How to Heal Your Gut: The Latest Bacterial Science & New Treatments – Vincent Pedre, M.D. – #1037

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about something that I almost feel like one day we're going to be done talking about it. And then I realized, no, we're not. And that is your gut. And by now, let me just be real straightforward. Having a healthy gut kind of improves your quality of life. You might have heard me say that, like, a thousand times. And you've read it in my books and you've heard some top experts come on the show. And the reason that I keep going back to this for you is that we keep finding new stuff, stuff that we didn't know, that this is like the unexplored frontier. And you. You turn away and you come back six months later like, oh, my God, look what just happened. We're figuring out more and more about what you can do, and especially about what you can do to tweak things to get it back on track when it's off track. And, like, no one knew. Oh, there's depression. Oh, there's like, suicide risk. Oh, there's what's going on with your. Your mouth effects and probably your eyelashes, for all we know, affects what's going on in your. In your gut. So I brought a friend on the show who's just written a new book called the Gut Smart Protocol. And we've known each other for quite a while, hung out a bunch. And his name is Dr. Vincent Pedre. And what you'll find is that he's been doing functional medicine in Mexico, Australia and Peru, actually, because he's a professor for the Institute of Functional Medicine in those areas, works with Nature MD and really just has a unique view on gut bacteria. And he's someone who's out in the world versus in a lab in a. In a research facility. It turns out you need both. You need the crazy academic researchers who are saying, well, more research should be done. But it appears that this bacteria in your gut, if you have it, makes you live longer and, you know, be a robust lover or whatever it is. And, like, more research should be done. And then clinicians that like Vincent are like, you know, I think if I feed the person this food, given that we know the bacteria does that, maybe we'll just see if it works. And when patients come back going, my life has changed. You're like the front line. So, Vincent, just to open things up, what bacteria should I be taking to get those aforementioned effects?

It's actually, and the answer is, there's not one that makes things better. It's actually the, the combination. And really the word is diversity. That's the, that's the word that everybody needs to know is diversity. Because if, you know, so the one thing that we've done over the last, you know, half century that has destroyed gut microbial diversity is the discovery and the use of antibiotics and the over prescribing of antibiotics and the, the ease of getting antibiotics in certain parts of the world without a prescription. So what we've learned is that as microbial diversity decreases, we get an increase in chronic degenerative diseases. You get increase in inflammatory bowel diseases and all the obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, all these things that we used to think came from, like, you know, we call them chronic degenerative diseases, as if they're just happening because the body is degenerating. No one ever thought of saying, you know what, let's, let's take a telescope and let's actually look at the body through the gut and through the lens of the microbiome, and let's see if any of these diseases are related to the gut and the gut microbiome. And that's what we've been doing in the last 20 years. And it's basically turning science upside down. Because even something like diabetes that I learned in medical school was caused by an exhaustion of the beta cells. The pancreas just can't produce more insulin. You know, like, you're thinking like, okay, these people, they're getting old. Maybe they ate too much sugar and they just, you know, they made their beta cells run like 50 marathons and now they can't run anymore. And, and now what we know is that it's the microbiome that's fueling increased insulin production, that eventually leads to insulin resistance, that leads to obesity, that eventually wears out the pancreas, and even mitochondrial toxicity that happens inside the beta cells. But then you stop producing insulin, your sugar levels skyrocket. So, you know, like, is there a magic bullet? There isn't.

Well, let me ask you this. Does eating too much sugar cause diabetes?

It's the avenue to it. But guess what it does to your microbiome. So eating, eating too much sugar, so they've shown this in studies, is going to cause shifts in the microbiome that happen even within 48 hours. Changes in, in diet that will promote the growth of yeast, that then will hijack your brain with mycotoxins that are going to tell you to keep eating more sugar. And it also causes alterations in the gut microbiome that are going to have you know, so your microbiome is responding to the environment and the environment is created by what you eat. So if you're eating a lot of sugar, it's going to cause a shift in the microbiome and it's going to produce, it's going to, it's, it's going to favor the growth of certain bacteria that actually scramble the insulin signal.

Okay, so too much sugar messes up your gut bacteria, which then messes with your insulin signaling and that's the cause of diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Anyway.

Well, let's let. Do you, can we dive a little bit deeper?

Yeah, yeah. I want to know your take on it because this is cutting edge stuff. And, and there's a lot of people like your sugar is bad and I'm not so sure that sugar is that bad. So I'm going to go deep with you on this.

Let's go a little deeper. So if you're eating too much sugar, if you're eating too many processed foods, it's causing shifts. And you know, from a study that was done in Stanford University comparing a high fiber diet to a high fermented foods diet, what they found is, and this is not sugar, this fiber, but it's a type of polysaccharide. Right, Right. The more you ate, the more you actually favored certain bacteria that have what they call carbohydrate active enzymes. So they break down certain types of carbohydrates. So depending on how you eat, you're favoring certain types of bacteria. Now when you're causing these shifts in the microbiome towards a more unfavorable organisms or yeast overgrowth, eventually what you get is you start getting a breakdown of the gut barrier. So then this leads to increase in intestinal permeability. Leaky gut then leads to more influx of inflammatory molecules from the gut, including, I mean they've tested and found bacterial DNA, even bacteria in the bloodstream of people with leaky gut. But also lipopolysaccharide or endotoxin. Now endotoxin is going to work inside the cells. So endotoxin binds to something called toll like receptor 4, then activates the NF Kappa B pathway, which is inflammatory pathway inside the cells. And guess what? Toll like receptor 4 is found in the liver, in muscle tissue, in the brain pancreas. So it's going to activate these pathways, going to increase inflammation and but as a result, what it's doing is scrambling the insulin signal and causing insulin resistance.

That is, that is so interesting. Um, do we know which insulin signal is being. Is it the TLR for insulin thing? Like where is the. Which. Which signals getting scrambled.

So when, when the lipopolysaccharide binds to the receptor. And this is actually. Let me, let me reverse it because another, another study found that when the bacteria in the gut are producing certain types of short chain fatty acids, they're going to actually stimulate the pancreas to secrete more insulin.

Okay, got it. So, and then, so what's going on is.

And then we know that when you have high insulin levels, that's a signal for your body to turn carbohydrates into fat. Right.

Okay.

So carbohydrates coming from any source. So it's going to tell your body, switch metabolism, start packing on fat in the middle. And then it becomes this vicious cycle because then the insulin receptor becomes more resistant to the insulin signal.

That's one of the reasons I believe that activated charcoal, which binds to those gut bacterial endotoxins. In some studies, it's actually tied to extending human lifespan because I think it's reducing exactly the problem you're talking about, which is definitely a contributing factor for type 2 diabetes. And I reject that. Eating too much sugar wears out the pancreas argument because it just doesn't matter.

I don't think that that's the mechanism of what's happening. I think it's more. It's related to the gut and it's related to mitochondrial toxicity.

Mitochondrial toxicity for sure. And probably disturbance in the type of fat. I'm not really sure what percentage of the problem comes from gut bacteria messing with insulin signaling because of toxins, because you had antibiotics and junk food and too much sugar versus how much comes because you broke your cell membranes with omega 6 fats. And I think it's some of both. You weaken the cells and then you punch them in the face with lipopolysaccharide toxins. Do you have any sense. I know that you don't have a study there.

And you want to also think these omega 6 fats are going to. Are carriers for lipopolysaccharide.

Oh, yeah, let's talk about that. Oh, actually, that makes me really happy. I'd forgotten about that little aspect of the. I wrote about that in the bulletproof diet. So what do omega 6 fats do to carry these? These what they're called polysaccharides means, you know that they're.

Yeah.

Or at least they're called lipo.

They're part lipid molecules, saccharide molecules, which makes them sort of like able to get through fat membranes. But obviously if they have a fat carrier, they're going to make it through more easily, you know, because the fats can mycellize these lipopolysaccharides. They can turn the lipopart out in the sacropard in inward, because they're almost like both fat and water soluble.

Okay.

If they get mycellized by these fats, then it just becomes a vehicle to get through that. It's like a way to sneak through the cell membrane.

It is a way to sneak through. And it turns out omega 6 fats, which are in processed foods, all the things you're talking about in, they carry them through better than maybe saturated fats or especially MCT oils. Right?

That's a question. You know, because there was one study that showed that coconut oil carried lipopolysaccharide through more easily than say, olive oil. Maybe. You know, this is why the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest diets out there, because of the consumption of olive oil. But that's just one study that I saw.

And it wasn't just coconut oil. If you read deeper. It was lauric acid, what I call Lier's MCT oil. So lauric acid is technically an MCT oil, but it's metabolized like a long chain fat. So unscrupulous companies can say, oh, we have MCT oil in here, but it doesn't raise ketones the way C8 and the other ones do. And there are studies showing that MCTs are protective against LPS in the liver, which is one of the reasons that even if you're using something like butter, I don't know, in coffee or whatever, some kind of random idea like that, that the butter and the butter can escort lipopolysaccharides, these toxins from your gut. If you have an unhealthy gut, it brings it in. But the MCTs are there to help to protect the liver from that. That was part of the architecture of that original invention for bulletproof coffee.

You know what else protects against lipopolysaccharide? Or endo. Or as we call it, endotoxemia, you know, or diet induced endotoxemia, you know, the, the influx of lipopolysaccharide.

Let me guess, anything Pfizer sells will protect you from it, right?

No.

Okay, sorry. It was a good guess.

It's much, it's much simpler than that. No, it's not made by Pfizer. It's made by the earth.

Okay?

It should be organic, not pesticide ridden, but actually broccoli. So polyphenols, antioxidants, actually reduce endotoxemia related to a meal. So if you eat a hamburger and french fries with some broccoli, it might protect you versus just eating the hamburger and french fries by itself.

I saw a study, too, that showed that eating it was either a quarter or half of an avocado, even with charred meat, which has its own problems, was protective. So there's a lot of goodness from those things. And that's part of what you talk about in the gut smart protocol. I'm just kind of hitting you with some weird questions because listeners have heard a lot about the gut, and if you're like, eat, eat, eat the rainbow, I'm like, yeah, tell me something new, Vincent. But I thought, you know what I.

Think I don't know that that's right. Honestly, thank you. But let me tell you why I don't think. I think functional medicine has been saying, eat the rainbow. And I was one of those who was, you know, swallowing that. That line. Hook and sinker. And then I went to Africa and I spent time with the Hadza, one of the last hunter gatherers on the planet. And the reason I wanted to go is because they've been studying their gut microbiome. They've been getting poop samples from Hadza because someone decided, hey, these people have no diabetes, no obesity, no cardiovascular disease, they don't get cancer. And they're basically hunting and gathering. They're not eating any westernized food. They haven't been exposed to antibiotics. And they looked at their gut microbiome and found like, hey, it's more diverse than a western control microbiome. They used an Italian cohort as the control group. And I mean, you can imagine Italy. It's a Mediterranean diet. They're eating a really diverse group of vegetables, all colors, you know, beautiful rainbow. And then you go to Tanzania with a Hadza, and they're eating some berries, some root vegetables. You know what? I went. I went foraging. I went both hunting and foraging with them. We found there's this honeybee in Africa that basically makes the honeycomb inside a tree bark and then just sets up like a little chimney. And these guys, like, I mean, this chimney is probably like, not more than a centimeter. And they can. They just spot it and they cut open the tree bark inside this beautiful honeycomb. Now these bees, like, people are probably thinking, like, you know, I was there and they. They gave it to me and I ate honeycomb with Honey. And there were bees mixed in there. And I'm like, I'm just going to do whatever. And these bees are really tiny. They look like flies. Wow. They're eating the full honey. It's not like they're just having honey. They're having the honeybee, the honeycomb, everything. They're digging root vegetables out of the ground. Now, this isn't very colorful rainbow. And aside from that, like they're, they're hunting birds and like, you know, medium to bigger animals. They have a license to hunt zebras. No one else can hunt zebras, but if they, they want to. So they're eating, you know, meats, some berries, baobab, fruit, which is, that's a big one, huge in fiber. So they've calculated that they're taking about 40 to 50 grams of fiber per day.

And it's mostly soluble, though. Like, they spit out the, the insoluble fiber. So they're mostly getting basically prebiotics. So again, like meat.

Right.

Some kind of berries and, and a meaningful amount of sugar from honey and then they're getting prebiotics.

Exactly. But this is the other thing which I think is really enhances their microbiome. They're not washing their hands, they're getting dirty. They're getting exposed to their environment. And that's, I think, the missing factor. Why in the west, we think like, oh, you got to eat the rainbow. That's going to give you this wide range of fibers, soluble, insoluble fibers, and that's going to make for a diverse microbiome. But I don't think it's really that. I think it's not being exposed to antibiotics, getting exposed to the outdoors, getting a good amount of fiber. But also, I mean, there's a lot of different things because there's other studies that have kind of challenged this way of eating also as a way to get a more diverse microbiome.

So what I'm hearing is I should stop washing my hands after I go to the bathroom. And, and thank you for that.

If you, if you happen to kill an animal, you know, just leave the blood on your hands. You know, when you see your kids, like, give them a hug.

Okay, all right, I see your point. All right, so. So there's the hygiene hypothesis. Here's where I've been a little confused. Nowhere on the planet do you eat the rainbow year round, because only a little bit of the rainbow is available at any one time, usually for two to four weeks. And I say this as a guy who's run a Regenerative farm, you know, where. Oh, that's funny. You can't eat that color because it doesn't grow right now. And so the idea, I'm going to eat the rainbow by flying bell peppers in from Belize. That doesn't work. And furthermore, your gut bacteria change themselves within what, 72 hours? Is that a good number based on.

What you eat very quickly? And actually they did another study on the Hadza where they looked at their seasonal microbiome. Because Tanzania has two big seasons. It has the rainy season and has the dry season. And throughout the year what's available to them changes depending on if it's rainy versus dry season, they're going to eat different things. And what they found is that the predominant phyla in the gut shifted and some of them even seemed to disappear, let's say during the rainy season. And then when they went back the next year. So they went through a rainy season, dry season, back to rainy season, back to dry season. When they went back through the cycle, the phyla would seem to disappear and then when they started eating the foods that supported those bacteria, they would come back. They would be detectable in the stool. So you probably always have a certain reservoir of bacteria and it's just constantly shifting based on what you're eating and you're exposing yourself to.

What that means is that if you eat Thai food because it has this colors in it tonight, and then tomorrow you eat Mediterranean food and then the next day you eat borscht because it has red in it or something. I, I don't really know what eating the rainbow really looks like. I'm pretty sure your gut bacteria are like, what the hell are you doing to me?

They're probably really confused.

Yeah, okay, but that leads to another question. How do we know that diversity is actually good for us?

Lots of studies are bringing that up. So we know, for example, that and this is by measures of diversity and it can be kind of confusing because there's so many different diversity measures like alpha diversity, beta diversity, different indexes that they use. But what the studies show is that as you increase diversity, you reduce inflammation. And I do think we need more studies for this because we don't really have the problem, Dave, is that these interventional studies that they've done so far, like these, for example, they did Stanford University did a study on a high fiber diet versus a high fermented foods diet, but it was two intervention groups. They didn't do a control group, high fiber against the high fermented foods, small group, 18 in each branch. But interestingly, in this 10 week study, what they found was that people were eating six servings, five to six servings of fermented foods in the peak period. So they had a four week ramp up and then six weeks where they were told to maintain that high intake of whether it was fiber or fermented foods. And again, as a functional medicine doctor, I was thinking, as I was reading the study, I'm thinking who's going to win? I think it's the fiber people. This is what I've learned. It's going to create more microbial diversity and eating all this fiber. But it was the fermented foods that actually increased microbial diversity and reduced 19 different inflammatory markers. Now they were looking at immune cell activation, cytokine relief, release, all those things.

I, I imagine that a combination of those taking a fuel for diverse populations would be your best bet as well as eating the fermented foods if you tolerate them well.

They found. Actually I'll, I'll, I'll comment on that because there was a study that came out at the end of last year and it was looking at the, just they were looking at perceived stress right. In a group of people. And what they did is they put them on, they took two groups. This one actually was 45 participants divided into two. So still small study. It was done during the pandemic so they couldn't recruit more people. Guess they, they couldn't find the people. And there was a control group and then there was the group that was taught how to eat more fiber. So they were getting five to eight servings of fiber per day and they were asked to get two to three servings, which is two to three cups of fermented foods per day. And they found that it created changes in the gut microbiome that were associated with reductions in inflammation. So it kind of ties in with the Stanford study and as a result they're perceived stress score dropped. So, so I think we're heading to the place where and I, and I talk about it in my book that it's not about like fiber versus ferment and it's also not like hey, fiber is the cure all. Because there are doctors out there who are like just eat fiber. Like fiber is going to, fiber is going to rescue you.

Yeah, especially if you're eating the insoluble fiber. It's just, it doesn't work. It's not good for you. I think at this point I feel safe saying that it might be better than what you're doing now, but it's not a good solution. Right.

It's not the whole thing. And it seems like, you know, and you would wonder, like, people might think, like, well, can I take a probiotic? Can I do this or that? I mean, with the fermented foods, is it increasing microbial diversity because you're taking in foods that have microbes growing on them? It doesn't. It's not because, like, when they did the testing, like, initially you'll be able to, like, you'll be able to detect those bacteria, whether it's Lactobacillus or whatever, in the ferment. But eventually you start seeing the appearance of all these other strains and it's. The ferments are, are supporting the growth of these other strains of bacteria, probably through cross feeding.

It. It's really interesting. One bacteria eats another bacteria's poop, basically, which does all sorts of unpredictable stuff.

You know who else does that are mice. They like to eat each other's.

And. Yeah, dogs. All right, I'm gonna say something that I just formulated. Diversity is the new calorie. And here's what I mean. We've had people saying for a long time, well, if we just cut our calories, magically, we're gonna lose weight, not caring what the calories are. And it was an excuse to feed us ultra processed junk food. And it was like, calories are bad. Calories are bad.

I mean, you remember the old Weight Watchers.

Yeah.

It was basically point system where you can have ice cream and that's okay as long as you don't pass your points. Doesn't matter that it's a crap calorie and it probably has some crappy oils in there.

No, it doesn't matter at all. And it's, it's just provably wrong. And now we have people going, oh, I got nine grams of protein. Like, dude, that was gluten. Gluten's a protein. It doesn't. Different proteins do different things. And when you say diversity, hey, you want to increase diversity? Add some Clostridium difficile, which is what kills people in the hospital all the time. But it's diversity. So I'm like, you know what? Screw your diversity of gut bacteria. You better tell me the composition of it. Because just worshiping diversity without saying whether.

It'S good diversity or bad diversity, it's really the metabolomics. It's like, what are they producing? What is that? That group in your gut? What are they producing as an aggregate?

That's why I've been, you know, an early advisor and a big supporter of viome because they're doing exactly that figure out like what's happening. And there's a variety of things where we're saying, well, what does the system of bacteria do? Because what I don't want is diversity, but basically a bunch of, of chaotic anarchist gut bacteria where I have a highly diverse but warring armies going back and forth across my gut, which pretty much describes my childhood.

You find this funny that I was been reading studies on this and some studies will say, well, diversity was associated with reduction in depression. And then another study says diversity was associated with increased depressive scores. You're like, okay, where are we sitting here with diversity?

Right? So what's your, what's your take? I mean, you're, you're out in the world. So do we really want more diversity if we don't know what it's doing?

I think the, I think the weighted evidence is that div. I think, I think we're ultimately going to see that diversity is good.

I, I think you're right. And I, I do think we're going to find that some diversity is a lot better than other diversity, which is kind of not what, you know what.

Else I think we, I don't know that we fully admitted is that we kind of need some bad guys in there too. So when I'm, when I'm talking about diversity, I'm not just saying, oh, it's this beautiful diverse group of like college professor probiotics that are all good. No, we need some of those evil ones in there too. 10 to 15%. They do something that kind of helps keep everything in balance. Almost like predators in, in an ecosystem. You know, like what happened when they took the wolves out of Yellowstone park created a imbalance in the ecosystem.

Interesting. It really did. I remember that because I used to live around there. And yeah, and it, it totally screwed stuff up when they took the, took them out, but it screwed it back up when they put them back in. Right. Did you see that?

No. What happened there when they, they put him back in?

There was such a shortage of deer that now everything's getting overgrown. They used to get pruned back from the deer. And because it turns out the combination of human hunting and wolves put too much downward population. So now they're talking about hunting the wolves again and everyone's all upset.

Oh my goodness. See, but it's about, it's about balance. It is about balance, you know, and in the gut it's called quorum sensing. And there's certain Bacteria that are really good at that, where they can they, it's almost like you have to imagine it's like we're talking about nanometer layer thick. So super.

Right.

They're all hanging out there and it's precious real real estate. Right. And certain bacteria can come in and they can claim that real estate. And you know what they do? Can I, can I curse?

Sure, absolutely.

Those, those create their own antibiotics and they kill off the other bacteria. They're like, we're coming in, we're taking your home. But a lot of these are like the spore base. You know, you've probably seen a lot of probiotics now coming up, the spore based organisms. Well, the bacillus subtilis coagulans, all these, they create their own antimicrobial peptides that basically get rid of bad bugs in certain parts of the gut and they put in the territory and they help reduce inflammation, they help the integrity of the gut lining.

They totally do. And it, we kind of think, oh, it's just good gut bacteria. It's, it is a war in there. Unquestionably. One of the other things that gut bacteria do that I, I found really mean. In fact, I don't trust gut bacteria. I, I kind of want to be a germ free guy where I would never have any gut bacteria. Like if we had one antibiotic that I could take that would get rid of every bacteria in my gut and keep them gone without destroying the environment around me.

You know what it, I mean it might be, it's from, from a certain perspective it might be a good anti aging measure because as your gut microbiome ages then your tryptophan metabolism changes.

Yes.

And so they find that you start, you, you, your, your bioavailable tryptophan falls and you're, you have more of the kineurin kynarinin pathway. So your, your kynariunin to tryptophan ratio starts to change, which is going to age you. And partly it seems to be related to what the microbiome is doing, how it's metabolizing tryptophan, but it's the aging microbiome that's causing that shift. So actually I don't know if you want to be completely germ free or you might want to start eating the poop from like younger kids and teenagers that have no health issues.

If you think about it, there are people like one of the safest things you can do if you're going to do fmt, the fecal matter transplant and you're really sick. And there are tons of people who have been healed by this. I thought about doing it when my gut was really wrecked, but I never did. Would be. You'd want poop from a baby who has never had antibiotics in utero. Right. That's going to be about as good as it gets.

Well, but. Okay, okay, well, let's talk about that. Because baby still needs to get their. Their gut microbiome populated.

Right.

And it's mostly going to be bifeural bacterium infantis because of the human oligosaccharides in the breast milk. Yeah. So you would probably want to wait till like age 3, but make sure that child's never been given antibiotics for an ear infection. And, and then, of course, you'd have to, I guess, wonder about the ethics of that. But hey, how much poop is thrown out in diapers?

There's no ethics from that. Like, like you're gonna throw the diaper away. You know, I, you know, I took some poop from that. If people have ethics problems with that, we gotta, we gotta.

You can desiccate it and encapsulate it. You know, the thing is, like, there was the. What we've learned is that you can actually transfer the obesity trait.

Yes.

Through a fecal transplant. And this happened to a woman who. The mother had C. Diff. So this was just a case report. The mother had C. Diff. The daughter, and they couldn't get rid of it. You know, she had recalcitrant. It wasn't responding to any antibiotics. So they were going to do a fecal transplant and the daughter became the fecal donor. The problem is the daughter had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is characterized by insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, you know, sugar metabolism issues. And the mother did not. But after the fecal transplant, she developed the same thing.

Wow.

And we know from mice studies where they've taken discordant twins. One twin is thin, the other twin is obese, and they do the equivalent of a fecal transplant because if you poop in the mouse cage, they like to eat poop. That's just what they do. We took germ free mice and fed them the poop from a thin twin and the poop from an obese twin gave them the same diet. It was a low fat high in plant polysaccharides. And the thin mouse stayed thin. But the other mouse that got the, the one that got the. The poop from the thin twin stayed thin. The one that got. From the obese twin got fat.

Wow. So what this means though, is that a germ free mouse can eat whatever it wants and doesn't get fat and doesn't have metabolic dysfunction. So if we make it not germ free and we give it the right germs, it's okay, but it's not better off than it was when it had no germs. So, I mean, and I'm just going to go on a limb, and I know this is going to be, like, controversial because you just wrote, you know, the Gut Smart Protocol, and you and I were both harmed by excessive antibiotics when we were kids, right? You took more than 20 doses.

I had.

I took them every month for like, I don't know, 10 years because of strep throat and sinus infections. Uh, and I know it was a part of my problem, so not calling on people to do this, but I mean, what if you could take an antibiotic like every week that just knocked out most of the gut bacteria so there would be no, none of the ones that make you fat and tired anymore.

You have to think you're also gonna lose the ones that keep you thin and energized.

Okay, well, let me ask you this. This is not in the Gut Smart protocol, which is in your book, by the way. There's all kinds of cool stuff about, like, what to do. And I gotta ask you about the seven kinds of leaky gut. Cause I've never seen one write about that before. But before we get there, what do you think happened to our gut microbiome as a result of locking everyone in individual houses for the last three years?

It could be good or it could be bad.

Okay, explain.

So some research has been looking at what is it that the aging microbiome and why is it that centenarians maybe, you know, age better than other people?

Right.

Well, we know about the, the diet and also the lifestyle, but one of the characteristics of a lot of centenarians is they live in multi generational households. And they think that because of that, there's some level of sharing of the microbiome. Now, let's interlay this with what was happening during the pandemic. A lot of people were not just isolated at home, but they were being given antibiotics when they got sick, most typically Zithromax, because it was found that Zithromax actually has some certain antiviral properties that could help with the lung part of COVID the lung infection. Another researcher that I saw present at the Microbiome Congress a couple of years ago was studying what happened to the microbiome of people if they were cohabitating and one of them was given a five day course of Zithromax and the other one didn't. And first they looked at like husband and wife and they found that if one was given course of antibiotics, the other person's microbiome also showed alterations that you would see from someone who had just taken antibiotics. And then they thought, well, maybe the husband and wife are kissing. So let's do it just with roommates. People are not in any like amorous relationship and they found the same effect.

So basically if someone's on antibiotics, you should lock them in a cell. Is that what I'm hearing you say.

You should not let them come back home.

So hold on a second.

Or you know, just have them read the Gut Smart protocol and diversify their gut microbiome after they've been on antibiotics and then all will be good. Eat more fermented foods.

I want to get into some of the stuff that you brought up here, about seven kinds of leaky gut. What are the seven kinds? Because no one else has written this in a book I've ever seen.

Yeah, I mean these are all the gut interrelationships, right? So we've got the gut skin, we've got the gut brain access, we've got certain ones that people don't really think about, like the gut metabolism connection, the gut joint connection. So it's basically, it's not that there are seven types of leaky gut, is that there are seven big systems that are affected by leaky gut.

Okay.

And when you have leaky gut, it's going to cause, it's basically causing system wide inflammation and it's going to show up in a different way for different people. And of course it's more complicated than that. It depends on what bacteria growing in the gut microbiome, what other fun bugs you have hanging out in there, you know, like yeast parasites, whatever it may be. I've certainly had my, my bouts of parasites. No fun.

Yeah, me too. Did you get them when you went to Africa?

Oh my God.

Eating zebras and all that stuff.

I, I, after I came back from Africa and I had eaten honeycomb with the hadza and I had also had root vegetables that were just freshly dug from the ground. Well, Dave, I think it turns out that if your gut isn't used to eating stuff like that, it might not be a good idea. So I got back and to make matters a little more complicated, I got back from Africa and then a week later I went to Mexico.

Oh, I mean yeah. So it's almost like we weren't designed to do that. I mean, who would have thought?

So I managed to pick up two different parasites. One, I think from Mexico, probably amoeba, Amoeba histolytica. And the other one from. From Africa, Korea, Turkuris. And I thought that I was dying. Like, I was in such severe. It hit with nausea that just kept increasing, increasing, increasing. And I had such severe pain that it felt like someone was taking an ice pick and, like, punching it through my belly. And this was the weekend. And finally, Dave, this will be a marker of how desperate I was. Guess where I went. Which is the last place on Earth I would ever. I went to the er. And that is, as a. As a doctor, that is the last place on Earth that I would ever want to go to, because I know more than they do. And so I get to the er.

You know, I know some ER doctors who are kind of badasses. They just don't like what they do for their day job. Just to be clear. There are some good ones out there, no?

There are some good ones, yeah. I also know some really good ones. So I get to the er, and. And I. And I've had experience with, like, severe parasites, severe abdominal pain to the point where I'm like. Feel like I want to die. And. And I tell them, morphine doesn't work for me. You've got to give me something stronger. Well, as soon. And they. And I'm like, and I'm a doctor. As soon as I said that, they classified me as a drug seeker.

Well, yeah. I mean, you're a doctor. Is there a difference? I can only say that because we know each other.

So anyway. Anyway, she. They did give me something. It barely touched the pain. Then she wanted to give me. And I had severe upper abdominal pain, and I would. And she wanted to give me an nsaid, so Toradol intravenous. And I looked at her, and I'm like, you're. I'm. And she. She just didn't want to listen to me. So when the nurse came, I refused it. And she's like, you refuse the Toradol? I'm like, why? Because I have severe epigastric pain, and you have yet to prove that I don't have an ulcer burrowing a hole through my stomach. And you want to give me a medication that can make me bleed through my intestines, so I'm not going to take it. And so we negotiated, and interestingly, what they ended up giving me was ketamine.

That's good stuff, man. I mean, it works great if you're feeling trauma over pain.

Well, actually, you know what, you know what I learned about ketamine is that ketamine actually deactivates the NF kappa B pathway, so it shuts off inflammation. And it, it literally, when I had this parasite, it felt like I had a fire in my gut. It literally felt like a fire.

Wow.

And so the ketamine shut that down. And as a result, then I went to see a tropical disease specialist who diagnosed me. And the minute I was on antibiotics, I got better.

Okay. Antibiotics can be magic. And I just, I want listeners to understand that you've written a book about how to recover from antibiotics. I once since I started bulletproof. So sometime in the last 10 years, for eight months, I had just like, I had the runs and I picked up a parasite from Salad in Arizona that was some kind of tropical parasite you don't normally see in the US And I mean, I took visits all kinds of experts before someone finally found it. Wrote me a script for twelve hundred dollars worth of, of whatever. And I don't remember off the top of my head, but that fixed it within three days after every herb, every charcoal, every ozone, all the stuff that I know, all the herbals and four different lab tests couldn't find it. So like there, there's a whole set of things where sometimes it's okay to take a drug when the benefits are greater than the, the damages.

Well, well, what happens is then you've gotta, you've gotta then go and fix the damage.

Yeah. And you have to admit it exists. And what the, the world of, of business has taught us is that it's cheaper to deny reality than it is to admit reality, take responsibility for creating it, and then fix it. So it's the same thing with many things. We just pretend there's not a problem. Just be like, hey, you know what you want a non caloric sweetener? Okay, here's the pros, here's the cons. We're just going to tell you about it. You can decide if it's worth it. Right. The problem is it's usually not worth it. And then they make less money, so it's just easier to lie. And the same thing for, you know, is wifi hard, harmless? No. Is it really useful? Yes. So we could just admit the reality. And I feel like a lot of people are waking up to just say, you know, nothing's all good, nothing's all bad. Let's choose how dangerous we want our life to be. And that that's my choice. It's not the bureaucrat's choice. And so I would say, you know, it was a good thing that they gave you an antibiotic to fix the thing in your gut to kill the thing. That would have been hard to kill with herbs or maybe you just lived with it or, you know, throughout all of history. It kind of would have just killed you.

Well, it was, it was like severe pain. I mean the amoeba histolytica was just, you know, making me feel horrible. And that's one of the other interconnections with leaky gut is the immune system, you know, so I mentioned brain, skin metabolism, joint also energy, immune system and airway. And that was a big one growing up because the, every time I got antibiotics it was just messing with my immune system, making me more prone to getting more airway infections. And I would have probably been one of those people double masking during the pandemic because I was a complete hypochondriac as a child because I just got sick whenever anybody coughed around me.

Wow. I was the same way. I don't know if I was a hypochondriac. I just knew that I was sick all the time. And it was just finally, by the time I was maybe a teenager, I could feel three days before a sinus infection happened. I called a doctor and just like, hey man, it's happening again. Give me antibiotics. And they just call them in. All right, what's your take? And I know in the gutsmart protocol you talk about grains, but talk about whole grains versus refined grains versus glyphosate American grains. Just give me the Dr. Pedre Grain 101 from the book.

Yeah, I mean, basically stay away from pesticide ridden food, regardless of where it's coming from. Because glyphosate is an antimicrobial agent. It's like eating an antibiotic. It Right. It basically is a chelator. It's this, it's destroying the soil microbiome to say the least. So if you care about our soil, that's going to be. We're going to deplete our farming soil. You should stop buying anything that's made with glyphosate. The question, you know, do we need grains? Is grains part of like a fiber rich diet? You know, in. I mean the truth is that most people don't eat enough fiber. So in that study, when they looked at the fiber versus the fermented foods and had people increase their fiber intake some People were eating only 10 grams of fiber per day and they increase it to 45 grams on average. We should be eating somewhere between 25, 35, maybe up to 40 grams. What did it do? It helped modulate the immune response.

What if you eat too much? Like I went up to 60 grams of only soluble when I was writing my anti aging book because I just looked at the evidence for aging and I got a lot of soluble fiber. I4x the diversity of my gut bacteria during that time as measured by Viome, but was 60, 80, 100 grams of soluble fiber.

Like how much really bloated.

I actually didn't. Not with the, not with the blend.

You could feel really bloated eating that much fiber. But true soluble versus insoluble, because insoluble is going to be really hard to digest. But you know, the other thing is that a lot, a lot of people do is they hear health advice and they're like, let me just go 0 to 60. And you should never do anything 0 to 60. Like you should dip your toe, dip it a little more, a little more, a little more. You know, give yourself a ramp up period that's probably at least four weeks long to let your body, body adjust to the changes in the diet. I still believe that, that you do need insoluble fiber just to move things.

Through, but, but not maybe excessive amounts.

Not excessive amounts. And, and honestly, being Cuban, I love white rice.

Yeah, it's better than brown rice.

White rice, actually. It doesn't bump my blood sugar and it actually makes my microbiome really happy.

I like that. Okay, I gotta ask you this. There are studies that show vegans fart seven times more than non vegans. And this is affecting the carbon dioxide layer on the planet. What do you think of this?

I think there are potential benefits to the vegan diet, but the problem is Mother Nature. No, no, no, no, listen, listen, listen.

Keep going.

I think everyone should be eating. The majority of the planet isn't eating enough fruits and vegetables.

All right, I, I'm with you there.

But the other, the other half is if you deprive yourself of the proteins that are necessary to make all the important enzymes that your body needs, you're not going to be walking around very happy. Now the interesting thing is, so if you look at TMA production, so trimethylamine, which is this molecule produced by gut bacteria, like. Got it. I'm trying to think of the name. Oh, you're going to like this one, Dave. It's called Hungatella.

Hungate Yeah, that's one of my favorite bands from the 80s.

Hungatella produces trimethylamine. So it's one of the groups of bacteria in the gut that produce trimethylamine from things like phosphatidylcholine, L carnosine. So this is the argument why a meat based diet might not be good for you because you start producing more trimethylamine. Now the thing is it's dependent on genetic variations because the trimethylamine in itself isn't the problem, it's what it gets metabolized to in the liver to trimethylamine oxide, which is tmao. That then increase the risk for stroke and heart attack and actually has been associated with depression as well.

Wow.

So what they found is if you eat more vegetables, so they were doing like meat eaters versus vegans. I kind of came to the conclusion that eat meat but have more vegetables to count it because they also found that the more vegetables you eat, the way you can counter that effect of producing more tmao. So yeah, I mean, let's save the planet. You know those Franken burgers, those vegan burgers.

Yes.

They're using corn, they're using like ingredients that have been shipped from all different parts. Like, and no one ever talks about the, the greenhouse effect of building these vegan meat lookalikes that are full of like, usually they have some sort of omega 6 oil in them. They've got a lot of corn based ingredients. I mean they're, they're not only horrible for you, but they're also horrible for the environment because of the way all of these ingredients are being sourced.

All right, TMAO is this, this thing that's made by bad bacteria in the gut in the presence of fish or eggs or phosphatidylcholine or soy lecithin which comes from soy. So. Oh, and red meat. Yeah, yeah. But all the headlines always like red meat. Number one, if you don't have tmaoformers, you can eat all the meat you want and it doesn't matter. You can also eat all the eggs, all the fish, and all the vegan processed foods that contain.

If you don't have a lot of hungatella in there, then go to town.

So I, I did test mine, even though I have a history of taking a lot of antibiotics, but I don't eat industrial meat. So what that means is you can measure this and just know. And if you have tmaoformers in your gut, maybe you should do something about that instead of trying to eat Franken food on. On a desire to. To fix things. The other thing that no one talks about. Guess what else? You might not even know this part because I, I really did a lot of digging. It was like two weeks to write this piece. It's on. It's on my blog. You know what else forms TMAO in the gut besides tma? No, actually it's nitrite and nitrate. So burning your meat does it. And you can also get it burning from vegetables. And I, I reference all this stuff.

You mean like charred vegetables if you.

Overcook them, or even just regular vegetables that have nitrate in them, like, you know, celery. So we're like, oh, it turns out bad gut bacteria, no matter. Pretty much what you eat are going to be causing.

You mean we shouldn't be drinking celery juice?

It's kind of funny. Celery juice I don't think is bad for you because you need some nitrates. You should have healthy gut bacteria. I don't think it actually cures diabetes and is like the Lord's second coming, like some people. But it'll hydrate you nicely. It's got structured water in it, but it's not worth 20 bucks. And making it a major part of your diet is foolhardy unless you just like it and you have a lot of money.

Exactly.

Yeah. It's kind of funny because I've been on Dr. Oz, we actually talked about. And you've been on Dr. Oz as well. And I have so much respect for him as a doctor. And we talked about cell reduce which was on there. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. It's got some minerals in it, it's got some benefits. Right. But then you have someone who came out the medical medium who's like, you know, I downloaded something from the 1970s that's like, celery juice will like cure cancer and diabetes. Like all these crazy stuff. There is no evidence of that. And people who try and do that do not get those results. I have been a raw vegan. I have drunk more celery juice than most humans. It's not, it's not that, but it's not bad for you. It's one of those crazy things. I'm still though mad that vegans are farting when they eat like Franken meats. This is still traumatizing me. Is there a cure for that? People who fart too much. I mean, you wrote the Gutsmart protocol. If I have a problem with flatulence or I'm asking For a friend here.

First of all, you know, stop eating all those beans that are mass made. Like, you know, if you go to the hot bar, like if you want to eat beans, they need to be soaked and rinsed overnight and, and you actually have to cook them with some sodium bicarb and then also put some kombu seaweed in there, and that's going to reduce the gas forming properties of it.

Are you saying this as a medical doctor or a Cuban?

Look, Cubans, we love our black beans. Don't take my black beans away.

Is this traditional from what you learned growing up? And we've talked.

Oh, like how. Oh, no, no, no, no. This was not done. We were like a, like a fart a thon in my house when we had the black beans because my mom didn't know how to do this. No, this is stuff I've learned since.

Medical stuff. Okay.

But you know, the other thing you can do actually is take entericoted peppermint oil and it's going to reduce gas in your belly.

And there are beans, bean enzymes, beano, and things like that that can help. But let me ask you this.

Actually, the more beans that you eat, the more carbohydrate active enzyme producing bacteria start growing in your gut. So eventually you start becoming like resistant to it.

You're.

But you're, you're able to process this food a bit.

All right. There is more though that I want to ask you about when it comes to beans. So Dan Buettner is a guy I, I really respect Dan. He's been on my show, he does the blue zones. And I respect Dan because he's, he's tirelessly worked for like 25, 30 years to try and figure out, like, what do people who live longer actually do? And. But the algorithm then is like, I don't know, I'll just do that. But there isn't like a question. When I chatted with him, it wasn't like a why is it happening? Why does it work? And he's still like, you know, just eat beans every day and legumes and like, that's what everyone does. If you could just do one thing, you know, be plant based.

But what else are they doing? You know? And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna say, I bet you, you know, because beans are a source of prebiotic fibers. Right, Right. But they're not just eating beans. They're also eating fermented foods as well.

Right.

So they're eating what? I think we're gonna come to a conclusion on is the best diet for people to have on the planet, which is a combination of fermented foods and fiber daily. Which is kind of what I came up with in my book after looking at the research and seeing where things are going, you know, because we don't have enough like dietary intervention studies looking at like what happens if you combine fermented foods with fiber over the long term, what is that going to do for a lot of things including aging and how does it change the gut microbiome and that kynorunin and tryptophan metabolism ratio, all those things. So I think it's, I think you can't get so micro and be like, well, they're eating beans. Well what else are they eating? Not just the beans. And the diets are different. Right. Because there's a lot of blue zones around the world. They're not all eating the same diet. You know, there's blue zones. And by the way, a lot of people don't know this and I don't know that it's on the map, but Cuba is kind of a blue zone because there are a lot of Cubans who live to very old age and I. And they eat a lot of black beans.

It's true. And there's something else that's present in Cuba that's present in many of the other blue zones. And I talked with Dan about this. It's that poor record keeping and poverty which means sometimes it's cheaper to take your parents identity when they pass than it is to pay inheritance taxes. So there may be a few 120 year olds walking around going, I hope no one knows that. My mom had me when she was 25 and I took over. My mom's idiot. Just saying like this has happened and there's a strange correlation with, with blue zones and bad recordkeeping. And to his defense, Dan did talk about how he believes he's accounted for those problems. But just, just saying like in Cuba, I don't know how good record keeping for the last 120 years is, but my guess is like everywhere else on the planet there's been a little bit of fraud. And, and that's, no one gets paid.

A lot of money there. So you're certainly not going to try to be your dead relative so you can get some great inheritance in Cuba.

That's a fair point. So maybe not because there really isn't. Yeah. It's just so that like they do.

They do keep really close health records.

Oh, they do. Okay.

And, and this is fascinating. So let's let's, let's go all the way back to the beginning of this. Talk to sugar. So Cubans love their sugar, right? They love their sugar. Now, I don't know if you remember the special period. So that was called. The special period was when Cuba lost its Russian subsidies. And in Cuba, they called it the. The El periodo especial, the special period. So I guess it made it. It kind of made it sound better than it was. It's like we're in a special period. Means we're get. We. We've lost our fucking subsidies, so we can't feed you. So what they did is they rationed sugar. So sugar consumption dropped dramatically, like 75%. This was in the 90s. And they were keeping track of health records. They keep very close track. And guess what happened? Sugar consumption dropped, obesity dropped, diabetes dropped, heart disease dropped, Heart attacks dropped. Like all health measures in the population improved. And guess what happens when sugar was reintroduced? When the special period ended, all of these markers started going up. Now you could say Cuba's an isolated incident. You know, is this something, you know, can we replicate this? And actually, we had already done that because Great Britain during World War II raised in sugar. And they also keep really close health records, and they found the same thing. Dramatic drop in heart disease, in diabetes, obesity.

So that's kind of goes back to the beginning of our interview where, okay, sugar is not good for you. But the Hadza were eating it. And in my original, they're eating honey.

So let's, you know, they're eating honey, and they're eating the honeycomb, which is full of fiber. And they're also eating the honeybees. They're getting some other, you know, maybe some bee poison in there.

Okay, got it. Yeah, like some bee poop. Maybe they're referlizing as well.

You know, they're getting microbiome enhancements.

All right, so let's actually talk about the fructose and the honey, though, after looking at a bunch of data. When I wrote the bulletproof diet, this was a long time ago. What I came up with was about 25 grams of fructose, maximum per day to prevent the damage that it does. And you might have some more sucrose as well. And for listeners, table sugar is basically glucose with sucrose. Table sugar is glucose and fructose stuck together. So basically, you can have a little bit. You shouldn't have too much. You should eat a lot of vegetables with some fiber. You should have enough protein and all that. But there's room for that. And that raw honey was preferable to the other sources. But even if you have white sugar, you know, if it's a little bit.

And you got to make sure it's real honey when you're buying it at the supermarket.

Oh, all the honey from China is real. It says right on it.

I buy my raw honey at the farmer's market.

I think that is the right thing to do. I. I'm 100% with you there. Or from small beekeepers. Unless you're vegan, at which point you have to eat processed raw sugar sprinkled on a meat like substance.

You should put a lot of agave on your.

Yeah, no, agave is fertilized by bees, so you can't eat it.

Every plant is fertilized by bees.

Oh, my gosh. We better stop eating plants. You're totally right. Thanks for the convincing me to give up my vegan background. Vincent, what did you eat today?

Ooh, what did I eat today? Let's go backwards in time. I had just eggs. I had two. Listen, just eggs.

The fake product called just eggs. Or you had real eggs?

No, no, no, no. I had, I had eggs and egg whites. So two things. One with mushrooms and the other one with red peppers. I know you don't like red peppers, but.

No, no, if you're not sensitive to lectins. I like them a lot. For me, I'm so.

I'm okay with them. They're also Cuban. Diet approved.

Yeah, I love them.

And then, and then for lunch, I had wild salmon and a salad that I just threw together. I put some kale.

I saw a recipe for kale in your book. Did you eat kale today?

No. There is a kale kale recipe. You're going to kill me.

There's actually a kale recipe in my cookbook too. When people demand it, I'll tell you how to cook it to taste good, but I don't recommend you eat it.

There's also a beefaw recipe which is so good. Yeah, I just made a big salad.

Okay.

And they had some paleo bread and like some hummus.

Okay, so. And you said paleo bread that's made out of nuts and seeds and stuff?

Yeah.

Okay, got it. And some hummus. So some carbs. Some complex carbs and stuff like that. Okay. And what are you gonna do for dinner?

What's my dinner tonight? Oh, man. Can I tell you what I ate for dinner last night?

Sure, that counts.

So last night I. So I make my. I. I've reinvented a dish called Cuban picadillo. And I've remade it many different ways. But so this one way that I make it is with ground lamb. And so I made it with ground lamb, some red onions, and then stuffed olives, green pepper, red pepper, stuffed olives. And I use a little bit of vinegar in there. So it's a, it's a ground dish. And I had it with white rice.

And do you cook and cool your white rice? You cook it with a little fat and then cool it and all to make more resistant starch. Are you one of those guys?

I, I do and I don't. So sometimes I like eating it straight hot, but I like, also I usually make a lot of white rice. So then I'll take it out of the fridge the next day and I'll just eat it cold because then I know I'm getting those resistant starches which are good for my gut bacteria.

Okay. I do the same thing. I cook it with a little bit of MCT or ghee in it, which makes more cross reacted stuff. And I think there's enough evidence for that for gut bacteria that it's worth doing. Okay. Very cool. All right. So that, that's what you eat. And I just, I want to say good job on the book. It's getting to be really hard to write a book on gut bacteria that doesn't say the same thing that every other gut bacteria book book says. And when you and I are professional authors, this is your second book. It's got endorsements from me forward by our friend David Perlmutter, who's just an amazing human who's been on the show several times. So, like, there's a network of authors and we all talk with our publishers and we're like, we want a book on this. And we're like, yeah, but we don't want to write a book on that. Right. Like, you have to give me something interesting here. Right. So then eventually you're as, okay, I'm going to write something, but it, it has to be different, otherwise it's boring to write it. Right. So I think you met that bar, which is just hard to do for the gut. I wouldn't have wanted to write a gut book right now.

I think I, I think I also did something that's gonna really be a trendsetter and it's gonna make everybody else look at the way they're writing books on gut health because I created a personalized diet based on a quiz and that was a huge challenge. But most of the books out there for the gut are not personalized to the individual. And honestly, no two guts are the same, so you can't say that the diet is the same for everyone.

Very well said. So it's funny, your book comes out, I think, a week after mine.

We're like book twins, man.

Yeah, we're book twins and they're both personalized things and this is the biggest trend. So, guys, if you're looking for knowing what to do for you, that's not the same as your grandmother. Like, literally you're different. Pick up the gutsmart Protocol, which is Vince's book, and it's going to tell you what to do for your gut, not any gut. And you might as well do Smarter, not harder. If you buy them together, then magically the Amazon algorithms or wherever you like to buy them will know this book is bought with this book because we're both biohackers and you want to know.

I'm a gut hacker.

Yeah, hackers. Like, what's going to work for you? Because it's just not the same as everyone else. And you did do that well. And I think you covered new ground in the book, which is just hard to do. So kudos, man. Thanks for writing it.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it was a bit of a risk because my old publisher rejected having me write another gut book. They're like, it's overdone. But I just felt that I had a very fresh idea and that I was going to come with a different angle. We didn't even get into the vagus nerve and the. The whole mind, body connection and breath work and meditation and how that affects the gut, but I've got that in there as well. So I think my book is going to bring a fresh angle that a lot of people out there don't talk about.

It's very true. You've done that. So thank you for being on the show, thanks for writing a good book and I look forward to seeing you at a book launch event for one or both of our books coming up here.

Sounds awesome, man. Thanks for having me on.

You got it. Guys. If you like the show, you know what to do. I wasn't even kidding. If you really like the show, go out there, pick up Smarter, Not Harder, and order the gutsmart Protocol. Buy them together. And you're doing this because you're supporting people who are writing books because there aren't that many of them. And we may be the last people who write new things because a bunch of people are going to go to ChatGPT and write a bunch of crap that's recycling all of the old pharmaceutical garbage that's been been used to train chat GPT. So we have a wave of books that don't say anything new that are going to be coming out here. Vincent did something new in this. So smart, not harder. So reward the people who do the work instead of just kind of scout the algorithms and it's like leaving a tip for a barista. But you're buying a book and you get to keep it. See you all on the next episode. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey Facebook.