53. How to Heal Leaky Gut and Alkalize Your Body Naturally with Dr. Daryl Gioffre

It's incredible how deficient we become in minerals. And one of the biggest reasons why is what's happening to our soil. They've done a study on spinach showing that you have to consume 65 servings of spinach to get the same mineral content, especially iron, that you got back in 1948 with one serving. Dr. Daryl Joffrey, joining us live, wrote.

This book called get off your sugar.

The gut is critical.

With over two decades of experience, Dr. Daryl Joffrey is a highly sought after gut health and inflammation specialist.

I think we've become more deficient than we ever been in human history. We have what we call a sick care system. We make a fiber of the world's population. We spend over 50% of the world's money on medical care, yet we rank 72nd in world health. The gut is critical. All these downstream issues that people have, whether that's brain fog, anxiety, depression, we got to go back to the gut and make sure the gut's okay. And most people, it's not okay. My dad's doctor got it wrong. It wasn't about too much acid. It was about.

Ultimate human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, ultimate human, human biologist Gary Breco, where we go down the road of everything, anti aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. I've just introduced this guest to you, but I just wanted to say how excited I am to have him on the podcast. He is actually a, a resident in Naples and I, I started my clinic, ironically in Naples and we had this serendipitous crossing of paths. I've been using is called alkamind for quite a while to get the acidity out of my coffee and get some MCT oils and other things into my coffee in the morning. And then one day I heard about his personal journey. And as you know, I think the greatest inventions and impacts on humanity come from people that have solved a problem in their life and usually their pain has led to their purpose. And he is no different. He went through an incredible health journey, both himself and his father. And as he solved this complex puzzle of what was wrong, and we're going to talk about it today on the podcast. You know, he gave birth to an incredible brand that is focused on getting the acid level out of your life and controlling acid and eating an alkaline diet and becoming more alkaline to put yourself in a healthy state. As you know, I think the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease and so does he. So welcome to podcast. Dr. Daryl Geoffrey, thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to have you on, man.

Yeah, what a blessing. Great to see you.

And, and, and, you know, like I said, I. I feel like some of the greatest impacts on humanity from a health and wellness, longevity, anti aging standpoint, biohacking standpoint, whatever you want to say, you call it, you know, the, the, the impacts on, on big nutritional revolutions, they come from people that have solved problems, a problem in their life. And I've had some of the most inspiring guests on, and they identify with my audience because they've been in a place in their life where it was hopeless. Modern medicine couldn't solve the problem for them. Some of them were physicians, some were PhDs, some were MDs, and some were soccer moms. And they just realized that I had to become my own citizen scientist. I had to take matters into my own hands, and they solved the problem. And that ripple effect now is impacting tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of lives. And I think that your story is very similar. So welcome to the podcast and, you know, I'd love for you to talk about your journey and, you know, what you're focused on right now in your practice and with your patients. I know you're known as the celebrity nutritionist, but, you know, I'd love to hear about your journey and what gave rise to alkamind and, and your focus on an alkaline diet.

Sure. My practice was in New York City for 25 years.

I'm sorry to hear that. Exactly.

I escaped from New York. I love it. I love family up in Connecticut, but, yeah, I was the shoemaker with no shoes. You know, when you're in your early 20s, you can get away with a hardcore sugar addiction, which I had. You know, I've coached a lot of people through sugar, and it's. It's amazing because the amount of sugar that I was intaking was just insane. And you get away with this when you're in your 20s. But as I started getting, you know, later into my 20s, what happened was my waistline started growing. Yeah, I actually was.

I think sugar addiction is way worse than people think it is.

Oh, it's, It's. Sugar is a substance. It's not a food. I mean, it's a drug. It's become America's drug of choice. I mean, the average American is consuming 130 pounds of this white stuff every day, single year.

Wow.

That equates to 38 teaspoons a day. The problem with that is after six teaspoons the liver can't metabolize it literally stores it as fat and becomes just this massive toxin that dries up inflammation. And we know where that goes to. So I started gaining weight. I was 50 pounds heavier than I am, you know, today. And I was leading down to adjust one of my patients, and literally my pants split right down the backside because. True story.

No, true story.

I refuse. Yeah. I refuse to buy bigger clothes. You know, I was. I was one of those people.

The old fashioned plumber's crack.

Exactly, exactly. So that was kind of one of those moments where I said, all right, you know, you got to. You got to change something. And I literally drew a line in the sand, you know, burned the boats that day. And I decided I had to make a drastic change in my lifestyle. And it was interesting because a week later, I heard about this thing called the alkaline diet. And you ever hear something and all of a sudden it's like the magnets flip, and you're like, whoa, this. There's something about this. I got to learn more.

Yeah.

And, you know, sugar is the most or one of the most acidic substances you can put into the body. And as I started to learn more, I basically said, all right, I'm going to stop with the deprivation approach. Before that, you know, for years, I would stop sugar for two weeks, two months, you know, six months. And again, it's such a powerful drug. You come back to it. Now, for many people, they can quit sugar by that deprivation approach. But it didn't work for me, as most of my clients. It doesn't work.

Yeah. Yeah, most of my clients doesn't work.

Yeah. So I just started to add things into my life that were going to strengthen my body, alkalize my body. And I started with a green juice, and that was it. You know, I started with a green juice every single morning. And. And when I first had my first green juice, it literally tasted like swamp water. It was disgusting. And I realized about two weeks later that it wasn't the green juice that tasted nasty. It was my taste buds that were so used to sugar that was causing that desensitization. So as I started drinking more and more green juice, within about two weeks, my cravings were less. And within 21 days, the cravings were gone. So I started adding on to that. I started eating more salads. I started bouncing on a rebounder. I started lymphatic drainage, doing more things to oxygenate my cells. And literally, chlorophyll is one of powerful ways to cleanse and purify your blood.

It's very close to hemoglobin as well.

It's identical. It's identical except for the center atom. So I do live blood cell analysis as well. And it's amazing because you can look at your, your red blood cells on that high powered microscope. And you like a dark field. Dark field, exactly. Yep. And phase contrast. So I would be testing my blood as well and seeing what the chlorophyll did. And it was amazing because when I was really like jacked up on sugar, all my cells were like stuck together. What I call blood sludge.

Guys, time. Can I get, can I get a round of applause, please?

Yes. There you go. And the problem with that is that you can't get the oxygen to your tissues, you know, and now it creates this downstream issue. But as I started putting in this green juice and the chlorophyll, right, because it's identical to your hemoglobin molecule except for the center atom, where chlorophyll obviously is your magnesium, your hemoglobin is your iron. So again, people out there that want to help build iron just drink more greens. And as I started drinking more and more greens, the red blood cells started to separate. My body started to actually feel better. Byproduct of that, I literally lost about 42 pounds in three and a half months. It was incredible. And that was really kind of like the introduction to the whole alkaline world. And what I learned was, is that it's not about like trying to increase the alkalinity of the body. Like so many people get it wrong out there. Right. The whole purpose of alkalizing your body is to take the stress off your own body's buffering system so it doesn't have to do the work on its own. It's kind of like your, your temperature. If I'm in New York City and it's freezing cold out, I'm wearing a T shirt, I go outside. What happens is your body has to rob Peter to pay Paul. Your body has to basically use its resources to keep you alive. So it's going to take all of your blood from your fingers, from your toes, bring it to your organs. Why? So you don't die. It's got to keep that temperature. 98.6. It works like a thermostat, right? Well, the PH of your blood is exactly the same. It's tightly regulated between 7.35 and 7.45, but ideally a 7.4. So again, the reason why we put things into our body that alkalizes like leafy greens and things like that is to take stress off your body's buffering system like your kidneys, like your adrenal glands, like your blood proteins and the minerals in your bones, your muscles, in your mouth so that your body doesn't have to do the regulating on its own.

You know, it's interesting. I talk a lot about the fallacy behind drinking alkaline water can make the blood alkaline. We know that that was a great marketing myth and it worked to sell a lot of alkaline water. So talk to me about if, if alkaline water doesn't change the PH of the body, then how do certain diets provably and measurably actually change the PH of the blood? Because I also am a firm believer that being slightly into the call it, the alkaline range for human beings is, is entering a disease free state. When we were in the mortality space and we looked at blood ph, you know, acidic blood phs would accelerate nearly every form of disease and pathology and alkaline states would actually do the opposite. And so I'm a little fuzzy on the research and the mechanisms for, you know, diet specifically relating to shifts in ph in the blood. So talk a little bit about that.

It's all about minerals. I mean, minerals are the critical, most important thing for the body right now. And it's incredible how deficient we become in minerals, you know, and one of the biggest reasons why is what's happening to our soil. I mean, they've done a study on spinach and this one study was back in 2015, showing that you have to consume 65 servings of spinach to get the same mineral content, especially iron, that you got back in 1948 with one serving. Now in our present time that's going up to 75. So even when we try to be healthy, even try to get those minerals, it becomes really, really hard. So that's why supplementation of minerals, especially magnesium, becomes critical. And the whole purpose of putting minerals into the body is because they neutralize acidity. So when there is acid, when there's toxins, when there's inflammation being created by those acids, we need min to go in there and basically mop up the scene. But the problem is if we're not getting them from our diet, the body's got to get them somehow.

Yeah, right.

Because again, the ph of the blood is always constant. So what happens is the body, as I said before, it robs Peter the paypal. The body will take calcium from your bones, bring that into the blood. Why? To neutralize the acid. Takes magnesium from the bones, the muscles, takes bicarbonate from the mouth. Your body is so innately intelligent, it'll let your body and bones fall apart to keep your ph tightly regulated and stable. Because if that ph dips down by more than one point, we die.

Right?

And your body says, no way, we're not gonna let that happen. So the most important thing we can do is adopt what I call a strength eating diet, where you're eating lots of leafy greens, healthy plant based keto fats, moderate amounts of proteins, fiber, rich slow burning carbs. So you're getting all those four macros into your body and when you do that, your body's gonna have the necessary nutrients it needs to deal with whatever it is. I always say your body's alkaline by design, but it' acidic by function. So we breathe in oxygen, the waste product is carbon dioxide gas. Right. We go for an exercise, the body makes lactic acid. So the body has these like buffers that it could deal with just the regular acidity that we create from normal day life. But the problem is, is that the average American is dumping in so much acid into their body. From the standard American diet, which we call the SAD diet, or what I call the crap diet, right? We're full of crap, completely refined and processed. All right.

Oh, I love that. I'm going to adopt that now.

There you go.

You're going to see that start appearing on podcast. The crap diet, completely refined in process.

I mean we're, we're, we have a crap diet. We're full of crap. The Average American has 5 to 15 pounds of impacted fecal matter in their gut and is creating all this auto and toxicity. We're literally choking on our own fumes. So we have to get more minerals, especially the magnesium, because what it's going to do over a thousand different things as we all know. But in terms of what it does for our gut function, for people dealing with acid reflux, for our blood ph, it is critical. So again, leafy greens, but I like to go above that one step further. We want to drink our greens. Green juice, green smoothies, green soups. That's the core of what I call a strength eating diet.

And so what's so talk about a, a good morning routine for, I mean there are lots of great brands out there, athletic greens, you know, some of these superfood blends. So are you suggesting that people add this? You know, one of the things I, I, I, I tell people to Add every day to their morning routine is a half a teaspoon of something called Baja Gold sea salt, which, or even Celtic sea salt. I, I, I was reading some research on, on pink Himalayan sea salt and I, and I, about the, you know, the amount of heavy metals and then I actually did a test and I actually crushed some of this pink Himalayan sea salt and was able to pass a magnet over the, the cutting board and even see some of the flaking of, of the metals coming out the, of the pink Himalayan sea salt. So I really push people to, you know, Celtic salts and, and mineral salts like Baja Gold and, and to just remineralize the body first thing in the morning. You know, I, I like you believe that the majority of us are becoming diseased and pathological because of deficiencies in certain nutrients in the human body. And, and many of them are the ones that you don't hear about. The, the unfun co factors like molybdenum and selenium and manganese and boro, these you know, minerals that nobody's even heard of. Everybody knows about B vitamins and you know, B12 and folate, but it's those minerals. So talk about a, you know, for the listeners, like what in your opinion is the, you know, best morning routine? And when you say greens, what greens are you talking about? What's the best way to get them?

Sure. And I love what you said about, you know, deficiency. I mean, I think we've be become more deficient than we ever been in human history. You know, if you look at the cause of all dis. Ease, which is, excuse me, of balance, lack of harmony in the body, it's deficiency and toxicity. I always like to use the analogy. If you see a plant start to wilt, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Water.

Right. Why not drugs or surgery? Right. That's, that's, that's, that's where most of these.

Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I will start dissecting the stem.

And see if we, but that, that's.

Where all the popsicle stick on there.

Yeah, right. But that's where all these allopathic doctors are going to. And listen, there's, there is a time and place for crisis care. We have the best crisis care system in the world, but we do not have a healthcare system. We have what we call a sick care system. I mean, we make up 5% of the world's population. We spend over 50% of the world's money on medical care, again, which we call sick care. Yet we rank 72nd in world health. I can't even name 71 countries ahead of us. Right.

Wow.

So if we go back to the plant, we need to give that plant the things that it needs to be strong, to live, to be vital, Give it water, give it nutrients, give it sunlight. But there's a problem. That plant is still wilting. It's still dying. Why? What's going on? We're giving everything that it needs to be strong. Well, perhaps we missed that gas station next door leaking gasoline into the root system of that plant that's making that plant toxic. Now, maybe we prolonged the plant's life because we gave it the things it needed that it was deficient in. But again, it was still toxic. So the problem with this day and age is that we are more toxic than we've ever been in human history. And I truly believe that addressing the toxicity in the body is more important than the nutrients. But we need both. So if you give the plant all the things that it needs, and then you take out the things that's not serving that plant's higher purpose, if it's not too far gone, that plant will heal itself. Because we're all designed to heal ourselves. I mean, God heals us, right? That's the innate intelligence of the body. The power made the body is the power of the heal is the body. But we still need to give those the body, the things that it needs to strengthen it from the inside out. So when I wake up, the very first thing I do is I hydrate with water. But water is neutral. Right. Now you can throw in some, you know, some of the things that you mentioned. Yeah, Bajo gold and whatever salt you choose to use. But I like to make my water what I call acid kicking. So we have an amazing green powder with alkaline. It's got 21 of your most alkalizing greens. Now take a scoop of that. I'll put that in, mix it up. Less than 30 seconds, you're getting five servings of organic greens. But why is that so powerful? Because it's literally bypassing the gut. It's getting right into that blood where it's going to alkalize, it's going to energize, it's going to detoxify you. And it's not like the sugar where you kind of get that like Joel. And all of a sudden you come down deep with a crash, right? No, this is going to sustain you because chlorophyll is the core of what's in that green juice. And it's those min minerals, right? The magnesium, the potassium and all the other minerals that you're getting in those trace minerals that is actually going to give the body the juice, no pun intended, the strength that it needs. So I wake up, that's the first thing I want to do. You got to hydrate because the body is most acidic in the middle of the night. I mean the body's most acidic between 1 and 3am in the morning. It peaks about 5am so when you wake up, like you have to alkalize your body, you gotta hydrate. And I always say the solution to pollution is dilution. You've got to get that water in, but kick its acid with something that's going to be a little bit more powerful. That could be a little sea salt, a mineral powder or a greens powder. And that's how I, that's how I start my day.

That's great. You know, there's, there's, you know, some threads of, of wisdom out there that say that vegetables are killing us. I, I actually don't subscribe to that. I know that we have, you know, oxalates and we have oxalobacteria in, in the gut. I also think that the body is extremely good at minor amounts of, you know, hormetic stress. And so just about everything creates minor amounts of hormetic stress. Exercise creates small amounts of hormet. Every time we eat there is some hormetic stress on the body. And so talk a little bit about why you feel that green vegetable sources are some of the best ways to make the body alkaline. And what about the toxic chemicals in vegetables like oxalates and things like that that are commonly attacked as being stressors or pro inflammatory in the body are blocking the absorption of other nutrients? Again, I don't particularly subscribe to that theory myself, but I know a lot of my listeners have been down the road of different kind of dietary gurus. And I hear vegetables getting trashed a.

Lot.

In the public domain because of these stressors.

It's a great point and we hear it all the time. Anything in life you could find something good to support your cause or something against your cause. Right. But I wrote a whole page in the book about the whole thing on oxalates. You know, don't eat spinach, it's bad for you. It's got the oxalates. You know, Popeye, it's all bs. But no, it's like it's really about your gut. Like your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that's designed to assimilate these nutrients. I always say, you're not what you eat, you're what you digest absorbing.

That's low bacteria. I mean, so why would oxalate. Why would you have bacteria to process oxalates?

Right? So the problem is people's guts are a wreck. I mean, people's guts are so acidic is that they're not able to assimilate those nutrients. And I think one of the biggest problems with the oxalates is that you don't have that specific type of bacteria that's able to deal with what you're eating in the food. So it's not about avoiding spinach, because spinach is a strength food. I mean, spinach is incredible. Things like broccoli, all the vegetables are so powerful for the body. They are really good at detoxification and cleansing and purifying the body, especially the blood. But. But it's really about the gut. When the gut is healthy, when your gut microbiome is balanced and you don't have that dysbiosis where you're having more of these bad bacteria that basically eat away at the gut lining versus the good bacteria that reproduce and can go after those bad guys. It's like your gut is always in a war, right? It's like good guys versus the bad guys or your guts. Like a garden, you want lots of flowers, you don't want lots of weeds. The people that have trouble with digesting vegetables have more weeds in the garden. You know, it's like people that have low stomach acid, which I believe, believe is one of the biggest causes of all disease in human.

I could not agree with you more on that big time. I mean, when you say low stomach acid, just, just so. Because sometimes we get these. These terms confused. You know, acidity in. In. In the stomach. You know, the lower the number, the more acidic and the higher the number, the more basic.

Thank you. Yeah. And when we say get off your acid, I'm not talking about stomach acid.

Right.

Stomach acid is critical. I think we really got to talk about this because it's such a. A huge misconception out there. I'm talking about the acidity in the body, the acid in the tissues, or issues with the tissues and stealth pathogens and the inflammation that that causes. Right. So that's the things that we got to get rid of. But in terms of acid in the stomach, it's critical. I mean, I call this GI North. And one of the biggest things, when Hippocrates said all disease begins in the gut, I believe we're talking about leaky gut. But one step further, because one of the draw the driving causes of leaky gut is hypochloregia, which is low stomach acid. It creates three major problems. Right. Here's the thing, is that as we get older, we don't get stronger, we get a little weaker. Unless you're Gary, Bret. God. We don't get faster, we get a little slower. We don't produce more stomach acid, we produce less stomach acid.

That's right.

I mean, when you're 20 years old, each decade you're going to lose 10% of that stomach acid. That's what the research shows. I'm telling you, that is way more accelerated because of the standard American crap diet. Right. People have such low levels of stomach acid that the problem is when they eat their food, they can't absorb those nutrients. So you could be eating the best organic, clean food in the world. It's not getting into your cells. All right? So the first problem is you're getting malnutrition. Again, I'll say this, it's so important, we got to say it again. You're not what you eat, you're what you digest, absorb and assimilate. So as that food comes down and it gets into the stomach, if we're not digesting and assimilating that, that those nutrients aren't getting into the cells.

Yeah.

One of the mage major causes of hypothyroidism is not something that's going on with the thyroid. You have all these doctors looking at the thyroid and yes, we have to check those markers. It's critical. But why is the thyroid going hypo? We gotta look at the stomach.

Yeah, right. Because we're 80% of the T3 is, is, is, is made in the, you know, outside of the thyroid and the liver, the gut, the periphery, it's de iodinized in the liver. You know, there's nutrients that are needed for that deionization process. And then, and then you have the, the, you know, the role of the gut and the peripher, raising the level, taking T4 and turning it into T3 outside of the thyroid. And it's astounding to me that when T3 levels are low, that a lot of physicians are saying, well, this is hypothyroid and they're medicating the thyroid, in my opinion, for a crime that it's not committing.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So we have to look at that low stomach acid and start to optimize digestion because Maybe they're not getting iodine or selenium or vitamin C or magnesium or vitamin D because of the digestive process. So it never reached the thyroid gland, and now the thyroid gland is getting hit by that. Plus the thyroid gland is the first organ that gets hit by leaky gut. And that's another major issue. So malnutrition is the first thing that happens from low stomach acid. Number two is we develop food sensitivities. So again, as that food doesn't get digested. So let's say I'm eating an avocado, right. When I did my food sensitivity test. I love the MRT test because it's.

Not a release test.

Yeah, exactly. It's not looking at, are you allergic to this food? It's looking at when you consume this food, are you not digesting that food? And therefore it's creating inflammation in your gut. So that avocado comes down and it's not a small particle that your body can take in for nutrients. So instead the immune system that lives in your gut. And by the way, 80% of our immune system does live in our gut.

Right?

80% of the nervous system lives in the gut. 95% of the serotonin is not made in the brain, made in the gut. Gotta pay attention to this area. So what happens is that because that food's not being digested, it gets attacked. And now we're developing these food sensitivities, which is driving up inflammation. It's causing more stealth pathogens to gain momentum, again causing leaky gut. But I think the third and most important thing that happens from low stomach acid is the free passageway of stealth pathogens into the gut. All right? It's from the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, it's from the food that we eat. Again, there's toxins everywhere. And when those come through, it's like, my wife went to Michigan. I said, you want to have that Michigan defensive line in your stomach that's going to kill it all before it gets in. But no, it goes right past the stomach, right into the gut, sets up shop, and here we go.

Right, right.

So stealth pathogens, I believe, is one of the biggest causes of low grade chronic inflammation in the body. Because we don't know that they're there. And just like a stealth fighter, you don't know that it's there. It's going to kill you and take you out at some point. That's what these stealth pathogens do.

What's interesting is that is the stomach is actually designed to prevent this from happening. I mean, one of the reasons why we have a stomach is to kill bacteria. That's right. And yet when we take proton pump inhibitors, you know, Nexium, Prilosec, one of those was just recently pulled from the market, too. Might have been Nexium. But in any case, we take these proton pump inhibitors, you know, Tums, Rolaids, Antacids, and then we're killing the PH of the stomach. We're making it too alkaline, so the first stage of the digestive process is inhibited. Now we're dumping alkaline contents into the gut, where we should be dumping acidic contents into the gut. And you're sort of reversing the natural physiologic role of the gut. One of the most incredible things for me as a human biologist was discovering years ago that acid reflux was actually the byproduct of having too little acid.

Oh, boy.

Right?

Oh, boy.

This seems so oxymoronic to me. But then, then when you understand the physiology of how these different sphincter muscles, you know, in the stomach work, this cardiac sphincter at the top of the stomach, that's actually very sensitive to not only the amount of acid, but the ph of the acid. And the more acidic the stomach is, the tighter this muscle closes.

That's right.

And the more alkaline it is, the more it relaxes. And so what you're doing is you're asking that muscle to relax. That protects the stomach acid from leaving and entering the esophagus. And then you're wondering why you have acid reflux. And so you keep taking more antacids and more proton pump inhibitors, further driving the alkalinity up and further exacerbating the acid reflux and then buying yourself a downstream problem in the gut.

Gut.

Oh, and you would agree with that.

In the gut and the body. I mean, PPIs.

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It's. It's. The problem with PPIs is that you're taking now a low acid stomach, which we now know is bad. And every time you pop one of those pills, you've now reduced 95% of the acid in the stomach. So the goal of this kind of method is to get rid of the symptoms. But here's the problem. There's a research article that was published a year ago showing that 54% of people that take PPIs actually have increased symptoms in terms of their acid reflux. So it doesn't even work in the majority of people.

Right.

Not to mention you're actually taking the root cause of why we have acid reflux. You're making it worse. So the goal is to, like, snip the wire to the alarm in the house. And, you know, now we don't know that there's something going on, but guess what? The fire's still there. We just now aren't being paid attention to it. The fire is going to take you out. And by the way, this is exactly what happened with my father.

With your dad, really?

Acid reflux is a serious, serious problem.

I know. It leads to Brett's esophagitis. And the dysplasia is a predisposition to cancer and can even lead to cancer in the distal part of the esophagus. Right. Is this what we're talking about?

It was October 2014, and it was a beautiful fall day, one week before the New York City Marathon. And I've been wanting to run the marathon for 20 years. And I'm in my final training run in Central park, and I'm picturing myself walking past or running past that finish line. Yeah.

Yeah.

And my wife would be there. My son Braden, who's now nine, was six months at the time. He was just bor. And my parents were coming down Vermont from Vermont to watch the race as well. And all of a sudden, my phone starts to vibrate. I take the phone out, and there's a missed call from my brother Brandon. So me being a goofy brother, take a selfie, snap it back to him, and I keep going. A few seconds later, phone buzzes again. Take the phone out. This time, it was a text call. Emergency.

Wow.

Immediately, Gary, I knew something happened to my parents again. They were driving down from Vermont, so they were driving down at 91 south, like, right before Hartford, a very, very busy highway there in the HOV lane. My dad was always the driver. My mom was always the passenger. In fact, she was knitting a sweater for my son Braden that she was gonna give to him when they saw us. And all of a sudden, she feels the car start veering off like this. Well, there's one huge problem. A concrete divider going 70 miles per hour. So she looks over at my father, and there he is, passed out against the window like this.

No way.

Serious. Car goes up the concrete divider. She leans over, grabs his leg off the accelerator, pulls it off. Car comes back down. Car goes back up. She grabs the keys, pulls them out of the ignition. As the car crashes, it's a miracle they didn't flip onto oncoming traffic the other way and kill not just them, but other people as well. So all of a sudden, I'm in a Zipcar heading from New York City up to the Hartford hospital. And all along the way, I'm trying to figure out as a doctor, like, why did my dad pass out? Was it a heart attack? Was it a stroke?

Perforated?

Was it an aneurysm? Right. So when I get to the hospital, I meet with a doctor. He says, your dad has esophageal cancer. I'm like, what?

How did that cause him to lose cancer? Did he bleed?

So he was bleeding out from the inside from years of silent acid reflux. He was a stubborn Italian father. Never mentioned anything. This is before. I was really, like, a gut specialist, right? But he always had this chronic cough. And I was always saying to myself, what is that chronic cough all about? So three days later, we're with the top specialist in esophageal cancer at Sloan Kettering. And he says, good news, guys. Your dad's cancer hasn't metastasized or spread. And these things are usually caused by too much acid. We'll come back to that point. We'll come back to that point in just a second.

Wow.

And it's so funny because I'm wearing my shirt that says, get off Your acid.

Right.

Because that night I'm giving a keynote address at one of the big wellness conventions in New York City. And I'm talking about how the. Or the connections between acidity and, as you were mentioning before, chronic inflammatory diseases like cancer, heart disease, and things like that.

Right.

And so, like, right after that, I doubled down. I became a health investigator. And like any investigator does, you start following the evidence. I started calling every expert, you know, reading every research article, as many studies as possible. How did this happen? How did my dad get to this point? And most important, what can we do to hopefully reverse this thing? Right, Right. So three years later, I'm driving up to my brother's house in Connecticut. It was my birthday. We're gonna go up there to see my family and spend the day with my dad. And when we got there, you can tell that, you know, he lost a lot of weight. He wasn't looking good, he was losing the fight.

Did he have a gastroesophageal resection? What, did they go in and resect it?

So what they did when, when he was diagnosed with it, he had an 11 hour robotic surgery because the damage was so bad, right? Because he. Because we say, yes, it's from low acid, but we have to understand is that acid still causes the damage. Right. Low acid is the reason a big thing is magnesium deficiency. That's what causes that esophageal sphincter to not open and close properly. So there's a whole host of things we do for, obviously when someone has acid reflux, but for years, this acid, even though it was low level, was creeping up into the esophagus. Basically. Think about what acid does from a common sense standpoint, acid is corrosive. It could burn a hole through chicken bones and metal. Think about what that does inside your gut, inside your digestive system. And when he was driving, that's what made him pass out. He was bleeding out. He had to have two transfusions at the hospital. And they did basically an 11 hour robotic surgery where they took two thirds of his esophagus, removed that half of his stomach. They brought the two together. So now his stomach was up in his chest, which is just a whole crazy thing. That was a pretty traumatic surgery that he went through. But nonetheless, we're with him on that day when we went to visit him. And again, we could tell that he was losing the fight. But we had a nice, beautiful day. My daughter now was three months old, so got to spend some time with my daughter. We head back to the city, Gary. Not even two hours later, I get a call from my. From my brother. Dad's in the hospital on life support, in a coma.

Oh, my God.

So I'm back off there this time. I took a train. There's no way I was in the state to drive. We all gather around my father. I'm holding his hand, and he's got a tube down his throat. And I said, dad, I'm so sorry for not being able to save your life. And I made a vow to him in that moment. I said, dad, I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent as many people from not suffering and not going down this route that you had to go. And Gary, after that, they pulled the tube out and he died right there. So this has become. No, thank you. But you talk about when we started turning pain to purpose. This was such a painful moment. It still is a painful moment, but I've turned that into my purpose. You know, my story was originally about me and sugar addiction and weight, but it's taken on a whole new role, which is the gut is critical. It's like all these downstream issues that people have, whether that's brain fog, anxiety, depression, issues with the reproductive system, liver stress, whatever it is, right. We gotta go back to the gut and make sure the gut's okay. And most people, it's not okay. So that's become my now mission in life is to help as many people become aware of how to protect your gut, what to do to protect the gut. And again, my dad's doctor got it wrong. It wasn't about too much acid, it was about too little acid.

Yeah.

And what can we do? So you mentioned, like, the things that we could put into the body as far as the acidity. One of the best things you could do is apple cider vinegar. You know, it's like you take a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar 20 to 30 minutes before your biggest meal of the day. Put that in about a third cup of warm water, because the warm water is going to stimulate the gastrin.

And this is. This is how to get the acid going again, by the way. I don't know if I've ever shared this publicly, but my father had the same surgery. He had gastroesophageal resection from esophageal cancer. And by the grace of God, he's still with us today. But a large part of this was because we got him off of post surgery off of PPIs, but he did have that gastroesophageal resection. And I got a very similar call to what you did. And I think that this is a much more prevalent problem. I mean, here we are, two guys on a podcast. Both of our fathers suffered from esophageal cancer. And I think it's a lot more prevalent than people are aware. And, and that, you know, we don't take action until you get that phone call. I didn't take action until I got the very same phone call. And my father started with a persistent cough too. And so Captain John Breckers still around. Love you, dad. And, but, but I, but, but I want to get back to this. So as I, I didn't mean to cut you off some of the way that. Yeah, you're. You're welcome. I know that's a hard story to share. Um, but I want to talk about some of the ways that people listening, practical things they can do to maybe restore this acid balance. So you were saying 30 minutes before a meal. Tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Love that. With baking soda.

You said you can add a little baking soda, but I would prefer not to. If you're taking baking soda, it could deplete your other minerals. So what I would do is just do the straight up apple cider vinegar. Or you can also, in addition to that, add a little bit of lemon juice.

Juice.

Now, lemon, we all know is an acidic fruit. It's acid out of the body, but it has an alkaline forming effect when you digest it. So does apple cider vinegar because it's high in minerals, low in sugar. Right. Same thing with lime. Same thing with grapefruit. Not so with oranges, because oranges have more sugar. So you can just put a little lemon slice in there. Now, if someone does have acid reflux, I recommend don't start with a tablespoon. Start with half of a teaspoon. See how you feel if you get that kick up of acid reflux. And what you do do is take a tablespoon or, you know, a couple teaspoons of baking soda in a little bit of water, drink that, that'll calm it down right away. Or you could take some of our acid kicking minerals, same thing. And that'll come out right right away. But that's important because what that's going to start to do is start to gently increase the stomach acid, which is the goal. Right. Because we want to digest our food, we want to get those nutrients into our cells. One of the biggest symptoms we see with people from hypochalurygia or low stomach acid. Acid is chronic fatigue.

Yes.

You have no energy, they'll sleep 12, 14 hours. They wake up, they're still exhausted. Why? Because the body's not getting those nutrients into the energy factories of the body, the cell. Right. The mitochondria. So it's really important that we do that before a meal. We have to take a digestive enzyme. I'm huge into digestive enzymes. And we test for this. I mean, my mantra is test, don't guess. I know that's one of your mantras as well.

Totally agree with that.

It's so important, and especially when it comes to gut. Another one of my goals is to or mission is to have gut testing as regular as all the other testing. You know, it's like we test our cholesterol, we test our blood sugar, we test our hormones. Like, we gotta test our gut as well.

Yeah.

All right. Because we can actually look at all these numbers. There's a specific marker called the last taste, one that will show up in a GI map or a stool sample test, which is a direct marker if you're making sufficient amounts of enzymes specifically to break down proteins. Right.

And what kind of test is this? A saliva stool.

This is a stool sample. Stool sample, Yep, stool sample. And it uses PCR technology. So we're looking at the DNA not of our body, but of the pathogens in that stool. Right. And it's very, very accurate. And it gives us a really incredible look at the entire microbiome. We're looking at GI North. We're looking at the. The stomach digestion, we're looking at your gallbladder. You know, are we digesting and simulating the fats? Now? You can tell if you're not stimulating fast because the stool will float. Right. We gotta look at our. Our stool. Right. We gotta look at our crab, as they say.

Nobody wants to hear that.

But. But it looks at something called steady crate, which is basically. Basically looking at are we digesting our fats? And of course, are we making enough digestive enzymes? So that's what we call GI North. And just by adding a digestive enzyme before your first bite or after your first bite does wonders for your body, because, again, it's going to support your pancreas and it's going to help you assimilate all those nutrients that your body really, really needs.

So for somebody that's taking PPIs right now, or just constantly, you know, sucking down the tums. At one point in my life, years ago, it was when I was triathlon training, I used to buy the Costco sized, like, they were like quart jugs of, of Tums. And I nibbled on those things like cotton candy. I've been off of that for, for years now. But so for somebody that's constantly Tums, roll aids, antacids, or on a PPI Nexium Prilosec and wants to get off, number one, is there hope for them to do so? And number two, what does that pathway look like?

Yeah, absolutely. 100. This is all reversible. And it's funny you say that I had that giant Tums in my, in my car and also in my bag because my gut was such a wreck as well.

I did too. Yeah. I actually like the little chewable ones with the candy gel on them. I'm going way back, guys.

Way back. Yeah, you can't tell that, right? But isn't it funny how people will take more. So the elderly, they'll take Tums for calcium. When you have an antacid, you can't absorb the. You can't absorb the calcium because, yeah, it's an oxymoron because you need the acidity. But it is 100 reversible. But again, you have to look at the root cause of what's off in the gut that's driving this situation. So rule number one, you cannot stop your PPI's cold turkey.

Right?

That is the worst thing that you can do. So you need to wait on that. What we need to do is heal that gut, get that gut back into a more strengthened state. And that's really like what the testing does. If you're not going to test, there's ways to do it as well.

Well, but I'm saying the Rolls Royce way to get off ppi.

So first is test the Rolls Royce ways. Is what I do is we test. I'll do a food sensitivity test because we want to look at 170 different foods and chemicals that you might think is affecting your body, like health foods. It's not saying that that avocado was bad for me or garlic. Like, garlic was one of my food sensitivities. So you're telling this Italian guy he can't have garlic for three months? Like, yeah, if I want to get my gut healthy. So my diet maybe was a little boring for a few months, but guess what? I got healthier because of it.

Right.

So we do a food sensitivity test, and then we do the GI map or a stool sample test.

And is this a mediator release test, an alcat?

It's. It's a mediator release, meteorous release.

Okay, yeah. Which I love because I do too.

It's really looking at more of the inflammation and what it also does is.

It takes into account your, your baseline information and it looks at the distance that you travel from where you are to when you encounter this, this, this food, you know, food compound. So it actually really is much more sensitive. And I, and I found personally that this media release test can be better than the ALCAT test. We used to run the ALCAT test too, as I understand it was actually developed by the same PhD. And, and you know, there's just a more targeted result, more accurate results for food sensitivities rather than just anything creating inflammation and not taking into account your current state of inflammation. So.

That's right. That's right. We're looking at mostly a 60% accuracy rate with the ALCAT, but when we look at MRT, we're looking at a 94.5% sensitivity and the 91.7% specificity. So what that means in English, if there's a food sensitivity and it shows up, it's there and you got to pay attention to it. Because if you don't remove those foods for a few months, this is not saying like stay off the foods forever. It's taking those foods out of your diet for a few months. And this is now what we call bio individuality. Like I talk about eating a strength eating diet, like these are the foods that we want to focus on, which is better than nothing if we don't have a test. But some of those foods could be driving up inflammation in my body. So we gotta be very careful. It's like the dog chasing his tail. If my goal is to reduce inflammation in the gut and the downstream effects it's having in the rest of the body, I have to remove all sources of or root causes of inflammation. And that could be the foods that we're unknowingly putting into our body that is driving up the inflammation. So that's why that test is critical. You have to do it. And then the other test, the GI map test, is amazing because now we're looking at how you're digesting your food. We're measuring inflammation levels through something called calprotectin, which is such an important, important number. We're looking at leaky gut, we're looking through something called zonulin, we're looking at stealth pathogens, we're looking at the whole status of your microbiome, we're looking at your healthy probiotics, the commensal, the Keystone bacteria. These are the good guys, right? These are the flowers that we want to build up. But the problem is, if our gut's being overtaken by all these bad guys, these stealth pathogens, whether that's Candida or mold like I went through, or an active virus like Epstein Barr virus, or something like Klebsiella or Citrobacter or parasites. Right, Right. These are all things that people have in their gut, and they have no idea that it's there until you test for it. Right. So that's why I say, like, once you know it's there, then you could go about it and do something about it. Laser focus, a specific protocol to get to the root cause of these things. Because if you don't, what happens is all these pathogens, like a snowball, they start to gain momentum. They start to basically take. They're like snipers. They take your good, healthy guys. The microbiome. Before you know it, you have a lot more bad guys than good guys. And we measure this, there's something called secretory iga. It's looking at your first line of defense, because the gut is the first line of defense. Right. So we look at that number, we can see exactly where it's at. And then once we have that information, we can talk about, this is the right diet for you. This is the specific foods you should be eating. These are the foods you want to avoid for the next few months. This is the specific types of supplements that we need to strengthen the gut gut to heal and seal that leaky gut and gut lining. And most important, these are the things we need to do to eradicate these stealth pathogens. Maybe we need to do a biofilm disruptor to get at the things underneath the surface that we can't see on that test. And then maybe we need to do some binders to basically help the body escort these toxins out. And what happens, Gary, you know, this over time, all right? We don't need a retest to show that the body's doing better, because our energy goes up, our weight starts to go down, everything starts to. Our sleep is better. All these things that we never would have associated with a healthier gut starts to improve. And then when you go back and you retest, all of a sudden you see these massive changes in markers. I know you do that with all of your clients. You're always pre and post testing. It's critical, because again, we always say, God lives in a computer. Right? It's nice to see the object. It's nice to see the Objective data. But I love when the clients start to feel better very, very soon after starting something like this. That's how resilient the body is. The body was designed to heal itself. We just gotta get out of the way and give the body what it needs. Needs and also what it doesn't need.

I love that. So, so we start by testing. We look at food sensitivities, food allergies. And sensitivities are different than allergies, you know, so food sensitivities, food. Food allergy testing, mediated release test. They can add the, you know, teaspoon up to a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar 30 minutes out from, you know, from a meal. Then when you get the food sensitivity back, you design, you know, a diet that's, that's avoiding these sensitivities, these food sensitivities, and then repopulating the gut. And I imagine that's with probiotics.

Critical.

And what are some of your. Go to probiotics. So. So first we test and support and we get those foods out of the diet. Because I've got lots and lots and lots of people listening to this podcast right now that are on proton pump inhibitors and they want to get off them and they do not know how to walk themselves out of it. So this is critical. Yes, for so many of them. And this is great information.

I'll say it again. It is possible. I do with clients every single day. I had a client that came to me when we looked at her calprotectin level. She had such bad reflux. I can say this the worst case of reflux I've ever seen. Her calprotectin was 698. Again, that's the marker of inflammation in the gut. That number should be less than 50, ideally zero. Hers was 698. When she came to me, she was suffering so bad. She's seen, you know, how many times they've seen like 20 different doctors. Then they come to us.

Right, right, right.

And then they get well, right. Because again, we're looking for the root cause. We're doing things that these doctors aren't looking for. But it was incredible because she had, you know, ulcers in her esophagus, ulcers in her throat, ulcers in her mouth. She couldn't sleep at night because her, her ears were popping. And again, this was all because of the reflux. And again, when she came to me, she was on 80 milligrams of omeprazole. Now, it took us. Yeah, I mean, it's insane. So it, and she was.

That's no acid.

Yeah. And, and she was, I mean, she was crying on the first visit. I felt so bad for her. She spent over, I mean, over a hundred thousand dollars on the care over the years that she was trying to fix. And she was getting worse, not better. Right. So it's our duty to help these people, but by doing it the way that it's going to get to the underlying reasons of why. And it was incredible. After the first re exam or the retest, about four months in, symptomatically she was doing better. The symptoms were less intense, less frequent. Her calprotectin was coming down. When we hit the eighth month mark, her calprotectin was zero. No zero, zero.

Wow.

And that's cool. But here's the cool thing. She was off of 80 milligrams of omeprazole. We did it the right way.

So, so, so progressing down this, this line of, of thought, after the testing, after some of the support, you know, apple cider vinegars, after removing the food allergies and food sensitivities, and then getting on a good probiotic and taking digestive enzymes, which I'm also a big fan of, and digestive enzymes, the ones that I use, use that we usually take midstream, you eat a little bit of food, you take the digestive enzyme, you finish eating your food. That alone, I've, I've seen miracles in, in, in clients coming through our clinic. And so you, you help the digestive system with a little bit of digestive enzyme and you give it further support with a good probiotic. And when and how do you start titrating off of some of these PPIs?

Yeah, it's the last effect. And going back to your question on probiotics, I love spore based probiotics. In the beginning, there's a few reasons why, number one, they are a good supporter to strengthen the microbiome. All right, so that's, that's important. But spore based examples would be things like megasporebiotic thrive probiotic. They have strands such as Bacillus subtilis.

The fermented type.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's, it's not an alive bacteria, it's the spore. Right. So what happens is it has a shell and as it goes through the harsh environment of the digestive tract, that shell basically keeps it protected. And it's like, it's like a seed, it's like a dormant seed. And once it gets actually past the hydrochloric acid, the bile salts and it goes into the gut, then that shell releases and then the spore can do what it needs to do. And it's probably the most important probiotic to take if someone's taking an antibiotic. And if someone is taking an antibiotic, we can go over what the leaky gut protocol is for that. But what it also does is it nudges the out any bad pathogens. So most probiotics don't eradicate pathogens. Spore based probiotics can do that. And they did a study on 20 year olds and they basically measured them taking two spore based probiotics at their largest meal of the day. And what they found after 30 days was that on average their leaky gut healed by 44%.

Wow.

44% from a probiotic, which they're not really designed to do. Now I love, love terrain based probiotics because they have more of the strains that has to be refrigerated. What I like about the spore base is that they do not have to be refrigerated. So it's a little more convenient and we want to switch it up. Right. So I'll start with a spore based probiotic for the first two or three months and then once I see that their microbiome is getting stronger on the retest because we look at these bacteria, then I'll switch them to a more terrain based probiotic.

What is a terrain based probiotic?

Lactobacillus akkermansia. You know the ones that have to be refrigerated. Acid.

Yeah.

And you'll see plantarum, you'll see like about 15 of those, you know, in an average probiotic. And those are important because that's what's going to strengthen the microbiome.

So now they've got the probiotic, they're pretty far down the road. They're taking the probiotic digestive enzymes, they're avoiding the food sensitivities, the food allergies, they're giving themselves some support. And now how do we know and what's the mechanism of starting to titrate down off of some of the PPIs?

Yep. So their diet is in check now there's the inflammation levels are coming down. We have them on, on some specific agents to soothe and calm the upper GI tract. That could be something like dgl, which is deglycerized licorice, which is an adaptogenic herb that is really good at healing the mucous membranes of the stomach, the duodenum, small intestine, even the esophagus. Marshmallow roux. I love so marshmallow roux. One of my favorite things is to make a marshmallow root tea. So I'll take marshmallow roux and cinnamon bark, and I'll take three tablespoons of marshmallow root root and one tablespoon of cinnamon bark. And what I'll do is I'll keep doing three tablespoons of marshmallow, one tablespoon of cinnamon, and I'll create a jar with that ratio. And then once that jar is full, airtight. You have this amazing formula for a marshmallow root tea, which is great because it has anti inflammatory effects. It's antihistamine, it's an antioxidant and it works great for people with irritation, ulcerations, all sorts of upper GI issues going through acid reflux. And what they do is you take one tablespoon of that, that put that in eight ounces of water, airtight top, let that sit for four hours, and then what you do is you strain that and you have an amazing anti inflammatory soothing tea that these people can use that will help the mucous membranes of the gut. So these are some examples of things that they can do. Minerals, bicarbonate. So now we've healed the upper GI tract. We put in place the foods that are biologically right for that person. Right now we are strengthening the gut with things like L glutamine, probiotics. And now their symptoms are better. For some people, that could be four months. For some people like that client, I was saying it was, you know, up to a year. So we want to accelerate that process as quickly as possible. But when they're ready, how do we know they're ready? Their symptoms are gone. Right. And once those symptoms are gone, then that next phase is going to be starting in conjunction with their doctor responsibly to wean them off of their PPIs.

When you say wean off of PPIs, do you start skipping dosing or do you start taking less of a dose on a daily basis?

Yeah, great question. It really depends on which, which one they're on, which medication, how much they're taking. So if someone's taking 40 milligrams of omeprazole in the morning and at nighttime, or 80 all at once, then we'll just gently reduce the dose and then we'll do that for a few days. And then sometimes what we'll do is we'll add in. If they're doing like a PPI at night and morning, we'll take out the PPI in the morning and in place, we'll put like a pep. So it really depends on what's going on, but the goal is to slowly reduce at their own pace. I think the biggest mistake I see a lot of doctors make is that they go way too quickly. And what happens, you get this rebound effect. And that's bad because, number one, now their symptoms get worse, and number two, now they're afraid to do it again.

Right, right.

So you got to go about it slowly, slowly, with the amount that you're doing. And then what we do eventually is we'll go every other day, and then we'll keep on increasing. That depends on if it's. If it's a tablet, if it's a capsule. So again, it's a slow and steady approach. We do it the right way, and once we get there, they're okay because we put all these other agents in that are still being taken, so the tissue has healed. So as we slowly remove the ppi, we have all these other things that we've been doing since day one that are still in place that are continuing to heal and seal and protect the gut.

Right.

And then at some point, what we would do once we are off the PPI is now introduce something like hydrochloric acid in a very slow, gentle way. I would start with apple cider vinegar first, but then following that with hydrochloric acid to start to get the actual stomach acid back into play.

And you see that they're actually able to go back to normal pathic eating and 100 and. And get completely off of the PPIs.

Yeah, they're. They're eating comes back way before. I mean, literally within three months. Months, they're adding in a lot of those food sensitivities. You have to even retest for it.

What you're looking at, which is amazing. I've seen that on this MRT test. These. These sensitivities. Completely correct.

Yeah, it's amazing. And you're looking for trigger symptoms when you add that food back in. So let's say avocado was a. Yeah, I'm picking on avocado, my favorite food in the world, God's butter. But if I'm adding that back in, I'm going to add that in by itself with other green foods, because I'm looking at am I still being irritated by that food? Am I having any acid reflux, bloating, indigestion, constipation, am I feeling tired, brain fog, Anything like that would. That would warrant. Yes, this is still an issue for me and if it was, then maybe I'd go another month without that food. But if I don't have those trigger symptoms, I'm good to go.

Yeah. Love it, man. I think you and I also share a common love for hydrogen water. Oh yes, we've got our hydrogen water bottles.

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So from a gut standpoint, talk a little bit about the, you know, the impact and why you're such a fan of, of hydrogen water on the gut and you know, some of its any inflammatory, you know, compounds or any inflammatory effects and why you're such a fan of.

Yeah, it's so powerful. I mean the gut should make 10 liters of hydrogen every single day. And the problem is 10 liters. 10 liters of hydrogen of hydrogen every day.

Hydrogen gas.

Gas, yeah, hydrogen. Yeah, hydrogen gas. And the problem is that we don't do that. Right. Because our guts are such a wreck. Right. Think about the onslaught from, you know, the, the day we're born till now, how much abuse our gut has taken and it's just not making the amount of hydrogen. So these.

Yeah.

Needs a reboot.

That was mine. It just went off because.

Yeah, I'll just talk about gut health.

And I'm like firing up my hydrogen water. Cheers.

But the reason why I love hydrogen is because it's a selective antioxidant accident. So not to get too scientific, but you have two. H2 is what molecular hydrogen is. So you have two hydrogen atoms. And the best part about that is that can take out two hydroxyl free radicals. So. Oh, minus is the bad guy. That's the one that causes damage. That's the one that makes our body rust and rot from the inside out. That's what causes our biological age to basically age faster than the clock says it's supposed to. Right. So it'll basically. One hydrogen will take out an oh, and guess What? That forms H2. Okay. So from one molecule of molecular hydrogen, we form two water molecules. It's not like other antioxidants that will steal an electron that is a little bit more unstable. So it's a very stable selective antioxidant. That's number one. Number two, it's amazing because it's a powerful anti inflammatory. It goes up to the brain within 30 minutes of ingesting this. I mean, there's over a thousand studies on this.

Hydrogenstudies.com is a great website.

Love that website website. It's amazing on Parkinson's patients that literally have tremors, they start doing the hydrogen water because it lowers inflammation of the brain, which is obviously one of the triggers for all these different sorts of brain issues. And we're seeing that the tremors will stop. They've done studies in combination with five Fluorosil. When you take the hydrogen and you expose it to a colorectal cancer cell, there's 100% apoptosis, which means the cancer cell's gone.

Wow.

So it's powerful. But probably my favorite thing is that molecular hydrogen or hydrogen water is the only therapeutic agent that can actually increase the anaerobic flora of the. Of the gut faster than the antibiotic can take it down. So if someone's taking Antibiotic. What does everybody say to take, take a probiotic. Right? Yeah, you should take a probiotic. Take a spore based probiotic. That's the most important one. But when you're drinking hydrogen water, it's so powerful because it's actually going to outpace the damaging effects that the antibiotic is doing to your gut. So it's critical.

Right. And so many people are on, you know, antibiotics, especially for sibo, which is just destroying the rest of the gut. I mean, I understand you, you know, it's, it's the lesser of two evils, right, when you have these bacterial overgrowths. But I'm, I'm an enormous fan of hydrogen water. I've got thousands of people drinking hydrogen water and I get comments all the time that, you know, when I travel, I, I just don't feel the same because I forgot my hydro water bottle.

Oh, this goes everywhere with me. I love it.

Yeah, it goes everywhere with me too. But the, you know, the concept of, you know, just getting back to homeostasis and getting back to what, you know, the natural state that we are supposed to be in and because of the constant assault of, of, you know, microplastics and glyphosates and pharmaceuticals and chemicals and synthetics and, and, you know, these different things in our, in our food and in our water. You know, I believe that anytime that we can bolster the body's natural ability to detoxify and reduce inflammation, we're taking huge steps ahead rather than using a chemical synthetic to actually create that anti inflammatory effect. So do you have, is hydrogen water a part of your gut rebuilding protocol?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Absolutely. Obviously you have to get a good probiotic in there, which we spoke about, about molecular hydrogen is critical. Yeah. And everybody has leaky gut. You know, the research out there says 80% of people have leaky gut. It's 100%, albeit at different degrees. And when I do my live blood cell analysis testing, it confirms that because we see Candida signs of fermentation in blood samples of 100 of the people. Now the question is, do I have an overgrowth of Candida or was there leaky gut that's allowing Candida from the gut to get into the bloodstream, which is obviously bad. Right now we all have Candida in the gut in a small amount. That's actually good because Candida is there to break down. But so many people have an overgrowth of Candida. So it's so important that we heal and seal that gut wall. There's a protocol that I have that can do that in two years. Because the, I mean, two weeks. Because the problem with an antibiotic is that it will wipe out your microbiome for two years. Right.

Wow.

One round of antibiotic just destroy. It's like an napalm bomb. It destroys the bad, it destroys the good. And things like sugar and gluten and dairy will poke holes in that gut. But this is like open door. All those things that should never get into the bloodstream now systemically into the body will get in there like undigested proteins, mycotoxins, candida, inflammation, bacteria, all that stuff. Right. So what you want to do is take one tablespoon of liquid aloe vera, something like a George's aloe or a lily of the desert, and then you take one tablespoon of bioactive silver hydrosol. I love like sovereign silver or Argenta 24 silver hydrosol. Silver hydrosol. It's a very not, not, you know, not regular silver that people are used to. We're talking about bioactive silver hydrosol. It's a much more nano smaller particle. And you take one tablespoon of each at the same time on an empty stomach. You do that three times a day for two weeks. What the aloe does, it protects the silver down through the digestive system and then once it gets into the gut, but basically the aloe lets it go. Silver I love is because it's an immunomodulator, it boosts immune function, it's an antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal. When I was having heavy mold issues, mold toxicity, mold sickness, this was a big part of my healing process. And then the aloe vera is great because it's very soothing to the gut. It'll heal and seal that gut wall. And of course, during this protocol two weeks, you also want to take two of the spore based probiotics at your largest meal of the day. And it's incredible, you know, for some people we might do that longer depending on how much abuse there's been to the gut. But it's so powerful at getting rid of inflammatory pathogens in the gut, building up the immune system in the gut, and most important, healing and sealing that gut wall, which is critical for our health because again, all disease begins in the gut. It's the leaky gut.

Yeah, and, and where do you fall on peptides? I mean, I'm a huge fan of peptides like BPC157, you know, which is a gastric pentadeca peptide. It's actually synthesized from gastric juice. I, you know, I've seen our clinical team use it and create Mirac in leaky gut. It's also good for injuries. What I call nips and bibbles, you know, those little minor tears in the rotator cuff, knees, hips, shoulders, ankles. The FDA recently, you know, banned compound pharmacies from producing it. But you can still get it nutritional grade, which is a very high grade of A. BBC 157. Do these peptides have a role in your protocol in healing and sealing the gut? And if so, like, how do you incorporate those?

Yeah, I love peptides. I love BP517. Funny that you mentioned that. I'm taking three capsules twice a day of BPC 157. Not so much for my gut.

I'm taking two capsules three times a day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except I'm shorter than you. Yeah, it's important because it heals connective tissue. You know, I'm taking that for a spinal injury that I had. I broke my neck, as I was telling you before, when I was 18 and they wanted to do surgery on me a year ago because I've seen so much damage and degeneration, severe pressure on my spinal cord and the spinal nerves where I was, I mean I have a high threshold of pain, but I was like at like a nine level pain and I just didn't know what to do. So I'm biohacking, doing all these different things. But I started adding three capsules twice a day of that. And then I started adding three capsules twice a day of boswellia, which is boswellia frankincense, which is a natural non steroidal anti inflammatory. And Gary, it was amazing. Literally within three or four weeks my pain level went from a nine down to a two. And from, you know, all the adjusting over here, as you can see my arthritis and my two pinkies there, you know, 130,000 adjustments over 25 years. Just abused that. Boswellia works really good. And also the BPC on the extremities, shoulders, wrists, hands. So it's something that I use for that, which is really, really good. Anyone suffering with arthritis, it works wonders. But for people with reflux and when I had my mold toxicity, what I did was I would take a capsule of the BPC157, I'd open that up in just maybe an ounce of water, mix it up, drink that on an empty stomach. And what that does is it heals the whole upper GI tract.

Wow.

It heals ulcers. It Heals the connective tissue, helps the mucous membranes, not just in your stomach, but further downstream in the small intestine and upstream in the esophagus. These are all things I wish I knew when my dad was alive. But again, this is what we're doing with our clients now, getting phenomenal results. And that's what biohacking is. You talk about hydrogen, it's like the body should make the hydrogen, but we're not making it. So what tools can we put into the body? How we can change our internal environment, also change the external environment to basically get that 10 liters to get these different things that we need to help our body heal itself from the inside out.

Yeah, I love it. I mean, like I say, I've been a huge fan of Peptides ever since. I've never actually heard of taking the capsule, breaking it open. Maybe you could even put it in yogurt or.

Yeah, you could put it in yogurt for sure.

Okay. And then you just swirl it around a little bit of water and, and swallow it so it leaves and does its job on the way down.

That's exactly right.

Because I think you have, you know, one thing when you're trying to get somebody off of a, of a, a PPI and heal the, you know, the acid reflux condition. But then there's the other side, which is we have to repair the tissue that's been damaged because you don't know, unless you've been endoscoped, you don't know the exact state of that endothelial damage. And so, you know, Peptides should be.

Yeah, and they're part of the, they're safe. You know, they're, there's extraordinarily safe. There's really no downside to doing it. So if you didn't have that endoscopy, doing this is just a no brainer because you have to assume that there has been some damage. You don't know the extent of that damage, but we have to assume that in putting that into the body, it's going to work wonders. And I love things like kpv. When I had my mold toxicity, I was diagnosed with Sears chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which about 25% of the population has. We're like the canary in the coal mines when it comes. Here we are in southwest Florida, the mole capital of the world.

Yeah, exactly. I actually just found that out. The mole. They were in the mold capital world. That's why I got air filters in every room in the house.

They're amazing. But one of the markers that was off was something called msh, which is very common in serious patients. But KPV is really good at helping a great peptide to help increase the MSH levels. So peptides have been a big part of my life. Thymosin, I mean, there's so many different ones out there that are good. Alpha. Yep. So I was using that as well. But I would say my number one go to is hands down the BPC 157. I love it. And it's got so many different things that you can use it for.

Yeah, I agree. This has been amazing. I mean, I'm. I, I, I 100. I'm going to have you back on the podcast because I rarely get guests that actually come on and give really good practical steps for how people can solve an issue in their life. And I bet there are thousands and thousands of people that are watching this podcast that are saying thank you. Finally, somebody told me the process to get off of my PPIs. I know that they're bad. I know I shouldn't be taking them. I don't like shoveling down the antacids. I can tell that I've got issues in my gut downstream from lack of gut flora and food sensitivities. But now at least I have a roadmap. Um, so I do want to give a shout out to your alkaline product, which is what I use in my coffee on a daily basis. I have a hard and fast rule on the ultimate human that I never talk about products or services that I either don't use every day in my daily life or I don't actually have firsthand knowledge of. And I use yours in my daily life and I have firsthand knowledge of. So I want to give you a minute to talk about the alkaline. Alkaline product and then where they can find it and how they can find you.

Sure, yeah. And in regards to acid reflux, you know, I. We kind of connected through the acid kicking coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love the name of it.

I gotta keep Kelly. I gotta give Kelly RIP a huge props for that because she's who inspired me. She came to me in 2014 and I was doing some work with her and her daughter, and I had no idea she was gonna do this. But she goes on the show a few days later because she was feeling so much better after just getting off her acid and doing some of the things that we talk about. So she's talking about this and she's like, I'm still drinking my coffee, but I Didn't tell them. And at that point I was telling people, don't drink coffee. Don't drink coffee. Especially if you have acid reflux. Right. Because coffee is so acidic. And here's the deal with coffee. There are a lot of upsides to coffee. So many benefits to coffee. I agree, right, Major benefits to coffee. But the one huge downside is it's suicidic. So when she said that like my lights are going off. How can we fit this into people's lifestyle so they can still drink their coffee? Even people with acid reflect reflux and that's kind of how acid kicking coffee was born. And all it is is a powder that you add into your coffee. Ideally we should be drinking organic coffee. I drink mold free coffee.

But I love it. It's got, it's got MCT oils. I mean it's coconut oil, coconut oil.

It's going to cream that coffee. So it's got those plant based keto fats. It's going to suppress your hunger. It's got the acid fighting minerals. So it's the minerals that neutralizes the acid. We've done studies showing that it will, will neutralize all the acid in up to a 20 ounce venti. So it's so powerful what one scoop can do. And we have, you know, five plant based vegans and vegan enzymes, fat burning enzymes, which helps your body metabolize the fat. Also helps bloating and indigestion. There's Himalayan salt. So we're getting in those trace minerals. Also helps people with sugar cravings. And it tastes amazing. I know. You're the vanilla guy.

Yeah, I love the vanilla one, man. Well, now I'm drinking the brain boost because you only put brain boost in one of the versions. And now I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm ripping myself off if I just have the vanilla. So now that's the hazelnut, which is.

My, which is my favorite.

I drink the hazelnut.

But we also have a version for black coffee drinkers, you know, and black coffee drinkers. I'm not a coffee guy. When I first kind of started developing this, I'm a green juice guy. So I had no problem formulating our acid kicking greens and our minerals. But when it came to the coffee, it's like it took us two fail launches before we finally got it. Five years of testing and testing. And not just testing like I'm testing every different mineral. What work? Cause there's over 35 different acids in coffee. Coffee. Most of them best, some of them good. Like chlorogenic acid. So it's selective, which means it goes after the more reactive, dangerous acids, and it actually will preserve the good acids. Right. So we went through a whole testing process to see which different minerals are going to work the best to deal with the acid. And we retested that. It tastes great. So the whole goal is to kick your coffee's acid before it even hits your body. Right. And so many of our clients, they were on, on PPIs and acid reflux and all that stuff, and now they could drink coffee while they're going through that process, because people love their coffee. But we do have one. It's a packet that you can add to your black coffee. Won't change the taste, won't change the color or anything like that. So black coffee drinkers, we got you covered out there. And then we have the acid kicking alcohol, which is kind of the next version. So it's like, what's the two times of day that people are most acidic when they wake up and they're caffeinating, and at the end of the day when they're chilling with a glass of wine. So it's not about saying you can't have those things. Let's choose better versions of the things that we're drinking. But again, now we just came out with acid kicking alcohol. Five drops in every drink. It's a proprietary blend of ionic minerals that will kick your alcohol's acid. It brings the PH of your alcohol, no matter how acidic, wine has a ph of 3.1. Vodka, a little bit higher ph of like 4 to 5. But what it does, it brings the ph up to the PH of your gut around 8.4. And now once it's at that ph, now your gut can deal with it instead of attacking it, it now your gut can actually deal with the assimilation process. It's easier on your liver, it lowers the inflammation process, and most important, it's not going to irritate your gut, it's not going to cause acid reflux, bloating, indigestion problems. And the next day is a lot better. The hangovers go away.

I find I, I, I, you know, I swear by it myself. So I end every podcast by asking every guest the same question. And there's no right or wrong answer to this question, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Oh, I love that question. The ultimate human to me is about being imbalance. It's about having peace in my life. It's about having energy to deal with what I have to deal because life is. Is stressful. It's like, especially over these last three years, like, life has gotten crazy for all of us.

It really has.

Yeah. And for most people, stress is managing them, but we need to have the ability to manage stress, and to do that, we have to get back to the basics. Like, when, you know, I'm human, I get off track. You know, most people do. When I do that, I just get back to the basics. Like, what are those basics? Water, right? Let's start drinking more water. We're dehydrated. Think about that plant. That plant wilts. Give it water. Breathing. Like these things are free. Like we got. Yeah, exactly. We gotta get that breath in. You started talking about oxygenation. It's the most critical nutrient for the body, so we have to breathe. Unfortunately, most of us are stuck in fight or flight, sympathetic survival mode mode. We need to shift that to parasympathetic healing mode. All right. 90% of people are trapped in that fight or flight state. And that third F is freeze. Right. So I think it's so important that we get back to the basics. Getting more minerals into our body, moving our body. Motion is emotion. You know, most of us live this sedentary lifestyle, so you got to get out of your desk and move the body. 10,000 steps.

We're getting off this podcast, and we're doing a 10,000 step driving down this morning.

I see this guy on the road.

Yeah.

I'm like, Gary. And he's got his 10,000 steps. So again, you have to.

I was out getting my 10,000 steps this morning.

When. When you're. No matter how good you feel and no matter how bad you feel, you got to do these things every single day. You got to be proactive. And if you do those things, life will be in balance. And for me, it's about a why. You know, it's like, I could have the best strategy in the world, but if I don't have a purpose, a why to get behind. Why do. When life happens, when the. You know, it hits the fan, it could be, you know, Covid. It could be a death of a parent or something at work. You know, things. Things can go bad, but if you have that powerful purpose, you're going to have the wherewithal. You're gonna have that drive, that passion, that motivation to find a way to get through it. So for me, it's about the right strategy. It's about getting back to the basics. But most important, it's about having that why and having faith. You know, when I was really sick with mold. I was at the lowest of the low. I didn't think I was gonna grow up to actually see my kids or think I was gonna be around to see my kids growing, grow up. And it was a. It was a awful time in my life. I remember just sitting in my bed, just staring up at the ceiling in a dark room, and it was just a dark time. And my wife brought me to a church out in California, and I gave my life that day to. To Jesus. And. Wow. You know, I still have my struggles here and there with my faith. It's an ongoing process, but it's amazing how you can just get help out there, whether it's your faith, a mentor, a family member. Don't do this alone. Don't be on an island, all right? We need to be in community. We need to have these relationships together. We can get there. I need to lift someone else up. They need to lift me up together. We lift each other up, and we do this together, man. There is no limit to what we can do. We can become that ultimate human. It's possible. It's doable.

Love that. I gave my life to Christ in 1994 at a Promise Keepers convention in Chicago, Illinois, Soldiers Field. So happy to hear you say them. And thank you so much, Dr. Jo, for coming onto the podcast. This has been amazing. Podcast. One of my. One of my favorites. We're definitely going to have you back.

Awesome.

And as always, guys, that's just science.