The Hidden Microbiome Crisis in Your Gut (And How to Fix It)

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and today I'm looking forward to introducing you to a new sim. She is a board certified functional health coach and she's the author of the new book called Flourish from within Feed your gut for lifelong health. So we're going to be talking about, you might have guessed, the gut microbiome and all the amazing ways that optimizing your gut microbiome can optimize your health. Thank you so much for joining.

Joining us today, Anu Dr. Donnie. Thank you. Such a pleasure. I'm so excited to speak with you and yeah, I'm very excited about your book.

Congratulations.

Thank you. It's like a huge undertaking. Lots of research. It's taken me about three to four years to complete it because it's kind of part science, part storytelling and part, you know, recipes and how to as far as taking care of the microbiome. So it took a lot of putting together, you know, but it's finally done.

Yay.

Sense of relief.

It feels so good. I know. It feels so good. When you get to that point and now you get to tell everybody about it. It's no longer like you're, you know, all in your head. It's like, okay, let, we want to hear all about it. And of course this is such an important topic and such a hot topic, you know, especially I would say over the past 10 years, people are more and more hearing the word microbiome, maybe getting a better understanding of the microbiome. And we hear a lot about probiotics and sometimes we hear about prebiotics, but there's still a lot of confusion about it. And so that's why I'm really glad that you're here to set the record straight as a scientist. Right. You were, you really was. Your original training was as a scientist and then you've shifted into helping people with their health based on all of your scientific knowledge. Maybe tell us a little bit more how that so people get a sense of like what inspired you to write this book and to help people with their health.

Absolutely. And to just clarify things. I'm not a microbiologist but it's something that I just became passionate about because of my own health. Many moons ago we're talking when there was no Internet and chatgpt. I was struggling with my gut. You know, I was this really healthy person and one day I had gut issues. I couldn't digest the same foods that I could digest perfectly well before. And I was really flummoxed. I'm like, what's going on? What's, what's happening with me? And I did the usual route that we all take. We went from doctor to doctor in search of answers. And we're talking a time when labels like ivs, placebo were not that usual and not that common. And it's really not the doctor's fault. It just wasn't there in, in their radar. So I was given the usual things. Oh, you need to increase your protein, decrease your protein, not eat this, or oh, I think everyone goes through it. What's a little bit of bloating or flatulence? So I just got to a point where I was extremely frustrated. And I still remember the day when I sat in my car just sobbing, just feeling this incredible sadness that I couldn't figure this out and why wasn't anyone taking me seriously when it was such a big deal for me? And that's when I, through all that chaos, I got a very clear thought. If no one else is going to name this thing for me, I would name it. Sometimes it's, I think, as you will agree, a diagnosis is so much better than not knowing. You know, when you don't know what you're going through, that creates such chaos and confusion and you're just going, you're barking up the wrong tree. Just really frustrating.

Well, and especially the term I. Even having the name IBS doesn't really give you many answers.

It's kind of, no, it doesn't, but.

So you still don't know what's going on.

You still don't know, and it's very confusing, but at least it gives you some. A starting point. You could go to someone, say, I think I have ibs, but I didn't know any of that. And at that point I said, I'm going to figure this out. I put my science background to work. Spent hours and hours in the library at ucsd and that's how I discovered the microbiome. It was still in its infancy at that time. Human microbiome project had just started. The Sonnenbergs had written the book the Good God. And I devoured every bit of information I could find at that time. And I thought, this is the missing piece. Something happened between, you know, something has changed. Maybe there's something that I was doing. You know, I came from eating whole foods and, you know, things like that. And then I adopted the convenience strategies like, oh, let's eat something quick and go to work, or something like that. And I still am not sure what really triggered it. And Maybe it's not that important, but I started thinking of how important it was to feed these microbes. So really understanding that our gut microbiome plays such a huge part. We have microbes on us, in us, every part of us. But those trillions of microbes in our gut, we have a symbiotic partnership with them. We have a mutual partnership and it's evolved. They've co evolved with us. There's never been a time when they've not been part of our lives and they're all forever guests. So once I accepted that, then became a really an easy thing of okay, how do I take care of you? So that's pretty much what happened. And slowly I just, I started getting better and healing. And like Maya Angelou says, when you heal, go heal someone else. I started talking. Anyone who would listen, listen to me. And I would nerd out on the microbiome. In fact, people would just laugh at me saying, oh my gosh, she's going to start about the microbiome yet. And because there wasn't a lot of information back then, but today, so many more people understand that the microbiome plays a huge role even in something like hpv, which is so downstream and so, you know, mucosal, the gut microbiome, we are finding research that it is playing a part in something that downstream. So it's just changed how I do my coaching, my practice, everything has become microbiome driven. And I see results because of that. So I find that very exciting. And my mission, Dr. Downey, is you and I are, we are in a field where everybody has heard about the microbiome, but I heard somewhere that two out of three Americans had not even heard of the word microbiome. And I'm on a mission to change that. And I'm hoping with the book, sorry.

What is the microbiome? What is your, what do you tell them?

I, well, I break down the science. I mean, so someone like, for example, I was driving to a microbiome conference and the Uber driver asked me, what are you doing? What are you speaking about? I said, I'm speaking about the microbiome. And he said, what is that? So I said, well, there are a bunch of bugs and these bugs or trillions of them in your gut, in your colon, and they play such an important part of how you're feeling. How, how is your mental health? Do you have up and down moods? You know, how is your immune system doing? Do you, do you fall sick often? There's, they have a role to play in every part of your life. And that's what I talk. So all of a sudden, all of his symptoms, he started asking me, oh, so is that why I fall sick so often? Is that why I have these gut issues? Oh, I get so up and down with my mood. And he, he started connecting it and then I, I, I looked at him, I said, this is the person I need to write the book for. Not the few people who have just heard about the microbiome where, who's already in our inner circle, but for that person who has no clue about it, but has the same right for the same information as any of us. So I kept that in mind when writing the book. And I'm hoping I really have broken down the science. And like, I've always been told that that's my superpower. I break down science really well. So let's see. You know, I hope I have.

Well, what I always like to point out about the microbiome is that because a lot of times we, for a long time we thought that, you know, we were trying to be sterile from all microbes and bacteria. Right. And we spend a lot of time trying to like, you know, avoid bacteria and microbes. And so this is kind of like completely flipping that script. And, and, and I think that, you know, even sometimes people who are aware of the microbiome still might not quite realize that what we're actually saying is not all bacteria are bad. Right. So, so it's like even, I wonder if like the term bugs, it almost has like a negative connotation.

Exactly.

So it's more like saying, hey, there's, there's, yes, there's bacteria that if they land in our gut, they could cause a lot of trouble, like diarrhea. They could send you to the hospital. And there's bacteria that we need for, like you're saying, to communicate to our immune system, our nervous system, our hormones, our everything. Yeah.

And so, and that's why I have a, my take on this is don't always go after the bad guys, you know, because the bad guys can also be a good guy. You know, I mean, so I'm really simplifying here, but when you're talking high level, I just think really in making sure that you have a healthy microbiome. And what is a healthy microbiome? I don't think we have a definition for a healthy microbiome, but I would prefer to call it a resilient microbiome. And a resilient microbiome is one that can bounce back after an Illness after a bout of diarrhea, after antibiotics, any of that. And it's like, okay, I'm fine now. And that resilient microbiome needs species richness, it needs species evenness because you're doing a lot of functions behind the scenes for us. So if we have enough species, like let's say, for example, serotonin, you know, 90% of serotonin is made in the gut. So if we don't have those serotonin making bugs, then, you know, we're less apt to be producing a neurotransmitter at a gut level and having that, you know, even just create that loop with the gut brain or immune system. 70% of our immune system is in the gut. And then these microbes are training ground, are a training ground for our immune system. It's training them to say, this is a friend, this is a foe, this is a neutral party respond accurately. But if we don't have that, the immune system can overcompensate or be triggered to do something it's not supposed to do. So, and even I think you probably deal with this a lot with hpv, which is so immune related that taking care of the immune system becomes very, very important. And I feel like the gut microbiome plays a huge role in taking care of the immune system.

It really does. It's this, this part of our bodies that we often, we really take for granted, I think. And we, it feels a little bit invisible because it's not like our arm that we can see, right. It's inside of us. But we can, we can see the bloating when it's off track. Right. The first time you, if a patient says I have bloating and gas, I'm like, there's something off track with your microbiome. That's what creates those symptoms. So anyone listening? If you're like, yeah, I have some bloating and gas, or I have some. But sometimes, right, Sometimes we can have imbalance in the microbiome and have no digestion.

Exactly. And you could have like, for example, like people will ask me what how many species should I have? Or should I get a microbiome test done? And the answers to that are so individual. You know, I feel like, well, and microbiome testers may not be diagnostic yet, but they definitely are. With the new shotgun sequencing testing, we have a pretty good idea of who's in your distal colon because of the fecal test will tell us, you know, dead live microbes. Like, so from that we can get a Pretty good idea of how is your inflammatory response. How are you digesting fiber if you're, if you have very few species that are adept at digesting fiber. Because remember, when we need fiber, we need to eat fiber. And the fiber goes undigested to the colon. And our microbes digest the fiber for us. And that's something that we've, in evolution we passed on the stars to these microbes. But if we don't have the species richness, of course we're going to struggle with the aftermath of eating something that's higher in fiber. Or even sometimes it could be protein. You know, protein is digested in the upper digestive parts. But sometimes when you eat way too much protein or you're not digesting it, it can end up in the colon and the, and the, and your microbial partners are not going to say, I'm not going to eat anything. Certain bugs have evolved to digest protein, but when they digest protein, they not just, they make very little short chain fatty acids. That's your stellar flagship, you know, metabolite that does incredible things like keeping your metabolism giving you a lot of energy, keeping your inflammatory responses down. They'll digest the protein but also produce metabolites that may be toxic to our system like ammonia, like H2S, hydrogen sulfide, that can cause that rotten egg smell, you know, sometimes with gas, things like that. So it's really important to look at the big picture. So I'm always about what is the one thing that we can do to help our forever guests thrive? So the symbiotic partnership is alive and kicking. We help them, they help us. And I think the biggest thing I've seen, Dr. Donnie, is food is the biggest needle mover. And then of course lifestyle matters. Like you said, that hygiene hypothesis plays a role. Don't go overboard on the hygiene, don't go crazy on antibiotics. Of course antibiotics play such a big role in our well being and of course, you know, there are times when you need them, but being very judicious and thinking about, about things like that or PPO make a huge difference.

If you don't mind, I want to break down a few different points that you're making there.

Yeah.

One is the things that there's so many things that can disrupt our microbiome. So we've already established how important the microbiome is. And then to say there's so many things that can disrupt our microbiome. You mentioned antibiotics. You know, every time we're on antibiotics, not only is it going to kill whichever bacteria was causing the infection, but it can affect your good bacteria too. So let's just talk through briefly, like what are some of the other things that can disrupt our microbiome? Because I think some, what I find is that sometimes that helps people to go, oh yeah, I have been exposed to that, so I might have disrupted my microbiome. This is how you start to realize, oh yeah. Besides the symptoms, we've talked about what you might have been exposed to that could have disrupted your microbiome. Are there some other things that you usually think of?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think for me in my practice, what I've seen is the number one is restrictive diets. People come to me because they've been on so many yo yo diets, restricted diets, saying, I'm not eating this, eating that, because the oral tolerance is poor, the immune system is taken up eating. They're not able to digest a lot of things. Or it could be that they want to lose weight and so they're on mono eating. So what are they doing? They're starving. These very bugs that are, that thrive on their one fuel, which is fiber.

So then you're like, it's, it's like I think about it as like if you have only a few. Sometimes this happened, like you said, with restricted eating, but sometimes it happens when someone's just, maybe they just only like a few foods. So they keep eating the same foods over and over again. Right. It's, they may not realize they have a restricted diet, but it's just a low variety diet. Right. It's like a diet that's a very low variety. And the key is like you're saying these microbes, we, we feed them with what we eat. Right. So what, what you eat determines who's getting fed in your microbiome. Yeah. And they each feed off of different things.

Yeah. So it's not about feeding one microbe. Like some people will say, oh, how do I grow my akkermansia? Which has become like the famous microbiome bacteria that everyone talks about or strain, but it's about feeding all of them. And that comes from having a different variety of fibers in our food. And that requires a system. You can't really just say, I'm just going to add this or that. How long are you going to do it? Without a system, it's very difficult for any of us to remember how to, how to incorporate that. You know, for example, if I say diversity.

Sorry, I want to go into that, but I want to first just say like like just to finish this thought of the things that disrupt our microbiome, you know, can be also toxins we're exposed to.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Certain foods in particular, like let's say high sugar, high gluten. We know gluten disrupts the microbiome, you know, so like the things that can throw off the microbiome, is there anything else on that list that you would think of?

Yeah, so ultra processed foods. Definitely. And that's because they haven't evolved to look at them as food. It's like if you and I went to Home Depot and started looking at things as food, you know, it would be so odd for us. It's pretty much the same thing for them. They don't know that it's, they don't recognize that as food. And we're feeding them things that they don't recognize as food then. Because most processed, ultra processed foods do not have fiber, do not have protein. I mean, that's the whole thing behind it.

It's not even really food. It's just.

They're not even food. Yeah, yeah, they're not even food. So that would be number one. Food is the biggest need remover after that. I, I really think sleep is huge because there's so many studies that are showing that if, if sleep is compromised, your microbial diversity decreases because the, the, your microbiome has a circadian rhythm just like, like we do, and it's pretty synchronized. So if we don't respect our circadian rhythm, then chances are they're going to be compromised as well. So I would say definitely sleep stress is another big, huge thing. Think about cortisol and think about what perimenopausal, menopausal women go through with belly fat hot flashes and all of that. The microbiome has such a huge role to play and how it's having that hormon reset going on in the gut. You know, like special bacteria called estrobolone that really look at the estrogen reconjugating, for example, cortisol and belly fat. You know, people with a lot of belly fat have more receptors of, for cortisol. And decreasing that cortisol response is also so important for the microbiome. Exercise is huge. I was at a gym the other day and I was talking to athletes and how that butyrate, which is like the flagship short chain fatty acid that these bugs produce when you feed them fiber, they've seen such a connection to that versus when, when athletes take in more fiber, they are, they have less of that Delayed onset soreness, they, they, they oxidize fat by about 20% more. Things like that that are incredible for information for us because then we're looking at micro, the microbiome in our goals. If it is weight loss, use them as partners to help achieve the goal. Because we look at metabolic potential more as a calories in, calories out or just exercise. But if we kind of look at it from the perspective of the microbiome then I think everything shifts a little bit and we start looking at how do we feed them on a daily basis.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox they have a stomachache and headache and they can't sleep and they're feeling anxious and I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patients do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants and supporting our natural detox detoxification pathways in the body. Also I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you then expose the toxins and how to change your day to day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical, environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxins toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery into your day to day routine. So I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at drdani.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program at Dr. Donnie.com I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health. Yeah, you really, I think that's such a beautiful point that like if we start to look at our day as what are the choices I'm making and how does, how can that best benefit my gut bacteria? So like you're saying everything from what you eat, which we're going to go into more detail about what to eat to optimize your microbiome and what you have in the book to help us with that. And then like you said, sleep, our exercise and then, and then also like the other things we're exposed to in our environment, toxins or medications. And so we start to go, oh my gosh, what I'm exposed to is actually impacting my microbiome and then my microbiome is impacting my health. Sometimes, you know how, sometimes we're less likely to make a health decision for ourselves, but sometimes if we think about it as, hey, I'm making this health decision for my gut bacteria, maybe that's going to make it easier to make the decision. And you mentioned the testing because, because sometimes if someone listening is like, well, I do have maybe bloating or some other symptoms and I have been exposed to these things that could disrupt my microbiome. So how am I going to know? How am I going to know for sure? And so this is where I found the gut microbiome testing to be very helpful for patients. I've been using gut microbiome testing and analyzing it and helping optimize the, the microbiome for, for years and years and years. So I, I can see them like the message I want to share is it's possible to fix your microbiome, right? Because sometimes we feel like, oh my gosh, I've now that I realize I've really bombarded and, and knocked out my poor microbiome. And sometimes you people will come to me and like, is this even fixable? And so I always say to them, absolutely, it's fixable. There's so many tools we have, right, to, to fix a microbiome. But sometimes the first step is to do an assessment so that we can see as much as we can. But the key thing is this, this testing is not going to happen at the regular gastroenterology office, not at this point in time, right? Like you can't expect that. You can go to the gastroenterologist and they're going to know any, they might have been reading about this, but it's not available through the standard lab. If they do a stool test, it's going to probably be a culture and it's only going to show who's still alive when they did the culture. It's not going to give you this information that Anu and I are talking about with your, who's living in your gut and who should be there and who shouldn't be there. It's not going to happen from a culture or the standard doctor's office.

Right, Absolutely. And I think it's so true. And the doctors don't, I mean if you think about it, internal medicine, they have about eight minutes to spend with you. So it's not even fair to ask a practice practice that is not built to do this. There's a huge gap, you know, there's no, I mean if I have a problem like you know, I have a fracture or like a disease of some kind that needs immediate help, that is a system I would respect. But for things like this, it's just not built for it. So it's would we would be asking the wrong person for help. And I think don't be surprised if.

You'Ve been struggling a long time and the doctors are not helping. You have to. Exactly. We're glad you're listening to this because then we, hey, there's a lot we can do but it's going to be likely an out of pocket test. And even then there's so many tests out there. This is one of the, I think one of the biggest increase in products in business I think is we're seeing so many different companies coming up with microbiome panels.

So yeah, which is good and bad, right? Because I think the listeners should understand that the sequence, the sequencing, short gun sequencing, what kind of technology is the product that you use? What are they known for? You know, that's very important and without naming brands or anything like that, I feel like if we do our own research and say, okay, if I am going, I pick this because I have very specific bugs, pathogenic bacteria that I want to target because my symptoms are so related to this particular, particular pathogen, then there's a certain, certain kind of technology available. But if you are more into this is how I describe it to my clients. You walk into a party, you don't have anyone specific to talk to. You just take pictures of all the people there. You say, oh this is, this is great. That's a beautiful dress. That's lovely. You know, I, I think I want to talk to this person. That sort of an approach, then a shotgun sequencing really gives you a great idea of who's at the party, who's in your colon, who are those forever guests in there and what are they, what are they doing to help you or to make your, make you feel worse, you know, so then you have a pretty good starting point. And it's always that a test is that it's measuring something and it's giving you an opportunity to fix it. And then the fixing part is like, let's see, the tests are saying that, well, this person has elevated ratios of certain, certain phyla. And we know that that's connected with weight gain. Then that's a great starting point. We know that, you know, we could maybe bring some balance back into the, into the microbial population, give them certain things that help. And this is a question I get asked a lot, Dr. Downey, about probiotics and prebiotics. And because there are so many probiotics today, I would say for the listener, the best thing is to first of all educate yourself about what kind of strains are really, really beneficial for you, because not every strain will do the same thing for you. And then if you're going to pick a probiotic, let's say yogurt, for example, and you go to the, your local grocery store and you pick up probiotic, really kind of look at the label a little bit. You know, if it's saying probiotic contains probiotic cultures, that's not telling you anything. If the, the company hasn't even taken the time to put a strain name on it, then I would say don't buy the product. Instead, buy a product that's very specific and says lactobacillus reuteri or BB Lact 12, then you know why you're buying that product. Let's BB Lactose 12 is such a well studied strain and it can really help you with things like constipation. So I think we need to empower ourselves with that kind of education. And then when we have that, we become better consumers of the product.

Yeah. And so I love these points and to really understand that most times when it says probiotics is going to be Lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, because those are the two that we can, that we have the technology to really put into a product that we can sell the counter. And so I always like to point out, like, okay, no matter. You could pick from a lot of different brands that might have slightly different strains of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. But even if you take a large amount of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, you might just be flooding your system with just those strains and those particular bacteria. It's, there's a whole another, you know, trillions that, that you're not going to find in a probiotic, which brings, and.

That'S where the richness comes in very handy. It's. I, the analogy I would use is like having like a thousand tomato plants and one freaking zucchini plant that's really trying hard to survive. We don't want that situation. We want thriving of different species. So they do different functions for us behind the scenes. Neurotransmitters, vitamins, short chain fatty acids, and if not, anything. I think today's listeners should say, I mean, even if I could just sum up my whole research on the book, everything, the one thing I would say is get more fiber in. Make sure you having a diverse amount of prebiotic fibers. You know, not all fibers are prebiotic in nature. So really look for prebiotic fibers that will grow your species.

Because prebiotic, just so everybody understands prebiotic means it's going to feed the bacteria.

Yeah.

So, and, and fibers, you know, because a lot of times when people hear fiber, they might think of like, I don't know, psyllium or. Yeah. So I would like to clarify that, like we can, we can find fiber in, and in fruits, in vegetables, in nuts, in seeds and, you know, so we, we want to be looking at like you're saying the processed food doesn't have, isn't going to help feed our bacteria. It might even help disrupt our bacteria. So we need to be thinking of like whole foods from nature that humans, you know, are designed to consume. Those are the foods that have the, the correct prebiotic or food for our bacterium.

Right, Absolutely. And that diversity is what the microbiome likes. So very simply, you could just have broccoli from Whole Foods or Vons or whatever your local grocery store is, and next week you say, I'm just going to try like maybe a Chinese broccoli or a Korean, you know, version of it. So that slight, subtle diversity is what the microbiome likes.

Just even if changing up broccoli, but it's slightly different versions of broccoli, they pay attention to that. That it doesn't necessarily have to even mean whole different types.

Correct?

I mean, yes, I would it's like when you can go to the store and kind of go, oh, this week I'm going to have broccoli, next week I'm going to get asparagus. Right. So you kind of mix it up a little bit in terms of your vegetables.

So mono eating is not a good. And so in my book I just kind of lay out a plan where we have foundational layers. Foundational layers are our vegetables and fruits, legumes, lentils, beans. And again, there's a whole range of how much people can digest and utilize these things. If they've been starving their microbes for a very long time, it's going to be a little bit more challenging. But I think everyone can eventually, you know, because if I, I healed so many of my clients have. I know. And you probably can 100% agree with me that it is indeed possible. And then after that we have enhances something that enhances your microbial picture. And those are like good fats and herbs and spices. There are some spices that have incredible polyphenolic activity and including them into that and that's where the system is very important. You know, you can't willy nilly add something and then you'll forget about it. That's human nature. Like I, you know, I might read something or on Instagram or something. And so I'm just going to add term right today and then we may forget because it's not habit. It's not a habit. It's not become procedural like maybe brushing our teeth. So until it becomes procedural, we need to follow assistance so we know how to eat. And then of course there are functional foods. Functional foods are like beta glucans, like things in like shiitake mushrooms and you know, barley, things like that, polyphenols, flavonoids and different kinds of prebiotic fibers is all of them really help grow more species for us.

Awesome. And it's. So you start to get a sense of this, of this choosing variety of whole foods as best you can. And then it, you have to pace yourself. Right. Very disrupted microbiome. Then we're gonna, we have to start simple and start with a small amount. I think one of the, the biggest sort of mistakes that I see happen is that people hear, oh, we need to help our microbiome. We need to eat fermented foods or we need to eat probiotic foods. And then they kind of overdo it and then it. Because there is such a thing as too much bacteria too. Yeah.

And then of course, if you don't have the Right. Players, you know, you are causing this perfect straw. You know, you have a lot of fermentation happening and that and there's putrefaction happening. So it is a process, you're right. And it needs to be done very carefully and slowly. So someone with IBS or sibo. I would never suggest fermented foods for someone like that. We need to go really slowly. Take your time, start with the foundational layers, really get comfortable with adding diversity there. There's so many low fodmap fruits and vegetables that we can add in. And then in time you can add the enhancers, you can add the functional foods to enrich the microbial population.

That's how I, and in the meantime.

Sleep, stress, breath work and all of that exercise. Huge, huge players.

Yeah, that's, that's what I talk a lot about in that this master stress reset your health book. And I, I talk about the microbiome in there too. So it'll be, the books will go well together.

Yeah.

Your book and my book and, and anyone who, who missed it at the beginning. Anu's book is flirty. Nourish from within, feed your gut for lifelong health. You can find it at Amazon. And the thing is like, for a while there, when we were, when the microbiome projects first started coming out and the information and we started going, oh, this is cool, we can actually know our gut microbes and we can know which foods are feeding which ones. And for a while there we were even being, trying to be really exact about it. And sometimes patients ask we this, they'll say, okay, if I need to increase this bacteria, which food should I eat more of to increase that specific bacteria? And, and what I found is that while yes, sometimes we can kind of say, okay, yes, to increase this family of bacteria, you can lean a little more toward, let's say blueberries or flax seeds or you can, you can kind of break that down that way. But what inevitably will happen is we end up having a lot of cross reactivity. So what can happen is you're, while you're trying to feed this one, you might end up over feeding this other one. And so you, you can't just break it down like that. Right? It's not that simple to just say, oh, just eat flaxseed and you'll fix everything. No, it's like, that's why you keep coming back to. It's not about breaking it down that simply. As humans, I think we would logically like it to be that simple. But it's not that simple. We had. Eventually I said, forget it. That's. It's too complicated. You can't. Can't. It's. It's more important to have a small amount of. A variety of different foods so that you create a diverse environment. I. I don't know if you. You used a garden analogy already before, and I find that this garden analogy often really helps people to understand. Like to say, if you have a garden that's overgrown, right. Which is a lot of times where. Where people show up there, they're like, oh, my gosh. And. And we take a look. Like, we've got like some bushes over here and some shrubs that haven't been pruned in a long time. They're way overgrowing. And then we have these others plants, like you said, the zucchini, that's like starving to death. And then we have a bunch of weeds also things that we don't really want in our garden. And now the soil is also damaged because we've been under so much stress and lack of nutrition. And so. So the. This garden is like, oh, my gosh. And we're like. And then the person comes to us and says, can you do anything to help me with this overgrowing gard? And we go, okay, yeah, but you know what? It's. It doesn't work to just come in and flatten the garden. Like, because sometimes it's tempting, right? Like, we might. People be like, can't do we just come through with a bulldozer and completely knock out the whole garden and start over. Now, sometimes again, as humans, we might be like, I'm. I'm tempted to do that, but actually what I find, and maybe you do too, and you. Is that the bulldozing the garden is not. Not really the best choice. The best choice is we got to come in and before we start fertilizing. Because if you just come in and start fertilizing and giving yourself a bunch of.

Building the soil. Yeah.

Then now you're. You're fertilizing the ones you don't want to grow. So you have to first prune the garden. It's like, okay, let's. Let's start pruning. Let's. Let's weed. Let's prune. Let's. And then we can slowly start to feed the ones we do want.

Yeah.

And then we can. And we got to restore a healthy soil. Right. We got to heal the. Even the gut. Intestinal lining. So because intestinal lining is the microbes need the intestinal Lining to grow on. And so then we can start to feed and regrow your garden in a healthy, balanced way so that it comes out to be this beautiful garden with a variety of different flowers and plants. That's right. I mean, I don't know. Does that analogy work?

Yeah, yeah, it's fun. But I mean, even just when we are pruning, I think we may have to kind of let some things just stay because if you prune too much, then we are having problems there as well. Because.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's a careful process, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a very careful process. And building the soil, adding all of the amendments so the soil is enriched is such an important step. And that's where you can't really pick and choose and say, okay, Akkermansia grows on polyphenolic compounds. Let's increase pomegranate, green tea and cacao. Fine. It may help Akkermansia, but it may also help other microbes. So I think a big over high level things of all my microbes do so well on feeding on foods that they really recognize as food and really looking at fiber as the big dietary component that they are so adept at digesting. And they produce short chain fatty acids, butyrate in particular. And if we can just break down the science to let me make more short chain fatty acids because then my energy is better because it goes and gives you signals to your mitochondrial mitochondria to make more ATP. It decreases and calms your inflammation down. You have better metabolic potential. So your dial is up rather than down. So you lose more weight, you maintain it. Or if you have SIBO or ibs, we can gain weight because you're probably not digesting a lot of nutrients at that point. So all of this starts with taking care of the gut, keeping in mind that the gut is so connected to the immune system, it's so connected to the brain, it's so connected to cardiovascular health. That's why my tagline is lifelong health health. Because it's not one thing, it's so many things. I mean you deal with a lot of people with hpv. And I think there's a study that came out that are 17 different taxa that are connected to just HPV. I mean that is pretty cool. That is so downstream. But there's having these taxa really increases chances of hpv. So connecting the dots, taking care of your vaginal microbiome. Because of that, the vaginal microbiome is connected to the gut microbiome, making sure your ph is Balanced or, you know, and having the right kind of bacteria in your, in your vaginal microbial population. And for that, caring for your gut, I think is a great starting point.

I, I completely agree. I see this all the time with, when I help patients with, who are dealing with hpv. And, and so for those of you listening, high risk HPV is a sexually transmitted virus virus that's associated some of the. HPV is associated with cancer risk. There's 14 types associated with cancer risk. And so a lot of times we're thinking the focus is all in the, in the vagina. And okay, we've got this virus in the vagina. But lo and behold, the researcher is really showing, as Anu mentioned, that the gut microbiome is connected to the vaginal microbiome. And so what I do is I really emphasize that we have to look at your gut health. Health. We have to look at not also how well you're digesting food. Is there leaky gut and is there an imbalance of the microbiome? Because if so, what's going on in the gut is absolutely affecting that vagina and your ability to protect yourself from hpv. And while.

Yes, and I think that's why you have such a success rate in clearing hpv, because you're not just saying, oh, it's just a periphery, but let's go deeper, let's see what is causing that immune response. Lungs. Because immunity has a lot to do with how the viral load is. So even something like HPV immune system is such a big part. And I think that's really amazing. And I love that.

Yeah, it's very exciting. I mean, for multiple reasons. Yeah. Like, so say, say the person has an overgrowth growth of bacteria that are then causing leaky gut and causing inflammation in the gut. And the person may not even have digestive symptoms or pain. But when we do testing, we can see that inflammat and that inflammation then can go to the vaginal area. And we know when there's inflammation in the vagina that increases susceptibility. But also, as you're saying, if the immune system's so busy in the gut trying to protect us from these microbes and even sometimes food sensitivities, then the immune system isn't as able to protect us from the microbes it needs to protect us from, like viruses.

Absolutely. And that has such a big part to play your, you know, oral tolerances, such an important part of all of this. And people on restrictive diets have very poor oral tolerance. So that affects Your immune health and you're not producing enough enzymes, let's say in the mouth, you know, starting with the mouth and that is so important. Chewing is important, making sure that you're producing enough saliva in the mouth so you're able to produce these enzymes, secretory IgA for example, to increase that enzyme load so you are able to digest from the get go, you know, the things that you, you are putting into your mouth. So it's a process and our system is incredible and it figures things out. Just needs some starting point, you know, it just needs a little bit of help and a few rules. We don't need 150 rules about eating. We just need simple rules, adequate protein, a variety of fibrous foods like plant based approaches, good fats. If most listeners are just saying, I see this on my plate every single day, that's a great starting point. Rather than going after single nutrients, oh, this nutrient is bad, this nutrient is good. How many are we going to chase down the thing as long as we have a simple rule, Whole unprocessed foods, you know, and they make it on my plate pretty regularly. That's a great starting point for most people.

Now in the book, I know you have some recipes as well for people to help them get some ideas of. Okay, here's the kind of recipes or foods to incorporate. Tell us more about that, the recipes so people can look forward to how, what those look like.

And I have clients from all over. Yes, granted we are in a melting pot, but food is so personal, food is so unique to, I mean the cuisines are so something that we either like or dislike. So I didn't want to just have recipes from one, let's say one cultural base or anything like that. Yes, research is showing us that Mediterranean diets, diets that are plant forward are really helpful to the microbiome. But I wanted to offer my readers an approach that is all inclusive. Whether you are African American or Mexican or Indian, there's a recipe there that respects your culture because every culture has something healthy and exciting to offer. So when you get that as a starting point, then you say, ah, this is where the fiber comes from in my culture, you know, it could be different things for different people. Then the sustainability is there. If I gave, let's say an Indian person, you know, a Mediterranean diet and say this is what you need to eat, they may do it for like about a week. And after that saying, where's my dal, where's my, you know, so that's typically what happens to most diets. They fail because they are not connected to our cultural preferences or our unique preferences. So I think that is a big part of the book. The first part of the book is section one is all about the microbiome, hopefully in very simple language that you're going to find exciting and to discover. Section 2 is the framework of the Flourish diet that I proposed propose, which is eat any protein that you wish to eat. Just eat enough fiber for these guys so you're both happy and well fed. And then section three are about 50 recipes that are culturally diverse and are high in fiber in different prebiotic fibers. And it's a good starting point. So I don't really necessarily talk about fermented foods and things like that because it's not a starting point for most people. People. And then the app that goes with the book has way more, you know, it has lots of recipes, it has tools that you can implement right away, you know, if you want to do like a protein flip or calculate your protein or your fiber intake and then there's a membership that goes along with it as well to help a little bit more high touch, you know, as far as help.

Ah, that sounds amazing. And so, so I'm so grateful for you for creating all of that. I can't wait for everyone to benefit from it so they can get your book. The flourish from within feed your gut for lifelong health at Amazon. Is there another website or something they should go to to find the app and the membership?

Well, it's landing on Amazon on the 29th, July 29th, so and then yeah, and then before that it's on my website, but after that it's going to be on Amazon. They can also, can also come to my website and, and once they do buy the book, there's an QR code inside and they click on it, they find the app.

Very good. Oh my gosh. So, so good. I can't wait for everyone to listen and I'm sure they, they might have some questions, so feel free to send us your questions and I'll also put the contact information to be able to reach Anu for you, those of you who are interested as well. Thank you again so much for joining.

Thank you so much, Dr. Donnie, it was a pleasure.

Ah, so good. And I think it's such an important topic and there's been so much confusion and controversy. So I'm so glad you're setting the record straight and really helping people to understand how they can eat to feed their microbes to benefit their health. Yeah, so good.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

And thanks all everyone for joining us here at How Human Seal. I look forward to connecting with you for the next episode. See you soon. Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources visit. Drdani.