Well, hello ladies and gents. Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com.
And today I've got special guest Josh Deck on the line.
He is a gut health expert and holistic nutritionist, and we
dive deep into the wonderful world of proper gut microbiome
health. We talk a lot about the
environmental factors, We talk about the dietary factors.
We talk about the things that oftentimes go unsaid when it
comes to optimizing one's gut health, such as where the food
comes from, not just the types of foods, the macronutrient
breakdown, but the actual sourcing, procurement and
environment that that food was raised or grown and how that
impacts gut health as well. We we honestly went pretty deep
on proper gut health and improving one's health from a
holistic standpoint as it pertains to the gut being the
foundational pillar in which everything stems from.
So I truly enjoy the conversation.
We are speaking the same language.
He's got an interest in homesteading in light of what
he's learned about proper gut health, so we'll talk a little
bit about that as well. I've got no doubt that you will
take something from this. You'll likely want to grab a pen
and paper because it's going to be pretty involved at some
point. So take some notes.
But thirdly, enjoy the conversation.
Like I said, I've got no depth that you will take some
actionable steps from this. So that for the delay.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with Josh Deck,
we are live, Josh. How are you brother?
It's a good day to be in Calgary, man.
We get these chinooks. The sun is shining, there's snow
on the ground. I can wear AT shirt and short
shorts outside if it doesn't get any better than that.
So you get snow on the ground right now, huh?
We do do not. We do not, no.
I'm in Arkansas, so there's no snow here.
Not yet. We don't get snow.
Almost ever. You get snow.
What, A month out of the year? Yeah, pretty much, man.
We get like one or two weeks where it gets us really hard and
we're all buttoned up for the winter, but it's not normally a
common occurrence by any means. Well, I'm in Calgary.
We snow 13 months out of the year.
Man, you don't get tired of that.
Oh, I get very tired of that. We're looking to to move, do
something, change something up, buy a homestead, you know, a
little farm, do something. We can actually enjoy it
differently than being inside and dealing with traffic and,
you know, vehicles. That's about it.
Oh, you've piqued my interest on Homestead now.
So you want to get some land? Raise your own animals.
Yeah, ideally. I mean, especially doing what I
do in the health space, you know, we understand so clearly
everything from the water to the food.
Like it's just, it's garbage, right?
Everything's about if it's poison, it's all fake food.
And I do, I want to have my own food, my own my own animals, my
own everything. So I can really just have sort
of that. We'll call it a freedom approach
to my own health and my Wellness. 100% man, Like we
bought some land a few years back and we've been trying to
get into the homesteading scene. How?
We got our own chickens. We're going to be getting some
lambs, some pigs, some cows. I found a really good local
source for pasture raised poultry.
I actually just ordered. I was talking to somebody early
this morning. I'm having them butcher several
lamb for me. I'm going to get that.
So we're speaking the same language.
As soon as you start diving deep into nutrition and health and
where your food comes from, what you tend to do when you're
following ketogenic low carb carnivore diet.
It's like the whole homesteading conversation just happens by
default because it goes hand in hand.
It really is an organic transition.
You know, it's like anything you get car guys over long enough
period of time, they end up working on fixing on cars and
they got a garage full of them. Same with any kind of
nutritionist or anybody in that space.
It is an organic transition to go from curiosity to expertise
to just overhauling every aspect of your life to fit your new
desires, wants and needs a. 100% Man, There's so different.
There's so many different entries to this lifestyle, like
I came to it from, you know, the bodybuilding training
standpoint. You are a gut expert.
What was the catalyst for you getting into it in the 1st
place? Well.
With an interesting chain of happy accidents.
So I used to be a paramedic. That was my first career, way
back in my late teens, early 20s, and I really learned very
quickly it was actually sick care.
I wasn't working in healthcare, I became a glorified ambulance
or taxi for the elderly and the ill, and it's just not what I
wanted to do. I really wanted to help people
get better. And there's something to be said
for, you know, pulling somebody out of a car with the jaws of
life and, you know, all the trauma.
But it wasn't what I wanted to do in healthcare.
And so I learned very quickly I need to do something else.
And through a chain of happy accidents, I got into the
personal training world. I had been into fitness and
weightlifting and basic exercise and sport since I was a kid.
I remember, you know, being 8 years old, six years old,
somewhere in there and pulling out, you know, remember those
Jane Fonda thigh squeeze machines that like mom would
have? I had one of those couple of 10
LB dumbbells and made my own little gym.
So it's something that's always been in my blood.
And so I pursued that for a few years and it was really
interesting. This woman came to see me back
in my early 20s, one of my first clients, when I was working for
a big box gym. Her name was Lynn and we started
together. I mean, her breakfast was 17
pills and a shot of insulin. Her dinner was 9 pills and a
shot of insulin. She was had high blood pressure.
She was on the disability list at work.
She slept with a CPAP machine. Like all of her body's functions
were just on a steady decline. That was age 57 when we started
together. By the time she was 59, she
ended up breaking her first world record in the raw
powerlifting division and she just kept breaking them right up
until she was about 62, give or take when she retired.
And so it really just highlighted the bodies ability
to heal itself. We do things properly and look
at things properly and it just pushed me further and further in
the holistic world. I saw people I was working with
working on food and nutrition and exercise whose skin issues,
anxiety, depression, arthritis, whatever it was.
They would just start to alleviate when the body worked
as it was originally intended. And it pushed me further and
further to that world until I ended up at a conference where
someone was talking about the gut Biome.
I was hooked. I saved up for a couple of
years, went back to school, became a nutritionist, and here
I am specializing in gut disease like ulcerative colitis and
Crohn's disease. The gut is like one of the guts,
kind of like the brain, man. That's why I call it like the
second brain. Like there's so many, there's so
many ways you can take things. There's so much we still don't
know about it. When you were to like, if you
were to look at it from a high level view, what degree of
understanding do you think we have on the gut?
Are we still light years away or are we getting closer?
Oh man, we're 50 years away easily.
So just to give you an idea here, understanding, we
understand gut health sort of in a general sense.
We talk about how important it is and most of us just assume,
well, I'd like to not be bloated.
I'd like to digest food or kind of eat more of whatever I want
without any repercussions. And we call that gut health.
But what it actually means at its core, I argue our gut
bacteria are more important than our very own DNA.
And I'll tell you why. You know, we look at the entire
human genome, right? There are 23,000 genes in the
human genome that make you you. We have 3,000,000 genes inside
of a gut bacteria. And so we have 130 times more
genetic material inside of our gut microbiomes.
And those bacteria that we do, the rest of our body, they
influence everything, genetic expression, DNA.
You can connect the the gut to every disease you could possibly
imagine. In fact, 14 out of 15 of the
leading causes of death in the USA are things like heart
disease, cancer, stroke, respiratory issues, diabetes,
Alzheimer's, kidney issues, liver issues, Parkinson's, all
these things, 14 out of 15 are directly connected to the gut.
The 15th cause is suicide and homicide, which means that 93%
of the main things we're telling people are natural causes of
death are not in fact natural. There are chronic inflammatory
conditions that your gut has a major role or can be entirely
responsible for by itself. And so when we talk about gut
health, I look at it, we often say you are what you eat, but
really you are what you breakdown, digest, absorb.
And if you have any kind of inhibition in your gut, an
inability to absorb, you're not going to be healthy.
You're not going to turn over new cells.
You're going to start breaking down.
Disease processes happen. Things get from the gut and
circulate directly into your lymphatic system and
bloodstream, which are the Super highway of the entire body.
It can get in, causing all kinds of issues anywhere in the body,
just about any disease you can name.
We can draw a connection. I feel like when you're going
through elementary school and you're learning the anatomy of
the human body, the way they structure that does as a
disservice because they separate everything out.
You got the skeletal system, the musculature system, you've got
the digestive system and the way they portray that it just kind
of segments everything, whereas in reality everything is so
incredibly intertwined and affects the whole.
So on that note, if someone is wanting to just understand the
digestive system and the gut, particularly from a a deeper
level like, how would you define that?
How would I define the gut? Wow.
Like that's a question. I can't say I've ever been asked
before, but here, here's my first instinct.
Answer your brain and your gut. They're actually made from the
same tissue in utero. Your gut is connected to
everything. It's one cell thick between your
small intestine and getting directly to your blood and
lymphatics. It's two cells from your large
intestine, and they're smaller than the width of hair.
And so we look at what goes in and what comes out.
Here's the basics of how it works.
You eat, you chew, you break things down.
They get into your stomach. You have receptors between your
stomach and small intestine, like guards think like the
Queen's guard. They stand there and open up or
they close down. If things close down, we got a
problem. If they open up, it's usually a
good thing. Sometimes can be a problem.
So if they get through the small intestine, things start breaking
down. You have your bile and all your
pancreatic enzymes and all these things start to mix in and start
breaking down foods so you can readily absorb it.
Where it gets to the large intestine where you absorb what
we used to think was most of just your water absorption,
which is part of it. But as we start to excrete,
things exit the back door through the rectum.
But 90 ish percent of all of your gut bacteria actually
reside in your large intestine at the portion that connects to
the small intestine. So it's going to be connecting
on your your right side. And so that tube that comes up
and down, that's where most of your gut bacteria lives.
Now that gut bacteria is responsible for everything like
we talked about, it's responsible for balancing
hormones. Up to 40% of your inactive
thyroid converts to active between your gut and your liver,
right. We have balancing of estrogens.
We can actually recirculate estrogens and toxins if our guts
out of whack. All kinds of toxins and junk can
float through there. And so we talk about defining
the gut. It is everything.
It is the center of our being, the center of our Wellness, the
center of our cognition. ADHD, depression, anxiety all
comes back to the gut. They're even now looking at even
autism as being an inflammatory autoimmune condition of the
brain and nervous system rather than just a structural disorder
of the brain. It all comes back to the gut and
the gut Biome. Now one thing I will say on
that, we talked about all the genes in the bacteria, right
3,000,000 different genes compared to 23,000 inside the
the human genome. We start to look at how
expansive this gut bacteria is. We have about 100 trillion of
them. Now we have about 10 trillion
cells in the rest of your body, which means your gut bacteria
also outnumber your body's own cells. 12:50 And so we look at
the gut. Not only are we talking mouth to
anus or talking everything in between this remarkable
microscopic world where everything is everything and
it's connected to the rest of you, more so than arguably your
brain and your nerves are. So when we are going through
life as a species is meant to, we're going through, we're
eating of the foods that we're supposed to.
If you were to just take all the the human noise out of the
equation and we were just eating as we're designed to eat and
everything was functioning as it should, That's a far cry from
what we now are seeing in our society with the obesity
epidemics, the chronic sickness, the illness, all the
medications, all the processed food that people are pouring
into their guts. What is the single biggest issue
or concern that you see as where we're stepping wrong and just
being LED astray as a species as it pertains to improving proper
gut health? When I look at proper gut
health, of course look at overall health and my comparison
will be this. If we look at a lot of
indigenous tribes, Brian Sanders is working on a documentary
right now called Food Lies. That's you'll see him on
Instagram as Food lies. And he visits different tribes,
indigenous tribes through Cambodia and different areas.
And they don't have diseases like we do.
They don't have rotting teeth like we do.
That's your microbiome in your mouth, right?
They don't have infertility the same way we do.
They don't have arthritis, they don't have Alzheimer's.
We have elderly, they have elders.
And it's a very different way of looking at aging and disease
processes. And so if I could say the number
one thing that's leading us astray is that we're no longer
eating food. Everything that we eat is
basically a food like substance. It mimics food, it goes down and
tastes like food. It's what we've conditioned to
be food. But we're not eating real food
anymore, and most of what we eat comes out of a factory or a
package somewhere, somehow. And so even if you reduce it to
its smallest parts, there's microplastics and damn near
everything. We spray 17,000 different types
of pesticides on crops in the USA, totaling over a billion
pounds a year, and pesticides destroy and kill living
organisms to make sure the crops can grow without interference.
So if we have these living organisms like bugs and beetles
and all kinds of wildlife that is dying, what do you think it's
doing to individual organisms inside your gut, which are
again, more important than your DNA?
And so the biggest way we're being LED astray is being told
by lobbying agencies, food corporations and people who make
money, One off of processed foods but two off of illness,
right. We're being told constantly
we'll go try a Beyond Beef burger because it's better for
you. None of that food, not a single
ingredient in there, is of a natural substance or source from
it, from its its edible form, maybe from its raw form, Maybe
soy at one point was you know, grown, but that's also GMO and
so none of it's actual food and your body can't run on that.
And This is why these other tribes have no idea what these
diseases are, because they don't face them like we do.
Yeah, no, I totally agree, man. Like I think when you look at
what we're consuming on average, I mean people like it's just it
boggles my mind. People the things that people
are willing to stick down their throat and consume spend money
on. It's not even food like the the
rate at which people go to fast food chains.
I mean none of it's real anymore.
So when, when that's happening, when they're consuming that
food, from a mechanistic standpoint, what is?
What is the cascade of events that take place?
Like, they consume that food, they chew it, it goes to their
digestive tract. It literally just wreaks havoc
and kills the microbiome. And then that leads to the
disarray we find ourselves in. I mean, basically that's
probably the best way to summarize it.
Like if I was teaching, you know, a grade five class, that's
exactly what I would tell them. It goes through and instead of
nourishing, it kills. Think about your bacteria in
your gut like a fishbowl, right? We talk about prebiotics and
probiotics and there's something we now know is post biotics as
well. And so your probiotics are the
living Organism. That is your actual live
bacteria. Those are the fish in the fish
bowl. Now the prebiotics are the fish
food, right? Because you, you eat, you poop,
so do your bacteria. So we put some fish food in the
tank, and your fish eat that, and then they poop.
That's your post biotic. Now is that post biotic a good
thing or a bad thing? Is it pooping out short chain
fatty acids? Is it pooping out vitamins?
Is it pooping out really beneficial things for your
immune system and culturing? I mean, up to 90%, seventy to
90% of your immune cells are made and matured inside of your
gut and you need a really good environment to do that
successfully. And so if we look at what's
muddying the waters and that's all these things coming in,
we're putting too much things that your bacteria, your fish in
the tank cannot eat and so the water doesn't stay clear and
that's where disease starts. That's sort of the the
simplified version. A lot of people have a very
high, you know, surface level understanding of this and they
will be marketed towards things like detoxes and things of that
nature or specific products that are marketed as probiotics,
prebiotics. Is there much benefit to any of
that if they're still consuming the diet that they're consuming?
Well, I mean, it's really interesting because the argument
would be, if your house is burning down while you're trying
to build it, can you build it faster than it burns down?
If you can, then at least it's a structure, livable or not, as
irrelevant. It's a structure by the basic
marketing argument. And so if we're putting in all
these vitamins and minerals and nutrients into our body while
we're also burning the place down, I mean, are we really
keeping up or just preventing the inevitable?
And that's the question we have to ask ourselves when we're
consuming these things. Now, every health practitioner,
every single one, has a bias leaning of some kind.
Whether you're carnivore, whether you're vegan, whether
you're a mix, whether you know you advocate for supplements or
Whole Foods only, it doesn't matter.
We all have a bias somewhere, though a lot of us can try to
be, you know, non partisan in any way we possibly can.
There's going to be some mixture in there based on education
preferences and personal experience.
And so the general population, it's very easy for them to get
confused, for them to get LED astray, frankly, by marketing
companies who make a really good point or make a viral video.
And they buy this product that does next to nothing for them
because the environment which is receiving that product is not
ready to make the most use of it.
You can bring lumber to a town that's on fire, but they're not
going to be able to use it adequately.
And that's the same thing with what's going on inside of our
bodies. We're bringing building
materials, we're bringing supplies, but our body is not in
a state to be able to use it appropriately.
And this is what's causing us to still be spending.
The USA spends 4 1/2 trillion dollars every single year, but
they have the highest sickness and disease rates.
It's the sickest country in the world.
You know, 60 plus percent of people over 50-60 years old are
on a minimum of two or more prescription medications on a
regular basis. And so we're throwing, no matter
what we have, we're throwing the most money, the most research
and money and supplements and pharmaceuticals at our health.
Yet we are the sickest nation on earth.
And I say we I'm in Canada, but I call it all of North America
are pretty much the same. And that is a big, big problem.
Yeah, I totally agree. I tend to do the exact opposite
of what the bureaucratic entities tell me to do when it
comes to. Yes, they say go left, go as far
right as possible. Yeah, 100%.
Out of curiosity is there with with so many different types of
societies, cultural backgrounds, ways of eating When you look at
it from a a gut microbiome standpoint and the bacteria that
are therein. When you look at somebody with a
healthy gut microbiome in North America for instance, and
compare that to somebody in Southeast Asia eating totally
different types of food, but both seemingly very healthy, is
that gut microbiome? I mean I would assume if you're
eating the right food, your gut microbiome would reflect that,
but how could they be so totally different forms of dialect?
Does that shift based off of lineage and and heritage or is
there much play in that realm at all?
Well, this is where your original question kind of comes
back around full circles. How much do we really know?
I say we're 50 years away at least, because you and I rob as
total strangers. We've never met before, right?
We're not related. We don't even live in the same
country, right? You and I share about 99 to
99.9% of our DNA, right? We're almost identical.
We only share 20 to 30% of the DNA of a microbiome, and so
we're looking at the grand scheme of things.
This is why it's so fascinating. We know there are staples,
right? We know the basics of
Acidophilus and bifidobacterium or different Lactobacillus
strains. If we see these all over the
place on probiotics, the most researched ones out there,
Acromancia is coming out making a big splash right now, all
kinds of specific strains. And so we know what they do.
But the ranges and ratios, the specific genus of each strain is
very, very different, and so I'm very curious to see myself as a
practitioner in this space. I'm very interested to see over
the years what happens with the development of research and I'll
tell you why. There are even on a basic GI map
for example, we might measure Lactobacillus, that's going to
be all your Lactobacillus, reyteries and acidophilus and
different strains. Often times if you're not
measuring an individual gene of that species it comes out as
SPP, your non species specific measurements kind of the
umbrella of all Lactobacilli. And so we can see all of that
but we don't know exactly the ratios of who's got what right
now. We haven't measured it enough.
It's only technology that's been around for maybe a decade of
really like accessible to the public.
And so if we look at somebody, for example, who receives a
heart transplant, great story of a woman that was a news article
that came out 1015 years ago now.
But she'd received a heart transplant.
Stay at home, mom, three kids, very quiet, kept to herself, you
know, goes to church, the basics.
And she got a heart transplant from a donor who had actually
died in a motorcycle accident. Very evil Knievel type, right?
Love to drink, love to smoke, love to ride fast.
Well after a number of years she started to develop habits that
were more high risk living that she never had before.
And so the argument then that I would make is it's these
microbes influencing our personality.
We already know your micro, your microbes in your gut directly
influence how social you feel like being certain behavioral
traits and qualities we can see how they influence certain
neurotransmitters and hormones. I mean 90 plus percent of your
neurotransmitters come from your gut anyways.
And so these different things that we see and how they
interact, it's going to be a really cool science to discover
how much of our microbes alter our personality, right?
We even know right now, for example, people who cut calories
and can't lose weight, right. We call it in the industry
weight loss resistant. Those people have a lot of
toxins in the body, but also are likely to have a lot of altered
gut bacteria. There was a recent mouse study
where they actually took all this bacteria from the mice and
flushed it out as much as they could with laxatives and
antibiotics in the works. And they cleared out their
colons. They took a control group with
healthy bacteria and then this modified group and they put them
on a caloric deficit. And they found that the mice who
had good bacteria, of course, got benefits to their gut
bacteria and their hormones and all these things.
And they lost weight on a caloric deficit.
But the mice who had altered or disrupted or even eliminated gut
bacteria didn't get any of those benefits.
And if they did get any, they were very, very minimal.
And so they even couldn't lose weight, which is what I believe
is in part responsible, not only the food and junk but for
obesity crisis is a change. The gut bacteria that we're not
yet measuring or that is not yet popularized.
And so the influence really everything and even our
personalities, even our ability to gain and lose weight and I
think something of the future will be very similar to CRISPR
technology. We're changing baby's eye colors
in utero and all kinds of stuff right now.
Whether or not, you know, you have certain specific beliefs or
you think we're playing God, that's irrelevant to this
particular statement is that we have the technology to alter
genetics in utero, in a tube to determine what hair color, what
eye color. And there are now studies, these
same mouse studies showing that mice who get a fecal transplant
of gut bacteria from an active, thriving healthy mouse, they get
a lot of those benefits of the exercise from the healthy mouse.
So maybe in 20 to 50 years really wealthy people can
purchase stool from poor people and give them money for having
healthy bacteria and not actually really have to exercise
but still get the benefits. And so that leaves the question,
in the future, could we maybe change personalities and change
other traits and disease and risk ratios and genetic
expression all through altering somebody's gut bacteria with a
pill? And that that fecal transplant,
I mean that's starting to be rolled out in human studies,
right, like there have been some studies indicate success with
it. Yeah, it's already approved by
the FDA and the USA that's typically it's used for
recurrent C diff infections. That's that's what it's approved
for. Right now it's not yet approved
in Canada, but they are doing clinical trials, but they've
used it cases of ulcerative colitis and what's Crohn's
disease previously considered autoimmune.
Nothing you can do take the drugs will cut out your colon
one day are now being reversed. We've seen Parkinson's reversed.
I had Doctor William Lee who was on my show talking about the
causes of disease and he was saying how he actually scrubbed
in on a colonoscopy FMT. So there's two roots of FMT.
One's going to be an oral capsule, which sounds really
gross, but that's what it is. They take the stool and the
feces and spit it out and extract the microbes and put
them in these resistant capsules to get it in culture in your
gut. The other one which now looking
at his colonoscopy to actually go in and flush and clean out as
much stool and bacteria from the colon as possible and implant
stool from another healthy donor or your super donors and they
have actually fully reversed Parkinson's and even a case of
cancer was completely reversed and cured through this FMT.
And so again cancer is an inflammatory condition.
So if it starts in the gut, it makes sense that altering the
Biome will help reverse these diseases.
And that's what we're working on right now in my specialty here
with inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's colitis is what changes
do we need to make on a cellular and microbiological level to get
people to reverse these diseases and stay in permanent remission.
There's there's so much to it, man.
Like people need to take a very measured approach to any
manipulations they're making with their gut health, I'm
assuming. So like a lot of people will do
these these cleanses or they'll do like they'll they'll take
enemas, coffee enemas, all water enemas.
That's become popular and a lot of a lot of subgroups that could
probably do a lot more harm than good if they're riding
themselves of all the good bacteria they do have.
Like how? How does one go about measuring
and determining what steps to take here?
That's a great question. Before I do that, I want to put
one caveat in place. Please do not aim to modify your
own bacteria, especially if you detect problems on your own.
It can be very detrimental. We've seen cases of death from
it. We've seen all kinds of disease
introduction. There was a fella in Toronto.
It's actually on a documentary fun one called Designer Shit and
it's this woman who goes through and she actually alters her own.
She has ulcerative colitis and takes her husband's stool and
does her homemade FMT and she did what she could to do some
measurement to make sure things were healthy.
But it is highly risky without a professional and you can cause a
lot of problems. This one gentleman actually used
stool from his mom also got lucky, says he cured his
ulcerative colitis but he actually picked up her menopause
symptoms with hot flashes and you know and ADHD and lack of
focus. So measuring.
Very very cool tool, but please take heed when doing it
yourself. It can be very dangerous.
Don't eat so in an unsupervised environment.
That's exactly it. If you're gonna eat, poop, do
it. Do it with a professional.
And so her FMT She'd actually done retention.
Enemas is what it was, but oral administration seems to be the
preferred route as of late. But here's my thoughts on that.
So we can measure. So we talked briefly about a GI
map right measurement. That's what we do, is a stool
sample goes to the lab. There's different types of maps.
Ones I tend to like to use are Q, PCR, DNA stool analysis.
There are some labs like Doctor's Data that will do them,
but they are qualitative. So we give you a +1234.
So yeah, Streptococcus species or Clostridium species plus 3 +
4. So it gives you an idea.
I like to use quantitative data, so that's going to be things
like Vibrant Wellness or diagnostic solutions where
they'll actually tell you your culture count.
They use APCR to actually replicate and count out the the
strains of these things and show you how many grams or how many
bacteria per gram of stool etcetera.
So it's a very cool measurement. But the problem here again, we
have 1 to 2000 species, 7 to 9000 strains, which means
upwards of about 18,000,000 different types of bacteria.
And This is why a lot of physicians tend not to use them.
It's just not solid enough, right.
We can maybe see 50 to 100 strains out of these upwards of
18 ish million bacteria and and count them in data.
Now, the good news is that what we can see on these stool
samples we sent to the lab is it's very actionable.
But again, it's stuff we know a lot about your Lactobacillus,
your Bifidobacterium, your fecal presidencies.
And so there's all kinds of stuff we have a lot of research
on. A lot is very actionable.
We can know where it resides, a lot of the bacteria, where it
comes from. But it goes beyond that.
If somebody is showing a lot of imbalance in the bacteria, I see
it a lot in IBD cases. That's why most of them are
inflamed, is we see a lot of imbalances in bacteria.
But the question is, how did you get there?
I got one lady I'm working with right now.
Over the last 3-4 years, her doctors gave her over 30 doses
of antibiotics. Like, no wonder her guts a mess.
On the other hand, I've got a little boy I've been seeing for
a little while now. He's five years old, turning 6
soon, and he went in to see his doctor.
Severe ulcerative colitis. OK, it's ulcerative colitis.
It's autoimmune. There's nothing we can do.
It is what it is. I'm sorry you got a bad luck in
the draw, but here are some immunosuppressives and all kinds
of stuff we can give him to, you know, make his life more
comfortable. Well, we did a stool analysis.
His gut bacteria was one of the worst I've ever seen at five
years old. It doesn't make sense.
There's has to be something else going on.
So we did a urine test and found 20 plus different strains of
mold. Turns out the whole home,
they're doing a complete remediation.
They've moved out. They've been out of their home
now for nine months, and that's at the time of us recording.
And they're working on getting the mold out because the system
was full of it. And that's what altered has got
bacteria. And so when doctors say there's
really nothing we can do, I say bullshit.
We're just not looking in the right places.
Either we don't want to, or we don't have the education or they
don't have the time to educate themselves as another problem.
But that's sort of what we do in measurement.
We have to measure #1. But two, if it's out of place,
we have to go through an extremely thorough history.
We can use organic acid testing. We can use different types of
lab work to figure out the most probable explanation as to
what's a causing the inflammation and or B causing
changes in your gut bacteria leading to further inflammation.
I know there's been multiple companies that have come out of
the woodwork lately to analyze DNA, kind of take the the raw
23andMe genetic data and then you know, summarize what that
could potentially mean for you, how to turn on and turn off
those various snips. And I know there's been some
companies crop up that do something similar from a a gut
microbiome standpoint. Are there any particular ones
that you would recommend that vouch for, present good data in
an actual format, or is that still the wild frontier?
Now, are you talking about biomes or DNA testing?
Biomes similar to what they've done with the DNA testing.
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of, you know, looking at things like
Mosaic, Vibrant Wellness diagnostic solutions.
Those are sort of my go TOS right now.
There's a lot of them out there. Precision Point has some really
great stuff, but all of them have different tests.
So for example, one of the tests from Vibrant Wellness, we do an
Oats test, that's your organic acid test.
That may not be as accurate in some regards as maybe one from
Mosaic. And so really getting to know
your labs does make a difference as a practitioner because they
they present different points of data and different levels of
accuracy. And so there are a lot of tests
that will recommend the challenges for your general
population. You have to have a practitioner
like myself or a functional medicine Doctor Who works in
your area or all over the world that can actually get these
tests and help you find a solution because they are behind
locked doors. Because I consult for a lot of
doctors, I do have access to a lot of these labs like Precision
Point. You have to be a physician.
I was able to get an account, but without access like that you
you can't get a lot of these proper tests done.
Yeah, totally makes sense. Are there any?
Like, given all that we don't know about proper gut health,
are there any hard yeses and hard Nos that you can
confidently say? For instance, obviously alcohol
is probably not going to be the best thing for gut microbiome
health. What about things like fermented
foods? Is that going to yield a net
positive for everybody? Like what?
What are some hard yeses and hard noses that we can
confidently speak on? 100% alcohol.
You know, we used to say that little bit is good for you or
it's, you know, the red wine is good for the antioxidants
resveratrol. That's all been fully debunked,
that the risks and problems are not worth the reward by any
means. You can get those anthocyanins
and resveratrol from other places and even a straight
supplement now, so we don't need the alcohol.
There are zero benefits from alcohol human body if anything
is detrimental and directly linked to other problems.
So that's one other challenge we have is manufacturers,
producers, food companies will pay for studies to be done and
that's where the financial bias comes in.
The information trickles to the public.
We just hear the 1 cherry on top.
Oh alcohol, I love alcohol and I can get antioxidants.
Hell yeah, give me the wine and it's extraordinarily
detrimental. That study was paid for by, say,
a wine producer. And so we're cherry picking data
without considering or purposely leaving stuff out.
So alcohol's number 1, #2 sugar. Now, there are different types
of sugar, right? Of course, you refine sugars,
your table sugars, even, you know, we look at us like cane
sugar. It's all highly acidic sugar.
It's all concentrated forms. So I prefer things like stevia
or natural sugars in fruit. Of course, as you would know
with fibers, that can slow the absorption in imbalanced blood
sugars. But if you have bacterial
issues, if you have fungal issues, Candida or dysbiosis,
like an overgrowth of a lot of opportunistic bacteria, any
sugar at all is going to contribute to your problem.
And that's very problematic for a lot of people not knowing
what's actually going on. So even fruit sugar, I might
remove fruits entirely for 6 to 12 weeks.
It depends. And other things you want to
look at, of course, are going to be gluten.
Gluten is a hard no for everyone, always, Doctor Tom
O'Brien he told me. He says the people who get gut
issues from gluten are the lucky ones because they can decipher
that this is a problem. They understand they can feel it
by eating a bite of gluten that they balloon.
But the people who are unlucky are the ones who can't tell.
Maybe 3-4 days later you have a problem.
And that's primarily because gluten, for example, your body
identifies gluten protein as a pathogenic bacteria, as a as a
toxic bug. And so when we talked about the
digestive system, we talked about those Queens guard sitting
between the stomach and small intestine right there.
It's called TLR 4. It's a Toll like receptor #4.
I believe there's nine or eleven, I think there's nine in
the body. But toll like receptor #4 sits
between the stomach and the small intestine.
And if you eat gluten, what they do is actually look at that and
go, OK, you're a problem. Better down than up.
It might be a little bit easier. So let's try that.
They open the floodgates and they actually create leaky gut
as a defense mechanism. They open the floodgates.
They spread the cells inside the gut lining.
It actually allows water to come in.
That's why if you eat something you shouldn't, you get the runs
within like 10 minutes. That is your body's toll like
receptors opening the floodgates to try to wash like putting your
thumb over the top of the hose right to create pressure and
power washer driveway. Same thing happens in the gut is
trying to flush it out and that's what what gluten does to
the body. It creates leaky gut.
Now we heard the term leaky gut. In this context it's a good
thing. It is beneficial.
Your body's saying I want to get rid of you.
The problem is chronic inflammation leads to sustained
leaky gut, which leads to sustained issues in a bi
directional flow. Not just water coming in, but
toxins leaking out. And that's the problem.
So alcohol, sugar, gluten. Hard.
No. Second to that would be as an
overarching rule. If your great, great, great
grandmother would not recognize it as an edible piece of food,
we probably shouldn't eat it. It's as simple as that.
I know nobody likes it. It's not a sexy answer, but it's
meat, fruit, vegetables, whatever it is you're eating,
that's where you want to go to. And those are sort of my four
points of contact, I'll say, around food and edibles.
What about hard yeses? Are there any for sure?
Hey, your your body's going to benefit if you consume this on a
regular basis. Fat and meat every single time.
It is the most bioavailable. All the studies that are coming
out, there's so much information out there but the benefits of
red meat. And even Harvard published a
really embarrassing study recently, earlier this year that
was showing the how harmful red meat was and diabetes and waste
circumference and all these things.
But their classification for raw meat or sorry red meat was
lasagna and sandwiches as opposed to eating a salad with
like olive oil. So even the data they're
collecting is is pretty biased. And so I'm a big fan of doctors
like Anthony Chafee who do talk about the carnivore diet.
I'm not strict carnivore. I'll consume fruit, I eat very
little vegetables, but mostly red meat.
And I did AGI map earlier this year when I was dealing with
some gut issues myself. Came up high stress period, lots
going on. Had surgery earlier in the year
which required a lot of antibiotic use.
They put in a big sinus infection and issues there.
But my gut Biome was a bit of a mess.
I've been carnivore, almost strictly carnivore.
I think I went 12 weeks strict carnivore.
Then after that I introduced some fruit.
But about eight months on an animal based a carnivore diet
and my Biome has never looked better.
I just submitted A stool sample, got it back about 3-4 weeks ago
and it's never looked better. And so it's interesting to say
that we need fiber, we need plants, we need these things.
Now fibers become an essential nutrient.
Literally putting sawdust inside our food like wood isn't food,
right? It's a building material.
It's it's it's cellulose for for rabbits maybe, and other
craters, but humans can't digest it.
And so now that we're adding all this fiber to things, just
because it's cellulose, we're getting a lot more junk in our
food. And so my yeses are animal
products, eggs, meat, fat, butter or ghee.
Olive oil is a pretty remarkable substance, has all kinds of
antimicrobial and healing properties.
So that's sort of my go to yeses.
Now we're definitely speaking the same language there.
I think all the benefits of fiber far more so, not because
fiber Internet itself is grand for our body, but it helps
mitigate the adverse response that comes from eating all the
other crap and just pushes that through at a better rate.
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting argument to say eat
fiber because you can't break it down.
You need it. So it kind of scrapes the
insides and you know, it's good for you.
On the other hand, they'll also in the same breast, say don't
eat meat because you can't break it down.
So do we eat fiber because we can't break it down or not eat
meat because we can't break it down?
Like you can't have both in in my argument.
I'm not necessarily saying everyone should be carnivore
always. I'm actually very much in the
middle. I've had people with very poor
guts like in severe gut disease who I've tried on carnivore and
they've done well based on their their Biome profiles.
Other I've given them more of a plant based diet and they've
done really well. Everybody responds differently.
I don't think it's so much per SE the foods, I think one, GMO
is a big problem. Two, we're eating a lot of foods
that never existed in the human diet.
And three, I don't think it's the foods as much being the
problem as it is. Excuse me, as it is the food
production. Food production is a mess again,
pesticides, GMOs, mono cropping storage processes, the mold
risk, and things like peanut butter and chickpeas and coffee.
Like it's immense. And so it's this mega
manufacturing and mono cropping that is the problem.
It's how we're growing our food, I believe to be more of a
problem than the food itself. We're now growing food inside of
dirt, right? We used to grow it inside of
soil. And by that I mean carbon
cycling, biogeochemical cycling. If you have a bioregenerative
farm, right? You'll look at Rob, you have an
apple tree. Apple falls off the tree, It
decomposes in the grass. The grass grows from that dirt.
And then the cow eats the grass and you eat the cow.
So you've now gotten all those nutrients combined into you, but
now it's just dirt. We till the soil, the the top
layer is dead. There's no microbes in it.
There's no life in it. There's no nutrients.
It's artificially grown with fertilizers and sprayed full of
chemicals to make it grow and produce a crop and the nutrient
value is destroyed. And I think those are more of a
problem to our health than the actual plants themselves.
That's my my first instinct thought on it.
But again, some doctors will disagree about defense
mechanisms of plants and all that, so.
This is where intuitive Eating comes in, and that's a sort of a
whole nother topic, but definitely an interesting point
of discussion. No, I'm, I'm definitely picking
up what you're putting down. I'm in agreement for sure.
Have you had anybody that's seen a significant decline in
microbiome health with a carnivore approach?
No, no, I've not at all. And that's another interesting
point is why and how right do they sort of sustain themselves?
Can they use all the nutrients and meat to to sustain
themselves? We've been told we need
prebiotics, we need fermentable carbohydrates, we need things
they can turn into short chain fatty acids, you know, resistant
starches and all these things. But some of the healthiest
people I've seen are an animal based or carnivore diet.
And so that begs to differ or begs the question rather how do
we differ these diets from a plant based diet where we study
the microbiome to doctors saying will it actually be knowing what
we know now? They will argue it is inhumane
and borderline should be illegal to do a carnivore diet and test
people because of how hard red meat and other things is on the
diet. But I mean since the 1800s
they've used a red meat diet in water to cure Crohn's disease.
So what is it we're missing and what sort of data are we
neglecting to gather by not testing biomes and stools on a
mass scale using an animal based or carnivore diet?
There's much less money to be made, man.
That's why there's not incentive there.
Unfortunately, that's exactly it.
Artificial food is where it's at.
Yeah, regular farming, there's there's very little money in it
and that's why these lab grown meats, the profit margins are so
high. But again, it's just dead tissue
inside of of that often made from, you know what would
arguably be cancerous or precancerous cells to get them
to grow so rapidly. But we're not getting real food
anymore. Like humans were never meant to
eat like this man. Totally.
If someone is going to be consuming a lot more vegetation,
are they better off going the route of fermented foods like
the sauerkrauts and kimchi, things of that nature?
That's going to be easier to absorb than, say, a raw
vegetarian approach. You know, I used to say raw.
I was actually conventionally trained.
As a nutritionist. I was trained go raw, right?
Eat as many raw, real organic foods as you can and I'm seeing
whether or not a healthy gut could do it to be determined.
You know, that's something else that's really interesting.
People argue they feel great on a raw diet.
I think it's because what they've done is eliminated a lot
of the junk really. But I've known a lot of people
who went raw vegan and got horribly, I'll I mean, famous
person right away is David Dave Asprey, right?
He went raw vegan and he never felt worse in his life.
I tried it and I felt horrific. It's when I went animal based, I
felt better And so it's really interesting to say should we eat
raw or not. I think humans, if you're going
to eat vegetables, should be cooked.
I think fruit is definitely a lot easier to eat raw.
Some will argue eat it cooked, it just depends on the current
state of your gut. But I will never ever advocate
for a raw vegan diet. Knowing what I know about health
and science and gut disease specializing in it, I'll never
recommend a raw vegan diet. Yeah, What about raw meat?
That's been kind of like a popular trend as well.
Like, some argue that when you cook the meat, you're able to
have better absorption of the nutrients.
Some say that the exact opposite is true, and if you're eating
raw meat, you're going to be able to simulate those nutrients
better than what what What's the gut microbiome say?
That's a good question and that's something that is just
not enough data on unfortunately right now and a lot of these
studies that we look for and what we're really conditioned in
the society as well where we want to prove really causation,
not just correlation. It's just not enough for us
anymore. It has to be measured.
And so I would argue to say that a raw meat diet, provided it's,
you know, a clean and and sustainable source, is probably
great. But I don't, I don't know if in
our world anymore raw meat is going to be OK.
I sure as shit would not eat raw meat from like, Safeway, right?
I wouldn't do that at all. If I was growing my own cattle
and I was to eat it, I'd be more inclined.
On the other hand, I've also known people who went out
hunting, you know, grabbed a wild buck and the meat was raw
and they got very, very, very sick because that animal was
carrying a pathogen or a parasite or something else that
caused the problem. So I would say just from a
health and safety standpoint, microbiome aside that consuming
raw meat is but much better, sorry, cooked meat is a much
better option than raw just for safety.
But whether or not it benefits the Biome differently, that's
some some research I'd be very interested in seeing.
It would just be very difficult to get a a big enough scale of
people to actually study pre and post and keep track of raw meat
to give them grocery store meat versus farm grown meat versus
you know, wild game and haunted. And it can be very, very
difficult study to do. Yeah, it is interesting though.
I've been kind of gravitating more towards not necessarily raw
but minimally cooked meats. But at at the same time, I've
definitely known the source of those meats.
I've either haunted it and killed it myself.
I've known the farmer, the rancher.
That's definitely not something that I would do or advocate for
a big box conventional grocery store.
I agree entirely. I know where my food comes from.
I know the farmers. I go to the farm myself to pick
it up. I go to the ranch.
And so, you know, I know where all of it's coming from.
And that makes a big difference. Excuse me?
It makes a very big difference. What about seed oil?
So that's another point of contention right now in the
space. What is that doing to the gut
microbiome specifically? It's like 1 SEC.
It's got a scratching the throat.
Hey, no worries, no worries. Especially as it depends like
cooking in certain oils and fats and like whether or not you cook
above that smoke point. Does it turn it into a trans
fat? What's that doing to the gut
microbiome like that? That's a big point of contention
right now, so I'd be keen to get your take on it.
Yeah, I'm a vehement. They get seed oils.
It doesn't make any sense, the manufacturing process.
And here's the thing, there's a lot of people right now will say
again, it's correlation, causation.
We have the study that shows seed oils are just fine, but
they are extraordinarily high in Omega 6.
Now can the average body handle high Omega six?
No, because 92 to 97% of us are not metabolically healthy
anymore. And so again, but not just
metabolism in the weight gain, weight loss scenario, it's our
entire cellular Wellness. Every, every chemical or
biological process used to maintain life, that is
metabolism. And so our metabolisms are so
full of junk that we can't handle these things.
I mean, and back in 2000 and four 2005, the Red Cross did a
study where they took a bunch of freshly cut umbilical cords.
They grabbed 10 of them and they found an average of 256 toxic
chemicals inside a freshly cut umbilical cord, which is
staggering. I mean 180 were known to cause
cancer, 217 were toxic to the brain and nervous system, 208
caused birth defects or abnormal development.
And these are in like brand new babies.
And so could we handle higher Omega sixes if we were maybe in
a better metabolic state? Perhaps.
But are all of us highly inflamed and full of so much
junk that adding more of these negative Omega sixes in higher
amounts like seed oils, which I believe would be a better oil in
your car than in your body, Then you know it's nonsense.
And so looking at these fried oils, looking at the amount of
trans fats, looking at hydrogenated oils, that's a big
one. I mean, we look at any
hydrogenation will produce trans fats every single time.
It's a chemical process with a basically just blow hydrogen
through something and it attaches to all your carbon
chains and so instead of this squiggly non stacking oil that
will actually make like an oil like you get from olive oil, it
turns into a thick margarine where all these lines, these
these chemical structures are more straight and so they stack
like paper. That's how you get your
margarine. They always create trans fats,
even if they say trans fat free, they've modified it even further
in some way or change the serving size to show no trans
fats per that serving size and that's very problematic as well
as more deception by the food industry.
So long about answer are seed oils safe?
There are a lot of people who would argue yes, but the
correlation is just so strong. We've only been eating them for
50 to 70 years. We cannot say for sure they are
safe and the risk profile just doesn't make sense knowing what
we know about processed foods. Yeah, I'm in complete agreement.
What are some good proxies people can use for kind of
analyzing their own health and being objective?
Like like regularity for instance?
As simple as that may sound, is there like a general rule of
thumb as to what a healthy frequency for regularity would
be, or is that going to be incredibly dependent upon the
individual? I don't think this is dependent,
as doctors say, even GI specialists, and this is what
shocks me. Gastroenterologists will tell
you one bowel boon every couple of days is fine.
If you are not having at least minimum of one fully formed easy
bowel movement every single day. Or you wipe, it's one or two
wipes and you're clean, then you are having a problem of some
kind, some sort of dysfunction. If it's really sticky, if it's,
you know you're having, like I said, less than one, some people
up to three. That's pretty normal, right?
Dogs, babies, they eat, they poop.
So one to three could be argued to be normal.
I do have less obviously on a carnivore diet, you know, maybe
two a day instead of three or four like I used to with a plant
based diet. And that's just strictly do the
bulk and the fiber and how things are moving through or not
digesting. But if you're having anything
outside of that, you have a problem.
If you are dealing with a bit of looseness, if you're dealing
with sensitivity, if you're dealing with any kind of bloat,
any irritability, any acid reflux, I mean, 72, upwards of
72% of Americans complain of gut issues once a week.
That's your Constipation, diarrhoea, gas bloat, pain,
cramping something. And if we look at the severity
spectrum and here's where it gets wild, Rob.
When I look at my speciality of Crohn's and colitis, we have in
1990, there was roughly 1 1/2 to 3,000,000 cases of IBD worldwide
according to the CDC. Today it's 7,000,000 / 50% of
those cases are in the USA alone.
In the USA is 5% of the globe. So with 72% of Americans dealing
with gut issues and now when 5% of the world has 50% of the
disease, we can see the slippery slope of gut problems happening.
And so we talked about what kind of gut issue should be aware of.
Anything outside of the normal can put you on a slippery slope
to developing severe gut disease down the road, be it months or
years. It's all relative and it's not
really dependent on the individual.
We're all so similarly built. Mechanically speaking, you
should be one to three a day with I'll pain very easy, no
blow eating food, high energy, good focus, mental clarity, no
skin issues. These types of things should be
very very easy and normal. It is crazy how accepting people
are of just, you know, bloat, pain, discomfort, acid reflux,
that they just all assume that's just normal.
They'll run to Walgreens, grab some Pepto Bismol and call it
good and. Which is the worst?
I hate antacids. Yeah, but I mean, I can't.
I like since I adopted the ketogenic down, like I don't
have any gas, I don't have any cramping, I don't have any
bloat. Like all that's just gone.
Like people just realized how much better they felt when that
was not even part of the equation.
That alone would be a reason to stick with it.
Yeah, well, one of the issues is 1.
The education is precipitated by the medical professional.
Like I had one lady, she came in.
I'll tell you Rob, she had one bowel movement every four weeks,
once a month. Can you imagine the backup, the
solidity she had chronic migraines.
She had all should have colitis. She had all these issues.
Her doctor wasn't that concerned.
It's like, well, you have, you see these things are going to
happen. Like this lady's on the brink of
death. You need to be cleaning out
those toxins and purging stuff. 3 weeks later she's having three
to five bowel movements a day. Like we loosened her right up.
No problem, no medication. It can be done.
But the problem with this is because up to 9090 to 97% of
people are not metabolically healthy, 72% complaining of
regular gut issues. We've now taken common and
accepted it as a normal, and that's a very big problem.
We do it all the time even in blood work when we see patient
blood labs. You know I had a client of mine
who went back and she got a thyroid checked and her TSH that
thyroid stimulating hormone normal used to be between one
and 4.5 or was it goes one and four and she got hers back.
It was like 6.1. The doctor said, oh you're fine
it's within normal range well over that year for when she got
hers done in July of 2022 to when it came back in January of
2023. They've changed the reference
range from 1:00 to 4:00 to 1 to 6.5 S They added 67% extra
leeway because they took the normal population of sick
people, the common population, and said, well, here's our new
reference range. So we're constantly measuring
our Wellness based on sick people.
We're going to continue to get sick results and we're going to
continue to make people sicker and sicker.
And This is why we'll say, yeah, 123, you know, one bowel
movement every couple of days is normal.
And say, yeah, common is normal because everyone is sick,
because our sliding scale of what's acceptable keeps getting
worse. And as a major problem, we're
going to drive ourselves into freaking extinction, man.
Yeah, no, I totally agree, man. The there's just so many moving
targets out there right now and people have forgotten how to
just be intuitive and be objective and listen to their
own body. Like they don't even know how to
do that and they'll turn to a doctor or medical professionals
get a skewed or biased approach. And it's just it is a slippery
slope. It's very, very unfortunate.
And very, very dangerous. It's This is why diseases are on
the rise, man. This is why, you know, we
celebrate things and saying, well, look at us here.
Now, in 2023-2024, we do such an amazing job with cancer.
People are surviving. The survival rate is so much
more. Well, there's one stat.
The other stat is we have more cancer than ever before and
people are getting sicker, right.
So we're cherry picking our data once again and celebrating wins
that should not be wins. 100% out of curiosity man, know what
you know. How do you structure your day of
eating and frequency for instance?
Like I know you kind of say you certainly advocate for animal
based diets and predominantly don't use much besides some veg,
same fruits from time to time, but what does that look like on
a day-to-day basis? Are you eating a lot of fish?
Are you predominantly red meat? You have much chicken, poultry,
things of that nature. Predominantly red meat, about
95% red meat. I'm not opposed to eating other
things I'm a big fan of like Benazzotti Keto Flex, where it's
like flexing in and out of keto, for example.
So I primarily do ride in Aikido life.
I had this morning, for example, I had about a half pound to a
pound of steak with butter and salt, and I'll eat that three
times a day. Sometimes I put yogurt on it.
Sometimes, you know, maybe for a little snack we'll have half a
cup or a cup of frozen raspberries as a treat, things
like that. But I get everything I need from
red meat and that's my personal diet.
And again, it's all grass fed, grass finished, organic, GMO
free, soy free, corn free, grain free.
And really, it's not that much more expensive than the grocery
store because I drive to the farm and go direct from farm to
table and that's a much better option.
And so that's my personal diet. I might make a soup, you know,
if my wife is sick, I might make chicken soup with rice and
carrots and celery and that's fine.
I'm not going to say no to vegetables.
If I go to my in laws, they're just not a regular part of my
diet and I've never been healthier.
I love it. Can you speak a little bit on
the the formation and creation of just butyrate butyric acid in
a Diane that is predominantly red bean?
Yeah, well I mean your gut bacteria produce these post
biotics, right. They they create that.
So what they take in is they consume and they ferment like we
talked about inside of the gut bacteria like the fishbowl.
So whatever you give them, they will then consume and if they
are healthy and you have these relatively normal levels, they
will produce them. And what we used to believe was,
OK, well your your bacteria need food to poop, right?
They have to be fed these fibers, these starches, these
fermentable carbohydrates in order to ferment into short
chain fatty acids. But those are what keep the body
healthy. Now on the other hand, if you
don't need these things coming in, how do you make them?
If your if your bacteria can sustain themselves, it becomes
its own ecosystem. If you are doing fasting, maybe
your bacteria are eating other things, maybe your cells they're
consuming through autophagy and so things turn themselves over.
It's a very self regulating machine.
And so we talk about post biotics and things like
butyrate. We know there are specific
strains of bacteria that produce these post biotics, right.
They create them by themselves. A really great example of a post
or pre, sorry probiotic. We know that we're studying a
lot now with Acromancia. We know it balances things like
estrogen, We know it balances out your blood sugar metabolism.
We know it produces benefits to the immune system.
And so it's in there, it's balancing itself.
It's very self regulating. And so it's really interesting
to see the research and I'd actually love to read more about
exactly what these bacteria need if any for food because they are
so self-sufficient and self-sustaining that ecosystem.
Think about a pond, right, we don't need to put food into a
fish pond. If you have algae, if you have
bugs, if you have a normal ecosystem, it's very
self-sustaining. That's what terrariums are.
They're a self-sustaining ecosystem and I believe our guts
can do that regardless of what we put in there, if they start
off the right way, from birth to breastfeeding to life.
Yeah, totally, totally agree, man.
So no carbohydrates necessary, basically.
Basically, I mean, I don't think we need them at all.
Look how many people are in a full ketogenic lifestyle for
years now? We do know if you're always in
keto, always in forever. There are correlations to cancer
risk, but that's the point of keto flexing in and out.
You know, you're not going to get a tribe that goes through
running through the jungle and looks at fruit and goes, no, we
are keto, don't eat right though.
We're going to grab that and eat it.
And so our bodies flex in and out of these states.
So is the question. No carbohydrates always in
forever? I'd say no.
These fruits and these things are made to be eaten.
But on the other hand, do we actually need them on a
day-to-day basis? Hell no.
You could go your entire life without a single carbohydrate.
You'd have a much better chance of survival and preventing
disease than you would without a, you know, go even a couple of
weeks ago. Any fatter, any protein, you get
very, very sick. And so do we need carbohydrates?
I'd say arguably in small amounts here and there.
Do we need them every single day, forever and always?
No. Women, of course, are going to
be different biologically and hormonally, but for the most
part we can be in a keto lifestyle.
Yeah. And I don't think any of those
studies that indicate long term ketosis being, you know, cooler
to cancer are well designed studies in the 1st place.
So that's kind of a mute point to begin with.
Well, that's a lot of grey air and I totally agree.
And so that the data we pulls from the data we're given.
But like you said, if it's already kind of bastardized and
bias and, you know, skewed, then like what good is it?
Is it a point of reference and consideration?
Sure. Is it something for us to maybe
look at and keep an eye on? Sure.
But can we use it as definitive data?
Absolutely not. Yeah, 100%.
Well, I'm, I'm curious man, what, what's in the pipeline for
you? What are you excited about?
What research studies get your interest right now?
What? What are you diving into as we
go into the next year? Well, it's interesting.
So I've been pushed recently to write a book.
A lot of people have been asking for it.
I met with Mark Devine. What I think was last week, I
don't know if you know him, he's the Navy SEAL wrote unbeatable
mind and design SEAL fit. But interesting fella.
He says, tell you what man says when you write a book, we're
going to come back and have another conversation.
I said OK. And so I think a book coming up
is going to be interesting. I think I'd like to call it
antiquated medicine. Talking about how horrible our
system is and how we rely on all this old stuff.
Got some neat stuff coming up going on a show with Doug
Kaufman, who created the Kaufman Diet on Know the Cause.
Going to got some really great speaking events, doing some
traveling, going to seminars. So we got a lot of stuff.
We're just trying to get the word out.
My my whole mission is that diseases, especially autoimmune,
digestive diseases like Crohn's and colitis don't fall to the
sky and drop on our head and come from nowhere.
There's always A cause. The problem is, medicine doesn't
look for it. They just go, here's your
current symptoms, therefore here's your diagnosis.
And we give drugs 1-2 or three for that diagnosis.
It's cookbook, it's line cook. It is not critical thinking.
We want to go back to the roots and teach people to do that for
themselves, to understand it differently and really become
advocates. And so whether that's through
books or speaking or TV shows or or podcasts, there's lots of
cool stuff coming up and we just want to get the word out.
Yeah, I love it, man. I feel like this is a topic that
is so misunderstood. So the more light that you can
bring to it, the more hopefully you open people's eyes and
minds. Because like we said in the very
beginning, you can't really tease out gut health from
everything else. Like, it's all intertwined.
And if people start viewing it holistically as such, they're
likely going to start moving in the right direction.
So where? Where they're sourcing their
food, the types of foods they're consuming, the toxins, their
environment. I mean, everything is all
interconnected and we have to live life accordingly.
Undoubtedly. I don't think I could have
wrapped it up better myself is that's exactly what it is.
When you are so convicted by knowledge, belief and
understanding, you move in accordance with that It becomes
your new law, your new rule for life.
When you realize that these pesticides are killing us, when
you realize that our circadian rhythms are a mess because we're
all in the city, we're watching TV at night, we're eating late
at night, we're throwing off these rhythms.
We're not getting sleep or prone to diseases.
It's really interesting. A lot of the health community
has more interest in actually moving out of the city day by
day, not just because homesteading is trendy, but
because it aligns with our beliefs and our values around
health and Wellness and getting back to nature.
And as society begins to move further and further away from
that original design, we health professionals tend to move
closer and closer to it. So it does create more of a gap
and more of a dichotomy, you know, between two different
types of communities. But I think it's really
interesting to see where it goes and how much one can influence
the other. Yeah, I mean, it just feels
right to like when you're doing something that you know to be
true and pure and right. You just, you just know it.
And like when you're sitting around a campfire sharing a meal
with people that you know you aspire to, to learn from and be
like, and you're eating a quality meal and you're looking
up at the stars because you're miles away from the city.
Like that just feels like it's primal, It's carnage.
It's like how we are supposed to be as a species.
We've just removed ourselves from that environment.
But the more we can do to get closer to it, the better.
Yeah. And I got a philosophy, you
know, it's that we as human beings, the closer we get to
nature, the further we get from disease.
And I'll tell you why. You know, over sanitizing
everything 20/20 was a prime example of people getting sick
just from not getting outside, not getting sunlight, over
sanitizing everything. And that whole that whole forest
was just people making themselves sick or really.
And so looking back, one of the things that that people can do
the most for themselves is to get outside, get into nature.
The people with the worst microbiomes and with that the
worst immune systems are those who are #1 born C-section, so
not vaginally. So again, a not a natural thing.
Two who are bottle fed, not breast fed and they're going to
have horrific gut biomes and they're actually more inclined
to get, you know, to die of SIDS.
Babies who are who are bottle fed are twice as likely to die
from SIDS than babies who are breast fed.
And so that already starts right out there.
Now, if you live in a city, if you work in an office building,
if you sit inside all day, you have one of the worst
microbiomes. But if you were born vaginally,
you came to the birth canal, you were breast fed.
If you grew up on a farm, interacting with animals and
getting your hands in the dirt, your microbiome diversity is far
more superior than to somebody on the other end of that
spectrum. And that's strictly because of
how we were designed to live in nature and engaging, interacting
with nature, being outside, being in the dirt, you know,
working with animals, being on a farm or consuming animal
products. That's how we introduce things
into our bodies. But these hyper sterilized
lifestyles, they just completely work against us.
We're not introducing new life into our Meadow, into our forest
of of bacteria so to speak. And so we're lacking a lot
really in in the world of health and diversity based on our
modern lifestyles. And that's another driver for so
much sickness and disease, a. 100% and that's kind of what
we're touch touching on the very beginning and our aspiration is
to kind of get into the home setting.
What what's the timeline like that for you?
Are you you going to be getting land anytime soon?
Yeah, we're actually seriously looking at getting some land
within the next year to year and a half and having a home and
everything built up. It's just going to be a really
great question of what do we do with it.
You know, my dream would be to buy some land that's farmable
and that you know, we have some flexible zoning on that people
will come out and want to do retreats, come out to do
weddings, have some glamping, have some cabins and Airbnb's.
And you know whether it's a live work type scenario and you have
people coming out, live on the land and working and it just
becomes a community. That's my dream and hopefully in
the next couple of years we'll have that.
But it's something we are working and saving rigorously
toward because we believe that is where we're supposed to be
and that's where humans were designed for, is this very
natural lifestyle. In meeting with homesteaders and
farmers like Joel Salatin and Jill Winger, they are phenomenal
and they're super brilliant and they just talk about how getting
back to nature and farming and working in outside is just some
of the most fulfilling. It gave them meaning, it gave
them purpose and it changed their health as well.
And so much comes from getting back to nature and then that's a
dream that I want. The closer I get to that side of
things, the deeper my understanding gets, the more I
am in this industry, the more that begins to align with my
values. And that's now we're actively
working towards. I love it, man.
Well, our dreams and our values are most definitely aligned.
So when you get that property, you let me know.
If there's anything I can do to help, by all means let me know.
And you are more than welcome to come check out our operation
here because I think one of the main benefits that I've noticed
just simply in going the homesteading route is that the
people that are doing something similar and the sense of
camaraderie and community that comes with that is pretty much
unparalleled. So just keep diving deeper, man.
It's it's pretty fulfilling. Well, I'll absolutely take you
up on that. You know, we're doing a lot of
traveling coming up this year and maybe that's one of the
things we'll stop and do because I want to learn more about it.
You know, unfortunately I wasn't raised on a farm.
I wasn't raised to work with my hands.
Like I've been trained to work hard but not with my hands.
I'm handy ish. I can hang photos and pictures,
but I couldn't build a house, you know.
And so I want to learn these things because those are skills
that you are self-sufficient, self-sustaining.
And when you have a village full of people who do that, the the
quality of life that you get is so much more meaningful and so
much deeper than constantly being back-to-back and competing
with somebody on social media, media and and you know, living
in this sort of world that's all artificial and made-up.
It's just not what we want to be doing.
And and the better a community we can build, the more places we
can visit, the more we can learn and everybody comes up together.
And that's that's the dream. Amen to that, man.
It certainly takes a village. Well, where do people go to find
out more about you and just watch the journey unfold, man?
But they want to learn more. Best place to go to
wouldbereversiblepod.com That's reverse able pod.com.
And that's my podcast, Reversible, the ultimate Gut
Health podcast. And what we do there is just
talk about the gut. Now that can be a bit of
redundant topic. So it's not just like here's
some bacteria, Here's some fun facts.
We actually meet with some of the best in the world talking
about different ailments and conditions.
We talk about how the gut effects our world, how our world
effects it. And we meet with doctors like
William Lee, Stephen Gunger, We even had Lisa Bill you on
talking about business and gut and Wellness.
And it's just a really fascinating podcast.
I've had the opportunity to meet with some really amazing guests
and specialists from all over the world, some very famous
famous people and to get their take on it and it's been really
cool journey. So on there as well on
reversiblepod.com. I also have access.
I've created some free gut health programs.
If people are dealing with acid reflux, fatty liver, irritable
bowel, inflammatory bowel, whatever it is, there are free
programs and of course our our custom programs for severe
inflammatory bowel disease. We can always help with that and
you can reach everyone through that website reversiblepod.com.
Awesome. Well, I will certainly link it
to that and make it easy for people to find you.
Josh, really appreciate the time, man.
I've learned a ton. I value what you're putting out
in the space, and I've got no doubt that you're making impact
in ways you don't even yet realize.
So keep doing exactly what you're doing.
Hey man, likewise, I I love what you're doing.
The message is spreading and I appreciate you having me on.
And just give me the opportunity to share this information with
people who are really interested in hearing it.
So thank you. My pleasure, man.
Well, until next time, brother. Take care and happy holidays to
you. Cheers.