Episode 83 – Leaky Gut – Pt.1
Speaker 1: 00:00 This is Dr Chad Edwards and you’re listening to podcast number 83 of against the grain.
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Speaker 1: 00:37 Hey guys, this is Dr Chad Edwards and you’re listening to the against the grain podcast, so excited to be here with the Dr Heath Travis. Dr Travis, how are you today? Oh, awesome. Dr Edwards. Thank you so much for having us back. You know, we just got through the Christmas break, got a little snow on the ground, ready to get back in and rolling at. It’s nice and cold that it. Got It. So this topic comes to us from one of our listeners that had a special request for a topic. This is one I’ve thought about doing many times, obviously plays a big role for a lot of things. I think this applies to a lot of people and we’ll definitely go over this. It’s going to be the first of a two part series a. So we’re going to cover the first part now and then we’ll do the uh, the second part, which is basically the treatment for this and what we do about it, uh, in the second podcast.
Speaker 1: 01:30 So when you listen to this one and you want to know what can you do about it? You just gotta wait for number two. Find out next time you got it. That was real excited when you told me what we’re going to talk about today. We see it effect everybody. Yep. So I don’t, I can’t think of a single patient that wouldn’t benefit from optimizing this. So what is it that we’re talking about? So today we’re gonna talk about a concept or not a concept. It’s a, it’s a problem a called leaky gut, and so a lot of people don’t know what, what leaky gut is. So Dr Travis, tell us a little bit about leaky gut. I mean, you see some of this. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, and I think the first thing is just to, for us to understand what the gut is and it’s for us to take our digestive food and pass it through and absorb all those nutrients.
Speaker 1: 02:18 Right? So with a leaky gut, we get permeability or holes throughout that process and we start to leak toxins and nasty stuff and to the rest of our system and we’re not absorbing what we need to write. It wreaks havoc and it starts to create all kinds of problems. Oh, there’s no question. In fact, hippocrates actually said all disease begins in the gut and you know, when you look at something like leaky gut, I mean that’s. Well, you know, it’s funny how I, he had a, you know, all the way back then. Exactly. It’s just amazing. Yeah, I mean that guy, he was onto something. I think I’m, it’s just so many components of things that he hit the nail on the head and this is definitely one of them for sure. So you, you said that the gut is definitely supposed to get I, the way I like to say it is get good stuff in, keep bad stuff out.
Speaker 1: 03:13 And there’s a lot of things, toxins and different things that will alter that permeability that affect the function of the gut, which can cause a whole host of problems or at least make many of them worse. So, um, let’s talk a little bit more about the gut lining and how it’s composed and all those kinds of things. So that we’re talking about, you know, the cellular level, right? Talking about the endothelial cells that line the gut. And so when you look at this on a picture, you can imagine two cells joining together and there’s a junction in there. So, you know, they’re not completely 100 percent. Everything’s bonded where it’s a solid piece. It’s two separate cells that come together and so there’s space there, but everything when it’s performing like it’s supposed to, everything flows through and the stuff that needs to be absorbed from that is absorbed through those junctions bases.
Speaker 1: 04:07 Yeah. So basically, you know, to put it in a little bit different words. So my kids like the show fuller house, you know, and so there’s the, you know, the first show full house, I remember the, the intro to that show shows these houses in San Francisco that are tall and you’ve got multiple houses that are side by side and they’re stacked pretty close together, but they’re not stuck together. There’s a gap in between there. And so with those houses, those, those houses in this analogy, uh, represent the cells that form that barrier from the inside to the outside and the, uh, this, this what we call a tight junction. It’s the spot weld. I like to think of it as a spot weld a between these, these cells that hold them together. But that’s the gate in between these houses that two separate houses, but it’s the gate that controls what goes in between those houses.
Speaker 1: 05:05 Right. That’s how I like to think about it. I think that’s brilliant. We said it’s a good analogy. So, um, you know, getting, getting on that cellular level and what composes that barrier and what gets through it. So those tight junctions in that, just like you said, that, that I’m not the glue, but the, the, those cells sticking together plays a critical role in establishing that barrier between the inside and the outside of the body. Because even though the gastrointestinal tract is technically what’s actually inside the body, it’s almost like this big long donut, you know, it’s this big long tube. So anything in the middle is technically on the outside, you know, you drink water and it goes out your bottom, you know, especially like with diarrhea or something, it’s just running right through. Nothing gets absorbed. It’s not actually in your body until it’s absorbed through that barrier between those cells or through the cells, through active processes and absorbed into the body.
Speaker 1: 06:02 Otherwise, it’s still, even though it’s in your gut, it’s still outside the body. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s why all these little things are so important because they’ll come together at the right time for us to get that proper absorption. Right? So if something, if you eat a certain food, depending on if it’s a fat, a protein, the carb, you know, it’s going to break down certain levels. Right. We learned how the digestive process. So as that breaks down, those nutrients are absorbed at a very specific place, right time. Right. So when we start to do issues with this, everything, it’s not just one little spot is right. It’s everywhere. That’s right. It’s scary. Absolutely. So there’s. So we talked about with this, with this gut function, again, I like to keep things as simple as I can get good stuff in. So absorbing nutrients. You mentioned that and keeping bad stuff out.
Speaker 1: 06:55 So serving as a barrier and I also, you know, like to use when I was in Iraq, we were in this compound and we had walls and we had this actually this is big gigantic area between the outside world and the inside world. In fact, getting into the compound when we would go out on a on convoys and things like that. It was a process to get out through the front gate and so we could get on the road and go, where were we going to go? When we had issues with convoys leaving and they had an accident, you know, an issue. We literally found that it was faster for us to launch a helicopter to fly out to the scene of the accident just on the other side of the wall. Wow. To get the. To get the casualties and fly them back in.
Speaker 1: 07:39 It was faster to do that than it was to get through this extremely complex. A network of fences and gates and all these kinds of things. So, but you’ve got this big wall around it. So the, the, the gut on some level it’s supposed to do that kind of barrier thing to keep bad stuff out. The problem is with this leaky gut, it’s like you got holes in your concertina wire. Uh, there’s nobody on the guard gate, uh, and, and, and, and bad stuff gets in which that’s where we start really having all kinds of problems outside of just our gut, but that’s where we start having all kinds of other issues. And so when, when this barrier doesn’t work correctly, when we have this leaky gut and there are things that we can do, there is a test that you can do, uh, that, that tests it on a level to me.
Speaker 1: 08:32 I don’t know that it’s worth, we just assume that everybody has it on some level and you know, treating leaky gut is just treating health period. That’s all of the things that are beneficial for the gut treat overall health period. So I don’t often test for this, although if patients want to know, it’s kind of like testing for gluten sensitivity or gluten allergy, I want to be tested for him. Well why? Why? Just cut it out and see how you do and most of the time they feel most of the time at least, excuse me. At least they’ll know I cut out gluten. I feel better whether that, that. What else do you want to know? Yeah, we talk about that all the time in our clinic to where it’s like somebody was like, well, you know, do you think I have a gluten issue?
Speaker 1: 09:13 And I always tell them, you know, you may not have celiac disease, you may not be full blown gluten intolerant to the point where you cannot have it. Right. But in my mind, and this is not validated anywhere, but in my mind, I think that the Dr Travis data, I think we all have a gluten sensitivity. Yeah, issue. It’s just to what degree? Right? So, so this, this, you know, all this kind of comes together with what we’re talking about here. But I definitely agree. It’s a concept of pick your poison and then, because technically even oxygen is a potential poison. Absolutely. Um, and you know, we could talk about that and when we put patients in the ICU, we put them on a ventilator, one of the first things that I do to me, it’s a race to get them below. We’ll put them on a hundred percent and you know, this pressure and all this stuff, but it is a race to me to get their oxygen levels down below 60 percent because especially in infants, we see Bronco Pulmonary dysplasia that these issues were too much oxygen is actually damaging.
Speaker 1: 10:11 It causes oxidative stress and damage. And uh, you know, we see that in a number of things and certainly in dive medicine and hyperbarics and things like that, you can get oxygen toxicity with in diving. Uh, there’s oxygen toxicity, you can actually have seizures and it’s because of this oxidative damage. So something that we have to have so good and can be bad. Exactly. And you know, we have to have it removed, but in too much it’s bad. So even, you know, if you tolerate a piece of pizza that, you know, gluten, Leighton Pizza, uh, you may not tolerate 10 pieces of gluten or gluten late, late and uh, so anyway, I think that’s a great way to put that. So what are some of the things that we can see? What is leaky gut? If you, if you got leaky gut, why should, why should our listeners care?
Speaker 1: 10:59 That’s a great symptom wise. I think, uh, one of the first places to really start is you talking about the nutrient absorption and then malabsorption and into the immune response and how the body deals with that. But symptom wise, we really start to see a lot of different things. Um, you know, patients should care because of the autoimmune issues. Well, that’s a big one. You know, the arthritis is the, it goes on and on. I think the list of autoimmune disorders grows every day. But what, and we’ve had podcasts on this just with thyroid and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, graves’ disease, those kinds of things. And we know that the anti gluten antibodies share a lot of cross reactivity with gluten. So when someone has Hashimoto’s, one of the first things that I do is recommend that they come off gluten and many patients do better. Well, and it’s amazing.
Speaker 1: 11:49 I think I’m even in art when I see somebody with an inflammatory issues. That’s the other. Okay, so the other side of auto immune or the. The part of that whole thing is just simple inflammation, joint pain. Let’s say we’ll talk to him about coming off of gluten or other inflammatory foods. Right? And it’s amazing. Thirty years of joint pain, boom. I feel better. Not right, exactly. And I mean, I think it’s important to understand that inflammation piece and why I think so many patients, even if they feel well, you have to look at inflammation because inflammation, you want to talk about cardiovascular disease. The three main problems with cardiovascular disease is not cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol. Exactly. It is inflammation oxidation, glycation. So it’s. In fact, Dr Houston, a well known in the functional and Integrative Medicine World says that native LDL LDL is bad cholesterol. I hate that term, but I’m going to use it for simplicity.
Speaker 1: 12:47 I’m native LDL LDL and it’s just, it’s form is never problematic. It’s a problem when it’s inflamed, glycated and oxidized. So the inflammation piece is critical. So even if you feel well and you’re, but you want to be healthy longterm, you have to look at the inflammatory process and the inflammatory issues and gut is paramount in this overall inflammation. And then you should test this stuff which we do in our clinic with crp, myeloperoxidase. You can look at oxidized ldl after you, I suppose stains or multiple inflammatory markers that we can look at and we do that in our clinic. Absolutely. And it’s such a good baseline because, you know, just with the CRP, I mean, you, you can start having people judges and changing their diet and see a change in 30 days. I mean absolute or less. Absolutely. And it’s, you know, it’s validated, it’s there, it’s easy, right?
Speaker 1: 13:40 Yeah, I mean it is, and it can be a huge issue. Uh, so, you know, we talked about, so with the, some of the inflammation pieces, people with asthma, I mean it can be a huge trigger. You have dairy and grains can be a big issue with people with asthma. You mentioned the autoimmunity and the rheumatoid arthritis and was certainly talked about Hashimoto’s, multiple sclerosis. Type one diabetes is actually an auto immune condition. Absolutely. I mean a, the list goes on and that’s pretty interesting in itself, you know, and yeah, and you’re talking about the other things too, with the inflammation that the generative process with the nerves, neurodegeneration, um, the food allergies that start to come, people start to notice the food allergies let go. All of a sudden I’m allergic to this. Well, there’s a reason, right? Then just appear out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: 14:24 And that allergy is not just you broke out in a rash and you have hives in your throat, starts swelling. It can be any number of limitations. And I think that’s why a lot of people struggle for so long with figuring some of this out is because sometimes it’s almost, you know, sub symptomatic, right? And then so they don’t realize it’s a symptom, right? Until it was just normal for them to have this one little thing. So we really got to dig into it for them to understand that. Absolutely. And you know, the other thing with, with that nutritional piece, it’s not always you eat the thing and it causes a problem in an hour, right? If it did, you’d figure it out pretty quick, but sometimes these things don’t show up for a couple of days or potentially even longer. So it, it really requires a diligent effort over a really even weeks to try and clean this stuff up.
Speaker 1: 15:12 I agree. Other things that we. I’m sorry, in our clinic to, you know, um, we talked about headaches. Excuse me if headaches are another one for leaky gut. No question that all the time. No, no, just that general rundown Malays. And we’re going to come back to this again in a minute, but you know, we’ve done podcasts on gluten. You know, gluten elevates a chemical called Zonulin and Zonulin, excuse me, directly breaks down tight junctions, so tight junctions, obviously we mentioned that there in the gut, but there are also two other places and one is in the lung and holding those Alveoli together. And the, and the last one is the blood brain barrier, which is essential for good brain health and brain inflammation and all kinds of things. So in Pah patients eat gluten, there’s annual and low independent of whether or not they’re, they are gluten intolerant, not or, or allergic zonulin levels go up.
Speaker 1: 16:10 And so you can take a patient that sensitive to migraines and have them smell something and because that blood brain barrier is not intact, they’re sensitive to these chemicals and it can trigger a migraine like that. So not that gluten necessarily caused the Migraine, but it set the stage so that other things absolutely couldn’t call it can trigger the Migraine, which is, I think the whole key piece to this whole thing is just the cumulative effect of where this goes. You know, uh, I think a big one in our clinic two is fibromyalgia. I’m, I’m sure you see this all day everyday. And you know, some patients I feel really sorry for because they’ve been dismissed so many times with this, right? It’s a real and they have it and it hurts. And when we look at diet, it’s always a fibromyalgia patient that we see.
Speaker 1: 16:58 We can do some things with that real quick. Right? Yeah. Amazing. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I get, I had a patient just this week that came in, new patient had a diagnosis of fibromyalgia and I told the patient, and I, and I mean this, that fibromyalgia is really a crap diagnosis. In fact, it’s not really a diagnosis. They should call it fibromyalgia syndrome, uh, which, you know, anytime it’s a syndrome, especially if it’s named after someone, that means we don’t really know what’s going on. But you have all these things. So fibromyalgia is a real entity, but it is not one entity. It all it means is you have connective tissue and muscle pain. That’s the true definition of fibromyalgia. That’s what it is. It’s not a diagnosis that’s like saying you have a headache, but we’ll grab it a better Latin name, you know, and anyway, so it, it’s, it’s a real entity.
Speaker 1: 17:50 But it is not one disease process. It’s not one issue. And I’ve told a lot of my patients, you know, I said when we really start to look at this, that fibromyalgia diagnosis to me is really just a red flag of let’s really start looking back to these neuro, you know, these autoimmune right issues because that’s where we’re going. Right. You know. And then if they’re not there, they’re real close. Right. You know, it’s almost a hundred percent. Yep, exactly. Every time. So a couple of questions before we take a break. It was one question before you take away why these patients, they’ve been to five or five different doctors, they’ve got all these issues. Why doesn’t their doctor tell him about leaky gut? That’s such a great question. You know, and honestly they don’t know. Um, traditional medical schools aren’t teaching this. It’s not, it’s not what they’re going to go find your traditional medical schools.
Speaker 1: 18:40 I mean, you’ve been through osteopathic school, you know real well. But Donald Kirby is an md with the director of the center of human nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. And he said, from an MD standpoint, it is a very gray area. Physicians don’t know enough about the gut, which is our biggest immune system. Oregon is what he’s saying is we don’t know because we weren’t taught right. It wasn’t what was important to teach whenever there. Right. And so, you know, it’s one of those things that they look at, so it’s important that they get educated on their own, but more importantly, patient has to understand. That’s why it’s so important for us to understand as people what’s going on so we can bring this stuff up because it has to be that it is real, right? Yeah. There’s no question and it, you know, this whole concept is really how it was paramount in me moving into a functional medicine arena, you know, and I listened to Robb Wolf podcast and that, that was instrumental in me learning nutrition and how our food plays a role in our overall health.
Speaker 1: 19:39 And it was shocking because that guy, he has his brilliant on and knows his stuff. He knows the research and it is there for people to go and look at this stuff. You know, the interesting thing when I got back from Iraq, I went from my special forces battalion into the hospital as I was getting ready to transition out, so I worked in the hospital for a couple of few months before I got out and I sat in our morning meeting with a gastroenterologist and I was kinda getting into the nutritional medicine piece and I said, so what do you think about elimination diets? And His almost flippant answer to me was there was no evidence that makes it a difference. And that was the end of it. Now the sad thing is that’s a gastroenterologist. The is supposed to know everything there is in my world.
Speaker 1: 20:27 He’s supposed to know my thought. He’s supposed to be the expert. There’s something going on with a gun. I don’t know what it is. Go see that guy because he’s the expert and they’re not there. They, they understand full well disease of the gut as defined by the ICD 10 international classification of diseases. And leaky gut is not one of them. There’s not an ICD 10 code for a, for a leaky guts. So because of that, you know, there’s, there aren’t tons of studies that here’s how you diagnose it and here’s how you treat it. In fact, that’s kind of one of the quotes from this as a physician named Linda Lee, she’s a gastroenterologist and the director of Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine digestives industry said we don’t know a lot, but we do know that it exists and she went on to say in the absence of evidence, we don’t know what it means and what therapies can directly address it.
Speaker 1: 21:22 In other words, we’ve got to have the study that shows us what to do or what it is and what to do about it. We don’t have those, those slam dunk studies from peer review journals. So it’s almost like it’s just paralysis. And until we get that, we’re just going to stick our hand up. And you know, the other problem with that part is the reason because it’s a simple answer. So when there’s a simple answer, the no big conglomerates can make a ton of money off of it to study it, right? So there’s not a lot of people pushing to get that study accomplished. Exactly. And the other piece is just the, I want to say controversy, but the, the um, it’s a denial that, that there’s something like this and in fact, the United Kingdom, their national health service says there’s little evidence to support this theory about this intestinal permeability and no evidence that so called quote treatments for leaky gut syndrome such as nutritional supplements and a gluten free diet, have any beneficial effects for most of the conditions that are claimed to help.
Speaker 1: 22:20 Now, part of my, I’ve got multiple issues with this statement, but they’re looking at one entity and they want one solution. So they talked about gluten free. The problem is, is you don’t have a homogenous population. And in any of these studies, if you don’t look at a, you know, years and years and years ago they looked at total cholesterol and didn’t look at the breakdown. So they didn’t have enough information to say one way or another on associations. So then as you learn more, you’re able to break that down. But the population wasn’t, wasn’t a lumped into these groups, so you don’t get good evidence. I think the same thing is true here. You got some patients that are a casing allergic. You’re one of the protein in dairy. Yeah. You get some that have an issue with Zayn, one of the corn. Then you get some that have, um, you know, an issue with lectins and some that have an issue with gluten, each of them slightly different and maybe they have an issue with all of them, but you don’t separate those patients out. So one per one solution isn’t going to take care of all of those problems. Exactly. So let’s take a quick break when we come back and we’re going to talk about the common causes of leaky gut and uh, that’ll, that’ll kind of prime the pump for the next podcast on, on leaky gut, which is how to fix this stuff. Fantastic. Are you tired and fatigued? Are you frustrated with doctors because they just don’t seem to listen. Do you want
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Speaker 1: 24:12 Alright, we’re back talking about some leaky gut. And you know, when we talk about leaky gut, we’re not talking about the, uh, the potato chips that were made with Olean that made your shorts, Brown were talking about the, uh, the lining of your gut and how it impacts our overall health, how different foods, different things can get messed our gut up and all kinds of problems that are centered around leaky gut. And we could talk for hours on this topic. This could go on and on. There’s what’s called the gut brain axis where, you know, there’s all kinds of issues with the brain. So there’s issues with, uh, you know, adhd. Uh, there’s issues with asthma and Parkinson’s disease now that it’s causative, not that it causes those things, but it plays a role. Um, you know, depression, anxiety, adhd, autism, there’s a nutritional component. Again, not saying it’s causes it. Well, think you can just look at the correlations here and go, okay, these diagnosis levels are up. How many percent look at the Diet and how it’s changed, right? With we ran one with these diagnoses, right? So just court, just correlating the loan. You start to really go.
Speaker 1: 25:21 Exactly. So let’s talk a little bit about the. There’s four main causes for this leaky gut thing. So Dr Travis, what? Tell me one of the, one of the bigger ones, obviously we’ve been talking a little bit about nutrition. So that’s exactly where we go. We have to start with the poor diet and you know, when you look at a diet, you look at so many things, um, of course we’re gonna Talk Paleo here second because it’s so good for this. But when we talk about a Paleo Diet, of course that’s a whole nother 10 podcasts, right? Exactly what one of the big things is the removing of Greens, you know, taking those out of the Diet because we already mentioned the lectins that are in the Greens, but they are so they attack that gut, that cell wall, right? So, and that’s where we start to get when they attack, it’s, it’s Kinda like a, you know, a missile hitting a wall, it leaves a hole, right.
Speaker 1: 26:16 That’s when we start to talk about this leaky gut. It’s not just a small hole that we can drive through that we need to get the good stuff. This is where the bad stuff starts to cross the barrier. Right. And it’s directly attributable to this lecture. I mean, right, it’s obvious. Yeah. And in some of these cases, you know, going back to that full house, you know, houses in San Francisco, some things just open the gate in between the two houses. Some things tear the gate down and some things blow up the houses, you know, I mean it’s, there’s, there’s a whole lot that can go wrong and sometimes when you open the gate it causes. The next level is the gate falls over and the next thing is the next thing, you know, because of trying to heal all that stuff, uh, the house comes down and now you just have this kind of a snowball effect.
Speaker 1: 27:00 Like we were talking about a whole go with gluten issues. Another gluten of course it’s in here. But you know, people go, oh, well I’m gluten free, let’s great grain-free. Right? Because just because you’re gluten free, every other green has its own gluten if you will, attached to it. That’s right. And so, you know, gluten has been real sexy and real popular because it’s, we don’t, we know all about it, but every grain has that concept behind it. Exactly. And, and those, you know, when you think about the, uh, the biology, the botany of those plants, the, the plants have those things. They’re actually protecting. They’re protecting the plant from invaders and, and fungus and bugs and all kinds of stuff. And then when you talk about gmo stuff, the genetically modified organisms, I’m the, I think many of the problems with gmo are that it is not, it depends on which product we’re talking about, but you’re enhancing the resistance of why they want the gmo piece.
Speaker 1: 28:04 They, they’re trying to protect that plant from a, the bugs that are attacking it and all these kinds of things. You make it in hospitable to those bugs and you’re increasing those anti nutrients, those things that attack your gut. And there are things that you can do that help minimize those such as cooking and fermenting. And so those kinds of st it will just sprouting a that will minimize some or at least reduce some of that. And you know, the, you know, and I agree with you driving home, that gluten piece is only, you know, one ending out of the game. It’s, it’s, and that may be the biggest component for some people, but it may not be a component at all for others. So you have to look at all of these anti nutrients and we’re only going to scratch the surface on these.
Speaker 1: 28:50 But, you know, lectans, those are these sugar binding proteins that also, you know, the, the, the, um, the epithelial lining in your gut, these cells contain sugar. Absolutely. That’s their energy levels. Uh, so that’s, that’s part of what they need. And the lectins bind to that just like they do the other and it just causes a whole host of disruption. Then you got phytates that caused a whole host of problems. And then of course we got the GMO, but there’s other foods like gluten, like cow’s milk, a, one. Casein is a huge offender. And then you add pasteurization of milk on top of that. And it destroys some of these enzymes. And of course Louis Pasture, uh, which, you know, his pasteurization, absolutely. He recommended treating the milk. And I would argue that treating, heating the milk to kill some of these bacteria was only a shelf life thing.
Speaker 1: 29:44 Um, you know, you get good healthy animals and get agree 100 percent. Yeah. So, but it destroys some of these enzymes that allow us to drink these things with impunity. And so you’re, you’re, um, you’re destroying some of these when you pasteurize. And sugar, you know what, let’s forget this one huge because it’s such a big deal and it’s a big deal in multiple different, multiple different reasons really. And uh, you know, so eliminating sugar, it’s a good idea. When you look at the Paleo Diet, it’s really addressing almost all of these. One of the things with sugar, the really cool thing about when we talk about removing it, that people get a lot of people out there, they’re like, oh, I can take sugar out. No candy, no pop. Great. Well we also have to really consider the foods that break down to sugar, which grants exactly right, process carbs.
Speaker 1: 30:34 So you know, it’s, it’s, you got to really think outside the normal box here and go or it gives a greater right? The thing sugar, what breaks down. So it turns into sugar. How fast does it turn into sugar, how much does it turn into? And I think that takes you in a whole different world for sure. And then you get into other nutritional approaches like a fodmap diet and then. Or you can look at a gaps diet or a specific carbohydrate diet. And some patients will benefit from that because those carbohydrates, the specific carbohydrates, hence the specific carbohydrate diet will, um, are, are beneficial or detrimental in some ways because they’ll feed bad bacteria, they’ll feed yeast, they’ll feed all these other kinds of things that can really mess us up. Absolutely. So obviously nutrition plays a big role and you know, we could talk for hours on nutrition alone. In fact, this podcast is ended up being a whole lot longer than I expected, but there’s just a lot to it. And we’re only laying the groundwork here. So what else can, can contribute to this leaky gut thing? You know, I think a chronic stress weight, that’s a problem, right? People are stressed.
Speaker 1: 31:40 It’s a big one though, you noticed even in the gut. So we think, oh, strike us. How’s that affected my gut? Well, it is right. You know, I think it plays a huge role, you know, that weakened immune function. Absolutely. And it. And it absolutely weakened immune function. In fact, they took patients, uh, they took people I should say and they put them, these patients, these people were afraid of heights. And they measured their IGA level, which is one of the antibodies, and they measured their salivary Iga levels at the beginning before they got out on this big bridge and they measured their Iga levels as they got halfway across and it was dramatically reduced that fast. You’re iga levels plummeted because of that stress. So you can imagine if you’re chronically stressed, saw a patient yesterday going through a divorce and you know, just came in complaining and saying, I’m just incredibly stressed out and it, I get it, you know, there, that is a very stressful thing.
Speaker 1: 32:37 It’s why when you get stressed, you get canker sores, you get, you know, these cold sores, you get more immune problems because your immune system takes a hit when you are stressed, period. That begins with the taste buds. The second touches the mouth, those ins start to come. Well, if you’re not getting the enzymes to break down food. So anyway, that, that’s the stress part is huge. It is a major, major role. Uh, obviously it increases inflammation, inflammation, which can obviously lead to a leaky gut thing. Then the next big one, and again we can talk for hours on it. Toxins. It’s huge. It’s huge now more than ever. You know, it was important that people get that as the more we refine the process things, the more toxic we’re becoming, right. Antibiotics, a insead’s, um, you know, processed food, all the alleys turned into these tap water, tap water, fluoride and chloride.
Speaker 1: 33:34 People think that that’s protective. It fluoride, and you know, we could talk about this a long time, that so many of these issues we could talk about for a long time. Fluoride, there’s no question. It is beneficial for your teeth. I mean, when you are in an environment where you’re constantly eating sugar, that feeds the bacteria that feed on your teeth. So we have to offset that with fluoride. You talked to a dentist and they will tell you that fluoride without question reduces dental caries and reduces the decay of your teeth. And every single time I’ve talked to a dentist and they said, well, you need fluoride because of this. I said, okay, well let’s, let’s, let me just ask you a question. If they didn’t eat crap and they didn’t eat a bunch of food that causes these things, would it be a problem?
Speaker 1: 34:19 And every one of them are like, yeah, we’ll probably not. Okay, so you’re treating one problem and you’re preventing or reducing the risk of dental caries by treating crappy diet with fluoride, but yet fluoride interferes or it competes with iodine. And so you’ve got a whole host of issues with that. Like when there’s A. I’ve actually done a podcast on iodine where I talk about some of that toxicity so you can go back and listen to that one, but it’s pretty amazing, you know? And then so chloride and fluoride do play a role and there’s all kinds of crap they put in our water to protect it from bacteria doesn’t grow in it. And. But those things can cause problems also now say, oh no, no, no, it doesn’t. Well, you know, they also used to say the world was flat and they also used to take us soldiers and march them in front of an atomic bomb as they blew it up and said, let’s just watch it and look at the pretty bomb when they used to put cigarettes in the soldiers.
Speaker 1: 35:13 Uh, Mrs back because what they say exactly right. And then, you know, the last one, last most common one where you were last minute here. They, uh, so bacteria that bacterial imbalance. I think this one’s really huge. Um, I talked to my patients about this all the time, right? You know, the gut biome was what we’re really getting into now. You’re starting to hear a lot about this, you know, outside of just you and I talking, you hear people talking about that biome and all this stuff because the bacteria that lines our gut and our stomach, you know, it’s so important for so many processes, right? So as that starts, as we start to lose good bacteria due to leaky gut, you know, anybody that antibiotics are a great thing, right? They’re designed to have a real specific function. And they go in and kill bacteria, absolutely.
Speaker 1: 36:07 One of the worst things about them is they’re coming a nuclear bomb. They’re going to go in and take all the bacteria good and bad. So we have to replenish the good sometimes plus the chronic overuse of it. But really the good bacteria, as it’s decreasing, we’re getting a lot of this bad bacteria and we’re seeing more of it because of all the processing of the foods and the toxins and the molds, you know, so when this bad bacteria starts to take over our balances off, we don’t have the biome that we were designed to have. Now we’re not only leaky gut where also digesting things weirdly and oddly and not digesting thing, you know, it’s just another cog in the wheel just keeps making it worse and worse and worse. And so balancing that bombs huge importance. And I think it’s something that we’re gonna see a lot more of moving forward.
Speaker 1: 36:52 I think you’ll see more and more people talking about this. Uh, there’s no question and you know, Dr Perlmutter, he wrote a great book called at brain makers and it is all about the bacteria in your gut and how it impacts your brain. And he’s a neurologist and he goes into great detail about the, the benefit of these bacteria in your gut and those bacteria, in fact, there are more bacteria in your gut than there are cells in your body. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, it’s just amazing one, you know, that’s one of those things too. And I love him. He knew grain brain and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, he really puts it in perspective. We can protect our brains so much. Right? And so, uh, you know, like probiotics, I’ll have a patient come in and were kind of misled on that too to a degree.
Speaker 1: 37:39 They’ll come and say, oh, I eat tons of yoga and I’m say great. But the problem is it’s pasteurized, it’s cooked, they cook a lot of the good stuff out and there, there’s some benefit there. Don’t get me wrong in those cultures, but you know, we want to get a fucking good stuff to put in what you know, whenever you’re doing that, absolutely. But I think what a lot of people don’t understand is the strain of bacteria absolutely matters. And I talked about, I talked about this with lyme disease, so you can go back and listen to this. The strain of the bacteria matters. It may be the same species, the same bacteria. It’s a different strain to underscore that I use the analogy, or not the analogy, but the, uh, the, the, the case of Ecolab and Ecolab as an essential bacteria in our gut.
Speaker 1: 38:24 If you get the wrong strain, it’s potentially fatal. So ecolab o one, five, seven, oh, one, five, seven, h seven causes hemolytic uremic syndrome and can be fatal. But yet we need good equal in our gut. So you gotta get the right strain. So when you’re taking a probiotic, when you’re consuming of a cultured food, you have to get a probiotic that interacts with the gut. The Gut is not a big bowl that you just dumped stuff in. It is an active component, the bacteria binds to the epithelium lining and that’s where the magic happens. If it doesn’t interact with the human gut, it’s probably not giving you the, all of the benefit that it should be giving you. So you need to make sure you’re getting good strains of that stuff. And you know, it’s interesting to see. We see so many people hear things and go out and buy something just to take some times it can be more toxic and when I’m not getting to the right thing.
Speaker 1: 39:16 Exactly. And so look looking for those really good things. Um, you know, we also talk about, um, just that imbalance in, in where I think the part it plays in all of the stuff we talked about earlier, especially with autoimmune stuff. Right? And that’s where the big part that we need to know with that. Yeah, no question. So there’s just a rehash real quick. So there’s the four main causes of leaky gut. You got poor diet, you got chronic stress, toxic overload, and bacterial imbalance. Leaky gut contributes to a whole host of medical problems, all kinds of autoimmune disorders, inflammatory decision, uh, disorders, food allergies, headaches, fibromyalgia, mental issues such as anxiety and depression and Adhd, malabsorption issues, all kinds of things. And your standard doctor doesn’t know about it. There’s a lot of controversy around it even though we know it exists. So this is a real entity that in my opinion, in our opinion, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: 40:14 Really needs to be addressed. And it’s why we see so many patients that benefit so much from changing their diet, fixing, getting rid of sugars and things like that. It’s the gut is a critical, critical component in your overall health. And it’s got to be addressed. Absolutely. You know, it plays, plays such a fundamental role and everything you see on a daily basis. Everything I see, you know, even talking to neurology and just joint stuff. So whenever they start to get this, you know, it’s a real simple idea just to start with food, right? It’s cool and there’s a whole host of other things. There’s some specific nutrients, some specific nutritional things that we need to do, but there’s a number of other things that we can do and that’s what we’re going to cover in our next podcast. I think it’s really critical that anybody that’s dealing with any of these issues understands how to treat this. Um, and you know, there’s a lot of good information out there, but we’re going to cover that in our next podcast and I am super excited about it. If you’ve got these issues, you got to tune in for the next one. Okay. Wait. Hey Man. Thanks for your help today. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3: 41:19 Thanks for listening to this week’s podcast with Dr Chad Edwards. Tune in next week where we’ll be going against the grain.
