Episode 30: Is Your Gut Triggering Your Immune System? An Interview with Dr. Heather Moday

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this next— Season. I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, and Insomnia, you name it. Then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. Hi friends. This week's episode is about the complex. relationship that our gut health has on our immune system. I'm interviewing Dr. Heather Moday. She's a triple board-certified functional allergist and immunologist. We're going to talk about leaky gut, which you've probably heard of before. The medical term is called increased intestinal permeability. We're going to talk about how that triggers your different types of immune reactions and what symptoms that it can cause. We're also going to explain how leaky gut is almost always the root cause of diseases like autoimmune disease, skin issues, and mood disorders. We're going to talk about the pros and cons of advanced functional medicine testing like food sensitivity testing and stool testing to evaluate your gut's microbiome—all those little guys that are living in your system, running the show. So if you're doing all the right things. If you're eating clean, moving every day, actively managing your stress, and you're still struggling— the weight's not coming off, you're not sleeping well, you have no energy, or maybe you have adult acne, maybe you have heartburn, pain with eating certain foods, maybe your bowels are fluctuating between diarrhea and constipation, maybe it's all of the above, you poor thing— then you need to listen to this episode. Because most likely the reason for your imbalance is in your gut. And don't mind the occasional dog barking in the background. That's either my Samoyed Angel or my black lab Shadow. They get excited when the mail comes, when the neighbor walks by, when the wind blows too much, or squirrels in the backyard, you name it. Okay, so sorry about that, but don't freak out if you hear a dog.

Let me quickly tell you about Dr.

Mode's credentials because they're beyond impressive. She's one of those people that I jokingly say has big neurons because she's so smart. That means you just have a big brain. It's a bad joke from medical school. So Dr. Mode received her medical degree from Tulane Medical School in New Orleans. She completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in allergy and immunology. But then she went on to complete a fellowship in integrative medicine with the Arizona Integrative Medicine Program, and she's board certified in integrative and holistic medicine. Then she completed a fellowship in functional medicine through the Institute of Functional Medicine and the Kalish Functional Medicine Fellowship. So she went on to start the Moday Center for Functional and Integrative Medicine in Philadelphia. where she practices both traditional and integrative medicine. So here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Heather. Thanks for being on the Functional Gynecologist Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I'm super excited to talk to you today. We need to dive into the immune system. It's so important during this time, right? What kind of patients do you usually see in your practice?

So I'm an immunologist by training. Um, that was my background after medical school. So I did internal medicine and then Immunology and allergy. Originally, I did a lot of just conventional allergy practice. I worked with a lot of people with asthma and chronic sinusitis and things, but when I went back and got trained in integrative medicine and functional medicine, I switched. Most of my practice now is people who have autoimmune disease or people who have other issues like chronic gut issues, a lot of Mood issues. I still do see people with allergies or just sort of other immune dysfunction. So it's a little bit of a mixed bag. Yeah.

Okay. But it always seems to go back to the gut, doesn't it?

Yeah. Well, it definitely goes back to the gut a lot because, you know, to have a real understanding of our immune system is to understand that one of the central parts of our immune system Our immune system actually lives within our intestinal tract, or is what we— we like to call it the gut because it's a lot easier to say.

Right.

Really, there's a whole area, central command, if you want to think about it that way, where probably about 70% of all of our cells that are immune cells are hanging out there, just like about a cell layer beyond our intestinal tract is our whole immune system. So it's really, really important. If you have problems with your gut health, then you're going to have problems with your immune health. It's like the two are inseparable, really.

Yeah. And I talk to my patients about their bowels all the time and they look at me like I'm crazy, you know? What does my depression and thyroid disease have to do with my gut? So I would love for you to talk more about kind of how you approach that with your patients and even begin that conversation of this This is why we need to look in your gut.

I basically tell them that story is about how our immune health is so associated with the integrity of our gut, but also when it comes to things like really any disease process has to do with what we're eating, right? Maybe not getting the right nutrients, maybe not absorbing the right nutrients, it's going to affect us in a lot of different ways. We're going to have health issues stemming from that. And when it comes to issues like mood problems, we know that a lot of the chemicals that are actually in our brain that help us with mood or actually regulate our mood, those are made in our digestive tract and they have a— they—

Interesting.

Made a lot by the interaction of some of the bacteria there. Even shifts— and they've done a lot of studies with this too in both humans and animals, but looking at how changing the microbiome makeup or the bacteria that's in our colon can really shift things like anxiety and depression and even things like ADD in children.

Interesting.

It's really very much all, you know, tangled up together. It's so, so, so important.

Yeah. And so do patients typically have symptoms of GI issues or is it just your other symptoms that you're having?

You know, it's both. And it's always harder to convince someone that it's their gut when they don't have other problems, right?

Yeah.

My personal story, like, I've never had like any IBS issues, you know, constipation, diarrhea. I always thought like nothing really bothers me. But a few years ago when I was having a lot of stress in my life, when I was, you know, opening my practice, I developed acid reflux, which was something I'd never had before. And, you know, I think a lot of us just think it's so normal that we ignore it, but having acid reflux is like The canary in the coal mine. It's telling you that things are not so good down there, right? If you're having acid reflux, that's like the top, right? That means that everything below it is probably not working so well. In my case, I had a lot of yeast overgrowth, and that was a real problem, which I figured out through testing and things. It was causing me to have other symptoms like brain fog and joint pain, etc.

Right.

You don't have to have an overt GI problem, although many of my clients do. They come in and they're labeled as IBS, things like that. Many people don't. They just say, oh, I've got autoimmune thyroid disease, or I have arthritis and depression, or whatever. I always say, well, it's in your gut. I tell them the whole story and they get it. I say it over and over and over again. So it is very important.

Yeah, I think it is a new concept for a lot of people, even though the science has been here for over a decade, and it just keeps coming, right? Like, that connection is real. Those microbiome, they are running the show, I say. And you have to acknowledge that and look at and evaluate it. Sometimes I see my patients, you know, they'll be struggling with constipation, but they Just take magnesium every day or Miralax every day. And so they start telling themselves their bowels are normal and they don't have an issue. Same thing with heartburn, right? Like, oh my gosh, all my patients are on PPIs. And what a disservice we're doing them by covering up that symptom because we need to know that's going on so we can look deeper. Like you're saying, that's the canary in the coal mine. Like, we need to investigate. So let's definitely talk about testing because a lot of times I get patients in the office who want food sensitivity testing. They're like, yep, I can't eat anything. You know, I can't eat the healthy foods. The healthy foods make me feel bad. And maybe that's true, but I like to start with stool testing first and foremost. So tell me what you think about those 2 issues.

So I think that stool testing can be really important. I think that you can do a lot of things without it, but it does give us a great window to look into. And also it's great if you're trying to prove yourself or to someone else, like, look, this is abnormal. You may not be feeling this, but this is what is going on and this is what this means.

Mm-hmm.

So stool tests, There's several companies that do them and they're all a little bit different, but they have markers that look at different things. Most of them will look at both the DNA of the stool, so basically what they're looking for is all the different strains of bacteria because there's actually a certain type, you know how we have like a DNA imprint, right? So humans are supposed to have a certain type of DNA or the genome, right? Well, we have like a microbiome genome. And so humans have like a sort of a typical microbe fingerprint. But the problem is, is that because of rampant use of antibiotics over the past, what, now probably 20, 25, 50 years or so, a lot of them have been killed off. And so it's almost like— It's almost like extinguishing a species, right? And so when you do that, you throw off the entire ecosystem. It's like you have missing microbes. They can see that in these tests, like what microbes are missing, what things are overgrown, what things are not there, what things are there in too great of an amount. It can look at level or markers of inflammation and tell us if there's actual inflammation in the wall of the gut, which tells us a lot. It can tell us a lot about how much you're absorbing. So are you having problems absorbing fat or protein or carbohydrates? So a lot of these things. So stool testing can be really, really helpful. Now, the question about food allergies, I think, is really important. We all want to blame— I don't want to say blame, but we sort of want to take the easy way out, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, we all want to say, well, I don't feel good, let's say, when I eat Garlic and onions or something, or I don't feel good when I eat cabbage and broccoli. Okay, so there's a reason for that, and it's not because you're allergic to any of those things. When we eat especially vegetables and fruits, and there are other foods too, one of the big components of those, they have a lot of great fiber, and fiber is really, really important. One of the reasons fiber is important is that Our wonderful little gut bacteria down in our colon, that is what they eat. They don't eat steak. Eggs. They don't. Okay. They don't eat really flour. I mean, I guess they do some starches, but they eat fiber from, you know, whole grains, fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds. Okay. So when people have trouble with those foods, it's usually Because they have a significant imbalance in the types of bacteria that they have there. So if they have an overgrowth, right, especially if the bacteria has migrated north and they end up having small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or what they call SIBO, what's going to happen is when they eat those foods, these overgrown bacteria are going to break it down and ferment them sort of like how you would ferment— You know, beer or wine or something, and it creates a lot of gas. When you create a lot of gas, it creates a lot of pain. It can cause diarrhea. It can cause constipation. So it can either increase the motility or movement of your gut, or it can slow it down. And so what happens is we start to blame the food. It's not the food. It's the terrain, right? You got to fix the terrain.

Yeah. I like how you said that. Exactly.

Because we want to be eating those foods. You want to. There are ways to balance out the microbiome and to eat those foods again because it's really, really important. What happens, the other thing, is that if we start pulling all these foods out, and a lot of people will do that, and they'll come in and they're eating like 20 different foods. That's all they eat. Now, when they do that, they're going to be really getting into some scary territory because that's nutrient deprivation. You're going to be missing a lot of vitamins and minerals, and you're also going to be underfeeding your gut microbes. You end up really just getting sicker and sicker. That's why, although I truly believe there's true food allergies and food sensitivities, but you have to fix the gut first. You got to get that microbiome back online, and you have to get the— The gut microbiome. That gut immune barrier healed before you can start saying, hey, do I really, really truly have a food allergy or food sensitivity? And then work on that.

Yeah, I love that. And I think people need to also realize that it's pretty common to have a leaky gut or dysbiosis where you have an imbalance of those bacteria because it's from simple things like being on birth control pills for years, right? Or chronically stressed, too much on your plate, you're running from place to place, you're overworked, you're not sleeping, those things destroy that. So I think it's really important for people to realize that they can damage it, but they can also heal it.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it is, we don't have to have gone through like a, like you said, like some tremendous catastrophic loss. I mean, most of us, you know, run ourselves ragged on a daily basis, and it's become normalized. I know, For myself, I was working full-time in a job which I didn't like, right? I was actually doing too much. I was working out, doing a lot of these races. So I was sort of doing a lot of physical activity, but then I wasn't sleeping well, right?

Yeah.

So I wasn't recovering from that. And then I had a lot of excessive stress of like, how am I going to set up this practice and all the finances of that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't have enough time to do enough self-care or meditate or whatever. And I'm sure at the time I was like, oh, I'll just deal— you just deal with it, right? You just manage it. You're like, whatever. And that kind of level for several months is enough to do damage. It doesn't have to be some catastrophic stressor or loss or something that you can necessarily It's like, you know, it's little bits, little bits, little bits until things break down. So it's really, really, really important to be very protective of your, you know, your nervous system and your stress response. So even things like watching too much news or consuming too much social media is enough stress for some people.

Oh yeah, definitely. Especially in this time of COVID I've seen seen that, you know, people are packing on the pounds. And some of it's that we're baking more and eating more, but a lot of it's stress. A lot of it is people are scared, their feet are full, you know, and that chronic cortisol is releasing more blood sugar and increasing your insulin and destroying your gut. So super important.

So it's something that I think everyone should be mindful of. And it doesn't take a lot. You know, it's not like you need Right now, I mean, I know that there are some people that obviously got no break in the action because of their employment, right? But many of us, we do have time to do some self-care and things like journaling or meditation or self-talk or deep breathing. We have plenty of time in the day to be doing it and we are just choosing not to. We really have to realize that if If we do it, not only do we feel so much better, it really does work, right?

Yes, it does.

First time, but if you just keep putting that effort in every day, it's like something you just return to and you think, wow, this makes me feel so good, I'm going to keep doing it. It's like a muscle, you know, you want to keep strengthening. But even just a little bit helps, you know, it doesn't have to be an hour, it can be 15, 20 minutes.

Right, it's consistency, right? Like, do a little bit every day, it adds up, just like A little bit of stress every day destroyed your gut, a little bit of de-stressing can heal you, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

But some— a lot of people get to the point where they have developed systemic inflammation, chronic disease, all this gut dysbiosis. So where do you begin to start with healing them?

Well, I think, you know, you have to look at that foundational stuff because, like you said, the hormones make a big difference. That cortisol, which is our stress Yes. Foundational things would be look at your life. What are your sleep habits? Are you skipping sleep? Are you staying up? Are you watching TV before bed? What's the quality of your sleep? What can you do to really improve that? It could be little things. It could be shutting off TV 2 hours before. It could be doing a little journaling before bed. It could be making sure you're not drinking alcohol to go to sleep at night or something like that. Just trying to improve that issue. Then maybe starting with stress. Okay, so then I'm also going to build into my day 10 to 15 minutes of deep breathing and a little body scan. That's something everybody can do. Those are 2 big things. Then look at your diet. Take a couple of days without judgment. I always say— Don't have judgment because judgment doesn't help anybody, right? Don't feel like, oh, I'm awful. I'm fat. I'm terrible, blah, blah, blah. Don't say any of that stuff. Just eat the way you would normally eat. Write it all down and then take a look at it and then go, okay, what can I be doing here to add in more fruits and vegetables? Can I swap out some of maybe the convenience foods that I'm using? Or can I use— you can use any of those free apps. Everybody has a cell phone, right? Everybody can get—

Right.

They're free.

Yes, that's what I did. I got the Lose It app when I kicked sugar almost 5 years ago. I got real. I told the truth. I put down exactly what I was eating, and I realized I was grabbing cookies like every hour or 2 or eating cake. You know, I live— I was in an office of all women, so there was always crap in the break room, right? And when you start logging that and really getting real, It's eye-opening, and that's the only way to break that sugar addiction. And like you said, I started swapping that out and eating fruit mostly, just because I still craved that sugar. And then I started eating more bitters, more vegetables, more, you know, things with savory flavor. And eventually I was able to break that sugar habit. But I think that's a great point. Like, just hold yourself accountable, even for a few days, can be super eye-opening. So do you then go on to use the elimination diet often on your patients, or how are you balancing that gut and healing it?

So I think an elimination diet is helpful. We call it elimination because we're eliminating certain things, and they're not necessarily bad foods. Okay, so a lot of times in an elimination diet, we'll take out gluten, we'll take out dairy, we might take out Red meat, we'll take out sugar, we'll take out alcohol, coffee. People are probably like, oh my God!

Yeah, yep.

You know, for some people it might be egg, you know, so there's a couple different ones, but— and the reason why we pull out some of these foods is some of them are associated with auto— some people with autoimmune disease are sensitive to them. They can be allergic for some people, right? So these are some of the foods that people have more allergic responses to, like for example, corn, eggs, dairy, very common. And then things like red meat. I mean, having small amounts of red meat is fine for most people, but a lot of people eat it all the time, or they're eating things like ham or bacon or processed things. And by pulling that out, they actually are pulling out a lot of, you know, inflammatory foods. It also pulls out a lot of convenience foods that a lot of people would normally reach for, right?

Oh, yeah.

Someone says you're not going to have gluten, you're like, oh, well then every single cookie that I normally buy in a plastic or cardboard box has gluten in it, so I'm going to stop that. It just gets a lot of the junk out. Then it gives you just a level playing field to see how do I feel for 30 days? How do my joints feel? How does my energy feel? Do I get headaches? Do I— am I sleeping better? It just gives you a break, right? That's the way that we use it. It's not meant to be like, oh, this is the way you're going to eat for the rest of your life and you can never have X, Y, or Z food again.

Right.

It's not meant to be a punishment. Then what we do is we start maybe adding things back little by little, maybe not the real junky stuff, but little things. And some people will say, you know what, man, I added back that cheese and I noticed, like, I got congested again, or, like, you know, that acne that I had that went away, it came back.

Yeah, for sure. I think you learn so much about yourself. I just think it's really eye-opening, you know? It's like you get to really see how your body responds to the fuel you're putting in it. So I think it's super important.

Longer than 30 days, but you have to do it for, I would say, at least that period of time in order for your body to, to heal and in order for you to notice a difference. So, but I always just caution that elimination is not the answer to everything, right? It's meant to be a tool. Um, and then if your body doesn't react well to it, then you can keep it out.

Right. And the 4 weeks is because your immune system needs to stop reacting to those foods, correct? Yes, I do. Can you talk— yeah, talk to my listeners about the difference between a food allergy and a food sensitivity? Because I think food sensitivity testing is super popular. People want to just do that and blame the food and then not eat those foods ever again. And, you know, I agree with what you're saying. That is not necessarily the answer. The answer is healing the gut. dealing with the other aspects of your life that are causing the dysbiosis, but maybe we do need to remove the offending agents for a while to calm that immune system down, right?

Exactly. So food allergy is different. So when people talk about food allergy, they're literally only talking about one type of reaction, and that is, um, they call it a type 1 reaction. And this is a reaction that occurs with a certain kind of antibody called IgE. So IgE, when you have antibodies against, let's just say the most common, let's just say peanut, right? If you have an IgE antibody or if you have them, thousands of them, right, in your body that are targeted against peanut, when you eat the peanut, you're going to have usually within—

24 hours.

A few minutes to a few hours, a sort of very severe reaction that is very typically allergic, okay? So that would be things like hives on your body, swelling, like maybe of the lips, throat, tongue, asthma, difficulty breathing, and then in very severe cases, your blood pressure drops and people die. That's called anaphylaxis.

Okay. Right.

So that is a food allergy. Now, not to say that every time someone has that severe of a reaction, but let's just say I went out to dinner, I ate a shrimp or 2, and then within like 15 to 20 minutes I felt itchy on my tongue and I had hives on my chest. I would consider that to be a true food allergy and that you should avoid the food because it can get worse. So that can become life-threatening.

Okay.

So it can, depending on how much you eat of that, can get worse. Food sensitivity is a little bit different. Food sensitivity is different antibodies. They're what's called IgG or IgA antibodies. This occurs because, as I said, when we're eating, food is information. When food goes down, gets digested, goes into our small intestinal tract, We have this very strong immune barrier between the inside of our digestive tract and our immune cells. The only things that are supposed to come through there are supposed to be things that are already pre-broken down and that we're absorbing so that we can use it as a nutrient, right? When we have disruption in our intestinal lining or leaky gut issues, as we like to call them, Those proteins or have not maybe been broken down fully into their nutrient status. They're able to cross over without— without being properly processed and into the bloodstream where our immune system automatically gets triggered because they see that as a threat. They see that as something that is dangerous.

Okay.

What happens is we make antibodies against, let's just say, I don't know, corn or something, or pineapple. It could be something completely random, right? Then when you do the food testing, you can see, oh, that someone has an IgG level elevation against strawberry or pineapple. It does not mean that you're going to have a life-threatening reaction to it. Now, does it mean that you might get some inflammation if you eat that food all the time? Possibly, okay? We don't know, but the answer is not to not eat that food. The answer is that it's really not a true allergic response. It's just sort of like an innocent bystander antibody. You want to seal that gut lining, and then over the time, those antibodies are going to disappear. Then you can eat the food again. Let me tell you, I have done food sensitivity testing on lots of people for different reasons. I don't do it routinely because of this, because there's so many people with leaky gut that what happens is I'll run a food sensitivity test and they come back and they're alert that it says they're sensitive to 100 foods. Nobody's happy to hear that.

Right.

A lot of people want to come in and they're like, oh yeah, I just want to be told I can't eat like 10 things. Usually things that I don't want to eat anyway. But God forbid it's things I love to eat. And then they think, well, if they take those things out, that all of a sudden every problem in their body is going to go away. That's not true. And when you get told that you've got 75 foods that you're sensitive to, a lot of them being your favorite foods, it doesn't seem so fun anymore, does it?

Exactly. The other thing I see is people get food sensitivity testing and then they repeat it 2 years later and it's completely different foods and they're so confused. And then they finally find me and I'm like, well, it's just your system is responding. Your immune system's trying to protect you. Things are getting through that gut barrier that shouldn't be getting through. So I love how you're I think it's so important for people to realize that it's not a life sentence, right? You might be able to eat pineapple again. You just need to heal your gut, right?

That takes a while. It's not like it happens overnight. You know, a lot of times I'll hear people will say, oh, I, you know, I went and I took, you know, I read an article, so I took, you know, oregano oil, or I took this for a month and But they didn't really change anything else, right? They didn't change their stress management. They're still drinking pretty heavily, or maybe they're still popping Prilosec or whatever. They didn't do a lot of other changes, and they're like, well, I don't understand. I thought that would heal my gut.

Yeah.

There's a lot of moving parts there, right? There's a lot of things that go into—

Yes.

If you have a garden, right? If you went out into your backyard and all you did was take packets of seeds and just throw them around the yard—

Like probiotics?

Would you expect to have a beautiful garden? Absolutely not, right? You have to like till the soil, you might have to check the pH, you might have to add in some things to manage the pH, you want to put in some fertilizer and worm casings, you know, you want to Put the seeds in there, but then you've got to pull out the weeds, you've got to add some plant food. There's so many different steps in order to cultivate a garden. If you think of your gut as your garden, you get the idea. Wow, this is a multi-tiered process that might take a few months for me to really—

Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great analogy. I was just looking in my yard today and it's like, All the mulch that was put down a month ago, grass is growing through it because we're not tending to it, right? So it really is a living, breathing thing inside of our gut, and it's going to change every day. I mean, our gut cells turn over constantly. We create new cells. It's trying to heal for us, but we keep throwing in all those things that injure it, right? We just keep on overexercising, eating processed crap. Or, you know, some people drinking pop, living stressed-out lives, not sleeping. So it's so true that we have to handle every aspect. It's all interconnected. So I'm so glad you touched on that. So you see patients for depression, mood disorders, Alzheimer's, all kinds of stuff, and you're oftentimes starting with the gut, right?

Yeah, I mean, you have to. I mean, you have to address it. It's not anything that you can ignore. I mean, obviously for some people it's a bigger issue than for others, but very rarely, I mean, almost never, do I do a test and find that there's not something that we can improve upon. They may not have overgrowth of bacteria or yeast. But maybe there's signs that they don't get enough fiber, so they're not making enough of the fuel that grows the intestinal cells that are called fatty acids, short-chain fatty acids. So maybe they're not getting enough fiber, or maybe they don't have enough— some of the beneficial species are missing. So we'll work on doing things like fermented foods and just probiotics and—

Yeah.

You know, we may not have to do as much as we do with someone else, but you always have to address it because if you don't, you could be completely missing.

Right.

Yeah.

Is there one food plan that you think most people should be eating, or are you super individualized with your patients?

I'm really individualized. I think that When we've looked at health data in general, and this is applying to everything from brain health to intestinal health, I think that going more with a plant-based diet is the way to go. It doesn't mean that you can never have an egg or that you're never going to enjoy some chicken or whatever. I think that I'm not into that sort of dogmatic strictness when it comes to food because as long as the food is a whole— it's whole food that's been cultivated, not sprayed, so it's organic, so it's been raised well, etc., then I'm okay with it. But I would say that most of— I am not a fan of people using a lot of meat in their diet because I think it does have too many detractors to it, plus just the— environmental impact that it has. And then looking at a lot of the data for a plant-based or plant-forward type of nutrition plan, there's much lower incidences of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer. And then they've done a lot of previous work on the sort of more Mediterranean diet, which is still very much a plant-based diet. It has small amounts of meat, Small amounts of dairy products, uh, that also has been shown to be associated with really good outcomes for cardiovascular disease. And so I would say somewhere along that line of a Mediterranean-style diet, um, you know, with very plant-forward, lots of seeds and nuts, fruits, um, is a great way to go. I think you're going to get the best impact on lots of different systems of your body.

Yeah, definitely. I think cleaning up the diet is number one for me. Like, that's when the patient leaves my office the first day. There's always a diet plan, right? If it's not the elimination diet, it's the Mito food plan or the Core food plan or something where you're going to change how you're eating so you can affect that gut microbiome. So—

No, it's foundational. I mean, if you There's no point in putting supplements into your body if you're not changing your— if you're not, I should say, optimizing your nutrition. The thing is, I think a lot of people are scared of food that maybe they haven't tried before, or they think it has to be something fancy and gourmet, or they also think it might have to be expensive.

Right.

That's not the case. You can do really, really simple things. Simple meals that can be really nutritious. And, you know, it doesn't have to be like something that you're gonna take a picture of and put on Instagram.

Yeah, exactly.

A lot of my dinners and lunches are like whatever I— I do a lot of like, well, whatever I ate the night before, that's my breakfast the next day or like my lunch the next day. It's like just put it in into a bowl and add like an avocado on top of it or something. Yeah, so nothing fancy.

And it's so easy to get organic now or grass-fed beef if you want to eat beef and things like that, you know, free-range eggs. It's just a lot easier nowadays. And I think we need to get back into the kitchen. So I'm actually a fan of the COVID situation. I think that it's been nice to be at home, have time to cook, be forced to cook, right? Because I'm worried that we're going to raise a bunch of kids who've never cooked a meal, who don't know how to be in the kitchen. So I think it's— if anything good comes out of it, it's been that.

And also, you know, planting. People have—

Oh, yes.

Vegetables again. And like, you know, it's almost like the Victory Gardens of World War II. You know, it's like the COVID garden, right?

Yes.

No, and I mean, I actually planted a bunch of veggies. Um, I don't even have much space. I just have like a raised bed in my little city house, but I got cucumbers and beets and baby kale and what else, carrots out there and peppers and tomatoes. So—

That's awesome. Yeah, I did the same thing and I haven't done it in probably 8+ years, but I actually had the time. So it's, it's pretty awesome. So I hope other people have been embracing the time that we've been given. I think it's so important. Oh my gosh.

Sure, for sure. And you know what, this is going to be, you know, everyone's going to be going back to sort of, it's not going to be normal, but it's going to be a little bit more back to our normal life. And You know, for the next year or so, you know, this thing is going to be popping up, and there are some populations that are obviously more fragile that are going to have to be more careful, and that's just the way it is. But for many of us, you know, if we can continue or make changes in our life in terms of like taking better care of ourselves, the chances if we you know, happen to contract, you know, the COVID virus, that we're not even going to feel it or we're going to get, you know, hardly, you know, really have few symptoms. And that's sort of an inevitability because it's not, you know, at this point we don't have a vaccine on the horizon and probably won't for quite a while. So the thing that we all can do is that we can strengthen our immune system by sleeping, Doing moderate exercise and eating really wholesome food and de-stressing and all those things because that's what is the weakness. All those, when we're not doing those things, we're hurting our immunity and when we don't have a good immune system, that's when we get into trouble. So it's really, that's one thing we all can work on right now. It's a very positive thing to work on and to think about instead of thinking about The negativity of it all.

Yeah. Oh, I love that you said that. I think it's so important that we focus on strengthening our immune system because honestly, viruses and bacteria existed way before we ever did, and they're going to exist long after we do, right? I mean, it's— that's just how it is, and we need to coexist with them. And so we need to strengthen our immune system if we want to stick around.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so this has been an awesome talk. I love hearing all your wisdom, so thank you so much for sharing this with my listeners.

Well, this is great. It was so great seeing you again since, uh, yeah, we didn't get to see each other this year in Arizona. Hopefully next year.

I know, things need to stop being closed.

Oh, so we can go and, you know, Learn some more new stuff, you know.

Exactly, lifelong learners. So Dr. Heather, where can people follow you and check you out?

So my I do most of my posting on Instagram, so you can go there, and my handle is the immunity MD. So I've been trying to put some new videos up there, and then my website is just www. Modaycenter.com. It's my last name, modaycenter.com. Yeah.

Cool. I will have those in the show notes for everybody because I definitely think they need to be following you. You're a wealth of knowledge on immunology, gut health, all that good stuff.

Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure and have a wonderful rest of the week. You too. Take care. Okay. Bye now.

Bye. Well, thanks for joining me this week. That was really a good topic. We need to talk about gut health more because it does affect every other system in our body and can lead to so many chronic diseases. So I want you to keep that in mind if you are not making progress, you're not getting better doing the things that you're doing, and remember that we are We are a system of systems. All of our systems are interconnected. They influence each other and affect one another, so nothing happens in a vacuum. The gut and immune system are super connected and influence each other. The gut and the brain influence each other, gut and hormones, everything. So if you aren't getting results and you want to work with me, you know where to find me, www.drtabatha.com. That's 3 A's, T-A-B-A-T-H-A, no I's. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please hit the subscribe button. Please share it with your girlfriends. Spread the word. Women need to know that there are answers out there. There are ways to reclaim your health. We're in this together. It would be awesome if you would hit me up a review and maybe even click the 5 stars. That would let iTunes know that you want to keep hearing this and this stuff is important to you. So I appreciate it so much because you know what, I do this for you. So go out and have a kick-ass week and take one little nugget from this podcast Just add it to what you've already been making changes with. They add up, I promise. By next year, you're gonna be a renewed woman. So go out and renew yourself. Bye, guys! Bye!