In this video, the speaker discusses practical steps to improve gut bacteria and overall health. They emphasize the importance of fasting, as it reduces the population of harmful gut bacteria while preserving the beneficial ones. They also recommend eating whole foods with a variety of fiber, consuming fermented foods, taking certain supplements like omega-3 and prebiotics, avoiding processed oils and sugars, and managing stress through relaxation techniques and exercise. Additionally, the speaker highlights the significance of sleep, biophilia (connecting with nature), and maintaining a healthy weight. Overall, these changes can help improve gut bacteria and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
Key Insights:
– Fasting can improve gut bacteria by causing the bad bacteria to die off and allowing the good bacteria to flourish.
– Consuming whole foods with a variety of fiber is important for improving gut health.
– Eating fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and yogurt, can have positive effects on gut bacteria.
– Certain supplements, like omega-3 and prebiotics, can also help improve gut health.
– Avoiding processed oils, sugars, and preservatives is crucial for maintaining a healthy gut.
– Sleep plays a role in gut health, and getting seven hours of good quality sleep is important.
– Managing stress and incorporating relaxation techniques, such as meditation, is beneficial for gut health.
– Spending time in nature and exposing oneself to different environments can help improve the diversity of gut bacteria.
– Exercise and physical activity can positively impact gut flora and overall gut health.
– Practicing good hygiene, getting a true allergy workup, and implementing dietary and lifestyle changes can help heal a leaky gut.
– Biophilia, or the love for life and nature, can boost gut health by exposing oneself to new bacteria.
– Maintaining homeostasis and introducing some stressors can strengthen the immune system and prevent chronic diseases.
Transcript
„But these are practical steps that you can take today. Today you can make these changes. None of these are that difficult. You just have to make up your mind. Do you want chronic diseases of modern man today, or do you want to die when you are 98 years old, just walking down the street and dropping dead? Well, welcome back. So enough of this chemistry, physiology, biochemistry, everything else. What can I do today to improve my gut bacteria so that my gut lining is also better, so that I have less inflammation in my body, so that I will not get the diseases of modern man? Modern man from the industrialization since then. This is what happened. These are all new acquired diseases that we are now looking at. It’s our lifestyle. And this next portion, I’m going to talk about your lifestyle, which includes the microbiome, because it’s all in one big ecosystem in your body. So let’s just dive right into it. What do I do practically with my patients? Of course, I take the full history exam, everything else. But what’s my final advice? Number one, fasting. Why do I tell them to fast? What’s that got to do with the microbiome? Well, when you fast, guess what happens to the bad guys in your gut? They have nothing to eat. And I told you, the half-life is really short. So they start dying off. So their population goes down. The good guys, their population stays good. In fact, it gets even better because the body wants to preserve those and produces chemicals to actually feed those bacteria. So there’s a dramatic change in fasting in the bacterial flora. This has been shown over and over again. The fasting doesn’t only benefit you in one way. Then, okay, fine, I’m fasting. So I’m not taking any food inside. But no, your butyric acid levels go up. Your ketones go up. Your brain changes. It gets neuroplasticity and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. But somehow, the ketosis and the changes in the biochemistry actually changes your gut flora as well. So it’s very interesting that it’s all linked in. So fasting does improve your gut flora. One, in fact, if you look at hibernating animals, you know, when they are fasting in that state, there’s a huge change in the microbiome that occurs. The microbiome changes in people who get gastric bypass. And you think that all gastric bypasses are just eating less and eating small amounts. But no, we now know that most of the changes, the beneficial changes that are occurring after gastric bypass surgery, is as a result of the microbiome changing, changes completely. This drastic change, that’s how you get reversal of diabetes and obesity and all the other conditions associated with morbid obesity. And talking about obesity, I just want to throw in two points. If your BMI is over 40, you’ve just lost seven years of your life. If your BMI is over 50, you’ve just lost 14 years of your life. This is not to be taken lightly. Obesity is just a phenotype of something that may be going on inside your body. It’s not just, ‚Oh yeah, I’m obese.‘ There are some patients that are obese, yes, and there’s no inflammation in the body. And you look at their liver, sonographically, look at the liver, they don’t have inflammatory markers, they don’t have small dense LDL, they don’t have atherosclerosis. And if I did a biopsy of the fat, it probably is not full of immunocytes, they’re the minority. We kind of look at this in more serious, obesity is not to be taken lightly. If you want a functional long life, then get your BMI down to normal. This is very important. So intermittent fasting, time-restricted feeding. Remember, your microbiome also has a circadian pattern. So if you’re eating every two hours, you’ve shown no respect for the circadian pattern of your microbiome. So therefore, that microbiome is going to be stressed out. You’re going to have the wrong kind. And that’s been shown over and over again. You eat every two, three hours, and you will have a different type of microbiome than if you do time-restricted feeding. Because theologically through evolution also, you are not supposed to be eating every few hours. Go look at my previous videos on fasting to be convinced. You’ve got to do time-restricted feeding. OK, this is very important. So fasting, I think you can go look at my slides on that. But they do affect the microbiome, and it affects your inflammation. Fiber, whole foods. Look, you’re supposed to eat whole foods. I thought that fiber is OK. In the upper portion of the gut, it gets digested. Hardly any gets down to the colon. No, you need to be eating for you and your bugs. See, this is for me. All right, this is a dessert. If you’re going to have one, this is for me. It’ll be absorbed halfway down my ilium already. It’s all gone. Nothing left to go down to the bottom. Sometimes some gets down and causes small bowel overgrowth, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, because those bugs that love sugar, they flourish in that terminal portion of your ilium. And you get this condition. In fact, 61% of obese patients probably have what is known as SIBO. 61% of obese patients probably have SIBO. What does that mean? That means they have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And the microbiome that’s going on in your colon, now this bacteria go to a different place to live. They start living in the intestine and cause havoc over there. So those are the patients who get a lot of GI symptoms. And SIBO can be treated and can be treated effectively. It can be even diagnosed effectively. You can diagnose SIBO. You can diagnose leaky gut. So all these tests can be done. But the point here is that you need to be eating whole foods with a variety of different types of fiber in your diet. And we know this from our Mediterranean diet, from the diets of people who eat whole foods. They get the right fiber, whole foods. You look at the similarity of all the blue zones, what do they eat? So some eat not that much fiber, but everything they do eat is all whole foods. So because it’s all whole food, it will then introduce and bring in the right bacteria as well. So the Inuits, for example, didn’t eat that much fiber. But what they do it, what little they did, fosters the growth of the right microbial. Yep, fermented foods. I tell all my patients to eat fermented foods every day. You should be eating sauerkraut or kimchi or whatever kind of natto if you like natto. The Japanese eat a lot of natto. What is natto? Natto is fermented soy. You can play with it at home. You can ferment soybeans and you can have that. Yogurt, of course, but I like kefir. I like kefir very much because I think that it actually gets down to the colon. And it has great benefit. The more the different varieties of bacteria, the better. And this is very important. Fermented foods. Supplements. There are some supplements that I give my patients to improve their gut bacteria. One of them is, of course, omega-3, because I told you that it produces or stimulates intestinal alkaline phosphatase, which actually heals the gut. So they get less leaky gut. And I give some patients prebiotics, which are fiber supplements. Fiber supplements, which I mentioned inulin before, and then there are other fiber supplements that are also available. But I like inulin very much. But there are other prebiotics that are available, for my very sick patients, they’re basically made out of natural foods that are full of fiber, and then put it into a little capsule form. And that’s helpful. No processed oils. That means no omega-6 and omega-9, which is found in processed oils. So it’s a separate token, processed oils. It’s not natural. You don’t find that in nature. Yes, you find some polyunsaturated in nuts, for example, but the proportions are less. Even olive oil has some omega-6 in it and a little bit of omega-9 in it. But the proportions are much less. So nature, when it packages things together, it does it very nicely. So olive oil is not all monounsaturated, as most people think it is. It’s not. Only a proportion of it is polyunsaturated. And it’s got monounsaturated, and there is even some saturated fat in it. So this is a mixed proportions. And everything is bottom line is, it must not be processed. Anything that comes from a factory is not right. If that oil was made in a factory, it’s suspicious. Because what did they do? Because these also be consumed by your bacteria. But by the way, we’re in the in the in the insparthool that we had in the Gulf. How did they fix it up? How did they clean it up? Oh, that’s all right. So come along bacteria. Bacteria to the rescue. Through a bunch of bacteria that are oil-consuming bacteria. And they consume that oil. See, so bacteria can actually consume a lot of things. So if you live long enough, maybe in another million years from now, 500,000 years from now, all the poisons that you’re putting into your stomach, including plastics, for example, you will have bacteria in your gut that will be able to process all those bacteria or all those products. But it’s going to take you 500,000 years before you develop that type of ability. So I wouldn’t wait that long. Process for no sweetness, no preservatives, no emulsifiers, look, these things are all chemicals. They were made to preserve things, for convenience, shelf life. That’s why the processed oils are also used. Like cookies, for example, emulsifiers. Emulsifiers, terrible. Hate emulsifiers. What is an emulsifier doing? Something that’s unnatural. It’s taking oil and water and putting it together and emulsifying it so that it stays together. It’s processed. Emulsifiers, no good. No sugar. Sugar is a processed food. It’s taken up by bad bacteria in your gut. Eat a lot of sugar, you got a lot of bad bugs in your gut. That includes high fructose corn syrup, which is really awful. Did you know that the metabolism of high fructose corn syrup is almost identical to alcohol? If your kids are taking high fructose corn syrup, we might as well give them a drink. It’s that bad on the liver. So think twice before you give a kid any high fructose corn syrup. Fatty liver is one of the biggest problems that we’re having kids today. And they’re going to go on to get liver failure down the road. There’s absolutely no doubt about it. True allergy workup. So some patients really have gut allergies, and that’s why they have leaky gut. Yeah, and they may have gluten allergies. So you can do gluten tests, see whether they actually have gluten sensitivity or not. Sometimes it’s the protein that’s found in wheat or barley, rye, and oats. But you can run those tests on some patients. But you know what, in my experience, doing this now for a few years now, I find that the allergies are a little overblown. And a lot of people are going on to this gluten-free diet and saying they’re feeling some, some are feeling better, some are not feeling any better. They’re going on a gluten-free diet, and then they’re eating processed foods because there’s a lot of processed gluten-free foods. So, you know, if you think you are gluten sensitive or have a gluten allergy, just do the blood test. It’s a clear, nice blood test that’s available. And then you can do some exclusions. That means you can do everything else, you exclude one group of foods and see whether you, in fact, have a true allergy. Next one is sleep. You know, what does sleep have to do with bacteria? Do bacteria need sleep? Answer is yes. They have a circadian pattern as well. And sleep will change your autonomic condition. We’ll give you a leaky gut. So one night of no sleep, bad sleep, increases LPS levels in your blood. Bad sleep patterns are inflammatory. There’s no doubt about it. We know that there’s increased sympathetic tone from the brain as far as the gut is concerned. You do get leaky gut. So you’ve got to repair the gut lining. To do that, seven hours of good sleep. If you’re not waking up in the morning feeling refreshed, there’s something wrong with your sleeping. You need to see a good sleep physician. Now, that doesn’t mean you have obstructive sleep apnea only. Sleep hygiene is important. Sleep apnea simply means that, OK, you’re choking at night because of your increased body mass, or maybe your turbinates are all blocked, and you’ve got nasal congestion at night. And by the way, this is happening in kids too. Huge problems with sleep. Why? Because the guts are leaking, and therefore they’re getting inflammation. They’re getting mucosal thickening. They’re mouth breathing as a result. This inflammation, this difference between nose breathing and mouth breathing, mouth breathing causes inflammation, inflammatory markers go up. So these kids are becoming inflamed, and they’re getting obstructive sleep apnea at night, because their noses are getting blocked. The congestion necessarily gets so much infection in the ears as well. So if you get a child that’s constantly, their nose is blocked, get it checked out and get over them. Do not accept mouth breathing. It affects the sleep patterns at night. It’s going to affect their learning. And remember, there’s a phase that you go through. If you don’t learn it now, you know, nature dislike it, it’s going to be very hard to learn later on. It’s lost years. Sleep is not to be taken lightly, especially in children. So in adults, of course, it’s very important. If you have sleep apnea due to obesity or due to structural problems, you can take care of it. You can even sleep with a mask temporarily. But of course, the real treatment for obstructive sleep apnea in adults is weight loss, dietary changes. But your sleep hygiene is important. Watching blue light at night decreases the quality of your deep sleep as well. So you need to start dimming the lights, and you need to allow your body to get into that restful state before you go to bed. Stress management. Stress, man. Can stress increase gut leakiness, and inflammation, and inflammatory markers, such as LPS? And the answer is a resounding yes. So you just have one bad, stressful day. You’ve just had a bunch of LPS go through your body. But it’s so important. That is why everyone must learn some form of relaxation. Meditation is an excellent one. It’s a lovely way to manage stress. And I also added biophilia. So what do you know what biophilia is? So bio means life. Well, the environment, filia, means love. So when you go for a walk in the mountains, in the hills, or in a meadow, or a park, or even on a beach, why do you feel so good? Is it just because, „Oh, I went out for a walk“? No, because you could have gone for a walk in the concrete jungle of downtown, and I don’t think you’d feel that good. But biophilia is something special, a feeling of restfulness and a wonderful feeling that you get. Why is that? It’s because you’re also getting bacteria out there with every breath that you’re taking. You’re taking in millions of bacteria. Did you know that? I mean, do you think that we are so clever here? We wash our hands with alcohol, and we have this AC going on and everything else, but actually, the air out there is not as good as outside. You’re actually absorbing, taking in bacteria. You want that, because you want that biodiversity in your body, because the body is always looking to say, „Okay, how can I become stronger? How can I become better?“ Each breath that you’re taking takes in millions and millions of bacteria. One drop of ocean water has one million bacteria in it. Maybe that’s why you’re feeling so good when you go for a swim in the ocean, because your biophilia gives you the microbiome changes that you’re going to need to optimize. What’s missing? Okay, these guys are missing. They all come in. These guys have got plenty of it. I don’t need these guys. 99.9% of the bacteria out there are harmless to human beings. But we’ve treated them like enemies, and we’ve tried to demolish them by stabbing them out and killing them with antibiotics and unnecessary agents. Such as these. These host pipes are made of these special type of plastics that kill bacteria. Why? What do you call when we’re doing that? See? So, biophilia is really important. Putting yourself in the environment, changing your environment, very important. Exercise. Now, exercise we did talk about a little bit. So why is exercise so helpful? Does your gut flora change when you exercise? Answer is yes. So we know exercise is good for the cardiovascular system. Did we work it out exactly why? Nobody really knew exactly why exercise is so beneficial for cardiovascular disease. Having aerobic capacity is very good. So that you don’t get anaerobic and your heart rate doesn’t go up too much and your blood pressure doesn’t go up too much. So you can get the same amount of work done with less effort. So you need cardiac fitness. That’s different from the biochemistry of your arteries, to make your biochemistry better. Exercise also helps make the blood vessels better. How? One of the ways it does is butyrate. So when you exercise, you’re actually making butyrate. And butyrate actually improves the condition of your blood vessels and it actually… it’s anti-atherosclerotic. Homieses. Why did I throw homieses? Homieses is a kind of a stress that the body goes through and that hormesis actually improves your body for the next adventure. Just exercise, change your gut bacteria also because it’s a form of hormesis. It’s stress. And then, yes. So what happens is, let’s say I go for a walk, a formal walk. My body language is, follow. He’s changed his environment. He’s gone to a new place and a new place is gonna give new challenges. So I gotta prepare for this. And a new place is gonna have new bacteria. I need to prepare for that. See? So it makes changes in the body, including your microbiome because it anticipates that there’s gonna be a new environment and I gotta be better able to handle this new environment. That’s how your body knows. How did your body know? What are the markers that told it that this change in a place that I’m in? So it’s trying to maintain homeostasis. So whenever there’s some degree of challenge to your homeostasis, there’s gonna be an improvement in your immune system. Is an immune problem? It is an immune problem. It’s an inflammatory problem. So homeostasis is necessary, some form of stress. Exercise, fasting, sauna. Okay, sauna has been shown to reduce sudden cardiac death by more than 50% if you do it three to four times a week. And yeah, it’s got to do with heat shock proteins and everything else. I don’t have data on the gut bacteria, but if you’re interested in research and it seems like you are, then go and do some research on that. I bet you’ll find that eventually they’re gonna find that sauna also makes changes to the gut lining and your bacterial flora. That’s how it is anti-inflammatory. So some form of homeostasis, you gotta have some form of stress. If you just sit around all day doing absolutely nothing, you sit in one spot for weeks after weeks, your immune system is all going to go down. The next bug that comes along with this pneumonia or bingo, you’re gonna get it. You’re gonna get it. You’re gonna get the illness. And you’re going to get a cytokine storm because your immune system was not regulated to say, „Okay, don’t overreact, don’t overreact, don’t overreact.“ Remember, the T-reg cells I told you about, remember the titanic cells in the intestines? The regulatory cells. These T-reg cells are very important. They actually go to a thymus gland as well, and the thymus then especially during development, that’s the master that says, „Okay, all these following antigens, these are all friends, don’t react to them anymore.“ Okay? Now go out and tell your immune system this too. And they go out there and tell the whole body, „Hey, I got a whole bunch of friends here, we don’t react to these guys, okay? Don’t react to them, these are my friends.“ T-reg, that’s the homeostasis that we are supposed to be living in. And that’s what this is all about. It’s maintain that homeostasis. So you need to stress it every now and then a little bit, because what doesn’t kill you strengthens you, right? Somebody said that. So there you go. So I hope that this was helpful. But what I practically do in the office, because understanding the biochemistry of this is, of course, very complicated. And coming up with more and more, but these are practical steps that you can take today. Today, you can make these changes. None of these are that difficult. You just have to make up your mind. Do you want chronic diseases of modern man today, or do you want to die when you are 98 years old, just walking down the street and dropping dead? Because that’s what I want to do. None of these chronic diseases and disability. We don’t want that. Mentally, you should be afraid about Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, let me tell you, Alzheimer’s is all inflammatory. It’s mostly inflammatory. And if you want to fight Alzheimer’s, you do this. I can guarantee you won’t get it. Because there are other forms of Alzheimer’s, too, but I’m telling you, it’ll make a huge dent in your probability that you get Alzheimer’s. So don’t get those sounds, don’t get physical illness. Don’t get coronary artery disease. Don’t get end organ dysfunction. Keep your muscles. Keep your muscles strength. Grow your muscles. Keep them. Sleep right. Fix your gut bacteria. We’ll catch you on our next trip. If you’re coming on my next trip, it’s going to be on the USS Enterprise. So hope that you all can join me. Till then, be safe. If you like this video, then this one I strongly recommend for you. But if you want to see the whole series, please click here.
