Short interview between Dr. Paul Savage (founder of MD Lifespan) and Dr. Nikol Hopkins (nutritionist) about the central role of gut health in longevity medicine. They emphasize gut microbiome diversity (loss of diversity linked to aging and disease), connections between gut bacteria and immune, neurological, and metabolic conditions (autoimmunity, mental health, obesity), and close by inviting viewers to consult MD Lifespan and to contact Dr. Hopkins through referrals or the website.
Chapters
Foreign.
Doctor Paul Savage. I am the founder of MD Lifespan, and we're here today talking to Dr. Nicole Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins and I have known each other for as long as I've been in this space of longevity medicine. Matter of fact, early on, after I'd been one of the original founders of A for M, and we were actually met each other at one of the initial lectures, she was actually in the.
Audience sitting in the front row, listening.
To me give lectures on hormones. And then I talked to her. She's like, well, you're coming to listen to my lecture. I was like, well, what are you lecturing on? And she says, I'm lecturing on the gut. And at that time, I really hadn't been exposed to what I know now, which is the gut first, the gut last, and the gut's always in between. And that's really a truism. Longevity medicine. One of the most interesting. There's tons of studies. One of the most interesting studies I've seen lately in longevity medicine is when they start looking at the number of bacteria and the type of bacteria that you have in your gut and how it changes over time. And I used to at least think that it was the number of bacteria that declined over time that was really the influencing factor. But in fact, it's the loss of the diversity in the bacteria that becomes a problem with people. And if people think you can lose bacteria, but when you lose that diversity, that's when you lose your life, that's when you start losing the years.
Disease processes start and you have all kinds of illnesses, autoimmune processes begin. And if you don't keep care of the gut, or when you keep care of the gut, the gut will keep care of you.
Correct? Right. And it's so influential that it's the simple things. It's the making sure you eat your vegetables because bacteria eat the vegetables. And you need to maintain the ability to not poison your gut with alcohol and with drugs or antibiotics or a number of different medicines. And we're not saying we're anti medicine, we're just saying understand what the medicine does to your gut and how we going to change that the of the gut that's so fascinating though, is if you want to talk about your immune system, it's in your gut. You want to talk to where you have most of your brain cells, it's in your gut. When you want to talk about where you have the most bacteria in your body, it's in your gut. Matter of fact, you have more bacteria in your gut than you have cells in your entire body, which makes you wonder, are we actually humans with a microbiome? Are we a microbiome that grew a human around it?
Well, and one of the interesting things is neurotransmitters and the manufacturing of neurotransmitters like serotonin.
And where does that occur in the gut?
More research is happening where they are discovering the etiology of adhd, add, depression, anxiety, actually in the gut.
I read an immense article today, just today, about a lady who had schizophrenia and into a schizophrenic coma for. For 20 years until Dr. Came and saw her, said let's go treat her lupus, which they knew she had, which is an autoimmune disease, which occurs where?
In the gut.
In the gut they treated her autoimmunity and she woke up after 20 years. That's just this recent article.
In the paper this past Sunday.
Well, even obesity, everybody thinks that obesity is a result of eating too much, right? Yes, that is.
That is a very small part of it. That's a very small part of it.
But it's also, you know, the obesogenes and the bacteria that you have that can actually stimulate the appetite.
We can actually measure the type of bacteria you have in your gut and predict your weight based upon the ratio of the Bacteroides.
Do you say firmicutes or Firmicutes?
Right. So if you really want to improve your health a lot, come see us at MD Lifespan. You can almost always get generally referred to Dr. Nicole through a visit with me, or if you'd like, go to our website, click on her name and open that conversation with her directly. Dr. Nicole, we're. Personally, I'm thrilled to have you part of the MD Lifespan team.
And I am thrilled as well. I've known you 20 years more. Yeah, 20 years. At least 20 years. And I have followed you like a. My guru.
Right? She follows me and I just always drag her along. So we're looking forward to treating you all.
