The Dirt Cure with Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. Now, today's show is all about getting dirty. Yep, you heard me right. We have the author of the Dirt Cure today. I've known Dr. Maya Chatri Klein for a little over a year, actually. Yeah, just about a year now. And I just loved her message, her work. I think you're just gonna dig what she has to say. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we dive into this subject. Dr. Maya Chatri Klein is a neurologist. She's an herbalist and urban farmer. Wait till you hear what she has in her New York City apartment. Like, well, I guess probably not in her apartment, but I'm not telling you. Wait till you hear about this. I had to have her repeat it. She's also the author of the Dirt Cure. Healthy Food, Healthy Gut, Happy Child, which has been translated into 10 languages. Now she's been featured in the New York Times, the Telegraph, NPR Sky News, the Dr. Oz show, and more. She's board certified in adult and child neurology as well as pediatrics. And she completed the University of Arizona's fellowship in Integrative Medicine and now serves on their faculty. She works and studies with indigenous communities and healers in Ecuador. And in her book and practice, she offers an integrative and spiritual approach to allow moving beyond chronic health problems in children and adults. She also founded the Terrain Institute where she teaches terrain Medicine, an earth based program for transformational healing. And literally, this woman is a tree hugger. And it's very interesting because I have seen some dramatic shifts with Grant. And as he's gone out into nature and really started to garden, he intuitively knew this and started to do this as one of his things that helped heal his brain. And you're going to hear why that is and how it works today with Dr. Maya Chitreat Klein. All right, let's do it. Dr. Maya Chatri Klein, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Thank you for having me.

So I just dig this topic because one of the things that happened when my son Grant came home from the hospital, and this was a kid who, like, you know, was a normal teenage kid who wanted to play video games and hang out with his girlfriend. So this is not what he used to do, but he all of a sudden wanted to garden and went out and got outside and got into the dirt. So, you know, I just started to watch him, and it was one of the things that he's done to kind of help himself and ground himself. So let's dive in. Because you wrote the Dirt Cure. What is the Dirt Cure?

So germ theory started with Louis Pasteur, who's the father of pasteurization. And at that time, people became so obsessed with the idea of these invisible germs that could be making us sick, that they even said that things like yogurt and sourdough bread were contaminated with bacteria and they didn't want anyone to consume it. And so we've really come a long way now to understand that those bacteria and other organisms are really important for our health. But in the process, we've really sanitized our bodies and our lives. So starting with things like antibiotics and steroids and using bleach in our homes, even dishwashers using hand sanitizer, and even staying indoors, because the more we're indoors, the less we're being exposed to the microbiome of the outside. And all of these things are really important. Our bodies recognize not just the presence of these organisms, but also the absence. And so in the meantime, we've actually seen an explosion of chronic illness, including things like allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease, which is likely related to being too clean.

So how about the flip side about being out there, like my son Grant, being out there in the dirt? Is there science to show that this makes the difference?

So there's actually a tremendous amount of science, and almost every day we're seeing new studies out. I think most people now know about the benefits of things like probiotics, right? So you think about take people taking actual pills, right, filled with billions of colonies of bacteria on purpose. So we now know that, you know, being exposed is beneficial. That's sort of to begin with. But what's interesting is there's all these different ways that we can be exposed, not just to organisms, but really biodiverse organisms. And that seems to be what is the most impactful. So starting with, you know, most people have heard of the hygiene hypothesis, which is, you know, kids who grow up on farms have fewer allergies and less asthma. And it was thought it was because there were more bacteria on farms, but when they actually measured and compared between a farm and an urban apartment, they found that the amount of bacteria was almost equal. But what was different was the biodiversity. So the farms just have more kinds of organisms, and that seems to be what our bodies really crave. Well, when you're talking about Grant being out and gardening, what, one teaspoon of soil has as many organisms as there are people on the entire planet.

Wow.

So it's about the most biodiverse exposure. You can have to be any soil.

I mean, it just like his soil out there in the desert. That one teaspoon of that soil, I.

Mean, it's healthy soil, is absolutely jam packed with diverse organisms. And what's the coolest thing about that? You know, if we're talking about even brain health, and there's a lot of benefits and a lot of science, but specifically, there's this whole field of research now around something called psychobiotics, which are organisms that specifically impact our mood and our cognition. So there are certain kinds of soil organisms that are being studied now. One of them is called Mycobacterium vacci, which, when someone takes it, actually can boost their serotonin levels, as if they are taking SSRIs, like, antidepressant medication.

Oh, my gosh, this is so great, because, you know, having had a son who had so many issues, and they want to put them on psych meds, and those things are just devastating. Like, the side effects of those are worse than the original problems Most of the time.

Yeah, absolutely.

What happens? Because I'm. I feel fortunate. I'm living out now in a place called Rancho Santa Fe, and I literally make a point every day of walking out barefoot on the grass and out into the orchard. I noticed that my dog is a lot happier out here too. And I thought, oh, it's just because she can run around. I'm thinking, nah, maybe it's a lot more, you know, she's not so much in this. This cement jungle. But what do you do about the people who are living in, say, New York City or what? What do you do? Just make a point of going to the park or. How do you do this?

Well, you know, I actually live in New York City, and, you know, I made a little. I have a little urban garden, and I keep chickens which is also great for the microbiome.

And you live in the city and you keep chickens.

I keep chickens, yeah. I have, I have seven chickens, so. And I have a dog who. You know, this is. It's so interesting because, you know, pets are a great way to actually expand your microbiome. You share a microbiome with your pets, and that also boosts brain health and immune health and gut health. So it's really, it's really cool. All the different ways that we're really interacting with, with animals and with the natural world and benefiting. But that said, I mean, you know, for me, like, there are a lot of parks in New York City. New York City is actually rich with parks. And so every. Every morning I go out and trail run in like a little woods right near my house. And, you know, I'm not running a marathon in there. It's not that much, you know, nature, but I'm able to run about three miles in the woods every morning. And so I come back and I feel so much calmer and so much more grounded. And it's just different, you know, when I can't run in the woods, I feel very different if I'm running on the roads.

So.

So I think getting into the park can be really. Also, it could just be easy. I mean, it can be as simple as, okay, take your lunch and eat outside somewhere green. Or it can be if you have work to do and you're on your laptop or you need to be on your phone, go sit on a rock and just kind of be grounding yourself at the same time, or go hug a tree. And I mean, I am not afraid of looking stupid. I will go if I see a nice tree.

I think I've seen you do this.

Probably you have, you know, but it's so simple and like you said, just like taking off your shoes and walking barefoot in the grass. These are. You know, there's this concept of earthing and it sounds, you know, very like hippie dippy or woo. But there's science behind this that actually, like, the earth is an unlimited supply of electrons. And when they go into the body, when you are, you can't wear anything that's grounding. So you can't wear like shoes with rubber soles. They have to be leather soles or you have to be barefoot. It has to be something conductive. But you basically get that flow of electrons into your body and it neutralizes things like free radicals, which are like part of what drives inflammation in the body. So it's like A natural anti inflammatory that you're just constantly getting when you're in contact with rocks or, you know, grass or soil. So there's all these ways then that like it impacts us. And there's this concept in Japan called Shinrin yoku, which is also translates basically to forest bathing. And all it really is is immersing yourself in the beauty of the forest. But it's been studied and it's been found that people who regularly forest bathe have lower cortisol levels, meaning like they just have less stress, their sleep is better, their mood is better, their executive function is better. They actually produce more natural killer cells, so their immune systems are more active and they actually produce more anti cancer proteins. So they're actually preventing or simply by spending time and enjoying the forest.

Wow, that is, it's. I've seen it myself firsthand without, you know, I kind of intuitively sensed it. But watching Grant go through it and now being up at this house I'm at, which you'll see soon, and wandering through the orchard as definitely it's like the most, it's like an instant stress reducer. Just go walk out there. It's incredible. So what about food? Where does that fall into all of this?

Well, so the way that I actually ended up writing the Dirt Cure was because my son, my youngest son, when I was finishing my fellowship in neurology actually at a year of age, started to have terrible, terrible asthma. And it was really almost debilitating. My husband and I were both in our training, our medical training at the time, and we kept having to miss work, which was like, you know, just like staying home with him because his breathing was so affected that it was scary to even leave him with a sitter. So we were constantly having to be with him. And it was basically one week of acute sickness and then the week of recovery, then another week of acute sickness and he started to have a developmental regression as well at the same time where he had been an early talker, he wasn't gaining new words and he was tripping a lot and he wasn't catching himself. So he'd fall and basically smash his face every time he'd fall. And as a pediatric neurologist, I was pretty terrified and I was going to doctors and basically being blown off by the doctors who were saying, oh, he's just a reactive kid and I don't see anything really that wrong and just put him on the medications. And so he was on antibiotics and steroids and inhalers and again and again and again, which Completely was, you know, actually destroying his gut health and his immune health, even as, you know, it was not really helping his asthma. And so what ended up happening was that I had to do my own research and really find my own way through that because it seemed like none of my colleagues were going to help me do that. And it turned out he was severely allergic to soy. And so ultimately taking him off of soy within three days, he stopped having asthma. And the only time he would have asthma again was, was if he had an exposure to soy, even soybean oil. So I started to really investigate at that time what's going on with our food, like why is soy so problematic and why was it causing him to be so sick in his gut, in his immune system and lungs and in his brain? And ultimately I learned a lot about how we're growing food, how we treat our soil, how animals are being raised and what we're giving them. And so what the dirt cure really kind of illustrates and the kind of science that I looked at was around nutrient dense food and basically eating foods that in many cases we were told were not good because it's really the quality. So things like eggs, which a lot of people, I still have, people come and say, I'll only eat egg white omelets. I feed my kids egg white. O. And I'm like, you don't understand yolks. The good part, right? Yolks are liquid golds.

You know, that's where the food intolerance comes from. The egg white, not the egg yolk.

Yes, absolutely. You know, and even it's interesting, I mean, like fat, you know, which we were all told, you know, fat's no good. I mean, the brain is 70% fat. So if you're not, you know, eating, you know, healthy fats that are, you know, obviously sourced from, you know, let's say high quality animal products, like pastured eggs. Right. Or if someone's having butter, you know, grass fed butter, meaning that the animals were out on pasture, it's higher. It's. It's as much as 5 times higher in vitamin D. It's as much as 12 times higher in essential fatty acids like omega 3s when the animals were raised on pasture. So thinking about where food comes from and getting those nutrient dense foods, you know, we see a lot of problems. And I know you've talked about this extensively with sweeteners and with sugar, but, you know, most people don't totally cut it out of their lives. And, you know, for children especially, it's an issue. And so What I looked at was what kind of sweeteners actually have really strong antioxidant properties. And obviously that's always going to be minimal or in moderation, but using something like raw honey. Raw honey is now actually being looked at as a treatment for type 1 diabetes because it stabilizes blood sugar levels. Now, this doesn't mean go out and have tons of raw honey. It's still sugar. And we still obviously have to be really careful about how much we consume of that if we're having any. But these are the things looking at really the antioxidant properties. Like, one of the things that I found was that blackstrap molasses actually has almost 10 times the amount of antioxidants as a serving of blueberries.

Yeah. And this is the important thing. And just remember, everybody, she's not talking about that honey in the bear. This is not what she's talking about.

Right. We're talking about. We're talking about raw, unprocessed honey in. In, you know, small. In small amounts.

And you can actually use that therapeutically for allergies. So there's. That's the important thing. It's like, why do we eat in the first place? Because we're getting nutrients, macronutrients and micronutrients. That's why you eat. You know, we've gotten so far away from that. Like, I think of the last 20 years and all came down to, okay, how many calories. I'm like, well, what about the nutrition in there, guys? You know, it's crazy. So, like I hear you saying it's. It just, it looks like, you know, unprocess your diet and get out into nature and that can make the big changes. But you look at the effects on our kids of, you know, being in the house and being on computer games and eating all this processed crap. Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing low fat dairy products with artificial sweeteners in them packaged towards kids. I'm like, what are you doing? You know? Yeah, that's like criminal. Like criminal. Artificial colors and artificial sweeteners. And you wonder why the kid's going sideways, right?

Well, absolutely. Taking out the processed stuff is key. And I've seen, and, you know, ultimately I obviously applied this in my patients and saw such transformations when we really cut out all those food chemicals, which I talk about in depth, in the dirt cure, and really look at just nutrient dense whole foods as much as possible. And one of the things I just wanted to mention was, you know, along with having a little bit of the sweetener One of the things I recommend very, very strongly is making sure that you're getting bitters in your diet, whether it's a bitter tonic, which can even be coffee. But also there are other herbal things like chamomile tea and dandelion tea, but also things like orange zest or leafy greens. There's a lot of ways to get these bitter, bitter components in the diet and that actually stabilizes your insulin levels, your blood sugar and your appetite. So anytime that you're having even a little bit of sweetener, you always want to incorporate something bitter into your meal as well so that you're really stabilizing and balancing and it actually helps with cravings as well.

Awesome, awesome info. And I know that you also have some recipes that you've got for everybody too, which by the way, I put them@jjvirgin.com dirtcure. Tell us what you've got that you put together for everybody.

Well, a lot of people are always asking me, you know, you talk about nutrient dense foods but like, I don't know how to prepare those things. How do I find them? So obviously, you know, reading the book is a fantastic way to kind of get the whole picture. But I wanted people to just have some recipes. So I included some of my favorite recipes which actually were voted on by my kids as well. And you know, I'm a busy mom and working and I still, you know, use these as my go to recipes, recipes to really support gut and brain health. So, you know, they're I think, really easy and, and fun.

We love easy and fun. Love easy and fun. So again, you can get those at jjvirgin.com forward/dirtcure and dirt cure is obviously a book you want for your success library. And I know you've got more over@drmya.com and that's M A Y A dot com. This will all be in the show notes if you're, if you're driving, going, oh my gosh, I can't write it down. We've got it for you. So just pop on over and get the show notes. And I want to thank you so much, Dr. Maya, for jumping on today and sharing all of your awesome wisdom. I super appreciate it. Now after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer listeners question. And today's question comes from Marily in Salem. And Marilyn asks. I hear so much talk about probiotics. How do I know if I need one? All right, so there's some supplements that I see as just the basics out there. Obviously, a good basic, a good multivitamin, mineral antioxidant formula and essential fatty acids, omega 3s. Those are like, critical. On top of that, I find most people need some extra vitamin D with K and some additional magnesium. And then another one that I add into that mix are probiotics. So here's the deal. Our gut microbiome is made up of bacteria. There's actually 10 times the amount of bacteria than cells in our body. And this bacteria is, can be very smart or can be very problematic. It can help us lose weight, it can help us have a better mood, it can help us have more energy, it improves our immune system, can reduce inflammation, can help with nutrient absorption, or it can be problematic. We now know that if you have too much the bad bacteria, it can actually extract more calories from the foods you eat and store it as fat. We know that you can disrupt your gut microbiome with things like artificial sweeteners and make it more glucose intolerant, increase your risk of diabetes. So your gut microbiome is, oh my gosh, like pretty much everything. It really is super critical for how you, how you feel, how you look, how you think. So we want to make sure that we optimize it, and that's where probiotics come in. But there's more to it than just probiotics. There's probiotics and there's prebiotics. And the interesting thing about prebiotics, and I'm going to talk specifically about some things called bacteriophages. And what we know about them is they do a couple cool things. Number one, they can help the, the probiotics really, you know, take hold, grow and flourish. But also they can kill off the bad bacteria. So one of the things that I've put together is I've put together a probiotic formula. And one thing you want to look for probiotics is genuinely widely, unless you're working on something specific, like maybe you're targeting Candida and you're going to use Saccharomyces boulardi. But in general, it' great to have A variety of strains. I have seven strains. And you want to be in the billions. I've got 5 billion of these little suckers because not all of them are going to make it through. And that's where you want to make sure that the way they're encapsulated so they survive the stomach acid and they can go into the small intestine where you want them to be and implant. So that's the first part is you want to get a lot of strains of probiotics. If you're eating fermented foods, if you're getting good fiber that can feed the good bacteria, that helps as well. But the other piece of this again is these prebiotics and these bacteria bacteriophages that can help here, help you help feed those probiotics and, and help make sure that the bad guys are gone and the good guys flourish. Because it's all about that balance in your microbiome. That's why I actually named my probiotic and bacteriophage Microbiome Balance. It's all about that balance. You're never going to get rid of all the bad stuff stuff, but you want to make sure you have a preponderance of good and a very little bit of of the bad as you go through it. So if you're following the sugar impact diet or the virgin diet, or both, best of all, you're eating low sugar impact, you're eating high fiber, you've gotten out the foods that can create inflammation and feed the bad bacteria in the gut and you're in good shape. The next step is to really have a flourishing microbiome. And that's where probiotics and bacteriophages, prebiotics can come into play. Now, one other thing here, if you are on antibiotics, then you want to really focus on this. In general, I think probiotics just are a good staple to have in your supplement baggie. I have a little supplement baggie of all my stuff, my multivitamin, mineral, antioxidant, essential fatty acid pack. And then I add in extra vitamin, vitamin D with K. And then I have probiotics and magnesium and a bunch of stuff. But it to me, that is one of those ones that's a great one to add. But an especially important thing is if you're suffering from any kind of constipation, this can be super helpful. Problems with nutrient absorption or you've been taking antibiotics. This is definitely a time. If you've been taking antibiotics, I generally will tell people to take these four hours away from taking the antibiotic and take two per day for a couple of months to help recover from it was one of the strategies I used with my son Grant when he was in the hospital. As soon as I could start putting food into him because he was on so many things, of course, so many, so many probiotics or so many different antibiotics because of all the things going on with him. So it's a good strategy to have. Alrighty. Thanks so much for asking that question. And if you've got a question, here's what we do. We pull these questions from, from social media, from Facebook and Instagram, and also from customer service. If you're writing into JJ virgin.com so just wherever whatever is easiest, most convenient for you. We love seeing the questions. I especially love them when I'm popping on Facebook live. Love to see them there because I can answer them right away and then I look for the ones that are perfect for the podcast and I bring them in there. Now this is the time where I put some gratitude out there. And if you've been listening at all, you know I start every morning with gratitude. It's a huge part of my day. And one of the other things that's a huge part of our week and month here in on the JJ Virgin team is reading the amazing, amazing reviews that you guys are leaving us on itunes. And we so, so, so appreciate it. So I make sure you know how much we appreciate it. Today's, Today's review comes from Affun4s a funds for us. A f h u n d for us. And it says great advice. 5 stars. I found JJ because I've read and listened to Dr. Hyman and Dr. Myers. I've been to visit a functional medicine doctor and a nutritionist. JJ is a great low cost alternative. She gave the same grade of the advice. Wish I'd found her first. Would have saved a lot of money. I also love the supplement packs and the shakes. We need more. Thank you for that and can't wait for more burst workouts. All right, I so appreciate that and thank you so much. And again, we love those reviews, so keep them coming.

I hugely appreciate it and thank you.

For joining me today. I will see you next time.

Bye bye.

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