Transcript for:
Gut Microbiome and Health

hey guys Dr Josh ax here welcome to the show each and every week we dive deep into the science and principles behind how you can experience a health breakthrough physically mentally and spiritually and today we're talking about one of your body's most important organ systems and this is important for everybody whether you're looking to reverse autoimmune disease or promote longevity or help even counsel someone else in their health you have an organ system by the way it's not just an organ it's actually a community an army of microbes that are working for you in this system and this system is important for everything from Reversing Hashimoto to fighting cancer to helping you prevent long covid or reversing long covid almost every health condition you can imagine is tied to this system and this organ system within the body and it is your gut microbiome and today I'm going to be walking through the things destroying your gut microbiome many of these things are very surprising and I'll be going through the top diet herbs and lifestyle medicine tips that can help you heal your gut for good experience breakthrough and so many more surprising things on today's show before I dive in though make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the link in the show notes to subscribe to my weekly Wellness newsletter to get my top tips for natural healing delivered straight to your inbox now I do want to start off saying this uh is not something I share often but I had leaky gut in a major gut microbiome issue my first two years when I was running my medical practice I ran a functional medicine practice in Nashville Tennessee and I was working so many hours a week and probably close to 60 to 70 and I remember getting to the point to where all of a sudden I started having some digestive issues I started having bloating I started having some loose stool some skin issues and I thought what's going on here I thought I was eating perfectly and I ran into a met Chinese medicine doctor who had told me you're having a gut issue and it's due to stress and I started to learn more and more about how to get to the root of my issues and heal my gut and I was able to completely reverse my gut microbiome issues in leaky gut in about yeah I'd say 30 to 90 days and then I went and wrote a book on the topic it was a best-selling book nationally called eat dirt and in this book I went through the top step to help heal leaky gut and this was something then I did in my practice and I helped tens of thousands of patients reverse autoimmune disease leaky gut issues and a number of other health problems and part of it was due to me learning how to heal my own gut and I have so much of a heart for people that are dealing with these gut issues you know one of my best friends Jordan Rubin had ulcer of colitis Crohn's disease lost 90 lbs and was in a wheelchair he almost died due to his gut health and his life was saved when he learned about a diet in lifestyle practices that could help heal his gut I'll share some of that as well today but but and and I I do want to stop here and also say this if you've got a gut issue it's you that doesn't just mean you're going to have gut symptoms so for instance you think of gas bloating diarrhea constipation some sort of gut issue if you have leaky gut or a microbiome issue it's not just that you might have a gut issue and your only symptom is autoimmune disease or chronic pain or hypothyroidism those all start in the gut and most people tend to think well hey if I've got an issue if I've got a thyroid diagnosis if I have a liver diagnosis if I have a brain diagnosis like Alzheimer's those issues are those organs malfunctioning not it tends to be that there's a gut issue which then affects that organ system and so the reality is almost no matter what you're struggling with the first area of your body that's affected is your gut now I do want to mention there is another system that tends to be affected just as much and that is your nervous system or your neuroendocrine system and and so I think there are really two main hormones that are impacted for most people causing their disease issues the first thing is your nervous system which then tends to cause cortisol release which is then your hormonal system your neuroendocrine system that tends to be related to to cortisol and the other one is your gut which tends to be related to insulin release and that's poor diet but if you have a medical issue rather than running to whatever organ or disease you're diagnosed with first you tend to need to focus on your gut or your neuroendocrine system if you want to get to the root of the problem now back to the gut your gut hous is approximately 70% of your immune system and a large portion of your immune cells reside in what's called your G GT that stands for gut Associated lymphoid tissue which helps your body fight off pathogens in infections and this gut is home to around 30 to 100 trillion microbes now that's around um double to 10 times more bacteria than human cells in your body most likely and these microbes play a role in digestion metabolism immune regulation even mood in fact I was reading a recent medical study that said probably one of the top supplements you can take or foods you can eat to support weight loss and reaching your ideal body composition so being more lean and fit is taking a probiotic supplement or eating more Probiotic foods because your gut is responsible for absorbing nutrients it's responsible for converting things in your body it's responsible for creating certain nutrients that stoke your metabolism and so keeping your gut healthy is crucial for everything from longevity ity to even fighting cancer to things like weight loss now here are some other important facts about your gut your gut microbiome contains over 1,000 different species of bacteria and microbes now listen it's not just bacteria as well I do want to mention this it's bacteria it's viruses it's parasites it's yeast uh it's fungi so your body or your gut is just beaming with different types of microbes which actually help you survive they help you adapt to your environment and some of these microbes and bacteria are known as probiotics while others are harmful those are they're they're known as pathogenic microbes and you really want to have a balance in your body what happens is if you don't have enough good bacteria like probiotics the bad take over and that's where you get things like candida and that's when you start to have inflammation throughout your gut which then causes inflammation throughout your body and so you really want to make sure that your microb is balanced we're seeing this in more and more research today that when people are dealing with health issues it's a gut issue not an organ issue like or another organ as I mentioned like a thyroid or a liver or uh you know or or even even your reproductive organs now I want to go through though the biggest signs of poor gut health that people are ignoring today if you're dealing with issues like bloating brain fog food sensitivity skin issues fatigue autoimmune conditions these tend to be related to poor gut health even chronic pain like rheumatoid arthritis that's an autoimmune disease to where the body is getting in a cycle of inflammation that starts in the gut which then is affecting your joints now I do want to go through some other signs though that tend to be maybe less gut rated in a minute now I want to hit more on the gut rated for just a few and then we'll get into hey this is a gut issue but they're not gut symptoms so here are signs number one sign you've got gut issue again our digestive issues it's bloating it's gas it's diarrhea it's con constipation in addition though food sensitivities reactions to gluten dairy or other Foods nutrient deficiencies such as poor absorption of vitamin B12 iron and magnesium and then chronic inflammation joint pain muscle ache swelling here's another big one brain fog if you're dealing with brain fog issues it almost always starts in the gut this could be trouble focusing memory issues mental fatigue those are some of the biggest signs of brain fog skin issues eczema acne rosacea rashes psoriasis autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto rheumatoid arthritis lupus um mood disorders like anxiety depression and irritability here's some more frequent infections such as weak immune system recurring colds or lime disease mold toxicity EP steam bar these are all signs of what long Co fatigue sugar Cravings headaches these are all warning signs that you have a gut issue now I want to answer a question that I get frequently somebody just asked me this this week they said Dr asks how long does it take to heal the gut the truth is this it varies now I've had many many people where we've completely reversed their gut issues in just 30 days if they follow the exact right diet their exact right treatment protocol which we'll get into at the end here but others may even take months to years if they've done a lot of damage to their gut and again there are a lot of factors in terms of how much of a transformation are you going to make are you taking all the right nutrients um you know there's also lifestyle factors there's no doubt that stress really damages our gut as much as diet does I want to give you an example of this I've taken care of thousands of patients with inflammatory bowel disease like IBS and what will cause them to have an IBS flare up where they might have stool and um just just major stomach intestinal pain and feel like a wreck what will cause them to feel that pain tends to be eating gluten or dairy or some sort of very poor diet but what causes that to also happen is if they're going through relationship struggles if they have a type of stress from maybe going through a fight with their spouse or they're worried about their kids or there's workplace stress and so stress and poor d diet are the biggest factors disrupting the gut micro now there's other things as well I'll hit on in a minute and some of these are going to be really surprising before I do that though I want to mention that gut health problems are rising in people in fact when you look at the last 30 to 50 years the issues of gut related conditions have continued to go up almost every single year and according to a 2023 study in the medical journal molecules they found the most common reason that people struggle with gut health problems include stress an an unhealthy diet excessive alcohol consumption antibiotics and taking prescription medications now let's take a closer look at some of these factors let's look at medications for instance especially antibiotics birth control pills and nids antibiotics wipe out not just the bad bacteria in your gut they wipe out the good bacteria use of antibiotics has risen by another 16% over the past 10 years now it already been going through the roof and growth but even in the last 10 years it's continued to grow and this presents a problem for bacterial resistant strains of bacteria like claustrum defil infections which so many people have today um and so we're seeing all of these other types of bacteria and viruses get smarter and they become more resistant to the antibiotics we're taking and they become even more damaging to our bodies and so we see this a lot with the use of these antibiotic drugs today and again I want to say I you know I think one of the greatest forms of malpractice today in the entire medical profession is doctors that prescribe antibiotics when somebody has a viral infection and did you know that when you have a child come in with an issue like a common cold or a flu or an ear infection over 90% of the time it's actually close to 98% of the time that that infection is a virus and an antibiotic an antibacterial medication can never kill a virus and so I actually think it's malpractice when doctors are prescribing that because doctors take an oath first Do no harm well when they prescribe an antibiotic for a child a 2-year-old a 5-year-old they take that antibiotic they're wiping out so many of these good bacteria and did you know some of those good bacteria those kids will never get back and then that puts these kids on a course once you wipe up that good bacteria to having food sensitivities to having learning disorders to having eczema to having future autoimmune diseases that have a greater cancer diagnosis in the future and so the amount of harm that our physicians in mainstream medicine are doing today to our kids when they prescribe an antibiotic drug it's the most overprescribed drug out there today or antibiotics now listen there's a time in a place for antibiotics to save a life but it's not for the common cold it's not for the common flu and it's not fer infection in 98% of cases and again we're disrupting and destroying where 70% of the immune system lives in our kids and adults today and if you've ever taken a prescription antibiotic drug one of the most important things you need to do is focus on healing your gut microbiome creating more diversity and greater growth of good bacteria in your gut if you truly want to heal any of the conditions we've talked about today but especially issues is related to the gut in the immune system now the next medication that is causing major harm today are UDS those are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofin as an example this weakens your intestinal lining leading to Leaky gun in fact listen to this study a survey found that around 63% of us adults reported using nids within the past year and about 40% of adults over 65 feel at least one or more ined prescriptions annually and according to another study they found this that when you take an nid drug it damages your gut microbiome and causes leaky gut in many many cases and so every time you're taking a non-steroid or anti-inflammatory drug you Dam you're damaging your that gut lining causing leaky gut now here's the medication that surprises the most people birth control pills oral contraceptive pills are taken by about 25% of us women between the ages of 15 to 44 in a research study published in the Journal of microbiology Society indicates this these pills influence gut health by altering the composition and function of the gut microbiome because what it does is when estrogen goes up it acts as a type of fertilizer for bad bacteria to overgrow especially yeast so different types of microbes like to feed off of different things and so when you have a woman who's eating let's say lots of blueberries okay lots of berries lots of sweet potatoes you'll have more of the good bacteria Thrive and grow when you're eating a lot of processed sugar more yeast grows in a very similar way when you're doing things that alter your hormones and estrogen increases you're causing more of the yeast to grow like candida and that's one of the reasons why birth control pills are so dangerous and unhealthy for women long term is that when you have all that yeasting candida start to overgrow it also decreases nutrient absorption and so those women that take birth controls pills they absorb less B vitamins in things to support actually even thyroid function which is why when women take birth control their their chance of getting hypothyroidism goes up dramatically and I want to say this I hit on three of these medications but here's the reality there's not a single conventional medication that doesn't do some level of damage to your gut so you want to do almost everything you can to take a vitamin an herb a peptide or some sort of natural treatment or therapy instead of taking a conventional medication when it comes to your gut health now in addition to drugs being very very damaging to our gut the biggest thing that's damaging our gut today along with stress is inflammatory foods and some of the biggest culprits include sugar refined grains seed oils gluten dairy these highly processed foods when you strip these foods of fiber nutrients like when you're doing white bread or or potato chips that start it acts like sugar in your body for the most part it starts to feed the bad bacteria and the other thing is gluten itself as a protein is very inflammatory so is dairy now if if you take a grain like a wheat or a rye or a barley that has gluten and you bring it through a sprouting process or a fermentation process it actually breaks gluten down in a way that you can now absorb it and it's non-inflammatory for most people in fact there's studies done on people that have celiacs disease that's a major sensitivity to gluten and and when they consumed sourdough bread versus regular bread the group that had sourdough had zero reactions even though they ate gluten the group that consumed uh the actual non-s sprouted or fermented gluten I want to say had you know well over 50% of the time it's closer to 70% of the time they had a reaction and so we see this according to the medical literature and dairy is the very same thing when you're doing raw dairy that is fermented like a raw goats milk yogurt uh you're you're it's typically not going to cause a reaction or cause it to very very few people however it's it's conventional Dairy the casine that protein and dairy is can cause autoimmune reactions in leaky gut as well so your diet really matters here and I'll get into more specific dietary principles here in a minute now I also want to go through toxicity and even our water supply you know poor water quality if you're drinking tap water it contains heavy metals chloride chlorine fluoride microplastics and chlorine and fluoride in particular disrupt gut bacteria while heavy metals of course also contribute but and that's not an all water supply but can chlorine and floride is in pretty much all Water Supplies across the board and a 2024 study in the medical journal Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology found this that microplastics in tap water can alter the gut microbiome and also impact intestinal function they can increase intestinal permeability known as leaky gut they trigger inflammation and cause oxidative stress which is going to cause you to age more quickly and your organs to age more quickly so even these microplastics today in our water supply so we see today that everything from our water supply to medications to diet all of these things are adding up and I want to mention another thing that probably isn't talked about much that's been damaging our guts a lot more the past 5 years and it's this over sanitation when we went through Co the amount of people using disinfectants sprays using hand gels a lot of these have antibiotics in them like Tran and these chemicals these antibiotics um kill off the good bacteria on our skin and in our gut they weaken our immune system you actually want to have a certain level of exposure to bacteria this is why the every medical study shows you want your kids to play in the dirt you want your kids to get dirty this is why kids innately they don't even know they're doing it they put everything in their mouth I have a one-year-old right now you know we were we were outside recently and she literally took an entire Festival where we have a garden this Garden in in our yard and she just put an entire thing of dirt in her mouth when we're at the beach she's putting sand in her mouth there's nothing she doesn't put in her mouth God created her body to start to do that so she can expose expose Expos it's like she's getting it a natural immunization we know what vaccines are and those types of immunizations where we're putting a foreign disease that's synthetic in a way man-made into our bodies God created us to naturally have exposure especially from the years of 1 to 2 years old where kids are getting these micro exposure es to dirt and microbes and yeast and all these things and their immune system is getting stronger and stronger and stronger as long as they're doing micro doses okay and um and and not going completely overboard but but it's it's good for their immune system and what happens if you don't do that if your kids aren't spending a lot of time outside especially which is where they're going to get their greatest level of true immunization and exposure what happens if that doesn't happen is their chance of having allergies and sensitivities go up dramatically and what happens is is if they don't have these exposures and later on they start to get them well they'll start to have um more the the what would tend to have only caused a a micro uh reaction to your body it'll start to have a larger reaction because your body's on high alert because it's never been exposed to these things and so you want to kind of have these many exposures over time and not a big exposure later on which then your body has a more negative reaction to and so you really want to make sure that your kids eat dirt in addition here's what we're seeing with a lot of our our gut issues today autoimmune disease if you have autoimmune disease in almost every single case of autoimmune disease you have leaky gut it's a gut issue and this is true with Hashimoto it's true with rheumatoid arthritis it's true with lupus it's true with many of these gut issues and so and here's how this works by the way a gut health and autoimmune disease let's say for instance you uh take a lot of an you take an run of antibiotics and you're on a medication and you've been exposed to glyphosate and you have eaten a poor diet okay so your gut has a lot of inflammation you start to have like imagine your gut is a fishing net or a a kitchen strainer and it gets a rip or hole in it okay well now when you're trying to catch fish or noodles like in a kitchen strainer and there's a big hole in it things start passing through well that's what your gut lining is like your gut lining is like a fishing net it's supposed to allow small things through and not bigger things well when you have bigger things passed through that aren't supposed to like undigested food proteins like gluten and casine or toxins such as glyphosate and heavy metals or certain medications or a number of things when those pass into your bloodstream and shouldn't be there your body says whoa this is too big this shouldn't be here it sets off an immune reaction and that's inflammatory and when that happens over and over and over again eventually your body will say okay we've been trying to eliminate this gluten or casing and we haven't been able to get rid of the problem here for three years now okay now we need to try something new let's not just go after gluten now let's go o go after any protein in the body that looks similar to gluten and sometimes that's your own body's proteins peptides and your body your body's own own protein and so your body will start attacking its thyroid causing Hashimoto or your body will start attacking your skin causing rosacea or exema or or psoriasis or your body will start attacking its joints like rheumatoid arthritis does that make sense so your body will now start attacking other proteins so your body is attacking itself and that's what's going on with your immune system now the good news is you can reverse this I've helped tens of thousands of patients reverse their autoimmune disease using food diet and lifestyle medicine and so you can do it but the root cause of autoimmune disease actually starts in the gut you know this is something that i' I've I've cared for a lot of patients I have a telea medicine clinic of virtual practice it's called the Health Institute and um and uh and I've helped a lot of patients start to address this via the practices and programs online if by the way if you're a person who is looking for a practitioner that can help you you can go to the health institute.com and watch one of our training videos and then work with a practitioner on helping you reverse that but I I did want to mention that because people ask all the time well Dr I have this do know practitioner to help walk me through that and yet you can go to the Health Institute and check that out now I do want to mention here another big thing and we've already talked about this that causes these gut issues and microbiome disruption and that's chronic stress just as much as poor diet and toxins chronic stress will your gut and then your immune system and what happens when you're under a lot of chronic stress cord cortisol is released and that when cortisol is released um your body starts pulling energy from other areas and your body your gut is not as good as repairing itself and when your body is not as good at repairing itself it actually weakens the tissue so when cortisol is released and your adrenals are overloaded and you're in a fight ORF flight State your gut lining gets weaker and it also slows your digestion down and it starts to cause leak gut the uh it causes these sort of holes they're called tight junctions open up in your gut creating more autoimmune issues so for a lot of people if you have a a diet issue the first hormone that tends to be affected is uh insulin but if you have a strat stress issue it's cortisol that then affects insulin which then affects your gut negatively is is what tends to happen and so just so you know another key factor to Healing your gut is dealing with chronic stress now there was a study published on this recently in the Journal of physiology and pharmacology and here's what they found exposure to stress results in alterations in the brain gut connection or known as the brain gut axis this ultimately leads to development of a broad array of these GI issues like inflammatory bowel disease but even basic things we see that are more that are more common like ulcers acid reflux gas and bloating and constipation are also affected with stress and another big thing that will contribute to this is not we we talked about stress is alcohol intake most people think oh alcohol just affects the liver well according to more recent studies know alcohol damages the gut lining as well now if you had a little bit of wine something like a half a glass of red wine it's really not going to affect your body that negatively but if you have more than one glass of an of alcohol or if you drink nightly it really starts to inflame your gut lining and so you really want to be careful of the amount and how often you drink alcohol and there are plenty of studies showing this that alcohol actually damages the liver and the gut and the pancreas basically your entire digestive system now I want to h on one toxin in particular that is probably causing the most gut microbiome issues and it is glyphosate this is the pesticide or herbicide that's found in Roundup now here's what a 2023 study found in regards to glyphosate consumption even in very small doses and by the way what was amazing about this study is they found even in doses that were found to be considered safe by us standards it Alters your gut microbiome and disrupts and damages many gut bacteria these changes were linked to in the study inflammation of your gut which led to poor nutrient absorption and activation of pro-inflammatory immune cells which then are linked to autoimmune disease and so we see glyphosate which again is on so many foods today damaging our gut microbiomes and here's the other crazy part there's another study that found that glyphosate can live in your gut for year years it stays there for a long time this is why there's actually certain types of probiotics I'll mention here in a few minutes that specifically actually helps your gut detoxify from this this this um Roundup this glyphosate and so there's a very specific type of probiotic you want to take uh to actually help your body detoxify this from your gut mular biome I mean you know for some of you your gut is essentially think about it like this it's bankrupt it's it's missing it's it's not only it's in debt so for many of you you need to do a lot of probiotics for many years and sometimes you want to start small and work your way up but for a lot of you you want to really focus on building and building and building your gut microbiome as much as you can over time now if you have certain issues like histamine intolerance you've got to be very strategic about how you do it and do it in slower but if you don't have histamine intolerance many of you can Dive Right In and do higher doses uh pretty early on now a few more things I want to head into in terms of the things causing leaky gut and we're going to get into the Solutions in terms of the diet the supplements the herbs and the lifestyle but here's another one additives and food dieses artificial food additives emulsifiers preservatives artificial colors these have also been shown to cause issues and then mold toxicity here's another one mold exposure uh and mot toxins whether this be from food or mold in your home triggers gut inflammation and these mot toxins have actually release a toxin called um uh okra Toxin and it's been shown to increase intestinal permeability as well and cause symptoms like bloating food sensitivities and chronic fatigue this is why people with mold exposure also get gut issues and again brain fog and bloating is it affects their gut you would think that okay if you're exposed to mold that's Airborne that would affect your lungs mostly well it does affect your lungs but it also passes into your gut and those are the biggest areas that tend to be affected is your lungs and your gut which then affects your brain if you've ever been exposed to mold and there's a very specific way you want to detox it from that as well and you know I've seen this in clinical practice I've had many celebrities reach out to me and some well-known people with leaky gut microbiome issues and I have gone through specific plans to help them reverse what they're dealing with and I've done this with many people now one person in particular I want to mention who's gone through something he shared it publicly that I haven't worked with I actually worked with one of his co-stars but it's Ashton Kutcher he's a celebrity from That 70s Show and and he actually said publicly he faced severe leaky gut and autoimmune issues after following an extreme diet um he went on a diet for a period of time of eating only fruits and nuts and seeds to prep for a roll and because of this diet he developed vasculitis this is inflammation of his blood vessels and he started having issues with his sight his hearing that stem from inflammation isn't crazy that you can have a gut issue and it's causing issues with your nervous system your your eyesight and your hearing and he had to completely rebuild his gut health with dietary changes and medical support and listen you'd think oh he's eating mostly fruits and nuts doesn't that sound healthy no raw foods lots of raw nuts and raw seeds and raw fruit that's not good for your gut go that surprises most people um but that's not you know raw foods are not good for your gut you want to eat mostly cooked foods and this goes all the way back thousands of years ago we're talking about hypocrates we're talking about Chinese medicine we're talking about ayurveda you know I even think about you know ancient Jewish medicine if you know some of the roots there and this some of it's biblical some of it's more just the way the ancient Jews ate you know there's something called Jewish penicillin which is chicken soup and so when somebody was sick in the past and Ill which remember starts in the gut they would have people consume things like chicken soup and ginger tea lots of soups and teas lots of liquids that are cooked and so if you have a gut issue do not be eating a lot of salads do not be doing a lot of smoothies you don't want to do cold food you want to do raw foods you want to do warm and nourishing cooked food a lot of cooked meat a lot of cooked vegetables um maybe a little bit of rice or sweet potato if as carbs Maybe a little bit of baked fruit cooked fruit like baked pears and applesauce this helps heal leaky gut getting to the root of these issues and I've had so many patients who have come in who thought they were doing really well by eating lots of salads and lots of superfood smoothies while they were actually destroying their gut health making themselves worse if you've been doing everything right eating clean exercising but somehow you're still not feeling your best your energy is dragging your memory is slipping and it's frustrating because you know there's more to your potential well what if the issue isn't just in your routine but it's deep down inside your cells you know you're investing in the best supplements working out regularly and sticking to a clean diet but if your cells are stuck in what's called cell danger response all the hard work might not be paying off as it should think of your C like a house under renovation you can bring in the highest quality materials like the best supplements in clean foods but if the workers inside the house or are on lockdown because of a storm nothing gets done the materials just pile up unused that's what happens when your cells are in CDR they can't fully use the good stuff you're giving them getting out of CDR the cell danger response is the key to unlocking your body's full potential when your cells are no longer in protective mode they can finally use the nutrients hormones and energy you're working so hard to provide that's when everything starts to click your energy improves your workouts become more efficient and you start to feel like yourself again go to Beyond bloodwork decom to learn how to break free from cell danger response and make the effort pay [Music] off now I want to walk you through right now the three phases of gut healing and how to truly heal leaky gut heal your gut microbiome help you overcome if you have damage from antibiotics damage from birth control pills damage from nids how to start to heal your gut here's phase one remove in detox let's talk about if we did a 30-day healing process now for some of you it may take a full year it may take three months but let's go through what a 30-day would look like the first phase is removing detox step one is about removing what's actually damaging your gut and starting to detoxify the harmful substances here's what you need to eliminate processed foods refin sugars refined grains and gluten seed oils and dairy temporarily also alcohol and at least cutting back on caffeine you can have a little bit in the morning if you tolerate caffeine well but you don't want to be drinking it throughout the day you got to remove these and nonorganic foods that might be Laden with glyphosate or or genetically modified foods you want to get all of those completely out of your diet and raw foods and very cold foods and cooling foods like ice cream get those out of your diet raw nuts raw seeds that's phase one and what you want to do also I want to mention this you want to drink clean water don't continue to drink tap water with chlorine and fluoride in it get a really good filtered water or spring water is great as well is going to be important now I want to go through some other things we can start to do as well to naturally detoxify your gut one is exercise uh walk and really it's almost any form of exercise now let me say this you don't want to over exercise did you know that doing marathon training uh over two hours of CrossFit a day um Triathlon training where you're doing a lot a lot of cardio that actually causes leaky gut and makes your gut worse but if you're walking if you're doing regular weight training let's say for an hour or less if you are uh doing a little bit of inner f training if you're doing regular cardio that's less than 45 minutes especially those are all good for your gut for the most part so you want to move you want to sweat that's going to help detoxify it's going to move your lymphatic system getting on a mini rebounder that's great as well but just walking um playing pickleball uh swimming um uh cycling those are all great as well so you want to move a little bit and in addition an infrared sauna is amazing this is going to help move your system and you want to warm your body you can get an infrared SAA you can get an infrared blanket infrared heating pad you can do a little bit of heat around your stomach around your belly button and low back in fact if you ever go to a certain acupuncturists they will put a red light over your belly button area which is your really going to be your small and large intestine area over your intestines and they will put red light over your low back and that's because that's going to help heal your gut okay get it's going to bring more blood flow more circulation and so that's something great you can do um is get more infrared hea and you can buy an infrared heating bat on Amazon easily and just keep that over that region of your body to help heal and bring blood flow as well which can be very very healing for a lot of people now I want to mention a little bit more about infrared light and the benefits um it's been shown in clinical studies to reduce inflammation in the gut and oxidative stress in fact there was a published study in the Journal of gastro neurology and hepatology and here's what they found they said as the primary inducer of circadian rhythms light especially infrared light can influence the human intestinal microbiome they said photobiomodulation therapy which is red light therapy or infrared light can stimulate healing relieve pain reduce inflammation and affect the Circadian rhythm and gut microbiome beneficially isn't that amazing new studies are being released showing that red light therapy in infrared light therapy has an incredible healing capacity on the gut microbiome so this is why so many of my patients I recommend they get in an infrared sauna or they get an infrared heating pad and they use that healing light regularly and by the way let me tell you something that's even more powerful than that sunbathing the sun gives off not only near and for red light all forms of red light and blue light and green light the the you know the full spectrum colors that actually help heal your gut now I do want to say listen you don't want to burn your skin ever it's bad for your skin um and bad for aging but you do want to get regular vitamin D and regular sunshine on your skin and especially getting that stomach area and low back area getting that direct light actually helps heal your body now when you can't get in the sun um again this is where photobiomodulation therapy like doing a red light bed or red light panels has tremendous benefits as well or again infrared SAA or just a red heating pad so if if financially you have the means to get something like an infrared SAA or go to a reg generative Therapy Center where you can regularly get in the Sun or do a red light bed or if you can't afford that um or you want to be you're just being financially conscious then buy a red light heating pad an infrared heating pad on Amazon maybe I think the one that Chelsea and I bought has about it's like $150 um and and that's a great choice it's a great option to do something like that as well um I do want to mention and this is something that I get questions about all the time Dr ax should I or shouldn't I fast if I want to heal my gut and the answer is it really depends on your unique physiology I have some patients do a certain level of fasting if they've got issues I have others that don't but let me tell you what I do with most patients I have them eat with in a 10hour window and so what I'll have them do is eat breakfast around 8:00 a.m. I'll have them eat lunch around noon and I'll have them eat dinner an early dinner around 5:00 or as early as we can ideally and so that puts you in a 10-hour eating window and so they're not snacking at night they're not eating the moment they wake up in the morning maybe they're waiting an hour or hour and a half or two but but that really puts somebody in the in in a really good position where they're not eating for 14 whole hours and that's really good for most people and I think for most people that need to heal whether it's hormonally or their gastrointestinal system I think for those people they're best off not doing a really a six or four or 2hour fast I think fasting now listen I have had some men that were fairly resilient and they did well with intermittent fasting and more and more um extreme fasting so so for some patients they do well with it but the majority of my patients even more so women I found that that intense fasting every single day is too hard on their hormonal system and it's not ideal for their healing so again I really like about that 10-hour window or so where they're still not eating quite a bit they're still 4H hour gaps so so they can still get the right amount of calories in and that tends to be really really good and I've seen the best results in healing leaky G following that protocol but again here's the key listen to your body listen if if you feel like and you notice hey you know what I do have energy I do feel good fasting is agreeing with you then you can fast more than that or if you feel like yeah listen I really need to eat even earlier and I need to do more of a 12-hour eating window then Hey listen to your body with that okay and the other thing I would say is also listen to the foods that agree with you or don't agree with you I have some people I've treated with leaky gut syndrome or microbiome issues and their body responds incredibly well to rice and potatoes those sorts of carbs and then there are others that don't respond to those disaccharide carbs and potatoes or to to to grains at all in some it's the top food that helps them heal like in Chinese medicine rice kanji where you're cooking rice overnight toward where it's mush it's the number one food they heal from I've had other patients who if they cut touch any type of dairy even if it's raw and fermented they get sick and then I have one of my closest friends Jordan ruin who reversed inflammatory bow disease where almost the only thing he ate for 3 months was raw goats milk kefir that was the number one 58 and he reversed IBD so listen all the advice I'm giving you tends to be good for the majority but listen remember you are a unique individual and you need to pay attention to what your body does well with listen just because your best friend did the diet and they respond well do a food and sell good results does not mean that that's also going to work for you okay so what I'm sharing with you these are principles that work for most people but you still need to adjust and listen to your body along the way now I do want to mention here as well as we're talking about detoxing and cleansing your body we're part we're still in phase one here you also need to be aware of things like mold or infections in candida so many people today have uh microb overgrowth of things like candida or sibo small intestinal bacteria overgrowth and this is where stress also plays an important role if you have sibo the number one issue there is that you're too busy you need to back off you need to relax you need to eat very slowly and give your gut time to heal and for some people they need to eat more of what we call lowfat map map diet and they need to be careful with things like vinegar and like doing even probiotic rich foods because it might impact them negatively uh but for many of them what I found is doing soil-based probiotics actually are what work best for them and then they also need to eat things like uh like jasmine rice tends to be very good in a slow cooker where it's mush and chicken and doing those sort of bland easy to eat Foods on a regular basis they tend to do very well with those okay so biggest things we need to do in Phase One remember remove the foods that cause inflammation try and remove the medications that are causing inflammation try and cleanse your body and the supplement the number one supplement you want to take in phase one is a soil-based organism probiotic I would recommend a probiotic that's very high dose very strong in a type of probiotic it's called ab22 it's known as basilla subtilus this specific probiotic help acts like a bulldozer of clearing out candida hpylori and bad bacterial overgrowth and it's the one your body is least likely to have a histamine reaction to so doing that one is very good um and I would do you know five I would do very high dose I would do up to a trillion daily especially if you have an infection um to clear it out so that's phase one get rid of the bad use probiotics um to help start to cleanse out the bad and do things like red light therapy and Fred sauna okay phase two we've removed all of the toxins we've removed the things damaging your gut the INF the inflammatories and we want to now repair the gut days 11 through 20 um this you really want to focus on foods that are easy to digest number one food for most people is bone broth now I do want to mention there's a group of people that have histamine intolerance and they don't even respond well to bone broth but they will probably respond well to a bone broth protein or or a chicken stock okay and so what happens when you cook bone broth a long time or with a lot of vinegar that's when it has more histamine if you do a very short cook time like if you make bone broth at home in a pressure cooker for just let's say an hour or two that tends to not have that histamine and again don't put vinegar in either when you do that and that sort of bone broth most everyone tolerates even those with histamine and sibo reactions I recommend some fermented foods um it could be a little bit of sauerkraut or coconut yogurt but introduce slowly if you don't do well with it then back off and try again later just start with even a teaspoon and if you don't do well don't keep doing it here's another big thing I recommend to heal your gut drink a lot of herbal teas Ginger peppermint marshmallow chamomile licorice root astragalus doing these herbal teas warming tea throughout the day is so healing for your gut microbiome so healing in fact I would say it's probably the biggest therapy we are missing today is doing herbal teas to heal our guts now the basis of your diet here as we repair should be soups think about just a classic chicken vegetable soup maybe with a few little tweaks you're doing organic chicken you're doing bone broth you're doing celery you're doing carrots if you do okay with them onions if you're have sibo then don't do it or if you're having too much fermentation but that you're you're grading a little bit of ginger in there maybe a little bit of uh sea salt and if you want to you tolerate while do a little bit of rice like a like a Bosman or Jasmine in there and consume that and you could eat that almost every meal okay but that's good a lot of meat and vegetables okay that are cooked but soups um in addition to meat and cooked vegetables you could steam vegetables that's wonderful again sweet potatoes and rice are what people tend to do the best best with I mentioned baked pears applesauce baked blueberries um and then I would also say um a little bit of healthy fat it could be a little bit of avocado a little bit of extra virgin olive oil a little bit of coconut oil um coconut milk that's sort of the ideal diet if we're really going to heal your gut is a diet pretty much like that okay um if we're going to reverse verse Ley got in heal your got microbiome um and I would also say so do soups you could also do you know a steak that you grill or or ground beef made up into a grassfed burger and then do that with some steamed vegetables and maybe a little bit of something like a tri a hummus or a tahini or something like that with it could be very healing now there are also very specific nutrients and vitamins you need to heal your gut and some of the best include zinc in fact zinc is known as your body's repair mineral you have to have it to heal your gut I would recommend typically 15 to 30 milligrams daily um humic and fulvic acid these are found in certain probiotic supplements that tend to detoxify and nourish your gut microba this is especially good if you can find some humic acid or fulvic acid in a probiotic supplement as well very good for gut healing L glutamine is an amino acid typically a white powder doing 5 grams once to twice daily aloe vera juice if you have a lot of heat in your system now if you have ibsd or you stick out your tongue it's white or if you get cold easily do not do aloe vera but if you have a lot of heat in your system aloe can be helpful then and if not if you found feel cold you actually want to do more Ginger instead of the aloe but zinc humic and fulvic acid El glutamine probiotics tend to be the top things you want to do to heal your gut along with herbs like ginger licorice root marshmallow peppermint argulus are great for gut healing I also want to mention as you are healing your gut not to overdo it by ere exercising um by being too much stress remember I cannot overstate this stress is equal to diet and what's disrupting your gut microbiome so you need to both follow this diet I'm sharing and additionally you need to schedule things you love to do you need to have more margin in your life going from thing to thing to thing being busy every single moment of the day is destroying your gut health spending more time in nature going on many many more walks I mean walking in nature is so healing for your gut meditating praying just spending time praying to God reading your Bible reading a personal growth book reading a novel You Love and Enjoy is healing journaling doing lunch with a best friend going out and playing pickleball whatever you love to do do more of that and create more margin where you're not as busy okay that's going to help you heal you might say oh easier said than done I have five kids and I'm working and I'm a mom and I've got everything listen at some point if you don't take care of yourself it's going to cost you something greatly I I experienced it with my own mom my mom was this mom growing up and at 41 years old she was diagnosed with breast cancer and then she got put on anti-depressants and then anti- aiy drugs and then she was diagnosed with leaky gut and then she had chronic fatigue syndrome and hypothesis and she was always exhausted to where she could hardly do anything that was my mom growing up and it was because she did that every moment of every day she was busy doing something and she was always caring for others and not caring for herself and looking back I really I would been okay if my mom would have done less if she would have had her health you know so so that's what I would say if you're in that situation really think about prioritizing only say yes to the great even say no to the good just say yes to the great things prioritize do everything you can to spend time with God your family the things that matter most in doing things you love and cut everything else out okay that's going to help you heal you got to nourish yourself and have good self-care if you're going to heal and here's another big one sleep you got to get enough sleep that's when your body heals and repairs if you have leaky gut or microbiome issues or autoimmune disease or hypothy any of these issues your body heals the most your gut heals the most when you're sleeping and you need to have ideally 8 to 9 hours of sleep at night try to go to bed earlier that's the best way okay try and go to bed earlier have your room dark have it cold use a weighted blanket once dinner's over put on this blue blocker sunglasses it's okay if you look silly I look silly every night when I do it okay this is going to help you heal get that deep restful sleep okay phase three of healing your gut rebuild here's some other things that maybe go out of the box or even more extreme to help you heal okay now I already mentioned this in phase one but I want to mention it again doing probiotics especially not and let me mention not just probiotics but prebiotics and postbiotics the best probiotic strain for healing leak you get include number one basilla subtilus and other so espo strains um such as basilis closi basilis coagulant but get more soil-based organisms and then also lactobacillus and bifidobacterium and there's other people that also like uh types of archimia which I think is beneficial but not as beneficial as these but these are really going to help heal your gut okay so you want to find a good probiotic especially with basilla subtilus and you also want to look for good prebiotics like trifala which is a ancient ayurvedic blend which is very very good especially if you have constipation um marshmallow root mushrooms like Rishi are also tremendous Prebiotic rich foods um are very healing as well um and then certain types of fruit like like I mentioned apples like applesauce is very good has pectin this is an amazing amazing uh Prebiotic food that helps heal the gut you know there's a a 30-day study involving adults with ibsd uh with confirmed leaky gut and they found that um a multistrain probiotic supplement sign significantly improved intestinal permeability healed leaky gut in 81.5% of participants with 37% achieving full and complete normalization of their gut microbiome so think about that this is rare for study to be this effective nearly 82% of people that took a high quality probiotic supplement saw a great Improvement in leaky guut wow there there's nothing else you could probably take I mean maybe zinc is going to be up there too but there's almost nothing else you could take that's going to be as effective for healing leaky gut as probiotics in fact they're definitely the most effective they're also the pride the most effective at healing autoimmune disease and that's what's crazy to me is there's so many people with autoimmune disease and they're not taking a quality probiotic and listen I I'm going to say this again quality most probiotic supplements are not good they're garbage by the time you take the strains they're dead and they don't have the most powerful clinically studied strengths so you get what you pay for I had somebody recently text me you know that that they're doing all the right things and then they tech text me the brand of supplements they were taking I said where did you get that and they said CVS and it was they bought it for like $5 like this probiotic and it's like no listen I I hate to say this if you want to be effective you need to buy buy the $50 brand you you got to buy the quality one and even if you took way less and and your budget was way less well then parse it out over time and get more via your food but don't don't skimp you want to buy quality if you're buying any of these supplements I want to mention the same study as well so they continued on with this study here's what they found patients reported when they took this probiotic supplement significant reductions in abdominal pain and diarrhea and by the end of the study 96% of participants felt their IBS symptoms had been significantly or satisfactorily Al alleviated suggesting that probiotics might be the most promising supplement for healing IBS wow that's amazing the other thing I mentioned earlier is prebiotics and you're basically going to get this from eating a lot of cooked or steamed vegetables and fruit like berries and applesauce for the most part those those things now onions and garlic and certain nuts and seeds also have good fiber but you have to be careful with those because for some people it's going to upset your stomach so if you do nuts or seeds they should be sprouted and made into a nut butter or some seeds like ground up flax can be okay for some people but if your guts very sensitive you even want to wait for those for a little bit and focus more on the applesauce and um and the steamed vegetables so remember this in phase three you are continuing on with the diet we talked about a lot of cooked meat especially meat is very easy to digest a lot of bone broth some cooked vegetables some applesauce maybe some cooked blueberries maybe some baked parrots those sort of foods and doing the supplements especially probiotics and then also consider things like uh you know acupuncture can be very healing for the gut we mentioned red light therapy Chinese medicine can be very healing as well so working with a practitioner an acupuncturist or functional medicine dot can also help guide you into other strategies for healing and the Chinese medicine perspective is this is that part of your digestive system it's it's working like a fire it needs to generate heat and have energy to break down food and it's much EAS easier to break down and digest C Foods this is why if you like smoothies but you have leaky gut you you want to stay away from smoothies unless you're doing what I call a a warming smoothie and here's what I have patients do rather than the frozen fruit smoothie in the morning I have them do something like a sweet potato or pumpkin smoothie so I will have a patient take either pumpkin butternut squash or sweet potato and put that in and then I will have the do a little bit of just water or a little coconut milk I'll have them put in a little bit of pumpkin pie spice and then I'll have them put in a scoop of a collagen or a bone broth or a stem cell protein some sort of more collagen or broth based protein about 20 gram of that I may have them put in a little bit of a plant-based protein or or if they tolerate it well that's a vanilla flavor let's say with with this recipe and and and I have them do it either room temperature or warm and see the fiber that you're going to get in pumpkin or butternut squash or sweet potato is very healing and very good for the gut or I have them do applesauce in this smoothie and do the very same recipe with a little pumpkin pie spice or Ginger cardamom and um and then doing again the water maybe a little bit of coconut milk and um and the same thing the vanilla powders and when they do that so so if you want to do a smoothie or a shake do that okay that that's sort of the ideal that you do something like that in the the morning but you want to focus on more warming Foods soup stews cooked vegetables rice coni made into a porridge um you know herbal tea so you want to warm the body that's the TCM perspective in the cold foods the raw foods ice drinks salads smoothies Dairy fried and greasy Foods excessive sugar these all overburden the digestive system you know a few of the herbals that are most prescribed and recommended in Chinese medicine I I referenced them earlier such as licorice root and peppermint and Ginger and marshmallow in addition though one of the most clinically backed herbs for healing your gut microbiome is aulus a stralis is an herb that strengthens your immune system and your gut and act as an adaptogen and actually in studies has been shown to help heal intestinal permeability you can do this as a tea or as part of a supplement and and it's one of my favorites probably 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams daily in addition propolis which is found in honey if have leaky gut and want to heal your gut Manuka Honey is probably the most healing or doing a superfood honey that has propolis in it propolis is made by bees and it has this anti-inflammatory immune modulating properties and acts as a Prebiotic that supports the growth of good bacteria and specifically propis combined with Manuka Honey kills off hpylori and and helps kill off bacterial overgrowth so taking both taking both both propolis and Manuka together have tremendous benefits as I mentioned as well there are lots of other herbs in Chinese medicine that are beneficial licorice root for instance has been shown to heal the gut as well now last topic I want to touch on because I get many questions about this is what about peptides and peptide therapy well there are peptides that can help heal their gut what peptides are they are shorter chains of amino acids so they're not as long as a protein but they're shorter chains of amino acids that are found in your body that help with creating hormones help with repairing tissue regeneration and overall Supply the basis sometimes for healing your body one of the most popular today for healing leaky gut and for helping support gut repair is known as bpc157 and this is an incredible peptide you can take it as an oral capsule you can take it as a nasal spray you can do it as a uh an injection is in like a like a insulin syringe and it is very very good for healing the gut microbiome and there are many peptide suppliers out there but bpc157 helps both with that tissue regeneration if you actually have leaky gut another one is called tb500 or thymosin B4 beta 4 and it's a peptide that supports tissue regeneration as well but also reduces inflammation of the gut and you can take that in a very same way another one is really powerful it's called kpv V this is a powerful anti-inflammatory peptide that also helps gut permeability and again you're going to take this orally or you're going to take it um typically as a um as an injection and so these are if you want to kind of go above and beyond you can do those as well now I want to last thing I want to talk about is testing um one listen if you have any of the symptoms I talked about especially gut issues you know you have leaky gut and a microbiome issue um but generally also remember if you've got headaches if you have brain fog if you have skin issues if you have autoimmune disease you know you also have leaky gut or gut issues as well and you can do a test called a GI map which stands for gastrointestinal microbial aite plus it's a basically it's a stool test that looks at the type of microbes bacteria and pathogens that live in your gut and there are markers for leaky gut in there and so they will test and look at exactly what's going on there and it can tell you so a GI map is a great way to test and there are specific tests for leaky gut one is called zulin um that you can do there's a newer one out called an idin test this is a key protein that basically manages your gut staying closed and if it's off well then we know that there's leaky gut and this is a test that's performed via a blood test but really I would say the stool test the G GI map is one of my favorites to do with patients so we know exactly what we need to do to start healing their gut and we can actually see those imbalances there but um remember this all disease and all health for the most part begin in your gut and you want to take good care of your gut this is good for everything from reversing disease to promoting a long healthy life for longevity and healing and um you want to focus on remember removing the things that are damaging your body and then going and doing those positive things that help really restore repair and regenerate your tissue and that's everything from reducing stress by being proactive about doing things you love to taking probiotics to eating that diet that I shared with you today and if you do that it works again I've helped thousands of people reverse leaky gut reverse autoimmune disease by following these tips I want to say hey thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr Josh a show remember every week I'm diving deep into the principles that are going to help you experience a breakthrough physically but also mentally and spiritually and we're diving into topics everything from raw milk to peptides to what the you know what the government is doing to either help you or hurt your health and so I I I uh I'm so grateful for all of you that are subscribers here that are on Mission with me thank you for all of you that are sharing these podcast getting the word out there because you know there are millions of people that don't know that their issue is actually a gut issue I mean there I come across people all the time and they think well my autoimmune disease is bad luck or genetics and it's not there's simple things you can start to do to heal yourself and get to the root cause so thank you to all of you for subscribing liking and sharing this episode I can't wait to see you on on the next episode