Episode 09: Microbiome, How Bugs In Our Body Control So Much

Welcome to my podcast, asking the question, if not now, when? This is Cindie Brown and thank you for joining me today. For more information, visit me at www.ifnotnowwhen.best.

Microbiome, gut flora, prebiotics, probiotics, what is all of this and why is it important to have an understanding of what this all means? Well it turns out, it impacts the youthful appearance of our skin, weight loss or gain, our energy level, our mood, joint health, brain health, protects us from cancer, Alzheimer's, and the list goes on. What is the microbiome? So, here goes the scientific definition: "The microbiome is the genetic material of the microbes which are bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses that live on an inside the body. The number of genes in the microbes in one person's microbiome is 200 times the number of genes in the human body. The microbiome in our gut may weigh as much as 5 pounds." Or as doctor Gundry would say, we have 5 pounds of bugs living in us.

In this episode, I'll be talking about what we can do to improve and maintain a healthy microbiome to keep us look and feeling great. Thinking back, the first time I heard anything about gut flora or microbiome was about 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer. And I flew out to Irvine California to see Doctor Connealy who was a holistic doctor specializing in cancer. And I will never forget, she had another doctor with her and during a conversation he had said we need to test her microbiome and make sure that she has a healthy gut flora. I had no idea what he was talking about. But then when I went to the health food store and I looked at prebiotics, probiotics and reading the labels and trying to understand what it was all about. Well that was the first time I had really looked into it. But ten years later I read a book by Steven Gundry MD called; The Longevity Paradox, How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age. Of course that book caught my eye because you know my goal is to live to 120 so anything that has to do with longevity I'm reading it. Well, it turns out this book does a deep dive into the microbiome.

So Doctor Steven Gundry is a former cardiac surgeon and currently runs his own clinic investigating the impact of diet on health. In his book I found it incredible how much of an effect these bacteria or what he calls, "gut bugs" have on our overall physical and mental health and longevity. Aging is not simply a function of age but it's really a byproduct of the way we live our lives. As science evolves, it's really showing us our gut microbes, well our gut bugs or bacteria that make up our microbiome largely determine our level of good health and longevity.  I love the way Doctor Gundry describes this. It makes it super easy to understand but he calls our body the  condominium where the bugs live. And the game is if we keep this condominium in great shape then the good bugs are happy and thrive and the bad bugs die off. But if we keep our condominium in bad shape then the bad bugs and bacteria thrive and the good bugs that keep our skin healthy and our body healthy and us feeling good die off. So that's basically what we want to do is keep our condominiums in great shape and feeding the good bacteria the food that keeps them thriving and starve the bad bacteria that cause us harm and age us.

Interesting discoveries, you know we talk about genetics and family traits. You go to the doctor they're gonna ask, did your parents have heart disease, all of that. Well so many studies have shown that twins that are separated and live in different families, their gut microbiome is more similar to the family they are living with than their birth parents. So the two identical twins will have very different microbiomes which determine many health factors that we previously thought were due to genetics.

So what is a healthy microbiome or what is a healthy gut, how do we create that? So first and most important is a diversity of bacteria. If we don't have a diversity of bacteria we're not gonna live very long. So first let's talk about antibiotics. Both that are prescribed and that we are eating in our foods. Obviously the antibiotics that are prescribed are necessary and keep us healthy, when needed. But I know when my boys were young there was a tendency to over prescribe antibiotics and many patients were demanding it even if they had a viral infection. Or their kids had a viral infection or bronchitis. Antibiotics had nothing to do with it but doctors would prescribe it because parents would feel better that they're giving their child something to help make them feel better. Prior to full spectrum antibiotics, we had antibiotics but for specific bacteria. But now this full spectrum antibiotics that we take kills all our bugs, good and bad and some studies are showing that it takes up to two years for our gut flora or a good bacteria to re-populate. I think the message is to be careful and aware of the impact antibiotics have on our gut buddies.

Now antibiotics in our food. I've always said focus on the things we can control and this is something we can. Unfortunately, many don't even realize that there are antibiotics in a lot of our foods and we think we're making healthy choices when in fact they may not be the best choice. So as I had talked about in a previous episode and it's pretty common knowledge that much of our industrial raised meat contain antibiotics. Industrial livestock are given antibiotics and also the corn, soy and wheat that they're fed from our crops that are sprayed with Roundup including glyphosate. Glyphosate is an active ingredient in Roundup, the weed killer and it's categorized as an antibiotic because it kills bacteria. Another thing to keep in mind is glyphosate is sprayed on wheat as a drying agent. So we also get small micro-doses of antibiotics in all of our wheat products, cereals, pasta, breads. So when possible, choosing meat and poultry and fish free of antibiotics moves you in a much better direction and even more so is buying grass fed beef. When you do that, not only is that a healthier choice but you're supporting the ranchers and farmers that are doing the right thing. The second thing we can do is, as much as possible, buy organic fruits and vegetables because they're not sprayed with Roundup or any of the other pesticides. The glyphosate that's in Roundup that's sprayed on our fruits and vegetables, again contains an antibiotic but glyphosate itself also causes leaky gut.

So our intestines are lined with a mucous membrane and also these microvilli. And Doctor Gundry describes it, which really helped me understand it well. It's kind of like a shag carpet throughout the lining of our intestines and these microvilli or shag carpet are responsible for the absorption of the nutrients in our food. So the thicker this mucous membrane or lining of our gut the healthier we are, the more youthful our skin and the increased probability of a longer life and health span. So how do we make sure we have a thick mucus membrane in our intestines? Besides limiting and avoiding antibiotics as much as possible, our gut buddies love fermented foods. So yogurt without the sugar, kimchi, sauerkraut, all of these types of fermented food feed our good bacteria and ensure that our gut flora is diverse. And again, that you've heard many times eating the rainbow is certainly very helpful. Conversely, avoiding sugar and saturated fats is gonna be very helpful as well because our bad bacteria thrive on that, they thrive on sugar so really does controller cravings for sugar and it sends messages to the brain that they're hungry and they want more. I was actually talking to a friend yesterday about craving sugar and it's been my experience that it took about a month. But what I did was I stopped all sugar even from fruit and simple carbohydrates. Nothing for a month and I think I killed some of those sugar craving gut bacteria because after that I didn't crave sugar the way I used to. You know when they said that there's about 5 pounds of bacteria in our gut it makes sense because between our small and large intestine if you spread it out it's a really long tube. I had no idea you know it's all inside our body but I had no idea how long it was. But I was able to visualize it quite a few years ago when a friend from Ecuador was staying with us and finishing medical school and he came up to buy medical equipment and I walked in the house and I saw this really skinny garden hose stretched out that went from dining room to the living room kitchen family room all the way to the other side of the house. I'm thinking what is he buying a garden hose for a skinny garden hose? And then he told me it was part of the equipment he's purchased to perform colonoscopies. Man that was an eye opener. So our gut buddies have a large area that they live in.

So let's talk about leaky gut for just a minute. So leaky gut is when the when the wall of the intestine were that mucous membrane is becomes very very thin making it more permeable where the molecules from our food cross that gut barrier that normally would keep the toxins and pathogens in and avoid them from crossing into our bloodstream. When they do get into our system it can cause a cascade of inflammation contributing to insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune conditions according to Doctor Michael Silverman. He's the leading author of the study and chairman of infectious diseases at Western University in Ontario. So when these molecules leak out into our bodies rather than being absorbed, our immune cells; our T cells are B cells and killer cells, are busy attacking the foreign molecules from our leaky gut with less of them available to fight infections and cancer cells. So something else that's really interesting. The gut is the source of a lot of really important hormones that affect our brain and mood such as serotonin and melatonin. So when you have the right mixture of gut buddies or bugs, you're able to transfer building blocks into these hormones. But if you do have a lot of the harmful bacteria, they really don't have the ability to make these hormones and if we've got a lot of bad bugs in our gut we will more than likely be angry, moody and anxious and it's really a reflection of what's happening in our microbiome. You know, and when I read that I couldn't help but remember that study where they were children with behavioral issues that were sent to the secondary school and all they did was change the lunch program to a healthy lunch and behavioral issues significantly improved and so did test scores. There are a lot of reasons a healthy diet improves test scores and behavior but knowing that our gut bugs influence our hormones and mood, it makes me think the improvement in their microbiome had something to do with it as well.

You know another thing we can do to feed and help our good bugs thrive is a thing called hormesis which is stressing cells. And the way Dr Gundry describes it, is he says it's making the cells realize times are tough so our organisms say hard times are here and we've gotta get through this. So the cells that are weak or zombie calls they die in new cells grow. It's what Dr. Gundry calls, "a mechanism for self pruning the dead wood" and our good bacteria grow in times of famine or fasting and our bad bacteria die. And the more we're stressed, and the good hormesis type of stress not mental stress but stressing our bodies through fasting and exercise, the more they divide and the more mucus you have and the more steam cells that you actually stimulate to grow just by fasting. Dr. Gundry also explains that we're seasonal animals and our microbiome changes as we eat different foods in different seasons.

So here's some more really good news regarding wear and tear in our joints and arthritis. Dr. Gundry writes, "The most recent research confirms that arthritis is caused not by overuse but rather by the bad bugs in the gut creating inflammation. It's that inflammation that wears and tears our joints, not aging itself." For me this is great news. I saw my Mom suffer from rheumatoid arthritis and how it disfigured her toes and fingers. This news gives me hope that this may not be my fate.

So let's talk about prebiotics and probiotics. I was kind of confused with both of those. But prebiotics are "types of dietary fiber that feed the friendly bacteria in our gut. It helps the gut bacteria produce nutrients to our colon cells." So some examples of vegetables that are high in prebiotic content are chicory root, jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onion, shallot, spring onions, leeks, cabbage are all good examples of vegetables with a high prebiotic content. And probiotics are actually the helpful or good bacteria that keep our gut healthy.

So as I had mentioned before, the more information we have the more informed decisions we can make that impact the quality of our lives. And understanding this topic of the microbiome in the holobiome certainly adds in additional dynamic to help us make better decisions knowing the cause and effect of our food and lifestyle choices on our microbiome. And I really like how Doctor Gundry explains this, "There is literally a life and death struggle constantly being waged between the good guys in your holobiome which are dedicated to keeping you young until the day you and they die. And the bad guys which desperately wanna take over and run you into the ground. So the question is this,  which are you going to feed and nourish and which are you going to starve out? This is a factor in aging that is entirely within your control. Every meal you eat, when you eat, how and how much you exercise, the products you use in the shower, the supplements you take each day. All of these small choices add up to have a real impact on our life span and our health span."

Interesting how it turns out that listening to our gut is more significant and meaningful than we've ever thought before. I do hope you find this information useful and I am so grateful for you joining me today. Wishing you peace, love, joy and good health. Bye for now.

New York Times Article, "Seeking an Obesity Cure, Researchers Turn to the Gut Microbiome From <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/well/eat/seeking-an-obesity-cure-researchers-turn-to-the-gut-microbiome.html>

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/lectins/

Dr Steven Gundry, MD https://www.ifm.org/about/profile/steven-gundry-md/