Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Leaky Gut & Leaky Brain - More Than Supplements
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Welcome to the Functional Medicine and Natural Healing Podcast, where we share the secrets to upgrade your digestion, improve your hormones, restore your immune system and detoxify your body. I'm your host, dr Houston Anderson. Now let's get started. The following discussion is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or disease process. Please discuss any medical treatments or medical interventions with your personal physician. Hi guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr Houston Anderson. I'm here with Dr Gabe and we are excited today to talk about a common problem in the office called a leaky gut. So a lot of people know what leaky gut is. So we'll kind of go in depth about some things that people know and then we'll also cover some of the basics so you really understand why you probably have this and what to go about. What's new with you today, dr Gabe?
Speaker 2:Just hanging out at home. It's a casual day for me because we're getting ready to move, so moving boxes, filling those all sorts of fun and games with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm actually glad that we're doing this together right now, because I probably would have skipped out on today because we got a lot going on too. But that is what it is and we'll keep going. So let's talk about someone thinks they have leaky gut or doesn't know what it is. But leaky gut pretty much exists in most patients. But how do you see it walking your door? What do people say when they walk in?
Speaker 2:I almost kind of like what you said. I assume anyone walking in probably has it just because it's so prevalent, but usually they will have some sort of gut issue. But they don't always have to have a gut issue. You could have some neurologic thing just as simple as anxiety tend to worry depression, because when you have leaky gut you also have leaky brain, which we can get into that. But generally speaking, to make it really simple and straightforward bloating indigestion, definitely some gut disturbance going on because of localized inflammation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was a traditional medicine doesn't ever go to leaky gut. There's the discrepancy between how they describe it, meaning technically, in the research. If you guys want to go do all the research that supports the things that we talked about today, it's really under the word intestinal permeability. So if you go and tell your GI doc, hey, I've got leaky gut, they kind of laugh at you and you don't really get too far. So they kind of kick you out, saying like maybe you have anxiety because you're afraid of that. And you probably do have anxiety because, like you said, there's that leaky gut brain connection.
Speaker 1:So, I think that's a big one.
Speaker 1:I think I'll talk really quick to what happens if you go to your doctor's office and you do have intestinal permeability or you think you have it.
Speaker 1:The problem with this is once again like so I always say I'm a chiropractor, I train, although I do functional medicine all the time why doesn't our GI doctor solve this problem for us? And the reason why is because there's not a definitive test that they can run. So we have all kinds of like zonulin occlusion tests. You can do urine, you can do blood, you can do LPS tests, you can do different endotoxin tests, but at the end of the day, none of them are definitive. And the problem with it is that what they find in the research is, if you run the test, you could feel better and the tests are worse, or the tests could get better and you could feel worse, and that's the big discrepancy in research. Hence why your doctor really doesn't have a ton of actionable steps to give to you from the medical or medicine perspective, because they don't want to prescribe a drug for a, maybe, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with that for sure. That's one of the main issues. There's nothing they can do about it. So what's the point of running any sort of guess on it? Because, like you said, there's a couple of tests out there and there's zonulin. They're starting to find better tests on that but generally speaking, it's an indirect test. And then what do they do with it in the end? Because I mean, when we get into it leaky gut, as much as we often hear about it being a root cause usually something causes it in the first place.
Speaker 1:So it's not really, that's pretty funny to go over. Eventually, I guess right, what's a real root cause? Maybe we'll have a whole episode on just what is a root cause. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be good. So what's the difference between? Like someone walks into your office I just said the medical doctors often don't have anything to do Like someone comes into your office. What can you look at from the natural perspective? What tools do you have that you can use, that maybe they wouldn't use?
Speaker 2:So, from a natural perspective, of course, just having the paradigm where we're looking at things a little bit differently, where we are absolutely looking for a root cause, to bring that up again. So that would be one of the main ones. So, as somebody comes in, I'm asking questions in regards to all their symptoms, and in this case we're kind of focused so much on the gut. So I'm wanting to figure out, ok, what is going on, why are you having these problems, and if leaky gut is involved, how I'm going to go about testing for that specifically still going to be kind of indirect, because we're not necessarily wanting to treat that directly. We're wanting to treat what's causing it, and so it probably helps to go into the physiology of what leaky gut is.
Speaker 1:So yeah, before we get too deep into that, I say that's the biggest thing I see. When people walk into my office they come in, they're on a probiotic, a prebiotic, an omega fish oil, and what's the last one? Everyone gets vitamin D, right and those four things and they're saying like hey, my doctor gave me a leaky gut protocol and I'm like that's pretty much a general health protocol, not a specific gut protocol. And then oftentimes, like I'll, steve, I'm going to call it a beginner protocol and if your doctor is a beginner I'm sorry, but like they're doing marshmallow roux and stinging nettle and all these new salaginous nutrients that essentially cover the gut lining that protects you a little bit from a lot of the main causes, but they're not really digging deep enough to really see that resolution. And what happens whenever you do kind of like a bandaid mucus membrane support is that you don't get the results Right.
Speaker 1:So I treated gut like almost exclusively for about four years because it was just the easiest thing to market, to be straightforward, like everyone had it and no one was fixing it, and so I just brought a ton of it into the office. But you know, we've kind of expanded obviously beyond that because the gut isn't that hard. There's so much more after that. But yeah, why don't you explain to someone how they might kind of develop this leaky gut? And what does leaky gut mean? Because as soon as you say leaky gut, everyone thinks they're like bleeding to death, right?
Speaker 2:You're right. You're right. I mean and just to kind of add to your point a little bit too like glutamine. Glutamine is like everything. Anyone comes in with leaky gut. They're on glutamine protocol just to heal the gut. But the thing that I explained to my patients that they're always surprised with is how quick the gut heals. Yeah, it's like three days and the cells replace themselves. And so many people are surprised.
Speaker 2:Really, what you need to do is get rid of what's breaking down those cells, and so that gets into the physiology of leaky gut, and I like to liken it to a castle because I think that's the easiest way to kind of envision this. You have a single layer of cells that line your gut that's protecting you essentially from everything you're putting into your gut. So in that sense, you're being able to consume whatever food, whatever you're drinking or anything like that, and you have this single layer between you and your immune system and your bloodstream. And most of your immune system lies in your gut, like 80%, and so the way I look at it is that cell layer is the castle wall. You have bacteria and other things that live in your gut.
Speaker 2:That kind of create this mucous membrane, which is another protective thing, and you can kind of think of that like a castle note. And then, of course, the archers and everything else that are the soldiers behind it are your immune system, and so what happens is you're exposed to pesticides or, besides, you're exposed to heavy metals, food intolerances and pathogens, or maybe you're overfeeding certain microorganisms inside your gut that end up breaking down this wall, and instead of having these draw bridges only open at particular times, instead they're blowing holes in the whole system or they're activating those draw bridges when they shouldn't be. So. It's that draw bridge that allows things into the castle, and so now you have holes in your wall. The draw bridge is open. That's what leaky gut is. It's increased permeability, things that shouldn't be getting past that wall or getting past it.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it and I would say, like typical symptoms of this leaky gut, like we talked about bloating and stuff like that, just reactions to anything, right, whether it's environmental. I mean I get that all the time. People are like, oh well, I'm allergic to all the trees in Arizona. I'm like, well, that's not really a thing, right. So now you might have environmental allergies and definitely those can irritate gut linings and things like that, but if you come in as like every tree around your house you're allergic to, that's another sign that maybe you have that leaky gut story going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah ragweed that's the common one here where I'm at and like, it just hit ragweed season and so everyone is having a hard time with ragweed. But and then we just think, okay, I'm going to take that over the counter anti-histamine the entire time, instead of actually figuring it out. Oh, maybe my body is having a really hard time handling all this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, I think. Yeah, just thinking about just anything getting from the external world into the blood stream is a problem. Hence where we have such severe reactions, hence where we start to develop pretty much every symptom that walks into our office, from eczema and brain fog to other things like I don't even autoimmune disease, just the more severe things. But from even, like anytime something goes from the food or the environment and passes through that barrier that you're talking about. That's when pretty much every health problem starts. So let's go into, like, some of the root causes, right? So we said we don't want to just band aid that gut lining, we want to figure out why in the world there's a hole in the gut lining first. All right, so, doc, what causes some of this main leaky gut stuff that's going on?
Speaker 2:All right. So I mentioned a few of them. Diet in general let's start there because that's probably the simple one. The standard American diet Lots of sugar, lots of processed food and that sort of thing is going to cause leaky gut just from it and of itself. Sugar processed foods are going to break down that gut lining. They're going to break down that mucous membrane or the mucous layer that we have sitting there, and then it's going to allow things to get through. It's also going to not provide enough nutrition so that your immune system is even working well, or the protein to replace the cells in your gut. So now you're having this malnutrition and then further some inflammatory foods that are getting in. That's breaking down.
Speaker 2:The other ones are just your own gut bacteria or fungus that live in your gut. So, like candida, albicans, we all have that. So if we eat too much sugar, it's going to overgrow. If you have other certain bacteria that live in your gut because you're eating certain foods, the more you feed it, the more it grows, the more that is in your gut. That can easily lead to breakdown of this barrier. Otherwise there's pathogens, and pathogens are the ones that aren't supposed to be there that get in. So we all have a certain amount of E coli in our large intestine, but it shouldn't be in our small intestine. Then there's certain E coli, you just shouldn't have any. So that's one. Of course, other food what's the word? I've already lost it.
Speaker 1:Like infections like. Shigella or Salmonella or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Food poisoning yeah, shigella, the Salmonella. The other one that I thought of was C diff. Another thing that is a huge issue and of course, whenever I was a nurse I saw a lot of that, to the point that I can recognize the smell anytime but C diff is a huge issue. From hospitals or other care facilities that's where you get C diff usually. Of course, there's other things that you can definitely get in you that are just pathogenic, but those are probably the main ones I think we would see in terms of the gut. Of course there's things you get like vector-borne, like Lyme disease and other things like that, but that's a little bit different presentation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the only thing I'll throw out here in addition is the concept of dysbiosis. We don't really have that in our show notes here anywhere, but essentially the way that that gut stays happy and leaky gut doesn't exist all the time is. We're trying to keep some kind of balance between the good guys and the bad guys. It's not really about quantity of good guys. I think that's the old probiotic myth. If we add a ton of good guys, all of a sudden all the bad guys disappear and clinically I would say I think it's true for both of us. We don't really see that happen. You don't just add a bunch of probiotics and everyone instantly gets better.
Speaker 2:No, it would be nice, that'd be simple. But yeah, no, it usually is the bandaid, like you were saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even then. So I'll tell you this because I'm pretty blatant about not using probiotics in my office and when people say what about my probiotic, I say no. What about my prebiotic? I say no. And the reason why is because what I found clinically is I was running into the problem where people would come in I would come up with this magical treatment protocol and then they call me in a week and say I'm not better. And early in practice I was like okay, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this.
Speaker 1:And always the thing that was keeping the people that didn't get better rapidly from getting better was their probiotic. So I was like what else are you taking? And they're like nothing. I mean, I am taking a probiotic for my gut health, of course, and I would pull that one out and you would see at least 40% of that 50% get better within a week and you're like, oh man.
Speaker 1:So the problem is this there's thousands of strains, there's a lot of options, there's 50 different top probiotics you can buy, but it's really hard to dial that in and I even remember different practitioners. So Dr A Stillsmith in the UK. He makes individual strains but you find that people switch strains that they need as quick as like two, three days, right. So it's hard to stay on top of that, unless you want to go see your doctor every three days and pay a pretty penny for that, just for maintaining your probiotic, which you're maybe over obsessed with. That. Yeah, not giving you the home run or the root level issue that you're trying to address. Remember that pathogens that Dr Gave just talked about those are the guys that are causing the problem. Now there is research that probiotics do help with those pathogens, but we don't find that they're the strongest way to do it.
Speaker 2:No, no, I agree with that too. So I think we've had this conversation in the past. It's like when somebody asked me what they should do for probiotics, I'm like get it from your food, yeah. So I think you have good organic food which is going to get to some of the other causes of leaky gut, but eat good organic food. You guys are lucky. In Arizona you can buy raw milk in the store, so if you're not a dairy sensitive, you can get it there. I mean, here we can go to the farm and get it. There's a lot of ways to get probiotics in just food form.
Speaker 1:Yep, totally agree. So I think we covered well, we covered the poor standard American diet, but I think other dietary factors is, if you're suffering from a lot of gut stuff, lower grains. I think we get that question all the time. What's your favorite diet? I don't know. I usually say like some kind of paleo base, right, yeah, paleo base is an idea and then start refining for how you feel while you eat it. But yes, definitely all the processed, refined grains, all the additional sugars, all the high fructose corn syrup which your actual cells of your gut can't really tolerate very well. So all of that stuff is kind of stuff that just contributes to this problem on a daily basis and you're trying to get rid of the major guys like pathogens, as well as that daily irritant. So we don't use a lot of fiber. That's another good one. We have a low fiber diet in America, but I don't use a lot of fiber supplements because most of the time people already have enough irritation that a fiber supplement will also aggravate their symptoms that they already have.
Speaker 2:No, I think you're 100% there with the fiber. It's so common people being told to eat a high fiber diet or metamucil or whatever it is that they're needing to bring into their food or into their diet itself, and that is problematic. And I mean even research kind of shows that with fiber. We don't have a lot of studies on fiber, which surprises people, and the one study that I remember reading that we do have shows that a no fiber diet actually helped the most for people who were struggling with constipation and IBS, which was interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I've seen that one. That is cool. Well, give me an example of some of the food intolerances you see in your office.
Speaker 2:most common so gluten by far is always number one. I think I see that one. The most common Dairy, probably tied with several others. So dairy nightshades are the other. One Nightshade family, if no one knows what that is, is your tomato pepper eggplant group. It's a pain in the neck. I always feel bad whenever that one comes up Just because it is hard. Corn is another major one, Soy and egg those are probably the big, big ones and it's also the ones that you're going to see. If you're familiar with AIP diet, which is a paleo diet, that's a little bit more strict. They remove those things for autoimmune Just because we're seeing this causing leaky gut, which then can easily turn into an autoimmune type flair.
Speaker 1:For sure. Right that path, not the pathogen, but the food gets into the bloodstream. The body overreacts to that food that's in the bloodstream and now you have lots of inflammation and it just goes everywhere. And the question is, what organs susceptible to damage at that time? What other? Maybe you're someone that's always had a liver gallbladder issue. Now you have the leaky gut. It makes that flare because of the inflammation and you think that it's. And so this is actually interesting because we talk about, like what's the chicken or the A? What comes first in that scenario. You had a gallbladder problem first, for example, and then you got the leaky gut, which then exacerbated your gallbladder problem, and then now you're stuck in this tough spot of like I have a severe gallbladder problem now and a leaky gut. What do I do? First? And it's just about teasing it out and figuring out what's going to help the patient the most. Anything you want to say on pesticides and herbicides Is this in all our food. We can't avoid it. What do we do?
Speaker 2:So I mean, as best as possible, you're going to eat organic and that's within reason. Usually what I tell people, especially those who are new to this world, is go to the dirty dozen lists and I give them EWG's website and have them go there and look at the dirty dozen. The dirty dozen are the 12 fruit and vegetables that have the worst pesticides. Number one right now for a while has been strawberries. Strawberries are really bad. So getting those organic local is always best, because then you can talk to the farmer and know what they're doing, because even with organic, there are certain practices that aren't the best. But you just do the best you can because it is a battle and you got to pick your battle. So the best thing is that, because I mean, if you start thinking about every environmental toxin that you are dealing with, you're going to be surprised by even our clothing. It's everywhere that you're going to be running into some of this stuff, and so what is going to be the best thing for your butt?
Speaker 2:Generally speaking, go to the dirty dozen first, start working towards organic, getting pasture, raised meat and that sort of thing will get you along those ways. But with my patients I'm always working a day at a time, though sometimes I like to pull the bandaid off completely at once, depending on the need and if they're willing. But yeah, they are everywhere. Water would be the next one. Usually I'm telling them you need to filter your water or get it from, say, like natural grocers, which is what we have here local and you can get some, or you can get some RO reverse osmosis water. There I use a Berkey right now, and then when we get our new house I'll be looking into probably doing a whole house filter or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah, I mean that's and that's always a hard one. I mean I'm not going to throw out a brand that I think is the best for RO water. That's just a really hard one to do.
Speaker 2:It's all about the strengths and weaknesses right. Yep, even the Berkey, like Berkey, has its strengths and weaknesses. It's just the one that we chose to do for ease, while we are living in apartments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I will tell you that, that our well water comes out crystal clear and when it freezes I always tell people like you can tell if your water is really good. When it freezes, your ice cubes are clear. It means this still has energy, is still structured as well, as I mean it doesn't, doesn't count the mineral content, but you test your water there. But, yeah, obviously, city water is going to be pretty garbage. Right, I live in the city, but our place out that has the has the well. That's like awesome water to exist in. I just don't get it as often. So, yeah, we're doing RO at our house too.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about stress. I think I think I'll cover stress really quick and then I'll get some comments on I think I think stress is something that I'm most concerned about in a chronic nature. But I did see a study where they actually they proved that if they over exercise you for a period of time as short as like eight hours and you get no sleep, that you will develop intestinal permeability from exercise alone. So I think about all the people that are like oh, I got to lose weight, I got to lose weight, but even that, that's a whole, that's a whole subset, but the reality is, most people that walk into our offices are mild anxiety cases and once again, your job as as the patient, to figure out is it stress causing the leaky gut or did the leaky gut cause stress? So let's say that you had no stress and you weren't anxiety case six months to go.
Speaker 1:You've never felt stress in your life. Then you come into our office and you're having panic attacks or something like that. We're going straight to leaky gut. Definitely a lot of other things too, but you're not really a stressed out person, so to say. So then you have the other scenario where you've always been like prone to stress, or or high tension, or high strung, as they say, and and that person is prone to leaky guts so often because they can't manage their stress well mentally. So those are the two things I see as far as like just straight stress, exercise stress and constant mental stress Sometimes a chicken or an egg story once again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, I see that same thing. So it's really common with, like, say, like an IBS patient they're doing really, really well and then some stressful event happens and it just falls apart. And that's after. I've already seen them cleared up a lot of their gut stuff and it just shows how important like emotional stress can be. And then on the flip side, like what you're saying, that just sounded like it reminded me of my own issues with anxiety. So I definitely noticed some stuff in the past, but it wasn't until I lived in Africa and I was under a good deal of stress that all the anxiety came out. But that was more because my gut was not in a good state back then. I didn't know anything about nutrition, and then my anxiety just went through the roof. And it wasn't until I started learning functional medicine that I started realizing oh my goodness, this is exactly what I've been dealing with this whole time and figured out. You know how to fix this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not to really qualify my qualifications, but like just because I don't always talk about my own health conditions, but like, like I had a straight like, so I have the I have a biolastic diary podcast, but like I had that for like two and a half three years, like that was a horrible thing. But essentially I had leaky gut for two and a half three years. And while you're going to hear me say don't take probiotics, it's because I tried it and it didn't work for me. It's because I tried so many supplements. I tried everyone's phone, every functional medicine protocol out there because I was even at an end for myself.
Speaker 1:I couldn't take supplements because it hurt too much. I didn't eat until nighttime so I would fast all day long, eat one meal. I had to take like two hour naps at lunch because, like my gut was so messed up that I just couldn't get well and it was like almost like I and this is a common thing everyone tells me I can't take supplements, like I hear you, but at the same time, like you have to find your way to work to that and that's actually where it was. Some like the band aid stuff can work, like the glutamine, for example. That can be a great way to kind of get something into your system when you don't tolerate that much.
Speaker 2:I think you even say it real quick. You even saying that, like, just makes me think of the mutual seminars that we've all gone to to learn functional medicine and that sort of thing. They always have a lot of glutamine and stuff like that. I remember always taking that stuff just because it was free and just how often I just felt absolutely terrible after taking it just because it wasn't what was needed for the body to heal itself. Or or the glutamine, it didn't even work as a band aid because you're constantly breaking down your gut and so it didn't even do anything.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, no good. What was he say is like let's, let's, we'll cover glutamine and supplements in a second here. I want to make sure we cover a lot of supplements so people have options, not typical options, but some some thoughts there. Heavy metals and other environmental toxins anything you want to send those, they definitely cause the. He got problems with energy for cells.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can go pretty heavy on that, you're right. Like lead and others they're going to really affect, like your ability to create energy and your mitochondria. That is 100% Neurological things. Probably can do a whole podcast easily on heavy metals and all their effects neurologically but it has been shown to increase permeability and they got any of those toxins One just from the inflammation that they create but then to just from the way your body is interacting with them and what it's doing to the cells in the gut and how it's making you prone to a blood release and that sort of thing. That then just opens up the gut. That means on you and is there as the gatekeeper and so things can trigger it to open it up and that can be done in a good way or in a bad way and we don't want the bad way and you know that's where we're seeing a lot of these things interact with your gut.
Speaker 1:And I think there's some Q&As in the next podcast, but I would say that's a common question is like how do I not get leaky gut again or how do I know if I have leaky gut? Those are pretty simple stories, but I think the big thing about like how do you keep leaky, get away we're all in a flux state. I like to say like sometimes your guts a little healthier, sometimes a little healthier, it's really a some accumulation of your total health. So you're going to go back and forth and I think maybe what we haven't I mean, if people know the word leaky gut, then they probably are like, oh my gosh, like I got to address it first. If you don't know the word, you probably are underestimating how important it is. But at the same time I think both you and I, because we go pretty deep with our patients it's leaky guts the first thing that we often address.
Speaker 1:And just because we did a podcast on leaky gut and we said it could cause autoimmune disease doesn't mean it's the only driver of your condition. So we see, I see that a lot of people like I got leaky gut, can you fix my gut? We go and we fix that gut. Like they are stellar. They went from you know horrible bowels and gut issues to perfect bowels and gut issues I can't detect. Detect another gut issue and they're like well, I think my gut's still leaky and it's like no, what happens is there's still other problems in the body that will drive you back to leaky gut, primarily their system problems that need to be rebalanced. But leaky gut is, in the end, all be all. A lot of people jump on that train real quick and it's like no, don't give up just because we healed your leaky gut and you're still sick, right.
Speaker 2:Yep no-transcript. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I would just say, like you mentioned Lyme disease before, I would say that would be a good example of like you can have Lyme disease and not have leaky gut and still feel pretty bad.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, you're right, and we see quite a bit of Lyme in my area. I mean, ticks are everywhere and, like I've already had a few this last week, that very much seemed that way and it's always an interesting case and we'll have to do a podcast on that one. It's an always an interesting case with Lyme or any of the tick born ones, because it's a similar scenario. I still have leaky gut. Oh, I still have Lyme disease. You got something else going on too. It's multifaceted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see that level of Lyme, like people say they're never recovering from Lyme, but it's like they had a lot going on, so it may not be that Lyme. You have to assess that a little bit more Fun story yeah, when we lived in Missouri going to school, my wife went hiking one time got bit by a tick, developed her bullseye rash and we're like oh, like you know, like that's why I'll never live in Missouri.
Speaker 2:We're definitely afraid of that.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's cover some of the supplements. For some of the main root causes. I think both of us are going to agree diet comes first. You're going to have to clean that stuff up. Once you clean that stuff up, then we can address pretty much mostly we would say pathogens that sit there and just irritate and destroy and poke holes in that gut, making it that leaky gut, or destroy that zonulin, including complex. The bacteria actually creates these anti zonulin kind of things that break them open. So I always say my favorite product on earth is Chinese coptis golden thread, however you want to say it, because it's a broad spectrum for bacteria and fungus. What else do you use, doc?
Speaker 2:I like Neem. Neem's really good, or Malia, whichever one you go with. Miranda's another big one Nonifruit. Those are huge.
Speaker 2:It kind of depends on what is going on in the gut and what's causing and what you're needed. So like olive leaf is also good, but that's like a great antiviral and it does have properties, of course, to kill bacteria and other things. Those are probably some of the big ones. Then it kind of then goes into what else is possibly needed to help the gut heal. If I'm going to use a vitamin, mineral or amino acid, probably vitamin A is the most common. For me.
Speaker 2:Vitamin A helps heal the gut. It's really good at healing the gut lining. Outside of that, then it's going to be kind of specific to the person. So like I might use zinc if they are not producing enough acid in their stomach. Zinc is like a huge component for acid. Or I might use acid itself, like betaine hydrochloride, just depending on the person, just because that's going to help. You got to have some acid in your stomach to break down the nutrients to then help repair the gut lining. Now the herbs, probably, like you said, golden thread, chinese coptus, malia, miranda those are the ones that I probably see the most commonly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a couple of factors there. I would say all of leaf in high doses. I like the ORAC for antioxidant value because you see that it can actually calm the inflammation even if it's not killing anything. So you have like a certain antioxidant value to that.
Speaker 1:The other one I have that I'll use and once again, from patient perspective and from personal perspective, ocaropepsin is often one that I use from standard process and it's not that common. Not many people use it, but essentially it is a digestive enzyme but what it can do is break down an infected mucosal tissue and so what essentially the big thing about it is? It gives you brand new microvilli so you get higher absorption. What builds up over time this is standard processes, I guess statement philosophy, but I can't prove it, but it seems to work this way is that you build up that gunk between your microvilli and your absorption goes down and you can't replace those because they're kind of sitting in some sludge. So essentially that's the concept of Ocaropepsin finds that gut lining, digests all that old stuff you have there and then you can regrow some new stuff which, like you said, 72 hours to replace a gut If you only have gut problems.
Speaker 1:So many people feel better in 72 to 96 hours. Now, say, you have seven different autoimmune diseases and a leaky gut problem. Well, I'm not going to give you a 72 hour window to heal, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that usually takes a while. Usually there's a food intolerance involved. Yeah, it's a little bit longer with that and that's where you know. Just throw out a couple other supplements you might say something like Japanese knotweed or manjees to show up curcumin, those sort of things but that's to decrease overall inflammation because the resveratrol, the curcumin, help reduce it. And so, really speaking, like those are pretty good herbs for that. But that's in a specific case, like we're dealing with autoimmune, like we got a lot more going on than just simple leaky gut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that is the truth, right? So we have to be very upfront about that. Most people have leaky gut and a few other things. If that leaky gut was caused by insulin issues, which then dysregulated liver function, hormones and gallbladder function, now you're in this like weird, like I don't have any healing nutrients from the gallbladder, the bile solids, bile steroids can't go and calm things down, so you're kind of stuck and you end up in the kind of complex cases. Hence why you can't just always Google leaky gut protocol and get better, right?
Speaker 2:No, I love that, like I mean, just as you're talking. I'm just kind of laughing at myself because it gets complicated, because it's multifactorial. It can get really complicated, Like you're talking about. Okay, you got some fungal infection in the gut and leaky gut present. You might have some autoimmune issue. The gallbladder and liver are going to be completely compromised. Your brain might be compromised Like we mentioned, leaky brain earlier and so now you got all these organs and now sometimes it is the case where you just fix the gut and all those other ones go away. That is definitely true, but there are times where that is not the case at all and you got to do quite a bit of support, like you said. Like with gallbladder, you got your awesome product artichoke, like it might be needed. When it comes to liver, it could be that you're not methylating properly and you might need some B9 or B12 or something like that, and it just gets. It can get really complicated for somebody, but that is exactly why you can't just do some random candida repair or some other leaky gut protocol online and why it fails a lot of people, or just doing colloidal silver or something like that, because that can also just not go the way that you're wanting it to go.
Speaker 2:Like I've tried those things too. Like you were saying, I've tried doing. Like like I had mold issues for a long time and so like one guy was just like, try this. And I'm like, okay, I'm willing to try it. And it was like spraying lotus over in your nose while snorting a probiotic. Like you're opening the probiotic and you're snorting it and I mean I was hopeful it didn't do anything. But nevertheless, like you want to try to go to somebody who knows what they're doing, because it gets complicated and there's no cookie cutter way of getting it. Like you ask Dr Anderson, what do you do when somebody comes in your office? Like, what are you looking at? What are you thinking about? It's, what is individualized protocol does this person need? Because I can't just throw like Chinese caucuses is really common, but I mean, what if they need Malia? Or what if they need a straggler or something like that, and if I think that with every single person coming in I'm going to have an issue helping them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, every time I tell someone like oh, a Chinese cop, this will work for you. And then it never a muscle tests out right. So hence the value of the visit.
Speaker 2:It's like being it.
Speaker 1:And that's why I always tell people, because both of us do phone consults. Sometimes on phone consults I have to give like three or four products where in the office. I would just give one where I would say like oh, in the office will muscle test, is it Malia or Neem, or is it Chinese cop this or is it Miranda or an olive leaf? I love woad this year ever since COVID. Is it any one of those for the gut? If I don't know when I'm on the phone sometimes there's not a differentiating factor for like a viral infection Virals, viral has certain symptoms, but we can't tell you which virus or which herb sometimes. So we'll have to give you like three of them over the phone. It doesn't mean the phone visit has less value, it's just it's less specific than muscle testing.
Speaker 1:We love people to go to their doctors locally but, like I said, we haven't really gone over this. But Dr Gabe's information is online. I'm available online for phone consultations Sometimes if you can find my schedule open, and then I have Dr Dono at the office too. So we have availability for phone consultations where we can get you really deep into some of these things as well as if you're local, right, so if you're in Missouri, go see Dr Gabe. Now I get that all the time. People are like well, I live five hours away from you. I'm like honestly, like sometimes it's worth the drive to find a good practitioner once or twice. I'm not saying go there every week, but yeah, if you can call up Dr Gabe from Missouri or whatever surrounding state you're in, that's within like three, four, five hours, it's probably worth the drive. In my opinion.
Speaker 2:No, I agree with that. I've had several people drive quite a bit, or at least for one visit or two visit, and then we can talk on the phone and see how things go, follow up wise, just so we get to the nitty gritty details and the first few things, know what's going on and then hopefully we can really handle it on a phone console or a phone Phone console or virtual console from there on. But that's interesting that you're seeing Wode a lot. I've been seeing it here and there just kind of randomly, and it's not one that in the past I've seen very common either.
Speaker 1:All of Leaf and Wode are both those for me ever since COVID. Honestly, they would be like secondary to Malia and Miranda, and they've taken their spots, so hence why I mean I don't think you know this.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I have my own all of Leaf now anyway. But that's why I did it, because I was selling a lot of bottles every day and I was like, hey, let's get out AMG all of Leaf, just so I have I have easier product to access for the patients. But let's summarize this. I think my summary for today, as we in the podcast, is simple. Assume you have leaky gut, right, like know that you probably have it. If you have a health symptom, everyone has leaky gut. End of story. Second, address some of the main things, such as infection and food, and I'll get a quick online infection.
Speaker 1:I hate to do this. Like don't think that just because you've taken an herb or a supplement or the magical one in my office in Arizona the rage is biocidin just because you've taken biocidin doesn't mean you've addressed your dysbiosis or your infectious load. Lastly, if you're not better within a short period of time, it actually has value to go see a doctor because they're gonna understand. While you can Google leaky gut and be an expert on it, it's really hard to then be an expert on leaky gut, pancreatic function, digestive enzyme function, immune balancing, liver, gallbladder and all of that. It's just so hard for a single person to be an expert at it, so I do throw out the concept. Give it a try, but if you're not getting better, so some of the supplements we recommend. It might be great for you. But if that doesn't work, you need to give someone a call.
Speaker 2:No, I love it. That's a similar thing for my angle. I want to get people better and, if they can do it on their own, more power to you. That's why we do these podcasts. That's why I have all the articles up on my website and even have a free leaky gut book, that sort of thing, just to help people go through it and realize, hey, you can do a lot on your own at home. Get the Paleo diet, try to do an elimination diet. Remove the foods that are most common, see if that helps. Try Chinese Coptus, try some of these herbs, and if not, we're here for you or we can find someone local to you, something like that. Just reach out, we're here to help.
Speaker 1:All right, you'll have Dr Gabe's contact information on mine below in the show notes, but other than that, that's it for this episode, and stay tuned for the next episode, which we're gonna cover Q&A or questions that we got off of Instagram, where you can find us, of course, on Instagram, and we'll answer some basic Q&A that we get. They're actually pretty complex, so we hope to see you on the next show.
Speaker 2:All right, see you then.