 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Dr. Jill Live. As you know, you can find me on YouTube. Please do stop by there and subscribe so you get advanced notice of all the upcoming episodes. Or if you prefer audio in your car on your walk, wherever you're going, like I do, you can listen on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify anywhere you listen to podcasts, it's all there. But wherever you listen, please, please do subscribe, follow and make sure you leave a review, because more reviews we get to reach more listeners. So today, I have a delightful friend and amazing colleague. And we're going to talk about the gut and all things gut brain connection. Also want to mention she was on a previous episode, I think it was episode 21. Way back in the days. It's like, I think it was early in COVID actually, but we connected. So you might want to catch that episode. Episode 21 is with Lauren Lax today. Let me introduce you, Lauren, and then we will jump right in. So Dr. Lauren is a former TV news journalist trying functional medicine and gut health expert. Her work is inspired by her 25 years of clinical and personal experience, overcoming 12, quote, incurable diseases. I know how that goes. The diets doctors and Dr. Google couldn't solve. Dr. Lauren's life to death story has been featured on CBS ABC. Good morning, America and USA Today. And you can find more about her work by reading her latest book, The Total Gut Reset, which is also the title of our episode today. Tune in to her Go With Your Gut podcast and joining her in the Total Gut Reset program and virtual functional medicine clinic. Lauren, so good to see you here and welcome back. It's always fun to talk to a colleague but also friend because we often share prayer requests outside of this, which is so fun to have that kind of friendship. But I'd love to start with story. So I want to start with your kind of like, how did you get here? We heard just a little bit about being curable diseases and everything in your bio. Tell us a little bit about your background and kind of what you're passionate about. 100% Well, yes, I was on the path to becoming the next Katie Kirk on the Today Show before the big man upstairs had different plans with just kind of the journey I had been on. And my journey really begins back at 10 years old fourth grade recess. And all I wanted to do was fit in. I had a frizzy hair and a pink scrunchie my mom made me wear and that day at fourth grade recess, the popular girls invited me to join their gossip circle. And they're like laughing at Melanie Strong's ugly sweater gawking over Eric Arthur's cute, freckled face. And then the topic of weight comes up. And the queen bee says, Oh, my gosh, you guys, I weighed myself last night and I'm 69 pounds. So fat. And then turning to each of us. What do you weigh? And one by one, we had to go around the gossip circle and report to our drill sergeant. And at a healthy 80 pounds at 10 years old, I was by no means a fat kid. But when the circle got to me, I gulped and I lied. And I said, I don't know. And I'd never forget going home and standing in the pantry that day and turning over my favorite Doritos snack pack, and learning a whole new language, which was fat grams and calories. And I aged 10, my life path took a sharp turn. And little did I realize it's been the next 20 plus years of my life on a roller coaster of diets, dogmas, Dr. Google searches and doctors offices, all in search for feeling good in my own skin for multiple things. So I was diagnosed with anorexia around that age. My habits started and quickly were discovered by my parents and pediatricians. And from there, it became kind of an all out war between like my goals for just feeling good in my own skin and what the world and the culture told me to do. And then the doctors and just the conventional healthcare system as well. And really little did I realize I would go ahead to head with that like just conventional thinking at such a young age. But really my many years in hospitals and treatment centers, I spent a four years accumulated of my life over the course of that eating disorder journey inside hospitals and treatment centers on feeding tube and heart rate monitors and IV fluids and being fed the Pop Tarts pizza and Prozac, because that's the conventional medical systems treatment for eating disorders. And still is kind of today as well, just kind of like we see with a move more eat less for people that are overweight, just symptom based treatment or take a pill for an ill lifestyle induced disease. So at a young age, my wheels began to turn of like, you know, this is not the path to feeling well or being well. That early journey came to a head from the eating disorder at age 23 when I found myself about to enter my second year of grad school. I was actually studying to become a doctor of occupational therapy, roundabout ways of getting places. But I'll never forget stepping on the scale and seeing a number I had not seen since I was that 10 year old girl, actually one pound less 79 pounds. Only this time I was 23 and a full fledged adult. And my journey really like kind of like started and stopped there. And I'll never forget praying God help me make a change today. It wasn't like my parents standing over me telling me what to do or doctors saying like, I was a full fledged adult again, I was making my own decisions and just like this is what my life has come to. And so as I prayed like God help me make a change today yelled that out loud on my way to the gym at the YMCA. And when I got to the gym, not one but nine other strangers walked up and there are nine gym goers I now call my YMCA angels and stepped in spoke up and said they wanted to help and really not knowing anything about my backstory. They just saw a girl slaving away on her Stairmaster and in the gym eight hours a day and subsisting on very little and just withering away. And within the next 48 hours I found myself in the CCU with a heart rate in the near 20s and doctors saying I may not make it. And it was in that moment something inside me clicked. And it was that download was the answer is not out there. It's in here and like really in my gut. And the Holy Spirit is a big part of my story as well. And I heard a download from the Lord is just Lauren, I've got this but buckle up your seatbelt. It's going to be a ride and it wasn't another just six weeks day at a time in a hospital or few months at a treatment center. I spent another year in treatment really refeeding back to health but not in a very healthy way. But something inside me had changed and I said life is going to be different on the other side and at 100% wise like became just completely remissed from that eating disorder in that mindset that I had for so long and just freedom from that. And a little did I know on the back end of that journey like I had another journey I'd go through. And so the next 10 years I would actually be diagnosed with these 12 incurable illnesses. I put that in quotes because they're now in remission 100% but just from all those years that both diets and treatment had destroyed my gut. So both diet culture and conventional health care and I really form this like fire in my belly to figure out there has to be another way outside of both of these worlds that are promising health for people. And the diagnosis I was given was anything from like five different autoimmune diseases, hypothyroidism being worked at for cancer and brain tumors and strokes and then mass activation syndrome, mold illness, Lyme disease, co-infections like really the list goes on. There's not a disease I did not touch on I guess paper. But like it really was I had to heal from the inside out. So that journey and that roller coaster became my underground medical school. So they say of just like learning how to heal from the inside out and that's what developed my love for the gut and the gut brain connection because that runs the show of our body. Your gut is connected to everything, both head, heart and health are all three of those things. And so it's both figurative and literal. And then the brain like just that directly right there. So everything that we intercept in our in our outer world, builders from there to the gut and then vice versa obviously. So that's where I began to find so much healing and led me to where today I'm healed to others and working with others and I'm launching this company Total Gut Reset which is really a compilation of both my lived experience of all those years. I'm about 35. I feel like I'm 25 because I am anti-aging. And then as well as just my clinical and personal experience working with patients the past 10 years now. Wow. What a compelling story. And what a beautiful way you have a telling your story. It's intriguing. I know that our listeners, if they didn't relate to one point, they related to another because what you're describing is a human experience, right? And especially for young women, I had a lot of similar stuff. I talk about my book and I had I didn't know I was celiac undiagnosed. I was synced deficient. I was hypocaloric. I had swelling, I had puffy face and I was thinking I was fat, right? And I had the same kind of pathway more like a couple years of bulimic behavior. But it wasn't about the eating disorder. It was about mindset, right? And it was also about our health from the inside out from the gut level because my gut was so ill that it was affecting me physically. And I really understand that. And I know a lot of either mothers listening, grandmothers listening, patients listening, young girls listening or others can relate. And if there's ever more pressure, it's this next generation is even more with our filters and our toxic load. And this is only becoming a bigger issue because people on the outside are trying to fix this surface, this mask, right? And it's the inside where we heal. And so I love that you go there. And I want to talk about mindset because part of what you described is when you were on the you know, the gym and you had the angels intervening at the fitness center. What I heard in your story was this understanding at some deep level at some point, which was probably God's spirit in your life, right? That was like, this is an outside job. And you said that, right? I mean, let's talk about that because that leads on to what we're going to talk about today. And really what I also believe is some of the key healings. We can't if we hate ourselves, or we don't love the body that God has given us, we will get disease and will often manifest in auto immunity or other things. And so it's so important. Let's talk a little bit about that. And that and tell us about how did that feel to go from, I mean, honestly, I don't know what we don't want to project, but I'm guessing you kind of hated your body in the beginning, right? Because that's what we do when we have those kinds of disorders. And then we have to switch and shift. Tell us about that. Because that's Yeah, I often tell my clients like this ease in our life can show up as disease in the body. So this is being just the again, uneasiness, stress and balance. And like a lot of that is intercepted through the brain. The HBAT axis is taking everything in in our fight or flight world. And so it could be external stress that is manifested and definitely like just the psychosocial emotional stressors that we are vibing at on a daily basis. And 95% of our brain and our thoughts are actually subconscious thinking. And so anything that we're consciously aware of is like the tip of the iceberg. And so like, if I am in a place of like not feeling good enough, like that was my story for so long, that was really just entrenched in my inner most being. And so what continued to drive a lot of the eating disorder. And then also just like the later residual of all the other health issues was just that that full embodied belief that I'm not good enough. And like from, you know, the enemy's greatest lies as well. And so that I think can really just manifest and I want to say like about eating disorders, but at any symptom, actually there is a map to a specific type of stressor. So with eating disorders, with gut issues, a lot of times that's related to an indigestible conflict in our life, our body and our symptoms are metaphors for what's happening in our, in our mind, in our world, in the stresses that we're encountering. So obviously fourth grade recess, little girl tells me I'm fat, that's pretty indigestible something I didn't can swallow figuratively again and break down on like that is like pinging the ouch, that hurt. And I never process that at that time. And these can be like the seemingly littlest of things, but it can also be a building story. And that I'm not good enough didn't just happen at that fourth grade recess. It was very interesting, my like early life of wanting to be a people pleaser being the first born, golden child and feeling like I needed to perform growing up in a society where there was a lot of expectation and like upper middle class kind of school, etc. Like teacher in third grade telling me to suck my tummy in. So there's a lot of seeds that can be planted. It's not just one instance either. And a lot of times the onset of an illness or an imbalance is going to mirror like, or like the length of that illness may mirror the onset of it. So it's slow building, whereas like maybe an acute cold or flu that last a week, like that's a stink conflict related to. So that may have been like the weather is changing. It's winter. This sucks. Like that stinks. Or it could be just like something like at work, a tough little email or tobacco that you were navigating that like could onset it, but I have been able to understand how the brain is mapped for different conditions based on stressors. And it really just like through my own lived experience to and workshop being each of those individual thing has really made so much sense and also helped with healing because with awareness comes more healing. Yeah, that's one thing we you and I love to text back and forth is the learning we're doing. And really, it does start for my journey to its understanding ourselves at a deeper and deeper level, it often leads to transformation. And that's what you're describing. Now, two things that come to mind I talk about in the book, and I think are common to so many men and women is I'm not worthy. I'm not enough or I'm not lovable. Those those are universal things that people often struggle with. Tell us from your perspective with your background in NLP and some of these things, where do those come from? How can we overcome? How might they manifest in disease? So the wariness, the loving ourselves? Tell us a little bit about those framework because those seem to be super common. Yeah, I mean, I think they are part of the human needs like Tony Robbins calls them like the six like human needs, which would be like worth and such like nificance connection and love is another one, the need for control and like our peace in our life, the need for variety, the need for like just joy to and just like ease and kind of like that's his framework is that he'll come from. I call him like got hungers, but I think they are part of the human experience because just like we do live in a world where this world is not our home as well. And so those pinings for like whether it is significance and worth or purpose or love and connection. We saw that a ton during COVID. I think it's so interesting that during COVID, we were locked down for like, you know, four or eight weeks in some places and people got way sick after being locked down. And it's just like how that lack of love and connection was really taken from us and where that disease was escalated as well as like the stories we were feeding ourselves during that time and the awareness there. So but yeah, I mean, I think it is definitely rooted like even that worth back in the Garden of Eden to and just the need for like purpose and meaning and wanting to be something greater. And so I think it is just embedded in us with awareness, though, like comes power. Yes. Hey, everybody, I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, Unexpected Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science and Faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life-threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein Barr and mold and biotoxin related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy, stop by readunexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. Yes. And these aren't bad things because being loved, loving and return is such a core of who we are and what we are put on this earth to do and then worth and value. We all have intrinsic value. So so let's let's turn a little to the gut specific because we have the physiological gut, the gut issues you and I have both experience. But then the gut brain connection, do you want to frame that a little and tell us a little bit about like how you approach the gut with the gut reset program? Yeah, definitely. Well, I kind of view how I always say health is an inside job. And so like if you fix the inside, the outside is really going to improve. So we're talking a lot, we were talking a lot about mindset, but also physiologically, just because that the gut is the mothership. It's kind of if you've ever seen my big fact Greek wedding, Windex they use on everything. And I think there's really nothing that your gut does not touch. You have more microbes than you do cells in your body. And they are like it is the majority of your immune system is there a 70 to 80% then you have obviously the brain where 90 to 95% of signals to the brain are actually coming from the gut microbes over 500 million neurons inside your gut, which would be brain cells inside your gut more than any other part of your peripheral nervous system. Your metabolism is greatly affected. And so I love the studies where they take the mice, the germ free mice, and they put bacteria from an overweight subject and from a lean subject into these mice and they gain weight or lose weight depending on which bacteria they get. No change in diet or exercise at all. And and then from just like your hormones as well, like your largest endocrine producing organ or hormone producing organ endocrine organ itself. And so a lot of our hormone balancing, a lot of our active T three, which would be thyroid hormones produced there, HPA T axis being greatly like cortisol inflammation is going to affect both what's happening in the gut and the gut's also going to affect the HPA T axis, which would be your cortisol producing system. Yeah. And so there's just so many layers there. And like, yeah, the mothership is really what I like a great way to frame it. What are some practical lifestyle tips? Obviously, we can talk about probiotics and those kinds of things interventions. But what tell us how like sleep and mindset, some of the other things affect our gut. So top down in the bottom up direction. But what about these things that actually affect our gut function? Yeah, definitely. So I think there are I mean, fundamentals of health help. It's like an olive branch to the guy. And so the reason why diets even work in diet culture for a time, we know 95% of diets end up failing people. But it's because of what it's happening in the gut. So like if one say adopts a carnivore diet, I was just like Keto Khan this past weekend, a lot of carnivore keto being talked about, it's modulating the gut microbiome. And so like diet can be an influential piece and like your gut healing your gut. And which was once productive can become counterproductive to without the balance and the gut. So the gut and your body as a whole ultimately does fires homeostasis. And we definitely live in a toxic world where we're inundated with like lack of homeostasis. So sometimes what it seems like maybe extreme or just like cleansing, etc. or diets of some sort, therapeutically can be really productive and helpful. And so but I would say diet is the number one modifier of the gut, aside from like a fecal microbial transplant, at least for a time. And most people are doing that right now. And then from a diet like granular perspective, it really goes mean balance protein fat and fiber being essentials there. And the least inflammatory versions of those as possible. It is interesting from a mindset perspective when we do factor in diet, though, too, because I do believe 80 20 balance is so essential from a diet perspective, it's kind of like the hygiene hypothesis, like the cleaner we are the sicker we become. So a lot of my patients that come to me are eating so pristine, or eating like five to 10 foods. And yet they're still sick and still not feeling well and still feeling waste just around food. And so a big part of my approach is actually branching out and finding food freedom because we all know when 90 year old uncle Joe who eats like spam and orange soda every day, he's on his couch and he never like had a diagnosis in life, he's a happy camper. And like, there is something to the mind and our peace of mind or like the blue zone studies as well are great. Yeah, community is a huge piece of the puzzle. But that's just one factor diet, as I'm mentioning balance, there's a multiple other things. I can. So I actually love just stopping there real quickly because I have a lot of patients who are in even my history with Crohn's I went on a very restrictive diet to heal from that. But let's talk briefly because so many of the foods like say we do go on a low pod med diet for SIBO right. This is a great example because what you're doing is you're taking all the foods that feed your microbiome. And you're doing that intentionally so that you starve the bacteria that are growing in your small bowel it works. It's very effective I use that. But if you were to stand the low pod med diet for life, or if you're out there and you've been on it for 10 years, you are starving the diversity in your microbiome. And even for me with my history of Crohn's and eating super clean, I have continued to try to add foods versus take them away. And years ago, 20 years ago, it's been a long time since I've been doing functional medicine. I would put you on elimination diets and it's super helpful. Like you said, the studies I quote when I'm teaching about gut health is one day of the mice switching from a high fat westernized diet to a plant based diet or vice versa. The microbiome changes in 24 hours. So it's profound the effect of the by the food on the microbiome and on the immune system. And that's what we're seeing. But that long term can be and it can also be so restrictive for you even mindset or going out to eat with friends or whatever. Now I'm all for a super clean diet. I still to this day let me be clear. I really, really, really clean. I don't touch gluten. I don't touch to carry. I really avoid sugar. So that'll always be and I have no problem with that. But as many of you listeners have had these, you know, where you're so sensitive or you have mass activation, what we want to do is heal that mindset, heal that immune system. Speaking of that, I think this is a great next topic because mass activation gut very connected because we have so much histamine mass cells in our gut. And the thought that came to mind that I'd like to talk about is fear and safety. Right. Because I think a big piece of this reacting to our environment reacting to the world having had mold exposure, both you and I, we get to be and even if we know in our mind, hey, I'm going to be okay. There is a limbic response, right. And the same with being afraid of foods where you get into this box where you have four food groups that you can eat, not groups, but food, you know, period. And part of that is if you don't feel safe in your body or you feel like the environment is a threat, even subconsciously, it will affect your reactivity to foods and muscle issues. Let's talk about that because that's this mind body connection. And I feel like the more I can help patients feel safe, the more they'll heal their guts. Yeah, 100%. Like so the fear response overtly is going to shut down your digestion and then release that like made a made a histamine because fear, anxiety, like that goes together with the histamine release as well as cortisol. And it's kind of like if you're running from a bear in the wild, the last thing your body is going to want to do is digest that chicken breast. And so that fight or fight response is huge as well. So like it does start here in the mind. And one of my favorite studies is the milkshake study where they give two groups of milkshake and they say just like enjoy it. One of them is an indulgent shake, a 600 calorie milkshake. The other one is a sense of shake, a 140 calorie milkshake. In actuality, they gave them the exact same milkshake, 300 calorie milkshake. And they wanted to see what happened to their metabolic response. And the people that have the indulgent shake actually were more satisfied. They felt very nourished and they're like earned it, we enjoyed it. It's a one time great. Glad we got to do the study and enjoyed that. The people with the diet shake on the other hand, had an three times increase in their hunger hormone. And they just felt more deprived and like they kind of earned it as well. They earned their calories so they could have more and they wanted more. And again, no change in actual milkshake that they were served. And so that in and of itself going into our meals and the way we approach food, especially when we are labeled and we've like come to this conclusion a lot of times on our own because we've been doing all the searching and realized, man, I do have massive activations in Rome and then you start getting inundated with like low oxalates, low histamine, low everything, alpha, gal syndrome, et cetera. And so then fear sets in. And so if we even think about it, you would react. And so I think something that really helped me begin to get over that was to assume a new identity. And I can say, like with just like 100% confidence that I've been able to introduce every single food that I wanted to that I had not been able to have before, or like when I was going through that. And when I say that I wanted to, like I have a very deep seated like I would say trauma with like gluten and dairy just from the eating disorder days of being served prop tarts and being horse fed these milkshake, like ice cream resource shakes that I just haven't really wanted to go there. But I think my body could handle it if I really mentally like use that muscle just how I have like if I go to Italy, eat really like try the gluten bread there, which is more pristine than our toxin bread here. But all that to say is something I'll do with my clients is like a topping exercise and like find two to three affirmation statements like when I was like struggling with the mold, it was like, I'm strong, I'm resilient, the mold can't hurt me. And I would tap right here on my third eye, which is like where your pituitary gland is and where the stress is being like really released. And so doing that around food, like I'm strong, I'm resilient, like the almond milk can't hurt me or whatever the food is. And so that way you begin to assume a new identity and then really getting good visualization kind of like the Michael Phelps style where his secret to success as a 20 plus Olympic athlete or gold medal Olympic athlete was visualization seeing himself at the end of that race like standing on the podium waving to his fans, feeling himself in the water. And so you can do visualization with who it is you want to show up as in health and healing with food and just like envisioning it and then really beginning a new belief because our body is going to respond to what we're telling it. So if we're showing up to a meal and very just quietly like, I can do this, but there's like that deep sea that I believe still like it may be more challenging. And so and then on the like side end or like alongside what I'll do to help support clients kind of like floaties is like I'll put in the supplemental support that feel like a like a life vest for them. So like whether it's an MC stabilizer or some natural and it has to mean who knows placebo effects are real like they can take that with that or digestive enzymes if tolerated. And so kind of just putting in the reinforcements and then focusing a lot more on building up versus breaking down is what I do. And so like if we can build up your good gut bug army and not like leaky gut symptomology that's often present as well as like your drainage lymphatic like I focus a ton more on support versus like detox kill detox kill because we want that good gut bug army. Then the oral tolerance increases and you're able to digest more foods as well. Love that. And what I love that you talked about is identity, you know, habits. So any habit we want to change whether it's eating more, more foods or, you know, getting up every morning to do a gentle meditation or exercise when we change our identity around that, like you said, I just wanted to reiterate that because I think it's so powerful for those of you out there looking at a way to change your movie frustrated with yourself or first of all be kind to yourself because you're doing the best you can. But second of all, when you start to change, I am a healthy person or I have a healthy gut and you become that. Like you said, and when you're tapping, you actually start to make choices because that's your identity. For example, I don't eat gluten. I have celiac. And so there's never a choice or question. There's never any mental anguish over should I have that bread or should I not? I just know I'm gluten free. I don't eat gluten. That's my identity. Same with smoking. I don't smoke. I'm a non smoker and again, no judgment, but that's who I am. And so when that cigarette, which I don't think I've ever been offered a cigarette, but when something like that would come across me, I'd be like, no, I don't smoke, right? So anything you want to change in your life with habits, if you start to become that and that's your identity, it's so much easier because if you're like, oh, I'm 90% gluten free. Well, then when that bread comes along, you're like, oh, am I going to eat it? Am I going to not? And you struggle internally? And if you're in a weak state and you didn't want to, but you were like, oh, I'm gonna, and then you shame yourself internally. And there's a whole roller coaster. So I really love that you talked about identity, because I think that's been a key for me in living life. Well, as this is, for example, I am a cancer survivor, technically, I say technically, because what sometimes nowadays people will say, you know, ask about the cancer and I have to almost pause because when I got cancer 25 21 years ago, I literally was like, I didn't identify with it. I didn't become it. And I never really identified with being a cancer survivor or having had cancer. And not that I was in denial, I was full fledged participating. But what that's led to is like this kind of dissociation with like, oh, yeah, I did have cancer, but it never was me, it wasn't my identity. And I think that's part of the healing, right? Oh, 100%. I would say like in both of my journeys, the crux point was deciding that I was well, like, I'm going to be well now. And I'm healed and like both for the mold and those 12 incurable illnesses. And then for the eating disorder, have had specific pivotal moments with that. So that is 100%. Correct. Love, love. So in our last few minutes, mold, audience loves to hear about mold, because a lot of you out there are suffering or have suffered or know someone who suffered and it's nasty. I always say it was way easier to have cancer than to have mold related illness because cancer is obvious. I had no hair, you know, people understood mold related illnesses so difficult. And there's also a sabotage to our insight and understanding our overwhelming our Olympic system. So not only is it overwhelming physically, people don't understand, but it's also sabotaging our ability to kind of be in the real, you know, situation and deal with it logically because our brain is affected. So obviously, mold can affect the gut. And you and I have both had experiences. You want to talk just a little bit about what you've learned with mold related illness and the gut or just in general tips and suffering from mold. Oh, man, that's I love mold, the topic of mold, because it is so pervasive nowadays. And so obviously, like the fungal overgrowth and the gut and like disruption of the gut microbiome as a whole can be caused from toxicity. And a lot of times like we deliver gallbladder is part of your gut, it's part of your digestive system. And those are the pathways that a lot of times get most clogged that we're like really targeting when we are detoxing from mold or thinking like even sauna from all like we want to push pathogens through or toxins through rather. Interestingly, though, as well, like kind of back to the gut brain is like some people tend to have certain symptoms of mold more than others. So I did have a lot of ideas. I had colitis, flair and mold where some get like horrible like brain fog and or others will get like hormone imbalances where the thyroid's off. Like we know there's like mold touches everything and not everything for every one at the same time. So like why is that? And that's kind of where the like the whack-a-mole of piecing together like what specific symptoms are maybe your top three and understanding like what is the gut brain connection there. And when I am thinking gut brain, we hear a lot about the limbic system and how the limbic system part of the brain is processing stressors and memories and storing and paralleling. So if I like smell mold, even if I'm not in living in mold anymore, it can retrigger like that fear response that I felt like in my very first house where so I may experience the same symptoms even if it's just like in my or if I think about it, I used to like go into new homes and like to be testing or to go look at a new home to live in before even walking in. Sometimes I was already reacting because there was that fear response like I don't want to be in that situation again. And so that's the limbic system and how that's working. And so like for gut symptomology, I mentioned earlier, like a lot of times that can be related to indigestible conflicts. And so like what in my life was like a pervasive or like hanging healing with an indigestible conflict and prior to getting most sick with mold, I know 100 percent I've lived in mold a lot of my life and other seasons. But for whatever reason, this season of my life that I got most sick, it had been a series of stressors and indigestible conflicts both within a work context and like a roommate situation context. And I was working, I think like 12 hour days, like very long, not sleeping very much, maybe four hours and kind of like just go mode. And so there was a lot of stress happening. But kind of like you can workshop your specific symptoms again, dependent on what are the most pervasive ones. And that really helped me greatly is understanding how much like stress had been related to the preceding onset from that gut brain connection. Your immune system is also in your gut, as we mentioned. So a lot of times with mast cell being paralleled with mold, like I would say nine times out of 10, they're like linked if not 100 percent of the time that is connected in there. And so like that, again, being like, OK, immune system is in my gut, mold is something I'm perceiving. I'm living in as a toxin. And so there's a lot of layers there. But and the gut does impact again, every other system in your body. But if you have overgut, sometimes I would explore like what was the indigestible conflicts going on in my life prior to the mold onset or around that time as well. Gosh, I love that framework of the mind and indigestible complex so that we can think beyond just the physical organs because our brain and our framework and some of the subconscious massively affects us. Oh, Dr. Loren, I could keep talking to you for a long time. This is so fun. But let's talk first of all, what would be your big takeaway? I just recently talked to someone and said future generations, you know, because we know how we survived our childhood and some of the things we struggled with, I think the younger generations have it even more difficult, our toxic loads increasing. There's so much upheaval and uncertainty and all of that. What would be, you know, gut related, health related, brain related, you pick it. What would be a takeaway you would give to our listeners? Yeah, I would just like lean into knowing when given the right tools, your body always innately wants to heal itself. And so like, you know, break a bone, slap a cast on it, six, eight weeks of heals, even if you're eating McDonald's or catch a cold or flu, a little R&R, Gilmore Girls reruns, bone broth, like does the body good, like the body is really wired to heal itself. And so even amidst just recognizing the inundation that we are in a toxic world and our food system, medical system isn't all we've got our best interests of health at heart, like to really rest in the fact that like when given the right tool of my body still innately is wired to heal. And so those right tools being like fundamental foundations of like balanced diet that we talked about really great gut health and the layers that that includes like, you know, sleep, exercise connection with people like five gut love habits that I talked about in my program. Those are all like just really great core basics. I always go back to the foundations and even for myself whenever I'm feeling out of balance. Yeah, I love that we landed there because so critical with the foundational and like he said sleep and food, clean, I would say clean air clean water, clean food, basic, basic stuff. It doesn't take an expensive supplemental program. It starts with the six so so poor. And Dr. Lorne where can everybody find you or follow you tell us more about? Yeah, I'm I'm Dr. Lauren everywhere. So just D.R. L.A. You are why and not in and Dr. Lauren dot com is my mothership website and then total gut reset dot com will be going live in September. Awesome. Very cool. Thank you as always for your time for your expertise for your story and your compassion. It's so fun to talk to you today. Thank you for having me on so fun.