#77 Start Thinking Differently About Digestion with Dr. Doni Wilson

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.

Hey, it's Dr. Donny. And today I wanted to talk more about digestion and especially talk about digestion from a little bit different perspective than maybe we're used to thinking about it or talking about it, especially too related to the microbiome and the microbes that live in human digestion and the effects they can have on our bodies. So, so.

Let'S see. Let's start by just the basics of our digestion, which sometimes we, I think, sort of like a lot of things in our bodies that take it for granted, you know, think our digestion is just going to work. You're supposed to just work no matter what we're up to, no matter what's going on in our lives. And the digestion is often the first to remind us that actually our bodies are very responsive to our environment and what's happening in our day to day. That's that expression of butterflies in your stomach or that gut feeling, or even by knowing that when someone's under a lot of stress, they have a higher risk of developing ulcers and reflux, GERD or gastroesophageal reflux, those are the things that help us know that our digestion is affected by our stress. But I would really say our digestion is affected by how we're relating to our environment and how we're relating to ourselves. If you start to have digestive issues, your stomach's bothering you, you have reflux, you have bloating, pain, anything going on there in your digestion, have it just be a little reminder that it means that there's something going on in your greater environment and world that is, is showing up as digestive issues.

So what's important I find, to also remind ourselves about is that our digestion starts within the mouth. So even when you start to think about eating.

Your digestion starts to make enzymes in your mouth to help you digest your food. And then it continues down to the stomach, the pancreas, the small and large intestines. And there's a lot of different hormones that are communicating with each other to help that whole orchestra of digestion to occur. All of those hormones and mechanisms are affected by, you guessed it, our environment, our world around us, the way we're existing in our, in our day and in our life, and how much we're sleeping and how much exposure we have to nature.

That's why sometimes things seem so simple. Sometimes it seems so simple to just be like, okay, I need eight hours of sleep, or I need to get outside and spend some time in nature, or I need to just take some deep breaths. These things seem really simple, but actually they make a big difference because our nervous system and our bodies are responding to all of that information in order to communicate with all of these hormones and mechanisms that help our digestion work. This is true really for our immune system and all our other hormones too. But I want to focus on the digestion because it is really so essential, as you heard in others of the How Humans Heal podcast interviews that I've done recently with other practitioners, both other naturopathic doctors and also medical doctors or functional medical doctors who are expressing the same thing, that digestion is essential no matter what health issue even we think osteoporosis is in the bones. What does that have to do with the digestion? Well, the studies show that it has everything to do with the digestion, including how well you're digesting and absorbing your nutrients and the balance of bacteria and other microbes living in your digestion also have an influence influence on your bone health. Something that seems like, hey, how's that going to be related? Totally is related. Same with dementia. Same with anxiety and depression. Same with insomnia. Same with skin issues. Same with also women's health issues. Everything from fertility to vaginitis, recurrent vaginal infections, HPV and abnormal Pap smears and abnormal menstrual cycles. Even PCOS is been. There are studies to correlate to digestive health.

If you're curious about research, I encourage you to just search online for the studies that make those connections because I think it's going to really help you understand your body better. I really believe that the more we understand our bodies, the more it's going to benefit our health. Because if you understand what's going on in your body, then you understand what your body needs in order to function better for you. Ultimately, we're living in these human bodies. This is the human body you were born into. And that human body is going to be responsive to your environment and it has certain needs. Our bodies need for us to eat food and digest our food and absorb our Nutrients, that's just part of being human. Sometimes it helps to think of an animal. If we think of even a cat or a dog they require. It makes sense to us that we need to feed them, they need to have their food and their nutrition in order to thrive. Sometimes that helps remind us that we're also humans. We also need to eat and get our nutrients in order to thrive. But at the same time, you could be throwing food in, but if you're in a stressed, constantly stressed state.

It'S not going to get into your body the same way. Our bodies are just not as able to digest and absorb when we're in a constant state of stress. That's why if you look back in history, you'll look at cultures where even if you look now at cultures that are living the longest, what they call living in a blue zone, these are people who have the longest longevity and the greatest quality of health. What they find is those people in their day to day, just their way of doing things and their culture where it's accepted to take rest, to take breaks, to get enough sleep, to enjoy the meal. And so I think we can learn a lot from these cultures. It's not about, you know, we don't have to move to where those people live. We can just start to take on some of their behaviors and norms, you know, what's normal to them. The thing is, it becomes so normal or familiar for us to be in the race, in constant stress and fear and control and worry, and our minds can get very distracted with all of that. But we need to just remind ourselves, okay, how can I create space for myself, brain space, mental space, and day to day space in your schedule so that you can bring in some of these behaviors and activities and ways of being in your human body that are going to be more beneficial to your health. The thing is, it's really coming from a point of prevention. It's how do we prevent health issues as much as possible? Of course, health issues still can happen. And when they do, then we can come back to these same principles to help ourselves recover. It's a matter of how much do we want to be able to enjoy our lives, do the things that we really want to do with our purpose, our joy, or being with family or creativity. Here we are in these lives, we might as well choose to be able to do it in a way where we can find joy and happiness and also connection with others and to feel good. I realize how much of the time, I mean, I know for myself how many years I was Living in pain, sometimes emotional pain, sometimes physical pain, sometimes both. And I don't think it's. I don't think I'm rare. I think that most all of us live a lot of our lives in pain. Whether it's because we're afraid something's going to happen or because something happened and now we're trying to recover from it, or because we have an injury or a physical condition, including in the digestion, that's causing us discomfort. Even if that's constipation, even if that's frequent stools or diarrhea, even if that's bloating and gas. This is all, to me, a source of pain and discomfort. That.

Yes, we have to meet it with some acceptance. That's part of being human too, that we're going to experience some discomfort, some signals from our bodies. It's not to judge those things or try to avoid them or push them away. It's more to say, okay, that makes sense. I accept that my body's giving me these signals, but now what might I be able to do to help shift it?

As our food gets digested through the stomach, right from the mouth to the stomach, the stomach makes hydrochloric acid, which is especially good at digesting protein, like animal protein. Then the small intestine, you have digestion of all three components of our food, protein, carbs and fats. Because the bile made by the liver comes through the gallbladder and the bile duct to the small intestines to help digest our fats and absorb our fat soluble nutrients. The pancreas makes the pancreatic enzymes as well as, believe it or not, the cells that line the intestines. The small intestines actually also make enzymes. They're making sure that everything's digested so that it can get absorbed. It has to get through the walls of the intestines. If it just stays inside of our intestines, it's just going straight through us. It has to get digested and be able to go through the walls. But really, our bodies, when optimal, only allow digested nutrients. We need our water, we need our electrolytes, we need our nutrients. We need glucose, amino acids and fatty acids to be able to get through. That's what we survive on when we're under stress, when we're exposed to toxins, when we're exposed to inflammatory situations. It damages those intestinal cells. Now they can't do their job well. They can't finish the digestion. We end up with things like intolerances to food, like Fructose intolerance, which I had years ago and had to figure it out and solve it for myself, where fructose intolerances, where you're not digesting fruit sugars, but fructose is also in.

Other kinds of vegetables, like onions have a lot of fructose. It's in beans, it's in some grains, like gluten. Gluten.

And so if you're not digesting fructose or fructans, well, it's likely because the intestinal cells are not healthy enough to do it. And so as we heal those intestinal cells now, you can digest fructose and fructans better again. But of course, we don't want to overdo it. I mean, that's the thing is, it's tempting. As humans, I think our brain wants to think if something's good for us, then more is better. But I really caution you about that because more is not necessarily better. Usually more is more stress for your system, even something that's good for you. Let's say we hear so much about how beans and legumes are good for us, but if we eat too much, especially at one time, we can't digest it all. It's too much fiber. It overfeeds the bacteria. The bacteria living in our intestines, which we're going to talk more about, they survive and thrive off of different kinds of fiber. Fiber from our fruits or vegetables or nuts, seeds, legumes, grains. And so depending on what we're eating, it determines who's going to thrive. Right. So if you eat a lot of a certain food, you're going to feed a lot of a certain bacteria. And the goal is a diversity of bacteria you would like. We want to have trillions of different. Trillions of bacteria in total, and a wide diversity of bacteria living in our digestion because they have all different purposes. One bacteria is really good at making, let's say, serotonin or gaba, or communicating with our immune system and balancing the immune system, or communicating with our nervous system or making certain nutrients.

We need a balance of different kinds of bacteria because they do all different stuff for us and they feed off of different fibers. If we look at our diet and we see that our diet is really repetitive and the same thing or too much of one thing. Now we're overfeeding ourselves and we're overfeeding the bacteria at the same time. And when we do that, it's essentially too much of a good thing.

Now you're going to have bloating gas, bloating, constipation, things are just not going to move around well, because we just happen to overfeed ourselves and overflow feed the certain bacteria. And so really, moderation is key. Just trying to be really good at listening to your body. And of course, it takes just being present when you're eating and being present with yourselves to go, oh, hey, how much and how often should I eat this food? So that I end up, yes, feeding those bacteria, but not over feeding them. So just remembering this concept of.

More too much is not a good thing. There can be, you can take too many probiotics, you can take too many fermented foods, you can have too many, too much kale, you can eat. So even though it's something good for you, if you have a lot of it, especially at once now, it's no longer that good for you because it's just too much for your body to handle all at one time. It doesn't mean that you can't have any. It's just, how do we find that middle zone? How do we do not too little and not too much. I would say the same thing with fasting, because a lot of times now we hear a lot about fasting, which can be, to me, it's just again, one of those activities that people that have the highest longevity do some amount of not eating. But the thing is that not eating, I think it's all relative. If we're sleeping for eight hours straight, we're not eating while we're sleeping. That's eight hours of a fast. That's already a good thing. If we find that we can't sleep and then we're waking up and we're eating in the middle of the night, and now we're not having eight hours of a fast, we're having a couple hours and then we're eating again and a couple hours we're eating again. And then that's not enough break for your digestion either. The digestion does need a little bit of a break time. But if we take too long of a break now, sometimes there's cultures where they might do fasting for a few days or a little bit longer for a period of time, I think that can be a way to just help reset the body and the health. But if you're going to be fasting a long time all the time, it can become too much because now not only is it just a nice fasting break for your body, but what you want to watch out for is you don't want it to become a stress, a starvation message to your body. Because if the body starts to think you're starving, it's going to go into starvation stress mode, which is going to raise your cortisol, it's going to shut down your digestion, it's going to make it so that when you do eat, you're more likely to gain weight and overfeed your bacteria again. It's knowing at what point have you crossed the line where it's now becoming a stress on your body instead of a benefit. And it's different for different people. We can't say it's exactly this many hours or this much food because we all have unique bodies, unique metabolism, unique set of bacteria, unique set of hormones and genetics. There's variables that come into play in determining what's the right amount for you. I think of Goldilocks sometimes, the story of Goldilocks where she's trying out the different size chairs and trying out the different size bowls of porridge, and this one's not enough and this one's too much. And then she finds just the right amount. I think that's a lot of what we practice each day as humans is what's not enough, what's too much, and what's the right amount for you? It can change day to day and week to week and month to month. It can change. Once you figure out what's the right amount for you, just know that it can shift again. If you're under stress, it might be different than if you're not under stress.

Just knowing that, that's, I think, part of our normal process. And to pay attention to that requires that you have a little bit of not only awareness and this information to begin with, but also the time to just check in with yourself each day. So I encourage you all to do kind of a daily check in and be like, okay, how did I do yesterday? How do I feel today after what I did yesterday? What do I want to do differently today? What do I want to eat differently? What kind of timing do I want to. When I wait a little longer in the morning to eat, and then I want to eat one meal, and then I want to wait a few hours before I eat the next meal, and then what time am I going to aim to finish eating and. And start getting ready for sleep? Just getting to know your body patterns. In some ways, it may also be like if you have a newborn baby.

A major part of the first couple months of having a newborn baby is learning the baby's patterns. Babies essentially sleep, eat, and then they hang out and do baby fun for a little bit of time, too. But it goes in a pattern. I think babies can remind us that that's probably true for all of us. We just have a slightly different cycle, but we need to rest, we need to eat, and we need to enjoy and do different activities in a pattern.

As you learn your baby's pattern, then you know better what to anticipate and what to have ready and what they're going to need next. And that's the same for yourself, just figuring out, okay, when's my body going to need to eat next? When's my body going to need some water? When's my body going to need to sleep? And you start to learn how to take care of yourself as you would a baby or as you would a pet. Sometimes I like to remind ourselves that we take care of others, but sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves. That's key with the digestion because of course, one of the. One of the most important things about digestion is that things need just to keep moving. We're eating, it's moving through, getting digested, but then it needs to keep moving out. If things move too quickly or too slowly, that also affects it. Part of the speed of our digestion has to do with the nervous system. The nervous system is telling the digestion what to do. The muscles have to contract. Those muscles make big contractions, but those muscles also make little small contractions. I think of it like if you were going to vacuum, you're going to vacuum the middle. You're going to like the middle of the rug first, and then you're going to pull out the little hose and you're going to vacuum in the corners. So the digestion is similar in that way. It moves the main things through and that the main food and fiber and contents of our digestion has a big major movement through and then it goes through and it has these, what's called a migrating motor complex, which is essentially like getting into the corners and helping these little fine movements to help move things along. That all requires our nervous system to be working well so that it can tell the muscles what to do. And it requires all the different hormone signals and neurotransmitter signals, and it also requires a nice balance of bacteria to make that all happen. And so if you're struggling with just the, the movement through your digestion, then that's sometimes where we have to begin. It's just, how do we help your retrain your muscles, how to move things through in Your nervous system. Again, it comes back to some of these same signals from the outside, from the sleep, from that we can use certain nutrients. Sometimes we need to use magnesium, which is certain types of magnesium like magnesium citrate and magnesium oxide are really good at signaling to the, to the muscles to move.

You just have to find the right dose. How much magnesium citrate or oxide is going to signal to your muscles to move things along and how much. If it's too much, it's just going to cause more loose stool and too frequent bowel movement. You just find what's the right amount to keep things moving. But the wonderful thing about magnesium is your intestinal muscles and cells are not going to become dependent on magnesium. If you take it, they're going to respond to it. But it's not like if you don't take, then it's just normal, it's not a dependency. Whereas some herbs and laxatives can create a dependency where now the muscles are not responding normally. They're depending on this external source. So I much prefer to use magnesium. Sometimes we use aloe to help get the bowels moving. Of course, drinking enough water and movement of your body and all these things I've been talking about connection to nature and sleep and everything helps. So you got to have those things happening. We also have to pay attention to hormones like thyroid. Thyroid function's low, your digestion slows down and so we need to think about, hey, is your thyroid needs some more help in order to keep the bowels moving.

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That movement is really important. And then on the other side, if you're having too frequent Bowel movements, that's a different thing. We need to figure out why. Is it because there's an imbalance of microbes in your digestion? That's sometimes if we get inflammation in the digestion. Now, inflammation can come from different things. Inflammation can come from stress, it can come from certain foods that are inflammatory to your digestion. It can come from.

Imbalance of bacteria or candida or other microbes. Anything that irritates the digestion could potentially cause more frequent bowel movements or for some people, more constipation. It really depends on your body. If it really gets inflamed, then the immune system might start trying to protect you from your own cells. This would be an autoimmune condition, or what we call an inflammatory bowel disease is the official term. But things like celiac disease, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, this are situations where the inflammation really goes high in the digestion and the immune system starts going into really trying to protect you. What we want to do is help calm it all back down again, calm down the immune system, take away the things that are triggering it, rebalance the bacteria. Now the digestion and the immune system can calm down and start functioning well again. I help so many patients with this over the past couple decades. I really feel grateful because I've learned so much and then of course, for myself as well.

My father also was diagnosed with Crohn's disease a couple of years ago. I, I'm so glad I had all this knowledge to be able to help him as well. We can use nutrients and herbs so much of the time to help our digestion heal. We can use digestive enzymes. We can take pancreatic enzymes. They make pancreatic enzymes either from an animal source or what's considered a plant based source of pancreatic enzymes. Swallow them. And this way we're adding to the enzymes to help digest the food. This is especially when your body's under stress and we know it's not making enzymes adequately. We can see that on a stool test. Then we know we need to use pancreatic enzymes to help digest your food better. For now, the goal is to help to eventually have your body doing a better job of its own. And then you're not going to be so reliant on outside sources of pancreatic enzymes. But if you swallow pancreatic enzymes, it's not going to inhibit your body, your pancreas, from doing its job, your pancreas, as it heals and recovers from stress, it's Going to start doing pancreatic enzymes on its own again, Most likely, unless it's very damaged. But most cases the pancreas can recover function and start making pancreatic enzymes again. Same with the intestinal cells. As the intestinal cells recover from what we call leaky gut, those intestinal cells can start making digestive enzymes again. Then you don't have to be so reliant on an outside source. But think of it as you take digestive enzymes, swallow them with your food, so you swallow them. When you have food in your belly. It's just helping to digest it so that you can actually get digested food and absorb your nutrients while your digestion is healing. Then we can use glutamine, which is an amino acid that feeds the small intestinal cells. We can use butyrate, which is to feed the large intestinal cells. We can use herbs like DGL is one of my favorites. It's a herbal licorice which is anti inflammatory, antimicrobial, very healing all around the body, but especially in the digestion. We can use DGL many different ways as powder and capsules, liquids. The DGL form of it is made so that it doesn't affect the blood pressure. Licorice in general, if a person has high blood pressure, could potentially raise the blood pressure. When we're working on the digestion and we don't need that part of the licorice, we can use the DGL form so it doesn't affect them. We can use it even if a person has high blood pressure, if that makes sense. So the licorice is so anti inflammatory, so the body can actually drop the inflammation and heal. If there's constant inflammation, it's hard for the body to heal. It would be like a wound, you know, if you cut yourself and it's inflamed. Inflamed, inflamed. It has, it takes way longer to heal, but we can. That's why we use anti inflammatory. I mean that's why they make anti inflammatory medications and things like prednisone, because it's anti inflammatory. If it calms down the inflammation now the body can heal. It's all a matter of how do we manage the inflammation enough so the body can heal itself. Yes, sometimes we need to use anti inflammatory medications, prednisone and so on. Or sometimes we can use herbal licorice and other anti inflammatory herbs. Slippery elm and marshmallow root and there's so many. Nature gives us anti inflammatory substances. We can use even.

CBD or cannabis is known for being anti inflammatory. As we drop inflammation, whether that whatever form we need to use or combination of things, then the body can actually heal, the immune system can reset, the digestion can start working better again. Then you're digesting your food better, the cells start to recover. Now they can digest and absorb nutrients. Now the, the muscles can start moving food through better and the bacteria are going to be better, imbalanced. Because if you're digesting your food better now what the bacteria are getting is only the undigested food that was left over. And so.

It'S a better match. It's just a better, you know, it's just a better sharing situation. You're getting your nutrients and the bacteria are getting their nutrients and it's like in a balance. Whereas when things are stressed and inflammatory, inflamed, you are not getting your nutrients and the bacteria are getting overfed. So it's this imbalance. So we just have to work little by little. It's not an overnight process, it's really a process little by little over time because it also requires us to practice and learn new routines. And then gradually.

Your digestion heals, you digest better, you absorb your nutrients better. And the bacteria are still getting fed, but they're not getting overfed. Now a lot of times when we think about the microbiome, we're really thinking about mostly the bacteria. And I'm so glad that we're so much more familiar with the bacteria living in our digestion. I think for a long time it would have freaked us out to think that there's bacteria living in our bodies. But really what we know now is that there's bacteria living all through our digestion, but every other part of our body, on our skin, they've even shown the microbiome or the healthy bacteria living in the uterus, ovaries and so on. It's just part of us. In fact, there's more bacteria cells than human cells in our bodies. This is an essential part of being human. Just because we can't see them doesn't mean that they're not there and they're not important. If we don't have them, definitely negatively affects our health. We definitely have so many studies now to show that, that if the bacteria are depleted or imbalanced, it increases risk of so many different health concerns. Everything from mental health, anxiety and depression, to like we talked about earlier, skin health, bone health, your immune system autoimmunity becomes way more likely. And what I find is in viral infections like HPV and EBV become Way more likely. So we need to help the balance of bacteria, really. And again, a lot of it comes down to not just like it's tempting. You'll hear a lot about taking a probiotic, which I do recommend. A lot of times we do need to take a probiotic, but that's not the whole story. And it's not just about eating fermented foods. Yes, eat a little bit of fermented foods. I do eat a little bit of fermented foods. But if we overdo the probiotic or we overdo the fermented foods or we overdo the fiber, now we're just, just overdoing the bacteria. And so I really want to again, emphasize that too much of a good thing is not a good thing. And so I also want to talk about how it's not just the bacteria. We have other microbes that can live in our human digestion to help optimize our health. And they research this too, back in history. What was living in a human digestion back in time that helped them prevent health issues? And. And we know that there are certain bacteria that a low amount is a good thing, but if they overgrow now, they're making toxins and inflammation, and it's a bad thing. It blocks things like methylation. Methylation is how our bodies use B vitamins. And if we have too many of the wrong bacteria, it blocks the use of B vitamins. And B vitamins are so essential for our nervous system, our detoxification, our production of healthy cells, and protection of our DNA. So we need to be healthy use of B vitamins or what we call methylation. And that's affected by stress, but it's also affected by overgrowth of bacteria. It's a matter of how do we help manage these. Then there's even Candida. We can have a little bit of yeast or Candida, but if we have too much now we have an overgrowth of Candida. And that can cause all kinds of different symptoms in the digestion on our skin, vaginally, you name it, the yeast. If they start overgrowing, they can cause a lot of issues, too. We need to then help to reduce the Candida. Of course, Candida love. Like most bacteria, they thrive. Candida thrives on sugars and sugar substances.

Sometimes we have to reduce our sugar intake, but to me, it's less about, like, you'll hear about a lot of diets where you have to really restrict your sugar. And just like earlier, I talked a lot about having too much is not a good thing. But having too little is also not a good thing. So if you're restricting really too much, like if you, I don't find you have to, to heal, you know, we might reduce your sugar. So if you're having, oh, you're having, you realize you're having a lot of refined white sugar, then we need to reduce it because it's, it's just too much sugar that we don't really need. It's too much for our bodies. Right. But we do need some sugar substances, natural sugars from either fruits or vegetables or other forms of carbohydrates. So it's not about having zero carbohydrates, it's about choosing the carbohydrates that are going to be best for you and your bacteria. And so if candida are overgrowing, oftentimes it's that the diet got a little bit too high in different sugar substances. Even too much fruit can overfeed Candida. And really to me, the time when Candida thrives is when the bacteria are out of balance. If your bacteria are imbalanced, it's much harder for Candida to take over. And so we need to think about your whole body, your whole environment, your day to day routine. We need to think about your gut bacteria so that they can, they can help manage, they can help make sure, okay, there's a little Candida. But the candida are not going to overgrow because the whole rest of the environment is keeping things in balance. If things are out of balance, then Candida can overgrow and cause different kinds of issues.

Really, if there's Candida overgrowth.

I really want to encourage you to, you have to look at the big picture of why the Candida is overgrowing. Same with HPV or ebv. If HPV and EBV are overgrowing or active, it's a matter of the environment. What about the environment around you and inside of you is allowing that virus to activate?

It excludes what's happening in your digestion. We need to come back to healing the digestion and getting the bacteria balance, including the bacterial balance vaginally to help protect the environment, keep it in balance so that it's not these other microbes. These microbes are part, we have viruses as part of it. It's not that the viru virus is evil or the virus is the problem. It's that the environment is allowing that virus to turn on and activate. If we change the environment, get your body more in balance, then the viruses are not able to activate and cause the problems that they can cause if they're activated. So I really want to help you shift your perspective from putting the blame on the bacteria or the blame on the candida or the blame on the virus. Virus, because they're, to me, they're not really the blame. They're just taking advantage of the situation. And if we can shift, the more you kind of put yourself back into your body, can reconnect with your body and empower yourself and say, this is my body, this is my environment to manage? What choices do I want to make on a daily basis to help my body digest, move things through, absorb nutrients, maintain a healthy bacterial environment? What can I do to keep that environment balanced so that there isn't a chance for a virus or candida or overgrowing bacteria to even happen? It's just not going to happen. And it comes from a totally different way of thinking about it.

Along those lines, I want to mention something I've mentioned a little bit before, which is, is something called helminth therapy or sometimes we refer to the specific helminth. Now, usually when it comes to who's living in our digestion, we're getting more and more familiar with talking about the bacteria and who's healthy to live there. But still the term parasite.

Makes us cringe and think, oh no, there's a problem. And I think that's because there are parasites that are a problem. There's just like with the bacteria, there are certain bacteria that can be a big problem. They can put you in the hospital. Like C. Diff is a bacteria that can cause death if a person isn't able to address it. There's bacteria that can be really dangerous and there can be parasites that can be really dangerous to our health.

I think we need to just get a bigger perspective on that and realize, okay, yes, there's certain microbes that, that if they're able to thrive and overgrow and cause inflammation and trouble in our bodies, that can be. We need to address it because it can spiral out of control and cause more and more problems. But there's other bacteria. And what would be considered a parasite or microbe that is actually beneficial? That's actually. So I want to help you re shift your perspective on that, on this terminology and away from, I mean, parasite really essentially means that it's a microbe, that it's benefiting from us and we're benefiting. And the question is, are we going to benefit from it? So the more dangerous parasites are benefiting from us, but we're not getting much of a benefit. But there are parasites or microbes where it can be a win win where they're benefiting from us, us, just like with the bacteria, right, these bacteria are benefiting from living in our bodies, but we're also benefiting from them. They're making nutrients and neurotransmitters. And with the certain kinds of parasites, they actually help stabilize and manage our immune system, our nervous system. So we're benefiting from them while they're benefiting from us. And so now it's a collaboration, it's a mutual existence. And to realize that we can have these positive mutual existence with other microbes, whether it's bacteria, whether it's considered a parasite, whether it's considered any other kind of microbe, where it's a mutual benefit, then that's what we want. And they've shown this in research and they've shown this back in time, that when humans have microbes living in the gut that that help us help our immune system work better, decrease inflammation. We talked about decreasing inflammation based on staying away from inflammatory foods and taking herbs that are anti inflammatory. But what I'm saying now is that if we have the right bacteria and other microbes living in our gut that can drop inflammation now, our bodies can heal. So we want to choose the microbes that help drop inflammation, help our intestinal cells recover, help our bowels stay healthy. And by doing that, they help our immune system, our nervous system, our hormones work better. And so I just want to open your mind to this new way of thinking of it, that it's about the balance and it's about having the right microbes to benefit you and not the guys that are going to cause inflammation or cause nutrient depletion or cause other issues. So it's a matter of who, right? It's a who issue, not a what issue. And so I want to just help encourage you to think of it a little differently there because then we can open our minds to, wow, are there microbes we're missing? When you take a probiotic, you're just getting lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. Now lactobifido are really good and they do a lot of good things. But that's just two strains of bacteria, Lactobacillus, umbifido. Sometimes then we use a bacillus, which has other benefits. But there's only certain bacteria you can get in a supplement, in a pill at this point in time. Most of them you can't get of the trillions of possible bacteria. You can't get most of them in a pill. You can only change your diet to feed them and change the environment to feed them. Same with.

These other microbes. You can't get it in a supplement or a pill, but there are ways. Now it's in research. Well, they've been researching this for a couple decades. Starting some of the original research was in Australia. They studied what was called or hookworms and whipworms and is a very specific type. By the way, when we talk about hookworms or whipworms, there's many, many, many different types. Just like we talk about all the different types of bacteria, there's many types of even a specific type of worm. When they do the research, they find that a very specific type of worm can drop inflammation and help people, for example, with celiac disease, who celiac disease is, have an immune and autoimmune response to gluten. How do we help correct that immune system response? Well, what they found is that when people have this very specific microbe, it can correct it. Now, these people, when they get exposed to gluten, they no longer have an inflammatory response. It made the researchers go, what's going on there? What are they secreting? Why is it beneficial? They've studied, studied, studied to figure it out. They've studied different kinds of autoimmune conditions. Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, you name it. They studied allergies, asthma, all kinds of different immune system and inflammatory conditions. And they find it's consistently beneficial if you use the right microbe in the right amount for that person. It's very specific for each of us. One person needs more of a certain one and other people need less.

This is really awesome. Then they start doing the research because they think, well, if this microbe can benefit a human that way, can we extract a substance? Can we make a medication out of it? Can we put it in a pill form? Essentially, they're studying that to try to figure that out still. But who knows how long that can take and if they'll ever be able to. Some substances from nature, it's so complex in nature that you can't extract it and get the same benefit.

I really wonder if that's the same case with the microbes, that it might not be able, that we can replicate it in a chemical or supplement form. Maybe the only way to really benefit from it is like we do in nature, is just having the actual microbe to do the actual work to Benefit us. And so there are ways to do this and people have found ways because people are in pain and desperate and wanting to feel better and live their lives. And so people go, oh wow, is there a way where we can access these microbes? And so there are ways, but I really want to warn you because again, not all of them are equal. So just like with a probiotic, you don't want to just go buy any probiotic. You need to, to find a really high quality probiotic. And if your digestion is really stressed and needs help, then I would even want to do a stool test to understand the imbalance in your bacteria and then go through a very sequential process of helping to stabilize and reestablish healthy balance of the bacteria. So it's a careful process. Even sometimes they use what are called fecal transplants where they essentially take the microbiome from another human and put it into another human. That's been studied to help with C. Diff. That bacteria, that dangerous bacteria I mentioned and is used in various clinics around the world for the treatment of C. Diff. We know if we put in, we replace, basically we transplant another person's microbiome. It can help them get rid of this harmful bacteria. But it's not. Well, microbiome is not used in general because there's a lot of. We haven't totally fine tuned it. Exactly. How do you test the original microbiome? How do you do it in a smooth process so it doesn't cause other problems? There's so many little variables that need to be taken into account.

We start to think through how are we going to do this. The researchers that researched the helminthic therapy, helminthic meaning these microbes that we often call a worm, which I know the word worm has negative connotations to it. Try to just let your mind redefine, redefine the word worm, redefine the word parasite. Because they're not all bad. There's actually some what we consider a worm or a parasite, but it's actually beneficial to the human body. They can test them under a microscope because some of these are.

When we use a hookworm, for example, it's called a hookworm because when you look under the microscope, it looks like a hook. It only can live in the human small intestine because people worry is it going to. There are certain worms that can overgrow and produce too many of them. They can replicate or they can live in the wrong part of the body.

We've heard these worst case scenarios of when Person gets the wrong worm and it causes other issues. But when we get the right worm, these hookworms, and again, it's a very specific, DNA tested version of a hookworm. They're microscopic and they live only in the small intestine and they cannot replicate in the human body. They can only replicate once they go out of the human body in the soil, they would have to be. That's their life cycle. As they go out of a human body, they would be in the soil. Let's say if someone was living on a farm and they had their compost on their farm. Now this microbe has to live in the soil and then it has to get back into a human at a certain stage of life. And then it knows how to go through the human body to get to the small intestine. And it can only survive in this human small intestine while it, its little microscopic hookworm is thriving in our small intestines. It's sending signals out to benefit us. I can speak from all of this that I've been saying is from personal experience with my digestion and my body. And I have also been able to have the opportunity to use this experimental therapy called hookworm or helminthic therapy on myself. I could see from my own experience how it shifts my immune system, system, my nervous system. It decreases all the inflammation, it decreases the allergies, it helps stabilize my body and get me back into sync from stress.

And it's not causing any negative.

This is now years, and I haven't had any negative effect. I can tell you from personal experience that these microbes can benefit human without causing a negative. And so that's, I think, what we're all looking for, right? Like everything from.

Sleep to kale to microbes, it's like how to find the right ones in the right amount at the right timing for us to benefit and for it to benefit our health, for us to be able to improve our longevity and help get us out of pain and discomfort. And so I just want to open your mind to that and I'm happy to. If you're interested in learning, learning more, please feel free to reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk with you more about it. If it's, if any of this that I'm talking about, from healing your digestion to rebalancing your bacteria, to managing viruses, to considering kind of new, what we considered more experimental but new ways of thinking. I mean, now I think of them as new because it's in our right now. It seems new but these are things that have been in humans for forever. So it's not really new, it's old. And we're just realizing that it could be a missing medicine for us.

If you have an interest or would like to learn more, please reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk with you and see if anything that I've talked about could be beneficial for your health. Whether it's you found out you have MTHFR and you're trying to figure out what to do. Maybe you found out you have autoimmunity or you're having, having HPV or fertility issues or a lot of times I'm helping people with even just anxiety or migraines or dementia and you're like, what else can I do? My brain is just not working the way I want it to. What can I do? Because there's so many of these health issues where sometimes there are medications that can help. Luckily we have discovered certain medications that can help with certain situations. But sometimes these medications have side effects and sometimes they don't help. That's why I'm thinking, okay, how can we use other tools? Not to say one is bad or good. It's how do we understand our bodies and what our bodies need so that we can look for other tools that are available to us that we can use in a safe way so that we can benefit from them. Well, thanks for joining me and I hope that opened your eyes and gave you some more ideas for your health. And again, just reach out to me if you'd like to talk more. Have a good rest of day.

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.