#239 How Understanding the Gut Vagina Connection can help you Clear HPV!

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

In this video, I'm going to be talking about how diet and gut health play a key role in helping to clear high risk HPV virus. I'm Dr. Donnie and I'm a women's health expert as well as HPV expert, helping thousands of women around the world to address abnormal Pap smears and get HPV to negative once and for all. So I wanted to talk about this gut vagina connection because first of all, it's not well known that there is a gut vagina connection. And so most people are not even realizing this is something to pay attention to. And it's definitely not something that you're likely to hear about from the doctor's office. Even though there are more and more research studies coming out every year documenting what's referred to as the gut vagina axis, meaning there's a communication both ways. Not only do we have can we show that the microbiome in the gut is influencing the microbiome in the vagina, but also the other direction as well, the microbiome in the vagina is influencing the microbiome in the gut. And then there's that's not the only connection. But the microbiome in both locations is communicating with our immune system. So our immune system throughout our whole body is getting signals from these microbes in our gut and vagina and that's going to influence levels of inflammation in the gut, levels of inflammation in the vagina, as well as susceptibility to infections like high risk hpv. So this is a huge piece of information and really helps us to put together the puzzle pieces and break the mystery of how to solve high risk HPV virus. Because most women are told by their doct either, oh, it's going to go away on its own, but then it doesn't go away on its own. How many of you are in that situation? Or the doctor says it's never going to go away and you're left with what? Appointments every six months with a gynecological oncologist just waiting for things to get worse. Those are the options that women are faced with right now in the United States and in other countries around the world. I know because I talk to thousands of women every year. They tell me this is what they're experiencing in the standard medical approach. And yet here's this key piece of information that if we can understand the gut vagina connection and we can help women to re optimize their gut microbiome and vaginal microbiome and drop inflammation and help their bodies actually perform the way that they can possibly perform and protect them from high risk HPV virus, that we could actually be reduced, reducing rates of HPV related cancer like cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, vulvar cancer, anal cancer and more. So that seems worthwhile to me. How about you? So I'm glad you're joining me. In this video I'm going to be talking more in depth about the microbiome. I want you to understand what is the microbiome and, and how does it get disrupted in the first place, right? What's going on and how do you know that potentially your gut or vaginal microbiome might disrupted and might need attention? What testing is available for you to get more information about this? And then we want to get into what's the potential treatments. I'm going to give you some tips that you can be implementing right away to start down this path of supporting your good bacteria and not allowing microbes that we don't want like high risk HPV virus. Ultimately this is your body, this is the human body you're living and existing in and you have the potential for a microbiome that can protect you. We just need to help you to understand how to help your microbiome protect you. And this is not something we learn in elementary school. In fact, a lot of this research has only really come out in the past decade. So medical, the medical system hasn't caught up with this information. That's why I'm so glad you're listening in and be able to share this information with you. And this is exactly why in my practice I stepped outside of the standard medical model. I stepped outside of what's covered by insurance so that I can offer this to my patients. I can offer you guidance how to heal your microbiome and how to heal from hpv, how to get the HPV to negative and stay negative. Because it's not just about exposure. So many of us think, oh, it's just because I was exposed to hpv. But I want you to understand, of course there had to be an exposure. It wouldn't be there at all if you hadn't been exposed. But it's not the only piece of it, right? We get exposed and our body has the capacity to kick the virus out of there. That's well established in research as well. So if that HPV virus is hanging around for months or years, then we have to start asking questions. Why is it that your system isn't protecting you? Why is your immune system not protecting you? And it's not just your immune system, it's your microbiome. Part of the job of the microbiome is to protect you from microbes that shouldn't be there. And if the, if HPV is showing up, that's like a red blinking light saying there's a reason why the virus is showing up and not going away. We have to look closer, we have to dig deeper, we have to understand and start making changes because it's worth it. When I, the women who work with me in one on one or in my programs, and they start making these sometimes initial very simple changes very quickly, they start feeling a difference, and not just in terms of fending off hpv, but in their overall health. Because as it turns out, our microbiome is not just influencing our susceptibility to infections, but our microbiomes influencing our susceptibility to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and even osteoporosis, all the different health issues that we deal with. So as you solve your gut and vaginal health to protect yourself from hpv, you end up solving and protecting yourself from so many other health issues at the same time. Okay, so now you know why I'm so excited to share this information with you and why I'm hoping you also are like, please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. So, okay, so then you know you're in the right place. So this microbiome, we used to think our bodies were sterile. We used to think the vagina was sterile. And then we figured out, no, it's not sterile. There's a whole ecosystem is referred to in the research as an ecosystem, which I think is a nice way to think about it. Right. An ecosystem is not just a single bacteria. There's actually trillions of different kinds of bacteria in the vagina and there's trillions in the gut. And there's some overlap. Some of them are the exact same. There's over 50% the same. That's how they can tell that they're coming back and forth between the gut and the vagina. Because when they trace it down to the DNA of Those microbes, it's exactly the same. So they know they're going back and forth, and not just at birth. At first we thought the only way that we got exposed to bacteria was through vaginal birth, but now we know that's not the case. We're getting exposed to bacteria other than just during childbirth. So we know that there is a healthier ecosystem possible, and it's different in the gut than in the vagina. But there are some similarities. And by the way, there's also ecosystem of microbes in the uterus and in the ovaries and what's turning out every part of our body, right? So no longer are we a sterile system. We have to let go of that concept of being sterile and instead embrace the concept that we can work together. We can be in a symbiotic relationship with the microbes that can protect us, that actually help our immune system, help our nervous system, help us make nutrients, help us make neurotransmitters, transmitters help, but we depend on them. Actually, more of our cells are from microbes than human cells, if you think about it. So it's not just us or our body, it's us. And our microbiome is our human experience and existence. And so you start to realize, wow, I need to really be taking good care of my microbiome. And when you start to shift that as a priority, then you start to go, wait a minute, and how. What do I need to eat not just to feed myself, but to feed my microbiome in a healthy way? What do I need to not eat in order to make sure I'm optimizing my microbiome? What do I need to be doing otherwise in my life? Do I need to be avoiding toxins? And what things negatively affect my microbiome? Right, because we, we want to take care of them like they're our best partner in life, because they really are. We're really starting to see them. So what we want to do is start to understand how. Do you know if your microbiome might be off track? Now, simply testing positive for high risk HPV is a sign to me that there's a high likelihood that your microbiome could be imbalanced, at least the vaginal microbiome, but quite likely you may have also an imbalance of the gut microbiome just based on the fact that hpv, high risk HPV is testing positive, but there may be other reasons too. So what are the things that disrupt the microbiome in terms of the gut microbiome and the Vaginal microbiome, they're both disrupted by stress exposure. Now we most all have some stress exposure. So you start to realize, oh my gosh, we already have stress working against us. We already have stress as a factor that's causing disruption. So we need to constantly also be working against it and helping us recover from the negative effects of stress. That's why I wrote the book master your stress, reset your health. The more you can master stress and recover from stress at the same time that you're exposed to stress. This way you can prevent these imbalances from happening. But most times we don't realize we're under so much stress, whether it's even major traumas and crises in our life, let alone the daily stresses we're exposed to, that we often dismiss thinking, there's nothing I can do about it, when really there's a lot we can do to help ourselves recover from stress. And I can come back to some tips about that at that last section of this video. So we need to be thinking about, have I been exposed to a lot of stress? In which case likely it has affected my microbiome. Have you been exposed to foods that can disrupt the microbiome, in particular gluten? Has a lot of research to show when people consume a lot of gluten, which is in bread and rice and excuse me, not rice, anything made from barley, rice, rye, R Y E, rye, spelt and gluten, those can disrupt the microbiome in the gut, which can affect the microbiome in the vagina. Whether you have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease or not.

It's not dependent on having a sensitivity. Simply consuming gluten disrupts the microbiome. So it's not about whether you have sensitivity or not. Gluten already can be an issue, especially if you're eating it every meal or every day and all the time. So we need to be starting to pay attention to that. Also pesticides. So if you're eating non organic food, those pesticides disrupt our microbiome. And then if you start to think about medications, there's certainly antibiotics, right? Because antibiotics are antibacterial, they're going to kill bacteria. Now, we use them when someone has a bacterial infection, but they're often overused. It's well documented that we are overusing antibiotics, meaning people are taking antibiotics when they don't even have a bacterial infection or they're taking more than they need of antibiotics, and instead of figuring out how to prevent an infection, we're ending up on antibiotics. Over and over for long periods of time. When we are, then we're going to disrupt our gut microbiome. And certainly some women are also having to use vaginal antibiotics from, let's say, a bacterial infection vaginally. Then those antibiotics vaginally disrupt the vaginal microbiome. But other medications affect our microbiome as well, including medications used to treat reflux. So antacids and acid blocking medications affect the microbiome as well as many other medications. So this is something to consider. If you've needed to be on medications at various or longer periods of time or recurrent times in your life, then there's quite a high likelihood that your microbiome has been imbalanced. Also, simply having other infections, like having food poisoning, Covid or any other kind of infection, even from a virus, can then cause an imbalance in the gut microbiome. So these are some of the examples of common reasons why people's gut microbiome gets disrupted. And how do you know that your gut microbiome is disrupted? Well, a lot of times they you start to get symptoms, especially if it's more moderate to severe disruption or what we call dysfunction dysbiosis. Right.

A biome, you call it a microbiome or biome. So if it's an imbalanced microbiome, we call it a dys d y s dysbiosis, meaning imbalance of the bacteria. And that could mean that there's an overgrowth of more inflammatory bacteria. Right. So what can happen is not just that the microbiome drops to negative, right? Yes, that can happen where you start to have a decrease in your healthy bacteria, but you can also have an overgrowth of either healthy or unhealthy bacteria. So it's really an imbalance. It means there can be too much of good or bad bacteria and too little of good bacteria. And in that imbalance is where we start to see an impact on your immune health and your vaginal health. So you might also know that you have an imbalanced gut biome if you're getting reflux or burping, bloating, either higher up or lower down, and all through your belly, constipation, diarrhea, any kind of abdominal pain or cramping or discomfort.

And there's many other possible ways it could show up, including if you might be diagnosed with a autoimmune or inflammatory bowel disease like colitis. These are all signs to me that there's very likely imbalance of bacteria, but it also might not show up as digestive symptoms. Some people don't even realize they have an imbalance in their gut biome until we actually start testing for it. So it might only show up based on vaginal infections. You might be getting vaginal yeast or bv. It's also possible that you might be having skin rashes because when you have an imbalance in the gut microbiome, it makes it more likely you're going to develop skin rashes, whether eczema, rosacea or many other types of skin rashes. Also, if you're getting mental health symptoms like anxiety, depression or migraines, sleep issues, these can be tied back to your gut microbiome as well as, let's see, so we covered the nervous system, the skin, also hormones sometimes, then it's affecting blood sugar levels. Insulin function as well as ovarian hormones, pcos and endometriosis are both tied back to imbalances in the microbiome. So if you're having any kind of menstrual irregularities or fertility issues, this is also tied back to imbalances in the microbiome. So if you're like, why am I not getting pregnant easily? We also have to be looking at your vaginal and gut microbiome so you start to get a sense, right? Oh, another one I meant to mention is autoimmunity. If you've been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, whether Hashimoto's, rheumatoid arthritis, any other kind of autoimmune condition, I know right away that I need to be paying attention to your gut microbiome because the research shows a connection between imbalances in the microbiome and likelihood of developing an autoimmune condition. And some of you might be noticing all of these things. You might be noticing, oh, I have digestive issues and autoimmunity and high risk hpv and that makes you start to go, oh, it's all interconnected. And the thing that makes me excited about is that means if I can guide you or when I get the chance to guide you to rebalance your microbiome, gut biome and vaginal biome, that means I am going to be able to help you heal and set yourself feet free from this situation and prevent it from happening again. The ways you know you have a vaginal microbiome imbalance sometimes could be a vaginal discharge. It could be for. It could be that you just testing positive for high risk hpv. You might have frequent bladder infections as well, BV yeast sometimes, but not always. Sometimes you don't even have any symptoms or some women will say to me, they have a vaginal discharge that they keep asking the doctor about, and the doctor keeps saying it's nothing. And lo and behold, when we do specialty testing, we finally figure out that there's an imbalance in the biome. And I'm going to tell you about that specialty testing here in a minute. I know how scary it is to test positive for HPV virus. And I know it's even more concerning when your gynecologist tells you that all you can do is wait and see if it continues and if it causes abnormal cells. That's exactly why, as a naturopathic doctor and midwife, that I feel so passionate about helping women to be proactive about protecting themselves from HPV virus. I've been helping thousands of women for the past 23 years to do exactly that and to get, get HPV to negative and stay negative. And that's why I developed the say Goodbye to HPV online program where you can get access to my proven protocol from wherever you are in the world. So I hope you will come check out the say Goodbye to HPV program, review the success cases and see if this is going to be a good fit to help you get your life back from hpv. So these are the ways. You know, the other thing, by the way, that I want to emphasize that disrupts the vaginal microbiome, besides stress and antibiotics, also is simply sexual intercourse. When we have sexual intercourse with another human, it can disrupt the vaginal microbiome because now you're getting exposed to another person's microbiome. And that's a very common cause, let alone if you're using any kind of contraception or spermicide or douche or lubricant. These all can, especially if they're chemicals, you know, based on a chemical substance, have the potential to disrupt your microbiome as well. So that's the thing I always say, we're human, we're gonna have sex, we're gonna get our. We're gonna be under stress. We're probably gonna have an imbalanced microbiome. So it's not about judging or criticizing yourself or being hard on yourself is to say, oh my gosh, of course I'm human. And the microbiome gets affected by so many things. It's pretty much inevitable that our microbiome is going to get disrupted if we're not doing something to protect it and work against that. You know, the current is disruption. We have to work against it to prevent that and to Solve that for ourselves. It's not about taking a single pill, right? Like, it's not like, oh, you're just going to go to the doctor and they're going to give you one pill and it's going, fix it. All right? Taking an antibiotic is not going to fix this situation. Antibiotics cause the situation. So it's not that simple to just go take a pill or go do something, and it's going to be fixed tomorrow. This is a situation where we have to look at the big picture and we have to be willing to stand back and outsmart it. We have to be willing to say, I'm the one now in control of my health and I'm going to do something about this. So how do we start taking those steps right now? I mentioned that there are some specialty tests that can give us some additional information. And when I say specialty tests, I mean these are labs. These are at a special lab outside of the standard labs, right? There's the standard labs that are covered by air insurance that you probably go to get your blood drawn. Those are kind of the standard labs, and they do the standard tests. But there's also labs, at least in the United States, let alone other countries, that are specialty labs. They have private companies that have, oftentimes they have their own scientists, their own research, and they are developing tests that can help people, but they may or may not be covered by insurance. Most times they're not covered by insurance. You're going to need to pay out of pocket to get the benefit and the information from those specialty labs. And they offer that testing through practitioners like me who have a practice where I can. I can. I'm licensed to be able to order the test and I'm. And then you can often collect the sample at home, send it in, and then as someone who's trained to help you with that information, I can help you to address it. So, for example, there's. There are several specialty labs now that offer stool testing for the microbiome. Some of these are even public, available to the consumers. You may have seen them online and they're not, you know, they have all some value. But I have to say, one of the greatest growing industries right now is consumer testing for the gut microbiome. Not to say that you shouldn't do them, but just be mindful that you may or may not get all the information you need from a consumer test. I recommend doing a clinical microbiome, what's called a DNA analysis. Right now, that's considered the best option we have, is A PCR DNA analysis of the gut microbiome and a test like this can show us are, is there any pathogenic or bad guys that, that are really inflammatory, really causing trouble, or is there, is there any overgrowth of good bacteria? Is there any overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria? These are bacteria that a little bit, okay, but if they start to really overgrow, they start to cause more inflammation and disrupt the immune system and so on. And so we can see this in this dual microbiome panel. We can also see how well are you digesting your food? Is there inflammation, is there blood? We can get so much more information from these panels and then that gives us information we need to solve this. But this is not something you're going to hear about in the gastroenterology office. It's not integrated into the standards medical system. There's also similarly same kind of DNA analysis for the vagina. And these are different lab, different specialty lab. They can do a swab at home, send it in, and they show us exactly who's living in your vagina. And it's different, way more specific and sensitive than the test that you have done at the gynecologist's office, which often doesn't find much. But when you do this panel, we can actually see, do you have a predominance of the healthy Lactobacillus that should be living in the vagina or is it low? Because the studies show that when women have a low amount of the Lactobacillus species that are supposed to be living in the vagina, when they're low, and when the PH of the vagina goes up, there's a much higher rate of high risk HPV and a much higher rate of cervical, cervical cancer caused by hpv. That's huge, right? So that means to me that optimally, when you go in and you have a HPV test and a Pap smear, they should really also be testing you for your lactobacillus to find out if you have low lactobacillus. And then we should be treating that to help you build back up your lactobacillus vaginally. But that's not yet part of the standard medical system. And instead of waiting for that to become part of the standard medical system, you might decide, hey, I'd rather spend a couple hundred dollars, get the test done myself to find out if my Lactobacillus are lagging behind, and then have someone like me help you to get your vaginal lactobacillus Back on track again. But we also are going to need to not just treat the vaginal area, we need to treat your gut as well. Because say we solve the vagina and we just get the lactobacillus back, but your gut is still out of balance. It's going to disrupt the vagina again. So you could, then you're going to fix them and you just keep going round and round. You're like, I fixed it. Oh, it's broken again. I got to fix it again. It's broken again. Right. There's like something in your house where you just like, you're like, oh, I fixed, I fixed it. But then tomorrow it's broken again. Now I'm going to, am I going to fix it the same or am I going to actually go, let me get to the source of the problem so that I don't have to keep fixing it every day, right. And it's the same thing. We have to think that way about our bodies. We have to be like, why should I be continuing to do something that's not actually solving the issue? Let me actually solve it so I can get on with my life, do something else and, and live your purpose and your passion so you can get access to this testing. And then there's. This is what I specialize in. Luckily. Luckily, in addition to specializing in HPV and abnormal pap smears and women's health for over 24 years, I've also special specialized in helping to understand the gut microbiome and how to heal the gut. And, and lo and behold, I could see because I work in both areas. Right. Like a lot of practitioners are only a gastroenterologist or only a gynecologist and so they're not looking in both places and they don't realize there's overlap. But I'm lucky that I, I'm a naturopathic doctor, so I'm looking at your whole body. So I'm helping with the vet, the, the gynecological women's health aspect. But I'm also helping with the gut health and the nervous system and the hormones and so I can see where the overlap is and I can see, oh, what's happening in the gut influences what happens in the vagina and vice versa. And the best way we can help you prevent HPV related cancer is to also help you solve your gut health. Now so far I've mostly been talking about the microbiome as that overlap, but I want to also bring in the concept of leaky gut because what happens is when the gut bacteria are out of balance. And by the way, it's not just the bacteria. My, the microbiome includes not just my, not just bacteria, but other microbes as well. It's important to expand that concept of a microbiome and say, yes, it's bacteria, but it's more than bacteria. There's other healthy microbes in the gut as well. So when those microbes get out of balance, like we see it on a stool panel, and we see the high inflammatory bacteria or microbes, what happens is part of the way those microbes start to cause trouble is they start to damage the intestinal cells, they start to raise inflammation in the gut. So the body's trying to protect you from this imbalance. So the immune system starts making inflammatory mediators or messengers, and the intestinal cells are being. And what develops is something called leaky gut. Leaky gut is when the intestinal cells are not as healthy as they should be. The intestinal cells, their job is to make sure your food is digested and then absorb your nutrients. Right? So you're swallowing your food. It's got to get digested and it's got to be even finally digested by your intestinal cells. And then the food itself doesn't go in, but the digested food and nutrients can go through the cells to get into your body. That's how we get our nutrition, that's how we function, is by our food. We get right. Our protein and fats and carbs and nutrients, vitamins, minerals, they have to get into our body through these cells. Well, when we're under stress, when we are exposed to gluten, when we're exposed to pesticides, when we're exposed to medications, when we're exposed to imbalance to microbiome, it causes those cells to be not healthy anymore. They, they, it's, it's called a permeability. So also it causes the food to not be digested well. So now we have a situation where you're swallowing food. It could be even healthy food not getting digested well, leaking through between the cells as undigested food. So now your immune system is going to start trying to protect you from the food you're eating. It could be even trying to protect you from bananas and almonds, yes, probably gluten, dairy and eggs as well. It starts to protect you from whatever you're eating because what you're eating isn't getting, getting digested and it's getting through your intestinal lining to where most of our immune system is located more than 80% of the immune system is in the gut surrounding the intestines trying to protect us from what's coming in. So as soon as the immune system starts trying to protect you from the food you're eating, that's called a food sensitivity Are not the same as a food allergy. A food allergy is when, let's say someone eats a peanut and they end up in the emergency room. That's an IGE response. Food sensitivity is a different antibodies. It's IgA and IgG and they are delayed responses over days to weeks. So it's subtle. It's not sending you to the emergency room. Very likely it's more like causing inflammation and making you not feel good. You may not even have a stomach ache. It might cause runny nose or headache or skin rash. And then that inflammation doesn't just go to your skin and your head, but it goes to the vagina. So now there's inflammation in the vagina because of the foods. They're triggering inflammation. And when there's inflammation in the vagina, that also increases the susceptibility to high risk hpv, let alone other infections. So there's this other layer where the leaky gut or intestinal permeability is increasing inflammation and further increasing your risk of hpv. This is exactly why in my say Goodbye to HPV program and when I work with women one on one, the first thing we do.

Is to help you identify leaky gut food sensitivities so that we can help you to change your diet in a way that's going to help you to drop inflammation. Right. We need to figure out which foods are inflammatory for you, take them out of your diet, start working on healing leaky gut. Because intestinal cells can heal when they have the right nutrients and they're not being constantly bombarded by the things that disrupt them. And then we can start feeding in ourselves that way. Feed ourselves in a way that rebalances our microbiome. And we start then using probiotics in a way that helps reestablishing the healthy bacteria that can protect you both in your gut and the vagina. So it's a step by step process. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a step by step. Which is why they say Goodbye to HPV program is a three month program. And when I work with women one on one, it's usually over six months to a year process to completely solve this. And that's when we see that HPV go away. Because no longer is it in an environment where the HPV can survive safe because now your microbiome and your immune system can do what they're supposed to do and protect you from hpv. So let's talk a little bit about how, how that's possible, what you can do so you can get a sense of it. So yes, there's things you can do right away to drop and you know inflammatory foods, the most common are dairy and gluten. Also sugar is very much an inflammatory food. So if you want to start today, you could say, okay, let me decrease the sugar, decrease the dairy, decrease the gluten and think about doing a food sensitivity panel. But not just any food sensitivity panel. They're not all created equal. I've been researching food sensitivity panels for over 20 years and I know that they're not all going to give you the right information. It's very important to go to a highly specific test and lab that's going to give you the right information. And so you can get that one through my office to make sure you're getting the right information to work with it. It makes every kind of difference in your, in your ability to heal quickly. So we do an IGA IGG food panel from a private lab and that gives us information to say, hey, is it dairy and gluten? Are there any other foods that are inflammatory for your body? And the point is not to cause you to have a very restrictive diet. The point is we want to eliminate the foods that are causing inflammation and then help you to continue to get enough calories and nutrients from the foods that are not inflammatory things that contain healthy proteins. I would, the easiest is first of all, you can go to a healthy protein shake. That's why I, in my product line Nature Empowered, we have both a pea protein shake, a bone broth protein shake and others as well.

And these pea protein and bone broth protein are hypoallergenic non inflammatory protein sources so that you can make a protein shake without sugar that tastes good and get yourself the nutrients right away in the morning. Then you can use my leaky gut support program or bundle to start healing leaky gut. So I can teach you exactly how I healed my own leaky gut and how I've helped heal thousands of patients. Leaky gut. It's not a complex process and there's a lot of misinformation out there. And I can tell you based on experience in helping people of all ages to heal leaky gut that it's absolutely possible. But you, it's important to follow the exact steps that are going to get you there most efficiently. And that's exactly what I teach to my patients and in my leaky gut program, as well as in the say goodbye to HPV program. So we start working on healing leaky gut with herbs, nutrients, digestive enzymes, so that you're digesting your food and you're using the herbs and nutrients that are known to help the intestines, intestinal cells recover. And then what we do is we go through a process of, if there is potentially an imbalance of the microbiome, we might then need to do the specialty testing. And then I guide you through my protocol, again, very specific protocol that I've developed over years of helping people with this, to use antimicrobial herbs and specific products that are known to help drop inflammation, support the intestinal cells, support the healthy bacteria, and get your microbiome back on track again. Many people come to me and say, Dr. Donnie, do I just need a fecal transplant? Do I need to start over? What do I need to do? And believe me, I get it. It can be tempting to go to one extreme or the other, but I can tell you that it's possible. I've helped so many patients with very severe cases to heal their microbiome that I can tell you that it's absolutely possible. But I need to guide you step by step, step through the process. It's not easy to do on your own, and it's not easy to do. Most practitioners are not taught how to do this, and they. You can get very lost along the way. And oftentimes I find that people are taking way too many supplements than they need. We just need a very strategic plan and go about it while still listening to your body and understanding what your body needs each and every step of the way so that we can actually address what's overgrowing. Right. I look at it like a garden. If you have an overgrowing garden, it means the rose bushes haven't been pruned, but at the same time, the weeds are growing too big. So you can't. You don't. You have some of what you want, but you also have what you don't want. So we have to go through a process of pruning the bushes we want to keep pulling the weeds of or getting rid of plants we don't want anymore, and then healing the soil, which is the same as your intestinal lining. We need to get it so that the intestinal cells are healthy and it can be an environment where these healthy bacteria can thrive again. And this is true for the gut and the vagina, we need to drop the inflammation vaginally, improve the health of the cells vaginally, which is very important all throughout women's life, but especially during menopause, when estrogen levels drop and those intestinal cells, the vaginal cells, become atrophied because there's not enough estrogen. So then how are the bacteria. The bacteria can't thrive. The bacteria drop and the HPV comes in. So we need to get that vaginal estrogen level up, get the cells healthy again, so that the bacteria, the healthy bacteria can thrive in the vagina again. So it's a process that takes steps over time. But this is something absolutely doable that I help women to do, and men, by the way, I also help men in my practice each and every day to accomplish this. And over several months to a year, they're able to completely win back their microbiome, drop their inflammation levels, get HPV to negative, prevent cancer, and so many other health issues along the way. So we also use probiotics. As I mentioned, there are certain oral probiotics that have been researched to help with the vaginal health issues. So we know that you can swallow probiotics that will end up helping your vaginal, vaginal area as well. So now if there is an imbalance of bacteria, we usually need to address the imbalance first. We're not going to just start throwing in good bacteria randomly. We need to address the imbalance first. We need to prune the garden first before we start putting in fertilizer. Right. You're not going to fertilize an overgrowing gardener. Nothing's going to get better. We have to prune weed, then we can fertilize and plant seeds in a healthy garden. So when we get to that point, then we can use the right, the women's probiotic that has been researched to help the gut and the vagina. And we can also use vaginal probiotics directly to help get the healthy bacteria back on track again. So this is something that I guide women to do one on one, or in my Zigamy HPV program.

I was going to say that also in terms of gut health.

Let'S see if there's an imbalance. We can address that. If we need to, then we can use the, the micro, the probiotics to get the good bacteria back on track again. And this way you can actually get ahead of this. Now, a lot of people say, should I be eating right? Should I be eating fermented foods? Should I be Eating, you know, pro prebiotics. Because you'll hear about this. You hear about this a lot. People think, oh, I need to support my microbiome. So I'm going to e ton of yogurt and fermented foods and I'm going to take a huge amount of probiotics. And as I was just saying, that doesn't always solve it because it's not just about flooding your system with more bacteria. That doesn't always solve it. Right. If you think about it again, if you have this overgrowing garden, it doesn't really help to just throw more plants and seeds in there. And fertilizer is not going to solve the problem. Right, because there's already an imbalance. You're just aggravating the imbalance. So to me, I'm always very careful. I don't start by saying to eat more fermented foods or take more prebiotics like inulin or other kinds of prebiotics that you'll see out there being marketed. I'm very careful. Even in terms of your diet, yes, fiber is important. Healthy fruits and vegetables is important. But it's not that we want to overfeed the bacteria, right, because they're already being overfed. Most times when we're under so much stress, we're not digesting our food well and we end up overfeeding our bacteria with our undigested food. You'll know you're overfeeding bacteria if you get bloating, gas, fullness, burping, you're overfeeding your bacteria. So you don't need to be putting in more bacteria. We need to be actually taking a step back. And before we do any fermented foods or taking a whole bunch of probiotics, we need to first get your food digested better. And so the place I start with that is simply taking deep breaths. So if you could take anything away from this from the very beginning, I would say, okay, I've just given you a whole ton of information. Please know that I'm here to guide you through that. You don't have to figure it out on your own. I don't recommend trying to figure it out on your own. It's going to take a long time when you have me here to help guide you. You. But what you can start doing on your own is start to just step back and take a couple deep breaths. Because when you take a couple deep breaths, you're telling your nervous system to create calmness. You're telling your nervous system to start digesting food so what you want to do is when you're getting ready to eat first, take a couple deep breaths, tell your nervous system, I want to go into a calm state, parasympathetic state. I want to be rest and digest. I want to make digestive enzymes. I'm going to be eating food, I want to get my nutrients. So you start communicating with your body differently by just taking deep breaths, by creating calmness, by turning off all the distractions and.

Stimulation and just say, take some time to go inward, put your hands on your belly, take a couple breaths and say, okay, digestion. I know I need you to digest my food so that I get the nutrients and that my bacteria are going to get enough, but I don't want to overfeed them either. So simply starting with these mindfulness activities can make a huge difference. And then starting to become aware, how do we eat just a right amount of low inflammatory foods, right? This would be, it can be animal protein in small quantities, you know, can be chicken, turkey, salmon, can even be beef. You're going to need the protein. And it can be a little bit of vegetables and fruit, maybe up to half a cup of vegetables and fruits. You're getting your colorful fruits and vegetables that have antioxidants and nutrients and you're chewing well to digest your food and you enjoy your food and so your body starts to realize it has a connection with that food. So you get the nutrients and you're not getting the inflammation from sugar and gluten and dairy. You don't need that stuff. We just need that protein, healthy fats and healthy carbs from our fruits and vegetables. And now your body can get the nutrients it needs, digest the food and not overfeed your bacteria. Then if there is an imbalance of bacteria, we can address it with antimicrobial herbs and specific products that help direct the traffic of the bacteria. Prune the garden, pull the weeds, and then we get to the time down the line in the process where we can then support the good bacteria if necessary. If you are low on Lactobacillus, then you can take some Lactobacillus, but if you're not low, you don't need to take more. So that I hope gives you a sense of the process that I guide people through, to know, hey, this is essential for and plays a huge role in your ability to protect yourself from high risk hpv, let alone so many other health issues. And to know that it's a process and that you're going to need to go outside of the standard medical system to get help with this. This is not something that you're likely to hear about or get help from a practitioner that that's under the standard health insurance. And that's why I set my practice up so that I can help you wherever you are in the world. I help patients by phone and video, one on one and in group programs to accomplish this because I believe you should have access to this information. I know you can heal yourself. I know you can heal your leaky gut, you can heal your microbiome, you can fend off HPV when you have the right information and the right support. And so that's why I do what I do here at how humans heal and drdani.com and I welcome you to go to my website as well as to clearhpvnow.com where you can find more resources and support as well as the programs that I'm mentioning to help guide you on this path. It's a you're entering onto a path of learning how to give your body what it needs, what is needed all along, but you just didn't realize what it needed. And it's not just about throwing everything at it at once. We have to go through a step by step process which I can guide you through because I've identified the steps and the methodology to help get there and I'm training other practitioners in this process as well. So if you're a practitioner who's listening and you would like to understand exactly how I guide people to heal the gut, vaginal access, then reach out to me because I can tell you more about how I'm training practitioners exactly how to implement this protocol to help women fend off high risk HPV and prevent cervical cancer as well as other types of cancer, and to help others to benefit from this information as well. Thanks again for joining me here at How Humans Heal. And if you don't already subscribe, please do so that you don't miss the next video. I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.