 the space the length of our intestines is actually the same as a tennis court so You know when we're watching in the Australian open for example that tennis court is inside of us and it's only one self there So any anything that can kind of get through that you know thin thin thin membrane our immune system goes Oh my gosh, you know, we're under attack and And we need we need all the energy that you have To fight this war that's you may not even feel now most people feel it by You know fatigue or you know other believe it or not They see so many particularly women with depression and anxiety and they Don't have a clue unfortunately that this is actually happening Because of this war that's starting down in their gut. You guys have taught me so much women Because you guys thankfully have a gut feeling and Men and quite frankly most medical people have poo poo that feeling that women have Luckily, I have a wife two daughters and three female dogs. So I I Yeah, well, yeah, and luckily I've learned that Women have this sense That we should pay attention to and for the last 20 years I've been urging women in particular to please keep looking for a healthcare provider who will take your complaints seriously and Once people start doing that once I started saying gee, you know, that's Are you sure that that's going on? I started looking at the blood work and I go son of a gun, you know, you're right And let's fix it. Hmm. I mean, I'm I can completely attest to that I I think that maybe what could be said is not only to find a practitioner that takes you seriously and is willing to Explore what it is that could be causing this What some may think is imaginary symptom, right? but also to You yourself that person out there to take your symptoms seriously to take your intuition seriously probably 2018 I Remember thinking to myself like my body had shifted a little like like gained a couple of pounds out of nowhere And I was like man, this is so weird and nothing I did made a dent on it And I was like maybe it's just I need to try harder. Maybe it's just age. Maybe it's just that but my intuition Said my hormones are off. I probably should check them fast forward now into the end of 2020 I had another shift like that and I was like, okay, this is not okay anymore and I'm one of those people that does have great energy and so It's not as easily Noticed in my world But then I finally went in and I had a slew of things including leaky gut including dysbiosis including heavy metal Toxicity, I mean just tons and tons of stuff. Thankfully I felt decent But you know the ultimate shift for me was I finally had cycle issues and then I was like well I guess I should probably do something about this So I think that yes following that intuition and getting in touch with the body and trusting that is a really important thing So do you find that food is the number one? culprit Yeah You know it properties also said, you know, let food be thy medicine and medicine be their food. He was smart Man, I don't know how you figure all this out, but yeah So that's I guess what made me famous is that a lot of the Healthy foods that we think are good for us actually contain mischievous little proteins that are the defense system of the plant against being eaten which are called lectins and lectins Bind to the wall of our gut and they actually flip a switch that breaks these tight junctions And the object of the game for a plant is not to be eaten and To make sure that it's babies don't get it eating its seeds and Their only defense against being eaten is to try and make their predator in that case us Not feel well when we eat certain Plants or plant babies and the object of the game is a smart animal If it doesn't feel well or if it's not thriving or even if it's not Reproducing the animal says, you know every time I eat this plant or this plant, baby I don't feel very well. I think I'll go eat something else The plant wins the animal wins everybody's happy humans as we all know are pretty stupid and So when we eat things that we have an intuition or we can feel that something's not right We take, you know, we take prilosec odc or toms or nexium We take antidepressants. We take a leave Advil And this actually is I write in all my books makes things worse rather than better the other thing that I think is really important that I wrote in the last book particularly is We have Amazing gut dysbiosis now just because Of two things number one the antibiotics that we take For whatever You couldn't believe the number of people who have been given antibiotics for COVID-19, which They don't work It's a it's a virus folks Number two antibiotics are fed to almost all of our conventionally farmed animals and We use them to make these animals grow quicker and faster and fatter Yeah, and so yeah so When we eat these Animals, we actually are eating the antibiotics that are in their flesh and so unbeknownst to us Those antibiotics kill off our gut microbiome. So rather than having this intense beautiful diverse Tropical rainforest of tens of thousands of species of bacteria in our gut many of us for instance after a course of antibiotics You may be reduced to one or two bacteria out of ten thousand and it may take two to three years To get that back Yeah, it's unfortunately true I mean think about it if the forest burns down and we run in there and we plant little seedlings It's gonna take 20 or 30 years to get that forest back And so we've been really naive that oh, I can take you know some probiotics the next day And I'll be back to normal and fortunately you got to build this ecosystem in your time. Oh man That's uh, that's sad to hear because like as a current issue I have Like I said dysbiosis and leaky gut and of course that stuff doesn't get tested like monthly, but you know I've heard and and Please explain this to me and help us understand that your like your face is basically like the inside out of your gut Is that accurate? That's accurate. Great. Well, my gut sucks right now and thank god for makeup But I have um, and I got this like 10 years ago It's perioral dermatitis or something like that and it basically looks like a little rash, right? It's like a little bumps around your face and I got it last summer When all of this got tested and then I was running a marathon So I was training a ton and I've heard that marathons are bad for leaky gut and gut issues. Is that correct? Oh, absolutely That's one of it's one of the worst things you can do for your health. No offense I agree and I was invited to do another one with the girls that did it with me And I said absolutely not but I will cheer you on problem is though is what do you do about it? So like in my situation, I tried to avoid antibiotics. I had a topical steroid I used it for the last six months and then I heard it could actually have A bad payoff like it makes things worse. Is that true too? Well, yeah, topical steroids, I mean they cover up the problem, but you're right So what's fascinating is the the lining of our gut is literally our skin turned inside out And so what's fascinating is what's happening on the inside wall of your gut In a way, luckily for many people is expressed on their skin And so people with psoriasis people with eczema people with dermatitis Those are actually an external sign that that process is going on on the inside of your gut So if you think about this You know red raw rash, yeah, you go. Oh my gosh I got this red rawness on the inside of my gut and I don't want that Let's say you can just let's say you're someone who can see it on your skin Maybe, you know, I've heard of a lot of people have You know avoid gluten or dairy and that also helps clear their skin up things like that So if you're someone out there and you can see it on your skin that something's going on What do you do and in this case like for even something like what I have going on the the general fix Usually is an antibiotic, right? I hope not but Oh Well, what do we do? Well, so again, this is a sign that the wall of your gut is is under attack by compounds that produce these gaps in the wall of your gut and About 80 of all my patients now Have an autoimmune disease that have been kind of all around the country of the world trying to fix Because they don't want to go on immunosuppressant drugs or they're on them and want to get off and so We we do have the benefit of testing people for leaky gut and we also have the benefit of testing people for food sensitivities and What's fascinating is years ago. We used to do food allergy testings where we put like 100 little pinpricks on your back and see what you reacted to they're worthless Really? Oh, yeah, they're worthless. I guess one of the reasons I might be believable is I'm willing to say I was wrong based on new data and Yeah, I used to use this these tests and they're useless because we now have much better tests looking at what are called food sensitivities If you have a porous wall of your gut if you have intestinal permeability Normally the foods we eat should be broken down by all of our digestive enzymes into simple sugars simple amino acids from protein and simple fatty acids from fat and those should be absorbed through the wall of our gut But if you've got spaces gaps then whole pieces of food that Were not broken down properly can actually go across the wall of our gut. So let me give you an example Let's suppose you eat a lot of kale and then we do a food sensitivity test And all of a sudden you were you're at very strongly to kale and you go, well, what the heck, you know, that's not right You know, okay, I eat a lot of kale and kale is good for me Well, what happens is about whole piece of kale comes across the wall of your gut Your immune system says what the heck is that? I've never I've never seen kale before And I've seen simple carbohydrates. That's a foreign protein. That's a foreign body And I'm going to attack it And so it's fascinating years ago when we first had these tests I'll backtrack for a second about 90 of people who get my book the plant paradox or one of the subsequent ones Resolve their autoimmune disease with just by following don't eat these foods And you know, it's exciting. Um that that works But about 10 of people and even 10 of my patients Despite swearing on bibles or crayons or whatever that they're following the rules They're they're better, but they're not all the way better And so when we do that, then we go more sophisticated looking for food sensitivities And I can tell you as a general rule And I wrote this in my first in the plant paradox 70 of people with celiac disease, which is the extreme form of gluten intolerance A year and a half after following a gluten-free diet still have celiac disease by intestinal biopsy Which is the gold standard. Why? Because most gluten-free foods have lectins that they are reacting to beyond gluten So 70 of people who are sensitive to wheat or sensitive to corn 100 of people who are sensitive to wheat or sensitive to oats including gluten-free oats They're sensitive to quinoa. They're sensitive to buckwheat They're sensitive to almost all the pseudo grains and they literally cross react The other thing that's unique in my trouble-making patients as I call them is most of them are sensitive to not only casein A1 Which I write about but also casein A2 Those are the milks, right? Those are the cows, right? Those are the two different kind of cows And most of the really sensitive people are sensitive to egg white and egg yolk Sorry now Yeah, the good news is And then we do a food sensitivity and quite frankly almonds show up all the time When I first did this years ago we banned almonds But when I wrote the plant paradox my editor said man, you're really mean come on. Give it. Yeah, give us something And I said, okay the the lectin is in the peel of the almonds So you can have blanched almond flour and you can have marcona almonds and it's worked pretty well But again, some of my troublemakers it's almond flour. That's the the trouble and when we get rid of that It's it's all better I'll give you a great example. Um as an athlete A couple years ago. I had an uh nhl hockey player young man 23 years old who developed Crohn's disease which is a is an autoimmune and he was having 20 episodes of bloody diarrhea a day And he was on two immunosuppressants and wasn't getting any better Uh, he had to drop out of the nhl. He lived with his mother And I he lost 75 pounds. He was a skeleton And somebody gave him my book the plant paradox and he started following it and He got down to about oh three to four bloody bowel moves today, but his weight stabilized so Get a cold call from him and said, hey, you know, this is the first thing that it has actually worked Yeah, but I'm not all the way yet. Could we you know Investigate this further and I said, yeah, you know, this will be great So we did all this and sure enough He was sensitive to all forms of dairy and all forms of eggs and you know Gluten was a disaster and so was corn etc So we took all those away from him And in three months, he's back having normal bowel movements and he's gaining weight And he's still still his You don't wasn't having bloody bowel moons, but he says, you know, they're still not formed, right? I said, okay, let's let's do a food sensitivity And he was having a lot of almond flour bread almond flour cookies And sure enough almond flour and vanilla beans were a couple of his real trouble makers and so we took him away and He he calls me back his mother and he called me back So that was it that was it. He's back to normal and he's back playing now and so oh my god But it was like son of a gun such an investigation. It takes so long I mean even I can attest to that You think it's this and then that kind of doesn't work and you go to that and the next thing and the next thing And you kind of just peel away the layers of like what is really the thing and it it takes time So when you execute it, it's like Good job, like that's hard to do. Oh, it's very hard to do And the fact that your book can do it on its own without actually having to I mean, this is the ultimate scaling option for someone like you who has this information To be able to write a book to help people because you can't possibly see all the patients that read this book I still see patients six days a week because It's it's very hard for me to turn people down unfortunately The I mean the heartwarming stories. I know I like this fellow, but I mean we had a little five-year-old child from texas who's had Just his entire palms of his hands and of his feet were just bloody And he couldn't walk His mother carried him around all of his life And he'd been everywhere and he couldn't go to school because I mean literally his hands were bleeding and his feet were bleeding And you know people would put him on steroids blah blah blah and nothing was working And she wrote me a letter and you know, I said, oh my gosh, you know, let's see what's going on Well, this poor young man had just profound leaky cut in a very low vitamin D level and hopefully we can talk about that And long story short it took us a year But uh, he completely healed his hands and feet The mother would you know send me photographs and we'd talk every three months And we found you know what he was sensitive to And now he's I think he's uh nine years old in school thriving in advanced classes And mom doesn't have to carry him around anymore. That's You know, and so how can I resist, you know You know, I have to keep seeing patients because they teach me What do you say Just to clean it up because I know a lot of people that have done Uh food sensitivity tests Um, and it seems like a lot of times the things that show up on it are the things you eat Correct. So how accurate Is the test itself? And is there a certain gold standard of a company that tests like is there a hierarchy? If you just sign up for the one where they send you a box and do the thing like Prick your finger a bit like is that enough or do you need to go to a certain level to achieve accurate results? And the fact that so many things show up on your diet that is what you eat. Is that because it's truly aggravating you Yeah, uh, there's a lot of questions there, but uh, I personally use a lab called vibrant america I've used lots of labs to me. They're the most accurate um The and it you know, it's going to cost you to get the the full panel. It's going to cost you about 400 500 bucks There are other labs that do them Cyrex is another one that's quite good, but I like vibrant better um Your point is well taken if you're eating a lot of things and you have leaky gut Invariably these things you are going to be sensitized to now the good news It may take me somebody else a year to get somebody's leaky gut sealed I was naive when I started this. I said a couple weeks. You'll be fine No But the good news is once you seal leaky gut We find that you become desensitized against most of these foods in fact I gave a paper at the american heart association lifestyle and epidemiology meeting two years ago showing that 94 of people Who had celiac disease and profound gluten intolerance? In a year 94 of them no longer had any antibodies to gluten their immune system Literally was retrained that gluten was not an issue for them anymore So I mean the extent we find that once you seal the gut by removing these things and once you You literally can retrain the immune system Not to react to these substances and that's why So many of my patients if I can convince them That yeah, I'm going to make you miserable and the foods I'm going to take away from you But if we seal your gut and most of the time we can We'll get these things back into your diet and and it'll be worth it long term Wow, so essentially the like testing for food sensitivities Given the fact that yes the things that you eat show up in your diet because of course like you said it passes through Particles that are way too big your body doesn't understand it. It hasn't been broken down So it's really just an indication of in your Experience that lectins being probably the number one thing to eliminate Maybe it needs to be a little more specific as it goes But that is the best starting place because the leaky gut is really just a The it's the it's the diagnosis, but it's not necessarily that your food What's causing test can be your your your gold like your it's not your bible to what to eat and what not to eat It's just saying you have inflammation You have your gut is not operating properly things are seeping through and yeah If you have a diverse diet, you're gonna see a lot of stuff on your test and and okay interesting That makes sense because you know, I mean in my experience I had a lot a lot a lot of things on my test that were a level level red level high Okay, you had said that you wanted to talk about vitamin D Yeah, the vitamin D. Is that a hormone as well? It is a hormone as well In fact, we should have named it as a hormone long ago instead of a vitamin But one of the things that I guess didn't surprise me, but maybe surprised me early on when you know, and I've been working in this area for 25 years now Is that all of these patients who presented with autoimmune diseases? Just as a start had very low levels of vitamin D And you know, I went that's kind of interesting And then all of these patients with leaky gut have low levels of vitamin D. And so yeah So there's there's several important things. Um, so vitamin D is a hormone. I've never seen vitamin D toxicity yet And I've been measuring vitamin D levels every three months for 25 years I think a normal vitamin D level should be anywhere from 100 to 150 Even the Cleveland Clinic and Quest now say that vitamin D levels up to 150 are completely normal not too high and so I'll Push my patients vitamin D levels up to 100 to 150 sometimes will go higher vitamin D does two things We have As as the cells in the wall of our gut are are hurt by these lectins and other compounds There's a bunch of replacement cells stem cells that are ready to take the place of these damaged cells It's kind of like the old revolutionary war movies where you got lots of liners of soldiers and the first guys go down and the next guys step up, right? Well, that second line Has to be pushed into place by vitamin D They sit there and twiddle their thumbs and go what am I supposed to do something? And it's vitamin D that pushes them into place. That's number one number two We know that people with autoimmune diseases their immune cells their white blood cells Normally should be sensitive to vitamin D. Vitamin D basically says hey guys relax Go have a donut and a smoke if we think of them as cops And that's not to generalize but just cool it don't carry a newsy around every everything's fine But we know that people with autoimmune diseases their immune cells do not listen to vitamin D properly So you basically have to literally hit them with a sledge hammer to quiet down so it's this two-fold effect and so Almost all human beings should be on 5000 international units of vitamin D Or 125 micrograms any of my autoimmune patients we start them on 10,000 international units The university of california san diego one of the Expert centers in vitamin d thinks the average american should take 9600 international units of vitamin d a day to have an adequate level the average american They've found and other people found that you cannot produce vitamin d toxicity at 40 000 international units a day You're safe You're safe And I have some of my really tough autoimmune patients on 40 50 000 a day That because of the bioavailability to their body of what they actually absorb and do something with excellent question It turns out when you've got a leaky gut you do not absorb it well and Long before we had measurements of leaky gut I used vitamin d levels to decide when the gut was sealed and so I'd be Pushing pushing pushing vitamin d and I'd have somebody on 30 000 units and And their vitamin d would be 50 And then on the next blood test their vitamin d is you know 140 and I go great, you know, we're there Let's start backing down now and it's actually been a very reliable Way, so you're right People with leaky gut you just can't absorb vitamin d well and once we seal you then your vitamin d Needs go down Got it. That makes perfect sense. What are some other kind of hormones that are at play that are big factors and health Well One of the things that I wrote about in the last book the energy paradox that I think people need to know is Glyphosate the active ingredient and roundup is now Omni present in our diet It's in and people You know, we we learned about roundup with gmo foods and you know roundup was developed to You know spray soybeans and kill the weeds and the soybeans would die blah blah blah And so everybody thinks of roundup as being sprayed on gmo foods but and 95 of corn in the united states is genetically modified Same with canola But now what's happened in the last 10 years is that roundup is no longer just being used on gmo crops It's now being used on conventional crops as what's called a deskin These large corporations Have to bring these multimillion dollar harvesters to a field On a certain day to be efficient. So rather than wait For the field to ripen and dry They kill the plants with roundup and then they die and then they're dry And so they basically say, okay, you know field in iowa number seven is We're gonna have the harvesters there on next day spray it with roundup so we can harvest it And so nobody's sitting around washing the weed or the oats or the corn of roundup afterwards They They don't have to declare it and so it's fed to our animals It's fed to us almost all grains the united states are contaminated with roundup Almost all vineyards in the united states are sprayed with roundup to mine's clean organic. We're organic Very good. Bless you. Yes. And uh, you know But yeah in europe and it's you know, it's hard to get uh organic or biodynamic wine in the united states and bless you for doing that uh Because you know, most of our wines are contaminated with with roundup. Now, why should we worry about that? Well, it turns out that glyphosate is sadly now known to actually cause intestinal permeability leaky gut without doing anything else and roundup is Roundup was patented as an antibiotic glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic Was it ever administered as an antibiotic first before it became something they sprayed on? Okay. Wow, but it's considered an antibiotic Yeah, it's it's it's what antibiotics do exactly and So one of the things that they assured us was that don't worry Roundup is not absorbed and it can't kill you because you nice people Don't run what's called the shikomate pathway. And that's a really fun word the shikomate pathway And yeah, but but plants use the shikomate pathway What they didn't tell us was that our bacteria in our gut use the shikomate pathway And that's how they patented it as an antibiotic, but they didn't bother to tell any of us So every time you eat a roundup sprayed grain or bean or corn You're inadvertently killing off your gut microbiome and causing leaky gut Even though you're very fastidious about, you know, what choosing things More amazing episodes just like this one watch now Everybody's got a juicer. I know you got one in the cabinet someplace get out your juicer Buy some organic berries buy some organic fruit Put it in your juicer Throw the juice away. It's poison