Why Your Energy Crashes After 40 (It's Not What You Think)

Because the reality is, yes, you can normalize, you know, different conditions across the population, but when you have somebody sitting in front of you, that's the person, right? And even if you have 50 to 200 all learning something new, it's their individual route and road. And what is their individual root cause? Because I get hate to break it to people, it's never just one thing. It's usually a constellation of somewhere between 5 and 50 or more. Yeah, right. But you got to uncover it. And I always like to call it like peeling back the layer of an onion and really digging in, because it's different for each person. But the framework, and I think that's the important part, the framework of how you go about digging through and becoming your own investigator is the important part. And I think you have really mastered a lot of that framework to help people really become their own investigative, you know, detective. So, so tell me, when you're looking in the gut, what are the big things that you see that a lot of people sort of get wrong when they're looking at the gut? Because there's a bunch.

Oh, it's so funny. So, I mean, I have so much to say here. So everybody really loves to fixate on the commensal and the opportunistic and the pathogenic bacteria and parasites, right? So, oh my gosh, I have streptococcus, I have staphylococcus, I have Klebsiella, I have, you know, E. Coli. I've got, you know, I've got this or that XYZ parasite. Right. I've got a me, I've got a Entamoeba, I've got. And you know what? That's not my favorite part of the test. The, the bacteria, the organisms that live there, they live there for a reason. And the reason is your terrain is screwed up and your immune system is screwed up. So I like to flip to the post part of the test that shows me what's happening in your immune system, what's happening with your digestive markers, what's happening with inflammation. Because those three key things are going to tell me what got you here in the first place. To create an environment where all those bacteria can thrive, where those parasites can thrive. And until you solve those things, you can't just take an herb to kill a bunch of bacteria and parasites and expect anything to change. The terrain didn't change. And so those things are just going to come right back. You have an inviting environment for microbes, infections to grow. You have to change the environment. And so My favorite parts of the tests are not really what's growing there. It's why are these things growing here?

Oh, I'm so glad you said that. Because I, I have people, you know, because my researchers looking at the microbiome and people would fixate on. I think I have H. Pylori. I'm like, why is it there? You know, it's like, you know, you know. Yeah, you can't. You can buy the best organic seed on the planet and if you put it in a garden that has been napalmed, it is not going to do well. Right. It doesn't matter how fancy the seed is. And I think, I think that's the challenge. And again, even like, people, oh, I need to take this. What probiotic? What, this, what that? Like, it doesn't matter if it's an environment that it cannot grow in and cannot support other ones of the same nature to grow in, it's still not going to help.

Yeah, it's like you, you really have to go and look at the environment and solve it. The biggest one that everybody seems to be really excited about right now is Akkermansia mucinophilia. Right. This is like, it's like the bacteria of the year. Right. It's like, which bacteria is getting the most research. And so people get really obsessed about it. And so we see a lot of, of less than detectable limit or very low Akkermansia. And they want to go get an Akkermansia probiotic because, you know, there's a few brands out there that are known for their Akkermansia or one brand in particular that I of.

Yeah.

And of course, they go and spend all this money on a probiotic and they take this Akkermansia hoping that they can get this one singular bacteria to work better. And. And it doesn't work. We retest and it's not there. And it's not there because you didn't give it what it needs to thrive. You didn't change the environment. So really taking a Ekkermansia without the polyphenols that it needs to, to thrive, or without, you know, solving the digestive issue or solving for inflammation, you know, you're just throwing seed into dead soil. Right. It's not going to take.

Yeah, yeah. And those are the grannies of the neighborhood. Like, they're going to move on when the drug gangs move in. Right. So when you got the wrong ones in there, they're not surviving. Right. That's the reality. Right. And so you said polyphenols so let's go down this road, because we got to go down this road because there is a huge push lately for a carnivore diet.

Yeah. So a very famous functional medicine doctor. Actually, I'm not. Yeah, I think she's a doctor. Anne Louise Gittleman was an. Anne Louise Gittleman. A PhD or a medical doctor. I don't.

She's a PhD. She's a PhD.

Yeah. Dr. Anne Louise Gittleman. So I had the fortune to interview her early on. Like, when I first started producing my first summits. She was. She was a speaker, and I interviewed her a couple of times, and she said to me one time, she said, laura. And I would call her, like, the grandmother of American functional medicine. I mean, she is so important to.

Yeah.

She made it possible for you and me to do what we're doing. People thought she was crazy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was one of the first books I picked up decades ago.

She's a pioneer. She's a pioneer. And she said to me, Laura, she said, the diet that heals you is not the diet that will sustain you. And this is what people get wrong. And so what she means by that is, so you went carnivore and you felt better, so now you think you should be on it forever. Or you went vegan and. And you felt better, so now you think you should be on it forever. When the reality is we were not built or meant to eat a singularly focused diet. We were meant to eat by the seasons, by what's available. And that includes all kinds of different foods, animal and plant derived. And you don't get polyphenols from animals. You get polyphenols from plants. Plants. And so it's so funny. You can put a bunch of experts in a room and everybody can argue until they're, you know, red in the face about the diet. That's right. And. And I just say, you know, what's right for you, what works for you, what do you feel better on? Based on where you're at right now, in your health, what needs to be focused on. And your genetics, which is a big piece. And I, you know, learned this later on in my functional medicine journey, that not all of us are really built to digest and assimilate the nutrients out of every single food on the planet. So I'll just use, like, there's members of my family, we all did our DNA, and there's members of my family who would literally die. Well, die is a little bit extreme, but would become very ill if they were a vegan because they can't actually extract the nutrients from, from plants as effectively as they can from animal products. It's not that they can't at all, but if they were relying on that for protein, they would become ill. And so the plant, the, the diet that heals you, that makes you feel better in the moment, like. Yeah, a carnivore diet totally simmers down the gut. You're not putting any fiber in there. You're not having to, your bacteria aren't having to ferment anything. It totally rests the gut. It allows you to, you know, a lot of shifts to occur in that terrain. But carnivore forever, I think, is, could be a problem for people because what are you going to do for polyphenols and vitamins and nutrients that only come from plants that aren't part of animal foods?

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at the data and the research, you know, if you do a carnivore diet for a long period of time, you will have radical shifts in that microbiome over time, and they produce like a bunch of nasty things. Putresine. Cadaverine. Yeah, cadaver. Right, they do, right. There's, there's colitis models of those, you know, those things. And so I think it's a, you know, it's the idea of a therapeutic diet to fix a particular underlying pathology. And then there's maintenance diet, which is going to be broader and wider, I think, and it's that. Miss. You know, but, but it's a great marketing tool to, to drive everybody to a very extreme diet, you know.

You know, I mean, you can sell a lot of books, you can sell a lot of food, you know, supplements and, and gadgets to measure what's happening in your body. I mean, yeah, it's a great, it's a great model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the reality is it's different. You know, it's. Yeah, so I, I agree, but I think, you know, the, the most important thing, like you've already said, is that we have to lay the groundwork for the environment, for the microbiome to normalize itself. Now, you mentioned a little bit about toxins and other things. I'd like for you to just sort of back up a little bit and talk about, like, parasites and fungus and what things do they like to harbor and hang on to that, that probably drive your toxicity and other stuff, because lots of people love doing this kind of stuff, too, and they can't figure out why they can't get better.