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Pedram: Hi, everyone. Dr. Pedram, back with Dr. Sara.
Sara: Hi, everybody. Pedram: So as promised, this week, we're back,
wanting to talk about gut health. So last week, we had a number of questions. We'll
get to a few of them here in a few moments. But last week, we said that we really want
to talk about the gut biosphere and what that means. There's so much probiotic news in the
media now and everyone's finally saying, "Eat probiotics." There's a lot of good, bad and
ugly; and we kind of want to tease this out for you, guys. Because there are things that
you need to know as consumers and parents and as people with bodies that, I think, we
will be able to hash out and work out for you, guys, today.
Sara: Absolutely, and I also think it's important that we describe some of these terms because
I think there's some terms that are confusing for people. There was just this Michael Pollan
article in the New York Times magazine, Some of My Best Friends are Bacteria. I wanted
to just describe some of the terms that are there to get us started. One is microbiome.
Microbiome is the set of DNA that goes with the bacteria that are in your body, especially
your gut. The other is microbiota, which is basically the bacteria and the species that
are in your gut, so two different terms that I think are important to define at the beginning.
Pedram: Fantastic, yes. Sometimes we have a tendency to geek out and use words freely
here and then go, "What?" The first things first is what's this whole thing about bacteria,
right? We went through this phase, our Better Living Through Chemistry years, where we thought
that all bugs were bad and we should nuke them all and so we got really, really good
at using antibiotics. We started using the hand sanitizers on everything, basically clean,
clean, clean, clean, clean. It really did change the world in a lot of ways because
people were dying from infectious diseases and babies were dying all over the place.
It became too much of a good thing and so now, we're kind of on this recoil where we're
realizing we have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater proverbially here and that
some of these bacteria, I would say more than some, a lot of this stuff that we've been
trying to kill off and/or ignore, neglect is actually doing things for us in terms of
gut absorption, in terms of psychological health, in terms of immunity and all this.
So now with everything's kind of upside down and everyone's saying probiotics for everything,
and one of the things I want to caution about is the big pharma has gotten into this game.
So they're doing their little one-a-days with a dosage that is pretty much irrelevant from
everything I've seen in the studies, right? We were just talking about this earlier. I
mean, you said it was 15 billion is your minimum. Sara: I would say in absolute minimum that
even as worth the money is 15 billion a day and a lot of people can't even tolerate that
because their microbiota, the species of bacteria, are so limited that they can't handle more
than 15 billion. But I would say that's the minimum threshold. Otherwise, you're just
pooping out what you're taking in. Pedram: Yeah, yeah. There's a really key point
here, guys, is you can't stay on cheeseburgers and diet Cokes and then just start taking
a 15-billion probiotic pill and think that the world's going to come changing it in a
heartbeat, right? There's a whole notion of prebiotics and foods that will help this stuff
happen is really kind of a prerequisite. So you have to change to a diet that is higher
in fiber and basically isn't so as acidic and causing a lot of the other problems that
we're having with gastritis and food combinations and all these types of things. So let me dig
into that real quick because having your body take various types of food at once is oftentimes
confusing, right? So the pH or the acid level that your body needs your stomach to be at
to break down, say, a steak is different than that of, say, a piece of bread or a dinner
roll, right? So what happens is when we start diluting and putting all these in there, we
will have amylase and protease and all sorts of different enzymes coming out at once for
different types of food and the pH level gets a little skewed. So what happens is we have
a harder time breaking this food down. Then you have a fermentation process and bacteria
starts to rot in there, then you get gas, you get bloating, you get all sorts of dysbiosis
and things that America complains about on a daily basis. Then you got, Larry, the cable
guy, standing in front of some hot dog stand, just saying, "Take my antacid and life can
go on." We all know that doesn't work, right? It's a temporary fix. So some of the studies
we're talking about offline that I've been reading and it's a bit bold, but I mean, this
is data that's coming out is if you've been on antibiotics, if you've wiped out your gut
flora, the proper dose for re-inoculation is 400 billion per day for seven days. Then
you drop to about 30 billion for about three weeks and you could kind of cruise back down
to 15, depending on where you're at. But we're talking about a significant amount of bacteria
to get in and ... But almost like a tidal wave to recolonize your gut and get you back
to a place of health. Now, some people will have diarrhea. Some people will have loose
stools. So again, you have to kind of ease into some of these things, if you are not
accustomed to this type of environment. Really, the problem is overuse of antibiotics and
bad use and mix in the food. So I mean, maybe we can talk about the antibiotics
for a minute because that's one of the kind of primary culprits in all this as we've gotten
so good at using them that we use them for everything.
Sara: Can I jump in one second, Pedram, and just say that this 400 billion per day for
seven days idea, it's not do it yourself? Like this is something that I would really
recommend that you do with a functional medicine physician or someone's who's well trained
in the gut because that's a massive amount of probiotics. We're talking about re-inoculating
after you wipe out everything with the antibiotics, for instance. But I think it's so important
to realize that you don't want to be doing this on your own. It can also give you a die-off
reaction, which can make you feel like crap. It can make you feel like you have the flu.
There's just many things that can happen, so be cautious about that. Do it only under
the direction of a clinician who's well trained. Pedram: Yeah, yeah, a good point. We do this
with patients who are far gone, who come in after some cipro dose or things like that
and we watch them and we monitor them, right? So again, one of the big things is, what are
you eating, right? Are you already alkaline? Are you already having your broccoli? Are
you already eating foods that are helping the system kind of move these bacteria out
and along? Or are you compromised? As H. pylori kind of hanging out there, and you've done
all these different treatments for acid reflux and all these things and things keep coming
back, that's when you really, really, really need the supervision because your body is
already losing its compensatory mechanisms and we need to figure out specifically what
it is for an individual that needs to be done, right?
Sara: That's right. I saw a patient yesterday who is saying to me, "I've got a great diet.
I eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables." I was asking her what she drank. She has two
diet Pepsis a day. I don't want to bash Pepsi, or maybe I do, but I want to just say that
the highway patrolmen and women, when they're trying to get blood stains off of the freeway
after an accident, they use Coke. They use Pepsi. Because it's so acidic, and it gets
rid of blood stains. We don't want that in the body. It is so acidic. So we want to be
alkalinizing just as you described. I just read about that this morning. So I wanted
to add that piece in about the highway patrolmen. Pedram: That's amazing. When I was kid, I
was drinking a can of Coke and one of my dad's friend pulled me over and took this corroded
penny and chucked it into a glass of Coke, brought it out. It was shiny. It was enough
for me to just walk away. I said, "Well, I don't know what that was but that doesn't
look like something I want in my stomach." Sara: That's right.
Pedram: But it's really highly addictive. I mean, I remember when I was in Bolivia,
I did a tour of the original kind of Coke manufacturing plant where they were using
*** and then it turned out ***'s kind of fell out of political favor, if you will,
when people realized what it was and they made very slight modifications to the chemicals
that went into that beverage to have it not be ***. But I know a lot of people who
are addicted to diet Coke, in particular. It's a very powerful addiction. I mean, it's
... I know people that will get a splitting headache and migraine if they don't have their
diet Coke in the morning to start. That's a bad sign, guys. If that's how you're starting
your day, chances are you've developed an addiction to something that is not good for
you and that's ... And back to kind of pulling us into gut health here. It's destroying the
pH balance of your system and so no matter what you're doing for good bacteria or bad
bacteria, it's constantly creating an environment where the bad stuff will be dominant. Because
it thrives in some of that kind of anaerobic, highly acidic environment.
Sara: That's right. I love to get people swaps instead of just saying, "Don't drink this.
Don't drink that." So one thing that I think is really valuable is to drink kombucha. We're
going to get into some of the fermented foods where you can get these probiotics and reinoculate
as needed. Another one that I really like is water, filtered water, with a tablespoon
of apple cider vinegar, especially the type that has the mother, the little brown stuff
at the bottom. So these are a few swaps that I think are helpful. I want to circle back
to the antibiotics too, though, Pedrem. Because you started to go down that path and I pulled
you off. Pedram: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's ... There
is an argument to be made for enhancing immunity. So this is ... This whole thing becomes kind
of a chicken-and-egg conversation, right? Because gut health has been proven to help
enhance your immune system. So what happens is when you got poor gut health, the immune
system is working very hard. You get things like leaky gut syndrome and you get all sorts
of dysbiosis. If you think about it, the inside of your body, from your mouth all the way
down to your ***, is actually the outside as well, right? So things are coming in, getting
processed by your body, being pulled into the actual body, but this cavity is just the
tube that things can pass through that we can take things out of, right? So when you
have a bad environment in your gut, what happens is a lot of these bad guys start slipping
through, getting into ... Crossing the cellular barriers and there's different permeability
issues with gut health. But what happens is a chunk of food or some bacteria or some sort
of foreign agent will come in. Your immune systems says, "Ah-ah, this can't be in here."
Their toxic, right? So that's fine because that's how that mechanism
is built. But if we do that day in and day out, meal after meal, diet Coke after Pepsi
and all that kind of stuff, eventually, that system starts to really get the immune system
to drag. When that happens, we become a lot more susceptible to infections, right? So
now, you're more susceptible to infection. Kid goes off to school, comes back with runny
nose and cough and sneeze, next thing you know you're sick. Again, you go to the doctor.
What do they give you? Here's some amoxicillin. Here's another Z-Pak. Then what you do is
... Again, that kills all the bacteria. It's pretty indiscriminate. It's like dropping
a bomb, right? So it starts killing all the bacteria in your gut and then the good bacteria
are even more compromised so next go-around, your immunity is even weaker and weaker. Then
we get into this kind of downward spiral of compromised immunity and poor bacterial health.
So the overuse of antibiotics can be fixed with the proper use of probiotics in a lot
of ways because as we enhance the system's ability to fight off disease, we don't get
to this place where it's like I have an ear infection or I'm coughing up [smurfs 00:12:05].
So now, I definitely need to go take the antibiotics. I'm not opposed to antibiotic use. I think
they're really appropriate when it'*** the fan, right? But the problem is how are people
getting sick so often and how does it hit the fan that often, and that has to do with
how are bodies are set up and our immune systems are set up in the first place.
Sara: Yeah, it's such an important point, and I think immunity is one of the key aspects
of why you should care about this, why bother with paying attention to your gut, to your
microbiome, your microbiota. But I think another few things that I just want to hit the highlights
of include the obesity epidemic. Some of the other chronic diseases that we see, a lot
of people don't realize that it comes down to the diversity of your microbiome and like
how diverse these bacteria are. Their DNA, that tracks with your risk of obesity. It
tracks with your risk of inflammatory bowel disease. There was just an article in the
New York Times last week where a woman was describing being a donor of fecal transplants
to a friend of hers who had Crohn's disease or maybe it was ulcerative colitis, one of
the inflammatory bowel diseases. She basically worked with him. He did this do-it-yourself
fecal transplants. Fecal transplants are really interesting. They're showing that they can
change the insulin signaling that's happening in your body. So that whole problem of insulin
resistance and how one in two Americans has insulin resistance, you can reverse it with
fecal transplants. So I just wanted to say that this goes broader
than just immunity, even though immunity is really important.
Pedram: Yeah, you know what? A good point. Let's touch on this real quick because there's
a ... Natasha McBride, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, went through all sorts of issues
with depression and addiction and food ... Basically food and gut health, right? So one of the
things that happens if you have bad gut health is gluten and casein, in particular, so your
wheats and your breads and all that and casein, your dairy products, will break down in a
way where it's actually not complete, right? So what will happen is it will become a glutal
morphine or a casein morphine because what you need is the good bacteria in there to
help you break down some of these agents and to help with some of the mediation of this
breakdown. So now, the word morphine, right, is a derivative of the same chemical that
binds to our addictive brain centers here that keep us craving and wanting more. So
how many patients have you had in your clinic that just say, "Look, I can't live without
my cheese," right? Sara: Oh, it's so common, so common. Just
like I eat it addictively. I can't stop and I also ... You want me to go off of it? I
can't. It's like I don't know how to do that. Pedram: Yeah. That's an addiction, guys. It's
an addiction to the morphine part, the casein morphine part of this whole deal. So there's
a lot of addictive behavior. There's a lot of ... There's all sorts of stuff that kind
of now being look at on the spectrum, autism and all these types of things with moms who
have been dysbiotic and colony problems coming through. Because if you think about it, when
you're inside a momma, you're in a sterile sac, right? So if you have a vaginal birth,
which is what used to happen before this whole C-section generation, well, I had a conversation
with Alejandro Junger about this because he has a lot to say about this in a future episode.
But you'll start to see with the C-section generation, a lot of the people that have
grown into, they're out now in their 20s and stuff with C-section, after C-sections became
really popular, are developing a lot of gut health issues and all this because what happens
is the seed colony, guys, of your gut health that you get is on the way out of the vaginal
canal and it's the health of momma on your way out that will help determine what that's
going to be and then your early diet, then the milk and all that kind of stuff.
So the early exposure to good bacteria is what helps us enhance our immunity and have
really kind of a symbiotic relationship with the earth around us, right? So it's like we're
not independent, right? These bacteria are part of our life and I don't have the number
here in front of me. I'll look it up if you guys are interested. Just ping us and give
us a comment, if you're interested in this. But there's a high percentage of our genetic,
the makeup of the DNA in our body, actually comes from the bacteria in our body, not necessarily
from our human DNA, right? It's bacterial DNA that works with our human DNA for epigenetic
expression and all kind of stuff. Yes, I think you have it in hand. I love it. I love it.
Go, yes. Sara: Yes, so it's actually 10x, which I think
is so amazing. I'm just going to read a little bit from Michael Pollan. "I can tell you the
exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person, plural, as a superorganism,
that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That's
when I opened my email to find a huge processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a laboratory
located at the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado." He goes on, but he
says another important point here that speaks to the number that you have from the bacteria.
"In sheer numbers, these microbes and their genes dwarf us. It turns out that we are only
10% human. For every human cell that is intrinsic to our body, there are 10 resident microbes,
including commensals that are generally harmless freeloaders and mutualists, favor traders,
and only a tiny number of cases, pathogens." So 10x, you've got 10 times more bacterial
DNA than you have human cell DNA. Pedram: Boom. Now, you know what? I'm so happy
you had that on hand. Guys, think about this for a second. You are 10 times more bacteria
than you are human. What happens is a lot of times, you'll see this in some of the funky
diseases that people get to is the bacteria will sometimes even take over your consciousness
and have you go eating funky things, right? Like for iron, people will be chewing on metal,
all kinds of diseases that we studied in school. Because what will happen is eventually, they
will take over the shop and they will tell you what they want. You'll see this a lot
with people who have Candida problems, too, right? They'll start having cravings for things
that Candida likes to eat on, right? So then the question really becomes, who's driving
at a certain point? For me, this is really powerful and spiritual in a lot of ways because
it really points to our symbiotic connection with all the life around us and our relationship
with the earth. So what happens now? You walk in to every store, anywhere in the western
world, there's a bottle of Purell sitting there. It's just like anti ... Sanitize, sanitize,
sanitize and it's antibiotic universe. I'm not saying go smear yourself with staph or
something but ... I just got back from camping. It was a fourth
of July weekend. You're eating some food. It falls on the ground. You pick it up. You
blow on it, if you even blow on it. You put it back in your mouth, right? Think about
people back 10,000 years ago. You pull a root out of the ground. You kind of dust it off
and you eat it. You put your hand in a river. You start drinking water straight out there.
There's tons and tons of bacteria that come from life all around us that were part of
our internal ecosystem, which became part of our genetic makeup. Now that we've really
shifted that and we're having GMO foods and processed foods that are all devoid of that,
what's happening is we're becoming less, how shall I say, full spectrum.
Sara: Well, that's very well state, Pedram. I completely agree with that. A friend of
mine, Daphne Miller, one of my classmates from medical school, just wrote a book called
Farmacology, spelled with an F, Farmacology. She did internships at different small farms
around the U.S. One of the farms is called Jubilee in Washington. It's a biodynamic farm.
In her first day of internship, the guy that was leading her, the owner of this farm, said
to her, "Why don't we start by working on the tilth?" She said, "What's tilth?" He picked
up a handful of soil and held it out to her and said, "This is good tilth." It's full
of really helpful bacteria, and it's kind of like when you see a patient. Tilth is like
good chi. You can tell the patients who have good chi, who are eating from really rich
soils, who have the bacteria that you're talking about versus those who are eating from poorer
soils, soils that have been stripped of this healthy, diverse, complex bacterial mix. It's
also why Michael Pollan named this article that he wrote for the New York Times magazine,
Some of My Best Friends are Bacteria. We want this. We want to figure out how to befriend
bacteria again. How do we rebrand bacteria? Pedram: That's right. That's right. It's a
double-edged sword because there are certain bacteria that aren't great but again, we threw
the baby out with the bathwater, and most of these organisms out there that we've cohabitated
and coexisted with are fine. Some of them are not fine only if they only fall out of
certain proportion so again, it's the relationship with out bodies, our own kind of epigenetic
expression or immune systems. So the moral of the story is the healthier you get and
the better diversity and kind of healthy mix of bacteria that you have working with you,
the less antibiotics you need and the better you feel and the better you could process
your food and turn it into fuel versus having this kind of bolus of stuff show up and the
body freaks out, saying out, "I don't know what to do it." So it gets inflamed and it
starts processing sugars into fats and putting things away for a rainy day because it does
not know what to do with it, right? If we're optimized as a system, then things flow better.
Also, we find that we're losing weight. We're getting sick less often and even if you don't
think that you're ... Some people think of sickness as, "I'm down, drinking Theraflu
for three days and calling my boss to get off work."
But it's that low-grade immunity stuff that's really ... I mean, what's the number one reason
people calling the doctors nowadays is really to say, "I'm tired," right? Guys, what is
one of the biggest zappers of your energy is your immune system. It's working around
the clock and so if you don't give it the support it needs, no wonder you're tired.
Right? So that's something that I really kind of emphasize in the kind of vitality model
of medicine that we practice here is just to kind of getting people to realize that
it's not the absence of symptoms that's health, that vibrancy. It's like that soil you're
holding up, that chi that's kind of emanating out of the patient. That's when you know that
they're good, right? Does stuff happen? Do they still get sick now? Again, yeah. But
they're the ones that bounce back in an afternoon or a day or whatever. Not the ones that are
out 10, 12, 20 days a year because they're just so sick. All they could do is sit home
and watch reruns of *** -Doo. You know what I mean? That's no way to leave.
Sara: So true, and I want to make sure that we emphasize some of the practical solutions
here rather than to dwell in the problem. So we talked about kombucha. I think it would
be worthwhile to maybe, in addition to probiotics, circle back to the food sources of improving
the diversity of your microbiome. So Pedram, you want take kimchi?
Pedram: I'm a big kimchi fan. I'm going to geek out with you guys right now. So apparently,
there's about 187 versions of kimchi. By the way, kimchi is kind of a traditional fermented
cabbage dish that the Koreans are all about, right? When I say the Koreans are all about
it, average of 40 kilos per person per year in Korea of kimchi, okay?
Sara: 40 kilos? Pedram: Yeah. So check this out, you guys.
In 2003, an outbreak of what became known as SARS in Asia and while other countries
are back ... SARS virus came out, all the other countries are hit really hard. Korea
was virtually untouched, and so they looked at Korean chickens infected with the avian
flu virus and they recovered quickly or quicker after eating food that contains some of the
good bacteria found in kimchi. Then they do a subsequent studies on 200 ... Study on 200
chickens by the Korean Food Risk Research Institute supporting the theory that it enhanced
immunity and basically, it protected against even the worst viruses and bacteria. So the
lactic acids produced during the fermentation process stops the growth of the bad bacteria
and it's useful in the prevention of conditions such as yeast infections, UTIs, obesity, diabetes
and gastrointestinal cancers, okay? So it's the ... When we talk about this lactic acid
and the fermentation process, it's this kind of, how shall we say this, reflection of life
that's coming from the bacteria that we want, right? That is now creating an environment
where the bad guys can't thrive, okay? It's also obviously high in fiber, vitamin
A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, beta-carotene and then after undergoing three weeks of fermentation,
it's really high in levels of B1, B2 and B12. They'll double, okay? So basically, it gets
rid of the bad bacteria and then also, there's some studies that show that stabilizes blood
sugar levels in some of the intense hunger pangs and cravings. So I mean, you look at
all that and then there's some more ... I could geek out some more journal of medicinal
food showing that it drops cholesterol LDL levels and fasting blood glucose levels after
just one week. Then there's another basically a study in Pusan National University in Korea
with 100 young man who ate about half a pound daily, much greater drops in cholesterol.
But they saw it in people that ate a little less as well, okay? So kimchi, and [Wendy
00:26:00] was just telling me that there's families in Korea that she knows of that'll
take two days off a year and the whole family will get together and just basically make
kimchi that will last them the whole year. They put it in containers. They let it ferment
and it's just this delicacy kind of thing but it's eaten with everything because it
helps as a digestive. It helps as an antibacterial, antiviral and
it helps us absorb and process our foods better and again, those B vitamins, which when I'm
fatigued, that if you're not ... If you don't have it, we talked about this in the Vitality
movie. A lot of these good bacteria help us absorb our B vitamins, right? So if you're
not getting it from your food, then you're taking it in supplements but it's never the
same, right? So we've talked about this pretty much on every episode is ... If you could
go whole foods, that's the way to go. Sara: Well, I love it. I mean, what a fantastic
scholarly trip through kimchi. Thank you. I also want us to talk about making breakfast
more savory. I'm just ... As I'm listening to you describe kimchi, I think we should
be having it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Two tablespoons, maybe with two poached eggs
in the morning for breakfast, two tablespoons added to lunch and dinner and I think it's
so important to realize that you can buy this stuff. Like you can buy it organic. It's just
that our palate is not used to it but it can become used to it because it's one of those
medicinal foods. This is the kind of information you want for the 10% of your genome that's
human and especially for the 90% that is microbial. So I think that's so important. Thank you
for that. I want to emphasize a few other favorite sources of probiotics. I love artisanal
sauerkraut. So I get sauerkraut from my local health food store. It comes in a little jar.
I can get it with beets. I can get it with seaweed. There's lots of different ways to
get sauerkraut. I'm a big fan of that. I also really love non-GMO miso. So I make
miso soup. I use it in my sauces. It's a great way to do kind of a non-dairy sauce. I just
think it's important to realize that up to about 90% of soy that's available in the U.S.
is GMO. So you want to be careful that it's non-GMO. Hopefully, we'll do another session
very soon on why you want to avoid GMOs. But those are some of my favorites. Nato is another
favorite, but I'm also kind of a super-freak when it comes to eating and that's not everyone's
taste. Pedram: One that is getting more and more
popular is kefir. So my only thing with that is look for an organic version because it's
dairy based. A lot of times it's made with goat's milk. But again, that fermentation
process comes with bacteria, right? That's the whole point is the way you make these
yogurts is you boil the milk, you do this process and then you add cultures of bacteria,
which then take over and become this food called yogurt, right? Kefir is very kind of
concentrated in that. I have ... One of the docs, maybe we'll have him on, Dr. Ben-Joseph
from the Vitality movie as well, he has a formula where he takes a bunch of nuts and
seeds and things and blends them in and then puts in kefir, sauerkraut and miso and I'll
just ... Every type of good bacteria you could find let's them ferment and become this kind
of like patties, these cakes, that are or actually pretty tasty, and he does that. Again,
he'll do ... Maybe once every quarter or so, he'll make a bunch as an old habit and give
it to his grandkids and all that. Those kids just don't get sick, right? So there's a lot
to be said, guys, for this. I mean, kimchi, there's definitely an odor that comes with
it. If you could tolerate it, great. Frankly, I don't care. But if my wife can tolerate
it, great. So some of these foods have odor. Some of
them don't. Play around with medicinal food. Now, real quick, because I know we're running
out of time, probiotic pills and supplements, any advice that you have for people on that?
Because there's the food and then the supplements, and I want to make sure we cover both. Because
our people are very busy and some of them don't have time to prepare this stuff.
Sara: Sure. Well, I was led to give a couple of supplement brands because I'm not affiliated
with any one and some of the ones that I take personally and recommend to my clients include
Klaire Labs. K-l-a-i-r-e. I also use Integrated Therapeutics. They've got a really great brand
that is an intensive source of probiotics that you can keep at room temperature, so
it's nice for traveling. Then I also like FloraBlend from Thorne, so those are three
that I like a lot. Pedram: Fantastic, fantastic. Again, you guys,
15 billion is kind of like your number there. If you start getting to high dose, work with
your physician, work with your health care practitioner, work with someone to help make
some of those transitions. One thing I'd like to add is you're having all sorts of gut issues,
the tendency of the market is to say, "Oh, this week, it's resveratrol. This week, it's
Pycnogenol. This week, it's this." Then now, it's the probiotics, right? It's complicated,
right? So as much as I want to say probiotics are the panacea for a lot of things, I want
to say, you got to look at other things, too. Right? So if you're having constant GI upset,
you want to look at food allergies. You want to look at food combination. You want to look
at ... Just work with somebody and don't try to self-diagnose, if you will. Then they can
hold your hand and walk you through this but then, say, "Look, I want to choose a whole
food algorithm. I want to choose to kind of enhance my vitality and build myself up."
Then all of the stuff that we've talked about today becomes a very powerful tool to attain
those goals but don't always try to go it on your own without some sort of health advice
from someone who can kind of take a look at you and make sure that you're doing the right
thing. Again, we've said this before, we'll say it again, if your doctor doesn't want
to play, there's plenty of good doctors out there. Just find a good doctor who's kind
of functionally trained and wants to help enhance your system, instead of just keep
you come back for your regular check-ups and giving you the drugs that he thinks you need.
Sara: Yeah, beautifully stated. Mark Hyman talks about how pretty much all disease begins
in the gut. I think that's so important. We haven't, in a systematic way, gotten through
the four F's or the four R's, the four R of preparing your gut. Some people even use the
five R's. Maybe we can do that in a future session. But I agree with that. I think it's
very important. Even as physicians, we work with other physicians to take care of our
own gut. I think that's important for all of us.
Pedram: Absolutely. It's very easy to make a couple of bad food decisions and start kind
of going into a tailspin and then having a sugar craving and then because of that having
this and having that, now I need coffee. It's very easy to kind of fall off the perch. It
takes about two, three days to kind of get back on track sometimes. So as you become
aware of that, it helps make and kind of inform more enlightened food decisions as well, so
you're not doing this yo-yo thing all the time. I can attest to that. Look, we're human,
right? I get in trouble with that all the time and then I'll have to kind of fix that
and bring myself back to center because ... You go to a birthday party. You have a piece of
cake. Next thing you know, things changed, right?
Sara: Yeah, I agree with that. I was talking to Mark Hyman just last week at Wanderlust.
He said something so profound. He said, "You know, when you're driving and you've got your
GPS on and you make a wrong turn, it doesn't say to you, 'You're so stupid. What's wrong
with you? Why are you eating that donut and turning the wrong way?'" It says, "At the
next possible place, make a legal U-turn." That's what we want to be doing with their
health. That's what we want to be helping you with. How do you make that legal U-turn
and get back on the path? Pedram: Beautifully said. God, Mark Hyman
is so good with those. Sara: He's so good. I know, and he's cute.
Pedram: He's a sweetheart. I'm really bombed. I was actually supposed to be in Wanderlust
with you, guys. I'm bombed that I didn't get to see you guys. I will go visit him on the
East Coast and let's him on as a guest. I think we'll have some fun having him on here.
Sara: Oh, yes. Pedram: Yeah. Excellent, guys. Right before
we check out here, we did have one comment that I definitely wanted to get to because
last week, when we were talking about broccoli, there's some confusion. We've mentioned this
a couple of times but there's all this talk out there about broccoli being harmful for
people who suffer from thyroid problems, okay? So [Janet 00:34:26], from Bogotá of Colombia,
I just ... I want to reach out and say, there is some talk along these lines but it's not
as substantiated. Sara, I'll let you jump on this real quick.
Sara: Yeah, a couple of things about the whole goitrogen risk and, "Oh, my gosh. Would you
stay away from all the brassicas, like Brussels sprouts and broccoli, If you have a thyroid
problem?" I look at this literature really thoroughly when I wrote my book, The Hormone
Cure, and I was underwhelmed by the effect of these vegetables, which are so full of
things that are so good for you and their effect on the thyroid. So first of all, if
you cook them, they have less of effect on the thyroid. Second of all, just looking at
the raw ones and their effect on the thyroid, the data is underwhelming. A lot of it is
in animals and whether it actually has an effect on humans, I think it's debatable.
There's probably some people who have an effect. You can sort of see if that's true for you.
But I think to make a global statement about staying away from this really important source
of vegetables because of a fear around the thyroid is probably misguided.
The answer is somewhere in the middle. I think this may be one of those archaic folklore
ideas when it comes to natural health and natural medicine, people saying, "Stay away
from the brassicas." Whereas I think they probably have more benefit than harm. But
see what's true for you. Track your thyroid levels and see what happens. Just don't miss
out on this antioxidants that we all need. Pedram: Well said. You know who I think we
should have on as a guest is Datis Kharrazian as well. He is really an expert on this thyroid
thing and according to him and a lot of these people that have come up, a good percentage,
I think 80% of the Hashimoto's thyroid that we're seeing out there is autoimmune and it's
coming from either food or some sort of antibody issue that we're having with something that's
going into our bodies. So this whole thyroid thing, in general, tends to be a bit blown
out, and there's some natural ways to look at it. Maybe we'll invite him on as a guest
to a whole show on thyroid to help [Janet 00:36:36] and all the people who have kind
of asked these types of questions and get to the bottom of this more.
Sara: That's right, and I ... What I think is important, Pedram, is that we take on some
of these myths or some of these standards that we have in natural medicine and conventional
medicine in our show. I think it's standing down. I think it's really important that we
say, "Okay, what does the literature actually show us? Are we making an oversimplified summary
of this idea, like the broccoli slows down your thyroid? What's the real truth?" So that's
what I'm really delighted to offer to our listeners.
Pedram: Love it. Love it. Guys, hit us up with comments, questions. We will answer them
as fast as we can, either online or offline. But we are getting to them and give us questions
about what you would like to see in future topics. I mean, we've got several weeks lined
up right now. But we get a lot of requests and we want to hear from you, so keep them
coming. Dr. Sara, always a pleasure. I'm looking forward to our next encounter. Have yourself
a wonderful week. Sara: Thanks, Pedram. Thanks, everybody. Thanks
for listening. Pedram: Thank you, everybody. Bye.