Deuterium Depleted Water and Hydrogen Sulfide SIBO: Exploring the Connection with Greg Nigh, ND

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Dr. Greg Nye, ND. Dr. Nye did his undergrad at Notre Dame, has an MA from Arizona State University and a Master of Science in Oriental Medicine and a doctorate in naturopathic medicine from National University of Naturopathic Medicine. He's been in clinical practice practice since February 2002 with a clinical specialty in naturopathic oncology and currently practices virtually from Rhode Island. He likes to do research and publish articles, but he came to my attention from his 2020 book, The Devil in the Garlic: How Sulfur in Your Food Can Cause Anxiety, Hot Flushes, IBS, Brain Fog, Migraines, Skin Problems, and More, and a Program to Help You Feel Great Again. And we'll be discussing hydrogen sulfide, SIBO, and sulfur issues, but we also actually spent a good deal of our time talking about deuterium-depleted water and its relationship to and use in gut health and cancer as well. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Nye.

Yeah, glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. So when I did an intro call with Dr. Nye, we ended up talking at length about deuterium depleted water and how important he thinks this topic is to gut health and human physiology. And he has articles out on the topic with Stephanie Seneff, a well-known glyphosate researcher. So I promise we're gonna get to sulfur and hydrogen sulfide, SIBO related topics, but I think if we don't start here, you'll take me there anyway. So can you start us off with what deuterium and deuterium depleted water are?

Gosh, um, so let's start with what deuterium is. And I suspect a lot of your audience knows, but just to make sure it's clear, deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, which is to say it's basically the same as hydrogen but it's got a neutron in the nucleus, which regular hydrogen doesn't. And that makes deuterium heavy. So people might have heard of heavy water, and that just means water that uses deuterium isotopes as the H's, so just weighs more. Now, so the thing is, deuterium is everywhere. It is ubiquitous in our environment. It's in all the water we drink. It's in the food that we're eating. It is constantly coming into us. But that's a problem because deuterium doesn't behave like hydrogen when it's in the body. And so our bodies have pretty amazing mechanisms in place to be sure that deuterium doesn't gunk things up. And what I think is true is that a great deal of modern maladies are— if you go to the root, root, root— has to do with deuterium getting in the way of normal cellular function. Did I answer the question? Maybe I talked about—

Yeah.

Yeah.

So does this have anything to do with oxidative stress or is this unrelated?

It's all kind of related. Certainly, you know, obviously normal cell physiology has all kinds of reactive oxygen species that are getting created, and now we know that those are signaling molecules. They're not just bad. And then things could get tipped into an excess of oxidation, which then we call it a stress. And so the processing of deuterium. Is sort of in a balance with the oxidation state of the cell. And so if deuterium gets dysregulated within the cell— so just to give you a quick example, we know that the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, and hydrogen get funneled to the mitochondria, which ultimately pass through that ATPase pump, spins the pump, creates ATP, and that fuels pretty much everything about physiology. So the thing is, those are hydrogens that go through that pump. It's literally like a funnel. And every time one goes through, it spins the funnel. If a deuterium makes its way to the mitochondria and goes through that pump, it binds to a protein in that pump and causes the pump to sputter. And so it impedes the efficiency of the pump. And so the more deuterium that make its way to the mitochondria, the more it it is clogging up those ATPase pumps, not only compromising the ability of the cell to generate energy, but in the process generating extra free radicals. So enhancing just the level of oxidation that's being generated within the mitochondria. And of course, that ricochets all over the place creating problems.

Okay.

Now, just for clarity's sake, because there's so many other types of water out there that people are talking about, this has nothing to do with hydro hydrogen water or alkaline water or what other types of water? Yeah.

Structured water and— Yeah. All of that, which all may very well have beneficial physiological effects, but they are not the same as deuterium depleted water. Depleting those isotopes out of water is a very intensive industrial process, which is why there are only a few companies in the world that are doing this for retail sale. So yeah, there's nothing, you know, if you look up like probably on YouTube, there's some videos about how to make it in your kitchen. It ain't real. That is not a thing. Unfortunately, you have to buy deuterium depleted water. Now, what I will say about hydrogenated water And this, we're going to end up talking about this when we come back to guts. Hydrogen, hydrogen gas is inherently depleted in deuterium. Oh, and so when you bubble hydrogen gas and dissolve it into water, you are sort of one of the consequences of doing that. And maybe one of the reasons it's beneficial is that you are enhancing the number of hydrogen relative to deuterium within the water. So in drinking that water, you're supplying hydrogens and less deuterium. It's not taking deuterium out, it's just making hydrogen more present.

Yeah.

And does that work also if you're taking a tablet and putting into your water?

Is that same thing?

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Interesting. So Now let's get into how deuterium depleted water relates to gut health or deuterium itself. Okay.

So, and keep in mind, this is for the most part, this is all discovered or uncovered in the past 8 months. It's like very, very new. So this is something that Stephanie initially got me keyed into. She published a few papers on the topic, and then we ended up— we recently published a paper together that's right now going through peer review. So we have this fundamental truth, which is that the body needs to be very careful in what it does with the deuterium that is always coming in. And I am to a fault in many ways. And Stephanie and I are very much aligned in this way in thinking that bodies are adaptive to almost an absurd extent. Everything is to help us function normally. And what has become apparent as we get into the even the chemistry and physics of this stuff, which of course Stephanie is way beyond me and all of that, but I tag along, is that the microbiome, human microbiome, the gut microbiome is a sieve. It is. So all of the food and water that we're taking in, which has deuterium in the water that we drink, deuterium is present at about 150 parts per million. And food. So all of that carbohydrate, you know, carbohydrates have all those hydrogens attached. Well, some portion of those hydrogens attached to carbohydrates are deuterium. They're not hydrogen. Ditto for protein and fat. But in terms of deuterium content, carbohydrates have the highest deuterium content. Protein is next and fat is the lowest. So Okay, so we're drinking our water or whatever liquids we're drinking, deuteriums and all of that. We're eating our food, deuteriums and all of that. And if that deuterium makes its way into peripheral physiology cells doing what they need to do, it's going to cause problems if it's not taken care of. So the first line of filtration is these trillions of bacteria in the gut. That have enzymes in place. It's like they're sniffing all the molecules coming through. And if they spot a deuterium, there are enzymes that— there are two roles that they play. One is that they will, you know, when water or food comes in with all these hydrogens, those hydrogens get plucked off and get utilized for all kinds of reactions throughout the body., but those enzymes are very careful that as they're plucking off hydrogen, if they grab a deuterium, they let go. They won't utilize the deuterium. They leave it there so that it never gets used down the road for something else physiologically. So that's one way that it prevents deuterium from getting into reactions further in the body. What then happens is that deuterium-enriched stuff is left behind because you're leaving it behind. Well, it just so happens that there are several kinds of bacteria that actually grow better with deuterium. They like an enriched deuterium environment, which is great because they can sop up deuterium that's present. What bacteria? E. coli, Clostridia, the kinds of things that we commonly see as dysbiotic bugs when we do the testing, they actually do better when deuterium is left behind. So if there's more deuterium coming in, there's more to leave behind and you need bacteria there that can tolerate that. So that is one way that the bacteria are scrubbing the incoming molecules. A second way, and this is really the main focus of the paper that we just wrote, is that there are certain molecules that will trap deuterium. So an example would be collagen, or more specifically, proline. Proline has an ability to— so proline is out doing what it's doing. But if it encounters a deuterium, it will put it in a pocket and hold on to it. And this is why then proline goes on to build collagen. Collagen is actually enriched in deuterium because it's associated with all the proline. And there's a whole hydration shell around collagen, which is a whole other story. But the point is that collagen and other organic molecules, essential fatty acids, are able to do this as well. If they are out there doing what they do, but if they encounter deuterium, it's like, it's like a mousetrap. It will snap it into place and then it will be excreted. There are enzymes also that will trap deuterium. And it's like they have these other enzyme things that they're doing, but if they encounter deuterium, they trap it, they shut down, they don't do any more of their enzyme activity and they get excreted. Carotenoids is another example. They will trap deuterium. And so there are these various molecules that are in our gut that are hanging out in our gut doing their molecule thing, proteins and various enzymes that are doing whatever it is they do. But if they encounter deuterium, their enzymatic activity stops, they trap the deuterium and they get excreted. So it's this way of making sure that whenever deuterium is encountered, it is gotten rid of. So on the one hand are the enzymes that are making sure not to use deuterium as they pluck hydrogens off. And on the other end are these other molecules that are constantly just on the prowl for any deuterium that is left behind. They trap it and they get it out so that it can be excreted and thus not get into peripheral metabolic activity. So the gut is like this first line of defense in preventing an accumulation of deuterium. And what I believe to be true is that what we call dysbiosis, you know, to come at it a different way, I don't think bodies do anything to just piss us off. Like they, they're doing what they're doing in order to fix a problem. Now, there are exceptions. I understand that. But for the most part, I think that bodies are trying to fix a problem. And I think that a good case can be made that what we are calling dysbiosis— dys, you know, dys meaning it's, it's functioning wrong— is maybe not dys. Maybe it's adjustments in the microbiome that allow it to do things more efficiently, things that need to be done. And so, you know, there are— with SIBO, you know, the classic, the hydrogen and methane and hydrogen sulfide, all of those, all three gases are deuterium-depleted gases. The enzymes that are creating those gases make sure that those gases are deuterium depleted, and the hydrogens that are associated with those gases then go on to be used in various, you know, like the bacteria making hydrogen sulfide. Well, those H2 on the sulfur are not deuterium, they're hydrogen. And that's very important because hydrogen sulfide is going to go on to be oxidized into sulfate, which is Of course, the body has to have access to sulfate all the time, and it needs that sulfate to be deuterium depleted because otherwise it messes up the various things that it's supposed to be doing in the body. Ditto for the hydrogen gas that is being created in the gut, which, you know, it's like, oh, how do we kill the bugs that are making all this hydrogen gas? Maybe the body needs more access to hydrogen. Meaning that there's too much deuterium around, you need more hydrogen to be involved in the various— because hydrogen gas just dissolves through the gut wall and gets in circulation. It is delivering hydrogen throughout the body for all kinds of metabolic reasons. So I forget where I started on this, but the point is that what I think is true is that the gut is constantly working with us to manage a deuterium problem in generating not only those gases, but the gut is constantly generating the short-chain fatty acids, butyrate, propionate, acetate. All three of those are deuterium depleted. The bacteria that are generating them have enzymes with a very high— what's called a KIE, kinetic isotope effect. And that means when they go, they got to— you got to transfer hydrogens to stick them onto the molecule building butyrate, for example. If they grab a deuterium instead of a hydrogen, they won't use it. They will only be using hydrogen. So all of these short-chain fatty acids that our gut is making for us, bless their heart, those are deuterium-depleted fatty acids that are then delivered around the body, supplying hydrogens for all kinds of metabolic needs. So that's kind of the overview of what I think guts are up to.

Okay, cool. So does that, that might make sense then if you think about the fact that people often get overgrowth of things like E. coli or C. diff or whatever when they eat bad diets full of processed carbohydrates and sugar and such.

Yeah, ab— absolutely. I mean, something that has always mystified me as a practitioner. So people come to me and say they test positive for hydrogen SIBO and they go through treatment and they get rid of the bacteria that are generating this excess hydrogen. Or me, you know, not down to zero, but they dramatically reduce that population and then they take all the right probiotics and they eat the right diet and they meditate and they do all the right things. And 2 weeks later, those bugs are back. They're creating the same symptoms again. And ditto for people that do with methane or sulfur, doesn't matter. Kill the bacteria to get rid of those, that production, do all the right things. And so commonly people have their symptoms come back. It doesn't make sense. Why would the body bring those bacteria back in, in spite of everything we're doing to prevent that from happening? It makes sense to me that they come back because they're serving a purpose. They're doing something that our body needs done. You know, our gut is not— it's not concerned that it's making us feel bloated or whatever. That's not the concern. The concern is to meet a metabolic need. And the microbiome is just an organ. I mean, it really is an organ in the body that is constantly adapting itself to meet the various needs, you know, generating neurotransmitters and hormones and vitamins and short-chain fatty acids and constantly generating things that we need. And it's a factory that is always reshaping itself to do that.

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Mm-hmm. So that makes sense to me in the case of someone who doesn't have elevated vinculin antibodies, but I, for one, have have, you know, post-infectious IBS with, with elevated vinculin antibodies. And I can tell you that like my stomach doesn't gurgle hardly ever. Like it's a, it's a day for celebration when I hear my stomach gurgling. So I have no motility in my small intestine. Uh-huh. So for me, it's kind of obvious that the reason it keeps recurring is because the bacteria aren't getting cleared out with the migrating motor complex. Do you not believe in that theory or do you think these are different questions?

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as pathology. Associated with the gut. Certainly there are, you know, there are neurological issues that can slow the bowel and prevent normal kinds of motility. And, you know, all kinds of other things can happen. Certainly it's not a universal statement that everything happening in the gut is as an adaptation. I don't think that's true. What I think is true is that there is a great deal of what we consider to be bad in various ways, you know, different kinds of bacteria that are happening in the gut, and that our approach is to target the bacteria. And I think that, at least in my experience in interacting with patients, is that it's not a very successful strategy. Killing bacteria that we believe to be the underlying cause of the symptoms is temporary. Now, once in a while there's a home run hit, but for the most part, and maybe it's a biased sample and maybe I'm just seeing the patients that it doesn't work for. And so they come to me and say, Greg, what can you do? But my impression is that it's not a winning strategy to focus on trying to like manually adjust bacterial populations.

Okay.

So last time we talked, you were starting some clients out on deuterium-depleted water. And so I'm curious if anybody has noticed an impact yet. Yes.

And I certainly, I feel like I'm very, I'm still early in this clinically, as I mentioned before, it was kind of, yeah. This is not a long history behind this. I have had 3 patients tell me that they feel like their gut has improved through this pro— and I've only— this is how many patients? You know, I'm probably between somewhere around 5 to 8 patients that have now actually implemented it. And one of the reasons to not implement it, which is an aside, is just the cost of it, which I can come back to that. But In my experience, there is, the modest improvement that I've seen is with gut changes. And what I believe to be true is that it's not a standalone fix for guts. I think that, you know, there are other, there's other foundational kind of work that needs to be done to repair sulfate, sulfur and sulfate metabolism, for example. Or to adjust diets. There is a deuterium-depleted diet that I think can be quite valuable for people to pursue. The most dramatic change and like emails with people saying, I can't believe how different I feel. And that is just with general vitality, clarity of mind and vitality and overall oomph to get through the day. I had just sis Last week, got an email from a patient telling me she's— says she's 61 years old and she feels like she's 45 years old. Like she hasn't felt so much energy in a few decades.

Awesome.

So there's that, which I personally, I don't think is just a perk. I think that that is— that kind of change is— I mean, what it's indicating obviously is enhanced cellular energy production, right? I think.

Yeah.

And that's not a trivial change when you're talking about enhancing someone's overall health. My hope is as more people adopt this and are reporting back to me how their guts are doing, that I'll continue to accrue some, some positive feedback about that. And of course, if any other practitioners want to start implementing this, not just for gut health. I mean, personally, I think that I don't know of any other singular therapy that has as much universal application as deuterium depleted water, because it is literally every single cell that has to deal with the deuterium problem. So, yeah.

So speaking of that, so I had just started because I was looking at the other article you sent me related to cancer and deuterium. And so I just, you know, Googled the question and popped up with a meta-analysis, or no, systematic review, sorry, of clinical and experimental trials. And, and the second sentence is, the clinical experiments indicated that deuterium-depleted water monotherapy or in combination with chemotherapy was beneficial in inhibiting cancer development. Yeah. So, I mean, it just seemed like a, like a straight statement, like this is beneficial, no question, you know.

I mean, you know, it was one of those thump myself on the forehead when I realized how much information is out about deuterium as a cancer therapy. It really is shocking. There are very few therapies in, especially, I mean, it's silly to call it an alternative therapy because fricking water. I mean, that's not all that alternative, you know, but there are so many clinical trials that are out about deuterium in cancer therapy. And, you know, it's like, if there's a, if there's a chemotherapy that can get an additional, like 6 months, you know, one group gets this drug and the other gets the standard drug. And oh my gosh, this, this other drug got 6 months longer overall survival on average. It's like headlines. In these deuterium-depleted water studies where they have one group of cancer patients doing standard therapy and the other doing standard therapy and drank deuterium-depleted water, it is freaking outrageous. The— often the deuterium-depleted water group has survival measured in years longer than the other, the group that didn't get it. I mean, it really is quite dramatic.

Yeah.

In what it can do. And not, so that's in the treatment group. I think maybe even more important is with the, in that context of people who, you know, they had cancer or they do therapy and then they get NED, where there's no evidence of disease, and then their whole being is about preventing cancer. In that context, deuterium depleted water. There was a study that just came out. I wish I could quote the stats on it, but I'm pretty positive that in the group that was no evidence of disease, in that group that drank deuterium depleted water, there was no recurrence of cancer at all in the duration of the study, as opposed to several who had recurrence in the other arm of the study. I could get that citation to you.

Wow. That's great.

But it was very impressive when I read it.

Yeah. So big question then, how expensive is deuterium depleted water and where do you get yours? Yeah.

So deuterium depleted water, I mean, I, I'm not advocating the different companies that make it or anything. I happen to have gotten established a relationship with Adrian, who's a guy who owns a company called extralightwater.com. It's actually, I think it's called Hydro Health is the name of the company, but the website is extralightwater.com. So DDW is generally made, you know, you buy it in the amount of deuterium in the water. He sells it at 50 parts per million, 25 parts per million, and 10 parts per million. And he tests every batch that he makes and Like he just put out that his 25 part per million water was actually, he tested it at 19 parts per million. So he's always coming under. He won't sell it. It goes over, but it often comes under. So for example, I just did personally a course of, it was about 80 days total. I went through 4 cases of 25 part per million water.

Now, if you buy Only that, no other water.

Well, I drank a little bit of other water during the day, but for the most part, I mean, each— so a case is 24 bottles through this company and each bottle is half a liter. So I was, I was definitely drinking some other water, but every day I had at least one, usually a little more than one bottle.

So half a liter.

Okay.

Yeah. I would have a half a liter plus some. And if you buy it case by case, then through that company, 25 parts per million is $190 per case. So 24 bottles, $190. You can do the math on what each bottle is.

Yeah.

The way I did it, because if you do it as a subscription, you get, I think it's 8% off. So I knew I was going to do it through a series of 4. So I just had it automatically send me a case every 3 weeks because I was drinking a little more than 1 bottle a day. So I would pretty much run out at the 3-week mark and that drops the price from $190 down to $172. You know, it's still a decent amount of money. Adrian points out that if you calculated the price per bottle, there are a whole lot of people spending more than that on their Starbucks every day. So, you know, I think it works out to like $1.80 a bottle or something like that. I forget exactly, but it's not cheap. It's not something that everyone can do. Now, I, in my own clinical practice, have significantly reduced the number of other supplements that people are doing. And so that they can concentrate their spending in a more focused way with deuterium depleted water being part of that. You know, I'm in your question earlier about what do I see happen with people with their guts? So I'm early in that experiment. I've been using it more extensively with cancer patients because that's where the evidence— I mean, there's a lot of evidence there, not only cancer, but anxiety, metabolic disease, diabetes, neurological disease. There are clinical trials with all of that. Cancer is just, is the situation where most of the research has been done. So yeah, it ain't cheap. Generally what I want to get people doing if they can is, so body deuterium content, and there are tests for this. If you go to deuteriumtest.com, com. They have a saliva test. There's another company, I forget their URL, or I would give it, that has a urine test. But if you look it up, salivary testing is, seems to be a little better supported. So deuteriumtests.com, they have, I think it's $199 for a salivary test. You spit in a vial and it'll tell you what your body deuterium level is. So our normal body deuterium level runs at around, I think it's about 145.

5.

And that's because we're, we're always trying to lower our deuterium. So we're taking in 150 parts per million and then we got to get some deuterium out. When you drink deuterium depleted water, you're essentially over time replacing your body's water with this lower deuterium water. The goal is to lower the overall deuterium level in the body. And once you get below a certain threshold, and nobody's really sure exactly what that threshold is. Some say it's around 130. I saw another source saying 118 is the magic number where all the genes start being activated for all the anti-cancer effect. In my mind, I'm just trying to get it as low as I can get it in the period of time that I can get people to do this. So generally, usually, and not always, usually what I'm doing is have people drink 2 cases of 25 ppm water, and then 2 cases of 10 ppm water. And that gets them through about 80 days. And then take a break. By the end of 80 days, body deuterium level has dropped dramatically, drinking just 1 bottle a day. So I, I just did a test on myself recently and drinking, I did 4 cases of 25 parts per million and did the salivary test at the end of that trial. And I was at 119 parts per million of body water by that point, which I think is a pretty decent drop. Now, I didn't do a pre-test to find out what I was at prior. It's possible just because of what I eat and whatever that I was not at the normal 145. I don't know, but it was good to know that, okay, 4 cases at 25 can drop it down pretty significantly. And I think with a cancer patient, I would definitely have them do those last 2 cases at 10 part per million just to drop it down even more.

Yeah.

And how do you feel? Different? Decidedly different? Or?

Oh, like a rock star. No, you know, I wasn't necessarily a good test case cuz I don't really have significant.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anything that I could use as a gauge. I mostly wanted to see what the impact would be on body water overall. And so I got that info. I mean, I had good energy and, but I generally am fine on that anyway. So I didn't really have a good barometer about how it was impacting other things.

So you mentioned foods and diet that is more deuterium depleted. Is that What, what kind of diet does that look like?

Well, unsurprisingly, it's basically a ketogenic diet. Fat is the lowest of the dietary deuterium that we can take in. Ghee, I think, is the lowest of the oils in deuterium. Butter is way down there as well, but generally oils are low in deuterium. Then protein is the next lowest concentration, highest, duh, is carbs. And the simpler, the higher the deuterium level. So it kind of matches what we generally think about as healthy eating.

Ah, okay. That's interesting. 'Cause I was noting, I, I, every once in a while I'll throw all my food into a Cronometer and see how my macros are falling out and am I getting enough of every nutrient. And, and I noted that my diet was like 55% fat. At least for the couple days I was tracking it. And I thought, I'm not doing that on purpose, but like, I just, I just, I'm generous with the olive oil. I'd love to put some of that hot olive oil. I got the spicy stuff. I got the, the basil olive oil, you know.

Love it. Yeah. I think it's a great way. I mean, I'm—

but the, but the trick is getting enough protein and doing that and getting enough, you know, fruits and vegetables and doing that. It's just like, I'm absorbing so many calories into fat that how do you get the rest of the stuff you really need?

Oh yeah. That Yeah, no, I hear you. I think, you know, I, it's stuff we all know about sourcing food and protein. Like if you're eating grass-fed meats and all that, that's gonna be inherently deuterium depleted just because that's what it is. So yeah, I think, I think combining deuterium depleted diet with deuterium depleted water, and in fact, I think there are studies on this. I'm pretty sure Don Baggostino, you know, he's the, he's the dude who has published a lot about hyperbaric oxygen therapy and he's published with Tom Seyfried on ketogenic diet and all of that. And they have both, I think D'Agostino even more than Seyfried, he's published some really impressive articles on deuterium and deuterium depletion in the diet. And I think he has published about the combination of drinking DDW and eating ketogenic diet and how that is like the rockstar way to eat.

I have to say it, it seems to work better for men than women. I don't know a lot of women that have been able to sustain that. I think something related to our hormones. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, well, just to say that I love carbs way too much to give them up entirely. Like, it's just a non-starter. But yeah, I can't say that I, I did it for once for like a month and I felt, you know, I felt fine, but I think the quantity of fat did not agree with my gallbladder.

And, um, you know, when I, I remember it was probably, I don't know. 15 years ago. Wait, what is that? 10, 11 years ago. So, but I don't know. It was when Seyfried, Thomas Seyfried came out with his book Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. And I read that book and I was like, holy crap. I, and because, you know, it's, that book is all about ketogenic diet and kind of the metabolic effects it has on cancer, but all of his research was on brain cancer, was on pretty much glioblastoma. That was his thing. And that just happened to be the cancer that he decided to study. And it was very serendipitous that he did because it works really well on that cancer. And then it wasn't long after that book came out and we ended up both being at the Oncology Association, Natural Medicine Association. We were both at that conference. We were both talking there and I got to pick his brain over the course of the weekend. And what I really wanted to understand was, okay, this is working really well in glioblastoma. Is there any reason, like what are the other cancers we should expect this to work in? And his opinion was this should work in every cancer type. There's no reason it should be unique to glioblastoma. So, and I, you know, I have worked for years with Maria Zilka, a nutrition therapist. And so we go back to the clinic and I'm like, all right, Every cancer patient, we're going to implement ketogenic diet and we're going to see what happens. So that's what happened. And it was quite enlightening in that there are some people who implement a ketogenic diet, they feel fabulous. They, their brain clears up and they have great energy and they lose weight, but not too much. They just go to a healthy weight and OMG, it's like everything goes really well. And then there are those other people. Sounds like you're in that group where they just cannot do it. Their body won't do it. And some people, one group, even following the diet as closely as they possibly could, they cannot get their ketones down. To what is considered a therapeutic range, which totally mysterious. Maybe they were cheating. I don't think so, but something metabolically, their body would just generate glucose. And then there was another group who just felt miserable. Just their brain was fog and energy was crap and mood was bad and they never got past You know, there's ketosis and then you're supposed to get into that keto-adapted state where you're just burning ketones and feeling fabulous. They never got to that. They just sort of stayed in what we think of as that flu-y kind of ketosis state and were miserable. And so for those people, you gotta bring 'em out. You gotta bring carbs back into their life. And there was no test that you could do in advance to know which it was. And in my observation, it didn't really divide down male-female lines because, okay, I had people in both categories, male and female, both. So yeah, I don't know, but clearly there are some metabolic types that just don't get into that keto-adapted state and they never feel well.

Yeah. No, I think I did. I mean, I got to the point where I was in ketosis, but I just couldn't sustain it. I mean, I just love carbs too much. And, and to me it just felt like, oh, another meal of like, you know, meat and broccoli. And, and I don't eat dairy, so that, so that's like a significant source of fats for people who are doing ketogenic diet. 'Cause I'm lactose intolerant. So it was just like, what's left? You know?

So for you, I'm just curious, it was, as much a psychological heaviness of staying on the diet as it was like a physical—

eh.

Yeah. I mean, it's like the joy of a piece of toast with your breakfast. Like, I mean, literally I have to force myself to eat everything else around the piece of carbs. Yeah. The joy it brings. I get it.

Yeah.

I'm a foodie. I love food. So, you know, it's maybe some people are kind of indifferent to food. Like they're just like, eh. It's just fuel, whatever. Maybe for them, they're just as happy eating. And I have clients just like that. Yeah, no problem. You tell them what to eat, they're like, no problem, I can implement anything you tell me. Other people who are just like, this is so terrible, I can't eat anything.

And no, I have the same. Yeah. I mean, I will have to say one of the most shocking diets that I have been introduced to, which was by patients who told me about it, and of course we all know it now, and that is the carnivore diet. And I have had multiple, and by that I mean probably half a dozen patients who their gastrointestinal problems were completely cured, put little quotes there, but in their experience, they, all of their symptoms resolved upon adopting the carnivore diet, which is so counterintuitive to me.

But did they all come back upon going off of it?

Well, uh, they didn't. Although, yeah, a few of those, I mean, these weren't people that I was managing on that diet. They, they heard about it and they implemented it on their own. And so I had a few of them actually just send me an email. Hey, Dr. Now, I just want to let you know I'm cured and I just did this diet. I have had people who came and they told me that they implemented the carnivore diet, they did fabulous, and then over time, you know, for various reasons, they— it didn't work so well, or they stopped doing it, and eventually their gut got bad again, and they tried it again and it didn't seem to work as well the second time, or whatever, you know, people are all weird and we all respond to diets differently and all that. But it is one of those one of the rare diets where people implement it and describe to me dramatic changes in how they feel. I mean, I have a lot of people implement AIP diet or, you know, there's so many friggin diets out there now that people do. And yeah, you know, people will describe, yeah, I felt a little better. I think I did better doing this and doing that. But there are only a few diets in my experience that people describe it in profound ways that they, like, everything changed when they started that diet.

Yeah.

So I, I, I don't doubt that people feel better, but sometimes I see stool tests on people who've been on these sorts of diets, be it ketogenic, be it carnivore. And then I look and they've got elevated beta-glucuronidase and I'm like, I'm sorry, you need to go off all meat now. And all fat and you need to, to like turn this around because you might end up with colon cancer or breast cancer. And so, you know, it's like in theory they might be fixing stuff, but they're breaking other stuff and, and you don't know until you do the test. Anyway, that's just my comment on that. So I, I'm not a big fan of anything extreme because for me you're losing out on the joy of eating if you're just eating meat. And, and most of the people that I've spoken to are doing carnivore are not, are not doing it right. Like they're not even eating they're just eating like steak every day or hamburger every day. They're not eating, you know, organ meats. They're not getting the full gamut of nutrients. And often they're not actually doing carnivore. Like there's a couple vegetables they eat or a little bit of fruit they eat or something. Like there's always something else cuz they just can't stand it. Like at the end of the day it's just meat. I do wanna get to sulfur. So let's, let's, let's get back to that original reason that I did reach out to you was your expertise in sulfur metabolism and how it relates to gut health. So why don't we start first with an explanation of the different forms of sulfur and which forms are good for us and which are bad for us and what it's doing in the body.

Wait, which forms are good for us and which are bad?

Yeah.

Is that the question?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't really know that I could, um, I could categorize it in that way. I think, you know, the, so the big picture on sulfur is that of course we have to have sulfur all the time. Because we have to generate sulfate and these various other sulfur compounds. So, and these compounds that get generated like sulfate, we're not eating sulfate. I mean, sure, there's maybe some trace amounts in some people's well water, but for the most part, that's not what we're taking in dietarily. We take in various sulfur compounds and we have to convert them to the biologically useful forms of sulfur. And the problem, which literally just stumbled upon in— well, that's a long story, but some people, for various reasons, they can't efficiently get from the dietary sulfur to those converted forms of useful sulfur. And I think the most important of those is the sulfate, because sulfate— I mean, we are sulfating things all the time. It's crazy how much sulfate has to be constantly available to the body in order to carry out all the sulfation reactions. So if that gets compromised for various reasons that it can compromise, then bodies, because they're fairly intelligent, they figure out, or they already know somehow, how to work around the problem. And the workaround, at least one of them, is to generate more hydrogen sulfide because hydrogen sulfide gets directly oxidized to sulfur dioxide, SO2. Which gets directly oxidized to sulfite, SO3, which gets enzymatically converted to sulfate, SO4. So it just steps up the oxidation scale to get it to sulfate, which we now know is deuterium-depleted sulfate, which is gold for all those sulfation reactions in the body. So You know, dietary sulfur is the raw material for doing that.

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Different sources of dietary sulfur, and this is just discovery over a decade of just doing this with people. Some forms of dietary sulfur are just harder for many people to get converted into those other useful forms of sulfate than others are. So the highest source of dietary sulfur is meat.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, the cysteine and methionine hanging out in meat is by far and away the, the biggest bulk of sulfur that obviously anyone but vegetarians, is taken in. My experience is that meat is rarely, not never, rarely a problem. Most people tolerate eating meat. Garlic, if I'm going to pick one, I mean, I didn't, it's not a coincidence. I named my book Devil in the Garlic because garlic tends to be the most reactive of the sulfur compounds that people take in. And I think one possible reason for that is that unlike sulfur compounds in other foods, the compounds in garlic, once they're absorbed and they're in circulation, they are taken up by red blood cells and can be directly converted into hydrogen sulfide. And so our entire system of red blood cells becomes a factory for generating this hydrogen sulfide gas, potentially. And I think likely for some people that gets upregulated for, who knows, genetic reasons or I don't know. In order to detoxify that hydrogen sulfide so that it doesn't then leak out of red blood cells and get into circulation, you have to have vitamin B12 and you have to have glutathione. And so there are lots of people who are compromised in one or both of those, which would potentially add insult to injury. So I think that garlic— or not, I think— in doing this low sulfur protocol with people, you know, a diet where people significantly reduce the amount of dietary sulfur coming in for a couple of weeks and then one by one introduce it has been, oh my gosh, to see how many people at the end of 2 weeks have significant or even complete resolution of some symptoms. Now, not everybody. I ain't saying it's a cure for everybody, but there have been a really dramatic number of people over the years who had problems sometimes for decades they had, you know, all sort of colitis symptoms or irritable bowel. And within 4 or 5 days of starting this diet, they have no symptoms at all. I mean, it's crazy. And so we get people through 2 weeks and then at the end of 2 weeks is the reintroductions. The first thing to reintroduce is garlic and it is shocking how many people their symptoms have been gone for a period of time, or at least significantly reduced for a period of time. They reintroduce garlic, bam, there's a symptom again, comes back, whether it's brain fog or migraine or joint pain or gut, irritable bowel, rashes, whatever it is, there it is again when they reintroduce garlic. So then, you know, we have people do their reintroductions one by one. So then After that, and can't reintroduce the next one until the symptom from that one cleared, of course. So, you know, for some people, usually it's only a couple days and the symptom clears. Some people it's a week or two, but then onion and kale and go through the list of the reintroductions, egg, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage.. And so you get a really kind of a good picture of, for this individual, which sulfur compounds they don't seem to tolerate well. And so usually you can hold those out for a period of time, bring the others back in, because of course we want people's diet as diverse as possible to keep enough different varieties of gut bugs active in their gut. I don't like people staying on restrictive diets for extended periods of time. And lots of people back themselves into a corner that way, which I understand. They're just trying to not have symptoms. But once you stay in that corner too long, you're stuck in a corner and it's not easy to get out. So, you know, we kind of catalog which of the sulfur compounds are, seem to be the most reactive and then try to bring in various kinds of support, which is often trial and error. You know, there's educated guessing about it, but you're just trying to figure out which things work for which people. Usually we get somebody to a place where they can then reintroduce the foods that were reactive, like garlic. Now, there are some people, they just cannot reintroduce garlic with all the support we can get, but most people get to a place where they can reintroduce it. Not, I mean, a lot of them were taking like 2 garlic tablets a day and putting garlic. I mean, garlic is everywhere on their food. They don't get back to that, but they get back to, they can put a little bit of garlic powder on there as a seasoning or something. And actually, oddly enough, many of them form an aversion to garlic once they've been through that process and kind of clean the garlic outta their system and they reintroduce it and it causes misery. Many of them are fine. They, they feel like they don't even like the smell of garlic anymore. So yeah, that's good. So it's always a mystery which particular compounds somebody might react to, and not everybody reacts to any of them. And it's not actually an individual reaction, it's just a composite of total sulfur load that comes in over time. And eventually the bucket is full and it spills and causes symptoms. And so for those people, it's actually much easier. Then there are just certain things you can have people do throughout their day or week, at least to lower or to, I guess, drain their bucket faster so that it doesn't overflow. And I mention every time I do a podcast, I'm talking about things like Mosem Forte, which is a particular form of molybdenum that I have just found that works really well. Epsom salt baths have been like another one of those holy crap, I can't believe some people changes their life to just do Epsom salt baths. Now, maybe it's because they're getting magnesium that way. But I think the people that I'm working with is because they're getting sulfate that way. Because by doing Epsom salt baths, I have had a number of people who then can expand the amount of sulfur foods that they take in. They're less reactive to their sulfur foods. Why is that? I think it's because they're getting sulfate directly through the skin. So the body has a supply of sulfate. It doesn't need to generate hydrogen sulfide in their gut to produce more sulfate. They've already got enough. So again, the bugs, if the bugs aren't needed, they don't show up. They will go away on their own.

Yeah.

So you're describing a group of people who have sulfur issues, but not all of them have what appears to be a hydrogen sulfide SIBO presentation, correct?

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And in fact, so I started, I started getting interested in sulfur. It's weird. I tried to trace this back and I couldn't figure out exactly, but early on I had read a paper by Stephanie that had to do with sulfur, and that's how I first got into communication with her. So I was working with Maria at the time and I said, can you just put together a low sulfur diet? I just wanna see what happens. And so she kind of did some homework and put together a diet and, and it, it was like people with migraines or hot flashes or anxiety or eczema or whatever it was, was trying. It was like unreal how many different things were responding really well to low sulfur. I remember a patient coming in who she told me she had been detoxing. And I asked her how long. She said about 3 years she'd been detoxing and just felt terrible, like brain fog and fatigued and oh, but she's doing all this detox therapy. So I asked her what she was taking and she's taking a laundry list of sulfur supplements, right? Lipoic acid and garlic and methionine and NAC and glutathione and, you know, all these detox supplements. I said, okay, I want you to stop all of that. Do the slow sulfur thing. It's fine. She wasn't detoxing. She couldn't process the sulfur. She was taking in too much sulfur. So we just got rid of that and she felt totally fine, like fabulous after that. So the point is, oh yeah. So I was working with all these other, lots of other conditions. And then this was back, you know, we're talking about in like 2010, 2009, something like that. Then people started coming in with these SIBO tests. SIBO back then was not a thing. But people were coming in with these tests saying they had high hydrogen or high methane. They didn't test these hydrogen sulfide at that point. So they had these test results and their guts were a wreck and they're like, can you help? And I didn't know anything about SIBO really. And, but I was like, well, what the hell? Let's just put 'em on a low sulfur diet and see what happens. And a large percent of them got better. Like they had significant improvement by doing low sulfur diet, even though their tests, whatever these hydrogen or methane things, which kind of led me to this thinking that maybe sulfur issues are underlying those other types of SIBO, which I think can be true. I don't think it's always true, but I think there are situations where it seems to play out that way because if you just do low sulfur with them, their symptoms seem to resolve. Now, I will also say, as I've said before, I don't test SIBO. I don't do methane, sulfur, hydrogen sulfide testing. The test is the program. I have had many, many, many, many patients who show up telling me about how they tested high in some sort of SIBO and then they went through a treatment protocol and they tested again, and they were happy to report that they didn't have any more of that kind of SIBO. And I always follow up to say, did you feel better? And they usually say, nah, not really. It's like symptoms have what seem to be, seem to me to be a fairly loose correlation with test results. So I don't really do much testing. I am more just focused on symptomatics because ultimately I think that's where the pudding is.

Yes. So in the SIBO community, and I mean, especially like the research that Mark Pimentel has done, you know, they've identified certain bacteria that they say are culprits in hydrogen sulfide SIBO, or what they're now calling intestinal sulfide overproduction or ISO. And I believe, I think the 3 that they've targeted, or maybe even only 2 of these, Dysulfovibrio, Fusobacterium, and Bilophila wadsworthii. But in your book, you list many more. And I'm also seeing in my experience, cuz I do do stool testing and sometimes I do metagenomic sequencing, that more than anything else, there's lots of cases where Klebsiella seems to be the dominant sulfur-fixing bacteria that's causing an issue. And I know there's others. Can you list what those other sulfur-reducing bacteria are? You put it in your book. Yeah.

No, I didn't. Off the top of my head, I can't. I know I put it in my book and there's a, there's a article that actually lays it out really well and kind of talks about the sulfur cycle.

I found the page. Yeah. H. pylori, Dysulfovibrio, Campylobacter jejuni, E. coli, Clostridium, Enterobacter bilifila, Wadsworthia, Staph aureus, Streptococcus anginosus, and Klebsiella.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And those are the kinds of things that we see all the time on stool tests. For people that got dysbiosis and we see those bacteria showing up. Now I ain't saying that they're only showing up to make hydrogen sulfide, but they are making hydrogen sulfide. And so maybe, maybe they're doing that for a reason.

Yeah. Okay. So the diet, let me just clarify the diet that you use. It's no essentially cruciferous vegetables, onions, garlics. I assume the other things like leeks and chives and everything else in that family also out.

Yeah.

And alliums, I guess. And then no meat. Also no fat?

No, I don't—

or do you? I don't say no fat.

Oh, okay.

That's because that's, that's the protocol I've, I had learned, but—

I mean, Maria's, I just send people to Maria to get oriented to the diet. And I think, I think maybe the first week is still vegetarian just to, just to do that break. But it is not part of the 2-week elimination. Meat is not part of the 2-week elimination anymore. Because I just, it was exceedingly rare that somebody had a meat reaction. And when they did, it was so crazy, over-the-top dramatic that it seemed like something else was going on. It was not a sulfur thing.

Yeah.

Some, what is that? Avogadro. Yeah.

Alpha-gal reduce.

And I usually have people taking Mozyme. I titrate the dose up on that to see at what dose they feel the best. Might be doing, uh, butyrate, might be doing— I am almost always doing autonomic regulation therapies along with it because, I mean, we're going to be out of time. I don't have time to go into the autonomic piece of things, but I feel like I was late coming to the realization of how central that is. And the fact is, I think it is becoming a much more dominant picture in overall, in all of the chronic diseases that we're seeing. People are so much more complicated now than they were when I started practice. And I think that is in large part due to a much more prevalent and dramatic autonomic dysregulation that We're talking about people who are overstressed essentially, and that just aren't managing it well, or this goes beyond that. People have for lots of reasons. I think it is, yes, it's that. But I think that there are exposures that we have now that are dysregulating us in ways that can come back and manifest themselves as sort of a, anxiety and feeling wired. But I don't think— to just call it out, I think things like EMF exposure, the density of the fields around us has increased probably a thousandfold, a millionfold maybe in the past 15 years. When you think about the saturation of our environment with Wi-Fi, Now it's raining down from the skies. I mean, we know that those things have an impact on our autonomic balance. And so it's like the ocean we're swimming in. So it's hard to even tell what the effect is that it is having, but I don't, I have no doubt that it's having one. These vaccinations, I wrote a chapter for Neil Nathan's book about actually two chapters, but one chapter in particular about these mRNA shots and the autonomic impact of those on the body, which is not trivial. There is a reality, not in my belief, just in my clinical experience and reading the experience of other doctors, that shedding is a real thing, that exosomes are coming off of people who have had vaccinations. So even people that have not had vaccination are exposed and those exposures have an autonomic impact. And so these are, I mean, this is just some of the stuff. Of course, there's all kinds of other chemicals and stuff in our environment that are contributing, but it's all piling up on us and leading to significant, widely prevalent autonomic dysregulation that makes everything else harder to treat. It's much harder to get the body to respond even to a good set of therapies if there's that underlying autonomic imbalance in place. So I am a big proponent of having people do autonomic therapies. I have Maria's trained in Safe and Sound Protocol, which I think is an extremely valuable addition to almost every therapy that I am setting people up with. And there are others, lots of people know about autonomic therapies, but it is, I think in many ways, the elephant in the room when it comes to having people that aren't responding to whatever program I'm putting out.

So it sounds like you're using primarily diet as a tool. So what about, I assume of course that there are people who go through the diet and they're still bloated and they're still miserable at the end of it. So then do you, do you move towards antimicrobials or, uh-huh, what other kinds of interventions do you then go to for someone with something that looks like a hydrogen sulfide SIBO presentation?

It's like a sulfur problem is one of many possibilities of why somebody might feel bloated or funky in their gut. And so I usually start there because it has the best, I think the best potential to get some symptomatic relief for, for the people that it fits. If it doesn't, then it's like, all right, check that box. We looked into it, didn't, didn't seem to be a thing. And then any number of, you know, it's like we all have our ways of trying to figure out why somebody feels the way they feel. I am doing testing, hormone testing, all kinds of blood testing and trying different kinds of diet elimination diets or different diet work with people, various homeopathics that I, you know, kind of homeopathic programs that for some people are home run on getting their gut working the way it needs to. So it's really just, it's like if that one gets ruled out, then you just do what any practitioner should do. And that is, all right, well, what's the next on the list of usual suspects and kind of knock it down the list.

So I heard of, of this method of using MSM, which is methylsulfonylmethane, which is a sulfur-based supplement as an antimicrobial for someone with severe bloating. And the doctor who described it, I believe it was on Neurology Kobe's podcast, she said she didn't discriminate between what kind of SIBO people were presenting with. And anyway, I, I started taking it myself and, and followed her protocol up to like the max dose and, and. Sure enough, it cleared out my SIBO for a time, like everything that kills bacteria does, and then it came back as it always does. But anyway, she said, you know, she didn't matter whether somebody had sort of a hydrogen sulfide SIBO presentation or methane, seemed to be very successful with the methane in particular. And I'm curious what you think, you know, somebody who's got a sulfur issue, would MSM be an issue for taking it? Would that make sense that that would be too much sulfur for them, or might that have the same effect as the, Epsom salts.

Well, I'll start that by saying what I've often said, which is that people are weird.

Mm-hmm.

And so there are, I mean, I've had patients, I can think of one in particular, very sensitive to sulfur, like all kinds of dietary sulfur. The one way that she could keep herself symptom-free is taking 25 grams of MSM a day. I mean, That's a lot of sulfur. Yeah, but for her it worked. And I have had a few other patients since then who heard about that protocol, who did the protocol. Oh my gosh, my gut is completely better. I have at least an equal number of patients who did the protocol and it wrecked them. It was not a good experience at all. Now, I feel confident that I don't know the doc who, or whoever the practitioner is who put that protocol together. I have no question that she's very competent and that she has, if she were working individually with people, maybe she could have guided in a way that would not have led to that. But what I suspect is true is that it's going to work for some people and it ain't going to work for others. And probably you just gotta do it and find out. Like, I doubt that there's a test that says, oh yeah, that's not gonna work for me. Yeah.

So you did in the book mention some of the genetics of sulfur, and I know that like CBS and SUO, S-U-O-X maybe, were some of the SNPs that are relevant. Can you talk about this a little bit?

Yeah, a little bit. I think in the book I mentioned that I don't give it too much weight. And I would say I give it even less weight now.

Okay.

You know, I, the one that gets the most attention probably is CBS. And I have seen people with CBS problems, you know, CBS glitches on CBS who have gut problems and I've seen people with CBS glitches with no gut problems. And so like, well, you know, okay, people are weird. I think I also mentioned in the book, I don't remember, I haven't read it in a while, but I think I mentioned that sulfite oxidase, the SUOX, that one, it seems pretty consistent to me that if somebody, now I've never seen homozygous on that, I've only ever seen heterozygous, but if somebody has a heterozygous glitch on that, it is pretty much guaranteed they've got sulfur issues going on, which makes sense to me. There's only one way for sulfite to get converted to sulfate, and that's through that enzyme. And so if you slow it down, it makes sense that it's gonna cause problems.

And is that where molybdenum comes into play or?

Yep.

That's exactly where it comes in.

Okay.

That is its role.

Okay. And what about hydroxocobalamin? Where does that come into play?

Hydroxocobalamin is, it oxidizes hydrogen sulfide in the periphery. And so it's not converting it to sulfate, but it's converting if you have excess hydrogen sulfide in the blood, hydroxy cobalamin will oxidize it up to sulfite, which will then get converted to sulfate by the SUOX enzyme.

Okay. So it helps if you've got excess in the— yeah, I know that's, that's one of the supplements you mentioned in the book. To move on to one other subject in our last 5 minutes, I noticed on your website that you were interested in peptides, and I'm curious if you recommend oral BPC-157. For gut issues and, and if you think it's effective and which forms you prefer.

I do. I think, I think peptides are kind of a really interesting new kid on the block. So I do with BPC-157. I have people take it orally. I happen to just use a company called Integrated Peptides, which has a couple of good formulations. I'm blanking right now on the powder that they have for the gut. It's like their only comes in a jar gut powder. It has BP-157 and some other good akkermansias in there. But that one I find to be very helpful, but I'll also for some people just do BPC-157 just as supplement. Yeah, there are some other peptides, thymogen alpha-1, I think can be—

What is it?

Thymogen alpha-1. Mm-hmm. Just a really important immune modulator.

This is injectable or is this also oral?

That's oral. Yeah. Yeah. These are all oral.

Okay.

So yeah, I, I do think peptides are a really important new kid on the block in terms of, I mean, not standalone, always with all the other kinds of additions that we're doing. But yeah, I think it's a valuable tool.

Yeah. I, I don't know if publicizing them better now, but I definitely have had more clients ask me about it and it's, it's an expensive supplement, so I don't just like jump to that. But if they bring it up, I'm like, well, sure, if you wanna spend on it, I'm happy to have you take it. So yeah, no, I, I've, I've looked at the InfiniWell ones that have the extended release and the quick release. And so I, you know, I was thinking which, which would be better for gut health. You know, if you're wanting it in the small intestine, I'm thinking would be quick release and in large intestine extended release. I'm not sure what the—

Yeah, I think that's, I think it's generally how I would do it.

Yeah.

Or I mean, for acute, acute things, I'm gonna do a quick release for more chronic. I'll tend to do more extended release.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think they're good and they are expensive. You know, when I give it to patients, I always apply a discount. I drop ship it and discount it. So yeah.

Yeah. So, um, I had one client who I think had some success with gastritis and that seems to be one thing where sometimes you just get a, a person who for whatever reason cannot seem to get rid of gastritis. Like that's just like no matter everything else fixes, but that one thing is just, and, and that's one place where I think it feels useful to me.

Yeah, I agree. Inflammatory stuff. I agree. You know, another therapy, what do we got? 1 minute left. How about that? Another thing that I am doing quite a bit is just infrared light applied to the abdomen. Oh, there are actually studies on using it to treat gastritis and other inflammatory bowel stuff because with a powerful enough light and especially with infrared, you get penetration into the gut and it has all kinds of good shifting effects on the gut bugs and the microbiome and inflammatory state of the bowel. So yeah.

Is this with a clinical grade infrared light or the kind of infrared light somebody can afford?

Yeah, no, I just Amazon, like you type in red light therapy and there are all kinds of different ones that are available and they have different levels of power to them. Like over the gut, I probably wouldn't do like LED lights. I would do There's some that are quite a bit more, sort of more like a spotlight. Red light. Yeah.

Interesting.

So, all right.

Yeah, we have delved into all sorts of interesting things and I'm not sure anybody could wind that up into a useful protocol, but it was certainly an interesting subject. So I will definitely point people to you and your work and articles and stuff. If you want to send me links, I can share those in the show notes. And I'll see if I can set up some sort of affiliate thing with that water. I don't know if they do that, but if they do, then you could support the show if you're gonna get some deuterium depleted water. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Excellent.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being with us.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Yeah. Well, that was definitely not a Gut Health 101 conversation, but some really interesting tidbits there.

If you're interested in getting deuterium depleted water or any of the supplements mentioned in the podcast, please check out my affiliate links in the show notes to support the show. You can also support the podcast by buying supplements at a discount from my Fullscript dispensary, ordering tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab Store, or using my affiliate links to iHerb, which is available worldwide, or Amazon. And just to note that you can use my Amazon link to buy anything, not just supplements, and support the podcast. So I'd love it and really appreciate it if you'd bookmark my link and use it for regular Amazon purchases. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at HighDessertHealthCoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.