TOPIC: YOUR GUT HEALTH AFFECTS YOUR MENTAL HEALTH Dr. Guy Citrin ND, naturopathic physician and international speaker on the Microbiome educates us on the ways your gut health can affect your mental health. He educates us on “leaky gut” and “inflammation” and how it is connected to depression, anxiety, and chronic illnesses. www.CitrinWellness.com
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Speaker 1
Hi. I'm Dr. Selina Matthews, spiritual psychologist, and I want to welcome you all to Social Transformation. And my guest today is Dr. Guy Citrin. He's a naturopathic medical doctor. His practice, Citrin Wellness, is located in Beverly Hills and he is also an international speaker on the microbiome, which is really important for our topic today, which is how your mental health is affected by your gut health.
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Speaker 1
It is going to be a fascinating topic, so stay tuned. Dr. Guy, I am super excited to have you on my show. So I want to ask you right now, can you tell me what the correlation is between gut health, depression and anxiety?
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Speaker 2
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. This is very exciting. And we've been talking about this for a while. So, yeah, we can dove right into it. The correlation between gut health, anxiety and depression, is that the question?
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Speaker 1
Yes.
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Speaker 2
So there's a few correlations, right. So most people have been a little misled, I'm sure, as you know, the thinking that serotonin is the end all and be all marker of of neurological health. Right, right. Think okay my serotonin is off, I'm depressed, I have a chemical imbalance and I need an SSRI or medication.
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Speaker 1
Right.
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Speaker 2
And although that might be possible for a few people. Right. I'm sure as a clinician, you see this, I see this all the time. We see that a lot of times SSRI are not helpful for people. Right. So why is that the case and what's the correlation to the gut, if that's your question? So from a serotonin perspective, 90% of our serotonin is released in our gut.
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Speaker 2
So, yeah. You didn't know that?
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Speaker 1
No, I did not know that.
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Speaker 2
So serotonin is produced by what are called entero chromosome cells. And those line, the gut and the purpose of serotonin from a functional perspective is that serotonin increases peristalsis, and peristalsis is the movement of your bowels. So to have a healthy bowel movement, you need a healthy amount of serotonin that is primarily one of its primary functions. That's what serotonin does.
00:02:47:11 - 00:03:11:23
Speaker 2
So dopamine is released through the substantia nigra, which is the part of the brain stem that's responsible for dopamine, release and metabolism. But however, serotonin is released primarily in the gut helps you get into what's called the rest and digest that state. Right? So we all so this gets pretty complicated and complex, but a lot of people have heard about rest and digest.
00:03:11:23 - 00:03:36:01
Speaker 2
Right. I'm sure you see this all the time in your practice, right? People are switched neurologically into a fight or flight status, which means primarily they're serotonin is off. Right. Because they don't produce enough serotonin to help the movement of their bowels into a digestible, healthy, digestible place. So the correlation between gut and serotonin is like 1 to 1.
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Speaker 2
It's produced in the gut and it helps you pass your bowels. It's also very helpful for mood and regulation and all that stuff. However, the imbalance of mood disorders is not necessarily just a serotonin problem. It can be it can be correlated. But there's so much going on else in the gut that's responsible for anxiety, depression, cortisol, management, all that stuff.
00:04:01:12 - 00:04:07:24
Speaker 2
So what we now know is that you have a direct correlation between the microbiome and your mental health.
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Speaker 1
So you said you just said microbiome. And I know you are an international speaker on that. So can you define for the audience what the microbiome is? Because people are confused about that. It's a big.
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Speaker 2
Term. Yeah, microbiome is a very simple term. It just means the collection of bacteria in the gut. Actually, it means in any orifice, but typically it's because we talk about gut health. Sometimes when you say them, you can have like an oral microbiome, you can have a vaginal microbiome, any, any area of your body that's exposed to bugs, essentially, that has bacteria and it has its own ecology.
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Speaker 2
And so that means just the collection of organism. Those are bacteria in that space. So typically in microbiome just means in typically what you're going to hear when you're microbiome is gut microbiome. And what that means is just all the different bacteria that live and have all of these effects in your gut.
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Speaker 1
Wow, that's incredible. So the gut is the gut produces neurotransmitters, right?
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Speaker 2
Yeah.
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Speaker 1
How do the are there more besides the serotonin that the gut produces and how does it get its way? I mean, I know about the vagus nerve. Is that a way that it goes up? It tends to go up to the brain or how how does it work?
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Speaker 2
Yeah. So so now you're talking my mind gut, right. And so I think that was kind of the initial question is how did these symptoms present? Right? What's the gut doing in response? What the better neurotransmitters and how do they respond? So you have many neurotransmitters. They are secreted in different areas of the body and they are broken down in the gut and then utilized in the gut and excrete it.
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Speaker 2
And when there is a problem with your microbiome or the collection of bacteria, you may utilize secrete or metabolize different neurotransmitters ineffectively. So for serotonin, for instance, if you have what's called dysbiosis or or dysregulation or an upset microbiome, you're potentially not producing serotonin to the levels that you need to. So if that's the case, you're already going to have mental issues, right?
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Speaker 2
However, so to my first point is that serotonin is just one very small component of mental health. We've been led to believe as a society that it's everything, but it's just one piece of it. But underlying that is the health and the ecology of the gut, and that is what's responsible for the production and healthy utilization of all the neurotransmitters.
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Speaker 2
And all of those are responsible and mental health. So it's just taking a little bit of serotonin is a very myopic or nearsighted view of the situation, right? I mean, I'm sure you see that, Dr. Matthews Right. And like, people just think I need an SSRI, but that's not the case. You need to get your microbiome in order.
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Speaker 2
You need to like balance out all the inflammation, all that stuff. So I think we're going to talk about that more today, but ultimately, for your for it, your question is, how does all this correlate? And then one of those channels that the gut talks to the brain is through the vagus nerve. So you have a nerve that connects the brain to the gut and that nerve stimulates.
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Speaker 2
What I was talking about earlier is that healing rest and Digest plays. So the vagus nerve is part of the again, the parasympathetic nervous system that controls and regulates resting and digesting. And if your rest and digest is off, your entire body is off in terms of the ability to calm yourself down and properly handle the chemicals that create a peaceful existence.
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Speaker 1
Well, I am sure that everybody in the world, because of COVID, their rest and digest and their whole gut issues, have inflamed because of all the issues that have been happening. Right. Are you seeing that? Because I'm seeing a lot of distortion in people that I've never seen before. People are having much more difficulty today than they've ever had to function.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually curious to hear what you what you've been saying, because I've been saying that all the time lately, too. What are you primarily noticing with your patients?
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Speaker 1
Well, I am seeing incredible levels of depression, inability to get things done. It's like their brain is not can't function like it used to. And there's no difference in the way that they move in the world. But it's like everything is harder to do and it's they they're not as capable as they were prior to COVID. And I find this shocking and I can actually even see some of this in myself.
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Speaker 1
I mean, I'm like, what? Like, why is it so difficult for me? It never used to be. So what I'm experiencing and what my clients are experiencing, there's something similar. There's something cultural that I've never seen before from.
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Speaker 2
So I see I see a lot of different patients. People come to me with all sorts of stuff and the gut lends itself to a lot of symptoms. So I see symptoms across the board. We recently opened up a mental health component to the clinic, as you know, and I would have to say I'm right on board with you.
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Speaker 2
I'm seeing rates of anxiety, mostly anxiety. Right. There's a there's a component to depression with anxiety typically, right? Yes. Somebody somebody phrased it really beautifully to me. Once they go anxiety is fear of the future. Depression is fear of the past.
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Speaker 1
Wow. Beautiful. Beautifully written.
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Speaker 2
I really like that. It seems to be accurate. You know, when people are living in the past in sorrow, they they are depressed. And when people are so anxious about what's going to happen, are so concerned about what's going to happen. Right. There's anxiety because you're you're living in a place of fear ultimately. Right? So it's the fear of the future.
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Speaker 2
Um, to your point, I think COVID really created a massive shock right? Spiritually, culturally. And it kind of triggered our fear centers a little bit. And in that, I think that our levels of uncertainty and how we navigate the world have been elevated so that now we are more anxious.
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Speaker 1
I'm wondering if the anxiety there's a lot of talk of leaky gut, right. Is have you seen a leaky gut increase because of COVID?
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Speaker 2
Um, so this is a pretty complicated question. I'm trying to think of like the best way medically to explain that. So the short answer is 100% right. But why is that the case? Yeah. So so maybe what we need, I don't know. I don't know the level of medical expertize your patients have. But let me maybe I should explain leaky gut on a basic level, please.
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Speaker 1
Please, because I've got a lot of people watching this.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. So leaky gut for those who don't know basically the medical term is intestinal permeability. And what that means is that your gut has a very protective layer to keep the outside world from entering your bloodstream on the inside. Right. We have a natural think about like a wall, right? Like just a very sturdy should be a very sturdy, healthy wall.
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Speaker 2
It's called the mucosal barrier. So it's made out of mucus. And that's a barrier that keeps the lining of your cells protected so that they're not getting hurt by anything that you're swallowing or any bacteria that you're bringing into the gut. Right. So it's just a very nice, healthy. So what happens when you are in an anxiety state?
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Speaker 2
Right. And this is crucial to understanding mental health, is that you switch again away, simple in the nervous system, you switch away what I was talking about from the parasympathetic to the sympathetic. So you have two modes of your nervous system, right? And this is ultimately baseline physiology is you're either resting and digesting or you're in fight flight one, you're in nature.
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Speaker 2
If you're fighting a bear, you don't need to rest and digest in that place. You're living in an immediate stress. You need all of your faculties going right. You need your eyes dilated, you need blood flowing to the extremities. You need to be able to run. You bring, you know, air and blood to the lungs. You need to get the system moving right, however, so that shuts down the central organs because you're not in a place where like you want to rest, you want.
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Speaker 2
So when. So humans are very interesting because we're the only creature that can perpetuate an anxiety state. Animals don't do this. So we sit there and we think about the patterns that cause a stressful event. If we're constantly under stress, we switch our sympathy, we switch off our parasympathetic nervous system, and we live in a sympathetic nervous system which shuts down the motility and the utilization of our gut.
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Speaker 2
And what happens in that state is that you basically create stagnation or the inability to move things fluidly through your gut, and you create inflammation. And that inflammation. And it's like I lecture on this. It's actually quite a complicated mechanism, but basically you're creating a mini sepsis event and you start breaking down your gut barrier and the minute your gut barrier starts to degrade or get broken down, that wall that protects your inside from the from the outside world, you start getting systemically inflamed.
00:14:25:10 - 00:14:53:09
Speaker 2
And that systemic inflammation can result in a whole host of variety of issues. But that is essentially leaky gut use. Your barrier gets degraded and in the degradation your gut acts like more like a sieve and it passes things that it should not be passing into your bloodstream, which then activates your immune system and turns on inflammation. This is the this is the basis of all chronic disease.
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Speaker 2
I'm like, this is the foundation of health challenge is that we are systemically inflamed. Inflammation causes disease. Every word in Latin that ends in itis is the name of a disease, conjunctivitis. I mean, you name it, you just think of all the itis as a, you know, itis in Latin means inflammation. So the cause of all disease is inflammation.
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Speaker 2
A very brilliant chiropractor actually said that. He said that all the commonality between all diseases is inflammation. And if we study the gut pathology, we understand that when you pass things through that you're not protecting the gut lining. The gut lining starts to degrade, which is leaky gut that turns on the immune system, which causes low grade inflammation.
00:15:43:00 - 00:15:59:19
Speaker 2
And then the longer that goes on, the more problems it creates. It creates further problems in the ecology of the microbiome. It turns on chronic disease, it turns on pathways of inflammation. And that is ultimately the basis of chronic systemic issues.
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Speaker 1
Wow. That's that's incredible. So inflammation. So what I'm going to go back to the COVID thing so that I really get this, so that COVID created a situation of fight or flight which inflamed the inner workings of our digestion and therefore created much more depression and anxiety in our mental health, which is what I am seeing.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, like, there's a small piece of that that needs. Sorry, I'm just nit picking the small bits because.
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Speaker 1
I'm not anywhere standing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 2
So it's not that, it's not that when the gut is inflamed that created anxiety, it's that the anxiety created the shutdown of the gut, which further perpetuated further anxiety and then that created further disease that or this regulation which perpetuates. Right. So it's like the chicken or the egg. Did we we got scared. We got into a traumatic state.
00:17:10:14 - 00:17:37:27
Speaker 2
Yes, that's traumatic state. Shut down our nervous system. That that ability to heal and rest and digest that further potentiated any leaky gut disorders which further creates inflammation and then shuts down our ability to then process the chemicals that neutralizes back into a place of rest and digest. Wow. So the mechanism is complicated. I mean, it's, you know, it's it's it's a topic I lecture on in high detail for doctors.
00:17:37:27 - 00:17:42:28
Speaker 2
And so everybody gets a little bit confused on this. So, but it's just like, I.
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Speaker 1
Feel so bad that.
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Speaker 2
Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, I paused and I'm just. I just want to get the understanding that the understanding across is that ultimately, when we switch away from a rest digest healing place, we are in a state of ultimately of inflammation, which causes disease. Well, and that's that's the biggest issue. And then it's a it's a downward spiral, right?
00:18:08:13 - 00:18:32:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. And that's probably what you're saying, right? I think that's what you were saying. You're saying is like people are their ability to handle stress, their ability to do stuff function in the natural world is decreased. And in my perspective, that's the case because they're furthering the shutting down of the of the chemicals that allow them to process their day to day handle their cortisol levels.
00:18:32:17 - 00:19:00:26
Speaker 2
So for fun fact, they did a study with with mice and they found that germ free mice. So mice essentially without a microbiome. So a healthy, healthy amount of bacteria, their cortisol levels were three times higher than a healthy microbiome. And gut cortisol is made by the adrenal gland. So it's not made in the gut. So, you know, there's such an interplay between our microbiome and cortisol, as is our ability to handle stress.
00:19:01:18 - 00:19:25:19
Speaker 2
So when we start dysregulated in the gut ecology, we, we, we have we potentially get our issues of inability to handle and maintain stress, which then creates further anxiety, right? So that sort of thing, it's a downward spiral. It's like one thing causes and then causes and it just just keeps going down and down it down. And I don't know if that's what you're saying, but.
00:19:25:19 - 00:19:59:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, no, absolutely. That's exactly what I'm saying. But you're you know, you're saying it incredibly specifically better than I did. So I really appreciate that. I'm going to quote you on that. So, you know, so we have all these gut issues and we know one of the reasons COVID, but it was going on before COVID also. So why do you think all these gut issues are so widespread in America or is it just global?
00:20:01:02 - 00:20:39:16
Speaker 2
It's becoming more global. We've had a couple major problems that have caused all of our guts to be chronically problematic. This is in due to the industrial revolution. Ultimately, this is just it's just history. Basically, there's been some massive consequences of growing up and in like the post the post-industrial revolution ultimately. So what happened was the amount of toxins that we are now consuming.
00:20:39:21 - 00:21:01:00
Speaker 2
So there's a couple of things that degrade the mucosal lining. Glyphosate is huge. So everybody has heard of glyphosate. If you don't know what glyphosate is, it's the active ingredient. And Roundup Roundup is the most widely used pesticide. If you've seen all the commercials now, finally, finally, finally, they have implicated Roundup to the cause of cancer. By the way, they knew all this.
00:21:01:09 - 00:21:19:26
Speaker 2
And there are studies that show this. They all knew about it. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist guy, but I can tell you that I've looked at the data and they all had studies, rat models that showed that roundup directly cause tumor, but they meant so much money off of it, they didn't really want to go into not utilizing it.
00:21:19:26 - 00:21:43:24
Speaker 2
So what they did was they sprayed all our pesticides there as a as a major pesticide as they spread this glyphosate is is one of the most difficult compounds for our bodies to interact with. So it immediately degrades the mucosal barrier. So that protective lining that you have every time you eat fruits or vegetables, if they're not organic, you're basically degrading your microbiome, your gut, your.
00:21:44:03 - 00:22:01:15
Speaker 1
Diet is shocking. That is shocking. So you're saying what is all of the vegetables that people are eating that aren't organic are affecting their physical health, therefore their mental health.
00:22:02:12 - 00:22:26:12
Speaker 2
100%. And so it's not just fruits and vegetables. It's literally anything that's ever been sprayed with the pesticide roundup. And there's a lot of other toxins. Right. So we know BPA is right. There was a whole push against BPA is why one of the reasons BPA is really bad for your mucosal barrier roundup is incredibly toxic. Any antibiotics that you use, especially as a little kid, degrade your mucosal barrier sugar.
00:22:26:14 - 00:22:53:05
Speaker 2
So this is another problem with a little bit of you know, this is why I'm not a big fan of like our history as a people in the last hundred years is because the agricultural revolution that happened in the last hundred years was very damaging to us. They created there was a dairy campaign. I don't know if you know much about this, but the big push for milk does your body good.
00:22:53:21 - 00:23:19:14
Speaker 2
They knew that that data wasn't substantiated. That was a marketing play. Dairy is not the best for us and for our mucosal barrier. Milk does not do your body good. So for those of you who think that that's not the truth, sugar, that, you know, there was an anti fat, right? We if you recall. Right. Everything that we were taught from the fifties, then eighties.
00:23:19:14 - 00:23:47:23
Speaker 2
Right. Was Fats really bad for you? Fat lines, every cell in your body. It's what creates a healthy ability for you to transmit hormones across your cell barrier wall. So you need fat. Fat is super important, especially for neurological conditions. It lines all of the nerve cells. So if you don't have fat and you have elevated sugar and you have dairy and you have these inflammatory things, you're degrading your gut.
00:23:48:12 - 00:24:18:05
Speaker 2
Further of interest is the amount of plastics, heavy metals, toxins, all this stuff. I mean, this is a very depressing talk, but all the things in our society that we're consistently bombarded with outside of our ability, right? Like we don't really know. You know, environmental medicine was probably the most sound course I ever took, but, you know, we don't really study these things as doctors, especially don't study them, which is sad, but we don't study the effects of the environment on our health.
00:24:18:05 - 00:24:50:06
Speaker 2
It's a topic that's not taught in medical school, unfortunately, but it's the most important topic, in my opinion, because it explains how we relate to the outside world. And when we're ingesting these chemicals, these toxins, air pollutants, everything that you're bringing into your body, it has an effect. What that effect does is ultimately degrades your mucosal barrier. And again, the cause of all disease is the degradation of your mucosal barrier, which causes systemic inflammation and the onset of all the irises that we know of and existence.
00:24:50:06 - 00:25:05:21
Speaker 1
Wow. Do you think that going back to your you're talking about sugar, do you think people going off of sugar, being sugar free? And the other one we didn't talk about gluten free is a good start.
00:25:06:19 - 00:25:30:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, 100%. Okay. 100%. I always I always do. I always do. Gluten and sugar is going to be your biggest allergens, right? Because what it does is, is the and this gets very complicated. I'm not going to go into it. But your gut is the perfect cauldron for yeast because it's moist and damp and hot. And so that's where yeast broke.
00:25:30:18 - 00:25:54:13
Speaker 2
Like think of like yeast growing in like a brewer facility for beer. And what is it like to grow yeast? You need sugar, sugar, speed use. That's how they that's how we make alcohol. Right. Same thing happens in the gut. You have these. So yeast loves to live where the mucosal lining is degraded loves. It's called microvilli. You have pliers, patches and all sorts of like, yeah.
00:25:54:14 - 00:26:11:15
Speaker 2
Physiological words to explain like basically cavitation or holes in the mucosal lining. That's where yeast lives. And then we consistently feed that with more, with more sugar, and then we create a dysregulation in that environment ultimately.
00:26:11:23 - 00:26:28:16
Speaker 1
Well, can you give us an example of a patient from your clinic that you've turned around, you know, using your your naturopathic and functional medicine information?
00:26:29:09 - 00:26:30:00
Speaker 2
So as one.
00:26:31:26 - 00:26:36:01
Speaker 1
I know you've treated millions, but just, you know.
00:26:36:15 - 00:26:37:26
Speaker 2
You want like a success story.
00:26:37:29 - 00:26:57:17
Speaker 1
Here we are, you know. Yes, of course. Yes. So so I want I want people to understand the way that you approach medicine. And, you know, at Citrin Wellness, which is your Beverly Hills clinic, how it's different than the traditional doctors that they're seeing.
00:26:57:17 - 00:27:20:06
Speaker 2
And this is the I mean, I honestly like and this isn't a testament to me on any level because it's not like I created this stuff or you know, I'm just regurgitating all the brilliant things that have been taught to me over the years. And I've had incredible mentors. So none of this is an ego driven thing, but I've been very fortunate to reverse major disease states and a lot of people.
00:27:20:06 - 00:27:55:15
Speaker 2
So it's been it's been an incredible journey to be able to offer a lot of the education that's been imparted on me, to help a lot of people, you know. But I would say the difference is ultimately the approach and understanding. That's really the only difference is that I'm not looking for immediate symptomatic relief. Right. I'm I'm investigating into the cause of their illness and the minute I understand the pathology and the physiology, meaning the mechanism of why they're suffering, I can help reverse it naturally or with medication.
00:27:55:15 - 00:28:28:22
Speaker 2
So it just depends on what I see is wrong. And ultimately then it's about helping their bodies defame Rex, create a proper environment internally. And what's crazy is that I see mental health significantly improved just by working on the body. So when I help people get their chemicals in order, essentially get the inflammatory cascades down, figure out the mechanism of what's going on and why they're experiencing that stuff.
00:28:28:29 - 00:28:52:18
Speaker 2
And we reverse that cause. Then we heal the body and the body's unbelievable. So for those of you who think that the body cannot heal, that's your that needs to be changed mentally. Because I have seen mass of improvements in people's health in a very short amount of time when the mechanism is understood of what's keeping them sick.
00:28:53:04 - 00:29:06:06
Speaker 1
I have a question for you. I have a question. Parkinson's is one of the specialties I have in my practice. Yeah. How do you work with Parkinson's?
00:29:06:06 - 00:29:31:22
Speaker 2
So those are late stage diseases. And unfortunately there is. As far as I know, there's a couple of conditions and that I've just been less successful with. That is unfortunately one of them. Um, it is a, it is a quite a late stage disease. I have been able to help people before they get into Parkinson's, reverse a lot of the things that can potentially cause it.
00:29:31:22 - 00:30:01:22
Speaker 2
Right. So when we start to look at their organic acids and their dopamine in their gut and how do they utilize dopamine? So Parkinson's them, it's a it's a dopamine issue ultimately. Right. There's been a lot of stuff in the natural world to help mitigate the symptoms, which is one of the biggest ones is glue to thiamin IVs, where you inject the antioxidant glue to iron and you can literally see the tremors and the shuffling gait and all that kind of disappear before your eyes, which just super on nuance, really.
00:30:01:22 - 00:30:03:27
Speaker 1
That is incredible.
00:30:03:27 - 00:30:04:23
Speaker 2
Typically doesn't.
00:30:04:23 - 00:30:05:09
Speaker 1
Last.
00:30:05:29 - 00:30:32:25
Speaker 2
Not going to lie, the relief doesn't last. So they have to constantly get glutathione on IVs, which gets expensive. And there's been you know, there's been further resolutions out of a couple of stem cell clinics in the world that are trying to rehabilitate the brain and the ability to process and handle dopamine. A lot of those conditions are also known in the functional medicine world as major inflammatory conditions of the brain.
00:30:33:07 - 00:31:01:07
Speaker 2
So a lot of the resolution, you know, ultimately before super late stages, we work on brain inflammation and we repair what's called a leaky brain versus the leaky gut. Same concept is just you have a you have a blood brain barrier, like you have a gut blood barrier. And that gut brain barrier. Then we work on the neurophysiology to understand where the inflammation is in the brain, help reverse those inflammatory cascades and then we can restore functionality.
00:31:01:07 - 00:31:04:18
Speaker 2
But it's, you know, that's that's pretty complicated at that point.
00:31:04:18 - 00:31:34:00
Speaker 1
But yeah, but this is really, really fascinating. Dr. Guy really fascinating stuff. I had no idea that that those even were possible. I know my clients are going to be so excited to hear this. So in the last takeaway, what can people do to improve their gut? Like, is there there are two or three things that you would suggest that they really do to to help themselves.
00:31:34:15 - 00:31:54:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. And by the way, Dr. MATTHEWS, you're talking like you you have more experience than anybody I know. For those listeners of you that are obsessed with Dr. MATTHEWS, she has been a patient and a friend of mine for quite some time now, but she has been on her own remarkable health journey for over, what, 30 years you've been doing?
00:31:55:05 - 00:31:55:26
Speaker 1
30 years?
00:31:56:16 - 00:32:27:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. So she looks amazing because she takes care of her gut and her health. And so she's very aware and very in tune with everything that's going on in the functional medicine world. As for recommendations on what I typically advise for the gut, it is very I don't have a protocol because I don't work in protocol worlds. I work in understanding what the person is lacking or the cause of their issue and then helping reverse that.
00:32:28:12 - 00:32:56:02
Speaker 2
So I typically don't even advise for a probiotic unless I find that the probiotic is necessary. If they're missing certain strains or they have elevations of bacterial infiltrations, a very safe thing to take is aloe vera. Aloe vera and Slippery Elm are probably my favorite. Just if I had just had to give you a like they just soothe inflammation calm down inflammation.
00:32:56:02 - 00:33:14:18
Speaker 2
Aloe vera is like a miracle plant from the gods I think themselves. I don't know how it does what it does, but anything it touches, it soothes. Think of like if you have a burn or you have any thing on the skin, aloe vera does the same thing in the gut. Aloe vera is a beautiful, beautiful aid to have in the gut arm.
00:33:14:18 - 00:33:38:07
Speaker 2
And then you need everything else that the gut utilizes. So the biggest problem in the gut, probably if I had to put anybody on anything, it wouldn't be to help the gut. It would be to help digestion, because we need to break down our nutrients so we can utilize the nutrients. And that is what I'm seeing chronically. The problem people's stomach, pancreas and gallbladder are significantly dysfunctional in this day to day world.
00:33:38:26 - 00:34:01:24
Speaker 2
And in that and what those are called, the proximal stomach organs are the top of the stomach. That is what breaks everything down to them that your gut can relax, absorb its nutrients and do what it needs to do. But when you don't break down your foods, the bacteria go crazy because they ferment and eat your food. So to make a very easy question, very complicated.
00:34:01:24 - 00:34:17:12
Speaker 2
I don't really know. I don't really have one thing. Al was really nice or like probably digestive enzymes is what I would say. Most people probably need some sort, but then which digestive enzymes and how you navigate that is also, you know, that also gets into it's our beautiful.
00:34:17:16 - 00:34:43:04
Speaker 1
Well well so your god this is so fabulous. This has been so enlightening. I am so thrilled to have you here to talk on this, to kind of open the doorways for people to understand the work that you do, the incredible work that you do, your clinic. I'm thrilled. And I'm I'm really blessed. Thank you.
00:34:43:14 - 00:34:54:04
Speaker 2
Thank you there. Thank you to be here. Thank you.