Digital Social Hour - Making Probiotic Choices : Debunking Diet Myths with Robert Yang | Digital Social Hour #39

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

Hey there! Are you ready for another rollicking ride with your favorite hosts, Sean Kelly and Wayne Lewis, on The Digital Social Hour? This episode is filled to the brim with eye-opening truths, and we're joined by the ever-inquisitive Robert Yang. Settle in for some fascinating stuff! We've all been told that breakfast is the most essential meal of the day. But what if the cereal your parents have been lovingly serving up is the culprit behind your constant sugar crashes? We delve deep into the surprising truths about the food pyramid, and Robert confesses to uphold steak over cereal! How about that? Bad gut health is a bummer. We dig into all things gut-related, from shocking revelations about McDonald's and cereals to discovering the magic in jars of organic sauerkraut. Brace yourselves for intriguing concepts like postbiotics and even a discussion on how everything from your sleep patterns to stress levels can throw your gut health for a loop. Did we mention poop capsules? Yes, you read that right! In a bizarre twist, we tackle a strange phenomenon where transferring fecal matter from a thin person to an overweight one may result in weight loss! We wrap up the episode salivating over Robert's strange ice cream preferences and opening a can of worms on the 80/20 rule for indulgences. Yes, it's okay to reward yourself sometimes! So hit play now, and get ready to have your mind blown. Trust us, you don't want to miss this one! So tune in, get comfy and let's get deep into gut health together! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/digitalsocialhour/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A cereal is probably the worst food you can start to deal with. Your parents have been trying to kill us this whole time. A skinny person take their poop and give it in a capsule basically into a fat person and they actually lose weight. What? Alright, welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up? And our guest today, Robert Yang. Robert. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. We're just going to dive right into it. We are.

All right. Look, the charm's healthier than steak. According to the food pyramid. According to the food pyramid. According to the food pyramid. Well, see, I am of the belief that steak should be part of your diet. Okay. For a lot of people. Obviously, quality does matter.

So I know quite a few people believe, oh, it has to be plant-based or vegetarian on that side. It's interesting we were talking about it because I was just looking into that. And so oftentimes within the literature, they always refer to De Filippo et al. So basically it's a researcher and they talk about how plant-based diets are better for gut health via low fat and then vegetarian that sort of diet and then they compare it to for example the standard american diet right or the another term is western america who actually made that up that lucky charms is actually healthier food the government like what well i mean that's the that's the yeah that we can get into that discussion like hey let's put this out i mean cereal probably i did a post on cereal too, but just to finish that part, they compare sort of apples to oranges in a way.

So they talk about low-fat vegetarian, but then they point to the standard American diet, which there's so many confounding factors. You know, you have sugar, obviously you have processed foods. You know, the meat that they include within the meat category is typically it's bacon it's meats full of preservatives nitrates that sort of thing versus okay is it grass-fed is it organic eggs free range um and

then obviously the fat sources are not very good typically it's uh categorized to be a fat but it's fried fat trans fats so there's a lot of confounding factors where you can't really compare apples to apples right yeah that regards to whether okay this is just the diet for gut health yeah and that's where I think meat can be part of a good diet for your overall gut health so it's not healthier no it is no it is it is healthier. Lucky Charms isn't healthier. Well, not Lucky Charms. I mean, you know, if you look at, I mean, whenever I think about cereal, I did a post and I said, it's probably the worst food you can start to deal with. You call it a junk.

Because I call it junk. Because you're eating something that has been so processed with heat temperature, but also high pressure. So it's technically they call it an extrusion process. So that completely changes the molecular structure of the protein of the wheat or the corn or the rice, whatever the grain was. And so it's nothing that we've seen or exposed our body to in nature in terms of that protein. So not only are you really causing the rollercoaster effect of your blood sugar so our parents have been trying to kill us this whole time well without knowing without knowingly they're lovingly trying to do marketing on the cereals it's

brilliant right but the red boxes lucky charm but creating a character yeah cartoon character i mean we all fell for that yeah yeah yeah it's good Yeah, it's good marketing. McDonald's too. So how can people find out if they have gut health issues and what are some ways to improve your gut health? So I would say standard blood work is one way to do that. So oftentimes a lot of people go for a monthly checkup and they might get a complete blood count. So basically that's looking at white blood cells, red blood cells.

So oftentimes with white blood cells, you can think of them sort of the Pac-Man of your body. So they're there to eat up viruses, bacteria, parasites, whatever that is. And so there's a functional range, it should be between five and 7.5. So if you have a range where it's 8.5, then that usually means that there's some kind of active overgrowth or infection involved, or even below a five, then it could be four or 3.5, which may indicate, okay, you've got some kind of chronic sort of issue that's going on for a long time.

So if it's above or below the range, you know, okay, maybe there's something going on. And so oftentimes in that case, then you would go into maybe stool testing. Or if you just how outright have yeah waterfall poop and you know constipate all the time you may need to go straight into doing a stool i just did a blood test and i had a low white blood cell count every time i do a blood test i have that my mom said it's genetic but is there a way to fix that well uh in terms

of maybe fixing it sometimes they say yes you might be genetically inclined to have a white low white blood cell count isn't that bad it's bad yeah it just means that there something is causing it to be depressed but so whether we know it or not our body is always trying to fix things you know creating a homeostatic balance within the system even within the immune system the digestive system hormonal system so there could be something that could be driving that white blood cell count down. So that's where I say, look, we need to do some extensive blood work. I call it functional blood panel. Let's look at maybe some hidden icebergs that could be causing that to be driven down. Right. And then going back to the question earlier about improving gut health, what are some tips you recommend people?

Yeah, I mean, I would say... I heard sauerkraut. Yeah, I mean, sauerkraut is one way to do that. So that goes along the lines of... What kind of sauerkraut? Because I just sitting on the, you know, in a shelf, not refrigerated, it's probably not the good kind of sauerkraut. Okay. So the refrigerated kind. Yeah. Refrigerated kind. And typically, you know, when we're looking at fermented foods like sauerkraut, it's...

What does sauerkraut actually do? Well, it's technically it's fermented, right? So you're getting bacteria to grow and so it is a whole food probiotic but it's also what we call a prebiotic because that's fiber in there so that feeds your your good gut flora but also there's a concept called post biotic so that's where when you get probiotics into the system and they're fed fiber or a resistant starch you name it then they take that they turn it into a fuel called short chain fatty acids and that in itself is the fuel source for allowing the gut flora to flourish so sauerkraut's one way to do that is really good it can be but for some people that how much of it

do you eat like what what's the amount that you should eat daily i mean i say start small it could be just one spoonful just to see how you react because sometimes for some people they may be sensitive on an empty stomach at night and i would say most likely with food just generally with your food okay yeah but um so nasty i mean it's it's it's it's but it's very acidic too so that kind of helps with the digestive process try kimchi instead but kimchi yeah that's fermented it's like cabbage right it's basically uh you know napa cabbage but with spices in it so if you don't like spicy food you don't handle spicy food then that may not be such a good option. Dr. Justin Marchegiani What about kombucha? Is that good? Dr. Tim Jackson Kombucha is another source of a sort of

whole food probiotic. What I was gonna say is that some people, for example, with SIBO, I'm sure you've heard of that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Because they have the growth of the bacteria in the wrong place in the digestive tract, sometimes sauerkraut, kombuchaucha yogurts can actually exacerbate some of your symptoms so that's when they go oh i tried sauerkraut supposed to be the holy grail and i got bloated and i got gas and i'm farting and that is can be a sign that okay now that's sort of a clinical sign of okay now we need to do some testing to determine okay do you indeed have some kind of overgrowth that could be exacerbated by you know a potentially very healthily healthy

gut food what do you say to people that think the organic stuff is all bs and it's just marketing um i would say there's kind of a partial truth to that in the sense where you have obviously big conglomerates that want to get in that game because there's such a it's a huge market to make money so in that sense some of the organic um the usd organic uh guidelines have sort of been watered down to a certain degree so when you look at organic farming and you look at okay what should it be um it was biodynamic farming where you have rotation of crops you have um cows and chickens and goats and pigs all rotating through and that was truly uh a biodynamic and they can still call it organic well that that is truly the sort of essence of our organic that's what it's

supposed to be what it's supposed to be but oftentimes now they try to water down the the terminology or definition well because it's a trend they can get that sticker on their meat well you could charge more yeah well you can charge more i i would say in terms of like that we talked about meat earlier when it says organic uh beef for example it doesn't mean it's grass-fed beef okay so if it says organic beef it just means that the cows were fed organic corn grain soy got it that sort of thing so you're still going to get a meat product that has probably high omega-6 lower omega-3s higher arachidon acid. So the meat quality is not going to be as good, even though it's technically organic. Interesting. Yeah. Does lack of sleep affect gut health?

That's a big one. I think so. I just have been, I'm working on a gut rest program. And so sleep is part of that solution. Because what they've shown over time is that when you get a person that's sleep deprived, it does directly affect the diversity of the gut microbiome, but also reduces the number of the gut bacteria. So sometimes you see when you really dive in and you take a deep dive into the literature, some will say, oh, well, there wasn't really that much of a change. And another one will say, oh, there was a massive change. And when you look at animal versus human studies, one of the interesting things that I found was that when they were studying the rats, it's kind of, I mean, it's cruel in a way, but they basically sleep depriveddeprived them by putting them on basically a sort of like rotating device so that when they start to fall asleep, they fall in the water. So that's their sort of, I guess, way to sleep-deprive them. Whereas within a human study, they're sleep-depriving, but they're watching a movie or they're playing video games or reading a book.

So it's a very kind of nice environment. So obviously with that particular human study, they don't really show that much change in the gut microbiome. Um, but obviously most people that are in college university, they're an attorney, they're preparing for some, you know, a big, big event, you know, they're highly stressed. they don't sleep that much, they don't eat very well because the other problem with sleep deprivation, it changes your what we call ghrelin and leptin. So that's sort of your yin and yang of how you create satiety. So that's why all the medical or the pharmaceutical companies are trying to find that holy grail of leptin drugs and so forth to help with obesity. But what sleep has been shown to do, or sleep deprivation, it increases your ghrelin levels.

So you get the munchies, basically. Like being sleep-deprived. And then the problem with that is that it's a snowball effect because the munchies are not organic beef and kale and broccoli. It's starchy processed sugar, chips, crackers, Snickers, you name it. Can fasting help with improving gut health? It's a really good question. There is some of the literature coming out that the fasting does change some of the gut microbiome. How much fasting? Like how long?

Yeah. I mean, it's a really good question because typically it's sort of the 16-8, right? So you fast for 16 hours, intermittent fasting, or people are stuck on worse time-restricted eating. The only, I view it as a tool, the whole intermittent fasting. So you have to use a tool properly in the situation given. And so sometimes when I'm working with someone with a gut issue, intermittent fasting is not the way to go because they get moody, they get hangry, they get emotional when they are fasting. And then also what ends up happening is because they don't eat enough calories

during the day, they get the munchies at night, they overeat, they don't eat enough protein. And so that creates a whole another issue of problems right over time so i think a person who has very good eating habits to begin with i think maybe intermittent fasting could be helpful right but you have to be careful it's kind of a fine line people that are struggling to lose weight is that usually due to a gut issue um i would say yes and no um it depends on who the person is right so for example they've they've done some rat studies and human studies where

they actually take um a skinny person take their poop and give it in a capsule basically into a fat person and they actually lose weight what wait yeah or they've done it in rat studies as well whoa take the feces of a skinny person yeah say they put it in a capsule shoot it up or they well basically they put it in micro encapsulations or or sometimes they might actually yes shoot up the butt of the person in that person that's obese or you know overweight starts they end up losing weight wow but now like we're also context right so we're looking at okay someone who's obese uh versus someone who's relatively or not overweight so i say it depends who the person is because obviously someone who's i don't know preparing for a bodybuilding show is that going to really help them no i mean at that

point you're looking at macros and carbs and proteins and, you know, exercise and supplements and those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah. But that's kind of where some of the research is going towards. But I don't think it's ever going to defeat, obviously, good sleep patterns, good eating, hydrating, controlling your stress, because that's obviously a big factor. So stress impacts your gut. Absolutely. Oh, yeah, for sure. Slow it down, right?

Stress can slow down your digestion. Well, it can either slow it down or speed it up. So, for example, they've shown when you have high stress level, you have elevated cortisol, but probably noradrenaline as well. And they've showed that that feeds the gram-negative bacteria in your intestinal tract. So when you get highly stressed, you could potentially basically push that overgrowth

within your intestinal tract. And then we're talking about, obviously, elevation of cortisol. And so typically as the cortisol levels goes up, it's not a bad thing. It's just to help you to get away from the tiger, so to speak. Gotcha. Right? But if you chronically have high cortisol levels, what that's been shown to do is drop what we call secretory IgA. So it's technically, we say it's your first line of defense of your immune system, sort of like the coast guard line, you know, protecting the coast

of California or whatever that is. So if you have high stress all the time, it depresses your SIG-A and then your first line of defense is no longer there. Now you're predisposing yourself to fungal, bacterial, parasitic overgrowth over time. So that's sort of like the indirect path of how high stress, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual can affect your gut health.

Wow, that's crazy. So there's that. It's always a hand where whenever I lecture, I say, look, gut health is like octopus tentacles. An octopus can touch eight different things at once, and the gut can affect your gut brain axis, gut skin axis, gut liver axis, gut kidney axis. So it has its hand in everything.

And it's not to say that it's the end all be all for everything um sometimes even with someone with gut issues i have to address their blood sugar because their blood sugar is all over the place based on their lab work i'm like look we're not going to ever get your gut under control unless we start to stabilize your blood sugar but so sometimes it's like okay we're not even doing stool testing or we're not going to do you know hormone testing we just let's get your blood sugar what what drinks are complete no-no to you like i'm not drinking that because it affects the gut and gusts the gut in this way in this way or i know people are going to hate me but say it it's alcohol baby alcohol alcohol i thought that was liver well so it can be liver right so we have

like a fatty liver people talk about um fatty liver is bad actually right so yeah so that that's bad so you have obvious people know about if you drink too much alcohol you get a fatty liver yeah you can have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease so sometimes you find that with people that just i don't know they drink like two liters of soda every day right yeah if you're just corn syrup too high sugar um but um with alcohol one you create a pseudo-like leaky gut which i'm sure you've heard of it's called what leaky gut leaky good yeah yeah i haven't heard of it yeah so quick explanation if you think about digestion from north to south yeah food goes your mouth esophagus goes in your stomach oops excuse me stomach is a big cement mixer so that mixes everything up acid and then it goes

in your small intestine so that small intestine there's what we call tight junctions so it's sort of like the riot police protecting the target store. And so the Target store is a bloodstream. So that's very, very, very important territory, obviously. So if the riot police gets irritated or they throw a cocktail bomb, boom, blows up. So instead of the tight junctions being very close together, they open up. And that's what we call leaky gut. So there's a researcher. So what happens when the gut is leaky?

So basically what happens, Alessio Fasano, he's a researcher. So what happens when the gut is leaky? So basically what happens, Alessio Fasano, he's a researcher, and figured out what causes leaky gut. And he said, what happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas. That's kind of how what the small intestine should be like. So what happens in the small intestine should stay in the small intestine. So when you have irritation to the intestinal tract that causes leaky gut that goes straight into the bloodstream immune system body goes what the heck that shouldn't be in the bloodstream so now you have alarms bells whistles

red lights blue lights going on go whoa whoa whoa that's it and you're artificially artificially activating the immune system which shouldn't be activated in those situations. But what do you... And leaky gut basically causes them to open up. So what are you... I'm sorry, leaky gut, alcohol, sorry. Are you intoxicating your blood with alcohol or is it the feces? No, well, when you drink alcohol,

it goes in your stomach, it goes in your small intestine, and that irritates the small intestine and opens it up. Gotcha. And then you eat your organic broccoli or beef or chicken and then that potentially go and it makes it worse oh yeah we don't drink so yeah we're good on that one and

then we didn't even talk about the blood sugar effects hormonal effects sleep effects because that that right snowballs into that what about food wise what foods are bad um i would say probably um obviously trans fats are pretty inflammatory so any fried food fried food so fried food in general french fries fried chicken you gotta cut those out i don't know that's why i went to teriyaki madness but y'all said that's not much better well you got the sugar right right but if I order the bowl without teriyaki, am I good? Then it's a much better choice. Okay.

Yeah. So no teriyaki. But it's still got seed oils. Yeah. So the seed, that's why Sean's like, it's still got seed oils. See, he's always going to say something. Dude, that's cooked in there. You got two weeks left.

He's looking out for you. Yeah, no. Sean just like that. That's cool. Yeah. So what were you saying? So, you know, foods that are bad for your gut. So obviously fried food, trans fatty acids are going to be one of them.

Sugar is going to be another one because that's very... So no sugar? If you can, or very seldom sugar. What if it's fruit? Fruit, yeah. Fruit, sugar, sugar. Because sugar is in everything, right? With fruit, sugar, obviously you're having the fiber

content but there's also phytonutrients so what we're finding is that some of the phytonutrients in fruits and vegetables um and they're continuing finding new phytonutrients that are very helpful for the gut microbiome so um you know we're talking about obviously table sugar and things like soda and you know soft drinks yeah yeah how often do you eat sugar do you even touch sugar no i do touch sugar like i'll have it on the weekends okay like what what's your what's your like for me i would say it's ice cream ice cream but i but i stay within a parameter avoiding dairy oh okay so it's gluten free it's all it'll be gluten free dairy free it'll be like coconut oh okay i've tried the avocado one

i haven't tried that one i kind of scared you because i'm like avocado do you like it i like it okay so i'll have to give that one so so you so you do indulge but just a little bit yeah i indulge yeah and that's why i tell people look it doesn't have to be perfect all the time okay you know 80 20 just don't just not all the time just not all yeah i've got you you got to live your life a little bit yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah. Exactly, yeah. That makes sense. Well, man, it's been a pleasure. I could talk to you for hours. Yeah, man, yeah.

I kind of want to keep going. Yeah, I wish we could. Any closing comments where people can find out more about you? Yeah, you can find me, Robert Yang, on Instagram. Also, robertyang.net, the website. So if anybody needs help and they're just struggling with gut health issues,

hormonal balances, I try to help people the best way I can. Amazing. Wayne? You can follow me on Instagram, hormonal balances. I try to help people the best way I can. Amazing. Wayne? You can follow me on Instagram at The Creator. Sean Kelly, Digital Social Hour.

Thanks for tuning in. See you guys next week.