WTH?!? Episode 114: Gut-Brain Connection with Dr. Vincent Pedre

Welcome back Everybody. I am Dr. Greg Eckel and this is what the health and we have got an entertaining one today. It is the gut brain connection, psychobiotics and mental health. My guest, Dr. Vincent Pedre. He's the medical director of the Pedre Integrative Health and founder of Dr. Pedre Wellness, nutraceutical consultant for Nature MD and Orthomolecular Products. He's also the CEO of Happy Gut Life and a functional medicine certified practitioner in practice in New York City and also a very, very fun guy. He's got the author of Happy Gut the cleansing program to help you lose weight, gain energy, eliminate pain and featuring his proprietary blueprint for healing the gut the Gut Care program. He has helped thousands around the world resolve their gut related health issues. Welcome aboard, Dr. Vincent.

Thanks for having me.

Yes, you are very welcome. That is, you are a busy doctor and up out educating thousands around the globe around this gut brain connection. And I love the title of your book and your program there, the Happy Gut. You know, we're going to talk about there's loads of research dollars going into the gut brain axis right now and you've been way ahead of the curve with really singling that out. I am curious though, as a functional medicine doctor, what got you so interested in gut health?

Oh yeah, well, it was actually something that was under my nose for the longest of times, but I had learned to live with it and just considered it part of my my normal functioning until I learned about the gut microbiome and gut physiology and realized that what I thought was normal actually was not normal and that I didn't have to live that way because what had happened is I always had gut issues as a child. Suffered from constipation at times really painful and severe. But then what really I think impacted my gut was the 20 plus rounds of antibiotics that I was put on throughout my teenage years for all sorts of infections from sinusitis to throat infections to lung infections. And that was just, you know, 1980s, early 90s, like it was just the thing to do. You have an infection, the doctor throws an antibiotic at you. I think what they didn't realize is being put on two to three rounds of antibiotics per year. My gut never had a chance to recover. As a result, I had developed, you know, and I can, I can say this now looking back, I had developed a dysbiosis. So I think decimated my good gut bacteria and that led to leaky gut. The leaky gut made me sensitive to gluten and dairy among some Other foods that I discovered. And it took about two decades for me to unravel this whole thing. And it happened at a time when I was just kind of thinking, well, I just have to conform to the fact that I may eat out and my gut's going to either be okay or it's not going to be okay. And I think a lot of people who are out there, they probably think, like, stuff is happening just randomly and they can't put their finger on it. Like, why? Sometimes I eat out, I don't feel well, other times I'm fine. And of course, it's always in the details. And when I discovered that my gut microbiome had been decimated, that I had leaky gut, I changed my diet. I started incorporating fermented foods, I introduced probiotics, and really put myself on a gut healing plan. And it was around that time that I was really fascinated with gut health. And as a doctor working with patients, I got really curious about the interconnections with gut health. So I think my ear would be propped up maybe a little more when patients told me they had gut issues. And they also presented with migraines or they had anxiety, they had depression, and they also felt it in their gut. They would lose their appetite or they would feel like they had to run to the bathroom. And I think everybody can relate to that, feeling your nerves in your stomach. So it was that personal journey that then led me to an incredible curiosity and fascination with working with patients with gut health issues that I say kind of led me to become an accidental gut expert, because it wasn't like I had chosen to go down the track of becoming a gastroenterologist, which I'm not, because I don't do procedures. But I ended up there through the functional medicine side, simply because I was doing what I loved. And as I helped people heal their gut issues, they would refer first, friends, family, loved ones. And little by little, I realized, wow, there's a lot of people out there with gut health issues, gut related health problems, and they don't know what to do. And it can be complicated because it's a complex ecosystem, but at the same time, it can be quite simple.

Yeah.

And it can come down to knowing what foods to eat, what foods not to eat, what to expose yourself to, and how to put yourself on a gut healing regimen.

Yeah, you know, it can. I definitely, you know, we hear from patients every day. It's very confusing, especially when you get on the Internet, start, you know, searching for yourself out there on what the solution Is. Is that how you got into functional medicine then? Is that of your own desire and need? Is that what led to it? Or did you find functional medicine before?

Yeah, that's a great question. So before I went to medical school, I had finished college in three and a half years. So I had actually gone back home. I had eight months off to kind of get mentally ready to go to medical school. And there was an elephant in the room that was sitting in the background that I knew I had not addressed. And that elephant in the room was my severe fear of needles and the fact that I passed out every time I had a needle. Alcohol. The smell of alcohol made me feel queasy. And, you know, I had gotten into medical school, I had gotten a scholarship, and then I was like, okay, what now? Like, I've. I'm actually going to go to medical school. Yeah, but how can I become a doctor if I don't really jive with needles? And needles are going to be a part of my life as a doctor? And, and I have done things like volunteer at a hospital and done. And volunteered at a community clinic and stuff, but I didn't have to handle needles myself. So what that did is actually it ended up being the inciting factor that shaped everything that came after that. Because instead of either running away and saying, I can't become a doctor because I'm afraid of needles or I'm afraid of needles, so let me go to the doctor and ask for medication to help me deal with this fear. So maybe put me on anxiolytics instead. What I did is I went to the bookstore and I started researching self help books. And I chanced upon a book called the relaxation response by Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard. And it basically teaches you breathing techniques to help gain control of the autonomic nervous system. And I started practicing breath work. This is me at. I mean, you've got to put your mind back in time. This is January of 96. I'm about to go to medical school. I'm 21 years old, and I'm discovering breath work at a time when breath work was not something that was in the vernacular. So I started doing breathwork. Breathwork led me to meditation. I started doing guided meditation. That led me to discover yoga. So I started doing yoga, and that became my regimen for the next couple of months until I got to medical school. And I was able to get my vaccine series because I knew kind of like the. It was almost like my Olympics was getting the three vaccines for hep B for medical school. And I had at least the first one before medical school started by August. So it was like I was training for my Olympics. But my Olympics was I wasn't going to pass out when I got the shot. And I was using all sorts of meditation, breath work, visualization. And I passed the test the first time. I mean, yeah, my didn't pass out. I didn't pass out. I was sitting in the waiting room. I could feel my heart starting to race. I could feel, like, cold sweat. And then I just breathed myself through. I calmed myself down. I closed my eyes, and I was able to get through it. And I think, you know, once you do it, once, you're like, okay, I can do this. And I tell this story because it shaped the type of doctor that I would become. Because during that time, I also discovered the works of Deepak Chopra and Dr. Andrew Weil and started reading their books. And by the time I got to medical school, I was meditating on a daily basis, and I was doing yoga. And I didn't, you know, this is 96. So, you know, yoga, meditation, breath work.

That wasn't. That was not mainstream, for sure.

That wasn't. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for, mainstream. So I was kind of embarrassed to share that. So I did not share that with most of my classmates. I had one confidant who was one of my best friends, and she ended up doing yoga with me. But everybody knew me as the Zen guy. What they didn't know is that a year ago, eight months ago, I was an anxious person, my mind running all the time. I was that type A personality. I could look. I had developed the ability to look calm on the outside, but the inside was not a reflection of the outside. The inside of my head was a storm. And it was through meditation, breathwork, visualization, that I was able to gain control over that. And it shaped my attitude towards medicine and to. Towards what is possible. Yeah, Because I was able to conquer something without medication. And the benefits were greater than anything you could have achieved with an antianxiety medication, because it allowed me to be better at all aspects of my life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's tremendous. What a great happen chance in the bookstore there. Right. If you believe in the happen chance.

So I tell this story. So, you know, just. You asked how did I get to functional medicine? I was already kind of heading in that direction. I discovered Dr. Mark Hyman's work, and I was reading his books, learning about functional medicine. And in the meantime, I had finished my training at the hospital and around that time I had taken a year, I call my sabbatical year. And during that year, I actually did a yoga teacher training. The yoga teacher training led me to then decide that I wanted to do a medical acupuncture training. And it was the medical acupuncture that taught me systems biology and the interrelationship between all of the different body systems. So it took me away from the way I had been taught medicine where imagine in traditional medicine, the lungs are pulled out, and when you're dealing with a patient with a lung issue, you're just dealing with the lungs. If they have a heart issue, you're just dealing with the heart. If they have a kidney issue, you're just dealing with a kidney. And you can imagine what a nightmare it was when you had a patient in the hospital and you have all the different specialists consulting and they're saying different things that might conflict with each other. Suddenly, I find myself looking and thinking about the body in a different way. I mean, yoga already had gotten me to think about the body as this whole through breath work, looking at how people hold their bodies. But it was really the medical acupuncture that opened my mind to systems biology and the fact that the lungs are not isolated from the heart, from the gut, the kidneys, everything is working together. And it was. It was really that. That then allowed me to make sense of functional medicine. Because when you say the word functional, I mean, now I understand why they chose it. But functional is not a word that, when you say it, immediately you're like, aha. Okay, yeah, I get what this is. Like, what in the world is that? Like, functional. Like, what does that mean? Yeah. So I wasn't really getting it, and I was trying to decide what was going to be the next thing. And after a couple of months of research and reading about functional medicine, I finally decided to commit. And I've never looked back since then.

That's awesome. You know, that's. That's. I didn't know that about you. So thank you for sharing that story and that it's interesting to see how different people come to that kind of more holistic approach. And whether it be from your own needs and. Or your life path, that really has transformed you. I mean, because I would say you still maintain that air of Zen master about you. So that's great.

That's good. Yes, that's good to hear.

And that component. So, I mean, I think that plays into, you know, really the mindset component of the gut brain axis. And how does the mind play a role here. I mean, your stories are really illustrating exactly what, what that is and how that played out for you. And then what are you seeing in practice, like is that's got to be a foundational piece for you in what you're training and teaching and educating people on.

It's a. It's a bi directional system. Right. And I. What the way I describe it is that the gut and the brain are connected through the vagus nerve. We can think of the vagus nerve as a telephone wire that connects the brain and the gut and they speak to each other through that telephone wire. So the gut might pick up the phone and call the brain and tell them these things are going on here and vice versa. And the fascinating thing, I was sitting at a lecture with Dr. Datis Kharazian and he was talking about what happens 30 minutes after a traumatic brain injury. And within 30 minutes of a traumatic brain injury, you lose vagal tone. And so the vagus nerve becomes dysfunctional. And as a result, gut permeability goes up. And I thought that was really fascinating because up to that point in functional medicine, I had been learning everything about what causes increasing gut permeability. Exposure to antibiotics, anti inflammatory medications like ibuprofen, birth control pill, stress, alcohol, poor diet. But now he was telling me that it also can come from the other direction. I thought that is really amazing because we're taught is that 70% of the communication through the vagus is actually going from the gut to the brain, unless feedback is coming from the brain to the gut. But knowing that there is an effect on gut permeability and how important, I mean, gut permeability, leaky gut is ground zero for so many diseases that being able to get that vagal tone back to normal is, I think, one of the most important things in healing the gut and healing disease. And that's something that I'm really excited to share in my new book, which will be coming out next year. I write about the vagus nerve and all that, and have breathwork exercises and meditations for the gut, which I think are so important. But it's really about getting to that place where your body feels safe. And when you're in ventral vagal tone, your body has this sense of security, of safety. You're in parasympathetic. The body can heal itself. Most people, unfortunately, are either living in fight or flight, sympathetic mode, which I always say. Fight or flight is like an attack on the gut. Those catecholamines increase gut permeability or they're beyond that. And they're in what we call dorsal vagal tone, which is you're stunned, you're depressed, you're anxious, you can't, you're like stuck, you know. So the goal for a lot of people is to get them into this more Zen relaxed state. And I think it's really important to recognize that because, yes, human healing the gut requires proper diet. Yes. Maybe sometimes probiotics, supplements, leaky gut repair formulas. But what I've found is that you cannot out diet, you cannot out supplement a stressed out lifestyle. So you've got to address it from both directions.

Yeah, that is a big missing link for so many people. I mean, it's like the old statement is you're not going to eat your way out of a bag potato chips. Right. Like you're not going to get there. And this platform sometimes is unconscious. Right. So how would people know if they're stuck in a sympathetic dominant or fight or flight stress response? Because so many people are walking around in that state, but they think that it's normal. Right. Like the same component of how you started out on your own journey of just thinking, well, this is just normal. Like this is all I've known, like. So you didn't know anything different? Right.

I will say this, that when I suffered from gut issues that were unpredictable and recurrent, I knew that that was not right. But I called it my normal. Sure. So I think there's always an intuitive part of the person that knows this is not right. Sometimes what I tell people is to do basically and itemize all the things that they are dealing with, everything that's on their plate, and then look at that and ask yourself, is this a lot?

Right, Right.

And I totally agree with you because some people, they don't know that they're living stressed out, but they do know that when they get home, they need a drink to unwind from the workday. Their sleep is disrupted. They either have trouble falling asleep or they wake up in the middle of the morning, they have constant racing thoughts, they tend to worry a lot internally. Maybe they have, you know, they may or may not have upset stomach from time to time, maybe have to run to the bathroom. Things don't sit it well. So your body will communicate it with you. It's just a question of whether people are listening. And I agree, a lot of times I've had to actually point it out to people that, you know, you're stressed out, like, Right.

It's like a relief, like, oh, that's what it is. Yes.

You know, you're managing a lot. And not that I want to, you know, hang my head on the stress corner and blame everything on stress and. But I do have to say that stress is a huge factor in a lot of disease processes. And it's a modifier. It's a disease modifier. Even if you have pain in your body, if you have pain in your body and you're able to breathe through it, you can actually reduce pain signaling in the body. And I used to. I don't know if I still have it as good as I did. I used to pride myself in having a very high pain threshold. And it was because I could breathe through pain. I could sort of dissociate myself from pain. And it's because if you're able to lower your stress response, you. You modify the way your body's behaving and you can do that through breath work.

So that autonomic response, you can modify it by breathwork or meditation along those lines. So this component of. So what do you see then? Are you like prescribing meditation to folks or for that gut brain access and that relationship. It sounds like that's ground zero for the work that you're doing.

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, that's a big part of what I do. And I'll prescribe different types of breathwork exercises. Sometimes with, you know, deep breath holds and then humming while. While exhaling to create a vibration here for the vagus nerve sometimes. Yesterday I was teaching a patient how to do holotropic breath work. So a double. A belly inhale, a chest inhale, and then an exhale. Sure. And I don't know if people have heard about that or seen holotropic breath. Breath work. I used to think that it had to be done fast. Like it had to be inhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, exhale. But I worked with a holotropic breathwork teacher, Jesse Gross, and he showed me that you can actually do it slow and still get it feels like it might take a little bit longer, but you get an amazing response. Hmm.

Well, talk about that then. So for folks that aren't familiar for with holotropic breathwork, what are the benefits of it? What? Where did it come from?

Yeah. Oh, God, you're quizzing me now on the originator.

I don't remember Stanislav Broth, but the use of it, because you're using it with patients or like in that particular instance, why do you use that over different breath work with patients?

You know what, it depends on the patient. And what I think will be easy for them to do and learn, but it's one way to activate the vagus nerve.

Got it.

And the interesting thing that I thought is really cool, what Jesse teaches is if you're feeling anxious, meet the anxiety with your breath. So maybe when you start breathing, your breath is a bit faster because you're matching your emotional state to the breath. And as you keep going, you're going to find that that emotional state starts to drop, the anxiety level starts to drop, and your breath also starts to slow down. And I thought that was really interesting because his viewpoint is that if you're really anxious, so imagine you're kind of like vibrating fast and you're buzzing to tell you to then just do slow breathing.

Right? Yeah, disconnect.

It's not going to match where you're at.

Right.

You know, unless you're a Zen master that can just drop into that slow breath work and it gets you into that state.

Sometimes so many people, you know, when you say meditation, it's like a four letter word for them. They're like, what are you talking about? I can't even sit still for a minute. You know, my mind is going so rapidly and I've tried that. I can't do that. I get so restless, you know, all of those things come up.

That's why I focus on breath work. Because what I've realized is that it's, I think our, our whole approach to meditation is backwards. Yeah. I think we, we people think that meditation is like, okay, I'm going to sit down now. I'm going to, I'm going to clear my mind of all these.

Nothing happening up there. Right.

And, and it's going to be perfect. I'm going to. And you know, but the truth is that it's very hard to do that, especially if you're going from whatever state you've been. Like, maybe you've had a stressful day, you've got home, maybe kids are crying, screaming, who knows what's going on? Husband, wife, whatever. So what I tell people is you need to breathe first in order to meditate. Because the breath work will start to change the internal environment and get you into a state where then you can calm your mind. Because the brain does what the brain follows, what the body does.

Yeah.

So if, if you start creating a sense of calm and safety in your body, it's going to create a sense of calm within your mind. So I, my hack for that is start with breath work first. And sometimes I tell people you're, you're not meditating, you're just going to do breath work. And that's the only goal is to. To do breath work. And don't even worry about the amount of time. Like, don't even. I'll tell them, you know, set your alarm for five minutes, a timer, five minutes, and do it for five minutes and then you're done. But don't count the time, don't think about the time. You know, just let it pass. A lot of times what happens is you start realizing that five minutes passes like that. After you've done it a couple of times, the next thing you know, you're going to 10 minutes, and then 10 minutes go by like that. Then you're at 15 minutes, then maybe you're at 20 minutes because it starts contracting time. You know, it puts you into that brain space where the time continuum is just. It's bent. So, you know, space time starts to distort itself because you're just present in the moment. You're focusing on the breath. And I think this is a very important aspect of really creating that connection with the gut brain. And why I've got three chapters in my upcoming book, all about the brain gut connection and the importance of breath work and. And some meditations for the gut. Love it. And. And the. The truth is that you cannot, you cannot heal the gut fully if you ignore this one piece.

Yeah, it's a showstopper. I mean, it's like a big hole in the bottom of the bucket if you're not dealing with that. You know, it's interesting, right, because you're coming at it from the gut realm and I'm coming at it from the brain realm. And that vagus nerve is so integral. We're showing Parkinson's sometimes starts 10 to 20 years prior to any central nervous system stuff from the gut. Right. Traveling up the vagus nerve. So there's the Brock hypothesis. So all of the neurotransmitters in the gut form there. Which then brings me up to all of the research that's coming out on the microbiome and in particular with centurion. So those that are living over 100 years old, what are we learning from those folks that have been around for 100 years on the planet between their gut microbiome and just healthy aging? What do you see?

Yeah, this is really fascinating because when they've looked at the gut microbiome of centenarians, one thing that they have found is that some of them seem to have gut bacteria that actually reduce inflammation.

Really.

And they Also seem to have bacteria that make them more resistant to infections or actually support the body through infections. And maybe this is why they tend to be more resilient over time. Again, these are observational studies. These are not double blind, placebo controlled studies. These are just looking at the gut microbiome of centenarians and saying, hey, this is what we found. There were some trends here and these trends maybe explain something really interesting.

Right.

You know?

Right. So yeah, just to be clear, it's not saying that those bugs created the centenarian and, and that health. But.

And they were different. They were different depending on the region too. Huh. So it's not, it can be region specific, which wouldn't be surprising because, you know, there's centenarians in Okinawa, Japan, there's also centenarians in Sardinia, Italy, but their diets are not exactly the same. You would think that there's slight differences in the makeup of their gut microbiome based on the types of foods that they're eating.

Right, right. Yeah. So it's kind of the chicken or the egg there. Right. Was this a byproduct of their lifestyle or was it the bugs that helped create the lifestyle or a little bit of both. Right, yeah.

And I think it's always multifactorial. So one interesting study that I ran into at a conference from a researcher at McGill University was looking at the gut microbiome of aging mice and seeing is there a different gut microbiome as mice get older? There does seem to be changes in the microbiome that happen with aging. One of the things that those changes result in is more inflammation in the body. One of the things that we're conjecturing is there in these areas of the world where centenarians tend to live, they're usually in multi generational households. Is there sharing of the microbiome between centenarians and their grandkids or great grandkids, and maybe that allows for them to keep a younger looking microbiome than they would otherwise. And that could be one of the reasons that's responsible for the fact that they age better. You know, it's just, it's another one of those questions like, you know, is that a factor? You know, I think, I think it's multifactorial. I mean, I think also in those areas of the world their, their perception of stress or their perceived stress in life is, is not as great. And they have very tight knit communities, family units. So I think there's probably a lot of different factors that play into that.

Sure.

But the one thing that keeps popping up as a commonality is inflammation and that certain gut bacteria can increase inflammation and other ones decrease inflammation. And inflammation is the common denominator in all disease.

Sure, yeah. And can be stimulated by stressors as well.

Right, Yeah. I mean we know that stress increases cortisol and high cortisol is going to cause alterations in the gut microbiome. It's going to favor bacteria that are less favorable to our survival.

Now on, so just on this component of correlation, not causation, but what are some interesting. So there's a whole component around certain gut bugs and mood like a psychobiotic. So what are, what's the, what's the research showing around that? So you, you know, you'll see it, you know these tables of different strains of bacterium that's normally found in the gut and then possibly associated with different disease states, possibly as some corrective agents. I recently came across one not in mental health, but on a weight loss probiotic. They were showing giving this specific strain was helping with weight loss.

Yeah. And usually that particular strain is Lactobacillus gg. There's a specific strain of that that has been found to help promote weight loss irregardless of diet, which is quite fascinating. Yeah. And I was just reading today, I know this is an aside a researcher that is basically creating pills from the poop of athletes and the theory is that they have, what they found in high performance athletes is that they have a type of bacteria called, it's called Verrucobacteraceae I think is the genus. And what it does is it metabolizes lactic acid which tends to build when you're doing competitive sports. And by doing that it actually increases endurance. So what they were finding is that by giving people a probiotic, basically a poop pill, that it was increasing their endurance at the gym by anywhere between 10%, even higher over time.

And that, you know, that is, that is definitely moving the needle, especially for that performance athlete and then has all kinds of downstream effects for the rest of us mere mortals. Right, well that, I mean that's really interesting. Right. So giving your up regulating certain gut bugs, it's like a fecal matter transfer for athletic.

And fascinating because I had read about this before, it's either in Scotland or Ireland University College Cork was studying the gut microbiome of athletes and had found the same thing, that there were certain bacteria that were more predominant in athletes than sedentary people. And the question was, is it the, you know, what is it? Because if it's not diet then is it the athletics? And it could be because if you're, when you're exercising more, you're producing more lactic acid, maybe that favors, you're feeding that type of bacteria. So then it tends to grow in more abundance. But I just published a blog post on anxiety and the connection between the gut and anxiety. And it was California Institute of Technology did a study on mice and they found that certain mice who exhibited greater anxiety behavior had a higher production of a certain metabolite called 4 EPS, 4 ethyl phenyl sulfate in the gut that has also been found in higher amounts in patients with schizophrenia as well as autistic children with autism. It seems that when four EPS gets to the brain, it modifies the oligodendrocytes in a way that causes an increase in anxiety. Again, really fascinating to see that there are these connections with what's going on in the gut. I think still we're doing a lot of kind of like, you know, like, oh, look, that's interesting.

Yeah, let's look at that.

That's interesting. So then what do we do to then improve people's, you know, if you're suffering from anxiety, you're like, okay, well what am I supposed to do?

Right?

Or if you have depression, which is to me, a brain that's inflamed. Like, how do you resolve that?

Yeah.

And one avenue is to really look at the gut and just, even just going back to the foundation of what we know is going to improve the makeup of the gut microbiome. And it's very simple things that maybe listeners will not like me saying. But it's cutting out sugar.

Yep.

It's cutting out alcohol or cutting back on alcohol, because again, alcohol is sugar also modifies the gut microbiome. It's for some people cutting back on gluten because gluten, some people metabolize gluten in ways that produces neurotoxic metabolites. It can also mean cutting back or cutting out dairy. And doing these interventions can help the gut start to heal itself. When you also introduce foods like fermented foods, so cultured foods, which again, could be dairy, could be non dairy sources like sauerkraut, could be kefir, yogurt. There's a lot of sources now that are both dairy based and non dairy based. And there was an interesting study that came out last year from Stanford University that was looking at a fiber rich diet versus a fermented foods diet, like a diet high in fiber versus a diet high in fermented. Foods and what does it do? And in functional medicine we're always teaching like eat the rainbow of vegetables, eat a lot of fiber, Nobody gets enough fiber. And the, even though this was a small study, I think it was about 40 participants, mostly women, mostly white women. So we can't say that it can generalize fully, but it did offer some really interesting conclusions because when they, they looked at the results, what they found was that the diet that was actually more beneficial for the gut and that increased gut microbiome diversity, which is really important for health, was the fermented foods diet and not so much the fiber rich diet. The other thing that they looked at, they looked at 19 inflammatory markers and guess which one of the diets reduced those markers the most.

Well, the way that you're leading me on makes me think it's the fermented one.

Yes. Yeah. Which honestly, if I, if I had been asked to guess before I read the results to that study, yeah, I would have actually guessed it was a fiber rich diet that would reduce the inflammatory markers. What the fiber rich diet did do, which is really important in general for overall health, gut, brain, everything is it modified the immune response. So the fiber rich diet helped balance out the immune response.

Interesting. You know, I had seen some earlier research maybe a decade ago just showing a fiber rich diet will increase the species, the diversity of the microbiome as one of the better ways to assure you have a healthy microbiome or whole ecosystem in the gut. So it's interesting to hear like. Well, actually a fermented food, you know, had a better likelihood there. And I'm, I'm curious because I don't want our listeners and viewers to go out just load up on fermented food because here in the Northwest I have seen people do that. Right. Of a little is good, more is better. Yeah. And then they, the American way, all kinds of different, all kinds of histamine reactions and like really tanking their health. So this is within moderation. That's a specific study, but it's important like that's how we think and clinically of pulling this information into the living laboratory of clinic and for helping you all as to why we do the show. So maybe give some specifics on like dosing, like if somebody was going to start eating some more like traditional foods and nourishing tradition style, like there is a lot of wisdom.

You don't want to go 0 to 60 all of a sudden. And the other thing is, you know, I just, I just juxtaposed fiber rich diet versus a fermented foods diet. Yeah, I'm not saying, and I don't think that was the goal of the researchers to say that you should be eating a lot of fiber or you should be eating a lot of fermented foods. I think the answer is in between. You should be eating both. And the amount that you eat depends on your body. In general, the majority of Americans don't get enough fiber. They get anywhere between 10 and 15 grams of fiber, whereas the recommended amount is anywhere between 25 and 35 grams per day. So most people, you're not going to go wrong by increasing your fiber because you're probably not getting enough fiber. Fermented foods, like you said, a bit trickier because you can't go from 0 to 60 if you haven't been having any fermented foods. The best thing to do is start by testing out and you can start, let's say, you know, let's use kefir as an example. Maybe you start with a half shot glass and you have that and you do that every day and you see how you feel. Because when you introduce these foods, you can also copy cause something called die off, especially if you've got imbalances in the gut, if you have yeast overgrowth, you might actually feel kind of crappy for the first couple of days. The first week, even up to two weeks, your brain might be foggy. You know, these are all signs that you might have some bad bugs in the gut. And the, the new good bugs in the kefir are going in and kind of like battling it out with them. But during that period, they're going to make you feel crappier. There was an interesting study done in England. Women who were put on a fermented drink, a kefir, and before they did it, they had them fill out an anxiety questionnaire. And, you know, they were women who were suffering from anxiety. And then two weeks after taking the kefir drink every day, they had them fill out the question questionnaire. And overall, there was a significant change in their level of anxiety from drinking the kefir. And we know that lactobacillus, certain strains of lactobacillus, like plantarum, can produce neurotransmitters like gaba, which help the body relax itself. Or they can modulate GABA secretion in the brain by causing signaling of the vagus nerve, which then sends a signal to the brain that controls the GABA receptors in the brain. And that's usually mediated through serotonin receptor endings that are on the vagus nerve all along the gut lining. So even through serotonin being produced in the gut can affect GABA in the brain and then control the level of excitation in the brain. It makes sense that a fermented drink could actually have some benefits. But like you said, you don't want to go from zero to 60 and sometimes you want to start as small as like a quarter teaspoon or a teaspoon and slowly work your way up.

So in that English study, what did they find? Like, so they were having just like a couple days worth of the beverage and then. Or were they continuing for the two.

Weeks of the study every day for two weeks?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow, that's awesome. So and, and that's a specific strain. So I always have the question, you know, when we do sampling, you know, we're testing and you know I give the analogy is we're taking like a drop of water out of the Olympic sized swimming pool to really get a sense as to, you know, how many probiotics are you needing to take to actually make a difference in there. Right.

That's a really. And you know what, and I, I had that same viewpoint because also thinking about like fermented foods, they're going to have certain amount of counts. They're certainly depending on how they've been made, not going to be always super powerful. And, and that's why when I was reading the study, I was actually expecting the fiber group to create the greater diversity because I thought, you know, the fermented, I mean, yeah, you get some good bacteria and fermented foods. But what we do know is that it's not just about the bacteria, the probiotic bacteria that are in the fermented food is that the fermented, the probiotic bacteria in the ferments cross feed other favorable bugs in the gut and they can actually, what they find is they increase the, the residents of other favorable bacteria by cross feeding them metabolic byproducts that they make. So, so then it makes sense. Sure. That they're going in and it's almost like they're a conductor and they're kind of like controlling the entire environment.

Yeah, I like that. I like that vision of a conductor like having the innate immune system or the intelligence around the gut. I mean I think it is such a powerful intervention across the board. Right of start with the gut or healing the gut because of all of the communication and self signaling that happens around there. And you know, you shared with you know, over 70% afferent like to the brain information from the gut via the vagus nerve. And so having that more of a, I use this symphony analogy, it's nice.

And it's being. And that information sometimes is being sent through neurotransmitter that was produced by a single cell bacteria.

Yeah, one single cell. I know. I mean it is really phenomenal, the whole thing. Like just this, you know, these structures we're walking around in, you know, on kind of coming down the tail end of the show here and you've touched on the mental health component, but let's, let's dive in there a little bit more because it is, you know, now more than ever we know we're needing some, some sanity or some groundedness around our headspaces. The mental health and gut health. You've shared some studies around with anxiety, some linkages with spectrum disorders along those lines. What else are you seeing in the mental health realm with gut health?

Definitely depression as well. And like I was explaining before, that a depressed brain is an inflamed brain. Usually when you have leaky gut, which is an inflamed state of the gut and it allows for. Now they've actually tested it and they find that when the gut is leaky, inflammatory substances leak through the gut. Even bacteria and bacterial DNA can get across the gut lining as well as something called endotoxin. And when the gut barrier is leaky, it will also cause the blood brain barrier to become leaky. And the blood brain barrier is like a special filtration system that protects the circulation of the brain so that even when things get into your body, your brain is still protected, but that goes out the door when your gut becomes leaky. And then the brain is susceptible to all sorts of inflammatory substances. And we know, for example, that endotoxin, which is secreted by gram negative bacteria that live in the large intestine, that it activates an inflammatory cascade inside a lot of different cell types, muscle, liver, pancreas, and even the brain, the hypothalamus, it turns on a pathway that's called the NF kappa B pathway, which is an inflammatory pathway. When your gut is inflamed, the brain becomes inflamed as well. So depression is kind of a way to think of. It is like your brain is on fire. And the way to put the fire out in the brain is to put the fire out in your gut first. And we do that by fixing the diet, taking out inflammatory foods, sometimes introducing probiotics, introducing foods like we talked about, like fermented fiber rich foods, and then Healing nutrients for the gut. One of the most powerful nutrients for leaky gut is L glutamine, which is an amino acid. And it's one of the most well researched nutrients for reversing leaky gut. But I also like to use powders that have all sorts of other mucilaginous herbs like marshmallow root extract, slippery elm bark, aloe vera, dgl, deglycerisionated licorice and quercetin also, which is a bioflavonoid that acts as a prebiotic for the gut bacteria and helps improve the mucus lining of the gut. So, you know, putting this all together, you mentioned my gut care program at the beginning, which is in my book Happy Gut. It basically is four simple steps that are designed to reverse leaky gut and improve a whole bunch of health parameters as a result. And what's always been surprising to me is how when people heal their gut, other things get better as well. And I'm not going to say that, you know, if you heal your gut, your depression will be gone because I think mental health issues are more complex than just unidirectional gut to the brain. There's always other things that might need to be unraveled, unpacked through therapy, through whatnot, in order to be able to figure out where it's all coming from. And of course, like I talked about breath work, even vagal nerve stimulation has been improved, approved by the FDA for treatment resistant depression. And they find that vagal nerve stimulation devices can. Actually there was one study, I'm just thinking back to long time ago when I looked at this improved patients who had treatment resistant depression who had not improved under any circumstances. I think the response rate with vagal nerve stimulation was 37%. It's not 100%, but still that's a good number of people who otherwise were not responding to any other therapy.

Nothing to nothing else. Right? Yeah, that's a good number there for recalcitrant. Yeah.

And we know that vagal nerve stimulation is going to help improve gut permeability as well.

Vagal nerve stimulation, there's wearable devices that do that.

There are FDA approved devices that can be used by a person. They stimulate the vagus nerve through the neck.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So not shock.

It's quite, it's, it's quite fascinating. There's one that I got for my son, that's a company called Sensate.

Yeah.

And it's a, it's a, it's a vibrational vagal nerve stimulation device that looks like a Pebble and you put it on, you lie back and you put it on your chest.

Yeah.

And it comes with meditation music and you, you listen to it and you lie back while it's vibrating and stimulating your vagus and it puts you into a relaxed state.

Oh, that's great.

Another way to kind of biohack people say, well, I can't meditate. Well, maybe you need a vagal nerve stimulation device to help you get into that relaxed state.

Yeah. As a little reminder, I've heard of the Apollo as well is something that does something similar with a strap around the ankle. You know, we are living at an amazing time with all of these. The interconnectedness of different therapeutics and via wearable devices to then diet, nutrition, to mindset, to movement. You know, and really we know and we are going to share with all of you out there is it's all of the things like we need a full court press. It is not just one purple pill that is going and that is why you are listening. I know, I know it. I am speaking to the choir out there. But you know, it is, that's why.

I'm bringing it is the combination of these things. And at the same time I'll say to the listeners because that can feel really overwhelming. Choose one thing and conquer that one thing at a time. So say, you know, I'm going to learn breath work. So for the next two to three weeks, just dedicate yourself to breath work. And then the next step, I'm going to start improving my diet and choose the one thing you're going to change in your diet. You know, some people, they, they do better in a phased approach where you perfect each step and then you move on to the next one. You keep stacking things in.

Yeah.

That way it feels less overwhelming.

Yeah. Or I mean I'll put a shameless plug in for your program too. And we're going to share all of your, you know, how to contact Dr. Vincent in the show notes. But you know, get into a proven program that can support you making the changes. I mean, you know, like that's the component where you are not out there by yourself or alone. Like nobody needs to go through it alone. And why I keep bringing these top notch experts on the show. So for all of us to learn and share because that's, we get through this together. Right. In that oneness sense of, of what's happening out there. There's a reason why you stayed on to listen to the end of the show here.

And so thank you for the shameless plug. Indeed.

Anytime, Dr. Vincent. Because you know, I only bring on people that I trust. So I'm vetting for the community. And so like it's a big deal for me, you know, like they know and I wouldn't be doing the show without our listeners and viewers. So thank you all for tuning in. In the last two minutes, what would you like to impart? Any final wisdom words?

That's broad. Sometimes people ask me, we're talking about gut brain and what are the couple of things that could really move the needle quickly. I would say the number one choice for me would be to cut out or cut back on sugar.

The white death.

Yeah, yeah. And that would include alcohol. I don't know if people realize, but think about the times when you drink and you wake up the next morning and if you were to take a meter and check your mood, how is your mood the next morning? Are you like uppity, like chipper, like happy? Or you may be, you know, maybe you're not. The happy would be like a 10 on that meter. Maybe you're a 7, maybe you're a 5. Maybe it's not enough. But subtle. And if you keep seeing that pattern, you have to ask yourself, you know, if that's something that you're working on, does, does alcohol fit into your life in that way? And I know I'm, I hope that people are like throwing darts at me or something at this point. But, but sugar is a depressant and alcohol is a depressant. And also sugar increases anxiety. So if the one intervention that can improve the gut, improve gut health, improve the makeup of the gut microbiome is cutting back on sugar and then focusing on foods that have natural sugars like berries, fruit, like apples, oranges, you know, getting your sugar from natural sources but not from overly refined sources.

Love it. Dr. Vincent Pedre, thank you for coming on. If you all like the show, give us a five star review out there and share us with two of your friends and loved ones. It does make a difference. It's how we're getting the word out. That's how the show is growing. So thank you all for tuning in. This is Dr. Greg Eckel on what the health contact talk radio Tuesdays from 2 to 3pm Pacific Time. We'll see you next week.