Dhru Purohit Show - Why You Need to Eat 30 Different Plants a Week to Fight Inflammation and How to Build Your Healthiest Gut Microbiome Yet with Gut Expert Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, One Skin, and Branch Basics. Over 95% of Americans are deficient in one key nutrient: fiber. And yet, fiber plays a powerful role in overall health—supporting weight loss, better sleep, and increased satiety. Today’s guest takes a deep dive into fiber, gut health, and why adding more plants to your diet is one of the best things you can do for your well-being. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz to discuss why increasing the diversity of plants in your diet is crucial for gut and overall health. Dr. Bulsiewicz shares his top tips and go-to recipe for anyone beginning their journey toward more fiber and plant diversity. He also explores concerns surrounding the increasing use of GLP-1 medications without a long-term plan and identifies the most effective practices for achieving sustainable weight loss. If you’re looking for a deep dive into what damages the gut microbiome—and how to truly optimize your gut health—this episode is for you. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz is a board-certified gastroenterologist, an internationally recognized expert in gut health, and the bestselling author of Fiber Fueled and The Fiber Fueled Cookbook. He serves as U.S. Medical Director and Scientific Advisor at ZOE, has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, has presented to Congress and the USDA, and has taught gut health to over 10,000 students. Dr. B earned his MD from Georgetown, trained at Northwestern and UNC, where he was chief fellow, and completed an NIH-funded epidemiology fellowship at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Bulsiewicz dive into: Increasing the diversity of plants in your diet (00:30) Research on the significance of adding diversity to your diet (3:42) Starting the day with a morning smoothie as a best practice for diversity (9:30) Base ingredients for smoothies and beginner-friendly plant additions (17:10) Personalizing the right amount of fiber for your gut microbiome (25:41) Emulsifiers added to plant-based meals (28:03) The connection between fiber and GLP-1 (36:54) Intense food noise, cravings, and long-term drug dependency (43:59) A tiered approach to weight loss (48:17) Alcohol and the least damaging options from a gut perspective (1:09:24) Marijuana use and its impact on health (1:14:25) The controversy behind the MAHA movement (1:19:29) Fermented foods and their effects on the microbiome (1:31:44) Tier-ranking what damages the gut microbiome (1:40:12) Concerns about the carnivore diet and Dr. Bulsiewicz’s observations (1:53:59) Dr. Bulsiewicz’s prebiotics and the journey to build a better microbiome (1:57:49) Strengthening intuition and learning to trust your gut (2:04:03) Also mentioned in this episode: ZOE 38Tera: Dr. Bulsiewicz’s prebiotic For more on Dr. Bulsiewicz, follow him on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, One Skin, and Branch Basics. Right now, Bon Charge is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Right now, One Skin is offering my community 15% off; just go to oneskin.co and use coupon code DHRU to save 15% and give your skin the scientifically proven, gentle care it deserves. Right now, Branch Basics is offering 15% off the Premium Starter Kit; just go to branchbasics.com and use coupon code DHRU. Make 2025 your cleanest, healthiest year yet with Branch Basics! Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Will, welcome back to the podcast. I want to jump right in and provide some major value for our audience today on the topic of the gut microbiome. Something pretty profound that I've heard you reference is some pivotal research around the idea that one of the best ways to take care of the gut microbiome and lead to greater healing and energy inside of the body, potentially, is to include 30 different plants inside of your diet. on a weekly basis. Talk to us about this number 30. Why is it so magical and break down some of this pivotal research? The thing about this is I think this is universally applicable

and something that every single listener, unless you're on a 100% animal-based diet, every single one of these listeners can apply this to their life. Increase the diversity of plants in your diet. Where this came from, Drew, is a study called the American Gut Project. That's where it originally started. And the American Gut Project actually was an international study and included like 52 territories and countries across the globe, especially the United States and the UK.

And it was the first time that they had microbiome samples for over 10,000 people and simultaneously all kinds of information about their diet, their lifestyle. And what were they eating? How were they eating? What was their dietary pattern? All these different things. And when they did their analysis, this was like purely statistical. This was not some sort of a prior thing.

they were trying to find. When they did their analysis, this thing jumped out. It jumped out off the charts where they go, whoa, that's the thing. And the answer was eating at least 30 unique plants per week. So let's break that down. So every single plant has fiber. But also fiber is not just generically fiber. Not all fiber is the same.

That would be like saying that the protein in a fish is the same as the protein in a bean. They're not the same. So unique plants have unique forms. forms of fiber. Also, every single plant is like slightly different in terms of the chemicals that they contain, which could include things like phytochemicals or could include special polyphenols. There's over 8,000 polyphenols, which are plant-based antioxidant compounds. And like the simplest way to look at that is the colors of a plant. So red has certain polyphenols, orange, purple, like these are different. But every single one is unique. These are the things

that feed and fuel the gut microbiome. The fiber, the polyphenols, the phytochemicals, resistant starches when they're present, these are the prebiotics. And specific families of microbes, they rise and they fall based upon the choices that we make. So if you were to literally just eat kale all day long, you would not be healthy. Because whatever microbes enjoy kale, they would grow. You can only go so far with that. and all the other microbes would be starving.

And you could end up with a kidney stone. And you would definitely end up with a kidney stone. That happened to a friend of mine. But anyways, that's another story. Continue. That's another story. No, but it's true. I mean, that's not a healthy diet, right?

So when we overemphasize one specific thing, we're sort of making a mistake. Because actually what we should do is zoom out and look at this bigger picture where there's this abundance of variety that exists in nature. And it's much like diversifying your portfolio, where when you have variety in your diet, You are feeding and fueling. You are getting all the different types of fiber and polyphenols and phytochemicals and different types of vitamins and minerals. So you're sort of balancing it all out.

And that's what ultimately leads to a more healthy, more diverse, more abundant microbiome. So you and I were talking before we started about Zoe. This is something that Zoe actually, our scientific founder at Zoe, Tim Specter. A company based in the UK. A company based in the UK that's available in the U.S. Tim Spector is a professor at King's College London, one of the most accomplished, most published published scientists in the world. And he actually was driving this study because basically he introduced a whole bunch of people from his dataset in the UK so that it could be balanced

include both U.S. and British people. And we found this. And this led us to now where Zoe is sort of taking this and running with it. We have other studies that have backed up the concept that dietary diversity is essential. And we have a randomized control trial where we apply these concepts to people. And we find that in this randomized control trial, when you apply these concepts, you lower your weight, you reduce your waist circumference, you lower your triglyceride levels, you're happier, you sleep better, you have more energy, you're less hungry, which is actually kind of interesting. You're less hungry, yet you're losing weight. That's pretty cool. So all of these benefits start to unfold. So here's what I would come to say that, like to me, I have

moved past. In fact, I kind of don't like dietary and nutrition labels at the this point, like I really don't like them. Because we're oversimplifying people. We're oversimplifying diets. So I'm here to say, forget that. Like, forget what we call it. Focus on the quality of your diet. One of the ways that you can really enrich the quality of your diet is by adding more variety of different plant-based foods. And if 30 sounds intimidating, don't panic. Because truly, like 10 years ago, I was probably at five. What you want to do is just start slow and steady, adding more, all fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, and spices. They all count. I've heard you say that for people that are starting off and are doing an audit in terms of,

hey, how much variety am I getting and how much fiber I'm getting? And it's a little low and I want to increase it because I'm convinced by the science that one of the best ways to do this. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to make a practical for our audience is starting off with a morning shake. That's not the end all be all, but it's one major step in the right direction. So if somebody, first of all, did I get that right? and if somebody wanted to make a shake and use it as a way to start heading in this direction, break down the best practices of what they could be including in the shake

to not only support their gut microbiome, but as you mentioned, not going too crazy so that they can be gentle and avoid a common thing that happens for a lot of people when they introduce a lot of fiber at once is they have digestive issues bloating. So is a shake a great way to get started? in the right direction.

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Invest in the health and longevity of your skin. skin and scalp with one skin. Your future self will thank you. I think we're referring to the same thing. I would use the word smoothie. Like basically we're talking about throwing a whole bunch of plant-based stuff into a blender, pressing the button and letting it buzz, right? And I think it's a great way to start your day.

So a few things about this. Number one, it's more easily digestible. This is something I would recommend to nearly all of the listeners. Number two, they can be delicious. Like, they should be delicious. There's no reason for it to not be delicious. Number three, you can really crank up your fiber by doing this. It's a great way to start your day because then you're already ahead of the curve in terms of your fiber goals.

And number four, same is true for plant diversity. Like you can easily get to 8, 10, 12 different plants. It's a Monday morning. It's a new week that started. You want to get to 30 by the end of the week. You throw some stuff into a blender. It takes you three minutes and you're already at 12th. That's not a bad start.

Can you break it down? What would you be putting in it? not necessarily. I want to hear what you do today, but I want to start off first with advice for somebody who's like, I need more diversity, I need more fiber, and I want to do it in a way that's slow and steady. So what does that smoothie look like? For that person, I like to use an expression low and slow. So what that means is conceptually similar. I want people to think about the gut like it's a muscle. Apply the same logic that you would use in the gym to your gut. So let's pretend this is day one.

This is conceptually the same as you going to the gym on January 1st. And if I were to give you guidance on that day before you go to the gym, I would say, Drew, please don't hurt yourself. Please don't go crazy. Please don't lift weights that are way more than you're ready to lift. Start low. Allow your body to adjust and adapt to it. And you will get stronger. And when you go back in two days, you'll be a little bit stronger.

You can do just a little bit more. And if you keep that pattern going, that's how you build muscle mass. That's how you grow stronger. That's how you add functionality to your body that you don't currently have, but you could have if you were to follow this pattern of growth, right? The gut is the exact same way. So with the smoothie concept, let's start low. Let's go slow. So how do we start low?

Okay, part of this is like, please don't drink 40 ounces of smoothie on the first day, right? Like, it's a volume thing. So don't make a massive smoothie and then feel obligated to finish the whole thing. Like, if anything, make it smaller and share it. All right. Number two, what do we throw into the smoothie? I would recommend that you start off with a low FodMap smoothie because it's going to be more gentle on the gut. So what is this concept of Fodmaps for your listeners who perhaps haven't really heard much?

Or maybe they've heard it, but they're like, what is that? FodMap stands for, and this is super nerdy, forgive me. Frementable oligosaccharides, di-saccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. What this is referring to is the fermentable carbohydrates in our diet. So that includes lactose and dairy products. That includes things in beans, things in whole grains, fructose and fruit, and fruit, and sweeteners like sugar alcohols, which also include artificial sweeteners. Okay. All of these things, when we say fermentable, fermentation produces gas.

So for people who have a sort of weak gut where they may struggle to process and digest their food, going low FODMAP can be a more gentle approach that's easier and it produces less gas. You'll feel better. So start with a low fodmap smoothie. And just for reference for the audience, what are the most commonly consumed high FodMap foods, even for like a healthy audience? So if you had to list like five of them, just for an example. Beans, legumes, almost all of them. Lentals are, especially canned lentils are the exception potentially.

Whole grains, the ones that are gluten containing, which is an interesting thing. Again, we may circle back to this. So wheat barley and rye are high fodmap foods. garlic and onions, high fod map. And then, like, there's, like, some other ones that are out there. There's certain berries that can be high fodmaid. Avocado is high fodmap. You have to be kind of careful with the amount.

Yeah. So it's with avocado, it's like if you have a certain amount, that's a modest amount. Because, I mean, like, when I open an avocado, I'm definitely not throwing in the trash. I want to eat that whole thing. And, but, like, the amount is rather small if you have gut issues. Just to be clear for audience, these aren't bad foods. These are foods that actually, as people start to see how much fiber they can handle and how well they do, a lot of these foods are foods that if people can tolerate them, you want them in the diet.

It's just that you're starting off this smoothie by potentially avoiding a lot of these foods. I don't think too many people are putting beans and lentils in their smoothie. Maybe some people are, but some of this other stuff to be paying attention to. You could. Okay. So first rule and principle on low and slow. Low and slow. Low and slow is go towards fodder.

map friendly foods, low fod map, foods that are there. Yeah, and if you're looking to do that, like, you can certainly find these things on the internet. You absolutely don't need to buy my books, but you could also borrow my books from the library. And my first book, Fiber Fueled, has a four-week plan in the back. The first two weeks are completely low-fodmap. So any recipe that's in the first two weeks, you already know it's full-fod map. Yeah, I'm sure it's in chat, GPT, somewhere.

So, somebody probably took a photo. That's probably true. Damn that. Although, please buy authors' books and support their work. And then Fiberfield's Cookbook is my second book. And that was an interesting book because it was really about food sensitivity and trying to help people with that. So I have two protocols. And one of the protocols is a low FODMAP.

So there's about 25 recipes, including some smoothies. So again, for people who want to try this out, go and try those types of things and see how you feel. If you are getting bloated from that, if it's too much, then reduce the amount that you're drinking. Just cut it down. Volume matters, right? Don't go ham. Yeah. So it might be that if you're not used to making smoothies, start off with maybe more like

eight ounces, 10 ounces, you know, work your way up. Stay away from the high FODMAP foods that are there, right? Stick to low FODMap. So now give us an example, right? My audience, people have heard a lot of different conversations about protein. We might come back to this later on. So I know there's a lot of great protein options that people can include. I use personally, I don't do super well with a lot of plant-based,

proteins. I get a little bit of fermentation. So I use a beef protein that's there, like a grass-fed beef protein because I don't do all so well with weigh as well. So I use a powder. So I use a powder, right? Because I like to include that. But separate from that, separate from people's protein of choice if they decide to include that, which I think you would recommend, right? You absolutely could. If you want to turn this, if you want to make it more satiating, if you want to feel full, because what we're talking about right now is the basic conversation is around getting more plants, more fiber, more diversity, right? But if you want to take that smoothie and turn it into a meal and make it more satiating,

then yes, we would absolutely love to include some protein and some healthy fat. Great. So let's talk about some of the other things that are out there, just from your perspective. And again, for somebody who's starting low and slow, what else could they be putting inside of there? So what does that base look like for an introductory smoothie? Let's start off with are you recommending water, almond milk, keifer, and then what are some of these plants that they could potentially be putting inside. Yeah, I mean, you're going to need a liquid.

So, and I think that all those choices that you just described are perfectly fine from my perspective. Where I started back in the day was with water. We will use a plant-based milk now these days in our house. But like whatever you prefer, wherever you feel most comfortable. And there are advantages to kifir in the sense that that's a fermented food. And we can talk more about like the advantages of fermented food more globally. I sort of see that as a separate conversation, but also very important. We led with plant diversity.

Cool. We're tackling that. There's also this conversation about fermented food. I would love to get into that. We'll definitely get into it. It's on the docket. All right.

Amazing. You need something that's going to give it the creamy factor. All right. So if you had no FODMAP concerns, that could be an avocado. When you do have a FodMap concerns, then many times a banana would be the way to go.

You still need to be conscious and aware of the banana. Is it brown or is it closer to green? When it's closer to green, it's higher in resistance starch, which is actually really good for our got bugs. And it's lower in FodMaps. So that, to me, is a win when you get closer to that. And again, you're going to be throwing this into a blender. So you're not going to be trying to bite some hard on ripe banana, right? And it's still going to blend well, assuming that you have a nice blender,

like, you know, whether that be a Vitamix or a Beast or something like this. Okay. So you want something that's going to give it the creamy. I usually go with banana. If you wanted to make this a smoothie bowl is a little hack, as opposed to a smoothie. That you, you know, you're going to be a smoothie. You you're going to drink. Freeze your banana. So take the banana out of the peel and put it into your freezer. And then when you're ready to make your smoothie, throw that in there. You will now have a smoothie bowl or ice cream.

We could also call it that instead of the smoothie. All right. Now after this, to me, greens should absolutely be a part of these smoothies. Why? Because of the incredible amount of nutrient density, the unique properties that they have, the nitrates that are good for our blood pressure, and the fact that they're almost no calories. So it's like sprinkling nature's multivitamin

into your smoothie without adding any additional calories to it. So I want the greens in there. You have many choices of what you prefer there. And then we need some variety of berries. So like in our house, we will classically go with blueberries. If you're being MoFodMap, you have to be a little bit careful

because there's a certain number of blueberries that you can do. the alternative could be a different fruit. So we want something to give some sweetness. So, like, you could roll with pineapple or you could look at raspberries. Like, these are alternative choices that are available. Whatever is going to taste good for you. So, like, I don't believe in smoothies that are purely berry-based or purely berry-plus banana. I kind of feel like that's a lost opportunity.

Because if you're going to add all of that sweetness, but not include some vegetables in there, then you're sort of missing out on the chance to like make this more healthy and add more variety to it. And then other stuff that I like to put in there. So we always put broccoli sprouts into our smoothies. And the beauty of broccoli sprouts is that like broccoli contains glucosinolates that are really thought to protect us from cancer. And that's what we get from cruciferous vegetables in general. the main one that we're talking about is one called sulfurophane. It's an isothiocyanate.

Sorry for the nerdy language here. But sulfurophane, which Johns Hopkins is studying this particular phytoc chemical, looking at it on many different levels for many different issues. Dr. Jed, right? Dr. Jed, exactly. Yeah, Jed-Fahey. So I like to get broccoli sprouts because they contain 50 to 100 times more sulfurophane than you're going to get from,

adult mature broccoli. So rather than throwing adult mature broccoli in there, give me a handful of sprouts, throw them in there. I will warn you, they're going to give a peppery flavor to your beverage. If you throw too much, like you might notice that. Embrace it because that's the good stuff. Like you're tasting the good stuff.

So it's kind of like olive oil. How do you shop for olive oil? Well, I could give you 10 different ways or I could just tell you this. If it tastes peppery, if it kind of burns the back of your throat, you got good olive oil. It's basically like the summary. Speaking of olive oil, I add olive oil to my morning smoothie. Yeah.

I'll put in a little bit of olive oil, usually about like 15 grams. Because I also feel between the protein, the fiber that I get from including things like a modest amount of avocado, the right amount of berries. I do better with frozen strawberries talking about personalization. For whatever reason, frozen blueberries make me really tired afterwards, which is so random. Again, who knows, maybe my friend some insight for me for that in the future. I do include some microgreens, some sprouts. I love putting mint in my smoothie. And when I look back on it, you tell you all these different things up.

I'm like, wow, that's easily eight, nine, ten, twelve different types of diversity of plant food that gets included in. And it takes me, you know, ten minutes to drink the whole thing. Exactly. Let's not miss the opportunity before we move on from this to also include the wonderful seeds that include both fiber and healthy fats, chia, flax, hemp, and basil seeds. So the cool thing about those is that you could have those sitting either in your freezer or in your pantry, but basically like that's a, you know, pseudo non-perishable. It's not going to go bad, right?

And you keep that around the house. And then every single time you fire up the blender, you just get all four. And you get four extra points there. I love the mint ad edition, by the way. That was cool. Yeah, I love that. One of the beauties of including this, all this diversity. in a morning smoothie

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Yes, and I 100% agree. And the beauty of this is that we have to keep it real. That we're busy. We're all busy, right? So trying to plan out what you're going to be doing at 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, who knows. But planning out your morning, like, that's on the table, right? You just need to decide what time you need to wake up and then you have your routine. And we've all seen in the internet, the guy who wakes up at 4 in the morning and has this elaborate routine.

But you just got to figure out what time you want to wake up. And then you can include something like this. And where you choose to insert it, that's a personal choice. But to me, where I see the opportunity is like, get up early enough. If you want to spend some time reading, perhaps like reading, like doing spiritual work, reading in the Bible, or writing, journaling, doing something that's good for you to sort of set your mind right. And then when the sun comes up, get outside. Get 30 minutes outside.

Ideally, with another person, having a chit chat, being social, enjoying the outdoors, getting that natural sunlight, beaming off the back of your retina. which activates serotonin, which is good for our brain. It's good for our focus. It's good for our energy levels. It's going to actually transform it to melatonin later tonight. So you can sleep better. And by the way, 90 to 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut

because this is the drumbeat that basically keeps our gut in rhythm. So when we get that morning sunlight, we actually are helping to produce that serotonin, which is going to help to give us a good, not to be too graphic, but a good, healthy bowel movement. You're going to poop better. Yes. It's a great way to start the day.

And to me, like, you go and you do that, maybe you have a ruck vest on, and then you get home in a smoothie time. A couple more practical questions about protecting the gut microbiome and the power of the morning smoothie. And then we're going to talk about the role that fiber plays in things like weight loss and how it's nature's natural ozempic and relates to GLP. So stay tuned. We're going to get into that.

on a practical level, how concerned are you about a lot of the emulsifiers that are so common in these plant-based milks, especially that are out there? I am concerned. On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned are you? And what is your recommendations and solutions? And for people that don't know, could you first start off with breaking down what are emulsifiers and what is their known impact on our gut microbiome and what is their unknown impact on our gut microbiome? Well, there's always stuff that we don't know. So the issue is that drew dietary

amulsifiers are just one category of food-based additives that have been introduced into our food system, into our food supply without adequate research to give us confidence, whether they are safe, unsafe or somewhere in the middle. And this is the problem that we have with the system that's been in place. That really has, I think, come more into the public consciousness. And I think this is a really good thing through the service of RFK and the Maha movement. Like basically, they're bringing attention to this concept of generally recognized as safe, which is GRAS. Anyone who's read my books, you've heard me talk about this.

This is something that was in my first book, Fiber Fueled. I was very critical of the way in which our regulatory bodies are managing. our food system because it's like completely designed for the food industry to add whatever they want to get permission to do so and to make it next to impossible for us to withdraw it after the fact. It's really hard to prove that something is really causing harm. Now these emulsifiers, let's dig into this. They have come to the surface because it starts with animal model studies.

Amosifiers are stabilizers. Yeah. That are often add to foods to keep them shelf stable. and in a way they kind of operate, you know, keeping it stable, but also getting rid of bacteria. They're kind of like an antibiotic in a way. They're not an antibiotic, but they're kind of preserving so that you can sell an almond milk, a cashew milk or other products for a longer shelf life. Otherwise, they would normally be getting bacteria or they wouldn't blend as creamily

or they would have other issues. Is that accurate? Did I miss something? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's certainly more than the plant-based milks. This is all over the. the place. So you have to really start to pay attention. Yeah. And I didn't mean to mention, I didn't mean to hint that it was, wasn't bigger than that. I was talking about in the context

of smoothies. So people are using a lot of plant baked milks and their smoothies, which obviously can be good in a lot of ways, but they come along with these emulsifiers. Exactly. Yes. And there's got to be workarounds that we'll figure out. We'll talk about that. I think that the simple of the emulsifiers is we all know what happens when you add oil to water. Right? They separate out. What if you wanted to blend those together and keep them blended together? So they wouldn't separate out. That's what the emulsifiers are doing. So could we make these plant-based milks without emulsifiers?

Yes. And that would require a simple thing. You would have to shake up your milk before you pour it. And there are brands that are doing this, by the way. 100%. There's, you know, I have no affiliation with them, but one of my favorite brands is New Barn, which is an almond milk company. they do cashew, coconut milk, other stuff.

You look at their ingredients for almond milk on the back, not that I really consume a lot of almond milk. It's literally almonds, water, sea salt, and then that's their base one. And a lot of their almonds come from regenerative farms in California and their brands that have flavors. It's literally like vanilla extract inside of there, like organic vanilla extract.

So there are companies that are doing it. Yes, it's more expensive, but there are alternatives that are out. Yeah, this is, and that is a beautiful. thing. And as a consumer, it's actually not that complicated to figure this out. Because if you flip it over and look at the ingredient list, if you recognize everything on that ingredient list, you're in a good spot. If you're like, what is that? Which I am myself and I have a background in chemistry. Many times I look at these ingredient lists, I don't even know what these things are. So you have to figure that out. So this is where I

think keeping it simple becomes very important. All right. So the issue with the emulsifiers is that that with these different products that contain them. And a lot of times it's the creamy type thing. So like a plant-based milk, plant-based yogurt, like these are places where you're going to find these. And ice cream in general, in general, regardless dairy, non-dairy, whatever. The issue is that they are disruptive to the microbiome. And the signal emerged initially in animal model studies

where we would see basically rats developing colitis, like all sort of colitis because of exposure to these compounds. and it evolved to where they started to ask the question, like among humans what happens. And actually there was a study done in France where they put people on a low emulsifier diet compared to a high emulsifier diet. And they saw very rapidly significant disruption

of the gut microbiome in the course of just days in people who were consuming the high emulsifier diet. So, and, you know, to context, I just want to be totally clear. This is not an argument that the way to fix our food system is to remove emulsifiers. That is not the only solution. This is a broad issue where there are 10,000 additives in our food system. Emulsifiers we have started to identify as potentially problematic.

Let me know when they pull these things out of the food supply because they have not. Let me know when that happens. I don't see it happening anytime soon, but maybe with RFK, maybe it will. but this is not like you can take the emulsifiers out of the ultra-processed food it's still an ultra-processed food we still have other issues totally it's important to know you know the reason I brought up emulsifiers is that let's say somebody makes the habit of this fantastic morning smoothie that you've just outlined and they continue to use it as a vehicle to get you know healthy fats fiber and especially protein into their diet on a regular basis they're meeting all their sort of macro goals

if that's something that they're paying attention to. They're starting the day off with energy. And a big part of that is also too, what are they not eating? They're not eating a sugary bagel. They're not eating other stuff because they feel full on it. And so that we can make sure that it continues to service us within the unknown. If we can look at the back of the box of milk that we might be using or the ice cream. Again, I hope nobody's putting ice cream in their morning smoothie.

And you see things like Carragian and other things. like that that are out there. You can just go to chat GBT and type in what are the common top emulsifies that are there. Polysorbid 80, caroxy macicellulose. There should be cause for concern of doing that every day, day in and day out over years, that we would be worried enough about the impact of the microbiome that you would tell people, look, I don't really want you eating these things every single day. Once in a while, fine. You go to a coffee shop and you like almond milk, you like oat milk, fine, and they're using the barista blend, which has the most amount of, you know, emulsifiers in it. Okay, every once in a while is great. But if you're

putting that in your morning smoothie every single day and you're doing it over years, you might end up doing some damage to your gut microbiome. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Well, and also you, when you compound that with other things in your diet, right? So like, this is not happening in isolation. This is not in a vacuum. This is concurrent with other things that are going to exist. the more that we lean into ultra-processed foods, the more that we expose ourselves to these risks, right? Because if you made the plant-based milk at home, which, by the way, many of the plant-based milks that you just mentioned,

it is 100% possible and not even that complicated. Oat milk, incredibly easy. almond milk, not that complicated. Soy milk, not that complicated, right? You could take edamame and throw that into the blender, like frozen edamame, throw that into the blender with your smoothie, with water. Basically, you just added clean soy milk, right?

And that's going to also give you protein. So, like, I don't know how you feel about it, amame. But from my perspective, organic etamame, organic, minimally processed, soy-based foods like miso or tempe. To me, these are health foods. Dried etamame organic, there's this company. I forgot the name of it. I'm sure you've seen it in the stores is one of my top fiber snack foods that I have

in the day. I'll talk about some of my other ones and I want to hear yours as well. But before we get into those snack foods and we talk about, about fermented foods and all those great things. I want to come back to this bigger idea, right? You talked about in the start of this podcast about the importance and the data that came from some of these pivotal studies like the American Gut Project about how important diversity is. And the way that we get that diversity is through a lot of different plant sources. And along with it, you're getting this incredible fiber and all the different types of

fibers. Right now we have millions and millions of Americans before we get even to the rest of the world that are on GLPs. And I have friends that are on them and have lost a great amount of weight and are doing it in a smart way and are working with smart doctors that are helping them make sure that they preserve their lean muscle mass and they're working out and they're cleaning up their diet. And it's a personalized approach that has given them a boost in the right direction. and they're doing it in a smart way, and they've seen incredible results. Their lipids have improved, their weight has improved,

you know, in some cases, plaque in the artery from just, you know, their progression of eating an unhealthy diet with a lot of alcohol and other ways that they have abused in the past isn't progressing as bad as it was previously. Like, I've seen some pretty fantastic things. Cool.

And the conversation has to be so much bigger that there are natural ways that we can, increase these signals of satiety in the body. And you are a big proponent of reminding people that fiber is one of those ways. Can you talk about that? So, GLP1 doesn't come out of nowhere. It's produced by our own body. This is one of a group of gut hormones that we call it incretin hormones.

And actually what drives GLP1 production in the body, there's a couple of things. But one of them is fiber. Fiber in the diet helps us to basically activate the release of GLP 1 because when fiber gets fermented and transformed by our gut bacteria, they produce short chain fatty acids, and those short chain fatty acids activate receptors that lead to the release of GLP 1. So this is the reason why when you line up different concepts of how do we get people to feel full after a meal, what consistently rises to the surface as being the most powerful way to accomplish this is through dietary fiber.

Now, it's not just a fiber thing. So, like, I don't want to make the claim that just hack your fiber that fixes all of your issues. Because there's also protein. Protein in combination with fiber can be a great pairing, right? And this is how we get ourselves to feel full and not overeat. When it comes to the GOP ones, you know, with the people that you described, like, there are people who exist who have tried everything.

And I'm so glad that these drugs exist for the. people. But I do take issue with the idea that we destroy people's health. We make 88% of America metabolically unhealthy through diet, like we're largely driven by diet, right? And then the solution that is created by the people that we work with, like whether it be the pharmaceutical industry or our government or whatever it may be, the solution that's being proposed to us, even honestly the medical system. What's being proposed to us is take this shot. take it for the rest of your life. It will cost you a lot of money.

And we have no clue what will happen to you and your body three years, five years, ten years, 20 years from now. We have no clue. From my understanding, gLPs were used with diabetics for a long period of time. Like we have at least 10 years plus of a lot of people having used gLPs. Now, obviously there's a lot of different derivative forms that they're being created in. Right? you have all the different ways that people are using

Treseptide, semaglutide, and all the new compounds that are there. But is it true that we don't have a clue of what it's doing to people? So to me, it's a reasonable short duration that we have with other GLP-type drugs like bieta that was like being used a little over 10 years ago for diabetes. Semiclutide, we have more experience with diabetes than we do with weight loss. It's not exactly the same dosing.

So semi-glutide is much more recent on the market. My point is, so we have data for, let's call it like a little over five years for semaglutide, a little over 10 years for any GLP1. So yes, there's data of that variety. We're asking people who are in their 20s and 30s to commit to taking this for 50 years. We're not going to have. With the standard approach in the way that it's being recommended. Right. We don't, because the problem is that if you discontinue the use, we don't yet have any evidence to suggest that there's a protocol that allows you to use it, change your diet and lifestyle, and then withdraw the drug and maintain that weight loss. We have no evidence of that. What we see with total clarity is that a year after people stop using the drug, the weight is 100% back. Right. So all of the benefits that you receive from the drug, they are gone. I think that there's benefits.

fits to these drugs for the people who really need them. I think that the problem that I have is that like we have completely bypassed the nutrition conversation and the exercise conversation. Like why, why would we bypass that to jump straight to these drugs that again, I'm concerned about not only the cost, but what happens when people take these for 10, 20, 30, 40 years? And so, and what I see is I see an opportunity to start with foundational principles that like, I really wish our healthcare system was more supportive of and would actually like introduce this as the baseline. Like this is the first step.

We're going to work with you to improve the quality of your diet. There's many ways you can prove it. It's not just a fiber thing. But one of the aspects of a high quality diet with total clarity is addressing your fiber deficiency. And when we accomplish this, it's going to elevate the health within your body. Will it lead to profound sudden weight loss in the same way that a GOP one does? no, this is not a drug. Will it lead to better health throughout your entire body that can lead you to thriving for the rest of your life?

100% yes. That's a great way to explain this sort of landscape. And I think that I agree with you. I think a lot of our listeners would agree with you as well. And I think while we don't have long-term data on it, the anecdotal thing that I've seen is, and I'd love to get your take on this. You know, you have a lot of friends in the space that are open-minded, integrative, functional, some degree of wanting to really use the full set of tools in the toolbox, both eastern,

Western, integrative, whatever, to help the patient get healthy. And a lot of what I've been hearing from those individuals is that there are individuals that have prioritized protein are working out on a regular basis. You know, they're not like dogmatic about one particular diet or another, but through a combination of maybe their gut microbiome being completely disrupted from antibiotics as a kid, through trauma, through other stuff. They live in this hyper, palatable, addicted, heavy food noise in a way that, I mean, I have so much empathy. I've never felt that before.

I've never felt like such a degree of food noise that I don't feel satiated after a meal or I'm craving some sort of snack that's like totally encapsulating or some high-calorie food. Sure, I have cravings like everybody else, but I've never had that level of food noise. And that with a personalized approach, they've been able to dial in some of those habits, some of the same things you've said, introduce some form of these GLPs could be compounded in many instances. It's not usually this full dose that's being given to the average population.

And it's very much a get on to get off approach that's there. And between some of that momentum and that person finally having some taste of what it looks like to have that noise in their head kind of quiet, that they've increased their interception and been able to get to a place where, hey, I'm now maintaining with these healthy habits. Again, this is completely anecdotal. There's no studies that are there on those people. Sure. And that's where I've just seen firsthand and have so much empathy for somebody who literally

has been carrying 40 pounds of extra weight for the last 20. 20 years, 30 years, and it's trying a lot of things, well-intentioned. And I share all the same concerns because that's not the vast majority of how this is being used out there. It is truly, we're going to have these people on these drugs forever. And there's no plan to get them off. And they're a lifelong customer. And we have no clue what's going to happen in that instance.

Yeah. And no, and there's no particular effort to change. their diet to improve the quality of their diet to get them exercising. It's just like a single like take this drug and there you go. That's it. Yeah. Right. So no, the what you just described, I have tremendous empathy for that.

A person who is obese is struggling, is trying like working their tail off to exercise to eat better, not achieving the results that they're looking for. That's exactly what these these drugs are good for. This is exactly the situation. and I would love for it to be less than full dose and be successful. And I think that's a personalized approach because ultimately, if you're able to accomplish your goals with that dose, that's what matters. Right.

Like, I'm a goal-oriented person. What's going on with the patient? How do I get them to where I want them to be? And if I were to get them to that place and then be able to withdraw the drug and maintain them on that diet and that lifestyle change that they've made, that's a massive win. I would 100% stand behind that. I think my concern that I have is the,

these are a bit poorer in opposite, but like the use of the drug as being a first line option for obesity in the absence of dietary and lifestyle modification. I have a problem with that. And I also have a problem with people, because this is what's happening out there. And I know that this is happening in Los Angeles, and it's happening in Charleston too,

is the idea of taking people that are slightly overweight. Five, 10, 15 pounds. Yeah, and they want to look good in a swimsuit, right? And making promises to those people, not only will you lose the weight, but this reduces your risk of cancer. This reduces your risk of heart disease. That's bullshit. That's not true.

You don't have data to back that up. Don't make a promise like that when you don't have, that is way too big to be making a promise like that when you don't have data to back that up. These studies that were done, yes, they do protect against heart disease and against cancer in people who are morbidly obese and lose a tremendous amount of weight because obesity is a risk factor for heart disease and cancer.

Great reminder. If you had a patient come to you and say, hey, listen, I'm in that category. I have five, 10, 15 pounds that I want to lose. And sure, it might be for vanity purposes. And I don't know if I'm hitting all the things that you recommend. What would be, you know, a tier ranked approach

that you would come to them on? and say, hey, before you go down this rabbit hole is something that could be potentially harmful for you, like exploring these GLPs, and there's no shortage of companies that are advertising direct-to-consumer options for you to go down that rabbit hole on, you would sit them down and you'd say,

hey, listen, here are the things that we want to make sure that we double down on, focus on, and approach. If you would tier rank that, what would that be? Tier rank that, so I have to put it in order. Yeah. Oh, Drew, you're putting me on the spot, brother. You're one of the best communicators in the space, so I know you can handle it. Thank you.

Putting these in order is a little bit tricky. Let me say this. I don't think that exercise would be number one, but it would definitely be in there. The problem with exercise is that if you don't actually get into a calorie deficit, then your body will just adapt the number of calories that you consume. So my argument, I would probably start with the elimination of hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods. So that's number one. That's number one.

And again, I think for a lot of people in this 5, 10, 15 pounds, there's probably a lot of listeners that are listening today that are in that category. I think most of them are aware that, you know, we don't want to be centering our diet around Cheetos, Doritos, you know, hyper-processed, you know, Starbucks, other things like that. So I think they're hip to that. But yes, we have to make sure that that's part of the equation. Even the health-washed ones, right? Because the problem is like Cheetos and Doritos are obvious, right?

But to your intelligent listeners who are out there, they're going to walk into a supermarket and they're going to be marketed to with tempting packaging that's going to tell them that they're healthier or it's high fiber. For example. Or it's prebiotic. I mean, OliPop. Okay. So now, do I think that OliPop is the worst thing that exists in the world?

No, but do you want me to dig into this? Should we? Dig into it. It's okay? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. All right. Yeah, you're sharing your honest thoughts.

Let's put a couple of things on the table because ultimately, to me, nutrition is about choices. What are you consuming relative to what? And of course, from a beverage perspective, effective, good old fashioned water, like, should be the backbone, right? But that's not the reality of what's happening out there. So here are the choices. There's sugar sweetened beverages like Coke. There's artificially sweetened beverages like Diet Coke. There's holly pop and there's kombucha. All right. And we can throw juice in there too if you want. So like to me, juice, the vast majority of juices are sugar sweetened

beverages. So I would put them like conceptually close but not as bad as Coke itself or like a sugar sweetened soda. Yeah, many juices that are fruit-based have even more sugar than a can of Coke. Yeah, just not to even make it even more complicated is not just a sugar thing. I'm sure that people have noticed that there's an acidity to Coke, has citric acid in it. What happens when you take acid and you put it in plastic? You shed plastic into the beverage. Yeah, all cans, Coke, olipop, anything that's in an aluminum can,

has an internal layer of plastic to protect the can. from sort of leaching into the beverage. In the same way that if you go to your favorite coffee shop and you get a takeaway coffee and it sits on your counter because you forgot to finish it for three days, if that paper cup has not melted and seeped through, it's got a plastic liner. So these plastic liners are important

because we're exposing ourselves to microplastics. Now this is a conceptually new idea, and there's a lot that we need to learn. and I'm not here to sort of fearmonger, but I am here to bring awareness to where there might be risk. There was a New England Journal of Medicine paper that came out recently. They took a look at people who were undergoing a carotid and arteryctomy. So they were removing the plaque because these are people are at risk for a stroke.

They're surgically removing the plaque in their carotid artery, which is up in their neck. So they peel this plaque off, and then they sent it out and they looked under a microscope. Not everyone had a high concentration of microplastics or like really truly the proper language is nanoplastics. These are plastics that the particle size is so small you will only see it under a microscope. Not everyone had a high concentration, many of them did. And among these people that had a high concentration of nanoplastics stuck in the wall of the plaque that is in their neck artery, what they found. Okay, look, like that has been removed. But then they tracked these people and they saw that they were at a significantly higher risk of having a heart attack, having a stroke, dying from cardiovascular disease in the years that followed.

So correlation, but cause for concern, right? Absolutely. Right? Cause for concern because we have no idea between all the polyester clothing that we're all wearing, which is filled with plastic, goes in the washing machine, ends up in the water supply. We don't have the technology anywhere in America for any water system. to filter out for those things on a municipality level. That's why everybody should get a filter. The best piece of advice that somebody gave me many, many years ago,

either you get a filter or you become the filter. And I always remembered that. So between the plastics, between food manufacturing that's out there, we have no clue how ubiquitous. Even in the studio, I had soundproofing put in. Some of that soundproofing, I looked at the materials. it's basically different form of plastics that are there, which is why I always have an air filter running in the background

and I'm measuring it. I'm not going to filter at all, but it's ubiquitous and we should be paying attention. So to take this back to what you were talking about. Cans. So let's go through it. So we have the sugar, sweetened soda beverage. Yep.

We'll throw juice right after that. All right, now we're going to go to the artificially sweetened soda beverage. Still has the micropastic issue. Still concerned about that because there's acidity in there. And in terms of artificial sweeteners, I know people get big feelings about these things. But artificial sweeteners with total clarity, total clarity, come into contact with the gut microbiome. Because the vast majority of them are not absorbed. So they come into contact with the gut microbiome.

They change the gut microbiome. And then the result of this is now the way that your gut microbiome interacts with you and your food is slightly different as a result of that artificial sweetener. there are concerns that exist. Is that worse than sugar? I would say no. So Diet Coke is still going to be better than a Coke. Yeah. And do I occasionally have Diet Coke?

Yes. Do I drink it on a daily basis? Absolutely not, but I used to back in the day. And is the bigger concern in the microbiome or is the bigger concern microplastics, which comes from all canned, you know, sodas that are out there? That's a tricky one. The problem with the microplastics is that I would characterize us as like there's a signal. We don't like what we're seeing here.

We haven't actually done the research yet to have clarity of like what those risks really are. So I think there's enough there to say let's proceed with caution. Let's like be conscious of this and try to avoid this where we can. But we can't yet say with total clarity that this is in fact as bad as this or as that. Part of the issue, Drew, is that these are microscopic. So again, like you can only see them with a microscope. We don't yet have a test measure that is consistently applied to characterize what quantifies. How do we quantify it?

How do we find them? Yeah, every lab that's doing work in this space because I'm working on some new stuff and I've been looking at these labs that are out there, they all have a slightly different approach in way because this is emerging a new science to even quantify the amount of plastics, nanoplastics that are inside a food or a beverage. Exactly. Here's my thought with Alipop. If I were to take a soda, like a carbonated water, basically, all right, and want to help you to improve your gut microbiome, I would prefer to opt for a high quality supplement as opposed to because basically this is what we have here.

Like to me, this is carbonated drink plus supplement. We mix them together. We call it a functional beverage, which sounds very sexy. Right. But it's the same thing as having drinking a carbonated drink and taking a supplement. I think they were using a little bit of like, hey, this is like good for your gut, the prebiotics. I don't know if it's because of some of the lawsuits that some of these companies have dealt with like Poppy and Oli Poppe. I think there's a few class action lawsuits that were there.

It seems they kind of moved away from that a little bit. And now it's more just like, hey, this is a healthier soda. Right. So and I welcome that concept, right? I welcome the concept of a healthier soda. But I think that the issue, though, is that there's this added fiber that's in there. The added fiber that was put in is inulin. Inulin is pure FodMap.

We were talking about LofodMap. This is the opposite of LofodMap. This is pure FodMap. It's actually purified FodMap. That's what it is. All right. It does feed and fuel the gut microbiome. It also is the most gas-producing form of fiber that I've ever come across.

So if you drink on Oli-Pop and you're farting all day long, you probably have a good sign that you have issues with some FodMap foods. carbonated gas also enters into the body. It must be expelled. It either comes out the top. So you're either belching or you're farting. Like those are the two options when it comes to the carbonated gas. And then you add in the fiber and that's going to ferment it.

And yes, it does have an effect on the microbiome, but it's producing a lot of gas and you're farting like crazy. Right. All right. So but the problem with this is that like knowing what I know, this is the cheapest fiber that exists. You can add this amount of fiber for pennies, right? So we add this cheap fiber into this. And then we call it pre-biotic. We sell it as a health drink.

We jack the price up dramatically. If you're going to supplement, don't give me the cheapest fiber that exists. If you're going to supplement, give me something high quality. Like give me something that actually is really good for my body. So that's the way that I feel that. It's like to me this is basically a carbonate drink in my mind. Give me a spin drift plus a good supplement. I do want to say like, olive pop has nailed their flavors.

And I, because I've done some of these. plastic test, these microplastic test. I ran a test with one of my doctors here in L.A. because I thought I had some plastics exposure. It was an antibody test to a lot of the common plastics that were there because I had some elevated antibodies that were in that I was dealing with and I was confused about where they came from. Anyways, all that's for a future episode.

But I have gone out of my way to really not be consuming a lot of drinks that come in a can just because of my own situation. but I got to give props to Olipop for nailing the flavors that are out there. But here's the reason that I found this fascinating. We went down this rabbit hole. We said, okay, for those people who are thinking about GLPs for addressing their 5, 10, 15 pounds of extra weight. And they're maybe not addressing some of the basics.

How would you tier rank an approach? You mentioned ultra-processed foods. And then you kind of got on this trend of, Olipop. Yes. And so your feeling in particular is primarily what, that they shouldn't really be using any liquid form of a soda, even if it's a healthier one, because it's going to come with a lot of calories?

Is that where you were getting with it? No, not necessarily calories. It's more so that these are part of an ultra-processed food diet. Okay, so that's an example of ultra-processed foods. Yes. Right. And I would rather have to kombucha. If I had my choice.

You'd rather have them go to kombucha. Yes. It comes in a glass bottle. no microplastic concerns. It's fermented. And what you do is you take that, like, for example, you buy a 16 ounce bottle. You cut that into thirds.

And you mix that with water and ice. It's still plenty flavorful, right? And then you extend the life of that. That's great. Okay, so step one. Cut out the ultra-processed foods. Even if you don't think you're having ultra-processed foods, if you're having three or four olive pops a day,

you're having ultra-processed foods. So let's bring that down. dramatically, what's next from there? Bring down the ultra-processed foods. I would say number two, we need to address our fiber issue. And the reason why this becomes a massive target for me is because of the mass-scale deficiency that exists. So the average woman in the United States is getting 15 grams of fiber per day.

She should be getting 25 at a minimum, not optimal, at a minimum. The average man is getting 18 grams of fiber per day. He should be getting 38 at a minimum. You and I can have a conversation about nutrition and see the confidence. common grounds that exist between us, even if we're not exactly the same. And to explain my general approach to nutrition is to say that I'm trying to get after the things where I see great opportunities for the average American out there. Now, if you're already consuming a ton of fiber, that would not be my target, right? But acknowledging that 95% of Americans are deficient fiber, let's get after that.

Do you feel that part of that too is if you haven't used some sort of tracking method, even if you don't want to track all your calories, which I know doesn't work for a lot of people, but use some sort of tracking method to even get an audit of how much fiber you're having on a daily basis. Because I've found that when I recommend that to people, because that was recommended to me, not just for fiber, but also to see, well, how much protein are you actually eating? I was pretty astonished to see that I was under eating on protein and I was under eating on fiber during a period of time in my life. I think overall I've had a good amount of fiber that's there and I've corrected a lot of those

things, but I didn't really know how much fiber I was eating until I started tracking. Yeah. Do you recommend that for people? Yeah, I think so. I think that there can be value to those things. And the technology has gotten better. I should mention real quick that as Zoe, we are traditionally known for having a big kit that allows people to do personalized nutrition with our big kit.

But actually, we have a new app that we're going to be releasing, like within the next few weeks that's totally free, helps people to identify the, the, the, quality of ultra-processed foods because we created a risk score for ultra-processed foods where we break them down into because they're not all the same and they're not all bad, right? So let's understand which ones are worse, which ones are better. So we help people to do that and it also provides nutritional guidance for people for free. So you were talking about fiber, auditing your fiber, make sure you're getting enough. The average woman is getting 15.

Let's try to bump that up to 25. At a minimum. At a minimum. Yeah. Again, all towards the goal of, hey, for whatever reasons, people can be motivated for a lot of different reasons, but somebody might want to lose five, 10, 15 pounds, and they want to do it in the most natural, holistic way that's there. You're continuing to go down your tier rank list. Ultra processed food, get rid of them. Fiber, right, start to include more of that. What's next

after? I'm going to go protein. I'm going to go protein because, again, it comes back to I sort of see these as complementary pieces. Like, let's not isolate fiber. It's not just fiber and isolation. It's fiber plus protein leads to greater satiation. So, and I want to combine those two. And I think people, you feel this when you eat a meal that combines an adequate amount of both fiber and protein. You feel that difference. So I would say protein is number three. And within that, are we shooting for any specific numbers, regardless of how people get their protein sources?

But are you trying to, you know, people see a lot of different things that are out there, a gram per, you know, ideal body weight that we're shooting for. what's your feelings on that? Based on the data that I've reviewed, I do think that the 0.8 grams per kilo gram RDA is too low. Like that is like to avoid sarcopenia, right? When we're talking about optimization, we need to go higher. I'm of the belief. I'm not as high as some other people are

where they say basically the equivalent of 2.2 grams per kilo of body weight. I'm more in the range of 1.2 to 1.6. And I think that the amount that you need is in some ways determined by your physical activity. So I'm going to put exercise on our list. It may not be number four, but let's call it number five. All right. So let's make exercise number five. I'm going to put that on our list.

And to me, protein needs to be sufficient to support growth of muscle mass and also recovery. So, and that to me, the 1.2 to 1.6 is the range. that gets that done from my perspective. Fantastic. Okay, great. So you had protein? Yep, that's three. Exercise?

Yep. I have exercise at five, and I'm going to slide in number four, and I'm going to go with time restricted eating. So the thing about time restricted eating is that people, you know, I see these debates. Is there something special about time restricted eating compared to, compared to like calorie control over a certain period of time? Okay. the truth from my perspective is that time-restricted eating gives you a framework

to control the timing of your diet with consistency, which taps into your circadian rhythm, and simultaneously to maintain control over the unhealthy eating that happens on the bookends. So if you are going to create this sort of period of time where let's pretend that it's 10 hours of an eating window, right, 14 hours of fasting, which I think this is like a nice level of time restricted eating. You have a 10-hour eating window. What this helps you to do is to avoid that late-night snack. And that's key.

That late-night snack is where we disrupt our metabolism. So, and the data are clear that if you take real-world people, which is what matters, because that's who's listening to us right now, right? If you take real-world people and you apply time-restricted eating, it does help them to maintain a calorie deficit. which can lead to weight loss. You know, tell me if this is a fair statement for our audience that's listening and kind of connecting these dots together of us talking about gLP, weight loss, and then your approach that you recommend for the person that wants to lose that five, 10, 15 pounds.

Fundamentally, of course, quality of food matters because there's so much inside of a rich diet. You know, you and I were talking a little bit about these blueberries that I sent you last year that are like so plump because they're grown in organic soil compared to even organic blueberries that might be grown in like hydroponically that don't have that access to the soil and the microbes and other stuff. And the craziest thing that I saw is that these blueberries that I had, they didn't go moldy for like weeks at a time. If I buy blueberries from like whole foods, they're like moldy within like a week, right? So there's infinite intelligence and importance of

quality of our diet because there's so many things that we get along with it. So that's, that's known. Our audience knows that. You've talked about that forever. And in addition to that piece that's there is that fundamentally, however we get there, people will lose weight when they consume less energy than what they end up burning. Like if we look at these GLP's, fundamentally people are losing weight, not through magic, but actually because they're eating less calories. Is that your understanding? Yeah, it is. Yeah. It's cutting that. So using this list that you've had there, these are all ways to ultimately get somebody in a way that's doable and supportive for their lifestyle, whether it's cutting ultra-processed

foods out, not all of them are bad, right? Way protein, plant protein. These are considered ultra-processed foods, but there can be better ways to obviously have that, and that just doesn't automatically make them bad, like you said. But the worst offenders, the high-calorie ones, ultra-processed foods are hyper-palatable. Yep. if we're less attached them, our taste buds are not going to get hijacked. We're going to be consuming less calories.

Fiber is going to be satiating for all the different reasons. Protein is going to be satiating. Exercise targets both the mood piece. When you exercise, you actually want to be healthier in your life. You're more likely to stick to healthy habits. And, of course, increases your burn rate that's there. Not that we want to rely on it as a primary vehicle of losing weight, right? it's supportive for so many aspects.

It's also healthy for the microbiome. Oh, it's 100% healthy for the microbiome. And the other thing I want to add real quick is that we're, the, the premise of our conversation was targeting specifically weight loss, right? So that's why I have exercise down at number five. Right. But if we're going to shift this argument to, I want to look good for summer in a swimsuit, exercise moves way up.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Totally. And then, and then of course, what was the last one that you talked about after exercise? Well, we talked about time restricted eating. I'm restricted eating, right, which is another form of calorie control for a lot of people that's more manageable than tracking all their calories. It's a manageable way to achieve a calorie deficit and have control and maintain a circadian form of eating so that you're not eating at 10 o'clock at night, which is when we're creating the most metabolically unhealthy pattern.

So like the timing of when we eat does make a difference. Yeah. And the last thing I want to add before we move out is alcohol. We have to throw alcohol in there, right? which is that is unnecessary calories and also disruptive to our gut microbiome. If people were to drink occasionally, special occasion, special night out with the friends, you know, and fall into that place of, you know, not having more than really a drink every couple of weeks, what is your favorite gut friendly or even, or more importantly, because alcohol is not gut friendly,

what is the least damaging alcohol to the body and the gut microbiome? Yeah, I think the strongest argument is for red wine. So it's interesting. I actually recently have been pushing back against myself a little bit because I used to say, in fact, my first book said this, that why drink red wine when you can get resveratrol, which is the polyphenol that comes from red wine, you can get that by eating grapes or even believe or not eating peanuts. Like there's a lot of other plant-based foods that contain resveratrol.

Okay, here's where my pushback comes in. Fermentation. fermentation. Fermentation leads to transformation of food. The resveratrol that has been fermented is not the same as the resveratrol that has not been fermented. The resveratrol that was fermented is now more bioactive. Your body is going to be able to receive this resveratrol in greater proportions. So now, that doesn't mean that red wine needs to contain alcohol.

So if you were to drink red wine for the purposes of your health, you would de-alcoholize it because it's not the alcohol that provides the benefit, if anything, that's the part that provides the harm. But if you're just like looking to have a drink once in a while, like what you described, I have zero issue with. I have zero issue with the idea of people having occasional, truly occasional. Truly occasional drinks. Where I think that the issues exist is like clearly there's an issue with drinking to the point of a hangover. You are damaging your microbiome when you do that. That is not just dehydration.

You can't just give yourself an IV and feel better. You have damaged your gut microbiome and it takes you a day to feel better. And I think that there's an argument. Let me be totally clear. I don't have perfect data for what I'm about to say. I'm using what I have and interpreting it. But I think there's an argument that the concept of one to two drinks being good for us is actually being challenged right now.

So part of this is that alcohol consumption on any level has been associated with carcinogenesis, cancer risk. Part of this is that alcohol consumption on any level when consumed in the evening is disruptive to your sleep, even one drink. And then the study that changed my mind is they took a look at something called lipopolysaccharide, which comes from the gut. And when the gut barrier is damaged and broken, meaning like people call it leaky gut, that's fine. I also would call it increased intestinal permeability. When the gut barrier is damaged and broken, this lipopolysaccharide gets into the bloodstream. So if you draw blood on a person and you're seeing, oh, man, their LPS is spiking, you know the gut barrier has been harmed.

All right. And in this study, they basically gave people a significant amount of alcohol. It was not one drink, a significant amount of alcohol. But here's what happened. Their blood alcohol level went up in parallel. Their lipopolysaccharide level went up. The lipopolysaccharide did not normalize until the alcohol normalized. So the fact that these things happened in parallel,

the fact that you couldn't get LPS to get out of the bloodstream until the alcohol was also gone, to me provides the suggestion. that we're better off without alcohol in our lives. Yeah, I think a lot of people are waking up to that idea. I know myself, like, I just don't drink anymore. And I'm not afraid of alcohol, truly, if there was something that was a time period where I'm a really big fan of especially like this whole category of these dried farm wines that are out there.

And they tend to be lower alcohol, which some people have a theory that, you know, we've made red wine way more alcohol. to really meet the demand of especially like the consumer base in the United States and the Western world, but that wines previously in the traditional way that they were made tended to be a little bit lower alcohol wines that are there. And obviously, you know, places that are going to be staying away from pesticides, additives, other things that seem to be at least one of the reasons besides maybe potential histamine that people have really bad reaction to wines in general. Yeah. Yeah. So I think separate from those

occasionally, truly occasionally, I think a lot of people are waking up to the idea that I just feel much better on a regular basis without alcohol in my life. Yeah. And if I am going to do it, I know that it's going to be a trade-off of probably impacting some sleep, not feeling great, overeating the next day, or whatever else comes along with it. Yeah. I'll still have a drink once in a while if I'm being social, but like as a dad with four kids, I'm not out doing that very much.

Yeah. But the one thing I would say with caution, though, is that as alcohol, Alcohol use has gone down. Marijuana use has come up. And people want to believe that there's no risk associated with that. That is certainly not true. So a few things. First of all, cognitively, it definitely affects people's brains. We call them potheads back in the 90s, right?

There's actually studies now where they look at the size of the brain on imaging and have shown that the brain shrinks with chronic marijuana use. I don't like the sound of that. Yeah, absolutely. It impacts memory function. There was a big study. We wrote about in our newsletter like it just came out like a month ago or two months ago that showed that exact thing that you were talking about.

Okay. And then in the gastrology world, 10 or 12 years ago, if you ever made the diagnosis that I'm about to share, your peers would look at you like you are a genius. But there has been the emergence in recent years of something called cannabinoid hyper-emesis. syndrome. People may have also heard of this being referred to as cyclic vomiting syndrome. But this is cyclic vomiting syndrome that is driven by chronic marijuana use. We're seeing it a lot in kids.

And if, like, let's pretend in theory that we're in a clinic and some young person comes in, they're 19 years old, and they say to me, I'm having, I'm throwing up every single day. Because that's literally what they will describe it as. I will ask them one question that will help me to know immediately what's going on. Do you like taking hot showers? And they'll go, oh my gosh, yeah, how did you know? I'll take a shower for an hour straight. I feel so much better.

Right. What's happening here is that when a person develops cannabinoids, it's probably related to the cannabinoid receptors that we have in the body. But when a person develops the cannabinoid hyperamysis syndrome, The problem that exists is that they feel better when they smoke. And the nausea gets worse when they stop smoking. And then they can hop in the shower and feel better for whatever reason. It's like the heat allows them to activate those receptors and feel better.

Wow. So it's a word of caution. I've personally had, and I've written about this before, and I've talked about this with Dr. Chris Palmer, who wrote the book Brain Energy and does a lot of work in this space. I've personally had five people in my life. Again, these are young people who already are in the key demographic of a higher risk of schizophrenia, schizophrenia, schizoaffect disorder, bipolar disorder. So already it's, you know, you're predisposed being in a certain demographic in age.

But these people all have the same story. They were like cannabis users. And they went to medium, high medium to heavy cannabis users. a lot of them actually during the pandemic, when a lot of people were in isolation. And it seems that, especially in the United States, they found a product marketplace

that has higher THC content. Most of these individuals out of the five, four were guys, but there is one woman that's a part of this too. And it seems, and I say that it seems because it's actually so hard to get these individuals help, you know,

that they all had a major episode. of either schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or something in that category, right? Yeah. Refuse medical treatment. In two instances, became homeless

and their parents had no idea where they are, couldn't find them. And, you know, there's a very controversial figure who had a lot of, you know, hot takes during the COVID pandemic, but was known primarily for his work and writing in this space, this gentleman named Alex Berenson,

who wrote a book, Parents Tell Your Kids, the truth about weed. And he talked about a lot of the data that was coming out of Europe, showing that there is strong data with this connection, especially for young people who don't often know how to mitigate their exposure, stay away from especially the highest THC content of these different products that are there, that you are having an explosion of individuals that are having schizophrenia as schizoaffective disorder. And it's heartbreaking because I have never seen one of those people personally yet.

I'm sure there's some stories come back after they've had that damage to their brain and body. Yeah. Those associations are clearly there. There's also on a lighter level, there's also paranoia that many people experience through the use of chronic marijuana. So I think that the big thing from my perspective is that if you want to smoke weed once in a while, that I don't have a huge issue with. But when you're turning this into chronic use as a replacement for having a drink

or when you're basically self-medicating because a lot of people are, that's where the issues come up. I want to go back to a topic that you've mentioned a couple of times, and it's a little bit of a controversial topic on our podcast. And I get all sorts of inbound emails from one way or another, any time it's mentioned, and it's the Maha movement. Okay. Right?

And if I would summarize, and I read all the emails, I don't respond to everything because I don't have that much time. Yeah. If I would summarize, you have one group of people, regardless of their voting history in the past, that feel that, hey, RFK coming into office and now becoming secretary under the Trump administration is directionally in the right direction. We're heading, you know, directionly in the right way. And we're asking all these important questions. And we're creating this awareness and this zeitgeist of people that are finally saying, are, you know, health care system is messed up, not that he was the first to say it, but to amplify it on that

level. And we're moving in the right direction. And if you look at the things that he's talked about before, and that can include a whole gamut of things, this idea of banning TV ads from pharmaceuticals and preventing their influence on news and news coverage of pharmaceutical companies, removing already this idea that we're going to generally regard things as safe without the proven evidence that's there that they are safe for the population, putting pressure on big food, putting pressure on big ad, putting pressure on big pharma. And we're just starting down this pathway, wanting to improve infant formula and make it a lot more of a cleaner product that's available to people.

That's all headed in the right direction, even if I have mixed feelings about. Donald Trump, even if I have mixed feelings about, or I have no positive feelings about Donald Trump, I think this is a good move. And are we going to solve every single aspect in health? No, you still have personal responsibility. You still have people of different economic levels. And there's a lot of different reasons why people eat processed foods. There's the overconsumption of calories. But we're heading in the right direction and that conversation is important. So let's say that's one group of individuals. The other group of individuals, that I've probably gotten the most amount of emails from is people that are saying even before the election was finished and even before Secretary Kennedy got into his position at the institutes of health, how dare you align with this group could be because of previous comments about vaccines, autism, or just even the association that somebody like Kennedy, who a lot of people were very supportive of with his environmental work has now made a deal with the devil

and not only will he not be able to get things done, but you all are being gaslit to support something that is actually going to set us back, is going to set public health back. So that's largely, there's a lot of things in between, but that's largely the emails that I've gotten. Yeah. And people have been pretty upset with me

for even mentioning his name, on podcasts that are there. And I want people to feel anything they want to. I'm going to continue to do what I want to do. And I want to hear perspectives from across the aisle. I just had on Paul Hawkin, who had some very strong feelings about the current administration and how even he's known Bobby Kennedy for a long time and is not very sympathetic to what's going on and actually feels that there will not be a lot that will be able to take

place. Give me your views on this layered subject, which has now taken the world of health directly into the world of politics. I've always felt very strongly about keeping my politics separate from my professional life because to me, I'm a medical doctor, we're talking about people's health that should come from a place of sincerity, honesty, and there shouldn't be really any sort of political influence. Yeah, you never ask somebody who they voted for and they come into your office. You help every single person across the board. Yeah, 100%. That's a hundred percent. That means nothing. And also, I would never align my views to try to fit.

Like, to me, the association of what you eat with political ideology is completely absurd. But it definitely has happened. It definitely has happened. So now, with this, though, we're talking about the intersection of politics with the world that I exist in professionally, because this is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. And I have been calling for change. I have been begging for change. All right.

So here's where I'm at. The status quo is killing us. We're clearly getting worse. We're clearly getting worse. So we do need to change. Anytime you make a change, like there's going to be discomfort that people have with any change.

That's human nature. People are like, ooh, that doesn't feel comfortable. Like you'd rather stay in what you know right now to be true even when it's killing you. That's the way that people typically operate. So to make any change is going to make people feel a bit uneasy. When you make a change, when you make a change, you're going to take a risk, there's a chance.

There's a chance that it's the wrong choice. I would really love, love for this to be a smashing success. And I am cheering for him to do that. Because in the same way, that across party lines, I would never cheer against the president of the United States. This is our country. This is the country that my children live in. This is the country that my grandchildren will live in.

Right? I want us to be successful. That's to be. to be like cheering against your own country. So with that, I want Bobby Kennedy to be a massive success. Only time will tell. I can't project what's going to happen. I can tell you this.

I can tell you this with this is, this is me assessing the way of the land as we sit here today and discuss this topic. I would like to believe that there are much bigger issues for us to get after than seed oils. Now, you can take the seed oils out, and I am perfectly happy with that. When you take them out and you replace it with beef tallow, from my perspective, we are rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. Like that is not moving America in a meaningful direction towards better health.

And if he's going to use the energy that he has at the start of a new administration, like the energy is high right now. Dude, get after it. Let's get after the big stuff, right? Let's make a difference. Let's make healthy food more affordable for people. Let's get it into their lives and figure out how to do that. Let's get the bad stuff out of the food system.

So that's where I'm at is I want to see those types of changes. And what I don't want, what I'm fearful of, to be honest with you, Drew, is I'm fearful that we're going to do something like, okay, we got rid of red number three. Do you know how easy it is for the food industry to replace red number three? Super easy. Let's not plant a flag and declare victory. We have done nothing, right? And I'm not saying that's what Bobby Kennedy and his team have done. What I'm saying is that's what I fear is that we do something that's convenient and easy.

for them because their lobbyists get to us. And then the flag gets planted, hey, we were a success. We made a difference. Look at what we did. I want bigger change than that. I want much bigger change than that. But I also think that, like,

we have to target the stuff that's really meaningfully going to make a difference in people's lives. And if he really is going to do that, then honestly, I'm kind of a little bit, like I hope that he's okay because he's putting it on the line to do that.

Because these are powerful forces that he's going to have to push through. Yeah, that's well said. And I think that, you know, very smartly, strategically, you know, being close friends with somebody like Vani Hari who's been talking about Red Number 3, when I look at from the outside and people say, do we really think that this is actually going to make people healthier? And it's like, okay, great, there are the immediate benefits that come. I'll take it. Right? Great.

Yeah. And largely, that group of individuals, let's say, Vani, Bobby Kennedy, Callie, and some of those people that have been very involved in that. I feel like they smartly, because every movement needs a hook, right? Every movement that's out there, historically, there's a hook, there's something to rally people around that can potentially cross the aisle a little bit and get people's attention. And this idea that there are companies in America that are American companies that make one version of a product for another country. Yeah.

version of it here that's cheaper, filled with more dyes, etc. That have cause for concern, major cause for concern. And that the primary consumer of these things are kids. Who doesn't want to protect kids more? I think it was a very smart move. And somebody who's honest, like yourself, can come in and say, great, I can understand why that ended up winning and became the focus and is part of the conversation. And yet we cannot let the conversation end there.

That's a beginning piece to what has to be a profound shift in the way that health is practiced, delivered, and internalized in the United States. You know, first of all, I completely agree, right? My hope is that that's step one on the path to much bigger things. And again, with the seed oils, my thing is just, look, you can take the seed oils out of the ultra-processed food. It's still an ultra-processed food. It's still calorie-rich. Still hyper-palatable. It still may have those emulsifiers in there, right? So, like, to me, there's other issues that exist.

Absolutely. Replace the seed oils with extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil and limit our frying as much as we possibly can. Like, I'm pretty sure you would agree with me on that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, now, the thing I want to remind the listeners, though, is that at the end of the day, we can't expect our government to do everything for us. This is the reason why this podcast and my platform and all of these other things exist so that we can empower people with knowledge so that they can basically become the stewards of their own health.

And I think that that health is like, to me, health and family are true wealth and ask anyone who has lost their health, they would pay anything to have it back. So I think that we all have to start there. Well said. Well, I appreciate it. Even though I know you don't dive into the topic of politics on a regular basis, I appreciate you having this conversation here because these worlds are coming together. Yeah. And it's a part of the fact that health is more mainstream than ever. And if we look at why it is, it's not just for health for health sake. It's actually the fact that people are sicker than ever. Yeah. And even people who feel healthy compared to the general. population, they might not be an obese, they're maybe not even overweight. They feel like there are so many forces that are against them. And I'm not talking about big food or other things. They feel low energy. They feel bloated regularly. They feel off. And they are sort of banging their heads

against the wall and saying, is this really what human existence should be looking like? I feel like there's this interpotential internally to be thriving. And I'm not thriving. And I want answers. And from that standpoint, I love the fact that health is more mainstream than ever. And I feel like, especially with the young generation and how much they're paying attention to the topic of health, because of social media and podcasting and other things, it's going to only continue to get more mainstream. And that's why I'm so hopeful and I'm so bullish on especially the world, but team America as a whole. Like, I believe in the American population to take us in the right direction because we want to make change on a governmental level, great.

But we also have that American spirit of let's get ourselves healthy, let's get our families healthy, and let's create products and services that make it easier for people to do that as well. 100%. Love it. Okay. On that topic, I promised we would come back to something that you hinted at a couple times in the conversation.

And that is something that's so central in getting us health. especially our gut microbiome, which is where this conversation started, and it's the topic of fermented foods, right? What is your governing ideology when it comes to somebody who's saying, I've heard Dr. B talk about fermented foods? I've heard so many people share the studies that are out there about its benefits. I don't have it in my diet at the level that I want to, except for the occasional pickle here and there, maybe. What is your government? philosophy about how to dive into that world and what are the most practical things that you'd want to share with our audience today about how they can get the biggest bang for their buck

for including fermented foods in their diet. I think it starts with having the fermented foods in your refrigerator, like to actually have them in your physical space so that when you open up that refrigerator door, boom, there they are. They're tempting you. Right. And bear in mind that this is not intended to form the core of your diet, I am very happy for you to have this as a side item. So it's like this little accoutrement that you have with your core meal. It's your side piece. That's your side piece, right?

And there's many different forms of fermented foods. Not everyone loves the same flavors and textures. They're all sort of unique and different. So you have to find what works for you. But like things like sauerkraut and kimchi and like those to me, they're both coming from cabbage, they're not the same thing. They complement different types of meals, right? Sometimes I want that heat from the kimchi,

and sometimes I want that crunch and that acidity that cuts, cuts through the other food with the sourcrow. I think fermented vegetables, which include pickles, but like if a person who's listening to this tries fermentation at home, it is so easy to do. And I love, love fermented green beans, fermented radishes. You may not like radishes,

but if you ferment them, you will feel differently. They're amazing. So these are on the table. And then, of course, there's the fermented foods like tempe and miso. Those are going to be, like, not as common to consume,

but it's really good to try them out, expose yourself to them, and see what you think. Don't eat raw tempe. It's a little funky. It's better to cook it, add some spice to it, or like a little bit of soy sauce

to sort of add some flavor to it. And then there's the fermented dairy products. So like for people who are consuming dairy, to me, the healthiest form of dairy that exists, without question, is fermented dairy. And that includes kaffir and yogurt and things like that, Greek yogurt. So, you know, Greek yogurt, we talked about protein. Take a look at the label of Greek yogurt. The amount of protein is quite impressive. One of my favorite hacks.

I'm off a dairy now. It's just, I've tried it in so many ways, but it just continues to not work well for me, even fermented dairy. Yeah. Which I'm really sad about because it tastes amazing. But when I was having Greek yogurt, my favorite hack was a serving of Greek yogurt, which can often be somewhere between 15, you know, grams of protein. Yeah. Sometimes I would do a double serving. I'd add in a scoop of protein powder on top of that.

I'd mix it together and I'd put frozen blueberries on top. And it's literally high protein, gut-friendly meal. And it's so good that if you even put in a few more frozen blueberries inside of it, it's as if you're having the best dessert in the world. And it's not even that sweet. The argument, if I were to push back against dairy products in general, the issues that exist are like there's issues around non-organic dairy, which, where they could be pumped up with hormones.

they may even be pumped up with antibiotics, right? That's the issue with non-organic. And when you get into organic, they're not going to be administering the hormones or the antibiotics, but the cow still produces hormones. Yeah. So that still is being transferred as a part of that product. That's the pushback that exists.

But among animal products, I would put fermented dairy products up towards the top. Like to me, fish, shellfish, eggs, and fermented dairy are up at the top from my perspective. And so, and if you were to take that, that Greek yogurt that you just mentioned, like to me, that can become the vehicle for plant-based diversity, which makes me very happy for people who are trying to accomplish that, where you could put a whole bunch of different berries. Seeds in there, other stuff. Hemp seeds, right? You could put whatever nuts you like.

Like, I really dig walnuts. But whatever nuts, you throw some hemp seeds. You throw some cinnamon on there. That's an extra plant. you get a mix of berries. So yes, blueberries, but raspberries and strawberries and blackberries. Okay, that's four. Like, that to me becomes the vehicle to accomplish this.

That thing that started off as just yogurt could end up with seven or eight different plants easily. Any data on how much fermented foods we need to consume to get the benefits to our gut microbiome? And then what is fermented food doing to our gut microbiome? We don't have clear data on intermediate amounts of fermenting. food intake. So what that means is that, like, let's start by acknowledging that the vast majority of Americans, their fermented food consumption as we sit here right now, is zero. Or if it's any, it's probably yogurt.

And that's it. What we do have is a study out of Stanford University. And the Sondonberg's had people really crank up their fermented food intake. Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot. But it was to prove the point, like, what happens with this intervention? over the course of eight weeks. And what they found is increase in the diversity of the gut microbiome,

reductions of inflammatory measures. Right? So this is what's potentially on the table. What does an intermediate amount accomplish? We don't have total clarity on that. But I also think that there's enough to sit here and say, I think it's worth it, even if it's an intermediate amount. I don't think that it should be, hey, you only should feel good about yourself

if you get up to six servings of fermented food a day. That's really hard to get to, to be honest with you. Absolutely. So let's opt to try to prioritize these foods and take it as far as we can possibly take it. What happens with fermented foods? What are the benefits in terms of the gut microbiome? Okay, zoom out for a quick moment and contemplate this. It's very interesting.

Our gut is an ecosystem in the same way that the Great Barrier Reef or the Amazon rainforest is an ecosystem. And a ferment is also an ecosystem. So it achieves a balance. And it's made up of all these living microorganisms that include bacteria and yeasts. And through that balance, they are actively consuming and transforming components of that food that you have exposed to them to. What they are depends.

Like, are we talking about sauerkra? Are we talking about kombucha? Are we talking about yogurt? There's different things that are being consumed in each of those cases. But basically what they're doing is they're consuming things within that food. and they're changing it, they're transforming it. So the end result is not just about the microbes. That is a part of the story, that you have living microbes.

But it's also the transformation that took place within the food. An example of this is sourdough bread. You kill the microbes when you bake it. And yet, despite this, I would argue that a high-quality sour-dough bread from nice flour is the healthiest bread that exists. It's lower in gluten content. it actually reduces the glyphosate content and enhances the absorption of fiber of protein.

So it increases the vitamins that are there. So we get all of these benefits that come from the transformation that the food undergoes as a result of these microbes. In essence, what they're doing within that jar or whatever it may be within that ecosystem is they are slowly digesting the food in the same way that our body would digest the food, but we're giving them more time to really do it.

it and transform it. So far on the podcast, we've been talking a lot about the top things that people would do to support their gut health and a lot of the evidence that's out there, which you've been championing for the rooftops for years now, and you do such a great job at that. Let's make sure that we touch on this idea of if you had to tier rank again, the things that are the most damaging for the gut microbiome that we know of right now. And the reason I ask this question is that having this incredible network of practitioners that I'm surrounded with that I've made friends with over the years in both traditional medicine, functional medicine, integrated medicine.

One thing uniquely across the board that I hear from people is that the patients that are coming in today with some sort of gut health issues have so many more issues than the patients that they were seeing, let's say 10, 15, 20 years ago. So the people who are sick are way more sicker. It's a lot more people than you would typically think about. And they're just seeing that so many individuals have such bad gut health, which can result in all sorts of symptoms, bloating, constipation on the light end of stuff, all the way up to the onslaught of individuals who have really debilitating IBS,

ulcer of colitis, and everything else in between there. So from your perspective, on a national level, what are the things that people are doing on a daily basis that are the most damaging things to the gut microbiome that is creating this landscape that I just talked about? I think there's been a generational decay that's taking place in the quality of our microbiome.

So I think it's been happening over time. And so forgive me because I'm going to cheat a little bit because my number one would be the absence of dietary fiber. Yeah. So that we talked about. That already, when you don't have dietary fiber, you don't have that protective element that could help even maybe withstands from a lot of these insults that are coming from our environment and other things that are there. That's exactly right. And there was research done. So I just mentioned a moment ago, the fermented food study out of Stanford with the Sonnenberg.

the Sonnenbergs also did a study which was a generational mouse study because you can't do the study in humans it would just, you know, I mean it would take like 70 years to do. So they did a generational mouse study where they deprived the mice of dietary fiber. And what they found was that there was a generational decay that took place in the diversity of species within their gut. Now when they added fiber back, say three or four generations in, when they added fiber back in, there was some saving that was accomplished. Like basically they were able to get back some of what they had lost, but they didn't get all the way back to the baseline of where grandma started.

So I do think that this is like part of the issue is that it's worse for our kids than it was for us. And it's worse for us than it was for our parents. Grandma's eating some more processed food. Mom is eating and obviously dad too, right? It all goes hand in hand. But getting your microbiome, a big part of it is obviously kind. coming from your mom, the family's having less dietary fiber, the next generation's having way more ultra-processed food, less dietary fiber.

That has had a cascading impact, is what you're saying. Yes. And these things, these things, so the choices that you make push out and exclude something else. So, and this is the issue where I would put number two ultra-processed foods. And it's a bit, I'm cheating a little bit, to be totally honest with you, because within this umbrella of ultra-processed foods, the reason why I'm going for this for number two is that I get to like sit down and say, look at all of these different food additives that we do know

are causing harm to our gut microbiome. Like we touched on dietary emulsifiers. We've talked about artificial colorings. We haven't talked about artificial flavors, but we could throw those in there. You know, we touched on glyphosate. We touched on artificial sweeteners that I have concerns about, perhaps not as big as the emulsifiers, but they're there. My concerns are there.

This is just part of the package. And here we are adults, 60% of calories, ultra-processed. Our children, 70% of calories. Because if you put it in the pantry, if it's in the house, that's what they're going to eat. That's what it was designed for, designed to bring them back. So number two is ultra-processed foods. Number three, I'm going to cheat again a little bit. We're going with sugar, all right?

Because, like, to me, this is a part of the ultra-processed problem. But it's also a specific part of the ultra-processed problem, and it needs to be dealt with the added sugar. And, you know, I would go so far as to say because there are people, who say, damn those carbs. And I used to push back against that, Drew, because I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's more complicated than damn those carbs.

Fiber is a carb. But you know what? I'm willing to say here today with you, damn those carbs, because really we're talking about is refined carbs, and that includes sugar, and that also includes refined flowers. Which act like sugar in the body. Which acts like sugar in the body.

And the more that you grind them up and bleach them and remove the whole grain element, right to turn it into white flour, the more that you do this, the more that you're basically turning this in the sugar, and the more that you're also extracting where the value, including the vitamins, the minerals, and the fiber exists. Now, it doesn't mean that it's impossible to enjoy a slice of bread.

Bread's quite delicious. But I would, you know, I argue in favor of sour dough bread, which has a lower glycemic index and has other qualities that I've described that are more healthy. But I also am not arguing that sourdough bread is something that you consume at every meal, which is part of a diet. You have it a couple times a week maybe. Great.

So too much sugar in the diet is feeding the wrong bacteria or maybe even, you know, yeast, fungus, other microbes. And it's also, obviously, besides destroying your metabolic health, you're not getting, what are you missing because you're having too much sugar in the diet? You're not getting all the beneficial things to support the beneficial bacteria. Yeah. And there's some interesting things. Like, for example, at Zoe, we did some research where we, as a part of the Zoe kit, people wear a continuous glucometer for two weeks. And we see what they're eating and how their blood sugar responds and what their blood sugar does like over the course of many hours. Most people, when they think about the glucometer, they're thinking about, okay, what is my spike?

What is my area under the curve? What's happening immediately? And I get that. but actually if you bring attention to a couple of hours later, there's something interesting that happens in people who consume refined carbohydrates, which is that your blood sugar drops, and it drops below the baseline. Now, it's not a plummet,

and it's not enough to make you like overtly hypoglycemic. Hypoglycemic is the word that we use for low blood sugar, and that's where people are like shaky because they took too much insulin. All right, it might not make you that. But it is enough to make you feel fatigued, and it's enough to make you hungry. And it's enough to make you hungry for more refined carbohydrates. Because glucose is the fuel for your brain.

And in that moment when the blood sugar is too low, the interpretation of your brain is, oh gosh, like, am I on short supply here? I'm below my normal amount. I need more sugar to replace that to get this back to normal amounts. So then you go seeking it out and you end up consistent. consuming hundreds of calories extra during that particular day. So it ends up becoming a vicious cycle. Where would you rank or would it be in your top five, top 10,

environmental toxins, pesticides, as being some of those things that have led to the state of people having such effed up guts? Yeah. So you and I have, I feel like, I feel pretty good about the conversation that we had about microplastics and nanoplastics. And I think that that needs to be included along with pesticides because that's like environmental toxic exposure. And I, you know, if I'm not going to include that with ultra-processed foods,

then I would put this right where we are right now, which is probably number four. And you could debate, is that four or is that really three? Should I bump that above sugar? That's a debatable thing. I'm pretty close on those two from my perspective. But I do worry about these things. And, you know, let me just summarize my thoughts on glyphosate. people get big feelings on this topic.

And the thing about glyphosate is this is a water-soluble herbicide. So that means it's intended to destroy all plants. And because it's water-soluble, that means that when it gets into our soil, it doesn't wash out very easily. So it will stick around for a period of time. In fact, I was telling you before we started, I just saw a commercial on TV that the Roundup people were bragging that you can go outside, spray your lawn once, and for four months you won't have to worry about spraying it again.

So basically what they've told you is that when you spray your yard with glyphosate, those chemicals are still hanging around four months later. All right, as your children and as your dog is running around in that yard. My wife and I have the worst yard in the neighborhood. We're never going to win the yard of the month award in Charleston because we have opted to go clean.

But, you know, it's being sprayed on our food. and that includes oats. So when you mentioned oats earlier, actually I'm not a fan of oat milk. Even if it's organic, there's a lot of contamination that's inside of it. A lot of contamination also. It's basically like you're creating a refined carbohydrate

because when you take that oat and you roll it, you are processing it. And then when you chop it up in a blender, you're processing it even more. So you're breaking it down into constituent pieces. So, yeah, so I'm not a huge oat milk fan. But oats, and this also, by the way, includes the wheat barley and rye that contain glitory,

You hear these stories, Drew, about people. I know people also have big feelings about gluten, and that's its own conversation. But you hear these stories about people who are like, I can't eat bread in the United States. But if I go to Italy, I'm fine. Okay. That is not gluten. There's definitely gluten still in that Italian bread. And I get the argument, oh, well, the concentrations of gluten is higher in the United States.

And I don't think that's what it is. I think the argument there is pesticides. That fundamentally the wheat is not being treated the same way, prior to making bread compared to the wheat in the United States that is being sprayed. And by the way, it's not even genetically modified per se in the U.S. It's that an herbicide kills plants. When you harvest wheat, you are able to accelerate your process and get that wheat into the supermarket much faster if you dry it up, which is what this does.

I have serious concerns about glyphosate and really what it boils down to is that, you know, you could say, oh, well, humans are not hurt by the consumption of glyphosate. Okay, but are your microbes hurt? Because it doesn't take much. And the data would strongly suggest that the microbiome is hurt by the presence of glyphosate. The microbes are in fact killed. So important to be aware of these things because I have friends who are like, I want to eat more fiber. I want to do this thing.

I want to do that. And people are very educated in these days. You know, they're customers of Zoe or this company or that company. They're paying attention to their health and they're trying a lot of these targeted things. And I've never heard from more people. Again, it's not the majority of people. It's just that small group that used to be super, super small. Now it's more so that something has happened to them.

Life trauma, pesticides, other stuff, the combination that even having, trying to do the right thing and following a lot of the recommendations that we have here, even starting slow, if they're not really careful, just the tiniest little thing throws their gut microbiome off. Yeah. Right? And I have so much empathy for those individuals that are there, right? And they're not dogmatic. They're not this.

And also, when I first heard many, many years ago about things like keto or carnivore or other things, I sort of maybe kind of wrote it off a little bit. I'm sure somebody can find some clips from this podcast in that way that I didn't understand the motivation beyond maybe ideological sort of components that were there. but I've had some smart people over the years that are quite nuanced who have expanded my mind on that that have said that somebody like a Dr. Nick Norwitz. I don't know if you're familiar with this work that's out there, but he's known for being an individual inside of that keto and cornerwar space.

And I had him on the podcast recently and they were talking about some of their research that's coming out. And he said, listen, I truly believe human beings should be able to eat a lot of different plants. And that's actually going to be good for them. and it's going to be good for their gut microbiome. People have to understand my situation and my story that because of my unique insults, my gut health got so thrown off

that even the tiniest inclusion of certain types of food would put me in a bout of a flare-up with his ulcerative colitis. And so I ended up in this position as an extreme elimination diet because of a combination of things. Yes, am I paying attention to the work on fecal transplants and other stuff?

I'm not ready to do it yet. and I hope that comes in the future, but I do believe that we were meant to be omnivores. I do believe that we were meant to eat high-quality plant foods that are there. Here's the reason why I'm not doing it. It's not a dogmatic thing. It's just the fact that, you know,

I'm a smart guy. I've tried a lot of different stuff. I've tried different products that are out there. And this is the unique situation that I'm in. When you hear somebody say from that perspective, again, taking out the sort of dogmatic piece of carnivore world, you know, do you also have empathy? for that individual? Of course. I'm a medical doctor. I care about that person, right? Like,

what I really care about, and I said this earlier in the show, and I'll bring it back on the table, is I care about results. I want a person better. And I fully respect and acknowledge that if you try something for yourself and it causes you to get worse, and you have not been provided by your medical doctor or through the healthcare system, an explanation for that, like I would totally understand why you would then ultimately say this makes no sense anymore.

I'm hurting myself, right? And I think where I come from is that I don't know the details of this person and truly it's not about this person anyway. Sure. Right? This is more of like a conceptual, right?

But I feel given the opportunity to sit down with someone like this, and really unpack in the way that I would in a clinic. Everything about this person, including their medical history. But going, I'm of the belief, Drew, and you've alluded to this, but I want to bring it into the light here. It's more than just your health and your list of medications and even your diet and whether you exercise. It's more than these things.

There's elements of who we are as humans that aren't easily definable and yet have a massive impact on our health. And so to me, that is the non-conscious mind, the things that exist outside of our conscious mind, and the presence potentially of trauma. So, and I've seen this firsthand many times. And the reason why I want to point this out is that I actually had a patient who I can tell you with clarity that I was trying to do all of my tricks. She had ulcerative clitis. I was trying to do all my tricks. I was trying to do the plant-based thing. She was not getting better.

And ultimately, what changed everything was when we got to a point where we discovered together that, like, her job was horrible. And she would go to work and her boss would demean her not just to her face, but in front of her peers. Wow. And like getting in the car in the morning was enough to get her heart rate to jump up. And so it takes a lot of audacity

to leave a job. And she did. She did it. And when she did, the healing was instant. And because it was never a matter of the plants being the problem, it was a matter of a misdiagnosis. And the problem being something that the conventional health care system

doesn't really acknowledge. which is the reality that we are human and that we have a soul and that soul can be injured through trauma. And that's sometimes the best healing that we can do is actually to heal that part of ourselves that is not physical, but is who we truly are, though. I think that sometimes that's what we really need. Well, as we're winding down here, I have a question that I want to get into to leave our audience with on the topic of the gut-brain connection.

And this idea of trusting your gut, and if any of the things that we've talked about today, actually make it easier for us to trust our gut. So I'm going to get in that question in a second. But first, I'm a huge fan of great communicators. I'm a huge fan of people that also take the entrepreneurial leap and create companies, products, solutions that are out there that make it easier for people to be healthy. And so I want to take a moment to talk about some of the projects that you're up to. So you've mentioned your books.

You are very prolific on social media with your content, your clips, your education, podcasting as well. And obviously you regularly go on other people's podcast. But you have a new venture as well too. I was hoping you might share a little bit about that. I started a company called 38 Terra. And 38 T-E-R-A, this means 38 trillion. That's in reference to the 38 trillion bacteria that we have lived inside of our gut.

And basically the backstory, Drew, is that as a gastroenterologist, it is completely part of our process and has been for a very long time to use supplements with our patients. So that could be pre-botic fiber supplements, it could be probiotics. It's in our guidelines. This is mainstream gastroenterology. And I was doing this with incredible success in my clinic for many different years. So like if you came into see me in the clinic on the very first visit, there was legitimately a 90 or 95% chance that I was going to send you home using a fiber supplement. What was your favorite one that you were typically kind of giving? Well, I had a few different ones and it kind of depended on the context just a little bit.

But in the United States, like there's, you know, you can very easily get access to metamusal. You can very easily get access to Benafiber. And if you are a little bit willing to go and seek it out, you can find the. acacia fiber in the United States. And these are, these are all great options. Sillium husk, would that be in there? Sillium husk is with metabusal. So that's metamusole. And then, and then there's also partially hydroized guargum. So Ph. G is another one. It's not super easy to find, but it's out there and it. Yeah. All right. So I had been doing this for a very long time. I do this with people

who are on a low fiber diet. I do this with people who are on a high fiber diet. I had a ton of people who were vegan who would come to see me with digestive health issues. It still works. Right. So this became like a centerpiece of what I did. And when I wrote my book, fiber-fueled chapter seven was called pre-biotics, probiotics, and post-biotics. It was all about this concept. So after reading this chapter, so many people came out of the woodwork, they're like, Dr. B, what do you recommend? And the problem is that it's one thing for me to be in a clinic one-on-one with people. And it's another thing to now have a platform, which potentially impacts hundreds of thousands of people and simultaneously opens up the opportunity for me to do something that really

makes a difference. And so it was in that moment that I made the decision that I wanted to take what I saw as an inadequate number of options to address gut health issues in terms of supplements and take it up to a whole new level. And really create ultra-premium supplements for gut health. So I started this process in 2021, February of 2021. I launched the company in January of 2024, so about a year ago. The, like, sold so many products in the first 24 hours that I had to call it. close the store.

That's always a good thing. Yeah, and I started doing drops like every month. And like, you know, how many am I going to sell this month? Boom, we're sold out in 45 minutes. All right. So, but our first product is a pre-botic. And the beauty of this product, there's a few things about it that like I spent literally years honing in and crafting.

It is seven unique pre-botic ingredients. So we talk about diversity of plants. So does a monofiber really make sense within the context of diversity of plants? No, I would rather give you seven different unique prebotic ingredients. We talked about how fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols are unique types of prebotics. This product, as far as I know, is the only one that's on the market that gives you all three of those, fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols. Several of the ingredients are ones that are given in a very precise dose because they have human clinical trials to prove that they improve your gut microbiome, improve your bowel movements,

and reduce gut symptoms. All right. So we also made it low FODMAP. This was an important thing from my perspective. We talked about FODMAPs very early in the episode. They're more gentle for the gut. And then the really big thing is, like, for example, Benafiber. This is wheat dextrin.

So this is a wheat derived product. I mean, do we know if it's been sprayed with glyphosate? We really have no clue. Probably. So my thought was, you know what? We're making the supplement that we always wished would exist. let's go to an extreme in terms of our testing. So every single batch, we spend thousands of dollars testing over 120 different things

that ultimately are fed into a report that when you enter the lot number on our website, you can download that report and you will get batch specific information in terms of the, in terms of the allergens, the heavy metals, in terms of food intolerances, like I have to push the labs to do very weird tests that most people are not doing. pesticides, glyphosate. We are certified glyphosate free. And last but not least, we are on the verge of becoming NSF certified, which for people who don't know what that is, I'm sure you know what that is, Drew.

But for most people, they may not know that NSF certified basically means that we are testing it extremely rigorously where if you were a professional athlete and you want to know that you have a clean product. NSF certified is how you accomplish that. So anyway, so we, this is our first product, daily microbiome nutrition. This to me is like I'm building products that are intended to serve a purpose for people's gut health. This product is to improve the health of your gut microbiome. But we have other things in the product line that are going to be coming later this year.

So I think it's just something if you're, if you like what you're hearing, come to the website 38.com. Check out what we have. Read the reviews. They're completely real. And sign up for our newsletter so that you can hear about new products when they come out. Amazing. And just to be clear for everybody, this is a powder, right? is a powder.

And you can add it to your shake. You could add it to your shake. You could add it to your smoothie. You could drink it with just water. It's quite easy. Like literally, you drop it in some water. You swish it and drink it.

Boom, done. Amazing. Well, you were kind enough to give me a package. So I'm going to take it. I'm excited to try it out. And I'll let you know about it. I'll let my listeners know as well. Dr. B, as we wind down here,

going back to my final question to conclude us out, there's this idea that we talk about in our culture of trusting your gut. And we have talked a lot on this podcast in general, not necessarily this episode, about the gut-brain connection. But do you think that the idea of strengthening this ability, that we can increase our intuition,

that we can get better at trusting our gut? Is that possible for people who are listening today? And if it is possible, what things support that? process, whether it's things you mentioned today or whether it's things that we haven't mentioned day. How do we get better at trusting our gut and increasing our intuition? This concept of intuition and trusting your gut is very interesting how things that we provide a label to, like we use terminology, many years ago. And ultimately, here we are and we circle back,

we're like, huh, that seems to be actually true. Our gut actually has 500 million nerves that are constantly feeling and sensing and connected to our brain. And those gut microbes are communicating to our brain through those 500 million nerves. So our brain, our conscious mind, in combination with our gut, and then the third party is our non-conscious mind that we don't have the capability of really understanding what's happening in that space, but it does ultimately feed into those instincts of what you feel in that moment where you want to trust your intuition. To me, these are the three things. It's like a triangle, the conscious mind, the non-conscious mind, and your gut are combining in that moment

to give you an instinct. And the research has suggested that those instincts are on point. More so than, like in many cases, you can overthink a thing. So how do we trust our gut better? I think that part of it, from my perspective, Drew, is also through the gut-brain connection. I want people to be in a place where they feel well, where they love the person that they see in the mirror, where they have great self-esteem and great confidence, right? It's the same thing that I want for my children as I want for everyone else who's out there.

I want it for myself. I was in a place where I didn't have those things. So how do you ultimately accomplish this? You elevate your health throughout your entire body, right? And that includes by or that really starts from my perspective through the gut. And we've talked about a lot of things. You've pushed me to create lists where I had to prioritize. And I think that like, you know, if we were,

we're going to summarize these things. Because truly, if you go, if you go back, and I'm sure you'll timestamp those things, you can go back and you can take those lists and write them down on a piece of paper and put them on your refrigerator and be aware of these things that exist, because these are opportunities for you. These are the levers that you can pull. But if I were to really break this down, let's keep it super simple. I want people to increase the variety of varieties of plants in their diet. You don't have to count the grams of fiber. If you increase the varieties of plants in your diet, you will be giving me what I want. I want you to add fermented food to your diet.

Like those to me are the two big dietary interventions. And as we increase those things, I want you crowding out the ultra-processed foods. Right. So as that UPFs go out, income these new things that are flooding your body with gut healing, anti-inflammatory chemicals that are good for you. And then I like to think about like the physical body and the non-physical body. and how we can be the best versions of ourselves. The physical body, there are the obvious things that we can do without lifting a fork.

Exercise. Sleep. Spending time outdoors. Getting that morning light exposure. Even you could make the argument things like breathing exercises to activate the vagus nerve. But in terms of the non-physical body, I just want to bring attention to this in the very last minute. Please. With absolute total clarity, we have a crisis of will.

loneliness in the United States. People feel more disconnected than they've ever felt before. And it's funny because social media, you would think having a network of thousands of people that you're talking to on there that would somehow make you feel more connected. It doesn't. We come from a position of being tribal. And within a tribe, you didn't have 3,000 people that you were hanging out with. You had a family of families. It started with your own family that you made sure that you were really connected to. and then these other people, you grew to trust one another. True connection means that in that moment, when I am at my lowest, you are there to pick me up.

And that's not easy for you, but you do that for me because you are bonded to me. Right, that's a true connection. Social media, they will let you go as quickly as they can swipe a different direction. Like, that's the way it is, right? So we need to get back, put down the phones, have real conversations with real people,

take a walk, talk to someone, go have dinner, sit down, have a meal, actually talk to them, turn off your phone. The average adult is spending six hours a day on their phone. The average child is spending seven on devices. So we need to be aware of this. And the last thing that I want to say is that we as humans, this is something I've been thinking about a lot. We as humans have a hole in our heart that can only be filled by our higher power. and that we will try to fill that hole with a lot of different things.

You know, the worship of material goods and money. Or, you know, there's so many things that we get ourselves into. Like, we want to be famous. We want to be on the Internet. We want to serve a certain ideology, right? A certain group of people. Okay. The problem is that those things are like sugar for the soul.

They make you feel good for a minute and then you feel worse a couple hours later and you're hungry for more. The thing that truly satiates the soul is actually to open up. And to me, this is not about that one specific ideology, that one specific religion, although I have my own beliefs. This is about the fact that across the globe, if you look at all groups of humanity have ever existed, dominantly, we have all yearned for a relationship with our higher power. And I think it just starts with taking a quiet moment and opening up your heart to that possibility because I think when you find that connection, it's something that can really fuel better health and it may surprise you.

Beautiful. Will, I want to thank you for not just tackling that last question, giving your beautiful thoughts, which were very poetic. I really appreciate it. but for giving our audience so many practical takeaways on today's episode and being willing to go down the rabbit hole of all the things that we explored. I'm a huge fan of you. I'm a huge fan of your work, your style of communication.

I just want to say it's been an absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. The pleasure is all mine. You're doing amazing things. And it's an honor to be here with you and with your audience. So I thank you for that. Hi everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send down an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health.

We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to you. to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.