Barbell Shrugged - [Gut Health] The Epicenter of Health Optimization w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged #638

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Why the gut is so important for optimal health. What causes poor gut health and how to avoid it How important is a stool sample to find potential hidden stressors What your poop can tell you about your health Ways to improve gut health   Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dan Garner on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we're digging into the gut. This is like the thing that everybody wants to know and nobody has a great explanation of what actually goes on in your gut until today. And now you get to learn because Dan Garner, smartest dude in the whole wide world when it comes to understanding lab work, stool samples, and how the gut plays a role in optimizing your health. I think today is going to be very eye-opening for many people that have had questions about the gut, understanding gut health, trying to decide what's just total marketing and myth of the fitness space and nutrition space and chugging kombucha thinking you're really

doing something. But today you get to learn about what actually is going on inside. And it's a very, very cool conversation that I'm excited for you to be a part of. Before you get into the gut, we're going to thank our sponsors. I want to thank everybody over at Organifi. The apples have arrived, introducing the refreshing taste of new Organifi Green Juice Crisp Apple. All the benefits you've come to love in the classic reset green juice with a new juicy twist. Enjoy the same fan favorite nourishing ingredients, ashwagandha, moringa, spirulina, and corella designed to hydrate, energize, and support cortisol balance. The new green juice crisp apple is made with organic,

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the code shrugged for 10% off. That's masszymes, M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged for 10% off. friends let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews warner doug larson dan garner in the house today on barbell shrugged we are talking about gut health and uh if there's one thing that we have learned uh that the the head of the snake when it comes to optimizing our health really lives in our gut. I feel like I'm on my, I'm on month five right now of getting my, my gut health all figured out after learning I had strep throat in my gut, which I have a funny story to tell you about. Um, why, why is the gut so important in kind of this optimal health thing? I feel like there's so much confusion around gut health and sorry to be a buzzkill to the world, but kombucha doesn't seem like there's so much confusion around gut health and sorry to be a buzzkill

to the world, but kombucha doesn't seem like it's going to make that much of a difference when you start digging into the real data here. Yeah, for sure. I mean, a lot of those things that people feel good on, they stop feeling good on once they remove them. So they're end up, they're nothing more than a bandaid. Like a lot of people, they feel good on kombucha so long as they keep drinking kombucha. But then when you remove it and you go back to feeling like crap, that should be the first signal to your brain to say, hey, I'm not actually dealing with the root cause of the problem here. I'm just adding an extra band-aid each and every single day so that I feel better temporarily. And that's nothing more than just a symptom-based approach. And digestive enzymes

are the same way with this. If you need them in order to not feel bloating, well, then that's simply a Band-Aid because when you remove them, your root cause problem is still there and undergoing and creating an unknown amount of damage underneath the surface to your physiology that's going completely unaddressed.

The gut health world, because a lot of people don't take the steps like you two took, Doug and Anders. A lot of people don't take the steps like you two took, Doug and Anders. A lot of people don't want to put their poo in the mail and send it over to a weird guy in Canada who wants to analyze it. So that's a big step to take, but it's ultimately like a really important step because when you asked me to open the podcast, you asked me, why is the gut so important? Man, I hate saying things like this, but I believe it. If you were to get the most bang for the buck out of any organ system in the body, if you only had to focus on one organ system, I would probably be picking the gut because you aren't

what you eat. You only are what you eat and actually absorb. So every single other organ system depends upon the health of the gastrointestinal system. For example, if we want to make testosterone, that's going to require B vitamins, cholesterol, and saturated fats in order for that process to take place. We only get these micro and macronutrients if we have a healthy digestive system. Neurotransmitters is the same thing. We need tyrosine and phenylalanine and as well as vitamin C, copper and B6 in order to make epinephrine and norepinephrine. Those things have to come from our gastrointestinal tract. So if we're talking neurotransmitters, if we're talking

hormones, not to mention the gut itself contains every single neurochemical that the brain contains, it contains a ton of hormones all by itself. It houses 75% of our immune system. It's like the amount that goes into the, and I'm talking the entire gastrointestinal system with respect to the liver, gallbladder, small intestine, large intestine, the microbiome. And the microbiome by itself should be considered an organ system because this kind of surprises a lot of people. And it still weirds me out when I say it.

The bacteria in our gut, they weigh five to 10 pounds. Whoa, really? bacteria in our gut, they weigh five to 10 pounds. So yes, something that's microscopic has a weight of five to 10 pounds in our gut. And for reference, your liver weighs five to six pounds. So you have more weight in bacteria in your gut than you have this giant liver on the right side of your body. So the bacteria itself should be considered an organ. It really should. In the future, I think it will be. It will be considered its own organ because of how large of an impact it has on physiology. So if people were to focus on, say, one organ system, and again, I don't like saying this because everything is connected to everything. There's ripple effects. And just because there's more bang for the buck

with the gut, it doesn't make it more important than other organ systems either. But holy moly, when you get it figured out, so many other things improve because hormones, neurotransmitters, inflammation, immunity, digestion, and absorption. These are things that help the entire physiology. And I think my focus on the gut as my career progressed, it wasn't like, oh man, I love the gut. I'm going to learn everything about the gut. No, I'm a results-driven guy. So I don't really care what tool I have to use for the job, so long as I get the result. But what I was finding is that so many people have gut problems. So I was just getting basically really good at using this tool because so many people

have gut problems. And I think this is probably something you guys have seen in your coaching practice as well. How many people come to you with gut symptoms? When I posted like just that one picture of the streptococcus in my gut as high, and then all the normal bacterial flora that were low, I got an insane number of people asking how I was going to fix it. And everybody, it seems, has something going on, whether it comes out and they just have irregular bowels, IBS, there's just some sort of digestional issue that I feel like people are just rampant, but nobody, the problem I think for many in conceptualizing what goes on in their gut is there's just so many things they could

focus on because you go and get that, the GI map done. And there's, I mean, there's the standard ones, right? There's like E. Coli. Well,

that's not in there. That's good. But then you get into streptococcus. I didn't even know you could get strep throat in your gut. And then there's staff infections. Like there's an enormous list of bacterial growths and fungus and toxins and things that could live in there because it's kind of like this, it's its own universe. It's like its own ecosystem in there. And one of the biggest shifts that I've had probably in the last like year or two and just

kind of being interested in it, I've never really had like any crazy symptoms or, you know, I only had, it sounds weird to say say I only have one problematic bacterial infection which is kind of low but like a lot of times when I eat now I don't even think about like or conceptualize it or frame it as like I'm eating food that I like, think about it as like feeding my little pet gut bacterias. What do they want to be the healthiest thing? Because that's in the end, the food has to go through there to be broken into all the pieces. So you might as well feed the bacteria that are going to do the best for your body. That framework actually has helped a lot and just in a very 10,000 foot view of like how, because if you get into the pieces of it, it's, it's, it's totally nuts.

There's so many pieces. For sure. And if you zoom, I was gonna say, if you zoom out, what are like the, like the top five things nutritionally you need to do to have a healthy gut or like the big picture items okay so the big picture item believe it or not first and foremost is to manage your stress that that stress all by itself can wreck gut health it's been demonstrated in research that stress is so detrimental to your gut health that it could give you bleeding ulcers. And how it works is stress, and I'm talking psychological stress. I'm not trying to be around about physiological stress.

No, this is, if you're stressed out about something in your life, you will wreck your gut. What begins in the mind ends in the body. And how it works from a mechanistic perspective is stress creates cortisol. Cortisol actually lowers hydrochloric acid or what most people know as stomach acid. It lowers hydrochloric acid secretion in the stomach and the body is the ultimate conservation machine. It wants to use the least amount of energy possible to complete a task because it's always metabolically efficient because we're just hardwired that way based on previous years or in generations rather that we've gone through where starvation was a real thing. So now our body is just ultimate conservation. So what happens

when we're talking about stress and giving somebody a bleeding ulcer or just wrecking their gut in general, stress will lower hydrochloric acid secretion. And because hydrochloric acid secretion is now lower, there is a protective mucosal layer in our actual stomach. And the mucosal layer, let's just say, you know, random silly number, let's just say it's one inch thick. Okay. But now when we reduce, when we secrete less hydrochloric acid, our body will say, okay, well, I'm going to be more efficient with this because if we're only secreting this small amount of hydrochloric acid, then I don't need a full inch of mucosal protection. So I'm going to go all the way down to a quarter inch of mucosal protection now, because that's going to be enough to protect this stomach wall from the burning acid that is the hydrochloric acid. So that happens, stress reduces hydrochloric acid, because we have less hydrochloric acid, now we have less

mucosal barrier protection. But now let's say that stress goes away, you made a big sale at work, or you just won a competition, or something happened, you know, the blind date you went on that stressed you out, it went freaking great. And now you're, you know, you're in an awesome relationship, whatever the heck it is. Now that stress is lifted and cortisol is reduced and hydrochloric acid secretion goes back up to an optimal level. But you still only have a small little layer of protection of mucosal barrier. So when that hydrochloric acid goes up to the normal level, it's actually too much for the mucosal barrier in order to protect itself from, and then that injury from the acid to your stomach

will end up giving you an ulcer. Something that began in the mind and had nothing to do with the gut at all, ended up in physiology. And that's, that's, I always say that that's like one of the first things you got to focus on with gut health. And that even matters. So some people might be saying like, okay, well, the bleeding ulcer kind of a cool example, but how's that like super relevant to me? Here's a really important factor. And it's going to be a bit of a long answer. But I promise people are going to think this is super frickin cool. Because if you have stress, and lowered hydrochloric acid secretion, you will significantly screw up both your brain chemistry and your recovery from exercise.

Trug family, some very cool news coming out of Walmart. You didn't expect to hear that, I bet. Ageless male protein was selected as one of the very few products in the entire performance nutrition category. So the entire shelf with all of the supplements, ageless male protein, the zone, the pump, and the shred were chosen to have rollback pricing to begin the

new year. What that means is Walmart pretty much never does sales, but they do these things called rollbacks, and they select a very, very few products in each category, pretty much the ones that they think are going to absolutely crush in the new year and the hot time. And they chose us, which is super, super cool. So 2,200 stores, Walmart nationwide, the Walmart near me, I don't have it. And that's annoying. That means it's a whack Walmart, but the Walmart near you probably has it because we're in over half of them. So you can get over, get to the performance nutrition section in the pharmacy, age of smell, protein zone, pump and shred. Make sure you get over there. Look for my face on the box, pick up some supplements and get your new year kickstarted. Right? Friends. I'm so stoked. We have rollback pricing. Whoever knew that that was going to be

a thing at barbell shrug. You will significantly screw up both your brain chemistry and your recovery from exercise. Here's how. Hydrochloric acid breaks down protein in the stomach. It is the primary thing that our body uses to break down protein. So let's say you ate your six ounce chicken breast to get jacked and strong. You're on the program right now. You had a six ounce chicken breast. Now, again, we're just using numbers for ease of example. We had six ounces of chicken breast.

And let's say we secreted enough hydrochloric acid to break down 80% of that chicken breast. All right. 80% of that chicken breast now enters the small intestine for optimal absorption and assimilation into amino acids up into your biceps. So you can get jacked, boom, done. 80% of it's gone. But now the remaining 20% left undigested in the gastrointestinal tract will now be eaten, and this kind of ties into Anders' point, it will now be eaten by the bacteria. Now, bacteria, when they eat protein, that's what is called putrefaction. Protein, and it's a gross word to say, protein will putrefy

in your gastrointestinal tract. You know, when protein is eaten by bacteria, it will putrefy. When protein, sorry, when fat is eaten by bacteria, it will putrefy. When fat is eaten by bacteria, it will go rancid. So this is just terminology for different macronutrients that get eaten by bacteria. But when you have remaining 20% of that chicken breast in your stomach, and the protein begins to eat that, the bacteria rather, begin to eat that protein, they will eat it. And bacteria are just like us. They will eat it and they will poop. When bacteria poos out protein, it poos out something called indole. Indole, I-N-D-O-L-E, is extremely toxic to physiology. So our physiology says, holy crap, we cannot have this indole here. We need to convert it into a safe chemical known as indican and excrete it out of physiology. So here's why

that's important. I can see your indican in your urine. So if you did a urine analysis with me and IndiCan was in your urine, it would only ever be in your urine if you're not properly metabolizing protein from your diet. It's an on-off switch. If it's not there, you are metabolizing protein. That's freaking great. But if it is there, you are not metabolizing protein from your diet. That's key for us to understand because you're not what you eat. You only are what you eat and actually absorb. So somebody could be having their 50 grams of whey protein isolate post-workout and not actually getting the most

bang for their buck out of that protein because they're not secreting enough hydrochloric acid to properly break down all of that protein so that you assimilate and utilize all of those amino acids to get strong and get jacked. What connects the brain chemistry to this is something I already said. Like if we wanted to make epinephrine and norepinephrine, which is adrenaline and noradrenaline, we make that from tyrosine and phenylalanine. That's in protein. So if we don't digest and absorb protein properly, we're going to massively limit our recoverability from exercise, which is then going to limit our performance in exercise because you only

perform as well as you are recovered. And then also your neurotransmitter balance can be thrown off. The gut looks like it's at fault here, but it actually began in the mind. If we remember that could have been the root cause to that entire cascade of brain chemistry, recovery, and performance, not going the way you wanted it to, but it's something that can absolutely be seen and flagged in your urine. And once that cycle starts, it's probably very hard to stop because the anxiety and stress kind of compounds on each other. Yes, for sure. And 30% of the world's population also has a bacterial infection known as Helicobacter pylori or H. pylori. H. pylori lives in the stomach. It's one of the few bacterias that can actually survive in that

acidic environment. But what it does is it doesn't actually want it to be too acid. It increases the alkalinity of the stomach, which reduces hydrochloric acid even further. So if somebody is stressed out, then they will reduce hydrochloric acid secretion. And then if they're also a part of the one third of the population, that is Helicobacter pylori, they will reduce hydrochloric acid secretion even further and then this is somebody who has bloating distension um anybody ever heard of protein farts that's because you're not digesting and assimilating it properly that's not like a joke people are like yeah i'm getting the protein no it's not a joke at all walk into a crossfit

competition at 9 a.m before the first event goes off it's like a dude waste field out there have you have you ever gone into the public bathroom at the arnold sports festival yeah that's exactly what i'm talking about crossfit games is the exact same it's so heinous it'll sting your nose like it will destroy you all this bunch of people with rotten guts drinking protein shakes all day. First, yeah, protein shakes pre-workouts. They're jet-lagged. The toilets must just have a meeting at the end of the day and just cry to each other.

They must. Yeah, it's very, very noticeable. That's the thing though, right? Everybody gets the protein farts. That's not normal digestion and assim very, very noticeable. That's a thing though, right? Everybody gets the protein farts. That's not normal digestion and assimilation, you guys. I want to, even going into, you say protein farts, I want to, what is the, you said this to us when we were taking our test,

or it was one of the questionnaires about drinking coffee and immediately having to go to the bathroom. You said that's normal or it's common, but it's not normal. Right, yeah. I always thought that that was like the kind of the result of just having your first coffee. But also, I want you to know that doesn't happen anymore. Yeah.

Thanks to Dan Garner, that doesn't happen anymore. No, we restore healthy gut function. Coffee's a funny one, because coffee will stimulate motility in the in the intestinal tract, which will help, you know, increase the speed at which one is going to go to the bathroom. And a lot of people used to actually blame caffeine for that. But it's been seen in research that if you have decaffeinated coffee, you still go to the bathroom quicker. So they both actually do it. There seems to be some unique compounds in the coffee bean itself that stimulates motility.

And that is going to happen at a much greater degree in someone with an unhealthy gut. Because if somebody, your motility on paper should be 12 to 16 hours, or rather, I should say transit time. Motility is the contractions of the gut that's keeping it going. A lot of that is regulated by serotonin. So that's why vitamin D, I've said before, is one of the most underrated gut supplements. And that's because vitamin D is required for serotonin synthesis, which is required for optimal motility contractions so that you have a proper transit time. So your transit time with coffee or not should still be approximately 12 to 16 hours.

If it's earlier than that, then your food is going through your gastrointestinal system too quickly, and you're likely lacking assimilation. So things you aren't, again, you aren't what you eat, you only are what you eat and actually absorb. If it's less than 12 hours, there's a higher probability that it's going too fast due to a stressed physiology and that you are dumping a lot of what you ate into the toilet rather than into your muscle tissue and nervous system tissue. However, if it's longer than 16 hours, then there's a greater chance that you can undergo something known as enterohepatic recirculation, where there are certain toxic

compounds in your stools that will reenter circulation because they've been in you for that long of a period of time. So if they stay too long, you get things coming back that shouldn't come back. But if it's in you too short, then things leave you that you wanted to kick around. So on paper, 12 to 16 hours seems to be in the research, the ideal point. But in my practice, I've extended that to 12 to 24. I think if you have one, so long as the stool looks good, if you have one per day of a nice, well-formed log, then I think that that is should still fall within the optimal zone, provided it passed easily and it still looked good. And a good test that the listeners can use

is just eat one cup of beets. Beets will make your stool red and some of the water in the toilet red as well. Obviously, this isn't blood. This is just the beets. So don't freak out. But I've used it as a test before for people who I was worried about their motility or they came to me worried about their motility. Have one cup of beets and then start your stopwatch and then see when you see the beets in the toilet. And then that's your transit time. Anyone who's ever juiced beets before will know that they look in the toilet and you go, Oh shit. Until you remember you juiced beets. Am I okay? The toilet is covered. It'll happen when you're peeing too. And it'll, it'll freak you out.

You're like, Oh yeah. So glad I don't like, uh, you know, a few minutes ago you mentioned serotonin. Uh, it's some absurd percentage of serotonin formed, formed in the gut. It's like 90, 95%, something along those lines. Correct? Yeah. I've read 90%. Yeah. So a lot of people don't associate gut health with mental health, but if that much serotonin is being produced by your gut, and you have gut problems, you're not producing enough serotonin. Presumably, there's there's some mental health downstream effects there, correct? Certainly. When you look at the gut,

I mean, it's called the second brain for a reason. And also, like we even say things like, oh, man, I got a gut feeling about this. You can feel those feelings in your gut. One of the reasons this is true is because if you look at the chemicals within the brain, there is not a single chemical in the brain that can't also be made within the gut. The gut also can function independently of the brain. You can actually cut off the communication between the two and the gut will still digest, absorb, and work exactly the way it's going to work. Like a weird zombie gut. It can be completely disassociated with the brain. They've seen this in rats. You actually cut the disconnections between the two and then the gut continues to function normally. And we've got 90% of our

serotonin in there, 50% of our dopamine in there, and there's also 400 times more melatonin in the gut than we have in the pineal gland within our brain. So in addition to that, to go back previously, we also get the raw materials for neurotransmitter synthesis from our diet from a healthy gut. So in addition to the serotonin, dopamine, melatonin concentration that we have within our gut, we also get all of the raw materials from our diet that are responsible for helping mental health scenarios. And that's something that's really important to care about because there's so many people, a good example is let's just stay in the world of serotonin. Serotonin, you have the raw material of L-tryptophan. L-tryptophan can be

made into serotonin. And for those of you who aren't familiar, serotonin is responsible for feelings of anti-anxiety and positivity, like feelings of happiness. And serotonin is also what puts you to sleep. Serotonin puts you to sleep, melatonin keeps you asleep. But keeping in the conversation of serotonin, anti-anxiety, feelings of positivity, and an ability to fall asleep at night. So serotonin is really beneficial. And that's the pharmaceutical industry is actually leveraged serotonin for their antidepressant drugs. So SSRI is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That's an entire class of drugs focused on keeping serotonin in the body so that people can feel better. But that still requires

raw material. So we actually get L-tryptophan from our diet, which is an amino acid. And provided you have enough vitamin B6, you can then convert that tryptophan from tryptophan to 5-hydroxytryptophan to serotonin. B6 is required in that metabolic pathway. So even in the presence of drugs, even in the presence of meditation, even in the presence of breathing routines, even in the presence of any of these things, like somebody could be sad or have a lot of anxiety and they want to do breathing routines and meditation to bring that down. Those are obviously beneficial, but if you have low B6 status, then you have a

chemical insufficiency. It's not a routine or ritual or morning, evening optimization thing that you need. You have a chemical insufficiency to create the neurotransmitter that you want. That is a nutrient dependent process. So, you know, in the conversation of mental health, I think that it's so important to also discuss neurotransmitter metabolic pathways with respect to amino acids and vitamin and mineral availability to create those things. And then ultimately you got to revert back to the gut because we need to digest and absorb those optimally anyways. And I believe that, did both of you guys come back with sub optimal B6 status or just one of you? It's been a few months now i don't think i had it i think it doug did okay i don't

think i did yeah so lower i see that all the time it's so often do i see low b6 status and it's because b6 is used for a lot of things like b6 is used for serotonin synthesis it's also used for melatonin synthesis but if you look at amino acid supplements, you'll see like branched in amino acids and EAAs, they all contain B6. And that's because B6 is required to metabolize amino acids as well. So when you got a guy like Doug Anders, any athletes with high protein diets, and they're very active, you're using way more B6 than the average person. And because you're depleting it at a rate that your body is not able to resynthesize it itself, then you're at a much higher need for B6. And I've seen that a ton in my practice. So you can actually deplete B6 through having a high protein diet and being

extremely active, and then not even physiologically connect that to your you having high anxiety right now but b6 is required for protein metabolism as well as serotonin synthesis so it's just kind of a cool way to illustrate how everything is connected to everything in physiology yeah so this is a great example of why you need to do labs like i kind of put b vitamins in the category of like i don't know like i eat like I eat really well compared to most people. B vitamins are fortified in a million different things. Like I probably get enough B vitamins.

I was not worried about B vitamins at all in any capacity. Even when I used to take ZMA, I'd be like zinc, magnesium. Yeah, probably. But B6 is kind of just in there. I probably don't need it. And so I would just, you know, ever since the last couple of years, I would just buy zinc and magnesium supplements, but not even worry about the b6 but turns out that was like the most important one that i did need and i had no fucking idea about that until until we got

labs done i came back low b6 and i was like really i was that wrong about that damn i'm really happy happy i did these labs because i was i was completely 180 degrees in the wrong direction on that idea yeah when you talk about the digestion side of things, a lot of people take digestive enzymes. Is that kind of maybe like a waste if the micronutrient profile is not the way it needs to be to get everything moving? Is that kind of like missing a step by taking digestive enzymes? Digestive enzymes should be seen as a way in which to manage symptoms. And that's not always a bad thing. Like I'll give people enzymes if they're like totally bloated and feeling like crap. Because they make you feel great. I feel like every time I've taken them, I'm like, oh,

this stuff's amazing. Like I can feel how much better I'm digesting food. Like you really can feel it. Exactly. So I'll, and I'll use it for that purpose. So I'll use it if it's, let's just say you're my client. I'll use it to give you, to give you that feeling of feeling good again, while I work on the real root cause of the problem in the background. So that's basically just to get you feeling great on the process while I eliminate the real root cause problem so that you can come off those enzymes and not bloat like you were previously. So, and I'm open with my, with my clients about that. It's like, okay, we're using the enzymes are really only using it to improve digestion now while we go through the process to

eliminate the root cause of the issue. And at the end of the protocol, you can drop the enzyme. So you're not even going to need them anymore. Yeah. So that's a, that's something that's, that's critical. And to kind of, um, piggyback a little bit on something Doug said that he didn't know he had a low B6. Um, a cool thing that is in the world of gut health is, uh, a lot of people who have, and I'm only saying this because we already went over low hydrochloric acid. People who have helicobacter pylori infections or who are highly stressed often also have low B12. And there's cells in our stomach called the parietal cells. They secrete hydrochloric acid. So those are the cells on the stomach wall that help us secrete hydrochloric acid. They're called parietal cells.

Parietal cells also secrete this cool thing called intrinsic factor. Intrinsic factor is secreted in the stomach to take B12 on a fricking roller coaster all the way to the ileum in the gut. So you can imagine you're getting B12 from a steak and say B12 is very high in red meat. So when you eat this steak, the parietal cells will secrete hydrochloric acid to break down the protein, but it'll also secrete intrinsic factor. Intrinsic

factor grabs onto this B12, covers it and holds onto it all the way until it gets to the ileum, which is a certain section in the small intestine. And then it will bind onto intrinsic factor receptors in the ileum, and that will deliver the B12 into circulation. However, if our parietal cells are low functioning due to either stress or helicobacter pylori, well, then we don't get the intrinsic factor to grab onto the B12 to then deliver to the helium to then be uptaken into circulation and contribute towards both nervous system and mitochondrial energy support.

B12, if B12 gives you energy, which it does for a lot of people, it means you needed it. So one thing I'll do in coaching is B12, lots of B12 comes in lozenges. And the reason why it comes in lozenges is so you can actually just let it melt in your mouth so that you avoid digestion altogether. You actually enter circulation under the tongue. So you can bypass the problem. Exactly. You get B12 right into circulation, bypassing the problem while you fix the gut. And then once the gut is fixed, you can go back to not having B12 because intrinsic factor will be doing its thing. I'd love to talk a little bit, kind of transition into like the actual healing side of things. It looks like Doug and I, Doug had a few of these infections. I had one. What is like the process of healing the gut? I know, like I actually was surprised at how many of the like good bacteria I was deficient in.

And even though I didn't have that many like infections going on in there. What is like the, it looks like there's like a three-step process that we go through to kind of kill all the bad stuff, fill it with good stuff, and then reinforce and build like a very strong gut. Am I interpreting kind of the protocol that way? Yeah. So the only thing I would add is you said three-step process, really a four-step process because there is that preparatory phase.

Yeah, the wellness phase that we call, yeah. Exactly. I want you to go through a wellness phase first because there's infectious states. And when people try to do what I do, sometimes they'll jump straight to the antimicrobials. So for example, they might use, say, oil of oregano, which is a decent antimicrobial. But certain infections in physiology, they've evolved right along with us. So like bacteria have managed to survive, they want to survive too. And the way in which like bacteria and viruses and stuff, the way they've evolved

to continue to survive, it's really fascinating when you go through the research when like something is a bacteria, and then it's resistant to an antibiotic or it's a bacteria and it survives the sanitation cream. It's, it's very, very impressive what they've done to continue to survive and thrive alongside us. And one of the ways in which they thrive is they create something called biofilm in physiology and people can imagine an infection, basically just wrapping itself in a cocoon of mucus. That's what biofilm is. It's mucus. It creates its own mucus. And what this does is it protects it from antimicrobials. So let's just say oil of oregano is trying to act as an antimicrobial to the infectious agent. Well, the infectious agent is covered with this cocoon of mucus, so the

antimicrobial can't get to it. So what I do in our wellness phase is incorporate a compound such as NAC, which has antimucolitic properties, and it's been very well demonstrated even in full meta-analyses at this point to cleave through biofilm. So we'll run NAC for two to four weeks first, so that when we move into phase two, which is the kill phase, the pathogens exposed so that there's no mucosal layer of protection for the bacteria to protect itself from the strong antimicrobial herbs and things, supplementations that we'll be taking during kill phase. So to kind of simplify it for the audience, month one, let's optimize your health and break down the mucosal layer of the biofilms. Month two, let's go through kill phase and send whatever we need to send down into your gut in

order to kill off all the bad guys. The month three is your repair phase because there's only three layers of protection that protect us from the outside world. Our bacterial layer, our mucosal layer, and our actual cell wall of the gut. Repair phase is about reinforcing and strengthening all of these three layers. And then finally, month four is diversification phase. Diversification is simply diversifying our gut bacteria because as research continues to come out um there are some probiotics or or rather some marketing materials that will want you to think that only one or two bacteria lactobacillus yeah lactobacillus acidophilus well that's the

one i get right there's a guy on youtube right now that's coming after me about some lactobacillus. Acidophilus maybe? Acidophilus. He's coming after me hard. Yeah. Uzo or something like that is the name of it. He's got long hair. He looks very woke and very, what is, it looks like he has a great man bun.

Like he could be in Austin right now filming. It's being super woke and having hair are things I'm not familiar with. Me neither. I couldn't even imagine my life with a man bun, but I bet if I had the Umso supplement, I would grow some. Yeah, exactly. So that diversification phase is all about introducing a diverse range of bacteria because the more diversity you have, the greater integrity of your gut you have. And again, when people try to do what I do, lots of times they'll fail because they'll just try and get rid of the pathogen and then kind of call it a day. That's a wrap. But the way my brain works, that pathogen existed in your physiology for a reason to begin

with, because you are weak enough to, the environment was weak enough to allow it to thrive. So once I get rid of that pathogenic state, I want to create an environment so strong that there's a much higher percentage chance that it will never ever come back. So phase one, preparatory phase, phase two, kill phase, phase three, repair phase, phase four, diversification phase, then you got a badass gut moving forward. Yeah. I, um, I have noticed, uh, many things in this protocol, but one of them has been the coffee and like the immediate, um, the, the motility in the morning, we could call it. Um, there's like no, there's no rush anymore. My body's not trying to just like purge all of the bad stuff out of me and playing from behind. I feel like it's just like all of the speed of drinking a coffee and feeling like I need to run to the bathroom, all that stuff's disappeared. It's magical. Yeah. I would love. I don't want to know what having IBS or like really bad

symptoms or some sort of like actual diagnosis. Um, but I'd love to, uh, almost know what that feels like and then know what it feels like four months later when you just completely eliminate all that stuff, because it must be life-changing for people that have these like really bad problems. Yeah. I've got a testimonial database of people telling me those stories. That's it's happened to a bunch, man. And, uh, like, like I always say, people don't actually know how good the human body's designed to feel. You're not supposed to have poo cramps and run to the bathroom in the morning. You know, you're not supposed to have poo cramps and run to the bathroom in the morning. You know, you're not supposed to have loose stools. You're not supposed to be able to see what food you ate

in your stool. Like these things aren't supposed to be there. And, uh, it's amazing how much caffeine free energy you have when you're properly digesting and assimilating your food, the way you're supposed to. I can sign off on that. Down 40 ounces of coffee a day, not this past weekend, not when I'm traveling, but on a regular basis. Down 40 ounces a day, that's a big number. That's an enormous number. Yeah, I'm at like a third of what I used to be. So what's that math? What's 40 divided by eight? That be um five be five that's five yeah so five so that's five less coffees a day that's how much progression you've had that's enormous to need to have to feel better on five less coffees per day and only a few months shows you just where you were at and

you were health pretty healthy when you came to. I'm the world record holder right now. You're pretty healthy. He rolled his eyes so hard for all of you listening on the podcast. You didn't see how aggressive he just rolled his eyes at my 68 out of 100. Yeah, I was just going to steamroll through that. Let's just, let's talk about something else. All right. Let's talk about something factual besides my overinflated D plus. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, dude. People, yeah, go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna, I was gonna say for all the clients that we've worked with, including me and Andrew, so we've had many people with opportunistic bacterial overgrowth, kind of negative bacteria, many people that have low amounts of kind of positive bacteria. But on the GI map, there's a section for parasites and a section for worms. How common is that to find in your clientele? More common than what people think. I would say, I would say a minimum of 20% that not a worm, but a parasite, a worm you'll know, cause it'll be eating your calories and you'll be getting smaller. Um, but a parasite, that's something that is incredibly common and many times is symptomatic to what falls in line, which was with what people refer to as normal. So you'll have those

sporadic gastrointestinal complaints that you can't really pin down. It's like, am I sensitive to eggs? Am I sensitive to dairy? Is it gluten? What's going on? Lots of times that could be parasitic activity. So that will just simply go unchecked until you have someone do your stool analysis and people will live their whole life without doing a stool analysis. And, uh, yeah, I would say, um, after doing over a thousand of these, I should actually do the math again. Um, it's, we're probably getting close to 2000 at this point, but, um, I would say probably 20% of the labs that you've run on people is what you're saying. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I would say that it probably averages out at a minimum of 20%, probably 20 to 25% of people come with some form of parasite that they had no idea was holding them back from becoming the best version of themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. That's actually higher than I, higher than I thought it was going to be 20%. Yeah. Like one in five people. Like if it's that common, like you go to the doctor,

you get your basic CBC, CMP type blood work stuff. But why, why is not getting stool samples more common in like just basic medical care? Because it's not going to kill you. That's the thing. It's not to the point where you're going to have a serious like cardiovascular risk of disease.

You're not going to have diabetes. You're not going to have any type of major medical emergency. And that's basically what that industry is built upon. I've got a real simplistic continuum I like to talk about where it's a three-point continuum. Death, fake health, and real health. If you're on the death side of the equation, you're dead. If you're in the fake health, that's where 90% of the population lives. Because fake health means that you just don't have a disease.

That's all fake health is. It's the absence of disease. But you could have low sex drive. You could have brain fog. You could have low energy. You could have a tough time burning fat and building muscle. All of these things are present in this person, even though they don't have a disease. No one would want to be that person. So that's why I work with people who want to be in the, this side of the continuum, which is real health. People that vibrate at a different frequency, man, people with high energy,

people who crush their bucket list, people with excellent sex drive, ability to transform their bad body to the degree of their goal. Like just this past year, I got very lean and then I got as big as strong as I've ever been. And now I'm running a full marathon. That's all within a 12 month span. So when I set a goal, I just adjust my programming to meet that fricking goal and my body follows suit because I don't have those constraints holding me back. That's someone who has real fricking health. So we've got death, fake health, and real health. The reason why people aren't getting their stool analysis done is because they live in the world of fake health.

Because having, say, a relatively dormant parasitic infection, such as a blastus hominis, that is something that you can live with for the rest of your life. But it will keep you in fake health, but you won't have a diagnosed disease. But if you're somebody who wants to thrive, then you gotta get it checked out because that's something that will always hold you back

from becoming the best version of yourself because you're not supposed to have a fricking parasite in your gut. We have a lot to talk about on gut health. I feel like we just kind of scratched the surface today. Where can people learn more? Where can they find you? Dan Garner, Nutrition on Instagram. There it is. Doug Larson. Instagram. Doug, we'll see Larson.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug. Get over to dieseldadmentorship.com where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic. And make sure you hit your local Walmart in the pharmacy. Three programs, products, programs on the shelf. So if you don't see my face on a box, that means you're in the whack Walmart. You need to go to the cool one right next door. Friends, see you guys next week.