The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 91. Dr. Will B Explains How to Heal Your Gut and Prevent Disease

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Have you ever wondered if the key to your overall well-being lies in your gut? In this episode, Gary Brecka explores the fascinating world of the gut microbiome and its profound impact on your health. Discover how the trillions of microbes living in your gut not only aid in digestion, but also play a crucial role in your mental health, immune system, and overall vitality. As Dr. Will B stated, “The food choices that you make today will start to impact your microbiome by tomorrow.” How will you begin nurturing your gut today? Let us know in the comments below! Connect with Dr. Will B: Order Dr. Will B’s book, “Fiber Fueled” here!: https://theplantfedgut.com/book/ Order 38Tera today! Your gut’s ‘new best friend’ and daily gut ‘multi-vitamin’: https://bit.ly/3Xsr5Qf For more information on Dr. Will B. click here!: https://bit.ly/4dMJLQC Follow Dr. Will B on Instagram:https://bit.ly/4cYsva0 Follow Dr. Will B on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3XswEhP Follow Dr. Will B on TikTok: https://bit.ly/3z6NMjN Follow Dr. Will B on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4e3IPXI 00:00 ​Intro of Show and Guest 02:31 ​Dr. Will B’s Transformative Journey  07:23 ​The New Science of Microbiome 11:31 ​Gut Microbiome’s Impact on Our Health 14:51 ​Feeding Your Microbiome 15:14 ​Inside the Intestine: Microbes’ Existence as an Ecosystem 17:10 ​Gut Microbiome’s Disturbance Potentially Causing Mental Disorders  19:08 ​Healthy Microbiome Diet and Lifestyle 22:21 ​Power of Fermented Foods 25:42 ​Cancer Therapies and Microbiome 31:36 ​Feeding Microbes with Fiber 33:14 ​Risks of Colon Cancer  39:26 ​Plant Sources of Fiber 44:55 ​Gut Microbiome Tests and Checking Yourself 59:20 ​Basic and Healthy Gut Nutrition 01:01:47 ​Probiotic Studies 01:05:03 ​Preventative Measures  01:06:43 ​Connect with Dr. Will 01:11:46 ​Final Question: What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” Get weekly tips from Gary Brecka on how to optimize your health and lifestyle routines: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU PLUNGE - Use code “Ultimate” for $150 off your order of the best cold plunge & sauna in the US: https://bit.ly/3yYE3vl EIGHT SLEEP - Use code “GARY” to get $350 off Pod 4 Ultra: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E ECHO GO PLUS HYDROGEN WATER BOTTLE: https://bit.ly/3xG0Pb8 BODY HEALTH - Use code “ULTIMATE10” for 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/4cJdJE7 Discover top-rated products and exclusive deals. Shop now and elevate your everyday essentials with just a click!: https://theultimatehuman.com/amazon-recs Watch “The Ultimate Human Podcast with Gary Brecka” every Tuesday and Thursday at 9AM ET on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 The Ultimate Human on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3VP9JuR The Ultimate Human on TikTok: https://bit.ly/3XIusTX The Ultimate Human on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3Y5pPDJ Gary Brecka on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs Gary Brecka on TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo Gary Brecka on Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H SUBSCRIBE TO: https://www.youtube.com/@ultimatehumanpodcast https://www.youtube.com/@garybrecka The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lot of our problems, they start with the gut microbiome and food and nutrition is the most powerful lever that we have that we could pull in order to revitalize and restore that microbiome and get it back to health. Because when we do that, these diseases wash away. A person who's born in 1990 is four times more likely to be diagnosed with rectal cancer and two times more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer during their lifetime compared to their parents if they were born in 1950. No way. 95% of Americans, they are wildly deficient in fiber. The benefit of consuming fiber is that you get a healthier microbiome that's producing short chain fatty acids. If we want an effective immune system, we need a strong microbiome. The food choices that you make today will start to impact your microbiome by tomorrow. So many mental disorders do in fact originate in the gut.

I can point you to the studies that show that if you look within the state of these mood disorders, the gut microbiome is disturbed. There's damage to the gut microbiome, which we call dysbiosis. If I'm listening to this podcast and yes, I'm concerned about my gut health and yes, I'm concerned about my microbiome, where does somebody, and what does a healthy microbiome diet look like? The people with the healthiest guts. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. And I am super, super pumped for today's guest. As you heard in the bio, he's a

very, very accomplished physician, moved from the dark side to the bright side now. And we just had, we did a pre-podcast in my kitchen before we jumped on the podcast and my staff kept saying, hey, you guys need to stop talking and get on the podcast so everybody can hear this. But we are going to go down the road of the gut, the gut microbiome, some of the links to all kinds of conditions that you might not think are related to actually having a healthy gut microbiome. So I'm super, super excited to welcome Dr. Will B, well, Dr. Will Bolschwitz to the podcast, which is why they call him Dr. Will B. Welcome to the podcast, brother. Yeah, thank you, Gary. It's a pleasure to be here, man.

I am such a fan of your work. I went deep down the rabbit hole of looking into some of your work and even watching some of the other podcasts that you've been on. So many fascinating topics about microbiomes and cancer tumors and the link between the gut microbiome and all kinds of conditions, some of which I've professed for a while about mental conditions that actually can originate from the gut. And so there's so many places that we can go. I want to just kind of start with the basics. You know, I always say that I feel like the most influential people that I have on my podcast are people that were on their way in life to doing something else.

And there was an event, something in their life, light bulb went off. There was a tipping point. They met someone, they had a profound experience. They had a painful experience, an addiction they conquered. Something happened in their life and they had this to die moment and, and they went down a new path. And it seems like, you know, you, you know, being traditionally trained as a medical physician, um, but now your viewpoint seems to be so much more holistic, so much more dynamic, so much more about the whole organism. Can you just talk a little bit about your journey? Yeah.

Um, I think it's interesting that you say that because I think that profound things need to happen in our lives in order to inspire us to work towards greater things. And at my lowest moment, I was actually being tremendously blessed. So this was going back about 12 years ago, like roughly 2012, 2013. So to contextualize this, I spent 16 years of formal education to become a board certified gastroenterologist. And, um, during that time I was working a hundred hours a week, you know, and, uh, had to give everything that I had to my career. That's what they asked of me, right? I had nothing left. And of what I did have left, I said, you know what? I just want to feel good even if it's

for five minutes. And so I ate a junk food diet because it worked so perfectly in my life. So I had no money. As a gastroenterologist, you ate a junk food diet. Oh, a hundred percent. In fact, most gastroenterologists do. I mean, but Gary, the number one cause of death among cardiologists is heart disease. Wow. Yeah, it's true. I did not know that. So, but in this moment there I was in my early thirties, I had no money. So a fast food diet was inexpensive. I had no time. Well, I could get food real quick. Um, I enjoy food. I liked the way that it tastes. Like I, I won't deny that. Right. And so it fit into my life so

perfectly. It required no effort. And that's what I lived on. And it was like twice a day. And it was kind of funny because here I am to talk about the power of a healthy diet. And I was the guy among my circle of friends that if they were to say who's the least likely out of all of us to be one day sitting in the chair with Gary Brekka, it's you. Yeah. So are you in a hospital setting, a clinic setting? I was in a hospital. So I did my medical school at Georgetown. I was at Northwestern for my residency and then the University of North Carolina for my GI fellowship. So I was working in these hospitals taking care of really sick people. And what ended up happening is that my health got away from me. So I was a high school athlete. I still thought of myself as being an athlete, but it kind of feels like I woke up in my early thirties and I took a look

in the mirror one day and I didn't recognize the person in front of me. And I was in a dark place. I was 50 pounds overweight. I had extreme anxiety. I had extremely low self-esteem, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. And I was quite miserable to be totally honest with you. And it was funny because if you looked at me on paper, you would think that my life was perfect. Yeah. And if you knew me personally, you would know that I was not doing well. Making decent money, respect to being a physician, probably top of your career. I won the highest award at Northwestern amongst 60 doctors. It's so competitive. We have 4,000 applicants. I was

number one and I won the top award at UNC too. On paper, it looks great. I was in a dark place. And so in that moment when I needed help, I didn't want what I had been trained to do for 16 years. I didn't want the pill. Right. Right. I wanted a root cause solution and I needed to figure out how to do that because I didn't know how to do that. I hadn't been taught how to do that. Right. And I initially tried to exercise my way out of this. I'm a very type A person. So I was willing to go and hit the gym for an hour a day. And in addition to hitting the gym for an hour a day, also either run a 5K or swim 50 laps in the pool. Wow.

That did that six days a week. Okay. And I got faster. I could run further. I was stronger, but my gut was just as big. And so clearly I needed more than that. And ultimately it was changing my diet that allowed me to undergo a radical transformation in my health that was so profound that as a medical doctor who cares deeply about the people that I work with or work for, I had no choice at

that point. This has to be something that I bring to my patients. So I became quite obsessive about studying this science that I had discovered, which was the new science of the microbiome. Right. Because that's where I think the root of my issue was. And so, and, and I brought this into my clinic and from 2014 on, I was treating patients with irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, acid reflux, and watching them as, yeah, and they're having as radical of a life transformation as I had. You mean, and you were, when you say you were treating them, had you already started to migrate away from like the corticosteroids or immunosuppressants and you were migrating towards the diet side of things to help treat them? So in conventional gastroenterology, the diet is not a part of the plan at all.

Right. Right. So conventional gastroenterology. That is astounding to me. I mean, the only reason why we eat is to feed our microbiome, right? I mean, we don't really eat to feed ourselves. We eat to feed the intermediary in our gut. And then that feeds us.

I 100% To oversimplify things. Well, I 100% agree. Yeah. And it's actually shocking to me how highly intelligent people don't see that. Right. Right. Because they will say.

Including a gastroenterologist. I mean, by the way. Talking about the world's leaders who are standing at the podium at an inflammatory bowel disease conference and teaching on inflammatory bowel disease. And they don't believe that diet has anything to do with inflammatory bowel disease. Yeah. You know what they say? And that's completely insane to me.

You can't read the label from inside the jar. You know, it's like sometimes we're so buried and so mired inside of our own beliefs that we, we can't read the label in, you know, in the jar that we're stuck inside of. Somebody said that to me the other day. I'm like, it's a great analogy. Um, you know, I, I really try not to allow myself to get too dogmatic or pigeonholed or religious about any one direction or philosophy because I meet so many amazing people like yourself. And, you know, they bring forward evidence and you're like, wow, that really. But in your community or previous community, there's really not a whole lot of room for free thinking. No, that's true. I think there's not a lot of room for free thinking. And, you know, and just to be totally clear, this is not, I'm not rejecting conventional medicine, right? I don't either,

by the way. Yeah. If I need, if I need conventional medicine, then I would have it. I think that the issue that we have is an over-reliance on pills and procedures and using that as our first line approach to problems. Right. Where the root of the problem is not the absence of the pill or the procedure, right? The root of the problem is something that's deeper inside of us. Right. That I would make the argument, and I think that you would probably support this. I think that a lot of our problems, particularly in the gastroenterology space, they start

with the gut microbiome and food and nutrition is the most powerful lever that we have that we could pull in order to shape and change and revitalize and restore that microbiome and get it back to health. Because when we do that, when we successfully get the microbiome back to health, these diseases wash away. Right. Right. So from my perspective, to me, the approach to people who need therapy for their health problem should not start with medication. It should start with addressing the root of the issue, which is diet and lifestyle. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And if we just took a step back for a moment, let's talk about all of the incredible systems inside the body that are touched from the microbiome. Right. I mean, first of all, the you know, I often remind people that a lot of our intestinal tract is technically outside of our body.

I mean, and what's what's like our skin. But it's sort of folded inside. Right. You know, down the now down the throat and and out the rectum. But the barrier separating that external environment from our internal environment is only a single cell layer. Yes. Right? And what determines whether or not that layer is being assaulted or is benefiting has a lot to do with our microbiome. Yes. And it's a very delicate layer.

I mean, you know, I remember when I first read Dr. Perlmutter's book years ago, it was kind of ahead of its time. It was called The Gut-Brain Access, The Gut-Brain Connection. And I was really shocked as a human biologist that the gut could have so many profound effects on mental illness, on autoimmune diseases, on immune competency. And we talk a little bit about, you know, the basis for, you know, our gut microbiome and why it's so important. What are the other systems that it's connected to?

So listeners really tune in and say, I need to really pay attention to this. Yeah. Well, so first of all, we evolved with these microbes. So the very first human, whoever that was millions first of all, we evolved with these microbes. So the very first human, whoever that was millions of years ago, they had a microbiome and we co-evolved in a way where we grew to trust them. And it's very clear to me as a medical doctor that this is true because they have actually inserted themselves into human physiology in a way where we require them in order to properly function as humans. So if we, in theory, were sterile and did not have these microbiomes,

did not have a microbiome, we would be in big trouble very quickly. So, and the gut is this place. So you just talked about how the gut is external to our body, which is true. It's weird to think about. Yeah, it is. But the gut is also the place where we interact with the environment. We interact with the outside world. The skin is a barrier. It's a wall. But the choices that we make when we put something into our mouth, chew it and swallow it, that's based upon trust. You trust that whatever it is that you put into your mouth is not toxic. Right. And in fact, going to nourish your body. And then you send it down and it will come into contact with these gut microbes.

And inside, they're mostly concentrated, Gary, inside of our colon. All right. So it's at the very end. At the very end. Yeah. And there's 38 trillion microbes that exist in that specific location. Wow. Now, 38 trillion is a hard number for us to sort of comprehend.

So let me try to put this into perspective. If we were to, on the most clear, like if we were way up north in Canada on the most clear night and we looked up and we saw all the stars in the sky, I would need to take 380 galaxies full of stars, tighten them up and insert them into your colon. And that's how many microbes you have living inside of you right now. Wow. They outnumber your human cells. You are less than 50% human. They make up 99.5% of your genetic code. Your genetic code is less than 1% human. It is 99.5% your microbiome. Wow. And they're connected to so much. It starts with their interactions with our food. So they help us to unpack our food and they make nutrients available to us that otherwise wouldn't be available. So all food comes into contact with these microbes. Right.

And this is to me like the essence of life. Yeah. Is like, you know, you're not alive unless you get access to nutrients. Ever wonder how elite athletes recover faster and stay energized? It's the science of cold water therapy. Hi, I'm Gary Brekka, and I want to introduce you to Plunge. Plunge helps to soothe your sore muscles, boost your energy levels, and improve mental clarity. It's a powerful way to support your immune function and enhance your mood. Ready to transform your health? Take the Plunge.

Change your life. Visit plunge.com and shop now. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Yeah, we were saying before the podcast, like you don't eat to feed yourself. You eat to feed your microbiome. That's right. And then they're going to feed you.

And then they're going to feed you. You got to be kind to these guys. And these nutrients that they create for us are bioactive and are able to actually exert effects, influences throughout our entire body. So it's more than just within our intestine. Now, if we were to zoom in, you know, with the microscope and look at the intestine itself, what we would discover is you would see, oh, there's these microbes and they're as alive as you and I are. All right. And they have personalities and they have cliques and circles of friends and they have unique skill sets. Certain

ones do certain things and they work in teams and they have food preferences. They don't all like the same food. So guess what? They sound a lot like us. Right, right. And they're existing there inside of us in an ecosystem. And surrounding them is the gut barrier. And as you said, it's a single layer of cells. On the other side of that gut barrier is 70% of your immune system. And the reason why your immune system is there is because this is where we're interacting with the outside world. So if there's a problem- That's where the action is going to be. That's where the action is, right? So they're communicating to one another.

The microbes are talking to the immune system. The microbes are actually maintaining that gut barrier that protects the immune system and that protects our bloodstream so that we don't allow toxins or things into our blood that shouldn't be there. But then these bioactive molecules, which we'll talk about some of them, like short chain fatty acids, for example, our microbes create these things. They enter into the bloodstream. And within seconds, they're circulating throughout our entire body.

Right. And having healing effects, including our metabolism, including our insulin sensitivity. Inflammation. And inflammation. And our brain. And even, Gary, our blood-brain barrier. So our blood-brain barrier is actually conceptually the same as the gut barrier in that it's also a single layer of cells with the same tight junctions

that hold the cells together. And so when people eat well, they may notice more energy. They may also notice that they're cognitively more focused. And that's the effects of your gut and these bioactive molecules, not only on your brain, but on your blood brain barrier. We talked about it in the kitchen before the podcast, you know, that so many mental disorders, I'm just going to sort of group them all together for a minute. ADD, ADHD, OCD, manic depression, bipolar, anxiety, anxiousness, all of these things that we might be labeling as a mental condition or mental disorder do in fact originate

in the gut. Meaning the neurotransmitters that provide those different moods and emotional states originate in the gut. I think there's a highly compelling argument. And if we take a look at each of these, every single one of the ones that you just mentioned, I can point you to the studies that show that if you look within the state of these mood disorders, the gut microbiome is disturbed. There's damage to the gut microbiome, which we call dysbiosis, right? So, and we see that in each of these cases. Now, there are some who will make the argument, oh, which we call dysbiosis, right? So, and we see that in each of these cases.

Now, there are some who will make the argument, oh, well, these are associations, right? That they're true at the same time, but it's not necessarily proof of causality. But I actually think that like, as far as we can take it, there's evidence that would suggest that this is in fact legit. We have fecal transplant studies where they will take the fecal transplants of a person who is clinically depressed and transplant it into a mouse. And then the mouse will change its mood

and start to demonstrate behavior consistent with the spectrum of how mice manifest depression. Right. And the opposite, I've read from fecal transplant studies as well, where it can actually, they can improve mood and emotional state and even improve some of these conditions because through fecal transplant by reinserting a new microbiome. So when we,

if we were to take a step back for a second and say, if I'm listening to this podcast and yes, I'm concerned about my gut health and yes, I'm concerned about my microbiome, like where does somebody start and do we just go and test it? And then do we adjust our diet accordingly? Are there some things I could add to my daily routine that would help ensure that I'm putting healthy pre pro postbiotics into, into this, a system and improving its function? Like where, where does, where does somebody start and what is a, what is a healthy microbiome diet look like? Yeah. Um, so the good news is that as powerful as this is, the microbiome is extremely forgiving. So we have research that shows us that the food choices that you make today will start to impact your microbiome by tomorrow.

Wow. Now, this is not to make the claim that you're completely overhauling your microbiome. That takes time. That would be reshaping it. But what we do know is that those changes will start to take place immediately. And if you start to make changes with consistency, consistency is a very important concept within the microbiome. Yeah. Very key. So like that one meal, you know, or doing like that quick, you know, five day thing,

that's not going to get the job done. What we need is we need to identify sustainable habits, sustainable choices that you're actually willing to do. And it will help you to reshape the microbiome. And there's multiple ways that we can shape this microbiome. These are things that you talk about. And some of them are dietary. And we can talk about those concepts, prebiotics, things like this. So some of them are dietary, but some of them also are through fitness, through exercise, through sleep, through aligning with our circadian rhythm, right? Through meditation or breath work. So the interesting thing to me is that I enjoy seeing the way that people like, for example, you address these issues.

Because in all cases, you say, you know, um, 30 minutes of exercise within 30 minutes of waking up. And I say, okay, I can show you how this affects the microbiome and why that makes sense. Yeah, that's great. I would love to, I would love to link some studies to, to, to that. And I think that there's so much confusion out there. There's so many product oriented approaches, um, out there that, um, you know you know, I eat a lot of kefir vegetables. I post it on Instagram all the time. I talk about it. I can tell when I'm not eating fermented foods.

And, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't like it. We were joking around before the podcast about my grandmother used to can everything. And I swear to God, I walked into her basement when I i was 10 years old came back when i was 19 years old the same can of beets was on you know the jarred vegetables but she you know fermented um vegetables all the time it was a part of my life growing up and then i got way away from that and in high school and college um and only recently i've returned to that and the difference in how I feel and, and even just the diameter of my gut when I'm regularly eating, um, you know, fermented vegetables is, is night and day. And I see it in my kids too, even in my staff, cause I mean, I, I, you know, feed them when

they're here. Um, so talk a little bit about the, the kinds of foods. I think there's a lot of myths surrounding fiber you know is is is fiber really as important as we um you know it's it's held out to be the difference between soluble and insoluble fibers what are ways to increase soluble and insoluble fibers in in my diet so i can actually get more of these short chain fatty acids so i can get the internal benefits that i'm really after yeah it really kind of starts with what we're putting in the front end. Yeah, it a hundred percent does. And you know, if, if we want to touch on, you know, if I were to offer up two main takeaways for the listeners

at home, let's start with what you just put on the table, which is fermented foods. Okay. All right. And then we can move on to other stuff like fiber, but fermented foods. When I wrote my first book, Fiber Fueled, it came out in 2020. And I had an entire chapter dedicated to the power of fermented foods. Fermentation is transformation, right? The food starts as one thing and it ends as something different. And the transformation is taking place because of the microbes. They're using their specialized enzymes that they have to unlock the nutrition within the food. So sauerkraut is a great example of this, where it starts off as salty cabbage and it ends up as this tart, crunchy, acidic, delicious thing that has now different B vitamins. B vitamins, yeah. Unlocking the vitamin C, making the polyphenols more

bioavailable. Unique forms of fiber that we call exopolysaccharides. And then of course, the part that we all focus on with fermentation, which is the live microbes. So the jar of sauerkraut has turned into an ecosystem. And that ecosystem exists much like the ecosystem inside of us with a balance of microbes where the good guys outweigh the bad guys. Yeah. And I could take you to, you know, the store, Gary, and show you the probiotics that people pay a lot of money for that contain the exact same microbes that you would find in a jar of sauerkraut. Right. And you're probably more likely to have them be live. Oh, 100%. Yeah. And so, so the, so to me, this was intuitive. Like this makes complete sense that this is a

gut health food. And there of course is the tradition that, you know, these are celebrated foods from across the planet, but it wasn't until much more recently that actually at Stanford university, some of my friends who are there, Professor Christopher Gardner, Professor Justin Sonnenberg, his wife, Erica Sonnenberg, they combined and they did a randomized control trial. And in this randomized control trial, they were measuring people's gut microbiome. They were looking at measures of inflammation and they had them dramatically increase their fermented food intake. Now, the baseline is basically zero. In America, people either don't consume fermented food at all, or maybe they do a little bit of kind of junky yogurt. Right.

Right. And so in this study, they ramped up their fermented food intake. And the exciting part about this was that in just eight weeks, they were able to increase the diversity within their gut microbiome. And they lowered measures of inflammation, which by the way, does not come as a surprise to me because when we increase the diversity in our microbiome, a hearty, healthy microbiome is a resilient microbiome, which results in a resilient, healthy immune system that's lower in inflammation. Yeah, that is so powerful. You know, I heard you on a podcast and i was i was listening to you talk about a really fascinating concept that um there's now evidence that even um cancer tumors have their

own microbiome yeah um and the microbiome may be predictive of its susceptibility to chemotherapeutic treatments. That's right. That one blew me away. Yeah. Because, you know, I always think of the microbiome, not just microbes, but the microbiome as being just, you know, inside the gut, not inside of something like a tumor. It made a lot of sense to me what you said, but talk to me a little bit about that research and the promise that that might have for oncology treatments. We're transitioning to a new phase with the microbiome. It used to be that the microbiome was this novel thing where you would kind of take a look at the test and you'd be like,

oh, that's interesting, but you didn't really know how to use the information. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I've even looked at some of these microbiome tests and I'm like, well, I don't know how we repopulate that flora, this flora, that flora. I mean, take a bunch of probiotics, but I think that's what most people think too. So, well, now we're entering into this new phase where we're actually starting to use this information. We're using what we know in terms of manipulating the microbiome in order to help people achieve their health goals. And there's no better example of this than within cancer therapy, because these, of course, are desperate people, right? They're like fighting for their lives.

They're desperately hoping that the treatment they receive from their doctor, like chemotherapy or immunotherapy, which I'll explain in a moment, is going to help them to eliminate this tumor and the carcinogenic cells in their body. So the new phase is that, you know, you mentioned that we now see that a tumor has a microbiome and that increasingly you can predict response to therapy using the information that exists in the tumor microbiome. Now that's not quite at, that concept is not quite out in prime time just yet. This is early days in terms of that idea.

But if we were to shift our focus to a different idea that is actually out in practice now, it's immunotherapy. And it started with melanoma, but now this is being applied to multiple different forms of cancer. The new way that we approach cancer, which by the way is proving to be more effective for most cancers, is rather than directly trying to crush and destroy the cancer cells, which is chemotherapy, we are now flipping to a new idea, which is why don't we just empower the immune system? Yes. And allow the immune system to do what it does. Right. Which is eliminate cancer cells. Yeah. It's astounding. I actually just had a client of mine. I'm not

licensed to practice medicine, so this was not my doing, but a client of mine, very, very prominent woman, 80 years old, was diagnosed with stage four metastatic colon cancer in February and had a DNA mismatch. So the immune system had recognized that cancer is a foreign body and was already beginning to create antibodies to it and did immunotherapy and in less than seven months was completely cancer-free at 80 years old on immunotherapy. And you would have thought that somebody like that would have gone into high-dose radiation, chemotherapy, maybe exploratory surgery,

and not likely at 80 years old to have survived that. But she is alive right now. And it was seven months from the time. And I'm not, again, saying that immunotherapy is the only thing that you can do for cancer. But what's really interesting is that you're now talking about the immune system and the strength of the immune system and specifically using the microbiome as a way to target some of these therapies, maybe even decide how treatment resistant a tumor is going to be. So the concept is proof that our immune system requires a healthy microbiome in order to be healthy itself. Okay. Right. If we want an

effective immune system, we need a strong microbiome. And it started, really this is research coming out of MD Anderson, at melanoma melanoma is the number one cause of skin cancer death in the United States and they were treating people with immunotherapy this idea that you empower the immune system to do the work for you and they noticed that people who received antibiotics were not doing as well. And so now at first they said, well, maybe they're just more sick. So they started to dig into this in more detail and they discovered, oh no, what's happening here is that the antibiotics are whacking out the microbiome. And without the microbiome intact, the immunotherapy doesn't work. Wow. So they,

they followed this up with a study looking at fecal transplant. And they said, okay, so if antibiotics are bad, then maybe if we can restore the microbiome with a fecal transplant, we could get better results. They took a group of people who had failed immunotherapy. These are people who are desperate. They have no choice at this point. Like they failed the best therapy that we have and they gave them a fecal transplant and now this was a a series of

patients and they were shocked by the number of people that ended up responsive to immunotherapy after receiving a fecal transplant after previously failing the same treatment. Wow. Okay. So then they followed this up with an additional study. And I think this is where the exciting science is emerging for us. And it can lead us into our second sort of nutritional conversation. The second study, they took a look at what they were eating. And they specifically looked at fiber intake. So now fiber, as we'll discuss, is the key to feeding and fueling the gut microbiome. And when you feed it and fuel it fiber, the microbes break down the fiber. It stops being fiber. And they transform it into fat.

Short-chain fatty acids. Short-chain fatty acids. Butyrate, acetate, and propionate. And these short-chain fatty acids have effects throughout the entire body, including directly on the immune system and repairing and restoring the gut barrier. Wow. So now these are really important and powerful things for people who are sick. So anyway, they took a look at this. You need to feed them the right things in order for them to produce the short chain fatty acids, right? I mean, the right types of fiber.

The benefit of consuming fiber is that not only do you get a healthier microbiome, but you get a healthier microbiome that's producing short chain fatty acids and you need the fiber in order to produce the short chain fatty acids. They don't just apparate out of nowhere. And what they found in this study, again, getting back to melanoma with the immunotherapy, is that people who were consuming more fiber had a profound survival advantage. And for every five grams of fiber that they had in their diet, five grams, this is not a lot. That's not a lot at all. For every five grams of fiber that they had in their diet, they had a 30% survival advantage.

For every five grams of fiber? Every five grams. Wow. And this is not the only cancer where we're seeing findings like this. There's similar research to suggest this with colon cancer. Really? Yeah. Because colon cancer is skyrocketing right now.

I mean, you had job security in your, your career. Yeah. Did you do surgery as well? Yeah, I did colonoscopy. I've, I'm actually very serious about colon cancer because I'm the guy who's diagnosed many people, even at a young age. And it's, it breaks my heart. Like these, these were my patients. Right. At a young age. So you're on the prevention bandwagon now. Oh, I'm on the prevention bandwagon, but I'm also on a holistic bandwagon of saying, look, the solution is prevention, but a prevention strategy is not just colonoscopy. Right. Right. A prevention strategy starts with what we put into our mouth because this is colon cancer. Why is it shifting? Because it's shifting to younger people. And for those who haven't heard the headlines, a person who's born in 1990 is four times more likely to be diagnosed with rectal

cancer and two times more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer during their lifetime compared to their parents if they were born in 1950. No way. So in 40 years time, we have four times the risk of rectal and twice the risk of colon cancer. And it's also shifting to a younger population of people, which is highly problematic because colonoscopies don't start until you're older. So if you develop cancer before that age, it's a big problem. Yeah. And it's probably not going to be caught until later in the stages, right? Hey everyone. If you've been tuning into the Ultimate Human Podcast for a while now, you know I'm very selective about the products that I endorse. I only feature items that I personally use daily to enhance my own health and wellness. One product I use daily is the Echo Go

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water.com and enter the code ultimate 10 for a special discount and elevate your hydration game. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Yeah, that's exactly right. And colon cancer, if you catch it early stage, is actually highly treatable. If you can, for example, get a stage one cancer, the survival rate is almost 100%. It's when we get more advanced that you get yourself into big trouble. And so detecting it early is really essential. This is related to the microbiome. There are ways in which the microbiome is disturbed in the development of colorectal cancer. On the flip side, if you want to prevent colorectal cancer, the way that we do this is with short chain fatty acids. There are multiple mechanisms, multiple mechanisms that short chain fatty acids are actually able to destroy tumor

cells. Short chain fatty acids are actually able to destroy tumor cells. Short-chain fatty acids are actually able to destroy tumor cells. Destroy tumor cells. Because we are constantly replicating our bodies. Our body makes mistakes in replication. It's normal to create abnormal cells. But our body has to have the capacity to get rid of them. We have to be able to identify them and get rid of them. And if we don't, if we don't see it.

The zombie cells, the senescent cells, those cells that are just not metabolically healthy. Exactly. And they start, it starts off as one cell. And if our body identifies it and eliminates it, then there's no problem. And this is what happens on a daily basis. Like as we're sitting here talking to one another. Right. Right. But if our body misses it because the immune system is not healthy and because we don't have things properly oriented, then that one cell becomes two cells, becomes four cells, becomes eight cells, and you give it enough time and it turns into a tumor. Wow. Right. So and it starts on a microscopic level like that. have the ability to directly destroy tumor cells through multiple different mechanisms. And this is important information because we're talking about the benefits of short-chain fatty acids on a number of different levels. We get them from fiber. 95% of Americans are not just

mildly deficient in fiber. They are wildly deficient in fiber. Wow. So to put numbers to this, men like you and I, we should be consuming at least 38 grams of fiber per day. The average man in the United States is getting 17. All right. Not even half. So not even half. Yeah. The average woman in the United States is getting 15 grams of fiber and she should be getting 25. So about 60%. So we're nowhere close to where we need to be. And then we ask our question, why do we have such a colon cancer problem? And the solution that our government comes up with is things like colonoscopy programs, which I'm completely in favor of. We need to protect

ourselves. But what they don't talk about at all, which makes no sense to me, is that what if we addressed the fiber deficiency that exists in the United States? This is more than just colon cancer. This is heart disease, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease. We could keep going. Yeah, type 3 diabetes. Yeah. So you really think that having a high fiber diet is a non-negotiable? I think that we should start by addressing the fiber deficiency, right? So getting 38 grams of fiber is not a high fiber diet. Right. That's just actually normalizing. And I wonder how many people are actually getting to that point. Getting to 38 grams of fiber. Um, among men it's, uh,

I think about 3%. 3%. About 3% get to 38. So, and again, that's not a high fiber diet. We consider that a high fiber diet, Gary, because we have normalized something that's very abnormal. Right. We've put ourselves into a position where it's like, you know, if the gut were a muscle, then the collective muscle of the American gut is so weak right now. Right. You know, if the gut were a muscle, then the collective muscle of the American gut is so weak right now. Right. You know, I've been saying this for a long time too. You know, a lot of the big data points at these kinds of trends. So for, you know, somebody that wants to pay attention to this and wants to incorporate more fiber in their diet. Not all fiber is created equally.

You're a big fan of plant sources. What are some of the go-to plant sources? Let's say aside from fermented vegetables, what are some of the go-to plant sources that we could add to our diet to make sure that we're getting the right amount of soluble and soluble fiber? So I think that the key here is that, so first of all, fiber can be incredibly complicated. I agree with the key here is that, so first of all, fiber can be incredibly complicated. I agree with you. It is biochemically complex. People think it's all the same thing.

No, no. It's like the word protein, right? The protein in a fish is not the same as the protein in a bean. Right. Right. And the word protein is a big word. There's a lot of different types. There's a lot of different types of fiber. And, but yet that complexity can be distilled down to simple rules that everyone can take away from this podcast. Okay. All plants have fiber, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. By the way, mushrooms also have fiber. Technically, they're not plants, they're fungi, but like, let's make them honorary plants. Yeah, yeah, let's make them honorary plants. So all of that has fiber, okay? They also all have both soluble and insoluble fiber.

When we use these words, soluble and insoluble, it's just describing a characteristic of the fiber, right? And like another word that we could use is viscosity, which is how thick it is, like how gelatinous it becomes. Or another word we could use is fermentable. How fermentable is it? These are just different ways to describe properties of fiber. Now, soluble fiber and insoluble fiber, we do need to separate out a little bit because the way they function is different. Insoluble fiber is the grit. That's the roughage. That's the traditional view of fiber. I grew up, I sure you did too where the way that i saw

fiber was my grandma stirring an orange drink so that she could have a dump yeah exactly right metamucil yeah she's having her metamucil so she could have a poop so true we knew what grandma was up to there yeah yeah so now that's that's the great i grew up with that grandma yeah and that's the grit and that just runs right through us It's the new science of fiber that I want to talk about, which is the soluble fiber. All right. The new science that's showing us the soluble fiber actually dissolves in our drink. It goes down into our intestines, passes through about 20 feet of our intestines. We don't have the enzymes to break down soluble fiber, but our microbes do.

So it passes through our small intestine, arrives into the colon completely intact, and then they get into a feeding frenzy because this is their preferred food. So they get to eat. And then they go to work in teams unpacking that fiber and releasing the short chain fatty acids. All right, now you asked me,

what are the foods that I recommend? Let me say, I'm more than happy to share some of my favorites. Like I love avocados, right? I've already had avocados twice today. I thought you said tacos. I want to actually reshape the way that people think about fiber to stop thinking about it in grams. Okay. Right. We have been told, like even me, I mean, during the show, I've said we need to get this many grams of fiber. Okay. Actually, when it comes to our microbiome, the key is variety.

Because different types of plants have different forms of fiber. So yes, like beans and lentils, they are a wonderful source of fiber and resistant starches and polyphenols. So like that to me, those are concentrated sources. The reason why a lot of people struggle with them is because their gut microbiome is not ready to handle the amount of beans they just ate. All right. But, but if we, if we were to take a step back, the American gut project was the largest study to date that allows us to draw connections between our gut microbiome and our, our lifestyle pattern, our diet. And in that, in that study, it wasn't whether you called yourself vegan or keto or any of these different labels that we apply to a person that didn't matter right what mattered was that the people with the healthiest guts were the people who were eating at least 30 plants per week wow and um that sounds like that's more than 30 servings right you're saying 30 plants 30 total plants 30 plant varieties okay

so and and the key with that is like, no matter who you are, if you're not hitting 30, don't feel bad because 95% of America is not doing this. Right. Right. So start where you are, but just think about this when you go to the supermarket, when you go, when you step into the kitchen and when you sit down at the dinner table, there's an opportunity where you can add more variety, right? You're making tomato sauce. You could do tomato sauce and pasta. That's two plants. Or you could take that tomato sauce and turn it into a vehicle for throwing all kinds of different varieties of plants in there. Yeah. And when you start putting a wide variety of plants in there and wide variety of soluble versus insoluble fiber, you start producing these short chain fatty chain fatty acids you see what kind of markers could we

watch for in because this is the other thing is how do i measure whether or not i'm doing a good job with my microbiome right i mean we're both big data guys and so i test my microbiome i see that it's off i make some adjustments to my diet um What kind of biomarkers could I expect to see in my blood and, you know, change? Well, so I guess let me sort of frame this, which is to say that, I mean, yes, you could do a microbiome test. I work with a company called Zoe and we have an at-home microbiome test that also includes a CGM. I've seen zoe yep so our our kid is combination microbiome continuous glucose monitor and a blood lipid test to basically create a personalized dietary plan okay okay and we have we have a randomized control trial that we published in may in nature medicine

proving that our product works all right but put that to the side for a moment and let's just start with something that's completely free and very basic, which is how do you feel and what do your bowel movements look like? Right. This is where I would start because people that have a damaged microbiome, they have low energy. They have tons of fatigue. Yeah. They have difficulty with concentration and focus. Right. They can't get a lot done. They're struggling in their exercise and their workouts. I noticed this myself. I'm curious if you notice this. If I eat a junk food meal, which like I'm, I'm not perfect, right? I do the best that I can. If I have a bad meal, my workouts are way worse. Oh yeah, no question. And if I have a bad meal, I just finished a podcast on this, but if I have a bad meal too close to bedtime,

it's even worse. A hundred percent. You know, it not only destroys the mood, but also destroys the sleep and then you pay for it the next day. Right. Yeah. So all of these things are the product of your microbiome. If you have gut symptoms when you eat regular amounts of food, right, that's because your gut microbiome is struggling to help you to process and digest your food. Look at your bowel movements.

So you get byproducts that you don't want. Gas, bloatingating constipation irritability cramping all of these things that sloppy digestion right we think our food allergies or food sensitivities and then it gets in a sense because we don't have the bug got microbiome they sort of are um but the the exciting thing is that you're not stuck with the microbiome that you have today no and there's common sense there's a common sense approach that you can use to address this issue so that people who want to consume more fiber but struggle to consume even normal amounts of fiber,

like the numbers that we're talking about, they can accomplish this. And the way that I go about this is to use an exercise analogy. So like if you hurt your knee, you have two choices. You could go lay on a bed, not move, all right? And I promise you, you will not feel pain in your knee. Right. But your health throughout your entire body will suffer because you are completely sedentary,

you're not using the rest of your body at all. Eventually this will manifest with disease and it will actually create problems for you. Right. The alternative choice is that, and I know Gary, I'm sure when I asked this question, it's a little more complicated with you because you've got some other things you would do. Yeah. Right. But like for the average person, the other choice is to go through a rehabilitation program. Right. Right. And in a rehabilitation program, you're actually working the knee. You're actually forcing it to move. It's controlled. Now, you may have some discomfort when you do this, but like that's to be expected.

Right. Right. And you're working through a process of restoring function to that knee so that by the time that you're done, you can get back to playing pickleball or playing basketball or whatever it is that you like. Right. The gut is the same. So the problem with the conventional approach that we have these days is that people say, if you don't feel well, then just eliminate it. Oh yeah. And people end up on a progressively more restricted diet. They're shaving away more and more different types of foods. And I just said 10 minutes ago that the number one predictor of a healthy gut microbiome is the variety.

Abundance is the key, not restriction. Right. Right? So how do we go about this? The way that we do this is we rehabilitate the same way you would with a knee, which is that you got to take these foods that you're struggling with and put it in an amount that you can actually tolerate. So start low and go slow. Reduce the amount that you consume at one meal. That causes the reaction. That causes the reaction. Make it an amount that you actually can tolerate. There is an

amount that you can actually tolerate. All right. Make it an amount that you actually can tolerate. There is an amount that you can actually tolerate. All right. Make it an amount that you can actually tolerate. Your gut will grow stronger. Yeah. Because it grows stronger. You can increase the amount that you can eat next time by a little bit. Yeah. It's just like exercise. Yeah. So, and when we say we're going to go slow, so, you know, back to the, um, the biomarkers that, that test, because again, I'm a huge, huge fan of data and I like to measure and track things. You know, one of the things we do in our clinic environment is we'll pull a blood panel and pull a genetic profile and then we will supplement for the genetic deficiencies and then watch

the changes in the blood. So we're looking at things like C-reactive protein, homocysteine, kidney EGFR, you know, filtration rates, alkaline phosphatase in the liver, you know, the enzymes in the liver, AST, ALT, seeing if the liver's getting more or less inflamed. So we, and in large pools of patients, you can see that things like, well, when I take glutathione and I support my healthy detox pathways, we actually see a reduction in alkaline phosphatase and usually reduction in enzyme activity that looks, that indicates inflammation and irritation. So if I'm, if I get a gut microbiome test and I want to go on a journey to fix my gut microbiome, or I'm listening to this podcast and I want to start incorporating things in my daily life that

are actually going to have an impact, what sort of things should I be measuring? And I'm going to put some of these tests that you suggest, I'll put them in the show notes, because I think there's so much out there on gut microbiome that it's hard for people to figure out where they start. Well, I think the reason why it's confusing is that the gut microbiome, it has functional abilities and those functional abilities apply to all different aspects of who we are in our health, right? So it's not just this one measure. How is your gut microbiome doing for your digestion, for your metabolism, for your immune system? Like these are separate, separate goals and we need a microbiome that supports us in each of these goals. Right. So where you have to start is you have to

start by first saying, what are you, what are you hoping to accomplish? What, what do you want to go after? Right. Do you want to enhance your metabolism? Do you want to enhance your immune system? Do you want, do you want to be better at digestion? Right. Starting with a holistic, before we get into, into blood web measures, just real quick, and I kind of touched on this, but just to be totally clear, I start with how does a person feel? Mm-hmm. Right? What is their health history?

Do they have- Get their symptoms. What are their symptoms? Mm-hmm. What is their health history? Do they have a history of diagnoses that are associated with dysbiosis? Because when I would go to see patients, I would take a look at their health history, and you see they're here to see me for irritable bowel syndrome, but they also have

major depression, ADHD, right? They have obesity, they have high cholesterol, they have prediabetes, they have polycystic ovary syndrome. Okay. Everything is out of whack. Right. Yet the one thing that ties all of that together is the microbiome. Phenomenal. Right. So, and then the last thing is like, what's going on with your bowel movements? Because if I were a cardiologist, I would listen to your heart, but I'm a gastroenterologist and your poop is predicated on a healthy microbiome.

Right. 60% of the weight of your bowel movement comes from microbes. I mean, the byproducts from microbes, the waste from microbes. The waste from microbes. Yeah. Yes. So we think of our poop as being the excrement of our food. It's our food waste. But actually the majority of the weight of our food is microbial in nature. And one of the ways that you know, and I can prove this to you because if I were to put some soluble fiber into a drink for you, you would have a vigorous large bowel movement.

Not while we're live and on the air here. a vigorous large bowel movement. Not while we're live and on the air here. A vigorous large bowel movement. Yeah. I feel quite comfortable talking about these things, Gary. You just let that fly, dude. I love it. Oh, I talk about it. I bet you there's some people watching this right now that are like, hey, if I can have a vigorous large bowel movement, I am in.

Tell me where I can get that because constipation is a massive issue with, I can't even tell you how many clients come into our clinic. Oh, I'm convinced it's epidemic. It's epidemic. When was the last time you had a bowel movement? How many do you have a day? One, two. And there are people who poop every day.

I'm every morning. I'm like a bear. No, but there are people who poop every day and they're still constipated. Oh, okay. So it's not even just your frequency. But I think that the key here, though, is that a healthy microbiome is reflected in good, healthy, large, satisfying bowel movements. Yes. All right.

So we start with those things. All right. And then the question is, okay, so which, which index, which, which direction do we want to look into? Because if what we want to look into is your digestive health, then to me as a gastroenterologist, it's about symptoms. That's what I treat as a gastroenterologist. I treat symptoms. That's the focus. Right. But if we were looking at your metabolic health and we want to say, where's your metabolism at? Then I want to take a panel of labs that are going to show me where you're at in terms of your metabolic health. And if I have to start somewhere, I want to look at insulin sensitivity.

Insulin sensitivity, huge. That's where I want to start. I mean, but we could also, of course, take a look at your lipids, take a look at your cholesterol. We could get a full panel. One of the things that I like with our ZOE program is that our triglyceride test is a postprandial triglyceride test. After a meal. So it's after a meal. It's a standardized meal. So that way, everyone who does the Zoe kit, whether it's you or me or someone else,

they get the same meal. And then we can see what the response is. Now, this is like, to me, conceptually a stress test. So you eat the meal, go through the microbiome. What shows up in the blood is what you're measuring that response. So believe it or not, our blood fat levels, this is something that we published in 2020 in Nature Medicine. Our blood sugar, our blood fat, specifically triglycerides, and our insulin levels can all be predicted by our gut microbiome. Wow.

On different levels. on different levels. So the most powerful thing for blood sugar, for example, is what did you just eat, right? So if you eat like a high sugar meal. But that's just glucose, right? Right. But hemoglobin A1c has sort of what you're eating over time. You know, much longer window, 90 days or, you know,

three month window of your blood sugar. That's right. But you're saying that's highly predicted by your gut microbiome. So I'm saying that your blood sugar is highly predicted by your gut microbiome. I'm saying that even more so your insulin. And the reason why insulin is important is because actually the amount of insulin that you require to process the exact same food is directly indicative of your insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity.

Right. So, and that's, that's very much predicted by your gut microbiome. And this aligns with the research that shows that if you take the microbiome of a person with diabetes and you transfer it to a mouse, that mouse will get diabetes. And yes, Gary, even in humans, we have data where they took young men, gave them a fresh microbiome. They had pre-diabetes, gave them a fresh microbiome, and then they saw improvements in their blood sugar. And when you say gave a fecal transplant or probiotics, prebiotics, what did they do to give them a microbiome? So in that particular

study where they gave it to the young men, it was a fecal transplant. But if I were given the choice, what would I rather give a person? A fe transplant or or a prebiotic i would rather give them the prebiotic right and the reason why is because the fecal transplant um so let's pretend in theory like if if i were to give you a fecal transplant what would happen well the issue is that the new microbes that i've given you are not uh aligned with the food that you eat. Right. They're aligned with the food of the host. Of the host.

Right. Right. So you may derive a benefit initially from having this fresh microbiome that maybe has functional abilities that you didn't previously have. And I don't mean to pick on you, Gary. It's just like in theory. Yeah. Right. So you may derive a benefit from this.

So like in this study, for example, these young men who had a blood trigger problem, they got a new microbiome and suddenly their blood trigger problem got a lot better. That's phenomenal. Right. But the issue though, is that they never changed their diet and because they never changed their diet over the course of four weeks, they shifted back to their old microbiome and they were right back to where they started. Right. So it's not a sustained benefit. So if you wanted to sustain the benefit, what you would need is you would need the prebiotic. You would need to shift your diet. And by feeding the microbiome, then you would actually be able to maintain that benefit and perhaps even go beyond it. Hey, guys, I'm really

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basic healthy microbiome function is based upon maintaining this level of fiber, this level of soluble fiber. Here's the best sources of soluble fiber in your opinion i mean if i if i have to pick one i'm going with legumes right and yeah and the reason why so lentils peas and beans okay and the reason that i'm going to go there also part of a lot of the longevity diets i mean all the longevity diets show this yep walter longo's research supports that there are research studies where they um control for multiple different factors and then they spit out like what is the number one food and beans are the food that pops out. What is it about beans that's special? Well, they have a tremendous amount of fiber and also resistant starches and they're being wildly under consumed. So the average American, you know, I laugh when people propose the idea that the lectins

and beans are the cause of all of our issues. Yeah. I mean, this makes zero sense. You do hear that for sure. Well, Gary, the average American eats six pounds of beans per year. Yeah. Per year. Our parents, our parents' generation ate eight pounds of beans we reduced

our bean intake substantially this is not the cause of our problems okay okay so but it is an opportunity it is an opportunity because these are foods that are non-perishable completely inexpensive right like there's very few foods that are less expensive than beans. Yeah. Yeah. Legumes are really cheap. And they can be worked into our diet. And they're pretty versatile. Yeah. They're very versatile. So they can be worked into our diet in a number of different ways. It doesn't need to be this thing where you're on an all bean diet. That's not what I'm proposing. Right. What I'm proposing is that you actually reintroduce these into your diet and just have them in there. Right. Right right in addition to everything else that you're eating so legumes um you know fermented um veggies which is one of my favorites i i remember

i hated them so much as a kid i crave them now as an adult they are they they go with just about anything and sauerkraut can be really really powerful but some of the kimchi's are delicious and they're crunchy and like you know if you have a hot meal on your plate, you can have them cold. You can actually make them hot too. And so these kinds of things. But the soluble and insoluble fiber. Because I think when we talk about gut microbiome health, most people think they go straight to the shelf and grab a probiotic. And the way that, you know, most people would evaluate probiotics is they go,

okay, how many colony forming units are here? Oh, 50 billion CFUs. That's good. And it has, this one has seven strains and this one has 11 strains. So more colony forming units, more strains, and it's more expensive. So it's probably the best probiotic. So kind of walk us through that because what's interesting about the probiotic so kind of walk us uh through that because what's interesting about the probiotic research that i've looked at is it seems to be almost black and white meaning there are those these probiotic studies where had no impact um on the hypothetical outcome and then there were probiotic studies we had a demonstrative impact some of which were fecal transplant studies. And to me, that meant it must

have something to do with how the probiotics were getting in. Maybe they were getting destroyed by the stomach acid. Maybe they weren't the cultures that they reported to have in the probiotics. So kind of walk us through that maze because the probiotic section of the most nutritional stores right now is, you know, it's like going into a 7-Eleven and trying to find an energy drink. There's a lot of choices. Yeah. Right. So there are definitely people who benefit from probiotics. I've taken care of these patients. I've had many patients that have recommended probiotics too and seen them have amazing results. All right. But it is not one size fits all. And you will not know until you actually try the probiotic and see what it does for you. So, and the reason why this is, is because Gary, you have a, you have a gut microbiome that's completely unique to you.

There's no one on the planet. This is as, as much of a signature as your fingerprint. And if you had an identical twin in theory, like if you had an identical twin, you would only share about 30 or 35% of the same microbes. Wow. You would be more different than you are the same. Which could explain some of the differences between identical twins that are genetically identical, right? 100%. So yes, they're genetically identical and yet they have like, there can be wild discordance in terms of many different health measures, obesity or other things from health perspective. This is, this is actually how someone that I work with, Tim Spector, he got started in this space because he was looking and doing twin studies in the nineties and the two thousands. And what he discovered is

like, I can't explain it all with genetics. There's something else going on here. And so, and then that's what led him into the microbiome. Which microbiome is kind of epigenetics, right? I mean, it's, it's going to have an influence, our genes predisposition, but to me, the microbiome. This is an important point because I actually didn't mention this earlier, which is that, this is an important point, which is that we have a genetic code. That genetic code is not the story of our life and it is not whether or not we will or will not develop disease. Right. It is a switchboard. And those switches can be turned on or turned off, which is epigenetics is what you're talking about.

And the question is, who's sitting at the switchboard? Because that's powerful. Right. And the answer is the microbiome. Wow. The microbiome has the ability through short chain fatty acids to actually modulate our genetic code and turn certain genes on or off. That's so fascinating. I mean, what is, you know, in this field of the microbiome and gastroenterology, what is inspiring you right now?

Like, what's really captivated your intention? What roads do you really go down? What do you think the population needs to know? Because, I mean, you're, you know, this is on the fringes of mainstream modern medicine for sure. Yeah. Right. I mean, in terms of mainstream adoption of modern medicine, sorry.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that we, you know, I'm excited by these immunotherapy studies that we're talking about. Right. I like, I think the vaccines, immunotherapy, I'm fascinated by this. I also pray though, that people don't need this. Right? I also pray that people don't actually develop disease, that we could prevent it before it ever happens.

Right? So to me, what's exciting about the microbiome is not what we do after a person has cancer, although I want that to be successful. To me, what's exciting is the opportunity that we have through common sense choices, simple choices, where we could add more varieties of plants to our plate, where we could add fermented food back into our diet, where we could get into a routine of regular exercise, where we could align our circadian rhythm, where we could get a good night's rest and suddenly nurture a healthier gut microbiome that prevents us from getting the melanoma in the first place. Like that to me is the great opportunity that we have. Yeah. I love that too. I feel like we have a whole second podcast brewing here, which I'd

love to invite you back to do. We're going to take a little detour and jump into what I call our rule brackets and answer some questions. But for my audience, that's really interested in your topic. Where can they find out more about you? Where can they, where can they find some of the supplements that you've come up with your book? How do they find you? Yeah. So you can follow me on social media. So I am the gut health MD on, on Instagram, Facebook. I'm on Tik TOK, uh, as the gut health MD underscore, cause some kid took my handle before me.

So, and if you're out there and he's the gut health MD, well, they're not, they're not posting anything. I don't know what they're expecting to happen, but you'll get a message that you're holding you hostage for five grand. You can get it back.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, so you can find me on social media i'm very proud my favorite thing honestly gary is writing emails so because i feel like writing is the ultimate form of communication most people who follow me follow me because of my books my first book fiber fueled i don't even know how many it's sold it's like certainly more than 300 000

copies and um so and I spent a year writing that book and you could sit down in a weekend and like hang out with me and learn, right? Yeah. That to me is like what writing is about. So I enjoy, I enjoy writing emails to my community. I have a community of about 200,000 people on my list. Awesome. And we, you know, basically like dig into these kinds of nerdy topics that I love and we talk about poop and all this different stuff. Right. So I would encourage people, it's a completely free resource. You owe me nothing. Right. That you can come and sign up for my email list and learn with me. Yeah. Right. With this community. Give without the value. And then, you know, my, my belief system is that I think that, you know, I believe in a food first approach.

Like I think that nutrition needs to come first. Right. I don't think that you can out supplement a bad diet. I totally agree with that. Nor should you try. But I do believe that when we do nutrition and when we engage, you know, with these lifestyle things like exercise and sleep, there are limits to how far it takes us. And oftentimes there's also opportunities for more where we could optimize, right? Where we could fill in the holes that haven't been properly

filled by our diet, which exists in all major dietary patterns, right? But you and I could sit here and poke the holes in all of them. I tell people all the time, like you have no idea how good normal feels until you really feel normal. I totally agree. It's amazing. So I'm of the belief that there's a place for supplements. Supplements are not a replacement for food. Supplements are in addition to food. And I'm just speaking from my own personal experience. No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise of this, that I sat there for 10 years and I watched people as I put them on fiber supplements, many of them who were already eating a healthy diet because this is what I became known

for. Right. So they sought me out and they were already on a healthy diet trying to get better. And the fiber supplements made a radical, had a radical effect in terms of their health. So, but the, but the issue that I always saw, Gary, is that the supplements like, you know, that it currently exists, I'm not going to name any names, but you all know which ones I'm talking about. They've existed since I was a kid. We're talking about outdated 1980s formulas, right? These are single, I'm saying that diversity of plants is the key, yet this is a single

source of fiber that's being sold to us by a pharmaceutical company that's not third party testing it or telling us anything with transparency. Right. So to me, there was this opportunity to do so much better for people who want to take a prebiotic supplement. So that's why I decided to create my own. And I launched it in January of this year for the first time. And it went so fast that we had to close the store after 24 hours. Yeah, because I was going to sell out of my stock and it takes me about six months to restock. So, but now here we are, we've restocked and the brand is called 38TERRA, 38TERRA. 38TERRA stands for 38 trillion, the number of microbes that live in our gut. And basically I spent three years formulating the exact prebiotic supplement that I would want for myself or for my patients, because it gives them fiber, resistant starch, and polyphenols. And these three things are

unique forms of prebiotics. They're not the same. And they synergize with one another. So like basically the polyphenols, you and I were talking about this beforehand. Yeah. The polyphenols shape the microbiome to actually increase their ability to create short chain fatty acids from the fiber and the resistant starch. Wow. So and it's been very satisfying to do this because the way that I see my career is that I'm trying to create change on mass scale. Same. Absolutely.

And change comes in the form of a person reading my book and changing their diet or listening to this podcast and taking away some actionable tips or adding this supplement and then writing a review that's a five-star review and telling me how they cleared up their psoriasis or they improved their gut issues or they've never been better in terms of their inflammatory balance. That's me. This is what it's about. No better feeling in the world. Well, I end every podcast by asking every guest the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to this question, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I'm going to go in a totally different direction than we've been, right? I mean, we could, we could,

we could talk about the ultimate human being a human that embraces the whole person that includes our microbiome, right? We are a super organism, but actually I want to talk, get back to whole, the ultimate human is a person who's connected to others because that actually is the source of our happiness. We are social creatures and longevity. If you want, it's as powerful as what we eat. Yeah. Right.

And if you want to, um, torture a person, you isolate them. Amen. And so I, and I think in today's world, I see a lot of sickness,

a lot of despair and a lot of people who are sad. And I think that part of the way that we heal is to put down the phone and look a person in the eye, connect to that person, right? And feel loved, right? That's what we need. And feel connected and appreciated. And yeah, that's fantastic. That's one of the best, if not the best explanation I've gotten so far. It's good for our microbiome too. Those people. Yeah. Of course you had to bring it back to poop.

We can always bring it back. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm definitely going to invite you back. I think that your journey has just begun. And I think that people like you that have had so many profound experiences in their life and they're actually turning that into tangible ways to touch more lives. You're the kind of person I really enjoy giving a voice to, and I'm going to follow your journey and bring you back in front of my audience, you know, again, very soon. Appreciate you, Gary.

Appreciate you too, Ben. And as always, guys, that's just science.