The Ultimate Gut Reboot Podcast - Plus High Protein Diet Damage, Irradiated Fish, Getting Fit in 4 Minutes, And Much More!

In this podcast, High Protein Diet Damage, Ancestral Beer, Irradiated Fish, Getting Fit in four Minutes and the Ultimate Gut Reboot.

Podcast welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here. And in case you didn't notice from the announcements, I am podcasting all by myself today. And no, Brock didn't disappear into the Mayan jungle wilderness during last week's Mexican podcast. And as far as I know, he wasn't involved in any kind of freak horrible Canadian fracking oil accident or hockey or curling or beer or poutine gulping accident.

This is not a boot diplomacy.

This is a boot dignity. This is a boot respect.

This is a boot realizing that humor.

Is he is simply not here podcasting with me today because I had to record today's episode one day early. Tomorrow I'm heading down to Bradenton, Florida to the IMG Sports Academy to train with the elite triathlon team. I race for Team Timex. So I will be down there swimming, biking, running and learning all about the wetsuits and the bicycles and the Timex timepieces that we'll be using during this year's race season. And I definitely still wanted to get a podcast episode out to you today. So in today's podcast episode, you're going to get some killer news flashes, a few special announcements, and an amazing podcast with a special guest named Dr. Tim Jackson. As usual, all of the shownotes for this episode are going to be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 274 and I got to tell you this, there are a ton of resources for today's podcast. So head over there to get access to everything and let's go ahead and jump right into today's news flashes.

News flashes.

Well, in case you do not yet, follow me on twitter over@twitter.com BenGreenfield Let me fill you in on something. Every day I read over 50 different blogs and blog articles along with research journals and studies that get sent to my email inbox. I sift through this stuff, find the best, most practical, most applicable stuff that's gonna change your life, your fitness, your waistline and your health and put it out there. So be sure to tune in to twitter.com BenGreenfield if you're not already now, today I've got a handful of really helpful news flashes for you and some stuff has piled up in the past couple of weeks. So typically we cover three or four news flashes every podcast episode. I've got a few more than that to go into for you today. Now, first, I want to talk about an article that came out on a really good website called supversity.blogspot.com and that article actually featured nine very simple diet rules that I, I think are pure weight loss gold. Now, I'll link to this article in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 274 if you want to dig into more of the reasoning and the research behind each of these rules. But drum roll please. Here they are. Rule number one is to stick to stepwise reductions in total energy intake. What that means is that if you're going to restrict calories, you, you would start with about a 10 to 15% drop in calorie intake over and above what you're currently eating. Okay? So you drop calories by about 10 to 15% and then you gradually increase that by dropping calories in 5 to 10% increments. Okay, that would be as opposed to doing like a crash diet in which you subtract a huge number of calories all at once. So you start small and you gradually decrease the amount of calories each week rather than starting with one big all or nothing calorie cut. Now, rule number two is that no matter how many calories that you cut, you should never, ever limit your energy deficit to anything more than 40% calorie reduction. Okay, what does that mean? That means that if you burn, say 2,000 calories a day for your resting metabolic rate, and you can figure out your resting metabolic rate by going to a website like getfitguy.com and discovering your metabolic rate calculators over there. Let's say you find out that your metabolic rate is 2000. Well, you would never on any day want to limit your energy deficit to more than 40% of that. So you'd never want to take in fewer than 1100 calories per day because that's where you risk metabolic damage or else hitting a weight loss plateau. Okay? Rule number three is to keep lifting heavy while you're dieting to minimize muscle loss. So what does that mean? That means that you should never, when you're dieting, stick to or get stuck in a rut of just doing like body pump classes. Or high rep, low resistance type of weight training. It turns out that based on research, the best way to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, or lose fat and maintain muscle, which means tones and curvature, is to lift heavy. One of my favorite ways to do that is something like a five by five weightlifting protocol where you choose five different exercises and you do five sets of five reps for those exercises. And each of the exercises is the type of exercise that allows you to lift heavy. Squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, pull ups or pull downs, things of that nature. Okay, rule number four is to use your diet, and not only your diet, to generate an energy deficit. So what that means is that rather than simply restricting calories, what you want to also do is burn calories, preferably through a mix of both high intensity interval training as well as shocker here, low intensity steady state exercise. Now the best way to do this is to do your low intensity steady state exercise in the morning in a fasted state preferably, and then the high intensity interval training on a different day or on the same day, but later on in the day. And that has been shown to accelerate fat loss versus just restricting calories or restricting energy intake through diet. So rule number five is to increase your protein intake to be somewhere between 20 to 30, 30% of your total energy intake. Yes, it turns out that that is good for weight loss versus going much, much higher in protein or going extremely high in fat and low in protein. So 20 to 30% is your magic window, based on research for maintaining again, a very good muscle to fat ratio and getting long term sustainable weight loss. Okay, rule number six is to consume about 30 grams of protein per meal. And to me, that rule seems like it could potentially be pushing a lot if you're a very light person. I would say that if you weigh about 110 to 120 pounds or less, that 30 grams of protein per meal might be a little bit lower. The other issue I have with this rule is that if you're doing that much protein right before you go to bed at night, you might get a little bit of an insulin spike that could potentially pull you out of fatty acid oxidation. But in most cases, that general rule of right around 30 grams of protein is pretty good. And that incidentally is about the most protein that you're going to be able to absorb and utilize per meal anyways. So 30 grams. Okay, rule number seven is to implement regular refeeds whenever your total energy deficit is greater than 25%. All right, let me say that again, implement regular refeeds when your total energy deficit is greater than 25%. What this means is that if you are restricting calories pretty significantly, like we're talking to the point where you're going to bed hungry every night, you're chewing on the inside your cheeks, staring awake, looking at the ceiling, you know, really being careful to not overeat, that can potentially cause some metabolic damage or it can influence what's called your leptin sensitivity unless you're doing some refeeds. So I'm a fan. If you really are getting down and dirty and engaging in some pretty significant calorie restriction to doing a refeed day or a refeed meal every week, where you just go out and treat yourself and eat as much as you want, basically push yourself away from that table not being hungry anymore. And that can have a really good effect at keeping you from experiencing a weight loss plateau. Rule number eight is to eat your veggies. No surprises here. Research shows that when you're eating a high amount of vegetables, particularly from dark leafy greens and nutrient dense foods, that you are going to vastly accelerate weight loss. Don't worry, it's not going to pull you out of fatty acid oxidation. Carrots aren't going to be too high in sugar. Neither are parsnips or kale or bok choy or spinach. Don't worry about the carbs in those foods. That's silly. Okay, and then rule number nine is to avoid post starvation obesity by working your way up to habitual energy intake progressively. So what does this mean? This means that it's important to avoid the formation of new fat cells by making sure that when you increase your energy intake, you do it in small incremental steps. So if you're going to diet and restrict calories when you reach your goal weight and perhaps you increase your level of physical activity and subsequently increase your level of calorie intake, don't do so in big steps. Okay? So what that means is don't lose a bunch of weight and then, you know, go from a 2,000 calorie diet to training for Ironman and eating 3,500 calories per day. Instead, what you want to do is gradually increase your energy intake to whatever, starting from an energy restricted 1500 calorie per day diet to gradually getting up to 1750 to 2000 to maybe, you know, let's say you need, you find you need 2250 or 2500 to support your daily levels of physical activity. So big picture here is don't shock your body by dumping a ton of calories into it all at once as you pull yourself out of a calorie restricted diet. Okay, enough talk about calories and diet. Let's move on to another study that looked at whether or not you can actually get fit in just a few minutes a week. And this was an article over at New York Times. I'll link to it in the show notes as well. And what this looked into was two recent studies that came out investigating high intensity interval training. The first study actually compared a group that combined high intensity interval training that consisted of four 30 second bouts of all out maximum efforts on a bicycle and alternated that with uninterrupted intervals that lasted about four minutes. Now, both the four minute interval training that they did on one day and the stop and go type of interval training that they did on the other day both burnt the same amount of energy, the same amount of calories. But what they did was they compared a group that did this stop and go plus continuous interval style training with a group that just did continuous style interval training. Well, it turns out that even though both groups experienced gains in fitness, the group that mixed the high intensity interval training stop and go style with the continuous style interval training actually experienced greater fitness improvements and less of a loss in fitness after stopping the training compared to the people that just did the continuous interval training. So the big takeaway message from this first study is that if you're gonna do high intensity interval training and you're going to rely on these very short bouts of exercise to get fit with the minimum amount of time that you should mix up your workouts and have a few different types of interval training sessions that you do in each week. So, for example, one of my favorite things to do is to take somebody who's limited for time and give them one day where they're doing some very short 30 to 60 second hard efforts, another day where they're doing some also short but slightly longer 2 to 4 minute efforts, and then another day where they're doing one long, for example, 10 to 20 minute kind of tempo effort. That's a very good scenario for sustainable weight loss or sustainable improvements in cardiovascular fitness. Now, the second study that they looked at compared a group who shoved a bunch of high intensity interval training sessions into just three weeks versus another group that did the same amount of training but put it into eight weeks. Now what they found was that the group who shoved all these high intensity interval training sessions into just three weeks, meaning that they just killed themselves for three weeks, they actually did not experience anything, any improvement in their endurance capacity. And in many folks in that group, their endurance capacity actually declined until they had gone through about 12 days of rest. Whereas the group that spread all of their high intensity interval training sessions out over eight weeks experienced consistent improvements in endurance and fitness. So what this goes to show is that there's two different ways you can get fit with high intensity interval training. You can either do a bunch of it all at once, completely destroy yourself, and then allow yourself to rest so that you bounce back. And this might be a scenario you'd experience if you were to, say, go off and do a really hard fitness camp, like, say, a triathlon training camp or something like the Seal Fit Camp that I'll be going down to do in August down in California. You would do something like that, but then you would allow yourself anywhere from one to two weeks of complete rest and recovery so that you absorb those improvements. Now, the other way to do it would be to simply give yourself a good 48 to 72 hours of rest between high intensity interval sessions and just spread them out week after week throughout the entire year. Now, that latter scenario is a much more sustainable type of way to do high intensity interval training and to experience the fitness gains that you can get with it. But if you ever do decide to immerse yourself in a very tough camp or week or multi week series of high intensity interval training, understand that you'll probably gain zero fitness. And you may actually lose fitness unless you also program or plan for a period of sustained rest and recovery after that high intensity interval training block. Okay, next, I tweeted out that for all you out there stuffing your faces with coconut oil and butter indiscriminately, it may come as a shocker to you, but it turns out that a recent study that appeared in the Journal of Diabetes shows that overfeeding on saturated fat can actually cause liver and visceral fat accumulation. In other words, risk of developing fatty liver and a beer belly. So what this study looked at was a comparison of overfeeding on polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils, and overfeeding on saturated fats such as you would find in things like grass fed beef and coconut oil and butter and things of that nature. Well, it turns out that when you overfeed on saturated fat, you actually get even more of a metabolic health, health risk effect compared to overfeeding on polyunsaturated fat sources. And the important thing to realize here is that although you actually do need adequate saturated fats in your diet for everything from cholesterol, steroid and hormone formation to the integrity of your cell membranes, to the ability of your body to absorb other fatty acids like omega 3 fatty acids from fish oil. The fact is that once you're saturated fat intake begins to creep over and above about 30% of your total fat intake, it begins to become a health risk. So understand that when you're looking at your total fat intake during the day, you need to make sure that no more than about a third of it is from saturated fat. And then the rest of it can come from things like extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil, olives, raw seeds, raw nuts, things of that nature. But the solid type of saturated that you're going to get from coconut oil and butter and the marbliness in steak and things of that nature, you definitely don't have an unlimited ceiling as far as how much you can eat. And unfortunately that also includes bacon. So just be careful. If you're that person walking around with bacon and butter on every plate of breakfast, you can indeed overdo it. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So another interesting article that came out was over@eartheasy.com, another blog I subscribe to. And this article asked whether after Fukushima, if it's safe to eat seafood. And this article makes some really good points. For example, Fukushima derived cesium that you'll find in something like bluefin tuna. It still remains 600 times lower than the levels of naturally occurring ocean radionuclides that you'll find in the fish. And many other commonly eaten Pacific seafood species have yet to show any contamination from radiation. Now the article also goes into the actual half life of many of these radioactive compounds released from Fukushima. For example, iodine 131, which is something that they really talked about a lot, especially after the tsunami. Well, it has an eight day half life, so most of that isn't even present in the fish or in the water anymore. Cesium, which is another radionuclide that has a longer half life, but it behaves kind of like a salt and it goes in and out of fish and, and out of humans pretty quickly. So it doesn't really have the ability to bioaccumulate in your tissue. Now there are other radionuclides, like there's one called strontium 90 and that is a bone seeking isotope that could find its way into human bones. But the fact is that we've seen zero evidence that strontium 90 is actually winding up in the bones of any of these small fish or finding its way into human bones. So once again, it's just speculation. And there's no actual consensus that there's really any increased fatal cancer risk or radiation risk at all of eating seafood. While at the same time, we know that there's a greatly elevated heart disease risk when you have a lack of fish intake, as well as an increase in the risk of overall mortality. So my recommendation when it comes to radiation is to not completely quit eating seafood or enjoying your favorite sushi restaurant, but to just make sure that you're getting adequate minerals in your diet, which will help to counteract any effects of potential radionuclides in the fish that you're eating. And that would mean getting enough zinc, getting enough iodine, and getting enough magnesium. And we talk about all of these in today's podcast interview with Dr. Tim Jackson. And then also to realize that there are other much, much bigger sources of radiation that you can control. So, for example, when we travel, most of us voluntarily expose ourselves to about 5 millirems from a single cross country flight across the country. And that's equivalent to eating over six pounds of contaminated tuna daily for an entire year. And medical X rays aren't very far behind. So you may want to consider before you stop eating fish to perhaps fly a little bit less and not take as many medical X rays. Ultimately, the article is really good. I'll link to it in the show notes. I would recommend that you go and read it. Okay. And then finally, we get to the high protein diet and cancer study that seems to have taken over the media lately. So let me fill you in on this study really quickly. What they did was they looked at protein intake in folks who were from 50 years old on. They found that from age 50 to 65, that high protein could modestly increase mortality, especially cancer and diabetes related mortality. And then once you got above 65 years old, there was actually a slight decrease in mortality and a high protein diet appeared to be somewhat protective. Now, in conjunction with this study, there was also another study that was done in mice that actually appeared as part of this paper. And in that study, they actually looked at mice that had tumors and found that the mice with tumors that were on a higher protein diet actually experienced a greater growth in those tumors and an increased risk of mortality compared to the mice that were on a slightly lower protein diet. So I am going to put a link to the best three breakdowns of this study that I was able to find on the Internets. So the first paper or the first article that reviewed this study was over@examine.com and examine.com brought up a few good questions that weren't asked about this study. The first was exercise. We know that exercise elevates your protein needs, but this study didn't look into exercise at all and whether or not exercise actually exerts a protective effect against higher protein intake or whether or not exercise may actually increase your need for protein. This wasn't looked at. There may be people in the population who actually, similar to these 65 plus year olds, actually need higher protein intake or benefit from a higher protein ceiling. The study didn't really measure anything above and beyond whether or not the protein came from animal or plant based sources and didn't actually compare the quality of the protein. The study didn't look at all at people who were younger than 50 years old. So we don't know any data about that. The study did not look at vegetable and fruit intake and whether or not that actually had a protective effect against high protein intake. The study didn't look at what was eaten in place of protein in the low protein group. So what that means is we don't know if whatever macronutrient, whether it's carbohydrates or fat that was used to replace the high amounts of protein had a protective effect or not. The study didn't look at fast food based sources of protein versus home cooked based sources of protein because it was all based off questionnaires, not based off of actual measurement of foods or controlled food intake. The study didn't look at other elements of lifestyle such as smoking or exercise, like I mentioned earlier, or environmental toxins and pollutants, anything above and beyond simply protein intake. So those are some Questions raised by examine.com which also went into a very good scientific look at the study as a whole. Now, another really good article was over at Mark's Daily Apple and in that article they made a really good point and that is that low protein diets have been shown to slow your metabolism, increase insulin resistance, cause body fat gain, impair your immune system, make infections more severe, reduce muscle function, impair nitrogen balance, increase the risk of osteoporosis and increase the risk of sarcopenia, which is muscle wasting. Unfortunately, the media didn't take into account any of these previous studies that have been looked at in terms of adequate protein intake and simply took this single study that again only showed that high, high amounts of protein between the ages of 50 and 65 years old might increase your risk of mortality from cancer and from diabetes and simply ignored all these other studies. And when you think about it, if you eat a bunch of protein and you already have a tumor, then it's pretty likely that that protein might assist with the growth of that tumor, since protein and the insulin release that you get from protein can indeed cause cell growth, whether it's growth of a muscle or growth of a tumor. And then as far as diabetes risk goes, it also makes sense that if you're eating way more protein than you actually need, you might indeed experience an increase in the risk of diabetes, since you not only get, as I just mentioned, that insulin release from the protein, but also get gluconeogenesis from protein that's not used to repair muscle or to synthesize muscle gluconeogenesis, meaning that that protein gets converted into glucose, which can spike blood sugar levels. So that's a really good point that this article at Mark's Daily Apple goes into and something else to take into consideration. Now the last article that I thought was a great breakdown of this study was over@rawfoodsos.com and while it repeats a lot of the same things that are said at examine.com and@marksdailyapple.com, this article, which is written by Denise Minger, goes into the fact that in many cases we see that methionine based sources of protein, such as we might get from lean red meat and from the muscle of animals, is actually relatively low in glycine, which is necessary to balance out methionine. Now, both glycine and methionine are amino acids, which technically in your diet should be taken in balanced ratios. And this is why we see when we look at ancestral diets, a lot of times the lean muscle and the meats that we're traditionally used to in our modern diet being thrown to the dogs. And instead things like bone marrow and organ meats, which are high in both glycine and methionine, being favored over those lean cuts of meat. But nowadays, when our meat based protein is just coming from steak and muscle, we're getting way more methionine unopposed by the type of glycine that we'd find in things like organ meats and bone marrow. And unopposed methionine can indeed increase risk of mortality, cancer, diabetes, etc. So this highlights the fact that it's important if you are going to be eating adequate amounts of protein to include things like organ meats, bone marrow, and what we might consider to be awful and that's O F f a l, not a w f u l in our diets. And I'm actually going to publish an article over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the Monday after this podcast is released that goes a little bit more into the type of things that we should be including in our diets that we don't anymore, and the type of things that are in our diets that that probably shouldn't be in there anymore. So I'll link to all three of these breakdowns of the high protein study over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 274.

Special Announcements.

Just a few quick special announcements before we move into this week's interview with Dr. Tim Jackson. The first is that the 10 years that I've spent in the trenches working with professional, recreational and weekend warriors, all of the tips that I've learned from the thousands of articles that I read every year on nutrition, on health, on fitness, on human optimization, all of that is wrapped up in my brand new 540 plus page beautiful hardcover manual that's now available as a book over at Beyond Training Book. Now there was a little delay in shipping. Those of you who pre ordered through Amazon already know this, but the book actually is shipping to actual homes next week and you can get it now@BeyondTrainingBook.com There are also a ton of bonuses if you grab a copy for your friends, your family or your co workers. So if you get three or more copies, there are tons of goodies that you get when you upload your receipt using the special form when you click on bonuses@BeyondTrainingBook.com if you order 10 plus copies, there's literally over 5,000 bucks worth of swag that you get put into a raffle for. So a lot of really cool stuff over there and you can get it all@BeyondTrainingBook.com you can also, if you just want to download a bunch of freebies that go along with the book and you don't feel like getting the book at all or you just want to get a taste of it, go to the bittorrent for the book. And that's@bengreenfieldfitness.com torrent and I've got extra videos, audio chapters and free hidden chapters that go above and beyond what's actually in the book. So that's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com torrent and also when you get the book at BeyondTrainingBook.com, there are currently six hidden chapters and eight different training plans that you get access to as part of that book. So a lot of cool goodies in there. A couple other things. If you're listening in and you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast over in itunes, I would highly recommend that you do so. It's a great way to automatically get the podcast downloaded to your phone or to your computer right when it comes out. It's also a really, really good way to support the podcast and to help with the ranking in itunes. So go over to itunes, click subscribe and you can just do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Click subscribe if you haven't yet subscribed and leave a quick review if you're able to do so. And then finally, if you want the brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness gear, the tech T shirt, the BPA free water bottle, or the cool beanie that is way, way better than a hat in my opinion, the beanie is just a high quality, tech fleece based beanie that just looks good. Whether you're a guy or a girl, it's a pretty cool beanie to rock. You can get that all@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear and it's a great way to support the podcast. All right, so that's it for special announcements and let's go ahead and have a quick message, then move into Today's interview with Dr. Tim Jackson.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where you'll get Instant access to 24. 7Forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben's Body Transformation Club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. We'll see you inside.

Hey folks, we're just about to jump into today's special gut reboot interview with Dr. Tim Jackson, but I wanted to let you know about a mistake that I made when recording this interview. I actually mentioned that you get a $100 discount on services from Dr. Jackson when you mention this podcast or use the code Ben on his website. And just so you don't get upset or unpleasantly surprised when you go to do that, I actually misspoke. It's a $50 discount, not a $100 discount. Still significant, but I wanted to make sure that I give you that correction, just so you know. So that being said, I promise it's still a really good interview and that's still a really good discount. So enjoy this episode. I lear a ton and I think you will too. Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here and a few weeks ago@bengreenfieldfitness.com There was an article and it was actually a really popular article. It was called Broken Gut to big How a busted digestive system can make you hormonally fat. And that article, which I'll link to in the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 274 was written by Dr. Tim Jackson. And Tim Jackson is actually on the call with me. Today we are going to be going into the nitty gritty details of everything that you need to know about how to reboot your gut and why there's such an intimate connection between your gut and your digestion, your hormones and the way that you look, the way that you feel, and the way that you perform. Now, Tim has a really interesting bio. He's educated in nutritional biochemistry, digestive health, and he studies the systemic effects of digestion as well as something called functional endocrinology, which is kind of a fancy word for the way that your hormones work. Now he's well versed in everything from active release technique to adjust your spine and take care of musculoskeletal trigger points to help expedite the healing process and your digestive tract, your gut or your spine. He's currently working on his functional diagnostic nutritionist certification. He's trained with a fellow named Dr. Kendall Stewart, who's kind of an expert in the realm of genetics to learn the far reaching implications of what are called methylation deficits and their role in your neurology and your immunology. And so he actually does a lot of long distance consultation with folks to help guide them through the process of their genetic testing. So for example, if you've done testing through something like 23andMe.com, Dr. Jackson is really good at looking into what are called single nucleotide polymorphisms or other genetic markers that might also affect the way that you look, feel and perform. Now, we'll be talking more about digestion and hormones today than we'll be talking about digestion. But whether you're interested in kind of working with Tim on a digestion standpoint or genetic standpoint? We at the end of our discussion today, going to give you some special codes that you can use to get a discount off of any consultation or service from Dr. Jackson. So I will go ahead and shut up now and turn things over to Dr. Tim. And first of all, Dr. Tim, is it okay if I call you Dr. Tim? Or would you prefer Dr. Jackson?

Absolutely, yeah, that's perfectly fine.

Okay, we'll go with Dr. Tim. And second, just. Is there anything before we jump into digestion that you wanted to add to the intro that I just gave?

No, I think you nailed it. I think you know me as well as I know me.

And where are you living at now, just so folks know what area, doctor?

I'm in South Carolina.

Okay.

I'm located in South Carolina, right near the coast.

Okay, gotcha. Cool. So there's that. South Carolina. Are you from South Carolina originally?

I am. So you'll notice a little bit of an accent.

I was gonna say, I thought I detected a little bit of a draw there. Cool. So, Tim, a lot of people, including myself, have had digestive issues. Complain of digestive issues. It's something that I think a lot of folks experience are issues with their gut. Is there a reason that you think digestive issues are so common nowadays?

Yeah, I think, you know, it all starts with the health of the mother. When you look at the average number of chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and immunosuppressive chemicals found in the average umbilical cord, it's well over 200. So you're sort of coming into the world with immune imbalances, some hormonal imbalances, known carcinogens. And then it's very common, obviously for a number of reasons. For moms today to have gut flora imbalances from antibiotics being over prescribed. That's one of the most common stress, high cortisol levels that obviously contributes because high cortisol levels will thin out the digestive tract, which we'll get into more later. But it starts there. And antibiotics are pretty much handed out like candy. And if you look at the percentage, I don't know, the exact number of kids born via C section, and then the percentage of children who are also not breastfed. You know, you're starting out sort of behind the eight ball in terms of your immune health and your hormonal balance.

So is there evidence that women's umbilical cords or their gut flora isis actually different? I mean, have they done studies that looked into stuff like that or is it kind of A case where we just know that based off of, of current floral status in mothers that's looked at in hospitals before birth.

I don't know if they've done studies to look at the floral content during the gestation period, but I think it was nine different cities where they had a large sample size and they averaged out or measured the average number of endocrine disrupting chemicals and immunosuppressive chemicals. And I think it was right around 210 in those eight or nine cities. So that definitely has a negative impact on the hormonal status and the immune status. What people tend to forget with chemicals toxicity issues is that the hole is really greater than the sum of its parts. This is kind of another topic. But heavy metals, you'll read a study where it says this level of mercury is safe and then another study will say this level of aluminum is safe. But they never looked at them together. And there's a synergy where it's sort of like one plus one equals 10. And we really don't know or have any idea of how dangerous they can be when the effects are kind of summated over time.

Do you think that the number of C sections versus vaginal births kind of affects this?

I think it absolutely does. From everything I've read, you can make up for it during the first two years of life, you know, if you supplement with high dose probiotics, obviously if you're breastfeeding and you can certainly make positive changes after that. But I think the first two years of life are kind of the standard in terms of trying to balance out any negative repercussions of having a C section versus being born vaginally.

Both my kids were born via C section. I didn't give them high dose. I didn't give them high dose probiotics because I wasn't convinced of the safety. But they were breastfed. Do you think that breastfeeding is enough for moms out there who have kids who were born via C section for womb? They don't want those kids to wind up with gut issues later on in life. Or do you think that there's a safe probiotic out there for moms to give babies?

Yeah, there's a few different ones out there. Claire labs, pharmacin labs that tend to be pretty good, or, excuse me, pharmax, pretty good in terms of safety. A lot of times, some of the claims that you see made about probiotics, they may have actually studied one strain and then the bottle is claiming this benefit or this other benefit. But if you look at the studies, a lot of times that wasn't the species that was studied in the research literature, but definitely the overall immune health, not just digestive health, but the number of T cells and natural killer cells and your immunoglobulins are all positively impacted through breastfeeding.

Okay. And that brand that you mentioned that you think would be okay for, like, children would be like a pharmax child's probiotic.

Yeah. What can happen actually in children and adults is it's kind of the same thing as if you cut your skin, you put a band aid on it to protect it from the outside elements. And it's sort of the same thing if you have a leaky or breached gut barrier, whether it's a child or an adult, if the bacteria leak into the bloodstream, your body sort of views that as a foreign invader. And so it can create an immune response, or what's called a cytokine storm, where you may have. Have fever, fatigue, skin breaking out. It's really no different than, like I mentioned, the cut on your skin. So repairing that gut barrier is the first thing to do before even supplementing. And people oftentimes want to know what's the best test to determine if I have leaky gut? And 99.9% of the time, I tell people, don't even worry about testing for it. You could just have treated it more cheaply and safely than having gone to the expense in time of submitting a test sample.

So how do you know then? Like, if you have a problem with your digestion? Like, you know, I know that a lot of people don't get necessarily constipation or diarrhea, but they may still have digestive issues going on where maybe they're not absorbing something properly or perhaps getting a Microsoft nutrient or a nutrient deficiency from a lack of enzyme production or something like that. Like, what do you look at and how do you recommend people know if they have a problem with their digestion?

Yeah. So there's kind of two basic categories of stool tests out there, one being the cdfa, the Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis, where they essentially try to culture the bugs of the digestive tract.

No, that's the. What'd you say it's called? A cdsa. Yeah, exactly.

The Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis.

Okay.

And so what they try to do with that test is basically culture the anaerobic bugs from the large intestines. And, you know, since obviously it's an aerobic environment that can lead to some of the bacteria or A lot of the bacteria being killed off or dying off. And from a practical standpoint, that can lead to a false negative test result where you get your test back and it kind of leads to a false sense of security where you probably do have some dysbiosis or some issue going on, but it's not being detected. The other category of stool test out there uses a DNA probe. So it's looking for the DNA of the various microbes, and so whether they're dead or alive, it'll pick them up.

And where do you find a test like that?

Yeah, Metametrics. It's called the GIFX profile.

Okay, yeah, I've had that one done before. Gotcha.

Yeah, and so that one, you know, none of the tests are perfect. They all have flaws and can miss things. But in my experience, the metametrics typically gives you more information and, you know, it's going to give you a better plan of action in terms of, you know, whether you need probiotics or whether you need to take an antimicrobial to address any pathogenic bacteria, yeast, anything along those lines.

Now, I know that the GIFX panel, like, if people were to go to like direct labs and order a GIFX panel, there's different ones out there. They go by different numbers. Do you have a particular number that you tell people to look for?

Yeah. So since they've merged with Genova, it's the 2200, the GIFX 2200, but with an asterisk by it that you. If you want H. Pylori to be measured, you have to do that as an add on. It used to be just included automatically with the GIFX test, but now you have to, you know, select that as an add on if you want to have that measured.

Okay. Okay, gotcha. So that's a good way to find out if you have a problem with your digestion. If you're going to, to test and you weren't actually looking at stomach discomfort or constipation or diarrhea, but kind of above and beyond these symptomatic issues, one of the things that I mentioned we were going to talk about, of course, is what goes on systemically, especially from a hormonal standpoint. When you have poor digestive health, can you explain which hormones are most impacted if you have poor digestive health?

Yeah. So what I tell people is that whether we're talking about the gut or a systemic issue, basically anything that creates inflammation or an inflammatory stressor to the body will activate your adrenal Axis, meaning that it's pretty much viewed by the body as a stressor. So cortisol, your adrenals get stimulated to produce cortisol, which, its whole point basically is to calm down that inflammatory stressor. External stressors, we, we can see those. If I have a cut on my skin or if I'm involved in a trauma like a car accident, we can see the damage from that. But internal stressors are just as harmful and we kind of feel the downstream effects, but we don't necessarily feel the primary issues that are going on. If you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria or you have a malabsorption or a parasite, you're certainly going to have a constant strain on your adrenals. Basically, conceptually, you can think of it as if all my energy or a large percentage of my energy is going towards fighting that pathogen, then I'm going to have less energy to do things like workouts or go for a walk or read a book. Cortisol is one of the primary hormones, but long term, those low levels of inflammation that are created by something. We'll talk about more later. But the lipopolysaccharides, they're part of the cell wall of some of the gram negative bacteria that can live in the colon. Those molecules, they create lots of inflammation. They can dull thyroid hormone receptor sites. So that could lead to downstream effects. Feeling cold all the time, weight gain or difficulty losing weight weight. It can also contribute to insulin resistance. So you started out with a gut issue here that's led to downstream inflammatory stress that resulted in high cortisol eventually, probably low cortisol and some impaired thyroid hormone metabolism too.

Interesting. So in terms of the cortisol picture, how much cortisol is too much? Because, because like a lot of people are gonna produce cortisol when they exercise or you know, obviously when you wake up in the morning, you even get high amounts of cortisol produced. Like when you say high cortisol, what are you referring to exactly?

Dr. Well, you know, I look at it within the ranges given on like an adrenal stress index. Obviously, you know, it's kind of like the Goldilocks phenomenon. Too little has negative effects and too much have, will have a negative impact as well. So, you know, it's very common. I'm sure you've seen this and talked about this. But you know, at one point during the day you may have very low cortisol, but at another point, you know, four hours later or eight hours later, you may have the opposite situation. So I Think the goal being, you know, short term to supply adaptogens or hormone replacement to get you through some of the symptoms and the long term goal being to address those various stressors the body's under with gut pathogens, parasites, candida falling under that category.

Okay, gotcha. So when you're, when you're looking at something like, let's say someone's done a blood panel for cortisol, which I know isn't ideal, but there are a lot of people out there doing like wellness FX panels or blood tests that are giving like a one off for cortisol. And for example I've done that having trained for Ironman triathlon or been in a state of heavy training and I've seen cortisol values, you know, up in the upper teens, kind of like lower 20s for blood cortisol in the morning. Are those numbers that would be red flags do you think, or do you have a certain number that you look for if you're looking at like a one off blood test?

If you're going off a one off blood test? Yeah, I think, you know, when you start getting into the low that definitely in the mid-20s, you want to find out obviously what stressor is causing that. And you mentioned exercise, triathlon training, things like that. I think that gets into where the dose determines the effectiveness. A lot of people when they're going through a stressful period, they'll try and work out more. But exercise is just another stressor to the body. So the dose and the timing, the amount is so important to those things. So you know, if you have, if you're doing a one time blood test, whether it's in the morning or early afternoon, definitely if it's high or, excuse me, mid-20s, using things like phosphatidylserine, glycine, etc. Ashwagandha to kind of lower cortisol is a good strategy in the meantime while you're, you're figuring out what stressors are leading to that abnormal result.

Yeah, in my case, adaptogenic herbs helped out a ton. Like I started taking this stuff called TNT and then also a big, big component for me was not hopping out of bed early in the morning, but instead laying there in bed for a good five to ten minutes doing journaling and then doing deep breathing and also taking my heart rate variability measurements. I probably could have still gotten decent results by just laying there and being really relaxed, relaxing my mind, closing my eyes, calming my thoughts before I got out of bed. But I'm kind of a nerd so I Wanted to throw in the quantification as well and also do some of the journaling. But for me, that was huge. I think that made just as big a difference as doing something like taking adaptogenic herbs. So high cortisol level levels and high stress levels are going to damage the gut. And it sounds like vice versa, like a damaged gut can also raise cortisol levels. But how do low hormone levels negatively affect the gut? Or vice versa?

Yeah, so as far as the high cortisol, you know, that definitely puts you in a more catabolic state where you're breaking down tissue. And the gut, you know, has a high rate of turnover in the colonocytes. So you're more likely to have a breached gut barrier where you're mounting an immune response to common foods or foods that you eat more frequently than others. And you're also going to have probably a greater chance of a dysbiosis, just because. I think the simple way to explain it is that some of the pathogenic bacteria that. That in low numbers, they're helpful. They have receptors for some of the fight or flight neurotransmitters like norepinephrine. And so when that HPA or adrenal axis is constantly going, you're kind of telling those bad bacteria to grow, grow, grow. And so that's one way in which cortisol negatively impacts the gut. Thyroid health. Obviously, that affects every tissue in the body, the gut being no exception. And, you know, if your thyroid is not working optimally, your mitochondria, your batteries of your cells won't work as well as they should. You won't recuperate from injury or any sort of inflammatory stress in the body very well. And that goes for the gut, too.

Really. There's a link between thyroid and injury healing. Yeah.

So every cell, if I remember correctly, every cell in the body has a receptor for two things, both vitamin D and thyroid. And so if you think about it, it's kind of like one of those bidirectional relationships where they influence one another. So the thyroid will influence the mitochondria, and the mitochondria influence the thyroid. But, yeah, it absolutely affects that anabolic catabolic state and how well you can repair tissue.

Interesting. Okay, so what else are we looking at from, like a low hormone perspective?

Yeah, definitely. When you have that imbalanced cortisol to DHEA ratio, you know, optimal being around 5 to 1, 6 to 1. So, you know, with hormones and with other biomarkers in the body, it may not always be about the absolute Number it may be equally about the ratio of various hormones. So you know, there are 24 hour urine hormone panels out there where you can see, you know, in an entire day's time how much or the amount of various hormones you're producing.

Are those something you have to get.

Through whether you're more anabolic or do.

You have to get Those through a doctor, the 24 hour urine panels or, or do you do those through self management or how does that work?

You can actually get those through direct labs. Now I believe there's certain Genova is a common one. There's another one, Dr. Jonathan Wright's lab, Meridian Valley, it's in Washington state.

And that's a 24 hour hormone panel. 24 hour urine, yeah, exactly. Okay, Exactly. Gotcha. By the way, for those of you listening in, I'm madly taking notes and putting them up on the show. Notes over atbestben greenfieldfitness.com 274 for those of you who aren't writing this stuff down. Okay, so that's how we can look at the hormones. What about testosterone? What's the link between testosterone and the gut?

Yeah, so there's not a lot of studies, but a couple studies that have shown those with higher testosterone levels or administering testosterone was actually shown to benefit and improve the ratio of good to bad bacteria in the gut. And you know, the researchers, this is purely theoretical at this point, say that that's probably one of the reasons why women are more predisposed to autoimmune disorders is because, you know, there's such a strong gut component with that and women obviously are going to have lower testosterone levels which negatively impacts the gut flora. I think if I remember correctly, 74% of people with autoimmune disorders have an infection of Klebselia. So various correlational studies between.

Infection of the what?

Klebselia. It's just a harmful bacteria. And correlational studies have just found that people with RA have a strong or a high level of that particular bad bacteria. So, you know, testosterone influences the bacteria in a positive way, helping to balance those out.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Are there any other hormones that are affected by gut damage?

Yeah. So basically, conceptually, you know, everyone who's listening can kind of think of it this way, that if you have a malab or poor absorption, macronutrients or micronutrients, that basically there's a direct connection via the portal vein from the GI tract to the liver. So if you have imbalanced gut flora, you're not absorbing food correctly. Not low stomach acid, things of that nature. You will negatively impact the liver. Phase one and phase two detox process pathways. So basically it sends a larger workload to the liver. And they're already kind of the liver is working around the clock to detoxify both outside and inside toxins. And specifically they found that those lipopolysaccharides from the gram negative bacteria, they inhibit that phase one detox. You have that good chart in the article on your side. And phase one takes things that are fat soluble and phase two makes them water soluble. What happens is you develop problems when there's an imbalance between phase one and phase two because those molecules are sitting around and they're highly reactive. Some of those lipopolysaccharides and other bacterial endotoxins can negatively impact the liver, slow those detox phases down and that will negatively impact the thyroid. The statistic that's kind of accepted is around 60% of your T4 to T3 is converted in the liver. So if you have a sluggish liver, it can lead downstream to thyroid issues and also estrogen dominance. And the way that works, or the mechanism for that is that the enzyme beta glucuronidase typically gets produced in higher quantities when you have a dysbiosis or a bacterial floral problem. And so if you have a higher estrogen or estrogen dominance in men or women, that leads to elevated thyroid binding globulin and more thyroid issues. So you can see it's just kind of a vicious cycle where the liver slowed down, thyroid is negatively impacted, estrogen increases, and then thyroid is impacted again.

So how exactly can people go about taking care of their liver in terms of cleaning it up, so to speak, if it's been damaged or if gut damage has resulted in a liver that needs cleaning?

Yeah, so there's that great list of foods you have in the article. But outside of that, that reminds me.

When you say the article, you're referring to that article you wrote a few weeks ago over on the. Yeah, exactly, got it. And I've got that linked for folks who want to go check it out over in the show notes. So what else are there like, because you hear people talk about everything from L glutathione to N acetylcysteine to calcium glucarate. What do you recommend as far as cleaning up the liver?

Yeah, so the first thing would be fixing the gut. I obviously, because that's going to indirectly impact the liver. But outside of that, from a more practical standpoint, Having some of those genetic polymorphisms you mentioned earlier, having those tested to see if you have the MTHFR where you don't methylate very well, that negatively impacts or slows down your phase two detox in the liver. You mentioned glutathione. You can have have polymorphisms in that pathway where you're not producing as much glutathione as you should. And glutathione is needed for many, many different reasons, but liver detoxification is a big one.

Got it. So walk me through this, this link between genetic testing, discovering polymorphisms and healing the gut. If somebody wanted to practically kind of go through a process like this, how would they do it? Like would it be a 23andMe type of genetic test or is there something else?

Yeah, the 23andMe is the most economical and you're looking to get what's called the raw data from 23andMe. So the results when you first get them aren't going to mean very much to anyone. It's an RS and then a number. But you can use one of the various programs out there like MTHFR support, Genetic Genie, and what that does is it translates that data into a usable form.

So you can export your data from 23andMe and then import it into a site like, what'd you say, genetic Genie or MTHR1.

MTHFR support is one of the sites I'm involved with and it'll generate a PDF or report. The one from MTHFR support is the most comprehensive. It gives you about 18, 19 pages worth of polymorphism.

Are those free or are those cost based websites? Once you've paid for your 23andMe, what's it cost to import that data into these other sites?

For mthfr support, it's $20 and that's the most comprehensive report. Genetic Genie, I believe they asked for a $5 or $10 donation and, and the other ones, I think it's along the same line, somewhere around $10.

Okay, that's not too bad.

Right? So the 23andMe test, $99 one time test, takes about five weeks, maybe six to get your raw data back. And then you can use one of these programs that will give you some more practical information like do you have one copy or two copies of these polymorphisms? Where that comes in into play is that when I say methylation, it's a series of about 100 or more reactions that happen in the body that's responsible from everything from producing some of your neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin to producing glutathione, which we talked about earlier, and also synthesizing or helping balance some of your immune cells, like your helper T cells and your suppressor T cells. That methylation pathway, there's many cofactors involved, but the two major players are MethylFolate and B12. If you have the 23andMe, and you find out that you have one or two copies of one of the MTHFR SNPs, or possibly, you know, you would want to supplement or make sure your supplements you're taking have L5 methylfolate, which is the active form.

L5 methylfolate?

Yeah, it's L5mthf.

Okay. So you would get tested, you would find out whether or not you actually have this deficiency in being able to convert to folate. And then if you do, you would want to take an L5 methyl methylfolate type of supplement, Right?

Exactly. And so that's where most of the supplement companies, especially the professional ones out there now are, including the L5 methylfolate versus folic acid. Because the whole point of MTHFR is that that enzyme is not working at the rate that it should be. So if you have one copy, the percentage is a 30% decrease. If you have two, it's about 70. But you will not be able to process folic acid very well.

Now, would that also manifest in. If you were to get a blood test, like low blood folate levels or anemic, like symptoms or things of that.

Nature, it can usually folate or blood folate levels will actually be high. It's kind of like B12 usually. That's what's. If it's high in the blood, as a general rule, it's going to be low in the cell. But you also have to look at our reference ranges. Compared to somewhere like Japan. You know, everyone here, every test I see pretty much has high B12. And I think a lot of it has to do with our kind of ridiculous reference ranges. And other times it may have to do with it's not getting transported into the cell like it should be, which could involve a cofactor or mineral, something of that nature.

Gotcha, Gotcha.

Okay, so the 23andMe test, once you find that out and find out that information, it can help guide some of your supplement decisions. And you can be proactive in terms of preventing future problems. Because one thing we know is that as your levels of glutathione decline, your risk for every disorder out There increases.

Mm. Okay, gotcha. Now this is something that you do. You'll actually, because this is obviously, I think for a lot of people, a little bit intimidating to go through this process. One of the things that you do, you said you were involved with the mthfr support.com website. Do you actually do consultations where if somebody does their genetic testing and imports that data, will you get on the phone with them and walk them through it?

Yeah. So you know what I tell people is that all these polymorphisms can be important, but at the end of the day, they've all been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. What's most important is that you have the healthy lifestyle behaviors to feed the correct information to those genes. So if you're staying up all night eating fast food every day, all of those harmful genes are probably going to be much more likely to express themselves. But I try not to get into minutiae with all the polymorphisms. I try to address the major ones related to MTHFR and glutathione. But yeah, we go through the major ones and kind of put it into context and how it's fitting into their individual health picture.

Why would somebody have a polymorphism like this? What's the evolutionary advantage to having like a double copy that would affect your methylation?

Yeah, so if you look at one, and you probably have heard of this one Apoe. Apoe is one that is connected to detoxification and there's four types. So if you have the Apoe 4, they've shown that you're more likely to have a higher iq, a greater level of intelligence, but you also had an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. So there seems to be, you know, there was some trade off at some point. I think where these, a lot of these things got triggered, especially in regards to mthfr, is once they started fortifying foods with folic acid, you know, you start seeing these higher blood folate levels and that's been correlated to your risk for different types of cancers.

Interesting. So what about this methylation issue? Why would somebody actually have an issue with methylation? Is it because we are living in a different environment than we used to, or would there have been some type of an ancestral advantage to having methylation issues?

Yeah, I don't know a ton about the ancestral advantage as far as why they get triggered any sort of stress. It could be in one person, a car accident, it could be a traumatic birth in someone else, or it could be a reaction to a very potent medication. They were maybe Put on for a short period of time. So any of those types of stressors in the body, heavy metals, especially mercury, can really block or inhibit methylation along with inflammation. So there's an inverse relationship between inflammation and methylation. As your inflammation levels increase, your methylation pathways continuously slow down. So technically, you know, you could even show up as having no copies of mthfr. But if you have enough heavy metals and enough inflammatory stress, your biochemistry may behave as if you did have one.

Interesting. Got it. Okay, cool. So let's. So let's talk about some of the most important action steps that you think people can take to optimize digestion in terms of things that you've really found to work very, very well. What are some of the things that people can do right off the bat to ensure that they just have a superhuman gut?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most basic things is managing stress just because of the cortisol connection to causing both a leaky gut or a brain gut barrier, but also leading to a catabolic state where you can't repair the GI tract and also contributing to the dysbiosis level there. What people have to remember is that when you're under that fight or flight response, all your parasympathetic activities slow down. So your digest absorb, assimilate, heal. Any reactions related, related to that are decreased. And that includes producing stomach acid. So a lot of times I hear people kind of exchanging stomach acid for enzymes and enzymes for bile, but they're really three separate entities. And the top of the cascade beginning in the stomach should be very acidic, a pH of 1 to 2. So meditation journaling that you mentioned getting to bed on time, those can all positively impact how well your body produces stomach acid. The second thing would be to make sure that if you're over the age, I would say of 30, definitely over 35, you will probably need to supplement with something like betaine hydrochloride, which is essential replacement stomach acid. And I tell people that, you know.

If you're taking all these, really, at 35 years old.

Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with some mineral deficiencies. So zinc and iodine, if you're deficient in those, balancing those out may help you produce more of your own stomach acid. But heavy metals, especially mercury and or a low thyroid function, definitely slows down your body's own production. And so any sort of stressors, whether it's internal or external, contribute to that HPA axis dysfunction and may require that you supplement with something like either Swedish bitters, which I don't use much, but betaine hydrochloride, because you really want to correct the environment.

But would, you know, like, wouldn't you be getting, like, heartburn and stuff like that?

Sometimes, not always. So, you know, just. I'm sure your listener, most of your listeners know, you know, it's more common to have low stomach acid versus high. And it's really not about the amount. It's kind of like real estate. Location, location, location. And so the lower esophageal sphincter at the bottom of the esophagus, if there's a lot of pressure in the GI tract from floral imbalance, that can lead to that sphincter relaxing and the acid moves up into your esophagus. And then you would get heartburn, indigestion, things like that. But sometimes it may show up as fatigue. You may not notice any benefits from the supplements that you're taking or the dietary changes that you've made. It could be that you show up, you do a vitamin or mineral profile, and you have every deficiency known to man. That's kind of a red flag that something else is going on and that you need to fix. Something upstream of what's showing up on the test.

Got it. Interesting.

Balancing stomach acid for me is the primary thing, because if that's off, it creates an environment that's positive or healthy living environment for the microbes, but not for you. And so you can go in with antibiotics or herbs and kill off whatever bugs you find. But if you don't correct the terrain and the environment, there's a good chance it will return.

Okay, gotcha. So betaine hydrochloride, stress management. Anything else for optimizing stomach function?

The mineral balance. So iodine and zinc, two common mineral deficiencies, those are required to produce your own stomach acid.

Do you generally recommend folks get that through food, like consumption of sea vegetables and things of that nature, or do you have specific dietary supplements that you recommend for zinc?

I usually tell most people to make sure they're getting at least 15 to 20 milligrams a day of zinc picolinase or chelated zinc. You know, if they're someone who does eat a lot of seafood, then I tell them they probably don't need iodine. They can get it from their foods. But I'm kind of in the middle. You know, the dosages on iodine out there, they're either really low or really high, and I kind of fall right in the middle.

Yeah. What I do is I eat a lot of seaweed, nori, kelp, dulce, stuff like that. When I'm traveling, I use a little dropper full of this stuff called nascent iodine. And I simply take about six drops of that on days that I'm not able to eat seaweed derivatives, which is typically when I'm traveling, when I'm in airports and airplanes and stuff like that. So I try and get it from natural food sources when I can and then when I'm not able to, I'll use the iodine supplement. Kind of the same thing with food. I try to eat shellfish, fish and seafood whenever possible to get some of that zinc, especially from. We talked with Dr. Jack Cruz actually a few weeks ago on this podcast about going out of your way to eat oysters and things like that. But in the absence of those, any type of multivitamin or supplement that has about that 15-20mg of zinc in it can be helpful for sure. So what about probiotics? When it comes to taking a probiotic, do you recommend that folks take a daily probiotic or what's your take on restoring good bacteria or addressing bacteria in the stomach?

I'm not a big fan, at least for long term, meaning more than say eight or nine weeks supplementing with probiotics. Certainly it's common to have low or imbalanced floor out there, but I also see a fair number of floors people who on their metametrix test they have very good levels of Lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. So what people tend to forget is that you can take, let's take a product like Culturel that has Lactobacillus acidophilus. Well, too much of that. You can crowd out the other good probiotics in your digestive tract as well and you end up creating large amounts of B lot lactate, which can create brain fog, impair your mitochondria, the batteries of your cells. So as far as taking a daily probiotic, if you've been on an antibiotic, it's probably a good idea, but I don't recommend doing it for more than say eight to nine weeks without testing and kind of seeing where your levels are. There is a probiotic out there called Prescript Assist which has some of the lesser well known bacterial species outside of the bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus. And a lot of people have had good success with that supplement.

Does that include stuff like the Espillardi in it?

That one I don't think it has Any espillardi. But the same thing kind of goes back to what you mentioned with your kids is that someone who has had high cortisol for a while or we know there's a good chance they have a leaky gut, then you would want to try and repair that barrier prior to supplementing because you can have a cytokine storm where you kind of get the signs and symptoms, like if you had a low level flu.

Gotcha. So do you think when it comes to probiotic supplementation that. Well, let me ask you this, because this is what I tell a lot of my clients. I tell them to eat fermented foods like, like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, yogurt, things of that nature. And then when they're traveling and they're in the absence of fermented foods, which happens a lot, again, when you're traveling, you know, similar to, like mineral deficient foods, to travel with the probiotic supplement and to use something like that when they're traveling.

Right? Yeah. So I tell people to definitely try and do that. And, you know, I think it gets back again to the repairing that barrier. So eating, even if you're taking a probiotic supplement or eating a lot of the fermented foods, some people will react negatively to those, and it gets into that person's immune status and lymphatic or lymphoid tissue that contains the immune cells in the gut. But the bacterial, whether they're through a supplement or fermented foods, their behavior can be modified in the presence of a higher or lower ph. So that's where optimizing stomach acid levels is really important.

Dr. Gotcha. Now, what about small intestine bacterial overgrowth? Where does that fit into all this?

Yeah, so when you have impaired stomach acid levels or low levels of stomach acid and or constipation, what happens is most of the bacteria, when we talk about good and bad bacteria, should be in the large intestines or cold. Well, they can sometimes go on a little field trip up to the small intestines where they hang out. They impair macronutrient and micronutrient absorption. They can produce a gas called hydrogen sulfide that impairs your energy production and your mitochondria creates brain fog and fatigue. So sibo, it's pretty much impossible to have SIBO if you have good levels of stomach acid. So there are antibiotics, some herbs that can be helpful for it, but you always want to make sure that you're restoring the digestive sequencing Starting with the stomach acid.

Do you give your patients or the folks that you work with like a bacterial overgrowth test, like a breath test?

Yeah. So with that, even with the breath test, it misses about 25% of people out there. So, you know, obviously it picks up on 75%, but it's kind of a diagnosis or a diagnosis of exclusion where you've tested, corrected all the other markers in terms of stomach acid, bad bacteria in the large intestines, and you're still having fatigue and you've ruled all these other things out. Some of the antibacterial herbs, herbs, things like loricide from coconut oil can be helpful to kind of eradicate the SIBO and prevent it from coming back.

Why would bacteria actually move from your large intestine into your small intestine?

I think it has to do with they're smart little critters, even though we don't give them much credit. And so they're looking out for themselves in terms of trying to get the most from the nutrients out there that you're ingesting. So it has a better chance of doing that if it can move up to the small intestines and impact the breakdown of fats, protein and carbohydrates directly.

I've had some patients or some clients test positive for SIBO via bacterial overgrowth breath test from direct labs. And one of the things that that's responded really well to that, I find is, oddly enough, enteric coated peppermint oil. Have you used peppermint oil much or had experience? Dr.

I haven't. I've read good things about it and I've heard some really positive reports. But you found that to be pretty helpful?

Dr. Yeah, I have quite a bit. And I actually had SIBO at one time and went through like a peppermint extract treatment for about 90 days, and it works really well.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I'll have to try that.

That along with, with oil of oregano, which I think would be helpful for a lot of digestive issues. So it's good stuff. The show notes are getting long as far as all the resources I'm putting together for folks here. Okay, so another thing I want to ask you about, and I know we're coming up on time here pretty soon, but I wanted to ask you about biofilm because I've heard you talk about biofilm before. What exactly is biofilm and how does that affect optimal digestion?

So biofilm, we have it all over systemically in our mouth. The plaque on our teeth is composed of biofilm. And it's basically where microbes, especially bacteria, they kind of create a shield around themselves to protect them from the immune attack. And so they're more likely to survive and live another day if they're under the shield of a body biofilm. Sometimes you'll have other microbes in there as well, and sometimes they'll kind of sequester heavy metals like mercury, lead, and other toxic metals like aluminum. But if you don't address biofilm, let's say you show up positive for klebsalia or pseudomonas and you take whatever herbs or antibiotics, you're much less likely to eradicate it if you don't address the. The biofilm. And addressing the biofilm, there's a few products out there, one called Interphase from CLAIR Labs, and there's some systemic enzymes like Buloki nattokinase, that can also help to kind of break up the biofilms. And it allows whatever herbs or medications you're using better access to those microbes so that you have a. You stand a better chance of eradicating them.

Okay, so soso, back that up just a second. How would you actually know if you have a biofilm?

There's, to my knowledge, no really accurate test out there. If you show up positive, like on a metametrix or CDSA for whatever microbes, it's probably a good idea to just address it, because the bacteria, they're going to do whatever they can do to survive, whether it's moving up to the small intestines to get more nutrients. And they're still smart in that they exchange genes, so they have like a gene transfer between themselves and other bacteria that makes them more potent, and that takes place inside the biofilm.

Okay, and the actual supplements that you recommended for biofilm, what were they again?

It's Inter phase I, N, T, E, R and then Phase plus from Claire Labs should take that one on an empty stomach. And systemically addressing those biofilms, things like nattokinase or serrapeptase, those can both help to break up some of the systemic biofilms.

Okay, gotcha. Taking a few more notes down for people here. So Interphase plus or Nattokinase. Okay, got it.

Yeah, those are both very helpful.

Okay, now, I know that you are one of the Featured presenters at Dr. Jack Crus optimal Reset Program. I've talked about that before in this podcast. You can go check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Optimal I'm also presenting there on Biohacking Human Performance, and that's going to be a really, really good kind of online conference that you can go to. But like I mentioned, for those of you who want want Tim to walk you through everything from your 23andMe.com genetic testing results to gut issues, he is available as an online consultant. And as I promised, we do have a discount to give you on this podcast. So what you need to do is you can either go to healyourbody.org, which is Tim's website, and simply let Tim know that you discovered him through this podcast, or you can pretty much order anything over there and use code Ben. That's just B, E, N. And you'll get a $100 discount on any consultation or service from Dr. Tim. So hopefully that helps you out a little bit as far as being able to interpret some of these things, because I know this, especially when it comes to the methylation and the genetic interpretation, it can get pretty confusing. And Tim is one of the experts in this stuff. And I actually, I've talked to Dr. Jack Cruz a little bit about this, and he always recommends Tim as like the guy to go to when it comes to getting your genetic testing results interpreted. So highly recommend Tim again, his website is healyourbody.org and you get a $100 discount on any consultation or service from him when you mention this podcast or you use code Ben. Tim, anything else that you wanted to cover in today's podcast? As if you already hadn't given us enough to think about.

Yeah, I think we hit on a little bit of everything. The epigenetic component. One thing that I didn't mention is if you have a leaky gut barrier, glutathione is important for a lot of reasons, but it can definitely affect your ability to heal that gut barrier. So just another reason to get your glutathione levels up.

Do you mean that if you use a glutathione supplement, it can inhibit healing, or do you mean that it can help?

It can help. So you need glutathione to control the redox status and oxidative stress. So that's just one more thing that can help with healing.

Right? Also very, very useful for hangovers.

Yup.

All right, well, cool. Atana show notes. So again, folks, go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com274. I've pretty much been writing furiously the whole time Dr. Tim was talking. So a lot of really good notes for you over there in the resources section. And then Tim's website is healyourbody.org and if you mention this podcast, he'll give you a discount on consults with him. So, Tim, thank you so much for joining us on the call today.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. It.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Tim Jackson signing out from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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