The Dr. Hyman Show - Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Ask Mark Anything: Regaining Taste And Smell After Covid, Acid Reflux, And More

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

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Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to offer you a seven-day free trial of my revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus. For seven days you get special access to all the private content included in Dr. Hyman Plus entirely free. It's so easy to sign up. Just go to Apple Podcast on your phone and click try free button on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. You'll get exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes and functional medicine deep dives where a practitioner dives into topics like heart health, muscle health, insulin resistance, and more to help you understand the root cause of specific ailments and walk you through the steps to improve your health today. You'll also get access to all my Ask Mark Anything Q&As where

I answer the community's biggest health and wellness questions. Because I'm so sure you're going to love this platform, I am offering you free access to all of this content for seven days and a teaser of my brand new Ask Mark Anything episode. Head on over to the Doctors Pharmacy podcast on Apple podcast and sign up for your free trial. Okay, here we go. Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Ask Mark Anything. My name is Herschel Perth. I'm the Dr. Hyman Plus community manager, and I'm joined by Darcy Gross. Hi, Darcy. Hi. And she's one of the producers of our Longevity Roadmap docuseries. And of course, we're here with our expert, Dr. Hyman. Hi, Dr. Hyman. How's it going? All right. And our Dr. Hyman Plus community is watching live now. We want to thank

them all for submitting their questions for today's Ask Mark Anything. So let's go ahead and get started. So the first question is, Dr. Hyman, do you have any recommendations for getting your taste and smell back after having COVID-19? Yeah, that's a tough one. I think, you know, a lot of us experience loss of taste and hearing with COVID. Not everybody does. I didn't, but it happens. It usually comes back over time is my experience over the last two years. So I usually don't worry about it too much. And I reassure people sometimes there are therapies that can be very effective. You know, one of the things that can really help repair neurologic dysfunction in which, which this is because COVID affects the

nervous system is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And it's, it's been very effective for this kind of post COVID syndrome. Also ozone might be helpful. These are not really mostly affordable or accessible to most people. So I tell people, most people just wait it out, but if it really is disturbing and it's really problematic long-term, there are other therapies. And then there's things like exosomes, peptides, and other therapies that are a little bit on the margins of healthcare, but I think often work the best for post COVID, uh, lung or long COVID syndrome. Okay. Super helpful. Darcy to you for the next question. Awesome. Thank you so much. Um, so the next question from our community is,

is it possible to have recurring throat phlegm from acid reflux? And if so, do you have any recommended help for the reflux and or the phlegm? Yeah, of course, of course. Yes. And yes, I think we, um, you know, really have a crappy approach to reflux in traditional medicine. We use these drugs called acid blockers or PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, which suppress acid production and lead to a whole set of downstream consequences, including bacterial overgrowth in the gut and protein mal absorption, mineral absorption, B vitamin absorption problems like B12 absorption, pneumonia, osteoporosis. I mean, they're really bad news for long-term use. So from a functional

medicine perspective, when you have reflux, it can show up as that cough, congestion in your throat, but it's often treated best by addressing the root causes like we do in functional medicine. So what are the root causes of reflux? I wrote a whole textbook chapter for a medical textbook on this, and it's kind of a long list, but the first is to sort of stop those foods that even traditional doctors think or associate with reflux, including spicy foods, tomato-based foods, citrus foods, fried foods. All those things can be really effective in seeing if those are impacting your reflux, but it may not be that.

It can also be food sensitivities, gluten, dairy, other food sensitivities can play a big role. So those I also suggest people eliminate. And then it's important to look at whether or not you have an infection with a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori or H. pylori, which commonly can cause heartburn, reflux, ulcers. And that may need to be treated with antibiotics. It can sometimes can be treated with herbs. There are a lot of other things that can actually really help with reflux. Make sure you don't eat before bed, make sure you treat your food well, make sure, you know, some of you might need more digestive enzymes or hydrochloric acid

supplementation. Treating things like bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth can help. Getting your microbiome sorted is really important. So that all can be very helpful. I think there's some really simple remedies. Zinc carnosine can be helpful. Glutamine can be helpful. Licorice can be helpful. There's a really effective product called DGL or deglycerized licorice, which you chew almost like Tums, but that helps to kind of line the gastric lining and coat the lining and help with some of the reflux symptoms. So there's usually not a patient, I can't sort out the reflux. The problem is when you are on these drugs, PPIs, you can't get off them easily. They're almost designed to be addictive. They suppress the acid. When you stop them, the acid rebounds and you get way worse symptoms. So the key is slowly taper off them over time, maybe two or three weeks, and eventually you can get off them as you start to increase these other things. There's one product I like called Glutagenics, which has licorice,

aloe, and glutamine. Glutamine is used in, I usually like Japan as a traditional treatment for reflux. So that's an important amino acid that the gut uses to have energy and line the gut and create healing and repair. So Glutagenics, I love. These DGL tablets, I love. There are other ways to sort of support gut health, but that's sort of the summary. And I've had lots of podcasts on this, written lots of articles and blogs on it. So I encourage you to check those out too. And we'll link to those in the show notes.

Yeah, absolutely. That's super helpful. Have you ever found drinking apple cider vinegar with a meal is helpful for that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So many people find that effective. So I encourage you to try whatever natural remedies they want and see what works for them. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Hyman and back to you, Herschel. All right. So our next question is what are the possible causes of mucus in your bowels?

Well, I mean, the most common cause is colitis. Ulcerative colitis is a big cause or Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease. That would get me concerned. Often it's people who have dysbiosis or imbalances in their gut flora. They can have bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth. Various kinds of infections can do this. So I encourage people to make sure they get a good workup and find out what's causing it, because it can be something more serious that you might be missing. And even low-grade colitis can show up as mucus in your bowels. And if you have that, you know, I highly encourage people to not just jump on the drugs and steroids and these immune suppressants that we use to treat these inflammatory bowel diseases, but to actually

address the root cause. So there's a lot of data, for example, around diet and gut health. Amazing. Think about it. I've met gastroenterologists go, well, why would I care about food? Well, you're putting pounds of this stuff in the tube. It's your, your area of specialty. Why don't you think it affects it in some way? But there's a number of studies looking at the autoimmune paleo diet is very much like my 10 day detox diet, which eliminates grains and beans and dairy, gluten, sugar, alcohol, but this also eliminates eggs and nuts and seeds and, um, and nightshades. So that it's a more extreme version, but that can be often worth a try to see if it helps to reduce those symptoms. And then you can add things back and see what works or doesn't. Uh, there are many other ways to address the root causes. Often gluten is a big factor. There can be dysbiosis,

infections, heavy metals, toxins, all can cause autoimmune disease. So you kind of figure out what the root cause is, but it's not a benign symptom and it needs to be investigated. Yeah, super helpful. So definitely important to get a workup and figure out where this is coming from. Darcy, over to you. Yeah. So this next question, I'm just going to read it off. It's a little bit longer and then ask any follow-up questions if you missed the question. So you recently had a fantastic podcast with Chris Kresser on supplements and why they're necessary. And so the follow-up question is this particular community members's farmer's market doesn't actually offer organic produce.

So they've opted to purchase organic produce from the grocery store. But given the decrease in nutritional value of grocery store foods, are you better off buying non-organic local produce or continuing to avoid all pesticides and buying the organic produce at your grocery store? Yeah, I got it. local produce or continuing to avoid all pesticides and buying the organic produce at your grocery store? Yeah, I got it. So listen, in an ideal world, we'd all be eating local food that was regenerative and organic. Not always possible, but even in communities that may be underserved with farmers markets, organic food, there's often Walmarts and you don't like these big companies, but Walmart is the biggest organic grocery store in the country, maybe in the world.

And it often provides a source of organic produce at relatively lower costs. So I think that's a place to start in your community if you're really struggling to find organic food. I highly recommend eating organic food for a number of reasons. One, obviously, it's a cost issue and the prices are coming down, but Walmart's a good alternative for that. One, there's significant data on the harm of pesticides and herbicides and so forth on our health. And there's really no question about that. And if you are looking at how to sort of manage your budget, using the Environmental Working Group's guide called the dirty dozen and clean 15 to look at what are the 12 most contaminated conventionally grown fruits and vegetables,

avoiding those entirely. And then what are the clean 15? What are the ones that, you know, a banana or an avocado, even if it's not organic, it's not so bad because it has a coating on it and you can peel it and, and it doesn't have the contamination. So that's the clean 15 list. You can buy non-organic. So that's a way to sort of split hairs a little bit. I think it's better not to buy conventionally raised produce, honestly, for not only the reason of the pesticides and chemicals, but also the nutritional density.

We know that both the vitamins and minerals in the food are much higher in organic foods. And not only those, but the phytochemicals in food. Now, phytochemicals are super important for our overall health. They regulate so many biological functions. They're really like vitamins and minerals in my mind, but they don't call them essential. But we really need them if we want to maintain health, if we want to extend our lifespan and healthspan. And it turns out these phytochemicals, and there's 25,000 or who knows more in plant

foods, are incredibly important for regulating our immune systems, our gut microbiome, our brain function, many of our longevity pathways and switches. So we have the ability to use these plant compounds to help regulate our biology. And conventionally raised foods has very little of these. Organic has more, but non-organic is the same. There's a new framework for thinking about how we grow food called regenerative organic. And essentially that means that we leave the soil undisturbed, so no tilling. And you can have organic farms that are extensive and they're tilling, which is a problem. You leave the roots undisturbed in the soil.

You use cover crops, you do crop rotations, and you also use animals as an integrated strategy to build soil. So the key here is to build living soil. When you build living soil, it creates a whole symbiotic environment with the soil, the microbes in the soil, the fungi in the soil and the plants. And then that allows the plants to extract more nutrients, to build more phytochemicals, and to be way more nutrient-dense and healthy for us and healthy for the environment. Not only are you helping yourself,

but you're also reducing carbon in the atmosphere. You're increasing biodiversity on the farms. You're increasing the water content that's able to be held so we resist droughts and floods we prevent the runoff of nitrogen fertilizer into our waterways that has contaminated them and caused death of dead zones and death of fish you know in huge huge numbers so we really we really have a lot of benefit we can if we can start to move towards that and i'm working we're going to talk about it later but i'm working on policy that is really shifting our way of farming towards more regenerative. And that is going to be more and more out there right now. It's hard to, to find regenerative products, but

you know, you know, your local farmers market often are good. And I, I, like I said, even if you don't live in an area where they have that, uh, I hate to say it, but try Walmart. Yeah, for sure. And I think it also comes down to that supply and demand. So the more that we demand those types of regeneratively raised foods and meats, the more they'll have to supply it. And that just kind of, it's that full cycle where you just have to do, you have to start demanding it and then they have to respond. So yeah, love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Hyman and back to you, Herschel. All right. So our next question is about ozone water. So what's your take on drinking ozone water daily and does that help with leaky gut? Well, you know, ozone, first of all, what is ozone? People are thinking it's this toxic molecule that we should avoid that causes, you know, all kinds of health issues. And, you know, if the ozone layer is disrupted and we're seeing disturbances in that. And so people are kind of confused about what it is, but essentially it's this highly reactive molecule.

It's O3. It's actually been used in medical practice for well over a hundred years for various things, including infections back in World War I when they didn't have antibiotics. Nikolai Tesla invented the machine that is the ozone generator, but it's still on the margins of most of medicine. Now, you can take it many ways. You can take it IV. You can do it intramuscular. You can do it rectally. You can do it vaginally. You can put it in water. You can do it topically. I've had, for example, an infection in my foot when I was in Hawaii, and I was about to go get it surgically opened and cleaned out because it was really infected. And I just put on ozone gel one night, and the next

morning I woke up and it was almost gone. And then within a day or two, it was gone. So it was pretty shocking to see the effects of it. So ozone is very powerful. However, I think, you know, certain, certain areas of ozone therapy are less clear. And I think drinking ozone water for sure will purify the water. So whatever's in there, you're not going to get sick from anything in terms of the bacteria or parasites or whatever's in the water. So it's a great way to clean water. And it also can have some beneficial effects, but it's also a germicide. So I think I have some concerns about using ozone water as a drinking water on a regular basis because it does, it does kill bugs and it kills good bugs and bad bugs. So I, if you're going to do it, you want to make sure you're taking plenty of probiotics and not just using it alone. And I probably wouldn't recommend it

as my first option for treating leaky gut. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because it's taking out the bad and the good. So yeah, super helpful. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad free podcast episodes, plus Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly functional deep dive episodes. I guess that's why we call it Dr. Iman Plus. Then head on over to The Doctor's Pharmacy on Apple Podcasts and sign up for your seven-day free trial.

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