Ep108: What Is The Gut Microbiome And Why Is It So Important To Your Health?

Hello everyone and welcome to the Rebel Nutritionist, the podcast that breaks with fancy and fad nutrition tips and offers real functional nutrition and health advice. I'm your host, Meryl Brandwine, and I'm the owner of the Brandwine Institute for Nutrition and Wellness, a holistic wellness center located in beautiful South Florida. I earned the name the Rebel Nutritionist because I help my clients uncover the real truth about how food can truly heal your life. Each week we will share with you stories, tips and real science based information about living healthier. We'll focus on nutrition, movement and emotional balance so that when it comes to the real skinny about health, you'll have all the information you need to meet your own personal goals. If you're tired of feeling frustrated because you can't get to the root cause of your illness, or if you feel like your healthcare providers just aren't listening, are unable to lose the weight you've wanted to, or just want to be more proactive about your health, tune in and get the support you need to get real results. I know that together we can help you feel great. We're excited to show you the way to long term healthy living. So let's dive in and get started. Welcome back everybody to the Rebel Nutritionist podcast. Podcast part two. Woohoo. Here we go with Dr. Cheryl Burdett. We finished part one with our allergy and sensitivity conversation and we're going to dive right in to part two, everything about the gut microbiome. So welcome back Cheryl.

Thank you for having me.

So let's get right into it. Clarify for people what is the gut microbiome? Because I think, know people say to me, oh well, I don't really need to test my gut because you know, I don't have problems pooping and I don't have indigestion or reflux. So like explain this to people please.

Yeah, absolutely. And so. So unfortunately, or fortunately, maybe let's just say fortunately, glass half full. What starts in the gut doesn't stop in the gut. Because if that were the case, the foods we eat being broken down into nutrients would never get into our body. So of course we're able to absorb Nutri. And what happens in the gut has this effect on the rest of our body, a systemic effect. So now if you have the opposite, maybe you have a reaction to food that creates inflammation that doesn't necessarily stay in the gut. And so it will create a trigger for things called cytokines and interleukins. And they, they have names like IL6 and TNF Alpha but those float around the body and they tend to create inflammation in the area that might just be your genetic susceptibility. So maybe we are weaker in terms of cardiovascular disease. Well, though those inflammatory mediators can damage cholesterol, make it something called oxidized ldl, which is the one that's most likely to form a plaque or maybe just more of a sensitive brain. And so that same IL6, that inflammatory mediator from the gut in the brain, it can block our ability to make certain neurotransmitters like serotonin. And so this can be a reason for feeling depressed. So that inflammation that starts in the gut doesn't just stay there. And if in some people their genetic weak spot isn't the gut, and so they don't feel anything there, but they'll feel it elsewhere in the body. And so, so this means that our gut based inflammation can be responsible for a lot of symptoms. Now if you look at, for example, people with irritable bowel syndrome, they do have an increased risk of depression over people that don't have irritable bowel syndrome. But you might have a stronger gut, you don't feel it there. And the inflammation that starts there is still a reason why you're feeling more depressed. So it has an effect across the body, not just in the gut.

And I think people are seeing that more and more, especially with all the literature that's come out about it. And it's making its way across every social media news channel, which is good. It's alerting people to that. So things like arthritis can be connected to our gut, right?

Yes, 100%. And so there are a couple of mechanisms, at least by which that would be true. So the first we talked about in part one, for these food, food sensitivities. And so you're making these antibodies, they're attacking food because they're confused. That food leaked through intact, it was larger than normal, you made these antibodies, but those antibodies aren't perfect, they attack the food. But some of the proteins in your joint tissue can look similar. And so they cross react and they begin to attack the tissue and the joint. The second thing that can happen, you have this inflamed gut, you're more permeable. It causes the microbiome, the bacteria that's there to become imbalanced. And we begin to grow more of these bad guys. And our good guys begin to dwindle. And those bad guys shed little bits of their outsides. They're called lipopolysaccharides. And Then those get absorbed because the gut is leaky. And so those lipopolysaccharides, they actually, for example, if I biopsy the synovial fluid of somebody with rheumatoid arthritis, I will find more of these lipopolysaccharides in the joint tissue that came from the gut. And so, so these things that happen in the gut float around and then can ignite inflammation in other parts of our body. And so it's another way that what's happening in the gut contributes to rheumatoid arthritis. I guess I'll add a third to that. And in your healthy, normal microbiome, it's the good guys, they send signals to the rest of your immune system that says, hey, we feel good here in the gut. Things are going right. Don't get crazy. The rest of the immune system can kind of take a break, calm down. So they directly send anti inflammatory signals that keep the immune system in balance. And this is the beauty of these gut based interventions for immune health. They don't suppress the immune system. If you get a cold or a flu, in fact, you'll probably fight that better. But they also don't augment the immune system. So if you have an autoimmune disease, it doesn't make it worse. These are the ways we put that immune system back in balance.

Right, that's great. So back, so let's go back to talking about, right, the, the entire system. I mean, digestion starts in the mouth, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So our oral health, our stomach, you know, in terms of digestive enzymes. So let's talk because so many people are on these proton pump inhibitors or acid blockers, right? The, the nexiums of the world or the, you know, the pantoprazole, whatever. Right? All of these, these proton pump inhibitors and acid blockers. Can you talk for a minute about how bad they are?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, and, and I don't even have to say it, the side of the box says it. So if you look right there in the insert or the side of the box, it says not intended for long term use. And so, but yet so many people get stuck on them and they take them for forever. But so the first thing is that they decrease hydrochloric acid and that is stomach acid. And that is the first, well, maybe not the first phase, like you said, it starts in the mouth, digestive enzymes. But then our, our second big player is the hydrochloric acid in the stomach that should break down all these carbohydrates. And proteins and break them down into these little bits that the immune system won't see as weird or foreign. And so when you block hydrochloric acid, you don't break these proteins down like you should and they look weird to the immune system. And this isn't your opinion. This isn't my opinion. This is peer reviewed medical research that says that what they're called, PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, have increased the incidence of both IG and IgE allergies and sensitivity. So it's a known fact that they do that. In addition to that, they also interfere with what are called osteoblasts. And osteoclasts, those are the, those are cells in your bone matrix that determine bone density. So they impair bone density as well. And it looks like they could be having some impact on the mitochondria. Another thing they do is they inhibit your body's production of something called diamine oxidase. And that's the major enzyme that degrades histam. So now here's this thing that was supposed to be helping you feel better in the gut, but it's inhibiting your ability to break down histamine that'll make you feel worse in your gut. And so again, you see why people get just stuck on these and then, and aren't able to move forward.

Right? And so, you know, it's, it goes back to. And this is the work that we do. I mean, I get so many people in here who want, you know, who want off, who are not feeling well, and we do, we get them off. I mean, it's definitely a process, right? But it is the process of rebuilding that whole system, right? So when people come in and they're like, oh, wait a minute, but, but aren't I, you know, we talk about the whole acid thing. Well, if I don't take my, my, my, my medication, I'm going to feel that heartburn. And I'm like, okay, right. So explaining to them that really it's because they have too little acid, not too much acid. Can you address that?

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple other things happen with those that I haven't even mentioned. And first, create atrophy of the gut lining. And so the second thing they do is there are these cells that produce hydrochloric acid. So you get on something to block acid. The body's wise, it goes, oh my gosh, I need acid. So it makes more of those cells. So now you have even more of the cells that make acid. So you come off the medication and you go and you go, oh my gosh, I burn even more than I did when I went on to this. Well, that's to be expected because your body made more cells to produce more hydrochloric acid. So it feels wor. The, the, the. They also decrease blood flow to the gut, which atrophies the lining. So now your lining is even thinner. So yes, you feel worse. So you can't cold turkey. You have to go slow. It has to be a stepwise process. But yes, you think that, that, that kind of feeling of it's, it's worse, not better when you go off is absolutely because of the havoc that they've wreaked in the body. And now you gotta retrain slowly wean decrease those hydrochloric acid cells if you much. But to your point, there's this whole group of people that, and it's a larger group than the first one that will feel reflux, that will feel heartburn because they're not making enough acid. And I know that sounds so weird on face, but you're going to have to handle a little bit of chemistry with this, with me to walk through it. And so that chemistry is ph. And so normally the PH of the stomach is very acidic. It's a ph of two. And remember, when ph goes up, that means you're more alkaline. Well, the whole rest of your body is a seven. So let's say you're not making enough hydrochloric acid, so you're a ph of four. Well, four is not a strong enough signal. So when we have nice strong acid, when we have a ph of 2, it sends a signal to this little muscle that's right on the bottom of the esophagus called the lower esophageal sphincter and it tells it to clamp. So good healthy acid tells the sphincter to clamp at the bottom of the esophagus so nothing can go up. It also tells this other sphincter at the bottom of the stom up, so everything goes down. So you should be a ph of 2, but you're not doing that great making stomach acid. You're a ph of four. You don't send a good strong signal, that pH of 4 begins to drift up into the esophagus that's used to a 7. It's still too acidic for the esophagus. It hurts. You don't send a signal to the bottom of the stomach to open so everything sits more, it ferments. Fermenting creates gas that Creates pressure. And so you're sending this. What would be weaker stomach acid up, but it's still strong compared to normal tissue. So you burn. So now you get on something that blocks acid. So now you make even less. So now your sphincter stays open even more. So now things don't break down even more. So more gas, more bloating, more pain, on and on. And you think you need these things more and more, and then, you know. And you're stuck. Yeah. And you're in the wrong direction completely.

Absolutely. Wow, that was a great explanation. Thank you. You know, I'm just envisioning that, right? Like, the people listening going, oh, that's really what's happening. Right. I mean, yeah, we need about four more hours to have you go through the rest of the body to do that. Right. But so. So let's lead into that by saying, you know, and people are always going to say, well, what's the, you know, how do I resolve that? Well, that's the work that we do. Right. The work that you. When you're with a clinician who knows what they're doing, they are systematically going through, you know, from the top down. Which is why it's so important to really work with a practitioner who knows this work and not just, you know, I. It makes me nuts. And I talk about this all the time on pretty much every podcast. Like, you can't just trust an influencer on Tick Tock or on Instagram or on Facebook who says, use this product to take care of reflux. Use this. Like, it's way more than that.

You know, I wouldn't trust hearing me on the Internet. And what I mean by that is I haven't sat down with the patient yet. There's no way I can treat a billion people. All the same, it's not going to work. I. We have a billion listeners right now.

Right.

Anyway, but, but, but I mean, we have to sit with people, we have to hear their story. All of this is individualized and so, sure, there can be grains of truth. The same is true for researchers. Not even. Not even. Like, here's this beautiful study, and I love it, and I'm so excited about it. And there was 80% efficacy rate. Sounds great, right? Unless you're the 20%, then it's meaningless to you. And so until someone sits down with you and hears your history and your story, there's. There's no way you're getting the best care.

Absolutely. Amen to that. Hey, everyone, you're listening to the Rebel Nutritionist Podcast. Which is sponsored by the Rebel Kitchen. The Rebel Kitchen course, Nutrition for Optimal immunity, is a four week culinary program that will take you from that 5pm dreaded feeling of, oh my gosh, what do I cook? I have nothing in my house. Stressed out feeling to making healthy, homemade meals that can be on the table in 30 minutes or less. Each Rebel Kitchen course provides you with everything you need for 30 days of nutritious meals for you and your family, including cooking demonstrations and videos, meal plans, customizable grocery lists, and more. You know, I'm all about small, consistent changes. And if you've tried those restrictive fad diets that insist you change everything up and only eat one way, you'll know they are almost impossible to stick to. That's why I love the Rebel Kitchen, where everything is customizable to fit your health needs and personal food choices, but also supports you making consistent, manageable changes in your kitchen. At just $37 per course, this is an affordable, supportive program that gives you four weeks of meal planning, kitchen prep, support, and more. Ready to join me in the Rebel kitchen? Head to merrellbrandwine.com and hit the button Rebel Kitchen, and you can sign up there. All right, so let's take it now from now, all this stuff is not really getting digested in your gut because it's, you know, you're a mess there. And now all of a sudden it's trying to go into, you know, the whole small intestine piece and oh, wow, now everybody's got sibo, right? Yeah, right. I mean, again, every. So many people are walking around with it and. Right. We're testing for it, we're. So let's touch on that because I know so many people are so curious about that. Can you kind of. Let's lead into that.

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, you're adding one more thing I didn't come up with already about why these PPIs are not so good for us. Because not only is that stomach acid there to break down foods, it's also there to support the right microbiome, the good, healthy flora. And if we talk to our good guys, our Bifidobacter and our Lactobacillus, they've evolved with us for thousands of years. They're really good at dealing with the acidity that should be there, that ph. In fact, that is where they thrive. And so. But if we talk about the bad guys, they don't do so well in that environment. In fact, some bugs like H. Pylori will. Will even try to do things to suppress Your hydrochloric acid. So they can live longer. And that just makes sense. Right? Part of this acid is there to protect us from pathogens from bacteria that was on food, things that were maybe undercooked, et cetera, et cetera. And so if we start to block our stomach acid, we aren't going to kill off bad bugs as well as we should. So now we can get something called sibo. Like you mentioned, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where the wrong bacteria start to hang out out there. They grow more and more. They don't break things down as well. They, they, they literally create gases. This is how we even do our testing around them. We have people breathe into a bag and you measure the gas. You measure methane. Yes. The one that comes from cows. And the discussion around global warming, that can be coming from you as well. And it's just as pretty as it sounds. And so. But it doesn't. Right. And feel good. Lots of huge gas producing hurts, pushes upwards, fermentation. You're not breaking things down like. And then another part of that is it doesn't even have to be bad guys. So in every little part of your of your body, we have a different microbiome. I have different bacteria growing on my elbow than my armpit, than my stomach, then my small intestine, then my large intestine. So I block stomach acid. I can't break things down. I don't kill the bugs. I should. But the other thing it does is that signaling. I mentioned opening up the sphincter. So things move like they should and it stimulates something called peristalsis. That's the movement of the gut. So if your gut doesn't move, things sit there longer than they should and they begin to grow things. Think about that Tupperware that you, you left under the seat of the car. Right? It didn't move like it should. It should have gotten into the dishwasher. That stuff should. But it grows. The same thing happens internally. If we're not moving like we should, things begin to grow more than they should. And so bacteria that would be perfectly fine in the lower part of your gut. Gut, you're not having the movement like you should. It begins to drift up and it gets into the wrong areas and kind of creates more of a traffic jam and can hurt when it gets to the wrong areas of the body as well. Yeah, thank you for reminding me that they do even more harm than I was initially mentioning.

Yeah, exactly right. It is that trickle down effect. Well, look, we see so many people with sibo and so, you know, it is. And the resolution of that, I want people to know, you know, it. There's. And the literature is pointing to it. It is becoming more of an. A chronic issue than even an acute one. Right. Chronic, meaning it comes back. It goes away. It comes back. And look, we have great success treating it herbally as opposed to the very expensive medications. Can you just address the medication versus, let's say an herbal kind of concoction for sibo?

Yeah, they're going to be 500 to $700 a month, if you're lucky here. And the data set, and they don't necessarily even work as well. We have trials comparing those medications to botanicals, various herbal formulas, and showing that the herbal formulas can often be more effective. So certainly no reason to start with. And, you know, we won't get into all this, but if you've got the script filled in Canada, you'd pay much less for it. But there's really just no reason to drive across the border. The botanicals. One reason that we see more efficacy from botanicals is they're just not as overused as antibiotics. So we just don't have the same level of resistance to them. The second thing is they tend to work in multiple ways. When you're selecting a drug, you want one compound that binds to one thing the strongest, and that's what you're going to pick. Well, botanicals have many compounds in them, so some might kill the bacteria, but some of those compounds even do things like get through their biofilm. So bacteria put these shields up around them called biofilm that make it harder for the antibiotic to get there. Well, botanicals will often do things to help pierce this biofilm. Botanicals can do things to increase your own immunity. So it's this, this combination epigenetic effect that can often make botanicals a little easier to use. And they're also more sparing of our good, healthy flora so they don't knock out all your good guys and attempt to restore everything.

Right. Awesome. Yes. And thank you for that. So, so to that end, you know, I, I know, you know, everybody seems to be on probiotics every, you know, I, I have this going on. I'm just going to take a probiotic. Right. And everybody's on a different probiotic. Whatever. I mean, mean, probiotics can support health. It's so, you know, but it's certainly not. Again, obviously, you need to sit down with the client. It's a one on one thing getting to know what, you know, what their system may or may not need, but you know, probiotics are certainly not going to cure everybody. Can you just sort of reiterate that in a, in, in a, in a science?

Yeah, and especially not just, and especially ones not just kind of randomly pulled off the shelf. First of all, there are quality issues. A lot of direct to consumer brands. What you're buying isn't even alive anym. So this is an area that it's important to work with a clinician to make sure you're getting a good clinician line that's been tested and verified that it actually has live, what are called colony forming units in there, because many just don't. Second, there are, if you're buying the wrong strains, they can even produce histamine rather than reduce histamine. So they don't follow the premise of first do no harm. And then third, if you're working with a clinician, they're often doing more things like a comprehensive digestive stool analysis that will actually show you which of your strains are high or low. So you're not just picking the wrong thing. That makes you even more imbalanced. Because even the good guys, if you have an overgrowth of them, they can begin to create harm at some point. So having this information first to know which strains are going to work better for you or even to know which strains are more indicated in that pathology makes a world of difference. It's just, it's a very random shotgun approach that doesn't follow the premise of first do no harm. When you just wander down an aisle and grab any probiotic out there. There.

Absolutely. Thank you. That was, that was a great, great clarification on that. So I do want to be mindful of your time. So I have one other question or sort of comment that we can sort of have a dialogue about. But you know, it still goes back to we have to pay attention to the food we're eating. Right. It comes back to we need to eat real food. Because food has me. We keep hearing about these different things, these different compounds and foods that we know speak to our gut, that we've talked about for a long time time. Short chain fatty acids and polyphenols and all of these compounds that you're never going to get from just a supplement. You've got to get it from food to really. I mean, that's how our bodies were designed. Food is information for all of our cells. I mean, how do you want to go ahead and you know, like just, just expand on that?

Yeah, absolutely. So I will use some what we call functional foods that are various protein shakes and whatnot, especially to get people started. But the ultimate goal is people to a whole foods diet that is the one that is least inflammatory for them. Because the gut is the size of a tennis court. If you are eating something that inflames you all over, all over a tennis court inside your body, that will make you hugely sick. But if you are eating things that nourish your system, this can be so much more profound in terms of making you well. And there's not a drug out there that does what foods do for us. When I look to the literature I can see that women that, that eat their five servings of fruits and vegetables a day are percent less likely to have breast cancer. And there's no medication out there that will do that for us. And I haven't even started talking about the little things that whole foods get broken down into. We all know fiber is good for us, but something you mentioned, short chain fatty acids. Fiber gets broken down by good healthy flora into these short chain fatty acids and we absorb them and they affect our brain. They tell our brain to think better. They're anti inflammatory in the gut they might be even as anti inflammatory as some of the medications that are out there. And so when we're thinking so it's not even just nutrients, it's the cell to cell signaling keeping the immune system imbalance and keeping us from being inflamed and, and then all of the rest of it from there. I know a lot about food, but I still keep a food journal and I know that when I do that, that, that I do better. And so if we go through my food journal, you're going to find a lot of chia seeds in there. That high fiber anti inflammatory you're going to find. I'm attempting to get a vegetable at every meal throughout. Best thing I can do is have a high quality diet. And the most specific way to find one for myself is to figure out what my body is reacting to and then work around those limitations. So yes, whole foods, absolutely right.

And one thing that I do want to just kind of end on this note, you know, people are like especially oh well is it this diet? That diet? It's, it's, it's the diet that works for you. We've got to get out, out of putting people into the box. And I find, and the reason I actually mentioned the short chain fatty acid piece as well is because we find most abundant short chain fatty acids in our root vegetables or let's say in our starchy vegetables and people who are trying to avoid carbs. This is a big problem, right. In terms of they're staying away from a whole food group that is really going to nourish them in the best way possible. So we have to not, you know, we've got to get rid of that mentality from the 80s like, don't eat white potatoes, don't eat this, don't eat that because it's starchy. Right?

Absolutely. Anybody who's doing one of those styles of diet, I challenge you. And to make sure you are tracking your grams of fiber and what you're going to find is you are really struggling to get towards that 20, 25 grams of fiber. And that's. That has so much health benefit associated with.

With it. Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you for this conversation. We could probably do this for, you know, a couple of days, talk about all this stuff, but like I said, want to be mindful of your time. And thank you so much for just two great conversations around gut health and allergies. And this has been just amazing. So thank you.

Been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Having me.

Of course, of course. All right, everybody, I think you all have gotten some great information. Make sure you reach out to us with any questions. Happy to answer them. And you know, if you want to get on some of that testing and understanding where your intestinal permeability is or where your sensitivities are, please reach out to us. We can help you understand you a whole lot better. And with that being said, this is your Rebel Nutritionist signing up.

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