Gut Health for Being Panic Proof with Dr. Nicole Cain and Hannah Kleinfeld from Omnibiotic Life

Foreign. Hi, everyone. I'm so excited to be here today with naturopathic physician Dr. Nicole Kane. Nicole has been a dear friend of Omnibiotic for several years now. She is such a wealth of knowledge on all things mental health and naturopathic medicine, overall health. And I'm here today chatting with her about her book launch, which is launching in October. The title of the book is Panic Proof and it's all about different, more holistic approaches to mood and anxiety. Nicole, I'm so excited to talk to you today, so let's dive right in. Why don't you tell me about, you know, the, the backstory behind your book. What motivated you to write it?

I am so grateful to be here with you, Hannah, and just for those listening, Hannah and I have been collabor multiple years now since I think 2022 or sooner. And I'm just so grateful to have connected with the work that you do because it's synergistic to this book. It's called Panic Proof. And this is the book that I desperately needed when I was at rock bottom with my anxiety. And it talks about what anxiety is actually telling us, needs heating, he healing, and how so that you can actually be empowered by your symptoms to get your life back. And so it comes out in October this year, 2024, and I'm really excited about it. And we talk about the gut, brain access and psychobiotics in this book. It's amazing.

Yeah, I think, you know, that's when I. So when you first started talking to me about your book and what you were writing, I think one of the really important things that resonated with me was this idea, you know, what you're seeing in your clinical practice, that more and more people are looking for a more holistic approach to, you know, dealing with or addressing their mood and anxiety. And I think that was so inspiring. You know, you're giving people a whole new set of tools to really be proactive about managing their mood and anxiety. So since Omnibiotic and, you know, the gut microbiome is so dear to us here, here, tell us a little bit more. From your perspective, how is the gut related to anxiety or to mood? You know, how do you see the gut brain axis also from a clinical perspective?

I see it working primarily with four different systems. And so we have the gut, and the gut contains all sorts of bacteria and viruses and yeasts and all sorts of other organic matter. And the job of the gut and the gut microbiome is to help regulate your entire body. And so the Gut microbes have their own specific roles. They make your neurotransmitters. In fact, 95% of your serotonin is made by the microbes in your gut. And so we also see that clinically, when we give somebody an antidepressant like Lexapro or Zoloft, that we see changes in the mood as well as digestive changes. And so we know that the gut microbiome plays a huge role in how we feel emotionally, but also physically. And the gut has a nervous system. We have the enteric nervous system that surrounds your digestive tract. And the enteric nervous system gets information from the gut bugs, and then it sends information up your vagus nerve to your brain, and and then your brain will send a signal back. And so this bi directional communication channel between the gut and the brain, we call the gut brain access. And then the gut communicates with the immune system and it also communicates with the endocrine system. So our hormones, like cortisol and sex hormones and thyroid.

Yeah, I love how you just kind of, you know, expanded on this because when, especially you as a naturopath, when you're looking at overall, you know, holistic health, you have to look at all these systems and how they're all intertwined. And, you know, oftentimes when one system is not optimal or out of balance, it really quickly impacts all these different systems. You know, you just mentioned that the gut microbiome is important for immune function, for neurotransmitter production, for sleep. You know, it's just all intertwined. And then if you're stressed, you know, stress negatively impacts your hormones, impacts your immune system, your systemic inflammation, and also impacts the gut. So we can see that any one of these factors usually impacts multiple systems in our body.

Yeah, you mentioned cases, and in the book Panic Proof, I talk about a case, and it's this guy, Matthew, and he has a type of anxiety that I refer to as gut anxiety, where his symptoms started after a release, stressful traumatic event when he was a child where he was experiencing these digestive symptoms in combination with anxiety. He was about to go on stage as a little kid and perform with his class, and he had a digestive accident, which then created this feedback loop of fear and autonomic arousal and digestive upset. So when one would come up, the other would come up. And so when doctors just treated him from the neck up, if you will, just counseling or psychotropic medications, he wasn't getting better because the gut was a part of the conversation. And so we talk about how those two can work together to be a part of healing as a whole person.

Yeah, I love that. I also love that you are sharing some of these almost like real world case examples in your book. I'm sure you're blinding the names and all the things that you always do. But, you know, I think it's so interesting for people to read about these types of, you know, real examples because I'm sure people maybe see a little aspect or a little glimpse of themselves in some of these cases and can feel inspired to see, oh, this person, you know, took this more holistic approach and these were the outcomes they had. So, going back to the gut for a moment, how do you use probiotics in, you know, looking at some of.

These cases, microbial diversity is the name of the game. And I find that with a lot of my clients, their world gets smaller and smaller and smaller with anxiety and fear. There's this feeling of, why is my body rebelling? Was it that cookie that I ate or was it that, that social environment that I went to? Was it this trip that I went on? And so we, we find our worlds shrin. And I find that people are eating the same foods because they're afraid of having a reaction to something. They're not socializing and going out and being with people. And we exchange microbial matter. And when we eat diverse foods, we do that. And so you have all sorts of bugs in your gut, and they all have different jobs, they all have different roles, and they want to live in community together. And so one of the first things that I work on doing is let's just work on expanding your microbial diversity. Because if you have a group of bacteria whose zone of genius is converting estrogen, like Clostridia, we'll say, is converting estrogen into active estrogen. And that's like what they do. That's their favorite thing. And now you have estrogen dominance and anxiety. If we can add more microbial diversity, crowd those bugs out, then it's supporting the body. So one of the first things I do is I try to increase microbial diversity. I will have them add fiber to their diet, sometimes fermented foods, so long as they're not high histamine also. And then I, for a lot of people, I will add a psychobiotic, which is a probiotic that has bacteria that have been clinically studied for their ability to benefit the brain and the nervous system.

Yeah, I think it's really important what you're saying. You know, diversity is key because we need to make sure that we have this, these bacteria that are doing all the different tasks. You know, you don't just want to, in many cases, you don't just want to add one strain in huge quantities to the gut because you need to make sure you maintain that diversity. I love that. So since, you know, you've been working with omnibiotic for many years now, that's kind of how we got to know each other. And you just mentioned a psychobiotic. Can you share just a few takeaways or things you've observed specifically with omnibotic stress release when, when your patients are taking that?

I had a wonderful presentation which everyone can find online where I went through a bunch of cases using different omnibiotic. So I know in this conversation we won't be able to cover all of that, but I don't want you all to miss it. So what you could do is you could go to my YouTube and then that's Dr. Nicole Caine and then type in a IHM. You'll get a whole presentation with lots of omnibiotic cases but different benefits that I've seen is I've seen kids who. There's a case of Amanda and she had really bad school social anxiety. She was afraid of going to school, she was lagging academically. We did a lot of gut work in conjunction with counseling and her transformation was amazing. I have a case of a perimenopausal woman who had a ton of of symptoms that she was attributing to menopause, like hot flashes and night sweats. And working with her gut was game changing. I had another case on there too of a woman who had all of these very non specific immune system concerns. She's getting sick all the time. And I gave her AB10, which just got nominated for this amazing award, right?

Yes, yes. Winner of the microbiome modulation category by Nutra Ingredients.

Such a huge victory. And that was an amazing product for her. She had been to so many integrative clinicians with very limited results. Is this non specific kind of immune system thing. And remember as we talked about earlier, that the immune system is by and large regulated by your gut. And so we want to go to the bottom of the stack. We want to go to the root cause and say, okay, what are these symptoms telling me may be out of balance and what do I need to do to help restore balance? And oftentimes when in doubt, just go to the gut. And we gave her this person, we gave a B10 and I had the testimonial word for Word in that presentation, but it was absolutely amazing.

I love to hear that. It's amazing to hear how you're helping so many people, you know, really reclaim both their physical health and also their mental health. So because we're talking about your book, which is launching October 8th this year, 2024, tell us just maybe a quick overview of, like, what are some of the. Like, if we were to look at a chapter summary, what are some of the chapters that people might see in the book? You know, what are the different topics that they could be reading about?

I walk you through the journey of healing panic, and the whole book is broken into three parts. And the first part is trying to understand what are the symptoms and messages from anxiety and panic. And so we look at how panic can show up differently for people. So some people get digestive upset, some people get heart palpitations, some people, they feel numbness and tingling. And so we break down, how did you get here? What happened to you? What didn't happen to you? What's going on in your history? How is the anxiety? How are the symptoms showing up both emotionally, mentally, physically? The second part is changing the paradigm, is changing the conversation where we don't look at symptoms as problems to be solved, but rather indicators. And so in this chapter, we dive deep into the science. And so I have a whole chapter on the gut brain access, and I write about psychobiotics. And we even break down how to find a good psychobiotic because more is not always better. And we talk about that a lot. And we explore neurotransmitters and we look at hormones. And then the whole third part of the book is how to be panic proof. And you get your panic proof protocol, which has all of the integrative tools that I use, like herbs and meditation and supplements and psychobiotics and all of the things. So. And it's broken down and it has stories so woven throughout it. There's a quiz, there's self assessment checklists, there's journaling prompts. It's really interactive and super fun.

I love that. I love that people are coming out, really, with a toolkit of, you know, all the different things they could be looking at. And I also love that it's interactive. It almost, to me feels like a book and a workbook all in one. So, yeah, I'm so excited to read it when it comes out. And I hope many of the folks listening here will also go check it out because, you know, I'm sure you can learn a lot about how to just even if you're not specifically dealing with anxiety, but you just want to have a more calm mental approach to life. I'm sure there is tools in there that maybe you can be adding to your toolkit, so go check it out. Panic Proof October 8, 2024 by Dr. Nicole Cain. And I'm so excited to read it and thank you for chatting with me today, Nicole.

Thank you so much, Hannah. I appreciate you.

Same here.