Why Gut Health is LIKELY Our Problem with Dr. Vincent Pedre

Today on Midlife conversations, I've got Dr. Vincent Pedre. Now, he has a concierge practice in New York City. He combines Eastern and Western medicine, which I'm super excited about. He is an author of two books, originally the Happy Gut and now the Gut Smart Protocol. He's CEO and founder of Happy Gut Life. And I can't wait to talk to him today about all things gut health and what we might not know is related to gut health today. So thank you for being here.

It's so awesome to be here with you. Thanks for having me.

So I have a lot of questions for you, and I want to start with what made you. And thank you for this, by the way. Be someone that combines Western and Eastern medicine, because that's unusual.

It is very unusual. And I think the alternate track that I might have ended up in is as a naturopathic physician. But in my family, there was a very strong push to become an allopathic physician, to become a medical doctor, an MD And. And honestly, there was a lot of. As a. As a kid, as a teenager, when. When I knew I was going to become a doctor, I kind of looked up to them. You know, I thought, wow, like, doctors, they have all this knowledge, they help people. But during that journey, I. I actually came across certain obstacles. And one of the biggest obstacles that I had was as I was applying to medical school, I realize, wait a second, I'm afraid of needles. And every time I get my blood drawn, I pass out, and if I get a shot, I'm like, next thing I know, my heart's racing, I'm turning cold, and the room is going dark. And then they're waking me up and being like, hey, like, so, you know, I had all this thought, and when it became a reality that I was going to go to medical school, I thought, wait a second, how can I become a doctor if I can't be around needles? Like, I'm going to have to be around needles. And that led to this whole thing. Like, you know, I almost didn't go to medical school. My parents were like, absolutely not. You're going to medical school. You know, very old school, immigrant parents. And I started exploring, and what I discovered was the autonomic nervous system. And I was trying to figure out, well, what is going on inside my body? Why does it feel like my body rebels against me and has its own mind when a needle is coming at me? And next thing I know, I'm out. I'm having a sinkable episode. So I discovered the autonomic Nervous system. This is before medical school and I discovered breath work. I got a book called the Relaxation Response and learned about breath work and started breathing and then started meditating. I started doing guided meditation and then I, I discovered Dr. Chopra and Dr. Andrew Weil back then. The book, this is 1995. Just to, to date myself, you know, yoga, meditation, breath work. They're not in. In 1990.

No, they were still that. The weird people in California. And I'm in California, so I can say that.

Yeah. And this one, you know, 21 year old in Miami, Florida at the time, who is basically locking myself in my bedroom, my childhood bedroom and doing breath work and becoming disciplined about it every day because it was almost like I was training for the Olympics. But my event was going to be going to get the Happy Vaccine series and not passing out. And, and so I had eight months to do this. And during that time I just started breathwork, meditation, guided meditation. Then I just started reading and discovering spontaneous healing, quantum healing. And my mind opened to this whole other world and I realized this is the type of doctor I want to become.

Wow. You know what I love about that? When you share that so many people put these things in a box, like that's the out there stuff that doesn't like that go to, are you a real doctor? Like that's when people talk about those things. Right. But I love that you are a real doctor. Like you are that and you are incorporating this and you legitimize it a lot more because unfortunately it does get a bad rap from a lot of.

People and yet there's so much science that supports it. And I will tell you, you know, like, just to take people back to 1995, this is not in. I was afraid to share when I got into medical school that I was meditating every day when I got home from classes and I was doing breath work. And everybody as we got into the first year and you know, the first year of medical school is like a fire hose. Like every two weeks you're, you're like covering an entire book and the material is just overwhelming. And everybody would look at me, they're like, why are you so calm? It would be the night before a test. We're all at the library. It's 11pm at night. And I'm like, I'm done. I'm going home. I'm going to go get my rest. And why are you so calm? I'm going to stay up all night studying. And it was because I was meditating.

That's amazing. So they're popping the caffeine or even drinking to go to sleep or whatever and you're doing these Zen like things and you're seeing a trick, but it's not socially acceptable yet.

I had basically found a biohack that was, I discovered because of my fear of needles. And little did I know that because I didn't run away from my fear of needles, that it basically became my life work. And it was. And it would shape the type of doctor that I would become. And there's no replacement. You know, you can sit down and read all the science you want, but when you experience the power of what these things can do for you, you have your own experience through it and a very real experience because I was able to reprogram the way my brain works and that very type A wound up personality that is the type of student that got me into medical school. But then realizing that this no longer served me, that this is not the way I wanted to live my life. And starting this reprogramming that started at the age of 21 and continued for many years forward as I, as I started like just changing the way my nervous system reacted to things, you know, because I was very reactive as a, as a child and a teenager and realized like, wow, I didn't realize how reactive I was until I started meditating. Breath work and changing that and retuning myself. And it's a lot of what I talk about in, in my book, the Gut Smart Protocol, because you, you can't ignore the effect of stress on the body, on the gut, on, on your healing process.

So let's talk about that a little bit because I, you know, and I'm, I admit I am one that struggles with this. I, and I am that type A category person and I've done breath work and I've meditated and I love it when I do it and I'm not consistent with it and I forget about it and I think I don't have time for it. And then when I actually do it, I'm like, why don't I do this every day? And then it's a cycle. So first of all, why is this so hard for us? And like, like, let's talk about this connection because like people like me need to hear this. Like we need to understand why this is critical to practice. Just like we do our workouts or other morning routine things.

Yeah. And, and honestly like, so I'm 49 years old, so I've been meditating now on and off, not continuously, but on enough for More than half of my life. And what I've realized and learned over the years is I've learned many different techniques. And one thing that I found is really important is what you do should meet where you're at in the moment, because five years from now, you're not the same person that you are today, and you're not in the same circumstances. So maybe instead of box breathing, you need alternate nostril breathing to balance male, female energy in your body and feel more grounded in yourself. Maybe you need a vase breath. Maybe you need to change the style of meditation that you do. And what I've done over my lifetime is I've changed what I do, Listening intuitively to what my body is asking for. But why is it so hard? Honestly, I find that it's harder now than when I was 21 in 1995. But what was the world like then? There was no Internet.

That's true.

We didn't have all distractions, you know, if. If you can remember, I. I listened to my guided meditations on a CD roll.

Yes, yes.

With. With those wired headsets.

The Walkman or the.

Yeah, yeah, the Walkman. And, you know, I think now we've got a lot of distractions. We've got the smartphone, and we've got to. Got to put it by my face so you can see it. We have to shut that out. We have to take a moment for ourselves and pause and breathe. And the interesting thing is, you know, I talk about this all the time with respect to changing health habits, any health habit, there's always inertia. Right. There's always that internal resistance. Even for myself who seasoned. I've meditated for a long time. I've gone through periods where I stopped meditating. I was like, oh, I don't need to do it anymore. Because the. I had done it for so long that the effects would not go away. Like, months. And I still felt the same. But then little by little, you start to drift.

Yes.

And you start realizing, oh, the stress is starting to kind of like, vacation.

Like, you go on vacation, you're two weeks in, you feel amazing, you come back, it's like you feel on top of the world, and then you get back to your normal routine.

It's like, you get back and it's a cold plunge, but there's that inertia. And. And I heard this. This TED talk, I think it was last year, and I thought it was brilliant, and I love it. And I'll use it with patients and people that I talk to because. And I'll tell it to my son. I have an 18 year old son who also I've gotten into meditation and breath work and I'll say, you know, if you're waiting for the moment that you feel like it, when the sun is shining bright, the birds are chirping, you slept really good and now you're going to wake up and you're going to go to the gym and you're going to meditate, you know what that day is not arriving. Yeah, it's never going to be perfect. If you're waiting for when you feel like it, it's not going to happen. So how do you get from not feeling like it?

Because I feel personally called out right now because this is probably the story in my head when the day when all the stars align.

No, and, and look, I'm there too. I, I, I've, I'm challenged sometimes with that inertia that happens because you get, you know, like say we, we travel, we go to conferences, we do things and then you get back home and now you're knocked off your routine and you think you can just jump into it, but now there's a bit of inertia because you kind of relax, you're not so back into it. So how do you break through this? So you can't go from like, okay, you're gonna, you're gonna, Tomorrow I want you to meditate for 30 minutes. No, you're not going to do that. No. So I call them stepwise activations. You start with a baby step. So maybe all you do is you set your timer for two minutes and you're going to close your eyes and you're going to breathe until that timer goes off. Maybe you do it for five minutes. When I do this, I use an app now called Insight Timer. I have no relationship with them, so. And what I love about the app is that you can use, they have all these different gongs and things you can set and you can, I have all these presets, like a 20 minute meditation and at 10 minutes it gives me a special sound and it's a different gong. So I know, okay, I'm at the 10 minute mark and then it's, and then I have three that sound at the very end and I will tell you, I'll finish the meditation, I'll hear the end of it and I'm so good into it that I don't want to stop.

What's this app called?

It's called the Insight Timer.

Okay, I'll clearly download this today.

Yeah, it's it's great because, I mean, if you're okay with sitting in silence, I mean, I think there's a lot of different hacks for. If you are the type of person who has a very rapid mind and have a hard time meditating, guided meditations are great because then they give your brain that focus.

I find that, too. I find if it's guided and I can listen if it's just the, like the binaural, whatever they're called, the beats. I can't. Yeah, I can't do that because my head will think of my to do list. But you're right, if I listen to an actual guided meditation, I can super focus on it. I also find another thing is walking. If I actually walk, even though you're supposed to sit there quiet with your eyes closed, if I listen and walk, that's another big thing that will work for me.

So here's. Here's one that we talk about in the book. And I. I teamed up with some meditation and breath work teachers. One of them was Emily Fletcher.

I know her. She's been on the podcast.

She's amazing. So there's a breath that we put into the book. It's called the 2x breath, and it's meant to rewire you if you're feeling really amped up, if you're really stressed. One of the things that I try to teach is that if you're amped up and you sit down and you're about to eat, but your body's all amped up, do you think your stomach is ready to receive that food? Do you think you can digest and assimilate and break down that food in that state? No, but a lot of people, they do this. So one way that. And I love that you mentioned walking. So then you can add the breath to the walk. So every two steps, you inhale, and then every four steps, you exhale. So you're inhaling for two steps, you're exhaling for four steps, and that's the 2 to 1 ratio called the 2x breath. That starts to put your body into a more relaxed state and you can start walking. If you feel kind of amped up, you do it walking. And as you feel your nervous system cooling down, you can actually sit down and continue the breath.

That makes sense. You know, I had this weird thought. There's probably nothing to this, but I'm just going to say it anyway because I was somehow, when I was walking and doing breath work a few weeks ago, I thought of this. I thought of how Some people turn to cigarettes or marijuana even, to calm themselves down. But I started thinking, is it those things, or is it the deep breaths in. They're taking from both of those things and the concentrated rhythm of it. So I don't know why that hit me, but I. There's got to be something to that, too, in addition to whatever substance they're doing. But just that concentration of the breath.

Absolutely. I think so. And. And I think a big thing for people to realize is that you've got the drug right inside of you, and you've got the. You're carrying it with you. One thing that's really important is to understand how to breathe, to get your body into that relaxed and digest mode. Because most people, when I tell them, like, take a deep breath, like, what if you took a deep breath right now? Take a deep breath.

I would probably use my chest, not my stomach.

Yeah, so you went like this, you went like that. And that's what most people do. Because we're tucking in our belly. We want to look nice and thin, but really, in order to access that part of the nervous system, you've got to reverse the breath and breathe like a baby and breathe with your belly first, using your diaphragm. So when you inhale, your belly is going out. Your. Your lungs, the bottom of your lungs are expanding like a barrel, filling with air. And you want to make sure that you're breathing through your nose so that it triggers all this nitric oxide that causes vasodilation. That then allows your body to get more oxygen, and that improves blood flow to every part of the body, including your internal organs and your. Your stomach, which you need while you're digesting your food.

That makes sense. Okay. I'm starting to see how this might be connected to the gut.

Yes.

So let's talk about that. How is it connected to the gut? Other than obviously, just even what you shared about eating makes sense. If you're not intentional and you haven't done that, and then you're rushing your body to process, that can't be good for our gut right there.

Not at all. And I saw a patient this week, and he was telling me, you know, when he. He eats and he's at home and he might get a business call and his family is sitting down to eat, and then he just sits down, and immediately, he just got off a call with a client, and he goes right to eating at the same vibration as he just finished that call. He's eating too fast, so he doesn't know to tell his brain, his stomach can't catch up and tell his brain when he's full, hello, how many people. And he's also emotionally eating because he's stressed. And I said, you know what if you just stop for a moment and take three deep breaths. So there's another breath in the book, it's called the physiologic sigh. And it's a breath that you do right before you eat and it's meant to meet you where you're at. So if you've had a stressful day and you're about to sit down and eat, but you're eating with that same level of stress. So instead you stop for a moment, just a little pause, take a deep breath in through your nose and then you exhale with a sigh and ah, like if you're alone, like you can be loud if you want. And imagine while you're doing that is you're releasing all of the stress of the day and then you repeat it and you do it three times and then you check in with your body and you do this with people and just three breaths.

Yeah, it makes sense. And it makes sense too. To me, a different topic, but it makes sense why some people that they'll pray before they eat or whatever, they're being so intentional and mindful around that. That's also probably calming them and relaxing them.

Absolutely. I mean, I think it's important to reach that intentionality because you, you cannot heal in a amped up fight or flight state. We've got to get into what, what it is called in polyvagal theory, ventral vagal mode, which is where you're relaxed, your vagus nerve, which is that telephone wire that connects your, your internal organs and, and especially your gut, your heart, everything to your brain and communicates in both directions. Get it into that ventral vagal mode where your vagus is firing and it's what it's telling your body is, you are safe now, you can relax, you can assimilate, release stomach acid, release those digestive enzymes, feel up that gut barrier because the vagus controls intestinal permeability and leaky gut and that reduces inflammation in the body and then you can digest better.

What's coming up for me too, as you're saying, this is me included. So I'm always going to keep throwing myself under the bus here. When something's wrong and we want to fix, like something's not working in our body, something's not. And we go into I must fix, I must eat, all these things, I must do all These things. And we're operating from that state you're talking about. We're not going to get anywhere because.

You'Re approaching it as a type A person, you know, and, and living in New York City. I've had many of those patients.

Yeah. And I'm from the east coast, so I fit right in.

So you know that. Yeah. And I'm, I've been an east coaster my whole, whole life, so I know how to. I'm kind of like this. I sort say like I'm a bubble of Zen in New York City.

You belong out here in California, so.

You know, you might be, you're checking off all the boxes, you're eating all the right foods. You know, you're eating your, your greens, you're taking your supplements, but you're doing it like this, like a type A person. You're rushing through and you're inhaling your lunch while you're on your computer working. You're on a call.

I feel super called out right now.

Yeah, I've been guilty of that. Honestly. I, I'll, I'll raise my hand and call myself out on it. And I've had these patients and you know, taking care of so many people with gut health issues, I started realizing, you know, I used to put the diet and the supplements and everything first and realize, yeah, that is important. Absolutely. That is critical. But if you don't address the mind and that mind body connection and mind gut connection, we're not going to get anywhere. We're just going to be in a standstill.

It makes sense. It makes sense. Okay, let's talk about gut health specifically because the type A people do want to hear that too. And then they know now that they have to approach it from a more Zen like state. This is critical, but it's not a.

It'S a non negotiable because I think a lot of people that, that I've seen over the years, they, they'll be like, okay, I'll do the diet, I'll do this. And then they're like, yeah, and I'll get to that other thing, that meditation breath work. Like, yeah, I'll get to it. And they come back and see me and I'm like, well, you know, what did you do? Did you get into the meditation breath work? No, I didn't do that.

They're like, when I get my to do list, then I will.

Yeah, yeah. And I tell them, look, it's, it's a non negotiable. And honestly, you know, I've been a doctor for over 20 years now. And the longer that I'm a doctor, the more I realize, yeah, this is an absolute non negotiable, especially in our world right now with how much sensory overstimulation we have. It's so important to get the body into that safe zone. So. Yeah, but let's talk about the answer.

So as I ask these questions, I'm committing Scout's honor that I will do it from the state you're talking about. So everybody else listening as he's going to share this, we have to promise that we're doing it with that filter because if we do it the other way, then he can't promise we're going to get results.

So.

I heard you, I heard it.

Absolutely.

You can give us the best advice in the world. Yeah.

If you get my book, the gutsmart protocol, or when you get my book, make sure you don't skip that turbocharged results section. That, that section of the mind body connection. So important.

And I know what you're saying here because when I sold fat loss stuff for years, it wasn't the mind body connection in the way you're talking about, but I used to really talk to people about getting clear on their vision first. Like, what is their intention for themselves? What's their vision? And everyone would skip that. They go right to what do I eat and what do I do? And I'm like, if you don't know where you're headed. And so I know what you're. You mean, I know it's different things, but I, I agree and I get it. And you're right and I'm called out and I'm gonna listen. Going to be a good student. Okay, so. So assuming I'm going to do it from that place, what. How many things are actually connected to our gut? Like, do you believe all disease is from this? Like where.

What do you think every chronic degenerative disease, like, the more we dig into it and the more we look at the science, it's really crazy how many things are connected to the gut because of leaky gut. So autoimmune disease, skin issues, skin rashes, eczema, psoriasis, airway issues, like, just like being susceptible to getting infections, bronchitis, sinus infections, which happened to me, this is why I feel so passionate about it, is that I was on 20 plus rounds of antibiotics as a child. I kept getting sick over and over and the pediatricians didn't realize the more antibiotics you gave me, the more you destroyed my gut, the more you made my Gut leaky. The more I became sensitive to wheat, dairy, and other foods that were the pre primary foods in my diet as a teenager. And I just kept getting sick over and over and nobody understood. I mean, this was part of my, my motivation for becoming a doctor. And then later on, when I discovered the world of the microbiome and the gut and realized, wait a second, this is why I got so sick.

It makes sense. And this is why so many doctors skip this part. So many doctors skip that part. I don't ever hear. Well, first of all, I definitely never hear them talking about meditation and breath work, but I definitely also don't hear them talking about gut health. In fact, when I told my.

And brain. Yeah, brain, mental fog, memory, there's connections with dementia. There's also connections with migraines, with depression, anxiety, with the gut. You know how many people are suffering from mental health issues and don't realize that there's a big issue also connected to their gut health? Wow.

Okay. So I'm going to ask you more about that. But what I find interesting, so how you shared about the antibiotics. And I think a lot of us that grew up, you know, I did the same thing. I probably had 20 rounds as a kid. When I mentioned to my mother recently that I was going to have gut health checked, like I was going to do a gut biome test, she said her exact words were, go to the gastroenterologist, there's a test, and they'll give you an antibiotic for it. And I thought, okay, we're on a totally different side of, different side of the world here because that is a lot of the Western medicine is something around your gut. Here's an antibiotic, which would make it even worse. So I think we're so misled on this topic.

We are, we are really misguided on this topic. And, and even a big piece of it. Look, this is why I love that I am connected to both worlds and, and I feel very lucky that I did a traditional medical training.

Sure.

So I understand that part of it and I understand the utility of antibiotics. They can save lives. They can get rid of a parasite infection in the gut. But there's the. And part. When you're in an antibiotic, then you've got to repair the damage that's been done to your gut afterwards because it's.

Killing all the good bacteria, too.

And that's what most doctors miss.

No, they totally. And that's why, ladies, you get a yeast infection every time you have an antibiotic. Like they go for A urinary tract infection. They take an antibiotic, and then they get a yeast infection. It's like a.

And by the way, like, for. For the women listening, you know, the yeast infection is not just because there's yeast in your vaginal canal. The reason you're getting yeast infection is because you have a dysbiosis. So there's an imbalance of good and bad bugs inside your gut where there's probably a yeast overgrowth. And I. And I saw these patients over the years that came in, and they were going to their gynecologist, and they'd been on, say, like, two rounds of antibiotics for sinus infection. Then they get a yeast infection. Their gynecologist gives them an antifungal. Then a month later, they have another yeast infection. They go on another antifungal. Then two months later. So I had a patient who just. Her. A gynecologist just kept prescribing.

Oh, yeah.

And. And I'm like, well, we need to treat the reservoir in your guts. We've got to get rid of the yeast overgrowth. But we also have to, not just by attacking it, but by bringing in things that are going to help improve your gut microbiome so you can rebalance because. Because it's all about restoring balance in the body.

So, okay, how do we figure out what's going on in our gut? Because now I'm. Well, you convinced me of a lot of things on this session right now, but. But it's just like my personal session over my podcast with you. But what. What. How do we know we have problems? Do we have to go do the whole stool test? Are there the gut mapping, the GI mapping? What. What do we need? I know in your book you have.

A way around that. I've learned over the years that the patient tells you what's happening with them if you ask really detailed questions. So I created, based on my experience with patients and understanding gut health and all, a quiz in my book called the Gut Smart Quiz.

Okay.

And it will classify people based on a score. You get a score, and that score tells you if you're mild, moderate, or severe. And, okay, it's not like going and doing a stool test. And obviously, if you come and work with me in my concierge practice, that's what I do. I do stool analysis, and I kind of get very nerdy with data. But for all the people out there, one. These tests are expensive, and you can still get a lot of information to understand what's going on in the gut Because I can tell you that if you test severe, if you test moderate on my gut. Smart quiz. You've got leaky gut.

Wow.

Because you're lighting up with symptoms that are in other parts of the body. And when you have leaky gut, I like to say it's not like Vegas, where what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in the gut doesn't stay in the gut. It affects all over your body, of your body. And some of the questions I ask are like, do you have Hashimoto's? Do you have autoimmune thyroiditis? Do you have mental fog? You know, do you suffer from skin rashes? And then other things that women might not be aware of, like if you're on a birth control pill, it increases gut permeability, for sure. If you're going through menopause or if you have really severe periods and you take ibuprofen or Aleve for them, that ibuprofen that I leave, which the nsaid, is causing leaky gut.

Wow.

So all of these things are additives. So there's a lot of things that we think, like, oh, it's over the counter, it's safe. Well, it's not really that safe. And it's increasing gut permeability. And when you increase gut permeability, you're increasing inflammation and the propensity to every chronic degenerative disease in the body.

That makes sense. I will tell you every time we think something is harmless, and I'm speaking for myself and for everybody listening, like, we think something's harmless. Like, one thing. Like, I. I know for my ruptured disc, because I had a ruptured disc in my back. The only thing that I felt was stopping pain with indomethacin. And I was warned about what that would do. I don't think I fully registered until I actually experienced what you're talking about.

It'll eat an ulcer in your.

Yeah. It destroys you. It's so. To me, I'm like, I'm hyper aware of all. Any supplement, anything now that we're putting in. Like, how. What is it actually doing and what's the consequence of it? Because something we think is temporarily relieving something will create a whole other problem.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we have to be really careful writing off things that we think are. Are just normal and. And how many people go to Mexico and they go and buy things that you can't get at the pharmacy all the time?

They do. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just like, oh, I'll just. This is easier. Or I hey, I'm guilty of that too. A year ago, we stocked up on antibiotics in Mexico just in case, when we thought the world was going to end with, you know, everything shut down. But then I get, but I, you know, you learn about this and we understand, like, I don't want to take antibiotics. And I can't believe, just, just to.

Put it into perspective. So, very typical antibiotic that a woman will be prescribed for a UTI. Cipro.

Yep.

Five day course.

Just five days, which I've done probably five times.

Yeah. Five days of Cipro, it will take your gut 12 months to recover from.

Whoa, that's crazy. That's crazy. That's a lot.

A lot.

Okay, so everybody listening right now. We must go get his book. Clearly we need to do this. It's called the Gut SM protocol because there's a test in there and I'm going to be doing this that we can take and it's going to help us decide what level we're on. And then you said you even have like, what to follow, how to fix.

This then based on, you know, just based on my experience with patients, you know, because there's a lot of books out there that tell you eat this way, that way, but then they don't, you know, they don't give you all the details that you need in order to be successful with it. So first I started and I created a food list that are divided into mild, moderate and severe. And so depending on your category, because I wanted people to know if you're going to the supermarket and you tested severe, this is what's okay for you to eat. And these things are out. So, you know, exactly, you know, take my book with you to the supermarket and, and then we also, I teamed up with a chef who is actually a very well known chef in Australia and nutritionist, clinical nutritionist. And we came up with 65 recipes that are divided into mild, moderate, severe. Now the cool thing is that it's the severe category is the most limiting. So that's going to be the most restrictive on what you can eat, what you can't eat.

Okay.

When you get into moderate, you can eat everything that's moderate and you can eat everything in the severe category. And once you get into mild, you can eat across three categories. So your diet keeps getting better. And the idea is you do the program for 14 days, you follow it best you can. I give people the tools on, you know, I, I give them many ways that they can manage this. Like I give them a meal plan, but I say Also be intuitive. Listen to your body. Know what is it that you're. You're. You're wanting and desiring and follow the guidelines. And then in 14 days, you retake the test and you see where you're at, has the needle move.

It's amazing. So you can actually see what you've changed and what's important. Yeah.

And if it hasn't, then do an inventory of. Okay, what. What have I done?

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't start meditating.

That makes. Well, yeah, that would be where I would fail, I'm sure. But I'm. I'm not. I'm a new person, though. I'm becoming the type person that's going to. Because I'm listening to you and it makes sense to me. So this is, this is good. I do have one more question about gut. A lot of times when we hear gut health, people automatically go to parasites. How real is that? How worried do we need to be about that? And like, should we be testing for that? Help me with that.

They're probably. They're probably out there more than people realize. And they're also probably one of the hardest things to diagnose. So if you go to your regular doctor and they do an. What they call an OMP test. So they tell you, oh, give a stool sample and we'll send it for omp, an ova and parasite exam. It is the stupidest exam ever, really. Like, most of the time it comes back negative. So if you go to your doctor and they say, oh, I'm going to do an OMP and rule out a parasite, and it comes back negative. They have not ruled out a parasite.

Okay, good to know.

So you need to do a stool PCR test with genome sequencing, because then they can look for genetic sequences that are remnants in the stool that could be from a parasite. And again, these tests are not perfect.

Yeah.

But it's amazing what happens when you do find someone has a parasite and you start picking so one very common parasite that if you go on any. If you go on Wikipedia, for example, and look up Blastocystis hominis, that's the name of a. One of the most common parasites worldwide. And you don't have to leave the U.S. you don't have to go to Mexico to get it. A lot of people here have it, probably because of disordered gut ecology. But you'll read that Western medicine says, oh, it's benign. It doesn't really cause any. It's never been proven. But then if you dig into the literature, you'll find that blastocystis actually increases intestinal permeability and causes leaky gut and can lead to a whole bunch of things. And I had a patient who presented with blastocystis and yeast overgrowth and she was fatigued, mentally foggy, had achy joints, was breaking out in hives.

Wow.

And the other doctors wanted to put her on immunosuppressants and biologic, like, yeah, all sorts of immunosuppressants for autoimmunity. And instead what we did is we worked on her gut and she got better.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm hearing more and more about this probably because I've gone through some of my own challenges and like, can't the type A way of fixing it was not working. So. So it's gotten more and more interesting to me. So while so much good information here, I'm going to definitely go pick up your book. Everybody listening. Make sure you go get the gut Smart protocol. Get that book. I'm going to take that mapping test. I'm going to. I'm going to check this out myself. I'm going to. And I'll keep you posted on how I do here. So everybody, you've got to go do this. Where can people find the book? Where can they find you to follow more? I think you said the gutsmart protocol.com, is that correct?

Yeah. They can go to gutsmartprotocol.com and they'll be able to get some bonuses there when they purchase the book. And also I'll have the quiz on. On the website.

Even better.

So they can download it. So, you know, if you already wrote your answers in the book, like, you can just get a fresh new quiz.

Okay.

And retake it. And Instagram is my jam, as I like to say. So you can find me on Instagram @ Dr. Pedre D? Rpedre.

Well, thank you for your time today. This was super informative.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It was fun.