Advanced Gut Testing with the Gut Goddess

Hi, this is Lindsey Parsons with The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. Today I have Dr. Grace Liu, aka the Gut Goddess, on the show. She is the creator of the Gut Institute and she's a doctor of pharmacy and she works to help people solve their complex gut and other health problems. I met Grace at the 2018 Microbiome Medicine Conference that she hosts, and the 2019 conference is coming up soon in September in San Francisco. So if you're a gut health enthusiast and want to take your knowledge to a whole other level, you should attend that conference and learn all about the protocols that Grace uses to help people heal their guts. And you can check the show notes for a link to the conference and a discount code. And if you missed the last episode about the gut giveaway, we are giving away a free Biome gut test kit, which includes a consultation with a nutritionist. So if you are interested in entering that drawing, go to highdeserthealthcoaching.com/theperfectstool, and there will be a link in the show notes where you can go enter to win. And you have until Monday, September 9th to do that. Now on to the show.

Welcome, Grace.

Hi, Lindsey. I'm so grateful to be on your show. Thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. Thank you for joining us. So let me just start with asking you how you got on the journey, briefly, how you got on the journey of gut health.

I started in functional medicine about 2011 because of my own health issues, and I had been studying and blogging about the gut for kind of a while. And when I actually got sick myself, it just started to make a lot of sense. And then we've been so lucky the last 10, 5 years, The incredible amount of data now in microbiome medicine, 16S whole genome sequencing has just far exceeded anyone's expectations. The costs have gone down and now millions of labs are doing these kind of testing in like healthy people as well as disease states. So we can make a lot of correlations and we see patterns in our clients and it all makes sense now. And when we make the native microbiome resurrect, health always improves.

Okay, so I know you see people who have pretty complex gut health issues, but say somebody has just constipation, for example, you know, not super severe, you know, maybe they go every couple days. So should that person be concerned about their gut health, or, you know, should they be going out and getting testing, or should they just take some fiber or magnesium and call it a day?

So anyone with any kind of chronic illness, in my opinion, in functional medicine, actually deserves to have a gut test. Yes, so whether it's chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, or just any kind of chronic silent ailment or chronic modern disease like heart disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity, autoimmunity, you know, aches or pains, fibromyalgia, things like that, cancer, definitely all benefit and deserve a really good gut testing.

So what kinds of things could just something like simple constipation be indicative of? What could that— what could that be underneath?

You know, a lot of disease states drill down really well. They correlate with constipation. There's literally an 8 to 25, depending on the study you look at, 8 to 25% increased correlated risk of breast cancer with chronic constipation. And the— yeah, the less frequent the stool is, like if let's say once a month stool compared to once a week stool is, you know, far more correlated with breast cancer or any other cancer. You know, when we drill it down, colorectal cancer, ovarian, even, you know, other cancers, you, you can see the correlation. And I think it's just because, you know, our gut is this silent organ. It's literally our other half. Our gut microbiome has 100 trillion bacteria, and that's exact— very close to how many cells we have. Blood cells, white blood cells, and our somatic organ cells and other cells— literally, they're one-to-one. The thing is, you know, they're— the sizing, you know, is a little different. They're much, much smaller, but literally it's one-to-one. And when we don't take care of our other half, you know, in the modern age, like, no one eats like the same amount of fiber that they were so spoiled with, you know, they— if you believe in evolution, you know, they evolved with our paleo ancestors and they literally were fed 100 and some estimates are even 150 grams of fiber every day. But really now in the modern age, people barely get 5 or 7 grams even in the paleo diet and especially these gut diets like SCD diet, low FODMAP diet, AIP autoimmune diet or GAPS diet. These are kind of gut healing diets, but they're never meant to be taken forever. And these diets are just super devoid of fiber, which is okay temporarily, but long-term it's gonna damage the gut and put the person at risk for all kinds of diseases, cancers, and chronic conditions.

Yeah, so our ancestors were probably like chewing on roots all day and things like that, right? Yes, yes, that's, that's mostly where they're getting the fiber, right?

All day. Now we barely spend any time.

Yeah, the root vegetables are probably some of the least appreciated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so when do you decide that gut testing is called for? Or is that pretty much all the time? And what tests do you use?

We, yes. Yeah. We believe everyone should, it should be like an annual test. You know, we do it quarterly or even every 2, 3 months for our clients. So the testing I love is, there, there are 3 actually that we do on all our clients. One is a stool kit. They don't tell a lot. You know, they tell us sort of, you know, macro stuff, you know, big picture stuff. But in terms of detailing down exactly what we're overall looking at, sometimes it's very hampered. They don't, they don't give fungal information. Very well. There is some good parasite data. It's not that great, you know, no, no test is actually great for parasites, but, but we do a lot of presumptions, you know, does someone eat salad? Do they eat out of this country? Do they eat raw fish? You know, sushi, sashimi, carpaccio, that kind of thing. We—

And you assume they've got a parasite.

Yeah. Basically, if it's yes to any of those, if they live in the United States, yes. Do they have kids? Do they have a dog? Yes. Do they have a lizard? Yeah. You know, we carry things from our pets and our kids because they go and touch everything and play in dirt. And cat— there's cat poop, you know, parasites.

But is it possible to have a parasite just sort of at a low level that's not causing any problems?

Well, we don't see healthy people, you know, healthy people parasites, and I don't care if they have parasites, right? All our hunter-gatherers have parasites, all our country healthy farmers have parasites, ruralists that live without pesticides and, you know, ancestral ways of farming, you know, they all parasites, no big deal. You know, even, yeah, a lot of healthy hunter-gatherers who have no cancer, no chronic diseases, they live very long lives, they have tons of parasites, it's no big deal. So it's only the sick people with parasites that are the Good people, yeah, because unlike those that I just mentioned right now, they don't have the good flora. There's nothing to fence off the parasites, right? The fences are down. So when the defenses are down, which is all the Western world who overuse antibiotics, soaps, and, you know, chemicals and solvents that sterilize things and drugs, antibiotics, we're at a— we're at a risk because no matter what we get exposed to, they can very potentially very easily colonize us.

Hmm.

Okay. So, so you were mentioning the stool testing. Is that— what, what lab do you use? What's the, what's the official name of that stool testing?

Okay. We use a bunch of stool kits. So, and one is the gold standard we like is actually Genova, but it's actually really expensive right now. So we don't use a lot of it, but there's the GI-FX 2200 test, which is phenomenal cuz it combines DNA testing, qPCR, along with culture. Very old-fashioned, really good. But you know, everything, every, every test has its limit and I just love that test. And then the second test we use a lot of is called Diagnostic Solutions Lab, way cheaper, and yet it gives like all our data that we need to see through qPCR, a genetic way of testing. And what's qPCR? It's like quantified PCR. They amplify the DNA of the bacteria, the bacteria's DNA, so we can see what's going on.

So it's a DNA sequencing of bacteria?

Exactly. Yeah. And they also do a little bit of fungal. It's not very accurate in my opinion. And they also do a little bit of virus, you know, again, it's not super accurate in my opinion, but you know, it gives another dimension of data. That is always helpful to tell us kinda the depth of dysbiosis for somebody. And otherwise, the tests are very similar in other regards. But there's no culture with this test and culture's kinda old school. We don't see a lot—

Where you let something sit for a couple days and see what grows?

Yeah. Culture sits on specific selected media, but yeah, so we don't know all the best media, you know, so we can't grow certain things. So it's very limited what the data is. But it's still, as an old school test, it still tells us certain things that are very, very helpful. Yeah. The other test we do, which we do on everybody, is actually to check the immune system. It's kinda like going under the hood of a car and kinda, you know, just checking grossly like something that you can't see with an indicator or some other way of visualizing. So what we like to look at for the immune system is someone's antibody response to food, you know, for food allergens, and to look at their allergy response, IgG, we call it immunoglobulin G, it's an arm of our long-term immune system, and looking at their responses to Candida and Saccharomyces, two of our biggest fungal growths in the gut. After antibiotics, these overgrow. People get yeast infections, Saccharomyces and Candida infections. They're very silent. They're very subtle. This is a big reason for why there's a lot of disease now after, after antibiotics are given. And it's hard to assess this because none of the current stool testing picks it up very well. I would say 98% of them actually fail.

And then which test is it that tests that?

It's called an IgG panel, and the best one we have is— it's quick, it's reliable, sensitive, and specific. It's from Great Plains Lab. It's on our website. I'll give you the links later.

Okay, so, you know, it's funny because I— Quest does IgG Candida, you know, just a standard test that you can get covered by insurance. Is that the same test essentially?

It's through the urine, and no.

Oh, okay.

Oh no, sorry, not urine. This one we do is not urine, it's actually blood, a blood spot. But blood spot testing can be done And blood drawn can be done by various labs. Not all of them offer it. And then this is kind of convenient because you can just ship it in and it gets assessed. And, uh, yeah, there are a lot of companies that offered, uh, different blood testing to look at IgGs.

They're great.

Some of them are literally running $700, $800 for each of the tests I just told you, and they do other panels, but they don't necessarily offer it alone.

So this is—

and is that— this most cost effective? And we, we do it routinely on people and then repeat it.

So I'm familiar with the IgG antibody tests for food allergies. Is that— is the test you're doing include all that, or is it just to, to see sensitivities to Saccharomyces and Candida?

This one includes food allergies, all the major food allergies.

And do you find that those are effective and that they correlate with elimination diets and what people find they're sensitive to?

None of them do. We only do— I only do this test not to look at food allergies, but to look at the anti-Candida, anti-Saccharomyces test. Yeah. Oh, okay.

So because, yeah, my impression of those tests is that if you've been eating it, it's gonna show up.

Exactly.

Yes. Why? Because of permeability, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right. So there's antibodies pretty much everything we eat.

Anything you're eating. I don't care if it's like filet mignon or like hand massage cow every day. Yeah. I don't really care. Yeah. It'll show up.

Okay. So what about the organic acids test? Is that something you use often or when do you use that?

Yes. So third test we do on everybody, and I understand you have your father's test.

We do an organic acid test on everybody.

Everybody. It's very cost-effective. It gives us all the data we really wanna see for what's going on in the gut. It's not selective for species, but we see an overall big view and we can drill down. They have specific metabolites for Clostridium. They have specific metabolites for mold and they have specific metabolites for fungal overgrowth like Candida and Saccharomyces. So it's just super phenomenal. Tells us so much what's going on and we can easily track it every month if we want to, or every 2 to 3 months if we want to.

Now, just to be clear, none of these tests are covered by insurance, right?

I think there are ways people can offer, uh, a lot of clinics can offer through insurance, but you know, sadly this year, starting this year and last, the last couple years, insurance coverage has gone way down. And yeah, it's harder for people for some reason.

Yeah.

So what is the organic acids test? What are organic acids?

So organic acids are small little metabolites, chemicals, organic acids in other words, but small chemicals that can be detected through gas chromatography. And any machine— machine that in the modern age can pick these up is really cost-effective. They can literally run thousands of these chemicals through testing and get very accurate numbers and quantify them. So it's a really great way to check over time what's coming out of the gut. Okay, so—

and so this is a urine test, right?

Yeah, so metabolites from the gut, whether they come from good flora or bad flora or bad bacteria or bad fungal overgrowth they release the metabolites and they go into the blood. And then from the blood, the kidney filters them and it goes into the urine. We're only seeing what's coming out of the urine, and that's good enough for us. And I love this test because it's non-invasive, doesn't require blood draw. It's just the first morning urine. You freeze it up and then ship it over to the lab overnight in FedEx. The FedEx bags are all included with the box. And I just love it. It's not all, you know, we always take into account context. You know, we know with the gut, one meal will change the whole gut microbiome. Shift it. You know, people can have more fungal yeast overgrowth with like when they eat ice cream and bunches of sugar, right, or fruit juice and things like that. One meal, one drink can change it. But when we kind of know what's going on with the person, what supplements they're taking, what probiotics they're taking, we kind of see the picture what that's going on and make a lot of decisions from that.

So now an oat test can't really tell you where a fungal or bacterial overgrowth is, right? It can just tell you that it's it is, not that it's in the small or large intestine.

Or yeah, our biggest repository bacteria is actually the small— is our large— is, um, okay, some people think it's the large colon because that's where every— all the fermentation happens and that's where the 100 trillion bacteria are. But when someone's ill and there's overgrowth, it can happen in the small intestines. And the surface of the small intestines, not volume, but the surface of the small intestines, is as big as a tennis court, literally. And then I believe when there's just a lot of inflammation going on, the surface area increases because there's more bacteria there, for one. Their, their surface area goes up, right? And if there's inflammation, that makes things swell, right? Just like if someone's leg swelled, it gets bigger, right? So in my opinion, you know, our tennis court actually may become a football court. Disease state conditions in terms of surface area, and that leads to problems, you know, because they're spewing out more metabolites coming out of there. But when we look at the OAT and even a stool kit, if there's a lot of overgrowth going on in the small intestine, which is 7 to 8 meters long, which is way bigger than the large colon, which is only a meter, a meter and a half. What we see in, in stool kits, it could be an overflow coming from small intestines. And then for the urine OAT kit test, the organic acid test, because we have standards of what's healthy, when there's overgrowth, it could be coming from small or large intestine. We don't really know, but because of disease states, and we have a lot of correlation between small intestinal biopsies we know that these are always affected. Small, small intestines is always affected.

And it— does it really matter where the overgrowth is in terms of treatment, or do you— would you treat it the same whether the overgrowth was, you know, say, in particular with fungi?

Studies appear to indicate that if someone's ill, they have overgrowth in the small intestines, whether it's fungal, bacterial, or otherwise. And what we find is that they have all of them overgrowing, and that's why the OAT test is so great. So let me drill it down for you. So the first 1 to 9 markers, 1 through 9, are all fungal markers., right? And you can see fungi. Sometimes people eat very clean, you know, sugar-free, grain-free, carb-free keto, you know, keto diet, no carbs, right? So then they don't trigger different overgrows of bacteria or fungal overgrowth. So then everything may actually kind of look really good, kind of dampened, right? But we know they tell us they have symptoms like, oh, if I eat a bite of sugar or donut, like bam, like they get brain fog, can't function, they're in bed sometimes for 2 weeks. So depending on a diet, you know, we can induce growth and stuff. But anyway, you have to kind of take that all into account. So when we look at things, we kind of have a lower threshold for health. Our goal is to have the upper range— there's like these orange bars, that's the upper limit of normal. And we, we want for our protocols to have people in the 1/5 or lower of the whole, or like of the bar of the range where the upper limit is the, the orange bar. So we want 1/5 of the range or less. So you want to look at your dad's for a second?

Yeah, sure. Let's pull it open. And I have put a link to that in the show notes so people can find it and look at it with us.

Yeah.

Awesome.

So yeah, my dad has had gut pain his entire life and has probably consumed more boxes of baking soda than Arm Hammer could produce in a year. So this is, this is some of the first complex gut testing that he's done.

Yeah. So he has a lot of fungal overgrowth. Not only are there 3 reds, but none of the markers except for 3 Number marker 3 is that goal. So 9— so 8 out of 9 markers are suboptimal. They're above the 1/5 range. So he clearly has boatloads of yeast. And if you do the IgG pattern, he'll be off the chart for anti-Candida and probably ask, uh, to ask, uh, anti-Saccharomyces. If he's not, it could be because he's very immunocompromised, and that puts someone very close to cancer. Being immunocompromised, the body can't fight things that they really should and identify things and eliminate them., you know, in a normal fashion. So that's something, you know, to take into account. And then the bacterial parts are also awful too. He has a condition known as SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, as well.

And where do you see that? Like number 10 or—?

So markers 10 through 18, none are at goal except for 17. None are at goal and I'll tell you why. So the Clostridium markers are 15, 16, 17, 18. Clostridium is one of our nastiest, nastiest bacteria found in the hospital in human disease. Like C. diff. Yeah. So have you heard of tetanus? Tetani? Sure. That's Clostridium tetani, right? The spores are very, really neurotoxic. Another one is botulism. Do you know what botulism is?

I do. Awesome.

So that comes from the spores of Clostridium botulinum. And we don't need a lot of these. A little bit goes a long, long way. 30,000 people a year die from Clostridium difficile. That's another very nasty strain. It lives on all the hospital surfaces, on all the hands of nurses and doctors according to studies, and all babies that are born in the hospital because they get covered with these by healthcare workers and the surfaces in the hospital. What studies show is that the more Bifidobacterium longum someone has, their Clostridium colonization is less. It's inversely proportional.

So Bifidobacterium longum is a good, uh, good probiotic to deal with that?

Yes, and we make a signature probiotic which has the highest strength on the market. Okay. It's literally 100 times stronger than anything, or even 200 times stronger depending on the brands you look at, and it's called Bifidomaximus. We'll give you a link to that.

And now, is that a powder?

It's a powder probiotic. We'll be having the capsules coming out shortly.

Okay. So, 'cause I was thinking if it's a powder, then that's pretty much hitting the small intestine only, right? Or is it— do you have to stop your stomach acid to get, get it down? No.

Get it to kill something? That's— it's not acid labile. It's acid strong. It's strong for acid, actually. Oh, okay. But the higher the dose, the more it gets deeper into the— deeper into the gut, to the large colon. Yeah, yeah, it's very healing. Or some— we have some people do enemas. You don't need a lot, a little bit goes a long way. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah. And when you—

when they do the enemas, is that just like take a standard enema, mix up the probiotic with it?

And yeah, but you only need a small amount. If someone has any kind of colitis, a little bit goes a long, long way. They can actually die off. Oh, specifically Bifidobacterium longum? Our probiotic is 7 strains, and it's mostly Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus rhamnosus. And then we have a couple couple other strains that balance it out and give it diversity. All of these are associated with health, health improvements in clinical trials. Okay.

So 10 through, did you say 17, tells me that he's got SIBO.

So for Clostridium, we have, I have much lower thresholds for disease and health. Hmm. The goal is zero. The goal is to the far, far left where it's as low as possible.

And are all of these Clostridia species that these, that these metabolites are indicating are high for him, are all of them harmful?

So you, if you look at markers 15, 16, 17, 18, these are the only Clostridium markers. Okay, 15, 16, 17, 18. And our goals— he has all 4 of these high. Has he been to the hospital?

I think 18 looks okay. 18 is below the error bar.

Our goal is near zero, so my goal is 6.8.

He was at the hospital. Well, he had some medical stuff recently, like more than a year ago.

They don't have it— you know, we don't see the numbers very well, but it's to the far, far, far left. They almost line up to the far left when they're healthy. Okay. And after our protocols. Mm-hmm. Okay.

But all of these species, 'cause I see C. diff, obviously that's harmful, but C. strictlandii, C.

liberatorid, and all those are— those all harmful? Yeah. These, these aren't accurate, you know, someone can have C. diff come up high on another test, but then their C. difficile is very low, even at goal sometimes. We have found some incongruency actually with these markers, but they are overall indicative of Clostridium, the neurotoxic strains. Not only is it neurotoxic, they're paralytic, right? And immunosuppressant, just like mold is. Yeah, so we go— you can look actually at his mold markers. I'll go over them with you. So markers 2, 4, 5, 6, and 9 are identified as mold markers by the lab. They, they just updated their testing. I mean, they just updated the way they report the testing, so now they'll actually give you the species of mold. Like, most of these are Aspergillus but there's a couple other species that they indicate. So 2, 4, 5 are the main ones I look at. And my goal, just like Clostridium, because these are immunotoxic and gut toxic as well as neurotoxic, brain toxic, right? They're— my goal is zero, literally zero, like for 2, 4, and 5. Okay. Yeah. And then because his markers are so high for Clostridium, they're, they're not reporting the lowest levels, but it should be almost near zero. 15, 16, 17, 18 will almost be near zero or at zero. Okay, when they're healthy.

So he's a big fat mess.

Most people are. Yeah, most people are. Even if they look really healthy on the outside, and then you ask them like, oh yeah, no, I have insomnia, I take Ativan for like 30, 40, 50 years, right? And it's like, okay, yeah. And then you look at their testing, well, no wonder you don't make any serotonin because your gut's broken, right? Our gut— our gut— good gut flora is actually what makes— produces serotonin, and then our gut neurons store it for them. And if we don't have enough serotonin, we can't make melatonin, the parent compound for melatonin is actually serotonin. 70-80% of our melatonin, our good sleeping hormone, comes from our serotonin, which comes from our good gut flora. So literally, our— you know, I'm a pharmacist, and our gut flora, they are our pharmacy, right? And they make the pharmaceuticals that we actually really need to keep health really good, mood good, and feel happy and whole. And when there's any kind of degradation there, it leads to disease. It could be just silent, you know, creepy disease, or like full-on gonna kill you heart disease, morbid obesity or, you know, gallbladder attack, all associated with a poor dysbiotic microbiome. Okay.

Well, let's go on to the— to the rest of the markers. Okay.

What else do you wanna know?

Those are 19 on, I guess we haven't looked at those.

Yeah. Well, I— you know, we teach a class on it. We could spend hours on it. What specifically do you wanna kinda know? You wanna—

Oh, so I see oxalic is high, for example. Does that mean that— is that probably a byproduct of the overgrowth of the yeast and bacteria or should he be worried about eating spinach?

So we ask people a little bit about their diet sometimes, and when we see the mold markers high, so markers 2, 4, 5, they're very high and they're off the chart. I'm not saying he's living in mold and mold is a big problem, but when we lose the firewalls, when people don't have the good gut flora around anymore, no matter what they encounter, could be a few, you know, spores, you know, they, they garden or they're in a mildly moldy bathroom or kitchen, you know, then they actually can encroach and invade the system and the spores can stick around. So markers 4, 4, 2, 4, and 5, they're really quite high. He's got a mold issue. Mold and Candida all pump out oxalates, and the reason why oxalates are such a big deal, why I love this Great Plains Test for OTE, is that we see oxalates on this test and they can tell us a lot about disease, right? And they tell us a lot about someone's system, whether they're able to detox these oxalates or not. So oxalic acid is high. Our goal for people is below 10, actually. The lab reports normal levels are below 10 or 20. So he's really quite high. The other two are actually off the chart. They're, they're not red zone, but they're really quite high. They're off the chart. Our goal is, again, 1/5 or lower for all three of these. And for 19 to 20, I'm a little more stringent too. They should be like to the far, far, far left unless they have genetic issues. And the reason why we focus on this is because oxalic acid acid crystallizes.

Yeah, what, stones, kidney stones, that kind of thing?

Oh, they crystallize in bone marrow, in, uh, thyroids, glands, lymph nodes, in the lymph, which is our highway for our immune system, and it clogs things up. And these aren't always detectable. For women, they also crystallize in the breast. That's known as fibrocystic breast or breast lumps. It's detected on MRI, mammogram, or, you know, thermography. For a lot of women too, it leads to cysts and fibroids. And infertility, endometriosis, PCOS, fibroids that are as big as their baby's head when they're giving birth. So we want to look at oxalates. They always come from overgrowths that don't belong in the body. And because of the deficit of good gut flora that really should belong there, that— but they've been annihilated from either antibiotics, never got it from mom, you know, from eating a high sugar diet, too much sugar, soda, you know, juices.

So long and short of it, everything else that follows after this basically points back to the same problem, which is the bacterial and fungal overgrowth.

Yeah, he's, he's got a lot of red markers. His glutathione's tanked. So we need glutathione as our number one detox. So someone can have basically a pretty organic diet, you know, not have a lot of toxins, but any toxins they do encounter, if they don't have enough glutathione, they can't detox it and it starts to accumulate and cause more problems. It becomes a very vicious, vicious cycle.

Where do you see his glutathione has tanked?

You look at marker 58, 59, and then he's not, he's not rebuilding. You can look at his amino acids. He's not, he has protein malabsorption. None of the amino acids are getting assimilated. So look at all the zeros. There's 7 zeros for amino acids. None of his proteins from diet are getting assimilated. Wow. He needs not just baking soda, but he needs to heal the gut. Yeah, he needs some serious help. Yeah, because without acid activation, the enzymes, digestive enzymes, they work, they don't break down protein. Everything's putrefying in the small intestine.

Wow, okay, well, I'm sure he's gonna be delighted to hear all this.

Yeah, has he had an H. pylori test or the IgG?

I assume he's had that because he, you know, he does go to standard doctors.

But the treatment unfortunately is triple antibiotics and acid blocker, and these create more fungal overgrowth. So the funny thing about H. pylori, I love this bacteria, it really tracks with our migration of humans all over the earth. You should check out this book book called Missing Microbes. It's written by—

oh, I have his doctor. That's what got me into all this.

Oh, okay. Did you have health problems or any—

oh, sure, I've had health problems, but I also— no, I didn't have H. pylori, but, but that book was, was seminal in my interest in the gut microbiome.

I love that book. I love him.

Yeah, I know. So, well, let's, let's get off the test for a minute and let me ask you, when you do see somebody like this who's a big fat mess all over, they've got SIBO, they've got small intestine fungal overgrowth, or SIFO, right? Where do you go?

Yeah, for— I would tell you that he probably has parasites too, like, and viral overload, without doubt. Yeah, at least 3 to 5 viral activations, one of them probably likely being EBV, a 90% chance being EBV. Epstein-Barr. Yeah, Epstein-Barr. He doesn't have that mono, it's so prevalent now, it's just this low-grade activation.

Yeah, so, so—

and not just that, not to sound down, because it's not— we all see everything resolve, right? Like, without a doubt. It's not— we see this like all day, every day. Okay.

Yeah. So, so when somebody is in this kind of condition, are you going to like prescription drugs or are you sticking with herbal type stuff and probiotics?

Where are you going? Prescription drugs are really great for humankind. You know, we don't have dysentery and widespread health, massive health epidemics anymore, right? And we have pretty clean water. But the downside is that antibiotics are going to create more fungal overgrowths, prescription antibiotics, right? And they also, you know, they're the reason why we are in this mess, and we really don't want to get there again. So what we do, yeah, we use a lot of botanicals. Botanicals is the way to go. And we layer different low-dose synergism of different botanicals together. So we get— and we have different phases working with people. We always go through 4 phases. The first phase, we go big to small. So the first phase is big, like big parasites. The second phase is fungal. Literally, fungi are 100 times bigger than bacteria. And then we go bacteria next, and then lastly we do viruses. They're the smallest in the ecosystem of the microbes.

And so, so which products do you like to use for, for the fungal stuff?

Well, we, we use a lot of fungal for a lot of people, almost sometimes many of the phases actually. And the reason why I say that is because fungi is so big, so they're kind of like these big spaceships, okay, or trucks. And like, let's say H. pylori. The reason why it's so hard to eliminate even with antibiotics, the reason is because they hide. They hide in the spaceships. Is that like biofilms, or— so they hide in Candida, and that's why we have to do antifungals when we're looking at different bacterial parasites, bacterial pathogens like H. pylori. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So which antifungals do you like to use?

Yeah, so we, we use different ones. Some come from Russian medicine, Japanese medicine, and Chinese medicine. We, we We use like many different kinds. It kind of depends on what we're looking at for the person and what their GI Map and their OAT and GI FX test, stool test, come into. But we use low doses. We don't use any high-dose berberine, any high-dose oregano oil, and no high-dose garlic. And the reason is because in vitro studies show that they kill good bifidobacteria and good lactobacilli. So we use low doses of different combination products. We have actually an amazing class. Your dad would really love this. It's an 8-module. Class which blasts fungal and parasitic and bacterial overgrowth depending on testing. It's all evidence-based, based on results on the organic acid test. We give the protocols to help people, to guide them and help get over some of the issues. So it's about one phase in this one class, and it comes with the OAT kit and IgG test and all the probiotics they need to recover their gut. It's called— wow, yeah, it's called— it's our Master Gut class. And you can find it at thegutinstitute.com/8blast because there's 8 modules. We blast dysbiosis. So thegutinstitute.com/8blast.

Okay, now what if somebody just wants to come see you? Can they, can they make an appointment, or is— are you getting so hard to see that?

Uh, yeah, yeah, we have a 1-year waitlist going right now, but they can certainly go to our website. Yeah, and you know, we'll, we'll give them some certain like options or If they graduate through the class, they'll get to the top of the waitlist.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And one quick question: is there a relationship between the dental amalgams with mercury and, and the fungal overgrowth?

Okay, so, you know, every person is really different. Sometimes we run a test called the Clifford test. Have you heard of the Clifford test? No. So it looks at immunoglobulins against every dental material literally on earth, and they look at the reaction to it. And not, not everyone's allergic to the mercury in their amalgams. It's really funny, I was really healthy And then I had a Mirena IUD, antibiotics, and a vaccine I probably didn't need. And then I did a Clifford test and it turned out— I mean, I had gotten really ill. No one could figure out what was going on. I had gotten suddenly ill. I did the Clifford test and I was allergic to every— there were hundreds of mercury-containing composite materials and amalgams on the Clifford test. I was allergic to all of them. I was off the chart. I was suddenly allergic to everything. I was allergic to water. Like, I drink water and I would look at water and I'd gain 10, 20 pounds. Months. I was ill. Yeah, I was so ill, suddenly allergic to everything because of this storm of immune problems, right, that started off with a, with a really strong birth control. You know, it's— it was a xenoprogestin, a foreign progestin for my body, and it didn't handle very well. So everyone's really different. Amalgam is not always an issue for some people, and you have to very safely take it out quarter by quarter of the mouth, not all of a sudden, because you'll dump the mercury. It's a volatile gas. Which means you can breathe it in and it'll literally sediment into your body. Yeah, yeah. So right, obviously you have to go to somebody who's qualified to safely remove. Yeah, we call them— I think it's IOMT, and they got to do like all kinds of remediation, like dental dam, oxygen, and a lot of precautions. And you want certain binders because you don't want to recirculate it all once you breathe it in and all this stuff, right? But even then, a lot of people are really sensitive. They're usually ill. And they'll still have problems. Yeah, so mercury, it's really interesting. For people who don't have problems with it and they don't have SNPs where they're holding on to all the heavy metals, it may not be a problem and they may not have fungal overgrowth. For other people—

so not everyone needs to get a complete dental removal.

I actually had mercury and I was fine. I mean, I wouldn't say it's fine, but, you know, relatively speaking, wasn't until my storm of health problems then it became a big, big problem, you know. Yeah, yeah. So everyone's really different. I want to scare— there's no reason to scare people, you know, but And then if someone has chronic illnesses, it's something to really look at, but then you have to be really careful. I've heard of some cases, even practitioners, they go and remediate the mercury out of the mouth and then they're in bed for 2 years. Literally, they did not feel the remediation well at all, and it was too sudden, not enough binders, and blah blah blah blah blah, right? They didn't do IV glutathione and they needed it, and they were already ill to begin with. Yeah, so you have to be careful, but any kind of heavy metal whether it's arsenic, aluminum, mercury, whatever, it can be problematic. These are all— they're used as preservatives and medicine or for, you know, antimicrobial benefits, right? And, and silver even, you know. And the problem is that if they're in the system, they're killing off good bacteria if it's excess or someone's susceptible. Yeah, just like an antibiotic, right?

And so if it kills off good bacteria, does that mean then that the yeast overgrows?

Then it may cause any kind of overgrowth— a viral overgrowth, parasitic overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, and yeast overgrowth. And there There's an affiliation. Candida loves mercury. Part of the reason is because they help us detox mercury. When we have healthy levels of Candida, they're known and shown to actually help us get rid of mercury. But when they're overgrowing, something shifts. They become kind of toxic little beasts, and they hold on to the mercury, and they— and we don't eliminate them.

And then, yeah, I ask because my dad is a mouthful of mercury. He's probably had 10 What are they called?

Root canals. Yeah, and every day he's swallowing it in and messing up and causing more Candida and fungal growths in small intestines and esophagus. He, you know, he's at risk for esophageal cancer and adenoma.

Well, that, that and the, and the, uh, the cigar he smokes every day. I think he, he's on a quick path to it.

Well, Winston Churchill smoked and ate, and he was fat, overweight, you know, happy man. And he— who was this? Winston Churchill. And he lived— oh, very happy age, 90s, 100. With good faculty, and he ruled England quite well for a long time. Not everyone has problems. Not everyone has, like, genetic problems.

That's an anecdote, though.

Oh, you're, you know, maybe you're the outlier.

Yeah, yeah, well, I hope, I hope my dad will be that way.

Or your dad, or me, right?

He's already, like, you know, in his late 70s.

Yeah, no, I looked at genetic— we look at genetics for all our clients, and there's always a reason why people get ill, I feel like. Right, it's either dose effect or a genetic effect or burden, like pharmaceutical burden, or a mix of all of them, right? There's always a track record like somewhere.

And so when people are doing these various protocols that you're doing to, to clear their bacteria and their fungi, do you have put them on restrictive diets?

I'm not a fan of the restrictive diet because personally I got damaged by many of them, and a lot of people aren't so aware of things. And I, when I was in the middle of it, I was certainly not aware of it until later. I was like looking back, a lot of my health metrics got a lot worse. And we never wanna ruin health with something that's so-called healing, right? Not customized for that person in that case. So a lot of the diets on the market right now, they may be temporarily really helpful, like for a day or two, you know, but invariably it's gonna damage the gut in some way and somehow if it's not customized. I really like the IgG food panel and I really love this OAT kit because we can kind of fine-tune someone's diet a little bit, right? If they have really high oxalates, we might move to medium oxalate diet. When we do gut testing, we can see some of the sugar carb fermenters, if they're really excessive, we can go on a moderate carb diet. When we see salicylates and phenols high, we can go on a lower salicylate diet and use protocols and botanicals that are lower in salicylates and avoid like a salicylate allergy. But in general, most diets have to be customized in my opinion for the best optimal effect, you know, as well as like not to damage the microbiome further where it's already like on the brink of destruction if not extinct already, you know what I mean? So diets are really funny. It's always a fad to have this kind of diet, that kind of diet. And I think the public, they get mesmerized by how someone looks, you know, like in the public eye or the Instagrams or media or whatever. But I've actually seen the gut testing for like a number of leaders in the diet world. None of them have great tests. And that's why they do what they do, right? But they end up irrevocably damaging their gut, in my opinion. And it's not always the best thing. And then, you know, once they're in a public—

Yeah, because of the limitation on fiber essentially?

A lot of things, you know, could be anything, right? So it depends. And then, and then because they're a public figure gets into this problematic field, in my opinion. For me, you know, I just tell people what we see and our observations. It'll be true for some people, won't be true for others, as well as a bell-shaped curve. And we try to be transparent about the things that really, really do work and things that we've seen just frankly fail for the great majority of people and why we try to give— there's always a reason why. Like keto and low-carb is really helpful for a lot of people, but then beyond a point, if they don't fix their gut, as soon as they lick a strawberry, it's all— you know, all their health problems come back again. Well, so how is that a permanent solution, right? Yet the great majority of the world, they live long, healthy lives and they eat tons of rice and beans all day long. And that's the— you know, that's actually the longevity diet for these Blue Zones. And they have no genetics for any problems with that, but they also don't have antibiotics like us. They don't take healthcare, so they don't get the damage that we do, and they're able to eat these ancestral diets without problems, but we can't. So once— I don't even eat a high-carb diet right now because, you know, I still have some of the modern issues. And even though I have great diversity in my gut, I still can get challenged if I don't sleep enough or I don't exercise enough or I don't eat, eat well enough. So what about gluten? You know, I'm a fan of gluten, but not, not American gluten. And then if you don't have a good gut microbiome, you don't have the the flora that break down gluten. What is that? So, you know, we have something called sourdough, right? Sure. Yeah. So the longer it's fermented, there's less and less gliadin and gluten, even to the point where there's like less than 5 to 10 parts per million, and, and celiacs can eat it with no health detriments at all. So the flora in sourdough actually should be in people's guts, but we don't have it.

So, so let me ask you this, because I have autoimmune conditions and And, you know, my understanding is that if you have autoimmune, you really should stay off gluten.

We have celiacs eat gluten again, no problem, especially European gluten. And I have friends that do that all the time. Bifidobacterium longum is one of the most important bacteria. It's highly linked to celiac. When it goes down with formula or antibiotics, like in Finland studies or Swedish studies, it will lead to celiac. The problem is not celiac and gluten. The problem is missing bifidobacterium longum in babies. Mm-hmm. So when babies are born, they're supposed to be full of bifido from mom, and then mom's milk, the human milk oligosaccharides feed the bifido, and the bifido protects the baby, protects their gut, prevents immune problems. It also allows tolerance for things including gluten. These days, babies don't have bifido. It's almost extinct in the modern world. It's extinct in mom's breast milk. There's studies coming out of UC Davis where they are not finding bifido in mom's breast milk. This is atrocious. This is only happening in the West world. This is not happening in hunter-gatherers and other parts of the world. So celiac is really interesting. It's not really a gluten problem. It's again a deficit of the good gut flora because a lot of people have the celiac genes hunter-gatherers, as well as in Europe. The only difference is that they don't get antibiotics. If they get antibiotics, they'll end up with celiac, and that's what's happening in the Western world.

And does, does B. longum colonize our gut, or is it something you have to take?

B. longum always colonizes, and it's found in babies, it's found in humans, it's found in centenarians as well, and they're not taking any probiotics. It's a natural colonizer.

Yeah, no, I thought B. infantis was the one that was—

that's one of the few things that actually we can colonize and actually resurrect because it's found in a probiotic. There are a lot of species, unfortunately, we don't have in a probiotic yet because they're anaerobes. Because they're what? Strict anaerobes. Strict anaerobes, right, right.

Yeah, I actually have to get going soon.

I'm so sorry, but— Oh no, no problem. Yeah, we'll be able to like—

We'll have to bring you back sometime because there's so much more we could talk about.

Lovely, I know. And then you can give me a follow-up of how your dad's doing.

Yeah, I will definitely have to do that. So I'll put all the links to your stuff on my site, and thank you so much for coming on.

Oh, I so appreciate— I love you, Lindsey, and I love how much you came to our conference last year. I'll give you a link to our conference as well. It's coming up next month. And if you have any coaches or clinicians that are listening, I hope they can consider our gut protocols, and we teach them, and they can apply them to their clients and have really robust practices as they apply them.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, and your conference is in San Francisco?

Yes, in San Francisco, September 21st and 22nd of this year, and it's amazing. We have fantastic speakers. Many of them are users of our probiotics and our protocols, and they just just see phenomenal improvements they do at our clinic. Reversal of colitis, GERD, infertility, hormones issues, autoimmunity. We generally see autoimmunity reverse in 6 months or less.

Okay, awesome. So I will, I will give everybody all those links, and thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you so much, Lindsey Parsons.

Take care. Wow. So as you can see, Grace exists on a whole other plane of gut and health understanding than most of us. I think I'm gonna have to listen to that 3 or 4 times to pull out all those great nuggets of knowledge. Again, if you are interested in her Master Gut class or her conference, check out the show notes. I'll have a discount code there for conference registration. And if you'd like to support the show, please check out the product links available from my website, including my full script dispensary, general links to Amazon and Vitacost, and then specific products I recommend. That's HighDesertHealthCoaching.com. Also, you can find me on Facebook at High Desert Health or Instagram at high.desert.health. Health, so please follow me in one of those places. And here's wishing you all the perfect stool!