How To Reduce Inflammation, HEAL YOUR GUT & Prevent Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman

So when your gut immune system and your gut-brain connection are not working, it's going to cause bad health outcomes. When you have bad bugs in your gut, it produces toxins that drives inflammation when they're absorbed, and that inflammation interrupts your insulin signaling and insulin function, and you end up with insulin resistance, and then you produce more insulin, and then you gain more weight, and then just this vicious cycle goes on. Basically, gut bacteria are controlled by what you're feeding them. so you're the master of your bacteria. If you understand what they like to eat, you can feed it to them. Over the last hundred years, with the industrialization of our food supply, our diet has changed so dramatically. It's become highly processed, full of sugar, lots of bad fats, low in fiber, and it's dramatically changed our microbiome, our gut bacteria, and it contributes to all sorts of health consequences from obesity to what I call diabesity, which is pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, to cancer, to heart disease, to dementia, to autoimmune disease, to allergies, to asthma, to infertility. I mean, the list goes on. To acne, to pretty much everything you can think of. Any disease is connected in some way to your gut and your microbiome. It turns out it's probably one of the most important things in your health. and sadly doctors learned nothing about it. And functional medicine, we've been talking about this for decades. We've been understanding how to optimize the gut even before they had the word microbiome. So we talked about dysbiosis, which people used to laugh at me for talking about, and leaky gut. And now you can go on PubMed, the National Library of Medicine, there's thousands of papers on dysbiosis and problems with intestinal permeability and leaky gut. So we really need to pay a lot of attention to our gut throughout our life and how to optimize it. And the food we eat not only feeds our cells, but it also determines our inner garden, what kind of bugs are growing in our gut. And this garden is so important because if it's full of bad bugs, you're going to be in trouble and you're going to have all these health consequences. If it's full of good bugs, your health is going to be great. including your mental health. So when you actually look at the biology of the microbiome, it affects everything and it drives inflammation throughout the body. It affects our mood, our energy. I mean, our aging process, it's one of the 10 hallmarks of aging, is damage to our microbiome. So getting your gut bacteria healthy is probably one of the most important things you can do to stay healthy and to keep your health a long time. and if your bacteria are sick, so are you. I remember talking about this to a bunch of Tibetan monks once. I was giving a lecture at a monastery in Tibet, a bunch of Tibetan monks, and one of them was asking me, so, Dr. Hyman, if your bacteria are sick, are you sick? And he kind of got the connection. I thought it was great. Now, we're talking about two really key aspects. One is the gut immune system, which is really almost one system, and the other is the gut brain. system, which is almost one system. And so these are really two central ways that the gut affects everything through your immune system and through your brain. So when your gut immune system and your gut-brain connection are not working, it's going to cause bad health outcomes. So the question is, what are the things that cause imbalances in your gut? And what are the strategies to reduce bad bugs in your gut and reduce inflammation and heal your gut and create a healthy microbiome? First of all, let's talk about the gut and the immune system. Your gut is where about 60 to 70% of your immune system lives. All the immune cells are things we learned in medical school called Peyer's patches. They're right underneath the lining of the gut. Basically, your gut is one cell thick. The layer of the gut lining is one cell thick, and right under that is your immune system. Why? Because it's where you're exposed to most of the foreign substances every day called food and bacteria. so that's why it's there. And when people have all sorts of issues, they don't think that it's related to their gut because they might not have digestive symptoms. So if you have allergies or arthritis or autoimmune disease or irritable bowel or acne or chronic fatigue or mood disorders or dementia or cancer, you might think, oh, what does that have to do with my gut? It has everything to do with your gut. So if you want to fix your health, and we do this all the time in functional medicine, it's sort of central to our practice, you start with the gut. If you fix someone's gut, usually everything else gets better. There may be obviously other things, but sometimes we forget, I had mercury poisoning before. That damaged my gut. I had to get rid of the mercury to fix my gut. But fixing my gut became a key part of my health. It affects your whole body. It's the most important thing in your system because it helps to digest and break down food, to absorb nutrients, to keep out toxins, to regulate your immune system. It's a lot of work. And so, if you want to have optimal immune function, optimal detoxification, optimal brain function, and get the nourishment you need from food, your gut has to work properly. So, most of us should not know about our gut. It should just do its job, make an urge once or twice a day or more to go to the bathroom, which have a nice formed log, should float ideally, which probably doesn't go to the sinks because most people don't have fiber, and that's it. and we go about our business. But when you look at the prevalence of gut disorders in this country, irritable bowel, reflux, heartburn, I mean, these are among the most popular drugs sold today in the world. The number one visit to doctors today is for digestive problems. So this is a real big problem. Now, you've got a lot of flora in there. You might have 500, 1,000 or constantly discovering new species. You might have three pounds of bacteria in your gut. And this whole field of the microbiome is so important. In fact, you have 10 times as much cells maybe from bacteria as your own cells. Some people say it's the same amount or more, but it's a lot. But what's more important is you have probably 100 times as much bacterial DNA in your gut as your own DNA in your body. And DNA produces proteins. so metabolites, compounds. And the bacteria, if you have bad bacteria, are producing a lot of bad compounds that you absorb. And maybe a third to half of all the metabolites in your bloodstream right now are from your gut microbes and the proteins they produce, the metabolites they produce. And too many of the bad bugs, and it can be just bad bacteria, but it can also be yeast or parasites or worms, and none of the good bugs can cause huge issues for your health and even make you gain weight and cause obesity. And they've done these studies where they've transplanted the bacteria from a obese mouse into a thin mouse and that thin mouse becomes obese even independent of eating anything. So it's really important to understand the complexity of our health. Now one study they looked at 123 non-obese people and 169 obese people who were all from Denmark. And the researchers found that people with low amounts of healthy bacteria had way more body fat, worse insulin resistance, worse cholesterol, and more inflammation compared to the people who had a healthy gut. They also noted that the people with the lowest amounts of healthy bacteria actually gained more weight over time. so we think, oh, it's just what we're eating. No, it's not only what we're eating, it's what our bacteria eating and what we're feeding them and what they're producing. In fact, there's a whole term for this, it's called metabolic endotoxemia. Scientists are talking about, for example, now fecal transplants for weight loss, for autoimmune disease, for all sorts of problems, for Parkinson's, for Alzheimer's, for autism, to take basically the poop out of a healthy person and put it in someone who's sick and they get healthy. Now, I'm not a big fan of that for most things yet. I think it can be useful sometimes, but a much easier way is to learn how to feed your healthy gut bacteria and learn what food they like and how to fertilize them and create a healthy inner garden and give them the right foods, whole, fresh, real food, nutrient dense food, polyphenol rich food, fiber rich food, prebiotic rich food. When you feed your bugs junk, the bad ones grow. and that causes leaky gut, that leads to excess toxin absorption from the bacteria, it causes more inflammation, food sensitivities, and then you get all sorts of problems, like I mentioned, because when you have inflammation from the bad gut bacteria, that causes your insulin not to work so well, and that causes more weight gain, and you get more visceral fat, and then that's hungry fat, and then you want to eat more, and it just creates this vicious cycle. So, I've seen patients literally cure them of cravings by fixing their gut bacteria. and make them lose 40 pounds by fixing their gut bacteria. The good news is your microbiome changes with every single bite of food. So you can positively influence your gut flora right away, starting with your next meal. You don't have to wait. Now, let's talk about the gut-brain connection. We talked about the gut-immune connection. Your gut is considered your second brain. And really, there's two reasons, I think. One is that There is actually a whole nervous system in the gut called the enteric nervous system. It's connected to your brain, so your gut brain is connected to your actual brain. It's constantly communicating back and forth. There's also an enormous amount of neurotransmitters in there. Your gut is almost like a second brain. It's called the second brain. It plays a huge role in how we feel, in our mood, and in so many different factors of our health. You know, beside your brain, your gut is the only organ with its own nervous system. Your small intestine, for example, has as many neurons as the spinal cord. Your gut nerve cells, like the brain cells in your gut, let's call them, they produce 95% of your serotonin. And every class of neurotransmitter in your brain also resides in your gut. In fact, your gut contains more neurotransmitters then your brain, believe it or not. So that's why the gut is so important and why it has to be in balance for your brain to be in balance. I've had patients who've had depression we fixed with fixing their gut, who have OCD, who have schizophrenia, who have autism, who have anxiety simply by fixing their gut. I recently learned that it was a company that makes Akkermansia, which is a very important keystone species in your gut that loves to eat polyphenols like green tea, pomegranate, cranberry, and it regulates metabolism, autoimmunity, and many, many other things. Well, actually, when this bacteria was grown in the vat, which they grow it for commercial use to produce the bacteria for a probiotic, they found that the liquid, the soup that the bacteria was grown in, was full of GABA. GABA is a neurotransmitter which makes you relax. It's basically the body's natural valium. and so these bacteria producing all these substances, you have bad bugs, they can producing things that cause you to be anxious and depressed and irritable, whereas good bacteria can make you calm and relaxed and happy. So if your gut's not happy, you're not happy. So your gut has to be really healthy for your brain to be healthy, and it can really, really be not that hard to do. Now, we also know we have gut feelings, butterflies in your stomach, you have gut instincts, you know, Japanese people see the gut as a seat of the mind and the soul. When your gut's not healthy, your whole mood, emotions, your brain is just not working. It's important to get that sorted out. What causes imbalances in our gut? Why do we have a bad microbiome? Historically, you look at indigenous cultures, they didn't have all the problems we have. They didn't have autoimmune disease, they didn't have cancer, they didn't have heart disease, they didn't have allergies, they didn't have any of this stuff. It's not like we're born defective. We just live in a way that destroys our microbiome. So even in a perfect world today, in the 21st century, it's very hard to keep your gut healthy and in balance. But there's a lot of things that really do harm. And I want to go over those, and then we'll talk about how to get your gut healthy. First is our diet. Our diet is so bad. It's processed food. It's full of additives, emulsifiers, thickeners, sweeteners, chemicals that destroy your microbiome. It also is full of sugar and starch, which fertilize bad bugs. They love the bad food just like you do, but they actually consume it and then they produce all these dangerous metabolites. And you get bad bacteria, you get yeast overgrowth, and you get a whole damaged ecosystem in there and a leaky gut and the rest of the cascade we just talked about. Certain medications can be quite bad. Antibiotics obviously cause problems. Anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil. acid blocking drugs like Prilosec or Prevacid or Asperx Nexium. They're terrible. They block acid and they change your whole microbiome. Steroid use, certain hormones, all interfere with digestive function. Certain infections, you might get a parasite. You might have bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth. All these can cause damage. Toxins, heavy metals, pesticides, chemicals, mold, all interfere with gut function. That's what I had. I had really bad mercury in my gut. wasn't working for years because it was interfering with my gut function, with the enzymes, caused each overgrowth. Also, you might not have good digestion. Your digestive enzymes might not be that strong. And you basically have trouble with actually digesting your food. And we can measure digestive enzymes on stool testing. So stress can cause that, acid blocking and medication can cause that, low zinc levels can cause that. But it's important to have optimal digestive enzyme function and you might need to take digestive enzyme or hydrochloric acid. Stress also, by the way, your bugs are listening to your thoughts. So if you're, you know, angry or upset or having negative thoughts, those bacteria are listening and they're changing and you're actually growing the bad ones and killing the good ones. It changes the gut nervous system, it creates a leaky gut and changes the good bacteria in your gut to bad ones. So basically how do you reset your gut? Well, in functional medicine we talk about the 5R program. which we'll get into in a minute. But essentially it's a methodology for resetting your gut. And I've used this with thousands of patients with great success. The first thing is focus on what you're eating and eat real food. So get rid of all the junk food, the crap. So the first R of the 5R program is to remove. And this means remove the bad food, remove bad bugs, remove drugs that are interfering with you, remove food allergens, parasites, get rid of all the bad stuff. Then, you can also do an elimination diet, which can be really effective, which I find helps to identify leaky gut and food sensitivity issues. Get rid of gluten, dairy, sugar, corn, yeast, soy for at least a week or two, maybe three. If you want to do a more aggressive detox, you can do my blood sugar solution 10-day detox diet, which has really specific instructions on what to eliminate and how long and how to add foods back and how to identify what's going on with your body. Really, really important to actually try to do an elimination diet because you don't know how bad you feel until you start feeling good when you get rid of this stuff. And then the second thing you might need to do is you might need to treat yeast in your gut with antifungals or bacterial overgrowth or a parasite or a worm. And that really is important to reduce the load of the bad bugs and allow the good bugs to grow. It's like a garden. You gotta have a we, I call it the weeding, seeding and feeding program. You gotta weed out the bad stuff, you gotta feed the good stuff. and you've got to seed it with good bacteria. The second R in the 5R program is called replace, which means replace digestive enzymes, extra fiber, prebiotics. Prebiotics are amazing. They're in food like jicama and artichokes and asparagus and plantain. There's all kinds of foods that contain prebiotics. You want to include those in your diet. You want to actually replace fiber, so lots of extra fiber in your diet through fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some grains and beans. Re-inoculate your gut is the third step. So re-inoculate with good bacteria, probiotics. probiotic foods, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, tempeh, natto, all basically prebiotic foods, even pickles, but you might need to take probiotics. There's a whole way to do that and there's many different kinds of probiotics. Also, you want to repair. The next step is to repair the gut lining with things that help heal a leaky gut, glutamine, omega-3 fats, zinc, even primrose oil. Many things can be used as part of this. The fifth R is to restore, which essentially is restoring your nervous system through meditation, relaxation to reduce the stress level because stress will damage your gut even if you're doing everything else right. That's what we do with our patients and we see remarkable changes. Anybody who comes with any inflammatory disorder, almost any problem, I always focus on what's their gut history and what can we do to optimize their gut. I've written a lot about it in many of my books, but lots of free articles. We'll link to them in the show notes of the podcast. Getting your gut healthy is super important part of your long-term health. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. So what are the ones that we should really be paying attention to that we really want to avoid and get rid of? The first I just mentioned earlier is bisphenol A or BPA. It's found in plastic water bottles and canned foods. It's a synthetic compound that mimics.