Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2035: Why Diets Always Fail With Dr. Will Cole

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Dr. Will Cole about diets and taking control of your health. How sustainable wellness must be born out of self-respect. (2:12) Bridging the gap between how people eat vs. how they feel. (6:32) Creating your resilient center. (8:56) The evolution of diet cultures. (11:56) The politicization of diets. (15:30) The mind-body connection. (20:17) The role the microbiome plays in your gut health. (26:05) Bio-individuality and immune responses to certain foods. (28:47) Re-training the brain around ‘healthy’ food intolerances. (32:27) The growing field of functional medicine. (36:41) The value of having more tools in your toolbox with it comes to auto-immune diseases. (41:20) Reading between the lines of incoming patients. (51:42) Percentage of patients that he is their first line of defense or last-ditch option? (53:16) The primary purpose of his latest book, ‘Gut Feelings’. (55:00) What led him to help celebrities? (57:22) Related Links/Products Mentioned NEW BOOK (PRE-ORDER): Gut Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel Get yourself tested and transcend your health goals! March Promotion: “Time-crunch Bundle” (MAPS 15 Minutes, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Prime + Eat for Performance eBook ALL for only $99.99!! Mind Pump #1922: Fatphobia & Other Lies That Are Keeping You Fat, Unhealthy & Sick Mind Pump #2002: Big Pharma Hates Fit & Healthy People Overweight and obesity: effectiveness of interventions in adults Mind Pump #1815: Improving Fat Loss, Muscle Gain And Fitness With Continuous Glucose Monitors U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022: Accelerating Spending, Worsening Outcomes Alternative Treatment Approaches to Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth: A Systematic Review Mind Pump Free Resources         Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Featured Guest Dr. Will Cole (@drwillcole) Instagram Website Podcast: Art of Being Well  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Alright, today's episode was a lot of fun. We had Dr. Will Cole on. He's a functional medicine practitioner, most well known for being Gwyneth Paltrow's functional medicine practitioner. Works with a lot of celebrities,

but also a lot of everyday regular people. He's an author, he's got a great book, that's out right now called Gut Feelings. You should check it out in today's episode. We talk about basically why diets always fail. We talk about relationships with food, so disordered eating, about relationships with food, so disordered eating, diet culture, the how politics has influenced diets. It's actually an amazing fun episode. This was great interview. If you want to figure out why diets aren't working

or why they don't work for most people, you're gonna love this episode. By the way, Dr. Wilcole has a great podcast called The Art of Being Well. In fact, I'll be on his podcast soon, pretty soon here. So this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, mphormones.com. Look, if you feel like you may have hormone imbalances,

like low testosterone, or if you're interested in using peptides to maximize health, performance, fat loss, muscle building, work with doctors. Go to mphormones.com, see if it's right for you, and if it is, the amazing people there will get you all set up. Again, it's mphormones.com. Now we're also running a workout program sale this month. We took some of our best time-sensitive workout programs.

In other words, workout programs are great for people who don't have a lot of time or space or workout equipment, and we put them in a workout program bundle and then discounted it. So here's what's included in the new time crunch bundle. Maps 15 minutes, maps anywhere, maps prime and the ebook eat for performance. We put them all together in that bundle and discounted it over $200 off. That means you only pay $99.99 for all those programs. If you're interested, just go to mapsmarch.com. All right, here comes this awesome episode. Dr. Will Cole, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. I wanna start out by talking about just disordered eating in general. I know you work a lot in the kind of celebrity space. We all did most of our work and I guess general pop, but we saw a lot of this ourselves and realized as trainers that this was like the root

of kind of everything that we had. We wanted to accomplish with people. Let's start there. Let's define disordered eating because it could look a lot of different ways and then maybe your experience with working with people and how to kind of tackle that. Sure. And as you guys probably know how this works, it's like the celebrities that I see, that's

the what gets all the attention. But like 99% of my patients for the past 13 years running this telehealth center are just like regular, my top patient base are actually professionalized, school teachers, engineers, and nurses. But they don't get the attention. That's the celebrities do. But you know, and I found that they all have a love of spreadsheets and getting to the root cause. And that's what I just, I love getting to the root cause.

But you're right, there's a lot of, a lot of, food is a double edged sword. It's very much a nuanced, there's a lot of context that I think we need to have about this. And these are conversations that I have with patients every single day. But I think that there's a lot of toxic tribalism when it comes to food in our culture, right? We have toxic diet culture on one end, which none of us within wellness legitimately are going to say that's a good thing, you know, eat less, work out more.

It's all about thinness and basically shame your way into wellness. They'll never overtly say that, but that's sort of the underlying message. But then I really have a problem with this polar opposite, this toxic anti-diaculture, where they sort of remove all basic logic about nutrition that there's quote unquote no such thing as a bad food. And I have a problem with that as well because I think it's creating a lot of food confusion

because I talk to people for a living, talking about these things, and there's a lot of disillusionment. They don't know what to believe. Their fact of the matter is that there are some foods that are going to mess up your blood sugar and going to raise inflammation, impact your digestion, feed chronic health problems. The point that I'm making in gut feelings is that avoiding those foods isn't restrictive, itself, respect. And I think that this either-or toxic tribalism within wellness, just like toxic tribalism within any sphere really misses a lot of people in the middle. And a concept that I talked to my patients about that I talk about in the book is this

food piece path. This path where yes, we can recognize that some foods aren't good for us, but ultimately this is coming from a place of self-empowerment and having agency over our health and wanting to feel good. And so I mean, disordered eating is a big topic, but I really have an issue with both polar opposites within this conversation. And ultimately, I find that sustainable wellness has to be born out of self-respect and eating foods that love us back. And we're all different.

That's really a major facet of functional medicine. It's bio-individuality. So it's really about being your own end of one experiment and really exploring food as medicine. And this practice that I tell my patients to do to learn the art of using food as a meditation as well. And really saying, okay, you're not a bad person if you choose to have that food, whatever food you choose that maybe doesn't love you back, but did it make you, maybe it was you hanging out with your friends and socializing, okay? Then don't shame yourself,

eat the food and move on. Shame is worse than any food, but ultimately you may use that food as a meditation and mindfully eat and say, wow, this really wasn't worth it. And you'll remember and grow an awareness for the next time. That's food peace, where it's a logical, evidence-based approach to food, a rational approach to food. We talk about this as helping clients become more aware of how these foods affect their body. Now, when you get a client, I would imagine like us,

many people are completely numb to what how foods affect them. So are there steps, are there certain things that you do you take with your clients to get them to become more aware of how these things are consuming or affecting their body? Yeah, I think that initially, I think I start as simple as I can and then from there, as granular as I need to, but starting off with just more mindful eating. Are you eating on the go? Are you running around?

Are you stressed when you're eating? There's a lot of distraction and numbing going on in our culture that many people you're right are absolutely divorced between what they eat and how they feel. So it could be as simple for many people as just sit down, breathe, chew slowly and be mindful of how you feel after you eat. And then from there we can get more granular. I mean, we if we will start with food tracking apps to really track foods and we can go back and correlate symptoms and find patterns between what they eat and how they feel if we need to go there. And we get granular as far as continuous glucose monitors and

really looking at data. And then bigger objective data snapshots like blood labs to correlate a baseline and how does some positive nutrient-dance bioavailable foods? How does that influence your physiology? That's also a massive awareness tool for our labs. So it's not this sort of like doctor pontificating about some thing, you know, some idea that he's seen work, but it's, no, they know for themselves. Whoa, I saw my blood sugar here, now I'm seeing it here. I see my inflammation here, now I'm seeing it here,

and people get encouraged by that. They wanna keep doing the things that love them back and people wanna feel good, but it's kind of, I think, distills a lot of that food confusion that can really happen in our culture because of all this Dr. Google and all these people with well and good intentions on social media and on podcasts creating a lot of disillusionment around food.

Well, I had an experience when I had to years ago become more aware of how food affected my body besides the body fat muscle gain, which I was very well aware of. I was just completely disconnected from all the other things that how or how foods affected me. And when I became more aware and started making connections to other positive outcomes like digestion, inflammation, sleep, mood, I actually started to find that I started to crave different foods because I had made those positive connections. And that was extremely effective because one of the challenges that I found with clients and myself was, well, if I know that's good for me, but I don't want to eat it, I want

to eat this thing over here. But then I found I actually wanted to eat certain foods because I started to become aware of how they affected me. Is this common? Do you see this as part of this process of becoming more aware or doing these food meditations? Absolutely. People want to feel good and when you start to, like all the noise

around the conversations around food, the sort of supercharged conversations and blanket statements and your broad sweeping generalities around food really fall into the background when people know, okay, these are the tools, these are the food tools for my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacks that make me feel the best. And they really, they have a center, they've created a center for themselves and a confidence about themselves and intuition about themselves, that it's the center, that's how I see it for my patients,

that they create this sort of resilient center and they can pivot from that center, but they know their center and they know their wiggle room. And we all have different wiggle rooms as far as like quote unquote what we can get away with. But there's this, I think, confidence when you find out what foods work for you. But then also realizing what works for you today

is it necessarily what you're always gonna have to do. So I do a lot with people with autoimmune problems and different inflammatory problems. And as the body's healing and we're improving function over time, what I'm always trying to remind my patients is that your body's gonna gain resilience. So you don't have to be so stuck on one ideology and say like this is my identity in food.

That is going to evolve and change. And for anyone, no matter who you are, I think it's important to remember that it's okay to pivot. It's okay to learn new things and try new things and evolve over time. And I find that there's so much pivot, it's okay to learn new things and try new things and evolve over time. And I find that there's so much tribalism with food whether you're talking about like the keto movement or the carnivore

or vegan vegetarian, whatever, like that's their identity. And I feel like that is really sticking your body in a box that when you find out, okay, maybe it worked for you for a time and you get super excited, what happens when things evolve? Our microbiomes always changing, our life is always changing, our body is always changing. So I think it's important for people to realize that to be flexible with yourself.

Well, how many years have you been doing this now? I've been, I started one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers about 13 plus years ago at this point So I've basically been in this room for the past 13 years 10 hours a day Looking at labs and talking to people. What do you see Today that is different than when you started are there Are there trends that are that are new now that are different than when you first started like what come Tell me a little bit about the evolution of coaching these people and what you see today that's different than when you started.

I think I see a lot of positive. I think that the democratization of health information, the decentralization of health information is overall a massively positive thing. Before it was these gatekeepers that were in white coats and the media that would say this is what it was. And this was sort of the orthodoxy around nutrition. And I feel like I remembered 13 years ago

when I would be talking about the idea of reversing diabetes and how the idea of food could impact things like diabetes and autoimmune conditions, I would get phone calls from people and say, how dare you say that food influences type 2 diabetes and you could reverse it. It's genetic. You can do nothing about type 2 diabetes. And same with autoimmune conditions. How dare you say food can influence inflammation levels and decrease flare ups. And today I don't get any of those phone calls and we're reaching

a lot more people. So I think that there's, that's a good sign in my mind that there's a growing amount of people that are aware the influence that food and my body practices, how does that impact human physiology? At the same time, I think that this sort of, I go back to this anti-diag culture, I feel like they are this malignant voice, I think within wellness, that taking a lot of people back and a lot of confusion around food, because

then people are starting to, anytime you talk about any positive food changes, it's automatically labeled as toxic diet culture, and I think that's just very, it can be potentially hurting a lot of people. Yeah, it seems like it's become, at least in my experience, it feels like the diet culture has become more polarizing than it ever was before. Do you feel the same way? Yeah, I do. I don't know why that is exactly.

I think social media probably plays a part of that and I think I'm a massive advocate for freedom of speech. So I never want to silence or cancel anybody. Like the person I disagree with the most, I want them to have a platform to say what they want to say. But when there's a lot of keyboard warrior on the other end of the world saying things that they would never say to your face, I think that there can be a lot of toxicity amongst this conversation, right?

You can't just be civil, you can't just be kind, but give your opinion and be strong in your opinion. There's this sort of really malignancy, I think, within the conversation, that doesn't have to go there. We're talking about food. And we should be able to realize that this is something that we could have a robust debate about, but we don't have to really get to

just a dark place that I think social media can breed. Well, Will, I have some commentary on that. I'd love your opinion on what I'm about to say, because I've been doing this for a long time, over two and a half decades, and all the way back when I first started as a 18-year-old trainer, diets have always been tribal. There's always been tribalism among diets. Everybody in the fitness space knows this. This guy over here will say, eat a lot of carbs, it does this, this person over here will say,

avoid these types of foods, this person will say it. And there's always been some tribalism, but something new that I've noticed over the last maybe 10, but especially over the last five years that didn't exist before, was that diets became, for lack of a better term, political. And what I mean by that is before the argument was, you're wrong, you're diets unhealthy.

The arguments today are starting to sound like this. The way you're eating makes you a bad person. Not that you're diets wrong, but you're killing the environment. You're killing the environment, or it's unethical, or you're a bad person, or you're top whatever, label however you're fat-shaming, or toxic masculinity on either end. It's like you're getting attacked, let's say, political strategies.

Have you noticed this as well? Yeah, that's a very astute observation. I think that's exactly what it is. It's not just about food anymore. It's an indictment on your very character and your sort of moral compass. So I think that that is, again, it's taking something that is probably,

at some point, started with good intentions or good enough intentions, right? It's like, all right, we see a lot of disorder eating out there. We know detoxed die culture is not good. But then they're all context and all nuance is lost. And we're sort of swinging the pendulum to the completely other side where it is, whether it's you're right, the toxic anti-dia culture where everything's in the

name of body positivity. And there's so much virtue signaling about that because it's like, of course, I would say I want everybody to love themselves no matter who or where what they look like. But ultimately, loving yourself doesn't necessarily mean accepting where you're at right now. And the idea that you could evolve and grow and level up your health is like seen as a negative thing. It's upside down. It's completely backwards.

So I think you're absolutely right. And then that's not even talking about the, I think the vegan militant vegans amongst the social media, like back corners of social media, which again, it's how they're at a level of morality and political. We are literally seen as murderers if we are omnivore. Yeah, you know what's interesting about this, because it definitely is political because if you look at the political space, you'll have one movement that is extreme. And it almost always spurs an equally extreme on the other end movement.

And so veganism has always been around, it's been around for a long time. But it got real extreme, relatively recently. And I 100% believe it's the reason why carnivore now is a thing. I feel like it's like the extreme reaction. I mean, how do you feel about what I'm saying, is that makes does that resonate?

Yeah, I think that's your right on track there. I think that's part of the issue. It's really they're both sides of becoming more emboldened because of this growing tribalism. And it's like, what's the end of all of this, right? You know, I've talked to patients for a living, I look at labs for a living, and there's a science in art to all of this. Like if somebody, like for example, if somebody really identifies as vegan, right? And they have a lot of stress and anxiety about ever being not vegan. That stress and anxiety and shame around food is going to, even if practically it makes the most sense for them

to bring, like let's say wild caught fish in and they land on sort of a nutrient dense bioavailable pescetarian diet. I know clinically we can really move the needle in certain areas based on their goals, but that's stress and anxiety and that sort of mental relationship, emotional relationship with food is gonna completely sabotage any good results around that food. And that's kind of what I'm talking about and got feelings is like what's the what are you not just feeding your body, but what are you feeding your head and your heart? And ultimately, what's your relationship with food? And we have to really start, for some of these people, really start retraining the limbic system to not have such a supercharged anxiety and stress around healthy foods. Like stressing about healthy foods isn't good for your health.

And again, these carnivores versus vegan, high carb versus low carb, like faster versus non-fasters, diet culture versus anti-diaculture is only confusing the people more. Yeah. Well, you know, you're reminding me of a study I read a long time ago. I'd love your reaction to this, but there was a study that compared obese individuals who worked with a therapist versus obese individuals who worked with a traditional dietician. Long-term success was greater with the people who worked with a therapist. And the goal wasn't necessarily diet, it was just therapy versus the ones that actually worked on the diet in terms of long-term success, in terms of weight loss. What's your opinion

on that? Why do you think that is? I think because in part of this, it's that mind-body connection, right? There's a study that I referenced and got feelings around self-compassion. I think a lot of this, when you're looking at shame or what I call shameflamation around food or your body

or whatever, it is life itself, there can be a lot of dysregulation of the immune system in the form of chronic inflammation, a lot of dysregulation when it comes to the autonomic nervous system, the body is stuck in more of that fight or flight stress state. And there's a lot of sources of what are contributing to these things, it's not just food,

it can be environmental toxins, of course, it could be stress, it could be unresolved trauma as well. But the study looked at the people that had the highest self-compassion scores had the lowest interleukin six levels. They had the lowest inflammation levels. So I think working with the therapist, I don't know the study that you're referencing per se, but it makes sense to me when you're talking about someone really working on cultivating tools to regulate their nervous system will not only heal the relationship with food, but also influence their physiology in the form of a more regulated nervous system and lower inflammation levels.

Yeah, well, that's interesting because I think one of the mistakes that Western medicine has made with diet is that they have separated the psychological from the physiological, and you're talking about how they're both equally important. You mentioned that study, which made me think, you know, the immune system is designed to regulate and attack. It'll attack invaders, and sometimes it can attack your own body, if it thinks your own body is a problem. Well, if you're psychologically hating yourself,

could that perhaps trigger an immune response against yourself? Yeah. I mean, these are sort of the things I spent probably too much thinking about, because then it's just, there's so many levels to this, right? I mean, researchers refer to autoimmunity as the immune system, quote, losing recognition of self. And I think, okay, that's happening

in a physiological level, right? So you're like, you're a lemmur creator, the immune system is tagging whether it's the thyroid and Hashimoto's disease or the Mylon chief of MS or the guy with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's or celiac, that's happening physiologically. But then you look at the research around stress and trauma

and these sort of mind-body studies are really looking at, okay, what's happening? People losing recognition of self. There's a lot of shame, a lot of stress, this sort of perpetual sympathetic, like, activation is triggering things for people just as much as food, just as much as environmental toxins, or, you know, a virus or pathogens, something like that. So yeah, that's a huge, a huge component that that's why I wrote the book, because I think we, a lot of people know about

food. I think I don't necessarily think we need another food book out there in the world. But I think that this sort of mind food, like what are your thoughts for food? How does this influence our physiology? Yeah, this is probably why the process takes so long, what did you say? It's not as easy as just giving somebody, you know, when I first became a trainer, well, we were taught to give people meal plans. And I remember thinking, like, just follow what I gave you. And you'll totally get in grade. Nobody would follow it.

Nobody could follow it or stick to it. But, of course, you know, 10 years later, doing this for a long time, I started to realize, oh, it's way more complicated than just following instructions like a robot. So do you think that's why one of the reasons why this takes so long is you're not just giving people information, they have to kind of change themselves,

change how they view themselves and how they view food and how they use it to self-medicate, for example. Yeah, 100%. So there's a lot to unpack with these conversations. You're absolutely right, like exploring both gut and feelings in my job, like the physiological and the psychological, the physical and the mental emotional spiritual,

the physical stuff, it's not that it's easy, it's just more straightforward, it's more dry, it's more prescriptive, right? It's like, yeah, I put it in the book, I deal with, I address it with every single one of my patients, but it is, and people with, I address it with every single one of my patients. But it is, and people with, especially a certain personality, like my patient base, we're talking about, like type A, driven, proficient, high performing people that are, just tell me what to do, Doc. Like, I'll do it. I'll execute it, but I need to know what to do.

I want that protocol. Okay, let's do it. But for many people, it is just one side of the coin. And the feeling stuff of got feelings is not so prescriptive because you can't really tell somebody to just not stress or you don't have that shame or like just drop that trauma because it's stock, doesn't work like that. So you're really going to have to retrain the nervous system and retrain how they do life.

Like what are their coping mechanisms even? Because there's a lot of coping mechanisms around food and things like alcohol that you really need to unpack, which takes time. In many ways, I find that my job in functional medicine just as much as it is around nutrition is very on the therapy side. It's probably just as important if not more for many people. How much of a role does the microbiome play in all of this in terms of your state of well-being mentally, in terms of what drives you towards cravings and food selection and

choices, like how concerned do we need to be? It's massive. And I think that that is that part, when we're looking at, let's just say microbiome labs or blood labs look at different inflammation markers that has a gut-centric component, like the gut is modulating some inflammatory process in the body, there can be a lot of grace, I think, around that when people see, oh, it's just, it's not my lack of willpower. I'm not just like a bad person or a weak person because I keep like going for the fridge late at night. There's just as much as

there is a mental emotional component, there's a physiological component. It has to be a both and not either or approach when you're talking about people's health. So the research is clear. I mean, that certain bacteria influence like opportunistic, apathogenic bacteria that we can quantify on labs, modulate our cravings, this crosstalk between our gut, our second brain, influences the how our brain and hormones

and blood sugar are expressed. So yeah, it's a huge, I think, way off of many people's shoulder to know, okay, I can fix this, and I can get some metabolic flexibility. I can improve my gut brain access. I can create some resilience here, so I'm not bound by the hangryness. I'm not bound by these insatiable cravings that seem to consume me. So yeah, it's a huge deal.

And that's a massive part of what my message to my patients in the book is for us to really give people this freedom from this either or dichotomy between mental health and physical health. I think that I love that there's a growing normalizing, destigmatizing around mental health, that's good. But I think in many ways it's an incomplete conversation, because in the West we still will separate mental health

from physical health as it's sort of abstract, quote, unquote, chemical imbalance, which is, I'm sure you guys agree, that it's Flemzy Science at best even taking that model. But really looking at, for example, the microbiomes influence on the brain or the cytokine model of cognitive function, I mean, cytokines are pro-inflammatory cells. How does inflammation impact our brain works?

So it's really dealing with these physiological things, which gives people a lot of a preve. Like when they can get their head above that proverbial water, they could start making decisions that love them back instead of these self-sabotaging ones. Well, let's talk a little bit about the immune system's role in how our bodies react to foods. I remember years ago when CGMs, when people in the fitness and health space started first using CGMs to see how they reacted to different foods, I knew someone whose reaction to an avocado was worse than when they ate a cookie and everybody was so confused and then we considered the fact that they might have an immune reaction

to that avocado and you know, it was immune reaction, it was an inflammatory response, delivered, dumps out a bunch of sugar and that's what showed up on the on the CGM. So how does that happen? How does it happen where I can eat a particular food or way, and not even talking about food allergy, right? Just talking about how my immune system reacts to different foods and how those reactions can influence my behaviors.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I think honestly, that's probably part of the reason why I'm not super, I'm not ideological one way or the other because I'm reminded on an hourly basis for the past 13 years. If I hung my hat in one way to do for the thing for everybody, I'd be proven wrong all day long because I can think of a great food that works great for one person and the next person it causes a flare up. So I just, I have to be intellectually flexible when you're looking at labs for a living

and looking at bio-individuality. So I see this a lot. The healthiest food you can ever think of, where you know all the exciting science around it. Like avocados are like the epitomization. And it like makes the vegans happy and the keto people have. It is like the most inclusive foods. It is come one, come all to the avocado. Everybody can get behind it. But it's high in FODMAPs. So people that with SIBO can have a reaction to it, which raises inflammation because it pisses off the microbiome and influences blood sugar, for example. Or like you said, there's many people that, there's some people that can have an allergy to avocado as well, but then beyond allergies,

there's this continuum of intolerances, like a fod map intolerance. These people that have opartisbiosis and things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, they don't have the proper ability to break down these fibers. The bacteria actually love to over consume these fermentable sugars that are in things like avocados and things like onions and garlic as well.

Or people can have reactions to all different types of plant compounds. So there's a lot of variables to consider here. It doesn't mean avocado is bad. It just means, okay, look, it's bioindividuality, and again, back to my earlier point, just because avocados don't work for you now, doesn't mean it's necessarily always going to be the case. So let's use the CGM, let's use microbiome test

and blood test to look at what foods love you back and which foods don't, but then as we're fixing, let's say to use this example, let's fix the seabull, let's get some microbiome resilience here so you can reintroduce these foods over time. And to use the cookie, sometimes these like easy to digest, quote unquote, simple carbs for a very irritated gastrointestinal system. It doesn't mean they're healthy, but I hear that all the time.

Like when I eat junk food, my digestion's better. So then they're using that. I mean, that's all they need to go double down on some fast food. It doesn't, I mean, their blood sugar is probably hating them, but ultimately, on a digestive standpoint, I see that actually a lot, because it's less of a whole food. So it's like requires less to break down sometimes.

It doesn't make it healthy though. Let's stay on this avocado metaphor. So you have a client and they've ate avocado their entire life. And then we find out that it's an insult to them now. How do you communicate to somebody, how this healthy food, they've ate their entire life, is now affecting them in this way that they just assume couldn't be possible because they never thought up or did their belief system.

Right, so how do you communicate that? And also, how often is that common that it's a food that they've had in their entire life and that you've got a communicating that this food is no longer agreeing with you. I see a lot of people that have these underlying gut issues, they have sebowl, dysbiosis, seafo, like small intestinal fungal overgrowth.

So a lot of these higher fod-map plant foods, higher histamine, I mean avocado can be higher histamine too. I see a lot of mass cell activation and histamine intolerance too. So these sort of complex things that are beyond the basics. So all like anything's fair game as far as what's irritating their immune system. So normally when we create a baseline, some calmly reactions down and then do reintroduction, they can see for themselves, oh, wow, I never thought that was an issue for me

until I removed it for a time and reintroduced it. There's a lot of like feedback, I think, for people to realize. But then it's, I always wanna bring the context around this, like don't fear that food, and we have to work on these limbic system retraining the brain, so you don't, if you have a trauma,

like I'm using that word just from the sense of, there's a lot of fear and anxiety around food when food causes you flare up sometimes, and especially if it's healthy food, because then you're like so disillusioned on what even is good for you. So, and people, I'm often times will meet them, and they're eating five different foods

because they don't even know what to believe anymore. So, there's a lot of unpacking both on a physiological and a mental emotional level oftentimes we'll meet them and they're eating five different foods because they don't even know what to believe anymore. So there's a lot of unpacking both on a physiological and a mental emotional level that has to come come about. So I think that to use that avocado example, and if it is a an intolerance or a reaction, some sort of immune system reactivity, let's, for example, we have to show them clearly this is cause and effect, but look, it is such a feedback loop because people stress and anxiety around foods does play a part into the reaction. For example, for some people when we work on regulating the nervous system, getting the nervous system more into a parasympathetic state and retraining the limbic system, they, reactions they used to have, they don't have anymore.

So it is back just this overarching idea of a both-and approach, both the physical and mental-emotional and sometimes spiritual component of it. It's huge when you're talking about food reactions and reintroduction of foods over time. That doesn't mean they should be having a food that's causing the reaction in the short term. Let's say we have to heal their gut and deal with their seabull, but part of healing that dysbiosis and that, what's happening on a mechanistic standpoint, is a lack of the migrating motor complex. It's the gut brain communication, the cross-talk between the gut and the brain. Trauma and stress will decrease my degrading motor complex. So you really have to really work on training

that vagus nerve to be strong enough to be able to regulate that gut brain access appropriately. So it is, it's definitely can be tough for people. When you're talking about healthy foods, causing reactions, how do you navigate that? So it's very much being proverbially on the ground with these people to let them know this isn't going to be forever. Let's work on repairing these both sides of this coin so you can start reintroducing foods and healing your relationship with food just as much as you're healing your body. Yeah. I have personal experience with that.

Years ago, I had to do some serious gut health work and I couldn't eat peanuts, egg whites, cruciferous vegetables. But then after I healed my gut, I mean, those are now a regular part of my diet. But at the time, I was hyper reactive to them. So I have personal experience. Now, along those lines, I had the luxury of working with someone who was

somewhat privy to functional medicine about 18 years ago. And this is back when finding a functional medicine practitioner was like, it was impossible. I mean, you couldn't find one. It was just went around. But I do remember terms and terminology being thrown around in that space that the medical community, scoffed at and laughed at, because I also at the time trained a lot of traditional doctors. I had clients that were surgeons and doctors. And if I brought up the word like leaky gut syndrome, I'd get eye rolls and scoffing.

If I said something like adrenal fatigue, everybody, oh my god, that doesn't exist. Now, to me what's funny to me now is, now traditional medicine will say, intestinal wall hyperpremiability, which is leaky gut syndrome, or they'll say something like HPA axis dysfunction, which is adrenal fatigue. Do you see more inroads? Because that's a positive change. Do you see that this is accelerating? Now we're starting to

get more functional medicine, in-do traditional medicine? Yeah, I love that you brought this up, because I think that's part of the reason why when I go, I mentioned those earlier phone calls 13 plus years ago, I like, how could you say this? One of my top referral bases at the telehealth center are conventional doctors. Oh, well.

That is shocking to me. I never thought the day would happen when I'm on a Zoom call with our common patient and the gastroenterologist or the rheumatologist or the PCP, I don't take that for granted at all because I think that our world has changed in that way for the better very dramatically in 13 plus years just in that small chunk of time relatively.

So yeah, I think it's huge. And most of my colleagues within functional medicine are conventionally trained. I mean, and they will be the first to tell you that they didn't learn any of this stuff in medical school. And they had to, that's why they had to be trained postdoctoral training in functional medicine.

And the Cleveland Clinic has a functional medicine center, many mainstream institutions, medical institutions, how functional medicine center. So I mean, these hospitals, these medical groups are not spending millions of dollars on functional medicine and integrative medicine schools and centers based on quackery, based on woo-woo. They are doing it because the results speak for themselves. So I think the archaic person out there that's still like deep trying to shame and de-legitimize us in functional medicine, they're on the wrong side of history. And I think the statistics speak for themselves, right? I mean, the United States spends more on health healthcare than the next 10 top spending countries

combined, yet we're the sickest with the shortest lifespan of all industrialized nations. So, it's very the height of hubris to still have a God, God complex with that type of data. So, we have to do something different to see something different. And I think there are many, I mean, look, most doctors, conventional doctors, got into healthcare because they wanted to help people. And they're starting to realize, wow, these complex health issues are largely lifestyle driven. So meaning the best tool within the toolbox

for most of these people is gonna be some sort of lifestyle approach. But again, it doesn't have to be either or. Some people need to be on medications and we have amazing advancements and diagnostic and acute trauma care, emergency care. We need that. Let's have the best of both worlds,

and that's really what I'm trying to teach people is not having tribalism in medicine, just as like we shouldn't have tribalism within wellness and food culture. So here's what's interesting, what you're saying. I remember there was a study that came out and have tribalism within wellness and food culture. So here's what's interesting, what you're saying. I remember there was a study that came out, I wanna say five or six years ago that compared herbal treatments

to pharmaceutical treatments for SIBO. Now SIBO even a while ago was not accepted by the medical community. Now it is, right? You can get tested by a traditional gastrodoctor and they'll test you for SIBO. And so it's well accepted. But I remember the study that came out

that compared urbels to pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals being antibiotics, urbels being antimicrobials. And the results were actually the same. They actually did just as well. I thought that was so groundbreaking that we saw that they showed in the study, hey, these are plants that you could buy and use to treat

SIBO that worked just as good as these super powerful, you know, nuclear bomb antibiotics that many people could, you know, couldn't found too expensive. Are we seeing anything like that with SIFO? You mentioned SIFO earlier, it's a small intestinal fungal overgrowth. First off, is it accepted like SIBO is? Or is that still

kind of consider on the fringe? And if it is, what are the treatments for that and how different are they than how you would treat SIBO? It is not as widely, I don't know of any patient that I've heard and I see a lot of when I'm on their initial telehealth consult, I'll see labs that are ran in the conventional setting. I don't see really, I see Candida ran, blood tests typically to look at Candida antibodies. I do see that. So I think that there's an awareness,

but oftentimes those type of labs are ran because the patient asked for them, right? So the patient says, like, can you please run that? And have they have a doctor that's maybe just willing enough to run it for them or open and mind it enough to run it for them, they'll run it. There's really not, I think, a wide approach to something they may give them an antifilk in

or some sort of antifungal if they push hard enough or think it's warranted certainly. But I think, Sebo, I've a lot of hope when I look at people that are struggling with SIBO and are getting lab access to SIBO breath test within their conventional doctor to look at these things. But I agree that the refaxim in is a vaxi-vaxim antibiotics they are needed sometimes. They can be a great tool for many people, but it really can do a lot of damage to the good microbes as well,

that I find that many of these dysbiotic cases that don't necessarily need the big atomic bomb antibiotics, some people need them, not everybody does. So to have more tools within your toolbox versus just that one antibiotic is really an appropriate thing because a lot of these people do really well with herbal antimicrobials. It's more sustainable. The chance of reoccurrence is a lot less in my experience versus the conventional antibiotics.

So it's similar to people that have seafull. These herbal antimicrobials oftentimes many of them do have antifungal properties as well. I was just gonna say that. So let's get into that for a second, well because antibiotics can actually set up an environment that increases the potential for fungal overgrowth. Antimicrobials, which are plants, like things like oregano, peppermint oil, and so on,

they tend to possess both antibacterial or antimicrobial effects and also antifungal effects so they don't create the environment for fungal overgrowth like antibiotics. Am I being correct here? Is that accurate? Absolutely. So, the studies that are out there, oftentimes you will see within the plant medicine, natural medicine, support, research, you will see that. As that they have antibiotic capabilities as well as antifungal capabilities.

So, cats claw, oregano, powder arco, uvourercy, cappurlic acid, these type of things can really be helpful for people that have bacterial dysbiosis and sebowl, as well as fungal overgrowth as well. And look, people can have both of those. Many of our patients do. Because the problem is a lack of regulation of the microbiome. There's a lack of migrating motor complex with the nervous system, and these opportunistic and pathogenic bacteria can really be like weeds overgrowing in this gut garden causing a lot of imbalance. So many people have both, but they're just tested for SIBO.

So they are just looking at that one thing, but it's way more like SIBO doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a larger dysbiotic problem oftentimes, and we know SIBO is associated with many autoimmune problems too. So normally there's some other inflammatory component beyond just SIBO itself. What, okay, so the reoccurrence of SIBO is quite high. When I look at the data and my own personal experience, I probably have to treat myself for some dysbiosis.

A lot less these days, probably like maybe once a year or less, but in the past it would just keep coming back. And there's a lot of information I had to treat C-Bone now, but there's very little information on what to do after to prevent reoccurrence. Can we talk about what that looks like? Because I guarantee some people listening right now are like, yeah, I keep getting it.

Like I had it, I fixed it, came back. Like what's the deal? Yeah, I think it can come back from many different reasons, right? I think if sometimes people don't give the protocol long enough time and I see this a lot where they've got the pruning down of the microbiome, they improve some migrating motor complex from an nervous system standpoint, but the gut can take upwards in my experience

and there's some studies to show this as well, 18 to 24 months to really heal. So we have some people on protocols, like the herbal antimicrobial protocols, and adjunctive nervous system regulation support for a year and a half, two years, cycling, not always on it, but cycling through these protocols to really give it the chance that it needs. I see very low rate of reoccurrence when we do that.

Our patients, our average patients are with us for about a year and a half to two years because of that. So it's not really sexy to say that because they want like three weeks of that like seven. It doesn't work like that for most people that have these chronic GI issues. Again, it's cycling, it's intermittent, it's not always taking all the supplements or all the things, but at least cyclically over the course of that time. So I think that's part of it. And the other thing is from a food standpoint, people get kind of un, like, not in a bad way, but they get kind of cocky around foods. Like, oh, I can eat this and I can eat that. I can eat that. And it's like, they because they have more resilience, the distance between cause and effect is greater. So they don't realize, oh, like, yeah, I didn't

have a problem with just that, but like that, that and that and time really is breeding these disparity problems. I see that all the time too, which is fine. Again, they build a center for themselves, let's get back, let's refresh and kind of really not get too cocky too soon. Would you base the cycling of these treatments? Cause this is blowing me away because I think that's me. Would you base the cycling based off of symptoms

or more of a regular thing? Like, okay, for 30 days you're doing this antimicrobial protocol and then we'll start it again in 60 days or is it, let's get back on it when you start to notice certain symptoms. Like, what does that look like? Normally, it's a combination of, well, I'll say this, for most people, it is not just based off of digestive symptoms.

I'm looking at labs as well. And I think that's the buy-in I think for many people, because when they see, okay, my digestion improved relatively quickly, and by that I mean, like months of healing, but we know we have to create some stability after we got out of the woods. And I think at that point, if you see inflammatory markers that are still off,

or you see these immune markers that are still off, 75% of the immune system is in the gut. So the overt, obvious, noticeable digestive symptoms may be in remission. Fantastic. That's a blessing. But ultimately, the ripple effects of the immune system being kind of fragile is still, you can see it on labs for months and months after the digestive issues have calmed down.

So at that point, my approach has always been to create immune system resilience over the course. The analogy that I use for patients in this instance is like a cast. Like you can't like take the cast off with a broken bone and like go do yard work, go do some pushups, and like put the cast back on. That's gonna re-endure it and slow down that healing time.

Well, okay, so the initial intervention protocol a few months, right? Take, we can take the cast off, we can reintroduce some foods, go off of some supplements, but still keep that support ongoing cyclically. Put that sling on, do some rehab to use that analogy, but don't like take the sling off and go like hog wild. You have to really rehab the gut over the course of, in my opinion, for most people years, not weeks

and months. God, that has to be one of the most common things that you see. Because I'm thinking back now to my experience for a while. Great analogy, right? Yeah, yeah. I think that a lot of people get excited. And I'm also guilty of this. Like you've eliminated something for a while, healed it, healed better.

You go have it. You go have a serving of it one time and you're like, oh shit, I didn't get any symptoms. I'm good. I'm good. And then you introduce it again. Three days later and then you introduce it again the next day and then before you know it,

you're doing it every day again and then all the symptoms come back. And then you probably go like, oh, that functional medicine guy, he didn't help me. And you chalk it up as like, you didn't, you didn't cure me, you didn't fix me. And you chalk it up as like, you didn't care me, you didn't fix me because it all came back anyways. So, well, I mean, how often does that happen?

Is that more often than not that this happens where they revert? More often times than not, but I don't know. I just think doing this as long as I have and really this being my main focus for my patients, I, they're in it for the long haul. I let them know.

You communicated. Yeah, you communicated. Yeah, I let them know from the beginning. So they know the first time I'm meeting them and I'm looking at their labs and looking at their health history, looking at all things they've done both conventionally and with other great functional medicine doctors. It's like part of this is, it's not always more and more and more. It's just staying consistent with the tools that are the most effective for you and me reminding

and like coaching you to stay on this path and not like wavering from this because I know if they put in the time, they're going to see the sustainable results they're looking for. So yeah, they know what they're getting when the first time they're meeting me, that this is like the time frame that we're looking at. And look, and I always say this too, like if I don't want to limit what your body can do, like maybe you're a really rapid, amazing, demigod of a human being that will heal super fast.

But like I, at the same time, like let's just take it step by step and give the body the time that it needs. How, how quick within a consult, can you tell whether you can help this person or not? Meaning that, because I know you talk a lot of, we have already talked about the physiological side and the psychological side, I'm betting that there are some psychological indicators

or maybe mind sets that people have coming into their their console with you how quickly can you tell like oh I'm gonna be able to help this person. Oh this ain't we're probably not we're gonna probably gonna fail can you tell? Yeah, I Can and not always right. I think You're meeting someone for an hour and a half online I've been doing it long enough like reading between the lines That science and art duality of what I do in functional medicine. So I get a good read, but you really, there's an unfolding that happens after that. But yeah, a lot of the obvious signs you can get earlier on,

but you know, I'm up for a challenge. I really, it's just a matter of like, how hard are you going to make this for me? But I will see this through. And look, the overwhelming majority of our patients, they've already came to the point by the time they get to me to know I have to do something different to see something different. And they have a certain level of teachableness and they are willing to collaborate on their health

and they want answers. So I may be in some ways, even though I have complex cases, kind of have it easy because they know that I'm for them and not against them. And they're desperate, probably, a little bit, right? Cause you're not the first person to answer. So that was, this leads me to the question I wanted

to ask you too is, and have you seen this change? What percentage of your patients would you say that you are actually the first line of defense? And how many of them, like Western medicines fail them, and that's the only reason why they're coming to you. And has that percentage shifted since the beginning when you first started today? It's, that's a great question. The overwhelming majority of them have done a lot. They, they have kind of gone, they've either gone through conventional medicine

and known that that's all there is to offer. Maybe they, maybe they don't even that sick. They don't even have that many health problems, but they know enough to know if they want to optimize their health, they're going to have to look something similar different. And that doesn't mean that we're replacing their primary care physician. Like we're still telehealth. Like they still need their physical exams. We're still working in conjunction with their local doctor, but they know ultimately to deal with optimize your health and prove their labs are going to have to go to us.

But look, a big percentage of the people are struggling with some complex health issue that it's stubborn. It's just not the needle's not moving for them. And yeah, I'm normally not people's first rodeo. Let's just say that. Normally I'm like down, they've kind of gone through the conventional doctors, they've gone through many alternative doctors.

And I would say this, they are better off than they would be if they weren't doing those good things. Because most of them are eating better than most people. They're taking well-intentioned supplements. They have some labs that they had ran. They are better off, but they're all kind of stuck at this like sucky plateau that they're looking to move past. Yeah, Will, what was the primary motivation

for gut feelings? What drove you to write that book and write about what you're talking about? To me, being in the health space professionally, I keep saying 13 years, but I was a weird health nerd kid at like 15 years old. I worked at the finish line selling shoes in high school and I'd use my paycheck to go to the the health food store and like by the latest super food

I read about the latest like supplement. I saw we have such a weird kid And I think my now I have a teenage son and I'm thinking I was so weird I'd pack my brown paper bag lunch with like belt whole bell peppers and like just two on a whole bell pepper As a teenager in Western Pennsylvania. It was really weird. But where there's just everybody, eight McDonald's and Wendy's KFC. So that was, I've been a part of this sort of community for a long time since the 90s. And I really wanted to have a conversation to my community, where I find that there's a lot of tribalism amongst us, and there's a lot of disillusionment amongst us,

and it's born out of endless conversations I've had with my patients. So I really wanted to have a sane conversation between toxic diaculture, anti-diaculture, between conventional medicine and functional medicine, and I also wanted to talk about the patients that I see, people with autoimmunity, people with mental health issues like anxiety and depression, fatigue, and dealing with both the gut and the feeling side of human health, the physical and the mental emotional spiritual,

and how a both-and approach really falls short and a lot of people fall through the cracks of that. So I find that this dual approach of dealing with the physiological stuff, like we keep talking about the SIBO protocols and the food protocols, like that's all in the book, but just as much are these somatic practices and breath work and meditation practices and things like forest bathing and these sort of that maybe seem kind of out there, but there's so much exciting research of how can we modulate our nervous system in a positive way that supports this gut brain axis and lowers inflammation for my people with autoimmune inflammation. Excellent.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't ask this. I'm sure you get this question all time or it's annoying to have to answer, but what led you into the celebrities? How did that happen? How did you get into helping celebrities? So I, that's not annoying. I'm happy to answer it.

I really, I honestly don't even know, because I, guys, I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah, that's why it's interesting to me. It's like, if you were the heart of LA, I, okay, I get it, you know what I'm saying? But you're, I, no, I live in farm country. I live in the middle of nowhere. I really haven't changed what I've done in 13 years.

I don't know other than us, I think just being resolute and focused in our lane and provide great results and people that hear about it, it's just word of mouth. I, by no means is Western Pennsylvania, like the Venice Beach of these coasts. That is not Abbott Kinney out here. It's like farm country.

But, you know, I just love what I do. I'm passionate about what I do. And when I think there's something to be said about just staying in your lane, being laser focused, and I don't want to call it maybe, it's going to irritate some people. But the law of attraction, I think, does there's something there of like just being a great at your craft. And I'm not being arrogant.

I'm just saying I just live and breathe this stuff and I look at labs and get people better. So when people that the world would know here about this, they're going through the same crap that everybody else is going through. But the only difference is that the world pays attention when they talk about gut health. And so I think it's good because it raises awareness to other choices that people have in their

healthcare. Otherwise, like the random, like a lot of our patients actually are based in the Midwest where they don't have access to functional medicine. I had a group call yesterday and like 70% of the patients were in the Midwest, like in Minnesota, in Illinois, in Iowa, not coastal cities, that they just want access to this. And many of them wouldn't have ever heard about functional medicine if it wasn't for these people that the world would know.

So I think it can be used for a lot of good. Excellent. Well, this has been great, Will. Thanks for coming on the show. This has been awesome, man. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So your book can be found pretty much anywhere books are sold so yeah got got feelings you can get on Amazon Barnes and Noble target all the places and I'm really excited to have you guys on the art of being well my podcast as well Thank you appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. Thanks guys

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