Kriben Govender on How to Improve your Mental Health by looking after your Gut

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, your gut health superstore. Nourish Me Organics are the premier store online when it comes to home fermentation kits, probiotics, probiotics, Gut health and natural health supplements. So if you want to check out the range, do head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code happygut for 10% off. Guys, sit. We have a very special show. It's myself, Cribben Govender, being interviewed by Steve from the Made to Thrive podcast. So hope you enjoy this different format. Take it away, Steve.

So today I've got one of the health heroes in the podcast world. He's got the most incredible website. I've learned a lot from this man called Cribbing Govender, and it's just what a privilege and what an honor to have him on the Made to Thrive show. And I'm going to start the show with the way he starts his show. And welcome to the Made to Thrive show, Crib and Govenda. And who is Cribbing Govenda?

Oh, wow. Thank you for the introduction, Stephen. It's quite surreal to get that question flipped back onto me because that's how I start my show. It's a really open question and this is the first time I'm actually going to be answering that question. But I'm essentially, I'm a food scientist, I'm a business owner of Nourish Me Organics, a husband and a father, and really someone who's on a journey to awaken people when it comes to the strategies that they can use to improve their health and especially mental health, because mental health is something that is deeply, deeply important to me because I struggled heavily with anxiety and depression severely for most of my life. And I've been trying to find the tools along my journey to deal with it. And I've essentially got many, many tools in the toolkit to address it. I mean, my mental health is not perfect by many means of the imagination, but it has improved out of this world with the things that I've learned. So essentially that in a nutshell, I'm just a person that's really on a. On a journey of discovery.

I want to dig deep, a little into your story because I know that you had a sort of a traumatic episode in your life and then you developed how important the gut is with mental health. So tell us a little bit about your specific story.

Yes, Steve, about. It's 10 years ago now, probably 2010, where my life really, really just collapsed. I mean, I was pretty successful in terms of my career and education, all that kind of stuff. The journey to develop a family, a lifestyle, all that kind of stuff was really successful. But I just. And when I think back, my struggle with things, it all collapsed in 2010. But when I think back, it was around in childhood when I was a child and I'd gone to. To a trip overseas with my parents to India, and I got extremely, extremely ill with food poisoning. During that particular trip, I picked up a bug called Shigella dysentery. And I'd come back to Australia and I was literally going to the toilet. Like, it would have been like seven times a day, literally. I couldn't hold any food down. I lost most. I've lost 10 kilos. I was already a waif, super skinny in that. And I lost a further 10 kilos. It was like a skeleton. But the doctors put me on a very, very strict regimen of antibiotics. And it literally, when I think back now, now it happened, it decimated my gut and my microbiome, and we can talk about that later, what that is. But essentially I went from this pretty happy, go lucky character, bubbly kid, very popular, to being someone that was dark, gloomy, depressed. Really a 180 shift in my behavior. And it was quite profound, like extremely profound. And so I carried this struggle with being continuously anxious and then developing depression and things like that through my life. But I think once my career started to progress, the level of stress drastically accelerates. So I found myself in kind of more senior roles. And in those particular roles, the stress just got to me. My whole life collapsed. I literally found myself. I've got three beautiful children, my wife and I separated. I ended up in an apartment in the city by myself and really ready to end my life was that desperate. So I sat there. Really, it was close. I was literally looking over the edge. It was that close in terms of how serious it was. Unfortunately, the thing that really saved my life is the fact that I got three beautiful young boys and I did not want to leave that legacy for them. So I got my strength up. I started to research how can I tackle this struggle with this mental deliberation, and found many tools, many, many tools. But the most important thing, and you mentioned that before, Steve, was the very, very significant connection between the gut and the brain. So that's the story in a nutshell.

Yeah. Good. So what I want to ask you is the chasm between how important our gut function is and our microbiome and Our mental health, especially in South Africa and Africa, is significant. I mean, is it really true that your microbiome, your gut microbiome, affects your mental health and well being?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, the microbiome in itself is only a recent discovery. I think the studies were happening in full swing probably around 2000, probably mid 2000s, I'd say 2005 to 2007 or something like that. But it was really around 2014 when a lot of mainstream media and more of the mainstream started to report on these findings. And then as the studies have progressed, we're still very early days. I mean, it's the microbiome is this collection of microbes, whether it's bacteria, yeast, fungi, parasites, archaea, viruses, it's a 2 kilogram organ that's actually mainly in the gut. But there's different axis throughout axes, I should say, throughout the body, whether it's the gut gut brain axis or the gut lung. And then there's also these other areas where there's microbes, whether it's the mouth or the nose or the private parts, you know, skin, they all have their own individual microbiomes. But science is very, very, very specific now in that that connection between the gut and the brain and the microbes having the ability to produce neurotransmitters which can communicate directly through the vagus nerve to the brain. So how you feel is a huge part of it, is what's going on in the gut. So there's a very definite connection and science is developing very rapidly in that space.

I want the listeners to hear that and the audience on YouTube, that there's a body of research, there's science now showing that the microbiome, your gut microbiome, affects your wellbeing, affects your mental health, affects your clarity of thought, affects just the way you function in all aspects of cognition. So I do want to dive into your story. You did a little bit of research. What did you end up doing? Tell us.

That's a good question, Steve. Initially it was, I mean, being a scientist having that background in science.

It.

Was almost pretty seamless for me to jump into the research and starting to look at what sort of evidence there is in that space on the gut, brain and all that kind of stuff. And I started to come up with papers and see it. But the seminal piece of work that really got me started was reading a book called the Gaps Book, which is, I think it's Gastrointestinal Psychological Syndrome by Natasha Campbell McBride. And she talks contextually about her child and using different dietary strategies to impact how the child functions from a neurological perspective, cognition, mood, things like that. And she demonstrated very clearly in that book that there is a connection between the gut and the brain. And by modulating the diet and shifting the diet, you can impact how you feel and your psychological functions. So I started to use some of those strategies. So I went into a GAPS diet, very strict GAPS diet for about three, three or four months. I started to incorporate things like bone broth. I started to cut out things like grains and excessive amounts of carbs and processed foods and junk foods and all. Anything that was artificial, I cut out of the diet. And then I started to introduce fermented foods later on. And specifically one that absolutely a game changer for anybody that wants to improve their mental health is a product called milk kefir. And milk kefir, there's a lot of fake products that are coming onto the supermarket shelves. But to make, to get real milk kefir, you have to make it yourself with the kefir grains. But it's a very easy product to make. It's literally, it takes you 24 hours. And once you get a hold of kefir grains, you can make milk kefir. With milk and kefir grains for life forever. These grains are reusable. So once you do it, I mean, they keep on growing. So it's the most powerful probiotic and certainly the most economical probiotic and scientifically backed fermented food on the planet. And the way milk kefir works, there's a couple of different ways it works. Firstly, it helps with the production of tryptophan. So when you look at the nutritional components of milk kefir, it is loaded with probiotic bacteria. You're talking 2 trillion probiotic organisms per serve of this product that you make at home that costs nothing, just milk. Then you've got all these, these neurotransmitters like gaba, a very important calming neurotransmitter that is very abundant in milk kefir. You've got prebiotics, which are substances that feed other bacteria. And I mentioned it before, just unbelievable amounts of tryptophan. And why tryptophan is important is because tryptophan is a precursor molecule for serotonin. Serotonin is this feel good neurotransmitter. So what happens is tryptophan through a whole series of biochemical reactions. It's very complex. It also needs, just on a side, you need morning sunlight to actually start the conversion process between tryptophan into serotonin. And then finally serotonin gets converted into melatonin, which is your sleep hormone. So you're talking about this cascade of hormones, which is pretty much starting from a dietary component. Milk, kefir, light exposure. So then I started to explore other things aside from diet. I started to go into, obviously, I went to see a psychologist. That's the first, most obvious thing you do. And the psychologist took me through a series of exercises. They taught me how to meditate. So I started to learn how to do transcendental meditation. I started to do yoga. I started to do acting training. I started to look at conquering fears and the biggest fear. Something that was really holding me back. I mean, before I started podcasting and all that, I mean, I was terrified of being in front of people. Whether it's one of a camera, whether it's in front of a public speaking event is the biggest fear that I've ever had. And one of the most liberating thing that I ever did for my mental health was to actually learn how to act going into an acting class, because acting, really learning how to act is not learning how to pretend. Learning how to act is learning more about yourself and learning about all these different parts of you and dealing with trauma. It's psychology. Acting is all psychology. So going through a whole year of acting training really helped me to break through all these blockages psychologically fears like public speaking and learning the tools on how to. How to actually conquer less fears. And at the end of that course, that acting training that I did for a year, I did it. I was on stage in a theater production in front of 300 people. So it was hugely, hugely liberating. And all those skills that I've learned, I obviously use now in my podcasting. I've done some commercial work in acting and things like that as well. So it's all. It's all a journey. Right? So it's not just one thing, Steve. It's multiple. Multiple things that really helped me to overcome my mental health struggles. But diet is. Diet, exercise, yoga, electromagnetic radiation, light therapy, cold therapy. There's so many tools in the toolkit that have really helped me. And these practices lie pretty much use every single day. I have cold showers every day. I used to jump in the ocean once a week, but now I'm in lockdown, so I'm stuck at my house in Melbourne.

Yeah, but I think what you're saying is that what moved the needle the most was getting your gut health good. You know, starting with the kefir and that built up some neurotransmitters within your gut, within your body, within your brain. That moved the needle significantly that you possibly could go to do acting classes and work that out. It obviously helped your work with the psychologist. So I do feel that the audience needed here how important their gut is, what they put in, whether it's processed food, whether it's junk food, whether it's, you know, your poof is now that are causing a lot of, you know, research and science and a big hoo ha in social media circles. You know, all your oils, your processed oils, your vegetable oils, your canola oils, those type of oils that damage the gut. That was a significant move for you. That was a game changer that started things. And that's why you've got a podcast called the Gut Health Gurus and why you got a store called Nourish Me Organics. Am I correct?

Yeah, absolutely, it's Nourish Me. I mean, it starts with the most simplest thing. I mean it's a gradient, it's a spectrum. There's these different steps, right? So the most simplest step is diet and lifestyle changes. I mean, you always start with the lowest hanging fruit. What are the things that you. They're gonna be very simple to change. And then the additional strategies are really percentage improvements. But to get from 1% improvement to 80% improvement, it's really simple. Super simple, Jeff. Just eat real food, real food from scratch. That is the easiest thing to incorporate. Stop going to the supermarket and buying all the box nonsenses. Get fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, the cleanest water you can afford, you know, everything as clean as possible. And that's going to take you unimaginable amounts in terms of improvements the most. This is this. Obviously if you asked me this question two years ago, it would be very different because I'm continuously learning. But where the latest science is in terms of the microbiome is the impact of circadian rhythmicity on the microbiome composition. Let me explain. So circadian rhythmicity is your body being yoked to the day and night cycle, particularly the sun. So what disrupts circadian rhythmicity, I think most significantly is EMF radiation. So it's your artificial lightings, it's your wi fi signals, your Bluetooth, it's shifting the environment that's interfering and creating stresses in the body that the body is not accustomed to after millions of years of development through its evolutionary process. So this non native field is interrupting all your hormones, your melatonin hormones, cortisol hormones. It's a Stressor. So that's the first thing that's very easy to just when you're going to sleep, turn off your WI fi router. Very easy, you're not using it. Put your phone in airplane mode. It's pretty easy, right? Then you start to manage your light. Waking up in the morning, getting sunlight in your eyes again, that's going to set the circadian rhythmicity because you have to remember the body has a clock when it secretes different hormones. If you're sitting in the dark with a cell phone shining in your eyes with all this blue light, blue lights, just think white light, that's blue light. The blaring iPhone blazing in your eyes. Instead of your body thinking this is sleep time, it's thinking it's in the middle of the day. So it disrupts the circadian rhythm. And the microbiome itself has a circadian rhythm. Different organisms are active at different parts of the day. So you need some organisms early in the day and you need different ones in the middle of the day. And at the end of the day, there's a rhythm. But when the rhythm is disrupted, this neuroendocrine organ, this 2 kilo organ, which is literally from a numbers level, it's roughly 50, 50, your cell to a micro, a bacterial cell, I should say. So 50, 50. But from a genetic point of view, it's like you're, you're 90 plus percent. It's even higher. 90 plus percent microbe. There's much more microbial genes in your body than your own genes. So most of your genes are not yours. They're exogenous, they're from outside, they're these organisms. And it's the only organ in the body that is purely adaptive, like 100% adaptive to stimuli. Whether it's circadian rhythmicity, whether it's your food sources, it can shift and adapt. And it's one of the most important reasons why we can adapt, why as humans, we're so resilient. We can adapt to pretty much any environment because the microbiome can fill in the gaps that you need. They produce hormones, they produce vitamins, minerals. They're 80% of your immune system. So it's amazing. It is absolutely amazing. But coming back to circadian rhythmicity, so you need to be yoked to the sun, so it's very easy. So you get sunlight in your eyes in the morning, at midday, you get another exposure from the sun. Get it on your skin, your face, your eyes. And then when it comes to the nighttime, where blue light blocking glasses Limit screen time at night. There's modes on your phone that you can play with to start to kill the blue light. But what I find is the easiest way is I just whack on some blue light blocking glasses and then that allows my body. Because melatonin production doesn't start in the night. The precursor molecules, as I mentioned, start when that moment, when that sunlight hits your eyes, you start to produce pomc. It's a compound called pomc. It's an acronym for a long chemical name, pomc. But POMC goes through a conversion, multiple conversions. Tryptophan, serotonin. Then eventually the last one in that cycle is melatonin. So you need to have this. And melatonin, I would say is aside from glutathione, melatonin is like this master antioxidant. I mean, it's so important for so many different biochemical reactions in the body and that sleep. So coming back full circle, that lifestyle leads itself to getting the proper amount of sleep and high quality sleep. Because that just. Yeah, you're pretty much recovering, you're detoxifying, your brain is detoxifying during that sleeping process. And your gut is repairing. You literally have a new gut every couple of days. Like, I mean, it's so it's a tissue that's continuously being regenerated because it is the biggest defense to the outside world. It's not the skin. The number one interface to the outside world is the gut. The gut. Think about the gut. Think about your body as two tubes. You got an outer tube which is the skin, and the inner tube is your gut. So whatever's sitting inside the gut is outside the body. It's sitting outside. And the easiest way I can explain this is think about like a drug trafficker, drug trafficker that swallows the bag of drugs and he smuggles it through a country and he poos it out and that he can, or whatever he's trying to smuggle because it's outside the body. It's not inside the body, it's going through the gut and you're pooping it out, you're not digesting it. So hence that's why the gut is so critical. So I've jumped all over the place, so you might want to rein me back and explore.

No, no problem. I think there's a lot of information there and I think it's just exciting how important the circadian rhythm is, how important natural sunlight is in your eyes. Because. Because unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation with regards to how damaging the sun is in fact, the sun is probably one of the most important parts of our lives, our function, our health, our microbiome. And a lot of this work comes out of Dr. Jack Cruz, who we both a big fan of. So we'll link to the Gut Health Gurus podcast with Dr. Jack Cruz in our show Notes. Also Andy Mann from Blue Blocks use his. So there's a lot of crossover between myself and the Gut Health Gurus podcast as well as Nourish Me Organics. But I do want to delve into a little bit, a bit of the deeper details on kefir because I know it's a dairy product. Tell me a bit more. If someone's got a dairy intolerance, are there other options for kefir? And then I want to talk about kombucha after that.

Yes, certainly. I mean milk kefir is the gold standard in terms of the probiotic benefits. The functional peptides, which are literally just small bits of protein that have biological effects on the body. There's things like the ability to lower cholesterol, there's lowering blood pressure, there's obviously that neurotransmitter components, there's all these antimicrobial having the ability to knock out Salmonella or some Listeria and some other other nasty pathogens, ability to knock out Helicobacter pylori. So there's proven scientific benefits to these functional peptides, but the functional peptides itself, they're postbiotics. So postbiotics are what the bacteria themselves produce or the yeast. So these compounds that they produce that have the benefits. So the probiotics are the live organisms, but the postbiotics are the ones that are doing most of the work. So hence it's very important from a kefir perspective. If I was going to recommend something with science is to use the dairy based version with a very high quality milk. So something preferably with primarily a2 milk proteins, the non inflammatory type milk proteins, whether it's organic, biodynamic, chemical free, small herd, not these mass produced commercial products with lots of chemicals, just a very pure milk source, goat's milk. That's going to be your best, best option, gold standard in terms of science. You can use like water, kefir, grains and it's basically it's just this is someone that's vegan that doesn't tolerate dairy products or they have an intolerance. The casein I should mention, if you're lactose intolerant, milk kefir is going to be fine because the Lactose is converted into lactic acid. So the bacteria actually reduce the lactose to such a small level that it's not going to trigger a lactose intolerance reaction. I'm lactose intolerant. I don't have any problems with milk kefir. So if you have some dietary restrictions or limitations with dairy and certainly the early parts of the GAPS diet, I think they do recommend going dairy free, grain free, carb free, all that kind of stuff. So kefir comes very late into the GAPS protocol anyway. But there is water kefir. So water kefir is a very different organism. So milk kefir comes from the Caucasus region in central Eurasia. It's thousands of years old. There's mentions of it in the Bible. It's just been passed down from many generations to generations. It's not made in a lab. It's just something that's been handed down for thousands of years from the Caucasus region. Water kefir most likely came from Central America, Mexico. That's the evidence. The best evidence that I found is somehow someone opened a fruit and they found these grains inside of it. And grains are really. It's not like a plant grain. It's a biofilm, it's a bacterial biofilm. It's literally bits of sugars that the bacteria secrete and they make these almost like little crystals called kefir grains. So water kefir is a great option for someone that is dairy free. You can put it into coconut water and ferment it, or you can ferment it in sugar and water. Most of the sugar is removed in the fermentation. It's converted into organic acids. You can use kefir grains, water and milk kefir grains. You can use it with nut milks. So you can make soy milk kefir, almond milk kefir, whatever, coconut milk kefir. It's very versatile.

That sounds excellent. And if someone is doing well with their kefir, do they need to take probiotics? Are you a probiotic fan? I mean, is there any case that you can take too much, many probiotics or prebiotics? It seems to be the rage here where every second person's on probiotics and prebiotics.

The way I approach it, Steve, is it's very personalized. So generally speaking, I think having a dietary source of fermented foods in every meal is very advantageous. So it's almost like you're prophylactic. So something that you're taking just to maintain good wellness and Good health with probiotics. After you go through some sort of metagenomic analysis of your stool, you get a stool profile, you look at the deficiencies in different species of bacteria. Then you can use therapeutic interventions with probiotics and prebiotics. So you can use specific strains, something like a nice little strain of E. Coli, or you can use VSL number three, which is the most clinically tested probiotic preparation on the planet. So VSL3, you can use something like Seed, which is another good one, where they're just a consortium of different probiotic bacteria, but they're more so. Or megasporebiotic, which is, which is a spore based probiotic, again with lots of good studies for leaky guts and all sorts of things like that. Now there's therapeutic strains that are specifically selected for mental health, so you can get strains that will help with mental health issues. So it's very, very tailored to the individual person. But I would say that broadly speaking, fermented foods are very cost effective, easy to implement and I really recommend having a fermented food in every meal. So your breakfast, you could be having some milk, kefir with some berries. Then at lunchtime you could be having a bit of sauerkraut on the side, a glass of water kefir, glass of kombucha, a bit of miso, miso soup, natto, tempeh, kimchi. There's so many amazake, so many, many different fermented foods you have to choose. There's thousands. Cheese, yogurts, they're all fermented foods. Chocolate, fermented food, coffee, fermented food, cheese, fermented food, glass of red wine. So you got lots of options.

Yeah, great. And that's a better option than supplementation. But what you are saying, if you are struggling, work with a health coach or health advocate or work with a natural practitioner or a doctor of Chinese medicine to try and help you. If that road where you've used all these fermented foods, which you can in every single meal have not solved your gut issue.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely right. And I really recommend looking at the practitioner only probiotics. I mean, these are the ones that have got science behind it, they've got clinical studies, the ones that you pick up from the supermarket shelf, they don't have the same rigor, they're much cheaper. But are they going to be as efficacious as using a therapeutic practitioner only brand and product. So hence that's why working with a naturopath or a practitioner, you get access to These particular products. Great.

Tell us a little bit about the science of kombucha. You know, I picked it up from your podcast and I've seen it on your website and, you know, watched a few sort of, you know, interviews that you've done on kefir and kombucha. Tell me what's happening with Kombucha and is it for everyone?

Kombucha? I think it's, it's not particularly well studied. I'll put that out straight away. I mean, there is some, some evidence to suggest that it could be helping from an organic acids perspective on blood sugar modulation. So definitely could be having that benefit. I definitely think also from my research that the, the organic acids, gluconic acid, that's produced in the fermentation, glucuronic acid, acetic acid, act as prebiotics in the gut. So I don't think it's a probiotic per se. They might be, there might be big, big inverted commas. There might be Saccharomyces boulardii. There might be, but no one's actually proven it that I've actually seen it. There might be Saccharomyces boladi. There certainly is Saccharomyces cerevisceae. So these are kind of beneficial yeast species. But it's not like a milk kefir, like a milkephea. You've got 100 strains, 30 to 100 depending on the study you look at of probiotic bacteria and yeast, 100%. It's gonna, it's worked, it's tried and tested. There's human clinical trials, there's pre clinical animal studies. We've got evidence and it's been used for thousands of years. It's an amazing product. Kombucha is a little bit on the, on the edge in terms of its efficiency as being beneficial from a probiotic perspective. But you know what, Steve? So much better than soft drinks, so much better than artificial products. It's homemade, it's literally just fermented tea takes about seven days to make at home. Really cost effective. Don't get sucked in too much to the commercial ones because a lot of them are just sugary water with flavors and additives. If you're going to have Kombucha, make it yourself at home or find a brand that you can trust that actually does it the proper way. It is very difficult to make real Kombucha because of the alcohol percentage from a commercial perspective. So it's very unlikely that the ones on the shelves are going to be the real deal. So best to make it yourself.

Great. I've heard that Australia's water is not good at all from Dr. Jack Cruz and just the deuterium content. And yeah, I do want to find out. But you said clean water and I think that's very, very important. I think we've discussed how important, you know, just probiotics are high important. Kefir is making sure you have fermented foods. But tell us about water. I do want to talk about that. I don't even know about the water status from a deuterium point of view in South Africa. I've still got to do those tests, try and find the experts in South Africa to find out, you know, what the deuterium content is. What is deuterium? Number one, how important is it to drink deuterium depleted water? And what is happening in Australia?

Yeah, cruises being pretty scathing on the water in Australia. But the, the water in Australia has a couple of issues. Number one, the deuterium content is by far in my mind it's just a geographical anomaly. It's around 154. We've done extensive testing, our laboratory does extensive testing on deuterium contents of multiple water sources. But deuterium, all it is is an isotope of hydrogen so it's just got more molecular weight. So it can substitute into a hydrogen in chemical reactions. But from a weight perspective it's got twice the mass, it's got an extra neutron. So Instead of having H2O which is water, two hydrogens and oxygen, you can end up with various configurations. But the Most obvious is D2O. But the problem is that deuterium, I've been very lucky. I've spoken to Dr. Jack Cruz, but I've also spoken to Gabor Shomli. I spent time with Gabor Shomli in Hungary and I've also spent time on a video conference with Dr. Laszlo Barache. So Dr. Laszlo Boros, Gabor Shamli, they're the experts in the world and basically what they're saying is that deuterium can interfere with various reactions in the body. But the most obvious one is within the mitochondria, which is the energy producing organelles in the body. So what Dr. Lazlo Borish suggests is that excessive levels of environmental deuterium coming through our food, food or water, primarily water, damages these nanomotors. I'm not sure how much you know about the nanomotors, even the mitochondria. So hence if you the, the most dense tissues have I think about 10,000 mitochondria. So if you imagine, and the best analogy to think about the impact of mitochondria is if you think about if someone was going to invade a particular country, Steve, what would you think would be the first targets they would hit?

They got to hit the walls, got to get out walls. You know, she can't get the outer barrier. You're in trouble.

Yeah. Anything else you can think of?

Well, anything that's going to produce resources, that's going to produce energy and resources.

That's it. Like a power plant. Right. So you hit the power plants. So that's exactly what happens when your mitochondria is dysfunctional. The mitochondria think about your heart, would, think about your brain. They're very dense with mitochondria. So if the mitochondria are being whacked out in your brain cells, do you think the brain is going to function to its full capacity if it's not getting the energy? This is, this is which. What could be potentially happening with neurodisfunction, neurological diseases? This is what happens in the gut. The gut cells, the lining, they have mitochondria. The mitochondria are the early warning systems. The mitochondria actually the first line of defense in the immune system. They're the sensing organelles in those little gut cells. So think about having deuterium, excessive levels of deuterium through the diet or through the water and damaging those mitochondria inside the gut cells. Could this be leading to dysfunctions like leaky gut? So this is the impact of deuterium. But deuterium also messes around with topology. I mean, in nature, a lot of the way that things function is through shape. So enzymes have a particular shape. A lot of shape is involved in the way reactions occur, the cells function, the barrier systems, whether it's a phospholipid barrier or some barrier system like that. So anything that's going to be impacting a shape of a molecule could potentially cause dysfunction. And if you consider that deuterium is twice as heavy, it's going to be causing some potential distortions in shape of different tissues or even molecules.

So do you import your water in from where. If you. Is that, where do you get it from? From a deuterium depleted water? Is it a way that we could get it in South Africa for people that are really not. Well, I know that crew spoke about the ketogenic diet being a deuterium depleting diet number one, and then getting the right water in Australia. Where do you get it from. And where can people in South Africa get this deuterium depleted water?

That's a really good question. The easiest way you touched on it already is diet, because carbohydrates tend to be having higher levels of deuterium. And maybe what we can do is link to our guide because we wrote, I think, and Ben agrees, Ben Greenfield, who we spoke to originally, it's one of the best guides in deuterium depletion deuterium science ever written, comprehensive diet. Because I've done so much testing on different water sources and we have access to data on food, we can show you the deuterium content of different food products and also different water sources. So that's probably the easiest to just link to that guide. But just talking on the top of my head, fats tend to be lower in deuterium. Things like lard and bacon fat are lower in deuterium, whereas grains and wheat and carbohydrates and all these starchy foods tend to be higher in deuterium. So the easiest way you mentioned is to have some sort of ketogenic diet. So using a ketogenic diet and then also exposing the body to especially those different sun cycles, light in the morning, light at midday, potentially even if you have the time, light at sunset or from the sun, and even using techniques like red light therapy, using a red light panel. Your question on water. Because I did so much testing in all these deuterium sources around the world, I literally tested just about every single country. And I found a source very high in the mountains in Canada. So what I did, I was so excited when I did the testing. I literally told my wife, we're getting on a plane and going to meet these guys. So we literally arranged a meeting. I jumped on a plane, flew to Canada, up to this pristine glacial source, spent an absolute fortune, and just to lock in this source and imported all this water into Australia. So I have, I actually created my own brand. It's called LO D. But the Lodi is actually water from this glacial source. The most, most pristine, purest. No glyphosate, no chlorine, no fluoride. It is literally low deuterium. It's 136 ppm deuterium, the lowest natural water deuterium content on the planet ever tested. That's where I was so excited. When I saw that number come out from the analysis, I realized that this is the most amazing water product on the planet and it's from a natural source and it's the same price that we normally can buy bottled water from a shop. It's not any more expensive. Having said that, there is Dr. Gabor Shomli and Laszlo Borosch where they deal with cancer patients because a lot of the deuterium studies are done on cancer and slowing the growth of cancerous cells. So what we did is we formed the partnership with Gabor Shomla in Hungary and his brand is called Preventa. And Preventa is the market leader when it comes to using deuterium depleted water as an oncology treatment. You can use it for diabetes, you can use it for cancer, but obviously I make no claims on that. We just have it as a water supply for. You can look at Dr. Gabor Chomelyi's work and his research and Laszlo Borish's work in research. They're both very credible scientists, very well respected scientists. So you can look at their work to understand the science behind it. But the point is Preventa, they use a fractional distillation process to get that deuterium level down to about 25 ppm. But they have to use in incredible amounts of energy to achieve that. And I've seen, I've actually gone to their factory. It's four layers, four levels of distillation technology used in the oil industry. So it's this very old energy intensive process, but it gets the level down to about 25. So a lot of these sick people dilute the water to anywhere between say 80 to 120 ppm. But that's more if you're really sick, that's when you use that level. And so we import Preventa and look, we sell out of that product. It's extremely expensive. But because it's so effective against particular illnesses, we have quite a substantial customer base that are willing to pay that price. But it's a very expensive water. So low D is more for Aussie consumers. It's a couple of bucks a bottle. I mean, it's not expensive.

What I am hearing you saying, Kevin, is that how important your water is because you've gone all the way to Canada, you now spend time with sporus and all these guys that are specialists in this field, how important is water? Are you saying it's as important as the getting out in the sun? Are you saying as important as food? Is it? Where does it sit?

Number one? Because the reason why I say that is because it's about, I think about 70% of your body is water. So think about it, you know, like water, we're learning more and more about water. Water is an incredibly important molecule. The research is suggesting that water is almost like a hard drive. It's got memory. There's lots of research on this. A lot of it's esoteric and some of it's a bit woo woo. But I have seen a lot of credible scientists talk about this as well. Water holds memory. So hence if that water you're drinking out of your tap is going through all, all these, all these processing and plants and they have chlorine and they've got fluoride and they've got all this, it could have hormones. Some water sources are actually recycled from water that you're flushing down the toilet. So I mean, it depends on your water source. But think about the memory that that water is holding versus a source that's coming from a glacier or from an aquifer. And I take my water very serious and I've never talked about this on a podcast, but I actually, I structure my water before I drink it. So I use my low D water. But what I do is, I use, I've got a secret method, I can't really talk about it, but what I do is I, I use some technology to actually erase the memory of the water. And then you can structure it and structuring is easy. You can use, you can put it in the sun, you can use a red light panel with infrared light and red light. Some people vortex as well, their vortex. I use a combination of different things, but I structure that one water so I have more of this. I'm not sure you've seen the work of Gerald Pollock. The fourth phase of water.

Yeah, fourth phase of water.

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of that EZ exclusion zone water that's more absorbable in the body. So I use these techniques and technologies to very simply create exclusion zone structured water. And every glass of water goes through that process before it goes into my body. And it's a hundred percent pure. So not distilled water. I mean, it's natural water from an act, from a glacier.

Okay, sounds incredibly interesting. And I think we've got to get some of your skills. I don't know how to test the water from a deuterium point of view in South Africa, but maybe we can have a chat afterwards and just look at how important the water sources are for South Africans and for Africans in general. But tell me a little bit more about your interest in terms of the sun circadian rhythm and how it causes exclusion zone water in the mitochondrial, sort of inner mitochondrial membrane. So you're now drinking deuterium depleted Water, which is excellent, you're now getting into the sun and that causes your easy water, is that correct?

Yeah. So exposure to the infrared spectrum is what's going to trigger this exclusion zone water. So hence getting out in the sun. Cruise talks about it extensively. Getting out, getting skin in the game, going down to the beach when you can, when you're not locked down, you can deliberately make a concerted effort to spend time in nature. There's negative ions as well, which is very under appreciated. Neurological effects on the body too. You ever wonder why the Japanese do forest bathing? Or sometimes when you spend time in a park or you spend time in a forest, or you spend time in the beach, there's something magical about it. One of the reasons is because of these negative ions. So that's another really effective tool to improve your mental health. Just going down to the beach, going to the park or going to a forest. To answer your question, the main thing with exclusion zone water is going to be the infrared light in the sun. Specifically. A lot of these, especially around midday, is when you get some UV light as well. So all these things contribute to these spiral effects in the water actually inside the body and the tissue. But one point I would add, which I forgot to add earlier, would say if water was number one, number two I would say is a confined eating window. So what you find, if you want to improve this is the 80% eat clean food and water. The next thing I would say is confine your eating window. It's going to sound like I'm crazy, but try and confine it to six to eight hours a day. It's not as hard as you think. The reason why is because we've been mentally conditioned to over consume. We've been conditioned to continuously be consuming food, snacking, eating continuously. If you can confine within, say from 9am to 5pm, just confine your eating during that time. This is when you give your gut a chance to actually rest and digest. Because eating is cortisol, it's stressful, it's hugely energy intensive, it's taxing on the immune system. So one of the simplest things is just stop eating. Give the food that you've actually consumed a chance to actually digest. Give your body the chance to actually absorb the nutrients from the food. And then especially, at least I would say, four hours before bed, no eating, because eating again is going to interfere with the melatonin production. And the last thing you want to do is when your body is trying to flush out all these toxins out of your brain and Flush out toxins out of your body, you start worry about digesting food. So this is like these little tiny tweaks. Clean food, clean water, circadian rhythmicity, small confined eating window, intermittent fasting. Essentially what you're doing is intermittent fasting. A 16 hour. You're going to see some amazing benefits because you actually are letting your body do its job. You're getting out the way and actually allowing your body to really do its job and work for you and not getting in its way.

Fantastic. And it's just, you know, I think we've been just blessed today by Cribbn and all his information from circadian rhythm to kefira to kombucha to fasting, which at Made to Thrive we are big fans. We have a lot of blogs on Made to Thrive. Sachin Panda's work on circadian rhythm and when to eat is so important. I've seen my data on my ordering improve dramatically when I eat. When the sun is out. When the sun goes down, you stop eating and give yourself at least four hours. I totally agree with that. And I've seen my deep sleep scores, my REM sleep scores improve, my HRV improve. And so I do want to talk about two last sort of areas. You've been so generous with your time, Cribben. Thank you so much. There's so much value. I mean, I'm going to link to Patrick van der Bert. He's been on your show. He's been on my show about emf. I mean there's just so many links in our show notes here because we've covered such a vast array of topics. But the first thing I want to talk about your morning routine. I know Dr. Jack Cruz speaks about how important the sunrise is. Is it morning light? Is it the sunrise? Tell us about your morning routine.

It's pretty simple. I stickler for routine actually. So normally I wake up around 7:30. It's actually hard to wake up because I fully blackout. I should let you know as well. My house is. Patrick actually did it. Patrick hardwired my. He was the one that was responsible. He did the assessment in my house. He came in, we got rid of all the dirty electricity. We put switches in, kill switches to kill different light circuits. So my room has literally after a certain time period, zero emf. I don't have WI fi in my house. Everything is hardwired by Ethernet. So WI fi got banned a few years ago from my household. So no one has WI fi. So all my kids have ethernet ports in their room. So they just plug into the Ethernet, so there's no WI fi. So. And then my, my room is blacked out so it's really hard to wake up because it's like I'm sleeping in a black cave. So normally I set an alarm for myself. Around 7:30 I wake up, I go downstairs and the first thing I do is put my tackies. I talk the South African way, I put my tackies on and go for a walk in the sun. So normally take a walk down to my local cafe which is about 20 minutes to get to. And the sun is rising around that time so I'm getting this beautiful amount of light hitting my eyes. I'm getting some exercise, just some brisk walk, walking, some exercise. But then what's really important because I do a lot of my work alone is I have a bit of a chat with my barista. So I'm having some form of human interaction, having a bit of chat, have a chat, some social interaction to get my day started. I come back, I do 20 minutes of transcendental meditation. But I also, and it sounds like a full on bloody ritual but I always, I use sound therapy. So what I do is I use a sound generator and you can just, you can just download it on your. There's like online like tone generators But I use 432Hz so I'm not sure whether you've ever come across this research before but it's just a sound frequency playing. Then I have aromatherapy, so I have like a, it's like a diffuser. So normally I use lemongrass oil or I use lavender. Something calming. Depends on how I feel or what type of state I want to get myself into. And so I sit there, I've got the sound therapy, I've got my red light panel. But what I do in the morning is because I don't want red light, I want more blue light. So I use blue light from just natural lighting but then also infrared light just, just to, just to give me a bit of added benefit. So I sit there for 20 minutes. So I've got sound, smell, lighting, meditating for 20 minutes and then I'll get up and start my day and typically I'll have a nice breakfast about nine o' clock or so, cup of coffee. I have some medicinal mushrooms, maybe some, some CBD oil, some supplements. One supplement which I'm loving, I didn't know much about till I just recently discovered is zeolite. Have you ever come across Zeolite? I have, yeah, yeah, I'm really loving, yeah, yeah, it's great for detox. But I really love the zeolites because think it just helps to really clear any of these heavy metals. It also modulates the gut microbiome by knocking out a lot of negative bugs, removes toxins. But I have some other supplements as well. I have my milk kefir. Milk kefir. Normally have that with a handful of blueberries, some almonds, some Brazil nuts and bee pollen.

Okay, fantastic.

And then I'll have.

Sounds incredible. Simple, but simple with a circadian rhythm. And it's a real food and healthy stuff.

Yep. And then I'll literally after my breakfast I'll have one more meal for the day, typically around 3 o'. Clock. And that will be quite a substantial meal. That's like my. Like a king's meal. Like it's. It keeps me full. Like literally I'll be full for the rest of the night. I mean it's substantial and typically it'll involve some form of. You mentioned PUFAs. I love sided Westers, a piece of grass fed organic steak, organic lamb. But typically I go to seafood as much as I can specifically for the omega 3s. Omega 3s are very important. Oysters or the sardines are my go to. But I'll mix it up. And of course lots of vegetables, lots of diversity in vegetables. And what people don't realize is that diversity in vegetables also includes spices. You have a spice mix, there could be like seven different types of vegetables in that spice mix. And then you mix up your vegetables. And an easy way to get lots of diversity in vegetables is to use fermented vegetables. Fermented foods because they literally sit in your fridge for it could be years. Like I have a miso. I have miso's that I've made that are 2 years old. So I could literally just get a teaspoon of miso and put it on the side of the plate, put some natto, put some tempeh, various types of pickled vegetables which could just be sitting preserved in my fridge. Mustards, they're all ways to include different types of fibers and different types of plant foods in your diet. It's not hard. The worst thing is you just eat the same thing every day. Because that's the typical standard diet is where piece of meat and then the same vegetables. Carrots, peas, potato. That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting diversity in plant food.

Brilliant. And I know that I do want to talk about it, possibly a later podcast because I know we're running out of time and You've been just so gracious. But the carnival code by Dr. Paul Saladino. What's happening? Not believing in fiber and saying that, you know, there's going to be a lot more research in the future, how important eating from nose to tail is, making sure that you get enough glycine as well as the methionine that comes from the meat, the muscle part of the animal. But I think what I want to finish with is just I've noticed over many years of dealing with clients, 21 years now in the health space, that the hardest thing is for people to maintain healthy habits, to maintain sustained transformation. So they start diets and the research shows that 80 to 95% of people who lose weight regain that weight within 45 years, if not more. Give us your top three tips or pieces of advice that help people maintain or sustain their transformation.

KEVIN Firstly, I'll say is one of the bits of research that I found that alludes to why people gain the weight back is because the microbiome, again, just like many other reactions in the body and processes in the body, tries to go back to its steady state. So it wants homeostasis, so it wants stability. So what happens is you can have a stable state that's diseased. For instance, you could be a diabetic, or you could have obesity and you've got a diseased steady state. So you have to fight against this homeostatic effect for the body wanting to just go back. Because remember the bacteria and the yeast and the candidas and all these things in your gut have direct line of communication to the brain via the vagus nerve, so they can signal more sugar, more X, more Y. So what I suggest for consistent change, we're very fortunate that we can shape the microbiome, we can slowly modulate it. It's not like you can change your heart or change your liver or change your kidneys. It's pretty much stuck with what you genetically have. But the microbiome, you can shift it substantially just by dietary interventions. And that's why things like carnivore or elimination styles of diets, GAPS diet, AIP diet, all these diets that exclude certain things are so powerful because we can shift our microbiome to a point where we start to crave the good things, where the beneficial bacteria are dominating, the Lactobacillus or the Akkermansia or the Bifidobacteria, all the short chain fatty acid producing bacteria, the ones that are dominating, versus the negative types of bacteria or yeasts. So once we shift it then the battle is easy. But everybody has to go through those few months of pain, to go through the elimination, to struggle through the cravings. But again, out of everything, I think diet is probably number three. There's easier ways. Get rid of the EMFs, start to be really mindful of your light exposures. Eat in a shortened window, really a short window, like eight hours, six to eight hours, and just eat really clean food. And I think just by making those changes, you will then push that microbiome state to a new state. And then once it gets to the new steady state, then you can maintain it, but you have to go through that short term pain.

Fantastic crib and thank you so much. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you? Where can they listen to you?

Well, you've got the Gut Health Gurus podcast which is on Spotify and Apple and all that good stuff. And then I'm most active on Instagram. For some reason I just resonate with Instagram. So if you go to Gut Health Gurus on Instagram or you get to Gut Health Gurus on Facebook, on YouTube, we have the Gut Health Gurus Facebook group which is now almost 14,000 people from across the world who are just totally obsessed with all things gut health, microbiome, fermented foods. I've just been so blessed to have just a really loving, supportive community of people that can hold your hand and give you lots of advice. So it's free, you can just come and join us. And obviously then you've got nourishment organics. If you're interested in some of our products, we have some of the most novel, revolutionary health products in the world. So you can come by and check out our fermentation kits, a range of probiotics, probiotics, fermented foods, anything that's cutting edge, I'm getting on there. I've got this amazing product recently as well. It's a bioactive hemp oil. Unbelievable Again for mental health. It is just unbelievable. It's really soothing and bioactive hemp oil. It's amazing.

Well, tell us a little bit more because it sounds fantastic. We've got hemp oil here, but I don't know what the difference is between the bioactive form and just the ordinary hemp that you find in South Africa.

It's special. I actually found these guys in, in a conference in Nanuga. It's the biggest trade conference in the world. In Germany, just by fluke, I found these guys, I tried their products. But what makes this particular product special is that they go through quite a gentle extraction process of the hemp to get the maximum amount of these bioactive compounds. But why they work so effectively is because there's this entourage effect. So all these different phytocannabinoids and different compounds work together because there's a nice balanced profile. They're not just trying to isolate certain components. So they, it's very rounded in the way they, they react in the body and specifically the endocannabinoid systems in the gut. It's, it's very, very soothing to the body. It's very effective if you suffer from any form of anxiety and depression. Just a little bit of this stuff under the tongue. I use it on a daily basis. It's very common and very, very powerful for gut health inflammation. If you've got soreness and joints in the body, especially after working out for training doms, you know, delayed onset muscle soreness, you can rub it on topically. Very powerful product. I was very surprised at how effective actually was trying it myself.

We'll get the connection to Nourish Me Organics for the Made To Thrive community. Especially in this crazy corona time with anxiety and depression on, the exponential increase, people sitting behind laptops, the blue light, the EMFs really not getting out like they used to. I think there's going to be a huge need for someone like Criben Govinda and Nourish Me Organics to get out there with these amazing products. So we'll just put the links in the show notes. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your calling. You inspire me. Steve Stabbs here in South Africa. It's the first time we've met, but you're an inspiration. You motivate me to get out there and really declare these things that we've been speaking about. There's just so much value and so much information in this podcast. So send us your queries and your comments and we'll put all the links. So thank you so much, Cribben. I pour favor and blessing upon your life that you go from strength to strength. And I know it's getting dark that side of Melbourne.

I'm grateful that.

No problem. We're breaking some circadian rhythmicity here, but thank you.

My pleasure, man. My pleasure, man. Thanks, Tij. Great. Take care.

Thanks so much.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with myself, Cribben Govender, being interviewed by Steve from the Made to Thrive podcast. Huge thanks to Steve. So do head to the Made to Thrive podcast and check out his work. He's amazing. He's a fellow podcaster from South Africa doing some amazing things. Guys, if you do enjoy this podcast, please leave us a kind review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever you can find us. It does help support the show. If you're interested in checking out the show sponsor, Nourish Me Organics, do head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Happy Gut for all the products across their range. Guys, thank you so much. Until next time.