What To Eat When You’re Constipated | Dr. Will Bulsiewicz Live Q&A

welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the physicians committee hello i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll thank you so very much for joining us today here on facebook and on youtube as we raise our health iqs together and this show now watched and downloaded in more than 100 120 countries around the world making it one of the most downloaded nutrition podcasts anywhere online today and so the question today is this right who hasn't been backed up a time or two in their life right you sit down and you pray for splashdown but nothing happens and it seems no matter what you try it's just a whole lot of waiting anticipating and a whole lot of bathroom letdown so if you are constipated what can you do what are the foods that will get things moving again to answer that question and a lot of your others i can think of no better man to join the exam room live than the prince of poop himself best-selling author of fiberfield dr will bolsoewitz is here with us today dr bullswitch thanks for being here my man chuck thank you so much thank you so much chuck for for having me on the show i don't know who wrote the lead into this to the show today but if it was you you are an evil genius that was incredible thank you thank you my friend i do have a quite the demented mind um but nonetheless nonetheless let's go ahead and get some people some help uh we're gonna be talking about constipation and a whole lot about other gut health topics so if there's something that you have that you would like to ask dr bolsowitz go ahead and fill up that doctor's mailbag by posting your question in the comments or in the chat and we will get to as many as we possibly can with the time that we have here today so dr b you ready to rock and roll my man let's do it rock and roll all right first question you know what it is comes to us from diana what foods will help with constipation all right right off the bat chuck i want to acknowledge everyone who is here with us live today thank you everyone for being here live let's take it straight to the comments all right so chuck can you remind the people who are here how can they comment if they want to weigh in on the question that we just did they go to facebook they can go to facebook they can go to youtube the live chat is very active right now on on youtube in particular so go ahead and just chat right with us friends on youtube friends on facebook i want to hear from you right now i can see you commenting diane v apple i see your comments go ahead and drop into the comment box right now what foods you think are the best choices for constipation let's have some fun and do a little interactive action here and while you guys go ahead and do that and i'll be paying attention with my third eye down there in the corner seeing what you guys add for me uh i want to start off and and let's just go back to the fundamentals the most classic of all foods for constipation how could we ever forget how could we ever forget prunes i mean prunes whether you consume them as prunes one two three per day or you're doing it as a glass of prune juice it actually works it actually is a fantastic choice for constipation i'm seeing a lot of great things here you guys are commenting on apples from julie apples have a type of fiber called pectin so fibers fiber from apples definitely has been shown to be beneficial for constipation i'm seeing people mention whole grains mentioning legumes so what i love about these types of foods is that both legumes and whole grains are an excellent source of resistant starches of soluble fiber of polyphenols what i just did there folks is i gave you three different types of prebiotics resistant starches soluble fiber and polyphenols you will find them in whole grains and in legumes and this is the reason why these are microbiome feed eating foods sophie sophie says papaya papaya is a great choice for constipation it's also a great choice digestive distress people seem to do really well when they consume papaya all right i'm going to go a little bit rogue i'm going to add a few more i see christina has mentioned flax seeds flax seeds are really good for constipation and you can either do them whole and they will just pass through or you can grind them up and by grinding them up you are also giving yourself access to the lignans the lignans have multiple beneficial effects on the body in terms of metabolic health and also in terms of preventing hormonal cancers so you're double dipping not only are you improving your gut health not only are you improving your bowel movements but you also are improving your metabolism and protecting yourself from some dangerous cancers we love that uh and i want to add i'm going to add chia seeds so among the omega-3 seeds right the omega-3 seeds are chia seeds flax which i just mentioned and hemp seeds the chia seeds are the highest in fiber content and the beauty of chia which i find to be like a gift from nature i mean it's almost mystical in quality is that when you add water they absorb this water and they transform from a seed into a gelatinous almost pudding-like texture and so chia pudding is a fantastic snack that could be enjoyed on a daily basis giving you the benefits of fiber and simultaneously omega-3s so that's a beautiful thing and the last one that i want to add chuck is i'm going to add this here people are saying psyllium husk of course sodium husk it as a supplement can be a wonderful thing in terms of constipation but my book fiber fueled i'm not actually raising this up to promote the book even though i guess i am tangentially doing that but really i i'm glad you're still there chuck uh the the reason i'm doing it is because i love this exploding kiwi i'm very proud of this exploding kiwi and i remember the day they showed me the cover of this book for the first time and i was so excited but kiwi incidentally is fantastic for constipation in fact they've done studies where they compare uh the consumption of kiwi two kiwis per day to what you can accomplish with medications and supplements for constipation and the kiwis were just as good so folks get some kiwis in your diet get that pooping going wow who knew the kiwi was so powerful for constipation i had no idea and that that my friend that must mean that that is why you are super excited not only did the kiwi look cool but i mean if it is that powerful to get things moving again my man i think that they nailed that cover the kiwi the kiwi is powerful it is really cool when it's exploding because let's just be honest we like exploding stuff or maybe that's just me but this is not what it's going to do to your colon folks all right the kiwi is not gonna make your colon explode i just wanna be completely transparent uh in the in the interest of those who are wondering like did dr b just say that it's gonna make my colon explode no it will not oh man ah boy do i love it when you're on the show okay so we just talked about a whole lot of foods but judy is wondering how much water should we be drinking every day to keep things moving along and does tea or flavored water count toward that amount yeah uh these are good questions julie so by the way real quick amanda asks with or without the skin on the kiwis this is the beauty of being live you guys you get to ask questions like this and um the answer is that in that study they actually peeled the skin off but you're not under an obligation to do that i often will eat my kiwi with the skin on but i will buy it organic as a result of that um chuck remind me what the question was again and so we talked a lot about food we uh judy was asking about water how much do you need to drink and whether tea or flavored water counts and there it is right in front of me so there you go guys um so how much water do we need to drink you know let's bear in mind first of all that there is actually water content specifically when you're eating whole plant foods right like for example if you were to consume a kiwi think about the water content that actually exists in that kiwi at baseline and the water content that's in whole plant foods does contribute to your water intake during the day so let's not ignore that but you know generally speaking let's just keep it super simple because if you look at what the institute of medicine says they have different recommendations for different people based upon your age based upon your gender let's keep it super simple i think it's really good to get eight glasses of water per day all right in addition to your diet eight glasses of water per day and my approach to this is rather simple wake up in the morning and if you're a coffee drinker like me i love coffee forget jumping straight into coffee and have yourself two glasses of water to start your day and you will be amazed at the difference it can make in terms of your energy levels feeling more awake and alert feeling more mentally sharp in the morning and then you get your coffee going after you have your two glasses of water two glasses of water to start the day two glasses of water with every meal if you do this three meals that's six glasses of water two glasses at the start that's eight total boom we have accomplished our goal complement that with a whole food plant-based diet and you are going to be doing exceptionally well um now do tea and flavored water count flavored water definitely counts and it's a great way to jazz up your water and make you feel like you're in a spa when really you're just in your kitchen and it's a regular wednesday morning um but uh with regard to tea it depends on the caffeine content caffeine whether it's coffee green tea black tea or soda if you drink that uh that will actually have a diuretic effect making you urinate and you pee up more than you drink in so you might drink 10 ounces of of tea and then urinate out 12. that's not a net benefit so when it comes to tea herbal tea would count towards that but green tea and black tea would not so it's the caffeine effect right so uh you just got to be careful with the caffeine that's basically what that boils down to exactly so if it were decaf coffee then you would or decaf tea you would be totally fine outstanding um may have touched on this a little bit uh sophie's question at 12 13 why do i get constipated when i eat too much fiber ah this is a good question and i love this because you know the thing is that i feel that sometimes people assume that because i wrote a book called fiber fueled it must mean that dr b just wants to put the gas pedal down all the way on fiber and my recommendation for every single person that comes into my clinic on every single visit is increase your fiber intake and eat a diversity of plants that's not actually true there's nuance to medicine there's nuance to the way that we take care of people and we have to make personalized recommendations so let's talk about fiber so that you guys can have a complete understanding of the way that this works when you are pooping fiber is your friend you keep things moving through fiber will help you to keep things going okay and it will be feeding your gut microbiome in the process and giving you all of the immuno immunologic and metabolic benefits that come from fiber that i described in great detail in my book if you are constipated if it's mild constipation cranking up your fiber drinking more water a little bit of exercise you should be fine all right but the people that i see in my clinic they don't have mild constipation they have moderate if not severe constipation and when that is the case they're locked up the stool is not moving and they start pouring fiber in and the fiber gets stuck they're still locked up they're still constipated but by adding more fiber they actually produce more gas they get more bloated and what's interesting chuck is that this is like something that blew my mind when i learned this which was well after i finished all my training as a gastroenterologist all 16 years of it what's interesting is that methane gas which is produced by the fermentation that occurs our gut bugs methane gas actually slows bowel motility so when you are constipated you produce more methane gas which slows bowel motility which makes you more constipated which produces more methane gas which slows bound volatility and you end up in this vicious vicious cycle all right so is the solution to reduce our fiber intake no the solution is to get things moving and once you get things moving fiber becomes your friend again so the point from my perspective is that for people that have moderate or severe constipation the solution may not be only to crank up your fiber intake and you may be frustrated when you start increasing your fiber intake and you feel like your constipation is not getting better that's because you need something more than that you need to get things going and many times what i will use to do that to accomplish that chalk is i will use magnesium so the gas like so now i'm i'm kind of like wondering is it just because the pressure that builds up holds everything in place or what's the actual mechanism there in terms of the gas and the bloating as far as like holding things like actually causing the constipation like reducing that bowel motility i think is is the way that you turned it yeah i don't i so i don't know exactly what the mechanism is there but what i can tell you chuck is the research that was done to illustrate this effect now of course you guys know this about me i don't stand in favor of animal testing i'm not in favor of that whenever possible i would prefer to avoid it but when there are research studies that have results i will report those results and they did a research study where they infused methane gas into an animal and by simply infusing methane gas into their bowel the animals became constipated and so this is this is the research that shows us that when you produce more gas when you have more methane gas in the system you actually are slamming the brakes on bowel motility slowing things down and you're contributing to even worsening constipation that said it is imperative uh that we do our best to end animal testing in labs um very very much so uh important thank you for bringing that up dr b agree uh we have a question from an athlete this is actually a holdover from your last episode and this is someone who goes to the gym a lot protein-aholic they want to know can protein powder even vegan protein powders contribute to constipation oh yeah definitely protein powders can definitely contribute to constipation and the one thing that i have noticed is that virtually every single protein powder regardless of the source by the way i mean this could be a plant-based protein powder uh they virtually all will cause gas and bloating and if we go back to what you and i were just talking about 30 seconds ago chuck when you produce more gas and bloating you are slamming the brakes on bowel motility and you are producing constipation so this is one of the issues that exists with protein powder so many of the people who come to my clinic they will say to me and i'll notice like you know this person is like clearly someone who works out quite a bit and they'll say to me i'm having gas and bloating i don't understand why and the first question for me is well the first question is do you consume dairy and if the answer is yes and i tell them get rid of that immediately but then the second question would be are you using protein supplements and when they say yes then i will have the conversation with them that we're having right now which is that this can be the cause of the gas and the bloating and potentially the constipation if you feel that a protein supplement is really necessary then the one that you want to get is a fermented vegan protein the fermentation process reduces the amount of gas and bloat that occurs as a result of the protein and it also enhances the bioavailability of the protein so you're actually getting more into your system that being said the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of us do not need protein supplements so now chuck i when i was at my top weight okay i didn't lose as much weight as you did but i did lose 50 pounds i used to weigh 240 pounds i'm six foot four and i weighed 240 pounds and i changed my diet and i was actually pescetarian for a few years i went down to about 210 and then when i went completely whole food plant-based i dropped from 210 to 190 that was my high school weight all right so i got back to my high school weight then i got back in the gym i actually wasn't exercising i got back in the gym i started working out i put on 15 pounds of muscle i do not use protein supplements and i don't worry about protein i just eat food and i eat in abundance and variety and guess what calorie per calorie spinach has more protein than beef calorie for calorie spinach has more protein than beef all plants have protein wow wow that's it yeah let's isolate that and play that one back every single time uh timmy this is also a holdover might have been the same person that sent in that last question my trainer says protein is what you need to eat in order to feel full but how does that compare to fiber yeah uh so actually fiber activates i would argue that fiber is more important the the protein thing is not wrong but it's also not true in isolation it's important to understand our body is not so simple as oh yeah take more protein then you will activate your satiety hormones that's not true what we need is we need both protein and fiber dietary fiber actually through the gut microbiome through short chain fatty acids activate the satiety hormones that allow us to feel full so now what kind of foods contain both protein and dietary fiber there's only one answer let's see it in the chat box you guys tell me what are the foods that contain protein and dietary fiber and there's only one correct answer plants plants are the only source of both protein and dietary fiber all plants contain fiber all plants contain protein if your goal is to lose weight you should be eating more plants and kevin hall who is a metabolism researcher at the nih has done a series of very interesting studies looking at for example high protein diets versus high carb but whole food plant-based diets and noting that people lose more fat when they eat a whole food plant-based diet than when they eat for example a low-carb ketogenic diet which is super high in protein boom done it's over dr b i think that uh you're breaking up a little bit um so if uh if you wouldn't mind jumping off for a second and trying to reconnect that would be fantastic in the meantime i will uh hold down the fort here for uh for the time being but everybody who's commenting right now thank you guys so very much for staying so active uh with the show and uh i can only speak to constipation here from experience like when i was still significantly overweight and eating 10 000 calories a day you would think that i was always always always in the bathroom just given that volume of food but nothing could be further from the truth like i would go sometimes two and three days without going and then it was just like i felt so it was actually a painful experience dr b what i was talking about was being so constipated when i was still so overweight despite eating ten thousand calories worth of food every single day and how painful it was you know when i actually would be able to go um and and just just it was insane to me given the volume of food i was eating and the fact that my body still wasn't enabling me to go i mean have you heard about that like people who eat just an insane amount of food still being constipated yeah i mean constipation chuck is epidemic in our country and you know i see people like i literally i'm in the clinic today i'm on call i'm seeing patients today and i saw people today who they poop every day how can i possibly be constipated well like look i i want everyone to understand constipation is not how often you go constipation is the manifestation of symptoms that take place when you are inadequately evacuating your colon you could go every day but if you're not completely emptying you're backing up and so you can eat a ton of food you can eat a ton of calories but if you're not evacuating your colon on a routine regular basis you're going to start backing up and it's going to be uncomfortable and what you ultimately are going to get is you're going to get hard stools and heart stools are hard for anyone to get out it doesn't matter who you are and you know chuck i i would suppose like going back in time that that's probably what was happening with you to be honest with you it would not surprise me uh let's take a question here from bo we've talked about uh protein supplements but what about iron supplements at 12 24 b.o wondering whether iron supplements can cause constipation super super constipating the classic iron supplement is ferrous sulfate fair sulfate not only is constipating it also can cause digestive distress independent of constipation so something to be aware of i'm actually a big fan in my in my clinic i don't really use much ferrous sulfate instead what i prefer to use is actually a plant-based iron supplement so i would recommend to my patients that they get a plant-based iron supplement it's actually a liquid and combine that with vitamin c so it's kind of interesting vitamin c which you get from citrus foods actually enhances the bioavailability of non-heme iron that you will find in other plant foods like for example greens so if you have a salad with greens and you do a squirt of lemon on top as you're dressing you actually are not only getting something that's flavorful and delicious but you also are enhancing the availability of these nutrients and so it's just nature is very intelligent here's a fun question from anne pearl at 12 20 a little bit of a change of pace is there a correlation between the smell of the poop and the food that you are eating in a particular day uh yes there definitely is there are different smells to our to our gas that we pass and you know no no debating or disputing that at times you can run across a um gas a gas that you pass that's that's foul and many times that's sulfur related and so now this this can be you know related to what's happening in people who consume meat for example particularly red meat where you know effectively what's happening inside your digestive system is that that meat that you consumed is now like rotting and decomposing except it's inside your body and um that can ultimately lead to these foul smelling farts gas but i mean there's other things too that could potentially contribute so sulfur-containing foods like garlic and alien vegetables can also contribute to those types of things that's not to say that we avoid the alien vegetables it's just something to be aware of that if you were to consume a very large amount of sulfur containing foods you may notice that smell on a gas uh poor uh porphy rio at 12 15 what are some other foods that may cause constipation we talked a lot about helping it but now what are the ones that we should be avoiding high fat foods fat actually slows down bowel motility so and when i say high fat foods i'm not referring to any uh plant food because guess what if it's a whole plant like avocado or seeds and nuts right they may be high in fat but guess what they're also high in fiber the fiber content and an avocado is fantastic so i'm not saying that avocados and seeds and nuts cause constipation what i am saying is that fat which you may get from um you know oil or from animal products these types of things can certainly contribute to constipation oil uh that brings us to natasha's question also at 12 15. she is wondering how oil affects digestion um there are different types of oil to act as if all oil is the same would not be accurate and some types of oil i would describe as inflammatory and some types of oil when consumed in a very limited amount in moderation can actually be anti-inflammatory and i think that the the studies support that so really what i'm saying here is that there's a hierarchy and at the top of the hierarchy i i would put olive oil and extra virgin olive oil now something that may surprise some people in the last few years coconut oil has been very popular i mean to the point that people are like putting coconut oil into their coffee or putting coconut and coconut oil into a smoothie and just like throwing it in there coconut oil is saturated fat i mean it is predominantly saturated fat we know chuck that saturated fat in our pre-clinical studies is actually harmful to the gut microbiome and most of the time when we talk about saturated fat we're really talking about the fat that you find in animal products but you can find saturated fat in plant-based sources that includes coconut oil and palm oil and so for those reasons i actually try to avoid those specific types of oil whenever possible all right i'm gonna go ahead and award teresa with the question of the day award this is from 12 30 and it is fantastic i cannot believe that nobody has asked this yet on the show question should your poop float or should it sink [Laughter] you know what this is such a we we all feel um we may not admit this we may not talk about it socially with our friends perhaps we talk about it with like our immediate family just because that's our inner circle most of us feel very interested in what our poop means what it says about us if you have poop that floats and you simultaneously notice an oil slick on the surface so like literally it looks like someone poured oil into the toilet bowl that can be indicative of pancreatic insufficiency meaning that the pancreas is not producing enough digestive enzymes to help you to absorb your fat most of the time when people have floating bowel movements it's really not a concern and i don't i don't personally get worried as a gastrologist that it's indicative of some greater problem typically when a person has some sort of greater problem when we manifest it in our bowel movements which which by the way i think is like literally i would make this a vital sign paying attention to our bowel movements to me is as important as paying attention to our blood pressure or our heart rate but when i'm paying attention to it i want to know the form the shape i want to know how often a person is going there's something by the way called the bristol stool scale that you can look at and it's seven different types of bowel movements type one is very constipated type seven is diarrhea type four is where we're supposed to be so i want to look at that and um and i i would look to see like is there blood is there mucus is there evidence of oil or oil at the surface if you are having good regular evacuations and the only thing that you notice is that your stool is floating honestly it's probably nothing unless you're suffering from other symptoms as well if you have other symptoms those would be grounds to go and talk it over with your doctor and uh let's see here uh fasting that's really popular i love this question also from sophie 1229 can fasting potentially help with constipation dr b uh so it's it's something where if it's going to help you will notice the difference within a few days and the advantage of fasting you know it kind of depends on what kind of fasting we're talking about there are many different forms of fasting i'm going to assume here that what we're referring to is time restricted eating which basically means that there is a specific window of time during the day during which you're consuming food and then there is a second second additionally a window of time where you are not consuming food the window where you are not consuming food is typically on the order of 12 to potentially up to 16 or more hours per day all right that is time restricted eating now i'm of the belief based upon the available literature i mean i do want more high quality human studies based upon the literature that's available today in 2021 i'm of the belief that giving our gut a rest is a good thing for our gut microbes when we enhance the health of our gut microbiome we may find it reflected in the health of our bowel movements sixty percent of the weight of our stool is not the excrement from your food sixty percent of the weight of our stool is actually microbes from our gut so what we see when we have a bowel movement is you are actually seeing a direct reflection of your gut microbiome in a way something that enhances the health of your gut microbiome may reflect in better bowel movements speaking of microbes we have a good question from valley that was in the doctor's mailbag wants to know will you still get beneficial microbes if you peel fruits and vegetables there are a lot of benefits to the the peel or the surface of the fruit or the vegetable many times that's where you will find the polyphenols and there certainly is fiber and there is no question about that so generally speaking i don't want people to peel the surface and remove it but of course like we could go down the line of so many different gosh there's like literally 300 000 edible plants on this planet we're not going to run through all of them to just to describe what is in your best health interest in terms of the way that you prepare it the way that you cook it but generally speaking i think that it's in our best interest to maintain those things now one thing that's kind of interesting chuck i've mentioned this before on the show but i'm sure that there are many people here this is this is their first time they did a study looking at apples and they found that the apple has a microbiome the apple has a hundred million microbes in its microbiome when we consume that apple we actually are transferring those microbes into our digestive system and when you do stool testing you will find that those microbes are actually visible they're apparent in the stool testing that we do so like there is transfer of microbes from our dietary from the things that are in our diet what was interesting in this apple study chuck is that the microbes were not where you would expect them to be you would expect them to be on the surface and they were not they were actually mostly in the core which is the part that we throw out if you feel so inclined to consume the core of your apple you certainly can it's not going to harm you and what you may get as a result is a burst of living food living microbes that can support your digestive health all right let's see if we can take uh two more really quickly before we wrap things up for the day and we're gonna go all the way back to joanna she was uh very early to hop on today an hour and a half before we went live here uh joanna at 10 30 this morning are sugar alcohols okay for the gut and what about stevia and monk fruit so the reality is that that most of us have a sweet tooth and most of us are going to have some sort of added sweetener that we use in our diet i mean it's quite difficult to completely get away from when it comes to sugar alcohols there are sugar alcohols that exist in normal healthy food in our diet and from my perspective there is no concern about those foods right there is no plant that you can consume in whole food form that i am aware is actually harmful for your health and what i mean of course i'm talking about the edible plants but like there is no evidence that eating whole food plants are actually going to make your health worse it's always good for you sugar alcohols that are extracted using a chemical process that none of us know how to do i was a chemistry major in college i have no clue how they do this chuck when they extract these chemicals from the food and they isolate it that is a different story and the evidence from my perspective would suggest that these are harmful to the gut microbiome now is there room for more research of course there is there always will be we're working with what we got today and we will know more tomorrow but where we stand today is that the evidence would suggest that these are harmful for the gut microbiome if i am forced to choose an added sweetener among them i think that stevia and monk fruit are very reasonable choices additionally erythritol there is no evidence that erythritol actually gets down to your gut microbiome it's absorbed much earlier within your gut and so that is beneficial when it comes to protecting your gut microbiome but the last thing i would say is in a perfect world we avoid the added sweeteners and we instead opt for whole foods if you need a sweetener dates are a wonderful choice and they also contain fiber those medjool dates in particular are so good so didn't you give us a recipe once um for like a a snickers swap or a snickers hack that involved a date and and like a peanut or something crazy like that yeah let's do it again right now so this is so simple you guys i absolutely love i absolutely love this and i think that this is like a look the reality is that many of us have sweet tooths we want to enjoy something after the meal right little dessert once in a while and that's okay that's okay but we just want healthy substitutions where possible so quite simply chuck you take a date you split it open okay and then what you do is you wipe a smear that is the technical term a smear of your favorite nut butter which could be peanuts could be almond cashew whatever it may be you wipe a smear on the inner part of that date and then you sprinkle some chocolate chips on top you want to add some additional stuff like some sesame seeds be my guest okay but these are these are what i describe as snickers bites and they actually are in my book fiberfield one of the recipes i just gave it to you right now though what the heck dates shmear of nut butter dark chocolate chips try it and report back to me you will love it and they will remind you of snickers bars that's the fun thing about the plant-based diet is there's so many fun ways to still get the flavors that you've been enjoying your entire life just on a scale that is infant i i mean infinitely healthier than what you had been eating so i mean i just i love that so very much see the thing is chuck like literally this is this is the most winning of ever type of desserts that you can do because like you can get in your car and you can drive down to the store and you can spend 1.99 for a snickers bar right and eat that and it's absolute junk and it's damaging your gut microbiome it's not good for your body or alternatively on the flip side you can have some dates some peanut butter and some dark chocolate chips and like literally it takes you one minute to prepare this one minute zero effort and what you have in the dates is you have dietary fiber feeds your gut microbiome you have healthy fats in your nut butter and you have the polyphenols which are in the are in the dark chocolate again feeding your gut microbiome you have a microbiome food but it tastes wonderful you get to enjoy it all right final question uh switching gears so we went uh from sweet now let's do something a little bit more sour uh you were talking last time about uh how you were a big fan of making sauerkraut and uh cult madra cota maraju i hope i'm getting that right has the question does adding salt water to the cabbage kill the bacteria that it has uh no actually it brings the ecosystem so okay this is i love this question because it's the perfect time of year for us to talk about this because people who are in the northern hemisphere and there may be some people in australia i love you guys but people who are in the northern hemisphere we're in sauerkraut season this is sauerkraut season this is the perfect time to get and pick up this new hobby and the beauty of sauerkraut is that it's so ethereal it is completely just easy to do and you are creating an ecosystem in a jar so if you take cabbage and you start with a head of cabbage living on that cabbage right now are the microbes that you need to transform it from cabbage which is crunchy and we all know the flavor of cabbage right transform it from that into that sour vibrant alive flavor that you get from sauerkraut the microbes are already there nature prepared it for us all we have to do is chop up the cabbage and add it to a two percent brine solution submerge submerge the cabbage keep it completely underwater those microbes they come to life and there is a series of steps that are involved so like for example there's a an initial microbe that will occur in the first three days that produces a lot of gas so what you'll notice in the first few days of producing sauerkraut is that you'll go and check it out it'll be like 24 or 48 hours after you started and you're going to start to see bubbles bubbles that are popping up in the ferment all right that's this first wave of microbes which is called mukhana stock mcconnestock so but then the second wave of microbes comes in and that includes lactobacillus plantarum lactobacillus plantarum you will find in many probiotic supplements where you spend 50 a month to get access to lactobacillus plantarum why spend 50 a month make some sauerkraut you can buy a head of cabbage for three bucks and you put it outside in your garage in a mason jar you give it seven days okay a fermentation you taste it if it tastes sour and it's to your delight you can put in the fridge if you want to but me personally i like to keep going sauerkraut much like wine keeps getting better with age so to me three weeks four weeks i'll go out there once a week take still get a little taste see where it's at it keeps getting better and i'm just gonna tell you like if you start doing this you will become addicted it's not my fault it's not my fault and it's a good thing it's a superfood sauerkraut is so good it really is uh and i see susan in the chat room and saying kimchi is also wonderful to make at home as well so susan as we wrap up the show here today if you wouldn't mind sharing that recipe i might like to try that i'm sure that the other roomies who are watching right now might enjoy that as well um but dr b very excited here because we're headed into the fall in just a couple of weeks we've got thanksgiving the holiday season is here and you're doing a little something something called fiber fuel for the holidays tell us about that yeah i actually just announced it today to my email list um that i'm bringing this back so i actually did this last year chuck uh i did fiberfields for the holidays and basically we had a series of meetings educational webinars and also i gave people recipes that they could use at the holidays these are the recipes that i literally cooked myself for my family on thanksgiving and um so like lentil loaf is one of them these mashed potatoes that are incredible uh brussels sprouts okay so bottom line is like i want to get people set up to have a wonderful holiday season thanksgiving christmas time with family having fun but also doing it in a way where it doesn't come at the expense of our health how do we accomplish that well that's what this is all about so i'm building off of what we did last year we got amazing feedback from the people who did this last year with us we're building off of that we're adding more recipes i'm adding additional uh a live webinar which will be next month next monday so for people who are interested you can come to my website theplantbedgut.com to learn more or just follow me on social media because i'll be sharing about in the next few days outstanding the plantfedgut.com or you can hop on instagram thegut healthmd a phenomenal follow there as well and in the episode notes the show description right now you will also find a link to pick up a copy of fiberfield great for yourself also makes the perfect holiday gift to give the gift of health this year why not dr b appreciate you being here my man you are a rock star as always it's my pleasure chuck always fun to be here and i thank all these wonderful people who came to join us live today thank you for your comments thank you for engaging you guys love y'all and look forward to seeing you again next month there he goes the prince of poop and if you feel like you have raised your health iq today by a point or two go ahead and like this video subscribe to us on youtube be sure to like us on facebook as well and then bonus points if you hop over to apple podcast and wherever you get your shows go ahead and look for the exam room podcast by the physicians committee subscribe there as well you get this episode as well as so much other content delivered right to your mobile device for free twice a week so look for that and please also leave a five star rating and for today my friends that is all the time that we have so i want to say thank you one more time to the incredible dr will bolsoewitz for being here today and also to the crew behind the scenes that makes the magic happen thank you and to you my exam roomies thank you for all of the wonderful comments and questions and just bringing that chat room to life today you guys are incredible and for everyone here at the physicians committee i am the weight loss champion chuck carroll we'll talk to you again soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 1,092,770

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Id: ZwvbPYz82AE

Length: 43min 56sec (2636 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021