Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 554: Dr. Will Cole

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

Dr. Will Cole, doctor, author, and host of The Art of Being Well, joins the DTFH! You can pre-order Will's new book, Gut Feelings, Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What ou Eat and How You Feel, right now! You can also check out his site, DrWillCole.com to learn more about Will and his practice. Finally, check out The Art of Being Well, available everywhere you listen to your podcasts! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter - Try for FREE at ZipRecruiter.com/Duncan MyBookie - Use code DUNCAN and deposit $50 or more to receive a FREE Instant Cash Bonus! Lumi Labs - Visit MicroDose.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout for 30% Off and FREE Shipping on your first order!

Greetings, friends. It's me, Duncan, your noble podcast host, and this is the Duggar Dressel Family Hour podcast. Most of you probably know I'm a huge fan of Terence McKenna. For those of you who might not be aware of who that is, just check him out. There's probably seven trillion hours of his brilliant lectures on psychedelics, mushrooms, shamanism, and just about everything else on YouTube. He has the most incredible way of articulating the psychedelic experience to the point that sometimes in the past when I was reading his books, I felt like I was high as a kite. So you can probably imagine how excited I am to

discover that Terence McKenna has more than one brother. You all know about Dennis McKenna. He's a genius and hopefully one day will appear on this podcast, but I was completely shocked to discover that Terence McKenna has another brother, Matt McKenna, and many of his lectures are available if you dig around YouTube, but to save you some time, I recorded one of them and I present it to you now. The mushroom speaks to you in the whispering voice of an eternal being, the harmonic buzz of a mycelial larynx made whole by its symbiosis with your synaptic cleft. It whispers in your ear and says let's go to a strip club, let's

order lap dances and delight in the erotic outflow of optical pleasure originating in the exotic dancers. Thong and its luminous spangles jingle jangling against the golden pole. Here the pole is not just a mechanism upon which the exotic dancer acts out the primordial rite of instantiating souls into the material reality via the mechanism of human reproduction, but becomes a serpentine phallus. And as you watch spellbound, the mushroom invites you to order a lap dance to remove the space between you and the other and merge fully with the exotic dancer. And so you surrender to the invitation of

the mushroom. It's all you can do what you were before you consumed those five dried grams of fungal matter and climbed into your mini Cooper and what you are now might as well be the difference between the paleozoic and the Cretaceous era to even contemplate the you that once was married with children would be like some advanced galactic civilization attempting to analyze the motivations of an insect on some distant world. You are now a new thing, a thing with a pocket full of $20 bills and so you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and invite the dancer into your proximity by waving

your money in the air, a kind of nod to the inescapable absurdity of a civilization that prioritizes the collection of rectangular bits of colored paper over experience itself. The mushroom compels you to invite the exotic dancer back to your suite at the hotel you reserved earlier. And when she asks if you have cocaine, the mushroom tells you to tell her that yes, you do have cocaine and that there is nothing wrong with cocaine that in fact cocaine is a sacrament in many cultures used to open up to the physical reality to embrace the purely physiological non-intellectual aspect of

your own humanity. The exotic dancer has a tattoo on her sacrum of a mushroom from Mario Brothers and you are stunned by the impossible synchronicity how even outside of hyperspace even here in the flashing lights of the golden butler gentlemen's club, little cosmic winks from the great mysterious eye of the earth still managed to penetrate the veil. And so you bring her to your hotel room and with the frothing madness of a romantic poet proceed to eat her ass. You indulge yourself in the pastime of the great philosophers who were unafraid of taboo and in that ecstatic exploration you become one with all the

other initiates who dared be led blindfolded into the druidic catacombs where they were offered psychoactive nectar from clay chalices engraved with symbols of the goddess. It is there you are no longer a participant in male dominator culture but a happy servant worshiping the ass of the goddess and the mushroom is there with you watching. It watches you from the closet smoking a sacred cigarette and pleasuring itself. You return home and like every explorer of the forbidden you climb through your window. You wash yourself in the shower and sleep as you never had before dreaming of your next rendezvous with the

great mystery. Amazing lecture, truly life changing and we have an amazing podcast for you today that also could be life changing. I know you've probably heard of Goop and that means you've probably heard of Dr. Will Cole. He's the host of the art of being well podcast which is a great podcast but he's also written a lot of books including one that truly changed my life. He's got a new book coming out that I really hope you will pre-order makes a big difference for these people. It's called gut feelings healing the shame fueled relationship between what you eat and how you feel. It's a book about the

microbiome something that has always freaked me out to imagine that beings living in your digestive system are actually having some kind of weird effect on the things you want to eat and your behaviors and your mood is mind-blowing and we talk a lot about that in this conversation along with a lot of other things. So strap in the first we subscribe to my patreon it's at patreon.com forward slash DTFH you're gonna get commercial free episodes of every podcast along with access to our discord and our vibrant thriving community of beautiful geniuses. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. Also my

dear dear loves won't you come see me do some stand-up. I've got so many dates coming up but the closest one is happening on the 16th. I'm gonna be at Wise Guys Comedy Club in Vegas on Thursday Friday and Saturday after that I'm headed to Kansas City on the 24th to the improv then I'll be at Charlie Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh. That's starting on April 27th. All the dates are at DuncanTrestle.com. Check them out. Get your tickets. Thank God most of my shows have been selling out. I hope you'll come. Alright everybody let's do this. Welcome to the Duncan Trestle family hour podcast Dr. Will Cole.

Dr. Cole welcome to the DTFH. It's so great to see you. How are you today? I'm doing well man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Oh my god are you kidding? I can't wait to talk to you. Now before you go on what's hanging behind you on your wall there? What is that? So my day job is I started one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers. So for the past 13 years I sit in this room for 10 hours a day and I'm gonna if I'm gonna be somewhere 10 hours a day I want it to be as zen as chill as you can. So what's behind me is eucalyptus and then on the side of me is like some cacti and just like trying to bring some

forest bathing inside my office. Dr. Cole tell me something as a doctor who has I'm one of the many people who've benefited from your hard work do you feel a little like it's paradoxical that you are helping people like me while simultaneously being glued to your office? Yeah I do it's it's paradoxical and I've thought and people have told me that online social media before like just knowing when I do it like shouldn't you I you know I take I have healthy boundaries that work for me I go on trips with my family I have very much an introvert so I get to spend the weekends with my family as much as

possible even if I have to travel for work I take one of my kids with me and really use it as sort of family time that's cool so it's I've created sort of my bubble of things that work for me and when you love what you do and it's helping people and I have an amazing team around me it's like family vibes like so much in my life that it seems like a lot and it is a lot in some ways but I have mitigated it as much as I can right now that's all you could do right I mean I this is um you know finally we begin to utilize technology in the way we all knew it could be utilized meaning we don't need to be at these offices

why why do we have to like be like driving fucking up the environment to get to a place to do a thing that we this technology this technology can instantaneously do but then now we're all just stuck at home I mean this is something like that I work from well I work in a back house behind behind my house but yeah I all the time thinking maybe I should just go back to the office because is it good for my kids to see me kind of come in and out of the house that confuses them is it what are your thoughts on that do you the distinction between work and a home that's interesting you said this so I'm

in my clinic right now I so I leave my house to come to work I like the synergy of this the separation of family at home and I like this yeah I like a separation from working home because it's like clear turn on turn off sort of thing you know you know when you love what you do you really fully turn off that's right it's still a little different but it it's like an energetic shift at least and I love the physical synergy with my team here like most of my age my HQ team is here like my corporation team the friend s friend end of the clinic is all here so I love that sort of collaborative in person and

look I know people say the zoom meetings are one thing and like the asana boards and all that stuff the slack channels it's not the same it's not right so it's to me I love because I am on telehealth all day long with patients looking at a screen I like turning the screen off when I'm meeting with my team so for me that sort of break from the screen is like when I get to meet with my team for like patient case reviews and I'm like with my people in a room and not in a screen so I try to break it up as much as I can got it okay here I want to talk to you about your book now I know this isn't your you've written many books but

I gotta tell you I got this book and intuitive fasting and I'll admit I have ADHD I didn't read the whole thing but I read enough I read I read enough and I'll tell you man it peak pandemic way I was over 180 pounds I think 184 pounds bloated just look like shit felt like shit I started fasting I'm down to 163 pounds I never thought I could in my whole life I never I'm sure you deal with this with patients who have more weight on them than they might want to have there's a sense this will never go away this is I know you might have some method or there might be this diet or this method or whatever but my fat as

opposed to other people's fat is committed enthusiastic in love with being attached to my body and it's going nowhere yeah and it seemed like that also I quit drinking simultaneous I mean obviously that's not helping but I now I'm habituated to fasting I don't I like it I don't I just don't eat like I used to eat and but all of a sudden I've noticed on the internet op-eds pieces popping up fasting is not good for you anymore now it'll cause heart disease heart attacks it's you you're dooming yourself by fasting so now I'm in this neurotic place where when I get on the scale and I've lost a

little more weight I'm like oh my god here you are you do you need what are you messing up your life so can you address I don't know if you've noticed this new wave of anti-fasting stuff out there can you address that and let those of us who have managed to discipline ourselves into fasting I don't know whether that stuff's true or not sure and that that sort of maybe anti-fasting conversation was going on whenever like the intermittent fasting bubble like the zeitgeist is really going on a few years ago too but I think there was just so much excitement around it that people didn't hear but people that were in the

space like myself I was reading both sides like all the time and how I think the media and articles would their perspective of a study and I think you know context matters with all of these things and their headlines and the sensationalism isn't always as it's it's sexier than sometimes the data around it right the way that studies are formulated and what actually was like looked at matters and in a lot of the studies if I don't know specifically the ones you're citing to talk about it but I know that the way that I would advocate people to do intermittent fasting is to never fast their way out of a

poor diet and I think that sometimes when you get in a research space they want to see where the benefits coming from comparing them to placebo and if they didn't change anything in their diet what if they just fasted fasting is a hormetic effect on the body it's a hormesis and it may be one of the parts that you read about an intuitive fasting but it's this good stress just like people are talking about high intensity interval training or even re-hit like different types of high intensity training or cold therapy and cold plunges or yeah on a therapy those are all hormetic things so they're not good or bad it's

how you use them and who's using them right how and how much are they using them right always in the sauna that too much sauna wouldn't be good for you you die too much cold plunged would be good for you because you die too much high intensity interval training isn't good for you so same with fasting and the ketogenic diet would say too too much stress on your body isn't a good thing yeah I could see that for some subgroups of people putting too much stress could probably impact heart health if you're like eating doing omad and like eating best but next to nothing for years on end that's not advantageous more isn't

always better so I think that it's good that science and the culture are exploring these things but that's why I called that book intuitive fasting yeah so you can find out what works for your body instead of like these sort of blanket statements well this and this is yeah this is that it's not like I'm not eating anymore and I get but I could see how someone could with an eating disorder could rationalize the eating disorder by thinking that they're doing something healthy when they're not getting enough calories and starving themselves I eat I mean this is what I love about that your book is it's sort of

encouraging you as the individual listen to your body you know because whenever when I was overeating I wasn't listening to my body my body was like what are you doing my body was like an Amazon employee like are you kidding me really like another chorizo are you really doing huevos rancheros we had them for breakfast you didn't have that for breakfast and lunch so chorizo's are your thing that was your thing no my my thing was just dumping food into my body out of habit out of you know I don't know why and and and then it just changed and now and just like you say in your book like it it just my body like reharmonized with and and and now I don't have those weird like

spikes of hunger yeah and hagginess cravings yeah it's metabolic flexibility that's what you built for yourself so you can eat and fast intuitively that's it's a beautiful thing now on to the next one and this ties into your new book have you been watching the last of us at all no should I be oh yeah it's so good it's so good I've been I tell you I don't get out very much I don't like I'm in this room too much Dr. Cole it's just a beautiful incredibly scary awesome series but the uh the the apocalypse in this case is it zombies it's a fungal disease it's spread through the world it's gotten into people's brains it's controlling them I've always been creeped out by the idea that there are colonies of things in my intestines that are sending

signals through my body that I'm confusing as my own compulsions when in fact it's something inside of me you know this is being like another gummy bear more sugar come on another beer let's go can you is my assessment of an accurate or did if I just sort of overblown what's going on in the relationship between the human mind and the gut it's you hit it right on the nail on the head but it's it sounds science fiction it does it sounds creepy like what it's this thing going on but we co-evolved with it and in some ways you think about it we exist because of it we it it in many ways I think created us and it's these trillions of bacteria it's upwards depending on the study that you look at it's a hundred trillion bacteria that live in our gut and on our

skin and cross talk with each other and then cross talk with us meaning the physical self us so if you put that in perspective a hundred trillion bacteria we have 10 trillion human cells so we are 10 times more bacteria than human yes you never had to tell me that oh my god that's another thing to wake up in the middle of thinking about thanks dr. Cole what I know crazy man but you know what I think of you know in the 90s there was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and there was that I think his name was Crang where the the villain had the brain inside the robot that's what I think of when I think of the microbiome it's this thing inside of us that if that left us we would be just a meat a meat machine that just fell over because we need the microbiome

to make neurotransmitters we need microbiome to regulate hormones we need the microbiome to actually make our immune system I mean 95 percent of serotonin is made in the gut and stored in the gut 50 percent of dopamine is made in the gut stored in the gut so we lost 95 percent of our serotonin and dopamine 75 percent of our immune system is made in the gut so these things actually influence everything for their own survival because you said like the cravings there's studies that show that depending on the colonies you have in your bacteria it will influence what you crave like the you said I don't even know why I was going for the trees I don't even know why I was going for these things well the bacterial overgrowth the dysbiosis I quantify on

my patient's labs are associated in scientific literature to these insatiable cravings it's not the fact that you are weak or you had poor will yeah weak willpower and you just were a horrible human being because you had to crave that junk food that's what happens with the microbiome and it's this vicious cycle then because you want it's causing you to eat more of what these opportunistic apathogenic bacteria or think of them as like weeds overgrowing in his gut garden that want these things that don't love the human body back hey nothing I love more than taking a stroll through an English gut garden that's so brilliant oh look at your beautiful microbiome let's throw sugar on it the uh okay so um you now when you are doing panels on your

patients you're saying that you can take somehow you what are you through blood what what is the what is your measuring book stool test uh so we have people basically poop and what looks like a fried dish but you're not putting fries in this thing you're just you're putting a bowel movement in and we send it to the lab the patients are in themselves so if you have a partner you can like make it a thing like a bonding experience now um yeah you wait wait hold on honey can you help me poop in the friedish so you can yeah you can collect it and then send it out male classic valentine's day yeah classic valentine's day okay so you poop in a friedish and you send it out and then from that you you can tell what's going on and that's not just stool test I mean you're talking about

gut health specifically but blood does tell us a lot so between stool and blood when you're talking about gut health that's going to give you a lot of different biomarkers different data points to look at the metabolites that are produced from certain bacteria measuring any of those weeds that I was talking about the opportunistic pathogenic bacteria that influence things like cravings and influence things like mood issues I mean things like anxiety and depression and brain fog and fatigue oftentimes have their roots and what's going on in the gut so it's not just about digestive issues it's also brain health issues and inflammatory problems like autoimmune problems and 75 of the immune systems in the gut and the fact that many of our hormones are converted in the

gut too for example 20 of the thyroid hormone is converted in the gut so a lot of people sluggish thyroid hormones it's really a gut health problem that's causing it if you do scroll like I do you might think that the economy is collapsing like some kind of neutron star sinking in on itself and sucking itself into a tiny horrific yet incredibly powerful black all devouring swirling vortex of death but actually that's not the case several industries are heading for a hiring boom this spring including e-commerce healthcare and even hospitality it's in fact one of the areas with the most growth so if you need to hire qualified candidates ASAP for any of these industries or any other industry you need zip recruiter and right now

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pills right they're not that's not you're not gonna brand them bacteria pills but they're bacteria pills and so some of them will be like these are for women these are for men and I've always thought come on really like you're like there's some of these work better for middle women is that nonsense or is that true it's most that's mostly branding in my opinion it's marketing it's it's it's trying to I think communicate to the consumer and what they will do isn't like this deceptive what they will do is probably I don't know about the specific brands but what I have seen done sometimes that they will put some different colonies that have been researched to be bent the study was more done in women so they will say okay this is beneficial in the

studies for women so we're gonna then sell it to women or what they will do is get something that's that's not a probiotic that is complementary to women like an herb or some sort of mineral that women are deficient in or the herbs been shown to support for women so they're sort of getting sort of a women complex in that area but you're right it's the wild west when it comes to probiotics there's just so much out there not all is worth the money and the it's you know I think food is first that's where my mind goes to and like food to eat actually influence the microbiome probiotics and postbiotics and prebiotics all have their place but to me they're secondary to food okay so what so what are the foods please don't say kombucha what are the what what what what what

what are you right I don't like it man I get creeped out by the youtube videos where the hippie is like look at my colony oh god forbid someone offers you homegrown kombucha you're like no I'll pass thank you I don't want your mucoid jar so but what what do you what do you recommend when people you know what I was that guy about 10 years ago I was that guy but I was I was like my friends you want this scoby you want this scoby it's like he's a doctor you're a doctor you're a doctor I'm talking about like a music festival somebody like dirty feet hey man they're probably right you're making me think they were right but tell me what do you recommend they need to everybody else needs to google the picture of a scoby and what you're

talking about it's pretty trippy looking but the it's this gelatinous symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast is what it is so kombucha look fermented foods like that can be a tool if you're talking about probiotic rich foods uh kombucha kefir or kefers you can do water coconut regular dairy like grass-fed organic dairy kefirs um yogurts cheeses uh all the probiotic foods have their place but also prebiotic things that's just gonna be foods with fiber in them basically fruits and vegetables mostly and and and beans if they you tolerate them some gluten-free grains if you tolerate them but mostly fruits and vegetables provide fiber which is food for the microbiome they eat what we eat and they will then ferment those fibers and make what are called short

chain fatty acids which are basically needed for the human immune system and needed for our brain and and and everything in our body so um the more diverse the beneficial microbiome is the it's associated in the research to be more beneficial to us so the more diverse we can eat as far as plant foods like fruits and vegetables are a good idea and um certainly the probiotic foods have their place too and then you can supplement with prebiotics probiotics and postbiotics too like post a postbiotic would be something like supplementing with butyrate which your gut makes but you can give your body extra of it to get some added gut supportive benefits and there's one called urolithin A that is kind of newly researched it's another postbiotic but those are some foods

to focus on okay so describe to me what happens when you have an overgrown untended gut garden and you start introducing probiotic prebiotic foods into your system what's going on down there what's what change is happening yeah and this is something i've really mentioned in the newest book it's one something i'm really exploring in my new book called gut feelings because it's a conversation that i'm always having with my patients this sort of bi-directional relationship between mental health and physical health and you know in the west we like to separate mental health from physical health but the reality is mental health is physical health our brains are part of our body and when you're bringing in any food changes you can notice a lot of ship especially

of probiotic rich foods like kombucha or sauerkraut or kimchi these fermented vegetables if you're having too much of it it's not a good idea because it's gonna really shift your microbiome too fast you can feel like crap really easily i've noticed that i've noticed that exact thing like i get manic i'm like i'm going to take a bunch of probiotics what's the recommended dose there's no more we're gonna we're gonna bomb this gut garden with this stuff and i'm gonna feel better right away and then yeah i've noticed that i get it makes you feel weird oh yeah it's too much and it's higher some of those fermented foods are higher in histamines too so histamines are a normal part of the immune system but too much histamines your brain is actually rich with these histamine

receptor sites so it can impact the way that acetylcholine and serotonin and dopamine are because of this crosstalk between your gut bugs and your brain so there it more isn't always better there there should be done judiciously to tolerance and a little goes a long way i guess is a good way of putting it okay all right i get it so but but okay so are these new the new colonies you're introducing are they taking over or is it a symbiosis are they attacking like what what is happening they pro all probiotics meaning all beneficial bacteria act as in in in a way they act as antibiotics meaning they do regulate things so even that it is in a in a way be you everybody has their own microbiome in a way it's it's kind of an experiment your own end of one experiment by

having these foods especially in higher levels because everybody's microbiome is going to respond differently because everybody has different levels of different microbes of 100 trillion bacteria if you're bringing in a new thing look there's so much research around these probiotic foods and beyond research there's humans have had them for so long that they are generally well they're well tolerated and they're a healthy way to support bacterial bacterial diversity but you know that's why i would say be judicious with it because you're you're shifting you're modulating your microbiome and there's going to be a shift and you can have what's what we would generally refer to as herxheimer responses or die-off symptoms because

there may be some opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria that going to release these life of polysaccharides these bacterial toxins when you are killing them off by bringing in more good guys so it's not necessarily a bad thing but i don't want you to feel horrible from eating some kimchi or sauerkraut so it's just about being smart with it so just slow and easy just a nice yeah slow and slow low and slow okay so i don't mean to i mean you're a doctor so everyone listening i'm sorry it's gross but i've been fascinated by ever since it like became popular ish fecal implants i don't know if you ever saw the south park where they were like they were trying to steal i can't remember some famous football quarterbacks

shit because everybody wanted to give get there you know do is give themselves a fecal implant is this non is this really work like if you take another person's shit and put it inside side of you you you the stories are insane like suddenly people start craving different foods people want to eat more fruit people so tell me about the the data on this this is nonsense well it is a nonsense but it's not a magic cure all either so it's actually i did i talked about fecal transplants in gut feelings because it is fascinating compelling science around this again crosstalk between you take somebody that has a one microbiome and you give them someone else's it can influence so much things the way that brain the brain functions mood changes and the immune to the

reason why people are doing it mainly and the people that are the the the current candidates of how it's being applied are people with very um well c diff like treatment resistant c diff c diff acille um that are having horrible gastritis digestive issues and certain auto immune issues are being explored too and they basically have for lack of better word like a very dis decimated dysregulated unhealthy microbiome and those people have tried everything and they are good the doctors have determined they were good candidates for fecal transplants um and i think the tactical term is fecal microbiota therapy fmt i think is what they call it um but we typically use the term fecal transplants so that's empty sounds so much better yes instead

of a poop poop transplant yeah people like d i'm sure i don't know if you saw this but like on youtube i don't know if they've taken the videos down or not but like years back they people would do their d i y like poop in a blender and enema full on so that's not how i would advocate to do it but there's certain many hospitals i shouldn't say many there are several hospitals and mainstream medical institutions that do this for patients that are good candidates for it nfl season has come to an end but in my bookie the opportunities to win don't stop now look am i a big fan of sports no i'm not but many of my friends are growing up everyone i knew was into sports and i wish that i could have glued myself to sports but back then

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they do it yeah that's what it is it's a fecal enema is typically how it's done I know there's certain bioengineering companies that are like tech companies that are looking and I don't know where they're at in the development of it but just like trying to get it in a pill form that would be in a capsule that's done that way but the way that it has been done in the research world and in certain clinical trials is it an enema type protocol and it's not that the caveats are it doesn't work for everybody it can cause I've seen I've heard horrible flare-ups in the negative because it's kind of it is uncertain of how you're going to respond just like a medication certain people can have side effects from it this is going to modulate your microbiome in a way that

you don't always know so that's why doing it properly with a doctor is a good idea because you know what type of microbiome you're getting you're vetting and looking at the specific colonies of them and you're getting it done appropriately and I've had some patients that have had to do it and we coordinate with with every all the variables and make sure they're doing it right and it can be a game changer for people that have tried everything but it takes multiple sessions it's not just one and done like get a poop transplant and you're like a new person it can be a game changer for some people but that's rare normally it takes a series of months and even over the course of a year plus to really start to modulate their immune system in a positive way well that's

disappointing I always thought if I blasted a healthy person shit up my ass I'd feel better almost instantly so the question is who would you pick if you had to pick whose microbiome would you go to my tinder propha it's right there I'm just I'm kidding I'm married but I don't know you know if I this is the kind of thing where if I was like the most disgusting mad scientist on earth I would be really interested in doing not just athletes but musicians writers artists I mean that your book the work you're doing it just forces everyone to ask the question who am I how much of what I am or what I think I am is within my control and how much of it is the bacteria inside of me and you know but the it's I think it's so unseemly uh that that you know

it's it's not sad it's maybe the least I mean well to each their own but to me maybe the least sexy thing to like blast someone else's poop inside of you but the but you know the the implication behind it is bizarre it's you know you hear these stories people get heart transplants and their personality changes people you know this the connection that you were talking about earlier between one's emotional mental state and what's going on in their body it's something that I think maybe people don't want to it to really contemplate because there's an implicit sort of like who you think you are it's not quite as solid permanent and and real as you might be imagining it's might just be a reflection of this wild harmony going on inside your body

well especially I think around mental health issues right especially when you're talking about things like anxiety and depression it can be very and usually we're triggering it could be very controversial to say well this may not be just a quote unquote chemical imbalance which has flimsy science at best anyways could it be something going on in your gut could it be inflammation that's that's driving your anxiety and depression it's not as accepted yet in our culture and can be offensive for someone that just thinks that's just the way that I am I I just have anxiety I just have depression right why do you have this and I think that this this these are the things that researchers are exploring and what I really I just was such a passion project to

write got feelings because it's people don't have to settle for feeling lousy there's so much agency that we wield over our health if we start tending to this garden in the way that I think I've seen really work for our patients are do you are you getting pushed back like I imagine you I mean there's so much money behind SSRI's and there's so much money being made from these things even though I you know recently it was like all of a sudden it's like they don't really work like it appear and I've I've I've friends who are psychiatrists they're like yeah it's like we're finding out that like it's all that what we thought was efficient in treating depression is maybe not doing anything or barely anything or maybe actually worsening the condition by this

constant like mitigation of dosage and the type of medication are you getting pushed back do you do you get slammed or attacked or do you find yourself yeah maybe I mean I don't pay much attention to it because again I'm always with patients I'm not really listening to it but I I would assume that this people and like those of us in functional medicine I mean the Cleveland Clinic has a functional medicine center center so there's the by no means fringe it's like so we are like hopefully more and more permeated within the mainstream but yeah I think we're pushing the envelope and people that tend to go through the weeds first get scraped sometimes and I'm okay with that but the reality is it's not an either or thing I mean antidepressants work for some people

and if they're a tool within your toolbox that work for you then great yeah I just think there's there are many people that it just doesn't work for them what are they supposed to do so that's what I'm talking to the people that are doing everything their doctor's telling them to do and they're like dang I still feel like crap like I'm still depressed I'm still anxious what do I do well these other pieces of the puzzle may be the reason why and oftentimes they are and that's interesting that you know some researchers are looking at antidepressants maybe the way they do help some people is that they may act as a mild anti-inflammatory that it's really the mild anti-inflammatory benefit that you can get but yeah so they don't they have

merit but there's just more in my opinion more effective ways to lower inflammation without the potential side effects that some of these medications have and look if you even if you look at the power of placebo I think there there are other studies that are saying well yeah they work marginally they're basically the same as placebo in most cases there's nothing wrong with that I mean that's the mind over matter right there's something good about someone believing something will work and it's shifting placebo shifting physiology I mean just like there's the no-cebo effect like people that believe the worst about things it can like kill them it's pretty crazy too so it's they have their place I'm not shaming anybody who chooses to

go on them oh me either you freaking king it's in my arsenal of potential things I'll take if I get when I get depressed I yeah I hate medication shamers I say let's use all the weapons out there to try to feel better just be honest about what's working and what's not so for my friends out there on medication well you know me I love drugs so okay so so okay now this forgive me I'm sure by now you've ascertained I'm not a doctor I realized that I don't really understand what inflammation is like I've got all kinds of teas and uh supplements that claim to reduce inflammation and I happily take them but I realized what what is inflammation like I I always have thought of it is it like you're swelling up

or something what can you tell me what inflammation actually is sure it's an acute inflammation can look like swelling up right if you someone like twists their ankle it swells up or like hurts their knee it can swell up that's acute inflammation and that is during an injury and there can be swelling around that that injury that acute injury and because of that inflammation is not inherently bad it's it's a part of the immune system it's it's it's needed like human beings will not be there if we didn't have healthy measured inflammation levels to fight out viruses to fight off bacteria it's a healthy inflammatory response and as I said earlier 75 of that response originates in the gut so um the the problem is when inflammation becomes chronic it's that sort of that forest fire that

that is burning in perpetuity that's the issue and it's homeostasis it's like a lack of balance in the body and that's inflammation too high for too long and that chronic inflammation is associated with just about every health problem under the sun I mean autoimmune issues type 2 diabetes heart disease cancer to um brain health issues I mean anxiety depression brain fog fatigue it's called in the research the cytokine model of cognitive function cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells so it's researchers looking at how inflammation impact how our brain works so even this again when I said earlier like relegating mental health is sort of this abstract thing it's quite physiological because our brain is a part of our body just like anything else and the brain has its own

immune system the old research used to think that the brain because of the blood brain barrier that nothing could get into the brain and the brain was what they would call immune privileged that like didn't have its own immune system but now we know it's not immune privileged it has what's called the micro glial cells which has it can trigger an inflammatory or neuro inflammatory response that things like anxiety and depression and brain fog and fatigue are implicated with so inflammation is an immune response and it matters to a lot of people and most people don't even know it and in with our patients we measure inflammation and work to get it down but then part of bringing it down is to ask what's causing the inflammation because inflammation is the

commonality well what's causing the chronic inflammation in the first place so that's what I really get to exploring gut feelings like there's the gut and the feeling stuff there's the physiological and the psychological both matter like the physical stuff like we keep talking like we talked about like the underlying gut problems and the chronic infections like we see a lot of mold toxicity and different like chronic Lyme disease those things will impact things like anxiety and depression for many people but then the feeling stuff also will impact inflammation and I think that gets overlooked of things like chronic stress and trauma and and intergenerational trauma even will impact will raise inflammation just as much as that chorizo or cupcake what we're talking about

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will raise inflammation just as much as that chorizo or cupcake what I'm talking about yeah especially if the if the person giving you the treat oh so it's also beating beating you in the streets yeah even worse even now that's a dumb joke I'm sorry okay so uh what are the markers for inflammation like I've always thought it was this kind of like ambiguous thing I didn't even realize you could quantify it in a human so you could take someone's blood and say you're inflamed like you have crime oh yeah for sure yeah yeah that's that's that's my day job that's like Monday through Friday no way yeah it's at least your conventional tests I'll tell you about all the conventional stuff you don't even need a functional medicine doctor like yeah we can run it for you

but if you even go to your pcp and ask him for these tests they can run these so high sensitivity reactive protein hscrp the american heart association the cdc uses this as a what they call a relative risk factor for heart attack and strokes that's why they're typically running but if you look at on pub med and like the nih is like studies there is so much research of hscrp c reactive protein being implicated in many different issues even things like anxiety and depression and the things that I talk about in gut feelings the and autoimmune issues I see a lot too so we want it and so does the a american heart association so does the cdc we want it to be under one hscrp and it's a simple blood draw it's a very inexpensive test for most people or insurance

covers it for most people um homocysteine is another very conventional test we want homocysteine in functional medicine we want homocysteine to be optimal under seven the conventional range is going to be a little bit higher than that and I guess that's a bigger conversation of where we even get those reference ranges but right we're looking at optimal they're looking at average in in conventional medicine so we want it to be in the healthier zone under seven but above seven's been shown to act as a neurotoxin it can act as a basically this low-grade source of inflammation on the brain and it's associated with what they call it's another like creepy term but they call it leaky brain syndrome but things are passing through the blood brain barrier that shouldn't

be able to pass through the blood brain barrier that is associated with neuro inflammation and then the conventional doctors are typically running homocysteine to um look at heart attack and stroke risk too so um those are just two conventional tests that pretty much anybody can get if they have access to a doctor if you spend any amount of time like contemplating cultural implications of inflammation you know like this sort of as above so below like if you know or like we're all like socioeconomic impacts on what foods we consume you know and then if this the foods we're consuming are causing inflammation the inflammation is causing mood shifts the mood shifts are causing behavior patterns have you ever considered like the the big picture of because that is where we

enter into zombie invasion land you know it's not clearly i'm not i'm we're not zombies but it's if we are mostly bacteria and our foods are changing our mood then that means that the the impact of like a fucked up economy inflation all of these things it's more than just people not being able to buy eggs or milk or the things they want it would show up in the form of unrest it would show up in the form of uh crime right if you if is there any research on this sort of holistic impact of shit diets on like society as a whole there has been as far as behaviors for sure i mean people that start for example there's been studies to show that when populations that are maybe higher crime or abusive situations when they eat a more whole food diet for example

anger things like anger and quantifications of anger and violence go down wow many studies that look like similarly to things like meditation sort of these mental emotional spiritual things because they lower inflammation the way that meditation and breath work and things work is because they are putting the body more into a parasympathetic state which is the resting digesting hormone balance state it's the anti-inflammatory state because cortisol what's cortisol cortisol is an endogenous immunosuppressant so it's a natural anti-inflammatory so in states of stress cortisol is coming up and in part not just to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure and like get you out of there that situation you know from an ancestral perspective but it's also

attenuating calming inflammation levels so oftentimes on patients when they are super stressed or like irritated we measure inflammation and cortisol cortisol is really high inflammation is really high because cortisol is trying to calm that inflammation levels so I think about the philosophical stuff all the freaking time because I think about the cascade societally of what's going on like if everybody's feeling anxious and exhausted and wired and tired is how they explain it to me and there and I look at the labs you're going to have increased rate of things like anxiety and depression brain fog fatigue people make decisions that aren't in their best interest and they make they make decisions that are in the best interest of society as a whole

so it's a massive problem but I even think like the as above so below actually that's funny that you said that in gut feelings I use that phrase that's the first chapter I don't know if you know this but like that's the first that's the first chapter of the book is as above so below because I'm thinking of the sort of this planetary problem you think of environmentally of climate change what's going on the sort of dysregulation of the planet there's physiological climate change in the form of chronic inflammation that's happening in every human being because we're intimately connected to nature but then going back to the microbiome our gut microbiome is intimately connected to our planetary soil microbiome which is also disrupted and it's this big reckoning

that's happening right now in the form of dysregulation on a physical level a planetary level and socioeconomic level and a geopolitical level too it's really bizarre because you you could sort of you know I don't mean you are I get to say stuff I know you're a doctor I don't know how much you can like say talk about woo stuff or even want to but you know one one very creepy aspect of being alive today is like you can look at a bunch of different sort of eschatological predictions book of revelations some indigenous cultures and all the things they predict that would happen at the collapse of society and you know it would seem magical if you didn't know like what you're talking about but you could almost like just based on

population growth technological acceleration resulting in disruptions and you know biomes across the planet you could just knowing what you're talking about you could almost set up a timeline just based on inflammation rates like it's so weird to like if this is first we must you know you have many others have this is impacting our emotions our emotions impact our actions our actions the sum total of all human action is culture civilization so you could use existing blood panels right now as some kind of bizarre metric set those like up against like social unrest and all the crazy stuff that's been happening in the world and you you might be able to show this is why it's happening it's not happening because of anything other than

bad diets the diets are being are bad because it we want instant access to food that's missing the stuff we need it's really wild man as above so below it's very it's really quite trippy because the coverse of that would be if we could figure out a way to get people to reduce inflammation on a global scale it's the age of Aquarius baby have you ever thought about that you ever play around with that idea no 100% and I you know even if you think about it like even on a global level like what came first the chicken and the egg like it's it is this vicious cycle because in many ways like the things were marketed to the foods that people were fed the things were we're told to have and the the amount of sort of mind numbing FOMO inducing content people are sort of like

trained to like go for these foods that don't love them back and make them it's highly addictive it's it's selling and at all the while they're really depleting and messing up the soil microbiome and messing up the environment and all of that stuff but then once that happens it sort of feeds this beast of this sort of let's say pathogenic bacteria this pathogenic microbiome that yeah causes the whole problem I would love to look at that I mean we need to do that you and I need to do this research together and just like collect like millions of people's poop and just like ask for some like high high corporate guys poop that's like messing up the environment and like Duncan Trussell from Goop hi you may have heard of Goop or Dr. Will Cole going to the browser

look I'm here to collect some poop I know what you're thinking you know ask them world leaders will let us have it just get a fried dish squat down we'll be fine see ya we gotta get Putin to shit in a fried dish let's do it mission mission this is our mission Dr. Will Cole this has been a very educational and fun conversation I really appreciate your time and I cannot wait to read gut feelings because I'm telling you as someone who struggled with depression and noticed an instant change in my mood states by well through fasting but shift in diet I can't wait to see all of the research and hard work you've put in to this particular area of health because I think we're all going to benefit from it when is it coming out gut feelings gut feelings comes out March 21st

and we're talking about like all the gut stuff and the feeling stuff I mean it's just again it's conversations that I have with patients all the time and I really wanted to share with people the research around stress and trauma and intergenerational trauma it's that sounds science fiction too of how trauma can be passed down through generations how it can literally be stored in ourselves okay wait you have a few more minutes to talk about that okay so this is a this is uh one of my favorite studies that I recall and I'm sure you've heard of it you expose it's a horrible study because animals are being tortured but you expose mice to I think it was cherry blossoms the smell of cherry blossoms or something some some smell while they're

like I think they were shocking them it's fucking horrible mice have children expose the mice to the very the smell they've never encountered stress reaction epigenetics used to be junk science they used to say this is nonsense it doesn't translate you can't translate trauma generationally now it's being proven no no no you know your parents were your grandparents even how I don't know how far back it goes but can you tell folks a little bit about this and what's what what studies are out there yeah sure it's there's so much on like the good side and sort of the negative side too but it's called intergenerational trauma or transgenerational trauma it's something it's a section within gut feelings we're talking about it's not just that like one of the things

we have patients fill out is an a score adverse childhood experience score and I talk about it at length in the book too but the higher the a score the more likely people are prone to different autoimmune issues and metabolic issues and and mental health issues a hypervigilant nervous system and it's things that we have to work on and like some of the practices that I talked about in the book like EMDR and somatic practices and breathwork and meditation and even psychedelic medicine how these things can help to sort of disentangle the that sympathetic fight or flight hypervigilant nervous system but intergenerational trauma is stuff that has passed on through your family so the research that I talk site in the book has to do with two different geopolitical

occurrences one was in the or both were done in the early 20th century one was in Ukraine and we're taught you mentioned about Russia but it's it's it was Russia it was Joseph Stalin who made a had a man-made famine against the Ukrainian people and history repeating itself of just like this sort of subjugation anytime the Ukrainian people wanted to have independence they were subjugated and he did Joseph Stalin did this in the 1920s of this basically starved and like mass genocide of the Ukrainian people and researchers generations later found that this these methylation or genetic expressions passed on one two three generations down literally being expressed expressed in their descendants of the sort of genetic epigenetic

heirloom if you will being passed on and same research being done in the Holocaust survivors descendants as well and that's again it's heavy stuff but it's just as trauma can be inherited and just as trauma can be stored in your body so can healing and I see see people breaking the chains of dis-ease and dysfunction all the time and healing not just themselves but their children and their children's children and generations don't ever get to see so while it's heavy we know that you can actually shift your biochemistry and shift your genetic expression and pass it along and break the chains wow it's so that stuff is so weird now before you mention the negative side I honestly I've only heard the negative side of epigenetic or genetic trauma what are you saying

that positive like I don't know positive experiences I'm trying to think about the opposite of trauma is like can be can also be passed out well yeah I mean health can I mean the healthier microbiome is the healthier that the healthier you are when you the couple that I'm talking the proverbial couple that I'm talking about the healthier you they both are when they conceive and their the baby is growing in the mother's womb the healthier the healthiest that baby's gonna be so I see this all the time with my patients like them and their partner getting super healthy they came from really shitty backgrounds but they're getting themselves very healthy so they can have their kids have the best shot at it not we all have junk we're all gonna

come in with some messiness and that's okay but there's a lot that we can undo by the choices we make in our life so this isn't a message of man I'm screwed because let's like my great grandmother went through this horrible trauma it's like no what can I do today start moving the needle for myself but also really shifting things from my family I feel like you're telling me that I should not be arguing with my pregnant wife about the interior design decisions that she's making because it'll impact our baby yeah yes leave her alone no I'm not once I realize that's the answer everything got better right away um yeah okay this has been a really enlightening conversation doctor I really appreciate it if folks wanted to

connect with your clinic is it can anyone just work with work with your clinic where do we find you yeah everything's at drwocoll.com that's d-r-w-i-l-l-c-o-l-e.com they tell a health clinic information's there gut feelings the pre-order for the book is there they can get it on amazon target barn to noble independent bookstores all that stuff and my podcast the art of being well is episode every week for that great show by the way and guys please pre-order these books these they have to endure my yapping for an hour can you do something for them get it help this helps right when people pre-order it helps oh it helps tremendously because it really it moves the needle and it gets the message out there for sure so if you're gonna get this book anyway just please

pre-order now dr. Cole I really appreciate your time I hope you have a wonderful day thank you thanks buddy you too that was dr. Will Cole I hope that you will pre-order or order this his book depending on what when you're listening to this check out his website if you're interested in becoming a patient you can actually become as patient all the links are at ducatrustle.com big thank you to our sponsors and a big thanks to you for listening we'll be back next week a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne Worthington Stafford and Jay Ferrara oh and

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