Dr Chein - How to Maintain Good Bacteria in My Stomach - Your Optimum Health

Well, welcome to youo Optimum Health. I'm Jeff Harris along with Dr. Edmund Chen. Dr. Chen, I just love these sessions by the way, because I get to ask questions that sometimes intrigue me that help kind of uncover more information. So if you haven't caught these, like the last session we talked about was all about our hormones. And if you're someone who's getting older and you don't feel like you did when he was 20, 30 years old, you need to go back and watch this last segment. But today, you know, Dr. Chen, we're going to talk about something that it seems like maybe as little as 5 years ago no one talked about this stuff. Now it seems like everybody and their brother in law has a problem with either the wrong bacteria in their stomach. Got lucky, leaky gut, whatever. So take us through that. What bacteria is supposed to be in our stomach? And when it's out of balance, what's going on?

Take us through that. When what, what bacteria is supposed to be in our stomach? And when it's out of balance, what's going on?

Okay, years ago we thought bacteria is all bad, okay? And.

The person who is.

Great or saint is when his shit doesn't smell. Okay, that was a concept.

Wrong.

Because it turns out that we have millions of bacterias in our large intestine and they do a lot of work. They do a lot of work, good work. In fact, they make hormones. Oh really? That go to the brain. So there's a gut brain connection now it's tremendous connection, very strong connection. So these millions of bacterias are needed. So the guy who smells is better than the guy who doesn't smell.

Okay, shall we say that? Yeah. Okay, then the bacteria have genes. All right, Years ago we don't care about the bacteria's genes. Now we found out that the bacteria has more genes than we have. Oh really? In number of genes. Okay, so that means any little thing you do everything, little change, little change of diet or from, you know, yesterday being a meat eater, today to be a more vegetarian, it changed your gut flora. Flora is the. Microbiome is the word. If you haven't heard about it, learn about it.

Microbiome.

Microbiome, meaning the bacteria environment in your gut is called microbiome. And the microbiome changes instantly just in a day or two of you changing.

Your diet from meat eater to a vegetarian or vegetarian to meat.

So what happens taking off this, so what happens with those people that like every year my wife and I will do some kind of a cleanse? It'll be like a 30 day cleanse.

Is that then shifting, like almost immediately when we go from, hey, we're eating a lot of meat or whatever, take pasta out of the diet, that whole thing. Okay, absolutely. Interesting.

Yeah. And what happens when you go on a fast is that the bad bacteria, who depends on certain.

Dietary things that you eat, suddenly now are being starved and so they reduce in number. That's why it's good to do a periodic fast. Oh, okay, yes. Bad bacteria reduces number and the good ones don't. The good ones.

Depends on ketones, for example, to survive. So ketone is something that our liver will make when we don't have glucose. If you go on a fast, you have no glucose, you don't take in any glucose. And how can you survive? Your brain needs glucose. Well, your liver turns all that fat that you have in your body into ketones and that will feed your brain and feed your gut good bacteria. But the bad guys don't get it.

So the bad bacteria. So you're saying that in our gut we have a level of bad and good bacteria.

Yes, and good.

I mean, is there a balance there or is one is greater than the other?

There is a balance. There's a tremendous balance.

And when the balance is out, when the bad bacteria, which are usually in gram negative, overwhelm the good bacteria, which you hear all the time, acidophilus lactobacillus, which, that's why people are taking that orally, yogurt, things like that, when they take these good bacteria, or if they don't take it and the bad ones overwhelm them, then danger happens, diseases can happen. And so like intestinal dysbiosis, meaning overgrowth of the gram negative bacteria. It's a disease and it can cause leaky gut. And leaky gut, basically, is that a damaged gut. And leaky just means increased permeability. You know, traditional doctors like to say increased diagnosis, increased intestinal permeability. That's their diagnosis. For guys like us, you know, we say leaky gut and they used to laugh at us 10 years ago. They, the traditional doctors laugh at the doctors who use the word leaky gut. The gut doesn't leak. Come on. You know, that's what they, they laugh. But the reason we. I like the word leaky gut because it makes the patient understand it very, very easily. Much more easier to understand, you know, that the word leaky gut than the word, oh, what do I have? I have increased intestinal permeability. What's that? You know, so, so and so people can understand the word leaky a lot more. And basically good. Good food leaked into the intestine, into the bloodstream, or it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Yes.

Okay.

Should stay in the gut. And as. And as things like gluten, which cannot be digested, even staying in the intestine cannot be digested, once you get out of the intestine into the blood, you are in trouble. Oh, boy. Autoimmune diseases, okay.

You know, that's where our body's attacking ourselves. Misunderstanding.

Okay. Autoimmune disease, like Hashimoto's diabetes, very frequently associated with autoimmune disease.

Okay, so that was my next question is from that. That imbalance, you know, what kind of things show up when there's too much bad bacteria and not enough good? What kind of. Are there symptoms that we see?

Yeah.

Okay.

The symptoms. Let's just pick the small intestine. Okay? Okay. And small intestine, when you have too much bacteria is called sibo, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. When you have that symptom, you have bloating and you have. After you eat, you regurgitate. You got acid or the food that you just ate and now half an hour ago came up. Okay. And so. So you go to a doctor and it's acidic because your. Your stomach and you go to doctor and doctor does the wrong thing, they give you anti acid. Anti acid is the wrong thing because it takes that red light out of your problem. Rather than treat the bacteria overgrowth or diagnosed it and treat the problem, now it takes away the acid.

Yeah.

So now you regurgitate. It's not acidic. You feel good. Oh, I just regurgitate my meat that I ate two hours ago, and it's not. It's not sour to me. And I feel pretty good. You know that and that. But that's a wrong treatment completely.

So that's diet. That's treating the. That's treating the symptoms, not the cure. Yeah, like the cause.

Proton pump inhibitor, they call that. Proton pump is the pump that makes acid. Should be banned, in my view. Literally should be banned. If the FDA is up to date, should. Should take that off the market because.

We see antacids being sold over counter just all the time.

Right?

All the time. And so that. That really is a reverse issue.

Okay. And it has to do with inability to digest and all that, because when you get the food down to the small intestine, the small intestines are inflamed. Number one, it's inflamed. Hey, go back Up. It tells them, go back up. I can't handle this much.

Got you. Okay.

You had a big meal. I can only handle one fourth. So come slowly. So they kick it up. That's what the. That's that regurgitation.

Interesting.

Yeah. And then bloating, Uncomfortable. Gassy. Well, the intestine is telling you, stop eating, man. Boss, boss, stop eating. It's giving you a message. Okay, so they eat a little bit and they feel bloated already. They don't feel like eating no matter how good the food is. So they. That's another sign of it. So when somebody goes to. When you take someone to a five star restaurant and you. And say, what's your favorite dish? He says, oh, I like fettuccine carbonara, let's say. Okay. And you order. Okay, waiter. Fettuccine carbonara. And he just barely touched one quarter of the dish and he stopped. He said, what happened? Full. Yeah, that.

That's a clue.

That's a clue.

Wow.

Because he loved that.

Yeah.

And as soon as he eats one quarter, he's done. Full. Hey, you got sibo. You got small intestinal bacteria.

Because the small intestine said, hey, that's it.

That's all it takes when you love it. You should swallow the whole plate.

Sure, sure.

You should swallow the whole plate.

Yeah, that's interesting. So that's a big sign. But now you're talking about just in the small intestine. What about in a large intestine?

Oh, large intestines. Gassy and diarrhea.

Okay.

And.

Watery diarrhea. Constipation. Diarrhea, Constipation going up and down and up and down and up and down. That's another sign. That's sign of the large intestine. Now. And the reason the large intestine is different from the small intestine is there's a valve at the junction of the appendix. The appendix is right at the junction where you separate the large intestine from small intestine. And. And God built us intending the small intestines to have no bacteria at all. Sterile. Sterile. Yes.

Okay.

No bacteria. And yet because of the.

Appendectomy. Dumb thing to do, you know, it used to be, you know, now, now the thing is to preserve the appendix as much as you can. Don't cut it out. Old days. What is that for? That's. It's something that useless in your body. Cut it out so you don't have to have appendicitis anymore. Dumb act. Because now you do the appendix. Take the Appendix out. It affects the ilocecical valve. Now the bacteria from below comes up to the small intestine.

Gotcha.

And they live in that small intestine. And then gives you the sibos. The diagnosis of small intestine. Coming back to the. So the colon.

When the colon gets disposed, it is crazy. It is totally out of control because that's where the worms live. Oh boy. You know, round worm.

You know, flat worm, all kinds of worm. They live in its large intestine. That's where they choose to live. So the environment is like the ghetto. Gotcha. The large intestine is the ghetto. So when the ghetto is in trouble and you know, it is in big trouble. Riots. Yeah, yeah. So you have the diarrhea, you have constipation. Zigzag, zigzag, zigzag. And those are the symptoms and signs.

Gotcha. So how are there tests people can take to find out if their bacterial levels are out of whack?

Absolutely.

Or they have leaky gut?

Well, the leaky gut is diagnosed differently.

Okay.

Because to convince the traditional doctor that you got leaky gut, you have to have the scientific antibody test against your intestinal wall. That's when they accept it. Okay, but coming back to a more general approach, the bacteria, somebody says, well, I started having diarrhea, constipation, direct constipation. I have a lot of gas. You know what I do? Do a stool test. A three day stool set. Not at the hospital, not at LabCorp, you know, but. But to a professional stool lab like Dr. Stater Genova, who gives you a four page report. If your stool report is one page, you got cheated. You got cheated.

Interesting.

Yeah. Okay. In China it's one line. In China, stool test is 10 yuan, which is a dollar 75, something like that.

Wow.

That cheap one line, no parasite, that's it.

And I don't know how true that would be, even, you know. Yeah.

But here in the States it's four pages. Four pages.

Yeah. It tells you, it tells you the good bacteria concentration, the lactobacillus concentration, the bifidobacteria concentration, the good bacteria concentration, how many, how much? You have the good ones and then they tell you how much of the bad ones. So you instantly see you're out of balance.

And does it give you. Does it say, hey, this is a good range. This is where you're at. I mean, does it give us.

They just give you a plus. Okay, so 1 plus 2 plus 1 plus is some. 2 plus 3 plus 4 plus you got a lot of it, whatever that it be. Okay. You know, so you, the stool test will instantly tell you the balance, shall we say. And then when you get inflamed.

When you get parasite, they see the parasite, of course. And then when you get inflamed, they also see the inflammatory.

Components and the antigens, the IgA IgG in the intestine.

Because of the inflammation in the intestine. So you see that too. Okay, yeah. And you see fungus, which people don't even consider it a pathogen. And I do consider fungus a pathogen, meaning it does bad things to us.

So you can have fungus in your gut. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. So and you can only see it on a genova or doctor stated type of laboratory stool test.

So that's something that if they were somebody, if you're somebody local, I mean, is that something that you provide? Can you do that here?

Yes. We just, you know, just call, we give you a prescription for free. You don't have to be a patient of mine.

Okay.

You just call the office and I'll give you a prescription. Go do it. And if you see a problem, then you come, come in.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So this is all about. This is all about bacteria. And there's good level, I mean, good levels and bad levels. So you'll always have some bad bacteria in your stomach.

Always.

Okay. We just don't want to get out of control.

Exactly.

We want to keep them in the ghetto.

Yes.

And under control. Exactly.

Correct.

But now let me make sure I understood this. So you said in the, in the small intestines, that should be pristine.

Yes.

But in the large intestine, that's where all the activity is going on with the different levels of bacteria.

Yes.

Okay, gotcha. Anything we missed there with bacteria?

Yeah, we missed, probably not missed, but the connection between the bacteria in the leaky gut.

Ah, yes, of course.

And then the autoimmune disease as a result of it. Okay, okay, so. So all the inflammations, I don't care. You know, so what I have, sometimes it's diarrhea, sometimes I have constipation and I have a lot of gas. So what? It doesn't bother me, it bothers other people. Okay. Long wrong. Because when that goes on for a long time, your large intestine gets inflamed, it becomes leaky. Leaky, meaning they are defective defects on the wall of the intestine and the intestinal cell absorption cells. One cell layer thick. Wow. That's all. Wow. Very easy.

That layer is very easy to break and when it breaks now, you got problems. Okay, what problem? Or your bad bacteria get into it. That's number one. That was supposedly in your ghetto. Now these people get out of the ghetto and they get into these high priced homes and start robbing, okay? And we saw that in Alzheimer's. We call.

LPS lipoprotein saccharide. These are bacterial toxins. They make toxins. They cockatoo. They make defecations also.

So wait a second, so you're saying as this progresses, it could actually cause leaky gut, which then could trigger Alzheimer's?

Yeah, because now that toxin goes into the. The brain, you know, and because it's.

In your bloodstream now. Yes. Okay. All right, so it's traveling and traveling.

Goes into the brain. It stays in the brain. So that, that, that ghetto guy, that homeless ghetto guy now got out of the ghetto, you know, go, go onto the main street, and now settles in Beverly Hills. Okay?

The brain.

Call it the Beverly Hills. The area that's. Oh, man. You know, we need protected. It should be protected. It goes in through. Through the blood brain barrier, in fact. So they isolate the LPS from the brains of Alzheimer's patients. So then it starts to cause these brain problems. And so you will never imagine that your Alzheimer's or Parkinson's could be a result of a leaky gut. Wow. You know, some, some, some patient come to me and, you know, just have shaking problems, for example, and you know, like Parkinson's or tremor, and boom, turns out that they have leaky gut. And that actually took a long time to get there. In other words, God created the blood brain barrier very well to protect this valuable computer. So it takes many years of leaky gut to damage that computer. So these are the serious things. Okay. Then also, the leaky gut is associated with good food getting into the blood. Banana, apple, you know, these. Good stuff, Good stuff that we. Healthy stuff.

So even if somebody. So even if somebody's thinking, I'm eating well. Yeah, it's still going right through that, that area that's been permeated.

It's good for you nutritiously. But once you get in the blood, it's bad.

Yeah.

Banana in the blood shouldn't be there. Shouldn't be there at all.

And then it travels throughout your body, right into the brain.

Yeah, into the brain, too. And before it gets to the brain, the lymphocytes already locked in. Lymphocytes are soldiers, basically synthesize antibodies, lock them in. Just like an immunization. Like I give you a polio vaccination or mom's vas vaccination or herpes vas vaccination, we give you a shot. I mean, before it gets to the brain, the body attacks that.

That vaccine. And same thing with the banana. They attacked it and they formed the antibody against it and locked them in. You can't get into the brain? No, I'm sorry, It's like police, okay? It's like, you know, they see a homeless guy walking towards.

The high end home, they stop them. Where's your id? Where do you live? Nope, you can't get there. They lock you on, put handcuffs on you. Okay, so well, that's good, that's good. But these cops, when they're too busy walking people, they will now misfire. Meaning that when they see a homeless person who's protein, they dress that way. Unfortunately, our thyroid and our pancreas dress the same way in many parts.

The protein structure on the surface of our organs, especially thyroid pancreas are very much like the bananas and the apples.

Interesting.

So when these antibodies lock into banana all the time now when they see your pancreas and your thyroid, they're going to attack your thyroid.

So you're starting to attack yourself.

Now you have good stuff. You have autoimmune disease. Now you have Hashimoto disease. You have diabetes, autoimmune diabetes.

So the leaky gut becomes big problem. More big problem because of what leaked through.

Very serious.

What leaked through.

So, okay, so I have to ask you then, so because, I mean, this sounds like dire information, but is it reversible?

Absolutely. And the reversible is the reverse, the relief you got first.

Fix the hole.

Fix it. Fix the hole. Okay, Close the hole. Put the gate down. Like Donald Trump says, build a wall. Okay? Build a wall. We're gonna pop that hole. So no banana goes through, no bad bacteria goes through. Nothing goes through. Whatever stays in there, staying in the intestine, that's what's. That takes a year.

Takes a year to fix that hole.

That takes a year.

So during that whole year, you still got things leaking through, but not as bad. Every day, okay, just trying to repair.

And you next thing is stay away. You should do a food allergy test. You should stay away from banana and apple. If you are allergic to banana and banana.

So are some of those things that you said stay away from bananas? Or in this example, are there some foods then that are not creeping into the bloodstream?

No. All of them creep through your police didn't arrest them and get sensitized to that.

Okay, so when you Say take a food test, a food allergy test. Then you'll know. Hey. Okay, if, bang, bananas and apples show up, you're saying, hey, those are the ones that were. Obviously.

But cannot take. Yeah, you can't.

You got to stop that. Yeah. Because the other stuff wasn't. Wasn't being identified. Yes, I got you.

Okay. Those leak through too. But the cops, your cops, didn't stop them and didn't get sensitized enough like our cops right now, especially in the Homeland Security, the border patrol guys, I mean, they're very sensitized to Arabic faces, Middle Eastern faces. They're sensitized. So if you're a Middle Eastern guy, child driving in a car from Canada, you're gonna be more likely to be stopped than me. Asian. Okay.

Because you've created a particular profile.

Profile.

Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. But inside, your body's just saying, hey, the apples and the bananas. We've profiled it, and even though it matches other parts of your body, it attacks that too. So if we eliminate that, then there's less of that going on.

So basically, like me telling my, you know, Egyptian friend in Canada, hey, you know, right now, don't come to USA if you come fly, don't drive. You know what I mean? Right? Yeah. Or by boat. You know, it's the same thing.

So you can. It's reversible. Takes about a year to clear that up. But you should get a food allergy test to find out what foods are you sensitive to, and then you stay away from those. What are the things going on? I mean, is this now your. Because that's an out of balance of the bacteria, but it also has a hole. So now what's the next step? So we've reduced the food. Now what we do?

Well, now we wait for the cuffs to die. Oh, really?

Okay, so that's just a time thing. That's why it takes a year.

Yes. Now we depend on the lymphocyte. Hey, you drop off, you die.

Gotcha.

So hopefully, if you don't have banana in a year's time, he dies. Nobody recognizes banana. You start all new again.

So that's why you can't eat it again. So that's why it's important for somebody who's going through that as an example to say, hey, I feel really good today. And then they get off the wagon, if you will, and now they recharge. Does that almost re. Aggravate the whole thing again?

Ah, if you're allergic to, you know, gluten, and you Tickle, gluten priority. You. You never get well. Yeah, you're always training your soldiers. You're always training your border patrol.

Gotcha.

Against that strange face. Features, we call it, you know, and they're going to be reactive.

So we've taken you down this road of bacteria. And we started in the gut, we started to say, hey, here are some symptoms of it. As an example, in the small intestines, it was like, hey, you're starting to have some. We call it acid reflux, or food coming back up when it shouldn't happen and then masking it by taking antiacids. That's not the answer because that's. The part of your body should be really pristine. Then the next part was there's a part of your body where you should have some bacteria, and that's in your large intestine. Right. But then if it's out of balance, we could have some leaky gut issues. Yes. All right. Wow. This is. To me, this has been like. We've unearthed some really neat things here that there's probably a lot of people walking around out there that might have this. So that the bloating, the bacteria, the extra weight on, you know, the wild cycles in there and how they. They defecate, where it's runny, then it's diarrhea, then it's constipated. All of that cycle going for 10 years.

And say, I have this problem. Yeah, but I live with it.

Yeah, but it can be stopped.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No, no, no, no. It's a big problem. It's not a small problem.

So you said. You said they can contact the office. We'll put the number on the screen now, the number on the office, and you'll give them a prescription for this stool test. And it should be one of those things. If there are anything less than four pages, you've got the wrong test.

You got the wrong lab.

You got the wrong lab. Excuse me. So LabCorp is not the place. Place to go for that. Nothing against LabCorp. They're more.

What?

More blood and whatnot. So this is for a stool test to find out what's going on inside, and then probably need to. Probably not every doctor.

Yes. A lot of doctors don't even know that. I mean, I still. Today, you know, I see patients refer to me having stool tests by Doctors done by LabCorp.

Gotcha.

Every other stool test. Yeah. Where? Lab coat. Yeah. Toss it away. Yeah.

Now, Dr. Chen, I know because we're in your. We're in the room where you do this, where you do telemedicine, is this something you can treat from a distance as well? Okay, so if you had somebody, if you're on the other end, you say, gosh, these are symptoms that I have or my spouse has or somebody that I know has, you can still contact. You don't have to fly in. Go do the stool test and then give the results to Dr. Chen and.

You can treat them through telemedicine.

Through telemedicine. But realize this is one of those things. It's going to take some time, right? It's going to take some time to turn it on because it could have taken, like you said, it could have been this way for 10 years. Right. So it's not like, it's not like just, you know, painting a room and it's a different color today. It's going to take some time. And the other thing you said is make sure you get the food allergy test because that's going to. Because otherwise you're just re aggravating the system. It's like, hey, the fires almost out, let's put some more gas on it.

Yeah, right, right, exactly.

And so we want to make sure to understand that and, and don't go back until it's done. But give yourself. So is that pretty. And I'm not trying to nail you down, just trying to get a general idea. Is that a worst case scenario? Is that just average?

Average.

So I mean, if it's worse, it could be longer or is that.

No, worse would be. It's the end result. You can got Alzheimer's now from the lps. You got severe Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. That's tough. You got, you know, you got uncontrollable diabetes from autoimmune disease from a leaky gut. That's what I call a headache.

So this is nothing to think lightly about as, hey, I've just got some gas in my stomach, I got some diarrhea. If it's a good, really reoccurring issue, it's an issue, folks don't put it off. So we've got Dr. Chen's number on there if you're interested in calling him and getting that test, which I'd highly recommend, but if not, if you're out of the area, do the same thing. Dr. Chen, you can handle them long distance, as you said. Anything else about leaky gut that you've got us on our toes after this episode?

That's about it. That's what they should know.

Great. Well, Dr. Chen, again, thank you so much for being such a wealth of knowledge because again, our average, average doctors, we're probably not going to see this. Like you said, LabCorp not going to see this. Right. And like you said in China, that one line probably not going to get it done. Right. So thank you for joining us. I'm Jeff Harrison.

Dr. Edmund Chen.

And we'll see you next time on YOUN OPTIMUM health.