Improving Metabolic Health through the Gut: Rich Maurer's HMO Success Story

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Rich Maurer, a citizen scientist and gut health tinkerer who's been scientifically tracking the results on his gut and his hemoglobin A1c, a marker of blood sugar, from using human milk oligosaccharide prebiotics. Rich graduated with with a BS in medical technology from the University of Mount Union and an M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Rich worked as a medical technologist for 8 years and has served as a pastor for the past 28 years. Rich has been married to Karen for 35 years and they have 3 adult children. 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 ebook, 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, Rich.

Yes, thank you, Lindsey Parsons. I really appreciate you having me on your podcast. I have to say, I really enjoy your podcast. I've been listening for probably over a year. And then there's one thing I did not see, though, until recently, that you're actually sitting on a little stool. So I assume you intended that as a play on words.

I did.

The title of your podcast.

I did.

Well, well done there.

Thank you. That's funny you say that because I thought of that like right at the very beginning, but haven't thought of it much since and no one's ever mentioned it. There you go. But yes, that was part of the design of the COVID photo.

Sure. Now everybody knows.

Indeed. Now they do. My secret's out.

So you reached out to me because I had interviewed Beau Berman from Layer Origin about their human milk oligosaccharides or HMO prebiotic, and you'd had some interesting results you're tracking using stool tests following your use of that prebiotic. And we'll get into your results in a minute, but can we start with what your starting conditions were that made you want to try it?

Right. You know, I listen to your podcast and others, and I hear so many people that really struggling with all sorts of health problems. And I always consider myself a fairly healthy person, even though lifelong migraines, lifelong IBSD, decades of asthma, lots of family history of various things. But I said to myself, I'm pretty fit, I exercise, I don't have heart disease, diabetes, cancer. You know, I'm on some prescriptions, but whatever, you know, I'm pretty healthy. But I realized I was fairly fit but not actually that healthy. Then COVID happened. Actually, that, that was a big point. January of 2021, got COVID for the first time, really bad case of it, wasn't hospitalized, so wasn't life-threatening or anything, but really, really sick for a couple of weeks and had some serious gut symptoms from that, a couple of episodes of excruciating gut pain. And my wife was so kind, she started looking for some foods, some diets that could help during that time. So I look back on that time and I say, I thank God for COVID. And I say that carefully not to say that I'm glad that COVID exists, that people would be harmed or killed from it, but the impact of COVID in my life was really beneficial, was a turnaround, helped us to look at our diet, our overall health. So we started on that time a FODMAP diet, which I never heard of before. I'm not sure if it helped, but I think just eating good food and getting rid of these other things. And then the first thing I noticed was migraines went away. I had a migraine 24 hours for 2 weeks. Shortly after that, they were going away. And I think that was mostly elimination of sugar is what that was. And then through nutrition, continued exercise, and then the prebiotics— HMO is one, a prebiotic we'll talk about— I was able to eliminate migraines, IBS-D, asthma. A more recent discovery, which I didn't start with, was that my HbA1c, you know, it's an average of your glucose in your blood. Went down by 14% from a pre-diabetic level to an optimal level, and then also lowered my cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL by 15%, and then went off all prescription meds. And I feel like at age 59, I'm healthier than I've been in, in decades.

That's awesome. And so I'm sure people are interested in particular in the IBS-D. Do you feel that the HMOs had an impact on that, or did something else prior to you trying the HMOs have an impact on that?

That's a great question, and I'm not absolutely certain, but getting off of dairy products seemed to have the biggest impact. I think it's multifactorial, but for me, I think it was the dairy product. You know, I go my whole life and I don't understand that, you know.

I am lactose intolerant, and I knew that, and I took pills for that, you know, lactase digestion tablets for years.

But it wasn't until I read this book that ironically was sitting in the bathroom at a place I was working at.

And it was all about poop. Every single page was a different kind of poop. And then there was one that was called the lactose poop. And it was like, you know, wet, loose, painful.

And I was like, that's exactly what it is when I don't take enough enzymes or when I don't—

I'm not careful or I eat too much and then just try and throw some ice cream on top. That was exactly what it was like.

It took me reading that book to realize that this was long before I was a gut health coach.

Sure. Yeah. Interesting. Just curious, I've just started experimenting with lactate. I've only done it a couple of times. I've been so, quote unquote, afraid of dairy products, although yogurt, some fermented dairy doesn't seem to bother me at all. Does lactate help, you know, in the short term and occasional?

Yeah, I mean, when I do eat dairy now, I will take a lactase enzyme. Yeah, Lactaid is one of the brands of those. Yes, it definitely helps. But I found that it was like, it was never foolproof, right? Like, if I ate too much and then I just tried to stick a dessert on top that had lactose in it, or if I just didn't time it right, maybe I didn't take enough with my meal, or the dose wasn't big enough, or just there was too much food in there, it just didn't mix up right. Take care of the lactose, it was really bad coming out the other end.

Gotcha. Gotcha. No, thank you for that.

Yeah, I stay away from dairy most of the time. It's an occasional treat. So can you just explain a little bit about what HMOs are since it's been a while since I've had that podcast on them?

Sure. HMOs stand for human milk oligosaccharide. An oligosaccharide is a medium-chain sugar. It's non-digestible by humans. So, HMOs would be, would be fit in the larger category of a prebiotic fiber. And again, they're a soluble fiber, indigestible to humans, but they directly feed the good gut bacteria. One of the things that really fascinates me about HMOs is the fact that it's the third leading ingredient in human breast milk, in mother's breast milk., and I used to work in hospital labs. I got a Bachelor of Science degree, but most of my life I've been a pastor. So I definitely look at life through what we call a biblical worldview. And I see this as the Creator, the divine designer, just putting this into his creation. The fact that a large part of mom's breast milk contains these HMOs, which again, since they're not digestible, by the baby or adult, any, any human. It doesn't help the baby directly. It only feeds the baby's beneficial bacteria. So that was all designed and put into HMOs. Now, obviously, HMOs are not human breast milk. It's a derived thing in the laboratory that contains only the HMO and not the other aspects of the breast milk, right?

Derived from cow milk.

I think that's correct, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's if I recall from my conversation with Bo Berman. Yeah. No, that's a beautiful perspective. The other perspective I heard on a podcast yesterday was it may be that we're just the host for the bacteria, that they're actually the ones in charge and we're just the carriers for the bacteria.

There's more of them. There's more of their cells than there are in us.

It's a very pessimistic viewpoint, but yeah, okay, sure, go with that one.

Just a funny viewpoint. Sure. Anyway.

When I have clients dealing with diarrhea or loose stool, I always tell them about tributyrin, which is the best absorbed form of butyrate, which is normally made by bacteria fermenting fiber in your colon. Supplemental tributyrin can help slow your motility down and feed the cells lining your colon, firming up stool, and helping create an oxygen-free environment in the colon, which helps the butyrate-producing bacteria to survive and multiply. Those bacteria are often wiped out after taking antibiotics, which is why tributyrin is a great accompaniment and follow-up supplement if you have to take antibiotics. My new supplement, Tributyrin Max, has 750mg of tributyrin, which is the highest dose currently available in a capsule. You can find it at tributyrinmax.com That's T-R-I-B-U-T-Y-R-I-N-M-A-X.com and use code INTRO15 for 15% off your first order.

What kinds of changes did you see in your stool test results and other test results after being on the Layer Origin HMOs and what dose were you taking?

Right. So let me back up and say, before I discovered HMO, I was taking some other prebiotic fibers, about 5 different ones. For a while. Now I'm down to 2 or 3. So I did a stool test, was on 5 prebiotic fibers, did a second stool test, then started added HMO, and then did a third stool test. And I've got a couple videos out that monitor this progress, but saw by far the most dramatic changes just with the HMO. And, uh, there's 3 keys that I saw which I, I think are really absolutely crucial for a healthy gut or elimination of what would be a leaky gut. The opposite of that would be an increase in butyrate. I'm just going to list these, then we can talk about them. An increase in butyrate, an increase in gram-positive bacteria, which are the quote-unquote healthy bacteria in the gut, an increase in a certain type of gram-positive bacteria, specifically Bifidobacterium. I can sort of talk through those a little bit. Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that is actually what's called a postbiotic. So the gram-positive bacteria in your gut produce that as a byproduct of their own metabolism, which is again another one of these symbiotic relationships that benefits all of us, all the species in our body, because we need butyrate. In fact, in the colon, People are familiar with epithelial cells. It's the, the outer layer of your skin cell. Inside the colon is a layer of epithelial cells called colonocytes. So the only thing— there's a single layer of these colonocytes that separate the interior of your colon, all the fecal material, all the bacteria, all the toxins we'll talk about, a single layer of epithelial cells that separates all of that from your bloodstream. So when we talk about a leaky gut, we're talking about fecal material, especially the toxins that get through that single layer of colonocytes. Something called tight junction will open up and allows these things to get through. But the colonocytes, that's their food. They consume butyrate, so that will heal them and give them the energy that they need to repair or maintain a healthy gut. So that's butyrate, short-chain fatty acid. Secondly, increase in gram-positive bacteria. And why that is so important is because the gram-negative bacteria is what produces this toxin called LPS, lipopolysaccharide. It exists on the cell wall of the gram-negative bacteria. And that is what, if it gets into your bloodstream, it's a toxin. If it gets in your bloodstream, it can travel anywhere in your body and cause systemic inflammation, leading to all manner of metabolic disorders and diseases. So extremely important to reduce that. And one of the ways you reduce LPS is by reducing the numbers of gram-negative bacteria, and you do that by also increasing the gram-positive bacteria. I'll give you my butyrate results. I went from 52% butyrate. And now let me say, these numbers are from a website called BiomeSite. So, what you do is you take your gut test and any gut test that has a FASTQ data, you can upload to BiomeSite. And I love it because they track the changes. So, I've got 3 stool tests that have uploaded to BioMinds site. So I can literally chart it, automatically chart it for you, the increases. Specifically in regard to butyrate, they're not measuring directly the amount of butyrate in your gut, they're measuring the bacteria that produce butyrate. So when I talk about percentages, I'm talking about the percentages of butyrate-producing bacteria. And mine went from 52% to 65%, which at that time, several months ago, put me at the 100th percentile of everyone that had the data on BioMenthe. So that was a massive increase. Since then, my daughter, actually, she's second place as far as I know. She went from 41 to 67%, and now she's at 99%. I just talked to a friend yesterday. He went from 49% to 74%. So that's a tremendous amount of butyrate. You look at his distribution chart and it's literally off the chart. It's so high. And my daughter and this friend only utilized HMO as a prebiotic, whereas I had the other prebiotic fibers prior to that.

Which stool tests are you using that you can afford to be doing these frequent tests on everybody?

Right. Well, of course, I'm not paying for their test, but paying for my wife's and mine. I use Ombre, used to be Thrive Inside. Through discount codes, I don't pay more than $60.

Oh, wow.

So it's not cheap, but compared to some are a couple hundred dollars each, it becomes more tenable.

And is that 16S or is that metagenomic?

That's 16S.

Okay.

Yeah, I believe. I believe.

Okay.

The butyrate results have been fantastic. And then talking about increase in gram-positive bacteria, it's my daughter who holds that record. My friend increased his greatly. His went from 50%— so these are also percentages— 50% gram-positive. So he had an even amount of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria to 87% gram-positive bacteria. Where my daughter went from 62 to 89% gram-positive bacteria. So the vast majority of their colon are filled with healthy gram-positive bacteria, which again is going to reduce the LPS, the toxin, etc. In regard to LPS, just for a moment here, this is just an analogy that helps me think about the damaging effects of toxins. E. coli is a gram-negative bacteria. And most people are familiar with E. coli outbreaks and they cause hospitalizations, unfortunately sometimes deaths. That's a different toxin. That's called a Shiga toxin. And that toxin, of course, it's similar, right? It gets in your bloodstream, it travels throughout, shuts down organs, especially kidneys. So I say that toxin from a gram-negative bacteria can kill you fast, whereas LPS from gram-negative bacteria can kill you slowly is ultimately what it's doing, but it's still a toxin and it's this slow killer really is the way I look at it. And then thirdly, an increase in a certain type of gram-positive bacteria, specifically Bifidobacterium. And, uh, this is where I did a lot of research just looking for reputable research papers, meta-analysis, etc. And again and again what I'm seeing is when you have type 2 diabetes, you consistently show a decrease in Bifidobacteria. And what's happening is that is decreasing insulin sensitivity or increasing insulin resistance. I could talk about that for a moment. Insulin is what drives glucose into the cells. So if you picture your cell is waiting there and it needs glucose, right, to produce ATP and energy and feed itself, And if the receptors for the insulin are blocked, it can't get the glucose. That's insulin resistance. And if that happens and it continues to happen, of course, your bloodstream increases the amount of glucose. And that then is a measurement of the HbA1c, which is a 3-month average of the glucose in your bloodstream. And that leads to the beginning of type 2 diabetes. But when you increase the Bifidobacteria, it increases the insulin sensitivity, which allows that channel of glucose to regularly enter into your cells. So, what I saw is a pretty dramatic decrease. I was at 5.7, my A1C, which was just inside pre-diabetic and barely. If I tested the next day, it might have been 5.6. But over about 4 or 5 months, it went down to 4.9.

Wow.

Which is an optimal level. And as far as I can tell, the only thing I did different was HMO. And of course, during that time, my bifidobacteria went from almost undetectable. It went up some on the prebiotic fibers and then just skyrocketed on the HMO. And specifically, again, sort of a symbiotic relationship.

One particular species of Bifidobacteria that skyrocketed only on HMO is B. adolescentis, and it produces a different type of short-chain fatty acid, propionate, which a key butyrate producer, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, consumes the propionate produced by the Bifidobacteria and then in turn produces butyrate. So again, just that, that symbiotic relationship working together. So those are my changes, both on the, the gut tests and on blood tests and symptoms.

Yeah. And I, and I have certainly seen studies showing that Bifidobacterium decreases because that's the primary, I think Bifidobacterium infantis is the primary bacteria that starts in the gut of a child who's born vaginally, at least. And then all Bifidobacteria in general decrease as you age. And I think our— that decrease is associated with some of the problems of aging or the normal consequences of aging, shall we say. So yeah, an increase in Bifidobacteria seems like that would be a net positive for sure.

Yeah, for sure. And interestingly, so I'm in addition to some family members helping some other friends through this process, you know, before and after test, go on an HMO. And so far Everybody, these are all adults, every single one has almost undetectable Bifidobacteria. That's a small sampling, but it makes you wonder, does the average adult have almost zero Bifidobacteria? The very thing that we need to have lots of. Yeah, it is, it's fascinating. Also, I have found, at least in my own experience, that probiotics— people talk a lot about probiotics, and hopefully they help some people. I was on probiotics for years and I don't see any changes, certainly in symptoms. And obviously it had no impact whatsoever on my gut test, the actual bacteria. And I'm still not on probiotics. I didn't take any probiotics while I was taking these prebiotic fibers. But I do believe that if you're feeding the bacteria with the prebiotics and then you can seed the gut with probiotics, I think that could be really beneficial. For example, talking to my friend yesterday who's got this skyrocketing gram-positive bacteria, fantastic skyrocketing butyrate levels, fantastic. His bifidobacteria was still quite low. It wasn't nonexistent, but it was quite low. So we talked about getting him on a quality probiotic that has mostly bifidobacteria. And so he thought this is a great idea. We're gonna retest it. So I'm, I'm real excited to see how that might turn out.

Yeah, that was something interesting to me when, when I did have the folks from Layer Origin on, you know, they have a probiotic prebiotic combo formula, the Pure HMO Symbiotic, and I was just looking up the strains in it. So it's Bifidobacterium bifidum plus the strain number, Bifidobacterium lactis, Bifidobacterium longum. So they've got 3 of 'em in there so that you can help feed it and seed it as you're going. And it's very reasonably priced at that. I mean, I'm on Amazon right now and I can provide a link for people. It's $29.69 for 40 billion CFU, plus it's got the, the 1,000 milligrams of HMOs in it. So I thought that was a good deal.

Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you for reminding me that, honestly. Can you see how many days supply it is?

I assume that that's a 1-month supply. Let me see. It's 2 capsules, 30 servings per container.

30 servings. Okay. By comparison, just the HMO powder is 1,000 milligrams. So same amount of HMO, but it's a 45-day supply.

Right. So you're gonna spend a little bit more to get the probiotics, but if you need to seed that as well, like if you got no bifidobacteria at all, Exactly.

And that's a, you know, probiotics get crazy expensive. So that, that is a good deal.

Yeah.

Thank you for reminding me of that one.

Yeah. Because I think that's what I had originally tried to take. Anyway, I just went out after our last confession.

This is the second recording with, with Rich because I forgot to press record on the first recording. And after our last recording, I'm like, you know what? I need to try those HMOs again. So I went out and got some. So I've been taking them.

I've been tossing them in my yogurt each day along with any number of other things that I try.

I'm not as scientific as you in the inter— or I should say, I don't have the patience that you do to try one thing at a time and have not done the pre and post testing, but just seeing how it impacts me.

So you're, you're taking the one with probiotics or no?

No, I'm just taking right now, I'm just taking the straight, straight HMO powder.

I do have another bifido. I just keep getting free stuff.

So sometimes I take a lot of stuff just because someone gave it to me.

So sure.

I was, I was on a different probiotic and now I'm on another one that I had left over in my closet.

Oh, I'm, I'm sure you've got a lot, but if you don't retest, how are you going to know if it's helped you?

Oh, believe me, I have all sorts of signs, but I do have post-infectious IBS, so I just, I just keep getting it over and over again.

So my, my body will tend to overgrow proteobacteria, which are those gram-negative, and that will, that will just keep recurring. So I know that I always need to be fighting that battle.

Well, interesting. Yeah, I, I, I could see that. Interesting though, my wife, HMO increased her Akkermansia too much. Akkermansia is, is a, is a very good beneficial bacteria. But what happened is she went so high, 20%. Normally like 1% is pretty good. Most people I found can't really grow any. She went to 20%. What it did is then reduced her butyrate and her gram-positive bacteria, the very good things we're talking about. So I just said stop taking HMO, right? I mean, it's just one of these things. Some people call the Goldilocks.

Yeah.

It doesn't work the same for everybody. So that should be said.

Yeah.

No, there's an interesting thing that I've noticed on stool tests, which is often people who have H. pylori in their gut, and I don't know if the test you're taking shows that one, But often people who have H. pylori have elevated levels of Akkermansia, and I assume that because it causes constipation and some amount of delay in, in emptying, you're having more time for those Akkermansia to be feeding on, because they feed on that mucus layer, and I just assume there's more fuel for them and then they increase. That's my theory anyway.

Excuse this brief interruption, but I wanted to remind you that if you've been struggling with IBS, IBD, reflux, gastritis, SIBO, dysbiosis, Candida, diarrhea, constipation, and all that gut health stuff.

That's my specialty.

So I work with clients not just here in Tucson, Arizona, where I live, but also virtually on video chat. And I offer single appointments as well as a 5-session gut health program for people with tougher gut health issues or mental health or autoimmune challenges that go along with that. Who likely require testing and longer-term follow-up, as well as 12-week programs for weight loss. If you think that a 5-session or longer course of health coaching might help you meet your health goals, you can set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session with me to talk about what you've been going through, and I'll listen and hear if it sounds like I have something in my toolkit that you haven't already tried and let you know if I think that health coaching would be appropriate for you. You can find a link for that in the show notes and I hope to hear from you.

Yeah, no, thank you for that. I'll check to see if ombre has H. pylori. Yeah, that's a really good clue.

Yeah, but I think that people who tend towards the proteobacteria increase. Well, so I actually just listened to a really good— Mark Pimentel is the one who invented the IBS-Smart test and the TrioSmart and has done a lot of research on SIBO. And he's a doctor at Cedars-Sinai. And it was a talk on sort of the state of, of affairs with, with all that research. And he was talking about the fact that the, in SIBO, it's typically certain gram-negative bacteria that increase. So they're all in the family of proteobacteria. I think E. coli is one of them. Klebsiella is another. And I think he may have mentioned a third. And so those are the ones that in particular tend to be increasing in the small intestine of people with SIBO. If you are positive for post-infectious IBS, you have positive vinculin antibodies, that you will typically have a diarrhea type of SIBO, not a constipation type.

Okay.

Although I have, I have, I've seen clients who have positive IBS-SMART tests and have a constipation type. So I think obviously things can mix, mix up. Like you can have an overgrowth of hydrogen-producing bacteria plus an overgrowth of methanogens, and somehow it all nets out to constipation. But yeah, sure.

Have you seen—

maybe not because they'd be asymptomatic. For example, my wife doesn't have dysbiosis symptoms. Do you think she could still have H. pylori? Still possible?

Oh, people have it all the time. I mean, even plenty of healthy people have it. It may just not be overgrown. So if there's no reflux, if there's no constipation, if there's no concerns, then I mean, there's an entire book written about how it has healthy effects on this as well. That's a classic in the world of gut stuff by Martin Blaser, Missing Microbes, it's called. Entire books about H. pylori.

Okay, okay. Yeah, the fact is it's expanding our knowledge exponentially, and nobody knows for sure yet. So it is exciting to, to watch it develop. Yeah, but certain things we do know, you know, with a fair degree of certainty.

Yeah.

And your wife's A1C level went down as well, right? On HMO. It did.

It did. But then because of the results I mentioned, reducing butyrate and gram-positive, took her off of HMO.

Right. But what was the— what was the reduction for her?

So she was only on for like 4 or 5 weeks and she went from 6.0 to 5.4.

Or 5.

So in this pre-diabetic range.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

She wants to be pre-diabetic.

Ideal.

Yeah. Okay. Again, with all of you, how can you be sure the changes can be attributed to the HMOs and not something else like any other diet changes or any other supplements?

Right. Good question. In fact, when I did a video about insulin resistance and HMO, my wife afterwards said, well, you know, about the same time you start HMO, you start on cinnamon, and that is proven in good doses to also lower A1C.

And I was like, oh, you're right.

So what I did was took myself off of all that cinnamon for 3, 4 months— I think it's at least 4 months— and then retested my A1C, and it went down a little lower yet. So I eliminated that variable. And as far as I know, I hadn't made any other changes.

So it went down from the 4.9 or it went down from the—

I went from 5.7 to 5.0 and then it went down from 5.0 to 4.9, which again is statistically insignificant. But the point is it didn't go up after getting cinnamon.

Okay.

Yeah.

At the very least, if you've got an A1C issue, you could take the cinnamon and the HMOs and you'd be in good shape.

There you go.

Yeah.

And cinnamon's yummy too.

So I assume you were taking pills though, not just sprinkling it on your food.

Yeah.

You know, to get 3 to 6 grams.

Oh, that's a lot.

Yeah.

That's, that's the, the recommended amount for reducing A1C.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

And I'm curious, as you were reducing your A1C and your wife too, did you notice any changes in your energy or anything else?

Oh, good question. We both exercise and we've made those nutritional dietary changes. So I don't think either of us noticed it that I can tell.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I understand that your daughter too was taking the HMOs and that she had some other positive health changes.

Yeah, right.

Sort of, uh, accidentally, you might say, within a couple of weeks. Of taking the HMO, she noticed that, that her acne was improved. She would have what would be called mild acne, I think, in, in, in the spectrum of things. But she thought it significantly improved. And one of my videos, she was kind enough, I didn't ask her, to provide before and after photos. And so that intrigued me, of course. So found plenty of research papers that showed, you know, Bifidobacteria and the results that she demonstrated. In her gut tests indeed can reduce acne.

Well, I'm sure that's very appealing to the teenagers out there.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Or adults that have, have acne.

Exactly. Yeah. And so you mentioned at the very beginning about having had COVID and some problems that developed subsequently.

And I don't know if you—

you probably listened to the episodes.

Actually, I'm not even sure if I've published them yet because I've now got like 5 episodes sitting in my queue to publish. But there was at least one episode where someone was talking about having gotten an ulcer from COVID and that that's a very rare side effect.

But you were talking about excruciating stomach pain. I assume you wouldn't know if that's what happened to you.

Yeah, I don't think so.

That—

so that was my first bout of COVID in January 2021. This past January 2022, I had COVID again and discovered over lots of testing over the summer and a dramatic increase in symptoms. I first noticed some symptoms a couple of weeks after I had COVID in January 2022, but then dramatic increase in symptoms over the summer. So lots of testing done and landed on COVID-induced autonomic dysfunction, which is just another type of long COVID symptoms, and, uh, wide variety of symptoms there. But one of them, such as it'll sort of take over, sneak up on me, and it's never the same thing and not always all the symptoms at once, but extreme exhaustion, diarrhea, nausea, feeling flush, rapid increase in both tachycardia and bradycardia. So increase in heart rate, decrease in heart rate, increase in blood pressure. Never had a blood pressure problem in my life, and I'm shooting up to 160. Thankfully, in my case, this can be very debilitating for some people. The symptoms pass quickly. You know, my wife says, uh, you're the epitome of the phrase, this too shall pass. Literally Sunday afternoon, I just felt rotten for 2 hours. But while I'm sitting there, I'm thinking to myself, you know what, in about 2 hours I'm gonna feel good. And I did. So, so I'm very thankful for that. But wide variety of symptoms. So yeah, that might be some your, your listeners might key in on because I had a difficult time, first of all, understanding myself, but also trying to walk through with my practitioner what this might be. And it seems my, my experience and things I've read that doctors just still, even 2 years right into this COVID, post-COVID, first aren't understanding Long COVID, aren't able to see autonomic dysfunction symptoms and then connect the dots.

Yeah, I know I have watched many webinars on Long COVID and how to treat it and some of the tests that you can use to see what's going on on the nutritional level because there are, there's a lot of oxidative damage to cells and you know, you need your antioxidants, you know, in heavy doses post-COVID. There is sometimes damage to blood vessels and you need to keep those open. So I think L-arginine is, you know, is known for helping produce nitric oxide, which keeps your blood vessels open. So there's a number of tools that, that are out there if you are dealing with that sort of thing.

Oh, I'd love to get the links to some of those podcasts because what I—

Oh yeah, happy to.

Yes, thank you. I found so precious little, honestly, it's just that the standard, you know, plenty of hydration and electrolytes and, and exercise, you know, all things I'm already doing. So yeah, that, that'd be great.

Yeah, no problem. So I, I will put all these links, by the way, in the show notes for Biome site where you can upload your results and Ombre and to your videos that show the before and after photos and all the, all the, because they're great videos. I mean, they're really, it's really interesting stuff and you get to see the charts that you've made of of how things have gone up and down.

Anything else that you want to talk about though before we get off?

I don't think so. I think that about covers it, Lindsey.

Okay, awesome. Well, I think that this is actually a much better conversation than our last one, so we've done well.

I, I think so.

I think so.

Okay, well, it was great talking to you.

Yes, you as well, Lindsey.

Say thank you so much.

Well, that was a fun conversation, and Rich is clearly quite knowledgeable on gut health. 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 highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all perfect skin.