well hello everyone welcome back to episode seven it's Matt and Sarah co-founders of goodness lover and creators of the microbiome series that you are watching now speaking of watching we are heading towards the end of this event and um I guess we'll take you behind the scenes a little bit of what it feels like at this point for us for us it's like a marathon it's just about to be finished like we are just like the relief that this has all gone out to you that um the pages stayed up that the people are enjoying it I get connecting with information is just immense so the series will finish um and and that's amazing and your hair will be swirling of all this new information but you would say the next Point as to what happens after and so Sarah what is it like to you know what's it like after the series goes out and people sent their packages and they get started what is that like from our end well I will tell you it is my favorite part of the day to receive messages to receive emails about the results that people are getting honestly it keeps me on a high all day long we have people writing and saying my energy is back I have no more gut pain I feel younger my doctor told me I can reduce my blood pressure medications my doctor told me my blood sugar looks great I'm losing weight my joints the pain is diminishing I feel 30 years younger I feel that's that's a quote from an email that we received and it's honestly it's just the best so that is what I hope is waiting for you when you start to implement these things these protocols the these dietary tips and tricks into your life when you start to bring your wonderful complex microbiome bring it bring them in as your partner and best friend on your health Journey it's amazing what can happen obviously I've seen it in my own life my these joints they don't hurt me anymore they used to hurt a lot not anymore um but it's the best it's just what we want for you as well so I really hope you feel empowered equipped encouraged to take this information on into your life from for a lifetime and we'd like to just remind you in the sense that this is um the series is coming to an end which is sad we've loved being there with you like we feel like we've made so many more new friends around the world and um you know what I'm not your part if you've share the series and you've watched it um you're part of the goodness of a family we thank you for the bottom of our hearts for all the wonderful messages that you've written in but we believe that this is just the beginning um because after the heads well finishes you need to then put this into action like it's it's one thing to shock your mind and be like wow there's so much more information but it's when you put these things into action that has the incredible impact on changing the trajectory of people's lives their health um and their families health and is there anything more important than than health is there anything more important like once it's gone it's gone like you can be a billionaire and you lose your health you lose everything and this is why we value everything like this is why we value this and information so much because it is a war zone out there at the moment there is so much misinformation people don't understand what to do they don't understand that there's more to the story than maybe what they're being told and this is where we would love you to join in and join us because by owning a series we make this as practical as possible we want you to be equipped not only for your own health But ultimately for you to teach and share this information confidently with your friends and family that's the way the entire thing has been designed and we would love to have you a part of our community because it's when you get together in community that's where things happen and yeah it's just we want you to experience that as well basically so time's running out but there is a button on the screen for you to take the next step with us in whatever package that you decide and we would love to personally welcome you into the goodness lover family so yes for those who would like to own this series as part of your personal Library along with all the amazing bonuses that we have on offer including meal plans and cooking programs and cheat sheets and supplements they're all there on offer for you to consume and enjoy and and to equip you so we've got insane an insane deal like what a special event only deal on offer so time is running out we're in episode seven um so we're nearing the end of our journey but we want to thank you again for joining us and um it's been our privilege to host you [Music] thank you [Music] welcome to episode 7 of our microbiome masterclass I'm your host Sarah Otto today we're back to take a closer look at some of the most Troublesome forms of dysbiosis when the microbiome doesn't have enough of the beneficial species that support our gut health opportunistic pathogens take over this can result in chronic and hard to treat infections that steadily drain our immune system and fan the fires of inflammation if you or someone you care about has been struggling with stubborn long-term gut issues or health problems chronic infections may be partly to blame let's dive in to find out how to tell if pathogenic microbes are affecting your health and learn about the best ways to resolve chronic infections I have this one patient in particular she's one of my favorite she's like real feisty and fun to be with but she really struggled with anxiety she fell under that category of her anxiety really just went through the roof during covet she was a very complicated person I tried all of my things with her and I just could not get her she would go out into these crazy easy flares which she'd have vomiting and diarrhea and just get triggered out of nowhere and she'd be out for like two days three days you know and what we discovered with her is actually her main issue was that she had a lot of fungal overgrowth and because of that fungal overgrowth she had a lot of eosinophils or histamine-producing cells sometimes those allergies presents like allergies on the skin or sneezing but sometimes it presents like really strong reactions to food and when you kind of clamp down on that histamine then all of a sudden you can clamp down on the anxiety the first thing is just figuring out if it's there right she was pretty severe in the amount of histamine that she had so with her we actually ended up doing a whole lot of anti-fungals and then we used one of my favorite drugs that's uh in the U.S you have to compound it up it's called catataphen but it's a mast cell stabilizer and so you know we're treating the anti-fungals and then we Mast Cell stabilize her so she's not nearly as reactive and she doesn't have as much histamine circulating so she's not nearly as anxious and on top of that just by taking care of some of the histamine and she's not like afraid she's going to go to a restaurant and have a crazy vomiting diarrhea flare because of all that she is just a lot more comfortable in her body she's not as phobic you know what I mean like it's kind of a huge life changer when you don't have to worry every time you go out to eat if you're gonna have a crazy reaction and it's hard to have a social life and have a community without being able to eat so just giving her the ability to eat a little bit more freely and she still has her restrictions and she still knows her triggers but at least she's not worried that everything she puts into her mouth is going to get her to have a vomiting diarrhea attack we managed to get her on a regimen that controlled her histamine right and that experience of controlling her histamine really completely changed her anxiety about everything you know and it was just like kind of amazing to watch this person who was like had so much fire and so much internal light but was being clamped down because the anxiety was so intense and then dealing with the underlying cause of the fungal overgrowth creating all of that histamine it just comes completely changed her I will also say that the thing that's really interesting with anxiety in the microbiome is the byproduct of cortisol is histamine so if you're in a condition where there's a lot of histamine secretion cortisol will be higher you'll have a lot of histamine you'll have a lot of Mast Cell issues you'll have a lot of allergic issues so histamine intolerance is something that occurs pretty commonly these days and I'll find more and more people coming to me specifically mentioning that they're intolerant to foods high in histamine so there are many things that can lead to issues with histamine but first it's important to know where histamine comes from so histamine is released by mast cells in the lamina propria of your gut lining that is a part of your gut wall these mast cells will release histamine when activated and histamine is a very vasoactive substance because it can produce a lot of symptoms all over your body from GI symptoms to skin rashes what causes muscle activation well there are a lot of different conditions there is post-infectious so for example you know covid any gut infection can activate it but there's also very specific triggers and you know very specific triggers can include anything from food so for example actually High FODMAP Foods have been shown to increase urinary histamine levels and the bacteria in your microbiome that is associated with histamine what we've learned is that you have to kind of understand triggers of your your histamine activation the histamine activation can come from food triggers it can come from stress triggers it can come from things like temperature triggers and there are so many things that can trigger activation of mast cells and then when they're more active and you introduce a high histamine food then you will become very symptomatic so it's very important to tease through in a very kind of in-depth meeting with a nutritionist what indeed is causing your symptoms you know a lot of times it's not as helpful to just do full elimination diets like removing all histamine because actually it's not possible to remove all histamine from your diet it's just possible to do a low histamine diet but it's always better to just understand your gut better and that takes journaling of symptoms you know understanding your triggers going through it with somebody who understands what chemical compounds are found in what foods and can help you identify your triggers there's a lot of reasons for histamine sensitivities one of them can be candida mold infestation so if someone's living in a moldy environment or they have a history of living in a moldy environment and that somehow has created a biofilm in their body then certainly the histamine problem is is not directly related to the mold it's related to the inflammation as a result of those those things populating the body and so when I get into these kind of situations my first and foremost concern is what's causing the histamine sensitivity because oftentimes it wasn't there five years ago 10 years ago it's something that came on over time and so we have to determine how we can create a remedy for the root cause then we can address getting histamines back in the body going on a low histamine diet is first and foremost the starting point with something like this and we want to try and get those aggravating Foods out of the body so that the body has less inflammation but while we're going on that low histamine diet we want to look at interventions that are going to help pull any of those potential infections out of the body so with candida or mold they're both in that fungal family and I'm going to be looking at anti-fungal remedies I commonly will use black walnuts uh product Arco I I love oregano oil actually I've been using recently in my clinic for dealing with mold overgrowth and also to accommodate those herbs we're also looking at things that are going to help defind and detoxify so something like an acetylcysteine might be appropriate a molybdenum might be another appropriate intervention to help with binding and removing those toxins from the body so we want to support the body's detoxification Pathways but we also want to make sure that we're getting everything out what I've seen with so many of my patients I have worked with this combination of of mold candida and histamine intolerance a lot over the years a lot and I've seen over and over again that with you know three rounds four rounds maybe five rounds of the herbs three weeks on three weeks off that we can start reintroducing some foods and eventually they can start to come back into a place where they're able to eat more and more Foods um and I like use myself as a perfect example of this because I know my body the best I actually had um exposure to mold over periods of time and realized that this was also contributing to my histamine issues and as I worked as I got myself out of the the environment where the mold was and we had it remediated and continued to work on pulling the mold out of the body in a pulsing manner I found myself starting to be able to eat Foods I hadn't been able to touch in years literally years So and I've seen this with other patients too time and time again that once we get the body cleared of the inflammation cleared of the infection that these food sensitivities are actually not food sensitivities it's just the body's hyper reactivity in an inflamed State and so then these restrictive painfully restrictive types can be loosened up gradually because if anyone's followed it has a low histamine diet it is not easy and I have a lot of vegetarians that come into my clinic and it's even harder because vegetarians rely heavily on beans and TOEFL these are of all these are high histamine Foods avocados so they can be really challenging for people that are on a plant-based diet that have a histamine sensitivity to really go on a low histamine diet they feel like they're boxed into a corner but it's temporary if we're really addressing the root cause of the histamine intolerance and that is really the Crux of it is how do we get to that root cause address it properly and then gradually work to getting them back onto these foods that are perfectly healthy and the body should be able to accept we are seeing way more of a condition called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome MCAS right and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome is a condition that comes in a spectrum there are people who have a little bit of Mast Cell Activation or some mild allergic presentation and there are some people who are just like chock full of mast cell or histamine right what fungus does and what mold does is the byproduct that the immune system secretes to its reaction to mold and fungus candida also in that is it makes more mast cells so I think about a mast cell like it's a little cell and it imagine like a balloon with 10 little darts right and the balloon the wall that surrounds that balloon or the membrane of the balloon if it gets really thin or friable those darts will puncture that balloon right and now you've got these 10 darts and those 10 darts are going to puncture 10 more balloons and now you've got a hundred yards and a hundred darts are then going to go and puncture a hundred balloons and now you've got a thousand like you can see how this logarithmically will just cause more and more and more mast cells or histamine degranulating those darts are basically histamine molecules right and so what happens with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome or MCAS is you have all of this crazy degranulation of the histamine and that's just causing like this hyper reaction of eosinophil cells so all of this allergic in the GI in the brain in the nose in the eyes on the skin like hiding stuff like that and so that's what happens a lot with with Mass muscle activation you have a lot of mast cells that naturally live within your intestine and when they start degranulating you now end up with this allergic reaction of the intestinal organs but not like anaphylactic emergency reactions just really degranulation just like hyper reactive reactivity to food hyper reactivity to digestion that's called Mast Cell Activation your mast cells by generally will significantly increase if you have fungus candida or mold exposure and also if you have parasites basically what we do is we work simultaneously we work simultaneously by trying to stabilize those mast cells we also have really really useful natural agents that play an important role and sometimes are enough and sometimes are not if we're talking about natural agents we're talking about quercetin and bioflavonoids both of those are really good Mast Cell stabilizers we're talking about vitamin C in higher Doses and nettles nettle is one of the best Mast Cell stabilizers that we have and in fact I had one MCAS patient this lovely man who really like super high functioning man would like way high up on the in this big tech company and all of a sudden he got hit by a truck so not literally figuratively what happened was he got a foodborne illness he got food poisoning and he just never recovered and he treated sibo and he treated sebone he treated sibo and like no change and then he finally came into my office and we found that he had a mold exposure from his house and so we started working with him on sifo and we tried the pharmaceutical agents with him and he just didn't like the side effects he didn't tolerate them we tried quercetin with him and it worked really well but it was getting expensive and then in his experience freeze-dried Nettles were like the thing after we got him out of that fungal overgrowth he would just continuously use free dry Nettles one pill twice a day he was able to actually take that promotion they wanted him to take that he couldn't tolerate with because his brain fog was so bad Cassandra was someone who was born vaginally she was breastfed she had very limited antibiotic use during childhood but then a good amount events had used as a teenager and in college she had the occasional food-borne illness or travelers diarrhea episode but in general she healed very well until she got coveted now covid is unfortunately leading to a lot of GI issues in the past two years and in a whole variety of different types of GI disorders but certainly we know that covet affects the microbiome and can affect the immune system of the gut as well so Cassandra started having bloating usually woke up fine had increased bloating throughout the day felt really terrible when she ate a bowl of lentils and lentils and brown rice at the dinner table and could barely sleep because she couldn't even butt in her pants at night it was so bad she felt like she was 16 months pregnant so Cassandra finally sought out a practitioner who understood a lot of the consequences of covid and did lab tests and stool tests and there was nothing acute going on as far as uh infectious process did a sibo test showing intestinal methanogen overgrowth she did the uh the Dual antibiotic treatment and felt around 60 percent better but as she returned and was reevaluated uh in clinic I was decided to do an endoscopy because the upper bloating appeared to be so bad and so during endoscopy sifo aspiration was performed as well as Mast Cell biopsies looking for the amount of mast cells on the intestinal samples and checking for other things like H pylori and disaccharidases which are the enzymes in your gut and her endoscopy revealed that she did have a lactase deficiency and she had increased math cells so this actually correlated again with her GI symptoms but she had also had some experiences upon further questioning with flushing of her face sometimes after eating especially histamine-rich Foods so Cassandra was then counseled about a condition called MCAS or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome which is something that we're seeing a good amount after covid and can be also associated with sibo classically this was actually something that was associated with erlers-danlos syndrome with pots and sibo but now again kind of has found a new Resurgence after covid and in Long covid specifically Cassandra chose to do natural supplementation with quercetin vitamin C and vitamin D which she improved with about 80 percent and then chose to decrease histamine both through her diet with a low histamine diet for example doing something so simple as to just avoid leftovers will decrease the histamine in your diet and then also block histamine pharmacologically with histamine one and two receptor blockers for example Zyrtec and Pepcid and with this treatment Cassandra finally felt fabulous and after a couple weeks of treatment she was able to come off of the pharmacologic support and then reintroduced histamine Foods stopped the supplements and was on her way to to new gut health one of the fastest ways to relieve the discomfort of histamine intolerance or muscle Activation Syndrome is to Simply avoid High histamine foods and foods that promote histamine release these include fermented foods alcohol preserved Meats aged cheese dried fruit avocado tomato spinach shellfish canned foods beans and citrus fruits instead emphasize low histamine Foods quinoa fresh fruit asparagus artichokes broccoli cauliflower grains bread and pasta this will give you a break from your symptoms so you can have the energy to get to the root of imbalance and heal your gut and get back to a diverse diet but first in order to heal the imbalance in the gut we have to clear the infection let's zoom in for a closer look at what happens when an infection takes root in the gut so we can understand why pathogens are so consistent and discover the key step to restoring a healthy balance in the microbiome one of my big passions is biofilms and there's physiological biofilms and there's pathological biofilms so in healthy physiology what happens is this happens in the intestine in the bladder in the mouth in the lungs pretty much everywhere bacteria will come together and you know bacteria when they're floating around they're single-celled organisms and eventually a bunch of bacteria will like float around and get to an area within the body which is moist and has a little bit of rigidity for the bacteria to adhere to and then all of those bacteria will kind of come together and populate and out of nowhere they'll start voting right this is called Quorum sequencing and all of the bacteria will come together and they'll excrete a hormone where all bacteria speak the same language with this one hormone right and all of the bacteria will come together and say I want to develop a city here and so they'll all come together and bacteria will then populate and and like secrete all of these uh polymorphic carbohydrates basically which will let them populate an area and build walls around the city and then what happens at that point is the different bacteria the different viruses a different archaea will become super specialized and they will choose to deal with detoxification or deal with filtration or deal with creating more walls or roads within the city and basically you'll have this robust community of bacteria that are now operating together as a multicellular organism right and then that Community or that City or that biofilm that physiologic biofilm will become too populated and all of the bacteria and the viruses and everything will vote again and they'll say okay we need to expel a bunch of this bacteria and let them free that will kind of pop out and they'll float out they'll be they'll again become single-celled organisms and be plantonic and then they'll start to set up a new community some someplace else that will then allow them to pop into being this multicellular organism so bacteria and viruses they have the ability to float from being on their own to being part of a community on their own part of a community and when they're in these communities they can do virtually anything they share DNA they share antibiotic resistance they share nutrients they share detoxification they really just like come together to specialize within the city structure but research now is just exploding and it's quite clear that that's what's happening in the microbiome it's this constant communication and they are working collaboratively not only within their own species and not only with the other species of the microbiome but they are cooperatively collaborating for our health as well and that's what we see with that interaction between the gut microbiome and the enterocytes creating peptides and hormones it's absolutely fascinating the difference between a physiologic and a pathologic biofilm is the bacteria that are in there and the bacteria that are running the show my biggest bad guy is always pseudomonas if you do a lit search on pseudomonas what's going to come up is pseudomonas and surgery because what we see a lot is pseudomonas has this ability to form thick big hard walls that really protect everything living inside of it from the elements and when I'm talking about the elements in your GI tract I'm talking about your enzymes and the hydrochloric acid and the migrating Motor complex that cleans everything up and you know the immune system that lives in your GI access to anything that's going to normalize the species that are in there pseudomonas in my experiences of really significant bad guy that's difficult to eradicate both surgically and phys and functionally within the GI tract and it will allow a bunch of bad guys to like take over a community it's like the worst case scenario of a gang taking over an area what we know is we also know that physiologic bio films do work to try to degranulate or control pathologic biofilms but if you've wiped out most of your species most of the good guys by antibiotic use by being exposed to pesticides by smoking by eating a poor diet what's really left is the bad guys and then you have a difficulty reversing any chronic infections this one person comes to mind they were across the country of course from us and they were struggling with things like chronic fatigue syndrome panic attacks anxiety how people will typically describe it to me they'll say I feel very wired and tired they feel exhausted but just can't wind down their immune system in the form of chronic inflammation is hyper Vigilant and then their nervous system is hyper Vigilant as well and then they're dealing with digestive problems they are like many of our patients they were struggling with a lot of food sensitivities and food intolerances they could have like seven different foods because every other food cause bloating caused different inflammatory symptoms in their body there's a lot of trauma when it comes to that when you feel like food is your enemy and you feel like I don't even know what to trust because even these healthy foods are causing me reactions there's an emotional component which that further perpetuates that sympathetic fight or flight stressed inflamed State when you feel like even healthy foods make you feel horrible and they were struggling with brain fog word recall name recall issues a lot of gut brain access issues and they were diagnosed with autoimmune thyroiditis Hashimoto's disease but their symptoms were way more vast than just Hashimoto's disease and they were told yes you have an autoimmune condition it's autoimmune thyroid problems but it looks like you have other autoimmune problems but we really don't know how to label you and things like chronic fatigue syndrome fibromyalgia were thrown around she was not given any clear answers many people with this level of sibo will say I feel like I'm nine months pregnant even though I'm not pregnant I feel like every food I eat causes me uncomfortable painful bloating I could drink water and I will get bloating it's that significant and for her it was vacillating ibsc and ibsd meaning she had IBS irritable bowel syndrome symptoms but she would have looser stools then she'd have constipation with all these things it's very difficult because there's so many different variables to consider even stress and sleep can influence what their body's ability is to even handle things like food that's the digestive problems he was having and because of the sibo which caused the IBS she was having a lot of these food sensitivities histamines and she was reacting to fermented foods dairy grains a lot of it had to do with histamines even lots of fruits and vegetables so she was eating two or three things there's two or three vegetables and some meat that couldn't be left out long because of the histamine so it had to be fresh so that's what she was doing day in day out that's a lot of our patience that's not sustainable and ultimately it's a check engine light that something needs to be addressed she was about 23 years old when it first happened and she had her first neurological autoimmune flare up early on and then it went away but when it first happened she went blind she went blind for a while I can't imagine the fear when that when that would happen as a single mom that went blind and that went away she never got any clear answers they would say again it looks autoimmune but there's no lesions on the brain there was no clear indication on what's going on here and that went on for years and then again the autoimmune thyroid issues they kind of knew things were going along but she just never got any clear answers and she wasn't given any tools like she did everything her doctors said to do but basically this thing that came and went there was really no solution for it so a variety of different blood tests comprehensive blood tests microbiome tests hormonal tests chronic infection tests environmental toxin tests like glyphosate we saw a whole Myriad of different things that needed to be dealt with in addition to sibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth she also had what's called CFO a small intestinal fungal overgrowth she had different candida albicans different other types of fungus overgrowing in her gut as well and there's also this larger connection to biotoxins for her case and many of our patients cases so she had high levels of mold toxins or mycotoxins in her body that ultimately colonize in the gut for many of our patients these underlying biotoxins from things like mold and chronic lyme disease for some people are oftentimes a missing piece and for her that's exactly what was going on she had high levels of mold toxins and some other co-infections that had to be dealt with she knew she had Lyme disease when she was a little girl she thought it was dealt with she went on the rounds of antibiotics and then was fine but later on in life because of stress and some trauma in her life that chronic lyme was reactivated and on top of that mold toxins can also cause reactivation of these latent infections as well and then because of the physiological stressors you can imagine what that would do to your endocrine system when your nervous system system and your inflammation levels are dysregulated that is putting the body into that sympathetic fight-or-flight stress hyperdrive which is the antithesis of the parasympathetic the antithesis of the resting digesting hormone balanced state so we have to actually improve the resilience and where the bio train of that person's system I.E dealing with the Upstream root causes of why the hormonal problems are there in the first place to have proper hormonal signaling so yes she had hormonal imbalances yes it was contributing to her symptoms of fatigue and anxiety and sleep problems and weight loss resistance yes although that's true but those hormonal imbalances didn't happen in a vacuum we had to go Upstream to her microbiome we had to go Upstream to these other environmental toxins and biotoxins that were contributing to that nervous system and endocrine system dysregulation um so that was what was going on physiologically so for her to calm down her nervous system to allow her gut brain access to work appropriately to allow the sibo healing to happen we need to deal with the mole toxins and the chronic lyme co-infections we just had to deal with that because otherwise her nervous system is always going to be stuck in that fight or flight stress State her vagus nerves this connection between the gut and the brain was always going to be dysregulated by dealing with these biotoxins we're able to really calm her nervous system down calm and support her gut brain axis appropriately so those are the first steps we're able to implement food changes we're able to implement natural medicine supplement protocols we're able to implement my body practices somatic practices therapy trauma work and the person that I see today is dramatically different and by the way this person is a single mom she travels for work all over the country her one child is on the Spectrum so she had every excuse in the book to put her health on the back burner her why was bigger than her excuses and that's the tenacity that's sort of that light that I see in people that I know are gonna make it because you see people that have way more privilege and way more time and bandwidth make all the excuses in the world that you know getting healthy is just for the wealthy and I'm too busy for that and it's not for me but the reality is this woman wasn't gonna take no for an answer and she wasn't going to let medical gaslighting or unanswered questions keep her back from reclaiming her health when I met her she was like really had such little wiggle room little resilience she could eat five things she had all these symptoms a lot of stress and Trauma around food in her body because her body was at war with itself but over time we can expand that resilience expand what her body can handle she could reintroduce food she could have more great days but she still knew her boundaries she knew what foods even despite her healing didn't love her back and that's bio individuality but that's not just bio individuality that's also peace because you know what foods your body loves and what foods your body hates and we want to expand that bandwidth as much as we can so your body loves a lot more foods and if we're doing our job by regulating her nervous system and her immune system in her microbiome Health we should be able to get the point where a lot more foods do love her body back but even then there's gonna be some foods that just don't ever love you back but you still have that Center to know your wiggle room we're at this point with her for about almost a year and she's doing amazing I'm seeing her every few months and she's doing wonderful she knows what what are the most effective tools within her toolbox so she can do a lot on her own now on a practical like electronic health records I'm going through what she gained like she gained her energy her brain fog went from a 10 out of 10 to like zero to one zero to two depending on the day it's a very low brain fog regular digestion she's having normal bowel movements she has a zest for life she's able to work and function and be the best mom so what did she gain she gained her quality of life and she gained her to live the life she was created for I see so many people kept back from living the life they created for it because of health issues like this these things that keep them back when you're fatigued when you're in pain when you feel like you have to know exactly where all the bathrooms are because you're dealing with a digestive problem that's not a great quality of life so when you don't have those things hovering around you burdening you holding you back you can live whatever life you want to live so she has the energy to do the things she's passionate about and the career that she's passionate about and the kids that she's passionate about so that's you know freedom I guess is what she gained so it's amazing to see her today I mean she has her complete life back her doctors were able to take her off of her medications her different inflammatory medications her thyroid is stabilized she has regained energy a lot of the hair loss that she was having is growing back her Labs look amazing because of us dealing with these root cause issues both the physiological and the psychological the place that's really interesting where we've done a lot of data on biofilms in particular is in the context of chronic infections chronic prostatitis chronic UTIs chronic plaque on your teeth or gingivitis chronic GI infections all of those what we've seen is that we think at the moment between 70 and 80 of those chronic infections are caused by biofilm species so when we're giving the body antibiotics for example the antibiotics are only wiping out the planktonic or single-celled organisms but they are unable to penetrate through that biofilm wall to get to the bugs that you really want to kill and so then you're wiping out any of the good guys that are left that are free-floating and a little bit of the bad guys that are free floating but you're never really getting beneath those walls and so that's why it's really hard to address chronic infections the other place that's a big place for infections the mouth you know with plaque the vagina with bacterial vaginosis and yeast infections the GI with chronic bacterial overgrowth fungal overgrowth a lot of chronic conditions like ulcerative colitis like rheumatoid arthritis like psoriasis Parkinson's has now been linked to biofilms in the GI and you know dysbiosis in the large bowel so all of those chronic conditions what we currently know is we think that they settle they begin within microbiome issue in the GI at the moment we think that most chronic diseases are associated with chronic infections and so there's some interesting data that looks at ulcerative colitis you see patients having a lot of biofilm and you know bacterial overgrowth within the large intestine and which is causing the progression into disease and what happens when you have a lot of pathologic species within the GI tract physiologically you've got you right in your GI tract that's called an challanocyte that's like the actual physiological cells that make up you then you have this mucin layer and in the large intestine you've got two mucine layers that's like the foundation of a house and then you've got the microbiome either physiologic or pathologic that is the foundation of the house which is sitting on the mucin layer when you have a lot of bacterial overgrowth or infections basically the bacteria eats up that mucin layer in a way that is faster than the body or the colonosides can reproduce it and so because of that there is ulcers or infections or basically the bacteria can get Beyond a wall and then kind of take over and just reproduce and reproduce and reproduce that causes chronic infections for Crohn's disease there's this one particular study that found that there's this Triad of two bacteria and a fungus that seems to be found in a lot of Crohn's Disease patients that is part of the underlying cause of their disease for stomach issues and ulcers we know that there's a chronic infection of H pylori right and H pylori is not always a bad guy in fact you can look at H pylori I think there's like 16 different virulence factors and only like two or three of the virulence factors are going to be bad but if you have an H pylori overgrowth and it's one of those bad guys you need to nip it in the bud and if it's not one of those bad guys you probably should just leave it alone I am seeing a lot of long-term covered symptoms I would say the biggest one is brain fog interestingly enough I think because of the uh the spike proteins and inflammation that is causing but it's not solely how that person responded or reacted to covet or getting covered by itself what I'm finding with most of my clients is that when you have a co-infection that specific co-infection gets Unleashed in the body because of what covet does so and this is something that I experience with my mold I got covered twice and the first time my symptoms were pretty much benign I mean I was tired for a few days but what happened was is that the mold the co-infection of the mold just became Unleashed with a force and it was incredible of what it did to my brain fog is specifically to the mold in my mouth and on my tongue I mean I don't even want to show people the picture of my tongue and how crazy looks like it looked like an alien lizard that's what it does so with so many of my clients is that these stealth infection stealth pathogens that they had for years that were basically hovering under the radar and not affecting them enough to basically reach out to someone for help so they could have had a parasite and a sub threshold level or they could have had inflammatory bacteria or even candida and then they got covered and that combination of covet and the spike proteins Unleashed whatever other co-infection was in the body that was remaining at Bay now that came in Full Throttle and it's crazy because I'm working with some clients where we actually have pre and post tests which actually show the increase in pathology in terms of these different types of infections that we see in the stealth infections so I can say that the symptoms people are having are strictly because of Kobe I believe that the long-term coveted symptoms that people are having are the inflammatory reaction most commonly caused by the actual co-infections now that have become Unleashed that are now overproductive became a massive Snowball overriding the immune system in the gut now leaked into the body now affecting the brain and the biggest ones we're seeing are uh brain fog sinus congestion what you have to understand is that 95 of the bacteria in your sinuses actually comes from the gut so again yes there's a lot of things that I do to help biohack the sinuses to help kind of clear that out but if you don't treat the gut and get rid of those pathogens in the gut you can't get the sinus better Epstein-Barr virus is another good example of that as well the vast majority of people have antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus meaning they've had exposure to the virus some point in their life people that have autoimmunity that have mold toxins and underlying gut problems oftentimes have a propensity for a reactivation of these viral infections and it's contributing to their autoimmune symptoms and chronic fatigue syndrome Etc biofilms kind of come with the territory when we're dealing with the microbiome and especially when we're dealing with overgrowth and pathogenic bacteria that are in the body and also fungi like candida so biofilms can present a really big problem it creates a therapeutic wall and when there are biofilms then we especially with some of the pharmacologic interventions that are used anti-fungal and anti antibiotic agents that are used on the conventional side of of treatment for sibo or candida or things like that there are some of them that don't actually get through to the biofilm and there's actually been a lot of studies showing the golden seal Goldenseal actually pierces the biofilm berberines are known to pierce biofilms so using Goldenseal with an antibiotic can actually be beneficial I always put Goldenseal in with my interventions because I know that if I'm working with some sort of bacterial overgrowth or some sort of fungal overgrowth I'm probably dealing with a biofilm somewhere especially if it's an infection that's gone on for a long time so Goldenseal is a really great partner in crime and you could also take that down to the simple form of the isolated form of berberines I like the whole herb I'm just you know that's just my my background of using the whole plant for healing I think that the benefits of the whole plant can be really therapeutic so I do use the whole plant of Goldenseal and in the form of an alcohol extract tincture along with the other agents like a black walnut or a pot of Arco or oregano oil or you know or even or like an allicin which is capsule so there's a lot of different um combinations but Goldenseal is is a really great companion herb to get in there and start knocking that biofilm down pulsing these if we are just hitting hard hard hard hard it could actually make the biofilm stronger right it's like when you're under attack what do you want to do you want to build a wall you want to create a fortress you're not going to leave yourself exposed for too long if you realize there's a continuous attack you're going to build up your defenses the body and the microbiome does the same thing so when the microbiome recognizes there's a full-on attack over a period of time it's like okay well we have to make this wall thicker stronger impenetrable we don't want to die it's nature right so we definitely want to consider that policy three weeks on and the reason I do three weeks is it's I it's what I considered and what I've learned to kind of be the upper tolerable limit of exposure to these very strong herbs Goldenseal and black walnut are no joke they are really powerful herbs and I take it to the very limits of therapeutic uh duration but I also monitor my my patients very closely and we stay in close contact when they're on the rotation with the herbs versus the break so having having the biofilms in the mix Goldenseal berberines are definitely the way to get in there but we don't want to do them long periods of time because those defenses are going to come up so we really want to think about pulsing let's say you're coming in and you're in your 60s and you've been dealing with this since your 20s that's a biofilm patient that's just shouting you've most likely done almost everything I am never going to get anywhere just by doing my stock super effective things because you've been at it for too long so with those people I'm looking for a bio if I'm expecting a biofilm so when I do my stool testing I kind of land on I want to see what's in there so I do a biofilm provocation and then they collect their stool when I do that biofilm provocation I'm actually using high-dose enzymes so Lumber kinase therapeiptidase NATO kinase stuff like that which has a long history of being used especially for Lyme disease and you know all of our old school lime docs they would always rely on biofilm formulations especially enzyme-based ones so I'm having patients take high-dose enzymes for a short amount of time and then collect their stool and then I think I'm able to see a little bit more about what's happening in the biofilm in the large intestine only because when you're doing a stool collection all you're really seeing is what's in the large intestine you're not seeing anything in the small intestine nothing in the stomach nothing in the rest of the Body for biofilm I am generally using probably the the best herb that I have in my back pocket which is not an herb it's a mineral it's called business and that's business of nitrate is the one that I'm using bismuth subsalisate which is what's in Pepto-Bismol so bismuth first of all has a very very long historic history it's a mineral it's on the Periodic Table of nutrients it's a mineral and in Chinese medicine there's documentation of using bismuth I think going back like a thousand two thousand years ago so that's an old one and good one what we know about bismuth is that bismuth is a a fairly large organism there is good data that shows that bismuth breaks down biofilms it's relatively safe there's at least one study that shows that bismuth at a thousand milligrams twice a day for a six week period does not cause any toxicity we also know that bismuth used for longer amounts of time does cause toxicity and generally that toxicity happens when you've been using it for a prolonged amount of time and when you discontinue using it it's generally reversible so bismuth on its own is very effective I am using a formula that was created by Dr Paul Anderson a naturopathic physician in our community and he pairs bismuth with dmsa which is a key later and alpha lipoic acid and that reformulates in it's called a bisthiol complex which is safer than bismuth alone and bismuth alone is already pretty safe because it's a larger organism the way I imagine is like a jackhammer when you're breaking up cement it like Jack hammers those biofilm communities and then that allows the herbs that you're going to use to get in there to actually affect the bacteria that's in there parasites and protozoa are two of the best known and most problematic chronic infections while it's debatable just how common these conditions are it's undeniable that for some people treating parasites is a vital part of their health Journey let's find out how to tell if you have a parasite and explore the best strategies for clearing these from your body just a few months ago I had a trip to lovely Cancun Mexico myself where I did pick up a parasite and then I read about it and it turns out that there's a huge problem with this particular parasite apparently a lot of tourists have picked up this particular parasite so yeah I mean parasites can be a big problem it took me like four months before my gut was right again you know and I actually had to take an antibiotic and I hate antibiotics if I you know I try to avoid them but there are cases where you do need to do that so especially someone who is traveling like I did you go to a place where it turns out that there is this High incidence of a certain type of a parasite definitely be aware of it I didn't even look into parasites in Cancun ahead of time you know I only looked at it after the fact when something was clearly wrong with me definitely parasites are real they can give you all kinds of problems and they can also be subtle and some that we thought we're like okay maybe aren't okay like blastocyst is hominis so when someone has sort of stubborn gut problems and you're not sure what's going on definitely testing stool and looking for OVA and parasites is definitely appropriate I test for that in my patients when it's appropriate which does come up and then I treat it in a conventional manner like if I have to with the drugs for the parasites and then I do everything to restore the gut like I did for myself you know to eat the right foods and take probiotics and so on everything we can to restore a healthy gut microbiome again after taking the hit of the parasite and the treatment for the parasite absolutely we see parasites and protozoa and the difference between a parasite and a person is like Giardia or Anthony but his little Goes Like A Parasite we know that guy's a bad guy we know that and so amoeba hisalitica is going to like drill into the intestinal layers you get blood and you get pause and it's just bad with giordia we know that Giardia isn't necessarily a bad guy like it doesn't cause ulcers but it just changes up the microbiome to make it better for giardia than it is for you right then we have protozoa blastocystis homini and endolymax Nana Penta trichomonas homini all of these guys and what they seem to do is for a subset of people they cause issues and for a subset of people they don't most likely if you're coming into my office you're coming in because you have a GI complaints and so if I'm going to find glasses I'm an eye on you I'm going to go over and treat it and they also predispose to this biofilm formation predisposed to microbiome changes that are going to make you feel uncomfortable if you're feeling digestion if you're spending a lot of your time focusing on what's happening in your GI tract then there is something that's not going right and it probably is some kind of microbial change for the worst and protozoa can help create that for the General Public for the person that's on Google and searching things sometimes I feel like people feel like they have parasites more than I actually can quantify that on laps and I would say also too I will see many people they'll send me pictures in their patient portal to send me pictures of their bowel movements as part of my job guys it's just it's a side benefit they will tell me this is a parasite coming out but it's not it's mucus and sometimes people get strands of mucus because of inflammation and they think that's parasite the amount of times I've seen that over the years is pretty profound they told themselves they have a parasite it's mucus now the mucus isn't normal it's part of an inflammation they probably have bacterial overgrowth and yeast and follower growth and have other problems in their gut but the mucus strands aren't parasites so parasites are a thing for some people but just because you have digestive problems doesn't automatically mean it's a parasite I would say that it's a factor for many people and it should be looked at if you intuitively have looked in other areas I definitely would never want to discourage somebody with following their intuition and substantiating it with data but it is not nearly as common in my opinion as bacterial overgrowth and fungal overgrowth but I will say this there's a possibility that the lab technology at this point the level of sensitivity and specificity isn't where we need to be yet not all testing is created equal right there is what is still most commonly used which is called an OVA and parasite test an OVA and parasite test is basically I like to say it's like the equivalent of a needle in a haystack so you collect your stool right and you know you collected a little hat for all intents and purposes and then you take like a couple of different varieties of chunks of your stool and you mix into this little cup and you mix mix and then you bring that to the lab right and the lab tech goes into that little cup of mixed stool and you know takes a pinch and puts one drop on a slide and magnifies that one drop ten thousand times and they're looking in that little image of a ten thousand time magnification do they see an egg or something crawling or something that looks like a parasite and they look at that field you know maybe they look at 10 different fields in that one little drop of poop so it is literally looking for a needle in a haystack and that's important because if you are positive you are definitively positive they found an egg or they found a parasite however if you are not positive if you are negative that does not mean you are negative it just means you are not definitively positive so it's a very specific test but it's not very sensitive right where the world is going right now as far as diagnosis is to PCR and PCR basically means you're taking like a couple of snips off of different DNA matter within the stool again you're sitting with the same problem like you're not taking every stool you're only checking one stool and you're probably only taking a couple clumps of it now they can run your stool through a machine that looks for different sequences and depending on what PCR sequencing because that's the other piece of this what PCR sequencing they're using some sequences are more effective than other sequences the other problem with PCR sequencing I think it's like Leaps and Bounds better than an ovum parasite right but the problem with PCR sequencing is there is no standardized library for every single bacteria having different genetic Snips so your lab Lab a might have a library of you know 2 000 Snips lab B might have a library of 400 Snips lab C might have a library of 10 000 Snips and so depending on the library of the DNA steps that you're sending your poop to they might have be able to find what you have and they might not so while PCR is already so much better and so much more sensitive than OVA and parasite there are still also problems with it but that's probably why this patient got missed because she had just gotten an over in parasite run maybe two or three times over the 20 years maybe once over the three years when she was feeling worse but they never found it because they didn't find that particular needle in a haystack I'm leaving it open that there could be more parasitic issues that I'm seeing on Labs but regardless we're bringing them rotational antimicrobials in their life that we're able to improve the bio train of the microbiome even without seeing all those pathogens Quantified on a lap so we would bring in different herbal anti-parasitics like wormwood black walnut oregano again Pat's claw cemento can all be brought in start off low and slow find a threshold that's effective for you that's what I would do for anybody that has a parasite issue is bring in some natural anti-parasitics biofilm disruptors are still appropriate so whether that be n-acetylcysteine Knack is a biofilm disruptor serrapeptase is a biofilm disrupter stevier Stevia used medicinally it can be a biofilm disrupter as well or a combination of those even more so and that's what I would also say as well if somebody has a parasitic issue or a yeast in fungus issue yeast in fungal overgrowth or a bacterial overgrowth rotation of antimicrobials is well in my experience a more fruitful sustainable response because of different agents are better at killing off certain things and other are better of killing off other things and remember it's not just about that one thing it's the larger context of the microbiome dysregulation in the first place I find that that's more effective and the rate of reoccurrence and flare-up it goes down precipitously when you're consistent with what you have and then within reason rotating different agents so it could mean bringing in one antimicrobial for a week or two and then going into another antimicrobial and that sort of cycling for a few weeks or more often a few months to get the gut supported in the level to the level that it needs to be supported so I had this one person come in so she had probably had GI concerns for about 20 years and it had been getting like progressively worse for the last three years she came in with tons of diarrhea she also had a diagnosis of microscopic colitis and um uh Celiac we you know took her history and we ended up running a stool assay to see what was happening with her GI and she came back with Giardia blastocious homini and amoeba hysalidiga and pentatric ammonis homini two parasites two protozoa I mean that's not good and you know you have to remember that she's worked with her GP her primary care and they had run stool tests they've run over and parasite tests and they didn't find any of this but I think because we were doing a PCR DNA sequence we were able to find them so when she came in to see me she was pretty presenting like a pretty um common microscopic colitis patients and so what that means is she was probably having four to five bowel movements every day Bristol stool seven mainly so like gravy sometimes Bristol stools six so poop looked a little bit more like porridge but like no sausages No Bananas no corn on the cobs like they were all loose and they were all urgent I did what I usually do which is I start at the top of my pyramid I went after the parasites in the perazawa and what happened to her was she was like I didn't know that that's what poop was supposed to look like like basically we got rid of her parasites and protozoa I think all of them were acting together to make that her neighborhood bad we eradicated the parasites and protozoa we did a longer course of nitrogen oxenide and within a month she was having normal bowel movements sometimes parasites like sometimes that's it oftentimes it's not the only thing but with her that was it and now she was like I feel constipated and I was like what does that mean you know I show her my Bristol stool chart and she was like well I kind of have to sit on the toilet for like a minute and a half like she had not had a form bowel movement that wasn't urgent in so many years she forgot that sometimes you're supposed to engage your pelvic floor to have a bowel movement it was literally that much of a change there is no limit to what we can do when we take a health into our own hands I hope that we have inspired you to invest your time and energy into nurturing your health From the Inside Out starting with your microbiome in our next episode we'll be diving deeper into what you can eat for your microbiome I'll see you there [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]