Is Coffee Good or Bad for Midlife Woman’s Gut and Metabolism?

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Coffee drinkers, pay attention. I have America's happy gut doctor on here with me. I'm gonna ask them all the hard questions, maybe hard to listen to questions. Is coffee good? Is coffee bad? What are the pros? What are the cons? How much is enough to get the benefits without sabotaging our gut health or our adrenals? Are you curious? Do not miss this. In this very special episode, I am going to interview Dr. Vincent Pedre, the medical director of Pedre Integrative Health and founder of Dr. Pedre Wellness, CEO, founder of Happy Gut Life, has worked as a nutraceutical consultant and spokesperson for Nature MD and Orthomolecular Products, and is a functional medicine certified practitioner with a concierge practice practice in New York City since 2004. As the best-selling author of two books on the gut, he believes the gut is the gateway to excellent wellness, and nothing could be more true for a midlife woman. His newest book, The Gut Smart Protocol, features 14-day personalized gut healing plan based on the Gut Smart Quiz. It's the accumulation of years of research and clinical experience as a functional gut health expert. His newest offering, Happy Gut Coffee, is why we're having this conversation today. Stay tuned till the end because we talk about coffee and metabolism, coffee and fat burning, coffee and weight loss resistance due to cortisol spiking, coffee and toxins that are endocrine disruptions, meaning again confusing your hormonal system. When is coffee good? When is it bad? Get all those questions answered here. And at the end, if you're in favor of a coffee that is healthier for your gut, stick around, because I am funding Dr. Pedre's Kickstarter with a new coffee. More ahead. Stay tuned. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness, and longevity, and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Well, hello to my favorite gut health doctor. How are you?

Hello, nice to be back with you, and happy that I just got to see you just about a month ago.

I know it, it's— it seems like both a long time ago and just very recently. It was so good, and it was so great to meet your son. And we're going to get into this, talking about your new adventure right now, but I want to talk to my audience members right now, or ask for them. Coffee. All right, to the Happy Gut Guy, we want to know, coffee good, coffee bad, or let's break down and unpack pros and cons.

Coffee can be both good and bad for you.

Very neutral answer.

Yeah, look, coffee is, in general, it's good for your gut. It's rich in polyphenols. The polyphenols feed your gut microbiome and they produce a whole bunch of what we call postbiotic substances, chemical signals that are super important for the body, including, including stimulating the release of GLP-1, which is right now one of the most prescribed medications for obesity and weight gain across the United States. They said like, like one-third of Americans are taking GLP-1 agonists or something like that. It's of adults.

Wow.

It's pretty crazy. But when you drink coffee, you have a natural stimulator of GLP-1. But this depends on the type of coffee that you're drinking.

Okay. So, first of all, every once in a while, I have these pangs. First of all, so everybody knows, right, I'm in fitness, been in fitness for 40 years, and coffee or caffeine of any kind has always been This is an ergogenic aid. Having it at the right time in the right amount prior to a workout can actually help you work harder, longer without, or without it feeling harder or longer, which is an added benefit.

You might even— I want to add this one little tidbit in there because I think this is something that I found out while researching both the potential benefits and the health hazards of coffee. And caffeine, that coffee has a particular chemical called tigonaline, and tigonaline stimulates muscle growth with or without exercise. So while you're then adding caffeine, as we use caffeine to help power workouts, and you get, you know, that's why there's all these pre-workout drinks with caffeine in them. Well, turns out that coffee has this particular substance called tigonaline that stimulates muscle gaze.

Wow. Okay, I'm going to dig into that because that I have never heard, and that is amazing. From the flip side, it also helps to kick in fat burning, right? So we know that that as a stimulant, but I always have this, okay, wait, my digestion is not the same as it was, say, 20 years ago. So am I doing myself any harm? What's the Happy Gut Doc say about that?

What it really comes down to is the hidden dangers behind coffee that most people aren't thinking of because you can't smell them and you can't taste them, but they can be there in the background and they can do things. Sabotage your metabolism and even lead to weight gain.

Okay. Now you have our attention. And those hidden things are?

Let's start with the fact that coffee is the— in the top 10 crops that are most sprayed with pesticides worldwide. Pesticides act as gut disruptors. They destroy the gut microbiome. And they lead to things like leaky gut that I've come on your podcast many times before and talked about. And when you have a leaky gut, you're going to have more inflammation coming into your body. And if there's more coming in than your body can resolve, you're going to gain weight or you're going to hit a weight loss plateau and you're just not going to be able to get those last 10 pounds off. And you're frustrated and you think you're doing all the right things. You don't know what's getting in your way. There can be also hidden mycotoxins in coffee. And the other one that most people aren't really thinking about, which I think is probably one of the bigger players, is the microplastics that are getting into our coffee because of the ways that the coffee is prepared or the way the coffee is served. And drank when you go to a coffee house.

Okay, let's break that down. So prepared, how should we be preparing it?

So I get this question a lot, like, and especially when I was coming out with my own coffee, are you gonna have K-Cups? Because don't people love their K-Cups, right? Because All you have to do is take a little pod, put it into the machine, fill it up with water, press the thing tab down, and in 2 minutes, less than 2 minutes, you have your cup of coffee, right? Mm-hmm. But we're not thinking about the fact that inside that K-cup, it's lined with plastic.

Oh my gosh.

And whether it's BPA-free or not BPA or has BPA, It's when plastic comes into contact with hot water, it is going to leach microplastics out of the plastic, gets into the liquid, and you're going to drink those microplastics. But also a lot of these home coffee makers, like if you have a drip coffee maker, what is it made of? What are the parts made of? Plastic.

Wow.

What happens when you go to a coffee shop and you pick up a coffee to go? What is that cup lined with so that the liquid, the hot liquid, doesn't just, like, melt away the paper cup? It's lined with plastic. So all this contact with hot liquids, and then you put a plastic top on top of it, and you're drinking your coffee, you're slurping it through that little hole. In the plastic cup and you're getting exposed to these microplastics. Now, would this be important at all if, if microplastics didn't cause a problem? But especially for your audience, one thing to realize about microplastics is that they fall under the umbrella category of what we call endocrine disrupting chemicals, or EDCs. And I know you've talked about this with your audience. What do EDCs do? They mimic estrogen. So they come in and they scramble your hormones, they confuse your body, they make it difficult for you to lose weight. But now we have research showing that microplastics actually also disrupt the gut microbiome, destroy the mucus layer in the gut, and lead to leaky gut as well. So if you're, if you're one of those people who's drinking a K-cup of coffee per day, it's almost like eating a credit card per week of plastic.

Oh my gosh, that's terrible. Hotel rooms. Hotels are killing us. I mean, that's the only place that I'm exposed. What I do at home, and I'd love to know how you prepare your coffee, I have always liked pour-over. There's something about that method. Now, I don't love it because it gets cold fast, so I only make like a cup at a time, but I love that method. There's something about the ritual. How do you prepare your coffee?

You're like speaking my love language with pour-over. That's exactly what I do. And, and honestly, I've, I have it down to that it for to make one cup, it only requires about 2.5 pour-overs. So you think it's going to take a long time, but you can actually come and pour the hot water, then go and keep getting ready, put on your shirt, come back, pour some more. It's, it's just a thing about time management, but you're getting one, a better quality cup of coffee, the 1, the flavor is better because the hot water is hitting all of the ground beans. And 2, you're not getting exposed to microplastics. And if you're using a filter that's an organic filter that doesn't have any bad substances in it, then it's a much cleaner cup of coffee. The other way that I like to tell people to make their coffee is with a French press. Mm, yeah, that's another option.

I've never figured it out. A French press is smarter than me. I—

yeah, you just put the grounds in the bottom, you add the hot water, put a timer for 2 minutes, and then just plunge it and your coffee is done. But honestly, the pour-over—

where have you been all my life, dude?

Pour-over to me tastes the best, although the, the difference with a French press is that you're going to get more contact with the beans, with the ground beans. So you're going to get more of the, the oils in the coffee are going to get into the hot water.

Yeah.

And maybe because of greater, longer contact time, you get more of those antioxidants from the coffee, the polyphenols. But it also depends on the roast that you're using and some other factors as well. Those are my true favorite methods for making.

I love that. I, so, and I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask you because I don't want to assume. Do you like to grind your own beans, like right before you do it, or do you buy, do you ever buy pre-ground? And what's the difference if we do one versus the other?

First of all, I drink Happy Gut Coffee now. Strictly, uh, just because of the way it agrees with my body. Um, but anybody who is a coffee connoisseur would be insulted, like seriously insulted, if you did not buy whole beans.

Okay.

And you grind them right before you make the coffee because that's how you're going to get the richest flavor possible. Now, a lot of the coffee that you're buying out there, you don't know when those beans were ground and how long it's been sitting in the bag. And that can be a factor in the freshness of the coffee. It starts losing some of its flavor. But yes, the best way to make it is to grind your own beans. And again, it's a little extra step. That adds a ton of flavor. Not that your coffee has to be made that way all the time, and not that I'm always— I don't always have a grinder with me, like if I'm traveling, and so I'll take ground coffee with me at times. And sometimes you'd have to grind too much. Like if I, if I'm making a cold brew where you need like a cup of ground coffee to make one big cold brew that will last you for maybe a couple of days, it's easier to just get pre-ground coffee or have it pre-ground because it's just gonna be a lot of work to grind a cup or more at a time.

Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. I'm feeling very smug. So yeah, I, when you said anybody who, any self-righteous coffee drinker would be just insulted, you were talking to all of my siblings. So if y'all are listening, my mother is smiling down at you because, yeah, there's history there.

Do you— what do you do to— I mean, you're already like up here in my book with being a pour-over person. Please tell me that you grind your beans.

I do, because my siblings came, stayed with me, and were appalled that I had not my own grinder, so they left theirs with me. I mean, seriously, they felt pathetically sorry for me, and they're like, you have to have this. They they immediately went— this is when I lived in Boulder— they went to the Peppercorn, which is the nicest kitchen store there, and bought me like, you know, a pour-over and, and everything. They needed to know I was taken care of.

I love this. Yeah.

Okay, so can we talk a little bit about, do you doctor it up? What's okay? What's not okay? Let's talk creamers and sugar sweeteners, stevias, what—

there, all that stuff. Yeah. Like I was thinking, like, I need to come out with a happy gut coffee version of Bulletproof Coffee. One thing that I actually found myself doing a lot, because there are certain supplements that I take that are in powder form, and I thought, well, the best delivery is in a liquid, but it's more fun to put it in coffee than it is to just put it in a glass of water. And mix it up. So I will put collagen powder in my coffee, and I will—

flavored?

No, just completely unflavored collagen powder, like not just, uh, plain. And I will also— actually, I use a product by Designs for Health called Whole Beauty Collagen, which has Lastiva, which is a patented form of silica, which helps reduce fine lines and wrinkles too. So, uh, it's working.

You look so good.

Thank you. And it's supposed to help like preserve your hair and, you know, your skin, your hair. So I, I figure, you know, like that's one way that I up, um, upgrade my coffee.

Great.

Which is also really good for the gut, by the way, because collagen is high in glycine. Which is a cytoprotective amino acid that's really good for the cells that line the gut lining. So another reason to have collagen is not just for your skin, but for what I like to call your inner skin, which is your gut lining. And, um, and then I also add SBIs, uh, serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins, which are a type of binder, which for anybody who's listening don't go out there and just get SBIs and start taking them. If you tend towards constipation, they can make you more constipated. But if you're the type of person who has IBS and it tends to shift between looser stools to normal, then a lot of times taking something like an SBI, which is sort of like colostrum but without the dairy, is really good for balancing the gut. It binds all sorts of toxins, including some really nasty toxin called endotoxin, which causes weight gain and even predisposes people to diabetes with leaky gut. So I like to take the SBIs, and sometimes, um, I came up with this idea, like, seeing someone post on Instagram, like, uh, it was a black latte, and I was like, well, how did they do that? With charcoal powder. So with a binding powder. So from time to time, I make a charcoal coffee with some activated charcoal and some other binders too, just because I think from time to time it's good to bind bad stuff out of the body. But my baseline coffee is with the collagen and with the SBIs, the serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins, which I think, which do a number of things. So, they not only bind toxins, they help boost the immune system and they also help protect the gut lining and rebuild the gut lining from all of the potential stressors and harmful things that people are exposed to, like antibiotics, pesticides, medications that you might have to take from time to time. So that's kind of like my, my current happy gut coffee version. Plus or minus stevia. I kind of go away from it. I was just on a trip to our family place in Miami Beach and we don't have any— well, we do have sweetener there. I should, I should say we do. It's just, we don't have sweetener that I would ever use because my, the rest of my family uses sugar and I won't ever put sugar in coffee. But I do like to add some almond milk or some sort of nut milk as well.

Now, is that specific to coffee? You won't ever put sugar in coffee? Yeah, I took that as you would never put sugar in your body, but is that correct?

I, I normally, I, I'm not like, say, like as a, as a gut health expert, I'm, I'm very worried of the dangers of sugar on what it can do to the gut and how it can promote and support yeast overgrowth, which then leads to a whole host of problems. But I do want to qualify and say for anybody who's listening that fruit is sugar.

Hmm.

And fruit also ferments and fruit can make you bloated. And especially like, for example, I just had a patient who was having a lot of stomach woes and we figured out that she was eating fruit for dessert after her dinners and then not feeling so great. And you don't really want to eat fruit right after you just ate a whole meal. It's not, it's not a good idea as your body is going, that fruit is going to sit there for longer and it's going to get fermented by the gut microbiome. But also, I had a recent patient who was eating and craving a lot of fruit. And a lot of times we think, well, fruit, like a bowl of fruit, that's healthy. Like, let me have a giant bowl of fruit. And she had yeast overgrowth. She had major sugar cravings, not just for regular sugar, but she craved fruit, and she craved the type of fruit that is very high in sugar, like melons and grapes, uh, not the, the better low glycemic fruit. I'm very in favor, and, and even in patients where they're dealing with yeast overgrowth, where there are sugar issues I don't take all fruit away. I still will let them have berries and any other like low glycemic fruit, like grapefruit, for example. It depends on the person cuz some people react in different ways.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, I don't generally add sugar to any beverage, you know, in general. And, and I think we're, we're exposed to sugar in many ways. Like it's impossible to escape having, you know, exposure to simple carbs in some shape or form. You just never know in sauces when you eat out. Like, we're inadvertently getting exposed to sugar, but where you can choose to not add sugar, if you can do that, that's going to make you much healthier, and it's going to keep things like your hormones in better balance.

Amen to that. And I think that was a huge insight for anybody listening about, you know, having fruit after a meal. And I will have to say I'm probably guilty of advocating for that, that if you're going to have fruit because of the potential spike in blood sugar, don't do it on an empty stomach. And I will suggest that after having protein, it might be better. But I love what you've said here. When do you advocate that those berries would be appropriate? When would you rather see someone have them?

I would prefer that you wait for your, like, say you've had dinner and you wanna have something sweet later, but allow about an hour to digest that dinner before having the berries. Cuz sometimes when you have them too close to having eaten your, your dinner, that fruit is just gonna sit there and it's gonna ferment and it's gonna make you feel gassy and your stomach upset, but it also depends on the type of fruit. You definitely don't want to have a very sugary fruit right after a meal, like watermelon or like cantaloupe. Like those aren't going to digest so well and they can actually make you quite bloated. Those for me, like I love watermelon as a hydration tool. In the summer months. Yeah. And from my experience in working with patients, and, and I agree, like, you want to watch sugar bumps, but say you just get home from a workout and after you've pumped some iron, your muscles are very sugar hungry, so it's going to be harder for your blood sugar to spike. I've, I've tested this with myself and with patients using CGMs, continuous glucose monitors, Yeah. And post-workout, your body can tolerate a bit of sugar better. It's not gonna cause that spike. So in the summer when you're hot and it's sweaty, or if you're living in Scottsdale where it was still hot, like it's probably still quite hot. Sure. And you get in from a workout, watermelon is a great hydrator. Yeah. And in that moment, I think it would be okay to have it on an empty stomach. Because your body is going to be— is just ready to absorb that sugar. It's not going to cause a sugar spike. Your body's going to use it. Your muscles are going to absorb that. Um, so like everything, it's a little bit nuanced. And it's so true, and it depends on the person, you know. Now that there's so many ways to access getting a CGM for yourself to see how your blood sugar tracks because not everyone responds to the same thing in the same way. I would say, you know, if you don't know for sure, get a CGM for 2 weeks or for a month and do all these things. Change when you have something and see how it affects you depending on when you eat it— before exercise, after exercise, after dinner. Like, how do these things affect you?

Yeah, I love that. That was so helpful. Okay, I want to ask you a couple questions here, so, um, I hope I don't insult you. I might insult you.

So we'll just see.

So caffeinated versus decaf, is decaf just like black water in your world?

Well, let's start with this. A lot of decaf coffee has been either overprocessed, overroasted, kind of burnt, and they've used chemicals to draw the caffeine out. So it's not that great for you. Now, there are companies now that are using a steam distillation process to create the decaf, so there are no chemicals involved. And that's definitely a better way to get decaf. But there are benefits to having caffeine, including increased brain circulation. It's good for people with early dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. It improves brain function. But the, the crazy thing is, and I don't know if this would be the same if you queried your followers, when I asked my followers who are, you know, people are really interested in gut health, and I thought, you know, caffeinated or decaf? Like, what do you drink? And I, I certainly thought, uh, because at the time I had given up coffee for 7 years, and then the reason I started drinking coffee again before I came out with my own coffee was because a company from the UK that had a steam distillation process to make decaf coffee for people who are particularly sensitive to caffeine. Me, really, in a non-toxic way to create a decaffeinated coffee. And so after 7 years of not drinking coffee, drinking only matcha, they sent me a bag of this decaf coffee, and I started having it and realized how much I missed the flavor of coffee.

Oh yeah. It's different, isn't it? You know, I was thinking before we came on, I was thinking this is really an emotional topic, and I think that nobody did it better than Folgers. I mean, they really nailed it. It— that— those commercials are so emotional, and it, it is all that. It's all the things. It's holding the warm mug, it's smelling it and remembering your mom in the kitchen when you came down in the morning. It's just so many things.

For me, the same. Growing up in the '70s in a Cuban household, we weren't making a drip-over coffee. My mom was making an espresso from a mocha pot in the morning, but that mocha pot, as it steamed, it would fill the entire house with the smell of Cuban coffee. And that was my signal that it was time to— for me to get out of bed and get ready for school because the coffee was already being made. Mm-hmm. So, um, to answer your question, to go back to your question about caffeine versus decaf.

Yeah.

I thought, well, people who have gut issues, they're probably drinking decaf because the caffeine, sensitive stomachs, all that. So I asked my followers and lo and behold, guess what they mostly drink?

I would've said caffeinated.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, no, you're right. Like 85% of them drink caffeinated and a minority drink decaf, which I mean, I understand makes sense because the one question I get asked when I put patients on a cleanse or detox program is— okay, you know the question.

I did not ask this. Did I?

Are you going to take away my coffee?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's either that or vodka in my groups. But yeah, we'll pick you up. I want to ask you this, and elephant in the room to all of my listeners. Part of the reason women are concerned about this is because coffee makes them poop.

Yes. Yeah. It is a stimulant for the peristaltic contractions of the intestines. So for a lot of people, it has what I would call positive effect.

Okay.

Cause it makes them poop. But the other reason that it's doing that, it's a combination of things here that we kind of have to break down because yeah, there could be bad things in the coffee that they're drinking that is also upsetting their stomach and making them run to the bathroom. Oh, right.

Yeah.

So whereas coffee has polyphenols that support the gut microbiome, and when the gut microbiome is happy, your gut is gonna be happy too. And one of the things that the gut bacteria do amongst many is like bifidobacteria helps stimulate the bowel movements. They help stimulate the rhythmic contractions of the intestines that help move things down. But if your coffee has toxins in it, like pesticides, mycotoxins, which can be found in up to 50% of coffees on average, those things are gonna have negative effects on your bowels. And you maybe find yourself running to the bathroom with loose stools, but it's not because coffee's helping, it's because coffee is hurting your gut.

Interesting perspective. Okay. Oh, I wanna ask, well, two more questions cuz I know you have this project coming up, the Happy Gut. Coffee. And I want to tell everybody a little bit more about this because I think it's really exciting, number one, to be a part of something and to be a part of something that, you know, is for good versus bad. I think we've heard more pros here than cons here, and, and of course it's all unique to the individual. But I want to ask you this because there are positive benefits of drinking coffee associated with them, and I think we've got plenty of studies that are tied to longevity, you know, and coffee drinkers. How much is enough to get the benefits and how much is too much?

I would tell people, you know, cause a cup of coffee on average will have about 670 milligrams of caffeine. Now it depends.

You have a small cup, brother.

Then it depends on the roast. Yeah, it could be more. It could be more, but maximum, like, let's say 100, 120. Milligrams. You don't want to go more than 2 cups per day. Ideally for me, 1 cup is enough, but 2 cups I would say is a good max, after which the amount of coffee that you're having, the caffeine can start to agitate the system, uh, spike cortisol, lead to agitation and, uh, disrupt your sleep pattern. You know, start doing some of the negative things that are associated with drinking caffeine, lower, um, your patience level with other people.

Who, me? Yeah. And I have to say that to anybody listening, I mean, my mother loved her coffee, and I like to say anymore, like, oh my God, I'm my mother's daughter, you know. I swore I never would do this, and I'm doing this. But I will notice that if I allow the cups of coffee to creep up, you know, and somehow I've tested my DNA as I do with some clients, and I metabolize caffeine very well. So to me, that said, oh, you can have another cup, no problem, you know. And I was like, don't tell me that. I should never have done that. But I will notice that I will feel weight loss resistant, like I'm not at my best. I will feel like puffy or fluffy if I'm having just even one more cup than I know I should.

Too much caffeine is also going to stimulate your pancreas to release more insulin. That's going to cause some insulin resistance, and that will lead to some weight loss resistance. But I would also challenge you, even as a what you're describing is you're a fast metabolizer, whereas myself, I'm a slow metabolizer. And, but I would challenge you as a fast metabolizer, you know, check your sleep tracker, whether you have an Oura Ring or one of those Apple Watch or Fitbit. And see whether that cup that you have in the afternoon that you think doesn't affect you, how that's affecting your deep sleep, and even maybe disrupting your HRV as well.

You're a buzzkill. Okay, thank you, thank you. We're gonna have to edit that out, y'all. I'm just kidding.

I'm still telling you coffee is good for you. Coffee's got so many great benefits for the gut, for longevity, as you said, for the gut-brain access. Um, but like anything, everything in moderation. And sometimes the reason that you're at— you're reaching for that second or third cup, there could be like a level of crash that's happening from what you think is the caffeine is wearing off, but it could be that the crash is actually happening because the cup of coffee that you just drank had hidden toxins like mycotoxins that need to brain fog and make you feel a bit fuzzy in the head.

Which brings me back to Happy Gut Coffee. Okay, so we want some insurance that we've got something clean that is indeed offering benefits without the risks or the cons. How do we get our hands on that? Tell us about this Happy Gut Coffee?

Couple of, couple of things to, to know there. So our Happy Gut Coffee comes from small farmers in South America that are farming their land with organic methods. So no pesticides, no, no added toxins. And we're working directly with them. So there's not a lot of middle people. And then those beans get sent to the lower Hudson Valley in New York State, and they're getting hand roasted, micro roasted in a small facility to make sure that the quality of the roasting is to perfection. And the roasting process is what allows for the complexity of the flavors in the beans to come out. And part of the reason that we call it a happy gut coffee is that it's easier on the gut. And the reason for that is that it's a dark roast, which means that it's lower in acid. So for anybody who loves their coffee, but then gets kind of like that tinge, like, oh, my stomach doesn't feel good, or they're popping Tums or antacids because they get heartburn or stomachaches from coffee, or they don't even realize the connection. That's part of what we wanted to do with Happy Gut Coffee is make a smoother coffee that's lower in acid, not only toxin-free, and we've had it third-party tested to verify that it's free of all types of toxins that we talked about, but also make it gut-friendly. And so, when people support the Kickstarter campaign, which you'll put in the show notes, the link, What they're doing is they're not just supporting and buying into a healthier coffee for them, but part of the proceeds are going to support these small farmers in South America. And within the different choices, we actually, because of Veterans Day, we decided to also create a line of the Happy Gut Coffee that we're calling it the Hero line. And in the Hero line, for anybody who chooses a reward that has the Hero line, 100% of the profits from the sale of those Hero line orders are going to a nonprofit called the Defenders of Freedom, which basically is a clinic in Texas that helps veterans who are suffering from traumatic brain injury heal from their traumatic brain injuries, which are often misdiagnosed as PTSD or post-traumatic stress, and they're put on unnecessary medications with— when if their traumatic brain injury was treated, they wouldn't need these medications. And that's what this clinic is doing through this nonprofit, is helping these veterans. So you can choose which way you want to support the coffee. If you want to support veterans, you buy one of the, the Hero Line, uh, rewards. And if you want to support support the growth of a small company that's bringing a healthier, toxin-free, mold-free coffee that is easy on your, on your gut. I like to call it gut love in a cup because with every cup you're loving your gut with our Happy Gut Coffee, but you're also supporting, you know, microfarmers and a micro-roaster And bringing a quality product to the market, and you're actually gonna be a part of this new coffee. Mm-hmm. Being able to, you know, just be available for everyone. So that's, I would love everyone's support. If this is something that you feel rings with you and that you would wanna support any of these causes or just support a small company bringing a new product out to the world in a way that I think you, you got to try the coffee, right? When we had—

Yeah.

At Mindshare. So you can tell people what, what was your experience? And I know I was doing a cold brew because it was 110 degrees in Scottsdale.

That's right. It was. Yes, I remember. And yeah, it was just, I, Clean and smooth, I mean, are the two words that come to mind. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was serving it black with no sweetener, nothing, because I wanted people to really experience the, the complexity of the beans. But also, like you said, the— everybody's first reaction is how smooth it is.

Yep.

It doesn't have that bite. And it doesn't have the bitterness that a lot of coffees have.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So for anybody who's still not sure, so it's a really exciting opportunity. This is what a Kickstarter is. And I know you've heard that word before. You may never have had the opportunity to participate, but this is like group funding, like we're a part of bringing this to fruition. So this idea, you are essentially sitting there like Barbara Corcoran, you are Shark Tank.

But you also get product in return for supporting the launch of Happy Gut Coffee. So either you get a 1-bag option, you get 3 bags. You can think of this as something that you could say is your early holiday shopping because we plan to start shipping the coffee probably by the middle of December. So we are hoping that the first shipments are going to arrive right before Christmas. So you can think about this. You could use them as gifts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that is exactly what I'm doing. So you've heard I've got 3 coffee snobs in my family, genetically related, can't get rid of them. So I'm doing my cleansing.

Grinders, bless them.

Well, you know, I have to tell you, I was at home once, stayed at their house as opposed to a hotel. And they had been gone and, you know, they let me know, you know, here's where the coffee is. I opened it up and I'm like, oh my God, this is intense. I mean, there was coffee like all over, like all kinds in drawers and cabinets and I was overwhelmed. So they'll be getting some for sure, for sure. So I will put the link in if you have a mind like a steel trap it's flipping50.com/happygutcoffee. But beyond that, so we do want to see this happen, and we want to thank you, number one, for bringing back the coffee, because I too had departed from it for 2 and a half, 3 years and was only doing matcha. I thought my gut was going to be a lot happier with that, and but I missed coffee, you know. And once you bring back that, it's like, oh, I remember you. And so I'm so glad to have a healthy option and to know the facts. So thank you for sorting all that out. Is there a question I should ask you before I let you go?

Ooh, as you were talking about matcha, like, not to— I'm a big fan of matcha, and same things apply there. You don't think about this, uh, but one, the importance of organic. Yeah, if you're drinking matcha, which is a powdered form of the green tea leaf, Um, but two, if you're drinking tea or green tea in a bag, that bag might have plastics in it. So anybody who's a tea drinker, you also have to think about the microplastics. And if you really start digging into it, you might get rid of all your tea bags and go loose leaf tea, which is probably the tea version of pour over.

Wow. Okay, we have been schooled, you all. Dr. Vincent Pedre, thank you so much. Congratulations on Happy Gut Coffee, because we know for sure we're going to get some in our stocking this Christmas.

Yeah.

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