 First things first. What is bloating? Well, the truth is bloating is a natural consequence of bacteria eating the foods they want and fermenting them and producing gases. They're producing these gases, which we now call postbiotics. These gases are actually incredibly beneficial to your health. In fact, I devoted an entire book, The Energy Paradox, to try and convince you to step on the gas. Now, the whole idea that we should try to eat foods to prevent bloating is actually one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. Just this past week, a beautiful study was published showing that hydrogen gas, yes, that gas that the Hindenburg blow up with, is incredibly important for giving bacteria that make butyrate, which is the holy grail of short chain fatty acids, that I wrote about in Unlocking the Keto Code, the substances they need to make butyrate, and that the more hydrogen gas that you have, that you produce, the better you are at making butyrate. You think that's not important? Well, as I've written about before, a study in Japan looking at Parkinson's patients and mild dementia patients, they did not have bacteria that made hydrogen gas. As compared to people who didn't have these problems, they had bacteria that made hydrogen gas. When they gave these individuals hydrogen water to drink, hydrogen dissolved in water, they got better, their symptoms improved. So the idea that we don't want to form gas, that's completely wrong. Now, you hear that gas production is a marker that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO. Now, where did this idea come from? First of all, up until a very few years ago, we had no idea that there were any bacteria that lived in our small intestine. We knew that there were bacteria in our mouth. We knew that there were bacteria in our colon, our large bowel. We even knew that there was a bacteria that liked to live in our stomach, H. pylori. But we really had no way of sampling whether bacteria were in our intestines or not. And I won't go into why we didn't know, but let's just say we didn't have sampling techniques. We now know that the small intestine is rich with bacteria. And a lot of those bacteria just so happen to be fermenters of post-biotic gases. Gases like hydrogen, gases like methane, gases like CO2, and gases like hydrogen sulfide. And I spent a whole book trying to convince you that these gases are really good for you. So the idea of trying to prevent this is actually counter-intuitive. In fact, the FODMAP diet, that diet that's designed to take away all these fermentable sugars, actually stars your microbiome to death. Absolutely, positively does. So I'm not sure why anyone would ever want to adapt a FODMAP diet, because that microbiome is going to give you not only long-term health, but attention, please, butyrate is actually what's going to help seal your leaky gut and keep it sealed by the action on the lining of our gut cells. So do not starve your cells to death. Now, so you don't want to have drinks that are going to stop bloating. What you want to do is drink drinks that are going to support the health of your gut and stop drinking drinks that are going to destroy gut wall. Now, after all, a healthy gut, a healthy gut microbiome, leads to more comfortable digestion, which is actually what you're trying to achieve. In fact, there are multiple published studies looking at people who had gas and bloating and who were told through tests that they had SIBO. Half of them were put on a FODMAP diet. The other were given more of these digestible fibers. And can you guess what they found? Well, if you said there was absolutely no effect in the amount of gas and bloating or the symptomatology, regardless of what system was used, you'd be right. So the idea of starving bacteria just doesn't click with studies. Now, before I reveal what drinks can help, I want to set the record straight on drinks that will not help you. In fact, these drinks will make you bloat even worse. Number one, wheat grass or barley grass. Now, a little bit of history. Where did the idea that wheat grass was good for you come from? Well, it actually came from Anne Wigmore, who was the founder of the Hippocrates Institute in Florida. Some of you may know that this was founded as a place for cancer patients to get natural holistic treatments. And Anne Wigmore noticed that when dogs wanted to vomit, they ate grass. And she was convinced that her cancer patients as part of their therapy should vomit. Now, fun fact, human beings cannot digest grass any more than dogs can. In fact, we can't absorb the nutrients from wheat grass. Now, cows and ungulates have four stomachs. They have four fermentation chambers to break down the cellulose in plant walls and in grass. So they are what are called four gut fermenters, top of the gut fermenters. Gorillas and apes in general are mid gut fermenters. They do most of their fermentation in the small intestine. That ought to tell you something. We're primarily hind gut fermenters. We do most of our fermentation now in our colon. So the reason a gorilla has this giant belly is that his small intestine or her small intestine is devoted to being the fermentation site. So we have evidence that fermentation was designed to happen in the middle of our intestines in our small bowel. Now, interestingly, no animal can actually break apart the cell wall of a plant. Termites can't break apart wood. They actually have to have bacteria in their little guts to break down these plant compounds. So fermentation is actually part and parcel with breaking down plants. Now, why do we have much smaller guts than apes? It turns out that cooking, fire, heat is the only other known way of breaking apart the cell wall of a plant. And so cooking made predigestion possible. So we had predigested foods with cooking that allowed us to minimize that mid gut fermentation that great apes had. And in fact, there's very, very strong evidence that Homo sapiens actually happened because of the advent of fire. So, yes, wheatgrass is a really great way to upset your stomach, but it's even worse than that. Wheatgrass contains gluten. So does barleygrass. Gluten is one of the best ways to cause leaky gut that anyone has ever found out. Alessio Fizzano from Harvard proved this when he was at the University of Maryland. That's the mechanism, one mechanism of causing leaky gut. So if you don't want leaky gut, which will really give you bloating, then get the wheatgrass and barleygrass out of it. A ton of my patients who are otherwise doing great. When we look at why they're not getting better, I can't tell you the number of people who are having a green drink with either wheatgrass or barleygrass is one of the ingredients. And when we get rid of that green drink, that was one of the culprits. OK, now, number two, this is going to surprise you. In fact, most of these things I'm going to tell you will surprise you. Ginger, ginger is thought of as calming for the stomach. But we do food sensitivity tests on our patients looking for IgG and IgA antibodies to 100, 200 different foods. And one of the things that popped up very quickly in all of these patients, and we've done thousands of them, is a great number of my patients with leaky gut are sensitive to ginger. They have antibodies to ginger. And when you eat something that's supposed to calm your stomach and calm your intestines, a number of my patients react to ginger. So if you're interested in ginger tea, adding ginger to your smoothies and you have gas and bloating, think about eliminating ginger as one of the culprits. Number three, here's one of the big culprits, smoothies. Now, there are plenty of people out there who love their morning smoothies. Now, sorry, folks, smoothies are just not healthy and they are not going to help with bloating. First of all, fruit is loaded with sugar, especially the pineapples and bananas, which are common in smoothies. Interestingly enough, when we do food sensitivities, a huge number of people have sensitivities to both pineapples and bananas. In fact, it's interesting that these are tropical fruits and almost all of us were never exposed to tropical fruits until about 500 years ago. They were not part of any of our ancestors' diets. And it's fascinating to me that both of these fruits come up very high in the list of foods that people are sensitive to. So that sensitivity sets off a reaction in your gut that causes leaky gut. Now, let's call a spade a spade. Sugar is sugar. Sugar feeds bad gut bacteria. When your bad gut bacteria overrule the good, you'll get bloating and other digestive comfort, you will get cramping. And it's not the benefit to keep eating these things and get it out of your system. Now, what about green smoothies? I am a huge fan of green smoothies because, number one, they have very little sugar. But here's another shocker that I talk about in the next book, Gut Check. There are a class of lectins that I haven't written about before because I didn't want to cause even more widespread panic. There's a class of lectins that are called aquaporins, water pores. And I don't have the time to tell you about them today. But spinach happens to contain an aquaporin that a number of people have an antibody to and aquaporins are known to cause leaky gut. They're known to cause leaky brain and they're known to cause damage to the myelin sheath if you have antibodies to them. Shockingly, a number of my patients with MS, when we tested them, had antibodies to the spinach aquaporin and they were big spinach eaters, spinach smoothies, spinach salads and eliminating spinach from their diet made a big difference. Now, I'm not telling you to eliminate spinach from your diet. Not everyone reacts to the aquaporin and spinach. But if you have an autoimmune disease or if you have MS or symptoms of MS, get rid of that spinach in your smoothie. Number four, lemon. Now, this is another shocker. I would never believe this in a million years. Surprisingly, in my patients, food sensitivity, lemons rank very high. It happens all the time. Now, is there an alternative? Yeah, you can use a lime. Most people who react to lemons do not react to limes. All right, what about drinks that can help? Well, first of all, have a shot of olive oil. There's more and more evidence that the polyphenols in olive oil support the growth of good bacteria and support the growth of bacteria that make butyrate. And the more butyrate you make, the healthier your wall of your gut, the better you feel. So have a shot of olive oil. Have some apple cider vinegar mixed with water or have some psyllium husk. psyllium husk, it turns out, may be the favorite food for your gut buddies. And there's some beautiful studies done out of Stanford University by the Sonnenberg husband and wife team that shows psyllium husk combined with fermented foods like yogurt or kefir really, really improve gut diversity and improves inflammatory markers in human volunteers. So have some psyllium husk dissolved in water. Better yet, take some basil seeds and dissolve them in water. You're going to get all this phenomenal gut buddy feeding fiber in the basil seeds and polyphenols as well. So three great options for your morning drink that will actually improve your gut health rather than hurt it. And please, please, please avoid the FODMAP diet. It is lethal to the guys that you want in your gut. Believe me, it's true. Thanks so much for watching. But don't go anywhere. This next one is sure to surprise you. Dark chocolate, greater than seventy two percent cacao, has polyphenols that will dramatically improve your eye health.