Personalized Nutrition for Weight Loss, Energy, and Health with Dr. Vincent Pedre

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Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the Ask the Health Expert podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to BetterHelp so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out 100 I've got my buddy Dr. Vincent Pedre back now. You probably know him from our interviews. We did a what to eat, when to eat and why for gut health. That was incredible where we dug deep into the microbiome and of course we've we've done an interview about his happy gut work and he's back now and he's done something really super cool. He kind of took the happy gut and went further with it and designed a quiz to really help you figure out your gut health and then what what you need to do next and then created a 14 day personalized gut healing plan based on that called his Gut Smart Protocol and that is his new book. And we are going to be digging into his new book today and also talking about a fun trip he did. Well, maybe not fun fun might be overstating it where he got a lot of information that kind of helped shape his work and the gut. So let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Vincent. If you're new to him, if you're new to him, you're definitely going to want to follow him on Instagram. I'll make sure I put that in the show. Notes. He does some great content. He's the medical director of Pedre Integrative Health in New York City and he is also the CEO and founder of Happy Gut and he also has been a spokesperson for Nature md. He's a functional medicine certified practitioner and he speaks all over the place. Plus plus he is an amazing dancer, I just got to say that. And he cooks killer Cuban food. These are all super important things, of course. And he is one of my go to's, if not the go to on gut health. And you are going to hear some incredible information about gut microbiome diversity and how it can impact your weight and your metabolism. So stay with me. I will be right back with Dr. Vincent Pedric.

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Dr. Vincent Pedre, welcome back to the program.

Thanks for having me back. Always have a great conversation with you, jj.

My go to gut Doc. There you are. Now, I'm super excited because you wrote happy gut, which the happy gut. I know that it's kind of always felt like a double entendre to me because you always smile like, you're always smiling. And then it was about how to make your gut happy. Now we're into gut smart. So we are going to talk about this, but first of all, what I'd love to start with is like, what does gut smart mean to you?

Ooh. I kind of like the part of the reason I came up with gut smart is like becoming smarter about your guts to get gut smart. So it's really about up leveling people's knowledge about how the gut is integral and the foundation for every aspect of health. Gut brain, gut skin, gut immune system, gut airway, everything. Metabolism, weight, is connected to the gut. And so it is a little bit of a double entendre about gut smart, like getting gut smart and understanding better the role of the gut in all of its different aspects. Because people know they have a gut issue. Right. If you have abdominal pain, bloating, all that. But do people really know yet that they have a gut issue? If they can't lose weight, they have a weight loss plateau, if they're having hormonal imbalances, if they're estrogen dominant, if they've got adult acne, all of these things are tied to the gut. And that's one big thing that I hope to get across with this new book.

Doesn't it feel like we're kind of going back to where everything sort of started, where? In medicine and health?

Way back in the dark, like 100 years ago.

Right.

You know, before. Before allopathic medicine took over this country was actually more in line with naturopathic medicine with a belief system that everything starts and ends with the gut. And if you're going to work with someone that you need to start working with their gut health first.

So that's what it feels like. It feels like. Okay, well, now we're back to that.

The difference is the. The difference is that a hundred years ago, we didn't have all this research that we're doing now and understanding not just the gut lining, but also the gut microbiome and how it plays a role in a whole bunch of different things like weight management and even depression, like mental health.

Yeah. We also, back then didn't have ultra processed foods. We didn't have all these toxins. Right.

We didn't we didn't have antibiotics. No. Doctors actually had these devices in their office where they created colloidal silver solutions that they gave their patients because silver is an antimicrobial, and they would use that to treat infections before we ever discovered antibiotics, which was around, I think, penicillin in the 1940s, which can be.

Amazing and devastating all at the same time. So it's interesting. You talk about personalizing, and you look at gut health out there, and it's kind of like, okay, well, do this. But it's a very different approach. If you have, say, candida versus Sibo versus leaky gut. And so you talk about personalizing the gut, how are you doing that? How are you creating different gut types?

Basically, through a quiz. And the quiz, what it does is it not only teases out how frequently you're having gut symptoms and what their severity is, and by adding that up, you get a score. But then it also asks you, do you get headaches? Do you have allergies? Do you have asthma? Do you have autoimmune disease? Do you have Hashimoto's thyroiditis? All of these things add up to create a final score that divides people into mild, moderate, or severe. It's really beyond just candida. It's about, how is this affecting your entire body? And then how can we create a healing program based on this that is not just going to help you with your gut health, but is also going to help you resolve the domino effect of issues that are created when your gut is out of balance?

Yeah, I would love to dig into how the gut influences your weight and your metabolism and all of that. But before we do it, I remember I just was in Mexico with our buddy Eric Admidis, and I think back to. Because he's still trying to get me to go on the trip. And I said, I will go on the trip to the hunter gatherers if, like, I don't have to go pee in the bush, like, we're going to have to resolve this. So. So he's trying to figure that out. But you did go on this trip. You went to. To Africa. You stayed with the Hundred gatherers. And I know that that also played a role here. So what went down on that trip?

Well, first of all, I have to say the reason I was so excited when I was One of the 10 people that got a golden ticket and was picked to go on this trip is that I had already been learning about the hadza, the hunter gatherers. They've been doing living the way that their ancestors Lived for thousands of years because someone got curious and decided to collect their poop and test it and look at their microbiome and found that their microbiome is quite diverse. In fact, it's way more diverse than in that study. They looked at a control group of Italians. So Italian cohorts, you can imagine they're eating the rainbow. They're eating tomatoes, pasta sauce, lots of greens, basil, pasta, lots of grains. Mediterranean diet, you think Italians, they're eating one of the healthiest diets in the world. So they should have a really diverse gut microbiome. Well, their microbiome is not more diverse than the Hadza. But more importantly, like, who would care? Like, if your microbiome is diverse? Well, who cares? Well, the Hadza have no diabetes. They have no heart disease. They have no obesity. They have no mental health issues. In fact, they don't even have a word for depression. It doesn't even compute for them.

Wow.

It's not part of. It's not part of what they think reality encompasses, because they live in the elements. They live under these hormetic stressors, and they are way more resilient. They're okay with peeing out in the woods.

Okay, now just stop it. But here's the question. So they.

That could be a good hormetic stressor for you, jj.

Well, I am trying to push myself out of my comfort zone. I know this is an important part of longevity, is doing different things. So I'm assuming they also have no cancers.

No cancer. And that's what's really fascinating about them. And. And what I like to say is. So why do we care about microbial diversity? Well, microbial diversity is the holy grail of your health. The more diverse your gut microbiome is, the less inflammation you're going to have in your body. So that is the key there, because every western disease is fueled and powered by inflammation. And a lot of that inflammation is coming from the foods that people eat. Too much sugar, too many processed foods, inflammatory oils. And then what it does to the gut and increases gut permeability and leads to leaky gut and causes dysbiosis, imbalance between good and bad bugs, maybe an overgrowth of yeast. So it causes this. This disturbance that then has reverberating effects through the entire body.

Okay, a couple questions. Let's go back to the Hadza.

Hadza.

The Hadza.

Hadza. And then we'll. Because I want to talk. Get into this mic.

And for anybody who doesn't know the Hadza, their. Their territory is mainly Around Tanzania. And a lot of the area is like near some of the preserved lands where animals can run free. There's zebra and there's. It's just gorgeous.

Now, what was their diet like? What did you eat?

So we went hunting and foraging. They hunt things like birds. We ended up. They ended up actually cooking a goat while we were there. I was not very big on that. But we also went and forage for root vegetables. So we dug them out of the ground and eat them raw. Which.

Raw? That's a big anti. Nutrient. No, no, in our world.

Well, they eat them raw. But imagine this fruit vegetable is more like a jicama. It's got the consistency. It's very water, like on the inside. So not like the ones we think of that have to be cooked. It's actually not like a potato. Not like a potato. It's very watery and crunchy. And then they're eating honey. So we went out, like out far from where we were staying. And I don't know how they saw this, but they saw because honeybees in Africa, they create their honeycomb inside a tree, and then they build a little chimney. Looks like a little tiny chimney which allows for air circulation. And these bees are really small. They're like little flies. They're not like the bees that we have here in the US at least the ones in that part of Africa. And so they chopped open the tree bark and inside was all this honey, and they just like poured it into our hands and we were having honey out and honeycomb and. And there were bees mixed in with the honey. Ew. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was quite a thing. It could be why I got a parasite after being in Africa. Who knows? My, my, my gut microbiome is not prepared for that. But obviously they, they've lived and grown up in the wild, so their gut microbiome can handle all this stuff. And so they also eat baobab fruit, which is very high in fiber, and they use it to wean kids off of breast milk. They make it into a porridge and they're eating berries and just animals. It's very simple diet.

Now, do they get up in the morning? Do they eat at specific times? Or is it just when they happen to find food? Like, what's a day like?

A day is. You know, sometimes I would wake up early and wander around the animals in there. Like, no, I know. I was afraid. I was afraid of that. There was a fire going on and they put somebody on guard just in case of hyenas or whatever. You know, because we're out in the wild, so you don't know what's going to come. But luckily, no, we didn't have any. They're not in a territory where there's lions and lionesses. But I was a little bit afraid, so I probably was sleeping between people, just thinking if something happened, they'll eat them first. I'll have some response time here. One morning I woke up early and the little children, there was like two children just wandering around on their own while still everybody else was sleeping. So, you know, they take their time waking up and then they're the very separate communities. So like the men will huddle together and there was like a cave and they would huddle together. And the women, they're doing their own thing separately. They're like maybe making beads and clothes and things like that. And then eventually, sometime probably like late morning, they decide to go out and they go on either a hunt or a foraging round and they can cover a lot of territory in little time. I mean, these, these guys are really fast and obviously they, they were hosting us. So we did things like learn how to use a bow and arrow. And I learned that it's not that easy and that apparently I don't have the musculature, the built musculature to pull and that string back. I mean, they, it is on so tight that you start pulling on it, you're like, wait, I can't pull this. And then the chief would take the bow and arrow and just grab it and just go like this. I'm like, wait, how did you do that? And he didn't look like bow flex in the wild. He was built. But he must have some really strong rhomboids back here. You know, he's developed that musculature and it's just amazing how skilled they are, like going out on the hunt with them and they'll see a bird really far away in a tree and they can just, they'll, they'll get it.

Wow. So I'm hearing all this and what's so fascinating is there's very few cultures that have not gotten hit with westernized trash. You know, with our ultra processed foods, with our crazy stress, with iPhones, with, you know, all of that stuff. It's like this is one of those last, last communities that hasn't. And you describe it and say there's no diabetes, there's no heart disease, there's no obesity, there's no cancer. It's really quite telling.

And, and obviously people aren't going to go and start hunting and gathering and living out in the woods. But what can we learn from them that we can incorporate into our lives? You know, for people who are living in cities that don't get enough nature exposure, get out and get in nature. Because being out in nature is really good. Not only does it lower your cortisol levels, but it also helps improve microbial diversity. You know, ideally, in nature that is free of pesticides and free of herbicides and all that. So maybe not a lawn in the park might not be the best place. But if you can get out in the woods in nature, go hiking, all of that is going to improve microbial diversity in a way that other things don't.

Yeah, we try to go outside every day and get our feet in the grass. Right. Bare feet in the grass, see the sunlight. It's easy. When you have little dogs, you have to go do it. But I think it's something we tend to.

Sky before screen is ideal. Go outside, get the sun before you look at your smartphone screen.

That's a good one. Well, what else can you take away from that and bring into, you know, our world? What lessons from the Hadza?

One of the big ones is just looking at what happens if we're not exposed to antibiotics. And for a lot of people listening, probably they're thinking, well, I've been on a lot of antibiotics over a lifetime, but there's probably mothers here who have children, and you can make a different choice for your children and try to only use antibiotics when they're absolutely necessary.

How would they know when that is, though? How would someone know? Right.

Well, most viruses, most colds are viral. They don't require antibiotics. And in fact, the practice of giving antibiotics for ear infections in pediatrics was actually shown to be incorrect, and they found that most of them were viral and didn't actually require antibiotics. So how does someone who's a mom, how do they know? Well, you got to question your doctor, because doctors are just writing things. They just want to get you out the door. Not only do they want to get you better, but they also want to get you out the door as quickly as possible. Because our medical system only allots for 15 minutes at max per person. So you need to get in there, decide what the issue is and what the prescription is. I was once that type of doctor. I was trained that way. You're just thinking, what prescription do I need to write to move this person out, do the best I can for them. And the thing that the patient, whether it's a Mother, child or the mother advocating for the child is ask the question, is this really absolutely necessary? Do you think I could get better without an antibiotic? What are you treating here? Do you think I have a bacterial infection? So I think this is where you have to use a lot of gut intuition as well.

And the problem with antibiotics, just in case someone is not quite sure, because we're talking about gut diversity and your microbiome, what happens when someone takes an antibiotic?

I'll give you an example. One of the most common prescribed antibiotics, especially in the last couple of years, is a Z Pak, Zithromax. I can't tell you how many times patients came in when I was in regular practicing doctor working for a bigger clinic. Doc, can you just give me a Z pack? I just want to knock this cold out. I would be the doctor, like, well, you're not going to knock a virus out with an antibiotic. So like it's probably just a placebo effect that you think it's making you better, especially if you get better after the first dose. And. But a Z pack, five days, which actually stays in your body for another five days, it has a long half life. So it's hanging around for 10 days total. It will take your gut microbiome six months to recover from that five day antibiotic. Now another really common one for women is Stipro, another five day course for uti, very commonly given to women when they have urinary tract infection. And of course, if you're listening to this, you don't want your UTI to turn into a kidney infection, right? And end up in the hospital. So UTIs a lot of times need to be treated. But a five day course of Cipro is going to knock out your gut microbiome and it's going to take it 12 months.

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Now, can you, can you improve that by being really good about pre and probiotics and shorten that time?

Yeah, and in fact, you know, there are some. There was a key study that came out in the fall of 2021 while I was writing this book put out by Stanford University. It was mostly Done on women split into two groups of 18 and they looked at the effects on the immune system, immune activation and microbial diversity of a fiber rich diet versus a high fermented foods diet. They divided the group. One group was eating 5 to 8 servings of fiber rich veggies per day. The other group was eating, went from eating less than half a cup of fermented foods to having up to 6 servings per day.

6 cups, 6 servings of fermented food.

Yes.

Holy smokes.

This was the high fermented foods group. So and, and you think, well how are they getting those servings? Most of them through yogurt and through vegetable brine drinks. So they were drinking it. So might have been a little bit easier to get all those servings. Well, what happened? Who do you think had the greatest increase in microbial diversity? The fiber rich group or the my or the fermented foods group?

So, so it would seem like the fermented foods group, but then you need the fiber to feed it. So you know, I'd look at and go, well you have to have the fiber, otherwise you have no fuel for the, for the bacteria. So I'm going to go fiber.

So was actually the fermented foods group that had the greater increase in microbial diversity. Now this was only done, the intervention was 10 weeks long. So one comment was that maybe the fiber rich group needed more time to reach that point where it was starting to change microbial diversity. But what they did find is the fiber rich group, it modified immune activation depending on their baseline microbial diversity. So you were asking me, okay, someone's on antibiotics, what do they do afterwards? How do they modulate their immune response? Because how many people have been on an antibiotic for a sinus infection, ear infection, and then three or four months later they get another one and they have to be on antibiotics again. And what's happening? You know, there's some level of immune dysregulation. I've seen this. You fix the gut, then they stop needing to have antibiotics over and over again. They stop getting so many sinus infections. Well, one way is making sure you're getting enough fiber.

But also, and that study you just said to be clear. Yeah, they said high fiber, high fermented foods, but they gave an insane amount of fermented foods. Like I've never heard of that high. That is like, it was a lot extreme.

It ranged, it ranged from four to six servings per day during the six week. So they had a ramp up. They didn't go from zero to that. They had four weeks during which they were increasing it and then a six week maintenance phase. And they checked microbial diversity and a whole bunch of inflammatory markers before and after. And the other thing they found was that the ferment, the high fermented foods group actually had a drop in all 19 inflammatory markers, some of which they were looking at intracellular cytokine activation as a marker for immune activation. But with the fiber rich group there was.

And the fiber was how much?

Because it seems to me five to eight servings.

But that's not a lot of fiber. Like that's a normal day. That's what people should.

That's not normal for most people. Jj, I've, what I've seen is when I have asked over the 20 years that I've been a doctor, the average answer of how many cups of veggies are you getting per day is one to three.

Right. And if you pulled out ketchup, iceberg lettuce and potatoes would be zero. But when you look at that, that still it seems like the fermented is like, you know, it's a lot, it's a, it's massively more than the fiber group. So I feel like they need to redo that study and equalize.

Well, they didn't. Also it was mostly women. So I think they need to have male, female as well as more ethnically diverse because it was mostly white and put them together.

What would happen with fiber and ferments.

Together and a control group. So there was another study actually that was published last year in October where they looked at what happens to people's stress score if you put them on a high fiber, high fermented foods diet. And Here it was 5 to 8 servings of fiber per day of fiber rich veggies.

How many grams? How many grams?

The aim. So in this study they started, most people were eating anywhere between 12 and low 20 some grams of fiber per day. And during the intervention they, they more than doubled that. So they were eating up to like 45 grams of fiber per day.

And are they trying to make sure it's like a blend of prebiotics and.

Well, a blend of soluble and insoluble fibers. And then they, they also instructed them to increase their ferments. But in this study it was two to three servings, not six servings per day. And the, the control group, so it was 45 people divided into two. The control group was just given general dietary advice like avoid sugar, avoid processed foods. But they weren't told to Eat more vegetables to eat more fermented foods. Then they did a stress score before and after. We're looking at the gut brain connection here. And what happens if you do a dietary intervention with high fiber, high fermented foods, but not as high as the other study. What they found is that the intervention group had a 32% drop in their stress score post only four weeks, whereas the placebo group was 17%. So the difference was significant between the two groups. To start asking and questioning, you know, what is it that's going on inside the gut microbiome when you do these things? What are you altering? Internal signaling, the metabolism of tryptophan, the inflammatory signals get reduced, you get more short chain fatty acids like butyrate, which are anti inflammatory. And you know, this was just a healthy group. I think we need to start looking at this diet style intervention for people who are stressed. Not just stressed, but anxious and depressed and see what happens with them.

I have so many different places. I've been furiously writing questions and trying not to jump in here. But the first one would be.

How.

Are they assessing gut diversity?

Is that through a stool test and shotgun DNA sequencing? Yeah.

Okay. Because with your quiz and they're using.

Different indexes that they have, like all these, like Shannon index, Simpson's index. So they were using different markers, they were looking at all types of ways to look at diversity.

Can you, can you make some assumptions based on the diversity of someone's diet on the diversity of their gut microbiome? Or do you have to like, if we knew someone had good diet diversity, could we make an assumption that they're probably pretty good?

Or will we look at this, look at this short study that was done with the fiber rich group and there was no change in microbial diversity in the fiber rich group. So I don't know. And that was a 10 week intervention. So do we know that, can we make a judgment based on diet? I think we have to look at the whole person holistically because what if you're eating a lot of fiber but you've been on antibiotics twice in the last year?

Yeah, yeah, right. Or your gut super permeable, you've been like hammering.

And those are the types of questions that I ask in the gut Smart quiz to really delineate, you know, because it's not just about gut symptoms, it's not just about other body symptoms, but it's also about what's going on. Like have you been on antibiotics? Have you been on birth control pill which increases gut permeability. Do you take NSAIDs for pain? Because that's also going to increase gut permeability.

So really you're looking at symptoms, lifestyle, to get a formula for healing. And I think it's important. I'm glad that it's coming out now about the gut bacteria and weight, metabolism. But I'd love you to go down that, that rabbit hole too because it's, it's so fascinating.

I think there, there was a, a really key study that was done actually a couple of years ago, I think it was 2015, where they took germ free mice and they use germ free mice as a model for what happens when you do a stool transplant into these germ free mice. What can happen to their metabolism, to their weight loss. They took these germ free mice, divided them into two groups and then they found what they call discordant twins. Twins where one is thin and the other one is obese. They took the stool from each twin and they put it in the cage. One from the thin twin, one from the obese twin. With these mice. They fed all the mice the same diet. It was a low fat diet, high in plant polysaccharides, fruit, vegetables. And the thin mice stayed thin on this diet. The other thin mice, after the stool transplant, gained weight, became obese, developed metabolic disorders. It was one of the first studies where it shows that weight gain and metabolic disturbances is a transferable trait within the gut microbiome. So all this time we were thinking that it was all about the body. It was all about how much sugar you're eating, your insulin resistance, and not realizing there was a whole lens through which we were not looking at things, which was through the gut, through the gut microbiome. What is happening there? Because the gut microbiome also controls insulin sensitivity and resistance and can actually control how you're packing on weight or able to lose weight. So then what they did is they wanted to see, well, can we make those obese mice thin again? And so they, they put those mice on a low fat diet and they populated them. Now they put all the mice together and what they found was that the thin mice, their gut microbiome because, okay, this is a little gross, but mice, mice like to eat each other's poop.

My dogs like to eat their poop too. So, you know, so I'm over it.

Go, go figure. Go, go figure.

Well, they must know something we don't know. Maybe this is, maybe they do. Eat Skinny Poop. Forget Skinny Pop. Eat Skinny Poop. This will be your next product. Well, did it work. So did they eat the skinny.

So the thin mice, when they ate the poop from the obese mice, their gut resisted colonization by that microbiome. But when the obese mice ate the poop from the thin mice, their gut got colonized. Assuming that maybe the thin mice had a more diverse gut microbiome, the other one was less diverse, which is what we see with disease and inflammation. The obese mice then fed a low fat diet, lost weight and became thin. And then they thought, well, what happens if we now feed them a high fat diet? Processed food type style diet. The thin mice stayed thin. The obese that became thin gained weight again and became obese.

Now I wonder if they were able to keep that gut microbiome longer. So it really took hold. So this wasn't, this wasn't a thing to say, hey, if you're got good gut microbiome, you can eat ultra processed garbage pop tarts. That's not, that was not the takeaway.

No, no. Although, you know, my body and I can eat a good amount of Cuban food and I'm okay, but I don't eat wheat gluten. You know, I stay away from a lot of inflammatory things.

So you can say that I've had your Cuban cooking. It's amazing and it's totally healthy. So you know, it's, it's not like you're sitting there making like wonder bread Cuban sandwiches, right? No, no, you're making. What was that thing you made at the house that night that was so amazing?

That was a picadillo, which is a very traditional Cuban dish. And I think I made it with grass fed beef and bison. I think I might have.

Looks quite spectacular. That's all I remember. And there was nothing unhealthy about it. So, you know, I think it's elevated.

Cuban cuisine because Cuban cuisine can be pretty unhealthy.

Well, I've never had the unhealthy because I've only had yours. So there you go. So what should we be doing then? I mean, I know you know the big takeaway here and everyone's going to hear how they can get to take the quiz. Because the obvious thing here is take the quiz and find out what your health is customized and find out your gut types. You can customize this, but are there a couple global things that people should be thinking of in terms of nutrition? Then I want to go past nutrition, but global things for nutrition that, that.

We should be doing very important things. You know, gluten is bad for us, regardless of whether you have gut issues or not? Or that you're aware of them because.

Because.

Because gluten is one, an inflammatory molecule. A lot of wheat, if it's not organic, has been sprayed with glyphosate, which is an antimicrobial agent. So it causes alterations of gut microbiome that then leads to leaky gut. But gluten itself activates a signaling molecule that increases gut permeability. So it leads to leaky gut even in normal people. So over time, if you think of a multi hit hypothesis where maybe you don't start off with disease when you're 30, but you're eating not the greatest diet and you keep having bread and pasta and overexposing yourself to gluten, by 40, your thyroid's starting to act up, things are starting not to look as well. You're starting to gain weight. It's hard to lose weight. Well, it's partly the gluten that's contributing to that. Dairy is a big problem for a lot of people, either dairy sensitivity, food sensitivities, or just lactose intolerance. The majority of the world is lactose intolerant, anywhere between 70 and 90%. So that can be very problematic for people. And you have to stratify people depending on what their gut issues are. Some people can tolerate, some people can. And that's what I did with the gut. Smart quiz. Alcohol. Alcohol is a big one. If you're trying to heal your body. I mean, you have to think that alcohol is used to sterilize surfaces. So when you drink alcohol, what do you think it's doing to your gut microbiome? It's doing the same thing. It's causing alterations in the gut microbiome that then lead to increases in gut permeability, increases inflammation in the body. And you know, we used to think like, well, alcohol, it's the sugar, it's the liquid calories. It's not just that. It increases immune signaling in the body which then leads to weight gain and you're putting on more fat in the middle and you're wondering why you can't lose weight because all you're doing is eating salads and you know, like little bit of protein. But you're having your cocktails and your wine every day. So alcohol is another big one for a lot of people. Caffeine, coffee. I'd hate to say it. I'm not saying cut it out completely.

I was good at everything you were saying. And we'll just kind of skip over coffee.

I'm just, I'm not saying cut it out completely, but for some people who are drinking two plus cups of coffee espresso per day, it's going to trigger an insulin response. It's going to make you hyperinsulin, and that can lead to weight gain also. So you have to pay attention to all of those things.

Yeah, I think it's important. I know alcohol has been getting a lot of press lately, and I sometimes think we just confuse people more than ever because it's like one to two glasses a day is healthy. No, any at all can kill you. I was like, okay, there's in between.

But it increases the risk for breast cancer in women.

Oh, my gosh.

One drink per day. I think it's like 8 to 14 milligrams of alcohol per day. You know what I did? I stopped drinking on January 1st, and it was originally part of dry January. But then I thought, you know, let me see, what. I haven't done this in a while. And you know me, I'm not like a big. I don't tolerate a lot of alcohol. So it's not like I'm going to have multiple drinks in a night. But I'm a social drinker and I decided, you know what, Let me see what happens if I take alcohol out. Well, what happened was I got way more organized. I wake up early in the morning, meditate. I've been in Miami, so a lot of days I go into the ocean. I started going to the gym at 7 in the morning. JJ, I would never work out in the morning. I actually thought that my biorhythm did not allow me to work out in the morning, that I was an afternoon person. Well, guess what? I can work out in the morning. I completely shifted that and was doing a cold plunge at 37 degrees at my gym. So I think you take alcohol out, you don't know what you're going to get back in your life. And I'm not saying don't drink, but I'm saying be aware that if you're trying to heal your body and your body's inflamed, you've got to think about the effect that alcohol is having on your body.

I completely agree. Tim and I actually started last year. We, we started in, gosh, November. We decided to just do an experiment. And I mean, it was profound. And it wasn't that, hey, I'm never going to drink. I like my occasional glass of wine, but we do it very differently now. If you're out to dinner, we'll have a glass of wine. But it got to the, oh, we'll have wine every night. You know, it's like, nope, it's all, that's all done. We stopped it. And I think everybody owes that to themselves to test and especially if you are, if you're focused on healing your gut, alcohol doesn't have a place. There's there.

And I will say if you, if you stop drinking, you know, and if you're a social drinker, you have three to four drinks per week. If you stop drinking, you need to put a mental note in your, in your mind that you've got to wait two weeks to start to see what are the effects of having taken alcohol out because your body needs some time to detox from it.

Yeah, I really found it was about a month and then it was like, holy smokes. I mean, pretty quickly you'll see sleep changes that are dramatic. I was like, wow, just improved sleep.

Being able to wake up early in the morning, waking up before sunrise, like just being way more productive, you know. And I've always been one. You know me, I like to walk my talk. So if I'm going to say don't, don't drink because it's bad for your gut, well, I'm going to have done it myself.

Yep, I'm with you.

All right.

Having said that, I was going to invite you to a dry farm wines boat party. I'll tell you about that in a bit. So I know there's more to it though, than nutrition. You and I have done some meditating together. I've been, I did that breath work class with you that you were amazing that you led us through. So beyond nutrition, like, let's talk mindfulness because I've just been amazed. I kind of look at what I've taken on over the last two years and went, what the heck was. Why did I wait so long to do this? So. And you've been, you've been a guy doing yoga and doing meditation and breath work for years, right?

JJ, I started when I was 21, 1995.

What made you decide to do that? Like, that was not my priority when I was in college. I'll just say no.

I had just finished college. I finished in three and a half years, went back home to Miami and already had been admitted scholarship to University of Miami for medical school. But I had a big issue and it was kind of like the elephant in the room. I was afraid of needles and I would pass out every time I had my blood drawn, every time I had a vaccine, a shot, anything. I was heart racing, cold Sweat out. So I almost didn't go to medical school, and my parents kind of, you know, they're like, no, no, no, you're going to become a doctor. And so there I am. I came back home from college, and I'm thinking, okay, now I need to figure out how do I address this issue that I'm afraid is going to make it impossible for me to be a doctor because I'm afraid of needles, and they make me queasy, they make me uncomfortable. So I started researching and found a book that changed my life. It's called the relaxation response by Dr. Herbert Benson from Harvard. And he had done research on how breath work, breathing and meditation can alter your blood pressure, can gain control over the autonomic nervous system, which is what happens when you pass out, when you have a syncopal episode. It's this override of the autonomic nervous system. You go into the sympathetic fight or flight. And so I said, I'm going to conquer this, and I'm going to do it with using my body. I'm not going to take any medications. I'm not going to take any drugs. That wasn't in my philosophy growing up. And I'm going to figure out how I conquer this issue I have with needles so I can become a doctor. So I started doing the breath work. I started doing meditation. Back then, it was guided meditation. And then I discovered yoga, started going to yoga class. This is 1995, JJ 1995. Like, this was not even in people's. Like, this wasn't even part of our culture back then. But I was determined, and it was almost as if I was training for the Olympics. I was doing breath work every day, and I was determined that I was going to conquer this issue. Little did I know that this obstacle that was put in my way, you know, my life could have taken a very different turn. When I. When I went home to tell my parents, after them, Kat, that I didn't want to go to medical school, I said, I think I want to go to Wall street, because my. My second thing I was interested in, in trading and stocks and all that. And my parents were like, whoa, what? What are you doing? And thanks to them, I was forced to conquer this fear that I had. But my life could have taken a very different turn. But thanks to this fear and the fact that I was kind of forced to learn how to meditate and do breath work at 21 on my own, just reading books because there was no Internet yet back then where we could, you know, watch guided Meditations. There were no meditation apps, so I had to just read a book.

There were no apps, honey.

No apps. And there was CDs. You remember CD ROM players? Like, I had my CD player with the CD ROMs, and. And I conquered it. And it. It shaped the type of doctor. I knew when I did that, that that was going to be part of the type of doctor that I would become in the future.

That is super, super cool. And I know that you're putting some of these together to go with your book, which is amazing because I. Everyone should have the opportunity to go through a guided meditation and breath work with you. It's quite something. They should also get to have Cuban food cooked by you. But that's probably not going to be everyone.

I am. I actually, when I was putting together the meditations and the breathwork for the book, I had these people I wanted to work with, and one meditation teacher kept flaking out on me. And I. And I had decided each chapter has enough room for three meditations and three breath work exercises. And this one meditation teacher just was like, yeah, I'll do it. And then they would disappear. And then they would say, yes, and then disappear. And finally I was like, you're out. I'm not dealing with this. I need to have this chapter done. And then I thought, you know, why am I trying to look for a meditation teacher another one, when I have been doing meditation for more than half of my life? So I decided to create a meditation. I designed a new meditation. I call it the Gut Love Meditation. And it's based on my experience doing the Tibetan Loving Kindness Meditation, where you shower yourself with love and then you radiate that love out into the world. But instead, I created the Gut Love Meditation where you go inside and you're sending love to your gut, to your gut microbiome and appreciation and gratitude and then expanding from there. And when I. When I sent it to my editor, she read through and she said, you know, I think my favorite meditation in this chapter is yours. The Gut Love Meditation.

Everything always works out, doesn't it? Exactly how it's supposed to.

It's always. It always works out when you realize if the. If you're hitting a wall, the obstacle's there, it's because you're supposed to find another way. And if you just let go of needing it to be one way, then you can step back and see, wait a second, they're not responding because they're not the ones who are supposed to write this meditation. I'm supposed to do It.

Yes. Well, I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the book. So you've got the book Gut Smart Protocol and for people buying it, I'm going to put the information here. Also put your last interview on Happy Gut here as well. I'll put everything@jj virgin.com forward/gutsmart and you're going to get the quiz that you can download and then continue to take as you can see your improvement, you're getting $50 from your happy Gut store. That's crazy. I mean, someone would be crazy not to buy the book because you get more than the book.

And yeah, you get, if you buy the hardcover for 20 some dollars, you're getting more than $100 worth of bonuses. So you're actually I'm going to buy.

10 books so I get a thousand dollars worth of bonuses. Is that okay?

You can buy as many books as you want.

So yeah, great opportunity. So you get the quiz, you get your tip sheet and you know the thing I love the most is these guided meditations that are in the book that you'll be able to access as well. So I mean, this is really stunning work. I am super duper excited about this. It's like this, we needed this book and I know you've been slogging away at it for quite a while here. So I appreciate all the work that you've had you put into it. So again, that'll be at jjvirgin.com forward/gut smart for the Gut Smart protocol and you'll have all the bonuses when you grab the book, which you'll want to do ASAP and get started. And congratulations on another book, baby. Very exciting, very exciting, very exciting thing. I'll look forward to celebrating that one with you soon. And thank you again for being awesome.

Thank you jj.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast, and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.