#76 Start By Healing Your Gut with Dr. Destia Skinner

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.

Welcome, everyone. I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Destina Skinner. And she's a naturopathic doctor. She and I were actually in school together at Bastyr University. This is over 20 years ago. So we've just been giggling about how the time flies by and how fun it is to get to connect with each other and talk about what we've especially what Zoshardisti has been doing for the last 20 some years. Thank you so much for joining me today.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me on. I'm excited to share.

It's great. And it's great to get to just talk as naturopathic doctors and how just our perspective on health and healing, especially after a couple decades, I should say, of experience. So I know we wanted to focus today on basically starting with the gut, which is such a classic phrase from naturopathic medicine, is your health starts with your gut health. And just tell me more about how you've come to that and why you've come to that with you and your husband, who is also a naturopathic doctor and you practice together. Of course. This is so fun to know both of you for all this time. But talk me through first. How did you get to naturopathic medicine to begin with and how did you, you know, sort of how did you get on this path to doing what you do?

I'm happy to share. So really, honestly, I was at the University of Washington and I was on my way to be a traditional medical doctor. I wanted to be an ob. And my, my boyfriend at the time who is now my husband, Dr. Brian Skinner, he ended up getting really sick. He was losing weight, he was gaunt, he was feeling awful. And we traditional western medicine route and they were saying, nothing's wrong with you. Everything looks good. He had been sick as a kid really early on and lots of trips to the ER for stomach pain and gut stuff. And everyone said, nothing's wrong with you, to the point where his parents really considered him a hypochondriac. And we decided we found nature pelvic medicine through my mom who was a hospice nurse and just happened to have crossed it with her own health. And we found a naturopathic doctor and we had to take out a credit card together, even as college students and not married to be able to do this kind of medicine. And it was a 180 turn and it was so worth it. And it changed our future. Right. So then Brian's looking and saying, this is what I want to do. And I'm like, great, you go to medical school. You go to a naturopathic medical school, I'll go to regular medical school. And you know, what a dynamic duo. And then somewhere in that journey, I just realized I wanted to have solutions that I loved the medical detective work that we get to do as naturopathic doctors. And I loved taking someone who was hopeless and feeling like there were no answers and being able to find answers in that. And I just, I loved natural medicine as a healing. And so we both went to naturopathic medical school.

That is so awesome. Then you guys are in California, right? You're practicing, would you say mostly in California this whole time?

Exactly. Yeah. So we had 20 years of a bricks and mortar kind of classic big. We had several dogs, big IV wing in the Palo Alto area. So Cypress Natural Medicine. And then we've just recently started a new wing and we took then that clinic, totally virtual. And we started a new wing to our clinic and totally new business called Revolutionary Health. And that's all about education and really wanting people who might not come see us as doctors, but really need the education and maybe are a little more do it theirself. People who are self motivated and just want to put the pieces of their puzzle together. So. So we're launching that part with our first course, which is Revolutionary Gut.

Oh, I love that. And I like the term revolutionary, you know, because it can definitely be so life changing. Like you mentioned in your story, you know, you're offering, hey, this medicine changed our lives. Maybe it can change your life too. And so let's talk a little bit more about gut health and I'm curious to hear, you know, your sort of how you talk about it. How do you talk about gut health as a missing link for people's health?

Yeah. So one thing that I'll share a little bit about my story because I think that kind of goes into.

Why I share how I share. So really I started in nature public school, school. I was also doing home birth midwifery, in case you didn't remember that. And my body just crashed. I was exhausted. I'd Always as a child, suffered chronic allergies and bladder infections that would come and go. But I ended up with bladder infections, going to kidney infections, extreme exhaustion, body pain, and daily gut pain. And the daily gut pain was something I'd been with for so long and bloating that I really didn't think it was linked with anything. But I started to wonder, because of naturopathic medical school, was this connected to everything? Could my symptoms all be connected? And I really found there was a huge connection in the gut. My partner was driving me again to the hospital with another kidney infection because the regular pain in my gut had had me miss my signs of infection. I wasn't listening to my body. I was missing my cues. I realized that I was really broken. I wasn't going to settle for this. In my journey of naturopathic medicine is really where I found the solutions and found that a lot of it was in my leaky gut. Underlying infection in my gut and really eating foods that my body was revolting against and creating a lot of inflammation and also in my nervous system that the stress was the key with the going all night and going all day that had really crashed my system. And then all of this reared its ugly head. But it was all underlying there because the roots weren't healthy. And you got to get the roots healthy to get the rest of the body healthy. So I really find a lot of roots in the nervous system and how we eat we really need. I haven't had a bladder and kidney infection in 20 years. Doing the simple things that I share with my clients and patients and the simple things that we share in revolutionary gut. I came across some pieces to the puzzle that were so simple that I really thought they blew my mind because I didn't expect them to have such a powerful effect. That's.

Our secret sauce, I really think, is helping people become their own best health advocate and really getting to preparing their bodies so that their body's ready for the food. And their body knows what to do with the food because their nervous system is running right to accept it. And they've gotten all the digestive juices, the enzymes and the things that they need on board for the body to do what it needs to with food, make energy.

And one of the things I hear you referring to is how the systems in our body are so interconnected. Sometimes we kind of think of the digestion is so separate from, say, the urinary tract. With these urinary tract infections are separate from the nervous system or separate from. And we in Conventional medicine, it's often going to one type of practitioner for digestive health versus a different type of practitioner for these other health issues. And I think it's automatic as naturopathic doctors. But I want to pull that point out that really we look at how the body is interconnected and that's what you started doing for your own self was like, wait a minute, this bit of digestive symptoms that I could potentially ignore some of the time is actually, actually related to these other issues that are going on in my body because I think sometimes people don't even realize that their digestive health is an issue. Right.

But it's like, yes, absolutely.

And it's actually pretty common urinary symptoms with digestive issues. I find that pretty frequently, like if I see a patient who's getting frequent urinary infections or even just.

Pain or discomfort or frequency of urination right away to think about the digestion because they're.

So interconnected, Right, Absolutely. All of our mucous membranes, I feel like even sinuses, I go, if I see sinus stuff, I go to the gut. If I see bladder and chronic infections really of any sort, I go to the gut. That's also because the gut is especially as we age, it is, are key component for our immune system. So if we're not, if our gut isn't adequate, then we're not going to be able to fight other little underlying infections. So yeah, if I see chronic infections or link with any of the other what we call mucous membranes, then I always look at the gut for that or hormones. That's a big one. I look at the gut for automatically too.

Yeah, talk us through that. What kind of hormone related symptoms do you find or you know, kind of like little signals right from the body saying yes, the hormones need attention, but you better look at the gut too. Are you thinking like PM or like for women?

So, you know, when I was in this crashed physical state myself, my PMS was off the charts bad. I had horrible cramping. I felt like the fatigue of PMS was unsurmountable at that point because I was so broken down. And I think a lot of that comes from when we don't.

When our, when our gut isn't working well, it's leaky, meaning things can, bigger things can get through than we would want them to, or we're running a lot of inflammation, then our hormones aren't getting cleared out adequately. And so we're not able, like the good bacteria in our gut are really important to conjugating and Allowing our estrogens to actually leave our body and not be recirculated.

When our gut is leakier, then things get in that shouldn't. Biotoxins and hormones that our body is actually trying to excrete, it's trying to clear them out. It's doing the job. But our gut is a sieve and allowing things back in, then we end up with estrogen excess symptoms and inflammatory symptoms that could all be dealt with by just healing the gut.

Yeah, yeah. That's such an important point too. Just. Yeah. If you're having. If you're having symptoms, you're associating with, say, your menstrual cycle, there's another really important time to come back to the digestive health. And you're mentioning leaky gut, which I love to talk about. And I'm thinking back, I don't even think we really learned much about leaky gut when we were in school. We really learned about leaky gut, became more, I think, into awareness.

Based on research and clinically. I feel like after I graduated from Bastyr University, it's something that we were, as I look back, I think we were addressing it. We just weren't really talking about it back then. But it's so key. Let's just talk about it a little bit more because I think some people, you know, a lot of times people will say to me, well, what's leaking? Where? And you know, do I have to. If I don't have diarrhea, could I possibly still have leaky gut? You know, so let's talk about that a little bit more about, like how to understand the gut and leaky gut.

So there's a great test. There's a few, you know, there's. There's several now, and we didn't have those when we were in school. The gut tests like Zonulin or calprotectin, all of those are a little newer. I mean, 20 years is a long time. Thank God. We've come a long way since then. And so those are good markers that you can get tested in your stool to find out if you have leaky gut. But leaky gut can go completely underneath the radar. You might not even know you have leaky gut. Right. And what it is, is that inflammatory, that lining. We have these. We have these cells in our gut and they have certain. They come together with these junctions and there's a certain amount of space, right. And that space is what food gets broken down in your gut. And then you get to absorb those nutrients through.

The gap Junctions between your gut cells. And as your gut. Just like if you see any cut, how it gets very inflamed and boggy and swollen, your gut gets that inflamed inflammation going on. And then those, those part, those holes between the gut cells actually get bigger. And so bigger food particles can get in. So it's a great cause for food allergies or food reactions. But also, you know, there we have more cells than we have. We have more bugs than we have cells in our body. Right. So we're like a mothership for our microbiome and that then they're excreting their own what we call biotoxins. And that can get in and make you feel not very good. But it's really just that those inflammatory mediators making those gut cells to spread apart so bigger things can get in, then your blood is ready for.

That's a great. I love the way you're explaining that and knowing based on what you said earlier, where most of our immune system is waiting right there under our intestinal lining to protect. So if things are getting through that shouldn't bigger pieces of food, undigested food, or toxins from bacteria or so on, then the immune system is ready to protect us. And then it just becomes this vicious cycle of inflammation. Right. And then it's just kind of this overwhelming. It may or may not cause any bowel changes. You may not get any diarrhea or, or, you know, sometimes not even bloating or pain. It can just be that it ends up causing inflammation somewhere else in your body and affecting your immune function and so on.

A lot of times I end up figuring that we all have some degree of leaky gut. It's really not a yes or no thing. It's more like what degree of severity is your leaky gut? Because we get so many things can damage those intestinal cells. Everything from stress, which you mentioned from the beginning, physical stress and emotional stress.

Cortisol is well known to thin the gut wall lining. Yeah. High cortisol, stress hormone.

Yeah, yeah. Talk us through what are some of the other causes of what causes those intestinal cells to. Yeah. To not be, you know, next to each other and protecting us.

And. Yeah, and like you said, like there we all have a little bit of leaky gut that's called able to digest and absorb our food.

We need that space in the gut cells. We just don't need that boggy, inflamed gut wall lining. And so that's why testing, testing to see where that's at. For you is a good thing. But the question was, what? Like, so foods. There's some foods that are just more pro. Inflammatory than others. So that can definitely be a factor. The high stress. You know, a lot of our life is so go, go, go. We're running around in that go, go, go. And that's our sympathetic dominant state. The only way we can make adequate HCl and digestive enzymes, which are key to keeping our gut bugs under control, are key to absorbing and digesting and breaking down our food.

Right.

And that's a. I would say, I feel like the stress of the current life situation that most of us are under are one of the hugest factors in causing leaky gut one. Because we're eating in a state that our body's not ready for. So we're eating. How many people eat in their cars on the run? How many people. I mean, so many of my patients and clients eat while they're working, you know, or. Or eat just on the go and not in a state. And when we're in our go state, we're in our sympathetic dominant state. Our vagus nerve is one of the key parasympathetic keys to our gut. But we need to be in that relaxed nervous system state that needs to be predominant and running the show, not our sympathetic nervous system when we eat, because that's what allows digestive juices to be released. And so we're eating foods that maybe don't have a lot of smell and flavor. That's another thing that will stimulate our digestive juices to be released. Those bitter qualities are really key for getting that digested digestion going. And, you know, I think we used to eat more plants more easily, and those plants, a lot of time have those bigger qualities that we're missing. Now we're eating a big chunk of bread with some cheese on it, and it doesn't have that quality that allows those digestive juices to be released.

Yeah, it's such a good point because, you know, to start to make us just think about, hey, I'm. I'm living in a human body. It requires food to continue and.

Be able to digest that food and get the nutrients from it. I need to be in a kind of a calm state with, like, you're saying with the. So the vagal nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system can send the right signals to the stomach, the pancreas, the gallbladder, and to make the substances that help us digest. Even part of the job of these little intestinal cells is to make sure the food gets finished digesting. But if they're all overwhelmed and under functioning, they're not going to be able to digest well for us. Then we end up with this undigested food sitting in our gut.

Guess who gets to eat it? Bacteria.

I love how you said control our, basically control the bacteria because it's, it's so, so much of the time we hear, you know, and I read and I see things where people are emphasizing like they get the impression we need more and more bacteria. We need to, you know, we need to take fermented foods, we need to, you know, we need to take a bunch of probiotics. We need to. And so you get, can get this impression that even with the gut biome that more is better. And as, as you and I know, it's not necessarily the case. It's about enough of the right bacteria but not too much because too much, even of the good bacteria can be a problem. So let's talk about the microbiome a little bit more. How do you describe that and how do you talk to people about their microbiome and how to manage it?

So one thing is keeping inflammation down really key for managing the microbiome because they can't, you know, like you can't live on a boggy inflamed. They can't live on a boggy inflamed tissue. They need healthy tissue to live. So and again, the vagus nerve, the new research is showing that the vagus nerve is a huge part of switching off that neuro inflammatory, it's part of our neuro inflammatory reflex. So it's really part of switching off that inflammation. So not only is it key for us to make the right things to digest our food and to be able to accept and break down our food. It's a really key to our inflammation, which is a key to your microbiome but also you know, the microbiome. And so that's why I feel like there's a lot of things we need to put into place to be ready to eat. We need a. We need, we need. I mean who taught us to prepare to eat?

Did your mom say you need to be in a relaxed state in order to accept your food? Dear one like no one told us that.

Yeah, and it was usually a lot of times the dinner table was a stressful place or sometimes people I think like you said, are racing through their day so much that they, they're just lucky if they sit down and eat, let alone relax. Relax to eat.

Yes, exactly. So I really think that's a key component to managing our microbiome. But again, our microbiome does so many good things for us. Our microbiome synthesizes nutrients and vitamins and neurochemicals, our neurotransmitters, huge link between the gut and the brain. With those it breaks down and helps us process our hormones. It is key for our immune system. Our immune system doesn't function without the bugs growing in it.

And.

The body is made up of 30 trillion cells, whereas the bacterial cells make up your microbiome are 39 trillion. So we've got a lot more of them than we do of us. So we really need to make sure that they stay in check. And part of that is making sure that our gut digestive function is up and working. But the only thing they eat is their favorite food and what feeds them. And that's key, right? We got to be feeding not only ourselves, we think as fiber as something that helps with constipation, right? But really fiber is a major food source for our microbiome. That's what they eat. And so we don't think as fiber as our nutrition, but we've got to also think of not just feeding ourselves, we've got to feed our microbiome because they make our neurochemicals and some vitamins to feed our body. So we need to feed them fiber.

Isn't it something? And I think to emphasize that that fiber can come from vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, some of these foods that are. Right. It's like real food, you know, like it doesn't come so much from something sort of processed and packaged. It doesn't usually have very much fiber in it. And at the same time, because these bacteria and other microbes in the gut live.

On this undigested food or fiber, if we eat too much and overwhelm our digestion or we don't eat, you know, in a way that supports our digestion, then where we can even over feed them. And when you overfeed your bacteria, then that can you, you might notice like bloating, gas burping, right? Then it's like, especially when, especially with.

The fiber, if you overfeed them fiber that you haven't broken down. So if you haven't pre digested that fiber with your saliva and your digestive enzymes and your, you know, all the things that break down our food, you're giving them two big pieces of fiber just like you give them two big pieces of meat or whatever by not chewing your food, not breaking. So first we got to chew, we got to secrete digestive enzymes in our saliva. We got to secrete the enzymes from our pancreas and our stomach and the hcl. There's a lot of places that we need to break down those pieces. If they're getting too big pieces of fiber, you're going to get a lot of gas and fun. And that's, that's what a lot of people do. They'll go out and their normal diet would have been, I'm eating 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day, really low fiber diet. And they'll be like, okay, fiber is good for me. And they go up to 50 and they're going to be so uncomfortable one because they're feeding more bacteria so they're living more and creating more fun gas ish things. But also they're working too hard to break down that stuff that you haven't broken down. So your first step is you've got to break down your food first so that the bacteria don't break it down and cause more gas. Whether it be meat or fiber, both of those things. You know, putrefying meat in your gut is gonna create a lot of gas as well as breaking down fermenting fiber.

Yeah, it's so good to. Because I think this is sometimes what gets missed when people are, you know, they have digestive issues and by that point, by the time you're feeling awful and in pain and distended and all of that, you're just like, give me a quick fix. You know, I want out of this. Of course, because it's, it's so, feels so awful and it really can affect your life and your ability to go places and do things. And at the same time, when the gut, the more severe the digestive imbalance, whether it's leaky gut and inflammation and imbalanced gut bacteria, it's going to be a step by step healing process. And I think that's what you're describing is like it doesn't help to just dive in and expect overnight results.

Yes. Don't dive in and do it all. You will be so uncomfortable. You really need one, a trusted source and a guide to help you through the process. But also you need to build up the ability. Right. You're, especially if you're starting with an imbalanced microbiome, you don't want to feed all the bad guys. You want to know who you got in there and really make sure you're feeding the good guys in the process. And so that's definitely key. The other thing that I think is really important in our food, for our microbiome is all the different colors and flavors. You wouldn't know that the rainbow of the diet, all the different plant polyphenols in all the colors of our fruits and vegetables. And in our plant kingdom, each one of those colors feeds a different bug. And really how we win the microbiome race, if we have one, it's diversity is a huge key to that puzzle. Your microbiome, as you know, is different than my microbiome, but diversity is the key and eating the most widest variety of colors and flavors in our plant kingdom and helps to feed and support the widest variety of guys in our microbiome. So those are two keys that I think we really miss talking about a lot.

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No, it's true and it's in sometimes of course, when we're in a hurry and we're stressed, sometimes we're reaching to the same foods over and over and over. And that's, that's not going to allow for variety or diversity in your gut because you're just feeding the same bacteria all the time. So reminder to just like, almost like you're inviting us to when we sit down and eat. Think about your, who you're feeding in your gut. Not just what can I eat fast that I'm in the mood for, but how do I eat in a way that's going to feed a nice diverse group of bacteria but not overfeed them either. And it's a careful balance because we don't have sometimes I joke, we don't, our bodies don't have like it almost would be nice If a little. Somehow a bell would go off or some sort of little readout would pop up that says you've eaten enough or you've eaten the right amount of this fiber.

We wish there was some signaling that our body could give us, but you really have to go by some of these more subtle signals. And how do you feel during your meal? How do you feel right after? How do you feel several hours after? So that you have to be paying attention and observing to notice, hey, did I eat in a calm enough way? Did I eat the foods that supported my digestion well? Or we just have to get better at picking up on these signals and learning from them so that we can keep tweaking. It's not about trying to be perfect. It's about listening to your body and making little adjustments in the next meal and the next meal and the next experience so that you're. You're learning from your body and growing along the way.

Yeah. And stopping and paying attention. You know, it's like. Like you said, like learning along the way. But that takes awareness. And that's what I think is so key in really talking about is that awareness of, am I in a relaxed state before I eat?

And you can simply do that by doing. Do you know heart math? I love heartmath.

Yes.

Heartmath is one of my favorites. And the quick coherence technique is so easy. You can do it anywhere. You can do it in the car, you can do it. But if you just take a few moments to get in more of a relaxed.

Heart coherence is shown to increase vagal tone. And that vagal response is really, really key. Just. Just sitting down. And I think prayer used to do that for us. Right. And maybe some of us aren't praying. But do your prayer with your heart math, if that's your thing. That quick coherence techniques of just sitting down and breathing and getting into gratitude. Because when we're in gratitude, we're not in that stressed fear mode that is more of our sympathetic dominant state. We immediately. And then our digestive juices can. Can be released and we can actually properly digest our food and our peristalsis, which is a key component. Sometimes people just are in that frozen state of their nervous system, and peristalsis isn't working to move stuff through.

Right.

So I think the preparing to eat key is like something that's so missed and needs to be shouted to the. You know, to the top of the mountains. Because I think it's a key component we've missed. We Go to a lot of us as naturopathic doctors and we'll be great. Let's kill some bugs in your gut. Let's heal your leaky gut with some supplements. But no one talks about, like, how is your system actually accepting and taking in the food? And so I think that's a really key.

It's such a thank you because it's such a good reminder to just, you know, kind of insert that when you know it's time to eat and you're going to eat. You know, give yourself a few seconds of deep breathing and centering so that you're. Yeah. You're getting the right signals. Like, we can, we can kind of promote these. The nervous system. We can kind of give the vagal nerve a little extra help with pretty simple things like taking deep breaths.

Yes. Taking a few deep breaths before you eat. Getting some gratitude going and just thinking of, even if it's just the food in front of you, really getting something going in terms of gratitude and chewing your food. Chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing. Like that is another key that's really missed. We just swallow such big particles and then no one can digest it down there, no matter how much digestive enzymes you put in. And then just simply having something sour or bitter around meals so that you're releasing those digestive juices. Just that four sequence of simplicity. Deep slow breathing before you eat. Gratitude chewing. Like, I mean, it's pretty simple.

I know, right?

We forgot. So. And it's like with chewing, you know what I try to. One little trick I've used is just like set down your fork or utensil. You know, just like take a bite, put it down and just give yourself a few seconds. Because if we keep holding onto our fork and we're shoveling in and we're trying to move it all down, it goes so fast. But if we go, okay, let me put my food in a bowl and sit down and breathe and then.

Set down your utensils. So it actually kind of gives you a chance to chew and swallow and have your body just focus on that activity. I know sometimes we think, oh my gosh, I don't have time. But really, if, if you don't have time to eat in this way, then, then it's going to start affecting your health and it's going to take up more time somewhere else.

Then you're going to have to go see an H Path. Doctor.

Oh, my gosh. I always. You always make me laugh. Just. Yeah. Even from way back when. I love it. Thank you so much. And it's so. It's like, so cool to see, you know, just to see each other, right? Like, after all these years, to. Because we, you know, knowing each other before all of this time, helping patients, you know, to be able to go, okay, this is, you know, this is obviously something that has been a passion of yours and Brian's, and. And I share that with you. You know, being able to understand the body and what it needs and what signals it's trying to give us and. And share some of these simple things that can make a huge difference on people's.

Get the foundation going. You know, it's so much of it is just making sure that the foundations are strong for the body to be able to work.

And of course, a lot of times, even if we want to be able to address, let's say, the nervous system, like migraines or anxiety or the urinary tract or menstrual hormones, like we were talking about women's hormones, we can't really address them very well until the digestion is working, because we are needing to have you maybe swallow some other herbs or nutrients or.

Take in other substances to help with these other systems. But if your digestion is not able to handle that, then we were stuck. So this is another reason, right, that is, like, start with helping you because, say, especially like with patients who have heartburn and nausea, which are really more. I mean, heartburn I think people kind of know about. I mean, it's really, really so common, even mild amounts of heartburn or gerd. But also, I hear oftentimes about nausea, people who experience, you know, varying degrees of nausea at different times of day and different times of the month. And to me, nausea is really a symptom of, like, gas inflammation in the stomach, gastritis. And.

So it's like, we need to help. And it's the vagal nerve, I think, kind of saying, I need attention in here. Help.

Me.

I'm not making it. And I totally agree with you on that. Like, and acid reflux oftentimes, I mean, what is the only tool in Western medicine we do is block it. But honestly, a large proportion of the time, it's because you haven't adequately released digestive enzymes. You have low acid and low enzymes, and you're not breaking down your food. And especially if you have more acid reflux a while after you've eaten, because it'll sit in there. That sphincter that goes from the stomach to the small intestine needs a certain level of acid for it to release. So your Food will sit and putrefy and ferment and do all kinds of other stuff to break it down because you didn't allow enough time, enough relaxation and enough stimulation to release adequate HCl and enzymes to digest your food.

Yeah. So yeah, just learning how to put all of those pieces together and. Yeah. So I think it's so awesome that you've created an online course to help people with this, so people can even get your support with solving this without having to meet with you in person. They can do this wherever they are.

So our first course is going to be launching the end of September. And this is a group course, so we'll be doing it together. Really talking about going through the habits, building the habits that it takes to really have a healthy gut and all the pieces to the puzzle of that. And it's six weeks, so it's nice and simple once a week, really diving into with lots of good support and really building those habits for a healthy gut and then finding the root causes that are your like, is yours more in your microbiome? Is yours more in leaky gut? Is yours more in the nervous system and how that's functioning in your gut and really getting to your root and then building a plan around. So super simple and fun at the same time, which is nice and less expensive than engaging in a whole journey with a naturopathic doctor.

And I was going to say, I mean, you mentioned earlier how stool analysis can be so helpful because it and those tests of course, have improved so much over the years. I don't even know what we were looking at 20 years ago. It was nowhere near as totally different.

Test.

Because before the only way to measure the gut biome was with a culture. Which means a culture means the bacteria has to grow in the lab in order to identify it. And many bacteria are not going to grow in the lab. So we never really transport.

Right.

We just don't get a good picture. We get like a partial picture that's not even very helpful. And we can make some conclusions like, is it food getting digested? Is the protein getting digested? But now that we can do a DNA analysis of the bacteria, we can really know who's living in your gut without them even still being alive in the sample because they can identify based on that DNA and we can identify.

What we consider normal or good bacteria versus these bacteria that might be either just mildly a problem if they start overgrowing or more of a problem because they're releasing more toxins and causing more symptoms. So we can really get A better sense of who's living in there, what's out of balance as well as, as you mentioned before, signs of leaky gut and inflammation. And so it can be so helpful, like, if you feel like you're stuck in a cycle of you can't get your gut health to improve. Right. It can be so helpful to them.

I think that. I think honestly, everyone should get a map of their gi, should get their microbiome analyzed one, because it's the foundational piece to everything in our health. Our immune system, our brain, neurochemicals, our hormones. It's just so key to our energy system and it's so simply done now and it gives you just so much information. There are certain bacteria you were talking about. There's the good guys and then there's the guys that are okay when they're low, but then they get opportunistic when they overgrow. And then there's all the guys that are linked with actually overstimulating the immune system and linked with autoimmunity. And then there's parasites and there's so many guys that can live in there. And really knowing who lives in you is a key component to so many things. Our allergies, how our immune system functions. So, yeah, definitely a key.

Yeah. In some ways. Like, for us, I would think you. You probably think this too. Like, people think of like an annual exam as going in for sort of like physical exam and regular blood work, standard blood work. But I think for us, it's like we need to know who's living in your gut. That's part of your, you know, because then we can be preventing so many health issues, not just the ones that we deal with every day, but even heart disease, cancer, dementia, osteoporosis. Right. Like conditions that come up over a lifetime are also interconnected with the gut.

Cancer.

Cancer is huge.

Yeah, absolutely. Autoimmune disease. Yes, absolutely. You are right. That should be a part of. At least every couple of years someone gets an assessment of that. I think it's key for no matter what disease you have, you can make it somewhat better no matter what it is. I think through making sure that your gut is healthy. If it's not, it's contributing, it's contributing to your inflammation, it's contributing to you not being able to absorb and get the right nutrients into your body to work. It's contributing to so much in just not working properly and getting that function can really make anything somewhat better. It's not the key to everything, but it really does Help so many things.

Function better and we have so many tools to help with it. So it's like being able to get information that then we can do something about. Right. It's like. And it helps us as your nature of other doctors to be like, hey, you need to really focus on, you know, like you said, the basics. But also, you know, is it in your case more we need to work on the digesting of the food more or is it that it's. We need. There's some overgrowing bacteria we need to address with some antimicrobial herbs or, you know, Right. Like we can.

Or do we need to heal the inflammation in the gut? Is the zonulin too high? And yeah, I mean there's so many pieces to the puzzle on that. That is just such a key. And bacteria, you know, we talk about yeast, yeast, yeast overgrowth was such a big thing, I think when we were in school. I really find bacterial overgrowth to be so much more common and so much more problematic.

I agree. Now that we have these tests that really show us, I think before we were probably guessing it was Candida. And sometimes Candida joins the party. I think it just decides, hey, this is a vulnerable spot. It's perfect for me. And it just joins in. But it's like as your gut heals, then it's not such a happy home for Candida or any of these other guys that really don't want to be there. We need to change your gut environment so that it's not a happy home for these overgrowing Candida or bacteria or whoever else. Parasite worms.

Yeah, they can all just decide, hey, I want to hang out with you.

I had a hookworm once and found it on a gi. On a GI test. Thank God. But my immune system, I had chronic allergies as a kid. Going off dairy, really balancing my gut and getting that all had totally like they were 85, 90% gone from, sent home from school. I swollen shut, very sick kid. And then all of a sudden my allergies were haywire. And I did that test, found out I had a hookworm treated. It killed my gut and allergies gone again. So it can be quite shockingly profound and quick too. It doesn't have to be this long, drawn out thing that everyone thinks it is.

Well, and I'm glad you're mentioning that because in the past with following research all along, but in the past few years I've been really researching and looking into helminth therapy. I don't know if you're familiar with.

And this is this concept of micro. The. I would say microbes that live. Can live in the human digestion, but actually in more developed countries, we don't get exposed to them because people usually get exposed to them more from being outdoors and being barefoot outside and different, you know, just different living conditions. And what they found is that, you know, when. When humans don't have some of these sort of helmets. So sometimes we can.

Some good parasites, right?

Yeah, yeah. Like. Like that, you know, like you mentioned you had one that was aggravating your health and causing an issue. But there's also sometimes these. These. What would be considered a parasite, but it's actually just a micro. A microbe that can actually be beneficial and to. We've way more comfortable, as I love how you described it earlier, we get so much more comfortable with the idea of having bacteria living in and on our body everywhere. I think years ago that would have freaked us out totally, but now we're like, oh, yeah, I have bacteria. I'm going to swallow my probiotic bacteria. You know, we're comfortable with that. But to now start to realize, hey, there's some other microbes besides bacteria that actually can be very beneficial. And it's. The key is having the right ones. And I think this is going to be really a huge new area of understanding and focus coming soon because it's, you know, sometimes even when it comes to a hookworm you were mentioning, there's so many different types. Yeah. And if certain ones are going to be causing an issue, you know, causing say, allergies like you said, or inflammation or different health issues. But if we have specific types, this is what the research shows. If we have a specific type of hookworm specifically or others like whipworms, they're showing it helps decrease or even turn off autoimmunity, like celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, like Crohn's disease, and even other. I've worked now with other kinds of autoimmunity, like rheumatoid arthritis and so on, where we can actually use these microbes to help moderate the immune system and shift it out of autoimmunity. And it's. It's. Yeah, it's just so, I think so cool and exciting. But I really want to warn people because it. You want to again, work with someone who really understands this and knows how to. How to do it in a safe and effective way, because it's not. It's so new and it's not considered, you know, any kind of standard of care, but it can be so helpful because sometimes when people get to a certain extreme with their gut health, like extreme leaky gut and extreme dysbiosis. Dysbiosis is the word we use when the gut bacteria are out of balance. Say someone who has C. Diff, for example. Right. People will get to a point of like, hey, if I have such extreme imbalance of my bacteria, or maybe the person had to be on long term antibiotics, then they'll go to fecal transplants to say, hey, this was one of the ideas to try to help people. Let's put in. A fecal transplant is basically putting in a whole new microbiome from another person's digestive tract. They've really studied the fecal transplants for say, C. Diff infections to be effective. But it's not as simple as it sounds because now you might be taking on someone else's microbiome, but you still have to get it into balance. Like you've been talking about how to feed that microbiome. Is there going to be too much of one or the other? And so I always like to tell people, yes, fecal transplants are an option around the world. But you have to know that it's not just a simple transfer. You have to then still get your gut health working. And there's a reason you were there.

You gotta get the root cause of what got you there in the first place to alleviate so they can seed. Right? Yes.

And to make it a good home for this new microbiome and to know that sometimes it takes some. I sometimes use an analogy almost like a garden. Like if the microbiome was like a garden of plants you need, like we talked about, you want to have a diversity of healthy plants. But if we're depending on, you know, what we're eating and how we're digesting the food we eat, we could easily be kind of over fertilizing the wrong plants. Then we end up with all these weeds overgrowing or you know, and you're like have this totally overgrown garden. So then it's a matter of we need to have healthy soil and we need to be having the right food for these plants and we need to take out the ones that are not healthy that we don't want in the garden, but really support the. The ones that we do want. And so we, it's a process of kind of like, right. Like just redoing this whole garden so that you can actually grow the plants. In this case, we're really using this, an analogy for growing the bacteria and other microbes that we want in order to help our health.

Yeah. Because they do so much for our health. Like we have to. It's. It's not an option.

Right.

To keep them in balance. It's not an option to know that your microbiome is healthy because they're linked with so much of our health. I really think that the microbiome research and helminth, you know, all the research that's coming out on the bugs and what they do for us is going to be paramount to. That's the foundation that we need to start out for every single disease. Because there's such a big link. Like you link. You talk about so many different ones. Right. And they're all linked with the gut and who lives in you.

Thank you so much, Jesse. This has been great to talk this all through with you. And I think it's going to be really helpful for everyone listening to just really help them get some more ideas of where to start with this and how to start thinking about this and integrated into their health plan.

And at minimum, just make sure that you're ready and in that relaxed state to accept food like that. We all have to do that, right? I'm learning still on that one.

Me too. Me too. We talk about what are good reminders for ourselves, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, there we go. Let's go do some breathing and some chewing and some enjoying our food and oh, my gosh, I wish we could do that together. But maybe soon.

Yes. We gotta fly across the country. Right. So one thing. If you want to learn more about our program, check out revolutionarygut.com.

Okay.

And then you can learn all about, like, what we're up to.

Oh, I love that. Revolutionarygut.com and then you also have cnmhealth.com.

Yeah. And that's our clinic site.

Okay. Gotcha. And people can find you on social media as well and connect with you and find out more about how you can help them. Oh, my goodness. So good. Thank you so much.

It was so much fun to get to see your face again and hear your voice. Such a distinctive voice. I definitely have missed connecting with you. So it'll be fun to keep connecting.

I love it. Oh, thank you. You too. And we'll talk to you soon then.

Talk to you soon. You have a beautiful day.

Thank you. You too.

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