Healing Your Gut (Finally), Why You Shouldn't Freak Out About Food Labels, What Your Poop Can Tell You About Your Gut & More With Dr. Lauryn Lax

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, if you can imagine a cartoon character where they hit it over the head with a bat, it gives those dizzy stars and spins. It's kind of the same way for the subconscious mind. The more that we program something that is the anecdote to maybe I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, or I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, or I can't digest this, or whatever the story is, it begins to neutralize where that old story actually becomes like we forget the old story because the body senses that anxiety and that stress. So, trusting your gut is all about living in the knowing state and that it's already been fulfilled and thanking God for the health that you're going to have or that you have.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show.

Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. Ben Greenfield: Hey, folks. My guest on today's podcast is a former TV news journalist and she has really studied up hardcore on the gut. I'll let you tell your story to everyone, Lauryn, but I know it involves some pretty significant illnesses. You wound up writing this book. I'm going to hold this book up. For those of you watching the video version, the show notes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/LAX, not the airport. It's actually my guest's last name, Dr. Lauryn Lax. And Lauryn wrote the "28-Day Gut Kickstart" back in the day, but then she came out with this new book, "The Total Gut Reset." And I get so many gut books sent to me. I think maybe I don't know, people know that I myself have a little bit of a princess gut or that I'm interested in the gut or whatever. And I don't do a podcast on 90% of them, but this one was really good and got into some stuff that I think would be really helpful for my audience, Lauryn. So, I would love to take a deep dive into some of this. But before we do, I want to hear what got you interested in the gut.

So, my love for the gut and really the gut-brain connection begins back at 4th grade recess. And, I was 10 years old, a pink scrunchie in my frizzy hair that my mom made me wear, and all I wanted to do was fit in. And, the popular girls invited me to join their gossip circle that day where they're laughing at Melanie Strawn's ugly sweater and gawking over Eric Arthur's cute freckly face and floppy ears. And then, all of a sudden, the topic of weight comes up. And, the queen bee says, "Oh my gosh, you guys, I weighed myself last night and I'm 69 pounds." "¡Qué gorda!" And then turning to each of us and she said, "¿Qué pesas?" And one by one, we had to go around the gossip circle and report to our drill sergeant. And at a healthy 80 pounds, 10 years old, I was by no means a fat kid, but when the circle got to me, I gulped and I lied and just said, "I don't know," looking down at my feet. And I'll never forget going home that day and standing in the pantry and turning over my favorite Doritos snack pack. And learning a whole new language, which is fat grams and calories. And then, at age 10, really my life path took a sharp turn. And, little did I realize that that day would set the tone for the next 20+ years, 25 years of my life where I would spend on a roller coaster of diets, dogmas, Dr. Google searches, doctor offices, all in the quest of feeling good in my own skin inside and out. And, I had struggled with gut issues from the time I was young. I mean, kid of the processed food generation, antibiotics, C-section baby, like all the cards were stacked against an unhealthy gut early, but it really was this pivotal moment of both diet culture and health culture really trying to figure out again how to feel good in my own skin and spent and accumulated 4 years of my life behind bars in hospitals and treatment centers during that time where the typical treatment for eating disorders, anorexia that I had developed, was Pop-Tarts, pizza, and Prozac. And so, just like our symptom-based treatment for say someone that's overweight, move more and eat less, or someone that has a lifestyle-induced disease, just a pill for an ill, my symptoms were treated with what made the most sense for food freedom and weight gain and processed foods. And, it really began to create this healthy skeptic in me of like, "Is this the way? Is this the way to be healthy?" And, really began to question conventional wisdom that I was being told by all, like, my doctors and nutritionists that I would see, dietitians in these treatment centers. And so, I was getting fed one narrative in that sense. And then, on the outside, again, diet culture was— I was a child of the '90s, so grew up in low-fat being bad. And then, we go into Atkins and South Beach. And I really was a trendsetter for every single diet under the sun. And all the while, still struggling with a ton of, like, over gut issues.

Quick question before you get into how it came to a head. Do you think that eating disorders damage the gut? Because it seems kind of counterintuitive to me and maybe some other people because you think, "Well, anorexia, you're just not eating very much. Wouldn't that be easy on the gut?" Obviously, maybe it's hard on the joints and the hormones, et cetera. But, does that make sense? Just playing devil's advocate. It seems to me like sometimes eating less could help the gut. I even know some people with gut issues who get really skinny and almost look like they have anorexia just because they're afraid to eat anything at all, but it seems to help their gut. And so, do you think there's a mechanism of action where anorexia or some other eating disorder could actually harm the gut?

Oh, 100%. I mean, I think just in research alone, we see 98% of those that have had eating disorders will develop a functional gut disorder. And I think it's super unaddressed both going through treatment and eating disorder life. And you're right, that which is once productive can become counterproductive. So, I think it begins on first where the gut begins when you are beginning. So, say I feel a little bit better when I'm adopting, say, a diet of not eating, fasting, but it really depends on the variables as well. If you're living on artificial sweeteners as I was, like Crystal Light and all these diet foods that are super processed. That's not going to make your gut feel good. And then, just all the dysbiosis, we would call it insufficiency dysbiosis that's created with anorexia. So, you are basically starving out both the healthy and the non-healthy gut bugs. So, you really just don't have that life force in there. And, 1 in 4 women that have gone through anorexia, or I just say women, but men are experiencing this as well, will develop an autoimmune disorder as well. So, we just know how related that is to leaky gut and dysbiosis on the back end. And then, those that maybe are struggling with overeating, binge eating, I mean, likewise, there's dysbiosis being created, dysbiosis being just gut imbalance because of just the certain things that you're feeding the microbes versus— and certain things you're not and how you're forcing digestion to happen. There's a lot of stress created. I would think— and that too being the number one driver would be stress, the perceived stress, the inflammation that's going through that gut-brain axis. So, great question. And yes, gut issues are very common in those that have struggled with disordered eating. And I think, again, that threshold of if one goes on say a long-term fasting or just eating less diet, they feel better because perhaps they were starting at a threshold of a very dysbiotic gut to start. And so, they are starving out some gut bugs that aren't serving them. But, I do see this in diet culture too. You don't have to have an eating disorder to fall into the pigeonhole or the rabbit hole of a disrupted gut microbiome. And, I think any diet, it can be productive. So, we say carnivore, keto, vegan, vegetarian, whatever people are adopting, the reason why they see that productivity is because it's modifying the gut. And then, the reason why 95% of diets fail, say, you know, after the 30 days or 3 months or hit that plateau, It's not just because they failed the diet or their willpower is down or the diet's not working, it's because of what's happened in the gut microbiome. And in my patient population, I see a lot of patients that don't have overeating disorders but they have a fear of food that has developed because of like they've pigeonholed themselves so much into a certain diet where they're eating maybe 5 to 10 foods because it's all their body can handle. They've developed histamine issues or they continue to linger in that state. Because even things like a carnivore diet, which I think can be very beneficial and therapeutic, but I've had a lot of patients that have fallen into what— that's all they can eat now because if they do introduce something back in, it was kind of like a Band-Aid. It was cover-up because they took out certain foods that were making them unwell. But if they didn't mind to heal the gut as well, didn't just rely on the food and grow some healthy gut bacteria that could digest other foods, they may run into a wall. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It's interesting because I was telling you before we started recording, I'm supposed to interview Steven Gundry tomorrow and his whole book is about— he calls them gut critters, but the idea of the microbiome and its importance in the gut-brain axis and the gut metabolism axis. And sure, if you overeat and spill over a bunch of say inflammatory lipopolysaccharides from the gut into the bloodstream or develop leaky gut or pockets of inflammation, diverticulitis or the like, then that kind of makes sense because you're just eating too much, you're eating too much of the wrong thing. But, it sounds to me like what you're saying is that even if you're not eating enough, you're throwing off your microbiome, not feeding your gut bacteria, not populating your gut and creating a host of other issues. And then, what I'm talking about is particularly relevant to not eating enough or excess dieting or anorexia nervosa or not eating a wide enough variety of foods. I think it's pretty intuitive for most people as something like bulimia would cause issues just because you've got so much acid imbalances and that results in poor digestive enzyme production and damage to the esophagus, et cetera. But, I was just thinking about that as you were talking that it is kind of interesting because you'd think, Well, just don't eat and everything will heal up, but you just don't eat and as you just noted, you throw the bacterial balance off in a pretty remarkable fashion. So, I interrupted you though when you were talking about everything kind of coming to a head at one point.

Yeah. So, everything in that journey really came to a head the morning that I stepped on the scale at 5:00 a.m. only to see a number I had not seen since I was that 10-year-old girl, only this time I was 23 and I was a full-fledged adult and I was living in Nashville at the time, about to enter my second year of grad school the next day. I was studying occupational therapy by this time. Long story, I'd gotten out of the news just because I wanted to get out of Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was living, working in the news under my parents' roof because I was so unwell that they had really wanted me to be close. So I said, "I'll go to grad school and I could live on loans." And so, I was there. Woke up and there was no— at this time, it's again being scared. There was no doctor standing over me telling me I was unhealthy anymore or my parents even there who had really fought for my life many times in and out of all these hospitals and treatment centers. And so, I remember getting into my car and driving to the gym. I had 4 or 5 gym memberships. I was working out 8 hours a day at this time in my life and just praying out loud, "God, "Help me make a change today." And, my spiritual journey had been a very big part of my eating disorder. I felt like it was really a spiritual warfare. And, to me, God helped me make a changement, helped me eat a tablespoon of almond butter more or helped me work out 30 minutes less on my StairMaster today, just willpower. And, when I got to the gym that morning, I got out of my car collecting my magazines, my fitness stuff to go into the gym. And, turned around and I heard not one but 9 other strangers walk up and they said, "Good morning, Lauren," and whipped around 9 other gym goers who stepped in and spoke up and said they wanted to help. And, not knowing anything about my backstory in my life, just seeing this girl for the past couple years every day slaving away on the StairMaster and they stepped in and spoke up and just said, "We don't know what we would do if we ever saw you collapse on this in front of us. And, just out of the kindness and the love of their hearts, they had all come together the night before and just planned this kind of intervention. They were all friends about my parents' age because that's who works out about 5:00 a.m. in the morning. And, they drove me to Vanderbilt Hospital where nothing imminent had happened, no bullet wound, no car wreck, and the doctors were like, "Why is she here?" But, they just knew in their hearts I was not well. And, My parents were by this time on their way down from Little Rock to come. And, within 48 hours, I found myself in the CCU with a heart rate in the near 20s and doctors saying I may not make it. And, I know without a doubt had they not stepped in that day, I would not be here having this conversation with you at all. And, in that moment, flat on my back in a hospital bed as they're screaming, "We may need to call code blue," and talking about maybe putting a pacemaker into my heart, there was something, a peace that came over me and it was as if God was saying like, "Lauren, this is not your time. You're going to make it, but buckle up. This is going to be a ride." And, I spent the next 4 weeks on feeding tubes and heart rate monitors and IV fluids in the hospital. And, by the end of that 4 weeks, the doctors gave me one of two choices. They said, "You can stay here for another 8 weeks and continue to be refed and bed rest or you can go back to treatment." You have no other option. And so, I chose to go back to treatment and said, "I'll go for the minimum 6 weeks." And, I'd done the treatment game many times. Again, Pop-Tarts, pizza, Prozac model. I knew what I was in for and ended up staying about a year in Miami. And, on that 6-week mark that I was supposed to leave, actually, I started to have all these chest pains I had not had since that day of that imminent moment. And, it was, again, as if God was saying like, "Lauryn, I'm not done with you yet." And, wanted to wring out that eating disorder out of my system and out of my psyche. And, there was a lot of hard lessons learned that I wrote in a blog at that time just facing Double Bagel Day or Egg McMuffin Fridays or Eggo Waffle Tuesday Thursdays, my nemesises. And, it was not really about the food by that time, it really was it wringing out of my heart and my head. Treatment was no different. It was something in me had really changed though and decided, you know, when I get out of here, life is going to be different on the other side. And so, I got out of treatment about a year later and I was learning to walk again and crawl, starting to do that in life and began to find my footing and actually was so thankful to stumble into an amazing church community, CrossFit community. And then, that was a gateway into functional medicine and paleo for me was that CrossFit community down there in Miami. And so, I began to get really curious and interested in helping others heal. And so, yeah, I kind of began my functional medicine journey. I had no idea what I was going to do with my doctorate in occupational therapy, but it really is the job of helping people live life to the fullest is the ethos of that profession. And so, learned how to marry that with functional medicine training and nutrition. And over the next decade, set out on this journey of learning not only in the classroom or in online learning kind of situations, but also actually my body became my best teacher because I ended up developing these 13 incurable conditions over the next decade that had been a byproduct. You had asked a question earlier about how the gut is disturbed during something like anorexia, and lo and behold, it really was. And little did I know that all of these issues were related greatly to that disrupted gut-brain axis. But it really was this residual of these 5 autoimmune diseases, Lyme, mold, mast cell activation syndrome, hypothyroidism, cancer workup, stroke workups, brain tumor workups. It was just nuts and the doctors couldn't explain it. Mayo Clinic turned me away. Cleveland Clinic turned me away. It was just one of those complex cases that I see a lot now in clinical practice as well. And really, there was not much hope for me other than symptom-based treatment according to both conventional and honestly a lot of the functional docs were head scratch— scratching their head. And, that journey came to a head a decade later, literally almost to the date. I was 33, my Jesus year is what I call it. That's the year of— it's just really a pivotal year in a lot of people's lives. But, I found complete healing and it was really through this mechanism called the gut-brain axis and rewiring the gut-brain axis that I was in a training learning how to use— they didn't even call it gut-brain axis, it was just limbic system type of work and NLP type of work that I was training just from a coaching perspective, but it ended up helping my body do this complete 360. You oftentimes hear the body keeps the score or issues are in our tissues and mine certainly were and I didn't realize that. And it was a much deeper work than I'd ever done in the 20-plus years of therapy. I had been in just cognitively touching the 5 to 10% of the brain that is in the cognitive state, whereas 90% of our thoughts are subconscious, which interestingly enough, 90% of those thoughts come from the gut microbiome as well. And so, I developed this understanding of how the gut and the brain are connected. And through healing my brain, I was then able— I was already eating a healthy diet, I was already doing the supplements, I was doing everything physically, And, it all began to work when that gut and that brain got aligned and there was this stress release that had been there for so long in my body. And so, this is a lot of the work now that I do with clients is just marrying the two. It's the physical and the mental-emotional because it's just like a physiological state can produce a psychological reaction. So, something in the 3D world can make us feel anxious, for example, a news headline. Or something like that. A mental emotional state can also produce a physical state. And, even more greatly, if you can think about the water studies where we can change water with just loving thoughts versus angry thoughts where they look under a microscope and they see that and we're 70% water ourselves as a body. So, I'm very passionate about helping individuals take their health back into their own hands. And really, my mechanism that I use is just a gut-brain reset. And, When I say the word gut, to me, that is like if you've ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, they use Windex on everything. So, to me, gut is not just digestion, constipation, and bloating. It really does touch multiple parts and facets of health. So, it's a very broad term for what I mean like the root cause of health.

Ben Greenfield: Interesting story. I've never actually had to pray to God that I could eat more almond butter. If anything, I've had to pray that God would somehow keep me from eating the entire jar. But, I get where you were. And, it makes me think a little bit about the fact that back to your story when you were a kid in elementary school and coming back and looking at the Doritos, I mean, people are encouraged to look at food labels now, Lauryn. I mean, for example, I just interviewed the Food Babe and the entire podcast was about look at this on the food label, look at that on the food label. How do you kind of marry the idea of intelligent approaches to knowing what it is that you're eating and not freaking out about it or stressing out about it in such a manner that disrupts that gut-brain axis producing stress, leaky gut, and anxiety around food. Does that make sense? How do you approach the whole food label thing?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think we do live in not— it's not heaven on earth necessarily here. So, there is a lot of chemical and toxin toxins in our food. I think America's food system compared to say Europe, it does not reflect a real food diet here. And so, I think that is something I'm cognitively aware and I still educate my clients on. And that said, I also believe in something like the hygiene hypothesis with food that the little dirt never hurt mentality. And we know hygiene hypothesis in immunology, it goes the cleaner you are, the sicker you become. So, The more you sanitize your hands or the more you live like a bubble boy, the more when you're exposed to the elements outside, you're going to become sicker. And I think with the food and gut, it can be the same way. And so, kind of we were talking about our reflection. Some of my sickest patients are those that are eating only 5 to 10 foods because they are avoiding everything or they've become so fearful of how food makes them feel. And yet, I just said they're the sickest patients still because they're in this bubble, this container, and their gut is not as resilient. And they're eating dirt, I guess, is something that we would say. But yeah, I think there is a balance and a fine line in a way. But I was just at Whole Foods earlier today and I forgot to bring some liposomal vitamin C. I love it when I'm traveling. And so, just picked up one and flipped over a label. And I mean, there's all this food coloring in it and citric acid. And just some fillers. And it's just like we, I think, do need to read labels from that perspective of toxicity. And I think toxins are the X factor and chemicals are the X factor that, I mean, ideally we're eating a real food diet still that mimics like ancestral times. And back to the 80/20, the little dirt never hurt is being able to go with the flow. And like, if you are in Rome, eat the pasta. On your birthday, have a treat and just move on. At Thanksgiving, enjoy your whatever your mom made you. Like the traditional things. I've had some patients, like I said, with the 5 to 10 foods. One of them that comes to mind, she had mast cell activation syndrome, had mold illness, was eating practically, I think, chicken and chicken for every meal and maybe a little bit of— I don't even know what vegetables she was eating, not much of anything. But, all that to say, she went home during a Thanksgiving and just being around family and feeling loved and not on her own in the journey, she actually ate foods that she hadn't eaten in years and it was like she felt fine. And, I remember her just messaging me the next day and saying, "Dr. Lauryn, I don't know how this happened," but that goes back to how that gut and brain work. And, one of my favorite studies is where they take— have you— the milkshake study. Crum is the doctor's last name. I think it's Alice or Alison Crum. And they take two groups and they give them a milkshake and they want to see what happens to them metabolically. One milkshake is a 600-calorie milkshake and one milkshake is a 140-calorie diet shake, so the healthier shake. In actuality, both groups got the exact same milkshake, like a 300-calorie milkshake. So, they had no idea though and they drink the milkshake. And what they found is a completely different metabolic response. So, those that drink the the 600-calorie milkshake that were like, "Hey, this is one and done. This is for the study. I'm going to just enjoy this, savor this," they actually had a healthy metabolic response. Whereas those that drank the diet shake went into kind of that starvation mode. They were hungrier. Their ghrelin scores, which is the hunger hormone, went up 3 more times than the other group. And, this was all based on perception, not on the actual calorie shake or the milkshake. So, Really, our perception plays a huge role in our diet. And, you can even think about a food desert versus yuppie culture in downtown Austin where I live. And, everything's gluten-free, animal-based, and you can get all the free things at whatever restaurant you go. They don't look like you have a third eye. But, if you go to a food desert, I mean, they're eating the Dorito diet, but they're not thinking about even anything related to their health a lot of times. And, they're just living on this every day. They're not thinking about how the food's affecting them because their totem pole of what they're stressed about is completely different and maybe more in that survival mode state or on what's happening with baby daddy. It's just a different threshold of where our directed focus goes. And so, I think the more sometimes we're hyperfocused on food, the more we can either stay intolerant to foods or we react to foods. And, when I was reintroducing foods back from so much restriction, one of the things that helped me the most is speaking positive into my mind and the food I was actually digesting. So, my body is strong, I'm resilient, and knows how to digest this food. And, I've reintroduced every single food that I was reacting to, all the histamines and the autoimmune paleo diet kind of foods that I wanted to reintroduce. With that principle.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, the brain certainly is pretty powerful. It's kind of related to you feeling great because you feel as though you got a fantastic night of sleep and then checking your wearable and finding out your sleep score isn't that great and all of a sudden you feel tired. Or back to the calorie thing related to the milkshake study, sometimes I'll just be awake at night and I'll think I'm full and I'll think, gosh, Why do I feel hungry, restless, et cetera? I'll sometimes check my blood glucose and it'll be low. And then, I'll lay there, and this isn't every night, but I'll think, "Well, gosh, I had that packet of oatmeal and that was 350 calories and that shake was maybe 600 calories. And then, lunch seemed really filling and it was maybe 300 calories, whatever." And once I add it all up, I realize, "Oh, I ate 1,000 fewer calories than my body needs tonight." that's why I'm hungry. But sometimes, if you think you're eating a whole bunch of calories, you feel full when you're really not and then the hunger can kick in later on. So, I've experienced that in a few different ways. And as far as the food labels go, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you're endorsing eating crap. I think you're endorsing not being so stressed out and myopically orthorexic about your diet that you're actually not doing your gut any favors. For me, I think that if you're exercising, if you're physically active, you can certainly get away, I think, with a little bit more from a dietary standpoint. But, I'm honestly more concerned about big ag, about monocropping of agriculture, about poor soil practices, about abusive animals with non-regenerative farming and just supporting that entire scenario. I'm much more concerned about that than, "Hey, this grain-fed steak is going to just screw me for weeks on end and destroy my gut and make me fat or whatever people think." So, I think it's kind of an art and a science. It's about being a responsible consumer who knows and is educated about the physiological and environmental impact of what you're eating and then also checking yourself and not stressing out about it too much because as you've outlined that can have a pretty significant impact on the gut. But, I'm curious because you talked about limbic training and NLP. What's that even look like? Can you give me an example or if somebody's listening in, an example of if they are stressed out or if they do have an eating disorder, what a practice or what a sample routine or whatever from that style of training actually looks like?

Yeah, totally. I think first starts with awareness. It's all about getting awareness of the subconscious mind, which is again 90% of our thoughts being subconscious. So, just thoughts that we're not aware of. And interestingly, they say statistically 80% of people's thoughts are repeat or negative thoughts they've had before. So, it's opening up this onion layer of thoughts. And I think around health would be a great example to workshop here. And if people have whatever your symptomology is, say you have bloating all the time or maybe someone has PCOS or maybe someone has an acute UTI right now, whatever it is, it's first gaining awareness around what is the mindset connection to this symptom. And so, symptoms I a lot of times have found are metaphors for the body or for the brain like a stressor, perceived stress. We talked a little bit about toxins. I think they can be the X factor. So, say you go to Mexico, you drink the water, get a parasite or a gut infection. That's overtly toxicity happening. However, something internally or at a mental mindset level can prime tissues for disease or symptomology to show up for different people in different ways. So, I'll give you a really just simple example. Say little Johnny, he's 8 years old, he eats peanut butter and jelly every single day for lunch and he has for years and he loves it. And then one day out of the blue, little Johnny begins to develop these skin rashes, a little bit of hives, as well as gut symptoms around his PB&J. And so, goes to the doctor, the doctor says, "Must be a gluten and peanut intolerance. So, cut those out, see how he does." Little Johnny's doing better. Well, when Little Johnny comes to me, we do a little bit of work and I ask him or really his mom what was happening in Little Johnny's life prior to the onset of these symptomologies. And come to find out little Johnny was eating a PB&J at the same time he witnessed his parents have an all-out fight in the kitchen that led eventually to his dad walking out that day and eventually their separation and divorce. And the way that the gut-brain axis works is it locks that in or the limbic system which traps and stores memories. And so now when little Johnny sees this trigger subconsciously, he's not thinking about the fight, the divorce, the stress, the indigestible conflict that he felt in that moment, not able to figuratively digest or swallow, the body and the limbic system are correlating this trigger or this sandwich with that trigger and that stressor. And, this is all happening at a very subtle level.

Yeah. And, by the way, this would be similar to, for example, me having a little bit of a disagreeable association with the way that pizza impacts my gut. But maybe it's because most of the pizza that I ate for 5 years was combined with massive amounts of tequila, vodka, gin, and being hungover and eating it cold from the refrigerator. And so, now when I see pizza, I just associate it with feeling like crap.

Yeah, exactly. Or people may have experiences even with just food poisoning in general. They remember it was that Chinese restaurant, they never want to go again because that would be now a conscious stressor that they're aware of. And that's being a gut gut and food related, but this really goes deeper to all sorts of symptoms. And so, for example, my mom, she had developed a UTI the other day. I was talking to her on the phone and she was like, "Gosh, I haven't had one in several years." I don't know. Well, knowing just what I know about mapping the body and what symptoms are connected to certain stressors, a UTI is connected to a territorial conflict. Territory is down there. And I was like, well, Mom, like, has there been any, like, territorial conflict? Like, you feel like someone's infringing on your territory? This can be sexual. This can also just be like in our environment. Doesn't have to be. And she was like, yes. I was like, well, what is it? And lo and behold, my sister had just moved back home from Alabama with her husband. They're kind of like homeless looking for a home. They have 3 kids all under the roof. And my parents are like in their golden years of like retirement life right now. And it's just been a lot of like energy and influx and being on. And so, she had escaped to go to their— they have a lake house. And, when I was talking to her, and a lot of times the way symptoms arise is when you're out of the acute stressor is where they onset because you're now in the phase 2 of disease onset. Stress is happening sympathetic, so we're not feeling the symptoms when we're running from a bear. We're not feeling the sprained ankle. We're not feeling the scab on our knee that we just got. We're just trying to get away. But, when you're away is when you feel the sprained ankle or the scab. Same thing with symptomology. And so, at an onset and a lot of times with awareness around health-related challenges of what are some of the root cause stressors that were happening, not just physical stressors, it can be really healing alone because it's like if you're standing in the ocean and a wave keeps hitting you from behind, you keep falling forward and then you turn to face the wave, what happens? You're able to stand stronger and not be knocked down as much. And so, it's like the brain takes back its power with this awareness. So it's not sending that same inflammatory signal to those tissues where the inflammation is. So, for a lot of people, I write about this in my book and kind of map out certain symptoms and what they could be connected to from a stressor perspective. And, it's super unique for every individual. I think COVID is a great example as well. So many people had different symptoms with COVID And, some people have had gut, some people had no symptoms, some people had all sinus, some people have lungs. And, a lot of that from this gut-brain connection perspective would be how they were perceiving the stressor. So, when people are, say, watching the news and hearing about COVID "Oh, my gosh, this is so indigestible. I cannot swallow this information. This is a lot," could show up in the gut. Whereas, if there's this death fright conflict, like, "I could lose my life," and we see this a lot with the baby boomers and older generations, it would show up as lung or heart. And again, all in a matter of a split second perception of how that can result in certain symptomologies.

Yeah, that's super interesting. And, it makes me think about this joke I sometimes tell when I'm out and about at a restaurant, the food comes out and I tell everybody, "Wait, wait, wait, let's pray." And then, I pray over the food and bless it to our bodies and everything like a good little Sunday school boy does. Yeah. Then I'll open my eyes and say amen and say, "Okay, now the food won't poison you," or, "Now you can eat as much vegetable oil as you want. It's not going to hurt you." But, on a more serious note, when you look at this idea of limbic training and the gut-brain axis, would an example of managing that be something like prayer or 3 deep releasing breaths or gratitude before a meal? Because I've read and heard that that actually has a significant biological impact on incretin hormones and satiety, digestion, absence of leaky gut, et cetera.

I'm so happy you're mentioning that. And, that is a principle, one of many techniques that is very powerful for, again, kind of taking back the reins over whatever the stress is, whether it's present in your frontal lobe or if it's a stressor in your body, the symptomology. And I mean, I think that biblically as well, what a principle. God just kind of created this principle of thanksgiving and gratitude and even in the Lord's Prayer. And I think for a great reason. And I mentioned a little bit earlier the study of the water and how water responds to the energy that we send it. So it is that about-face and that energy that you send it. Or if you think about, say, Viktor Frankl, The Man's Search for Meaning, and with Purpose and vision and just thinking more positive thoughts is really what he credits his survival from Nazi Germany or the concentration camps.

Choose your contentedness no matter the GMO nature of the corn that you're consuming and it's less likely to cause you damage.

I do believe so. And I do believe— I mean, I think just having been in that place of being in a place of no cure for what I was struggling with, And being at sub-90 pounds, not in an anorexia state but in a catabolic state as an adult and just feeling like, "Man, is there going to be a way out?" The way that gave me that jet fuel was through the mind. And I've just seen it so much with the most chronic of patients. And it's why I think foundationally, I mean, I build it up together because the physical is going to inform the mental as well. Our physiology, will inform psychology. And so, I think the healthier choices we can choose, but that said, I still believe that the mind can greatly trump where the body's at in our 3D reality. And so, I think it is a little bit— it can be a dance. If you are going to choose to eat a diet of Doritos for the rest of your life, I mean, that's just your prerogative. And that said, we all know a 90-year-old Uncle Joe who eats Spam sandwiches, orange soda, smokes cigars every day, sits in his La-Z-Boy, but lived to be 99 years old. And that was my grandma. And so, I think there is something merit of just the perception of stress and how that really does play a role. So, I have a 3-step process that I teach my clients and it's tune into your gut, take care of your gut, and trust your gut. So, I talked about the tuning in and that's just understanding where you're at today. And then, getting a bit of vision for like, "Well, what do you want?" Because if your blinders are down, say in a health perspective, because this can apply to any area of your life, by the way, like the mind and how that can trump your 3D reality, whether it's money or whether it's with relationships or like you go on. But, in the health context, I would say I got vision in that hospital bed like, "Okay, I want to be well. Lauren's going to be recovered. I'm definitely not recovered in this 3D state right now." But, getting vision and Basically, just tuning into where are these symptoms coming from. Number 2 is take care of your gut. And so, there's a physical inside and out. So, the outside would be I teach my 5 Gut Love Habits and the foundations of building back a healthier microbiome from a physical standpoint. And then, on the tuning in or taking care of your gut rather, it's really speaking gut love over your body into yourself. And so, getting a vision of that higher version of you. And this is where the I am statements become like, I am strong, I'm resilient, the mold can't hurt me. I'm strong, I'm resilient, the mold can't hurt me. I help my clients to find like 3 mantras to start, like that would just be like core statements and these can change, but where you could like rampage with these. And because if you can imagine a cartoon character where they hit it over the head with a bat, it gives those dizzy stars and like spins. It's kind of the same way for the subconscious mind. The more that we program something that is the anecdote to maybe I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, or I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, or I can't digest this or whatever the story is. The more we can reprogram a new story, it begins to neutralize where that old story actually becomes like we forget the old story. So, that taking care is really about speaking gut love or speaking that into your life. And then, the last is just trusting your gut. So, living in the knowing state and ways that we do that is through thanks and gratitude, give thanks in advance. For like, you know, that's a principle Rick Warren talks about all the time on his podcast is like, thank God in advance for what he's already done in your life. But it's just like giving gratitude for like being where you are and seeing yourself as if you are already there and living out of that as-if state is a trusting state. And it's also the law of detachment. It's like the more we're focused and like clinging to a goal, the more resistance happens. You know this, like you've probably seen this, Ben, you've worked in the fitness industry forever with those that like really want to lose weight, for example. And so, they focus so hard on the scale, on the size of their jeans or whatever. And a lot of times, there's this resistance that's created. But when they jump into like, "Oh, what would healthy me do?" And being the healthiest version of themselves and just acting as if they are already that 20 pounds down or 10 pounds down, there's this resistance that lessens. We also see this in love and relationships. Love finds you when you least expect it. Or, with money, it's already acting as if you have the millionaire mindset versus living in scarcity and checking your bank account or working or being so fearful of debt because the body senses that anxiety and that stress. So, trusting your gut is all about living in the knowing state and that it's already been fulfilled and thanking God for the health that you're going to have or that you have.

Yeah, I love that. And, it seems like this Question I want to ask you is on the extremities of the paradoxical because it involves hyper-analyzing a component of your diet in a manner that might actually stress a lot of people out, but you have this poop chart in the book. Yes. On page 64. I think I wrote to you and asked if we could put it in the shownotes too so people could see what the golden poo chart is like. So, shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Lax. But, I was over at my buddy's house, last week and he showed me this black box. He's like, "Dude, this is the most powerful one-day cleanse ever." So, actually, because I like to guinea pig this stuff, I ordered it and it comes with this guide on how to interpret the color and the length and the activity of your mucoid plaque, these things people mistake for parasites that wind up in the toilet bowl. And while I'm not going to put you on the spot to interpret mucoid mucoid plaque, it did get me thinking as I was reviewing it just this morning over breakfast, over my green smoothie looking at pictures of mucoid plaque, I thought I should ask Lauryn if she looks at her poop and if so, what she or somebody listening in could learn from that.

Oh, yeah. Definitely, it's your daily report card and it's just like people are tracking their blood sugar nowadays or their Oura Ring score or whatever the monitors they're using. It is something that ideally and hopefully we're doing daily. Now, I have a lot of conversations. I'm like, "How's your poo?" or "Tell me your habits." "It's normal." Define normal, please, because everyone's level of normal is a bit different. But, the ideal normal poo would be daily if not twice a day as well as a well-formed complete S or C-shaped easy to pass in 1 or 2 passes kind of poo. That would signify a golden poo. If it's anything other than that, then we just get a little bit questionable. There's multiple factors that can contribute to different types of poo and mostly being our eating habits and stress levels. But that said, I do use this golden poo chart to kind of help people really assess where they're at and get a better understanding of poo.

Yeah, ribbons, pebbles, rocks. I get the big dump. I mean, I fill the toilet bowl every morning, not to gross people out.

Yeah.

But then you write in there, Big dump could indicate chronic constipation, which I get sometimes, by the way, low stomach acid enzymes, dysbiosis from stress, irregular eating habits, low vagal nerve tone. And then, the last one was a little bit of a head-scratcher for me, megacolon. What's megacolon?

Megacolon would be a toxic colon or for some people toxic colon, some people it's just a very enlarged colon. So, they just are holding a lot of poo at once compared to those that are not just a smaller container, kind of like a person that has a larger stomach versus those that don't. And so, if it's like your motility is a little bit slower, sluggish, then that could be a piece of the puzzle from a megacolon. And that's— I mean, I was diagnosed with that as a kid. They looked at an X-ray, it's like, "You have a very large colon, Lauryn." And so, I was having a lot of constipation at that time. Thank you. And just managing that is just like I mean, diet was way different than it is now, but there's also certain supplements and digestive supports that helped me with kind of in the stage of coming out of a constipated state. Sometimes when people are like, say they've been on a train of not eating for a certain time of day and then eating more later in the day, I mean, there's just more bulk in the stool that could be creating a big dump scenario. Or if again, they are taking maybe a supplement such as a digestive, like a gallbladder support that's going to release more bile at once or help with stimulating that release right there. And so, my rule of thumb number one is better off than in. And so, any type of poo being better than no poo because at least we're clearing. And then, that I think is probably more indicative. I don't know if you do intermittent fasting right now or what you're fasting what your eating time frames are?

A little bit. By the way, I'm so lean, I don't worry about it that much, but I generally have 12 to 16 hours I go overnight until breakfast that I don't eat.

Yeah.

And, part of that is just because I don't like to do sauna and cold pool and workouts and stuff after I've had a smoothie or eggs or breakfast. So, I just wait until I'm done with all my things and then I have breakfast. And, by the time that rolls around, it's been 12 to 16 hours.

Yeah. Well, Ben, I mean, I teeter between that and just straight-up golden poo. It's what I would call it. And, another thing I have found that's kind of a trigger and a positive, it's helping my body at least with the motility in bulk is I tend to eat more starch at night if I do do starch. I don't really do much starch during the day from a blood sugar perspective, but I am obsessed lately with kombucha squash in particular. And, I find when I have something that is that soluble fiber and bulky, It is gel-like in nature, so it is showing up as bulk in the stool in that way.

Yeah. With some almond butter and honey and sea salt and the squash, it counts as dessert too. It's amazing.

Nature's candy.

You can pray to God for more almond butter if you have a few extra kombucha squashes around. So, the constipation thing is interesting because you talk about a form of constipation in the book that I'm guessing a lot of people have dealt with. As they take advice to cut down on stimulants and energy compounds and coffee. You talk about coffee withdrawal constipation. I've never seen that in a book before. What's coffee withdrawal constipation?

Well, since coffee is a natural digestive bitter, so it's like a bitter is gonna poke the gallbladder. And the gallbladder, why that's important, that's the most underrated organ I think in the body, but it's what's not only stimulating enzyme production and the breakdown of fats is what people most correlated to. And also, just the release of bile. Bile is being released when that gallbladder is stimulated. So, if you can imagine an organ or closing your fist, ideally when a digestive bitter like coffee or a fat touches that fist, you get a nice pump. Get that pump, that muscle up and going, squeezes out the bile to then stimulate a bowel movement. Well, if people are stripping the coffee out, and they're not doing— maybe they're even drinking 2 to 3 cups like the average would be, or maybe it is just that morning cup. It's just that extra little nudge, nudge that helps with that release. And so, that constipation can happen in that way. Coffee also, as we know, is a stimulant. So, there is some caffeine release or adrenaline release that is helping with some motility for some people as well. But, the agent I find most or the mechanism I find most prevalent for people is that gallbladder. And so, when we support the gallbladder, say with some digestive bitters or even bile salts with meals for a time, not always and forever, even apple cider vinegar which can also have some of that gallbladder stimulating effect there, choleagogue effect, then we can help with regulating some poo. We also know that coffee is a natural dehydrator. So, It's also kind of zapping up the hydration being one of the number one supports for healthy motility. And, a lot of folks are just underhydrated in our modern day.

Yeah. My hack for that is I just drink more coffee because I figure the excess liquid helps to overtake the dehydration effect. That's my logic and I'm sticking to it. Your section on constipation was crazy. I mean, just to give you guys a little bit of a preview of Lauryn's book. I mean, the part on constipation alone is use magnesium or buffered vitamin C, chew your food until fully liquefied and slow down, sea moss 1 to 2 spoonfuls daily. I've used that before. It's a really good source of fiber. I forget, is that the soluble fiber that the sea moss is?

Yeah, yeah. It's gel-like.

Okay. Gel-like. Yeah, gel-like. Exactly. Probiotics like Lactobacillus plantarum, Squatty Potty. I love that except when I travel and I don't have it. Sit up straight during the day. Take a Prokinetica in the morning and evening. Eat food with breakfast instead of a liquid. Sip Smooth Move tea. That sounds fantastic. What else? Water and minerals, of course. Avoid drinking out of plastic water bottles because it causes gut inflammation. No laying down or intense exercise directly after eating. Avoid raw veggies and raw salads. And, by the way, Lauryn, that was transformative for me when I quit filling the blender bowl and my plate with giant piles of kale and spinach and the like. Avoid high FODMAP foods, digestive bitters like you noted, coffee enemas. I actually still do those once a week. Chlorella tablets, jumping up and down in place or rebounding, tabletop position stretch, squeeze your colon acupuncture point, right hand, the inner web of the right hand, abdominal massage, and hypnosis for digestion and meditation. That is a pretty comprehensive list. When it comes to all of these different things that somebody can do to get stuff moving along, it makes me think, well, there's got to be some things that cause that in the first place that pop up over and over again. What would you say are the primary leading causes of constipation besides not just drinking enough water?

Yeah. I mean, I think overtly stress. So, I mean, and stress is such a broad term, but you can imagine just clenching your fist. Even a little kid that's just so frustrated, they got to go poo. It's just when you're clenching your gut or you are shortening your breath, a great telltale sign for people to do or a check-in would just be pause, for a minute and count the number of breaths you take in a minute. And, just to get some feedback for yourself. And ideally, we're at rest or you're moving a little bit here, so your breath rate would be a little bit different at a minute. But, if you're just chilling out, do this exercise. And ideally, you want to have a 4 to 7 breaths per minute rate if you're in that rest and digest parasympathetic mode that the vagus nerve loves for motility. So, the average I found is 12 to 20 breaths per minute for most people. If you think, again, rest and digest meditative state in a way, it's pausing to pray and breathe before a meal. The reason why I think prayer is also helpful for digestion is just because it's that natural art of pause that was created for humans prior to eating food and just jumping in and plowing in for that rest and digest. But, 12 to 20 breaths is what I would say I find the average breath rate. If we're on the higher end of that, say if you're in the 15, 20. I've had a woman that was— she was at 47 breaths a minute. She had no idea she was hyperventilating and she could not figure out for the life of her why she had this chronic SIBO, methane-based, and she couldn't lose the last 10 pounds. And that exercise alone was so impactful for her. The body doesn't know the difference in running from a bear versus I just pulled up my Instagram feed and I'm comparing myself to my business rabbits that I'm chasing or to the girl that I want her body. The way that the heart is changing and the breath rate is changing. And so, that is I think just to show kind of how stress, just residual, we don't think we're under stress. Exercise is a stressor like you said to the body. It's a healthy, can be a hormetic stressor. But, kind of that yin and that yang. Other causes of constipation, I think just going back to that gallbladder, it is so inundated, it kind of is the net that catches all these toxins and gets congested over time. And so, especially with females that I work with that have had been birth control pills is a huge stressor to the gallbladder. But then, just plastics by and large for humans as well, long-term use of drugs like SSRIs or Tylenols, Advils, NSAIDs, obviously toxins in the food, seed oils, et cetera. If your gallbladder is just inundated, your cup gets full over time, that's going to cause some digestive backup. From a gut perspective. And, it's also I think one of the leading causes of things that are downstream. So, say SIBO or just chronic bloating and then the constipation.

Yeah, that's super helpful. Probably one of the most underrated tactics that you have on there is the abdominal massage. I even have a miniature massage gun. It's made by Power Plate. It's one of the really small ones that TSA doesn't freak out about. And, I travel with it. And, also sometimes if I get traveler constipation, I'll lie on my back on the bathroom floor and just follow the path of the colon, ascending, transverse, descending over and then kind of over the ileocecal sphincter and just do about 2 or 3 minutes of that. Transformative for traveler's constipation. I mean, it worked at home too obviously, but abdominal massage with a percussive gun set on a really light frequency, that's a game changer.

Oh, I love that. I've never even thought about taking a Theragun or something on the external. And, that's a great— I just use the quadrants with my hand. So, that's even better. That's game-changing, Ben.

Such a Luddite.

I'm going to use that.

Such a Luddite, Lauren. Well, we've only scratched the surface of your book. There was one other thing I wanted to ask you though, and that's this whole checking to see if you have sufficient enzyme production. Can you give me an overview of the— I think you call it the apple cider vinegar challenge and the enzyme challenge because I think that'll be really helpful for people as a little homework after this podcast?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you're experiencing bloating after meals regularly, that's overtly going to be low enzymes whether it's pancreatic enzymes or, again, how the gallbladder is working. And, enzymes for the gallbladder, I say it in quotes, would be more like bile salts that will help with the apple cider vinegar. And then apple cider vinegar also touches, which is before enzyme, stomach acid. And that being like, we have those 3 main components of digestive health that will help with moving food through the digestive system, creating a healthy microbiome ecosystem, as well as like preventing things like the bloating and constipation. And that would be stomach acid, digestive enzymes, and then the gallbladder. Just making sure that's healthy and moving and grooving. The way apple cider vinegar, that challenge works, you can use it for really assessing stomach acid levels. And so, and HCl is another thing that we'll use is hydrochloric acid. So, if you're not into the taste of apple cider vinegar, for example, but it's really the thought of you take the apple cider vinegar like a swig of it, a shot, ideally not straight, you want to dilute it some. Say in 4 ounces. Okay. You could even do up to 8 ounces of water, but for a challenge, I would do about 4 ounces of water, put the HCl in there or the apple cider vinegar in there, take a swig. If you feel burning sensation pretty quickly, overly, that is going to indicate some lower stomach acid for you. You are more sensitive just because— and we see this with HCl as well. If you don't feel the burning right initially though, That just is a severity scale. So, sometimes with more HCl, so say I take 1 tablet of HCl and it's got 250 milligrams of HCl in it, I don't feel anything. But then, I take up to 3, I have to get up to there, that would be even a lower scale of stomach acid. So, I think by and large what I have found in the westernized world is back to how stress has kind of stamped out some of that stomach acid and enzymes. If you can imagine, stomping on an anthill and you just stomp, stomp, stomp those ants, you crush it. Well, that's how stress works from a stomach acid and digestive enzyme perspective. And so, with the challenge with whether it's the ACV or the HCl, it's like you want to reach the point where there's a little bit of a burning but not super burning because if you get to the point where you feel really a warming sensation, then you back down just a little hint of whether it's how much ACV you put in there or the magnitude how many capsules of HCl you took. Does that make sense?

It makes sense. Drink apple cider vinegar, a shot or so. If it doesn't burn, then you might need digestive enzyme support. Same trick works with baking soda. Take a half to a quarter teaspoon. If you're not burping within 5 minutes, you probably have low stomach acid. Production. So, cool hack. Lauryn Lax, "The Total Gut Reset," bengreenfieldlife.com/lax. bengreenfieldlife.com/lax. Grab Lauryn's book, check out her website. I'll link to it all in the shownotes and try to snag that poop chart from Lauryn too to put in there as well. Lauryn, email that to me and I'll get it in the shownotes if you want to so people can do a little poop analysis and think fondly of you as they stare pensively into the toilet bowl. So, Lauryn, thank you so much for coming on. It's been amazing.

Thank you. This has been fine, Ben.

Alright, folks. I'm Ben Greenfield with Dr. Lauryn Lax signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an amazing week.

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