I come from a humble place in Upstate New York and I was raised on junk food yeah and this is the way I ate for 75% of my life and the food that was glorified in our house how could that possibly be the cause of my problems the food that brought us love and connection and intimacy and fun and play oh yeah get home from school play some hoops or Mario Kart fire up the grill couple dogs right like every day Dre yeah summer barbecue let's go it was fun and I loved it but it caught up to me wow it caught up to me in my early 30s and so I needed something to change and the and the thing that changed for me was that I eventually looked in the mirror it was actually by meeting my wife so who like here we are you know uh more than 10 years later we have four kids together but in this moment we're going on a first date and she ate very differently than me really yeah and I never seen anything how did she eat we were at so we were in you know North Carolina right um they didn't have all the diversity back then of foods well and you look at the menu and my wife said to the waiter just she pulled him aside and she goes can you get me a plate and on that plate put collards and black eyed peas and okra and some mashed potatoes wow all right and so she had them arrange a plant plate and I was like who are you yeah yeah what is going on here I get some steak or chicken or yeah yeah I got my usual pork chop so look I'm not saying that's wrong what I'm saying is that my diet needed an overhaul uhhuh right there needed to be changes and um seeing that she opened my mind cuz she looked amazing right she looked amazing she seemed to be healthy have everything going for her and it seemed to be effortless and here I am grinding out an hour and a half of exercise every day with a gut still with a gut still wow right what is it going on why' she go on a day with you so I have no clue I have no clue the The Sun Shines on the dogs you know so anyway um and it just but it was enough to open my mind and so there was this one day where uh I was going to go to Hardies and get my usual $5 deal where they can get you like 2500 calories for five bucks so bad you know for about two seconds you feel great you feel sick and then you just want to get on some sweats and lay on the couch and make weird noises so um so anyway uh instead I went home look I'm a single guy in my 30s I am not going to cook a gourmet meal right right so I pulled out a blender and I threw a bunch of stuff in there and that worked and I made like a 40 o smoothie and I instantly felt like something that had been missing from my life was in that in that cup and um and it made me you know I don't know if you've ever experienced this but when you feel really unwell you just want to feel better yes and so that made me feel better and when when that happens it's enough to make you say well I want to feel that way again and so I came back the next day and I did it again and that started the process for me of changing my diet and once I started to change my diet the weight melted off my body really my confidence cuz I had extremely low self-esteem but you were in the top of your field as a medical doctor and GI and running a hospital Division and didn't matter all the degrees and you could shower me with the degrees and the awards and all these things and I felt good for a day and then I went back to feeling like trash why do you think you felt so insecure or low self-esteem I think that I think that the way that we feel about ourselves is affected by um what's going on inside of us really yeah I do wow I absolutely do I think it's more than just like there are labels that we can apply whether or not a person has a clinical condition major depression generalized anxiety disorder whatever you want it to be but there are also aspects of who we are that are very human that maybe we don't have a label to apply to it but we all experience it right and that is self-esteem and that is energy levels yes and things of this variety and I was in a dark place and so anyway making that change completely radically transformed my health and because because I had that moment I'm a medical doctor and I care a lot and so I felt like I have no choice I have to bring this into the clinic and so I started bringing this into the clinic to treat my patients and I saw radical Transformations among people with eural bow syndrome and acid reflux and Crohn's disease and all sort of colitis I see these radical Transformations and you get to a point I eventually got to a point in 2016 where I was like this story like people deserve to hear this and it should not be pre-required that you come to see Dr b as your doctor in order to hear this story you should be able to hear this no matter where you are and that's what motivated me to get out there and start doing this wow man do you think it's possible for us to have high self-esteem High positive energy without exercising and eating only processed foods I think you'll be so uh such a fraction of the person that you could be if you were to start to make those Implement those changes wow yeah absolutely we've only talked about food and exercise first what's the what's the third thing all right cool so um I wna I want to start by saying this there are these 12 nerves in the brain called the cranial nerves okay and if you actually look as I did in gross anatomy and medical school at the skull clearly we have evolved to really protect these nerves they come from our brain and they pass through these special sort of channels within the skull and they basically control everything that really matters so our ability to see one another our ability to smell to hear to taste to move our tongue to talk to swallow right like this is these 12 nerves impact everything impact everything but there's this one uh nerve among the 12 that's like dude what are you doing here it's the it's like the Black Swan because 11 of the 12 are just involving basically the brain and the upper neck but there's this one nerve that breaks off travels from the brain all the way through the chest all the way down into the abdomen the brain comes down well I mean the nerve comes down n comes down and it's connected this one nerve not all 12 no no only one out of 12 huh right so when you think about how important these nerves are clearly like these are our priority nerves and here's this one nerve that has come down to connect to our gut wow and this is called the vagus nerve all right and the vus nerve is absorbing information it is sensing what is happening within our gut with our immune system and communicating that back to our brain and this is one of the ways I mentioned earlier in the show that the gut has multiple ways to communicate to the brain we've actually started to cover several of them one of them is with short chain fatty acids another is through the vagus nerve all right so these are two of the ways that our gut communicates to our brain the vagus nerve um is fascinating because there's new there's new technology that's coming out now that shows us that you can actually just activate the vagus nerve and change the way that a person functions really it's be so they call it a vagal nerve stimulator it's an implanted de device you need surgery in order to have this and it sends an electrical signal through the vegus nerve and it goes back to the brain and it goes back to the brain and the and by doing this you can improve a person's recovery after stroke you can uh reduce their exposure to debilitating diseases like epilepsy wow and it's FDA approved for major depression holy cow yeah it's now being studied in iral oile syndrome Crohn's disease and all sort of cius so now we're studying these things in digestive health conditions not just cognitive conditions because the vas nerve affects both wow okay so the the Vegas nerve is quite fascinating we have the ability using a technique that's completely free and every single listener can apply this to their own life right now to control the Vegas nerve in a number of ways and the one that I'm here to advocate for is breathing so deep breathing exercise es affect the V nerve all right um the way that we do this is to take 4 seconds in through the nose and then to release for six seconds through per Pur lips all right so you actually are going to be forcing air on some level because you got six seconds of a release slowing it down a little bit on the way out so this is a 10c longer on the way out y so it's not box breathing but it's a not a complete box yeah yeah okay so not holding at the top breathing out out longer than holding at the bottom you're just breathing in and out longer you know different studies look at different uhuh variations on basically the same thing it always seems to be something on the order of 4 seconds in and at least 4 seconds out right so I'm talking about six seconds out just because of this one study that the a little longer yeah yeah but like if you do four seconds in four seconds out you're good you be better it's better than most of us breathing through our chest you know one second in one second out only in the chest and not deep intentional slow fully oxygenating the body the brain everything right all of that and then activating the V nerve that's what we're getting at interesting yes so we're talking about activating the vegus nerve by doing this and you can do this every day and if you do it for literally 10 minutes literally 10 minutes you will notice differences as you start to do this day by day so if you just do this for 10 minutes a day just breathing to activate the Vegas nerve what type of improvements can you C okay so we talked about the vas nerve is this information Super Highway connecting our gut to our brain so we would expect to see improvements in both am I right yes okay so number one I'm of course interested in pooping because that's what I work for right so I want people to poop and I want them to have great bow movements and in uh one particular study they took people that had Euro bowel syndrome with constipation so they were constipated people and they had them do this exercise on a daily basis and what they discovered is that it actually radically transformed their bow motility right their intestines were moving differently and they pooped more frequently so they actually had relief from their constipation not by changing their diet not by taking a laxative but by breathing that was it that was it no exercise no different foods no dieting nothing just breathing just breathing they pooped better they pooped better now if you exercise You'll poop even better if you eat fibroid You'll poop a hell of a lot better but wow but it's amazing to think just ponder that the power that simply by a breathing exercise yes we can alter the physiology of our intestinal system that's incredible but we can also affect our brain and this is backed by studies and science and research we can post it to the show notes yeah that's amazing uh you can also change the way that our brain works so by doing this type of breathing we can improve our Focus improve our memory improve our cognition and improve our mood wow this is incredible um I I do want to talk about so these are the top three things we can do to improve our Mood Food exercise breathing along with all the things you said within each three which I think are powerful and I know there's a lot more to it but that's a great Baseline I do want to talk to you since we talked about poop um how many times should we be pooping a day let's just get right to it I'm just curious like my wife has told me that I'm far too comfortable talking about this topic sometimes we're at dinner parties and like yeah this is how you should be pooping and how it should look yeah yeah yeah she's like you're not allowed to talk about Bloody bow movements anymore oh my God so wait a minute first off how how many times should we be pooping a day and how long does it take for after you D eat food for it to come out what's the optimal timeline all right to know that you're a healthy functioning human being I'm so glad that you asked this question um because actually there's a fun experiment that people can do at home um so now first of all let me answer the question about pooping yes um I'm of the belief that pooping should should be a um it should feel full it should be a complete evacuation all right okay it should be a complete evacuation um you should no longer feel like you have to go when you're done uhhuh it should be satisfying and this entire process dare I say should be fun like it should feel good it shouldn't be painful it certainly should not be painful it should not be effort it should feel good and you should be able to flip that door open and strut out in slow motion and Michael blé I'm feeling good is blasting while like explosions and slow smoke yeah all right this is the way that I think it should be for people unfortunately it's not shocking considering 95% of Americans are fiber deficient of course that plays a role how often should we poop the average American poops once a day if you were consuming an adequate diet with an adequate amount of fiber you would be pooping more than once a day really yo definitely you would poop probably twice a day but it's not about the number so I want to make sure that we not fixate on this because I'm quite sure there will be listeners who will hear this and they'll go something's wrong with me hold up if you are pooping on a level where you have complete adequate bow movements it's satisfying you have a sense of relief when you're done and you are not suffering symptoms as a result of your bow movements you're in a great place wow and that maybe that's not once a day for you and that's okay all right so there are people who poop every other day and I would not classify them as constipated based upon that alone meanwhile Lewis there are people who poop every day and they are clearly constipated yeah and unfortunately they don't even realize that they're constipated because they say I'm pooping every day you need better bow movements if you are not completely evacuating when you go then that is not then that is to me the first step towards backing up and backing up as constipation wow how long should it take when you get on the toilet to finish um should it be like okay I sit down it should be like 30 seconds done and wipe it clean and move out or is it like okay to be there for a few minutes so for the dudes in the audience I quite sure that many of you have uh a habit of bringing your phone into the bathroom and checking your fantasy league or whatever it may be or playing a video game and I don't want you spending more than 5 minutes on the toilet if you can avoid it um so the process of pooping should be where we feel a sense of urge not necessarily urgency but urge like I need to go I got to go I can hold it if I need to but it's ready the time yeah right and you and in that moment you are listening to the cues of your body right this is completely natural and you go into the bathroom you get into a proper pooping pooping position which by the way a proper pooping position is not sitting rigidly on a toilet what is it it's moving your feet up so having some sort of I've got that you have Squatty Potty oh yeah do you I love it man I love The Squatty Potty man I've had that for a few years oh you're a pooping Master you're a pooping icon I don't know about that I was thinking the reason I got it is because I used to be constipated I used to be like blocked up right yeah I don't know if this is TMI here but certainly not with me and I wanted to and I want to ask you this um for probably I don't know 15 20 years like it was not every day but it seemed like it was off and on right I was like oh man I'm taking a while to to go it's like you know you know I and I and here's when it started to change so what you're telling me at the beginning of this conversation is starting to make some sense and I started to pull some of this together in the last couple years too I'm curious about when I was 16 I had eight teeth for removed the the the orthodontist was like you've got a small mouth we got to open your mouth we're got to give you braces but we got to take out the four wisdom and then four on the sides oh it brutal right yeah it was miserable four weeks of recovery with just ice bags and a freaking helmet to like hold it together right it's miserable now as it started to heal I was just like I don't want to go through more pain I was 16 yeah football season was coming up I was going to wear a margard for three months I was like I'll wait till basketball season to put the the braces on I delayed it as long as I could you know three months turned into 20 years where my teeth started to enclose I I couldn't my back teeth stopped touching so I only could touch my front two teeth right here the back teeth like enclo it like went reverse my jaw so the back teeth did not touch so I wasn't able to chew properly so it would get very tiring chewing with my front two teeth wow so i' essentially just eat a few bites and swallow yeah so one I finally got invisaline and got braces and I finally got implants of those teeth so I could actually Chomp my food better yeah once I got those implants in I still have one more to do once I got them in I noticed that I started to use the bathroom better I was able to chew more fully Chomp more fully and therefore process better I was also more intentional about how I was eating and what I was eating and things like that but I'm curious if you know if you're just chewing a few bites and swallowing your food as opposed to actually chewing it down how that affects your I guess blocked up or constipation levels and adding that with a processed diet I'm assuming did not support me with my gut right yeah uh there's multiple different factors there it's interesting what you're describing with your teeth because this is what a lot of older people deal with on a routine basis really yeah and they and they struggle to be able to chew their food and because they can't chew their food they opt for simpler foods that are pre- digested in a way really which are ultr processed foods it's lot easier to eat ultr processed foods there's quite a bit of data actually around eating rate how fast we eat by the way this is something that we're looking at at Zoey um Zoe is a company that we uh are running the world so hard just nutrition science study right now and I'm the US medical director and so with eating rate how fast you eat it's highly compelling that um foods that require us to slow down actually are beneficial to our metabolism interesting yeah and you could take the exact same food and serve it two different ways one of which you can just scarf down or the other one requires you to actually chew your food and the one that Che you requires you to chew your food that's less predigested actually is better for your body metabolically really yeah so like versus what about a smoothie uh in a perfect world in a perfect world world you would eat a salad you want to make a smoothie or you make a smoo but I'm here advocating for smoothies because they're delicious and they're a great way to still get fiber phytochemicals polyphenols into your diet with a diversity of plants so and then you can have your your salad for lunch like you're not going to even sell it at every meal honest yeah exactly wow so you're saying nut butter versus uh almonds it's better than the almonds 100% why is that um I think there's a couple things so part of it is the uh the food itself it's not like food is more than just calories and nutrients and macros um there's a structure to the food and we call it the food Matrix and an intact food Matrix is generally speaking the preferred way to to consume our food so basically what that means is less processed wow yeah so if it's pure even if it's like a whole food but it's puree or or processed right or crushed down or whatever it might be it's better to have the whole food by itself than the processed version or the crush down version when when possible but like I'm not here to make it sound like I don't like almond butter or peanut butter um there have been some interesting studies about if you take the uh the exact same food and you cook it if you cook it it actually has a different effect on the microbiome so like for example you take uh kale and maybe you would steam the kale to soften it up and things like this by steaming it you're actually changing the food a little bit it's not a bad thing and it'll have a slightly different effect on your gut microbiome than that raw wow uncooked kale so yeah there's a lot of interesting stuff there what what is more effective or more efficient the raw uncooked vegetables or cooked SL steamed SL sauteed vegetables I think when people are changing their diet it's better to give your gut an opportunity to adapt and to gently ease into it and cooked food or like you know these like things that are kind of broken down already they're a lot easier to to digest than like the raw foods are so like going raw food only to me I don't really advocate for that that yeah um all right so bow movements yes so uh I prefer for people to have a natural bow movement in five minutes or less you shouldn't have to strain to go in a perfect world um it should come out quite naturally you get your business done you get up you walk out the door don't sit there don't sit there because blood gets pulled down into your pelvis when you're sitting there in that position and it actually fills the hemorrhoids and we have an epidemic I mean I hate to say this I feel like we've been talking about a lot of epidemics here today we have an epidemic of hemorrhoidal issues what is hemorrhoids um hemorrhoids are the most uh attractive uh concept out there so um these are basically like veins that carry blood and they exist right around our Bottom now I know I should have an answer for why did we evolve to have hemorrhoids and I do not I don't honestly know why we evolved to have hemorrhoids but we did they're there all right and when we when our bow movements change whether that be constipation or diarrhea or straining to go and bearing down and pushing we are actually driving blood down into these beds of of tissue these hemorrhoids they get engorged they get enlarged and then can cause trouble so they can cause bleeding they can pop out um they can itch so there's a number of different things and statistically 50% of Americans who are age 50 have hemorrhoidal issues so so you heal those hemorrhoids um you can make dietary changes that will certainly improve them substantially because they e and flow a little bit so maybe they wouldn't be completely non- problematic because they are a part of our anatomy so when you change the anatomy and you have dog it but anyway so that's the reason to to not spend too much time on the toilet so and so if someone is having one of those three I guess you said diarrhea constipation and like straining to straining like to push through the go right if they're experiencing that occasionally or frequently what are the main causes of those three styles of unhealthy poop this is a huge conversation I mean like I have it might take a day to hold yeah I have like courses that are multi-hour courses that taught on this on these each of those topics but um but if we were to say okay let's bring it back to like what is the thing you can do uh the answer is fiber fiber because the the the power of fiber again 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber what's unique and special about fiber one of its superpowers Beyond feeding and fueling our gut microbiome to create short chain fatty acids is that it's the only thing that I'm aware of that can fix both diarrhea and constipation fiber and bring it back to the middle so it gives your stool form it gives you that glorious soft but formed bowel movement that we're striving towards and when it's soft and formed then it comes out a lot easier you don't have to strain to go so we are addressing all of the issues that you just described so when you have when you have hard when you have hard poop or I can see you blushing just a little or you have I guess I don't know what the word would be like uh not continuous or it's like just yeah lose lose or comes out yeah yeah what does that mean is this mean you don't have fiber if you have like really all right hard poop or like it's not continuous what we do know is what we do know is this it actually brings me back to a question that you asked earlier which is um how long should it take for us to poo yes right if it's faster that's typically associated with with loose stool like diarrhea because you have faster Transit are moving through yes and when it's slower that's associated with constipation uhhuh and both of these things are actually associated with changes in the microbiome so the microbiome is a player for sure in our gut motility and whether or not we develop diarrhea or constipation okay and we can actually do a simple at home exercise to measure this and determine what our gut Transit time is and that is uh so we at Zoe this is actually a study that we published in one of the top Gastrology journals on the planet called the gut and um basically what we did is we had people eat blue muffins M and these blue muffins the food D will show up in your poop uhhuh so you can see when it comes out so you can see when it comes out how long time it but you time it yes and most people are like either they're pooping 24 hours later or 36 hours later wow or up to 48 hours later and all that is normal okay all that is normal but if you see that blue in less than 18 hours you got fast Transit and typically you're going to have diarrhea and that's actually that's not good we don't want that okay so that's a lack of fiber many times that's a lack of fiber uhuh um or you may see very slow Transit where it's coming out like more than two days later right and that that's not good either that's not good either so all of these things are actually correlated not just to our microbiome because they are but they're also correlated to metabol IC parameters so um like for example there's this thing that we use as as Physicians to predict a person's risk of cardiovascular disease like heart attack and so this is like a 10-year risk score and believe it or not like your bowel Transit time in this study was correlated to your cardiovascular risk wow so um so it's worth us paying attention to these things so having healthy poop is a huge part of living a healthy life I think so and I think that like the the thing that's interesting about about poop is that um we ignore it we ignore it because it's like we've stigmatized it but if as a gastrologist you look at your poop every time uh most of the time yeah yeah yeah I guess kind of proud kind of proud we're in a good place that's good yeah um well it's important to pay attention I guess you don't to stare at it but it's like it's important like you have to be creepy okay yeah flush see it as it goes down and all right I'm doing the right things you don't have to be creepy about it and you have to obsess about it but you should take not putting your hand in there and checking it out you're not doing weird stuff yeah please don't do weird stuff but um I do think it's worthwhile to take a look and understand where you're at and there are these um seven different uh measures of stool called the Bristol stool score interesting okay so and they're they're individual pictures that allow you to see like what you know hey my poop looks like this all right and some of them are diarrhea and some of them are constipation and some of them are right in the middle where you want to be that's a Bristol four Bristol four is the Fantastic glorious bow mov okay okay so and the the the thing that's key from my perspective because this correlates to our gut microbiome and if it correlates to our gut microbiome then it also correlates to our digestive health our metabolic Health our immune Health our our cognitive health because of this we should be looking at this um so I think it's important for people to know so you can at least know hey is this not a Bristol 4 is this a Bristol one or two which is constipation is this a six or seven which is super loose and watery which is diarrhea because if that's where you are then we need to make some changes in order to get you to a better place and a lot of it comes down to adding more fiber to your diet if you add more fiber to diet for the vast majority of people they will actually see substantial improvements in terms of those bowel issues wow now I don't want to sit here like there are people that have you know um uh some sort of medical issue sure it's more complicated in those people so let's not make it too simple here right right right right wow fiber fiber is one of the keys it sounds like now how do you know what are the I guess what are the main symptoms of having a leaking gut well we've started to touch on this yeah so a leaking gut again it comes back to this single layer of cells the epithelial layer and when it's breaking down it's because of things that are happening within the microbiome and it's creating opportunity for things to get into the bloodstream or across into the immune system system that aren't supposed to be there when a person has a leaky gut there can be a number of things but I think the first thing you're going to feel is a loss of energy okay we saw this in the lipopolysaccharide study where they injected the lipopolysaccharide into their blood they felt fatigued right that was within a couple hours um so low energy is one of the Key signs and I think the reason why this is Lewis is because energy is this thing that we all experience I do you do I could ask you right now what your energy level is 0 to 10 you'd have an answer for me for sure sure yeah right and so what everyone else yet doctors don't get it h doctors don't understand you go to your doctor say I'm feeling low energy I'm feeling fatigued and they kind of roll their eyes and the reason why is because I don't think they mean to dismiss you I actually think they're very compassionate they just don't know what to do with that and what I'm saying to you and what I want people to hear is that this is because it's connected to our immune system and inflammation there's overwhelming evidence that this is true so right now if you look at a group of people 20% of people will tell you in the United States that they have low energy and they have tons of fatigue okay 20% but if you were to look at a group of people that go to their doctor it's one in three instead of one in five one in three people that go to their doctor have low energy and if you look at people that have a chronic inflammatory Condition it's at least one and two it's at least 50% but if you were to look at autoimmune diseases which are like overt RI roaring chronic inflammation among autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease all sort of colitis um Ms multiple sclerosis it's like almost 100% of people will tell you that they have low energy wow right so to me energy is we're we're pretending or the the traditional medical system has pretended that it's meaningless we don't know what that means and I'm here telling you that there's now overwhelming evidence that this is a measure of our inflammation wow now we've been talking about the gut health with the immune system but how does gut health play in with the nervous system and impact it um it gets back to the gut brain connection we've we've touched on two different ways that the gut connects to the brain one fatty acids the vegus nerve yeah okay so let's look at some of the other ways one is neurotransmitters so um neurotransmitters are things like serotonin serotonin is the happy hormone yes uh when we treat major depression or generalized anxiety disorder we use serotonin reuptake Inhibitors to boost serotonin levels in the brain turns out that 95% of Serotonin is produced not in your brain in your gut come on but everyone talks about serotonin in the brain yeah but it's produced in the gut 95% of it is produced in the gut 5% of it is produced in the brain now in the brain it is very relevant and important for how we feel our mood our energy levels our Focus but in the gut but um the microbes have the ability to actually shape the production of Serotonin and and serotonin precursors and these serotonin precursors affect bowel motility and affect mood and can cross the blood brain barrier so if you think about this people that have for example eal bow syndrome all right so what is IR bow syndrome there's no here we are it's 2024 we don't have a blood test we don't have a CAT scan or anything we can do to diagnose this condition we've known about it for 50 years okay what is going on here well they have a change in Bow motility they all have either diarrhea or constipation they all have abdominal pain and in an overwhelming fashion they suffer from Moon disorders there is a massive disproportionate prevalence of depression anxiety and other mood disorders and people that have BS and it's quite fascinating because when you think about it it connects back to the gut and the brain and the the new way of thinking about this condition which has changed many times during my career the way really yeah yeah about thinking about and treating IBS treating about IBS right um now there's a more holistic view which is a good thing not just say here's a drug or here's this thing yeah yes to to say it's not just a digestive disorder this is a disorder of the brain and gut axis interesting yeah because I've heard about um you know people struggling to go to the restroom from different times if they feel like unsafe if they feel like maybe they're in an unhealthy relationship and it's causing certain gut issues is that connected to the nervous system not feeling safe because of the environment or relationships that are out of alignment does that impact the digestive uh inner workings as well you know is that all play in 100% really 100% do you think IBS is more of an emotional challenge then I think it's the disorder of the brain good excess interesting I think it's more than just one or the other I think it's both so we have to incorporate both in that in in our concept of that but um start with a simple example person's about to go on stage and give a speech they have they have uh uh anxiety around that what do they do they feel flutter in their stomach start to feel nausea maybe a builds towards cramping abdominal pain and maybe they have to run to the restroom and go wow right when I was in medical school on test day there was like a line out the bathroom door it was disgusting right before when I played football man I had to go like 5 10 minutes before the game started yeah it was like you try to go an hour before to get it done but then like just the nerves or the excitement would just be like I got to go now yeah like right before like we're starting the game I'm like I got to go let's describe exactly what's happening there so basically what's happening there is this is once again the brain gut connection um now the brain is taken Center Stage instead of the gut the gut becomes secondary and the stress of the moment leads to activation of the sympathetic nervous system wow the sympathetic nervous system is the opposite of what we were describing with the vus nerve the vus nerve is our parasympathetic that's our rest and digest relaxed State the sympathetic is I'm about to run into a football and try to knock someone's head off right so you're like getting charged up for a fight or to run away from a saber-tooth tiger or whatever it may be that's our sympathetic nervous system the brain as a part of that stress response there are good things that happen you get an adrenaline surge you feel powerful you can in that moment do uh superhuman things but there's a sacrifice and the sacrifices your gut the brain releases a hormone called corticotropin releasing hormone or c and the CR sets off this inflammatory Cascade and downstream if you follow that ultimately what you discover is it has a negative impact on the gut microbiome it affects B motility it also actually directly affects the microbes so there's a shift within the microbiome and then here we are and you got to go to the bathroom wow you would think that in a fighter flight moment that your body would suck it in so you could actually run away right or like get away from the moment some people do some people get very very constipated under stress but you know basically what we're talking about though is like an acute stress right an acute stress which is different from a chronic stress what do you what do you do if you've been exposed to trauma and um it lives in your unconscious mind and it causes you chronic stress on a daily on a daily basis because you have not healed that wound that emotional wound what happens people get IBS and Cron's disease of citis and I've had many patients he got too 100% wow because what what I'm giving you are the diagnosis but the root cause is a damaged gut with leaky gut so the symptoms or the diagnosis I guess are the damaged gut but the root of that is a lack of healing an emotional trauma I've had many patients these are actually my proudest moments as a doctor to be completely honest with you my proudest moments are not getting people to change their diet my proudest moments are taking that person who has been to six or seven doctors and they're not getting better even with medication and you build a doctor patient relationship it's not one visit talking about four five six visits and you get to a place where they tell you something from their past that is still affecting them today and my role as the doctor is not to fix that specific issue it's to bring awareness to them so that they understand understand that these are not separate issues wow and once they discover that then actually treatment is like next level because they actually turn their attention towards the thing that they've been avoiding or ignoring they turn towards that and they have a healthc care professional not me that's not what I do but they have a healthare professional who helps them to heal that wound and when they heal that wound these are people that have been doing 30 different plants exercising deep breathing exercises still not their gut is still messed up gut's still not messed up Dr B I've done everything your book tells me to do I'm still messed up okay once we discover this the healing is a rocket ship it's like within a days it's like transforms they are completely transformed because they're doing because everything is right but it's like that rocket ship is Chained down wow it's chained down so it's trying to go off but it can't go off because of these chains and you got to break the chains the chains that are holding them back and that is their that is their history of trauma man isn't this fascinating that you could do all the right things physically but if you don't heal emotionally or psychologically and allow your nervous system to feel safe you can't take off as a human being 100% that is fascinating and that's why I just believe that learning to face yourself and address the emotional psychological or memory wounds that you're holding on to and processing those things that can take time and healing those things emotionally y will set you free physically as well I think this is the missing piece that a lot of people haven't heard and they need to hear wow it's almost like doctors if they had also training on therapy you know how to how to implement that type of process I guess you couldn't be trained therapists with some type of training it's almost like that could also elevate healing better I a believer in a teams based approach to Healing that that there's not going to be that one one person that can do everything person that does everything anymore that you need to surround yourself with a team of competent people that you trust and you have faith in gosh and um and work with them but it's the uh I want to give a quick shout out to one of my mentors at the University of North Carolina his name is Doug drosman and he is the um uh founder of year oldow syndrome so he wrote the book it's called it's called the Rome foundation and basically it was like a group of scientists that met in Rome Italy for the first time and and like put together this idea of what IBS is back in the 80s wow so that was Rome one and they've gone through and I think they're on Rome four now so basically but he's the author he's the guy that has organized this and led this created this diagnosis I worked in his Clinic the hospital hated us we would see two patients in a half of a day most gastrologists these days see two patients in 15 minutes really yeah we would see two patients in a half of a day we would spend hours with these people but these were the people that I'm describing that would bounce from Doctor to doctor and never get better and the system was failing them because you can't just use a pill for everything wow you can't just make a diagnosis and fix everything at some point someone needs to have a holistic View and see the complete person and see that we are more than just uh this one you know set of symptoms and so and that's what we did and um and he was quite interesting because he was a professor of both medicine and Psychiatry and I would call him a Maverick because like he's back there in the 80s and 90s and coming up and making connections like you know for example history of sexual abuse in childhood connecting that to the manifestation of Digestive Disease as an adult wow I mean that that's something I talked about on this show many times about dealing with sexual abuse as a 5-year-old and how it left me feeling very unsafe and clinched a lot and kind of like always looking out to see who is going to try to attack me abuse me take advantage of me in different social settings even when it wouldn't be a sexual abuse setting but just a setting of like School setting right Sports whatever it might be and I TR and I believe that was a big part like you know 4 five years ago I started really diving in deeper on sexual abuse healing I started about 11 years ago but didn't fix the teeth and I still ate poorly as well but I to kind of put it all together four or five years ago with fixing teeth intentional eating eating healthier healing trauma on a deeper level and I feel like it's allowed me to have more freedom within my body as well peace and Harmony someone asked me this morning uh how are you feeling today at the gym how you feeling and I had another guest on earlier today where told him I always tell people the truth about how they feeling so if I'm not feeling good I'm like man I'm messed up right now I'm stressed out I'm this like I'm honest how I'm feeling I don't just say good for every answer and I said I'm feeling peaceful loved abundant Greatful and harmonious and it's how I feel sounds amazing but it's been willing to face incredible amounts of pain in Within Myself address it not just one and be done but consistently for the last four and a half years yeah almost weekly and being willing to face it and process the pain to create meaning to process shame guilt insecurity and whatever else I was holding on to psychologically emotionally physically from the different traumas of life and allowing myself to selflove Without Shame and anymore and it has been one of the most challenging processes I've ever had to experience but the most liberating and freeing process and it's a journey that will continue I feel better my gut has reacted better and I only feel like I can improve from here as well and continue to get better so I'm so glad that you as an expert in this field as a doctor medical doctor talking about healing the emotional traumas can sometimes be the final thing that allows us to elevate our physical potential as well it's people like you that have the ability to change the lives of millions of people because you sit here and you speak with uh openness about a difficult topic for you and that requires courage and putting yourself out there I appreciate that you do that and it's in there's an interesting thing that you said just a moment ago that I can't help put comment on real quick which is that you talked about um feeling like uh tensed up clinched clinched is the word you used right it's actually not a coincidence that constipation is actually the manifestation in many cases of that kind of trauma because that that feeling of clinched actually like you you truly are yeah constantly yeah I mean I constantly was I don't I don't attach that to myself anymore but in my my years growing up and my teens and my early 20s it was a clenched feeling it was almost like I was ready to fight at all times right it's like waiting for someone wanting to trust and love the world but waiting for someone to take advantage of me at the same time yeah and it wasn't a relaxed state of being how can you trust when you're a 5-year-old who's vulnerable and exposed to something like that that's really hard and as an adult we're constantly uh struggling to overcome those types of experiences that we have but it's but I just find it interesting that the the words like this like clinched they're um they're you're intending it figuratively but it actually is literal it is literal it is and it caused digestive pain you know and it was it's hard to go to the bathroom it was this is what I'm saying sitting there for 20 30 minutes at times you know being like I'm I going to get this out you know it's just like but like you said going back to the breathing like just activating the breathing alone for 10 minutes a day will allow you to relax your mind your nervous system your body and connect it your gut as well so that you can process everything better you add the exercise you add the food but I feel like the fourth thing what I'm hearing you say I don't know if this would be the fourth thing would be healing the emotional wounds healing trauma and you could do the first three food exercise and breathing but it sounds like a lot of your patients until they healed the trauma they still struggled with their gut yeah I don't think this is everyone yes but for people that have something in your past that you're still struggling with um and maybe you've repressed it right maybe you're not thinking about about it yeah but it's there um if you have something like that I I I just want to bring awareness to the fact that this is not something that you're able to hide and put away to the side it's continuing to affect you and to be the best version of yourself the best thing that you can do is reach out for help and and address it directly wow this is beautiful man I got so many other questions on my list that I would like to ask you but I think a lot of these things are probably in uh one of your books um and you've got so much content as well I want people to check out your website um what is the main place that we should send people to to learn about your books your programs your information uh so yeah you can well you can find me on social media uhu so I'm I'm the gut health MD yes um you can come to my website which is the plant-fed g.com I'm quite proud of my email newsletter um we have a a large community and basically like I my favorite way of communicating is not on social media it's through your newsletter it's through my newsletter because then I can like really attack and break down studies the way that I like it doing it I'm signing up so thank you dude um and then uh the other thing is that I I mentioned this a few times but I think I should bring attention to this so I'm the US medical director of Zoe Zoe is running the world's largest nutritional Sciences study basically if you were to sign up we send you a kit it has a microbiome test a a continuous glucose uh uh measure and um uh a blood fat test and we combine all those factors to give you a personalized dietary plan and I'm actually very proud of the fact that first of all Zoe we ran a randomized control trial and the results are going to be published in nature medicine uh I don't know exactly when it depends on whe the show errors sure sure but the that's literally the top journal on the planet wow that journal never takes randomized control trials I don't you know I think the reason why they took ours is because of this is like a groundbreaking study um but nonetheless we're honored um and what did the study reveal well so people were randomized so it's a clinical trial and people in the United States were randomized to either do the Zoe program or us dietary guidelines now us dietary guidelines if you go and you look at it I mean people can find stuff that they disagree with right we can all find stuff but if you actually follow it most of it is sensible advice what's the main philosophy of it oh you we want you to consume enough fiber we want you to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet right Grandma said yeah so I mean there's stuff in there that I may disagree with but the the the majority of it I'm going to sit here and say you know what you got probably 80% of it right sometimes grandma said finish your pie you know so H you know that's cuz she loved you that's cuz she loved you it wasn't cuz she was worried about your health exactly yeah and she wanted you to love her back exactly yeah so um but anyway so so we're not comparing to like eating crew towns right we're comparing to an actual real diet that is recommended by our government uhuh and so in this study people that were on the Zoe program first of all by simply doing the Zoe program for 18 weeks they um they lost multiple centimeters off their waist right they reduced their visceral fat they lost weight they lowered their triglycerides they improved their gut microbiome and then I think the part that I want to talk about because it's relevant to this whole conversation that you and I have been having here today is that they had more energy substantially substantially more energy uh better mood they slept better and it improved their hunger so in other words they're they were able to control their appetite yeah okay so they got all these benefits but then the cool part is people that were the most compliant with our program meaning like there's some people that don't do it yeah right but if you actually do it what happens you get everything that just described yet intensified you get even more so like you double the number of centimeters off your waist wow right by actually doing the program um but then you also start to reduce cardiovascular risk factors you lower your blood pressure your apob your LDL cholesterol now here's the part that I think got nature medicine excited I think this is the reason I'm about to tell you the reason why I think they published our paper we looked at the people who are most compliant with Zoe versus people who are most compliant with the government guidelines like do you actually follow the advice yes right so now it's not an excuse of oh I didn't do it now it's like are you actually doing it and when we compared those two things Zoe dominated so in other words this personalized plan that is specific to you it's not the same for everyone interesting outperformed what our government consider considers to be our our ideal diet which is kind of do this for everyone yeah do this for everyone so Zoe kind of takes these three different measurements and tells you here's what your body your gut your blood your genetics here's what you should be doing for you yeah we break down and it'll be different for someone house 100% you could you could you could do it with uh if you have a sibling you have a brother I've got three older siblings yeah brother and two sisters yeah so like hypothetically if you all did this what you would discover is that you're different W right a big part of your difference is your microbiome your microbiome is completely unique to you there's no one on the planet with a microbiome like yours so you might share similar genetics but your response to food is different because you have all these other factors that are different and we can see that so we can look at your blood sugar your blood fat your microbiome we can give you that feedback and we can also Empower you with an understanding your food there's no food that's off limits this is not about restriction this is about abundance wow so it's about understanding though your food and how to properly eat for your own unique biology that to me is exciting wow so anyway how can people get access to this or try this if you want to check it out go to zoe.com willbe the reason why I put SL willbe there is because you'll find a sweet little gift from me which is a 10% off ticket nice um and you can use that little code to uh to save a little cash if you decide to go for it amazing and we have a podcast too by the way that I've seen it yeah it's in the top of the charts in the health section I see that yes it's always it's always competing with me I'm trying trying to get ahead of that all the time you know well you have you have an amazing diverse podcast I love I love what you do and and we are like a science oriented exclusively um with a heavy focus on nutrition but a lot of other things that's cor and um and so people can check that out too now you guys are doing awesome zoe.com will be also the plant fed gut .c check that out plant uh um the gut health MD on Instagram Facebook and social media this is powerful stuff man and I and I feel like the more knowledge and wisdom we have around this information this science and the more we can just start testing a little bit of it trying some of it today and seeing how it impacts our mood our health our well-being it's just going to make us better human beings so I'm so grateful and I want to acknowledge you um will for for dedicating the last 20 years of your life to understanding this and expanding your knowledge and doing all the studies and the research but also taking a big risk and a leap of faith when you got sick I guess 10 12 years ago and saying hey let me see if there's other information I can gain outside of my medical training let me try new things let me let me try to take this from our first PR principles approach let me try to see if there's other ways that I can heal myself first so that I can can help others heal as well yeah so I want to acknowledge you for that man because I think there's a lot of people that are sick today like you talked about and unfortunately unless people get this information from you or from other people like yourself who are teaching this people are going to be very sick over the next 5 to 10 20 years and it's going to take big wakeup calls for them until they make a change so I hope people are able to spread this message and share this with a friend today um and and help anyone even if it does doesn't seem like someone is unhealthy physically send them this episode on video or audio to get people educated informed on how to be healthier and impact the people on their life more so it just feels like people are sicker now more than ever posing thought yes that sounds very pessimistic I get it and I understand that people would feel that way I'm very optimistic that's good here's why because there's a revolution taking place in science M we didn't know anything about this microbiome stuff until now wow now we have the ability to not just look at it now we can manipulate it we're proven that for example with the Zoe study that I just mentioned the randomized control trial we have the power to manipulate it the choices that you make today will have an effect on your microbiome by tomorrow so for the listeners at home be optimistic that you can make a small choice and these small choices may seem trivial in the moment but guess what if you were to come back and do that again tomorrow and the next day this actually small choice will become a massive and Powerful choice for your health don't wait until you have a problem do it now that's incredible man um I want to ask you two final questions Dr B one is I call it the three truths so imagine a hypothetical scenario you get to live as long as you want but it's your last day on Earth and you get to see your family grow up have a beautiful life continue to create in science and research and write more books and speak and whatever you want to do you get to live your life fully but it's the last day and for whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario you have to take all of your work with you every conversation that is recorded is gone every book every podcast every post anything you've ever published it's gone we don't have access to your information anymore but on your final day you get to leave behind three lessons to the world three truths that would be your truths what would be those for you um so I'm gonna start with the obvious one from this episode which is increase your fiber intake and add 30 different plants to your diet all right so let's get that out of the way and we don't need to talk about that anymore because I want to move into the part that I'm excited about which is um number two to um invest into human connection I think it's so important and number three make sure that you make time for your family the people that you love yeah so because at the end of the day all these these things the money is seductive it's attractive but it's love it's relationships it's family that really are what make us feel full mhm final question what's your definition of greatness thriving and everything you do but so there's all sorts of interesting intermittent fasting regimen so one thing that fasting does is it boost something called autophagy which is kind of this house cleaning process within the cells killing the zombie cells well that's a separate that's with that's a whole separate thing but um this is more inside the cell the accumulation of debris that contributes to the age

Channel: Lewis Howes

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Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, gut health diet, gut health podcast, gut heathy foods, gut microbiome diet, gut microbiome and mental health, gut microbiome and brain, lewis howes podcast

Id: KpD4fWpOarw

Length: 99min 32sec (5972 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024