THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Gut Health for Mental Health w/ Dr. Amy Shah

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

I’ve got a GUT FEELING you’re going to really like this week’s episode.That’s because this week’s episode is all about GUT HEALTH featuring one of the TOP EXPERTS in the field, DR. AMY SHAH.DO NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY!If you want to take your health and wellness to an even higher level, you need to listen to this episode…Or if you’ve got some unexplained issues like fatigue, brain fogginess, discomfort of any type, aches and pains… You gotta listen to this!!After a serious car accident that jolted her into thinking about her life differently.  Dr. Shah realized while she didn’t sustain any physical injuries in the accident, mentally she wasn’t happy.  Against the backdrop of a busy schedule of studying for her medical boards and building a practice from scratch, her health was suffering.  She began struggling with WEIGHT GAIN, LOW ENERGY, and UNEVEN MOODS before coming to the realization she needed a complete mental, hormonal, and inflammatory reset. That led her to her life’s work, WELLNESS, and the strong MIND AND BODY connection necessary to achieve OPTIMAL HEALTH. Dr. Shah has become obsessed with creating methods and tools to help people move forward in their lives.  She has authored an incredible must-read book, “I’M SO EFFING TIRED:  A PROVEN PLAN TO BEAT BURNOUT, BOOST YOUR ENERGY, AND RECLAIM YOUR LIFE” named one of the five best business books of 2021 by FORTUNE MAGAZINE.  Using cutting-edge science, she has helped thousands of people tap into their powerful energy trifecta: the complex relationship between your GUT, your IMMUNE SYSTEM, and your HORMONES. Based on years of research Dr. Shah explains how your GUT and your BRAIN are connected.  You’re going to hear how your gut impacts your mental health, and how we think impacts our gut.We also cover why being exposed to BACTERIA is better for your immune system, how INFLAMMATION is linked to your gut bacteria, and what you can do to FIX YOUR GUT.You’re also going to get deep insights into Dr. Shah’s NUTRITIONAL RESEARCH, including what foods we should and should not be eating, and HOW WHAT TIME WE EAT AFFECTS OUR GUT.If you’re like a lot of people, you’ll also want to hear what Dr. Shah has to say about those dreaded SUGAR CRAVINGS and how they’re connected to our DOPAMINE PATHWAYS.  Make no mistake, your gut health does affect your LIFESPAN.  So, if you haven’t been doing a good job of taking care of it before now, what you learn on this week’s episode from Dr. Shah should be more than enough to get you thinking about gut health with a degree of urgency.

This is the Edmila Show. Alright, welcome back to the show, everybody. Today is going to be one of those shows that you're going to learn a ton about your gut and your mind and your happiness level and your overall well-being in ways probably that you never have before. And so I specifically invited Dr. Amy Shaw to be here today, who by the way is the author of I'm so effing tired, which you should go grab right away. But we're going to I actually come here today because this is a topic

I want to understand more because I've actually been struggling with it a little bit, frankly, myself. So welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. And it was a difficult journey to get here flying in. It I'm here. I'm happy. I got to use some of the mind gut connection tools that we'll talk about. Okay, let's get into these tools. So the first thing is, I was sort of surprised because I didn't realize this. You say that the gut has an impact on our mind and even as far as depression and mental health, mental wellbeing. and I did not know that. Absolutely. I mean, we always talk about mental health in the way of thinking differently,

or taking medications, but there are bacteria in your gut that actually determine what you're thinking, you're mood right now, your energy levels, even schizophrenia, neurological diseases, anxiety, depression, they can literally change your mood by just changing the bacteria in your body. It's crazy. You can transplant a mood from one person to the other. We're going to talk about fecal transplant later, because I didn't even know what the term meant to prepare for the interview today. But let's stay there for a second. So you're telling me that, because by the way, people that are listening to this are watching this, oftentimes are having these emotions and these feelings that potentially they think are triggered

by their environment, external environment. Someone cut me off on the freeway or I didn't get a promotion or, you know, I got a negative comment on social media, you're saying, maybe that's what it is, but it can actually be the bacteria in our gut that is actually signaling our emotions. How does that actually physically work? There are at least four different ways we know that the gut actually signals to the brain what we should be feeling at any particular moment. It produces serotonin, it produces dopamine. I mean, these are the things that we think about are produced only in our brain, but actually 90% of it is produced in our gut. And what it does is it sends signals.

They have ways to signal to the brain through the vagus nerve, through creating little vesicles that go traveled through the body and like inflammation. So using our immune system to communicate. So when you're trying to think about, oh, I'm anxious or I'm not feeling well, I'm not focused or I feel tired, one of the things you should do is start to think about how you could improve that gut bacteria because there's a direct correlation. I mean, there is a bacteria called acrimansia

and it actually has been shown to reverse neurological diseases because it produces this vitamin B3. Who knew that bacteria produce vitamins in our body, right? And this B3 nicotinamide goes to our brain and actually can help with the myelin sheaths on our axons in our brain. So it's like protecting those sheaths is so important as we age with dementia and with things like ALS and autism and neurological diseases. So this stuff is like

blowing open the entire world of how we think about our mindset and mood. And even like how we do work because we've been basically ignoring this data for so long. So we're on the track of killing these bacteria and stripping their functions. So basically we are working with a fraction of the bacteria we should be having. So this is so important for those of you to listen to this because you're most of my audience is pretty health conscious. Yeah. Try to eat right, train, you know, they read the good books, they listen to me, they do those other things. You use the term who knew. So I'm going to lay a foundation for that. Who does know and how long have we known? So you've been ignoring the data for a while, but my sense is, and this isn't, you know, this isn't the first time that I've had these thoughts or conversations,

but obviously to the depth that you're going to go today, how new is this thinking? How new is this space that you're in? Well, this lecture that I just mentioned to you acrimansia, it was named in 2004. So it was just discovered. And the links with autism and bacteria, it was lactobluxilous luteuride. I think that was in, that was about 10 years ago. So this is new stuff in medicine, anything 20 years or less is new. I went, it's, I'm going to age myself, but about 20 years ago when I graduated, it was not really talked about.

I mean, we didn't really, I mean, gut was gut. You know, if you had constipation diarrhea, then you deal with the gut. But you wouldn't think of it in terms of how we're focused or our energy levels are mood and America is facing like epidemic levels of anxiety and depression. There's a 30% rise in anxiety medications, a 20 something percent rise in depression medications where the unhappiest we've been in 50 years and 56% of Americans say that they have trouble with their mental health. So we're in a bad spot right now.

We're mainly treating that by trying to regulate the serotonin levels in someone's brain and instead of potentially looking at their gut health. So let's stay on that for a second. The reverse is also true, you believe, that the way that we think impacts our gut also. True. Isn't that fascinating?

Yeah, it is. To me, it's super fast. You could take people who believe in God or people who think positively or people who have a well, well-being mindset or self-reported. And you can identify them by their gut bacteria. So there's a study that actually looked at their gut bacteria and they said, oh, they look different in their diversity of how many bacteria there are and the prevalent species. And staying with schizophrenia, I mean, they can look at the gut bacteria of schizophrenics and non and not knowing who's who they were able to pick out the schizophrenic people.

Now, that's incredible. That's really, really incredible. The reason that I've told you that I've been struggling with this, so this is going to be interesting for my audience as well. I'd found out recently that I had H. Pylori, and so I was prescribed a huge course of antibiotics, like I think three at one time, really, really heavy. And I noticed, and by the way, I'm sort of like the king of mental health and how to think correctly and programming your mind and the particular activating system. And these are the things you're right. And I found myself having a really difficult time.

It's interesting because you were referred to me during this time. This is very recent. I was down waking up with like tremendous anxiety and I was, I would wake up with this anxiety and not know why I had it. And I'm almost creating things as I was coming out of sleep to be worried about, to be concerned about giving the given day. I'm like, this isn't me at all. And I'm trying every tool in my handbag that I've developed over all these years and they

weren't working. And so you would tell me that that is probably the fact that I've wiped out this bacteria in my gut that I need. So this is important for everybody. Let's talk about antibiotics in general and the impact they might have on other facets of our lives other than just getting rid of HPI lory or whatever that we have. Absolutely. And the sad thing is we're giving antibiotics to animals that are going to be, you know, our food in dairy and in meat. And we give it to children that are developing their immune systems. I mean, from zero to five, we can change our microbiome, but from zero to five, they

are forming the basis change our microbiome, but from zero to five, they are forming the basis of their microbiome. And if you're giving them different kinds of antibiotics and sanitizing everything they do, using antimicrobial cleaners for everything, you will change their microbiome in a negative way that could impact them for their entire life. And so that's food for thought for us in the last two years.

I mean, what damage have we done to our future population? Because we can recover somewhat. But when you're forming that zero to five, that's like the key time that you don't really want to be giving a ton of antibiotics during that time. Yet we give it out like, you know, still in medicine. It's pretty much given out to every single child. It's also given out to adults a lot too though, right?

So like, what's your opinion about that? Should we be prescribing antibiotics? And if someone listening to this is, this is, be honest, probably in the last year or two, a lot of people listen to this. We're prescribing antibiotics for something, right? So what would you say to them? Well, it's like anything. I feel that because it was so beneficial for so many years,

because it helped us live longer. I mean, people died from diseases that we could have prevented. Now it's gone to the other extreme, where there are people who are using antibiotics, antibiotics for things like, you know, when you have a viral infection, or when you just want to be Say for just insurance and that's really a dangerous path that we've taken not only for

You know for people who have opportunistic infections Because once you use a lot of antibiotics, they don't work anymore Yeah, but it's also because we are killing that exact bacterial colonies that are making us happy, that are making us satisfied. You know, when you come into hunger and cravings, we know obesity and cravings and, you know, eating disorders, they're all related to the gut.

Okay. So we're going to talk about that in a minute about sugar cravings and whatnot as well. So it's interesting you say this about antibiotics and the almost use of them like their vitamins or something. And again, I'm not qualified to know whether or not, you know, it's the degree to which it hurts us. But I add up doctor one time that every time I went to Mexico would give me like prophylactic antibiotics before I went down there.

You know what I'm talking about? I wasn't sick, but in case you might get sick when you go down there, take these before you go and take them while you're there. Yeah, and I think that's why this conversation is so important because I think now if you know this and I know this, next time we're offered an antibiotic, we might think twice like, hey, let me just wait out another week and see if I really need it because there are cases you are going to need it. So it's a case of over-Zellus prescriptions and it's really, really hurting us. Okay, so we now know that there's an emotional connection between our gut and our lives. We

know that now and our brain. So we've established that, which is, you know, for most people listed as probably a revelation for most people. We also know that the antibiotics are going to monkey with those bacteria in there to some extent and potentially could eliminate the ones that serve us. You said something earlier that was just really striking to me, which is that you tell me anti bacterial stuff that we're spraying all over

everything right now in our culture. If you had one of those businesses the last 24 years, your stock's gone up big time, right? So, educate us a little bit more about it. Let's go down that road a little bit more, especially with our children, but even with us as adults too, I didn't even think about the impact on your gut when you're doing that. So, let me give you a really great example.

Turn of the century in London. This doctor notices that all his patients that have asthma and allergies and immune issues, the children were all the rich kids from the city, London. And all the farm kids didn't have those issues and he saw a striking difference. And so he created this hypothesis, the hygiene hypothesis, that you don't want to be too clean. You want, and they proved it that the more siblings you had, the more you lived on farm and had dirt in your environment, the more people, siblings, friends, visitors, the more bacteria you shared in your food, the better it was for your immune system. And they said these, and he couldn't exactly know what the rich kids were doing differently,

or the parents were doing for the kids, but he knew that there was something that they were doing wrong because their immune systems were reacting. And that's what it was. Okay, so let's take it. Let's really go there then. So during the pandemic, we kept kids away from each other in schools, right? And so I'm sure they're passing some of this bacteria to one another in the normal structure of school when children go to school that they probably weren't passing to one another, of course, when they weren't there. So I'm curious as to what you think the potential impact of that window of time was or even maybe for those of us that may face something like this again, you know, the ramifications of keeping them away from each other. Am I right? They must pass bacteria to one another. Huge, huge, huge ramifications. If you think there is a study

so fascinating, um, path, licking the pacifier of your baby. So a lot of people when they, um, have a pacifier that falls or needs a sanitization, they actually checked and they saw that the gut microbiome of those children was more diverse and healthier because their healthy parents were passing on the germs. And this is, I mean, if you said that during this time where you're supposed to share saliva with someone who's healthy people would think you were crazy.

You would be banned from entering like... Good, I'm a good parent because I've done that crap. Yeah, I totally have done that. Yeah, like sharing spoons, you know, that whole thing with someone healthy. So when you talk about transplanting bacteria, you're actually transplanting bacteria from a healthy person to another healthy person and your children need that. That's what breast milk is so great for children because you're not only giving them the bacteria in your breast milk, but also from your skin.

Oh my gosh. So, wow. So there is a danger in not having these children pass bacteria to one another on a regular basis. Absolutely. I mean, that's incredible. There's so much data that having children together or having more siblings or having animals in the home

have, even going to daycare because they're around each other is really beneficial to the immune system. And so we won't see the ramifications of this until at least 10 years after they had to experience. How mainstream is what you're telling me? In other words, if I put 10 doctors in this room right now, how many of them would go, no, she's right, and how many of them would go. Because by the way, new ideas also are controversial in the beginning. How controversial is what we're talking about right now? Or is it a mainstream thought?

Well, the hygiene hypothesis is a very mainstream thought. When I entered, I went to Columbia for immunology training and that was the driving hypothesis. And that time, we were studying whether pollution can then affect your immune system in the way. So how does pollution play into it? Is that affecting the hygiene of hypothesis or is it making it worse or better?

What about being around cockroaches or that kind of thing? So there's so much out there, but we know the hygiene hypothesis is still the running, leading hypothesis of why there's so many allergies and asthma and even autoimmune diseases now. What about inflammation in your body? Inflammation.

So inflammation is such a, I mean, people have heard this, but do we really know what inflammation even is? So one thing I'll tie back to the gut bacteria because that's the easiest way to think about it. One of the ways that the gut bacteria communicates with your brain is through inflammation, meaning it tells a, um, some cells in your body that, hey, things aren't going well. There's something going on here. And that, uh, immune cells send signals to the brain and says, traveled all the way and says, Hey, things aren't going well. She probably shut

down. She probably go to sleep, be tired, because we need to fix the problem. So inflammation is directly linked. Your gut bacteria are like a walkie-talkie, constantly communicating with your immune system about what's going on. And that's why food and the practices we do becomes paramount in that way.

And have you ever noticed, I don't know how you transformed it, but I know that a lot of transformations, mental and life transformations, start when you start changing your diet. 100% and you start to feel better and then you start to think better and you're, well, I don't like what I'm doing. And you start to make changes in your life and it kind of goes from there and that makes biological sense. What I love about you is a lot. But one of the things I love about you, I love brilliant people who don't feel the need to have to sound brilliant. In other words, really, truly brilliant people understand very complex things and are able to explain them in understandable ways

without having the need to sound sophisticated when they say it. That's true brilliance. And you do that. You take this very complex, very complicated, very nuanced topic and you explain things in a way that almost everybody can understand, including somebody like me. And if I can understand it about anybody, can I, right? So let's stay on it, but let's talk about some solution.

So you talked about food, but before we go to food, because we're gonna talk about that. And that's a big it, but let's talk about some solutions. So you talked about food, but before we go to food, because we're gonna talk about that, and that's a biggie, everybody. But what is the main solution? If I'm, because it's a science that's sort of like, you can't always measure all of it, right? So I'm, maybe I'm bloated, or I'm inflamed, or I'm fatigued, or my emotions aren't in check.

That sounds like it could be different bacteria for different things, right? They all have a different name on them. So is there like a package solution? Like do you just, do you take probiotics? Like, what do you do if it's an emotional thing or a physical thing? Well, the hundred billion dollar industry

of medications and probiotics will tell you it's probiotics, but really we don't have a probiotic solution yet. In fact, some of the probiotic solutions that they've looked into actually don't work as good as dietary changes make sense, right? When you're eating the bacteria like through fermented foods or which I'll talk about, then you're actually keeping it in your gut. Whereas if you're throwing a probiotic, and it's almost like throwing seeds out of an airplane at 10,000 feet, like you hope

that something sticks, but you're just kind of throwing it. That's what I would think. Yeah, some of it's flying in the wind, and that's what probiotics are. And right now, we still don't have a one-shot solution to fixing that gut. One of the things that are counterintuitive besides diet is this concept of circadian rhythms, the sun. That piece is super easy. It can improve your brain health in ways that you know you subjectively know when you go out and get some sunshine in the morning. First thing, it resets your entire body, your brain, your gut bacteria, and you know, every cell in your body has a clock that needs to see that sun. And even if it's a cloudy day, people message me all the time on Instagram, oh, but I live

in a cloudy overcast place. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be bright. It can be overcast gray, raining, whatever it is. But that natural light is very different from the artificial light that we get indoors. And if you are indoors all the time, which again, we were, you will break the clocks. You will damage the clocks. You will damage the gut bacterial clocks. And you will end up with high rates of obesity and diabetes and

high cholesterol and all of the things that we don't want that we're trying to battle. It's actually going way up by not paying attention to this. Okay, you're awesome. So, so let's say those of you that work in an office building all day long, you need to hear what she just said. Those of you that work in cities really need to hear what she just said But I want to understand this a little bit deeper. I know that we have circadian rhythms Are you saying the bacteria itself has its own circadian rhythm? Yeah, come on crazy the bacteria itself They they these bacteria. Okay, by the way, we have 100 trillion and their genes outnumber the stars in the universe Okay, They have personalities. They have

food preferences and they need sun and dark just as much as we do. Oh my goodness. What's the foods then? Yeah, they they're starving to death actually because in 97% of Americans, we're not eating enough of what it eats as its primary food, which is fiber. Fiber is stripped away to give you white sugar, to give you refined flour, to give you all the conveniences of today. So when you think about it that way, it makes so much sense that diseases are going up, anxieties going up, fatigue is going up, depression is going up. Look at our food supply. Look at how much processed food we're eating, fiberless food. And now it's gotten to the point where 97% of Americans are not getting even the minimum

amount of fiber that you need to keep those bacteria alive. So should we be eating more celery or should we like take a fiber supplement? Yeah. Whatever I say fiber people are like, what brand do you recommend? No, I'm not talking about a brand. It's literally free.

I mean, or low cost. You eat the food. So when you're eating a broccoli, it has fiber in it, right? But when you're eating a white table sugar, it does not have any fiber. It's removed. So the sugar cane that it came from had tons of fiber. Have you ever had raw sugar cane?

It's like the most fibers thing you could ever eat, right? You have to chew it, and there's a ton of fiber. But what we wanted to do is make it easy, you know, of convenient, and so we just tripped it all away. Same thing with wheat, you know, you take real wheat and wheat, it's very fibers. So we basically took real food, stripped off the fiber, and that's what we're eating as food like substances, which is not feeding that bacteria.

And not only is that bacteria dying, it's growing the wrong kinds of bacteria that's sending inflammation signals to the brain. That's making us depressed. That's making us sick. So it's just insane how this knowledge can literally smart entrepreneurs who's listening to this might say, oh, well, why the heck are we marketing this to all these health conscious people?

Why don't we start making foods that have prebiotic fiber, which is the food for the gut bacteria. What about real fermented foods in the diet? They just publish a study that showed that six fermented foods a day, which is like unheard of for most people, and I'll tell you what fermented food is. That was the amount of food that it would take to really grow and flourish that gut bacteria. And six fermented foods is like sourcrout, kimchi, kombucha, you can get probiotic yogurt, cottage cheese, you can even get probiotic cheese, which is like gouda.

And you can eat pickle, anything that has live bacteria is actually so good for the gut even better than just eating fiber is adding those foods and not notice I didn't say any brands any pills anything you have to buy it's literally the food that you eat. How long does it take to fix? Do we know? Well, there's it can change in those littleist three days. No, so they took a group of people who were on a Western very unhealthy diet, which is kind of extreme.

And they changed them to completely healthy, plant focused, whole foods diet. And they saw in three days of market change in their gut microbiome. Okay. Is I feel like there's we're going so fast, right? Because I just have all this stuff on my own for my own health and for the better listening to this. So, okay, first off, I think I might have a gut issue because I'm someone listening, they say I'm bloated, or.

By the way, the inflammation topic, what's not a move off of that yet? Most, it's pretty, it's a consensus now that inflammation is a playground or feeding ground or the environment of disease in our body. So that's why inflammation matters so much everybody, if you're wondering why we covered that earlier. But is there a test I can take that tells me I'm right. Hey, I think this, I think some of my anxiety or I think some of my bloating or I think some of my fatigue could be in my gut. Is there a test that we can take a blood

test, something that would indicate that that's accurate? I'm smiling because that's also the other $100 billion question is who can come up with the best FDA, you know, reproducible. There's many tests out there and a lot of people will spend thousands of dollars on testing. Yeah. And you know, you come up with maybe some answers, but really it's not clear. There needs to be an Apple, you know, a company that just kind of comes into the scene and takes over and that's a standard, but we don't have that yet.

Okay. So you want to be more listening? Yeah. So many ideas. Yeah. Seriously, you want to be more listening? Yeah, so many ideas. Yeah, seriously, you want to be more of entrepreneurs for all of problems. Okay, so let's assume that I'm pretty sure that I got an issue. There's controversial solutions.

Well, non-controversial is eat-for-mentored foods. Non-controversial is stop eating process stuff, stop pounding so much sugar. Oh, yeah, and alcohol too. Oh no, no, we need to delete that. No way, but it's not no alcohol. You can have alcohol. It, the longest living people in the world,

most of them have alcohol. But our relationship to alcohol is really poor in this country. Even more so than Europe and other countries around the world. So we have a problem with our dopamine connection to alcohol, but alcohol itself can be quite healthy in small amounts. It's just the excess that we're dealing with. What does it do if you drink it in excess? How does it affect your gut health?

It kills a good gut bacteria. It grows the bad ones. Does it really? Yeah, that's important to know. Because it's sugar in a lot of it too. Yeah, the sugar, the additives, and the alcohol itself, actually. So you end up so high sugar, high, you know, poor fats, meaning, you know, the refined processed fats and high alcohol intake is three things that are going to kill your gut.

When they look at hunter-gatherer societies, which are the people that live closest to maybe how we used to live before, their guts are full of bacteria much more than ours and they're diverse, all different types of bacteria. So they're thinking that that's how we were before, and now we have kind of shrunk it down because of all our refined diets, our stress levels, pollution, maybe there's a lot of talk about, you know, additives and foods, plastics, whatever. But now we don't have as much. And alcohol, sugar, high fat, high processed diets are worsening the problem. Okay.

I'm wondering about time of eating, if it has any impact. Meaning, we're talking about the circadian rhythm of food, of us of our gut. What about when we eat food? Is there any impact on that like pre-sleep eating and things of that nature? Absolutely. Okay. So you hit the nail on the head. If you're like, hey, I want to start, I don't know where to start. Yeah. Start with the circadian rhythm thing because you don't have to even change your diet per se. You literally stop eating two to three hours before bed.

Even more if you can handle it, like that's the hardest time of day because most people are eating the bulk of their calories in the evening. But if you can move up that dinner time, give it at least two to three hours and let your body overnight rest and recover. In the morning, you know, hunter gatherer said, we didn't just roll out of bed and have a pop tart orange juice. Like, you know, you'd go out and you'd forage or you're, you're bring food back for your family. So maybe you don't eat right the first minute you wake up, but you go for a fasted workout. You maybe do your mindset work. Maybe you do your, you know,

get your mind right, whatever your morning routine is, and then you break your fast a little bit later. That would be the ideal way to do that, because these bacteria, like I said, they have, they need sleep, they have on and off. I mean, they're literally little, like living beings. So crazy. How do you know all this, by the way? I mean, by the way?

I mean, by that is what research have you done? In other words, not in other words, those words. What has made this your study? And what about you is so unique, because you came so referred to me, not just by one person, or you know who it ends up, it asked me to finally meet with you.

But your name had come up several times for me prior to that. So I'm just curious, where does all this come from with you? And are you researching this stuff? Or are you writing about it? Yeah. I want to know about that. That's a great question. Um, I'm one of the very rare people who did nutrition school before going to medical school.

And that back then that was like unheard of nutrition was like a soft science. Yeah. And medicine, especially in the places that I trained. I mean, these were real academics. These were people looking at cell cultures, you know. And so that's what I did. I looked at cell cultures, but I looked at how hormones influenced it,

how nutrients influenced it. And I was in the lab at Columbia, like looking at cell cultures, but at that time, nutrition was kind of like, you know, yeah, okay, yeah, what you, you know, this is kind of not a serious topic. And I was already an outsider as it was. I mean, imagine going to these places, you know, the harvors and Columbia's and being super small, petite, Indian. I didn't look the part, I didn't act the part and I didn't have the same interests as most of the people around me. And so that made me motivated to kind of find some solutions.

It came from being obsessed with figuring out why it was that some people could be healthy and eat all the sugar or processed foods they wanted. And then in my family, everyone died at the age of 60 from diabetes and heart disease. And they were thin people. That you wouldn't even look twice about, you know, they're not the people that were super unhealthy. And so that was what initially sparked my interest. And now

Neutrisms become so invoked. I'm so excited because the the field has just blossomed. So then I went to Immunology Fellowship. Then I started my practice and I saw this in real life, like people coming in with serious issues with their immune system and inflammation that really could be solved with lifestyle and dietary measures. But the modern medical world is still stuck in the funding comes from companies where how do you do research?

Like if you think about it, how do you get funding from research, either governmental agencies give it to you, which they do, or you get grants from. Pharmaceutical companies. Yeah, and big companies. And my first nutrition seminar, I remember going to Boston, it was in Boston,

and I remember walking in to this, the whole convention center, and everything was sponsored. It was Kellogg's and Kraft, and every single company you could think of was sponsoring a booth or the session, and then you wonder why our nutrition recommendations were so skewed and certain.

It's so true. I think you're so special because I'm thinking the big lobbies, you know, the serial companies, the Kellogg's of the world, all the pharmaceutical companies, there's just not a big enough apple or cell re-laby, right? Like, yeah.

The companies, they give us the big, there's no cellry lobby doing research. What I'm saying is completely something that I don't make money from. So that's why it's not really motivational to a lot of people because, but like I said, we know entrepreneurs are savvy. And I know that someone could create something really healthy that could help our gut. You I, I'm such an amateur. And after my book, everybody was asking me, hey, you talk about this spice tea called chai.

How do I make it? So I made a small batch and it got sold out within one round. Then I made a second, third. And now I have this little business of making healthy chailate. And it's literally because there's such a need. I mean, we need transparency. We need things that actually are real food and not full of fillers and additives. And so I know that there's, we can change if we just put our minds together. And you know that I know your background, but I want everybody to hear it. So that's why

I asked the question. But I, that's's talk a little bit more on the food thing. We're gonna go through a bunch of solutions now, everybody back to back to back. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about fibrous foods, chai tea. Okay, so is there any other super food or something we think we should ingest, or is there something we should be ingesting?

Is there another thing other than processed foods don't ingest? Okay. So sugar. Cut out the refined sugar completely. You don't need it. I mean, if it's like refined sugar means like not the sugar that's in your apple, that's cool. It's the sugar that, you know, when you go to McDonald's and get the shake, that's so I know you know, but I'm just saying to people because people say, well, there's sugar and fruit. Yes, the sugar and fruit is okay because it's coupled with fiber. Okay, and then you really do want to add those fermented probiotic foods. And this is crazy because this is something you might not have

heard of because this is new research. Six servings was the best case scenario for your gut health. So one kombucha would be two servings. Okay, so if you had one kombucha, you could have two servings. Then maybe you have one kimchi, maybe you have one, like nancy's, there's some brands that make the probiotic cottage cheese or probiotic yogurt. You can add it. It has to say that it has bacteria because there's a lot of yog. It has to say that it has bacteria because there's a lot of yogurts in our world that have zero bacteria. And same thing with pickles,

a lot of pickles are just, you know, pickles, but they're not actually containing bacteria. Okay. And you want to include, you know, a few servings of that a day. Daily. Daily. And really changing your gut bacteria.

And then fiber fiber is maybe the easiest yet the hardest one because when you say fiber it's like overwhelming like what do you mean fiber means vegetables like we already know that there are vital chemicals in vegetables polyphenols and vegetables that are going to cure you of diseases right we have evidence but we now know that it also feeds that good gut bacteria. So you could have, you know, you should have up to six servings of vegetables a day. That means breakfast, lunch, dinner. You're having some vegetables.

Fruits are also in that category, spices. Now, spices, a special thing about spices is that it works like a prebiotic food for that gut bacteria. And it also is a direct anti-inflammatory. One teaspoon of turmeric is equal to 30 to 60 minutes of exercise. Oh my gosh. It's not crazy. I mean, and we talk about exercise. Like, everyone should be doing that.

And we know that, right? That's the other thing that can really grow your gut bacteria is going outside and exercising getting sunlight in nature so I'm putting them all in one category but really it's exercise has separate effects sunlight has separate effects nature has separate effects but put all those three together and you can kind of multitask your busy I'm busy the first thing I do in the morning is I try to get a little bit of a fasted workout outdoors with the natural light to multitask all of that to improve my gut bacteria. Okay. Fasted workout outdoors.

I can add that. I'm fasted workout, but I can start doing that outdoors. Yeah. Just a small part of it outdoors doesn't have all the outdoors. By the way, you want to know, find that lab test I can test for this stuff too. Will you please do that? Yes. Please.

Okay, you're so special, it's so awesome. So I want to keep going. By the way, the revelation for everybody to listen to this, at least as a baseline should be, I need to be looking at my gut health in all these other areas of my life. It is affecting me emotionally, mentally, my energy, my focus.

That's another area, guys. Your ability to be focused. So okay, someone's listening and they go, all right, I got it. Sunlight, I don't eat that much processed food. I am pretty good on fiber. I am doing all this other stuff. So let's take it a little deeper to some of the other stuff.

So you talk about fecal transplants in the book. Now this is just so everybody gets the concept and I think everyone's gonna rush out and go to another country and get a fecal transplant, which is not FDA approved in the United States if you're listening in the book. Now this is just so everybody gets the concept. I think everyone's going to rush out and go to another country and get a fecal transplant, which is not FDA approved in the United States if you're listening to the US. But I think it proves the principle of healthy in healthy gut, right? So what is a fecal transplant? And why is this working in other countries? And it's not approved in the US, but it'll probably, well, I'll let you answer whether it will be or should be.

So, think about the schizophrenia example that we gave. When you transplant, so they couldn't transplant the gut from a schizophrenic person to another person, because that's illegal. So what they did is they actually took that microbiome and they put it in a mouse. And then they took a non-schizophrenic person and they took that microbiome and put it in a mouse. And then they took a non-skitsophrenic person and they took that microbiome and put it in a mouse and they mixed up the mice and you were able to see schizophrenic behavior in the mice that got the gut microbiome from the schizophrenic human. I mean, it's just crazy. So if you think about it, then you're like, well, can't we cure depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, neurological diseases just by transplanting them a new gut microbiome?

So that's where the possibility lies. The science is so new. And here, there's a lot of forces that are blocking it. And some of it is commercial forces. They don't, people don't want you to be able to do that because it would stop their entire industry. Correct. But there are cases, there's a few cases in America that you are allowed to get a fecal transplant. It's if you have this very severe intractable GI illness,

you're allowed to get it. And we don't really know how to transplant the bacteria just yet, but right now how we do it is a fecal transplant. We basically, you do a colonoscopy on a patient, which you've probably gotten or know someone who's gotten. And then you transfer those materials to a healthy, you know, person that's your relative that you trust, you're not going to transplant, at least not as of today. You can't really just transplant from anyone or there's no bank per say.

But the potential is crazy. I think of even people with Crohn's disease some days, things of that nature, right? Exactly. that's, I mean, mental health disorders, neurological disorders, and of course, GI disorders can be really influenced by this. Well, I think what it does is what I was saying when I introduced the topic was it almost sort of puts to bed the notion of whether this is speculative. Yeah.

Right, like, we, if we're doing things like that and seeing results, then we know that the health of that area of our bodies is affecting every other area of our body. And it's really the future of medicine. That's my sense. My sense is the future of medicine. I think we're gonna learn things about heart disease and cancer and all kinds of other things

from the same space in our bodies, which we know a little bit about now. Yeah. Okay, another level. Psychobiotics. Yes. What are they? Psychoiotics is this concept of, can you take a bacteria, ingest a bacteria and change the outcome in your brain? So they did this with the ALS. ALS is a cute, myelinating,

dem myelinating process that we have no cure for. They found in mouse models that you could give those people acrimansia, which is a spectrary that produces the B3, and it was able to pre-match reverse Ls in that model. They did the same thing with a mouse model of autism, because as you know, there's so much research going on, and they found this one bacteria lactobacillus root-ry, and they supplemented with that. In the animal model, they were able to, in a small scale, reverse those symptoms. And so that's where it becomes interesting, like, when we have anxiety, what if we could take a psychobiotic? And during that time, we could, you know, improve our diet, do all the other things

that we're supposed to do. But what if that was able to help us get through? And so this is where the things that I know we can do today is you can increase your bacteria about the food you eat by the people you spend time with, by sharing, you know, food, it's a, it's a mini fecal transplant, right? When you share foods with healthy people. So communities, probably-

Is that what you mean by, please share, spend time with, you know, some other mental outlook, you're talking about the fact that you're actually sharing bacteria with these people. And, you know, remember we talk about where the product of our environment, but in biologically speaking, it's probably because we're the product of the gut bacterial transfer from the people that we're hanging out with. Well, that's interesting because I was told that that H. Pylori that I had was actually

transferred between probably me and my wife because it can be transferred even through saliva, right? Yeah. So I'm fascinated by this topic. Right. And that makes you think like, oh, when there's children, shouldn't we be giving them a lot more shared food? And you know, all the way, the most like I told you, zero to five is that very, very malleable time that we could really be improving the health of our future leaders and our future.

People, parents don't do it though because kids are sick, right? So they're like, they're going to get germs or they're going to get sick. So that's the thinking. You're saying that the bacteria they get from one another far outweighs the potential of them passing a cold to one another. For example, when I have two kids and when they were young, if I had a cold or I was sick, I would not share my food or any kind of water, but all the other times, I was trying to give them as many things of shared food as possible.

That's incredible. And that's why people that live in more crowded households seem to do better with their immune system and less inflammation. It's very interesting to science. I mean, what we could do for our minds personally and what we could do for the future is just insane. That's so true. That's really interesting. So shared food. Nothing in my research on this topic and preparing for you talked about hydration or water. Is there no impact on that or is dehydration lack of water extra water? How's that impact? Even minor dehydration makes you more tired, less focused, more able to, you know, blood sugars are higher. So hydration is extremely important and super inexpensive. And it's almost like we don't, the idea of eight glasses a day is obviously,

if that's not scientific. So you could have 10 glasses and I might need six because I'm smaller or I, you know, I might have all these other drinks in a day and then supplement with egg glasses. So it's really not about how much, but it's, you want to be hydrated enough that when you go to the bathroom, it is light yellow, and that's the key to really maintaining good mental state and also to helping your cravings and appetite if that's something that you're trying to watch. If you have a real sugar craving, you have an issue.

Is that an accurate thing? If you have this craving of sugar, that's an indicator. Oh, yeah, I have a good test for it. Do you have a food that you love so much that it's almost an uncomfortable feeling when you get it? It's like pleasure mixed with a little bit of anxiety. So it's like that feeling of, oh my god, should I be eating this? Is it and am I gonna get more later? Is this a bad food for me? It's it's like that kind of feeling and people will get that with alcohol

People will get that with certain food. They love so much But they know that they have kind of a hard relationship with and that's your dopamine pathway. And dopamine pathways are really interesting for food companies because dopamine pathways make you take action. They make you get up whatever you're doing and drive to the store and buy that food that you're craving. That's a dopamine craving. And so when you identify your dopamine cravings, that's a signal to you that those foods might be triggering a brain pathway. That could be negative in your mind. And so for it might be as benign as a warm chocolate chip cookie and you say, you know what?

I'm only going to have that once a week because I know that if I keep a whole bunch in the house, my dopamine pathway gets activated. And I all I think about is that food. And that's that's drugs, alcohol and foods. When it triggers that dopamine pathway and what triggers dopamine pathway, high sugar, high fat, high salt, especially when it's all combined. So the food companies actually test which things are going to activate that. Because that means that they're gonna buy it,

they're gonna order, they're gonna stand in line, they're going to, you know, the whole thing. You're amazing. I went earlier about what created you. And they're like most people, I know most people listen to this, especially if they see this too. They're going, what a really unique, brilliant woman. And you can tell like, this is one of these things.

You're going to be on my show many times over the next 10 or 20 years because this area is going to be the area. We're going to, we're going to unravel that there's anti aging elements to this. There's longevity. Yeah, we even talk about that. We haven't even gone there, which we still can for a minute. But this, you were doing okay in life, and then you have this incident. So for a lot of people, this is off the, we're going to move

just for a second away from this to you. But I think obviously people that have listened to this so far, one of their takeaways is this woman is super impressive, right? And you were, do you have a pretty good life going? and then an event took place for you. And just tell us, tell, I know, but tell the audience what happened. So long story short, I am an Indian South Asian immigrant to the US. And so we started out at this very low place, which I never thought of as low,

but looking back at it. And when I tell the stories, yeah, yeah, it was, we lived in this motel that was converted into apartment building. And, you know, I worked myself up. I didn't have any connections. And I went to all these schools and top level training, medical school, double board certified.

And I got a job. And I was like, you know, at the outside, it was like the peak in my field. That was the peak. And I was miserable. I was exhausted. I was unsatisfied. And I was thinking to myself, this can't be what success is. But I didn't know what to do to get out of it. Like, I couldn't imagine that for the next 25 to 30 years, I would have to live in this space of what I was doing on a daily basis, how I was feeling. And during that time, I had a very, very serious life threat and cracks in it.

And it happened because I was driving so frantically to pick up my kids, and I had stayed late for a meeting that I was asked to stay. You know, I was a new partner in my practice. They were like, let's do an impromptu meeting. I didn't have the guts to even say, oh, I have to go pick up my kids, the center closes at six. And so I was racing late,

and I was thinking of the lady judging me, the partners judging me, and all I was at, you know, when you're driving, you're not really paying attention, you're just thinking in your head. I was taking a left turn, and I got into this huge a car hit me and Literally it felt like I was spinning for hours, but it was really seconds probably and the first thing I did is I checked

You know, I had all the airbags went off. I had a glass all over me first thing in my mind was You know, I still have I have to go get my kids like I have to, and my mind was still racing. And for that week afterwards, I just start to myself, what am I doing? I have to retrain, I have to go back and figure out what success really means to me and what it's going to take to get there. And so that's when I pivoted. And I think a lot of people can say, you know, success is not necessarily getting to the peak of your field or getting to some accolades or money. It's really freedom. It's, you know, health, it's feeling alive, feeling like you're doing something with a purpose. And so I've spent the next 10 years pretty much rerouting myself and go, which was a dumb

decisions in some people's eyes, but I feel like I'm doing something that I really feel passionate about. And then last year I came out with the book. So credible. I think I should give people hope because we're seeing someone who's so clearly doing what they're calling us now. And to know that you had to go through that event. And if you are listening to this and, you know, you've got this thing you think you should be doing and you're not doing, you don't have to wait for a car accident or some, you know, traumatic event in your life just to make a decision, hey, I'm going to step into this new person. I'm going to begin to pursue my calling, pursue what my giftedness is because clearly, you

know, I think the happiest people identify with their gifts and talents and interest star and then use them in the service of other people. Absolutely. And that's really what you're clearly doing as we're sitting here today. And that's the whole point of it, right? Because I could literally, the easiest thing I could do right now is make a probiotic, or join a company that sells psychobiotics.

But that would be doing a disservice to the entire this whole field and my audience and the people who trust me, I feel like my role is to give you information because we know that it's not as easy as just giving a medication. If it was, we would have been all cured of depression and diabetes and all the things.

It's so much more than that. You're so much more than that. I can't even believe how good this has been. I don't want it to end though. So I'm going to ask you another question. So I don't want to tell you. We talked about longevity. And do you live shorter life, shorter life if you have issues in your gut and do you live a longer life if you have the healthy bacteria in there? Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are blue zones around the world, you know, the five different blue zones that people live. But most people may not know what that is.

So you have to live right on the front. It's the areas of the world that national geographic is identified as these special zones where people live well above 100 centenarians, the highest concentration of centenarians. And it's not just about living long, right? None, I don't know about you, but I don't wanna just live long. It's like you wanna live well when you're living long. So they look to some of these common characteristics. And so much of it is what we just talked about,

you know, they have connection. So connection is not only good for your mental health, but it's good for your gut health, right? They, their diets are full of fiber, and we are doing the exact opposite of every centenarian society. And so we can say that there are things that improve longevity,

that aren't even diet related. So this connection piece is where that gut brain, connection and mindset kind of come together because without connection, you don't live a long healthy life. And that not only means we don't know right now what that means. Does that mean that you're gut bacteria die off or that you don't have enough diversity because you're not around people? Or is it that connection strengthens your gut, brain connection? There's all these plausible ideas, but we know that you need just a few. You don't need to have a thousand friends, but in those communities, they have roles, they have a purpose,

and they have some of the people that are just know that they're not around, if they're not around. And I think we've lost that, you know. I do. I totally agree with you. And how much of us, really, how many of us are really spending any time on mindset, except for your listeners, you and I, we know the power of this, but in mainstream, medicine and wellness, say you go to your doctor and you want to live a long, healthy life, I doubt that a lot of them are going to talk about mindset work as you know number one through 20 They're going to maybe tell you about a vitamin or something you should prevent and It's because the data is just so hard to measure right we know that religion is good for your health We know that connection is good for your health. We know having passion is good

Good for your health and mental health, but it's hard to quantify that. So that's why in medicine, we don't talk about it. Well, that's what makes you so unique. It's what made your work jump off the page to me was like, oh my gosh, she says your mind actually affects your body and your body affects your mind. And most people don't get either one of those two things or just prescribing medication. When there's an ailment that comes up and then that medication is probably hurting your

gut health even worse. And it's the cycle that just, we continue to plug leaks in our lives, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Okay, last thing. What did I not ask you today? Oh, God. That I should have asked you

or something that you want to add to the conversation because this is new territory for most people. And even for me, in reading your book, it explained a lot of things about myself to me. Different times I've had different emotional states and fatigue, especially for me. I think, I'm working so hard. That's why I'm fatigued. Well, you know what, there have been periods of my life where I've worked the hardest that I had, I didn't have fatigue. It was actually some gut health issues with me. I know this for a fact. I can actually trace most of the fatigued times of my life to around the time I had taken antibiotics.

I'm not going to get into all the details of that, but there's a relationship there, especially in my body. So what else would you add that I didn't get to ask you that I should have or anything you want to close things up with? I've never asked that at the end of an interview. I know. I'm not prepared. By the way, thank you so much for you should be my new hype person because like throughout the I was like wow

I feel so good about myself right now. Well, you should thank you. I Think the biggest thing to think about is the when we had talked about Eastern medicine We touched on it when we first started off air and this concept in Western the our world is that when you have muscles, when you look fit is when you are healthy, right? But healthy is a lot more than that. It's your mind. How healthy is your mind? How is your relationship to the entire world? Like, if people think you're a jerk, you know, or if people think you're a jerk, you know, or do people think you're a nice person

or a helpful person? Health is so much more than just fitness. And in America, we think about health as fitness. You're right. It's not, but in the Eastern traditional cultures and Chinese medicine Ayurveda, it's about being happy. It's about being happy. It's about feeling good in your body,

being in harmony with your community and the earth. And so I think that kind of opened my eyes to think, wow, yeah, this is, it's not just about being fit. Of course, I want to be fit, but it's so much more than that. You are. Dr. Amy Shaw, I'm really grateful that you did than that. You are. Dr. Amy Shaw. I'm really grateful that you did this today. Thank you.

For my, you know, consider it my audience. It's like my extended family. I really care. I think you can tell that I do. And you've served them in a way no one on my show ever has before because this is the first time we've really covered this topic to any extent.

And so guys, this industry, this topic is just going to become more and more well-known with more and more breakthroughs. And so I'm secure in saying to you that if you follow Dr. Amy Shaw, you're going to be on the cutting edge of the future of this as well. You should also go get, I'm so effing tired her books. She's got another book that'll be out eventually called I'm so effing hungry. But in the the meantime go get her other book. Where can they follow you or find you? Yeah on Instagram. I'm at fasting MD and Facebook and Twitter. I'm Amy shot MD. All right, and you guys need to go get my book the power of one more on the power of one more Dotcom or anywhere that you guys can get books. Today is one of those shows you need to share with people that you know

We're going through any mental health issues, fatigue, anxiety, or physical issues like bloating, right? Or just they're achy and sore and uncomfortable. We came up with a lot of those solutions today for you guys, and so please share the show with everybody and everybody. God bless you and your family. Continue to max out your life. This is The Ed Milage Show.